Freda Bedi, by Wikipedia

This is a broad, catch-all category of works that fit best here and not elsewhere. If you haven't found it someplace else, you might want to look here.

Re: Freda Bedi, by Wikipedia

Postby admin » Wed Nov 20, 2019 5:20 am

A List Of Fallacious Arguments
by Don Lindsay
September 16, 2013

"The jawbone of an ass is just as dangerous a weapon today as in Sampson's time."
--- Richard Nixon


Several of these have names in Latin, but I mostly ignored that and used English.

If anyone is bothered by my using "he" everywhere, note that "he" is the person arguing fallaciously.

• Ad Hominem (Argument To The Man)
• Affirming The Consequent
• Amazing Familiarity
• Ambiguous Assertion
• Appeal To Anonymous Authority
• Appeal To Authority
• Appeal To Coincidence
• Appeal To Complexity
• Appeal To False Authority
• Appeal To Force
• Appeal To Pity (Appeal to Sympathy, The Galileo Argument)
• Appeal To Widespread Belief (Bandwagon Argument, Peer Pressure, Appeal To Common Practice)
• Argument By Dismissal
• Argument By Emotive Language (Appeal To The People)
• Argument By Fast Talking
• Argument By Generalization
• Argument By Gibberish (Bafflement)
• Argument By Half Truth (Suppressed Evidence)
• Argument By Laziness (Argument By Uninformed Opinion)
• Argument By Personal Charm
• Argument By Pigheadedness (Doggedness)
• Argument By Poetic Language
• Argument By Prestigious Jargon
• Argument By Question
• Argument By Repetition (Argument Ad Nauseam)
• Argument by Rhetorical Question
• Argument By Scenario
• Argument By Selective Observation
• Argument By Selective Reading
• Argument By Slogan
• Argument By Vehemence
• Argument From Adverse Consequences (Appeal To Fear, Scare Tactics)
• Argument From Age (Wisdom of the Ancients)
• Argument From Authority
• Argument From False Authority
• Argument From Personal Astonishment
• Argument From Small Numbers
• Argument From Spurious Similarity
• Argument Of The Beard
• Argument To The Future
• Bad Analogy
• Begging The Question (Assuming The Answer, Tautology)
• Burden Of Proof
• Causal Reductionism (Complex Cause)
• Contrarian Argument
• Changing The Subject (Digression, Red Herring, Misdirection, False Emphasis)
• Cliche Thinking
• Common Sense
• Complex Question (Tying)
• Confusing Correlation And Causation
• Disproof By Fallacy
• Equivocation
• Error Of Fact
• Euphemism
• Exception That Proves The Rule
• Excluded Middle (False Dichotomy, Faulty Dilemma, Bifurcation)
• Extended Analogy
• Failure To State
• Fallacy Of Composition
• Fallacy Of Division
• Fallacy Of The General Rule
• Fallacy Of The Crucial Experiment
• False Cause
• False Compromise
• Genetic Fallacy (Fallacy of Origins, Fallacy of Virtue)
• Having Your Cake (Failure To Assert, or Diminished Claim)
• Hypothesis Contrary To Fact
• Inconsistency
• Inflation Of Conflict
• Internal Contradiction
• Least Plausible Hypothesis
• Lies
• Meaningless Questions
• Misunderstanding The Nature Of Statistics (Innumeracy)
• Moving The Goalposts (Raising The Bar, Argument By Demanding Impossible Perfection)
• Needling
• Non Sequitur
• Not Invented Here
• Outdated Information
• Pious Fraud
• Poisoning The Wells
• Psychogenetic Fallacy
• Reductio Ad Absurdum
• Reductive Fallacy (Oversimplification)
• Reifying
• Short Term Versus Long Term
• Slippery Slope Fallacy (Camel's Nose)
• Special Pleading (Stacking The Deck)
• Statement Of Conversion
• Stolen Concept
• Straw Man (Fallacy Of Extension)
• Two Wrongs Make A Right (Tu Quoque, You Too)
• Weasel Wording

Ad Hominem (Argument To The Man):

attacking the person instead of attacking his argument. For example, "Von Daniken's books about ancient astronauts are worthless because he is a convicted forger and embezzler." (Which is true, but that's not why they're worthless.)

Another example is this syllogism, which alludes to Alan Turing's homosexuality:

Turing thinks machines think.
Turing lies with men.
Therefore, machines don't think.


(Note the equivocation in the use of the word "lies".)

A common form is an attack on sincerity. For example, "How can you argue for vegetarianism when you wear leather shoes?" The two wrongs make a right fallacy is related.

A variation (related to Argument By Generalization) is to attack a whole class of people. For example, "Evolutionary biology is a sinister tool of the materialistic, atheistic religion of Secular Humanism." Similarly, one notorious net.kook waved away a whole category of evidence by announcing "All the scientists were drunk."

Another variation is attack by innuendo: "Why don't scientists tell us what they really know; are they afraid of public panic?"

There may be a pretense that the attack isn't happening: "In order to maintain a civil debate, I will not mention my opponent's drinking problem." Or "I don't care if other people say you're [opinionated/boring/overbearing]."

Attacks don't have to be strong or direct. You can merely show disrespect, or cut down his stature by saying that he seems to be sweating a lot, or that he has forgotten what he said last week. Some examples: "I used to think that way when I was your age." "You're new here, aren't you?" "You weren't breast fed as a child, were you ?" "What drives you to make such a statement?" "If you'd just listen." "You seem very emotional." (This last works well if you have been hogging the microphone, so that they have had to yell to be heard.)

Sometimes the attack is on the other person's intelligence. For example, "If you weren't so stupid you would have no problem seeing my point of view." Or, "Even you should understand my next point."

Oddly, the stupidity attack is sometimes reversed. For example, dismissing a comment with "Well, you're just smarter than the rest of us." (In Britain, that might be put as "too clever by half".) This is Dismissal By Differentness. It is related to Not Invented Here and Changing The Subject.

Ad Hominem is not fallacious if the attack goes to the credibility of the argument. For instance, the argument may depend on its presenter's claim that he's an expert. (That is, the Ad Hominem is undermining an Argument From Authority.) Trial judges allow this category of attacks.

Needling:

simply attempting to make the other person angry, without trying to address the argument at hand. Sometimes this is a delaying tactic.

Needling is also Ad Hominem if you insult your opponent. You may instead insult something the other person believes in ("Argumentum Ad YourMomium"), interrupt, clown to show disrespect, be noisy, fail to pass over the microphone, and numerous other tricks. All of these work better if you are running things - for example, if it is your radio show, and you can cut off the other person's microphone. If the host or moderator is firmly on your side, that is almost as good as running the show yourself. It's even better if the debate is videotaped, and you are the person who will edit the video.

If you wink at the audience, or in general clown in their direction, then we are shading over to Argument By Personal Charm.

Usually, the best way to cope with insults is to show mild amusement, and remain polite. A humorous comeback will probably work better than an angry one.

Straw Man (Fallacy Of Extension):

attacking an exaggerated or caricatured version of your opponent's position.

For example, the claim that "evolution means a dog giving birth to a cat."

Another example: "Senator Jones says that we should not fund the attack submarine program. I disagree entirely. I can't understand why he wants to leave us defenseless like that."

On the Internet, it is common to exaggerate the opponent's position so that a comparison can be made between the opponent and Hitler.


Inflation Of Conflict:

arguing that scholars debate a certain point. Therefore, they must know nothing, and their entire field of knowledge is "in crisis" or does not properly exist at all.

For example, two historians debated whether Hitler killed five million Jews or six million Jews. A Holocaust denier argued that this disagreement made his claim credible, even though his death count is three to ten times smaller than the known minimum.

Similarly, in "The Mythology of Modern Dating Methods" (John Woodmorappe, 1999) we find on page 42 that two scientists "cannot agree" about which one of two geological dates is "real" and which one is "spurious". Woodmorappe fails to mention that the two dates differ by less than one percent.


Argument From Adverse Consequences (Appeal To Fear, Scare Tactics):

saying an opponent must be wrong, because if he is right, then bad things would ensue. For example: God must exist, because a godless society would be lawless and dangerous. Or: the defendant in a murder trial must be found guilty, because otherwise husbands will be encouraged to murder their wives.

Wishful thinking is closely related. "My home in Florida is one foot above sea level. Therefore I am certain that global warming will not make the oceans rise by fifteen feet." Of course, wishful thinking can also be about positive consequences, such as winning the lottery, or eliminating poverty and crime.

Special Pleading (Stacking The Deck):

using the arguments that support your position, but ignoring or somehow disallowing the arguments against.

Uri Geller used special pleading when he claimed that the presence of unbelievers (such as stage magicians) made him unable to demonstrate his psychic powers.

Excluded Middle (False Dichotomy, Faulty Dilemma, Bifurcation):

assuming there are only two alternatives when in fact there are more. For example, assuming Atheism is the only alternative to Fundamentalism, or being a traitor is the only alternative to being a loud patriot.

Short Term Versus Long Term:

this is a particular case of the Excluded Middle. For example, "We must deal with crime on the streets before improving the schools." (But why can't we do some of both?) Similarly, "We should take the scientific research budget and use it to feed starving children."

Burden Of Proof:

the claim that whatever has not yet been proved false must be true (or vice versa). Essentially the arguer claims that he should win by default if his opponent can't make a strong enough case.

There may be three problems here. First, the arguer claims priority, but can he back up that claim? Second, he is impatient with ambiguity, and wants a final answer right away. And third, "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence."

Argument By Question:

asking your opponent a question which does not have a snappy answer. (Or anyway, no snappy answer that the audience has the background to understand.) Your opponent has a choice: he can look weak or he can look long-winded. For example, "How can scientists expect us to believe that anything as complex as a single living cell could have arisen as a result of random natural processes?"

Actually, pretty well any question has this effect to some extent. It usually takes longer to answer a question than ask it.

Variants are the rhetorical question, and the loaded question, such as "Have you stopped beating your wife?"

Argument by Rhetorical Question:

asking a question in a way that leads to a particular answer. For example, "When are we going to give the old folks of this country the pension they deserve?" The speaker is leading the audience to the answer "Right now." Alternatively, he could have said "When will we be able to afford a major increase in old age pensions?" In that case, the answer he is aiming at is almost certainly not "Right now."

Fallacy Of The General Rule:

assuming that something true in general is true in every possible case. For example, "All chairs have four legs." Except that rocking chairs don't have any legs, and what is a one-legged "shooting stick" if it isn't a chair?

Similarly, there are times when certain laws should be broken. For example, ambulances are allowed to break speed laws.

Reductive Fallacy (Oversimplification):

over-simplifying. As Einstein said, everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler. Political slogans such as "Taxation is theft" fall in this category.

Genetic Fallacy (Fallacy of Origins, Fallacy of Virtue):

if an argument or arguer has some particular origin, the argument must be right (or wrong). The idea is that things from that origin, or that social class, have virtue or lack virtue. (Being poor or being rich may be held out as being virtuous.) Therefore, the actual details of the argument can be overlooked, since correctness can be decided without any need to listen or think.

Psychogenetic Fallacy:

if you learn the psychological reason why your opponent likes an argument, then he's biased, so his argument must be wrong.

Argument Of The Beard:

assuming that two ends of a spectrum are the same, since one can travel along the spectrum in very small steps. The name comes from the idea that being clean-shaven must be the same as having a big beard, since in-between beards exist.

Similarly, all piles of stones are small, since if you add one stone to a small pile of stones it remains small.

However, the existence of pink should not undermine the distinction between white and red.

Argument From Age (Wisdom of the Ancients):

snobbery that very old (or very young) arguments are superior. This is a variation of the Genetic Fallacy, but has the psychological appeal of seniority and tradition (or innovation).

Products labelled "New! Improved!" are appealing to a belief that innovation is of value for such products. It's sometimes true. And then there's cans of "Old Fashioned Baked Beans".

Not Invented Here:

ideas from elsewhere are made unwelcome. "This Is The Way We've Always Done It."

This fallacy is a variant of the Argument From Age. It gets a psychological boost from feelings that local ways are superior, or that local identity is worth any cost, or that innovations will upset matters.

An example of this is the common assertion that America has "the best health care system in the world", an idea that this 2007 New York Times editorial refuted.


People who use the Not Invented Here argument are sometimes accused of being stick-in-the-mud's.

Conversely, foreign and "imported" things may be held out as superior.

Argument By Dismissal:

an idea is rejected without saying why.

Dismissals usually have overtones. For example, "If you don't like it, leave the country" implies that your cause is hopeless, or that you are unpatriotic, or that your ideas are foreign, or maybe all three. "If you don't like it, live in a Communist country" adds an emotive element.


Argument To The Future:

arguing that evidence will someday be discovered which will (then) support your point.

Poisoning The Wells:

discrediting the sources used by your opponent. This is a variation of Ad Hominem.

Argument By Emotive Language (Appeal To The People):

using emotionally loaded words to sway the audience's sentiments instead of their minds. Many emotions can be useful: anger, spite, envy, condescension, and so on.

For example, argument by condescension: "Support the ERA? Sure, when the women start paying for the drinks! Hah! Hah!"

Americans who don't like the Canadian medical system have referred to it as "socialist", but I'm not quite sure if this is intended to mean "foreign", or "expensive", or simply guilty by association.

Cliche Thinking and Argument By Slogan are useful adjuncts, particularly if you can get the audience to chant the slogan. People who rely on this argument may seed the audience with supporters or "shills", who laugh, applaud or chant at proper moments. This is the live-audience equivalent of adding a laugh track or music track. Now that many venues have video equipment, some speakers give part of their speech by playing a prepared video. These videos are an opportunity to show a supportive audience, use emotional music, show emotionally charged images, and the like. The idea is old: there used to be professional cheering sections. (Monsieur Zig-Zag, pictured on the cigarette rolling papers, acquired his fame by applauding for money at the Paris Opera.)

If the emotion in question isn't harsh, Argument By Poetic Language helps the effect. Flattering the audience doesn't hurt either.

Argument By Personal Charm:

getting the audience to cut you slack. Example: Ronald Reagan. It helps if you have an opponent with much less personal charm.

Charm may create trust, or the desire to "join the winning team", or the desire to please the speaker. This last is greatest if the audience feels sex appeal.

Reportedly George W. Bush lost a debate when he was young, and said later that he would never be "out-bubba'd" again.

Appeal To Pity (Appeal to Sympathy, The Galileo Argument):

"I did not murder my mother and father with an axe! Please don't find me guilty; I'm suffering enough through being an orphan."

Some authors want you to know they're suffering for their beliefs. For example, "Scientists scoffed at Copernicus and Galileo; they laughed at Edison, Tesla and Marconi; they won't give my ideas a fair hearing either. But time will be the judge. I can wait; I am patient; sooner or later science will be forced to admit that all matter is built, not of atoms, but of tiny capsules of TIME."

There is a strange variant which shows up on Usenet. Somebody refuses to answer questions about their claims, on the grounds that the asker is mean and has hurt their feelings. Or, that the question is personal.

Appeal To Force:

threats, or even violence. On the Net, the usual threat is of a lawsuit. The traditional religious threat is that one will burn in Hell. However, history is full of instances where expressing an unpopular idea could you get you beaten up on the spot, or worse.

"The clinching proof of my reasoning is that I will cut anyone who argues further into dogmeat."

-- Attributed to Sir Geoffery de Tourneville, ca 1350 A.D.


Argument By Vehemence:

being loud. Trial lawyers are taught this rule:

If you have the facts, pound on the facts.
If you have the law, pound on the law.
If you don't have either, pound on the table.


The above rule paints vehemence as an act of desperation. But it can also be a way to seize control of the agenda, use up the opponent's time, or just intimidate the easily cowed. And it's not necessarily aimed at winning the day. A tantrum or a fit is also a way to get a reputation, so that in the future, no one will mess with you.

This is related to putting a post in UPPERCASE, aka SHOUTING.

Depending on what you're loud about, this may also be an Appeal To Force, Argument By Emotive Language, Needling, or Changing The Subject.

Begging The Question (Assuming The Answer, Tautology):

reasoning in a circle. The thing to be proved is used as one of your assumptions. For example: "We must have a death penalty to discourage violent crime". (This assumes it discourages crime.) Or, "The stock market fell because of a technical adjustment." (But is an "adjustment" just a stock market fall?)

Stolen Concept:

using what you are trying to disprove. That is, requiring the truth of something for your proof that it is false. For example, using science to show that science is wrong. Or, arguing that you do not exist, when your existence is clearly required for you to be making the argument.

This is a relative of Begging The Question, except that the circularity there is in what you are trying to prove, instead of what you are trying to disprove.

It is also a relative of Reductio Ad Absurdum, where you temporarily assume the truth of something.

Argument From Authority:

the claim that the speaker is an expert, and so should be trusted.

There are degrees and areas of expertise. The speaker is actually claiming to be more expert, in the relevant subject area, than anyone else in the room. There is also an implied claim that expertise in the area is worth having. For example, claiming expertise in something hopelessly quack (like iridology) is actually an admission that the speaker is gullible.

Argument From False Authority:

a strange variation on Argument From Authority. For example, the TV commercial which starts "I'm not a doctor, but I play one on TV." Just what are we supposed to conclude?

Appeal To Anonymous Authority:

an Appeal To Authority is made, but the authority is not named. For example, "Experts agree that ..", "scientists say .." or even "they say ..". This makes the information impossible to verify, and brings up the very real possibility that the arguer himself doesn't know who the experts are. In that case, he may just be spreading a rumor.

The situation is even worse if the arguer admits it's a rumor.

Appeal To Authority:

"Albert Einstein was extremely impressed with this theory." (But a statement made by someone long-dead could be out of date. Or perhaps Einstein was just being polite. Or perhaps he made his statement in some specific context. And so on.)

To justify an appeal, the arguer should at least present an exact quote. It's more convincing if the quote contains context, and if the arguer can say where the quote comes from.

A variation is to appeal to unnamed authorities.

There was a New Yorker cartoon, showing a doctor and patient. The doctor was saying: "Conventional medicine has no treatment for your condition. Luckily for you, I'm a quack." So the joke was that the doctor boasted of his lack of authority.

Appeal To False Authority:

a variation on Appeal To Authority, but the Authority is outside his area of expertise.

For example, "Famous physicist John Taylor studied Uri Geller extensively and found no evidence of trickery or fraud in his feats." Taylor was not qualified to detect trickery or fraud of the kind used by stage magicians. Taylor later admitted Geller had tricked him, but he apparently had not figured out how.

A variation is to appeal to a non-existent authority. For example, someone reading an article by Creationist Dmitri Kuznetsov tried to look up the referenced articles. Some of the articles turned out to be in non-existent journals.

Another variation is to misquote a real authority. There are several kinds of misquotation. A quote can be inexact or have been edited. It can be taken out of context. (Chevy Chase: "Yes, I said that, but I was singing a song written by someone else at the time.") The quote can be separate quotes which the arguer glued together. Or, bits might have gone missing. For example, it's easy to prove that Mick Jagger is an assassin. In "Sympathy For The Devil" he sang: "I shouted out, who killed the Kennedys, When after all, it was ... me."


Statement Of Conversion:

the speaker says "I used to believe in X".

This is simply a weak form of asserting expertise. The speaker is implying that he has learned about the subject, and now that he is better informed, he has rejected X. So perhaps he is now an authority, and this is an implied Argument From Authority.


A more irritating version of this is "I used to think that way when I was your age." The speaker hasn't said what is wrong with your argument: he is merely claiming that his age has made him an expert.

