Madame Blavatsky on the Sir Oracles of Oriental Religions

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky · Blavatsky Speaks Series · 13 pages

Thirteen pages against the professional orientalists of her day, and the sharpest piece of satire in this batch. The premise is that it is on Buddhist doctrine that the Pythagoreans grounded the principal tenets of their philosophy, while the scholars who have arrived most recently claim what she calls papal authority over the same material. The section that carries the argument is titled without ceremony: four quick and easy steps on how anyone can become an authority on Buddhism.

What happens next, on her account, is that the authority is ready, and ignorant Mrs Grundy — soft on whose lap her laureate sons recline — crowns the new pope and forces him on the acceptance of the public. The specific occasion is a dismissive review of Sinnett's Esoteric Buddhism, headed The Cosmogony of an Artificial Fifth Rounder, which she says is no review at all but meaningless ex-cathedra chaff. The image she answers it with is the best thing in the document: the critic reminds her of the naive witness, a tailor, who claimed better acquaintance with the murdered man than his own son, on the ground that the victim's old coat and hat had been made at his establishment.

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