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Archive for the category ‘Occult’

  1. Chakras into the west: Rama Prasad’s Nature’s Finer Forces – I

    As promised at the end of the last post in this series, for this next part I’m going to take a look at the work of Rama Prasad – in particular his 1890 book, Nature’s Finer Forces, first published in Lahore under the title of Occult Science: The Science of Breath in 1884.

    Why this particular book? I find Nature’s Finer Forces interesting for a number of reasons. Although it does not have a great deal to say about chakras/kundalini – what it does say – and how Rama Prasad presents an explanation of the subjects covered using the scientific terminology of the time is of value. It is frequently assumed that scientific interpretations of chakras, etc., are a western or ‘colonial’ overlay or imposition on indigenous, premodern representations of the transmaterial body. That Rama Prasad and a number of other Indian authors of this period (some of whom I’ll be examining in future installments) did so, raises interesting questions regarding cultural intersections and the formation of knowledge. Also, Nature’s Finer Forces was to some extent, the cause of controversy within the Theosophical Society – prompting Madame Blavatsky to make some fairly unequivocal statements on the subject of Tantra. Continue reading »

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  2. Reflections on a ‘Kundalini’ experience – I

    I’ve started working on an autobiographical writing project recently – looking back on some of my earlier writing, and reflecting on what experiences and ideas prompted me to do a particular piece, placing it within the context of my personal trajectory at the time, and how my ideas have changed since. An example of this process that I thought would be of interest to enfolding readers follows, an examination of the events which contributed to one of the first essays I ever wrote relating to the general subject of tantra, entitled “Kundalini: A Personal Approach”. Continue reading »

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  3. Book Review: My Years of Magical Thinking

    My Years of Magical ThinkingWe live in an age of enchantment. Over the last thirty years or so there has been a gathering tide of interest in magic, from popular culture to the academy. Esoteric and Pagan studies are both rapidly expanding fields, and magic, far from having declined or been relegated to the marginal or countercultural, is now increasingly being shown to be a key influence in many aspects of contemporary culture, from the arts to the sciences. Indeed, many of the key figures associated with the so-called Age of Enlightenment have been shown to have had a deep engagement with the occult, ranging from Descartes’ interest in Kabbalah to Newton’s writings on Alchemy. 1 Magic is being celebrated and explored in ways undreamt of by those who uncritically accepted Keith Thomas’ pronouncement in the 1970s that magic had “declined”. Rather than attempting to explain away or banish the occult back to its supposedly marginal status, there is an increasing focus, in a wide range of disciplines – from history to cognitive neuroscience – to explore magic’s affects and possibilities. Surfing the crest of this occultural zeitgeist comes Lionel Snell’s new book, My Years of Magical Thinking. Continue reading »

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  4. Jottings: on comparative demonologies

    At my May 2017 lecture at Treadwells Bookshop examining Tantra & Trance Possession, I gave a very brief outline of “afflictive possession” in both Ayurvedic & Tantric texts – and what is sometimes referred to as bhūtavidyā (‘the science of spirits’) including some remarks on how this subject is treated in the Netra Tantra – an eighth-century Kashmiri text, possibly composed in court circles, which has much to say on the subject of possession, exorcism, and related topics. Continue reading »

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  5. 2017 Lectures so far

    A quick announcement for some up-coming lectures in the UK. Continue reading »

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  6. Book Review: Rainbow Body

    Earlier this year I started a series of posts examining some of the early ‘influencers’ of the modern chakra system as it tends to be represented in the west. I’d been interested in writing about this subject for some time, and had started to think that it would make an interesting book project – examining the development of the western chakra system within the larger context of biomedical discourses. However, I must admit that I baulked somewhat at the prospect of having to read through acres and acres of ‘new age’ material. Now I don’t have to, as Kurt Leland’s Rainbow Body: A History of the Western Chakra System from Blavatsky to Brennan (Ibis Press, 2016, 516pp, Paperback) is the definitive history of the evolution of the chakra system as it is known in the West today. Continue reading »

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  7. A Phallic Knight – III

    In the previous post in this series I outlined the publishing of Richard Payne Knight’s A Discourse on the Worship of Priapus and the ensuing scandal. For this post I’m going to look at some of Knight’s other works -and his later life – post-Discourse. My aim here is to highlight the wide range of Knight’s interests and show how he continued to express, in various ways, his antipathy to Christianity. I’ll get around to examining some of the background politics and social context in the next post. Continue reading »

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  8. Chakras into the west: Early Theosophical Sources – II

    Continuing from the previous post examining early sources for western chakra models, I’m examining the influence that Indian Theosophists had on shaping early Theosophical discourse concerning the Chakras, drawing primarily on the work of Karl Baier. Continue reading »

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  9. Chakras into the west: Early Theosophical Sources – I

    In the first post in this occasional series I took a brief look at the rather novel mapping of the chakras on to the Book of Revelation as done by Theosophist James Morgan Pryse. Prsyse’s book The Apocalypse Unsealed was first published in 1910 – the same year as C.W. Leadbeater’s The Inner Life within which is Leadbeater’s first treatment of the ‘force-centres’ or ‘chakrams’. I’ll take a closer look at both The Inner Life and Leadbeater’s 1927 book The Chakras another time, but for now I want to highlight two key questions that have been bothering me for some time. Firstly, what were the sources for the Theosophical treatments of the chakras, and secondly, at what point (and by who) did the chakras first become identified with nerve plexuses and so forth?

    I have, up until recently, been eyeing up two possibilities for source texts for Theosophical discourse regarding chakras. Firstly, there is Babu Siris Chandra Basu’s 1887 translation of the Shiva Sanhita, and secondly, Pandit Rama Prasad Kasyapa’s 1889 work Occult Science, the science of breath. This latter text I am particularly interested in. Originally published as a series of articles under the name Nature’s Finer Forces between 1887-1889. Rama Prasad’s work was somewhat controversial due to his drawing on tantric sources – which Madame Blavatsky was not reticent to show her disapproval of. This text is also widely regarded as the means through which the Indian concept of Tattvas made its way into western occultism.

    So I thought I had pretty much nailed down the origins of chakras into Theosophy. I was wrong. Continue reading »

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  10. A Phallic Knight – II

    As I hope the treatise may be forgotten I shall not name the author, but observe, that all the ordure and filfth, all the antique pictures, and all the representations of the generative organs, in their most odious and degrading profusion, have been raked together, and copulated (for no other idea seems to be in the mind of the author) and copulated, I say, with a new species of blasphemy. Such are, what we would call, the records of the stews and bordellos of Grecian and Roman antiquity, exhibited for the recreation of antiquaries, and the obscene revellings of Greek Scholars in their private studies. Surely this is to dwell mentally in lust and darkness in the loathsome and polluted chamber at Capreae.”
    Thomas James Mathias

    Given that I’m going to give a lecture on Richard Payne Knight for the London Fortean Society in October, I thought I’d better get on with the series of posts on Knight I started last June. Continue reading »

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