Every Initiate must be an Adept in Occultism

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky · Buddhas and Initiates Series · 10 pages

First published in French in La Revue Théosophique, Paris, in April 1889, and given here in the English translation from Blavatsky Collected Writings XI, where it appears under the title A Danger Signal. The occasion was a footnote in the journal's first issue which defined an Initiate as any seeker possessing the elementary data of occult science, and an Adept as the highest degree an Initiate can attain — adding that Europe had many Initiates but probably no Adepts.

Blavatsky reverses the two. An Adept, in the sense sanctioned by usage among Theosophists and the occultists of India, is simply one versed in some special art or science; an Initiate is one admitted to the mysteries of the esoteric philosophy — a hierophant. She is careful to say she cannot judge whether the French definition is licensed by French usage, having no etymological dictionary to hand, and allows that it may hold among Freemasons. Her objection is to the confusion the loose usage causes, and the danger signal of the collected-writings title is what she thinks follows from it.

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