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Searchable Full Text of Incidents
in the Life of H P Blavatsky
Incidents in the Life
of Madame Blavatsky
compiled from
information supplied by
her relatives and friends and edited by A P Sinnett
The
Secret Doctrine by H P Blavatsky
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The
Theosophical Publishing House,
AUTHOR'S
PREFACE
THE
first edition of this book, published in 1886, was issued during
Madame
Blavatsky's lifetime as an indirect protest against the cruel and
slanderous
attack on her embodied in the Report to the Committee of the
Psychical
Research Society appointed to investigate the phenomena connected with
the
Theosophical Society. This Report was very effectually answered at the time,
and
the passages in my original book especially relating to it are hardly worth
reproduction
now. But the facts relating to Madame Blavatsky's life which it
then
dealt with are more interesting now than ever, in view of the gigantic
development
of the Theosophical Society; and the original edition having been
long
out of print, the present edition is prepared to meet a widespread desire.
I
need not now reproduce dissertations which the original edition contained in
deprecation
of the incredulity that still held sway twenty-five years ago in
reference
to the reality of occult phenomena. A great change in this respect has
come
over cultivated thinking within that period, and appeals for tolerance on
behalf
of those who give testimony concerning occult super-psychical phenomena
of
which they may have been witness are no longer necessary.[6]
For
the rest, the book is now republished as written, no attempt having been
made
to recast its language to suit the present time, when the subject of the
memoir
is no longer with us; but I have added some notes where later events or
experience
have seemed to claim them.
CONTENTS
Chapter Page
AUTHOR'S PREFACE 5
1CHILDHOOD 9
2MARRIAGE AND TRAVEL 39
3AT HOME IN
4MADAME DE JELIHOWSKY'S NARRATIVE66
5MADAME DE JELIHOWSKY'S NARRATIVE —
continued87
6MADAME DE JELIHOWSKY'S NARRATIVE —
continued 105
7FROM APPRENTICESHIP TO DUTY 121
8RESIDENCE IN AMERICA132
9ESTABLISHED IN INDIA169
10A VISIT TO EUROPE205
NOTE FOR THE PRESENT EDITION255
MADAME
BLAVATSKY
CHAPTER
1
CHILDHOOD
QUOTING
the authoritative statement of her late uncle, General Fadeef,
made
at my request in 1881, at a time when he was Joint-Secretary of State in
the
Home Department at
Blavatsky,
to give the name at full length) “ is, from her father's side, the
daughter
of Colonel Peter Hahn, and granddaughter of General Alexis Hahn von
Rottenstern
Hahn (a noble family of
and
she is, from her mother's side, the daughter of Helene Fadeef, and
granddaughter
of Privy Councillor Andrew Fadeef and of the Princess Helene
Dolgorouky.
She is the widow of the Councillor of State, Nicephore Blavatsky,
late
Vice-Governor of the
Mademoiselle
Hahn, to use her family name in referring to her childhood, was
born
at Ekaterinoslaw, in the south of
proper
German form of the name, and in French writing or conversation the name,
as
used by Russians, would be De Hahn, but in its strictly Russian form the
prefix
was generally dropped.[10]
For
the following particulars concerning the family I am indebted to some of its
present
representatives who have taken an interest in the preparation of these
memoirs.
“The
Von Hahn family is well known in
belong
to an old
Countess
Ida Hahn-Hahn, the famous authoress, with whose writings
well
acquainted. Settling in
was
married to the Countess Proêbstin, who, after his death, married
Nicholas
Wassiltchikof,
the brother of the famous Prince of that name. Mme. Blavatsky's
father
left the military service with the rank of a colonel after the death of
his
first wife. He had been married en premières noces to Mademoiselle H.
Fadeew,
known in the literary world between 1830 and 1840 as an authoress — the
first
novel-writer that had ever appeared in
Zenaida
R . . . , and who, although dying before she was twenty-five, left some
dozen
novels of the romantic school, most of which have been translated into the
German
language. In 1846 Colonel Hahn married his second wife — a Baroness Von
Lange,
by whom he had a daughter referred to by Mme. Jelihowsky as ' little
Lisa'
in the extracts here given from her writings, published in
On
her mother's side Mme. Blavatsky is the granddaughter of Princess Dolgorouky,
with
whose death the elder line of that family became extinct in
her
maternal ancestors belong to the oldest families of the empire, since they
are
the direct descendants of the Prince or Grand Duke Rurik, the first ruler
called
to govern
house,
becoming Czarinas (Czaritiza) by marriage. For a Princess Dolgorouky
(Maria
Nikitishna) had been married to the grandfather of Peter the Great, the
Czar
Michael Fedorovitch, the first reigning Roman of; another, the Princess
Catherine
Alexeévna, was on the [11] eve of her marriage with Czar Peter
the
II when he died suddenly before the ceremony.
“A
strange fatality seems always to have persecuted this family in connection
with
with
that country. Several of its members died, and others fell into political
disgrace,
as they were on their way to
all
is the tragedy connected with the Prince Sergeéy Gregoreevitch
Dolgorouky,
Mme.
Blavatsky's grandmother's grandfather, who was ambassador in
advent
of the Archduchess Anne of Courlang to the throne of
their
opposition to her favourite of infamous memory, the Chancellor Biron, many
of
the highest families were imprisoned or exiled; others put to death and their
wealth
confiscated. Among these, such fate befell the Prince Sergèey
Dolgorouky.
He
was sent in exile to Berezof (
private
fortune, that consisted of 200,000 serfs, was confiscated. His two
little
sons were, the elder placed with a village smith as an apprentice, the
younger
condemned to become a simple soldier, and sent to Azof. Eight years
later
the Empress Anne laxnovna recalled the exiled father, pardoned him, and
sent
him as ambassador to
to
the Bank of England 100,000 roubles to be left untouched for a century,
capital
and accumulated interest, to be distributed after that period to his
direct
descendants. His presentiment proved correct. He had not yet reached
'quartering'
(cut in four). When the Empress Elizabeth, Peter the Great's
daughter,
came to the throne next, her first care was to undo the great wrongs
perpetrated
by her predecessor through her cruel and crafty favourite Biron.
Among
other exiles the two sons and heirs of Prince Sergeéy were recalled,
their
title
restored, and their property ordered to be given back. This, however,
instead
of being 200,000 serfs, had dwindled down to only 8000. The younger son,
after
a youth of extreme misery and [12] hardship, became a monk, and died
young.
The elder married a Princess Romadanovsky; and his son, Prince Paul, Mme.
Blavatsky's
great-grandfather, named while yet in his cradle a Colonel of the
Guards
by the Emperor, married a Countess du Plessy, the daughter of a noble
French
Huguenot family, emigrated from
service
at the Court of the Empress Catherine II where her mother was the
favourite
dame d'honneur.
“The
receipt of the Bank of England for the sum of 100,000 roubles, a sum that
at
the end of the term of one hundred years had grown to immense proportions,
had
been handed by a friend of the politically murdered prince to the grandson
of
the latter, the Prince Paul Dolgorouky. It was preserved by him with other
family
documents at Marfovka, a large family property in the government of
Penja,
where the old prince lived and died in 1837. But the document was vainly
searched
for by the heirs after his death ; it was nowhere to be found. To their
great
horror further research brought to light the fact that it must have been
burnt,
together with the residence, in a great fire that had some time previous
destroyed
nearly the whole village. Having lost his sight in a paralytic stroke
some
years previous to his demise, the octogenarian prince, old and ill, had
been
kept in ignorance of the loss of the most important of his family
documents.
This was a crushing misfortune, that left the heirs bereft of their
contemplated
millions. Many were the attempts made to come to some compromise
with
the bank, but to no purpose. It was ascertained that the deposit had been
received
at the bank, but some mistake in the name had been made, and then the
bank
demanded very naturally the receipt delivered about the middle of the last
century.
In short, the millions disappeared for the Russian heirs. Mme.
Blavatsky
has thus in her veins the blood of three nations — the Slavonian, the
German,
and the French.”
The
year of Mademoiselle Hahn's birth, 1831, was fatal for
decimated
from [13] 1830 to 1832 in turn nearly every town of the
continent,
and carried away a large part of its populations. Her birth was
quickened
by several deaths in the house. She was ushered into the world amid
coffins
and desolation. The following narrative is composed from the family
records
:—
“Her
father was then in the army, intervals of peace after
on
the night between July 30 and 31 — weak and apparently no denizen of this
world.
A hurried baptism had to be resorted to, therefore, lest the child died
with
the burden of original sin on her soul. The ceremony of baptism in
'orthodox'
'pairs'
of godmothers and godfathers, every one of the spectators and actors
being
furnished with consecrated wax candles during the whole proceedings.
Moreover,
everyone has to stand during the baptismal rite, no one being allowed
to
sit in the Greek religion — as they do in Roman Catholic and Protestant
Churches
— during the church and religious service. The room selected for the
ceremony
in the family mansion was large, but the crowd of devotees eager to
witness
it was still larger. Behind the priest officiating in the centre of the
room,
with his assistants, in their golden robes and long hair, stood the three
pairs
of sponsors and the whole household of vassals and serfs. The child-aunt
of
the baby — only a few years older than her niece aged twenty-four hours, —
placed
as ' proxy ' for an absent relative, was in the first row immediately
behind
the venerable protopope. Feeling nervous and tired of standing still for
nearly
an hour, the child settled on the floor, unperceived by the elders, and
became
probably drowsy in the overcrowded room on that hot July day. The
ceremony
was nearing its close. The sponsors were just in the act of renouncing
the
Evil One and his deeds, a renunciation emphasised in the Greek Church by
thrice
spitting upon the invisible enemy, when the little lady, toying with her
lighted
taper at the feet of the crowd, [14] inadvertently set fire to the
long
flowing robes of the priest, no one remarking the accident until it was too
late.
The result was an immediate conflagration, during which several persons —
chiefly
the old priest — were severely burnt. That was another bad omen,
according
to the superstitious beliefs of orthodox
cause
of it — the future Mme. Blavatsky — was doomed from that day in the eyes
of
all the town to an eventful life, full of vicissitude and trouble.
“Perhaps
on account of an unconscious apprehension to the same effect, the
child
became the pet of her grandparents and aunts, and was greatly spoiled in
her
childhood, knowing from her infancy no other authority than that of her own
whims
and will. From her earliest years she was brought up in an atmosphere of
legends
and popular fancy. As far back as her remembrances go, she was possessed
with
a firm belief in the existence of an invisible world of supermundane and
sub-mundane
spirits and beings inextricably blended with the life of each
mortal.
The 'Domovoy' (house goblin) was no fiction for her, any more than for
her
nurses and Russian maids. This invisible landlord — attached to every house
and
building, who watches over the sleeping household, keeps quiet, and works
hard
the whole year round for the family, cleaning the horses every night,
brushing
and plaiting their tails and manes, protecting the cows and cattle from
the
witch, with whom he is at eternal feud — had the affections of the child
from
the first. The Domovoy is to be dreaded only on March the 30th, the only
day
in the year when, owing to some mysterious reasons, he becomes mischievous
and
very nervous, when he teases the horses, thrashes the cows and disperses
them
in terror, and causes the whole household to be dropping and breaking
everything,
stumbling and falling that whole day — every prevention
notwithstanding.
The plates and glasses smashed, the inexplicable disappearance
of
hay and oats from the stables, and every family unpleasantness in general,
are
usually attributed to the fidgetiness and nervous excitement of the Domovoy.
Alone,
those born on the night between July 30th and 31st are exempt from his
freaks.
It is from the philosophy [15] of her Russian nursery that
Mademoiselle
Hahn learned the cause of her being called by the serfs the
Sedmitchka,
an untranslatable term, meaning one connected with number Seven; in
this
particular case, referring to the child having been born on the seventh
month
of the year, on the night between the 30th and 31st of July — days so
conspicuous
in
and
their doings. Thus the mystery of a certain ceremony enacted in great
secrecy
for years during July the 30th, by the nurses and household, was
divulged
to her as soon as her consciousness could realise the importance of the
initiation.
She learned even in her childhood the reason why, on that day, she
was
carried about in her nurse's arms around the house, stables, and cow-pen,
and
made personally to sprinkle the four corners with water, the nurse repeating
all
the while some mystic sentences. These may be found to this day in the
ponderous
volumes of Sacharof's ' Russian Demonology,' [The Traditions of the
Russian
People by J Sacharof in seven volumes, embracing popular literature,
beliefs,
magic, witchcraft, the sub-mundane spirits, ancient customs and rites,
songs
and charms, for the last 1000 years.] a laborious work that necessitated
over
thirty years of incessant travelling and scientific researches in the old
chronicles
of the Slavonian lands, and that won to the author the appellation of
the
Russian Grimm.”
Born
in the very heart of the country which the Roussalka (the Undine) has
chosen
for her abode ever since creation — reared on the shores of the blue
himself
for death — the child's belief in these lovely green-haired nymphs was
developed
before she had heard of anything else. The catechism of her
nurses
passed wholly into her soul, and she found all these weird poetical
beliefs
corroborated to her by what she saw, or fancied she saw, herself around
her
ever since her earliest babyhood. Legends seem to have [16] lingered in
her
family, preserved by the recollections of the older servants, of events
connected
with such beliefs, and they inspired the early tyranny she was taught
to
exercise, as soon as she understood the powers that were attributed to her by
her
nurses. The sandy shores of the rapid
their
vegetation of sallows, were her favorite rambling place, Once there, she
saw
a roussalka in every willow tree, smiling and beckoning to her; and full of
her
own invulnerability, impressed upon her mind by her nurses, she was the only
one
who approached those shores fearless and daring. The child felt her
superiority
and abused it. The little four-year-old girl demanded that her will
should
be implicitly recognized by her nurse, lest she should escape from her
side,
and thus leave her unprotected, to be tickled to death by the beautiful
and
wicked roussalka, who would no longer be restrained by the presence of one
whom
she dared not approach. Of course her parents knew nothing of this side of
the
education of their eldest born, and learned it too late to allow such
beliefs
to be eradicated from her mind. It is only after a tragic event that
would
otherwise have passed hardly noticed by the family, that a foreign
governess
was thought of. In one of her walks by the river side a boy about
fourteen
who was dragging the child's carriage incurred her displeasure by some
slight
disobedience. “I will have you tickled to death by a roussalka ! ”
she
screamed. “There's one coming down from that tree . . . here she comes . .
.
See, see!” Whether the boy saw the
dreaded nymph or not, he took to his
heels,
and, the angry commands of the nurse notwithstanding, disappeared along
the
sandy banks leading homeward. After much grumbling the old nurse was
constrained
to return home alone with her charge, [17] determined to have
“Pavlik” punished. But the poor
lad was never seen alive again. He ran away
to
his village, and his body was found several weeks later by fishermen, who
caught
him in their nets. The verdict of the police was “drowning by
accident”. It was thought that
the lad, having sought to cross some shallow
pools
left from the spring inundations, had got into one of the many sand pits
so
easily transformed by the rapid
the
horrified household — of the nurses and servants — pointed to no accidental
death,
but to the one that had occurred in consequence of the child having
withdrawn
from the boy her mighty protection, thus delivering the victim to some
roussalka
on the watch. The displeasure of the family at this foolish gossip was
enhanced
when they found the supposed culprit gravely corroborating the charge,
and
maintaining that it was she herself who had handed over her disobedient serf
to
her faithful servants the water-nymphs. Then it was that an English governess
was
brought upon the scene.
Miss
Augusta Sophia Jeffries did not believe in the roussalkas or the domovoys;
but
this negative merit was insufficient to invest her with a capacity for
managing
the intractable pupil consigned to her care. She gave up her task in
despair,
and the child was again left to her nurses till about six years old,
when
she and her still younger sister were sent to live with their father. For
the
next two or three years the little girls were chiefly taken care of by their
father's
orderlies; the elder, at all events, greatly preferring these to their
female
attendants. They were taken about with the troops to which their father
was
attached, and were petted on all sides as the enfants du régiment.
Her
mother died when Mademoiselle Hahn was still a child, [18] and at about
eleven
years of age she was taken charge of altogether by her grandmother, and
went
to live at Saratow, where her grandfather was civil governor, having
previously
exercised similar authority in Astrachan. She speaks of having at
this
time been alternately petted and punished, spoiled and hardened; but we may
well
imagine that she was a difficult child to manage on any uniform system.
Moreover,
her health was always uncertain in childhood; she was “ever sick and
dying”, as she expresses it
herself, a sleep walker, and remarkable for
various
abnormal psychic peculiarities, set down by her orthodox nurses of the
Greek
Church to possession by the devil, so that she was drenched during
childhood,
as she often says, in enough holy water to have floated a ship, and
exorcised
by priests who might as well have been talking to the wind for all the
effect
they produced on her.
Some
notes concerning her childhood have been furnished, for the service of the
present
memoir, by her aunt, a lady who, as well as Madame Jelihowsky, is known
personally
to myself and to many others of Mme. Blavatsky's friends in
Her
strange excitability of temperament, still one of her most marked
characteristics,
was already manifest in her earliest youth. Even then she was
liable
to ungovernable fits of passion, and showed a deep-rooted disposition to
rebel
against every kind of authority or control. Her warm-hearted impulses of
kindliness
and affection, however, endeared her to her relatives in childhood,
much
as they have operated to obliterate the irritation caused sometimes by her
want
of self-control in regard to the minor affairs of life with the friends of
a
later period. It is justly asserted by the memoranda before me, “she has no
malice
in her nature, no lasting resentment even against those who [19]
have
wronged her, and her true kindness of heart bears no permanent traces of
momentary
disturbances”.
“We
who know Madame Blavatsky well”, writes her aunt, speaking for herself
and
for another relative who had joined with her in the preparation of the notes
I
am now dealing with — “we who know her now in age can speak of her with
authority,
not merely from idle report. From her earliest childhood she was
unlike
any other person. Very lively and highly gifted, full of humour, and of
most
remarkable daring; she struck everyone with astonishment by her self-willed
and
determined actions. Thus in her earliest youth and hardly married, she
disposed
of herself in an angry mood, abandoning her country, without the
knowledge
of her relatives or husband, who, unfortunately, was a man in every
way
unsuited to her, and more than thrice her age. Those who have known her from
her
childhood would — had they been born thirty years later — have also known
that
it was a fatal mistake to regard and treat her as they would any other
child.
Her restless and very nervous temperament, one that led her into the most
unheard
of, un-girlish mischief; her unaccountable — especially in those days —
attraction
to, and at the same time fear of, the dead; her passionate love and
curiosity
for everything unknown and mysterious, weird and fantastical; and,
foremost
of all, her craving for independence and freedom of action — a craving
that
nothing and nobody could control; all this, combined with an exuberance of
imagination
and a wonderful sensitiveness, ought to have warned her friends that
she
was an exceptional creature, to be dealt with and controlled by means as
exceptional.
The slightest contradiction brought on an outburst of passion,
often
a fit of convulsions. Left alone with no one near her to impede her
liberty
of action, no hand to chain her down or stop her natural impulses, and
thus
arouse to fury her inherent combativeness, she would spend hours and days
quietly
whispering, as people thought, to herself, and narrating, with no one
near
her, in some dark corner, marvellous tales of travels in bright stars and
other
worlds, which her governess [20] described as 'profane gibberish';
but
no sooner would the governess give her a distinct order to do this or the
other
thing, than her first impulse was to disobey. It was enough to forbid her
doing
a thing to make her do it, come what would. Her nurse, as indeed other
members
of the family, sincerely believed the child possessed 'the seven spirits
of
rebellion'. Her governesses were martyrs to their task, and never succeeded
in
bending her resolute will, or influencing by anything but kindness her
indomitable,
obstinate, and fearless nature.
“Spoilt
in her childhood by the adulation of dependents and the devoted
affection
of relatives, who forgave all to ' the poor, motherless child' — later
on,
in her girlhood, her self-willed temper made her rebel openly against the
exigencies
of society. She would submit to no sham respect for or fear of the
public
opinion. She would ride at fifteen, as she had at ten, any Cossack horse
on
a man's saddle! She would bow to no one, as she would recede before no
prejudice
or established conventionality. She defied all and everyone. As in her
childhood,
all her sympathies and attractions went out towards people of the
lower
class. She had always preferred to play with her servants' children rather
than
with her equals, and as a child had to be constantly watched for fear she
should
escape from the house to make friends with ragged street boys. So, later
on
in life, she continued to be drawn in sympathy towards those who were in a
humbler
station of life than herself, and showed as pronounced indifference to
the
' nobility ' to which by birth she belonged.”
The
five years passed in safety with her grandparents seem to have had an
important
influence on her future life. Miss Jeffries had left the family; the
children
had another English governess, a timid young girl to whom none of her
pupils
paid any attention, a Swiss preceptor, and a French governess, who had
gone
through remarkable adventures in her youth. Madame Henriette Peigneur was a
distinguished
beauty in the days of the [21] first French Revolution. Her
favorite
narratives to the children consisted in the description of those days
of
glory and excitement when, chosen by the “Phrygian red-caps”, the
citoyens
rouges of
grande
ville in glorious processions. The narrator herself was now a weird old
woman,
bent down by age, and looked more like the traditional Fée Carabosse
than
anything
else. But her eloquence was moving, and the young girls that formed her
willing
audience were greatly excited by the glowing descriptions — most of all
the
heroine of these memoirs. She declared then and there that she meant to be a
“Goddess
of Liberty” all her life. The old
governess was a strange mixture
of
severe morality and of that brilliant flippancy that characterises almost
every
Parisienne to her deathbed unless she is a bigot — which Mme. Peigneur was
not.
But while her old husband — the charming, witty, kind-hearted Sieur
Peigneur,
ever ready to screen the young girls from his wife's pénitences and
severity
— taught them the merriest songs of Béranger, his best bons mots and
anecdotes,
his wife had no such luck with her lesson books. The opening of Noël
and
Chopsal became generally the signal for an escape to the wild woods that
surrounded
the large villa occupied by Mademoiselle Hahn's grandparents during
the
summer months. It was only when roaming at leisure in the forest, or riding
some
unmanageable horse on a Cossack's saddle, that the girl felt perfectly
happy.
For
the following interesting reminiscence of this period I am indebted to Mme.
Jelihowsky:
—
“The
great country mansion (datche) occupied by us at Saratow was an old and
vast
building, full of subterranean galleries, long abandoned passages, turrets,
[22]
and most weird nooks and corners. It had been built by a family called
Pantchoolidzef,
several generations of whom had been governors at Saratow and
Penja
— the richest proprietors and noblemen of the latter province. It looked
more
like a mediaeval ruined castle than a building of the past century. The man
who
took care of the estate for the proprietors — of a type now happily rare,
who
regarded the serfs as something far lower and less precious than his hounds
—
had been known for his cruelty and tyranny, and his name was a synonym for a
curse.
The legends told of his ferocious and despotic temper, of unfortunate
serfs
beaten by him to death, and imprisoned for months in dark subterranean
dungeons,
were many and thrilling. They were repeated to us mostly by Mme.
Peigneur,
who had been for the last twenty-five years the governess of three
generations
of children in the Pantchoolidzef family. Our heads were full of
stories
about the ghosts of the martyred serfs, seen promenading in chains
during
nocturnal hours; of the phantom of a young girl, tortured to death for
refusing
her love to her old master, which was seen floating in and out of the
little
iron-bound door of the subterranean passage at twilight; and other
stories
that left us children and girls in an agony of fear whenever we had to
cross
a dark room or passage. We had been permitted to explore, under the
protection
of half-a-dozen male servants and a quantity of torches and lanterns,
those
awe-inspiring 'Catacombs'. True, we had found in them more broken wine
bottles
than human bones, and had gathered more cobwebs than iron chains, but
our
imagination suggested ghosts in every flickering shadow on the old damp
walls.
Still Helen (Mme. Blavatsky) would not remain satisfied with one solitary
visit,
nor with a second either. She had selected the uncanny region as a
Liberty
Hall, and a safe refuge where she could avoid her lessons. A long time
passed
before her secret was found out, and whenever she was found missing, a
deputation
of strong-bodied servant-men, headed by the gendarme on service in
the
Governor's Hall, was despatched in search of her, as it required no less
than
one who was not a serf and feared her little to [23] bring her
up-stairs
by force. She had erected for herself a tower out of old broken chairs
and
tables in a corner under an iron-barred window, high up in the ceiling of
the
vault, and there she would hide for hours, reading a book known as Solomon's
Wisdom,
in which every kind of popular legend was taught. Once or twice she
could
hardly be found in those damp subterranean corridors, having in her
endeavours
to escape detection lost her way in the labyrinth. For all this she
was
not in the least daunted or repentant, for, as she assured us, she was never
there
alone, but in the company of ' beings ' she used to call her little '
hunch-backs
' and playmates.
“Intensely
nervous and sensitive, speaking loud, and often walking in her
sleep,
she used to be found at nights in the most out-of-way places, and to be
carried
back to her bed profoundly asleep. Thus she was missed from her room one
night
when she was hardly twelve, and, the alarm having been given, she was
searched
for and found pacing one of the long subterranean corridors, evidently
in
deep conversation with someone invisible for all but herself. She was the
strangest
girl one has ever seen, one with a distinct dual nature in her, that
made
one think there were two beings in one and the same body; one mischievous,
combative,
and obstinate — everyway graceless; the other as mystical and
metaphysically
inclined as a seeress of Prevorst. No schoolboy was ever more
uncontrollable
or full of the most unimaginable and daring pranks and
espiègleries
than she was. At the same time, when the paroxysm of
mischief-making
had run its course, no old scholar could be more assiduous in
his
study, and she could not be prevailed to give up her books, which she would
devour
night and day as long as the impulse lasted. The enormous library of her
grandparents
seemed then hardly large enough to satisfy her cravings.
“Attached
to the residence there was a large abandoned garden, a park rather,
full
of ruined kiosks, pagodas, and out-buildings, which, running up hillward,
ended
in a virgin forest, whose hardly visible paths were covered knee-deep with
moss,
and with thickets in it which perhaps no human foot had disturbed for
centuries.
[24] It was reputed the hiding-place for all the runaway
criminals
and deserters, and it was there that Helen used to take refuge, when
the
' catacombs' had ceased to assure her safety.”
Her
strange temperament and character are thus described in a work called
Juvenile
Recollections Compiled for my Children, by Mme. Jelihowsky, a thick
volume
of charming stories selected by the author from the diary kept by herself
during
her girlhood: —
“Fancy,
or that which we all regarded in these days as fancy, was developed in
the
most extraordinary way, and from her earliest childhood, in my sister Helen.
For
hours at times she used to narrate to us younger children, and even to her
seniors
in years, the most incredible stories with the cool assurance and
conviction
of an eye-witness, and one who knew what she was talking about. When
a
child, daring and fearless in everything else, she got often scared into fits
through
her own hallucinations. She felt certain of being persecuted by what she
called
' the terrible glaring eyes,' invisible to everyone else, and often
attributed
by her to the most inoffensive inanimate objects; an idea that
appeared
quite ridiculous to the bystanders. As to herself, she would shut her
eyes
tight during such visions, and run away to hide from the ghostly glances
thrown
on her by pieces of furniture or articles of dress, screaming
desperately,
and frightening the whole household. At other times she would be
seized
with fits of laughter, explaining them by the amusing pranks of her
invisible
companions. She found these in every dark corner, in every bush of the
thick
park that surrounded our villa during the summer months ; while in winter,
when
all our family emigrated back to town, she seemed to meet them again in the
vast
reception rooms of the first floor, entirely deserted from
morning,
Every locked door notwithstanding, Helen was found several times during
the
night hours in those dark apartments in a half-conscious state, sometimes
fast
asleep, [25] and unable to say how she got there from our common
bedroom
on the top story. She disappeared in the same mysterious manner in
daytime
also. Searched for, called and hunted after, she would be often
discovered,
with great pains, in the most unfrequented localities; once it was
in
the dark loft, under the very roof, to which she was traced, amid pigeons'
nests,
and surrounded by hundreds of those birds. She was ' putting them to
sleep
' (according to the rules taught in Solomon's Wisdom], as she explained.
[And,
indeed pigeons were found if not asleep still unable to move, and as
though
stunned in her lap at such times.] At other times behind the gigantic
cupboards
that contained our grandmother's zoological collection — the old
princess's
museum of natural history having achieved a wide renown in
those
days, — surrounded by relics of fauna, flora, and historical antiquities,
amid
antediluvian bones of stuffed animals and monstrous birds, the deserter
would
be found, after hours of search, in deep conversations with seals and
stuffed
crocodiles. If one could believe Helen, the pigeons were cooing to her
interesting
fairy tales, while birds and animals, whenever in solitary
tête-à-tête
with her, amused her with interesting stories, presumably from their
own
autobiographies. For her all nature seemed animated with a mysterious life
of
its own. She heard the voice of every object and form, whether organic or
inorganic;
and claimed consciousness and being, not only for some mysterious
powers
visible and audible for herself alone in what was to everyone else empty
space,
but even for visible but inanimate things such as pebbles, mounds, and
pieces
of decaying phosphorescent timber.
“With
a view of adding specimens to the remarkable entomological collection of
our
grandmother, as much as for our own instruction and pleasure, diurnal as
well
as nocturnal expeditions were often arranged. We preferred the latter, as
they
were more exciting, and had a mysterious charm to us about them. We knew of
no
greater enjoyment. Our delightful travels in the neighbouring woods would
last
from
them
with an earnestness that the Crusaders may have experienced when setting
out
to fight the infidel and dislodge the Turk from
friends
and acquaintances in town were invited — boys and girls from twelve to
seventeen,
and two or three dozen of young serfs of both sexes, all armed with
gauze
nets and lanterns, as we were ourselves, strengthened our ranks. In the
rear
followed a dozen of strong grown-up servants, cossacks, and even a gendarme
or
two, armed with real weapons for our safety and protection. It was a merry
procession
as we set out on it, with beating hearts, and bent with unconscious
cruelty
on the destruction of the beautiful large night-butterflies for which
the
forests of the
masses,
would soon cover the glasses of our lanterns, and ended their ephemeral
lives
on long pins and cork burial grounds four inches square. But even in this
my
eccentric sister asserted her independence. She would protect and save from
death
all those dark butterflies — known as sphynxes —whose dark fur-covered
heads
and bodies bore the distinct images of a white human skull. ' Nature
having
imprinted on each of them the portrait of the skull of some great dead
hero,
these butterflies are sacred, and must not be killed,' she said, speaking
like
some heathen fetish-worshipper. She got very angry when we would not listen
to
her, but would go on chasing those ' dead heads' as we called them; and
maintained
that by so doing we disturbed the rest of the defunct persons whose
skulls
were imprinted on the bodies of the weird insects.
“No
less interesting were our day-travels into regions more or less distant.
At
about ten versts from the Governor's villa there was a field, an extensive
sandy
tract of land, evidently once upon a time the bottom of a sea or a great
lake,
as its soil yielded petrified relics of fishes, shells, and teeth of some
(to
us) unknown monsters. Most of these relics were broken and mangled by time,
but
one could often find whole stones of various sizes on which were imprinted
figures
of fishes and plants and animals of kinds now wholly extinct, but [
27]
which proved their undeniable antediluvian origin. The marvellous and
sensational
stories that we, children and schoolgirls, heard from Helen during
that
epoch were countless. I well remember when stretched at full length on the
ground,
her chin reclining on her two palms, and her two elbows buried deep in
the
soft sand, she used to dream aloud and tell us of her visions, evidently
clear,
vivid, and as palpable as life to her! . . . How lovely the description
she
gave us of the submarine life of all those beings, the mingled remains of
which
were now crumbling to dust around us. How vividly she described their past
fights
and battles on the spot where she lay, assuring us she saw it all; and
how
minutely she drew on the sand with her finger the fantastic forms of the
long-dead
sea-monsters, and made us almost see the very colours of the fauna and
flora
of those dead regions. While listening eagerly to her descriptions of the
lovely
azure waves reflecting the sunbeams playing in rainbow light on the
golden
sands of the sea bottom, of the coral reefs and stalactite caves, of the
sea-green
grass mixed with the delicate shining anemones, we fancied we felt
ourselves
the cool, velvety waters caressing our bodies, and the latter
transformed
into pretty and frisky sea-monsters; our imagination galloped off
with
her fancy to a full oblivion of the present reality. She never spoke in
later
years as she used to speak in her childhood and early girlhood. The stream
of
her eloquence has dried up, and the very source of her inspiration is now
seemingly
lost! She had a strong power of carrying away her audiences with her,
of
making them see actually, if even vaguely, that which she herself saw. . . .
Once
she frightened all of us youngsters very nearly into fits. We had just been
transported
into a fairy world, when suddenly she changed her narrative from the
past
to the present tense, and began to ask us to imagine that all that which
she
had told us of the cool, blue waves with their dense populations was around
us,
only invisible and intangible, so far. . . . 'Just fancy! A miracle!' she
said
; ' the earth suddenly opening, the air condensing around us and rebecoming
sea
waves.....Look, look there, they begin already appearing and moving. [
28]
We are surrounded with water, we are right amid the mysteries and the
wonders
of a submarine world ! . . .'
“She
had started from the sand, and was speaking with such conviction, her
voice
had such a ring of real amazement, horror, and her childish face wore such
a
look of a wild joy and terror at the same time, that when, suddenly covering
her
eyes with both hands, as she used to do in her excited moments, she fell
down
on the sand screaming at the top of her voice, 'There's the wave . . . it
has
come! . . . The sea, the sea, we are drowning !' . . . Every one of us fell
down
on our faces, as desperately screaming and as fully convinced that the sea
had
engulfed us, and that we were no more! . .
“It
was her delight to gather around herself a party of us younger children at
twilight,
and, after taking us into the large dark museum, to hold us there,
spell-bound,
with her weird stories. Then she narrated to us the most
inconceivable
tales about herself; the most unheard of adventures of which she
was
the heroine, every night, as she explained. Each of the stuffed animals in
the
museum had taken her in turn into its confidence, had divulged to her the
history
of its life in previous incarnations or existences. Where had she heard
of
reincarnation, or who could have taught her anything of the superstitious
mysteries
of metempsychosis, in a Christian family ? Yet she would stretch
herself
on her favourite animal, a gigantic stuffed seal, and caressing its
silvery,
soft white skin, she would repeat to us his adventures, as told to her
by
himself, in such glowing colours and eloquent style, that even grown-up
persons
found themselves interested involuntarily in her narratives. They all
listened
to, and were carried away by the charm of her recitals, the younger
audience
believing every word she uttered. Never can I forget the life and
adventures
of a tall white flamingo, who stood in unbroken contemplation behind
the
glass panes of a large cupboard, with his two scarlet-lined wings widely
opened
as though ready to take flight, yet chained to his prison cell. He had
been
ages ago, she told us, no bird, but a real man. He had committed fearful
crimes
and a murder, for which a great genius had changed him into [29] a
flamingo,
a brainless bird, sprinkling his two wings with the blood of his
victims,
and thus condemning him to wander for ever in deserts and marshes. . .
.
“I
dreaded that flamingo fearfully. At dusk, whenever I chanced to pass
through
the museum to say goodnight to our grandmother, who rarely left her
study,
an adjoining room, I tried to avoid seeing the blood-covered murderer by
shutting
my eyes and running quickly by.
“If
Helen loved to tell us stories, she was still more passionately fond of
listening
to other people's fairy tales. There was, among the numerous servants
of
the Fadeef family, an old woman, an under-nurse, who was famous for telling
them.
The catalogue of her tales was endless, and her memory retained every idea
connected
with superstition. During the long summer twilights on the green
grassy
lawn under the fruit trees of the garden, or during the still longer
winter
evenings, crowding around the flaming fire of our nursery-room, we used
to
cling to the old woman, and felt supremely happy whenever she could be
prevailed
upon to tell us some of those popular fairy tales, for which our
northern
country is so famous. The adventures of' Ivan Zarewitch,' of' Kashtey
the
Immortal,' of the 'Gray-Wolf', the wicked magician travelling in the air in
a
self-moving seive; or those of Meletressa, the Fair Princess, shut up in a
dungeon
until the Zarevitch unlocks its prison door with a gold key, and
liberates
her — delighted us all. Only, while all we children forgot those tales
as
easily as we had learned them, Helen never either forgot the stories or
consented
to recognise them as fictions. She thoroughly took to heart all the
troubles
of the heroes, and maintained that all their most wonderful adventures
were
quite natural. People could change into animals and take any form they
liked,
if they only knew how; men could fly, if they only wished so firmly. Such
wise
men had existed in all ages, and existed even in our own days, she assured
us,
making themselves known, of course, only to those who were worthy of knowing
and
seeing them, and who believed in, instead of laughing at, them. . . .
“As
a proof of what she said, she pointed to an old man, a centenarian, who
lived
not far from the villa, in [30] a wild ravine of a neighbouring
forest,
known as 'Baranig Bouyrak'. The old man was a real magician, in the
popular
estimation; a sorcerer of a good, benevolent kind, who cured willingly
all
the patients who applied to him, but who also knew how to punish with
disease
those who had sinned. He was greatly versed in the knowledge of the
occult
properties of plants and flowers, and could read the future, it was said.
He
kept beehives in great numbers, his hut being surrounded by several hundreds
of
them. During the long summer afternoons he could be always found at his post,
slowly
walking among his favourites, covered as with a living cuirass, from head
to
foot, with swarms of buzzing bees, plunging both his hands with impunity into
their
dwellings, listening to their deafening noise, and apparently answering
them
— their buzzing almost ceasing whenever he addressed them in his (to us)
incomprehensible
tongue, a kind of chanting and muttering. Evidently the
golden-winged
labourers and their centenarian master understood each other's
languages.
