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HELENA PETROVNA BLAVATSKY

Aryan Theosophical Press
Point Loma, California

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of the Theosoijhical Society in New York in 1875, and

the writing of His Unveiled.

HELENA PETROVNA BLAVATSKY

FOUNDRESS OF THE ORIGINAL THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY
IN NEW YORK. 1875,

THE International Headquarters of which are now at
Point Loma, California

BY KATHERINE TINGLEY

Published by The Woman's International Theosophical League,

International Theosophical Headquarters,

Point Loma, California

CONTENTS

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky Katherine Tingley 1

"Yours Till Death and After, H. P. B." William Q. Judge 9

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky William Q. Judge 11

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky

An Editorial published in the New York Tribune, May 10, 1891 13

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky

A Refutation of Slanders against the Foundress

of the Theosophical Society Iverson L. Harris 15

Incidents in the Life-History of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky 22

H. P. Blavatsky, the Hero H. Travers, M. A. 28

Tributes to Helena Petrovna Blavatsky

By some of her old pupils resident at the International Theo- 32
sophical Headquarters, Point Loma, California

By some of her students and others at the International Theo- 37
sophical Headquarters, Point Loma, California

By some of her students 43

Quotations from the writings of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky

From I sis Unveiled, published in 1877 52

From The Secret Doctrine, published in 1888 58

From The Key to Theosophy, published in 1889 66

From "The New Cycle" 68

From "The Tidal Wave" 74

From The Voice of the Silence 77

From "Is Theosophy a Religion?" 78

Miscellaneous 79

^iC4l52

Theosophy leads to . . . action — enforced action, instead
of mere intention and talk. . . . But no Theosophist has
the right to this name unless he is thoroughly imbued with
the correctness of Carlyle's truism, "The end of man is an
action and not a thought, though it were the noblest," and
unless he sets and models his daily life upon this truth.
The profession of a truth is not yet the enactment of it;
and the more beautiful and grand it sounds, the more loudly
virtue or duty is talked about instead of being acted upon,
the more forcibly it will always remind one of the Dead Sea
fruit. Cant is the most loathsome of all vices.

— The Key to Theosophy, p. 226.

A true Theosophist must put in practice the loftiest moral
ideal; must strive to realize his unity with the whole of
humanity, and work ceaselessly for others.

— The Key to Theosophy, p. 26.

HELENA PETROVNA BLAVATSKY*

By Katherine Tingley

TJELENA PETROVNA BLAVATSKY, the Foundress oj the present
A. J. Theosophkal Movement, is called the 'lion-hearted ' ly her followers,
and I can conceive of no better name for her, because in every act of
her lije there was a superb courage — a courage of a quality which we rarely
hear of except when, under peculiar circumstances, a man is aroused to his
highest motive and most superb effort by some stirring emergency. I mean
spiritual courage, of a quality which marJis one who has realized that he is
essentially divine, which endows him with a measure of knowledge that can
come to him only through his inner nature, which at that moment maizes him
conscious that he is something more than he seems, part of the universal scheme
of life, and in harmony with the wonderful forces of nature. In spite of his
having made mistakes, in spite of having faltered, of having done injustice
to others, once he realizes that he, and every man, inherits the power to be his own
savior and can mal^e his life an expression of divine law, — that very fact will
bring to him a superb courage such as Madame Slav atsl^y possessed in so mar\ed
a degree and which she carried through her whole life.

As Foundress of the original Theosophical Society she brought again to
the world the teachings of Theosophy, the principles of which are as old as the
ages, but which, although so old — having been lost sight of for so many years —
appeared as new, as something very optimistic, something very inspiring, for
all the world's children to receive.

The great purpose of the Theosophical Society, as originated by Madame
Blavatsl^, is to teach Brotherhood. She brought from the storehouse of the past
the great teachings of the Wisdom- Religion, Theosophy, and they have been
preserved by those members who stood faithfully by her and her successors, and

*From stenographic report of an address given in Isis Theater, San Diego, California.

HELENA FETROVNA BLAVATSKY

who have sustained the original Theosophical Society, which is now called the
Universal Brotherhood and Theosophical Society.

She J^new her mission for Humanity. Nothing could throw her aside,
no one could discourage her — the more she was persecuted, the more she Worthed,
and the same is true of William Q. Judge, her successor — with the result that
this Society is today established on a basis of honor and dignity and integrity
that is unassailable, with its World-Center and International Headquarters
at Point Loma, California.

At the time she came to the Western World a great wave of materialism was
sweeping over this country and over all Europe. It was a marl^ed time. The
minds of men were turning away from the possibility of the higher spiritual
thought; they had become weary of creeds and dogmas; they had found so much
professed in the name of religion and so little practised in daily life that in
their despair they had fallen bacl^ upon the power of mere reason as an anchorage,
ignoring and in many instances attaching and seeding to tear down and to
deny the divine principles of life and nature.

Under the divine urge of her soul, Madame Blavats^y came to this country un-
heralded, a perfect stranger. She selected America as the first field of her endeavor,
because she was so imbued with the idea of the liberty that was accorded in this great
country to every Helper of Humanity. She was a Russian and had suffered under
the pressure of the conditions in her country. From childhood she had seen injustice
practised upon the peasants and others in the name of the law. She had ob-
served the appalling contrasts between the enormous wealth of the churches and
the poverty and suffering under the shadow of their very walls. She realized the
insincerity and the unbrotherliness of the age, its materialism and the resulting
disregard of everything which could not be expressed in terms of matter. And so
great were her sympathies for the human race that she selected America, this
'Land of Liberty,' to establish a firm foundation for the teachings of Brotherhood,
so that from America should go out the l^nowledge and the practice of Brotherhood
to all lands and all peoples — even to her own land.

She was well aware then, as many are today, that any effort to reform Russia
from within would only meet with failure; help must be given from without. It

HELENA PETROVNA BLAVATSKY 3

is no speculation on the pari of her students to declare that she had foresight in
regard to the conditions in the world, that she knew not only the needs of the time,
hut the remedy for those needs. How are we to account for the fact that she had
more foresight than others? Why should we select her as an example and pro-
claim her to the world as one of its greatest teachers? One of the best answers
to these questions, one that I have found in my study of her life, is this: if a
man or woman can keep warm the Heart Doctrine in his or her life, and can feel
it a sacred duty to be constantly cultivating the spirit of tolerance, the power of
sympathy will so grow in the nature and in the mind that the higher faculties of the
immortal man, the soul, will come into action more positively and effectively.
The higher part of ones nature is constantly alive in its way, although we may
not have the outer expression, and although the brain-mind may be wording
against it, because of environment and conditions and Karmic seeds that have been
sown — yet it is always there. It was the positive, conscious quality that was so
needed to touch the minds of men — and that quality gave Madame Blavats^y
the foresight and courage to persevere in her work fot Humanity.

Her sympathy grew with the days of her childhood. It was aroused by the
injustice and the insincerity that she saw in the life around her; and even as a
young woman, when not more than sixteen years of age, there was in her mind
and heart and life a superb purpose. She could not have had so great a purpose
had there not been some incentive, not only from the outward things which I have
mentioned, which she saw in her own country, but an incentive of such quality
and foresight that in her heart she realized that all countries needed help according
to their evolution and condition. It was this that carried her through all the
wonderful experiences in her travels in many lands until, in the seventies of
last century, she brought to America this wonderful philosophy of life — Theo-
sophy — and established the Theosophical Society as a nucleus of men and
Women who would work for Universal Brotherhood.

There must indeed have been some unusual conditions that caused this great
woman to leave her home in Russia, where she had position and wealth and
everything that the modern world holds dear, and was already one of the promising
lights in literature and an accomplished musician. She had no selfish motive,
as one can see, for there Was no money nor fame to be gained through her efforts.
She had the foresight to understand humanity and to k^ow that when she took "P
her cross, when she began her search for an answer to the problems of life, when

4 HELENA PETROVNA BLAVATSKY

later as a stranger she came to this great country and dared to speaJ^ openly
the sublime truths of the Ancient Wisdom, Theosophy, she would meet the im-
perfections of human nature and have to suffer her share of persecution as all
other true reformers had suffered in the past — possibly not in the same way,
but that she must suffer, she l^new.

With the picture and history before her of the persecution that all true reformers
had endured, she must hace had a quality of courage far above the ordinary —
/ call it extraordinary. It was courage born of the superb sympathy in her heart;
and with courage came new strength, and she waltzed as one clothed in the
Light. She challenged religious systems, admitting that the essential teachings of
religion were there, but that they were so honeycombed, so shut in, that all humanity
was going awry because it had not the Light, it could not find the Path. Many
great minds here and there in this and other countries were reaching out, seel^ing
to lead the world on material lines, away from even those indefinite lights of the
different religious systems, carrying men away from their moorings, so to speal^,
out into a darl^ness which would have become appalling if it had continued.

Madame Blavatskjy challenged the minds of the time. One has only to read her
boo\s; you need not tal^e my word for it, but fust read her wonderful booths, and
you will see that through her sympathy and courage and her l^nowledge of human
nature, there must have come into her life a quality of erudition, and a power to
apply the remedy to the ills from which humanity was suffering. But what did she
meet with when she came to this lovely country of ours? It maizes one almost
forget that there was ever given us a suggestion of Liberty. Instead of welcoming
her as one who would lift the veil and shed a light upon the ancient teachings which
the churches had so imperfectly presented, which had inspired the life of Christ
and of all the other great Teachers, nearly every religious body criticized her, tore
her life to pieces, so to say, fust so far as they could reach the public through their
control of articles in the newspapers and in the publication of sensational books.
That was the royal welcome that America gave to H. P. Blavats^y, the Friend
of Humanity.

I should not dwell upon this now, if it were not that somehow, fust this hour,
at this time when we as a people are called upon to work ^^'■^ ^^^ hu.nianity to bring
about Permanent Peace, fust now when there are such menacing conditions in the

HELENA PETROVNA BLAVATSKY

World, and there is unrest and despair and discouragement among so many, —
now is the time when Madame Blavatsky should step forth again in all the glory
and inspiration of her unselfish life with the Divine Message of Brotherhood
which she brought to the world!

We have no time to tarry along the way; we have no time for argument; we
need to get down to basic facts; we must study cause and effect. We must realize
why we are now in this state of such unrest; why, as a people, we arc divided;
why there is one class seething help on certain lines, perhaps too forcefully, de-
claring they are oppressed and losing their rights, while there is another class in
our country today sitting in the quietude and so-called peace of their wealth and
prosperity, indifferent to the heart-cry of humanity. And in presenting this
contrast it does not mean that I as a Theosophist, or that any Theosophist, in any
sense, can support anything that is not absolutely in accord with the principles of
Theosophy, that is, which is not absolutely in accord with Brotherhood and Justice.

Surely, now is the very time when, if Madame Blavats^ could be heard and
her message could reach the whole world, she would accentuate the idea of tolerance
— love for one another. It is a time when we cannot afford to waste effort in
criticizing each other. We have our weal^nesses individually and nationally;
hut we have so many things to do, and so much to learn, that we cannot afford
to waste a moment in tearing down anything which has a vital sparli of goodness
in it. If we oppose our brothers unfairly and unjustly we shall reap as we have
sown, and this is what we have done all down the ages and right into these modern
times. We have with us today marl^ed evidences of the mistakes of the past, made
by our ancestors, the product of many of the old teachings — the harvest of the
wrong seeds that have been sown. Foremost of all has been the spirit of unbrother-
liness, which today is, and for ages past has been, the Insanity of the Age. It is
appalling! And yet how many, with their families and the bread-and-butter
question to meet, ta\e time to consider these conditions, even the conditions right
in their own cities? How many realize that crime is increasing, and that the
spirit of injustice is growing even in the name of religion? There are so many
problems of life that are not understood. But one thing which all can do and
which is so much needed, is to throw our whole heart and soul on to that line of
action which PAadame Blavatsky so clearly indicated — to create a New Spirit
of Brotherhood, to cultivate a Sympathy superbly great, and to add to the Courage
of the Soul — not the courage of the world, nor the courage of the mind, nor that

HELENA PETROVNA BLAVATSKY

courage which sometimes comes with just a little quality of selfsercing — none
of these; but the Courage that dares, with a royal quality of daring, to do the
things that are right for Right's sake, for Humanity s sal^e.

If we would do these things, how long, thinly you, would it tal^e to build up our
nation in such a way that a new Light would be ours? And then would come forth
in all its beauty and dignity that splendid divine Sympathy which is in the heart
of every man, and the despair and unrest of the age would die out under the
pressure of our Spiritual Will, our Brotherly Thoughts and Acts, and the great
optimistic Hope which I have spoken of — the Hope that is inspired by the
teachings of Theosophy. Under present conditions we need something a little
more inspiring than the general trend of affairs. Our best writers write well,
our best preachers preach well, our best statesmen do well — all within the limits
of things as they are — but they could do better; so could we, each one of us;
and so could everyone in the world. It is the united effort of all that is needed —
of everyone as a unit in the whole — to call out the power of the Inner Divine Self,
to find the strength of his character and the glory of the Real Life, each one clearing
his mind of all its rubbish, its prejudices, and the pressures that come to lead
him astray, each one walking straight and clean — lil^e little children at the
feet of the Great Law, so to speal^.

I could not seek lo present to you the beautiful thoughts which Madame
Blavatsky taught, which are the same thoughts which the Nazarene and all the
great Teachers have presented down the ages, but are now given in Theosophy
in such a way that the mind of the inquirer finds the foundation, the basis, — ■
/ could not present these to you, except to urge the necessity of putting them into
practice in daily life; for to preach and not to try to lead the life were hypocrisy.
And we have our share of it in this great country of ours. We may preach eter-
nally, we may dream, we may aspire eternally. We may think. ^^ have the will to
do right, but unless we are positively unselfish and courageous in our efforts
for good work, we do little. How can we face the present condition of affairs,
the menacing conditions so near to us, without feeling that somewhere along the
Path we have failed to do our duty to each other? We must know that the condi-
tions that are growing all over the world, conditions of violence and antagonism,
were not born in an hour, nor in a day, nor in a year nor a century. Their
seeds were sown ages ago. But if the great spiritual truths which were given to
man in the very dawn of his history had been kept in all their simplicity, and

HELENA PETROVNA BLAVATSKY 7

creeds and dogmas had had no existence, there would not have been this great
separation in the human family which is everywhere becoming more and more
manifest.

To find the best way to set the Great Wheel of Brotherhood in motion — that
is what we must do. There are many very interesting people, very intellectual,
very energetic — we all kpow such — who would say; "Well, you \now, one
cant do much. The ideas that you present are very beautiful and I admire
them and believe in them, but one cant do much!'' I know better, and I \now that
Madame BlavaisI^, that one woman, who faced the conditions that she did,
coming here among strangers, leaving her home and its protection, bringing her
message of Theosophy to the world, — that she alone was a colossal power, even
at that time, and in spite of persecution and opposition. And today her message
has increased a hundred-fold in its strength and possibilities and is permeating
every department of thought. Sometimes you will hear of great preachers and
speakers, particularly in the Eastern states, putting aside their dogmas and
creeds — putting them aside when expressing their own thought, I mean, for
they are still hemmed in by their theology — but at the grand finale almost al-
ways obliterating what they have said out of the depths of their hearts. Just for a
moment at such times the speaker is himself, he is not trying to mal^e an impression
on the public, his soul has arisen for a moment into the Light, and he utters the
teachings of Theosophy.

You will find Theosophical ideas in romance and in poetry, and all along
the line, but usually only half-expressed and half-heartedly. There are so few
who come out openly as Victor Hugo did in recognition of the truth of Reincarna-
tion as absolutely essential to an understanding of human life. Not many do
this, but if you wish to know more about this subject of Reincarnation, which is
one of the great keys to the solution of the problems of life, all you have to do is to
study the Poets. Sit down for a few hours with Walt Whitman and say if it is
possible that he did not have a glimpse of the higher ideas of life, if he did not
immortalize himself in giving Voice to the principles of Reincarnation. Take
Whittier and the other poets, and you will find glimpses of the same truth as
they had the courage and the daring to express it. The American mind is too
much inclined to blend a few truths with fallacies and absurdities and idiosyn-
cracies, and with popular thought and * New Thought.' Mens minds are so
laden, their mental luggage is so heavy, that the Light of Truth can but rarely
find entrance.

8 HELENA PETROVNA BLAVATSKY

Turning again to Madame Blacaiskys teachings, we find the k^y that will
open the door to the inner and higher nature of man. Holding this k.ey, man
challenges himself; he must enter the chambers of his soul, he must talk, ^^^h
himself; he must unroll the Screen of Time before himself, and see all his past,
and question as to how far he has failed in his duty to his fellows. Then,
with this picture and memory before him, if the heart is right, if aspiration
is there, the soul will come into action and close the door on the past; and he will
hold the lesson in his mind and go forth in new light, in new power, with a quality
of sympathy and courage and an affectionate tolerance which all the world
should have. If only we could be tolerant towards our enemies — but that does not
mean that we must support them in their errors or their weal^nesses or their
unjust acts — it means that We shall be so just in all that We do in protest, and
in all that we do in lifting the veil on what is Wrong, that We shall do no harm,
but we shall show something of the spirit of tolerance and goodwill even in our
protest. For the spirit of criticism, of vengeance, of unbr other liness, intolerance
and force, is a hydra-headed monster — a monster that preys upon humanity,
ever seeding its destruction.

So in presenting to you dear Madame Blavatsky, our great Teacher, it is my
hope to arouse in you such interest that you will seeli to know more about
her and her teachings. Oh! how I wish you could come really to know her! You
would then begin to realize what her message was, you Would see how the condi-
tions of her life led up to her helping Humanity; and then, no matter how your
minds may have been permeated with dogmas and creeds and intolerance in the
past, you would find that som.ething new had been awakened in your heart and
life. It is there in the recesses of your being, and if you desire to be just, to do
right, to live the life and turn this menacing tide of unbrotherliness, you will
seek the Way, find the Light, and reach the Goal, through self-directed effort —
self-directed evolution — for ''the Way to Final Freedom is within Thyself."

DONATED BY

''YOURS TILL DEATH AND AFTER, H. P. B."*

BY William Q. Judge

SUCH has been the manner in which our beloved teacher and friend
ahvays concluded her letters to me. And now, though we are
all of us committing to paper some account of that departed friend
and teacher, I feel ever near and ever potent the magic of that resistless
Hfe, as of a mighty rushing river, which those who wholly trusted her
always came to understand. Fortunate indeed is that Karma which,
for all the years since I first met her, in 1875, has kept me faithful to
the friend who, appearing under the outer mortal garment known as
H. P. Blavatsky, was ever faithful to me, ever kind, ever the teacher
and the guide.

In 1874, in the city of New York, I first met H. P. B. in this life.
By her request, the call was made in her rooms in Irving Place, when
then, as afterwards, through the remainder of her stormy career, she
was surrounded by the anxious, the intellectual, the bohemian, the rich
and the poor. It was her eyes that attracted me, the eye of one whom
I must have known in lives long passed away. She looked at me in
recognition at that first hour, and never since has that look changed.
Not as a questioner of philosophies did I come before her, not as one
groping in the dark for lights that schools and fanciful theories had ob-
scured, but as one who, wandering many periods through the corridors
of life, was seeking the friends who could show where the designs for the
work had been hidden. And true to the call she responded, revealing the
plans once again, and speaking no words to explain, simply pointed them
out and went on with the task. If was as if but the evening before we
had parted, leaving yet to be done some detail of a task taken up with
one common end; it was teacher and pupil, elder brother and younger,
both bent on the one single end, but she with the power and the knowledge
that belong but to lions and sages. So, friends from the first, I felt safe.
Others I know have looked with suspicion on an appearance they could
not fathom, and though it is true they adduce many proofs which, hugged
to the breast, would damn sages and gods, yet it is only through blindness
they failed to see the lion's glance, the diamond heart of H. P. B.

In 1888 she wrote to me privately:

"Well, my only friend, you ought to know better. Look into my life and try to realize it —
in its outer course at least, as the rest is hidden. I am under the curse of ever writing, as the

*Originally published in Lucifer, (London) 1891

10 HELENA PETROVNA BLAVATSKY

wandering Jew was under that of being ever on the move, never stopping one moment to rest.
Three ordinary healthy persons could hardly do what I have to do. I live an artificial life;
I am an automaton running full steam until the power of generating steam stops, and then —
good-bye! . . . Night before last I was shown a bird's-eye view of the Theosophical Societies.
I saw a few earnest reliable Theosophists in a death struggle with the world in general, with
other — nominal but ambitious — Theosophists. The former are greater in numbers than you
may think, and they prevailed, as you in America tvill prevail, if you only remain stanch to the
Teacher's program and tnie to yourselves. . . ."

Such she ever was; devoted to Theosophy and the Society organized
to carry out a program embracing the world in its scope. Willing in the
service of the cause to offer up hope, money, reputation, life itself, pro-
vided the Society might be saved from every hurt, whether small or great.
And thus bound body, heart, and soul to this entity called the Theo-
sophical Society, bound to protect it at all hazards, in face of every loss,
she often incurred the resentment of many who became her friends but
would not always care for the infant organization as she had sworn to do.

Once, in London, I asked her what was the chance of drawing the
people into the Society in view of the enormous disproportion between
the number of members and the millions of Europe and America who
neither knew of nor cared for it. Leaning back in her chair, in which
she was sitting before her writing-desk, she said:

"When you consider and remember those days in 1875 and after, in which you could not
find any people interested in your thoughts, and now look at the wide-spreading influence of
Theosophical ideas — it is not so bad. We are not working merely that people may call them-
selves Theosophists, but that the doctrines we cherish may affect and leaven the whole mind
of this century. This alone can be accomplished by a small earnest band of workers, who work
for no human reward, no earthly recognition, but who, supported and sustained by a belief
in that Universal Brotherhood of which our Teachers are a part, work steadily, faithfully, in
understanding and putting forth for consideration the doctrines of life and duty that have
come down to us from immemorial time. Falter not so long as a few devoted ones will work
to keep the nucleus existing. You were not directed to found and realize a Universal Brother-
hood, but to form the nucleus for one; for it is only when the nucleus is formed that the accu-
mulations can begin that will end in future years, however far, in the formation of that body
which we have in view."

H. P. B. had a lion heart, and on the work traced out for her she had
the lion's grasp; let us, her friends, companions and disciples, sustain
ourselves in carrying out the designs laid down on the trestle-board, by the
memory of her devotion and the consciousness that behind her task there
stood, and still remain, those Elder Brothers who, above the clatter and
the din of our battle, ever see the end and direct the forces distributed
in array for the salvation of "that great orphan — Humanity."

HELENA PETROVNA BLAVATSKY*
BY William Q. Judge

THAT which men call death is but a change of location for the
Ego, a mere transformation, a forsaking for a time of the mortal
frame, a short period of rest before one reassumes another human
frame in the world of mortals. The Lord of this body is nameless;
dwelling in numerous tenements of clay, it appears to come and go;
but neither death nor time can claim it, for it is deathless, unchangeable,
and pure, beyond Time itself, and not to be measured. So our old friend
and fellow-worker has merely passed for a short time out of sight, but
has not given up the work begun so many ages ago — the upUfting of
humanity, the destruction of the shackles that enslave the human mind.
I met Mme. Blavatsky in 1874 in the city of New York where she
was living in Irving Place. There she suggested the formation of the
Theosophical Society, lending to its beginning the power of her individuali-
ty and giving to its President and those who have stood by it ever since
the knowledge of the Theosophical teachings. In 1877 she wrote
Isis Unveiled in my presence, and helped in the proof-reading by the
President of the Society. This book she declared to me then was intended
to aid the cause for the advancement of which the Theosophical Society
was founded. Of this I speak with knowledge, for I was present and at
her request drew up the contract for its publication between her and her
New York publisher. When that document was signed she said to me,
"Now I must go to India."

