Quest Magazine

An Outline of The Secret Doctrine
Franz Hartmann
Translated by Susanne Hoepfl-Wellenhofer
N.p: European School of Theosophy Press, 2024. 202 pp., paper, $20.50.

H.P. Blavatsky’s Secret Doctrine intimidates many readers. Consequently, a number of guides and introductions to it have been published over the years.

The latest to appear in English is An Outline of the Secret Doctrine by the early Theosophist Franz Hartmann (1838‒1912). For more on Hartmann, see the article by Susanne Hoepfl-Wellenhofer, TSA board member and translator of the work reviewed here, in the winter 2022 issue of Quest, Franz Hartmann: A Pioneer of the Theosophical Movement  . Hartmann’s book has recently been translated as part of a larger project to make his works available in English (see article in this issue).

Hartmann had the highest opinion of The Secret Doctrine. This edition reproduces a note he wrote in 1889: “My dear H.P.B. Your ‘Secret Doctrine’ will be ‘The Bible’ of the coming millennium.”

As the introduction to this book by Doss McDavid points out, “While it does present the Stanzas [of Dzyan] in sequential order, the accompanying commentary is not merely a shortened version of HPB’s explanation but rather a completely new exegesis, written by a friend who had spent hours with HPB, listening to her serious teaching and everyday banter while all the time absorbing her views on the nature of the world.”

Hartmann’s view of the Stanzas is distinctive in at least a couple of respects. He provides remarkably clear explanations of abstruse concepts and symbols. For example, “Fohat, the personification of the electric life force, the transcendental one, serves as the binding that connects all cosmic forces. It can also be considered as the energy of the sun, the electric life-giving fluid, and the fourth principle known as the animal soul of nature.” And “the ‘dragon’ or ‘serpent’ signifies a living, moving, intelligent force and essence, and is therefore the symbol of spiritual (‘superhuman’) intelligences or ‘spiritual men,’ whether these forces manifest in a visible material body or whether they are in the state of Nirmanakaya” (emphasis in both passages is Hartmann’s).

There is one striking difference between Hartmann’s and HPB’s views: Blavatsky not only rejected the notion of a personal God but avoided the use of the word God in most of her writings. Hartmann, on the other hand, uses it freely, citing German mystics such as Meister Eckhart and Jacob Boehme. He writes, “The Secret Doctrine asserts that the entire creation is a manifestation of the divine nature, originating from the breath of the Godhead”—here identifying the Godhead (a term used by Meister Eckhart) with what Blavatsky calls the “Absolute.” This does not reveal any great discrepancy between Hartmann’s views and HPB’s: it rather indicates that he is more likely to use terminology from the Western than the Eastern version of the esoteric tradition.

One particularly enjoyable feature of this book is an appendix giving Hartmann’s brief autobiography. His verbal portrait of HPB is apt: “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.” This account describes HPB concisely and objectively—which is particularly valuable for a figure who has been bandied about back and forth so much between scoffers and idolizers.

In short, this volume presents not only a succinct and insightful glimpse into The Secret Doctrine but an account of the life of Hartmann, an extremely influential but sometimes overlooked figure in early Theosophy. (A short introduction to his life and works by Robert Hütwohl appears at the front of this volume.)

In my opinion, the most comprehensive study of Blavatsky’s book remains The Divine Plan by Geoffrey A. Barborka, first published in 1961. Nevertheless, Hartmann’s perspective not only presents the Stanzas of Dzyan in concise form but sheds important light on Theosophy, particularly in relation to the Western esoteric tradition, and on a man who was a fascinating figure in his own right.

Richard Smoley

Magus: The Art of Magic from Faustus to Agrippa   
Anthony Grafton
Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2023. 289 pp., hardcover, $39.95.                       

According to social media, Renaissance men are all about us. We are encouraged to marvel at the linebacker who plays the violin, the crypto trader who writes novels, the stand-up comic who is a very deep thinker offstage.

Such well-rounded individuals are worthy of note and arguably models for those of us who never dream of picking up fiddle or pen. But we forget what the “Renaissance” part of “Renaissance man” actually means. Princeton University’s Grafton, a connoisseur of arcane arts and uncanny people, reminds us in this extraordinarily Renaissance-worthy book.