Of the latter, Helen felt quite sure. ' Baranig Bouyrak' had an
irresistible
attraction for her, and she visited the strange old man whenever
she
could find a chance to do so. Once there, she would put questions and listen
to
the old man's replies and explanations as to how to understand the language
of
bees, birds, and animals with a passionate earnestness. The dark ravine
seemed
in her eyes a fairy kingdom. As to the centenarian ' wise-man', he used
to
say of her constantly to us: ' This little lady is quite different from all
of
you. There are great events lying in wait for her in the future. I feel sorry
in
thinking that I will not live to see my predictions of her verified; but they
will
all come to pass! . . .' ”
It
would be impossible to write even a slight sketch of Mme. Blavatsky's life
without
alluding continually to the occult theories on which her own
psychological
development turns, and I think the narrative will be rendered most
intelligible
if I frankly explain some of [31] these at the outset, without
here
being supposed to argue the question as to whether these theories rest upon
a
correct appreciation of natural laws (operating above and within those of
physical
existence), or whether they constitute an exclusive hallucination to
which
her mind has been subject. It will be seen, at all events, that, according
to
such a view, the hallucination has been very protracted and coherent, so much
so
that, as I say, the life which has been entirely subordinate to the career
marked
out for it by those to whom Mme. Blavatsky believes herself, and always
has
believed herself, guided and protected, would be meaningless without
reference
to this vitalising thread running through it. Of course I have no wish
to
disguise my own adhesion to the view of nature on which Mme. Blavatsky's
theory
of life rests, nor my own conviction concerning the real existence of the
living
Adepts of occult science with whom I believe Mme. Blavatsky, throughout
her
life, to have been more or less closely associated. But to argue the matter
would
convert this memoir into a philosophical treatise going over a great deal
of
ground more fitly traversed in works of a purely theosophical character. It
will
be enough for my present purpose to expound the theory on which, as I say,
Mme.
Blavatsky's comprehension of her own life rests, merely for the sake of
rendering
the story which has to be set forth intelligible to the reader.
The
primary conception of oriental occultism, in reference to the human soul,
recognises
it as an entity, a moral and intellectual centre of consciousness,
which
not only survives the death of any physical body in which it may be
functioning
at any given time, but has also enjoyed many periods of both
physical
and spiritual existence before its incarnation in that body. In fact,
[32]
the entity — the real individual according to this view — may be
identified
by persons with psychic faculties sufficiently developed through a
series
of lives, and not merely in reference to one. The view of Nature I am
describing
— the Esoteric Doctrine — quite sufficiently accounts for the fact
that,
from the point of view of any given body, no incarnated person can command
a
prospect of the life-series through which he may have passed. Each
incarnation,
each successive life of the series, is a descent into matter from
the
point of view of the real spiritual entity: a descent into a new organism in
which
the entity — which is only altogether its true or higher self on the
spiritual
plane of Nature — may function with greater or less success according
to
the qualifications of the organism. The organism only remembers, with
specific
detail, the incidents of its own objective life. The true entity
animating
that organism may perhaps retain the capacity of remembering a great
deal
more, but not through the organism. Moreover, until the organism is
complete
— that is to say, until the person concerned is grown up — the true
entity
is only immersed in it — if I may employ a materialistic illustration to
suggest
the idea which would be only fully expressible m metaphysical language
of
great elaboration — to a limited extent. The quite young child, as we
ordinarily
phrase it, is not a morally responsible being: that is to say, the
organism
has not attained a development in which the moral sense of the true
entity
can function through the physical brain and direct physical acts. But the
young
child is already marked out as in process of becoming the efficient
habitat
of the entity or soul that has begun to function through its organism;
and,
therefore, if we imagine that there are in the world living men — adepts in
the
direction of forces on the [33] higher planes of Nature with which
physical
science is not yet acquainted — we shall readily understand the
peculiar
relations that exist between them and a child in process of growing up,
and
gradually taking into itself a soul that such adepts are already in
relations
with.
Let
me repeat that this mere statement of the occult science view of human
nature
is not put forward as a proof that things are so; but simply because that
theory
of things will be found a continuous thread upon which the facts of Mme.
Blavatsky's
life are strung. It may be that, as the story goes on, some readers
will
develop other theories to account for them, but all I have to say would
appear
disjointed and incoherent without this brief explanation, while it
becomes,
at all events, clearly intelligible with that clue to its successive
incidents.
In
this way I proceed to assume, as a working hypothesis, that even in childhood
Mademoiselle
Hahn was under the protection of a certain abnormal agency capable
even
of producing results on the physical plane when in extraordinary
emergencies
these were called for. For example, I have more than once heard her
tell
a story of her childhood's days about a great curiosity she entertained in
reference
to a certain picture — the portrait of one of the ancestors of the
family
— which hung up in the castle where her grandfather lived, at Saratow,
with
a curtain before it. It hung at a great height above the ground in a lofty
room,
and Mademoiselle Hahn was a small mite at the time, though very resolute
when
her mind was set upon a purpose. She had been denied permission to see the
picture,
so she waited for an opportunity when the coast was clear, and
proceeded
to take her own measures for compassing [34] her design. She
dragged
a table to the wall, and contrived to set another small table on that,
and
a chair on the top of all, and then gradually succeeded in mounting up on
this
unstable edifice. She could just manage to reach the picture from this
point
of vantage, and leaning with one hand against the dusty wall, contrived
with
the other to draw back the curtain. The effect wrought upon her by the
sight
of the picture was startling, and the momentary movement back upset her
frail
platform. But exactly what occurred she does not know. She lost
consciousness
from the moment she staggered and began to fall, and when she
recovered
her senses she was lying quite unhurt on the floor, the tables and
chair
were back again in their usual places, the curtain had been run back upon
its
rings, and she would have imagined the whole incident some unusual kind of
dream
but for the fact that the mark of her small hand remained imprinted on the
dusty
wall high up beside the picture.
On
another occasion again her life seems to have been saved under peculiar
circumstances,
at a time when she was approaching fourteen. A horse bolted with
her
— she fell, with her foot entangled in the stirrup, and before the horse was
stopped
she ought, she thinks, to have been killed outright but for a strange
sustaining
power she distinctly felt around her, which seemed to hold her up in
defiance
of gravitation. If anecdotes of this surprising kind were few and far
between
in Mme Blavatsky's life I should suppress them in attempting to edit her
memoirs,
but, as will be seen later, they form the staple of the narratives
which
each person in turn, who has anything to say about her, comes forward to
tell.
The records of her return to
full
of evidence, [35] given by her relatives, compared to which these
little
anecdotes of her childhood told by herself sink into insignificance as
marvels.
I refer to them, moreover, not for their own sake, but, as I began by
saying,
to illustrate the relations which appear to have existed in her early
childhood
between herself and those whom she speaks of as her “Masters”,
unseen
in body, unknown by her at that time as living men, but not unknown to
the
visions with which her child-life was filled.
In
the narrative quoted above, it will have been seen that she was often noticed
by
her friends sitting apart in corners, when she was not interfered with,
apparently
talking to herself. By her own account she was at this time talking
with
playmates of her own size and apparent age, who to her were as real in
appearance
as if they had been flesh and blood, though they were not visible at
all
to anyone else about her. Mademoiselle Hahn used to be exceedingly annoyed
at
the persistent way in which her nurses and relatives refused to take any
notice
whatever of one little hunchback boy who was her favourite companion at
this
time. Nobody else was able to take notice of him, for nobody else saw him,
but
to the abnormally gifted child he was a visible, audible, and amusing
companion,
though one who seems to have led her into endless mischief. But
amidst
the strange double life she thus led from her earliest recollections, she
would
sometimes have visions of a mature protector, whose imposing appearance
dominated
her imagination from a very early period. This protector was always
the
same, his features never changed ; in after life she met him as a living
man,
and knew him as though she had been brought up in his presence.
Students
of spiritualism, of occultism, of clairvoyance [36] will find this
record
strangely confused at the first glance, but I think, by the light of what
I
have said above in reference to the occult theory of incarnation, people who
hold
that theory will be excused for thinking that they see their way through
the
entanglement pretty clearly. Mademoiselle Hahn was born, of course, with all
the
characteristics of what is known in spiritualism as mediumship in the most
extraordinary
degree, also with gifts as a clairvoyant of an almost equally
unexampled
order. And as a child, the time had not come at which it would have
been
possible for the occult protectors of the entity thus beginning to function
in
that organism to set on foot any of those processes of physical training by
which
such natural gifts can be tamed, disciplined, and utilised. They had to
run
wild for a time; thus we find Mademoiselle Hahn — looking at her childhood's
history
from the psychological point of view — surrounded by all, or a large
number
of the usual phenomena of mediumship, and also visibly under the
observation
and occasional guardianship of the authorities to whose service her
mature
faculties were altogether given over, to the absolute repression in after
life
of the casual faculties of mediumship.
Her
friends were half-interested, half-terrified by those of her manifestations
which
they could understand sufficiently to observe. Her aunt says that from the
age
of four years “she was a somnambulist and somniloquent. She would hold, in
her
sleep, long conversations with unseen personages, some of which were
amusing,
some edifying, some terrifying for those who gathered around the
child's
bed. On various occasions, while apparently in the ordinary sleep, she
would
answer questions, put by persons who took hold [37] of her hand,
about
lost property or other subjects of momentary anxiety, as though she were a
sibyl
entranced. Sometimes she would be missing from the nursery, and be found
in
some distant room of the mansion, or in the garden, playing and talking with
companions
of her dream-life. For years, in childish impulse, she would shock
strangers
with whom she came in contact, and visitors to the house, by looking
them
intently in the face and telling them that they would die at such and such
a
time, or she would prophesy to them some accident or misfortune that would
befall
them. And since her prognostications usually came true, she was the
terror,
in this respect, of the domestic circle.”
In
1844, the middle of the period during which she was growing up from childhood
to
girlhood at Saratow, her father took her on her first journey abroad. She
accompanied
him to
charge
even then and even for him, though in her father's hands she was docile
from
the point of view of her demeanour in any other custody. One object of the
visit
to
natural
talents as a pianist — which indeed have lingered about her in later
life,
though often in total abeyance for many years together. She had some
lessons
from Moscheles, and even, I understand, played a duet at a private
concert
with a then celebrated professional pianist. Colonel Hahn and his
daughter
went to stay for a week in
only
striking feature of this excursion that I can hear of had to do with a
little
difficulty that arose between mademoiselle and her father on the subject
of
riding. She wanted to go on a man's saddle, Cossack fashion, as she had been
used
[38] to, in face of all protests to the contrary, in Saratow. The
Colonel
would not tolerate this, so there was a scene, and a fit of hysterics on
the
part of the young lady, followed by an attack of some more serious illness.
He
is represented as having been well satisfied to get her home again, and lodge
her
once more in the congenial wilds of
accomplishment,
her knowledge of the English language, received a rude shock
during
this early visit to
first
governess, Miss Jeffries, but in
fine
distinctions between different sorts of English which more fastidious
linguists
are alive to. The English governess had been a
soon
as Mademoiselle Hahn began to open her lips among friends to whom she was
introduced
in
than
their substance justified. The combination of accents she employed —
but
Mdlle Hahn soon came to the conclusion that she had done enough for the
entertainment
of her friends, and would give forth her “hollow o's and a's”
no
more. With her natural talent for speaking foreign tongues, however, she set
her
conversation in another key by the time she next visited
1851.[39]
-------
CHAPTER 2
MARRIAGE
AND TRAVEL
THE
marriage by which Mdlle Hahn acquired the name she has since been known by
took
place in 1848. She was then, it will be seen, about seventeen, and General
Blavatsky
to whom she was united — as far as the ceremonies of the Church were
concerned
— was, at all events, a man of advanced age. Madame herself believed
that
he was nearer seventy than sixty. He was himself reluctant to acknowledge
to
more than about fifty. Other matrimonial opportunities of a far more
attractive
character were, as I now learn from her relatives, open to her really
at
the time, but these would have rendered the marriage state, had she entered
it
with some of her younger admirers, a much more serious matter than she
designed
it to be in her case. Her demeanor, therefore, with the most desirable
of
her suitors was purposely intolerable. The actual adventure on which she
launched
herself — for in its precipitation and brevity it may fairly be
described
by that phrase — seems to have been brought about by a combination of
circumstances
that could only have influenced a girl of Mademoiselle Hahn's wild
temper
and irregular training. Her aunt describes the manner in which the
marriage
was arranged as follows : —
“She
cared not whether she should get married or not. She had been simply
defied
one day by her governess to find any man who would be her husband, in
view
of her [40] temper and disposition. The governess, to emphasize the
taunt,
said that even the old man she had found so ugly, and had laughed at so
much,
calling him 'a plume-less raven' — that even he would decline her for a
wife!
That was enough: three days after she made him propose, and then,
frightened
at what she had done, sought to escape from her joking acceptance of
his
offer. But it was too late. Hence the fatal step. All she knew and
understood
was — when too late — that she had been accepting, and was now forced
to
accept — a master she cared nothing for, nay, that she hated; that she was
tied
to him by the law of the country, hand and foot. A 'great horror ' crept
upon
her, as she explained it later ; one desire, ardent, unceasing,
irresistible,
got hold of her entire being, led her on, so to say, by the hand,
forcing
her to act instinctively, as she would have done if, in the act of
saving
her life, she had been running away from a mortal danger. There had been
a
distinct attempt to impress her with the solemnity of marriage, with her
future
obligations and her duties to her husband, and married life. A few hours
later,
at the altar, she heard the priest saying to her: 'Thou shalt honour and
obey
thy husband', and at this hated word 'shalt,' her young face — for she was
hardly
seventeen — was seen to flush angrily, then to become deadly pale. She
was
overheard to mutter in response, through her set teeth —' Surely, I shall
not.'
”
And
surely she has not. Forthwith she determined to take the law and her future
life
into her own hands, and — he left her ' husband ' for ever, without giving
him
any opportunity to ever even think of her as his wife.
“Thus
Mme. Blavatsky abandoned her country at seventeen, and passed ten long
years
in strange and out-of-the-way places — in
At
the time the marriage took place, Mademoiselle Hahn was staying with her
grandmother
and some other relatives at Djellallogly, a mountain retreat
frequented
in the summer by the residents of
never
intended to do more than establish the [41] fact that General
Blavatsky
would be ready to marry her, but with an engagement regularly set on
foot,
announced in the family, proclaimed to friends, and so forth, with
“congratulations”
coming in, and the bridegroom claiming its fulfilment, a
restoration
of the status quo was found by the reckless heroine of the
complication
more easily talked about than obtained. Her friends protested
against
the scandal that would be created if the engagement were broken off for
no
apparent reason. Pressed to go on with the wedding, she seems to have
consoled
herself with the belief that she would be securing herself increased
liberty
of action as a married woman than ever she could compass as a girl. Her
father
was altogether off the scene, far away with his regiment in
though
consulted by letter, was not sufficiently acquainted with the facts of
the
case to take up any decided attitude either way. The ceremony of the
marriage,
at all events, duly took place on
Of
course the theories concerning the married state entertained by General
Blavatsky
and his abnormally natured young bride differed toto coelo, and came
into
violent conflict from the day of the wedding — a day of unforeseen
revelations,
furious indignation, dismay, and belated repentance. Nothing was
ever
imagined in fiction more extravagant than the progress of the brief and
stormy
though imperfect partnership. The intelligent reader will understand that
a
born occultist like Mademoiselle Hahn could never have plunged into a
relationship
so intolerable, so impossible for her, as that of husband and wife
if
she had understood on the ordinary plane of human affairs what she was about.
The
day after the wedding she was conducted by the General to a place called
Daretchichag,
a summer retreat for
journey
to make [42] her escape towards the Persian frontier, but the
Cossack
she sought to win over as her guide in this enterprise betrayed her
instead
to the General, and she was carefully guarded. The cavalcade duly
reached
the residence of the governor — the scene of his peculiar honeymoon.
Certainly
the position in which he was placed commands our retrospective
sympathy
for some reasons ; but it is impossible to go into a discussion of
details
that might go far to qualify this. For three months the newly married
couple
remained together under the same roof, each fighting for impossible
concessions,
and then at last, in connection with a quarrel more violent even
than
the rest, the young lady took horse on her own account and rode to
Family
councils followed, and it was settled that the unmanageable bride should
be
sent to join her father. He arranged to meet her at
despatched
in the care of an old servant-man and a maid, to catch at Poti a
steamer
that would take her to her destination. But her desperate passion for
adventure,
coupled with apprehensions that her father might endeavour to
refasten
the broken links of her nuptial bond, led her to design in her own mind
an
amendment to this programme. She so contrived matters on the journey through
a
small English sailing vessel was lying in the harbour. Mme. Blavatsky went on
board
this vessel — the Commodore she believes was the name, and, by a liberal
outlay
of roubles, persuaded the skipper to fall in with her plans. The
Commodore
was bound first to Kertch, then to
ultimately
to
servants,
ostensibly to Kertch. On arriving there, she sent the servants ashore
to
procure apartments and prepare for her landing [43] the following
morning.
But in the night, having now shaken herself free of the last restraints
that
connected her with her past life, she sailed away in the Commodore for
afterwards
returning to the
The
little voyage itself seems to have been full of adventures, which, in
dealing
with a life less crowded with adventures all through, than Mme.
Blavatsky's
one would stop to chronicle. The harbour police of
the
Commodore on her arrival, had to be so managed as not to suspect that an
extra
person was on board. The only available hiding place — amongst the coals —
was
found unattractive by the passenger, and was assigned to the cabin boy,
whose
personality she borrowed for the occasion, being stowed away in a bunk on
pretence
of illness. Later on, when the vessel arrived at
further
embarrassments had developed themselves, and she had to fly ashore
precipitately
in a caique with the connivance of the steward to escape the
persecutions
of the skipper. At
fortune
to fall in with a Russian lady of her acquaintance, the Countess K-----,
with
whom she formed a safe intimacy, and travelled for a time in
and
other parts of
Unfortunately,
it is impossible for me to do more than sketch the period of her
life
that we now approach in the meagrest outline. For the full details of her
childhood
given in the foregoing pages, we are indebted to her relatives. She
herself,
though frequently able to tell disjointed anecdotes of her childhood,
could
never have put together so connected a narrative as that obtained from
Mme.
Jelihowsky, and there was no sister at hand to keep a record of her
subsequent
adventures during her [44] wanderings all over the world. She
never
kept diaries during this period, and memory at a distance of time is a
very
uncertain guide, but if the present record is uneven in its treatment of
various
periods, I can only point in excuse for this to the obvious
embarrassments
of my task.
In
began
to pick up some occult teaching, though of a very different and inferior
order
from that she acquired later. At that time there was an old Copt at
a
man very well and widely known ; of considerable property and influence, and
of
a great reputation as a magician. The tales of wonder told about him by
popular
report were very thrilling. Mme. Blavatsky seems to have been a pupil
who
readily attracted his interest, and was enthusiastic in imbibing his
instruction.
She fell in with him again in later years, and spent some time with
him
at Boulak, but her acquaintance with him in the beginning did not last long,
as
she was only at that time in
lady
of rank whom she met during this period she also travelled for a time. Her
relatives
at
servants
at Kertch reported her disappearance, but she herself communicated
privately
with her father, and secured his consent to her vague programme of
foreign
travel. He realised the impossibility of inducing her to resume the
broken
thread of her married life; and, indeed, considering all that had passed,
it
is not unreasonable to suppose that General Blavatsky himself was ready to
acquiesce
in the separation. He endeavoured, indeed, to obtain a formal divorce
on
the ground that his marriage had never been more than a form, and that his
wife
had run away; but Russian law at the time was not favourable to divorce,
and
the [45] attempt failed. Colonel Hahn, however, supplied his fugitive
daughter
with money, and kept her counsel in regard to her subsequent movements.
Ten
years elapsed before she again saw her relatives, and her restless eagerness
for
travel carried her during this period to all parts of the world. She kept no
diary,
and at this distance of time can give no very connected story of these
complicated
wanderings. Within about a year of their commencement she seems to
have
been in
time,
and where a famous mesmerist, still living as I write, though an old man
now,
discovered her wonderful psychic gifts, and was very eager to retain her
under
his control as a sensitive. But the chains had not yet been forged that
could
make her prisoner, and she quitted
influence.
She went over to
Russian
lady of her acquaintance, the Countess B------, at Mivart's Hotel, whom,
however,
she out-stayed in
Countess's
demoiselle de compagnie in a big hotel, she says, somewhere between
the
City and the
to
tell you what was the number of the house you lived in in your last
incarnation.”
Connected
as she was in
countrymen
abroad with whom she was either already acquainted, or who were glad
to
befriend her. Sometimes, when circumstances were favourable, she would travel
with
companions thus thrown in her way, at other times altogether alone. Her
craving
for adventure and for all strange and outlandish places and people was
quite
unsatiable. Her first long flight abroad was prompted by a passionate
[46]
enthusiasm for the North American Indians, contracted from the perusal
of
Fennimore Cooper's novels. After a little minor touring about
Countess
B------ in 1850, she welcomed the New Year of 1851 at
July
of that year went in pursuit of the Red Indians of her imagination to
an
early dissipation. At
introduced
to her. She was delighted to encounter the sons of the forest, and
even
the daughters thereof, their squaws. With some of these she settled down
for
a long gossip over the mysterious doings of the medicine men. Eventually
they
disappeared, and with them various articles of Madame's personal property —
especially
a pair of boots that she greatly prized, and which the resources of
ruined
the ideal she had constructed in her fancy. She gave up her search for
their
wigwams, and developed a new programme. In the first instance, she thought
she
would try to come to close quarters with the Mormons, then beginning to
excite
public attention; but their original city, Nauvoo, in
been
destroyed by the unruly mob of their less industrious and less prosperous
neighbours,
and the survivors of the massacre in which so many of their people
fell
were then streaming across the desert in search of a new home. Mme.
Blavatsky
thought that under these circumstances
region
in which to risk her life next, and she made her way, in the meanwhile,
to
This
apparently hasty sketch will give the reader no idea of the difficulty with
which
she has, at this long subsequent period, recalled even so much as is here
set
[47] down. It has only been by help of public events that she can
remember
to have heard about at such and such places that I have been enabled to
construct
a skeleton diary of her wanderings, on which here and there her
recollections
enable me to put a little flesh and blood At
principal
interest of her visit centred in the Voodoos, a sect of negroes,
natives
of the
practices
that no highly-trained occult student would have anything to do with,
but
which nevertheless presented attractions to Mme. Blavatsky, not yet far
advanced
enough in the knowledge held in reserve for her, to distinguish
“black”
from “white” varieties of mystic exercise. The Voodoos'
pretensions
were of course discredited by the educated white population of New
have
been drawn dangerously far into association with them, fascinated as her
imagination
was liable to become by occult mysteries of any kind; but the
strange
guardianship that had so often asserted itself to her advantage during
her
childhood — which had by this time assumed a more definite shape, for she
had
now met, as a living man the long familiar figure of her visions — again
come
to her rescue. She was warned in a vision of the risk she was running with
the
Voodoos, and at once moved off to fresh fields and pastures new.
She
went through
insecure
country, protected in these hazardous travels by her own reckless
daring,
and by various people who from time to time interested themselves in her
welfare.
She speaks with special gratitude of an old Canadian, a man known as
Père
Jacques, whom she met in
any
companionship. He saw her [48] safely through some perils to which she
was
then exposed, and thus by hook or by crook Madame always managed to scramble
along
unscathed; though it seems miraculous in the retrospect that she should
have
been able — young woman at that time as she was — to lead the wild life on
which
she was embarked without actually incurring disasters. There was no
reliance
in her case, as in that of
well
as civilised, and seems to have been guarded from harm, as assuredly she
was
guarded, by the sheer force of her own fearlessness, and her fierce scorn
for
all considerations however remotely associated with the “magnetism of
sex”.
During
her American travels, which for this period lasted about a year, she was
lucky
enough to receive a considerable legacy bequeathed her by one of her
godmothers.
This put her splendidly in funds for a time, though it is much to be
regretted
on her account that the money was not served out to her in moderate
instalments,
for the temperament, which the facts of her life so far even will
have
revealed, may easily be recognised as one not likely to go with habits of
prudent
expenditure. Madame, in the course of her adventures, has often shown
that
she can meet poverty with indifference, and battle with it in any way that
may
be necessary, but with her pockets full of money, her impulse has always
been
to throw it away with both hands. She is wholly unable to explain how she
ran
through her 80,000 roubles, except that amongst other random purchases she
bought
land in
forgotten,
besides having, as a matter of course, lost all the papers that had
any
reference to the transaction.
She
resolved during her Mexican wanderings that she [49] would go to
fully
alive already to the necessity of seeking beyond the northern frontiers of
that
country for the further acquaintanceship of those great teachers of the
highest
mystic science, with whom the guardian of her visions was associated in
her
mind. She wrote, therefore, to a certain Englishman, whom she had met in
to
join her in the
together.
He duly came, but the party was further augmented by the addition of a
Hindu
whom Mme. Blavatsky met at Copau, in
to
be what is called a “chela”, or pupil of the Masters, or adepts of
oriental
occult science. The three pilgrims of mysticism went out via the
to
dates,
they must have arrived at quite the end of 1852.
A
dispersion of the little party soon followed, each being bent on somewhat
different
ends. Madame would not accept the guidance of the Chela, and was bent
on
an attempt of her own to get into
attempt
failed, chiefly, she believes, as far as external and visible
difficulties
were concerned, through the opposition of the British resident then
in
1853,
however, was an unfortunate year for a Russian to visit this country. The
preparations
for the Crimean War were distressing to Mme. Blavatsky's
patriotism,
and she passed over at the end of the year again to
this
time to
city
compared to the
and
across the
ultimately
she brought up for a time in San Francisco. Her stay in America was
prolonged
on this occasion altogether to something like two years, and she then
made
her way a second time to India via Japan and the Straits, reaching Calcutta
in
the course of 1855.
In
reference to her prolonged wanderings her aunt writes: —
“For
the first eight years she gave her mother's family no sign of life for
fear
of being traced by her legitimate 'lord and master', Her father alone knew
of
her whereabouts. Knowing, however, that he would never prevail upon her to
return
home, he acquiesced in her absence, and supplied her with money whenever
she
came to places where it could safely reach her.”
During
her travels in India in 1856 she was overtaken at Lahore by a German
gentleman
known to her father, who, — in association with two friends, having
laid
out a journey in the East on his own account, with a mystic purpose in
view,
in reference to which fate did not grant him the success that attended
Mme.
Blavatsky's efforts — had been asked by Colonel Hahn to try if he could
find
his errant daughter. The four compatriots travelled together for a time,
and
went through Kashmir to Leli in Ladakh in company with a Tartar Shaman, who
was
instrumental in helping them to witness some psychological wonders wrought
at
a Buddhist monastery. Her companions, Mme. Blavatsky explains, had all formed
what,
referring to the incident in Isis Unveiled, she calls “the unwise plan
of
penetrating into Tibet under various disguises — none of them speaking the
language,
although one of them, a Mr K------, had picked up some Kasan Tartar,
and
thought he did”. The passage in Isis rather too long for quotation here.
It
begins on page 599, vol. ii of that book, and describes the [51]
animation
of an infant by the psychic principles of the old Lama, the superior
of
the monastery. The passage as given in his is taken from a narrative written
by
Mr K-----, and put by him in Mme. Blavatsky's hands, and corresponds in
outline
to similar marvels related by the Abbé Huc in the first edition of his
Recollections
of Travel in Tartary, Tibet, and China. In the later editions of
that
book the testimony the author gives to the wonders he witnessed in Tibet is
all
cut down and mutilated. His story was found to be too striking in
recognition
of “miracles” that were not, under the direction of the church,
to
be tolerated by the authorities in its earlier form ; but the first edition
of
the book can still be seen at the British Museum, where I have verified the
accuracy
of the quotation given in Isis.
In
reference to the journey in the course of which the Russian travellers
witnessed
the transaction at the Buddhist monastery, Mme. Blavatsky writes: —
“Two
of them, the brothers N------, were very politely brought back to the
frontier
before they had walked sixteen miles into the weird land of Eastern
Bod,
and Mr K------, an ex-Lutheran minister, could not even attempt to leave
his
miserable village near Leli, as from the first days he found himself
prostrated
with fever, and had to return to Lahore via Kashmir.”
The
Tartar Shaman, referred to above, rendered Mme. Blavatsky more substantial
assistance
in her efforts to penetrate into Tibet than he was able to afford to
her
companions. Investing her with an appropriate disguise, he conducted her
successfully
across the frontier, and far on into the generally inaccessible
country.
It was to this journey that she vaguely refers in a striking passage
occurring
in the last chapter of Isis Unveiled. As the narrative, though given
in
Isis without any of [52] the surrounding circumstances, fits here into
its
proper place in these records, I quote it at full length. Reference has just
been
made to certain talismans which each shaman carries under his left arm,
attached
to a string. Mme. Blavatsky goes on : —
“
' Of what use is it to you, and what are its virtues ? ' was the question we
often
offered to our guide. To this he never answered directly, but evaded all
explanation,
promising that as soon as an opportunity was offered and we were
alone,
he would ask the stone to answer for himself. With this very indefinite
hope
we were left to the resources of our own imagination.
“But
the day on which the stone 'spoke' came very soon. It was during the most
critical
hours of our life; at a time when the vagabond nature of a traveller
had
carried the writer to far-off lands where neither civilisation is known nor
security
can be guaranteed for one hour. One afternoon, as every man and woman
had
left the yourta (Tartar tent) that had been our house for over two months,
to
witness the ceremony of the Lamaic exorcism of Tshoutgour, [An elemental
demon,
in which every native of Asia believes.’] accused of breaking and
spiriting
away every bit of the poor furniture and earthenware of a family
living
about two miles distant, the Shaman, who had become our only protector in
those
dreary deserts, was reminded of his promise. He sighed and hesitated, but
after
a short silence, left his place on the sheepskin, and going outside,
placed
a dried-up goat's head with its prominent horns over a wooden peg, and
then
dropping down the felt curtain of the tent, remarked that now no living
person
would venture in, for the goat's head was a sign that he was ' at work.'
“After
that, placing his hand in his bosom, he drew out the little stone,
about
the size of a walnut, and, carefully unwrapping it, proceeded, as it
appeared,
to swallow it. In a few moments his limbs stiffened, his body became
rigid,
and he fell, cold and motionless as a corpse. But for a slight twitching
of
his lips at every question asked, the scene would have been embarrassing, nay
dreadful.
[53] The sun was setting, and were it not that the dying embers
flickered
at the centre of the tent, complete darkness would have been added to
the
oppressive silence which reigned. We have lived in the prairies of the West,
and
in the boundless steppes of Southern Russia; but nothing can be compared
with
the silence at sunset on the sandy deserts of Mongolia; not even the barren
solitudes
of the deserts of Africa, though the former are partially inhabited,
and
the latter utterly void of life. Yet, there was the writer, alone with what
looked
no better than a corpse lying on the ground. Fortunately this state did
not
last long.
“
' Mahaudû !' uttered a voice which seemed to come from the bowels of
the
earth,
on which the Shaman was prostrated, ' Peace be with you. What would you
have
me do for you ? '
“Startling
as the fact seemed, we were quite prepared for it, for we had seen
other
Shamans pass through similar performances. 'Whoever you are', we
pronounced
mentally, 'go to K-----, and try to bring that person's thought here.
See
what that other party does, and tell ----- what we are doing and how
situated.'
“
' I am there,' announced the same voice. ' The old lady (kokona) is sitting
in
the garden. . . . she is putting on her spectacles and reading a letter.'
“
'The contents of it, and hasten', was the hurried order, while preparing
note-book
and pencil. The contents were given slowly, as if, while dictating,
the
invisible presence desired to put down the words phonetically, for we
recognised
the Vallachian language, of which we knew nothing beyond the ability
to
recognise it. In such a way a whole page was filled.
“
' Look west . . . toward the third pole of the yourta,' pronounced the
Tartar
in his natural voice, though it sounded hollow, and as if coming from
afar.
'Her thought is here.'
“Then
with a convulsive jerk the upper portion of the Shaman's body seemed
raised,
and his head fell heavily on the writer's feet, which he clutched with
both
his hands. The position was becoming less and less attractive, but
curiosity
proved a good ally to courage. [54] In the west corner was
standing,
life-like, but flickering unsteady, and mist-like, the form of a dear
old
friend, a Roumanian lady of Vallachia, a mystic by disposition, but a
thorough
disbeliever in this kind of occult phenomena.
“
'Her thought is here, but her body is lying unconscious. We could not bring
her
here otherwise', said the voice.
“We
addressed and supplicated the apparition to answer, but all in vain. The
features
moved and the form gesticulated as if in fear and agony, but no sound
broke
forth from the shadowy lips; only we imagined — perchance it was a fancy —
hearing,
as if from a long distance, the Roumanian words, 'Non se pote' ('It
cannot
be done' ).
“For
over two hours the most substantial, unequivocal proofs that the Shaman's
astral
soul was travelling at the bidding of our unspoken wish were given us.
Ten
months later, we received a letter from a Vallachian friend in response to
ours,
in which we had enclosed the page from the note-book, inquiring of her
what
she had been doing on that day, and describing the scene in full. She was
sitting,
she wrote, in the garden on that morning,[The hour in Bucharest
corresponded
perfectly with that of the country in which the scene had taken
place.]
prosaically occupied in boiling some conserves; the letter sent to her
was
word for word the copy of the one received by her from her brother; all at
once,
in consequence of the heat she thought, she fainted, and remembered
distinctly
dreaming she saw the writer in a desert place, which she accurately
described,
and sitting under a gipsy's tent,' as she expressed it. '
Henceforth,'
she added, 'I can doubt no longer'.
“But
our experiment was proved better still. We had directed the Shaman's
Inner
Eye to the same friend heretofore mentioned in this chapter, the Kutchi of
Lhassa,
who travels constantly to British India and back. We know that he was
apprised
of our critical situation in the desert; for a few hours later came
help,
and we were rescued by a party of twenty-five horsemen, who had been
directed
by their chief to find us at the place where we were, which no living
man
endowed with common powers could have known. The chief of this [55]
escort
was a Shaberon, an 'adept' whom we had never seen before, nor did we
after
that, for he never left his soumay (lamasary), and we could have no access
to
it. ... But he was a personal friend of the Kutchi.”
This
incident put an end for the time to Mme. Blavatsky's wanderings in Tibet.
She
was conducted back to the frontier by roads and passes of which she had no
previous
knowledge, and after further travels in India, was directed by her
occult
guardian to leave the country, shortly before the troubles which began in
1857.
She
went in a Dutch vessel from Madras to Java, and thence returned to Europe in
1858.
Meanwhile
the fate to which she has been so freely exposed all through her later
life
was already asserting itself to her disadvantage, and without, up to this
time,
having challenged the world's antagonism, by associating her name with
tales
of wonder, she, nevertheless, already found herself — or rather, in her
absence,
her friends found her — the mark for slanders, no less extravagant, in
a
different way, than some that have been aimed at her quite recently by people
claiming
to take an interest in psychic phenomena, but unable to tolerate those
reported
to have been brought about by her agency. Her aunt writes: “ Faint
rumours
reached her friends of her having been met in Japan, China,
Constantinople,
and the far East. She passed through Europe several times, but
never
lived in it. Her friends, therefore, were as much surprised as pained to
read,
years afterwards, fragments from her supposed biography, which spoke of
her
as a person well known in the high life, as well as the low, of Vienna,
Berlin,
Warsaw, and Paris, and mixed her name with events and ancedotes whose
scene
was laid in these cities, at various epochs, when her friends had every
possible
proof of her being far [56] away from Europe. These anecdotes
referred
to her indifferently under the several Christian names of Julie,
Nathalie,
etc which were those really of other persons of the same surname; and
attributed
to her various extravagant adventures. Thus the Neue Freie Presse
spoke
of Madame Heloise (?) Blavatsky, a non-existing personage, who had joined
the
Black Hussars — les Huzzards de la Mart — during the Hungarian revolution,
her
sex being found out only in 1849.” Similar stories, equally groundless,
were
circulated at a later date. Anticipating this, her aunt goes on : —
“Another
journal of Paris narrated the story of Mme. Blavatsky, 'a Pole from
the
Caucasus' (?), a supposed relative of Baron Hahn of Lemberg, who, after
taking
an active part in the Polish Revolution of 1863 (during the whole of
which
time Mme. H. P. Blavatsky was quietly living with her relatives at
Tiflis),
was compelled, from lack of means, to serve as a female waiter in a '
restaurant
du Faubourg St Antoine'. ”
These,
and many other infamous stories circulated by idle gossips, were laid at
the
door of Mme. Blavatsky, the heroine of our narrative.
On
her return from India in 1858, Mme. Blavatsky did not go straight to Russia,
but,
after spending some months in France and Germany, rejoined her own people
at
last in the midst of a family wedding-party at Pskoff, in the north-west of
Russia,
about 180 miles from St Petersburg.
Concerning
the next few years of Mme. Blavatsky's life, we are furnished with
ample
details by means of narrative written at the time by her sister, Mme. V.
P.de
Jelihowsky, and published in 1881 in a Russian periodical — the Rebus — as
a
series of papers, headed, “The Truth about H. P. Blavatsky”. To this
source
of information we may now turn. [57]
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CHAPTER 3
AT
HOME IN
IN
the course of certain Personal and Family Reminiscences, put together by Mme
de
Jelihowsky, she explains the attitude of mind in which she was brought up,
interesting
both as bearing on the narrative she has to relate and also as
connected
with the family history of the subject of this memoir. She writes: —
“I
was born and bred in a strictly orthodox, sincerely religious, yet far from
being
mystically-inclined, family. But if the spirit of mysticism had failed to
influence
its members, it was not in consequence of any predetermined policy of
an
a priori denial of everything unknown, or of a tendency to sneer at the
incomprehensible
only because it is far beyond one's capacities and nature to
take
it in; but as ' highly educated and polished people' can hardly be expected
to
confess their mental and intellectual failings, hence the conscious efforts
of
playing at incredulity and esprits forts. Nothing of the sort was to be found
in
our family. Nor was there any great superstition or bigotry amongst them —
two
feelings the best calculated to generate and develop faith in the
supernatural.
But when, at the age of sixteen, I had to part with my mother's
family,
in which I had been brought up since her death, and went to live with my
father,
I met in him a man of quite a different 'nature. He was an extreme
sceptic,
a deist, if anything, and one of a most practical turn of mind; a
highly
intellectual and even a scientific man, one who [58] knew and had
seen
a great deal in life, but whose erudition and learning had been developed
in
full accordance with his own personal views, and not at all in any spirit of
humility
before the truths of Christianity, or blind belief in man's immortality
and
life beyond the grave.”