In November, 1878, she went to India and continued the work of
helping her colleagues to spread the Society's influence there, working
in that mysterious land until she returned to London in 1887. There
was then in London but one Branch of the Society — the London Lodge —
the leaders of which thought it should work only with the upper and
cultured classes. The effect of Mme. Blavatsky's coming there was that
Branches began to spring up, so that now they are in many English
towns, in Scotland, and in Ireland. There she founded her magazine
Lucifer, there worked night and day for the Society loved by the core
of her heart, there wrote The Secret Doctrine, The Key to Theosophy,

♦From an article published in The Path (New York), 189L

12 HELENA PETROVNA BLAVATSKY

and The Voice of the Silence, and there passed away from a body that
had been worn out by unselfish work for the good of the few of our cen-
tury but of the many in the centuries to come.

That she always knew what would be done by the world in the way
of slander and abuse I also know, for in 1875 she told me that she was
then embarking on a work that would draw upon her unmerited slander,
implacable malice, uninterrupted misunderstanding, constant work, and
no worldly reward. Yet in the face of this her lion heart carried her on.
Nor was she unaware of the future of the Society. In 1876 she told me
in detail the course of the Society's growth for future years, of its infancy,
of its struggles, of its rise into the "luminous zone" of the public mind,
and these prophecies are being all fulfilled.

Her aim was to elevate the race. Her method was to deal with the
mind of the century as she found it, by trying to lead it on step by step;
to seek out and educate a few who, appreciating the majesty of the Secret
Science and devoted to "the great orphan Humanity," could carry on
her work with zeal and wisdom; to found a Society whose efforts —
however small itself might be — would inject into the thought of the day
the ideas, the doctrines, the nomenclature of the Wisdom-Religion, so
that when the next century shall have seen its 75th year the new mes-
senger coming again into the world would find the Society still at work,
the ideas sown broadcast, the nomenclature ready to give expression and
body to the immutable truth, and thus to make easy the task which for her
since 1875 was so difficult and so encompassed with obstacles in the very
paucity of the language, — obstacles harder than all else to work against.

No one can study ancient philosophies seriously without perceiving that
the striking similitude of conception between all — in their exoteric form
very often, in their hidden spirit invariably — is the result of no mere co-
incidence, but of a concurrent design: and that there was, during the youth
of mankind, one language, one knowledge, one universal religion, when there
were no churches, no creeds or sects, but when every man was a priest unto
himself. And, if it is shown that already in those ages which are shut out
from our sight by the exuberant growth of tradition, human religious thought
developed in uniform sympathy in every portion of the globe; then, it be-
comes evident that born under whatever latitude, in the cold North or the
burning South, in the East or West, that thought was inspired by the same
revelations, and man was nurtured under the protecting shadow of the same
TREE OF KNOWLEDGE. — H. P. Blavatsky: The Secret Doctrine, Vol. I, p. 341.

DONATED BY
KATHERINE TINGLEY

HELENA PETROVNA BLAVATSKY*

FEW women in our time have been more persistently misrepresented,
slandered, and defamed, than Madame Blavatsky, but though malice
and ignorance did their worst upon her, there are abundant indica-
tions that her life-work will vindicate itself, that it will endure, and that it
will operate for good. She was the founder of the Theosophical Society, an
organization now fully and firmly estabhshed, which has branches in many
countries, East and West, and which is devoted to studies and practices the
innocence and the elevating character of which are becoming more general-
ly recognised continually. The life of Madame Blavatsky was a remark-
able one, but this is not the place or time to speak of its vicissitudes. It
must suffice to say that for nearly twenty years she had devoted herself
to the dissemination of doctrines the fundamental principles of which
are of the loftiest ethical character. However Utopian may appear to
some minds an attempt in the nineteenth century to break down the
barriers of race, nationahty, caste, and class prejudice, and to inculcate
that spirit of brotherly love which the greatest of all Teachers enjoined
in the first century, the nobiUty of the aim can only be impeached by
those who repudiate Christianity. Madame Blavatsky held that the
regeneration of mankind must be based upon the development of altru-
ism. In this she was at one with the greatest thinkers, not alone of the
present day, but of all time; and at one, it is becoming more and more
apparent, with the strongest spiritual tendencies of the age. This alone
would entitle her teachings to the candid and serious consideration of
all who respect the influences that make for righteousness.

In another direction, though in close association with the cult of
universal fraternity, she did an important work. No one in the present
generation, it may be said, has done more toward re-opening the long-
sealed treasures of Eastern thought, wisdom, and philosophy. No one
certainly has done so much toward elucidating that profound Wisdom-
Religion wrought out by the ever-cogitating Orient, and bringing into
the light those ancient hterary works whose scope and depth have so
astonished the Western world, brought up in the insular behef that the
East had produced only crudities and puerilities in the domain of specu-
lative thought. Her own knowledge of Oriental philosophy and eso-
tericism was comprehensive. No candid mind can doubt this after reading
her two principal works. Her steps often led, indeed, where only a few

*An Editorial published in the New York Tribune, May 10, 1891, (two days after
Madame Blavatsky's death.)

14 HELENA PETROVNA BLAVATSKY

initiates could follow, but the tone and tendency of all her writings were
healthful, bracing, and stimulating. The lesson which was constantly-
impressed by her was assuredly that which the world most needs, and
has always needed, namely, the necessity of subduing self and of working
for others. Doubtless such a doctrine is distasteful to the ego-worshipers,
and perhaps it has little chance of anything like general acceptance, to
say nothing of general application. But the man or woman who deliberate-
ly renounces all personal aims and ambitions in order to forward such
beliefs is certainly entitled to respect, even from such as feel least capable
of obeying the call to a higher life.

The work of Madame Blavatsky has already borne fruit, and is
destined, apparently, to produce still more marked and salutary effects
in the future. Careful observers of the time long since discerned that
the tone of current thought in many directions was being affected by it.
A broader humanity, a more liberal speculation, a disposition to investi-
gate ancient philosophies from a higher point of view, have no indirect
association with the teachings referred to. Thus Madame Blavatsky
has made her mark upon the time, and thus, too, her works will follow
her. She herself has finished the course, and after a strenuous life she
rests. But her personal influence is not necessary to the continuance
of the great work to which she put her hand. That will go on with the
impulse it has received, and some day, if not at once, the loftiness and
purity of her aims, the wisdom and scope of her teachings, will be recog-
nised more fully, and her memory will be accorded the honor to which
it is justly entitled.

If Theosophy prevailing in the struggle, its all-embracing philosophy
strikes deep root into the minds and hearts of men; if its doctrines of Rein-
carnation and Karma, in other words, of Hope and Responsibility, find a home
in the lives of the new generations, then, indeed, will dawn the day of joy
and gladness for all who now suffer and are outcast. For real Theosophy
IS Altruism, and we cannot repeat it too often. It is brotherly love, mutual
help, unswerving devotion to Truth. If once men do but realize that in
these alone can true happiness be found, and never in wealth, possessions,
or any selfish gratification, then the dark clouds will roll away, and a new
humanity will be born upon earth. Then, the Golden Age will be there,
indeed.

But if not, then the storm will burst, and our boasted western civilization
and enlightenment will sink in such a sea of horror that its parallel History
has never yet recorded.— H. P. Blavatsky: Lucifer, Vol. IV, p. 188.

"' DONATED BY
TKATHERINE TINGLEV

HELENA PETROVNA BLAVATSKY

A REFUTATION OF SLANDERS
AGAINST THE FOUNDRESS OF THE THEOSOPHICAL

SOCIETY

By Iverson L. Harris

Professor of Law, The Theosophical University

Student under Katherine Tingley, Leader and Official Head of the Universal Brotherhood

and Theosophical Society and Successor to H. P. Blavatsky and William Q. Judge

Foreword

THERE is absolutely nothing new or unheard of in the impulses direct-
ing the several attacks that have, at different times, been made
against the character and reputation of Mme. H. P. Blavatsky, the
great Theosophist and Revivifier of ancient Truths in our age. Such at-
tacks always take the form of libel or slander, sometimes arising out of ig-
norance and prejudice, sometimes springing forth from downright malice.
This melancholy fact is so well known to historians that they are constantly
on their guard against its subtle influence, and refuse to be swayed in their
judgments by it. From the earliest epochs of recorded history or human
story, great souls, lion-hearted reformers or innovators, especially in reli-
gious thought, and the protagonists in the never-ending struggle for human
betterment and human brotherhood, invariably have had to face and to
overcome trials of this sort. But men and women have blessed them for it,
for their unflinching courage and for their immovable determination to win
through to victory in the cause of Right and Truth. Think of the great
figures which flash like flame-rays over our mental horizons from time to
time, heralds of the Dawn! Such were Jesus the "Prince of Peace," the
compassionate Buddha, the great Confucius, the brilliant and noble-
minded Hypatia, and a host of others, filled with wisdom and with burning
love for the human species and for all things that are.

And such was H. P. Blavatsky, who in her supreme effort to alleviate
human misery dared to speak the truth even in the face of unending
persecution and misrepresentation. Let it be remembered that this new
outburst of ignorance and prejudice against her is but one more of the

16 HELENA PETROVNA BLAVATSKY

cowardly attacks upon a dead woman unable by that fact to defend
herself with her own mighty pen, formerly dreaded but now still.

"In 1875 she told me that she was then embarking on a work that would draw upon her
unmerited slander, implacable malice, uninterrupted misunderstanding, constant work, and
no worldly reward. Yet in the face of this her lion heart carried her on."

— William Q. Judge (Successor to H. P. Blavatsky)

'T^HE Memoirs of Count Sergius Witte, now being published, are
-*■ attracting wide attention. The second installment of these Memoirs
contains an alleged biographical sketch of Mme. Helena Petrovna Bla-
vatsky, the illustrious founder of the Theosophical Society. The quality
of the remarks of the noted author is in no way superior to the various
contemptible attacks which from time to time have been made upon this
great World-Teacher. But owing to the fact that the author bears the
title of a nobleman, and from his kinship to Mme. Blavatsky apparently
had unusual opportunities for gaining actual knowledge concerning her,
his comments and statements are apt to meet with an unquestioning
credulity. Particularly is this true when we reahze the snobbish tendency
of multitudes of readers to accept almost reverently anything that comes
from a titled source.

Those students of Theosophy who have received the very breath of
life from the spiritual teachings of this wonderful woman feel that it
would be worse than dastardly if they allowed any attack upon her real
nobility to go unchallenged.

This installment of Count Witte's Memoirs bears internal evidence
not only of its unreliability but of its unworthiness. Is it not true that
any wanton attack upon a woman ought to react to the discredit of its
author? And when we bear in mind that the present attack is not only
scurrilous but is made by a kinsman, then certainly his testimony is
already impeached. Apart however from this vice, Count Witte's narra-
tive and comment show that they are not even based upon his own
alleged knowledge, but upon tradition and hearsay. He writes, "As
I was many years her [Mme. Blavatsky 's] junior, I could not have any
recollections of Helena in her youth." "From the stories current in our
family I gather," etc. . . . "Such is the family tradition," etc. . . .

So that when the Count proceeds to state, among a great many other
alleged incidents in Mme. Blavatsky's career, that "at Constantinople
she entered a circus as an equestrian," not only is this statement un-
supported by the slightest offered evidence but according to the testimony
of her sister Mme. Jelihovsky, when she reached Constantinople she had

A REFUTATION 17

the good fortune to meet here one of her friends, the Countess K ,

with whom she continued her travels in Egypt, Greece, and other parts
of eastern Europe. According also to her aunt, Mile. Fadeyef, it was
another Blavatsky not in any way connected with the family who was
an equestrienne in Constantinople (see her statement given later).

Another illustration of the author's hearsay testimony is where he
charges Mme. Blavatsky with having married an opera singer, one
Mitrovich, without having secured a divorce from her husband, and again
with having married "a certain Englishman from London" without
having obtained a divorce either from her legitimate or illegitimate
husband. His authority for these statements is that from the second and
third 'husbands' respectively letters were received by Mme. Blavatsky's
grandfather to the effect that they, in turn, had become the old gentleman's
'grandsons.' This is hearsay upon hearsay, to which no judicial tribunal
on earth would give the slightest credence. Count Witte does not state
that he ever saw these letters. We are left to presume that the actuality
of their receipt was evidenced only by "stories current in the family,"
and by "the family tradition." And moreover, if he had seen such letters
he furnishes us no evidence of their authenticity or, granting that the
letters w^ere genuine, that they contained any proof of veracity further
than the bare statements of the writers. Certainly such evidence as this
should not be allowed in any way to bind Mme. Blavatsky or her disciples.

The following very definitely defamatory suggestion of Count Witte
about Mme. Blavatsky is also confessedly made upon hearsay. Speaking
of the Governor-general of Kiev, Prince Dundokov-Korsakov, he says,
"The Prince, who at one time served in the Caucasus, had known Helena
Petrovna in her maiden days. / am not in a position to say what was the
nature of their relationship.''

In this instance not only does Count Witte's statement involve an
unpardonable suggestion against Mme. Blavatsky that is admittedly
based upon hearsay or rumor or gossip, but his mllingness to impugn by
such means the character of a member of his family — his own first
cousin — and his ready disposition to injure her reputation, necessarily
show to any man with a spark of chivalry in his nature, that there was a
serious defect in the author's own nature. And because, forsooth, for
many years there had been a feud between the Blavatsky family and his
own, it ill becam.e him to vent his spleen upon his own cousin Helena, whose
misfortune it was to bear the name Blavatsky.

A further proof of the untrustworthy nature of the author's Memoirs
consists in the astonishing confusion which he has exhibited in his alleged
attempt to trace the career of Mme. Blavatsky in the two decades between
1851 and 1861, and between 1861 and 1871; for in the main his account

18 HELENA PETROVNA RLAVATSKY

of the period between 1861 and 1871 refers to occurrences happening
between 1851 and 1861, and, vice versa, the occurrences of the latter
decade are ascribed to the former.

Another instance of inaccuracy: the Count states that Mme. Blavatsky
founded the Theosophical Society in England, whereas the facts are
that she founded it in New York City in 1875, not settling in England
until about thirteen years later. Again, he states that after her return
from India she settled in Paris, the fact being that after her return from
India she settled in London. Again, he states that Mme. Blavatsky
learned her "occultism" from Mr. Hume, a celebrated spirituahst. The
fact is that the celebrated spiritualist of that period to whom the Count
refers was not named 'Hume,' but was a Scotsman, one David D. Home,
while Mr. Hume was a high Government official resident at Simla, India,
who was one of Mme. Blavatsky's early disciples.

Very different is the testimony given by Mme. Blavatsky's aunt,
Mile. N. A. Fadeyef, and her sister, Mme. Jelihovsky, who of all her
relatives were most closely associated with her. Mile. Fadeyef writes
thus of her illustrious niece:

''Faint rumors reached her friends of her having been met in Japan, China, Constantinople,
and the Far East. She passed through Europe several times but never lived in it. Her friends
therefore were as much surprised as pained to read, years afterwards, fragments from her
supposed biography which spoke of her as a person well known in the high life, as well as the low,
of Vienna, Berlin, Warsaw, and Paris, and mixed her name with events and anecdotes whose
scene was laid in these cities at various epochs, when her friends had every proof of her being
far away from Europe. These anecdotes referred to her indifferently under the several Christian
names of Julie, Nathalie, etc., which were really those of other persons of the same surname,
and attributed to her various extravagant adventures. Thus the Nei<e Freie Presse spoke of
Madame Heloise (?) Blavatsky, a non-existing personage, who had joined the Black Hussars —
les Hussards de la Mart — during the Hungarian revolution, her sex being found out only
in 1849. Another journal of Paris narrated the story of Mme. Blavatsky, 'a Pole from the
Caucasus' (?), a supposed relative of Baron Hahn of Lemberg, who after taking an active
part in the Polish revolution of 1863 (during the whole of which time Mme. Blavatsky was
quietly living with her relatives at Tiflis), was compelled from lack of means to serve as a
female waiter in a 'restaurant du Faubourg St.-Antoine.' "

It is certain that in all her travels Mme. Blavatsky's father not only
knew where she was, but that in a measure she was under his protection.
Her aunt writing about 'this says:

"For the first eight years she gave her mother's family no sign of life for fear of being
traced by her legitimate 'lord and master.' Her father alone knew of her whereabouts. Know-
ing however that he would never prevail upon her to return home, he acquiesced in her absence
and supplied her with money whenever she came to places where it could safely reach her."

Of similar import is the following statement regarding Mme. Blavatsky
made by her sister Mme. Jelihovsky:

''As later in life, wherever she went, her friends in those days were many, but her enemies,
still more numerous. . . . Thus, while people of the class of the Princes Gouriel, and of the
Princes Dadiani and Abashedse, were ranked among her best friends, some others — all those

A REFUTATION 19

who had a family hatred for the above-named — were, of course, her sworn enemies. . . .
Some years later, to these were added all the bifiots, church-goers, missionaries, to say nothing of
[a certain class of] American and English spiritualists, French spiritists. . . . Stories after
stories were invented of her, circulated and accepted by all, except those who knew her well —
as facts. Calumny was rife, and her enemies now hesitate at no falsehood that can injure
her character.

"She defied them all, and would submit to no restraint, would stoop to adopt no worldly
method of propitiating public opinion. She avoided society, showing her scorn of its idols,
and was therefore treated as a dangerous iconoclast."

In view of this testimony of Mme. Blavatsky's aunt and sister, is it
not more than probable, does it not approach certainty, that Count
Witte has availed himself of the infamous stories which maliciously and
falsely attribute to Mme. Blavatsky experiences which were either ficti-
tious or which centered about some other Blavatsky in no way connected
with her or her family?

There are only two instances which the author mentions which by his
own account rest in his own knowledge. He says: "On one occasion she
[Mme. Blavatsky] caused a closed piano in an adjacent room to emit
sounds, as if invisible hands were playing upon it. This was done in my
presence, at the instance of one of the guests."

And again, commenting on Mme. Blavatsky's presence at Odessa,
the Count refers to her having for a short time made and sold artificial
flowers, and in this connexion he says: "In those days she often came to
see my mother, and I visited her store several times, so that I had the
opportunity of getting better acquainted with her." It should be observed,
parenthetically, that if the Count's cousin, H. P. Blavatsky, was on
terms of such friendliness with his mother, a decent respect for his mother
should have prevented him from insulting her guest and niece.

Though the Count recites this last incident in a form that seems in-
tended to disparage Mme. Blavatsky, yet even if it is true, no right-
thinking person ought to allow himself to condemn Mme. Blavatsky if,
from the stress of circumstances or for any other legitimate reason, she
found herself engaged in a rather commonplace employment. And if the
piano story is true, not only is this phenomenon extraordinary but it
shows a somewhat aesthetic and poetical characteristic that her marvels
should take such musical form. The piano incident illustrates not any
evocation of 'spirits' by Mme. Blavatsky, but an effort to exempHfy the
latent powers in man and the finer forces of nature. The scant information
that we have about Jesus indicates that he was a carpenter and may have
been a fisherman, and that Buddha followed the avocation of a beggar,
although the son of royal parents. Is the making and selling of artificial
flowers less honorable?

The author does state something further on his own knowledge, though
strictly speaking it is a conclusion or opinion of the witness. He says:

20 HELENA PETROVNA BLAVATSKY

"I was especially impressed by the extraordinary facility with which she
acquired skill and knowledge of the most varied description. Her abilities
in this respect verged on the uncanny." The choice of the word * uncanny '
in this connexion shows the author's instinctive prejudice. Otherwise he
would have said 'miraculous.'

The author goes on to say: "A self-taught musician, she was able to
give pianoforte concerts in London and Paris, and although entirely
ignorant of the theory of music, she conducted a large orchestra. Consider
also that although she never seriously studied any foreign languages, she
spoke several of them with perfect ease. I was also struck by her mastery
of the technique of verse. She could write pages of smoothly flowing verse
without the slightest effort, and she could compose essays in prose on every
conceivable subject. Besides, she possessed the gift of hypnotizing both
her hearer and herself into believing the wildest inventions of her fantasy."

In the last sentence the instinctive prejudice of the author is again
revealed. He himself says in another place: "Although a young boy,
my attitude toward these performances was decidedly critical, and I
looked on them as mere sleight-of-hand tricks."

If as a mere boy the author had not presumed to be " decidedly critical "
in the presence of transcendent genius, and if he had not presumed to
adjudge his august kinswoman to be a sleight-of-hand performer, then
he might have discovered that neither she herself nor her hearers were
"hypnotized" into believing any invention or any fantasy, but that her
hearers were momentarily translated by the magic of her divine con-
sciousness so that they could in some degree participate in its beauties
and wonders.

The author further says: "She has enormous azure-colored eyes, and
when she spoke with animation, they sparkled in a fashion which is al-
together indescribable. Never in my life have I seen anything like that
pair of eyes." Again he says: "The Moscow editor, Katkov, famous in
the annals of Russian journalism, spoke to me in the highest terms of
praise about her literary gifts, as evidenced in the tales entitled From the
Jungles of Hindustan, which she contributed to his magazine."

The closing paragraph of the second instalment of Count Witte's
Memoirs reads: "Let him who still doubts the non-material origin and
the independent existence of the soul in man consider the personality of
Mme. Blavatsky. During her earthly existence, she housed a spirit which
was, no doubt, independent of physical or physiological being. As to the
particular realm of the invisible world from which that spirit emerged,
there may be some doubt whether it was inferno, purgatory, or paradise.
I cannot help feeling that there was something demoniac in that extra-
ordinary woman."

— DONATED BY
KATHERINE TINGLEY

A REFUTATION 21

Except for the ugly traits already pointed out in the Count's nature,
he could never have reached such a conclusion. Perhaps he was aided in
arriving at this doubting opinion by the hereditary bent received from his
religious ancestry and from his theological affiliations, particularly with
a high ecclesiastical dignitary. But the question has arisen in the minds
of many: Did Count Witte himself really write these defamatory state-
ments against his cousin, Helena P. Blavatsky, or have they been inter-
polated in his Memoirs by another?

Socrates must drink the hemlock because his conventional judges,
looking through the eyes of their egotism and their sacerdotal prejudices,
determined that this Grecian Savior was "corrupting the youth of Athens."
Hypatia, who is now recognised as having been one of the most exalted
Spiritual Teachers since the days of the Nazarene, was seized by a mob of
Christian monks, murdered, and her flesh scraped from her bones, because
these Christians decided that her chaste wisdom sprang from demoniacal
regions. Jesus was condemned by the Pharisees because, forsooth, he
was a "wine-bibber" and consorted with "publicans and sinners," and
also it was said of him, "He hath a devil."

Count Witte seems never to have heard of his kinswoman's immortal
works. The Key to Theosophy, The Voice of the Silence, Isis Unveiled,
and The Secret Doctrine. If he had known of them, and if he could have
read them without being "decidedly critical," then, despite the unmanly
traits which he has displayed, despite his presumptuous egotism, despite
his instinctive theological predilections, he might have been forced into
paying his illustrious relative an unqualified tribute. In one of these
immortal works Mme. Blavatsky writes:

"There is a road, steep and thorny and beset with perils of every kind, but yet a road,
and it leads to the heart of the Universe. I can tell you how to find Those who will show you
the secret gateway that leads inward only, and closes fast behind the neophyte forevermore.
There is no danger that dauntless courage cannot conquer; there is no trial that spotless purity
cannot pass through; there is no difficulty that strong intellect cannot surmount. For those
who win onward, there is reward beyond all telling: the power to bless and serve humanity.
For those who fail, there are other lives in which success may come."