His Renaissance men—and yes, they are all men—are so multitalented, they are scary. They were scary 500 years ago. Grafton’s fifteenth- and sixteenth-century figures mastered virtually every art or science we can imagine, including the seven liberal ones of academic culture and the many forbidden ones embedded in intersecting cultural networks of their own. They wrote in Latin and Latinized their names, and some knew Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic. Some were also rumored to be fluent in the strange tongues of tossed dice, flowing water, sneezes, burning wood, human palms, shoulder blades, and spirit guests. They traversed Europe when the continent was splitting into Catholic and Protestant factions, at times eluding the then still fluid categories and often barely evading inquisitor, censor, and mob. Some found work in universities or courts, while others sought refuge in monastic undergrounds stocked with lavish occult libraries. All blurred the lines between philosopher and physician, artist and alchemist, doyen and deviant, scientist and sorcerer. Grafton describes them as the makers of early modern learned or “natural” magic. Their social role he defines as “magus.”

Five personalities and their intellectually adventurous and avaricious lives dominate Grafton’s narrative of Renaissance highbrow magic. Pico della Mirandola, famous for his Oration on the Dignity of Man and his advocacy of Christian Kabbalah, is recognizable to veterans of undergraduate Western civilization surveys. Doctor Faustus, likely the itinerant schoolmaster and university lecturer Georg of Helmstadt, accused of sexual misconduct and necromancy, is the most legendary. The others—Marsilio Ficino, priest and translator of the Hermetic Corpus; Johannes Trithemius, Benedictine abbot and cryptographer; and Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, dubbed the “Archimagus” by a Jesuit opponent—are major if less-known forces in the Western esoteric tradition. What unites them all is the intellectual libido to know hidden things and the conviction that truth is one. Inexplicably, England’s John Dee receives only minimal treatment. Nostradamus and Paracelsus are not mentioned at all.

Grafton’s magi trafficked in ideas, and his book leaves no theory or debate unexamined. But, despite occasional voyages into other worlds, they also lived as embodied beings in specific social circumstances. Here Grafton excels as guide to both text and context. The very first chapter sets the stage as Faustus arrives for dinner at the Wittenberg home of Philip Melanchthon, Martin Luther’s humanistically inclined fellow Reformer.

Boundary crossing was evidently part of the magic of the magi. They sought the patronage of princes and produced erudite tomes for the literati but were also well acquainted with the fingernails, boiled urine, and bat’s blood of folk practitioners. Likewise, they displayed gifts for intellectual shapeshifting, arguing in the same book for and against a cherished thesis. Their “inky fingers” (title of another Grafton publication) reveal them straddling medieval and modern, producing manuscripts by hand and printing books by machine.   

Other boundaries transgressed include those separating Christianity from paganism, Judaism, and Islam; the line between piety and power; and the watery frontier between Europe and what Trithemius called “the islands and regions recently discovered by Amerigo Vespucci in the western ocean.” For Grafton, the magi’s supreme overcoming may have been their storming of the barricade between “engineering and conjuring.” At home with flights of mental fancy, they were also fascinated, and facile, with the down-to-earth and public manufacture of mechanical clocks, magic lanterns, war machines, and automata that could move, speak, and spit fire.

Hence the “grammar and glamor” of the Renaissance magus. With his own blend of scholarship and showmanship, Grafton recreates the complex and alluring world of early modern esoterica. Sharing the magi’s venerable backward gaze, he sketches their unofficial fellowship and traces its lineage to medieval mentors, if not to Egypt, Persia, and Mount Sinai. Some readers might be disappointed that, aside from occasional glances forward, he does not connect the dots to the likes of Swedenborg, Éliphas Lévi, H.P. Blavatsky, Aleister Crowley, or any of the alleged Renaissance personages lauded by today’s influencers and content creators. His touching memorial to his late wife, however, suggests he may not have been too far removed from the magus’s realm.

Reading Grafton’s magisterial work requires the discipline of the scribes he so admires. The reward is an unforgettable reminder of an age when wisdom and wizardry were one.

Peter A. Huff, author or editor of seven books, teaches religious history at Benedictine University. His article “The Current State of Unbelief” appeared in Quest, spring 2022.                

Maurice Nicoll: Forgotten Teacher of the Fourth Way
Gary Lachman
Rochester, Vt.: Inner Traditions, 2024. 453 pp., hardcover, $35.

