Tantra as Experimental Science in the Works of John Woodroffe

Autor(en)

Julian Strube

Abstrakt

John Woodroffe (1865-1936) can be counted among the most influential authors on Indian religious traditions in the twentieth century. He is credited with almost single-handedly founding the academic study of Tantra, for which he served as a main reference well into the 1970s. Up to that point, it is practically impossible to divide his influence between esoteric and academic audiences-in fact, borders between them were almost non-existent. Woodroffe collaborated and exchanged thoughts with scholars such as Sylvain Levi, Paul Masson-Oursel, Moriz Winternitz, or Walter Evans-Wentz. His works exerted a significant influence on, among many others, Heinrich Zimmer, Jakob Wilhelm Hauer, Mircea Eliade, Carl Gustav Jung, Agehananda Bharati or Lilian Silburn, as they did on a wide range of esotericists such as Julius Evola. In this light, it is remarkable that Woodroffe did not only distance himself from missionary and orientalist approaches to Tantra, but he also identified Tantra with Catholicism and occultism, introducing a universalist, traditionalist perspective. This was not simply a "Western" perspective, since Woodroffe echoed Bengali intellectuals who praised Tantra as the most appropriate and authentic religious tradition of India. In doing so, they stressed the rational, empirical, scientific nature of Tantra that was allegedly based on practical spiritual experience. As Woodroffe would later do, they identified the practice of Tantra with New Thought, spiritualism, and occultism-sciences that were only re-discovering the ancient truths that had always formed an integral part of "Tantrik occultism." This chapter situates this claim within the context of global debates about modernity and religion, demonstrating how scholarly approaches to religion did not only parallel, but were inherently intertwined with, occultist discourses.

Organisation(en)

Institut für Religionswissenschaft

Seiten

132-160

Anzahl der Seiten

29

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110664270-006

Publikationsdatum

05-2021

Peer-reviewed

Ja

ÖFOS 2012

603909 Religionswissenschaft, 601023 Globalgeschichte

Link zum Portal

https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/de/publications/tantra-as-experimental-science-in-the-works-of-john-woodroffe(a818efc3-7038-4b07-91bb-bee530242e83).html