Printed in the Winter 2025 issue of Quest magazine.
Citation: Smoley, Richard, "From the Editor's Desk" Quest 113:1, pg 40-42
This issue features an unusual amount of material about H.P. Blavatsky, including excerpts from the long-awaited second volume of her letters. We are even running an amusing caricature she drew.
All of this leads me to reflect on the role of HPB in today’s Theosophical Society. Blavatsky’s image looms heavily over the present-day TS (and perhaps still more over other branches of the Theosophical movement). At the risk of injecting yet another acronym into today’s cluttered mental universe, I have the sense that many Theosophists act according to the principle of WWBT: “What would Blavatsky think?”
HPB is an idol to some and an object of mockery to others. She is either infallible sage or pathetic trickster, getting her carpenter to build funny little cabinets to deceive the weak-minded. As usual, both of these extremes seem misguided and unhelpful.
I think the best capsule description of HPB is in a short biography by her associate Franz Hartmann (see page 48): “To me she always appeared as a great spirit, a sage and initiate inhabiting the body of a grown-up capricious child, very amiable on the whole but at times very irascible, ambitious, of an impetuous temper, but easily led and caring nothing for conventionalities of any kind.”
Whether HPB would agree with this assessment or not (which of us would agree with similar assessments of ourselves?), it seems to do succinct justice to both her virtues and flaws.
I don’t propose to deal with the historical Blavatsky in this editorial. An enormous amount of information about her is available, and there are many people who are far more familiar with it than I am.
Rather, it is the reified image of HPB that I wish to address. Sometimes it appears that people have a kind of simulacrum—an image of HPB—residing in their heads, perhaps as ideal, perhaps as superego, glaring at them every time they eat a hamburger or drink a glass of beer.
A well-known Buddhist adage says, “If you see the Buddha on the road, kill him.” That is, any image of the Buddha you come across on the spiritual path is not the true Buddha—the true enlightened mind—but a distraction (created by your own mind; whose else?). You need to recognize it for what it is and go past it.
I have a strong sense that a similar mental image of HPB (which varies according to individual tastes and neuroses) is an obstacle for many on the Theosophical path. I also have the sense that a similar image, collectively generated, is an obstacle for the progress of the Society as a whole.
One area in which this problem is especially obvious is present discussions of Theosophy in conventional academic circles. I have made some comments about these issues on page 17. Certainly the scholars in question are accountable for their own obliviousness. Even so, responses to this kind of scholarship from Theosophists have been weak and halting, because they often seem to want more to reactively defend Blavatsky than look at her clearly and impartially. It would appear that in any scholarly inquiry, the first casualty is objectivity.
I follow this academic discourse as a matter of professional duty, but I confess that I find it of limited interest. In the first place, your opinion of whatever happened way back then will be heavily conditioned by your preconceptions. Do you believe in telepathy, psychokinesis, and so on, at least theoretically? If so, your picture of the early Theosophical movement will differ radically from that of those (and this includes most if not all mainstream scholars) who categorically reject such possibilities.
More importantly, I think it is a mistake to cage up the Ageless Wisdom in the past. Blavatsky, Olcott, and their associates are fascinating personalities, but if you are really intent on going through the Hall of Learning, you will focus on internalizing the teachings. This includes not only conceptual understanding and living in accord with certain ethical principles, but being able to relate esoteric ideas with your own experience. It is one thing to talk about the astral body (for example) as discussed in the Theosophical texts and quite another to speak about it from your own lived experience.
We learned this lesson in school: in order to demonstrate true understanding, you not only had to know the concepts as a matter of rote learning but be able to express them in your own words. In my opinion, this is even more true for esoteric work. That it is also far more difficult should not be either an obstacle or an excuse.
Richard Smoley