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21 oktober 2007: “Heidense Feesten” door Leona Collants

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16 december 2007: “Een kennismaking met kinesiologie” door Agnès Lamote

 

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Op 23 september 2007 gaat een Landdag door in het faculteitsgebouw van de Faculteit voor Vergelijkende Godsdienswetenschappen te Wilrijk, gelegen te Bist 164.

Voor meer informatie over dit evenement kunt u terecht op de website van onze zusterloge Loge Witte Lotus, http://wittelotusbelgium.spaces.live.com/. Er wordt gevraagd om vooraf in te schrijven. Een brochure kan bekomen worden op vraag via tvla.be@hotmail.com.

Wij hopen uiteraard om zowel onze leden als sympathisanten te mogen verwelkomen. 

De activiteiten op maandag en woensdag gaan voorlopig niet meer door.

Van zodra deze hernomen worden, zal deze weblog worden aangepast. 

Het programma van studieavonden op dinsdagavond is op dit ogenblik nog in voorbereiding.

Van zodra bekend, zal deze weblog met de juiste informatie worden aangepast. 

Het programma van de zondagochtendlezingen voor Loge Antwerpen is op dit ogenblik nog in voorbereiding.

Van zodra dit bekend, zal deze weblog met de correcte gegevens worden aangepast. 

De Nederlandse tekst van dit verslag is nog in volle voorbereiding. Van zodra deze vertaling beschikbaar is, zal deze gepubliceerd worden.     Visit to the house where H. P. Blavatsky was born Summer  2005

 

 

“Museum centre of HPB and her family”

11, Leningradskaya Street,

Dnepropetrovsk

Ukraine

 

 

1.  Introduction:

Over the last several years, each time when the members of the Theosophical Society in Belgium came to the International Theosophical Centre at Naarden and met there with the members from the Ukraine, a number of them often invited us to come over to visit their country. This was not just a simple invitation by courtesy, but also a very serious business as it later appeared, because it is in that country that the founder of the Theosophical Society, Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, was born.

During the last several years, the political situation in the Ukraine had not been very attractive for travelling and we hesitated to launch ourselves in such an endeavour, and also because the trip did not seem to want to materialize very quickly. This large European country with almost 50 million inhabitants has been going through a period of change, after the Chernobyl disaster in 1986, when near the town of that name a nuclear power station melted down and exploded, causing many deaths in and around the nuclear site and large clouds of nuclear fallout contaminating Central and Western Europe.

The political situation changed suddenly after the demonstrations in the streets of the capital and the consequent change of government, in the winter of the years 2004/2005. Actually the first exchange of electronic messages between Kiev and Brussels, which had as their subject the possibility and programme of a two weeks visit to the Ukraine, started in September/October 2004, which must also have been the time that the political change was preparing to take place in that country.

The idea was to go for three days to the capital Kiev and for another three days to Dnepropetrovsk, where the house of HPB is situated. Furthermore there was a whole week destined for a holiday at the Black Sea, where there are lots of seaside resorts, so called “sanatoria” and sight seeing possibilities on the south coast of the Crimea.

A group of participants, numbering five people, all residents in Belgium undertook this travel experience, which seemed on the one hand like an exploration of the newly opened Eastern European territories after the end of the Cold War and on the other hand like a pilgrimage to the birthplace of Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. None of them spoke or understood Russian, so from the beginning it was agreed, that an interpreter would accompany them during the whole length of their two weeks journey.

The dates for the trip were chosen in relation to the flight scheme of the Ukrainian International Airlines and the possibilities of the participants and their interpreter, who was an English school teacher and member of the Theosophical Society in Kiev.

2. Visit to Kiev (23^rd to 26^th July 2005):

2.1.  23^rd July 2005 – Kiev – The Capital of the Ukraine :

The airplane arrived round midnight at the airport of Kiev, which is situated some 50 Km from the city centre. Kiev is the capital of the Ukraine and has about 5 million inhabitants. Chernobyl, where the nuclear power station melted down, is situated only 80 Km to the north of the capital close to the boarder with Byelorussia.

