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religion was seen to be necessary. Madame Blavatsky's disapprobation of
Spiritualism had as its prime motivation that movement's lack of any moral bases
for psychic progress. Therefore the ethical implications which she saw as
fundamental in any true occult system were embodied in the Theosophic platform
in the Universal Brotherhood plank. Brotherhood, a somewhat vague general term,
was made the only creedal or ethical requirement for fellowship in the Society.
At that it is, as a moral obligation, a matter of the individual's own
interpretation, and it is the Society's only link with the ethical side of
religion. Not even the member's clear violation of accepted or prevalent social
codes can disqualify him from good standing. The Society refuses to be a judge
of what constitutes morality or its breach, leaving that determination to the
member himself. At the same time through its literature it declares that no
progress into genuine spirituality is possible "without clean hands and a pure
heart." It adheres to the principle that morality without freedom is not
morality. Thus the movement which began with an impulse to investigate the
occult powers of ancient magicians, was moulded by circumstances into a moral
discipline, which placed little store in magic feats.
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CHAPTER V
ISIS UNVEILED
One morning in the summer of 1875 Madame Blavatsky showed her colleague some
sheets of manuscript which she had written. She explained: "I wrote this last
night 'by order,' but what the deuce it is to be I don't know. Perhaps it is for
a newspaper article, perhaps for a book, perhaps for nothing: anyhow I did as I
was ordered."
She put it away in a drawer and nothing more was said about it for some months.
In September of that year she went to Syracuse on a visit to Prof. and Mrs.
Hiram Corson, of Cornell University, and while there she began to expand the few
original pages. She wrote back to Olcott in New York that "she was writing about
things she had never studied and making quotations from books she had never read
in all her life; that, to test her accuracy Prof. Corson had compared her
quotations with classical works in the University Library and had found her to
be right."1
She had never undertaken any extensive literary production in her life and her
unfamiliarity with English at this time was a real handicap. When she returned
to the city Olcott took two suites of rooms at 433 West 34th Street, and there
she set to work to expound the rudiments of her great science. From 1875 to 1877
she worked with unremitting energy, sitting from morning until night at her
desk. In the evenings, after his day's professional labors, Olcott came to her
help, aiding her with the English and with the systematic arrangement of the
heterogeneous mass of material that poured forth. Later Dr. Alexander Wilder,
the Neo-Platonic scholar, helped her with the spelling of the hundreds of
classical philological terms she employed. But Madame Blavatsky wrote the book,
Isis Unveiled.
After the first flush of its popularity it has been forgotten, outside of
Theosophic circles. Even among Theosophists, or at any rate in the largest
organic group of the Theosophical Society, the book is hardly better known than
in the world at large. During the last twenty-five years there has been a
tendency in the Society to read expositions of Madame Blavatsky's ponderous
volumes rather than the original presentation; neophytes in the organization
have been urged to pass up these books as being too recondite and abstruse. It
has even been hinted that many things are better understood now than when the
Founder wrote, and that certain crudities of dogma and inadequacies of
presentation can be avoided by perusing the commentary literature. As a result
of this policy the percentage of Theosophic students who know exactly what
Madame Blavatsky wrote over fifty years ago is quite small. Thousands of members
of the Theosophical Society have grown old in the cult's activities and have
never read the volumes that launched the cult ideas.
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Isis must not, however, be regarded as a text-book on Theosophy. The Secret
Doctrine, issued ten years later, has a better claim to that title. Isis makes
no formulation, certainly not a systematic one, of the creed of occultism. It is
far from being an elucidation or exegesis of the basic principles of what is now
known as Theosophy. Isis makes no attempt to organize the whole field of human
and divine knowledge, as does The Secret Doctrine. It merely points to the
evidence for the existence of that knowledge, and only dimly suggests the
outlines of the cosmic scheme in which it must be made to fit. It is in a sense
a panoramic survey of the world literature out of which she essayed in part to
draw the system of Theosophy. If Theosophy is to be found in Isis, it is there
in seminal form, not in organic expression. Perhaps it were better to say that
the book prepared the soil for the planting of Madame Blavatsky's later
teaching. Her impelling thought was to reveal the traces, in ancient and
medieval history and literature, of a secret science whose principles had been
lost to view. She aimed to show that the most vital science mankind had ever
controlled had sunk further below general recognition now than in any former
times. She would relight the lamp of that archaic wisdom, which would illuminate
the darkness of modern scientific pride.
Her work, then, was to make a restatement of the occult doctrine with its
ancient attestations. This was a gigantic task. It meant little short of a
thorough search in the entire field of ancient religion, philosophy, and
science, with an eye to the discernment of the mystery tradition, teachings, and
practices wherever manifested; and then the collation, correlation, and
systematic presentation of this multifarious material in something like a
structural unity. The many legends of mystic power, the hundreds of myths and
fables, were to be traced to ancient rites, whose far-off symbolism threw light
on their significance. It would be not merely an encyclopedia of the whole
mythical life of the race, but a digest and codification, so to speak, of the
entire mass into a system breathing intelligible meaning and common sense. Her
task, in a word, was to redeem the whole ancient world from the modern stigma of
superstition, crude ignorance, and childish imagination.
In view of the immensity of her undertaking we are forced to wonder whence came [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]