The Seal of HP Blavatsky

William Quan Judge · Blavatsky Tributes Series · 5 pages

The historical papers Colonel Olcott was then running in The Theosophist under the title "Old Diary Leaves" prompted Judge to set down, in The Path for February 1893, a small correction to the record. Nearly all the earliest members had by then disappeared from sight — some grown wholly uninterested in the work, others gone over to the other side of death — and of those who remained, not all concurred in the details Olcott was publishing. The origin of the Society's seal was one of the matters Judge thought still wanted clearing up.

The cut he reproduces is taken from the original electroplate, made in 1874 or 1875 or possibly earlier from a wood-cut of the same date, both of which had lain quietly in a drawer for many years. It is substantially the Society's seal, with one difference: in place of the Egyptian cross at the centre stand the letters E.B. — Elena Blavatsky, the initial E aspirated — surmounted by the coronet of a Countess, with astrological and cabalistic signs added within the circle referring to the owner who used it. That owner was H.P.B. herself. The piece is brief, but it is the kind of first-hand detail about the Society's early symbolism that exists nowhere else.

Read the full text (PDF, 0.4 MB, 5 pages)