Blavatsky Quotes & Sayings

Knowledge increases in proportion to its use; that is, the more we teach the more we learn. — H. P. Blavatsky

The Christians were the first to make the existence of Satan a dogma of the church. What is the use in a Pope if there is no Devil ? — H. P. Blavatsky

The Path that leadeth on is lighted by one fire - the light of daring burning in the heart. The more one dares, the more he shall obtain. — Helena Blavatsky

But - drive out prejudice with a pitch-fork it will ever return. — H. P. Blavatsky

As no cause remains without its due effect from greatest to least, from a cosmic disturbance down to the movement of your hand, and as like produces like, Karma is that unseen and unknown law which adjusts wisely, intelligently, and equitably each effect to its cause, tracing the latter back to its producer. — H. P. Blavatsky

A Hindu is a born mystic, and the luxuriant nature of his country has made him a zealous pantheist — Helena Petrovna Blavatsky

Flowing down upon his shoulders," and as "having — Helena Petrovna Blavatsky

The essence of Theosophy is the perfect harmonizing of the divine with the human in man, the adjustment of his god-like qualities and aspirations, and their sway over the terrestrial or animal passions in him. Kindness, absence of every ill feeling or selfishness, charity, goodwill to all beings, and perfect justice to others as to oneself, are its chief features. He who teaches Theosophy preaches the gospel of goodwill; and the converse of this is true also - he who preaches the gospel of goodwill, teaches Theosophy. — H. P. Blavatsky

Who can know the ending until the last word has been written? Everything might change with the last word. — Lauren Kate

Theosophy occupies a central place in the history of new spiritual movements, for the writings of Blavatsky and some of her followers have had a great influence outside of her organization. ... The importance of Theosophy in modern history should not be underestimated. Not only have the writings of Blavatsky and others inspired several generations of occultists, but the movement had a remarkable role in the restoration to the colonial peoples of nineteenth century Asia of their own spiritual heritage. — Robert S Ellwood

The possible truths, hazily perceived in the world of abstraction, like those inferred from observation and experiment in the world of matter, are forced upon the profane multitudes, too busy to think for themselves, under the form of Divine revelation and scientific authority. But the same question stands open from the days of Socrates and Pilate down to our own age of wholesale negation: is there such a thing as absolute truth in the hands of any one party or man? — H. P. Blavatsky

The myths," says Horace in his Ars Poetica, "have been invented by wise men to strengthen the laws and teach moral truths." While Horace endeavored to make clear the very spirit and essence of the ancient myths, Euhemerus pretended, on the contrary, that "myths were the legendary history of kings and heroes, transformed into gods by the admiration of the nations." It is the latter method which was inferentially followed by Christians when they agreed upon the acceptation of euhemerized patriarchs, and mistook them for men who had really lived. — H. P. Blavatsky

Before the soul can see, the Harmony within must be attained, and fleshly eyes be rendered blind to all illusion. — Helena Petrovna Blavatsky

What writes history is the power of ideas. And every moment offers the potential to write something new. — Helena Petrovna Blavatsky

And now it stands proven that Satan, or the Red Fiery Dragon, the 'Lord of Phosphorus,' and Lucifer, or 'Light-Bearer,' is in us: it is our Mind — H. P. Blavatsky

It is an occult law moreover, that no man can rise superior to his individual failings without lifting, be it ever so little, the whole body of which he is an integral part. In the same way no one can sin, nor suffer the effects of sin, alone. In reality, there is no such thing as 'separateness' and the nearest approach to that selfish state which the laws of life permit is in the intent or motive. — Helena Petrovna Blavatsky

The discoveries of modern science do not disagree with the oldest traditions which claim an incredible antiquity for our race. — H. P. Blavatsky

Nothing of that which is conducive to help man, collectively or individually, to live not "happily" but less unhappily in this world, ought to be indifferent to the Theosophist-Occultist. It is no concern of his whether his help benefits a man in his worldly or spiritual progress; his first duty is to be ever ready to help if he can, without stopping to philosophize. — H. P. Blavatsky

