Post by Tamrin on Jul 24, 2008 8:32:28 GMT 10
Sometimes concern is expressed regarding perceived links to Theosophy and Antisemitism. I believe much of this stems from the lie that Alice Bailey was somehow a successor to Theosophy's principal founder, Helena Blavatsky. Blavatsky wrote of root races, etc., but in the context of her time, where the genetics of race were unknown (still debatable) and "race" was somehow seen to be tied in with particular, prevailing world views. Blavatsky was also a great admirer of Kabbalah and respected Jews in comparison to Christians, for having preserved, as an inner tradition, an understanding of the Ancient Wisdom. As concepts of race changed, her works were indeed reinterpreted and incorporated into Nazi Occultism but, then again, the Nazis were adept at distorting otherwise benign philosophies to their own ends.
In this the Nazis appear to have been aided (knowingly or not) by Alice Bailey, a disgraced former Theosophist who purported to be a successor to Blavatsky. While the Nazis were persecuting masons belonging to "Jewish" context masonic lodges in Europe, together with her husband Foster, she toured Europe in the years leading up to America's involvement in WWII (long after Kristallnacht and after the Nazis had conquered much of Europe), wrote vile, anti-Semitic treatises and were among the first holocaust deniers. Upon America entering the war on the Allied side, they somehow managed to get safe passage back to the US and then felt the need to put all the American lodges of AUM—their peculiar form of masonry into dormancy, despite masonry, in general, remaining safe and respectable in the US!?
Their vision for a Freemasonry, "cleansed" of its Jewish context and content, and fit for their so-called "new dispensation," is to be seen in the Grand Lodge Ancient Universal Mysteries (A.U.M.), which they founded. By contrast, the Lauderdale ritual owes much to the Theosophist Annie Besant who, with others, brought it over from France and adapted it. Please bear-in-mind that the first of the three objects of The Theosophical Society is: "To form a nucleus of the Universal Brotherhood of Humanity, without distinction of race, creed, sex, caste or colour." Antisemitism is therefore anathema to a true Theosophist.
In this the Nazis appear to have been aided (knowingly or not) by Alice Bailey, a disgraced former Theosophist who purported to be a successor to Blavatsky. While the Nazis were persecuting masons belonging to "Jewish" context masonic lodges in Europe, together with her husband Foster, she toured Europe in the years leading up to America's involvement in WWII (long after Kristallnacht and after the Nazis had conquered much of Europe), wrote vile, anti-Semitic treatises and were among the first holocaust deniers. Upon America entering the war on the Allied side, they somehow managed to get safe passage back to the US and then felt the need to put all the American lodges of AUM—their peculiar form of masonry into dormancy, despite masonry, in general, remaining safe and respectable in the US!?
Their vision for a Freemasonry, "cleansed" of its Jewish context and content, and fit for their so-called "new dispensation," is to be seen in the Grand Lodge Ancient Universal Mysteries (A.U.M.), which they founded. By contrast, the Lauderdale ritual owes much to the Theosophist Annie Besant who, with others, brought it over from France and adapted it. Please bear-in-mind that the first of the three objects of The Theosophical Society is: "To form a nucleus of the Universal Brotherhood of Humanity, without distinction of race, creed, sex, caste or colour." Antisemitism is therefore anathema to a true Theosophist.