"X" has not actually been countered unless there is agreement that the speaker has that expertise. In general, any bald claim always has to be buttressed.

For example, there are a number of Creationist authors who say they "used to be evolutionists", but the scientists who have rated their books haven't noticed any expertise about evolution.

Bad Analogy:

claiming that two situations are highly similar, when they aren't. For example, "The solar system reminds me of an atom, with planets orbiting the sun like electrons orbiting the nucleus. We know that electrons can jump from orbit to orbit; so we must look to ancient records for sightings of planets jumping from orbit to orbit also."

Or, "Minds, like rivers, can be broad. The broader the river, the shallower it is. Therefore, the broader the mind, the shallower it is."

Or, "We have pure food and drug laws; why can't we have laws to keep movie-makers from giving us filth?"


Extended Analogy:

the claim that two things, both analogous to a third thing, are therefore analogous to each other. For example, this debate:

"I believe it is always wrong to oppose the law by breaking it."
"Such a position is odious: it implies that you would not have supported Martin Luther King."
"Are you saying that cryptography legislation is as important as the struggle for Black liberation ? How dare you !"


A person who advocates a particular position (say, about gun control) may be told that Hitler believed the same thing. The clear implication is that the position is somehow tainted. But Hitler also believed that window drapes should go all the way to the floor. Does that mean people with such drapes are monsters?

Argument From Spurious Similarity:

this is a relative of Bad Analogy. It is suggested that some resemblance is proof of a relationship. There is a WW II story about a British lady who was trained in spotting German airplanes. She made a report about a certain very important type of plane. While being quizzed, she explained that she hadn't been sure, herself, until she noticed that it had a little man in the cockpit, just like the little model airplane at the training class.

Reifying:

an abstract thing is talked about as if it were concrete. (A possibly Bad Analogy is being made between concept and reality.) For example, "Nature abhors a vacuum."

False Cause:

assuming that because two things happened, the first one caused the second one. (Sequence is not causation.) For example, "Before women got the vote, there were no nuclear weapons." Or, "Every time my brother Bill accompanies me to Fenway Park, the Red Sox are sure to lose."

Essentially, these are arguments that the sun goes down because we've turned on the street lights.

Confusing Correlation And Causation:

earthquakes in the Andes were correlated with the closest approaches of the planet Uranus. Therefore, Uranus must have caused them. (But Jupiter is nearer than Uranus, and more massive too.)

When sales of hot chocolate go up, street crime drops. Does this correlation mean that hot chocolate prevents crime? No, it means that fewer people are on the streets when the weather is cold.

The bigger a child's shoe size, the better the child's handwriting. Does having big feet make it easier to write? No, it means the child is older.


Causal Reductionism (Complex Cause):

trying to use one cause to explain something, when in fact it had several causes. For example, "The accident was caused by the taxi parking in the street." (But other drivers went around the taxi. Only the drunk driver hit the taxi.)

Cliche Thinking:

using as evidence a well-known wise saying, as if that is proven, or as if it has no exceptions.

Exception That Proves The Rule:

a specific example of Cliche Thinking. This is used when a rule has been asserted, and someone points out the rule doesn't always work. The cliche rebuttal is that this is "the exception that proves the rule". Many people think that this cliche somehow allows you to ignore the exception, and continue using the rule.

In fact, the cliche originally did no such thing. There are two standard explanations for the original meaning.

The first is that the word "prove" meant test. That is why the military takes its equipment to a Proving Ground to test it. So, the cliche originally said that an exception tests a rule. That is, if you find an exception to a rule, the cliche is saying that the rule is being tested, and perhaps the rule will need to be discarded.

The second explanation is that the stating of an exception to a rule, proves that the rule exists. For example, suppose it was announced that "Over the holiday weekend, students do not need to be in the dorms by midnight". This announcement implies that normally students do have to be in by midnight. Here is a discussion of that explanation.

In either case, the cliche is not about waving away objections.


Appeal To Widespread Belief (Bandwagon Argument, Peer Pressure, Appeal to Common Practice):

the claim, as evidence for an idea, that many people believe it, or used to believe it, or do it.

If the discussion is about social conventions, such as "good manners", then this is a reasonable line of argument.

However, in the 1800's there was a widespread belief that bloodletting cured sickness. All of these people were not just wrong, but horribly wrong, because in fact it made people sicker. Clearly, the popularity of an idea is no guarantee that it's right.

Similarly, a common justification for bribery is that "Everybody does it". And in the past, this was a justification for slavery.


Fallacy Of Composition:

assuming that a whole has the same simplicity as its constituent parts. In fact, a great deal of science is the study of emergent properties. For example, if you put a drop of oil on water, there are interesting optical effects. But the effect comes from the oil/water system: it does not come just from the oil or just from the water.

Another example: "A car makes less pollution than a bus. Therefore, cars are less of a pollution problem than buses."

Another example: "Atoms are colorless. Cats are made of atoms, so cats are colorless."

Fallacy Of Division:

assuming that what is true of the whole is true of each constituent part. For example, human beings are made of atoms, and human beings are conscious, so atoms must be conscious.

Complex Question (Tying):

unrelated points are treated as if they should be accepted or rejected together. In fact, each point should be accepted or rejected on its own merits.

For example, "Do you support freedom and the right to bear arms?"


Slippery Slope Fallacy (Camel's Nose)

there is an old saying about how if you allow a camel to poke his nose into the tent, soon the whole camel will follow.

The fallacy here is the assumption that something is wrong because it is right next to something that is wrong. Or, it is wrong because it could slide towards something that is wrong.

For example, "Allowing abortion in the first week of pregnancy would lead to allowing it in the ninth month." Or, "If we legalize marijuana, then more people will try heroin." Or, "If I make an exception for you then I'll have to make an exception for everyone."

Argument By Pigheadedness (Doggedness):

refusing to accept something after everyone else thinks it is well enough proved. For example, there are still Flat Earthers.

Appeal To Coincidence:

asserting that some fact is due to chance. For example, the arguer has had a dozen traffic accidents in six months, yet he insists they weren't his fault. This may be Argument By Pigheadedness. But on the other hand, coincidences do happen, so this argument is not always fallacious.

Argument By Repetition (Argument Ad Nauseam):

if you say something often enough, some people will begin to believe it. There are some net.kooks who keeping reposting the same articles to Usenet, presumably in hopes it will have that effect.

Argument By Half Truth (Suppressed Evidence):

this is hard to detect, of course. You have to ask questions. For example, an amazingly accurate "prophecy" of the assassination attempt on President Reagan was shown on TV. But was the tape recorded before or after the event? Many stations did not ask this question. (It was recorded afterwards.)

A book on "sea mysteries" or the "Bermuda Triangle" might tell us that the yacht Connemara IV was found drifting crewless, southeast of Bermuda, on September 26, 1955. None of these books mention that the yacht had been directly in the path of Hurricane Iona, with 180 mph winds and 40-foot waves.

Argument By Selective Observation:

also called cherry picking, the enumeration of favorable circumstances, or as the philosopher Francis Bacon described it, counting the hits and forgetting the misses. For example, a state boasts of the Presidents it has produced, but is silent about its serial killers. Or, the claim "Technology brings happiness". (Now, there's something with hits and misses.)

Casinos encourage this human tendency. There are bells and whistles to announce slot machine jackpots, but losing happens silently. This makes it much easier to think that the odds of winning are good.


Argument By Selective Reading:

making it seem as if the weakest of an opponent's arguments was the best he had. Suppose the opponent gave a strong argument X and also a weaker argument Y. Simply rebut Y and then say the opponent has made a weak case.

This is a relative of Argument By Selective Observation, in that the arguer overlooks arguments that he does not like. It is also related to Straw Man (Fallacy Of Extension), in that the opponent's argument is not being fairly represented.

Argument By Generalization:

drawing a broad conclusion from a small number of perhaps unrepresentative cases. (The cases may be unrepresentative because of Selective Observation.) For example, "They say 1 out of every 5 people is Chinese. How is this possible? I know hundreds of people, and none of them is Chinese." So, by generalization, there aren't any Chinese anywhere. This is connected to the Fallacy Of The General Rule.

Similarly, "Because we allow terminally ill patients to use heroin, we should allow everyone to use heroin."

It is also possible to under-generalize. For example,

"A man who had killed both of his grandmothers declared himself rehabilitated, on the grounds that he could not conceivably repeat his offense in the absence of any further grandmothers."

-- "Ports Of Call" by Jack Vance


Argument From Small Numbers:

"I've thrown three sevens in a row. Tonight I can't lose." This is Argument By Generalization, but it assumes that small numbers are the same as big numbers. (Three sevens is actually a common occurrence. Thirty three sevens is not.)

Or: "After treatment with the drug, one-third of the mice were cured, one-third died, and the third mouse escaped." Does this mean that if we treated a thousand mice, 333 would be cured ? Well, no.

Misunderstanding The Nature Of Statistics (Innumeracy):

President Dwight Eisenhower expressed astonishment and alarm on discovering that fully half of all Americans had below average intelligence. Similarly, some people get fearful when they learn that their doctor wasn't in the top half of his class. (But that's half of them.)

"Statistics show that of those who contract the habit of eating, very few survive."

-- Wallace Irwin.


Very few people seem to understand "regression to the mean". This is the idea that things tend to go back to normal. If you feel normal today, does it really mean that the headache cure you took yesterday performed wonders? Or is it just that your headaches are always gone the next day?

Journalists are notoriously bad at reporting risks. For example, in 1995 it was loudly reported that a class of contraceptive pills would double the chance of dangerous blood clots. The news stories mostly did not mention that "doubling" the risk only increased it by one person in 7,000. The "cell phones cause brain cancer" reports are even sillier, with the supposed increase in risk being at most one or two cancers per 100,000 people per year. So, if the fearmongers are right, your cellphone has increased your risk from "who cares" to "who cares".

Inconsistency:

for example, the declining life expectancy in the former Soviet Union is due to the failures of communism. But, the quite high infant mortality rate in the United States is not a failure of capitalism.

This is related to Internal Contradiction.

Non Sequitur:

something that just does not follow. For example, "Tens of thousands of Americans have seen lights in the night sky which they could not identify. The existence of life on other planets is fast becoming certainty!"

Another example: arguing at length that your religion is of great help to many people. Then, concluding that the teachings of your religion are undoubtably true.

Or: "Bill lives in a large building, so his apartment must be large."


Meaningless Questions:

irresistible forces meeting immovable objects, and the like.

Argument By Poetic Language:

if it sounds good, it must be right. Songs often use this effect to create a sort of credibility - for example, "Don't Fear The Reaper" by Blue Oyster Cult. Politically oriented songs should be taken with a grain of salt, precisely because they sound good.

Argument By Slogan:

if it's short, and connects to an argument, it must be an argument. (But slogans risk the Reductive Fallacy.)

Being short, a slogan increases the effectiveness of Argument By Repetition. It also helps Argument By Emotive Language (Appeal To The People), since emotional appeals need to be punchy. (Also, the gallery can chant a short slogan.) Using an old slogan is Cliche Thinking.

Argument By Prestigious Jargon:

using big complicated words so that you will seem to be an expert. Why do people use "utilize" when they could utilize "use"?

For example, crackpots used to claim they had a Unified Field Theory (after Einstein). Then the word Quantum was popular. Lately it seems to be Zero Point Fields.


Argument By Gibberish (Bafflement):

this is the extreme version of Argument By Prestigious Jargon. An invented vocabulary helps the effect, and some net.kooks use lots of CAPitaLIZation. However, perfectly ordinary words can be used to baffle. For example, "Omniscience is greater than omnipotence, and the difference is two. Omnipotence plus two equals omniscience. META = 2." [From R. Buckminster Fuller's No More Secondhand God.]

Gibberish may come from people who can't find meaning in technical jargon, so they think they should copy style instead of meaning. It can also be a "snow job", AKA "baffle them with BS", by someone actually familiar with the jargon. Or it could be Argument By Poetic Language.

An example of poetic gibberish: "Each autonomous individual emerges holographically within egoless ontological consciousness as a non-dimensional geometric point within the transcendental thought-wave matrix."

Equivocation:

using a word to mean one thing, and then later using it to mean something different. For example, sometimes "Free software" costs nothing, and sometimes it is without restrictions. Some examples:

"The sign said 'fine for parking here', and since it was fine, I parked there."

All trees have bark.
All dogs bark.
Therefore, all dogs are trees.


"Consider that two wrongs never make a right, but that three lefts do."

- "Deteriorata", National Lampoon


Euphemism:

the use of words that sound better. The lab rat wasn't killed, it was sacrificed. Mass murder wasn't genocide, it was ethnic cleansing. The death of innocent bystanders is collateral damage. Microsoft doesn't find bugs, or problems, or security vulnerabilities: they just discover an issue with a piece of software.

This is related to Argument By Emotive Language, since the effect is to make a concept emotionally palatable.

Weasel Wording:

this is very much like Euphemism, except that the word changes are done to claim a new, different concept rather than soften the old concept. For example, an American President may not legally conduct a war without a declaration of Congress. So, various Presidents have conducted "police actions", "armed incursions", "protective reaction strikes," "pacification," "safeguarding American interests," and a wide variety of "operations". Similarly, War Departments have become Departments of Defense, and untested medicines have become alternative medicines. The book "1984" has some particularly good examples.

Error Of Fact:

for example, "No one knows how old the Pyramids of Egypt are." (Except, of course, for the historians who've read records and letters written by the ancient Egyptians themselves.)

Typically, the presence of one error means that there are other errors to be uncovered.

Argument From Personal Astonishment:

Errors of Fact caused by stating offhand opinions as proven facts. (The speaker's thought process being "I don't see how this is possible, so it isn't.") An example from Creationism is given here.

This isn't lying, quite. It just seems that way to people who know more about the subject than the speaker does.

Lies:

intentional Errors of Fact. In some contexts this is called bluffing.

If the speaker thinks that lying serves a moral end, this would be a Pious Fraud.

Contrarian Argument:

in science, espousing some thing that the speaker knows is generally ill-regarded, or even generally held to be disproven. For example, claiming that HIV is not the cause of AIDS, or claiming that homeopathic remedies are not just placebos.

In politics, the phrase may be used more broadly, to mean espousing some position that the establishment or opposition party does not hold.

This is sometimes done to make people think, and sometimes it is needling, or perhaps it supports an external agenda. But it can also be done just to oppose conformity, or as a pose or style choice: to be a "maverick" or lightning rod. Or, perhaps just for the ego of standing alone:

"It is not enough to succeed. Friends must be seen to have failed."

-- Truman Capote


"If you want to prove yourself a brilliant scientist, you don't always agree with the consensus. You show you're right and everyone else is wrong."

-- Daniel Kirk-Davidoff discussing Richard Lindzen


Calling someone contrarian risks the Psychogenetic Fallacy. People who are annoying are not necessarily wrong. On the other hand, if the position is ill-regarded for a reason, then defending it may be uphill.

Trolling is Contrarian Argument done to get a reaction. Trolling on the Internet often involves pretense.

Hypothesis Contrary To Fact:

arguing from something that might have happened, but didn't.

Internal Contradiction:

saying two contradictory things in the same argument. For example, claiming that Archaeopteryx is a dinosaur with hoaxed feathers, and also saying in the same book that it is a "true bird". Or another author who said on page 59, "Sir Arthur Conan Doyle writes in his autobiography that he never saw a ghost." But on page 200 we find "Sir Arthur's first encounter with a ghost came when he was 25, surgeon of a whaling ship in the Arctic.."

This is much like saying "I never borrowed his car, and it already had that dent when I got it."

This is related to Inconsistency.

Changing The Subject (Digression, Red Herring, Misdirection, False Emphasis):

this is sometimes used to avoid having to defend a claim, or to avoid making good on a promise. In general, there is something you are not supposed to notice.

For example, I got a bill which had a big announcement about how some tax had gone up by 5%, and the costs would have to be passed on to me. But a quick calculation showed that the increased tax was only costing me a dime, while a different part of the the bill had silently gone up by $10.

This is connected to various diversionary tactics, which may be obstructive, obtuse, or needling. For example, if you quibble about the meaning of some word a person used, they may be quite happy about being corrected, since that means they've derailed you, or changed the subject. They may pick nits in your wording, perhaps asking you to define "is". They may deliberately misunderstand you:

"You said this happened five years before Hitler came to power. Why are you so fascinated with Hitler? Are you anti-Semitic?"


It is also connected to various rhetorical tricks, such as announcing that there cannot be a question period because the speaker must leave. (But then he doesn't leave.)

Argument By Fast Talking:

if you go from one idea to the next quickly enough, the audience won't have time to think. This is connected to Changing The Subject and (to some audiences) Argument By Personal Charm.

However, some psychologists say that to understand what you hear, you must for a brief moment believe it. If this is true, then rapid delivery does not leave people time to reject what they hear.

Having Your Cake (Failure To Assert, or Diminished Claim):

almost claiming something, but backing out. For example, "It may be, as some suppose, that ghosts can only be seen by certain so-called sensitives, who are possibly special mutations with, perhaps, abnormally extended ranges of vision and hearing. Yet some claim we are all sensitives."

Another example: "I don't necessarily agree with the liquefaction theory, nor do I endorse all of Walter Brown's other material, but the geological statements are informative." The strange thing here is that liquefaction theory (the idea that the world's rocks formed in flood waters) was demolished in 1788. To "not necessarily agree" with it, today, is in the category of "not necessarily agreeing" with 2+2=3. But notice that writer implies some study of the matter, and only partial rejection.


A similar thing is the failure to rebut. Suppose I raise an issue. The response that "Woodmorappe's book talks about that" could possibly be a reference to a resounding rebuttal. Or perhaps the responder hasn't even read the book yet. How can we tell ? [I later discovered it was the latter.]

Ambiguous Assertion:

a statement is made, but it is sufficiently unclear that it leaves some sort of leeway. For example, a book about Washington politics did not place quotation marks around quotes. This left ambiguity about which parts of the book were first-hand reports and which parts were second-hand reports, assumptions, or outright fiction.

Of course, lack of clarity is not always intentional. Sometimes a statement is just vague.

If the statement has two different meanings, this is Amphiboly. For example, "Last night I shot a burglar in my pyjamas."

Failure To State:

if you make enough attacks, and ask enough questions, you may never have to actually define your own position on the topic.

Outdated Information:

information is given, but it is not the latest information on the subject. For example, some creationist articles about the amount of dust on the moon quote a measurement made in the 1950's. But many much better measurements have been done since then.

Amazing Familiarity:

the speaker seems to have information that there is no possible way for him to get, on the basis of his own statements. For example: "The first man on deck, seaman Don Smithers, yawned lazily and fingered his good luck charm, a dried seahorse. To no avail! At noon, the Sea Ranger was found drifting aimlessly, with every man of its crew missing without a trace!"

Least Plausible Hypothesis:

ignoring all of the most reasonable explanations. This makes the desired explanation into the only one. For example: "I left a saucer of milk outside overnight. In the morning, the milk was gone. Clearly, my yard was visited by fairies."

There is an old rule for deciding which explanation is the most plausible. It is most often called "Occam's Razor", and it basically says that the simplest is the best. The current phrase among scientists is that an explanation should be "the most parsimonious", meaning that it should not introduce new concepts (like fairies) when old concepts (like neighborhood cats) will do.

On ward rounds, medical students love to come up with the most obscure explanations for common problems. A traditional response is to tell them "If you hear hoof beats, don't automatically think of zebras".

