Kalachakra and Theosophy: The Sources of the Book of Dzyan and Kiu-te in The Secret Doctrine and Tantras

“These facts take us well beyond the realm of probability. Blavatsky indeed had esoteric northern Buddhist sources” (David Reigle)

INTRODUCTION

On the authorship of The Secret Doctrine: a facsimile of a letter from K.H. to William Quan Judge tells us, that the “Secret Doctrine when ready will be the triple production of M., Upasika” and himself. It is to be said, therefore that this two-volume tome is the work jointly of: (1) Koot Hoomi himself, Morya and Blavatsky; and (2) its editorial and scholastic input (Analysis of the ‘Würzburg Manuscript’ of The Secret Doctrine) is aided by close friends and associates. The argument is put forth in The Secret Doctrine assertively, that there once existed an ancient and universal, pre-Vedic body of knowledge. This is the secret doctrine, or the WISDOM TRADITION. The teachings of Theosophy such as the Cycles of Time do not originate with the Isma’ilis. There has been some successful and extensive research over the past few decades, which we must be made acquainted with.

---

“The Secret Doctrine has neither been invented nor exaggerated, but, on the contrary, simply outlined; and finally (…) its teachings antedate the Vedas.” (Helena P. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1., pg. xxxvii).

---

Helena Blavatsky attempts to gather evidence from ancient writers throughout the world in The Secret Doctrine, to prove the existence of this body of wisdom, the language of symbolism developed within its historical contexts, and an original creation account (order of evolution).

“An immense, incalculable number of MSS., and even printed works known to have existed, are now to be found no more. They have disappeared without leaving the slightest trace behind them. Were they works of no importance they might, in the natural course of time, have been left to perish, and their very names would have been obliterated from human memory. But it is not so; for, as now ascertained, most of them contained the true keys to works still extant, and entirely incomprehensible, for the greater portion of their readers, without those additional volumes of Commentaries and explanations.” (The Secret Doctrine, Vol. I, p. xxv.)

However, there are many clues and fragments to the esoteric teachings that have been identified within the Abhidharma, Kālachakra, and also Mahāyāna cosmology, not previously found or published in the 19^th century.

It was claimed then that several esoteric schools exist with its main seat being in the Transhimalaya region, “whose ramifications may be found in China, Japan, India, Tibet, and even in Syria, besides South America—claim to have in their possession the sum total of sacred and philosophical works in MSS. and type: . . .” (The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1, p. xxiii.)

Reactions to The Secret Doctrine were anticipated as seen in the quote above, when Helena Blavatsky explains, that “the rejection of these teachings may be expected, and must be accepted beforehand. No one styling himself a “scholar,” in whatever department of exact science, will be permitted to regard these teachings seriously” (The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1., pg. xxxvii). “They will be derided and rejected a priori in this century; but only in this one. For in the twentieth century of our era scholars will begin to recognize that the Secret Doctrine has neither been invented nor exaggerated” (ibid).

100 years later we are currently seeing recognition through the research of David and Nancy Reigle in the 1970s.

A few of the concepts and philosophy in The Secret Doctrine were presented firstly in A.P. Sinnett’s The Occult World and in Esoteric Buddhism., but K.H. points out in 1884, that the latter’s exposition of their esoteric school’s philosophy A.P. Sinnett created from his private correspondences (now known as The Mahatma Letters) contained vital errors (The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett, chron. ed., p. 428), which would be set right and explained in The Secret Doctrine.

RECAP ON “THE VERY OLD BOOK” AND THE LANGUAGE OF SYMBOLISM

It is believed that the cosmology in The Secret Doctrine leads to a more ancient creation myth about cosmic and planetary evolution, which is the original source several creation accounts and cosmologies evolved from.

Blavatsky references an “old Book”:

“There exists somewhere in this wide world an old Book – so very old that our modern antiquarians might ponder over its pages an indefinite time, and still not quite agree as to the nature of the fabric upon which it is written. It is the only original copy now in existence. The most ancient Hebrew document on occult learning – the Siphra Dzeniouta – was compiled from it, and that at a time when the former was already considered in the light of a literary relic.” (Isis Unveiled, Vol. 1., pg. 1.)

She states further that this very old book is the original source from which the many volumes of Buddhist tantras were compiled. It was written down in a secret sacerdotal tongue, termed here Senzar, a language of gods a tradition says was first dictated in Central Asia.

