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Yeah, I think that's what theosophists are saying about her today, but a cursory evaluation of her corpus shows that by anyone's standards her beliefs around ra

Yeah, I think that's what theosophists are saying about her today, but a cursory evaluation of her corpus shows that by anyone's standards her beliefs around race were white supremacist. I'll be charitable and assume that you missed this during your own reading: "Mankind is obviously divided into god-informed men and lower human creatures. The intellectual difference between the Aryan and other civilized nations and such savages as the South Sea Islanders, is inexplicable on any other grounds. No amount of culture, nor generations of training amid civilization, could raise such human specimens as the Bushmen, the Veddhas of Ceylon, and some African Tribes, to the same intellectual level as the Aryans, the Semites, and the Turanians so called. The 'sacred spark' is missing in them and it is they who are the only inferior races on the globe, now happily – owing to the wise adjustment of nature which ever works in that direction – fast dying out. Verily mankind is 'of one blood,' but not of the same essence. We are the hot-house, artificially quickened plants in nature, having in us a spark, which in them is latent" (The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 2, p 421). Hopefully you agree that's pretty ugly.

dr_dshiv 5y ago
She actually directly refutes the idea of superior and inferior races, just a page or so later. “The Africans have not left their continent for several hundred thousands of years. If to-morrow the continent of Europe were to disappear and other lands to reëmerge instead, and if the African tribes were to separate and scatter on the face of the Earth, it is they who, in about a hundred thousand years hence, would form the bulk of the civilized nations. And it is the descendants of those of our highly cultured nations, who might have survived on some one island, without any means of crossing the new seas, that would fall back into a state of relative savagery. Thus the reason given for dividing humanity into superior and inferior races falls to the ground and becomes a fallacy.” Emphasis mine. Her work may not have modern sensitivities, but it isn’t a racist screed. This is a massive work that involves dialectic. It seems to me that she raised a racist point only to bring it down herself, logically. Hopefully you agree that is pretty beautiful!

dr_dshiv 5y ago

She actually directly refutes the idea of superior and inferior races, just a page or so later. “The Africans have not left their continent for several hundred thousands of years. If to-morrow the continent of Europe were to disappear and other lands to reëmerge instead, and if the African tribes were to separate and scatter on the face of the Earth, it is they who, in about a hundred thousand years hence, would form the bulk of the civilized nations. And it is the descendants of those of our highly cultured nations, who might have survived on some one island, without any means of crossing the new seas, that would fall back into a state of relative savagery. Thus the reason given for dividing humanity into superior and inferior races falls to the ground and becomes a fallacy.” Emphasis mine. Her work may not have modern sensitivities, but it isn’t a racist screed. This is a massive work that involves dialectic. It seems to me that she raised a racist point only to bring it down herself, logically. Hopefully you agree that is pretty beautiful!