THE SOURCES OF MME BLAVATSKY'S WORKS
Now that enough has been said about Mme Blavatsky's life and character, we must say something about her works. If they do not derive from the revelations of any authentic 'Mahātmā', whence comes the rather varied knowledge to which they bear witness? She acquired this knowledge quite naturally during her many travels and also through her wide though unmethodical and rather poorly assimilated reading; she possessed 'a powerful mind, widely if erratically cultivated,' as Sinnett himself said. [1] It is related that during her first wanderings in the Levant in the company of Metamon she made her way into certain monasteries on Mount Athos, [2] and that it was in their libraries that, among other things, she discovered the Alexandrian theory of the Logos. During her stay in New York she read the works of Jacob Boehme, which were doubtless all she ever actually knew of authentic theosophy, as well as those of Eliphas Lévi, which she cites so often; she probably also read the Kabbala Denudata of Knorr de Rosenroth and various other kabbalistic and Hermetic treatises. In the letters that Olcott sent to Stainton Moses at the time mention is made of other works of rather varied character. For example, we read this:
For an interesting compilation of factual data on magic I refer you to the works of [Gougenot] of the Mousseaux, who although a blind Catholic and an implicit believer in devil worship has gathered a wealth of valuable facts which your most enlightened and emancipated spirit will value highly. You will also find it beneficial to read the works of the Eastern sects and the sacerdotal orders; some interesting particulars are also found in Lane's Modern Egyptians. [3]
In addition to the already mentioned Etoile Flamboyante and the Magica Adamica, a subsequent letter makes reference to an anonymous Hermetic treatise entitled The Key to the Concealed Things Since the Beginning of the World. [4] In yet another letter Olcott recommends to his correspondent Jacolliot's Spiritisme dans le Monde and other works on India by the same author, books moreover which contain absolutely nothing serious; [5] and all these works were no doubt ones which Olcott himself read along with Mme Blavatsky, of whom he said in this same letter written in 1876:
Wait until we have time to finish her book, and you will then find occultism dealt with in good English; many of the mysteries of Fludd and Philalethes, of Paracelsus and Agrippa, interpreted in a way that anyone searching can read.
According to this last sentence, then, Olcott and others collaborated in the compilation of Isis Unveiled, just as, later, Subba Rao and others contributed to The Secret Doctrine, this being a quite simple explanation of the variations in style to be noticed in these works, and which Theosophists attribute to dictation by different 'Masters'. In this respect it has even been said that upon waking Mme Blavatsky sometimes found twenty or thirty pages of writing, in a hand differing from her own, following hers of the previous day. We do
not contest this fact in itself, for it is quite possible that she had been sleepwalking and may really have written during the night what she thus found the next day; indeed, cases of this kind are common enough that there is no cause to marvel at them. Furthermore, natural sleepwalking and mediumship often go together, and we have already explained that Mme Blavatsky's duly noted frauds need not necessarily deny her any mediumistic ability. We can therefore admit that she sometimes played the role of 'writer medium', but as so often happens in such circumstances what she wrote was finally nothing but the reflection of her own thoughts and those of her entourage.
Concerning the provenance of the books Mme Blavatsky made use of in New York, some of which would have been rather difficult to obtain, we know from Emma Hardinge-Britten, former member of the first Theosophical Society, and also a member of the 'HB of L [6]' that 'with the Society's money Mme Blavatsky purchased and kept, in her capacity as librarian, many rare books the contents of which appeared in Isis Unveiled. [7] Moreover, we have seen that she inherited Baron de Palmes' library and that in particular this library contained manuscripts which were equally useful, as Dr Cowes said, and which together with the letters of Swāmi Sarasvatī Dayānanda shared the honor of later being transformed into communications from the 'Mahātmās'. Finally, Mme Blavatsky had been able to find various pieces of information in Felt's papers and in the books which the latter used to prepare his talks on magic and the 'Egyptian Kabbala', and which he left to her when he died. It seems that the first idea of the theory of the 'elementals', which he attributed rather gratuitously to the ancient Egyptians, can be attributed to Felt. [8]
As for strictly Eastern doctrines, Blavatsky knew of Brähmanism and Buddhism only what is commonly known, and understood little even of that, as is proved both by the theories she ascribed to
them also by her continual mistranslation of Sanskrit terms. Furthermore, Leadbeater explicitly acknowledged that 'she did not know Sanskrit' and that 'Arabic seemed to be the only Eastern language she knew' (she no doubt learned it during her stay in Egypt); [9] and he attributes most of the difficulties of Theosophical terminology to this ignorance of Sanskrit, difficulties which were such as to resolve Mrs Besant to replace most of the terms of Eastern origin by their English equivalents. [10] The former were very often given a meaning they never really had; we have seen an example of this in the word Mahātmā, which was replaced by 'Adept', and we shall find another in the word 'karma', which however has remained unchanged. Mme Blavatsky sometimes contrived words that do not exist in Sanskrit under the form she gives them, such as 'Fohat', which really seems to be a corruption of 'Mahat'. On other occasions she concocted them of elements borrowed from other Eastern languages: thus one comes across compounds which are half-Sanskrit and half-Tibetan or Mongol, such as 'Devachan' for the Sanskrit 'deva-loka', or again 'Dhyan-Chohan' for 'Dhyanī-Buddha'. Generally, these Eastern terms used at random almost always serve to disguise purely Western conceptions; ultimately they exist only to play a role analogous to that of 'phenomena', which is to attract a clientele easily swayed by appearances, and this is why Theosophists will never be able to renounce them completely. Indeed, many people are seduced by exoticism, even of the most mediocre quality, and moreover are completely incapable of assessing its value; a 'snobbism' of this kind is not foreign to the success of Theosophy in certain circles.