In
1858, when Mme. Blavatsky returned to Russia, her sister, the writer of the
reminiscences
from which I have just quoted, bore the name of Yahontoff — that
of
her first husband, who had died shortly before that date. She was staying at
Pskoff
with General N. A. Yahontoff — Maréchal de Noblesse of that place —
her
late
husband's father. A wedding-party, that of her sister-in-law, was in
progress,
and Colonel Hahn was amongst the guests. On Christmas night, Mme. de
Jelihowsky
writes, “They were all sitting at supper, carriages loaded with
guests
were arriving one after the other, and the hall bell kept ringing without
interruption.
At the moment when the bridegroom's best men arose, with glasses
of
champagne in their hands, to proclaim their good wishes for the happy couple
—
a solemn moment in Russia — the bell was again rung impatiently. Mme.
Yahontoff,
Mme. Blavatsky's sister, moved by an irrepressible impulse, and
notwithstanding
that the hall was full of servants, jumped up from her place at
the
table, and, to the amazement of all, rushed herself to open the door. She
felt
convinced, she said afterwards, though why she could not tell, that it was
her
long lost sister! ”
For
some time this memoir will closely follow Mme. de Jelihowsky's narrative,
now
translated into English for the first time, but it will be unnecessary to
load
every page with quotation marks. Where the first person is used, it will be
understood
that Mme de [59] Jelihowsky is speaking, although she also
frequently
refers to herself in the third person, as the narrative was
originally
published in Russia anonymously. When I, the present editor, have
occasion
to intervene with comments, such passages will be enclosed in brackets.
Spiritism
(or spiritualism) was then just looming on the horizon of Europe,
During
her travels, the psychological peculiarities of Mme. Blavatsky's
childhood
and girlhood had developed, and she returned already possessed of
occult
powers, which were in those days attributed to mediumship.
These
powers asserted themselves in strange incessant knocks and raps and
sounds,
which many hearers mistook for the esprits frappeurs; in the moving of
furniture
without contact, in the increase and the decrease of the weight of
various
objects, in her faculty of seeing herself (and occasionally of
transferring
that faculty to others) things invisible to ordinary sight, and
living
but absent persons who had resided years ago in the places where she
happened
to be, as well as spectral images of personages dead at various epochs.
Well
acquainted with a number of facts of the most striking character which have
happened
at that period of her life (which, however, has not lasted very long,
as
she succeeded very soon in conquering and even obtaining mastery over the
influence
of forces that surrounded her), I will describe only those phenomena
of
which I was an eye-witness.
For
this I must return to the night of Mme. Blavatsky's arrival.
From
that time all those who were living in the house remarked that strange
things
were taking place in it. Raps and whisperings, sounds, mysterious and
[60]
unexplained, were now being constantly heard wherever the newly
arrived
inmate went. Not only did they occur in her presence and near her, but
knocks
were heard, and movements of the furniture perceived nearly in every room
in
the house, on the walls, the floor, the windows, the sofa, cushions, mirrors,
and
clocks ; on every piece of furniture, in short, about the rooms. However
much
Mme. Blavatsky tried to conceal these facts, laughing at them and trying to
turn
these manifestations into fun, it was useless for her to deny the fact or
the
occult significance of these sounds. At last, to the incessant questions of
her
sister, she confessed that those manifestations had never ceased to follow
her
everywhere as in the early days of her infancy and youth. That such raps
could
be increased or diminished, and at times even made to cease altogether, by
the
mere force of her will, she also acknowledged, proving her assertion
generally
on the spot. Of course the good people of Pskoff, like the rest of the
world,
knew what was then occurring, and had heard of spiritualism and its
manifestations.
There had been mediums in Petersburg, but they had not
penetrated
as far as Pskoff, and its guileless inhabitants had never heard the
rappings
of the so-called spirit.
[All
who have become acquainted with Mme. Blavatsky in the present phase of her
development
will be aware of the eagerness with which she repudiates the least
trace
of mediumship as entering into the phenomena with which she had been
associated
in recent years. In 1858 she appears to have been in a transition
state,
already invested with occult will-power, which put her in a position to
repress
the manifestations of mediumship in emergencies, but still liable to
their
spontaneous occurrence when they were not thus under repression. [61]
Expressly
asked the question, she would always deny that she was a medium —
which,
indeed, she would appear no longer to have been, in the strict sense of
the
term — for she does not seem to have been controlled by the agencies
recognised
in spiritualism, even when sometimes acquiescing in casual
manifestations
on their part. Mme. de Jelihowsky, questioned on this subject
recently,
says: “I remember that when addressed as a medium, she (Mme.
Blavatsky)
used to laugh and assure us she was no medium, but only a. mediator
between
mortals and beings we knew nothing about. But I could never understand
the
difference.”
This
may be the best opportunity for bringing to the reader's notice some
passages
from Mme. Jelihowsky's Personal and Family Reminiscences which bear on
the
point, an important one as regards all psychic students of Mme. Blavatsky's
phenomena
and characteristics.
Her
sister says :—
“Although
everyone had supposed that the manifestations occurring in H. P.
Blavatsky's
presence were the results of a mediumistic power pertaining to her,
she
herself had always obstinately denied it. My sister H. P. Blavatsky had
passed
most of her time, during her many years' absence from Russia, travelling
in
India, where, as we are now informed, spiritual theories are held in great
scorn,
and the so-called (by us) mediumistic phenomena are said to be caused by
quite
another agency than that of spirits; mediumship proceeding, they say, from
a
source, to draw from which, my sister thinks it degrading to her human
dignity;
in consequence of which ideas she refuses to acknowledge such a force
in
herself. From letters received by me from my sister, I found she had been
dissatisfied
with much that I had said of her in my ' Truth about H. P.
Blavatsky.'
She still maintains, now as then, that in those days (of 1860) she
was
influenced as well as she is now by quite [62] another kind of power —
namely,
that of the Indian sages, the Raj-Yogis — and that even the shadows
(figures)
she sees all her life, are no phantoms, no ghosts of the deceased, but
only
the manifestations of her powerful friends in their astral envelopes.
However
it may be, and whatever the power that produced her phenomena only,
during
the whole time that she lived with us at the Yahontoff such phenomena
happened
constantly before the eyes of all, believers and unbelievers (relatives
and
outsiders) — and they plunged everyone equally into amazement.”
As
this memoir is a narrative and not an occult treatise, I refrain from any
minute
analysis of the psychological problem involved, and would only point out
that
the condition of things Mme. de Jelihowsky refers to, chimes in with the
rough
explanation I gave in the first chapter as to the occult theory of Mme.
Blavatsky's
development, which would recognise her natural born, physical
attributes
as only coming under control when the higher faculties of her real
self,
entering into union with the bodily organism as this reached maturity, put
her
in a position to be taught how to eradicate the weed-growth of her
abnormally
fertile psychic faculties.]
With
the arrival of Mme. Blavatsky at Pskoff, the news about the extraordinary
phenomena
produced by her spread abroad like lightning, turning the whole town
topsy-turvy.
The
fact is, that the sounds were not simple raps, but something more, as they
showed
extraordinary intelligence, disclosing the past as well as the future to
those
who held converse through them with those Mme. Blavatsky called her
kikimorcy
(or spooks). More than that, for they showed the gift of disclosing
unexpressed
thoughts, i.e. penetrating freely into the most secret recesses of
[63]
the human mind, and divulging past deeds and present intentions.
The
relatives of Mme. Blavatsky's sister were leading a very fashionable life,
and
received a good deal of company in those days. Her presence attracted a
number
of visitors, no one of whom ever left her unsatisfied, for the raps which
she
evoked gave answers, composed of long discourses in several languages, some
of
which were unknown to the medium, as she was called. The poor “medium”
became
subjected to every kind of test, to which she submitted very gracefully,
no
matter how absurd the demand, as a proof that she did not bring about the
phenomena
by juggling. It was her usual habit to sit very quietly and quite
unconcerned
on the sofa, or in an arm-chair, engaged in some embroidery, and
apparently
without taking the slightest interest or active part in the hubbub
which
she produced around herself. And the hubbub was great indeed. One of the
guests
would be reciting the alphabet, another putting down the answers
received,
while the mission of the rest was to offer mental questions, which
were
always and promptly answered. It so happened, however, that the unknown and
invisible
things at work favoured some people more than others, while there were
those
who could obtain no answers whatever. In the latter case, instead of
replying
to queries asked aloud, the raps would answer the unexpressed mental
thought
of some other person, first calling him by name. During that time,
conversations
and discussions in a loud tone were carried on around her.
Mistrust
and irony were often shown, and occasionally even a doubt expressed, in
a
very indelicate way, as to the good faith of Mme. Blavatsky. But she bore it
all
very coolly and patiently, a strange and puzzling smile or an ironical
shrugging
of the [64] shoulders being her only answer to questions of very
doubtful
logic offered to her over and over again.
“But
how do you do it, and what is it that raps ? ” people kept on asking.
Or
again, “but how can you so well guess people's thought ? How could you know
that
I had thought of this or that ? ”
At
first H. P. B. sought very zealously to prove to people that she did not
produce
the phenomena, but very soon she changed her tactics. She declared
herself
tired of such discussions, and silence and a contemptuous smile became
for
some time her only answer. Again she would change as rapidly; and in moments
of
good-humour, when people would be foolishly and openly expressing the most
insulting
doubts of her honesty, instead of resenting them she used to laugh
aloud
in their faces. Indeed, the most absurd hypotheses were offered by the
sceptics.
For instance, it was suggested that she might produce her loud raps by
the
means of a machine in her pocket, or that she rapped with her nails; the
most
ingenious theory being that “when her hands were visibly occupied with
some
work, she did it with her toes.”
To
put an end to all this, she allowed herself to be subjected to the most
stupid
demands ; she was searched, her hands and feet were tied with string, she
permitted
herself to be placed on a soft sofa, to have her shoes taken off and
her
hands and feet held fast against a soft pillow, so that they should be seen
by
all, and then she was asked that the knocks and rappings should be produced
at
the further end of the room. Declaring that she would try, but would promise
nothing,
her orders were, nevertheless, immediately accomplished, especially
when
the people were seriously interested. These raps were produced at her
command
on the ceiling, on the [65] window sills, on every bit of furniture
in
the adjoining room, and in places quite distant from her.
At
times she would wickedly revenge herself by practical jokes on those who so
doubted
her. Thus, for example, the raps which came one day inside the glasses
of
the young Professor M------, while she was sitting at the other side of the
room,
were so strong that they fairly knocked the spectacles off his nose, and
made
him become pale with fright. At another time, a lady, an esprit fort, very
vain
and coquettish, to her ironical question of what was the best conductor for
the
production of such raps, and whether they could be done everywhere, received
a
strange and very puzzling answer. The word, “Gold”, was rapped out, and
then
came the words, “We will prove it to you immediately”.
The
lady kept smiling with her mouth slightly opened. Hardly had the answer
come,
than she became very pale, jumped from her chair, and covered her mouth
with
her hand. Her face was convulsed with fear and astonishment. Why ? Because
she
had felt raps in her mouth, as she confessed later on. Those present looked
at
each other significantly. Previous even to her own confession all had
understood
that the lady had felt a violent commotion and raps in the gold of
her
artificial teeth! And when she rose from her place and left the room with
precipitation,
there was a homeric laugh among us at her expense.[66]
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CHAPTER 4
MM
DE JELIHOWSKY'S NARRATIVE
IT
is impossible to give in detail even a portion of what was produced in the
way
of such phenomena during the stay of Mme. Blavatsky amongst us in the town
of
Pskoff. But they may be mentioned under general classification as follows : —
1.
Direct and perfectly clear written and verbal answers to mental questions —
or
“thought-reading”.
2.
Prescriptions for different diseases, in Latin, and subsequent cures.
3.
Private secrets, unknown to all but the interested party, divulged,
especially
in the case of those persons who mentioned insulting doubts.
4.
Change of weight in furniture and of persons at will.
5.
Letters from unknown correspondents, and immediate answers written to queries
made,
and found in the most out-of-the-way mysterious places.[Thus a governess,
named
Leontine, who wanted to know the fate of a certain young man she had hoped
to
be married to, learnt what had become of him ; his name, that she had
purposely
withheld, being given in full — from a letter written in an unknown
handwriting
she found in one of her locked boxes, placed inside a trunk equally
locked.]
6.
Appearances and apport of objects unclaimed by any one present. [67]
7.
Sounds as of musical notes in the air wherever Mme. Blavatsky desired they
should
resound.
All
these surprising and inexplicable manifestations of an intelligent, and at
times,
I should almost say, an omniscient force, produced a sensation in Pskoff,
where
there yet remain many who remember it well. Truth compels us to remark
that
the answers were not always in perfect accord with the facts, but seemed
purposely
distorted as though for the purpose of making fun, especially of those
querists
who expected infallible prophecies.
Nevertheless,
the fact remains of the manifestation of an intelligent force,
capable
of perceiving the thoughts and feelings of any person; as also of
expressing
them by rappings and motions in inanimate objects. The following two
occurrences
took place in the presence of many eye-witnesses during the stay of
Mme.
Blavatsky with us.
As
usual, those nearest and dearest to her were, at the same time, the most
skeptical
as to her occult powers. Her brother Leonide and her father stood out
longer
than all against evidence, until at last the doubts of the former were
greatly
shaken by the following fact.
The
drawing-room of the Yahontoffs was full of visitors. Some were occupied with
music,
others with cards, but most of us, as usual, with phenomena. Leonide de
Hahn
did not concern himself with anything in particular, but was leisurely
walking
about, watching everybody and everything. He was a strong, muscular
youth,
saturated with the Latin and German wisdom of the University, and
believed,
so far, in no one and nothing. He stopped behind the back of his
sister's
chair, and was listening to her narratives of how some persons, who
called
themselves mediums, made light objects become so heavy that it was
impossible
to lift them; and others which were naturally heavy became again
remarkably
light.[68]
“And
you mean to say that you can do it ? ” ironically asked the young man
of
his sister.
“Mediums
can, and I have done it occasionally; though I cannot always answer
for
its success”, coolly replied Mme. Blavatsky.
“But
would you try ? ” asked somebody in the room; and immediately all
joined
in requesting her to do so.
“I
will try”, she said, “but I beg of you to remember that I promise
nothing.
I will simply fix this chess-table and try. ... He who wants to make
the
experiment, let him lift it now, and then try again after I shall have fixed
it.”
“After
you shall have fixed it ? ” said a voice, “ and what then ? Do you
mean
to say that you will not touch the table at all ? ”
“Why
should I touch it ? ” answered Mme. Blavatsky, with a quiet smile.
Upon
hearing the extraordinary assertion, one of the young men went determinedly
to
the small chess-table, and lifted it up as though it were a feather.
“All
right”, she said. “Now kindly leave it alone, and stand back! ”
The
order was at once obeyed, and a great silence fell upon the company. All,
holding
their breath, anxiously watched for what Mme. Blavatsky would do next.
She
apparently, however, did nothing at all. She merely fixed her large blue
eyes
upon the chess-table, and kept looking at it with an intense gaze. Then,
without
removing her gaze, she silently, with a motion of her hand, invited the
same
young man to remove it. He approached, and grasped the table by its leg
with
great assurance. The table could not be moved !
He
then seized it with both his hands. The table stood as though screwed to the
floor.
Then
the young man, crouching down, took hold of [69] it with both hands,
exerting
all his strength to lift it by the additional means of his broad
shoulders.
He grew red with the effort, but all in vain! The table seemed rooted
to
the carpet, and would not be moved. There was a loud burst of applause. The
young
man, looking very much confused, abandoned his task en désespoir de
cause,
and
stood aside.
Folding
his arms in quite a Napoleonic way, he only slowly said, “Well, this
is
a good joke ! ”
“Indeed,
it is a good one ! ” echoed Leonide.
A
suspicion had crossed his mind that the young visitor was acting in secret
confederacy
with his sister and was fooling them.
“May
I also try ? ” he suddenly asked her,
“Please
do, my dear”, was the laughing response.
Her
brother upon this approached, smiling, and seized, in his turn, the
diminutive
table by its leg with his strong muscular arm. But the smile
instantly
vanished, to give place to an expression of mute amazement. He stepped
back
a little and examined again very carefully the, to him, well-known
chess-table.
Then he gave it a tremendous kick, but the little table did not
even
budge.
Suddenly
applying to its surface his powerful chest he enclosed it within his
arms,
trying to shake it. The wood cracked, but would yield to no effort. Its
three
feet seemed screwed to the floor. Then Leonide Hahn lost all hope, and
abandoning
the ungrateful task, stepped aside, and frowning, exclaimed but these
two
words, “How strange! ” his eyes turning meanwhile with a wild expression
of
astonishment from the table to his sister.
We
all agreed that this exclamation was not too strong.
The
loud debate had meanwhile drawn the attention of several visitors, and they
came
pouring in from the drawing-room into the large apartment where we were.
[70]
Many
of them, old and young, tried to lift up, or even to impart some slight
motion
to, the obstinate little chess-table. They failed, like the rest of us.
Upon
seeing her brother's astonishment, and perchance desiring finally to
destroy
his doubts, Mme. Blavatsky, addressing him with her usual careless
laugh,
said, “Try to lift the table now, once more I ”
Leonide
H. approached the little thing very irresolutely, grasped it again by
the
leg, and, pulling it upwards, came very near to dislocating his arm owing to
the
useless effort: the table was lifted like a feather this time [Madame
Blavatsky
has stated that this phenomenon could only be produced in two
different
ways:
1st..
Through the exercise of her own will directing the magnetic currents so
that
the pressure on the table became such that no physical force could move it
;
and
2nd.
Through the action of those beings with whom she was in constant
communication,
and who, although unseen, were able to hold the table against all
opposition.]
And
now to our second case. It occurred in St Petersburg, a few months later,
when
Mme. Blavatsky had already left Pskoff with her father and sister, and when
all
three were living in a hotel. They had come to St Petersburg on business on
their
way to Mme. Yahontoff’s property, in the district of Novorgeff, where they
had
decided to pass the summer. All their forenoons were occupied with business,
their
afternoons and evenings with making and receiving visits, and there was no
time
for, or even mention of, phenomena.
One
night they received a visit from two old friends of their father; both were
old
gentlemen, one of them a school-fellow of the Corps des Pages, Baron
M------,
the other the well-known K------w. [ Sceptics who insist upon having
the
full names are invited to apply to the writer of the above, Mme de
Jelihowsky,
St Petersburg, Zabalkansky Prospect, No. 10 house, r.31 apartment’]
Both
were much [71] interested in recent spiritualism, and were, of course,
anxious
to see something.
After
a few successful phenomena, the visitors declared themselves positively
delighted,
amazed, and quite at a loss what to make of Mme. Blavatsky's powers.
They
could neither understand nor account, they said, for her father's
indifference
in presence of such manifestations. There he was, coolly laying out
his
“grande patience” with cards, while phenomena of such a wonderful nature
were
occurring around him. The old gentleman, thus taken to task, answered that
it
was all bosh, and that he would not hear of such nonsense; such occupation
being
hardly worthy of serious people, he added. The rebuke left the two old
gentlemen
unconcerned. They began, on the contrary, to insist that Colonel Hahn
should,
for old friendship's sake, make an experiment, before denying the
importance,
or even the possibility of his daughter's phenomena. They offered
him
to test the intelligences and their power by writing a word in another room,
secretly
from all of them, and then asking the raps to repeat it. The old
gentleman,
more probably in the hope of a failure that would afford him the
opportunity
of laughing at his two old friends, than out of a desire to humour
them,
finally consented. He left his cards, and proceeding into an adjoining
room,
wrote a word on a bit of paper; after which, conveying it to his pocket,
he
returned to his patience, and waited silently, laughing behind his grey
moustache.
“Well,
our dispute will now be settled in a few moments”, said K------w.
“What
shall you say, however, old friend, if the word written by you is
correctly
repeated? Will you not feel compelled to believe in such a case ? ”
“What
I might say, if the word were correctly [72] guessed, I could not
tell
at present”, he skeptically replied. “One thing I could answer,
however,
from the time I can be made to believe your alleged spiritism and its
phenomena,
I shall be ready to believe in the existence of the devil, undines,
sorcerers,
and witches — in the whole paraphernalia — in short, of old women's
superstitions;
and you may prepare to offer me as an inmate of a lunatic
asylum.”
Upon
delivering himself thus, he went on with his patience, and paid no further
attention
to the proceedings. He was an old “Voltarian”, as the positivists
who
believed in nothing are called in Russia. But we, who felt deeply interested
in
the experiment, began to listen to the loud and unceasing raps coming from a
plate
brought there for the purpose.
The
younger sister was repeating the alphabet; the old general marked the
letters
down; while Mme. Blavatsky did nothing at all — apparently.
She
was what would be called, in our days, a “good writing medium”; that is
to
say, she could write out the answers herself while talking with those around
her
upon quite indifferent topics. But simple and more rapid as this mode of
communication
may be, she would never consent to use it.
She
was too afraid to employ it, fearing as she explained, uncalled-for
suspicion
from foolish people who did not understand the process.
[From
the first, that is to say, almost from her childhood, and certainly in the
days
mentioned above, Mme. Blavatsky, as she tells us, would, in such cases, see
either
the actual present thought of the person putting the questions, or its
paler
reflection — still quite distinct for her — of an event, or a name, or
whatever
it was, in the past, as though hanging in a shadow world around the
[73]
person, generally in the vicinity of the head. She had but to copy it
consciously,
or allow her hand to do so mechanically. At any rate, she never
felt
herself helped or led on by an external power, i.e. no “spirits” helped
her
in this process after she returned from her first voyage, she avers. It
seemed
an action entirely confined to her own will, more or less consciously
exercised
by her, more or less premeditated and put into play.
Whenever
the thought of a person had to be communicated through raps, the
process
changed. She had to read, first of all, sometimes to interpret the
thought
of the querist, and having done so, to remember it well after it had
often
disappeared; watch the letters of the alphabet as they were read or
pointed
out, prepare the will-current that had to produce the rap at the right
letter,
and then have it strike at the right moment the table or any other
object
chosen to be the vehicle of sounds or raps. A most difficult process, and
far
less easy than direct writing.']
By
the means of raps and alphabet we got one word, but it proved such a strange
one,
so grotesquely absurd as having no evident relation to anything that might
be
supposed to have been written by her father, that all of us who had been in
the
expectation of some complicated sentence looked at each other, dubious
whether
we ought to read it aloud. To our question, whether it was all, the raps
became
more energetic in the affirmative sounds. We had several triple raps,
which
meant in our code — Yes ! . . . yes, yes, yes !!!
Remarking
our agitation and whispering, Madame Blavatsky's father looked at us
over
his spectacles, and asked:
“Well!
Have you any answer ? It must be something very elaborate and profound
indeed!
”
He
arose and, laughing in his moustache, approached [74] us. His youngest
daughter,
Mme. Yahontoff, then went to him and said, with some little confusion
:
“We
only got one word.”
“And
what is it?”
“Zaïtchik!
” [Zaïchik means, literally,”a little hare”, while Zaïtz is
the
Russian
term for any hare. In the Russian language every substantive and
adjective
may be made to express the same thing, only in the diminutive. Thus a
house
is dom, while small house is expressed by the word domik, etc.]
It
was a sight indeed to witness the extraordinary change that came over the old
man's
face at this one word! He became deadly pale. Adjusting his spectacles
with
a trembling hand, he stretched it out while hurriedly saying:
“Let
me see it! Hand it over. Is it really so ? ”
He
took the slips of paper, and read in a very agitated voice, — “
'Zaïtchik'.
Yes,
Zaïtchik; so it is. How very strange!”
Taking
out of his pocket the paper he had written upon in the adjoining room, he
handed
it in silence to his daughter and guests.
They
found on it both the question offered and the answer that was anticipated.
The
words read thus:
“What
was the name of my favorite war-horse which I rode during my first
Turkish
campaign ? ” and lower down, in parenthesis (“ Zaïtchik ”).
We
felt fully triumphant, and expressed our feelings accordingly.
This
solitary word, Zaïtchik, had an enormous effect upon the old
gentleman. As
it
often happens with inveterate sceptics, once he had found out that there was
indeed
something in his eldest daughter's claims, and that it had nothing to do
whatever
with deceit or juggling, [75] having been convinced of this one
fact,
he rushed into the region of phenomena with all the zeal of an ardent
investigator.
As a matter of course, once he believed he felt no more inclined
to
doubt his own reason.
Having
received from Mme. Blavatsky one correct answer, her father became
passionately
fond of experimenting with his daughter's powers. Once he inquired
of
the date of a certain event in his family that had occurred several hundred
of
years before. He received it. From that time he set himself and Mme.
Blavatsky
the difficult task of restoring the family chronology. The
genealogical
tree, lost in the night of the first crusades, had to be restored
from
its roots down to his day.
The
information was readily promised, and he set to work from morning to night.
First,
the legend of the Count von Rottenstern, the Knight Crusader, was given
him.
The year, the month, and the day on which a certain battle with the
Saracens
had been fought; and how, while sleeping in his tent, the Knight
Crusader
was awakened by the cry of a cock (Hahn) to find himself in time to
kill,
instead of being stealthily killed by an enemy who had penetrated into his
tent.
For this feat the bird, true symbol of vigilance, was raised to the honor
of
being incorporated in the coat of arms of the Counts of Rottenstern, who
became
from that time the Rottenstern von Rott Hahn; to branch off later into
the
Hahn-Hahn family and others.
Then
began a regular series of figures, dates of years and months, of hundreds
of
names by connection and side marriages, and a long line of descent from the
Knight
Crusaders down to the Countess Ida Hahn-Hahn — Mme. Blavatsky's father's
cousin,
and her father's family names and dates, as well as a mass of
contemporary
events which had taken place in connection with that [76]
family's
descending line, were given rapidly and unhesitatingly. The greatest
historian,
endowed with the most phenomenal memory, could never be equal to such
a
task. How then could one who had been on cold terms from her very youth with
simple
arithmetic and history be suspected of deliberate deceit in a work that
necessitated
the greatest chronological precision, the knowledge very often of
the
most unimportant historical events, with their involved names and dates, all
of
which upon the most careful verification were found to be correct to a day.
True,
the family immigrants from Germany since the days of Peter III. had a good
many
missing links and blanks in their genealogical tables, yet the few
documents
that had been preserved among the various branches of the family in
Germany
and Russia — whenever consulted, were found to be the originals of those
very
exact copies furnished through Mme. Blavatsky's raps.
Her
uncle, a high official at the General Post Office at St Petersburg, whose
great
ambition in those days was to settle the title of a Count on his eldest
sons
permanently, took the greatest interest in this mysterious work. Over and
over
again he would, in his attempts to puzzle and catch his niece in some
historical
or chronological inaccuracy, interrupt the regular flow of her raps,
and
ask for information about something which had nothing to do with the
genealogy,
but was only some contemporaneous fact. For instance :
“You
say that in the year 1572 Count Carl von Hahn-Hahn was married to the
Baroness
Ottilia, so and so. This was in June at the castle of — — at
Mecklenburg.
Now, who was the reigning Kurfuerst at that time; what Prince
reigned
at ----- (some small German state); and who was the confessor of the
Pope,
and the Pope himself in that year ? ”[77]
And
the answer, always correct, would invariably come without a moment's pause.
It
was often found far more difficult to verify the correctness of such names
and
dates than to receive the information. Mr J. A. Hahn, then Post Director at
St
Petersburg, Mme. Blavatsky's uncle, had to plunge for days and weeks
sometimes
into dusty old archives, write to Germany, and apply for information
to
the most out-of-the-way places, that were designated to him, when he found
difficulties
in his way to obtain the knowledge he sought for in easily
obtainable
books and records.
This
lasted for months. Never during that time were Mme. Blavatsky's invisible
helper
or helpers found mistaken in any single instance. [Indeed not; for it was
neither
a “spirit” nor “spirits” but living men who can draw before their eyes
the
picture of any book or manuscript wherever existing, and in case of need
even
that of any long-forgotten and unrecorded event, who helped “Mme
Blavatsky”,
The astral light is the storehouse and the record book of all
things,
and deeds have no secrets for such men. And the proof of it may be found
in
the production of Isis Unveiled.(Note by H.P. Blavatsky)] They only asked
occasionally
for a day or two to get at the correct information.
Unfortunately,
these records, put down on fly-leaves and then copied into a
book,
are probably lost. The papers remained with Mme. Blavatsky's father, who
treasured
them, and with many other far more valuable documents were stolen or
lost
after his death. But his sister-in-law, Mme. Blavatsky's aunt, has in her
possession
letters from him in which he speaks enthusiastically of his
experiments.
One
of the most startling of her phenomena happened very soon after Mme.
Blavatsky's
return, in the early spring of 1858. Both sisters were then living
with
[78] their father, in their country house in a village belonging to
Mme.
Yahontoff.
In
consequence of a crime committed not far from the boundaries of my property,
she
writes — (a man having been found killed in a gin shop, the murderers
remaining
unknown) — the superintendent of the district police passed one
afternoon
through our village, and stopped to make some inquiries.
The
researches were made very secretly, and he had not said one word about his
business
to anyone in the house, not even to our father. As he was an
acquaintance
who visited our family, and stopped at our house on his district
tour,
no one asked him why he had come, for he made us very frequent visits, as
to
all the other proprietors in the neighborhood.
It
was only on the following morning, after he had ordered the village serfs to
appear
for examination (which proved useless), that the inmates learned anything
of
his mission.
During
tea, as they were all sitting around the table, there came the usual
knocks,
raps, and disturbance on the walls, the ceiling, and about the furniture
of
the room.
To
our father's question why the police-superintendent should not try to learn
something
of the name and the whereabouts of the murderer from my sister's
invisible
agents, the officer Captain O only incredulously smiled.
He
had heard of the “all-knowing” spirits, but was ready to bet almost
anything
that these “horned and hoofed gentlemen” would prove insufficient
for
such a task. “They would hardly betray and inform against their own”, he
added,
with a silly laugh.
This
fling at her invisible “powers”, and laugh, as she thought, at her
expense,
made Mme. Blavatsky [79] change color, and feel, as she said, an
irrepressible
desire to humble the ignorant fool, who hardly knew what he was
talking
about. She turned fiercely upon the police-officer.
“And
suppose I prove to you the contrary ?” she defiantly asked him.
“Then”,
he answered, still laughing, “I would resign my office, and offer
it
to you, Madame ; or, still better, I would strongly urge the authorities to
place
you at the head of the Secret Police Department.”
“
Now, look here, Captain”, she said, indignantly, “I do not like meddling
in
such a dirty business, and helping you detectives. Yet, since you defy me,
let
my father say over the alphabet, and you put down the letters, and record
what
will be rapped out. My presence is not needed for this, and with your
permission
I will even leave the room.”
She
went away, and taking a book, placed herself on the balcony, apparently
quite
unconcerned with what was going on.
Colonel
Hahn, anxious to make a convert, began repeating the alphabet. The
communication
received was far from complimentary in its adjectives to the
address
of the police-superintendent.
The
outcome of the message was, that while he was talking nonsense at Rougodevo
(the
name of our new property), the murderer, whose name was Samoylo Ivanof, had
crossed
over before daylight to the next district, and thus escaped the
officer's
clutches.
“At
present he is hiding under a bundle of hay in the loft of a peasant, named
Andrew
Vlassof, of the village of Oreshkino. By going there immediately you will
secure
the criminal.”
The
effect upon the man was tremendous! Our [80] Stanovoy (district
officer)
was positively nonplused, and confessed that Oreshkino was one of the
suspected
villages he had on his list.
“But
— allow me, however, to inquire”, he asked of the table from which the
raps
proceeded, and bending over it with a suspicious look upon his face, “how
come
you — whoever you are — to know anything of the murderer's name, or of that
of
the confederate who hides him in his loft ? And who is Vlassof, for I know
him
not ? ”
The
answer came clear and rather contemptuous.
“Very
likely that you should neither know nor see much beyond your own nose.
We,
however, who are now giving you the information, have the means of knowing
everything
we wish to know. Samoylo Ivanof is an old soldier on leave. He was
drunk,
and quarreled with the victim. The murder was not premeditated; it is a
misfortune,
not a crime.”
Upon
hearing these words the superintendent rushed out of the house like a
madman,
and drove off at a furious rate towards Oreshkino, which was more than
thirty
miles distant from Rougodevo. The information agreeing admirably with
some
points he had laboriously collected, and furnishing the last word to the
mystery
of the names given — he had no doubt in his own mind that the rest would
prove
true, as he confessed some time after.
On
the following morning a messenger on horseback, sent by the Stanovoy, made
his
appearance with a letter to her father.
Events
in Oreshkino had proved every word of the information to be correct. The
murderer
was found and arrested in his hiding place at Andrew Vlassofs cottage,
and
identified as a soldier on leave named Samoylo Ivanof.
This
event produced a great sensation in the district, and henceforward the
messages
obtained, through the [81] instrumentality of my sister, were
viewed
in a more serious light. [Madame Blavatsky denies, point blank, any
intervention
of spirits in this case. She tells us she had the picture of the
whole
tragedy and its subsequent developments before her from the moment the
Stanovoy
entered the house. She knew the names of the murderers, the
confederate,
and of the village, for she saw them interested, so to say, with
the
visions. Then she guided the raps, and thus gave the information.] But this
brought,
a few weeks after, very disagreeable complications, for the police of
St
Petersburg wanted to know how could one, and that one a woman who had just
returned
from foreign countries, know anything of the details of a murder.
It
cost Colonel Hahn great exertion to settle the matter and satisfy the
suspicious
authorities that there had been no fouler play in the business than
the
intervention of supernatural powers, in which the police pretended, of
course,
to have no faith.
The
most successful phenomena took place during those hours when we were alone,
when
no one cared to make experiments or sought useless tests, and when there
was
no one to convince or enlighten.
At
such moments the manifestations were left to produce themselves at their own
impulse
and pleasure, none of us — not even the chief author of the phenomena
under
observation, at any rate as far as those present could see and judge from
appearances
— assuming any active part in trying to guide them.
We
very soon arrived at the conviction that the forces at work, as Mme,
Blavatsky
constantly told us, had to be divided into several distinct
categories.
While the lowest on the scale of invisible beings produced most of
the
physical phenomena, the very highest among the agencies at work condescended
but
rarely to a communication or intercourse with strangers. The [82]
last-named
“invisibles” made themselves manifestly seen, felt, and heard
only
during those hours when we were alone in the family, and when great harmony
and
quiet reigned among us.
It
is said that harmony helps wonderfully toward the manifestation of the
so-called
mediumistic force, and that the effects produced in physical
manifestations
depend but little on the volition of the “medium”. Such feats
as
that accomplished with the little chess-table at Pskoff were rare. In the
majority
of the cases the phenomena were sporadic, seemingly quite independent
of
her will, apparently never heeding anyone's suggestion, and generally
appearing
in direct contradiction with the desires expressed by those present.
We
used to feel extremely vexed whenever there was a chance to convince some
highly
intellectual investigator, but through H. P. Blavatsky's obstinacy or
lack
of will nothing came out of it. For instance :
If
we asked for one of those highly intellectual, profound answers we got so
often
when alone, we usually received in answer some impertinent rubbish; when
we
begged for the repetition of some phenomena she had produced for us hundreds
of
times before, our wish was only laughed at.
I
well remember how, during a grand evening party, when several families of
friends
had come from afar off, in some cases from distances of hundreds of
miles
on purpose to witness some phenomena, to “hear with their ears and see
with
their eyes” the strange doings of Mme. Blavatsky, the latter, though
mockingly
assuring us she did all she could, gave them no result to ponder upon.
This
lasted for several days. [ She explains this by describing herself as tired
and
disgusted with the ever-growing public thirst for “miracles”.] [83]
The
visitors had left dissatisfied and in a spirit as skeptical as it was
uncharitable.
Hardly, however, had the gates been closed after them, the bells
of
their horses yet merrily tinkling in the last alley of the entrance park,
when
everything in the room seemed to become endowed with life. The furniture
acted
as though every piece of it was animated and gifted with voice and speech,
and
we passed the rest of the evening and the greater part of the night as
though
we were between the enchanted walls of the magic palace of some
Scheherazade.
It
is far easier to enumerate the phenomena that did not take place during these
forever
memorable hours than to describe those that did. All those weird
manifestations
that we had observed at various times seemed to have been
repeated
for our sole benefit during that night. At one moment as we sat at
supper
in the dining-room, there were loud accords played on the piano which
stood
in the adjoining apartment, and which was closed and locked, and so placed
that
we could all of us see it from where we were through the large open doors.
Then
at the first command and look of Mme. Blavatsky there came rushing to her
through
the air her tobacco-pouch, her box of matches, her pocket-handkerchief,
or
anything she asked, or was made to ask for.
Then,
as we were taking our seats, all the lights in the room were suddenly
extinguished,
both lamps and wax candles, as though a mighty rush of wind had
swept
through the whole apartment; and when a match was instantly struck, there
was
all the heavy furniture, sofas, arm-chairs, tables, cupboards, and large
sideboard
standing upside down, as though turned over noiselessly by some
invisible
hands, and not an ornament of the fragile carved work nor even a plate
broken.
Hardly had we gathered [84] our senses together after this
miraculous
performance, when we heard again someone playing on the piano a loud
and
intelligible piece of music, a long marche de bravoure this time. As we
rushed
with lighted candles to the instrument (I mentally counting the persons
to
ascertain that all were present), we found, as we had anticipated, the piano
locked,
the last sounds of the final chords still vibrating in the air from
beneath
the heavy closed lid.
After
this, notwithstanding the late hour, we placed ourselves around our large
dining-table,
and had a séance. The huge family dining-board began to shake
with
great force, and then to move, sliding rapidly about the room in every
direction,
even raising itself up to the height of a man. In short, we had all
those
manifestations that never failed when we were alone, i.e. when only those
nearest
and dearest to H. P. B. were present, and none of the strangers who came
to
us attracted by mere curiosity, and often with a malevolent and hostile
feeling.
