New Age streams of various kinds....
From: Tarjei Straume
Date: Sun Nov 16, 2003 10:40 pm
Subject: New Age streams of various kinds....
I have a bunch of occult and New Age literature
on my shelf after my mother, who passed away in 1997. She had
been an anthroposophist since 1960, and in addition to Steiner,
she read everything occult she came across. Aleister Crowley
made her laugh out loud; she thought he was so funny with his
wild ambitions to be the Beast and all that, and his weird rituals.
(Well now, Ron Hubbard also read Crowley studiously, but because
the office of the Beast was already taken by Crowley, Hubbard
had to settle for something else that seemed to be available,
so he tried to make people think of him as the Antichrist, but
that's a different story.)
Anyway, my mother also had a heavy Dion Fortune
period in her mature years. As the threshold was approaching,
she felt that Steiner was too strict and tough with regard to
demands upon the individual between death and rebirth; other
occultists made it so much easier and more comfortable. So I
also have collections of Alice Bailey, Emanuel Swedenborg, Max
Heindel, Corine Heline (a pupil of Heindel), W. E. Butler, Mona
Rolfe PhD, Dr. Carrington, a huge Dion Fortune collection (of
course), plus some real oddballs like Rosemary Brown's book "Immortals
at my Elbow," featuring automatic writing of compositions
at the piano from celebrities like Liszt, Chopin, etc. And they
have messages to the world as well, of course, plus pieces of
wisdom from Shaw and Shakespeare. Makes me wish to join the Skeptics
Society immediately. And then you have "Beyond the Horizon"
by Grace Rosher. Automatic writing in sheer Spiritualist style.
Max Heindel (founder of the Rosicrucian Fellowship
in Oceanside, California) is a chapter by himself. He was described
by Rudolf Steiner in a lecture held in Christiania [Oslo] Oct
6, 1913 in the cycle, "The Fifth Gospel" (GA 148):
We have quite enough enemies
today already and the way they act is really very curious. I
do not propose to enlarge upon this, for you probably know about
it from the News Sheets. You are certainly aware of another strange
fact. There are people who have been saying for a long time that
the teaching I give is tainted with every kind of bigoted Christian
dogma, even by Jesuitism. This malicious allegation is made chiefly
by certain devotees of 'Adyar Theosophy', as it is called, and
they talk sheer, unscrupulous nonsense. But our teachings have
also been immeasurably falsified from a quarter which had violently
attacked the intolerance, the distortions and the allegations.
A man from America, who spent weeks and months getting to know
our teachings, transcribed and carried them off in a watered-down
form to America, where he has given out a plagiarised 'Rosicrucian
Theosophy.' True, he says he learnt a good deal from us over
here, but that he was summoned to the Masters and learnt more
from them. He says nothing, however, about having learnt from
us the deeper things which he had drawn from the then unpublished
lecture-courses. When something like this happens in America,
one may of course emulate the aged Hillel and be lenient; nor
need one stop being lenient when these things make their way
across to Europe. In a quarter from which the most violent attacks
on us were launched, a translation was made of what these circles
in America had taken from us, and in an introduction to this
translation it was said: True, a Rosicrucian conception of the
world is making its appearance in Europe, too, but in a bigoted,
Jesuital form; this kind of thinking can thrive only in the pure
air of California. Well... here I will pause! Such are the methods
of our opponents. We may regard these things with leniency and
even with compassion, but we should not shut our eyes to them.
When things like this happen, even those who for years have been
remarkably forbearing with people who acted so unscrupulously,
must be wary. Perhaps one day everyone will have their eyes opened.
If the service of truth did not demand it, I should much prefer
not to speak about these matters, but they must be faced fairly
and squarely.
My 1971 edition of Max Heindel's major work,
"The Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception, or Mystic Christianity,"
was first copyrighted in 1909, four years before RS held the
lecture quoted above. Amazingly, whan I first bought this book
in my youth, I bought the contents too, believing that Heindel
was yet another initiate. I didn't notice that he made no mention
of Ahriman whatsoever and that Rudolf Steiner was non-existent
for him, although I did find it curious that his writing bore
a distinct anti-Semitic coloring. It wouldn't have been surprising
if Heinrich Himmler had a copy of "The Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception"
on his night table, especially when we take another work by Heindel
into account, namely "Mysteries of the Great Operas."
The Nazis chose precisely the opera as a tool to hypnotize and
seduce the populace.
According to a friend of mine who happens
to be a CC priest, Emanuel Swedenborg was the reincarnation of
Ignatius Loyola, although as Swedenborg he refuted what he had
done as Loyola. Does anybody have any more info about this?
Tarjei
http://uncletaz.com/
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