Editor’s Note.— This text forms the opening portion of the surviving “Würzburg Manuscript,” an early draft of The Secret Doctrine prepared by H. P. Blavatsky principally during 1885-1886, before the work was extensively reorganized and rewritten into the form published in 1888. The surviving manuscript represents only a portion of this earlier version of the work.
“To the Readers” was first published in part in The Theosophist, August 1931, pp. 601–607; the complete text, including a previously unpublished latter portion, was subsequently printed in H. P. Blavatsky: Collected Writings, vol. XIV, pp. 462–469. The complete surviving Würzburg Manuscript was published in facsimile and transcription in 2014 by Eastern School Press, with an introduction by David Reigle and appendices by Daniel H. Caldwell.
The opening portion of “To the Readers” was extensively revised and expanded by Blavatsky for the Introductory to the 1888 Secret Doctrine, vol. I, especially pp. xvii–xxi. The remainder was not incorporated as a continuous passage into the published work and preserves, among other things, an earlier plan for The Secret Doctrine—divided into Archaic, Ancient, Medieval, and Modern parts—which was superseded during the book’s subsequent reorganization. No portion of “To the Readers” appears as such in the 1897 third volume.
“Strike but listen”—Epictetus
Error runs down on an inclined plane, Truth has to climb laboriously its way up hill. This is a reflection suggested by daily life experience. The old truism of guarding against such error would be to keep one’s mind entirely free from all prejudice; and never to form a decisive opinion upon any subject under disputation before a thorough examination of it and from all its aspects.
This is said with regard to the largely prevailing mistake that by Esoteric Buddhism—the tenets of the religious system preached by Gautama Buddha are meant. Nothing more erroneous than that could be ever imagined, but the error has now become so universal that many persons—even among the Fellows of the Theosophical Society—have fallen victims to it. This has to be laid directly at the door of those who, having been the first to bring the subject under public notice have neglected to point out the difference between Buddhism—the religious system of ethics preached by Gautama and named after his title of Buddha, and Buddhi,1 the Wisdom or the faculty of cognising, from the Sanskrit root “Budh” to know. The real culprits are we, the theosophists of India ourselves. To avoid the deplorable error was easy: the spelling of the word had only to be altered, and by common consent both pronounced and written—either Budhism or Bodhism instead of “Buddhism.”
The above remarks are more than necessary at the beginning of such a work as this one. “Wisdom-religion” is the inheritance of all the nations—the world over. ADI BUDDHA the One (or First) primeval Wisdom, is a Sanskrit term an appelation given by the earliest Aryans to Parabrahman,—the word “Brahmâ” not being found in the Vedas and Brahmanas as rightly told in John Dowson’s “Classical Dictionary” (p. 57)—the absolute and secondless (Adwaita) Wisdom. Æons of untold duration had, perhaps, elapsed, before the epithet of Buddha was so humanised, so to say, as to allow the term being applied to some mortals, and finally pronounced in connection with one whose unparalleled virtues caused him to receive the name of “Buddha of Wisdom unmoved.” Bodhi means the acquirement of divine knowledge, Buddha—one who has acquired “bodhi”; and “Buddhi” is the faculty of cognising the channel through which knowledge reaches the Ego. It is also that plane of existence in which spiritual individuality is evolved and from which personality is eliminated. When “Buddhi” absorbs our EGO-tism and all its vikaras,2 the pratyagâtma3 or “Avalokitesvara” becomes manifested and Mukti4 is reached. It was all this (and still is) before “Bodhi”5 became simply “intelligence,” the “intellect” and even “the holy fig tree” as defined by Dr. Eitel in his [“]hand book for the students of Chinese Buddhism.”
Unwise are those and ungenerous—as the matter stands, who, in their blind and, in our age, untimely hatred of Buddhism—however right they may be from a personal stand-point to view it as a heresy—go against its esoteric teachings which are those also of the Brahmins, simply because the name reminds them of the (to the Monotheist) noxious doctrines.
Unwise—is the correct term to use in their case. For alone the Esoteric philosophy is calculated to withstand, in this age of crass and illogical materialism its repeated attacks on all and every thing man holds most dear and sacred to him, in his inner spiritual life.