Argument By Scenario:

telling a story which ties together unrelated material, and then using the story as proof they are related.

Affirming The Consequent:

logic reversal. A correct statement of the form "if P then Q" gets turned into "Q therefore P".

For example,

"All cats die; Socrates died; therefore Socrates was a cat."

Another example: "If the earth orbits the sun, then the nearer stars will show an apparent annual shift in position relative to more distant stars (stellar parallax). Observations show conclusively that this parallax shift does occur. This proves that the earth orbits the sun." In reality, it proves that Q [the parallax] is consistent with P [orbiting the sun]. But it might also be consistent with some other theory.
(Other theories did exist. They are now dead, because although they were consistent with a few facts, they were not consistent with all the facts.)

Another example: "If space creatures were kidnapping people and examining them, the space creatures would probably hypnotically erase the memories of the people they examined. These people would thus suffer from amnesia. But in fact many people do suffer from amnesia. This tends to prove they were kidnapped and examined by space creatures." This is also a Least Plausible Hypothesis explanation.

Moving The Goalposts (Raising The Bar, Argument By Demanding Impossible Perfection):

if your opponent successfully addresses some point, then say he must also address some further point. If you can make these points more and more difficult (or diverse) then eventually your opponent must fail. If nothing else, you will eventually find a subject that your opponent isn't up on.

This is related to Argument By Question. Asking questions is easy: it's answering them that's hard.


If each new goal causes a new question, this may get to be Infinite Regression.

It is also possible to lower the bar, reducing the burden on an argument. For example, a person who takes Vitamin C might claim that it prevents colds. When they do get a cold, then they move the goalposts, by saying that the cold would have been much worse if not for the Vitamin C.

Appeal To Complexity:

if the arguer doesn't understand the topic, he concludes that nobody understands it. So, his opinions are as good as anybody's.

Common Sense:

unfortunately, there simply isn't a common-sense answer for many questions. In politics, for example, there are a lot of issues where people disagree. Each side thinks that their answer is common sense. Clearly, some of these people are wrong.

The reason they are wrong is because common sense depends on the context, knowledge and experience of the observer. That is why instruction manuals will often have paragraphs like these:

When boating, use common sense. Have one life preserver for each person in the boat.

When towing a water skier, use common sense. Have one person watching the skier at all times.


If the ideas are so obvious, then why the second sentence? Why do they have to spell it out? The answer is that "use common sense" actually meant "pay attention, I am about to tell you something that inexperienced people often get wrong."

Science has discovered a lot of situations which are far more unfamiliar than water skiing. Not surprisingly, beginners find that much of it violates their common sense. For example, many people can't imagine how a mountain range would form. But in fact anyone can take good GPS equipment to the Himalayas, and measure for themselves that those mountains are rising today.

If a speaker tells an audience that he supports using common sense, it is very possibly an Ambiguous Assertion.

Argument By Laziness (Argument By Uninformed Opinion):

the arguer hasn't bothered to learn anything about the topic. He nevertheless has an opinion, and will be insulted if his opinion is not treated with respect. For example, someone looked at a picture on one of my web pages, and made a complaint which showed that he hadn't even skimmed through the words on the page. When I pointed this out, he replied that I shouldn't have had such a confusing picture.

Disproof By Fallacy:

if a conclusion can be reached in an obviously fallacious way, then the conclusion is incorrectly declared wrong. For example,

"Take the division 64/16. Now, canceling a 6 on top and a six on the bottom, we get that 64/16 = 4/1 = 4."
"Wait a second! You can't just cancel the six!"
"Oh, so you're telling us 64/16 is not equal to 4, are you?"


Note that this is different from Reductio Ad Absurdum, where your opponent's argument can lead to an absurd conclusion. In this case, an absurd argument leads to a normal conclusion.

Reductio Ad Absurdum:

showing that your opponent's argument leads to some absurd conclusion. This is in general a reasonable and non-fallacious way to argue. If the issues are razor-sharp, it is a good way to completely destroy his argument. However, if the waters are a bit muddy, perhaps you will only succeed in showing that your opponent's argument does not apply in all cases, That is, using Reductio Ad Absurdum is sometimes using the Fallacy Of The General Rule. However, if you are faced with an argument that is poorly worded, or only lightly sketched, Reductio Ad Absurdum may be a good way of pointing out the holes.

An example of why absurd conclusions are bad things:

Bertrand Russell, in a lecture on logic, mentioned that in the sense of material implication, a false proposition implies any proposition. A student raised his hand and said "In that case, given that 1 = 0, prove that you are the Pope". Russell immediately replied, "Add 1 to both sides of the equation: then we have 2 = 1. The set containing just me and the Pope has 2 members. But 2 = 1, so it has only 1 member; therefore, I am the Pope."


False Compromise:

if one does not understand a debate, it must be "fair" to split the difference, and agree on a compromise between the opinions. (But one side is very possibly wrong, and in any case one could simply suspend judgment.) Journalists often invoke this fallacy in the name of "balanced" coverage.

"Some say the sun rises in the east, some say it rises in the west; the truth lies probably somewhere in between."


Television reporters like balanced coverage so much that they may give half of their report to a view held by a small minority of the people in question. There are many possible reasons for this, some of them good. However, viewers need to be aware of this tendency.

Fallacy Of The Crucial Experiment:

claiming that some idea has been proved (or disproved) by a pivotal discovery. This is the "smoking gun" version of history.

Scientific progress is often reported in such terms. This is inevitable when a complex story is reduced to a soundbite, but it's almost always a distortion. In reality, a lot of background happens first, and a lot of buttressing (or retraction) happens afterwards. And in natural history, most of the theories are about how often certain things happen (relative to some other thing). For those theories, no one experiment could ever be conclusive.

Two Wrongs Make A Right (Tu Quoque, You Too, What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander):

a charge of wrongdoing is answered by a rationalization that others have sinned, or might have sinned. For example, Bill borrows Jane's expensive pen, and later finds he hasn't returned it. He tells himself that it is okay to keep it, since she would have taken his.

War atrocities and terrorism are often defended in this way.

Similarly, some people defend capital punishment on the grounds that the state is killing people who have killed.


This is related to Ad Hominem (Argument To The Man).

Pious Fraud:

a fraud done to accomplish some good end, on the theory that the end justifies the means.

For example, a church in Canada had a statue of Christ which started to weep tears of blood. When analyzed, the blood turned out to be beef blood. We can reasonably assume that someone with access to the building thought that bringing souls to Christ would justify his small deception.


In the context of debates, a Pious Fraud could be a lie. More generally, it would be when an emotionally committed speaker makes an assertion that is shaded, distorted or even fabricated. For example, British Prime Minister Tony Blair was accused in 2003 of "sexing up" his evidence that Iraq had Weapons of Mass Destruction.

Around the year 400, Saint Augustine wrote two books, De Mendacio[On Lying] and Contra Medacium[Against Lying], on this subject. He argued that the sin isn't in what you do (or don't) say, but in your intent to leave a false impression. He strongly opposed Pious Fraud. I believe that Martin Luther also wrote on the subject.
admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 36125
Joined: Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:21 am

Re: Freda Bedi, by Wikipedia

Postby admin » Wed Nov 20, 2019 11:14 pm

German Theosophical Society
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 11/20/19

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.


The German Theosophical Society (DTG) was a theosophical association that existed from 1894 to 1902. Both Rudolf Steiner, the founder of anthroposophy, and his future wife, Marie von Sivers, had joined the DTG in 1902 and 1900 respectively, becoming members of the Theosophical Society Adyar (Adyar-TG).

History

The DTG emerged from the merger of the Theosophical Association and the Esoteric Circle, both of which originated mainly from readers of the magazine [Die] Sphinx. The esoteric circle was founded on November 3, 1893 in Berlin by Wilhelm Hübbe Schleiden, the Theosophical Association was founded in 1892 ibid, also by Wilhelm von Hübbe-Schleiden. Hübbe-Schleiden also acted as president of these rather loose and disorganized groups. They understood themselves as a branch of the Theosophical Society and therefore represented their doctrine. The merger also sought a tighter structure and reorientation towards the teachings of the Theosophical Society. The reunion took place on June 29, 1894, in the presence of Henry Steel Olcott, one of the founders and president of the Theosophical Society. Organizationally, the DTG was run as a branch of the European section of the Theosophical Society . Seat of the new society was Berlin. Wilhelm Hübbe Schleiden was elected President of the DTG.

The Theosophical Society split in 1895 as a result of Judge Case in two competing organizations. On the one hand the Theosophical Society Adyar (Adyar TG) and on the other hand the Theosophical Society in America , the DTG followed the schism of the Adyar TG direction under the leadership of Olcotts. In the following years, several smaller lodges were founded under the DTG umbrella

During these years numerous, sometimes competing, theosophical groups were founded throughout Germany, mostly with different goals, but each group relied on being in possession of the "true" and "right" theosophy. Hübbe Schleiden himself took part in a Theosophical Congress on August 25, 1901 to unite all different groups in Germany. However, no agreement could be reached. As a result, the members of the DTG, along with several like-minded theosophical groups on October 19, 1902 founded a separate German section of the Theosophical Society. In this DTG was integrated and thus went out as an independent organization.

Rudolf Steiner in the DTG

The Berlin Lodge of DTG was headed by Cay Lorenz Graf von Brockdorff as secretary, ranked he was under Wilhelm von Hübbe-Schleiden, the president of the entire (small) DTG group. [1]

On September 13, 1900, Rudolf Steiner gave a lecture in the literary circle "The Coming" about The Personality of Nietzsche. The audience included Count von Brockdorff and his wife Sophie Gräfin von Brockdorff. These were very impressed by Steiner's speech and then invited him to hold the same lecture again in their Berlin DTG box. Steiner accepted the invitation at the end of September 1900 and noticed for the first time that the listeners were more open-minded here for spiritual and, above all, supernatural teachings than he previously knew. Steiner himself remarked:

"Now I noticed that within the audience were personalities of great interest to the spirit world. Therefore, when asked to give a second lecture, I proposed the theme: "Goethe's Secret Revelation." And in this lecture, I became quite [...] esoteric. It was an important experience for me to be able to speak in words that were shaped out of the spiritual world, because until now, in my time in Berlin, I was forced by the circumstances to let the spiritual shine through my representations. "

- Rudolf Steiner : My life story [2]


The Brockdorffs invited Steiner to give lectures on a regular basis. From October 6, 1900 to April 27, 1901 Steiner lectured in a total of 27 lectures on the mysticism of the Middle Ages, these he published in 1901 in book form The mysticism in the rise of modern intellectual life . From October 5, 1901 to March 22, 1902, another 18 lectures followed, printed in 1902 under the title Christianity as a Mystical Fact . [3] [4] [5]

Already in November 1900, Marie von Sivers, Steiner's later wife, joined DTG and met Steiner during one of his lectures that same month. When at the end of 1901 Count Brockdorff wanted to resign from his secretary post due to age reasons, he asked Steiner if he wanted to become his successor. Steiner accepted on the condition that Sivers supported him in this activity. On January 17, 1902, Steiner, who until now had only been a guest, joined the DTG and became a member of the Theosophical Society Adyar. At the same time he also took over the office of secretary of the Berlin DTG Lodge. [3] [4] [5]

As already mentioned above, several like-minded theosophical lodges wanted to found their own German section of the Theosophical Society (DSdTG). At the end of April 1902, Steiner was approached with the idea of ​​becoming Secretary General of this DSdTG. He reasserted on the premise that Sivers would become his secretary. As a result, Steiner and Sivers traveled to London in July 1902 as official representatives of their lodge for a theosophical congress. Here they met with Henry Steel Olcott, then president of the Adyar TG, to receive from this a deed of foundation for the official founding of the DSdTG. On October 20, 1902 Annie Besant brought this document together with the certificate of appointment to the Secretary General to Berlin, where on this day the founding event of the DSdTG took place. [3] [4] [5]

Sources

1. Steiner & Spirit - Fruits of Anthroposophy: Steiner & Spirit Fruits of Anthroposophy ( Memento of 6 February 2009 in the Internet Archive )
2. Rudolf Steiner - My life: Steiner, Rudolf: My life (1923-25) ( Memento of January 16, 2006 in the Internet Archive ), page 200f.
3. Rudolf Steiner - My Life: Steiner, Rudolf: My Life (1923-25) ( Memento of 16 January 2006 in the Internet Archive )
4. Günther Wachsmuth: Rudolf Steiner's earthly life and work, from the turn of the century to death, the birth of spiritual science . Philosophical Anthroposophic Publishing House at the Goetheanum, Dornach 1964.
5. Gerhard Wehr: Rudolf Steiner, Life - Knowledge - Cultural Impetus . Diogenes, Zurich 1993, ISBN 3-257-22615-2 .

Literature

• Norbert Klatt: Theosophy and Anthroposophy, new aspects of her story from the estate of Wilhelm Hübbe-Schleiden (1846-1916) with a selection of 81 letters . Klatt, Göttingen 1993, ISBN 3-928312-02-2.

Web links

• Overview of the TG in Germany
admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 36125
Joined: Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:21 am

Re: Freda Bedi, by Wikipedia

Postby admin » Wed Nov 20, 2019 11:31 pm

Wilhelm Hubbe-Schleiden
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 11/20/19

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.


In July 1884 the first German Theosophical Society was established under the presidency of Wilhelm Hubbe-Schleiden (1846-1916) at Elberfeld, where Blavatsky and her chief collaborator, Henry Steel Olcott, were staying with their theosophical friends, the Gebhards. At this time Hubbe-Schleiden was employed as a senior civil servant at the Colonial Office in Hamburg. He had travelled widely, once managing an estate in West Africa and was a prominent figure in the political lobby for an expanded German overseas empire. Olcott and Hubbe-Schleiden travelled to Munich and Dresden to make contact with scattered theosophists and so lay the basis for a German organization. It has been suggested that this hasty attempt to found a German movement sprang from Blavatsky's desire for a new centre after a scandal involving charges of charlatanism against the theosophists at Madras early in 1884. Blavatsky's methods of producing occult phenomena and messages from her masters had aroused suspicion in her entourage and led eventually to an enquiry and an unfavourable report upon her activities by the London Society for Psychical Research. Unfortunately for Hubbe-Schleiden, his presidency lapsed when the formal German organization dissolved, once the scandal became more widely publicized following the exodus of the theosophists from India in April 1885. Henceforth Blavatsky lived in London and found eager new pupils amongst the upper classes of Victorian England.

In 1886 Hubbe-Schleiden stimulated a more serious awareness of occultism in Germany through the publication or a scholarly monthly periodical, Die Sphinx, which was concerned with a discussion of spiritualism, psychical research, and paranormal phenomena from a scientific point of view. Its principal contributors were eminent psychologists, philosophers and historians. Here Max Dessoir expounded hypnotism, while Eduard von Hartmann developed a philosophy of 'individualism', according to which the ego survived death as a discarnate entity, against a background of Kantian thought, Christian theology, and spiritualist speculations. Carl du Prel, the psychical researcher, and his colleague Lazar von Hellenbach, who had held seances with the famous American medium Henry Slade in Vienna, both contributed essays in a similar vein. Another important member of the Sphinx circle was Karl Kiesewetter, whose studies in the history of the post-Renaissance esoteric tradition brought knowledge of the scholar magicians, the early modern alchemists and contemporary occultism to a wider audience. While not itself theosophical, Hubbe-Schleiden's periodical was a powerful element in the German occult revival until it ceased publication in 1895.

Besides this scientific current of occultism, there arose in the 1890s a broader German theosophical movement, which derived mainly from the popularizing efforts of Franz Hartmann (1838-1912). Hartmann had been born in Donauworth and brought up in Kempten, where his father held office as a court doctor. After military service with a Bavarian artillery regiment in 1859, Hartmann began his medical studies at Munich University. While on vacation in France during 1865, he took a post as ship's doctor on a vessel bound for the United States, where he spent the next eighteen years of his life. After completing his training at St Louis he opened an eye clinic and practised there until 1870. He then travelled round Mexico, settled briefly at New Orleans before continuing to Texas in 1873, and in 1878 went to Georgetown in Colorado, where he became coroner in 1882. Besides his medical practice he claimed to have a speculative interest in gold- and silver-mining. By the beginning of the 1870s he had also become interested in American spiritualism, attending the seances of the movement's leading figures such as Mrs Rice Holmes and Kate Wentworth, while immersing himself in the writings of Judge Edmonds and Andrew Jackson Davis. However, following his discovery of Isis Unveiled, theosophy replaced spiritualism as his principal diversion. He resolved to visit the theosophists at Madras, travelling there by way of California, Japan and South-East Asia in late 1883. While Blavatsky and Olcott visited Europe in early 1884, Hartmann was appointed acting president of the Society during their absence. He remained at the Society headquarters until the theosophists finally left India in April 1885.

Hartmann's works were firstly devoted to Rosicrucian initiates, Paracelsus, Jakob Boehme and other topics in the Western esoteric tradition, and were published in America and England between 1884 and 1891. However, once he had established himself as a director of a Lebensreform sanatorium at Hallein near Salzburg upon his return to Europe in 1885, Hartmann began to disseminate the new wisdom of the East to his own countrymen. In 1889 he founded, together with Alfredo Pioda and Countess Constance Wachtmeister, the close friend of Blavatsky, a theosophical lay-monastery at Ascona, a place noted for its many anarchist experiments. From 1892 translations of Indian sacred texts and Blavatsky's writings were printed in his periodical, Lotusbluthen [Lotus Blossoms] (1892-1900), which was the first German publication to sport the theosophical swastika upon its cover. In the second half of this decade the first peak in German theosophical publishing occurred. Wilhelm Friedrich of Leipzig, the publishers of Hartmann's magazine, issued a twelve-volume book series, Bibliothek esoterischer Schriften [Library of Esoteric Writings] (1898-1900), while Hugo Goring, a theosophist in Weimar, edited a thirty-volume book series, Theosophische Schriften [Theosophical Writings] (1894-96). Both series consisted of German translations from Blavatsky's successors in England, Annie Besant and Charles Leadbeater, together with original studies by Hartmann and Hubbe-Schleiden. The chief concern of these small books lay with abstruse cosmology, karma, spiritualism and the actuality of the hidden mahatmas. In addition to this output must be mentioned Hartmann's translations of the Bhagavad Gita, the Tao-Te-King and the Tattwa Bodha, together with his own monographs on Buddhism, Christian mysticism and Paracelsus…

If the German occult subculture was well developed before the First World War, Vienna could also look back on a ripe tradition of occult interest. The story of this tradition is closely linked with Friedrich Eckstein (1861-1939). The personal secretary of the composer Anton Bruckner, this brilliant polymath cultivated a wide circle of acquaintance amongst the leading thinkers, writers and musicians of Vienna. His penchant for occultism first became evident as a member of a Lebensreform group who had practised vegetarianism and discussed the doctrines of Pythagoras and the Neo-Platonists in Vienna at the end of the 1870s. His esoteric interests later extended to German and Spanish mysticism, the legends surrounding the Templars, and the Freemasons, Wagnerian mythology, and oriental religions. In 1880 he befriended the Viennese mathematician Oskar Simony, who was impressed by the metaphysical theories of Professor Friedrich Zollner of Leipzig. Zollner had hypothesized that spiritualistic phenomena confirmed the existence of a fourth dimension. Eckstein and Simony were also associated with the Austrian psychical researcher, Lazar von Hellenbach, who performed scientific experiments with mediums in a state of trance and contributed to Die Sphinx. Following his cordial meeting with Blavatsky in 1886, Eckstein gathered a group of theosophists in Vienna. During the late 1880s both Franz Hartmann and the young Rudolf Steiner were habitues of this circle. Eckstein was also acquainted with the mystical group around the illiterate Christian pietist, Alois Mailander (1844-1905), who was lionized at Kempten and later at Darmstadt by many theosophists, including Hartmann and Hubbe-Schleiden. Eckstein corresponded with Gustav Meyrink, founder of the Blue Star theosophical lodge at Prague in 1891, who later achieved renown as an occult novelist before the First World War. In 1887 a Vienna Theosophical Society was founded with Eckstein as president and Count Karl zu Leiningen-Billigheim as secretary.

