Tao Te Ching
Blavatsky, Helena Еле́на Петро́вна Блава́тская
1831 – 1891 CE
Co-founder of Theosophy
Mystic, medium, philosopher, co-founder of Theosophy; Blavatsky traveled widely and claimed to meet many “Masters of the Ancient Wisdom.” She studied and practiced in Tibetan monasteries, became one of the first Westerners to ever become a Buddhist, worked closely with Hindu reform movements, and criticized the spiritual materialism of the spiritualist traditions she became linked with. She worked hard to bridge religion to and with philosophy and science but the scientific community characterized her as “one of the most accomplished, ingenious, and interesting imposters in history.” She wrote about ancient giants she believed made Stonehenge, the history of Atlantis, and many tenants of esoteric spiritualism. Her efforts became a major influence on the spread of Hinduism and Buddhism in the West as well as on Rudolf Steiner’s Anthroposophy and the New Age Movement.
Lineages
Hindu Russian Shamanistic Women of Wisdom
Eras
Western
Post-Romantic Age (1850 – 2018 CE)Gilded Age (1860 – 1900 CE)
Victorian (1837 – 1901 CE)
American Civil War (1861 – 1865 CE)
Chinese
Qing dynasty (1644 – 1912 CE)Unlisted Sources
Isis Unveiled
The Key to Theosophy (1889)
Quotes by Blavatsky, Helena (23 quotes)
“There is a road steep and thorny, and beset with perils of every kind, but yet a road, and it leads to the heart of the Universe.”
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“There has never been a religion in the annals of the world with such a blood record as Christianity.”
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“Do not be afraid of your difficulties. Do not wish you could be in other circumstances than you are. For when you have made the best of an adversity, it becomes the stepping stone to a splendid opportunity”
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“A Hindu is a born mystic, and the luxuriant nature of his country has made him a zealous pantheist”
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“No man can rise superior to his individual failings without lifting—be it ever so little—the whole body of which he is an integral part.”
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“Virtue and wisdom are sublime things, but if they create pride and a consciousness of separateness from the rest of humanity, they are only the snakes of self reappearing in a finer form.”
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“Error runs down an inclined plane, while Truth has to laboriously climb its way up hill.”
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“Buddhists maintain that there is no Creator but an infinitude of creative powers, which collectively form the one eternal substance, the essence of which is inscrutable hence not a subject for speculation for any true philosopher.”
from Isis Unveiled
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“by combining science with religion, the existence of God and immortality of man's spirit may be demonstrated.”
from Isis Unveiled
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“This is the age which, although proclaimed as one of physical and moral freedom, is in truth the age of the most ferocious moral and mental slavery, the like of which was never known before.”
from The Key to Theosophy (1889)
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“Slavery to State and men has disappeared only to make room for slavery to things and Self, to one's own vices and idiotic social customs and ways. Rapid civilization, adapted to the needs of the higher and middle classes, has doomed by contrast to only greater wretchedness the starving masses.”
from The Key to Theosophy (1889)
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“Wisdom and Truth are synonymous terms, and—well-known by representatives of the Church of England—the Sermon of the Mount would, in its practical application, mean utter ruin for their country in less than three weeks”
from The Key to Theosophy (1889)
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“[We do not]... blame, but rather pity, in our innermost heart, the 'wise men' of our age for trying to carry out the only policy that will keep them on the pinnacle of their 'authority'; as they could not, if even they would, act otherwise and preserve their prestige with the masses, or escape from being speedily outcast by their colleagues.”
from The Key to Theosophy (1889)
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“The origin of all religions—Judaeo-Christianity included—is to be found in a few primeval truths, not one of which can be explained apart from all the others, as each is a complement of the rest in some one detail. And they are all, more or less, broken rays of the same Sun of truth”
from The Key to Theosophy (1889)
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“There will be contemporary monarchs, reigning over the earth—kings of churlish spirit, violent temper, and ever addicted to falsehood and wickedness... Wealth and piety will decrease until the world will be wholly depraved. Property alone will confer rank; wealth will be the only source of devotion; passion will be the sole bond of union between the sexes; falsehood will be the only means of success in litigation; and women will be objects merely of sensual gratification.”
from The Key to Theosophy (1889)
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“Evidently Proclus does not advocate here simply a superstition, but science; for notwithstanding that it is occult, and unknown to our scholars, who deny its possibilities, magic is still a science... a profound and exhaustive knowledge of natural law—this was and is the basis of magic.”
from Isis Unveiled
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“Everything lives and perishes through magnetism; one thing affects another one, even at great distances, and its 'congenitals' may be influenced to health and disease by the power of this sympathy, at any time, and notwithstanding the intervening space.”
from Isis Unveiled
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“While Moses forbids 'graven images' of Him whose name is not to be taken in vain, Spinoza goes farther. He clearly infers that God must not be so much as described. Human language is totally unfit... Every attempt to the contrary leads a nation to anthropomorphize the deity in whom it believes”
from Isis Unveiled
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“Instead of stating that God made man after his own image, we ought in truth to say that 'man imagines God after his image,' forgetting that he has set up his own reflection for worship.”
from Isis Unveiled
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“What is imagination? Psychologists tell us that it is the plastic or creative power of the soul; but materialists confound it with fancy... Imagination, Pythagoras maintained to be the remembrance of precedent spiritual, mental, and physical states, while fancy is the disorderly production of the material brain.”
from Isis Unveiled
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“While Horace endeavored to make clear the very spirit and essence of the ancient myths, Euhemerus pretended, on the contrary, that 'myths were the legendary history of kings and heroes, transformed into gods by the admiration of the nations.' It is the latter method which was inferentially followed by Christians when they agreed upon the acceptation of euhemerized patriarchs, and mistook them for men who had really lived.”
from Isis Unveiled
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“Jesus taught the world nothing that had not been taught as earnestly before by other masters... Every word of his sermon is an echo of the essential principles of monastic Buddhism.”
from Isis Unveiled
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“The Christian virtues inculcated by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount are nowhere exemplified in the Christian world... Meanwhile the vices which coarse-mouthed slanderers have attributed to Paganism, are current everywhere among Christian Fathers and Christian Churches.”
from Isis Unveiled
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Quotes about Blavatsky, Helena (2 quotes)
“And we, who lived around her, who in closest intimacy watched her day after day, we bear witness to the unselfish beauty of her life, the nobility of her character, and we lay at her feet our most reverent gratitude for knowledge gained, lives purified, strength developed.”
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“Mme Blavatsky is a bit wild and somewhat irrational and speaks as if she were the Oracle of Delphi. But I will admit that I find some interesting observations in her book published back in 1888 at a time when physics and science were in their swaddling clothes... I'm astonished how much in keeping it is with modern Physics”
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