Blavatsky on Anna Kingsford

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky · Theosophy and Theosophists Series · 7 pages

Seven pages carrying an obituary, first published in Lucifer volume II number 7, March 1888, pages 78 to 79, and republished in the Collected Writings volume IX. *It is one of the warmest pieces of writing in this section, and it is about a woman whose translation of the Virgin of the World*, made with Edward Maitland, is held elsewhere on this site.

Anna Kingsford, MD, died on Tuesday 28 February after a painful and prolonged illness, and Blavatsky records the loss of one who, more than any other, had been instrumental in demonstrating to her fellow creatures the great fact of the conscious existence — and hence the immortality — of the inner Ego. The praise is specific rather than general. Few women, she writes, have worked harder or in nobler causes, and none with more success in the cause of humanitarianism; hers was a short but a most useful life. Her intellectual fight with the vivisectionists of Europe is singled out, and placed in its context: it was waged at a time when the educated and scientific world was more firmly in the grasp of materialism than at any other period in the history of civilisation, and it proclaims her as one of those who, regardless of conventional thought, place themselves at the very focus of a controversy prepared to brave all the consequences of their temerity. Pity and justice to animals are named as her favourite texts, and her general culture, medical training and intellectual power as what allowed her to reach a very large proportion of those who heard or read her. Nor was her field limited to the physical plane: she is called a theosophist and a true one at heart, a leader of spiritual and philosophical thought gifted with exceptional psychic attributes. Edward Maitland, her truest friend, is credited with having by incessant and watchful care prolonged her delicate and ever-threatened life for several years.

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