Theos-Talk Archives (August 2005 Message tt00195)

Frank,

So are you saying that the "higher teachings" of
Theosophy do NOT teach that men and women are
equal? But instead that men are somehow "superior" to women??

That men possess the divine soul but that women
lack the divine soul? What is the "divine soul" in
this context??

Does H.P. Blavatsky teach this anywhere in her
writings?

Or is this teaching found only in some obscure or
esoteric text by GdP??

Daniel


--- In theos-talk@yahoogroups.com, "Frank Reitemeyer" 
<ringding@o...> wrote:
> Bart, as far as I know (I have no time to study in depth Thomas) 
he declared 
> that a male fetus becomes after 40 days and a female fetus after 
80 days 
> human.
> But that refers only to that what Theosophy labels the lower self. 
As far as 
> I know Thomas denied that women have a divine soul.
> That's the reason why he also said that women exists mainly to 
serve the men 
> and give birth to children and to keep house - not to serve God, 
which is a 
> privileg of the man.
> 
> Thomas also added that a woman is inferior to man (i.e. lack of 
the divine 
> soul). That is the common convinction in the Catholic church and 
the 
> rationale why women cannot become priests: they possess no divine 
soul, 
> therefore have no connection to God and cannot to the work of a 
priest.
> 
> He also wrote that women are a blunder of nature, not created 
according to 
> the image of God, therefore it is the natural order of a woman to 
serve the 
> man. The full expression of the human kind is only possible in a 
man's body, 
> the women is a corrupted, mistaken man.
> 
> For this reason the synod of Paris in 846 A.C. decided that no 
priest must 
> enter a room where a woman is to be.
> 
> And the synod of Coyaca in 1050 decided that in the neighbourhood 
of a 
> church no woman must live.
> 
> And the 2nd synod of Toledo in 589 decided that a priest who hosts 
a woman 
> under suspicion must be punished and the woman sold into slavery 
by the 
> bishop.
> 
> The synod of Elvira, 4th Century, decided that woman must not 
write nor 
> receive letters.
> 
> Clemens said before 215 that a woman, thinking of her own being 
must be 
> ashamed.
> 
> There was another church teacher, John Chrysostomos (in greco-
German 
> rendering), who said that women mainly exist to satisfy the 
horniness of 
> men.
> 
> Pope Pius II. (1405-1464) said: If you look at a woman, consider, 
it is the 
> devil! She is a kind of hell!
> 
> Buddhist monks is not allowed to give a woman the hand because 
they are 
> unclean.
> 
> I think that Theosophy teaches similiar in its higher teachings, 
but popular 
> Theosophy looks as is men and women are equal.
> GdeP elsewhere said (I am looking for the text I read some years 
before) - 
> perhaps in one of his circulars - as warning for future 
theosophists that 
> women may not get leaders in the TM for the next some hundreds of 
years 
> because of their lack of the divine soul and their attraction to 
the lower 
> astral world.
> 
> Frank