In the Early Days of the Theosophical Movement

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky · Theosophy and Theosophists Series · 10 pages

Ten pages with an abstract and train of thoughts. Its full title states the problem it examines: in the early days of the theosophical movement, occult phenomena were taken as miracles. *It is a candid account of a strategy that misfired*, which makes it one of the more interesting historical files in this section.

The reasoning behind the phenomena is given first, and it is disarmingly practical. Wonders no longer arouse veneration and awe in the modern age but only curiosity — and it was in the hope of arousing and then using that spirit of curiosity that occult phenomena were shown at all. What happened instead is set out in three directions. The Roman Catholic Church excused itself from examining any of it on the plea that phenomena occurring outside its own pale are necessarily the work of the Devil, since it holds what she calls a lawful monopoly of the legitimate miracle business. Science took the opposite line and was no more helpful: where religion cannot grasp the idea of natural law applied to a supersensuous universe, science does not allow that any supersensuous universe exists for law to be extended to, nor can it conceive of any state of consciousness other than our present terrestrial one. And the spiritualists claimed the phenomena as the work of their dear departed and declared the leaders of theosophy to be mediums in disguise. Two exasperated asides close the argument and are the most human thing in the file: what mean and unreasoning animals ignorant men become when their cherished prejudices are touched — and, lest that seem aimed only at the uneducated, the reminder that the history of scientific research teaches us how very like an ignorant man a learned man can behave when the truth of his theories is called in question.

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