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Theosophy House
A
Modern Revival
Of
Ancient Wisdom
by
Alvin
Boyd Kuhn
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The Secret Doctrine by H P Blavatsky
PREFACE
Since this work was designed to be one of a series of
studies in American
religions, the treatment of the subject was consciously
limited to those aspects
of Theosophy which are in some manner distinctively related
to
restriction has been difficult to enforce for the reason
that, though officially
born here, Theosophy has never since its inception had its
headquarters on this
continent. The springs of the movement have emanated from
foreign sources and
influences. Its prime inspiration has come from ancient
Oriental cultures.
conditions of her native milieu. The main events in American
Theosophic history
have been mostly repercussions of events transpiring in
English, Continental, or
Indian Theosophy. It was thus virtually impossible to
segregate American
Theosophy from its connections with foreign leadership. But
the attempt to do so
has made it necessary to give meagre treatment to some of
the major currents of
world-wide Theosophic development. The book does not purport
to be a complete
history of Theosophy, but it is an attempt to present a
unified picture of the
movement in its larger aspects. No effort has been made to
weigh the truth or
falsity of Theosophic principles, but an effort has been
made to understand
their significance in relation to the historical situation
and psychological
disposition of those who have adopted it.
The author wises to express his obligation to several
persons without whose
assistance the enterprise would have been more onerous and
less successful. His
thanks are due in largest measure to Professor Roy F.
Mitchell of
University, and to Mrs. Mitchell, for placing at his
disposal much of their time
and of their wide knowledge of Theosophical material; to Mr.
L. W. Rogers,
President of the American Theosophical Society,
co-operation in the matter of the questionnaire, and to the
many members of the
Society who took pains to reply to the questions; to Mr.
John Garrigues, of the
United Lodge of Theosophists,
of Theosophic information, and to several of the ladies at
the U.L.T. Reading
Room for library assistance; to Professor Louis H. Gray, of
for technical criticism in Sanskrit terminology; to Mr.
Arthur E. Christy, of
philosophy; and to Professor Herbert W. Schneider, of
his painstaking criticism of the study throughout.
A. B. K.
September, 1930.3
CONTENTS
------
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THEOSOPHY, AN ANCIENT
TRADITION
..4
II. THE AMERICAN BACKGROUND OF
THEOSOPHY
..12
III. HELENA P. BLAVATSKY: HER LIFE AND PSYCHIC
CAREER
..25
IV. FROM SPIRITUALISM TO THEOSOPHY
..50
V.
VI. THE MAHATMAS AND THEIR
LETTERS
..83
VII. STORM, WRECK, AND
REBUILDING
..100
VIII. THE SECRET DOCTRINE
..110
IX. EVOLUTION, REBIRTH, AND
KARMA
..131
X. ESOTERIC WISDOM AND PHYSICAL
SCIENCE
..142
XI. THEOSOPHY IN ETHICAL
PRACTICE
.149
XII. LATER THEOSOPHICAL
HISTORY
..170
XIII. SOME FACTS AND
FIGURES
..190
FOOTNOTES
.198
BIBLIOGRAPHY
.222
INDEX
.237.4
------CARDIFF THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY IN
WALES-------
CHAPTER I THEOSOPHY
In the mind of the general public Theosophy is classed with
Spiritualism, New
Thought, Unity and Christian Science, as one of the modern
cults. It needs but a
slight acquaintance with the facts in the case to reveal
that Theosophy is
amenable to this classification only in the most superficial
sense. Though the
Theosophical Society is recent, theosophy, in the sense of
an esoteric
philosophic mystic system of religious thought, must be
ranked as one of the
most ancient traditions. It is not a mere cult, in the sense
of being the
expression of a quite specialized form of devotion,
practice, or theory,
propagated by a small group. It is a summation and synthesis
of many cults of
all times. It is as broad and universal a motif, let us say,
as mysticism. It is
one of the most permanent phases of religion, and as such it
has welled up again
and again in the life of mankind. It is that "wisdom of
the divine" which has
been in the world practically continuously since ancient
times. The movement of
today is but another periodical recurrence of a phenomenon
which has marked the
course of history from classical antiquity. Not always
visible in outward
organization-indeed never formally organized as Theosophy
under that name until
now-the thread of theosophic teaching and temperament can be
traced in almost
unbroken course from ancient times to the present. It has
often been
subterranean, inasmuch as esotericism and secrecy have been
essential elements
of its very constitution. The modern presentation of
theosophy differs from all
the past ones chiefly in that it has lifted the veil that
cloaked its teachings
in mystery, and offered alleged secrets freely to the world.
Theosophists tell
us that before the launching of the latest "drive"
to promulgate Theosophy in
the world, the councils of the Great White Brotherhood of
Adepts, or Mahatmas,
long debated whether the times were ripe for the free
propagation of the secret
Gnosis; whether the modern world, with its Western dominance
and with the
prevalence of materialistic standards, could appropriate the
sacred knowledge
without the risk of serious misuse of high spiritual forces,
which might be
diverted into selfish channels. We are told that in these
councils it was the
majority opinion that broadcasting the Ancient Wisdom over
the Occidental areas
would be a veritable casting of pearls before swine; yet two
of the Mahatmas
settled the question by undertaking to assume all karmic
debts for the move, to
take the responsibility for all possible disturbances and
ill effects.
If we look at the matter through Theosophic eyes, we are led
to believe that
when in the fall of 1875 Madame Blavatsky, Col. H. S.
Olcott, and Mr. W. Q.
Judge took out the charter for the Theosophical Society in
was witnessing a really major event in human history. Not
only did it signify
that one more of the many recurrent waves of esoteric
cultism was launched but
that this time practically the whole body of occult lore,
which had been so
sedulously guarded in mystery schools, brotherhoods, secret
societies, religious
orders, and other varieties of organization, was finally to
be given to the.5
world en pleine lumiθre! At last the lid of antiquity's
treasure chest would be
lifted and the contents exposed to public gaze. There might
even be found
therein the solution to the riddle of the Sphynx! The great
Secret Doctrine was
to be taught openly;
To understand the periodical recurrence of the theosophic
tendency in history it
is necessary to note two cardinal features of the Theosophic
theory of
development. The first is that progress in religion,
philosophy, science, or art
is not a direct advance, but in advance in cyclical swirls.
When you view
progress in small sections, it may appear to be a
development in a straight
line; but if your gaze takes in the whole course of history,
you will see the
outline of a quite different method of progress. You will
not see uninterrupted
unfolding of human life, but advances and retreats, plunges
and recessions.
Spring does not emerge from winter by a steady rise of
temperature, but by
successive rushes of heat, each carrying the season a bit
ahead. Movement in
nature is cyclical and periodic. History progresses through
the rise and fall of
nations. The true symbol of progress is the helix, motion
round and round, but
tending upward at each swirl. But we must have large
perspectives if we are to
see the gyrations of the helix.
The application of this interpretation of progress to
philosophy and religion is
this: the evolution of ideas apparently repeats itself at
intervals time after
time, a closed circuit of theories running through the same
succession at many
points in history. Scholars have discerned this fact in
regard to the various
types of government: monarchy working over into oligarchy,
which shifts to
democracy, out of which monarchy arises again. The round has
also been observed
in the domain of philosophy, where development starts with
revelation and
proceeds through rationalism to empiricism, and, in
revulsion from that, swings
back to authority or mystic revelation once more. Hegel's
theory that progress
was not in a straight line but in cycles formed by the
manifestation of thesis,
antithesis, and then synthesis, which in turn becomes the
ground of a new
thesis, is but a variation of this general theme.
Theosophists, then, regard their movement as but the
renaissance of the esoteric
and occult aspect of human thought in this particular swing
of the spiral.
The second aspect of the occult theory of development is a
method of
interpretation which claims to furnish a key to the
understanding of religious
history. Briefly, the theory is that religions never evolve;
they always
degenerate. Contrary to the assumptions of comparative
mythology, they do not
originate in crude primitive feelings or ideas, and then
transform themselves
slowly into loftier and purer ones. They begin lofty and
pure, and deteriorate
into crasser forms. They come forth in the glow of
spirituality and living power
and later pass into empty forms and lifeless practices. From
the might of the
spirit they contract into the materialism of the letter. No
religion can rise
above its source, can surpass its founder; and the more
exalted the founder and
his message, the more certainly is degeneration to be looked
for. There is
always gradual change in the direction of obscuration and
loss of primal vision,
initial force. Religions tend constantly to wane, and need
repeated revivals and
reformations. Nowhere is it possible to discern anything
remotely like steady
growth in spiritual unfolding.
It is the occult theory that what we find when we search the
many religions of
the earth is but the fragments, the dissociated and
distorted units of what were
once profound and coherent systems. It is difficult to trace
in the isolated
remnants the contour of the original structure. But it is
this completed system
which the Theosophist seeks to reconstruct from the
scattered remnants..6
Religion, then, is a phase of human life which is alleged to
operate on a
principle exactly opposite to evolution, and theosophy
believes this key makes
it intelligible. Religions never claim to have evolved from
human society; they
claim to be gifts to humanity. They come to man with the
seal of some divine
authority and the stamp of supreme perfection. Not only are
they born above the
world, but they are brought to the world by the embodied
divinity of a great
Messenger, a Savior, a World-Teacher, a Prophet, a Sage, a
Son of God. These
bring their own credentials in the form of a divine life.
Their words and works
bespeak the glory that earth can not engender.
The two phases of theosophic explanation can now be linked
into a unified
principle. Religions come periodically; and they are given
to men from high
sources, by supermen. The theory of growth from crude
beginnings to spirituality
tacitly assumes that man is alone in the universe and left
entirely to his own
devices; that he must learn everything for himself from
experience, which
somehow enlarges his faculties and quickens them for higher
conceptions. This
view, says occultism, does unnatural violence to the
fundamental economy of the
universe, wrenching humanity out of its proper setting and
relationship in an
order of harmony and fitness. Humankind is made to be the
sole manipulator of
intelligence, the favored beneficiary of evolution, and as
such is severed from
its natural connection with the rest of the cosmic scheme.
So small and poor a
view does pitiable injustice to the wealth of the cosmic
resources. Bruno,
Copernicus, and modern science have taught us that man is
not the darling of
creation, nor the only child in the cosmic family, the
pampered ward of the
gods. Far from it; he is one among the order of beings,
occupying his proper
place in relation to vaster hierarchies than he has
knowledge of, above and
below him.1
What is the character of that relationship? It is, says the
esoteric teaching,
that of guardian and ward; of a young race in the tutelage
of an older; of
infant humanity being taught by more highly evolved beings,
whose intelligence
is to that of early man as an adept's to a tyro's. It is the
relationship of
children to parents or guardians. Throughout our history we
have been the wards
of an elder race, or at least of the elder brothers of our
own race. The members
of a former evolutionary school have turned back often, like
the guardians in
Plato's cave allegory, to instruct us in vital knowledge.
The wisdom of the
ages, the knowledge of the very Ancient of Days, has at
times been handed down
to us. The human family has produced some advanced Sages,
Seers, Adepts,
Christs, and these have cared for the less-advanced classes,
and have from time
to time given out a body of deeper wisdom than man's own.
Theosophy claims that
it is the traditional memory of these noble characters,
their lives and
messages, which has left the ancient field strewn with the
legends of its Gods,
Kings, Magi, Rishis, Avatars and its great semi-divine
heroes. Such wisdom and
knowledge as they could wisely and safely impart they have
handed down, either
coming themselves to earth from more ethereal realms, or
commissioning competent
representatives. And thus the world has periodically been
given the boon of a
new religion and a new stimulus from the earthly presence of
a savior regarded
as divine. And always the gospel contained milk for the
babes and meat for grown
men. There was both an exoteric and an esoteric doctrine.
The former was
broadcast among the masses, and did its proper and salutary
work for them; the
latter, however, was imparted only to the fit and
disciplined initiates in
secret organizations. Much real truth was hidden behind the
veil of allegory;
myth and symbol were employed. This aggregate of precious
knowledge, this
innermost heart of the secret teaching of the gods to
mankind, is, needless to
say, the Ancient Wisdom-is Theosophy. Or at least Theosophy
claims the key to.7
all this body of wisdom. It has always been in the world,
but never publicly
promulgated until now.
To trace the currents of esoteric influence in ancient
religious literature
would be the work of volumes. Theosophic or kindred
doctrines are to be found in
a large number of the world's sacred books or bibles. The
lore of
Philosophy, not less than religion, bears the stamp of
theosophical ideology.
Traces of the occult doctrine permeate most of the thought
systems of the past.
All histories of philosophy in the western world begin, with
or without brief
apology to the venerable systems of the Orient, with Thales
of Miletus and the
early Greek thinkers of about the sixth century B.C. In the
dim background stand
Homer and Hesiod and Pindar and the myths of the Olympian
pantheon. Contemporary
religious faiths, too, such as the cult of Pythagoreanism,2
and the Orphic and
Eleusinian Mysteries, influenced philosophical speculation.
It needs no extraordinary erudition to trace the stream of
esoteric teaching
through the field of Greek philosophy. What is really
surprising is that the
world of modern scholarship should have so long assumed that
Greek speculation
developed without reference to the wide-spread religious cult
systems which
transfused the thought of the near-Eastern nations.
Esotericism was an ingrained
characteristic of the Oriental mind and
contagion than could
that practically all of early Greek philosophy dealt with
material presented by
the Dionysiac and Orphic Mysteries and later by the
Pythagorean revisions of
these.3
Thales' fragments contain Theosophical ideas in his
identification of the physis
with the soul of the universe, and in his affirmation that
"the materiality of
physis is supersensible." Thales thought that this
physis or natural world was
"full of gods."4 Both these conceptions of the
impersonal and the personal
physis, the latter a reasoning substance approaching Nous,
came out of the
continuum of the group soul, as a vehicle of magic power.5
Man was believed to
stand in a sympathetic relation to this nature or physis,
and the deepening of
his sympathetic attitude was supposed to give him nothing
less than magical
control over its elements.
Prominent among the Orphic tenets was that of reincarnation,
possibly a
transference to man of the annual rebirth in nature. Worship
of heavenly bodies
as aiding periodical harvests found a place here also.6 The
conception of the
wheel of Dike and Moira, the allotted flow and apportionment
in time as well as
place, of all things, nature and man together, was
underlying in the ancient
Greek mind. Persian occult ideas may have influenced the
Orphic systems.7
Anaximander added to the scientific doctrines of Thales the
idea of compensatory
retribution for the transgression of Moira's bounds which
suggests Karma. The
sum of Heraclitus' teaching is the One Soul of the universe,
in ever-running
cycles of expression-"Fire8 lives the death of air, air
lives the death of fire;
earth lives the death of water, water lives the death of
earth."9 And interwoven
with it is a sort of justice which resembles karmic force.10
Dionysiac influence brought the theme of reincarnation
prominently to the fore
in metaphysical thinking.11
Socrates, in the Phaedo, speaks of "the ancient
doctrine that souls pass out of
this world to the other, and there exist, and then come back
hither from the.8
dead, and are born again." In Hesiod's Works and Days
there is the image of the
Wheel of Life. In the mystical tradition there was prominent
the wide-spread
notion of a fall of higher forms of life into the human
sphere of limitation and
misery. The Orphics definitely taught that the soul of man
fell from the stars
into the prison of this earthly body, sinking from the upper
regions of fire and
light into the misty darkness of this dismal vale. The fall
is ascribed to some
original sin, which entailed expulsion from the purity and
perfection of divine
existence and had to be expiated by life on earth and by
purgation in the nether
world.
The philosophies of Parmenides, Empedocles, and Plato came
directly out of the
Pythagorean movement.13 Aristotle described Empedocles'
poems as "Esoteric," and
it is thought that Parmenides' poems were similarly so.
Parmenides' theory that
the earth is the plane of life outermost, most remotely
descended from God, is
re-echoed in theosophic schematism. Also his idea-"The
downward fall of life
from the heavenly fires is countered by an upward impulse
which 'sends the soul
back from the seen to the unseen'"-completes the
Theosophic picture of outgoing
and return. Parmenides "was really the 'associate' of a
Pythagorean, Ameinias,
son of Diochartas, a poor but noble man, to whom he
afterwards built a shrine,
as to a hero."14 "Strabo describes Parmenides and
Zeno as Pythagoreans."15
Cornford's comment on the philosophy of Empedocles leaves
little doubt as to its
origin in the Mysteries. 16 Strife causes the fall, love
brings the return.
Empedocles was a member of a Pythagorean society or school,
for Diogenes tells
us that he and Plato were expelled from the organization for
having revealed the
secret teachings.17
Of Pythagoras as a Theosophic type of philosopher there is
no need to speak at
any length. What is known of Pythagoreanism strongly
resembles Theosophy.
As to Socrates, it is interesting to note that Cornford's
argument "points to
the conclusion that Socrates was more familiar with
Pythagorean ideas than has
commonly been supposed."18 Socrates gave utterance to
many Pythagorean
sentiments and he was associated with members of the
Pythagorean community at
Phlious, near
R. D. Hicks comments on Plato's "imaginative sympathy
with the whole mass of
floating legend, myth and dogma, of a partly religious,
partly ethical
character, which found a wide, but not universal acceptance,
at an early time in
the Orphic and Pythagorean associations and
brotherhoods."19
"The Platonic myths afford ample evidence that Plato
was perfectly familiar with
all the leading features of this strange creed. The divine
origin of the soul,
its fall from bliss and the society of the gods, its long
pilgrimage of penance
through hundreds of generations, its task of purification
from earthly
pollution, its reincarnation in successive bodies, its
upward and downward
progress, and the law of retribution for all offences . .
."20
There is evidence pointing to the fact that Plato was quite familiar
with the
Mystery teachings, if not actually an initiate.21 In the
Phaedrus he says:
". . . being initiated into those Mysteries which it is
lawful to call the most
blessed of all Mysteries . . . we were freed from the
molestation of evils which
otherwise await us in a future period of time. Likewise in
consequence of this
divine initiation, we become spectators of entire, simple,
immovable and blessed
visions resident in the pure light."22.9
And his immersion in the prevalent esoteric attitude is
hinted at in another
passage:
"You say that, in my former discourse, I have not
sufficiently explained to you
the nature of the First. I purposely spoke enigmatically,
for in case the tablet
should have happened with any accident, either by land or
sea, a person, without
some previous knowledge of the subject, might not be able to
understand its
contents."23
Aristotle left the esoteric tradition, and went in the
direction of naturalism
and empiricism. Yet in him too there are many points of
distinctly esoteric
ideology. His distinction between the vegetative animal soul
and the rational
soul, the latter alone surviving while the former perished;
his dualism of
heavenly and terrestrial life; his belief that the heavenly
bodies were great
living beings among the hierarchies; and his theory that
development is the
passing of potentiality over into actualization, are all
items of Theosophic
belief.
Greek philosophy is said to have ended with Neo-Platonism-which
is one of
history's greatest waves of the esoteric tendency. It would
be a long task to
detail the theosophic ideas of the great Plotinus. He,
Origen and Herrennius
were pupils of Ammonius Saccas, whose teachings they
promised never to reveal,
as being occult. Plotinus' own teachings were given only to
initiated circles of
students.24 Proclus25 gives astonishing corroboration to a
fragment of
Theosophic doctrine in any excerpt quoted in Isis Unveiled:
"After death, the soul (the spirit) continueth to linger
in the aerial (astral)
form till it is entirely purified from all angry and
voluptuous passions . . .
then doth it put off by a second dying the aerial body as it
did the earthly
one. Whereupon the ancients say that there is a celestial
body always joined
with the soul, and which is immortal, luminous and
star-like."26
The esotericist feels that the evidence, a meagre portion of
which has been thus
cursorily submitted, is highly indicative that beneath the
surface of ancient
pagan civilization there were undercurrents of sacred
wisdom, esoteric
traditions of high knowledge, descended from revered
sources, and really
cherished in secret.
Presumably the Christian religion itself drew many of its
basic concepts
directly or indirectly from esoteric sources. It was born
amid the various cults
and faiths that then occupied the field of the Alexandrian
East and the Roman
Empire, and it was unable to escape the influences emanating
from these sources.
Its immediate predecessors were the Mystery-Religions, the
Jewish faith, and the
syncretistic blend of these with Syrian Orientalism and
Greek philosophy.
Judaism was itself deeply tinctured with Hellenistic and
oriental influences.
The Mystery cults were more or less esoteric; Judaism had
received a highly
allegorical formulation at the hands of Philo; the Hermetic
Literature was
similar to Theosophy; the Syrian faiths were saturated with
the strain of
"Chaldean" occultism; and Greek rationalism had
yielded that final mysticism
which culminated in Plotinus. Christianity was indebted to
many of these sources
and many scholars believe that it triumphed only because it
was the most
successful syncretism of many diverse elements. Numerous
streams of esoteric
doctrine contributed to Christianity; we can merely hint at
the large body of
evidence available on this point.
Christianity grew up in the milieu of the Mysteries, and
those early Fathers who
formulated the body of Christian doctrine did not step
drastically outside the.10
traditions of the prevalent faiths. Their work was rather an
incorporation of
some new elements into the accepted systems of the time. In
some cases, as in
Egyptian city were at the same time connected with the
Mystery cult of Serapis,
as many in
the most direct and prominent product of the two systems is
to be seen in St.
Paul, about whose intimate relation to the Mysteries several
volumes have been
written. Much of his language so strikingly suggests his
close contact with
Mystery formulae that it is a moot question whether or not
he was actually an
Initiate.28 At all events many are of the opinion that he
must have been
powerfully influenced by the cult teachings and practices.29
He mentions some
psychic experiences of his own, which are cited as savoring
strongly of the
character of the mystical exercises taught in the
Mysteries.30
When in the third and fourth centuries the Church Fathers
began the task of
shaping a body of doctrine for the new movement, the same
theosophic tendencies
pressed upon them from every side. Clement and Origen
brought many phases of
theosophic doctrine to prominence, a fact which tended later
to exclude their
writings from the canon. And when Augustine drew up the
dogmatic schematism of
the new religion, he was tremendously swayed by the work of
the Neo-Platonist
Plotinus, who, along with Ammonius Saccas, Numenius,
Porphyry, and Proclus, had
been a member of one or several of the Mystery bodies.31
The presence of powerful currents of Neo-Platonic idealism
in the early church
is attested by the effects upon it of Manichaeism,
Gnosticism and the
heresy, which tendencies had to be exterminated before
Christianity definitely
took its course of orthodox development. Occult writers32
have indicated the
forces at work in the formative period of the church's dogma
which eradicated
the theory of reincarnation and other aspects of esoteric
knowledge from the
orthodox canons. The point remains true, nevertheless, that
Christianity took
its rise in an atmosphere saturated with ideas resembling
those of Theosophy.
Theosophy, the Gnosis, having been to a large extant
rejected from Catholic
theology, nevertheless did not disappear from history. It
possessed an
unquenchable vitality and made its way through more or less
submerged channels
down the centuries. Movements, sects, and individuals that
embodied its
cherished principles could be enumerated at great length. A
list would include
Paulicians, the Bogomiles, the Bulgars, the Paterenes, the
Comacines, the
Cathari; Albigensians, and pietists; Joachim of Floris,
Roger Bacon, Robert
Bradwardine, Raymond Lully; the Alchemists, the Fire
Philosophers; Paracelsus,
B. Figulus; the Friends of God, led by Nicholas of Basle;
L'Homme de Cuir, in
in the Tarot; the great Aldus' Academy at
esoteric meanings in the literature of the Troubadours, and
in such writings as
The Romance of the Rose, the Holy Grail legends and the
Arthurian Cycle, if read
in an esoteric sense; Gower's Confessio Amantis, Spencer's
Faλrie Queen, the
works of Dietrich of Berne, Wayland Smith, the Peredur
Stories, and the
Mabinogian compilations. German pietism expressed
fundamentally Theosophic ideas
through Eckhardt, Tauler, Suso, and Jacob Boehme. The names
of such figures as
Count Rakowczi, Cagliostro, Count St. Germain, and Francis
Bacon have been
linked with the secret orders. In fact there was hardly a
period when the ghosts
of occult wisdom did not hover in the background of European
thought.
Sometimes its predominant manifestation was mystically
religious; again it was
cosmological and philosophical; never did it quite lose its
attachment to the
conceptions of science, which was at times reduced nearly to
magic. And it is.11
upon the implications of this scientific interest that the
occult theorist bases
his claim that science, along with religion and philosophy,
has sprung in the
beginning from esoteric knowledge. Not overlooking the
oldest scientific lore to
be found in the sacred books of the East, our attention is
called to the
astronomical science of the "Chaldeans"; the
similar knowledge among the
Egyptians, such, for instance, as led them to construct the
Pyramids on lines
conformable to sidereal measurements and movements; the reputed
knowledge of the
precession of the equinoxes among the Persian Magi and the
"Chaldeans"; the
later work of the scientists among the Alexandrian savants,
which had so
important a bearing upon the direction of the nascent
science in the minds of
Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, and
Robert Grosseteste, Agrippa von Nettesheim, and Jerome
Cardano in incipient
empiricism. It has always been assumed that the strange
mixture of true science
and grotesque magic found, for instance, in the work of
Roger Bacon, justifies
the implication that the concern with magic operated as a
hindrance to the
development of science. It should not be forgotten that the
stimulus to
scientific discovery sprang from the presuppositions
embodied in magical theory.
It is now beyond dispute that the magnificent achievements
of Copernicus,
Kepler, and Galileo were actuated by their brooding over the
significance of the
Pythagorean theories of number and harmony. Both science and
magic aim, each in
its special modus, at the control of nature. Through the
gateway of electricity,
says theosophy, science has been admitted, part way at
least, into the inner
sanctum of nature's dynamic heart. Magic has sought an entry
to the same citadel
by another road.
The Theosophist, then, believes, on the strength of evidence
only a fragment of
which has been touched upon here, that esotericism has been
weaving its web of
influence, powerful even if subtle and unseen, throughout
the religions,
philosophies, and sciences of the world. It makes little
difference what names
have been attached from time to time to this esoteric
tradition; and certainly
no attempt is made here to prove an underlying unity or
continuity in all this
"wisdom literature." Suffice it to point out that
in all ages there have been
movements analogous to modern Theosophy, and that the modern
cult regards itself
as merely a regular revelation in the periodic resurgence of
an ancient
learning..12
------
CHAPTER II THE AMERICAN BACKGROUND
An outline of the circumstances which may be said to
constitute the background
for the American development of Theosophy should begin with
the mass of strange
phenomena which took place, and were widely reported, in
connection with the
religious revivals from 1740 through the Civil War period. A
veritable epidemic
of what were known as the "barks" and the
"jerks" swept over the land. They were
most frequent in evangelical meetings, but also became
common outside. The
phenomena, such as speaking in strange tongues, a condition
of trance and swoon
frequently attendant upon conversion, occasional
illumination and ecstasy,
resembling medieval mystic sainthood, and the apparently
miraculous reformation
of many criminals and drunkards. These phenomena impressed
the general mind with
the sense of a higher source of power that might be invoked
in behalf of human
interests.
During this period, too, several mathematical prodigies were
publicly exhibited
in the performance of quite unaccountable calculations,
giving instantaneously
the correct results of complicated manipulations of
numbers.1 From about 1820,
rumors were beginning to be heard of exceptional psychic
powers possessed by the
Hindus.
But a more notable stir was occasioned a little later when
the country began to
be flooded with reports of exhibitions of mesmerism and
hypnotism. Couιism had
not yet come, but the work of Mesmer, Janet, Charcot,
Bernheim, and others in
apparently supernormal segment of the human mind.
"Healing by faith" had always
been a wide-spread tradition; but when such people as Quimby
and others added to
the cult of healing the practice of mesmerism, and subjoined
both to a set of
metaphysical or spiritual formulae, the imaginative
susceptibilities of the
people were vigorously stimulated, and the ferment resulted
in cults of "mind
healing." Quimby was active with his public
demonstrations throughout New
The cult of Swedenborgianism, coming in chiefly from
preceding century as a tremendous contribution to the feeling
of mystic
supernaturalism. Emanuel Swedenborg, who gave up his work as
a noted
mineralogist to take up the writing of his visions and
prophecies, had
profoundly impressed the religious world by the publication
of his enormous
works, the Arcana Coelestia, The Apocalypse Revealed, The
Apocalypse Explained,
and others, in which he claimed that his inner vision had
been opened to a view
of celestial verities. His descriptions of the heavenly
spheres, and of the
relation of the life of the Infinite to our finite
existence, and his theory of
the actual correspondence of every physical fact to some
eternal truth,.13
impressed the mystic sense of many people, who became his
followers and
organized his Church of the New Jerusalem. Though this
following was never large
in number, it was influential in the spread of a type of
"arcane wisdom." In the
first place, Swedenborg's statements that he had been
granted direct glimpses of
the angelic worlds carried a certain impressiveness in view
of his detailed
descriptions of what was there seen. He announced that the
causes of all things
are in the Divine Mind. The end of existence and creation is
to bring man into
conjunction with the higher spirit of the universe, so that
he may become the
image of his creator. The law of correspondence is the key
to all the divine
treasures of wisdom. He declared that he had witnessed the
Last Judgment and
that he was told of the second coming of the Lord. His
teachings influenced
among others Coleridge, Blake, Balzac, and, of course,
Emerson and the James
family. Though not so much of this influence was
specifically Theosophic in
character, it all served to bring much grist to the later
Theosophical mill.
A certain identity of aims and characters between Theosophy
and Swedenborgianism
is revealed in the fact that "in December, 1783, a
little company of
sympathizers, with similar aims, met in
Society,' among the members of which were John Flaxman, the
sculptor, William
Sharpe, the engraver, and F. H. Barthelemon, the
composer."2 It was dissolved
about 1788 when the Swedenborgian churches began to
function. Many such
religious organizations could well be called theosophical
associations, as was
the one founded by Brand in
Another organization which dealt hardly less with heavenly
revelations, and
which must also be regarded as conducive to theosophical
attitudes, was the
"Children of the Light," the Friends, or Quakers.
With a history antedating the
nineteenth century by more than a hundred and fifty years,
these people held a
significant place in the religious life of
delineating. Their intense emphasis upon the direct and
spontaneous irradiation
of the spirit of God into the human consciousness strikes a
deep note of genuine
mysticism. In fact, like Methodism, Quakerism was born in
the midst of a series
of spiritualistic occurrences. George Fox heard the heavenly
voices and received
inspirational messages directly from spiritual visitants.
The report of his
supernatural experiences, and of the miracles of healing
which he was enabled to
perform through spirit-given powers, caused hundreds of
people to flock to his
banner and gave the movement its primary impetus. His gospel
was essentially one
of spirit manifestation, and his whole ethical system grew
out of his conception
of the rιgime of personal life, conduct and mentality which
was best designed to
induce the visitations of spirit influence. The spiritistic
and mystical
experiences of the celebrated Madame Guyon, of
Fox's testimony.Not less inclined than the Friends to
transcendental experiences
were the Shakers, who had settled in eighteen communistic
associations or
colonies in the
healing, prophecy, glossolalia, and the singing of inspired
songs. They were led
by the spirit into deep and holy experiences, and claimed to
be inspired by high
spiritual intelligences with whom they were in hourly
communion. One of their
number, F. W. Evans, wrote to Robert Dale Owen, the
Spiritualist, that the
Shakers had predicted the advent of Spiritualism seven years
previously, and
that the Shaker order was the great medium between this
world and the world of
spirits. He asserted that "Spiritualism originated
among the Shakers of America;
that there were hundreds of mediums in the eighteen Shaker
communities, and
that, in fact, nearly all the Shakers were mediums.
Mediumistic manifestations
are as common among us as gold in
three degrees of spiritual manifestation, the third of which
is the
"ministration of millennial truths to various nations,
tribes, kindred and
people in the spirit world who were hungering and thirsting
after.14
righteousness."4 He further pronounced a panegyric upon
Spiritualism, which is
evidence that the Shakers were in sympathy with any
phenomena which seemed to
indicate a connection with the celestial planes:
"Spiritualism has banished scepticism and infidelity
from the minds of
thousands, comforted the mourner with angelic consolations,
lifted up the
unfortunate, the outcast, the inebriate, taking away the
sting of death, which
has kept mankind under perpetual bondage through fear-so
that death is now, to
its millions of believers,
The kind and gentle servant who unlocks,
With noiseless hand, life's flower-encircled door,
To show us those we loved."5
Still another movement which had its origin in alleged supernaturalistic
manifestations and helped to intensify a general belief in
them, was the Church
of the Latter Day Saints, or Mormons. In 1820, and again in
1823, Joseph Smith
had a vision of an angel, who revealed to him the repository
of certain records
inscribed on plates of gold, containing the history of the
aboriginal peoples of
America. The ability to employ the mystic powers of Urim and
Thummim, which are
embodied in these records, constituted the special attribute
of the seers of
antiquity. The inscriptions on the gold plates were
represented as the key to
the understanding of ancient scriptures, and were said to be
in a script known
as Reformed Egyptian. The Book of Mormon claims to be an
English translation of
these plates of gold.
It is not necessary here to follow the history of Smith and
his church, but it
is interesting to point out the features of the case that
touch either
Spiritualism or Theosophy. We have already noted the origin
of Smith's
motivating idea in a direct message from the spirit world.
We have also a
curious resemblance to Theosophy in the fact that an alleged
ancient document
was brought to light as a book of authority, and that the
material therein was
asserted to furnish a key to the interpretation of the
archaic scriptures of the
world. Of the twelve articles of the Mormon creed, seven
sections show a spirit
not incongruous with the tendency of Theosophic sentiment.
Article One professes
belief in the Trinity; article Two asserts that men will be
punished for their
own sins, not for Adam's; Three refers to the salvation of
all without
exception; Seven sets forth belief in the gift of tongues,
prophecy,
revelations, visions, healing, etc.; Eight questions the
Bible's accurate
translation; Nine expresses the assurance that God will yet
reveal many great
and important things pertaining to his kingdom; and Eleven
proclaims freedom of
worship and the principle of toleration.
Orson Pratt, one of the leading publicists of the Mormon
cult, said that where
there is an end of manifestation of new phenomena, such as
visions, revelations
and inspiration, the people are lost in blindness. When
prophecies fail,
darkness hangs over the people. In a tract issued by Pratt
it is stated that the
Book of Mormon has been abundantly confirmed by miracles.
"Nearly every branch of the church has been blessed by
miraculous signs and
gifts of the Holy Ghost, by which they have been confirmed,
and by which we know
of a surety that this is the Church of Christ. They know
that the blind see, the
lame walk, the deaf hear, the dumb speak, that lepers are
cleansed, that bones
are set, that the cholera is rebuked, and that the most
virulent diseases give
way through faith in the name of Christ and the power of His
gospel."6.15
About 1825, in a meeting at the home of Josiah Quincy in
Boston, a philosophic-religious
movement was launched which may seem to have had but meagre
influence
on the advent of Theosophy later in the century, but which
in its motive and
animating spirit was probably one of the cult's most
immediate precursors. The
Unitarian faith, courageously agitated from 1812 to 1814 by
William E. Channing,
Edward Everett, and Francis Parkman, flowered into a
religious denomination in
1825 and thenceforth exercised, in a measure out of all
proportion to its
numerical strength, a powerful influence on American
religious thought. Under
Emerson and Parker a little later the principle of free
expression of opinion
was carried to such length that the formulation of an
orthodox creed was next to
impossible.
They questioned not only the Trinitarian doctrine, as pagan
rather than
Christian (the identical position taken by Madame Blavatsky
in the volumes of
Isis Unveiled), but the whole orthodox structure. The Bible
was not to be
regarded as God's infallible and inspired word, but a work
of exalted human
agencies. Christ was no heaven-born savior, but a worthy son
of man. If he was
man and anything more, his life is worthless to mere men.
His life was a man's
life, his gospel a man's gospel-otherwise inapplicable to
us. Salvation is
within every person. Death does not determine the state of
the soul for all
eternity; the soul passes on into spirit with all its
earth-won character. In
the life that is to be, as well as in the life that now is,
the soul must reap
what it sows. If there were a Unitarian creed, it might be
summarized as
follows: The fatherhood of God; the brotherhood of man; the
leadership of Jesus;
salvation by character; the progress of mankind onward and
upward forever. All
this, as far it goes, is strikingly harmonious with the
Theosophic position.
That there was an evident community of interests between the
two movements is
indicated by the fact that Unitarianism, like Theosophy,
sought Hindu
connections, and strangely enough made a sympathetic entente
with the Brahmo-Somaj
Society, while Theosophy later affiliated with the
Arya-Somaj.7
No examination of the American background of Theosophy can
fail to take account
of that movement which carried the minds of New England
thinkers to a lofty
pitch during the early half of the nineteenth century,
Transcendentalism. It has
generally been attributed to the impact of German
Romanticism, transmitted by
way of England through Carlyle, Coleridge, and Wordsworth.
French influence was
really more direct and dominating, but the powerful effect
of Oriental religion
and philosophy on Emerson, hitherto not considered
seriously, should not be
overlooked. "All of Emerson's notes on Oriental
scriptures have been deleted
from Bliss Perry's Heart of Emerson's Journals."8 No
student conversant with the
characteristic marks of Indian philosophy needs documentary
corroboration of the
fact that Emerson's thought was saturated with typically
Eastern conceptions.
The evidence runs through nearly all his works like a design
in a woven cloth.
