culture, subculture and counterculture - Facultatea de Litere

DYNAMICS OF INTRA-GROUP RELATIONS:
SYMBOLS USED BY THE THEOSOPHICAL GROUPS
IN EASTERN EUROPE
ANITA STASULANE, JANIS PRIEDE
Daugavpils University, Latvia
There are many factors which constitute a subcultural group, but symbols and
shared ideas are by far the most important. Since a symbol is a specific factor in
a group formation, we began our quest for the better understanding of the intragroup
relations by looking more closely at the symbols used by the theosophical
groups in different countries of Eastern Europe. Therefore this article examines:
(1) the source of the theosophical symbols, (2) the characteristics of various
kinds of symbols used by the theosophical groups in Eastern Europe, (3) the
dynamics of intra-group relations.
1. The source of the theosophical symbols: H. P. Blavatsky and the Roerichs
A symbol plays an important role in the theosophical doctrine. After
noticing that the religious and esoteric traditions are rooted in symbols,
theosophists elaborated their own symbols. According to Helena Petrovna
Blavatsky (1831-1891), Theosophy or Divine Wisdom is the accumulated
wisdom of the ages. She stressed that occult symbols were recorded on a few
pages of geometrical signs and glyphs, because the ancients, who were in
possession of true teachings, knew that nothing could be preserved in human
memory without some symbol. Therefore from the very beginning of Aeons, the
Mysteries of Nature were recorded in geometrical figures and symbols.
(Blavatsky 1888: 612) Moreover, The Theosophical Glossary explains that
symbolism is “the pictorial expression of an idea or a thought. Primordial
writing had at first no characters, but a symbol generally stood for a whole
phrase or sentence. A symbol is thus a recorded parable and a parable a spoken
symbol.” (Блаватская 1994: 404)
Theosophists teach that the universe came into existence through an
evolutionary process, that everything in the universe is an expression of the
universal Oversoul. This immutable source is the origin “of force and of all
individual consciousness, and supplies the guiding intelligence in the vast
scheme of cosmic Evolution” (Blavatsky 1952: 188) – spiritual, intellectual, and
physical. So theosophists attribute the idea of evolution that was very popular in
the 19th century to all dimensions of the world: everything is subordinated to the
universal law of cycles. Thus, the idea of evolution penetrates the theosophical
doctrine: every notion is closely connected with this tenet. A symbol is not an
exception.
In The Secret Doctrine, H. P. Blavatsky gives some indication of the
importance of symbols in raising our consciousness, as they convey something
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