Among
a mass of various and striking phenomena that took place on that memorable
night,
I will mention but two more.
And
here I must notice the following question made in those days whenever my
sister,
Madame B sat, to please us, for “communications through raps”. We
were
asked by her to choose what we would have. “Shall we have the mediumistic
or
spook raps, or the raps by clairvoyant proxy ? ” she asked.
[To
make this clearer and intelligible, I must give her (Mme. Blavatsky's)
explanation
of the difference.
She
never made a secret that she had been, ever since her childhood, and until
nearly
the age of twenty-five, a very strong medium; though after that period,
owing
to a regular psychological and physiological training, she [85] was
made
to lose this dangerous gift, and every trace of mediumship outside her
will,
or beyond her direct control, was overcome. She had two distinct methods
of
producing communications through raps. The one consisted almost entirely in
her
being passive, and permitting the influences to act at their will, at which
time
the brainless Elementals, (the shells would rarely, if ever, be allowed to
come,
owing to the danger of the intercourse) chameleon-like, would reflect more
or
less characteristically the thoughts of those present, and follow in a
half-intelligent
way the suggestions found by them in Madame Blavatsky's mind.
The
other method, used very rarely for reasons connected with her intense
dislike
to meddle with really departed entities, or rather to enter into their
“currents
of thought” is this: — She would compose herself, and seeking out,
with
eyes shut, in the astral light, that current that preserved the genuine
impress
of some well-known departed entity, she identified herself for the time
being
with it, and guiding the raps made them to spell out that which she had in
her
own mind, as reflected from the astral current. Thus, if the rapping spirit
pretended
to be a Shakespeare, it was not really that great personality, but
only
the echo of the genuine thoughts that had once upon a time moved in his
brain
and crystallized themselves, so to say, in his astral sphere whence even
his
shell had departed long ago — the imperishable thoughts alone remaining. Not
a
sentence, not a word spelt by the raps that was not formed first in her brain,
in
its turn the faithful copier of that which was found by her spiritual eye in
the
luminous Record Book of departed humanity. The, so to express it,
crystallized
essence of the mind of the once physical brain was there before her
spiritual
vision; her living brain photographed it, and her will dictated its
expression
by guiding the raps which thus became intelligent.]
And
though few, if any, of us then understood clearly [86] what she meant,
yet
she would act either one way or the other, never uniting the two methods.
We
chose the former in this instance — the “spook-raps” — as the easiest to
obtain,
and affording us more amusement, and to her less trouble.
Thus,
out of the many invisible and “ distinguished ” phantom visitors of
that
night, the most active and prominent among them was the alleged spirit of
Poushkine.
I
beg the reader to remember that we never for a moment believed that spook to
be
really the great poet, whose earthly remains rest in the neighbourhood of our
Rougodevo,
in the monk's territory known as the “holy mountain”.
We
had been warned by Mme. Blavatsky, and knew well how much we could trust to
the
communications and conversation of such unseen visitors. But the fact of our
having
chosen for that séance the “spook raps”, does not at all interfere
with
the truth of that other assertion of ours, namely, that, whenever we wanted
something
genuine, and resorted to the method of “clairvoyant proxy”, we had
very
often communications of great power and vigor of thought, profoundly
scientific
and remarkable in every way; made not by but in the spirit of the
great
defunct personage in whose name they were given.
It
is only when we resorted to the “spook raps” that, notwithstanding the
world-known
names of the eminent personages in which the goblins of the
séance-room
love to parade, we got answers and discourses that might do honor to
a
circus clown, but hardly to a Socrates, a Cicero, or a Martin Luther. Page 87]
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK. CF24-1DL
CHAPTER 5
MM.
DE JELIHOWSKY'S NARRATIVE -CONTINUED-
I
REMEMBER that we were deeply interested in those days in reading aloud in our
little
family circle, the Memoirs of Catherine Romanovna Dashkoff, just then
published.
The interest of this remarkable historical work was greatly enhanced
to
us owing to the fact that our reading was very often interrupted by the
alleged
spirit of the authoress herself. The gaps and hiatuses of a publication,
severely
disfigured and curtailed by the censor's pen and scissors, were
constantly
filled up by comparing notes with her astral records.
By
the means of guided raps — Mme. B. refusing, as usual, to help us by direct
writing,
preferring lazily to rest in her arm-chair — we received, in the name
of
the authoress, innumerable remarks, additions, explanations, and refutations.
In
some cases, her apparent and mistaken views in the days when she wrote her
memoirs
were corrected and replaced by more genuine thoughts. [ The fact that
many
of the remarks and notes were different in their character from the
original
memoirs, and that errors and mistakes were corrected, can easily be
explained.
The old thoughts of Catherine Romanovna were expounded and corrected
in
the intellectual sphere of Madame B. The manner and nature of the expression
would
not cease to resemble that of the author, and, in the astral light, the
original
of the work, as conceived in the brain of the historian, would
certainly
be returned in preference to the mutilated views of the censor; while
the
brain of Madame B would supply the rest.] [88] All such corrections and
additional
matter given, fascinated us deeply by their profundity, their wit and
humor,
often, indeed, with the natural pathos that was one of the prominent
features
of this remarkable historical character.
But
I must return to my reminiscences of that memorable night. Thus, among other
post-mortem
visitors, we were entertained on that evening by A. Poushkine.
The
poet seemed to be in one of his melancholy and dark moments; and to our
queries,
what was the matter, what made him suffer, and what we could do for
him,
he obliged us with an extemporary poem, which I preserved, although its
character
and style are beneath criticism.
The
substance of it — which is hardly worth translation — was to the effect that
there
was no reason for us to know his secret sufferings. Why should we try to
know
what he may be wishing for ? He had but one desire: to rest on the bosom of
Death,
instead of which he was suffering in great darkness for his sins,
tortured
by devils, and had lost all hope of ever reaching the bliss of becoming
a
winged cherub, etc etc..[ In the recollection of Mme. Blavatsky, this was a
genuine
spirit-manifestation, i.e. a clumsy personification of the great poet by
passing
shells and spooks, allowed to merge into the circle for a few moments.
The
rhymed complaint speaking of hell and devils was the echo of the feelings
and
thoughts of a pious governess present ; most assuredly it was not any
reflection
from Madame Blavatsky's brain, nor would her admiring respect for the
memory
of the greatest Russian poet have ever allowed her to make such a
blasphemous
joke under the cover of his name.]
“Poor
Alexander Sergeïtch!” exclaimed Colonel Hahn, upon hearing this
wretched
production
read; and so saying he rose as though in search of something. [
89]
“ What are you looking for? ” we asked. “My long pipe! I have had
enough
of these cigars, and I cannot find my pipe ; where can it be ? ”
“You
have just smoked it, after supper, father”. I replied.
“I
did; and now Helen's spirits must have walked off with it or hidden it
somewhere.”
“One,
two, three! One, two, three! ” affirmed triple raps around us, as
though
mocking the old gentleman.
“Indeed!
Well, this is a foolish joke. Could not our friend Poushkine tell us
where
he has hidden it ? Do let us know, for life itself would be worthless on
this
earth without my old and faithful pipe.”
“One,
two, three ! One, two, three ! ” knocked the table.
“Is
this you, Alexander Sergei'tch ? ” we asked.
At
this juncture my sister frowned angrily, and the raps suddenly stopped.
“No”,
she said, after a moment's pause, “it is somebody else”. And
putting
her hand upon the table she set the raps going again.
“Who
is it, then ? ”
“It
is me; your old orderly, your honor: Voronof.”
“Ah,
Voronof! very glad to meet you again, my good fellow. . . . Now, try to
remember
old times: bring me my pipe.”
“I
would be very happy to do so, your honor, but I am not able; somebody holds
me
fast. But you can take it yourself, your honor. See, there it is swinging
over
your head on the lamp.”
We
all raised our heads. Verily, where a minute before there was nothing at all,
there
was now the huge Turkish pipe, placed horizontally on the alabaster shade,
and
balancing over it with its two ends sticking [90] out at both sides of
the
lamp which hung over the dining table.
This
new physical demonstration filled with astonishment even those of us who
had
been accustomed to live in a world of marvels for months. Hardly a year
before
we would not have believed even in the possibility of what we now
regarded
as perfectly proved facts.
In
the early part of the year 1859, as above stated, soon after her return to
house
of a village belonging to Mme. Jelihowsky at Rougodevo.[In the district of
Novorgeff,
in the Government of Pskoff - about 200 versts from St Peterburg. It
was
at that time a private property, a village of several hundred serfs, but
soon
after emancipation of the land passed into other hands.]
It
had been bought only a year before by my deceased husband from parties
entirely
unknown to us till then, and through an agent; and therefore no one
knew
anything of their antecedents, or even who they really were. It was quite
unexpectedly
that, owing to the sudden death of M. Yahontoff, I decided to
settle
in it for a time, with my two baby sons, our father, and my two sisters,
H.
P. Blavatsky and Lisa, the youngest, our father's only daughter by another
wife.
I
could therefore have no acquaintance with our neighbors or the landed
proprietors
of other villages, or with the relatives of the late owner of my
property.
All I knew was, that Rougodevo had been bought from a person named
Statkovsky,
the husband of the granddaughter of its late owners — a family named
Shousherin.
Who were those Shousherins, the hereditary proprietors of those
picturesque
hills and mountains, of the dense pine forests, the lovely lakes,
our
old park, and nearly as old a mansion, from the top of which one could take
a
[91] sweeping view of the country for 30 versts around, its present
proprietors
could have no conception whatever; least of all, H. P. B., who had
been
out of Russia for over ten years, and had just then returned.
It
was on the second or third evening after our arrival at Rougodevo. We were
two
of us walking along the side of the flower-beds, in front of the house.
The
ground-floor windows looked right into the flower-garden, while those of its
three
other sides were surrounded with large, old, shaded grounds.
We
had settled on the first floor, which consisted of nine or ten large rooms,
while
our elderly father occupied a suite of rooms on the ground floor, on the
right-hand
side of the long entrance hall. The rooms opposite to his, on the
left
side, were uninhabited, and in the expectation of future visitors, stood
empty,
with their doors securely locked. The rooms occupied by the servants were
at
the back of the mansion, and could not be seen from where we were. The
windows
of the empty apartment came out in bright relief, especially the room at
the
left angle ; its windows, reflecting the rays of the setting sun in full
glory,
seemed illuminated through and through with the effulgence of the bright
sunbeams.
We
were slowly walking up and down the gravel walk under the windows, and each
time
that we approached the angle of the house, my sister (H. P. B.) looked into
the
windows with a strange searching glance, and lingered on that spot, a
puzzling
expression and smile settling upon her face.
Remarking
at last her furtive glances and smiles, I wanted to know what it was
that
so attracted her attention in the empty room ?
“Shall
I tell ? Well, if you promise not to be frightened, then I may”, she
answered
hesitatingly. [92]
“What
reason have I to be frightened ! Thank heaven, I see nothing myself.
Well,
and what do you see? Is it, as usual, visitors from the other world ? ”
“I
could not tell you now, Vera, for I do not know them. But if my conjectures
are
right, they do seem, if not quite the dwellers themselves, at least the
shadows
of such dwellers from another, but certainly not from our, world. I
recognize
this by certain signs.”
“What
signs ? Are their faces those of dead men ? ” I asked, very nervously,
I
confess.
“Oh,
no! ” she said; “for in such a case I should see them as dead people
in
their beds, or in their coffins. Such sights I am familiar with. But these
men
are walking about, and look just as if alive. They have no mortal reason to
remind
me of their death, since I do not know who they are, and never knew them
alive.
But they do look so very antiquated. Their dresses are such as we see
only
on old family portraits. One, however, is an exception.”
“How
does he look ? ”
“
Well, this one looks as though he were a German student or an artist. He
wears
a black velvet blouse, with a wide leather sash. . . . Long hair hanging
in
heavy waves down his back and shoulders. This one is quite a young man. ...
He
stands apart, and seems to look quite in a different direction from where the
others
are.”
We
had now again approached the angle of the house, and halting, were both
looking
into the empty room through the bright window panes. It was brilliantly
lit
up by the sunbeams of the setting sun, but the room was empty evidently, but
only
for one of us. For my sister it was full of the images probably of its
long-departed
late inmates.[93]
Mme.
Blavatsky went on looking thoughtfully, and describing what she saw.
“There,
there, he looks in our direction. See ! ” she muttered, “ he looks
as
though he is startled at seeing us! Now he is there no longer. How strange!
he
seems to have melted away in that sunbeam ! ”
“Let
us call them out to-night, and ask them who they are”, I suggested.
“We
may, but what of that ? Can any one of them be relied upon or believed ? I
would
pay any price to be able to command and control as they, . . . some
personages
I might name, do; but I cannot. I must fail for years to come”, she
added,
regretfully.
“Who
are they ? Whom do you mean ? ”
“Those
who know and can — not mediums”, she contemptuously added. “But
look,
look, what a sight! Oh, see what an ugly monster! Who can it be ? ”
“Now,
what's the use in your telling me ' look, look' and see ? How can I look
when
I see nothing, not being a clairvoyant as you are. . . . Tell me, how does
that
other figure appear ? Only if it is something too dreadful, then you had
better
stop”, I added, feeling a cold chill creeping over me. And, seeing she
was
going to speak, I cried out, “Now, pray do not say anything more if it is
too
dreadful”.
Don't
be afraid, there is nothing dreadful in it, it only seemed to me so. They
are
there now — one, however, I can see very hazily; it is a woman, and she
seems
to be always merging into and again emerging from that shadow in the
corner.
Oh, there's an old, old lady standing there and looking at me, as though
she
were alive. What a nice, kind, fat old thing she must have been. She has a
white
frilled cap on her head, a white kerchief crossed over her shoulders, a
short
grey narrow dress, and a checked apron.” [94]
“Why,
you are painting some fancy portrait of the Flemish school”, laughed
I.
“Now, look here, I am really afraid that you are mystifying me.”
“I
swear I am not. But I am so sorry that you cannot see.”
“Thanks;
but I am not at all sorry. Peace be upon all those ghosts ! How
horrible
! ”
“Not
at all horrible. They are all quite nice and natural, with the exception,
maybe,
of that old man.”
“Gracious
! what old man ? ”
“A
very, very funny old man. Tall, gaunt, and with such a suffering look upon
his
worn-out face. And then it is his nails, that puzzle me. What terrible long
nails
he has, or claws rather; why, they must be over an inch long!”
“Heaven
help us! ” I could not help shrieking out. “Whom are you
describing?
Surely it must be” — I was going to say, “the devil himself”,
but
stopped short, overcome by a shudder.
Unable
to control my terror, I hastily left the place under the window and stood
at
a safe distance.
The
sun had gone down, but the gold and crimson flush of its departing rays
lingered
still, tinting everything with gold — the house, the old trees of the
garden,
and the pond in the background.
The
colors of the flowers seemed doubly attractive in this brilliant light; and
only
the angle of the old house, which cut the golden hue in two, seemed to cast
a
gloomy shadow on the glorious scene. H. P. Blavatsky remained alone behind
that
obscure angle, overshadowed by the thick foliage of an oak, while I sought
a
safe refuge in the glow of the large open space near the flower-beds, and kept
urging
her to come out of her nook and enjoy instead the lovely panorama, and
look
at the [95] far-off wooded hills, with their tops still glowing in the
golden
hue, on the quiet smooth ponds and the large dormant lake, reflecting in
its
mirror-like waters the green chaotic confusion of its banks, and the ancient
chapel
slumbering in its nest of birch.
My
sister came out at last, pale and thoughtful. She was determined, she said,
to
learn who it was whom she had just seen. She felt sure the shadowy figures
were
the lingering reflections of people who had inhabited at some time those
empty
rooms. “I am puzzled to know who the old man can be”, she kept saying.
“Why
should he have allowed his nails to grow to such an extraordinary Chinese
length
? And then another peculiarity, he wears a most strange-looking black
cap,
very high, and something similar to the klobouk of our monks.” [The round
tiara,
covered with a long black veil, worn by the orthodox Greek monks.]
“Do
let these horrid phantoms alone. Do not think of them! ”
“Why
? It is very interesting, the more so since I now see them so rarely. I
wish
I were still a real medium, as the latter, I am told, are constantly
surrounded
by a host of ghosts, and that I see them now but occasionally, not as
I
used to years ago, when a child. . . . Last night, however, I saw in Lisa's
room
a tall gentleman with long whiskers.”
“What!
in the nursery room near the children ? Oh, please, drive him away from
there,
at least. I do hope the ghost has only followed you there, and has not
made
a permanent abode of that place. How you can keep so cool, and feel no fear
when
you see, is something I could never understand ! ”
“And
why should I fear them ? They are harmless in most cases, unless
encouraged.
Then I am too [96] accustomed to such sights to experience even
a
passing uneasiness. If anything, I feel disgust, and a contemptuous pity for
the
poor spooks! In fact, I feel convinced that all of us mortals are constantly
surrounded
by millions of such shadows, the last mortal image left of themselves
by
their ex-proprietors.”
“Then
you think that these ghosts are all of them the reflection of the dead ?
”
“I
am convinced of it — in fact, / know it ! ”
“
Why, then, in such a case, are we not constantly surrounded by those who
were
so near and dear to us, by our loved relatives and friends ? Why are we
allowed
to be pestered only by a host of strangers, to suffer the uninvited
presence
of the ghosts of people whom we never knew, nor do we care for them ?
”
“A
difficult query to answer! How often, how earnestly, have I tried to see
and
recognize among the shadows that haunted me some one of our dear relatives,
or
even a friend! . . . Stray acquaintances, and distant relatives, for whom I
care
little, I have occasionally recognized, but they never seemed to pay any
attention
to me, and whenever I saw them it was always unexpected and
independently
of my will. How I longed from the bottom of my soul, how I have
tried
— all in vain ! As much as I can make out of it, it is not the living who
attract
the dead, but rather the localities they have inhabited, those places
where
they have lived and suffered, and where their personalities and outward
forms
have been most impressed on the surrounding atmosphere. Say, shall we call
some
of your old servants, those who have been born and lived in this place all
their
lives ? I feel sure that, if we describe to them some of the forms I have
just
seen, that they will recognize in them people they knew, and who have died
here.”
[97]
The
suggestion was good, and it was immediately put to the test; we took our
seats
on the steps of the entrance door, and sent a servant to inquire who were
the
oldest serfs in the compound. An ancient tailor, named Timothy, who lived
for
years exempt from any obligatory work on account of his services and old
age,
and the chief gardener, Oulyan, a man about sixty, soon made their
appearance.
I felt at first a little embarrassed, and put some commonplace
questions,
asking who it was who built one of the outhouses near by. Then I put
the
direct query, whether there had ever lived in the house an old man, very
strange
to look at, with a high black head-gear, terribly long nails, wearing
habitually
a long grey coat, etc., etc.
No
sooner had I given this description than the two old peasants, interrupting
each
other, and with great volubility, exclaimed affirmatively that they “Knew
well
who it was whom the young mistress described.”
“Don't
we know him ? of course we do — why, it is our late barrin (master)!
Just
as he used to be — our deceased master Nikolay Mihaylovitch ! ”
“Statkowsky
? ”
“No,
no, mistress. Statkowsky was the young master, and he is not dead; he was
our
nominal master only, owing to his marriage with Natalya Nikolavna — our late
master's,
Nikolay Mihaylovitch Shousherin's granddaughter. And, as you have
described
him, it is him, for sure — our late master, Shousherin.”
My
sister and I interchanged a furtive glance. “We have heard of him”, said
I,
unwilling to take the servants into our confidence, ” but did not feel sure
it
was he. But why was he wearing such a strange-looking cap, and, as it seemed,
never
cut his nails ? ”
“This
was owing to a disease, mistress — an incurable [98] disease, as we
were
told, that the late master caught while in Lithuania, where he had resided
for
years. It is called the Koltoun,[The “plica polonica”, a terrible skin
complaint,
very common in Lithuania, and contracted only in its climate. The
hair,
as is well known, is grievously diseased, nor can nails on the fingers and
toes
be touched, their cutting leading to a bleeding to death] if you have heard
of
it. He could neither cut his hair nor pare his nails, and had to cover
constantly
his head with a tall velvet cap, like a priest's cap.”
“Well,
and how did your mistress, Mrs Shousherin, look ? ”
The
tailor gave a description in no way resembling the Dutch-looking old lady
seen
by Mme. Blavatsky. Further cross-examination elicited, however, that the
woman,
in her semi-Flemish costume, was Mina Ivanovna, a German housekeeper, who
had
resided in the house for over twenty years; and the young man, who looked
like
a German student in his velvet blouse, was really such a student who had
come
from Göttingen. He was the youngest brother of Mr Statkowsky, who had
died
in
Rougodevo, of consumption, about three years before our arrival. This was not
all,
moreover. We found out that the corner room in which H. P. B. had seen on
that
evening, as she has later on, on many other occasions, the phantoms of all
these
deceased personages of Rougodevo, had been made to serve for every one of
them,
either as a death-chamber when they had breathed their last, or had been
converted
for their benefit into a mortuary-chamber when they had been laid out
awaiting
burial. It was from this suite of apartments, in which their bodies had
invariably
passed from three to five days, that they had been [99] carried
away
into yonder old chapel, on the other side of the lake, that was so well
seen,
and had been examined by us from the windows of our sitting-room.
Since
that day, not only H. P. B., but even her little sister, Lisa, a child of
nine
years old, saw more than once strange forms gliding noiselessly along the
corridors
of the old house, so full of lingering events of the past, and of the
images
of those who had passed away from it. The child, strange to say, feared
the
restless ghosts no more than her elder sister; the former taking them
innocently
for living persons, and concerned but with the interesting problem,
“where
they had come from, who they were, and why no one except her ' old'
sister
and herself ever consented to notice them.”
She
thought this very rude — the little lady. Luckily for the child, and owing
perhaps
to the efforts of her sister, Mme. Blavatsky, the faculty left her very
soon,
never to return during her subsequent life.[The young lady is now over
thirty,
and was saying but last year how lucky it was for her that she no longer
saw
these trans-terrestrial visitors.] As for Helena Petrovna, it never left her
from
her very childhood. So strong is this weird faculty in her that it is a
rare
case when she has to learn of the death of a relative, a friend, or even an
old
servant of the family from a letter. We have given up advising her of any
such
sad events, the dead invariably precede the news, and tell her themselves
of
their demise; and we receive a letter in which she describes the way she saw
this
or that departed person, at the same time, and often before the post
carrying
our notification could have reached her, as it will be shown further
on.
[The
pamphlet already referred to, Personal and Family Reminiscences, by Mme.
Jelihowsky,
may here [100] be laid under contribution in reference to
incidents
taking place at the period we are now dealing with.]
Having
settled in our property at Rougodevo, we found ourselves as though
suddenly
transplanted into an enchanted world, in which we got gradually so
accustomed
to see self-moving furniture, things transferred from one place to
another,
in the most inexplicable way, and to the strong interference with, and
presence
in, our matter-of-fact daily life of some unknown to us, yet
intelligent
power, that we all ended by paying very little attention to it,
though
the phenomenal facts struck everyone else as being simply miraculous.
Verily,
habit becomes second nature with men! Our father, who had premised by
saying
that he gave permission to everyone to incarcerate him in a lunatic
asylum
on that day that he would believe that a table could move, fly, or become
rooted
to the spot at the desire of those present, now passed his days and parts
of
his nights talking with “Helen's spirits”, as he called it. They informed
him
of numerous events and details pertaining to the lives of his ancestors, the
Counts
Hahn von Rottenstern Hahn; offered to get back for him certain
title-deeds,
and told us such interesting legends and witty anecdotes, that
unbelievers
as well as believers could hardly help feeling interested. It often
happened
that my sister, being occupied with her reading, we — our father, the
governess,
and myself — unwilling to disturb her, communicated with the
invisible
power, mentally and in silence, simply thinking out our questions, and
writing
down the letters rapped out either on the walls or the table near us.
...
I remember having had a remarkable phenomenon of this kind, at a station in
the
Swyatee Goree (Holy Mountains), where the poet A. Poushkine is buried, and
when
my sister was fast [101] asleep. Things were told to me, of which
positively
no one in this world could know anything, I alone being the
depositary
of these secrets, together with an old gentleman living for years on
his
far-away property. I had not seen him for six years; my sister had never
heard
of him, as I had made his acquaintance two years after she had left
Russia.
During that mental conversation, names, dates, and the appellation of
his
property were given to me. I had thought and asked, Where is he who loved me
more
than anyone on this earth ? Easy to know that I had my late husband in my
mind.
Instead of that, I received in answer a name I had long forgotten. First I
felt
perplexed, then indignant, and finally the idea became so comical that I
burst
out in a fit of laughter, that awoke my sister. How can you prove to me
that
you do not lie ? I asked my invisible companions. Remember the second
volume
of Byron's poetry, was the answer I received. I became cold with horror !
No
one had ever been told of it, and I myself had forgotten for years that
circumstance
which was now told to me in all its details, namely, that being in
the
habit of sending books, and a series of English classics for me to read,
that
gentleman, old enough to be my grandfather, had thought of offering
marriage
to me, and found no better means for it than by inserting in Volume II.
of
Byron's works a letter to that effect. ... Of course my “informers”,
whoever
they were, played upon me a wicked trick by reminding me of these facts,
yet
their omniscience had been brilliantly proven to me by them in this case.
It
is most extraordinary that our silent conversations with that intelligent
force
that had ever manifested itself in my sister's presence were found by us
the
most successful during her sleep, or when she was very ill. [102] Once
a
young physician, who visited us for the first time, got so terribly frightened
at
the noises, and the moving about of things in her room when she was on her
bed
lying cold and senseless, that he nearly fainted himself. Such tragi-comical
scenes
happened very often in our house, but the most remarkable of all such
have
already been told in the pages of the Rebus, in 1883, as having taken place
during
her two years' stay with us. As an eye-witness, I can only once more
testify
to all the facts described, without entering upon the question of the
agency
that produced them, or the nature of the agents. But I may recall some
additional
inexplicable phenomena that occurred at that time, testified to by
other
members of our family, though some of them I have not witnessed myself.
All
the persons living on the premises, with the household members, saw
constantly,
often in full noonday, vague human shadows walking about the rooms,
appearing
in the garden, in the flower-beds in front of the house, and near the
old
chapel. My father (once the greatest sceptic), Mademoiselle Leontine, the
governess
of our younger sister, told me many a time, that they had just met and
seen
such figures quite plainly. Moreover, Leontine found very often in her
locked
drawers, and her trunks, some very mysterious letters, containing family
secrets
known to her alone, over which she wept, reading them incessantly during
whole
weeks; and I am forced to confess that once or twice the events foretold
in
them came to pass as they had been prophesied to us.
[Some
comments on various parts of the foregoing narrative, furnished by Mme.
Blavatsky
herself, will here be read with interest. She says she has tried with
the
most famous mediums to evoke and communicate with those dearest to her, and
whose
loss she had deplored, but could never succeed.“Communications and
messages”
[103] she certainly did receive, and got their signatures, and
on
two occasions their materialized forms, but the communications were couched
in
a vague and gushing language quite unlike the style she knew so well. Their
signatures,
as she has ascertained, were obtained from her own brain; and on no
occasion,
when the presence of a relation was announced and the form described
by
the medium, who was ignorant of the fact that Mme. Blavatsky could see as
well
as any of them, has she recognized the “spirit” of the alleged relative
in
the host of spooks and elementaries that surrounded them (when the medium was
a
genuine one of course). Quite the reverse. For she often saw, to her disgust,
how
her own recollections and brain-images were drawn from her memory and
disfigured
in the confused amalgamation that took place between their reflection
in
the medium's brain, which instantly sent them out, and the shells which
sucked
them in like a sponge and objectivised them — “a hideous shape with a
mask
on in my sight”, she tells us. “Even the materialized form of my uncle
at
the Eddys' was the picture; it was I who sent it out from my own mind, as I
had
come out to make experiments without telling it to anyone. It was like an
empty
outer envelope of my uncle that I seemed to throw on the medium's astral
body.
I saw and followed the process, I knew Will Eddy was a genuine medium, and
the
phenomenon as real as it could be, and therefore, when days of trouble came
for
him, I defended him in the papers. In short, for all the years of experience
in
America, I never succeeded in identifying, in one single instance, those I
wanted
to see. It is only in my dreams and personal visions that I was brought
in
direct contact with my own blood relatives and friends, those between whom
and
myself there had been a strong mutual spiritual love”. Her conviction
[104]
therefore, based as much on her personal experience as on that of the
teachings
of the occult doctrine, is as follows: — “For certain
psycho-magnetic
reasons, too long to be explained here, the shells of those
spirits
who loved us best will not, with a very few exceptions, approach us.
They
have no need of it since, unless they were irretrievably wicked, they have
us
with them in Devachan, that state of bliss in which the monads are surrounded
with
all those, and that, which they have loved — objects of spiritual
aspirations
as well as human entities. ' Shells ' once separated from their
higher
principles have nought in common with the latter. They are not drawn to
their
relatives and friends, but rather to those with whom their terrestrial,
sensuous
affinities are the strongest. Thus the shell of a drunkard will be
drawn
to one who is either a drunkard already or has a germ of this passion in
him,
in which case they will develop it by using his organs to satisfy their
craving;
one who died full of sexual passion for a still living partner will
have
its shell drawn to him or her, etc.. We Theosophists, and especially
occultists,
must never lose sight of the profound axiom of the Esoteric Doctrine
which
teaches us that it is we, the living, who are drawn towards the spirits —
but
that the latter can never, even though they would, descend to us, or rather
into
our sphere.”] [105]
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK. CF24-1DL
CHAPTER 6
MM.
DE JELIHOWSKY'S NARRATIVE - (CONTINUED)
THE
quiet life of the sisters at Rougodevo was brought to an end by a terrible
illness
which befell Mme. Blavatsky. Years before, perhaps during her solitary
travels
in the steppes of Asia, she had received a remarkable wound. We could
never
learn how she had met with it. Suffice to say that the profound wound
reopened
occasionally, and during that time she suffered intense agony, often
bringing
on convulsions and a death-like trance. The sickness used to last from
three
to four days, and then the wound would heal as suddenly as it had
reopened,
as though an invisible hand had closed it, and there would remain no
trace
of her illness. But the affrighted family was ignorant at first of this
strange
peculiarity, and their despair and fear were great indeed. A physician
was
sent for to the neighboring town; but he proved of little use, not so much
indeed
through his ignorance of surgery, as owing to a remarkable phenomenon
which
left him almost powerless to act through sheer terror at what he had
witnessed.
He had hardly examined the wound of the patient prostrated before him
in
complete unconsciousness, when suddenly he saw a large, dark hand between his
own
and the wound he was going to anoint. The gaping wound was near the heart,
and
the hand kept slowly moving at several intervals [106] from the neck
down
to the waist. To make his terror worse, there began suddenly in the room
such
a terrific noise, such a chaos of noises and sounds from the ceiling, the
floor,
window-panes, and every bit of furniture in the apartment, that he begged
he
might not be left alone in the room with the insensible patient.
In
the spring of 1860 both sisters left Rougodevo for the Caucasus, on a visit
to
their grandparents, whom they had not seen for long years.
During
the three weeks' journey from Moscow to Tiflis, performed in a coach with
post
horses, there occurred many a strange manifestation.
At
Zadonsk — the territory of the Cossack army of the Don, a place of pilgrimage
in
Russia, where the holy relics of St Tihon are preserved — we halted for rest,
and
I prevailed upon my lazy sister to accompany me to the church to hear the
mass.
We had learned that on that day church service would be conducted near the
said
relics by the then Metropolitan [One of the three “Popes” of Russia, so to
say,
the highest of the ecclesiastical hierarchy of the Orthodox Greek Church]
of
Kiew (at present, in 1884, the Metropolitan of St Petersburg), the famous and
learned
Isidore, [Now a man past ninety years of age] whom both of us had well
known
in our childhood and youth at Tiflis, where he was for so many years the
Exarch
[The spiritual chief of all the archbishops, and the head of the Church
in
Georgia] of Georgia (Caucasus). He had been a friend of our family for years,
and
had often visited us. During service the venerable old man recognized us,
and
immediately dispatched a monk after us, with an invitation to visit him at
the
Lord Archbishop's house. He received us with great kindness. But hardly had
we
taken our seats in the drawing-room of the Holy [107] Metropolitan than
a
terrible hubbub, noises, and loud raps in every conceivable direction burst
suddenly
upon us with a force to which even we were hardly accustomed; every bit
of
furniture in the big audience room cracked and thumped — from the huge
chandelier
under the ceiling, every one of whose crystal drops seemed to become
endowed
with self-motion, down to the table, and under the very elbows of his
holiness
who was leaning on it.
Useless
to say how confused and embarrassed we looked — though truth compels me
to
say that my irreverent sister's embarrassment was tempered with a greater
expression
of fun than I would have wished for. The Metropolitan Isidore saw at
a
glance our confusion, and understood, with his habitual sagacity, the true
cause
of it. He had read a good deal about the so-called “spiritual”
manifestations,
and on seeing a huge armchair gliding toward him, laughed, and
felt
a good deal interested in this phenomenon. He inquired which of us two
sisters
had such a strange power, and wanted to know when and how it had begun
to
manifest itself. We explained to him all the particulars as well as we could,
and
after listening very attentively, he suddenly asked Mme. Blavatsky if she
would
permit him to offer her “invisible” a mental question. Of course, his
holiness
was welcome to it, she answered. We do not feel at liberty to publish
what
the question was. But when his very serious query had received an immediate
answer
— precise and to the very point he wanted it to be — his holiness was so
struck
with amazement, and felt so anxious and interested in the phenomenon,
that
he would not let us go, and detained us with him for over three hours. He
had
even forgotten his dinner. Giving orders not to be interrupted, the
venerable
gentleman continued to hold conversation with [108] his unseen
visitors,
expressing all the while his profound astonishment at their
“all-knowledge”.
[Vseznaïstvo - the word used can hardly be translated by
the
term omniscience; it is an attribute of a less absolute character, and
refers
to the things of the earth.]
When
bidding good-bye to us, the venerable old man blessed the travelers, and,
turning
to Mme. Blavatsky, addressed to her these parting words: —
“As
for you, let not your heart be troubled by the gift you are possessed of,
nor
let it become a source of misery to you hereafter, for it was surely given
to
you for some purpose, and you could not be held responsible for it. Quite the
reverse
! for if you but use it with discrimination, you will be enabled to do
much
good to your fellow-creatures.”
These
are the authentic words of His Holiness, Isidore, the Metropolitan of our
Orthodox
Greek Church of Russia, addressed by him in my presence to my sister
Mme.
Blavatsky. [The Russian Censor has not allowed this letter to appear in the
Rebus
in the original.]
At
one of the stations where we had to change horses, the station-master told us
very
brutally that there were no fresh horses for us, and that we had to wait.
The
sun had not yet gone down, it was full moon, the roads were good, and with
all
this, we were made to lose several hours ! This was provoking. Nevertheless
there
was nothing to be done, the more so as the station-master, who was too
drunk
to be reasoned with, had found fit to disappear, and refused to come and
talk
with us. We had to take the little unpleasantness as easily as we could,
and
settle ourselves as best we knew how for the night; but even here we found
an
impediment. The small station-house had but one room for the travelers [
109]
near a hot and dirty kitchen, and even that one was locked and bolted, and
no
one would open the door for us without special orders. Mme. Blavatsky was
beginning
to lose patience.
“Well,
this is fine ! ” she went on. “We are refused horses, and even the
room
we are entitled to is shut for us ! Why is it shut ? Now, I want to know
and
insist upon it”. But there was no one to tell us the reason why, for the
station-house
seemed utterly empty, and there was not a soul to be seen about.
H.
P. B. approached the little low windows of the locked room, and flattened her
face
against the window panes. “A-ha!” she suddenly exclaimed; “that's
what
it is ! Very well, then, and now I can force the drunken brute to give us
horses
in five minutes.”
And
she started off in search of the station-master. Curious to know what secret
there
was in the mysterious room, I approached the window in my turn, and tried
to
fathom its unknown regions. But although the inside of the room was perfectly
visible
through the window, yet my uninitiated eyes could see nothing in it save
the
ordinary furniture of a dirty station-house, dirty as they all are.
Nevertheless,
to my delight and surprise, ten minutes had not passed when three
excellent
and strong post-horses were brought out, under the supervision of the
station-master
himself, who, pale and confused, had become, as though by magic,
polite
and full of obsequiousness. In a few minutes our carriage was ready, and
we
continued our journey.
To
my question what sorcery had helped her to achieve such change in the drunken
station-master,
who but a moment before would pay no attention to us, Mme.
Blavatsky
only laughed. [110]
“Profit,
and ask no questions!” she said. “Why should you be so
inquisitive
? ” It was but on the following day that she condescended to tell
me
that the wretched station-master must have most certainly taken her for a
witch.
It appears that upon finding him in a back-yard, she had shouted to him
that
the person whose body had been just standing in a coffin in the
“travelers'
room” was there again, and asked him not to detain us, for we
would
otherwise insist upon our right to enter into the room, and would disturb
her
spirit thereby. And when the man upon hearing this opened his eyes, without
appearing
to understand what she was referring to, Mme. Blavatsky hastened then
to
tell him that she was speaking of his deceased wife, whom he had just buried,
and
who was there, and would be there, in that room until we had gone away. She
then
proceeded to describe the ghost in such a minute way that the unfortunate
widower
became as pale as death itself, and hurried away to order fresh horses !
Some
interesting details concerning Mme. Blavatsky's family home at Tiflis have
been
published quite lately in a Russian memoir, “Reminiscences of Prince A.
T.
Bariatinsky”, by General P. S. Nikolaeff, formerly his aide-de-camp at
Tiflis.