The true philosopher, the student of the Esoteric Wisdom, entirely loses sight of personalities, dogmatic beliefs, and special religions. As there cannot be two absolute Infinitudes, so there cannot be two true religions. Esoteric philosophy reconciles them all, strips every one of its outward, human garments, and shows the root of one identical with those of every other great religion. It proves the necessity of an Absolute divine Principle in nature. It denies Deity no more than it does the sun. Esoteric philosophy has never rejected God in nature, not even Deity, as the absolute and abstract Ens. It only refuses to accept any of the Gods of the so-called monotheistic religions—Gods created by man in his own image and likeness, a blasphemous and sorry caricature of the ever UNKNOWABLE. It is not, because the remnants of the once Universal Science and its occult literature are now claimed to be in the hands of the trans Himalayan Initiates of Tibet, that Esoteric Buddhi must necessarily be identified with Buddhism. The records we mean to place before the reader embrace the esoteric tenets of the whole world since the beginning of our Humanity, and Buddhistic occultism occupies in it only its legitimate place—and no more. Therefore even the alleged atheistical and materialistic Buddhism could be easily made to face the unmerited charge, were the task before us to give the public its esoteric doctrines alone, which it is not. Indeed the secret portions of the Dan or Dhyan of Gautama’s metaphysics grand as they appear to one unacquainted with the tenets of the Wisdom religion of antiquity—are but a very small portion of the whole. The Hindu Reformer limited his teachings to the purely spiritual aspect of Wisdom-Religion, to the Soul Ethics and MAN alone, leaving “things unseen” and incorporeal Beings outside of our terrestrial sphere entirely untouched. Time and human imagination made short work of the purity and the philosophy of even that small portion, once that it was transferred from the region of the purely esoteric circle of his Arhats to a soil less prepared for metaphysical conceptions than India. How its pristine purity was dealt with, may be found in studying some of the so called esoteric Buddhist schools of antiquity in their modern garb, in China, Japan and other Buddhist countries; also even among the lay laity and most of the uninitiated lamas of Tibet and Mongolia.
Thus the reader is asked to bear in mind the important difference between Buddhism and Bodhism and also—since we shall have to refer to it in the course of this work—that the SECRET doctrine preached by Gautama Buddha differs vastly from his exoteric or public teaching. The Buddha was a born Aryan, a Hindu, a disciple of the initiated Dwijas—the twice born. Unable to teach publicly all that had been imparted to him, he taught a philosophy built upon the ground work of the true esoteric knowledge, he only gave the world its outward material body and kept its SOUL for his Elect.
Unlike all other books this work could not stand alone on the authority of its own statements, and had to find allies, whether willing or unwilling. It has secured them in a long series of the well known names of a number of respected, often illustrious men of science. Though most of them have worked on entirely different lines and have made their researches with quite another object in view—they have, nevertheless, been made to help us in the propagation of more than one truth throughout the whole work.
Natural sciences, archæology, theology, philosophy—all have been forced to give their evidence in support of the teaching herein propounded. Scripta manent . . . their published admissions can be made away with—even by the opponent; they have been made good use of. Had we acted otherwise, the Secret Doctrine from the first chapter to the last, would have amounted to uncorroborated personal affirmations. Scholars and most of the latest discoveries in various departments of science being brought to testify to what might have otherwise appeared to the average reader as the most preposterous hypothesis based upon unverified assertions, the task proposed will now be made easier. Occult teachings will be examined in the light of both sciences—the physical as much as the spiritual and psychical. Although the reader is offered no more than the bare outlines of the Mysteries and hardly a few of the innumerable occult subjects taught in Esoteric philosophy, it would yet be the height of conceit and pride to come out in such a dangerous battle against prejudice single-handed. Nor could more be given in a work of such dimension as now proposed.
As already said, the Secret Doctrine is quite a new version of Isis Unveiled much of which could hardly be understood by theosophists in those days. It is in [an] indispensable corollary to the first work.
Concerned chiefly with our Humanity—that is to say from the commencement of the Fifth Root-race of the fourth Round up to our days—no more than a hurried glance can be thrown at present at the three antediluvian races that preceded the Atlantean family, or the Fourth Race. Nor can the vast catalogue of the Sciences taught by the Antediluvians—be treated in any other than a cursory way, especially when concerned with such tremendous problems as Cosmic and Planetary Evolutions, the age of our globe and its Humanities.
