The Transvaluation of 'Soul' and 'Spirit': Platonism and Paulism in H.P. Blavatsky's Isis Unveiled

8/11/2019 The Transvaluation of 'Soul' and 'Spirit': Platonism and Paulism in H.P. Blavatsky's Isis Unveiled

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[The Pomegranate15.1-2 (2013) 250-272] ISSN 1528-0268 (print)doi: 10.1558/pome.v15i1-2.250 ISSN 1743-1735 (online)

Equinox Publishing Ltd 2014. Ofce 415, The Workstation, 15 Paternoster Row, Shefeld S1 2BX.

The Transvaluation of Soul and Spirit:

Platonism and Paulism in H.P. BlavatskysIsis Unveiled1

Christopher A. Plaisance2

Independent [email protected]

Abstract

This paper in the doxographic history of Western esotericism examines

H.P. Blavatsky's use of the terms soul and spirit in Isis Unveiled.

Soul and spirit have been given great importance both in early

Greek thought and throughout the subsequent history of Western phi-

losophy, religion, and science, and uses of these terms are generally

bound up with the attributions of one Greek school or another. As Isis

Unveiledspecically frames itself as a Hermetic work, it would be rea-

sonable to assume that Blavatskys early use of soul, spirit, and theircognates in other languages would comport to the usage of the Alex-

andrian Hermetistswho phrased the relationship between the two in

terms of spirit being distinct from and inferior to soul, with spirit acting

as an intermediary substance which bridges the gap in the emanative

descent from the soul to body. However, Blavatskys use both of the

English and Greek terms (as well as their Latin equivalents) curiously

1. As this paper employs numerous non-English sources, a brief explanationof my method of citation is required. Paraphrased Greek terms (generally presentedin the nominative case) are free from quotation marks, while direct quotes are natu-rally contained within quotes. Similarly, translations that are quoted from publishedtranslations are presented within quotation marks and parentheses, (example),while original translations are simply in parentheses, (example). A special debt ofgratitude is owed to Aaron Cheak, whose assistance translating some of Paracelsusmore difcult Early New High German passages was invaluable. A further debt is

owed to Edward P. Butler, whose reading of an early draft of this paper helped sug-gest a deeper connection between Paul and the Stoa which was borne out by fur-ther research. Additionally, thanks are owed to Clare Goodrick-Clarke, under whoseguidance an earlier version of this paper was composed. Finally, I would like tothank Pomegranates reviewer, whose critique served to strengthen the papers argu-ment and form.

2. Christopher A. Plaisance recently graduated from the University of Exeterwith an MA in Western Esotericism.
mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]


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Plaisance The Transvaluation of Soul and Spirit 251

Equinox Publishing Ltd 2014

follow an inversion of this usage. As such, the principal purpose of this

study is to examine her understanding of these terms, and of the sources

to which she appeals in an attempt to uncover how and why this trans-

valuation occurred. This is accomplished by rst examine Blavatskys

usage, and then those of the historical precedents, charting the semanticshift from antiquity to that of Isis Unveiled.

Keywords: H.P. Blavatsky; Neoplatonism; New Testament; pneumatol-ogy; Stoicism; theosophy.

Introduction

The writings of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (18311891), one of the

founders and principal exponents of the Theosophical Society,3canbe divided into two periods marked by a wide variety of doctrinaland terminological shifts.4The rst is an Egyptian or Hermeticphase, which began with her early attempts to initiate a magical soci-ety in Cairo during 1872 and whose doctrines were epitomised by the1877 publication of Isis Unveiled.5The second is an Indian or Orien-tal phase, whose genesis lied in Blavatskys 1879 arrival in Bombayand which reached its apogee in 1888 with the pressing of The SecretDoctrine.6As Olav Hammer details, while Isis Unveileddescribes itselffrom the outset as a document of Hermetic philosophy,7its contentscan be accurately described as an attempt to synthesize the totality

3. While there exist innumerable biographies of Blavatsky written by membersof the Theosophical Society (and its subsequent splinter groups), Bruce F. Camp-bellsAncient Wisdom Revived: A History of the Theosophical Movement(Berkeley: Uni-versity of California Press, 1980) is the standard etic history. Further biographicaltreatments of Blavatsky can be found in the following works: Joscelyn Godwin, TheTheosophical Enlightenment, SUNY Series in Western Esoteric Traditions (Albany:State University of New York Press, 1994), 277331; Wouter J. Hanegraaff, New AgeReligion and Western Culture: Esotericism in the Mirror of Secular Thought, SUNY Seriesin Western Esoteric Traditions (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998),44282; Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, Helena Blavatsky, Western Esoteric Masters Series(Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 2004), 120.

4. Godwin, The Theosophical Enlightenment, 2778; Hanegraaff, New Age Reli-gion, 4523.

5. H.P. Blavatsky, Isis Unveiled: A Master-Key to the Mysteries of Ancient andModern Science and Theology, 2 vols. (Pasadena: Theosophical University Press, 1988).

6. H.P. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine: The Synthesis of Science, Religion, and Phi-losophy, 2 vols. (Pasadena: Theosophical University Press, 1999).

7. Blavatsky, vol. 2 of Isis Unveiled, vii: Our work, then, is a plea for the rec-ognition of the Hermetic philosophy, the ancient universal Wisdom-Religion, as theonly possible key to the Absolute in science and theology.


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252 The Pomegranate15.1 (2013)


of the late 1870s cultic milieu into a coherent religious philosophyincorporating everything from Plato (424348 BC) to Paracelsus (14931541) to nineteenth-century Spiritualism.8

Parallel with Renaissance ideas of theprisca theologia, Blavatskyssweeping emic historiography seeks to construct a narrative inwhich the golden thread of divine truth can be traced from the sagesof antiquity to her own work. And, as Isis Unveiledis largely a doxo-graphic history culminating with the emergence of Blavatskys The-osophy, it necessarily presents the extremely varied systems of thephilosophers being assimilated as in fundamental agreement withone another.9 However, in attempting to synthesise such a vastamount of philosophical territory, problems of terminological incon-

sistency emerge. As the aforementioned shift from Blavatskys Her-metic to Oriental phase engenders its own set of unique problems,I will, in this study, focus solely on the early issues presented in IsisUnveiledforemost of which are the terminological inconsistenciessurrounding her use of soul and spirit.