“The ‘very old Book’ is the original work from which the many volumes of Kiu-ti were compiled. Not only this latter and the Siphrah Dzeniouta but even the Sepher Jezirah, the work attributed by the Hebrew Kabalists to their Patriarch Abraham (!), the book of Shu-king, China’s primitive Bible, the sacred volumes of the Egyptian Thoth-Hermes, the Purânas in India, and the Chaldean Book of Numbers and the Pentateuch itself, are all derived from that one small parent volume. Tradition says, that it was taken down in Senzar, the secret sacerdotal tongue, from the words of the Divine Beings, who dictated it to the sons of Light, in Central Asia, at the very beginning of the 5th (our) race …” (The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1, pg. xliii.)

This language is described as “one universal esoteric, or ‘Mystery’-Language (…) the language of the Hierophants,” which is said to have seven dialects, each referring to one of seven mysteries of Nature.

“Skinner says the mystery language that he has hypothesized and that H.P.B. elsewhere calls Senzar can be expressed in a concealed fashion in ordinary language through the symbolism of the letter shapes or correspondences, but can also be expressed through parabolic stories and visually in constructions of many kinds. That mystery language is thus not a single form of expression, but is rather a symbolic use of many different forms.” (John Algeo, Senzar: The Mystery of the Mystery Language)

John Algeo explained that we can summarize what Blavatsky says or implies about this universal Mystery-language of the initiates as follows:

1. The Stanzas of Dzyan in The Secret Doctrine are based on an original Senzar version, and the original text of the Stanzas is described as pictographs and geometrical figures. The text of the Stanzas in The Secret Doctrine is not the original, but is a paraphrase based on Blavatsky’s understanding of the original and adapted to our ability to grasp the ideas symbolized.
2. Senzar is the “Mystery language” used by initiates all over the world and from the earliest days of humanity. It is not a language known to philologists.
3. The Mystery language was originally the common property of all human beings and was, indeed, the one language of our race, but by the time of our present humanity it has become an esoteric, that is, an inner or private system.
4. Despite the fact that H.P.B. sometimes calls it “speech,” the Mystery language is not normal spoken language, but is “pictorial and symbolical.”
5. On the one hand, the esoteric language is allegory like that found in the writings of the alchemists and Jewish scriptures.
6. On the other hand, the esoteric language is a form of written symbols that can be interpreted in various ways and by various spoken languages, especially geometrical figures with a hieroglyphic, cipher-like appearance.
7. The Mystery language is what we now call symbolism: it speaks to our unconscious minds and can be only imperfectly translated into ordinary, logical language.

Thus, we can think of Senzar as being the whole complex of sacred symbols with expressions of various kinds, but of two chief types:

1. the archetypal symbols in myths and fairy tales, allegories and parables, alchemical recipes and biblical history — stories that have a hidden meaning underneath the obvious narrative, stories that bear “a double interpretation”; and
2. a visual representation of those archetypal symbols in pictographs or hieroglyphic and cipher-like characters whose meaning the initiated can interpret independently of any language.

SOURCES

The sources of the Book of Dzyan and its connections to Tibetan Buddhism were legitimated in 1730 by a Capuchin missionary monk, Horace della Penna. There is also an 1833 article entitled “Note on the Origins of the Kalachakra and Adi-Buddha Systems” by Hungarian pioneer scholar Alexander Csomo de Körös (Körösi Csoma Sandor), who was mentioned before. Dr. Alexander Berzin, asserts in Mistaken Foreign Myths about Shambhala, that most of Blavatsky’s familiarity with the Kalachakra material is from the chapter entitled “The Kalachakra System” in Emil Schlagintweit’s Buddhism in Tibet (1863).

About the Books of Kiu-te: The Book of Dzyān (from Sk. jñāna and Sk. dhyāna) is described as the first volume of the Commentaries upon the seven secret folios of Kiute, and a glossary of the public works of the same name in Blavatsky’s Collected Writings, Vol. 14, pg. 422. It was found in the appendix of Narratives of the Mission of George Bogle to Tibet (1876), a Brief Account of the Kingdom of Tibet written by the Capuchin monk in 1730. Maybe, the first reference of the books in the West, the appendix speaks of restored laws taught by Siddhartha Gautama, which his disciples wrote down after his death. Its volumes consisted of laws called the sūtra and the Khiute (rGyud-sde or Kiute, tantra collection).

