In esoteric and occult teachings, giants are beings who live on spiritual, etheric and physical planes of existence. Giants were a popular theme in theosophical literature, Atlantis, lost continents and later the earth mysteries movement of Britain in the 1970s.
The concept of giants was discussed by the theosophist and occult author Blavatsky who wrote about the existence of giants in her book The Secret Doctrine connecting them to her theory of root races and claiming they correspond with Hindu cycle of the universe.[ citation needed ] According to theosophists, giants were the third root race who lived on the continent of Lemuria. [1] Theosophists also linked giants to the Atlantean race.
The German occultist Guido von List was influenced by Blavatsky's writings on giants and mixed together paganism, mythology, and theosophy, creating a basis for the belief in giants living in different realms based on the first four rounds of the root race theory. [2]
R. A. Schwaller de Lubicz, an Egyptologist and traditionalist, believed that giants had roamed the earth, and that after the fall of Adam, humanity fell into a state of degeneration. [3]
Lewis Spence, a writer on mythology, was critical of theosophy but accepted the existence of giants. He researched English folklore and mythology depicting such giants such as Magog and the British giant Albion. [4] Another writer who was opposed to occultism was the British journalist and author William Comyns Beaumont. Like Spence, he accepted the existence of giants based on folklore, mythology, and archeology. Beaumont believed that Britain was the location of Atlantis and that it was occupied by a giant race of Aryans. [5]
In the 1970s many of the authors of the earth mysteries movement in Britain wrote about Giants. John Michell wrote about the existence of giants in his book The View over Atlantis. Anthony Roberts wrote the book Sowers of Thunder: Giants in Myth and History in 1978, in which he claimed that giants were the original inhabitants of the British Isles and linked Alfred Watkins' ley lines to the British giants. [6]
Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, often known as Madame Blavatsky, was a Russian and American mystic and author who co-founded the Theosophical Society in 1875. She gained an international following as the leading theoretician of Theosophy.
In the religion of Theosophy and the spiritual movement called Anthroposophy, the Akashic records are a compendium of all universal events, thoughts, words, emotions, and intent ever to have occurred in the past, present, or future in terms of all entities and life forms, not just human. They are believed by theosophists to be encoded in a non-physical plane of existence known as the mental plane. There is no evidence for the existence of Akashic records, and rigorous scientific research in this field has seen little traction.
Alice Ann Bailey was a writer of more than twenty-four books on theosophical subjects, and was one of the first writers to use the term New Age. Bailey was born as Alice La Trobe-Bateman, in Manchester, England. She moved to the United States in 1907, where she spent most of her life as a writer and teacher.
Lemuria, or Limuria, was a continent proposed in 1864 by zoologist Philip Sclater, theorized to have sunk beneath the Indian Ocean, later appropriated by occultists in supposed accounts of human origins. The theory was discredited with the discovery of plate tectonics and continental drift in the 20th century.
James Lewis Thomas Chalmers Spence was a Scottish journalist, poet, author, folklorist and occult scholar. Spence was a Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, and vice-president of the Scottish Anthropological and Folklore Society. He founded the Scottish National Movement.
Vril: The Power of the Coming Race, originally published as The Coming Race, is a novel by Edward Bulwer-Lytton, published anonymously in 1871.
The Secret Doctrine, the Synthesis of Science, Religion and Philosophy, is a pseudoscientific esoteric book as two volumes in 1888 written by Helena Blavatsky. The first volume is named Cosmogenesis, the second Anthropogenesis. It was an influential example of the revival of interest in esoteric and occult ideas in the modern age, in particular because of its claim to reconcile ancient eastern wisdom with modern science. Proponents widely claim the literature contains clues as to how the nature of prayer was 'covered' and expunged from common wisdom, except for those with a keen eye.
Alfred Percy Sinnett was an English author and theosophist.
Root races are concepts in the esoteric cosmology of Theosophy. As described in Helena Petrovna Blavatsky's book The Secret Doctrine (1888), these races correspond to stages of human evolution, and existed mainly on now-lost continents. Blavatsky's model was developed by later theosophists, most notably William Scott-Elliot in The Story of Atlantis (1896) and The Lost Lemuria (1904). Annie Besant further developed the model in Man: Whence, How and Whither (1913). Both Besant and Scott-Elliot relied on information from Charles Webster Leadbeater obtained by "astral clairvoyance". Further elaboration was provided by Rudolf Steiner in Atlantis and Lemuria (1904). Rudolf Steiner, and subsequent theosophist authors, have called the time periods associated with these races Epochs.