"Scores upon scores of passages in his Journals and
Essays show that he leaned
often on the Vedas for inspiration, and paraphrased lines of
the Puranas in his
poems."9 But direct testimony from Emerson himself is
not wanting. His Journals
prove that his reading of the ancient Oriental classics was
not sporadic, but
more or less constant.10 He refers to some of them in the
lists of each year's
sources. In 1840 he tells how in the heated days he read
nothing but the "Bible
of the tropics, which I find I come back upon every three or
four years. It is
sublime as heat and night and the breathless ocean. It
contains every religious
sentiment. . . . It is no use to put away the book; if I
trust myself in the
woods or in a boat upon the pond, Nature makes a Brahmin of
me presently."11
This was at the age of twenty-seven. In the Journal of 1845
he writes:
"The Indian teaching, through its cloud of legends, has
yet a simple and grand
religion, like a queenly countenance seen through a rich
veil. It teaches to.16
speak the truth, love others as yourself, and to despise
trifles. The East is
grand-and makes Europe appear the land of trifles. Identity!
Identity! Friend
and foe are of one stuff . . . Cheerful and noble is the
genius of this
cosmogony."12
Lecturing before graduate classes at Harvard he later said:
"Thought has
subsisted for the most part on one root; the Norse
mythology, the Vedas,
Shakespeare have served the ages." In referring in one
passage to the Bible he
says:
"I have used in the above remarks the Bible for the
ethical revelation
considered generally, including, that is, the Vedas, the
sacred writings of
every nation, and not of the Hebrews alone."13
Elsewhere he says:
"Yes, the Zoroastrian, the Indian, the Persian
scriptures are majestic and more
to our daily purpose than this year's almanac or this day's
newspaper. I owed-my
friend and I owed-a magnificent day to the Bhagavat-Gita. It
was the first of
books; it was as if an empire spoke to us, nothing small or
unworthy, but large,
serene, consistent, the voice of an old intelligence which
in another age and
another climate had pondered and thus disposed of the same
questions which
exercise us. . . . Let us cherish the venerable
oracle."14
The first stanza of Emerson's poem "Brahma, Song of the
Soul," runs as follows:
"If the red slayer thinks he slays,
Or if the slain thinks he is slain,
They know not well the subtle ways
I keep, and pass and turn again."
Could the strange ideas and hardly less strange language of
this verse have been
drawn elsewhere than from the 19th verse of the Second
Valli, of the Katha
Upanishad,15 which reads?:
"If the slayer thinks I slay; if the slain thinks I am
slain, then both of them
do not know well. It (the soul) does not slay nor is it
slain."
His poem "Hamatreya" comes next in importance as
showing Hindu influence. In
another poem, "Celestial Love," the wheel of birth
and death is referred to:
"In a region where the wheel
On which all beings ride,
Visibly revolves."
Emerson argues for reincarnation in the Journal of 1845.
"Traveling the path of
life through thousands of births."
"By the long rotation of fidelity they meet again in
worthy forms." Emerson's
"oversoul" is synonymous with a Sanskrit term. He
regarded matter as the
negative manifestation of the Universal Spirit. Mind was the
expression of the
same Spirit in its positive power. Man, himself, is nothing
but the universal
spirit present in a material organism. Soul is "part
and parcel of God." He says
that "the soul in man is not an organ, but animates and
exercises all organs;
from within and from behind a light shines through us upon
things, and makes us
aware that we are nothing, that the light is all."16
This is Vedanta philosophy.
In the Journal of 1866 he wrote:.17
"In the history of intellect, there is no more
important fact than the Hindu
theology, teaching that the beatitude or supreme good is to
be attained through
science: namely, by the perception of the real from the
unreal, setting aside
matter, and qualities or affections or emotions, and persons
and actions, as
mayas or illusions, and thus arriving at the conception of
the One eternal Life
and Cause, and a perpetual approach and assimilation to Him,
thus escaping new
births and transmigrations. . . . Truth is the principle and
the moral of Hindu
theology, Truth as against the Maya which deceives Gods and
men; Truth, the
principle, and Retirement and Self-denial the means of
attaining it."17
Mr. Christy18 states that Emerson's concept of evolution
must be thought of in
terms of emanation; and a detailed examination of his
concept of compensation
reduces it to the doctrine of Karma.
The Journals are full of quotable passages upon one or
another phase of
Hinduism. And there are his other poems
"Illusions" and "Maya," whose names
bespeak Oriental presentations. But Mr. Christy thinks the
following excerpt is
Emerson's supreme tribute to Orientalism:
"There is no remedy for musty, self-conceited English
life made up of fictitious
hating ideas-like Orientalism. That astonishes and
disconcerts English decorum.
For once there is thunder he never heard, light he never
saw, and power which
trifles with time and space."19
It may seem ludicrous to suggest that Emerson was the chief
forerunner of Madame
Blavatsky, her John the Baptist. Yet seriously, without
Emerson, Madame
Blavatsky could hardly have launched her gospel when she did
with equal hope of
success. There is every justification for the assertion that
Emerson's
Orientalistic contribution to the general Transcendental
trend of thought was
preparatory to Theosophy. It must not be forgotten that his
advocacy of
Brahmanic ideas and doctrines came at a time when the
expression of a laudatory
opinion of the Asiatic religions called forth an opprobrium
from evangelistic
quarters hardly less than vicious in its bitterness.
Theosophy could not hope to
make headway until the virulent edge of that orthodox
prejudice had been
considerably blunted. It was Emerson's magnanimous
eclecticism which
administered the first and severest rebuke to that
prejudice, and inaugurated
that gradual mollification of sentiment toward the Orientals
which made possible
the welcome which Hindu Yogis and Swamis received toward the
end of the century.
The exposition of Emerson's orientalism makes it unnecessary
to trace the
evidences of a similar influence running through the
philosophical thinking of
Thoreau and Walt Whitman. The robust cosmopolitanism of
these two intellects
lifted them out of the provincialisms of the current
denominations into the
realm of universal sympathies. We know that Thoreau became
the recipient of
forty-four volumes of the Hindu texts in 1854; but it is
evident that he, like
Emerson, had had contact with Brahmanical literature
previous to that. His works
are replete with references to Eastern ideas and beliefs. He
could hardly have
associated so closely with Emerson as he did and escaped the
contagion of the
latter's Oriental enthusiasm.
Mr. Horace L. Traubel, one of the three literary executors
of Whitman, had in
his possession the poet's own copy of the Bhagavad Gita.
Perry and Binns, in
their biographies of Whitman, give lists of the literature
with which he was
familiar; and many ancient authors are mentioned. Among them
are Confucius, the
Hindu poets, Persian poets, Zoroaster; portions of the Vedas
and Puranas,
Alger's Oriental Poetry and other Eastern sources. Dr.
Richard M. Bucke, another.18
of the three literary executors, and a close friend and
associate of "the good
gray poet," was one of the prominent early
Theosophists, and it is reasonable to
presume that Whitman was familiar with Theosophic theory
through the channel of
this friendship. Whitman likewise gave form and body to
another volume of
sentiment which has contributed, no one can say how much, to
the adoption of
Theosophy. This was America's own native mysticism. It
created an atmosphere in
which the traditions of the supernatural grew robust and
realistic.
Attention must now be directed to that wide-spread movement
in America which has
come to be known as New Thought. It came, as has been hinted
at, out of the
spiritualization, or one might say, doctrinization, of
mesmerism. Observation of
the surprising effects of hypnotic control, indicating the
presence of a psychic
energy in man susceptible to external or self-generated
suggestion, led to the
inference that a linking of spiritual affirmation with the
unconscious dynamism
would conduce to invariably beneficent results, that might
be made permanent for
character. If a jocular suggestion by the stage mesmerist
could lead the subject
into a ludicrous performance; if a suggestion of illness, of
pain, of a
headache, could produce the veritable symptoms; why could
not a suggestion of
adequate strength and authority lead to the actualization of
health, of
personality, of well-being, of spirituality? The task was
merely to transform
animal magnetism into spiritual suggestion. The aim was to
indoctrinate the
subconscious mind with a fixation of spiritual sufficiency
and opulence, until
the personality came to embody and manifest on the physical
plane of life the
character of the inner motivation. Seeing what an obsession
of a fixed abnormal
idea had done to the body and mind in many cases, New
Thought tried to
regenerate the life in a positive and salutary direction by
the conscious
implantation of a higher spiritual concept, until it, too,
became obsessive, and
wrought an effect on the outer life coφrdinate with its own
nature. The process
of hypnotic suggestion became a moral technique, with a
potent religious
formula, according to which spiritual truth functioned in
place of personal
magnetic force. Essentially it reduced itself to the
business of self-hypnotization
by a lofty conception. Thought itself was seen to possess
mesmeric
power. "As a man thinketh in his heart" became the
slogan of New Thought, and
the kindred Biblical adjuration-"Be ye transformed by
the renewing of your
mind"-furnished the needed incentive to positive mental
aggression. The world of
today is familiar with the line of phrases which convey the
basic ideology of
the New Thought cults. One hears much of being in tune with
the Infinite, of
making the at-one-ment with the powers of life, of getting
into harmony with the
universe, of making contact with the reservoir of Eternal
Supply, of getting en
rapport with the Cosmic Consciousness, of keeping ourselves
puny and stunted
because we do not ask more determinedly from the Boundless.
Here is unmistakable evidence of a somewhat diluted
Hinduism. Under the
pioneering of P. P. Quimby, Horatio W. Dresser, and others,
study clubs were
formed and lecture courses given. Charles Brodie Patterson,
W. J. Colville,
James Lane Allen, C. D. Larson, Orison S. Marden, and a host
of others, aided in
the popularization of these ideas, until in the past few
decades there has been
witnessed an almost endless brood of ramifications from the
parent conception,
with associations of Spiritual Science, Divine Science,
Cosmic Truth, Universal
Light and Harmony carrying the message. So we have been
called upon to witness
the odd spectacle of what was essentially Hindu Yoga
philosophy masquerading in
the guise of commanding personality and forceful
salesmanship! But grotesque as
these developments have been, there is no doubting their
importance in the
Theosophical background. They have served to introduce the
thought of the Orient
to thousands, and have become stepping-stones to its deeper
investigation..19
A concomitant episode in the expansion of New Thought and
Transcendentalism was
the direct program of Hindu propaganda fathered by Hindu
spokesmen themselves.
When it became profitable, numerous Yogis, Swamis,
"Adepts," and "Mahatmas" came
to this country and lectured on the doctrines and principles
of Orientalism to
audiences of ιlite people with mystical susceptibilities.
Some time in the
seventies, Boston was galvanized into a veritable quiver of
interest in Eastern
doctrines by the eloquent P. C. Mazoomdar, author of The
Oriental Christ, whose
campaign left its deep impress. His work, in fact, formed
one of the links
between Unitarianism and Brahmanic thought, already noted.
In 1893 Swami
Vivekananda, chosen as a delegate to the World Congress of
Religions at the
Columbian Exposition at Chicago, and author of Yoga
Philosophy, began preaching
the Yoga principles of thought and discipline, and
instituted in New York the
Vedanta Society. Almost every year since his coming has
brought public lectures
and private instruction courses by native Hindus in the
large American cities.
Concomitant with the evolution of New Thought came the
sensational dissemination
of Mrs. Eddy's Christian Science. Offspring of P. P.
Quimby's mesmeric science,
and erected by Mrs. Eddy's strange enthusiasm into a healing
cult based on a
reinterpretation of Christian doctrines-the allness of
Spirit and the
nothingness of matter-the organization has enjoyed a steady
and pronounced
growth and drawn into its pale thousands of Christian
communicants who felt the
need of a more dynamic or more fruitful gospel. The
conception of the impotence
of matter, as non-being, is as old as Greek and Hindu
philosophy. Mrs. Eddy's
contribution in the matter was her use of the philosophical
idea as a
psychological mantram for healing, and her adroitness in
lining up the Christian
scriptures to support the idea.
It would require a fairly discerning insight to mark out
clearly the inter-connection
of Christian Science and Theosophy. There is basically
little
similarity between the two schools, or little common ground
on which they might
meet. On the contrary there is much direct antagonism in
their views and dogma.
Nevertheless the Boston cult tended indirectly to bring some
of its votaries
along the path toward occultism. In the first place, like
Unitarianism, it had
induced thousands of sincere seekers for a new and liberal
faith to sever the
ties of their former servile attachment to an uninspiring
orthodoxy. Secondly,
Christian Science does yeoman service in
"demonstrating" the spiritual
viewpoint. Its emphasis on spirit, as opposed to material
concepts of reality,
is entirely favorable to the general theses of Theosophy. Thirdly,
the
intellectual limitations of the system develop the need of a
larger philosophy,
which Theosophy stands ready to supply. Christian Science,
being primarily a
Christian healing cult, with a body of ideas adequate to
that function, often
leads the intelligent and open-minded student in its ranks
to become aware that
it falls far short of offering a comprehensive philosophy of
life. It has little
or nothing to say about man's origin, his present rank in a
universal order, or
his destiny. It leaves the pivotal question of immortality
in the same status as
does conventional Christianity. Many Christian Science
adherents have seen that
Theosophy offers a fuller and more adequate cosmograph, and
accordingly adopted
it. Their experience in the Eddy system brought them to the
outer court of the
Occult Temple.20
Among major movements that paved the way for Theosophy, the
one perhaps most
directly conducive to it is Spiritualism, for the founder of
the Theosophical
Society began her career in the Spiritualistic ranks. On
account of this close
relationship it is necessary to outline the origin and
spread of this strange
movement more fully..20
The weird behavior of two country girls, the one twelve and
the other nine, in
the hamlet of Hydesville, near Rochester, New York, in the
spring of 1847, was
like a spark to power for the release of religious fancy;
for Margaret and Kate
Fox were supposed to have picked up again the thread of
communication between
the world of human consciousness and the world of disembodied
spirits, and thus
to have given fresh reinforcement to man's assurance of
immortality. From this
bizarre beginning the movement spread rapidly to all parts
of America, England,
and France. In nearly every town in America groups were soon
meeting, eager for
manifestations and fervently invoking the denizens of the
unseen worlds. Various
methods and means were provided whereby the disembodied
entities could
communicate with dull mundane faculties. Many and varied
were the types of
response. Besides the simple "raps," there were
tinklings of tiny aerial bells,
flashings of light, tipping of tables, levitation of
furniture and of human
bodies, messages through the planchette, free voice
messages, trumpet speaking,
alphabet rapping, materialization of the hands and of
complete forms, trance
catalepsis and inspiration, automatic writing, slate
writing, glossolalia, and
many other variety of phenomena. Mediums, clairvoyants,
inspirational speakers
sprang forward plentifully; and each one became the focus of
a group activity.
It is somewhat difficult for us to reconstruct the picture
of this flare of
interest and activity, the scope of this absorbing passion
for spirit
manifestation. It attests the eagerness of the human heart
for tangible evidence
of survival. With periodical ebb and flow it has persisted
to the present day,
when its vogue is hardly less general than at any former
time. In the fifties
and sixties the Spiritualistic agitation was in full flush,
with many
extraordinary occurrences accredited to its exponents.21
Spiritualism encountered opposition among the clergy and the
materialistic
scientists, yet it has hardly ever been wanting in adherents
among the members
of both groups. An acquaintance with its supporters would
reveal a surprising
list of high civil and government officials, attorneys,
clergymen, physicians,
professors, and scientists.22
One of the first Spiritualistic writers of this country was
Robert Dale Owen,
whose Footfalls on the Boundary of Another World and The
Debatable Land were
notable contributions. Two of the most eminent
representatives of the movement
in its earliest days were Prof. Robert Hare, an eminent
scientist and the
inventor of the oxyhydrogen blow-pipe, and Judge Edmonds, a
leading jurist. Both
these men had approached the subject at first in a skeptical
spirit, with the
intention of disclosing its unsound premises; but they were
fair enough to study
the evidence impartially, with the result that both were convinced
of the
genuineness of the phenomena. Both avowed their convictions
courageously in
public, and Judge Edmonds made extensive lecture tours of
the country, the
propaganda effect of which was great.23 Before the actual
launching of the
Theosophical Society in 1875 at least four prominent later
Theosophists had
played more or less important rτles in the drama of
Spiritualism. Madame
Blavatsky, as we shall see, had identified herself with its
activities; Mr. J.
R. Newton was a vigorous worker; and it was Col. Olcott
himself who brought the
manifestations taking place in 1873 at the Eddy farmhouse
near Chittenden,
Vermont, to public notice and who put forth one of the first
large volumes
covering these and other phenomena in 1874, People From the
Other World. The
fourth member was Mrs. Emma Hardinge Britten, who had served
as a medium with
the Bulwer-Lytton group of psychic investigators in England,
and who added two
books to Spiritualistic literature-Art Magic and Nineteenth
Century Miracles.
Col. Olcott, Madame Blavatsky, and Mrs. Britten made
material contributions to
several Spiritualistic magazines, especially The Spiritual
Scientist, edited in
Boston..21
Meantime Spiritualistic investigation got under way and
after the sixties a
stream of reports, case histories, accounts of phenomena,
and books from
prominent advocates flooded the country. The Seybert
Commission on Spiritualism,
composed of leading officers and professors at the
University of Pennsylvania,
submitted its report in 1888. In the same year R. B.
Davenport undertook to turn
the world away from what he considered a delusion with his
book Deathblow to
Spiritualism: The True Story of the Fox Sisters; but he
found that Spiritualism
had a strange vitality that enabled it to survive many a
"deathblow." As a
result of studies in psychic phenomena in England came F. W.
H. Myers'
impressive work, The Human Personality and Its Survival of
Bodily Death, in
which the foundations for the theory of the subliminal or
subconscious mind were
laid.
But the work of the mediums themselves kept public feeling
most keenly alert. A
list of some of the most prominent ones includes Mrs.
Hayden, Henry Slade,
Pierre L. O. A. Keeler, the slate-writer, Robert Houdin (who
bequeathed his name
and exploits to the later Houdini), Ira and William
Davenport, Anna Eva Fay,
Charles Slade, Eusapia Paladino, Mrs. Leonara Piper. Robert
Dale Owen, already
mentioned as author, was a medium of no mean ability. In the
same category was
J. M. Peebles, of California, whose books, Seers of the Ages
and Who Are These
Spiritualists? and whose public lecture tours, rendered him
one of the most
prominent of all the advocates of the cult. A career of
inspirational public
speaking was staged by Cora V. Richmond, who gave lectures
on erudite themes
with an uncommon flow of eloquence. W. J. Colville began
where she ended, giving
unprepared addresses on topics suggested by the audience.
The three most famous American mediums deserve somewhat more
extended treatment.
The first of the trio is Daniel Dunglas Home, who was a poor
Scottish boy
adopted in America. While a child, spiritual power
manifested itself to him to
his terror and annoyance. Raps came around him on the table
or desk, on the
chairs or walls. The furniture moved about and was attracted
toward him. His
aunt, with whom he lived was in consternation at these
phenomena, and, deeming
him possessed, sent for three clergymen to exorcise the
spirit; when they did
not succeed, she threw his Sunday suit and linen out the
window and pushed him
out-of-doors. He was thus cast on the world without friends,
but the power that
he possessed raised him friends and sent him forth from
America to be the
planter of Spiritualism all over Europe.24
The second of the triumvirate was Andrew Jackson Davis. His
function seemed to
be that of the seer and the scribe, rather than of the
producer of material
operations. He was born of poor parents, in 1826, in Orange
Country, New York.
He seems to have inherited a clairvoyant faculty. He
received only five months'
schooling in the village, it being "found impossible to
teach him anything
there."25 During his solitary hours in the fields he
saw visions and heard
voices. Removing to Poughkeepsie, he became the clairvoyant
of a mesmeric
lecturer, and in this capacity began to excite wonder by his
revelations. This
was before the Rochester knockings were heard. He diagnosed
and healed diseases,
and prescribed for scores who came to him, surprising both
patients and
physicians by his competence. Then he began to see
"into the heart of things,"
to descry the essential nature of the world and the
spiritual constitution of
the universe. He could see the interior of bodies and the
metals hidden in the
earth. Adding his testimony to that of Fox and Swedenborg,
he asserted that
every animal represented some human quality, some vice or
virtue. He gave Greek
and Latin names of things, without having a knowledge of
these languages. In a
vision he beheld The Magic Staff on which he was urged to
learn during life; on
it was written his life's motto: "Under all
circumstances keep an open mind." In
1845 he delivered one hundred and fifty-seven lectures in
New York which.22
announced a new philosophy of the universe. They were
published under the title,
Nature's Divine Revelation, a book of eight hundred pages.
Davis then became a
voluminous writer.26
Thomas L. Harris, the third great representative, was much
attracted by Davis'
The Divine Revelations of Nature, but developed spiritistic
powers along a
somewhat different line, that of poetic inspiration. In his
early exhibitions of
this supernormal faculty he dictated who epics, containing
occasionally
excellent verse, under the alleged influence of Byron,
Shelley, Keats and
others. The interesting manner in which these poems-a whole
volume of three or
four hundred pages at a time-were created, is more amazing
than their poetic
merit. Mr. Brittan, an English publisher, tells us that
Harris dictated and he
wrote down The Lyric of the Golden Age, a poem of 381 pages,
in ninety-four
hours! The Lyric of the Morning Land and other pretentious
works were produced
in a similar manner.
"But," says William Howitt in his History of the
Supernatural, "the progress of
Harris into an inspirational oratory is still more
surprising. He claims, by
opening up his interior being, to receive influx of divine
intuition in such
abundance and power as to throw off under its influence the
most astonishing
strains of eloquence. This receptive and communicative power
he attributes to an
internal spiritual breathing corresponding to the outer
natural breathing. As
the body lungs imbibe air, so, he contends, the spiritual
lungs inspire and
respire the divine aura, refluent with the highest thought
and purest sentiment,
and that without any labor or trial of brain."27
Spiritualism is one of the most direct lines of approach to
Theosophy, since an
acceptance of the possibility of spiritistic phenomena is a
prerequisite for the
adoption of the larger scheme of occult truth. Spiritualism
covers a portion of
the ground embraced by the belief in reincarnation, and in
so far constitutes an
introduction to it. Theosophy is further, an endorsement of
the primary position
of the Spiritualists regarding the survival of the soul
entity, and thus
commends itself to their approbation. The Spiritualists have
been considerably
vexed by the question of reincarnation, and their ranks are
split over the
subject. Some of the message seem to endorse it, others
evade it, and some
negate the idea. What is significant at this point is that
the Spiritualistic
agitation prepared the way for Theosophic conceptions. A
large percentage of the
first membership came from the ranks of the Spiritualists.
But Spiritualism is but one facet of a human interest which
has expressed itself
in all ages, embracing the various forms of mysticism,
occultism, esotericism,
magic, healing, wonder-working, arcane science, and theurgy.
The growing
acquaintance with Yoga practice and Hindu philosophy in this
country under the
stimulus of many eloquent Eastern representatives has
already been mentioned.
The demonstrations of mesmeric power lent much plausibility
to Oriental
pretensions to extraordinary genius for that sort of thing.
More than might be
supposed, there was prevalent in Europe and America alike a
never-dying
tradition of magical art, a survival of Medieval European
beliefs in superhuman
activities and powers both in man and nature. Among the
rural and unschooled
populations this tradition assumed the form of harmless
superstitions. Among
more learned peoples it issued in philosophic speculations
dealing with the
spiritual energies of nature, the hidden faculties of man,
such as prophecy,
tongues and ecstatic vision, and the extent and possibility
of man's control
over the external world through the manipulation of a subtle
ether possessing
magnetic quality. The heritage of Paracelsus, Robert Fludd,
Thomas Vaughn and
Roger Bacon, Agrippa von Nettesheim, the Florentine
Platonists and their German,
French, and English heirs still lingered. The Christian
scriptures were.23
themselves replete with incidents of the supernatural, with
necromancy,
witchcraft, miracles, ghost-walking, spirit messages,
symbolical dreams, and the
whole armory of thaumaturgical exploits. The doctrine of
Satan was itself
calculated to enliven the imagination with ideas of demoniac
possession, and was
all the more credible by reason of the prevalence of
insanity which was ascribed
to spirit obsession. The early nineteenth century was must
closer to the Middle
Ages than our own time is, not only because education was
less general, but also
because a far larger proportion of the population was
agrarian instead of
metropolitan. Such cults were, however, by no means
restricted to "backwoods"
sections. They were astonishingly prevalent in the larger
centers. More
enlightened groups accepted a less crude form of the
practices. Where knowledge
ceases superstition may begin; and the problems of life that
press upon us for
solution and that are still beyond our grasp, lead the mind
into every sort of
rationalization or speculation.
Perhaps more people than acknowledge God in church pews
believe in the existence
of intelligences that play a part in life, whether in answer
to prayer, in
suggestive dreams, in occasional vision and apparitions, in
messages through
mediums, or in whatever guise; and out of such an
unreflective theology arise
many of the types of superstitious philosophy. To analyze
this situation in its
entirety would take us into extensive fields of folk-lore
and involve every sort
of old wives' tale imaginable. The chief point is that the
varieties of chimney-corner
legend and omnipresent superstition have had their origin in
a larger
primitive interpretation of the facts and forces of nature.
They must be
recognized as the modern progeny of ancient hylozoism and
animism. In the
childhood of our culture, as well as in the childhood of the
race and of the
individual, there is a close sympathy between man and nature
which leads him to
ascribe living quality to the external world. Countryside
fables are doubtless
the jejune remnant of what was once felt to be a vital
magnetic relation between
man's spirit and the spirit of the world. They are the
distorted forms of some
of the ancient rites for effecting magical intercourse
between man and nature.
While it is not to be inferred that Theosophy itself was
built on the material
embodied in countryside credulity, it will be seen that the
native inclination
toward an animistic interpretation of phenomena was in a
measure true to the
deeper theses which the new cult presented. Madame Blavatsky
herself says in
Isis Unveiled that the spontaneous responsiveness of the
peasant mind is likely
to lead to a closer apprehension of the living spirit of
Nature than can be
attained by the sophistications of reason.
The major tendencies in the direction of Theosophy have now
been enumerated. It
remains only to mention the scattering of American students
before 1875 whose
researches were taking them into the realm where the
fundamentals of Theosophy
itself were to be found. We refer to the Rosicrucians, the
Freemasons, the
Kabalists, Hermeticists, Egyptologists, Assyriologists,
students of the
Mysteries, of the Christian origins, of the pagan cults, and
the small but
gradually increasing number of Comparative Religionists and
Philologists.28
There were men of intelligence both in Europe and America,
who had kept on the
track of ancient and medieval esotericism, and the opening
up of Sanskrit
literature gave a decided impetus to a renaissance of
research in those realms.
The material that went into Frazer's Golden Bough, Ignatius
Donnelley's
Atlantis: the Antediluvian World, Hargrave Jennings' The
Rosicrucians,and many
other compendious works of the sort, was being collated out
of the flotsam and
jetsam of ancient survival and assembled into a picture
beginning to assume
definite outline and more than haphazard meaning. The great
system of Neo-Platonism,
the Gnostics, with Apollonius of Tyana, and Philo Judaeus
were coming
under inspection. The universality of religious myths and
rites was being noted..24
In short, the large body of ancient thought, so deeply
imbued with the occult,
was beginning to be scrutinized by the scholars of the
nineteenth century.
It was into this situation that Madame Blavatsky came. Her
office, she said, was
that of a clavigera; she bore a key which would provide
students with a
principle of integration for the loose material which would
enable them to piece
together the scattered stones and glittering jewels picked
up here and there
into a structure of surpassing grandeur and priceless worth.
She would show that
the gems of literature, whose mystic profundity astonished
and perplexed the
savants, were but the fragments of a once-glorious spiritual
Gnosis..25
------CARDIFF THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY IN
WALES-------
CHAPTER III
HELENA P. BLAVATSKY: HER LIFE AND
PSYCHIC CAREER
Who was Madame Blavatsky? Every new rιgime of belief or of
social organization
must be studied with a view to determining as far as
possible how much of the
movement is a contribution of the individuality of the
founder and how much
represents a traditional deposit. This inquiry is of first
importance in a
consideration of the Theosophical Society, because, more
than in most systems,
the personal endowment of its founder gave it its specific
coloring, character
and form. It should be said at this point that the career of
Madame Blavatsky as
outlined here does not purport to be a complete or authoritative
biography. It
was obviously impossible to undertake such an investigation
of her life, as the
difficulties of obscure research in three or four continents
were practically
prohibitive. We have been forced to base our study upon the
body of biographical
material that has been assembled around her name, emanating,
first, from her
relatives, secondly, from her followers and admirers, and
thirdly, from her
critics. Her life, up to the age of forty-two, narrowly
escaped consignment to
the realm of mythology, if not total oblivion, but was at
least partially
redeemed to the status of history by the exertions of Mr. A.
P. Sinnett, who
procured information from members of her own family in
Russia. His book,
Incidents in the Life of Madame Blavatsky, has been our
chief source of
information about her youth and early career. The Countess
Wachtmeister's
Reminiscences, Col. Olcott's Old Diary Leaves, V.
Solovyoff's A Modern Priestess
of Isis and William Kingsland's The Real Helena P.
Blavatsky, together with
Madame Blavatsky's own letters, especially those to Mr. And
Mrs. A. P. Sinnett,
are the main works relied upon to guide our story. If the
eventful life of our
subject is to be further redeemed from mystery and sheer
tradition into which it
already seems to be fading, a more thorough critical study
of it should be
undertaken, based upon authentic data collected from
first-hand sources as far
as this is possible.
It is to be understood, then, that the aim in this treatise
is to present her
career as it is told and believed by Theosophists, although
it is admittedly
already partly legendary. The precise extent it is to be
regarded as
mythological must be left to the individual reader, and to
future study, to
determine.
Helena Petrovna Blavatsky was born in the Ukrainian city of
Ekaterinoslaw on the
night between the 30th and 31st of July, 1831. Her father
was Col. Peter Hahn,
and her mother previous to her marriage, Helene Fadeef. The
father was the son
of Gen. Alexis Hahn von Rottenstern Hahn, from a noble family
of Mecklenberg,
Germany, settled in Russia. Her mother's parents were Privy
Councillor Andrew
Fadeef and the Princess Helene Dolgorouky. Madame
Blavatsky's grandfather was a
cousin of Countess Ida Hahn-Hahn, the authoress. Her own
mother was known in the
literary world between 1830 and 1840 under the nom de plume
of Zenaοda R.-the.26
first novel writer that had ever appeared in Russia, says
the account. Though
she died before her twenty-fifth year, she left some dozen
novels of the
romantic school, most of which have been translated into
German. The theory of
heredity would thus give us, apparently, abundant background
for whatever
literary propensities the daughter was later to display. On
her mother's side
she was a scion of the noble lineage of the Dolgorouky's,
who could trace direct
connections with Russia's founder, Rurik, and the Imperial
line.
Madame Blavatsky came on to the Russian scene during a year
fatal to the Slavic
nation, as to all Europe, owing to the decimation of the
population by the first
visitation of the cholera. Her own birth was quickened by
several deaths in the
household. She was ushered into the world amid coffins and
sorrowing. The infant
was so sickly that a hurried baptism was resorted to in the
effort to anticipate
death. During the ceremony, which was signalized with
elaborate Greek Catholic
paraphernalia of lighted tapers, the child-aunt of the baby
accidentally set
fire to the long robes of the priest, who was severely
burned. This incident was
interpreted as a bad omen, and in the eyes of the townsfolk
the infant was
doomed to a life of trouble.
From the very date of her birth, a peculiar tradition
operated to invest the
life of the growing child with an odor of superstition and
mystic awe. In Russia
each household was supposed to be under the tutelary
supervision of a Domovoy,
or house goblin, whose guardianship was propitious, except
on March 30th, when,
for mysterious reasons, he became mischievous. But the
tradition strangely
excepted from this malevolent spell of the Domovoy those
born on the night of
July 30-31, a time closely associated in the annals of
popular belief with
witches and their doings. The child came early to learn why
it was that, on
every recurring March 30th, she was carried around the
house, stables and cowpen
and made personally to sprinkle the four corners with water,
while the nurse
repeated some mystic incantation. Her first conscious
recognition of herself
must thus have been tinged with a feeling that she was in
some particular
fashion set apart, that she was somehow the object of
special care and attention
from invisible powers.
The Dnieper aided in weaving a spell of enchantment about
her infancy. No
Cossack of Southern Ukraine ever crosses it without
preparing himself for death.
Along its banks, where the child strolled with her nurses,
the Rusalky (undines,
nymphs) haunted the willow trees and the rushes. She was
told that she was
impervious to their influences, and in this sense of
superiority she alone dared
to approach those sandy shores. She had heard the servants'
tales of these
nymphs. Filled with this realization of her favored standing
with the Rusalky,
she one day threatened a youngster who had roused her
displeasure that she would
have the nymphs tickle him to death, whereupon the lad ran
wildly away and was
found dead on the sands-whether from fright or from having
stumbled into one of
the treacherous sandpits which the swirling waters quickly
turn into whirlpools.
Her mother died when Mlle. Hahn was still a child. She and
her younger sister
were taken to live with her father, in barracks with his
regiment, and until the
age of eleven, they were entertained, amused and spoiled as
les enfants du
rιgiment. After that they went to live at Saratow with their
grandmother, where
their grandfather was civil governor. The child was
"alternately petted and
punished, spoiled and hardened," and was difficult to
manage. She was of
uncertain health, "ever sick and dying," a sleep
walker, and given to abnormal
psychic peculiarities, ascribed by her orthodox nurses to
possession by the
devil; so that, as she afterwards said, "she was
drenched with enough holy water
to float a ship," and exorcised by priests. She was a
born rebel against
restraint, and went into ungovernable fits of passion, which
left her violently.27
shaken; but at the opposite apogee of her disposition she
was filled with
impulses of the extremest kindliness and affection. Through
life she had this
dual temper. Those who knew her better nature tolerated the
irascible element.
She was lively, highly-gifted, full of humor, and of
remarkable doing. She had a
passionate curiosity for everything savoring of the weird,
the uncanny, the
mysterious; she was strangely attracted by the theme of
death. Her imagination,
wildly roaming, appeared to create about her a world of
fairy or elfish
creatures with whom she held converse in whispers by the
hour. She defied all
and everything. She had to be watched lest she escape from
the house and mingle
with ragged urchins. She preferred to listen to the tales of
Madame Peigneur
(her governess) than do her lessons. She would openly rebel
against her text-books
and run off to the woods or hide in the dusky corridors of
the basement of
the great house where her grandfather lived. In a secluded
dark recess in the
"Catacombs" she had erected a barrier of old
broken chairs and tables, and
there, up near the ceiling under an iron-barred window, she
would secrete
herself for hours, reading a book of popular legends known
as Solomon's Wisdom.
At times she bent to her books in a spasm of scholarly
devotion to amend for
mischief making. Her grandparents' enormous library was then
the object of her
constant interest. No less passionately would she drink in
the wonders of
narratives given in her presence. Every fairy-tale became a
living event to her.
She would be found speaking to the stuffed animals and birds
in the museum in
the old house. She said the pigeons were cooing fairy-tales
to her. She heard a
voice in every natural object; nature was animate and, to
her, articulate. She
seemed to know the inner life and secrets of every species
of insect, bird, and
reptile found about the place. She would recreate their past
and describe
vividly their feelings. At this early date she detailed the
events of the past
incarnations of the stuffed animals in the museum.
Times without number the little girl was heard conversing
with playmates of her
own age, invisible to others. There was in particular a
little hunchback boy, a
favorite phantom companion of her solitude, for whose
neglect by the servants
and nurses she was often excited to resentment.
"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."1
In the neighborhood of the residence was an old man, a
magician, whose doings
filled the mind of the young seeress with wonder. The old
man, a centenarian,
learned to know the young girl and he used to say of her:
"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!"
Her whole career is dotted with miraculous escapes from
danger and still more
miraculous recoveries from wounds, sicknesses and fevers.
One of the first
appearances of a protective hand in her life came far back
in her childhood. She
had always entertained a marked curiosity about a curtained
portrait in her
grandfather's castle at Saratow. It was hung so high that it
was far beyond her
reach. Denied permission to see it, she awaited her
opportunity to catch a
glimpse of it by stealth; and when left alone on one
occasion she dragged a
table to the wall, set another table on that, and a chair on
top, and managed to
clamber up. On tiptoe she just contrived to pull back the
curtain. The sight of.28
the picture was so startling that she made an involuntary
movement backwards,
lost her balance and toppled with her pyramid to the floor.
In falling she lost
consciousness; but when she came to her senses some moments
afterwards, she was
amazed to see the tables, chairs, and everything in proper order
in the room.
The curtain was slipped back again on the rings, and no mark
of the episode was
left except the imprint of her small hand on the wall high
up beside the
picture.
At another time, when she was nearing the age of fourteen,
her riding horse
bolted and flung her, with her foot caught in the stirrup.
As the animal plunged
forward she expected to be dragged to death, but felt
herself buoyed up by a
strange force, and escaped without a scratch.
It was not many years more until the young girl's possession
of gifts and
extraordinary faculties, commonly classed as mediumistic,
became an admitted
fact among her relatives and close associates. She would
answer questions
locating lost property, or solving other perplexities of the
household. She
sometimes blurted out to visitors that they would die, or
meet with misfortune
or accident; and her prophecies usually came true.
In 1844 the father, Col. Hahn, took Helena for her first
journey abroad. She
went with him to Paris and London, but proved a troublesome
charge.
Her youthful marriage deserves narration with some fulness,
if only because it
precipitated the lady out of her home and into that phase of
her career which
has been referred to as her period of preparation and
apprenticeship. As her
aunt, Madame Fadeef, describes her marriage:
"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 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
'plumeless raven,' that even he would decline her for his
wife. That was enough;
three days afterwards 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. All she knew and understood was-when too late-that she
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 honor 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-she left her husband forever,
without giving him an
opportunity to ever even think of her as his wife.
