Blavatsky Book Review: Western Esoteric Masters Nicholas Goodrich-Clarke 2004

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (Western Esoteric Masters Series)

Anthology, Nicholas Goodrich-Clarke, editor
200 pages, Paperback 2004, North Atlantic Books 

The new millennium has quite been kind to Blavatsky. Quite a few important publications have seen the light of day, and I will be posting a few book reviews of some of the major releases (actually transferring some old reviews from my theosophy blog, more appropriate here).

This book can be considered a breakthrough in Blavatskian literature. After more than a century after her passing, Blavatsky has made it into the canon of western esoteric thinkers, deservedly so. Finally, her writings are considered worthy of serious academic study. The late, lamented Nicholas Goodrich-Clarke was one of the most qualified scholars to attempt this task and he does a creditable job, referencing the better academic works on theosophy that have emerged since the mid-80s and the most lucid and accurate theosophical publications. It is refreshing to see such a fair-minded, charitable, positive appreciation of Blavatsky’s works. Although at a modest 200 pages, the work cannot claim to be more than a basic introduction, Goodrich presents well-researched biographical accounts to frame the text selections of this anthology of her writings.

I will briefly list a few caveats that come to mind:

He basically follows the materialistic, highly skeptical, rationalistic approach established in the early 90s, which has become something of a status quo for academic research (although he is more open-minded about Blavatsky’s extensively documented capacity to produce diverse types of paranormal phenomena). I find that there are a number of semantic problems to this approach, but if that is the only framework that scholars are comfortable with at the moment, then so be it.

The author understandably sticks to his area of specialization, the western esoteric tradition, and so roughly two thirds of the work is devoted to Isis Unveiled  and earlier writings, whereas the work should probably only proportionally occupy no more than a quarter  of the space. However Isis is actually rather underrated for various reasons and is well-suited for an introductory study. He does a solid job with the remaining third, which covers what are the core aspects of Blavatsky’s oeuvre, although I find that it makes for a dense concentration of passages that are some of her most difficult, complex metaphysical and cosmological concepts that can appear inscrutably byzantine without the extensively documented arguments that she generally takes pains to provide. He does however manage to provide a decent summary of the notoriously difficult Secret Doctrine.

I find that his references to the over-used W.E. Coleman (pp. 51-52, 132) to be outdated and not very pertinent, although he does refute him. His summary of her notions of human and geological evolution (p. 16) is a little inaccurate. A passage from the Key to Theosophy (pp. 105-06) has  a large concentration of outdated or inaccurate references in the original. (To her credit, Blavatsky takes pains to give a lot of references to support her claims and she is pretty accurate, but sometimes they do require some updated explanations). Moreover, he does not necessarily give an indication of the complete, extensive scope of her writings (running to some 20-odd large volumes). So for example, his claim that she later de-emphasized her references to the Kabbalah (p. 76) could be contradicted by pointing out several writings on the Kabbalah dating up to the end of her life.

On the more positive side, most of the major well-known diagrams, including the rare ‘meditation diagram’, are included. Chapters 5 (Mesmerism and Magic) and 6 (Hermetic Philosophers and Rosicrucians) are Goodrick-Clarke’s most incisive, original and well-documented contributions. My caveats do not prevent the book from being a fair, well-researched, accurate introduction to Blavatsky and it deserves commendation for being a pioneering, breakthrough effort in taking Blavatsky seriously as an important thinker. Consumatum Est!

Some extracts:

Widespread dissatisfaction with the hegemony of science in Western culture and its preoccupation  with the concrete, the factual, and the substantive interacted with a lack of confidence in traditional Christianity, itself undermined by the very progress of scientific explanation. Theosophy, in the strict meaning of the movement founded by H.P. Blavatsky, addressed these concerns in a progressive way. Adapting contemporary scientific ideas to posit the idea of spiritual evolution through countless worlds and time-eras, Theosophy supplied dignity and purpose to man’s earthly life within a cosmic context. While spiritualism (a major movement from the mid-1850s) alleged survival after death, Theosophy located human destiny in an emanationist cosmology and anthropology that have their roots in both Neo-Platonism and Oriental religions. (pp.1-2)

Theosophy’s particular achievement lay in combining the modern scientific idea of evolution, rephrased traditionally as emanation and return, with ideas taken from Oriental religions. (p. 15)

In the West, Theosophy was perhaps the single most important factor in the modern occult revival. It redirected the fashionable interest in spiritualism towards a coherent doctrine combining cosmology, modern anthropology, and the theory of evolution with man’s spiritual development. It drew on the traditional sources of Western esotericism, globalizing them through restatements in terms of the Asian religions, with which the West had come into colonial contact. Here Theosophy paved the way for the study of comparative religion, first exemplified by the World Parliament of Religions at Chicago in 1893. (pp. 17-18)

Blavatsky’s cosmology presents the prime characteristics of Western esotericism as defined by Antoine Faivre’s pioneering studies (Antoine Faivre, Access to Western Esotericism (Albany, New York: State University of new York Press, 1994), pp. 10-15). These characteristics comprise (a) correspondences between all parts of the universe, the macrocosm and microcosm; (b) living nature as a complex, plural, hierarchical and animate whole; (c) imagination and mediations in the form of intermediary spirits, symbols, and mandalas; and (d) the experience of transmutation of the soul through purification and ascent.  (p.141)

Blavatskyan Theosophy thereby combines features of Western esotericism familiar from the Hermetic, kabbalistic, and theosophical traditions of the Renaissance and early modern periods with the nineteenth-century interest in Eastern religions in the West. This syncretism demonstrates the modern development of Western esotericism in terms of its capacity to absorb new ideas and influences. Blavatsky’s universal wisdom-tradition of Theosophy involving both Western and Eastern sources gave an important impetus to a new global esotericism.  (p. 142)