Quest Magazine

Printed in the  Summer 2022 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Hartmann, Franz,  "H.P. Blavatsky: The Sphinx of the Nineteenth Century" Quest 110:3, pg 35-41

By Franz Hartmann

Translated from the German by Robert Hütwohl

Franz Hartmann (1838‒1912) was a German physician and Theosophist who was a close associate of H.P. Blavatsky. For more about Hartmann, see Susanne Hoepfl-Wellenhofer’s article, “Franz Hartmann: A Pioneer of the Theosophical Movement,” in Quest, winter 2022.

This article is a translation of “H.P. Blavatsky. Die ‘Sphinx’ des 19. Jahrhunderts” (“H.P. Blavatsky: The ‘Sphinx’ of the Nineteenth Century”), originally published in Lotusblüten 1, no. 7 (April 1893), 305‒40. This article was reprinted as “H.P. Blavatsky,” Theosophischer Wegweiser (Calw, Germany: Schatzkammer-Verlag, n.d.), 93‒96, 125‒27, 148‒51. It was republished as Helena Petrowna Blavatsky, die Sphinx des 19. Jahrhunderts. Calw-Wimberg, Germany: Schatzkammerverlag Hans Fändrich, n.d. Translation copyright ©2022 by Robert Hütwohl.

Some details in this article misstate certain biographical facts about HPB. We have left them intact as Hartmann wrote them. 

The restoration of the true spiritual church cannot be accomplished by human effort and human wisdom, but solely by the manifestation of the spirit of truth within humanity.

One of the most significant appearances of this century, and probably the strangest of all, was that of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, née Hahn. She was the soul of the Theosophical Society, founded by her in collaboration with Colonel H.S. Olcott and others, which spread its branches over the whole earth in a relatively short time.

But this is probably the least of their merits. The main point is that the doctrines revealed by her and spread by her disciples have brought about a major change in the general worldview. This shift is taking place in all areas of religion, science, and philosophy, and is ever increasing. There is no doubt, therefore, that H.P. Blavatsky’s name will sooner or later find its due place in world history. The encyclopedia of conversation will contain as many lies about her character as it does about Cagliostro, Paracelsus, and other characters who were not understood by their contemporaries because they were above the mindset of their time. A noble soul can only be known and understood by noble souls; wickedness sees nothing in the noblest but its own image. Just as it is the destiny of every great mind to be misunderstood, ridiculed, and maligned in this foolish earthly world, so too was the case with Blavatsky. The ideals she presented were far too lofty for the narrow, vain, and selfish to comprehend, and every tiny newspaper writer thought himself entitled to judge them, though he had not the slightest idea what they were.

She was persecuted and betrayed throughout her life, and occasionally after her death. One begins to recognize her high spirit and the philanthropy which permeated her. The “pious” are beginning to realize that what she taught is identical with the teachings of the wisest among the saints of the church, and that they are never against true religion, but only against the rubbish adhering to it, against what religion claims to be but actually is not.

The philosophers who are capable of recognizing the spirit of the teachings declared by the philosophers of India begin to realize that without their own possession of this truth, all so-called knowledge is but a dream, a blind speculation and hiding in the dark.

As for modern science, insofar as it relates to the investigation of the nature and essence of man, it too begins to awaken from slumber, rub its eyes, and find that there are things of which it is so far unable to make out any idea.

For all of this, we must primarily thank the suggestions of H.P. Blavatsky, although some now adorn themselves with her feathers but are hostile to her memory and bring her proclamations onto the market under a different name as their own product.

Today the light whose condensing lens was H.P. Blavatsky enlightens some places where only a few years ago Egyptian darkness prevailed. Instead of knowledge based on mere hypotheses and theories, true and original knowledge has begun to take hold, which, unlike the scholasticism of former times, does not refer to mere appearances, but to the core of truth which pervades everything.

Blavatsky was a creature of whom it is not possible to form an even remotely accurate concept by hearsay alone; her talents were of a kind that is seldom found, and the wild rumors spread about them were likely to arouse suspicion. Anyone who personally came upon her could, unless he had a bias, only speak of her with admiration. For those who cannot comprehend the mysteries of inner human nature, she must remain a riddle; but for those who were able to penetrate into the sphere of their own thoughts and feelings, their soul was an open book of which nothing was hidden. A poet of modern times admirably says:

There are two natures in every person.
One is a child of daylight,
It shows traces of the sun everywhere,
There is nothing dark and nothing obscure.
You can see through them to the core,
You do not find anything strange, there is no riddle,
There is insight, clarity and trust,
It is crystal clear, simple, clear as day.

The other is as though it was born out of the night,
You do not know them and no one is measuring them;
Inspection and reason shall be defiled against her,
She is a strange guest within her own house.
Intangible, she throws into the realities
Her flickering and mad play of shadows,
Like dreams which pass through the bright day,
Tangles the threads and hexes the target.

Learned critics have only tried to analyze the “other nature” of H.P. Blavatsky; her one simple and true nature was not apparent to those critics.

Today there are still enough people today who know nothing about Theophrastus Paracelsus except that he got physical exercise in his leisure hours by waving his sword in the air; they believe that this was his only occupation. They realize that he left only buckskin pants upon his death, but his philosophy does not exist for them.

Likewise, Blavatsky’s critics could only see the mask of her personality, since in order to know the spirit, one must be in contact with one’s own spirit. Like other human beings, Blavatsky was a person in whom a spiritual individuality manifested. The biography of this spiritual individuality includes many reincarnations, whose events are beyond our observation. But the following may perhaps give us an inkling of how such reincarnations take place.

In 1831 a wealthy lady lived in Ekaterinoslav, Russia, in great seclusion, who only socialized with a few acquaintances, including the wife of a colonel, Peter Hahn, later the mother of H.P. Blavatsky. Not much was known about her other than that she was very charitable and greatly concerned with mystical things. As a result, she was regarded by many with superstitious awe.

Although she was in the best of health, one day this lady informed some of her friends that she was about to die but would reincarnate again shortly. The next morning, she was found dead in her room, but the doctors could not find a satisfactory explanation for her sudden death. On the same morning, Helena Petrovna Hahn was born.

Whatever may be thought of it, witnesses have confirmed that when the child learned to walk, her favorite outing was to the grave of the late lady, and that the girl repeated verbatim to her mother various confidential conversations her mother had had with that lady before Helena was born. It has been asserted that this spiritual individuality was an Indian in a still earlier incarnation, but such speculations have no further value. If we mention them at all, it is only to alert the reader to the possibility of such reincarnations and the fact that they can be remembered.

Helena’s father was the already mentioned Colonel Peter Hahn, and her mother was née Helene Fadeyev, a niece of the privy councilor Andrei Fadeyev and Princess Helene Dolgoruky. Relatives relate the strangest things about her youth, for which “exact” science has no explanation and with which our scholars will most readily come to terms with by regarding them as invented.

Several anecdotes relating to this can be found in A.P. Sinnett’s Incidents in the Life of Madame Blavatsky. Here we only emphasize that she was clairvoyant from an early age. For example, a murderer hidden in a haystack was once discovered using her information. This feat cost her father a large amount of money to appease the Russian police, who of course assumed that if Colonel Hahn had not known about the murder himself, such a discovery could not have taken place.

Little Helena seemed to be served by invisible forces. Objects she desired but could not reach, came to her, carried by invisible hands; she read the minds of those present like an open book; and prophesied events came true later. She was indeed a prodigy, an object of admiration and to the superstitious, of fear.

