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Theosophy & Modernism, pt. VIII

“…The first essay, Hidden Meanings in Abstract Art, by Maurice Tuchman, makes an attempt at explaining this dynamic. Tuchman argues that while the early Modernists were clearly influenced by occult systems and mystical schools of thought, experiencing ‘emotions of recognition’ with other similarly inclined artists and thinkers throughout history, that influence was superceded by formalist criticism (and a perceived break with the past) in the years following the Second World War. The primary reason for this, according to Tuchman, was the fact that many of the early abstractionists (Kandinsky, Mondrian, Malevich) were directly involved with and influenced by Helena Blavatsky and her Theosophical Society, founded in 1875.
I’m not an expert in the tenets of Theosophy, but my vague understanding is that they espoused a mix of Eastern metaphysics and western hermetic occultism, with the scientific worldviews of evolution and the electromagnetic spectrum. Basically, they retrofitted a roughly ‘Vedic’ cosmology, that of a holistic universe permeated/made up of energy vibrations, with the language of late 19th, early 20th Century physics, thereby concocting a type of mysticism for modernity. Erik Parker, in his book Techgnosis, sums it up nicely:
The Theosophical cosmos was a giant hum, whose lowest and most coarse ‘vibrations’ made up the material world and whose ‘higher’ planes were carried on ‘higher’ frequencies, all of which interpenetrated simultaneously and invisibly in the here and now, just like Maxwell’s (the physicist who translated Michael Faraday’s discovery of electromagnetic induction into the equations that describe the electromagnetic spectrum) spectral waves…”

Gordon Terry, from a conversation with Erik Bakke

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Do You Think Too Much?

Do You Think Too Much?

      It started out innocently enough. I began to think at parties now and then to loosen up. Inevitably though, one thought led to another, and soon I was more than just a social thinker.
      I began to think alone — "to relax," I told myself — but I knew it wasn't true. Thinking became more and more important to me, and finally I was thinking all the time.
      I began to think on the job. I knew that thinking and employment don't mix, but I couldn't stop myself.
      I began to avoid friends at lunchtime so I could read Thoreau and Kafka. I would return to the office dizzied and confused, asking, "What is it exactly we are doing here?"
      Things weren't going so great at home either. One evening I had turned off the TV and asked my wife about the meaning of life. She spent that night at her mother's.
      I soon had a reputation as a heavy thinker. One day the boss called me in. He said, "Skippy, I like you, and it hurts me to say this, but your thinking has become a real problem. If you don't stop thinking on the job, you'll have to find another job." This gave me a lot to think about.
      I came home early after my conversation with the boss. "Honey," I confessed, "I've been thinking..."
      "I know you've been thinking," she said, "and I want a divorce!"
      "But Honey, surely it's not that serious."
      "It is serious," she said, lower lip aquiver. "You think as much as college professors, and college professors don't make any money, so if you keep on thinking we won't have any money!"
      "That's a faulty syllogism," I said impatiently, and she began to cry. I'd had enough. "I'm going to the library," I snarled as I stomped out the door.
      I headed for the library, in the mood for some Nietzsche, with a PBS station on the radio. I roared into the parking lot and ran up to the big glass doors... they didn't open. The library was closed.
      To this day, I believe that a Higher Power was looking out for me that night. As I sank to the ground clawing at the unfeeling glass, whimpering for Zarathustra, a poster caught my eye. "Friend, is heavy thinking ruining your life?" it asked. You probably recognize that line. It comes from the standard Thinker's Anonymous poster.
      Which is why I am what I am today: a recovering thinker. I never miss a TA meeting. At each meeting we watch a non-educational video; last week it was "Porky's." Then we share experiences about how we avoided thinking since the last meeting.
      I still have my job, and things are a lot better at home. Life just seemed... easier, somehow, as soon as I stopped thinking.
(The author of this little jewel is unknown.)

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"There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it"  ~Minnie Aumonier