This memoir appears in the Historical Vyestnick (Messenger], a Russian
magazine
of high repute, dedicated, as its name shows, to historical Notes,
Memoirs,
and Biographies. Referring to the family of the Fadeefs, General
Nikolaeff,
writing of a period coincident with that of Mme. Blavatsky's visit to
Tiflis,
says: —
“They
were living in those years in the ancient mansion of the Princes
Tchavtchavadze,
the great building itself carrying the imprint of something
weird
or peculiar about it — something that carried one back to the epoch of
Catherine
the Great. A long, lofty, and [111] gloomy hall was hung with the
family
portraits of the Fadeefs and the Princes Dolgorouky. Further on was a
drawing-room,
its walls covered with Gobelin tapestry, a present from the
Empress
Catherine, and near at hand was the apartment of Mademoiselle N. A.
Fadeef
— in itself one of the most remarkable of private museums. The collection
gathered
into this museum attracted attention by their great variety. There were
brought
together the arms and weapons from all the countries of the world;
ancient
crockery, cups, and goblets, archaic house utensils, Chinese and
Japanese
idols, mosaics and images of the Byzantine epoch, Persian and Turkish
carpets,
and fabrics worked with gold and silver, statues, pictures, paintings,
petrified
fossils, and, finally, a very rare and most precious library.
“The
emancipation of the serfs had altered in no way the daily life of the
Fadeefs.
The whole enormous host of their valetaille (ex-serfs), [Forty men and
women;
and this for twenty-two years in Tiflis, where old General Fadeef was one
of
the three Imperial Councillors on the council under the Viceroys from Prince
Porontzoff
to the Grand Duke Michael] having remained with the family as before
their
freedom, only now receiving wages ; and all went on as before with the
members
of that family — that is to say, luxuriously and plentifully (it means
in
their usual hospitable and open way of living). I loved to pass my evenings
in
that home. At precisely a quarter to eleven o'clock, the old general,
brushing
along the parquets with his warmly muffled-up feet, retired to his
apartments.
At that same moment, hurriedly and in silence, the supper was
brought
in on trays, and served in the interior rooms; and immediately after
this
the drawing-room doors would be closely shut, and an animated conversation
take
place on every topic. Modern literature was reviewed and criticized,
contemporary
social questions from Russian life discussed; at one time it was
the
narratives of some visitor, a foreign traveler, or an account given of a
recent
skirmish by one of its heroes, some sunburnt officer just returned from
the
battlefield (in the Caucasian Mountains), would be [112] eagerly
listened
to; at another time the antiquated old Spanish-mason (then an officer
in
the Russian army), Quartano, would drop in and give us thrilling stories from
the
wars of Napoleon the Great. Or, again, 'Radda Bay' — H. P. Blavatsky, the
granddaughter
of General A. M. Fadeef — would put in an appearance, and was made
to
call forth from her past some stormy episode of her American life and travels
;
when the conversation would be sure to turn suddenly upon the mystic subjects,
and
she herself commence to ' evoke spirits.' And then the tall candles would
begin
to burn low, hardly flickering toward the end, the human figures on the
Gobelin
tapestry would seem to awaken and move, and each of us feel queer from
an
involuntary creeping sensation; and this generally lasted until the eastern
portion
of the sky began itself to pale, on the dark face of the southern
night.”
Mme.
Blavatsky resided at Tiflis less than two years, and not more than three in
the
Caucasus. The last year she passed roaming about in Imeretia, Georgia, and
Mingrelia.
Throughout the Trans-Caucasian country, and all along the coasts of
the
Black Sea, the various peoples, notwithstanding that their Christian
persuasion
dates from the fourth century A.D., are as superstitious as any
Pagan,
especially the half-savage, warlike Apkhasians, the Imeretenes, and the
Mingrelians
— the descendants, perhaps, of those ancient Greeks who came with
Jason
in search of the Golden Fleece; for, according to historical legend, it is
the
site of the archaic Colchide, and the river Rion (Pharsis) rolled once upon
a
time its rapid waves upon golden sand and ore instead of the modern gravel and
stones.
Therefore it was but natural that the princes and the landed
“noblemen”,
who live in their “castles” scattered through, and stuck
like
nests in thick foliage, in the dense woods and forests of Mingrelia and
Imeretia,
and who, hardly half a century back, were nearly all [113]
half-brigands
when not full-blown highwaymen, who are fanatical as Neapolitan
monks,
and ignorant as Italian noblemen — that they should, we say, have viewed
such
a character as was then Mme. Blavatsky in the light of a witch, when not in
that
of a beneficent magician. As, later in life, wherever she went, her friends
in
those days were many, but her enemies still more numerous. If she cured and
helped
those who believed themselves sincerely bewitched, it was only to make
herself
cruel enemies of those who were supposed to have bewitched and spoiled
the
victims. Refusing the presents and “thanks” of those she relieved of the
“evil
eye” — she rejected, at the same time, with equal contempt, the bribes
offered
by their enemies. No one, at any rate, and whatever her other faults may
be,
has succeeded in showing her a mercenary character, or one bent upon
money-making
for any motive. Thus, while people of the class of the Princes
Gouriel,
and of the Princes Dadiani and Abashedsé, were ranked among her best
friends,
some others — all those who had a family hatred for the above named —
were,
of course, her sworn enemies. In those days, we believe even now, these
countries
— especially Mingrelia and Imeretia — were regular hot-beds of titled
paupers;
of princes, descendants of deposed and conquered sovereigns, and feud
raged
among them as during the Middle Ages. These were and have remained her
enemies.,
Some years later, to these were added all the bigots, church-goers,
missionaries,
to say nothing of American and English spiritualists, French
spiritists,
and their host of mediums. Stories after stories were invented of
her,
circulated and accepted by all, except those who knew her well — as facts.
Calumny
was rife, and her enemies now hesitate at no falsehood that can injure
her
character.[114]
She
defied them all, and would submit to no restraint; would stoop to adopt no
worldly
method of propitiating public opinion. She avoided society, showing her
scorn
of its idols, and was therefore treated as a dangerous iconoclast. All her
sympathies
went toward, and with, that tabooed portion of humanity which society
pretends
to ignore and avoid, while secretly running after its more or less
renowned
members — the necromancers, the obsessed, the possessed, and such like
mysterious
personages. The native Koodiani (magicians, sorcerers), Persian
thaumaturgists,
and old Armenian hags — healers and fortune-tellers — were the
first
she generally sought out and took under her protection. Finally public
opinion
became furious, and society — that mysterious somebody in general, and
nobody
in particular — made an open levee of arms against one of its own members
who
dared to defy its time-hallowed laws, and act as no respectable person would
—
namely, roaming in the forests alone, on horseback, and preferring smoky huts
and
their dirty inmates to brilliant drawing-rooms and their frivolous denizens.
Her
occult powers all this while, instead of weakening, became every day
stronger,
and she seemed finally to subject to her direct will every kind of
manifestation.
The whole country was talking of her. The superstitious Gooriel
and
Mingrelian nobility began very soon to regard her as a magician, and people
came
from afar off to consult her about their private affairs. She had long
since
given up communication through raps, and preferred — what was a far more
rapid
and satisfactory method — to answer people either verbally or by means of
direct
writing. [This was done always in full consciousness, and simply, as she
explained,
watching people's thoughts as they evolved out of their head in
spiral
luminous smoke, sometimes in jets of what might be taken for some radiant
material,
and settled in distinct pictures and images around them. Often such
thoughts
and answers to them would find themselves impressed in her own brain,
couched
in words and sentences in the same way as original thoughts do. But, so
far
as we are all able to understand, the former visions are always more
trustworthy,
as they are independent and distinct from the seer’s own
impressions,
belonging to pure clairvoyance, not “thought transference”, which
is
a process always liable to get mixed up with one’s own more vivid mental
impressions.]
At times, during such process, Mme [115] Blavatsky seemed to
fall
into a kind of coma, or magnetic sleep, with eyes wide open, though even
then
her hand never ceased to move, and continued its writing.[“Very naturally”,
she
explains, “since it was neither magnetic sleep", nor coma, but simply a
state
of intense concentration, an attention only too necessary during such
concentration,
when the least distraction leads to a mistake. People knowing but
of
mediumistic clairvoyance, and not of our philosophy and mode of operation,
often
fall into such error”.] When thus answering mental questions, the answers
were
rarely unsatisfactory. Generally they astonished the querists — friends and
enemies.
Meanwhile
sporadic phenomena were gradually dying away in her presence. They
still
occurred, but very rarely, though they were always very remarkable. We
give
one.
It
must, however, be explained that, some months previous to that event, Mme.
Blavatsky
was taken very ill. From the verbal statements of her relatives,
recorded
under their dictation, we learn that no doctor could understand her
illness.
It was one of those mysterious nervous diseases that baffle science,
and
elude the grasp of everyone but a very expert psychologist. Soon after the
commencement
of that illness, she began — as she repeatedly told her friends —
“to
lead a double life”. What she meant by it, no one of [116] the good
people
of Mingrelia could understand, of course. But this is how she herself
describes
that state: —
“Whenever
I was called by name, I opened my eyes upon hearing it, and was
myself,
my own personality in every particular. As soon as I was left alone,
however,
I relapsed into my usual, half-dreamy condition, and became somebody
else
(who, namely, Madame. B. will not tell). I had simply a mild fever that
consumed
me slowly but surely, day after day, with entire loss of appetite, and
finally
of hunger, as I would feel none for days, and often went a week without
touching
any food whatever, except a little water, so that in four months I was
reduced
to a living skeleton. In cases when I was interrupted, when in my other
self,
by the sound of my present name being pronounced, and while I was
conversing
in my dream life — say at half a sentence either spoken by me or
those
who were with my second me at the time — and opened my eyes to answer the
call,
I used to answer very rationally, and understood all, for I was never
delirious.
But no sooner had I closed my eyes again than the sentence which had
been
interrupted was completed by my other self, continued from the word, or
even
half the word, it had stopped at. When awake, and myself, I remembered well
who
I was in my second capacity, and what I had been and was doing. When
somebody
else, i.e. the personage I had become, I know I had no idea of who was
H.
P. Blavatsky! I was in another far-off country, a totally different
individuality
from myself, and had no connection at all with my actual life.”
Such
is Mme. Blavatsky's analysis of her state at that time. She was residing
then
at Ozoorgetty, a military settlement in Mingrelia, where she had bought a
house.
It is a little town, lost among the old forests and woods, which, in
those
days, had neither roads nor conveyances, save of the most primitive kind,
and
[117] which, to the very time of the last Russo-Turkish war, was
unknown
outside of Caucasus. The only physician of the place, the army surgeon,
could
make nothing of her symptoms; but as she was visibly and rapidly
declining,
he packed her off to Tiflis to her friends. Unable to go on
horseback,
owing to her great weakness, and a journey in a cart being deemed
dangerous,
she was sent off in a large native boat along the river — a journey
of
four days to Kutais — with four native servants only to take care of her.
What
took place during that journey we are unable to state precisely; nor is
Mme.
Blavatsky herself certain of it, since her weakness was so great that she
lay
like one apparently dead until her arrival. In that solitary boat, on a
narrow
river, hedged on both sides by centenarian forests, her position must
have
been precarious.
The
little stream they were sailing along was, though navigable, rarely, if
ever,
used as a means of transit, at any rate not before the war. Hence the
information
we have got came solely from her servants and was very confused. It
appears,
however, that as they were gliding slowly along the narrow stream,
cutting
its way between two steep and woody banks, the servants were several
times
during three consecutive nights frightened out of their senses by seeing,
what
they swore was their mistress, gliding off from the boat, and across the
water
in the direction of the forests, while the body of that same mistress was
lying
prostrate on her bed at the bottom of the boat. Twice the man who towed
the
canoe, upon seeing the “form”, ran away shrieking, and in great terror.
Had
it not been for a faithful old servant who was taking care of her, the boat
and
the patient would have been abandoned [118] in the middle of the
stream.
On the last evening, the servant swore he saw two figures, while the
third
— his mistress, in flesh and bone — was sleeping before his eyes. No
sooner
had they arrived at KoutaĂŻs, where Mme. Blavatsky had a distant relative
residing,
than all the servants, with the exception of the old butler, left her,
and
returned no more.
It
was with great difficulty that she was transported to Tiflis. A carriage and
a
friend of the family were sent to meet her; and she was brought into the house
of
her friends apparently dying.
She
never talked upon that subject with anyone. But, as soon as she was restored
to
life and health, she left the Caucasus, and went to Italy. Yet it was before
her
departure from the country in 1863 that the nature of her powers seems to
have
entirely changed.
One
afternoon, very weak and delicate still, after the illness just described,
Mme.
Blavatsky came in to her aunt's, N. A. Fadeef's, room. After a few words of
conversation,
remarking that she felt tired and sleepy, she was offered to rest
upon
a sofa. Hardly had her head touched her cushion when she fell into a
profound
sleep. Her aunt had quietly resumed some writing she had interrupted to
talk
with her niece, when suddenly soft but quite audible steps in the room
behind
her chair made her rapidly turn her head to see who was the intruder, as
she
was anxious that Mme. Blavatsky should not be disturbed. The room was empty!
there
was no other living person in it but herself and her sleeping niece, yet
the
steps continued audibly, as though of a heavy person treading softly, the
floor
creaking all the while. They approached the sofa, and suddenly ceased.
Then
she heard stronger sounds, as though someone was whispering near Mme.
Blavatsky,
and [119] presently a book placed on a table near the sofa was
seen
by N. A. Padeef to open, and its pages kept turning to and fro, as if an
invisible
hand were busy at it. Another book was snatched from the library
shelves,
and flew in that same direction.
More
astonished than frightened — for everyone in the house had been trained in
and
become quite familiar with such manifestations — N. A. Fadeef arose from her
arm-chair
to awaken her niece, hoping thereby to put a stop to the phenomena;
but
at the same moment a heavy arm-chair moved at the other end of the room, and
rattling
on the floor, glided toward the sofa. The noise it made awoke Mme.
Blavatsky,
who, upon opening her eyes, inquired of the invisible presence what
was
the matter. A few more whisperings, and all relapsed into quietness and
silence,
and there was nothing more of the sort during the rest of the evening.
At
the date at which we write, every phenomenon independent of her will, except
such
as the one described, and that Mme. Blavatsky attributes to quite a
different
cause than spiritual manifestations, has for more than twenty years
entirely
ceased. At what time this complete change in her occult powers was
wrought
we are unable to say, as she was far away from our observation, and
spoke
of it but rarely — never unless distinctly asked in our correspondence to
answer
the question. From her letters we learnt that she was always traveling,
rarely
settling for any length of time in one place. And we believe her
statements
with regard to her powers to have been entirely true when she wrote
to
tell us, “Now (in 1866) I shall never be subjected to external
influences.”
It is not H. P. B. who was from that time forth victim to “
influences”
which would have without doubt triumphed over a less strong nature
than
was hers; [120] but, on the contrary, it is she who subjected these
influences
— whatever they may be — to her will.
“The
last vestige of my psycho-physical weakness is gone, to return no
more”,
writes Mme. Blavatsky in a letter to a relation. “I am cleansed and
purified
of that dreadful attraction to myself of stray spooks and ethereal
affinities.
I am free, free, thanks to THOSE whom I now bless at every hour of
my
life”. “I believe in this statement”, said, in a conversation in May
1884
at Paris, her sister, Mme. Jelihowsky, “ the more so as for nearly five
years
we had a personal opportunity of following the various and gradual phases
in
the transformations of that force. At Pskoff and Rougodevo it happened very
often
that she could not control, nor even stop, its manifestations. After that
she
appeared to master it more fully every day, until after her extraordinary
and
protracted illness at Tiflis she seemed to defy and subject it entirely to
her
will. This was proved by her stopping any such phenomena at her will, and by
previous
arrangement for days and weeks at a time. Then, when the term was over,
she
could produce them at her command, and leaving the choice of what should
happen
to those present. In short, as already said, it is the firm belief of all
that
there, where a less strong nature would have been surely wrecked in the
struggle,
her indomitable will found somehow or other the means of subjecting
the
world of the invisibles — to the denizens of which she has ever refused the
name
of “spirits” and souls — to her own control. Let it be clearly
understood,
however, that H. P. B. has never pretended to be able to control
real
spirits, i.e. the spiritual monads, but only Elementals; as also to be able
to
keep at bay the shells of the dead.”] [121]
-------
CHAPTER 7
FROM
APPRENTICESHIP TO DUTY
PROBABLY
the years 1867 to 1870, if the story of these could be properly told,
would
be found by far the most interesting of Mme. Blavatsky's eventful life,
but
it is impossible for me to do more at present than indicate that they were
associated
with great progress in the expansion of her occult knowledge, and
passed
in the East. The two or three years intervening between her residence at
there
would be no necessity for holding back any information concerning these —
the
latest of her relatively aimless wanderings — of which I might have gained
possession,
but no watchful relatives were with her to record what passed, and
her
own recollections give us none but bare outlines of her adventures.
In
1870 she came back from the East by a steamer via the then newly-opened Suez
Canal,
and after spending a short time in Piraeus took passage for Spezzia on
board
a Greek vessel, which met with a terrible catastrophe, and was blown up by
an
explosion of gunpowder and fireworks forming part of the cargo. Mme.
Blavatsky
was one of a very small number of passengers whose lives were saved.
The
castaways were rescued with no more than the clothes they wore when picked
out
of the [122] water, and were momentarily provided for by the Greek
Government,
who forwarded them to various destinations. Mme. Blavatsky went to
Alexandria
and to Cairo, where, amid much temporary inconvenience, she waited
till
supplies of money reached her from Russia. I have headed this chapter
“From
Apprenticeship to Duty”, because that is the great transition marked
by
the date of Mme. Blavatsky's return to Europe in 1870. Till that period her
life
had altogether been spent in the passionate search for occult knowledge, on
which
her inborn instincts impelled her from her earliest youth. This had now
come
upon her in ample measure. The natural-born faculties of mediumship which
had
surrounded her earlier years with a coruscation of wonders had given place
now
to attributes for which Western students of psychic mysteries at that date
had
no name. The time had not come for even the partial revelations concerning
the
great system of occult initiation as practised in the East, which has been
embodied
in books published within the last few years. Mme. Blavatsky already
knew
that she had a task before her — the task of introducing some knowledge
concerning
these mysteries to the world, — but she was sorely puzzled to decide
how
she should begin it. She had to do the best she could in making the world
acquainted
with the idea that the latent potentialities in human nature — in
connection
with which psychic phenomena of various kinds were already attracting
the
attention of large classes in both hemispheres — were of a kind which,
properly
directed, would lead to the infinite spiritual exaltation of their
possessors,
while wrongly directed they were capable of leading downward towards
disastrous
results of almost commensurate extent. She alone, at the period I
refer
to, appreciated the magnitude of her mission, and if she [123] did
not
adequately appreciate the difficulties in her way, she had at all events no
companion
to share her sense of the fact that these difficulties were very
great.
Probably
she would be among those most willing to recognise, looking back now
upon
the steps she took in the beginning, that she went to work the wrong way,
but
very few people who have had a long and arduous battle in life to fight —
especially
when that fight has been chiefly waged against such moral antagonists
as
bigotry and ignorance — would be in a position at the close of their efforts
to
regard their earliest measures with satisfied complacency.
The
only lever which, as the matter presented itself in the beginning to Mme.
Blavatsky's
mind, seemed available for her to work with, was the widespread and
growing
belief of large numbers of civilized people in the phenomena and
somewhat
too hastily formed theories of spiritualism. She set to work in Egypt —
finding
herself there for the moment — to found a society which should have the
investigation
of spiritualistic phenomena for its purpose, and which she
designed
to lead through paths of higher knowledge in the end. Some, among the
many
misrepresentations which have made her life one long struggle with calumny
from
this time onward, arose from this innocently intended measure. Because she
set
on foot her quasi-spiritualistic society, she has been regarded as having
been
committed at that date to an acceptance of the theory of psychic phenomena
which
spiritualists hold. It will have been seen, however, from the quotations I
have
given from her sister's narrative that, even on her first return from the
East
in 1858, she was emphatic in repudiating this view.
One
of the persons who sought Mme. Blavatsky's acquaintance in connection with
this
abortive society [124] was the subsequently notorious Mme. Coulomb,
attached
at that time to the personnel of a small hotel at Cairo, who afterwards
finding
her way with her husband, in a state of painful destitution, to India,
fastened
herself but too securely on Mme. Blavatsky's hospitality at Bombay —
only
to repay this in the end by rendering herself the tool of an infamous
attack
made upon the Theosophical Society in the person of its Founder by a
missionary
magazine at Madras. Of this I shall have occasion to speak again
later
on.The narrative of the period beginning in 1871, on which I am now
entering,
has been prepared, with a good deal of assistance from Mme. Blavatsky
herself,
from writings by relatives and intimate friends of her later years. It
would
be tedious to the reader if this were divided into separate fragments of
testimony,
and I shall therefore prefer — except in some special cases later on
—
to weld these narratives into one, and the use of the plural pronoun “we”
will
hereafter sufficiently identify passages which have a composite authorship.
In
1871 Mme. Blavatsky wrote from Cairo to tell her friends that she had just
returned
from India, and had been wrecked somewhere en passant (near Spezzia).
She
had to wait in Egypt for some time before she returned home, meanwhile she
determined
to establish a Société Spirite for the investigation of
mediums and
phenomena
according to Allen Kardec's theories and philosophy, since there was
no
other way to give people a chance to see for themselves how mistaken they
were.
She would first give free play to an already established and accepted
teaching
and then, when the public would see that nothing was coming out of it,
she
would offer her own explanations. To accomplish this object, she said, she
was
ready to go to any amount of trouble — [125] even to allowing herself
to
be regarded for a time as a helpless medium. “They know no better, and it
does
me no harm — for I will very soon show them the difference between a
passive
medium and an active doer”. she explains.
A
few weeks later a new letter was received. In this one she showed herself full
of
disgust for the enterprise, which had proved a perfect failure. She had
written,
it seems, to England and France for a medium, but without success. En
désespoir
de cause, she had surrounded herself with amateur mediums — French
female
spiritists, mostly beggarly tramps, when not adventuresses in the rear of
M.
de Lesseps' army of engineers and workmen on the canal of Suez.
“They
steal the Society's money”, she wrote, “ they drink like sponges,
and
I now caught them cheating most shamefully our members, who come to
investigate
the phenomena, by bogus manifestations. I had very disagreeable
scenes
with several persons who held me alone responsible for all this. So I
ordered
them out. . . . The Société Spirite has not lasted a
fortnight — it is a
heap
of ruins, majestic, but as suggestive as those of the Pharaoh's tombs. ...
To
wind up the comedy with a drama, I got nearly shot by a madman — a Greek, who
had
been present at the only two public séances we held, and got possessed I
suppose
by some vile spook.” [This literal translation of a letter written by
Mme
Blavatsky to her aunt fourteen years back shows that she never changed her
way
of viewing communication with “spirits” for physical phenomena, as she was
accused
of doing when in America.]
She
broke off all connection with the “mediums”, shut up her
Société, and
went
to live in Boulak near the Museum. Then it seems, she came again in contact
with
her old friend the Copt of mysterious fame, of whom [126] mention has
been
made in connection with her earliest visit to Egypt, at the outset of her
travels.
For several weeks he was her only visitor. He had a strange reputation
in
Egypt, and the masses regarded him as a magician. One gentleman, who knew him
at
this time, declared that he had outlined and predicted for him for
twenty-five
years to come nearly all his (the narrator's) daily life, even to
the
day of his death. The Egyptian high officials pretending to laugh at him
behind
his back, dreaded and visited him secretly. Ismail Pasha, the Khedive,
had
consulted him more than once, and later on would not consent to follow his
advice
to resign. These visits of an old man, who was reputed hardly ever to
stir
from his house (situated at about ten miles from town), to a foreigner were
much
commented upon. New slanders and scandals were set on foot. The sceptics
who
had, moved by idle curiosity, visited the Société and
witnessed the whole
failure,
made capital of the thing. Ridiculing the idea of phenomena, they had
as
a natural result declared such claims to be fraud and charlatanry all round.
Conveniently
inverting the facts of the case, they even went the length of
maintaining
that instead of paying the mediums and the expenses of the Society,
it
was Mme. Blavatsky who had herself been paid, and had attempted to palm off
juggler
tricks as genuine phenomena. The groundless inventions and rumors thus
set
on foot by her enemies, mostly the discharged “French-women mediums”,
did
not prevent Mme. Blavatsky from pursuing her studies, and proving to every
honest
investigator that her extraordinary powers of clairvoyance and
clairaudience
were facts, and independent of mere physical manifestations, over
which
she possessed an undeniable control. Also that her power, by simply
looking
at them, of setting objects in motion and vibration [127] without
any
direct contact with them, and sometimes at a great distance, instead of
deserting
her or even diminishing, had increased with years. A Russian
gentleman,
an acquaintance of Mme. B., who happened to visit Egypt at that time,
sent
his friends the most enthusiastic letters about Mme. Blavatsky. Thus he
wrote
to a brother-officer in the same regiment a letter now in the possession
of
her relatives, and from which we translate: “She is a marvel, an
unfathomable
mystery. That which she produces is simply phenomenal; and without
believing
any more in spirits than I ever did, I am ready to believe in
witchcraft.
If it is after all but jugglery, then we have in Mme. Blavatsky a
woman
who beats all the Boscos and Robert Houdin's of the century by her
address.
. . . Once I showed her a closed medallion containing the portrait of
one
person and the hair of another, an object which I had had in my possession
but
a few months, which was made at Moscow, and of which very few know, and she
told
me without touching it, ' Oh ! it is your godmother's portrait and your
cousin's
hair. Both are dead,' and she proceeded forthwith to describe them, as
though
she had both before her eyes. Now, godmother, as you know, who left my
eldest
daughter her fortune, is dead fifteen years ago. How could she know ! ”
etc..
In
an illustrated paper of the time there is a story told of Mme. Blavatsky by
another
gentleman. He met her at a table d'hôte with some friends in a hotel
of
Alexandria.
Refusing to go with these to the theatre after dinner, they remained
alone,
sitting on a sofa and talking. Before the sofa there stood a little
tea-tray,
on which the waiter had placed for Mr N----- a bottle of liqueur, some
wine,
a wine-glass, and a tumbler. As he was carrying the glass with its
contents
to his mouth, without any visible cause, it broke in his hand into many
pieces.
She [128] laughed, appearing overjoyed, and made the remark that
she
hated liqueurs and wine and could hardly tolerate those who used them too
freely.
The story goes on ...
“
' You do not mean to infer that it is you who broke my wine-glass . . . ? It
is
simply an accident. . . . The glass is very thin ; it was perhaps cracked,
and
I squeezed it too strongly . . .!' I lied purposely, for I had just made the
mental
remark that it seemed very strange and incomprehensible, the glass being
very
thick and strong, just as a verre à liqueur would be.”
But
I wanted to draw her out.“
She
looked at me very seriously, and her eyes flashed. ' What will you bet,' she
asked,
' that I do not do it again ?'
”'
Well, we will try on the spot. If you do, I will be the first to proclaim
you
a true magician. If not, we will have a good laugh at you or your spirits
to-morrow
at the Consulate. . . .' And saying so, I half-filled the tumbler with
wine
and prepared to drink it. But no sooner had the glass touched my lips than
I
felt it shattered between my fingers, and my hand bled, wounded by a broken
piece
in my instinctive act at grasping the tumbler together when I felt myself
losing
hold of it.“
"Entre
les lèvres et la coupe, il y a quelquefois une grande distance,'' she
observed
sententiously, and left the room, laughing in my face most
outrageously”.
“
During the latter years”, Mme. de Jelihowsky states, “many were the
changes
that had taken place in our family: our grandfather and our aunt's
husband,
who had both occupied very high official positions in Tiflis, had died,
and
the whole family had left the Caucasus to settle permanently in Odessa. H.
P.
Blavatsky had not visited the country for years, and there remained in Tiflis
but
myself with my family and a number of old servants, formerly serfs of the
family,
who, once liberated, could not be kept without wages in the house they
had
been born in, and were gradually being sent away. These people, some of whom
owing
to old age were unable to work for their living, came constantly to me
[129]
for help. Unable to pension so many, I did what I could for them ;
among
other things I had obtained a permanent home at the City Refuge House for
two
old men, late servants of the family: a cook called Maxim and his brother
Piotre
— once upon a time a very decent footman, but at the time of the event I
refer
to an incorrigible drunkard, who had lost his arm in consequence.”
That
summer we had gone to reside during the hot months of the year at Manglis —
the
headquarters of the regiment of Erivan — some thirty miles from town, and
Mme.
Blavatsky was in Egypt. I had just received the news that my sister had
returned
from India, and was going to remain for some time at Cairo. We
corresponded
very rarely, at long intervals, and our letters were generally
short.
But after a prolonged silence I received from H. P. B. a very long and
interesting
letter.“
A
portion of it consisted of fly-sheets torn out from a note-book, and these
were
all covered with pencil-writing. The strange events they recorded had been
all
put down on the spot — some under the shadow of the great Pyramid of Cheops,
and
some of them inside Pharaoh's Chamber. It appears that Mme. B. had gone
there
several times, once with a large company, some of whom were
spiritualists.[Some
most wonderful phenomena were described by some of her
companions
as having taken place in broad daylight in the desert when they were
sitting
under a rock; whilst other notes in Mme Blavatsky’s writing recorded the
strange
sight she saw in the Cimmerian darkness of the King’s Chamber, when she
has
passed a night alone comfortable settled inside a sarcophagus.]”
'Let
me know, Vera', she wrote, 'whether it is true that the old Pietro is dead
?
He must have died last night or at some time yesterday' (the date on the stamp
of
the envelope showed that it had left Egypt ten days previous to the day on
which
it was received). 'Just fancy what happened ! A friend of mine, a young
English
[130] lady, and a medium, stood writing mechanically on bits of
paper,
leaning upon an old Egyptian tomb. The pencil had begun tracing perfect
gibberish
— in characters that had never existed here, as a philologist told us
—
when suddenly, and as I was looking from behind her back, they changed into
what
I thought were Russian letters. My attention having been called elsewhere,
I
had just left her, when I heard people saying that what she had written was
now
evidently in some existing characters, but that neither she nor anyone else
could
read them. I came back just in time to prevent her from destroying that
slip
of paper as she had done with the rest, and was rewarded. Possessing myself
of
the rejected slip, fancy my astonishment on finding it contained in Russian
an
evident apostrophe to myself!”
'
“Barishnya (little or' young miss '), dear baryshnya! ” said the writer,
“help,
oh help me, miserable sinner! ... I suffer: drink, drink, give me a
drink!
. . . I suffer, I suffer!” From this term baryshnya — a title our old
servants
will, I see, use with us two even after our hair will have grown white
with
age — I understood immediately that the appeal came from one of our old
servants,
and took therefore the matter in hand by arming myself with a pencil
to
record what I could myself see. I found the name Piotre Koutcherof echoed in
my
mind quite distinctly, and I saw before me an indistinguishable mass of grey
smoke
— a formless pillar — and thought I heard it repeat the same words.
Furthermore,
I saw that he had died in Dr Gorolevitch's hospital attached to the
City
Refuge, the Tiflis workhouse where you had placed them both. Moreover, as I
made
out, it is you who placed him there in company with his brother, our old
Maxim,
who had died a few days before him. You had never written about poor
Maxim's
death. Do tell me whether it is so or not. . . .'
Further
on followed her description of the whole vision as she had it, later on,
in
the evening when alone, and the authentic words pronounced by ' Piotre's
spook'
as she called it. The ' spirit' (?) was bitterly complaining of thirst
and
was becoming quite desperate. It was punishment, it said — and the spook
seemed
to know it [131] well, — for his drunkenness during the lifetime of
that
personality ! . . . 'An agony of thirst that nothing could quench — an ever
living
fire,' as she explained it.”
Mme.
Blavatsky's letter ended with a postscript, in which she notified her
sister
that her doubts had been all settled. She saw the astral spooks of both
the
brothers — one harmless and passive, the other active and dangerous. [How
dangerous
is the latter kind was proved on the spot. Miss O - , the medium, a
young
lady of hardly twenty, governess in a rich family of bankers, an extremely
modest
and gentle girl, had hardly written the Russian words addressed to Mme
Blavatsky,
when she was seized with a trembling, and asked to drink. When water
was
brought she threw it away, and went on asking for a drink. Wine was offered
her
- she greedily drank it, and began drinking one glass after another until,
to
the horror of all, she fell into convulsions, and cried for “wine-a drink!”
till
she fainted away, and was carried home in a carriage. She had an illness
after
this that lasted several weeks. - [H.P.B.]Upon the receipt of this letter,
her
sister was struck with surprise. Ignorant herself of the death of the
parties
mentioned, she telegraphed immediately to town, and the answer received
from
Dr Gorolevitch corroborated the news announced by Mme. Blavatsky in every
particular.
Piotre had died on the very same day and date as given in H. P.
Blavatsky's
letter, and his brother two days earlier.
Disgusted
with the failure of her spiritist society and the gossip it provoked,
Mme.
Blavatsky soon went home via
longer,
making a voyage to
Russian
friends. Accounts of some of the incidents of her journey found their
way
into the French and even American papers. At the end of 1872 she returned in
her
usual way without warning, and surprised her family at Odessa.[132]
-------
CHAPTER 8
RESIDENCE
IN
[132]
IN the beginning of 1873 Mme. Blavatsky left
first
instance to
and
her occult teachers in the East was already established on that intimate
footing
which has rendered her whole subsequent life subject to its practical
direction.
It is unnecessary to inquire why she adopted this or that course; we
shall
rarely discover commonplace motives for her action, and frequently she
herself
would be no better able to say “why” she might be at any given moment
arranging
to go here or there than the merest stranger present. The immediate
motive
of her proceedings would be the direction she would receive through
occult
channels of perception, and for herself, rebellious and uncontrollable
though
she had been in earlier life, “an order” from “her master” was now enough
to
send her forward on the most uninviting errand, in patient confidence that
good
results would ensue, and that whatever might be thus ordered, would
assuredly
prove for the best.
The
position is so unlike any which the experience of ordinary mundane life
supplies
that I may usefully endeavor to explain the relationship which exists
in
connection with, and arising out of, occult initiation in the East between a
pupil,
or chela, of the esoteric or [133] occult doctrine and his teacher,
master,
or guru. I have known many chelas within the last few years, and I can
speak
on the subject from information that is not exclusively derived even from
that
source.
The
primary motive which governs people who become chelas is the desire to
achieve
moral and spiritual exaltation that may lead directly to a higher state
of
being than can be hoped for by the unassisted operation of the normal law of
nature.
Referring back to the esoteric view of the human soul's progress, it
will
be seen that people may often be impelled, as Mme. Blavatsky was, for
instance,
from childhood, by an inborn craving for occult instruction and
psychic
development. Such people seek initiation under the guidance, as it were,
of
a commanding instinct, which is unlike the intellectually formed purpose to
accomplish
a spiritual achievement that I have assigned above to chelas as their
primary
motive. But in truth the motive would be regarded by occultists as the
same
at different stages of development. For the normal law of Nature is that a
soul
having accomplished a certain amount of progress — along the path of
spiritual
evolution — in one physical life (one incarnation), will be reborn
without
losing the attributes thus acquired. All these constitute what are
loosely
spoken of as inborn tendencies, natural tastes, inclinations, and so
forth.
And thus, whether a chela is then, for the first time, seeking initiation
or
watched over by a guru from his last birth, the primary motive of his effort
is
the same.
And
this being his own spiritual advancement, it may be, that if circumstances
do
not require him to play an active part in any work in the world, his duty
will,
to a large extent, be concentrated on his own interior life. Such a man's
chief
obligation towards the public at large, therefore, will be to conceal the
fact
that he is a chela, [134] for he has not yet, by the hypothesis,
attained
the right to choose who shall and who shall not be introduced to the
“mysteries”.
He merely has to keep the secrets entrusted to him as such. On the
other
hand, the exigencies of his service may require him to perform tasks in
the
world which involve the partial explanation of his relationship with his
masters,
and then a very much more embarrassing career lies before him. For such
a
chela — however perfect his occult communications may be, through the channel
of
his own psychic faculties, between himself and his masters — is never allowed
to
regard himself for an instant as a blind automaton in their hands. He is, on
the
contrary, a responsible agent who is left to perform his task by the light
of
his own sagacity, and he will never receive “orders” which seriously conflict
with
that principle. These will be only of a general character, or, where they
refer
to details, will be of a kind that do not, in occult phrase, interfere
with
Karma; that is to say, that do not supersede the agent's moral
responsibility.
Finally,
it should be understood in regard to “orders” among initiates in
occultism,
that the order of an occult guru to his chela differs in a very
important
respect from the order of an officer to his soldier. It is a direction
that
in the nature of things would never be enforced, for the disregard of which
there
could be no positive or prescribed penalty, and which is only imposed upon
the
chela by the consideration that if he gets an order and does not obey it, he
is
unlikely to get any more. It is to be regarded as an order because of the
ardor
of obedience on the side of the chela, whose aspirations, by the
hypothesis,
are wholly centered on the masters. The service thus rendered is
especially
of the kind which has been described as perfect freedom. [135]
All
this must be borne in mind by any reader who would understand Mme. Blavatsky
and
the foundation of the Theosophical Society, and must be rigorously applied
to
the narrative of her later life. A constant perplexity arises, for people who
are
slightly acquainted with the circumstances of her career, from the
indiscretions
in connection with the management of the Theosophical Society
which
she has frequently fallen into. How can it be that the Mahatmas — her
occult
teachers and masters, whose insight is represented as being so great,
whose
interest in the theosophical movement is said to be so keen, whose wisdom
is
vaunted so enthusiastically by their adherents — permit their agent Mme.