Divided into two collections: (1) the Kanjur contain what the Tibetans consider Gautama’s words; and (2) the Tanjur expositions and commentaries are the collected writings of Nāgārjuna, Maitreya, Āryāsanga, and others. Both collections are divided into the laws of dote (mDo-sde or sūtra collection) and the tantras (rGyud-sde or kiute). 

The Kālacakra Tantra doctrine of the ‘cycles of TIME’ also existent in Shia and Zoroastrian tradition are now established at this point.

It is said, the complete Kālacakra Mūla Tantra is lost, though it is also known there once were voluminous original versions. Blavatsky mentions that 35 volumes of Kiute can be found in Gelugpa monasteries for public use, offering the popularised version of the secret doctrine, full of myths, blinds and errors†. However, “the fourteen volumes of Commentaries (…) with their translations, annotations, and an ample glossary of occult terms, worked out from one small archaic folio, the BOOK OF THE SECRET WISDOM OF THE WORLD — contain a digest of all the occult sciences” (Collected Writings, Vol. 14, pg. 422); and in H.P.B.’s time, were kept secret and in the possession of the Teshu Lama of Shigatse.

Its five sections include:

1. Cosmogony;
2. Correspondence to man, the microcosm;
3. Abhiṣeka, or initiation;
4. Sādhana, or practices relating to these correspondences (think of the Hermetic laws):
5. Jñāna, or wisdom and its practical application

KNOWLEDGE OF THE ESSENCE OF YOGA AND THE MEANING OF KALACHAKRA

The Book of Dzyan concerns the gnosis, or jñāna in relation to knowledge of the essence of yoga, cosmology, etc. H.P.B. addressed this in stating, that “there exists a science called Gupta Vidyā” (Helena P. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1, pg. xxxviii).

“Dan, now become in modern Chinese and Tibetan phonetics ch’an, is the general term for the esoteric schools, and their literature. In the old books, the word Janna is defined as “to reform one’s self by meditation and knowledge,” a second inner birth. Hence Dzan, Djan phonetically, the “Book of Dzyan.” (The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1., pg. xx., fn.)

We are told that Dzyan, coming from the Sanskrit word “Dhyana” (mystic meditation) is the first volume of the Commentaries upon the seven secret folios of Kiu-te, and a Glossary of the public works of the same name. Thirty-five volumes of Kiu-te for exoteric purposes and the use of the laymen may be found in the possession of the Tibetan Gelugpa Lamas, in the library of any monastery; and also, fourteen books of Commentaries and Annotations on the same by the initiated teachers, adding that:

“Strictly speaking, those thirty-five books ought to be termed “The Popularised Version” of the Secret Doctrine, full of myths, blinds, and errors; the fourteen volumes of Commentaries, on the other hand—with their translations, annotations, and an ample glossary of Occult terms, worked out from one small archaic folio, the Book of the Secret Wisdom of the World—contain a digest of all the Occult Sciences. These, it appears, are kept secret and apart, in the charge of the Teshu-Lama of Shigatse. The Books of Kiu-te are comparatively modern, having been edited within the last millennium, whereas, the earliest volumes of the Commentaries are of untold antiquity, some fragments of the original cylinders having been preserved. With the exception that they explain and correct some of the too fabulous, and to every appearance, grossly-exaggerated accounts in the Books of Kiu-te—properly so called—the Commentaries have little to do with these.”

In translating the Stanzas, commentary and erudition was added to it. Basically, the title of the Book of Dzyan is generic for Book of Wisdom, or ‘Book of Knowledge.’ This implies, its knowledge derives from an assimilation of intuitive insights rising from profound thinking, through heightened states of consciousness, and the knowledge accumulated through that experience.

Kālachakra is a term in Vajrayana Buddhism, meaning wheel, or “time’s cycle.” The book published as “The Voice of the Silence” by Helena P. Blavatsky, she notes were but “chosen fragments” from a wider claimed Buddhist volume, called The Book of the Golden Precepts, wherein, we find the meaning as well.

In it, the candidate is asked:

“Would’st thou become a Yogi of “TIME’S CIRCLE”? Then, O Lanoo: —

Believe thou not that sitting in dark forests, in proud seclusion and apart from men; believe thou not that life on roots and plants, that thirst assuaged with snow from the great Range — believe thou not, O Devotee, that this will lead thee to the goal of final liberation.” (The Voice of the Silence, Fragment II: The Two Paths, 1889.)

