Hi everyone, I'm back after a hiatus of several months, absorbed in various work that I'll post about over time.  The Church of Light convention and history preconference were delightful, and my research on the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor's history well received.  But Emma Hardinge Britten, and Marc Demarest as her biographer, were the stars of the preconference and returning her major works to print is worth celebrating not just for CofL members or Spiritualists and occult historians but…

Arnaud Desjardins: Cultural Bridge-builder Toward the East Moves On

Rene Wadlow

            Arnaud Desjardins (1925-2011) was a leading figure in introducing the broader French public to the philosophies and religious practices of Asia.  His films devoted to Tibetan Buddhist leaders, Indian religious teachers, Japanese Zen philosophers, and Afghan Sufis were widely shown on French television in the 1960s and early 1970s when…

"The aim of occultism is identically the same as that which is expressed in more or less imperfect language in every exoteric religion. It is union with the Divine. This can only be accomplished in one way, and that is by working with and for the Divine purpose in creation, and since that purpose is good and not evil, is life and not death, is unity and not division, we can only progress according to the energy we exert on the side of those forces which make for righteousness. "

Grounding Our Thoughts

What is grounding? How does one acquire and maintain it during our daily lives?  Most people are familiar with the term "grounding" when dealing with electricity.  We will use the simple example of a lightning rod.  The lightning rod is attached to the house in order to…

"It is your spiritual perception, and ability to create love and balance wherever you go and with whom ever you meet. Living in harmony with all life is a high level of consciousness, and shows that you have achieved a state of Unconditional Love. That Dear Ones is your goal, and you will get there and merge with…

The Goddess and the Role of Women

Rene Wadlow

It is only when women start to organize in large numbers that we become a political force, and begin to move towards the possibility of a truly democratic society in which every human being can be brave, responsible, thinking and diligent in the struggle to live at once freely and unselfishly.

            As Ray Grasse, long-time Assistant…

The new website www.krotonaarchives.com setup by Joseph Ross is a welcome addition to theosophical history.

Since Ross has a lot of very valuable historical documents and possibly artifacts of interest, it would be of great interest and value to everyone interested in theosophy, Krishnamurti and Krotona if these material are scanned and provided on the website.

Today, good fast scanners are not expensive and the…

From Krotona, Theosophy and Krishnamurti, 1927-1931:

The author feels that it may be important to examine what is meant by the word religion in the statement, “the Theosophical Society is to be a cornerstone of a new religion.” Is religion a matter of churches, temples, rituals and beliefs? Or is it the moment-to- moment discovery of Life’s movement? A movement which may have any name, or no name at…

www.krotonaarchives.com. Some parts still under construction; information on my Theosophical Society histories, especially the new release of Krotona, Theosophy and Krishnamurti, 1927-1931. 

What would you like to see…

From the Amazon listing of the book:

The author, Joseph Ross has just joined our community and we all should welcome him. He is the well known author of several books on Krotona, Theosophy, Krishnamurti etc.

I am looking forward to reading the recent book on Krotona, Theosophy and Krishnamurti.

Specifically I am looking forward to its availability in a non-proprietary format such as pdf, so that it can be read on any computer device without the need to buy devices such as Kindle. This approach…

I found this rather wonderful quote from the Indian spiritual giant, Sri Aurobindo, a few days ago...

"The very spirit of Yoga is this, to make the exceptional normal, and to turn that which is above us and greater than our normal selves into our own constant consciousness."

Hi, i still feel miserable because my breakup with my boyfriend. He was pretty much younger than me (college guy/me, in my 30....dhdhadhs) but i still miss him. A LOT.

Remembering that Theosophy tells much about unattachement, and i'm trying to learn that phase on life, of the unnatachement...still with the idea of believieng that probably in 'a future' we could be together...but really, i DON'T KNOW if i can manage to stand these phase in life. My life feels pretty dull. I…

Andrei Znamenski

Red Shambhala: Magic, Prophecy and Geopolitics in the Heart of Asia

(Wheaton, IL: Quest Books, 2011, 257pp.)

         Red Shambhala is a lively historical account of Soviet geopolitics in Central Asia in the first decade of the Communist government.  Znamenski tells the story through portraits of key protagonists, drawing on newly opened archives in Russia and new Russian publications. Znamenski, who now teaches in the USA,…

Sir John Woodroffe (aka Arthur Avalon) was an early 20th century writer who explained and defended tantra as a respectable system of mysticism. The following excerpt is from the review by

Colin Robinson of a book about Woodroffe (Sir John Woodroffe, Tantra and Bengal); an interesting paralell is made between the cases of Woodroffe and HPB. I have added highlighting to a few sections of the quote.

"The most thought-provoking topic of the…

The origin of this post is in a question that I posed to our brilliant host of the World Wide Wisdom Radio talkshow - Peter O'Lalor. In the context of apprehensions about the emerging technologies, Nano and Bio, my question was "Can Humans Control the Evolution of Technology?"

Let us look at the four discoveries in the Human history that had the greatest of impacts. Someone, without planning perhaps discovered Fire. Surely the elders and the wise of the society of that time,…