"Thus Madame Blavatsky abandoned her country at
seventeen and passed ten long
years in strange and out-of-the-way places,--in Central
Asia, India, South
America, Africa and Eastern Europe."2.29
True, before taking this drastic step she acceded to her
father's plea to do the
conventional thing; and she let the old General take her,
though even then not
without attempts to escape, on what may by courtesy of
language be called a
honeymoon, which drawled out, amid bickerings, to a length
of three months, and
was terminated after a bitter quarrel by the bride's dash
for freedom on
horseback. Gen. Blavatsky by this time saw the impossibility
of the situation
and acceded to the inevitable.
Tracing the life of Madame Blavatsky from this event through
her personally-conducted
globe-roaming becomes difficult, owing to the meagreness of
information. Her relatives and her later Theosophic
associates have done their
best to piece together the crazy-quilt design of her
wanderings and attendant
events of any significance. She herself kept no chronicle of
her journeys, and
it was only at long intervals, when she emerged out of the
deserts or jungles of
a country to visit its metropolis, or when she needed to
write for money, that
she sent letters back home. The family was at first alarmed
by her defection
from the fireside, but were constrained to acquiesce in the
situation by their
recognition of her immitigable distaste for her veteran
husband. If no other tie
kept her attached to the home circle, her need of funds
obliged her to keep in
touch with her father, who supplied her with money without
betraying her
confidences as to her successive destinations. He acceded to
her plans because
he had tried in vain to secure a Russian divorce; and he
felt that a few years
of travel for his daughter might best ease the family
situation. Ten years
elapsed before the fugitive saw her relatives again.
Her first emergence after her disappearance was in Egypt.
She seems to have
traveled there with a Countess K------, and at that time
began to pick up some
occult teaching of a poorer sort. She encountered an old
Copt, a man with a
great reputation as a magician. She proved an apt pupil, and
the instructor
became so much interested in her that when she revisited
Egypt years later, the
special attention he (then a retired ascetic) showed her,
attracted the notice
of the populace at Bulak.
After her appearance in Egypt she seems to have bobbed up in
Paris, where she
made the acquaintance of many literary people, and where a
famous mesmerist,
struck with her psychic gifts, was eager to put her to work
as a sensitive. To
escape his importunities she appears to have gone to London.
There she stayed
for a time with an old Russian lady, a Countess B., at
Mivart's Hotel. She
remained for some time after her friend's departure, but
could not afterwards
recall where she resided.
Occasionally in her travels she fell in with fellow Russians
who were glad to
accompany her and sometimes to befriend her. She indulged in
a tour about Europe
in 1850 with the Countess B., but was again in Paris when
the New Year of 1851
was acclaimed. Her next move was actuated by a passionate
interest in the North
American Indians, which she had acquired from a perusal of
Fenimore Cooper's
Leatherstocking Tales. Her zeal in this pursuit took her to
Canada in July of
1851. At Quebec her idealizations suffered a rude shock,
when, being introduced
to a party of Indians, both the noble Redskins and some articles
of her property
disappeared while she was trying to pry from the squaws a
recital of the secret
powers of their medicine men. Dropping the Indians, she
turned her interest to
the rising sect of the Mormons, being attracted doubtless by
their possession of
an alleged Hermetic document obtained through psychic
revelation. But the
destruction of the original Mormon city of Nauvoo, Missouri,
by a mob, scattered
the sect across the plains, and Madame Blavatsky thought the
time propitious for
exploring the traditions and arcana of Mexico. She came to
New Orleans. Here the
Voodoo practices of a settlement of Negroes from the West
Indies engaged her.30
interest, and her reckless curiosity might have led her into
dangerous contact
with these magicians; but her protective power reappeared to
warn her in a
vision of the risk she was running, and she hastened on to
new experiences.
Through Texas she reached Mexico, protected only by her own
reckless daring and
by the occasional intercession of some chance companion. She
seems to have owed
much in this way to an old Canadian, Pθre Jacques, who
steered her safely
through many perils. At Copau in Mexico she chanced to meet
a Hindu, who styled
himself a "chela" of the Masters (or adepts in
Oriental occult science), and she
resolved to seek that land of mystic enchantment and
penetrate northward into
the very lairs of the mystic Brotherhood. She wrote to an
Englishman, whom she
had met two years before in Germany, and who shared her
interest, to join them
in the West Indies. Upon his arrival the three pilgrims took
boat for India. The
party arrived at Bombay, via the Cape to Ceylon, near the
end of 1852. Madame's
own headstrong bent to enter Tibet via Nepal in search of
her Mahatmas broke up
the trio. She made the hazardous attempt to enter the
Forbidden Land of the
Lamas, but was prevented, she always believed, by the
opposition of a British
resident then in Nepal. Baffled, she returned to Southern
India, thence to Java
and Singapore and thence back to England.
But that country's embroilment in the Crimean War distressed
her sense of
patriotism, and about the end of the year 1853 she passed
over again to America,
going to New York, thence west to Chicago and on to the Far
West across the
Rockies with emigrant caravans. She halted a while at San
Francisco. Her stay in
America this time lengthened to nearly two years. She then
once more made her
way to India, via Japan and the Straits. She reached
Calcutta in 1855.
In India, in 1856, she was joined at Lahore by a German
gentleman who had been
requested by Col. Hahn to find his errant daughter. With him
and his two
companions Madame Blavatsky traveled through Kashmir to Leli
in Ladakh in
company with a Tatar Shaman, who was instrumental in
procuring for the party the
favor of witnessing some magic rites performed at a Buddhist
monastery. Her
experiences there she afterwards described in Isis,3 and
they are too long for
recital here. One of the exploits of the old priest was the
psychic vivification
of the body of an infant who (not yet of walking age) arose
and spoke eloquently
of spiritual things and prophesied, while dominated by a
magnetic current from
the operator.4 The psychic feat performed by her Shaman
guide was even more
wonderful. Yielding to Madame's importunities at a time when
she was herself in
grave danger, he released himself from his body as he lay in
a tent, and carried
a message to a friend of the young woman residing in
Wallachia, from whom he
brought back an answer.5 Shortly after this incident,
perceiving their danger,
the Shaman, by mental telepathy apprised a friendly tribal
ruler of their
situation, and a band of twenty-five horsemen was sent to
rescue the two
travelers, finding them in a locality to which they had been
directed by their
chief, yet of which the two had had no possible earthly
means of informing him.
Safely out of the Tibetan wilds-and she came out by roads
and passes of which
she had no previous knowledge-she was directed by her occult
guardian to leave
the country, shortly before the troubles which began in
1857. In 1858 she was
once more in Europe.
By this time her name had accumulated some renown, and it
was freely mentioned
in connection with both the low and the high life of Vienna,
Berlin, Warsaw, and
Paris. Her alleged absence from these places at the times
throws doubt on the
accuracy of these reports. After spending some months in
France and Germany upon
her return from India, she finally ended her self-imposed
exile and rejoined her
own people in Russia, arriving at Pskoff, about 180 miles
from St. Petersburg,.31
in the midst of a family wedding party on Christmas night.
Her reason for going
to Pskoff was that her sister Vera-then Madame Yahontoff-was
at the time
residing there with the family of her late husband, son of
the General N. A.
Yahontoff, Marechal de Noblesse of the place.
Soon afterwards, early in 1859, Madame Blavatsky and her
sister went to reside
with their father in a country house belonging to Madame Yahontoff.
This was at
Rougodevo, about 200 versts from St. Petersburg. About a
year later, in the
spring of 1860, both sisters left Rougodevo for the Caucasus
on a visit to their
grandparents, whom they had not seen for years. It was a
three weeks' journey
from Moscow to Tiflis, in coach with post horses. Madame
Blavatsky remained in
Tiflis less than two years, adding another year of roaming
about in Imeretia,
Georgia, and Mingrelia, exciting the superstitious
sensibilities of the
inhabitants of the Mingrelia region to an inordinate degree
and gaining a
reputation for witchcraft and sorcery. She was there taken
down with a wasting
fever, which an old army surgeon could make nothing of; but
he had the good
sense to send her off to Tiflis to her friends. Recovering
after a time, she
left the Caucasus and went to Italy. Here, the legend goes,
she, with some other
European women, volunteered to serve with Garibaldi and was
under severe fire in
the battle of Mentana.6
The four years intervening between 1863 and 1867 seem to
have been spent in
European travel, though the records are barren of accurate
detail. But the three
from 1867 to 1870 were passed in the East,7 and were quite
fruitful and
eventful.
In 1870 she returned from the Orient, coming through the
newly opened Suez
Canal, spent a short time in Piraeus, and from there took
passage for Spezzia on
board a Greek vessel. On this voyage she was one of the very
few saved from
death in a terrible catastrophe, the vessel being blown to
bits by an explosion
of gunpowder and fireworks in the cargo. Rescued with only
the clothes they
wore, the survivors were looked after by the Greek
government, which forwarded
them to various destinations. Madame Blavatsky went to
Alexandria and to Cairo,
tarrying at the latter place until money reached her from
Russia.
While awaiting the arrival of funds, the energetic woman
determined to found a
Sociιtι Spirite, for the investigation of mediums and
manifestations according
to the theories and philosophy of Allen Kardec. The latter
was an outstanding
advocate of Spiritualistic philosophy on the Continent. He
had correlated the
commonly reported spiritistic exploits to a more profound
and involved theory of
cosmic evolution and a higher spirituality in man. His work,
Life and Destiny,
written under the pseudonym of Leon Denis, unfolded a
comprehensive system of
spiritual truth identical in its main features with
Theosophy itself. His
interests were not primarily in spiritistic phenomena for
themselves, but for
what they revealed of the inner spiritual capacities and
potentialities of our
evolving Psyche.
It required but a few weeks to disgust Madame Blavatsky with
her fruitless
undertaking. Some French female spiritists, whom she had
drafted for service as
mediums, in lack of better, proved to be adventuresses
following in the wake of
M. de Lesseps' army of engineers and workmen, and they
concluded by stealing the
Society's funds. She wrote home:
"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 sιances we held, and
got possessed I
suppose, by some vile spook."8.32
She terminated the affairs of her Sociιtι and went to Bulak,
where she renewed
her previous acquaintance with the old Copt. His unconcealed
interest in his
visitor aroused some slanderous talk about her. Disgusted
with the growing
gossip, she went home by way of Palestine, making a side
voyage to Palmyra and
other ruins, and meeting there some Russian friends. At the
end of 1872 she
returned without warning to her family, then at Odessa.
In 1873 she again abandoned her home, and Paris was her
first objective. She
stayed there with a cousin, Nicholas Hahn, for two months.
While in Paris she
was directed by her "spiritual overseers" to visit
the United States, "where she
would meet a man by the name of Olcott," with whom she
was to undertake an
important enterprise. Obedient to her orders she arrived at
New York on July
7th, 1873.9 She was for a time practically without funds;
actually, as Col.
Olcott avers, "in the most dismal want, having . . . to
boil her coffee-dregs
over and over again for lack of pence for buying a fresh
supply; and to keep off
starvation, at last had to work with her needle for a maker
of cravats."10
During this interval she was lodged in a wretched tenement
house in the East
Side, and made cravats for a kindly old Jew, whose help at
this time she never
forgot.11 In her squalid quarters she was sought out by a
veteran journalist,
Miss Anna Ballard, in search of copy for a Russian story.
She received, in late
October, a legacy from the estate of her father, who had
died early in that
month. A draft of one thousand rubles was first sent her,
and later the entire
sum bequeathed to her. Then in affluence she moved to better
quarters, first to
Union Square, then to East 16th Street, then to Irving
Place. But her money did
not abide in her keeping long. In regard to the sources of
her income after her
patrimony had been flung generously to the winds, we are
told, upon Col.
Olcott's pledged honor, that both his and her wants, after
the organization of
the Theosophical Society, were frequently provided for by
the occult
ministrations of the Masters. He claims that during the many
years of their
joint campaigns for Theosophy, especially in India, the
treasure-chest at
headquarters, after having been depleted, would be found
supplied with funds
from unknown sources. Shopping one day in New York with
Colonel, she made
purchases to the amount of about fifty dollars. He paid the
bills. On returning
home she thrust some banknotes into his hand, saying:
"There are your fifty
dollars." He is certain she had no money of her own,
and no visitor had come in
from whom she could have borrowed. Once during this period
she created the
duplicate of a thousand dollar note while it was held in the
hand of the Hon.
John L. O'Sullivan, formerly Ambassador to Portugal; but it
faded away during
the two following days. Its serial number was identical with
that of its
prototype. The knowledge that financial help would come at
need, however, did
not dispose Madame Blavatsky to relax her effort toward her
own sustenance.12
During this time, and for nearly all the remainder of her
life, the Russian
noblewoman spent large stretches of her time in writing
occult, mystic, and
scientific articles for Russian periodicals. This
constituted her main source of
income. Col. Olcott states that her Russian articles were so
highly prized that
"the conductor of the most important of their reviews
actually besought her to
write constantly for it, on terms as high as they gave
Turgenev."13
A chronicle of her life during this epoch may not omit her
second marriage,
which proved ill-fated at the first. It came about as follows:
A Mr. B., a
Russian subject, learning of her psychic gifts through Col.
Olcott, asked the
Colonel to arrange for him a meeting with his countrywoman.
He proceeded to fall
into a profound state of admiration for Madame Blavatsky,
which deepened though
he was persistently rebuffed, and he finally threatened to
take his life unless
she would relent. He proclaimed his motives to be only
protective, and expressly
waived a husband's claims to the privileges of married life.
In what appears to
have been madness or some sort of desperation, she agreed
finally, on these.33
terms, to be his wife. Even then it was specified that she
retain her own name
and be free from all restraint, for the sake of her work. A
Unitarian clergyman
married them in Philadelphia, and they lived for some few
months in a house on
Sansom Street. When taken to task by her friend Olcott, she
explained that it
was a misfortune to which she was doomed by an inexorable
Karma; that it was a
punishment to her for a streak of pride which was hindering
her spiritual
development; but that it would result in no harm to the
young man. The husband
forgot his earlier protestations of Platonic detachment, and
became an
importunate lover. Madame Blavatsky developed a dangerous
illness at this time
as a result of a fall upon an icy sidewalk in New York the
previous winter, and
her knee became so violently inflamed that a partial
mortification of the leg
set in. The physician declared that nothing but instant
amputation could save
her life; but she discarded his advice, called upon that
source of help which
had come to her in a number of exigencies, recovered
immediately and left her
husband's "bed and board." He, after some months
of waiting, saw her obduracy
and procured a divorce on the ground of desertion.14
During the latter part of her stay in New York she and Col.
Olcott took an
apartment of seven rooms at the corner of 47th Street and
8th Avenue, which came
to be called "The Lamasery," in jocular reference
to her Tibetan connections.
"The Lamasery" became a social and intellectual
center during her residence
there. Col. Olcott says:
". . . her mirthfulness, epigrammatic wit, brilliance
of conversation, careless
friendliness to those she liked . . ., her fund of anecdote,
and, chiefest
attraction to most of her callers, her amazing psychical
phenomena, made the
'Lamasery' the most attractive salon of the metropolis from
1876 to the close of
1878."15
Madame spent her day-hours in writing, her custom for years;
and held open house
for visitors in the evening. There was always discussion of
one or another
aspect of occult philosophy, in which she naturally took the
commanding part.
She would pour out an endless flow of argument and
supporting data, augmented at
favorable times by a sudden exhibition of magical power. She
seemed tireless in
her psychic energy.
Several persons have left good word-pictures of her. Col.
Olcott graphically
describes her appearance upon the occasion of their first
meeting in the old
Eddy farmhouse, in Vermont, where they both came in '74 to
study the "spooks."
Col. Olcott had been on the scene for some time, as a
representative of the New
York Daily Graphic, when Madame Blavatsky arrived. He was
struck by her general
appearance, and he contrived to introduce himself to her
through the medium of a
gallant offer of a light for her cigarette.
"It was a massive Kalmuc face," he writes,
"contrasting in its suggestion of
power, culture and impressiveness, as strangely with the
commonplace visages
about the room, as her red garment did with the gray and
white tones of the wall
and the woodwork, and the dull costumes of the rest of the
guests. All sorts of
cranky people were continually coming and going at Eddy's,
and it only struck
me, on seeing this eccentric lady, that this was but one
more of the sort.
Pausing on the doorstep I whispered to Kappes, 'Good
Gracious! Look at that
specimen, will you!'"16
In her autobiography the Princess Helene von Racowitza makes
some interesting
references to Madame Blavatsky, whom she knew intimately..34
"I discovered in her the most remarkable being (for one
hardly dare designate
her with the simple name of woman). She gave me new life; .
. . she brought new
interest into my existence. Regarding her personal
appearance, the head, which
rose from the dark flowing garments, was immensely
characteristic, although far
more ugly than beautiful. A true Russian type, a short thick
nose, prominent
cheek bones, a small clever mobile mouth, with little fine
teeth, brown and very
curly hair, and almost like that of a negro's; a sallow
complexion, but a pair
of eyes the like of which I had never seen; pale blue, grey
as water, but with a
glance deep and penetrating, and as compelling as if it
beheld the inner heart
of things. Sometimes they held an expression as though fixed
on something afar,
high and immeasurably above all earthly things. She always
wore long dark
flowing garments and had ideally beautiful hands.
"But how shall I attempt to describe . . . her being,
her power, her abilities
and her character? She was a combination of the most
heterogeneous qualities. By
all she was considered as a sort of Cagliostro or St.
Germain. She conversed
with equal facility in Russian, English, French, German,
Italian and certain
dialects of Hindustani; yet she lacked all positive
knowledge-even the most
superficial European school training.
"In matters of social life she . . . joined an
irresistible charm in
conversation, that comprised chiefly an intense
comprehension of everything
noble and great, with the most original and often coarse
humor, a mode of
expression which was the comical despair of prudish
Anglo-Saxons.
"Her contempt for and rebellion against all social
conventions made her appear
sometimes even coarser than was her wont, and she hated and
fought conventional
lying with real Don Quixotic courage. But whoever approached
her in poverty or
rags, hungry and needing comfort, could be sure to find in
her a warm heart and
an open hand. . . . No drop of wine, beer or fermented
liquors ever passed her
lips, and she had a most fanatical hatred of everything
intoxicating. Her
hospitality was genuinely Oriental. She placed everything
she possessed at the
disposal of her friends."17
Mr. J. Ranson Bridges, a none too kindly critic, who had
considerable
correspondence with her from 1888 till her death, says:
"Whatever may be the ultimate verdict upon the life and
work of this woman, her
place in history will be unique. There was a Titanic display
of strength in
everything she did. The storms that raged within her were
cyclones. Those
exposed to them often felt, with Solovyoff, that if there
were holy and sage
Mahatmas, they could not remain holy and sage and have
anything to do with
Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. Yet she could be as tender and
sympathetic as any
mother. Her mastery of some natures seemed complete. . . .
To these disciples
she was the greatest thaumaturgist known to the world since
the time of
Christ."18
In a moment of gayety she once dashed off the following
description of herself:
"An old woman, whether 40, 50, 60 or 90 years old, it
matters not; an old woman
whose Kalmuco-Buddhisto-Tartaric features, even in youth,
never made her appear
pretty; a woman whose ungainly garb, uncouth manners, and
masculine habits are
enough to frighten any bustled and corseted fine lady of
fashionable society out
of her wits."19
For all her psychic insight, she seemed unable to protect
herself against those
who fawned upon her, cultivated her society, and then repaid
her by desertion or.35
slander. She was open to any one who professed occult
interest, and she readily
took up with many such persons who later became bitter
critics.
Much ado was made by delicate ladies in her day of her
cigarette addiction. Her
evident masculinity, her lack of many of the niceties which
ladies commonly
affect, her scorn of conventions, her failure to put on the
airs of a woman of
noble rank, her occasional coarse language, and her violence
of temper over
petty things, have led many people to infer that the message
that she brought
could not have been pure and lofty.
Theosophists put forward an explanation of her irascibility
and nervous
instability, in a theory which must sound exotic to the
uninitiated. They state
that when she studied in Tibet under her Masters, and was
initiated into the
mysteries of their occult knowledge, they extricated, by
processes in which they
are alleged to be adepts, one of her astral bodies and
retained it so as to be
able to maintain, through an etheric radio vibration, a
constant line of
communication with her in any part of the world. This left
her in a state of
unstable equilibrium nervously, and rendered her subject to
a greater degree of
irritation than would normally have been the case.
Madame Blavatsky's life story, covered now in its outward
phases, is not
complete without consideration of that remarkable series of
psychic phenomena
which give inner meaning to her career. In and of themselves
they form a
narrative of great interest, on a par with the legendary
lives of many other
saints. The story is a long one; a complete record of all
her wonder-working, as
told in the Theosophic accounts, would alone fill the space
of this volume. A
digest of this material must be made here, though a critical
examination is, as
said above, not attempted.
When, in 1858, she returned home from her first exile of ten
years, Spiritualism
was just looming on the horizon of Europe. Nothing seems to
be mentioned in the
several biographical sketches, of her coming in contact with
the sweep of the
Spiritualistic wave that was at full height in the United
States during the
early fifties, when she passed through that country. However
the case may be,
she returned home in 1858 with her occult powers already
fully developed, and
proceeded to make frequent display of them.
At Pskoff, with her sister's husband's family, the
Yahontoff's, raps, knocks,
and other sounds occurred incessantly; furniture moved
without any contact;
particles changed their weight; and either absent living
folk or the dead were
seen both by herself and her relatives many times. Wherever
the young woman went
"things" happened. Laughing at the continued
recurrence of these mysterious
activities, she averred to her sisters that she could make
them cease or
redouble their frequency and power, by the sheer force of
her own will.20 The
psychic demonstrations supposedly took place in entire
independence of her
coφperation, but she could, if she chose, interject her will
and assume control.
Her sister, Madame de Jelihowsky, remembers Helena's
laughing when addressed as
a medium, and assuring her friends that "she was no
medium, but only a mediator
between mortals and beings we know nothing about."21
The reports of her
wonderful exploits following her arrival at Pskoff in 1858
threw that town into
a swirl of excited gossip. There was a great deal of
fashionable company at the
Yahontoff home in those days. Madame's presence itself
attracted many. Seldom
did any of the numerous callers go away unsatisfied, for to
their inquiries the
raps gave answer, often long ones in different languages,
some of which were not
in Madame Blavatsky's repertoire. The willing
"medium" was subjected to every
kind of test, to which she submitted gracefully..36
An instance of her power was her mystification of her own
brother, Leonide de
Hahn. A company was gathered in the drawing room, and
Leonide was walking
leisurely about, unconcerned with the stunts which his
gifted sister was
producing for the diversion of the visitors. He stopped
behind the girl's chair
just as some one was telling how magicians change the
avoirdupois of objects.
"And you mean to say that you can do it?" he asked
his sister ironically.
"Mediums can, and I have done it occasionally,"
was the reply. "But would you
try?" some one asked. "I will try, but promise
nothing." Hereupon one of the
young men advanced and lifted a light chess table with great
ease. Madame then
told them to leave it alone and stand back. She was not near
it herself. In the
expectant silence that ensued she merely looked intently at
the table. Then she
invited the same young man who had just lifted it to do so
again. He tried, with
great assurance of his ability, but could not stir the table
an inch. He grew
red with the effort, but without avail. The brother,
thinking that his sister
had arranged the play with his friend as a little joke on
him, now advanced.
"May I also try?" he asked her. "Please do,
my dear," she laughed. He seized the
table and struggled; whereat his smile vanished. Try as he
would, his effort was
futile. Others tried it with the same result. After a while
Helena urged Leonide
to try it once more. He lifted it now with no effort.
A few months later, Madame Blavatsky, her father and sister,
having left Pskoff
and lodging at a hotel in St. Petersburg, were visited by
two old friends of
Col. Hahn, both now much interested in Spiritualism. After
witnessing some of
Helena's performances, the two guests expressed great
surprise at the father's
continued apathy toward his daughter's abilities. After some
bantering they
began to insist that he should at least consent to an
experiment, before denying
the importance of the phenomena. They suggested that he
retire to an adjoining
room, write a word on a slip of paper, conceal it and see if
his daughter could
persuade the raps to reveal it. The old gentleman consented,
believing he could
discredit the foolish nonsense, as he termed it, once for all.
He retired, wrote
the word and returned, venturing in his confidence the
assertion that if this
experiment were successful, he "would believe in the
devil, undines, sorcerers,
and witches, in the whole paraphernalia, in short, of old
woman's superstitions;
and you may prepare to offer me as an inmate of a lunatic
asylum."22 He went on
with his solitaire in a corner, while the friends took note
of the raps now
beginning. The younger sister was repeating the alphabet,
the raps sounding at
the desired letter; one of the visitors marked it down.
Madame Blavatsky did
nothing apparently. By this means one single word was got,
but it seemed so
grotesque and meaningless that a sense of failure filled the
minds of the
experimenters. Questioning whether that one word was the
entire message, the
raps sounded "Yes-yes-yes!" The younger girl then
turned to her father and told
them that they had got but one word. "Well what is
it?" he demanded.
"Zaοchik."23 It was a sight indeed to witness the
change that came over the old
man's face at hearing this one word. He became deadly pale.
Adjusting his
spectacles with a trembling hand, he stretched it out,
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 "Zaοchik." Yes; Zaοchik; so it is.
How very strange!" Taking out
of his pocket the paper he had written on in the next room,
he handed it in
silence to his daughter and guests. On it they found he had
written: "What was
the name of my favorite horse which I rode during my first
Turkish campaign?"
And lower down, in parenthesis, the answer,--"
Zaοchik."
The old Colonel, now assured there was more than child's
play in his daughter's
pretensions, rushed into the region of phenomena with great
zeal. He did not
matriculate at an asylum; instead he set Helena to work
investigating his family
tree. He was stimulated to this inquiry by having received
the date of a certain
event in his ancestral history of several hundred years before,
which he.37
verified by reference to old documents. Scores of historical
events connected
with his family were now given him; names unheard of,
relationships unknown,
positions held, marriages, deaths; and all were found on
painstaking research to
have been correct in every item! All this information was
given rapidly and
unhesitatingly. The investigation lasted for months.
In the spring of 1858 both sisters were living with their
father in the country-house
in a village belonging to Mme. Yahontoff. In consequence of
a murder
committed near their property, the Superintendent of the
District Police passed
through the villages and stopped at their house to make some
inquiries. No one
in the village knew who had committed the crime. During tea,
as all were sitting
around the table, the raps came, and there were the usual
disturbances around
the room. Col. Hahn suggested to the Superintendent that he
had better try his
daughter's invisible helpers for information. He laughed
incredulously. He had
heard of "spirits," he said, but was derisive of
their ability to give
information in "a real case." This scorn of her
powers caused the young girl to
desire to humble the arrogant officer. She turned fiercely
upon him. "And
suppose I prove to you the contrary?" she defiantly
asked him. "Then," he
answered, "I would resign my office and offer it to
you, Madame, or, better
still, 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 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 shall even leave the room." She went
out, with a book, to
read. The inquiry in the next room produced the name of the
murderer, the fact
that he had crossed over into the next district and was then
hiding in the hay
in the loft of a peasant, Andrew Vlassof, in the village of
Oreshkino. Further
information was elicited to the effect that the murderer was
an old soldier on
leave; he was drunk and had quarreled with his victim. The
murder was not
premeditated; rather a misfortune than a crime. The
Superintendent rushed
precipitately out of the house and drove off to Oreshkino,
more than 30 miles
distant. A letter came by courier the following morning
saying that everything
given by the raps had proved absolutely correct. This
incident produced a great
uproar in the district and Madame's work was viewed in a
more serious light. Her
family, however, had some difficulty convincing the more
distant authorities
that they had no natural means of being familiar with the
crime.
One evening while all sat in the dining room, loud chords of
music were struck
on the closed piano in the next room, visible to all through
the open door. On
another occasion Madame's tobacco pouch, her box of matches
and her handkerchief
came rushing to her through the air, upon a mere look from
her. Many visitors to
her apartment in later years witnessed this same procedure.
Again, one evening,
all lights were suddenly extinguished, an amazing noise was
heard, and though a
match was struck in a moment, all the heavy furniture was
found overturned on
the floor. The locked piano played a loud march. The
manifestations taking place
when the home circle was unmixed with visitors were usually
of the most
pronounced character.
Sometimes there were alleged communications from the spirits
of historical
personages, not the inevitable Napoleon and Cleopatra, but
Socrates, Cicero and
Martin Luther, and they ranged from great power and vigor of
thought to almost
flippant silliness. Some from the shade of the Russian poet
Pushkin were quite
beautiful..38
While the family read aloud the Memoirs of Catherine
Romanovna Dashkoff, they
were interrupted many times by the alleged spirit of the
authoress herself,
interjecting remarks, making additions, offering
explanations and refutations.
In the early part of 1859 the sister, Madame Jelihowsky,
inherited a country
village from the estate of her late husband at Rougodevo,
and there the family,
including Helena, went to reside for a period. No one in the
party had ever
known any of the previous occupants of the estate. Soon
after settling down in
the old mansion, Madame discerned the shades of half a dozen
of the former
inhabitants in one of the unoccupied wings and described
them to her sister.
Seeking out several old servants, she found that every one
of the wraiths could
be identified and named by the aged domestics. The young
woman's description of
one man was that he had long finger nails, like a
Chinaman's. The servant stated
that one of the former residents had contracted a disease in
Lithuania, which
renders cutting of the nails a certain road to death through
bleeding.
Sometimes the other members of the family would converse
with the rapping forces
without disturbing Helena at all. The forces played more
strongly than every, it
seemed, when Madame was asleep or sick. A physician once
attending her illness
was almost frightened away by the noises and moving
furniture in the bedroom.
A terrible illness befell her near the end of the stay at
Rougodevo. Years
before, her relatives believed during her solitary travels
over the steppes of
Asia, she had received a wound. This wound reopened
occasionally, and then she
suffered intense agony, which lasted three or four days and
then the wound would
heal as suddenly as it had opened, and her illness would
vanish. On one occasion
a physician was called; but he proved of little use, because
the prodigious
phenomena which he witnessed left him almost powerless to
act. Having examined
the wound, the patient being prostrated and unconscious, he
saw a large dark
hand between his own and the wound he was about to dress.
The wound was near the
heart, and the hand moved back and forth between the neck
and the waist. To make
the apparition worse, there came in the room a terrific
noise, from ceiling,
floor, windows, and furniture, so that the poor man begged
not to be left alone
in the room with the patient.
In the spring of 1860 the two sisters left Rougodevo for a
visit to their
grandparents in the south of Russia, and during the long
slow journey many
incidents took place. At one station, where a surly,
half-drunken station-master
refused to lend them a fresh relay of horses, and there was
no fit room for
their accommodation over the night, Helena terrified him
into sense and reason
by whispering into his ear some strange secret of his, which
he believed no one
knew and which it was to his interest to keep hidden.
At Jadonsk, where a halt was made, they attended a church
service, where the
prelate, the famous and learned Isidore, who had known them
in childhood,
recognized them and invited them to visit him at the
Metropolitan's house. He
received them when they came with great kindliness; but
hardly had they entered
the drawing room than a terrible hubbub of noise and raps
burst forth in every
direction. Every piece of furniture strained and cracked,
rocked and thumped.
The women were confused by this demoniacal demonstration in
the presence of the
amazed Churchman, though the culprit in the case was hardly
able to repress her
sense of humor. But the priest saw the embarrassment of his
guests and
understood the cause of it. He inquired which of the two
women possessed such
strange potencies. He was told. Then he asked permission to
put to her invisible
guide a mental question. She assented. His query, a serious
one, received an
instant reply, precise and to the point; and he was so
struck with it all that
he detained his visitors for over three hours. He continued
his conversation.39
with the unseen presences and paid unstinted tribute to
their seeming all-knowledge.
His farewell words to his gifted guest were:
"As for you, let not your heart be troubled by the gift
you are possessed of . .
. 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."
Her occult powers grew at this period to their full
development, and she seemed
to have completed the subjection of every phase of
manifestation to her own
volitional control. Her fame throughout the Caucasus
increased, breeding both
hostility and admiration. She had risen above the necessity
of resorting to the
slow process of raps, and read people's states and gave them
answers through her
own clairvoyance. She seemed able, she said, to see a cloud
around people in
whose luminous substance their thoughts took visible form.
The purely sporadic
phenomena were dying away.
Her illness at the end of her stay in Mingrelia has already
been noted. A
psychic experience of unusual nature even for her, through
which she passed
during this severe sickness, seems to have marked a definite
epoch in her occult
development. She apparently acquired the ability from that
time to step out of
her physical body, investigate distant scenes or events, and
bring back reports
to her normal consciousness. Sometimes she felt herself as
now one person, H. P.
Blavatsky, and again some one else. Returning to her own
personality she could
remember herself as the other character, but while
functioning as the other
person she could not remember herself as Madame Blavatsky.
She later wrote of
these experiences: "I was in another far-off country, a
totally different
individuality from myself, and had no connection at all with
my actual life."24
The sickness, prostrated her and appears to have brought a
crisis in her inner
life. She herself felt that she had barely escaped the fate
that she afterwards
spoke of as befalling so many mediums. She wrote in a letter
to a relative:
"The last vestige of my psycho-physical weakness is
gone, to return no more. 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." (Her Guardians in Tibet.)25
Madame Jelihowsky writes too:
"After her extraordinary and protracted illness at
Tiflis she seemed to defy and
subject the manifestations entirely to her will. In short,
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 had ever
refused the name of 'spirits' and souls-to her own
control."26
As a sequel to this experience her conception of a great and
definite mission in
the world formulated itself before her vision. It is seen to
provide the motive
for her abortive enterprise in Cairo in 1871; it is again
seen to be operative
in her propagation of Theosophy in 1875. It will be
considered more at length in
the discussion of her connection with American Spiritualism.
By 1871 her power in certain phases had been greatly
enhanced. She was able,
merely by looking fixedly at objects, to set them in motion.
In an illustrated
paper of the time there was a story of her by a gentleman,
who met her with some
friends in a hotel at Alexandria. After dinner he engaged
her in a long
discussion. Before them stood a little tea tray, on which
the waiter had placed.40
a bottle of liquor, some wine, a wine glass and a tumbler.
As the gentleman
raised the glass to his lips it broke to pieces in his
hands. Madame Blavatsky
laughed at the occurrence, remarking that she hated liquor
and could hardly
tolerate those who drank. He knew the glass was thick and
strong, but, to draw
her out, declared it must have been an accidental crumbling
of a thin glass in
his grasp. "What do you bet I do not do it again?"
she flashed at him. He then
half-filled another tumbler. In his own words:
"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 of
grasping the tumbler together when I felt myself losing hold
of it."
"Entre les lθvres et la coupe, il y a quelquefois une
grande distance," she
observed, and left the room, laughing in his face "most
outrageously."27
Another gentleman, a Russian, who encountered her in Egypt,
sent the most
enthusiastic letters to his friends about her wonders.
"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
Madame Blavatsky a woman who beats all the Boscos and Robert
Houdin's of the
country by her address. . . . Once I showed her a closed
medallion containing a
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
knew, 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. How could she
know?"28
At Cairo she wrote her sister Vera that she had seen the
astral forms of two of
the family's domestics and chided her sister for not having
written her about
their death during her absence. She described the hospital
in which one of them
had passed away, and other circumstances connected with
their history since she
had last been in touch with them. It was only afterwards
that she learned that
when her letter from Egypt was received by Madame
Jelihowsky, the latter was
herself not aware of the death of the two servants. Upon
inquiry she found every
circumstance in relation to their late years and their death
precisely as Helena
had depicted it.
Upon Madame Blavatsky's arrival in America her open espousal
of the cause of
Theosophy was prefaced by much work done in and for the
Spiritualistic movement.
Col. Olcott has brought out the fact that the phenomena
taking place at the Eddy
farmhouse in Vermont in 1873 changed character quite
decidedly the day she
entered the household. Up to the time of her appearance on
the scene the figures
that had shown themselves were either Red Indians or
Americans or Europeans
related to some one present. But on the first evening of her
stay spirits of
other nationalities came up. A Georgian servant body from
the Caucasus, a
Mussulman merchant from Tiflis, a Russian peasant girl, and
others, appeared.
Later a Kurdish cavalier and a devilish-looking Negro
sorcerer from Africa
joined the motley group.
From the Vermont homestead Madame Blavatsky went to New
York, where Col. Olcott
joined her shortly afterwards. Rappings and messages were
much in evidence
during this sojourn in the metropolis, the disembodied
intelligence in the
background purporting to be one "John King," a
name familiar to all spiritists
for many years before. The spirit finally declared itself to
be the earth-haunting
soul of Sir Henry Morgan, famous buccaneer, and so showed
itself to the.41
sight of Col. Olcott during the sιances with the Holmes
mediums some months
later in Philadelphia. From him as ostensible source came
many messages both
grave and gay.
All the while Madame Blavatsky posed as a Spiritualist and
mingled in the Holmes
sιances in Philadelphia for the purpose of lending some of
her own power to the
rather feeble demonstrations effected by Mr. and Mrs. Holmes
to bolster their
reputation in the face of Robert Dale Owen's public
denunciation of them as
cheats. She says that on one occasion Mrs. Holmes was
herself frightened at the
real appearance of spirits summoned by herself.
