{ "meta": { "schema_version": "1.2", "endpoint": "/api/sources/isis-unveiled/index.json" }, "work": { "slug": "isis-unveiled", "name": "Isis Unveiled", "stream": "western-european", "epoch_reflected": "current", "epoch_written": "current", "form": "inspired work", "tradition": "Theosophical", "author": "Helena Petrovna Blavatsky", "year_approx": 1877, "note": "H.P. Blavatsky's first major work, 1877. Steiner identifies Blavatsky's inspiration as proceeding from Master Christian Rosenkreutz acting through the Master of the Theosophical Movement.", "books_slug": "blavatsky--isis-unveiled", "books_slugs": null, "has_project_translation": false, "steiner_loci": [ "GA 258: History and Conditions of the Anthroposophical Movement", "GA 250: Early lectures on the Theosophical Society", "GA 264: From the Contents of the Esoteric School" ] }, "parents": [], "translation": { "title": null, "author": null, "source": null }, "chapters": [ { "num": 1, "slug": "01-chapter-i", "title": "I. Before the Veil", "words": 43443, "url": "/sources/isis-unveiled/01-chapter-i/", "api": "/api/sources/isis-unveiled/01-chapter-i.json", "project_translation": false, "subtitle": "The old Book; the seventy thousand years of hermetic conviction", "blurb": "The great prelude. The 'old Book' of which the *Siphra Dzeniouta* is itself a derivative; the seventy-thousand-year conviction of the hermetic tradition that matter has its hidden cause in spirit; the figure of the Divine Essence emanating from Adam in a luminous arc. The frame for the whole work." }, { "num": 2, "slug": "02-chapter-ii", "title": "II. Phenomena and Forces", "words": 46724, "url": "/sources/isis-unveiled/02-chapter-ii/", "api": "/api/sources/isis-unveiled/02-chapter-ii.json", "project_translation": false, "subtitle": "Becoming a 'spiritual entity' — the creation of self anew", "blurb": "On the question of what makes a human being a *Man*. The eliminating discipline by which man 'creates himself anew' — the precondition for any genuine investigation of phenomena and forces beyond the merely physical. Foreshadows the entire Theosophical anthropology." }, { "num": 3, "slug": "03-chapter-iii", "title": "III. Blind Leaders of the Blind", "words": 33081, "url": "/sources/isis-unveiled/03-chapter-iii/", "api": "/api/sources/isis-unveiled/03-chapter-iii.json", "project_translation": false, "subtitle": "Materialist science's refusal to investigate honest mediums", "blurb": "The crucial chapter on the academic establishment's refusal to investigate occult phenomena seriously. Robert Houdin's mockery of the academicians; the careful distinction between fraudulent and genuine mediums; the indictment of the 'blind leaders' of the 1870s scientific consensus." }, { "num": 4, "slug": "04-chapter-iv", "title": "IV. Theories Respecting Psychic Phenomena", "words": 11610, "url": "/sources/isis-unveiled/04-chapter-iv/", "api": "/api/sources/isis-unveiled/04-chapter-iv.json", "project_translation": false, "subtitle": "Spiritualist hypotheses surveyed and tested", "blurb": "A survey of the contemporary theories proposed to account for psychic and spiritualist phenomena — and Blavatsky's contrarian thesis: few are caused by disembodied human spirits; most operate by occult forces of nature consciously employed by jugglers of India and Egypt." }, { "num": 5, "slug": "05-chapter-v", "title": "V. The Ether", "words": 37180, "url": "/sources/isis-unveiled/05-chapter-v/", "api": "/api/sources/isis-unveiled/05-chapter-v.json", "project_translation": false, "subtitle": "The Astral Light — chaos, Akasha, Anima Mundi", "blurb": "The pivotal chapter on the Ether / Astral Light. The chaos of the ancients, the Zoroastrian sacred fire, Akasha, the Anima Mundi — all names for the one supersensible substrate. Blavatsky's first comprehensive Astral-Light teaching, foundational for what becomes *The Secret Doctrine*." }, { "num": 6, "slug": "06-chapter-vi", "title": "VI. Psycho-Physical Phenomena", "words": 60563, "url": "/sources/isis-unveiled/06-chapter-vi/", "api": "/api/sources/isis-unveiled/06-chapter-vi.json", "project_translation": false, "subtitle": "Materializations, levitations, the mediumistic powers", "blurb": "The phenomenal evidence — materializations, levitations, apports, automatic writing — surveyed at length. Cites the spiritualist literature of the 1860s-70s; argues that the documented phenomena demand a theory deeper than either the materialist denial or the naive spiritualist interpretation." }, { "num": 7, "slug": "07-chapter-vii", "title": "VII. The Elements and the Elementals", "words": 51252, "url": "/sources/isis-unveiled/07-chapter-vii/", "api": "/api/sources/isis-unveiled/07-chapter-vii.json", "project_translation": false, "subtitle": "The undeveloped sub-human kingdoms", "blurb": "Blavatsky's introduction of the doctrine of *elementals* — the proto-conscious sub-human beings of