Special Collections
Book of the Month, March 2006
Nightmare tales
H.P. Blavatsky
London : Theosophical Publishing Society, 1892.
H.P.L. [Blavatsky]
Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831-1891) was the founder of the Theosophical Society, a prolific writer and correspondent. Generally speaking she wrote about occult, religious, spiritual and philosophical matters, but exceptionally Nightmare Tales is a book of short stories. Harry Price acquired several of her publications, as well as other works on Theosophy and books by Theosophical writers.
Madame Blavatsky was born in Ekaterinoslav in the Ukraine, and travelled widely in Europe, the United States and Asia. She was a practicing spiritualist, and as a medium held séances. Madame Blavatsky claimed to have visited Tibet where she became the messenger of a living celestial brotherhood. The arcane knowledge vouchsafed to her was expressed in the 1877 work Isis Unveiled. She moved to India and begun publishing the journal The Theosophist in Bombay in 1879. She left India, amidst controversy, for Europe in 1885, and eventually founded her own Blavatsky Lodge in London in 1887. In London she published the journal Lucifer which later became the Theosophical Review.
As the title of the book suggests, the stories (A Bewitched Life; The Cave of the Echoes; The Luminous Shield; From the Polar Lands and The Ensouled Violin) deal with the supernatural. Indeed, Annie Besant in the foreword to the book states: “… only the hand of an Occultist could have added some of the touches …” Besant also indicates the status that Blavatsky held amongst her followers: “The world knows H.P. Blavatsky chiefly by her encyclopaedic knowledge, her occult powers, her unique courage. This little book … shows her as a vivid, graphic writer, gifted with brilliant imagination.”
Annie Besant also mentions that these tales were rewritten by Madame Blavatsky during “the last few months of the author’s pain-stricken life” as a respite from the weightier work on which she was engaged, The Theosophical Glossary. The Theosophical Publishing Company published Blavatsky’s books, and was the publishing arm of the Theosophical Society. The objects of the Society were given at the head of the advertisements at the back of Nightmare Tales (1892) as, in their words:
- To form the nucleus of a Universal Brotherhood of Humanity, without distinction of race, creed, sex, caste, or colour.
- To promote the study of Aryan, and other Eastern literatures, religions, philosophies and sciences, and to demonstrate its importance.
- To investigate unexplained laws of nature, and the psychic powers latent in man.
At the time of writing in February 2006 the website of the Theosophical Society in England states that: “Theosophy reveals the wisdom and secret doctrine underlying all religions and mythologies.” And that the Theosophical Society has “resulted in a recent Western re-introduction of many, now familiar, teachings such as reincarnation and karma. Esoteric Eastern philosophy is set forth alongside an ancient western mystery tradition including that of Kabbalah, Alchemy, & Gnosticism.”
specialcollections@shl.lon.ac.uk 
020 7862 8470 shl.specialcollections@london.ac.uk 020 7862 8470
