Isis Unveiled, published in 1877, is a book of esoteric philosophy

Philosophy

Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...

, and was Helena Petrovna Blavatsky's first major work.

The book discusses or quotes, among others, Plato

Plato

Plato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the...

, Plotinus

Plotinus

Plotinus was a major philosopher of the ancient world. In his system of theory there are the three principles: the One, the Intellect, and the Soul. His teacher was Ammonius Saccas and he is of the Platonic tradition...

, the Chaldean Oracles

Chaldean Oracles

The Chaldean Oracles have survived as fragmentary texts from the 2nd century AD, and consist mainly of Hellenistic commentary on a single mystery-poem that was believed to have originated in Chaldea...

, the Egyptian Book of the Dead, the Bible

Bible

The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...

, Pythagoras

Pythagoras

Pythagoras of Samos was an Ionian Greek philosopher, mathematician, and founder of the religious movement called Pythagoreanism. Most of the information about Pythagoras was written down centuries after he lived, so very little reliable information is known about him...

, Ammonius Saccas

Ammonius Saccas

Ammonius Saccas was a Greek philosopher from Alexandria who was often referred to as one of the founders of Neoplatonism. He is mainly known as the teacher of Plotinus, whom he taught for eleven years from 232 to 243. He was undoubtably the biggest influence on Plotinus in his development of...

, Porphyry

Porphyry (philosopher)

Porphyry of Tyre , Porphyrios, AD 234–c. 305) was a Neoplatonic philosopher who was born in Tyre. He edited and published the Enneads, the only collection of the work of his teacher Plotinus. He also wrote many works himself on a wide variety of topics...

, Iamblichus, Proclus

Proclus

Proclus Lycaeus , called "The Successor" or "Diadochos" , was a Greek Neoplatonist philosopher, one of the last major Classical philosophers . He set forth one of the most elaborate and fully developed systems of Neoplatonism...

, Apollonius of Tyana

Apollonius of Tyana

Apollonius of Tyana was a Greek Neopythagorean philosopher from the town of Tyana in the Roman province of Cappadocia in Asia Minor. Little is certainly known about him...

, the Popol Vuh

Popol Vuh

Popol Vuh is a corpus of mytho-historical narratives of the Post Classic Quiché kingdom in Guatemala's western highlands. The title translates as "Book of the Community," "Book of Counsel," or more literally as "Book of the People."...

, Paracelsus

Paracelsus

Paracelsus was a German-Swiss Renaissance physician, botanist, alchemist, astrologer, and general occultist....

, Giordano Bruno

Giordano Bruno

Giordano Bruno , born Filippo Bruno, was an Italian Dominican friar, philosopher, mathematician and astronomer. His cosmological theories went beyond the Copernican model in proposing that the Sun was essentially a star, and moreover, that the universe contained an infinite number of inhabited...

, Schopenhauer, Louis Jacolliot

Louis Jacolliot

Louis Jacolliot was a French barrister, colonial judge, author and lecturer.Born in Charolles, Saône-et-Loire, he lived several years in Tahiti and India during the period 1865-1869....

, Eliphas Levi

Eliphas Levi

Eliphas Lévi, born Alphonse Louis Constant , was a French occult author and purported magician."Eliphas Lévi," the name under which he published his books, was his attempt to translate or transliterate his given names "Alphonse Louis" into Hebrew although he was not Jewish.His second wife was...

, Marco Polo

Marco Polo

Marco Polo was a Venetian merchant traveler from the Venetian Republic whose travels are recorded in Il Milione, a book which did much to introduce Europeans to Central Asia and China. He learned about trading whilst his father and uncle, Niccolò and Maffeo, travelled through Asia and apparently...

, Jesus

Jesus

Jesus of Nazareth , commonly referred to as Jesus Christ or simply as Jesus or Christ, is the central figure of Christianity...

 the Nazarene, Siddhārtha Gautama, Zoroaster

Zoroaster

Zoroaster , also known as Zarathustra , was a prophet and the founder of Zoroastrianism who was either born in North Western or Eastern Iran. He is credited with the authorship of the Yasna Haptanghaiti as well as the Gathas, hymns which are at the liturgical core of Zoroastrianism...

 and Max Müller

Max Müller

Friedrich Max Müller , more regularly known as Max Müller, was a German philologist and Orientalist, one of the founders of the western academic field of Indian studies and the discipline of comparative religion...

, as well as Buddhist, Brahmanical, Chinese

Chinese literature

Chinese literature extends thousands of years, from the earliest recorded dynastic court archives to the mature fictional novels that arose during the Ming Dynasty to entertain the masses of literate Chinese...

