Reflectie 3(4).vp

veel gepraat en speculatie, soms zeer slecht gefundeerd, over ‘adepten, ‘mahatma’s ‘ en ‘goeroes’. Maar de Europese occul- te traditie, opgeëist door ‘mysticisme’, werd eveneens ‘uitge- vonden’ – of, misschien nauwkeuriger, opnieuw uitgevonden – en speelde in een liefde voor archaïsche bronnen, originen, geheime genootschappen, en het gotische dat mogelijk het best werd vertegenwoordigd door het succes van romanliteratuur van Rider Haggard’s She (1887) en Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897). De grote aantrekkingskracht van het occulte zelf was duidelijk in de modieuze rage voor astrologie, handlijnkunde en kristallen-bol-staren, terwijl periodieken als van W. T. Stead’s Borderland , sinds 1889, en van Ralph Shirley The Occult Review vanaf 1905, een nieuw algemeen gehoor vonden dat met enthousiasme discussieerde over van alles – van alchemie en Boeddhisme tot hypnose en psychologie. In het bijzonder Borderland richtte zich op het grote pu- bliek – het eerste nummer van het tijdschrift stelde het onder- werp ‘spoken’ aan de orde. Een duidelijke karakteristiek van het mystieke reveil eind 19 de eeuw was haar algemene omarming van het Oosten. Dat gold ook voor de meest bekend geraakte en internationaal geo- riënteerde occulte groep: de Theosofische Vereniging, in 1875 gesticht in New York door madame Petrovna Blavatsky en haar naaste medewerker, kolonel Henry Steel Olcott, onder meer ten doel het Amerikaanse spiritualisme te hervormen en een innige band met het Oosters mysticisme te bereiken. * * * By the end of the nineteenth century, Victorians were seeking rational explanations for the word in which they lived. The radical ideas of Charles Darwin had shaken traditional religious beliefs. Sigmund Freud was developing his innovative models of the conscious and uncon- scious mind; and anthropologist James George Frazer was subjecting magic, myth and ritual to systematic inquiry. Why then, in this quintes- sentially modern moment, did late-Victorian and Edwardian men and women become absorbed by metaphysical quests, heterodox spiritual encounters, and occult experimentation? … An involvement with the occult was a leitmotif of the intellectual avant-garde. Emphasis on the spiritual nature of the occult revival makes sense. Occultism was characterized by a particular view and understanding of the universe and of the place of humankind within it, which could loosely be called religious. Indeed, it would clearly be foolish to dis- count the religious or spiritual imperative. It is the case that the women and men who were drawn to occultism, even the secularist spiritualists, were attracted by the promise of otherworldly compensations and reali- ties. Spiritualism is manifestly concerned with the survival of the indi- vidual spirit, and subsequent ‘"mystical" developments usually empha- sized in some way the possibility of existence beyond death. Similarly some psychical researchers undoubtedly were seeking proof of the im- mortality of the soul, and possibly all were searching for either consola- tion or meaning in an otherwise bleakly materialistic world. But compel- ling though the classification of occultism (p 28) as “a surrogate faith” might be, it cannot fully account for the kind of “mystical revival” that occurred at the turn of the century. In particular, it cannot explain the very different form taken by occultism during the late 1880s and 1890s. Religious or spiritual “yearnings” might help to explain why individuals were drawn to the occult during this period, but they cannot altogether account for the very significant differences between spiritualism and “mysticism.” More especially, religious longing does not explain the particular expression or articulation of “mystical” preoccupations. A Godless universe was certainly an important factor, but the new “spiri- tual movement” constituted a phenomenon that was definitively fin-de-siècle. The “mystical revival” was characterized by the confluence of many of the most significant late-Victorian intellectual trends and fashionable interests was itself emblematic of the flourishing of things spiritual, but equally represented an au courant distaste for materialism and positiv- ism and an ongoing (if qualified) enthusiasm for science. It spoke to a new taste for philosophical idealism and European vitalism but at the same time owed much to late-Victorian scholarship and the opening of new fields of academic inquiry. Folklore, anthropology, Egyptology, phi- lology, and the study of comparative religion each had their place in a “mysticism” that looked East as well as West. Inevitably, at both the scholarly and popular levels, ‘’mysticism" drew on an East that was structured by the European imagination. It was caught up in the Victo- rian romanticization of India and the “mysterious Orient” that mani- fested itself in a genera! interest in “Theosophy and Oriental philoso- phy of various sorts ... and much talk and speculation, sometimes very ill-founded, about ‘adepts,’ ‘mahatmas,’ and ‘gurus.’ But the European occult tradition claimed by ”mysticism" was similarly “invented” – or, perhaps more accurately, reinvented – and played to a Victorian fond- ness for archaic origins, secret societies, and the Gothic that was per- haps best exemplified by the success of fiction like Rider Haggard’s She (1887) and Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897). The broad appeal of the occult itself was evident in the fashionable craze for astrology, palmistry, and crystal gazing, while new journals like W. T. Stead’s Borderland, founded in 1893, and the Honorable Ralph Shirley’s monthly. The Occult Review, established in 1905, catered to a genera! audience eager for discussions of every-thing from alchemy and Bud- dhism to hypnotism and psychology. Stead’s Borderland. in particular, was aimed at the popular market and “the great public,’’ and the jour- nal’s first issue proclaimed that it sought to reach ”the great mass of or- dinary people" in a much-needed democratization of “the study of the spook.” The occult and the “mysticism” with which it was (p 29) synony- mous were integral to the cultural milieu at the fin de siècle, and ex- erted an appeal that cannot be explained by reference to God alone. One of the most distinctive aspects of the “mystical revival” was its catholic embrace of the East, and this is what defined the Theosophi- cal Society, the most famous and internationally based occult group in late- Britain. The society, inaugurated in New York in 1875 by Madame Petrovna Blavatsky and her close associate, Colonel Henry Steel Olcott, has its roots in the drive to reform American spiritualism but quickly attained al glamorous association with “oriental” mysticism. *** Bronnen 1. C.W. Leadbeater (1847-1934), Wetenschap der Sacramenten, 1920 (1924 NL vertaling) 2. J.I. Wedgwood (1883-1951), New Insights into Christian Worship , 1976. Een bundel door E.J.Burton samengesteld en bewerkte artikelen die in de 2 de helft van de jaren 20 werden gepubliceerd in het tijdschrift The Liberal Catholic 3. A. Besant (18xx-19xx), Esoterisch Christendom , 192x (1926 NL vertaling) 4. The Place of Enchantment, British Occultism and the Culture of the Modern , Alex Owen; University of Chicago Press, 2004, 355 blz Citaat uit de introductie en uit gedeelten van blz. 27-29. 13 Reflectie 3(4) winter 2006 Het overwinnen van de dood is niet afhankelijk van het elimineren van lichamelijke ziekten, maar van het tot stand brengen van die bewustzijnscontinuïteit, die van het stoffelijke levensgebied op het innerlijke subjectieve bestaan overgaat. Bron: Alice Bailey Het naar buiten treden van de Geestelijke Hiërarchie par. 45