When you see some dramatic current political event, the January 6 US
election riots, with the QAnon Shaman connection with the Starseed movement,
QAnon’s connection with the ‘IAm’ movement, Steve Bannon’s connection with traditionalism, and with the Russian-Ukraine war, Alexander Dugin’s connection with traditionalism,
with a little inquiry, it becomes apparent that these movements origins were
influenced by Theosophy to a certain extent. Does this cast a dark shadow on
the already very challenged Theosophy ‘brand’? Should Theosophy be blamed?
Should Blavatsky be held responsible? These are some basic questions that come
to mind, which to address properly would require considerable historical
research that is beyond the scope of this editorial. I will simply propose a few
observations that strike me as relevant to the current state of the general
perception of Theosophy, and historical awareness of H.P. Blavatsky’s influence
in particular.
To begin, I'd like to suggest that since her theosophical ideas seem to have an
importance in today's political landscape, then a comprehensive and accurate
historical and intellectual study of her influence and ideas are necessary. And
if this stark reality serves to further encourage the growing field of esoteric
history, then I think that is good thing, because it could help to clear up the
significant inaccuracies, confusion and misunderstandings that continue to be
propagated about her.
History
Modernism inherently gives
little value to historical study other than for propaganda, that is to justify
itself, to promote the superiority of modern values. Hence the twentieth century
historical approach was to focus on rationalist materialism, often tacitly excluding
all perspectives that do not agree with that viewpoint. What was perceived as
an advance in objective rationalism, began to be perceived as biased,
repressive and rigid as currents of post-modernism began to emerge, and so
people started to become more interested in more spiritual, mystical,
alternative aspects that were previously neglected and excluded. The historical
study of esoteric currents began to emerge and has slowly grown and developed
over the last four decades.
There is a slow awareness that these alternative esoteric currents might not be as marginal as mainstream institutions would like to believe. So to a certain
extent, it would seem that the emergence of Steve Bannon, the QAnon movement, and traditionalist
political currents have caught people off guard and left them scrambling to understand
and analyze them.
There has been appreciable historical study of the Blavatskyan theosophy
current, things have improved. Over the last forty years, every new decade has seen
more accurate, detailed, insightful research. Still, there remains a sort of a
niche mentality, so I think it would be useful to further integrate the research into mainstream history
(although I’ve seen tentative efforts being made in that direction). Greater
research budgets should allow for more meticulous, serious research. It is a field
that shows promise and there have been some impressive studies and books.
Like many or even most academic fields today, thing are in a state of
flux, and the field of esoteric studies is no different. It is something of a
mixed bag, with a variety of approaches and varying levels of quality and
accuracy. It is still a field working at finding a semantic approach that can
make sense of an area of study that includes supernatural beliefs, practices,
and phenomena. To briefly mention some problems observed, you have presentism
– perceiving Blavatsky against today’s values, current New Age trends (often ignoring the stark realities of colonialism which she faced). The Negative
tendency of perceiving alternative spirituality from a Marxist / Max Weber
perspective, presented as a cautionary
warning, spiritual =irrational, deviant to the rational ideal of modernism. This favouring
of social theory results in a tendency to limit engagement in the discussion of
ideas and doctrines (although improving), hence I see a need for deeper engagement
with specifics intellectual ideas of Blavatsky per se. There are also semantic
issues of increasingly narrow specialization without a global perspective.
Moreover, there is the problem of throwing the baby out with the bathwater, judging the theosophical
movement as a whole solely by the worst examples, giving disproportional emphasis on the extreme, excentric,
dysfunctional manifestations, which are bound to occur in any movement that
gains a certain prominence. Hence I suggest a consideration of Gershom Scholem’s
notion of the distinction between healthy normative social standards in spiritual
movements and pathological deviations, which Scholem comments on in
his writings on the 17th-century on Sabbatai Zvi and the religious-social movement of Sabbatianism. For example, frequent reference is made to ‘Blavatsky and her Ascended Masters’,
even though the term Ascended Masters, although they may claim to be the same as in
Blavatsky’s time, whatever they are, are noticeably different from the originals and
people tend to incorrectly associate them directly with her, probably
facetiously, for derogatory purposes.
Unfortunately, there has been considerably less efforts by esoteric
organizations themselves to make use of their rich archival repository and present some historical overviews of their own, which would conceivably offer a more spiritual outlook. The study of the history of esoteric tradition is an important aspect of theosophical perennialism, which french Mason Jean-Marie Ragon has demonstrated, as well as Blavatsky (notably in chapter 8,volume 2 of Isis Unveiled and her review article of A. E. Waite's 'The real history of the Rosicrucians'. )
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