Theos-Talk Archives (March 2004 Message tt00253)

--- In theos-talk@yahoogroups.com, Drpsionic@a... wrote:
> The reason that commentators on the Kaballah such as Levi 
> and Mathers tend to be a bit, well, weird, is that Jewish 
esotericism was a 
> closed system and they could not penetrate it, so they were forced 
to use what 
> published materials they could find.

That may be true. It should be said that both men used nothing but 
grimoires which had been translated and were available in manuscript 
form in French and English libraries. Mathers' "translation" of THE 
KEY OF SOLOMON THE KING has been discovered to be actialy a ripoff of 
someone else's translation which he found in a library in England. 
It should also be said in fairness that both Mathers and Levi are 
reported to have actually succeeded at the evocations described i 
these books. Nonetheless this is not the best part of the Kabbalah.

Also, it is true that the Kabbalistic societies were for the mosty 
part closed, and it is also true that some of the genrile dominated 
societies were assisted in this study by Jewish scholars. The 
Asiatic Brethren, which were an offshoot of the eighteenth century 
Rosicrucians is an example. There is a bok I read many years and the 
name fof which I cannot remember that told the whole story in 
detaill. Also, von Eckartshausen's MAGIC is a work of no 
consequence, but he seems to have had some inside knowledge of the 
practical Kabbalah, even though he shared previous little with his 
readers. So it is a tough question to answer.

> The question must asked, is there any credible evidence that anyone 
was 
> denied admittance to the Theosophical Society during the Blavatsky 
period solely on 
> the basis of that individual being a Jew?

I think getting into the TS was like getting into the Book of the 
Month Club. The question that would be more meaningful would be 
whether anyone was excluded from the EST or the IG? I do not know. 
If anyone had been admitted, thogh, that would hgave set utterly to 
rest any idea that she was antiSemitic.

> We cannot take people out of the context of their lives and we 
cannot judge 
> people out of the context of their time even though it is a natural 
human 
> tendency and we may be assured that if anyone is so unfortunate as 
to read our 
> writings a hundred and fifty years from now they will do the same 
to us.

I suspect anyone so unfortunate as to read what gets said on this 
list next week will scratch his head in wonder. Forget about a 
hundred years from now.