The cause of Theosophy has an authentic connection to not only Buddhism, broadly speaking, but specifically the Buddhist Tantra material. Helena Blavatsky always spoke about the formation of the Theosophical Society in New York as part of the mission and reform of famous Tibetan Buddhist teacher Je Tsongkapa (1357–1419).

The Buddhist tantras are a thing different from the Hindu tantras, as David Reigle explained the aim of the Buddhist tantras that is in perfect line with Theosophy:

“The clearly stated and daily reiterated purpose in the Tibetan tradition for undertaking Buddhist tantric practice is to free living beings from suffering. These practices are done to produce in oneself the capabilities of a Buddha for use in benefiting the world. This is called the Bodhisattva ideal, by which one sacrifices one’s own earned liberation to stay behind and help other struggling beings. In the Hindu tantras there is no concern with benefiting anyone but the practitioner. This point cannot be emphasized too strongly: Buddhist tantra is entirely based on the Bodhisattva ideal.”

It was to especially educate the West about Buddhist teachings, but also to make known that a lost, but preserved real knowledge exists, passed generation to generation through Buddhas preceding Siddhartha’s time. This demonstrates that, the original mission of the Theosophical Society’s goes beyond the attempt to carry on the ideal of the Alexandrian Neoplatonists.

The Western world had no formal introduction to the Kalachakra at this time.

In Helena Blavatsky’s ‘Mystery of the Buddha’ (BCW XIV, pp. 388-99), she says, “What is given here is taken from the secret portions of Dus Kyi Khorlo (Kala Chakra, in Sanskrit, or the ‘Wheel of Time,’ or duration).” The Tibetan source for the “Cosmogenesis” and “Anthropogenesis” volumes of “The Secret Doctrine” H.P.B. claimed was the Stanzas of Dzyan, from the first volume of the Kiu-te commentaries; the former may be the lost Root Kalachakra Tantra, or Mula Kalachakra. The Stanzas of Dzyan (transcribed from Dhyana; Jap. Zen) are from the first section of the seven secret folios of the Kiu-te (cf. ‘The Secret Books of “Lam-Rim” and Dzyan’) or in Tibetan rGyud-sde (“Tantra Division”) — the title of the Kanjur. Blavatsky said that the esoteric volumes of the Kiu-te were kept secret under supervision of the Panchen Lama of Shigatse and was the study of the disciples of an Esoteric School.

The Voice of the Silence is specifically claimed to be a Yogacara text of a school of the esoteric Yogacaras; and the “chosen fragments from the ‘BOOK OF THE GOLDEN PRECEPTS’ – for the daily use of Lanoos (Disciples).” 

In 1925 the ninth Panchen Lama (Thubten Chökyi Nyima) officially endorsed the book and called it the “only true exposition in English of the Heart Doctrine of the Mahayana and its noble ideal of self-sacrifice for humanity.”

It was about “The Voice of The Silence” that famed Buddhist writer D.T. Suzuki said:

“Here is the REAL Mahayana Buddhism!” (see The Secret Doctrine of Dzyan)

Another text — the “Secret Book of Maitreya,” was made use by K.H., Morya, and the chief Chohan-Lama, whom it was said was at the time ‘the Chief of the Archive-registrars of the secret Libraries of the Dalai and Ta-shü-hlumpo Lamas-Rimpoche’.

This Secret Book of Maitreya has been identified today as the Uttara-Tantra or Ratna-gotra-vibhāga (see When the Clouds Part: The Uttaratantra and Its Meditative Tradition as a Bridge between Sūtra and Tantra, translated and introduced by Karl Brunnhölzl, Snow Lion, 2014). This book was to be used as the bridge to the tantras. Note, that Tantric Mysticism does not refer to sex, as its symbols yab-yum or “father-mother” refer to the combination of method and wisdom in attaining bodhichitta, or the compassionate wish to attain enlightenment for the benefit of all beings. Helena Blavatsky anticipated the reaction of the scholars to her work in The Secret Doctrine.

THE LOST MULA TANTRA

Blavatsky’s statement, that, “For in the twentieth century of our era scholars will begin to recognize that the Secret Doctrine has neither been invented nor exaggerated…” actually came true, partially atleast. David Reigle believes his work, which is bringing attention through circumstantial evidence the legitimacy of the book and its teachings, could lead to the discovery of a Tibetan or Sanskrit manuscript of the Book of Dzyan. Blavatsky claimed in The Secret Doctrine that she had seen a manuscript when she was in Tibet, but as stated before, it is considered lost.

