James Woodroffe was Advocate-General of Bengal and Legal Member of the Government of India, a Justice of the Peace, and a Knight of St. Gregory.

John was educated at Woburn Park School and the University College, Oxford, where he took second classes in jurisprudence and the Bachelor of Civil Law examinations.

After mentioning this to his assistant, he was informed that a "tantrik sadhu" had been hired to perform a mantra outside the courthouse to "cloud his mind" in favor of the defendant.

He translated some twenty original Sanskrit texts and, under his pseudonym Arthur Avalon, published and lectured prolifically on Indian philosophy and a wide range of Yoga and Tantra topics.

[citation needed] His choice of the name Arthur Avalon was due his initiation into the western equivalent of eastern tantra, the secretive Celtic religion which worships in secret within many British Churches, which has Arthur, with the nine sisters of Avalon in place of the ten incarnations of Vishnu, the nine incarnations of Durga, or the ten Mahavidyas as within other tantrik systems.

[5] Moreover, Taylor (2001: p. 148) conveys the salience of this magical literary identity and contextualises by making reference to western esotericism, Holy grail, quest, occult secrets, initiations and the Theosophists: "This is quite important to know, for here we have a writer on an Indian esoteric system taking a name imbued with western esotericism.