Editor’s Note—On the Status and Authenticity of this Volume
The status of the present volume has been the subject of considerable discussion among students of H. P. Blavatsky for more than a century. It was prepared for publication by Annie Besant from manuscripts left by Blavatsky and published in London in 1897—six years after Blavatsky’s death—and titled: The Secret Doctrine, Volume III. For approximately the first twenty-five years after its appearance, its general authenticity as a third volume of The Secret Doctrine does not appear to have been seriously disputed. The controversy that later surrounded it arose chiefly during the early 1920s.
The most influential early critic was H. N. Stokes, editor of The O. E. Library Critic. Beginning in 1921 with his criticism of Annie Besant’s editing of Blavatsky’s writings, and more explicitly in the two-part article “The Lost (?) Volumes of ‘The Secret Doctrine’” in 1922, Stokes argued that the volume published in 1897 was not the Third Volume promised by Blavatsky. He returned to the subject repeatedly, notably in “On the Missing Volumes of ‘The Secret Doctrine’” (1930), “Is ‘Secret Doctrine, Vol. III’ Genuine?” (1938), and “The Mystery of Vols. III and IV” (1939). Similar doubts were expressed by Alice Leighton Cleather and others, and the view entered more permanently into Theosophical literature when the 1925 and later Theosophy Company editions characterized the 1897 volume as spurious.
Several decades later Boris de Zirkoff undertook a much more extensive examination of the problem. His final treatment, “‘The Secret Doctrine—Volume III’ As Published in 1897: A Survey of its Contents and Authenticity,” appeared posthumously as the Introduction to Volume XIV of H. P. Blavatsky: Collected Writings in 1985. De Zirkoff did not question that the material itself was substantially the work of Blavatsky. Indeed, he identified numerous correspondences between the 1897 text and earlier manuscripts and writings. His objection was rather to regarding the collected material as the actual Third Volume contemplated by Blavatsky. He therefore redistributed its contents among the appropriate volumes of the Collected Writings, concluding that to present the whole as an integral Third Volume of The Secret Doctrine was misleading.
Subsequent research, however, has brought forward evidence which materially alters this conclusion. Especially important has been the work of Daniel H. Caldwell, whose study “The Myth of the ‘Missing’ Third Volume of The Secret Doctrine,” first published in 1995, reconsidered the contemporary documentary evidence and the surviving early manuscript of The Secret Doctrine. David Reigle later subjected the whole question to another detailed examination in “The Authenticity of the Third Volume of The Secret Doctrine,” written in 2014. Caldwell subsequently assembled much of the primary evidence into The Writing of The Secret Doctrine: A Chronology (2015). Taken together, these studies make a strong case that the main body of the 1897 volume is not merely a collection of miscellaneous writings arbitrarily attached to The Secret Doctrine, but represents, to a considerable extent, the very body of material which had at an earlier stage constituted Blavatsky’s projected first volume and which was subsequently reassigned to the projected Third Volume.
The key to understanding the matter is that The Secret Doctrine did not begin with the familiar arrangement found in the volumes published in 1888. Its plan changed more than once during the years of composition. By 1886 Blavatsky had prepared an extensive introductory or historical portion dealing with the existence of the Mysteries, the history of occultism, ancient and later initiates, and the relation of the various esoteric traditions to a common Wisdom-Religion. This was envisioned by her as an “introductory volume” that would precede the Secret Doctrine proper, which would be composed of cosmological, anthropological and related subjects. When Archibald and Bertram Keightley examined her enormous mass of manuscript in 1887, they recommended an extensive rearrangement: the cosmological material should become Volume I, the anthropological material Volume II (these became the two volumes published in 1888), then the historical treatment of occultism and the lives of great occultists—originally penned as the “introductory volume”—would become Volume III, and a further volume on practical occultism might follow. Blavatsky accepted this general arrangement.
A particularly important witness to this is the surviving early draft generally known as the Würzburg Manuscript, an incomplete copy of The Secret Doctrine material sent to India in 1886 for possible revision by T. Subba Row. Its first portion contains precisely the kind of historical and initiatory material which the Keightleys later described as having been transferred from the original introductory volume to the projected third volume. Most significantly, substantial portions of this manuscript appear again in the 1897 Third Volume. Reigle and Caldwell identify the surviving material as corresponding largely to Sections found in the 1897 volume (see this comparative table), while other portions were incorporated into the 1888 Introductory or published elsewhere. The Würzburg Manuscript therefore establishes beyond reasonable doubt that a substantial part of what appeared in 1897 had actually been written by Blavatsky as part of The Secret Doctrine, rather than being unrelated material assembled after her death.
The contemporary record also shows an identifiable continuity between the manuscript reorganized in 1887 and the volume eventually issued in 1897. In the published Secret Doctrine Blavatsky stated that “a large quantity of material” had already been prepared for a further volume dealing with “the history of occultism as contained in the lives of the great Adepts.” In April 1891, only weeks before her death, she described the forthcoming Third Volume as “now almost ready,” dealing with the ancient Mysteries of Initiation and giving esoteric sketches of famous philosophers and hierophants. On May 4, 1891, Annie Besant testified under oath that she had herself seen “a third volume of ‘The Secret Doctrine’” in manuscript and that it was “now being got ready for the press under my own eyes.”
