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A Blavatsky Quotation Book: being an Extract for each Day of the Year

By

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July

July 1

The doctrine of Metempsychosis has been abundantly ridiculed by men of science and rejected by theologians, yet if it had been properly understood in its application to the indestructibility of matter and the immortality of spirit, it would have been perceived that it is a sublime conception.

Isis Unveiled, Volume1, Page 8

July 2

Whether the physical man be under the rule of an empire or a republic, concerns only the man of matter. This body may be enslaved; as to his soul, he has the right to give to his rulers the proud answer of Socrates to his judges. They have no sway over the inner man.

Modern Panarion, Page 276

July 3

The only decree of Karma, an eternal and immutable decree, is absolute Harmony in the world of Matter as it is in the world of Spirit. It is not, therefore, Karma that rewards or punishes, but it is we who reward or punish ourselves, according as we work with, through and along with Nature, abiding by the laws on which that harmony depends, or breaking them.

The Secret Doctrine , Volume 1, Page 704

July 4

Theosophists do not believe in giving money through other people's hands or organisations. We believe in giving to the money a thousandfold greater power and effectiveness by our personal contact and sympathy with those who need it.

The Key to Theosophy , Page 164

July 5

After the death of the depraved and the wicked arrives the critical moment. If during life the ultimate and desperate effort of the inner self to re-unite itself with the faintly-glimmering ray of its divine parent is neglected; if this ray is allowed to be more and more shut out by the thickening crust of matter, the soul, once freed from the body, follows its earthly attractions, and is magnetically drawn into and held within the dense fogs of the material atmosphere.

Isis Unveiled, Volume 1, Page 319

July 6

It is an external law that man cannot be redeemed by a power external to himself.

Practical Occultism, Page 83

July 7

Pythagoras taught that the entire universe is one vast system of mathematically correct combinations. Plato shows the deity geometrising. The world is sustained by the same law of equilibrium and harmony upon which it was built.

Isis Unveiled, Volume 1, Page 318

July 8

At 8,000 or 9,000 years earlier the stream of knowledge had been slowly running down from the tablelands of Central Asia into India and towards Europe and Northern Africa, so about 500 years B.C. it had begun to flow backward to its old home and birthplace. During the two thousand subsequent years the knowledge of the existence of great Adepts nearly died out in Europe. Nevertheless, in some secret places the Mysteries were still enacted in all their primitive purity. The "Sun of Righteousness" still blazed high on the midnight sky; and, while darkness was upon the face of the profane world, there was the eternal light in the Adyta on the nights of Initiation.

The Secret Doctrine , Volume 3, Page 278

July 9

Man, is the philosopher's stone spiritually. " a triune or trinity in unity", as Philalethes expresses it. But he is also that stone physically. The latter is but the effect of the cause, and the cause is the universal solvent of everything — divine spirit.

Isis Unveiled, Volume 1, Page 309

July 10

While the records of even important events are often obliterated from our memory, not the most trifling action of our lives can disappear from the "Soul's" memory, because it is no Memory for it, but an ever-present reality on the plane which lies outside our conception of space and time.

Lucifer, October, 1889

July 11

Man is certainly no special creation. He is the product of Nature's gradual perfective work, like any other living unit on this earth. But this is only with regard to the human tabernacle. That which lives and thinks in man and survives that frame, the masterpiece of evolution — is the "Eternal Pilgrim", the Protean differentiation in Space and Time of the One Absolute "Unknowable".

The Secret Doctrine , Volume 2, Page 768

July 12

Parabrahman, the One Reality, the Absolute, is the field of Absolute Consciousness, i.e., that Essence which is out of all relation to conditioned existence, and of which conscious existence is a conditioned symbol. But once that we pass in thought from this (to us) Absolute Negation, duality supervenes in the contrast of Spirit (or Consciousness) and Matter, Subject and Object.

The Secret Doctrine , Volume 1, Page 43

July 13

A man's idea of God is that image of blinding light that he sees reflected in the concave mirror of his own soul, and yet this is not, in very truth, God, but only His reflection. His glory is there, but it is the light of his own Spirit that the man sees, and it is all he can bear to look upon. The clearer the mirror the brighter will be the divine image. But the external world cannot be witnesses in it at the same moment.

Isis Unveiled, Volume 1, Page XXIV

July 14

Would the principle of continuity, which exists even for the so-called inorganic matter, for a floating atom, be denied to the spirit, whose attributes are consciousness, memory, mind Love? Really, the very idea is preposterous.

Isis Unveiled, Volume 1, Page 114

July 15

Restrain by thy Divine thy lower Self. Restrain by the Eternal the Divine. Aye, great is he, who is the slayer of desire. Still greater he, in whom the Self Divine has slain the very knowledge of desire.