One of the first indications Col. Olcott was to have of the
interest of her
distant sages in his own career was shown during the time
that Madame Blavatsky
was in Philadelphia. At her urgent invitation the Colonel
determined quite
suddenly to run over and spend a few days with her. On the
evening of the same
day on which he left his address at the Philadelphia Post
Office the postman
brought him several letters from widely distant places, all
bearing the stamp of
the sending station, but none that of the receiving station,
New York. They were
addressed to him at his New York office address, yet had
come straight to him at
Philadelphia without passing through the New York office.
And nobody in New York
knew his Philadelphia address. He took them himself from the
postman's hand; so
they could not have been tampered with by his occult friend.
But the marvel did
not end there. Upon opening them he found inside each
something written in the
same handwriting as that in letters he had received in New
York from the
Masters, the writing having been made either in the margins
or on any other
space left blank by the writers.
"These were the precursors of a whole series of those
phenomenal surprises
during the fortnight or so that I spent in Philadelphia. I
had many, and no
letter of the lot bore the New York stamp, though all were
addressed to me at my
office in that city."29
The series of vivid phenomena which took place during the
Philadelphia visit may
be listed briefly as follows:
1.-Col. Olcott purchased a note-book in which to record the
rap messages. On
taking it out of the store wrapper he found inside the first
cover: "John King,
Henry de Morgan, his book, 4th of the fourth month in A.D.
1875." And underneath
this was a whole pictorial design of Rosicrucian symbols,
the word Fate, the
name Helen, the phrase "Way of Providence," a
monogram, a pair of compasses, and
various letters and signs. No one had touched it since its
purchase at the
stationary shop.
2.-Madame Blavatsky caused a photograph on the wall to
disappear suddenly from
its frame and give place to a sketch portrait of "John
King" while a spectator
was looking at it.
3.-Col. Olcott had bought a dozen unhemmed towels. As his
companion was no
seamstress, he bantered her to let an elemental do the
hemstitching on the lot.
She told him to put the towels, needle and thread inside a
bookcase, which had
glass doors curtained with green silk. He did so. After
twenty minutes she
announced that the job was finished. He found them actually,
if crudely, hemmed.
It was four P.M., and no other persons were in the room.
4.-Madame Blavatsky once suddenly disappeared from the
Colonel's sight, could
not be seen for a period, and then as suddenly reappeared.
She could not explain
to him how she did it..42
5.-The increase overnight in the length of her hair, of
about four to five
inches, and its later recession to its normal length.
6.-The projection of a drawing of a man's head on the
ceiling above the
Colonel's head, where he had seen nothing a minute before.
7.-The precipitation by "John King," in answer to
the Colonel's challenge to
duplicate a letter he had in his pocket, of the said
duplicate, correct in every
word.
8.-The precipitation of a letter into the traveling bag of a
Mr. B. while on the
train, the letter not having been packed there originally.
9.-The same Mr. B. begged Madame Blavatsky to create for him
a portrait of his
deceased grandmother. She went to the window, put a blank
piece of paper against
the pane, and handed it to him in a moment with the portrait
of a little old
woman with many wrinkles and a large wart, which Mr. B.
declared a perfect
likeness of his ancestor.
10.-The actual production by an Italian artist, through
"his control of the
spirits of the air," during one evening of entirely
clear sky, of a small shower
of rain, sufficient to wet the sidewalks. Previously Madame
Blavatsky had
created a butterfly, following a similar production by the Italian
visitor.
11.-The materialization by Madame Blavatsky of a heavy gold
ring in the heart of
a rose which had been "created" shortly before by
Mrs. Thayer, a medium whom
Col. Olcott was testing with a view to sending her to Russia
for experimentation
at a university there.
12.-The Colonel's own beard grew in one night from his chin
down to his chest.30
After the return from Philadelphia psychic events continued
with great frequency
at the apartments in New York. In December of 1875, Madame
Blavatsky, having
invited a challenge to reproduce the portrait of the
Chevalier Louis, reputed
Adept author of Mrs. Emma Hardinge Britten's Art Magic,
rubbed her hand over a
sheet of paper and the desired photograph appeared on the
under side. She had
laid the bare sheet on the surface of the table. Col. Olcott
had the opportunity
nine years later of comparing this reproduction with the
original photograph of
the Chevalier Louis, and found the likeness perfect, yet the
lines would not
meet precisely when the one was superimposed on the other.
It could not have
been a lithographic reproduction.
Early in 1878, Mr. O'Sullivan asked Madame Blavatsky for one
of a chaplet of
large wooden beads which she was wearing. She placed one in
a bowl and produced
the bowlful of them.
For the same gentleman in plain sight of several people, she
triplicated a
beautiful handkerchief which he had admired.
To amuse the child of a caller, an English Spiritualist, one
day she produced a
large toy sheep mounted on wheels. Col. Olcott claimed it
had not been there a
moment before.
On Christmas eve of that year when she and the Colonel, went
to his sister's
apartment, Madame expressed regret that she had brought
nothing for the
youngsters. But saying, "Wait a minute," she took
her bunch of keys from her.43
pocket, clutched three of them together in one hand, and a
moment later showed
the party a large iron whistle hanging on the ring instead
of the three keys.
Col. Olcott had to get three new keys from a locksmith.
Another time to placate a little girl Madame promised her
"a nice present," and
indicated to Col. Olcott that he should take it out of their
luggage bag in the
hall. He unlocked the already stuffed bag and immediately on
top was a
harmonica, or glass piano, about fifteen inches by four in
size, with its cork
mallet beside it. Colonel had himself packed the bag, having
to use all his
strength to close it, had reopened it on the train, and
there was not a moment
when his friend could have slipped an object of such size
into it.
It was in New York at this epoch that she took Col. Olcott's
large signet ring,
rubbed it in her hands and presently handed him his original
and another like it
except that the new one was mounted with a dark green
bloodstone, whereas the
original was set with a red carnelian. That ring she wore
till her death, and it
has since been the valued possession of Mrs. Annie Besant.
Once, in Boston, Madame walked through the streets in a
pelting rain and reached
her lodgings without the trace of dampness or mud on her
dress or shoes.
Similarly the Colonel found a handsome velvet-covered chair
entirely dry, not
even damp, after being left out all night in a driving rain.
One time when the two were talking about three members of
the Colonel's family,
a crash was heard in the next room. Rushing in he found that
the photograph of
one of the three had been turned face inward, the large
water-color picture of
another lay smashed on the floor, while the photograph of
the third was
unmolested.
Madame once made instantly a copy of a scurrilous letter
received by the Colonel
from a person who had done him an injustice. Again she
duplicated a five-page
letter from the eminent Spiritualist, W. Stainton Moses.
There was not time for
the receipt of the letter until its duplication for any one
to have copied it.
The second sheets were copies, but not strictly duplicate,
as the lines would
not match when the two were placed together and held before
the light.
At "The Lamasery" she produced an entire set of
watercolors, which Mr. W. Q.
Judge needed in making an Egyptian drawing. Next he needed
some gold paint,
whereupon she took a brass key, scraped it over the bottom
of an empty saucer,
and found the required paint instantly. The brass key was
not consumed in the
process, but was needed, she explained, to help aggregate
the atomic material
for the gold color.
When Olcott stated one evening that he would like to hear
from one of the Adepts
(in India) upon a certain subject, Madame told him to write
his questions, seal
them in an envelope, and place it where he could watch it.
He did so, putting it
behind the clock on the mantel, with one end projecting in
plain view. The two
went on talking for an hour, when she announced that the
answer had come. He
drew out his own envelope, the seal unbroken, found inside
it his own letter,
and inside that the Mahatma's answer in the script familiar
to him, written on a
sheet of green paper, such as he had not had in the house.
Through her agency the portrait of the Rev. W. Stainton Moses
was precipitated
on satin. It was a distinct likeness, and the head was rayed
around with
spiculae of light. It was surrounded with rolling clouds of
vapor, his astral
vehicle..44
Olcott, Judge and a Dr. Marquette one evening asked her to
produce the portrait
of a particular Hindu Yogi on some stationery of the Lotus
Club that the Colonel
had brought home that same evening. She scraped some lead
from a pencil on a
half sheet of the paper, laid the other half-sheet over it,
placed them between
her hands, and showed the result. The likeness to the
original could not be
verified, but it was pronounced by Le Clear, the noted
portrait painter, to be
one "that no living artist within his knowledge could
have produced."
Once Col. Olcott desired a picture of his Guru, or Hindu
teacher, as yet unseen
by him, and Madame essayed to have it painted through the
hand of a French
artist, M. Herisse. The artist's only instructions were that
his subject was a
Hindu. Madame concentrated, and he painted. The features,
finished in an hour,
were afterwards vouched for by Col. Olcott as being the
likeness of his Guru,
whom he met years later.
The Colonel testified to having seen Madame Blavatsky's
astral form in a New
York street while she was in Philadelphia; also that of a friend
of his then in
the South; again that of one of the Adepts, then in Asia, in
an American railway
train and on a steamboat. He stated that he took from the
hand of another
Mahatma at Jummu a telegram from H.P.B.31 who was in Madras,
the messenger
vanishing a moment later; and that he, H.P.B. and Damodar, a
young Hindu devotee
of hers, were greeted by one of these Teachers one evening
in India. But the
occurrence of this kind which he regarded as the most
striking, affecting as it
did his whole future career, happened at the close of one of
his busy days, when
his evening's toil with the composition of Isis was
finished. He had retired to
his own room and was reading, the room door locked. Suddenly
he perceived a
white radiance at his side and turning saw towering above
him the great stature
of an Oriental, clad in white garments and wearing a
head-cloth of amber-striped
fabric, hand-embroidered in yellow floss silk.
"Long raven hair hung from under his turban to the
shoulders; his black beard,
parted vertically on the chin in the Rajput fashion, was
twisted up at the ends
and carried over the ears; his eyes were alive with
soul-fire; eyes which were
at once benignant and piercing in glance; the eyes of a
mentor and judge, but
softened by the love of a father who gazes on a son needing
counsel and
guidance. He was so grand a man, so imbued with the majesty
of moral strength,
so luminously spiritual, so evidently above average
humanity, that I felt
abashed in his presence, and bowed my head and bent my knee
as one does before a
god or a god-like personage. A hand was laid lightly on my
head, a sweet though
strong voice bade me be seated, and when I raised my eyes
the Presence was
seated in the other chair beyond the table. He told me that
he had come at the
crisis when I needed him; that my actions had brought me to
this point; that it
lay with me alone whether he and I should meet often in this
life as coworkers
for the good of mankind; that a great work was to be done
for humanity and I had
the right to share in it if I wished; that a mysterious tie,
not now to be
explained to me, had drawn my colleague and myself together;
a tie which could
not be broken, however strained it might be at
times."32
Then he arose and reading the Colonel's sudden but unexpressed
wish that he
might leave behind him some token of his visit, he untwisted
the fehta from his
head, laid it on the table, saluted benignantly and was
gone.
Many a time, according to the Colonel's version, they were
regaled with most
exquisite music, or single bell sounds, coming from anywhere
in the room and
softly dying away..45
Olcott tells of the deposit of one thousand dollars to his
bank account by a
person described by the bank clerk as a Hindu, while he
(Olcott) was absent from
the city for two months on business which he had undertaken
at the behest of the
Master through H.P.B. He had told her that his errand would
cost him about five
hundred dollars per month through his neglect of his
business for the time.
In 1878 the Countess Paschkoff brought to light an adventure
which she had had
years before while traveling with Madame Blavatsky in the
Libanus. The two women
encountered each other in the desert and camped together one
night near the
river Orontes. Nearby stood a great monument on the border
of the village. The
Countess asked Madame to tell her the history of the
monument. At night the
thaumaturgist built a fire, drew a circle about it and
repeated several
"spells." Soon balls of white flame appeared on
the monument, then from a cloud
of vapor emerged the spirit of the person to whom it had
been dedicated. "Who
are you?" asked the woman. "I am Hiero, one of the
priests of the temple," said
the voice of the spirit.
He then showed them the temple in the midst of a vast city.
Then the image
vanished and the priest with it.
To round out the story of her phenomena it is necessary to
relate with the
utmost brevity the incidents of the kind that transpired
from the time of the
departure from America to India at the end of 1878 until the
latter days of her
life. This narrative will include occurrences taking place
in India, France,
Germany, and England.
It was in India that the so-called Mahatma Letters were
precipitated, upon which
the basic structure of Theosophy is seen to rest. Mr. A. P.
Sinnett, British
journalist, editor of "The Pioneer," living in
India, is the main authority for
the events of the Indian period in Madame Blavatsky's life.
During the first visit of six weeks to Mr. Sinnett's home at
Allahabad there
were comparatively few incidents, apart from raps. A
convincing exploit of her
power was granted, however, for one evening while the party
was sitting in the
large hall of the house of the Maharajah of Vizianagaram at
Benares, three or
four large cut roses fell from the ceiling. The ceiling was
bare and the room
well lighted.
About the beginning of September 1880 she visited the
Sinnetts at their home in
Simla. Here some more striking incidents took place. During
an evening walk with
Mrs. Sinnett to a neighboring hilltop, Madame, in response
to a suddenly-expressed
wish of her companion, obtained for her a little note from
one of the
"Brothers." Madame had torn off a blank corner of
a sheet of a letter received
that day and held it in her hand for the Master's use. It
disappeared. Then Mrs.
Sinnett was asked where she would like the paper to
reappear. She whimsically
pointed up into a tree a little to one side. Clambering up
into the branches she
found the same little corner of pink paper sticking on a
sharp twig, now
containing a brief message and signed by some Tibetan
characters.
A little later the most spectacular of the marvels said to
have been performed
by the "Messenger of the Great White Brotherhood"
took place. A picnic party to
the woods some miles distant was planned one morning and six
persons prepared to
set off. Lunches were packed for six, but a seventh person
unexpectedly joined
the group at the moment of departure. As the luncheon was
unpacked for the
noontide meal, there was a shortage of a coffee cup and
saucer. Some one
laughingly suggested that Madame should materialize an extra
set. Madame
Blavatsky held a moment's mental communication with one of
her distant Brothers.46
and then indicated a particular spot, covered with grass,
weeds, and shrubbery.
A gentleman of the party, with a knife, undertook to dig at
the spot. A little
persistence brought him shortly to the rim of a white
object, which proved to be
a cup, and close to it was a saucer, both of the design
matching the other six
brought along from the Sinnett cupboard. The plant roots
around the China pieces
were manifestly undisturbed by recent digging such as would
have been necessary
if they had been "planted" in anticipation of
their being needed. Moreover, when
the party reached home and Mrs. Sinnett counted their supply
of cups and saucers
of that design, the new ones were found to be additional to
their previous
stock. And none of that design could have been purchased in
Simla.33
Before this same party had disbanded it was permitted to
witness another feat of
equal strangeness. The gentleman who had dug up the buried
pottery was so
impressed that he decided then and there to join the
Theosophical Society. As
Col. Olcott, President of the Society, was in the party, all
that was needed was
the usual parchment diploma. Madame Blavatsky agreed to ask
the Master to
produce such a document for them. In a moment all were told
to search in the
underbrush. It was soon found and used in the induction
ceremony.
This eventful picnic brought forth still another wonder.
Every one of the water bottles brought along had been
emptied when the need for
more coffee arose. The water in a neighborhood stream was
unfit. A servant, sent
across the fields to obtain some at a brewery, stupidly
returned without any. In
the dilemma Madame Blavatsky took one of the empty bottles,
placed it in one of
the baskets, and in a moment took it out filled with good
water.
Some days later the famous "brooch" incident
occurred. The Sinnett party had
gone up the hill to spend an evening with Mr. and Mrs. A. O.
Hume, who were
likewise much interested in the Blavatskian theories. Eleven
persons were seated
around the table and some one hinted at the possibility of a
psychic exploit.
Madame appeared disinclined, but suddenly gave a sign that
the Master was
himself present. Then she asked Mrs. Hume if there was
anything in particular
that she wished to have. Mrs. Hume thought of an old brooch
which her mother had
given her long ago and which had been lost. Neither she nor
Mr. Hume had thought
of it for years. She described it, saying it contained a
lock of hair. The party
was told to search for it in the garden at a certain spot;
and there it was
found. Mrs. Hume testified that it was the lost brooch, or
one indistinguishable
from it.
According to the statements of Alice Gordon, a visitor at
the Sinnett home,
Madame Blavatsky rolled a cigarette, and projected it
ethereally to the house of
a Mrs. O'Meara in another part of Simla, in advance of Miss
Gordon's going
thither. To identify it she tore off a small corner of the
wrapper jaggedly, and
gave it to Miss Gordon. The latter found it at the other
home and the corner
piece matched.
Captain P. J. Maitland recites a "cigarette"
incident which occurred in Mr.
Sinnett's drawing room. Madame took two cigarette papers,
with a pencil drew
several parallel lines clear across the face of both, then
tore off across these
lines a piece of the end of each paper and handed the short
end pieces to
Captain Maitland; then she rolled cigarettes out of the two
larger portions,
moistened them on her tongue, and caused them to disappear
from her hands. The
Captain was told he would find one on the piano and the
other on a bracket. He
found them there, still moist along the "seam,"
and unrolling them found that
the ragged edges of the torn sections and the pencil lines
exactly matched..47
Some days later came the "pillow incident." Mr.
Sinnett had the impression that
he had been in communication with the Master one night.
During the course of an
outing to a nearby hill the following day, Madame Blavatsky
turned to him (he
had not mentioned his experience to her) and asked him where
he would like some
evidence of the Master's visit to him to appear. Thinking to
choose a most
unlikely place, he thought of the inside of a cushion
against which one of the
ladies was leaning. Then he changed to another. Cutting the
latter open, they
found among the feathers, inside two cloth casings, a little
note in the now
familiar Mahatma script, in the writing on which were the
phrases-"the
difficulty you spoke of last night" and
"corresponding through-pillows!" While
he was reading this his wife discovered a brooch in the
feathers. It was one
which she had left at home.
Perhaps it was these cigarette feats which assured Madame
Blavatsky that she now
had sufficient power to dispatch a long letter to her
Mahatma mentors. Mr.
Sinnett first suggested the idea to her, and her success in
that first attempt
was the beginning of one of the most eventful and unique
correspondences in the
world's history. It began his exchange of letters with the
Master Koot Hoomi Lal
Singh (abbreviated usually to K.H.), on which Theosophy so
largely rests.
On several telegrams received by Mr. Sinnett were snatches
of writing in K.H.'s
hand speaking of events that transpired after the telegram
had been sent.
Replies were received a number of times in less time than it
would have taken
Madame Blavatsky to write them (instantaneously in a few
cases), yet they dealt
in specific detail with the material in his own missives.
More than once his
unexpressed doubts and queries were treated. In many cases
his own letter in a
sealed envelope would remain in sight and within a very
short interval (thirty
seconds in one instance) be found to contain the distant
Master's reply, folded
inside his own sheets, with an appropriate answer,--the seal
not even having
been broken. Sometimes he would place his letter in plain
view on the table, and
shortly it would be gone. For a time when the Master K.H.
was called away to
other business, Mr. Sinnett continued to receive
communications from the brother
Adept, Master Morya, while Madame Blavatsky was hundreds of
miles away. They
continued in the distant absence of both H.P.B. and Col.
Olcott. And not only
were such letters received by Mr. Sinnett, and Mr. Hume, but
by other persons as
well. The list includes Damodar K. Mavalankar; Ramaswamy, an
educated English-speaking
native of Southern India in Government service; Dharbagiri
Nath; Mohini
Chatterji; and Bhavani Rao. Dr. Hόbbe-Schleiden received a
missive of the kind
later on a railway train in Germany. Mr. Sinnett would
frequently find the
letters on the inside of his locked desk drawers or would
see them drop upon his
desk. Their production was attended with all manner of
remarkable circumstances.
Then there was the notable episode of the transmission by
the Master of a mental
message to a Mr. Eglinton, a Spiritualist, on board a
vessel, the Vega, far out
at sea, and the instantaneous transmission of the letter's
response, written on
board ship, to some of his friends in India, the whole thing
done in accordance
with an arrangement made by letter to Mr. Sinnett by the
Adept two days before.
This incident has a certain importance from the fact that
the Master had said in
the preliminary letter that he would visit Mr. Eglinton on
the ship on a certain
night, impress him with the untenability of the general
Spiritualistic
hypothesis regarding communications, and if possible lead
him to a change of
mind on the point. Mr. Eglinton's reply recorded the visit
of the Mahatma on the
ship and admitted the desirability of a change to the
Theosophic theory of the
existence of the Brothers.
An interesting
------CARDIFF THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY IN
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CHAPTER of events in the sojourn of the two Theosophic leaders in
India is that of the thousands of healings made by Col.
Olcott, who states that.48
he was given the power by the Overlords of his activities
for a limited time
with a special object in view. He is said to have cured some
eight thousand
Hindus of various ailments by a sort of "laying on of
hands." Like Christ he
felt "virtue" go out of his body until exhaustion
ensued; and he stated that he
was instructed to recharge his nervous depletion by sitting
with his back
against the base of a pine tree.
In 1885 Madame Blavatsky herself experienced the healing
touch of her Masters
when she was ordered to meet them in the flesh north of
Darjeeling. Going north
on this errand, she was in the utmost despondency and near
the point of death.
After two days spent with the Adepts she emerged with
physical health and morale
restored, her dynamic self once more.
The last sheaf of "miracles" takes us from India
to France, Germany, Belgium,
and England. In Paris, in 1884, her rooms were the resort of
many people who
came if haply they might get sight of a marvel, her
thaumaturgic fame being now
world-wide. A Prof. Thurmann reported that in his presence
she filled the air of
the room with musical sounds, from a variety of instruments.
She demonstrated
that darkness was not necessary for such manifestations.
Madame Jelihowsky is authority for the account of the appearance
and
disappearance of her sister's picture in a medallion
containing only the small
photograph of K.H.
A most baffling display of Madame's gifts took place in the
reception room of
the Paris Theosophical Society on the morning of June 11th,
1884. Madame
Jelihowsky, Col. Olcott, W. Q. Judge, V. Solovyoff and two
others were present
and attested the bona fide nature of the incident in a
public letter. In sight
of all a servant took a letter from the postman and brought
it directly to
Madame Jelihowsky. It was addressed to a lady, a relative of
Madame Blavatsky,
who was then visiting her, and came from another relative in
Russia. Madame
Blavatsky, seeing that it was a family letter, remarked that
she would like to
know its contents. Her sister ventured the suggestion that
she read it before it
was opened. Helena held the letter against her forehead and
proceeded to read
aloud and then write down what she said were the contents.
Then, to demonstrate
her power further, she declared that she would underscore
her own name, wherever
it occurred within the letter, in red crayon, and would
precipitate in red a
double interlaced triangle, or "Solomon's Seal,"
beneath the signature. When the
addressee opened the letter, not only was H.P.B.'s version
of its contents
correct to the word, but the underscoring of her name and
the monogram in red
were found, and oddly enough, the wavering in several of the
straight lines in
the triangle, as drawn first by Madame Blavatsky outside the
letter, were
precisely matched by the red triangle inside. Postmarks
indicated it had
actually come from Russia.34
While at Elberfeld, Germany, with her hospitable
benefactress, Madame Gebhard,
some of the usual manifestations were in evidence. Mr. Rudolph
Gebhard, a son,
recounts several of them. One was the receipt of a letter
from one of the
Masters, giving intelligence about an absent member of the
household, found to
be correct.
The Countess Constance Wachtmeister, who became Madame
Blavatsky's guardian
angel, domestically speaking, during the years of the
composition of The Secret
Doctrine in Germany and Belgium, has printed her account of
a number of
extraordinary occurrences of the period. She speaks of a
succession of raps in
H.P.B.'s sleeping room when there was special need of her
Guardians' care. She
also tells of the thrice-relighted lamp at the sleeper's
bedside, she herself.49
having twice extinguished it. She tells of her receiving a
letter from the
Master, inside the store-wrapper of a bar of soap which she
had just purchased
at a drug store.
It was under the Countess Wachtmeister's notice that there
occurred the last of
Madame Blavatsky's "miraculous" restorations to
health. She had suffered for
years from a dropsical or renal affection, which in those
latter days had
progressed to such an alarming stage that her highly
competent physicians at one
crisis were convinced that she could not survive a certain
night. The great work
she was writing was far from completed; the Countess was
heart-broken to think
that, after all, that heroic career was to be cut off just
before the
consummation of its labors for humanity; and she spent the
night in grief and
despair. Arising in the morning she found Madame at her
desk, busy as before at
her task. She had been revivified and restored during the
night, and would not
say how.
The Countess records the occasion of an intercession of the
Masters in her own
affairs, on behalf of their messenger. At her home in Sweden,
while she was
packing her trunks in preparation for a journey to some
relatives in Italy, she
clairaudiently heard a voice, which told her to place in her
trunk a certain
note-book of her containing notes on the Bohemian Tarot and
the Kabala. It was
not a printed volume but a collection of quotations from the
above works in her
own hand. Surprised, and not knowing the possible
significance of the order, she
nevertheless complied. Before reaching Italy she suddenly
changed her plans, and
postponed the trip to Italy and visited Madame Blavatsky in
Belgium instead.
Upon arriving and shortly after greeting her beloved friend,
she was startled to
hear Madame say to her that her Master had informed her that
her guest was
bringing her a book dealing with the Tarot and the Kabala,
of which she was to
make use in the writing of The Secret Doctrine.
This must end, but does not by any means complete, the
chronicle of "the
Blavatsky phenomena." The list, long as it has become,
is but a fragment of the
whole. Without the narration of these phenomena an adequate
impression of the
personality and the legend back of them could not be given.
Moreover they belong
in any study of Theosophy, and their significance in
relation to the principles
of the cult is perhaps far other than casual or incidental.
If her own display
of such powers was made as a demonstration of what man is
destined to become
capable of achieving in his interior evolution, these things
are to be regarded
as an integral part of her message. They became, apparently
in spite of herself,
a part of her program and furnished a considerable impetus
toward its
advancement. Theosophy itself re-publishes the theory of
man's inherent theurgic
capacity. It can hardly be taken as an anomaly or as an
irrelevant circumstance,
then, that its founder should have been regarded as
exemplifying the possession
of that capacity in her own person..50
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CHAPTER IV
FROM SPIRITUALISM TO THEOSOPHY
Nothing seems more certain than that Madame Blavatsky had no
definite idea of
what the finished product was to be when she gave the
initial impulse to the
movement. She knew the general direction in which it would
have to move and also
many objectives which it would have to seek. In her mind
there had been
assembled a body of material of a unique sort. She had spent
many years of her
novitiate in moving from continent to continent1 in search
of data having to do
with a widespread tradition as to the existence of a hidden
knowledge and secret
cultivation of man's higher psychic and spiritual
capabilities. Supposedly the
wielder of unusual abilities in this line, she was driven by
the very character
of her endowment to seek for the deeper science which
pertained to the evolution
of such gifts, and at the same time a philosophy of life in
general which would
explain their hidden significance. To establish, first, the
reality of such
phenomena, and then to construct a system that would furnish
the possibility of
understanding this mystifying segment of experience, was
unquestionably the main
drive of her mental interests in early middle life. Already
well equipped to be
the exponent of the higher psychological and theurgic
science, she aimed to
become its philosophic expounder.
But the philosophy Madame Blavatsky was to give forth could
not be oriented with
the science of the universe as then generally conceived. To
make her message
intelligible she was forced to reconstruct the whole picture
of the cosmos. She
had to frame a universe in which her doctrine would be seen
to have relevance
and into whose total order it would fall with perfect
articulation. She felt
sure that she had in her possession an array of vital facts,
but she could not
at once discern the total implication of those facts for the
cosmos which
explained them, and which in turn they tended to explain. We
may feel certain
that her ideas grow more systematic from stage to stage,
whether indeed they
were the product of her own unaided intellect, or whether
she but transcribed
the knowledge and wisdom of more learned living men, the
Mahatmas, as the
Theosophic legend has it.
Guided by the character of the situation in which she found
herself, and also,
it seems, by the advice of her Master, she chose to ride
into her new venture
upon the crest of the Spiritualist waves. America was chosen
to be the hatching
center of Theosophy because it was at the time the heart and
center of the
Spiritualist movement. It was felt that Theosophy would
elicit a quick response
from persons already imbued with spiritistic ideas. It
cannot be disputed that
Madame Blavatsky and Col. Olcott worked with the
Spiritualists for a brief
period and launched the Society from within the ranks of the
cult. As a matter
of fact it was the work of this pair of Theosophists that
gave Spiritualism a
fresh impetus in this country after a period of waning
interest about 1874. Col.
Olcott's letters in the Daily Graphic about the Eddy
phenomena, and his book,.51
People From the Other World, did much to revive popular
discussion, and his
colleague's show of new manifestations was giving
encouragement to
Spiritualists. But the Russian noblewoman suddenly
disappointed the expectations
thus engendered by assigning a different interpretation and
much lower value to
the phenomena. Before this she and Col. Olcott not only lent
moral support to a
leading Spiritualist journal, The Spiritual Scientist, of
Boston, edited by Mr.
E. Gerry Brown, but contributed its leading editorials and
even advanced it
funds.
The motive behind their participation in a movement which
they so soon abandoned
has been misconstrued.
Spiritualists, and the public generally, assumed that of
course their activity
indicated that they subscribed to the usual tenets of the
sect; that they
accepted the phenomena for what they purported to be, i.e.,
actual
communications in all cases from the spirits of former human
beings. However
true this estimate may have been as appertaining to Col.
Olcott-and even to him
it had a fast diminishing applicability after his meeting
with H.P.B.-it was
certainly not true of her. Madame Blavatsky shortly became
the mark of
Spiritualistic attack for the falsification of her original
attitude toward the
movement and her presumed betrayal of the cause.
Her ill-timed attempt to launch her Sociιtι Spirite at Cairo
in 1871
foreshadowed her true spirit and motive in this activity. It
is evident to the
student of her life that she felt a contempt for the banal
type of sιance
phenomena. She so expressed herself in writing from Cairo at
the time. She felt
that while these things were real and largely genuine, they
were insignificant
in the view that took in a larger field of psychic power.
But the higher
phenomena of that more important science were known to few,
whereas she was
constantly encountering interest in the other type. If she
was to introduce a
nobler psychism to the world, she seemed driven to resort to
the method of
picking up people who were absorbed in the lower modes of
the spiritual science
and leading them on into the higher. She would gather a
nucleus of the best
Spiritualists and go forward with them to the higher
Spiritualism. To win their
confidence in herself, it was necessary for her to start at
their level, to make
a gesture of friendliness toward their work and a show of
interest in it.
Her own words may bring light to the situation:
"As it is I have only done my duty; first, toward
Spiritualism, that I have
defended as well as I could from the attacks of imposture
under the too
transparent mask of science; then towards two helpless
slandered mediums [the
Holmeses]. . . . But I am obliged to confess that I really
do not believe in
having done any good-to Spiritualism itself. . . . It is
with a profound sadness
in my heart that I acknowledge this fact, for I begin to
think there is no help
for it. For over fifteen years have I fought my battle for
the blessed truth;
have traveled and preached it-though I never was born for a
lecturer-from the
snow-covered tops of the Caucasian Mountains, as well as
from the sandy valleys
of the Nile. I have proved the truth of it practically and
by persuasion. For
the sake of Spiritualism2 I have left my home, an easy life
amongst a civilized
society, and have become a wanderer upon the face of the
earth. I had already
seen my hopes realized, beyond my most sanguine
expectations, when my unlucky
star brought me to America. Knowing this country to be the
cradle of modern
Spiritualism, I came over here from France with feelings not
unlike those of a
Mohammedan approaching the birthplace of his
Prophet."3.52
After her death Col. Olcott found among her papers a
memorandum in her hand
entitled "Important Note." In it she wrote:
"Yes, I am sorry to say that I had to identify myself,
during that shameful
exposure of the Holmes mediums, with the Spiritualists. I
had to save the
situation, for I was sent from Paris to America on purpose
to prove the
phenomena and their reality, and show the fallacy of the
spiritualistic theory
of spirits. But how could I do it best? I did not want
people at large to know
that I could produce the same thing at will. I had received
orders to the
contrary, and yet I had to keep alive the reality, the
genuineness and the
possibility of such phenomena in the hearts of those who
from Materialists had
turned Spiritualists, but now, owing to the exposure of
several mediums, fell
back again and returned to their scepticism. . . . Did I do
wrong? The world is
not prepared yet to understand the philosophy of Occult
Science; let them first
assure themselves that there are beings in an invisible
world, whether 'spirits'
of the dead or elementals; and that there are hidden powers
in man which are
capable of making a god of him on earth."
"When I am dead and gone people will, perhaps,
appreciate my disinterested
motives. I have pledged my word to help people on to Truth
while living and I
will keep my word. Let them abuse and revile me; let some
call me a medium and a
Spiritualist, others an impostor. The day will come when
posterity will learn to
know me better."4
As long as it was a question of the actuality of the
phenomena, she was alert in
defence of Spiritualism. In the Daily Graphic of November.
13, 1874, she printed
one of her very first newspaper contributions in America,
replying to an attack
of a Dr. George M. Beard, an electropathic physician of New
York, on the
validity of the Eddy phenomena. She went so far in this
article as to wager five
hundred dollars that he could not make good his boast that
he could imitate the
form-apparitions "with three dollars' worth of
drapery." She refers to herself
as a Spiritualist. In her first letter to Co. Olcott after
leaving Vermont she
wrote as follows:
"I speak to you as a true friend to yourself and as a
Spiritualist anxious to
save Spiritualism from a danger."5
A little later she even mentioned to her friend that the
outburst of mediumistic
phenomena had been caused by the Brotherhood of Adepts as an
evolutionary
agency. She could, of course, not believe the whole trend
maleficent if it was
in the slightest degree engineered by her trusted
Confederates. She added later,
however, that the Master soon realized the impracticability
of using the
Spiritualistic movement as a channel for the dissemination
of the deeper occult
science and instructed her to cease her advocacy of it.
Along with her reply and challenge to Beard in the Graphic
there was printed an
outline of her biography from notes furnished by herself. In
it she says:
"In 1858 I returned to Paris and made the acquaintance
of Daniel Home, the
Spiritualist. . . . Home converted me to Spiritualism. . . .
After this I went
to Russia. I converted my father to Spiritualism."
Elsewhere she speaks of Spiritualism as "our
belief" and "our cause." In an
article in the Spiritual Scientist of March eighth she uses
the phrases "the
divine truth of our faith (Spiritualism) and the teachings
of our invisible
guardians (the spirits of the circles).".53
Madame Blavatsky's apparently double-faced attitude toward
Spiritualism is
reflected in the posture of most Theosophists toward the
same subject today.
When Spiritualism, as a demonstration of the possibility and
actuality of
spiritistic phenomena, is attacked by materialists or
unbelievers, they at once
bristle in its defense; when it is a question of the
reliability and value of
the messages, or the dignity and wholesomeness of the sιance
procedure, they
respond negatively.
It is the opinion of some Theosophic leaders, like Sinnett
and Olcott, that
Madame Blavatsky made a mistake in affiliating herself
actively with
Spiritualism, inasmuch as the early group of Spiritualistic
members of her
Theosophic Society, as soon as they were apprised of her
true attitude, fell
away, and the incipient movement was beset with much
ill-feeling.
The controversy between the two schools is important, since
Madame Blavatsky's
dissent from Spiritualistic theory gave rise to her first
attempts to formulate
Theosophy. To justify her defection from the movement she
was led to enunciate
at least some of the major postulates and principles of her
higher science.
Theosophy was born in this labor. It is necessary,
therefore, to go into the
issues involved in the perennial controversy.
To Spiritualists the phenomena which purported to be
communications from the
still-living spirits of former human beings with those on
the earth plane, were
assumed to be genuinely what they seemed. As such they were
believed to be far
the most significant data in man's religious life, as
furnishing a practically
irrefutable demonstration of the truth of the soul's
immortality. They were
regarded as the central fact in any attempt to formulate an
adequate religious
philosophy. Spiritualists therefore elevated this assumption
to the place of
supreme importance and made everything else secondary.
Not so Madame Blavatsky. To her the Spiritistic phenomena
were but a meagre part
of a larger whole. Furthermore-and this was her chief point
of divergence,--she
vigorously protested their being what Spiritualists asserted
them to be. They
were not at all genuine messages from genuine spirits of
earth people-or were
not so in the vast majority of cases. And besides, they were
not any more
"divine" or "spiritual" than ordinary
human utterances, and were even in large
part impish and elfin, when not downright demoniacal. They
were mostly, she
said, the mere "shells" or wraiths of the dead,
animated not by their former
souls but by sprightly roving nature-spirits or elementals,
if nothing worse,--
such, for instance, as the lowest and most besotted type of
human spirit that
was held close to earth by fiendish sensuality or hate.
There were plenty of
these, she affirmed, in the lower astral plane watching for
opportunities to
vampirize negative human beings. The souls of average
well-meaning or of saintly
people are not within human reach in the sιance. They have
gone on into realms
of higher purity, more etherealized being, and can not
easily descend into the
heavy atmosphere of the near-earth plane to give messages
about that investment
or that journey westward or that health condition that needs
attention. At best
it is only on rare and exceptional occasions that the real
intelligence of a
disembodied mortal comes "through." There are many
types of living entities in
various realms of nature, other than human souls. Certain of
these rove the
astral plane and take pleasure in playing upon gullible
people who sit gravely
in the dark. Most of the occurrences at circles are so much
astral plane
rubbish; and, besides, sιance-mongering is dangerous to all
concerned and
eventually ruinous to the medium. If the mediums, she
bantered, were really in
the hands of benevolent "guides" and
"controls," why do not the latter shield
their protιgιs from the wrecked health and insanity so
frequent among them? She.54
affirmed that she had never seen a medium who had not
developed scrofula or a
phthisical affection.6
Inevitably the Spiritualists were stunned by their one-time
champion's sudden
and amazed reversal of her position. A campaign of abuse and
condemnation began
in their ranks, echoes of which are still heard at times.