Blavatsky,
with whom it is alleged they are in constant communication, to make
mistakes
which most people in her place would have avoided, to trust persons
almost
obviously unworthy of her confidence, to associate herself with
proceedings
that tend to lower the dignity of her enterprise, to lose temper and
time
with assailants who might be calmly ignored, and to spend her psychic
energy
in the wrong places, with the wrong people, and at the wrong moments. The
solution
of the puzzle is to be found entirely in the higher spiritual aspects
of
the undertaking. The Theosophical Society is by a great way not the only
instrument
through which the Mahatmas are working in the world to foster the
growth
of spirituality among mankind, but it is the one enterprise that has been
confided,
in a large measure, to Mme. Blavatsky. If she were to fail with it,
the
Mahatma energy concerned would be spent not in trying to bolster up her
failure,
but in some quite different direction. If she succeeds with it, the
principles
of moral responsibility are best vindicated by leaving her to
struggle
through with her work in her own way. A general on a campaign sending
[136]
an officer to perform a specific duty is mainly concerned with the
result
to be gained. If he thinks he can promote this by interfering with fresh
orders,
he does so. But by the hypothesis, a Mahatma interfering with his
officer
is throwing into confusion the operation of the laws of Nature which
have
to do with the causes — efficient on a plane above this of physical
incarnation
— that are generated by what we call moral responsibility. Of course
it
is open to people who know nothing of Eastern occultism, nor of superior
planes
in Nature and so forth, to put all this aside and judge Mme. Blavatsky's
action
by commonplace prosaic standards; but it is not reasonable for the
considerable
number of people who in various ways are quite ready to profess
belief
in the Mahatmas, and in the reality of that occult world in which Mme.
Blavatsky
is regarded by most theosophists as having been initiated, to say, in
spite
of these beliefs, that the action of the Mahatmas in leaving Mme.
Blavatsky
to make mistakes and trust the wrong people and so forth is
unintelligible.
It is not unintelligible in principle, even though, as I have
indicated
a page or two back, Mme. Blavatsky will sometimes receive orders the
immediate
motive of which she does not understand, but obeys none the less. This
condition
of things does not violate the rule about not converting a responsible
chela
into a blind automaton. Such interferences would never be found to take
place
under conditions which would discharge the agent of moral responsibility
for
the manner in which he might resume the guidance of his enterprise from the
point
to which obedience to the order received might have carried on or diverted
him.
No
special interest attaches to Mme. Blavatsky's brief residence in Paris in
1873,
where she stayed with a cousin of hers, Nicolas Hahn, Rue de
I'Université,
for
[137] two months. She was directed to visit the United States, and make
that
place for a time the scene of her operations.
She
arrived at New York on 7th July 1873, and resided in that city — with the
exception
of a few weeks and months when she had to visit other cities and
places
— for over six years, after which time she got her naturalization papers.
Although,
as will have been seen from Mme. de Jelihowsky's testimony, she was
emphatic,
even in 1858, in claiming for most of the phenomena that took place in
her
presence a very different origin from that usually assigned to such
phenomena
by spiritualists, the experience of spiritualism and mediumship that
she
acquired in America greatly enlarged her views on this subject. In 1875 she
wrote
home: —
“The
more I see of mediums — for the United States are a true nursery, the most
prolific
hot-bed for mediums and sensitives of all kinds, genuine and artificial
—
the more I see the danger humanity is surrounded with. Poets speak of the thin
partition
between this world and the other. They are blind: there is no
partition
at all except the difference of states in which the living and the
dead
exist, and the grossness of the physical senses of the majority of mankind.
Yet,
these senses are our salvation. They were given to us by a wise and
sagacious
mother and nurse — Nature; for, otherwise, individuality and even
personality
would have become impossible: the dead would be ever merging into
the
living, and the latter assimilating the former. Were there around us but one
variety
of 'spirits' — as well call the dregs of wine, spirits — the reliquae of
those
mortals who are dead and gone, one could reconcile oneself with it. We
cannot
avoid, in some way or other, assimilating our dead, and little by little,
and
unconsciously to ourselves, we become they — even physically, especially in
the
unwise West, where cremation is unknown. We breathe and devour the dead —
men
and animals — with every [138] breath we draw in, as every human breath
that
goes out makes up the bodies and feeds the formless creatures in the air
that
will be men some day. So much for the physical process; for the mental and
the
intellectual, and also the spiritual, it is just the same; we interchange
gradually
our brain-molecules, our intellectual and even spiritual auras, hence
—
our thoughts, desires, and aspirations, with those who preceded us. This
process
is common to humanity in general. It is a natural one, and follows the
economy
and laws of nature, insomuch that one's son may become gradually his own
grandfather,
and his aunt to boot, imbibing their combined atoms, and thus
partially
accounting for the possible resemblance, or atavism. But there is
another
law, an exceptional one, and which manifests itself among mankind
sporadically
and periodically: the law of forced post-mortem assimilation,
during
the prevalence of which epidemic the dead invade the domain of the living
from
their respective spheres — though, fortunately, only within the limits of
the
regions they lived in, and in which they are buried. In such cases, the
duration
and intensity of the epidemic depends upon the welcome they receive,
upon
whether they find the doors opening widely to receive them or not, and
whether
the necromantic plague is increased by magnetic attraction, the desire
of
the mediums, sensitives, and the curious themselves; or whether, again, the
danger
being signaled, the epidemic is wisely repressed.
“Such
a periodical visitation is now occurring in America. It began with
innocent
children — the little Misses Fox — playing unconsciously with this
terrible
weapon. And, welcomed and passionately invited to ' come in,' the whole
of
the dead community seemed to have rushed in, and got a more or less strong
hold
of the living. I went on purpose to a family of strong mediums — the Eddys
—
and watched for over a fortnight, making experiments, which, of course, I kept
to
myself. . . . You remember, Vera, how I made experiments for you at
Rougodevo,
how often I saw the ghosts of those who had been living in the house,
and
described them to you, for you could never see them. . . . Well, it was the
[139]
same daily and nightly in Vermont. I saw and watched these soulless
creatures,
the shadows of their terrestrial bodies, from which in most cases
soul
and spirit had fled long ago, but which throve and preserved their
semi-material
shadows at the expense of the hundreds of visitors that came and
went,
as well as of the mediums. And I remarked, under the advice and guidance
of
my Master, that (I) those apparitions which were genuine were produced by the
'
ghosts' of those who had lived and died within a certain area of those
mountains;
(2) those who had died far away were less entire, a mixture of the
real
shadow and of that which lingered in the personal aura of the visitor for
whom
it purported to come; and (3) the purely fictitious ones, or as I call
them,
the reflections of the genuine ghosts or shadows of the deceased
personality.
To explain myself more clearly, it was not the spooks that
assimilated
the medium, but the medium, W. Eddy, who assimilated unconsciously
to
himself the pictures of the dead relatives and friends from the aura of the
sitters.
. . .
“It
was ghastly to watch the process! It made me often sick and giddy; but I had
to
look at it, and the most I could do was to hold the disgusting creatures at
arm's
length. But it was a sight to see the welcome given to these umbroe by the
spiritualists!
They wept and rejoiced around the medium, clothed in these empty
materialized
shadows; rejoiced and wept again, sometimes broken down with an
emotion,
a sincere joy and happiness that made my heart bleed for them. 'If they
could
but see what I see', I often wished. If they only knew that these
simulacra
of men and women are made up wholly of the terrestrial passions,
vices,
and worldly thoughts, of the residuum of the personality that was; for
these
are only such dregs that could not follow the liberated soul and spirit,
and
are left for a second death in the terrestrial atmosphere, that can be seen
by
the average medium and the public. At times I used to see one of such
phantoms,
quitting the medium's astral body, pouncing upon one of the sitters,
expanding
so as to envelop him or her entirely, and then slowly disappearing
within
the living body as though sucked in by its every pore.[140]
Under
the influence of such ideas and thoughts, Mme. Blavatsky came out finally
quite
openly with her protest against being called a medium. She stoutly
rejected
the application of "Spiritist" that was being forced upon her by her
foreign
correspondents. Thus in 1877 she says in one of her letters:
"What
kind of Spiritist can you see in, or make of me, pray? I I have worked to
join
the Theosohical Society, in alliance offensive and defensive with the Arya
Samaj
of India (of which we are now forming a section within the parent
Theosophical
Society), it is because in India all the Brahmins, whether orthodox
or
otherwise, are terribly against the bhoots, [The simulacra or ghost of a
deceased
person, - an "Elementary", or spook. ] the mediums, or any
necromantic
evocations
or dealings with the dead in any way or shape. That we have
established
our Society in order to combat, under the banner of Truth and
Science,
every kind of superstitious and preconceived hobbies. That we mean to
fight
the prejudices of the Sceptics, as well as the abuse of power of the false
prophets,
ancient or modern, to put down the high priests, the Calchases, with
their
false Jupiterean thunders, and to show certain fallacies of the
Spiritists.
If we are anything, we are Spiritualists, only not on the modern
American
fashion, but on that of ancient Alexandria, with its Theodadiktoi,
Hypatias,
and Porphyries...."
[For
the new edition of this book I must here interpolate a note warning the
reader
against too submissive an acceptance of the views set forth in the letter
quoted
above. I do not think Mme. Blavatsky would have endorsed them at a later
stage
of her occult education. However frequently it may happen that
communication
from the astral world may be confused and corrupted by the
unconscious
influence of imperfectly developed mediums, it does not by any means
follow
that in all cases the “spirits” of the seance room are “empty
materialized
shadows” or “simulacra of men and women made up of terrestrial
passions
and vices, etc..“It was not till long after the date of the letter
quoted
that Mme. Blavatsky shared with myself in India the fuller teaching
concerning
life on the astral and higher planes of consciousness which put an
intelligible
face on the variegated and often bewildering experiences of
spiritualism.
That great movement was as definitely designed by higher wisdom
for
the illumination of civilized mankind, as the far greater movement that has
since
put us in touch with the mysteries of the higher occultism — that it was
simply
designed to break down the materialistic drift of thinking that was
prevalent
in the middle of the last century. It; was designed simply to show us
that
there was another life for human beings after the death of the physical!
body.
Those who had passed on, and were living on the astral plane, were
furnished
with a means of making their continued existence known to friends
still
in incarnation. Of course these opportunities were available for great
numbers
of astral entities surviving from the ignoble varieties of mankind, and
many
of these may have flocked in during Mme. Blavatsky's investigations of
current
spiritualism, confirming impressions she had acquired concerning the
characteristics
of the astral plane life; [141] but multitudes of
spiritualists
knew perfectly well that they often had touch with departed
friends
still maintaining the personalities of the earth life, and in this way
it
unfortunately happened that Mme. Blavatsky's sweeping condemnation of all
spiritualism
as delusive and unwholesome alienated large numbers of people who
ought
to have been the most ardent sympathizers with the Theosophical movement.
All
later students of occultism know now that the astral plane plays a much more
important
part in the future life of most people “passing on” than the
misleading
old “shell” theory led us to suppose in the beginning.]
The
Theosophical Society was founded in October 1875 at New York, with Colonel
Olcott
as life president — Mme. Blavatsky preferring to invest herself with the
relatively
insignificant title of corresponding secretary.
Colonel
Olcott's acquaintance with Mme. Blavatsky was formed at a farmhouse in
Vermont
— the house of two brothers, spiritualist mediums named Eddy, famous in
the
annals of American spiritualism — in October 1874. Referring to her in his
book,
called People from the other World , published in 1875, he says: —
“This
lady has led a very eventful life. . . .
The
adventures she has encountered, the strange people she has seen, the perils
by
sea and land she has passed through would make one of the most romantic
stories
ever told by a biographer. In the whole course of my experience I never
met
so interesting and, if I may say it without offence, eccentric a character.”
In
the year that elapsed between his first introduction to Mme. Blavatsky and
the
inauguration of their joint enterprise, his intercourse with her was
intimate
and his personal experiences remarkable. These need not be reviewed
here
in detail, except so far as some of them [142] will throw light upon
the
circumstances of Mme. Blavatsky's life at this period, and for the moment it
is
enough to say that they induced him to throw up his professional career as a
“lawyer”
(the distinctions between the different branches of the profession in
England,
it will be remembered, do not hold good in America) and devote his life
to
the pursuit of occult development as a “chela” of the same master to whom
Mme.
Blavatsky's allegiance is owing, and to the service of the theosophical
movement.
As
Colonel Olcott has shared some of the obloquy directed against Mme. Blavatsky
in
recent years, it may be worth while to add a paragraph concerning him written
by
Mr A. O. Hume, C.B., late Secretary to the Government of India in the
Agricultural
Department. This passage occurs in a letter by Mr Hume addressed to
an
English paper, and is quoted in the preface to The Occult World: —
As
regards Colonel Olcott's title, the printed papers which I send by this same
mail
will prove to you that this gentleman is an officer of the American army,
who
rendered good service during the war (as will be seen from the letter of the
Judge
Advocate-General, the Secretary of the Navy, and the Assistant Secretaries
of
War and of the Treasury), and who was sufficiently well known and esteemed in
his
own country to induce the President of the United States to furnish him with
an
autograph letter of introduction and recommendation to all Ministers and
Consuls
of the United States on the occasion of his leaving America for the East
at
the close of 1878.”
In
introducing some notes put together for the service of the present memoir,
Colonel
Olcott writes :—
“A
strange concatenation of events brought us together, and united our lives for
this
work, under the superior [143] direction of a group of Masters,
especially
of One, whose wise teaching, noble example, benevolent patience, and
paternal
solicitude have made us regard him with the reverence and love that a
true
Father inspires in his children. I am indebted to H. P. Blavatsky for
making
me know of the existence of these Masters and their Esoteric Philosophy;
and
later, for acting as my mediator before I had come into direct personal
intercourse
with them.”
The
earliest records of the Theosophical Society reveal the motives for its
formation
which the fuller information since made public concerning the
character
of Mme. Blavatsky's mission show to have been present in her mind from
the
first, though the means by which she should work them out lay before her
then
in a very nebulous and hazy condition. She seems to have been embarrassed
by
the difficulty of making her position intelligible to people who knew nothing
of
the existence even, still less of the nature and powers, of those proficients
in
occult science since so widely talked about — the Adepts and Mahatmas. Her
policy
seems to have been to imitate, by means of the occult powers which she
either
possessed herself or could borrow from her masters from time to time, the
phenomena
of spiritualism which then seemed to absorb the attention of all
persons
in America having any natural leanings towards mysticism, trusting to
the
sagacity of observers to show them that the circumstances with which she
would
surround such phenomena were quite unlike those to which they were used.
In
this way she seems to have aimed at cutting the ground from under the feet of
people
inclined to theorize too hastily on the basis of spiritualistic
observation
— at persuading them that the evidence on which they relied for the
maintenance
of their opinions did not afford adequate justification for these,
and
at leading them into the path [144] of a more legitimate philosophical
or
theosophical research. The policy was undeniably a bad one, and was carried
out
with little discretion and with a waste of psychic energy which cannot but
be
deplored in the retrospect by occult students who realize the consequences of
such
waste. However, I merely wish to be sufficiently critical of Mme.
Blavatsky's
proceedings, as this narrative advances, to elucidate the operations
in
which we find her engaged, and I refrain from the consideration here of the
policies
that might have been more triumphant.
A
vast array of unattainable purposes was set before themselves by the little
group
of friends who organized the new society in 1875. These were enumerated in
one
of the earlier codes of rules as follows:—
(a)
To keep alive in man his spiritual intuitions.
(b)
To oppose and counteract — after due investigation and proof of its
irrational
nature — bigotry in every form, whether as an intolerant religious
sectarianism
or belief in miracles or anything supernatural.
(c)
To promote a feeling of brotherhood among nations, and assist in the
international
exchange of useful arts and products, by advice, information, and
co-operation
with all worthy individuals and associations; provided, however,
that
no benefit or percentage shall be taken by the Society for its corporate
services.
(d)
To seek to obtain knowledge of all the laws of Nature, and aid in diffusing
it;
and especially to encourage the study of those laws least understood by
modern
people, and so termed the occult sciences. Popular superstition and
folk-lore,
however fantastical when sifted, may lead to the discovery of
long-lost
but important secrets of Nature. The Society, therefore, aims to
pursue
this line of inquiry in the hope to widen the field of scientific and
philosophical
observation.
(e)
To gather for the Society's library and put into written forms correct
information
upon the various ancient philosophic traditions and legends, and, as
the
[145] council shall decide it permissible, disseminate the same in such
practicable
ways as the translation and publication of original works of value,
and
extracts from and commentaries upon the same, or the oral instruction of
persons
learned in their respective departments.
(f)
To promote in every practicable way in countries where needed the spread of
non-sectarian
education.
(g)
Finally and chiefly, to encourage and assist individual fellows in
self-improvement,
intellectual, moral, and spiritual. But no fellow shall put to
his
selfish use any knowledge communicated to him by any member of the First
Section:
violation of this rule being punished by expulsion. And before any such
knowledge
can be imparted, the person shall bind himself by a solemn oath not to
use
it to selfish purposes, nor to reveal it except with the permission of the
teacher.
One
can readily discern in this formidable array of objects the inarticulate
purpose
which Mme. Blavatsky had really in view — the communication to the world
at
large of some ideas concerning the Esoteric Doctrine or great “Wisdom
Religion”
of the East, shining obscurely through the too ambitious programme of
her
new disciples, which might be summed up as contemplating the reformation and
guidance
of all nations generally — a programme which could hardly have been
floated
in sober earnest elsewhere than in America, where the mere magnitude of
undertakings
seems neither to daunt the courage of their promoters nor touch
their
sense of the ludicrous.
This
volume is indebted to Mr W. Q. Judge, one of the friends Mme. Blavatsky
made
in the early part of her residence in America, for an account of the
miscellaneous
marvels of which he was a witness during the period with which we
are
now dealing. He writes: —
“My
first acquaintance with H. P. Blavatsky began in the winter of the year
1874.
She was then living in [146] apartments in Irving Place, New York
City,
United States. She had several rooms en suite. The front rooms looked out
on
Irving Place, and the back upon the garden. My first visit was made in the
evening,
and I saw her there among a large number of persons who were always
attracted
to her presence. Several languages were to be heard among them, and
Mme.
Blavatsky, while conversing volubly in Russian, apparently quite absorbed,
would
suddenly turn round and interject an observation in English into a
discussion
between other persons upon a different topic to the one she was
engaged
with. This never disturbed her, for she at once returned to her Russian
talk,
taking it up just where it had been dropped.
“Very
much was said on the first evening that arrested my attention and
enchained
my imagination. I found my secret thoughts read, my private affairs
known
to her. Unasked, and certainly without any possibility of her having
inquired
about me, she referred to several private and peculiar circumstances in
a
way that showed at once that she had a perfect knowledge of my family, my
history,
my surroundings, and my idiosyncrasies. On that first evening I brought
with
me a friend, a perfect stranger to her. He was a native of the Sandwich
Islands,
who was studying law in New York, and who had formed all his plans for
a
lifelong stay in that city. He was a young man, and had then no intention of
marrying.
But she carelessly told him, before we left for home, that before six
months
he would cross the continent of America, then make a long voyage, and,
stranger
yet to him, that before all of this he would marry. Of course, the idea
was
pooh-poohed by him. Still fate was too much for him. In a few months he was
invited
to fill an official position in his native land, and before leaving for
that
country he married a lady who was not in America at the time the prophecy
was
uttered.
“The
next day I thought I would try an experiment with Mme. Blavatsky. I took an
ancient
scarabaeus that she had never seen, had it wrapped up and sent to her
through
the mails by a clerk in the employment of a [147] friend. My hand
did
not touch the package, nor did I know where it was posted. But when I called
on
her at the end of the week the second time, she greeted me with thanks for
the
scarabaeus. I pretended ignorance. But she said it was useless to pretend,
and
then informed me how I had sent it, and where the clerk had posted it.
During
the time that elapsed between my seeing her and the sending of the
package
no one had heard from me a word about the matter.
“Very
soon after I met her, she moved to 34th Street, and while there I visited
her
very often. In those rooms I used to hear the raps in furniture, in glasses,
mirrors,
windows, and walls, which are usually the accompaniment of dark
'spiritist'
séances. But with her they occurred in the light, and never except
when
ordered by her. Nor could they be induced to continue once that she ordered
them
to stop. They exhibited intelligence also, and would at her request change
from
weak to strong, or from many to few at a time.
“She
remained in 34th Street only a few months, and then removed to 47th Street,
where
she stayed until her departure to India in December 1878. I was a constant
visitor,
and know, as all others do who were as intimate with her as I was, that
the
suspicions which had been breathed about her, and the open charges that have
from
time to time been made, are the foulest injustice or the basest
ingratitude.
At times she has been incensed by these things, and declared that
one
more such incident would forever close the door against all phenomena. But
over
and over again she has relented and forgiven her enemies.
“After
she had comfortably settled herself in 47th Street, where, as usual, she
was
from morning till night surrounded by all sorts of visitors, mysterious
events,
extraordinary sights and sounds, continued to occur. I have sat there
many
an evening, and seen in broad gas light, large luminous balls creeping over
the
furniture, or playfully jumping from point to point, while the most
beautiful
liquid bell sounds now and again burst out from the air of the room.
These
sounds often imitated either the piano or a gamut of sounds whistled by
either
myself [148] or some other person. While all this was going on, H.
P.
Blavatsky sat unconcernedly reading or writing at Isis Unveiled.
“It
should be remarked here that Madame. Blavatsky never exhibited either
hysteria
or the slightest appearance of trance. She was always in the full
possession
of all her faculties — and apparently of more than those of average
people
— whenever she was producing any phenomena.
“In
the month of November or the beginning of December of the same winter, a
photograph
was received from a correspondent at Boston by Colonel Olcott, which
was
the occasion of two very striking phenomena. It purported to be the portrait
of
a person said to have written the books called Art Magic and Ghost Land. The
sender
required Colonel Olcott to return it almost immediately; which he did on
the
following evening, and I myself, being there as a caller, posted it in the
nearest
post-box. Two or three days later a demand was made upon Mme. Blavatsky
for
a duplicate of the picture, in the belief that it would be beyond even her
powers,
since she had no model to copy from. But she actually did it; the
process
consisting merely in her cutting a piece of cardboard to the requisite
size,
laying it under a blotting-paper, placing her hand upon it, and in a
moment
producing the copy demanded. Colonel Olcott took possession of this
picture,
and laid it away in a book that he was then reading, and which he took
to
bed with him. The next morning the portrait had entirely faded out, and only
the
name, written in pencil, was left. A week or two later, seeing this blank
card
lying in Colonel Olcott's room, I took it to Mme. Blavatsky, and requested
her
to cause the portrait to reappear. Complying, she again laid the card under
another
sheet of paper, placed her hand upon it, and presently the face of the
man
had come back as before; this time indelibly imprinted.
“In
the front room where she wrote, there was a bookcase that stood for some
time
directly opposite her writing-desk. Upon its top stood a stuffed owl, whose
glassy,
never - closing eye frequently seemed to follow your [149]
movements.
Indeed, I could relate things a propos of that same defunct bird, but
—
in the words of Jacolliot — ' We have seen things such as one does not relate
for
fear of making his readers doubt his sanity. . . . Still we have seen them.'
Well,
over the top of the doors of the bookcase was a blank space, about three
inches
wide, and running the breadth of the case. One evening we were sitting
talking
of magic as usual, and of 'the Brothers', when Madame said, 'Look at the
bookcase!'
“We
looked up at once, and as we did so, we could see appear, upon the blank
space
I have described, several letters apparently in gold, that came out upon
the
surface of the wood. They covered nearly all of the space. Examination
showed
that they were in gold, and in a character that I had often seen upon
some
of her papers.
This
precipitation of messages or sentences occurred very frequently, and I will
relate
one which took place under my own hand and eyes, in such a way as to be
unimpeachable
for me.
“I
was one day, about four o'clock, reading a book by P. B. Randolph, that had
just
been brought in by a friend of Colonel Olcott. I was sitting some six feet
distant
from H. P. Blavatsky, who was busy writing. I had carefully read the
title-page
of the book, but had forgotten the exact title. But I knew that there
was
not one word of writing upon it. As I began to read the first paragraph I
heard
a bell sound in the air, and looking saw that Mme. Blavatsky was intently
regarding
me.
“
'What book do you read ? ' said she.
“Turning
back to the title-page, I was about to read aloud the name, when my eye
was
arrested by a message written in ink across the top of the page which, a few
minutes
before, I had looked at and found clear. It was a message in about seven
lines,
and the fluid had not yet quite dried on the page — its contents were a
warning
about the book. I am positive that when I took the volume in my hand,
not
one word was written in it.
“On
one occasion the address of a business firm in Philadelphia was needed for
the
purpose of sending a [150] letter through the mail, and no one present
could
remember the street or number, nor could any directory of Philadelphia be
found
in the neighborhood. The business being very urgent, it was proposed that
one
of us should go down nearly four miles to the General Post Office, so as to
see
a Philadelphia directory. But H. P. B. said: ' Wait a moment, and perhaps we
can
get the address some other way.' She then waved her hand, and instantly we
heard
a signal bell in the air over our heads. We expected no less than that a
heavy
directory would rush at our heads from the empty space, but no such thing
took
place. She sat down, took up a flat tin paper-cutter japanned black on both
sides
and without having any painting on it. Holding this in her left hand, she
gently
stroked it with her right, all the while looking at us with an intense
expression.
After she had rubbed thus for a few moments, faint outlines of
letters
began to show themselves upon the black, shining surface, and presently
the
complete advertisement of the firm whose address we desired was plainly
imprinted
upon the paper-cutter in gilt letters, just as they had had it done on
slips
of blotting paper such as are widely distributed as advertising media in
America
— a fact I afterwards found out. On a close examination, we saw that the
street
and number, which were the doubtful points in our memories, were
precipitated
with great brilliancy, the other words and figures being rather
dimmer.
Mme. Blavatsky said that this was because the mind of the operator was
directed
almost entirely to the street and number, so that their reproduction
was
brought about with much greater distinctness than the rest of the
advertisement,
which was, so to speak, dragged in in a rather accidental way.
“About
any object that might be transported mysteriously around her room, or
that
came into it through the air by supermundane means, there always lingered
for
a greater or less space of time, a very peculiar though pleasant odour. It
was
not always the same. At one time it was sandal-wood mixed with what I
thought
was otto of roses; at another time some unknown Eastern perfume, and
again
it came like the incense burnt in temples. [151]
“One
day she asked me if I would care to smell again the perfume. Upon my
replying
affirmatively, she took my handkerchief in her hand, held it for a few
moments,
and when she gave it back to me it was heavy with the well-known odour.
Then,
in order to show me that her hand was not covered with something that
would
come off upon the handkerchief, she permitted me to examine both hands.
They
were without perfume. But after I had convinced myself that there was no
perfumery
or odoriferous objects concealed in her hands, I found from one hand
beginning
to exhale one peculiar strong perfume, while from the other there
rolled
out strong waves of the incense.
“On
the table at which Isis Unveiled was written stood a little Chinese cabinet
with
many small drawers. A few of the drawers contained some trifles, but there
were
several that were always kept empty. The cabinet was an ordinary one of its
class,
and repeated examination showed that there were no devices or mechanical
arrangements
in it, or connected with it; but many a time has one of those empty
drawers
become the vanishing point of various articles, and as often, on the
other
hand, was the birthplace of some object which had not before been seen in
the
rooms. I have often seen her put small coins or a ring or amulet, and have
put
things in there myself, closed the drawer, almost instantly reopening it,
and
nothing was visible. It had disappeared from sight Clever conjurers have
been
known to produce such illusions, but they always require some confederacy,
or
else they delude you into believing that they had put the object in, when in
reality
they did not. With H. P. B. there was no preparation. I repeatedly
examined
the cabinet, and positively say that there was no means by which things
could
be dropped out of sight or out of the drawer ; it stood on four small
legs,
elevated about two inches above the desk, which was quite clear and
unbroken
underneath. Several times I have seen her put a ring into one of the
drawers
and then leave the room. I then looked in the drawer, saw the ring in
it,
and closed it again. She then returned, and without coming near the cabinet
showed
me the same ring on her finger. I then [152] looked again in the
drawer
before she again came near it, and the ring was gone.
“One
day Mrs Elizabeth Thompson, the philanthropist, who had a great regard for
H.
P. B., called to see her. I was present. When about to leave, the visitor
asked
Madame to lend her some object which she had worn, as a reminder and as a
talisman.
The request being acceded to, the choice was left to the lady, who
hesitated
a moment; Madame then said, ' Take this ring,' immediately drawing it
off
and handing it to her friend, who placed it upon her finger, absorbed in
admiring
the stones. But I was looking at H. P. B.'s fingers, and saw that the
ring
was yet on her hand. Hardly believing my eyes, I looked at the other. There
was
no mistake. There were now two rings; but the lady did not observe this, and
went
off satisfied she had the right one. In a few days she returned it to
Madame,
who then told me that one of the rings was an illusion, leaving it to me
to
guess which one. I could not decide, for she pushed the returned ring up
along
her finger against the old one, and both merged into one.
“One
evening several persons were present after dinner, all, of course, talking
about
theosophy and occultism. H. P. B. was sitting at her desk. While we were
all
engaged in conversation somebody said that he heard music, and went out into
the
hall where he thought it came from. While he was examining the hall, the
person
sitting near the fireplace said that instead of being in the hall, the
music,
which was that of a musical box, was playing up in the chimney. The
gentleman
who had gone into the passage then returned and said that he had lost
the
music, but at once was thoroughly amazed to find us all listening at the
fireplace,
when he in turn heard the music plainly. Just as he began to listen,
the
music floated out into the room, and very distinctly finished the tune in
the
air over our heads. I have on various occasions heard this music in many
ways,
and always when there was not any instrument to produce it.
“On
this evening, a little while after the music, Madame opened one of the
drawers
of the Chinese [153] cabinet and took from it an Oriental necklace
of
curious beads. This she gave to a lady present. One of the gentlemen allowed
to
escape him an expression of regret that he had not received such a
testimonial.
Thereupon H. P. B. reached over and grasped one of the beads of the
necklace
which the lady was still holding in her hands, and the bead at once
came
off in Madame's hand. She then passed it to the gentleman, who exclaimed
that
it was not merely a bead but was now a breast-pin, as there was a gold pin
fastened
securely in it. The necklace meanwhile remained intact, and its
recipient
was examining it in wonder that one of its beads could have been thus
pulled
off without breaking it.
“I
have heard it said that when H. P. B. was a young woman, after coming back to
her
family for the first time in many years, everyone in her company was amazed
and
affrighted to see material objects such as cups, books, her tobacco pouch
and
match-box, and so forth, come flying through the air into her hand, merely
when
she gazed intently at them. The stories of her early days can be readily
credited
by those who saw similar things done at the New York headquarters. Such
aerial
flights were many times performed by objects at her command in my
presence.
One evening I was in a hurry to copy a drawing I had made, and looked
about
on the table for a paper-cutter with which to rub the back of the drawing
so
as to transfer the surplus carbon to a clean sheet.
“As
I searched, it was suggested by someone that the round smooth back of a
spoon
bowl would be the best means, and I arose to go to the kitchen at the end
of
the hall for a spoon. But Mme. Blavatsky said, 'Stop, you need not go there;
wait
a moment.' I stopped at the door, and she, sitting in her chair, held up
her
left hand. At that instant a large table-spoon flew through the air across
the
room from out of the opposite wall and into her hand. No one was there to
throw
it to her, and the dining-room from which it had been transported was
about
thirty feet distant; two brick walls separating it from the front room.
“In
the next room — the wall between being solid — [154] there hung near
the
window a water-color portrait in a frame with glass. I had just gone into
that
room and looked at the picture. No one was in the room but myself, and no
one
went there afterwards until I returned there. When I came into the place
where
H. P. B. was sitting, and after I had been sitting down a few moments, she
took
up a piece of paper and wrote upon it a few words, handing it over to me to
put
away without looking at it. This I did. She then asked me to return to the
other
room. I went there, and at once saw that the picture which, a few moments
before,
I had looked at, had in some way been either moved or broken. On
examining
it I found that the glass was smashed, and that the securely fastened
back
had been opened, allowing the picture within to fall to the floor. Looking
down
I saw it lying there. Going back to the other room I opened and read what
had
been written on the slip of paper, it was :—
“
' The picture of ------ in the dining-room has just been opened; the glass is
smashed
and the painting is on the floor.'
“One
day, while she was talking with me, she suddenly stopped and said,
'So-and-so
is now talking of me to -----, and says, etc.' I made a note of the
hour,
and on the first opportunity discovered that she had actually heard the
person
named saying just what she told me had been said at the very time noted.
“My
office was at least three miles away from her rooms”: One day, at about 2
P.M.,
I was sitting in my office engaged in reading a legal document, my mind
intent
on the subject of the paper. No one else was in the office, and in fact
the
nearest room was separated from me by a wide opening, or well, in the
building,
made to let light into the inner chambers. Suddenly I felt on my hand
a
peculiar tingling sensation that always preceded any strange thing to happen
in
the presence of H. P. B., and at that moment there fell from the ceiling upon
the
edge of my desk, and from there to the floor, a triangularly-folded note
from
Madame to myself. It was written upon the clean back of a printed Jain
sutra
or text. The message was in her handwriting, [155] and was addressed
to
me in her writing across the printed face.
“I
remember one phenomenon in connection with the making of a water-color
drawing
of an Egyptian subject for her, which also illustrates what the
Spiritualists
call apport, or the bringing phenomenally of objects from some
distant
place. I was in want of certain dry colors which she could not furnish
me
from her collection, and as the drawing must be finished at that sitting, and
there
was no shop nearby where I could purchase them, it seemed a dilemma until
she
stepped towards the cottage piano, and, holding up the skirt of her robe de
chambre
with both hands, received into it seventeen bottles of Winsor & Newton
dry
colors, among them those I required. I still wanted some gold-paint, so she
caused
me to bring her a saucer from the dining-room, and to give her the brass
key
of the door. She rubbed the key upon the bottom of the saucer for a minute
or
two, and then, returning them to me, I found a supply of the paint I required
coating
the porcelain.”
I
should hardly venture to communicate the foregoing narrative to the public if
it
were not for the obvious impossibility, in editing memoirs of Mme. Blavatsky,
of
keeping the various experiences recorded of her within the limits of that
which
is generally held to be credible. Certainly no one person of those who
have
had opportunities of observing the phenomena occurring in her presence
could
hope to be regarded by the world at large as both sane and truthful in
relating
his experience. But fortified as each witness is in turn by the
testimony
of all the others, the situation must be recognised as involving
difficulties
for critics who contend that one and all, near relations, old
friends,
casual acquaintances, or intimates of her later years, are all
possessed
with a mania for trumping up fictitious stories about Mme. Blavatsky,
or
all in different parts of the world, and at [156] widely different
periods,
sharing in an epidemic hallucination in regard to her, while in no
other
respects exhibiting abnormal conditions of mind.
The
first incident during her stay in America which seems to have drawn the
attention
of the newspapers to Mme. Blavatsky was the death and cremation, under
the
auspices of the Theosophical Society, of an eccentric personage known in New
York
as “the Baron de Palm”. Among other eccentricities that he committed, he
made
a will shortly before his death professing to bequeath a considerable
fortune
to the Theosophical Society, but on inquiry it turned out that the
property
referred to in this document existed in his imagination alone. The
newspapers
credited the Society with having acquired great wealth by seducing
the
sympathies of this guileless millionaire, when in reality his effects did
not
meet the cost of the ceremonies connected with burning his body. However,
the
Society and Mme. Blavatsky suddenly sprang into local notoriety.
“Fancy
my surprise . . .” she wrote about this time to her sister.
“I
am — heaven help us ! — becoming fashionable, as it seems I am writing
articles
on Esotericism and Nirvana, and paid for them more than I could have
ever
expected, though I have hardly any time for writing for money. . . .
Believe
me, and you will, for you know me, I cannot make myself realize that I
have
ever been able to write decently. ... If I were unknown, no publisher or
editor
would have ever paid any attention to me. . . . It's all vanity and
fashion.
. . . Luckily for the publishers, I have never been vain.”
In
the course of another family letter she writes: —
“Upon
my word, I can hardly understand why you and people generally should make
such
a fuss over my [157] writings, whether Russian or English! True,
during
the long years of my absence from home, I have constantly studied and
have
learned certain things. But when I wrote "/sis", I wrote it so easily
that
it
was certainly no labor, but a real pleasure. Why should I be praised for it?
Whenever
I am told to write, I sit down and obey, and then I can write easily
upon
almost anything — metaphysics, psychology, philosophy, ancient religions,
zoology,
natural sciences, or what not. I never put myself the question: ' Can I
write
on this subject? . . .' or, ' Am I equal to the task ?' but I simply sit
down
and write. Why ? Because somebody who knows all dictates to me. . . . My
MASTER,
and occasionally others whom I knew in my travels years ago. . . .
Please
do not imagine that I have lost my senses. I have hinted to you before
now
about them . . . and I tell you candidly, that whenever I write upon a
subject
I know little or nothing of, I address myself to Them, and one of Them
inspires
me, i.e. He allows me to simply copy what I write from manuscripts, and
even
printed matter that pass before my eyes, in the air, during which process I
have
never been unconscious one single instant. ... It is that knowledge of His
protection
and faith in His power that have enabled me to become mentally and
spiritually
so strong . . . and even He (the Master) is not always required;
for,
during His absence on some other occupation, He awakens in me His
substitute
in knowledge. At such times it is no more / who write, but my inner
Ego,
my ' luminous self,' who thinks and writes for me. Only see . . . you who
know
me. When was I ever so learned as to write such things? . . . Whence all
this
knowledge? . . .”
On
another occasion again she wrote also to her sister: —
“You
may disbelieve me, but I tell you that in saying this I speak but the
truth;
I am solely occupied, not with writing Isis, but with "Isis" herself.