If Count Witte had been able to invoke that nobility of spirit which
would have enabled him to read this language profitably, he could not have
asked whether its source was "inferno, purgatory, or paradise." He could
not have felt "that there was something demoniac in this extraordinary
woman." He would have known that such hmpid streams of spiritual
waters flowed through Paradise and had their fountain-springs in the
Eternal Realms beyond.

International Theosophical Headquarters,
Point Loma, California, December 16, 1920.

INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE-HISTORY OF
HELENA PETROVNA BLAVATSKY*

HELENA PETROVNA BLAVATSKY, daughter of Colonel Peter
Hahn, was the granddaughter of General Alexis Hahn (a noble
family of Mecklenburg settled in Russia). On the mother's side
she was the daughter of Helene Fadeyef, and the granddaughter of
Privy Councillor Andrew Fadeyef and of the Princess Helene Dolgoruki.
Born at Ekaterinoslaff in South Russia between July 30 and 31 in 1831,
she was married in 1848 to the Councillor of State, Nicephore Blavatsky,
late Vice-Governor of the province of Erivan, Caucasus.

1830-1840 — Her mother, Helene Fadeyef, was an authoress — the
first novel writer that had ever appeared in Russia — under the no7n de
plume of Zenaida R .

1830-1832 — Time of the great plague. During the baptismal rite
of Helena, a child holding a candle set fire to the long robes of the offici-
ating priest, and besides the priest several persons were severely burnt.
Helena was a great pet of her grandparents and aunts, and from earliest
years was brought up in an atmosphere of legends and popular fancy.

1833-1834 — Because of the date of her birth she was called by the
serfs the Sedmichka, meaning one connected with the number seven.
She was carried round the house every July 30th by her nurse, through
the stables and cow-pen, and was made personally to sprinkle the four
corners with water, the nurse repeating all the while some mystic senten-
ces, to purify the places from the rusalka (undine) and other evil spirits
(domovoys) from whom it was believed she was free.

1835 — About this time she had an English governess. Miss Augusta
Sophia Jeffries, but this lady did not seem to have the capacity for
managing her charge.

1837 — About this time she and her younger sister Vera — after-
wards married to an officer in the Guards at St. Petersburg, named
de Yahontoff, and later the widow of a civil officer named de
Jelihovsky, who formerly belonged to the government at Tiflis — were
sent to live with their father and for two or three years were chiefly
taken care of by their father's orderlies, petted on all sides as les enjants
du regiment.

1842 — After the death of her mother, Helena was taken to live at

♦Extracts from various sources, reprinted from The New Century, Vol. V, No. 4, Dec. 8, 1901.

INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF H. P. BLAVATSKY 23

Saratoff by her grandmother, her grandfather being civil governor there,
as he was formerly at Astrakhan. She was difficult to manage on any
uniform system. Though excitable and passionate she had "no malice
in her nature, no lasting resentment even against those who have wronged
her, and her true kindness of heart bears no permanent trace of momen-
tary disturbances." Her aunt says: "From her earhest childhood she
was unlike any other person. Very lively and highly gifted, full of humor
and of most remarkable daring."

1845 — Helena's horse bolted with her, and, as she fell, her foot
caught in the stirrup. Notwithstanding her great peril she felt a sus-
taining power holding her up.

1846 — Her father took her to Paris and London and when in England
they stayed a week at Bath. Her English at this time had a very strong
Yorkshire accent.

1848 — Married to General Blavatsky, (a man nearer 70 than 60
years of age). She became engaged to him in a sort of joke and after-
wards her friends would not let her break it off. Finally the ceremony
of marriage took place on the 7th of July, and she was then taken to
Daretchichag, a summer retreat. For three months she struggled against
the claims of her husband and finally rode off to Tifiis. Thence she took
the steamer Commodore and landed at Constantinople. Here she met

the Countess K and traveled for a time in Egypt, Greece, and

other parts of eastern Europe.

1849 — Visited Paris and London. Stayed at Mivart's Hotel in
London with Countess B .

1850 — Touring about Europe with the Countess B .

1851 — At Paris in January. In July she was in Canada at Quebec
and subsequently at New Orleans.

1852 — About this time went from New Orleans through Texas to
Mexico. At this time also had a legacy left her of 80,000 rubles.

1852 — At the end of this year, Madame Blavatsky set out for India.
She wanted to go into Tibet through Nepal, but was hindered by the
British Resident at Nepal. From there she went to Southern India,
Java, and Singapore, returning to England.

1853 — At the end of this year she passed to New York, thence to
Chicago; thence to the far West, across the Rocky Mountains to San
Francisco.

1855 — Returned to India via Japan and the Straits.

1856 — At Lahore met a German friend of her father and from that
place made a second attempt to get into Tibet.

1858 — Returned to Europe via Madras and Java in a Dutch vessel
and spent some months in France and Germany, afterwards rejoining

24 HELENA PETROVNA BLAVATSKY

her own people at Pskof, about 180 miles from St. Petersburg, in north-
west Russia. Madame Yahontoff (afterwards Madame Jelihovsky) her
sister, was staying at Pskof with General N. A. Yahontoff — Marechal
de Noblesse of that place — her late husband's father. During this
visit, Madame Blavatsky secured the interest of her brother Leonide,
by holding, untouched, a small chess-table against his strong efforts to
move it, and that of her father by reading his unspoken thought "Zai-
chik," the name of his favorite war-horse in his first Turkish campaign.

1859 — Early in this year H. P. B. went with her sister, Madame Y.
to a village called Rugodevo, in the district Novorjef in the government
of Pskof, about 200 versts from St. Petersburg.

1860 — In the spring of this year H. P. B. had a terrible illness.
She had received a remarkable wound (possibly when traveling in the
steppes of Asia.) This re-opened occasionally and she suffered intense
agony — the sickness would last three or four days, then the wound
would heal suddenly and no trace of it remain. It was near the heart.
She left Rugodevo for Tiflis in the Caucasus via Moscow. At Zadonsk
they saw the learned Isidore, then the Metropohtan of Kiev and later
(1884) Metropohtan of St. Petersburg, whom they had kno^vn as a friend
of the family when he was Exarch of Georgia (Caucasus), who on parting
blessed H. P. B. with the following words: "As for you let not your
heart be troubled by the gift you are possessed of, nor let it become a
source of misery to you hereafter, for it was surely given to you for some
purpose and you could not be held responsible for it. Quite the reverse,
for if you but use it with discrimination, you will be enabled to do much
good to your fellow-creatures."

About 1862 H. P. B. resided at Tiflis less than two years and not
more than three in the Caucasus; the last year she passed roaming about
in Imeritia, Georgia, and MingreHa. In the latter country she had another
serious illness, was often comatose, and was with great difficulty brought
to Tiflis, where she arrived apparently dying. Soon she was restored
to life again and left the Caucasus, going to Italy.

1863-1866 — Always traveling.

1867-1870 — This period was passed in the East and if recorded,
would probably be found the most interesting period of H. P. B's event-
ful Hfe.

1870 — Returned from the East via the Suez Canal, spent a short
time in the Piraeus, thence took passage for Spezzia on a Greek vessel,
which was blown up, en route, by an explosion of gunpowder and fire-
works (part of the cargo). H. P. B. with a small number of passengers,
was saved, but everything was lost of her belongings, and she went to
Alexandria and thence to Cairo to await supplies from Russia. At this

INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF H. P. BLAVATSKY 25

period she passes from "apprenticeship to duty" and she alone appreci-
ated the magnitude of her mission.

1871 — She set to work in Egypt, where she happened to be — founded
a society, which should have the investigation of spiritualistic phenomena
for its purpose, designing to lead it through to paths of higher knowledge
in the end. Here she met Madame Coulomb. She was very much disgusted
with the class of people who flocked around her, and she very soon shut
up her Societe, going to live at Bulak, near the Museum. She after-
wards returned to Europe via Palestine, lingering for some months there
and making a journey to Palmyra and other ruins.

1872 — At the end of this year she returned to her family who were
now staying at Odessa.

1873 — In the early part of this year H. P. B. left Russia and went
to Paris, where she stayed with her cousin, Nicholas Hahn, in the Rue
de rUniversite, for two months. Thence she was directed to visit the
United States, and arrived in July 1873, at New York, where she v/as
for over six years and got her naturalization papers, only visiting for
a few months other cities and places.

1874 — During this year she lived in apartments in Irving Place,
New York, and in October she went to the Eddy farmhouse, Vermont.

1875 — In October and November of this year H. P. B. with the help
of W. Q. Judge and others founded the Theosophical Society in New York
City. The objects of the Society as stated in an early code of rules were
as follows:

(a) To keep alive in man his spiritual intuitions.

(b) To oppose and counteract — after due investigation and proof of its irrational nature
— bigotry in every form, whether as an intolerant religious sectarianism or belief in miracles
or anything supernatural.

(c) To promote a feeling of brotherhood among nations and assist in the international ex-
change of useful arts and products, by advice, information and the cooperation of all worthy
individuals and associations: provided however, that no benefit or percentage shall be taken
by the Society for its corporate services.

(</) To seek to obtain a knowledge of all the laws of nature, and aid in diffusing it: and
especially to encourage the study of those laws least understood by modern people, and so
termed the occult science. Popular superstition and folk-lore, however fantastical, when
sifted may lead to the discovery of long-lost but important secrets of nature. The Society
therefore aims to pursue this line of inquiry in the hope to widen the field of scientific and
philosophical observation.

(e) To gather for the Society's library and put into written forms, correct information
upon the various ancient philosophic traditions and legends, and, as the Council shall decide
it permissible, disseminate the same in such practical v»ays as the translation and publication
of original works of value, and extracts from and commentaries upon the same, or the oral
instruction of persons learned in their respective departments.

(/) To promote in every practical way, in countries where needed, the spread of non-
sectarian education.

(g) Finally and chiefly to encourage and assist individual fellows in self-improvement,
intellectual, moral and spiritual. But no fellow shall put to his selfish use any knowledge

26 HELENA PETROVNA BLAVATSKY

communicated to him by any member of the First Section: the violation of this rule being
punishable by expulsion. And before any such knowledge can be imparted, the person shall
bind himself by a solemn oath not to use it to selfish purposes nor to reveal it except with
permission of the Teacher.

1874-1875 — H. P. B. removed from Irving Place to Thirty-fourth
Street, New York, and thence after a few months to Forty-seventh
Street, where she stayed till December, 1878.

1877-1878 — At the latter address, she wrote Isis Unveiled, in 1877.

1879 — In this year H. P. B. went to Bombay; she was much
annoyed by being watched by the authorities, but soon afterwards this
espionage was dropped. In December she visited Allahabad.

1880 — During this year she was at Simla where many of the events
recorded in the Occult World occurred.

1880-1881 — At this time H. P. B. took a trip to Ceylon.

1881 — The Headquarters of the Theosophical Society were es-
tablished at Beach Candy, in a bungalow called Crow's Nest. Here it
was that the magazine Theosophist was edited. Later this year H. P. B.
visited Allahabad and Simla again.

1881 — On December 16th or 17th the Calcutta newspaper. States-
man, apologized for an attack on H. P. B. under threat from her solicitors.

1882 — The autumn of this year was spent at Bombay, when H. P. B.
was taken very seriously ill, suffering from Bright's disease of the kidneys.
Her Teacher sent a chela from the Nilgerri Hills, requiring her to go
somewhere in the Himalayas. She was across the frontier in Tibet only
for two or three days and then returned practically well again. In De-
cember a valedictory address was delivered to H. P. B. and her helpers
on the eve of her departure for Madras, in which it was stated that many
"brave hearts from Lahore and Simla to Ceylon, from Calcutta to Kathia-
war, from Gujerat and Allahabad — Parsis, Hindus, Buddhists, Jews,
Mohammedans and Europeans" attested how far her attempts to es-
tablish Universal Brotherhood had succeeded during the brief stay of
four years.

1883 — Established at Adyar, a suburb of Madras, in a house with
extensive grounds. The upper rooms of this house were the private do-
main of H. P. B., and here many leading Anglo-Indian residents went
to see her.

1884 — In this year H. P. B. went to Europe, arriving at Nice in
March, thence to Paris, where Solovyoff and others were met at the
Rue Notre Dame des Champs, 46, which was the center of the Theo-
sophical Society at Paris, and which was visited by W. Q. Judge, and
others, including Madame Jelihovsky (H. P. B.'s sister) in June. On
April 7th H. P. B. arrived in London, on the evening of a meeting of the

INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF H. P. BLAVATSKY 27

London Lodge, which, in the preceding March, she had described as
being in its "sharpest crisis." She only stayed a week, returning to
Paris and again going to London on the 29th of June. Thence in August
she visited friends at Elberfeld, Germany, named Gebhard.

1885 — H. P. B. returned once more to India and had a great reception
from a delegation of native students of the Madras Colleges. Their
address signed by over 300 students declared that "we are conscious we
are giving but a feeble expression to the debt of endless gratitude which
India lies under to you." Soon afterwards she had a bad illness from which
she had another remarkable recovery to comparative health. About the
month of May she returned to Europe, staying for a time near Naples,
and thence removing to a quiet little town (Wiirzburg) in Germany some
three months later. In October of this year and at this little town H. P. B.
commenced The Secret Doctrine, and was very busy at it. She writes
enthusiastically of it, saying in one letter of it: "I begin to think it shall
vindicate us. Such pictures, panoramas, scenes, antediluvian dramas,
with all that! Never saw or heard better."

1887 — H. P. B. removed to London, and a new impetus was given
to the work there, which was subsequently centered at No. 19 Avenue
Road, Regent's Park, N. W.

1888 — Publication of Tiie Secret Doctrine by H. P. Blavatsky.

1889 — The Key to Theosophy and The Voice of the Silence written
and published by H. P. Blavatsky.

1S91— May 8. Death of H. P. Blavatsky at 19 Avenue Road,
Regent's Park, London.

Theosophy is the shoreless ocean of universal truth, love, and wisdom,
reflecting its radiance on the earth; while the Theosophical Society is only a
visible bubble on that reflexion. Theosophy is divine nature, visible and
invisible, and its Society human nature trying to ascend to its divine parent.
Theosophy, finally, is the fixed, eternal sun, and its Society the evanescent
comet trying to settle in an orbit to become a planet, ever revolving within
the attraction of the sun of truth. It was formed to assist in showing to men
that such a thing as Theosophy exists, and to help them to ascend toward it
by studying and assimilating its eternal verities.

— H. P. Blavatsky: The Key to Theosophy, pp. 56-57

H. P. BLAVATSKY, THE HERO

H. T. Edge, m. a.

THE foes of Theosophy, finding its teachings unassailable, have resorted
to the expedient of defaming its founder, knowing that many persons
will be deterred thereby from inquiring further into Theosophy;
though there are others v/ho, despite the slanders, insist on knowing more
of Theosophy, and who thereby discover the falsity of the slanders. The
name of H. P. Blavatsky has been so vindicated by her pupils and by the
influence of the work she initiated that the world is attracted by any men-
tion of her whatever, even slanderous. That name inspires an intense and
universal interest : it is impossible seriously to defame a character which all
instinctively recognise to have been great beyond ordinary measure.
People are determined to know all they can about H. P. Blavatsky; and
the usually sane judgment of the generality has recognised in such defama-
tions the customary crown of thorns which surrounds the head of those
who greatly dare in the cause of truth.

The poor prosaic disinherited world ! How it clings to the ideal of the
great personality ! How wistfully and lovingly it cherishes its innate belief
in the grandeur of the human soul! How eagerly it embraces the chance
of finding its faith and hope realized in some actually living hero, who
may serve to it as a reminder that man is after all something more than a
miserable sinner or a perfected monkey, and may, once in a while at least,
achieve the manifestation of his divine attributes!

There can be no doubt but a very large number of people, who have
either not heard of Madame Blavatsky, or have thought but little about
her, will on hearing such misrepresentations, at once procure her works
and read them, so as to see for themselves what manner of woman she was;
and then they will dismiss from their mind the slanders and fables, with
a note of thankfulness that these have been the means of introducing them
to so great an opportunity. For these works of Madame Blavatsky prove
that their author could never have been anything like the character
depicted in the fables, and that she never could at any time of her life have
been otherwise than a personality great and admirable in every way.

The stories of Jesus of Nazareth, of Hypatia, of Socrates — of many
more well known to history — should show that, whenever a great Teacher
appears with a message of Truth, Light, and Liberation for mankind,
desperate attempts are made by certain people of unamiable characteristics

DONATED BY
KATHERINE TINGLEY

H. P. BLAVATSKY, THE HERO 29

to hustle that Teacher out of sight, out of mind, off the face of the earth.
Truth, Light, and Liberation are not wanted in some quarters. That
this is what has happened in the case of H. P. Blavatsky is all too obvious,
people think; and they insist upon knowing what was the message which
brought so much joy to some, to others so much trepidation and animosity.
They insist upon making the acquaintance of the great Soul who dared
so much, but whose name has not sunk under the utmost weight of
defamation that could be heaped upon it.

The great Individual has always counted as the moving force in
history. It is in vain that philosophers try to represent the mass of
humanity as elevating itself by its own gravitation, like so much dough
generating its own leaven. The moving force has to come from without.
That which moves the body is Spirit; and though Spirit can and does
operate in every human heart that opens itself thereto, yet it operates
eminently in certain Individuals who appear here and there, from time
to time, and by their superior force, their loftier standing-ground, work
more mightily among men than do the hosts of lesser souls in a hundred
years. Faiths and philosophies serve man well, especially when he has
nothing more tangible to resort to; but he ever goes by imitation and
looks for the example: the visible living example of a great personality
influences us far more than any number of books and sayings. It shows us
what man can be, what we may ourselves become. It sets to work the
instinct of imitation. Our eyes are turned aloft, and our footsteps begin
instinctively to turn in the same direction.

"These be your gods!" says materialism, pointing to clay models of
imaginary human ape-ancestors ranged along the museum-wall; and
"Behold your origin and kneel!" says another kind of materialism, point-
ing to the picture of a sullen skin-clad man stealing fruit in a garden.
But man is prone to set up for himself better ideals. The forbidden fruit
may have turned his brain, but it never soured his heart; it never killed
the memory of his divine birth. And, conscious of his own failure, he
looks wistfully around to see if anybody else has attained. And when
he sees the Great One, he recognises him, and his heart leaps up, though
his foolish mind may doubt and rebel against the voice of the Soul.

There is for man a better life than this we are leading. Such is the
message of the Teachers, taught not in words alone, but by the example
of their personality and their life. They are like a revelation, a letting in
of the sun.

Instead of elaborating new systems, they always point to that which
is ancient of days, to Truth, which is agelong and endures throughout
all superficial changes. The permanent values in life are brought to
the fore. They demonstrate that mankind has never been left without the

30 HELENA PETROVNA BLAVATSKY

Truth, however far its living waters may recede into the background;
but that the Truth has always been preserved by faithful guardians.
It is thus that we find H. P. Blavatsky, in the preface to her largest
work, The Secret Doctrine, declaring that

"These truths are in no sense put forward as a revelation; nor does the author claim the
position of a revealer of mystic lore now made public for the first time in the world's history.
For what is contained in this work is to be found scattered throughout thousands of volumes
embodying the scriptures of the great Asiatic and early European religions, hidden under
glyph and symbol, and hitherto left unnoticed because of this veil. What is now attempted
is to gather the oldest tenets together and to make of them one harmonious and unbroken
whole. The sole advantage which the writer has over her predecessors is that she need not
resort to personal speculations and theories. For this work is a partial statement of what
she herself has been taught by more advanced students, supplemented, in a few details only,
by the results of her own study and observation."

Why do we feel such fascination for the gods of antiquity, if not be-
cause we feel inwardly that those myths inshrine vital truths? These gods
and heroes, were they not perhaps modeled on the memories of great men
that really walked on earth in brighter ages and taught mankind?

The phrase 'higher powers in man' is one to conjure with, nowadays
as in all times. Though it has been woefully misused, so that it may call
up in some minds nothing better than some petty and ignoble idea of
'occultism' or 'psychism,' we must look beyond the travesty to the
original meaning. When H. P. Blavatsky spoke of higher powers she
meant something more like what students of the Bible know as the
fruits of the Spirit, she meant those noble attributes which mark the
hero and the man whose genius inspires, and is inspired by, his enthusiastic
devotion to the cause of Truth, Light, and Liberation. Hear her own
words:

"We would have all to realize that spiritual powers exist in every man."

"The duty of the Theosophical Society is to keep alive in man his spiritual intuitions."

"From the Theosophist must radiate those higher spiritual forces which alone can re-
generate his fellow-men."

"Nature gives up her innermost secrets and imparts true wisdom only to him who seeks
truth for its own sake and who craves knowledge in order to confer benefits on others, not on
his own unimportant personality."

"Occultism is not magic. It is comparatively easy to learn the trick of spells and the
methods of using the subtler, but still material, forces of physical nature; the powers of the
animal soul in man are soon awakened; the forces which his love, his hate, his passion, can call
into operation, are readily developed. But this is black magic — sorcery. For it is the motive,
and the motive alone, which makes any exercise of power become black (malignant) or white
(beneficent) magic. It is impossible to employ spiritual forces if there is the slightest tinge of
selfishness remaining in the operator."

This shows that H. P. Blavatsky's sole idea was one of service, and that
the higher powers she meant were those only which render us more

H. P. BLAVATSKY, THE HERO 31

potent workers in the great cause. Selfishness is the cause of the world's
ills, and is only increased by the development of powers which aggrandize
the personality. It is only by arousing in man motives that are greater
than personal desire and ambition that the ills due to selfishness can be
withstood. This then is what H. P. Blavatsky came to do. The opposi-
tion she encountered was only to be expected, for she threw down the
gauntlet to all forces of stagnation and retrogression; she challenged the
existing order of things. Many voices, speaking more or less consciously
in the name of this great opposition, in some one or other of its many
forms, were raised against the Teacher and her work. The attempt was
made to create a legend, to create a mythical H. P. Blavatsky, and imprint
upon the pages of history a lie that should hide the truth. But the face
has been torn off this imposture, and the real H. P. Blavatsky stands
revealed. The forces acting against such a great Soul are somewhat of
the nature of what modern psychologists call a ' group mind ' — the
aggregated interests of large bodies with vested interests. Such a group-
mind is perhaps not fully expressed in any one individual, but it acts
through individuals, who may be conscious agents or merely impulsive
and unreflective people who are impelled by its influence upon their
instincts. Whenever some king or notable person is assassinated, the
immediate agent of the deed is usually some half-witted individual with
a purely personal grudge, due to some trivial slight, real or imaginary.
And in the case of H. P. Blavatsky we find many vicious attacks have
emanated from people of this unfortunate constitution.

The Hero is an ideal ever present in the hearts of men, who feel
that in the Hero is shown that which they themselves potentially are
and miay actually become. H. P. Blavatsky was a Hero, and even the
attacks on her demonstrate it. This the people are beginning to realize.

If the action of one reacts on the lives of all — and this is the true scientific
idea — then it is only by all men becoming brothers and all women sisters,
and by all practising in their daily lives true brotherhood and true sisterhood,
that the real human solidarity which lies at the root of the elevation of the
race can ever be attained. It is this action and interaction, this true brother-
hood and sisterhood, in which each shall live for all and all for each, which is
one of the fundamental Theosophical principles that every Theosophist
should be bound not only to teach, but to carry out in his or her individual
life. — H. P. Blavatsky, The Key to Tlieosophy, p. 230.