What Madame Blavatsky aimed to do was to teach that the
phenomena of true
Spiritualism bore not the faintest resemblance to those of
table-tipping. True
Spiritualism should envisage the phenomena of the divine
spirit of man in their
higher manifestations, the cultivation of which by the
ancients and the East has
given man his most sacred science and most vital knowledge.
She wrote in a
letter to her sister about 1875 that one of the purposes of
her new Society was
"to show certain fallacies of the Spiritualist. If we
are anything we are
Spiritualists, only not in the modern American fashion, but
in that of the
ancient Alexandria with its Theodidaktoi, Hypatias and
Porphyries."7 In one of
the letters of Mahatma K.H. to A. P. Sinnett the Master
writes:
"It was H.P.B. who, acting under the orders of Atrya
(one whom you do not know)
was the first to explain in the 'Spiritualist' the
difference between psyche and
nous, nefesh and ruach-Soul and Spirit. She had to bring the
whole arsenal of
proofs with her quotations from Paul to Plato, from Plutarch
and James before
the Spiritualists admitted that the Theosophists were
right."8
In 1879 she wrote in the magazine which she had just founded
in India:
"We can never know how much of the mediumistic
phenomena we must attribute to
the disembodied until it is settled how much can be done by
the embodied human
soul, and to blind but active powers at work within those
regions which are yet
unexplored by science."9
In other words Spiritualism should be a culture of the
spirits of the living,
not a commerce with the souls of the dead. To live the life
of the immortal
spirit while here in the body is true Spiritualism. We can
readily see that with
such a purpose in mind she would not be long in discerning
that the
Spiritualistic enterprise could not be used to promulgate
the type of spiritual
philosophy that she had learned in the East.
When this conclusion had fully ripened in her mind, she
began the undisguised
formulation of her own independent teaching. Her new
philosophy was in effect
tantamount to an attack on Spiritualism, and that from a
quarter from which
Spiritualism was not prepared to repulse an assault. It came
not from the old
arch-enemy, materialistic scepticism, but from a source
which admitted the
authenticity of the phenomena.
Her first aim was to set forth the misconceptions under
which the Spiritualists
labored. She says:
"We believe that few of those physical phenomena which
are genuine are caused by
disembodied human spirits."10
Again she "ventures the prediction that unless
Spiritualists set about the study
of ancient philosophy so as to learn to discriminate between
spirits and to
guard themselves against the baser sort, twenty-five years
will not elapse
before they will have to fly to the Romish communion to
escape these 'guides'
and 'controls' that they have fondled so long. The signs of
this catastrophe
already exhibit themselves."11.55
Again she declares that
"it is not mediums, real, true and genuine mediums,
that we would ever blame,
but their patrons, the Spiritualists."12
In Isis Unveiled she rebukes Spiritualists for claiming that
the Bible is full
of phenomena just like those of modern mediums. She asserts
that there were
Spiritualistic phenomena in the Bible, but not
mediumistic,--a distinction of
great import to her. She declares that the ancients could
tell the difference
between mediums who harbored good spirits and those haunted
by evil ones, and
branded the latter type unclean, while reverencing the
former. She positively
asserts that "pure spirits will not and cannot show
themselves objectively;
those that do are not pure spirits, but elementary and
impure. Woe to the medium
that falls a prey to such!"13
Col. Olcott quotes her as writing:
"Spiritualism in the hands of an Adept becomes Magic,
for he is learned in the
art of blending together the laws of the universe without
breaking any of them.
. . . In the hands of an inexperienced medium Spiritualism
becomes unconscious
sorcery, for . . . he opens, unknown to himself, a door of
communication between
the two worlds through which emerges the blind forces of
nature lurking in the
Astral Light, as well as good and bad spirits."14
In The Key to Theosophy15 written near the end of her life,
she states what may
be assumed to be the official Theosophic attitude on the
subject:
"We assert that the spirits of the dead cannot return
to earth-save in rare and
exceptional cases-nor do they communicate with men except by
entirely subjective
means. That which does appear objectively is often the
phantom of the ex-physical
man. But in psychic and, so to say, 'spiritual' Spiritualism
we do
believe most decidedly."16
One of her most vigorous expressions upon this issue occurs
toward the end of
Isis.
According to Olcott the Hon. A. Aksakoff, eminent Russian
Professor, states that
"Prince A. Dolgorouki, the great authority on
mesmerism, has written me that he
has ascertained that spirits which play the most prominent
part at sιances are
elementaries,--gnomes, etc. His clairvoyants have seen them
and describe them
thus."
"The totally insufficient theory of the constant agency
of disembodied human
spirits in the production of Spiritualistic phenomena has
been the bane of the
Cause. A thousand mortifying rebuffs have failed to open
their reason or
intuition to the truth. Ignoring the teachings of the past,
they have discovered
no substitute. We offer them philosophical deduction instead
of unverifiable
hypothesis, scientific analysis and demonstration instead of
indiscriminating
faith. Occult philosophy gives them the means of meeting the
reasonable
requirements of science, and frees them from the humiliating
necessity to accept
the oracular teachings of 'intelligences' which, as a rule,
have less
intelligence than a child at school. So based and so
strengthened, modern
phenomena would be in a position to command the attention
and enforce the
respect of those who carry with them public opinion. Without
invoking such help
Spiritualism must continue to vegetate, equally repulsed-not
without cause-both.56
by science and theologians. In its modern aspect it is
neither science, a
religion nor a philosophy."17
In 1876, the writing of Isis was committing her to a stand
which made further
compromise with Spiritualism impossible. Her statement
reveals what she would
ostensibly have labored to do for that movement had it shown
itself more plastic
in her hands. She would have striven to buttress the
phenomena with a more
historical interpretation and a more respectable rationale.
In this context, however, the following passage from Isis is
a bit difficult to
understand. It seems to make a gesture of conciliation
toward the Spiritualistic
hypothesis after all. She says:
"We are far from believing that all the spirits that
communicate at circles are
of the classes called 'Elemental' and 'Elementary.'
Many-especially among those
who control the medium subjectively to speak, write and
otherwise act in various
ways-are human disembodied spirits. Whether the majority of
such spirits are
good or bad, largely depends on the private morality of the
medium, much on the
circle present, and a good deal on the intensity and object
of their purpose. .
. . But in any case, human spirits can never materialize
themselves in propria
persona."18
If this seems a recession from her consistent position
elsewhere assumed, it
must be remembered that she never, before or after, denied
the possibility of
the occasional descent of genuinely human spirits "in
rare and exceptional
cases."
Before 1875 she wrote to her sister that there was a law
that sporadically,
though periodically, the souls of the dead invade the realms
of the living in an
epidemic, and the intensity of the epidemic depends on the
welcome they receive.
She called it "the law of forced post-mortem
assimilation." She elsewhere
clarified this idea by the statement that our spirits here
and now, being of
kindred nature with the totality of spirit energy about us,
unconsciously draw
certain vibrations or currents from the life of the
supermundane entities,
whether we know it or not. Through this wireless circuit we
sometimes drink in
emanations, radiations, thought effluvia, so to speak, from
the disembodied
lives. The veil, she affirmed, between the two worlds is so
thin that
unsuspected messages are constantly passing across the
divide, which is not
spatial but only a discrepancy in receiving sets. And both
she and the Master
K.H. stated that during normal sleep we are en rapport with
our loved ones as
much as our hearts could desire. The reason we do not
ordinarily know it is that
the rate and wave length of that celestial communication can
not be registered
on the clumsy apparatus of our brains. It takes place
through our astral or
spiritual brains and can not arouse the coarser physical
brain to synchronous
vibration.
Her critique of the Spiritualistic thesis in general would
be that something
like ninety per cent of all ordinary "spirit"
messages contain nothing to which
the quality of spirituality, as we understand that term in
its best
significance, can in any measure be ascribed.
In rebuttal, Spiritualists point to many previsions,
admonitory dreams, verified
prophecies and other messages of great beauty and lofty
spirituality, some of
them leading to genuine reform of character, and they
advance the claim, that
genuine transference of intelligence from the spirit realms
to earth is vastly
more general than that fraction of experience which could be
subsumed under her
"rare and exceptional cases of
"spirituality.".57
In one of the last works issued by Mr. Sinnett19 he deplores
the unfortunate
clash that has come between the two cults, points out that
it is foolish and
unfounded, and reminds both parties of the broad bases of
agreement which are
found in the two systems. He feels that there can be no
insurmountable points of
antagonism, inasmuch as Spiritualism, too, he asserts, is
under the watch and
ward of a member of the Great White Brotherhood, the Master
known as Hilarion;
and that it would be illogical to assume that members of
that same spiritual
Fraternity could foster movements among mankind that work at
cross purposes with
each other. But Mr. Sinnett does not give any authority for
his statement as to
Hilarion's regency over Spiritualism, and many Theosophists
are inclined to
doubt it. He feels that there is every good reason why
Spiritualism should go
forward with Theosophy in such a unity of purpose as would
render their combined
influence the most potent force in the world today against
the menace of
materialism. Whenever Spiritualists display an interest in
the formulation of
some scheme of life or cosmology in which their phenomena
may find a meaningful
allocation, they can hardly go in any other direction than
straight into
Theosophy. This is shown by their Articles of Faith, in
which the idea of Karma,
the divine nature of man, his spiritual constitution and
other conceptions
equally theosophic have found a place.
Perhaps Theosophists and Spiritualists alike may discern the
bases of harmony
between their opposing faiths in a singular passage from The
Mahatma Letters, an
utterance of the Master K.H.
"It is this [sweet blissful dream of devachanic Maya]
during such a condition of
complete Maya that the Souls or actual Egos of pure loving
sensitivities,
laboring under the same illusion, think their loved ones
come down to them on
earth, while it is their own Spirits that are raised towards
those in the
Devachan. Many of the subjective spiritual
communications-most of them when the
sensitives are pure-minded-are real; but it is most
difficult for the
uninitiated medium to fix in his mind the true and correct
pictures of what he
sees and hears. Some of the phenomena called psychography
(though more rarely)
are also real. The spirit of the sensitive getting idylized,
so to say, by the
aura of the Spirit in the Devachan, becomes for a few
minutes that departed
personality, and writes in the handwriting of the latter, in
his language and in
his thoughts, as they were during his life-time. The two
spirits become blended
in one; and, the preponderance of one over the other during
such phenomena
determines the preponderance of personality in the
characteristics exhibited in
such writings and 'trance-speaking.' What you call 'rapport'
is in plain fact an
identity of molecular vibration between the astral part of
the incarnate medium
and the astral part of the discarnate personality . . .
there is rapport between
medium and 'control' when their astral molecules move in
accord. And the
question whether the communication shall reflect more of the
one personal
idiosyncrasy or the other, is determined by the relative
intensity of the two
sets of vibrations in the compound wave of Akasha. The less
identical the
vibratory impulses the more mediumistic and less spiritual
will be the message.
So then measure your medium's moral state by that of the
alleged 'controlling'
Intelligence, and your tests of genuineness leave nothing to
be desired."20
This plank in the Theosophic platform not having been laid
down in 1875 to
bridge the chasm between the two movements, Madame Blavatsky
drew away from her
Spiritualistic associates, and it became but a matter of
time until some
propitious circumstance should give to her divergent
tendency a body and a name.
The break with Spiritualism and the launching of the
Theosophical Society were
practically contemporary. The actual formation of the new
organization does not.58
on the surface appear to have been a deliberate act of
Madame Blavatsky. While
it would never have been organized without her presence and
her influence, still
she was not the prime mover in the steps which brought it
into being. She seems
merely to have gone along while others led. However her
Society grew out of the
stimulus that had gone forth from her.
It was Col. Henry Steele Olcott who assumed the rτle of
outward leader in the
young movement. He gave over (eventually) a lucrative
profession as a
corporation lawyer, an agricultural expert, and an official
of the government,
to expend all his energies in this enterprise. He had
acquired the title of
colonel during the Civil War in the Union army's manoeuvres
in North Carolina.
At the close of the war he had been chosen by the government
to conduct some
investigations into conditions relative to army contracts in
the Quartermaster's
Department and had discharged his duties with great
efficiency, receiving the
approbation of higher officials. He was regarded as an
authority on agriculture
and lectured before representative bodies on that subject.
He had established a
successful practice as a corporation counsel, numbering the
Metropolitan Life
Insurance Company among his clients. In addition to these
activities he had done
much reportorial work for the press, notably in connection
with his
Spiritualistic researches. His authorship of several works
on the phenomena has
already been mentioned. His career had achieved for him a
record of high
intelligence, great ability, and a character of probity and
integrity.
It is the belief of Theosophists that he was expressly
chosen by the Mahatmas to
share with Madame Blavatsky the honor and the labor of
spreading her message in
the world. A passage from the Mahatma Letters puts this in
clear light. The
Master K.H. there says:
"So, casting about, we found in America the man to
stand as leader-a man of
great moral courage, unselfish, and having other good
qualities. He was far from
being the best, but-he was the best one available. . . . We
sent her to America,
brought them together-and the trial began. From the first
both she and he were
given to understand that the issue lay entirely with
themselves."
In spite of difficulties, caused by the clash of
temperaments and policies, this
odd, "divinely-constituted" partnership held
firmly together until the end.
Their relationship was one of a loyal camaraderie, both
being actuated by an
uncommon devotion to the same cause.
As early as May, 1875, the Colonel had suggested the
formation of a "Miracle
Club," to continue spiritistic investigation. His
proposal was made in the
interest of psychic research. It was not taken up. But
Madame Blavatsky's
sprightly evening chatter and her reported magical feats
continued to draw
groups of intelligent people to her rooms. Among those thus
attracted was Mr.
George H. Felt, who had made some careful studies in phases
of Egyptology. He
was asked to lecture on these subjects and on the 7th of
September, 1875, a
score of people had gathered in H.P.B.'s parlors to hear his
address on "The
Lost Canon of Proportion of the Egyptians." Dr. Seth
Pancoast, a most erudite
Kabbalist was present, and after the lecture he led the
discussion to the
subject of the occult powers of the ancient magicians. Mr.
Felt said he had
proven those powers and had with them evoked elemental
creatures and "hundreds
of shadowy forms." As the tense debate proceeded,
acting on an impulse, Col.
Olcott wrote on a scrap of paper, which he passed over to
Madame Blavatsky
through the hands of Mr. W. Q. Judge, the following:
"Would it not be a good
thing to form a Society for this kind of study?" She
read it and indicated
assent..59
Col. Olcott arose and "after briefly sketching the
present condition of the
Spiritualistic movement; the attitude of its antagonists,
the Materialists; the
irrepressible conflict between science and the religious
sectaries; the
philosophical character of the ancient theosophies and their
sufficiency to
reconcile all existing antagonisms; . . . he proposed to
form a nucleus around
which might gather all the enlightened and brave souls who
are willing to work
together for the collection and diffusion of knowledge. His
plan was to organize
a Society of Occultists and begin at once to collect a
library; and to diffuse
information concerning those secret laws of Nature which
were so familiar to the
Chaldeans and Egyptians, but are totally unknown to our
modern world of
science."21
It was a plain proposal to organize for occult research, for
the extension of
human knowledge of the esoteric sciences, and for a study of
the psychic
possibilities in man's nature. No religious or ethical or
even philosophical
interest can be detected in the first aims. The Brotherhood
plank was a later
development, and the philosophy was an outgrowth of the
necessity of
rationalizing the scientific data brought to light. The very
nature of the
movement committed it, of course, to an anti-materialistic
view. Col. Olcott was
still predominantly concerned to get demonstrative psychic
displays. He was made
Chairman, and Mr. Judge, Secretary.
It is interesting to note the personnel of this first
gathering of Theosophists.
"The company included several persons of great learning
and some of wide
personal influence. The Managing Editors of two religious
papers; the co-editors
of two literary magazines; an Oxford LL.D.; a venerable
Jewish scholar and
traveler of repute; an editorial writer of one of the New
York morning dailies;
the President of the New York Society of Spiritualists; Mr.
C. C. Massey an
English barrister at law; Mrs. Emma Hardinge Britten and Dr.
Britten; two New
York lawyers besides Col. Olcott; a partner in a
Philadelphia publishing house;
a well-known physician; and . . . Madame Blavatsky
herself."22
At a late hour the meeting adjourned until the following
evening, when
organization could be more fully effected. Those who were
present at the Sept.
8th meeting, and who thus became the actual formers (Col.
Olcott insists on the
word instead of Founders, reserving that title to Madame
Blavatsky and himself)
of the Theosophical Society, were: Col. Olcott, H. P.
Blavatsky, Chas. Sotheran,
Dr. Chas. E. Simmons, H. D. Monachesi, C. C. Massey, of
London, W. L. Alden, G.
H. Felt, D. E. deLara, Dr. W. Britten, Mrs. E. H. Britten,
Henry J. Newton, John
Storer Cobb, J. Hyslop. W. Q. Judge, H. M. Stevens. A By-Law
Committee was
named, other routine business attended to, a general
discussion held and
adjournment taken to Sept. 13th. Mr. Felt gave another
lecture on Sept. 18th,
after which several additional members were nominated, the
name, "The
Theosophical Society," proposed, and a committee on
rooms chosen. Several
October meetings were held in furtherance of the Society;
and on the 17th of
November, 1875, the movement reached the final stage of
constitutional
organization. Its President was Col. Henry Olcott;
Vice-Presidents, Dr. Seth
Pancoast and G. H. Felt; Corresponding Secretary, Madame H.
P. Blavatsky;
Recording Secretary, John S. Cobb; Treasurer, Henry J.
Newton; Librarian, Chas.
Sotheran; Councillors, Rev. H. Wiggin, R. P. Westbrook, LL.
D., Mrs. E. H.
Britten, C. E. Simmons, and Herbert D. Monachesi; Counsel to
the Society, W. Q.
Judge. Mr. John W. Lovell, the New York publisher, has the
distinction of having
paid the first five dollars (initiation fee) into the
treasury, and is at the
present writing the only surviving member of the founding
group. At the November
17th meeting the President delivered his inaugural address.
It was an
amplification of his remarks made at the meeting of Sept.
7th, with some.60
prognostications of what the work of the Society was
destined to mean in the
changing conceptions of modern thought.
The infant Society did not at once proceed to grow and
expand. The chief reason
for this was that Mr. Felt, whose theories had been the
immediate object of
strongest interest, and who was expected to be the leader
and teacher in their
quest of the secrets of ancient magic, for some
unaccountable reason failed them
utterly. His promised lectures were never scheduled, his
demonstrations of
spirit-evocation never shown. This disappointment weighed
heavily upon some of
the members. Mrs. Britten, Mr. Newton, and the other
Spiritualists in the group,
finding that Madame Blavatsky was not disposed to
investigate mediums in the
conventional fashion, or in any way to make the Society an
adjunct of the
Spiritualistic movement, suffered another disappointment and
became inactive or
openly withdrew. Mr. Judge and Col. Olcott were busy with
their professional
labors, and Madame Blavatsky had plunged into the writing of
Isis Unveiled. The
Society fell into the state of "innocuous
desuetude," and was domiciled solely
in the hearts of three persons, Olcott, Judge, and Madame
Blavatsky. However
dead it might be to all outward appearance, it still lived
in the deep
convictions of this trio. True, an occasional new recruit
was admitted, two
names in particular being worthy of remark. On April 5th,
1878, Col. Olcott
received the signed application for membership from a young
inventor, one Thomas
Alva Edison, and near the same time General Abner W.
Doubleday, veteran Major-General
in the Union Army, united with the Society. Edison had been attracted
by
the objects of the Society, largely because of certain
experiences he had had in
connection with the genesis of some of his ideas for
inventions. They had seemed
to come to him from an inner intelligence independent of his
voluntary thought
control. Also he had experimented to determine the
possibility of moving
physical objects by exertion of the will. He was doubtless
in close sympathy
with the purposes of the Society, but the main currents of
his mechanical
interests drew him away from active coφperation with it. As
for Major-General
Doubleday, Theosophy gave articulate voice to theories as to
life, death, and
human destiny which he had long cherished without a formal
label. He stated that
it was the Theosophic idea of Karma which had maintained his
courage throughout
the ordeals of the Civil War and he testified that his
understanding of this
doctrine nerved him to pass with entire fearlessness through
those crises in
which he was exposed to fire.23 When Theosophy was brought
to his notice he cast
in his lot with the movement and was a devoted student and
worker while he
lived. When the two Founders left America at the end of 1878
for India, Col.
Olcott constituted General Doubleday the President of the
American body.24
Concerning Mr. W. Q. Judge, there is only to be said that he
was a young
barrister at the time, practicing in New York and making his
home in Brooklyn,
where until about 1928 a brother, John Judge, survived him.
He was a man of
upright character and had always manifested a quick interest
in such matters as
Theosophy brought to his attention. It is reported among
Theosophists that
Madame Blavatsky immediately saw in him a pupil upon whose
entire sympathy with
her own deeper aims and understanding of her esoteric
situation she could rely
implicitly. He is believed always to have stood closer to
her in a spiritual
sense than Col. Olcott; in fact it is hinted that there was
a secret
understanding between them as to the inner motivations
behind the Society. Later
developments in the history of the movement seem to give
weight to this theory.
Mr. Judge and General Doubleday were the captains of the
frail Theosophic craft
in America during something like four years, from 1878 to
1882, following the
sailing of the two Founders for India. If little activity
was displayed by the
Society during this period, it was not in any measure the
fault of those left in
charge. They were not lacking in zeal for the cause. It is
to be attributed.61
chiefly to a state of suspended animation in which it was
left by the departure
of the official heads. This condition itself was brought
about by the long
protracted delay in carrying out a measure which in 1878
Col. Olcott had
designed to adopt for the future expansion of the Society.
Madame Blavatsky's
work in Isis had disclosed the fact that there was an almost
complete sympathy
of aims in certain respects between the new Society and the
Masonic Fraternity;
that the latter had been the recipient and custodian down
the ages of much of
the ancient esoteric tradition which it was the purpose of
Theosophy to revive.
The idea of converting the Theosophical Society into a
Masonic body with ritual
and degrees had been under contemplation for some time, and
overtures toward
that end had been made to persons in the Masonic order. In
fact the plan had
been so favorably regarded that on his departure Col. Olcott
left Mr. Judge and
General Doubleday under instructions to hold all other
activities in abeyance
until he should prepare a form of ritual that would properly
express the
Society's spiritual motif and aims. It happened, however,
that on reaching India
both his and his colleague's time was so occupied with other
work and other
interests that for three years they never could give
attention to the matter of
the ritual. By that time they found the Society beginning to
grow so rapidly
without the support they had intended for it in the union
with an old and
respected secret order, that the project was abandoned. But it
was this
tentative plan that was responsible for the apparent
lifelessness of the
American organization during those years. A number of times
the two American
leaders telegraphed Olcott in India to hasten the ritual and
hinted that its
non-appearance forced them to keep the Society here embalmed
in an aggravated
condition of status quo. When the scheme was definitely
abandoned,
straightforward Theosophic propaganda was initiated and a
period of healthy
expansion began.
It is of interest in this connection to note that on March
8, 1876, on Madame
Blavatsky's own motion, it was "resolved, that the
Society adopt one or more
signs of recognition, to be used among the Fellows of the
Society or for
admissions to the meetings." This might indicate her
steady allegiance to the
principle of esotericism. The practice fell into disuse
after a time. Yet it was
this idea of secrecy always lurking in the background of her
mind that
eventually led to the formation of a graded hierarchy in the
Theosophical
Society when the Esoteric School was formally organized.
Another development that Col. Olcott says "I should
prefer to omit altogether if
I could" from the early history of the Society was the
affiliation of the
organization with a movement then being inaugurated in India
toward the
resuscitation of pure Vedic religion. This proceeded further
than the
contemplated union with Masonry, and it led to the necessity
of a more succinct
pronouncement of their creed by Col. Olcott and Madame
Blavatsky.
Naturally Madame Blavatsky's accounts of the existence of
the great secret
Brotherhood of Adepts in North India and her glorification
of "Aryavarta" as the
home of the purest occult knowledge, had served to engender
a sort of nostalgia
in the hearts of the two Founders for "Mother
India." It seemed quite plausible
that, once the aims of the Theosophical Society were
broadcast in Hindustan, its
friendly attitude toward the ancient religions of that
country would act as an
open sesame to a quick response on the part of thousands of native
Hindus. It
was not illogical to believe that the young Theosophical
Society would advance
shortly to a position of great influence among the
Orientals, whose psychology,
ideals, and religious conceptions it had undertaken to
exalt, particularly in
the eyes of the Western nations. India thus came to be
looked upon as the land
of promise, and the "return home," as Madame
Blavatsky termed it, became more
and more a consummation devoutly to be wished. With Isis
completed and published.62
the call to India rang ever louder, and finally in November,
1878, came the
Master's orders to make ready. It was not until the 18th of
December that the
ship bearing the two pilgrims passed out of the Narrows.
There had seemed to be no way opened for them to make an
effective start in
India, no appropriate channel of introduction to their work
there, until 1878.
Then Col. Olcott chanced to learn of a movement recently
launched in India,
whose aims and ideals, he was given to believe, were
identical with those of his
own Society. It was the Arya Samaj, founded by one Swami
Dhyanand, who was
reputed to be a member of the same occult Brotherhood as
that to which their own
Masters, K.H. and M., belonged. This latter allegation was
enough to win the
immediate interest of the two devotees in its mission, and
through
intermediaries Col. Olcott was put in touch with the Swami,
to whom he made
overtures to join forces. The Arya Samaj was represented to
the Colonel as
world-wide in its eclecticism, devoted to a revival of the
ancient purity of
Vedantism and pledged to a conception of God as an eternal
impersonal principle
which, under whatever name, all people alike worshipped. An
official linking of
the two bodies was formally made in May, 1878, and the title
of the Theosophical
Society was amended to "The Theosophical Society of the
Arya Samaj." But before
long the Colonel received a translation of the rules and
doctrines of the Arya
Samaj, which gave him a great shock. Swami Dhyanand's views
had either radically
changed or had originally been misrepresented. His cult was
found to be
drastically sectarian-merely a new sect of Hinduism-and
quite narrow in certain
lines. Even then the Colonel endeavored to bridge the gap,
drawing up a new
definition of the aims of his Society in such an open
fashion that the way was
left clear for any Theosophists to associate with the Samaj
if they should so
desire. It was not until several years after the arrival in
India that final
disruption of all connection between the two Societies was
made, the Founders
having received what Col. Olcott calls "much evil
treatment" from the learned
Swami.
When the first discovery of the real character of the Arya
Samaj was made in
1878, it was deemed necessary to issue a circular defining
the Theosophical
Society in more explicit terms than had yet been done.
Olcott does not quote
from this circular of his own, but gives the language of the
circular issued by
the British Theosophical Society, then just organized, as
embodying the
essentials of his own statement. This enables us to discern
how far the
originally vague Theosophical ideals had come on their way
to explicit
enunciation.
1. The British Theosophical Society is founded for the
purpose of discovering
the nature and powers of the human soul and spirit by
investigation and
experiment.
2. The object of the Society is to increase the amount of
human health,
goodness, knowledge, wisdom, and happiness.
3. The Fellows pledge themselves to endeavor, to the best of
their powers, to
live a life of temperance, purity, and brotherly love. They
believe in a Great
First Intelligent Cause, and in the Divine Sonship of the
spirit of man, and
hence in the immortality of that spirit, and in the
universal brotherhood of the
human race.
4. The Society is in connection and sympathy with the Arya
Samaj of Aryavarta,
one object of which Society is to elevate, by a true
spiritual education,
mankind out of degenerate, idolatrous and impure forms of
worship wherever
prevalent.25.63
In his own circular, Olcott, with the concurrence of H.P.B.,
made the first
official statement of the threefold hierarchical
constitution of the
Theosophical Society. This grouping naturally arose out of
the basic facts in
the situation itself. There were, first, at the summit of
the movement, the
Brothers or Adepts; then there were persons, like H.P.B.,
Olcott himself and
Judge, with perhaps a few others, who were classified in the
category of
"chelas" or accepted pupils of the Masters; then
there were just plain members
of the Society, having no personal link as yet with the
great Teachers. A
knowledge of this graduation is essential to an
understanding of much in the
later history of the Society.
In the same circular the President said:
"The objects of the Society are various. It influences
its Fellows to acquire an
intimate knowledge of natural law, especially its occult
manifestations."
Then follow some sentences penned by Madame Blavatsky:
"As the highest development, physically and
spiritually, on earth of the
creative cause, man should aim to solve the mystery of his
being. He is the
procreator of his species, physically, and having inherited
the nature of the
unknown but palpable cause of his own creation, must possess
in his inner
psychical self this creative power in lesser degree. He
should, therefore, study
to develop his latent powers, and inform himself respecting
the laws of
magnetism, electricity and all other forms of force, whether
of the seen or
unseen universes."
The President proceeds:
"The Society teaches and expects its Fellows to
personally exemplify the highest
morality and religious aspirations; to oppose the
materialism of science and
every form of dogmatic theology . . .; to make known, among
Western nations, the
long-suppressed facts about Oriental religious philosophies,
their ethics,
chronology, esotericism, symbolism . . . ; to disseminate a
knowledge of the
sublime teachings of the pure esoteric system of the archaic
period which are
mirrored in the oldest Vedas and in the philosophy of
Gautauma Buddha,
Zoroaster, and Confucius; finally and chiefly, to aid in the
institution of a
Brotherhood of Humanity, wherein all good and pure men of
every race shall
recognize each other as the equal effects (upon this planet)
of one Uncreate,
Universal, Infinite and Everlasting Cause."26
He sums up the central ideas as being:
1. The study of occult science.
2. The formation of a nucleus of universal brotherhood.
3. The revival of Oriental literature and philosophy.
And these three became later substantially the permanent
platform of the
Society. In their final and present form they stand:
1. To form a nucleus of the Universal Brotherhood of
Humanity without
distinction of race, creed, sex, caste, or color.
2. To encourage the study of Comparative Religion,
Philosophy, and Science..64
3. To investigate the unexplained laws of nature and the
powers latent in man.
The inclusion of a moral program to accompany occult
research and comparative
religion was seen to be necessary. Madame Blavatsky's
disapprobation of
Spiritualism had as its prime motivation that movement's
lack of any moral bases
for psychic progress. Therefore the ethical implications
which she saw as
fundamental in any true occult system were embodied in the
Theosophic platform
in the Universal Brotherhood plank. Brotherhood, a somewhat
vague general term,
was made the only creedal or ethical requirement for
fellowship in the Society.
At that it is, as a moral obligation, a matter of the
individual's own
interpretation, and it is the Society's only link with the
ethical side of
religion. Not even the member's clear violation of accepted
or prevalent social
codes can disqualify him from good standing. The Society
refuses to be a judge
of what constitutes morality or its breach, leaving that
determination to the
member himself. At the same time through its literature it
declares that no
progress into genuine spirituality is possible "without
clean hands and a pure
heart." It adheres to the principle that morality
without freedom is not
morality. Thus the movement which began with an impulse to
investigate the
occult powers of ancient magicians, was moulded by
circumstances into a moral
discipline, which placed little store in magic feats..65
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CHAPTER V
ISIS UNVEILED
One morning in the summer of 1875 Madame Blavatsky showed
her colleague some
sheets of manuscript which she had written. She explained:
"I wrote this last
night 'by order,' but what the deuce it is to be I don't
know. Perhaps it is for
a newspaper article, perhaps for a book, perhaps for
nothing: anyhow I did as I
was ordered."
She put it away in a drawer and nothing more was said about
it for some months.
In September of that year she went to Syracuse on a visit to
Prof. and Mrs.
Hiram Corson, of Cornell University, and while there she
began to expand the few
original pages. She wrote back to Olcott in New York that
"she was writing about
things she had never studied and making quotations from
books she had never read
in all her life; that, to test her accuracy Prof. Corson had
compared her
quotations with classical works in the University Library
and had found her to
be right."1
She had never undertaken any extensive literary production
in her life and her
unfamiliarity with English at this time was a real handicap.
When she returned
to the city Olcott took two suites of rooms at 433 West 34th
Street, and there
she set to work to expound the rudiments of her great
science. From 1875 to 1877
she worked with unremitting energy, sitting from morning
until night at her
desk. In the evenings, after his day's professional labors,
Olcott came to her
help, aiding her with the English and with the systematic
arrangement of the
heterogeneous mass of material that poured forth. Later Dr.
Alexander Wilder,
the Neo-Platonic scholar, helped her with the spelling of
the hundreds of
classical philological terms she employed. But Madame
Blavatsky wrote the book,
Isis Unveiled.
After the first flush of its popularity it has been
forgotten, outside of
Theosophic circles. Even among Theosophists, or at any rate
in the largest
organic group of the Theosophical Society, the book is
hardly better known than
in the world at large. During the last twenty-five years
there has been a
tendency in the Society to read expositions of Madame
Blavatsky's ponderous
volumes rather than the original presentation; neophytes in
the organization
have been urged to pass up these books as being too
recondite and abstruse. It
has even been hinted that many things are better understood
now than when the
Founder wrote, and that certain crudities of dogma and
inadequacies of
presentation can be avoided by perusing the commentary
literature. As a result
of this policy the percentage of Theosophic students who
know exactly what
Madame Blavatsky wrote over fifty years ago is quite small.
Thousands of members
of the Theosophical Society have grown old in the cult's
activities and have
never read the volumes that launched the cult ideas..66
Isis must not, however, be regarded as a text-book on
Theosophy. The Secret
Doctrine, issued ten years later, has a better claim to that
title. Isis makes
no formulation, certainly not a systematic one, of the creed
of occultism. It is
far from being an elucidation or exegesis of the basic
principles of what is now
known as Theosophy. Isis makes no attempt to organize the
whole field of human
and divine knowledge, as does The Secret Doctrine. It merely
points to the
evidence for the existence of that knowledge, and only dimly
suggests the
outlines of the cosmic scheme in which it must be made to
fit. It is in a sense
a panoramic survey of the world literature out of which she
essayed in part to
draw the system of Theosophy. If Theosophy is to be found in
Isis, it is there
in seminal form, not in organic expression. Perhaps it were
better to say that
the book prepared the soil for the planting of Madame
Blavatsky's later
teaching. Her impelling thought was to reveal the traces, in
ancient and
medieval history and literature, of a secret science whose
principles had been
lost to view. She aimed to show that the most vital science
mankind had ever
controlled had sunk further below general recognition now
than in any former
times. She would relight the lamp of that archaic wisdom,
which would illuminate
the darkness of modern scientific pride.
Her work, then, was to make a restatement of the occult
doctrine with its
ancient attestations. This was a gigantic task. It meant
little short of a
thorough search in the entire field of ancient religion,
philosophy, and
science, with an eye to the discernment of the mystery
tradition, teachings, and
practices wherever manifested; and then the collation,
correlation, and
systematic presentation of this multifarious material in
something like a
structural unity. The many legends of mystic power, the
hundreds of myths and
fables, were to be traced to ancient rites, whose far-off
symbolism threw light
on their significance. It would be not merely an
encyclopedia of the whole
mythical life of the race, but a digest and codification, so
to speak, of the
entire mass into a system breathing intelligible meaning and
common sense. Her
task, in a word, was to redeem the whole ancient world from
the modern stigma of
superstition, crude ignorance, and childish imagination.
In view of the immensity of her undertaking we are forced to
wonder whence came
the self-assurance that led her to believe she could
successfully achieve it.
She was sadly deficient in formal education; her
opportunities for scholarship
and research had been limited; her command of the English
language was
imperfect. Yet her actual accomplishment pointed to her
possession of capital
and resources the existence of which has furnished the
ground for much of the
mystery now enshrouding her life. There seems to be an
obvious discrepancy
between her qualifications and her product, to account for
which diverse
theories have been adduced.
Just how, when and where Madame Blavatsky gained her
acquaintance with
practically the entire field of ancient religions,
philosophies, and science, is
a query which probably can never be satisfactorily answered.
The history of many
portions of her life before 1873 is unrecorded. We do not
know when or where she
studied ancient literature. Books from which she quoted were
not within her
reach when she wrote Isis. Can her knowledge be attributed
to a phenomenal
memory? Olcott does say:
"She constantly drew upon a memory stored with a wealth
of recollections of
personal perils and adventures and of knowledge of occult
science, not merely
unparalleled, but not even approached by any other person who
had ever appeared
in America, so far as I have heard."2.67
Throughout the two volumes of Isis there are frequent
allusions to or actual
passages from ancient writings, a list of which includes the
following: The
Codex Nazareus; the Zohar, the great Kabbalistic work of the
Jews; Chaldean3
Oracles; Chaldean Book of Numbers; Psellus' Works;
Zoroastrian Oracles; Magical
and Philosophical Precepts of Zoroaster; Egyptian Book of
the Dead; Books of
Hermes; Quichι Cosmogony; Book of Jasher; Kabala of the
Tanaim; Sepher Jezira;
Book of Wisdom of Schlomah (Solomon); Secret Treatise on
Mukta and Badha; The
Stangyour of the Tibetans; Desatir (pseudo-Persian4); Orphic
Hymns; Sepher
Toldos Jeshu (Hebrew MSS. of great antiquity); Laws of Manu;
Book of Keys
(Hermetic Work); Gospel of Nicodemus; The Shepherd of
Hermas; (Spurious) Gospel
of the Infancy; Gospel of St. Thomas; Book of Enoch; The
History of Baarlam and
Josaphat; Book of Evocations(of the Pagodas); Golden Verses
of Pythagoras;
various Kabbalas; Tarot of the Bohemians.
