Isis unveiled, Volume 1 (of 2), Science

by H. P. Blavatsky

Isis Unveiled, published in 1877, was the first major work of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky and the founding book of the Theosophical movement. This first volume, subtitled Science, is her attack on the materialism of nineteenth-century science and her claim that an ancient wisdom, preserved by initiates in Egypt, India and the secret societies, explains what physicists and physiologists could not. She ranges over the ether and the forces of nature, the phenomena of spiritualism and mesmerism, psychic powers, elementals, the Kabbalah, the magic of the ancients, the Cyclopean ruins and lost continents, and the teachings of Plato, Paracelsus and the Hindus. Whatever its scholarship, the book launched a movement that has shaped modern occultism and Western ideas of Eastern religion. The full text is available to read online in your browser on Vinteuil, and the first chapter is free.