Theos-Talk Archives (July 2001 Message tt00251)

Katinka,you wrote:

> Is the article on practical occultism, as published
in the Collected
> Writings, verbatim? Same question with the Adyar The
Voice of the Silence
> version that was published with de Zirkoff's
historical introduction. Or
> are the changes only in the spelling of sanskriet
and other foreign words?

Katinka, concerning the edition of the Voice of the
Silence published with Mr. de Zirkoff's historical
edition, this appears to be a verbatim reproduction of
the original 1889 ed. In other words, there has been
no attempt to "correct" any of the text. The
publisher has tried to reproduce the text exactly as
it appeared in the first ed. No "correction" of
spelling, etc. But it has been re-typeset and a few
changes may have inadvertently been introducted. 

In contrast, the Theosophy Company's edition of the
Voice has some 500 + changes/corrections including
rewording of some of the text. Unfortunately, the
Theosophy Co. which is the publisher does NOT alert
the reader that any changes at all are in this
edition. Most ULT associates I've corresponded with
initially assumed there were no textual changes when
compared with HPB's original and were therefore
usually quite surprised when I informed them that
numerous corrections had been made to the text.

The article on Practical Occultism in the Collected
Writings probably has corrections since Mr. de Zirkoff
was not trying to reproduce the text verbatim. In
other words, Mr. de Zirkoff probably "corrected" the
spelling of Sanskrit words, etc. To be sure, one
would have to do a detailed comparision with the
original article as found in Lucifer.

Theosophical University Press has published "verbatim
editions" of ISIS, the KEY and the VOICE. They are not
facsimiles of the originals but are re-typeset
editions. The publisher has NOT tried to correct
anything in the text but has simply tried to reproduce
verbatim the text from the original editions. A few
typos may have inadvertently crept in during this
process of re-typesetting.

The moral of this story is that one should carefully
examine all editions of HPB's writings REGARDLESS of
the publisher and try to ascertain if they are
facsimiles of the originals and if not facsimiles,
then are they truly verbatim with HPB's originals,etc.

Hope this helps.

Daniel



=====
Daniel H. Caldwell
info@blavatskyarchives.com
BLAVATSKY ARCHIVES
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