Sin by Cruel Acquiescence in an Unworthy Fashion

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky · Black versus White Magic Series · 6 pages

The smallest file in the section, and one of the most affecting. It begins with a newspaper paragraph: a wealthy American lady living in London had conceived a desire for a cloak made from the soft down on the breasts of birds of paradise. Five hundred breasts were required, and two skilful marksmen had reportedly been despatched to New Guinea to shoot the birds.

Blavatsky's title carries the charge, and it falls on more than the woman who placed the order. The sin is acquiescence — the cruelty made possible not by the one person who wanted the cloak but by everyone who found the wanting unremarkable, and by a fashion that no individual is responsible for and that everyone sustains. It appeared in Lucifer in November 1887 and is collected as 'Sin Against Life'. At six pages it is the shortest route into what this series means by evil: not a spectacular act of sorcery, but an ordinary appetite that nobody thinks to question.

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