Maria Carlson and other Collected Writings
In September 1990, the Soviet Union officially ended its policy of state-sponsored atheism, approving a tolerant law on freedom of conscience as people were entering the Church in record numbers. The fall of Communism in Russia in 1991 also led to the end of long years of a ban and suppression against Theosophy during the Soviet era.
MARIA CARLSON ATTEMPTED TO DEMONSTRATE THE UNDERSTUDIED VALUE THEOSOPHY HAD ON RUSSIA, and that in Russian culture, the influence of Theosophy was not underestimated by its Russian contemporaries. Many pages have been written on the history of Theosophy in the United States and Western Europe, but not Russia. Maria Carlson argues that Theosophy transformed the “creative intelligentsia” of the Russian Silver Age, and certain aspects of this history could not be understood without a study of the major impact Theosophy made on Russian Culture. This book creates a distinction between the future world of Marx, Science, and Communism versus Blavatsky, eternal return, and Nietzsche. However, what Maria Carlson does also is give a reason why the Russian Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholic theologians and historian officials should no longer falsely portray Theosophy as giving birth to a decadent period, that caused and is ideologically equivalent to the New Age movement, as portrayed in John Pope II’s encyclical. Maria Carlson demonstrates that this more precise view on these currents picked up in the culture and world, where the church failed to do and fails to still do. In the modern period, there is clearly an utter absence or weakening due to internal and external conflicts (and flaws) in the prior periods of such esoteric circles and associations. As with most scholar’s historical works, the evaluations are not to measure the truths of (or in) the ideas. We should recognize this movement’s value.
The source used is from Maria Carlson’s 1993 work, No Religion Higher Than Truth: A History of the Theosophical Movement in Russia, 1875-1922. Princeton University Press. (pp. 1-9)
Introduction
There are other avenues through which we can challenge the barriers between the Islamic world and Europe and America, that is affecting other relationship between other cultures and the West. During Blavatsky’s time, Russia saw itself not as Western, but a bridge between Europe and Asia. She was (1) born in the Russian Empire and shaped by a world that was neither Western European nor colonial in the same way as Britain or France; and (2) the Russian Empire bordered Buddhist regions (Kalmykia, Buryatia, Tuva), making Buddhism a local, familiar tradition, not an exotic foreign one. Her engagement with Buddhism and Hinduism is thus not merely a Western fascination with the “mystical East.” Buddhism was geographically and historically close to the Russian Empire, Russian Oriental studies were well developed in her time, Buddhist monasteries existed within imperial borders, and Eastern Slavic folklore and mysticism already blended Christian, ancestral and esoteric elements, making her attraction to non‑Christian traditions not unusual.
Through the Theosophical Movement, there was an attempt to form a bridge between cultures and civilizations, and Russia formed a spiritual, cultural and geographical bridge between Asia and Europe. We have not seen the flourishing of this bridge. Liberal internationalism and globalism are frameworks that promote cooperation across nations, but are tools of political, military, and economic manipulation. In practice, they have been used by powerful states or institutions to shape global rules, alliances, and markets in ways that advance their own strategic interests rather than purely universal ideals.
There is a strong Slavonian connection to the early Theosophical Movement that is pertinent to this history and shared ancestry particularly in relation to early Vedic and Iranian peoples, and of Russian mysticism and Freemasonry, that have been distorted or deliberately ignored by Christians. Blavatsky (born in the Ukrainian city of Ekaterinoslav later called Dnipropetrovsk) represented the “Soul of Russia” and Ukraine through her Slavophile spirit. The Russophobia and other critiques that usually accompany perceptions about her are unfounded. Her critiques of the West merely provide a window into the deeper histories of Europe and Asia, and challenge narratives and pathologies exhibited by modern political thinking, as it is guided by principles and ideas about the world preceding them.
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