TRIBUTES TO
HELENA PETROVNA BLAVATSKY

By Some of her Old Pupils resident at the International
Theosophical Headquarters, Point Loma, California

HAVING become acquainted with some of the teachings of Theosophy
in 1887, I immediately visited Madame Blavatsky at her residence
in London, for the purpose of seeing and knowing one who I felt
must be a great, noble, and gifted personality. I found her engrossed in the
work of promulgating Theosophy, by the receptions which she gave to all
inquirers and by her books and her magazine Lucifer. She toiled laborious-
ly and incessantly at a work which not only brought her no remuneration
of any kind but which was often indebted to her for assistance from her
own personal estate. These labors were carried on against the obstacles
of ill-health and bitter opposition. She soon made it clear to me that
Theosophy is indeed "the most serious movement of the age," and that
it demands from its students unselfish devotion to the cause of human
betterment, and an unflinching loyalty to truth, honor, and justice.
She pointed out that there was a nobler path in life for those sincerely
devoted to truth and willing to set aside their own personal ambitions
and prejudices in order to follow the behests of truth; and her own daily
life was the best vindication of her teachings. For truly H. P. Blavatsky
followed truth, and her whole hfe was a constant devotion and willing
sacrifice to it. My acquaintance with her continued intimate until her
death. Our relation was that of pupil and teacher, and she never failed
to educe all that was highest and best in my nature, and to set my foot-
steps upon that path which she herself had found to be the only true path
for humanity to follow — the path of unselfish devotion to the cause of
Truth, Light, and Liberation. She was at that time engaged in writing
and pubhshing The Secret Doctrine and The Voice of the Silence; and she
put the manuscript of the latter work into my hands to read.

I felt as though in the presence of a true friend, one who, imlike or-
dinary friends, knew the real needs of my heart; and who ministered to
those needs without flattering self-love or any other personal weakness.
I felt as though in the presence of a great reality, demonstrating to direct
perception the truth that the Soul of man is infinite, eternal, divine.
No words can express my sense of the privilege which I have enjoyed in
knowing this Great Soul, one of humanity's true Helpers. — H. T. Edge

DONATED BY
KATHERINE TINGLEY

TRIBUTES BY PUPILS 33

"CpVERY attack upon H. P. Blavatsky naturally calls forth a renewed
^^^ expression of love and reverence from those who knew her best.
This is really the final reply to such attacks, whatever others may also
be necessary — often better and m^ore convincing to those who did not
know her than one more direct. We who really knew her as she was,
tell what we saw, picture her as we knew her, say what she did for us and
what she was trying to inspire us to do and to become. The picture can
stand of itself as a sufficient reply to the slanders; for there is nothing
in common between this and the grotesque picture which her enemies
desire that the public should accept as her likeness. It would indeed be
also enough to point to her writings, without any direct testimony of ours.
The nobility and power of the writer's character, her love of truth and of
humanity, her desire to better the conditions of human life and to make
men and women realize their higher possibilities and give them hope and
light — all these shine unmistakably and transparently through every-
thing that came from her pen.

As one of those who knew her well, one of those to whom came, from
contact with her, the awakening of all that was best in their nature,
I, like the rest, welcome this new chance to go on record in her defence.

The first impression she made upon me (and on everyone else, whether
they thereafter loved or hated her) was of a personality of immense
strength, both of will and intellect. Most people, moreover, felt more or
less consciously that she understood their hidden nature. Some, for good
reasons, resented this clear insight into them.selves. Others, those who
could feel her compassion for human weaknesses so long as some good was
struggling there through them, and her magnetic appeal to and encourage-
ment of their own best ideals, loved her.

To me she became from the first moment I saw her, my Teacher and
friend. Her kindness to me from the first and all along until her death
is ever present in my memory.

Some faces have the marks of a weight of suffering which has crushed.
Her face had every line that pain can give, but, as visibly, it had never
weakened her will. Nor had it embittered her nor even quenched her
strong sense of humor.

Her center of consciousness was not in herself but in her work for
humanity. She was incapable of self-pity or of fear for herself. She was
hurt by attacks on herself only in so far as they hurt her work; was hurt
by treachery and ingratitude only because they were at all, and not
because they were with regard to herself. And she served and tried to
help the traitor and the ingrate to the last moment of opportunity.

When I first knew her (at Lansdowne Road and at Avenue Road in
London, England) she was aware, I think, that she had not long to live.

34 HELENA PETROVNA BLAVATSKY

And SO she was making every effort, working in some way from morning
to late at night without a break, to get the utmost possible of her message
into the public mind and into the minds of those about her and her special
group of pupils. She had very much more to give than any of us were
capable of taking. Theosophy requires the development of the whole
inner nature, not of intellect only, for its apprehension. And so the
Teacher had to wait upon the growth of the pupil's higher faculties,
dependent upon his own efforts in spiritualizing his life and consciousness.

She did her utmost, as I have said, working without ceasing, writing
for the public, issuing instructions to her Esoteric School, personally
teaching those about her and especially the few who composed her * Inner
Group,' often present at the meetings of the Lodge of her name, the
Blavatsky Lodge, and mostly keeping open house in the evenings for
inquirers who wished to discuss with her or question her.

This is not the place to go into detail concerning her work. I desired
merely to put on record some expression of my feeling for one of humanity's
great Initiate Teachers. In coming centuries every word from those
who knew her will be increasingly treasured for any light it may throw
upon her character. — Herbert Coryn

TT was in 1886 that I made the acquaintance of Madame Blavatsky in
-■' London and visited her at the house in Lansdowne Road, where she
was then living. In 1888 I joined the Theosophical Society and attended
the meetings of the Blavatsky Lodge, which met at the house of the
foundress of the Society in Lansdowne Road, at that time. Madame
Blavatsky was present on all the occasions of my weekly visits, and took
part in all the proceedings, answering questions as to the teachings of
Theosophy, and incidentally speaking on a great range of topics more
or less connected with the main subject of study, Theosophy.

The thing that had compelled my attention to this subject was my
intense conviction of the absolute sincerity of the foundress of the Society,
and of her power to expound the true teachings of Theosophy, as well as
of her fitness to be a guide to one who aspired to lead a higher life. My
conviction was based on my own personal observation and judgment of
character, and not at all on anybody's evidence or opinions. So, when
in later years, I heard stories of a kind that did not agree with my own
observations and conclusions, I was not influenced by them, but found
support for my faith in Madame Blavatsky as a spiritual teacher in the
internal evidence supplied by her works, such as The Secret Doctrine,
The Voice of the Silence, and The Key to Theosophy; all of which were
produced after my first meeting with the writer.

TRIBUTES BY PUPILS 35

The more I studied her works the stronger grew my faith in the
reality of Madame Blavatsky's mission, and in her ability to transmit to
the world the teachings intrusted to her for that purpose. It seemed
to me that her devotion to the cause of Theosophy was absolute, and
was wholly disinterested.

I saw that she suffered acutely from the slanders that were circulated
about her former life, but I felt that no amount of calumny could turn
her from the task which she had undertaken, and which she was carry-
ing out under conditions of ill-health that seemed to make work of
any kind impossible.

It was obvious that her self-sacrificing devotion to the cause of Theo-
sophy could bring to herself no other reward than denunciation and
viUfication, on the one hand, and on the other the very doubtful support
of those who were anxious to get from her some of the vast store of know-
ledge that was evidently at her command. While a few earnest followers
honestly endeavored to lead the life and to follow the teacher, the majority
of those who called themselves her followers were in reality seeking
knowledge for their own gratification, rather than for the service of
humanity. Some of these resented what they contemptuously called
the "parrot-cry of Brotherhood," which the "old lady" was constantly
insisting upon as the foundation of Theosophy, and which they con-
sidered "mere ethics."

In spite of the constant failure of her professed followers to understand
her, and the unscrupulous misrepresentations of avowed enemies, she
never lost faith in the cause, nor wavered in her absolute devotion to the
task she had undertaken. Suffering martyrdom both mentally and physic-
ally, she worked indefatigably, and her writing showed no trace of her
physical condition, which was such as to make her life a wonder in itself
and her hterary achievement a marvel.

What need to refute attacks upon her character, when there remain
such monuments to her nobility of soul and intellect as The Secret Doctrine,
The Voice of the Silence, Isis Unveiled, and The Key to Theosophy?

— Reginald Willoughby Machell

TDRIOR to meeting Madame H. P. Blavatsky in London in 1888 I had
-'■ been admitted, along with others in Dublin, to membership in the
Theosophical Society by William Q. Judge, then on a visit to Ireland.
At that time I had already become familiar with the details of many
infamous attacks which had been fulminated against the honor and
integrity of the Foundress, H. P. Blavatsky.

The pettiness and feebleness as to fact of all these, stood out in clear-

36 HELENA PETROVNA BLAVATSKY

cut contrast with the spiritual nobiUty of her wi'itings in Isis Unveiled
and the magazines edited by her, and such accusations but served to
strengthen one's enthusiasm for the great principles which underlie the
idea of man's essential soUdarity — to the philosophic rationale of which,
demonstrated by her work and her references to the lore and knowledge
of countless Teachers throughout the long ages, she had devoted her
life-energies and her very heart's blood.

Such attacks brought her unremitting suffering, as affecting the Cause
she labored for; yet, for us beginners in the Science of Life, they showed
well the inherent weaknesses of our complex nature, and enabled us
better to realize the enormous import to the race of the message Theosophy
holds out — a message delivered by H. P. Blavatsky in no uncertain
terms, and in fact with a vigor, an eloquence, and an amplitude of historic
and philosophic detail unrivaled in known history. While iconoclastically
tearing to tatters most of the generally accepted beliefs and dogmas,
scientific or otherwise, she stands revealed in her writings as a Master-
builder possessed of a complete constructive philosophy of practical life
and equally of cosmogenesis and anthropogenesis, as known to the Elder
Brothers of the race for incalculable ages. Withal so humble that at the
outset of her colossal work The Secret Doctrine she writes (paraphrasing
Montaigne), "I have here made only a nosegay of culled flowers, and
have brought nothing of my own but the string that ties them."

When she founded the Theosophical Society in 1875 in New York,
she said to Mr. Judge that she was embarking on a work that would draw
upon her unmerited slander, implacable malice, uninterrupted misunder-
standing, constant work, and no worldly reward. In this, if in nothing
else, she was a true prophet. Her main purpose was to permeate the
world with the ideas and teaching of the ancient Wisdom-Religion, primal
source of all the world-religions. It certainly was not to promulgate
spiritualism, marvel-seeking, or psychism of any kind. Let her writings
attest.

She brought to both east and west the truths so long obscured regarding
the great laws of Karma, Reincarnation, and the dual nature of man,
together with a spiritual philosophy so exalted as to furnish the keynote
for many successive lives of aspiration and endeavor. The few quotations
appended from her writings indicate in part the purpose of this great
and wise Teacher — beloved by thousands who have never seen her at all.

— Fred J. Dick

TRIBUTES TO

HELENA PETROVNA BLAVATSKY

by some of her students and others at the international
Theosophical Headquarters, Point Loma, California

EVERY attack upon H. P. Blavatsky must be welcomed by those who
knew her and have remained loyal to her work and purposes. For
it is one more opportunity for them to put on record their love of
her and their reverence for her as a Teacher, and also their gratitude to her
for having awakened them to recognition of their higher possibilities.
They know that her life was ideal in its unselfishness and devotion, wholly
consecrated to the work she had taken upon herself, wholly motived by
love of the race. In the coming centuries she will take her place as one
of the line of the great spiritual Teachers of Humanity. — Herbert Coryn

Our first great Teacher, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky — while icono-
clastically tearing to shreds most of the conventionally accepted dogmas,
scientific or otherwise — stands revealed in her writings as a Master-
builder in possession of a constructive philosophy of practical life and
equally of cosmogenesis and anthropogenesis, as taught to the few by
Elder Brothers of the race through incalculable ages. She brought to east
and west important truths, long obscured, regarding the great laws of
karma and reincarnation, especially as related to the dual nature of man;
and outlined a spiritual philosophy whose nobility can furnish keynotes
to many fives of endeavor. — Fred J. Dick

The crowning privilege of an eventful life has been my intimate per-
sonal relationship with H. P. Blavatsky, as pupil of that great Teacher.
This extended from 1887 until her death, while she was carr^dng on at her
London residence her work of promulgating Theosophy, by her receptions
to inquirers and the publication of her books and magazine. She showed
me that Theosophy is the most serious movement of the age, and that it
requires of its adherents entire devotion to the Heart-Doctrine; and her
own fife was the noblest exemplar of her teachings. In the face of illness,
incessant and malicious opposition, and at great pecuniary sacrifice, she
toiled heroically at her great work for the bringing of Truth, Light, and
Liberation to discouraged humanity. — H. T. Edge

38 HELENA PETROVNA BLAVATSKY

I MET Madame Blavatsky in 1886 and joined the Theosophical Society
in the following year, attending the meetings of the Blavatsky Lodge
first at her house in Lansdowne Road, London W. and later at Avenue
Road, N. W. My interest in Theosophy was to a great degree due to
my conviction of the absolute sincerity of the Foundress of the Society, as
well as of her ability to give the highest instruction in every branch of
the subject. I saw that her devotion to the cause was absolute and was
entirely disinterested; my faith in her and my interest in Theosophy
have grown with the years. — Reginald W. Machell

What most deeply impressed me when I met Helena Petrovna Bla-
vatsky in 1889 was her deep insight into human nature, her marvelous
wisdom, her sincerity, her generosity. I became a member of the original
Theosophical Society in the same year, and have ever since been an active
worker in it. Words fail to express the gratitude I feel to Mme. Blavatsky.
Only her peers can estimate the greatness of her character, her wisdom, her
self-sacrifice, her devotion to Truth and the Cause of Humanity; and
she was without peer in the nineteenth century. As Foundress of the
present Theosophical Movement, and its first Teacher, she proclaimed
again the Truths of the ancient Wisdom-Religion. Through its teachings
— the Divinity of Man, the Freedom of the Soul, Universal Brotherhood,
Karma, Reincarnation, — she gave a new meaning to life and opened the
way for a new understanding of its problems; she brought new hope to the
world and has made Humanity her debtor.

— Elizabeth Churchill Spalding

For four years a pupil of Mme. Blavatsky, for thirty-four a close
student of her writings, I regard it an inestimable privilege to pay homage
publicly to her ability, her devotion to the welfare of humanity, her bound-
less Compassion. It was she who brought forward, in the midst of a
selfish civilization, the unselfish doctrine of life for the sake of others and
the renunciation of personal salvation through the attainment of bliss in
a Heaven of egotistic happiness. Through her work and her teachings
mankind is being guided to a goal of attainment heretofore undreamed of.

— H. T. Patterson

With the discovery of new facts in physical science come the verifica-
tions, one by one, of the suggestions and affirmations which were made with
assurance forty years ago by H. P. Blavatsky, when she so courageously
braved the obloquy and hard-headed prejudices of materialistic tendencies
of the last century. Also in the vindication of Ancient Wisdom, concern-

DONATED BY
KATHERINE TINGLEY

TRIBUTES BY STUDENTS 39

ing the origin, development, and destiny of man, slowly-growing know-
ledge concedes now what she then declared with such certainty.

How long will it be before her immeasurable service to Humanity
will be fully recognised, and the once implacable traducers are silenced
for ever? — E. A. Neresheimer

"At the roaring loom of time I ply, and weave for God the garment thou seest him by."

In London, in the year 1889, I stood for the first time in the presence
of H. P. Blavatsky and listened to her words of wisdom and the cheering
optimism of her voice; words that changed the whole current of my life,
until, in course of time, I grew to recognise her as my Teacher and as
one of those Great Souls who, from century to century, again and again,
appear among men as benefactors of the human race.

In her versatility and erudition she had that 'grand manner' that
soared above and swept aside her would-be detractors. — As said by one
of her pupils: "Those who do not understand H. P. Blavatsky had
better not try to explain her."

She stands in the forefront of the Immortals — and, with her, her
successors, WilHam Q. Judge and Katherine Tingley. — C. Thurston

When the Great Theosophist H. P. Blavatsky brought her wonderful
message to us in the last quarter of the century just closed, loyal friends
and followers, and bitter and spiteful enemies stood arrayed, these against
those: the former in defense and support; the latter, to destroy if they
might. At present, the defamers and their parasitic satellites have been
beaten all along the line, but the fight is not yet ended. As Katherine
Tingley, H. P. Blavatsky's Successor, has very lately said, most propitious
and most promising is the present time for dealing a smashing blow at
cowardly attacks upon a dead woman's reputation and good name.

To that wonderful woman, H. P. Blavatsky, and to her great Suc-
cessors, my heart goes out, and will return to me never again. I know
H. P. Blavatsky; knowing her, I love her; loving her, I follow her and
her Successors, forever. — G. v. Purucker

I attended meetings conducted by Mme. Blavatsky at the London
Headquarters of the Theosophical Society during the months of March
and April 1891 — having applied for membership to the Society which
she had founded.

Mme. Blavatsky impressed me as one who personified what she urged
others to estabhsh in their own natures. Her example compelled one to
reahze that spiritual life is not a 'free gift,' but the product of self-effort

40 HELENA PETROVNA BLAVATSKY

along true lines. Her writings abundantly testify that each man's per-
ception of truth is strictly relative to the exercise of the powers of his
spiritual will to overcome and become, and that by sounding the depths
of his nature he may attain identity with the Divine Law which regulates
all life. Her influence upon modern life is that of having re-introduced a
mode of thought which embraces hitherto detached fragments of know-
ledge and experience as integral parts of one whole, pointing the way by
which the will, the intellect, and the sensibilities may be blended into one
power under the control of the spiritual and essentially divine Higher Self.

— William A. Dunn

Every student of H. P. Blavatsky owes to her a debt of gratitude in-
expressible in words. She possessed not only the desire to serve the world,
but the rare and needful knowledge. Her superb courage knew no Hmit;
her devotion to duty was absolute; her love for humanity, boundless.

The keenest minds, the sincerest lovers of mankind, have evidenced
their recognition of this, and bow in reverence before her transcendent
genius for Service. The longer those live who have felt her influence, the
more do they regard with wonder that towering figure of the nineteenth
century, who kindled the light in an era of spiritual darkness.

— Gertrude van Pelt, m. d.

Her writings reveal her soul. Profoundly helpful, with compassion
for all that breathes, spiritually upHfting and intellectually illuminating,
they reflect her high intelligence, nobility of character, and love of hu-
manity. They attract those who would lead better lives, and who would
learn how to promote the brotherhood of man. Her life was in accord
with her teachings, pure, unselfish, and generous. Her work has succeeded;
the nucleus of the Universal Brotherhood of Humanity has been es-
tablished on lines she outlined, the only ones that could succeed, on the
basis of the Divinity of Man. The 'Ancient Landmarks' have been
recovered. — Charles J. Ryan

A LOVING and loyal tribute to Helena P. Blavatsky, the World Teacher
of the nineteenth century, who restored to man the knowledge of his
divine origin and of the glorious ancient past; who pointed him to a path
of spiritual effort worthy the godlike nature; and who, in her writings,
left a lamp of wisdom to guide him upon the way.

The radiance of this Diamond Soul is reaching the heart-hfe of the
world; the mighty fearlessness of her devotion is rending the veils that
hid the oneness of Truth; her sublime compassion shall yet be the ideal
of men of every race and age to come; the clarion challenge of her selfless

TRIBUTES BY STUDENTS 41

life echoes around the world and calls men to true conceptions of the unity
and purpose in the destiny of humanity. — Marjorie M. Tyberg

Bright flame of pure compassion, warrior tried and true, once more we
hail you as the rolling years recall your pioneer endeavors for the Race.

Mere wordy eloquence or flowery praise is valueless in your discriminat-
ing gaze, nor would we offer verbal homage in the place of dedicated lives.
Rather we give ourselves anew to that great enterprise in which for many
lives you have poured forth your energies. Shoulder to shoulder will we
march, casting aside the petty hindrances retarding our advance, and
with a concentrated adamantine will, resolved to blend our separated lives
in that great river of devoted force in which all lofty souls are merged.

— H. P. Leonard

"She has no need of any man's praise; but even she has need of Justice." — William Q. Judge

For the courage of your world-wide Mystic Quest to find God and
the Soul in man; for your loyalty to the mighty perished past which you
made live again ; for your revelation of man to himself and your restora-
tion of his birthright of Divinity; for your compassionate vindication of
the rights of the animal world whose "long hymn of suffering" smote your
heart; for the Divine, Immortal Wisdom of your imperial books, and
your example as a woman and a Soul:

For these and more than these we pay you tribute, "H. P. B.," as
one who "being dead, yet speaketh." — Grace Knoche

"For a good treebringeth not forth evil fruit, neither doth a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit."

"My own principle has ever been to make the Light of Truth the
beacon of my Hfe," wrote Mme. Blavatsky. In all her voluminous
writings, not once does she offend the moral sense. She taught the highest
morality, love of truth, purity of life, service of humanity; of these her
own life was a shining example. Attacks against her are but signs of the
vigorous strength of Theosophy. Men attack only that which they fear;
they who love darkness ever hate the light. Her glorious teachings and
the work of her successors, William Q. Judge and Katherine Tingley,
are a complete refutation of all the calumnies uttered against her.

I became a member of the original Theosophical Society in 1890,
six months before Mme. Blavatsky's death, and since 1892 have been
actively engaged in Theosophical work. My gratitude and devotion to
H. P. Blavatsky and my reverence for her have grown with the passing
years. For me she stands as one of the Great Teachers of the ages.

— Joseph H. Fussell

42 HELENA PETROVNA BLAVATSKY

H. P. Blavatsky's life and her work were essentially prophetic. In
her own make-up she was a living example of a stage of development
which, compared with the average human being, mad^ her teachings of
human perfectibility seem not only possible but natural. She exemplified
the character of one who had consciously traveled farther along the path
of destiny than her fellow-men. Her knowledge of life and of natural
laws was the undoubted heritage of ages of past experience, which
nothing but reincarnation could account for. Her selflessness and tireless
energy in laboring to restore the ancient truths to the world, showed how
truly brotherhood is a fact in nature, and that the tie is founded in the
unity which originates in man's birthright of divinity. In an age steeped
and blinded at the lowest point of a densely materialistic cycle, she showed
how one could overcome the illusions of matter by self-conquest, and could
travel along the upward arc of the cycle.

Her teachings, touching life at every point, foretold the inevitable
changing and crumbling of the foundations of institutions which were
confidently regarded as secure and promising. The vexed and seemingly
unrelated problems of the industrial, educational, rehgious, and social
worlds she synthesized and harmonized into the single question of man's
progressive growth and self-development. She explained how, instead
of the individual being lost in the general racial advance, the law of karma
restored to him his just due, life after life.

Madame Blavatsky warned the nations of the disasters which to the
average mind seem to have fallen out of a clear sky. But in pointing out
the karmic effects of ages of unbrotherliness,— which are expressed in the
terrible war and its aftermath — she no less confidently predicted the
uprising of a great spiritual wave, such as this humanity had not yet known.
When her heroic soul had worn out its body, she left her work of hope and
inspiration in the hands of a worthy successor, William Q. Judge.

— Lydia Ross, m. d.

"Others abide our question; thou art free."

