Theos-Talk Archives (August 1997 Message tl00598)

As I have just ploughed through 55 digests and none from Buds, I am
writing to you here.  I finally decided that history has a place for me
in the search for the truth and Mdme B. and associated readings does not
go back far enough.  I wanted to go way back to a time before all this
written stuff, to try to avoid personal interpretation (re-writing
history for power and all that).

so I am currently studying Druids and Natural Magic.  In his book "The
Elements of the Druid Tradition", Philip Carr-Gomm states, "Godfrey
Higgins, author of three hefty volumes, the first of which was entitled
Celtic Druids; Gerald Massey who was similarly productive, and who,along
with Higgins, was used as source material by Mme Blavatsky" intrigued
me.  There is no mention in the other books I bought about Druids of Mme
B or Theosophy.  I have dozens of questions for you, because I am
guessing that you have experience with this "field", but a few will do:

1. Is it possible that Mme B. was influenced by Druidism (as revived in
the 1800's)?
2.  Is it possible that Jesus travelled to Gaul and/or Britain and was
influenced by the underground (by that time) Druids?  
3.  The Druid Circle of Life is EXACTLY like the Native American
Medicine Wheel.  What other representations of Life are the same? And,
why are the representations (diagrams) of concepts in Theosophy so
darned complex?  Why not a simple spiral or rosary for instance, why all
these levels and names that the average person can't pronounce let alone
memorize?  (and if you guys tell me that it's because it's for the
initiated only, that it takes years of discplined study to get there,
then that's why you're losing members - this is the fast food era, it's
not a fad it's part of our evolution, we can't go back, we can't sit
still long enough to take it in, any concept has to be so simple it hits
people like a ton a bricks and stays with them)
4.  Is it not evident that, when one strips away all the trappings and
details of any known set of religous practices and goes back far enough,
they are all the same in basic content and based on a simple set of
natural laws of cause and effect, which if you break you become extinct?
5.  Is it correct to say that there are a few natural great energy
centres on the planet, situated on ley lines I believe.  Do these
centres feature in Theosophy?  
6.  Isn't the medical profession now "discovering" the healing powers of
"sound", and isn't Stonehenge not only a calendar device, but also built
so that sound is manipulated - silence within the inner circle for
meditation and sound producing on the outer with different sounds
depending on the sun's position caused by the stones vibrating by the
heat?  Isn't sound a main ingredient of every religious practice,
including opening and cleansing the Chakras?  Is the sound of our
possessions killing us?

And, not withstanding the theories of Atlantis and Arcturus and other
types of what I still call "wierd stuff", have we not been left direct
evidence that before our recorded history, humans were a race of what we
would consider "giants", with their architecture having been copied in
size and grandeur by the Egyptians on down, so that, is it not possible
to postulate that, in evloutionary terms we are on the second or third
time around?

To the rest of you, bored out of your trees no doubt, I am sorry to get
so personal, but I can't get into specialty cats or S&M, or come back
with those one-liners some of you do so well, and no-one could complete
with hereticallacious Chuck.(Love ya Chuck)  As for women's issues -
been there, done that.  Boy, did some of you get real testy just
lately.  I thought I heard swords clanging in the distance (mixed with
the swish of Doss's robes that is). 

Here's my 2 cents worth (dear Doss, I love your writing style):
Re debating content: Everyone is at a different stage.  For those of us
who have gone through the "arguing and defending the faith" stage,
sometimes the debates seem time wasting - but surely we must understand
the need for others to experience it, just as we did (and may do again).
Re slinging insults:  It's certainly not true to say that words never
hurt.  They do, sometimes enough to get through that good old protective
shell, not only of the one to whom the diatribe is being directed, but
also to those of us are listening and watching.  Then we start to feel
and think.  (The first thing we feel is the pain of the person doing the
slinging!)
Re unconditional love:  Seems to me it's about the most dangerous
concept misinterpreted from what Jesus, Buddha and the rest of those
Eastern guys said and it's not "natural", leading once again to
extinction if everyone isn't doing it pefectly?
Re the postings amorous bits - when do I get to see email consumation? 
Re the policis: For the longest time, I couldn't understand why groups
held on so tightly to their hierarchies, traditions and by-laws and
regulations, other than that practically, a set of rules followed by all
makes things (and people) easier to control.  My former Women's Business
organization stood proudly each month and declared it was "Inclusive,
not Exclusive", yet if you were black or yellow or without a mass of
letters behind your name, you were useful as a dumb workhorse and never
got invited to the "real" gatherings.  Every group I have belonged to
eventually ended up spending more time fighting about the rules rather
than completing the mission, and it pissed me off.  Your mail has helped
me to observe the dynamics - the leaders emerging; the taking of sides;
the emotional support by the nuturers; the same old stories of
recriminations and backstabbing and downright lies in some cases to ruin
a reputation and hence kill an idea.  The wonderful evidence of the
process of seeking the truth.