In examining Blavatskys usage of the terms soul and spiritwithin Isis Unveiled, the scholar is faced with a knot of seeming con-tradiction. It is that knot which I propose to unravel throughout the

course of this paper. Simply put, the problem is that what Blavatskysaysabout the doxographic history of these two terms within West-ern philosophy, religion, and science does not appear to comport tothe actualhistories in question. In particular, as Blavatsky is keen toexplicitly designate Isis Unveiledas participating in the Platonic andHermetic traditions, it would be reasonable to assume that her psy-chology and pneumatology would be in line with the Platonists andHermetists of antiquity. However, this is not the case. Rather, wend that her usage constitutes an inverted transvaluation of the Pla-

tonic/Hermetic model. This being the case, we are left to determinewhether or not Blavatskys transvaluation represents some mannerof creative misreading of the ancients, or if the genesis of her usagecan be charted to some other school of thought.

8. Olav Hammer, Claiming Knowledge: Strategies of Epistemology from Theosophyto the New Age, Numen Book Series: Studies in the History of Religions, 40 (Leiden:Brill, 2004), 61.

9. Tim Rudbg, Helena Petrovna Blavatskys Esoteric Tradition, in Construct-ing Tradition: Means and Myths of Transmission in Western Esotericism, ed. Andreas B.Kilcher, Aries Book Series: Texts and Studies in Western Esotericism, 11 (Leiden:Brill, 2010), 1634.


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It is my contention that the latter position is true, and that thetrue source of Blavatskys transvaluation lies in Paul of Tarsus (ca.567 CE) Christianized Stoic pneumatology. Given the depth of Bla-

vatskys anti-Christianitywhich is felt throughout the whole of IsisUnveiledthis thesis necessitates a careful analysis both of the pre-cise ways in which Blavatsky uses the terms in question, and theways in which their Greek and Latin predecessors appeared amongthe Platonists and Paulists. I conclude that Blavatskys idiosyncraticadaptions of Platonic and Hermetic terminological apparatuses rep-resent a psychology and pneumatology that is essentially Pauline,but which has been draped in a facade of Platonism and Hermetism.While it is not entirely clear whether this situation is the result of mere

intellectual laziness or some mode of intentional deception,10the factremains that the doctrines presented in Isis Unveiledare decidedlynot what Blavatsky claims them to be. As we shall see presently, thepsychology and pneumatology presented in Isis Unveileddoes notbelong to the Platonic tradition, but is rather more strongly shapedby Pauline Stoicism and the transcriptional blunders of a novelist.

Blavatskys Use of Soul and Spirit

Soul and spirit are the regular English translations of the Greekterms and respectively. Given the importance of early

10. Regarding this intellectual laziness, the most glaring example is the aca-demic pretension and downright plagiarism which suffuses Isis Unveiled. The mostexhaustive documentation is Emmette Coleman, The Sources of Madame Bla-vatskys Writings, in A Modern Priestess of Isis, by Walter Leaf, 35366 (London:Longmans, Greek, and Co., 1895). Coleman sums up the situation (354), noting thathe discovered some 2000 passages copied from other books without proper credit,

and that while about 1400 books are quoted from and referred to in this work,Blavatsky herself only appears to have read one hundred of those. The remaining1,300 books quoted from were second-hand quotations from the works of a handfulof authors. In essence, what he demonstrates is that not only did Blavatsky blatantlyplagiarize the works of others, but that she also pretended to a breadth of readingthat she did not possess in the least. According to Coleman (3645), this intellectualdishonesty resulted in the wholesale garbling of historical doctrines, a wealth ofmisstatement and error in all branches of knowledge treated by her in Isis Unveiled,mistakes and blunders of many varied kinds, as well as great contradiction andinconsistenceboth in terms of internal and external cogency. What this meansfor this study is that there is a distinct possibility that Blavatskys transvaluation ofsoul and spirit was not the result of malice, but of simple academic dishonesty.This ineptitude is clearly demonstrated in the following section dealing with theAugoeides, where Blavatsky invents by accepting at face value a butchered tran-scription and translation of a Greek passage found within a fantasy novel.


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Greek thought in the subsequent history of Western philosophy,religion, and science, uses of these terms are generally bound upwith the attributions of one Greek school or another. As Isis Unveiled

specically frames itself as a Hermetic work, it would be rea-sonable to assume that Blavatskys early use of soul, spirit, andtheir cognates in other languages would comport to the usage ofthe Alexandrian Hermetists. Within the body of literature known asthe Hermetic corpus, the relationship between the two is such thatthe is distinct from the and inferior to it.11Within thecorpus, we nd a clear doctrine in which acts as an inter-mediary substance which bridges the gap in the emanative descentfrom the to (esh).12However, Blavatskys use both of the

English and Greek terms (as well as their Latin equivalents animaand spiritus) curiously follow an inversion of this usage. As such, theprincipal purpose of this study is to examine her understanding ofthese terms, and of the sources to which she appeals in an attempt touncover how and why this transvaluation occurred. To accomplishthis, for each term analysed, I rst examine Blavatskys usage, andthen those of the historical precedents, charting the semantic shiftfrom antiquity to that of Isis Unveiled.

As Blavatsky is aware that spirit and soul are commonlymade synonymous,13by non-technical readers, she provides a sec-tion of preliminary denitions at the books outset which seek toclarify her usage. She tells us that spirit the immortal, immate-rial, and purely divine principle in man while soul is the ,or the nepheshof the Bible; the vital principle, or the breath of life,which every animal down to the infusoria shares with man.14Sheidenties the soul as the lower of the two, denoting it as the AstralSoul, or the inner, uidic body which is mortal; the spirit, how-

ever is immortal, and is identied as the Augoeides, or portion ofthe Divine Spirit.15 Throughout the subsequent chapters of IsisUnveiled, soul is continually variously identied with the astral

11. Ernest DeWitt Burton, Spirit, Soul, and Flesh: The Usage of , , andin Greek Writings and Translated Works from the Earliest Period to 224 A.D.; and of

Their Equivalents , and -in the Hebrew Old Testament, Historical and Linguistic Studies, 2.3 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1918), 176.

