Lucifer Online!

The Theosophical Network site has now uploaded the first ten volumes of Lucifer, 1887-1892, the volumes that carry H.P. Blavatsky’s name as editor. Selected volumes of the journal have been available on line, but this is the first time that this much has been accessible. Hopefully it will encourage further research in this area now that this source material is so readily available. Thanks to the work of Marc Demarest and Joe Fulton it can be accessed here. [Update] The link at the Theosophical Network site no longer gives access to Lucifer. Marc Demarest has archived the first 20 volumes, from 1887 to 1897, at The International Association for the Preservation of Spiritualist and Occult Periodicals.

The Theosophical Society in Australia has indexed the journal’s run and it can be seen here. A 224 page topical index, compiled by Ted G. Davy for volumes 1 to 20 (1887-1897) of Lucifer, was issued by the Edmonton Theosophical Society in Canada in 1997.

Unlike The Theosophist, where Blavatsky was restrained by Olcott, in Lucifer she was able to express herself more volubly than before, as shown in some of her more forceful editorials during this time. "We hope next month to give in Lucifer a detailed examination of this pretentious volume and to exhibit, by quotations and parallel passages, the outrageous character of its wholesale plagiarisms and the emptiness of its claims to authority," she wrote in one. And her last written article, “My Books,” took on a critic who tried to slander and misrepresent her: "I will not name him. There are names which carry a moral stench about them, unfit for any decent journal or publication. His words and deeds emanate from the cloaca maxima of the Universe of matter and have to return to it, without touching me."