Sunday, July 10, 2011

Blavatsky News


* The latest issue of PMLA, the journal of the Modern Language Association, for March 2011, contains an article by Gauri Viswanathan titled “‘Have Animals Souls?”: Theosophy and the Suffering Body,” which continues her recent work on Blavatsky, memory, and history, theories and methodologies.

* There is an interesting, if brief, video that looks at Mme. Blavatsky’s Philadelphia address on 3420 Sansom Street that is now the home of the White Dog Cafe. Unfortunately, other than showing the address above the door, it gives no real idea of the building or location. It is posted on the iGeneralist site, which describes it as: “The home of Madame Blavatsky while she lived in Philadelphia. Not an adherent to her field of study, but I thought this video might be interesting to those fascinated by her life.”

* George M. Young looks at “Esoteric Elements In Russian Cosmism” in the 2011 issue of The Rose+Croix Journal, a yearly publication from AMORC. “Russian Cosmism is a lively and still productive tendency in the history of Russian esoteric thought, important but little known outside Russia. This paper presents a brief introduction to the ideas of several of the major figures in this tendency. From Nikolai Fedorov, in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, to Svetlana Semenova, today’s leading Cosmist, the emphasis of this movement has been on the human role in shaping and directing future human evolution, in all its physical, social, and spiritual manifestations.” As Young notes: “Since the late nineteenth century, more than a few notable contributions to international esoteric doctrine have come west with a strong Russian accent: H. P. Blavatsky, George Gurdjieff, P. D. Ouspensky, Nicholas and Helena Roerich are names that immediately come to mind.” The rest of the article can be read here.

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