Essential Theosophical Doctrines

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky · Theosophy and Theosophists Series · 23 pages

Twenty-three pages whose cover title is Essential Principles and Theosophical Doctrines, opened by a short abstract of key concepts. The text was first published *in French, in Le Lotus of Paris, volume II number 9, December 1887, pages 160 to 173, and the English here is the translation republished in the Collected Writings volume VII as her notes on Abbé Roca's Esotericism of Christian Dogma*.

The abstract states the position before the argument begins. Mysteries exist only for the ignorant; theosophy brought light to the mysteries of the Catholic Church, which are really those of the Brāhmanas under other names; and theosophy will never accept either a Christ made flesh according to the Roman dogma or an anthropomorphic God, still less a Shepherd in the person of a Pope. What makes the file more interesting than that summary suggests is the courtesy of the exchange it belongs to. Abbé Roca was a French Catholic priest writing sympathetically about esotericism, and Blavatsky calls his essay remarkable for its sincerity and its boldness before she begins disagreeing with it. She takes as her starting point the question he himself raises and answers — whether the moment in history in which they find themselves may not be the one when the saying of Jesus is fulfilled, that he has other sheep which are not of this fold, whom he must also bring, so that there shall be one fold and one shepherd. Her notes work through his readings one by one, and the disagreement is about who the shepherd is and whether a fold is needed at all. Because the two writers respect each other, the file shows the theosophical case against Church Christianity argued at its most careful rather than its most combative.

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