Blavatsky on the Elucidation of Long-Standing Enigmas

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky · Blavatsky Speaks Series · 7 pages

A short editorial from The Theosophist of April 1883, making a claim about its own moment. So much about the higher science of nature had lately been given out through those columns, she argues, that it was worth pausing to notice how the new methods illuminate the old ones — that the explanations then in development had all been foreshadowed by the mystic writers of an earlier school, and that books which had hitherto irritated impatient readers by their almost hopeless obscurity were already becoming intelligible.

The double interest she draws from this is the substance of the piece. First, the occult writings of the obscure school gain in standing, because it is thereby demonstrated that their obscurity of style was not, as unsympathetic critics had assumed, a mere cover for obscurity of thought. Second, the recent teachings gain authority in turn, as it becomes evident that they were familiar long ago to advanced students of the mystic era. Behind both sits the claim that the science now being given out in clearly intelligible language for the first time has been in the possession of the elect from time immemorial — with the question of why it was withheld set aside as having plenty of answers available elsewhere.

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