Book Reviews

Poems of Bliss
Geoffrey Hodson
Auckland, New Zealand: Theosophical Publishing House, 2021. 99 pp., paper, NZ$35 plus postage.

Poems of Contemplation
Elizabeth and John Sell
Auckland: Theosophical Publishing House, 2022. 65 pp., paper, NZ$30 plus postage.

Poetry can be defined as a type of writing that formulates a concentrated, imaginative awareness of experience in language chosen and arranged to create a specific emotional response. It focuses on the expression of feelings and ideas through the use of distinctive literary styles, sounds, and rhythms.

As part of its innovative publishing program, the Theosophical Publishing House in New Zealand has recently published two outstanding books of poetry by prominent members of the Theosophical Society whose gifts of creating poetry were widely unknown: Poems of Bliss by Geoffrey Hodson (1886‒1983), one of the TS’s most respected teachers and the author of over sixty books about Theosophy, healing, yoga, and the angelic kingdom; and Poems of Contemplation by Elizabeth and John Sell, close associates of Hodson and editors of his collected articles, Sharing the Light (in three volumes).

John Sell was an innovative teacher and workshop leader and the author of Practical Spirituality, published by TPH Auckland in 2019, shortly after his passing. In addition to her editorial pursuits, Elizabeth was a modest yet tireless Theosophical worker, accomplished artist, and counselor to family and friends. As with Joy Mills, whose private poems were discovered, collected, and published after her passing (For a Wayfarer, Quest Books, 2016), few people outside of close family and friends had any idea that the literary gifts of Hodson or the Sells included poetry.

Poems of Bliss was curated by Elizabeth Sell from a trove of Hodson’s unpublished writings that were discovered more than twenty years after his passing. In addition to being the only book of Hodson’s poetry ever published, what sets this little book of thirty-six poems apart from others is that they spring from the author’s clairvoyant investigations, which afforded him direct insights into the subtle realms and served as the wellspring of his deep personal yearnings for spiritual unfoldment. The result is a powerful yet intimate book that both educates and inspires. In “A Goddess of the Indian Sea,” the author writes of his clairvoyant impressions of a sea deva, whose partial message (rendered as poetry) follows:

You see all waves as separate
Whereas in truth all waves are one;
For there is but one great all-inclusive wave
Which is all being.
Find then the secret of the waves
And you will find the secret of yourself;
For what are you too but a wave,
Part of the larger wave of being.

Poems of Contemplation was originally intended to be a small collection of poems given as a memento to close family and friends after Elizabeth’s passing in February 2022. Later it was expanded to include poems written by her husband, John. The collection includes thirty-one beautifully crafted poems on a wide variety of spiritual subjects, including the magic of nature, spiritual unfoldment, personal liberation, and the mystery of death. As a lover of trees, I am particularly fond of Elizabeth’s “Meditation on a Cherry Tree”:

 

Can we be like those leaves
Cascading in beauty and brilliance,
Before our journey to heights Unknown?
Living fully in loveliness and joy
To our last moment, when we ascend and float
Away to realms anew.

Elizabeth carefully selected dozens of color photographs, drawings, and reproductions of her own acclaimed paintings to complement the poems that appear in these lovely books. Both were printed in the United Kingdom on glossy paper as deluxe paperback editions. For those who appreciate poetry, these two literary gems will provide a wealth of enjoyment, insight, and inspiration.

Nathaniel Altman

Nathaniel Altman has been a member of the TSA since 1970. He became a student of Geoffrey Hodson while attending the Krotona Institute School in 1971 and met the Sells in Adyar in 1975.

 

 

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Mindful Medicine: Forty Simple Practices to Help Healthcare Professionals Heal Burnout and Reconnect to Purpose
Jan Chozen Bays, MD
Boulder, Colo.: Shambhala, 2022. 230 pp., paper, $18.95.

I get a personal introduction to physician’s burnout every few days. My daughter, a fellow in pediatric neurology in an intensive care unit, called me the other day at 12 a.m. “Dad,” she says, “I just intubated a nine month old baby. But we don’t know whether she will survive or not. It is always an unknown, Dad. Kids seemingly on death’s door will end up walking away, and kids seemingly somewhat healthy will not survive. What helps me most, Dad, is your telling us to be in the present, to be mindful, and to be 100 percent there. It really helps.” Our conversations frequently end with her saying, “I am so tired, but I am OK.”

