Theosophy News Worldwide 2nd Quarter 2015 - Press outside the movement about Theosophy

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Some News and Articles more or less about Theosophy


Mojahedin.org

Iran: Theosophy group activist sentenced to jail & lashes

A theosophy activist from the Erfan Halqe theosophy group, has been sentenced to one year in jail and 74 lashes.
read more


sfgate.com

‘The Goddess Pose,’ by Michelle Goldberg

The history of yoga practice is primarily a history of men. While today’s superstar female teachers may salute the sun in spandex and headsets, women have been disciples rather than leaders in the modern yoga renaissance.
read more, also here or in the Huffington Post LA, the Independent or the New York Post


Wall Street Journal

‘Scriabin: The Complete Works’ Review

Imperious in mien and famously eccentric, the composer was a piano prodigy and classmate of Rachmaninoff at the Moscow Conservatory, where he later taught that instrument. Scriabin worshiped at the altars of Art and Theosophy, an occult philosophy seeking divine wisdom via various supernatural pursuits, and some of his statements suggest megalomania.
read more, also here


Mumbai Mirror

One beat at a time

Right opposite the School stands The Theosophical Society, a Blavatsky Lodge, founded in 1875 in New York by Madame HP Blavatsky - a clairvoyant from Russia - and Colonel HS Olcott, retired US Army officer. Their keen interest in India brought them here in 1879.
read more, also in the Hindustan Times


The Kansas City Star

‘The Musical’ reveals the re-education of Mikal Shapiro

The newest song feels like the album’s centerpiece: “The Reincarnation of Helena Blavatsky,” a tale written with Shapiro’s mother in mind. It’s one of the more conspicuous songs on “The Musical.” It’s lush, sprawling, cinematic, operatic and it eludes an explicit music style because it evokes several.
read more


Forward.com

Searching for My Indian Jewish Family, From Kabbalah to Bollywood

I stared at the logo. Could Meyer have been a member of the Theosophical Society? Maybe it was just the lateness of the hour, but this actually seemed like a viable possibility. There had been several Jewish theosophists in Bombay in the early 20th century.
read more


Times of Israel

Israel as a Utopia by Carlos Cardoso Aveline

“Verily, the fiendish spirits of fanaticism, of early and mediaeval Christianity and of Islam, have from the first loved to dwell in darkness and ignorance; and both have made ‘…the sun like blood, the earth a tomb,/ The tomb a hell, and hell itself a murkier gloom!’
read more


Forward.com

SSFU professor Patricia Gruben wins Woman of the Year Award

Recently, Gruben’s interests in experimental narrative led her to conceive of an immersive transmedia experience inspired by the famed 19th century Russian occultist Madame Helena Blavatsky. One part play, The Secret Doctrine, and one part multi-media installation The Veil of Nature...
read more


The Guardian

101 Strangest on Spotify: Kesarbai Kerkar - Living Music From The Past

Recorded 80 years ago in Mumbai at the Blavatsky Lodge, an esoteric English theosophical society, these songs were originally released by Broadcast, a label owned and run by diamond merchants Jesinglal K Mehta and his brother, Kishorilal.
read more


independent.ie

Magic, myth and secrecy - WB Yeats and the occult

When the Yeats family moved back to London in 1887, the young poet paid a visit to Madame Helena Blavatsky, the famous occultist and founder of the Theosophical Society which he joined and was later expelled from.
read more


patheos.com

Evolution of Religions

A colleague drew my attention to this infographic which claims to show the evolution of major religious traditions (click through to see the whole thing):
read more


independent.co.uk

Invisible ink no 271: Algernon Blackwood

As a sensitive, dreamy youth, he studied the Bhagavad Gita and theosophy, learning spiritual exercises that divorced him from worldly problems.
read more


blackvoicenews.com

Death Concepts of Culture

Closely related ideas in Theosophy say that at death one enters upon a life of rest, purification, and happiness--complete in proportion to the stage one has reached in evolution and to the deeds one has done in the life just ended.
read more


chronicle.com

Oxford's Influential Inklings

From Ruskin’s time until the days of the Inklings, a pattern of religious rebellion and rediscovery would repeat itself; one could be a militant skeptic like Huxley relishing the escape from Victorian restraints, or a militant believer like Ronald Knox relishing the escape from modern liberalism, or an initiate in any of the manifold schools of occultism, theosophy, and spiritualism that flourished in Oxford as well.
read more


Art News

‘Salt Is Ever More Important’: Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev on Her Plans for ‘The Most Dispersed Istanbul Biennial in History’

The thought form? That would be a reference to a book of that name by the theosophist Annie Besant. “This book was widely circulating in the early 20th century amongst artists,” Christov-Bakargiev said. “Hilma af Klint had the book, and I believe Kandinsky had the book, and many others. So she’s part of that Spiritualist, pre-abstract art.
read more


Deccan Herald

It's all in the family

His son, Rama Rao, was one of the earliest graduates of those times and worked as an ‘amildar’ – a coveted government post of those times. He was diametrically opposite to his father in his precepts and practices. He was a rationalist and a member of the theosophy movement.
read more


Daily Sabah

Mysterious scholar between East and West: Jamal ad-Din al-Afghani

The Catholic nationalists sent by his Russian friend, Madame Helena Blavatsky, the Irish revolutionaries, priests, et cetera would always visit him. The extremely mysterious Madame Blavatsky was the founder of the Theosophy Society, which was a supra-religion organization.
read more


Independent.ie

WB Yeats: The influencers

George Russell, 1867-1935: Said to have been Yeats's oldest friend, the Armagh-native first met William when they both studied at the Metropolitan School of Art in Dublin. As well as being a successful writer, editor, critic and poet Russell was also a mysticism writer and devotee of theosophy which would have appealed to Yeats.
read more


And some critical, false or unjustified News and Articles (more or less) about Theosophy


American Free Press

Religious Freedom Chained: The Homosexual Lobby’s Aggressive Agenda

As to the media of the day is referred in Prophecy to “The Prince of the power of air, the spirit that works in the children of disobedience.” With regards to the Biblical false Prophet “Freemasonry by Theosophy” to Zech 5—the curse of the Flying scroll and the wickedness in an Ephah can be denoted by QEI with the eyes of the theosophist Helena Blavatsky.
read more


The Guardian

More Human by Steve Hilton review – freemarketeering is now called putting people first

Appalled by the brutalities to which it has given birth, it comes up with a new vision: compassionate capitalism, small is beautiful, the big society, citizen stake-holding, all-in-it-togetherness and so on. When things get really serious, wackier solutions may be on offer: mindfulness, Scientology, off-the-peg Theosophy, packaged Kabbalah, ready-to-serve transcendentalism and outbreaks of touchy-feelyism, most of them fashionable in the California to which Steve Hilton, David Cameron’s former adviser, has now decamped.
read more


thenews.com

In the guise of artist, immigrant, heretic

The first generation of people who claimed to have been contacted by the UFOs or who’d seen them had a background in Theosophy and spiritualism. There’s a direct link between the 19th century occult and the UFOs.
read more


Top Secret Writers

UFO Undersea Bases: Some Compelling and Some Plain Stupid

What I am not a fan of are the bogus theories about Atlantis advocated by Ignatius Donnelly in the 19th century. He, alongside folks like Helena Blavatsky, helped popularize the idea of the Atlanteans being a technologically superior group of people.
read more