Isis Unveiled: Both Volumes - A Master-Key to the Mysteries of Ancient and Modern Science and Theology (Illustrated)
(This complete, unabridged, all-in-one edition of Helena B...)
This complete, unabridged, all-in-one edition of Helena Blavatsky's classic work of esoteric spiritualism, history and theology also contains her original illustrations.
Although named after the Egyptian goddess Isis - a figure widely associated with magic and nature - this book's scope ranges far beyond ancient Egypt. The author examines the ancient spiritual pantheons of the East, with chapters upon Buddhism and Hinduism. These ancient beliefs are strongly believed to hold much value by the author, who discusses the essential truths about the nature of reality, consciousness and the place of humanity on the Earth.
At over 540,000 words, this lengthy and eclectic treatise is considered to be one of the greatest ever produced in the field of esotericism. Alluding to wisdom from cultures all around the world, Isis Unveiled is a deeply detailed book invigorated by the passion of its author to prove that truths were known by the ancients that humans remains ignorant of to the present day. The truths which Blavatsky seeks to demonstrate span a wide domain; provinces of the spiritual, scientific, occult, religious and theological are delved into for answers.
With this book, Helena Blavatsky introduced what she termed the 'Wisdom-Religion' to the world; a creed in which ancient documents and knowledge are valued as the purest source of spiritual knowledge. Her own researches in the subject are vast and yielded results that are staggering for their breadth. Replete topics covered in this work include life after death, magical and psychic phenomena, sorcery, black magic, the origin of the Christian faith, and eastern figures such as Gautama Buddha.
The work however has not been without its detractors; many have accused Isis Unveiled of plagiarism, noting the similarity of large tracts with writings of other occultists. The sheer length and eclecticism of the book, and subsequent changes in the ideas attached to certain ancient phenomena, led to confusion among interested followers of Blavatsky's writings: some contested that the original concepts had been contradicted.
Helena Blavatsky was born to a wealthy family in Russia. Her education put her in contact with many ancient cultures and traditions, which fascinated her from an early age. Following the publication of this book she founded the Theosophical Society in New York, descendants and offshoots of which continue to research and seek after the essential truths underpinning existence to this day.
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Published posthumously in 1892, The Theosophical Glossa...)
Published posthumously in 1892, The Theosophical Glossary gives information on many of the principal words and definitions of occult terms used in theosophical literature, as well as details of the lives of some of the most important adepts of the east and west.
This work is not a cheap scan or the result of copying and pasting; It contains no missing pages, areas of blurred or missing text, photocopier's fingers, coffee stains, or other scanning artifacts. It has all of the original text, retyped and reformatted in an easy to read format.
(THE — the writer, rather — feels it necessary to apologse...)
THE — the writer, rather — feels it necessary to apologse for the long delay which has occurred in the appearance of this work. It has been occasioned by ill-health and the magnitude of the undertaking. Even the two volumes now issued do not complete the scheme, and these do not treat exhaustively of the subjects dealt with in them. A large quantity of material has already been prepared, dealing with the history of occultism as contained in the lives of the great Adepts of the Aryan Race, and showing the bearing of occult philosophy upon the conduct of life, as it is and as it ought to be. Should the present volumes meet with a favourable reception, no effort will be spared to carry out the scheme of the work in its entirety. The third volume is entirely ready; the fourth almost so. This scheme, it must be added, was not in contemplation when the preparation of the work was first announced. As originally announced, it was intended that the "Secret Doctrine" should be an amended and enlarged version of "Isis Unveiled." It was, however, soon found that the explanations which could be added to those already put before the world in the last-named and other works dealing with esoteric science, were such as to require a different method of treatment: and consequently the present volumes do not contain, in all, twenty pages extracted from "Isis Unveiled." The author does not feel it necessary to ask the indulgence of her readers and critics for the many defects of literary style, and the imperfect English which may be found in these pages. She is a foreigner, and her knowledge of the language was acquired late in life. The English tongue is employed because it offers the most widely-diffused medium for conveying the truths which it had become her duty to place before the world. 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 viii PREFACE. own study and observation. The publication 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 endeavour to, as they imagined, work out a complete system of thought from the few facts previously communicated to them
Helena Petrovna Hahn Blavatsky was a Russian-born occultist, philosopher, and writer. She founded the Theosophical Society in 1875.