, Persian

Persian literature

Persian literature spans two-and-a-half millennia, though much of the pre-Islamic material has been lost. Its sources have been within historical Persia including present-day Iran as well as regions of Central Asia where the Persian language has historically been the national language...

, Babylonian, Chaldea

Chaldea

Chaldea or Chaldaea , from Greek , Chaldaia; Akkadian ; Hebrew כשדים, Kaśdim; Aramaic: ܟܐܠܕܘ, Kaldo) was a marshy land located in modern-day southern Iraq which came to briefly rule Babylon...

n, Syria

Syria

Syria , officially the Syrian Arab Republic , is a country in Western Asia, bordering Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea to the West, Turkey to the north, Iraq to the east, Jordan to the south, and Israel to the southwest....

n, Gnostic, Egyptian

Ancient Egypt

Ancient Egypt was an ancient civilization of Northeastern Africa, concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile River in what is now the modern country of Egypt. Egyptian civilization coalesced around 3150 BC with the political unification of Upper and Lower Egypt under the first pharaoh...

 literature and much more.

It is composed of two volumes, the first concentrating on science, and the second on religion. The two volumes support the idea of spirituality

Spirituality

Spirituality can refer to an ultimate or an alleged immaterial reality; an inner path enabling a person to discover the essence of his/her being; or the “deepest values and meanings by which people live.” Spiritual practices, including meditation, prayer and contemplation, are intended to develop...

 and theosophize

Theosophy

Theosophy, in its modern presentation, is a spiritual philosophy developed since the late 19th century. Its major themes were originally described mainly by Helena Blavatsky , co-founder of the Theosophical Society...

 in accordance with it. Blavatsky herself distinguishes between spiritual phenomena and Spiritualism, the religious system. She supports the verity of spiritual phenomena, not the views of the Spiritualists, which she wrote about extensively in such works as The Key to Theosophy. The volume on science attempts to show how science can be just as dogmatic as religion, and betrays its own scientific method by denying spiritual phenomena with no scientific proof against it, meanwhile citing various scientists of renown that have acknowledged the necessity of a spiritual reality. The volume on religion attempts to expose the hypocrisy of certain established religions by focusing on how and where they have strayed from their origins and worked counter-actively, while simultaneously tracing the doctrines of the most revered mystics and philosophers to a common spiritual root.

Quotations

Pop culture references

p. 191 modern library edition of Joyce's Ulysses references Isis Unveiled.

• This book makes an appearance in the Sherlock Holmes
  Sherlock Holmes
  Sherlock Holmes is a fictional detective created by Scottish author and physician Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The fantastic London-based "consulting detective", Holmes is famous for his astute logical reasoning, his ability to take almost any disguise, and his use of forensic science skills to solve...
  
   Game "Mystery of the Mummy
  Mystery of the Mummy
  Sherlock Holmes: Mystery of the Mummy is an adventure game for Microsoft Windows, developed by Frogwares and released in 2002. The player controls Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's renowned detective Sherlock Holmes, investigating the mysteriously abandoned mansion of British archeologist, Lord...
  
  ". While examining a bookcase, Sherlock mentions that there is a book inside it called "Isis Unveiled" By M. Blavatt
  Madame Blavatsky
  Helena Petrovna Blavatsky , was a theosophist, writer and traveler. Between 1848 and 1875 Blavatsky had gone around the world three times. In 1875, Blavatsky together with Colonel H. S. Olcott established the Theosophical Society...
  
  .

• In the novel "Foucault's Pendulum
  Foucault's Pendulum
  Foucault's Pendulum is a novel by Italian writer and philosopher Umberto Eco. It was first published in 1988; the translation into English by William Weaver appeared a year later....
  
  " a character, Mr. Garamond, soon has the idea to begin two lines of occult books: one intended for serious publication by Garamond; the other, Isis Unveiled (a reference to the theosophical text by Blavatsky), to be published by Manutius in order to attract more vanity authors.
• "Isis Unveiled" is a song from ...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead
  ...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead
  …And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead is an American alternative rock band from Austin, Texas. The chief creative members of the band are Jason Reece and Conrad Keely . The two switch between drumming, guitar and lead vocals, both on recordings and live shows...
  
  's 2009 album The Century of Self
  The Century of Self
  The Century of Self is the sixth album by ...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead.-Production and release:This is the first full-length release from Trail of Dead after their Interscope contract...
  
  .

External links

• Isis Unveiled Net
• Online version of Isis Unveiled
• The Sources of Madame Blavatsky's Writings by William Emmette Coleman (an essay in which the author claims to have found the origins of allegedly plagiarized passages in Isis Unveiled and other Blavatsky writings.)