Articles about the Life and Work
of H P Blavatsky
Cardiff
Theosophical Society in Wales
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK. CF24 -1DL
Helena Petrovna
Blavatsky (1831 – 1891)
The Founder of
Modern Theosophy
The Life of
H P Blavatsky
Edited by A P Sinnett
CHAPTER 1
CHILDHOOD
QUOTING the authoritative statement of her late uncle, General
Fadeef, made at my request in 1881, at a time when he was
Joint-Secretary of State in the Home Department at St Petersburg,
Mme. H. P. Blavatsky (Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, to give the name at
full length) “ is, from her father's side, the daughter of Colonel
Peter Hahn, and granddaughter of General Alexis Hahn von Rottenstern
Hahn (a noble family of Mecklenburg, Germany, settled in Russia);
and she is, from her mother's side, the daughter of Helene Fadeef,
and granddaughter of Privy Councillor Andrew Fadeef and of the
Princess Helene Dolgorouky. She is the widow of the Councillor of
State, Nicephore Blavatsky, late Vice-Governor of the Province of
Erivan, Caucasus.”
Mademoiselle Hahn, to use her family name in referring to her
childhood, was born at Ekaterinoslaw, in the south of Russia, in
1831. Von Hahn would be the proper German form of the name, and in
French writing or conversation the name, as used by Russians, would
be De Hahn, but in its strictly Russian form the prefix was
generally dropped.
For the following particulars concerning the family I am indebted to
some of its present representatives who have taken an interest in
the preparation of these memoirs.
“The Von Hahn family is well known in Germany and Russia. The Counts
Von Hahn belong to an old Mecklenburg stock. Mme. Blavatsky's
grandfather was a cousin of Countess Ida Hahn-Hahn, the famous
authoress, with whose writings England is well acquainted. Settling
in Russia, he died in its service a full general. He was married to
the Countess Proêbstin, who, after his death, married Nicholas
Wassiltchikof, the brother of the famous Prince of that name. Mme.
Blavatsky's father left the military service with the rank of a
colonel after the death of his first wife. He had been married en
premières noces to Mademoiselle H. Fadeew, known in the
literary
world between 1830 and 1840 as an authoress — the first novel-writer
that had ever appeared in Russia — under the nom de plume of Zenaida
R . . . , and who, although dying before she was twenty-five, left
some dozen novels of the romantic school, most of which have been
translated into the German language. In 1846 Colonel Hahn married
his second wife — a Baroness Von Lange, by whom he had a daughter
referred to by Mme. Jelihowsky as ' little Lisa' in the extracts
here given from her writings, published in St Petersburg. On her
mother's side Mme. Blavatsky is the granddaughter of Princess
Dolgorouky, with whose death the elder line of that family became
extinct in Russia. Thus her maternal ancestors belong to the oldest
families of the empire, since they are the direct descendants of the
Prince or Grand Duke Rurik, the first ruler called to govern Russia.
Several ladies of that family belonged to the Imperial house,
becoming Czarinas (Czaritiza) by marriage. For a Princess Dolgorouky
(Maria Nikitishna) had been married to the grandfather of Peter the
Great, the Czar Michael Fedorovitch, the first reigning Romanof;
another, the Princess Catherine Alexeévna, was on the eve of
her
marriage with Czar Peter the II when he died suddenly before the
ceremony.
“A strange fatality seems always to have persecuted this family in
connection with England; and its greatest vicissitudes have been in
some way associated with that country. Several of its members died,
and others fell into political disgrace, as they were on their way
to London. The last and most interesting of all is the tragedy
connected with the Prince Sergeéy Gregoreevitch Dolgorouky,
Mme.
Blavatsky's grandmother's grandfather, who was ambassador in Poland.
At the advent of the Archduchess Anne of Courlang to the throne of
Russia, owing to their opposition to her favourite of infamous
memory, the Chancellor Biron, many of the highest families were
imprisoned or exiled; others put to death and their wealth
confiscated. Among these, such fate befell the Prince Sergèey
Dolgorouky. He was sent in exile to Berezof (Siberia) without any
explanation, and his private fortune, that consisted of 200,000
serfs, was confiscated. His two little sons were, the elder placed
with a village smith as an apprentice, the younger condemned to
become a simple soldier, and sent to Azof. Eight years later the
Empress Anne laxnovna recalled the exiled father, pardoned him, and
sent him as ambassador to London. Knowing Biron well, however, the
prince sent to the Bank of England 100,000 roubles to be left
untouched for a century, capital and accumulated interest, to be
distributed after that period to his direct descendants. His
presentiment proved correct. He had not yet reached Novgorod, on his
way to England, when he was seized and put to death by 'quartering'
(cut in four). When the Empress Elizabeth, Peter the Great's
daughter, came to the throne next, her first care was to undo the
great wrongs perpetrated by her predecessor through her cruel and
crafty favourite Biron. Among other exiles the two sons and heirs of
Prince Sergeéy were recalled, their title restored, and their
property ordered to be given back. This, however, instead of being
200,000 serfs, had dwindled down to only 8000. The younger son,
after a youth of extreme misery and hardship, became a monk, and
died young. The elder married a Princess Romadanovsky; and his son,
Prince Paul, Mme. Blavatsky's great-grandfather, named while yet in
his cradle a Colonel of the Guards by the Emperor, married a
Countess du Plessy, the daughter of a noble French Huguenot family,
emigrated from France to Russia. Her father had found service at the
Court of the Empress Catherine II where her mother was the favourite
dame d'honneur.
“The receipt of the Bank of England for the sum of 100,000 roubles,
a sum that at the end of the term of one hundred years had grown to
immense proportions, had been handed by a friend of the politically
murdered prince to the grandson of the latter, the Prince Paul
Dolgorouky. It was preserved by him with other family documents at
Marfovka, a large family property in the government of Penja, where
the old prince lived and died in 1837. But the document was vainly
searched for by the heirs after his death ; it was nowhere to be
found. To their great horror further research brought to light the
fact that it must have been burnt, together with the residence, in a
great fire that had some time previous destroyed nearly the whole
village. Having lost his sight in a paralytic stroke some years
previous to his demise, the octogenarian prince, old and ill, had
been kept in ignorance of the loss of the most important of his
family documents. This was a crushing misfortune, that left the
heirs bereft of their contemplated millions. Many were the attempts
made to come to some compromise with the bank, but to no purpose. It
was ascertained that the deposit had been received at the bank, but
some mistake in the name had been made, and then the bank demanded
very naturally the receipt delivered about the middle of the last
century. In short, the millions disappeared for the Russian heirs.
Mme. Blavatsky has thus in her veins the blood of three nations —
the Slavonian, the German, and the French.”
The year of Mademoiselle Hahn's birth, 1831, was fatal for Russia,
as for all Europe, owing to the first visit of the cholera, that
terrible plague that decimated from 1830 to 1832 in turn nearly
every town of the continent, and carried away a large part of its
populations. Her birth was quickened by several deaths in the house.
She was ushered into the world amid coffins and desolation. The
following narrative is composed from the family records :—
“Her father was then in the army, intervals of peace after Russia's
war with Turkey in 1829 being filled with preparations for new
fights. The baby was born on the night between July 30 and 31 — weak
and apparently no denizen of this world. A hurried baptism had to be
resorted to, therefore, lest the child died with the burden of
original sin on her soul. The ceremony of baptism in 'orthodox'
Russia is attended with all the paraphernalia of lighted tapers, and
'pairs' of godmothers and godfathers, every one of the spectators
and actors being furnished with consecrated wax candles during the
whole proceedings. Moreover, everyone has to stand during the
baptismal rite, no one being allowed to sit in the Greek religion —
as they do in Roman Catholic and Protestant Churches — during the
church and religious service. The room selected for the ceremony in
the family mansion was large, but the crowd of devotees eager to
witness it was still larger. Behind the priest officiating in the
centre of the room, with his assistants, in their golden robes and
long hair, stood the three pairs of sponsors and the whole household
of vassals and serfs. The child-aunt of the baby — only a few years
older than her niece aged twenty-four hours, — placed as ' proxy '
for an absent relative, was in the first row immediately behind the
venerable protopope. Feeling nervous and tired of standing still for
nearly an hour, the child settled on the floor, unperceived by the
elders, and became probably drowsy in the overcrowded room on that
hot July day. The ceremony was nearing its close. The sponsors were
just in the act of renouncing the Evil One and his deeds, a
renunciation emphasised in the Greek Church by thrice spitting upon
the invisible enemy, when the little lady, toying with her lighted
taper at the feet of the crowd,
inadvertently set fire to the long
flowing robes of the priest, no one remarking the accident until it
was too late. The result was an immediate conflagration, during
which several persons — chiefly the old priest — were severely
burnt. That was another bad omen, according to the superstitious
beliefs of orthodox Russia; and the innocent cause of it — the
future Mme. Blavatsky — was doomed from that day in the eyes of all
the town to an eventful life, full of vicissitude and trouble.
“Perhaps on account of an unconscious apprehension to the same
effect, the child became the pet of her grandparents and aunts, and
was greatly spoiled in her childhood, knowing from her infancy no
other authority than that of her own whims and will. From her
earliest years she was brought up in an atmosphere of legends and
popular fancy. As far back as her remembrances go, she was possessed
with a firm belief in the existence of an invisible world of
supermundane and sub-mundane spirits and beings inextricably blended
with the life of each mortal. The 'Domovoy' (house goblin) was no
fiction for her, any more than for her nurses and Russian maids.
This invisible landlord — attached to every house and building, who
watches over the sleeping household, keeps quiet, and works hard the
whole year round for the family, cleaning the horses every night,
brushing and plaiting their tails and manes, protecting the cows and
cattle from the witch, with whom he is at eternal feud — had the
affections of the child from the first. The Domovoy is to be dreaded
only on March the 30th, the only day in the year when, owing to some
mysterious reasons, he becomes mischievous and very nervous, when he
teases the horses, thrashes the cows and disperses them in terror,
and causes the whole household to be dropping and breaking
everything, stumbling and falling that whole day — every prevention
notwithstanding. The plates and glasses smashed, the inexplicable
disappearance of hay and oats from the stables, and every family
unpleasantness in general, are usually attributed to the fidgetiness
and nervous excitement of the Domovoy. Alone, those born on the
night between July 30th and 31st are exempt from his freaks. It is
from the philosophy of her Russian nursery that Mademoiselle Hahn
learned the cause of her being called by the serfs the Sedmitchka,
an untranslatable term, meaning one connected with number Seven; in
this particular case, referring to the child having been born on the
seventh month of the year, on the night between the 30th and 31st of
July — days so conspicuous in Russia in the annals of popular
beliefs with regard to witches and their doings. Thus the mystery of
a certain ceremony enacted in great secrecy for years during July
the 30th, by the nurses and household, was divulged to her as soon
as her consciousness could realise the importance of the initiation.
She learned even in her childhood the reason why, on that day, she
was carried about in her nurse's arms around the house, stables, and
cow-pen, and made personally to sprinkle the four corners with
water, the nurse repeating all the while some mystic sentences.
These may be found to this day in the ponderous volumes of
Sacharof's ' Russian Demonology,' [The Traditions of the Russian
People by J Sacharof in seven volumes, embracing popular literature,
beliefs, magic, witchcraft, the sub-mundane spirits, ancient customs
and rites, songs and charms, for the last 1000 years.] a laborious
work that necessitated over thirty years of incessant travelling and
scientific researches in the old chronicles of the Slavonian lands,
and that won to the author the appellation of the Russian Grimm.”
Born in the very heart of the country which the Roussalka (the
Undine) has chosen for her abode ever since creation — reared on the
shores of the blue Dnieper, that no Cossack of Southern Ukraine ever
crosses without preparing himself for death — the child's belief in
these lovely green-haired nymphs was developed before she had heard
of anything else. The catechism of her Ukraine nurses passed wholly
into her soul, and she found all these weird poetical beliefs
corroborated to her by what she saw, or fancied she saw, herself
around her ever since her earliest babyhood. Legends seem to have
lingered in her family, preserved by the recollections of the older
servants, of events connected with such beliefs, and they inspired
the early tyranny she was taught to exercise, as soon as she
understood the powers that were attributed to her by her nurses. The
sandy shores of the rapid Dnieper encircling Ekaterinoslaw, with
their vegetation of sallows, were her favorite rambling place, Once
there, she saw a roussalka in every willow tree, smiling and
beckoning to her; and full of her own invulnerability, impressed
upon her mind by her nurses, she was the only one who approached
those shores fearless and daring. The child felt her superiority and
abused it. The little four-year-old girl demanded that her will
should be implicitly recognized by her nurse, lest she should escape
from her side, and thus leave her unprotected, to be tickled to
death by the beautiful and wicked roussalka, who would no longer be
restrained by the presence of one whom she dared not approach. Of
course her parents knew nothing of this side of the education of
their eldest born, and learned it too late to allow such beliefs to
be eradicated from her mind. It is only after a tragic event that
would otherwise have passed hardly noticed by the family, that a
foreign governess was thought of. In one of her walks by the river
side a boy about fourteen who was dragging the child's carriage
incurred her displeasure by some slight disobedience. “I will have
you tickled to death by a roussalka ! ” she screamed. “There's one
coming down from that tree . . . here she comes . . . See, see!”
Whether the boy saw the dreaded nymph or not, he took to his heels,
and, the angry commands of the nurse notwithstanding, disappeared
along the sandy banks leading homeward. After much grumbling the old
nurse was constrained to return home alone with her charge,
determined to have “Pavlik” punished. But the poor lad was never
seen alive again. He ran away to his village, and his body was found
several weeks later by fishermen, who caught him in their nets. The
verdict of the police was “drowning by accident”. It was thought
that the lad, having sought to cross some shallow pools left from
the spring inundations, had got into one of the many sand pits so
easily transformed by the rapid Dnieper into whirlpools. But the
verdict of the horrified household — of the nurses and servants —
pointed to no accidental death, but to the one that had occurred in
consequence of the child having withdrawn from the boy her mighty
protection, thus delivering the victim to some roussalka on the
watch. The displeasure of the family at this foolish gossip was
enhanced when they found the supposed culprit gravely corroborating
the charge, and maintaining that it was she herself who had handed
over her disobedient serf to her faithful servants the water-nymphs.
Then it was that an English governess was brought upon the scene.
Miss Augusta Sophia Jeffries did not believe in the roussalkas or
the domovoys; but this negative merit was insufficient to invest her
with a capacity for managing the intractable pupil consigned to her
care. She gave up her task in despair, and the child was again left
to her nurses till about six years old, when she and her still
younger sister were sent to live with their father. For the next two
or three years the little girls were chiefly taken care of by their
father's orderlies; the elder, at all events, greatly preferring
these to their female attendants. They were taken about with the
troops to which their father was attached, and were petted on all
sides as the enfants du régiment.
Her mother died when Mademoiselle Hahn was still a child, and at
about eleven years of age she was taken charge of altogether by her
grandmother, and went to live at Saratow, where her grandfather was
civil governor, having previously exercised similar authority in
Astrachan. She speaks of having at this time been alternately petted
and punished, spoiled and hardened; but we may well imagine that she
was a difficult child to manage on any uniform system. Moreover, her
health was always uncertain in childhood; she was “ever sick and
dying”, as she expresses it herself, a sleep walker, and remarkable
for various abnormal psychic peculiarities, set down by her orthodox
nurses of the Greek Church to possession by the devil, so that she
was drenched during childhood, as she often says, in enough holy
water to have floated a ship, and exorcised by priests who might as
well have been talking to the wind for all the effect they produced
on her.
Some notes concerning her childhood have been furnished, for the
service of the present memoir, by her aunt, a lady who, as well as
Madame Jelihowsky, is known personally to myself and to many others
of Mme. Blavatsky's friends in Europe. Her strange excitability of
temperament, still one of her most marked characteristics, was
already manifest in her earliest youth. Even then she was liable to
ungovernable fits of passion, and showed a deep-rooted disposition
to rebel against every kind of authority or control. Her
warm-hearted impulses of kindliness and affection, however, endeared
her to her relatives in childhood, much as they have operated to
obliterate the irritation caused sometimes by her want of
self-control in regard to the minor affairs of life with the friends
of a later period. It is justly asserted by the memoranda before me,
“she has no malice in her nature, no lasting resentment even against
those who have wronged her, and
her true kindness of heart bears no
permanent traces of momentary disturbances”.
“We who know Madame Blavatsky well”, writes her aunt, speaking for
herself and for another relative who had joined with her in the
preparation of the notes I am now dealing with — “we who know her
now in age can speak of her with authority, not merely from idle
report. From her earliest childhood she was unlike any other person.
Very lively and highly gifted, full of humour, and of most
remarkable daring; she struck everyone with astonishment by her
self-willed and determined actions. Thus in her earliest youth and
hardly married, she disposed of herself in an angry mood, abandoning
her country, without the knowledge of her relatives or husband, who,
unfortunately, was a man in every way unsuited to her, and more than
thrice her age. Those who have known her from her childhood would —
had they been born thirty years later — have also known that it was
a fatal mistake to regard and treat her as they would any other
child. Her restless and very nervous temperament, one that led her
into the most unheard of, un-girlish mischief; her unaccountable —
especially in those days — attraction to, and at the same time fear
of, the dead; her passionate love and curiosity for everything
unknown and mysterious, weird and fantastical; and, foremost of all,
her craving for independence and freedom of action — a craving that
nothing and nobody could control; all this, combined with an
exuberance of imagination and a wonderful sensitiveness, ought to
have warned her friends that she was an exceptional creature, to be
dealt with and controlled by means as exceptional. The slightest
contradiction brought on an outburst of passion, often a fit of
convulsions. Left alone with no one near her to impede her liberty
of action, no hand to chain her down or stop her natural impulses,
and thus arouse to fury her inherent combativeness, she would spend
hours and days quietly whispering, as people thought, to herself,
and narrating, with no one near her, in some dark corner, marvellous
tales of travels in bright stars and other worlds, which her
governess described as 'profane gibberish'; but no sooner would the
governess give her a distinct order to do this or the other thing,
than her first impulse was to disobey. It was enough to forbid her
doing a thing to make her do it, come what would. Her nurse, as
indeed other members of the family, sincerely believed the child
possessed 'the seven spirits of rebellion'. Her governesses were
martyrs to their task, and never succeeded in bending her resolute
will, or influencing by anything but kindness her indomitable,
obstinate, and fearless nature.
“Spoilt in her childhood by the adulation of dependents and the
devoted affection of relatives, who forgave all to ' the poor,
motherless child' — later on, in her girlhood, her self-willed
temper made her rebel openly against the exigencies of society. She
would submit to no sham respect for or fear of the public opinion.
She would ride at fifteen, as she had at ten, any Cossack horse on a
man's saddle! She would bow to no one, as she would recede before no
prejudice or established conventionality. She defied all and
everyone. As in her childhood, all her sympathies and attractions
went out towards people of the lower class. She had always preferred
to play with her servants' children rather than with her equals, and
as a child had to be constantly watched for fear she should escape
from the house to make friends with ragged street boys. So, later on
in life, she continued to be drawn in sympathy towards those who
were in a humbler station of life than herself, and showed as
pronounced indifference to the ' nobility ' to which by birth she
belonged.”
