Pherecydes of Syros, Early Western Philosopher

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky · Buddhas and Initiates Series · 7 pages

A brief account of Pherecydes of Syros, the teacher of Pythagoras, and by Blavatsky's reckoning the first writer in Greece to explain highly philosophical subjects in prose. On the concurrent testimony of antiquity he travelled many years in the East, visited India and Chaldea, and lived in Egypt as a disciple of the initiated priests. Against that, Clemens Alexandrinus and Philo Biblius held that he received instruction from no master but drew his knowledge from the secret books of the Phoenicians — which she says does not contradict the first account, the interesting part being the evidence that the Phoenicians, like every other ancient race, kept an exoteric religion for the masses and an esoteric system for those seeking initiation.

The second half is a defence. Modern encyclopaedists deny Pherecydes the title of philosopher on the ground that he lived when men were beginning to speculate on cosmogony and the nature of the gods but had barely begun the study of true philosophy; Blavatsky calls this as great an error as many others of its kind. The text has an unusual provenance, set out in the editorial note: the original manuscript in Blavatsky's own hand was among the papers of her old friend John M. Watkins of London and passed to his son Geoffrey, and Boris de Zirkoff judged from the way it opens that it may have been intended for a glossary.

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