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Blavatsky

Blavatsky about the symbolism of the Christian Cross

One of my Dutch readers wondered after reading my piece about symbols, about the meaning of the Christian Cross according to H.P. Blavatsky. I thought I’d look it up. The closest I could find on the topic was Blavatsky on Crucifixion. She says there that: The cross itself, to which the whole man was attached, [...]

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Merry Christmas

I’m not the best at reminding myself to attend to holiday greetings, but this year I’m so wrapped up in preparing for Christmas, that I had to remember to give you all my greetings too. Quite suitably, today is the day of the winter solstice – when earth, sun and the centre of the galaxy [...]

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Spiritual evolution, cycles, 2012 and wisdom

This is a bit of a rambling post. I hope you’ll enjoy a few of the nuggets I’ve gathered together. In classic theosophy it’s explained that one reason to assume there are wise sages is simply to extrapolate from the presence of wise people in general. Similarly: because our society is so obviously more advanced [...]

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About the Importance of Religious Symbols

The first ‘lecture’ I ever gave, I gave for a very private audience: a few members of the Groningen lodge of the Theosophical Society. I was about 19 and still, ostensibly, studying chemistry. One of my fellow students went along. My main point that evening was that the importance of symbols was as a starting [...]

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Man the Measure of All Things, Sri Krishna Prem and Sri Madhava Ashish

I’ve just discovered an old classic whose title I have heard and read mentioned time and again. It’s a classic for a reason. There’s hardly a sentence that doesn’t add insight or new perspective. I’m talking about Man The Measure of All Things, by Sri Krishna Prem and Sri Madhava Ashish. I suspect this book [...]

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There is no danger that dauntless courage cannot conquer

The title of this post is a Blavatsky quote that was retweeted amongst some of my followers on twitter for a while. Her full name is Helena (or Elena) Petrovna Blavatsky (or Blavatskaya) by the way, not Helena Petronova Blavatsky. Here’s the full quote, quite popular among theosophists. There is a road, steep and thorny, [...]

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Unity in diversity – about a holistic approach

Last week I ended with the conclusion that causality in this universe can best be described as pluralistic. But I could not leave it at that, because the traditional spiritual approach – in East AND West – is that there is unity behind all that diversity. Christians and Muslims call that unity God, in Vedanta [...]

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Black magic versus white magic – it's all about motive…

Blavatsky was rather fond of the concept of ‘black magic’ and I’ve had this on my list of topics to write about ever since I started this blog. But it’s a difficult topic, a messy one. For one thing – I’m not too happy about labeling people, especially into such (literally) black and white categories. [...]

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Remembering Blavatsky – White Lotusday

On May 8th theosophists all over the world, whatever theosophical organization they belong to, commemorate Blavatsky’s passing on May 8th 1891. This day is called White Lotusday. Traditionally quotes from three texts are read: The Bhagavad Gita, The Voice of the Silence and Light of Asia. So here goes from chapter ten of the Bhagavad [...]

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About being observant of life… poverty and riches

I’d like to start this off with a story one of our Dutch theosophical teacher sometimes tells. Ronald Engelse was frequently at Saanen to hear Jiddu Krishnamurti talk. Krishnamurti would say, in his talks, that one should observe everything, the sky, the mountains, the grass… After a lecture like that, what did Ronald see people [...]

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