Brill Publishing has posted a chapter from Jessica A. Albrecht’s Subtle Energies in Therapy, Spirituality, Arts, and Politics. This chapter looks at work of sexual martyr Ida Craddock (a member USGL’s Order of the Eagle) and Frances Swiney. Be forewarned among other things it examines their utilizing the crackpot theory of eugenics which later was central to Nazi Germany’s concepts of racial purity which led inevitably to the slaughter of some six million Jews as well as Gypsies, Gays and other “undesirables.”
This chapter examines the work and writings of the Theosophists Frances Swiney (England) and Ida Craddock (USA) in the historical context of first wave feminism, sexual reform, and eugenics. It will show how both used tropes and themes of those contexts for their own argumentations and actions, especially their efforts to educate the youth. Notably, both used the concepts of vital forces and energies to combine esoteric receptions of ‘Eastern religions’ and Yoga with eugenics thought and women’s sexuality. Because of personal as well as political reasons, Swiney and Craddock used the notions of vital forces, energies, yoga, and sexuality to find answers that their Christian faiths could not provide. Their writings do not criticize Christianity but expand it along the lines of sexual reform and social purity. This illustrates the way in which biographical research challenges the ways in which the study of esotericism and religion conceptualize their fields, and shows how a focus on gender and racialization can shed new light on the relationship between science, religion, and esotericism.
https://brill.com/display/book/9789004736221/BP000025.xml?body=contentSummary-133844
