Isis Unveiled

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Isis Unveiled, published in 1877, is a book of esoteric philosophy, and was Helena Petrovna Blavatsky's first major work.

The book discusses or quotes, among others, Plato, Plotinus, the Chaldean Oracles, the Egyptian Book of the Dead, the Bible, Pythagoras, Ammonius Saccas, Porphyry, Iamblichus, Proclus, Apollonius of Tyana, the Popol Vuh, Paracelsus, Louis Jacolliot, Eliphas Levi, Marco Polo, Jesus the Nazarene, Siddhārtha Gautama, Zoroaster and Max Muller, as well as Buddhist, Brahmanical, Chinese, Persian, Babylonian, Chaldean, Syrian, Gnostic, Egyptian literature and much more.

It is composed of two volumes, the first concentrating on science, and the second on religion. The two volumes support the idea of spiritualism, and much of the content theosophizes in accordance with it. Nevertheless, Blavatsky herself distinguishes between spiritualist phenomena and Spiritualism, the religious system. She supports the verity of spiritualist phenomena as it was termed at the time, not the views of the Spiritualists as such, which she wrote about extensively in such works as The Key to Theosophy. The volume on science attempts to show how science can be just as dogmatic as religion, and betrays its own scientific method by denying spiritualism with no scientific proof against it. The volume on religion attempts to expose the hypocrisy of religion by focusing on how and where it has strayed from its origins, while simultaneously tracing the doctrines of the most revered mystics and philosophers to a common spiritual root.

[edit] Quotations

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But in spite of these perhaps too great admissions [about the vast inadequacies of the two books], 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 teaching are mine, as I have always declared; and I maintain that both are of the greatest value to mystics and students of Theosophy. — from My Books, Helena Blavatsky, 1891

”

[edit] Pop culture references

p. 191 modern library edition of Joyce's Ulysses references Isis Unveiled.

• This book makes an appearance in the Sherlock Holmes Game "Mystery of the Mummy". While examining a bookcase, Sherlock mentions that there is a book inside it called "Isis Unveiled" By M. Blavatt.

• In the novel "Foucault's Pendulum" a character, Mr. Garamond, soon has the idea to begin two lines of occult books: one intended for serious publication by Garamond; the other, Isis Unveiled (a reference to the theosophical text by Blavatsky), to be published by Manutius in order to attract more vanity authors.

[edit] External links

• Isis Unveiled Net
• Online version of Isis Unveiled
• The Sources of Madame Blavatsky's Writings by William Emmette Coleman (an essay in which the author claims to have found the origins of allegedly plagiarized passages in Isis Unveiled and other Blavatsky writings.)