IT IS NOT VERY DIFFICULT to write a book, if one chance to possess the necessary degree of Initiation, and the power of expression. It is infernally difficult to comment on such a Book. The principal reason for this is that every statement is true and untrue, alternately, as one advances upon the Path of the Wise. The question always arises: For what grade is this Book meant? To give one simple concrete example, it is stated in the third part of this treatise that Change is the great enemy. This is all very well as meaning that one ought to stick to one's job. But in another sense Change is the Great Friend. As it is marvelous well shewed forth by The Beast Himself in Liber Aleph, Love is the law, and Love is Change, by definition. Short of writing a separate interpretation suited for every grade, therefore, the commentator is in a bog of quandary which makes Flanders Mud seem like polished granite.

He can only do his poor best, leaving it very much to the intelligence of each reader to get just what he needs. These remarks are peculiarly applicable to the present treatise for the issues are presented in so confused a manner that one almost wonders whether Madame Blavatsky was not a reincarnation of the Woman with the Issue of Blood familiar to readers of the Gospels. It is astonishing and distressing to notice how the Lanoo, no matter what happens to him, soaring aloft like the phang, and sailing gloriously through innumerable Gates of High Initiation, nevertheless keeps his original Point of View, like a Bourbon. He is always getting rid of Illusions, but, like the entourage of the Cardinal Lord Archbishop of Rheims after he cursed the thief, nobody seems one penny the worse--or the better.

About Author:

Russian-born American mystic and cofounder of the Theosophical Society. Originally named Helena Hahn (born of German parents in Yekaterinoslav), she was married briefly in her teens to a Russian general, but left him and traveled widely in the East, including Tibet.

Blavatsky supposedly exhibited psychic powers from an early age, and throughout her career claimed to perform feats of mediumship, levitation, telepathy and clairvoyance. She went to America in 1873, and in 1875, with Colonel Henry Steel Olcott, founded the Theosophical Society in New York, and later carried on her work in India. Her psychic powers were widely acclaimed and attracted many converts to Theosophy, including Annie Besant, who's home became the headquarters of the Theosophical Society in London. Her writings include Isis Unveiled (1877) and The Secret Doctrine (1888).