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Blavatsky’s Coming Race: Nationalism, Racism, and Fiction in Theosophical Doctrine
John L. Crow, Florida State University
In 1888, the American section of the Theosophical Society began holding an annual convention,
bringing together the nation’s Theosophists to organize their efforts, and celebrate their
achievements. Society co-founder, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, sent a letter to each annual
convention, and in them, she frequently mentioned the unique role America played in the
advancement of the human race. According to her two-volume magnum opus, The Secret
Doctrine, America would be the home of the next sub-race of the fifth root-race.1 That is, in her
scheme of human evolution, America would be home to the next sub-group of the current level
of human spiritual and physical evolution.2 By her 1891 letter, which was also her last, she
mentions, like in many of her previous letters, the unique position of Americans, and warns that
their developing powers needed to be controlled. “Your position as the forerunners of the sixth
sub-race of the fifth root-race has its own special perils as well as its special advantages.”3 In this
letter Blavatsky connects American nationalism directly to her theories of human race
development. These theories were also influenced by, not only established nineteenth-century
racial categories, but the occult fiction of the English novelist, Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton, in
particular, his last novel, The Coming Race. Building on texts she encountered in India,
nineteenth-century theories of race, her American patriotism, and Bulwer-Lytton’s novel,
Blavatsky developed a theory of human evolution that simultaneously separated humanity into
distinct races while, at the same time, celebrated the mixing of races in the United States. As a
result, American Theosophists, and later offshoots, combined American nationalism and
occultism in the development of their occult doctrines which still persist today and influence a
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variety of esoteric traditions. However, before engaging Blavatsky’s theories of race, we must
first briefly review the race theories which permeated nineteenth century.
Racism is hardly a modern phenomenon. However, beginning in the eighteenth century,
the emergence of scientism gave it a renewed veneer of legitimacy. By the end of the eighteenth
century, natural scientists had developed a variety of schemas, such as skull size and volume,
skin and hair color, and other physical traits that reified the preexisting hierarchy applied to the
races. Accordingly, this emerging science demonstrated that Europeans were superior to all other
races, Africans the lowest, and others in between. One of the first biological classification
systems came from the Swedish naturalist, Carolus Linnaeus, wherein he divided humans into
numerous categories.4 Linnaeus looked not at the intellect, but solely the biological aspects of
man, moving away from the justification of man’s superiority over other animals by his ability to
reason. This moved man into the purely biological realm, making “the human species as merely
one part of the natural system, legitimately classified in the same way as flora and fauna.”5
Overall, these natural scientists considered “white” as the standard and attempted to explain skin
color variations. Many explained skin color difference as a result of natural conditions such as
climate and geography, an explanation that dated back to the ancient Greeks.6 Indeed, it was
primarily skin color that became the factor in determining race. Other attributes, physical and
mental, were considered with it, but color was the primary physical determinant. This emphasis
on skin color was, in many ways, due to the history of slavery, and in particular European chattel
slavery which began as early as the fifteenth century and reached maturity in the eighteenth.
While antiquity consistently demonstrated a propensity for humans to oppress and enslave each
other, there was always an ambiguity in the status of slaves. In most cases, they looked similar
to their owners. David Brion Davis notes “some slaves merely had their heads shorn or wore an
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identification tablet of clay or metal, which could be broken when they were freed.”7 Other
cultures were known to brand or tattoo slaves. These methods were necessary because no
intrinsic designation identified the person as a slave. However, with the European enslavement
of Africans, black skin began to emerge as a natural indicator of enslavement.