Since she was a Russian by birth, her nature had various peculiarities particular to the Russian nation, especially a high degree of perseverance and willpower, which degenerated into stubbornness. There was nothing she could not achieve when she wanted it.

This quality led to her marriage to sixty-year-old General Nikifor Blavatsky, a former governor of Erivan [present-day Tbilisi] province in the Caucasus. When she was nineteen, her governess said, “You are such a stubborn thing that you can never get a man; not even old General Blavatsky would marry you”; so she wanted to show her governess that she was wrong.

Not long after, she got the general to ask for her in marriage, and soon afterwards, in 1848, the marriage took place. But when, after the wedding, he wanted to display his marital affection, her nature revolted. When he became unwelcome, she was beside herself. Knocking him to the ground with a silver candlestick, she fled on horseback in the dark of night, believing she had killed him.

But General Blavatsky was not dead; he made a full recovery but resolved that it would be better to consent to a divorce than to live any longer with so dangerous a wife. After this event, Blavatsky traveled, spending many years in Central Asia, South America, Mexico, and Africa. She met a Copt in Egypt who taught her the “secret” sciences; she visited the United States, Japan, and India and attempted to enter Tibet in 1852, but did not succeed until 1856, when she remained there for three years.

In this short sketch, it is not our intention to give a detailed description of Blavatsky’s experiences. What appears to be the most interesting period in her life, from 1867 to 1870, is shrouded in mystical darkness. At that time, as she told her confidants, her body was in Tbilisi, in a state in which her outward consciousness returned only intermittently, while her inner “I” was in Tibet, maintaining her self-conscious existence in association with her teachers. She said, “I was divided into two personalities at the time. When I left my sick body in Tbilisi, I was a person who cared nothing for H.P. Blavatsky and did not even take notice its existence. When I awoke as H.P. Blavatsky, I was what I had been before, but remembered with reverence that second person.”

We leave it to our philosophers, if they know anything about the constitution of human nature, to account for this dichotomy, or, if they know nothing of such things, to only laugh at it. Dealing with Blavatsky featured a daily series of unexplainable events. For example, the writer of these lines often received answers to his thoughts from her; letters were written by invisible hands on paper in front of him; and manuscripts locked in boxes were corrected in an inexplicable way.

Once, for example, I was sitting in a corner of the room while Blavatsky was busy writing in another corner. I wondered what had become of one of my friends who had died in America. Blavatsky handed me a piece of paper, on which, while I had been thinking, she copied a well-chosen portrait of my friend, Mrs. K.W., as she lay in death. Beside it stood a strange-looking elemental, which seemed to await the departing astral body of the dying person, while the entrance of the spirit into the divine was indicated by a rainbow whose end lost itself in the sky.

Even as a child, Blavatsky wrote “ghost communications.” But one would be wrong to take her for a believing spiritualist; on the contrary, she scoffed at the spiritists’ belief in spirits and gave completely different explanations about the occurrence of such things. The following may serve as an illustration. She says:

When I was a young girl, I often saw the “ghost” of my aunt, who had moved to Germany with her son many years ago and who was believed to have died, since nothing was heard from her. This “ghost” wrote through my hand in German (which I had never learned), and in my aunt’s handwriting (which I only saw later), told us how she had died. She also gave the details of her funeral and the text which the pastor had preached on that occasion. In addition, the “spirit” of her son came and informed us that he had ended his earthly life by a suicidal hand and now deeply regrets this step, because he would have to suffer a lot. He also asked for the helpful prayers of those present. Everything was very touching, until it turned out that the aunt was alive and well in Berlin, and her son was also safely employed in a shop in London.

Blavatsky explained that once the germ of an idea has begun to develop in the mind, it develops according to a certain regularity, just as hearing a shot by a sleeping man leads to a dream about a whole murder story and may give rise to a series of consistent ideas, in which there is no truth. The brain, if not supervised by reason, works in a similar way, like a music box, which once set in motion, plays one particular piece and no other; no spirit of a dead person needs to be involved.

Such explanations were not at all to the liking of certain spiritists, who were enthusiastic about dealing with the “dear departed” and did not want to be disturbed in their sweet dreams in a fool’s paradise. So it was, that Blavatsky, while being decried as a spiritualist by the unbelievers, had the spiritualists themselves as their worst enemies, who took every opportunity to blaspheme her.

Blavatsky, for her part, fought spiritist superstition using the weapons of reason. She did not deny the “miracles” that the spiritualists marveled at but only disputed their interpretation. In all circumstances, the spiritualists ascribed these phenomena as the action of the spirits of the dead, but she explained them in a natural way. In order to prove that any person endowed with the necessary faculties, could produce these phenomena himself without the help of spirits, but since she had this talent, she produced them. For this reason, she was soon decried as a swindler by people who knew nothing of such things and did not understand why she acted this way. Among these ignorant ones were the majority of the world’s newspaper writers.

Blavatsky claimed not only to be in possession of such powers—not “supernatural,” but extraordinary—but also to be in contact with certain people, her teachers, the “Masters” or “Adepts” in Tibet and Egypt, who possessed the same and even higher spiritual powers. Indeed this seemed to be the case, since many people (including the author) frequently received “occult letters” from these teachers, who enlightened them about various subjects.

Such letters often seemed to suddenly pass from Professor Zöllner’s fourth dimension into the third dimension, that is, from the subjective world, invisible to us, into the visible objective world. They came unbidden and unsolicited, and often just at that moment when good advice was needed.

The discovery of these facts, however, gave rise to new misunderstandings. While those who were far from the matter fancied that Blavatsky was cheating her followers with sleight of hand, a multitude of devotees clung to these Tibetan Adepts, or, as they called them, “Mahatmas,” with a superstitious deification, regarding them not as men but as gods.

Among these superstitious devotees were some eminent members of the Theosophical Society, and it was precisely these who, when the storm over H.P. Blavatsky finally erupted, fled in cowardly flight, because this storm dashed the foolish idols they had created for themselves.

What Blavatsky herself thought of these conditions will perhaps be made clear by the following extract from one of her letters to the author:

Würzburg, April 3, 1886

Dear friend! Unfortunately, what you write about the mischief that is being done with the so-called “Mahatmas” is absolutely right. Haven’t I watched these follies for eight years? Didn’t I buck and fight N.’s* exaggerated fantasies, trying every day to get him to dampen his exaggerations? Wasn’t he told, as you know, that if he doesn’t see our teachers for what they really are and stops inflaming people’s imaginations with his exaggerations, he’s putting all the responsibility on himself for all evil that befalls us? Wasn’t he told even then that there were no such “Mahatmas,” who, he believes, hold Mount Meru on their fingertips and physically fly about in the air at will? I foresaw everything that would come out of his exaggerations; I have fought against it in vain, and despairing of my helplessness, I finally gave up the fight.

* In the original letter, she names Colonel Olcott. Hartmann replaced his name with “N.” so as not to offend Olcott. Further on in the same letter, HPB praises Olcott for all the good he has done. (Translator’s note.)

I was sent to America for a specific purpose. There I met N. engaged in spiritistic investigations and just as much in love with the “spirits” as he later was of the adepts. I was commissioned to show him that whatever happens in the “mediums” through their “spirits” enables others to do so. The ringing of "astral bells,” mind reading, “spirit tapping,” and the like can be accomplished by anyone without the help of “spirits” if he has the ability in his physical body through the organs of his astral body. All my family have known that I have had this ability since I was four. I could move furniture without making visible contact with it and make objects fly around in the air while my astral arms, which held those things, remained invisible.

