Hi everybody!

I am starting a new area, where one Theosophical website will be highlighted at a time. Today I will take a look at katinkahesselink.net

http://www.katinkahesselink.net

I took a look at the site, and I was overwhelmed at the amount of information on the site! At the end of this post, I will put a list of only the books and articles on the site. (there seems to be much more....)

Katalinka, how has your site been received? Which part of your site is most active?


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katinkahesselink.net -- Contents:

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(Edited. The list of 177 names had been deleted as too long! Well done, Katinka)

The katinkahesselink.net website also has a monthly e-zine, called Lucifer7. Here is the e-zine for August 2006

http://lucifer7.katinkahesselink.net/i/2006/8.html

Hi,

I'm honoured to be the first in the spotlight, thanks.

My website gets about 5000 pageviews a day, and the numbers keep growing yearly (though there is also always a summer lag, when the Dutch are mostly away on holiday). The visitors are split roughly fifty-fifty between the Dutch and the English pages, which may give you something of an idea on the relative popularity of the website in Dutch.

As far as specific pages go, I think I'll only cover the English stuff, since this is an English language forum.

The most popular subject by far in the English section (indeed overall) is on Jiddu Krishnamurti. Since I've recently grown more worried over the effect of his teachings, which though in many ways valuable, also seem to lead some people astray, I added an article on Krishnamurti and theosophy. I'm not deleting the pages in general as I've personally learned so much from Krishnamurti, that it would be wrong just to delete it. Also, his work is a very good antidote (spelling?) to tendencies to over-intellectualize theosophy, for instance. There are other psychological aspects of spirituality that his teachings work very well for as well.

As far as page-views for individual pages goes, I haven't checked in a while, but the last time I did, my spiritual quotes section did very well.

My more strictly theosophical pages, which number in the few hundreds I think, also do very well. As a whole they get more visitors than the spiritual quotes do, though each individual page gets far less. In total though they get just about half the amount Krishnamurti gets. So that's Modern Theosophy, theosophical themes

An individual page that keeps getting a lot of visitors, is one of high ethical value: bodhisattva vows. It's a collection of versions of the Bodhisattva Vow, the vow Bodhisattvas make to 'bless and save humanity', before full enlightenment. It's stock and barrel Mahayana Buddhism, but also very evident in Blavatsky's Voice of the Silence, so I'm very glad it's popular. After all, motive is very important and this means a large group of people is at least thinking about that issue.

Toltoy's story: How Much Land Does a man Need? is an odd man out. Blavatsky rightly spoke highly of Tolstoy and this story is absolutely great - basic ethics, yet a good read as well. The sort of thing I look for in my various collections of spiritual stories and jokes that provide a lighter tone to my website. This is also evident in another popular page, my
Sufi jokes and stories.

My website has material from various spiritual traditions, theosophy in the strict sense obviously, but also Sufism (Islamic mysticism) and Fourth Way (Gurdjieff and his students), Buddhism and lately Alternative Christianity. For me that's part of the practical aplication of the second object of the Theosophical Society which is after all to study and compare various religions, philosophy and science. Since religion is my major fascination I stick to that.

Though I have all kinds of stuff on my website, my main focus is spiritual growth and whatever helps with that. I do have a small section on theosophical metaphysics, but that never grows, whereas my various sections on spiritual growth (one in Buddhism and one in Theosophy, as well as most of the Sufism and Fourth Way subsite) keep on growing.

One section of my website that gets me positive feedback from a specialist-crowd is my Eclectic Theosophical History website. I want to mention it, because just today I added a paper on the influence of theosophy and the TS on the world. If any of you feel I've made mistakes, or have people or organisations to add, please do. I've also added a paper on Colonel Olcott and his impact on Sri Lanka and its Buddhist revival.

Mostly I try to cater to various levels of expertise. I have introductory material on theosophy, the spiritual quotes I just mentioned and articles on karma and reincarnation all of which cater to those unfamiliar with or new to theosophy, but I also have stuff that goes (sometimes much) deeper than that, for instance the historical stuff. I've organised the website by theme, as the above exposition shows, but there is also a contents-page which lists (nearly) all English language articles, from which the first post of this thread has a copy: http://www.katinkahesselink.net/other/c/contents.htm

My sitemap lists all the subjects I've organised my website around.

My newsletter Lucifer7 keeps those interested informed on what's new on my website, as well as providing articles relevant to those interested in my website. I'm particularly proud of a recent article, a reply to a question, on Annie Besant and the Indian Caste system in which my interest in Theosophical History is also apparent. Though to be honest it was researched mainly online - so much of Besant's writings is online these days that it was very easy to find quotes that give her opinion on the caste-system.
This aspect of the internet never ceases to amaze me and I am very glad to be a part of that.

Oh, and now that I am in the spotlight, may I add that the website is open to submissions of articles, both new ones and digitalized older ones.

Katinka,

I was only too happy to pick your site for the first Spotlight because it is so impressive. Thank you for all your links, now people can go through and really get a feel for what you have put together. (My description failed miserably to describe what you have accomplished.) I am a webpage designer, and I can only marvel at the time you have spent formatting your webpage.

You said,

"Since I've recently grown more worried over the effect of [Krishnamurti's] teachings...."

--> Really? Can give give some examples of what worries you?

Again, your website is impressive, and it is one that needs to be recommended to all Theosophists on the internet.

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Need spelling help?

http://www.spellcheck.net/

[this is assuming you meant that quote personally]
If you find spelling mistakes on my website, please tell me about them. :huh: As for the post above, I was just not paying attention to spelling that much.

In Katinka's Lucifer7 online magazine she is grumbling about the disappearance of the Three Objects from the Wheaton TS. I looked at their website - http://www.theosophical.org/society/intro/index.html and found the Three Objects there still. But it is odd that at the top of the page & thus coming before the 3 Objects, is this Mission statement, which are just the Objects reworded in a limp manner.

Hi,

I certainly did not mean it to say that the three objects had disappeared. Nor did I say that (rereading it now).

This is what I said:

I was in Wheaton this summer and found that they had cards (as in business-cards - in themselves a good idea) with this 'mission statement' on it. The three objects are thus de facto downplayed. The main point of my article isn't to protest that they got rid of the Three objects (they didn't) but that the mission statement is seriously lacking one element of the three objects: brotherhood, or fellowship or whatever you want to call it that links people together despite differences.