Theos-Talk Archives (June 2000 Message tt00176)

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Forum: alt.horror.cthulhu
Thread: "The Book of Dzyan"--a review

Subject: "The Book of Dzyan"--a review
Date: 04/02/2000
Author: James Russell <jgwr@xoommail.com>

THE BOOK OF DZYAN Being a Manuscript Curiously Received by Helena Petrovna
Blavatsky with Diverse and Rare Texts of Related Interest Selected and
Introduced by Tim Maroney. Chaosium Publication 6027, published February
2000.

Review by James Russell.

  ===== ===== ===== ===== =====

Amongst the assorted stylistic trappings of Cthulhu Mythos fiction, there
have always been the various books, those volumes of grave and horrifying
revelations such as the "Necronomicon", the "Pnakotic Manuscripts", the
"Book of Eibon", "Unaussprechlichen Kulten", and so forth. While all of
these have been fictional creations-despite claims by certain people who
really should know better that the
"Necronomicon" is/was a real book-concocted from the imaginations of their
respective creators, one Mythos book is actually an authentic text, namely
the "Book of Dzyan". At least, it's authentic in that it predates H.P.
Lovecraft's work and was included by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, founder of
the Theosophical Society, in her book "The Secret Doctrine", published in
1888; whether it has any reality beyond that is something I don't know.

I also don't know much about the research that's been done
into the matter of Lovecraft's familiarity with Theosophy. At any rate,
though, he was certainly unfamiliar with the "Book of Dzyan" when E.
Hoffmann Price introduced him to it in 1933, as recounted in "Selected
Letters" volume IV; see letters 602 to Price (Feb. 15 1933), 604 to Clark
Ashton Smith (Feb. 18 1933) and 610 to Elizabeth
Toldridge (March 25 1933). To Smith he wrote: "Price has dug up another
cycle of actual folklore involving an allegedly primordial thing called 'The
Book of Dzyan'. I don't know where E. Hoffmann got hold of this stuff, but
it sounds damn good." Good enough for Lovecraft to co-opt in passing as a
"Mythos" book in "The Haunter of the Dark", even if he otherwise knew
nothing about it.

Chaosium have published a series of collections of Mythos
fiction over the past few years, which are now being supplemented by a
series of Lovecraft's "occult sources". "The Book of Dzyan" is the first of
these, and I'll be interested to see what else Chaosium has in store. The
present volume, which is edited by Tim Maroney, is divided into three
roughly equal parts:
1) Maroney's introductory biographical essay.
2) The "Book of Dzyan" itself-the complete text as presented in "The Secret
Doctrine" with a small amount of Mme Blavatsky's commentary from that book,
plus a curious continuation of "Dzyan" by A.S. Raleigh and the Temple of the
People, published in 1914.
3) An abridged version (which still runs for nearly a hundred
pages) of the report made by the Society for Psychical Research in 1884.

The 19th century occult revival produced a number of odd and
interesting figures, and HPB was one of the more odd and interesting ones.
On the whole neither the S.P.R. report nor Maroney's
biographical piece paint a terribly flattering portrait of Mme
Blavatsky. Maroney does say in her favour, though, that "However much her
critics might deride her work as mere fabrication, nonetheless Blavatsky was
in tune with *something* beyond the normal sphere", so I suppose it's best
left to the individual to make up their own mind.

Maroney's introductory materials are well written, sometimes
with an element of dry humour (of C.W. Leadbeater he notes that "not only
[had he] counseled boys in masturbation, [he] provided them a helping hand";
A.S. Raleigh's comments on his "Stanzas of Dzjn [sic]" have been "elided as
an act of mercy"), though some will probably find his comments on Lovecraft
contentious. Although HPL professed a dim view of occultism and real occult
texts, finding it more fun to invent things like the "Necronomicon", Maroney
notes that he did have a certain fascination with these things that meant we
shouldn't take such declarations at face value (though at least he doesn't
overtly assume the Lovecraft-as-practicing-occultist position). I'd answer
that by quoting HPL's words to Nils Frome that he found these things
interesting "because I don't believe them" and move on.

"The Book of Dzyan" itself only amounts to a very small portion of the
overall book, about thirteen pages in all out of about two hundred and fifty
(not including endnotes), seven stanzas of "cosmic evolution" and twelve of
"anthropogenesis". Of this latter section, a note by HPB states that "Only
forty-nine Slokas [i.e. verses] out of several hundred are here given", so
even "The Secret Doctrine" includes only a minimal amount of the purported
text. Maroney's introduction describes it as "very much a 'weird tale'";
there are passages of pseudo(?)-Hindu obscurantism such as "But where was
the Dangma when the Alaya of the universe was in Paramartha and the great
wheel was Anupadaka"?-where indeed?-but there are other more interesting and
sensible passages. Much the same can be said of HPB's commentary from "The
Secret Doctrine"; the excerpts from that "damned thick, square book"
presented here make me somewhat glad that I've never attempted to read the
entire work. As for Raleigh's purported continuation, the "Stanzas of Dzjn",
well, they're another matter altogether. Maroney describes them as requiring
extensive reworking to bring them up to the par of a Dungeons & Dragons
module, which is pretty damning but not inaccurate.

Perhaps the last section is the most interesting, the S.P.R.
report of 1884, which did, and continues to do, vast damage to the
reputation of HPB. This is pretty self-explanatory-designed as it was to
prove that the psychic phenomena performed by Mme Blavatsky
(particularly in the matter of the "Mahatma Letters") were fraudulent in
nature-so I won't spend much time on it here. I'll only mention that its
somewhat spiteful origin-instigated by Emma Coulomb after the latter was
unceremoniously booted out of the Theosophical Society, whereupon she took
it upon herself to show up Mme Blavatsky's
tricks-does point out the disappointingly human nature of occult groups of
this sort; for all the lofty ideals, they can be terribly childish when they
try. (Witness the occasional outbursts of the Yaddith Lodge, for example.)

In the end, the "Book of Dzyan" itself is much like any other occult text:
only as frightening or interesting as you let it be. For my money, it pretty
much fulfils Lovecraft's statements about
"seriously-written books on dark, occult and supernatural themes-in all
truth they don't amount to much." No doubt whatever dark thoughts HPL
could've cooked up in his fertile brain about the Book of Dzyan would've far
outstripped the actuality of the book. As a whole,
though, this is an interesting volume, and a worthwhile initiative on
Chaosium's part, and as I said earlier, I'll be interested to see what else
they have in line for this new series.






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