Theos-Talk Archives (February 2001 Message tt00110)

Just today I received an email asking: 
"What does the 1886 [Secret Doctrine] manuscript consist of exactly ?"

My answer is as follows:
 
If you look at pp. 471 and 472 in HPB's COLLECTED WRITINGS, Vol. 14, you
will get an overview of contents.
 
The 1886 manuscript is NOT in HPB's handwriting but in
the handwriting of Countess Wachtmeister, Mary Gebhard
and (I believe) Mary Bates. In other words, these persons
helped to make a copy of HPB's original handwritten manuscript and this
copy was
then sent to India. This copy is the so-called Wurzburg manuscript.
 
Basically the EXTANT MS is divided into three "parts" or "volumes".
 
I. Introduction or Introductory (consisting of historical material like
articles in SD III, 1897)
II. Cosmogonic consisting of 7 stanzas and HPB commentaries
III. Angthopogonic 
 
See the following web page for my "expanded" chart of Volume I:
 
http://blavatskyarchives.com/sdiiitab.htm

Most of the material in Part I or Volume I of the MS is material that
finally ended up in the published SD Volume III of 1897.
 
Part II or Volume II of the MS consists (as said above)
of the translated Stanzas of Dzyan & HPB's commentaries.
This material in Part II finally ended up in the published SD Volume One
of 1888.

I have taken a printed Vol. One (1888) edition and have underlined in
red the text that also occurrs in the Wurzburg MSS. This would cover
pp. 1-268 of the published version.  
 
Looking at the red underlined text, I would estimate that about 1/3 to 1/2

of the complete text (pp. 1-268) in the published
volume one is also in the earlier Wurzburg Vol. two version. Does that
make sense?
 
Part III of the Wurzburg MSS is on the Anthropogonic material.
This section is very fragmentary consisting of (if I recall correctly)
of only a dozen pages or so of manuscript pages. You can find this
material in Vol. 2 of the published 1888 edition.
 
In both Parts I and II of the Wurzburg manuscript there are references to
various appendices to both parts. The only extant appendice is "Star-
Angel Worship" which HPB apparently decided at a later date to take out
and publish in Lucifer, July 1888. All the other appendices mentioned in
the Wurzburg manuscript (and also mentioned in HPB's letters of 1885, 1886
and 1887) are MISSING from the EXTANT Wurzburg manuscript. Evidence indicates
these appendices were sent to India attached to the rest of the manuscript
but somehow --- in the intervening years before Jinarajadasa discovered
at Benares the extant MS --- the appendices were "unattached" and lost.
It is my understanding that many of these "lost" appendices can be found
in SD Vol III (1897).
 
For more on the background of this manuscript see:
 
"The Myth of the "Missing" Third Volume of The Secret Doctrine."
http://blavatskyarchives.com/sdiiipt1.htm
 
See especially Bertram Keightley's remarks about the RE-arrangment of the

volumes. This is the key to everything.
 
Hope this helps.
 
Daniel

---------------------------------------
Daniel H. Caldwell
info@blavatskyarchives.com
BLAVATSKY ARCHIVES
---------------------------------------
http://blavatskyarchives.com
http://blavatskyarchives.com/esotericworld.htm
http://blavatsky.cc
http://theosophyonthe.net

You can always access our main site by
simply typing into the URL address
bar the following 6 characters:

hpb.cc
---------------------------------------