philosophical and better than Isis which will be killed by it. Now
there are hundreds of things I am permitted to say and explain.53
So Isis Unveiled was never rewritten; instead it was replaced
by The Secret Doctrine. But these two books cover very different
ground, and much of the material given in Isis Unveiled is still to
this day found nowhere else. We are therefore fortunate that a
new edition of Isis Unveiled was prepared by Boris de Zirkoff,
who spent countless hours correcting references, quotations,
spellings, etc. We are also fortunate that an abridgement of Isis
Unveiled was prepared by Michael Gomes, which eliminated
most of the dated or erroneous explanatory material. For as
16 Isis Unveiled: A Perspective
Blavatsky said about this book of hers just eleven days before
she died:
I maintain that Isis Unveiled contains a mass of original and never
hitherto divulged information on occult subjects. That this is so,
is proved by the fact that the work has been fully appreciated by
all those who have been intelligent enough to discern the kernel,
and pay little attention to the shell, to give the preference to
the idea and not to the form, regardless of its minor shortcomings.
Prepared to take upon myself—vicariously as I will show—
the sins of all the external, purely literary defects of the work, I
defend the ideas and teachings in it, with no fear of being
charged with conceit, since neither ideas nor teachings are mine, as I
have always declared; and I maintain that both are of the greatest
value to mystics and students of Theosophy.54
As summed up by Olcott, her co-worker on this book:
The truest thing ever said about Isis was the expression of an
American author that it is “a book with a revolution in it.”55
NOTES
1. “Introductory,” by Boris de Zirkoff, p. [43], in Isis Unveiled, by H. P.
Blavatsky, rev. ed., Wheaton, Illinois: Theosophical Publishing House,
1972 (1st ed., 1877); and H. P. Blavatsky Collected Writings, Wheaton,
Illinois: Theosophical Publishing House, vol. 1, p. 302.
2. Old Diary Leaves, by Henry Steel Olcott, 2nd ed., Adyar, Madras:
Theosophical Publishing House, vol. 1, p. 294.
3. The Secret Doctrine, by H. P. Blavatsky, 1st ed., 1888; rev. ed. [by Boris
de Zirkoff] (pagination unchanged), Adyar, Madras: Theosophical
Publishing House, 1978, vol. 1, p. xxxiv.
4. H. P. Blavatsky Collected Writings, vol. 14, p. 431.
5. The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett, ed. A. T. Barker, 3rd rev. ed.,
Adyar, Madras: Theosophical Publishing House, 1962, p. 201.
6. H. P. Blavatsky Collected Writings, vol. 5, p. 221.
7. H. P. Blavatsky Collected Writings, vol. 4, p. 184.
8. The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett, 3rd ed., p. 45.
Isis Unveiled: A Perspective 17
9. The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett, 3rd ed., p. 179.
10. The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett, 3rd ed., p. 127.
11. The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett, 3rd ed., p. 118.
12. H. P. Blavatsky Collected Writings, vol. 13, p. 197; see also The
Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett, 3rd ed., p. 472.
13. H. P. Blavatsky Collected Writings, vol. 13, pp. 198, 201.
14. H. P. Blavatsky Collected Writings, vol. 7, p. 50.
15. The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett, 3rd ed., p. 472.
16. Isis Unveiled, “Preface,” vol. 1, p. vi.
17. H. P. Blavatsky Collected Writings, vol. 7, p. 51.
18. The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett, 3rd ed., p. 52.
19. The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett, 3rd ed., p. 300; see also p. 152.
20. The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett, 3rd ed., p. 285; see also H. P.
Blavatsky Collected Writings, vol. 7, p. 288.
21. The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett, 3rd ed., p. 179.
22. The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett, 3rd ed., p. 45.
23. H. P. Blavatsky Collected Writings, vol. 4, pp. 119, 120.
24. H. P. Blavatsky Collected Writings, vol. 4, p. 120; Isis Unveiled, vol. 1,
p. 67.
25. H. P. Blavatsky Collected Writings, vol. 4, p. 120.
26. H. P. Blavatsky Collected Writings, vol. 4, p. 122.
27. H. P. Blavatsky Collected Writings, vol. 4, p. 182.
28. Isis Unveiled, vol. 1, p. 351.
29. H. P. Blavatsky Collected Writings, vol. 4, p. 184.
30. H. P. Blavatsky Collected Writings, vol. 4, p. 184.
31. The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett, 3rd ed., p. 169.
32. H. P. Blavatsky Collected Writings, vol. 7, p. 181.
33. Isis Unveiled, vol. 1, p. 346.
34. H. P. Blavatsky Collected Writings, vol. 7, p. 183; see note 37 below.
35. Isis Unveiled, vol. 1, p. 347.
36. H. P. Blavatsky Collected Writings, vol. 7, p. 184; see note 37 below.
37. H. P. Blavatsky Collected Writings, vol. 10, pp. 215-216. These two
sentences were here corrected as: “Hindus dread reincarnation in
other and inferior bodies, of brutes and animals or transmigration”; and
the “former life believed in by Buddhists is not a life in the same cycle
and personality.”
38. H. P. Blavatsky Collected Writings, vol. 10, p. 215.
39. H. P. Blavatsky Collected Writings, vol. 10, p. 215.