Ross G Caldwell
Paul Christian's description of an initiation into the Mysteries which he claims to be taken from Iamblichus
Christian's Initation ritual was taken from the Krata Repoa,
My point was his claim, not what we suspect was his inspiration. In a book called "The History of Magic", he names Iamblichus as his source, and provides what appears to be an extensive portion of that work. Christian does not inform the reader that he has invented the whole initiation scenario.
Crata Repoa itself, of course, consists of seven steps of initiation, not 22, and it makes no mention of the alphabet or images corresponding to it.
Christian clearly seems to have been inspired by this work, but he does not inform the reader of this, and it provides in any case merely the kernel of his own invention, which he rather ascribes entirely to Iamblichus.
Christian's invention is the forerunner of Michael Poe's "Temple of Serapis in Naples" a century later. Both are scholarly frauds.
which, in turn, was derived from "The Ritual of Initiations" by Humberto Malhandrini (Venice, 1657).
This book does not exist, that I can find. Every source which cites it derives directly or indirectly from H.P. Blavatsky, Isis Unveiled, footnote 751.
I searched in the general catalogues of 6 major libraries, and not a single one knows the strange name "Malhandrini". Presuming a typo, the forms "malandrini", "malhandrino", and "malandrino" also produced no authors with dates earlier than the 20th century and nothing resembling the title. This has taken me a couple of hours.
The libraries were:
Bibliothèque Nationale de France
British Library
Oxford University (OLIS catalogue)
OPAC SBN (Italian national catalogue)
Library of Congress (the largest library in the world, in number of items)
Harvard University (HOLLIS)
Anyone doubting my research competence or the negative result is welcome to look for themselves.
It appears that Blavatsky invented this author "Humberto Malhandrini" and the book "Ritual of Initiations". I would guess that it was in order to give greater antiquity and thererfore authority to the then relatively recent Crata Repoa (only a century old when she wrote; it would be as if an author writing today appealed to a book published for the first time in 1912 as the evidence of an ancient tradition).
So it seems that Blavatsky is guilty of a little fraud herself.