I
live
in a kind of permanent enchantment, a life of visions and sights with open
eyes,
and no trance whatever to deceive my senses! I sit and watch the fair
goddess
constantly.[158] And as she displays before me the secret meaning
of
her long lost secrets, and the veil, becoming with every hour thinner and
more
transparent, gradually falls off before my eyes, I hold my breath and can
hardly
trust to my senses! . . . For several years, in order not to forget what
I
have learned elsewhere, I have been made to have permanently before my eyes
all
that I need to see. Thus night and day, the images of the past are ever
marshaled
before my inner eye. Slowly, and gliding silently like images in an
enchanted
panorama, centuries after centuries appear before me, . . . and I am
made
to connect these epochs with certain historical events, and I know there
can
be no mistake. Races and nations, countries and cities, emerge during some
former
century, then fade out and disappear during some other one, the precise
date
of which I am then told by ... Hoary antiquity gives room to historical
periods;
myths are explained by real events and personages who have really
existed
; and every important, and often unimportant event, every revolution, a
new
leaf turned in the book of life of nations — with its incipient course and
subsequent
natural results — remains photographed in my mind as though impressed
in
indelible colours. . . . When I think and watch my thoughts, they appear to
me
as though they were like those little bits of wood of various shapes and
colors
in the game known as the casse tête: I pick them up one by one, and
try
to
make them fit each other, first taking one, then putting it aside, until I
find
its match, and finally there always comes out in the end something
geometrically
correct. ... I certainly refuse point-blank to attribute it to my
own
knowledge or memory, for I could never arrive alone at either such premises
or
conclusions. ... I tell you seriously I am helped. And He who helps me is my
GURU.
. . .”
As
belonging to the period of Mme. Blavatsky's residence in America, mention may
here
be made of a remarkable incident with which she was closely concerned,
though
it was not accomplished by the exercise of her own abnormal powers.[
159]
Prince
Emile Wittgenstein, a Russian officer, and an old friend who had known
her
from childhood, was in correspondence with her at the time of the formation
of
the Theosophical Society. In consequence of certain warnings addressed to him
at
spiritual seances concerning fatalities which would menace him if he took
part
in the war on the Danube then impending, Mme. Blavatsky was instructed by
her
unseen spiritual chief to inform him that on the contrary he would be
specially
taken care of during the campaign, and that the spiritualistic warning
would
be confuted. The course of subsequent events will best be described by the
quotation
of a letter afterwards addressed by the Prince to an English journal
devoted
to spiritualism. This was as follows: —
“ TO THE EDITOR OF THE ' SPIRITUALIST'.
“Allow me, for the sake of those who believe
in spirit predictions, to tell
you a story about incidents which happened to
me last year, and about which I,
for months past, have wished to talk to you,
without, till now, finding time
to do so. The narrative may perhaps be a
warning to some of the too credulous
persons to whom every medial message is a
gospel, and who too often accept as
true what are perhaps the lies of some light
spirit, or even the reflection of
their own thoughts or wishes. I believe that
the fulfilment of a prediction is
such an exceptional thing that in general one
ought to set no faith in such
prophecies, but should avoid them as much as
possible, lest they have undue
influence upon our mind, faith, and
free-will.
“A year and some months ago, while getting
ready to join our army on the
Danube, I received first one letter, and
afterwards a few more, from a very
kind friend of mine and a powerful medium in
America, beseeching me, in very
anxious words, not to go to the war — a
spirit had predicted that the campaign
would be fatal to me, and having ordered my
correspondent to write to me the
[160] following words, ' Beware of the war
saddle ! It will be your
death, or worse still!'
“I confess that these reiterated warnings
were not agreeable, especially when
received at the moment of starting upon such
a journey; but I forced myself to
disbelieve them. My cousin, the Baroness
Adelina von Vay, to whom I had
written about the matter, encouraged me in
doing so, and I started.
“Now it seems that this prediction became
known also to some of my
theosophical friends at New York, who were
indignant at it, and decided to do
their utmost to make it of no avail. And
especially one of the leading
brethren of the Society, and residing far
away from America, promised by the
force of his will to shield me from every
danger.
“The fact is, that during the whole campaign,
I did not see one shot explode
near me, and that, so far as danger was
concerned, I could just as well have
remained at Vevey. I was quite ashamed of
myself, and sought occasion now and
then, to hear at least once the familiar roar
and whistle which, in my younger
years, were such usual music to me. All in
vain I Whenever I was near a scene
of action, the enemy's fire ceased. I
remember having once, during the third
bloody storming of Plevna, with my friend,
your Colonel Wellesley, stolen away
from the Emperor's staff, in order to ride
down to a battery of ours which was
exchanging a tremendous fire with the redoubt
of Grivitsa. As soon as we,
after abandoning our horses further back in
the brushwood, arrived at the
battery, the Turkish fire ceased as by
enchantment, to begin again only when
we left it half-an-hour later, although our
guns kept on blazing away at them
without interruption. I also tried twice to
see some of the bombarding of
Guirgiewo, where all the windows were broken,
doors torn out, roofs broken
down at the Railway Station by the daily
firing from Rustchuk. I stopped there
once a whole night, and another time half a
day, always in the hope of seeing
something. As long as I was there, the scene
was quiet as in the times of
peace, and the firing recommenced as soon as
I had left the place. Some days
after my last visit to Guirgiewo, [161]
Colonel Wellesley passed it, and
had part of his luggage destroyed by a shell,
which, breaking through the roof
into
the gallery, tore to pieces two soldiers who were standing near.
"I cannot believe all this to be the
sole result of chance. It was too
regular, too positive to be explained thus.
It is, I am sure of it, magic —
the more so as the person who protected me
thus efficaciously is one of the
most powerful masters of the occult science
professed by the theosophists. I
can relate, by way of contrast, the following
fact, which happened during the
war on the Danube, in 1854, at the siege of
Silistria. A very distinguished
Engineer General of ours, who led our
approaches, was a faithful spiritualist,
and believed every word which he wrote down
by the help of a psychograph as a
genuine revelation from superior spirits. Now
these spirits had predicted to
him that he would return from the war unhurt,
and covered with fame and glory.
The result of this was that he exposed
himself openly, madly, to the enemy's
fire, till at last a shot tore off his leg,
and he died some weeks later. This
is the faith we ought to have in predictions,
and I hope my narrative may be
welcome to you, as a warning to many.—
Truly yours,
“(PRINCE) E. WITTGENSTEIN (F.T.S.).
“VEVEY, SWITZERLAND, ”
18th June 1878.”
Apart
from the intrinsic interest of this narrative it is important as showing
definitely
— what indeed is notorious for all who knew Mme. Blavatsky at the
period
to which it refers — that she had already, while the Theosophical Society
was
still in its infancy in New York, declared the existence of “the Brothers”,
whom
she has been so absurdly accused by her recent critics of inventing at a
far
later date.
The
Countess Wachtmeister, whose name will reappear in this narrative later on,
sends
me another independent account of Mme. Blavatsky's doings in America,
communicated
[162] to her by the gentleman concerned. She writes: —
“Mr
Felix Cunningham, a young American of large fortune, describes a scene which
took
place one evening when visiting Mme. Blavatsky in America. For some time
past
he had been terribly annoyed by certain manifestations which took place in
his
own presence : chairs would suddenly begin to hop about the room, knives and
forks
would dance upon the tables, and bells would ring all over the house; in
fact,
such a carillon would sometimes be set going that the landlord would
politely
request him to depart, and he would have to go in quest of another
apartment,
where, after a few days' sojourn, the same comedy would be repeated,
until
he felt like a wandering Jew, nearly driven wild by his invisible foes.
Having
heard of Mme. Blavatsky's great abnormal powers, he hoped through her to
get
a relief to his sufferings, and it was with a feeling of intense curiosity
that,
having been fortunate in obtaining an introduction to that lady, he one
evening
entered her drawing-room, to find her surrounded by a circle of admiring
friends.
When at last he was able to approach her, she invited him to sit on the
sofa
near her, and patiently listened to the long recital of his misfortunes.
Mme.
Blavatsky then explained to him that these phenomena were the result partly
of
his own psychic force and partly the work of elementals, and she explained to
him
the process through which he might either rid himself of such disturbances
for
the future, or else how he could obtain complete control over these powers
of
nature, and produce phenomena at will. This seemed, to Mr Cunningham as so
utterly
incredible that, though he kept his feelings to himself, he classed Mme.
Blavatsky
in his own mind as either a charlatan or a victim to her delusions.
What
was his astonishment, then, when a few moments later she turned to him in
the
midst of an animated discourse she was holding with some professor on '
Darwin's
System of Evolution,' and said, ' Well, Mr Cunningham, so you think it
is
all a sham ? I will give you a proof that it is not, if you like. Tell me,
what
would you like to have ? [163] Desire something without mentioning it
aloud,
and you shall have it.” He thought of a rose, there being no flowers in
the
room, and as the thought fastened itself on his mind, his gaze was directed
upwards,
and there to his astonishment he saw a large full-blown rose suddenly
appear
near the ceiling; it descended swiftly but surely towards him, the stalk
going
right through his buttonhole, and when he took out the rose to examine it,
he
found that it had been freshly plucked, and that the dew was hanging to the
petals
and leaves. Mme. Blavatsky, who had never moved from her corner of the
sofa,
looked at his bewilderment with amusement, and explained to him that when
once
man has obtained control over the elementals, such a phenomenon is simple
as
child's play.”
Some
interesting reminiscences of Mme. Blavatsky's New York residence are
contained
in an article published recently by the New York Times in its issue of
2nd
January 1885. The writer, noticing some then current news illustrating the
progress
in India of the Theosophical Society, says: —
““This
intelligence is interesting to the general reader, mainly as it serves to
recall
a most curious phase of modern thought. Its development nearly ten years
ago
in New York attracted much attention. The doings of the strange society
mentioned
in the French flat at Eighth Avenue and Forty-seventh Street, where
they
had their headquarters, were widely noticed by the press, and some
influence
on the thought of certain classes of men and women undoubtedly
emanated
from the small circle who gathered there.
“This
influence was beyond a question the result of the strange personal power
of
Mme. Blavatsky — a woman of as remarkable characteristics as Cagliostro
himself,
and one who is today as differently judged by different people as the
renowned
Count was in his day. The Pall Mall Gazette recently devoted a
half-column
to the lady. By those who knew her only slightly in this country she
[164]
was invariably termed a charlatan. A somewhat better acquaintance
developed
the thought that she was a learned, but deluded enthusiast. And those
who
knew her intimately and enjoyed her friendship were either carried away into
a
belief in her powers or profoundly puzzled, and the longer and more intimate
the
friendship was, the firmer the faith or the deeper their perplexity became.
The
writer was one of the last class. The closest study of a trained New York
reporter
failed for over two years to convince him that she was either a fraud
or
self-deluded, or that her seeming powers were genuine. That she wrought
miracles
will be denied flatly, of course, by all persons whom the world calls
sober-minded,
yet there are scores of people who will swear today that she did
work
them in New York.
“A
lady whose brother was an enthusiastic believer in the wonderful Russian, but
who
was herself a devout Methodist and thoroughly antagonistic to Theosophy (as
the
new system of thought was then beginning to be called), was induced to make
Mme.
Blavatsky's acquaintance. They became friends, though they continued widely
opposed
in belief. One day Mme. Blavatsky gave the other lady a necklace of
beautifully
carved beads of some strange substance that looked like, but was
not,
hard wood. 'Wear them yourself', she said. ' If you let anyone else have
them,
they will disappear'. The lady wore them constantly for over a year.
Meantime
she moved out of the city. One day her little child, who was sick? and
fretful,
cried for the beads. She gave them to him, half laughing at herself for
hesitating.
The child put them around his neck and seemed pleased with his new
toy,
while the mother turned away to attend to some domestic duty. In a few
minutes
the child began crying, and the mother found him trying to take the
beads
off. She removed them herself and found that they were nearly one-third
melted
away and were hot, while the child's neck showed marks of being burned.
She
tells the story herself, and in the same breath denies that she believes in
'any
such things'.
“Such
stories could be repeated by dozens, and for each one a reputable witness
could
be produced to swear to [165] the truth of it. It was not, however,
by
the working of tricks or miracles, whichever the reader may choose to regard
them,
that Mme. Blavatsky made the impress she certainly made on the thought of
the
day. It was by the power of her own personality, vigor of her intellect,
freedom
and breadth of her thought, and the fluency and clearness of her powers
of
expression. Her mental characteristics were as remarkable as her appearance.
A
more impetuous or impulsive person than she never lived. She was generous and
hospitable
to a fault. To her intimate friends her house was Liberty Hall, and
while
there was nothing sumptuous or pretentious about her mode of life, she
lived
well and entertained constantly. She seemed physically indolent, but this
was
on account of her size, which made bodily exertion onerous. Nothing like
mental
indolence could be noticed in her conversation, and if such a trait had
ever
been attributed to her, the publication of Isis Unveiled, her work on
Eastern
mysteries and religions, would have exonerated her from the charge.
Without
discussing the merits of the book, it may be asserted that the labor
involved
in its production was very great.
“As
a friend Mme. Blavatsky was steadfast and devoted to an unusual degree.
Credulous
by nature, she had been imposed upon by so many that she learned to
limit
her circle, but up to the time she left America she was always liable to
imposition
on the part of any designing person.
“She
was unconventional, and prided herself on carrying her unconventionally to
the
utmost extremes. She would swear like a dragoon when in anger, and often
used
in pure levity expressions which served no other purpose than to emphasize
her
contempt for common usages. Born, so it is said, of the best lineage in
Russia,
she had been bred and educated not only as a lady but as an aristocrat.
Discarding,
as she did, the traditional belief of her family, she discarded at
the
same time the entire system of European civilization. During her residence
in
America at least, for the writer claims to know no more about her than was
developed
here, she protested against our civilization vigorously. . . . The
criticism
she [166] drew on herself by this course was merciless, and from
a
civilized standpoint was certainly deserved.
“Those
who knew her best believe her to have been entirely incapable of a mean
act
or a dishonest one.”
The
writer goes on to quote the views which Mme. Blavatsky was in the habit of
expressing
on the subject of spiritualism.
“
'The phenomena that are presented are perhaps often frauds. Perhaps not one in
a
hundred is a genuine communication of spirits, but that one cannot be judged
by
the others. It is entitled to scientific examination, and the reason the
scientists
don't examine it is because they are afraid. The mediums cannot
deceive
me. I know more about it than they do. I have lived for years in
different
parts of the East and have seen far more wonderful things than they
can
do. The whole universe is filled with spirits. It is nonsense to suppose
that
we are the only intelligent beings in the world. I believe there is latent
spirit
in all matter. I believe almost in the spirits of the elements. But all
is
governed by natural laws. Even in cases of apparent violation of these laws
the
appearance comes from a misunderstanding of the laws. In cases of certain
nervous
diseases it is recorded of some patients that they have been raised from
their
beds by some undiscoverable power, and it has been impossible to force
them
down. In such cases It has been noticed that they float feet first with any
current
of air that may be passing through the room. The wonder of this ceases
when
you come to consider that there is no such thing as the law of gravitation
as
it is generally understood. The law of gravitation is only to be rationally
explained
in accordance with magnetic laws as Newton tried to explain it, but
the
world would not accept it.
“
'The world is fast coming to know many things that were known centuries ago,
and
were discarded through the superstition of theologians,' she continued. '
The
church professes to reprobate divination, and yet they chose their four
canonical
Gospels of Matthew, Mark, [167] Luke, and John by divination.
They
took some hundred or so of books at the Nicene Council, and set them up,
and
those that fell down they threw aside as false, and those that stood being
those
four, they accepted as true, being unable to decide the question in any
other
way. And out of the 318 members of the Council only two — Eusebius, the
great
forger, and the Emperor Constantine — were able to read.'
“Talking
thus by hours together, when the right listener was present, and
speaking
always 'as one having authority', it is small wonder that Mme.
Blavatsky
made her modest apartments a common meeting-ground for as strange a
group
of original thinkers as New York ever held. Not all who visited her agreed
with
her. Indeed, there were only a few who followed her teachings with implicit
faith.
Many of her friends, and many who joined the Theosophical Society which
she
formed, were individuals who affirmed little and denied nothing.
“The
marvels which were discussed and manifested in Mme. Blavatsky's rooms were
to
the most of them merely food for thought. If the bell-tones of the invisible
'attendant
sprite' Pou Dhi where heard, as they were heard by scores of
different
persons, this phenomenon, so minutely described by Mr Sinnett in The
Occult
World, was as likely to be chaffed good-naturedly by an obstinate sceptic
as
it was to be wondered at by a believer. But even the sceptic would shrug his
shoulders
and say, when hard pushed, ' It may be a spirit. I can't tell what it
is.'
If the discussion turned on some marvel of Eastern magic, or some fanciful
doctrine
of Eastern mythology, there was always a witness to the magic and a
believer
in the mythology present, and there was no one bold enough to deny what
was
affirmed, however much it might be laughed at. Sensitive as Mme. Blavatsky
was
to personal ridicule and to slander, she was truly liberal in matters of
opinion,
and allowed us as great latitude in the discussion of her beliefs as
she
took in discussing the beliefs of others.
“The
apartment she occupied was a modest flat of seven or eight rooms in West
Forty-seventh
Street. It was furnished plainly but comfortably, but of the
furniture
[168] properly so called, it was hard to get an exact idea, for
the
rooms, especially the parlors, were littered and strewn with curios of most
varied
description. Huge palm leaves, stuffed apes, and tigers' heads, Oriental
pipes
and vases, idols and cigarettes, Javanese sparrows, manuscripts and cuckoo
clocks
were items only in a confusing catalogue of things not to be looked for
ordinarily
in a lady's parlor.”[169]
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK. CF24-1DL
CHAPTER 9
ESTABLISHED
IN INDIA
JUDGED
by ordinary standards of common sense, Mme. Blavatsky's long stay in
America
was not a good preparation for her residence in India. And yet her
Theosophic
mission appears to have had India as its objective point from the
outset.
It is just possible, therefore, that her alienation from the English
population
of India in the first instance, due to the unreasonable prejudices
against
them which she came possessed with, may have served the cause she had in
view
in one way more than it told unfavorably in another. Unhappily there is no
good
understanding widely diffused as yet amongst the two races in India. Each
sees
the worst features in the character of the other, and ill appreciates the
best.
The responsibility for this state of things would, I think, be found very
equally
divided, but at all events it is possible, that in wishing to secure the
hearty
good-will of the natives, Mme. Blavatsky did not find herself really so
much
impeded as I have sometimes been inclined to think, by starting on terms
which
may almost be said to have cultivated the ill-will of the Europeans. The
too
readily enlisted sentiment of race antagonism may thus have put the natives
all
the more on her side, when it was seen that she was not on intimate or
friendly
relations with the Anglo-Indian community.[170]
However
this may be, Mme. Blavatsky came to India to plant the Theosophical
Society
in the soil where she believed, not quite correctly as subsequent events
proved,
that it was destined chiefly to flourish, armed for her task (for good
or
evil as we like to look at the matter) with a flourishing stock of
misconceptions
concerning the social conditions of the country. She was
guiltless
of any inclination to concern herself practically with politics, and
indeed,
on the subject of politics, though greatly misconceiving the true
character
of the English government at that time, was less prejudiced than in
other
ways, for at any rate she consistently recognized the theory that, bad
though
it might be, the English Government was immeasurably the best India could
acquire
in the present state of her degeneration, as compared with the era of
ancient
Aryan grandeur. But her sympathies were always ready to flame up on
behalf
of individual native wrongs, and since the organs of native interests are
apt
in India to circulate stories too hastily, if they seem to be flavored with
native
wrongs, Mme. Blavatsky, living almost entirely at first in native
society,
imbibed a good many ideas, on her first establishment in the country,
which
used to be the subject of warm argument between her and myself, when I
first
made her acquaintance.
This
acquaintance was formed at the close of the year 1879, during the earlier
part
of which she reached Bombay, accompanied by Colonel Olcott and two persons
who
were supposed to be Theosophists in the beginning, but fell off from the
Society
at an early date, under circumstances which constituted the first of the
long
series of troubles that have attended the progress of the Theosophical
movement.
I never knew either of them, but they do not appear to have been
persons
whom [171] anyone of soberer judgment, in Mme. Blavatsky's place,
would
have brought over as companions in an enterprise like that she had in
hand.
The four strangely assorted travelers settled down in one of the native
quarters
of Bombay, and were very naturally objects of some suspicion with the
authorities.
Their movements about the country and into the neighboring native
states
were not of a kind that the ordinary habits of Europeans would account
for,
and as a matter of course, in a country where great interests have to be
guarded
from possible foreign intrigue, they were put under surveillance.
But
Englishmen are not clever at the tricks of police surveillance — no more so
in
India than elsewhere — and the watch set upon the movements of Mme. Blavatsky
and
Colonel Olcott was absurdly apparent to the persons who — if it had been
really
required — should never have been allowed to suspect it. Mme. Blavatsky
fretted
under the sense of insult this espionage inflicted on her, with the
intensity
of feeling she carries into everything. For my own part, I used often
to
tell her, when we laughed over the narrative of her adventures afterwards, I
pitied
the unhappy police officer, her spy, a great deal more than herself. She
pursued
this officer with sarcasms all the while that he, in the performance of
his
irksome duty, pursued her in her vague and erratic wanderings. She would
offer
him bags or letters to examine, and address him condolences on the
miserable
fate that condemned him to play the part of a mouchard. I suspect from
what
I heard at Simla at the time, that the Bombay Government must have been
treated
by the superior authorities to remarks that were anything but
complimentary
on the manner in which they conducted this business. At any rate,
the
mistake concerning the objects of the Theosophists was speedily seen
through,
[172] and the local government instructed to trouble itself no
more
about them.
I
had been in correspondence with Colonel Olcott and Mine. Blavatsky, partly
about
this business, during the summer. Their arrival in India had been heralded
with
a few newspaper paragraphs dimly indicating that Mme. Blavatsky was a
marvelous
person, associated with a modern development of “magic”, and I had
seen
her great book, Isis Unveiled, which naturally provoked interest on my part
in
the authoress. From some remarks published in the Pioneer, of which I was at
that
time the editor, the first communications between us arose. In accordance
with
arrangements made by letter during the summer, she came to Allahabad to
visit
my wife and myself at our cold weather home at that station in December
1879.
I
well remember the morning of her arrival, when I went down to the railway
station
to meet her. The trains from Bombay used to come into Allahabad in those
days
at an early hour in the morning, and it was still but just time for chota
hazree,
or early breakfast, when I brought our guests home. She had evidently
been
apprehensive, to judge from her latest letters, lest we might have formed
some
ideal conception of her that the reality would shatter, and had recklessly
painted
herself as a rough, old, “hippopotamus” of a woman, unfit for civilized
society;
but she did this with so lively a humor that the betrayal of her bright
intelligence
this involved more than undid the effect of her warnings. Her rough
manners,
of which we had been told so much, did not prove very alarming, though
I
remember going into fits of laughter at the time when Colonel Olcott, after
the
visit had lasted a week or two, gravely informed us that Madame was under
“great
self-restraint” so far. This had not [173] been the impression my
wife
and I had formed about her, though we had learned already to find her
conversation
more than interesting.
I
would not venture to say that our new friends made a favorable impression all
round,
upon our old ones, at Allahabad. Anglo-Indian society is strongly colored
with
conventional views, and Mme. Blavatsky was too violent a departure from
accepted
standards in a great variety of ways to be assimilated in Anglo-Indian
circles
with readiness. At the same time, the friends she made among our
acquaintances
while under our roof were the best worth having, and all who came
to
know her, and were gifted with the faculty of appreciating bright and
versatile
talk, sparkling anecdote, and first-rate dinner-table qualifications,
were
loud in her praises and eager for her society. Her dinner-table
qualifications
it will, of course, be understood did not include those of the
bon
vivant, for her dislike of alcohol in all forms amounted to a kind of mania,
and
led her to be vexatious sometimes in her attack on even the most moderate
wine-drinking
on the part of others. An illustration, by-the-by, of the manner
in
which Mme. Blavatsky is constantly made the subject of the most extravagant
falsehoods
is afforded by a statement which has, I hear, been made quite
recently
in London by some ex-Anglo-Indian. He or she — I am glad to say I do
not
know who the he or she is, and do not seek to know — told my informant that
he
or she had actually seen Mine. Blavatsky intoxicated at Simla. As I know her
to
be a total abstainer, not merely on principle (in connection with her occult
training),
but by predilection as well — by virtue indeed, as I have described,
of
an absolute horror of alcohol — and as she has never resided at Simla under
any
roof but my own and one other, beneath which I was myself at the same [
174]
time a guest — the statement is for me exactly as if it asserted that,
during
her Simla visit, Mme. Blavatsky was double-headed like the famous
“Nightingale”.
I
want to give my readers an idea of Mme. Blavatsky, as I have known her, that
shall
be as nearly complete as I can make it, and I shall not hesitate to put in
the
shadows of the picture. The first visit she paid us was not an unqualified
success
in all respects. Her excitability, sometimes amusing, would sometimes
take
an irritating shape, and she would vent her impatience, if anything annoyed
her,
by vehement tirades in a loud voice directed against Colonel Olcott, at
that
time in an early stage of his apprenticeship to what she would sometimes
irreverently
speak of as the “occult business”. No one with the least
discernment
could ever fail to see that her rugged manners and disregard of all
conventionalities
were the result of a deliberate rebellion against, not of
ignorance
or unfamiliarity with, the customs of refined society. Still the
rebellion
was often very determined, and she would sometimes color her language
with
expletives of all sorts, some witty and amusing, some unnecessarily
violent,
that we should all have preferred her not to make use of. She certainly
had
none of the superficial attributes one might have expected in a spiritual
teacher
; and how she could at the same time be philosopher enough to have given
up
the world for the sake of spiritual advancement, and yet be capable of going
into
frenzies of passion about trivial annoyances, was a profound mystery to us
for
a long while, and is only now partially explainable, indeed, within my own
mind,
by some information I have received relating to curious psychological laws
under
which initiates in occult mysteries, circumstanced as she is, inevitably
come.
By slow degrees only, and in spite of herself — in spite of [175]
injudicious
proceedings on her part that long kept alive suspicions she might
easily
have allayed, if she could have kept calm enough to understand them, —
did
we come to appreciate the reality of the occult forces and unseen agencies
behind
her.
It
is unnecessary for me to give an elaborate account here of occult wonders
performed
by Mme. Blavatsky during her various visits to us at Allahabad and
Simla.
These are, most of them, recorded in The Occult World. Those which took
place
during her first visit were not of great importance, and some of them were
so
little protected by the conditions that would have been required to guarantee
their
bona fide character that they were worse than useless. My wife and I were
patient
observers, and by not jumping to any conclusions too precipitately, were
enabled
in the long run to obtain the satisfaction we desired; but guests,
especially
if they happened to be of a very materialistic temperament, would
regard
anything Mme. Blavatsky might do of an apparently abnormal character as
so
much juggling, and hardly disguise these impressions from her. The result in
such
cases would be a stormy end to our evening after such guests had gone. To
be
suspected as an impostor deluding her friends with trickery, would sting her
at
any time with a scorpion smart, and bring forth a flood of passionate
argument
as to the cruelty and groundlessness of such an imputation, the
violence
of which would really have tended with most hearers to confirm
suspicions
rather than to allay them.
Recollection
of this time supplies me with a very varied assortment of memory
portraits
of Madame, taken during different conditions of her nerves and temper.
Some
recall her flushed and voluble, too loudly declaiming against some person
or
other who had misjudged her or [176] her Society; some show her quiet
and
companionable, pouring out a flood of interesting talk about Mexican
antiquities,
or Egypt, or Peru, showing a knowledge of the most varied and
far-reaching
kind, and a memory for names and places and archaeological theories
she
would be dealing with, that was fairly fascinating to her hearers. Then,
again,
I remember her telling anecdotes of her own earlier life, mysterious bits
of
adventure, or stories of Russian society, with so much point, vivacity, and
finish,
that she would simply be the delight for the time being of everyone
present.
I
never could clearly make out her age at this time, and was led partly by the
look
of things, for the hard life she has led has told upon her complexion and
features,
and partly by her own vague reference to remote periods in the past,
to
overestimate it by several years. She has always had a dislike to telling her
age
with exactitude, which does not spring in her case from the vanity which
operates
with some ladies, but has to do with occult embarrassment. The age of
the
body in which a given human entity may reside or function, is held by occult
initiates
to be sometimes a very misleading fact, and chelas under strict rules
are,
I believe, forbidden to tell their ages. In Mme. Blavatsky's case the
problem
was somewhat complicated by the fact that she had, within the few years
previous
to my first knowledge of her, grown to somewhat unwieldy proportions.
Mr
A. O. Hume, whose name has been a good deal mixed up in very different ways,
both
with the early beginnings of the Theosophical movement in India and with
some
of its latest phases, was at Allahabad when Mme. Blavatsky first came
there,
holding an appointment for the time on the Board of Revenue in the N. W.
P.,
and he took great interest in our remarkable guest. He [177] presided
one
afternoon at a public meeting which was held at the Mayo Hall to give
Colonel
Olcott an opportunity of delivering an address on Theosophy, and a
passage
from his brief speech on that occasion may fitly find a place here as
showing
in graceful language the manner in which, at that time, the subject was
opening
up: —
“This
much I have gathered about the Society, viz. that one primary and
fundamental
object of its existence is the institution of a sort of brotherhood
in
which, sinking all distinction of race and nationality, caste and creed, all
good
and earnest men, all who love science, all who love truth, all who love
their
fellowmen, may meet as brethren, and labor hand in hand in the cause of
enlightenment
and progress. Whether this noble ideal is ever likely to germinate
and
grow into practical fruition ; whether this glorious dream, shared in by so
many
of the greatest minds in all ages, is ever destined to emerge from the
shadowy
realms of Utopia into the broad sunlight of the regions of reality, let
no
one now pretend to decide. Many and marvelous are the changes and
developments
that the past has witnessed; the impossibilities of one age have
become
the truisms of the next; and who shall venture to predict that the future
may
not have as many surprises for mankind as has had the past, and that this
may
not be one amongst them. Be the success, however, great or little of those
who
strive after this grand ideal, one thing we know, that no honest efforts for
the
good of our fellowmen are ever wholly fruitless. It may be long before that
fruit
ripens ; the workers may have passed away long ere the world discerns the
harvest
for which they wrought; nay, the world at large may never realize what
has
been done for it, but the good work itself remains, imperishable,
everlasting.
They who wrought it have necessarily been by such efforts purified
and
exalted, the community in which they lived and toiled has inevitably
benefitted
directly or indirectly, and through it, the world at large. On this
ground,
if on no other, we must necessarily sympathize with the Theosophists.
[178]
The
Theosophists in those days had all their troubles before them in an
unsuspected
future, and the movement seemed to be advancing gaily with many
friendly
hands stretching out to aid it, and nothing but petty squabbling among
the
members at the Bombay headquarters to disturb the peace of its chiefs. But
Mme.
Blavatsky's temperament always magnified the annoyance of the moment,
whatever
it might be, till it overshadowed her whole sky. Colonel Olcott spoke
at
the meeting which Mr Hume opened with the remarks just quoted, but one of his
hearers,
at all events — his distinguished colleague, — was not altogether
pleased
with his address, and no sooner were we clear of the Hall compound on
our
drive back than she opened fire upon him with exceeding bitterness. To hear
her
talk on this subject at intervals during the evening one might have thought
the
aspirations of her life compromised, though the meeting and the speech —
about
which I do not remember that there was anything amiss — were not important
to
the progress of the Society in any serious degree. Colonel Olcott bore all
these
tantrums with wonderful fortitude, taking them as all so much probation to
be
set down to the account of his occult chelaship; and with all this
exasperating
behavior Mme. Blavatsky nevertheless had a strange faculty of
winning
affection. Her own nature was exceedingly warm-hearted and affectionate,
as
it is still, and must remain as long as she lives, in spite of the cruel
disappointments
and trials, the sickness and suffering of later years, the
poignant
regret she has spent over irremediable mistakes that have compromised
the
success of her cause, and the passionate sense of wrong under which she
fumes,
as the unteachable world complacently listens to the tales of her
traducers,
or as flippant newspapers make fun of the wonderful stories told
about
her, [179] as though she were a mountebank or impostor. Thus the
prestige
of her occult power, uncertain and capricious though it has latterly
become,
invests her with so much interest for people who have emerged from the
bog
of mere materialistic incredulity about her, that anyone with a tendency
towards
mysticism is apt to become possessed with something like reverence for
her
attributes, in spite of the strangely unattractive shell with which she
sometimes
surrounds them. Thus, in one way and another, large numbers of people
in
India, who came to know her through ourselves, learned to regard her with a
very
friendly feeling, rugged manners and stormy temperature notwithstanding.
Mme.
Blavatsky visited us again at Simla in the autumn of 1880, when most of the
phenomena
described in The Occult World took place. She was much better inclined
now
than on her first arrival in India to conciliate European sympathy and
support
for the movement on which she was engaged. She had learned the lesson
which
the best friends of native interests in India must always learn sooner or
later,
if they come in contact with the realities of the situation, that for any
practical
work to be done, the natives want a European lead. Even when the task
in
hand has to do with the revival of Indian philosophy, its administration
languishes
when confided too exclusively to native direction. Mme. Blavatsky
therefore
came to Simla prepared for society. She would protest against the
“flap-doodle”
of “Mrs Grundy” — favorite phrases often on her lips, — but to
serve
her cause she would even condescend to put off occasionally the red
flannel
dressing-gown in which she preferred to robe herself, and sit down in
black
silk amid the uncongenial odors of champagne and sherry. Of course, beyond
a
very narrow circle, the wonders she [180] wrought were quite ineffective
in
kindling that zeal for intelligent inquiry into the higher psychic laws of
nature
by virtue of which they were accomplished, which it was the intention of
their
promoters to awaken. No one could understand Mme. Blavatsky without
studying
her by the light of the hypothesis — even if it were only regarded as
such
— that she was the visible agent of unknown occult superiors. There was
much
in her character on the surface as I have described it, which repelled the
idea
that she was an exalted moralist trying to lead people upward towards a
higher
spiritual life. The internal excitement, superinduced by the effort to
accomplish
any of her occult feats, would, moreover, render her too passionate
in
repudiating suspicions which could not but be stimulated by such protests on
her
part. Conscious of her failure very often to do more than leave people about
her
puzzled and vaguely wondering how she did her “tricks”, she would constantly
abjure
the whole attempt, profess violent resolutions to produce no more
phenomena
under any circumstances for a sneering, undiscerning, materialistic
generation;
and as often be impelled by her love of wielding the strange forces
at
her command to fall into her old mistakes, to hurriedly rush into the
performance
of some new feat as she felt the power upon her, without stopping to
think
of the careful conditions by which it ought to be surrounded, if she meant
to
do more than aggravate the mistrust which drove her into frenzies of
suffering
and wrath. Once, however, recognize her as the flighty and defective,
though
loyal and brilliantly-gifted representative of occult superiors in the
background,
making through her an experiment on the spiritual intuitions of the
world
in which she moved, and the whole situation was solved, the apparent
incoherence
of her character [181] and acts explained, and the best
attributes
of her own nature properly appreciated.
So
much exasperation and trouble have been brought about in recent years by the
disputes
which have arisen concerning the authenticity of Mme. Blavatsky's
phenomena,
that the general opinion of Theosophists has been apt to condemn the
whole
policy under which such displays have been associated with the attempt to
recommend
the exalted spiritual philosophy of the “Esoteric Doctrine” to the
outer
world. It is easy to be wise after the event; it is easy now to see that
in
Europe, at all events, where sympathy with new or unfamiliar ideas can best
be
courted by purely intellectual methods, the Theosophical position, as now
understood
by its most devoted representatives, would be stronger without, than
with
the record of Mme. Blavatsky's phenomena behind it. Still I am very far
myself
from thinking that the idea of awakening the attention of the world in
regard
to the possibilities for all men of greatly elevating and expanding their
own
inner nature and capabilities along the lines of occult study, by the
display
of some of the powers which such study was capable of bringing about,
was
in itself an injudicious idea. It is plain, of course, that Mme. Blavatsky
has
to bear the responsibility of having often misapplied that idea; that she is
suffering
from the prompt retribution of circumstances in the ignominy that has
been
heaped upon her of late, is also apparent. But cool observation of the
whole
position will show that, with all her mistakes, she has infused into the
current
of the world's thinking a flood of ideas connected with the
possibilities
of man's spiritual evolution, that many thinkers are at work with
now
in profound disregard of, not to say ingratitude for, the source from which
they
have come. Mme. Blavatsky's [182] failures and mistakes are glaring in
the
sight of us all; trumpeted in every newspaper that mocks her as an impostor,
and
proclaimed (by the irony of fate) in the proceedings of a Society that has
stultified
its own name by investigating an episode in her career, as if
psychical
developments were so much ironmongery, and the depth of nature's
mysteries
could be expressed — by a sufficiently acute observer — in decimals of
an
inch. But her successes are only apparent to those who have eyes to see, and
an
enlightened understanding to comprehend.
And
just as the history of Mme. Blavatsky's work is a party-colored page, so her
personality,
her external character, is equally variegated. I have said a good
deal
of her impetuosity and indiscretions of speech and manner and of the way in
which
she will rage for hours, if allowed, over trifles which a more phlegmatic,
not
to speak of a more philosophical temperament would barely care to notice.
But
it must be understood that, almost at any time, an appeal to her
philosophical
intellect will turn her right off into another channel of
thinking,
and then, equally for hours, may any appreciative companion draw forth
the
stores of her information concerning Eastern religions and mythology, the
subtle
metaphysics of Hindu and Buddhist symbolism, or the esoteric doctrine
itself,
so far as in later years some regions of this have been opened out for
public
treatment. Even in the midst of passionate lamentations — appropriate in
vehemence
to a catastrophe that might have wrecked the fruits of a life-time —
over
some offensive sneer in a newspaper article or letter, an allusion to some
unsolved
problem in esoteric cosmogony, or misinterpretation by a European
orientalist
of some Eastern doctrine, will divert the flow of her intense mental
activity,
and sweep all recollection of the current annoyance, for the moment,
from
her mind. [183]
The
record of Mme. Blavatsky's residence in India is, of course, intimately
blended
with the history of the Theosophical Society, on which all her energies
are
spent, directly or indirectly, and indirectly in so far only as she was
obliged
during this period to do what literary work she could for Russian
magazines
to earn her livelihood, and supplement the narrow resources on which
the
headquarters of the Society were kept up. The Theosophist, the monthly
magazine
devoted to occult research, which she set on foot in the autumn of her
first
year in India, paid its way from the beginning, and gradually came to
earning
a small profit, subject to the fact that its management was altogether
gratuitous,
and all its work, in all departments, performed by the little band
of
Theosophists at the headquarters ; but all the while that sneering critics of
the
movement in the papers would be suggesting, from time to time, that the
founders
of the Society were doing a very good business with “initiation fees”,
and
living on the tribute of the faithful, Mme. Blavatsky was really at her desk
from
morning till night, slaving at Russian articles, which she wrote solely for
the
sake of the little income she was able to make in this way, and on which, in
a
far greater degree than on the proper resources of the Society, the
headquarters
were supported, and the movement kept on foot.