In the realm of more widely-known literature, she uses
material from Plato and
to a minor extent, Aristotle; quotes the early Greek
philosophers, Thales,
Heraclitus, Parmenides, Empedocles, Democritus; is conversant
with the Neo-Platonist
representatives, Ammonius Saccas, Plotinus, Porphyry,
Iamblichus and
Proclus; shows familiarity with Plutarch, Philo, Apollonius
of Tyana, the
Gnostics, Basilides, Bardesanes, Marcion, and Valentinus.
She had examined the
Church Fathers, from Augustine to Justin Martyr, and was
especially familiar
with Irenaeus, Tertullian and Eusebius, whom she charged
with having wrecked the
true ancient wisdom. Beside this array she draws on the
enormous Vedic,
Brahmanic, Vedantic, and Buddhistic literatures; likewise
the Chinese, Persian,
Babylonian, "Chaldean," Syrian, and Egyptian. Nor
does she neglect the ancient
American contributions, such as the Popul Vuh. Her
acquaintance also with the
vast literature of occult magic and philosophy of the Middle
Ages seems hardly
less inclusive. She levies upon Averroλs, Maimonides,
Paracelsus, Van Helmont,
Robert Fludd, Eugenius Philalethes, Cornelius Agrippa von
Nettesheim, Roger
Bacon, Bruno, Pletho, Mirandolo, Henry More and many a
lesser-known expounder of
mysticism and magic art. She quotes incessantly from scores
of compendious
modern works.
Because of this show of prodigious learning some students
later alleged that
Isis was not the work of Madame Blavatsky, but of Dr.
Alexander Wilder; others
declared that Col. Olcott had written it.5
There are three main sources of testimony bearing on the
composition of the
books: (1) Statements of her immediate associates and
co-workers in the writing;
(2) Her own version; (3) The evidence of critics who have
traced the sources of
her materials.
First, there is the testimony of her colleague, Olcott, who
for two years
collaborated almost daily with her in the work. He says:
"Whence, then, did H.P.B. draw the materials which
comprise Isis and which
cannot be traced to accessible literary sources of
quotation? From the Astral
Light, and by her soul-senses, from her Teachers-the
'Brothers,' 'Adepts,'
'Sages,' 'Masters,' as they have been variously called. How
do I know it? By
working two years with her on Isis and many more years on
other literary work."6
He goes on:
"To watch her at work was a rare and
never-to-be-forgotten experience. We sat at
opposite sides of one big table usually, and I could see her
every movement. Her
pen would be flying over the page; when she would suddenly
stop, look out into
space with the vacant eye of the clairvoyant seer, shorten
her vision as though.68
to look at something held invisibly in the air before her,
and begin copying on
the paper what she saw. The quotation finished, her eyes
would resume their
natural expression, and she would go on writing until again
stopped by a similar
interruption."7
Still more remarkable is the following:
"Most perfect of all were the manuscripts which were
written for her while she
was sleeping. The beginning of the
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CHAPTER on the civilization of ancient Egypt
(Vol. I.,
------CARDIFF THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY IN
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CHAPTER XIV) is an illustration. We had stopped work the evening
before at about 2 A.M. as usual, both too tired to stop for
our usual smoke and
chat before parting; she almost fell asleep in her chair,
while I was bidding
her goodnight; so I hurried off to my bed room. The next
morning, when I came
down after my breakfast, she showed me a pile of at least
thirty or forty pages
of beautifully written H.P.B. manuscript, which, she said,
she had had written
for her by-------, a Master . . . It was perfect in every
respect and went to
the printers without revision."8
It is the theory of Olcott that the mind of H.P.B. was
receptive to the
impressions of three or four intelligent entities-other
persons living or dead-who
overshadowed her mentally, and wrote through her brain.
These personages
seemed to cast their sentences upon an imperceptible screen
in her mind. They
sometimes talked to Olcott as themselves, not as Madame
Blavatsky. Their
intermittent tenancy of her mind he takes as accounting for
the higgledy-piggledy
manner in which the book was constructed. Each had his
favorite themes
and the Colonel learned what kind of material to expect when
one gave place to
another. There was in particular, in addition to several of
the Oriental
"Sages," a collaborator in the person of an old
Platonist-"the pure soul of one
of the wisest philosophers of modern times, one who was an
ornament to our race,
a glory to his country." He was so engrossed in his
favorite earthly pursuits of
philosophy that he projected his mind into the work of
Madame Blavatsky and gave
her abundant aid.
"He did not materialize and sit with us, nor obsess
H.P.B. medium-fashion, he
would simply talk with her-psychically, by the hour
together, dictating copy,
telling her what references to hunt up; answering my
questions about details,
instructing me as to principles; and, in fact, playing the
part of a third
person in our literary symposium. He gave me his portrait
once-a rough sketch in
colored crayons on flimsy paper . . . from first to last his
relation to us both
was that of a mild, kind, extremely learned teacher and
elder friend."9
The medieval occultist Paracelsus manifested his presence
for a brief time one
evening.10 At another time Madame produced two volumes
necessary to verify
questions which Olcott doubted.
"I went and found the two volumes wanted, which, to my
knowledge, had not been
in the house until that very moment. I compared the texts
with H.P.B.'s
quotation, showed her that I was right in my suspicions as
to the error, made
the proof correction, and then . . . returned the two
volumes to the place on
the ιtagθre from which I had taken them. I resumed my seat
and work, and when,
after while, I looked again in that direction, the books had
disappeared."11
As Olcott states, when one or another of these unseen
monitors was in evidence,
the work went on in fine fashion. But, he notes, when Madame
was left entirely
to her own devices, she floundered in more or less helpless
ineptitude. She
would write haltingly, scratch it over, make a fresh start,
work herself into a
fret and get nowhere..69
Olcott's testimony, as that of Dr. Wilder, Mr. Judge, Dr.
Corson, the Countess
Wachtmeister, the two Keightleys, Mr. Fawcett and all the
others who at one time
or another were in a position to observe Madame Blavatsky at
work, must be
accepted as sincere. But if anybody could be supposed to
know unmistakably what
was happening in her mind, that person would be the subject
herself. What has
she to say? She states decisively that she was not the
author, only the writer
of her books. In one of her home letters she says, speaking
of Isis:
"since neither ideas nor teachings are mine."
In another letter to Madame Jelihowsky she writes:
"Well, Vera, whether you believe me or not, something
miraculous is happening to
me. You cannot imagine in what a charmed world of pictures
and vision I live. I
am writing Isis; not writing, rather copying out and drawing
that which She
personally shows to me. Upon my word, sometimes it seems to
me that the ancient
goddess of Beauty in person leads me through all the
countries of past centuries
which I have to describe. I sit with my eyes open and to all
appearances see and
hear everything real and actual around me, and yet at the
same time I see and
hear that which I write. I feel short of breath; I am afraid
to make the
slightest movement for fear the spell might be broken.
Slowly century after
century, image after image, float out of the distance and
pass before me as if
in a magic panorama; and meanwhile I put them together in my
mind, fitting in
epochs and dates, and know for sure that there can be no
mistake. Races and
nations, countries and cities, which have long disappeared
in the darkness of
the prehistoric past, emerge and then vanish, giving place
to others; and then I
am told the consecutive dates. Hoary antiquity makes way for
historical periods;
myths are explained to me with events and people who have
really existed, and
every event which is at all remarkable, every newly-turned
page of this many-colored
book of life, impresses itself on my brain with photographic
exactitude.
My own reckonings and calculations appear to me later on as
separate colored
pieces of different shapes in the game which is called
casse-tκte (puzzles). I
gather them together and try to match them one after the other,
and at the end
there always comes out a geometrical whole. . . . Most
assuredly it is not I who
do it all, but my Ego, the highest principle that lives in
me. And even this
with the help of my Guru and teacher who helps me in
everything. If I happen to
forget something I have just to address him, and another of
the same kind in my
thought as what I have forgotten rises once more before my
eyes-sometimes whole
tables of numbers passing before me, long inventories of
events. They remember
everything. They know everything. Without them, from whence
could I gather my
knowledge? 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."12
In another letter to the same sister Helena assures her
relative about her
mental condition:
"Do not be afraid that I am off my head; all I can say
is that someone
positively inspires me. . . . More than this; someone enters
me. It is not I who
talk and write; it is something within me; my higher and
luminous Self; that
thinks and writes for me. Do not ask me, my friend, what I
experience, because I
could not explain it to you clearly. I do not know myself!
The one thing I know
is that now, when I am about to reach old age, I have become
a sort of
storehouse of somebody else's knowledge. . . . Someone comes
and envelops me as
a misty cloud and all at once pushes me out of myself, and
then I am not 'I' any
more-Helena P. Blavatsky-but somebody else. Someone strong
and powerful, born in.70
a totally different region of the world; and as to myself it
is almost as if I
were asleep, or lying by not quite conscious-not in my own
body, but close by,
held only by a thread which ties me to it. However at times
I see and hear
everything quite clearly; I am perfectly conscious of what
my body is saying and
doing-or at least its new possessor. I can understand and
remember it all so
well that afterwards I can repeat it, and even write down
his words. . . . At
such a time I see awe and fear on the faces of Olcott and
others, and follow
with interest the way in which he half-pityingly regards
them out of my own
eyes, and teaches them with my physical tongue. Yet not with
my mind, but his
own, which enwraps my brain like a cloud. . . . Ah, but I
really cannot explain
everything!"13
Again writing to her relatives, she states:
"When I wrote Isis 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, zoφlogy, 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 someone
who knows all dictates to me. My Master and occasionally
others whom I knew on
my travels years ago. . . . 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."14
To her aunt she wrote:
"At such times it is no more I 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 was all this
knowledge?"
Whatever the actual authorship of the two volumes may have
been, their
publication stirred such wide-spread interest that the first
editions were swept
up at once, and Bouton, the publisher, was taken off guard,
there being some
delay before succeeding editions of the bulky tomes could be
issued.
Professional reviewers were not so generous; but the press
critics were frankly
intrigued into something like praise.15
Years after the publication of Isis, Mr. Emmette Coleman, a
former Theosophist
and contributor to current magazines, stated that he spent
three years upon a
critical and exhaustive examination of the sources used by
Madame Blavatsky in
her various works. He attempted to discredit the whole
Theosophic movement by
casting doubt upon the genuineness of her knowledge. He
accused her of outright
plagiarism and went to great pains to collect and present
his evidence. In 1893
he published his data. We quote the following passage from
his statement:
"In Isis Unveiled, published in 1877, I discovered some
2,000 passages copied
from other books without proper credit. By careful analysis
I found that in
compiling Isis about 100 books were used. About 1,400 books
are quoted from and
referred to in this work; but, from the 100 books which its
author possessed,
she copied everything in Isis taken from and relating to the
other 1,300. There
are in Isis about 2,100 quotations from and references to
books that were
copied, at second-hand, from books other than the originals;
and of this number
only about 140 are credited to the books from which Madame
Blavatsky copied them
at second-hand. The others are quoted in such a manner as to
lead the reader to.71
think that Madame Blavatsky had read and utilized the
original works, and had
quoted from them at first-hand,--the truth being that these
originals had
evidently never been read by Madame Blavatsky. By this means
many readers of
Isis . . . have been misled into thinking Madame Blavatsky
an enormous reader,
possessed of vast erudition; while the fact is her reading
was very limited, and
her ignorance was profound in all branches of
knowledge."16
Coleman went on to assert that "not a line of the
quotations" made by H.P.B.
ostensibly from the Kabala, from the old-time mystics at the
time of Paracelsus,
from the classical authors, Homer, Livy, Ovid, Virgil,
Pliny, and others, from
the Church Fathers, from the Neo-Platonists, was taken from
the originals, but
all from second-hand usage. He charged her with having
picked all these passages
out of modern books scattered throughout which she found the
material from a
wide range of ancient authorship. The reader of Isis will
readily find her many
references to modern authors. Coleman mentioned a half dozen
standard works that
she used; it is well worth while glancing at a fuller list.
She had read, or was
more or less familiar with: King's Gnostics; Jennings'
Rosicrucians; Dunlop's
Sod, and Spirit History of Man; Moor's Hindu Pantheon;
Ennemoser's History of
Magic; Howitt's History of the Supernatural; Salverte's
Philosophy of Magic;
Barrett's Magus; Col. H. Yule's The Book of Ser Marco Polo;
Inman's Pagan and
Modern Christian Symbolism and Ancient Faiths and Modern;
the anonymous The
Unseen Universe and Supernatural Religion; Bunsen's Egypt's
Place in Universal
History; Lundy's Monumental Christianity; Horst's
Zauber-Bibliothek; Cardinal
Wiseman's Lectures on Science and Religion; Draper's The
Conflict of Science
with Religion; Dupuis' Origin of All the Cults; Bailly's
Ancient and Modern
Astronomy; Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire;
Des Mousseaux's Roman
Catholic writings on Magic, Mesmerism, Spiritualism; Eliphas
Levi's works;
Jacolliot's twenty-seven volumes on Oriental systems; Max
Mόller's, Huxley's,
Tyndall's, and Spencer's works.
It is hardly to be doubted that Madame Blavatsky culled many
of her ancient gems
from these works, and she probably felt that it was a matter
of minor importance
how she came by them. What she was bent on saying was that
the ancients had said
these things and that they were confirmatory of her general
theses. Yet
Coleman's findings must not be disregarded. His work brought
into clearer light
the meagreness of her resources and her lack of scholarly
preparation for so
pretentious a study.
We have adduced the several hypotheses that have been
advanced to account for
the writing of Isis Unveiled. It must be left for the reader
to arrive at what
conclusion he can on the basis of the material presented. We
pass on to an
examination of the contents.
A hint as to the aim of the work, is given in the sub-title:
A Master-key to the
Mysteries of Ancient and Modern Science and Theology. She
says:
"The work now submitted to the public judgment is the
fruit of a somewhat
intimate acquaintance with Eastern Adepts and study of their
science. It is a
work on magico-spiritual philosophy and occult science. It
is an attempt to aid
the student to detect the vital principles which underlie
the philosophical
systems of old."17
She affirms it to be her aim "to show that the
pretended authorities of the West
must go to the Brahmans and Lamaists of the far Orient and
respectfully ask them
to impart the alphabet of true science."18.72
Isis, then, is a glorification of the ancient Orientals.
Their knowledge was so
profound that we are incredulous when told about it. If we
have "harnessed the
forces of Nature to do our work," they had subjugated
the world to their will.
They knew things we have not yet dreamed of. She states:
"It is rather a brief summary of the religions,
philosophies and universal
traditions in the spirit of those secret doctrines of which
none,--thanks to
prejudice and bigotry-have reached Christendom in so
unmutilated a form as to
secure it a fair judgment. Since the days of the unlucky
Mediaeval philosophers,
the last to write upon these secret doctrines of which they
were the
depositaries, few men have dared to brave persecution and
prejudice by placing
their knowledge on record. And these few have never, as a
rule, written for the
public, but only for those of their own and succeeding times
who possessed the
key to their jargon. The multitude, not understanding them
or their doctrines,
have been accustomed to regard them en masse as either
charlatans or dreamers.
Hence the unmerited contempt into which the study of the
noblest of sciences-that
of the spiritual man-has gradually fallen."19
She plans to restore this lost and fairest of the sciences.
Materialism is
menacing man's higher spiritual unfoldment.
"To prevent the crushing of these spiritual
aspirations, the blighting of these
hopes, and the deadening of that intuition which teaches us
of a God and a
hereafter, we must show our false theologies in their naked
deformity and
distinguish between divine religion and human dogmas. Our
voice is raised for
spiritual freedom and our plea made for the enfranchisement
from all tyranny,
whether of Science or Theology."20
She here sets forth her attitude toward orthodox religionism
as well as toward
materialistic science. She intimates that since the days of
the true esoteric
wisdom, mankind has been thrown back and forth between the
systems of an
unenlightening theology and an equally erroneous science,
both stultifying in
their influence on spiritual aspiration, both blighting the
delicate culture of
beauty and joyousness.
"It was while most anxious to solve these perplexing
problems [Who, where, what
is God? What is the spirit in man?] that we came into
contact with certain men,
endowed with such mysterious powers and such profound
knowledge that we may
truly designate them as the Sages of the Orient. To their
instruction we lent a
ready ear. They showed us that by combining science with
religion, the existence
of God and the immortality of man's spirit may be
demonstrated like a problem of
Euclid."
She adds:
"Such knowledge is priceless; and it has been hidden
only from those who
overlooked it, derided it or denied its existence."21
The soul within escapes their view, and the Divine Mother
has no message for
them. To become conversant with the powers of the soul we
must develop the
higher faculties of intuition and spiritual vision.22
She says that there were colleges in the days of old for the
teaching of
prophecy and occultism in general. Samuel and Elisha were
heads of such
academies, she affirms. The study of magic or wisdom
included every branch of
science, the metaphysical as well as the physical,
psychology and physiology, in
their common and occult phases; and the study of alchemy was
universal, for it.73
was both a physical and a spiritual science. The ancients
studied nature under
its double aspect and the claim is that they discovered
secrets which the modern
physicist, who studies but the dead forms of things, can not
unlock. There are
regions of nature which will never yield their mysteries to
the scientist armed
only with mechanical apparatus. The ancients studied the
outer forms of nature,
but in relation to the inner life. Hence they saw more than
we and were better
able to read meaning in what they saw. They regarded
everything in nature as the
materialization of spirit. Thus they were able to find an
adequate ground for
the harmonization of science and religion. They saw spirit
begetting force, and
force matter; spirit and matter were but the two aspects of
the one essence.
Matter is nothing other than the crystallization of spirit
on the outer
periphery of its emanative range. The ancients worshipped,
not nature, but the
power behind nature.
Madame Blavatsky contrasts this fulness of the ancient
wisdom with the
barrenness of modern knowledge. She characterizes the
eighteenth century as a
"barren period," during which "the malignant
fever of scepticism" has spread
through the thought of the age and transmitted
"unbelief as an hereditary
disease on the nineteenth." She challenges science to
explain some of the
commonest phenomena of nature; why, for instance, the moon
affects insane
people, why the crises of certain diseases correspond to
lunar changes, why
certain flowers alternately open and close their petals as
clouds flit across
the face of the moon. She says that science has not yet
learned to look outside
this ball of dirt for hidden influences which are affecting
us day by day. The
ancients, she declares, postulated reciprocal relations
between the planetary
bodies as perfect as those between the organs of the body
and the corpuscles of
the blood. There is not a plant or mineral which has
disclosed the last of its
properties to the scientist. She declares that theurgical
magic is the last
expression of occult psychological science; and denies the
"Academicians" "the
right of expressing their opinion on a subject which they
have never
investigated." "Their incompetence to determine
the value of magic and
Spiritualism is as demonstrable as that of the Fiji Islander
to evaluate the
labors of Faraday or Agassiz." There was no missing
link in the ancient
knowledge, no hiatus to be filled "with volumes of
materialistic speculation
made necessary by the absurd attempt to solve an equation
with but one set of
quantities." She runs on:
"Our 'ignorant' ancestors traced the law of evolution
throughout the whole
universe. As by gradual progression from the star-cloudlet
to the development of
the physical body of man, the rule holds good, so from the
universal ether to
the incarnate human spirit, they traced one uninterrupted
series of entities.
These evolutions were from the world of spirit into the
world of gross matter;
and through that back again to the source of all things. The
'descent of
species' was to them a descent from the spirit, primal
source of all, to the
'degradation of matter.' In this complete chain of
unfoldings the elementary,
spiritual beings had as distinct a place, midway between the
extremes, as
Darwin's missing link between the ape and man."23
Modern knowledge posits only evolution; the old science held
that evolution was
neither conceivable nor understandable without a previous
involution.
The existence of myriads of orders of beings not human in a
realm of nature to
which our senses do not normally give us access, and of
which science knows
nothing at all, is posited in her arcane systems. She
catches at Milton's lines
to bolster this theory:
"Millions of spiritual creatures walk this earth,.74
Unseen both when we sleep and when we wake."
She says that if the spiritual faculties of the soul are
sharpened by intense
enthusiasm and purified from earthly desire, man may learn
to see some of these
denizens of the illimitable air.
The physical world was fashioned on the model of divine
ideas, which, like the
unseen lines of force radiated by the magnet, to throw the
iron-filings into
determinate shape, give form and nature to the physical
manifestation. If man's
essential nature partakes of this universal life, then it,
too, must partake of
all the attributes of the demiurgic power. As the Creator,
breaking up the
chaotic mass of dead inactive matter, shaped it into form,
so man, if he knew
his powers, could to a degree do the same.
To redeem the ancient world from modern scorn Madame
Blavatsky had to vindicate
magic-with all its incubus of disrepute and ridicule-and
lift its practitioners
to a lofty place in the ranks of true science. She had to
demonstrate that
genuine magic was a veritable fact, an undeniable part of
the history of man;
and not only true, but the highest evidence of man's kinship
with nature, the
topmost manifestation of his power, the royal science among
all sciences! To her
view the dearth of magic in modern philosophies was at once
the cause and the
effect of their barrenness. If they are to be vitalized
again, magic must be
revived. "That magic is indeed possible is the moral of
this book."24
And along with magic she had to champion its aboriginal
bed-fellows, astrology,
alchemy, healing, mesmerism, trance subjection, and the
whole brood of "pseudo-science."
"It is an insult to human nature to brand magic and the
occult sciences with the
name of imposture. To believe that for so many thousands of
years one half of
mankind practiced deception and fraud on the other half is
equivalent to saying
that the human race is composed only of knaves and incurable
idiots. Where is
the country in which magic was not practiced? At what age
was it wholly
forgotten?"25
She explains magic as based on a reciprocal sympathy between
celestial and
terrestrial natures. It is based on the mysterious
affinities existing between
organic and inorganic bodies, between the visible and the
invisible powers of
the universe. "That which science calls gravitation the
ancient and the medieval
hermeticists called magnetism, attraction, affinity."
She continues:
"A thorough familiarity with the occult faculties of
everything existing in
Nature, visible as well as invisible; their mutual
relations, attractions and
repulsions; the cause of these traced to the spiritual
principle which pervades
and animates all things; the ability to furnish the best
conditions for this
principle to manifest itself, in other words a profound and
exhaustive knowledge
of natural law-this was and is the basis of magic."26
Out of man's kinship with nature, his identity of
constitution with it, she
argues to his magical powers:
"As God creates, so man can create. Given a certain
intensity of will, and the
shapes created by the mind become subjective. Hallucinations
they are called,
although to their creator they are real as any visible
object is to any one
else. Given a more intense and intelligent concentration of
this will, and the
forms become concrete, visible, objective; the man has
learned the secret of
secrets; he is a Magician."27.75
She makes it clear that this power is built on the conscious
control of the
substrate of the material universe. She states that the key
to all magic is the
formula: "Every insignificant atom is moved by
spirit." Magic is thus
conditioned upon the postulation of an omnipresent vital
ether, electro-spiritual
in composition, to which man has an affinity by virtue of
his being
identical in essence with it. Over it he can learn to
exercise a voluntary
control by the exploitation of his own psycho-dynamic
faculties. If he can lay
his hand on the elemental substance of the universe, if he can
radiate from his
ganglionic batteries currents of force equivalent to gamma
rays, of course he
can step into the cosmic scene with something of a
magician's powers. That such
an ether exists she states in a hundred places. She calls it
the elementary
substance, the Astral Light, the Alkahest, the Akasha. It is
the universal
principle of all life, the vehicle or battery of cosmic
energy. She says Newton
knew of it and called it "the soul of the world,"
the "divine sensorium." It is
the Book of Life; the memory of God,--since it never gives
up an impression.
Human memory is but a looking into pictures on this ether.
Clairvoyants and
psychometers but draw upon its resources through synchronous
vibrations.
"According to the Kabalistic doctrine the future exits
in the astral light in
embryo as the present existed in embryo in the past . . .
and our memories are
but the glimpses that we catch of the reflections of this
past in the currents
of the astral light, as the psychometer catches them from
the astral emanations
of the object held by him."28
Madame Blavatsky goes so far as to link the control of these
properties with the
tiny pulsations of the magnetic currents emanating from our
brains, under the
impelling power of will. Thus she attempts to unite magic with
the most subtle
conceptions of our own advanced physics and chemistry. She
thus weds the most
arrant of superstitions with the most respected of sciences.
The magnetic nature of gravitation is set forth in more than
one passage. She
wrote:
"The ethereal spiritual fire, the soul and the spirit
of the all-pervading
mysterious ether; the despair and puzzle of the
materialists, who will some day
find out that that which causes the numberless forces to
manifest themselves in
eternal correlation is but a divine electricity, or rather
galvanism, and that
the sun is one of the myriad magnets disseminated through
space. . . . There is
no gravitation in the Newtonian sense, but only magnetic
attraction and
repulsion; and it is only by their magnetism that the planets
of the solar
system have their motions regulated in their respective
orbits by the still more
powerful magnetism of the sun; not by their weight or
gravitation. . . . The
passage of light through this (cosmic ether) must produce
enormous friction.
Friction generates electricity and it is this electricity
and its correlative
magnetism which forms those tremendous forces of nature. . .
. It is not at all
to the sun that we are indebted for light and heat; light is
a creation sui
generis, which springs into existence at the instant when
the deity willed." She
"laughs at the current theory of the incandescence of
the sun and its gaseous
substance. . . . The sun, planets, stars and nebulae are all
magnets. . . .
There is but One Magnet in the universe and from it proceeds
the magnetization
of everything existing."29
It is this same universal ether and its inherent magnetic
dynamism that sets the
field for astrology, as a cosmic science. Of this she says
that astrology is a
science as infallible as astronomy itself, provided its
interpreters are as
infallible as the mathematicians. She carries the law of the
instantaneous.76
interrelation of everything in the cosmos to such an extent
that, quoting
Eliphas Levi, "even so small a thing as the birth of
one child upon our
insignificant planet has its effect upon the universe, as
the whole universe has
its reflective influence upon him." The bodies of the
entire universe are bound
together by attractions which hold them in equilibrium, and
these magnetic
influences are the bases of astrology.
With so much cosmic power at his behest, man has done
wonders; and we are asked
to accept the truth of an amazing series of the most
phenomenal occurrences ever
seriously given forth. They range over so varied a field
that any attempt at
classification is impossible. Of physical phenomena she says
that the ancients
could make marble statues sweat, and even speak and leap!
They had gold lamps
which burned in tombs continuously for seven hundred to one
thousand years
without refueling! One hundred and seventy-three authorities
are said to have
testified to the existence of such lamps. Even
"Aladdin's magical lamp has also
certain claims to reality." There was an asbestos oil
whose properties, when it
was rubbed on the skin, made the body impervious to the
action of fire.
Witnesses are quoted as stating that they observed natives
in Africa who
permitted themselves to be fired at point blank with a
revolver, having first
precipitated around them an impervious layer of astral or
akashic substance.
Cardinal de Rohan's testimony is adduced to the effect that
he had seen
Cagliostro make gold and diamonds. The power of the evil eye
is enlarged upon
and instances recounted of persons hypnotizing,
"charming," or even killing
birds and animals with a look. She avers that she herself
had seen Eastern
Adepts turn water into blood. Observers are quoted who
reported a rope-climbing
feat in China and Batavia, in which the human climbers
disappeared overhead,
their members fell in portions on the ground, and shortly
thereafter reunited to
form the original living bodies! Stories are narrated of
fakirs disemboweling
and re-embowling themselves. She herself saw whirling
dancers at Petrovsk in
1865, who cut themselves in frenzy and evoked by the magical
powers of blood the
spirits of the dead, with whom they then danced. Twice she
was nearly bitten by
poisonous snakes, but was saved by a word of control from a
Shaman or conjurer.
The close affinity between man and nature is illustrated by
the statement that
in one case a tree died following the death of its human
twin. Speaking of
magical trees, she several times tells of the great tree
Kumboum, of Tibet, over
whose leaves and bark nature had imprinted ten thousand
spiritual maxims. The
magical significance of birthmarks is brought out, with
remarkable instances.
She dwells at length on the inability of medical men to tell
definitely whether
the human body is dead or not, and cites a dozen gruesome
tales of reawakening
in the grave. This takes her into vampirism, which she
establishes on the basis
of numerous cases taken mostly from Russian folklore. It is
stated that the
Hindu pantheon claimed 330,000,000 types of spirits. Moses
was familiar with
electricity; the Egyptians had a high order of music and
chess over five
thousand years ago; and anaesthesia was known to the
ancients. Perpetual motion,
the Elixer of Life, the Fountain of Youth and the
Philosopher's Stone are
declared to be real. She adduces in every case a formidable
show of testimony
other than her own. And back of it all is her persistent
assertion that purity
of life and thought is a requisite for high magical
performance.
"A man free from worldly incentives and sensuality may
cure in such a way the
most 'incurable' diseases, and his vision may become clear
and prophetic."30
"The magic power is never possessed by those addicted
to vicious indulgences."31
Phenomena come, she feels, rather easily; spiritual life is
harder won and
worthier..77
"With expectancy, supplemented by faith, one can cure
himself of almost any
morbific condition. The tomb of a saint; a holy relic; a
talisman; a bit of
paper or a garment that has been handled by a supposed
healer; a nostrum, a
penance; a ceremonial; a laying on of hands; or a few words
impressively
pronounced-will do. It is a question of temperament,
imagination, self-cure."32
"While phenomena of a physical nature may have their
value as a means of
arousing the interest of materialists, and confirming, if
not wholly, at least
inferentially, our belief in the survival of our souls, it
is questionable
whether, under their present aspect, the modern phenomena
are not doing more
harm than good."33
Theosophists themselves often quarrel with Isis because it
seems to overstress
bizarre phenomena. They should see that Volume I of the book
aims to show the
traces of magic in ancient science, in order to offset the
Spiritualist claims
to new discoveries, and to attract attention to the more
philosophic ideas
underlying classic magic. Volume II labors to reveal the
presence of a vast
occultism behind the religions and theologies of the world.
Again the contention
is that the ancient priests knew more than the modern
expositor, that they kept
more concealed than the present-day theologian has revealed.
Modern theology has
lost its savor of early truth and power, as modern
technology no longer
possesses the "lost arts." Paganism was to be
vindicated as against
ecclesiastical orthodoxies.
She believed that her instruction under the Lamas or Adepts
in Tibet had given
her this key, and that therefore the whole vast territory of
ancient religion
lay unfruitful for modern understanding until she should
come forward and put
the key to the lock. The "key" makes her in a
sense the exponent and depository
of "the essential veracities of all the religions and
philosophies that are or
ever were."
"Myth was the favorite and universal method of teaching
in archaic times."34
We can not be oblivious of the use made by Plato of myths in
his theoretical
constructions.
"Fairy tales do not exclusively belong to nurseries;
all mankind-except those
few who in all ages have comprehended their hidden meaning,
and tried to open
the eyes of the superstitious-have listened to such tales in
one shape or other,
and, after transforming them into sacred symbols, called the
product
Religion."35
"There are a few myths in any religious system but have
an historical as well as
a scientific foundation. Myths, as Pococke ably expresses
it, 'are now found to
be fables just in proportion as we misunderstand them;
truths, in proportion as
they were once understood.'"36
The esotericism of the teachings of Christ and the Buddha is
manifest to anyone
who can reason, she declares. Neither can be supposed to
have given out all that
a divine being would know.
"It is a poor compliment paid the Supreme, this forcing
upon him four gospels,
in which, contradictory as they often are, there is not a
single narrative,
sentence or peculiar expression, whose parallel may not be
found in some older
doctrine of philosophy. Surely the Almighty-were it but to
spare future
generations their present perplexity-might have brought down
with Him, at His
first and only incarnation on earth, something
original-something that would.78
trace a distinct line of demarcation between Himself and the
score or so of
incarnate Pagan gods, who had been born of virgins, had all
been saviors, and
were either killed or were otherwise sacrificed for
humanity."37
She says that not she but the Christian Fathers and their
successors in the
church have put their divine Son of God in the position of a
poor religious
plagiarist!
Ancient secret wisdom was seldom written down at all; it was
taught orally, and
imparted as a priceless tradition by one set of students to
their qualified
successors. Those receiving it regarded themselves as its
custodians and they
accepted their stewardship conscientiously.
To understand the reason for esotericism in science and
religion in earlier
times, Madame Blavatsky urges us to recall that freedom of
speech invited
persecution.
"The Rosicrucian, Hermetic and Theosophical Western
writers, producing their
books in epochs of religious ignorance and cruel bigotry,
wrote, so to say, with
the headman's axe suspended over their necks, or the
executioner's fagots laid
under their chairs, and hid their divine knowledge under
quaint symbols and
misleading metaphors."38
To give lesser people what they could not appropriate, to
stir complacent
conservatism with that threat of disturbing old established
habitudes which
higher knowledge always brings, was unsafe in a world still
actuated by codes of
arbitrary physical power. High knowledge had to be esoteric
until the progress
of general enlightenment brought the masses to a point where
the worst that
could happen to the originator of revolutionary ideas would
be the reputation of
an idiot, instead of the doom of a Bruno or a Joan. Madame
Blavatsky was willing
to be regarded as an idiot, but her Masters could not send
her forth until
autos-da-fι had gone out of vogue.
We have seen in an earlier
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CHAPTER that the Mystery Religions of the Eastern
Mediterranean world harbored an esotericism that presumably
influenced the
formulation of later systems, notably Judaism and
Christianity. In recent
decades more attention has been given to the claims of these
old secret
societies. St. Paul's affiliation with them is claimed by
Theosophists, and his
obvious indebtedness to them is acknowledged by some
students of early
Christianity. It is impossible for Madame Blavatsky to
understand the Church's
indifference to its origins, and she arrays startling
columns of evidence to
show that this neglect may be fatal. The Mystery Schools,
she proclaims, were
not shallow cults, but the guardians of a deep lore already
venerable.
"The Mysteries are as old as the world, and one well
versed in the esoteric
mythologies of various nations, can trace them back to the
days of the Ante-Vedic
period in India."39
She does not soften her animosity against those influences
and agencies that she
charges with culpability for smothering out the Gnosis. The
culprit in the case
is Christianity.
"For over fifteen centuries, thanks to the
blindly-brutal persecution of those
great vandals of early Christian history, Constantine and
Justinian, ancient
wisdom slowly degenerated until it gradually sank into the
deepest mire of
monkish superstition and ignorance. The Pythagorean
'knowledge of things that
are'; the profound erudition of the Gnostics; the world- and
time-honored.79
teachings of the great philosophers; all were rejected as
doctrines of
Antichrist and Paganism and committed to the flames. With
the last seven Wise
Men of the Orient, the remnant group of Neo-Platonists,
Hermias, Priscianus,
Diogenes, Eulalius, Damaskius, Simplicius and Isodorus, who
fled from the
fanatical persecutions of Justinian to Persia, the reign of
wisdom closed. The
books of Thoth . . . containing within their sacred pages
the spiritual and
physical history of the creation and progress of our world,
were left to mould
in oblivion and contempt for ages. They found no
interpreters in Christian
Europe; the Philalethians, or wise 'lovers of truth' were no
more; they were
replaced by the light-fleers, the tonsured and hooded monks
of Papal Rome, who
dread truth, in whatever shape and from whatever quarter it
appears, if it but
clashes in the least with their dogmas."40
She speaks of the
"Jesuitical and crafty spirit which prompted the
Christian Church of the late
third century to combat the expiring Neo-Platonic and
Eclectic Schools. The
Church was afraid of the Aristotelian dialectic and wished
to conceal the true
meaning of the word daemon, Rasit, asdt (emanations); for if
the truth of the
emanations were rightly understood, the whole structure of
the new religion
would have crumbled along with the Mysteries."41
This motive is stressed again when she says that the Fathers
had borrowed so
much from Paganism that they had to obliterate the traces of
their
appropriations or be recognized by all as merely
Neo-Platonists! She is keen to
point out the value of the riches thus thrown away or
blindly overlooked, and to
show how Christianity has been placed at the mercy of
hostile disrupting forces
because of its want of a true Gnosis. She avers that
atheists and materialists
now gnaw at the heart of Christianity because it is
helpless, lacking the
esoteric knowledge of the spiritual constitution of the
universe, to combat or
placate them. Gnosticism taught man that he could attain the
fulness of the
stature of his innate divinity; Christianity substituted a
weakling's reliance
upon a higher power. Had Christianity held onto the Gnosis
and Kabbalism, it
would not have had to graft itself onto Judaism and thus tie
itself down to many
of the developments of a merely tribal religion. Had it not
accepted the Jehovah
of Moses, she says, it would not have been forced to look
upon the Gnostic ideas
as heresies, and the world would now have had a religion
richly based on pure
Platonic philosophy and "surely something would then
have been gained." Rome
itself, Christianized, paid a heavy penalty for spurning the
wisdom of old:
"In burning the works of the theurgists; in proscribing
those who affected their
study; in affixing the stigma of demonolatry to magic in
general; Rome has left
her exoteric worship and Bible to be helplessly riddled by
every free-thinker,
her sexual emblems to be identified with coarseness, and her
priests to
unwittingly turn magicians and sorcerers in their exorcisms.