Becoming is the mode of activity of the uncreate deity. — Helena Blavatsky

The chief difficulty which prevents men of science from believing in divine as well as in nature Spirits is their materialism. — Helena Blavatsky

When there were no churches, no creeds or sects, but when every man was a priest unto himself — Helena Petrovna Blavatsky

The whole order of nature evinces a progressive march towards a higher life. — Helena Blavatsky

The Universe is worked and guided from within outwards. — Helena Petrovna Blavatsky

We see that every external motion, act, gesture, whether voluntary or mechanical, organic or mental, is produced and preceded by internal feeling or emotion, will or volition, and thought or mind. — Helena Blavatsky

It is, then, by those shadows of the hoary Past and their fantastic silhouettes on the external screen of every religion and philosophy, that we can, by checking them as we go along, and comparing them, trace out finally the body that produced them. — Helena Blavatsky

Matter is spirit at its lowest level. Spirit is matter at its highest level. — H. P. Blavatsky

The wheel of the Good Law moves swiftly on. It grinds by night and day. The worthless husks it drives from out the golden grain, the refuse from the flour. The hand of fate guides the wheel; the revolutions mark the beatings of the heart of manifestation. — H. P. Blavatsky

In fifty years time, the need for true psychics and conscious mediums (such as H.P.B., for instance [Helena Petrova Blavatsky]) will be very great if the Masters' plans are to be carried through to fruition, and the movement must be set on foot in preparation for the coming of Him for Whom all nations wait — Alice Bailey

Theosophy, on earth, is like the white ray of the spectrum, and each religion only one of the seven colours. — H. P. Blavatsky

Every one of the numberless religions and religious sects views the Deity after its own fashion; and, fathering on the unknown its own speculations, it enforces these purely human outgrowths of overheated imagination on the ignorant masses, and calls them "revelation." As the dogmas of every religion and sect often differ radically, they cannot be true. And if untrue, what are they? — H. P. Blavatsky

Inaction in a deed of mercy becomes an action in a deadly sin. — Helena Petrovna Blavatsky

Reflect upon the defects of your character: thoroughly realize their evils and the transient pleasures they give you, and firmly will that you shall try your best not to yield to them the next time. — H. P. Blavatsky

Theosophy blesses the world; Theology is its curse. — H. P. Blavatsky

Whatever plane our consciousness may be acting in, both we and the things belonging to that plane are, for the time being, our only realities. As we rise in the scale of development we perceive that during the stages through which we have passed we mistook shadows for realities, and the upward progress of the Ego is a series of progressive awakenings, each advance bringing with it the idea that now, at last, we have reached "reality"; but only when we shall have reached the absolute Consciousness, and blended our own with it, shall we be free from the delusions produced by Maya [illusion]. — Helena Petrovna Blavatsky

It is on the acceptance or rejection of the theory of the Unity of all in Nature, in its ultimate Essence, that mainly rests the belief or unbelief in the existence around us of other conscious beings besides the Spirits of the Dead. — Helena Blavatsky

Who is the great man? He who is strongest in patience. He who patiently endures injury, and maintains a blameless life
he is a man indeed! — H. P. Blavatsky

Dogma? Faith? These are the right and left pillars of every soul-crushing theology. Theosophists have no dogmas, exact no blind faith. — H. P. Blavatsky

The world is not prepared yet to understand the philosophy of Occult Sciences - let them assure themselves first of all that there are beings in an invisible world, whether 'Spirits' of the dead or Elementals; and that there are hidden powers in man, which are capable of making a God of him on earth. — H. P. Blavatsky

The end of man is an action and not a thought, though it were the noblest — Helena Petrovna Blavatsky

From Architecture down to the Zodiac, every science worthy of the name was imported by the Greeks — H. P. Blavatsky

Yet, the Universe is real enough to the conscious beings in it, which are as unreal as it is itself. — Helena Blavatsky

Do not be afraid of your difficulties.Do not wish you could be in other circumstances than you are. For when you have made the best of an adversity, it becomes the stepping stone to a splendid opportunity. — Helena Petrovna Blavatsky

