Note [1]
Mr. E. Wilke of San Francisco, U. S., America, inquires whether Madame Blavatsky has changed her mind in regard to the character of spirits communicating at spiritual seances; because “Isis Unveiled,” Vol. I., page 67, says: “We are far from believing that all the spirits that communicate at circles are of the classes called elementals and elementaries. Many, especially among those who control the medium subjectively to speak, write, or otherwise act in various ways, are human disembodied spirits.”
So far as we know, Madame Blavatsky has had no reason to change her mind, since she wrote the above paragraph. Only the same might have been more explicit, and probably would have been so, if “Isis Unveiled” had been written expressly for believers in Spiritualism. However the subject of intelligences, communicating at spiritual seances, has been more explicitly treated on page 313 of Vol. III, (September number) of the Theosophist. It says: “But though elementaries and elementals constitute a large proportion of the performers, there are other classes of actors.”—“This class comprises the spirits of sane suicides. They are Spirits and not Shells, because there is not in their cases, at any rate until later, a total and permanent divorce between the fourth, and fifth principles on the one hand, and the sixth and Seventh on the other. The two decades are divided, they exist apart, but a line of connection still unites them, they may yet reunite, and the sorely threatened personality avert its doom,” etc.
Such “spirits” do exist and the complete division of their higher principles from the lower ones does not take place, until its appointed life term is run out, which term cannot be shortened by a wilful act of suicide. They remain “spirits” until the time comes, when in the regular, not interrupted, course of events they would have died. They then die a second death, and the final division of the principles takes place. Such “spirits” may be very much injured by coming in contact with immoral mediums and necromancers.
As regards the purer spirits in the devachanic condition, they cannot consciously communicate with us; but a sensitive person can put himself “in sympathetic rapport with their ray,” the soul of the “medium” may become “attuned” to that of the person in Devachan, and speak and act like her, as has been repeatedly explained by Madame Blavatsky.
As to our correspondent’s question about Avitchi, we would say that this is a state of wickedness for such, in whom the germ of the sixth principle has united with the lower principles. It corresponds to Devachan; but instead of being a state of enjoyment, it is a state of suffering. It is the place for “Black Magicians.”
A. B.
Notes:
[1] Spirits and Elementaries. A.B. [American Buddhist, Franz Hartmann] The Theosophist 5, no. 8 (May 1884), 203-204. {This article was reformatted from the original, but with the content unchanged other than fixing minor typos, by Robert Hutwohl, ©2025}