-- The Occult Roots of Nazism: Secret Aryan Cults and Their Influence on Nazi Ideology: The Arisophists of Austria and Germany, 1890-1935, by Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke


An easy Wikipedia search showed that many leading occultists and theosophists made pilgrimages to [Alois] Mailander and his Circle of Pansophists, known as the “Association of Promise” which he later opened in Dreieichenhain near Frankfurt.

Among the most well known members are Gustav Meyrink, Franz Hartmann, Wilhelm Hübbe-Schleiden, Franz Gustav Gebhard, and Karl Weinfurter. Many powerful influences came from [Alois] Mailander. Could this be the source for the occult revival?

Even Madame Helena Blavatsky once said of Mailander ‘that there was only one initiate in Germany and that he lived in Kempten, but that he did not belong to her school.’ According to Willy Schroedter, however, Madame Blavatsky did in fact belong to Mailander’s school. Steiner actually stated it was Blavatsky who broke away from the Rosicrucian Master she was associated with.…

The prominent Theosophist and occultist Wilhelm Hubbe-Schleiden was another individual acquainted with both Steiner and Mailander. Hubbe-Schleiden was the president of the German branch of the Theosophical Society of which Steiner was to become General Secretary, and in 1902 handed over the Presidency of the branch to Steiner. Hubbe-Schleiden later fell out with the German Pansophists, one reason being because he would not do the work prescribed to him by “Brother John.”

-- Uncovering the Secret of “THE M”: The Adept Behind the Western Tradition, by Richard Cloud


The Theosophical Society had established itself in Germany in 1884. The branch was founded in the "Occult Room" of the house in Eberfeld belonging to the husband of Marie Gebhard [Gustav Gebhard], a friend of H. P. Blavatsky and a former pupil of the french magician Eliphas Levi. The president was Dr. Wilhelm Hubbe-Schleiden, who had held diplomatic and civil service posts. After lengthy journeys in Equatorial Africa he had produced a series of works on foreign policy and the need for German colonial expansion; now he turned his energies to editing a Theosophical magazine. The next year saw the return to Europe (with the ailing Madame Blavatsky) of Franz Hartmann, a Theosophist of unsavory reputation. Hartmann had been born in 1838, served as a volunteer in the Bavarian artillery, then emigrated on impulse to America, where he qualified medically and took out American citizenship. Until 1883 he remained in the United States, becoming a coroner in Georgetown, Colorado, and a Spiritualist in New Orleans, where one of his patients developed mediumistic gifts which Hartmann was later to claim she had passed on to him. That year he sailed for India and joined the Theosophical Society at Adyar, where he was left alone to face the investigator of the Society for Psychical Research. His return to Europe was at first intended to be temporary, but on what was intended as a brief visit home he met Dr. Karl Kellner, the discoverer of a manufacturing process for cellulose. Hartmann adapted Kellner's idea to compound a drug to be inhaled against tuberculosis; and he established himself as director of an Inhalation Center in Hallein, near Salzburg. His prolific writing won his brand of Theosophy a substantial public, and he too began to publish a periodical.

By the turn of the century, most of the elements of the Occult Underground which were known outside Germany had secured some sort of foothold inside the country.

-- The Occult Establishment, by James Webb


German colonial-political writer and theosophist

Image
Wilhelm Hübbe-Schleiden

Wilhelm Hübbe-Schleiden (born October 20, 1846 in Hamburg , † May 17, 1916 in Göttingen ) was a German colonial-political writer and theosophist .

Life

Hübbe-Schleiden was born on 20 October 1846 in Hamburg as the youngest son of the civil servant Wilhelm Hübbe and his wife Wilhelmine Maria Sophie Eleonore Schleiden. At the age of nine his mother died. He attended a Hamburg high school.

Hübbe-Schleiden studied economics and law . In 1869 he received his doctorate in Leipzig to the doctor of both rights . He was then admitted to the bar in Hamburg as a lawyer . With the approval of the Hamburg Senate, he led the double name Hübbe-Schleiden. During the Franco-German War he was Attaché at the German Consulate General in London .

Hübbe Schleiden undertook extensive travels through Western Europe and lived between 1875 and 1877 in Gabon , where he founded the trading house Bolton & Schleiden with Augustus S. Bolton. In 1877 he was charged in Gabon for involvement in a double murder and sentenced. He was able to contest the verdict but successfully and then returned to Germany.

He then worked as a tax secretary in Hamburg and acted as a champion for the German colonial aspirations in Africa and Asia, where he supported Friedrich Fabri and himself gained a certain notoriety. For this he also wrote several books, including Overseas Politics and Ethiopia .

In 1883 he learned about his acquaintance with the manufacturer family Gebhard in Elberfeld know the teachings of the represented by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky Theosophy, with whom he dealt from now on to the end of his life. On July 27, 1884, the theosophical partnership Germania was founded in Elberfeld in the house of the Gebhard family, to whose president Hübbe-Schleiden was elected. On this occasion, he met Henry Steel Olcott , who admitted him to the Theosophical Society a few hours before his election. Hübbe-Schleiden stayed for half a year as a guest of the Gebhard family in Elberfeld to build up the organization of the law firm. A few weeks after its founding, Blavatsky, the founder of the Theosophical Society , was invited by the Gebhards to Elberfeld for a rest. For a few weeks now Elberfeld was the headquarters of the Theosophical Society. The announcement of the Coulomb Affair in September 1884 and the Hodgson Report in December 1885 severely discredited Madame Blavatsky and Theosophy. Hübbe-Schleiden, like other prominent members, resigned from the law firm in order not to compromise himself in the scientific world, but remained a member in distant India. Left by its most respected members, the law firm was dissolved on 31 December 1886 again.

Since January 1886 Hübbe-Schleiden acted as editor of the himself since the autumn of 1884 planned and founded monthly Sphinx , whose appearance he could save by leaving. She devoted herself mainly metaphysical topics, but also had references to theosophy. Thus, Hübbe-Schleiden was able to keep alive interest in the Theosophy in Germany, which had been damaged in its reputation. Especially from the readership of this magazine, he was able to found in 1892 in Berlin, the Theosophical Association . This followed on 3 November 1893 the Esoteric Circle . These two organizations were united on June 29, 1894 in the presence of Henry Steel Olcott to the German Theosophical Society (DTG).

At the end of 1894, Hübbe-Schleiden traveled to India to learn about the spiritual power of yoga through her own experience. In 1896 he returned without any tangible result and continued to occupy himself with Theosophy despite this failure. The impressions of his journey he published in his work India and the Indians and in several travel letters from India in the magazine Sphinx .

During these years numerous theosophical groups were founded all over Germany, all with different goals, but each group relied on being in possession of the "true" and "right" theosophy. Hübbe Schleiden himself took part in a Theosophical Congress on August 25, 1901 to unite these different groups in Germany. However, no agreement could be reached. Thereupon the members of the DTG, among them Hübbe-Schleiden, who had protested against the foundation for a long time, founded on 19 October 1902, in the presence of Annie Besant , a separate German section of the Theosophical Society (DSdTG). This was now directly subordinated to the headquarters in Adyar. On Count von Brockdorff's proposal, Rudolf Steiner was elected Secretary General.

The inherent gap between Annie Besant and Steiner's conception of Christ increasingly entered the consciousness of society, and the differences finally seemed to become unbridgeable. Following a request from Annie Besant, Hübbe-Schleiden had since 1912 introduced the Order of the Star of the East in Germany, founded by Besant in India, which proclaimed the Hindu boy Jiddu Krishnamurti a world teacher. Thus he tightened the contrast not insignificant. When the board of the German section demanded the resignation of Annie Besant at the turn of the year 1912/13, the entire German section of Annie Besant, who knew how much the German theosophists were behind Rudolf Steiner, was abruptly expelled on 7 March 1913. As a precaution, Steiner had already founded an Anthroposophical Society in Cologne at the turn of the year 1912/13, which was now able to start work.

Annie Besant authorized Hübbe-Schleiden, whose loyalty she had previously assured, through a new foundation deed for the reestablishment of the German section. This now reduced to about a tenth of society was no longer going strong. After Hübbe-Schleiden initially acted provisionally as Secretary General of the new German section, Johannes Ludovicus Mathieu Lauweriks was elected in May 1913 as a full Secretary General, but Hübbe Schleiden remained the main figurehead of the small Adyartreuen group. Internal quarrels led to a steady loss of members, which was reinforced by the outbreak of the First World War . With Hübbe-Schleidens death on 17 May 1916 the DSdTG disintegrated.

On July 6, 1912, Hübbe-Schleiden applied for membership of the Rosicrucian Order " Order of the Temple of the Rosy Cross ". Whether he actually became a member is not known.

In addition, he was a member of the Munich local group of the Pan-German Association. [2]

Works

• Sphinx. (Monthly, as editor between 1886 and 1896)
• The existence as pleasure, suffering and love . Brunswick 1891
• The search of the master. Conversation of a church Christian and a mystic . Rohm, Lorch 1916
• German colonization . Hamburg 1881
• Ethiopia. Hamburg 1879
• Colonization Policy and Colonization Technique . Hamburg 1882
• Motives for an overseas policy of Germany . Hamburg 1881
• Overseas Politics, 2 volumes . Hamburg 1881-1883
• World economy and the driving force . Hamburg 1882
• Indian Diary 1894/1896. With notes and an introduction edited by Norbert Klatt. Klatt, Göttingen 2009, ISBN 978-3-928312-25-7 . Online: Indian Diary 1894/1896

Literature

• Emmi von Gumppenberg: Open Letter to Dr. Ing. Hübbe-Schleiden in response to his "Message of Peace" . Altmann, Leipzig 1913.
• Norbert Klatt: The estate of Wilhelm Hübbe-Schleiden in the Niedersächsische Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Göttingen . Klatt, Göttingen 1996, ISBN 3-928312-04-9 .
• Norbert Klatt: Theosophy and Anthroposophy, new aspects of her story from the estate of Wilhelm Hübbe-Schleiden (1846-1916) with a selection of 81 letters . Klatt, Göttingen 1993, ISBN 3-928312-02-2 .
• Thekla von Speer: Dr. Hübbe-Schleiden's "Memorandum", considered impartially . Philosophical Theosophical Publishing House, Berlin 1913.
• Carl Unger : Against literary buccaneerism! A clearance of Mr. Hübbe-Schleiden . Philosophical Theosophical Publishing House, Berlin 1913.

Web links

• Literature by and about Wilhelm Hübbe-Schleiden in the catalog of the German National Library
• Wilhelm Hübbe-Schleiden , detailed biography of the anthroposophical research center Kulturimpuls, biographies documentation (in the quick search "Hübbe" enter)
• Short biography in the German colonial lexicon
• Hübbe-Schleiden and the Theosophical Society
• Hübbe-Schleiden , bibliographic records in the database Lebensreform

Single proofs

1. Corinna Treitel: A Science for the Soul: Occultism and the Genesis of the Modern German , Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore MD 2004, p. 86f
2. Michael Peters: " All German Association (ADV), 1891-1939 ", in: Historical Dictionary of Bavaria.

*************************

Wilhelm Hübbe-Schleiden
by Theosophy Wiki
Accessed: 11/20/19

Image
Wilhelm Hübbe-Schleiden

Image
Wilhelm Hübbe-Schleiden

Dr. Wilhelm Hübbe-Schleiden (October 20, 1846 - Göttingen, May 17, 1916) was a German scholar greatly interested in geographical exploration and in German colonial politics. In 1884 he became the president of the Germania Theosophical Society and was the founder and editor of the Theosophical periodical The Sphinx. He was also a member of the Society for Psychical Research.

Early life, education, and professional career

Wilhelm Hübbe was born in Hamburg on October 20, 1846. He later appended the name "Schleiden" in honor of his maternal uncle Matthew Schleiden, a botanist from Münich. Wilhelm was the youngest of five sons of Dr. Hübbe, who was prominent in the legal world. His grandfather was an eloquent and broad-minded preacher. "Willi" thrived in his family life and at the local Gymnasium, then spent time at universities of Göttingen, Heidelberg, Münich, and Leipzig studying jurisprudence and political economy to take a Doctor of Laws degree.[1]

After a brief term of practice as an Attorney in his native town he, however, accepted the offer of a post in connexion with the German Consulate General in London [as attaché during 1870-71], subsequently entering one of the great London Banking Houses, in order to acquire a thorough knowledge of business routine...

After a short period spent in Spain, he returned to England, embarking thence with a British friend on an expedition to the West Coast of Africa, where by their mutual efforts a business undertaking was founded at Gaboon.[2]


Business activities did not interest the young man as much as the theory of colonial administration, so he returned to Hamburg to write in support of German colonization. "So far-seeing was this pioneer of a new movement that his books Ethiopia (written in 1878), and Oversea Politics (1880), still [in 1911] command respectful attention, and are indeed deemed classics in this particular branch of German literature."[3]

Theosophical involvement

Dr. Hübbe-Schleiden was greatly interested in Occultism. In the summer of 1884 he received from his friend Herr von Hoffmann the newly translated German edition of Esoteric Buddhism. Hübbe-Schleiden read the volume all night and soon afterward contacted Colonel Olcott.

Ascertaining from that gentleman that Madame Blavatsky was then in Germany at Elberfeld with Frau Gebhard, one of her earliest German adherents, he, with characteristic promptitude, set out for that town in search of the Founder of the Movement.

It was here, then, that on the 27th of July, 1884, the first German Branch of the Theosophical Society, styled "Theosophische Societät Germania" was founded in the presence of H. P. Blavatsky, Mr. A. P. Sinnett, and other members then in Germany, having for its President Dr. Hübbe-Schleiden, and for its Acting Secretary Herr Franz Gebhard... Among the names of those who then joined the Society may be mentioned such well-known men as Dr. Carl du Prel, the artist, Gabriel Max, Herr von Hoffman (before mentioned), Herr Direktor Sellin, as well as that gentleman's brother, and Herr Bernhard Hubo.[4]


His Theosophical activities took primarily a literary form, establishing a theosophical magazine called The Sphinx in the year 1886 in Münich.[5] It was published regularly for about ten years.

Dr. Hübbe-Schleiden, like William Quan Judge, received two unusual letters from the Mahatmas Koot Hoomi and Morya, which were called "certificates." This occurred in a railway carriage during a "propaganda" tour with Col. Olcott.[6] Each document stated clearly that The Secret Doctrine was a joint production of the Mahatmas with Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. He found them, evidently precipitated, in his copy of Richard Hodgson's S. P. R. Report. Geoffrey A. Barborka in his extensive analysis of the unusual style of handwriting of the letters, stated: "The point is here made that a precipitated message may be produced by one who knows how to do so in any desired style of writing![7]

Hübbe-Schleiden was instructed not to publish the letters, but he showed them to Judge on July 21, 1892. Mr. Judge received permission to print his copies two years after Blavatsky's death, and he did so in The Path, in 1893.[8]

Dr. Hübbe-Schleiden was mentioned in Mahatma Letter No. 132 and Mahatma Letter No. 139, in which Helena Petrovna Blavatsky corrected a misunderstanding of A. P. Sinnett about what she had said to the doctor concerning Chains and Rounds.

Later days and death

After a trip to India around 1896-1898, he returned to Europe and, as reported in The Theosophist,

[He] may be said to have devoted himself even more exclusively than before to the study of Esoteric Philosophy, making, indeed, his life-work an elaborate treatise on Reincarnation, bringing, moreover, this much argued and, in some quarters, fiercely combated question into line with the theories held by present-day European Science, in so impartial, and yet so convincing a manner that his labors may be regarded as constituting as great a gain to orthodox scientific literature, as they most assuredly are for his fellow Theosophists.[9]


Dr. Hübbe-Schleiden died in Göttingen, Germany on May 17, 1916.

Writings

Writings on political topics


Dr. Hübbe-Schleiden wrote several books:

• Ethiopien Studien Uber West-Afrika (1879).
• Uberseeische Politik 1881-1883 (1883).
• Das Dasein ALS Lust, Leid Und Liebe (1891).
• Indien Und Die Indier: Kulturell, Wirthschaftlich Und Politisch Betrachtet (1898). This work, India and the Indians, set out all the author had experienced in his 1896 travels in India. Annie Besant wrote that it "bears the imprint of a master-mind in all matters appertaining to the problem of Colonial Policy."[10]
• Englands Ende In Der Schlacht Bei Dorking.

Writings on Theosophical topics

In addition to his work as the founder and editor of the German-language Theosophical periodical The Sphinx, Hübbe-Schleiden wrote in English. The Union Index of Theosophical Periodicals lists 31 articles by or about Hübbe-Schleiden.

Additional resources

• "Hubbe-Schleiden, Wilhelm" in Theosopedia.
• Wilhelm Hübbe-Schleiden in Wikipedia.
• Wilhelm Hübbe-Schleiden in AnthroWiki, written in German.

Archival materials

Dr. Hübbe-Schleiden's papers and books were deposited at the Library of Göttingen University.

Articles

• Dr. Hubbe Schleiden on a Letter from the Mahatma K.H. published by Blavatsky Study Center
• Two Letters from H.P. Blavatsky to Dr. Wilhelm Hübbe-Schleiden published by Blavatsky Study Center
• Letter from Master K.H. at KatinkaHesselink.net

Notes

1. Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine vol. I, (Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 1993), [12].
2. M. G., "Theosophical Worthies: Wilhelm Hübbe-Schleiden," The Theosophist 32.7 (April, 1911), 115-119.
3. M. G., "Theosophical Worthies: Wilhelm Hübbe-Schleiden," The Theosophist 32.7 (April, 1911), 115-119.
4. M. G., "Theosophical Worthies: Wilhelm Hübbe-Schleiden," The Theosophist 32.7 (April, 1911), 115-119.
5. Geoffrey Barborka, The Mahatmas and Their Letters (Adyar, Madras, India: Theosophical Publishing House, 1973), 299.
6. M. G., "Theosophical Worthies: Wilhelm Hübbe-Schleiden," The Theosophist 32.7 (April, 1911), 115-119.
7. Geoffrey Barborka, The Mahatmas and Their Letters (Adyar, Madras, India: Theosophical Publishing House, 1973), 302.
8. The documents were published in The Path, vol. VIII, April, 1893.
9. M. G., "Theosophical Worthies: Wilhelm Hübbe-Schleiden," The Theosophist 32.7 (April, 1911), 115-119.
10. M. G., "Theosophical Worthies: Wilhelm Hübbe-Schleiden," The Theosophist 32.7 (April, 1911), 115-119.
admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 36125
Joined: Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:21 am

Re: Freda Bedi, by Wikipedia

Postby admin » Thu Nov 21, 2019 1:21 am

German Agrarian League
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 11/20/19

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.


