A Case of Mesmeric Attack Thrusting a Mortal Wound on the Inner Man Without Piercing the Skin

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky · Black versus White Magic Series · 11 pages

One of the earliest things Blavatsky published in America, sent as a letter to the editor of The Sun in New York and printed there on 26 December 1875, under a headline the paper supplied itself: a dread scene in Eastern necromancy, vengeance marvellously wrought by occult methods, and the scīn-lǣca. It appeared only weeks after the founding of the Theosophical Society, and it is presented as a mystical story by a member of that Society rather than as doctrine.

The narrative opens in Eastern Europe in 1868, with news of a horrifying kind, and works towards the event the title describes — a death inflicted by mesmeric means, leaving the body unmarked and the inner man mortally wounded. What makes the piece worth keeping is less the story than its position in the series: it states, in narrative form, the proposition the whole Black versus White Magic collection exists to argue, that the same forces serve either end and that the difference lies in the will directing them. Republished in the first volume of Blavatsky Collected Writings.

Read the full text (PDF, 0.7 MB, 11 pages)