Art and Theosophy (2006) | Hacker News Reader

Art and Theosophy (2006)

katinkahesselink.net

27 pointsdvt16 comments

Theosophy is awesome. Blavatsky was a genius. Neither were spotless. Both had concerted campaigns to defame them. Keep in mind what life would be like for a genius female philosopher in 1870. Blavatsky had a HUGE influence on India. She was surprisingly rational, particularly for trying to rationally take on mysticism. Someone needed to do it.

Many people get scared off but it is worth reading some original work. https://www.theosociety.org/pasadena/isis/iu-hp.htm

"Not spotless" is another way of saying that her writings were rife with anti-semitism and anti-indigenous sentiments that pretty much everyone today should find reprehensible. The fact that these sentiments are fundamentally baked into her cosmology via her root races ideology blights her efforts with regard to mysticism.

I'll go farther and say that I think celebrating her without detailed qualification and acknowledgement of these issues (saying she's "not spotless"/"wasn't perfect", etc. obviously doesn't count), along with wantonly dismissing people who take issue with this content, is both extremely irresponsible and extremely unkind, not to mention deeply immature.

She was an awesome lady. She was antiracist. She made concrete and lasting contributions to the Indian independence movement. For this, she was deliberately framed for fraud by the British government.

Obviously, her case requires respect and nuance. She is one of history’s few successful female philosophers. She had lots of enemies then and now. Dig up what you can and we can talk about it. But don’t think it is “mature” and “responsible” to try to cancel her and her ideas, 150 years later.

As long as you ignore the antisemitism…

Accusing someone of antisemitism is pretty bad, so I’d really appreciate sources or quotes. As far as I understand, she wasn’t a fan of the literal interpretation of the Bible, but she loved the esoteric Jewish Kabbalah.

I suppose the only encounter I've had with theosophy is through Rudolf Steiner[1][2], whom I find infinitely intriguing - you might enjoy the Rudolf Steiner Press Audio[3] if you like Blavatsky.

> Blavatsky had a HUGE influence on India

It seems to me that the only real thinking that has ever occurred happened around 8th century BCE in India[4]; we fool ourselves in the West thinking we are anywhere close to it.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Steiner

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Steiner_and_the_Theosop...

3a. Rudolf Steiner Press Audio on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTuPXQlrmPfDB7YLJWywnAg/vid...

3b. One of my favorite episodes on the Rudolf Steiner Press Audio recordings is on the German theologian, Meister Eckhart: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3ZJ-AaClyo

4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Indian_philosophers

Modern art was indeed heavily influenced by theosophy at the start, even if it stands on its own feet since half a century and more. And historians that trace the development of abstract art are indeed amiss if they omit this influence, but superficial histories such as exhibition catalogues will understandably try and avoid such 'complications' in the narrative.

Btw one artist conspicuously missing from the article is Hilma af Klint [0], a Swedish "modernist" and theosophist too, that predates all the the others (Turner, Kandinsky, and Mondrian et al).

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilma_af_Klint

George Lucas had read up on Theosophistry and I suggest this was the most foundational premise for for the crude religious elements of 'the force' etc..

Also, Alice Bailey I think is much better than Blavatsky.

Theosophy, like anthroposophy, has a bizarre cosmology that positions white Aryans as the pinnacle of human spirituality. Anthroposophy originated through a schism with the theosophists, and posits a form of reincarnation that includes a racial hierarchy in which those who live virtuous lives are reborn, first as "lesser races" (Africans, indigenous peoples, South Asians), and eventually as white people if they live virtuous lives. This derives from the theosophist conception of "root races". See [1] for more discussion on antisemitism in theosophy, and [2] for mention of an incident at a Waldorf school (which follow the tenets of anthroposophy) in which white schoolteachers apparently self-identified as all races because they believed they had "ascended" through all of them.

Oh, it's worth mentioning that another movement derived from theosophy, ariosophy, went on to form the basis of Nazi cosmology.

All of these movements originated in turn of the century Europe and largely reflect the values of the era. And all of them, particularly the anthroposophists, are extremely aggressive about reputation management and sanitizing their histories.

Ah, and one final point -- the founders of the organic food movement were students of Rudolf Steiner, the originator of anthroposophy, who popularized his own system of agriculture -- biodynamics. A lot of cultural norms and attitudes in modern alternative health and natural food circles began with anthroposophy, and theosophy, by extension -- including the anti-vaccination movement. Weleda, a natural skincare company founded by Steiner still operates today.