Image
The Executive Committee of the Bund der Landwirte in 1900, on the left Dr. Diederich Hahn, center Conrad Baron von Wangenheim, and to the right Gustav Roesicke

The Bund der Landwirte (Agrarian League) (BDL) was a German advocacy group founded 18 February 1893 by farmers and agricultural interests in response to the farm crisis of the 1890s, and more specifically the result of the protests against the agrarian policies of Chancellor Leo von Caprivi, including his free trade policies.[1][2]

Background

The Reichstag was dissolved in June 1878 because it refused Bismarck's Anti-Socialist Law.

The Anti-Socialist Laws or Socialist Laws (German: Sozialistengesetze; officially Gesetz gegen die gemeingefährlichen Bestrebungen der Sozialdemokratie, approximately "Law against the public danger of Social Democratic endeavours") were a series of acts, the first of which was passed on October 19, 1878 by the German Reichstag lasting until March 31, 1881, and extended four times (May 1880, May 1884, April 1886 and February 1888).[1] The legislation was passed after two failed attempts to assassinate Kaiser Wilhelm I by the radicals Max Hödel and Dr. Karl Nobiling;...

Emil Max Hödel (27 May 1857 – 16 August 1878) was a plumber from Leipzig, Germany and a propaganda of the deed anarchist, who became known for a failed assassination. A former member of the Leipzig Social-Democratic Association, he was expelled from the organization in the 1870s[1] and eventually became involved in anarchism.

Hödel used a revolver to shoot at the German Emperor, Wilhelm I, on 11 May 1878, while the 81-year-old and his daughter, Princess Louise of Prussia, paraded in their carriage.[2] Hödel was seized immediately. He was tried and convicted of high treason, and sentenced to death on 10 July by the Prussian State Court. Julius Krautz, Prussian state executioner, beheaded Hödel on 16 August 1878 in Moabit prison.[3][4]

Although Hödel had been expelled from the Social Democratic Party, his actions, and those of Karl Nobiling, were used as justification to ban the party through the Anti-Socialist Law in October 1878.

-- Max Hödel, by Wikipedia


Karl Eduard Nobiling (10 April 1848 – 10 September 1878) was a German attempted assassin, who in 1878 made an attempt on the life of Emperor Wilhelm I.

Nobiling was born in Kolno near Birnbaum (Międzychód) in the Prussian Province of Posen, where his father was the tenant of the local manor. He attended school in Züllichau (Sulechów) and studied political science and agriculture at the University of Halle and Leipzig University, where he received a doctor's degree in 1876. During his studenthood he may have had some minor contact with Socialist circles, though an affiliation with the contemporary Social democratic movement has not been conclusively established.

-- Karl Nobiling, by Wikipedia


... it was meant to curb the growing strength of the Social Democratic Party (SPD, named SAP at the time), which was blamed for influencing the assassins.

Although the law did not ban the SPD directly, it aimed to cripple the organization through various means. The banning of any group or meeting of whose aims were to spread social democratic principles, the outlawing of trade unions and the closing of 45 newspapers are examples of suppression. The party circumvented these measures by having its candidates run as ostensible independents, by relocating publications outside of Germany and by spreading Social Democratic views as verbatim publications of Reichstag speeches, which were privileged speech with regard to censorship.

The law also banned the display of emblems of the Social Democratic Party. To circumvent the law, social democrats wore red bits of ribbons in their buttonholes. These actions, however, led to arrest and jail sentences. Subsequently, red rosebuds were substituted by social democrats. These actions also led to arrest and jail sentences. The judge ruled that in general everyone has a right to wear any flower as suits their taste, but when socialists as a group wear red rosebuds, it becomes a party emblem. In a final display of protest against this clause of the anti-socialist laws, female socialists began wearing red flannel petticoats, and when they wanted to show a sign of solidarity, they would lift their outer-skirts. Female socialists, especially, would display in protest their red petticoats to the police, who were constrained by social norms of decency from enforcing this new sign of socialist solidarity.[2]

The laws' main proponent was Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, who feared the outbreak of a socialist revolution similar to the one that created the Paris Commune in 1871. Despite the government's attempts to weaken the SPD, the party continued to grow in popularity. A bill introduced by Bismarck in 1888 which would have allowed for the denaturalization of Social Democrats was rejected. After Bismarck's resignation in 1890, the Reichstag did not renew the legislation, allowing it to lapse.

-- Anti-Socialist Laws, by Wikipedia


Chancellor Bismarck in the newly elected parliament relied on a broad agro-conservative majority with the slogan: Agriculture is owed by the state the same attention as industry; if both do not go hand in hand, the strength of one will not suffice for a lack in the other.[3] Bismarck helped foster support from these conservatives by enacting several tariffs protecting German agriculture, and incidentally industry, from foreign competition.[4]

In the early 1880s agriculture employed more people than industry and trade combined. However, Germany was fast becoming an industrialized state with increased rural exodus to the cities. After Bismarck resigned in 1890 and Leo von Caprivi became chancellor, the demands of industry were much more compelling, and the free trade treaties with Russia and Austria as well as legislation favorable to industry was seen as a threat to agriculture.[5]

The inaugural meeting of the Bund der Landirte was held in the Berlin Tivoli Brewery and was attended by some ten thousand people.[6] It drew its support from the most Protestant areas of the empire, northern and central Germany, and particularly from Prussia. In May 1893, just three months after its establishment, it campaigned for farmers' rights and won over 140 of the deputies who were elected in July, or about one-third of the members of the Reichstag, including the influential group that would found the Economic Association (Wirtschaftliche Vereinigung) some years later with Wilhelm von Kardorff, Berthold von Ploetz and Diederich Hahn.[7][8]

Organisation

By the end of 1893 the BDL had over 200,000 members. Only about 1% were rural landlords, with 24% coming from large family-owned farms, and the rest being small plot and tenant farmers. However, the leadership were from that 1%, primarily the Junkers from the east Elbe region, Saxony and Pommerania.[9] Exemplifying this control was Conrad Freiherr (Baron) von Wangenheim, a Pommeranian with extensive estates, who was chairman from 1898 to 1920. Thus the organisation favored the landlord interests as well as playing up to the interests of the actual farmers. Both the landlords and the farmers felt the shifting of political and economic power away from the land, and desired to maintain their vested interests. As a result, they worked closely with the political parties most aligned with that interest, but most especially with the Conservative Party (DKP).

By 1897 the BDL was headed by a three-member Executive Committee, one of whom was the chairman. It had a number of divisions, a speakers bureau which sent out inspirational speakers to the farming villages in the less labour-intensive winter months, an electoral division to identify candidates to support and to lobby candidates into supporting BDL initiatives, during election run-ups they had a propaganda division that provided BDL viewpoints on the candidates. There was a separate lobbying division for elected members of the Reichstag. In addition the organisation provided things like purchasing cooperatives which offered economic benefits to the members and acted as incentives to retain membership. By 1913 the BDL had over 330,000 members, employed more than 350 staff at headquarters, and approximately 400 regional workers.[10][11]

Policies and goals

The goal of the BDL was to preserve the leading position of agriculture in the economy and politics of Germany. In one of the founding documents it says: "German agriculture is the primary and most important industry, the strongest support of the empire and of the several states. To protect and strengthen agriculture is our first and most serious task because by the blossoming and flourishing of agriculture, the welfare of all professions is secured."[12] But the BDL also came to the defense of the mom and pop shops as against big-city department store chains, they safeguarded the interests of the rural and small urban middle class, the shop assistants, rural workers, sailors and fishermen and small wine growers. Basically they took all non-industrial workers, and small businesses under their wing.[1]

The most major demand of the BDL was the restoration of protective tariffs on food stuffs.[13] Other major demands were:

• the introduction of a state monopoly on foreign grain cereal with guaranteed minimum prices for domestically produced cereals.
• the introduction of a dual currency. In addition to the gold and silver, bank notes should be reinstated. It was hoped that the associated inflationary effects would help relieve the burden on rural borrowers.
• stock market reform - specifically to abolish grain futures trading and the Commodity Exchange.

With these were a host of minor demands such as strengthening the disease control on meat imports, thus making them more expensive, and a ban on adding yellow food colouring to margarine, thus increasing the market for domestic butter. When the tariffs were raised in the Bülow tariff bill, the demand changed to defending the protectionist tariffs.[14]

BDL members, rural, conservative and generally Protestant, in general despised the immorality of city life, and often associated it with Jews.[13] They believed that Jews were genetically incapable of farming.[15] Within the BDL this anti-semitism served a unifying function to help bring together the divergent interests of the Junker landowners and Hessian peasants. This commonality allowed the BDL to form large voting blocks which helped sway many a rural election, using machine politics.[16]

The Pan-German League (German: Alldeutscher Verband) was a Pan-German nationalist organization which officially founded in 1891, a year after the Zanzibar Treaty was signed.[1]

Primarily dedicated to the German Question of the time, it held positions on German imperialism, anti-semitism, the Polish Question, and support for German minorities in other countries.[2] The purpose of the league was to nurture and protect the ethos of German nationality as a unifying force. By 1922, the League had grown to over 40,000 paying members. Berlin housed the central seat of the league, including its president and its executive, which was capped at a maximum of 300. Full gatherings of the league happened at the Pan-German Congress. Although numerically small, the League enjoyed a disproportionate influence on the German state through connections to the middle class, the political establishment and the media, as well as links to the 300,000 strong Agrarian League.[3]


-- Pan-German League, by Wikipedia


As the BDL grew in strength, the Conservative Party depended upon them more and more for the defense of conservative positions in the Reichstag and in regional assemblies. However, this dependence ultimately changed the character of the party. The goals of the old-time conservatives, empire and enforced morality, defense of "throne and altar", became less important, while higher income for agroproducers gained in importance. Sometimes conflicts arose between the BDL and the party, and the BDL would withdraw its support from a troublesome conservative candidate, or throw its weight on a parliamentary vote over to the minority parties. However, the BDL's attempt to act independently of the Conservative Party did not always work. Thus in the Reichstag elections of 1903 the BDL attempted to run their own candidates, however only four were elected to the Reichstag. After this failure, Conservatives and the BDL recognized their need for each other, and there was greater unanimity.[17]

In the areas where the Conservatives were poorly represented, for example, in the Province of Hanover, in Hesse and in the Palatinate, the BDL worked together with the right wing of the National Liberals. After all, the BDL had enlisted the support of about 60% of the National Liberal candidates for their programme before the general election of 1907. In parts of the southwestern states of Germany, the BDL operated in conjunction with or as the local farmers' union or league.[18]

The BDL met with some successes and some failures. After several years they brought down the Caprivi government over the question of tariffs. But they never got the strict import restrictions on grain that they desired. The BDL was particularly effective on small issues, where the Reichstag members were less committed to their constituencies, such as forbidding yellowing of margarine and stiff restrictions on brandy and sugar imports. On the political side they along with their political ally, the Conservative Party, were unable to prevent the fall of the Bülow government over budget issues and the reform of the inheritance tax in 1909.

Overall, the BDL operated a highly successful lobbying effort both within and outside the Reichstag and regional assemblies. The BDL solicited the various candidates before the elections and only supported those who affirmed in writing their support of the BDL programme. Contemporary critics claimed that this was an unconstitutional practice, but it wasn't legal challenged, and the loss of BDL support could be critical for a candidate. As the BDL was not a political party, they had representation in most of the parliamentary caucuses. After nearly every election there would be up to 100 Reichstag members who belonged to the BDL or were otherwise politically tied to them. In the Prussian parliament, the BDL could always rely on at least a third of the deputies.

During World War I, the BDL, consistent with its conservative position, had expansive war aims. At the beginning of the Weimar Republic, it merged with the Deutschen Landbund (German Agricultural League) and others to form the Reichslandbund (RLB) (German Empire Agricultural League) in 1921,[13] which then further merged with the Union of German Farmers to form the Grüne Front (Green Front). However, the strong Junker influence in the Grüne Front drove many farmers out.[19] Nonetheless in 1933 under the National Socialist German Workers' Party (Nazi Party) it became the Reichsnährstand (Reich Food Estate).[13]



Notes

1. Puhle, Hans-Jürgen (1971). "Der Bund der Landwirte im Wilhelminischen Reich: Struktur, Ideologie und politische Wirksamkeit eines Interessenverbandes in der konstituellen Monarchie 1893- 1914". In Rüegg, Walter; Neuloh, Otto (eds.). Zur soziologischen Theorie und Analyse. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. pp. 145–162. OCLC 78878922.
2. Scheck, Raffael (2008). Germany, 1871-1945: A Concise History. Oxford, England: Berg. pp. 61–62. ISBN 978-1-84520-815-8.
3. Der Landwirtschaft schuldet der Staat die gleiche Beachtung wie der Industrie; wenn beide nicht Hand in Hand gehen, wird keine ohne die andere stark genug sein sich zu helfen. quoted in von Kiesenwetter, Otto (1918). Fünfundzwanzig Jahre wirtschaftspolitischen Kampfes: Geschichtliche Darstellung des Bundes der Landwirte. Berlin: Bund der Landwirte. p. 14. OCLC 46253180.
4. Feuchtwanger, Edgar J. (2002). Bismarck. London: Routledge. p. 208. ISBN 978-0-415-21613-5.
5. von Kiesenwetter 1918, p. 14
6. Puhle, Hans-Jürgen (1975). Agrarische Interessenpolitik und preußischer Konservatismus im wilhelminischen Reich (1893-1914): Ein Beitrag zur Analyse des Nationalismus in Deutschland am Beispiel des Bundes der Landwirte und der Deutsch-Konservativen Partei (second ed.). Bonn-Bad Godesberg: Verlag Neue Gesellschaft. p. 34. ISBN 978-3-87831-061-7.
7. Puhle 1975, p. 35
8. Torp, Cornelius (2005). Die Herausforderung der Globalisierung: Wirtschaft und Politik in Deutschland 1860 – 1914 (The Challenge of Globalization: Economics and Politics in Germany 1860 – 1914). Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. p. 196. ISBN 978-3-525-35150-5.
9. Iggers, George G. (1978). "Preface". Two Lectures in Modern German History. Amherst, Massachusetts: Council on International Studies, State University of New York at Buffalo. OCLC 4362496.
10. Ritter, Gerhard Albert, ed. (1967). "Bund der Landwirte Verbandsgeschichte von 1918 (partial)". Historisches Lesebuch 2: 1871-1914. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Bücherei. pp. 162–165. OCLC 489953883.
11. Nipperdey, Thomas (1992). Deutsche Geschichte 1866 - 1918, Band 2: Machtstaat vor der Demokratie. Münich: Beck. p. 584. ISBN 978-3-406-34801-3.
12. „Die deutsche Landwirtschaft ist das erste und bedeutendste Gewerbe, die festeste Stütze des Reiches und der Einzelstaaten. Dieselbe zu schützen und zu kräftigen, ist unsere erste und ernsteste Aufgabe, weil durch das Blühen und Gedeihen der Landwirtschaft die Wohlfahrt aller Berufszweige gesichert ist.“ quoted in Mommsen, Wilhelm (1951). Deutsche Parteiprogramme: Eine Auswahl vom Vormärz bis zur Gegenwart. Münich: Isar Verlag. p. 28. OCLC 3142603.
13. Biesinger, Joseph A. (2006). "Agrarian League (Bund der Landwirte)". Germany: A reference guide from the Renaissance to the present. New York: Facts On File. p. 207. ISBN 978-0-8160-7471-6.
14. Nipperdey 1998, p. 585
15. Richie, Alexandra (1998). Faust's Metropolis. New York: Carroll & Graf. p. 246. ISBN 0-7867-0510-8.
16. Nipperdey 1998, p. 586
17. Nipperdey 1998, pp. 586–587
18. Nipperdey 1998, p. 587
19. Barmeyer-Hartlieb von Wallthor, Heide (1971). Andreas Hermes und die Organisation der deutschen Landwirtschaft. Christliche Bauernvereine, Reichslandbund, Grüne Front, Reichsnährstand 1928 bis 1933. Stuttgart: G. Fischer. p. 80–82. ISBN 978-3-437-50155-5.
admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 36125
Joined: Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:21 am

Re: Freda Bedi, by Wikipedia

Postby admin » Thu Nov 21, 2019 3:52 am

Anton Drexler
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 11/20/19

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.


Image
Anton Drexler
Chairman of the Nazi Party
In office
24 February 1920 – 29 July 1921[1]
Preceded by Position established
Succeeded by Adolf Hitler (as Führer)
Chairman of the German Workers' Party
In office
5 January 1919 – 24 February 1920
Deputy Karl Harrer
Preceded by Position established
Succeeded by Position abolished
Personal details
Born 13 June 1884
Munich, German Empire
Died 24 February 1942 (aged 57)
Munich, Nazi Germany
Nationality German
Political party Nazi Party (1920–23, 1933–42)
Other political
affiliations German Fatherland Party (1917–18)
German Workers' Party (1919–20)
Occupation Politician
Awards Blood Order
Golden Party Badge

Anton Drexler (13 June 1884 – 24 February 1942) was a German far-right political leader of the 1920s who founded the pan-German and anti-Semitic German Workers' Party (DAP), the antecedent of the Nazi Party (NSDAP). Drexler mentored his successor in the NSDAP, Adolf Hitler, during his early years in politics.

Early life

Born in Munich, Drexler was a machine-fitter before becoming a railway toolmaker and locksmith in Berlin.[2] He is believed to have been disappointed with his income, and to have played the zither in restaurants to supplement his earnings.[3] Drexler did not serve in the armed forces during World War I due to being deemed unfit.[4]

Politics

Involvement in politics


During World War I, Drexler joined the German Fatherland Party,[5] a short-lived far-right party active during the last phase of the war, that played a vital role in the emergence of the stab-in-the-back myth and the defamation of certain politicians as the November Criminals.

In March 1918, Drexler founded a branch of Free Workers' Committee for a Good Peace (Der Freie Arbeiterausschuss für einen guten Frieden) league.[2] Karl Harrer, a journalist and member of the Thule Society, convinced Drexler and several others to form the Political Workers' Circle (Politischer Arbeiter-Zirkel) in 1918.[2] The members met periodically for discussions with themes of nationalism and antisemitism.[2] Drexler was a poet and a member of the völkisch agitators.

