Blavatsky and contemporary politics 5/5 - Basic response

 1-      Standard table-turning alternative protest responses.

I’ve never responded to a specific article or paper, but I plan on doing so soon. For now, this is an imaginary generic response to the worst types of writings that peremptorily posit a direct link between some notorious alternative spirituality scandal and Blavatsky. 

 

Some rhetorical retorts: Why is society full of overloaded prisons? What about the activities of the military–industrial complex? What about the globalization of addiction? What does it say about our education system that there are alumni who feel compelled to return to campus with a machine gun and mow everyone down? Maybe if society wasn’t like that, people wouldn’t be looking for alternative lifestyles.

 

2-      Contextualizing. Maybe it could be worse.

As bad as a picture can be painted by focusing on these types of incidents, who’s to say that if Blavatsky and Olcott hadn’t arrived on the scene, things wouldn't be a whole lot worse? Would you care to live in a world still overrun with the crass racism of colonialist dominance? Would you prefer to live in a world where Mormonism was a pervasive socio-cultural influence (Nothing against the Mormons, it's just that Blavatsky sometimes gets compared to the founder in academia)? Would you like to live in the world described in Ignatius Donnelly’s novel Caesar’s Column? (Note: people use this novel to imply that it is a precursor to radical populist conspiracy theories of the QAnon type, but I'm referencing it because I think that Donnelly is being portrayed unfairly currently and wish to give an example of his progressive, socially conscious concerns.)

 

3-      Accepting criticism. Yes, bad political theosophical entanglements happened.

It’s hard to deny that there haven’t been some rather spectacular theosophical misadventures, such as the William Pelley case, the Brother XII affair, the Nicholas Roerich Tibetan expedition. Not good. Not good at all. Pitiful. Sad. Tragic. Stating that the major theosophical organizations are altruistic, peaceful and tolerant and were not involved won’t really satisfy anyone. So I do feel that there is a need to ask deeper questions. Why did these theosophical offshoots go off the rails? Where, when, and how did certain wayward theosophical groups go South? Theses cases should be examined, analyzed, to understand how theosophical values, which should prevent such occurrences, failed to do so. Personally, I think that  the main problem lies in the area of misguided mediumnistic and psychic practices.

 

4-      The inter-war period. Those were crazy times for everyone.

A lot of the various schisms, scandals, defections, volatile situations, and millenialist outbreaks that I've mentioned occurred in the period of the two world wars, although there have been other incidents, such as the 1990 Church Universal and Triumphant millenialist mishap.  In any case, an interesting study could be made of the theosophical movement during the inter-war period. I’ve noticed a recent book that does tackle that problem to a certain extent, Spiritual Empires in Europe and India, Perry Myers, 2021.

 

I wish to suggest that they be looked into as possible symptoms in a wider context of socio-political causes and not necessarily sui generis events particular to esoteric groups. For the current situation, I do feel that there are indeed more things that could be said about theosophical influences in politics, and I plan to write at least one more major post in the future.

 

5-      The positive outweighs the negative.

At the end of the day, if I am to acknowledge various dire outcomes in certain more theosophically-oriented camps in the larger occulture world, the best answer I can put forward is that, overall, I believe that the positive influences of theosophy outweigh the bad ones. For example one can point to the health benefits of mindfulness, yoga and meditation spurred by theosophy’s efforts to popularize eastern philosophy. One could also point to the influence of the theosophical doctrine of universal brotherhood, which has been a noticeable influence on some of the 20th centuries greatest spiritual social/political activists : Leo Tolstoy, Jane Addams, Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Tenzin Gyatso, Thich Nhat Hanh, and Desmond Tutu, not to mention all the international humanitarian organizations that have emerged in the twentieth century. Peace out.

Part 1