We shall add yet another word specifically on the origin of the so-called highly secret Tibetan texts used by Mme Blavatsky in writing her works, notably the famous Stanzas of Dzyan [11] incorporated in The Secret Doctrine and The Voice of Silence. These texts
contain many passages which are obviously 'interpolated' or even wholly invented, as well as others that at the very least are 'arranged' to accommodate Theosophical ideas. As regards the authentic parts, they are quite simply borrowed from a translation of extracts from the Kandjur and Tandjur, published in 1836 in the twentieth volume of the Asiatic Researches of Calcutta, by Alexander Csoma de Körös. [12] The latter, of Hungarian origin, called himself Skander-Beg, and was an eccentric who traveled for a long time in central Asia seeking to discover through a comparison of languages the tribe from which his nation had come. [13]
Such is the strange mix of heterogeneous elements behind Blavatsky's major works, Isis Unveiled and The Secret Doctrine. These works were just what might be expected given the circumstances: indigestible compilations without order, a true chaos in which some interesting documents are awash in a mass of worthless assertions; it would certainly be a waste of time to look here for what can be found much more easily elsewhere. Besides, it abounds in errors as
well as contradictions, and these latter are such that the most contrary opinions can be satisfied. For example, in succession it is said that there is a God, then that there is not; that 'Nirvāna' is annihilation, then that it is quite the contrary; that metempsychosis is a fact, then that it is a fiction; that vegetarianism is indispensable for 'psychic development', then that it is simply useful; and so on. [14] All this can be understood without too much difficulty, however, for apart from the fact that Mme Blavatsky's actual ideas varied to a great extent, she wrote at prodigious speed and without referring to her sources, probably not even to what she herself had already written. However it is this work, which is so defective, that has always formed the basis of Theosophist teaching; and in spite of everything that has subsequently come to be added to or superimposed upon it, and even the corrections that she was constrained to introduce under the guise of 'interpretations', it always enjoyed an uncontested authority in the Society; and, if it does not embody the whole doctrine, it more or less contains the basic principles, presuming one can speak of doctrine and principles when in the presence of such an incoherent compilation.
When we speak here of uncontested authority, this applies above all to The Secret Doctrine, for the case of Isis Unveiled seems somewhat different. Thus, in establishing a kind of 'study plan' for Theosophy, Leadbeater strongly recommends the first, which he calls 'the best book of all,' and does not even mention the second. [15] We shall point out one of the main reasons for this reserve, which moreover is easily explained since a comparison of these two works brings out clearly the variations and contradictions noted earlier. Among other things, Mme Blavatsky wrote this in Isis Unveiled:
Reincarnation, that is, the appearance of the same individual or rather of his astral monad twice on the same planet, is not a rule in nature; it is an exception, like the teratological phenomenon of a child with two heads. It is preceded by a violation of the
harmonic laws of nature and only happens when nature, seeking to reestablish its disrupted equilibrium, violently pushes back to terrestrial life the astral monad taken away from the circle of necessity by crime or accident. [16]
In this passage it is easy to recognize the influence of the 'H B of L'. Indeed, the teaching of the latter, although absolutely 'anti-reincarnationist' in general, nonetheless admits, though wrongly, some exceptional cases, three to be precise: children stillborn or who die at an early age, idiots from birth, and finally voluntary 'messianic' incarnations, which occur around every six hundred years or so (at the end of each of the cycles called Naros by the Chaldeans), but without the same spirit ever being incarnated more than once, and without there being two such incarnations consecutively in the same race; these are the first two of the three cases that Mme Blavatsky has compared to 'teratological phenomena. [17] Consequently, when Theosophy became 'reincarnationist' these same two cases still remained exceptions, but in the sense that they admit the possibility of an immediate reincarnation, [18] whereas for normal cases, as we have said, an interval of fifteen hundred years is taken for granted. Moreover, when reminded that she had been accused of preaching against reincarnation, Mme Blavatsky came to assert that this was only by those
who have misunderstood what was said. . . . At the time the work was written, re-incarnation was not believed in by any Spiritualists, either English or American, and what is said there of reincarnation was addressed to the French Spiritists, whose theory is as unphilosophical and absurd, . . . and who believe in an arbitrary and immediate re-incarnation. [19]
However, Mme Blavatsky had borrowed the very idea of reincarnation from these spirits of Allan Kardec's school, to which she formerly belonged, and when, after having temporarily abandoned it under another influence, she readopted the concept, she made some modifications and did some polishing in order to make it more 'philosophical'. As for the passage cited from Isis Unveiled, it is clear enough and offers nothing obscure or difficult to understand. There is no question of discussing the modalities of reincarnation, or of knowing whether it is immediate or deferred; it is really reincarnation itself which, for the generality of cases, is rejected purely and simply. Thus here again, Blavatsky's insincerity is obvious, and one sees that she is the first to maintain that her thought has been poorly understood whenever some embarrassing assertion or formal contradiction is found in her writings. Her successors should follow this example assiduously whenever they would like to introduce any important change in Theosophist teaching.