LIST OF ARTICLES

THE DIFFERENT EDITIONS AND PUBLICATIONS OF THE SECRET DOCTRINE

 
 
 
 
The Wurzburg manuscript
 
The Wurzburg manuscript is a partial copy of the first draft that Blavatsky wrote between 1885 and 1886, when The Secret Doctrine was intended to be an improved version of Isis Unveiled, but later this project was scrapped when the masters decided it would be a new work more complete.
 
 
 
 
 
The first edition
 
The first edition was first published in 1888 in two volumes. The first volume is subtitled Cosmogenesisand was published on October 20, 1888. The 500 copies were sold before date of publication to advance subscribers. The second volume is subtitled Anthropogenesis and was published towards the end of the year.
 
The two volumes on their first pages have a table of contents, and at the end of the second volume there is an index of the two volumes.
 
Its editors were:
 
   -   The Theosophical Publishing Company. London.
   -   William Q. Judge, 117, Nassau Street, New York.
   -   The Manager of The Theosophist, Adyar, Madras.
 
And it was printed by Allen, Scott and Co., 30 Bouverie Street, EC, London.
 
 
 
 
Cover of the first publication
 
Note: Blavatsky and several of his collaborators assured that the Secret Doctrine will have a total of four volumes. The third volume was already ready to be printed and would deal with the lives of various adepts and occultists. The fourth volume was in preparation and it would deal with practical occultism. But the manuscripts of those next two volumes (3rd and 4th) disappeared and it is no one knows what happened to them.
 
 
 
 
 
The second edition
 
The sales of the first publication were so great that this same year 1888 a second printing was requested immediately, but this was incorrectly called the second edition when in reality it was only a reprint of the original with some small inaccuracies corrected.
 
 
 
 
 
 
The third edition
 
In 1893 (two years after Blavatsky's death) Annie Besant who was the new leader of the theosophical movement in Europe published a new edition in two volumes, known as the "Third Revised Edition", although strictly speaking it was the second edition. And this review was mainly carried out by academic George Mead who was the ex-secretary of Mme. Blavatsky and also Annie Besant participated a bit.
 
The original text was considerably modified by these two individuals, and many theosophists have criticized the enormous amount of changes they have made (more than 40'000), the vast majority of those changes being futile, such as change upper case to lower case, or change italics and punctuation.
 
But there were also more substantial changes such as incorporating footnotes into the main text, and any reference to the third and fourth volumes that Blavatsky had enunciated was also removed.
 
Therefore, this edition cannot be considered as a completely faithful reproduction of the original as Blavatsky wrote it. But despite this, this third edition is the one that has had the most circulation and from which most of the translations have been made.
 
It was published by:
 
   -   The Theosophical Publishing Society, London.
   -   The Path Office, New York.
   -   The Theosophist Office, Adyar.
 
And it was originally printed by HPB Press, London, and was later reprinted by the Adyar Theosophical Society in 1902, 1905 and 1908.
 
 
 
 
 
 
Index to the third edition
 
A larger and more complete index of the original index was published as a separate book in 1895, which was prepared by Alfred J. Faulding who was an important member of the British section; and since the pagination of the original edition had been changed, a key was included for those who had the original edition.
 
The editors were:
 
   -   The Theosophical Publishing Society, London.
   -   The Path Office, New York.
   -   The Theosophical Publishing Society, Benares.
   -   The Theosophist Office, Adyar.
 
Later an index of the third volume was also incorporated and this book was reprinted in 1902, 1905, 1908, 1911, 1913, 1918 and 1921.
 
·        Facsimile 1918
 
 
 
 
 
The third volume
 
In June 1897 Annie Besant published a book entitled " Occultism " pretending that it was the "Third Volume of the Secret Doctrine" (and this is how she already titled it in the second printing in 1910), and it is also known as "The Occultism of the Secret Doctrine”.
 
But this is not the third volume that Blavatsky had enunciated. In reality it is an unfinished set of articles that Blavatsky had left on her desk after she died and which Annie Besant collected.
 
But since these texts were a very small volume, Annie Besant added other documents: part of the Wurzburg manuscript and part of the instructions that Blavatsky gave to her Esoteric Section.
 
Unfortunately Annie Besant also made many alterations in these texts.
 
