The Original Sin Is a Jewish Invention

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky · Black versus White Magic Series · 60 pages

At sixty pages this is the longest sustained argument in the section after the Levi and philosopher's-stone compilations, and the most contentious. Its subject is the doctrine of original sin, which it treats as a late theological construction rather than a revealed truth, and behind that the virtual polarisation of mankind into good and evil that marks the origin of man's dual nature — triple, the abstract insists, once Consciousness is counted as the polariser on which the whole life-cycle hinges.

The reading of Genesis is the core of it. The serpent, Blavatsky argues, has always been an emblem of wisdom and eternity, the dual Androgyne coiled within a grand cycle and manifesting as good and evil eternally reacting on each other; esoterically it is the Logos, bearer of the divine creative wisdom that taught men to become creators in their turn — so that no sin can be attributed to the alleged disobedience in Eden. The only disobedience that incurs real punishment is contempt of the laws of spiritual life. Around that sit sections on the metaphor of the Holy of Holies and the sacredness of the generative organs, on the freedom of Vedic woman, and on the seclusion of women as an inheritance of Hebrew symbolism.

Read the full text (PDF, 2.9 MB, 60 pages)