I told N. that I met the adepts in India, in Egypt and Spain, and that they are persons who still live there today, and that calling these people “yogis,” “Rosicrucians,” or “Kabbalists” would not change the matter. These adepts were men who lived withdrawn and in quiet and did not associate themselves fully with anyone, unless one had (as I did) undergone seven and ten years of probation, and during that time had shown complete devotion and proved that one could keep silent even in the face of impending death. I fulfilled these conditions, and am—what I am.

All I have been allowed to say is that beyond the Himalayas, where there lives a core of adepts who belong to different nationalities and are known to the Teshu [Tashi or Panchen] Lama. I know several of them personally and said that they could do amazing things but that they did not dare to please the curiosity of a fool. As N. and X. [unknown] heard about these things, they became obsessed.

Then came D. [probably Damodar] and other fanatics who started calling the adepts “Mahatmas.”† Little by little, as we became friends, the adepts were turned into gods. They began to be invoked and worshiped, and made more and more fabulous and supernatural. Some Hindus imagined that these adepts were their ancient rishis, who had never died and were over 700,000 years old, that they lived invisibly in sacred trees, and when visible appeared with long green hair and bodies made of moonshine.

 †Mahatmas, from maha, “great,” and atma, “spirit.” This means something like a great spirit, a high genius, and corresponds to the German expression Euer Hochwohlgeboren [“Your Highness”]. (Hartmann’s note.)

Between these madnesses on the one hand and N.’s crushes on the other hand, what could I do? With horror and anger, I saw the wrong way they took. They believed that the “masters” must be omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent. If a Hindu or Parsee desired a son or a job, the “Mahatmas” should help him to get it, and if it didn’t, he felt he had been wronged by the “Theosophical Society.” When any foolish thing was done, he said, “Why don’t the Mahatmas take better care of him?”

That these adepts were human beings whose fortunes might be finite did not enter the minds of their admirers. The root cause of all this ignorance lies in the general ignorance of human nature, and in the failure of modern science and religion to give people anything better, higher, and nobler than a striving for money and reputation. Put that fact on one scale, and the confusion which modern spiritism has created in many minds on the other, and the riddle is solved.

Yours, etc. H.P.B.

In this we fully agree with Blavatsky’s views. The world in general was not mature enough to understand the theosophy she proclaimed. The eyes of our scholarly world, accustomed to the darkness of ignorance, could not endure the light which spread the Adepts’ teaching; it was unable to follow the high flight of the Himalayan eagle. Unable to grasp the spirit of wisdom, it curiously sought the source from which that wisdom flowed so as to throw dirt on it.

Here the author cannot fail to add in parenthesis, that when he came to Germany in 1884, he found the same silliness and exaggerations among the members of the Theosophical Society at that time. The attempt to bring them back to the correct level failed. They wanted to believe either in supernatural miracles or in nothing at all; they wanted either ubiquitous “Mahatmas” or no teachers at all. When they realized that their wildest expectations about the adepts’ personalities were wrong, the swarm of “wisdom seekers” grabbed the banner and scattered it about like chaff in the wind. People threw the baby out with the bathwater and wanted nothing more to do with real wisdom, since the only ideal of wisdom they were looking for consisted in satisfying scientific curiosity.

Let’s go back to Blavatsky. In New York in 1875, in association with Colonel H.S. Olcott and others, she founded the Theosophical Society, whose special purpose was the study of the literary treasures of the Orient and the secret sciences. This study soon made it clear that the ancient Indians possessed knowledge of which the modern worldview does not even understand the rudiments. This fact was highlighted by the appearance of two volumes by Blavatsky entitled Isis Unveiled. This book, like The Secret Doctrine, which appeared later, contains many citations from works which Blavatsky has never seen, yet these citations are all correct—even the page numbers given—which lends credence to Blavatsky’s claim that she saw these quotations in the astral light.

Moreover, the contents of this book proved that she was initiated into the higher mysteries of Freemasonry, although, as is known, these degrees are not accessible to the female sex in the usual way.

Her revelations astounded the whole of America, and what was said about the “occult phenomena” produced by her power soon gave rise to the most outlandish rumors. Then began the persecution of the Theosophists by the part of the press which voluptuously appropriates any gossip just to deliver something sensational to its readers, regardless of any injustice done to the cause of truth. Just as the big dogs beyond the oceans barked, so the little mutts gaped by the side. Only Blavatsky herself took no part. There was nothing so untrue and silly that was not printed by newspaper writers and devoured by faithful readers. The more honorable of such papers, such as the New York Sun, later retracted the accusations they brought; other newspapers, including German ones, would be advised to do the same.

But after all, what does a person’s reputation matter? In this case, its importance lies only in the fact that such slanders may prevent those who believe them from examining and taking advantage of the doctrines which the person in question has proclaimed. This consequence confirms Blavatsky’s teaching that every act and every omission falls back on the one who commits it.

An old proverb says: “Where God builds a church, the devil builds a chapel next to it.” The more you can use a thing, the more you can abuse it. The spread of Christianity, the religion of philanthropy, had in its wake the atrocities of the Crusaders, trials of heretics, burnings at the stake, and the Inquisition. Western audiences’ glimpses of certain Eastern teachings gave rise in some places to a renewed addiction to forbidden knowledge. Some even believed that schools should be set up to teach the preparation of love potions, gold making, witchcraft, and magic.

Many a man, when he saw his wild expectations deceived, declared himself deceived. But it is not the fault of truth that it is misunderstood, nor the fault of liberty that it is misused. To prevent all the evil that could possibly arise from the spread of enlightenment, there would be no other means other than spiritual slavery, the quiet of the churchyard, which is the ideal of stupidity.

The light diffused by Blavatsky created life and threw deep shadows upon those who ventured into her sphere filled with conceit and selfishness. Yet Blavatsky had not come to bring peace to fools, but rather the sword of knowledge, which threatens to destroy foolishness.

Since the main direction of the Theosophical Society was to learn about the secret sciences of the East, it was decided to move the Society’s headquarters to India. The move took place in December 1878. Blavatsky took up residence first in Bombay and then in Adyar, near Madras. In India she was received with joy, and rajas and maharajas courted her favor. The natives regarded the members of the Theosophical Society as their liberators, as the restorers of their religion and national autonomy, which had been lost through the caste system. Colonel Olcott never grew tired of trumpeting to the world the merits of ancient Aryavartha [the abode of the aryas, or noble ones] over that of modern civilization. The Indians, for so long oppressed by Europeans and accustomed to looking up to them as demigods and objects of fear, now saw Europeans showering them with praise and courting their favors. As a result, in a short time many Indians imagined they were just as good as any European—indeed much better.

Blavatsky’s teachings—or what which was thought to be her teachings—spread rapidly in India; thousands followed Colonel Olcott’s banner. These circumstances led to a sour period for the Christian missionaries, who now saw the field of their activity as “converters of pagans” becoming smaller and smaller, so that Blavatsky’s removal became a burning existential question for them. Indeed the “pagans” began to revert from the Christian church back to Brahminism. The more the people came to know the true spirit of Christianity, the more they believed it to be found in the Buddhist community, or in Advaita philosophy, rather than in Christian sectarianism.

The missionaries’ main concern was to undermine Blavatsky’s reputation, or at least to make her unpopular, for her teaching could not be attacked without destroying her personally, since this teaching forms the basis of every religion and therefore also that of Christianity.

In order to harm Blavatsky personally, the missionaries were offered a favorable opportunity through their connection with a housekeeper of the Theosophical headquarters, who was later dismissed and with whom Blavatsky had dealt confidentially. She had carelessly written a number of letters to this person, mocking the fanaticism of some of her worshipers, calling one a “fool” and the other a “dreamer.”