Its editors were:
 
   -   The Theosophical Publishing Society, London and Benares
   -   Theosophical Book Concern, Chicago
 
It was reprinted numerous times in different formats as I detail below.
 
·        Pdf facsimile 1910
 
 
 
 
 
The Pasadena Theosophical Society Edition
 
It 1909 the Aryan Theosophical Press of Point Loma, California (since then moved to Covina, California, and known as Theosophical University Press) under the direction of Katherine Tingley reprinted the original 1888 edition with some modifications:
 
A scholarly transliteration of Sanskrit words according to an accepted standard, some corrections of faulty Greek and Latin and of obvious typographical errors, and the occasional substitution of square brackets in place of parentheses for clearness. No changes were made in H. P. Blavatsky's language and no passages were eliminated. This is the standard edition still being published by the Theosophical University Press, Covina.
 
·        Online
·        PDF
 
The second edition took place in 1917, but it is the same text only bound in four volumes. The third edition took place in 1925 bound in two and four volumes. In both cases were published by the Aryan Theosophical Press.
 
The fourth edition was published by Theosophical University Press in 1947 as a reprint of the 1925 edition. The 1952 edition is verbatim with the original 1888 edition. This was reprinted in the Netherlands in 1963 and 1970, and in the United States in 1974.
 
 
 
 
 
 
Adyar's three-volume edition
 
In 1911 the Theosophical Society Adyar decided to republish the third revised edition together with the third volume, and was reprinted in 1913, 1918, 1921 and 1928.
 
 
Photo of the three volumes plus the index that was sold separately
 
 
 
 
 
The United Lodge of Theosophists edition
 
The members of the United Lodge of Theosophists did not like the modifications that the other Theosophical organizations made, and that is why in 1925 their publishing house The Theosophy Company of Los Angeles published a photographic facsimile of the two original volumes, bound in a single volume.
 
This edition provided the opportunity to re-study Blavatsky's work exactly as she had published it, without changes or corrections, although typographical errors remain there. And in the following years several editions were published.
 
·        Facsimile 1925
 
 
 
 
 
 
The Six Volume Fourth Edition of Adyar
 
In 1938 to celebrate fifty years of the Secret Doctrine, the Theosophical Society Adyar decided to republish all its Secret Doctrine publications in a single set but distributed them in more volumes:
 
-         The first volume of the third revised edition was divided into two, forming volumes 1 and 2.
-         The second volume of the third revised edition was also divided in two, forming volumes 3 and 4.
-         The third volume became volume 5.
-         And the index of the third revised edition plus a glossary became volume 6.
 
Some people believe that these extra volumes correspond to volumes 3 and 4 that Blavatsky enunciated, but that is incorrect.
 
Many of the footnotes introduced into the text in the third revised edition were restored as footnotes, and the few left in the text were enclosed in square brackets.
 
It was originally edited by the Theosophical Publishig House, Adyar; and published by C. Subbarayudu in The Vasanta press, Adyar; and was later reprinted in 1946, 1950, 1952 , 1962 and 1971, which are known as the 5th and 6th editions of Adyar and Wheaton.
 
·        (The third volume I have not found)
 
 
 
 
 
 
The centenary edition
 
In 1988 to commemorate the hundredth anniversary of the publication of the Secret Doctrine, the Theosophical Society Adyar published a version that was edited by Boris de Zirkoff in two volumes and an index, retaining the text and pagination of the original edition, but where Zirkoff corrected the transcription of oriental terms and increased the quotations that appear in the work. It was reprinted in 1993.
 
 
 
 
 
 
Index of the Theosophical Society Pasadena
 
A more complete and extensive index was prepared by John P. Van Mater and published in 1997 by Theosophical University Press.
 
·        Online
·        PDF
 
 
 
 
 
In summary
 
The Adyar Theosophical Society spent a long time (until the 1970s) publishing the third revised edition of Mead and Besant in various forms, but currently it only uses the edition elaborated by Boris de Zirkoff.
The Pasadena and Point Loma Theosophical Societies use the edition commissioned by Katherine Tingley.
And the United Lodge of Theosophists uses the original edition.
 
In the 21st century, hardly anyone uses the altered edition by George Mead and Annie Besant, and I personally find the improvements made by Zirkoff and Tingley beneficial.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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