Alice Leighton Cleather on HP Blavatsky: Her Life and Work for Humanity (1922)

Alice Leighton Cleather · Blavatsky Tributes Series · 134 pages

Alice Leighton Cleather was one of Madame Blavatsky's personal pupils, and this book — published in Calcutta by Thacker, Spink & Co. in 1922, and reproduced here as a complete facsimile with its original portrait — is her account of what her teacher was for and what the movement she founded was meant to do. Cleather writes as a participant, not a historian, and the book carries the authority and the partisanship that go with that position.

Her chapters move from the Messenger and the Message, and the preliminary work in America, to the foundation of the Universal Brotherhood movement in India, the Masters of Wisdom and their chelas, and a Great Master's statement on Buddhism and Brotherhood. Cleather's concern throughout is with the fidelity of the transmission — with what was actually taught, by whom, and on whose authority — which is what makes the volume a natural companion to its sequel, A Great Betrayal, published the same year and also in this series. Readers should note that this is a scanned reproduction of the 1922 printing rather than a reset text.

Read the full text (PDF, 8.1 MB, 134 pages)