The flight was a combined one between Belgian Airlines and Ukrainian International Airlines with a Boeing 737 airplane, which with its blue leather seat covers had reminiscences of the old days from the time of Sabena, when this national Belgian airline had bought a number of these planes, just before going bankrupt.

There were no problems during the three hours that we were in the air, and most of the Ukrainian passengers who seemed to be quietly speaking in Russian were in a good mood, probably because they were happy to go home again. I was sitting next to a Danish diplomat, who was stationed for three years in Brussels. We had a very lively exchange of views about the European Institutions and the developments as well as possible future scenarios for the European Political Union.

After going through Customs and Immigration we found our host, who was waiting for us with a mini-bus and driver to take us into the town and to our apartment. She had flowers and our breakfast in a big plastic bag. During the bus trip, we could see that there were many new buildings under construction, so it seemed, that an economic revival had been under way, for several years already.

The apartment was situated in an old building close to the centre of the city next to the Iranian embassy, the office of the European Commission and a German Protestant Church. It was well after midnight, when we arrived at the building, where it appeared that the elevator did not work, so we had to carry our luggage to the fourth floor ourselves. This was a good introduction to the general state of affairs in the country. But it must be said from the beginning, that despite the many inconveniences that were encountered during this trip, the people we met stayed mostly very gentle and helpful.

From the apartment we had a direct view on a gigantic and very dominant building, which had served as the headquarters of the local Supreme Soviet committee. It was a powerful cubical structure in the form of several superposed cubes, which had the appearance of a enormous cake and actually made one think of an oversized children’s tower of blocks with a big five pointed red neon-light star on top of it like the stars on our Christmas trees. As we arrived during a moonlit, but still a rather the dark night, there being less street illumination than we were used to, the building was even more menacing and looked mysteriously dangerous and terrifying. It made an overall impression of a completely tasteless and uninspired art form, which must have been resulted from the thoughts of utter materialism, which were in the minds of those who had decided to put it there. Because we were told that most of the churches were demolished by the soviets, rather soon after the communists came to power, it was clear that, for a couple of generations, this building had been standing on the site where in the old days a big orthodox church or cathedral must have been dominating the city. Our Ukrainian friends told us on several occasions that, during the pre-soviet times, there was a rule, which did not allow for any building to be higher than the highest church tower in the city.

We said good night to our host, who went home, as it was about half past two in the morning (i.e. half past three in Brussels time) and we were glad to go to sleep in our new quarters. The next day we slept a good part of the morning and enjoyed the bathroom and kitchen, which were in a rather old state, but well up to our western standard of comfort. There was even a washing machine, which we did not use, because the vacation had just begun. We decided not to look at the other apartment, which was still available. We had a very good breakfast in the tiny kitchen, which could fit just five at a small table.

By then it was Sunday afternoon and we had lunch in a self-service restaurant at five minutes walk in the direction of the centre. There was a delicious “Borsch”, which is a vegetable soup with cabbage, salads, fried potato slices and much more. After lunch we had a guided tour of the town with a T.S. member as guide, who spoke very good French, and our interpreter, the teacher in English. First we walked along a boulevard, which was free of traffic, because it was Sunday, and which led to the Maidan Square, where the Orange Revolution took place. We were told, that on this boulevard, were the enormous Soviet Building is situated and which was in line with buildings, which were all constructed in the same, heavy Stalinist style, people coming from all over the country were camping for several months during last winter, when sometimes it was freezing down to 15 degrees below zero. Now, there was a big Sunday afternoon crowd enjoying the good weather and relaxing in their liberated city centre. It was a nice sunny day and people were dressed accordingly. They were roller skating, selling souvenirs, riding motorcycles, showing circus acts and generally behaving in a relaxed way, demonstrating that they were happy to be free. We also experienced a general feeling of happiness and joy, while moving around in this crowd.