Founding of the German Workers' Party

Together with Harrer, Gottfried Feder and Dietrich Eckart, Drexler founded the German Workers' Party (DAP) in Munich on 5 January 1919.[2]

At a DAP meeting in Munich in September 1919, the main speaker was Gottfried Feder. When Feder's talk concluded, Adolf Hitler got involved in a heated political argument with a visitor, Professor Baumann, who questioned the soundness of Feder's arguments against capitalism and proposed that Bavaria should break away from Prussia and found a new South German nation with Austria. In vehemently attacking the man's arguments, Hitler made an impression on the other party members with his oratory skills, and according to him, the professor left the hall acknowledging defeat.[6] Drexler approached Hitler and gave him a copy of his pamphlet My Political Awakening, which contained anti-Semitic, nationalist, anti-capitalist, and anti-Marxist ideas.[2] Hitler claims the literature reflected the ideals he already believed in.[7] Impressed with Hitler, Drexler encouraged him to join the DAP. On the orders of his army superiors, Hitler applied to join the party.[8]

Once accepted, Hitler began to make the party more public, and he organized their biggest meeting yet of 2,000 people, for 24 February 1920 in the Hofbräuhaus in Munich. It was in this speech that Hitler, for the first time, enunciated the twenty-five points of the German Worker's Party's manifesto that he had authored with Drexler and Feder.[9] Through these points he gave the organisation a foreign policy, including the abrogation of the Treaty of Versailles, a Greater Germany, Eastern expansion, exclusion of Jews from citizenship.[10] On the same day the party was renamed the National Socialist German Workers' Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei; NSDAP).[11]

Following an intraparty dispute, Hitler angrily tendered his resignation on 11 July 1921. The committee members realised that the resignation of their leading public figure and speaker would mean the end of the party.[12] Hitler announced he would rejoin on the condition that he would replace Drexler as party chairman, and that the party headquarters would remain in Munich. The committee agreed; he rejoined the party as member 3,680. [13] Drexler was thereafter moved to the purely symbolic position of honorary president and left the party in 1923.[14]

Drexler was also a member of a völkisch political club for affluent members of Munich society known as the Thule Society. His membership in the Nazi Party ended when it was temporarily outlawed in 1923 following the Beer Hall Putsch despite Drexler not actually having taken part in the coup attempt. In 1924 he was elected to the Bavarian state parliament for another party, in which he served as vice president until 1928. He played no role in the Nazi Party's re-founding in 1925 and rejoined only after Hitler ascended to national power in 1933.[15] He founded a splinter group, the Nationalsozialer Volksbund, but this dissolved in 1928.[16] He received the party's Blood Order in 1934, and was still occasionally used as a propaganda tool until about 1937, but was never allowed any legitimate power within the party.

Death

Drexler died of natural causes after a lengthy illness in Munich in February 1942.[15]

Notes

1. Evans 2003, p. 180.
2. Kershaw 2008, p. 82.
3. "Anton Drexler". History Learning Site.
4. Dimuro, Gina (February 20, 2018). "Why Anton Drexler Was More Responsible For The Nazi Party Than Adolf Hitler". All That's Interesting.
5. Hamilton 1984, p. 219.
6. Kershaw 2008, p. 75.
7. Hitler, Adolf. Mein Kampf, 1925.
8. Evans 2003, p. 170.
9. Shirer 1960, p. 40.
10. Shirer 1960, p. 41.
11. Kershaw 2008, p. 87.
12. Kershaw 2008, pp. 100, 101, 102.
13. Kershaw 2008, p. 103.
14. Shirer 1960, p. 45.
15. Hamilton 1984, p. 220.
16. Zentner & Bedürftig 1991, p. 209.

References

• Evans, Richard J. (2003). The Coming of the Third Reich. New York: Penguin Group. ISBN 978-0-14-303469-8.
• Hamilton, Charles (1984). Leaders & Personalities of the Third Reich, Vol. 1. R. James Bender Publishing. ISBN 0-912138-27-0.
• Hitler, Adolf (1999) [1925]. Mein Kampf. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 978-0-395-92503-4.
• Kershaw, Ian (2008). Hitler: A Biography. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 978-0-393-06757-6.
• Mitcham, Samuel W. (1996). Why Hitler?: The Genesis of the Nazi Reich. Westport, Conn: Praeger. ISBN 978-0-275-95485-7.
• Shirer, William L. (1960). The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-0-671-62420-0.
• Zentner, Christian; Bedürftig, Friedemann (1991). The Encyclopedia of the Third Reich. (2 vols.) New York: MacMillan Publishing. ISBN 0-02-897500-6.

External links

• Mein politisches Erwachen; aus dem Tagebuch eines deutschen sozialistischen Arbeiters München, Deutscher Volksverlag 4th ed.
admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 36125
Joined: Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:21 am

Re: Freda Bedi, by Wikipedia

Postby admin » Thu Nov 21, 2019 4:08 am

Gottfried Feder
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 11/20/19

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.


Image
Gottfried Feder
Born 27 January 1883
Würzburg, Bavaria, German Empire
Died 24 September 1941 (aged 58)
Murnau am Staffelsee, Nazi Germany
Nationality German
Institution Berlin Institute of Technology
Field Urbanism
School or
tradition Nazism
Alma mater Humboldt University of Berlin
Contributions Nazism
Strasserism
Anti-capitalism
Planned community
Deep foundation

Gottfried Feder (27 January 1883 – 24 September 1941) was a German civil engineer, a self-taught economist and one of the early key members of the Nazi Party. He was their economic theoretician. It was one of his lectures, delivered in 1919, that drew Hitler into the party.[1]

Biography

Feder was born in Würzburg, Germany on 27 January 1883 as the son of civil servant Hanse Feder and Mathilde Feder (née Luz). After studying in classical Gymnasiums[citation needed] in Ansbach and Munich, he studied engineering in Berlin and Zürich (Switzerland). He then founded a construction company in 1908 that became particularly active in Bulgaria where it built a number of official buildings.

From 1917 on, Feder studied financial politics and economics on his own. He developed a hostility towards wealthy bankers during World War I and wrote a "manifesto on breaking the shackles of interest" ("Brechung der Zinsknechtschaft") in 1919. This was soon followed by the founding of a "task force" dedicated to those goals that demanded a nationalisation of all banks and an abolition of interest.

That year, Feder, together with Anton Drexler, Dietrich Eckart and Karl Harrer, were involved in the founding of the Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (German Workers' Party-DAP).[2] Adolf Hitler met him in the summer of 1919 while he was in an anti-Bolshevik training course at Munich university—funded by the army and organized by Major Karl Mayr—and Feder became his mentor in finance and economics. He helped to inspire Hitler's opposition to "Jewish finance capitalism."[3] Delivering political courses alongside Feder was Karl Alexander von Müller (son of Bavaria's Culture Minister) who spotted Hitler's oratorical ability and forwarded his name as a political instructor for the army—an important step in Hitler's career.[citation needed]

1920s

In February 1920, together with Adolf Hitler and Anton Drexler, Feder drafted the "25 points" which summed up the party's views and introduced his own anti-capitalist views into the program. When the paper was announced on 24 February 1920, more than 2,000 people attended the rally. In an attempt to make the party more broadly appealing to larger segments of the population, the DAP was renamed in February 1920 to the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (National Socialist German Workers' Party, NSDAP), more commonly known as the Nazi Party.[4]

Feder took part in the party's Beer Hall Putsch in November 1923. After Hitler's arrest, he remained one of the leaders of the party and was elected to the Reichstag in 1924, where he stayed until 1936 and demanded the freezing of interest rates and dispossession of Jewish citizens. He remained one of the leaders of the anti-capitalistic wing of the NSDAP, and published several papers, including "National and social bases of the German state" (1920), "Das Programm der NSDAP und seine weltanschaulichen Grundlagen" ("The programme of the NSDAP and the world views it's based on," 1927) and "Was will Adolf Hitler?" ("What does Adolf Hitler want?", 1931).

Feder briefly dominated the Nazi Party's official views on financial politics, but after he became chairman of the party's economic council in 1931, his anti-capitalist views led to a great decline in financial support from Germany's major industrialists. Following pressure from Walther Funk, Albert Voegler, Gustav Krupp, Friedrich Flick, Fritz Thyssen, Hjalmar Schacht and Emil Kirdorf, Hitler decided to move the party away from Feder's economic views. When Hitler became Reichskanzler in 1933, he appointed Feder as under-secretary at the ministry of economics in July, which appointment disappointed Feder, who had hoped for a much higher position.

Nazi Germany

Feder continued to write papers, putting out "Kampf gegen die Hochfinanz" ("The Fight against high finance", 1933) and the anti-semitic "Die Juden" ("The Jews," 1933); in 1934, he became Reichskommissar (Reich commissioner).

In 1939 he wrote Die Neue Stadt (the New City). This can be considered an attempt at Garden City building through the use of Nazi architecture. Here he proposed creating agricultural cities of 20,000 people divided into nine autonomous units and surrounded by agricultural areas. Each city was to be fully autonomous and self-sufficient, with detailed plans for daily living and urban amenities provided. Unlike other garden city theorists, he believed that urban areas could be reformed by subdividing the existing built environment into self-sufficient neighborhoods. This idea of creating clusters of self-contained neighbourhoods forming a mid-sized city was popularised by Uzō Nishiyama in Japan. It would later be applied in the era of Japanese New Town construction.[5]

However, despite its consistency with the blood and soil ideology of the Nazis, his concept of decentralized factories was successfully opposed by both generals and Junkers.[6] Generals objected because it interfered with rearmament, and Junkers because it would prevent their exploiting their estates for the international market.[7]

After the Night of the Long Knives in June 1934, where SA leaders like Ernst Röhm and left-leaning party officials like Gregor Strasser were murdered, Feder lost favor with Hitler and began to withdraw from the government,[citation needed] finally becoming Professor for Settlement Policy[8] at the Technische Hochschule Berlin in December 1936, where he stayed until his death in Murnau, Bavaria, on 24 September 1941.

Footnotes

1. Dornberg, John (1982). Munich 1923. New York: Harper & Row. p. 344. ISBN 978-0-06-038025-0.
2. Kershaw, Ian (2008). Hitler: A Biography, New York: W. W. Norton & Company, p. 82.
3. Kershaw, Ian (2001) [1991]. Hitler: A Profile in Power, Chapter I, London.
4. Kershaw (2008). Hitler: A Biography, p. 87.
5. Hein, Carola, Visionary Plans and Planners. In Japanese Capitals in Historical Perspective (Fiévé, Waley eds.) RoutledgeCurzon.
6. Grunberger, Richard, The 12-Year Reich, pp. 153–4, ISBN 0-03-076435-1.
7. Grunberger, The 12-Year Reich, p. 154.
8. Mühlberger, Detlef (2004). Hitler's Voice. The Völkischer Beobachter, 1920–1933. Vol. I: Organisation & Development of the NSDAP. Bern: Peter Lang AG. p. 28. ISBN 3-906769-72-0. Retrieved 2017-01-15.

See also

• Strasserism

External links

• Das Programm des NSDAP und seine weltanschaulichen Grundgedanken "The Program of the NSDAP and its Ideological Foundations" by Gottfried Feder at archive.org
• Programme of the Party of Hitler, the NSDAP and its General Conceptions in English
• Das Manifest zur Brechung der Zinsknechtschaft des Geldes "The Manifesto for Breaking the Chains of Gold" by Gottfried Feder at archive.org
• Feder's patent for an Apparatus for making concrete piles in the ground on Google Patents
• Newspaper clippings about Gottfried Feder in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW
admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 36125
Joined: Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:21 am

Re: Freda Bedi, by Wikipedia

Postby admin » Thu Nov 21, 2019 4:17 am

Karl Harrer
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 11/20/19

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.


Image
Karl Harrer
Reich Chairman of the DAP
In office
1919–1920
Leader Anton Drexler
Personal details
Born 8 October 1890
Died 5 September 1926 (aged 35)
Nationality German
Political party DAP
Occupation Politician

Karl Harrer (8 October 1890 – 5 September 1926) was a German journalist and politician, one of the founding members of the Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (German Workers' Party, DAP) in January 1919, the predecessor to the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (National Socialist German Workers' Party – NSDAP), more commonly known as the Nazi Party.[1]

Biography

Harrer was commissioned by the Thule Society to try to politically influence German workers in Munich after the end of World War I.[2]

Descent into Hell

The city is in turmoil. The Kaiser's republic has collapsed with the defeat of Germany in the First World War, and the whole country is up for grabs. It appears as if Germany is about to fall apart into the warring city-states from which it had been assembled nearly fifty years ago. The victorious Allies are demanding enormous concessions from Germany. The Russian Revolution has been in full swing for a year, and German soldiers returning from the front are being cajoled into helping midwife the same type of Communist regime amid the ashes of the Second Reich.

Kurt Eisner -- an intellectual and a Jew, a defender of the League of Nations -- takes the initiative and proclaims a Socialist Republic in Munich on the seventh of November, 1918. It looks as if there is going to be a Communist regime in Germany -- or, at least, a Socialist one in Bavaria -- after all. Hysteria grows among the nationalists, and with it despair that their nation is on the verge of realizing the dreams of Marx and Engels as codified in their famous Manifesto. Germans are bewildered, shocked ... stunned into a kind of nervous stupefaction. They have lost the war, their country may be broken up once again into many separate bickering pieces, and there will soon be Communists calling the shots in Berlin and in the capital city of Bavaria: Munich.

Within forty-eight hours there is a meeting of the Thule Gesellschaft. The Thule, a mystical society based in part on the theosophical writings of Guido von List and Lanz von Liebenfels -- which is to say, an amalgam of Eastern religion, theosophy, anti-Semitism, Grail romance, runic mystification, and Nordic paganism -- meets every Saturday in spacious rooms at the elegant Four Seasons Hotel in Munich. There are roughly 250 members of the Thule in Munich ... and over fifteen hundred in Bavaria. On that day, November 9, a bizarre individual, an occultist, an initiate of the Eastern mysteries in Turkey as well as of Freemasonry, and the leader and founder of the Thule -- the self-styled Baron Rudolf von Sebottendorff -- makes an impassioned plea to the assembled cultists for armed resistance to the Reds. This plea eventually degenerates into a monologue on runes, German racial theory, Nordic mythology, and other arcane lore. No matter. Most of his listeners know what to expect. They are, in fact, members of the supersecret, superracist, and superoccult "German Order Walvater of the Holy Grail," or Germanenorden, which is using the name Thule Gesellschaft -- or Thule Society, a "literary-cultural society" -- as a cover to confuse Munich's fledgling Red Army, which is on the lookout for right-wing extremists. Sebottendorff himself is Master of the anti-Semitic Germanenorden's Bavarian division under its leader and founder, Hermann Pohl.

The Thule cultists -- whose symbol is a long dagger superimposed on a swastika -- need no encouragement. They begin stockpiling weapons in secret supply dumps in and around Munich, anticipating a counterstrike against the new Socialist Republic. They make alliances with other nationalist groups, such as the Pan-Germans under editor Julius Lehmann, the German School Bund, the Hammerbund ... and an organized resistance movement is born. All the mystical and clandestine labors of the past twenty years involving a series of secret and occult organizations with elaborate initiation ceremonies and complex magical rituals, from the List Society's inner HAO (Higher Armanen Order) to the Order of the New Templars, will soon culminate in a pitched battle in the streets of Munich between the neopagan Thule Society and the "godless Communists."

FEBRUARY 21, 1919. The idealistic but hapless Kurt Eisner -- who preceded political speeches with symphonic concerts -- is assassinated by a young count and would-be Thulist. The police descend upon Thule headquarters, looking for inflammatory leaflets and other evidence of Thule Society involvement in the plot. Was the notoriously anti- Semitic Thule Society somehow responsible for Eisner's assassination? Sebottendorff stonewalls, and threatens to instigate a pogrom if the police don't leave the Thule Society alone. The police comply.

APRIL 7, 1919. A rebel Bavarian Soviet Republic is proclaimed in Munich as the legitimate minister-president of Bavaria flees north with his council to the town of Bamberg to prevent the Communists from taking over the government. The Thule organizes among the anti-Communist factions in Munich and Sebottendorff (together with his friend, the racist priest Bernhard Stempfle) begins conspiring with the "exiled" Bavarian government in Bamberg for a counterrevolt.

APRIL 13, 1919. The Palm Sunday Putsch. An abortive attempt by the Thule Gesellschaft -- with other anti-Communist groups -- to take power in Munich. There is bloodshed. The Putsch fails. Munich explodes into anarchy. The Communists seize control of the city and begin taking hostages. The Red Army is on the march ... and hunting for the Thule Gesellschaft.

APRIL 26, 1919. Sebottendorff is away at Bamberg, busy organizing a Freikorps (Free Corps) assault on Communist headquarters, when a Red Army unit raids Thule Society offices and arrests its secretary, the Grafin Hella von Westarp, and seizes the Thule membership lists. Six more Thulists are arrested at their homes, including the Prince von Thurn und Taxis, a well-connected aristocrat with blood relations among the crowned heads of Europe.

APRIL 30, 1919. Walpurgisnacht. The High Holy Day of European Paganism and Witchcraft. The Red Army executes the captured Thulists and other hostages, shooting them against a wall in the courtyard of Luitpold High School.

It is probably the worst mistake they could have made.

The next day, an obituary appears in Sebottendorff's Munchener Beobachter -- a newspaper which a year later becomes the official Nazi propaganda sheet, the Volkischer Beobachter -- giving the names of the seven murdered cultists and laying the blame on the doorstep of the Red Army. [1] The citizens of Munich are finally outraged, shaken out of their lethargy. Thulists continue their well-organized campaign of agit-prop against the Communist regime. The people take to the streets.

The Free Corps -- twenty thousand strong -- marches on Munich under the command of General von Oven. For the first time in history, storm troopers -- members of the Ehrhardt Free Corps Brigade -- march beneath a swastika flag with swastikas painted on their helmets, singing a swastika hymn. As they enter the city, they find that the Thule has managed to organize a full-scale citizen rebellion against the Soviet government. They join forces.

When the dust settles on May 3, the Communists have been defeated in Munich, politically and militarily. Hundreds of people, including many innocent civilians, have been senselessly slaughtered in their streets and homes by the crusading "Whites" with the swastika banners. But there will be no Socialist or Communist government in Germany until after World War II, over twenty-five years later, and even then it will rule over only half of the country and will take its orders from Germany's most despised enemy, the Soviet Union.

But now, so soon after the victorious march of the Freikorps through the streets of Munich, the threat of a Soviet regime in the rest of Germany is still very real. Units of the navy are in mutiny, raising the red flag over Germany's battleships. France will march into the Ruhr valley, Germany's industrial heartland. But the spectacular success of the Freikorps has aroused the admiration of anti-Bolshevik forces all across Europe. In Riga, the newly formed Latvian Republic begs for Freikorps assistance to defend their country against the Bolsheviks and even the British support this decision. Hence, Freikorps units move to the defense of Latvia until the British themselves have to intervene to free Latvia from the death grip of these rabid proto-Nazi brigands. [2]

Even Germany's own right wing is divided into two camps: those in favor of restoring the monarchy and separating Bavaria from the rest of Germany, and those in favor of a unified Greater German Reich, without a monarch but with a leader, a leader with vision. A German messiah. A Fuhrer. Where is that Fuhrer to be found?

Unwittingly, the Thule Gesellschaft provides the answer. Meeting in the expensive Four Seasons Hotel, the leading industrialists and aristocracy of the city, along with a generous helping of local police and military officials, are designing a two-pronged strategy of political activism. The Thule Society will do the organizing, will make the right connections among the society figures, the wealthy capitalists, the intelligentsia. They will stockpile the weapons. They will organize units of the Free Corps, particularly the Ehrhardt Brigade (which will become an official unit of Germany's navy as the Ehrhardt Naval Brigade and, eventually, subsumed into Himmler's SS) and the Freikorps Oberland.

But another arm of the Thule has already begun recruiting -- not among Munich's "beautiful people," the rich and the powerful -- but among the working people, the lower- and middle-class citizens who have been hit hardest by the civil wars, the enormous rates of inflation, the chaos and confusion. There will be no overt involvement of the Thule Society in this group, which is to be called instead the German Workers Party and which will be led by a serious, humorless, railroad employee and locksmith named Anton Drexler. They will meet in a beer hall. Perhaps between the two groups -- the Thule with its academics, nobles, and factory owners meeting at the Four Seasons, and the German Workers' Party with its rough-and-tumble factory workers meeting in beer halls -- they will be able to form a united front against Communism, international Freemasonry, and world Jewry.