She sowed the fields of thought with poetry, aspiration, faith in the
divine order of things. She made spiritual thinking possible. Her fiery
energies, her dynamic strength of will, heart, intellect, allowed none to
remain indifferent: here was one out of the Heroic Age, who challenged
all souls. The ethics of the Christs and Buddhas, grown faint with time,
she wrote anew in letters of fire; and reinforced with a majestic and irre-
futable philosophy. No Great Soul appears, but sets the kennels of
malignity yapping and snarling: for the attacks that were made on her,
it is enough to say that they are lies. — Kenneth Morris

DONATED BY
KATHERiNE TINGLEV

TRIBUTES TO

HELENA PETROVNA BLAVATSKY*

By Some of her Students

IN the hearts of those who are endeavoring to make Theosophy a real
factor in their hves, there must remain an overwhelming sense of
gratitude to her who has inspired them with the will to do so; and
this sense of gratitude, love and respect will never be content until it can
find fit expression. No material memorial, nothing that money can pur-
chase, will ever be judged a sufficient tribute to her memory. There is
but one way in which the debt can be paid and that is by making the
Theosophical Society a world-wide success and Theosophy known through-
out the whole globe. The work to be done is one not only of head and
hands but also of heart, the well-spring of all right actions and the real
magnet-point of our humanity. The tremendous burden of responsibiUty
that lay so heavily on H. P. Blavatsky, but which she so gladly bore for
the Society, must now be shared among ourselves. No longer can H. P.
Blavatsky stand as a 'buffer,' as she herself phrased it, to the Society
and be the scapegoat of all its shortcomings. While she lived, every
mistake and wrong-doing of those who surrounded her were set down to
Mme. Blavatsky and she had to bear the blame for all. This is now no
longer possible. The Theosophical Society and each of its members must
stand upon their own merits, and the day of vicarious atonement is past.
If the world is to respect Theosophy, we must make it first of all respect
the Theosophical Society, both for its labors for others and for the im-
mediate good it does to those who come within its pale. We must teach
and exemplify: teach what Theosophy is in plain and simple words, and
exemplify its redeeming power by our right conduct in all the affairs of life.

— G. R. S. Mead, F. T. S.

What phenomenon could well be greater than the production of
Mme. Blavatsky's monumental works, in a language and country foreign
to her, unless it were the union in one individual of such great knowledge,
such spiritual wealth, with so much geniality and consideration for the
meanest brother or sister who showed aspiration for truth or goodness,
so much sympathy and ready help in difficulties of every kind, material
as well as psychical and spiritual.

*Extracts from Tributes published in 1891, shortly after Mme. Blavatsky's death.

44 HELENA PETROVNA BLAVATSKY

Each can only speak as he or she has been personally affected; and
such egotism, if egotism it be, is but a triumphant verdict in favor of her
we fain would honor, whose greatest glory was the number of hearts and
minds she won for the pursuit of truth and virtue.

— Emily Kislingbury

the opinion of a hindu about h. p. blavatsky

Those who call Mme. Blavatsky *a fraud' are much mistaken, they
do not know her. I would be glad to give up everything I have in this
world to become such a fraud, if anybody will come forward to teach me.
Is it not sufficient for the Westerns to know that a proud Brahman, who
knows not how to bend his body before any mortal being in this world,
except his superiors in relation or religion, joins his hands like a submissive
child before the white Yogint of the West? — Rai B. K. Laheri, F. T. S.

how AN AGNOSTIC SAW HER

She was neither pessimist nor misanthropist. She was simply an
upright and romantically honest giantess, who measured herself with the
men and women with whom she came in contact, and felt the contrast,
and was not hypocrite enough to pretend she did not feel it. But she
did not call even those who reviled and wronged her by a more bitter
epithet than 'flap-doodles.' Such assailants as even the Coulombs and
Dr. Coues she referred to with expressions equivalent to "Father, forgive
them, for they know not what they do," even when these assailants were
doing their best to cut her, soul and body, with numerous and ghastly
wounds, and to fill them with salt and salve them with vitriol.

Theosophy or no Theosophy, the most extraordinary woman of our
century, or of any century, has passed away. Yesterday the world had
one Madame Blavatsky — today it has none. The matrix of hereditary
environment in which she was molded has been broken. Through the
coming ages of time or eternity shall the shattered fragments of that
matrix be gathered up and refixed, and another Helena Petrovna Hahn
be born upon the earth, when the earth is sane enough not to misunder-
stand her, to persecute her, and seek to bury her name in a cataclysm of
falsehood, hatred, and slander? — Saladin (In Agnostic Journal)

To all who assisted her work she was ever ready to give counsel and
help, and only those who received her help can appreciate it at its just
value. But though they feel it, they cannot talk of it, for it is not possible
to bring the deepest feelings to the surface. Personally, as I know her,
I may say that I found in her the wise teacher, the loving friend who knew

TRIBUTES BY STUDENTS 45

how to cut for the purpose of curing, and an example in practice when the
need arose of how to regulate action to theosophical ideas. I may close
by saying that I regard myself as most fortunate in the Karma which
brought me in association with H. P. Blavatsky and enabled me to assist
so far as I could in the work of the lion-hearted leader of the Cause of
Theosophy.— Arch. Keightley, m. d., F. T. S.

It is doubtful whether there ever was any great genius and savior of
mankind, whose personality while upon this earth was not misunderstood
by his friends, reviled by his enemies, mentally tortured and crucified, and
finally made an object of fetish-worship by subsequent generations.
H. P. Blavatsky seems to be no exception to the rule. The world, dazzled
by the light of her doctrines, which the majority of men did not grasp,
because they were new to them, looked upon her with distrust, and the
representatives of scientific ignorance, filled with their own pomposity,
pronounced her to be 'the greatest impostor of the age,' because their
narrow minds could not rise up to a comprehension of the magnificence
of her spirit. It is, however, not difficult to prophesy, that in the near
future, when the names of her enemies will have been forgotten, the
world will become alive to a realization of the true nature of the mission
of H. P. Blavatsky, and see that she was a messenger of Light, sent to
instruct this sinful world, to redeem it from ignorance, folly and super-
stition, a task which she has fulfilled as far as her voice was heard and
her teachings accepted. . . .

In caUing her ' the greatest impostor of the age ' the agent of the Society
for Psychical Research, who presented her with that title, merely certified
to his own incapacity to judge about character, for H. P. Blavatsky — as
all who were acquainted with her will testify — was never capable of
disguising herself, and any imposture, great or little, which she could have
attempted, would have immediately been found out, even by a child.
Mme. Blavatsky was in possession of that in which most of her critics
are sadly deficient, namely, soul- htoiv ledge, a department of 'science' not
yet discovered by modern scientists and would-be philosophers. The
soul that Hved in her was a great soul. This great soul, and not the dress
which she used to wear, should be the object of our investigation, not
for the purpose of gratifying scientific curiosity — but for profiting by
the example. — Franz Hartmann, m. d.

How keenly she felt the shameful attacks upon her character we who
knew her well, realized and regretted; and I often tried to reason her into
a feeling of indifference for the opinions of those who knew nothing of her

46 HELENA PETROVNA BLAVATSKY

except what they gathered from garbled and prejudiced accounts in
newspapers. But although she personally felt these slanders, a large part
of her suffering arose from a fear that the Cause which she had at heart,
and for which she worked as I have never seen anyone else work in any
other cause, would be injured by the calumnies against her. I always felt
astonished at the untiring energy which she displayed; even when ill she
would still struggle to her writing-table and go on working. It fills one
with contempt and anger to think that even when she was beyond the
reach of slander some of the papers degraded their pages with abuse, and
republished the falsehoods which have found credulous audience among a
class who pride themselves on their incredulity. . . .

Still to show that I had ample opportunities for knowing her well,
I will mention that during both her visits to Simla I saw her almost daily,
in fact I was in the same house for three months, in and out of her room
at any and all times of the day. She was always affectionate towards me,
and I had a real affection for her, and shall always, as hitherto, defend her
before the world. And we who know what a wonderful woman she was,
and how interesting and profound is the philosophy which she has brought
prominently forward, know also that a day will come when the world will
acknowledge her greatness, and will realize that we who defend and rever-
ence her memory are not such foolish and gullible people as the conceited
and usually ignorant public of today assume. — Alice Gordon, F. T. S.

WHAT SHE TAUGHT US

If I were to write this short memoir simply as an imperfect expression
of what H. P. Blavatsky was to me personally, and of the influence of her
life and teachings upon my own life and aspirations, I should merely be
adding one more testimony to that affection and reverence which she
inspired in all who learnt to understand her in some degree. There were
those who were attracted to her by the magnetism of her personal influence,
by her extraordinary intellect, by her conversational powers, and even by
her militant unconventionality. But I was not one of these. It was her
message that attracted me; it was as a teacher that I learnt to know and
love her. Apart from her teachings I might have looked upon Mme.
Blavatsky as an interesting and unique character, but I do not think
I should have been attracted to her, had not her message spoken at once
right home to my heart. It was through that message that I came to
know her, not as a mere personal friend, but as something infinitely more.

Let me dwell therefore upon Mme. Blavatsky as a teacher, let me
endeavor to express what it was that she set before me, and before so
many others, the acceptance of which united us by ties which death
cannot sever.

TRIBUTES BY STUDENTS 47

First, and above all else, she showed us the purpose of life. And when
I say this I mean much more than might be commonly understood by this
phrase. I mean much more than that she gave us an interest and a motive
in this present life, and a belief or faith with regard to the next. Those
who have learnt the lesson of the illusory nature of that which most men
call life, whether here or hereafter, need to draw their inspiration from a
deeper source than is available in the external world of forms. . . .

And thus she did something more than teach us a new system of
philosophy. She drew together the threads of our life, those threads which
run back into the past, and forward into the future, but which we had
been unable to trace, and showed us the pattern we had been weaving
and the purpose of our work.

She taught us Theosophy — not as a mere form of doctrine, not as a
religion, or a philosophy, or a creed, or a working hypothesis, but as
a living power in our lives.

It is inevitable that the term Theosophy should come to be associated
with a certain set of doctrines. In order that the message may be given
to the world it must be presented in a definite and systematic form. But
in doing this it becomes exoteric, and nothing that is exoteric can be per-
manent, for it belongs to the world of form. She led us to look beneath
the surface, behind the form ; to make the principle the real motive power
of our life and conduct. To her the term Theosophy meant something
infinitely more than could be set before the world in any Key to Theosophy,
or Secret Doctrine. The nearest approach to it in any of her published
works is in The Voice of the Silence; yet even that conveys but imperfectly
what she would — had the world been able to receive it — have taught
and included in the term Theosophy. . . .

Individualism is the keynote of modern civiUzation; competition and
survival of the fittest, the practical basis of our morality. Our modern
philosophers and scientific teachers do all that is possible to reduce man
to the level of an animal, to show his parentage, his ancestry and his
genius as belonging to the brute creation, and conditioned by brutal laws
of blind force and dead matter. What wonder then that one who beheved
so ardently in the divine nature of man, in the divine law of love, should
oppose with scornful contempt the teachings of both religion and science
which thus degrade humanity.

And she paid the inevitable penalty. Misunderstood, slandered, and
vilified to the last degree, she lived a hero's fife, and died a martyr's death.
Only those who were her intimate friends knew how she suffered, mentally
and bodily. The man who dies with his face to the foe, fighting to the last
though covered with wounds, is accounted a hero. But in the heat of
battle there is oblivion of pain, there is a superhuman strength of madness

48 HELENA PETROVNA BLAVATSKY

and frenzy. How much more should she be accounted a hero who could
hold on to life, and work as no other woman has worked, through years
of physical and mental torture. . . .

She chose the cross. And thus not merely did she teach us the meaning
of Theosophy by precept, but also by example. She was herself the great-
est of the Theosophists, not merely because she founded the movemnet,
and restored to the world the treasures of ancient wisdom, but because
she herself had made the ''Great Renunciation. ''

— William Kingsland, F. T. S.

from india

"Gone is the glory from the grass,
And splendor from the flower!"

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky has ceased to exist on this earthly
plane. She is gone from among us. Madame Blavatsky's death is a blow
to all the world. She was not of this nation or that. The wide earth was
her home, and all mankind were her brothers, and these brothers are now
plunged in mourning for the loss of a priceless sister. . . .

Madame Blavatsky was decidedly the most remarkable person that
this age has produced. The whole of her life was simply extraordinary.
There is no existing human standard by which to judge her. She will
always stand out alone. There was only one Madame Blavatsky, there
never will be any other. It was always difficult to understand her at all
points, she was often the greatest puzzle to her most intimate friends, and
the mystery of her Hfe is yet only partly revealed. — Babula

from SPAIN

Every time I saw Mme. H. P. Blavatsky, my affection, loyalty and
admiration for her increased. To her I owe all that I know, for both
mental tranquility and moral equilibrium were attained on making her
acquaintance. She gave me hope for the future; she inspired me with
her own noble and devoted principles, and transformed my everyday
existence by holding up a high ideal of life for attainment; the ideal
being the chief object of the Theosophical Society, /. e., to work for the
good and well-being of humanity.

Her death was a bitter grief to me, as to all those who are working
for the common cause, Theosophy, and who having known her personally,
have contracted a debt of undying gratitude towards her.

I have lost my Friend and Teacher, who purified my life, who gave me
back my faith in Humanity, and in her admirable example of courage,
self-sacrifice, and disinterestedness, and virtue, I shall find the strength

TRIBUTES BY STUDENTS 49

and courage necessary for working for that cause which we are all bound
to defend.

May her memory be blessed!

These, dear brethren and friends, are the few words which I wished
to say to you, greatly desiring to declare before you all that I shall never
forget what I owe to H. P. Blavatsky.

Let enemies and materialists explain, if they can, the power and
attraction of H. P. Blavatsky, and if they cannot, let them be silent.

The tree will be known by its fruits, as actions will be judged and
valued by their results. — Jose Xifre

H. p. BLAVATSKY AND "THE SECRET DOCTRINE"

"Who am I," she said, answering one question with another, "who
am I that I should deny a chance to one in whom I see a spark still glim-
mering of recognition of the Cause I serve that might yet be fanned into
a flame of devotion? What matter the consequences that fall on me
personally when such an one fails, succumbing to the forces of evil within
him — ■ deception, ingratitude, revenge, what not — forces that I saw as
clearly as I saw the hopeful spark: though in his fall he cover me with
misrepresentation, obloquy and scorn? What right have I to refuse to
any one the chance of profiting by the truths I can teach him, and there-
by entering upon the Path? I tell you that I have no choice. I am
pledged by the strictest rules and laws of occultism to a renunciation of
selfish considerations, and how can I dare to assume the existence of
faults in a candidate and act upon my assumption even though a cloud
may fill me with misgivings?" . . .

At this time I learned little more concerning The Secret Doctrine than
that it was to be a work far more voluminous than Isis Unveiled, and
that it would give out to the world as much of the esoteric doctrine as
was possible at the present stage of human evolution. " It will, of course,
be very fragmentary," she said, "and there will of necessity be great
gaps left, but it will make men think, and as soon as they are ready more
will be given out." "But," she added after a pause, "that will not be
until the next century, when men will begin to understand and discuss
this book intelligently." . . .

Incidents, such as this [referring to one who had come to her, asking
for help, but later turned against her], of ingratitude and desertion,
affected Mme. Blavatsky most painfully. I mention it here to show an
example of the mental distress which, added to physical maladies and
weakness, rendered progress with her task slow and painful.

Her quiet studious life continued for some little time, and the work
progressed steadily, until, one morning, a thunderbolt descended upon us.

50 HELENA PETROVNA BLAVATSKY

By the early post, without a word of warning, Mme. Blavatsky received
a copy of the well-known Report of the Society for Psychical Research.
It was a cruel blow, and, in the form it took, wholly unexpected. I shall
never forget that day nor the look of blank and stony despair that she
cast on me when I entered her sitting-room and found her with the book
open in her hands.

"This," she cried, "is the Karma of the Theosophical Society, and it
falls upon me. I am the scapegoat. I am made to bear all the sins of the
Society, and now who will hsten to me or read The Secret Doctrine? How
can I carry on my work for Humanity? ..."

Her sensitive nature was too deeply wounded, her indignation at
unmerited wrong too strongly stirred, to listen at first to counsels of
patience and moderation. Nothing would serve but she must start for
London at once and annihilate her enemies with the truth. Every post
only increased her anger and despair, and for a long time no useful work
could be done. She recognised at last that for her there was no hope or
remedy in legal proceedings in this country any more than in India.
This is proved by a passage from a "Protest" which she contributed to
Mr. Sinnett's reply to the Report entitled " 'Occult World Phenomena'
and the Society for Psychical Research," and which I will quote.

"Mr. Hodgson [the agent of the Psychical Research Society and author of the P. R. S.
report] knows," she wrote, "and the Committee doubtless share his knowledge, that he is
safe from actions for libel at my hands, because I have no money to conduct costly proceedings
against him." . . .

To conclude this episode I may perhaps be permitted to quote a letter
of my own, addressed to :

"From a worldly point of view Madame Blavatsky is an unhappy woman, slandered,
doubted, and abused by many; but, looked at from a higher point of view, she has extra-
ordinary gifts, and no amount of vilification can deprive her of the privileges which she enjoys.

"On account of the extensive knowledge which she possesses, and which extends far into
the invisible part of nature, it is very much to be regretted that all her troubles and trials
prevent her giving to the world a great deal of information, which she would be willing to
impart if she were permitted to remain undisturbed and in peace.

"Even the great work in which she is now engaged, The Secret Doctrine, has been greatly
impeded by all this persecution. ..."

In the following year [1888] another account appeared in The Theo-
sophist for July, which may also be of interest to my readers:

"Madame Blavatsky continues to labor as ceaselessly as ever, and under conditions of such
physical disability as render not simply her working, but actually her living truly marvelous.
I may say as a physician and not simply upon my own authority, but as a fact known to some
of the leading medical practitioners of London, that never before has a patient been known to
live even for a week under such conditions of renal disorder as have been chronic with her for
very many months past. Lately they have been somewhat modified by the action of strychnia,
of which she has taken a little over six grains daily. Very frequently she has attacks of cerebral
apoplexy, but without any treatment known to medical science wards them off and goes on,

TRIBUTES BY STUDENTS 51

firmly confident as ever that her present life will not end before its work is fully accomplished.
And in that work she is indefatiKable. Her hours of labor are daily from 6:30 a. m. to 7 p. m.,
w'ith only a few minutes' interruption for a lij!;ht meal just before the sun reaches the meridian.
During that time she devotes a great deal of her time to preparing the instructions for the
Esoteric Section, giving out such knowledge as is permitted her to impart and its members are
capable of receiving. Then the editorial labor connected with the production of her magazine
Lucifer devolves entirely upon her. And she also edits the new French Theosophical monthly
magazine La Revue Theosophique, published by the Countess d'Adhemar, who, by the way, is
an American by birth. Her magazine is now publishing a series of brilliant articles by Amara-
vella, and a translation in French of Madame Blavatsky's Secret Doctrine. . . .

" In the evening, from 7 until 11 o'clock, and sometimes 2 o'clock a. m., Madame Blavatsky
receives visitors, of whom she has many. Of course many are friends, others are serious in-
vestigators, and not a few are impelled by curiosity to see a woman who is one of the prominent
personages of the world today. All are welcome, and she is equally ready in meeting all upon
any ground they select.

"Mr. G. J. Romanes, a Fellow of the Royal Society, comes in to discuss the evolutionary
theory set forth in her Secret Doctrine; Mr. W. T. Stead, editor of the Pall Mall Gazette, who
is a great admirer of The Secret Doctrine, finds much in it that seems to invite further elucida-
tion; Lord Crawford, Earl of Crawford and Balcarres, another F. R. S. — who is deeply in-
terested in Occultism and Cosmogony, and who was a pupil of Lord Lytton and studied with
him in Egypt — comes to speak of his special subjects of concern; Mr. Sidney Whitman,
widely known by his scathing criticism upon EngHsh cant, has ideas to express and thoughts
to interchange upon the ethics of Theosophy, and so they come." — A. K.

To return, we were hardly settled in the house before people began to
call on Madame Blavatsky, and the visitors grew so numerous, and she
was so constantly interrupted in her work, that it was considered ad-
visable for her to have a day for reception. Saturday was chosen, and
from 2 p. m. till 11 or 12 at night there would be a succession of visitors,
and Madame Blavatsky would frequently have a group around her asking
questions, to which she would answer with unvarying patience. All this
time The Secret Doctrine was being continued, until, at last, it was put
into the printer's hands. Then began the task of proof-reading, revising,
and correcting, which proved to be a very onerous one indeed. . . .

But The Secret Doctrine finished, my task is done. Let me only add
my small tribute of gratitude and love to the friend and teacher who did
more for me than anybody in the world, who helped to show me the truth,
and who pointed out to me the way to try and conquer self, with all its
petty weaknesses, and to live more nobly for the use and good of others.
"Thy soul has to become as the ripe mango fruit; as soft and sweet as
its bright golden pulp for others' woes, as hard as that fruit's stone for
thine own throes and sorrows." . . . "Compassion speaks and saith:
can there be bliss when all that lives must suffer? Shalt thou be saved
and hear the whole world cry?"* These are the precepts that Madame
Blavatsky bade her pupils learn and follow, these are the ethics that her
life of continual self-abnegation for the good of others has set like a
burning flame in the hearts of those that believed in her. — Countess W.

*From The Voice of the Silence.

QUOTATIONS FROM THE WRITINGS OF
HELENA PETROVNA BLAVATSKY

From "Isis Unveiled," published in 1877

THE work now submitted to public judgment is the fruit of a somewhat
intimate acquaintance with Eastern adepts and study of their science.
It is offered to such as are wilHng to accept truth wherever it may be
found, and to defend it, even looking popular prejudice straight in the
face. It is an attempt to aid the student to detect the vital principles
which underlie the philosophical systems of old.

The book is written in all sincerity. It is meant to do even justice,
and to speak the truth alike without mahce or prejudice. But it shows
neither mercy for enthroned error, nor reverence for usurped authority.
It demands for a spoliated past, that credit for its achievements which
has been too long withheld. It calls for a restitution of borrowed robes,
and the vindication of calumniated but glorious reputations. Toward
no form of worship, no religious faith, no scientific hypothesis has its
criticism been directed in any other spirit. Men and parties, sects and
schools, are but the mere ephemera of the world's day. Truth, high-
seated upon its rock of adamant, is alone eternal and supreme.

— Author's Preface, Vol. I, p. v.

Our work, then, is a plea for the recognition of the Hermetic philo-
sophy, the anciently universal Wisdom-Religion, as the only possible key
to the Absolute in science and theology. — Author's Preface, Vol. I, p. vii.

A man's idea of God, is that image of blinding light that he sees re-
flected in the concave mirror of his own soul, and yet this is not, in very
truth, God, but only His reflexion. His glory is there, but, it is the light
of his own Spirit that the man sees, and it is all he can bear to look upon.
The clearer the mirror, the brighter will be the divine image. But the ex-
ternal world Cannot be witnessed in it at the same moment. In the
ecstatic Yogin, in the illuminated Seer, the spirit will shine like the noon-
day sun; in the debased victim of earthly attraction, the radiance has
disappeared, for the mirror is obscured with the stains of matter. Such
men deny their God, and would willingly deprive humanity of soul at
one blow. — Before the Veil, Vol. I, p. xviii.

QUOTATIONS FROM "ISIS UNVEILED" 53

Before closing this initial chapter, we venture to say a few words in
explanation of the plan of this work. Its object is not to force upon the
public the personal views or theories of its author; nor has it the pre-
tensions of a scientific work, which aims at creating a revolution in some
department of thought. It is rather a brief summary of the religions,
philosophies, and universal traditions of human kind, and the exegesis
of the same, in the spirit of those secret doctrines, of which none —
thanks to prejudice and bigotry — have reached Christendom in so un-
mutilated a form as to secure it a fair judgment. Since the days of the
unlucky medieval philosophers, the last to write upon these secret doc-
trines of which they were the depositaries, few men have dared to brave
persecution and prejudice by placing their knowledge upon record. And
these few have never, as a rule, written for the public, but only for those
of their own and succeeding times who possessed the key to their jargon.
The multitude, not understanding them or their doctrines, have been ac-
customed to regard them en masse as either charlatans or dreamers.
Hence the unmerited contempt into which the study of the noblest of
sciences — that of the spiritual man — has gradually fallen.

