Dweller on the Threshold

The Dweller on the Threshold is a character of Edward Bulwer-Lytton's novel Zanoni. It is a malevolent entity that embodies the sum of all darkness a person has accumulated throughout the incarnations he or she lived.

The "Dweller" is mentioned by different Theosophical authors, including Master Serapis, who makes reference to it in several of his letters to H. S. Olcott.

Mme. Blavatsky on the Dweller

According to Mme. Blavatsky's view "Dweller" is a known term in occultism:

Dwellers (on the Threshold). A term invented by Bulwer Lytton in Zanoni; but in Occultism the word “Dweller” is an occult term used by students for long ages past, and refers to certain maleficent astral Doubles of defunct persons.

In this view, the Dweller is the shell of the previous incarnation of a materilistic person discarded by the Higher Ego, which is attracted to it in its new incarnation:

In rarer cases, however, something far more dreadful may happen. When the lower Manas is doomed to exhaust itself by starvation; when there is no longer hope that even a remnant of a lower light will, owing to favorable conditions––say, even a short period of spiritual aspiration and repentance––attract back to itself its Parent Ego, then Karma leads the Higher Ego back to new incarnations. In this case the Kâma-Mânasic spook may become that which we call in Occultism the “Dweller on the Threshold.” This “Dweller” is not like that which is described so graphically in Zanoni, but an actual fact in nature and not a fiction in romance, however beautiful the latter may be. Bulwer must have got the idea from some Eastern Initiate. Our “Dweller,” led by affinity and attraction, forces itself into the astral current, and through the Auric Envelope of the new tabernacle inhabited by the Parent Ego, and declares war to the lower light which has replaced it. This, of course, can only happen in the case of the moral weakness of the personality so obsessed. No one strong in his virtue, and righteous in his walk of life, can risk or dread any such thing; but only those depraved in heart.

Further reading

• Dweller on the Threshold at Theosopedia

• The Dweller of the Threshold by W. Q. Judge at Blavatsky Net

• The Dweller on the Threshold by Hugh Shearman at Katinkahesselink.net

• The Dweller of the Threshold by Robert Crosbie at WisdomWorld.org

• The Dweller of the Threshold by Franz Hartmann at The Theosophical Library