Abstract
H. P. Blavatsky’s influential The Secret Doctrine (1888), one of the foundation texts of Theosophy, contains chapters propagating an unembarrassed Satanism. Theosophical sympathy for the Devil also extended to the name of their journal Lucifer, and discussions conducted in it. To Blavatsky, Satan is a cultural hero akin to Pro- metheus. According to her reinterpretation of the Christian myth of the Fall in Genesis 3, Satan in the shape of the serpent brings gnosis and liberates mankind. The present article situates these ideas in a wider nineteenth-century context, where some poets and socialist thinkers held similar ideas and a counter-hegemonic reading of the Fall had far-reaching feminist implications. Additionally, influences on Blavatsky from French occultism and research on Gnosticism are discussed, and the instrumental value of Satanist shock tactics is con- sidered. The article concludes that esoteric ideas cannot be viewed in isolation from politics and the world at large. Rather, they should be analyzed both as part of a religious cosmology and as having strategic polemical and didactic functions related to political debates, or, at the very least, carrying potential entailments for the latter.Keywords: Theosophy, Blavatsky, Satanism, Feminism, Socialism, Romanticism.
Highlights
In the category of details considered doubtful by her detractors, we find Blavatsky’s claims to having studied voodoo in New Orleans, crossing the prairie in the
What I shall focus on here, is not her personality, though that aspect will not be entirely ignored, but rather the ideas concerning Satan as a liberator figure that were current in contemporary culture, as well as the ties between Theosophy and radical movements like socialism and feminism, all of which might serve to further understanding of the cultural logic behind Theosophical Luciferianism
Since she is writing for a Theosophical audience well-acquainted with Blavatsky’s counter-readings of the Bible in The Secret Doctrine, she states: ‘if the honorable members had been enlightened with regard to the real meaning of those particular chapters dealing with the fall and fate of our race, they might possibly have refrained from such a profound exhibition of ignorance’ (Gay 1890, 120)
Summary
Almost 600 (!) biographies have been written of Blavatsky, but the details of her life, especially the years 1848–1873, remain sketchy all the same. Blavatsky was very hostile towards Christianity as an organized religion, though not towards the true esoteric core she claimed it (like all other major religions) possessed. In effect, this meant she was harshly critical of the effects of Christianity as a historical phenomenon, in terms both of the existing churches and of established Christian theology, i.e. of all its noteworthy past and present manifestations. She swore profusely, dressed garishly, and had a strong sense of irreverent humor Her New York study was decorated with a stuffed baboon wearing white collars, cravats and spectacles, carrying a manuscript bundle under his arm labeled ‘The Descent of the Species’ (Blavatsky rejected Darwin’s ideas about man being descended from apes) (Campbell 1980, 76). What I shall focus on here, is not her personality, though that aspect will not be entirely ignored, but rather the ideas concerning Satan as a liberator figure that were current in contemporary culture, as well as the ties between Theosophy and radical movements like socialism and feminism, all of which might serve to further understanding of the cultural logic behind Theosophical Luciferianism
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