The Secret Doctrine - Paperback

by H. P. Blavatsky (Author)

Complete and unabridged, here is the unparalleled landmark of occult philosophy and lost history that reshaped the modern spiritual mindset and continues to fascinate readers today.

There is perhaps no greater enigma in modern Western literature than The Secret Doctrine. The controversial Russian noblewoman Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky told the world that the book restored humanity's lost history and destiny. Its insights, she said, had been gleaned from long-secret books of wisdom and her tutelage under mahatmas, or great souls: adepts from the East who exposed the seeker to their esoteric teaching.

To read The Secret Doctrine is to enter a mysterious world of ancient cosmology and spiritual-scientific insights, which tell of humanity's unthinkably ancient past and its burgeoning evolution into a new, more refined existence.

For the first time, Blavatsky's encyclopedia arcana is available in a reset and redesigned single-volume edition, complete and unabridged. Its truths and challenges are available to the intrepid reader, who may find yet-unknown insights within its pages.

Author Biography

Like a comet across the horizon of complacent Western civilization, MADAME HELENA PETROVNA BLAVATSKY (1831-1891) appeared on the American scene in the early 1870s and almost single-handedly revived interest in the occult and esoteric, and also introduced many Westerners to the religious ideas of the East, particularly Hinduism and Buddhism. The world-traveled Russian noblewoman founded the Theosophical Society in New York City in 1875 to study the esoteric ideas behind the world's religions. She relocated to India in 1878, where she and her collaborator, Colonel Henry Steel Olcott, a retired Civil War officer, helped inaugurate India's independence movement. Blavatsky moved to London in 1885, where she began writing her magnum opus, The Secret Doctrine--a vast, two-volume compendium of occult philosophy and a cosmological vision of humanity's lost history and secret destiny. Published in 1888, The Secret Doctrine became a formative influence on avant-garde artists and intellectuals, and propelled the dawning occult revival and alternative spiritual culture. Blavatksy died two years after its publication.