The five years passed in safety with her grandparents seem to have
had an important influence on her future life. Miss Jeffries had
left the family; the children had another English governess, a timid
young girl to whom none of her pupils paid any attention, a Swiss
preceptor, and a French governess, who had gone through remarkable
adventures in her youth. Madame Henriette Peigneur was a
distinguished beauty in the days of the first French Revolution. Her
favorite narratives to the children consisted in the description of
those days of glory and excitement when, chosen by the “Phrygian
red-caps”, the citoyens rouges of Paris to represent in the public
festivals the Goddess of Liberty, she had been driven in triumph,
day after day, along the streets of the grande ville in glorious
processions. The narrator herself was now a weird old woman, bent
down by age, and looked more like the traditional Fée Carabosse
than
anything else. But her eloquence was moving, and the young girls
that formed her willing audience were greatly excited by the glowing
descriptions — most of all the heroine of these memoirs. She
declared then and there that she meant to be a “Goddess of Liberty”
all her life. The old governess was a strange mixture of severe
morality and of that brilliant flippancy that characterises almost
every Parisienne to her deathbed unless she is a bigot — which Mme.
Peigneur was not. But while her old husband — the charming, witty,
kind-hearted Sieur Peigneur, ever ready to screen the young girls
from his wife's pénitences and severity — taught them the
merriest
songs of Béranger, his best bons mots and anecdotes, his wife
had no
such luck with her lesson books. The opening of Noël and
Chopsal
became generally the signal for an escape to the wild woods that
surrounded the large villa occupied by Mademoiselle Hahn's
grandparents during the summer months. It was only when roaming at
leisure in the forest, or riding some unmanageable horse on a
Cossack's saddle, that the girl felt perfectly happy.
For the following interesting reminiscence of this period I am
indebted to Mme. Jelihowsky: —
“The great country mansion (datche) occupied by us at Saratow was an
old and vast building, full of subterranean galleries, long
abandoned passages, turrets, and
most weird nooks and corners. It
had been built by a family called Pantchoolidzef, several
generations of whom had been governors at Saratow and Penja — the
richest proprietors and noblemen of the latter province. It looked
more like a mediaeval ruined castle than a building of the past
century. The man who took care of the estate for the proprietors —
of a type now happily rare, who regarded the serfs as something far
lower and less precious than his hounds — had been known for his
cruelty and tyranny, and his name was a synonym for a curse. The
legends told of his ferocious and despotic temper, of unfortunate
serfs beaten by him to death, and imprisoned for months in dark
subterranean dungeons, were many and thrilling. They were repeated
to us mostly by Mme. Peigneur, who had been for the last twenty-five
years the governess of three generations of children in the
Pantchoolidzef family. Our heads were full of stories about the
ghosts of the martyred serfs, seen promenading in chains during
nocturnal hours; of the phantom of a young girl, tortured to death
for refusing her love to her old master, which was seen floating in
and out of the little iron-bound door of the subterranean passage at
twilight; and other stories that left us children and girls in an
agony of fear whenever we had to cross a dark room or passage. We
had been permitted to explore, under the protection of half-a-dozen
male servants and a quantity of torches and lanterns, those
awe-inspiring 'Catacombs'. True, we had found in them more broken
wine bottles than human bones, and had gathered more cobwebs than
iron chains, but our imagination suggested ghosts in every
flickering shadow on the old damp walls. Still Helen (Mme.
Blavatsky) would not remain satisfied with one solitary visit, nor
with a second either. She had selected the uncanny region as a
Liberty Hall, and a safe refuge where she could avoid her lessons. A
long time passed before her secret was found out, and whenever she
was found missing, a deputation of strong-bodied servant-men, headed
by the gendarme on service in the Governor's Hall, was despatched in
search of her, as it required no less than one who was not a serf
and feared her little to bring her up-stairs by force. She had
erected for herself a tower out of old broken chairs and tables in a
corner under an iron-barred window, high up in the ceiling of the
vault, and there she would hide for hours, reading a book known as
Solomon's Wisdom, in which every kind of popular legend was taught.
Once or twice she could hardly be found in those damp subterranean
corridors, having in her endeavours to escape detection lost her way
in the labyrinth. For all this she was not in the least daunted or
repentant, for, as she assured us, she was never there alone, but in
the company of ' beings ' she used to call her little ' hunch-backs
' and playmates.
“Intensely nervous and sensitive, speaking loud, and often walking
in her sleep, she used to be found at nights in the most out-of-way
places, and to be carried back to her bed profoundly asleep. Thus
she was missed from her room one night when she was hardly twelve,
and, the alarm having been given, she was searched for and found
pacing one of the long subterranean corridors, evidently in deep
conversation with someone invisible for all but herself. She was the
strangest girl one has ever seen, one with a distinct dual nature in
her, that made one think there were two beings in one and the same
body; one mischievous, combative, and obstinate — everyway
graceless; the other as mystical and metaphysically inclined as a
seeress of Prevorst. No schoolboy was ever more uncontrollable or
full of the most unimaginable and daring pranks and
espiègleries
than she was. At the same time, when the paroxysm of mischief-making
had run its course, no old scholar could be more assiduous in his
study, and she could not be prevailed to give up her books, which
she would devour night and day as long as the impulse lasted. The
enormous library of her grandparents seemed then hardly large enough
to satisfy her cravings.
“Attached to the residence there was a large abandoned garden, a
park rather, full of ruined kiosks, pagodas, and out-buildings,
which, running up hillward, ended in a virgin forest, whose hardly
visible paths were covered knee-deep with moss, and with thickets in
it which perhaps no human foot had disturbed for centuries. It was
reputed the hiding-place for all the runaway criminals and
deserters, and it was there that Helen used to take refuge, when the
' catacombs' had ceased to assure her safety.”
Her strange temperament and character are thus described in a work
called Juvenile Recollections Compiled for my Children, by Mme.
Jelihowsky, a thick volume of charming stories selected by the
author from the diary kept by herself during her girlhood: —
“Fancy, or that which we all regarded in these days as fancy, was
developed in the most extraordinary way, and from her earliest
childhood, in my sister Helen. For hours at times she used to
narrate to us younger children, and even to her seniors in years,
the most incredible stories with the cool assurance and conviction
of an eye-witness, and one who knew what she was talking about. When
a child, daring and fearless in everything else, she got often
scared into fits through her own hallucinations. She felt certain of
being persecuted by what she called ' the terrible glaring eyes,'
invisible to everyone else, and often attributed by her to the most
inoffensive inanimate objects; an idea that appeared quite
ridiculous to the bystanders. As to herself, she would shut her eyes
tight during such visions, and run away to hide from the ghostly
glances thrown on her by pieces of furniture or articles of dress,
screaming desperately, and frightening the whole household. At other
times she would be seized with fits of laughter, explaining them by
the amusing pranks of her invisible companions. She found these in
every dark corner, in every bush of the thick park that surrounded
our villa during the summer months ; while in winter, when all our
family emigrated back to town, she seemed to meet them again in the
vast reception rooms of the first floor, entirely deserted from
midnight till morning, Every locked door notwithstanding, Helen was
found several times during the night hours in those dark apartments
in a half-conscious state, sometimes fast asleep, and unable to say
how she got there from our common bedroom on the top story. She
disappeared in the same mysterious manner in daytime also. Searched
for, called and hunted after, she would be often discovered, with
great pains, in the most unfrequented localities; once it was in the
dark loft, under the very roof, to which she was traced, amid
pigeons' nests, and surrounded by hundreds of those birds. She was '
putting them to sleep ' (according to the rules taught in Solomon's
Wisdom], as she explained. [And, indeed pigeons were found if not
asleep still unable to move, and as though stunned in her lap at
such times.] At other times behind the gigantic cupboards that
contained our grandmother's zoological collection — the old
princess's museum of natural history having achieved a wide renown
in Russia in those days, — surrounded by relics of fauna, flora, and
historical antiquities, amid antediluvian bones of stuffed animals
and monstrous birds, the deserter would be found, after hours of
search, in deep conversations with seals and stuffed crocodiles. If
one could believe Helen, the pigeons were cooing to her interesting
fairy tales, while birds and animals, whenever in solitary
tête-à-tête with her, amused her with
interesting stories,
presumably from their own autobiographies. For her all nature seemed
animated with a mysterious life of its own. She heard the voice of
every object and form, whether organic or inorganic; and claimed
consciousness and being, not only for some mysterious powers visible
and audible for herself alone in what was to everyone else empty
space, but even for visible but inanimate things such as pebbles,
mounds, and pieces of decaying phosphorescent timber.
“With a view of adding specimens to the remarkable entomological
collection of our grandmother, as much as for our own instruction
and pleasure, diurnal as well as nocturnal expeditions were often
arranged. We preferred the latter, as they were more exciting, and
had a mysterious charm to us about them. We knew of no greater
enjoyment. Our delightful travels in the neighbouring woods would
last from 9 P.M. till I, and often 2, o'clock A.M. We prepared for
them with an earnestness that the Crusaders may have experienced
when setting out to fight the infidel and dislodge the Turk from
Palestine. The children of friends and acquaintances in town were
invited — boys and girls from twelve to seventeen, and two or three
dozen of young serfs of both sexes, all armed with gauze nets and
lanterns, as we were ourselves, strengthened our ranks. In the rear
followed a dozen of strong grown-up servants, cossacks, and even a
gendarme or two, armed with real weapons for our safety and
protection. It was a merry procession as we set out on it, with
beating hearts, and bent with unconscious cruelty on the destruction
of the beautiful large night-butterflies for which the forests of
the Volga province are so famous. The foolish insects, flying in
masses, would soon cover the glasses of our lanterns, and ended
their ephemeral lives on long pins and cork burial grounds four
inches square. But even in this my eccentric sister asserted her
independence. She would protect and save from death all those dark
butterflies — known as sphynxes —whose dark fur-covered heads and
bodies bore the distinct images of a white human skull. ' Nature
having imprinted on each of them the portrait of the skull of some
great dead hero, these butterflies are sacred, and must not be
killed,' she said, speaking like some heathen fetish-worshipper. She
got very angry when we would not listen to her, but would go on
chasing those ' dead heads' as we called them; and maintained that
by so doing we disturbed the rest of the defunct persons whose
skulls were imprinted on the bodies of the weird insects.
“No less interesting were our day-travels into regions more or less
distant. At about ten versts from the Governor's villa there was a
field, an extensive sandy tract of land, evidently once upon a time
the bottom of a sea or a great lake, as its soil yielded petrified
relics of fishes, shells, and teeth of some (to us) unknown
monsters. Most of these relics were broken and mangled by time, but
one could often find whole stones of various sizes on which were
imprinted figures of fishes and plants and animals of kinds now
wholly extinct, but which proved their undeniable antediluvian
origin. The marvellous and sensational stories that we, children and
schoolgirls, heard from Helen during that epoch were countless. I
well remember when stretched at full length on the ground, her chin
reclining on her two palms, and her two elbows buried deep in the
soft sand, she used to dream aloud and tell us of her visions,
evidently clear, vivid, and as palpable as life to her! . . . How
lovely the description she gave us of the submarine life of all
those beings, the mingled remains of which were now crumbling to
dust around us. How vividly she described their past fights and
battles on the spot where she lay, assuring us she saw it all; and
how minutely she drew on the sand with her finger the fantastic
forms of the long-dead sea-monsters, and made us almost see the very
colours of the fauna and flora of those dead regions. While
listening eagerly to her descriptions of the lovely azure waves
reflecting the sunbeams playing in rainbow light on the golden sands
of the sea bottom, of the coral reefs and stalactite caves, of the
sea-green grass mixed with the delicate shining anemones, we fancied
we felt ourselves the cool, velvety waters caressing our bodies, and
the latter transformed into pretty and frisky sea-monsters; our
imagination galloped off with her fancy to a full oblivion of the
present reality. She never spoke in later years as she used to speak
in her childhood and early girlhood. The stream of her eloquence has
dried up, and the very source of her inspiration is now seemingly
lost! She had a strong power of carrying away her audiences with
her, of making them see actually, if even vaguely, that which she
herself saw. . . . Once she frightened all of us youngsters very
nearly into fits. We had just been transported into a fairy world,
when suddenly she changed her narrative from the past to the present
tense, and began to ask us to imagine that all that which she had
told us of the cool, blue waves with their dense populations was
around us, only invisible and intangible, so far. . . . 'Just fancy!
A miracle!' she said ; ' the earth suddenly opening, the air
condensing around us and rebecoming sea waves.....Look, look there,
they begin already appearing and moving. We are surrounded with
water, we are right amid the mysteries and the wonders of a
submarine world ! . . .'
“She had started from the sand, and was speaking with such
conviction, her voice had such a ring of real amazement, horror, and
her childish face wore such a look of a wild joy and terror at the
same time, that when, suddenly covering her eyes with both hands, as
she used to do in her excited moments, she fell down on the sand
screaming at the top of her voice, 'There's the wave . . . it has
come! . . . The sea, the sea, we are drowning !' . . . Every one of
us fell down on our faces, as desperately screaming and as fully
convinced that the sea had engulfed us, and that we were no more! .
.
“It was her delight to gather around herself a party of us younger
children at twilight, and, after taking us into the large dark
museum, to hold us there, spell-bound, with her weird stories. Then
she narrated to us the most inconceivable tales about herself; the
most unheard of adventures of which she was the heroine, every
night, as she explained. Each of the stuffed animals in the museum
had taken her in turn into its confidence, had divulged to her the
history of its life in previous incarnations or existences. Where
had she heard of reincarnation, or who could have taught her
anything of the superstitious mysteries of metempsychosis, in a
Christian family ? Yet she would stretch herself on her favourite
animal, a gigantic stuffed seal, and caressing its silvery, soft
white skin, she would repeat to us his adventures, as told to her by
himself, in such glowing colours and eloquent style, that even
grown-up persons found themselves interested involuntarily in her
narratives. They all listened to, and were carried away by the charm
of her recitals, the younger audience believing every word she
uttered. Never can I forget the life and adventures of a tall white
flamingo, who stood in unbroken contemplation behind the glass panes
of a large cupboard, with his two scarlet-lined wings widely opened
as though ready to take flight, yet chained to his prison cell. He
had been ages ago, she told us, no bird, but a real man. He had
committed fearful crimes and a murder, for which a great genius had
changed him into a flamingo, a brainless bird, sprinkling his two
wings with the blood of his victims, and thus condemning him to
wander for ever in deserts and marshes. . . .
“I dreaded that flamingo fearfully. At dusk, whenever I chanced to
pass through the museum to say goodnight to our grandmother, who
rarely left her study, an adjoining room, I tried to avoid seeing
the blood-covered murderer by shutting my eyes and running quickly
by.
“If Helen loved to tell us stories, she was still more passionately
fond of listening to other people's fairy tales. There was, among
the numerous servants of the Fadeef family, an old woman, an
under-nurse, who was famous for telling them. The catalogue of her
tales was endless, and her memory retained every idea connected with
superstition. During the long summer twilights on the green grassy
lawn under the fruit trees of the garden, or during the still longer
winter evenings, crowding around the flaming fire of our
nursery-room, we used to cling to the old woman, and felt supremely
happy whenever she could be prevailed upon to tell us some of those
popular fairy tales, for which our northern country is so famous.
The adventures of' Ivan Zarewitch,' of' Kashtey the Immortal,' of
the 'Gray-Wolf', the wicked magician travelling in the air in a
self-moving seive; or those of Meletressa, the Fair Princess, shut
up in a dungeon until the Zarevitch unlocks its prison door with a
gold key, and liberates her — delighted us all. Only, while all we
children forgot those tales as easily as we had learned them, Helen
never either forgot the stories or consented to recognise them as
fictions. She thoroughly took to heart all the troubles of the
heroes, and maintained that all their most wonderful adventures were
quite natural. People could change into animals and take any form
they liked, if they only knew how; men could fly, if they only
wished so firmly. Such wise men had existed in all ages, and existed
even in our own days, she assured us, making themselves known, of
course, only to those who were worthy of knowing and seeing them,
and who believed in, instead of laughing at, them. . . .
“As a proof of what she said, she pointed to an old man, a
centenarian, who lived not far from the villa, in a wild ravine of a
neighbouring forest, known as 'Baranig Bouyrak'. The old man was a
real magician, in the popular estimation; a sorcerer of a good,
benevolent kind, who cured willingly all the patients who applied to
him, but who also knew how to punish with disease those who had
sinned. He was greatly versed in the knowledge of the occult
properties of plants and flowers, and could read the future, it was
said. He kept beehives in great numbers, his hut being surrounded by
several hundreds of them. During the long summer afternoons he could
be always found at his post, slowly walking among his favourites,
covered as with a living cuirass, from head to foot, with swarms of
buzzing bees, plunging both his hands with impunity into their
dwellings, listening to their deafening noise, and apparently
answering them — their buzzing almost ceasing whenever he addressed
them in his (to us) incomprehensible tongue, a kind of chanting and
muttering. Evidently the golden-winged labourers and their
centenarian master understood each other's languages. Of the latter,
Helen felt quite sure. ' Baranig Bouyrak' had an irresistible
attraction for her, and she visited the strange old man whenever she
could find a chance to do so. Once there, she would put questions
and listen to the old man's replies and explanations as to how to
understand the language of bees, birds, and animals with a
passionate earnestness. The dark ravine seemed in her eyes a fairy
kingdom. As to the centenarian ' wise-man', he used to say of her
constantly to us: ' This little lady is quite different from all of
you. There are great events lying in wait for her in the future. I
feel sorry in thinking that I will not live to see my predictions of
her verified; but they will all come to pass! . . .' ”
It would be impossible to write even a slight sketch of Mme.
Blavatsky's life without alluding continually to the occult theories
on which her own psychological development turns, and I think the
narrative will be rendered most intelligible if I frankly explain
some of these at the outset, without here being supposed to argue
the question as to whether these theories rest upon a correct
appreciation of natural laws (operating above and within those of
physical existence), or whether they constitute an exclusive
hallucination to which her mind has been subject. It will be seen,
at all events, that, according to such a view, the hallucination has
been very protracted and coherent, so much so that, as I say, the
life which has been entirely subordinate to the career marked out
for it by those to whom Mme. Blavatsky believes herself, and always
has believed herself, guided and protected, would be meaningless
without reference to this vitalising thread running through it. Of
course I have no wish to disguise my own adhesion to the view of
nature on which Mme. Blavatsky's theory of life rests, nor my own
conviction concerning the real existence of the living Adepts of
occult science with whom I believe Mme. Blavatsky, throughout her
life, to have been more or less closely associated. But to argue the
matter would convert this memoir into a philosophical treatise going
over a great deal of ground more fitly traversed in works of a
purely theosophical character. It will be enough for my present
purpose to expound the theory on which, as I say, Mme. Blavatsky's
comprehension of her own life rests, merely for the sake of
rendering the story which has to be set forth intelligible to the
reader.