We saw the old West Gate of the city, the Twin Churches, with their towers facing each other instead of both being oriented in the same direction. The biggest church of the two is Sofia Kievskaya, where lots of couples, just married, were having their wedding photographs taken. A bit further on we visited the oldest site of the city, where its first foundations had been laid by four men, of whom three were brothers. On that high place, overlooking a water stream and a deep valley there stood the beautiful Andreas church with green rooftops and its golden onions above each altar. There we were told, that at the end of the Middle Ages or so, the daughter of a Ukrainian King became Queen of France. So today there seems to be nothing new in Europe and for thousands of years its people have wanted to live together in peace.

In the evening our host accompanied by two other members and an aspirant member of the T.S. took the five of us to a concert with music by Hayden and Schubert. The concert took place in one of the two Roman Catholic churches of the town. It was a rather big Gothic church with two towers and it looked like a small cathedral. The choir and soloists had beautiful voices and the church acoustics were so excellent, that we did not miss one note. The church benches were a bit hard though, but altogether it truly was a very moving experience. We were told, that the Ukrainians are known worldwide for their exceptionally good singing capacities.

That night the town made me think of Athens, probably because its orthodox way of life and organisation. We had supper on our way home at “Traly Valy”, a self service with very delicious traditional national dishes. Two of us had to go back to the cashier, because they had not paid for the drink cups. It was very obvious to everybody, that one should pay one’s debts. A clear example of instant self served karma.

2.2.  24^th July 2005 – Kiev – The National Open Air Museum :

Half past nine this morning our host came to the apartment with the train tickets to Dnepropetrovsk for the day after the next day. Luckily the elevator worked again and it seemed that the repair had been done very early in the morning.

We were informed about the spiritual forces in Ukraine and in Kiev in particular. These were very powerful and had not been used, because of the presence of one dominant religion during hundreds of years. Today, these forces were used in a positive way again, which could be seen in the phenomena like the Orange Revolution, during which some five million people moved through the centre of Kiev and over Maydan Square, the heart of the nation, all with a positive state of mind. This had such an effect, that even the opposing people were not capable to do any harm, as soon as they had arrived in the crowd. This explains also, why Mme Blavatsky was born and raised in this country to later receive and spread the Secret Doctrine.

At 10.30 hrs in the morning our interpreter and two friends, took the five of us in a minibus with a driver for an excursion to the Open Air Museum. The two friends were the same friends, who had come to see us in Brussels after the summer school in the ITC at Naarden one month before. The museum has a surface of a large number of hectares, where there have been brought together the traditional buildings from the different parts of the country. Some of these buildings were already several centuries old when they had been taken apart, transported from their original sites to the territory of the museum and there put together again.

The most impressive building was a farmhouse from the High Tatra of over three hundred years old, of which most of the wooden structure was said to be the original more than one square foot thick beams made out of pine trees. One would like to stay and live there, so good was the feeling of security and being at home once one was in the vicinity of that age old structure.

There were farmhouses, small and big ones, even the original traditional farmhouse of a famous national writer and poet, churches, a pottery, a blacksmith, windmills and even an old wooden school with the house of the teacher inside of it, all with original furniture. The weather was not as good as the day before and now and then, an occasional shower surprised us. The museum was on such a vast territory that one could easily walk around for a whole day, before one would have seen all the buildings and a small part of the multitude of antique objects therein. There were several restaurants, an open-air souvenir market and a primitive theatre for folk dance performances and other events.

All together the museum looked like an enormous park with many trees and open grasslands between the different parcels, on which each region had the buildings of its own typical architecture united in small clusters, looking like little villages. As the day went by, there were more and more people, who came to relax and picnic on the grass and under the trees of the museum. Many wooden picnic tables and benches had been put up to that effect.

