Madame Blavatsky and Mead on the Gospel According to John

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, G.R.S. Mead · Secret Doctrine's First Proposition Series · 25 pages

Twenty-five pages in *four numbered parts, taken from the notes which formed the basis of discussion at the Blavatsky Lodge in October 1889, published in Lucifer* in 1893 and republished in Blavatsky Collected Writings volume XI. Mead explains in a preamble that he prepared them before the meetings, mostly from notes taken down from Blavatsky, and that since the matter cannot be thrown into precise form they must stand as hints for students — and, he adds, as a useful example of her method of interpretation.

Part 1 is Mead's own, on John i, 1-9, and is the most technical: it deals mainly with the translation of the opening verses, pointing out the difficulties and the liberty a translator may take without violating the Greek. Mead is explicit that this is of interest even to readers with no Greek, because it shows the danger of relying on the received translation — or on any translation — without a copious commentary. He then draws the conclusion that governs how the rest of the file should be read: if such great difficulties present themselves when the original is in Greek, a translation from Hebrew, a language he calls essentially occult and open to infinite permutation of meaning, is fraught with far greater difficulty. The three remaining parts are Blavatsky's, working through John i, 1-18, then i, 19-51, and then ii, 1-20. Taken together the file is less a commentary on the gospel than a demonstration of a method, which is how Mead presents it.

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