Although the characteristics she gave were absolutely correct for the cases in question, it was assumed that the Theosophists whose vanity had been offended would withdraw from H.P. Blavatsky after the publication of these letters. The missionaries therefore brought forth these letters and published them with many alterations and additions.

This well-prepared publication enraged the world’s press. “Revelations” were babbled about. Perhaps never since the time when theologians argued over whether or not Adam had a navel have so much ink and paper been wasted on so insubstantial a subject as when it was imagined that the self-knowledge of truth was dependent on believing in the credibility of Blavatsky’s personality.

The missionaries’ intrigue worked to the advantage of spreading the Theosophists’ reputation throughout the world and bring new members into the Theosophical Society. Nonetheless, some who were less discerning but all the more enthusiastic and whose whole theosophy consisted in a blind faith in Blavatsky’s personality (and in a thirst for the gratification of curiosity) were misled and denied the truth before the rooster had crowed to announce the dawn of the day of knowledge.

What Blavatsky taught was something like this: “The world is caught up in a dream life or a make-believe life; true life only begins when man truly recognizes himself. Do not think that true knowledge is what you think you know, because someone else has said it is so-and-so, or because it seems so-and-so. A mere opinion, hypothesis, or theory is by no means your own knowledge. Don’t look for the truth in the multitude of opinions, but in truth itself, which is simple. Listen to the word of truth, which speaks within you, and to the voice of silence, which can only be heard when the storm of passions has calmed down. Opinions are ephemeral and changeable, but the truth revealed in one’s higher self-awareness is eternal. Strive for purity and unity so that the Spirit of Truth may manifest within you. Believe this teaching, not because I preach it, but because you know the truth of it in your heart.”

Instead of following this advice, people argued about whether the occult letters they and others had received from the adepts were genuine or not, and whether the Mahatmas really existed; otherwise one could not believe the teachings.

“Do not concern yourself with appearances, but seek true being,” Blavatsky stressed. “All that is perishable is but a parable; appearances prove nothing other than that of appearing. After all, if someone were to shake the sun to prove a lie to be true, that would prove nothing other than that the person can shake the sun, but not that the lie is the truth.”

Instead of understanding this, people argued about whether certain occult phenomena produced by Blavatsky were real or sleight of hand, and they wanted to make belief in the wisdom teachings that she proclaimed dependent on this. The headquarters of the Theosophical Society became the scene of a fool’s comedy, in which the missionaries stood in the place of the clowns. The whole world raved about the “revelations” in Adyar, although none but the initiated seemed to know what they were about.

A member of a “scientific club” devoted to mind reading and the study of ghost stories (the “Society for Psychical Research” in London) came to India to play the role of an “expert” in giving his verdict about the source of Blavatsky’s wisdom, and whether the letters she and others received from the adepts were really written by those adepts or by Blavatsky herself.

Since the adepts did not appear before him to prove their authorship to him, and since he could not measure the depth of Blavatsky’s thought with a yardstick, he found no other way of avoiding damaging his reputation as an “expert” than to declare the whole thing a fraud. He wrote a book about how he imagined that this and that could have been done by sleight of hand, but with no further proof other than that it was done that way.

Going into the details of this comedy again would be a waste of time. Suffice it to say that in view of this report, Blavatsky was unanimously declared by this association as “the greatest fraudster of the century”—a declaration trumpeted in all directions as an ipse dixit of science and preyed upon by the faithful. Nowadays, however, the opinions of most of the members of that society have changed as well.

At the time, the impression made on Blavatsky by all these suspicions was not particularly pleasant. She was ill at the time, and a consultation with eminent medical authorities determined that she could not live another twenty-four hours. Since it was known that she wished to have her body cremated upon her death, official permission for the cremation was obtained. But the following night, her health was miraculously restored, and instead of being burned, she decided to make a change of air by traveling to Europe.

A few days later, she left for Naples, accompanied by the author of these lines and a companion, lived for two months in Torre del Greco at the foot of Mount Vesuvius, then went to Würzburg, later to Ostend, and finally to London, where she founded her magazine Lucifer and completed her great work The Secret Doctrine, after receiving much of the manuscript of this work from invisible hands and in an “inexplicable” way at the above-mentioned places, as well as on board the steamer during our crossing from Madras to Naples (although the world has not heard of this circumstance until now).

Her activity in London gave rise to a new revival of Theosophical societies in England and throughout Europe. To the extent that their teachings were understood, prejudices against them declined. Although in her lifetime the booksellers of London refused to undertake the sale of her writings for fear of causing offense, today they quarrel over publishing them.

On May 8, 1891, H.P. Blavatsky died, surrounded by her friends and disciples, at the European headquarters of the Theosophical Society in London, without any particularly conspicuous antecedent ill health.

It is possible the great spirit who was so active through her personality for a long time and worked with such great success for the spiritual evolution of humanity will sooner or later appear again in a different human shell as a new herald of eternal truth.

Robert Hütwohl lives and researches in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He is currently translating a large number of Franz Hartmann’s articles from various journals into English. In 2001 Robert published Bibliography of Franz Hartmann, MD with an Addenda: His Stay in Georgetown, Colorado. He is working on a project which can only be described as “an edification towards escape velocity for chelas.” He has also been working on research concerning Atlantis and various studies on Gautama Buddha’s important text, the Kalacakra-tantra or Wheel of Time tantra, and its commentary, the Vimalaprabha.

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Printed in the  Summer 2022 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Hoeller, Stephan A.,  "Remembering an American Sage: An Admirer and Associate Reminisces about Manly Palmer Hall" Quest 110:3, pg 32-34

By Stephan A. Hoeller

The year was 1953. A recent arrival from war-torn Europe, I found myself transplanted to Southern California, where I was eager to make contact with a remarkable man who might have justly been regarded as the most notable expert on the esoteric tradition on the American continent, if not in the world.

Early in his life, he became known as the author of the folio-sized, beautifully bound, and illustrated volume entitled The Secret Teachings of All Ages (with a host of highly impressive subtitles). At the library and vault of the headquarters of the institution he founded, Los Angeles’ Philosophical Research Society, he held such treasures as first editions of H.P. Blavatsky’s Secret Doctrine, replete with her handwritten notes, as well as alchemical and Rosicrucian codices, and a triangular cipher manuscript attributed to the Count of St. Germain. Having been introduced to these literary marvels by his kindly helper Mr. Gilbert Olson, I was eagerly looking forward to seeing the great man in person.

Some weeks later, I had the good fortune to attend one of Manly P. Hall’s weekday lectures in the smaller intimate lecture hall of the Society. I was filled with unprecedented amazement. This man was possibly the greatest orator of the twentieth century, and by that time had already delivered over 7,500 lectures and authored over 150 books and booklets. Yet he was available to us twice a week with his fabulous discourses, all perfectly structured and faultlessly delivered. From his youth until his passing, people wondered whether his phenomenal memory or his alleged occult powers were responsible for his oratory. (He always denied that he possessed paranormal faculties.)

From these early times on, I attended as many of his lectures as my schedule permitted. With the coming of the sixties, his audiences swelled to ever larger crowds. The sage met the burgeoning interest of the mostly youthful crowd with a t mixed reaction. On some occasions, he recalled that great cultural and even spiritual changes have at times come about as the result of the gatherings of young people. (He was fond of mentioning that the Meiji Restoration in Japanese history was virtually born in the teahouses of Tokyo and Kyoto.) At the same time, he viewed the undisciplined ways of the hippie subculture with disfavor. The occult interests of the sixties generation did not please him much. He considered ceremonial magic and witchcraft as unnecessary byways of the occult. Even more, he showed hostility toward visualizing and “manifesting” for material benefits. He considered using the occult and paranormal for material and selfish ends as bordering on black magic. Occultism without benevolent compassion appeared to him like sacrilege.

