Madame Blavatsky against Spiritualism

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky · Blavatsky Speaks Series · 85 pages

The long statement of a quarrel that shaped the Theosophical Society's first decade. Its opening proposition is the one repeated across the library — that mediumship is the opposite of adeptship — and the method is comparison: Eastern occultism and occultists set beside Western spiritualism, spiritualists and spiritists, with the terms defined before the argument starts. An article of faith by the English spiritualist M.A. Oxon is printed in full first, so the case being answered is stated by its own side.

Her reply distinguishes three things that spiritualism runs together: high planetary spirits who were human beings millions of ages ago and on other planets than this one; the illusory appearances of these projected on the screen of mediumistic perception; and seers and mediums who are willing and sincere but ignorant. She notes drily that she was accused of pipe-smoking, profanity and habitual intemperance merely for questioning the veracity of spirits who neglect to study history and fail to recognise the ghosts of people known to be alive. The middle sections take Johann Zollner's fourth-dimension experiments with Henry Slade seriously, and the closing statement is the one that gives the piece its balance: that the Society's aim is not to destroy spiritualism but to uplift and purify it, since while Eastern occultists try to purify matter, Western spiritualists strive to degrade spirit.

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