In undertaking to inquire into the assumed infallibility of Modern
Science and Theology, the author has been forced, even at the risk of
being thought discursive, to make constant comparison of the ideas,
achievements, and pretensions of their representatives, with those of the
ancient philosophers and religious teachers. Things the most widely
separated as to time, have thus been brought into immediate juxtaposi-
tion, for only thus could the priority and parentage of discoveries and
dogmas be determined. In discussing the merits of our scientific con-
temporaries, their own confessions of failure in experimental research, of
baffling mysteries, of missing links in their chains of theory, of inability
to comprehend natural phenomena, of ignorance of the laws of the causal
world, have furnished the basis for the present study. Especially (since
Psychology has been so much neglected, and the East is so far away that
few of our investigators will ever get there to study that science where
alone it is understood), we shall review the speculations and policy of
noted authorities in connexion with those modern psychological phe-
nomena which began at Rochester and have now overspread the world.
We wish to show how inevitable were their innumerable failures, and how
they must continue until these pretended authorities of the West go to the
Brdhmanas and Lamaists of the far Orient, and respectfully ask them to
impart the alphabet of true science. We have laid no charge against scientists
that is not supported by their own published admissions, and if our cita-
tions from the records of antiquity rob some of what they have hitherto
viewed as well-earned laurels, the fault is not ours but Truth's. No man

54 HELENA PETROVNA BLAVATSKY

worthy of the name of philosopher would care to wear honors that right-
fully belong to another.

Deeply sensible of the Titanic struggle that is now in progress between
materialism and the spiritual aspirations of mankind, our constant en-
deavor has been to gather into our several chapters, like weapons into
armories, every fact and argument that can be used to aid the latter in
defeating the former. Sickly and deformed child as it now is, the material-
ism of Today is born of the brutal Yesterday. Unless its growth is
arrested, it may become our master. It is the bastard progeny of the
French Revolution and its reaction against ages of religious bigotry and
repression. To prevent the crushing of these spiritual aspirations, the
blighting of these hopes, and the deadening of that intuition which teaches
us of a God and a hereafter, we must show our false theologies in their
naked deformity, and distinguish between divine religion and human dog-
mas. Our voice is raised for spiritual freedom, and our plea made for
enfranchisement from all tyranny, whether of Science or Theology.

— Before the Veil, Vol. I, pp. xliv-xlv.

"There is a personal God, and there is a personal Devil!" thunders
the Christian preacher. "Let him be anathema who dares say nay!"
"There is no personal God, except the gray matter in our brain," con-
temptuously replies the materialist. "And there is no Devil. Let him
be considered thrice an idiot who says aye." Meanwhile the occultists
and true philosophers heed neither of the two combatants, but keep per-
severingly at their work. None of them believe in the absurd, passionate,
and fickle God of superstition, but all of them believe in good and evil.
Our human reason, the emanation of our finite mind, is certainly incapable
of comprehending a divine intelligence, an endless and infinite entity;
and, according to strict logic, that which transcends our understanding
and would remain thoroughly incomprehensible to our senses cannot exist
for us; hence it does not exist. So far finite reason agrees with science,
and says: "There is no God." But, on the other hand, our Ego, that
which lives and thinks and feels independently of us in our mortal casket,
does more than believe. It knoivs that there exists a God in nature, for
the sole and invincible Artificer of all lives in us as we Hve in Him. No
dogmatic faith or exact science is able to uproot that intuitional feeling
inherent in man, when he has once fully realized it in himself.

— Vol. I, p. 36.

It is an easy task to show that the cosmogonical legends all over the
world are based on a knowledge by the ancients of those sciences which
have allied themselves in our days to support the doctrine of evolution;

QUOTATIONS FROM "ISIS UNVEILED" 55

and that further research may demonstrate that they were far better
acquainted with the fact of evolution itself, embracing both its physical
and spiritual aspects, than we are now. With the old philosophers evolu-
tion was a universal theorem, a doctrine embracing the whole, and an
established principle; while our modern evolutionists are enabled to
present us merely with speculative theoretics; with particular, if not
wholly negative theorems. It is idle for the representatives of our modern
wisdom to close the debate and pretend that the question is settled,
merely because the obscure phraseology of the Mosaic, far later account
clashes with the definite exegesis of 'exact science.'

One fact at least is proved: there is not a cosmogonical fragment, to
whatever nation it may belong, but proves, by this universal allegory of
water and the spirit brooding over it, that no more than our modern
physicists did any of these nations hold the universe to have sprung into
existence out of nothing; for all their legends begin with that period when
nascent vapors and Cimmerian darkness lay brooding over a fluid mass
ready to start on its journey of activity at the first flutter of the breath of
Him, who is the Unrevealed One. Him they felt, if they saw Him not.
Their spiritual intuitions were not so darkened by the subtle sophistry of
the forthcoming ages as ours are now. If they talked less of the Silurian
age slowly developing into the Mammalian, and if the Cenozoic time was
only recorded by various allegories of the primitive man — the Adam of
our race — it is but a negative proof after all that their ' wise men ' and
leaders did not know of these successive periods as well as we do now.
In the days of Democritus and Aristotle the cycle had already begun to
enter on its downward path of progress. And if these two philosophers
could discuss so well the atomic theory and trace the atom to its material
or physical point, their ancestors may have gone further still and followed
its genesis far beyond that limit where Mr. Tyndall and others seem
rooted to the spot, not daring to cross the line of the 'Incomprehensible.'
The lost arts are a sufficient proof that if even their achievements in
physiography are now doubted — because of the unsatisfactory writings
of their physicists and naturalists — on the other hand their practical
knowledge in phytochemistry and mineralogy far exceeded our own.
Furthermore, they might have been perfectly acquainted with the physi-
cal history of our globe without publishing their knowledge to the ignorant
masses in those ages of religious Mysteries. — Vol. I, pp. 134-135.

"Three spirits live in and actuate man," teaches Paracelsus; "three
worlds pour their beams upon him; but all three only as the image and
echo of one and the same all-constructing and uniting principle of pro-
duction. The first is the spirit of the elements [terrestrial body and vital

56 HELENA PETROVNA BLAVATSKY

force in its brute condition]; the second, the spirit of the stars [sidereal
or astral body — the soul]; the third is the Divine spirit [Aiigoeides].'"
Our human body being possessed of "primeval earth-stuff," as Paracelsus
calls it, we may readily accept the tendency of modern scientific research
"to regard the processes of both animal and vegetable Hfe as simply
physical and chemical." This theory only serves to corroborate the
assertions of old philosophers and the Mosaic Bible, that from the dust
of the ground our bodies were made, and to dust they will return. But
we must remember that

" 'Dust thou art, to dust returnest,'
Was not spoken of the soul."

Man is a little world — a microcosm within the great universe. Like
a foetus, he is suspended, by all his three spirits, in the matrix of the macro-
cosmos; and while his terrestrial body is in constant sympathy with its
parent earth, his astral soul lives in unison with the sidereal anima miindi.
He is in it, as it is in him, for the world-pervading element fills all space,
and is space itself, only shoreless and infinite. As to his third spirit, the
divine, what is it but an infinitesimal ray, one of the countless radiations
proceeding directly from the Highest Cause — the Spiritual Light of the
World? This is the trinity of organic and inorganic nature — the spiritual
and the physical, which are three in one, and of which Proclus says that
"The first monad is the Eternal God; the second, eternity; the third,
the paradigm, or pattern of the universe"; the three constituting the
InteUigible Triad. Everything in this visible universe is the outflow of
this Triad, and a microcosmic triad itself. And thus these inner worlds
move in majestic procession in the fields of eternity around the spiritual
sun, as in the heHocentric system the celestial bodies move round the
visible suns. The Pythagorean Monad, which fives 'in solitude and dark-
ness,' may remain on this earth forever invisible, impalpable, and un-
demonstrated by experimental science. Still the whole universe will be
gravitating around it, as it did from the 'beginning of time,' and with
every second man and atom approach nearer to that solemn moment in
the eternity when the Invisible Presence will become clear to their spiritual
sight. When every particle of matter, even the most sublimated, has been
cast off from the last shape that forms the ultimate link of that chain of
double evolution which, throughout millions of ages and successive trans-
formations, has pushed the entity onward; and when it shall find itself
reclothed in that primordial essence, identical with that of its Creator,
then this once impalpable organic atom will have run its race, and the
sons of God will once more 'shout for ioy' at the return of the pilgrim.

— Vol. I, pp. 212-213.

QUOTATIONS FROM "ISIS UNVEILED" 57

The master-problems of both hfe and death are still unsolved by occi-
dental physiologists. Even sleep is a phenomenon about whose cause
there is a great divergence of opinion among them. How then can they
pretend to set limits to the possible, and define the impossible?

— Vol. I, p. 215.

Everything in this world has its time, and truth, though based upon
unimpeachable evidence, will not take root or grow unless like a plant it
is thrown into soil in its proper season. — Vol. I, p. 219.

The fruit of the Tree of Knowledge gives death without the fruit of the
Tree of Life. Man must know himself before he can hope to know the
ultimate genesis even of beings and powers less developed in their inner
nature than himself. So with religion and science; united two in one,
they were infallible, for the spiritual intuition was there to supply the
limitations of physical senses. Separated, exact science rejects the help
of the inner voice, while religion becomes merely dogmatic theology —
each is but a corpse without a soul. — Vol. II, p. 264.

Light would be incomprehensible without darkness, to make it mani-
fest by contrast; good would be no good without evil, to show the priceless
nature of the boon; and so personal virtue could claim no merit, unless it
had passed through the furnace of temptation. Notliing is eternal and
unchangeable, save the Concealed Deity. Nothing that is finite — whe-
ther because it had a beginning, or must have an end — can remain
stationary. It must either progress or recede; and a soul which thirsts
after a reunion with its spirit, which alone confers upon it immortality,
must purify itself through cyclic transmigrations onward toward the
only Land of Bliss and Eternal Rest, called in the Zohar 'The Palace of
Love ' ; in the Hindu religion, Moksha; among the Gnostics, the ' Pleroma
of eternal Light'; and by the Buddhists, Nirvana. The Christian calls
it the 'Kingdom of Heaven,' and claims to have alone found the truth,
whereas he has but invented a new name for a doctrine which is coeval
with man.— Vol. II, p. 280.

Allied to the physical half of man's nature is reason, which enables
him to maintain his supremacy over the lower animals, and to subjugate
nature to his uses. Allied to his spiritual part is his conscience, which will
serve as his unerring guide through the besetments of the senses; for
conscience is that instantaneous perception between right and wrong,
exercised only by the spirit, which, being a portion of the Divine Wisdom
and Purity, is absolutely pure and wise. Its promptings are independent

58 HELENA PETROVNA BLAVATSKY

of reason, and it can only manifest itself clearly when unhampered by
the baser attractions of our dual nature. — Vol. I, p. 305.

There never was, nor can there be more than one universal religion;
for there can be but one truth concerning God. Like an immense chain
whose upper end, the alpha, remains invisibly emanating from a Deity —
in statu abscondito with every primitive theology — it encircles our globe
in every direction; it leaves not even the darkest corner un visited, before
the other end, the omega, turns back on its way to be again received
where it first emanated. On this divine chain was strung the exoteric
symbology of every people. Their variety of form is powerless to affect
their substance, and under their diverse ideal types of the universe of
matter, symbolizing its vivifying principles, the uncorrupted immaterial
image of the spirit of being guiding them is the same.

So far as human intellect can go in the ideal interpretation of the
spiritual universe, its laws and powers, the last word was pronounced
ages since; and, if the ideas of Plato can be simplified for the sake of
easier comprehension, the spirit of their substance can neither be altered
nor removed without material damage to the truth. Let human brains
submit themselves to torture for thousands of years to come; let theology
perplex faith and mime it with the enforcing of incomprehensible dogmas in
metaphysics; and let science strengthen skepticism by pulling down the
tottering remains of spiritual intuition in mankind with her demonstrations
of its fallibility, eternal truth can never be destroyed. — Vol. I, p. 560.

QUOTATIONS FROM "THE SECRET DOCTRINE"

PUBLISHED IN 1888

THESE truths are in no sense put forward as a revelation; nor does the
author claim the position of a revealer of mystic lore, now made public
for the first time in the world's history. For what is contained in this
work is to be found scattered throughout thousands of volumes embodying
the scriptures of the great Asiatic and early European religions, hidden un-
der glyph and symbol, and hitherto left unnoticed because of this veil.
What is now attempted is to gather the oldest tenets together and to make
of them one harmonious and unbroken whole. The sole advantage which
the writer has over her predecessors, is that she need not resort to personal
speculations and theories. For this work is a partial statement of what she
herself has been taught by more advanced students, supplemented, in a few

QUOTATIONS FROM "THE SECRET DOCTRINE" 59

details only, by the results of her own study and observation. The publica-
tion of many of the facts herein stated has been rendered necessary by the
wild and fanciful speculations in which many Theosophists and students
of mysticism have indulged, during the last few years, in their endeavor
to, as they imagined, work out a complete system of thought from the
few facts previously communicated to them.*

But it is perhaps desirable to state unequivocally that the teachings,
however fragmentary and incomplete, contained in these volumes, belong
neither to the Hindu, the Zoroastrian, the Chaldaean, nor the Egyptian
religion, neither to Buddhism, Islam, Judaism nor Christianity exclusively.
The Secret Doctrine is the essence of all these. Sprung from it in their
origins, the various religious schemes are now made to merge back into
their original element, out of which every mystery and dogma has grown,
developed, and become materiahzed.

The aim of this work may be thus stated: to show that Nature is not
"a fortuitous concurrence of atoms," and to assign to man his rightful
place in the scheme of the Universe; to rescue from degradation the
archaic truths which are the basis of all rehgions; and to uncover, to
some extent, the fundamental unity from which they all spring; finally,
to show that the occult side of Nature has never been approached by the
Science of modern civilization.— Preface, pp. vii-viii

. . . For the Esoteric philosophy is alone calculated to withstand, in
this age of crass and illogical materialism, the repeated attacks on all and
everything man holds most dear and sacred, in his inner spiritual life.
The true philosopher, the student of the Esoteric Wisdom, entirely loses
sight of personalities, dogmatic beliefs and special religions. Moreover,
Esoteric philosophy reconciles all religions, strips every one of its outward,
human garments, and shows the root of each to be identical with that
of every other great religion. It proves the necessity of an absolute Divine
Principle in nature. It denies Deity no more than it does the Sun.
Esoteric philosophy has never rejected God in Nature, nor Deity as the
absolute and abstract Ens. It only refuses to accept any of the gods
of the so-called monotheistic religions, gods created by man in his own

[*Wild and fanciful speculations are still indulged in by would-be expounders of the Theo-
sophical teaching,^ not members of the Universal Brotherhood and Theosophical Society —
and the many books on pseudo-Theosophy offered to the more or less uninformed public show
that the same need exists today, as when Mme. Blavatsky wrote her great work, of holding to
and accentuating the pure teachings of the Wisdom-Religion.— Katherine Tingley]

60 HELENA PETROVNA BLAVATSKY

image and likeness, a blasphemous and sorry caricature of the Ever
Unknowable. — Introductory, p. xx

Toward the end of the first quarter of this century, a distinct class of
literature appeared in the world, which became with every year more
defined in its tendency. Being based, soi-disant, on the scholarly researches
of Sanskritists and Orientalists in general, it was held scientific. Hindu,
Egyptian, and other ancient religions, myths, and emblems were made
to yield anything the symbologist wanted them to yield, thus often
giving out the rude outward form in place of the i7i7ier meaning. . . .

This is the true reason, perhaps, why the outline of a few fundamental
truths from the Secret Doctrine of the Archaic ages is now permitted to
see the light, after long millenniums of the most profound silence and
secrecy. I say "a few truths," advisedly, because that which must remain
unsaid could not be contained in a hundred such volumes, nor could it be
imparted to the present generation of Sadducees. But, even the little
that is now given is better than complete silence upon those vital truths.
The world of today, in its mad career towards the unknown — which
it is too ready to confound with the unknowable, whenever the problem
eludes the grasp of the physicist — is rapidly progressing on the reverse,
material plane of spirituality. It has now become a vast arena — a true
valley of discord and of eternal strife — a necropolis, wherein lie buried
the highest and the most holy aspirations of our Spirit-Soul. That soul
becomes with every new generation more paralysed and atrophied. The
"amiable infidels and accompHshed profligates" of Society, spoken of
by Greeley, care little for the revival of the dead sciences of the past; but
there is a fair minority of earnest students who are entitled to learn the
few truths that may be given to them now; and now much more than ten
years ago, when Isis Unveiled, or even the later attempts to explain
the mysteries of esoteric science, were published. — Ibid., pp. xxii-xxiii

More than one great scholar has stated that there never was a religious
founder, whether Aryan, Semitic, or Turanian, who had invented a new
religion, or revealed a new truth. These founders were all transmitters,
not original teachers. They were the authors of new forms and inter-
pretations, while the truths upon which the latter were based were as old
as mankind. Selecting one or more of those grand verities — actualities
visible only to the eye of the real Sage and Seer — out of the many orally
revealed to man in the beginning, preserved and perpetuated in the
adyta of the temples through initiation, during the Mysteries and by
personal transmission — they revealed these truths to the masses. Thus

QUOTATIONS FROM "THE SECRET DOCTRINE" 61

every nation received in its turn some of the said truths, under the veil
of its own local and special symbolism; which, as time went on, developed
into a more or less philosophical cultus, a Pantheon in mythical disguise.
Therefore is Confucius, a very ancient legislator in historical chronology,
though a very modern Sage in the World's History, shown by Dr. Legge —
who calls him "emphatically a transmitter, not a maker"- — as saying:
"I only hand on: I cannot create new things. I believe in the ancients
and therefore I love them." (Quoted in Science of Religion by Max
Muller.)

The writer loves them too, and therefore believes in the ancients, and
the modern heirs to their Wisdom. And believing in both, she now trans-
mits that which she has received and learned herself, to all those who will
accept it. As to those who may reject her testimony, — i. e., the great
majority — she will bear them no maHce, for they will be as right in their
way in denying, as she is right in hers in affirming, since they look at
TRUTH from two entirely different standpoints. Agreeably with the rules
of critical scholarship, the Orientalist has to reject a priori whatever
evidence he cannot fully verify for himself. And how can a Western
scholar accept on hearsay that which he knows nothing about? Indeed,
that which is given in these volumes is selected from oral, as much as
from written teachings. This first instalment of the esoteric doctrines is
based upon Stanzas, which are the records of a people unknown to eth-
nology; it is claimed that they are written in a tongue absent from the
nomenclature of languages and dialects v/ith which philology is acquainted;
they are said to emanate from a source (Occultism) repudiated by science;
and, finally, they are offered through an agency, incessantly discredited
before the world by all those who hate unwelcome truths, or have some
special hobby of their own to defend. Therefore, the rejection of these
teachings may be expected, and must be accepted beforehand. No one
styling himself a "scholar," in whatever department of exact science,
will be permitted to regard these teachings seriously. They will be derided
and rejected a priori in this century; but only in this one. For in the
twentieth century of our era scholars will begin to recognise that the
Secret Doctrine has neither been invented nor exaggerated, but, on the
contrary, simply outlined; and finally, that its teachings antedate the
Vedas. . . .

. . . Speaking of the keys to the Zodiacal mysteries as being almost
lost to the world, it was remarked by the writer in his Unveiled some
ten years ago that:

The said key must be turned seven times before the whole system is
divulged. We will give it but one turn, and thereby allow the profane one
glimpse into the mystery. Happy he, who understands the whole!

62 HELENA PETROVNA BLAVATSKY

The same may be said of the whole Esoteric system. One turn of the
key, and no more, was given in *Isis.' Much more is explained in these
volumes. In those days the writer hardly knew the language in which
the work was written, and the disclosure of many things, freely spoken
about now, was forbidden. In Century the Twentieth some disciple
more informed, and far better fitted, may be sent by the Masters of
Wisdom to give final and irrefutable proofs that there exists a Science
called Gupta-Vidyd; and that like the once-mysterious sources of the
Nile, the source of all religions and philosophies now known to the world
has been for many ages forgotten and lost to men, but is at last found.

— Ibid., pp. xxxvii-xxxix

. . . But to the pubUc in general and the readers of the Secret
Doctrine I may repeat what I have stated all along, and which I now
clothe in the words of Montaigne: Gentlemen, "I have here made

ONLY A NOSEGAY OF CULLED FLOWERS, AND HAVE BROUGHT NOTHING
OF MY OWN BUT THE STRING THAT TIES THEM."

Pull the "string" to pieces and cut it up in shreds, if you will. As
for the nosegay of facts — you will never be able to make away with
these. You can only ignore them, and no more.

We may close with a parting word concerning this Volume I. In an
Introduction prefacing a Part dealing chiefly with Cosmogony, certain
subjects brought forward might be deemed out of place, but one more
consideration added to those already given has led me to touch upon
them. Every reader will inevitably judge the statements made from the
standpoint of his own knowledge, experience, and consciousness, based
on what he has already learned. This fact the writer is constantly obliged
to bear in mind: hence, also the frequent references in this first Book
to matters which, properly speaking, belong to a later part of the work,
but which could not be passed by in silence, lest the reader should look
down on this work as a fairy tale indeed — a fiction of some modern brain.

Thus, the Past shall help to realize the Present, and the latter to
better appreciate the Past. The errors of the day must be explained
and swept away, yet it is more than probable — and in the present case
it amounts to certitude — that once more the testimony of long ages
and of history will fail to impress anyone but the very intuitional —
which is equal to saying the very few.— Ibid., pp. xlvi-xlvii

The Secret Doctrine establishes three fundamental propositions: —

{a) An Omnipresent, Eternal, Boundless, and Immutable principle

on which all speculation is impossible, since it transcends the power of

DONATED BY
KATHER"^'f^ "'■ "■ ''^

QUOTATIONS FROM "THE SECRET DOCTRINE" 63

human conception and could only be dwarfed by any human expression
or similitude. It is beyond the range and reach of thought — in the
words of Mdndukaya, "unthinkable and unspeakable."

To render these ideas clearer to the general reader, let him set out
with the postulate that there is one absolute Reality which antecedes
all manifested, conditioned, being. This Infinite and Eternal Cause —
dimly formulated in the "Unconscious" and "Unknowable" of current
European philosophy — is the rootless root of "all that was, is, or ever
shall be." It is of course devoid of all attributes and is essentially with-
out any relation to manifested, finite Being. It is "Be-ness" rather
than Being (in Sanskrit, Sat), and is beyond all thought or speculation.

— Vol. I, p. 14.

Parabrahm, (the One Reality, the Absolute) is the field of Absolute
Consciousness, /. e., that Essence which is out of all relation to condi-
tioned existence, and of which conscious existence is a conditioned symbol.
But once that we pass in thought from this (to us) Absolute Negation,
duality supervenes in the contrast of Spirit (or consciousness) and Matter,
Subject and Object.

Spirit (or Consciousness) and Matter are, however, to be regarded,
not as independent realities, but as the two facets or aspects of the Abso-
lute (Parabrahm), which constitute the basis of conditioned Being whether
subjective or objective. — Vol. I, p. 15.

The "Manifested Universe," therefore, is pervaded by duality, which
is, as it were, the very essence of its EX-istence as "manifestation."
But just as the opposite poles of subject and object, spirit and matter,
are but aspects of the One Unity in which they are synthesized, so, in
the manifested Universe, there is "that" which links spirit to matter,
subject to object.

This something, at present unknown to Western speculation, is called
by the occultists Fohat. It is the "bridge" by which the " Ideas" existing
in the "Divine Thought" are impressed on Cosmic substance as the
"laws of Nature." Fohat is thus the dynamic energy of Cosmic Ideation;
or, regarded from the other side, it is the intelligent medium, the guiding
power of all manifestation, the "Thought Divine" transmitted and made
manifest through the Dhyan Chohans, the Architects of the visible
World. Thus from Spirit, or Cosmic Ideation, comes our consciousness;
from Cosmic Substance the several vehicles in which that consciousness is
individualized and attains to self — or reflective — consciousness; while
Fohat, in its various manifestations, is the mysterious link between Mind

64 HELENA PETROVNA BLAVATSKY

and Matter, the animating principle electrifying every atom into life.

