The Six-Pointed and Five-Pointed Stars

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky · Secret Doctrine's First Proposition Series · 15 pages

Fifteen pages carrying *a reply Blavatsky wrote in 1881, first published in The Theosophist volume III number 2, November 1881, pages 31 to 33, and republished in her Collected Writings* volume III. An editorial note explains the occasion: it was written by way of answer to an article by K. Lalshankar under the same title, and it is complete and self-explanatory on its own.

The point at issue is which figure stands for which. Her authorities for representing the pentagram, the five-pointed star, as the microcosm and the six-pointed double triangle as the macrocosm are, she says, all the best known Western Kabbalists, mediaeval and modern — Éliphas Lévi and, she believes, Khunrath among them, both of whom give their reasons; and she points to the correct cut of the microcosm, with man in the centre of the pentagram, in Hargrave Jennings's Rosicrucians. The interpretative rule she lays down at the front of the file is the part worth carrying away from it, because it applies well beyond the immediate quarrel: the chief symbolical meanings of Spirit and Matter lie in the respective colours of the two interlaced triangles, and relate in no way to any of the lines which bind the figures themselves. The running heading gives the conclusion the file works toward — man is the jewel of the macrocosm. Because it is a reply to a named article rather than a general study, the file reads more briskly than most in this section, and it shows Blavatsky arguing a specific point with named sources rather than expounding a system.

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