Septenary Is the Constitution of Man

T. Subba Row, H.P. Blavatsky · Constitution of Man Series · 36 pages

A 36-page symposium that gives the sevenfold scheme from more than one tradition rather than asserting it from one. It opens with Zoroastrianism on the septenary constitution of man, by a Parsi Theosophist; then Brahmanism on the sevenfold principle in man, by T. Subba Row — the article also issued separately in this section; then five numbered annotations and commentaries on the Brahmanical account by Blavatsky.

The later sections widen the comparison further: Subba Row on the septenary division as it appears in different Indian systems, and Blavatsky on the septenary principle in esotericism, with a drawing of the planetary chain of seven rounds. Read alongside Classification of the Principles in Man in batch 1 — where the same two authors disagree at length about numbering — this file is the constructive counterpart: it shows how far the schemes of separate traditions can be lined up before the differences of enumeration start to matter, which is the point Blavatsky makes in the Drawing file when she says numbering in this connection is purely arbitrary and changes with every school.

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