Spirit and Perispirit

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky · Constitution of Man Series · 9 pages

First published in French in La Revue Spirite in April 1878 and given here in the English of Blavatsky Collected Writings I. The confusion it addresses is a straightforward reversal of terms: the Saxon spiritualists, she writes, are rather confused between the spirit and the périsprit, and perhaps do not distinguish them at all, describing the first by the word soul and the second by spirit — while Theosophists do exactly the opposite, the spirit proper being Nous and the périsprit or Psyche being the soul.

What follows is as much a statement of method as of doctrine. Theosophists accept no dogmas or preconceived principles to which everything must be subordinated; they seek truth in good faith and will accept it from any source, even at the cost of sacrificing what they have hitherto held — and whatever they teach at present, they are far from thinking they have settled everything, since such a claim would be omniscience and would be ridiculous. On the day a new Oedipus finds the complete solution to the riddle of the ages, what is man, the ancient and modern doctrines alike, and the approximations of the Spiritualists themselves, will be flung like the Sphinx into the ocean of oblivion. The positive teaching is the trinity of body, périsprit and spirit — following, she notes, the ancient philosophers and their pupil Paul, who held the physical body to be penetrated and kept alive by the périsprit. Note that a second file in this section, The Perispirit of Allan Kardec, draws on the same article from La Revue Spirite of April 1878 and opens with this same paragraph; it adds a passage on the morality of a system being no proof of its dogmas.

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