Within a year, this project of the Thule Gesellschaft will become the NSDAP: the National Socialist German Workers' Party. The Nazi Party. It will sport a swastika flag and a swastika armband, and its leader will be a war veteran, a corporal who had been sent by the German Army to spy on the organization: Adolf Hitler.

And by November, 1923, the tiny German Workers' Party will have grown to enormous proportions with many thousands of members, and will attempt to take over the country in the famous Beer Hall Putsch. The Putsch will fail, but Adolf Hitler the Fuhrer will be born -- not in a manger like the Son of God he often believed himself to be -- but in a jail cell at Landsberg Prison.

What was the Thule Gesellschaft? What were cultists doing fighting Communists in the streets of Munich? What did they believe? How did it influence the Nazi Party?

-- Unholy Alliance: A History of Nazi Involvement With the Occult, by Peter Levenda


At the time, Harrer was a reporter with a right-wing newspaper. Harrer convinced Anton Drexler and several others to form the Politischer Arbeiterzirkel (Political Workers' Circle) in 1918.[2] The members met periodically for discussions with themes of nationalism and racism directed against the Jews.[2] Although Harrer preferred that the small group remain a semi-secret nationalistic club, Drexler wanted to make it a political party.[2] Thereafter, Drexler proposed the founding of the DAP in December 1918. On 5 January 1919, the DAP was formed in which not only Harrer and Drexler, but also Gottfried Feder and Dietrich Eckart were involved. With the DAP founding, Drexler was elected chairman and Harrer was made Reich Chairman, an honorary title.[3]

Harrer became increasingly unhappy with the direction in which the party was going after Adolf Hitler became an influential force within it. Early in 1920, Hitler moved to sever the party's link with the Thule Society and to redefine the policies of the DAP. On 24 February 1920 in the Staatliches Hofbräuhaus in München, Hitler for the first time enunciated the twenty-five points of the German Worker's Party's manifesto that had been drawn up by Drexler, Feder and Hitler.[4] In addition, to increase its appeal to larger segments of the population, the DAP changed its name to the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (National Socialist German Workers' Party, or Nazi Party).[5][6] Such was the significance of the move in expanding the party's public profile that Harrer resigned from the party in disagreement as he had always believed that it should be a semi-secret elite group rather than a mass popular movement.[7] The Thule Society subsequently fell into decline and was dissolved about five years later,[8] well before Hitler came to power.

Harrer died in Munich on 5 September 1926, less than a month shy of his 36th birthday.[citation needed]

See also

• Nazism
• Weimar Republic

Notes

1. Kershaw 2008, pp. 82, 83, 87.
2. Kershaw 2008, p. 82.
3. Kershaw 2008, pp. 82, 83.
4. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, p. 37.
5. Kershaw 2008, p. 87.
6. Zentner & Bedürftig 1997, p. 629.
7. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, p. 36.
8. Goodrick-Clarke 1985, p. 221.

References

Goodrick-Clarke, Nicholas (1985). The Occult Roots of Nazism: The Ariosophists of Austria and Germany 1890-1935. Wellingborough, England: The Aquarian Press. ISBN 0-85030-402-4.
• Kershaw, Ian (2008). Hitler: A Biography. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 978-0-393-06757-6.
Shirer, William L. (1960). The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-0-671-62420-0.
• Zentner, Christian; Bedürftig, Friedemann (1997) [1991]. The Encyclopedia of the Third Reich. New York: Da Capo Press. ISBN 978-0-3068079-3-0.
admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 36125
Joined: Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:21 am

Re: Freda Bedi, by Wikipedia

Postby admin » Thu Nov 21, 2019 6:53 am

Germanenorden
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 11/20/19

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.


The Germanenorden (Germanic or Teutonic Order, not to be confused with the medieval German order of the Teutonic Knights) was a völkisch secret society in early 20th-century Germany. It was founded in Berlin in 1912 by Theodor Fritsch and several prominent German occultists including Philipp Stauff, who held office in the Guido von List Society and High Armanen Order as well as Hermann Pohl, who became the Germanenorden’s first leader. The group was a clandestine movement aimed at the upper echelons of society and was a sister movement to the more open and mainstream Reichshammerbund.[1]

The order, whose symbol was a swastika, had a hierarchical fraternal structure based on Freemasonry. Local groups of the sect met to celebrate the summer solstice, an important neopagan festivity in völkisch circles (and later in Nazi Germany), and more regularly to read the Eddas as well as some of the German mystics.[2]

In addition to occult and magical philosophies, it taught to its initiates nationalist ideologies of Nordic racial superiority and antisemitism, then rising throughout the Western world. As was becoming increasingly typical of völkisch organisations, it required its candidates to prove that they had no non-Aryan bloodlines and required from each a promise to maintain purity of his stock in marriage.

In 1916, during World War I, the Germanenorden split into two parts. Eberhard von Brockhusen became the Grand Master of the "loyalist" Germanenorden. Pohl, previously the order’s Chancellor, founded a schismatic offshoot: the Germanenorden Walvater of the Holy Grail.[3][4] He was joined in the same year by Rudolf von Sebottendorff (formerly Rudolf Glauer), a wealthy adventurer with wide-ranging occult and mystical interests. A Freemason and a practitioner of Sufism and astrology, Sebottendorff was also an admirer of Guido von List and Lanz von Liebenfels. Convinced that the Islamic and Germanic mystical systems shared a common Aryan root, he was attracted by Pohl’s runic lore and became the Master of the Walvater's Bavarian province late in 1917. Charged with reviving the province's fortunes, Sebottendorff increased membership from about a hundred in 1917 to 1500 by the autumn of the following year.[5]

The Munich lodge of the Germanenorden Walvater when it was formally dedicated on August 18, 1918 was given the cover name the Thule Society,[6] which is notable chiefly as the organization that sponsored the Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (DAP), which was later transformed by Adolf Hitler into the National Socialist German Workers' Party (Nazi Party).

References

1. Richard S. Levy, Antisemitism: A Historical Encyclopedia of Prejudice and Persecution, Volume 1, ABC-CLIO, 2005, p. 269
2. Swastika, Intelinet, archived from the original on 2007-06-04
3. Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke The Occult Roots of Nazism New York, New York University Press 1985: 131–32.
4. Thomas 2005.
5. Goodrick-Clarke 1985: 142–43.
6. Goodrick-Clarke 1985: 144
admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 36125
Joined: Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:21 am

Re: Freda Bedi, by Wikipedia

Postby admin » Thu Nov 21, 2019 7:09 am

Theodor Fritsch
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 11/21/19

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.


Image
Theodor Fritsch about 1920

Theodor Fritsch (born Emil Theodor Fritsche; 28 October 1852 – 8 September 1933), was a German publisher and journalist. His antisemitic writings did much to influence popular German opinion against Jews in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. His writings also appeared under the pen names Thomas Frey, Fritz Thor, and Ferdinand Roderich-Stoltheim.

He is not to be confused with his son, also Theodor Fritsch (1895–1946), likewise a bookseller and member of the SA.

Life

Fritsch was born Emil Theodor Fritsche, the sixth of seven children to Johann Friedrich Fritsche, a farmer in the village of Wiesenena (present-day Wiedemar) in the Prussian province of Saxony, and his wife August Wilhelmine, née Ohme. Four of his siblings died in childhood. He attended vocational school (Realschule) in Delitzsch where he learned casting and machine building. He then undertook study at the Royal Trade Academy (Königliche Gewerbeakademie) in Berlin, graduating as a technician in 1875.

In the same year Fritsche found employment in a Berlin machine shop. He gained independence in 1879 through the founding of a technical bureau associated with a publishing firm. In 1880 he founded the Deutscher Müllerbund (Miller's League) which issued the publication Der Deutsche Müller (The German Miller). In 1905 he founded the "Saxon Small Business Association." He devoted himself to this organization and to the interests of crafts and small businesses (Mittelstand), as well as to the spread of antisemitic propaganda. When he changed his name to Fritsch is unclear.

Publishing

Image
"A German Seven", montage of portraits of German antisemites c. 1880/1881. Centre: Otto Glagau, around him clockwise: Adolf König, Bernhard Förster, Max Liebermann von Sonnenberg, Theodor Fritsch, Paul Förster, and Otto Böckel.

Fritsch created an early discussion forum, "Antisemitic Correspondence" in 1885 for antisemites of various political persuasions. In 1887 he sent several editions to Friedrich Nietzsche but was brusquely dismissed. Nietzsche sent Fritsch a letter in which he thanked him to be permitted "to cast a glance at the muddle of principles that lie at the heart of this strange movement", but requested not to be sent again such writings, for he was afraid that he might lose his patience.[1] Fritsch offered editorship to right-wing politician Max Liebermann von Sonnenberg in 1894, whereafter it became an organ for Sonnenberg's German Social Party under the name "German Social Articles." Fritsch's 1896 book The City of the Future became a blueprint of the German garden city movement which was adopted by Völkisch circles.

In 1902 Fritsch founded a Leipzig publishing house, Hammer-Verlag, whose flagship publication was The Hammer: Pages for German Sense (1902–1940). The firm issued German translations of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and The International Jew (collected writings of Henry Ford from The Dearborn Independent) as well as many of Fritsch's own works. An inflammatory article published in 1910 earned him a charge of defamation of religious societies and disturbing the public peace. Fritsch was sentenced to one week in prison, and received another ten-day term in 1911.

Political activities

In 1890, Fritsch became, along with Otto Böckel, a candidate of the Antisemitic People's Party, founded by Böckel and Oswald Zimmermann, to the German Reichstag. He was not elected. The party was renamed German Reform Party in 1893, achieving sixteen seats. The party failed, however, to achieve significant public recognition. One of Fritsch's major goals was to unite all antisemitic political parties under a single banner; he wished for antisemitism to permeate the agenda of every German social and political organization. This effort proved largely to be a failure, as by 1890 there were over 190 various antisemitic parties in Germany. He also had a powerful rival for the leadership of the antisemites in Otto Böckel, with whom he had a strong personal rivalry.

In 1912 Fritsch founded the Reichshammerbund (Reich's Hammer League) as an antisemitic collective movement. He also established the secret Germanenorden in that year. Influenced by racist Ariosophic theories, it was one of the first political groups to adopt the swastika symbol. Members of these groups formed the Thule Society in 1918, which eventually sponsored the creation of the Nazi Party.

The Reichshammerbund was eventually folded into the Deutschvölkischer Schutz und Trutzbund, on whose advisory board Fritsch sat. He later became a member of the German Völkisch Freedom Party (DFVP). In the general election of May 1924, Fritsch was elected to serve as a member of the National Socialist Freedom Movement, a party formed in alliance with the DFVP by the Nazis as a legal means to election after the Nazi Party had been banned in the aftermath of the Munich Beer Hall Putsch. He only served until the next election in December, 1924.

In February 1927, Fritsch left the Völkisch Freedom Party in protest. He died shortly after the 1933 Nazi seizure of power at the age of 80 in Gautzsch (today part of Markkleeberg).

Works

A believer in the absolute superiority of the Aryan race, Fritsch was upset by the changes brought on by rapid industrialization and urbanization, and called for a return to the traditional peasant values and customs of the distant past, which he believed exemplified the essence of the Volk.

In 1893, Fritsch published his most famous work, The Handbook of the Jewish Question which leveled a number of conspiratorial charges at European Jews and called upon Germans to refrain from intermingling with them. Vastly popular, the book was read by millions and was in its 49th edition by 1944 (330,000 copies). The ideas espoused by the work greatly influenced Hitler and the Nazis during their rise to power after World War I.[citation needed] Fritsch also founded an anti-semitic journal - the Hammer (in 1902) and this became the basis of a movement, the Reichshammerbund, in 1912.

Another work, The Riddle of the Jew's Success, was published in English in 1927 under the pseudonym F. Roderich-Stoltheim (An anagram of his full name).

References

1. https://web.archive.org/web/20101230113 ... tters-1887
Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, 1985: The Occult Roots of Nazism, pp. 123–126.

External links

• Antisemiten-Katechismus by Theodore Fritsch at archive.org
admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 36125
Joined: Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:21 am

Re: Freda Bedi, by Wikipedia

Postby admin » Sun Nov 24, 2019 5:33 am

Part 1 of 2

Christianity and Theosophy
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 11/23/19

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.


Christianity and Theosophy, for more than a hundred years, have had a "complex and sometimes troubled" relationship.[1] The Christian faith was always the native religion of the great majority of Western Theosophists, but many came to Theosophy through a process of examination or even opposition to Christianity. According to professor Robert S. Ellwood, "the whole matter has been a divisive issue within Theosophy."[1][note 1]

Image
The emblem of the Theosophical Society.

Beliefs

God


According to the Theosophical spiritual Teachers,[note 2] neither their philosophy nor themselves believe in a God, "least of all in one whose pronoun necessitates a capital H."[5]

A Russian Orthodox cleric and theologian Dimitry Drujinin cited the Theosophical Master Kuthumi:

"We know there is in our [solar] system no such thing as God, either personal or impersonal. Parabrahm is not a God, but absolute immutable law... The word 'God' was invented to designate the unknown cause of those effects which man has either admired or dreaded without understanding them."[6]


A religious studies scholar Alvin Kuhn wrote that Theosophist Annie Besant believed:

"God is a composite photograph of the innumerable gods who are the personifications of the forces of nature... It is all summed up in the phrase: Religions are branches from a common trunk—human ignorance."[7]


In addition the Master Kuthumi said,

"In our [Tibetan] temples there is neither a god nor gods worshipped, only the thrice sacred memory of the greatest as the holiest man that ever lived."[8][note 3]


An American Methodist theologian Henry C. Sheldon wrote that, according to Helena Blavatsky, Theosophists reject "the idea of a personal, or an extra-cosmic and anthropomorphic God."[10] Concerning this, Drujinin stated that Theosophy in its basis "rejects and hates the name of God."[11] An American author Gary Lachman, noting Blavatsky's "animus toward the Judeo-Christian ethos," cited her article in which she wrote that the Bible is not the "word of God" but contains at best the "words of fallible men and imperfect teachers."[12]

In The Secret Doctrine Helena Blavatsky stated that "an extra-cosmic god is fatal to philosophy, an intra-cosmic Deity — i.e. Spirit and matter inseparable from each other — is a philosophical necessity. Separate them and that which is left is a gross superstition under a mask of emotionalism."[13][1] Professor Santucci wrote that she has defined the Supreme in the Proem to The Secret Doctrine as an "Omnipresent, Eternal, Boundless, and Immutable Principle on which all speculation is impossible, since it transcends the power of human conception and could only be dwarfed by any human expression or similitude."[14] John Driscoll, a theologian and author of The Catholic Encyclopedia, wrote in 1912 that Theosophy denies a personal god, and this "nullifies its claim to be a spiritualistic philosophy."[15][note 4] Blavatsky proclaimed that the Theosophists believe "in the Deity as the All, the source of all existence, the infinite that cannot be either comprehended or known, the universe alone revealing It, or, as some prefer it, Him, thus giving a sex to that, to anthropomorphize which is blasphemy."[17]

Professor Mary Bednarowski wrote that Theosophists "see the One as the cause of the universe," but not as its creator. When asked who it is that created the universe, Blavatsky responded that, "No one creates it. Science would call the process evolution; the pre-Christian philosophers and the Orientalists call it emanation; we, Occultists and Theosophists, see in it only the universal and eternal reality casting a reflection of itself on the infinite Spatial depths."[18] A Russian Christian philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev wrote that in the Theosophical books "the name of God is not mentioned."[19][note 5] Other Christian philosopher from Russia Vladimir Solovyov stated that Blavatskian Theosophy is a doctrine not only "anti-religious," but also "anti-scientific" and "antiphilosophic."[22][note 6]

Jesus

See also: The Esoteric Character of the Gospels § Historical Jesus

An American theologian Walter Martin wrote that Theosophy "ignores completely the true nature, person, and work of the Lord Jesus Christ."[24] According to Blavatsky, Jesus was the grand "philosopher and moral reformer."[25] She considered Jesus as "The Great Teacher," an Avatar with healing and demon-exorcising abilities. An American author Joseph H. Tyson stated, "She did not view him as The Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, but a Brahman Perfect Master" with clairvoyance, supernatural powers, and "fakir-like unconcern for the morrow."[26] In Blavatsky's opinion, "Jesus, the Christ-God, is a myth concocted two centuries after the real Hebrew Jesus died."[27] According to Theosophy, term "Christ" means the personal divinity "indwelling" each individual human.[28] An author of the journal of Christian theology Quodlibet James Skeen, defending Christianity, stated:

"Theosophy sees Jesus Christ in a docetic way. The Christ Spirit used the body of a holy man named Jesus to heal, work occult wonders, and teach the inherent divinity of all men, within the overall plan of evolution. Christianity sees Jesus Christ as the God-man—The Son of God and the Son of Man. It is called the hypostatic union of Deity and humanness."[29][note 7]


In December 1887 Blavatsky printed in Lucifer an open letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lord Primate of England. This editorial letter gave proof to show that "in almost every point the doctrines of the churches and the practices of Christians are in direct opposition to the teachings of Jesus."[31] She always opposed those who understood Jesus' teaching literally.[32][note 8] Her represent of Jesus as an equal of Buddha "grated on Christian nerves."[34][note 9] Martin proclaimed that the resurrection of Jesus Christ "and, for that matter, the resurrection of all mankind leave no room for the Theosophical dogma of concurrent reincarnations."[9] Alexander Men, a Russian Orthodox priest and theologian, stated that the "theosophical pseudo-Christology" became the fulfillment of Christ's prophecy of false messiahs and false prophets who will come to seduce the world. Also Men noted the "anti-Church and anti-Christian nature" of Theosophy.[36]

Prayer

Drujinin wrote that to the question, "Do you believe in prayer, and do you ever pray?" Blavatsky answered: "We do not. We act, instead of talking. <...> The visible universe depends for its existence and phenomena on its mutually acting forms and their laws, not on prayer or prayers."[37] Negating the personality of God, Blavatsky "rules out the propriety of prayer, except in the sense of an internal command."[38] She said, "We call our 'Father in heaven' that deific essence of which we are cognizant within us."[39] According to Bednarowski, in Blavatsky's opinion, prayer kills "self-reliance" and "refutes the Theosophical understanding of divine immanence." She stated, "We try to replace fruitless and useless prayer by meritorious and good-producing action."[40]

A Russian religious philosopher Sergius Bulgakov said that such "Theosophical surrogates" as concentration, meditation, and intuition can not replace prayer, thus, "Where there is no prayer there is no religion."[41] Berdyaev wrote that the experience of "prayerful communication" with God, revealed to man by the Christian church, is not recognized by the Theosophical teaching. Prayer in Theosophy is only "one of the others forms of meditation."[42] To prove Blavatsky's anti-Christianity, Andrey Kuraev, a protodeacon of the Russian Orthodox Church and professor of theology, quoted The Key to Theosophy:

"Nor, as just remarked, that a prayer is a petition. It is a mystery rather; an occult process by which finite and conditioned thoughts and desires, unable to be assimilated by the absolute spirit which is unconditioned, are translated into spiritual wills and the will... We refuse to pray to created finite beings―i. e., gods, saints, angels, etc., because we regard it as idolatry. We cannot pray to the Absolute for reasons explained before... [Christians] show Satanic pride in their belief that the Absolute or the Infinite, even if there was such a thing as the possibility of any relation between the unconditioned and the conditioned―will stoop to listen to every foolish or egotistical prayer."[43][note 10]


Kuraev wrote that Blavatsky's "hypothesis" that God can not hear the prayers of people, and people "can not meet" with God, contradicts the most important thing in Christianity. Thus, she spread out her "failure" on all people.[45]

Сondition after death

Bednarowski wrote that Blavatsky objected to the Christian interpretations afterlife "because they are described as eternal." She stated that, "nothing is eternal and unchangeable."[46] She said, "We believe in no hell or paradise as localities; in no objective hell-fires and worms that never die, nor in any Jerusalems with streets paved with sapphires and diamonds."[47] René Guénon wrote that on the Theosophical "heaven" the condition of man is such:

"As to the ordinary mortal, his bliss in it is complete. It is an absolute oblivion of all that gave it pain or sorrow in the past incarnation, and even oblivion of the fact that such things as pain or sorrow exist at all."[48]


Concerning this matter, Drujinin stated that the Christian truths of the post-mortem existence of man are "incomparably superior the delusional fantasies of the founders of Theosophy."[49]

Karma and reincarnation

According to The Catholic Encyclopedia, the main Theosophical teachings are karma and reincarnation. Karma is the law of ethical causation.

