Madame Blavatsky on the Imprudent Animus and Petty Spite of Two Ex-Fellows of the Theosophical Society

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky · Black versus White Magic Series · 10 pages

A document from the Society's internal quarrels, and a reminder of how much of Blavatsky's published work was written in the middle of one. Its subjects are two men who had been Fellows of the Theosophical Society and had left it in acrimony: William Oxley, described here as an ardent Spiritualist equipped with a wily tongue and habitually swayed by deceitful visions, and A.D. Bathell, a calumniator and manqué philosopher whom she nonetheless allows to have served as a useful purgative of the Society.

Beneath the invective there is a substantive disagreement about the nature of the phenomena both men claimed to have witnessed, and about the reliability of the visionary faculty when it is not disciplined — which is why the piece belongs in this series rather than among the biographical material. The contents are set out as an abstract of central ideas, point by point, so it can be read as argument rather than as episode. Readers unfamiliar with Blavatsky's polemical register will find it here undiluted.

Read the full text (PDF, 0.7 MB, 10 pages)