Martin Luther King tapped into a mystical East-West lineage, one that can guide us in divisive times
Christopher Naughton Jan. 1, 2020
Gandhi,
Blavatsky and King shared a common root: Transcendentalism.
Gandhi admitted that “Thoreau’s ideas greatly influenced [his]
movement in India.”[7] In April 1959, Reverend King made a long-awaited
pilgrimage to that country where he hoped to learn more about Mahatma Gandhi’s
use of non-violence in his own civil rights battle against the British Empire.
After leaving India, King’s interest in this kind of revolution became an
irrepressible passion. His clear decision to employ “non-violent resistance to
oppression” would not only keep him emotionally nurtured during the personal
struggles that followed, but also lay a crystal clear guideline for the
hundreds of thousands of informal followers he would attract.
Gaia Staff
History textbooks will tell you that Mohandas
Karamchand Gandhi, a.k.a. Mahatma Gandhi, is one of the most revered
names in Indian history for his achievements in ending British
imperialism through non-violent, civil disobedience. What they won’t
tell you is that there is a strong occult connection to his life of
social justice, due to the efforts of Madame Helena Blavatsky and Annie
Besant of the Theosophical Society.
https://www.gaia.com/article/blavatsky-theosophy-gandhi Marianne Williamson and the religion of
"spirituality"
Williamson unapologetically infuses her interest in
spirituality into her political campaigning
October 10, 2019
In "Spiritual
but not Religious: Understanding Unchurched America," religious
historian Robert Fuller sheds light on the various metaphysical movements that
emerged in the 18th and 19th centuries in America.
These include Swedenborgism,
Transcendentalism,
Spiritualism,
Mesmerism,
Theosophy
and New
Thought, each of which — despite being relatively unknown to most people —
have significantly shaped the “spiritual but not religious” trend.
These movements
were certainly theologically different, but nevertheless, like Williamson and
her followers, they postulated the existence of unseen forces and championed
the importance of both mystical experiences and individual freedom. If
channelled appropriately, those forces could purportedly lead to
self-empowerment.
Schmidt observes that many of the leaders and spokespeople of these
movements were ahead of their time, both socially and politically.
For instance, Margaret
Fuller, an early Transcendentalist and confessed mystic, was also a staunch
advocate for women’s rights in the early 19th century. So was Elizabeth Cady Stanton,
a women’s suffrage activist who sought to claim the privilege of autonomy for
the female sex in The
Woman’s Bible , published in 1895.
Suffragettes, Gnostics, and the Divine Feminine
October 5, 2018 by Philip
Jenkins
Theosophical works
had a special appeal to feminist thinkers, who found validation for ideas about
women’s suppressed role in early Christianity. Many of the leading occult
thinkers in this vein were women, including Helena Blavatsky, Annie Besant, and
Anna Kingsford. Feminist Bible criticism dates from the 1890s, with the
appearance of Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s Woman’s Bible (1895). While it
did not seek to revise the scriptural text, the Woman’s Bible offered
a thorough-going feminist commentary that pointed out the inconsistencies in
Scripture, and stressed the egalitarian nature of Jesus’ teachings.
Other Victorian women, however, took more extreme positions
than Stanton, feeling that Christianity was too closely related to patriarchy
to be worth saving in anything like its present form. This was the message of Matilda Joslyn Gage’s
Woman, Church and State (1893), which argued that ancient society was
obviously matriarchal in nature. Gage was also an early adherent of the
Theosophical Society, an association that she described as the “crown blessing”
of her life. One of her recruits into the movement was her son-in-law L. Frank
Baum, author of The Wizard of Oz, among many other titles. | |
| Matilda Joslyn Gage |
What a Forgotten 19th Century Suffragist Can Teach Us
About Women’s Rights vs. The Religious Right
By S. Brent
Rodriguez Plate March 8, 2017
If America is currently being “taken back”
and made “great again” we seem to be landing somewhere in the late 19th
century. It’s easy to say that great strides have been made toward racial and
gender equality in the last 150 years, yet one can’t help being struck by the
parallel discourse surrounding human rights between then and now. Nowhere is
this more evident than in the battles between women’s rights and the religious
right. And nowhere is it more clear than in reviewing the works of Matilda
Joslyn Gage.
It’s not the bible per se that is the
problem, but the interpretation of it, and she appealed to the Protestant
principle of individual scripture interpretation: the priesthood of all
believers extends to women, who should “be guided by her own reason.” She plays
Protestantism against itself to find new approaches to the ancient myths. At
the same time the new religious movements of Spiritualism and Theosophy, both
founded by women, gave her new channels to understand a revived sense of the
sacred.
for a good general bibiliography of the American
19th century Feminism-Theosophy connection see:
http://wlh-wiki.law.stanford.edu/index.php/The_Woman%27s_National_Liberal_Union_Convention
Some prominent names in the American Feminism/theosophy connection: Josephine
Cables, Emily Coues, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Matilda Joslyn Gage, Susan B. Anthony, Elia B. Peattie
Interestlingly, black abolitionist Frederick Douglass' celebrated 1952 Fourth of July speech was sponsored by the Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society of Rochester, where organizer's such as woman's rights activist Elizabeth Cady Stanton would go on to be involved in the Theosophical movement.
The Best Fourth of July Speech in History
James West Davidsom, July 2, 2015