The primary conception of oriental occultism, in reference to the
human soul, recognises it as an entity, a moral and intellectual
centre of consciousness, which not only survives the death of any
physical body in which it may be functioning at any given time, but
has also enjoyed many periods of both physical and spiritual
existence before its incarnation in that body. In fact, the entity —
the real individual according to this view — may be identified by
persons with psychic faculties sufficiently developed through a
series of lives, and not merely in reference to one. The view of
Nature I am describing — the Esoteric Doctrine — quite sufficiently
accounts for the fact that, from the point of view of any given
body, no incarnated person can command a prospect of the life-series
through which he may have passed. Each incarnation, each successive
life of the series, is a descent into matter from the point of view
of the real spiritual entity: a descent into a new organism in which
the entity — which is only altogether its true or higher self on the
spiritual plane of Nature — may function with greater or less
success according to the qualifications of the organism. The
organism only remembers, with specific detail, the incidents of its
own objective life. The true entity animating that organism may
perhaps retain the capacity of remembering a great deal more, but
not through the organism. Moreover, until the organism is complete —
that is to say, until the person concerned is grown up — the true
entity is only immersed in it — if I may employ a materialistic
illustration to suggest the idea which would be only fully
expressible m metaphysical language of great elaboration — to a
limited extent. The quite young child, as we ordinarily phrase it,
is not a morally responsible being: that is to say, the organism has
not attained a development in which the moral sense of the true
entity can function through the physical brain and direct physical
acts. But the young child is already marked out as in process of
becoming the efficient habitat of the entity or soul that has begun
to function through its organism; and, therefore, if we imagine that
there are in the world living men — adepts in the direction of
forces on the higher planes of Nature with which physical science is
not yet acquainted — we shall readily understand the peculiar
relations that exist between them and a child in process of growing
up, and gradually taking into itself a soul that such adepts are
already in relations with.
Let me repeat that this mere statement of the occult science view of
human nature is not put forward as a proof that things are so; but
simply because that theory of things will be found a continuous
thread upon which the facts of Mme. Blavatsky's life are strung. It
may be that, as the story goes on, some readers will develop other
theories to account for them, but all I have to say would appear
disjointed and incoherent without this brief explanation, while it
becomes, at all events, clearly intelligible with that clue to its
successive incidents.
In this way I proceed to assume, as a working hypothesis, that even
in childhood Mademoiselle Hahn was under the protection of a certain
abnormal agency capable even of producing results on the physical
plane when in extraordinary emergencies these were called for. For
example, I have more than once heard her tell a story of her
childhood's days about a great curiosity she entertained in
reference to a certain picture — the portrait of one of the
ancestors of the family — which hung up in the castle where her
grandfather lived, at Saratow, with a curtain before it. It hung at
a great height above the ground in a lofty room, and Mademoiselle
Hahn was a small mite at the time, though very resolute when her
mind was set upon a purpose. She had been denied permission to see
the picture, so she waited for an opportunity when the coast was
clear, and proceeded to take her own measures for compassing her
design. She dragged a table to the wall, and contrived to set
another small table on that, and a chair on the top of all, and then
gradually succeeded in mounting up on this unstable edifice. She
could just manage to reach the picture from this point of vantage,
and leaning with one hand against the dusty wall, contrived with the
other to draw back the curtain. The effect wrought upon her by the
sight of the picture was startling, and the momentary movement back
upset her frail platform. But exactly what occurred she does not
know. She lost consciousness from the moment she staggered and began
to fall, and when she recovered her senses she was lying quite
unhurt on the floor, the tables and chair were back again in their
usual places, the curtain had been run back upon its rings, and she
would have imagined the whole incident some unusual kind of dream
but for the fact that the mark of her small hand remained imprinted
on the dusty wall high up beside the picture.
On another occasion again her life seems to have been saved under
peculiar circumstances, at a time when she was approaching fourteen.
A horse bolted with her — she fell, with her foot entangled in the
stirrup, and before the horse was stopped she ought, she thinks, to
have been killed outright but for a strange sustaining power she
distinctly felt around her, which seemed to hold her up in defiance
of gravitation. If anecdotes of this surprising kind were few and
far between in Mme Blavatsky's life I should suppress them in
attempting to edit her memoirs, but, as will be seen later, they
form the staple of the narratives which each person in turn, who has
anything to say about her, comes forward to tell. The records of her
return to Russia after her first long wanderings are full of
evidence, given by her relatives, compared to which these little
anecdotes of her childhood told by herself sink into insignificance
as marvels. I refer to them, moreover, not for their own sake, but,
as I began by saying, to illustrate the relations which appear to
have existed in her early childhood between herself and those whom
she speaks of as her “Masters”, unseen in body, unknown by her at
that time as living men, but not unknown to the visions with which
her child-life was filled.
In the narrative quoted above, it will have been seen that she was
often noticed by her friends sitting apart in corners, when she was
not interfered with, apparently talking to herself. By her own
account she was at this time talking with playmates of her own size
and apparent age, who to her were as real in appearance as if they
had been flesh and blood, though they were not visible at all to
anyone else about her. Mademoiselle Hahn used to be exceedingly
annoyed at the persistent way in which her nurses and relatives
refused to take any notice whatever of one little hunchback boy who
was her favourite companion at this time. Nobody else was able to
take notice of him, for nobody else saw him, but to the abnormally
gifted child he was a visible, audible, and amusing companion,
though one who seems to have led her into endless mischief. But
amidst the strange double life she thus led from her earliest
recollections, she would sometimes have visions of a mature
protector, whose imposing appearance dominated her imagination from
a very early period. This protector was always the same, his
features never changed ; in after life she met him as a living man,
and knew him as though she had been brought up in his presence.
Students of spiritualism, of occultism, of clairvoyance will find
this record strangely confused at the first glance, but I think, by
the light of what I have said above in reference to the occult
theory of incarnation, people who hold that theory will be excused
for thinking that they see their way through the entanglement pretty
clearly. Mademoiselle Hahn was born, of course, with all the
characteristics of what is known in spiritualism as mediumship in
the most extraordinary degree, also with gifts as a clairvoyant of
an almost equally unexampled order. And as a child, the time had not
come at which it would have been possible for the occult protectors
of the entity thus beginning to function in that organism to set on
foot any of those processes of physical training by which such
natural gifts can be tamed, disciplined, and utilised. They had to
run wild for a time; thus we find Mademoiselle Hahn — looking at her
childhood's history from the psychological point of view —
surrounded by all, or a large number of the usual phenomena of
mediumship, and also visibly under the observation and occasional
guardianship of the authorities to whose service her mature
faculties were altogether given over, to the absolute repression in
after life of the casual faculties of mediumship.
Her friends were half-interested, half-terrified by those of her
manifestations which they could understand sufficiently to observe.
Her aunt says that from the age of four years “she was a
somnambulist and somniloquent. She would hold, in her sleep, long
conversations with unseen personages, some of which were amusing,
some edifying, some terrifying for those who gathered around the
child's bed. On various occasions, while apparently in the ordinary
sleep, she would answer questions, put by persons who took hold of
her hand, about lost property or other subjects of momentary
anxiety, as though she were a sibyl entranced. Sometimes she would
be missing from the nursery, and be found in some distant room of
the mansion, or in the garden, playing and talking with companions
of her dream-life. For years, in childish impulse, she would shock
strangers with whom she came in contact, and visitors to the house,
by looking them intently in the face and telling them that they
would die at such and such a time, or she would prophesy to them
some accident or misfortune that would befall them. And since her
prognostications usually came true, she was the terror, in this
respect, of the domestic circle.”
In 1844, the middle of the period during which she was growing up
from childhood to girlhood at Saratow, her father took her on her
first journey abroad. She accompanied him to Paris and London, a
child of fourteen, but a troublesome charge even then and even for
him, though in her father's hands she was docile from the point of
view of her demeanour in any other custody. One object of the visit
to London was to get her some good music lessons, for she showed
great natural talents as a pianist — which indeed have lingered
about her in later life, though often in total abeyance for many
years together. She had some lessons from Moscheles, and even, I
understand, played a duet at a private concert with a then
celebrated professional pianist. Colonel Hahn and his daughter went
to stay for a week in Bath during this visit to England, but the
only striking feature of this excursion that I can hear of had to do
with a little difficulty that arose between mademoiselle and her
father on the subject of riding. She wanted to go on a man's saddle,
Cossack fashion, as she had been used to, in face of all protests to
the contrary, in Saratow. The Colonel would not tolerate this, so
there was a scene, and a fit of hysterics on the part of the young
lady, followed by an attack of some more serious illness. He is
represented as having been well satisfied to get her home again, and
lodge her once more in the congenial wilds of Asia Minor. Her pride
in another accomplishment, her knowledge of the English language,
received a rude shock during this early visit to London. She had
been taught to speak English by her first governess, Miss Jeffries,
but in Southern Russia people did not make the fine distinctions
between different sorts of English which more fastidious linguists
are alive to. The English governess had been a Yorkshire woman, and
as soon as Mademoiselle Hahn began to open her lips among friends to
whom she was introduced in London, she found her remarks productive
of much more amusement than their substance justified. The
combination of accents she employed — Yorkshire grafted on
Ekaterinoslow — must have had a comical effect, no doubt, but Mdlle
Hahn soon came to the conclusion that she had done enough for the
entertainment of her friends, and would give forth her “hollow o's
and a's” no more. With her natural talent for speaking foreign
tongues, however, she set her conversation in another key by the
time she next visited England in 1851.
CHAPTER 2
MARRIAGE AND TRAVEL
THE marriage by which Mdlle Hahn acquired the name she has since
been known by took place in 1848. She was then, it will be seen,
about seventeen, and General Blavatsky to whom she was united — as
far as the ceremonies of the Church were concerned — was, at all
events, a man of advanced age. Madame herself believed that he was
nearer seventy than sixty. He was himself reluctant to acknowledge
to more than about fifty. Other matrimonial opportunities of a far
more attractive character were, as I now learn from her relatives,
open to her really at the time, but these would have rendered the
marriage state, had she entered it with some of her younger
admirers, a much more serious matter than she designed it to be in
her case. Her demeanor, therefore, with the most desirable of her
suitors was purposely intolerable. The actual adventure on which she
launched herself — for in its precipitation and brevity it may
fairly be described by that phrase — seems to have been brought
about by a combination of circumstances that could only have
influenced a girl of Mademoiselle Hahn's wild temper and irregular
training. Her aunt describes the manner in which the marriage was
arranged as follows : —
“She cared not whether she should get married or not. She had been
simply defied one day by her governess to find any man who would be
her husband, in view of her temper and disposition. The governess,
to emphasize the taunt, said that even the old man she had found so
ugly, and had laughed at so much, calling him 'a plume-less raven' —
that even he would decline her for a wife! That was enough: three
days after she made him propose, and then, frightened at what she
had done, sought to escape from her joking acceptance of his offer.
But it was too late. Hence the fatal step. All she knew and
understood was — when too late — that she had been accepting, and
was now forced to accept — a master she cared nothing for, nay, that
she hated; that she was tied to him by the law of the country, hand
and foot. A 'great horror ' crept upon her, as she explained it
later ; one desire, ardent, unceasing, irresistible, got hold of her
entire being, led her on, so to say, by the hand, forcing her to act
instinctively, as she would have done if, in the act of saving her
life, she had been running away from a mortal danger. There had been
a distinct attempt to impress her with the solemnity of marriage,
with her future obligations and her duties to her husband, and
married life. A few hours later, at the altar, she heard the priest
saying to her: 'Thou shalt honour and obey thy husband', and at this
hated word 'shalt,' her young face — for she was hardly seventeen —
was seen to flush angrily, then to become deadly pale. She was
overheard to mutter in response, through her set teeth —' Surely, I
shall not.' ”
And surely she has not. Forthwith she determined to take the law and
her future life into her own hands, and — he left her ' husband '
for ever, without giving him any opportunity to ever even think of
her as his wife.
“Thus Mme. Blavatsky abandoned her country at seventeen, and passed
ten long years in strange and out-of-the-way places — in Central
Asia, India, South America, Africa, and Eastern Europe.”
At the time the marriage took place, Mademoiselle Hahn was staying
with her grandmother and some other relatives at Djellallogly, a
mountain retreat frequented in the summer by the residents of
Tiflis. The young lady herself had never intended to do more than
establish the fact that General Blavatsky would be ready to marry
her, but with an engagement regularly set on foot, announced in the
family, proclaimed to friends, and so forth, with “congratulations”
coming in, and the bridegroom claiming its fulfilment, a restoration
of the status quo was found by the reckless heroine of the
complication more easily talked about than obtained. Her friends
protested against the scandal that would be created if the
engagement were broken off for no apparent reason. Pressed to go on
with the wedding, she seems to have consoled herself with the belief
that she would be securing herself increased liberty of action as a
married woman than ever she could compass as a girl. Her father was
altogether off the scene, far away with his regiment in Russia, and
though consulted by letter, was not sufficiently acquainted with the
facts of the case to take up any decided attitude either way. The
ceremony of the marriage, at all events, duly took place on the 7th
of July 1848.
Of course the theories concerning the married state entertained by
General Blavatsky and his abnormally natured young bride differed
toto coelo, and came into violent conflict from the day of the
wedding — a day of unforeseen revelations, furious indignation,
dismay, and belated repentance. Nothing was ever imagined in fiction
more extravagant than the progress of the brief and stormy though
imperfect partnership. The intelligent reader will understand that a
born occultist like Mademoiselle Hahn could never have plunged into
a relationship so intolerable, so impossible for her, as that of
husband and wife if she had understood on the ordinary plane of
human affairs what she was about. The day after the wedding she was
conducted by the General to a place called Daretchichag, a summer
retreat for Erivan residents. She tried already on this journey to
make her escape towards the Persian frontier, but the Cossack she
sought to win over as her guide in this enterprise betrayed her
instead to the General, and she was carefully guarded. The cavalcade
duly reached the residence of the governor — the scene of his
peculiar honeymoon. Certainly the position in which he was placed
commands our retrospective sympathy for some reasons ; but it is
impossible to go into a discussion of details that might go far to
qualify this. For three months the newly married couple remained
together under the same roof, each fighting for impossible
concessions, and then at last, in connection with a quarrel more
violent even than the rest, the young lady took horse on her own
account and rode to Tiflis.
Family councils followed, and it was settled that the unmanageable
bride should be sent to join her father. He arranged to meet her at
Odessa, and she was despatched in the care of an old servant-man and
a maid, to catch at Poti a steamer that would take her to her
destination. But her desperate passion for adventure, coupled with
apprehensions that her father might endeavour to refasten the broken
links of her nuptial bond, led her to design in her own mind an
amendment to this programme. She so contrived matters on the journey
through Georgia, to begin with, that she and her escort missed the
steamer at Poti. But a small English sailing vessel was lying in the
harbour. Mme. Blavatsky went on board this vessel — the Commodore
she believes was the name, and, by a liberal outlay of roubles,
persuaded the skipper to fall in with her plans. The Commodore was
bound first to Kertch, then to Taganrog in the Sea of Azof, and
ultimately to Constantinople. Mme. Blavatsky took passage for
herself and servants, ostensibly to Kertch. On arriving there, she
sent the servants ashore to procure apartments and prepare for her
landing the following morning. But in the night, having now shaken
herself free of the last restraints that connected her with her past
life, she sailed away in the Commodore for Taganrog in the first
instance, as the vessel had business at that port, and afterwards
returning to the Black Sea, for Constantinople.
The little voyage itself seems to have been full of adventures,
which, in dealing with a life less crowded with adventures all
through, than Mme. Blavatsky's one would stop to chronicle. The
harbour police of Taganrog visiting the Commodore on her arrival,
had to be so managed as not to suspect that an extra person was on
board. The only available hiding place — amongst the coals — was
found unattractive by the passenger, and was assigned to the cabin
boy, whose personality she borrowed for the occasion, being stowed
away in a bunk on pretence of illness. Later on, when the vessel
arrived at Constantinople, further embarrassments had developed
themselves, and she had to fly ashore precipitately in a caique with
the connivance of the steward to escape the persecutions of the
skipper. At Constantinople, however, she had the good fortune to
fall in with a Russian lady of her acquaintance, the Countess
K-----, with whom she formed a safe intimacy, and travelled for a
time in Egypt, Greece, and other parts of Eastern Europe.
Unfortunately, it is impossible for me to do more than sketch the
period of her life that we now approach in the meagrest outline. For
the full details of her childhood given in the foregoing pages, we
are indebted to her relatives. She herself, though frequently able
to tell disjointed anecdotes of her childhood, could never have put
together so connected a narrative as that obtained from Mme.
Jelihowsky, and there was no sister at hand to keep a record of her
subsequent adventures during her wanderings all over the world. She
never kept diaries during this period, and memory at a distance of
time is a very uncertain guide, but if the present record is uneven
in its treatment of various periods, I can only point in excuse for
this to the obvious embarrassments of my task.
In Egypt, while travelling with the Countess K-----, Mme. Blavatsky
already began to pick up some occult teaching, though of a very
different and inferior order from that she acquired later. At that
time there was an old Copt at Cairo, a man very well and widely
known ; of considerable property and influence, and of a great
reputation as a magician. The tales of wonder told about him by
popular report were very thrilling. Mme. Blavatsky seems to have
been a pupil who readily attracted his interest, and was
enthusiastic in imbibing his instruction. She fell in with him again
in later years, and spent some time with him at Boulak, but her
acquaintance with him in the beginning did not last long, as she was
only at that time in Egypt for about three months. With an English
lady of rank whom she met during this period she also travelled for
a time. Her relatives at Tiflis had lost all traces of her from the
time the deserted servants at Kertch reported her disappearance, but
she herself communicated privately with her father, and secured his
consent to her vague programme of foreign travel. He realised the
impossibility of inducing her to resume the broken thread of her
married life; and, indeed, considering all that had passed, it is
not unreasonable to suppose that General Blavatsky himself was ready
to acquiesce in the separation. He endeavoured, indeed, to obtain a
formal divorce on the ground that his marriage had never been more
than a form, and that his wife had run away; but Russian law at the
time was not favourable to divorce, and the attempt failed. Colonel
Hahn, however, supplied his fugitive daughter with money, and kept
her counsel in regard to her subsequent movements. Ten years elapsed
before she again saw her relatives, and her restless eagerness for
travel carried her during this period to all parts of the world. She
kept no diary, and at this distance of time can give no very
connected story of these complicated wanderings. Within about a year
of their commencement she seems to have been in Paris, where she was
intimate with many literary celebrities of the time, and where a
famous mesmerist, still living as I write, though an old man now,
discovered her wonderful psychic gifts, and was very eager to retain
her under his control as a sensitive. But the chains had not yet
been forged that could make her prisoner, and she quitted Paris
precipitately to escape this influence. She went over to London, and
passed some time in company with an old Russian lady of her
acquaintance, the Countess B------, at Mivart's Hotel, whom,
however, she out-stayed in London, remaining there in company with
the Countess's demoiselle de compagnie in a big hotel, she says,
somewhere between the City and the Strand, “but as to names or
numbers, you might as well ask me to tell you what was the number of
the house you lived in in your last incarnation.”
Connected as she was in Russia, she naturally met a good many of her
own countrymen abroad with whom she was either already acquainted,
or who were glad to befriend her. Sometimes, when circumstances were
favourable, she would travel with companions thus thrown in her way,
at other times altogether alone. Her craving for adventure and for
all strange and outlandish places and people was quite unsatiable.
