The Stanzas formed the basis for The Secret Doctrine (1888), one of the foundational works of the theosophical movement, by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky.
[3] She wrote: In 1909, Theosophist Charles Webster Leadbeater stated that the Book of Dzyan possesses occult qualities: Others have been skeptical.
As noted by John Algeo in his book, Blavatsky's other statements about Senzar (including the above linkage to Sanskrit) create a number of puzzles, which make it difficult to take the etymological language family references literally, since some link to Egyptian sources, while yet others are still of other roots.
Ufologist Desmond Leslie drew heavily on the Stanzas of Dzyan in his writing,[11] and theorized that they had originally been produced on the lost continent of Atlantis.
[2] René Guénon argued that Blavatsky based the Book of Dzyan on fragments of the Tibetan Kanjur and Tanjur, published in Calcutta in the twentieth volume of Asiatic Researches, in 1836.
Historian Ronald H. Fritze notes that:[Blavatsky] claimed to have received her information during trances in which the Masters of Mahatmas of Tibet communicated with her and allowed her to read from the ancient Book of Dzyan.