Thus retribution,
by the exquisite adjustment of divine law, is made to
overtake this scheme of
cruelty, injustice and bigotry, through her own suicidal
acts."42
Yet Christianity drew heavily from paganism. It erected
almost no novel
formulations. Christian canonical books are hardly more than
plagiarisms of
older literatures, she affirms, compiled, deleted, revised,
and twisted. She
believed that the first
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CHAPTERs of Genesis were based on the "Chaldean" Kabbala
and an old Brahmanical book of prophecies (really later than
Genesis). The
doctrine of the Trinity as purely Platonic, she says. It was
Irenaeus who
identified Jesus with the "mask of the Logos or Second
Person of the Trinity."
The doctrine of the Atonement came from the Gnostics. The
Eucharist was common
before Christ's time. Some Neo-Platonist, not John, is
alleged to have written.80
the Fourth Gospel. The Sermon on the Mount is an echo of the
essential
principles of monastic Buddhism.
Jesus is torn away from allegiance to the Jewish system and
stands neither as
its product nor its Messiah. Wresting him away from Judaism,
and likewise from
the emanational Trinity, both of which rτles were thrust
upon him gratuitously
by the Christian Fathers, she declares him to have been a
Nazarene, i.e., a
member of the mystic cult of Essenes of Nazars, which
perpetuated Oriental
systems of the Gnosis on the shores of the Jordan.
"One Nazarene sect is known to have existed some 150
years B.C. and to have
lived on the banks of the Jordan, and on the eastern shore
of the Dead Sea,
according to Pliny and Josephus. But in King's 'Gnostics' we
find quoted another
statement by Josephus from verse 13 which says that the
Essenes had been
established on the shores of the Dead Sea 'for thousands of
ages' before Pliny's
time."43
Jesus, one of this cult, had become adept in the occult
philosophies of Egypt
and Israel, and endeavored to make of the two a synthesis,
drawing at times on
more ancient knowledge from the old Hindu doctrines. He was
simply a devout
occultist and taught among the people what they could
receive of the esoteric
knowledge, reserving his deeper teachings for his fellows in
the Essene
monasteries. He had learned in the East and in Egypt the
high science of
theurgy, casting out of demons, and control of nature's
finer forces, and he
used these powers upon occasion. He posed as no Messiah or
Incarnation of the
Logos, but preached the message of the anointing (Christos)
of the human spirit
by its baptismal union with the higher principles of our
divine nature.44
In short, Madame Blavatsky leaves to Christianity little but
the very precarious
distinction of having "copied all its rites, dogmas and
ceremonies from
paganism" save two that can be claimed as original
inventions-the doctrine of
eternal damnation (with the fiction of the Devil) "and
the one custom, that of
the anathema."
"The Bible of the Christian Church is the latest
receptacle of this scheme of
disfigured allegories which have been erected into an
edifice of superstition,
such as never entered into the conceptions of those from
whom the Church
obtained her knowledge. The abstract fictions of antiquity,
which for ages had
filled the popular fancy with but flickering shadows and
uncertain images, have
in Christianity assumed the shapes of real personages and
become historical
facts. Allegory metamorphosed, becomes sacred history, and
Pagan myth is taught
to the people as a revealed narrative of God's intercourse
with His chosen
people."45
The final proposition which Isis labors to establish is that
the one source of
all the wisdom of the past is India. Pythagoreanism, she
says, is identical with
Buddhistic teachings. "The laws of Manu are the
doctrines of Plato, Philo,
Zoroaster, Pythagoras and the Kabala." She quotes
Jacolliot, the French writer:
"This philosophy, the traces of which we find among the
Magians, the Chaldeans,
the Egyptians, the Hebrew Kabalists, and the Christians, is
none other than that
of the Hindu Brahmans, the sectarians of the pitris, or the
spirits of the
invisible worlds which surround us."46
She, with the key in her hand, sees the solution of the
problem of comparative
religion as an easy one..81
"While we see the few translators of the Kabala, the
Nazarene Codex and other
abstruse works, hopelessly floundering amid the interminable
pantheon of names,
unable to agree as to a system in which to classify them,
for the one hypothesis
contradicts and overturns the other, we can but wonder at
all this trouble,
which could be so easily overcome. But even now, when the
translation and even
the perusal of the ancient Sanskrit has become so easy as a
point of comparison,
they would never think it possible that every
philosophy-whether Semitic,
Hamitic or Turanian, as they call it, has its key in the
Hindu sacred works.
Still, facts are there and facts are not easily
destroyed."47
"What has been contemptuously termed Paganism was
ancient Wisdom replete with
Deity. . . . Pre-Vedic Brahmanism and Buddhism are the
double source from which
all religions spring; Nirvana is the ocean to which all
tend."48
She says there are many parallelisms between references to
Buddha and to Christ.
Many points of identity also exist between
Lamaico-Buddhistic and Roman Catholic
ceremonies. The idea here hinted at is the underlying thesis
of the whole
Theosophic position. Successive members of the great
Oriental Brotherhood have
been incarnated at intervals in the history of mankind, each
giving out portions
of the one central doctrine, which therefore must have a
common base. The
puzzling identities found in the study ofComparative Religion
thus find an
explanation in the identity of their authorship.
Mrs. Annie Besant later elaborated this view in the early
pages of her work,
Esoteric Christianity. She contrasts it with the commonly
accepted explanation
of religious origins of the academicians of our day. Summing
up this position
she writes:
"The Comparative Mythologists contend that the common
origin is a common
ignorance, and that the loftiest religious doctrines are
simply refined
expressions of the crude and barbarous guesses of savages,
of primitive men,
regarding themselves and their surroundings. Animism,
fetishism, nature-worship-these
are the constituents of the primitive mud out of which has
grown the
splendid lily of religion. A Krishna, a Buddha, a Lao-Tze, a
Jesus, are the
highly civilized, but lineal descendants of the whirling
medicine-men of the
savage. God is a composite photograph of the innumerable
gods who are the
personifications of the forces of nature. It is all summed
up in the phrase:
Religions are branches from a common trunk-human ignorance.
"The Comparative Religionists consider, on the other
hand, that all religions
originated from the teachings of Divine Men, who gave out to
the different
nations, from time to time, such parts of the verities of
religion as the people
are capable of receiving, teaching ever the same morality,
inculcating the use
of similar means, employing the same significant symbols.
The savage religions-animism
and the rest-are degenerations, the results of decadence,
distorted and
dwarfed descendants of true religious beliefs. Sun-worship
and pure forms of
nature worship were, in their day, noble religions, highly
allegorical, but full
of profound truth and knowledge. The great Teachers . . .
form an enduring
Brotherhood of men, who have risen beyond humanity, who
appear at certain
periods to enlighten the world, and who are the spiritual
guardians of the human
race. This view may be summed up in the phrase: Religions
are branches from a
common trunk-Divine Wisdom."49
This is the view of religions which Madame Blavatsky
presented in Isis.
Religions, it would say, never rise; they only degenerate.
Theosophic writers50
are at pains to point out that once a pure high religious
impulse is given by a
Master-Teacher, it tends before long to gather about it the
incrustations of the.82
human materializing tendency, under which the spiritual
truths are obscured and
finally lost amid the crudities of literalism. Then after
the world has
blundered on through a period of darkness the time grows
ripe for a new
revelation, and another member of the Spiritual Fraternity
comes into
terrestrial life. Madame Blavatsky says:
"The very corner-stone of their (Brahmans' and
Buddhists') religious systems is
periodical incarnations of the Deity. Whenever humanity is
about merging into
materialism and moral degradation, a Supreme Being
incarnates himself in his
creature selected for the purpose, . . . Christna saying to
Arjuna (in the
Bhagavad Gita): 'As often as virtue declines in the world, I
make myself
manifest to save it.'"51
Madame Blavatsky stated that she was in contact with several
of these supermen,
who sent her forth as their messenger to impart, in new
form, the old knowledge..83
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CHAPTER VI
THE MAHATMAS AND THEIR LETTERS
The Masters whom Theosophy presents to us are simply
high-ranking students in
life's school of experience. They are members of our own
evolutionary group, not
visitants from the celestial spheres. They are supermen only
in that they have
attained knowledge of the laws of life and mastery over its
forces with which we
are still struggling. They are also termed by Theosophists
the "just men made
perfect," the finished products of our terrene
experience, those more earnest
souls of our own race who have pressed forward to attain the
fulness of the
stature of Christ, the prize of the high calling of God in
Christhood. They are
not Gods come down to earth, but earthly mortals risen to
the status of Christs.
They ask from us no reverence, no worship; they demand no
allegiance but that
which it is expected we shall render to the principles of
Truth and Fact, and to
the nobility of life. They are our "Elder Brothers,"
not distant deities; and
will even make their presence known to us and grant us the
privilege of
coφperating with them when we have shown ourselves capable
of working
unselfishly for mankind. They are not our Masters in the
sense of holding
lordship over us; they are the "Masters of Wisdom and
Compassion." Moved by an
infinite sympathy with the whole human race they have
renounced their right to
go forward to more splendid conquests in the evolutionary
field, and have
remained in touch with man in order to throw the weight of
their personal force
on the side of progress.
But the rank of the Mahatmas must not be underrated because
they still fall
under the category of human beings. They have accumulated
vast stores of
knowledge about the life of man and the universe; about the
meaning and purpose
of evolution; the methods of progress; the rationale of the
expansion of the
powers latent in the Ego; the choice and attainment of ends
and values in life;
and the achievement of beauty and grandeur in individual
development. Upon all
these questions which affect the life and happiness of
mortals they possess
competent knowledge which they are willing to impart to
qualified students. They
have by virtue of their own force of character mastered
every human problem,
perfected their growth in beauty, gained control over all
the natural forces of
life. They stand at the culmination of all human endeavor.
They have lifted
mortality up to immortality, have carried humanity aloft to
divinity. Through
the mediatorship of the Christos, or spiritual principle in
them, they have
reconciled the carnal nature of man, his animal soul, with
the essential
divinity of his higher Self. And they, if they have been
lifted up, stand
patiently eager to draw all men unto them.
Madame Blavatsky's exploitation of the Adepts (or their
exploitation of her) is
a startling event in the modern religious drama. It was a
unique procedure and
took the world by surprise. To be sure, India and Tibet,
even China, were
familiar with the idea of supermen. India had its Buddhas,
Boddhisatvas, and
Rishis. But what not even India was prepared to view without
suspicion was that.84
several of the hierarchical Brotherhood should carry on a
clandestine
intercourse with a nondescript group, made up of a Russian,
an American, and
several Englishmen, and issue to them fragments of the
ancient lore for
broadcasting to the incredulous West, which would mock it,
scorn it, and trample
it underfoot.
It was only justified, according to Madame Blavatsky, by
certain considerations
which influenced the final decision of the Great White
Brotherhood Council.
Majority opinion was against the move; but the minority
urged that two reasons
rendered it advisable. The guillotine and the fagot pile had
been eliminated
from the historical forms of martyrdom; and, secondly, the
esotericism of the
doctrines was, in a manner, an automatic safety device. The
teachings would
appeal to those who were "ready" for them; their
meaning would soar over the
heads of those for whom they were not suited.
The matter was decided affirmatively, we are informed, by
the assumption of full
karmic responsibility for the launching of the crusade by
the two Adepts, Morya
and Koot Hoomi Lal Singh. The latter, in the early portion
of his present
incarnation, had been a student at an English University and
felt that he had
found sufficient reliability on the part of intelligent
Europeans to make them
worthy to receive the great knowledge. Morya, we are told,
had taken on Madame
Blavatsky as his personal attachι, pupil or chela. She had
earned in former
situations the right to the high commission of carrying the
old truth to the
world at large in the last quarter of the nineteenth
century.
It is hinted that Madame Blavatsky had formed a close link
with the Master Morya
in former births, when she was known to him as a great
personage. It is also
said that she was herself kept from full admission to the
Brotherhood only by
some special "Karma" which needed to be
"worked out" in a comparatively humble
station and personality during this life. She said the
Masters knew what she was
accountable for, though it was not the charlatanism the
world at large charged
her with. We are led to assume that the Master Morya exercised
a guardianship
over her in early life, and later, that he occasionally
manifested himself to
her, giving her suggestions and encouragement. One or two of
these encounters
with her Master are recorded. She met him in his physical
body in London in
1851. In one of her old note-books, which her aunt Madame
Fadeef sent to her in
Wόrzburg in 1885, there is a memorandum of her meeting with
Morya in London. The
entry is as follows:
"Nuit mιmorable. Certaine nuit par un clair de lune que
se couchait ΰ-Ramsgate--
12 aoϋt, 1851,--lorsque je rencontrai le Maξtre de mes
rκves."
Hints are thrown out as to other meetings on her travels,
and we are told that
she studied ancient philosophy and science under the
Master's direct tutelage in
Tibet covering periods aggregating at least seven years of
her life. The
testimony of Col. Olcott is no less precise. He says:
"I had ocular proof that at least some of those who
worked with us were living
men, from having seen them in the flesh in India, after
having seen them in the
astral body in America and in Europe; from having touched
and talked with them.
Instead of telling me that they were spirits, they told me
they were as much
alive as myself, and that each of them had his own
peculiarities and
capabilities, in short, his complete individuality. They
told me that what they
had attained to I should one day myself acquire, how soon
would depend entirely
on myself; and that I might not anticipate anything whatever
from favor, but,
like them, must gain every step, every inch, of progress by
my own exertions."1.85
The fact that the Masters were living human beings made
their revelations of
cosmic and spiritual truth, say the Theosophists, more
valuable than alleged
revelations from hypothetical Gods in other systems of belief.
That their
knowledge is, in a manner of speaking, human instead of
heavenly or "divine"
should give it greater validity for us. The Mahatmas were,
it is said, in direct
contact with the next higher grades of intelligent beings
standing above them in
the hierarchical order, so that their teachings have the
double worth of high
human and supernal authority. This, occultists believe,
affords the most
trustworthy type of revelation.
It was not until the two Theosophic Founders had reached
India, in whose
northernmost vastnesses the members of the Great White
Brotherhood were said to
maintain their earthly residence, that continuous evidence
of their reality and
their leadership was vouchsafed. The Theosophic case for
Adept revelation rests
upon a long-continued correspondence between persons (Mr. A.
P. Sinnett, mainly,
Mr. A. O. Hume, Damodar and others in minor degree) of good
intelligence, but
claiming no mystical or psychical illumination, and the two
Mahatmas, K.H. and
M. Sinnett, Editor of The Pioneer, at Simla in northern
India, was an English
journalist of distinction and ability. Although he had
manifested no special
temperamental disposition toward the mystical or occult, he
was the particular
recipient of the attention and favors of the Mahatmas over a
space of three or
four years, beginning about 1879. It was at his own home in
Simla, later at
Allahabad, that most of the letters were received, addressed
to him personally.
Most, if not all, were in answer to the queries which he was
permitted, if not
invited, to ask his respected teachers.
Mr. Sinnett's book, The Occult World, was the first direct
statement to the West
of the existence of the Masters and their activity as
sponsors for the
Theosophical Society. He undertook the onerous task of
vindicating, as far as
argument and the phenomenal material in his hands could, the
title of these
supermen to the possession of surpassing knowledge and
sublime wisdom. His work
supplemented that of Madame Blavatsky in Isis, yet it went
beyond the latter in
asserting the connection of the Theosophical Society with an
alleged association
of perfected individuals. It put the Theosophical Society
squarely on record as
an organization, not merely for the purpose of eclectic
research, but standing
for the promulgation of a body of basic truths of an
esoteric sort and
arrogating to itself a position of unique eminence in a
spiritual world order.
In the Introduction to The Occult World Mr. Sinnett
elaborates his apologetic
for the general theory of Mahatmic existence and knowledge.
Fundamental for his
argument is, of course, the theory of reincarnational
continuity of development
which would enable individual humans, through long
experience, to attain degrees
of learning far in advance of the majority of the race. But
his "proofs" of both
the existence and the superior knowledge of these
exceptional beings are offered
in the book itself, in which his experience with them, and
the material of some
of their letters to him, are presented. His introductory
dissertation is a
justification of the Mahatmic policy of maintaining their
priceless knowledge in
futile obscurity within the narrow confines of their
exclusive Brotherhood. He
then attempts to rectify our scornful point of view as
regards esotericism. Of
the superlative wisdom of the Masters he posits his own
direct knowledge. The
Brothers are to him empirically real. But the logical
justification of their
attitude of seclusion and aloofness, or worse, of their
selfish appropriation of
knowledge which it must be assumed would be of immense
social value if
disseminated, is the point upon which he chiefly labors.
"There is a school of philosophy," he says,
"still in existence of which modern
culture has lost sight . . . modern metaphysics, and to a
large extent modern.86
physical science, have been groping for centuries blindly
after knowledge which
occult philosophy has enjoyed in full measure all the while.
Owing to a train of
fortunate circumstances I have come to know that this is the
case; I have come
into contact with persons who are heirs of a greater
knowledge concerning the
mysteries of Nature and humanity than modern culture has yet
evolved. . . .
Modern science has accomplished grand results by the open
method of
investigation, and is very impatient of the theory that
persons who have
attained to real knowledge, either in science or
metaphysics, could have been
content to hide their light under a bushel. . . . But there
is no need to
construct hypotheses in the matter. The facts are accessible
if they are sought
for in the right way."2
Spiritual science is foremost with the Adepts; physical
science being of
secondary importance. The main strength of occultism has
been devoted to the
science of metaphysical energy and to the development of
faculties in man, not
instruments outside him, which will yield him actual
experimental knowledge of
the subtle powers in nature. It aims to gain actual and
exact knowledge of
spiritual things which, under all other systems, remain the
subject of
speculation or blind religious faith.
Summing up the extraordinary powers which Adeptship gives
its practitioners, he
says they are chiefly the ability to dissociate
consciousness from the body, to
put it instantaneously in rapport with other minds anywhere
on the earth, and to
exert magical control over the sublimated energies of
matter. Occultism
postulates a basic differentiation between the principles of
mind, soul, and
spirit, and gives a formal technique for their interrelated
development. It has
evolved a practique, also, based on the spiritual
constitution of matter, which,
it alleges, vastly facilitates human growth. The skilled
occultist is able to
shift his consciousness from one to another plane of
manifestation. In short,
his control over the vibrational energies of the Akasha
makes him veritably lord
of all the physical creation.
The members of the Brotherhood remain in more or less
complete seclusion among
the Himalayas because, as they have said, they find contact
with the coarse
heavy currents of ordinary human emotionalism-violent
feeling, material
grasping, and base ambitions-painful to their sensitive
organization. This great
fraternity is at once the least and most exclusive body in
the world; it is
composed of the world's very elect, yet any human being is
eligible. He must
have demonstrated his possession of the required
qualifications, which are so
high that the average mortal must figure on aeons of
education before he can
knock at the portals of their spiritual society. The road
thither is beset with
many real perils, which no one can safely pass till he has
proven his mastery
over his own nature and that of the world.
"The ultimate development of the adept requires amongst
other things a life of
absolute physical purity, and the candidate must, from the
beginning, give
practical evidence of his willingness to adopt this. He must
. . . for all the
years of his probation, be perfectly chaste, perfectly
abstemious, and
indifferent to physical luxury of every sort. This regimen
does not involve any
fantastic discipline or obtrusive ascetism, nor withdrawal
from the world. There
would be nothing to prevent a gentleman in ordinary society
from being in some
of the preliminary stages of training without anybody about
him being the wiser.
For true occultism, the sublime achievement of the real
adept, is not attained
through the loathsome ascetism of the ordinary Indian
fakeer, the yogi of the
woods and wilds, whose dirt accumulates with his sanctity-of
the fanatic who
fastens iron hooks into his flesh or holds up an arm till it
withers."3.87
How did the Mahatmas impart their teaching? Mr. Sinnett was
the channel of
transmission, and to him the two Masters sent a long series
of letters on
philosophical and other subjects, they themselves remaining
in the background.
The Mahatma Letters themselves, as originally received by
Mr. Sinnett, were not
published until 1925.4 Sinnett, early in his acquaintance
with the Masters,
asked K.H. for the privilege of a personal interview with
him. The Master
declined. His messages came in the form of long letters
which dropped into his
possession by facile means that would render the Post Office
authorities of any
nation both envious and sceptical. The correspondence began
when Madame
Blavatsky suggested that Mr. Sinnett write certain questions
which were on his
mind in a letter addressed to K.H., saying she would
dispatch it to him, several
hundred miles distant, by the exercise of her magnetic
powers. She would
accompany it with the request for a reply. The idea in Mr.
Sinnett's mind was
one which he thought, could the Adept actually carry it out,
would demonstrate
at one stroke the central theses of occultism and
practically revolutionize the
whole trend of human thinking. His suggestion to K.H. in
that first letter was
that the Mahatma should use his superior power to reproduce
in far-off India, on
the same morning on which it issued from the press, a full
copy of the London
Times. Madame Blavatsky disintegrated the missive and wafted
its particles to
the hermit in the mountains. The answer came in two days.
The test of the London
newspaper, he wrote, was inadmissible precisely because
"it would close the
mouths of the sceptics." The world is unprepared for so
convincing a
demonstration of supernormal powers, he argued, because, on
the one hand the
event would throw the principles and formulae of science
into chaos, and on the
other, it would demolish the structure of the concepts of
natural law by the
restoration of the belief in "miracle." The result
would thus be disastrous for
both science and faith. Incompetent as the thesis of
mechanistic naturalism is
to provide mortals with the ground of understanding of the
deeper phenomena of
life and mind, it does less harm on the whole than would a
return to arrant
superstition such as must follow in the wake of the wonder
Sinnett had proposed.
The Master asked his correspondent if the modern world had
really thrown off the
shackles of ignorant prejudice and religious bigotry to a
sufficient extent to
enable it to withstand the shock that such an occurrence
would bring to its
fixed ideas. If this one test were furnished, he went on,
Western incredulity
would in a moment ask for others and still others; shrewd
ingenuity would devise
ever more bizarre performances; and since not all the
millions of sceptics could
be given ocular demonstrations, the net outcome of the whole
procedure would be
confusion and unhappiness. The mass of humanity must feel
its way slowly toward
these high powers, and the premature exhibition of future
capacity would but
overwhelm the mind and unsettle the poise of people
everywhere.
Mr. Sinnett replied, venturing to believe "that the
European mind was less
hopelessly intractable than Koot Hoomi had represented
it." The Master's second
letter continued his protestations:
"The Mysteries never were, never can be, put within
reach of the general public,
not, at least, until the longed-for day when our religious
philosophy becomes
universal. At no time have more than a scarcely appreciable
minority of men
possessed Nature's secret, though multitudes have witnessed
the practical
evidences of the possibility of their possession."
Letters followed on both sides, Mr. Sinnett taking advantage
of many
opportunities afforded by varying circumstances in each case
to fortify his
assurance that Madame Blavatsky herself was not inditing the
replies in the name
of the Adept. Frequently replies came, containing specific
reference to detailed
matters in his missives, when she had not been out of his
sight during the
interim between the despatch and the return. The letters
came and went as well.88
when she was hundreds of miles away. The answers would often
be found in his
locked desk drawer, sometimes inside his own letter, the
seal of which had not
been broken. On occasion the Mahatma's reply dropped from
the open air upon his
desk while he was watching.
Madame Blavatsky and the Master both explained the method by
which the letters
were written. Theoretically, they were not written at all,
but "precipitated."
Among the Adept's occult or "magical" powers is
that of impressing upon the
surface of some material, as paper, the images which he
holds vividly before his
mind. He may thus impress or imprint a photograph, a scene,
or a word, or
sentence, upon parchment. He uses materials, of course,
paper, ink or pencil
graphite. But in his ability to disintegrate atomic
combinations of matter, he
can seize upon the material present, or even at a distance,
and "precipitate" or
reintegrate it, in conformity with the lines of his strong
thought-energies. He
can thus image a sentence, word for word, in his mind, and
then pour the current
of atomic material into the given form of the letters, upon
the plane of the
paper. The idiosyncrasies of his own chirography would be
carried through the
mental process. K.H., we are told, always used blue ink or
blue pencil, while
the epistles from M. always came in red. Specimens of the
two handwritings are
given in the frontispiece of the Mahatma Letters. The art of
occult
precipitation appears still more marvelous when we are told
by Madame Blavatsky
that the Adept did not attend to the actual precipitation
himself but delegated
it to one of his distant chelas, who caught his Master's
thought-forms in the
Astral Light and set them down by the chemical process which
he had been taught
to employ. The Master thus needed only to think vividly the
words of his
sentences, so as to impress them upon the mind of his pupil,
and the latter did
the rest. This was explained by H.P.B. in an article, Lodges
of Magic, in
Lucifer, Oct., 1888, while she was being accused of issuing
false messages from
the Master.
"For it is hardly one out of one hundred 'Occult'
letters that is ever written
by the hand of the Masters in whose names and on whose
behalf they are sent, as
the Masters have neither need nor leisure to write them; and
that when a Master
says: 'I wrote that letter,' it means only that every word
in it was dictated by
him and impressed under his direct supervision. Generally
they make their chela
. . . write (or precipitate) them. It depends entirely upon
the chela's state of
development how accurately the ideas may be transmitted and
the writing model
imitated. Thus the non-adept recipient is left in the
dilemma of uncertainty
whether if one letter is false, all may not be."
For example, when a Mr. Henry Kiddle, an American lecturer
on Spiritualism,
accused the writer of the Mahatma Letters of having plagiarized
whole passages
from his lecture delivered at Mt. Pleasant, New York, in
1880, a year prior to
the publication of The Occult World, the Master K.H.
explained in a letter to
Mr. Sinnett that the apparent forgery of words and ideas
came about through a
bit of carelessness on his part in the precipitation of his
ideas through a
chela. While dictating the letter to the latter, he had
caught himself
"listening in" on Mr. Kiddle's address being
delivered at the moment in America;
and as a consequence the chela took down portions of the
actual lecture as
reflected from the mind of K.H.
Mr. Sinnett used the opportunity thus given him to draw from
the Mahatma an
outline of a portion of the esoteric philosophy and science
which was presumed
to be in his custody. The Master exhibited readiness to
comply with Mr.
Sinnett's requests for information upon all vital and
important matters..89
Koot Hoomi tells Sinnett first that the world must prepare
itself for the
manifestation of phenomenal elements in constantly augmenting
volume and force.
The age of miracles, he says, is not past; it really never
was. Plato was right
in asserting that ideas ruled the world; and as the human
mind increases its
receptivity to larger ideas, the world will advance,
revolutions will spring
from the spreading ferment, creeds and powers will crumble
before their onward
march.
The duty set before intelligent people is to sweep away as
much as possible of
the dross left by our pious forefathers to make ready for
the apotheosis of
human life. The great new ideas
"touch man's true position in the universe, in relation
to his previous and
future births; his origin and ultimate destiny; the relation
of the mortal to
the immortal; of the temporary to the eternal; of the finite
to the infinite;
ideas larger, grander, more comprehensive, recognizing the
universal reign of
Immutable Law, unchanging and unchangeable in regard to
which there is only an
Eternal Now, while to uninitiated mortals time is past or
future as related to
their finite existence on this material speck of dirt. This
is what we study and
what many have solved."5
Many old idols must be dethroned, chief of all being that of
an
anthropomorphized Deity, with its train of debasing
superstitions.
"And now," says K.H., "after making due
allowance for evils that are natural and
that cannot be avoided . . . I will point out the greatest,
the chief cause of
nearly two thirds of the evils that pursue humanity ever
since that cause became
a power. It is religion, under whatever form and in whatever
nation. It is the
sacerdotal caste, the priesthood and the churches; it is in
those illusions that
man looks upon as sacred that he has to search out the
source of that multitude
of evils which is the great curse of humanity and that
almost overwhelms
mankind. Ignorance created gods and cunning took advantage
of the opportunity.
Look at India and look at Christendom and Islam, at Judaism
and Fetichism. It is
priestly imposture that rendered these Gods so terrible to
man; it is religion
that makes of him the selfish bigot, the fanatic that hates
all mankind outside
his own sect without rendering him any better or more moral
for it. It is belief
in God and Gods that makes two-thirds of humanity the slaves
of a handful of
those who deceive them under the false pretence of saving
them. . . . Remember
the sum of human misery will never be diminished unto that
day when the better
portion of humanity destroys in the name of Truth, Morality
and universal
Charity the altars of their false Gods."6
He goes on to clarify and delimit his position:
"Neither our philosophy nor ourselves believe in a God,
least of all in one
whose pronoun necessitates a capital G. Our philosophy falls
under the
definition of Hobbes. It is preλminently the science of
effects by their causes
and of causes by their effects, and since it is also the
science of things
deduced from first principle, as Bacon defines it, before we
admit any such
principle we must know it, and have no right to admit even
its possibility. . .
. Therefore we deny God both as philosophers and as
Buddhists. We know there are
planetary and other spiritual lives, and we know there is in
our system no such
thing as God, either personal or impersonal. Parabrahm is
not a God, but
absolute immutable law, and Ishwar is the effect of Avidya
(ignorance) and Maya
(illusion), ignorance based on the great delusion. The word
'God' was invented
to designate the unknown cause of those effects which man
has ever admired or
dreaded without understanding them, and since we claim-and
that we are able to.90
prove what we claim-i.e., the knowledge of that cause and
causes, we are in a
position to maintain there is no God or Gods behind
them."7
The causes assigned to phenomena by the Mahatmas, he says,
are natural,
sensible, supernatural, unintelligible, and unknown. The God
of the theologians
is simply an imaginary power, that has never yet manifested
itself to human
perception. The cause posited by the Adept is that power
whose activities we
behold in every phenomenon in the universe. They are
pantheists, never
agnostics. The Deity they envisage is everywhere present, as
well in matter as
elsewhere.
"In other words we believe in Matter alone, in matter
as visible nature and
matter in its invisibility as the invisible omnipresent
omnipotent Proteus with
its unceasing motion which is its life, and which nature
draws from herself,
since she is the great whole outside of which nothing can
exist. . . . The
existence of matter, then, is a fact; the existence of
motion is another fact,
their self-existence and eternity or indestructibility is a
third fact. And the
idea of pure Spirit as a Being or an Existence-give it
whatever name you will-is
a chimera, a gigantic absurdity."8
Furthermore, says K.H., your conceptions of an all-wise
Cosmic Mind or Being
runs afoul of sound logic on another count. You claim, he
says, that the life
and being of this God pervades and animates all the
universe. But even your own
science predicates of the cosmic material ether that it,
too, already permeates
all the ranges of being in nature. You are thus putting two
distinct pervading
essences in the universe. You are postulating two primordial
substances, two
basic elemental essences, where but one can be. Why posit an
imaginary substrate
when you already have a concrete one? Find your God in the
material you are sure
is there; do not forge a fiction and put it outside of real
existence to account
for that existence. Why constitute a false God when you have
a real Universe?
There is an illimitable Force in the universe, but even this
Force is not God,
since man may learn to bend it to his will. It is simply the
visible and
objective expression of the absolute substance in its
invisible and subjective
form.
From this strict and inexorable materialism K.H. seems to
relent a moment when
he says to Mr. Hume:
"I do not protest at all, as you seem to think, against
your theism, or a belief
in abstract ideal of some kind, but I cannot help asking
you, how do you or can
you know that your God is all-wise, omnipotent and love-ful,
when everything in
nature, physical and moral, proves such a being, if he does
exist, to be quite
the reverse of all you say of him? Strange delusion and one
which seems to
overpower your very intellect!"9
The intricate problem, then, of how the blind and
unintelligent forces of matter
in motion do breed and have bred "highly intelligent
beings like ourselves" "is
covered by the eternal progression of cycles, and the
process of evolution ever
perfecting its work as it goes along." Intelligence
lies somehow in the womb of
matter, and evolution brings it to birth. Matter and spirit,
we must constantly
be reminded, are but the two polar aspects of the One
Substance.
The great philosophical problem of whether reality is
monistic or pluralistic
finds clear statement and elucidation in the Letters. It can
be gathered from
all the argument of K.H. that primordial nature is a monism,
but that when the
hidden energy, or sheer potentiality, of the unit principle
deploys into action,.91
or what the occultists speak of as manifestation, it splits,
first into a
duality, or polarization, and then into an infinity of
modifications arising
from varying intensities of vibration and modes of
combination. Through the
spectacles of time and space we see life as multiple; could
we be freed from the
limitations of our sensorium, however, we could see life
whole, as a single
essence. Non-polarized force is, in any terms of our
apperceptive nature, an
impossibility and a nonentity; pure spirit is a sheer
abstraction. Spirit must
be changed into matter, to be seen.
It is a silly philosophy which would exalt spirit and debase
matter, as many
ascetic or idealistic religious systems have done. Matter is
the garment of
spirit, and needs but to be beautified and refined. Spirit
is helpless without
it. "Bereaved of Prakriti, Purusha (Spirit) is unable
to manifest itself, hence
ceases to exist-becomes nihil."10 Likewise Spirit is
necessary to the faintest
stir of life in matter.
"Without Spirit or Force even that which Science styles
as 'not-living' matter,
the so-called mineral ingredients which feed plants, could
never have been
called into form."11
Form will vanish the moment spirit is withdrawn from it.
"Matter, force and motion are the trinity of physical
objective nature, as the
trinitarian unity of spirit-matter is that of the spiritual
or subjective
nature. Motion is eternal because spirit is eternal. But no
modes of motion can
ever be conceived unless they are in conjunction with
matter."12
"Unconscious and non-existing when separated, they
become consciousness and life
when brought together,"13
says K.H. in reference to the two poles of being. If the
spirit or force were to
fail, the electron would cease to swirl about the proton,
the atom would
collapse, the worlds would vanish. The world is an illusion
in the same way that
the solid appearance of the revolving spokes of a wheel is
an illusion. Stop the
swirl, and the universe not only collapses-it goes out of
manifestation.
A novel and startling corollary of the teaching that the
forces of nature are
"blind unconscious" laws, is seen in the query of
K.H. to Mr. Hume, whether it
had ever occurred to him that "universal, like finite
human mind, might have two
attributes or a dual power-one, the voluntary and conscious,
and the other the
involuntary and unconscious, or the mechanical power. To
reconcile the
difficulty of many theistic and anti-theistic propositions,
both these powers
are a philosophical necessity. . . . Take the human mind in
connection with the
body. Man has two distinct physical brains; the cerebrum . .
. the source of the
voluntary nerves; and the cerebellum-the fountain of the
involuntary nerves
which are the agents of the unconscious or mechanical powers
of the mind to act
through. And weak and uncertain as may be the control of man
over his
involuntary, such as the blood circulation, the throbbings
of the heart and
respiration, especially during sleep-yet how far more
powerful, how much more
potential appears man as master and ruler over the blind
molecular motion . . .
than that which you will call God shows over the immutable
laws of nature.
Contrary in that to the finite, the 'infinite mind' . . .
exhibits but the
functions of its cerebellum."14
That Master admits that he is arguing the case for such a
duality of cosmic
mental function only on the basis of the theory that the
macrocosm is the.92
prototype of the microcosm, and that the high planetary
spirits themselves have
no more concrete evidence of the operation of a "cosmic
cerebrum" than we have.
The Master has taken many pages to detail to Mr. Sinnett the
information
relative to the evolution of the worlds from the nebular
mist, and the outline
of the whole cosmogonic scheme. As this will be dealt with
more fully in our
review of The Secret Doctrine, it need only be glanced at
here to give coherence
to the material in the Letters. Force or spirit descends
into matter and creates
or organizes the universes. Its immersion in the mineral
kingdom marks the
lowest or grossest point of its descent, and from there it
begins to return to
spirit, carrying matter up with it to self-consciousness.
Impulsions of life
energy emanate from "the heart of the universe"
and go quivering through the
various worlds, vivifying them and bringing to each in turn
its fitting grade of
living organisms. Thus came the races of men on our Earth,
which is now
harboring its Fifth great family, the Aryan.
What is of great interest in the scheme of Theosophy is that
"At the beginning of each Round, when humanity
reappears under quite different
conditions than those afforded by the birth of each new race
and its sub-races,
a 'Planetary' has to mix with these primitive men, and to
refresh their memories
and reveal to them the truths they knew during the preceding
Round. Hence the
confused traditions about Jehovahs, Ormazds, Osirises,
Brahms and the tutti
quanti. But that happens only for the benefit of the First
Race. It is the duty
of the latter to choose the fit recipients among its sons,
who are 'set apart'-to
use a Biblical phrase-as the vessels to contain the whole
stock of knowledge
to be divided among the future races and generations until
the close of that
Round. . . . Every race has its Adepts; and with every new
race we are allowed
to give them as much of our knowledge as the men of that
race deserve. The last
seventh race will have its Buddha, as every one of its
predecessors had."15
And then Koot Hoomi undertakes to meet the inevitable query:
What comes out of
the immense machinery of the cycles and globes and rounds?
"What emerges at the end of all things is not only
'pure and impersonal spirit,'
but the collected 'personal' remembrances" . . .16 The
individual, imperishable,
will enjoy the fruits of its collective lives.
If the Mahatma's attempt to solve the eternal riddle of the
"good" of earthly
life is not so complete and satisfactory as might have been
wished, we at least
gather from this interesting passage that its ultimate
meaning can be
ascertained only by our personal experience with every
changing form and aspect
of life itself. We must taste of all the modes of existence.
This inflicts upon
us the "cycle of necessity," the imperative
obligation to tread the weary wheel
of life on all the globes. We will know the "good"
of it all only by living
through it. There is no vindication for ethics, for
religion, for philosophy,
for teleology and optimism, save in life and experience
itself. Reason,
dialectic, can do nothing for us if life does not first
furnish us the material
content of the good. All we can do is look to life with the
confident
expectation that its processes will justify our wishes. We
must in the end stand
on faith. If life prove not ultimately sweet to the tasting,
no rationalization
will make it so.