Gary Lachman’s description of Dr. Maurice Nicoll extols a man caught up in a time of intellectual and spiritual ferment. Freudianism, psychoanalysis, spiritualism, freethinker communes, and New Thought were all blossoming in his era: the early twentieth century.

Born in 1884, active through World War II up to his death in 1953, Nicoll was a Scottish neurologist and Jungian therapist who became an advocate of G.I. Gurdjieff’s Fourth Way. Nicoll eventually evolved his own brand of mysticism, tooled of equal parts Fourth Way, the Hermetica, Jacob Boehme, Greek philosophy, William Blake, Emanuel Swedenborg, and owing something to Theosophy. He taught with eloquence and insight at institute centers inspired by Gurdjieff’s Prieuré and P.D. Ouspensky’s country house. Not only was Nicoll afflicted with “institute-itis,” as Lachman likes to call it, he wrote extensively over the years, including fiction for The Strand Magazine and a successful novel. More significantly, he penned his five-volume Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky. 

Lachman emphasizes the inner disquiet—a sense that something important is missing—that prompts seekers to pursue the rather arduous Gurdjieffian path, and he sees many levels of disquiet in Maurice Nicoll. A neurologist and psychoanalyst, he could have prospered as a Harley Street physician and whiled away his life in middle-class ease. But Nicoll was forever searching for a way into the next level, an escape from the trapped routine that characterizes adult life. Lachman suggests that Nicoll may have had a kind of puer aeternus—eternal child—syndrome. He certainly had other psychological peculiarities, which drove him into the world of psychoanalysis, dream interpretation, and self-study.

A principal problem for Nicoll was his curious sexual fixation. As Lachman discovered (having gotten permission from the estate to slog through Nicoll’s multivolume private diary), this gentlemanly, portly, snooty physician struggled with compulsively envisioning the sexual degradation of women and an equally obsessive regimen of masturbation. As a psychologist, he knew the fantasies were unhealthy, and he agonized over them. For a time, he attempted to use the energy of his sessions of intense onanism for contacting higher spiritual powers. All this he kept secret, and we’re not aware of his having shared it with his own analyst, Carl Jung. Lachman offers no evidence that Nicoll ever acted on his fantasies.

One of the most rewarding parts of the Nicoll biography is his extensive association with the famous quasi-mystic and theorist of archetypes Carl Jung, who was godfather to Nicoll’s only child. Lachman details Jung’s break with Sigmund Freud, and Nicoll was apparently swept in the slipstream of Jung’s departure from Freudian psychoanalysis. Nicoll introduced Jung to London society, and for a time shared a house with him. Lachman suggests Nicoll had fallen victim to projection, turning Jung into a father figure: Nicoll’s relationship with his staid pastor of a father was iffy.

Jung’s overly sardonic presence led to a breakup between the two men. Left rudderless, Nicoll searched for another teacher, encountering Ouspensky’s lectures on the fourth dimension and his systemization of the Gurdjieff’s Fourth Way. Both Nicoll and his wife, Catherine, were struck by the Gurdjieffian ideas of humankind’s sleep, even though we suppose we’re awake—our utter mechanical reactivity and lack of inward unity. After steeping in Ouspensky for a time, Nicoll spent several seasons with Gurdjieff in the rigors of his institute outside Paris, an experience he found both taxing and transformative. On returning to England, Nicoll dealt with his father’s estate and began piecing together his own institute.

Lachman takes us through Nicoll’s dizzying hammering-together of a country institute for the study of the Fourth Way, onward through the advent of World War II and the Blitz, and how Nicoll and his followers worked in something like communality to survive together. As Nicoll aged, he seems to have drifted into something more syncretistic and less purely Gurdjieffian. As Lachman tells it, the sunnier spiritual climes of Swedenborg’s visions drew him, and by the end of his life he was perhaps more Swedenborgian than Gurdjieffian.

