Theos-Talk Archives (January 2002 Message tt00463)

Larry & Paul:

One of the ideas I found in Blavatsky and followed up
was the notion that there is a 100 year cycle in the
consciousness of the masses regarding matters
transcendental. Specifically, she says her
organization sends out a messenger in the seventy
fifth year of every century. Following up on that, I
found the whole story to be considerably more
interesting.

For several centuries now the first half of the
century seems to be dominated by the conservative
religious groups. Christianity was founded during the
first half of the first century and Mormonism and the
Ba'hai "faith" during the first half of the
nineteenth. It was between 1618 and 1648 that the
Thirty Years War was fought.

Then in the forty eighth year something of great
significance seems to happen to mark the shift. In
1648 the Treaty of Westphalia marked the formal end of
the Thirty Years War. It was then and thereafter that
the Rosicrucians began to rise to prominence, the
writings of Boehme were published in English, etc. It
was in 1647 that the Rosicrucian lodge at Nuremberg
was reconstituted with Leibniz as secretary. In 1748
there was once again a resurgence in European
Rosicrucianism, followed by a plethora of copycat
groups. In 1848 the Rochester Manifestations marked
the beginning of the spiritualist movement, etc.

The second half of the century also marks some
increase in materialsm and anti spirituality. This
was quite marked in the nineteenth century, but can
also be seen in the sighteenth, with the Rosicrucians
setting up an absurd council to consider and censor
books, including Kant's RELIGION WITHIN THE LIMITS OF
REASON ALONE.

At the end of the century, liberalism and esotericism
starts to decline and we see a resurgence of
conservatism, fanaticism, intolerance, etc., such as
we are seeing today. Blavatsky predicted that her WB
would withdraw from the TS in 1897. That is probably
true, and there rs no reason to believe that they came
back after withdrawing.

Whether Blavatsky's prophecy of the new messenger in
1975 was ever fulfilled or not I cannot say, but
NEWSWEEK ran a special issue reporting on the fact
that it was in that year that esoteric stuff peaked,
with the Maharishi, some Brazilian group whose name I
do not remember, and so on. The entire issue was
dedicated to that.

Those may all just be coincidences, but they seem
consistent enough to be at least interesting
historically.

The decline of "liberal Christianity" (which frankly
sounds like an oxymoron to me) is therefore in line
with what has happened in the past, and will probably
be accompanied by a decline in esoteric groups as
well. That will continue until about 2048, and then
the cycle will begin anew.

Steve

--- kpauljohnson <kpauljohnson@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Larry,
> 
> Your presence adds something to the list and I
> welcome the kind of 
> contributions you make below:
> > 
> > This liberal/fundimentalist trend is not unique.
> In Protestant
> > Christianity, all the old mainline churches which
> now view 
> themselves as liberal, are in decline. Methodists,
> Lutherans, 
> Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Reformed, all these
> have lost 
> significant membership in the last thirty to forty
> years. 
> 
> Disciples of Christ also. But one non-mainstream
> church that is 
> liberal is definitely not declining: the Unitarian
> Universalists are 
> growing at a rapid rate last I read. Another
> liberal success story 
> is the Unity School of Christianity, pretty
> expansionary if I recall 
> correctly. Note that these two consist of converts,
> whereas the 
> mainline losses are to people born into the faith.
> 
> > On the other side, the Southern Baptists,
> 
> Actually, I just read recently that the SBC had its
> first year of 
> declining numbers. THANK YOU, JESUS.
> 
> > Pentacostals, Holiness and other more conservative
> sects are still 
> on the rise.
> 
> Some conservative sects are in steep decline too. 
> But by and large 
> the fastest growing groups are conservative, e.g.
> the Seventh-day 
> Adventists.
> 
> Once, the Methodists were in that position. I guess
> that's cycles
> > in action.
> > 
> 
> The ARE is one of the most intriguing examples of
> membership booming 
> and busting; 17k when I first joined in 1977; up to
> almost 100k in 
> 1989, back down around 20k now. Lots of discussion
> about why that 
> happened.
> 
> As for Theosophy, I don't know about numbers but the
> impression of 
> vitality was generally strong in the late 70s and
> 80s, across the 
> board-- Adyar, Pasadena, ULT. I don't get the same
> impression now.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Paul
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to
> http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ 
> 
> 


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