If thou would'st have that stream of hard-earn'd knowledge, of Wisdom heaven-born, remain sweet running waters, thou should'st not leave it to become a stagnant pond. — H. P. Blavatsky

All things that ever were, that are, or that will be, having; their record upon the astral light, or tablet of the unseen universe, the initiated adept, by using the vision of his own spirit, can know all that has been known or can be known. — H. P. Blavatsky

Public Opinion, this invisible, intangible, omnipresent, despotic tyrant; this thousand-headed Hydra - the more dangerous for being composed of individual mediocrities ... — H. P. Blavatsky

The numerals of Pythagoras," says Porphyry, who lived about 300 A.D, "were hieroglyphic symbols, by means whereof he explained all ideas concerning the nature of things," and the same method of explaining the secrets of nature is once again being insisted upon in the new revelation of the "Secret Doctrine," by H. P. Blavatsky. — W. Wynn Westcott

We live in an age of prejudice, dissimulation and paradox, wherein, like dry leaves caught in a whirlpool, some of us are tossed helpless ... ever struggling between our honest convictions and fear of that cruelest of tyrants
PUBLIC OPINION. — H. P. Blavatsky

Spiritualism is but a baby now, an unwelcome stranger, whom public opinion, like an unnatural foster mother, tries to crush out of existence. — H. P. Blavatsky

The exercise of magical power is the exercise of natural powers, but superior to the ordinary functions of Nature. A miracle is not a violation of the laws of Nature, except for ignorant people. Magic is but a science, a profound knowledge of the Occult forces in Nature, and of the laws governing the visible or the invisible world. Spiritualism in the hands of an adept becomes Magic, for he is learned in the art of blending together the laws of the Universe, without breaking any of them and thereby violating Nature. — H. P. Blavatsky

I have pledged my word to help people on to truth while living and - will keep my word. Let them abuse and revile me. Let some call me a medium, and a Spiritualist, and others an imposter. The day will come when posterity will learn to know me better. — H. P. Blavatsky

Man is a little world--a microcosm inside the great universe. Like a fetus, he is suspended, by all his three spirits, in the matrix of the macrocosmos; and while his terrestrial body is in constant sympathy with its parent earth, his astral soul lives in unison with the sidereal anima mundi. He is in it, as it is in him, for the world-pervading element fills all space, and is space itself, only shoreless and infinite. As to his third spirit, the divine, what is it but an infinitesimal ray, one of the countless radiations proceeding directly from the Highest Cause--the Spiritual Light of the World? This is the trinity of organic and inorganic nature--the spiritual and the physical, which are three in one, and of which Proclus says that 'The first monad is the Eternal God; the second, eternity; the third, the paradigm, or pattern of the universe;' the three constituting the Intelligible Triad. — Helena Petrovna Blavatsky

The appearance and disappearance of the Universe are pictured as an outbreathing and inbreathing of the" Great Breath," which is eternal, and which, being Motion, is one of the three aspects of the Absolute - Abstract Space and Duration being the other two. — H. P. Blavatsky

I recall having read, at the brothers' instance, Madame Blavatsky's Key to Theosophy. This book stimulated in me the desire to read books on Hinduism, and disabused me of the notion fostered by the missionaries that Hinduism was rife with superstition. — Mahatma Gandhi

How long shall we Spiritualists be turned over like so many scapegoats to the unbelievers, by cheating mediums and speculating prophets? — H. P. Blavatsky

Everything that is, was, and will be, eternally IS, even the countless forms, which are finite and perishable only in their objective, not in their ideal Form. — Helena Blavatsky

Strength your Soul against the stalk of the Ego, make it worth of the name of Diamond Soul. — H. P. Blavatsky

Even in our day, science suspects beyond the Polar seas, at the very circle of the Arctic Pole, the existence of a sea which never freezes and a continent which is ever green. — Helena Blavatsky