12. Corpus Hermeticum: Tome I, Traits IXII, 3rd ed., edited and translated byA.D. Nock and A.J. Festugire (Paris: Belles Lettres, 1972), X.13.

13. Blavatsky, Isis Unveiled, 1:xli.14. Ibid.15. Ibid., 1:12.


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light of liphas Lvi (18101875) when used in the sense of a uni-versal principle,16and the astral body when used to designate theindividual anthropic principle17specically noting that the des-

ignation astral is ancient and was used by some Neoplatonists.18

The astral light is identied both as the Platonic anima mundi(world soul),19 the sidereal light of Paracelsus,20and the etherof Aristotle and nineteenth century physics.21 The astral bodyis similarly identied with Platos mortal soul22 and Paracelsussidereal body.23Spirit, then, is identied not only with ,24but also the of Plato,25 the Hebrew ,26 and Godreadilymaking spirit the highest principle.27

These preliminary denitions provide us with three points which

will serve as data for further analysis. One, Blavatsky, follows lin-guistic precedent and uses soul as the English translation of theGreek (and the Hebrew

) and similarly of spirit as (and). Two, she positions the divine spirit as being over andabove the astral soul. Three, her designation of the soul as astraland sidereal, and the spirit as the Augoeides necessitates thatthere is a hierarchical distinction between these two appellations.Regarding the rst point, little more needs be said other than that it

is important to note that while Blavatsky makes tremendous seman-tic changes to soul and spirit,she maintains an indelible iden-tity between these terms and their regular Greek, Latin, and Hebrewcognates. Given the fact that she is notpresenting her psychologicaland pneumatological doctrines as new, but rather as in line with awhole host of historical sources, this is an important point to keep inmind throughout this analysis. As the second and third points hingeon the relationship between the two terms, it is there that our doxo-graphic analysis begins.

16. Ibid., 1:158.17. Ibid., 1:129, 181; Blavatsky, Isis Unveiled, 2:558, 592.18. Blavatsky, Isis Unveiled, 1:xxv.19. Blavatsky, Isis Unveiled, 2:227.20. Blavatsky, Isis Unveiled1:xxv, xxvi, 64.21. Blavatsky, Isis Unveiled, 2:234.22. Blavatsky, Isis Unveiled, 1:277, 401.23. Ibid., 1:208.24. Ibid., 1:401.25. Ibid., 1:xli.26. Ibid., 1:181.27. Ibid., 317; Blavatsky, Isis Unveiled, 2:90, 269, 496.


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Middle and Late Platonic Sources

appears in extant Greek literature in the fth century BCE,and it continually used to denote wind and breath.28Other mean-ings emerge in the intervening centuries, but the fundamental twosenses perdure. , on the other hand, originated cotemporallybut is prevailingly a vital term bound up with the idea of life.29It too gained further meanings in subsequent centuries, but continu-ally bore the general senses of vitality and life. Blavatsky, during theHermetic phase of her career, regarded Theosophy as synonymouswith Platonism,30and it is with the Middle and Late Platonists (towhom Blavatsky regularly appeals) that we nd some of the earliest

systematic doctrines of the relationship between and .In the Corpus Hermeticum(second-third centuries CE), man is consti-tuted as a series of envelopes in which functions as a rari-ed intermediary substance linking to .31 In this system is conceived of as a semi-material uidic substance whichexists in the venal and arterial channels of the bodyconveying thesouls vitality to the body.32This idea of as an intravenoussubstance responsible for transforming psychic vitality into physi-cal motion is owed to Aristotle (384322 BCE),33but nds its epitome

in Galen (129ca. 216 CE), who tells us that nerves are not lled withblood, but with (psychic pneuma),34and that it isthat causes blood to move through the arteries.35

In Platonic philosophy, however, the relationship between thepneumatic substance and the soul is such that the is that whichcomprises the souls vehicle. This doctrine that the incorporeal soulis joined to the corporeal body by means of a pneumatic vehicle orig-inates in the second century CEwith the Chaldean Oracles, and from

28. Burton, Spirit, Soul, and Flesh, 13.29. Ibid., 24.30. Throughout the whole of Isis Unveiled, Theosophy is treated as identical with

orthodox Platonism, Middle Platonic Hermetism, and Neoplatonism.31. Burton, Spirit, Soul, and Flesh, 176.32. Corpus Hermeticum, X.13, 167.33. Aristotle, Movement of Animals, edited and translated by E.S. Forster, in

Parts of Animals, Movement of Animals, Progression of Animals, 440542, Loeb ClassicalLibrary (London: William Heinemann, 1961), 703a915; Aristotle, Generation of Ani-mals, edited and translated by A.L. Peck, Loeb Classical Library (London: WilliamHeinemann, 1953), 728a910, 736a34737a1, 737a15.

34. Galen, On the Natural Faculties, edited and translated by Arthur John Brock,Loeb Classical Library (London: William Heinemann, 1952), II.6.97.

35. Ibid., 2.8.120.


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Iamblichus (ca. 245ca. 325 CE) onward is part and parcel of Neopla-tonic anthropology.36The Oraclesdescribe the (subtle vehicle of the soul)37specically indicated to be made from

38

which both allows the soul to descend into the body andenables the theurgist to ascend () into the angelic and divinerealms.39 Iamblichus describes the as (ethereal)40and specically notes that it is composed of (ether)41the Aris-totelian element of the stars of which all superlunar bodies werethought to be composed.42Proclus (412485 CE) too noted the ethe-real nature of the , adding the adjective (astral).43Hierocles (fth century CE) as well described the vehicle as bothastral and pneumatic.44

With the rediscovery of Neoplatonism in the Renaissance, thetheory of the vehicle re-emerges. Marsilio Ficino (14331499) saw thebody as linked to the animaby means of spiritusthe regular Latintranslations of and .45 For Ficino, spiritus formed the

36. John Finamore, Iamblichus and the Theory of the Vehicle of the Soul, AmericanClassical Studies, 14 (Chico: Scholars Press, 1985), 1; Robert Christian Kissling,

The-

of the Neo-Platonists and the De Insomniis of Synesius ofCyrene, The American Journal of Philology43, no. 4 (1922): 31830, 322.37. The Chaldean Oracles: Text, Translation, and Commentary, edited and translated

by Ruth Majercik, Studies in Greek and Roman Religion, 5 (Leiden: Brill, 1989), fr.120.