Background
Helena Blavatsky was born at Ekaterinoslav in Southern Russia (now Dnipro, Ukraine). She was the daughter of Col. Peter Hahn and granddaughter of Gen. Alexis Hahn von Rottenstern Hahn of old Mecklenburg stock. Her mother, Helena Pavlovna Fadeev, a distinguished novelist writing under the pseudonym of "Zinaida R-va, " was an aunt of the celebrated Count Witte and a daughter of Privy-Councillor Andrey Fadeev and Princess Helena Dolgoruki. Further back, her ancestors were allied with the royal family. She passed an undisciplined childhood, at one time with her father in an army camp, and then, after the death of her mother, with her maternal grandparents. Their old country mansion at Saratov, much like a feudal castle, in the midst of parks and forests, fed the high-spirited girl's naturally romantic disposition. Hysterical and subject to hallucinations, she lived in a world of her own fancy when she was not quarrelling with her various governesses.
Education
In 1844 her father took Helena to Paris and London where she received some instruction in music, in which she showed remarkable talent, but he soon found his thirteen-year-old daughter too much for him and returned her to her grandparents. She grew up as reckless, self-willed, and erratic a young person as was to be found in all Russia.
Career
In 1848 Helena was married to Gen. Nikifor Vasilevich Blavatsky. She soon deserted her husband and returned to her grandfather who immediately shipped her to her father, but on the way she escaped and got to Constantinople. Here she seems to have formed a liaison with the Hungarian revolutionist and opera singer Metrovich (or Mitrovich) which was followed by another with an unknown Englishman. Then ensued a long period of wanderings about European capitals and gambling places, in the Near East, in Egypt, and possibly even to America (1851, 1853) and India (1853, 1856, 1869). No accurate record of these years can be pieced together from her own utterly unreliable and contradictory statements. Thus, in her first interview in America in 1874 she made no mention of having been to India but claimed to have made a fortune by selling ostrich feathers in Africa and, on another occasion, to have penetrated into the Sudan and lived for four months without seeing a white face, while incidentally translating Darwin and Buckle into Russian! Later, in the information which she gave A. P. Sinnett for his Incidents in the Life of Mme. Blavatsky (1886), the ostrich feathers, Darwin, and Buckle were forgotten, but three trips to India and a residence in Tibet were substituted.
In 1858 Helena was, according to her own statement, "converted to spiritualism" by the celebrated medium, Daniel D. Home, in Paris. In 1860 she was again in Russia, seeking reconciliation with her family and, at Pskov and Tiflis, creating a local sensation by her exhibitions of spirit-rapping. The arrival of Metrovich in Tiflis led to a renewal of their former relations and a new scandal. The two hastily went to Kiev whence they were ejected for pasquinades by Mme. Blavatsky against the Governor-General. Her statement that she was with Garibaldi in the battle of Mentana, November 3, 1867, seems to have been without other foundation than her romantic imagination. She was in Odessa at sometime between 1867 and 1871, still with Metrovich whom she supported by making and selling artificial flowers. In 1870 she was shipwrecked off Spezzia. The next year she was investigating and practising spiritualism in Cairo. In 1872 she was back in Russia, in 1873 again in Paris, and in July of the latter year she crossed to New York by steerage and settled in one of the poorer quarters of the city. She was about to start a new religious movement.
In the summer of 1874 the alleged spiritualistic phenomena of the Eddy brothers at Chittenden, Vermont, received great publicity through the favorable articles of Henry Steel Olcott in the New York Graphic. Mme. Blavatsky visited Chittenden, met the receptive Olcott, and soon convinced him of her own psychic powers. During the ensuing year they became very intimate and wrote numerous articles in defense of spiritualism. But in the winter the disastrous exposure of the medium, Mrs. Nelson Holmes, in Philadelphia, caused public interest in spiritualism to wane. Mme. Blavatsky, up to this time under the "control" of the famous spook, "John King, " shifted her allegiance, announced that she was in touch with certain Egyptian masters, "the Brothers of Luxor, " and strove to found a society for the study of Egyptian occultism. This took form eventually in the Theosophical Society, started on September 7, 1875, with sixteen members, Olcott as president, and herself as corresponding secretary. The aims of the Society were later enlarged to embrace the promotion of the brotherhood of man, the study of comparative religion, and the study of occultism in general. In the autumn of 1877 Mme. Blavatsky published in New York her celebrated Isis Unveiled, a two-volume work on occultism, largely made up of unacknowledged quotations. In this she denounced spiritualism as bitterly as she had formerly denounced its opponents. In 1878 a branch of the Theosophical Society was formed in London.
