Theos-Talk Archives (August 1995 Message tl00239)

A note on Ann's post:

>>Several prominent Theosophists or quasi-Theosophists have brought in
prayers
and invocations, rituals, a formal hierarchy of deities (called "masters")
etc.>>

Ann: Where is this happening?

Well, leaving off Rudolph Steiner's work for a moment, the Alice Bailey
teachings have an Invocation calling for Christ's return to earth; in
addition they observe full and new moons and hold several high holidaysas
well -- Christian Easter and Buddhist Wesak, when all the Masters are
imagined to assemble and receive a discourse from the Christ. The hierarchy
of Masters is laid out by AAB in no uncertain terms, a full bureaucracy of
who is supervising whom, and who's on top (you guessed it, the Christ). The
"great invocation," seeing as it is addressed to Christ and His return, seems
inescapably a "prayer" to me, having divinized that being who holds the
"office" of Christ. Was there a general election, one wonders, or was the
fellow promoted when the previous Christ moved on? The Invocation closes
with a prayer "Let Light and Love and Power restore the Plan on Earth."

Are we to assume that there is a Plan which has somehow been hidden or taken
away? And that if we pray hard enough it will come back? Again, all of
these beliefs are certainly viable for a personal faith, but they make
Theosophy unmistakably into a religion. A step more and we will have a
priesthood leading us in this prayer, with the Masters as saints who
intervene for us and grant indulgences.

Then there is the Liberal Catholic Church with it's full set of rituals that
are more Christian than Theosophical, of course, but I understand that the
LCC is fully sanctioned by the Theosophical Society of Adyar. Perhaps the
retired LCC bishop on this list can tell us more.

>As a budding gnostic, I ... differ with the idea that the
Gnostics are merely ashes in the south of France. These hardy souls seem to
reappear again and again, at different points in time, reincarnating when the
weather is right and the mind of man is ripe. <

This strikes me as profoundly true and eloquent to boot.

Rich