Theos-Talk Archives (September 2001 Message tt00068)

Monday, September 10, 2001

Dear Fadi:

Very interesting as the inflexion being implied among those who
know a language modern or ancient, is I agree a deterrent to an
accurate PHYSICAL or LITERAL translation. Now I understand why
it is said that no accurate translation can be had.

Yes, do study the information given in the KEY TO THEOSOPHY
(HPB) the 7-fold nature of Universal and Man are interesting and
ought to have correlations with Sufi mysticism.

I do not think you ought to be deterred from giving ISIS UNVEILED
a read. H P B does not condemn it as such in MY BOOKS; she is
candid about the errors that crept into it. Any one of fair
education and bright intelligence can get around the errors. I
do not know if you have secured a separate copy of an INDEX to
ISIS UNVEILED which is available. -- and if you want I can send
you a copy (providing you trust me with your mailing address.
You will find the INDEX gives a greater depth to ideas and
meanings. It also provides at time the needed continuity

There is however a valuable book to be used when dealing with the
"foreign" ideas and words of old scriptures. The THEOSOPHICAL
GLOSSARY ( by H P B and her co-worker G R S MEAD) has this
capacity. I have been using it for over 60 years and have been
able to check out the sources of most of the items and
explanations there. In fact it is one of the most interesting of
books, if one is inclined that way. In some cases it gives
information not to be found elsewhere.

I still think it important after studying the KEY TO THEOSOPHY
(HPB) to read ISIS UNVEILED once, and then pass on to the reading
of The SECRET DOCTRINE . But before that, even, it must be
mentioned that there are many Articles that H P B wrote which
serve to link the 2 major books.

ISIS UNVEILED was published in 1877 and between that date and
1888 (when The SECRET DOCTRINE was published) is a gap of 11
years.

The time in between was used in producing the magazines:
THEOSOPHIST (beginning 1879), LUCIFER (beginning 1887) and PATH
(Published in New York under the editorship of H P B's close
friend W Q Judge from 1886)

Those articles are valuable to establishing the bridge between
the 2 books. We here have reprinted verbatim the Articles H P B
wrote in 3 volumes & Index. So they would be easily available for
student use. Articles by Mr. Judge in PATH are in 2 separate
volumes and Indexed.

They are also Indexed.

Best wishes to you,

As always,

Dallas

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




-----Original Message-----
From: Fadi Mansour [mailto:redeemer@scs-net.org]
Sent: Friday, September 07, 2001 4:08 PM
To: study@blavatsky.net
Subject: [bn-study] RE: The Seven Fold Constitution and the
Uiverse in Evolution

Dear Dallas,

First things first. In what concerns the Arabic script, the
ancient
script used about 1000 years ago didn't have dots. As for vowels,
the Arabic
language contains three A (alef), O (waw) and Y (ya'). What I
called
"movements" (I dont' know the official translation) are signs
added to
letters to give an idea how this letter should be pronounced.
While in
general you don't need them, there are certain situations where
the meaning
can't be inferred without them. Their function is mainly
grammatical because
in Arabic different grammatical functions get different
"movements" to their
endings.

So, while I agree that on one level this is mosly linguistics,
but sometimes
discovering the intended meaning will require knowledge of the
structure of
the language. This is the main argument against traslations. In
Islamic
tradition, traslations are never held at the same level as the
original,
because a translation (or even an explanation in Arabic) holds
the point of
view of the one doing the translation (explanation). I think this
relates to
what is being discussed about truth and observation.

In what concens your over-view of Theosophy, I'm greatly
thankful, and I'm
trying to read "The Key to Theosophy". I postponed reading "Isis
Unveiled"
after skimming over "My Books" by HPB. Where she discouraged an
asker from
reading it. I still intended to read it but only gave it less
priority. What
do you think?

Thank you for everything.

Fadi

On Fri, Sep 07, 2001 at 07:45:29AM -0700, Dallas TenBroeck wrote:
> Friday, September 07, 2001
>
> Dear Fadi:
>
> Many thanks for the explanation.
>
CUT