Isis Unveiled

Tradition:
Theosophical
Author:
Helena Petrovna Blavatsky
Form:
inspired work
Approx. date:
c. 1877 CE

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.

Source context· Western European stream · Anglo-German cultural age
Stream
Western European
Cultural age
Anglo-German (5th post-Atlantean cultural age)
Composed
c. 1877 CE
Soul-faculty
Intellectual Soul

What this work carries

Isis Unveiled surfaces esoteric knowledge previously held within Western secret societies and lodges, bringing it into the public domain for the first time in the modern epoch. It draws on Egyptian, Hermetic, Neoplatonic, and Kabbalistic strands of mystery wisdom. The work also engages Indo-Tibetan esoteric traditions transmitted through Blavatsky's guides.

Language frame

Composed in English in New York and published in 1877, the work takes the form of a two-volume synthetic treatise combining comparative religion, occult philosophy, and polemic against scientific materialism. Its mode is discursive and encyclopaedic, characteristic of nineteenth-century theosophical inspired writing.

Steiner’s engagement

  • GA 258, 1923-06-11Steiner characterises Isis Unveiled as the curious phenomenon of bringing into public circulation secret knowledge previously confined to secret societies, while noting that Blavatsky, as a chaotic personality, mixed profound wisdom together with unreliable elements.
  • GA 258, 1923-06-12Steiner acknowledges that Isis Unveiled was not valueless and delivered its knowledge with a certain substantiality that made what it imparted appear original.
  • GA 97, 1906-04-25Steiner states that when Blavatsky wrote Isis Unveiled her guide was first a European and then an Egyptian, indicating that the work's inspiration derived from a Western rather than purely Indian source.
  • GA 130, 1911-09-27Steiner cites Isis Unveiled (2 volumes, New York, 1877) as a primary bibliographic reference in the lecture cycle on Esoteric Christianity and the Mission of Christian Rosenkreutz.
  • GA 90a, 1903-11-17Steiner notes that Isis Unveiled was a much heavier work than what followed, and that The Secret Doctrine appeared considerably later.
  • GA 95, 1906-08-24Steiner references the section on reincarnation in Isis Unveiled, chapter ten, in connection with Blavatsky's treatment of that doctrine.
  • GA 104a, 1907-05-08Steiner cites Isis Unveiled as a master-key to the mysteries of ancient and modern science and theology in a bibliographic note to his lectures on the Apocalypse.

Cross-tradition congruence

  • Hermetic and Neoplatonic traditionsIsis Unveiled's structural identification of a single prisca theologia behind Egyptian, Greek, and Oriental religion parallels the Renaissance Hermetic and Neoplatonic tradition of Ficino and Pico della Mirandola, which similarly sought a universal esoteric substratum beneath exoteric religious forms.
  • KabbalahThe work draws extensively on Kabbalistic concepts of emanation and hierarchical cosmic structure, exhibiting cross-tradition congruence with the Lurianic sefirotic scheme in its treatment of angelic and planetary hierarchies.

JSON: /api/sources/isis-unveiled/index.json · Back to Sources.