But even the little that can be given is better than complete silence upon those vital truths. The present world, in its mad career toward the unknown which it is too ready to confound with the unknowable, whenever the problem eludes the grasp of the physicist—is rapidly progressing on the earthly, material plane, and losing proportionately in the plane of spirituality. It has now become a vast λοφοςατης—the Valley of Death of the ancient Greek philosophers a necropolis wherein lie buried the highest, the most holy aspirations of our Spirit-Soul. That soul becomes with every new generation more paralyzed, and atrophy is rapidly setting in. The “amiable infidels and accomplished profligates” of society spoken of by Gresley, care little for the revival of the dead sciences of the past, little thinking that they have themselves become the “whitened sepulchres” of their Scriptures. These can hardly be galvanized from within. But there is a fair minority of earnest students who are entitled to learn the few truths that may now be given to them.
Before giving out the occult and hitherto concealed teachings an outline must be traced before the reader of the mechanical arrangement of the whole Doctrine, an extensive work as one can see. Much thought and labour have been bestowed upon the arrangement, such as would satisfy every reader—not only the student more or less familiar with the Occult Doctrine. If the work could have been published as a whole in so many volumes, the task might have been made easier. For reasons that would not interest the outside world, this could not be done and the writer had to conform to the original plan. The Secret Doctrine would come out in four distinct Parts—the Archaic, Ancient, Medieval and Modern Periods. Each part had to cover a period of 6 months to be issued in 2 chapters monthly, thus forming 48 and with additions 49 chapters in their two years duration, and the 4 glossaries (one to each Part) making at the end an additional, or 50th chapter. Should the writer find at the end of that period that the subjects with which she has to deal are not yet exhausted, that this work meets with the approval of her readers and that health and life are spared to her the Secret Doctrine may probably extend its present limits. Moreover there was the difficult problem at first proposed to so arrange the subject matter that the contents of no one part should infringe upon any of the three others, the Archaic period being forbidden to treat of that which belonged—say—to the middle Ages and the post and pre Christian centuries or the Ancient Period having to be shut out from the purely archaic age. How was this to be done? It was easy to fill Part I (Archaic Period) with a thesis which is but the verbal translation from the Catechisms and Elementary works of the Secret Doctrine on Cosmic and Planetary Evolution, the Birth of the Primeval Beings, “The Builders” the subsequent task the gradual formation of our Earth and its fellow-spheres of the chain, the progressive work throughout Aeons and Cycles of those “Heavenly Races” busy with the formation and the growth of our planet giving the impulse to the Kingdoms of the Earth, and finally the Birth of present Man, his gradual and irresistible Fall into Matter, then the four Races that preceded our actual fifth Race their history and development, the submerging of Atlantis—the real Cataclysm upon which were subsequently built all the legends of the Deluge etc. etc. etc. The writer has all this placed before her, to hear, to see and—to copy. What would be the results? And the reader’s opinion there on—save that of a few students and chelas? A fairy tale, woven out of the abstruse problems, poised in and based on the air and soap-bubbles bursting at the slightest touch of serious reflection, with no foundation as would be alleged to stand upon—even the ancient superstitions and credulous classics having no word of reference to it, and the symbols themselves failing to yield a hint at the existence of such a system?6 Such would be the criticism of the most benevolent among the critics, even of those desirous of learning something new and quite open to belief. Evidently the Archaic Period could not stand alone. Moreover before Part II could be read to its end the teachings of the Secret System, so new and unfamiliar to the European ear would have been half, if not entirely forgotten and the reader would have to turn back at every page of the second Part in order to be enabled to perceive and realize the ground upon which such or another symbol of later and esoteric systems was built, the root from which such or another shoot of some special religion has sprung from. This would never do. Thus it was thought best to preface each chapter with a stanza or two translated from the Book of Dzyan—barring such points that cannot be yet given out in this century. This book (see Chap—Sect ) is the extensive compendium of the History of our present grand Period (Maha Kalpa) premissing [premising] with a superficial and short account of the re[-]evolution of Kosmos and our own planetary System and starting to give more definite outlines from the appearance of man on Earth to our own age. It ends in 1897 agreeably with our chronology. Such an arrangement of chapters beginning each in an uninterrupted sequel with a first quotation from the Book of Dzyan, the subjects permitted to be discussed being divided into 49 parts it becomes easy to explain that which most naturally would have appeared hazy when read independently; thus also the verses or stanzas given (as in the original) can be glossed and interpreted by, and in the light of many a remark made by ancient writers never correctly understood by the modern, and by pointing out to the equally misconceived symbols bearing on each question or subject as it presents itself along one after the other.
Such were the difficulties now overcome, as it is hoped in dealing with mysteries of such tremendous importance.