Once black skin became the natural designation of slaves, numerous explanations, within
the framework of slavery, were created to reify that status. Early natural scientists frequently
turned to theological explanations for what they saw as blacks’ inherent inferiority. One such
explanation was the Bible claiming races were the result of Noah’s curse.8 Thus, the task of
scholars concerned with the origins of race, “was to trace which of the three sons of Noah gave
rise to the various other ethnic groups.”9 This classification, as historian Sylvester Johnson
writes, persisted into nineteenth-century America and became the dominant categorization, or
“ethnological rhetoric, being summarized in the three colors, white, yellow and black.”10
Another explanation, compatible with the Myth of Ham, appealed to the notion of the
Great Chain of Being (scala naturae). Built on Platonic and Neo-Platonic notions of emanation,
this idea was naturalized to explain the varying races, describing non-white races as
intermediaries leading to the apex, white Europeans. In terms of slavery, “the method helped to
buttress and confirms a hierarchy of cultures that could be ranked or graded along a variety of
dimensions from savagery to civilization.”11 Ultimately, as Audrey Smedley, a historian of race
in America, summarizes, determining the difference between races were the central concern of
Pre-Darwinian anthropology.12
When Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1859 and later, The Descent
of Man (1871), he challenged certain typologies of race and supported others. In his work, he
described the means by which animals survive and adapt to conditions. In The Descent of Man,
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he applies his theories of evolution to mankind, claiming humans evolved from animals and “that
man’s mental and moral nature was not different in kind from that of animals, but only in degree
and quantity.”13 Thus, his work challenged various race origin theories and Biblical notions, such
as the Curse of Ham and the claim that human beings had not changed since God created them.
However, his findings supported other race positions such as the Chain of Being and inherited
abilities and characteristics. Indeed, as Nancy Stepan notes, in the long run, Darwin’s ideas
tended to “strengthen rather than overthrow traditional racist ideas.”14
During this evolving discussion on race, there was a parallel discussion of what was
becoming of those immigrating to America. These discussions were mixed with American
nationalism that emerged after the United States achieved independence from Great Britain. One
of the first to make reference to this emerging “race” was the French-American, John Hector St.
John de Crèvecoeur. In his Letters from an American Farmer (1782), he describes how the
European, once living in America, abandons his former country and is “melted into a new race of
men.”15 These Europeans became a “race called Americans.”16 This understanding of racial
identity and the discourse of an “American race” became a common trope repeated by numerous
Americans and immigrants throughout the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth.
By the mid- to late-nineteenth century, the idea of a new race of mankind emerging in
America was commonly discussed, especially in intellectual circles. One illustration was in the
writings of German-émigré and scholar of American Religion, Philip Schaff. In his work, he
comments on “America’s digestive power” whereby it assimilates all “foreign elements,
excepting only the African and Chinese.”17 Indeed, for Schaff the new American man was a
combination of European materials, an amalgamation where one could only find the “faint echo
of European nationalities” of which it was composed.18 Stephen R. Graham, a biographer of
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Schaff’s, points out that both Schaff and Crèvecoeur had similar views including the agreement
that “in this chaos of peoples the traces of a specifically American national character may be
discerned.”19
At the turn of the twentieth century, artists were also incorporating claims of a new
American race into their work, especially works that celebrated the assimilation of minorities
into the masses of Americans. In 1900, Charles W. Chesnutt published three essays in the Boston
Evening Transcript where he claimed that the American races, especially African Americans,
were being slowly assimilated. In 1908, the London born Russian Jew, Israel Zangwill, released
the play The Melting Pot. The plot describes the struggle of two Russian immigrants, one a
Christian and the other a Jew, who overcome the cultural divisions that keep them apart. The
play’s “patriotic rhetoric, poly-ethnic sentiments, and sacred imagery”20 celebrates America’s
ability to form a new people and to bring together such diverse peoples of race and religion.
Zangwill’s ideals mirrors Crèvecoeur’s central theme, a message, which judging by the
enthusiastic response of The Melting Pot from the opening night audience, “was attractive to
many Americans,” well into the twentieth century.21
Americans were not the only ones looking at North America and imagining a new,
unified race. The English novelist, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, also had this assimilation of races at
the center of his last book, The Coming Race (1871).22 The story opens in America in the
nineteenth century. The unnamed American protagonist is asked to assist in exploring a
troublesome mine. Quickly the plot shifts, the protagonist finds himself trapped underground in
the presence of a new race of formidable humans powered by a mysterious energy called “vril.”23
Describing the race of the new people, the protagonist appealed to scientific ideas that the mixing
of races was positive. Yet, the protagonist’ discussion continues indicating that only the
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intermarrying of civilized races was permitted and that the non-civilized, i.e. the non-Vril-ya
races, were “regarded with more disdain than citizens of New York regard the negroes.”24 Thus,
Bulwer-Lytton mirrors the views of others discussed previously who agreed that intermixing was
permissible, but only with European peoples. Another social critique contained in The Coming
Race, one also found in Blavatsky’s work, is Bulwer-Lytton’s disdain for the ideas of Darwin
and evolution. Darwin understood humans as nothing but higher forms of animals. BulwerLytton’s claimed a more religious understanding of humans. This negative view of evolution, as
we will see, was shared by Blavatsky.
