Capital Punishment Is a Relic of Jewish Barbarity and a Dark Stain on Humanity

Franz Hartmann and Helena Petrovna Blavatsky · Black versus White Magic Series · 17 pages

An argument against capital punishment, made on grounds that were unusual then and remain so. The case is not primarily that the innocent are sometimes executed, though the essay says that too — many unconscious crimes will be committed, it warns, and many victims will innocently suffer death at the hands of righteous judges and too-innocent jurymen, both alike ignorant of the fiendish power of suggestion. The deeper claim is that the body may be slain but the soul may not, and that a violently severed life does not simply end.

From that follows the part of the argument that has no counterpart in ordinary abolitionist writing: an account of the consequences of the death penalty for the judge who pronounces it, the jury who assent to it, and the community in whose name it is carried out. Franz Hartmann's contribution sits alongside Blavatsky's. There is also a striking aside on fiction — that works of fiction are no fiction but presentiments of what lies in the bosom of the future — which explains something about why this series carries so many novels and tales.

Read the full text (PDF, 0.9 MB, 17 pages)