The tendency towards “black magic”

[Steppingfeet]

But the Theosophists weren't much in to love.  "There is no religion higher than truth" was one of their slogans, and they were not particularly loving to their anointed saviour, J. Krishnamurti, when he tired of the situation they put him into.

Do you know how love was situated in their philosophy? Was it simply one of any number of human emotions? Something to overcome? I know little about theosophy, but I do seem to recall Krisnhamurti being identified and groomed from a young age for the role.

The passage by Blavatsky sounds like some more if the same old bullshit to me. I dunno, maybe I wasn't reading it right or thinking enough about it, but it came across to me as another one of those bullshit assertions that spirituality amd physicality are dualistic and one must be picked over the other to get what you want put of either. I'm sick of spiritual ascetics telling us we need to disregard the matters and desires of the flesh to indulge in thw spiritual

If this passage is representative of the whole, I agree that it seems to repeats the same fundamental error many traditions have historically made: rejecting the material world as "fallen" and something to be overcome. I find no resonance with that way of thought.

However, I can exercise understanding and safely assume that they were responding (in their own distorted way) to the Original Desire within them, to the need for something higher and greater than the cage of their particular consensus reality. They were doing their best, as they saw it, to awaken. And as with any seeker in any time and place, they could not be separated from the limitations, contradictions, blindspots, myths, and other distortions of their context. Of which SF points to some:

They were seeking assiduously to see behind the veil in Victorian times, so one has to give them credit working under duress, but various distortions of those years are woven into their works.  The unbalanced anti-sexual display in the OP is one example of that, I would aver.

Who's to say what philosophies our time produces won't be seen by later generations as missing the point in some way?

However pure or mixed in polarity their efforts may have been - I don't have the measure - like all movements they have some sort of gift to offer that becomes visible only when viewed honestly but compassionately.

[The priest part in the following is irrelevant to the point.]

Ra: We spoke to one who heard and understood and was in a position to decree the Law of One. However, the priests and peoples of that era quickly distorted our message, robbing it of the, shall we say, compassion with which unity is informed by its very nature. Since it contains all, it cannot abhor any.

I think that this points to why Ra links the word "understanding" with "love" in the next density of evolution.