With the publishing of The Secret Doctrine, Blavatsky claimed to reveal the occult
composition of the cosmos and the hidden evolutionary history of humanity from a lost volume
called Book of Dzyan. The stanzas from this occult volume read something akin to a combination
of Bible and Vedanta literature. The second volume of The Secret Doctrine, entitled,
“Anthropogenesis” tells of the past, present, and future races of humanity, beginning with spirit
beings. During this process humans experienced a “fall from grace” and became stuck in
physical forms. It is in these stanzas from the Book of Dzyan that Blavatsky makes her first
refutation of Darwin. Whereas Darwin claims humans evolved from primates, Blavatsky’s Book
of Dzyan claims that ancient races of humanity interbred with animals and the results were
primates. While the means of refuting Darwin are different, the points of Bulwer-Lytton and
Blavatsky were the same; humans have a spiritual component that other animals lack. And just to
be clear to her readers, Blavatsky states, “The real line of evolution differs from the Darwinian,
and the two systems are irreconcilable, except when the latter is divorced from the dogma of
‘Natural Selection’ and the like.”25
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Also similar to Bulwer-Lytton was Blavatsky’s view of the differences in race. Both
Bulwer-Lytton and Blavatsky adopted the prevailing Anglo-American classifications of race
present at the end of the nineteenth century. Bulwer-Lytton projected his ideas of the various
Aryan races onto the Vril-ya and their revulsion of non-vril using tribes. Blavatsky adopted the
prevailing race categorizations and projected them onto her rounds of races. The first two races
were spirit beings with varying levels of material bodies. The third and oldest of the human races
was red, similar to Bulwer-Lytton’s oldest Vril-ya, and the fourth was brown which became
black because of the sin that caused the fall. In fact, there were a large variety of skin colors
including black, brown, red, yellow and white. However, much like other 19th century racialists,
Blavatsky says that all the colors come down to three categories:
Esotericism now classes these seven variations, with their four great divisions,
into only three distinct primeval races — as it does not take into consideration the
First Race, which had neither type nor colour, and hardly an objective, though
colossal form. The evolution of these races, their formation and development,
went pari passu and on parallel lines with the evolution, formation, and
development of three geological strata, from which the human complexion was as
much derived as it was determined by the climates of those zones. It names three
great divisions, namely, the red-yellow, the black, and the brown-white.26
She continues, the highest, the brown-white is associated with Aryans. “The Aryan races, for
instance, now varying from dark brown, almost black, red-brown-yellow, down to the whitest
creamy colour, are yet all of one and the same stock — the Fifth Root-Race.”27 She explains that
the major races of humanity developed in the fourth root race where the skin darkened because
humanity became “black with sin.” She also claims that the lowest forms of humanity are “the
‘narrow brained’ South-Sea Islanders, the African, and the Australian.”28 She states that “African
negroes” and “Chinamen” are hybrid remnants of the fourth root race.29 Of course, not all
scholars see the connections between Blavatsky’s categories and those of the scientific racialists
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of her age. James Santucci, one of the foremost scholars on Theosophy, rejects any notion that
Blavatsky’s understandings of race were similar to other racialist scientists. He writes,
The Theosophical explanation of race provided by Blavatsky and Sinnett should
be considered to be entirely separate and apart from the discussions of race
common in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Any discussion of race in
Theosophy must be considered from a different perspective, one that is cosmic
and ultimately divine in scope.30
Santucci’s explanation for why Theosophists, in particular Blavatsky, have a separate
perspective from those who are considered racist is not convincing. He explains root-races and
the cosmological evolution addressed previously. He enters the discussion of the Hindu sources
including the Laws of Manu. After reviewing all the material, he concludes stating that “Even a
superficial reading of the works of A. P. Sinnett and Helena P. Blavatsky, the two authors who
respectively popularized and provided a grand synthesis of the esoteric or occult universe,
reveals the absence of racist attitudes.”31 Yet his statement leads one to ask, is it only a
coincidence that the race hierarchy Blavatsky claims is part of the esoteric records matches
nineteenth century notions of race science? Santucci seems to want to insulate Blavatsky from
the labels of racism and the using of terms such as Aryan, which is commonly associated with
the Nazis. This seems somewhat justified as many project Nazi racial notions back in time and