— Vol. I, pp. 15-16.

Further, the Secret Doctrine affirms: —

(b) The Eternity of the Universe in toto as a boundless plane; peri-
odically "the playground of numberless Universes incessantly mani-
festing and disappearing," called "the manifesting stars," and the "Sparks
of Eternity." "The Eternity of the Pilgrim" is like a wink of the Eye
of Self-Existence (Book of Dzyan). "The appearance and disappearance
of Worlds is like a regular tidal ebb of flux and reflux."

This second assertion of the Secret Doctrine is the absolute univer-
sality of that law of periodicity, of flux and reflux, ebb and flow, which
physical science has observed and recorded in all departments of nature.
An alternation such as that of Day and Night, Life and Death, Sleeping
and Waking, is a fact so common, so perfectly universal and without
exception, that it is easy to comprehend that in it we see one of the abso-
lutely fundamental laws of the universe.

Moreover, the Secret Doctrine teaches: —

(c) The fundamental identity of all Souls with the Universal Over-
Soul, the latter being itself an aspect of the Unknown Root; and the
obligatory pilgrimage for every Soul — a spark of the former — through
the Cycle of Incarnation (or "Necessity") in accordance with Cyclic
and Karmic law, during the whole term. In other words, no purely
spiritual Buddhi (divine Soul) can have an independent (conscious)
existence before the spark which issued from the pure Essence of the
Universal Sixth principle — or the over-soul — has {a) passed through
every elemental form of the phenomenal world of that Manvantara, and
{b) acquired individuality, first by natural impulse, and then by self-
induced and self-devised efforts (checked by its Karma), thus ascending
through all the degrees of intelHgence, from the lowest to the highest
Manas, from mineral and plant, up to the holiest archangel (Dhyani-
Buddha). The pivotal doctrine of the Esoteric philosophy admits no
privileges or special gifts in man, save those won by his own Ego through
personal effort and merit throughout a long series of metempsychoses
and reincarnations. — Vol. I, pp. 16, 17.

Such are the basic conceptions on which the Secret Doctrine rests.

It would not be in place here to enter upon any defense or proof of
their inherent reasonableness; nor can I pause to show how they are,
in fact, contained — though too often under a misleading guise — in every
system of thought or philosophy worthy of the name. — Vol. I, p. 20.

QUOTATIONS FROM "THE SECRET DOCTRINE" 65

Science teaches us that the Hving as well as the dead organism of
both man and animal are swarming with bacteria of a hundred various
kinds; that from without we are threatened with the invasion of microbes
with every breath we draw, and from within by leucomaines, aerobes,
anaerobes, and what not. But Science never yet went so far as to assert
with the occult doctrine that our bodies, as well as those of animals,
plants, and stones, are themselves altogether built up of such beings;
which, except larger species, no microscope can detect. So far, as regards
the purely animal and material portion of man, Science is on its way to
discoveries that will go far towards corroborating this theory. Chemistry
and physiology are the two great magicians of the future, who are destined
to open the eyes of mankind to the great physical truths. With every day,
the identity between the animal and physical man, between the plant
and man, and even between the reptile and its nest, the rock, and man —
is more and more clearly shown. The physical and chemical constituents
of all being found to be identical, chemical science may well say that
there is no difference between the matter which composes the ox and that
which forms man. But the Occult doctrine is far more explicit. It says: —
Not only the chemical compoimds are the same, but the same infinitesimal
invisible lives compose the atoms of the bodies of the mountain and the
daisy, of man and the ant, of the elephant, and of the tree which shelters
him from the sun. Each particle — whether you call it organic or in-
organic — is a life. Every atom and molecule in the Universe is both
life-giving and death-giving to that form, inasmuch as it builds by aggrega-
tion universes and the ephemeral vehicles ready to receive the trans-
migrating soul, and as eternally destroys and changes the forms and expels
those souls from their temporary abodes. It creates and kills; it is self-
generating and self-destroying; it brings into being, and annihilates,
that mystery of mysteries — the living body of man, animal, or plant,
every second in time and space; and it generates equally life and death,
beauty and ugliness, good and bad, and even the agreeable and dis-
agreeable, the beneficent and maleficent sensations. It is that mysterious
Life, represented collectively by countless myriads of lives, that follows
in its own sporadic way, the hitherto incomprehensible law of Atavism;
that copies family resemblances as well as those it finds impressed in the
aura of the generators of every future human being, a mystery, in short,
that will receive fuller attention elsewhere. — Vol. I, p. 260-261.

QUOTATIONS FROM "THE KEY TO THEOSOPHY"

published in 1889

The Future of the Theosophical Society

TNQUIRER. Tell me, what do you expect for Theosophy in the future?

Theosophist. If you speak of Theosophy, I answer that, as it has
existed eternally throughout the endless cycles upon cycles of the Past,
so it will ever exist throughout the infinitudes of the Future, because
Theosophy is synonymous with Everlasting Truth.

Inq. Pardon me; I meant to ask you rather about the prospects of the Theosophical
Society.

Theo. Its future will depend almost entirely upon the degree of
selflessness, earnestness, devotion, and last, but not least, on the amount
of knowledge and wisdom possessed by those on whom it will fall to carry
on the work and to direct the Society after the death of the founder.

Inq. I quite see the importance of their being selfless and devoted, but I do not quite
grasp how their knoivledge can be as vital a factor in the question as these other qualities.
Surely the literature which already exists, and to which constant additions are being made,
ought to be sufficient.

Theo. I do not refer to technical knowledge of the esoteric doctrine,
though that is most important; I spoke rather of the great need which
the successors in the guidance of the Society will have of unbiased and
clear judgment. Every such attempt as the Theosophical Society has
hitherto ended in failure, because, sooner or later, it has degenerated into
a sect, set up hard-and-fast dogmas of its own, and so lost by imperceptible
degrees that vitality which living truth alone can impart. You must
remember that all our members have been bred and born in some creed
or religion; that all are more or less of their generation, both physically
and mentally; and consequently that their judgment is but too likely to
be warped and unconsciously biased by some or all of these influences.
If, then, they cannot be freed from such inherent bias, or at least taught
to recognise it instantly and so avoid being led away by it, the result can
only be that the Society will drift off on to some sandbank of thought or
another, and there remain, a stranded carcase, to molder and die.

Inq. But if this danger be averted?

Theo. Then the Society will Hve on into and through the twentieth
century. It will gradually leaven and permeate the great mass of thinking
and inteUigent people with its large-minded and noble ideas of religion,
duty, and philanthropy. Slowly but surely it will burst asunder the iron

DONATED BY
("KATHERINE TINGLEY

QUOTATIONS FROM "TPIE KEY TO THEOSOPHY" 67

fetters of creeds and dogmas, of social and caste prejudices; it will break
down racial and national antipathies and barriers, and will open the way
to the practical realization of the Brotherhood of all men. Through its
teaching, through the philosophy which it has rendered accessible and
intelligible to the modern mind the West will learn to understand and
appreciate the East at its true value. Further, the development of the
psychic powers and faculties, the premonitory symptoms of which are
already visible in America, will proceed healthily and normally. Mankind
will be saved from the terrible dangers, both mental and bodily, which
are inevitable when that unfolding takes place, as it threatens to do, in
a hotbed of selfishness and all evil passions. Man's mental and psychic
growth will proceed in harmony with his moral improvement, while his
material surroundings will reflect the peace and fraternal goodwill which
will reign in his mind, instead of the discord and strife which are every-
where apparent around us today.

Inq. a truly delightful picture! But tell me, do you really expect all this to be accom-
plished in one short century?

Theo. Scarcely. But I must tell you that during the last quarter
of every hundred years an attempt is made by those Teachers of whom
I have spoken, to help on the spiritual progress of humanity in a marked
and definite way. Toward the close of each century you will invariably
find that an outpouring or upheaval of spirituality — or call it Mys-
ticism, if you prefer — has taken place. Some one or more persons have
appeared in the world as their agents, and a greater or less amount of
occult knowledge and teaching has been given out. If you care to do so,
you can trace these movements back, century by century, as far as our
detailed historical records extend.

Inq. But how does this bear on the future of the Theosophical Society?

Theo. If the present attempt, in the form of our Society, succeeds
better than its predecessors have done, then it will be in existence as an
organized, living, and healthy body when the time comes for the effort
of the twentieth century. The general condition of men's minds and hearts
will have been improved and i^urified by the spread of its teachings and,
as I have said, their prejudices and dogmatic illusions will have been, to
some extent at least, removed. Not only so, but besides a large and
accessible literature ready to men's hands, the next impulse will find a
numerous and united body of people ready to welcome the new torch-
bearer of Truth. He will find the minds of men prepared for his message,
a language ready for him in which to clothe the new truths he brings, an
organization awaiting his arrival, which will remove the merely mechanical
material obstacles and difficulties from his path. Think how much one

68 HELENA PETROVNA BLAVATSKY

to whom such an opportunity is given could accomphsh. Measure it by
comparison with what the Theosophical Society actually has achieved
in the last fourteen years, without any of these advantages, and surrounded
by hosts of hindrances which would not hamper this new leader. Consider
all this, and then tell me whether I am too sanguine when I say that if
the Theosophical Society survives and lives true to its mission, to its
original impulses through the next hundred years — tell me, I say, if I go
too far in asserting that earth will be a heaven in the twenty-first century
in comparison with what it is now ! — pp. 292-295.

QUOTATIONS FROM "THE NEW CYCLE"*

THE principal aim of our organization, which we are laboring to make a
real Brotherhood, is expressed in the motto of the Theosophical So-
ciety, "There is no rehgion higher than truth." As an impersonal
Society we must be ready to seize the truth wherever we find it, without
permitting ourselves more partiality for one belief than for another. This
leads directly to a logical conclusion. If we acclaim and receive with open
arms all sincere truth-seekers, there can be no place in our ranks for the
bigot, the sectarian, or the hypocrite, enclosed in Chinese Walls of dogma,
each stone bearing the words 'No admission.' What place indeed could
such fanatics occupy in them, fanatics whose religions forbid all inquiry
and do not admit any argument as possible, when the mother idea, the
very root of the beautiful plant we call Theosophy, is known as — abso-
lute and unfettered liberty to investigate all the mysteries of nature,
human or divine!

With this exception the Society invites everyone to participate in its
activities and discoveries. Whoever feels his heart beat in unison with
the great heart of humanity; whoever feels his interests are one with
those of every being poorer and less fortunate than himself; every man
or woman who is ready to hold out a helping hand to the suffering; who-
ever understands the true meaning of the word ' egotism ' ; is a Theosophist
by birth and by right. He can always be sure of finding sympathetic
souls among us. . . .

We have already said elsewhere, that "Born in the United States
the Theosophical Society was constituted on the model of its mother
country. That as we know, has omitted the name of God from its Con-
stitution, for fear, said the fathers of the Republic, that the word might
one day become the pretext for a state religion: for they desired to

* Extracts from an article published in the first number of La Revue TMosophique (Paris), 1889.

QUOTATIONS FROM "THE NEW CYCLE" 69

grant absolute equality to all religions under the laws, so that each form
would support the State, which in its turn would protect them all. The
Theosophical Society was founded on that excellent model . . . [and]
provided all remain united in the tie of Solidarity or Brotherhood, our
Society can truly call itself a 'Republic of Conscience.' "

Though absolutely free to pursue whatever intellectual occupations
please him the best, each member of our Society must, however, furnish
some reason for belonging thereto, which amounts to saying that each
member must bear his part, small though it be, of mental or other labor
for the benefit of all. // one does not work for others one has no right to be
called a Theosophist. All must strive for human freedom of thought,
for the elimination of selfish and sectarian superstitions, and for the
discovery of all the truths that are within the comprehension of the
human mind. That object cannot be attained more certainly than by
the cultivation of unity in intellectual labors. No honest worker, no
earnest seeker can remain empty-handed; and there is hardly a man
or woman, busy as they may think themselves, incapable of laying their
tribute, moral or pecuniary, on the altar of truth. The duty of the
presidents of the sections and of branches will be henceforth to watch
that there are no drones in the Theosophical bee-hive who do nothing
but buzz.

In the present condition of the Theosophical history it is easy to
understand the object of a Review exclusively devoted to the propagation
of our ideas. We wish to open therein new intellectual horizons, to
follow unexplored routes leading to the amelioration of humanity; to
offer a word of consolation to all the disinherited of the earth, whether
they suffer from the starvation of soul or from the lack of physical neces-
sities. We invite all large-hearted persons who desire to respond to this
appeal to join with us in this humanitarian work. Each co-worker,
whether a member of the Society or simply a sympathizer, can help.
We are face to face with all the glorious possibilities of the future. This
is again the hour of the great cyclic return of the tide of mystical thought
in Europe. On every side we are surrounded by the ocean of the universal
science, — the science of Life Eternal — bearing on its waves the forgotten
and submerged treasures of generations now passed away, treasures still
unknown to the modern civilized races. The strong current which rises
from the submarine abysses, from the depths where lie the prehistoric
learning and arts swallowed up with the antediluvian giants — demi-gods,
though with but little of mortality — that current strikes us in the face
and murmurs: "That which has been exists again; that which has been
forgotten, buried for aeons in the depths of the Jurassic strata may
reappear to view once again. Prepare yourselves."

70 HELENA PETROVNA BLAVATSKY

Happy are those who understand the language of the elements. But
where are they going for whom the word 'element' has no other meaning
than that given to it by physics or materialistic chemistry? Will it be
towards well-known shores that the surge of the great waters will bear
them, when they have lost their footing in the deluge which is approaching?
Will it be towards the peaks of a new Ararat that they will find themselves
carried, towards the heights of light and sunshine, where there is a ledge
on which to place the feet in safety, or perchance is it a fathomless abyss
that will swallow them up as soon as they try to struggle against the
irresistible billows of an unknown element?

. . . The strife will be terrible in any case between brutal materialism
and blind fanaticism on the one hand, and philosophy and mysticism
on the other; — mysticism, that veil of more or less translucency which
hides the eternal Truth.

But it is not materialism that will get the upper hand. Every fanatic
whose ideas isolate him from the universal axiom that "There is no
rehgion higher than Truth" will see himself by that very fact rejected,
like an unworthy stone, from the archway called Universal Brotherhood.

Yes, it must be so, it cannot be otherwise when the chilly and artificial
gleam of modern materialism will disappear for want of fuel. Those who
cannot form any idea of a spiritual Ego, a living soul and an eternal Spirit
within their material shell (which owes its very existence to these prin-
ciples) ; those for whom the great hope of an existence beyond the grave
is a vexation, merely the symbol of an unknown quantity, or else the
subject of a belief sui generis, the result of theological and mediumistic
hallucinations, — these mil do well to prepare for the serious troubles
the future has in store for them. For from the depths of the dark, muddy
waters of materiality which hide from them every glimpse of the horizons
of the great Beyond there is a mystic force rising during these last years
of the century. At most it is but the first gentle rustling, but it is a
superhuman rustling,— 'supernatural' only for the superstitious and the
ignorant. The spirit of truth is passing over the face of the waters, and
in dividing them, is compelling them to disgorge their spiritual treasures.
This spirit is a force that can neither be hindered nor stopped. Those
who recognise it and feel that this is the supreme moment of their salva-
tion will be uplifted by it and carried beyond illusions. The joy they
will experience will be so poignant and intense that if they were not
mentally isolated from their body of flesh, the beatitude would pierce
them like sharp steel. It is not pleasure that they will experience but
a bliss which is a foretaste of the wisdom of the gods, the knowledge
of good and evil, of the fruits of the tree of life.

DONATED BY
KATHERINE TiN^' "^"^

QUOTATIONS FROM "THE NEW CYCLE" 71

But whether the man of today be a fanatic, a skeptic or a mystic, he
must be well convinced that it is useless for him to struggle against the two
moral forces at large now engaged in the supreme contest. He is at the
mercy of these two adversaries and there is no intermediary capable of pro-
tecting him. It is but a question of choice, whether to let himself be carried
along on the wave of the mystical evolution, or to struggle against this
moral and psychic reaction and so find himself engulfed in the maelstrom of
the rising tide. The whole world, at this time, with its centers of high
intelligence and humane culture, its political, artistic, literary and com-
mercial life, is in a turmoil; everything is shaking and crumbling in its
movement towards reform. It is useless to shut the eyes, it is useless to
hope that anyone can remain neutral between the two contending forces;
the choice is whether to be crushed between them or to become united
with one or the other. The man who imagines he has freedom, but who;
nevertheless, remains plunged in that seething caldron of selfish pleasure-
seeking, gives the lie in the face of his divine Ego, a lie so terrible that it
will stifle that Higher Self for a long series of future incarnations. All
you who hesitate in the path of Theosophy and the occult sciences, who
trembling on the golden threshold of truth — the only one within your
grasp, for all the others have failed you one after the other — look straight
in the face the great Reality which is offered you. It is only to mystics
that these words are addressed, for them alone have they any importance;
for those who have already made their choice they are vain and useless.
But you students of Occultism and Theosophy, you well know that a
word, old as the world though new to you, has been declared at the
beginning of this cycle. You well know that a note has just been struck
which has never yet been heard by mankind of the present era, and that a
new thought is revealed, ripened by the forces of evolution. This thought
differs from everything that has been produced in the nineteenth century;
it is identical, however, with the thought that has been the dominant tone
and key-note of each century, especially the last — absolute freedom of
thought for humanity.

Why try to strangle and suppress what cannot be destroyed? Why
hesitate when there is no choice between allowing yourselves to be raised
on the crest of the spiritual wave to the very heavens beyond the stars
and the universes, or to be engulfed in the yawning abyss of an ocean of
matter? Vain are your efforts to sound the unfathomable, to reach the
ultimate of this wonderful Matter so glorified in our century; for its
roots grow in the Spirit and in the Absolute; they do not exist, yet they
are eternally. This constant union with flesh, blood and bones, the
illusion of differentiated matter, does nothing but blind you. And the
more you penetrate into the region of the impalpable atoms of chemistry

72 HELENA PETROVNA BLAVATSKY

the more you will be convinced that they only exist in your imagination.
Do you truly expect to find in material life every reality and every truth
of existence? But Death is at everyone's door, waiting to shut it upon a
beloved soul that escapes from its prison, upon the soul which alone has
made the body a reality; how then can it be that eternal Love should
associate itself absolutely with ever-changing and ever-disappearing
matter?

But you are perhaps indifferent to all such things; how then can you
say that affection and the souls of those you love concern you at all, since
you do not believe in the very existence of such souls? It must be so.
You have made your choice; you have entered upon that path which
crosses nothing but the barren deserts of matter. You are self-condemned
to wander there and to pass through a long series of similar lives. You
will have to be contented henceforth with deliriums and fevers in place
of spiritual experiences, of passion instead of love, of the husk instead of
the fruit.

But you, friends and readers, you who aspire to something more than
the life of the squirrel everlastingly turning the same wheel; you who are
not content with the seething of the caldron whose turmoil results in
nothing; you who do not take the deaf echoes of the dead past for the
divine voice of truth; prepare yourselves for a future of which you have
hardly dared to dream unless you have at least taken the first few steps
on the way. For you have chosen a path, although rough and thorny at
the start, that soon widens out and leads you to the divine truth. You
are free to doubt while you are still at the beginning of the way, you are
free to decline to accept on hearsay what is taught respecting the source
and the cause of Truth, but you are always able to hear what its voice is
telling you, and you can always study the effects of the creative force
coming from the depths of the unknown. The arid land upon which the
present generation of men is moving at the close of this age of spiritual
dearth and of purely material satisfaction, has need of a divine symbol,
of a rainbow of hope to rise above its horizon. For of all the past centuries
our Nineteenth has been the most criminal. It is criminal in its frightful
selfishness, in its skepticism which grimaces at the very idea of anything
beyond the material; in its idiotic indifference to all that does not pertain
to personal egotism — more than any of previous centuries of ignorant
barbarism or intellectual darkness. Our century must be saved from itself
before its last hour strikes. This is the moment for all those to act who
see the sterility and folly of an existence blinded by materialism and
ferociously indifferent to the fate of one's neighbor; now is the time for
them to devote all their energies, all their courage to the great intellectual
reform. This reform can only be accomplished by Theosophy we say, by

QUOTATIONS FROM "THE NEW CYCLE" 73

the Occultism of the Wisdom of the Orient. The paths that lead to it are
many; but the Wisdom is one. Artistic souls foresee it, those who suffer
dream of it, the pure in heart know it. Those who work for others cannot
remain blinded to its reality, though they may not recognise it by name.
Only light and empty minds, egotistical and vain drones, confused by
their own buzzing will remain ignorant of the supreme ideal. They will
continue to exist until life becomes a grievous burden to them.

This is to be distinctly remembered however: These pages are not
written for the masses. They are neither an appeal for reforms, nor an
effort to ^vin over to our views the fortunate in life; they are addressed
solely to those who are constitutionally able to comprehend them, to
those who suffer, to those who hunger and thirst after some Reality in
this world of Chinese Shadows. And why should they not show them-
selves courageous enough to leave their world of trifling occupations,
their pleasures above all and their personal interests, at least as far as
those interests do not form part of their duty to their families or others?
No one is so busy or so poor that he cannot create a noble ideal and follow
it. Why then hesitate in breaking a path towards this ideal, through
all obstacles; over every stumbling-block, every petty hindrance of social
life, in order to march straight forward until the goal is reached?

Those who would make this effort would soon find that the "strait
gate" and the "thorny path" lead to the broad valleys of the limitless
horizons, to that state where there is no more death, because they have
regained their divinity. But the truth is that the first conditions necessary
to reach it are a disinterestedness, an absolute impersonality, a boundless
devotion to the interests of others, and a complete indifference to the
world and its opinions. The motive must be absolutely pure in order to
make the first steps on that ideal path; — not an unworthy thought must
turn the eyes from the end in view, not one doubt must shackle the feet.
There do exist men and women thoroughly qualified for this whose only
aim is to dwell under the aegis of their divine nature. Let them, at least,
take courage to live the life and not conceal it from the eyes of others!
The opinion of no other person should be taken as superior to the voice
of conscience. Let that conscience, developed to its highest degree,
guide us in the control of all the ordinary acts of life. As to the conduct
of our inner life, we must concentrate the entire attention on the ideal
we have proposed to ourselves, and look straight ahead without paying
the slightest attention to the mud upon our feet. . . .

Those who can make this supreme effort are the true Theosophists.

QUOTATIONS FROM "THE TIDAL WAVE"*

"The tidal wave of deeper souls,

Into our inmost being rolls,

And lifts us unawares,

Out of all meaner cares." — Longfellow

THE great psychic and spiritual change now taking place in the realm
of the human Soul, is quite remarkable. ...

Verily the Spirit in man, so long hidden out of pubHc sight, so care-
fully concealed and so far exiled from the arena of modern learning, has at
last awakened. It now asserts itself and is loudly re-demanding its un-
recognised yet ever legitimate rights. It refuses to be any longer trampled
under the brutal foot of Materialism, speculated upon by the Churches,
and made a fathomless source of income by those who have self-constituted
themselves its universal custodians. . . . The Spirit in man — the direct,
though now but broken ray and emanation of the Universal Spirit —
has at last awakened. . . .