fire, air, water, earth — distinct from the elementary spirits of the departed and from the Mahatmic adepts. The four-fold nature kingdom that will be enlarged in *The Secret Doctrine*." }, { "num": 8, "slug": "08-chapter-viii", "title": "VIII. Some Mysteries of Nature", "words": 46598, "url": "/sources/isis-unveiled/08-chapter-viii/", "api": "/api/sources/isis-unveiled/08-chapter-viii.json", "project_translation": false, "subtitle": "Hidden powers behind ordinary phenomena", "blurb": "The chapter of marvels — instances drawn from travel-narratives and contemporary scientific puzzles. Hindu fakirs, Tibetan lamas, Hawaiian kahunas; the magnetism that anticipates wireless transmission; the unknown laws by which intelligent will bends ordinary matter." }, { "num": 9, "slug": "09-chapter-ix", "title": "IX. Cyclic Phenomena", "words": 51405, "url": "/sources/isis-unveiled/09-chapter-ix/", "api": "/api/sources/isis-unveiled/09-chapter-ix.json", "project_translation": false, "subtitle": "Nature's great cycles; the eternal return", "blurb": "The cyclical doctrine. Stars, races, religions, civilizations all move in great recurrent cycles; what appears now as discovery is in fact recollection of what was known and lost; the Mahatmic teaching that history is the eternal return of one pattern at higher and higher pitches." }, { "num": 10, "slug": "10-chapter-x", "title": "X. The Inner and Outer Man", "words": 46472, "url": "/sources/isis-unveiled/10-chapter-x/", "api": "/api/sources/isis-unveiled/10-chapter-x.json", "project_translation": false, "subtitle": "Soul's perpetual passage through all things — Proclus", "blurb": "The chapter on the inner constitution of the human being, weaving Proclus, Ficino, and the Chaldean Oracles. The doctrine of the soul that 'perpetually runs and passes through all things' — Blavatsky's first sustained presentation of the multi-part anthropology that becomes the seven principles." }, { "num": 11, "slug": "11-chapter-xi", "title": "XI. Psychological and Physical Marvels", "words": 46913, "url": "/sources/isis-unveiled/11-chapter-xi/", "api": "/api/sources/isis-unveiled/11-chapter-xi.json", "project_translation": false, "subtitle": "The marvels of mind and body brought under one theory", "blurb": "The most ambitious synthesizing chapter of Volume I: the convergence of the psychological marvels (clairvoyance, prevision, dual personality) and the physical (poltergeist, materialization). A single doctrine of forces operating through gradients of subtle matter accounts for both classes." }, { "num": 12, "slug": "12-chapter-xii", "title": "XII. The \"Impassable Chasm\"", "words": 46455, "url": "/sources/isis-unveiled/12-chapter-xii/", "api": "/api/sources/isis-unveiled/12-chapter-xii.json", "project_translation": false, "subtitle": "Tyndall and the materialist scientific establishment", "blurb": "The polemical climax of Volume I. The 'impassable chasm' is Tyndall's famous phrase for the gap between matter and consciousness — which Blavatsky uses to indict the materialist scientific orthodoxy of refusing to investigate what lies in the chasm. The chapter's spine is a sustained engagement with Tyndall." }, { "num": 13, "slug": "13-chapter-xiii", "title": "XIII. Realities and Illusions", "words": 25426, "url": "/sources/isis-unveiled/13-chapter-xiii/", "api": "/api/sources/isis-unveiled/13-chapter-xiii.json", "project_translation": false, "subtitle": "What is real; what is appearance", "blurb": "The metaphysical chapter on the relation of reality to appearance. The seeming solidity of matter as illusion; the genuine reality of subtler forces; the criterion by which the practised occultist distinguishes what is permanent from what is phenomenal." }, { "num": 14, "slug": "14-chapter-xiv", "title": "XIV. Egyptian Wisdom", "words": 28031, "url": "/sources/isis-unveiled/14-chapter-xiv/", "api": "/api/sources/isis-unveiled/14-chapter-xiv.json", "project_translation": false, "subtitle": "Sais, the 8,000 years, the 17,000 years", "blurb": "'The transactions of this our city of Sais are recorded in our sacred writings during a period of 8,000 years' (Plato). Egypt as the great repository of the ancient wisdom; Blavatsky's argument that every art and science was already mature in Egypt a millennium before the Hellenic world stirred." }, { "num": 15, "slug": "15-chapter-xv", "title": "XV. India the Cradle of the Race", "words": 27316, "url": "/sources/isis-unveiled/15-chapter-xv/", "api": "/api/sources/isis-unveiled/15-chapter-xv.json", "project_translation": false, "subtitle": "The Secret Doctrine — its martyrdom and its vitality", "blurb": "The closing chapter of Volume I. India as the cradle of the great race; the Secret Doctrine as the 'man of sorrows' of the prophet Isaiah — despised, rejected, and yet enduring; the seed of a mighty oak. Sets up Volume II ('Theology') which the present work does not include." } ] }