We cut these numerous windings in our destinies daily with our own hands, while we imagine that we are pursuing a track on the royal high road of respectability and duty, and then complain of those ways being so intricate and so dark. We stand bewildered before the mystery of our own making, and the riddles of life that we will not solve, and then accuse the great Sphinx of devouring us. — H. P. Blavatsky

The Occultists, however, know that the traditions of Esoteric Philosophy must be the right ones, simply because they are the most logical, and reconcile every difficulty. — Helena Blavatsky

We must prepare and study truth under every aspect, endeavoring to ignore nothing, if we do not wish to fall into the abyss of the unknown when the hour shall strike. — H. P. Blavatsky

People keep repeating that the main things are love and compassion. Certainly love and compassion are the main things, but it takes knowledge to make love and compassion fruitful ... It takes just a second to say 'love'. But to acquire knowledge for the well-being and blessing of humanity requires an eternity. — H. P. Blavatsky

But the first differentiation of its reflection in the manifested World is purely Spiritual, and the Beings generated in it are not endowed with a consciousness that has any relation to the one we conceive of. — Helena Blavatsky

To act and act wisely when the time for action comes, to wait and wait patiently when it is time for repose, put man in accord with the rising and falling tides (of affairs). So that with nature and law at his back, and truth and beneficence as his beacon light, he may accomplish wonders. Ignorance of this law results in periods of unreasoning enthusiasm on the one hand, and depression on the other. Man thus becomes the victim of the tides when he should be their Master. — H. P. Blavatsky

That was the trouble with formulating a system: what could you do but repeat it? — Peter Washington

So little have thee first Christians (who despoiled the Jews of their Bible) understood the first four chapters of Genesis in their esoteric meaning, that they never perceived that not only was no sin intended in this disobedience, but that actually the 'Serpent' was 'the Lord God' himself, who, as the Ophis, the Logos, or the bearer of divine creative wisdom, taught mankind to become creators in their turn. — H. P. Blavatsky

A solitary ascetic is a symbol of the most cowardly egotism; a hermit who flees from his brothers instead of helping them to carry the burden of life, to work for others, and to put their shoulders to the wheel of social life, is a coward who hides himself when the battle is on, and goes to sleep drunk on an opiate. — H. P. Blavatsky

If coming events are said to cast their shadows before, past events cannot fall to leave their impress behind them. — Helena Blavatsky

Lucifer represents.. Life.. Thought.. Progress.. Civilization.. Liberty.. Independence.. Lucifer is the Logos.. the Serpent, the Savior. — H. P. Blavatsky

Theosophy is who Theosophy does, not thinks, not studies, not feels but does. — Helena Petrovna Blavatsky

The man might have become a Power, but he preferred to remain an Ass. — H. P. Blavatsky

The mind is the slayer of the real, let the disciples slay the slayer. — H. P. Blavatsky

Ridicule is the deadliest weapon of the age ... — H. P. Blavatsky

Help Nature and work on with her; and Nature will regard thee as one of her creators ... she will lay bare before thy gaze the treasures hidden in the depths of her pure virgin bosom. — H. P. Blavatsky

Be humble, if thou would'st attain to wisdom. Be humbler still, when wisdom thou hast mastered. — H. P. Blavatsky

As no outward motion or change, when normal, in man's external body can take place unless provoked by an inward impulse, given through one of the three functions named, so with the external or manifested Universe. — Helena Blavatsky

Man is spiritual being
a soul, in other words
and that this soul takes on different bodies from life to life on earth to order at last to arrive at such perfect knowledge, through repeated experience, as to enable one to assume a body fit to be the dwelling-place of a Mahatma or perfected soul. Then, they say, that particular soul becomes a spiritual helper to mankind. — H. P. Blavatsky

Endurance is the free companion of Sorrow, and Patience her master. — H. P. Blavatsky

Hast thou attuned thyself to the suffering of humanity, O candidate for light? — H. P. Blavatsky

The more thou dost advance, the more thy feet pitfalls will meet. — H. P. Blavatsky