tar her with their atrocities. However, are these two choices the only ones available to conclude
about Blavatsky and race? That she was either a Nazi racist or completely free from all forms of
racism? Perhaps it makes more sense to understand Blavatsky as a participant in the discourse of
race and European political supremacy during the age of European colonialism. Much like the
theorists noted previously, Blavatsky repeatedly cites various scientists, anthropologists, and the
like. She debates them, agrees with some and dismisses others. We have already noted her
disagreements with Darwin, but she also weighs in on other issues pertinent in her time. She also
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asserts that races can mix and that race combinations can be beneficial, contrary to those who
saw race mixing as degenerating. Thus, instead of denying Blavatsky’s views on race, views
which may be distasteful by today’s standards, it seems more reasonable to contextualize and
historicize her views, and note which ways her racial claims were not very divergent from other
Europeans and Americans of the time.
This brings us to her assertions about the next sub-race of the fifth root-race, the Aryans.
Blavatsky claims they will come from America because of race mixing. When Blavatsky
immigrated to America, she became an American citizen. She was immensely proud of her
adopted country as noted previously, and as such, it is not surprising that the rhetoric of a new
American race found its way into her narrative of evolution. In her writing we see how the
rhetoric going back to Crèvecoeur finds its way into the “occult history” of humanity, and singles
out America as the home of the next sub-race of the Aryans, supplanting the Europeans.
Blavatsky is unclear as to which races or sub-races are involved in the intermixing, and this
ambiguity leaves open the possibility for race inclusion. However in practice, minorities are
rarely mentioned or included in Theosophical discourses, although this is not always the case.
In 1895, due to a disagreement between Theosophical leaders in America and Europe, a
large portion of the American Theosophical Society separated from the headquarters in Adyar,
and created their own, independent branch of Theosophy under the leadership of Katherine
Tingley. Tingley established a community based on her vision of Theosophy. Prior to Point
Loma, which races were involved in the new American race remained vague in practice.
Historian W. Michael Ashcraft notes that Judge stressed the Anglo-Saxon base of America in his
writings. Point Loma, in contrast, founded just after Judge’s death, had a much larger mix of
races including a significant number of Cubans who were involved with the Theosophical
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schools established on the island. This diverse national heritage found in Point Loma combined
with a view of wishing peace for all nations, but also understanding America’s special role. As
part of this role, Tingley integrated what has been called a “Higher Patriotism” into her
community’s Theosophical practice. Ashcraft writes, Point Loma Theosophists “spoke of the
American continent being purified of the poisons left from the negative karma of older races who
indulged their passions.”32 Indeed, William Q. Judge claimed that the Theosophical Master’s, the
enlightened adepts who instructed the society, guided the American founding fathers to not insert
provisions into the Constitution affirming any religious establishment, and even prior to the
Constitution, they “oversaw” the drafting of the Declaration of Independence.33 Point Loma
Theosophists frequently called America the “United States of the World” and Tingley states that
“higher patriotism found embodiment in future Americans whose commonalities prevailed over
all other ethnic and national loyalties.”34 Ashcraft continues, “Point Loma Theosophists
highlighted this combination of Theosophical principle with emphasis on American life and
society in their use of patriotic symbols from American history, especially the Revolutionary
War era.”35 One symbol, in particular, was the American flag which became central to the
educational environment.36 In fact, it was Tingley’s Raja Yoga schools that she felt were going
to be significant factors in moving the evolution of the American race forward. On a trip to the
Netherlands in 1922, she gave a speech entitled “The Reconstruction of the Race and Higher
Education, from a Theosophical Standpoint.” In it she notes the central place of education in
developing humanity and helping to remedy the negative karma and habits which inhibits the
race. She stated, “Some day our race will be one race, one Universal Brotherhood, one
government, one language, and we shall enjoy eternal peace.”37 By combining American
nationalism with Theosophical principles, Tingley imagined that the Point Loma Theosophists
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were helping educate the youth of America to lead humanity forward in the creation of the next
sub-race in the fifth root-race as described by Blavatsky in The Secret Doctrine.
