Theos-Talk Archives (February 2002 Message tt00403)

Daniel:

Isn't it curious that Briggette has such a problem with HPB's alleged
copying passages from other authors without proper attribution, and
yet when she first appeared here, one list member had to go to court
to get her to delete from her web site material that the member said
was his, and was being quoted without permission, or attribution?

It seems to me that almost all the things she criticizes HPB for
doing, she is doing all the time herself, as well as her lapses of
logic, and all that.

Others have written extensively to her on the proper way to do
research, and to report it, yet time after time, others bring up the
same thing. My thought is that Bri is not just ignoring these things,
I think these things are over her head, and she truly doesn't
understand the criticism, or why she is being criticized.

While she seems to be fairly intelligent with some of her writing,
when she is criticized, she seems to be confused for a time, and then
goes on as if nothing had happened.

When I commented that a quote she had quoted with some particular
page, that the book that I had didn't have that many pages, she had no
idea what I was talking about, and just characterized it as
"nit-picking". While she seems to be intelligent, I can't help
wondering if it is truly so.

Dennis
**************
Bri said:
> Applying the same methods as Lopsang Rampa"and the founder of
> Eckankar, one can confirm that in Isis Unveiled, published in
1877,as
> Coleman stated; there are some 2000 passages copied from other
books
> without proper credit. "By careful analysis I found that in
compiling
> Isis about 100 books were used. About 1400 books are quoted from and
> referred to in this work; but, from the 100 books which its author
> possessed, she copied everything in Isis taken from and relating to
> the other 1300. There are in Isis about 2100 quotations from and
> references to books that were copied, at second-hand, from books
> other than the originals; and of this number only about 140 are
> credited to the books from which Madame Blavatsky copied them at
> second-hand. The others are quoted in such a manner as to lead the
> reader to think that Madame Blavatsky had read and utilised the
> original works, and had quoted from them at first-hand, - the truth
> being that these originals had evidently never been read by Madame
> Blavatsky. By this means many readers of Isis, and subsequently
those
> of her Secret Doctrine and Theosophical Glossary, have been misled
> into thinking Madame Blavatsky an enormous reader, possessed of vast
> erudition; while the fact is her reading was very limited, and her
> ignorance was profound in all branches of knowledge.