Word: besant
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...Jazz Singer Al Jolson, son of a cantor, received his early training in rhythmic, highly-colored Chassidic chants. † Last week Dr. Holmes listed the "ten greatest women of today," as follows: Jane Addams, "greatest among modern women"; Theosophist Annie Besant; Catherine Breshkovsky, "Grandmother of the Russian Revolution"; Scientist Mme Marie Curie; Anarchist Emma Goldman; Helen Keller, "most perfectly triumphant of women"; Poetess Edna St. Vincent Millay; Mme Sarojini Naidu, "first among Indian women"; Margaret Sanger, "indomitable advocate of birth control"; Authoress Sigrid Undset...
Said her friend, the late Journalist William Thomas Stead: "She could not be the bride of Heaven, and therefore became the bride of Mr. Frank Besant. He was hardly an adequate substitute." But Annie Besant did not long remain the compliant wife of a Victorian country vicar...
...atheism was not enough. Still seeking, Mrs. Besant became a Socialist, joined the Fabian Society, and organized the first successful strike among English working women. One day she reviewed a big two-volume book, The Secret Doctrine by Mme H. P. Blavatsky. It excited her; she went to meet the author, succumbed to Theosophy. Her rise as usual was rapid. Long secretary of the Society, at 60 she was made president. Theosophist headquarters are at Adyar, Madras, India, and there Mrs. Besant has lived off & on for 40 years. Considering herself a Hindu by adoption, she early championed Indian nationalism...
...knows Mrs. Besant as sponsor of Jiddu Krishnamurti, much-touted Theosophist Messiah, who recently went back on his backers by announcing that organization is wrong, individuality best. An apocryphal story (which Biographer Williams does not include) tells how Mrs. Besant tried to get Krishnamurti into Oxford. Applying first to the Warden of New College (the late famed Canon William Archibald Spooner), she described her charge as an incarnation of God. The Warden blenched, categorically refused to admit such a Presence, which might prove embarrassing to the other undergraduates. The Master of Balliol shook his head regretfully, said they...
Theosophy theoretically has no dogmas, is defined by Mrs. Besant as "the body of truths which form the basis of all religions and which can not be claimed as the exclusive possession of any." It has three Objects: "1) To form a nucleus of the universal brotherhood of humanity without distinction of race, creed, sex, caste or color. 2) To encourage the study of comparative religion, philosophy and science. 3) To investigate unexplained laws of nature and the power latent in man." But Theosophists believe in many a dogmatic mystery, among them reincarnation. Mrs. Besant in previous incarnations has been...