Her first long flight abroad was prompted by a passionate enthusiasm
for the North American Indians, contracted from the perusal of
Fennimore Cooper's novels. After a little minor touring about Europe
with the Countess B------ in 1850, she welcomed the New Year of 1851
at Paris, and in the July of that year went in pursuit of the Red
Indians of her imagination to Canada. Fortunately her illusion on
the subject of these heroes was destined to an early dissipation. At
Quebec (she believes it was) a party of Indians were introduced to
her. She was delighted to encounter the sons of the forest, and even
the daughters thereof, their squaws. With some of these she settled
down for a long gossip over the mysterious doings of the medicine
men. Eventually they disappeared, and with them various articles of
Madame's personal property — especially a pair of boots that she
greatly prized, and which the resources of Quebec in those days
could not replace. The Red Indian of actual fact thus ruined the
ideal she had constructed in her fancy. She gave up her search for
their wigwams, and developed a new programme. In the first instance,
she thought she would try to come to close quarters with the
Mormons, then beginning to excite public attention; but their
original city, Nauvoo, in Missouri, had just been destroyed by the
unruly mob of their less industrious and less prosperous neighbours,
and the survivors of the massacre in which so many of their people
fell were then streaming across the desert in search of a new home.
Mme. Blavatsky thought that under these circumstances Mexico looked
an inviting region in which to risk her life next, and she made her
way, in the meanwhile, to New Orleans.
This apparently hasty sketch will give the reader no idea of the
difficulty with which she has, at this long subsequent period,
recalled even so much as is here set down. It has only been by help
of public events that she can remember to have heard about at such
and such places that I have been enabled to construct a skeleton
diary of her wanderings, on which here and there her recollections
enable me to put a little flesh and blood At New Orleans the
principal interest of her visit centred in the Voodoos, a sect of
negroes, natives of the West Indies, and half-castes, addicted to a
form of magic practices that no highly-trained occult student would
have anything to do with, but which nevertheless presented
attractions to Mme. Blavatsky, not yet far advanced enough in the
knowledge held in reserve for her, to distinguish “black” from
“white” varieties of mystic exercise. The Voodoos' pretensions were
of course discredited by the educated white population of New
Orleans, but they were none the less shunned and feared. Mme.
Blavatsky might have been drawn dangerously far into association
with them, fascinated as her imagination was liable to become by
occult mysteries of any kind; but the strange guardianship that had
so often asserted itself to her advantage during her childhood —
which had by this time assumed a more definite shape, for she had
now met, as a living man the long familiar figure of her visions —
again come to her rescue. She was warned in a vision of the risk she
was running with the Voodoos, and at once moved off to fresh fields
and pastures new.
She went through Texas to Mexico, and contrived to see a good deal
of that insecure country, protected in these hazardous travels by
her own reckless daring, and by various people who from time to time
interested themselves in her welfare. She speaks with special
gratitude of an old Canadian, a man known as Père Jacques, whom
she
met in Texas, where at the time she was quite without any
companionship. He saw her safely through some perils to which she
was then exposed, and thus by hook or by crook Madame always managed
to scramble along unscathed; though it seems miraculous in the
retrospect that she should have been able — young woman at that time
as she was — to lead the wild life on which she was embarked without
actually incurring disasters. There was no reliance in her case, as
in that of Moore's heroine, on “Erin's honour and Erin's pride”. She
passed through rough communities of all kinds, savage as well as
civilised, and seems to have been guarded from harm, as assuredly
she was guarded, by the sheer force of her own fearlessness, and her
fierce scorn for all considerations however remotely associated with
the “magnetism of sex”.
During her American travels, which for this period lasted about a
year, she was lucky enough to receive a considerable legacy
bequeathed her by one of her godmothers. This put her splendidly in
funds for a time, though it is much to be regretted on her account
that the money was not served out to her in moderate instalments,
for the temperament, which the facts of her life so far even will
have revealed, may easily be recognised as one not likely to go with
habits of prudent expenditure. Madame, in the course of her
adventures, has often shown that she can meet poverty with
indifference, and battle with it in any way that may be necessary,
but with her pockets full of money, her impulse has always been to
throw it away with both hands. She is wholly unable to explain how
she ran through her 80,000 roubles, except that amongst other random
purchases she bought land in America, the very situation of which
she has long since totally forgotten, besides having, as a matter of
course, lost all the papers that had any reference to the
transaction.
She resolved during her Mexican wanderings that she would go to
India, fully alive already to the necessity of seeking beyond the
northern frontiers of that country for the further acquaintanceship
of those great teachers of the highest mystic science, with whom the
guardian of her visions was associated in her mind. She wrote,
therefore, to a certain Englishman, whom she had met in Germany two
years before, and whom she knew to be on the same quest as herself,
to join her in the West Indies, in order that they might go to the
East together. He duly came, but the party was further augmented by
the addition of a Hindu whom Mme. Blavatsky met at Copau, in Mexico,
and whom she soon ascertained to be what is called a “chela”, or
pupil of the Masters, or adepts of oriental occult science. The
three pilgrims of mysticism went out via the Cape to Ceylon, and
thence in a sailing ship to Bombay, where, as I make out the dates,
they must have arrived at quite the end of 1852.
A dispersion of the little party soon followed, each being bent on
somewhat different ends. Madame would not accept the guidance of the
Chela, and was bent on an attempt of her own to get into Tibet
through Nepal. For the time her attempt failed, chiefly, she
believes, as far as external and visible difficulties were
concerned, through the opposition of the British resident then in
Nepal. Mme. Blavatsky went down to Southern India, and then on to
Java and Singapore, returning thence to England.
1853, however, was an unfortunate year for a Russian to visit this
country. The preparations for the Crimean War were distressing to
Mme. Blavatsky's patriotism, and she passed over at the end of the
year again to America, going this time to New York, and thence out
West, first to Chicago, then an infant city compared to the Chicago
of the present day, and afterwards to the Far West, and across the
Rocky Mountains with emigrants' caravans, till ultimately she
brought up for a time in San Francisco. Her stay in America was
prolonged on this occasion altogether to something like two years,
and she then made her way a second time to India via Japan and the
Straits, reaching Calcutta in the course of 1855.
In reference to her prolonged wanderings her aunt writes: —
“For the first eight years she gave her mother's family no sign of
life for fear of being traced by her legitimate 'lord and master',
Her father alone knew of her whereabouts. Knowing, however, that he
would never prevail upon her to return home, he acquiesced in her
absence, and supplied her with money whenever she came to places
where it could safely reach her.”
During her travels in India in 1856 she was overtaken at Lahore by a
German gentleman known to her father, who, — in association with two
friends, having laid out a journey in the East on his own account,
with a mystic purpose in view, in reference to which fate did not
grant him the success that attended Mme. Blavatsky's efforts — had
been asked by Colonel Hahn to try if he could find his errant
daughter. The four compatriots travelled together for a time, and
went through Kashmir to Leli in Ladakh in company with a Tartar
Shaman, who was instrumental in helping them to witness some
psychological wonders wrought at a Buddhist monastery. Her
companions, Mme. Blavatsky explains, had all formed what, referring
to the incident in Isis Unveiled, she calls “the unwise plan of
penetrating into Tibet under various disguises — none of them
speaking the language, although one of them, a Mr K------, had
picked up some Kasan Tartar, and thought he did”. The passage in
Isis rather too long for quotation here. It begins on page 599, vol.
ii of that book, and describes the animation of an infant by the
psychic principles of the old Lama, the superior of the monastery.
The passage as given in his is taken from a narrative written by Mr
K-----, and put by him in Mme. Blavatsky's hands, and corresponds in
outline to similar marvels related by the Abbé Huc in the first
edition of his Recollections of Travel in Tartary, Tibet, and China.
In the later editions of that book the testimony the author gives to
the wonders he witnessed in Tibet is all cut down and mutilated. His
story was found to be too striking in recognition of “miracles” that
were not, under the direction of the church, to be tolerated by the
authorities in its earlier form ; but the first edition of the book
can still be seen at the British Museum, where I have verified the
accuracy of the quotation given in Isis.
In reference to the journey in the course of which the Russian
travellers witnessed the transaction at the Buddhist monastery, Mme.
Blavatsky writes: —
“Two of them, the brothers N------, were very politely brought back
to the frontier before they had walked sixteen miles into the weird
land of Eastern Bod, and Mr K------, an ex-Lutheran minister, could
not even attempt to leave his miserable village near Leli, as from
the first days he found himself prostrated with fever, and had to
return to Lahore via Kashmir.”
The Tartar Shaman, referred to above, rendered Mme. Blavatsky more
substantial assistance in her efforts to penetrate into Tibet than
he was able to afford to her companions. Investing her with an
appropriate disguise, he conducted her successfully across the
frontier, and far on into the generally inaccessible country. It was
to this journey that she vaguely refers in a striking passage
occurring in the last chapter of Isis Unveiled. As the narrative,
though given in Isis without any of the surrounding circumstances,
fits here into its proper place in these records, I quote it at full
length. Reference has just been made to certain talismans which each
shaman carries under his left arm, attached to a string. Mme.
Blavatsky goes on : —
“ ' Of what use is it to you, and what are its virtues ? ' was the
question we often offered to our guide. To this he never answered
directly, but evaded all explanation, promising that as soon as an
opportunity was offered and we were alone, he would ask the stone to
answer for himself. With this very indefinite hope we were left to
the resources of our own imagination.
“But the day on which the stone 'spoke' came very soon. It was
during the most critical hours of our life; at a time when the
vagabond nature of a traveller had carried the writer to far-off
lands where neither civilisation is known nor security can be
guaranteed for one hour. One afternoon, as every man and woman had
left the yourta (Tartar tent) that had been our house for over two
months, to witness the ceremony of the Lamaic exorcism of
Tshoutgour, [An elemental demon, in which every native of Asia
believes.’] accused of breaking and spiriting away every bit of the
poor furniture and earthenware of a family living about two miles
distant, the Shaman, who had become our only protector in those
dreary deserts, was reminded of his promise. He sighed and
hesitated, but after a short silence, left his place on the
sheepskin, and going outside, placed a dried-up goat's head with its
prominent horns over a wooden peg, and then dropping down the felt
curtain of the tent, remarked that now no living person would
venture in, for the goat's head was a sign that he was ' at work.'
“After that, placing his hand in his bosom, he drew out the little
stone, about the size of a walnut, and, carefully unwrapping it,
proceeded, as it appeared, to swallow it. In a few moments his limbs
stiffened, his body became rigid, and he fell, cold and motionless
as a corpse. But for a slight twitching of his lips at every
question asked, the scene would have been embarrassing, nay
dreadful. The sun was setting, and were it not that the dying embers
flickered at the centre of the tent, complete darkness would have
been added to the oppressive silence which reigned. We have lived in
the prairies of the West, and in the boundless steppes of Southern
Russia; but nothing can be compared with the silence at sunset on
the sandy deserts of Mongolia; not even the barren solitudes of the
deserts of Africa, though the former are partially inhabited, and
the latter utterly void of life. Yet, there was the writer, alone
with what looked no better than a corpse lying on the ground.
Fortunately this state did not last long.
“ ' Mahaudû !' uttered a voice which seemed to come from the
bowels
of the earth, on which the Shaman was prostrated, ' Peace be with
you. What would you have me do for you ? '
“Startling as the fact seemed, we were quite prepared for it, for we
had seen other Shamans pass through similar performances. 'Whoever
you are', we pronounced mentally, 'go to K-----, and try to bring
that person's thought here. See what that other party does, and tell
----- what we are doing and how situated.'
“ ' I am there,' announced the same voice. ' The old lady (kokona)
is sitting in the garden. . . . she is putting on her spectacles and
reading a letter.'
“ 'The contents of it, and hasten', was the hurried order, while
preparing note-book and pencil. The contents were given slowly, as
if, while dictating, the invisible presence desired to put down the
words phonetically, for we recognised the Vallachian language, of
which we knew nothing beyond the ability to recognise it. In such a
way a whole page was filled.
“ ' Look west . . . toward the third pole of the yourta,' pronounced
the Tartar in his natural voice, though it sounded hollow, and as if
coming from afar. 'Her thought is here.'
“Then with a convulsive jerk the upper portion of the Shaman's body
seemed raised, and his head fell heavily on the writer's feet, which
he clutched with both his hands. The position was becoming less and
less attractive, but curiosity proved a good ally to courage. In the
west corner was standing, life-like, but flickering unsteady, and
mist-like, the form of a dear old friend, a Roumanian lady of
Vallachia, a mystic by disposition, but a thorough disbeliever in
this kind of occult phenomena.
“ 'Her thought is here, but her body is lying unconscious. We could
not bring her here otherwise', said the voice.
“We addressed and supplicated the apparition to answer, but all in
vain. The features moved and the form gesticulated as if in fear and
agony, but no sound broke forth from the shadowy lips; only we
imagined — perchance it was a fancy — hearing, as if from a long
distance, the Roumanian words, 'Non se pote' ('It cannot be done' ).
“For over two hours the most substantial, unequivocal proofs that
the Shaman's astral soul was travelling at the bidding of our
unspoken wish were given us. Ten months later, we received a letter
from a Vallachian friend in response to ours, in which we had
enclosed the page from the note-book, inquiring of her what she had
been doing on that day, and describing the scene in full. She was
sitting, she wrote, in the garden on that morning,[The hour in
Bucharest corresponded perfectly with that of the country in which
the scene had taken place.] prosaically occupied in boiling some
conserves; the letter sent to her was word for word the copy of the
one received by her from her brother; all at once, in consequence of
the heat she thought, she fainted, and remembered distinctly
dreaming she saw the writer in a desert place, which she accurately
described, and sitting under a gipsy's tent,' as she expressed it. '
Henceforth,' she added, 'I can doubt no longer'.
“But our experiment was proved better still. We had directed the
Shaman's Inner Eye to the same friend heretofore mentioned in this
chapter, the Kutchi of Lhassa, who travels constantly to British
India and back. We know that he was apprised of our critical
situation in the desert; for a few hours later came help, and we
were rescued by a party of twenty-five horsemen, who had been
directed by their chief to find us at the place where we were, which
no living man endowed with common powers could have known. The chief
of this escort was a Shaberon, an 'adept' whom we had never seen
before, nor did we after that, for he never left his soumay
(lamasary), and we could have no access to it. ... But he was a
personal friend of the Kutchi.”
This incident put an end for the time to Mme. Blavatsky's wanderings
in Tibet. She was conducted back to the frontier by roads and passes
of which she had no previous knowledge, and after further travels in
India, was directed by her occult guardian to leave the country,
shortly before the troubles which began in 1857.
She went in a Dutch vessel from Madras to Java, and thence returned
to Europe in 1858.
Meanwhile the fate to which she has been so freely exposed all
through her later life was already asserting itself to her
disadvantage, and without, up to this time, having challenged the
world's antagonism, by associating her name with tales of wonder,
she, nevertheless, already found herself — or rather, in her
absence, her friends found her — the mark for slanders, no less
extravagant, in a different way, than some that have been aimed at
her quite recently by people claiming to take an interest in psychic
phenomena, but unable to tolerate those reported to have been
brought about by her agency. Her aunt writes: “ Faint rumours
reached her friends of her having been met in Japan, China,
Constantinople, and the far East. She passed through Europe several
times, but never lived in it. Her friends, therefore, were as much
surprised as pained to read, years afterwards, fragments from her
supposed biography, which spoke of her as a person well known in the
high life, as well as the low, of Vienna, Berlin, Warsaw, and Paris,
and mixed her name with events and ancedotes whose scene was laid in
these cities, at various epochs, when her friends had every possible
proof of her being far away from Europe. These anecdotes referred to
her indifferently under the several Christian names of Julie,
Nathalie, etc which were those really of other persons of the same
surname; and attributed to her various extravagant adventures. Thus
the Neue Freie Presse spoke of Madame Heloise (?) Blavatsky, a
non-existing personage, who had joined the Black Hussars — les
Huzzards de la Mart — during the Hungarian revolution, her sex being
found out only in 1849.” Similar stories, equally groundless, were
circulated at a later date. Anticipating this, her aunt goes on : —
“Another journal of Paris narrated the story of Mme. Blavatsky, 'a
Pole from the Caucasus' (?), a supposed relative of Baron Hahn of
Lemberg, who, after taking an active part in the Polish Revolution
of 1863 (during the whole of which time Mme. H. P. Blavatsky was
quietly living with her relatives at Tiflis), was compelled, from
lack of means, to serve as a female waiter in a ' restaurant du
Faubourg St Antoine'. ”
These, and many other infamous stories circulated by idle gossips,
were laid at the door of Mme. Blavatsky, the heroine of our
narrative.
On her return from India in 1858, Mme. Blavatsky did not go straight
to Russia, but, after spending some months in France and Germany,
rejoined her own people at last in the midst of a family
wedding-party at Pskoff, in the north-west of Russia, about 180
miles from St Petersburg.
Concerning the next few years of Mme. Blavatsky's life, we are
furnished with ample details by means of narrative written at the
time by her sister, Mme. V. P.de Jelihowsky, and published in 1881
in a Russian periodical — the Rebus — as a series of papers, headed,
“The Truth about H. P. Blavatsky”. To this source of information we
may now turn.
CHAPTER 3
AT HOME IN RUSSIA, 1858
IN the course of certain Personal and Family Reminiscences, put
together by Mme de Jelihowsky, she explains the attitude of mind in
which she was brought up, interesting both as bearing on the
narrative she has to relate and also as connected with the family
history of the subject of this memoir. She writes: —
“I was born and bred in a strictly orthodox, sincerely religious,
yet far from being mystically-inclined, family. But if the spirit of
mysticism had failed to influence its members, it was not in
consequence of any predetermined policy of an a priori denial of
everything unknown, or of a tendency to sneer at the
incomprehensible only because it is far beyond one's capacities and
nature to take it in; but as ' highly educated and polished people'
can hardly be expected to confess their mental and intellectual
failings, hence the conscious efforts of playing at incredulity and
esprits forts. Nothing of the sort was to be found in our family.
Nor was there any great superstition or bigotry amongst them — two
feelings the best calculated to generate and develop faith in the
supernatural. But when, at the age of sixteen, I had to part with my
mother's family, in which I had been brought up since her death, and
went to live with my father, I met in him a man of quite a different
'nature. He was an extreme sceptic, a deist, if anything, and one of
a most practical turn of mind; a highly intellectual and even a
scientific man, one who knew and had seen a great deal in life, but
whose erudition and learning had been developed in full accordance
with his own personal views, and not at all in any spirit of
humility before the truths of Christianity, or blind belief in man's
immortality and life beyond the grave.”
In 1858, when Mme. Blavatsky returned to Russia, her sister, the
writer of the reminiscences from which I have just quoted, bore the
name of Yahontoff — that of her first husband, who had died shortly
before that date. She was staying at Pskoff with General N. A.
Yahontoff — Maréchal de Noblesse of that place — her late
husband's
father. A wedding-party, that of her sister-in-law, was in progress,
and Colonel Hahn was amongst the guests. On Christmas night, Mme. de
Jelihowsky writes, “They were all sitting at supper, carriages
loaded with guests were arriving one after the other, and the hall
bell kept ringing without interruption. At the moment when the
bridegroom's best men arose, with glasses of champagne in their
hands, to proclaim their good wishes for the happy couple — a solemn
moment in Russia — the bell was again rung impatiently. Mme.