We had a vegetarian lunch in one of the restaurants, where the owner tried to speak German with us when we left his place. Our group might have puzzled him, when there were several languages spoken at the same time, i.e. English, French, Dutch, Russian and may be even Ukrainian.

On the way back into town we stopped at a vast exhibition site, constructed in sickening soviet style. The entrance had big columns with golden crowns at the top looking as if they were imported from ancient Greece. The exposition buildings had the same red stars on top of them as the Local Soviet Committee building in the centre of the city and were lacking any really artistic architectural proportions.

We went to do some shopping in a super market, which seemed to be a left over from the old regime. At the entrance there were toilets and also a guarded room, where bags and rucksacks could be left temporarily, which obviously could not be taken into the shopping area itself.

As we continued our way into the city and were waiting at a traffic light we could witness a quarrel between two drivers, who were standing with their cars in the middle of the crossing. One had come out of his car and had opened the driver’s door of the other to teach him a lesson. While the two guys were quarrelling, their female companions got out of their cars and started to get together at several meters distance to confer about the question what to do about this situation. The not so aggressive driver, who had stayed put behind the steering wheel of his car, suddenly gave his aggressor a well-directed punch in the face. This action had as a consequence, that the aggressor stepped back to mind his wounded face and that the other driver could call his female companion. She got back into the car and they escaped safe and sound. The traffic could resume its normal course, after his companion had taken the wounded driver to their car and they also had disappeared.

Although shocked, we were rather amused by this example of local crisis management and excellent problem solving capability. It also could be seen as a perfectly timed example to show us how full of temperament the local population was.

Coming near the centre of the city we could recognise the buildings and saw the Roman Catholic Church, where we had been to the concert the night before.

Back in the apartment we took some rest, washed our clothes in the washing machine, looked for matches and found a lighter, so we could cook our evening meal. It was a very cosy supper that we had in the small kitchen and our mood was really animated in that homely atmosphere, which we experienced there.

We even managed to find new light bulbs, to put in the place of the broken ones. But later we were told, that in the Ukraine these kinds of goods had to be replaced all the time, because the quality standards were very low.

2.3.  25^th July 2005 – Kiev – Pechersk-Lavra (Churches and Monasteries) :

Today, we went to see the Monasteries and Churches complex on the rocky hills to the north of the city along the river Dnieper, where there were also many underground tunnels and caves, in which generations of monks had been dwelling, over a period of some ten centuries. People said, that the tunnels even went as far as Moscow. As we travelled along the road from the city to this complex, we could see that there was a green belt between the road and the river at the left side of the road, while on the right side there were buildings all the way to the complex, which itself was situated on the left side of the road. It was surrounded by walls and had entry gates through which motorcars were not allowed to enter, the whole complex being a pedestrian area.

We went past all the churches and other buildings to a higher point to have a look at the river first. The rocks were rather steep and there was a wide view of the river and the land at the other side of it. These cliffs were obviously of strategically importance for the defence of the city site as well as densely charged with heavy telluric forces.

Then we went for a tour into the tunnels and caves. There we were told, that the monks, who had been living in these caves, in former times, received one meal per week and that most of them died rather quickly. Nevertheless a number of 119 of them had been declared saints. The bodies of many of these saints were behind glass windows inside niches along the sides of tunnels. These tunnels went gradually downhill. Later I concluded, that this must have made the task much easier for the monks who would have had to clean these caves.

After about ten centuries, the King and the Patriarch agreed to put an end to this cave starving ritual and they prohibited it by law. This must have been somewhere during the 19^th century.

When we had to go in a second tunnel, where there were intersections with other tunnels crossing that one, I smelled something burning. “These people still must have strange rituals”, I said to myself. The smell of burning was so heavy, that I became a little upset, until I discovered, that the flame of the candle, which I held in my hand, had set fire to my own beard. There was laughter all over, while I felt rather impressed by the effect of the whole situation upon my personal behaviour. Anyhow, I concluded at the time, that it probably expressed the opinion, that those cultures where the traditional burning of human remains takes place have found a better solution, compared with those cultures where the attachment to the physical is so great, that there still is a tradition of public exposition of these remains.

