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H.P.B. Collected Writings, 1874-1878:vol.1

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This first volume of Blavatsky's "Collected Writings" brings together her attempts to situate herself and her new movement within the context of the broader spiritualist movement in America. Blavatsky displays her wit, sharp insight, and cutting irony as she goes after the fraudulent practices and assertions of those mediums who claimed to evoke and speak with the dead. In article after article she advances her own theory that trance mediums are actually projecting their own energy from their bodies, which in turn gets shaped by the unconscious expectations of the audience into some longed-for person from beyond. As she points out, these "spirits" are always boring and have little if anything novel to convey, hence they are unlikely to be residues of actual persons. This volume contains some of her important scrapbook material, some short pieces of fiction, and some of the foundational documents of the Theosophical movement. Her biting humor comes out when she refers to Col. Olcott's ex-wife as "kali," intent on thwarting their plans to create a world-wide school of esoteric thought. For those who think that H.P.B. was only an otherworldly mystic, her blunt assesments of other people and their foibles will come as a pleasant surprise. As this volume comes to an end we see Olcott and Blavatsky leave for Bombay to start their crucial work in India. Her diary entry of December 24th, 1878 evokes the on-board scene, "Night of tossing and rolling. H.S.O. [Olcott] sick in bed.--Monotonous, stupid, wearisome. Oh for the land--oh for India and home!" (pg. 434). The book is fully indexed and has a very helpful bibliography which gives short biographies of all of the major and minor players in Blavatsky's world.