Yahontoff, Mme. Blavatsky's sister, moved by an irrepressible
impulse, and notwithstanding that the hall was full of servants,
jumped up from her place at the table, and, to the amazement of all,
rushed herself to open the door. She felt convinced, she said
afterwards, though why she could not tell, that it was her long lost
sister! ”
For some time this memoir will closely follow Mme. de Jelihowsky's
narrative, now translated into English for the first time, but it
will be unnecessary to load every page with quotation marks. Where
the first person is used, it will be understood that Mme de
Jelihowsky is speaking, although she also frequently refers to
herself in the third person, as the narrative was originally
published in Russia anonymously. When I, the present editor, have
occasion to intervene with comments, such passages will be enclosed
in brackets.
Spiritism (or spiritualism) was then just looming on the horizon of
Europe, During her travels, the psychological peculiarities of Mme.
Blavatsky's childhood and girlhood had developed, and she returned
already possessed of occult powers, which were in those days
attributed to mediumship.
These powers asserted themselves in strange incessant knocks and
raps and sounds, which many hearers mistook for the esprits
frappeurs; in the moving of furniture without contact, in the
increase and the decrease of the weight of various objects, in her
faculty of seeing herself (and occasionally of transferring that
faculty to others) things invisible to ordinary sight, and living
but absent persons who had resided years ago in the places where she
happened to be, as well as spectral images of personages dead at
various epochs.
Well acquainted with a number of facts of the most striking
character which have happened at that period of her life (which,
however, has not lasted very long, as she succeeded very soon in
conquering and even obtaining mastery over the influence of forces
that surrounded her), I will describe only those phenomena of which
I was an eye-witness.
For this I must return to the night of Mme. Blavatsky's arrival.
From that time all those who were living in the house remarked that
strange things were taking place in it. Raps and whisperings,
sounds, mysterious and unexplained, were now being constantly heard
wherever the newly arrived inmate went. Not only did they occur in
her presence and near her, but knocks were heard, and movements of
the furniture perceived nearly in every room in the house, on the
walls, the floor, the windows, the sofa, cushions, mirrors, and
clocks ; on every piece of furniture, in short, about the rooms.
However much Mme. Blavatsky tried to conceal these facts, laughing
at them and trying to turn these manifestations into fun, it was
useless for her to deny the fact or the occult significance of these
sounds. At last, to the incessant questions of her sister, she
confessed that those manifestations had never ceased to follow her
everywhere as in the early days of her infancy and youth. That such
raps could be increased or diminished, and at times even made to
cease altogether, by the mere force of her will, she also
acknowledged, proving her assertion generally on the spot. Of course
the good people of Pskoff, like the rest of the world, knew what was
then occurring, and had heard of spiritualism and its
manifestations. There had been mediums in Petersburg, but they had
not penetrated as far as Pskoff, and its guileless inhabitants had
never heard the rappings of the so-called spirit.
[All who have become acquainted with Mme. Blavatsky in the present
phase of her development will be aware of the eagerness with which
she repudiates the least trace of mediumship as entering into the
phenomena with which she had been associated in recent years. In
1858 she appears to have been in a transition state, already
invested with occult will-power, which put her in a position to
repress the manifestations of mediumship in emergencies, but still
liable to their spontaneous occurrence when they were not thus under
repression. Expressly asked the question, she would always deny that
she was a medium — which, indeed, she would appear no longer to have
been, in the strict sense of the term — for she does not seem to
have been controlled by the agencies recognised in spiritualism,
even when sometimes acquiescing in casual manifestations on their
part. Mme. de Jelihowsky, questioned on this subject recently, says:
“I remember that when addressed as a medium, she (Mme. Blavatsky)
used to laugh and assure us she was no medium, but only a. mediator
between mortals and beings we knew nothing about. But I could never
understand the difference.”
This may be the best opportunity for bringing to the reader's notice
some passages from Mme. Jelihowsky's Personal and Family
Reminiscences which bear on the point, an important one as regards
all psychic students of Mme. Blavatsky's phenomena and
characteristics.
Her sister says :—
“Although everyone had supposed that the manifestations occurring in
H. P. Blavatsky's presence were the results of a mediumistic power
pertaining to her, she herself had always obstinately denied it. My
sister H. P. Blavatsky had passed most of her time, during her many
years' absence from Russia, travelling in India, where, as we are
now informed, spiritual theories are held in great scorn, and the
so-called (by us) mediumistic phenomena are said to be caused by
quite another agency than that of spirits; mediumship proceeding,
they say, from a source, to draw from which, my sister thinks it
degrading to her human dignity; in consequence of which ideas she
refuses to acknowledge such a force in herself. From letters
received by me from my sister, I found she had been dissatisfied
with much that I had said of her in my ' Truth about H. P.
Blavatsky.' She still maintains, now as then, that in those days (of
1860) she was influenced as well as she is now by quite another kind
of power — namely, that of the Indian sages, the Raj-Yogis — and
that even the shadows (figures) she sees all her life, are no
phantoms, no ghosts of the deceased, but only the manifestations of
her powerful friends in their astral envelopes. However it may be,
and whatever the power that produced her phenomena only, during the
whole time that she lived with us at the Yahontoff such phenomena
happened constantly before the eyes of all, believers and
unbelievers (relatives and outsiders) — and they plunged everyone
equally into amazement.”
As this memoir is a narrative and not an occult treatise, I refrain
from any minute analysis of the psychological problem involved, and
would only point out that the condition of things Mme. de Jelihowsky
refers to, chimes in with the rough explanation I gave in the first
chapter as to the occult theory of Mme. Blavatsky's development,
which would recognise her natural born, physical attributes as only
coming under control when the higher faculties of her real self,
entering into union with the bodily organism as this reached
maturity, put her in a position to be taught how to eradicate the
weed-growth of her abnormally fertile psychic faculties.]
With the arrival of Mme. Blavatsky at Pskoff, the news about the
extraordinary phenomena produced by her spread abroad like
lightning, turning the whole town topsy-turvy.
The fact is, that the sounds were not simple raps, but something
more, as they showed extraordinary intelligence, disclosing the past
as well as the future to those who held converse through them with
those Mme. Blavatsky called her kikimorcy (or spooks). More than
that, for they showed the gift of disclosing unexpressed thoughts,
i.e. penetrating freely into the most secret recesses of the human
mind, and divulging past deeds and present intentions.
The relatives of Mme. Blavatsky's sister were leading a very
fashionable life, and received a good deal of company in those days.
Her presence attracted a number of visitors, no one of whom ever
left her unsatisfied, for the raps which she evoked gave answers,
composed of long discourses in several languages, some of which were
unknown to the medium, as she was called. The poor “medium” became
subjected to every kind of test, to which she submitted very
gracefully, no matter how absurd the demand, as a proof that she did
not bring about the phenomena by juggling. It was her usual habit to
sit very quietly and quite unconcerned on the sofa, or in an
arm-chair, engaged in some embroidery, and apparently without taking
the slightest interest or active part in the hubbub which she
produced around herself. And the hubbub was great indeed. One of the
guests would be reciting the alphabet, another putting down the
answers received, while the mission of the rest was to offer mental
questions, which were always and promptly answered. It so happened,
however, that the unknown and invisible things at work favoured some
people more than others, while there were those who could obtain no
answers whatever. In the latter case, instead of replying to queries
asked aloud, the raps would answer the unexpressed mental thought of
some other person, first calling him by name. During that time,
conversations and discussions in a loud tone were carried on around
her. Mistrust and irony were often shown, and occasionally even a
doubt expressed, in a very indelicate way, as to the good faith of
Mme. Blavatsky. But she bore it all very coolly and patiently, a
strange and puzzling smile or an ironical shrugging of the shoulders
being her only answer to questions of very doubtful logic offered to
her over and over again.
“But how do you do it, and what is it that raps ? ” people kept on
asking. Or again, “but how can you so well guess people's thought ?
How could you know that I had thought of this or that ? ”
At first H. P. B. sought very zealously to prove to people that she
did not produce the phenomena, but very soon she changed her
tactics. She declared herself tired of such discussions, and silence
and a contemptuous smile became for some time her only answer. Again
she would change as rapidly; and in moments of good-humour, when
people would be foolishly and openly expressing the most insulting
doubts of her honesty, instead of resenting them she used to laugh
aloud in their faces. Indeed, the most absurd hypotheses were
offered by the sceptics. For instance, it was suggested that she
might produce her loud raps by the means of a machine in her pocket,
or that she rapped with her nails; the most ingenious theory being
that “when her hands were visibly occupied with some work, she did
it with her toes.”
To put an end to all this, she allowed herself to be subjected to
the most stupid demands ; she was searched, her hands and feet were
tied with string, she permitted herself to be placed on a soft sofa,
to have her shoes taken off and her hands and feet held fast against
a soft pillow, so that they should be seen by all, and then she was
asked that the knocks and rappings should be produced at the further
end of the room. Declaring that she would try, but would promise
nothing, her orders were, nevertheless, immediately accomplished,
especially when the people were seriously interested. These raps
were produced at her command on the ceiling, on the window sills, on
every bit of furniture in the adjoining room, and in places quite
distant from her.
At times she would wickedly revenge herself by practical jokes on
those who so doubted her. Thus, for example, the raps which came one
day inside the glasses of the young Professor M------, while she was
sitting at the other side of the room, were so strong that they
fairly knocked the spectacles off his nose, and made him become pale
with fright. At another time, a lady, an esprit fort, very vain and
coquettish, to her ironical question of what was the best conductor
for the production of such raps, and whether they could be done
everywhere, received a strange and very puzzling answer. The word,
“Gold”, was rapped out, and then came the words, “We will prove it
to you immediately”.
The lady kept smiling with her mouth slightly opened. Hardly had the
answer come, than she became very pale, jumped from her chair, and
covered her mouth with her hand. Her face was convulsed with fear
and astonishment. Why ? Because she had felt raps in her mouth, as
she confessed later on. Those present looked at each other
significantly. Previous even to her own confession all had
understood that the lady had felt a violent commotion and raps in
the gold of her artificial teeth! And when she rose from her place
and left the room with precipitation, there was a homeric laugh
among us at her expense.
CHAPTER 4
MM DE JELIHOWSKY'S NARRATIVE
IT is impossible to give in detail even a portion of what was
produced in the way of such phenomena during the stay of Mme.
Blavatsky amongst us in the town of Pskoff. But they may be
mentioned under general classification as follows : —
1. Direct and perfectly clear written and verbal answers to mental
questions — or “thought-reading”.
2. Prescriptions for different diseases, in Latin, and subsequent
cures.
3. Private secrets, unknown to all but the interested party,
divulged, especially in the case of those persons who mentioned
insulting doubts.
4. Change of weight in furniture and of persons at will.
5. Letters from unknown correspondents, and immediate answers
written to queries made, and found in the most out-of-the-way
mysterious places.[Thus a governess, named Leontine, who wanted to
know the fate of a certain young man she had hoped to be married to,
learnt what had become of him ; his name, that she had purposely
withheld, being given in full — from a letter written in an unknown
handwriting she found in one of her locked boxes, placed inside a
trunk equally locked.]
6. Appearances and apport of objects unclaimed by any one present.
7. Sounds as of musical notes in the air wherever Mme. Blavatsky
desired they should resound.
All these surprising and inexplicable manifestations of an
intelligent, and at times, I should almost say, an omniscient force,
produced a sensation in Pskoff, where there yet remain many who
remember it well. Truth compels us to remark that the answers were
not always in perfect accord with the facts, but seemed purposely
distorted as though for the purpose of making fun, especially of
those querists who expected infallible prophecies.
Nevertheless, the fact remains of the manifestation of an
intelligent force, capable of perceiving the thoughts and feelings
of any person; as also of expressing them by rappings and motions in
inanimate objects. The following two occurrences took place in the
presence of many eye-witnesses during the stay of Mme. Blavatsky
with us.
As usual, those nearest and dearest to her were, at the same time,
the most skeptical as to her occult powers. Her brother Leonide and
her father stood out longer than all against evidence, until at last
the doubts of the former were greatly shaken by the following fact.
The drawing-room of the Yahontoffs was full of visitors. Some were
occupied with music, others with cards, but most of us, as usual,
with phenomena. Leonide de Hahn did not concern himself with
anything in particular, but was leisurely walking about, watching
everybody and everything. He was a strong, muscular youth, saturated
with the Latin and German wisdom of the University, and believed, so
far, in no one and nothing. He stopped behind the back of his
sister's chair, and was listening to her narratives of how some
persons, who called themselves mediums, made light objects become so
heavy that it was impossible to lift them; and others which were
naturally heavy became again remarkably light.
“And you mean to say that you can do it ? ” ironically asked the
young man of his sister.
“Mediums can, and I have done it occasionally; though I cannot
always answer for its success”, coolly replied Mme. Blavatsky.
“But would you try ? ” asked somebody in the room; and immediately
all joined in requesting her to do so.
“I will try”, she said, “but I beg of you to remember that I promise
nothing. I will simply fix this chess-table and try. ... He who
wants to make the experiment, let him lift it now, and then try
again after I shall have fixed it.”
“After you shall have fixed it ? ” said a voice, “ and what then ?
Do you mean to say that you will not touch the table at all ? ”
“Why should I touch it ? ” answered Mme. Blavatsky, with a quiet
smile.
Upon hearing the extraordinary assertion, one of the young men went
determinedly to the small chess-table, and lifted it up as though it
were a feather.
“All right”, she said. “Now kindly leave it alone, and stand back! ”
The order was at once obeyed, and a great silence fell upon the
company. All, holding their breath, anxiously watched for what Mme.
Blavatsky would do next. She apparently, however, did nothing at
all. She merely fixed her large blue eyes upon the chess-table, and
kept looking at it with an intense gaze. Then, without removing her
gaze, she silently, with a motion of her hand, invited the same
young man to remove it. He approached, and grasped the table by its
leg with great assurance. The table could not be moved !
He then seized it with both his hands. The table stood as though
screwed to the floor.
Then the young man, crouching down, took hold of it with both hands,
exerting all his strength to lift it by the additional means of his
broad shoulders. He grew red with the effort, but all in vain! The
table seemed rooted to the carpet, and would not be moved. There was
a loud burst of applause. The young man, looking very much confused,
abandoned his task en désespoir de cause, and stood aside.
Folding his arms in quite a Napoleonic way, he only slowly said,
“Well, this is a good joke ! ”
“Indeed, it is a good one ! ” echoed Leonide.
A suspicion had crossed his mind that the young visitor was acting
in secret confederacy with his sister and was fooling them.
“May I also try ? ” he suddenly asked her,
“Please do, my dear”, was the laughing response.
Her brother upon this approached, smiling, and seized, in his turn,
the diminutive table by its leg with his strong muscular arm. But
the smile instantly vanished, to give place to an expression of mute
amazement. He stepped back a little and examined again very
carefully the, to him, well-known chess-table. Then he gave it a
tremendous kick, but the little table did not even budge.
Suddenly applying to its surface his powerful chest he enclosed it
within his arms, trying to shake it. The wood cracked, but would
yield to no effort. Its three feet seemed screwed to the floor. Then
Leonide Hahn lost all hope, and abandoning the ungrateful task,
stepped aside, and frowning, exclaimed but these two words, “How
strange! ” his eyes turning meanwhile with a wild expression of
astonishment from the table to his sister.
We all agreed that this exclamation was not too strong.
The loud debate had meanwhile drawn the attention of several
visitors, and they came pouring in from the drawing-room into the
large apartment where we were.
Many of them, old and young, tried to lift up, or even to impart
some slight motion to, the obstinate little chess-table. They
failed, like the rest of us.
Upon seeing her brother's astonishment, and perchance desiring
finally to destroy his doubts, Mme. Blavatsky, addressing him with
her usual careless laugh, said, “Try to lift the table now, once
more I ”
Leonide H. approached the little thing very irresolutely, grasped it
again by the leg, and, pulling it upwards, came very near to
dislocating his arm owing to the useless effort: the table was
lifted like a feather this time [Madame Blavatsky has stated that
this phenomenon could only be produced in two different ways:
1st.. Through the exercise of her own will directing the magnetic
currents so that the pressure on the table became such that no
physical force could move it ; and
2nd. Through the action of those beings with whom she was in
constant communication, and who, although unseen, were able to hold
the table against all opposition.]
And now to our second case. It occurred in St Petersburg, a few
months later, when Mme. Blavatsky had already left Pskoff with her
father and sister, and when all three were living in a hotel. They
had come to St Petersburg on business on their way to Mme.
Yahontoff’s property, in the district of Novorgeff, where they had
decided to pass the summer. All their forenoons were occupied with
business, their afternoons and evenings with making and receiving
visits, and there was no time for, or even mention of, phenomena.
One night they received a visit from two old friends of their
father; both were old gentlemen, one of them a school-fellow of the
Corps des Pages, Baron M------, the other the well-known K------w. [
Sceptics who insist upon having the full names are invited to apply
to the writer of the above, Mme de Jelihowsky, St Petersburg,
Zabalkansky Prospect, No. 10 house, r.31 apartment’] Both were much
interested in recent spiritualism, and were, of course, anxious to
see something.
After a few successful phenomena, the visitors declared themselves
positively delighted, amazed, and quite at a loss what to make of
Mme. Blavatsky's powers. They could neither understand nor account,
they said, for her father's indifference in presence of such
manifestations. There he was, coolly laying out his “grande
patience” with cards, while phenomena of such a wonderful nature
were occurring around him. The old gentleman, thus taken to task,
answered that it was all bosh, and that he would not hear of such
nonsense; such occupation being hardly worthy of serious people, he
added. The rebuke left the two old gentlemen unconcerned. They
began, on the contrary, to insist that Colonel Hahn should, for old
friendship's sake, make an experiment, before denying the
importance, or even the possibility of his daughter's phenomena.
They offered him to test the intelligences and their power by
writing a word in another room, secretly from all of them, and then
asking the raps to repeat it. The old gentleman, more probably in
the hope of a failure that would afford him the opportunity of
laughing at his two old friends, than out of a desire to humour
them, finally consented. He left his cards, and proceeding into an
adjoining room, wrote a word on a bit of paper; after which,
conveying it to his pocket, he returned to his patience, and waited
silently, laughing behind his grey moustache.
“Well, our dispute will now be settled in a few moments”, said
K------w. “What shall you say, however, old friend, if the word
written by you is correctly repeated? Will you not feel compelled to
believe in such a case ? ”
“What I might say, if the word were correctly guessed, I could not
tell at present”, he skeptically replied. “One thing I could answer,
however, from the time I can be made to believe your alleged
spiritism and its phenomena, I shall be ready to believe in the
existence of the devil, undines, sorcerers, and witches — in the
whole paraphernalia — in short, of old women's superstitions; and
you may prepare to offer me as an inmate of a lunatic asylum.”
Upon delivering himself thus, he went on with his patience, and paid
no further attention to the proceedings. He was an old “Voltarian”,
as the positivists who believed in nothing are called in Russia. But
we, who felt deeply interested in the experiment, began to listen to
the loud and unceasing raps coming from a plate brought there for
the purpose.
The younger sister was repeating the alphabet; the old general
marked the letters down; while Mme. Blavatsky did nothing at all —
apparently.
She was what would be called, in our days, a “good writing medium”;
that is to say, she could write out the answers herself while
talking with those around her upon quite indifferent topics. But
simple and more rapid as this mode of communication may be, she
would never consent to use it.
She was too afraid to employ it, fearing as she explained,
uncalled-for suspicion from foolish people who did not understand
the process.
