Theosophical Enlightenment
Author : Joscelyn Godwin
Publisher : SUNY Press
Page : 466 pages
File Size : 26,28 MB
Release : 1994-01-01
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9780791421529
Author : Joscelyn Godwin
Publisher : SUNY Press
Page : 466 pages
File Size : 26,28 MB
Release : 1994-01-01
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9780791421529
Author : Joscelyn Godwin
Publisher : Suny Press
Page : 472 pages
File Size : 31,39 MB
Release : 1994
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
ISBN :
An enticing intellectual history of various esoteric currents from the early Romantic period to the early twentieth century. The author maintains that the Theosophical Society held a crucial position as the place where all those currents temporarily united, before diverging again.
Author : Joscelyn Godwin
Publisher : State University of New York Press
Page : 466 pages
File Size : 12,14 MB
Release : 1994-10-28
Category : Religion
ISBN : 1438404220
This is an intellectual history of occult and esoteric currents in the English-speaking world from the early Romantic period to the early twentieth century. The Theosophical Society, founded in 1875 by Helena P. Blavatsky, holds a crucial position as the place where all these currents temporarily united, before again diverging. The book's ambiguous title points to the author's thesis that Theosophy owed as much to the skeptical Enlightenment of the eighteenth century as it did to the concept of spiritual enlightenment with which it is more readily associated. The author respects his sources sufficiently to allow that their world, so different from that of academic reductionism, has a right to be exhibited on its own terms. At the same time he does not conceal the fact that he considers many of them deluded and deluding. In the context of theosophical history, this book is neither on the side of the blind votaries of Madame Blavatsky, nor on that of her enemies. It may, therefore, be expected to mildly annoy both sides.
Author : Hans Martin Krämer
Publisher : State University of New York Press
Page : 616 pages
File Size : 18,49 MB
Release : 2020-11-01
Category : Religion
ISBN : 1438480431
Theosophy across Boundaries brings a global history approach to the study of esotericism, highlighting the important role of Theosophy in the general histories of religion, science, philosophy, art, and politics. The first half of the book consists of seven perspectives on the activities of the Theosophical Society in very different regional contexts, ranging from India, Vietnam, China, and Japan to Victorian Britain and Israel, shedding new light on the entanglement of "Western" and "Oriental" ideas around 1900. The second half explores specific cultural influences that Theosophy exerted in the spheres of literature, art, and politics, using case studies from Sri Lanka, Burma, India, Japan, Ireland, Germany, and Russia. The examples clearly show that Theosophy was part of a truly global movement, thus providing an outstanding example of the complex entanglements of the global religious history of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Author : Antoine Faivre
Publisher : SUNY Press
Page : 310 pages
File Size : 32,16 MB
Release : 2000-02-17
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
ISBN : 9780791444351
A historical and interpretive study of three aspects of Western esotericism from the Renaissance to the twentieth century.
Author : K. Paul Johnson
Publisher : State University of New York Press
Page : 280 pages
File Size : 48,34 MB
Release : 1995-07-20
Category : Religion
ISBN : 1438407955
The author examines the careers of the most distinguished disciples of the Theosophical Masters. He begins by examining the concept of initiation promoted by the Theosophical movement's founders. Each section investigates a separate category of initiates, focusing consecutively on Hindus, Muslims, Bahais, Buddhists, and the Western female occultists. More than just a study of Theosophy, this book explores many related developments in political and religious history. Among the figures it illumines in new ways are Anagarika Dharmapala, Alexandra David-Neel, George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff, and Isabelle Eberhardt. Its approach brings needed objectivity and balance to a topic too long mythologized by cultists and ignored by scholars.
Author : Wouter J. Hanegraaff
Publisher : BRILL
Page : 598 pages
File Size : 12,91 MB
Release : 2018-09-24
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9004378936
Recent years have seen a spectacular rise of the New Age movement and an ever-increasing interest in its beliefs and manifestations. This fascinating work presents the first-ever comprehensive analysis of New Age Religion and its historical backgrounds, thus providing the reader with a means of orientation in the bewildering variety of the movement. Making extensive use of primary sources, the author thematically analyses New Age beliefs from the perspective of the study of religions. While looking at the historical backgrounds of the movement, he convincingly argues that its foundations were laid by so-called western esoteric traditions during the Renaissance. Hanegraaff finally shows how the modern New Age movement emerged from the increasing secularization of those esoteric traditions during the 19th century. This ground-breaking publication is compulsive reading for all those involved or interested in the New Age movement.
Author : Robert Wright
Publisher : Little, Brown
Page : 445 pages
File Size : 42,29 MB
Release : 2009-06-08
Category : Religion
ISBN : 0316053279
In this sweeping narrative that takes us from the Stone Age to the Information Age, Robert Wright unveils an astonishing discovery: there is a hidden pattern that the great monotheistic faiths have followed as they have evolved. Through the prisms of archaeology, theology, and evolutionary psychology, Wright's findings overturn basic assumptions about Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and are sure to cause controversy. He explains why spirituality has a role today, and why science, contrary to conventional wisdom, affirms the validity of the religious quest. And this previously unrecognized evolutionary logic points not toward continued religious extremism, but future harmony. Nearly a decade in the making, The Evolution of God is a breathtaking re-examination of the past, and a visionary look forward.
Author : Annie Besant
Publisher :
Page : 108 pages
File Size : 36,54 MB
Release : 1913
Category : Theosophy
ISBN :
Author : Erik Reenberg Sand
Publisher :
Page : 361 pages
File Size : 35,69 MB
Release : 2020
Category : History
ISBN : 0190853883
The essays in Imagining the East explore how Theosophists during the formative period imagined the religions and cultures of the East. The authors examine the relationship of such representations to orientalism, the history of ideas, politics, and culture at large and discuss how these esoteric or theosophical representations mirrored conditions and values current in nineteenth-century mainstream intellectual culture. The essays also look at how the early Theosophical Society's representations of the East differed from mainstream 'orientalism' and how the Theosophical Society's mission in India was distinct from that of British colonialism and Christian missionaries.