Sir John Woodroffe (1865–1936), also known by his pseudonym Arthur Avalon, was a British Orientalist whose work helped to unleash in the West a deep and wide interest in Hindu philosophy and Yogic practices.

Early life

Born on December 15, 1865 as the eldest son of James Tisdall Woodroffe, Advocate-General of Bengal and his wife Florence, he was educated at Woburn Park School and University College, Oxford, where he graduated in jurisprudence and the Bachelor of Civil Law examinations.

In 1890, He moved to India and enrolled as an advocate in Calcutta High Court. He was soon made a Fellow of the Calcutta University and appointed Law Professor there. He was appointed Standing Counsel to the Government of India in 1902 and two years later was raised to the High Court Bench. After serving for eighteen years in the bench, he became Chief Justice of the Calcutta High Court in 1915. After retiring to England he became Reader in Indian Law at the University of Oxford, and finally moved to France in his retirement, where he died in 1936.

Sanskrit Studies

Alongside his judicial duties he studied Sanskrit and Hindu philosophy and was especially interested in the esoteric Hindu Tantric Shakti system. He translated some twenty original Sanskrit texts, and under his pseudonym Arthur Avalon. He published and lectured prolifically on Indian philosophy and a wide range of Yoga and Tantra topics. As TMP Mahadevan wrote in the foreword to Woodroffe's Garland of Letters: "By editing the original Sanskrit texts, as also by publishing essays on the different aspects of Shaktism, he showed that the religion and worship had a profound philosophy behind it, and that there was nothing irrational or obscurantist about the technique of worship it recommends.

Serpent Power and Garland of Letters

Woodroffe's The Serpent Power – The Secrets of Tantric and Shaktic Yoga, is the source of many modern Western adaptions of Kundalini yoga practice. It is a philosophically sophisticated commentary on, and translation of, the Satcakra-nirupana ('Description of and Investigation into the Six Bodily Centres') of Purnananda (dated c.AD 1550) and the Paduka-Pancaka ('Five-fold Footstool of the Guru'). By the term 'Serpent Power' Woodroffe is referring to the release within an individual by yogic meditative techniques of energy with the capacity to evolve consciousness so that it experiences ecstasy beyond the world of duality or forms.

Woodroffe's Garland of Letters analyses the non-dualism (advaita) philosophy of Saktism from a different starting point - the evolution of this world from Supreme Consciousness. It is not a translation but a distillation of Woodroffe's understanding of the ancient texts and the philosophy of those who implement their meditative techniques to achieve samadhi. He writes: "Creation commences by an initial movement or vibration (Spandana) in the Cosmic Stuff, as some Western writers call it, and which in Indian parlance is Saspanda Prakriti-Sakti. Just as the nature of Cit or the Siva aspect of Brahman [Supreme Consciousness] is rest, quiescence, so that of Prakrti [matter] is movement. Prior however to manifestation, that is during dissolution (Pralaya) of the Universe Prakrti exists in a state of equilibrated energy.... It then moves... [t]his is the first cosmic vibration (Spandana) in which the equilibrated energy is released. The approximate sound of this movement is the mantra Om.