Theos-Talk Archives (August 2002 Message tt00089)

Dallas,

In your posting at:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/theos-talk/message/7664

you write in part:

> 1.	We do not know if H P B modified the material sent in
> 1886 to Adyar after that date. I would assume she did, but
> of course, I have no concrete basis to offer. It is my
> opinion after many years study. . . . 
> 4.	Why should H P B use only the MSS that was sent to Adyar
> ? Why would she not have added to it? She wrote that it
> was READY. So she must have prepared a great deal of
> written MSS for that purpose.

Dallas, Madame Blavatsky may have added and modified the material 
found in the 1886-1887 manuscripts of the SD. But before going into 
that issue, do you agree that in the summer of 1887 Volume I became 
Volume III as reported by Bertram Keightley and also verified by 
comparing the SD manuscript at Adyar with what was published in 1888?

Dallas, to be even more specific, look at the following essays or 
sections in the Volume I manuscript of the SD sent by HPB to Olcott 
who received this volume in early Dec. 1886. [All of this documented 
by the SD manuscript at Adyar, in HPB's letters to Olcott of this 
time period and also by Olcott's diary for 1886.]

* White and Black Magic in Theory and Practice
* Hermes and the 32 Ways of Wisdom 
* Mathematics and Geometry--- The Keys to the Universal Problems
* The Key of the Absolute in Magic-- the Hexagon with the Central 
Point -- or the Seventh Key
* Who Was the Adept of Tyana?
* The Roman Church Dreads the Publication of the Real Life of 
Apollonius
* Confession and Property in Common 
* What the Occultists and Kabalists Have to Say 
* The Souls of the Star -- Universal Heliolatry 
* The Mystery "Sun of Initiation" The Trial of the Sun-lnitiate 

There is no doubt that these essays written by HPB were in Volume I 
of the SD as of 1886.

Now let us take it further:

If Bertram Keightley's eyewitness account is accepted that Volume I 
became Volume III only 6 months later (i.e. by summer of 1887), then 
is it not clear that these essays listed above would have gone from 
Volume I to volume III? In other words, once the volumes were 
rearranged in the new order, a reader of the SD manuscript would have 
found the above listed material in the Volume III manuscript.

Is this conclusion so hard to accept in light of the primary 
source evidence I have previously cited?

Dallas, I hope that you will deal with this specific point.

Daniel H. Caldwell
BLAVATSKY ARCHIVES
http://blavatskyarchives.com/introduction.htm
"...Contrast alone can enable us to appreciate things
at their right value; and unless a judge compares
notes and hears both sides he can hardly come to a
correct decision."
H.P. Blavatsky. The Theosophist, July, 1881, p. 218.