Time is only an illusion produced by the succession of our states of consciousness as we travel through eternal duration, and it does not exist where no consciousness exists in which the illusion can be produced; but "lies asleep." — H. P. Blavatsky

The Universe is the periodical manifestation of this unknown Absolute Essence. — Helena Blavatsky

Prepare, and be forewarned in time. If thou hast tried and failed, O dauntless fighter, yet lose not courage: fight on, and to the charge return again and yet again ...
Remember, thou that fightest for man's liberation, each failure is success, and each sincere attempt wins its rewards in time. — H. P. Blavatsky

To act wisely when the time for action comes, to wait patiently when it is time for repose, put man in accord with the tides. Ignorance of this law results in periods of unreasoning enthusiasm on the one hand, and depression on the other. — Helena Blavatsky

Everything in the Universe, throughout all its kingdoms, is conscious: i.e., endowed with a consciousness of its own kind and on its own plane of perception. — Helena Blavatsky

When science shall have effectually demonstrated to us the origin of matter, and proved the fallacy of the occultists and old philosophers who held (as their descendants now hold) that matter is but one of the correlations of spirit, then will the world of skeptics have a right to reject the old Wisdom, or throw the charge of obscenity in the teeth of the old religions. — H. P. Blavatsky

The human mind can hardly remain entirely free from bias, and decisive opinions are often formed before a thorough examination of a subject from all its aspects has been made. — H. P. Blavatsky

The idea of passing one's whole life in moral idleness, and having one's hardest work and duty done by another-whether God or man-is most revolting to us, as it is most degrading to human dignity. — H. P. Blavatsky

Never allow any unnecessary or vain thought to occupy your mind. This is more easily said than done. You cannot make your mind a blank all at once. So in the beginning try to prevent evil or idle thoughts by occupying your mind with the analysis of your own faults, or the contemplation of the Perfect Ones. — H. P. Blavatsky

Patience leads to power; but eagerness in greed leads to loss. — H. P. Blavatsky

There is no higher religion than the truth. — Helena Petrovna Blavatsky

There is no [ ... ] higher than the truth. — H. P. Blavatsky

I speak "with absolute certainty" only so far as my own personal belief is concerned. Those who have not the same warrant for their belief as I have, would be very credulous and foolish to accept it on blind faith. Nor does the writer believe any more than her correspondent and his friends in any "authority" let alone "divine revelation"! — H. P. Blavatsky

Is the scraping off of a barnacle the destruction of a ship? — H. P. Blavatsky

True science has no belief," says Dr. Fenwick, in Bulwer-Lytton 's Strange Story; "true science knows but three states of mind: denial, conviction, and the vast interval between the two, which is not belief, but the suspension of judgment." Such, perhaps, was true science in Dr. Fenwick's days. But the true science of our modern times proceeds otherwise; it either denies point-blank, without any preliminary investigation, or sits in the interim, between denial and conviction, and, dictionary in hand, invents new Graeco-Latin appellations for non-existing kinds of hysteria! — H. P. Blavatsky

It is Satan who is the God of our planet and the only God. — H. P. Blavatsky

Gently to hear, kindly to judge." - SHAKESPEARE. — Helena Petrovna Blavatsky

Civilization may progress, human nature will remain the same throughout all ages. — H. P. Blavatsky

The Secret Doctrine is the common property of the countless millions of men born under various climates, in times with which History refuses to deal, and to which esoteric teachings assign dates incompatible with the theories of Geology and Anthropology. — Helena Blavatsky

Dogmas are the toys that amuse and can satisfy but unreasoning children. They are the offspring of human speculation and prejudiced fancy. — H. P. Blavatsky

This Law
whether Conscious or Unconscious
predestines nothing and no one. It exists from and in Eternity, truly, for it is ETERNITY itself; and as such, since no act can be co-equal with eternity, it cannot be said to act, for it is ACTION itself ... Karma creates nothing, nor does it design. It is man who plans and creates causes, and Karmic law adjusts the effects; which adjustment is not an act, but universal harmony, tending ever to resume its original position. — H. P. Blavatsky