It is said in a legend, the King Suchandra (Tib. Dawa Sangpo) of the northeastern Indian Kingdom of Shambhala (a region) requested from the Buddha the Kalachakra teachings, or the teachings regarding the cycles of time. From this was composed what is named the ‘Root Text’ or lost ‘Mūla-Tantra’ (Lost Mula Tantra: Shakya and Padmapani Lokeshvara (876 b.c.e.).

What David Reigle says is that the Secret Book of Dzyan is not plagiarized from the Kangyur of Alexander Csomo de Körös, but is this “lost” Mūla-Tantra. The Mūla-Tantra is said to be the original basis of the publicly known Kalachakra tantra.

Clearly, we now understand that the book has been identified as forming part of the Tibetan Buddhist canon, i.e., the Tantras.

David and Nancy Reigle demonstrate that we find concepts corresponding in the Vimalaprabhā commentary first published in the original Sanskrit (3 volumes) in 1986-1994; in the Ratna-gotra-vibhāga, among other concepts and doctrinal positions originally thought the fancy of Blavatsky’s imagination. Blavatsky’s knowledge of the Mahāyāna, concerning the doctrines of the Madhyamaka and Yogācāra Schools allowed her to penetrate their most abstruse ideas; and she uses Mahāyāna terms, among others to explain the first two Stanzas of Dzyan.

The Secret Doctrine can be seen as an expanded explanation of the Mūla Kālacakra tantra in modern language about ancient cosmology and human origins.

“Indeed, that which is given in these volumes is selected from oral, as much as from written teachings. This first instalment of the esoteric doctrines is based upon Stanzas, which are the records of a people unknown to ethnology; it is claimed that they are written in a tongue absent from the nomenclature of languages and dialects with which philology is acquainted; they are said to emanate from a source (Occultism) repudiated by science; and, finally, they are offered through an agency, incessantly discredited before the world by all those who hate unwelcome truths, or have some special hobby of their own to defend.” (H.P. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1, Introductory, p. xxxvii)

It must be also noted, that what H.P.B. presented as the Stanzas is only a portion of the whole.

“It is needless to explain that this book is not the Secret Doctrine in its entirety, but a select number of fragments of its fundamental tenets, special attention being paid to some facts which have been seized upon by various writers, and distorted out of all resemblance to the truth.” (H.P. Blavatsky. The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1, Preface, p. viii., 1888.)

Helena P. Blavatsky stated a difference in the types of teaching on the tantras.

“(…) the “Dus-kyi Khorlo,” or Tibetan Mysticism. A system as old as man, known in India and practised before Europe had become a continent, “was first known,” we are told [by the Orientalists], only nine or ten centuries ago. The text of its books in its present form may have “originated” even later, for there are numerous such texts that have been tampered with by sects to suit the fancies of each. But who has read the original book on Dus-Kyi Khorlo, re-written by Tsong-Kha-pa, with his Commentaries? (…) this grand Reformer burnt every book on Sorcery on which he could lay his hands in 1387 (…) he has left a whole library of his own works – not a tenth part of which has ever been made known.” (Helena P. Blavatsky, A Few More Misconceptions Corrected, Blavatsky Collected Writings, Vol. 14; brackets added)

WHAT SIMILARITIES IN FINNISH AND THEOSOPHICAL FOLKLORE TEACH US

We can use texts like the Finnish Kalevala to understand the value of folklore and the place of mythology in the studies of a Theosophist. The history of this mythology and the ideas of Golden Ages, abound in both the Northern European legends and folktale, just as in Tibet. In 1835, Elias Lönnrot compiled from Finnish and Karelian folklore, a manuscript titled “The Kalevala,” and completed it in a published 1849 version, a text quoted a few times in The Secret Doctrine. 

It was the time of Romanticism, and Wilhelm Richard Wagner. Richard Wagner’s operas invoked a sense of return to a once golden age, and the Karelian folklore, which is quoted in the beginning of Vol. II before Book II. Part I. of the Stanzas translated with Commentaries from “The Secret Book of Dzyan.”