What then was Mr. Hall’s philosophy of life, or mystical orientation, that he communicated in his literary works and spoken words? To attempt an explanation, it might be best to refer once more to his magnum opus, the encyclopedic work devoted mainly to the Western esoteric tradition. Its subtitle reads: An Encyclopedic Outline of Masonic, Hermetic, Qabbalistic, and Rosicrucian Symbolic Philosophy. From these titles, we may deduce that he was aware of a tradition originally descending from the Mysteries of both early and late antiquity, namely Egypt, classical Greece, and Greco-Egyptian Alexandria.

Mr. Hall noted that his interpretation was of the “Secret Teachings concealed within the Rituals, Allegories and Mysteries of all ages.” His recognition of a secret tradition proceeding from these sources indicates some orientation that was not common in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century, except for the monumental contribution of H.P. Blavatsky and her followers.

Mr. Hall was reverential and enthusiastic about the person and writings of Blavatsky. (He even sculpted a fine bronze bust of Mme. Blavatsky, and he owned an almost life-sized copy of a painting of her by Heinrich Schmiechen, the original reposing in Adyar.) HPB, Mr. Hall believed, was the latest true representative of this tradition, which she enriched with elements of Buddhist and Hindu provenance. He recognized Blavatsky as the latest link in a mysterious chain of messenger-sages come to reenunciate the ageless message of authentic gnosis. In his work The Phoenix, he wrote, “Take away the contribution of H.P. Blavatsky and all modern occultism falls like a house of cards.” His most important contact with her tradition was the German-American Theosophist Max Heindel, author of The Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception and other works, who, while identifying himself as a Rosicrucian, was teaching doctrines largely traceable to HPB.

Few know that Mr. Hall had served a sort of apprenticeship with Max Heindel early in the 1900s. In fact, he considered himself a “Rosicrucian Christian” and on other occasions described “the genuine Rosicrucian movement as an utterly reliable esoteric form of Christianity.” Mr. Hall also respected Annie Besant and called her “an esoterically inspired great social reformer and humanitarian.” One unconfirmed rumor declared that in the 1920s, Mr. Hall had an interview with Besant, offering his services if she thought he could function in the Theosophical Society. Dr. Besant reputedly advised him to continue his work on his own. Certainly he gave much evidence throughout his life of his sympathy for Theosophy and the Theosophical Society.

In his lectures and private conversations, Manly P. Hall frequently indicated that a certain convergence occurred on American soil, and that the two conjoining parties were a European transmission of ancient esoterica, originating in such sources as Neoplatonism, Hermeticism, and Gnosticism, and on the other hand, a certain psychic substratum of Native American provenance. In an essay published in 1964 entitled “Ancient America,” Mr. Hall indicated parallels and trajectories joining the spirit in these two esoteric streams. One of these, he felt, could be found in Native American tribal fraternities, the other in Hermetic, Rosicrucian, and Masonic secret societies from across the Atlantic. Far-fetched as such connections seem, their veracity is certainly worth considering. I am reminded of a motto presented to me as a dedication to some of Mr. Hall’s essays by their editor, the esoteric historian Mitch Horowitz: “Nothing is stranger than truth.” The quest for ecstasy, trance, dream, and vision, all of which periodically emerge in American culture, presented important contributions to occult America as well as to the general culture.

It may be useful at this point to take stock of Mr. Hall’s connection with some esoteric disciplines and teachings. By now, it may be apparent that he was truly a universal man and that his interest in various fields of esoterica was for the most part of an impartial nature. But it would be inaccurate to leave out of our considerations his great love for alchemy. In the vault of the Philosophical Research Society reposed numerous alchemical manuscripts that he had collected over several decades. It was considered one of the best collections of its kind on the American continent. Even C.G. Jung availed himself of Mr. Hall’s alchemical collection when writing his work Psychology and Alchemy.

The prize possession in Mr. Hall’s alchemical collection was a massive and colorful document called the Ripley Scroll, an actual parchment scroll of considerable magnitude, depicting in vivid colors and beautiful design the entire process of alchemical transformation. We were given to understand that only a small number of copies of this scroll were in existence. When requested to do so, Mr. Hall’s longtime librarian, Pearl Thomas, would bring out the Ripley Scroll from the vault and unroll it across several combined library tables, and we could view the entire transformation process to our delight.

Mr. Hall’s alchemical collection contained a considerable number of impressive codices in addition to the Ripley Scroll. Upon his demise, in tandem with one of my fellow lecturers, the late Roger Weir, we persuaded the heirs to sell the entire alchemical collection to the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, where now, after much restorative work, it is sometimes exhibited under the name of the Manly Hall Collection.

Though born in Canada (March 19, 1901), Mr. Hall spent most of his long life in the U.S. and in fact in Southern California. While in his twenties and thirties, he lectured all over the country in prestigious places, beginning with Carnegie Hall. Early in his life he was treated to a worldwide tour, which took him to much of Asia, the Middle East, and Europe. From his journey he wrote spirited accounts, often not without sharp criticism of the conditions he encountered on his journeys.

While still young, he became ill with an affliction of his thyroid (possibly cancer) in the course of which the ill organ was surgically removed. Chemical thyroid supplements being unavailable in those times, he was set up for a lifelong problem with obesity, the reason for which was not generally known. Nevertheless, having been raised by his grandmother, who was a physician of an alternative medical discipline, he enjoyed fairly robust health until the end of his life, and kept the Grim Reaper at bay for eighty-nine years until his death in 1990.

Like many outstanding intellectuals of his time, including Aldous Huxley and Christopher Isherwood, Mr. Hall once wrote for the movie studios, where he acquired a colorful coterie of acquaintances. One of his close friends was Bela Lugosi of Dracula fame, whose last marriage Mr. Hall solemnized in a ministerial capacity. Mr. Hall’s first wife, who suffered an early death, was a movie actress (his second wife, Marie Baur, was a student of esoteric matters). At the time I took up my residence in Hollywood, there were still numerous people at the movie studios who knew Manly Hall as “that tall interesting gentleman.”

The “Sage of Los Angeles” was a kindly and considerate gentleman, not only of the old school, but of the perennial school of civility. As it becomes increasingly evident, he was in friendly contact with numerous prominent figures in public life, the arts, and professions. I personally witnessed at least one visit of then Governor Ronald Reagan to Mr. Hall’s office, while his frequent telephone conversations with Elvis Presley were known to some of us. If walls could speak, the tales told by the neo-Aztec architecture of the Philosophical Research Society could disclose memories of visitors and admirers of great stature who walked there ever since its founding in 1934.

It is a teaching well known in some theologies (notably the Jewish) that the dead live on in the memories of those who knew them in life. As times pass and the admiring crowds vanish, it may be of importance for the few who were still present when the sage was with us to invoke their memories of this truly remarkable man. Those who remember will not let go of the image of the noble figure who was so often seen by us in his office or library and lecture room surrounded by splendid objects from many cultures, emanating an aura of gentlemanly refinement combined with subtle humor, seated in a huge chair, delivering long discourses of inspiring and informative content. When closing my eyes, I can still perceive the Barrymore-like profile and can hear the melodious voice conveying idealism, insight, and wonder. The memories of the sage have their own liberating power. In an age where fear, sorrow, and confusion are omnipresent, such thoughts are a great blessing indeed. Perhaps this small account of reminiscences may lighten the weight of time and place us on the eternal ways, where we might meet the unforgettable sage.

