The Secret Doctrine vs. The Cosmic Doctrine

Discussion on literature other than by the Star of Azazel.
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Polyhymnia
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The Secret Doctrine vs. The Cosmic Doctrine

Post by Polyhymnia »

Has anyone read The Cosmic Doctrine by Dion Fortune as well as Blavatsky's Secret Doctrine?

I was staring at my bookshelf this morning and the Cosmic Doctrine jumped out at me. I bought it years ago, before The Secret Doctrine, because my vein of study focused heavily on those old Golden Dawn/Hermetic Qabalist figures, but I never got around to reading it and it's just been collecting dust. From what I see in the introductions, Fortune makes no mention of Blavatsky or The Secret Doctrine, but does make mention of Annie Besant, Blavatsky's successor, the Theosophical Society, and the book Cosmic Consciousness by Dr. Richard Bucke (1901).

I'm not familiar wth Cosmic Consciousness, though I do intent on picking it up for the sake of comparison, so I can't comment much on that particular work (please input if you have any light to shed!) but it seems he started writing it around the time Blavatsky published The Secret Doctrine and had it published much later in 1901.

From what I gather Fortune started writing The Cosmic Doctrine in the early 1920's, and a quick leaf through of the book shows it's very similar to The Secret Doctrine, though perhaps with more of a Qabalistic spin. I won't know just how similar until I read it, which will take me some time to get to. Do you think it was possible for Fortune to have written The Cosmic Doctrine without having read The Secret Doctrine?
"Limited love asks for possession of the beloved, but the unlimited asks only for itself." -Kahlil Gibran
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