The Book of Dzyan is a reputedly ancient text of Tibetan origin. The Stanzas formed the basis for The Secret Doctrine (1888), one of the foundational works of the theosophical movement, by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. The book has influenced writers in the ancient astronaut, occult and UFO communities. Historians and skeptics have dismissed the Book of Dzyan as a hoax and have accused Blavatsky of plagiarism.
Morya, also spelt Maurya, is one of the "Masters of the Ancient Wisdom" within modern Theosophical beliefs. He is believed by followers of Theosophism to be one of the Mahatmas who inspired the founding of the Theosophical Society and was engaged in a correspondence with two English Theosophists living in India, A. P. Sinnett and A. O. Hume. The correspondence was published in 1923 by A. Trevor Barker, in the book The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett.
The Theosophist is the monthly journal of the international Theosophical Society based in Adyar, India. It was founded in India in 1879 by Helena Blavatsky, who was also its editor. The journal is still being published till date. For the year 1930, the journal was published in Hollywood, California by Annie Besant and Marie Russak Hotchener, but it returned to Adyar in 1931. The journal features articles about philosophy, art, literature and occultism.
Neo-Theosophy is a term, originally derogatory, used by the followers of Helena Blavatsky to denominate the system of Theosophical ideas expounded by Annie Besant and Charles Webster Leadbeater following the death of Madame Blavatsky in 1891. This material differed in major respects from Blavatsky's original presentation, but it is accepted as genuinely Theosophical by many Theosophists around the world.
Harold Tom Wilkins was a British journalist known for his books on treasure hunting and pseudohistoric claims about Atlantis and South America.
Man: Whence, How and Whither, A Record of Clairvoyant Investigation, published in 1913, is a theosophical book compiled by the second president of the Theosophical Society (TS) - Adyar, Annie Besant, and by a TS member, Charles W. Leadbeater. The book is a study on early times on planetary chains, beginnings of early root races, early civilizations and empires, and past lives of men.
Within the system of Theosophy, developed by occultist Helena Blavatsky and others since the second half of the 19th century, Theosophical mysticism draws upon various existing disciplines and mystical models, including Neo-platonism, Gnosticism, Western esotericism, Freemasonry, Hinduism and Buddhism.
Theosophy is a religious and philosophical system established in the United States in the late 19th century. Founded primarily by Russian mystic and spiritualist Helena Blavatsky, and based largely on her writings, it draws heavily from both older European philosophies such as Gnosticism and Neoplatonism and Indian religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism. Although many adherents maintain that Theosophy is not a religion, it is variably categorized by religious scholars as both a new religious movement and a form occultism from within Western esotericism.
Modern Theosophy is classified by prominent representatives of Western philosophy as a "pantheistic philosophical-religious system." Russian philosopher Vladimir Trefilov claimed that Blavatsky's doctrine was formed from the beginning as a synthesis of philosophical views and religious forms of the various ages and peoples with modern scientific ideas. Michael Wakoff, an author of The Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, stated that Blavatskian Theosophy was based on Buddhist and Hindu philosophy, and fragments of the Western esotericism with using an "absolutist metaphysics." In The New Encyclopedia of Philosophy it is said that Blavatsky's Theosophy is an attempt to merge into a universal doctrine all religions by revealing their "common deep essence" and detection of "identity meanings of symbols," all philosophies, and all sciences.
Hinduism is regarded by modern Theosophy as one of the main sources of "esoteric wisdom" of the East. The Theosophical Society was created in a hope that Asian philosophical-religious ideas "could be integrated into a grand religious synthesis." Prof. Antoine Faivre wrote that "by its content and its inspiration" the Theosophical Society is greatly dependent on Eastern traditions, "especially Hindu; in this, it well reflects the cultural climate in which it was born." A Russian Indologist Alexander Senkevich noted that the concept of Helena Blavatsky's Theosophy was based on Hinduism. According to Encyclopedia of Hinduism, "Theosophy is basically a Western esoteric teaching, but it resonated with Hinduism at a variety of points."
According to some literary and religious studies scholars, modern Theosophy had a certain influence on contemporary literature, particularly in forms of genre fiction such as fantasy and science fiction. Researchers claim that Theosophy has significantly influenced the Irish literary renaissance of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, notably in such figures as W. B. Yeats and G. W. Russell.