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Stephan A. Hoeller was born and raised in Hungary and was educated for the monastic priesthood in his earlier years. A member of the Theosophical Society since 1952, he has lectured in the U.S. as well as in Europe, New Zealand, and Australia. He served as a professor of religion at the College of Oriental Studies for a number of years and is the author of four books published by Quest Books: The Fool’s Pilgrimage: Kabbalistic Meditations on the Tarot; Jung and the Lost Gospels: Insights into the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi Library; The Gnostic Jung and the Seven Sermons to the Dead; and Gnosticism: New Light on the Ancient Tradition of Inner Knowing. He has been associated with the Besant Lodge of the TSA in Hollywood for many years and has been a bishop of the Gnostic Church (Ecclesia Gnostica) since 1967. He became the principal lecturer of the Philosophical Research Society (in addition to Mr. Hall) in 1970, and remained in that capacity for some years after Mr. Hall’s death.

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Printed in the  Summer 2022 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Levine, Arlene Gay,  "Elusive Beauty" Quest 110:3, pg 30-31

 

By Arlene Gay Levine

If your everyday life seems poor, don’t blame it; blame yourself; admit to yourself you are not enough of a poet to call forth its riches; because for the creator there is no poverty and no poor indifferent place.

—Rainer Maria Rilke

Whether in Deuteronomy, when Moses rebuked the rebellious Israelites, or multiple times throughout the Gospels, “ears to hear” refers to the capability to respond in one’s heart to the words of the Lord, or, more precisely, to be spiritually awake. What does this have to do with beauty? Everything.

In my article “The Alchemy of Adaptation,” published in the spring 2018 issue of Quest, I wrote: “Many artists speak of allowing ‘the brush to paint,’ ‘the fingers to play the notes,’ or ‘the words to arrive.’ Is this magic? I believe so. What they are really referring to is a skill they have developed, through conscious receptivity, to become clear vehicles for Universal Will. Over time, maybe countless lives, we can gradually learn to let the ‘little me’ step out of the way ‘for the performance of the miracles of the One Thing,’ as the Hermetic text the Emerald Tablet of Hermes puts it.”

Painters, musicians, authors, and poets who learn to open their senses and hearts can channel beauty directly from the Source that created them and all existence. It raises their work to a higher plane, above the prerequisites of skill and craft. As each of us is a hub of expression for the Source, this potential lies latent in everyone.

Gerard Manley Hopkins, an English poet and Jesuit priest in the Victorian era, wrote, “I do not think I have ever seen anything more beautiful than the bluebell I have been looking at. I know the beauty of our Lord by it.” Somehow, while observing these tiny flowers, he was able to transcend the simple vision of a small part of nature and see the magnificence of the creator abiding there.

Do you think Hopkins could have possessed this vision if he was seeing through the eyes of his everyday self, the one who worries, frets, and out of fear lives in either the past or the future? What is required is to be totally present in the moment, allowing the veil of all that is unreal to drop from our thoughts. It is like the state one endeavors to reach in meditation. The subtle difference here is permitting ourselves to flow utterly into unison with, and be fully accessible to, a deeper knowing for the purpose of cocreating.

Have you ever been entranced by the ever-changing kaleidoscope of the natural world, slipped into the notes of a sonata, become the intricate twists and turns of a tango, channeled a Petrarchan sonnet? Any of these moments, and innumerable others, offer the opportunity to be possessed by love.

There is almost a quality of total self-effacement, not in a negative sense, but as a means to humility. In so doing, the individual becomes an empty vessel filled by a Mind which is capable of guiding you beyond what is possible on your own. Unwillingness to be in tune and instructed in this manner prevents us from conveying true beauty. So if, for example, you are writing and catch yourself thinking about what to write next, put down your pen! Breathe, let go, and simply listen.

For me, the natural world was the first ingress to finding the beauty of which I speak. A sigh of wind through trees, the chanting of the birds, a chorus of crickets, the soft caress of a light rain on my skin, the aroma of a rose—rapt attention to all these sensations and more was my magic carpet to arrive at the door of the Divine.

One day, by chance, I happened to spy two sparrow hawks circling so high it hurt to look. In my lap was a poetry book, where words struggled to be what I’d just seen: the cobalt sky a canvas for flight, the hawks inscribing eternity upon the vanishing October light.

A pungent Indian summer breeze prompted whispers from remaining leaves. I eavesdropped, blinked my eyes; only one bird remained. That feathered missile launched into air so rare, I could no longer see him there, but wished I could go too.

The weight of book, paper, and pen drew me back to earth again, but to this day, part of me ascends. 

Star Trails* Some grip their lanterns through a great darkness, hearts so tightly woven in the ways of this world, mere shadows of who they might be while others, often ignored or even deemed mad, channel true power, minds illuminated by all that is holy despite the heaviness hunkering down around us . . . Picture Vincent viewing the countryside of St. Rémy from an open window before dawn at St. Paul asylum Imagine the genius of his sight akin to the light from a cameranot yet invented for another century or so, capturing with transcendent vision                    star trails scoring                                    the night                                                 sky

 

* A star trail is a long exposure photograph that shows the movement of stars in the night sky. The stars appear to move in the sky but it is actually the rotation of the earth that causes the perceived movement. This phenomenon could be used to build a better conceptual model of the Earth’s place in the solar system, galaxy, or Universe. Wikipedia

Mystic, poet, author, and educator, Arlene Gay Levine’s prose and poetry have found a home in The New York Times, an off-Broadway show, anthologies, journals, radio programs, and online. Recently her poem “The Climb” won second place in The New York Encounter 2020 Poetry Contest, judged by Dana Gioia. Her poem “Creation” was published in For Every Little Thing (Eerdmans, 2021). Learn more about her at www.arlenegaylevine.com.

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Printed in the  Summer 2022 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Braun, Stephen,  "Beauty and the Joshua Trees" Quest 110:3, pg 23-29

By Stephen Braun

A very specific quest for beauty started in the Mojave Desert, in the part of that desert where the Joshua trees grow. It started ten years ago, when I first experienced them. I have always loved trees, but those captured my heart and attention like no others.

They sit apart, dotting the sunburnt horizon as far as the eye can see. They are prickly and tawdry-looking; they live without much water and grow with a form that is ideal for discouraging predators and pretty much all else in the world. These rare trees exhibit no traces of animated life, showing what appear to be constant signs of distress, with limbs torn asunder here and there. There is constant heat and little wind in the desert, so they remain still; one will never see a Joshua swaying and dancing in the wind. Their prickly exterior ensures there will be fewer animals or birds to be found among their branches than on other trees.

Some find Joshua trees to be exceptionally beautiful; others, who notice the spiny, wayward, and prickly features, find them odd-looking. But are we seeing them as fully as we can?

Seemingly alone and separate from one another, they each offer a unique and individual voice as one moves among them. There is a sense they have something more to share with us than meets the eye, that they want to be heard. Perhaps they can offer something from their world to ours, something revealing, and exceptionally beautiful, about their inner nature. 

