LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Annie Besant: Life
built 230 days ago
Annie Besant, born on 1 October, 160 years ago, was one of the world’s great teachers—an accomplished instructor and a master educator. Throughout her life, she advanced the cause of learning, both exoteric and esoteric.
Source:
Because it can be reasonably proposed the Annie Besant was an initiate of the third degree, the “fixed stars” would be of particular importance. The stars represent the solar dimension of life, and come into greater prominence with the solar part of man (the soul) has taken a dominating position, as it does at the third initiation.
Source:
Interpreting her own life or explaining how she re-evaluated her own self, Annie Besant's activity was remarkable as an orator. She had experienced it for the first time, in 1873, from her husband's pulpit in the empty, lonely church, as she liked "to try how it felt" (
Source:
Annie first tasted the forbidden fruit of doubt while passing through her High Church phase. She set out to throw her mind back to the original events of Holy Week in order to relive them for herself. To aid her efforts, she tried to produce a single table of happenings out of the four gospels. Imagine her horror when she discovered, as many had before her, that the gospels contained disparities, that the gospels could not be harmonised. After a brief time of confusion, she quelled her doubts by telling herself God had placed inconsistencies in the gospels as a test of faith. She settled down to her old life of sacrifice to, and service of, Christ.
Source:
The child finally recovered but those weeks of anguish left a deep impression on Annie `s mind. She was transforming into an atheist and her personal belief in Christ ... changed .How could a good God tolerate pain and evil in the world she questioned. She saw suffering of the poor, the state of her mother whom she dearly loved, and how she had been defrauded by a lawyer she trusted, how she ran into debt, her own cheerful life turned into bondage and now the torture of the tiny innocent baby, all these events disillusioned her. She started to question the dogmas of the Church sense of outrange she felt, made her lose faith in Christianity. She became a rebel against the churches and finally a non- believer in God.
Source:
This essay examines the intellectual coherence of Annie Besant's life in such a way as to explore the rise of New Age thought in its relation to the Victorian crisis of faith. Scholars typically present Besant's life in terms of a series of commitments to incompatible movements, notably secularism, socialism, and theosophy. They explain her involvement in these movements by reference to her emotional needs, not to beliefs she held for reasons that made sense to her. In contrast, this essay suggests her life was a quest for truth, where the requirements she placed on the truth arose from her early break with Christianity, and where her social situation placed constraints on the sorts of movements through which she might pursue her quest. From this perspective, New Age thought appears as an intelligible response to the same crisis of faith that underlay much Victorian secularism.
Source:
MORE ABOUT
Life