Madame Blavatsky on Gerald Massey's
"Lectures" and "Natural Genesis."[Reprinted from The Agnostic Journal (London), October 3, 1891, p. 214.
As far as I know, this letter has never been reprinted since 1891.---BA Editor.]
Editorial Office, 17, Lansdowne Road
Holland Park, W., November 2nd, 1887.
My Dear Mr. Massey [1], my respected Guru in Egyptology, your correspondent is, for once (?), and yourself too, at sea in your conjectures. Whatever the exoteric meaning of the editorial footnote, its esoteric meaning will become clear in the third number of Lucifer.[2] I have read and re-read your Lectures and the more I read them the more I rejoice, for whatever there is in them (except your unjust pitching, semi-unjust at any rate, into esoteric Buddhist and our septenary ideas [see Massey's Lectures, "The Seven Souls of Man and Their Culmination in Christ," pp. 219-248]) is a corroboration of our esoteric teaching. No man, not initiated into the "Gupta Vidya" (secret knowledge) of the Hindus and Buddhists could, or has, come to better understand the secret of symbolism in Egypt than you. This I said in so many words in my forthcoming article, "The Esoteric Character of the Gospels." I quote you constantly, and, for me, you are the only man in Europe and America who understands that symbolism correctly. Not being much of an Egyptologist myself, except in those cases where that symbolism is identical with the Aryan (whether India had it from Egypt, or Egypt from India, is the business of ethnology and anthropology and the priority of races), I know, nevertheless, that yours is the correct rendering, simply because I know the secret symbolism of the Hindu Buddhists. The only object I have in view is to show this, and I can do so but by glorifying your esoteric intuition, not by representing it as exoteric. You differ from us in several important points, such as not accepting the Avatars, or the spirit of Christos, Buddha, Krishna (rather Vishnu), etc., otherwise than as purely subjective manifestations. We say that, with regard to the Gnostic Christ, you are absolutely right. There was no such "Avatar" since the pre-Mahabharatu times; but there is one at the close of every Kali-Yuga --- every 4,320,000 years (laugh, O Scientist!), the nine Avatars shown in the Puranas being only semi, not full, "Avatars." And you are absolutely right as to the Egyptian origin of Christianity, the carnalisation of purely metaphysical dogmas of the Gnostics, etc. I take your Egyptian aspect in toto, and only add to it the Aryan and what they would call the Turanian aspects, thus mutually strengthening our positions. We, too, claim that our interpretations are "derived from the facts themselves," and are not the outcome of our "own theoretic speculation." If you only "flesh the skeleton of facts," we do the same: plus, we infuse into that skeleton the soul and spirit of ancient metaphysics, which is, to say correctly, metaphysics only now, when the terrible Materialism and physicality of our modern minds has made it meta, something "beyond" our physical senses. We say there was a day when what is now meta-physical was as physical and as objective to the early races as our own bodies are now. Your Lectures are thus only one more chapter added, and a magnificent, invaluable contribution to, and a corroboration of, the Secret Doctrine in the "Books of Dzyan."One thing may well make you proud, and I mean to point it out. What we know we have learned it from ready made teachings for us, from the said Books and the Sanscrit secret Books. We avail ourselves of the ready-made Wisdom-religion of the far away past. We were taught, in short. You, all you know, you have laboriously acquired it by personal research and thought; you are self-initiate in the Mysteries --- of the British Museum; and [have] extracted the essence and the marrow of Esotericism out of the dead letter of Egyptian papyri, and under the conceited nose of Egyptologists, who see no deeper than the surface. I say, Mr. Massey, glory and honour to you. I say it for no compliment, out of no politeness, but from the bottom of my heart. It is our good Karma that sent you to us at the right moment, and the best --- when Lucifer was born on earth. Never mind that you differ from us and our views. What matters it that your conclusions are opposed to ours, when all your fundamental premises are identical and the same; and when, moreover, they (these conclusions) are only with regard to the aspect, or the version, of the archaic Esoteric Wisdom of one nation, the Egyptian, now radiating in so-called Christianity in a thousand broken rays. Let us, then, work in peace, harmony, and alliance against our common foe --- the modern enemy and curse of humanity --- Exoteric Christianity --- though we may (in appearance only) be working on two different lines. Forgive us our mistakes, as we forgive you your exuberance of science and its strict methods. And, lastly, forgive me my pigeon English in favour of my sincerity. --- Yours in truth,
"H.P.B."
Endnote
(1) Gerald Massey (1828-1907), English poet and Egyptologist. For a biographical sketch of his life, see HPB's Collected Writings, Volume VIII (1887), pp. 465-467. For a list of Massey's books and their contents, see Kessinger Publishing's Books by Gerald Massey.---BA Editor.
(2) This would be the November, 1887 issue of Lucifer. H.P.B. is probably referring to Part I of her article "The Esoteric Character of the Gospels" published in that issue.---BA Editor.