38. Ibid., fr. 196.39. Ibid., ffr. 119, 1223.40. Iamblichus, On the Mysteries: Translated With Introduction and Notes, ed. and

trans. Emma C. Clarke, John M. Dillon and Jackson P. Hershbell, Writings from theGreco-Roman World, 4 (Atlanta: Society for Biblical Literature, 2003), III.14.132,

V.26.239.41. Iamblichus, In Timaeum, in Iamblichi Chalcidencis: In Platonis diologos commen-

tariorum fragmenta, 106205, edited and translated by John M. Dillon, Platonic Textsand Translations, 1 (Wiltshire: The Prometheus Trust, 2009), fr. 84.14.

42. Friedrich Solmsen, The Vital Heat, The Inborn Pneuma and the Aether,The Journal of Hellenic Studies77, no. 1 (1957): 11923.

43. Proclus, vol. 3 of In Platonis Timaeum commentaria, 3 vols., edited by ErnstDiehl (Leipzig: Teubner, 19036), 195, 308.

44. H.S. Schibli, Hierocles of Alexandria and the Vehicle of the Soul, Hermes121 (1993): 1111.

45. Marsilio Ficino, Platonic Theology, 6 vols., ed. James Hankins, trans. MichaelJ.B. Allen, The I Tatti Renaissance Library (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,20012006), VII.6.1; Anna Corrias, Imagination and Memory in Marsilio FicinosTheory of the Vehicles of the Soul, The International Journal of the Platonic Tradition, 6(2012): 88, 901.


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souls currus (chariot)46or vehiculum(vehicle),47and was described asaetherius(ethereal).48It was this ethereal spirit bestowed vita(life) andsensus(sense) upon the body.49Drawing on Ficino as well as the late

classical Neoplatonists, Henry Cornelius Agrippa (14861535) simi-larly conceived of a universal spiritus mundi(world spirit) that actedas a transmissive medium through which the anima mundi actedupon the material world.50And, as did his predecessors, Agrippaidentied spirituswith Aristotles quintam essentiam(fth element),or ether, which was the means through which each occulta proprie-tas (occult property) was conveyed from the stars into the elements.51Paracelsus too conceived of spirit as a mean between soul and body,which conveyed astral inuences into mans terrestrial form.52Fol-

lowing Neoplatonic precedent, this spiritual intermediary manifestsitself anthropologically as the gestirnt leib (astral body), whichalong with the elementisch (elemental) body comprises ein massagwesen sind und ein limus (one slimy mass of mud) which is man.53Paracelsus identies this astral body as the jnner Gestirne (innerstars),54the sidus(star) of the innern himels (inner heaven), andthe siderisch geist (sidereal spirit)which wei was im gestirn(knows what is in the stars), and imbues man with this knowledge.55

Thomas Vaughan (16211666), drawing upon both Agrippa andParacelsus, serves as a nal example of Renaissance Neoplatonicviews of the relationship between soul and spirit. Like his pre-decessors, he conceived of a spiritus mundi that was the medium

46. Ficino, Platonic Theology, IX.5.2.47. Ibid., XIX.4.3.48. Ibid., V.13.14.49. Ibid., XVIII.10.11.50. William Newman, Thomas Vaughan as an Interpreter of Agrippa von Net-

tesheim,Ambix29, no. 3 (1982): 12540, 128; Henry Cornelius Agrippa, De occultaphilosophia libri tres, edited by V. Perrone Compagni, Studies in the History of Chris-tian Thought (Leiden: Brill, 1992), I.11, I.14.

51. Agrippa, De occulta philosophia, X.14.52. F.R. Jevons, Paracelsus Two-Way Astrology: I. What Paracelsus Meant by

Stars, The British Journal for the History of Science2, no. 2 (1964): 1401.53. Paracelsus,Astronomia Magna, oder die ganze Philosophia Sagax der groen und

kleinen Welt, in vol. 12 of Smtliche Werke, 1406, 14 vols., edited by Karl Sudhoff(Munich and Berlin: R. Oldenbourg, 192933), 58.

54. Paracelsus, Paragranum, in Paracelsus (Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohen-heim, 14931541): Essential Theoretical Writings, 61296, ed. and trans. Andrew Weeks,Aries Book Series: Texts and Studies in Western Esotericism, 5 (Leiden: Brill, 2008),H.2.47.

55. Paracelsus,Astronomia Magna, 301.


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through which the soul of nature was diffused and moved itsbody.56Similarly, he saw spirit as a mere enclosure or vestmentof the soul,57and as the celestial, ethereal part of manwhereby

we do move, see, feel, taste and smell, and have a commerce withall material objects whatsoever.58Vaughan further identies thisspirit with that part of man which Paracelsus calls the siderealman (homo sidereus),59 as the (vehi-cle and ethereal body) of the Platonists,60 and as the thin aerialsubstance which is the vestment wherein the Soul wraps her-self when she descends and applies to generation.61liphas Lvitoo follows suit with his predecessors, theorizing that there existsa lumire astrale (astral light) which is identied as the envel-

oppe de lme (envelope of the soul) and the thr ou le fantmesidral (ethereal or sidereal phantom).62The function of this corpssidral (sidereal body) is to act as lintermdiaire entre lme et lecorps matriel (the intermediary between the soul and the mate-rial body).63He further claries that this corps astral (astral body)is that qui fait communiquer notre me avec nos organes (whichconnects our soul with our bodies).64

Thus do we see throughout the Neoplatonists of late antiquity, the

Renaissance, and early modernity a consistent and coherent doctrinein which spirit functions as a transmissive intermediary substancebetween soul and body. The spirit is identied with the ether, andowing to the fact that the stars are themselves ethereal bodies, thespiritual portion of man is designated as star-like. While Blavatsky

56. Arlene Miller Guinsburg, Henry More, Thomas Vaughan and the LateRenaissance Magical Tradition,Ambix27, no. 1 (1980): 3658.

