Occult Philosophy Is Ancient Spiritualism

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky · Blavatsky Speaks Series · 22 pages

Twenty-two pages of debate conducted properly: an article by the English spiritualist writing as M.A. Oxon is printed in full first, and her reply follows. His subject is spirit identity, which he concedes is extremely difficult to square with some of the most recent speculations — so the disagreement begins from a point his own side had already conceded.

Her response opens with an admission that gives the whole exchange its weight: we were, at one time, as ardent a spiritualist as any. The distinctions that follow are the ones she draws throughout the library — there are Spirits and spirits, Seers and mediums, great scientists and unlearned tyros — supported here by two of the standard tables, comparing Akasha with the Astral Light, and setting out the semi-exoteric constitution of man. Agrippa's apparition, the eidolon, is identified with what the theosophist calls the astral shell. The closing argument is one of proportion: occult philosophy rests on the accumulated psychic facts of thousands of years, while spiritualism was then thirty-five years old and had not yet produced one recognised non-mediumistic adept.

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