Aloha,
Felicia wrote:
> Gerald Yorke was the Dalai Lama's emmissary in the West. I don't know
> which years, however.
Presumably Yorke represented the 14th (current) Dalai Lama, who took
the office in 1950. The 13th Dalai Lama (previous) died in 1933. This
suggests
to me that Yorke would not have pointed the Neo-Pagan Craft founders
towards Tibetan Tantra based on any connection with the Dalai Lama
or the Tibetan government or the one formed in exile.
Do you, Felicia, have any more information about what Yorke's being an
*emissary* involved? Was he doing something for the Dalai Lama personally?
Or was he doing something for the Tibetan government in exile?
> Yorke wrote an essay titled "Tantric Theory" which his family has not
> made publicly available.
> I have published about 30% of the essay in a series of posts to my
> blog, placing the text
> in no particular order, if anyone is interested. The essay is,
> unfortunately, undated.
> We already know Aleister Crowley referred Gerald Gardner to Gerald
> Yorke for tutelage.
> It is possible that Yorke provided Gardner with a copy of the essay or
> instructed Gardner
> regarding Tibetan Tantrism. However, AFAIK the essay was not among
> the items in the Gardner
> witchcraft museum collection. Otherwise, I have no doubt it would
> have been published all
> over the web, by now.
It appears to me that even if Yorke did instruct Gardner about Tibetan
Tantrism, Gardner didn't draw a lot explicitly from Tibetan sources. To
the extent that he intended to promote Craft as Western and English in
character, this makes sense to me.
The bits of Yorke's essay on Felicia's blog, incidentally, are worth
looking at.
Musing Magic & Colonialism! Rose,
Pitch
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