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Sunday, 12 February 2023

Blavatsky and recent articles by David Pratt

David Pratt is a good theosophical writer in the Tingley/Purucker/Point Loma/Pasadena tradition, who has a very respectable knowledge of current scientific literature.
He has been quite busy lately, writing and updating an impressive number of interesting articles on his website, of which we present some of the most recent ones.
 
The Saptarishi Calendar (Jun 2022)
In Hindu astronomy, the saptarishis (seven sages) are the seven brightest stars of Ursa Major (the Great Bear), which form the asterism known as the Big Dipper or the Plough. 
 
Secret Cycles (Jan 2022)
The manuscript of an unfinished essay on cosmic cycles and manvantaras, in HPB’s handwriting, exists in the archives of the Adyar Theosophical Society.Some of its pages are missing and some of the sentences are broken off.
 
Earth's meteoric veil (Sep 2021)
Earth’s magnetic attraction of meteoric dust, and the direct influence of the latter upon the sudden changes of temperature especially in the matter of heat and cold, is not a settled question to the present day, I believe.

Poleshifts: theosophy and science contrasted (May 2022)

That worlds are periodically destroyed by fire (volcanoes and earthquakes) and water, in turn, and renewed, is a doctrine as old as man. Manu, Hermes, the Chaldeans, all antiquity believed in this. Twice already has the face of the globe been changed by fire, and twice by water, since man appeared on it. As land needs rest and renovation, new forces, and a change for its soil, so does water. Thence arises a periodical redistribution of land and water, change of climates, etc., all brought on by geological revolution, and ending in a final change in the axis. ... [T]here is a secular change in the inclination of the earth’s axis, and its appointed time is recorded in one of the great secret cycles.
 
Space, time and relativity (Nov 2020)
In theosophy, a distinction is drawn between abstract space and concrete space.1 Abstract space is the boundless All, the omnipresent divine essence, unfathomable and ineffable. It is universal consciousness, life, substance, force, energy – all of which are fundamentally one. Infinite space comprises a limitless number of concrete, finite spaces or spatial units, each of which is composed of smaller units and nested within a hierarchy of larger units.
 
Re-examination of the experimental evidence for a nonzero aether drift (Sep 2021)
Paulo N. Correa, Alexandra N. Correa, David Pratt, Malgosia Askanas
Journal of Aetherometric Research, vol. 3, 3:1-32, September 2021
Building on the work of pioneering scientists like Nicola Tesla, Wilhelm Reich, and Harold Aspden, Aetherometry has developed a large body of experimental and analytical evidence for a dynamic, massfree aether. The aether is not “luminiferous” (i.e. is not composed of electromagnetic waves), nor is it passively dragged or entrained by the earth in its translatory and rotational motions. Rather, the earth is propelled and entrained by an electric aether, consisting of longitudinal-wave radiation that carries ambipolar (phenomenologically neutral) charge rather than monopolar charge. 
 
Lost civilizations of the Andes (Nov 2020)
The Aztecs held that the current age was the fifth. The Incas likewise believed that their own culture was the fifth age, or fifth ‘sun’. In the first age, people were nomads, lived in caves and had to fight off wild animals. In the second, they lived in crude round houses in fixed settlements. In the third age people multiplied, practised weaving, built houses like those of today, grew crops and lived in harmony. The fourth age, or age of warriors, began with internal conflicts; warriors left field and family, and human sacrifices were carried out. Each world-age is said to end with a cataclysm: the first was ended by water, the second by the ‘falling of the sky’ (a poleshift?), the third by fire, and the fourth by air.
 
The ancient Americas: migrations, contacts, and Atlantis (Oct 2020)
However, orthodox historians and archaeologists are still clinging to their isolationist preconceptions, and refuse to accept the evidence for widespread cultural diffusionism and intercontinental trade. They tend to vigorously defend their own specialist fields against ‘interference’ from outsiders, and generally feel no incentive, or lack the knowledge, to recognize common cultural traits. Where similarities are acknowledged, they are automatically attributed to ‘independent invention’.
 
Reflections on Karma (Jan 2022)
The teaching of karma rules out absolute chance and randomness. H.P. Blavatsky says: ‘It is impossible to conceive anything without a cause; the attempt to do so makes the mind a blank’ (Secret Doctrine, 1:44). Mainstream scientists accept that all events in our macroworld have causes, but most believe that in the submicroscopic quantum realm things can happen without any cause at all. However, not being able to identify a cause does not prove that no cause exists. This means that absolute indeterminism can never be more than an article of faith. As some physicists have pointed out, it is perfectly possible that there are deeper, subquantum levels of causality. 
 
Life beyond death: evidence for survival (Sep 2020)
A contemporary exorcist, Tony Finlay (ch. 8), writes: ‘In my experience, not all invading spirits are hostile or malicious. They may be simply “looking for a home”, reluctant to leave the associations they once had in the living world. Such beings may not induce violent or egregious behaviour in the “victim” but nevertheless, they do distort the normal pattern of a host’s behaviour. As such, they still have to be removed.’ He notes that the need for exorcism is on the rise, and links this to the growing tendency to dabble in the occult.
 
Health and Disease: theosophical quotations (Jun 2021)
‘Those who may, after reading our remarks, feel a call to heal the sick, should bear in mind the fact that all the curative magnetism that is forced by their will into the bodies of their patients, comes out of their own systems. What they have, they can give; no more. And as the maintenance of one’s own health is a prime duty, they should never attempt healing unless they have a surplus of vitality to spare, over and above what may be needed to carry themselves through their round of duties and keep their systems well up to tone. Otherwise they would soon break down and become themselves invalids. Only the other day a benevolent healer of London died from his imprudent waste of his vital forces. For the same reason, healing should not be attempted to any extent after one has passed middle life: the constitution has not then the same recuperative capacity as in youth.’ (BCW 4:383-6)

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