57. Thomas Vaughan,Anthroposophia Theomagica: Or a Discourse on the Nature ofMan and His State After Death, in The Works of Thomas Vaughan: Mystic and Alchemist(Eugenius Philalethes), 162, ed. Arthur Edward Waite (New Hyde Park: UniversityBooks, 1986), 17.

58. Ibid., 40.59. Ibid., 55.60. Thomas Vaughan, The Fraternity of the Rosy Cross, and a Short Declaration of

Their Physical Work, in The Works of Thomas Vaughan, ed. Arthur Edward Waite (NewHyde Park: University Books, 1986), 370.

61. Thomas Vaughan, Anima Magica Abscondita: Or a Discourse of the UniversalSpirit of Nature, in The Works of Thomas Vaughan, ed. Arthur Edward Waite (NewHyde Park: University Books, 1986), 79.

62. liphas Lvi, vol. 1 of Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie, 2 vols. (Paris: GermerBaillire, 1861), 208.

63. Ibid., 278.64. Lvi, Dogme et Rituel, 2:109.


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doesmake the same connection between the ether and the astral body/light,65 it is the soul, not the spirit, which is identied as astral andethereal throughout Isis Unveiled.66 This position that soul, then, is

the astral intermediary existing as the mean between spirit and bodyis a complete terminological reversal of the entire history of Neo-platonic usage. As the terms Blavatsky uses to describe the soulastral, sidereal, etc.are Platonic in origin, her transvaluationof soul and spirit is confusing, and necessitates that we inquireas to whether there are historical precedents for this usage and if so,why she overtly appeals to Platonic sources while covertly relying onwholly different philosophies.

Stoic and Biblical Inuences

Outside of Neoplatonism, there are two schools of thought whichvalue as identical with God, the Stoic and the Biblical tradi-tions. The Stoic position regarding the metaphysical dominance ofspirit has its roots in the Presocratic philosopher Anaximenes (585528 BCE) who used and (air) as synonyms,67and heldthat aer deum statuit (air is God).68Zeno of Citium (ca. 334ca.262 BCE), the Stoic progenitor, identied the Aristotelian ether withGod,69noting that God is both ardorem (ery) and is aether nomi-netur (called ether).70Zenos successor, Cleanthes (ca. 330ca. 230BCE)clearly maintained the aforementioned notion of unity betweenand , specically identifying God with spiritus.71Thus,while the early Stoics certainly did follow precedent and employedthe term to mean wind, they were certainly part of a tradi-tion which said that God was .72Could the Stoic identica-tion of God with ery spirit be an unattributed source of Blavatskys

transvaluation? She does mention the Stoic conception of God as the

65. Blavatsky, Isis Unveiled, 2:59, 185, 234.66. Ibid., 588, 592.67. Burton, Spirit, Soul, and Flesh, 74.68. Cicero, De natura deorum, in De natura deorum, Academica, 2383, ed. and trans.

H. Rackham, Loeb Classical Library (London: William Heinemann, 1968), I.10.26.69. Ibid., I.14.26, Cicero,Academica, in De natura deorum, Academica, 410659, ed.

and trans. H. Rackham, Loeb Classical Library (London: William Heinemann, 1968),II.41.126.

70. Cicero, De natura deorum, I.14.37.71. Tertullian, Apology, in Apology, De spectaculis, 2229, ed. and trans. T.R.

Glover, Loeb Classical Library (London: William Heinemann 1928), XXI.10.72. Burton, Spirit, Soul, and Flesh, 112.


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Divine Soul (Spirit), but not in direct connection with her owntheology.73

The identication of God with the spirit certainly doescomport to

Blavatskys usage, but the Stoic insistence on the synonymy of spiritand ether wholly runs counter to her use of ethereal strictly as anappellation of the soul. The Stoic notion of re, too, does not coincidewith Blavatsky, who makes mention of an astral re74 and notesthat the ether is bothpureand impurere,75both of which link reto the soul rather than spirit. Additionallyalthough not a Stoicpersein the Hellenised Judaic philosophy of Philo of Alexandria (20BCE50 CE), the logos, or nous, is equated on occasion also with theStoicpneuma.76In one instance, Philo specically identies

(the divine spirit) as (rational andintelligent).77This identity betweenand is further deep-ened by Seneca (ca. 4BCE65 CE), who tells us that ratio (reason)is nothing more than the divini spiritus (divine spirit).78ThisPhilonic and Stoic unity comports well to Blavatskys contention ofsynonymy between the two terms.79However, as Blavatsky does notdirectly acknowledge the Stoa or Philo as sources for this idea, thisexegesis must retain a degree of uncertainty.

The Stoic identication between God and spirit having shownitself to be inconclusive, we are left with the possibility of a bibli-cal origin for Blavatskys transvaluation. As mentioned previously,Blavatsky does follow precedent in identifying spirit and soulwith the Hebrew and .80Additionally, she twice identies herspirit with the of Paul of Tarsus (ca. 567 CE).81To under-stand the connection between the biblical view of spirit with Bla-vatskys, a brief examination of the former is required. Similar to theGreek , originally bore the meaning of wind, and was

73. Blavatsky, Isis Unveiled, 1:317.74. Ibid., 137.75. Blavatsky, Isis Unveiled, 2:12.76. John M. Dillon, The Middle Platonists: 80 B.C.to A.D. 220, rev. ed. (Ithaca: Cor-

nell University Press, 1996), 159.77. Philo of Alexandria, Questions and Answers on Genesis, ed. and trans. Ralph

Marcus, Loeb Classical Library (London: William Heinemann, 1953), II.59.78. Seneca, Epistles, 3 vols., ed. and trans. Richard M. Gummere, Loeb Classical

Library (London: William Heinemann, 191725), II.66.12.79. Blavatsky, Isis Unveiled, 1:xli, 401; Blavatsky, Isis Unveiled, 2:112, 282, 284,

