Privation

Privation is a term frequently used by H. P. Blavatsky in her writings. She takes this term from the philosophy of Aristotle, but interprets it in a different way than it is normally understood in current scholarship.

Traditional understanding

In chapter I.7 of his book Physics Aristotle says that, in order to understand how something can change, there must be three elements: matter (an object or subject), a form (or quality), and a privation (or lack). What comes to be is a new form in the matter that persists through the change; while this new form comes to be in what was previously lacking, that is, the privation of the form. Thus, for example, in the case of a person that did not know music and later he learns, the three elements would be:

1- Persisting matter: the person.

2- Lacking element: musical knowledge.

3- Acquired form: the musical faculty.

Blavatsky's interpretation

Mme. Blavatsky, however, interprets these three elements in a more metaphysical way. She wrote:

As Aristotle has it, three principles for every natural body to become objective: privation, form, and matter. Privation meant in the mind of the great philosopher that which the Occultists call the prototypes impressed in the Astral Light — the lowest plane and world of Anima Mundi.