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Isn't India the Home of Spiritual Wisdom?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 November 2020

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Summary

To answer that question, let me begin with a quotation. It comes from an American stage magician, Claude Alexander, and was published in 1924:

The Orient has always been looked upon as the Great Fount of Inner Knowledge; and as the original Home of the Mysteries … In the Orient of today, however, the Ancient Wisdom is still treasured, and the Secret Doctrines are still taught – but by the few, and to the few. In certain carefully guarded circles, among the sages and seers of the Orient, one who knows how to give “the right knock” will be admitted to fellowship, and will be given the teaching to which he is entitled by reason of his attainment along certain lines.

Writing his tract on Hindu magic at the height of his popularity in 1924, Alexander identified India as the land of ancient occult knowledge. He felt that the Vedas were the original sources of esoteric teachings. He argued that by practising oriental magic one could master clairvoyance and telepathic power. In making such claims, he was just a later addition to the long list of Western Orientalists and occultists who had already perceived India as the land of ancient sages, the home of age-old spiritual wisdom. Alexander's works were preceded by Friedrich Schlegel's Über die Sprache und Weisheit der Indier (On the Language and Wisdom of the Indians, 1808), Edwin Arnold's The Light of Asia (1879), Friedrich Max Müller's The Sacred Books of the East (1879), and of course H.P. Blavatsky's The Secret Doctrine (1888), among others.

This understanding of India as the storehouse of spiritual wisdom is a modern phenomenon – and yet the matter is not straightforward or easy. Are we dealing with nothing but a stereotypical Romantic view typical of modern Western society, or is there more at stake? In fact, the question cannot be answered by a simple “yes” or “no.” To get a clearer picture, we have to understand how this image of India as a land of spiritual knowledge developed. I will focus on two major points: firstly, why India's image as a spiritual and enchanted land is a picture of the imagination, and secondly, how India became a site of contestation between two different streams of thought. I will pay particular attention to the case of the Theosophical Society and its romanticisation of India.

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Hermes Explains
Thirty Questions about Western Esotericism
, pp. 191 - 197
Publisher: Amsterdam University Press
Print publication year: 2019

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