HPB - First of the Moderns or Last of the Medievals?

[Joe Fulton]

I was having a discussion with a member earlier this morning about some of HPB's personal habits and after going to work I got to thinking about it and something more important about her (at least to me) came to mind.

Was HPB the last gasp of the medieval world, a world of magic, sorcery, and otherworldly thought or was she the first of the modern era, with her views on space and time and the nature of existence which fits well into today's world.

That's a puzzle and how we view it kind of frames how we "do" theosophy.

Your thoughts?

[Deb]

Hey, Joe; 

I think she was a woman very much of her own time - on a certain level, but on another level, she was time-less.  Hard to explain, but in much the same way as Edgar Cayce, on a mundane level he was very much a man of his time period, but also lived out-of-time or beyond time, on another level. 

That being said, I do not think the ancients were as ignorant of "time and space and the nature of existence" as historians, et al. like to make them out to be, and conversely there is "magic, sorcery, and otherworldly thought" still existing today, for all our modernity.  At least for me.  No, I'm not personally into Wicca or that sort of stuff.  I find it interesting, in some ways, but I'm not a practitioner.  I find quantum physics interesting, too, but I assure you, I'm no theoretical physicist.  :-)    Maybe those are just two ways of describing similar, if not the same, things. 

[Joe Fulton]

And I think most of us are in that middle ground, with our feet planted in both places. Being exclusively in one or the other has its hazards.  And yes, HPB was definitely a person of her time, and of her heritage.  Being Russian comes with its own modes of thought.  The contribution that she made was quite real and will speak to people for hundreds of years to come.  Her ability to combine seemingly unrelated things was magical (in the way that Apple uses the word).

[Deb]

Yeah, she is definitely a fascinating person, considering the times and all, her background, etc., quite aside from the spiritual part of her life.  I know less about her than I should or would like, in a biographical way, but what I have read is so intriguing, but then,  I have a decided fondness for that time period anyway, in some ways inexplicable, because it's not an active interest or anything I've studied, but I feel a real pull to it.  My favorite people from my childhood were the oldest members of my family, my great-grandfather who was born in 1973, and my grandmother (his daughter), who was born in 1898.  I felt so "at home" around them and in their homes.  Everything felt so familiar.  But I digress.... 

[Deb]

Make that 1873!  Doh!

[Ferran Sanz Orriols]

 Hi!!!

Mmmmm... well, I don't think HPB would ever agree with modern era views of space and time and the nature of existence as they are understood today, even including quantum physics, but I can't think on her as the last gasp of medieval world, either, "gasp" maybe, but for sure not the last!

 But yes! our idea of her somehow frames how we do theosophy.  

[David Melik]

I do not see how one could call Madame Blavatsky the first modern person unless one is very ignorant of history of science. Besides that advanced mathematics existed for thousands of years and some Classical and perhaps Mediaeval scientists were reasonably advanced, such as probably in botany and zoology, modern science is considered in large to have started in perhaps the Renaissance and definitely the Enlightenment, in which Newton discovered math and physics that is still used today. Advanced biologists and Newton preceded Madame Blavatsky by centuries, and this affected Russia, and the Russian state was sponsoring advanced, calculus-based science (which Newtonian physics is based on) in the century before her birth, so I do not understand why you are asking this and am just setting things straight. Additionally, as far as I know, she lived after the beginning of the industrial revolution and the advent of electricity, which is considered the Modern age for most people measuring by the effect of applied science and the advancements of civilization on the life of most people.

[Joe Fulton]

Where it comes to certain areas, especially the synthesis of Eastern and Western thought, HPB was certainly among the first.  In that sense, the tradition that leads to later people like Ernest Wood, Fritjof Capra and Paul Davies starts with HPB.

[David Melik]

I disagree. I am unsure it is known when the first synthesis was, but as far as I know, Egyptian (not always called Western, but it is) and Minoan civilizations were influenced by the East. As far as I know, the ancient Greeks sometime from the Minoans to Trojan war adopted Eastern religion. Pythagoras studied in the near & middle East, and there is a theory Greek philosophers were influenced by India. I guess it happened at most during the reign of Alexander the Great. Judaism and Christianity are Asian influences, and though it is unclear whether Jesus existed, or was a Nazarean Essene rather than Jew, there is a theory he went to India. Islam was in contact with India and Europe simultaenously, and during the Renaissance, Europeans travelled to Asia. 'Orientalism' started over 100 years before HPB, but as I noted, it is probably older in Egypt and Greece. Did HPB not also talk of an ancient worldwide occult brotherhood?