When I received Chozen Bays’ book, I wanted to get in the car and drive to South Carolina to hand it to her. Chozen Bays is uniquely qualified to write this book. She is a pediatrician, was on the faculty at a medical school, and worked for thirty years in the field of child abuse at a hospital-based center in Oregon. Her team evaluated more than 100 cases of child abuse each month. Experiencing burnout and compassion fatigue was a foregone event. In spite of her forty-five years of Zen practice, she “fell into . . . distressing states of heart and mind.” She delved deep into the causes of burnout, and this tremendously helpful book is a result. The Covid pandemic makes it even more valuable now.

For medical professionals, highly distressing events occur often. Chozen Bays’ hospital chaplain called it “Chronic Acute Stress.” Her advice was to find means of spiritual support. This book gives us what Chozen Bays calls “an armamentarium of mindfulness practices and a regular meditation practice.”

Sooner or later, medical professionals find the joy draining out. Consequently, it is important to be aware of what is happening. The practices in this book provide the means, such as “Wash your mind as you wash your hands” and “Breathe as you walk from one room to another.” Chozen Bays encourages medical professionals to learn to take care of themselves in daily activities: commuting (breathe as you wait at a stop sign), waiting in a cafeteria line, or taking the first sips of coffee (be aware of the first three sips). Mindfulness of three breaths at any opportunity can be refreshing and can strengthen your resolve.

Chozen Bays’ book is divided into eight chapters, devoted to an introduction to mindfulness meditation practice for healthcare professionals; understanding our inner critical voice; insights into why meditation is helpful for the body-heart-mind complex; practices for connecting with yourself (the person we neglect most); practices for connecting with your patients; guided meditations; rescue remedies for times of urgent need (4-7-8 relaxation breathing, breathing peace, gratitude practice, and mindful self-compassion), and forming support groups. A rich section at the end of each chapter contains references, additional readings, and resources.

Each practice comprises five sections: “The Practice,” “Reminding Yourself,” “Discoveries,” “Deeper Lessons,” and “Final Words.” Loving-kindness on the way to or from work is easy to integrate in one’s life. The practice section teaches us to silently say, “May I be free from fear and anxiety; may I be at ease; may I be happy” in the car as you drive to work and then extend that wish to others. A reminder would be to put a Post-it saying “loving-kindness” or “metta” on your dashboard.

Discoveries are understanding or gaining insights into the root causes of anxiety and suffering. Chozen Bays says, “Often, a clue that I need to do loving kindness practice is a sense of dis-ease within.” A deeper lesson is knowing that suffering is inevitable. “The purpose of our life is to learn to relive our own suffering,” she writes, “to completely understand and love our own self, and then to find a way to help other beings or other people who are suffering.” It is not complicated. If someone cuts you off as you are driving, it is just a matter of saying, “May you be safe as you drive like that!” The final word is: “If you don’t show loving kindness to yourself, who will?”

As you read this book, you may be drawn to one particular practice. Embrace it by all means. For those of you who remember Monty Python’s Flying Circus, there is even a “Silly Walking” practice. I recommend that you only do it when no one is looking.

I have four frontline healthcare professionals in my household. I intend to get each their own copy.

Dhananjay Joshi

The reviewer, a professor of statistics, has studied Hindu, Zen, and vipassana meditation for forty years. He reviews regularly for Quest and works as a volunteer in the archives department of the TSA.

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Peacock Angel: The Esoteric Tradition of the Yezidis

Peter Lamborn Wilson
Rochester, Vt.: Inner Traditions, 2022: 272 pp., paper, $22.99.

One of the strangest and most misunderstood religions is the Yezidis, a sect of alleged devil worshippers in Kurdistan in the Middle East.

As one might expect from their reputation as devotees of the Evil One, the Yezidis have been subject to intense persecution from Muslims, particularly in recent decades.