[From the first, that is to say, almost from her childhood, and
certainly in the days mentioned above, Mme. Blavatsky, as she tells
us, would, in such cases, see either the actual present thought of
the person putting the questions, or its paler reflection — still
quite distinct for her — of an event, or a name, or whatever it was,
in the past, as though hanging in a shadow world around the person,
generally in the vicinity of the head. She had but to copy it
consciously, or allow her hand to do so mechanically. At any rate,
she never felt herself helped or led on by an external power, i.e.
no “spirits” helped her in this process after she returned from her
first voyage, she avers. It seemed an action entirely confined to
her own will, more or less consciously exercised by her, more or
less premeditated and put into play.
Whenever the thought of a person had to be communicated through
raps, the process changed. She had to read, first of all, sometimes
to interpret the thought of the querist, and having done so, to
remember it well after it had often disappeared; watch the letters
of the alphabet as they were read or pointed out, prepare the
will-current that had to produce the rap at the right letter, and
then have it strike at the right moment the table or any other
object chosen to be the vehicle of sounds or raps. A most difficult
process, and far less easy than direct writing.']
By the means of raps and alphabet we got one word, but it proved
such a strange one, so grotesquely absurd as having no evident
relation to anything that might be supposed to have been written by
her father, that all of us who had been in the expectation of some
complicated sentence looked at each other, dubious whether we ought
to read it aloud. To our question, whether it was all, the raps
became more energetic in the affirmative sounds. We had several
triple raps, which meant in our code — Yes ! . . . yes, yes, yes !!!
Remarking our agitation and whispering, Madame Blavatsky's father
looked at us over his spectacles, and asked:
“Well! Have you any answer ? It must be something very elaborate and
profound indeed! ”
He arose and, laughing in his moustache, approached us. His youngest
daughter, Mme. Yahontoff, then went to him and said, with some
little confusion :
“We only got one word.”
“And what is it?”
“Zaïtchik! ” [Zaïchik means, literally,”a little
hare”, while Zaïtz
is the Russian term for any hare. In the Russian language every
substantive and adjective may be made to express the same thing,
only in the diminutive. Thus a house is dom, while small house is
expressed by the word domik, etc.]
It was a sight indeed to witness the extraordinary change that came
over the old man's face at this one word! He became deadly pale.
Adjusting his spectacles with a trembling hand, he stretched it out
while hurriedly saying:
“Let me see it! Hand it over. Is it really so ? ”
He took the slips of paper, and read in a very agitated voice, — “
'Zaïtchik'. Yes, Zaïtchik; so it is. How very
strange!”
Taking out of his pocket the paper he had written upon in the
adjoining room, he handed it in silence to his daughter and guests.
They found on it both the question offered and the answer that was
anticipated. The words read thus:
“What was the name of my favorite war-horse which I rode during my
first Turkish campaign ? ” and lower down, in parenthesis (“
Zaïtchik ”).
We felt fully triumphant, and expressed our feelings accordingly.
This solitary word, Zaïtchik, had an enormous effect upon the
old
gentleman. As it often happens with inveterate sceptics, once he had
found out that there was indeed something in his eldest daughter's
claims, and that it had nothing to do whatever with deceit or
juggling, having been convinced of this one fact, he rushed into the
region of phenomena with all the zeal of an ardent investigator. As
a matter of course, once he believed he felt no more inclined to
doubt his own reason.
Having received from Mme. Blavatsky one correct answer, her father
became passionately fond of experimenting with his daughter's
powers. Once he inquired of the date of a certain event in his
family that had occurred several hundred of years before. He
received it. From that time he set himself and Mme. Blavatsky the
difficult task of restoring the family chronology. The genealogical
tree, lost in the night of the first crusades, had to be restored
from its roots down to his day.
The information was readily promised, and he set to work from
morning to night.
First, the legend of the Count von Rottenstern, the Knight Crusader,
was given him. The year, the month, and the day on which a certain
battle with the Saracens had been fought; and how, while sleeping in
his tent, the Knight Crusader was awakened by the cry of a cock
(Hahn) to find himself in time to kill, instead of being stealthily
killed by an enemy who had penetrated into his tent. For this feat
the bird, true symbol of vigilance, was raised to the honor of being
incorporated in the coat of arms of the Counts of Rottenstern, who
became from that time the Rottenstern von Rott Hahn; to branch off
later into the Hahn-Hahn family and others.
Then began a regular series of figures, dates of years and months,
of hundreds of names by connection and side marriages, and a long
line of descent from the Knight Crusaders down to the Countess Ida
Hahn-Hahn — Mme. Blavatsky's father's cousin, and her father's
family names and dates, as well as a mass of contemporary events
which had taken place in connection with that family's descending
line, were given rapidly and unhesitatingly. The greatest historian,
endowed with the most phenomenal memory, could never be equal to
such a task. How then could one who had been on cold terms from her
very youth with simple arithmetic and history be suspected of
deliberate deceit in a work that necessitated the greatest
chronological precision, the knowledge very often of the most
unimportant historical events, with their involved names and dates,
all of which upon the most careful verification were found to be
correct to a day.
True, the family immigrants from Germany since the days of Peter
III. had a good many missing links and blanks in their genealogical
tables, yet the few documents that had been preserved among the
various branches of the family in Germany and Russia — whenever
consulted, were found to be the originals of those very exact copies
furnished through Mme. Blavatsky's raps.
Her uncle, a high official at the General Post Office at St
Petersburg, whose great ambition in those days was to settle the
title of a Count on his eldest sons permanently, took the greatest
interest in this mysterious work. Over and over again he would, in
his attempts to puzzle and catch his niece in some historical or
chronological inaccuracy, interrupt the regular flow of her raps,
and ask for information about something which had nothing to do with
the genealogy, but was only some contemporaneous fact. For instance
:
“You say that in the year 1572 Count Carl von Hahn-Hahn was married
to the Baroness Ottilia, so and so. This was in June at the castle
of — — at Mecklenburg. Now, who was the reigning Kurfuerst at that
time; what Prince reigned at ----- (some small German state); and
who was the confessor of the Pope, and the Pope himself in that year
? ”
And the answer, always correct, would invariably come without a
moment's pause. It was often found far more difficult to verify the
correctness of such names and dates than to receive the information.
Mr J. A. Hahn, then Post Director at St Petersburg, Mme. Blavatsky's
uncle, had to plunge for days and weeks sometimes into dusty old
archives, write to Germany, and apply for information to the most
out-of-the-way places, that were designated to him, when he found
difficulties in his way to obtain the knowledge he sought for in
easily obtainable books and records.
This lasted for months. Never during that time were Mme. Blavatsky's
invisible helper or helpers found mistaken in any single instance.
[Indeed not; for it was neither a “spirit” nor “spirits” but living
men who can draw before their eyes the picture of any book or
manuscript wherever existing, and in case of need even that of any
long-forgotten and unrecorded event, who helped “Mme Blavatsky”, The
astral light is the storehouse and the record book of all things,
and deeds have no secrets for such men. And the proof of it may be
found in the production of Isis Unveiled.(Note by H.P. Blavatsky)]
They only asked occasionally for a day or two to get at the correct
information.
Unfortunately, these records, put down on fly-leaves and then copied
into a book, are probably lost. The papers remained with Mme.
Blavatsky's father, who treasured them, and with many other far more
valuable documents were stolen or lost after his death. But his
sister-in-law, Mme. Blavatsky's aunt, has in her possession letters
from him in which he speaks enthusiastically of his experiments.
One of the most startling of her phenomena happened very soon after
Mme. Blavatsky's return, in the early spring of 1858. Both sisters
were then living with their father, in their country house in a
village belonging to Mme. Yahontoff.
In consequence of a crime committed not far from the boundaries of
my property, she writes — (a man having been found killed in a gin
shop, the murderers remaining unknown) — the superintendent of the
district police passed one afternoon through our village, and
stopped to make some inquiries.
The researches were made very secretly, and he had not said one word
about his business to anyone in the house, not even to our father.
As he was an acquaintance who visited our family, and stopped at our
house on his district tour, no one asked him why he had come, for he
made us very frequent visits, as to all the other proprietors in the
neighborhood.
It was only on the following morning, after he had ordered the
village serfs to appear for examination (which proved useless), that
the inmates learned anything of his mission.
During tea, as they were all sitting around the table, there came
the usual knocks, raps, and disturbance on the walls, the ceiling,
and about the furniture of the room.
To our father's question why the police-superintendent should not
try to learn something of the name and the whereabouts of the
murderer from my sister's invisible agents, the officer Captain O
only incredulously smiled.
He had heard of the “all-knowing” spirits, but was ready to bet
almost anything that these “horned and hoofed gentlemen” would prove
insufficient for such a task. “They would hardly betray and inform
against their own”, he added, with a silly laugh.
This fling at her invisible “powers”, and laugh, as she thought, at
her expense, made Mme. Blavatsky change color, and feel, as she
said, an irrepressible desire to humble the ignorant fool, who
hardly knew what he was talking about. She turned fiercely upon the
police-officer.
“And suppose I prove to you the contrary ?” she defiantly asked him.
“Then”, he answered, still laughing, “I would resign my office, and
offer it to you, Madame ; or, still better, I would strongly urge
the authorities to place you at the head of the Secret Police
Department.”
“ Now, look here, Captain”, she said, indignantly, “I do not like
meddling in such a dirty business, and helping you detectives. Yet,
since you defy me, let my father say over the alphabet, and you put
down the letters, and record what will be rapped out. My presence is
not needed for this, and with your permission I will even leave the
room.”
She went away, and taking a book, placed herself on the balcony,
apparently quite unconcerned with what was going on.
Colonel Hahn, anxious to make a convert, began repeating the
alphabet. The communication received was far from complimentary in
its adjectives to the address of the police-superintendent.
The outcome of the message was, that while he was talking nonsense
at Rougodevo (the name of our new property), the murderer, whose
name was Samoylo Ivanof, had crossed over before daylight to the
next district, and thus escaped the officer's clutches.
“At present he is hiding under a bundle of hay in the loft of a
peasant, named Andrew Vlassof, of the village of Oreshkino. By going
there immediately you will secure the criminal.”
The effect upon the man was tremendous! Our Stanovoy (district
officer) was positively nonplused, and confessed that Oreshkino was
one of the suspected villages he had on his list.
“But — allow me, however, to inquire”, he asked of the table from
which the raps proceeded, and bending over it with a suspicious look
upon his face, “how come you — whoever you are — to know anything of
the murderer's name, or of that of the confederate who hides him in
his loft ? And who is Vlassof, for I know him not ? ”
The answer came clear and rather contemptuous.
“Very likely that you should neither know nor see much beyond your
own nose. We, however, who are now giving you the information, have
the means of knowing everything we wish to know. Samoylo Ivanof is
an old soldier on leave. He was drunk, and quarreled with the
victim. The murder was not premeditated; it is a misfortune, not a
crime.”
Upon hearing these words the superintendent rushed out of the house
like a madman, and drove off at a furious rate towards Oreshkino,
which was more than thirty miles distant from Rougodevo. The
information agreeing admirably with some points he had laboriously
collected, and furnishing the last word to the mystery of the names
given — he had no doubt in his own mind that the rest would prove
true, as he confessed some time after.
On the following morning a messenger on horseback, sent by the
Stanovoy, made his appearance with a letter to her father.
Events in Oreshkino had proved every word of the information to be
correct. The murderer was found and arrested in his hiding place at
Andrew Vlassofs cottage, and identified as a soldier on leave named
Samoylo Ivanof.
This event produced a great sensation in the district, and
henceforward the messages obtained, through the instrumentality of
my sister, were viewed in a more serious light. [Madame Blavatsky
denies, point blank, any intervention of spirits in this case. She
tells us she had the picture of the whole tragedy and its subsequent
developments before her from the moment the Stanovoy entered the
house. She knew the names of the murderers, the confederate, and of
the village, for she saw them interested, so to say, with the
visions. Then she guided the raps, and thus gave the information.]
But this brought, a few weeks after, very disagreeable
complications, for the police of St Petersburg wanted to know how
could one, and that one a woman who had just returned from foreign
countries, know anything of the details of a murder.
It cost Colonel Hahn great exertion to settle the matter and satisfy
the suspicious authorities that there had been no fouler play in the
business than the intervention of supernatural powers, in which the
police pretended, of course, to have no faith.
The most successful phenomena took place during those hours when we
were alone, when no one cared to make experiments or sought useless
tests, and when there was no one to convince or enlighten.
At such moments the manifestations were left to produce themselves
at their own impulse and pleasure, none of us — not even the chief
author of the phenomena under observation, at any rate as far as
those present could see and judge from appearances — assuming any
active part in trying to guide them.
We very soon arrived at the conviction that the forces at work, as
Mme, Blavatsky constantly told us, had to be divided into several
distinct categories. While the lowest on the scale of invisible
beings produced most of the physical phenomena, the very highest
among the agencies at work condescended but rarely to a
communication or intercourse with strangers. The last-named
“invisibles” made themselves manifestly seen, felt, and heard only
during those hours when we were alone in the family, and when great
harmony and quiet reigned among us.
It is said that harmony helps wonderfully toward the manifestation
of the so-called mediumistic force, and that the effects produced in
physical manifestations depend but little on the volition of the
“medium”. Such feats as that accomplished with the little
chess-table at Pskoff were rare. In the majority of the cases the
phenomena were sporadic, seemingly quite independent of her will,
apparently never heeding anyone's suggestion, and generally
appearing in direct contradiction with the desires expressed by
those present. We used to feel extremely vexed whenever there was a
chance to convince some highly intellectual investigator, but
through H. P. Blavatsky's obstinacy or lack of will nothing came out
of it. For instance :
If we asked for one of those highly intellectual, profound answers
we got so often when alone, we usually received in answer some
impertinent rubbish; when we begged for the repetition of some
phenomena she had produced for us hundreds of times before, our wish
was only laughed at.
I well remember how, during a grand evening party, when several
families of friends had come from afar off, in some cases from
distances of hundreds of miles on purpose to witness some phenomena,
to “hear with their ears and see with their eyes” the strange doings
of Mme. Blavatsky, the latter, though mockingly assuring us she did
all she could, gave them no result to ponder upon. This lasted for
several days. [ She explains this by describing herself as tired and
disgusted with the ever-growing public thirst for “miracles”.]
The visitors had left dissatisfied and in a spirit as skeptical as
it was uncharitable. Hardly, however, had the gates been closed
after them, the bells of their horses yet merrily tinkling in the
last alley of the entrance park, when everything in the room seemed
to become endowed with life. The furniture acted as though every
piece of it was animated and gifted with voice and speech, and we
passed the rest of the evening and the greater part of the night as
though we were between the enchanted walls of the magic palace of
some Scheherazade.
It is far easier to enumerate the phenomena that did not take place
during these forever memorable hours than to describe those that
did. All those weird manifestations that we had observed at various
times seemed to have been repeated for our sole benefit during that
night. At one moment as we sat at supper in the dining-room, there
were loud accords played on the piano which stood in the adjoining
apartment, and which was closed and locked, and so placed that we
could all of us see it from where we were through the large open
doors.
Then at the first command and look of Mme. Blavatsky there came
rushing to her through the air her tobacco-pouch, her box of
matches, her pocket-handkerchief, or anything she asked, or was made
to ask for.
Then, as we were taking our seats, all the lights in the room were
suddenly extinguished, both lamps and wax candles, as though a
mighty rush of wind had swept through the whole apartment; and when
a match was instantly struck, there was all the heavy furniture,
sofas, arm-chairs, tables, cupboards, and large sideboard standing
upside down, as though turned over noiselessly by some invisible
hands, and not an ornament of the fragile carved work nor even a
plate broken. Hardly had we gathered our senses together after this
miraculous performance, when we heard again someone playing on the
piano a loud and intelligible piece of music, a long marche de
bravoure this time. As we rushed with lighted candles to the
instrument (I mentally counting the persons to ascertain that all
were present), we found, as we had anticipated, the piano locked,
the last sounds of the final chords still vibrating in the air from
beneath the heavy closed lid.
After this, notwithstanding the late hour, we placed ourselves
around our large dining-table, and had a séance. The huge
family
dining-board began to shake with great force, and then to move,
sliding rapidly about the room in every direction, even raising
itself up to the height of a man. In short, we had all those
manifestations that never failed when we were alone, i.e. when only
those nearest and dearest to H. P. B. were present, and none of the
strangers who came to us attracted by mere curiosity, and often with
a malevolent and hostile feeling.
Among a mass of various and striking phenomena that took place on
that memorable night, I will mention but two more.
And here I must notice the following question made in those days
whenever my sister, Madame B sat, to please us, for “communications
through raps”. We were asked by her to choose what we would have.
“Shall we have the mediumistic or spook raps, or the raps by
clairvoyant proxy ? ” she asked.
[To make this clearer and intelligible, I must give her (Mme.
Blavatsky's) explanation of the difference.
She never made a secret that she had been, ever since her childhood,
and until nearly the age of twenty-five, a very strong medium;
though after that period, owing to a regular psychological and
physiological training, she was made to lose this dangerous gift,
and every trace of mediumship outside her will, or beyond her direct
control, was overcome. She had two distinct methods of producing
communications through raps. The one consisted almost entirely in
her being passive, and permitting the influences to act at their
will, at which time the brainless Elementals, (the shells would
rarely, if ever, be allowed to come, owing to the danger of the
intercourse) chameleon-like, would reflect more or less
characteristically the thoughts of those present, and follow in a
half-intelligent way the suggestions found by them in Madame
Blavatsky's mind. The other method, used very rarely for reasons
connected with her intense dislike to meddle with really departed
entities, or rather to enter into their “currents of thought” is
this: — She would compose herself, and seeking out, with eyes shut,
in the astral light, that current that preserved the genuine impress
of some well-known departed entity, she identified herself for the
time being with it, and guiding the raps made them to spell out that
which she had in her own mind, as reflected from the astral current.
Thus, if the rapping spirit pretended to be a Shakespeare, it was
not really that great personality, but only the echo of the genuine
thoughts that had once upon a time moved in his brain and
crystallized themselves, so to say, in his astral sphere whence even
his shell had departed long ago — the imperishable thoughts alone
remaining. Not a sentence, not a word spelt by the raps that was not
formed first in her brain, in its turn the faithful copier of that
which was found by her spiritual eye in the luminous Record Book of
departed humanity. The, so to express it, crystallized essence of
the mind of the once physical brain was there before her spiritual
vision; her living brain photographed it, and her will dictated its
expression by guiding the raps which thus became intelligent.]
And though few, if any, of us then understood clearly what she
meant, yet she would act either one way or the other, never uniting
the two methods.
We chose the former in this instance — the “spook-raps” — as the
easiest to obtain, and affording us more amusement, and to her less
trouble.
Thus, out of the many invisible and “ distinguished ” phantom
visitors of that night, the most active and prominent among them was
the alleged spirit of Poushkine.
I beg the reader to remember that we never for a moment believed
that spook to be really the great poet, whose earthly remains rest
in the neighbourhood of our Rougodevo, in the monk's territory known
as the “holy mountain”.