After the caves, we had a quick look at the rest of the complex, where the main church, which the soviet army had demolished a long time ago, had recently been re-established. The new cathedral looked a bit like a Disney Land creation, not so much charged as a religious sanctuary, but just a reconstruction of the outer form. The trees on the square in front of it were several centuries old and standing there respectfully, they seemed to give a demonstration that the intentions of the demolisher at the time had been directed to churches and not to these other valuable life forms.

We took the bus back into town, where we had dinner in the restaurant close to the apartment. After a short stop over in the apartment, two members of the T.S. took us to their library, where their group regularly came to study. The library is in an apartment, which is close to the football stadium just behind the building where the prime minister was living on the first floor. We spent the rest of the evening with a group of some 15 people, having tea and exchanging experiences about the theosophical work in our respective countries.

2.4.  26^th July 2005 – Kiev – Parks and Boulevards :

This morning everybody was free to sleep, go for a walk into town or whatever one wanted to do or not to do. Some went shopping and some took a rest. I went for a walk to look for the post office and discover the immediate surroundings of the apartment building, which was situated in an old part of the city and itself probably almost a century old. After finding the location of the post office I went to the right in front of our building and took three left turns after considerable distances so as to make a circular movement around the big building with the neon soviet star on top of it. At a distance of two hundred meters uphill I saw the street where there was the presidential office, but where the road was opened for works on the sewerage system like it seemed, so one could not walk through the street in front of this office. Not very far from there was the new office of the former president, who had to leave office last winter, where he worked now for a kind of charitable organisation.

Taking the first turn to the left at the street of the presidential office, I passed in front of a German Protestant Church, which had recently been renovated. The doors of the church were open, but I hesitated to go to have a look inside, because I wanted to continue my discovery and be back at the apartment on time for the excursion to churches and monasteries in the afternoon.

The street started to bend downwards steeper and steeper in the direction of the big avenue, called Kreshchatyk, under which there must have been a canalisation of the water stream, which had formed the valley. The site where the first foundations of the original capital of the medieval kingdom had been laid was on the hills at the other side of the valley. At the end of the street I went through a passage under one of the buildings, which were lining up along the Kreshchatyk. There Maidan Square and the river were to the right, but I turned to the left again, back to the apartment. On Kreshchatyk I was immediately immersed in the crowd of the daily city life. This is said to be the liveliest main street of the Ukraine. There were many people moving about on foot and in the traffic. The shops, terraces and entertainment acts gave the feeling that life here was just the same as in the centre of any other European capital.

At the end of Kreshchatyk I went to the left again and, after cutting a corner by going through a smaller street with lot of commercial activities, I passed in front of the restaurant, where we had gone for lunch on the first day. I felt satisfied to have discovered the city all by myself and took the last turn to the left while the road was going uphill again. Passing in front of the office representing of the EC, I again hesitated to go into that building to say hello, but decided, that nobody was waiting there for me, so I continued and passed in front of the Iranian embassy, which was standing brotherly side to side with the EU diplomatic building. A guard was martially standing on the pavement and did not return my friendly greetings. Everything seemed normal and peaceful that Tuesday morning.

In the afternoon our host took us for a trip to the park where we had a nice walk and consumed an ice cream. After that, we went sight seeing through the town on foot and also with the metro. We saw palaces, the Opera, the University and many other impressive buildings from the 19^th century. The town is a bit chaotic, because of building works all over the place, but the metro between Park and Opera was in a perfect condition, although a bit old fashioned.

At 21.30 hrs we had to go to the railway station to take the train to Dnepropetrovsk. The train was also  old fashioned, but everything was functioning and in good order. The construction of the carriages was very solid and their suspension was excellent, so sleeping was not a problem.

 

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