William Sharp (1855–1905) stated in a Critical Introduction of the Kalevala what it teaches us:

“In it are reflected not only the manners, beliefs, superstitions, and customs of a race, but the very soul of that race” (C.D. Warner, et al., comp. The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917)

As well as in the “old Book,” as Blavatsky stated above:

“This first instalment of the esoteric doctrines is based upon Stanzas, which are the records of a people unknown to ethnology (…) they are said to emanate from a source (Occultism) repudiated by science; and, finally, they are offered through an agency, incessantly discredited before the world by all those who hate unwelcome truths…” (H.P. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1, Introductory, p. xxxvii)

Like ‘The Kalevala’ the Stanzas from the Book of Dzyan are written in prose. It also invokes poetic imagery, cosmogony and mythology of Nature, concerning the Kosmos, Space, and the boundlessness of that Nature’s cyclical and evolutionary development.

TRANSLATING THE STANZAS AND THE SPECIAL LANGUAGE OF THE INITIATES

Nobody believed Blavatsky in the 1880’s. On the Stanzas of Dzyan:

“I cannot go and invent things; I am obliged to translate just as the stanzas give it in the book.”

Contrary to opinions of her, H.P.B. states, that there are limitations to the most respected Tibetan Buddhist scholars in her time.

H.P.B. claims in The Secret Doctrine, that the Stanzas upon which The Secret Doctrine is built are from the earlier mentioned unknown and Archaic folio, which contain secret wisdom of the world and the pre-historic past — “a digest of all the Occult Sciences.” Further, they are linked to a “Secret Book of ‘Maitreya Buddha.’ It is in the possession of protectors, and written in that Mystery language earlier mentioned, H.P.B. renders Senzar (see John Algeo, The Mystery of the Mystery-Language).

“The Book of Dzyan (or ‘Dzan’) is utterly unknown to our Philologists, or at any rate was never heard of by them under its present name.” (The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1., pg. xxii.)

“We have now to speak of the Mystery language†, that of the prehistoric races. It is not a phonetic, but a purely pictorial and symbolical tongue. It is known at present in its fulness to the very few, having become with the masses for more than 5,000 years an absolutely dead language.” (The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 2, pg. 574).

The archaic manuscript is written in the special language, known to the initiates of the past and about a pre-historic past, according to history and oral tradition. Blavatsky, hence, chose to use the Sanskrit terms that best expressed its metaphysical concepts. A perfect example is given in The Secret Doctrine, which is a similar advantage of Chinese language varieties, in that terms in Tibetan are very succinct.

So, here she gives a few reasons for her translations and use of terms, she has been criticized for, but her explanations are ignored:

“Extracts are given from the Chinese, Tibetan and Sanskrit translations of the original Senzar Commentaries and Glosses on the BOOK OF DZYAN – now rendered for the first time into a European language (…) To facilitate the reading, and to avoid the too frequent reference to foot-notes, it was thought best to blend together texts and glosses, using the Sanskrit and Tibetan proper names whenever these could not be avoided, in preference to giving the originals (…) were one to translate into English, using only the substantives and technical terms as employed in one of the Tibetan and Senzar versions, Shloka I would read as follows: Tho-ag in Zhi-gyu slept seven Khorlo. Zodmanas zhiba. All Nyug bosom. Konch-hog not; Thyan Ka m not; Lha-Chohan not; Tenbrel Chugnyi not. Dharmakāya ceased. Tgenchang not become; Barnang and Ssa in Ngovonyidj; alone Tho-og Yinsin in night of Sun-chan and Yong-grub (Pariniṣpanna).” (The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1, pg. 87)

Technically, we are told, without the use of the glosses and commentaries and rendered in her own way through Hindu-Buddhist expression, it would be gibberish to us. The Hindus and Buddhists have in ways preserved their esoteric themes and system. Blavatsky transmits what she has been taught, paraphrasing Montaigne, that her work was in collecting and presenting them in an understandable way. All of this only seems strange to “the Westerner” (so-called), because of the illusion of exoticism and the “Western view of history.”

This leads us to a very important subject of neglected study. To tie it all into what John Algeo explains about the mystery-language, Blavatsky spoke about this subject in her first magnum opus, Isis Unveiled. To briefly recap, Helena P. Blavatsky asserts, that there existed in antiquity one knowledge and one language, which eventually became limited in knowledge to a few, and this knowledge was denied to subsequent generations. The universal, esoteric tongue, or MYSTERY-LANGUAGE is the language of symbolism and allegory.

It is not a phonetic, but a purely pictorial and symbolical tongue.