We had been warned by Mme. Blavatsky, and knew well how much we
could trust to the communications and conversation of such unseen
visitors. But the fact of our having chosen for that séance the
“spook raps”, does not at all interfere with the truth of that other
assertion of ours, namely, that, whenever we wanted something
genuine, and resorted to the method of “clairvoyant proxy”, we had
very often communications of great power and vigor of thought,
profoundly scientific and remarkable in every way; made not by but
in the spirit of the great defunct personage in whose name they were
given.
It is only when we resorted to the “spook raps” that,
notwithstanding the world-known names of the eminent personages in
which the goblins of the séance-room love to parade, we got
answers
and discourses that might do honor to a circus clown, but hardly to
a Socrates, a Cicero, or a Martin Luther.
CHAPTER 5
MM. DE JELIHOWSKY'S NARRATIVE -CONTINUED-
I REMEMBER that we were deeply interested in those days in reading
aloud in our little family circle, the Memoirs of Catherine
Romanovna Dashkoff, just then published. The interest of this
remarkable historical work was greatly enhanced to us owing to the
fact that our reading was very often interrupted by the alleged
spirit of the authoress herself. The gaps and hiatuses of a
publication, severely disfigured and curtailed by the censor's pen
and scissors, were constantly filled up by comparing notes with her
astral records.
By the means of guided raps — Mme. B. refusing, as usual, to help us
by direct writing, preferring lazily to rest in her arm-chair — we
received, in the name of the authoress, innumerable remarks,
additions, explanations, and refutations. In some cases, her
apparent and mistaken views in the days when she wrote her memoirs
were corrected and replaced by more genuine thoughts. [The fact that
many of the remarks and notes were different in their character from
the original memoirs, and that errors and mistakes were corrected,
can easily be explained. The old thoughts of Catherine Romanovna
were expounded and corrected in the intellectual sphere of Madame B.
The manner and nature of the expression would not cease to resemble
that of the author, and, in the astral light, the original of the
work, as conceived in the brain of the historian, would certainly be
returned in preference to the mutilated views of the censor; while
the brain of Madame B would supply the rest.] All such corrections
and additional matter given, fascinated us deeply by their
profundity, their wit and humor, often, indeed, with the natural
pathos that was one of the prominent features of this remarkable
historical character.
But I must return to my reminiscences of that memorable night. Thus,
among other post-mortem visitors, we were entertained on that
evening by A. Poushkine.
The poet seemed to be in one of his melancholy and dark moments; and
to our queries, what was the matter, what made him suffer, and what
we could do for him, he obliged us with an extemporary poem, which I
preserved, although its character and style are beneath criticism.
The substance of it — which is hardly worth translation — was to the
effect that there was no reason for us to know his secret
sufferings. Why should we try to know what he may be wishing for ?
He had but one desire: to rest on the bosom of Death, instead of
which he was suffering in great darkness for his sins, tortured by
devils, and had lost all hope of ever reaching the bliss of becoming
a winged cherub, etc etc..[In the recollection of Mme. Blavatsky,
this was a genuine spirit-manifestation, i.e. a clumsy
personification of the great poet by passing shells and spooks,
allowed to merge into the circle for a few moments. The rhymed
complaint speaking of hell and devils was the echo of the feelings
and thoughts of a pious governess present ; most assuredly it was
not any reflection from Madame Blavatsky's brain, nor would her
admiring respect for the memory of the greatest Russian poet have
ever allowed her to make such a blasphemous joke under the cover of
his name.]
“Poor Alexander Sergeïtch!” exclaimed Colonel Hahn, upon
hearing
this wretched production read; and so saying he rose as though in
search of something. “ What are you looking for? ” we asked. “My
long pipe! I have had enough of these cigars, and I cannot find my
pipe ; where can it be ? ”
“You have just smoked it, after supper, father”. I replied.
“I did; and now Helen's spirits must have walked off with it or
hidden it somewhere.”
“One, two, three! One, two, three! ” affirmed triple raps around us,
as though mocking the old gentleman.
“Indeed! Well, this is a foolish joke. Could not our friend
Poushkine tell us where he has hidden it ? Do let us know, for life
itself would be worthless on this earth without my old and faithful
pipe.”
“One, two, three ! One, two, three ! ” knocked the table.
“Is this you, Alexander Sergei'tch ? ” we asked.
At this juncture my sister frowned angrily, and the raps suddenly
stopped.
“No”, she said, after a moment's pause, “it is somebody else”. And
putting her hand upon the table she set the raps going again.
“Who is it, then ? ”
“It is me; your old orderly, your honor: Voronof.”
“Ah, Voronof! very glad to meet you again, my good fellow. . . .
Now, try to remember old times: bring me my pipe.”
“I would be very happy to do so, your honor, but I am not able;
somebody holds me fast. But you can take it yourself, your honor.
See, there it is swinging over your head on the lamp.”
We all raised our heads. Verily, where a minute before there was
nothing at all, there was now the huge Turkish pipe, placed
horizontally on the alabaster shade, and balancing over it with its
two ends sticking out at both sides of the lamp which hung over the
dining table.
This new physical demonstration filled with astonishment even those
of us who had been accustomed to live in a world of marvels for
months. Hardly a year before we would not have believed even in the
possibility of what we now regarded as perfectly proved facts.
In the early part of the year 1859, as above stated, soon after her
return to Russia, Mme. Blavatsky went to live with her father and
sister in a country house of a village belonging to Mme. Jelihowsky
at Rougodevo.[In the district of Novorgeff, in the Government of
Pskoff - about 200 versts from St Peterburg. It was at that time a
private property, a village of several hundred serfs, but soon after
emancipation of the land passed into other hands.]
It had been bought only a year before by my deceased husband from
parties entirely unknown to us till then, and through an agent; and
therefore no one knew anything of their antecedents, or even who
they really were. It was quite unexpectedly that, owing to the
sudden death of M. Yahontoff, I decided to settle in it for a time,
with my two baby sons, our father, and my two sisters, H. P.
Blavatsky and Lisa, the youngest, our father's only daughter by
another wife.
I could therefore have no acquaintance with our neighbors or the
landed proprietors of other villages, or with the relatives of the
late owner of my property. All I knew was, that Rougodevo had been
bought from a person named Statkovsky, the husband of the
granddaughter of its late owners — a family named Shousherin. Who
were those Shousherins, the hereditary proprietors of those
picturesque hills and mountains, of the dense pine forests, the
lovely lakes, our old park, and nearly as old a mansion, from the
top of which one could take a sweeping view of the country for 30
versts around, its present proprietors could have no conception
whatever; least of all, H. P. B., who had been out of Russia for
over ten years, and had just then returned.
It was on the second or third evening after our arrival at
Rougodevo. We were two of us walking along the side of the
flower-beds, in front of the house.
The ground-floor windows looked right into the flower-garden, while
those of its three other sides were surrounded with large, old,
shaded grounds.
We had settled on the first floor, which consisted of nine or ten
large rooms, while our elderly father occupied a suite of rooms on
the ground floor, on the right-hand side of the long entrance hall.
The rooms opposite to his, on the left side, were uninhabited, and
in the expectation of future visitors, stood empty, with their doors
securely locked. The rooms occupied by the servants were at the back
of the mansion, and could not be seen from where we were. The
windows of the empty apartment came out in bright relief, especially
the room at the left angle ; its windows, reflecting the rays of the
setting sun in full glory, seemed illuminated through and through
with the effulgence of the bright sunbeams.
We were slowly walking up and down the gravel walk under the
windows, and each time that we approached the angle of the house, my
sister (H. P. B.) looked into the windows with a strange searching
glance, and lingered on that spot, a puzzling expression and smile
settling upon her face.
Remarking at last her furtive glances and smiles, I wanted to know
what it was that so attracted her attention in the empty room ?
“Shall I tell ? Well, if you promise not to be frightened, then I
may”, she answered hesitatingly.
“What reason have I to be frightened ! Thank heaven, I see nothing
myself. Well, and what do you see? Is it, as usual, visitors from
the other world ? ”
“I could not tell you now, Vera, for I do not know them. But if my
conjectures are right, they do seem, if not quite the dwellers
themselves, at least the shadows of such dwellers from another, but
certainly not from our, world. I recognize this by certain signs.”
“What signs ? Are their faces those of dead men ? ” I asked, very
nervously, I confess.
“Oh, no! ” she said; “for in such a case I should see them as dead
people in their beds, or in their coffins. Such sights I am familiar
with. But these men are walking about, and look just as if alive.
They have no mortal reason to remind me of their death, since I do
not know who they are, and never knew them alive. But they do look
so very antiquated. Their dresses are such as we see only on old
family portraits. One, however, is an exception.”
“How does he look ? ”
“ Well, this one looks as though he were a German student or an
artist. He wears a black velvet blouse, with a wide leather sash. .
. . Long hair hanging in heavy waves down his back and shoulders.
This one is quite a young man. ... He stands apart, and seems to
look quite in a different direction from where the others are.”
We had now again approached the angle of the house, and halting,
were both looking into the empty room through the bright window
panes. It was brilliantly lit up by the sunbeams of the setting sun,
but the room was empty evidently, but only for one of us. For my
sister it was full of the images probably of its long-departed late
inmates.
Mme. Blavatsky went on looking thoughtfully, and describing what she
saw.
“There, there, he looks in our direction. See ! ” she muttered, “ he
looks as though he is startled at seeing us! Now he is there no
longer. How strange! he seems to have melted away in that sunbeam !
”
“Let us call them out to-night, and ask them who they are”, I
suggested.
“We may, but what of that ? Can any one of them be relied upon or
believed ? I would pay any price to be able to command and control
as they, . . . some personages I might name, do; but I cannot. I
must fail for years to come”, she added, regretfully.
“Who are they ? Whom do you mean ? ”
“Those who know and can — not mediums”, she contemptuously added.
“But look, look, what a sight! Oh, see what an ugly monster! Who can
it be ? ”
“Now, what's the use in your telling me ' look, look' and see ? How
can I look when I see nothing, not being a clairvoyant as you are. .
. . Tell me, how does that other figure appear ? Only if it is
something too dreadful, then you had better stop”, I added, feeling
a cold chill creeping over me. And, seeing she was going to speak, I
cried out, “Now, pray do not say anything more if it is too
dreadful”.
Don't be afraid, there is nothing dreadful in it, it only seemed to
me so. They are there now — one, however, I can see very hazily; it
is a woman, and she seems to be always merging into and again
emerging from that shadow in the corner. Oh, there's an old, old
lady standing there and looking at me, as though she were alive.
What a nice, kind, fat old thing she must have been. She has a white
frilled cap on her head, a white kerchief crossed over her
shoulders, a short grey narrow dress, and a checked apron.”
“Why, you are painting some fancy portrait of the Flemish school”,
laughed I. “Now, look here, I am really afraid that you are
mystifying me.”
“I swear I am not. But I am so sorry that you cannot see.”
“Thanks; but I am not at all sorry. Peace be upon all those ghosts !
How horrible ! ”
“Not at all horrible. They are all quite nice and natural, with the
exception, maybe, of that old man.”
“Gracious ! what old man ? ”
“A very, very funny old man. Tall, gaunt, and with such a suffering
look upon his worn-out face. And then it is his nails, that puzzle
me. What terrible long nails he has, or claws rather; why, they must
be over an inch long!”
“Heaven help us! ” I could not help shrieking out. “Whom are you
describing? Surely it must be” — I was going to say, “the devil
himself”, but stopped short, overcome by a shudder.
Unable to control my terror, I hastily left the place under the
window and stood at a safe distance.
The sun had gone down, but the gold and crimson flush of its
departing rays lingered still, tinting everything with gold — the
house, the old trees of the garden, and the pond in the background.
The colors of the flowers seemed doubly attractive in this brilliant
light; and only the angle of the old house, which cut the golden hue
in two, seemed to cast a gloomy shadow on the glorious scene. H. P.
Blavatsky remained alone behind that obscure angle, overshadowed by
the thick foliage of an oak, while I sought a safe refuge in the
glow of the large open space near the flower-beds, and kept urging
her to come out of her nook and enjoy instead the lovely panorama,
and look at the far-off wooded hills, with their tops still glowing
in the golden hue, on the quiet smooth ponds and the large dormant
lake, reflecting in its mirror-like waters the green chaotic
confusion of its banks, and the ancient chapel slumbering in its
nest of birch.
My sister came out at last, pale and thoughtful. She was determined,
she said, to learn who it was whom she had just seen. She felt sure
the shadowy figures were the lingering reflections of people who had
inhabited at some time those empty rooms. “I am puzzled to know who
the old man can be”, she kept saying. “Why should he have allowed
his nails to grow to such an extraordinary Chinese length ? And then
another peculiarity, he wears a most strange-looking black cap, very
high, and something similar to the klobouk of our monks.” [The round
tiara, covered with a long black veil, worn by the orthodox Greek
monks.]
“Do let these horrid phantoms alone. Do not think of them! ”
“Why ? It is very interesting, the more so since I now see them so
rarely. I wish I were still a real medium, as the latter, I am told,
are constantly surrounded by a host of ghosts, and that I see them
now but occasionally, not as I used to years ago, when a child. . .
. Last night, however, I saw in Lisa's room a tall gentleman with
long whiskers.”
“What! in the nursery room near the children ? Oh, please, drive him
away from there, at least. I do hope the ghost has only followed you
there, and has not made a permanent abode of that place. How you can
keep so cool, and feel no fear when you see, is something I could
never understand ! ”
“And why should I fear them ? They are harmless in most cases,
unless encouraged. Then I am too accustomed to such sights to
experience even a passing uneasiness. If anything, I feel disgust,
and a contemptuous pity for the poor spooks! In fact, I feel
convinced that all of us mortals are constantly surrounded by
millions of such shadows, the last mortal image left of themselves
by their ex-proprietors.”
“Then you think that these ghosts are all of them the reflection of
the dead ? ”
“I am convinced of it — in fact, / know it ! ”
“ Why, then, in such a case, are we not constantly surrounded by
those who were so near and dear to us, by our loved relatives and
friends ? Why are we allowed to be pestered only by a host of
strangers, to suffer the uninvited presence of the ghosts of people
whom we never knew, nor do we care for them ? ”
“A difficult query to answer! How often, how earnestly, have I tried
to see and recognize among the shadows that haunted me some one of
our dear relatives, or even a friend! . . . Stray acquaintances, and
distant relatives, for whom I care little, I have occasionally
recognized, but they never seemed to pay any attention to me, and
whenever I saw them it was always unexpected and independently of my
will. How I longed from the bottom of my soul, how I have tried —
all in vain ! As much as I can make out of it, it is not the living
who attract the dead, but rather the localities they have inhabited,
those places where they have lived and suffered, and where their
personalities and outward forms have been most impressed on the
surrounding atmosphere. Say, shall we call some of your old
servants, those who have been born and lived in this place all their
lives ? I feel sure that, if we describe to them some of the forms I
have just seen, that they will recognize in them people they knew,
and who have died here.”
The suggestion was good, and it was immediately put to the test; we
took our seats on the steps of the entrance door, and sent a servant
to inquire who were the oldest serfs in the compound. An ancient
tailor, named Timothy, who lived for years exempt from any
obligatory work on account of his services and old age, and the
chief gardener, Oulyan, a man about sixty, soon made their
appearance. I felt at first a little embarrassed, and put some
commonplace questions, asking who it was who built one of the
outhouses near by. Then I put the direct query, whether there had
ever lived in the house an old man, very strange to look at, with a
high black head-gear, terribly long nails, wearing habitually a long
grey coat, etc., etc.
No sooner had I given this description than the two old peasants,
interrupting each other, and with great volubility, exclaimed
affirmatively that they “Knew well who it was whom the young
mistress described.”
“Don't we know him ? of course we do — why, it is our late barrin
(master)! Just as he used to be — our deceased master Nikolay
Mihaylovitch ! ”
“Statkowsky ? ”
“No, no, mistress. Statkowsky was the young master, and he is not
dead; he was our nominal master only, owing to his marriage with
Natalya Nikolavna — our late master's, Nikolay Mihaylovitch
Shousherin's granddaughter. And, as you have described him, it is
him, for sure — our late master, Shousherin.”
My sister and I interchanged a furtive glance. “We have heard of
him”, said I, unwilling to take the servants into our confidence, ”
but did not feel sure it was he. But why was he wearing such a
strange-looking cap, and, as it seemed, never cut his nails ? ”
“This was owing to a disease, mistress — an incurable disease, as we
were told, that the late master caught while in Lithuania, where he
had resided for years. It is called the Koltoun,[The “plica
polonica”, a terrible skin complaint, very common in Lithuania, and
contracted only in its climate. The hair, as is well known, is
grievously diseased, nor can nails on the fingers and toes be
touched, their cutting leading to a bleeding to death] if you have
heard of it. He could neither cut his hair nor pare his nails, and
had to cover constantly his head with a tall velvet cap, like a
priest's cap.”
“Well, and how did your mistress, Mrs Shousherin, look ? ”
The tailor gave a description in no way resembling the Dutch-looking
old lady seen by Mme. Blavatsky. Further cross-examination elicited,
however, that the woman, in her semi-Flemish costume, was Mina
Ivanovna, a German housekeeper, who had resided in the house for
over twenty years; and the young man, who looked like a German
student in his velvet blouse, was really such a student who had come
from Göttingen. He was the youngest brother of Mr Statkowsky,
who
had died in Rougodevo, of consumption, about three years before our
arrival. This was not all, moreover. We found out that the corner
room in which H. P. B. had seen on that evening, as she has later
on, on many other occasions, the phantoms of all these deceased
personages of Rougodevo, had been made to serve for every one of
them, either as a death-chamber when they had breathed their last,
or had been converted for their benefit into a mortuary-chamber when
they had been laid out awaiting burial. It was from this suite of
apartments, in which their bodies had invariably passed from three
to five days, that they had been carried away into yonder old
chapel, on the other side of the lake, that was so well seen, and
had been examined by us from the windows of our sitting-room.
Since that day, not only H. P. B., but even her little sister, Lisa,
a child of nine years old, saw more than once strange forms gliding
noiselessly along the corridors of the old house, so full of
lingering events of the past, and of the images of those who had
passed away from it. The child, strange to say, feared the restless
ghosts no more than her elder sister; the former taking them
innocently for living persons, and concerned but with the
interesting problem, “where they had come from, who they were, and
why no one except her ' old' sister and herself ever consented to
notice them.”
She thought this very rude — the little lady. Luckily for the child,
and owing perhaps to the efforts of her sister, Mme. Blavatsky, the
faculty left her very soon, never to return during her subsequent
life. [The young lady is now over thirty, and was saying but last
year how lucky it was for her that she no longer saw these
trans-terrestrial visitors.] As for Helena Petrovna, it never left
her from her very childhood. So strong is this weird faculty in her
that it is a rare case when she has to learn of the death of a
relative, a friend, or even an old servant of the family from a
letter. We have given up advising her of any such sad events, the
dead invariably precede the news, and tell her themselves of their
demise; and we receive a letter in which she describes the way she
saw this or that departed person, at the same time, and often before
the post carrying our notification could have reached her, as it
will be shown further on.
[The pamphlet already referred to, Personal and Family
Reminiscences, by Mme. Jelihowsky, may here be laid under
contribution in reference to incidents taking place at the period we
are now dealing with.]
