Arthur Avalon
From SourceryForge
"Arthur Avalon" was was the pen-name of Sir John Woodroffe (1865-1936), judge of the High Court of Calcutta and Professor of Law at the University of Calcutta. At a time when many western orientalists considered Tantra to be little more than a 'supersititious degeneration' of Vedic orthodoxy, Woodroffe was keen to demonstrate that Tantra was a philosophically sophisticated system in its own right, and with the aid of his translator, Atal Bihari Ghose, published a series of books presenting tantric ideas for a western audience.
According to John Mumford, Woodroffe became interested in Tantra from an incident at court. It is said that one day he had great difficulty concentrating on the case before him, and one of his servants informed him that a tantric sadhu had been employed by the defendant to sit outside the courthouse and chant mantras to cloud his thoughts. Outside, Woodroffe found an ash-covered sadhu chanting a Sanskrit litany. The Indian Police drove the sadhu away and Woodroffe instantly felt his mind clear, and moreover, instilled in him a desire to find out more about Tantric practices.
The most influential of these books is The Serpent Power - a translation and commentary of the sixteenth-century Sat-Cakra-Nirupana Tantra - from which arises the most popular conception of the 7-Chakra system. Woodroffe also appears to have been the source for the often-quoted relationships between chakras and the western anatomical glandular system. The Serpent Power is probably the primary text from which the majority of 'popular' western New Age/Occult appropriations on Kundalini arises.
Woodroffe's published works include:
- The Serpent Power
- Shakti & Shakta
- Hymns to the Goddess
- Tantra of the Great Liberation
- The Garland of Letters
- The Kulanarva Tantra
There is a biography of Woodroffe by Kathleen Taylor: Sir John Woodroffe, Tantra and Bengal: 'An Indian Soul in a European Body?' Curzon Press (2001). ISBN 070071345X
