Art

Mme. Blavatsky wrote:

Thoreau pointed out that there are artists in life, persons who can change the colour of a day and make it beautiful to those with whom they come in contact. We claim that there are adepts, masters in life who make it divine, as in all other arts. Is it not the greatest art of all, this which affects the very atmosphere in which we live? That it is the most important is seen at once, when we remember that every person who draws the breath of life affects the mental and moral atmosphere of the world, and helps to colour the day for those about him. Those who do not help to elevate the thoughts and lives of others must of necessity either paralyse them by indifference, or actively drag them down. When this point is reached, then the art of life is converted into the science of death; we see the black magician at work. And no one can be quite inactive. Although many bad books and pictures are produced, still not everyone who is incapable of writing or painting well insists on doing so badly. Imagine the result if they were to! Yet so it is in life. Everyone lives, and thinks, and speaks. If all our readers who have any sympathy with [the journal] Lucifer endeavoured to learn the art of making life not only beautiful but divine, and vowed no longer to be hampered by disbelief in the possibility of this miracle, but to commence the Herculean task at once, then 1888, however unlucky a year, would have been fitly ushered in by the gleaming star.

Online resources

Articles

• “Effective Art”: Imaginal Worlds, Fohat, and Freedom by Jeff Durham
• Beauty Is Not Optional by Kathryn Gann
• Theosophy and the Emergence of Modern Abstract Art by Kathleen Hall
• British Pre-Raphaelites and the Question of Reincarnation by Lynda Harris
• Jean Delville: Painting, Spirituality, and the Esoteric by Lynda Harris
• Concerto for Magic and Mysticism: Esotericism and Western Music by Gary Lachman
• Theosophical Music by Kurt Leland
• The Symbolic Art of Charles Rennie MacKintosh by Alan Senior

Additional resources

• Bibliography on Arts and Music available at the Henry S. Olcott Memorial Library.