[Joe Fulton]

It would be interesting to see the connection being made...outside of theosophical literature, of course.

[David Melik]

Early Judeo-Christian literature indisputably connects/synthesizes, and according to myth Hermetism does, and does according to scholars, who also say Pythagoreanism does. There may be more I do not know: from some point from 128000 to 7000 BCE, Easterners came to Crete, and by 750 BCE, ancient Greece included nearby Asian coasts. One could see what Eastern cults came to Greece and Egypt, and what Egyptian cults came to Greece and Rome. Hestia, Here, Demeter, Zeus, Athena, Artemis/Hecate, Apollo, Hermes, Aphrodite, Dionysus, Heracles, mostly (and a few only likely) had partly Egyptian or in most cases partly Eastern cults, and a few that were not partly Eastern were fully Eastern and imported to Greece. Several were Cycladic & Minoan (a Cretan European, African, Eastern civilization) or Mycenaean (later Cretan.) I do not know as much about Egyptian deities and the Greek Protogenoi and Titans now, but many are probably traceable to or imported from the East, so you could probably find more connections. HPB described much of this. She claimed India was the oldest surviving culture that led to most others, at least in Eurasia and Egypt/Africa. Perhaps you meant philosophy or science. I think HPB wrote the earliest science was Indian, but the earliest known math, engineering, probably astronomy, etc., known to science historians is middle Eastern, but either way, ancient Egypt and Greece were influenced and had literature on the topics. The Minoans were a great civilization. They may not have had high literacy, but do you think they or later Greece had no 'thought' (such as the simplest sciences) or that their religions were not philosophical? I claim certainly the wisdom cult of Athena, the Delphic maxims of Apollo, the teachings of Hermes-Thoth, and likely ideas in most/all ancient Greek cults, such as whatever made the Minoans peaceful, and the various ethical values in most, were philosophical. I have read the philosophy/religion/science attributed to Pythagoras, and about him (and a Greek philosopher-scientist from Asia minor said to have taught him,) and I see connections/synthesis. The Essenes or people at Qumran BCE had part of Plato's Republic. It seems true that Greek thought influenced much of the East at the time of Alexander--another synthesis, even if not surviving in a form you can read--which I suspect is in in the next several hundred and more years of Indian philosophy/science. Early Semitic mythology was also middle-Eastern and somehow related to the far East. It is clear Judaism and Christianity, West Asian religions themselves, have other Eastern and Western influences. The Gnostics had such influences (the Nag Hammadi library has at least one Hermetic text.) Islamic scientists and many Sufis have such influences (the first scientific method closest to today's was Islamic) and influence on the West. Likely so does Bahai, which preceded Theosophy and synthesizes religions from India to Israel (and may mention Laozi.) I hope you see connections, at least from Pythagoreanism or Qumran, earlier cultural ones, and consider if we just do not necessarily know who the first was. I could elaborate but have now described in more detail things you could look up.

[David Melik]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greco-Buddhism#Philosophical_influences

[Christian von Lahr]

IN MY OPINION:

 

(you can start cringing now...)

I would consider her the earliest example of one initiating the 6th Root-Race, the first Scout; her inability to feel that she could fit in must have been overwhelming, her greater abilities to see, feel, hear and sense what others could not, compelling. She would have insight, at least greater than ours at that time, of the cosmos and life on other worlds. True also, she would be one of the earliest entries from all Root-Races, so she would have considerable experience fighting the turbulence of new insight, as she single-handedly breaks through the religious notions of the day like an Ice-Breaker through the Baring Straights.

And so, her struggle would have been mighty, far greater than we have to go through, for she made our course easier. She would have to have gone running through the jungle of life with a machete, though, to accomplish any discovery, so I can forgive her a multitude of sins (and I mean that half-laughing).

Her natural mental and psychical proclivities would be coupled with her first of a wave significance to make her the most "fitted" for the role her alleged Masters assigned her (though, I have no difficulty in perceiving said masters being her own Higher Self, Higher guidance from the Mental Plane, or even Astral assistance, which she seems to be fond of, especially the lower (I don't think she maintained the significance in the difference in gradients of sub-plane to sub-plane, and how we relate to these, that we have come to learn ... her thinking and experience in terms of the total expanse of a Plane would seem to be indicated in her epics, thus no evidence of distinguishing the colors of a rainbow, only being in awe of a spectacular multi-colored site. 

 

christian von lahr