Thread by @HindooHistory

THREAD

Excerpts from an abridged version of Mabel Potter Daggett’s essay titled “The Heathen Invasion of America” published in 1911 in the Hampton-Colombian Magazine: 1/

#HindooHistory

“Yoga, that Eastern philosophy, the emblem of which is the coiled serpent, is being disseminated in America. Literally yoga means ‘path’ that leads to wisdom. Actually, it is pricing the way that leads to domestic infelicity and insanity and death” 2/

“It was the Congress of Religions, at the Chicago World’s fair, in 1893... they arrived silken clad and sandal shod, to prove an attraction that outshone the plain American variety of minister in a frock coat and white tie.” 3/

“On the banners of many of these cults is emblazoned the serpent that affects the onlooker as a startling reminder of the evil that entered Eden” 4/

“The yoga class is like the Browning class, or the Shakespeare class, and is the direct means by which a Swami reaches the public.... it is the promise of eternal youth that attracts woman to yoga, the promise which is found intertwined with most pagan religions” 5/

“Further record of the devastation that follows in the wake of the trailing robes of the ‘masters’ from the East may be read day to day in the newspapers...” 6/

“The imported religions of the Orient that sow the subtle seeds of destruction are offered to the uninitiated as beautiful philosophies. On the surface they are that. But they are inevitably sprung from the soil of paganism and are tinctured with its practices” 7/

“It is not that the Swamis bring with them the hideous images worshiped at every roadside shrine in India. Here and there, it is true, a little known Buddha or a green jade Krishna has appeared in an American home” 8/

“A greater menace than that of image worship lurks in the teachings of the Hindu mystics. The casual observe will not discover it. Only those who reach the inner circles become acquainted with the mysteries revealed to the adepts...” 9/

“The descent to heathenism is by such easy stages that the novice scarcely realizes she is led. How many are followers of the bee gods it is difficult to estimate with exactness...” 10/

“Baba Bharati, the other day, in a newspaper interview, boasted of his 5000 converts in this country, the majority are women. Baba Bharati is that Hindu who is more selective in his heathenism than are the Vedantists” 11/

“There is no more horrible idol in the Hindu pantheon than the figure of Kali. She is represented as a nude, black woman, dancing on the body of her husband, the god Siva” 12/

“It is the Hinduism that reaches in the wide span from this Heathen idolatry to the heights of the Bhagavad Gita that has brought to America the yoga philosophy... it is not the worship of images of stone and wood that constitutes the gravest peril...it is the worship of men” 13/

“What has paganism done for the women of the East that the women of the West want aught with it? Woman’s position in India is the most degraded of anywhere in the world...” /end