See [3] and [4] for some discussion of anthroposophist attitudes about vaccinations

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theosophical_mysticism#Blavats...

[2] https://www.bbc.com/news/education-28646118

[3] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/dec/21/rightwing-popu...

[4] https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s...

Blavatsky was an anti racist. She deliberately tried to integrate wisdom from all sources, seeing common truths. nazism that’s nonsense. Read original work, please.

Even in the first article you cite, it says: The first aim of the Theosophical Society she founded is "To form a nucleus of the Universal Brotherhood of Humanity, without distinction of race, creed, sex, caste or colour”

That’s pretty chill for 1870.

Yeah, I think that's what theosophists are saying about her today, but a cursory evaluation of her corpus shows that by anyone's standards her beliefs around race were white supremacist. I'll be charitable and assume that you missed this during your own reading:

"Mankind is obviously divided into god-informed men and lower human creatures. The intellectual difference between the Aryan and other civilized nations and such savages as the South Sea Islanders, is inexplicable on any other grounds. No amount of culture, nor generations of training amid civilization, could raise such human specimens as the Bushmen, the Veddhas of Ceylon, and some African Tribes, to the same intellectual level as the Aryans, the Semites, and the Turanians so called. The 'sacred spark' is missing in them and it is they who are the only inferior races on the globe, now happily – owing to the wise adjustment of nature which ever works in that direction – fast dying out. Verily mankind is 'of one blood,' but not of the same essence. We are the hot-house, artificially quickened plants in nature, having in us a spark, which in them is latent" (The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 2, p 421).

Hopefully you agree that's pretty ugly.

She actually directly refutes the idea of superior and inferior races, just a page or so later.

“The Africans have not left their continent for several hundred thousands of years. If to-morrow the continent of Europe were to disappear and other lands to reëmerge instead, and if the African tribes were to separate and scatter on the face of the Earth, it is they who, in about a hundred thousand years hence, would form the bulk of the civilized nations. And it is the descendants of those of our highly cultured nations, who might have survived on some one island, without any means of crossing the new seas, that would fall back into a state of relative savagery. Thus the reason given for dividing humanity into superior and inferior races falls to the ground and becomes a fallacy.”

Emphasis mine. Her work may not have modern sensitivities, but it isn’t a racist screed. This is a massive work that involves dialectic. It seems to me that she raised a racist point only to bring it down herself, logically.

Hopefully you agree that is pretty beautiful!

The anti-vaccination movement predates theosophy and is as old as vaccination itself. There is some overlap in membership, but it is a historical error to see it as an offshoot of theosophy.

>Oh, it's worth mentioning that another movement derived from theosophy, ariosophy, went on to form the basis of Nazi cosmology.

This claim doesn't stand up to scrutiny. Ariosophy was known as ario-christianity by its formulators [0]. Theosophical elements were twisted by the Nazis as were elements of many religions: Christanity(as above), Buddhism and Hinduism (the swastika), etc. That you can find elements of each of those religious systems in twisted form in Nazi cosmology does not mean it was derived from them nor that Theosophists, Christians, Hindus, and Buddhists share any kind of common cause with the Nazis.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ariosophy

A key differentiator between theosophy and the other ideologies you mention is that the former's seminary text includes the words inferior races with regard to certain specific "non-Aryan" races, and discussions on the spiritual poverty of semites compared with Aryans.

The Theosophisical Society 'chose' as it's 'Jesus Christ Incarnate' an Indian guy, Krishnamurti [1] that's one hell of a dark man, and pretty far from 'White'.

It's definitely wrong to suggest they were 'White Supremacist' - that's a crude, 2020 narrow implication of something which is more complicated than that. So try to keep pop culture out of this because it distorts the history.

Now - what they, and many people at the time did think is that Black people were less evolved, which is definitely racist, but note that the premise is quite empathetic, they take a paternal posture, not an angry or hateful one. I think that this is the darkest of all psychological secrets of populist leftist movements, which is that they actually don't really believe in real equality, they believe that Black people are 'lesser' and need the support/protection/guidance of White people. Malcolm Gladwell hinted at this with reference to good research in his book 'Blink' where people's 'true prejudices' were revealed with different kinds of testing, with very interesting results.

That some ragtags trot out the 'Aryan' word for this or that is not evidence of anything really.

Theosophistry is a really interesting phenom, it's culturally notable. It goes far beyond huckster occultism, it's a big more of a serious attempt to merge Yogic and Western Spiritual ideals. Mixed in with some fantastical stuff.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jiddu_Krishnamurti

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