Blavatsky's reputation in the 1950s was not good, not good at all. Thankfully, things have changed. To give an idea what it was like, below is an extract from 'Secret Societies', Serge Hutin, Presses Universitaires de France, 1952 (pp. 11-12). Hutin (pictured, right) is a pretty solid esoteric scholar, at least judging from the writings on Rosicrucian subjects of his which I have read. Blavatsky manages to merit two short, rather terse footnote mentions, so she was not quite totally dismissed from the club.
If the multiple forms of initiation each offer a distinct interpretation of the descent-re-ascent, death-resurrection scheme, there is a theme where they all agree: that of the the Lost wisdom: ''The reflections of Knowledge, writes G. Persigout, shine in the hearts of Men but like a kind of broken mirror, where the deformity increases because each of the scattered pieces are each taken as a whole.'' Hence the idea many times expressed of a Secret tradition, transmitted to the diverse eras and under different forms to a whole series of successive Revelators, in such a way that all religions would proceed, ultimately, form the same Source... Nowadays, it is mainly René Guénon (1) who has developed this antique conception, where esotericism is something anterior to established religion: ''the same, he writes, which it takes support from, in terms of a means of expression and realization, where it does nothing but to relate it to its principle, and it represents, in reality, in relation to itself, the Tradition, anterior to all particular exterior forms, religious or other''.
(1) Cf. also the works of Madame Blavatsky.
The need to claim descent from an extremely ancient tradition - conceived even as anterior to the world where we live- is common to all esotericisms, hence the problem of the ''initiatory filiation'': each grouping has tried to prove its fabulous antiquity thanks to the idea of a regular and uninterrupted succession of adepts, forming a kind of chain'' (Cf. the need of Christian churches to establish an ''apostolic succession'' of their vicars). To this ''horizontal'' transmission in time through the conservation of its original heritage throughout the successive stages of humanity, some even add a ''vertical'' transmission, atemporal, that is from the ''supra-human'' to the human: we find this idea of an ''invisible Church'' hidden from the profane, depositors of the tradition, with the Rosicrucians of the XVIIth century and with numerous contemporary authors, such as R. Guénon, who developped the ideas of ''spiritual centres'', themselves attached to ''a supreme centre that constitutes the unchanging deposit of the primordial tradition''. (2)
(2) This traditional doctrine was current in the masonic circles of the XVIIIth century; it was taken up again by Madame Blavatsky.
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