Theos-Talk Archives (August 2002 Message tt00030)

Ian and Dallas et al,

I would appreciate your comments on the following material that I have
compiled to try to elucidate the problem surrounding the contents of 
volume III of the SD.

Daniel

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In a letter dated September 23, 1886, H.P. Blavatsky in Ostende wrote 
to Colonel Henry S. Olcott in India:

I send you the MSS. of Secret Doctrine.....Now I send only 1st volume 
of Introduct. Section.... There are in the 1st Introductory Vol. 
Seven Sections or Chapt. § and 27 Appendices, several App.
attached to every Section from l to 6, etc. Now all this will make 
either more or at any rate one volume and it is not the S.D. but a 
Preface to it.... (The Theosophist, March 1925, p. 789.)

But the manuscript of the first volume was not sent to India at that 
time. The reason for this delay is described in a later letter from 
Blavatsky to Olcott. (See HPB's letter dated Oct. 21, 1886 and 
published in the March,1925 issue of The Theosophist on p. 787.)

Finally sometime around Nov. 20th of the same year, Countess 
Wachtmeister on a trip to London mailed the manuscript of volume I to 
Henry Olcott in India.

In Olcott's handwritten diary for Friday, Dec. 10, 1886, one finds the
following excerpt:

"Recd. MSS of Secret Doctrine, Vol. I. . . . "

In his Annual Address delivered to the T.S. Convention at Adyar, 
Madras, India on December 27, 1886, Colonel Olcott mentioned the 
receipt of this Volume I manuscript:

"The MSS. of the first volume has been sent me. . . .It will gratify 
you to learn that it more than maintains her reputation for learning 
and literary ability. . . . " (The Theosophist, Supplement, January 
1887, pp. xx-xxi.)

The next day in another address given at the opening of the Adyar 
Libary, Olcott also spoke of the recently received volume I 
manuscript:

". . . the entire MSS. of the first of five volumes that Madame 
Blavatsky is now writing upon the Secret Doctrine, is in my hands; 
and that even a cursory reading has satisfied better critics than 
myself [T. Subba Row] that it will be one of the most important 
contributions ever made to philsophical and scientific 
scholarship. . . . " (The Theosophist, Supplement, January
1887, pp. xlvii.

Sometime around December 15, after receiving the manuscript of Volume 
I of the SD, Olcott wrote Madame Blavatsky telling her that the 
manuscript had been received and that Subba Row had been reading the 
manuscript.

On January 4, 1887, H.P.B. wrote replying to Olcott's letter:

"I am glad Subba Row likes my Proem. But it is only as Preliminary 
Vol. and the real original doctrine is in the volume [two] I will 
send you when Fawcett comes on the 20th and then he will take it to 
England himself --- for I cannot send it or rather insure it from
here [in Ostende]."

The manuscripts of Volumes I and II as mentioned above are preserved 
in the Adyar Archives. The partial contents of Volume I can be seen 
in the following table:

http://blavatskyarchives.com/sdiiitab.htm

Volume II of this manuscript consists of the Seven Stanzas of Dzyan on
Cosmogony and HPB's Commentaries thereon.

Only a few pages of Volume III is extant in the Adyar Archives. This 
third "volume" deals with the Evolution of Humanity.

So from a careful reading and study of HPB's own letters in 1886 and 
1887 as well as from a careful analysis of the contents of the extant 
SD manuscript in the Adyar Archives, one sees that in early 1887 the 
SD was divided into the following three volumes:

Volume I: A Historical Overview of Occultism and its Adepts, etc.

[Note: HPB's letters written in 1886 given several descriptions of 
the contents of this volume. See 
http://blavatskyarchives.com/sdiiipt3.htm Compare these descriptions 
with the actual extant contents of the first volume. See 
http://www.blavatskyarchives.com/sdiiitab.htm ]

Volume II: Evolution of Cosmos as found in the Seven Stanzas of Dzyan

Volume III: Evolution of Man (Humanity) as found in further Stanzas 
of Dzyan

Some months later when H.P. Blavatsky had moved to London, Bertram
and Archibald Keightley had the privilege of going through the SD
manuscript. Here are Bertram's relevant comments:

"A day or two after our arrival at Maycot [in May, 1887], H.P.B. 
placed the whole of the so far completed MSS. in the hands of Dr. 
[Archibald] Keightley and myself....We both read the whole mass of 
MSS.--a pile over three feet high--most carefully...and then, after 
prolonged consultation, faced [HPB]...with the solemn opinion that 
the whole of the matter must be rearranged on some definite plan...."

"Finally we laid before her a plan, ...."

". . . instead of making the first volume to consist, as she had
intended, of the history of some great Occultists, we advised her to 
follow the natural order of exposition, and begin with the Evolution 
of Cosmos, to pass from that to the Evolution of Man, then to deal 
with the historical part in a third volume treating of the lives of 
some great Occultists. . . .This plan was laid before H.P.B., and it 
was duly sanctioned by her. . . . " [Quoted in Reminiscences of H. P. 
Blavatsky and The Secret Doctrine, by Countess Constance Wachtmeister 
et al., Quest edition, 1976, pp. 78-9.]

So as Bertram Keightley tells us, the order of the volumes of The
Secret Doctrine was rearranged in mid-1887. Volume I became Volume 
III.

AFTER the rearrangement in 1887, the volumes would have been listed
as follows:

Volume I: Evolution of Cosmos
Volume II: Evolution of Man
Volume III: History of Some Great Occultists

In summary, the extant volume I of the SD manuscript preserved in the
Adyar Archives is concrete evidence as to what was in volume I as of
late 1886. An outline of that content can be seen in the table 
already given above and which I give again:

http://blavatskyarchives.com/sdiiitab.htm

This is the same material and volumes seen by Bertram Keighley 
several months later in London.

Daniel H. Caldwell
BLAVATSKY ARCHIVES
http://blavatskyarchives.com/introduction.htm