HELENA P. BLAVATSKY, THE SECRET DOCTRINE

After tracing the origins of the trinitarian dogma of the Christians through the Chaldean, Egyptian and Mithraic systems, H.P.B. theorizes about the roots of the Chaldean people in Southern Mesopotamia. The Chaldean people were part of a migration of other tribes, she says who lived in the earliest times of Babylonia. These early people instructed the Babylonians in their first notions of religion, but few traces remain of these people’s language, considered inventors of the cuneiform characters, or called Sumerians. These early tribes that instructed the Babylonians in the Mysteries taught them this sacerdotal Mystery-language.

The biblical myth of the Tower of Babylon is used as a polemical attack on Babylonian religions and Mesopotamia, and in other contexts as a source of ‘wicked doctrines’ via occultism or magic. The actual history does not begin with the Babylonians, since their initiates were taught this sacred Mystery-language, which H.P.B. argues belonged to a tribe of the Hindu-Brahmans, or let us say, a tribe of Indo-Aryans. The sacerdotal language has a connection to their vernacular language — the Sanskrit of the Vedas; and is used in the magical evocations of the initiated Brahmans and religious ascetics. H.P.B. then states that the Tibetan lamas claim that the mysterious characters on the leaves and bark of the sacred kumbum  (Tibetan: སྐུ་འབུམ་) are recorded in this language. Isis Unveiled continues elaborating, that witnesses to the magical evocations (hymns) in the mysteries of Brahmanical initiation see them pronounced in a particular language, not Sanskrit. Furthermore, it was forbidden to translate it in vulgar dialects. The evocations in initiation among the high Brahmans, in a similar process among Kabbalists and Masons, are imparted at a low breath in the ear of the adept.

The MYSTERY-LANGUAGE or sacerdotal language is still employed by the initiates of all countries. Since, Blavatsky claimed that this language was not phonetic, we are led to ask what is language? Language can be expression, linguistic or non-linguistic: Pictographs; Sound and Light between Artifacts; the communication between Natural Objects: Flowers and Trees; Ideographs, Phonograms; Figurative Language (Parables, Allegory, etc); or Literal Speech (French, English, etc). The Middle Age hermetic philosophers (the alchemists), H.P.B. states here, knew of and renovated the ancient symbolic language of the ancient priests, and constructed a Kabbalistic slang from it. It was further mixed with Christian jargon; and the reasons being, were to 1) make it difficult to trace; 2) to protect; and 3) obscure, or blind false neophytes, disciples or students. Alone, a true disciple of Hermes can understand, it is said.

“The necessary union of ideas and signs; the trinity of words, letters, numbers, and theorems; the religion of it can be compressed into a few words: “It is the Infinite condensed in the hand of an infant,” says Éliphas Lévi. Ten ciphers, 22 alphabetical letters, one triangle, a square and a circle. Such are the elements of the Cabala, from whose mysterious bosom sprang all the religions of the past and present; which endowed all the Free Masonic associations with their symbols and secrets, which alone can reconcile human reason with God and Faith, Power with Freedom, Science with Mystery, and which has alone the keys of the present, past and future.

The first difficulty for the aspirant lies in the utter impossibility of his comprehending, as I said before, the meaning of the best books written by Hermetic Philosophers. The latter who mainly lived in the mediaeval ages, prompted on the one hand by their duty towards their brethren, and by their desire to impart to them and their successors only, the glorious truths, and on the other very naturally desirous to avoid the clutches of the blood-thirsty Christian Inquisition, enveloped themselves more than ever in mystery. They invented new signs and hieroglyphs, renovated the ancient symbolical language of the high-priests of antiquity, who had used it as a sacred barrier between their holy rites and the ignorance of the profane and created a veritable Cabalistic slang. This latter, which continually blinded the false neophyte, attracted towards the science only by his greediness for wealth and power which he would have surely misused were he to succeed, is a living, eloquent, clear language…” (Collected Writings, Vol. 1, pp. 130-131, originally published in the Spiritual Scientist, Boston, Vol. III, September 23, 1875, pp. 25-7)

Blavatsky believes, that one day, the mystery-language will become one again for the whole of humanity in future cycles. This did not mean a written language, since all languages need not be written.