The parent society in New York failing to prosper, Olcott and Mme. Blavatsky now decided to try their fortunes in India. They sailed on December 18, 1878, and arrived in Bombay, Febryary 16, 1879. Even before this they had affiliated with the Arya Samaj, a group headed by a Hindu mystic, Dayananda Saraswati, but within a short time they and the venerable Hindu were denouncing each other as "humbugs. " Mme. Blavatsky supported herself and Olcott by writing, under the pseudonym of Radda-Bai, for the Russky Vyestnik, a series of exceedingly able travel sketches. Meanwhile her production of "psychic phenomena" converted A. P. Sinnett, editor of the leading Anglo-Indian paper, the Allahabad Pioneer, in whose pages the Theosophical movement was widely advertised. The two founders established their own magazine, the Theosophist, and began to gain adherents throughout India; in 1880 they carried the movement to Ceylon; in 1882 they fixed the permanent headquarters of the Society at Adyar, a suburb of Madras, in a bungalow fitted up with an "occult room" and a "shrine. " By means of these, Mme. Blavatsky received over the astral telegraph mysterious letters from her latest masters, two Tibetan Mahatmas named "Morya" and "Koot Hoomi. " In 1883, however, it was brought out that one of Koot Hoomi's letters, published in Sinnett's Occult World (1881), was taken verbatim from a spiritualistic address delivered by a certain Mr. Kiddle in America. This discovery led to numerous resignations from the London branch, and the situation became so serious that early in 1884 Olcott and Mme. Blavatsky paid a trip to Europe.
Hardly had they departed before her secretary, Mme. Emma Coulomb, together with her husband, both residents in the Theosophical bungalow, began to circulate stories of wholesale trickery on Mme. Blavatsky's part. These were published in the Christian College Magazine at Madras in the fall, and the much-harassed Theosophical leaders now hurried back to India, closely followed by Richard Hodgson, come to make an investigation on behalf of the British Society for Psychical Research. This investigation was carried on for three months; when it became known that the investigator's report would corroborate the Coulomb charges, Mme. Blavatsky resigned her position as corresponding secretary of the Society and sailed once more for Europe.
In April 1885 she arrived at Naples, desperately ill, impoverished, and all but universally discredited. But her spirit was indomitable. She settled down to an obscure life in Würzburg, Germany, where as soon as her health was a little better she devoted herself to her most important piece of writing, The Secret Doctrine (1888), in two large volumes, an elaborate exposition of the basic ideas of Theosophy. Toward exposures of her past she adopted the attitude of a religious martyr persecuted by unbelievers, and this role gradually gained her more followers than she had lost. In the spring of 1886 she moved to Ostend and in the summer of 1887 to London. There in September 1887 she organized the Blavatsky Lodge; in October 1888 she established the Esoteric Section of the Theosophical Society with herself as head; in August 1890 authority over the entire European Theosophical organization was given to her.
During all this time she was suffering from a variety of diseases anyone of which, in the opinion of her physician, would have sufficed to kill an ordinary person. Nevertheless, in these years, besides her other activities, she edited a monthly Theosophical magazine, Lucifer (1887 - 1891) and wrote the Voice of the Silence (1889), a Theosophical rhapsody; The Key to Theosophy (1889); a Glossary of Theosophical Terms (1891); and Nightmare Tales (published posthumously, 1892), a collection of semi-mystical short stories. At the time of her death, on May 8, 1891, she was once more the recognized head of a great religious movement.
Achievements
Helena Blavatsky was a pioneer esotericist. She first introduced knowledge of eastern religions to the West, including the ideas of karma and reincarnation. She launched the Theosophical Movement calling her message Theosophy. She was the author of several massive books, most famous of which were "Isis Unveiled" and "The Secret Doctrine. "
In mature age her once attractive appearance was a thing of the past: Helena had grown enormously corpulent, was slovenly in dress, gorged herself on fat meat, smoked incessantly, and swore like a trooper. Her personal duplicity and profound contempt for humanity were, however, concealed beneath an engaging frankness of manner. Her unconventionalities attracted the unconventional. Above all, her large mystical blue eyes magnetized and fascinated.
Connections
On July 7, 1848, Helena was married to Gen. Nikifor Vasilevich Blavatsky, at one time vice-governor of Erivan, who according to her statements was then seventy-three years old, although forty-five years later he was said to be still alive. In January 1878, claiming to be a widow, Mme. Blavatsky was again married, to a Russian named M. C. Betanelly, from whom she was divorced on May 25, 1878.
