British Orientalism and Hindu Tantra scholarship

Arthur Avalon (Sir John Woodroffe)

1865 – 1936

Sir John George Woodroffe was a British judge at the Calcutta High Court who, writing under the pseudonym Arthur Avalon, translated and published over twenty Sanskrit Tantric texts and became the foremost Western expositor of Shakta Tantra. His works — including The Serpent Power (1919) and the 22-volume Tantrik Texts series — introduced Kundalini yoga, chakra theory, and Tantric philosophy to Western esoteric audiences for the first time in accessible scholarly form. His translations shaped how twentieth-century Western occultists, Theosophists, and New Age practitioners understood and appropriated Hindu Tantric practice.