Charles Sotheran explained that “…the art of speaking and writing in a language which bears a double interpretation, is of very great antiquity; (…) it was in practice among the priests of Egypt, brought from thence by the Manichees, whence it passed to the Templars and Albigenses, spread over Europe, and brought about the Reformation.” (quoted from Charles Sotheran by H.P.B., Collected Writings, Vol. 1, pg. 126)

“As the Egyptian hierophants had their private code of hieratic symbols, and even the founder of Christianity spoke to the vulgar in parables whose mystical meaning was known only to the chosen few, so the Brahmans had from the first (and still have) a mystical terminology couched behind ordinary expressions, arranged in certain sequences and mutual relations, which none but the initiate would observe.” (H.P. Blavatsky, Collected Writings, Vol. 5, pg. 296)

“The Hierophants and Initiates of the Mysteries in the Secret Schools had one universal, Esoteric tongue—the language of symbolism and allegory. This language has suffered neither modification nor amplification from those remote times down to this day. It still exists and is still taught. There are those who have preserved the knowledge of it, and also of the arcane meaning of the Mysteries; and it is from these Masters that the writer of the present protest had the good fortune of learning, howbeit imperfectly, the said language. Hence her claim to a more correct comprehension of the arcane portion of the ancient texts written by avowed Initiates—such as were Plato and Iamblichus, Pythagoras, and even Plutarch…” (H.P. Blavatsky, Collected Writings, Vol. 13, pp. 153-54)

This connects the roots of the Theosophical Positions, initially and ignorantly mocked by some nineteenth-century Western scholars, to the regions of Āryāvarta, Central Asia and Mesopotamia (The Connection of Theosophy to Tibet, Iran and Chaldea).

Being that this is all connected with the Kālacakra and esoteric exegesis, these are practical teachings and concepts, that the Christian tradition has not fully prepared or been able to prepare the Western mind for. Speaking further against the exclusivity attributed to Jesus in the New Testament, Blavatsky demonstrates in Isis Unveiled, that this character or whomever actually wrote the text essentially taught the same secret doctrines. Whatever is the case, the writers were acquainted with and utilized the mysteries. Blavatsky rebuts that there is nothing the New Testament teaches that was not taught already:

“Jesus taught the world nothing that had not been taught as earnestly before by other masters. He begins his sermon (on the Mount) with certain purely Buddhistic precepts that had found acceptance among the Essenes, and were generally practised by the Orphikoi, and the Neo-Platonists (…) Every word of his sermon is an echo of the essential principles of monastic Buddhism. The ten commandments of Buddha, as found in an appendix to the Pratimokṣa-Sūtra (Pali-Burmese text), are elaborated to their full extent in Matthew.” (Helena P. Blavatsky, Isis Unveiled, Vol. 2, pp. 552-3)

In her work, the Tetragrammaton, she once more demonstrates the importance of her mission, and in proving the existence of such form of communication, and its connection to well-known myths. H.P.B. challenges us to seriously question the established exclusivity that divides Judaism, Christianity and Islam, as well as students of esotericism from each other:

“The same remarkable elasticity of interpretation is afforded in the esoteric texts of other nations. Each symbol and glyph having seven keys to it, it follows that one party may be using one key to any subject under dispute, and then accuse another student, who is using another key of deliberate misinterpretation. Such is not my policy however. In esoteric matters I would rather seek conciliation than quarrel over mistakes made, whether real or imaginary; because the CAUSE and the triumph of truth ought to be dearer to a true Occultist and Theosophist than petty successes over disputants.” (H.P. Blavatsky, Tetragrammaton,Theosophist, November, 1887)

OTHERS ON THE VINDICATION OF THEOSOPHICAL TEACHINGS

American philosopher Richard Taylor spoke highly of H.P. Blavatsky, advising not to dismiss her works:

“Blavatsky had access to Tibetan Buddhist sources which no other Westerner during her time had. Her works are by no means merely strings of plagiarisms, but rather very cogent arguments, supplemented by masses of data, that her readers should believe Buddhist claims that there is a perennial philosophy, in the possession of Adepts, which explains the origins of the world and leads to salvation from it. … Blavatsky knew what the Buddhist Tantras were, knew their content and philosophical import better than any Western contemporary, and knew bona fide Tibetan traditions surrounding them. This alone gives strong reasons not to dismiss her claims out of hand.”

The Dalai Lama wrote in 1989 when the centennial edition of The Voice of the Silence came out:

“I am therefore happy to have this long association with the Theosophists and to learn about the Centenary Edition: THE VOICE OF THE SILENCE which is being brought out this year. I believe that this book has strongly influenced many sincere seekers and aspirants to the wisdom and compassion of the Bodhisattva Path. I very much welcome this Centenary Edition and hope that it will benefit many more.”