Occultism (*Twitch Twitch, Gibber Gibber*)
It finally happened. After a term of not doing much on my Dissertation (and three months of not updating my blog) I finally got another bite by the occultism bug.
Essentially the tack i'm taking with my Theosophy/Golden Dawn dissertation is to take each of its components (the Ascended Masters, the Tarot etc) and map out where they got the idea from and what they did with it. This evening it's been the Ascended/Hidden masters, and the process goes a little like this:
*Idea - The Ascended masters are a selection of individuals, based either out of Tibet or Shambhala in the Gobi Desert, that attained enlightenment through lifetimes of esoteric practice, and who appear throughout time to influence world events and religions. These have included known religious figures such as Jesus, future ones such as Maitreya, and other occultists such as the Comte de Saint-Germaine.
**Paralells - Buddhist Bodhisattvas / Celestial Buddhas - beings who attain semi-enlightenment but remain in contact with earth to guide people through the Dhamma correctly, as something between Archetypes and minor Gods.
***Origins
Essentially the tack i'm taking with my Theosophy/Golden Dawn dissertation is to take each of its components (the Ascended Masters, the Tarot etc) and map out where they got the idea from and what they did with it. This evening it's been the Ascended/Hidden masters, and the process goes a little like this:
*Idea - The Ascended masters are a selection of individuals, based either out of Tibet or Shambhala in the Gobi Desert, that attained enlightenment through lifetimes of esoteric practice, and who appear throughout time to influence world events and religions. These have included known religious figures such as Jesus, future ones such as Maitreya, and other occultists such as the Comte de Saint-Germaine.
**Paralells - Buddhist Bodhisattvas / Celestial Buddhas - beings who attain semi-enlightenment but remain in contact with earth to guide people through the Dhamma correctly, as something between Archetypes and minor Gods.
***Origins
- Eliphas Levi talked about a "secret doctrine" of the common teachings of all religions and magic
- The Rosicrurian Brotherhood were said to pass down a similar doctrine, and when questions began to be asked as to whether Rosenkreutz and the brotherhood actually existed, were said to have disappeared into Tibet, as yet unexplored by outsiders
- The Knights Templar also transmitted a secret doctrine, and their brotherhood-style practices led to accusations of being an occult society, and to their disbandment
- The Freemasons were connected to the Templars by a Jacobean Writer, and the association with the occult stuck
- Madame Blavatsky, at the time bumming around Asia and the Americas and doing a lot of reading from various religions, comes across this stuff, cobbles it together, and claims to have met these Masters during her time in Tibet (or, depending on what you believe, she read about Levi's theories in the novels of Edward Bulwer-Lytton, connected the dots and published it as legit in a form of immense, esoteric fanfiction)