Very much as a result of my contact with these postings, I am choosing
to relearn the traditions of my "Tribe" and hang on for dear life to the
ones that once provided me and my ancestors with order in the
(always)encroaching chaos, with a sense of place and security in the
(imagined)void, with the ability to love all things and people who
wanted to be loved and to leave the others well alone for them to find
their own way, to understand the past, live to the fullest in the
present and to read the signs for the future, to seek the truth and
hence, to fear very little except my own lack of discipline.  Oh, and
I'm going to read Atlas Shrugged again (for the fourth time and with
understanding this time)

Finally, to Alan - you once asked me where I grew up.  I was born in
Plymouth, we moved to Devizes, and except for a short stay in Suffolk,
spent most of my youth about 10 minutes from Stonehenge, on a farm near
Salisbury.  I went to Bristol University (for the physics) and roamed
around Dorset looking for Hardy's characters.  In the early days (and I
mean the late 50's) there were four generations of us living in a
cottage that had no electricity, no inside toilet, and was mostly the
original wattle and daub.  We killed our own meat and hung it, grew all
our own vegetables, and lived everyday by first predicting the weather
and then by homilies.  I could talk to animals, did my homework up a
tree and spent all of my spare time lying around in a corn field or
copse talking to invisible people (until I got wind of the opposite sex
that is).  While I learned Latin and French, my great-grandfather talked
a diallect so strong with dipthongs and olde words that I couldn't
understand him half the time, but I was passionately happy and didn't
know I was any different from "normal" people.  (And I do mean
passionately happy, no passion in relationships or career or idea has
ever come close to that absolute feeling that I was surrounded by
timeless love, eons older and wiser than me, and that everything in
nature was infinite and pefect and I was too).  Oh how the mighty have
fallen!  But hey, you Americans, don't think I didn't know how you were
living, 'cos later we got electricity and a TV and I fell in love with
Dale Robertson on Wells Fargo and was most disappointed when I visited
Buffalo, N.Y. just after emigrating and no-one was riding horses!

Well, society did a good job on me and I helped because I didn't hold
onto the magic and the power within, I gave it over to the materialisitc
world - this so-called New World. When I left England, I slowly lost all
connection until a few years ago a Hopi trained Indian told me that I
was totally disconected and lost and that I would have to start the road
back by hugging a tree everyday.  (Mind you, it's pretty hard to hold
onto the "magic" when the snow banks are taller than you are and you're
freezing your ass off and then you get 2 months of Summer when it's too
darned hot to move and you are on the mosquito's food chain) 
I have been in Canada for nearly thirty years and I still cry like a
baby when I meditate and go back to the Wiltshire land and the sounds
and the smells and the magical energy.  But no-one can go back.  The
Tribe has to go on, taking the truth and the power with it to the "New
Place", wherever it may be, because the truth and the energy never
changes and governs all.  I'm finally coming "home again" to that place
within where we are all the same, there are no barriers of time and
space, and I haven't missed the boat or wasted my life.  Why do I
contribute, I have asked myself, 'cos I read what I write and it's
darned embarrassing.  Well maybe it's not because I have any theosophy
or philosophy to offer like you guys do, but because for a moment in
time I am an example of who your groups should be looking to "lecture"
to.  You see, the physical emigrations are over, there is no more "land"
to discover or to run away to and no better body or relationship or job
than the ones we have chosen, so there's a mass of people out there who
are no different than the ones Mme B. wanted to reach - they're lost,
like I was, and for some of them, Theosophy is the only way home.    
Love to you All.  Annette.