The Voice of the Silence, Page 58

July 16

It was only when, as a result of the evil hints of the serpent matter, the latter condensed itself and cooled on the spiritual man in its contact with the elements, that the fruits of the man-tree — who is himself that tree of knowledge — appeared to his view.

Isis Unveiled, Volume 1, Page 297

July 17

Physical Nature, when left to herself in the creation of animal and man, is shown to have failed. She can produce the first two kingdoms, as well as that of the lower animals, but when it comes to the turn of man, spiritual, independent and intelligent powers are required for his creation, besides the "coats of skin" and "breath of animal life".

The Secret Doctrine , Volume 2, Page 59

July 18

Occultism tells us that every atom, like the monad of Leibnitz, is a little universe in itself; and that every organ and cell in the human body is endowed with a brain of its own, with memory, therefore, experience and discriminative powers.

Lucifer, April, 1890

July 19

For logic, consistence, profound philosophy, divine mercy and equity, this doctrine or reincarnation has not its equal on earth. It is a belief in a perpetual progress for each incarnating Ego, or divine soul, in an evolution from the outward into the inward, from the material to the spiritual, arriving at the end of each stage at absolute unity with the divine principle.

The Key to Theosophy , Page 104

July 20

.... Thought is an energy that affects matter in various ways, but consciousness per se, as understood and explained by Occult philosophy, is the highest quality of the sentient spiritual principle in us, the Divine Soul (or Buddhi) and our Higher Ego, and does not belong to the plane of materiality.

The Secret Doctrine , Volume 3, Page 375

July 21

To offer oneself as a candidate for Chelâship is easy enough, to develop into an Adept the most difficult task any man could possibly undertake.

Five Years of Theosophy, Page 31

July 22

Children should above all be taught self-reliance, love for all men, altruism, mutual charity, and, more than anything else, to think and reason for themselves. We would reduce the purely mechanical work of the memory to an absolute minimum, and devote the time to the development and training of the inner senses, faculties and latent capacities ..... We should aim at creating free men and women, free intellectually, free morally, unprejudiced in all respects, and, above all things, unselfish.

The Key to Theosophy, Page 182

July 23

We believe in relieving the starvation of the soul, as much if not more than the emptiness of the stomach; for gratitude does more good to the man who fills it, than to him for whom it is felt.

The Key to the Theosophy, Page 165

July 24

The corner stone of Magic is an intimate practical knowledge of magnetism and electricity, their qualities, correlations, and potencies. Especially necessary is a familiarity with their effects in and upon the animal kingdom and man.

Isis Unveiled, Volume 2, Page 589

July 25

The man who wars against himself and wins the battle can do it only when he knows that in that war he is doing the one thing which is worth doing.

Practical Occultism, Page 67

July 26

The Wise Ones tarry not in pleasure grounds of senses. The Wise Ones heed not the sweet-tongued voices of illusion.

The Voice of the Silence, Page 21

July 27

Those who believe in Karma have to believe in Destiny which, from birth to death, every man weaves thread by thread around himself, as a spider his web; and this Destiny is guided either by the heavenly voice of the invisible Prototype outside of us, or by our more intimate astral, or inner man, who is but too often the evil genius of the embodied entity called man. Both these lead on the outward man, but one of them must prevail; and from the very beginning of the invisible affray the stern and implacable Law of Compensation steps in and takes its course, faithfully following the fluctuations of the fight. When the last strand is woven, and man is seemingly enwrapped in the network of his down doing, then he finds himself completely under the empire of this self-made destiny. It then either fixes him like the inert shell against the immovable rock, or carries him away like a feather in a whirlwind raised by his own actions, and this is — Karma

The Secret Doctrine , Volume 1, Page 700

July 28

Physical man is but the highest development of animal life.

Isis Unveiled, Volume 1, Page 327

July 29

From an impalpable ideal thought under the creative Will of Him of whom we know nothing, and but dimly conceive in imagination, this globe became fluidic and semi-spiritual, then condensed itself more and more,until its physical development — matter, the tempting demon — compelled it to try its own creative faculty. Matter defied Spirit, and the earth, too, had its “Fall”.

Isis Unveiled, Volume 2, Page 420

July 30

What I do believe in is: (1) the unbroken oral teachings revealed by living divine men during the infancy of mankind to the elect among men; (2) that it has reached us unaltered; and (3) that the Masters are thoroughly versed in the science based on such uninterrupted teaching.

Lucifer, October, 1899

[H.P.B., born midnight, July 30 - 31, 1831]

July 31

Ancient philosophers ..... divided the interminable periods of human existence on this planet into cycles, during each of which mankind gradually reached the culminating point of highest civilisation and gradually relapsed into abject barbarism. To what eminence the race in its progress had several times arrived may be feebly surmised by the wonderful monuments of old, still visible, and the descriptions given by Herodotus of other marvels of which no traces remain.

Isis Unveiled, Volume 1, Page 5