Thus
energetically promoted, the Society continued to make steady progress.
Colonel
Olcott travelled about the country with indefatigable perseverance,
founding
new branches in all directions, and Mme. Blavatsky herself went with
him
and some others to Ceylon during the cold weather, 1880-81, where the
theosophical
party was fêted by large and enthusiastic native audiences. The
movement
took firm root in the island at once, and flourished with wonderful
vigor.
[184]
Here,
of course, Madame Blavatsky's open profession of Buddhism as her religion
was
all in her favour, though it had been rather against her in India, as
exoteric
Hindus and Buddhists are not at all in sympathy, though the esoteric
docrines
of the initiates of both schools are practically identical. The
Singalese
welcomed, with delight, a lead which showed them how to set up schools
in
which their children could be taught the essentials of secular education
without
coming into contact with European missionaries.
During
the autumn of 1881 I returned to India from a visit to England, and on
landing
at Bombay spent a few days with Madame Blavatsky at the headquarters of
the
Theosophical Society, then established at Breach Candy, in a bungalow called
the
Crow's Nest, perched up on a little eminence above the road. It had been
unoccupied
for some time I heard, discredited by a reputation for snakes and
ghosts,
neither of which encumbrances greatly alarmed the new tenants. The
building
was divided into two portions — the lower given over to the Society
service
and to Colonel Olcott's Spartan accommodation ; the upper part, reached
by
a covered stairway, corresponding to the slope of the hill, to Mme. Blavatsky
and
the office work of the Theosophist. There was also a spare room in this
upper
portion, all the rooms of which were on one level, and opening on to a
broad
covered-in verandah, which constituted Mme. Blavatsky's sitting, eating,
and
reception room all in one. Opening out of it at the further end she had a
small
writing-room. On the whole she was more comfortably housed than, knowing
her
wild contempt for the luxuries of European civilisation, I had expected to
find
her ; but the establishment was more native than Anglo-Indian in its
organisation,
and the covered verandah was all day long, and up [185] to
late
hours in the evening, visited by an ebb and flow of native guests, admiring
Theosophists
who came to pay their respects to Madame. She used to like to get
half
a dozen or more of them round her talking on any topic connected with the
affairs
of the Society that might arise in a desultory, aimless way, that used
to
be found rather trying by her European friends. The latest embarrassment or
little
difficulty or annoyance, whatever it might be, that had presented itself,
used
to fill her horizon for the moment, and give her fretful anxiety out of
keeping
with its importance, and there has rarely been a period during the five
or
six years I have had to do with the Society when there has not been some
situation
to be saved — in Mme. Blavatsky's estimation, — some enemy to be
guarded
against, some possible supporter to be conciliated. How it was possible
for
any nervous system to stand the wear and tear of the perpetual agitation and
worry
in which — largely in consequence of the peculiarities of her own
temperament,
of course — Mme. Blavatsky spent her life, persons of calmer nature
could
never understand. But she would generally be up at an early hour writing
at
her Russian articles or translations, or at the endless letters she sent off
in
all directions in the interest of the Society, or at articles for the
Theosophist;
then during the day she would spend a large part of her time
talking
with native visitors in her verandah room, or hunting them away and
getting
back to her work with wild protests against the constant interruption
she
was subject to, and in the same breath calling for her faithful “Babula”,
her
servant, in a voice that rang all over the house, and sending for some one
or
other of the visitors she knew to be waiting about below and wanting to see
her.
Then in the midst of some fiery argument with a pundit about a point of
[186]
modern Hindu belief that she might protest against as inconsistent
with
the real meaning of the Vedas, or a passionate remonstrance with one of her
aides
of the Theosophist about something done amiss that would for the time
overspread
the whole sky of her imagination with a thundercloud, she would
perhaps
suddenly “hear the voice they did not hear” — the astral call of her
distant
Master, or one of the other “Brothers”, as by that time we had all
learned
to call them, — and forgetting everything else in an instant, she would
hurry
off to the seclusion of any room where she could be alone for a few
moments,
and hear whatever message or orders she had to receive.
She
never wanted to go to bed when night came. She would sit on smoking
cigarettes
and talking — talking with a tireless energy that was wonderful to
watch
— on Eastern philosophy of any sort, on the mistakes of theological
writers,
on questions raised (but not settled) in Isis, or, with just as much
intensity
and excitement, on some wretched matter connected with the
administration
of the Society, or some foolish sarcasm levelled against herself
and
the attributes imputed to her in one of the local newspapers. To say that
she
never would learn to, estimate occurrences at their proper relative value,
is
to express the truth so inadequately that the phrase does not seem to express
it
at all. Her mind seemed always like the exhausted receiver of an air-pump, in
which
a feather or a guinea let fall, drop with apparently the same momentum.
Of
society in the European sense of the term she had absolutely none at Bombay.
She
never paid visits, and as the custom of the English communities in the East
requires
the new-comer to make the first calls, she, ignoring this necessity,
was
left almost absolutely without [187] acquaintances of her own kind in
that
station of India where she was supposed to be most at home. I often
wondered
that none of the English residents at Bombay had the curiosity to break
through
the conventionalities of the situation and take advantage of the
opportunity
lying within reach of their hands for making friends with one of, at
all
events, the most remarkable and intellectually-gifted women in the whole
country
— rugged eccentricities and cigarettes notwithstanding. But certainly at
first
the quarters where Madame Blavatsky established herself, and the habits of
her
heterogeneous native household, and the wild tales which I have no doubt
from
the first were circulated about her, may have intimidated any but the most
adventurous
of the English ladies accustomed to the decorous routine of
Anglo-Indian
etiquette. She herself may have fretted occasionally against her
isolation,
but at all events did not regret the loss of European “society” in
the
special sense of the word; she would have found it a terrible burden to go
out
to formal parties of any kind, to forego the ease of the nondescript
costumes
— loose wrappers — that she wore, to put herself in any position in
which
her fingers would be restrained from reaching, whenever the impulse
prompted
them to do so, for her tobacco pouch and cigarette papers. Rebel as she
had
been in her childhood against the customs of civilized life, so equally was
she
a rebel against the usages of English society in India; and the strange
discipline
of her occult training that had rendered her spirit devoted and
submissive
to the one kind of control she had learned to reverence, left the
fierce
independence of her outer nature quite unaltered.
She
joined me at Allahabad a few months after my return to India in 1881, and
went
up to Simla with me [188] to be the guest for the remainder of that
season
of Mr A. O. Hume. She was far from well at the time, and the latter part
of
the journey — a trying one for the most robust passenger — was an ordeal that
brought
out the peculiar characteristics of her excitable temper in an amusing
way,
I remember; for the “tongas” in which the eight-hours' drive up the
mountain
roads from Kalka at the foot of the hills to the elevated sanatorium is
accomplished,
are not luxurious conveyances. They are low two-wheeled carts hung
on
a crank axle, so that the foot-boards are only about a foot above the road,
with
seats for four persons, including the driver, two and two back to back —
just
accommodation enough in each for one passenger with his portmanteau
(equivalent,
if he has one with him, to a passenger), and a servant. We had two
tongas
between us, putting our servants with some of the luggage in one, while
Madame
Blavatsky and I occupied the back seat of the other with a porte manteau
on
the seat beside the driver. The only recommendation of a tonga is that it
gets
over the ground rapidly, and the ponies, frequently changed, trot or canter
up
all but the steepest gradients. The traveler is jolted frightfully, but he is
not
likely to be capsized, though even that happens sometimes, for the mountain
roads
are very rough, and the ponies apt to be troublesome. The general
character
of the tonga pony may be appreciated from the fact that I have known a
driver
apologize to a passenger for a particularly flighty pair, on the ground
that
they had never been in harness before. The animals are attached to the
vehicle
by a strong cross-bar resting in sockets on saddles they carry for the
purpose,
and though on this system ponies and cart are as firmly united as a
bunch
of keys by its steel ring, still they are no less loosely linked together,
and
n nervous passenger is liable to be disturbed by the extraordinary positions
into
which they get during any little disagreement between the team and the
driver.
One such disagreement arose soon after our start on the journey of which
I
am speaking, and Madame's impassioned anathemas directed against the whole
service
of the tonga dak and the civilization of which it formed a part, ought
not,
I remember thinking at the time, to have had their comicality wasted upon
an
audience of one. Then, as the day and the dreary drive wore on, Madame's
indignation
at the annoyance of the situation only waxed more vehement, instead
of
settling down into the dogged despair with which the more phlegmatic Briton
as
a rule accepts the disagreeables of a tonga drive. Especially she used to be
incensed
whenever the driver sounded his ear-piercing horn close behind us. She
would
break off whatever she was talking about to launch invectives at this
unfortunate
“trumpet” whenever it was blown, and as often, up to the end of the
journey;
and, seeing that a tonga driver for self-preservation's sake must blow
his
horn whenever he approaches a turn in the road (which may conceal another
tonga
coming the other way); also that the road from Kalka to Simla, the whole
fifty
or sixty miles of it, consists chiefly of turns all the way up, the
trumpet
was more effectually cursed by the time we got to our destination than
the
jackdaw of Rheims himself.
I
do not think it worth while to add to the wonderful records of Mme.
Blavatsky's
“phenomena”, contained in other portions of this volume, any
description
of the relatively insignificant incidents of that kind, which were
all
that occurred at the period to which I have now come. The manifestations of
abnormal
occult power which had been displayed so freely in the summer of 1880
had
given rise to a good deal of acrimonious [190] discussion. Whatever
policy
had been under trial, by the mysterious authorities whom Madame Blavatsky
spoke
of as her Masters, when she was freely permitted to exercise whatever
abnormal
gifts she possessed, and even helped to achieve results beyond her own
reach,
had now fallen into discredit. The days of phenomena working were all but
over.
All that occurred now were concerned merely with the despatch and receipt
of
letters, or in some way incidental to the work of the Theosophic movement. It
would
rarely happen that even these presented themselves under conditions that
rendered
the transaction complete enough to be described as a wonder; though
with
the experience of Madame Blavatsky that most of us about her at this time
had
had on other occasions, incidents that were incomplete as tests of occult
power,
would necessarily share the retrospective credit attaching to other
similar
incidents that had been complete in the past. However, the mot d'ordre
in
the Theosophical Society was now coming to be unfavorable to the craving for
phenomena
as such, that each new set of acquaintances Madame Blavatsky might
make
would necessarily feel at first. Mr Hume — who at that time was greatly
interested
in the information I had begun to obtain shortly before in reference
to
the views of Nature entertained by the adepts of Indian occultism — and I,
were
far more intent now on enlarging our comprehension of this “Esoteric
Doctrine”
than on witnessing further displays of a mysterious power of which we
could
not fathom the secrets. We used to spend long hours together, day after
day,
in trying to develop the unmanageable hints we obtained in the form of
written
answers to questions, with the help of Mme. Blavatsky; but the task she
had
to perform in endeavoring to elucidate these hints, was almost hopelessly
embarrassing;
[191] for though her own knowledge was very great, it had not
been
originally implanted in her own mind on European methods; it was not
readily
recast in a European mould, and above all, she had no clear idea as to
what
she was at liberty to tell us, and how far her general obligations of
secrecy
still applied. It was an uphill and not very profitable beginning that
was
made at this time with an enterprise that assumed considerable proportions
in
the end, and it was not till a later period, when I had returned to my own
house
at Allahabad, that my instruction in occult philosophy, leading up to the
subsequent
development of the book called Esoteric Buddhism, began to make real
progress.
By that time, to my lasting regret, Mr Hume's sympathies had been
alienated
from the undertaking.
It
has been, in this way, Mme. Blavatsky's fate, throughout her work on the
Theosophical
Society, to make and lose many friends. The peculiarities of her
character,
which these memoirs will have disclosed, sufficiently account for
this
checkered record of success and failure. No personal demeanor could be
imagined
worse calculated than hers to retain the confidence of people earnestly
pursuing
exalted spiritual ideas, during that intermediate stage of
acquaintanceship
intervening between the first kindling of an interest in her
general
theories of occultism, and the establishment of a profound intimacy. It
is
only people who know her hardly at all, or only through her writings, and, at
the
other end of the scale, those who knew her so thoroughly that she herself
cannot
mislead them, by external roughness and indiscretion, into distrusting
the
foundations of her character, who do her justice. People who are familiar
with
her without being closely intimate and long acquainted with the conflicting
elements
of her nature, [192] can hardly escape some shock to their
confidence,
sooner or later, some uncomfortable suspicion about her code of
truthfulness,
of right or wrong, which once planted in their minds, and not
immediately
brought forward and frankly discussed with her, will be sure to
rankle
and grow. It is easy for people whose work lies altogether on the
physical
plane of existence, who deal with one another by the light of
principles
which are perfectly well understood all round, to remain beyond the
reach
of all moral reproach, to regulate their conduct so that all men recognize
the
purity of their intentions, and the high standards of right by which they
are
governed. The course of life before an occult chela endeavoring to carry out
a
work of spiritual philanthropy amongst people on the “physical plane” — “in
the
world” — (as the occult phrase would express it, distinguishing between the
normal
community of human kind at large, and the secluded organization in
contact
with other modes of human existence, besides those of ordinary living
flesh)
is immeasurably more embarrassing. Such a person is entangled, to begin
with,
in a network of reserve. He cannot but be cognizant of a great many facts
connected
with the occult life which he is not at liberty to disclose, which,
indeed,
he is bound to guard even from the betrayal which an indiscreet silence
in
face of indiscreet questioning might sometimes bring about. There would be no
difficulty
in his way if he were simply a chela of the ordinary kind concerned
as
such merely with his own spiritual and psychic development ; but when he has
to
make some disclosures, and must not go too far with these — when he is not
allowed,
withal, to be judge of what information he shall communicate and what
keep
back, — his task may often be one that is replete with the most serious
embarrassment.
[193]
These
embarrassments would, of course, be least for a person of naturally cool
and
taciturn temperament, but amongst occultists, as amongst people “in the
world”,
temperaments vary. Of course Mme. Blavatsky's excitable and passionate
disposition
has been a frightful stumbling-block in her way: but what is the use
in
an orchard of the most gracefully shaped tree that bears no fruit ? She might
have
been born with the manners of Mme. Récamier, and the sedate discretion
of
an
English judge, and have been perfectly useless in her generation. Whereas,
with
all her defects, the possession of her splendid psychic gifts, of her
indomitable
courage — which carried her through the ordeals of initiation in the
mysteries
of occult knowledge, and again held her up against the protracted
antagonism
of materialistic opinion when she came back into the world with an
onerous
mission to discharge, — and of her spiritual enthusiasm, which made all
suffering
and toil as dust in the balance compared with her allegiance to her
unseen
“Masters”, the possession, in short, of her occult attributes has
rendered
her an influence in the world of great potency. The tree may not have
assumed
a shape that passing strangers would admire, but the fruit it has borne
has
been a stupendous harvest.
When
I say that suffering and toil have been with Mme. Blavatsky as dust in the
balance
compared to her duty, I say that with deliberate conviction; but, of
course,
the phrase must not be taken to mean that she bears suffering and
privation
with philosophical calm or equanimity. She is not capable of bearing
the
annoyance of a pin-prick with equanimity. She cannot help fuming and
fretting
over every annoyance, great or small, and when, as so often happens
inevitably,
considering the stories told of her wonder working, and the
occasional
[194] manifestation of her powers in this respect up to a recent
date,
she is suspected of trickery, her indignation and misery and incoherent
protests
are so vehement and unwise in their expression that they only serve to
strengthen
unjust conclusions to her disadvantage.
During
the Simla visit of 1881, we established the Simla Eclectic Theosophical
Society
— a branch which it was hoped at the time would attract Anglo-Indian
members.
Mr Hume was its president for the first year, and I myself for its
second;
but the movement never took root firmly in Anglo-Indian society, and
indeed
at that time there was nothing before the world that could give the
movement
an adequate raison d'être for Europeans at large.
The
record of Mme. Blavatsky's life in India for the next year or two would be
mainly
a narrative of tiresome episodes connected with attacks of one kind or
another
on the Theosophical Society. A Calcutta newspaper called the Statesman
made
her and her Society the object of frequent sarcasms, and sometimes of grave
misrepresentation,
so that in December 1881 it was driven under a threat of
legal
proceedings to publish a letter from solicitors on Mme. Blavatsky's
behalf.
This may be usefully reproduced here as illustrating at once the
offensive
nature and the groundlessness of the attacks of which she was the
object.
“CALCUTTA, December 16, 1881.
“SIR, —
In the Statesman of Tuesday, the 6th instant,
there appears an article having
reference, among other matters, to Madame
Blavatsky and Colonel Olcott, the
founders of the Theosophical Society. In the
course of that article it is
stated: —
“ 'It is now asserted not only that the
resources of both (Madame Blavatsky
and Colonel Olcott) are exhausted, but that
they are largely in debt, on
account, it is alleged, [195] of the expenses
of the Society. It is not
difficult for any one to arrive at the
conclusion that it would be highly
desirable and expedient for the founders of
the Theosophical Society to have
these debts paid off. This is a simple and
not unpraiseworthy instinct. The
question that remains is, as regards the
means by which this consummation is
to be effected.'
“The remainder of the article, which we need
not quote at length, is an
elaborate insinuation that Madame Blavatsky
is endeavoring to procure from a
gentleman named, by spurious representations,
the payment of her debts.
“Now, the allegation about Madame Blavatsky
being in debt is, we are
instructed, absolutely false to begin with ;
nor is the Society which she
helped to found in debt, unless, indeed, it
be to herself. The accounts of the
Society, published in the THEOSOPHIST for
last May, show that the outlay
incurred on behalf of the Society up to that
date had exceeded the receipts
(consisting of ' initiation fees ' Rs. 3900,
and a few donations) by a sum of
Rs. 19,846, but this deficit was supplied
from the private resources of Madame
Blavatsky and Colonel Olcott.
“We may further explain that Madame Blavatsky
is a Russian lady of high rank
by birth (though since naturalized in the
United States), and has never been
in the penniless condition your article
insultingly ascribes to her — whatever
mistakes may have arisen from the improper
publication of a private letter by
Colonel Olcott to a friend in America, the
careless exaggerations of which,
designed merely for a correspondent familiar
with the real state of the
affairs to which these referred, have given
you occasion for some offensive
remarks.
“We therefore, duly instructed on behalf of
Madame Blavatsky and Colonel
Olcott, now require of you that you should
publish this letter together with
an apology for the scandalous libel to which
you have been misled into giving
currency.
“We also require that in further refutation
of these, and in general reply to
the insulting language of your article, you
should publish the enclosed
explanations extracted from the Pioneer of
the 10th instant.[196]
“In the event of your failure forthwith to
comply with our request, or to give
up the name of the writer of the article in
question, we are instructed to
proceed against you in the High Court for
recovery of damages for the libelous
attacks of which our clients complain. —
Yours faithfully,
SANDERSON & Co.”
The
publication of this letter was accompanied by a quasi-apology, and the
matter
dropped. But next month the Theosophists were engaged in another war of
words
with a Mr Joseph Cook, a missionary preacher, who attacked the Society in
certain
lectures he gave at Poona. All standards of European good sense applied
to
such a matter would, of course, have required Mme. Blavatsky to remain
perfectly
quiescent in face of such assailants, but her temperament forbade
this,
and possibly the native Indian feeling on such subjects, very unlike the
European
feeling in corresponding cases, may have made it impossible for the
leaders
of the Theosophical Society to refuse an answer to any charges made
against
them. At all events, poor Mme. Blavatsky was never dragged out of one
pool
of hot water without forthwith finding herself in another.
In
the autumn of 1882, of which she spent the greater part at Bombay, she became
seriously
ill, and was at length summoned to an interview with her occult
superiors
across the Sikkim frontier, near Darjeeling. In a note I had from her
shortly
before her departure from Bombay, written in the middle of September,
she
bade my wife and myself good-bye, in the expectation, apparently, that the
term
of her physical life was nearly over. The note is so characteristic that I
give
it here with only a few private allusions suppressed.
“MY DEAR FRIENDS, MRS AND MR SINNETT,
I am afraid you will have soon to bid me
good-bye. This time [197] I have
it well and good. Bright's disease of the
kidneys, and the whole blood turned
into water, ulcers breaking out in the most
unexpected spots, blood, or
whatever it may be, forming into bags
à la kangaroo, and other pretty extras
and et ceteras. This all, primo, brought on
by Bombay dampness and heat; and,
secundo, by fretting and bothering. I have
become so stupidly nervous that the
unexpected tread of Babula's naked foot near
me makes me start with the most
violent palpitations of the heart. Dudley
says — I forced him to tell me this
— that I can last a year or two, and perhaps
but a few days, for I can die at
any time in consequence of an emotion. Ye
lords of creation ! of such emotions
I have twenty a day. How can I last then ? I
give all the business over to
-----; ----- (meaning her Master) wants me to
prepare and go somewhere for a
month or so toward end of September. He sent
a chela here from Nilgerri Hills,
and he is to take me off, where, I don't know,
but, of course, somewhere in
the Himalayas.
“ ... I can hardly write, I am really too
weak. Yesterday they drove me down
to the Fort to the doctor. I got up with both
my ears swollen thrice their
natural size, and I met Mrs ------ and sister,
her carriage crossing mine
slowly. She did not salute nor make a sign of
recognition, but looked very
proud and disdainful. Well, I was fool enough
to resent it. I tell you I am
very sick. Yes, I wish I could see you once
more, and dear ------ and -----.
“Well, good-bye all, and when I am gone, if I
go before seeing you, do not
think of me too much as an 'impostor', for I
swear I told you the truth,
however much I have concealed of it from you.
I hope Mrs ----- will not
dishonor by evoking me with some medium. Let
her rest assured that it will
never be my spirit, nor anything of me — not
even my shell, since this is gone
long ago.
Yours in life yet,
H. P. B.”
Some
particulars of her journey up to Darjeeling, made shortly after this, are
given
in a narrative by an enthusiastic candidate for chelaship, Mr S.
Ramaswamier,
[198] who endeavored to accompany Mme. Blavatsky, scenting the
probability
that she was really going to meet one of the higher adepts or
“Mahatmas”.
I take a portion of this narrative from the Theosophist of December
1882.
It took the form of a letter addressed by the writer to a brother
Theosophist.
“... When we met last at Bombay I told you
what had happened to me at
Tinnevelly. My health having been disturbed
by official work and worry, I
applied for leave on medical certificate, and
it was duly granted. One day in
September last, while I was reading in my
room, I was ordered by the audible
voice of my blessed Guru, M ------, to leave
all and proceed immediately to
Bombay, whence I had to go in search of Mme.
Blavatsky wherever I could find
her and follow her wherever she went. Without
losing a moment, I closed up all
my affairs and left the station. For the
tones of that voice are to me the
divinest sound in nature; its commands
imperative. I travelled in my ascetic
robes. Arrived at Bombay, I found Mme.
Blavatsky gone, and learned through you
that she had left a few days before; that she
was very ill ; and that, beyond
the fact that she had left the place very
suddenly with a Chela, you knew
nothing of her whereabouts. And now, I must
tell you what happened to me after
I had left you.
“Really not knowing whither I had best go, I
took a through ticket to
Calcutta; but, on reaching Allahabad, I heard
the same well-known voice
directing me to go to Berhampore. At
Azimgunge, in the train, I met, most
providentially I may say, with some Babus (I
did not then know they were also
Theosophists, since I had never seen any of
them), who were also in search of
Mme. Blavatsky. Some had traced her to
Dinapore, but lost her track and went
back to Berhampore. They knew, they said, she
was going to Tibet, and wanted
to throw themselves at the feet of the Mahatmas
to permit them to accompany
her. At last, as I was told, they received
from her a note, informing them to
come if they so desired it, but that she
herself was prohibited from [
199] going to Tibet just now. She was to
remain, she said, in the vicinity of
Darjeeling, and would see the BROTHERS on the
Sikkim Territory, where they
would not be allowed to follow her. . . .
Brother Nobin, the President of the
Adhi Bhoutic Bhratru Theosophical Society,
would not tell me where Mme.
Blavatsky was, or perhaps did not then know
it himself. Yet he and others had
risked all in the hope of seeing the
Mahatmas. On the 23rd, at last, I was
brought by Nobin Babu from Calcutta to
Chandernagore, where I found Mme.
Blavatsky, ready to start, five minutes
after, with the train. A tall,
dark-looking hairy Chela (not Chunder Cusho),
but a Tibetan I suppose by his
dress, whom I met after I had crossed the
river with her in a boat, told me
that I had come too late, that Mme. Blavatsky
had already seen the Mahatmas,
and that he had brought her back. He would
not listen to my supplications to
take me with him, saying he had no other
orders than what he had already
executed, namely — to take her about 25 miles
beyond a certain place he named
to me, and that he was now going to see her
safe to the station, and return.
The Bengalee brother-Theosophists had also
traced and followed her, arriving
at the station half-an-hour later. They
crossed the river from Chandernagore
to a small railway station on the opposite
side. When the train arrived, she
got into the carriage, upon entering which I
found the Chela! And, before even
her own things could be placed in the van,
the train — against all regulations
and before the bell was rung — started off,
leaving Nobin Babu, the Bengalees,
and her servant behind. Only one Babu and the
wife and daughter of another —
all Theosophists and candidates for Chelaship
— had time to get in. I myself
had barely the time to jump in, into the last
carriage. All her things — with
the exception of her box containing the
Theosophical correspondence — were
left behind, together with her servant. Yet,
even the persons that went by the
same train with her did not reach Darjeeling.
Babu Nobin Banerjee, with the
servant, arrived five days later; and they
who had time to take their seats
were left five or six stations behind owing
to another unforeseen accident (?)
at another further [200] place, reaching
Darjeeling also a few days
later! It requires no great stretch of
imagination to know that Mme. Blavatsky
had been, or was perhaps, being again taken
to the BROTHERS, who, for some
good reasons best known to them, did not want
us to be following and watching
her. Two of the Mahatmas, I had learned for a
certainty, were in the
neighborhood of British territory, and one of
them was seen and recognized, by
a person I need not name here, as a high
chutuku of Tibet.”
Mme.
Blavatsky was only two or three days across the frontier with her occult
superiors,
but she returned practically well again, and cured for the time of
the
formidable diseases by which her life had been menaced.On the 16th of
December
1882, a farewell entertainment was given by native friends to the
founders
of the Theosophical Society, just before their departure from Bombay to
take
up their residence at Adyar, Madras, where a house had been purchased for
the
Society by subscription. At this entertainment an address was read as
follows:—
“On the eve of your departure for Madras, we,
the members of the Bombay
Branch, beg most respectfully to convey to
you our heartfelt and sincere
acknowledgment for the benefit which the
people of this Presidency in general,
and we in particular, have derived from your
exposition of the Eastern
philosophies and religions during the past
four years. Although the exigencies
of the Society's growing business make it
necessary to remove the headquarters
to Madras, we assure you that the enthusiasm
for Theosophical studies and
universal Brotherhood which you have awakened
in us will not die out, but will
be productive of much good in future. By your
editorial efforts and public
lectures, you have done much to awaken in the
hearts of the educated sons of
India a fervent desire for the study of their
ancient literature, which has so
long been neglected; and though you have
never undervalued the system of
Western [201] education for the people of
India, which to a certain
extent is necessary for the material and
political advancement of the country,
you have often justly impressed upon the
minds of young men the necessity of
making investigations into the boundless
treasures of Eastern learning as the
only means of checking that materialistic and
atheistic tendency engendered by
an educational system unaccompanied by any
moral or religious instruction.
“You have preached throughout the country
temperance and universal
brotherhood, and how far your attempts in
that direction have been successful
during the brief period of four years was
perfectly manifest at the last
anniversary of the Parent Society, just held
in Bombay, when on one common
platform brave hearts from Lahore and Simla
to Ceylon, from Calcutta to
Kattiawar, from Gujerat and Allahabad —
Parsees, Hindus, Buddhists, Jews,
Mahomedans, and Europeans — assembled under
the banner of Theosophy, and
advocated the regeneration of India, under
the benign influence of the British
rule. Such a union of different communities,
with all the prejudices of sects,
castes, and creeds set aside, the formation
of one harmonious whole, and the
combining together for any national object,
in short, a grand national union,
are indispensable for the moral resuscitation
of Hindustan.”
Your endeavors have been purely unselfish and
disinterested, and they
therefore entitle you to our warmest sympathy
and best respects. We shall most
anxiously watch your successful progress, and
take an earnest delight in the
accomplishment of the objects of your
mission, throughout the Aryawart.
“As a humble token of our sense of
appreciation of your labours of love, and
as a keepsake from us, we beg most
respectfully to offer for your acceptance,
on behalf of our Branch, an article of Indian
make, with a suitable
inscription.”
Thus
by words as well as by deeds the native Theosophists of India were showing
their
appreciation of the good work done by Mme. Blavatsky and Colonel Olcott
[202]
in spite of the perpetually renewed slights they received all the
while
from the Anglo-Indian newspapers.
The
house at Madras in which Mme. Blavatsky was next established was a great
improvement
on the cramped and comfortless bungalow at Bombay from which she
removed.
Madras is a station of enormous extent, straggling along seven or eight
miles
of the sea-shore. Adyar is a suburb at the southern extremity, through
which
a small stream finds its way to the sea, and just before it reaches the
beach
spreads out into a broad shallow expanse of water, beside which the
Theosophical
House stands in extensive grounds. Here we found Mme. Blavatsky and
her
heterogeneous household comfortably installed when my wife and I visited her
on
our way home from India in March 1883. She was looking forward to final rest
there,
and was hoping she had at last found the tranquil retreat in which she
would
spend the remainder of her life. Her occult gifts have not included the
power
of forecasting the vicissitudes of her own career, and she was very far at
that
time from suspecting the renewed disturbance of her destinies, which the
next
two or three years were preparing to bring forth. The upper rooms of the
house
were her own private domain. These did not cover the whole area of the
lower
storey, but even with an addition that had just been made, stood on the
roof
like the poop of a ship upon its deck. The new room just built had been
hurried
forward that we might see it complete, and was destined by Madame to be
her
“occult room”, her own specially private sanctum, where she would be visited
by
none but her most intimate friends. It came to be sadly desecrated by her
worst
enemies a year or two later. In her ardor of affection for all that
concerned
the “Masters”, she had especially devoted herself to decorating a
certain
hanging cupboard to be [203] kept exclusively sacred to the
communications
passing between these Masters and herself, and already bestowed
upon
it the designation under which it became so sadly celebrated subsequently —
the
shrine. Here she had established some simple occult treasures — relics of
her
stay in Tibet — two small portraits she possessed of the Mahatmas, and some
other
trifles associated with them in her imagination. The purpose of this
special
receptacle was, of course, perfectly intelligible to everyone familiar
with
the theory of occult phenomena — held by Theosophists to be as rigidly
subject
to natural laws as the behavior of steam or electricity. A place kept
pure
of all “magnetism” but that connected with the work of integrating and
disintegrating
letters, would facilitate the process, and the “shrine” was used
a
dozen times for the transaction of business between the Masters and the chelas
connected
with the Society for every once it was made to subserve the purpose of
any
show phenomenon.
At
Madras Mme. Blavatsky was not quite so much neglected by the European society
of
the place, in the beginning of her residence there at all events, as she had
been
at Bombay. Some of the leading Anglo-Indian residents went to see her and
became
her fast friends. With some of these she spent part of the autumn at
Ootacamund,
the hill station of Madras. An incident which took place during this
visit
excited much local interest at the time, and is described by the lady
chiefly
concerned, Mrs Carmichael, as follows: —
“I went to see Mme. Blavatsky, who was at
that time on a visit to General and
Mrs Morgan, who live at Ootacamund. After
some interesting conversation with
her I left, expressing a desire to see her
again soon, and on my third visit
the following incident occurred.
“It was about four o'clock in the afternoon
when I [204] called on Mme.
Blavatsky, and was received by her in the
drawing-room. I sat beside her on
the sofa, and took off my driving gloves.”
I had already several times expressed to
Madame Blavatsky my great desire to
see some occult phenomenon, and also to be
convinced by some token of the
presence of the Mahatmas.“
After a short time spent in conversation on
this and other subjects, in course
of which I said how much I should like to
have a ring duplicated in the same
way that Mrs Sinnett had, Mme. Blavatsky took
my hand, and withdrawing from
her hand a ring which she called her occult
ring, took off also two rings from
my hand, one a blue sapphire, single stone.
She held the three rings for a
short time in her right hand, and then
returned me one saying — ' I can do
nothing with this; it has not your influence'
(it was a ring of my husband's
which I had put on accidentally that day).
She then proceeded to manipulate in
her right hand my blue sapphire and her own
occult ring, at the same time
holding my right hand with her left."
After an interval of a minute or two she
extended her right hand saying —“
'Here is your ring' — showing me at the same
instant two sapphire rings, my
own and another identical in every respect,
except that the second was larger
and a better cut stone than my own. ' Why do
you give me this? ' I asked in
surprise.“
' I have not done it; it is a gift from the
Mahatmas,' answered Mme.
Blavatsky. ' Why should I be so favored ?' I
asked. ' Because,' said Mme.
Blavatsky, ' the Mahatmas have allowed you to
have this as a token that they
recognize and thank you and your husband for
the deep interest you have always
shown to the natives.' ”
About two months after, on my return to
Madras, I took the duplicated sapphire
ring to Messrs Orr & Son, jewelers, and I
was told by them that they valued
the stone at 150 rupees, calling it a
party-colored sapphire.
(Signed) “ Sara M. CARMICHAEL.
“LONDON, August 14th, 1884.” [205]
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK. CF24-1DL
CHAPTER 10
A
VISIT TO EUROPE
At
the Convention of the Theosophical Society, held in December, it was stated
that
there were then seventy-seven branches in India and eight in Ceylon. The
anniversary
celebration went off with éclat as usual, in spite of some sparring
in
print between the President and the Bishop of Madras, foreshadowing a fiercer
conflict
between the Society and the local missionaries at a later date; and
early
in the spring the leaders of the movement came on a visit to Europe.
Colonel
Olcott had arranged to come some time previously on some business
connected
with a case before the Colonial Office, in which the interests of the
Ceylon
Buddhists were involved, and at the last moment it was decided that Mme.
Blavatsky
should accompany him. Her rescue, during the visit to the Sikkim
frontier,
from the death that seemed awaiting her during the autumn of 1882, had
not
done more than patch up physical machinery that was thoroughly out of order.
She
was again falling into very bad health, and it was supposed that the sea
voyage
to Europe and a few months' change would do her good. It was not
contemplated,
in the beginning, that she should come as far as London, and on
her
arrival at Nice, where she had friends, in the beginning of March she wrote,
in
reply to various invitations from London: — [206] “
I
have received the kind invitations of yourselves, of ------, and ------, and
others.
I am deeply touched by this proof of the desire to see my unworthy self,
but
see no use to kick against fate and try to make the realisable out of the
unrealisable.
I am sick, and feel worse than I felt when leaving Bombay. At sea
I
had felt better, and on land I feel worse. I was laid up for the whole day on
first
landing at Marseilles, and am laid up now. At the former place it was, I
suppose,
the vile emanations of a European civilised first-class hotel, with its
pigs
and beef, and here — well, anyhow I am falling to pieces, crumbling away
like
an old sea biscuit, and the most I will be able to do, will be to pick up
and
join together my voluminous fragments, and gluing them together, carry the
ruin
to Paris. What's the use asking me to go to London? What shall I, what can
I,
do amidst your eternal fogs and the emanations of the highest civilisation ?
I
left Madras à mon corps défendant. I did not want to go —
would return this
minute
if I could. Had not ------ ordered it, I would not have stirred from my
rooms
and old surroundings. I feel ill, miserable, cross, unhappy. ... I would
not
have come to Nice but for Madame ------, our dear Theosophist from Odessa.
Lady
C ------ is the embodiment of kindness. She does everything in creation to
humor
me. I came for two days, but I reckoned without my host, the mistral of
Provence,
and the cold winds of Nice. As soon as I am better, we mean to join
the
'secretaries' in Paris, only to begin fidgeting as soon as I am there, and
wishing
myself sooner in Jericho than Paris. What kind of company am I to
civilized
beings like yourselves ? . . . I would become obnoxious to them in
seven
minutes and a quarter were I to accept it and land my disagreeable, bulky
self
in England. Distance lends its charms, and in my case my presence would
surely
ruin every vestige of it.
“The
London Lodge is in its sharpest crisis. ... I could not (especially in my
present
state of nervousness) stand by and listen calmly to the astounding news
that
Sankaracharya was a theist, and Sabba Row knows not what he is talking
about,
without kicking myself to [207] death; or that other still more
astounding
declaration that Masters are evidently ' Swabhavikas.' And shall I
begin
contending against the Goughs and Hodgsons who have disfigured Buddhism
and
Adwaiticism even in their exoteric sense, and risk bursting a blood-vessel
in
London upon hearing their arguments reiterated ? . . . Let me die in peace if
I
have to die, or return to my Lares and Penates in Adyar, if I am ever doomed
to
see them again.”
In
spite of the reluctance thus expressed, she ultimately came to London and
stayed
for several months, but meanwhile she remained in Paris for a few weeks
and
was there joined by some of her Russian relatives and friends. Mme. de
Jelihowsky,
whose writings have been quoted so largely in the earlier chapters
of
this memoir, again took pen in hand to describe some phenomena that occurred
during
this period.