We are assured, however, that the unit of personal
consciousness built up in the
process of cosmic evolution is never annihilated, but
expands until it becomes
inclusive of the highest. It enjoys the fruitage of its dull
incubations in the.93
lower worlds in its ever-enhancing capacities for a life
"whose glory and
splendor have no limits."
But, says K.H. immortality is quite a relative matter. Man,
being a compound
creature, is not entirely immortal. You know, he reminds us,
that the physical
body has no immortality. Neither the etheric double nor the
kama rupa (astral
body), nor yet the lower manasic (mental) principle survive
disintegration. Only
the Ego in the causal body holds its conscious existence
between lives on earth.
Even the planetary spirits, high as they are in the scale of
being, suffer
breaks in their conscious life,--the periods of pralaya. In
the true sense of
the term only the one life has absolute immortality, for it
is the only
existence which has neither beginning nor end, nor any break
in its continuity.
All lower aspects and embodiments have immortality, but with
periodic recessions
into inanition.
The problem of evil received treatment at K.H.'s hands, and
is summarized in the
statement that
"Evil has no existence per se and is but the absence of
good and exists but for
him who is made its victim. It proceeds from two causes, and
no more than good
is it an independent cause in nature. Nature is destitute of
goodness or malice;
she follows only immutable laws, when she either gives life
and joy or sends
suffering and death and destroys what she has created.
Nature has an antidote
for every poison and her laws a reward for every suffering.
The butterfly
devoured by a bird becomes that bird, and the little bird
killed by an animal
goes into a higher form. It is the blind law of necessity
and the eternal
fitness of things, and hence cannot be called evil in
Nature. The real evil
proceeds from human intelligence and its origin rests entirely
with reasoning
man who dissociates himself from Nature. Humanity then alone
is the true source
of evil. Evil is the exaggeration of good, the progeny of
human selfishness and
greediness. Think profoundly and you will find that save
death-which is no evil
but a necessary law, and accidents which will always find
their reward in a
future life-the origin of every evil, whether small or
great, is in human
action, in man whose intelligence makes him the one free
agent in Nature. It is
not Nature that creates diseases, but man. . . . Food,
sexual relations, drink,
are all natural necessities of life; yet excess in them
brings on disease,
misery, suffering, mental and physical. . . . Become a
glutton, a debauchee, a
tyrant, and you become the originator of diseases, of human
suffering and
misery. Therefore it is neither Nature nor an imaginary
Deity that has to be
blamed, but human nature made vile by selfishness."17
It will be of interest to hear what K.H. says about
"heaven."
"It (Devachan)18 is an idealed paradise in each case,
of the
Ego's own making, and by him filled with the scenery,
crowded with the incidents
and thronged with the people he would expect to find in such
a sphere of
compassionate bliss."19
Man makes his own heaven or hell, and is in it while he is
making it. It is
subjective; only, Theosophy postulates a certain (refined
and sublimated)
objectivity to the forms of our subjectivity. Man does in
heaven only what he
does on earth-forms a conception and then hypostatizes or
reifies it. Only, in
the case of nirvanic states, the reification is
instantaneously externalized. On
earth it is a slower formation. The "Summerland"
of the Spiritualists is but the
objectification of the Ego's buoyant dreams, when freed from
the heavy
limitations of the earth body..94
"In Devachan the dreams of the objective life become
the realities of the
subjective."20
This means that the ideal creations, the highest aspirations
of man on earth,
become the substance of his actual consciousness in heaven.
They are the only
elements of his normal human mind that are pitched at a
vibration rate high
enough to impress the matter or stuff of his permanent body,
and hence they
alone cause a repercussion or response in his pure
subjective consciousness when
the lower bodies are lost. On this theory the day dreams and
the ideal longings
of the human soul become the most vital and substantial, and
abiding, activities
of his psychic life.
The only memories of the earth life that intrude into this
picture of heavenly
bliss are those connected with the feelings of love and
hate.
"Love and hatred are the only immortal feelings, the
only survivors from the
wreck of the Ye-damma or phenomenal world."21
All other feelings function at too low a rate to register on
the ethereal body
of the Devachanee, and are lost.
"Out of the resurrected past nothing remains but what
the Ego has felt
spiritually-that was evolved by and through, and lived over
by his spiritual
faculties-be it love or hatred."22
Suicides, says K.H., must undergo a peculiar discipline
following their
premature death. Since they have arbitrarily interrupted a
cycle of nature
before its normal completion, the operation of law requires
that they hang
suspended, so to speak, in a condition of near-earthly
existence until what
would have been their natural life-term has expired.
"The suicides who, foolishly hoping to escape life,
found themselves still
alive, have suffering enough in store for them from that
very life. Their
punishment is in the intensity of the latter."23
Their distress consists, it seems, in remaining within the
purview of their
earthly life without being able to express its impulses.
They are often tempted
to enjoy life again by proxy, i.e., through mediums or by
efforts at a sort of
vampiristic obsession. Victims of death by accident have a
happier fate. They
are more quickly released from earth's lure to partake of
the lethal existence
in the higher Devachan.
All those souls who do not slip down into the eighth
sphere-Avichi-through a
"pull" of the animal nature which proved too
strong for their spiritual fibre to
resist, go on to the Devachan-to Heaven. To the Theosophist
heaven is not "that
bourne from which no traveler e'er returns," nor is
access to it a matter of
even rare exception. Millions of persons in earth life have
had glimpses through
its portals, in sleep, trance, catalepsis, anaesthesia,
hypnosis, or in the
open-eyed mystic's vision. It is a realm of sweet surcease
from pain and sorrow,
of happiness without alloy. But it is far from being the
same place, or from
providing identically the same experience, for every soul.
Each one's heaven is
determined by the capacities for spiritual enjoyment
developed on earth. Only
the spiritual senses survive.
To enrich heaven one must have laid up spiritual treasure on
earth. Furthermore,
the life there is not without break. The released Ego does
not loll away an.95
eternal existence there, but after due rest returns to
earth. Nor is his
enjoyment of the Devachan the same in each sojourn there. He
bites deeper into
the bliss of heaven each time he takes his flight from body.
The constant
enrichment of his experience in the upper spheres provides a
never-ending
novelty.
To Mr. Sinnett's assertion that a mental condition of
happiness empty of
sensational, emotional, and lower mental (manasic) content
would be an
intolerable monotony K.H. replies by asking him if he felt
any sense of monotony
during that one moment in his life when he experienced the
utmost fulness of
conscious being. Devachan is like that, he assured the
complainant, only much
more so. As our climatic moments in this life seem by their
ineffable opulence
to swallow up the weary sense of the time-drag, so the
ecstatic consciousness of
the heaven state is purged of all sense of ennui or
successive movement. To put
it succinctly, there is no sense of time in which to grow
weary.
"No; there are no clocks, no timepieces in Devachan, .
. . though the whole
Cosmos is a gigantic chronometer in one sense . . . I may
also remind you in
this connection that time is something created entirely by
ourselves; that while
one short second of intense agony may appear, even on earth,
as an eternity to
one man, to another, more fortunate, hours, days and sometimes
whole years may
seem to flit like one brief moment. . . . But finite similes
are unfit to
express the abstract and the infinite; nor can the objective
ever mirror the
subjective. . . . To realize the bliss in Devachan, or the
woes in Avitchi, you
have to assimilate them-as we do. . . . Space and time may
be, as Kant has it,
not the product but the regulators of the sensations, but
only so far as our
sensations on earth are concerned, not those in Devachan. .
. Space and time
cease to act as 'the frame of our experience' 'over
there.'"24
The land of distinctions is transcended and the here and
there merge into the
everywhere, as the everywhere into the here and there, and
the now and then into
the now.
Koot Hoomi is sure that the materialistic attitudes of the
Occidental mind have
played havoc with the subtle spirituality embodied in
Eastern religions, in the
effort at translation and interpretation.
"Oh, ye Max Mόllers and Monier Williamses, what have ye
done with our
philosophy?"25
You can not take the higher spiritual degrees by mere study
of books. Progress
here has to do largely with the development of latent powers
and faculties, the
cultivation of which is attended with some dangers. In this
juncture it avails
the student far more to be able to call upon the personal
help of a kindly
guardian who is truly a Master of the hidden forces of life,
than to depend upon
his own efforts, however consecrated. Each grade in the
hierarchy of evolved
beings stands ready to tutor the members of the class below.
"The want of such a 'guide, philosopher and friend' can
never be supplied, try
as you may. All you can do is to prepare the intellect: the
impulse toward
'soul-culture must be furnished by the individual. Thrice
fortunate they who can
break through the vicious circle of modern influence and
come above the vapors!
. . . Unless regularly initiated and trained-concerning the
spiritual insight of
things and the supposed revelations made unto man in all
ages from Socrates down
to Swedenborg . . . no self-tutored seer or clairvoyant ever
saw or heard quite
correctly."26.96
The Master Morya has a word to say to Sinnett about
"the hankering of occult
students after phenomena" of a psychic nature. It is a
maya27 against which, he
says, they have always been warned. It grows with
gratification; the
Spiritualists, he says, are thaumaturgic addicts. It adds no
force to
metaphysical truth that his own and K.H.'s letters drop into
Sinnett's lap or
come under his pillow. If the philosophy is wrong a
"wonder" will not set it
right. Spiritual knowledge, made effective for growth, is
the desideratum.
Trance mediumship, he reiterates, is itself both undesirable
and unfruitful. No
mind should submit itself passively to another. "We do
not require a passive
mind, but on the contrary are seeking for those most
active." Nothing can give
the student insight save the unfolding of his own inner
powers.
Much of the Adept's writing to Sinnett has to do with the
conditions of
probation and "chelaship" in the master science of
soul-culture. He says there
are certain rigid laws the fulfilment of which is absolutely
essential to the
disciple's secure advancement. They have to do with
self-mastery, meditation,
purity of life, fixity of purpose. These laws, which at
first seem to the
neophyte to bar his path, will be seen, as he persists in
obedience to them, to
be the road to all he can ask. But no one can break them
without becoming their
victim. Too eager expectation on the part of the aspirant is
dangerous. It
disturbs the balance of forces.
"Each warmer and quicker throb of the heart wears so
much life away. The
passions, the affections, are not to be indulged in by him
who seeks to know;
for they wear out the earthly body with their own secret
power; and he who would
gain his aim must be cold."28
A hint as to the occult desirability of vegetarianism is
dropped in the
sentence:
"Never will the Spiritualists find reliable trustworthy
mediums and Seers (not
even to a degree) so long as the latter and their 'circle'
will saturate
themselves with animal blood and the millions of infusoria
of the fermented
fluids."29
Arcane knowledge has always been presented in forms such
that only the most
determined aspirants could grasp the meanings. K.H.
interjects that Sir Isaac
Newton understood the principles of occult philosophy but
"withheld his
knowledge very prudently for his own reputation." The
"scientific" attitude of
mind is declared to be unpropitious for the attainment of
clear insight into
truth, and the pretensions of modern scientists that they
comprehend "the limits
of the natural" receive some of the Master's irony.
"Oh, century of conceit and
mental obscuration!" he jeers.
"All is secret for them as yet in nature. Of man-they
know but the skeleton and
the form . . . their school science is a hotbed of doubts
and conjectures."30
Furthermore, "to give more knowledge to a man than he
is fitted to receive is a
dangerous experiment." In his ignorance or his passion
he may make a use of it
fatal both to himself and those about him. The Adepts, it
appears also, have
their own reasons for not wishing to impart knowledge more
rapidly than the
pupil can assimilate it. The misuse of knowledge by the pupil
always reacts upon
the initiator; the Teacher becomes responsible in a measure
for the results. The
Master would only hinder and complicate his own progress by
indiscreet
generosity to his chela..97
As one means of lightening this responsibility the chela is
required, when
accepted, to take a vow of secrecy covering every order he
may receive and the
specific information imparted. The Master knows whether the
vow is ever broken,
without a question being put.
The prime qualification for the favor of receiving the great
knowledge is
rectitude of motive. Wisdom must be sought only for its
serviceability to
Brotherhood and progress, not even as an end in itself:
"The quality of wisdom ever was and will be yet for a
long time-to the very
close of the fifth race-denied to him who seeks the wealth
of the mind for its
own sake, and for its own enjoyment and result, without the
secondary purpose of
turning it to account in the attainment of material
benefits."31
The applicant for chelaship is tested-unknown to himself-in
subtle ways before
he is accepted, and often afterwards, too. It is not a
system of secret
espionage, but a method of drawing out the inner nature of
the neophytes, so
that they may become self-conquerors.
K.H. reminds Sinnett that the efforts of theosophic
adherents to restore or
propagate esoteric doctrines have ever been met by the
determined opposition of
the vested ecclesiastical interests, which have not scrupled
to resort to
forgery of documents, alleged confessions of fraud, or other
villainous
subterfuge, to crush out the "heresy."
"Some of you Theosophists are now wounded only in your
'honor' or your purses,
but those who held the lamp in previous generations paid the
penalty of their
lives for their knowledge."32
He points out, too, the distressful state into which certain
over-eager
aspirants have brought themselves by "snatching at
forbidden power before their
moral nature is developed to the point of fitness for its
exercise." He says:
"it would be a sorry day for mankind" if any
sharper or deadlier powers-such as
those the high Adepts are privileged to wield-were put in
the hands of those
unaccustomed to use them, or morally untrustworthy.
K.H. volunteers to explain the occult significance of the
interlaced black and
white triangles in the circle which forms part of the
monogram on the seal of
the Theosophical Society. The Jewish Kabbalists viewed the
insignia as Solomon's
Seal. It is "a geometrical synthesis of the whole
occult doctrine."
"The two interlaced triangles . . . contain the
'squaring of the circle,' the
'philosophical stone,' the great problems of Life and Death,
and-the Mystery of
Evil."33
The upward-pointing triangle is Wisdom concealed, and the
downward-pointing one
is Wisdom revealed-in the phenomenal world.
"The circle indicates the bounding, circumscribing
quality of the All, the
Universal Principle which expands . . . to embrace all
things."
The three sides represent the three gunas, or finite
attributes. The double
triangles likewise symbolize the Great Passive and the Great
Active principles,
the male and female, Purusha (Spirit) and Prakriti
(Matter).34 The one triangle
points upward to Spirit, the other downward to Matter, and
their interlacing
represents the conjunction of Spirit and Matter in the
manifested universe. The.98
six points of the two triangles, with the central point,
yield the significant
Seven, the symbol of Universal Being.
Manifestation of the Absolute Life creates universes, and
starts evolutionary
processes; but, says K.H. to Sinnett,
"neither you nor any other man across the threshold has
had or ever will have
the 'complete theory' of Evolution taught him; or get it
unless he guesses it
for himself. . . . Some-have come very near to it. But there
is always . . .
just enough error . . . to prove the eternal law that only
the unshackled Spirit
shall see the things of the Spirit without a veil."35
Pride of intellect grows enormously more dangerous the farther
one goes toward
the higher realms; and after that is overcome spiritual
pride raises its head.
An average mortal finds his share of sin and misery rather
equally distributed
over his life; but a chela has it concentrated all within
one period of
probation. One who essays the higher peaks of knowledge must
overcome a heavier
drag of moral gravitation than one who is content to walk
the plain.
From a purely political standpoint it is interesting to note
that in 1883 K.H.
had taken hold of a project to launch in India a journal to
be named "The
Phoenix," which, with Mr. Sinnett as editor, was to
function as an agent for the
cultivation of native Hindu patriotism, of which the Master
saw a sore need in
India's critical situation at that time. Native princes were
looked to for
financial support, as well as Theosophists, and propaganda
for the venture had
already been set in motion. But K.H. declares that his
closer inspection of the
situation and his discovery of the wretched political
indifference of his
countrymen made the enterprise dubious, financially and
spiritually. He then
ordered Sinnett to drop it entirely, as he saw certain
failure ahead.
The Mahatma Letters, in the latter portion, go deeply into
the affairs of the
London Lodge, T. S., which Mr. Sinnett had founded on his
return to England, and
they even advise as to the "slate" of officers to
stand for election. There was
a factional grouping in the Lodge at the time, the
Kingsford-Maitland party
standing for Christian esotericism as against the paramount
influence of the
Tibetan Masters, whose existence was regarded by them as at
least hypothetical;
and the Sinnett wing adhering closely to H.P.B. and her
Adepts. Mrs. Anna B.
Kingsford had had a series of communications in her own
right from high
teachers, which K.H. himself stated were in accord with his
own doctrine. These
were published in a volume, The Perfect Way. The Master
counsels harmony between
the two parties, preaching, with Heraclitus, that harmony is
the equilibrium
established by the tension of two opposing forces.
Much or most of the substance of the later Letters is
personal, touching
Sinnett's relations with persons of prominence in the
Theosophical movement. The
Adepts make no claim to omniscience-they themselves are in
turn disciples of
higher and grander beings whom they speak of as the Dhyan
Chohans,36 and whom
they rank next to the "planetaries"-but they
assert their ability to look from
any distance into the secret minds of Sinnett's associates
as well as into his
own. They gave him the benefit of this spiritual
"shadowing" to guide him in the
Society's affairs.
Many complimentary things are said to Mr. Sinnett for his
encouragement; but he
is not spared personal criticism of the sharpest sort. He is
told that his
attitude of Western pride stands in the way of his true
spiritual progress.
While his admirable qualities have won him the distinction
of being used as a.99
literary aid to the Mahatmas, still he is pronounced far
from eligible for
chelaship.
Much of the material in the Letters, being of a quite
personal and intimate
nature, was, to be sure, never intended for publication; in
fact, was again and
again forbidden publication. But the Sinnett estate was
persuaded, in 1925, to
give out the Letters for the good they might be expected to
do in refutation of
the many bizarre divergencies which Neo-Theosophy was making
from the original
teachings. Their publication came at the conclusion of the
half-century period
of the existence of the Theosophical Society and was supposed
to terminate an
old and begin a new cycle with some exceptional significance
such as
Theosophists attribute to times and tides in the flow of
things.
To most Theosophists the existence of the Masters and the
contents of their
teaching form the very corner-stone of their systematic
faith. And ultimately
they point to the wisdom and spirituality displayed in the
Letters themselves as
being sufficient vindication of that faith..100
------CARDIFF THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY IN
WALES-------
CHAPTER VII
STORM, WRECK, AND REBUILDING
Reverting from philosophy to history we must now give some
account of what
happened in India from the date the two Founders left
America late in 1878.
India welcomed Theosophy with considerable warmth. Col.
Olcott toured about,
founding Lodges rapidly, and Madame Blavatsky bent herself
to the more esoteric
work of corresponding with her Masters and of establishing
her official
mouthpiece, The Theosophist. Though Isis Unveiled had been
put forth in America,
Theosophy was first really propagated in India.
The early history of the Society in India need not concern
us here, save as it
had repercussions in the United States. But it is necessary
to touch upon the
conspicuous events that transpired there in 1884-85, for
they shook the
Theosophic movement to its foundations and for a time
threatened to end it. We
refer to the official Reports issued in those two years by
the Society for
Psychical Research in England upon the genuineness of the
Theosophic phenomena.1
The S.P.R., having been founded shortly before 1884 by
prominent men interested
in the growing reports of spiritistic and psychic phenomena
(the early
membership included at least three Theosophists, Prof. F. W.
H. Myers, Mr. W.
Stainton Moses and Mr. C. C. Massey), manifested a
pronounced interest in the
recently-published and widely-read works of Mr. Sinnett, The
Occult World and
Esoteric Buddhism. Madame Blavatsky's Isis Unveiled and the
works and
experiments of Prof. William Crookes had done much to foster
this new study.
Accordingly when Col. Olcott and Mohini M. Chatterji, a
devoted follower of
H.P.B., were in Europe in 1884, the S.P.R. requested the
three to sit for
friendly questioning concerning Madame Blavatsky's reported
marvels. She was
herself interrogated at this time. This procedure led to the
publication "for
private and confidential use" of the First Report of
the Committee in the fall
of 1884. In sum the Report expressed decided incredulity as
to the genuine
nature of the phenomena. Ascribing fraud only to Madame
Blavatsky, it says:
"Now the evidence in our opinion renders it impossible
to avoid one or other of
two alternative conclusions: Either that some of the
phenomena recorded are
genuine, or that other persons than Madame Blavatsky, of good
standing in
society, and with characters to lose, have taken part in
deliberate imposture."
The conclusion was:
"On the whole, however, (though with some serious
reserves) it seems undeniable
that there is a prima facie case for some part at least of
the claim made, which
. . . cannot, with consistency, be ignored."
Later in the same year the S.P.R. sent one of its members,
Mr. Richard Hodgson,
a young University graduate, to India to conduct further
investigation of the
phenomena reported to have taken place at the Headquarters
of the Theosophical
Society, at Madras. He was given untrammeled access to the
premises and.101
permitted to examine in person members of the household who
had witnessed some
of the events in question.
H.P.B.'s nemesis in these ill-started proceedings was one
Madame Coulomb. In
1871, when Madame Blavatsky had been brought to Cairo, along
with other
survivors of their wrecked vessel, the French woman, a
claimant to the
possession of mediumistic powers, became interested in
H.P.B.'s psychic
abilities and rendered her some assistance. When, in 1879,
the Founders arrived
in India, Madame Coulomb in her turn resorted to her Russian
friend for aid, and
H.P.B. made her the housekeeper, and her husband the general
utility man, of the
little Theosophic colony. They proved to be ungrateful,
meddlesome, and
unscrupulous, became jealous and discontented, and when left
in charge of Madame
Blavatsky's own rooms in the building during her absence on
the journey to
Europe in 1884, they fell into bickering and open conflict
with Mr. Lane-Fox,
Dr. Franz Hartmann and others of the personnel over
questions of authority and
small matters of household management. Both they and the
Theosophists took up
the matters of dispute by letter with H.P.B. and Col. Olcott
in Europe, and the
two leaders urged conciliation and peace on both sides. But
finally the ill-repressed
resentment of Madame Coulomb broke out into secret
machinations with
the Christian missionaries to expose Madame Blavatsky as a
fraud. Madame Coulomb
placed in the hands of the missionaries letters allegedly
written to her by her
former friend, in which evidence of the latter's connivance
with her French
protιgι to perpetrate deception in phenomena was revealed.
Just before exploding
this bombshell the Coulombs had become unendurable, and had
finally been
compelled to leave the premises.
Madame Coulomb bartered her incriminating material to the
missionaries for a
considerable sum of money, and the purchasers spread the
alleged exposure before
the public in their organ, the Christian College Magazine.2
Madame Blavatsky, in
Europe, made brief replies in the London Times and the Pall
Mall Gazette,
stating that the Coulomb letters were forgeries. She wished
to bring
recrimination proceedings against her accusers to vindicate
herself and the
Society. Friends dissuaded her, or deserted her, and nothing
was done. But the
Founders prepared to hasten back to India. Col. Olcott seems
to have taken a
vacillating course, and the resolution adopted at a
Convention held in India
upon their return expressed the opinion of the delegates
that Madame Blavatsky
should take no legal action.
She resigned her office as Corresponding Secretary, but
later was requested to
resume her old place.
Mr. Hodgson submitted his report, which was published near
the end of 1885.3 He
had not witnessed any phenomena nor examined any. He
questioned witnesses to
several of the wonders a full year after the latter had
taken place. He rendered
an entirely ex parte judgment in that he acted as judge,
accuser, and jury and
gave no hearing to the defense. He ignored a mass of
testimony of the witnesses
to the phenomena, and accepted the words of the Coulombs whose
conduct had
already put them under suspicion.4 The merits of the entire
case have been
carefully gone into by William Kingsland in his The Real H.
P. Blavatsky, and by
the anonymous authors of The Theosophical Movement. The
matter of most decisive
weight in Mr. Hodgson's unfavorable judgment was the secret
panel in H.P.B.'s
"shrine" or cabinet built in the wall of her room,
and a sliding door exhibited
by the Coulombs to the investigators, and described as
having been used by
Madame Blavatsky for the insertion of alleged Mahatma
letters from the next room
by one of the Coulomb accomplices. The Theosophists resident
at Headquarters
charged that the secret window had been built in, at the
instigation of the
missionaries, by M. Coulomb during H.P.B.'s absence. He
alone had the keys to.102
Madame's apartment, and one of the points of his quarrel
with the house members
was the possession of the keys. He refused to give them up,
alleging that Madame
Blavatsky had placed him in exclusive charge of her rooms
during her absence.
The charges of course threw doubt upon the existence of the
Masters, the
genuineness of their purported letters and the whole
Mahatmic foundation of
Theosophy.
A great point at issue was the comparison of H.P.B.'s
handwriting with that of
the Mahatma Letters. Two experts, Mr. F. G. Netherclift and
Mr. Sims, first
testified they were not identical, but later reversed their
testimony. Mr. F. W.
H. Myers confessed there was entire similarity between the
handwriting of the
Mahatma Letters and a letter received by Madame Blavatsky's
aunt, Madame Fadeef,
back in 1870 at Odessa, Russia, from the hand of a Hindu
personage who then
vanished from before her eyes. (Madame Blavatsky was at some
other quarter of
the globe at the time.) A distinguished German handwriting
expert later declared
there was no similarity between H.P.B.'s chirography and
those of the Master M.
and K.H.
It remained for Mr. Hodgson to assign an adequate motive for
Madame Blavatsky's
colossal career of deception, and here he confesses
difficulty. He finally
concludes that her motive was patriotism for her native
land: she was a Russian
spy! Mr. Solovyoff, in his A Modern Priestess of Isis, gives
some substance to
this charge. It is conceivable that Madame Blavatsky could
have felt sentimental
interest in the Russianizing, rather than the Anglicizing,
of India; yet it
appears preposterous to think that she would have endured
the privations and
hardships to which she was subjected in her devotion to
Theosophy merely to
cloak a subterranean machination for Russian dominance in
India. She was an
American citizen, having been naturalized before she left
the United States.
Mr. Hodgson declared Madame Blavatsky to be "one of the
most accomplished,
ingenious and interesting impostors in history." In a
letter to Sinnett, June
21, 1885, she records her reciprocal opinion of Mr. Hodgson.
She writes:
"They very nearly succeeded [in killing both her and
the Theosophical Society].
At any rate they have succeeded in fooling Hume and the
S.P.R. Poor Myers! and
still more, poor Hodgson! How terribly they will be laughed
at some day!"
The attack of the S.P.R. upon Theosophy and its leaders fell
with great force
upon the followers of the movement everywhere and only a few
remained loyal
through the storm.
Among the faithful in America was Mr. W. Q. Judge. It
remained for him to effect
a reorganization of the forces in the United States in 1885,
when the S.P.R.
attack was raging abroad. In the previous year he had gone
to France, had met
H.P.B., continued on to India and back to America. In 1885
he reorganized the
sparse membership into the Aryan Lodge. In 1886 he started
the publication of
The Path, long the American organ for his expression of
Theosophy. Active study
and propaganda followed quickly thereupon and the number of
branches soon
tripled. Col. Olcott had appointed an American Board of
Control. This body met
at Cincinnati in 1886 and organized "The American
Section of the Theosophical
Society." In April, 1887, the branches held their first
Convention, and adopted
constitution and by-laws. Mr. Judge became General
Secretary. The organization
was a copy of that of the Federal Government, though
allegiance was subscribed
to the General Council in India. In 1888 the second
Convention was held, with
Mr. Archibald Keightley present as a representative from
England. Theosophical
organization was at last in full swing in America..103
Brief mention may be made at this point of a somewhat divergent
movement within
the ranks of Theosophy itself about 1886. A Mr. W. T. Brown,
of Glasgow, had had
close fellowship with the Theosophists at Adyar, Madras,
from 1884 to 1886. He
then came to this country and associated himself with Mrs.
Josephine W. Cables,
who had been a Christian Spiritualist, but who had as early
as 1882 organized
the Rochester Theosophical Society. This was the first
Theosophical Lodge
established in America after the original founding in New
York in 1875. But Mrs.
Cables tried to represent Theosophy as a mixture of
Christianity, Spiritualism,
Mysticism, personal ideas on diet and occultism in general.
She founded The
Occult World, a magazine which Prof. Elliott Coues, then
President of the
American Board of Control, tried to make the official organ
of Theosophy in
America. But Mr. Judge's Path was in the field, and Mrs.
Cables and Mr. Brown
gave expression to some jealousy of the rival publication,
alleging that the
Theosophical Society was not a unique instrument for the
spreading of occult
knowledge, but that Christ was to be accepted as the final
guide and authority.
They referred to the Theosophic teaching as
"husks," while Christ had fed the
world the real kernel. To this H.P.B. replied through The
Path for December,
1886, and cast the blame for their losing touch with her
Masters on Mrs. Cables
and Mr. Brown themselves.5 Mrs. Cables turned her Rochester
Theosophical Society
into the "Rochester Brotherhood" and her magazine
into an exponent of Mystical
Spiritualism. Mr. Brown returned to the fold of orthodox
Christianity. Prof.
Coues was destined to contribute a sensational
------CARDIFF THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY IN
WALES-------
CHAPTER to Theosophic history
before he broke with the movement forever.6
A close study of the record will reveal that it was during
these years that the
germ of a hierarchical division in the Theosophical
organization developed. In
the theory of the existence and evolutionary attainments of
the Masters
themselves was enfolded the conception of a graded approach
to their elevated
status. As the Theosophical Society came to be understood as
only an appanage of
the Masters in their service of humanity, its inner intent
was soon seen to be
that of affording a means of access to these high beings. It
was recognized as
an organization whose supreme headship was vested in the
Mahatmas and whose
corporate membership formed a lower degree of spiritual
discipleship. This
hierarchical grading naturally fell into three degrees,
predicated on the thesis
that the Adepts accept pupils for personal tutelage. There
were first, the
Masters, then their accepted pupils or chelas, and lastly
just plain
Theosophists or members of the Society. The third class
might or might not be
led to aspire to chelaship, on the terms of a serious pledge
to consecrate all
life's efforts to spiritual mastery. These three divisions
came to be called the
First, Second and Third Sections of the Theosophical
Society. It is the theory
advanced in the Theosophic Movement that H.P.B. represented
the First Section,
Mr. Judge the Second and Col. Olcott the Third. The Russian
noblewoman was
regarded as the only bona fide or authoritative link of
communication with the
First Section (though the Masters might at any time grant
the favor of their
special interest to others, as they did to Mr. Sinnett);
Judge was held to be an
accepted chela, in the high confidence of Madame Blavatsky
and her mentors,
their reliable agent to head the order of lay chelaship;
Col. Olcott was the
active and visible head of the Theosophical Society, the
accepted instrument of
the Masters in the work of building up that organization
which was to present
the ancient doctrine of their existence to the world and
mark out anew the path
of approach to them. H.P.B. and Judge worked behind the
scenes, while Olcott
stood in the gaze of the world. To them belonged the task of
bringing out the
teaching and keeping it properly related to its sources; to
him fell the
executive labor of providing ways and means to serve it to a
sceptical public.
The functions of the former two were esoteric; those of
Olcott exoteric. It was
understood that the Colonel was not advanced beyond the
position of a lay or.104
probationary chela. He himself seems to have accepted this
ranking as deserved,
and generously admitted that
"to transform a worldly man such as I was in 1874--a
man of clubs, drinking
parties, mistresses, a man absorbed in all sorts of worldly,
public, and private
undertakings and speculations-into that purest, wisest,
noblest, and most
spiritual of human beings-a 'Brother,' was a wonder
demanding next to miraculous
efficacy. . . . No one knows until he really tries it, how
awful a task it is to
subdue all his evil passions and animal instincts and develop
his higher
nature."7
The Theosophical Movement ascribes most of the trials and
tribulations of
Theosophy to the Colonel's indifferent success, at times, in
the "awful task."
Years later, Olcott says:
"She was the teacher, I the pupil; she the
misunderstood and insulted messenger
of the Great Ones, I the practical brain to plan, the right
hand to work out the
practical details."8
Out of this situation eventuated the formation of the
Esoteric Section of the
Theosophical Society. So many members were reaching out
after the chelaship that
Judge wrote to H.P.B. in 1887 for advice as to what to offer
them. She replied,
telling him to go ahead in America and she would soon do
something herself. She
then began the publication of Lucifer, in which the
qualifications, dangers,
obstacles, and status of chelaship were set forth in article
after article.
Judge went to London; and there, at the request of Madame
Blavatsky drew the
plans and wrote the rules for the guidance of the new body.
Col. Olcott looked
on with some perturbation while his spiritual superiors
stepped lightly over his
authority to inaugurate the higher enterprise. In October,
1888, the first
public statement relative to the Esoteric Section appeared.
It announced the
purpose of the formation of the Esoteric Section to be:
"To promote the esoteric interests of the Theosophical
Society by the deeper
study of esoteric philosophy."
All authority was vested in Madame Blavatsky and official
connection with the
Theosophical Society itself was disclaimed.
A further hint as to the impelling motive back of the new
branch of activity was
given by H.P.B. in the letter she addressed to the
Convention of the American
Section meeting in April, 1889. She says:
"Therefore it is that the ethics of Theosophy are even
more necessary to mankind
than the specific aspects of the psychic facts of nature and
man . . ."
She made a plea for solidarity in the fellowship of the
Theosophical Society, to
form a nucleus of true Brotherhood.
Unity had to be achieved to withstand exterior onslaught, as
well as interior
discord. An attack upon one must be equally met by all. The
first object of the
Society is Universal Brotherhood. She asked in the finale:
"How many of you have helped humanity to carry its
smallest burden, that you
should all regard yourselves as Theosophists? Oh, men of the
West, who would
play at being the Saviors of mankind before they can spare
the life of a
mosquito whose sting threatens them! Would ye be partakers
of Divine Wisdom or
true Theosophists? Then do as the gods when incarnated do.
Feel yourselves the.105
vehicles of the whole humanity, mankind as part of
yourselves, and act
accordingly . . ."
She then sent out a formal letter, marked strictly private
and confidential, to
all applicants for entry into the new school. It contained
an introductory
statement, the "Rules of the Esoteric Section
(Probationary) of the Theosophical
Society" and the "Pledge of Probationers in the
Esoteric Section." The latter
was as follows:
"I pledge myself to support, before the world, the
Theosophical Movement, its
leaders and its members; and in particular to obey, without
cavil or delay, the
orders of the Head of the Section, in all that concerns my
relation with the
Theosophical Movement."
It can be seen that such a pledge carried the possibility of
far-reaching
consequences and might be difficult to fulfil under certain
precarious
conditions. Much controversy in the Society from 1906
onwards hinges about this
pledge.
Madame Blavatsky went on to say:
"It is through an Esoteric Section alone . . . that the
great exoteric Society
may be redeemed and made to realize that in union and
harmony alone lie its
strength and power. The object of the Section, then, is to
help the future
growth of the Theosophical Society as a whole in the true
direction, by
promoting brotherly union at least among a choice
minority."
The Book of Rules provided that the work to be pursued was
not practical
occultism, but mutual help in the Theosophic life; it
outlined measures for
suppressing gossip, slander, cant, hypocrisy, and injustice;
for limiting the
claims of occult interests and psychic inclinations; it
inculcated the widest
charity, tolerance, and mutual helpfulness as the prime
condition of all true
progress. Said the Rule:
"The first test of true apprenticeship is devotion to
the interest of another."
It concludes:
"It is not the individual or determined purpose of
attaining oneself Nirvana,
which is, after all, only an exalted and glorious
selfishness, but the self-sacrificing
pursuit of the best means to lead our neighbor on the right
path . .
."
Conditions for membership in the Esoteric Section were
three: (1) one must be a
Fellow of the Theosophical Society; (2) the pledge must be
signed; (3) the
applicant must be approved by the Head of the Section. And
warning was issued
that, while no duties would be required in the Order that
would interfere with
one's family or professional obligations, "it is
certain that every member of
the Esoteric Section will have to give up more than one
personal habit . . . and
adopt some few ascetic rules." The habits referred to
were alcoholism and meat-eating,
mainly, and the ascetic rules were those regulating meditation,
sleep,
diet, kindly speech, altruistic thought, etc.
The establishment of the Esoteric Section was one of the
moves undertaken to
rebuild the structure of Theosophy which had been so badly
shattered by the
S.P.R. attack and its consequences. But while this was going
forward, largely
under the direction of Judge, Madame Blavatsky had already
begun to devote her.106
tireless energies to the accomplishment of another great
work of reconstruction.
Its inception bore a logical relation to the promulgation of
the Esoteric
branch. If students were to be taken deeper into the
essentials of the occult
life, there was need of a fuller statement of the scheme of
the world's racial
and cosmogonic history, so that the task of personal and
social development
might be seen and understood in its most intimate rapport
with the larger
streams of life. The arcane knowledge had to be further
unveiled.
The combined attack of the Coulombs, the Christian
missionaries and the English
Psychic Research Society on Madame Blavatsky in 1885 was
indeed a fiery-furnace
test. She had vigorously, in Isis and elsewhere, attacked
orthodoxy and
conservative interests in religion and science. She was now
to feel the full
force of the blow which society, through the representatives
of these vested
interests, was impelled to strike back at her, and it was
greater than she had
anticipated. It nearly ended her career. Not that she was
one to cringe and
wince under attack. Far from it. She wanted to bring suit
against her
calumniators. She burned under a sense of injustice. She
even contemplated the
possibility of startling a crowded court room with a display
of her suspected
phenomena. But-the trial would have necessitated dragging
her beloved Masters
into the mire of low human emotions, and this she could not
do. Instead, the
storm within her soul had to wear itself out by degrees. It
nearly cost her life