Look around you and behold! Think of what you see and hear,
and draw therefrom your conclusions. The age of crass materialism, of
Soul insanity and blindness, is swiftly passing away. A death struggle
between Mysticism and Materialism is no longer at hand, but is already
raging. And the party which will win the day at this supreme hour will
become the master of the situation and of the future; ... If the signs
of the times can be trusted it is not the Animalists who will remain
conquerors. This is warranted us by the many brave and prolific authors
and writers who have arisen of late to defend the rights of Spirit to reign
over matter. Many are the honest, aspiring Souls now raising themselves
Hke a dead wall against the torrent of the muddy waters of MateriaHsm.
And facing the hitherto domineering flood which is still steadily carrying
off into unknown abysses the fragments from the wreck of the dethroned,
cast-down Human Spirit, they now command: "So far hast thou come;
but thou shalt go no further!"

.... The renovated, Hfe-giving Spirit in man is boldly freeing it-
self from the dark fetters of the hitherto all-capturing animal life and
matter. Behold it, saith the poet, as, ascending on its broad, white
wings, it soars into the regions of real life and light; whence, calm and
godlike, it contemplates with unfeigned pity those golden idols of the
modern material cult with their feet of clay, which have hitherto screened
from the purblind masses their true and living gods. . . .

* From Editorial in Lucifer, November, 1889.

QUOTATIONS FROM "THE TIDAL WAVE" 75

Literature — once wrote a critic — is the confession of social life, re-
flecting all its sins, and all its acts of baseness as of heroism. In this
sense a book is of far greater importance than any man. Books do not
represent one man, but they are the mirror of a host of men. Hence
the great English poet-philosopher said of books, that he knew that they
were as hard to kill and as prolific as the teeth of the fabulous dragon;
sow them hither and thither and armed warriors will grow out of them.
To kill a good book, is equal to killing a man.

The 'poet-philosopher' is right.

A new era has begun in literature, this is certain. New thoughts
and new interests have created new intellectual needs; hence a new race
of authors is springing up. And this new species will gradually and imper-
ceptibly shut out the old one, those fogies of yore who, though they still
reign nominally, are allowed to do so rather by force of habit than predi-
lection. It is not he who repeats obstinately and parrot-like the old
literary formulae and holds desperately to publishers' traditions, who
will find himself answering to the new needs; not the man who prefers
his narrow party discipline to the search for the long-exiled Spirit of
man and the now lost truths; not these, but verily he who, parting
company with his beloved 'authority,' lifts boldly and carries on un-
flinchingly the standard of the Future Man. It is finally those who,
amidst the present wholesale dominion of the worship of matter, material
interests and selfishness, will have bravely fought for human rights and
man's divine nature, who will become, if they only win, the teachers of
the masses in the coming century, and so their benefactors.

But woe to the XXth century if the now reigning school of thought
prevails, for Spirit would once more be made captive and silenced till
the end of the now coming age. It is not the fanatics of the letter in
general, nor the iconoclasts and Vandals who fight the new Spirit of
thought, nor yet the modern Roundheads, supporters of the old Puritan
religious and social traditions, who will ever become the protectors and
Saviors of the now resurrecting human thought and Spirit. It is not
those too-willing supporters of the old cult, and the mediaeval heresies
of those who guard like a relic every error of their sect or party, who
jealously watch over their own thought lest it should, growing out of
its teens, assimilate some fresher and more beneficent idea — not these
who are the wise men of the future. It is not for them that the hour
of the new historical era will have struck, but for those who will have
learnt to express and put into practice the aspirations as well as the
physical needs of the rising generations. ... In order that one should
fully comprehend individual life with its physiological, psychic and
spiritual mysteries, he has to devote himself with all the fervor of un-

76 HELENA PETROVNA BLAVATSKY

selfish philanthropy and love for his brother men, to studying and know-
ing collective life, or Mankind. Without preconceptions or prejudice, as
also without the least fear of possible results in one or another direction,
he has to decipher, understand and remetnber the deep and innermost
feelings and the aspirations of the poor people's great and suffering heart.
To do this he has first "to attune his soul with that of Humanity," as
the old philosophy teaches; to thoroughly master the correct meaning
of every line and word in the rapidly turning pages of the Book of Life
of MANKIND and to be thoroughly saturated with the truism that the
latter is a whole inseparable from his own Self.

How many of such profound readers of life may be found in our boasted
age of sciences and culture? Of course we do not mean authors alone,
but rather the practical and still unrecognized, though well known,
philanthropists and altruists of our age; the people's friends, the unselfish
lovers of man, and the defenders of human right to the freedom of Spirit.
Few indeed are such; for they are the rare blossoms of the age, and gener-
ally the martyrs to prejudiced mobs and time-servers. Like those wonder-
ful 'Snow flowers' of Northern Siberia, which, in order to shoot forth
from the cold frozen soil, have to pierce through a thick layer of hard,
icy snow, so these rare characters have to fight their battles all their
life with cold indifference and human harshness, ....

. . . The root of evil lies, therefore, in a moral, not in a physical
cause.

If asked, what is it then that will help, we answer boldly: — Theo-
sophical Hterature. . . .

Yet, even in the absence of such great gifts one may do good in a
smaller and humbler way by taking note and exposing in impersonal
narratives the crying vices and evils of the day, by word and deed, by
publications and practical example. Let the force of that example im-
press others to follow it; and then instead of deriding our doctrines and
aspirations the men of the XXth, if not the XlXth century, will see
clearer, and judge with knowledge and according to facts instead of
prejudging agreeably to rooted misconceptions. Then and not till then
will the world find itself forced to acknowledge that it was wrong, and
that Theosophy alone can gradually create a mankind as harmonious
and as simple-souled as Kosmos itself; but to effect this Theosophists
have to act as such. Having helped to awaken the spirit in many a
man — we say this boldly challenging contradiction — shall we now stop
instead of swimming with the Tidal Wave?

DONATED BY
KATHARINE TINGLEY

GEMS FROM "THE VOICE OF THE SILENCE"

TRANSLATED AND ANNOTATED FROM THE "BOOK OF THE GOLDEN

Precepts" by H. P. Blavatsky

Before the Soul can see, the Harmony within must be attained, and
fleshly eyes be rendered blind to all illusion.

Give up thy life, if thou wouldst live.

The Wise Ones tarry not in pleasure-grounds of senses.
The Wise Ones heed not the sweet- tongued voices of illusion.

Strive with thy thoughts unclean before they overpower thee. Use
them as they will thee, for if thou sparest them and they take root and
grow, know well these thoughts will overpower and kill thee. Beware,
Disciple, suffer not, e'en though it be their shadow, to approach. For
it will grow, increase in size and power, and then this thing of darkness
will absorb thy being before thou hast well realized the black foul mon-
ster's presence.

Let thy Soul lend its ear to every cry of pain like as the Lotus bares
its heart to drink the morning sun.

Let not the fierce Sun dry one tear of pain before thyself hast wiped it
from the sufferer's eye. But let each burning human tear drop on thy
heart and there remain, nor ever brush it off, until the pain that caused it
is removed.

Do not beUeve that lust can ever be killed out if gratified or satiated,
for this is an abomination. It is by feeding vice that it expands and waxes
strong, like to the worm that fattens on the blossom's heart.

For mind is like a mirror; it gathers dust while it reflects. It needs
the gentle breezes of Soul- wisdom to brush away the dust of our illusions.
Seek, O beginner, to blend thy Mind and Soul.

False learning is rejected by the Wise, and scattered to the winds by
the good Law. Its wheel revolves for all, the humble and the proud.
The 'Doctrine of the Eye' is for the crowd; the 'Doctrine of the Heart'
for the elect. The first repeat in pride: "Behold, I know"; the last, they
who in humbleness have garnered, low confess: "Thus have I heard."
'Great Sifter' is the name of the 'Heart Doctrine.'
The wheel of the good Law moves swiftly on. It grinds by night and
day. The worthless husks it drives from out the golden grain, the refuse
from the flour. The hand of Karma guides the wheel; the revolutions
mark the beatings of the Karmic heart.

78 HELENA PETROVNA BLAVATSKY

True knowledge is the flour, false learning is the husk.

Sow kindly acts and thou shalt reap their fruition. Inaction in a
deed of mercy becomes an action in a deadly sin.

Have patience, as one who fears no failure, courts no success. . . .

Have perseverance as one who doth for evermore endure. Thy
shadows live and vanish; that which in thee shall live forever, that which
in thee knows, for it is knowledge, is not of fleeting life: it is the Man that
was, that is, and will be, for whom the hour shall never strike.

Step out of sunlight into shade, to make more room for others.

To live to benefit mankind is the first step. To practise the six glorious
virtues is the second.

The selfish devotee lives to no purpose. The man who does not go
through his appointed work in life — has hved in vain.

Be humble, if thou wouldst attain to Wisdom.
Be humbler still, when Wisdom thou hast mastered.

The way to final freedom is within thy self.
That way begins and ends outside of Self.

The path that leadeth on, is lighted by one fire — the light of daring,
burning in the heart.

FROM "IS THEOSOPHY A RELIGION?"*

WHAT, then, is Theosophy, and how may it be defined in its latest
presentation in this closing portion of the nineteenth century?
Theosophy, we say, is not a Religion.
Yet there are, as every one knows, certain beUefs, philosophical,
religious and scientific, which have become so closely associated in recent
years with the word "Theosophy" that they have come to be taken by
the general public for Theosophy itself. Moreover, we shall be told these
beliefs have been put forward, explained and defended by those very
Founders who have declared that Theosophy is not a Religion. What
is then the explanation of this apparent contradiction? How can a certain
body of beliefs and teachings, an elaborate doctrine, in fact, be labeled
"Theosophy" and be tacitly accepted as " Theosophical " by nine- tenths
of the members of the Theosophical Society, if Theosophy is not a Reli-
gion? — we are asked.

* Lucifer, IH, pp. 178-180.

DONATED BY .., "' ' '' " " ' '•' •

KATHERINE TINGLE Y •..•/■'■.!.. j :''0 j'.; :\: :

MISCELLANEOUS QUOTATIONS 79

To explain this is the purpose of the present protest.

It is perhaps necessary, first of all, to say, that the assertion that
"Theosophy is not a Religion," by no means excludes the fact that
"Theosophy is Religion" itself. A Religion in the true and only correct
sense, is a bond uniting men together — not a particular set of dogmas
and beliefs. Now Religion, per se, in its widest meaning is that which
binds not only all men, but also all beings and all things in the entire
Universe into one grand whole. This is our Theosophical definition
of religion. . . .

Thus Theosophy is not a Religion, we say, but Religion itself, the
one bond of unity, which is so universal and all-embracing that no man,
as no speck — from gods and mortals down to animals, the blade of grass
and atom — can be outside of its light. Therefore, any organization or
body of that name must necessarily be a Universal Brotherhood.

MISCELLANEOUS QUOTATIONS FROM THE

WRITINGS OF
HELENA PETROVNA BLAVATSKY

^^OEHOLD the Truth before you: a clean life, an open mind, a pure
-^-^ heart, an eager intellect, an unveiled spiritual perception, a broth-
erliness for one's co-disciple, a readiness to give and receive advice and
instruction, a loyal sense of duty to the Teacher, a willing obedience to
the behests of Truth, once we have placed our confidence in and believe
that Teacher to be in possession of it; a courageous endurance of personal
injustice, a brave declaration of principles, a valiant defense of those who
are imjustly attacked, and a constant eye to the ideal of human pro-
gression and perfection which the Secret Science {Giipta-Vidya) depicts —
these are the golden stairs up the steps of which the learner may climb
to the temple of Divine Wisdom."*

If man by suppressing, if not destroying, his selfishness and per-
sonality, only succeeds in knowing himself as he is beyond the veil of
physical Maya [illusion] he will soon stand beyond all pain, all misery,
and beyond all the wear and tear of change, which is the chief originator
of pain. ... All this may be achieved by the development of unselfish

* From an ancient writing quoted by H. P. Blavatsky for the instruction of her students.

80 HELENA PETROVNA BLAVATSKY

universal love of Humanity, and the suppression of personality, or selfish-
ness, which is the cause of all sin, and consequently of all human sorrow.

To merit the honorable title of Theosophist, one must be an altruist
above all, one ever ready to help equally foe or friend, to act rather than
to speak, and to urge others to action while never losing an opportunity
to work himself.

From the Theosophist must radiate those higher spiritual forces which
alone can regenerate his fellow-men.

The first of Theosophical duties is to do one's duty by all men.

Let once man's immortal spirit take possession of the temple of his
body, and his own divine humanity will redeem him.

It is only by close brotherly union of men's inner selves that the
reign of justice and equality can be inaugurated.

Nature gives up her innermost secrets and imparts true wisdom only
to him who seeks truth for its own sake and who craves for knowledge in
order to confer benefits on others, not on his own unimportant personality.

He who does not practise altruism; he who is not prepared to share
his last morsel with a weaker or poorer than himself; he who neglects to
help his brother man, of whatever race, nation or creed, whenever and
wherever he meets suffering, and who turns a deaf ear to the cry of human
misery — is no Theosophist.

Theosophy will gradually leaven and permeate the great mass of
thinking and intelligent people with its large-minded and noble ideas of
Religion, Duty, and Philanthropy. Slowly but surely it will burst asunder
the iron fetters of creeds and dogmas, of social and caste prejudices; it
will break down racial and national antipathies and barriers, and will
open the way to the practical realization of the Brotherhood of all men.

That light that burns in thee, dost thou feel it different in any wise
from the light which shines in other men?

The duty of a Theosophist: to fear no one and naught save the
tribunal of his own conscience.

QUOTATIONS 81

The universal religion can only be one if we accept the real primitive
meaning of the root of that word. We Theosophists so accept it; and
therefore say we are all brothers — by the laws of nature, of birth, of
death, as also by the laws of our utter helplessness from birth to death
in this world of sorrow and deceptive illusions. Let us then love, help
and mutually defend each other against the spirit of deception; and
while holding to that which each of us accepts as his ideal of truth and
unity — i. e., to the religion which suits each of us best — let us unite
to form a practical nucleus of a Universal Brotherhood of Humanity
without distinction of race, creed, or color.

True knowledge is of Spirit and in Spirit alone, and cannot be acquired
in any other way except through the region of the higher mind. ... He
who carries out only the laws established by human minds, who lives
that life which is prescribed by the code of mortals and their fallible
legislation, chooses as his guiding star a beacon which shines on the
ocean of Maya, or of temporary delusions, and lasts for but one incarna-
tion. These laws are necessary for the life and welfare of physical man
alone. He has chosen a pilot who directs him through the shoals of one
existence, a master who parts with him, however, on the threshold of
death. How much happier that man who, while strictly performing on
the temporary objective plane the duties of daily life, carrying out each
and every law of his country, and rendering, in short, to Caesar what is
Caesar's, leads in reality a spiritual and permanent existence, a life with
no breaks of continuity, no gaps, no interludes, not even during those
periods which are the halting-places of the long pilgrimage of purely
spiritual life. All the phenomena of the lower human mind disappear
like the curtain of a proscenium, allowing him to live in the region beyond
it, the plane of the noumenal, the one reality. If man, by suppressing,
if not destroying, his selfishness and personality, only succeeds in knowing
himself as he is beyond the veil of physical Maya, he will soon stand beyond
all pain, all misery, and beyond the wear and tear of change, which is the
chief originator of pain. Such a man will be physically of matter, he will
move surrounded by matter, and yet he will live beyond and outside it.
His body will be subject to change, but he himself will be entirely without
it, and will experience everlasting life even while in temporary bodies of
short duration. All this may be achieved by the development of unselfish
universal love of Humanity, and the suppression of personality, or selfish-
ness, which is the cause of all sin, and consequently of all human sorrow.

The Universal Brotherhood and Theosophical Society

Founded in New York City in 1875 by H. P. Blavatsky, William Q. Judge, and others
Reorganized in 1898 by Katherine Tingley
Central Office, Point Loma, California

The Headquarters of the Society at Point Loma, with the buildings and grounds, are no 'Community,' 'Settlement'
or 'Colony,' but are the Central Executive Office of an international organization where the business of the same
is carried on, and where the teachings of Theosophy are being demonstrated. Midway 'twixt East and West,
where the rising Sun of Progress and Enlightenment shall one day stand at full meridian, the Headquarters of the
Society unite the philosophic Orient with the practical West.

MEMBERSHIP

in the Universal Brotherhood and Theosophical Society may be either 'at large' or in a local Branch. Adhesion
to the principle of Universal Brotherhood is the only pre-requisite to membership. The Organization represents
no particular creed; it is entirely unsectarian. and includes professors of all faiths, only exacting from each member
that large toleration of the beliefs of others which he desires them to exhibit towards his own.

Applications for membership in a Branch should be addressed to the local Director; for membership 'at large,'
to the Membership Secretary, International Theosophical Headquarters. Point Loma, California.

OBJECTS

THIS BROTHERHOOD is a part
of a great and universal move-
ment which has been active in all
ages.

This Organization declares that
Brotherhood is a fact in Nature. Its
principal purpose is to teach Brother-
hood, demonstrate that it is a fact
in Nature, and make it a living power
in the life of humanity.

Its subsidiary purpose is to study
ancient and modern religions, science,
philosophy and art; to investigate
the laws of Nature and the divine
powers in man.

It is a regrettable fact that many
people use the name of Theosophy
and of our Organization for self-
interest, as also that of H. P. Bla-
vatsky, the Foundress, and even the
Society's motto, to attract attention
to themselves and to gain public
support. This they do in private and
public speech and in publications.
Without being in any way connected
with the Universal Brotherhood and
Theosophical Society, in many cases
they permit it to be inferred that
they are, thus misleading the public,

and honest inquirers are hence led
away from the original truths of
Theosophy.

The Universal Brotherhood and
Theosophical Society welcomes to
membership all who truly love their
fellowmen and desire the eradication
of the evils caused by the barriers
of race, creed, caste, or color, which
have so long impeded human pro-
gress. To all sincere lovers of truth,
and to all who aspire to higher and
better things than the mere pleasures
and interests of a worldly life and
are prepared to do all in their power
to make Brotherhood a living energy
in the life of humanity, its various
departments offer unlimited oppor-
tunities.

The whole work of the Organiza-
tion is under the direction of the
Leader and Official Head, Katherine
Tingley, as outlined in the Constitu-
tion.

Inquirers desiring further infor-
mation about Theosophy or the Theo-
sophical Society are invited to write
to

The Secretary

International Theosophical Headquarter*
Point Loma. California

STANDARD THEOSOPHICAL LITERATURE

The Secrp:t Doctrine: The Sytithesis of Science, Religion, and Philosophy: by
H. P. Blavatsky. Second Point Loma Edition, 1917: Virtually a verbatim re-
print of the original edition published in 1888 by H. P. Blavatsky (per set: 4 vols.)

Isis Unveiled: A Master-Key to the Mysteries of Ancient and Modern Science and
Theology, by H. P. Blavatsky (Per set: 4 vols.)

The Key to Theosophy: A Clear Exposition, in the Form of Question and Answer,
of the Ethics, Science, and Philosophy, for the Study of which The Universal Brother-
hood and Theosophical Society has been founded, with a copious Glossary of General
Theosophical Terms, by H. P. Blavatsky (per copy)

Bhagavad-GIta: The Book of Devotion. A Dialog between Krishna, Lord of Devotion
and Arjuna, Prince of India. An Episode from the Mahdbharata, India's Great Epic

The Voice of the Silence, and other fragments from the Book of the Golden Precepts.
Dedicated to the Few. Translated and Annotated by H. P. Blavatsky

Echoes from the Orient: A Broad Outline of Theosophical Doctrines, doth

by W. Q. Judge paper

$12.00

12.00

2.25

1.00

.75

.50
.25

A Nosegay of Everlastings: from Katherine Tingley's Garden of Helpful Thoughts.

Short extracts culled from various addresses delivered in Europe and America. cloth . 75

paper . 50

THEOSOPHICAL PAMPHLETS: per copy, each, .15c.

An Epitome of Theosophy, by William Quan Judge

The Mystical Christ, by Katherine Tingley

Katherine Tingley and her Raja- Yoga System of Education, by Lilian Whiting

Katherine Tingley: Theosophist and Humanitarian, by Lilian Whiting

So.ME of the Errors of Christian Science, by H. P. Blavatsky and William Q. Judge

The Evils of Hypnotis.m, by Lydia Ross, m. d.

Katherine Tingley on Marriage and the Home, by Claire Merton
Incidents in the History of the Theosophical Movement, by J. H. Fussell

.25
.25

THEOSOPHICAL MANUALS

Handbooks for Students
Price each, paper .25; cloth .35. Per set (19 vols.), paper $4.00; cloth $5.50

No.

10.

No.

11.

Elementary Theosophy
The Seven Principles of Man
Karma

Reincarnation
Man after Death
Kama-loka and Devachan
Teachers and Their Disciples
The Doctrine of Cycles
Psychism, Ghostology, and

the Astral Plane
The Astral Light
Psychometry, Clairvoyance, and

Thought- Transference

No. 12.

No. 13.
No. 14.
No. 15.

No. 16.

No. 17.

No. 18.

The Angel and the Demon

(2 vols., 35c. each)
The Flame and the Clay
On God and Prayer
Theosophy: the Mother of

Religions
From Crypt to Pronaos: An Essay

on the Rise and Fall of Dogma
Earth: Its Parentage, its Rounds

and its Races
Sons of the Fire-Mist: A Study

of Man

THE PATH SERIES

Specially adapted for Inquirers in Theosophy: Per copy .05

No. 1. The Purpose of the Universal Brotherhood and Theosophical Society

No. 2. Theosophy Generally Stated (W. Q. Judge)

Reprinted from Official Report, World's Parliament of Religions, Chicago, 1893

No. 3. Mislaid Mysteries (Herbert Coryn, m. d.)

No. 4. Theosophy and its Counterfeits

No. 5. Some Perverted Presentations of Theosophy (H. T. Edge, M. A.)

No. 6. What is Theosophy? (H. T. Edge, M. A.)

THE THEOSOPHICAL PATH {illustrated, monthly) Edited by Katherine Tingley
per copy, domestic .30, foreign .35 or Is 6d.
(per year $3.00: Canadian postage, .35; Foreign .50)

PAPERS OF THE SCHOOL OF ANTIQUITY. Per copy, 20 cents

No. 1. The Spirit of the Hour in Archaeology: by William E. Gates, Professor of American
Archaeology and Linguistics, School of Antiquity.

No. 2. The Relation of Religion to Art in Antiquity and the Middle Ages: by Osvald Siren,
Professor of the History of Art, University of Stockholm.

No. 3. Notes on Peruvian Antiquities {illustrated) : by Fred. J. Dick, M. Inst. C. E., Professor
of Astronomy and Mathematics, School of Antiquity.

No. 5. Early Chinese Painting (illustrated): by William E. Gates

No. 6. Medical Psychology: by Lydia Ross, M. D.

No. 7. Ancient Astronomy in Egypt and its Significance {illustrated) : by Fred. J. Dick.

No. 8. Studies in Evolution: by H. T. Edge, M. A. Natural Sciences Tripos, Cambridge
University, England; Professor of Education in the School of Antiquity.

No. 9. The School of Antiquity: Its Meaning, Purpose, and Scope: by J. H. Fussell,
Secretary, Universal Brotherhood and Theosophical Society.

No. 10. Problems in Ethnology: by J. 0. Kinnaman, A. M., Ph. D., Member of The Victoria
Institute of Great Britain. Notes by J. H. Fussell.

No. 11. Neglected Fundamentals in Geometry: by Fred. J. Dick.

No. 12, Maya Chronology (illustrated): by Fred. J. Dick.

LITERATURE IN SWEDISH, DUTCH, GERMAN, FRENCH, SPANISH
TRANSPORTATION CHARGES PREPAID

THE THEOSOPHICAL PUBLISHING COMPANY
POINT LOMA, CALIFORNIA

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fJ^B 3d 1924

lOw-12,'23

^D 03326

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464152

UNIVERSITY OF CAUFORNIA LIBRARY