496.80. Blavatsky, Isis Unveiled, 1: 181; Blavatsky, Isis Unveiled,2:362.81. Ibid., 2812.


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later extended to cover those of breath and spirit.82And, simi-lar to the Greek , was used to designate the soul, that entitywhich, residing in a living being, makes it alive,83which distin-

guishes a living being from inanimate objects.84

However, distinctfrom early Greek concepts of , the Hebrew understanding ofquickly took on a religious dimension, resulting in a compositeusage characterised as physical-religious-psychical as contrastedwith the psychical-vital use of .85And, while the early uses ofall four terms display a great degree of parallelism,86the Greek trans-lators of the Septuagint subsumed the extra-Hellenic notion of thespirit of God present in Old Testament uses of into ,87which resulted in the emergence of the Greek expression of an essen-

tially Hebrew idea in the designation , or holy spirit.88Still, it is not in the Greek translations of Old Testament literature

where we see the stark valuation of as something above andbeyond ; for this we look to Paul. As Troels Engberg-Pedersonnotes, the importance of pneuma in Pauls thought can hardly beoverstated.89While Pauls use of is plainly kindred withthe Old Testament usage of , he almost never uses it to refer towind or breath. but rather continually and consistently uses it

in reference to the Spirit of God.90

Neither is Pauls usage strictlyderived from Jewish sources. As is evidenced by his use of Stoicterminology, his echoing of Stoic phrases, his bringing to expressionconceptions that would have been at home within Stoicism, his useof Stoic topoi, metaphors, gures and forms, [and] his use of Stoicnatural theology, Paul was clearly acquainted with Stoic philoso-phy and seems to have drawn on it rather heavily in the develop-ment of his own views.91Although it is clear that Pauls encounter

82. William Ross Schoemaker, The Use of in the Old Testement and of inthe New Testament(PhD diss., University of Chicago, 1904), 134; Burton, Spirit, Soul,and Flesh, 55.

83. Burton, Spirit, Soul, and Flesh, 62.84. Ibid., 65.85. Ibid., 712.86. Ibid., 73.87. Schoemaker, The Use of ., 3688. Burton, Spirit, Soul, and Flesh, 170.89. Troels Engberg-Pedersen, The Material Spirit: Cosmology and Ethics in

Paul, New Testament Studies55, no. 2 (2009): 179197 (179).90. Ibid., 187.91. David A. DeSilva, Paul and the Stoa: A Comparison,Journal of the Evangeli-

cal Theological Society38, no. 4 (1995): 54964 (563).


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with Christ and with Judaism shaped his theology to a great degree,the parallelism between Paul and the Stoics cannot be ignored.92

In Paul, we nd a view of that is specically tied to

heaven and that it is a physical element (like heaven itself) that mayenter into and transform an earthly, physical bodya positionfar more consistent with Stoicism than Judaism.93An illuminatinginstance of this can be found in I Cor. 15:448 when Paul describesAdam as a (living soul) with a (nat-ural body),94 and then portrays Christ as a (life-giving spirit) with a (spiritual body). Thedifference between the two is that Adam is (earthly) andChrist is (heavenly).95A further example of this is seen

in ICor. 2:145, where the (natural) man is described asone who has not received (Gods spirit), andis thus not himself (spiritual). This usage marks acontrast between and [that] is wholly foreign to ordi-nary Greek thoughtbeing the exact converse of the Platonic use,which treats as inferior to .96

As much as Paul seems to have drawn on the Stoa, the identityis far from complete. For, although with the Stoa we dosee

identied with

and God, we do notsee the Pauline linkage ofand , or the treatment of the ensouled physical body asthe opposite of a heavenly, pneumatic one.97What we see inPaul is at once complete transversal of the Platonic view as wellas a radical appropriation of the Stoa, in which is treated asthe incorporeal and divine faculty, while is the semi-corporaland embodied faculty. For Pauls exaltation of the over there is no observed previous parallel,98and it seems clear that thismust be the ultimate root of Blavatskys inversion. What is curious,

though, is that while she does refer to Pauls use of as par-allel with her own twice,99uses that appearto comport themselves

92. Ibid., 564.93. Engberg-Pedersen, The Material Spirit, 186.94. While this phrase might be literally translated as body of the soul,

here carries more the connotation of natural or worldlyas distinguished fromthe transcendent .

95. The Greek New Testament: SBL Edition, ed. Michael W. Holmes (Atlanta: Soci-ety of Biblical Literature, 2010).

96. Burton, Spirit, Soul, and Flesh, 191.97. Engberg-Pedersen, The Material Spirit, 190.98. Burton, Spirit, Soul, and Flesh, 206.99. Blavatsky, Isis Unveiled, 2: 2812.


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into a Neoplatonic context are legion. The fact, then, that her usageis essentially Pauline, but is cloaked in a Neoplatonic facade seemsto be an unacknowledged consequence of her syncretic blending of

two terminological apparatuses which are not in agreement.

The Astral Soul and the Augoeides

We now come to the third point in this examination, Blavatskysdescription of the soul as astral and sidereal while linking thespirit with the Augoeides. Although Blavatsky uses the word asa proper noun, in its original context was an adjective,meaning luminous or light-like, and was commonly used in

combination with the now familiar descriptor , as wellas other adjectival compounds like (ery) and (solar)all of which involve the sufx, meaning form ortype.100 Among its earliest extant uses are those found in theChaldean Oracles, where the (luminous body)is identied with the pneumatic vehicle used by the theurgist toengage in (theurgic ascent).101Galen, too, makes an earlyexplicit reference to the (lumi-nous and ethereal body), demonstrating a further early second cen-tury linkage between descriptions of the vehicle as pneumatic,ethereal, and luminous.102

Moving forward into the Neoplatonism of late antiquity, wesee the term intimately bound up with the theory ofthe . Iamblichus describes the theurgists ability to receiveGod as achieved by purifying the (lumi-nous spirit),103notes the ethereal nature of this luminous spirit104specically designating it as the

(ethereal and luminous vehicle).105

Proclus as well, describes thevehicle as the (luminous garment) of thesoul.106Macrobius (fth century CE) introduces the Latin cognate,

100. Daryn Lehoux, What Did the Romans Know: An Inquiry Into Science and World-making(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012), 124.

