LION OF LIGHT - The Spiritual Life of Madame Blavatsky

Note: a full version of this review with more details in support of the criticisms made is available from the editor

Only a biographer with a lion heart would dare to write about Madame Blavatsky and include within his scope her early life and world travels, including her time in India; her writings and her association with colleagues, friends and enemies; then comment on The Theosophical Society, on other spiritual organisations, on the Masters and on Truth; and conclude with Blavatsky's legacy and her astrological analysis: all of that in a book (without an index) of 133, A5 pages. I would normally be as indifferent to odd typos or inaccuracies in an erudite book as I would be with a sprinkling of wrong notes in a great musical performance. However over 20 pages (more than fifteen percent) of the book contain errors of spelling, syntax, referencing, and reference numbering, symptomatic of sloppy proof reading and inadequate research. Are all these inaccuracies, then, counterbalanced by the quality of the exposition? Gordon Strong makes it plain in an eloquently worded introduction that he has no 'literary axe to grind', his motive being a 'fascination and respect for the subject'. He quite rightly points out that Blavatsky has been 'vilified and championed in equal measure' and that of the latter, some 'seek to paint a flawless picture of their subject'. It is therefore a tribute to the author that he strives to give an account without elevating Blavatsky to faultless, deific status as so many of the credulous Blavatsky-fundamentalists are all too prone to doing. Unfortunately though, his idea of a balanced perspective drives him into all manner of suppositions, presumptions and dogmatic statements supported with either flimsy evidence or no evidence at all. He goes to extremes to opine that Blavatsky was supposed to be utterly autocratic, would brook no rivalry and would suffer no views other than her own; moreover that some of her statements were hypocritical and that she behaved viciously towards Mabel Collins whom she snidely accused of practising black magic. So all in all, 'The Spiritual Life of Madame Blavatsky' has become his version of a garbled psychological analysis of Blavatsky. We may pass by all this as being the author's opinions. But we cannot let pass some statements that are as inaccurate as they are highly damaging. Blavatsky's 'outright dismissal of the occult' is a very poorly worded way of stating her outright dismissal of the misuse of occult powers, the so-called Left Hand path. Then her 'outright prejudice against Western spirituality' is a complete misunderstanding that what she strove to do was to restore and point towards the spirituality of the East at a time when Eastern philosophies were very little known given the current (nineteenth century) prejudice of the unquestionable superiority of the Englishman over the Indian and therefore the unquestioned supremacy of Western thought. Then we are told that Blavatsky eschewed Christianity, ignorant of the fact that she railed against Churchianity, or sham Christianity, this Church-Christianity being the dogmatic and fossilised version of the true living message of the Christ, the living spirit killed by the dead letter in the hands of proselytising priests and Christian missionaries. Blavatsky is also supposed to have accused the Greek philosophers of gross errors setting herself up against minds greater than her own but with little intellectual firepower – overlooking the innumerable deferential references to Greek luminaries littered throughout her writings. And then we have a potted history of the highly complicated and contorted affairs and struggles of The Theosophical Society, including all the internal dissensions and disputes, plus the Judge affair and Krishnamurti saga all polished off in under 15 pages. This is, frankly, mud raking that provides no insight. Instead of wasting our time on Leadbeater's supposed pederasty which even to this day, despite all the machinations and counterclaims has never been conclusively proven, why not instead mention the book that he wrote with Annie Besant: Occult Chemistry, being the remote viewing of subatomic particles, a book that has interested scholars and scientists of international acclaim. Annie Besant fares poorly in Strong's hands. Never mind that her tremendous social work in India resulted in her election as president of the India National Congress. Moreover, that she was a prolific and phenomenal theosophical author, indefatigable lecturer and The Theosophical Society owed most of its membership to her magnetic oratory; and its assets to her far reaching business sense. To claim that Besant and Leadbeater 'ruined Blavatsky's cosmology' ignores the fact that Blavatsky herself periodically modified the esoteric taxonomy to suit the context of what could legitimately be revealed and what could be understood in the English tongue by the public at large, especially in the West. In this guise, it is pity that Strong has not mentioned the core ethos of The Theosophical Society concerning freedom of thought: that the teachings promulgated should not be taken as authority, but rather investigated with openness, impartiality and without dogma. This is of the very greatest importance flying in the face of mistaken ideas that theosophy is a new-fangled religion invented by Blavatsky, or that 'Blavatsky is The Theosophical Society' as Strong opines. What useful material can we dredge from the book? There are several insightful remarks. For example: that the notion of combining the spiritual and the scientific was the bedrock on which The Theosophical Society was built; that Blavatsky was incapable of fraud and owned occult powers using them to achieve what she considered best for the world; that the inner, soul-life of an individual is of supreme importance; that when an individual earnestly decides to follow a spiritual path, he is severely tested and every trait in his personality rises to the surface; that some members of The Theosophical Society were not as altruistic as Blavatsky, using the Society to gain personal ambition; and most importantly, the 'dangers latent in any group devoted to spiritual work'. We are grateful for Strong's succinct and accurate accounts of the appalling vilification of Blavatsky by Solovyov, and the high-handed manner in which she was labelled a fraud following the 1885 Hodgson report by the Society for Psychical Research, which body then retracted their decision in the light of the Harrison report of 1986. But despite these many useful commentaries he has tried to cover far too much material. The subject would have been much better served had he concentrated on a few major topics: for example, the problems and tests of individuals and groups devoted to spiritual matters, and especially, Blavatsky's massive erudition – Isis Unveiled contains passages from 1339 different works and in The Secret Doctrine 1147 different works (including the leading scientists of her day and earlier epochs) are quoted and referenced in support of the occult doctrines propounded. Instead of forays into irrelevant and scurrilous material, Blavatsky's vision, legacy and any account of her spiritual life would have greatly benefitted by highlighting the testimony of the many great scientists who were drawn to occultism – Einstein (who was intrigued by The Secret Doctrine recommending it to Heisenberg), and Sir William Crookes, to name but three; and discussing her own passion for placing the occult doctrines on a firm scientific footing as the Theosophical Research Centre (comprising eminent scientists, including a Fellow of the Royal Society) so magnificently attempted to do.