The Mojave Desert is a bit out of the way for a New Yorker who doesn’t drive, but I managed to get there several times over the years to commune with those trees. On each occasion, I attempted to hear what they might have to say or share. I started to consider how, as a photographer, I might be able to capture that with a camera. I wondered how I could portray their inner voice and beauty in a way we might be able to understand as busy humanity, blessed with our human set of senses and abilities, which are much different from those of the Joshua trees. In the words of Susan Sontag, author of On Photography, one of the most seminal books about photography as an art form, “Nobody ever discovered ugliness through photographs. But many, through photographs, have discovered beauty.” This essay is about how I did just that, with inspiration from the Joshua trees.

Joshua trees, Joshua Tree National Park

Photography may seem like the epitome of Plato’s cave. Light from the external world enters a lens and is affixed on a plate; the image from said plate is then rendered onto a medium elsewhere, at which point we have what may be considered a photograph. This aspect of photography used to limit how its potential was regarded and the extent to which photographs were counted as a true art form.

As tools have progressed, those opinions have started to change, and photography has begun to earn the reputation it deserves in the canon of fine arts. However, one thing has not changed since the first click of the shutter of a camera obscura until today: photographers have always been concerned with finding the beautiful in unexpected places, or amplifying beauty in places where it is expected.

Figure 1. This work, a study of rose of Sharon flowers by Adolhe Braun (c. 1854), is an albumen silver print from a glass negative. Some might say that flowers as an object are undoubtably beautiful, and therfore this image is. Others migt look at the unusualcomposition of this image and disagree.		Figure 2 Hiram Pulk, nine tearsold, cuts some fish at a canning company. "I ain't very fast, only about five boxes a day. They pay abot 5(cents) a box." Eastport, Maine. National Child Labor Committee collection, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division. Offhan, if we described an image of a young boy with soiled clothing and dead fish next to his bare feet, a dock slightly out of focus, with skewed angles, adn gray skies, one might not imagine it as beautiful. And yet when looking at the image, taken by Lewi Hine to document child labor, many might yet see beauty. What, then, makes this image beautiful?

Of course, cameras also serve utilitarian purposes, such as for documentary or archival photography. But this essay will focus strictly on the camera as a tool for unlocking and identifying more beauty from and in our world.

Like many other artists, photographers have attempted to define beauty as subjectively or objectively based, and they have run into the classic problems and tug of war between the two, as in this example (figures 1 and 2).

The above examples represent conundrums for defining beauty in a photograph, since not everyone would agree on whether each image may be described as beautiful. This has led some to state that beauty is intersubjective, in the sense that it is dependent on a group of judges. But this leads us to even more problems: there’s simply too much beauty in this world and too many judges to see us through to a concrete definition.

	Figure 3: This photograph of the Fontainebleau Forest in France, by Eugene Cuvelier, dates from the early 1860's. Many would agree that this magical photograph of a magical forest effectively captures sublime beauty. The image might arguably pass muster with both the objectively an subjectively defined concepts of beauty, leaving us with yet another conundrum, because both defintions aply.

Finally, we have a third example to consider:(figuare 3)

Initially, photographers had only a limited ability to capture a point of view different from what we are capable of seeing as humans. From the early camera obscuras of the beginning of the nineteenth century until the early twentieth century, photography was very much what-you-see-is-what-you-get, provided subjects could sit still for half an hour or a fifty-pound camera could be lugged to a site. In its earliest days, photographers strove for what-you-see-is-what-you-get, given the difficulties of lighting conditions, early stages of camera equipment, and atmospheric proclivities.

As cameras became more portable and procedures for capturing photos became more process-oriented, photography proceeded to document wonders, civilizations, and beauty throughout the world. Photographs of pyramids, Amazon rain forests, Chinese temples, and the Eiffel Tower spurred interest and excitement to capture more and more beauty.

This early expansion established photography as a medium that was able to capture the world in ways that were considered both factual and fascinating. This new ability to affix light to a silver-coated plate, then use light again to fasten an image from that plate onto a photographic canvas, unlocked new potential to account for detail in the world and humanity. “The photographer,” Paul Rosenfeld wrote of Alfred Stieglitz, “has cast the artist’s net wider into the material world than any man before him or alongside him” (Sontag, 24).

After photography became more established as a medium, some photographers sought to break away from the what-you-see-is-what-you-get relationship between normal human perception and what is being photographed. Early historical breaks from our typical anthropomorphic viewpoint began to move photography into its own unique direction as an art form. This expansion beyond what we typically would notice with our own eyes started in the early twentieth century, with pioneers such as Paul Strand and Edward Weston, who attempted to portray patterns and beauty in unexpected places. With their work and that of other pioneers, photography started to move forward as an art form on its own terms.

Figure 4. Paul Strand, Abstraction, Porch Shadows, Connecticut (1916), gelatin silver print, from the porfolio On My Doorstep, A Porfolio of Eleven Photographs, 1914-73.

In 1915 Paul Strand, who studied under acclaimed photographer Alfred Stieglitz, took a photograph which he titled “Abstract Patterns Made by Bowls,” one of the earliest known attempts at such a perceptual shift. Strand later turned to close-ups of machine forms, nature, and nudes, pulling the curtain and revealing previously unrecognized beauty in both natural and man-made forms. In addition to honing in on macro shots of everyday objects, Strand also played with perspective. His From the Viaduct, New York (1916), showed a new kind of artistic perspective that could be unleashed by the optics and field sensitivities of cameras.

Strand’s work is one of photography’s earliest and best-known breaks from showing the world strictly from our existing perspective. Work like his enabled photography to reveal novel structures, patterns, and beauty in everyday settings and objects. The photographic floodgates were now open, and many photographers have followed suit to this day. (figure 4)

Subsequent advances in camera technology eventually went in numerous other directions, bringing us images of earth from orbit or from vast depths under the sea. We became able to recognize and account for breathtaking beauty in our world that was inconceivable a few generations ago.

Photography now has become known for exploring symmetry, structure, and harmony in the nooks and crannies of our material universe. Susan Sontag writes, “One finds that there is beauty or at least interest in everything, seen with an acute enough eye” (Sontag, 138). Indeed, that is the lifelong quest for many photographers: to unlock beauty and share it with the wider world.

Photography was not generally considered a fine art until the 1970s, when On Photography made probably the most valid and convincing case for it. In that seminal essay, Sontag addressed many aspects of beauty in terms of the photographic medium. When discussing how photography compares to painting, she said, “The painter constructs, the photographer discloses” (Sontag, 71). That prevalent view of photography has been a mixed blessing for the craft, inasmuch as it has led many to discount it as an art form. Yet when a photograph approaches the sublime, we are acutely aware of its potential for transcendence. This too has also made it difficult to pin down succinct definitions of beauty in photographs.

As camera, optical, editing, and storage technologies developed, we have been able to see more beauty in the material world than ever before. Breathtaking images of cellular biological structures are now possible, as are images of the far reaches of outer space, revealed by our cameras: (figures 5 and 6). 

Figure 5. (ABOVE) Cameras in space have revealed breathtaking cos,ic beauty and universal essence. Image courtesy of NASA. Figuar 6. (RIGHT) Our space cameras also have revealed harmnic patterns and laws underlying our universe. Image courtesy of NASA.

 How might we apply twenty-first-century photographic tools to Joshua trees? One suspects that those trees can sing louder for us, no matter what kind of subjectively or objectively based photograph we take.

We can pursue this quest further by considering the problem from a Theosophical point of view, using ancient wisdom. 

 Theosophical Concepts of Beauty

Perhaps we are limiting ourselves with the subjective-objective paradigm to which we default as photographers. What if we were to think less about taking a photograph “of” something and more about “constructing” a photograph using the ancient wisdom? A photograph records the relationship one object has with another: a photographer-object taking a photograph of another object. So then, what if we consider a photograph as a connection between objects, or what if we use photographic tools to explore the inner relationships of an object on its own?