The Past could not be read with[out?] rending asunder the veil behind which it lies concealed, drawn down by too cautious hands to screen it from the profane and the inappreciative: therefore the necessity of often teaching upon subjects sacred to some readers and the dealing with which may as often give them pain. This being unavoidable is to be sincerely regretted but truth is the first and ought to be the only criterion of every religion. No human born dogma, no institution, however sanctified by custom and antiquity can compare in sacredness with the dogma of Nature. The key of wisdom that unlocks the massive gates leading to the arcana of the innermost sanctuaries can be found hidden in her bosom only, and that bosom is—in the countries pointed to by the great Seer of the past century Emanuel Swedenborg. There lies the heart of nature that bosom whence issued primeval Humanity and which is the cradle of man.
The writer is too well acquainted with human nature and the state of modern Society to hope for more than a few dozen of men who among the thousands will abstain from branding this work a priori as a fiction—perhaps an elaborately made up mystification. It will be called a tissue of unverified and unverifiable assertions at best superstitious legends and groundless traditions. We live in an age when everything which is not bluntly denied is at least strongly doubted; and History herself is dealt with by the so called Christians as brutally as legendary lore. If Niebuhr could with one stroke of his pen cross out from his work (though he could hardly hope to blot them out from his history)—the first five centuries from Roman empire and Lewis chose to begin with Pyrrhus and Schlosser—killing Cadmus, Donaus and Cecropes commence his history with Minos, let us hope that all such historians may one day perceive their error and regret it as sincerely as Augustin Thierry did. The latter has at any rate made amende hons rable if one may believe his biographers. He deplored the erroneous principle that made them all (the would be historiographers) lose their way and each presuming to correct tradition that vox popoli [populi] which nine times out of ten is vox dei—by their personal views and preconceived opinions; and he finally admitted that in legend alone rests real History; for legend his biographer makes him add is living tradition and three times out of four it is truer than what we call History.7
More dangerous even than the termites in one of Michelet’s tales, the modern recorder[s] of Universal History are preparing for her the fate of most of the buildings in India. History will tumble down and break into atoms in the lap of the XXth century—devoured to its foundations by her annalists—who are the white ants of our Century the XIXth.
The very fact, that a work with pretentions to philosophy and an exposition of the most abstruse problems has to be commenced by tracing the evolution of mankind from what is regarded as supernatural beings—Spirits, will arouse the most malevolent criticism. Believers in and the defenders of the Secret Doctrine, will have to bear the accusation of madness and—worse as philosophically as the writer does. Whenever a theosophist is taxed with insanity he ought to reply by quoting from Montesquieu’s Lettres Persanes: “By opening so freely their lunatic asylums to their supposed madmen, men only seek to make one believe that they are not themselves mad.”
Nevertheless before proceeding to give out the translated stanzas from the Book of Dzyan, on Cosmic Evolution and the work of Creative Spirits a brief recapitulation must be made in Chapter I of the ideas upon Occult philosophy and Magic prevalent during the few centuries that preceded and followed our era. This was the last turning point in History, the period of the supreme struggle that ended by the throlling [throttling] of Paganism in the Western world. From that time the vista into the far distant Past, beyond the “Deluge” and gardens of Eden began to be forcibly and relentlessly closed by every fair and unfair means against the indiscreet gaze of posterity. Every issue was blocked up, every record that hands could be laid upon destroyed. Yet there remains enough among such mutilated records to warrant us in saying that there is there in every evidence possible proofs of the actual existence of a Parent Doctrine. Fragments have survived geological and political cataclysms to tell the story; and that very survival showing evidence that the now Secret Wisdom was once the one fountain head, the ever perennial source at which were fed, all its streamlets, the later religions of all nations—from the first down to the last. This period, beginning with Buddha and Pythagoras at the one end, and the New Platonics and Gnostics at the other is the only focus left in history wherein converge for the last time the bright rays of light unobscured by the hand of bigotry and fanaticism from the aeons of time gone by.
However superficially the Public has also to be made acquainted with the efforts of other World Adepts, and Initiates of those ages to benefit Humanity with their knowledge and thus preserve the mother-philosophy; as also now the modern Teachers made themselves acquainted with the lore of the Archaic Age.
The Initiate of 1885 would remain indeed incomprehensible and for ever an impossible myth were not like Initiates shown in every other age in history. This may be done only by naming chapter and verse where the mention of these great characters may be found who were preceded and followed by a long and interminable line of other great Antediluvian and Postdiluvian Masters in the arts. Thus only can be shown a semi traditional and semi-historical authority that the Occult knowledge and the powers it confers are not altogether fictions, but that they are as old as the world itself.