In Peacock Angel, Peter Lamborn Wilson delves into the lore and thought of the Yezidis to cast some light on this much-maligned faith.

The first question is, are the Yezidis in fact worshippers of the Devil? That has to do with how you view their principal deity, Melek Ta’us, the Peacock Angel. Defenders of the Yezidis say that he cannot be identified with the Devil as understood in the Abrahamic faiths. But Wilson writes,

Nowadays, it is fashionable to deny that the Yezidis are “devil worshippers,” either out of pious political correctitude, or to shield them from the wrath of Sunni extremists. I will take issue with denial, first because I will argue that the Yezidis . . . worship daevas [devas]; and second, because I am convinced that Melek Ta’us “is” Azazel or Lucifer, the character sometimes known as Satan, the fallen (arch) Angel, who in the Yezidi telling is pardoned and restored by God to his viceregal position. He is certainly Lord of the World, and bestower of all good, but is himself beyond good and evil.

Wilson explains, “The Yezidis say they believe in one God, but that He is a deus absconditus [an “absconded god”] who has left the work of the universe to his viceregent Azazel” or Melek Ta’us.

Like Lucifer, Melek Ta’us fell but has been forgiven and restored to a high position.

The Yezidis have many other curious features. They are a closed group: you simply cannot convert to Yezidism; to that extent, they are an ethnic group of their own. Furthermore, although they have written texts, their tradition is fundamentally oral. Yezidism is not what Islam would call a “religion of the Book”; in fact “Yezidism . . . rejects the Book. It opposes the Book,” Wilson writes. It even prescribes illiteracy for most of its believers.

Indeed the Yezidi sacred texts did not appear till the late nineteenth century, created, Wilson suggests, as a way of deflecting persecution from the Muslims. But these books do not have the authority of the oral tradition.

Where did Yezidism come from? Wilson suggests that it is descended from Indo-Iranian groups that held out against Zoroastrianism in the first millennium BC, continuing to worship the daevas condemned by Zoroaster.

More recently, Wilson traces Yezidism to one Sheikh Adi ibn Musafir al-Hakkari, born into a noble Arab family, who died c.1162 at around the age of ninety. Like certain heterodox Sufis, he claimed to be one with God (blasphemy in Muslim eyes) and picked up another heretical Sufi idea: that Shaytan (Satan) had been redeemed. Wilson believes that these fringe Muslim sources merged with survivals of the old pre-Zoroastrianism daeva worship to create what is now known as Yezidism.

Many other elements went into this mélange of teachings, one being the doctrine of the seven spirits governing the cosmos, an idea that appears everywhere from the book of Zechariah to the old Orphic mysteries. Whether these gods are beneficent or malign (as the Gnostics, for example, taught) is a subtle question that raises the issue of what is good and what is bad. Many fringe traditions (none of them ever granted mainstream legitimacy in their associated religions) believed in a reversal of good and evil—like a Sufi sect called the Ahl-i Haqq (“people of the truth”), who despised the conventional Muslim sharia (law) to the point of roasting pigs and drinking wine.

Both in his own person and through his alter ego Hakim Bey, Wilson has been holding up the black banner of antinomianism and anarchy for decades, so of course the Yezidis would have an almost irresistible appeal for him.

Nevertheless, an attempt at a sober analysis suggests that Wilson’s portrayal of this mysterious and rejected religion is fundamentally accurate. He does full justice to the differences between the Abrahamic Satan and Melek Ta’us, noting that the latter has both been granted full restoration after his fall and that the deus absconditus has given him the rulership of the world.

Wilson has traveled for decades in the Middle East, making friends and acquaintances among heretical Muslims of all kinds, and his account reflects a deep knowledge of the area and its people, while supplying amusing and instructive anecdotes. His take on the Yezidis is learned, convincing, and enjoyable, and is no doubt the best introduction to this vexed subject.

Richard Smoley

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Rose Paradise: Essays of Fathoming: Gurdjieff, the Mahatmas, Andreev, the Emerald Tablets, OAHSPE, and More

FRANKIE PAULING HUTTON
Murrells Inlet, S.C.: Covenant Books, 2022. 224 pp., paper, $16.95.

