that modern science had all the answers, when in fact it was
limited to physical reality alone; and secondly that religion had
the whole truth, when in fact it had only pieces. Thus, much of
Isis Unveiled was devoted to showing the inadequacies of science
and religion, and comparatively little of it was devoted to giving
out new teachings, other than the very fact of their existence.
An exposition of the new teachings as such was to come later.
Those who have studied The Secret Doctrine should therefore not
expect to find in Isis Unveiled the same kinds of things they
found in The Secret Doctrine. Isis Unveiled is quite different.
In order to get a perspective on what one will find in Isis
Unveiled, it may be useful to review some of the comments on it
made by the author and her teachers. Blavatsky writes:
. . . it was the first cautious attempt to let into the West a faint
streak of Eastern esoteric light . . . .6
While writing Isis, we were not permitted to enter into details;
hence—the vague generalities.7
The Mahatma K.H. writes in his letters:
The author was made to hint and point out in the true direction,
to say what things are not, not what they are.8
4 Isis Unveiled: A Perspective
Many are the subjects treated upon in Isis that even H.P.B. was
not allowed to become thoroughly acquainted with . . . .9
Don’t you see that everything you find in Isis is delineated,
hardly sketched—nothing completed or fully revealed.10
“Isis” was not unveiled but rents sufficiently large were made
to afford flitting glances to be completed by the student’s own
intuition.11
Not only was Blavatsky not permitted to give clear details,
she had to express what she could give out in a language that
was foreign to her. She informs us:
When I came to America in 1873, I had not spoken English—
which I had learned in my childhood colloquially—for over
thirty years. I could understand when I read it, but could hardly
speak the language. . . . Until 1874 I had never written one word
in English. . . .12
Therefore she submitted the manuscript of Isis Unveiled to her
co-worker Colonel Olcott to correct her English. They worked
together on this, rewriting all but the passages which had been
dictated to her by her teachers. Thus she says:
It is to him [Olcott] that I am indebted for the English in Isis.
. . . .
The language in Isis is not mine; but (with the exception of that
portion of the work which, as I claim, was dictated), may be called
only a sort of translation of my facts and ideas into English.13
However, Olcott was not then in a position to correct errors of
doctrine that Blavatsky was oblivious to because of her lack of
fluency with English.
It was my first book; it was written in a language foreign to me—
in which I had not been accustomed to write; the language
was even more unfamiliar to certain Asiatic philosophers who
Isis Unveiled: A Perspective 5
rendered assistance; and, finally, Colonel Olcott, who revised
the manuscript and worked with me throughout, was then—in
the years 1875 and 1876—almost entirely ignorant of Aryan
Philosophy, and hence unable to detect and correct such errors
as I might so readily fall into when putting my thoughts into
English.14
Indeed, Olcott could not correct what he did not understand,
and Blavatsky could not express what she understood.
I am [at] 47th St. New York writing Isis and His voice dictating to
me. In that dream or retrospective vision I once more rewrote all Isis
and could now point out all the pages and sentences Mah. K.H.
dictated—as those that Master did—in my bad English, when
Olcott tore his hair out by handfuls in despair to ever make out
the meaning of what was intended.15
This situation necessarily led to mistakes in Isis Unveiled.
One that was soon to catch up with her was her usage of the
term “God.” Blavatsky writes in the Preface to Isis Unveiled:
“When, years ago, we first travelled over the East, exploring the
penetralia of its deserted sanctuaries, two saddening and everrecurring
questions oppressed our thoughts: Where, WHO, WHAT is
GOD? Who ever saw the IMMORTAL SPIRIT of man, so as to be able to
assure himself of man’s immortality?
“It was while most anxious to solve these perplexing problems
that we came into contact with certain men, endowed with
such mysterious powers and such profound knowledge that we
may truly designate them as sages of the Orient. To their instructions
we lent a ready ear. They showed us that by combining
science with religion, the existence of God and immortality of
man’s spirit may be demonstrated like a problem of Euclid.
For the first time we received the assurance that the Oriental
philosophy has room for no other faith than an absolute and
immovable faith in the omnipotence of man’s own immortal
self. We were taught that this omnipotence comes from the
kinship of man’s spirit with the Universal Soul—God! The