            Let’s look for some of the answers by going back to the Stanzas of Dzyan:

This was the Army of the Voice—the Divine Septenary. The sparks of the seven are subject to, and the servants of, the first second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, and the seventh of the seven . . . These (“sparks”) are called spheres, triangles, cubes, lines, and modellers. (Secret Doctrine, 1:93)

Philosophers through the ages have attempted to express the above wisdom by portraying it in different ways through the concepts of form, number, geometry, harmony, and symmetry; the unifying essence of which points to a divine and loving intelligence embedded in manifested creation, which they called beauty.

The Pythagoreans were able to express the fundamental principles of the universe through numbers and form. Plato in the Symposium and Plotinus in the Enneads define beauty itself in the realm of the ideal Forms, and the beauty of particular objects in their participation in the Forms.

The eighteenth-century Irish philosopher Francis Hutcheson states, “What we call Beautiful in Objects, to speak in the Mathematical Style, seems to be in a compound Ratio of Uniformity and Variety; so that where the Uniformity of Bodys is equal, the Beauty is as the Variety; and where the Variety is equal, the Beauty is as the Uniformity.”

		Figure 7. The Dance of Shiva: six photographs overlaid using seal of Solomon geometries, number sequences, and Tarot symbolis,.

The Roman architect Vitruvius writes, “Symmetry also is the appropriate harmony arising out of the details of the work itself . . . As in the human body, from cubit, foot, palm, inch and other small parts come the symmetric quality of eurhythmy.”

Thomas Aquinas’s second requirement for beauty is “due proportion or consonance.”

The question becomes: how do we apply these ideas of beauty to a photograph? It may be to our benefit to consider a third aspect of beauty—one that considers it in a transitive sense, as informed by patterns within and among conscious objects. If we start to consider beauty this way, and identify harmonics and patterns transitively, what might happen? How might we unlock those patterns in a tree?

We are at an exciting moment for applying the use of ancient wisdom to images. Photography, at its core, is about mathematics and light. As beginners, we were taught the “rule of thirds” as a means of structuring the composition of a photograph. (The term refers to a type of composition in which an image is divided evenly into thirds, both horizontally and vertically, and the subject of the image is placed at the intersection of those dividing lines, or along one of the lines.)

When we take a photograph, we are implicitly managing a complex series of mathematical considerations, sequences, and decisions that determine the various settings of a camera and how the resulting image is affixed to a final medium. We have light meter settings, lens refractions, color settings, flashlight strength and duration, shutter speeds, f-stops, distance from the subject, depth of field, and other mathematical considerations that are required every time we take a photograph, even with a mobile phone. Many of us may be unaware how many of these considerations are automated when we use contemporary cameras.

 

Figure 8. Maple grove, Naperville, Illinois. Thirteen photographs, full circumference, with Tarot and  sared number sequences to inform setings.		Figure 9. Forest bathing, Fairbanks, Alaska. Thirteen photographs, full circumference, with Tarot and sacred number sequences to inform, settings.
Figure 10. (ABOVE) Birch grove, Fairbanks, Alaska. Eleven photographs, half circumference, with Tarot and sacred number sequences to inform settings. Figure 11. (RIGHT) Spruce mandala, Fairbanks, Alaska. Five photographs, half circumference, with Tarot and sacred number sequences to inform settings. Note the mandala pattern, which appeared when I applied the final esoteric adjustment.

 

Photographers make explicit choices about those elements to move their concept and image forward. We now have the ability to take things a step further by incorporating esoteric teachings and paradigms into the mathematics of photography. We have more potential than ever to explore universal harmonies with our cameras. Most image editing software easily allows millions of combinations of the mathematical elements of a photograph, down to the pixel level. Optical lenses are more advanced than ever. We have almost limitless potential to apply esoteric tools in new ways.

The key is to find ways of incorporating esoteric principles into our use of cameras and other imaging tools, in the ways our cameras interface with the external world, and in the settings of the photography tools themselves. The esoteric possibilities are practically endless.

Now let us return to those odd-looking trees in the Mojave Desert to test the transitive aspects of beauty in photographs. I returned to them last April, on my first photographic journey out of New York City since the start of Covid-related lockdowns. This time my journey was different: I was now accompanied by teachings from the ancient wisdom in addition to my trusty camera. I wandered the desert on foot, considering different trees to work on; when a hawk landed in one of the trees near me, I knew it should be the one for attempting a new approach to beauty in a photograph, using ancient teachings.

To start with, I selected six stones from the desert floor and laid the first one to the north of the tree. I then marked out a six-pointed star (sometimes called the Seal of Solomon), with the first stone set at the top of this esoteric symbol, followed by placement of the other stones at angles where I could attempt to capture the tree’s living harmony. I took a series of photos of the tree from each stone, using esoteric concepts to inform intentional camera movements and the angles of my shots. My goal was to capture more of how the tree itself experiences and lives in this world, differently than we do, but in its own beautiful way.

Once home, I completed the last phase of this process by combining the photographs I had taken into one. I sequenced the photographs and applied adjustments to them using esoteric tools such as numerology, harmonic ratios, and Tarot symbolism. The result from this first attempt was encouraging:

Encouraged by this result and subsequent attempts, I started to apply techniques rooted in the ancient wisdom to trees across the United States in a new project called American Tree Portraits, which so far has included trees from fifteen states. The results have been startling, and a nascent body of work has started to emerge.

And now let us return to the Joshua trees and the inspiration of the Mojave Desert. They have shown us new ways to find beauty by applying esoteric tools within camera settings and the imaging process., We may now bring more voices and beauty to life as the trees sing and dance for us, enriching our loving world even more. We may also look at our modern cameras as ubiquitous beauty machines, which allow us to explore, capture, and share more beauty than ever, pulling the veil off the harmony and intelligence in our divinely manifested world.

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Sources

Blavatsky, H.P. Meta-Astronomy. Santa Barbara, Calif.: Concord Grove Press, 1982.

————. The Secret Doctrine. Two volumes. Wheaton: Quest, 1993.

Fistioc, M.C. The Beautiful Shape of the Good: Platonic and Pythagorean Themes in Kant’s Critique of the Power of Judgment. Reviewed by S. Naragon. Notre Dame, Ind.: Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, 2002.

Hegel, G.W.F. Hegel’s Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art. Translated by T.M. Knox. Oxford: Clarendon, 1975.

Hutcheson, Francis. An Inquiry into the Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue: In Two Treatises. In K. Haakonssen, ed. The Collected Works and Correspondence of Francis Hutcheson. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2004 [1726].

Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Judgement. Translated by J.H. Bernard. New York: Macmillan, 1951.

Konstan, David. Beauty: The Fortunes of an Ancient Greek Idea. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.

Newhall, Beaumont. The History of Photography. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1982.

Rosenheim, J.L. Photography’s Last Century: The Ann Tenenbaum and Thomas H. Lee Collection: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2020.

Sartwell, Crispin. “Beauty.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2017.

Schiller, Friedrich. On the Aesthetic Education of Man. Translated by R. Snell. Minneola, N.Y.: Dover, 2004.

Sontag, Susan. On Photography. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1977.

Troward, Thomas. The Hidden Power and Other Papers upon Mental Science. New York: Robert H. McBride & Co., 1925.

Stephen Braun is a writer and photographer based in New York City and a Life Member of the Theosophical Society. He is active with the National, New York City, and Washington, D.C., lodges. More tree images created using esoteric tools may be found at www.stephenbraun.photos.

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