Conclusion
On a sunny day on Mount Shasta, California, in August 1930, Guy Ballard was taking a hike and
claims to have met the Ascended Master, Saint Germain.38 From this encounter Ballard founded
the religious movement, “I AM” and began publishing his revelations. Ballard was a former
student of Theosophy and was widely read in the tradition.39 Moreover, he was significantly
influenced by Blavatsky’s ideas of the masters and claimed that the Theosophical Masters were
also the Ascendant Masters of “I AM.”40 Included in the “I AM” doctrine was that the masters
were leading the human race forward in its evolution and that the United States has a central role
in this process. Repeatedly the “I AM” movement claimed much like Theosophists that the
Masters were influencing the shaping of America’s founding documents. Indeed, Ballard
claimed directly, much like Judge did previously, that the masters, in this case Saint Germain,
were forces for America’s inception, and that “America’s very Freedom in the beginning of her
existence was due largely to His [Saint Germain’s] tireless efforts in protecting and encouraging
those responsible for her inception. The drafting of the Declaration of Independence was also a
direct result of His Help and Influence, and it was His Love, Protection, and Guidance which
sustained Washington and Lincoln during the darkest hours of their lives.”41
Ballard died in 1939 but today the “I AM” movement continues to promote these
teachings, ideas which trace directly back to Blavatsky and her synthesis of nineteenth-century
ideas of race, science, literature, and nationalism. Blavatsky developed a race hierarchy similar
to those of her contemporaries and found much influence from her American nationalism and the
fiction she read. Knowing these ideological genealogies helps explain the beliefs and positions of
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a number of groups influenced by Theosophy in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
Ballard’s Ascendant Masters did not emerge sui generis. Numerous groups are still influenced by
Theosophical ideas today and if we are to understand what they believe and practice, we must
begin to delve deeper into Theosophical doctrine and look honestly and forthrightly at the
unpleasant aspects that no longer meet with public approval.
13
Work Cited
Blavatsky, H.P. H. P. Blavatsky to the American Conventions, 1888-1891, With a Historical
Perspective. Edited by Kirby Van Mater. Online Edition. Pasadena: Theosophical
University Press, 2012. http://www.theosociety.org/pasadena/hpb-am/hpb-am.htm.
Blavatsky, Helena Petrovna. Isis Unveiled: A Master-Key of The Mysteries of Ancient And
Modern Science and Theology: Science. Vol. 1. 2 vols. Facsimilie ed. The Complete
Works of H.P. Blavatsky. London: Rider, 1877.
———. The Secret Doctrine: The Synthesis of Science, Religion, and Philosophy:
Anthropogenesis. Vol. 2. 2 vols. Centennial Edition. Pasadena: Theosophical University
Press, 1988.
Bulwer-Lytton, Edward. A Strange Story. Charleston, SC: BiblioBazaar, 2006.
———. Vril: The Power of the Coming Race. Reprint. New York, NY: Rudolf Steiner
Publications, 1972.
Bulwer-Lytton, Victor Alexander George Robert. The Life of Edward Bulwer: First Lord Lytton.
Vol. 2. 2 vols. London: Macmillan and Company, 1913.
Crèvecoeur, J. Hector St. John de. Letters from an American farmer. Edited by Ludwig
Lewisohn. New York, NY: Duffield and Co., 1908.
Davis, David Brion. The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University
Press, 1966.
Graham, Stephen R. Cosmos in the Chaos: Philip Schaff’s Interpretation of Nineteenth-Century
American Religion. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1995.
Graves, Joseph L. The Emperor’s New Clothes: Biological Theories of Race at the Millennium.
New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2001.
14
Hudson, Nicholas. “From ‘Nation’ to ‘Race’: The Origin of Racial Classification in EighteenthCentury Thought.” Eighteenth-Century Studies 29, no. 3 (April 1, 1996): 247-264.
Johnson, Sylvester. The Myth of Ham in Nineteenth-Century American Christianity: Race,
Heathens, and the People of God. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.
