Quotes:Fragments of Occult Truth

Zirkoff, Boris

“Fragments of Occult Truth.” This series of essays on some of the teachings of the occult philosophy are referred to by H.P.B. on a number of occasions in the present Volume, as may be found by consulting the Index.

Their authorship has been often in doubt, quite needlessly so, when all available evidence is taken into consideration. The first Three Fragments were published with no author’s name in The Theosophist, Vol. HI, October, 1881, March and September, 1882, in reply to certain letters from an Australian Theosophist, W. H. Terry, embodying a number of questions. These first “Fragments” were from the pen of Allan Octavian Hume, as may be shown by consulting The Mahatma Leiters to A. P. Sinnett (pp. 63, 84, 90, 123, 174 and 250) and The Letters of H. P. Blavatsky to A. P. Sinnett (pp. 8, 9 and 41).

Later installments of the “Fragments,” signed “Lay Chela,” are from the pen of A. P. Sinnett who took over where Hume had left off. They appeared in later issues of The Theosophist.

Some students have felt that H.P.B. had a hand in the production of the early “Fragments,” and that possibly others, like Subba Row, for instance, may have contributed to them. There is no 648 solid evidence in support of this, especially when H.P.B.’s own statements are taken into account, particularly the one where she tells Sinnett that she cannot reply to “a new article from Terry” as “my style would so clash with his [Hume’s] in the Fragments.”

Source: Boris de Zirkoff, «H. P. Blavatsky Collected Writings», vol. 4, pp. 647-648