The Past however, shall help to realise the PRESENT and the latter to better appreciate the PAST. The errors of the day must be explained and swept away. It is more than probable since in the present case it amounts to certitude—that once more the testimony of long ages and history shall fail to impress any one but the very intuitional—which is equal to saying the very few. In such a case the true and the faithful may console themselves with presenting the skeptical modern Sadducee with the mathematical proof of his obdurate obstinacy and dullness. There still exists somewhere in the archives of the French Academy the famous law of probabilities. It was worked out by an algebraical process for the benefit of skeptics by certain mathematicians and runs thus. If two persons give their evidence to a fact and thus impart to it, each of them 5/6 of certitude, that fact will have then 35/36 of certitude; i.e. its probability will have become to its improbability in proportion of 35 to 1. If three evidences are joined together, the certitude will have become 15/16. The agreement of ten persons giving each ½ of certitude will produce 1023/1024 etc. etc. The occultist may remain satisfied—and care for no more.
NOTE. It must not be imagined from the subtitle of the advertisements “a new version of Isis Unveiled” that the Secret Doctrine is simply a rearrangement of old matter. It is an entirely new work with only occasional quotations and extracts from Isis to serve a double purpose. Because it has been often said (a) that the theosophical teachings clashed with the statements in the earlier work after the publication of Mr. Sinnett’s Esoteric Buddhism and (b) to show that not only was the writer of the present familiar then with all the topics now given in the Secret Doctrine but that there is not a single contradiction if properly understood. When Isis was written only fragmentary portions could be given but now the reader will be instructed how to fit in the disjointed pieces so as to perfect the whole.
Note. In view of the multiplicity of subjects every chapter will be divided into sections (§) and whenever required into numbered sub-sections.
1. Moreover the planet Mercury is also called Budha (one d) and it is the name—meaning “wise, intelligent” of the son of Brihaspati’s wife; Budha who married Ilâ, the daughter of Manu Vaivasvata, the progenitor of our race.
2. Vikara is transformation or change.
3. Pratyagâtma is a compound word meaning “separation” and soul or “Spirit” when Maya and every wordly conception eliminated from the inner nature of man his spirit becomes one with the Ocean Spirit or Parabrahman.
4. Mukti—freedom, the same as Nirvana; freedom from the trammels of Maya.
5. Not “Bodhi” but the Bo-tree (aswattha); it is also the name of a particular state of Samadhi (bodhi) the trance in which the subject reaches the culmination of spiritual knowledge. The Aswattha-tree character of the Universe is realised. The small seed sends forth the big tree, which sends down from its branches the peculiar roots which reenter the earth and support the tree of knowledge (see Bhagavad Gita).
6. An instance may now be given as an illustration of what is said taken from the History of Freemasonry whether rightly or wrongly. J. M. Ragon, an illustrious and learned Belgian Mason—reproaches the English masons of having materialized and dishonoured Masonry once based upon the Ancient Mysteries, by adopting them owing to a mistaken notion of the origin of the craft, the name of Free masonry and Free Masons. The mistake is due, he says, to those who connect Masonry with the building of Solomon’s Temple, deriving its origin from it. He derides the idea and says: . . . “The Francmaçon (which is not maçon libre or free masonry knew well when adopting the title, that it was no question of building a wall but that of being initiated into Mysteries veiled under the name of Francmaçonnerie (Free masonry); that his work was only to be the continuation or the renovation of the ancient mysteries and that he was to become a Mason in the manner of Apollo or Amphion: do not we know, that the ancient initiated poets when speaking of the foundation of a city meant thereby the establishment of a doctrine? Thus Neptune is a god of reasoning, and Apollo, the god of the hidden things, presented themselves as masons before Laomedan, Priam’s father, to help him to build the city of Troy, that is to say to establish Trojan religion? . . . .” (Maçonnerie Orthodoxe p. 44.) Such veiled sentences with double meaning abound in the ancient classics and writers: Therefore, had an attempt been made to show that—say—Laomedan was the founder of a branch of archaic mysteries, in which the earth-bound, material soul (the 4th principle) was personified in Menelaus’ faithless wife, the fair Helen—we might be told that no classic speaks of it, and that Homer shows Laomedan building a city not an esoteric worship MYSTERIES had not a Ragon, or some one else come to corroborate what was asserted.
7. Revue des deux mondes, Littré, 1865, pp. 157-58.