101. Chaldean Oracles, ffr. 11920.102. Galen, vol. 2 of De placitis Hippocratis et Platonis, 3 vols., ed. Phillip De Lacy,

Corpus medicorum Graecorum, v.4.1.2 (Berlin: Akademie Verlag 1978), vii.7.25.3.103. Iamblichus, On the Mysteries, III.11.125.104. Ibid., V.26.239.105. Ibid., III.14.132.106. Proclus, vol. 1 of In Platonis rem publicam commentarii, 2 vols., ed. W. Kroll

(Leipzig: Teubner, 18491901), 119.


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the luminosi corporis (luminous body) which proceeds down-ward from the zodiaco et lacteo (Zodiac and Milky Way) toimbue elemental man with astral attributes.107Later Greek Neopla-

tonists continually refer to the spiritual intermediary between thesoul and body as the with this precise wordingbeing found in the works of Syrianus (died ca. 437 CE),108Damas-cius (ca. 458538 CE),109Simplicius (ca. 490560 CE),110and Olympio-dorus (ca. 495570 CE).111

Thus, the Middle and Late Platonic usage of shows itselfto be identicalwith , as an adjective intimately associatedwith the pneumatic vehicle. Blavatskys usage, however, disagreeswith this signicantly. The Augoeides, which, again, Blavatsky

treats as a noun rather than an adjective, is made to be identicalwith the Divine Spirit which is ontologically prior to the AstralSoul.112She repeatedly distinguishes the Augoeides as distinct fromthe sidereal or astral body, noting the latters function as being anintermediary between the former and the terrestrial body.113Shespecically describes the Augoeides as a discrete spiritual beingwho is at once identical with the Self, the Shining One,114 the

,115and God.116What is more, in an echo of the previous sections

conclusion where it was determined that Blavatsky was cloaking thePauline distinction between and in Neoplatonic ver-biage, we nd that she continually describes this heterodox view ofthe Augoeides as completely in accord with those of the ancientNeo-platonists117 and the Greek philosopher-initiates such as

107. Macrobius, Commentarii in Ciceronis somnium Scipionis et excerpta e libro de dif-ferentiis et societatibus Graeci Latinque verbi, ed. Ludwig von Jan, Opera quae super-sunt, 1 (Quedlinburg and Leipzig: Godofredi Bassii, 1848), I.12.13.

108. Syrianus, Syriani in metaphysica commentaria, ed. W. Kroll, Commentaria inAristotelem Graeca, 6.1 (Berlin: Reimer 1902), 86.

109. Damascius, vol. 2 of Damascii successoris dubitationes et solutiones, 2 vols., ed.Charles mile Ruelle (Paris: Klincksieck, 1899), 255.

110. Simplicius, vol. 1 of Simplicii in Aristotelis physicorum libros octo commentaria,2 vols., ed. H. Diels, Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca, 9 and 10 (Berlin: Reimer,188295), 615.

111. Olympiodorus, Olympiodorus: Commentary on the First Alcibiades of Plato,ed. L.G. Westerink (Amsterdam: Hakkert, 1956), 16.2.

112. Blavatsky, Isis Unveiled, 1: 12.113. Ibid., 1: 212.114. Blavatsky, Isis Unveiled, 2: 318.115. Ibid., 2: 495.116. Ibid., 2: 496.117. Blavatsky, Isis Unveiled, 1: 315; Blavatsky, of Isis Unveiled, 2: 495.


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Porphyry and Plotinus118linking all of this with the daemoniumofSocrates.119

What this seems to indicate is that for Blavatsky, the Augoeides

functions as a personal tutelary deity, similar to the Platonic (personal daemon).120She describes this being as the self-shining blessed vision resident in the pure light and as the God towhom Plotinus was united six times during his lifetime.121This isafarcry from the actualNeoplatonic use of as synonymouswith the ethereal, astral, and pneumatic vehicle of the soul. Thisbifurcation between the astral soul and the Augoeides builds uponthe afore-analysed transvaluation of soul and spirit found inIsis Unveiled, and doubles the confusion by taking two terms which

were bothoriginally appellations of the and dividing thembetween the two spheresan action which makes the meaning ofAugoeides completely separate from and incompatible with theoriginal . What, then, is the origin of thistransvaluation?As allof the extant Greek uses of comport to the Platonicusage, the answer does not lie in antiquity, but forward in history.With the Medieval shift from Greek to Latin and then to nationalvernaculars in the Renaissance, the term disappeared even from Pla-

tonic texts, and is not found in any of the works of men like Ficino,Agrippa, Paracelsus, Vaughan, or even early modern theurgists likeLvi.

As such, we must look to uses of the transliterated augoeidesas it occurs in works which would have been available to Blavatskyprior to the composition and publication of Isis Unveiled in 1877. As itso happens, there is but one published work from that time period inwhich the term appears, Edward Bulwer-Lyttons (18031873) bookZanoni(1842), to which Blavatsky refers to throughout Isis Unveiled.122

Bulwer-Lytton uses the term only once in Zanoni, with one of thecharacters describing the subject of a theophany as, Soul of mine,

118. Ibid., 2: 115.119. Ibid., 2: 284.120. For detailed exposition on this concept, see: Plotinus, vol. 3 of Enneads, 7

vols., ed. and trans. by A.H. Armstrong, Loeb Classical Library (London: WilliamHeinemann, 196688), III.4.1ff.; Iamblichus, On the Mysteries, IX.1ff.; Apuleius, vol. 2of De deo Socratis, in Opera omnia, 10269, 2 vols., ed. G.F. Hildebrand (Leipzig: Sum-tibus C. Cnoblochii, 1842); John M. Rist, Plotinus and the Daimonion of Socrates,Phoenix17, no. 1 (1963): 1324.