Nor does the documentary trail disappear with Blavatsky’s death. Throughout 1891 there were announcements that the Third Volume was to be published. In 1894 it was reported that the manuscript was being typewritten. James Morgan Pryse later recalled receiving the manuscript from Besant at this period and described it as unfinished and badly arranged, with some pages rewritten several times and no clear indication in every case which version represented Blavatsky’s final revision. The first pages were sent to the printer in 1895; the work was reported completed in 1896; and the volume appeared in London in June 1897.
Perhaps the most direct testimony came from Bertram Keightley, one of the two men who had actually read and reorganized the original Secret Doctrine manuscripts with Blavatsky in 1887. When the authenticity of Volume III was challenged in 1922, Keightley replied that, apart from the two volumes published during Blavatsky’s lifetime, “all this material has been published in the third volume which contains absolutely all that H.P.B. has left in manuscript.” He added that Besant had, in his judgment, even published certain manuscripts which Blavatsky had not brought to a sufficiently finished state. This testimony is especially significant because Keightley knew the pre-publication manuscript corpus at first hand.
The researches of Caldwell, supported by Reigle, therefore appear to justify an important correction to the older view. There is no need to posit a completed “real” Third Volume which disappeared and was replaced by an unrelated compilation. The evidence indicates instead that the historical-occult material originally written as an introductory or first volume was moved, during the reorganization of the work, into the position of a projected Third Volume; and substantial portions of that material are precisely what we find in the volume published in 1897. Caldwell therefore concludes that the supposed “missing” Third Volume is largely a myth, while Reigle concludes that the surviving manuscript evidence confirms that a substantial amount of the 1897 material was written by Blavatsky specifically as part of The Secret Doctrine.
This conclusion does not, however, mean that the 1897 volume should be regarded in exactly the same way as Volumes I and II of 1888. Those volumes were prepared for the press and corrected while Blavatsky was alive. Volume III was not. At her death its materials were still undergoing arrangement and revision. Annie Besant herself stated in her Preface that the papers were unarranged and had no obvious sequence; she divided them into sections, arranged them as best she could, corrected grammatical and non-English constructions, and occasionally supplied words in square brackets. The testimony of Pryse and Keightley likewise indicates that portions remained in varying states of completion. Thus the authenticity of the underlying material and the editorial status of the published volume are two different questions.
The fairest description of the work, therefore, may be this: Volume III is a genuine collection of Blavatsky’s writings, a substantial portion of which demonstrably belonged to The Secret Doctrine and to the historical Third Volume projected during her lifetime, but it is preserved for us in a posthumously arranged and edited form which she herself never finally prepared for publication. To dismiss it as “spurious” obscures the manuscript evidence; to treat every feature of the 1897 arrangement as having received Blavatsky’s final approval would go beyond what that evidence allows.
One further distinction should be kept in mind. The principal historical and occult material occupies the first portion of the 1897 volume. The final portion consists of Blavatsky’s Esoteric Instructions and related oral teachings, originally given within her Esoteric School. Their authenticity as Blavatsky material is not the central issue in the controversy discussed above, but their inclusion in Volume III represents a distinct editorial decision. Caldwell accordingly separates these Esoteric Papers from his argument concerning the identity of the Third Volume proper.
With these qualifications understood, the present volume may be approached as an important surviving part of the larger literary project which occupied the final years of Blavatsky’s life. Its subjects are precisely those repeatedly associated with the projected historical volume: the ancient Mysteries and their initiates; the secrecy surrounding occult knowledge; Hermetic, Kabbalistic, numerical and symbolic systems; the origins and esoteric interpretation of Christianity; the lives and teachings of figures such as Simon Magus, Apollonius of Tyana and other historical adepts; and, in its later sections, the esoteric teachings concerning Gautama Buddha and the succession of spiritual teachers. In this respect Volume III forms a natural complement to the cosmological and anthropological synthesis of the first two volumes—a historical inquiry into the transmission, concealment, and periodic reappearance of the Wisdom-Tradition whose principles those volumes attempt to expound.
