In Pursuit of Mysteries

Toys

The Japanese will make a cute little plastic toy out of anything.

Here is Dainichi Nyorai as a toy:

Westcott Texts

My copy of Yeats’s Golden Dawn by George Mills Harper has not been a lot of use in my Golden Dawn research for my thesis. One appendix at the back has been useful. It is the catalogue of books in the “Westcott Hermetic Library” founded by…Westcott in 1891. The catalogue is from 1897 but it lists the books of the library, many of which would have been in Westcott’s personal collection earlier.

Among these books, there are Ginsburg’s and Franck’s books on the Kabbalah. There are also Thomas Taylor’s translations of Iamblichus’ On the Mysteries and Sallustius’ On the Gods and the World. Since one section of my thesis is on the antecedents to the Golden Dawn’s conceptions of the soul, it is very useful to know what texts Mathers and Westcott, as the two architects of the Golden Dawn, had access to in their work. Both published extensively during the time of the formation of the Golden Dawn or just before it but having a list of books from a library that Westcott founded strengthens my ability to point to things like Taylor’s translation of Iamblichus or Franck’s writings on Kabbalah. The fact that Westcott is the translator of published editions of Levi’s work helps there as well.

Nothing “proves” anything but it helps with the arguments about where their ideas were coming from before I get into the Golden Dawn’s own ideas concerning the nature, role, and structure of the soul (my thesis topic) in their papers, ritual work, lectures, etc.

Happy Day.

The End of Tibet

Rolling Stone has a very long article on Tibet on their website called, “The End of Tibet.”

It discusses a lot of things, most of them very depressing but it echoes things I’ve heard in the last year or so about the changing nature of Tibetan society as more and more Chinese poor into the country, marginalizing the Tibetans. It also brings up the issue of violence and resistance. I first read about this last year but the younger generation in India is, in many ways, tired of preaching nonviolence since it seems to gain them nothing. They are seeing their homeland destroyed while nothing stops it. They are actively discussing taking a page from resistance movements in Palestine and elsewhere. Suicide bombers are being discussed. Apparently, in places in Tibet, violence and the killing of Chinese has begun happening on a greater scale.

This is all very depressing. As one of the places where the Dharma has played such a role and where the tantric Buddhism that my heart is connected to has resided for so long, it is so very horrid to see it destroyed and its people lose themselves.

Personally, given China’s growing strength economically and militarily in the world, I see no reason to believe that Tibet will be its own nation again. Most of the world, lip service aside, could not care less as long as they don’t have to witness the destruction themselves.