121. Blavatsky, Isis Unveiled, 2: 115.122. Blavatsky, Isis Unveiled, 1:1, 17, 64, 72, 158, 286.


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the luminous, the Augoeides.123In the footnote to this passage, hedenes the term as a word favored by the mysticalPlatonists and follows this with a butchered quote from Marcus

Aurelius (121180 CE) purporting to include a reference to the word.124Howeverin what must have been an action speci-cally designed to thwart future scholarsBulwer-Lytton not onlymistranscribes but also wrongly cites the quote! The actual quota-tion employs the term (true to its own), not ,making Bulwer-Lyttons appellation to it a complete non sequitur.125This being the case, what we uncover is that Blavatsky has takena term which isauthentically Neoplatonic, claims to use it in thenormal way, but covertly uses it in the completely unhistorical and

contrived sense of a novel. More than anything else we have seen,this introduction of the term Augoeides into the Theosophical lex-icon by Blavatsky evidences the laziness of the method by which IsisUnveiledwas compiled. For, it is obvious that no effort was made totrack down Aurelius original quote in context. Rather, as Colemandemonstrated, like so many other references in the work, this evi-dences the fact that Blavatskys source material often consisted ofsecond-hand quotations that may or may not have been accurate.

While this can occasionally be done in a way that goes unnoticed,here the error of Blavatskys bad research methodology is blindinglyobvious.

123. Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Zanoni (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Company,1888), 12930.

124. The footnote reads verbatim: a word favored by the mysticalPlatonists, , , , , , MARC. ANT., lib. 2.The sense of which beautiful sentence of the old philosophy,which, as Bayle well observes, in his article on Cornelius Agrippa, the modernQuietists have (however impotently) sought to imitate, is to the effect that thesphere of the soul is luminous, when nothing external has contact with the soulitself; but when lit by its own light, it sees the truth of all things and the truth cen-tered in itself, Ibid., 130.

125. Marcus Aurelius,Meditations, inMarcus Aurelius, 1345, ed. and trans. C.R.Haines, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1930), 9:.12: , , , , (The soul is a sphere truly shaped, when it neither projects itself towards any-thing outside nor shrinks together inwardly, neither expands nor contracts, butirradiates a light whereby it sees the reality of all things and the reality that is initself).


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Conclusion

In examining the ideas of and relationship between soul andspirit in the early Hermetic writings of Blavatsky, the over-arching conclusion is that there are two strata: the overt presenta-tion of her ideas and terms as stemming from one source, and thecovert reality of these having a different origin. Regarding our threepoints of investigation, it became immediately clear that Blavatskyuses soul as the English translation of the Greek , the Latinanima, and the Hebrew . Likewise, she uses spirit in place ofthe respective Greek, Latin and Hebrew terms , spiritus, and. In employing the Greek terms, in particular, she directly appeals

to the Platonists, and gives the distinct impression that her usage ofthe terms is connate with theirs. However, analysis indicates thather usage represents a complete transvaluation, giving the Neopla-tonic meaning of to , and vice versa. Additionally, whilepresenting the Neoplatonic doctrine of the , she rightly appliesthe English translations of the term , astral and side-real, to the vehicle (which, again, she has made into the soul itselfrather than the souls pneumatic envelope), but divorces this fromthe appellation augoeidestransforming what is historically an

adjective relating specically to the vehicle into personal tutelaryGod who is above and beyond the astral body.

While Blavatsky certainly never explained her reasons for makingthese semantic alterations to the established uses of the terms, someconclusions can be drawn. In the rst instance of Blavatskys essen-tially Pauline usage of spirit presented as if it were Platonic, thesituation is muddled by the fact that Isis Unveileddisplays whatHanegraaff describes as obsessive anti-Christianity126 so strongthat Carl Jackson suggest a more tting title for the book would

have been The Horrors of Christianity Unveiled and the Excellences ofHinduism Praised.127Why then, since Blavatsky was so overtly hostileto Christianity, does her pneumatology rest on the reformations ofPaul? What appears to be the case is that while Blavatsky wasveryfamiliar with the Bible, she was not nearly as conversant with thetexts of Platonism as she leads her readers to believe. As we havealready seen through Colemans analysis of Blavatskys sources, sheroutinely pretended to erudition she did not possess. This allows us

126. Hanegraaff, New Age Religion, 450.127. Carl T. Jackson, The Oriental Religions and American Thought: Nineteenth-

Century Explorations(London: Greenwood Press, 1981), 160.


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to rule out creative misreading as a means through which her trans-valuation of soul and spirit occurred. For, as Harold Bloom tellsus, for creative misreading to occur, there must rst be a profound

act of reading that is a kind of falling in love with a literary work.128

With Blavatsky, it is painfully obvious that there was no such deepreading of the ancient Platonists, but rather an eminently supercialreading of secondary sources and second-hand quotations.

In this way, I think it is reasonable to conjecture that she beganher investigations into Platonic philosophy with Pauls attributionsof soul and spirit already entrenched in her mind. Thus, ratherthan encountering Neoplatonism as such, she did so through a Pau-line interpretative lens, assimilating Plato into Paul rather than seeing

the vast differences in each. As she was acutely conscious of her ownanti-Christianism, she could hardly acknowledge her vast debt toPaul, and so (consciously or unconsciously, we cannot say) cloakedhis words in a Platonic guise. The bifurcation of the Augoeidesfrom its cognate term astral seems to follow suit. As Blavatskydoes not directly reference anyinstance of the term from antiquity,andunlike a great many Greek technical termsonly uses the Eng-lish transcription, it is reasonable to assume that she rst encoun-

tered it through Bulwer-Lytton. Following a pattern similar to thesoul/spirit inversion, she then covered this gap in her knowledgeby presenting Bulwer-Lyttons idea as if it were one of great antiq-uity. In summation, what appears to be the case is that Blavatskycontinuallyand perhaps even systematicallymisrepresented heruses of specic terms as being Platonic when her words actuallypointed to biblical or ctional sources. While this kind of behaviouris the very height of intellectual dishonesty, it does t well within thegreater context of disingenuous appropriations of historical material

within Theosophy and the New Age.

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Documents

The Transvaluation of 'Soul' and 'Spirit': Platonism and Paulism in H.P. Blavatsky's Isis Unveiled