Blavatsky
Original sense
Karma is not a judge, not a lesson-planner, and not a score. It is the impersonal, unerring adjustment of effect to cause on physical, mental, and spiritual planes — ‘the Ultimate Law of the Universe.’ It requires reincarnation because one life cannot exhaust causes. It is neither fate (it is self-created) nor instant justice.
Karma is the unerring law which adjusts effect to cause, on the physical, mental and spiritual planes of being… that unseen and unknown law which adjusts wisely, intelligently and equitably each effect to its cause, tracing the latter back to its producer.
She rejected both Christian reward/punishment and the idea that suffering always ‘means’ a moral failing in this life. Collective karma, national karma, and the long delay of effects are essential to her account. No one ‘clears’ karma with a ritual; one exhausts it by creating no new causes of the same kind.