Theosophist Is Who Theosophy Does

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky · Theosophy and Theosophists Series · 15 pages

Fifteen pages, and *one of the few files on this site with a stated compiler's purpose and a date of its own*. An introductory note by the series editor explains that it is an anthology from Blavatsky's works, assembled to help students discriminate between Message, Messenger and Medium, and that it was first shared with fellow theosophists in 1998 before being revised and republished as part of the online series.

That threefold distinction is the whole point of the selection, and it is a sharper editorial idea than most anthologies have. The Message is the teaching itself; the Messenger is the person who brings it; the Medium is the channel or instrument through which something comes — and the passages are chosen to keep the three from being confused with one another, which is the error the file treats as the commonest and most damaging in the movement's history. Read beside "Our only deliverer and saviour" earlier in this section, on the self-proclaimed messiahs of the day, the purpose is clear enough: a movement that accepts a message on the authority of the messenger has made the messenger into the message, and a movement that accepts whatever comes through a medium has abandoned judgement altogether. The title states the test the anthology proposes in place of both — a theosophist is who theosophy does, that is, someone identified by conduct rather than by affiliation, initiation or claimed contact. Frequently quoted works are cited in abridged form, with the key given in Compassion: The Spirit of Truth, the first of the site's Major Works.

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