In the past incarnation the ego had acquired certain faculties, set in motion certain causes. The effect of these causes and of causes set in motion in previous incarnations and not yet exhausted are its karma and determine the conditions into which the ego is reborn.[15]


Reincarnation is directly related to karma. James Skeen stated that the Theosophical teaching about karma and "its relation to forgiveness and faith" contradicts the Bible definitions of these important concepts.[29] Encyclopedia of New Age Beliefs argues that the laws of karma and reincarnation "are really a doctrine of self salvation." And consequently there is no need for "Jesus Christ's substitutionary death for our sins," when the person, who offends, pays himself.[50][note 11][note 12]

Blavatsky and other Theosophists believed that karma, the "unerring law of Retribution," is a system of penalty "as stern as that of the most rigid Calvinist, only far more philosophical and consistent with absolute justice."[53] Ellwood wrote that, according to Blavatsky, "Karma is an Absolute and Eternal law in the World of manifestation." Karma is the "impersonal force" which brings retribution for thoughts, words, and deeds of men without "destroy intellectual and individual liberty" in order to demonstrate that men must live with the consequences of their choices.[54] A religious studies scholar Jeffrey D. Lavoie noted that, in Blavatsky's opinion, the soul "must purify itself through cyclic transmigrations."[55] Ellwood has quoted in The Secret Doctrine:

"Intimately, or rather indissolubly, connected with Karma, then, is the law of re-birth, or of the re-incarnation of the same spiritual individuality in a long, almost interminable, series of personalities. The latter are like the various costumes and characters played by the same actor."[56]


Drujinin stated that the concept of reincarnation fundamentally contradicts the most important dogmas of Orthodox Christianity. Moreover, he stated that there are good reasons to believe that the concept of reincarnation, bringed in Theosophy, was entered "by the inspiring it dark spiritual forces" for the preparation of an appearance of Antichrist.[57] He wrote that the Theosophical doctrine of reincarnation denies the tragedy of death and glorifies it as a positive moment of the cosmic evolution. Depreciating "death, this doctrine thereby devalues life and reconciles man with any suffering and injustice."[58][note 13]

Accusations

Fraud


See also: Coulomb Affair
In September 1884 the Rev. George Patterson, a principal of Madras Christian College, wrote about Blavatsky's occult phenomena: "What if these signs and wonders are proofs of something very different?... Instead of a message from beings of supernal wisdom and power, we shall have only the private thoughts of a clever but not over scrupulous woman."[60][61] The anti-Theosophical publications in The Madras Christian College Magazine in September 1884 were made by the time of arrival of Richard Hodgson, an expert of the Society for Psychical Research, aimed at studying the phenomena of Blavatsky.[62] The Committee of SPR, after analyzing and discussing Hodgson's research, came with reference to Blavatsky herself to the following conclusion published in December 1885: "For our own part, we regard her neither as the mouthpiece of hidden seers, nor as a mere vulgar adventuress; we think that she has achieved a title to permanent remembrance as one of the most accomplished, ingenious, and interesting impostors in history."[63] According to the Rev. George Patterson, "It is to these phenomena, and to the openly expressed antagonism of Theosophy to Christianity, that the rapid spread of the new cult in India is to be ascribed, and not to any system of positive doctrine."[64][note 14]

Spirit communication

See also: Incidents in the Life of Madame Blavatsky § Mediums and mediumship

Theologian Kuraev wrote that Theosophists' feature is spirit possession. If the usual scientific or philosophical book appears as a result of systematic and consistent reflections of its author, then the theosophical treatises are written as a "dictation of capricious spirits." A person-medium does not have power over the text that is "communicated" to him, he is not fully competent in its planning and word processing.[66][note 15] In Drujinin's opinion, Theosophy preaches "reckless" communication with spirits. And the spirits who presented themselves as "teachers-mahatmas" can expel the disciple in general from his body. In confirmation, he quoted Ignatius Bryanchaninov: "The desire to see spirits, curiosity to learn something from them is a sign of the greatest folly and complete ignorance of the moral and active traditions of the Orthodox Church."[68] Theologian Martin noted that the Bible prohibits to practice a communication with spirits.[69] Nevertheless, in 1860 at Zadonsk, Isidore, the Metropolitan of the Russian Orthodox Church, seeing the manifestations of Blavatsky's mediumship, said: "Let not your heart be troubled by the gift you are possessed of, nor let it become a source of misery to you hereafter."[70] According to Blavatsky, mediumship is the contrast of adeptship, because the medium is the "passive instrument of foreign influences, [while] the adept actively controls himself and all inferior potencies."[71]

Demonization

Mersene Sloan, an editor and Bible teacher, called the theosophical initiation a process of "disguised" demonization, a "gross perversion" of the Christian regeneration.[72]

"The pupil [of Theosophy] becomes an Adept. This is one of many theosophic statements proving the end of the cult's endeavors to be the incarnation of demons in human beings. Of course, it is denied that the masters are demons, but the doctrines and practices of the cult prove them to be such, and such only. Some know it by actual contact with them... It is not, then, a matter of developing latent powers in man that Theosophy seeks, but the subjection of man to the invading powers of demons."[73
]

Drujinin argued that Theosophy seeks to "control the world" with the help of magic. Every Theosophist wants to achieve supernatural powers that "will elevated him above other people." The natural continuation of the absence of faith in the "true God" is that the Theosophist, who is a magic practitioner, "considers himself a god."[74][note 16] Drujinin summed up: "Exploring Theosophy, we came to the conclusion that such a muddled, contradictory and fantasy doctrine could had been created only by the mentally ill men!"[76]

Satanism

The ministers of the Christian churches had related to the Theosophical Society as the "brood of the Evil one."[77] In 1879 Blavatsky wrote that the Christian Church called the Theosophists "infidel emissaries of Satan."[78][note 17] In theologian Kuraev's opinion, the Theosophists declared that there is no other God at all except Lucifer: "It is 'Satan who is the god of our planet and the only god,' and this without any allusive metaphor to its wickedness and depravity. For he is one with the Logos."[80][note 18]

Ellwood has quoted in The Secret Doctrine:

Satan represents metaphysically simply the reverse or the polar opposite of everything in nature. He is the 'adversary,' allegorically, the 'murderer,' and the great Enemy of all, because there is nothing in the whole Universe that has not two sides—the reverses of the same medal. But in that case, light, goodness, beauty, etc., may be called Satan with as much propriety as the Devil, since they are the adversaries of darkness, badness and ugliness.[82][note 19][note 20]


Confrontations

Drujinin noted that Blavatsky "personally took part in the armed struggle against the Roman Catholic Church."[85] In 1866 she was accompanying Giuseppe Garibaldi on his expeditions. In 1867 she with the Italian volunteers "fought at Viterbo and then at Mentana" against French-Papal troops. In the battle of Mentana Blavatsky was "gravely wounded."[86][note 21] In 1941 Jinarajadasa, the fourth president of the Theosophical Society Adyar, informed that Blavatskian Theosophy has been "officially banned by name by the Pope as a dire heresy, and in one month in each year, a prayer is offered to God through the Virgin Mary to save the world from Theosophy."[89][note 22][note 23][note 24]

In 1880, Henry Olcott took it upon himself to restore true Sri Lankan Buddhism and "to counter the efforts of Christian missionaries on the island."[note 25] In order to accomplish this aim, he adopted some of the methods of Protestant missionaries.[93][94] An American scholar of religion Stephen Prothero stated that in Ceylon Olcott was performing "the part of the anti-Christian missionary." He wrote and distributed anti-Christian and pro-Buddhist tracts, "and secured support for his educational reforms from representatives of the island's three monastic sects."[95] He used the Christian models for the Buddhist secondary schools and Sunday schools, "thus initiating what would become a long and successful campaign for Western-style Buddhist education in Ceylon."[96][note 26] Peter Washington wrote that Christian missionaries were furious about the activity of Olcott and other Theosophists.[98]

Theologian Kuraev wrote that Blavatsky allegedly declared that the goal of the Theosophists "is not to restore Hinduism, but to sweep Christianity from the surface of the earth."[99][note 27] Sylvia Cranston wrote that in Britain, the Church of England tried to ban the sale of Lucifer.[101][note 28] Rejecting the Christian accusations that the Theosophical Society is a "pioneer of the Antichrist and brood of the Evil one," Blavatsky wrote to the Archbishop of Canterbury that it is "the practical helper, perchance the saviour, of Christianity."[103][104][note 29] In 1893 some members of a Parliament of Religions were Theosophists, and the principal leader of the Church of England declined his support for the Parliament because, according to him, "the Christian religion is the one religion" and he did not see "how that religion can be regarded as a member of a Parliament of Religions without assuming the equality of the other intended members and the parity of their position and claims."[107][note 30]

On December 2, 1994 the Bishops' Council of the Russian Orthodox Church accepted the interdict On the Pseudo-christian Sects, Neopaganism, and Occultism, in which Blavatskian Theosophy was defined as an anti-Christian doctrine.[109][16] Thus, the Russian Theosophists who counted himself the Orthodox Christians were excommunicated.[110] Franz Hartmann, a prominent Theosophist, wrote on clerics as follows:

"Every attack made upon the erroneous opinions and the selfishness of the church autocrats is misrepresented by the latter as an attack upon religion; not upon their religious views, but as an attack upon religion itself. Their church is their God, and the interests of the church are their religion; it is all the God and the religion they know; they can form no conception of a God without priestcraft, nor of a religion without church benefits."[111]


Modern Christian Theosophy

Not to be confused with Theosophy (Boehmian).

In Ellwood's opinion, in addition to the Blavatsky-Olcott line in Theosophy, there was another, quasi-theosophical, attitude to Christianity. In addition to the anti-clerical line in Theosophy, "Christian/Catholic Theosophy" of Kingsford and Maitland arose. In 1882 they published a book The Perfect Way, or the Finding of Christ,[112] which made a great impression on Besant. This book says on the liberation of spirit from matter, a salvation prefigured, after the mystery drama of the Crucifixion and Death of Christ, in His Resurrection.[1]

In her book Esoteric Christianity Besant continued the Theosophical interpretation of Christianity.[note 31] In his article[29] Skeen analyzed her book in detail: according to her, a "healthy religion must contain a secret element attainable only by the spiritual elite."[29][1][114] To prove that this secret element passed from Jesus to the Apostles, she cites Second Timothy 2:2. The verse reads: "The things that thou have heard from me ('teacher to pupil') among many witnesses, the same commit thou ('in a secret manner') to faithful men who shall be able to teach ('also in a secret teacher to pupil manner') others also."[115][29] Besant named this esoteric knowledge the Greater Mysteries. The Lesser Mysteries meant the partial uncovering of the deep truths that must first be assimilated before entry into the Greater Mysteries. And Greater Mysteries can only be passed on "'from mouth to ear' as a pupil becomes qualified."[116][29] In Besant's opinion, a return to the esoteric Christianity of the early ages is "the only way to save Christianity's importance."[29][117][note 32]

According to Besant, the Christ is "more than the man Jesus."[119] She has three views of Christ: "the historical Christ, the mythic Christ, and the mystic Christ."[29] Skeen has quoted:

"Round this glorious Figure gathered the myths which united Him to the long array of His predecessors, the myths telling in allegory the story of all such lives, as they symbolise the work of the Logos in the Kosmos and the higher evolution of the individual human soul."[120][29][note 33]


Theosophical Christianity

In the post-Blavatsky works of Theosophists, the "earlier trenchant anticlericalism" is visibly lacking, and the attitude to Christianity is almost entirely positive. In particular, Annie Besant and Charles Leadbeater demonstrated a new regard for "Catholic-type doctrine and worship, understood esoterically and theosophically." They also viewed Christ, "together with the church's seasons, festivals, and sacraments, as not only symbols of spiritual truth but also as means of transmitting transcendent energies." Large group of Theosophists entered the Liberal Catholic Church, though some have been Anglicans and Roman Catholics.[1][note 34] Ian Hooker, former Presiding Bishop of the Liberal Catholic Church, wrote:

"The Liberal Catholic Church arose from the sense of loss of many English theosophists whose new affiliation left them unwelcome in the churches where they had been worshiping, and from the endeavor of these people to find a place of Christian worship, along with freedom of interpretation, in the English branch of the European Old Catholic Church."[122]


Image
The Completed Eucharistic Form.[124]

The founding bishops of the Liberal Catholic Church were Theosophists J. I. Wedgwood and C. W. Leadbeater who were "actively involved" in the work of the Theosophical Society (Adyar). The doctrine of this Church offered an interpretation of Christianity in which "judgment and salvation after only one life," were substituted by liberation from the necessity for rebirth after many; and in which eschewal of the aftermath of sin "via the redemptive sacrifice of Christ," was substituted by the just and pedagogical receiving of results of whatever has been making in earlier incarnations under the "Law of Karma."[122] The meaning of the rites of the Liberal Catholic Church was expounded in Leadbeater's book The Science of the Sacraments.[125] The author's idea was to save the basic forms of traditional Christianity, but to put "new wine into its old wineskins." The "new wine" was the new nature of the Ancient Wisdom transmitted by the modern Theosophy. According to Ellwood, the Christian rite, "especially when well enacted and well supported by constructive thoughts on the part of all worshipers, creates thought-forms that are vessels and channels of the divine powers evoke by those exalted ideas."[97][note 35]

Basis of mutual understanding

Stephan Hoeller, a Regionary Bishop of Ecclesia Gnostica, noted that the including the nineteenth-century polemics materials in the modern Christianity-Theosophy dialogue "is not useful."[128] David Bland, a member of the Theosophical Society since 1970, stated:

"In the workshop recently [November 5–7, 2000] held to explore a greater interface between the Theosophical Society and the Christian tradition, it was recognized that some Christian faith tenets can indeed inhibit dialogue and create what may appear as in surmountable barriers to open exploration. As the participants in that workshop, members of the Society from various Christian backgrounds, worked through these issues, we identified our dilemma. Each of us recognized that dogmas, if accepted at face value, will continue to be a chasm, but we also realized that there are principles that can bridge that chasm. If one accepts the imperative of love, the interpretations that would divide can be placed to the side, and an atmosphere of love and understanding created."[129]


Professor Ellwood, a religious studies scholar and Liberal Catholic priest, proclaimed that Christianity could be rebuilt to be consonant "with the deepest insights of Theosophy, and moreover become for some people a vehicle for the transmission of those insights and the powers latent in them."[97] In his book The Cross and the Grail: Esoteric Christianity for the 21st Century Ellwood wrote:

"The Eastern Orthodox liturgy, a Catholic form of service, suggests the desire to make physically visible what is transpiring on the astral and mental planes by intentionally creating sacramental thought-forms that channel divine energy from the heart of God. The actual correspondence may not always be exact, since no human craft or art could completely reproduce the worlds of the inner planes; but the feeling of color, richness, and unity-in-diversity is there. In Eastern Orthodoxy, the often-concealed altar behind the iconostasis, a screen covered with icons and pictures of saints, is like the innermost eternal realm of pneuma, spirit, the atma, the God within. This power seems to radiate through the saints with their luminous eyes as though they were beings in the heaven of the mental plane, or Devachan. As the service progresses with its mystical and unforgettable music, its richly-robed clergy moving with the slowness of ancient ritual, and its billowing clouds of incense, a dome of silvery-blue light that merges upward into gold is formed above the congregation, like the onion-shaped domes atop many Orthodox churches. The structure is so exalted that it barely touches the earth, and not all present are able to perceive it directly."[130]


Christian converts to Theosophy

• George Arundale, the third President of the Theosophical Society Adyar. His father, the Rev. John Kay, was a Congregational minister. In 1926 George became Regionary Bishop of the Liberal Catholic Church in India.[131][132]
• Alice Bailey, initially a member of the Theosophical Society Adyar. She was raised in the "conservative evangelical wing" of the Church of England. At the age of eighteen she became a religious worker in the Young Women's Christian Association.[133][note 36]
• Annie Besant, the second President of the Theosophical Society Adyar. She was an Anglican by education and, at age twenty, married Rev. Frank Besant.[135][136][note 37]
• Helena Blavatsky, a founder the modern Theosophical movement, the co-founder and main ideologist the Theosophical Society.[137][note 38][note 39] She was an Orthodox Christian by birth and education. All her relatives belonged to the conservative people who considered themselves "the good Christians."[140][note 40]
• Daniel Dunlop, a member of the Theosophical Society (initially), the founder a magazine The Irish Theosophist. His father, Alexander Dunlop, was a Quaker preacher.[142]
• Franz Hartmann, a member of the Theosophical Society, co-worker of Blavatsky and Olcott at Adyar.[143] He was "educated in the doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church" and wished at one time to become a monk of the Capuchinian Order.[144]
• Geoffrey Hodson, a member of the Theosophical Society Adyar and Liberal Catholic priest. He grew up with "strong conventional Christian beliefs." Hodson worked for the Y.M.C.A. as an organizer.[145] He fostered the esoteric exegesis of the Bible and wrote several works containing "extensive and often profound esoteric interpretations" of the stories from the Old Testament and the life of Jesus.[1]
• Charles Leadbeater, at first an Anglican priest then a member of the Theosophical Society and co-worker of Olcott in Ceylon.[note 41] He became after Blavatsky's death "the main ideologist" of the Theosophical Society Adyar. Leadbeater was also the second Presiding Bishop and a "leading theologian and liturgist" of the Liberal Catholic Church.[147][148]
• Henry Olcott, the co-founder and first President of the Theosophical Society, a "key figure" in the modern history of Sri Lankan Buddhism.[93] His parents had "raised" him a Presbyterian.[149] In 1860 he married the daughter of a priest of the Episcopal Church.[150]
• Gottfried de Purucker, the leader of the Theosophical Society Pasadena. He was "destined for the clergy" by his father, an Anglican minister.[151]
• James Wedgwood, a member of the Theosophical Society Adyar. He gave up "training for the ministry of the Church of England"[152] and became the founding bishop of the Liberal Catholic Church.[153]

See also

• Buddhism and Theosophy
• Buddhism and Christianity
• Hinduism and Theosophy
• Theosophy and Western philosophy
• "Is Theosophy a Religion?"
• "The Esoteric Character of the Gospels"
• "What Are The Theosophists?"
• "What Is Theosophy?"
• Christian theosophy
admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 36125
Joined: Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:21 am

PreviousNext

Return to Articles & Essays

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 9 guests