It Had to Happen (1936) – New York Times (link to full article)
Review of the 1936 film “It Had to Happen” wherein the main character is referred to as an “Omnipotent Oom,” indicating the degree to which Bernard was infused into the popular culture of the 1930s.
The Great Oom: The Improbable Birth of Yoga in America, by Robert Love
Book review by Mugs McConnell, with a shout out to this site. Thank you!
An article in Elephant Journal notes Love’s book as one of many in 2010 that explores the history of Modern Yoga.
Then BOOM. Suddenly, last year, three books on the subject appeared: Robert Love’s The Great Oom, Stephanie Syman’s The Subtle Body, and Philip Goldberg’s American Veda. These meticulously researched, highly informative histories cover similar historical terrain, but without too much overlap. Together, they offer an incredible new resource for those interested in tracking the on-the-ground evolution of American yoga.
In the wide wide world of yoga things can sometimes be very strange indeed.
Mom and her friends pose for a class shot
Pierre bernard in his Library at the Clarkstown Country Club
Yoga and the Great Oom…Nice interview with Bob Love on ABC Radio Australia
In the below video [1:13-1:29] you will see Pottery Barn style expert Jeffrey Moss, roaming a vast and unusual garden called Lotusland, in search of inspiration for designs that may one day land at your local mall. So how does this relate to Omnipotent Oom? Ganna Walska, the genius behind Lotusland was married to Theos Bernard when she moved to Santa Barbara, California and began liquidating her fabulous jewels to buy exotic and rare Bromeliads to plant on the grounds of her estate. They later divorced but that is another story, just one of the many offshoots of the amazing tale of the Great Oom.
While it may be true that:
“In 1963, for the first time, the Dalai Lama allowed a Westerner, Desjardins, to film the heart of the Tibetan tradition.”
See Theos Bernard Collection below.
Theos Bernard Collection
East Asian and Bancroft Libraries – Univ. of California Berkeley
This collection is a rich resource for the study of all aspects of Tibetan culture that were documented by American explorer and scholar Theos Bernard at a time when the Tibetan government maintained a strong isolationist policy. In 1937, Bernard spent several months in Tibet, where he was granted unprecedented access to monastic practices in temples. He took thousands of photos and shot 20,000 ft. of 16 mm film, recording Tibetan civilization at the height of its development and before the Chinese invasion of 1949 and subsequent Cultural Revolution had destroyed it. As well as the pictorial material and personal archives, the Bernard collection includes extraordinary museum pieces–bronze statues, paintings, mandalas, prints on cloth, traditional clothing, implements and other items. The collection is housed in several libraries and museums around campus.
We are in the process of scanning the entire Vira Sadhana: International Journal of the Tantrik Order Vol. 5, No. 1, published by the Tantrik Order in America in 1906. There are few extant copies of this amazing journal available in the world. We happen to be lucky enough to have been given one years ago. We have been asked many times over the years where a person might obtain a copy and sadly have never had an answer, unitl now.
Click the cover image to display the first 10 pages of Vira Sadhana in PDF format.
Vira Sadhana, as decribed in The Subtle Body: The Story of Yoga in America by Stefanie Syman.
“You can see Bernard’s debt to practical occultism most clear in volume 5, no. 1 of International Journal of the Tantrik Order: Vira Sadhana, first published in 1906. Running nearly two hundred pages, the journal was no mere prop in Bernard’s order. For more than three decades it was the T.O.’s touchstone and textbook.”
“The journal was bound in red, with the T.O symbol stamped in gold on the cover. Over time, there were several covers, including a red silk one. The frontispiece is a photograph of the moon, which according to the caption represented “the abode of the Tantrik God, Siva, (Mahadeva) with the Siddhas as the Moon.”
“Inside the editors reprinted a mangled verse of Emerson’s “Brahma.” as well as citations from various encyclopedias and the works of Rudyard Kipling, Sir Monier Monier-Williams, Max Muller, Schpenhauer and Victor Cousin, who had influenced Emerson. All of these great men concurred – Tantrism was a “divine science,” and Tantriks are masters of the Veda. The concensus was largely a fiction, the product of the editors’ quotation.”
“The journal also published selections from a host of different tantric texts, including one on Hatha Yoga, titled “Tantrik Yoga: Texts Requiring an Initiate to Unravel and Expound” a portion of the Maha Nirvana Tantra and a “Hymm to Siva.”
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