Of the symbols appearing throughout history, few have rivaled the rose in prominence. No other flower (except arguably the lotus) has been so celebrated in diverse cultures throughout the world.

In this engaging and wide-ranging encomium, Frankie Pauling Hutton acknowledges the influence of the rose and explores its esoteric and metaphysical aspects. At the outset, she writes, “Careful review and reflection of rose-embracing literature and poetry reveals that the flower in all its perfection is a direct link to the Source of all and everything. For those who have eyes to see, it comes into focus as one of the most long lasting, widely used and beautifully powerful symbols of all time.”

An ongoing contemplation of the rose in its beauty and its symbolic and metaphorical glory leads to spiritual growth and a shift in consciousness which few fully develop in one lifetime, Hutton argues. This growth is possible through deep, disciplined work, as exemplified in the teachings of G.I. Gurdjieff, of which Hutton is a student.

Rose Paradise consists of an introduction and five chapters, the first three of which are drawn from Rose Lore: Essays in Cultural History and Semiotics (2012), a collection of essays by Hutton and others.  Hutton traces the rich history of the symbolism of the rose from the Bible to the writings of Dante, Yeats, Eliot, and others, in social movements and spiritual teachings including Theosophy and Rosicrucianism, and in the writings of Gurdjieff. The first chapter, “Dying Laughing: The Rose from Yeats to Rumi,” explores the rose in the great poetry and literature of the past, using Barbara Seward’s The Symbolic Rose as a starting point.

In the second chapter, “Rose Vignettes: Black Plague to Gulag,” Dr. Hutton surveys familiar names such as Mozart and Nostradamus and introduces us to a diverse group of little-known individuals: German-Jewish poet Rudolf Borchardt developed the garden as a metaphor for spiritual growth. Following World War II, Japanese physician Tomin Harada treated atomic bomb survivors. Introduced to roses by a British officer, he became a rose breeder and peace activist. New Jersey composer Charles Austin Miles wrote hundreds of hymns but is known chiefly for “In the Garden.” Russian writer and mystic Daniil Andreev criticized state power and technology and wrote of world peace in The Rose of the World while imprisoned by the Soviet regime. The vignettes of these individuals, who were aware of the symbolic power of the rose, are among the most moving passages in the book.  Hutton goes on to explore the symbolism of the rose in the developing movement to abolish female genital mutilation, a practice regrettably still common in a number of cultures worldwide.

The third chapter, “Blossom as the Rose in OAHSPE, The Emerald Tablets, and the Holy Bible,” introduces rose symbolism in the obscure work OAHSPE, the Hermetic Emerald Tablet, and Bible passages, notably Isaiah and the Song of Songs. The author compares OAHSPE, a “new Bible” channeled by the nineteenth-century clairvoyant John Ballou Newbrough, with H.P. Blavatsky’s Secret Doctrine.

The final two chapters, “Gurdjieff’s Third World Rose and ‘Okidanokh’” and “Spectre of a Rose . . . Gurdjieff’s Last Teaching,” stress the importance of doing spiritual work through methods including balance, self-remembering, self-observation, and sitting and sensing meditations. We gradually become aware of and overcome our programming and our karma as we progress to higher consciousness through multiple lifetimes.

Hutton discusses Gurdjieff’s major works, including Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson and Life Is Real Only Then, When “I Am,” the I Ching, and the Sufi poem, Attar’s Conference of the Birds, as well as the Mahatma Letters. She also cites other sources and concepts, some familiar to spiritual seekers, others more obscure, and some that are not without controversy.

Through study, effort, and contemplation, the rose blossoms as a profound metaphor, connecting the seen and the unseen, the lower and higher planes, who we are and what we can become. The spiritual path is arduous, “steep and thorny,” and yet must be traveled. Through her unique perspective, Hutton beckons us to continue on this path, stating, “As a symbol, the rose continues to be a marker on the pathway.” Thus appreciated and honored, it becomes our guide and companion as well as a symbol of our higher selves.

Joel Sunbear

The reviewer, a member of the TSA, has also studied and practiced New Thought and other spiritual traditions. A retired counselor and advocate for persons with disabilities, he is a student of sacred geometry in art and architecture.

 

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