The Secret Doctrine, Volume 3, Contents
Section II. Modern Criticism and the Ancients
Section III. The Origin of Magic
Section IV. The Secresy of Initiates
Section V. Some Reasons for Secresy
Section VI. The Dangers of Practical Magic
Section VII. Old Wine in New Bottles
Section VIII. The Book of Enoch the Origin and the Foundation of Christianity
Section IX. Hermetic and Kabalistic Doctrines
Section X. Various Occult Systems of Interpretations of Alphabets and Numerals
Section XI. The Hexagon with the Central Point, or the Seventh Key
Section XII. The Duty of the True Occultist toward Religions
Section XIII. Post-Christian Adepts and their Doctrines
Section XIV. Simon and his Biographer Hippolytus
Section XV. St. Paul the real Founder of present Christianity
Section XVI. Peter a Jewish Kabalist, not an Initiate
Section XVII. Apollonius of Tyana
Section XVIII. Facts underlying Adept Biographies
Section XIX. St. Cyprian of Antioch
Section XX. The Eastern Gupta Vidya & the Kabalah
Section XXI. Hebrew Allegories
Section XXII. The “Zohar” on Creation and the Elohim
Section XXIII. What the Occultists and Kabalists have to say
Section XXIV. Modern Kabalists in Science and Occult Astronomy
Section XXV. Eastern and Western Occultism
Section XXVI. The Idols and the Teraphim
Section XXVIII. The Origin of the Mysteries
Section XXIX. The Trial of the Sun Initiate
Section XXX. The Mystery “Sun of Initiation”
Section XXXI. The Objects of the Mysteries
Section XXXII. Traces of the Mysteries
Section XXXIII. The Last of the Mysteries in Europe
Section XXXIV. The Post-Christian Successors to the Mysteries
Section XXXV. Symbolism of Sun and Stars
Section XXXVI. Pagan Sidereal Worship, or Astrology
Section XXXVII. The Souls of the Stars—Universal Heliolatry
Section XXXVIII. Astrology and Astrolatry
Section XXXIX. Cycles and Avataras
Section XLI. The Doctrine of Avataras
Section XLII. The Seven Principles
Section XLIII. The Mystery of Buddha
Section XLIV. “Reincarnations” of Buddha
Section XLV. An Unpublished Discourse of Buddha
Section XLVII. The Secret Books of “Lam-Rim” and Dzyan
Section XLVIII. Amita Buddha Kwan-Shai-yin, and Kwan-yin
Section XLIX. Tsong-Kha-pa—Lohans in China
Section L. A few more Misconceptions Corrected
Section LI. The “Doctrine of the Eye” & the “Doctrine of the Heart”
Editor’s Note:
The original 1897 edition of The Secret Doctrine, Volume III continues, following Section LI, with a separate collection entitled “Some Papers on the Bearing of Occult Philosophy on Life” (pp. 433–594). These consist principally of H. P. Blavatsky’s Esoteric Instructions and notes of teachings given to members of her Esoteric Section and Inner Group.
These materials have not been included in the present edition. They form a distinct body of writings, originally issued or communicated privately to pledged students under conditions of secrecy, and are more appropriately studied in the context of the fuller body of Blavatsky’s esoteric papers. Much of this material has since been collected and published separately, most comprehensively in Daniel H. Caldwell’s The Esoteric Papers of Madame Blavatsky, which reproduces in facsimile many of the original documents and brings together the surviving Esoteric Section and related materials in a single volume.
In introducing these papers in 1897, Annie Besant stated that the first three Instructions, though privately circulated during Blavatsky’s lifetime, had been written with the intention that they should eventually be published, and that the related notes of oral teachings were published with Blavatsky’s consent after the period of restriction had expired. It is entirely possible that Besant was here faithfully reporting instructions privately given to her by Blavatsky, and nothing in the surviving record establishes that this was not the case. At the same time, no written statement from Blavatsky herself has been found confirming such an authorization, nor does any surviving testimony from another member of her Inner Group clearly corroborate it. Indeed, Alice Leighton Cleather, herself a member of the Inner Group, later explicitly disputed Besant’s account, maintaining that these teachings had not been written for eventual public circulation and suggesting that, had Blavatsky lived, some of the material might instead have been incorporated into a future volume only with her further permission. Cleather’s testimony, however, cannot by itself settle the question.
The testimony of G. R. S. Mead, who with Besant had served as a secretary of the Inner Group and had helped record its teachings, adds another element of uncertainty. Mead later recalled that he himself had urged Besant to publish the Esoteric Instructions because copies were already widely dispersed and he feared that they might otherwise appear in an unauthorized form. Significantly, in giving this account he did not appeal to any known authorization from Blavatsky for their eventual public release. His testimony does not disprove Besant’s claim—such permission may have been given privately to her without Mead’s knowledge—but neither does it independently confirm it. The surviving evidence therefore leaves the question of Blavatsky’s intended eventual publication unresolved. What can be established with much greater certainty is that these teachings were originally communicated under explicit restrictions of privacy and secrecy. Whether Blavatsky later authorized their public release remains possible, but cannot at present be independently verified.
The decision not to reproduce them here should not be understood as a judgment upon their authenticity, importance, or their publication by previous editors. They have long been publicly available and have been reproduced by a number of responsible students and editors, including Boris de Zirkoff and Daniel H. Caldwell. The present edition simply adopts a more conservative editorial policy: out of respect for the conditions under which these teachings were originally given, and because they constitute a distinct body of esoteric instructional material, they are left to the separate collections and schools devoted specifically to them.