Nicoll could be a snob: he does not seem to have encouraged working-class persons or people of color into his spiritual school. While he left an indelible mark with his esoteric interpretations of the New Testament in The New Man and The Mark, his powerful classic Living Time, and his Psychological Commentaries, some present-day Nicoll enthusiasts may be annoyed by Lachman’s feet-of-clay revelations: Nicoll’s classism, sexual obsessions, and alcoholism might put off some readers. We see in Lachman the influence of Colin Wilson, and there is a certain tendency to sensationalism here. Gurdjieffians might be annoyed with Lachman’s repeating of some canards—for example, the mistaken notion that Gurdjieff did not successfully help anyone transform themselves. But Lachman’s impressive notating, his extensive background as a chronicler of esoteric spirituality, and his insights into his subject’s character carries the book. It is more than worthwhile, if one does not expect complete and total accuracy in every regard. The esoteric is, after all, mysterious.

John Shirley

John Shirley is the author of Gurdjieff: An Introduction to His Life and Ideas, as well as numerous works of fiction.

Printed in the  Winter 2025  issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Georgiades, Erica; McDavid, Doss "The Franz Hartmann Collection"   Quest 113:1, pg 8-9

By Erica Georgiades and Doss McDavid

The Franz Hartmann Collection is a groundbreaking project that aims to put together in a comprehensive and accessible form the writings of the Theosophist, mystic, and physician Franz Hartmann (1838‒1912). Hartmann, who was a close associate of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky and Henry Steel Olcott, played a significant role in the development and popularization of Theosophy in Germany. His diverse body of work, which includes writings on Theosophy, Christian mysticism, Masonry, Rosicrucianism, and alternative medicine, has been a source of inspiration for many.

A drawing by HPB, from the collection of Franz Hartmann. Hartmann writes: "She sometimes drew caricatures that were  not without artistic value and portraits that were easily recongnizable. One such represents the examination for initiation of a proninent member of the T.S.  He is evidenty unable to answer the questions asked of him by K.H. and he looks with a wistful eye at a bottle of chamagne and a dancing girl, as if he were very loath to abandon the pleasures of this life. An elemental holds a candle and in the distance is the Master M. and still further on Madame Blavasky herself sitting on an elephant."Reproduced in Hartmann's autobiographu in his Ouline of the Secret Doctrine.

Despite the profound impact of Hartmann’s work, his writings have never been compiled in a comprehensive manner until now. The Franz Hartmann Collection, launched in 2022, seeks to rectify this oversight by publishing the entirety of Hartmann’s works in both book and web format. Currently consisting of eleven volumes, the collection covers a wide range of topics, from An Adventure among the Gnomes to Hermetic Stories for Children. It also features three volumes translated for the first time from German to English by TSA board member Susanne Hoepfl-Wellenhofer: Yoga and Christianity; Mysteries, Symbols, and Occult Forces; and An Outline of the Secret Doctrine. One highlight of the collection is the inclusion, on its website, of hundreds of articles and books by Hartmann that have been translated into English for the first time by Robert Hütwohl. The collection is far from complete and is an ongoing work, with four more volumes underway.

This extensive collection of works provides a wealth of knowledge and insight into Hartmann’s teachings and philosophy, making it an invaluable resource for scholars, researchers, and enthusiasts alike. Visitors to the collection’s website, www.franzhartmann.eu, can explore the full range of Hartmann’s writings, gaining a comprehensive understanding of his contributions to the fields of mysticism, Theosophy, and alternative medicine.

The significance of the Franz Hartmann Collection extends beyond merely compiling Hartmann’s writings: it also serves to shine a light on the impact and legacy of this influential figure. It highlights the importance of preserving and reprinting the early work of Theosophists, contributing in this way to the preservation of Theosophical history. By making Hartmann’s works more accessible and readily available, the collection seeks to ensure that his works continue to inspire and educate future generations of individuals interested in esoteric and spiritual knowledge.

The collection exemplifies a passion for preserving and disseminating valuable knowledge. The meticulous effort put into translating and compiling Hartmann’s works for the Franz Hartmann Collection is a testament to the dedication and commitment of those involved in the project. Thanks to Susanne Hoepfl-Wellenhofer and Robert Hütwohl, who have worked tirelessly to bring Hartmann’s writings into the English language.

The team involved in the project consists of Doss McDavid, Erica Georgiades, Juliet Bates, Ifigeneia Kastamoniti, Susanne Hoepfl-Wellenhofer, and Robert Hütwohl. 

Erica Georgiades is the director of the European School of Theosophy and the School of Wisdom. She is also the president of the Theosophical Society in Greece.

Doss McDavid has been a member of the Theosophical Society since 1969.  He is a professor emeritus at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio.