Presentiments of What Lies in the Bosom of the Future

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

Published in Lucifer in October 1887 under the title 'The Signs of the Times', and among the more prophetic-sounding things Blavatsky wrote — which is the point of it. Occultism, the opening argues, has long passed beyond the region of careless amusement and entered that of serious inquiry; and it is intensely interesting, she adds, to follow the rapid evolution of that change season by season.

The claim the piece is best remembered for concerns literature: that works of fiction are no fictions but true presentiments of what lies in the bosom of the future. It is a striking position, and it explains a good deal about the shape of the Philaletheians library — why a Bulwer-Lytton novel and a Victor Hugo epic sit in this section alongside doctrinal essays, and why the tale is treated throughout as a legitimate vehicle for teaching rather than as decoration. The essay closes on a warning to the ignorant and the unprepared, and to those who listen to what she calls the sirens of materialistic science. Frontispiece by Jacek Yerka.

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