King, Gedfre Ray, and Guy Ballard. Unveiled Mysteries. Schaumbueg, IL: Saint Germain
Foundation, n.d.
Lewis, James R., and Jesper Aagaard Petersen, eds. Controversial New Religions. Oxford
University Press, 2005.
Schaff, Philip. America: A sketch of the Political, Social, and Religious Character of the United
States of North America, in Two Lectures, Delivered at Berlin, with a Report Read before
the German Church Diet at Frankfort-on-the-Maine, Sept., 1854. New York, NY: C.
Scribner, 1855.
Sender, Pablo D. “Mahatmas versus Ascended Masters.” Quest: Journal of the Theosophical
Society in America 99, no. 2 (Summer 2011): 107-111.
Shumsky, Neil Larry. “Zangwill’s ‘The Melting Pot’: Ethnic Tensions on Stage.” American
Quarterly 27, no. 1 (March 1, 1975): 29-41.
Smedley, Audrey. Race in North America: Origin and Evolution of a Worldview. Boulder, CO:
Westview Press, 1993.
Stepan, Nancy. The Idea of Race in Science: Great Britain, 1800-1960. London: Macmillan,
1982.
Szuberla, Guy. “Zangwill’s The Melting Pot Plays Chicago.” MELUS 20, no. 3 (October 1,
1995): 3-20.
15
1 Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine, 2:444–445.
2 Blavatsky, H. P. Blavatsky to the American Conventions, 1888-1891, With a Historical Perspective.
3 Ibid.
4 Graves, The Emperor’s New Clothes, 38–39.
5 Hudson, “From ‘Nation’ to ‘Race’,” 253.
6 Graves, The Emperor’s New Clothes, 40.
7 Davis, The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture, 49; Stepan, The Idea of Race in Science, xi.
8 Smedley, Race in North America, 155.
9 Ibid., 157.
10 Johnson, The Myth of Ham in Nineteenth-Century American Christianity, 7.
11 Smedley, Race in North America, 178.
12 Smedley, Race in North America, 235–236.
13 Stepan, The Idea of Race in Science, 53.
14 Ibid., 59.
15 Crèvecoeur, Letters from an American farmer, 55.
16 Ibid., 51.
17 Schaff, America, 54.
18 Ibid.
19 Schaff, America, 54.
20 Szuberla, “Zangwill’s The Melting Pot Plays Chicago,” 15.
21 Shumsky, “Zangwill’s ‘The Melting Pot’,” 29.
22 Subsequent reprints have modified the title to variants of Vril: The Coming Race, or Vril: The Power of the Coming Race.
23 In Chapter VII of The Coming Race, Bulwer-Lutton describes vril: “I should call it electricity, except that it comprehends in its manifold branches other forces of nature, to which, in our
scientific nomenclature, differing names are assigned, such as magnetism, galvanism, &c..” In fact, it was electricity, or more correctly the future possibilities of it, that inspired Bulwer Lytton’s
ideas of Vril as he states in a letter from March 20, 1870: “I did not mean Vril for mesmerism, but for electricity, developed into uses as yet only dimly guessed, and including whatever there
may be genuine in mesmerism, which I hold to be a mere branch current of the one great fluid pervading all nature.” Bulwer-Lytton, Vril: The Power of the Coming Race, 45; Bulwer-Lytton, The
Life of Edward Bulwer: First Lord Lytton, 2:466.
24 Ibid.
25 Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine, 2:185.
26 Ibid., 2:249.
27 Ibid.
28 Ibid., 2:168.
29 Ibid., 2:723.
30 Santucci, “The Notion of Race in Theosophy,” 39.
31 Ibid., 51.
32 Ashcraft, The Dawn of the New Cycle, 153.
33 Ibid., 153–154.
34 Ibid., 157–158.
35 Ibid., 158.
36 Ibid., 159.
37 Tingley, “The Reconstruction of the Race and Higher Education, From a Theosophical Standpoint,” 325.
38 King and Ballard, Unveild Mysteries, 1–3.
39 Sender, “Mahatmas versus Ascended Masters,” 107.
40 Lewis and Petersen, Controversial new religions, 281.
41 King and Ballard, Unveiled Mysteries, viii.