Having settled in our property at Rougodevo, we found ourselves as
though suddenly transplanted into an enchanted world, in which we
got gradually so accustomed to see self-moving furniture, things
transferred from one place to another, in the most inexplicable way,
and to the strong interference with, and presence in, our
matter-of-fact daily life of some unknown to us, yet intelligent
power, that we all ended by paying very little attention to it,
though the phenomenal facts struck everyone else as being simply
miraculous.
Verily, habit becomes second nature with men! Our father, who had
premised by saying that he gave permission to everyone to
incarcerate him in a lunatic asylum on that day that he would
believe that a table could move, fly, or become rooted to the spot
at the desire of those present, now passed his days and parts of his
nights talking with “Helen's spirits”, as he called it. They
informed him of numerous events and details pertaining to the lives
of his ancestors, the Counts Hahn von Rottenstern Hahn; offered to
get back for him certain title-deeds, and told us such interesting
legends and witty anecdotes, that unbelievers as well as believers
could hardly help feeling interested. It often happened that my
sister, being occupied with her reading, we — our father, the
governess, and myself — unwilling to disturb her, communicated with
the invisible power, mentally and in silence, simply thinking out
our questions, and writing down the letters rapped out either on the
walls or the table near us. ... I remember having had a remarkable
phenomenon of this kind, at a station in the Swyatee Goree (Holy
Mountains), where the poet A. Poushkine is buried, and when my
sister was fast asleep. Things were told to me, of which positively
no one in this world could know anything, I alone being the
depositary of these secrets, together with an old gentleman living
for years on his far-away property. I had not seen him for six
years; my sister had never heard of him, as I had made his
acquaintance two years after she had left Russia. During that mental
conversation, names, dates, and the appellation of his property were
given to me. I had thought and asked, Where is he who loved me more
than anyone on this earth ? Easy to know that I had my late husband
in my mind. Instead of that, I received in answer a name I had long
forgotten. First I felt perplexed, then indignant, and finally the
idea became so comical that I burst out in a fit of laughter, that
awoke my sister. How can you prove to me that you do not lie ? I
asked my invisible companions. Remember the second volume of Byron's
poetry, was the answer I received. I became cold with horror ! No
one had ever been told of it, and I myself had forgotten for years
that circumstance which was now told to me in all its details,
namely, that being in the habit of sending books, and a series of
English classics for me to read, that gentleman, old enough to be my
grandfather, had thought of offering marriage to me, and found no
better means for it than by inserting in Volume II. of Byron's works
a letter to that effect. ... Of course my “informers”, whoever they
were, played upon me a wicked trick by reminding me of these facts,
yet their omniscience had been brilliantly proven to me by them in
this case.
It is most extraordinary that our silent conversations with that
intelligent force that had ever manifested itself in my sister's
presence were found by us the most successful during her sleep, or
when she was very ill. Once a young physician, who visited us for
the first time, got so terribly frightened at the noises, and the
moving about of things in her room when she was on her bed lying
cold and senseless, that he nearly fainted himself. Such
tragi-comical scenes happened very often in our house, but the most
remarkable of all such have already been told in the pages of the
Rebus, in 1883, as having taken place during her two years' stay
with us. As an eye-witness, I can only once more testify to all the
facts described, without entering upon the question of the agency
that produced them, or the nature of the agents. But I may recall
some additional inexplicable phenomena that occurred at that time,
testified to by other members of our family, though some of them I
have not witnessed myself. All the persons living on the premises,
with the household members, saw constantly, often in full noonday,
vague human shadows walking about the rooms, appearing in the
garden, in the flower-beds in front of the house, and near the old
chapel. My father (once the greatest sceptic), Mademoiselle
Leontine, the governess of our younger sister, told me many a time,
that they had just met and seen such figures quite plainly.
Moreover, Leontine found very often in her locked drawers, and her
trunks, some very mysterious letters, containing family secrets
known to her alone, over which she wept, reading them incessantly
during whole weeks; and I am forced to confess that once or twice
the events foretold in them came to pass as they had been prophesied
to us.
[Some comments on various parts of the foregoing narrative,
furnished by Mme. Blavatsky herself, will here be read with
interest. She says she has tried with the most famous mediums to
evoke and communicate with those dearest to her, and whose loss she
had deplored, but could never succeed.“Communications and messages”
she certainly did receive, and got their signatures, and on two
occasions their materialized forms, but the communications were
couched in a vague and gushing language quite unlike the style she
knew so well. Their signatures, as she has ascertained, were
obtained from her own brain; and on no occasion, when the presence
of a relation was announced and the form described by the medium,
who was ignorant of the fact that Mme. Blavatsky could see as well
as any of them, has she recognized the “spirit” of the alleged
relative in the host of spooks and elementaries that surrounded them
(when the medium was a genuine one of course). Quite the reverse.
For she often saw, to her disgust, how her own recollections and
brain-images were drawn from her memory and disfigured in the
confused amalgamation that took place between their reflection in
the medium's brain, which instantly sent them out, and the shells
which sucked them in like a sponge and objectivised them — “a
hideous shape with a mask on in my sight”, she tells us. “Even the
materialized form of my uncle at the Eddys' was the picture; it was
I who sent it out from my own mind, as I had come out to make
experiments without telling it to anyone. It was like an empty outer
envelope of my uncle that I seemed to throw on the medium's astral
body. I saw and followed the process, I knew Will Eddy was a genuine
medium, and the phenomenon as real as it could be, and therefore,
when days of trouble came for him, I defended him in the papers. In
short, for all the years of experience in America, I never succeeded
in identifying, in one single instance, those I wanted to see. It is
only in my dreams and personal visions that I was brought in direct
contact with my own blood relatives and friends, those between whom
and myself there had been a strong mutual spiritual love”. Her
conviction therefore, based as much on her personal experience as on
that of the teachings of the occult doctrine, is as follows: — “For
certain psycho-magnetic reasons, too long to be explained here, the
shells of those spirits who loved us best will not, with a very few
exceptions, approach us. They have no need of it since, unless they
were irretrievably wicked, they have us with them in Devachan, that
state of bliss in which the monads are surrounded with all those,
and that, which they have loved — objects of spiritual aspirations
as well as human entities. ' Shells ' once separated from their
higher principles have nought in common with the latter. They are
not drawn to their relatives and friends, but rather to those with
whom their terrestrial, sensuous affinities are the strongest. Thus
the shell of a drunkard will be drawn to one who is either a
drunkard already or has a germ of this passion in him, in which case
they will develop it by using his organs to satisfy their craving;
one who died full of sexual passion for a still living partner will
have its shell drawn to him or her, etc.. We Theosophists, and
especially occultists, must never lose sight of the profound axiom
of the Esoteric Doctrine which teaches us that it is we, the living,
who are drawn towards the spirits — but that the latter can never,
even though they would, descend to us, or rather into our sphere.”
CHAPTER 6
MM. DE JELIHOWSKY'S NARRATIVE - (CONTINUED)
THE quiet life of the sisters at Rougodevo was brought to an end by
a terrible illness which befell Mme. Blavatsky. Years before,
perhaps during her solitary travels in the steppes of Asia, she had
received a remarkable wound. We could never learn how she had met
with it. Suffice to say that the profound wound reopened
occasionally, and during that time she suffered intense agony, often
bringing on convulsions and a death-like trance. The sickness used
to last from three to four days, and then the wound would heal as
suddenly as it had reopened, as though an invisible hand had closed
it, and there would remain no trace of her illness. But the
affrighted family was ignorant at first of this strange peculiarity,
and their despair and fear were great indeed. A physician was sent
for to the neighboring town; but he proved of little use, not so
much indeed through his ignorance of surgery, as owing to a
remarkable phenomenon which left him almost powerless to act through
sheer terror at what he had witnessed. He had hardly examined the
wound of the patient prostrated before him in complete
unconsciousness, when suddenly he saw a large, dark hand between his
own and the wound he was going to anoint. The gaping wound was near
the heart, and the hand kept slowly moving at several intervals from
the neck down to the waist. To make his terror worse, there began
suddenly in the room such a terrific noise, such a chaos of noises
and sounds from the ceiling, the floor, window-panes, and every bit
of furniture in the apartment, that he begged he might not be left
alone in the room with the insensible patient.
In the spring of 1860 both sisters left Rougodevo for the Caucasus,
on a visit to their grandparents, whom they had not seen for long
years.
During the three weeks' journey from Moscow to Tiflis, performed in
a coach with post horses, there occurred many a strange
manifestation.
At Zadonsk — the territory of the Cossack army of the Don, a place
of pilgrimage in Russia, where the holy relics of St Tihon are
preserved — we halted for rest, and I prevailed upon my lazy sister
to accompany me to the church to hear the mass. We had learned that
on that day church service would be conducted near the said relics
by the then Metropolitan [One of the three “Popes” of Russia, so to
say, the highest of the ecclesiastical hierarchy of the Orthodox
Greek Church] of Kiew (at present, in 1884, the Metropolitan of St
Petersburg), the famous and learned Isidore, [Now a man past ninety
years of age] whom both of us had well known in our childhood and
youth at Tiflis, where he was for so many years the Exarch [The
spiritual chief of all the archbishops, and the head of the Church
in Georgia] of Georgia (Caucasus). He had been a friend of our
family for years, and had often visited us. During service the
venerable old man recognized us, and immediately dispatched a monk
after us, with an invitation to visit him at the Lord Archbishop's
house. He received us with great kindness. But hardly had we taken
our seats in the drawing-room of the Holy Metropolitan than a
terrible hubbub, noises, and loud raps in every conceivable
direction burst suddenly upon us with a force to which even we were
hardly accustomed; every bit of furniture in the big audience room
cracked and thumped — from the huge chandelier under the ceiling,
every one of whose crystal drops seemed to become endowed with
self-motion, down to the table, and under the very elbows of his
holiness who was leaning on it.
Useless to say how confused and embarrassed we looked — though truth
compels me to say that my irreverent sister's embarrassment was
tempered with a greater expression of fun than I would have wished
for. The Metropolitan Isidore saw at a glance our confusion, and
understood, with his habitual sagacity, the true cause of it. He had
read a good deal about the so-called “spiritual” manifestations, and
on seeing a huge armchair gliding toward him, laughed, and felt a
good deal interested in this phenomenon. He inquired which of us two
sisters had such a strange power, and wanted to know when and how it
had begun to manifest itself. We explained to him all the
particulars as well as we could, and after listening very
attentively, he suddenly asked Mme. Blavatsky if she would permit
him to offer her “invisible” a mental question. Of course, his
holiness was welcome to it, she answered. We do not feel at liberty
to publish what the question was. But when his very serious query
had received an immediate answer — precise and to the very point he
wanted it to be — his holiness was so struck with amazement, and
felt so anxious and interested in the phenomenon, that he would not
let us go, and detained us with him for over three hours. He had
even forgotten his dinner. Giving orders not to be interrupted, the
venerable gentleman continued to hold conversation with his unseen
visitors, expressing all the while his profound astonishment at
their “all-knowledge”. [Vseznaïstvo - the word used can hardly
be
translated by the term omniscience; it is an attribute of a less
absolute character, and refers to the things of the earth.]
When bidding good-bye to us, the venerable old man blessed the
travelers, and, turning to Mme. Blavatsky, addressed to her these
parting words: —
“As for you, let not your heart be troubled by the gift you are
possessed of, nor let it become a source of misery to you hereafter,
for it was surely given to you for some purpose, and you could not
be held responsible for it. Quite the reverse ! for if you but use
it with discrimination, you will be enabled to do much good to your
fellow-creatures.”
These are the authentic words of His Holiness, Isidore, the
Metropolitan of our Orthodox Greek Church of Russia, addressed by
him in my presence to my sister Mme. Blavatsky. [The Russian Censor
has not allowed this letter to appear in the Rebus in the original.]
At one of the stations where we had to change horses, the
station-master told us very brutally that there were no fresh horses
for us, and that we had to wait. The sun had not yet gone down, it
was full moon, the roads were good, and with all this, we were made
to lose several hours ! This was provoking. Nevertheless there was
nothing to be done, the more so as the station-master, who was too
drunk to be reasoned with, had found fit to disappear, and refused
to come and talk with us. We had to take the little unpleasantness
as easily as we could, and settle ourselves as best we knew how for
the night; but even here we found an impediment. The small
station-house had but one room for the travelers near a hot and
dirty kitchen, and even that one was locked and bolted, and no one
would open the door for us without special orders. Mme. Blavatsky
was beginning to lose patience.
“Well, this is fine ! ” she went on. “We are refused horses, and
even the room we are entitled to is shut for us ! Why is it shut ?
Now, I want to know and insist upon it”. But there was no one to
tell us the reason why, for the station-house seemed utterly empty,
and there was not a soul to be seen about. H. P. B. approached the
little low windows of the locked room, and flattened her face
against the window panes. “A-ha!” she suddenly exclaimed; “that's
what it is ! Very well, then, and now I can force the drunken brute
to give us horses in five minutes.”
And she started off in search of the station-master. Curious to know
what secret there was in the mysterious room, I approached the
window in my turn, and tried to fathom its unknown regions. But
although the inside of the room was perfectly visible through the
window, yet my uninitiated eyes could see nothing in it save the
ordinary furniture of a dirty station-house, dirty as they all are.
Nevertheless, to my delight and surprise, ten minutes had not passed
when three excellent and strong post-horses were brought out, under
the supervision of the station-master himself, who, pale and
confused, had become, as though by magic, polite and full of
obsequiousness. In a few minutes our carriage was ready, and we
continued our journey.
To my question what sorcery had helped her to achieve such change in
the drunken station-master, who but a moment before would pay no
attention to us, Mme. Blavatsky only laughed.
“Profit, and ask no questions!” she said. “Why should you be so
inquisitive ? ” It was but on the following day that she
condescended to tell me that the wretched station-master must have
most certainly taken her for a witch. It appears that upon finding
him in a back-yard, she had shouted to him that the person whose
body had been just standing in a coffin in the “travelers' room” was
there again, and asked him not to detain us, for we would otherwise
insist upon our right to enter into the room, and would disturb her
spirit thereby. And when the man upon hearing this opened his eyes,
without appearing to understand what she was referring to, Mme.
Blavatsky hastened then to tell him that she was speaking of his
deceased wife, whom he had just buried, and who was there, and would
be there, in that room until we had gone away. She then proceeded to
describe the ghost in such a minute way that the unfortunate widower
became as pale as death itself, and hurried away to order fresh
horses !
Some interesting details concerning Mme. Blavatsky's family home at
Tiflis have been published quite lately in a Russian memoir,
“Reminiscences of Prince A. T. Bariatinsky”, by General P. S.
Nikolaeff, formerly his aide-de-camp at Tiflis. This memoir appears
in the Historical Vyestnick (Messenger], a Russian magazine of high
repute, dedicated, as its name shows, to historical Notes, Memoirs,
and Biographies. Referring to the family of the Fadeefs, General
Nikolaeff, writing of a period coincident with that of Mme.
Blavatsky's visit to Tiflis, says: —
“They were living in those years in the ancient mansion of the
Princes Tchavtchavadze, the great building itself carrying the
imprint of something weird or peculiar about it — something that
carried one back to the epoch of Catherine the Great. A long, lofty,
and gloomy hall was hung with the family portraits of the Fadeefs
and the Princes Dolgorouky. Further on was a drawing-room, its walls
covered with Gobelin tapestry, a present from the Empress Catherine,
and near at hand was the apartment of Mademoiselle N. A. Fadeef — in
itself one of the most remarkable of private museums. The collection
gathered into this museum attracted attention by their great
variety. There were brought together the arms and weapons from all
the countries of the world; ancient crockery, cups, and goblets,
archaic house utensils, Chinese and Japanese idols, mosaics and
images of the Byzantine epoch, Persian and Turkish carpets, and
fabrics worked with gold and silver, statues, pictures, paintings,
petrified fossils, and, finally, a very rare and most precious
library.
“The emancipation of the serfs had altered in no way the daily life
of the Fadeefs. The whole enormous host of their valetaille
(ex-serfs), [Forty men and women; and this for twenty-two years in
Tiflis, where old General Fadeef was one of the three Imperial
Councillors on the council under the Viceroys from Prince Porontzoff
to the Grand Duke Michael] having remained with the family as before
their freedom, only now receiving wages ; and all went on as before
with the members of that family — that is to say, luxuriously and
plentifully (it means in their usual hospitable and open way of
living). I loved to pass my evenings in that home. At precisely a
quarter to eleven o'clock, the old general, brushing along the
parquets with his warmly muffled-up feet, retired to his apartments.
At that same moment, hurriedly and in silence, the supper was
brought in on trays, and served in the interior rooms; and
immediately after this the drawing-room doors would be closely shut,
and an animated conversation take place on every topic. Modern
literature was reviewed and criticized, contemporary social
questions from Russian life discussed; at one time it was the
narratives of some visitor, a foreign traveler, or an account given
of a recent skirmish by one of its heroes, some sunburnt officer
just returned from the battlefield (in the Caucasian Mountains),
would be eagerly listened to; at another time the antiquated old
Spanish-mason (then an officer in the Russian army), Quartano, would
drop in and give us thrilling stories from the wars of Napoleon the
Great. Or, again, 'Radda Bay' — H. P. Blavatsky, the granddaughter
of General A. M. Fadeef — would put in an appearance, and was made
to call forth from her past some stormy episode of her American life
and travels ; when the conversation would be sure to turn suddenly
upon the mystic subjects, and she herself commence to ' evoke
spirits.' And then the tall candles would begin to burn low, hardly
flickering toward the end, the human figures on the Gobelin tapestry
would seem to awaken and move, and each of us feel queer from an
involuntary creeping sensation; and this generally lasted until the
eastern portion of the sky began itself to pale, on the dark face of
the southern night.”
Mme. Blavatsky resided at Tiflis less than two years, and not more
than three in the Caucasus. The last year she passed roaming about
in Imeretia, Georgia, and Mingrelia. Throughout the Trans-Caucasian
country, and all along the coasts of the Black Sea, the various
peoples, notwithstanding that their Christian persuasion dates from
the fourth century A.D., are as superstitious as any Pagan,
especially the half-savage, warlike Apkhasians, the Imeretenes, and
the Mingrelians — the descendants, perhaps, of those ancient Greeks
who came with Jason in search of the Golden Fleece; for, according
to historical legend, it is the site of the archaic Colchide, and
the river Rion (Pharsis) rolled once upon a time its rapid waves
upon golden sand and ore instead of the modern gravel and stones.
Therefore it was but natural that the princes and the landed
“noblemen”, who live in their “castles” scattered through, and stuck
like nests in thick foliage, in the dense woods and forests of
Mingrelia and Imeretia, and who, hardly half a century back, were
nearly all half-brigands when not full-blown highwaymen, who are
fanatical as Neapolitan monks, and ignorant as Italian noblemen —
that they should, we say, have viewed such a character as was then
Mme. Blavatsky in the light of a witch, when not in that of a
beneficent magician. As, later in life, wherever she went, her
friends in those days were many, but her enemies still more
numerous. If she cured and helped those who believed themselves
sincerely bewitched, it was only to make herself cruel enemies of
those who were supposed to have bewitched and spoiled the victims.
Refusing the presents and “thanks” of those she relieved of the
“evil eye” — she rejected, at the same time, with equal contempt,
the bribes offered by their enemies. No one, at any rate, and
whatever her other faults may be, has succeeded in showing her a
mercenary character, or one bent upon money-making for any motive.
Thus, while people of the class of the Princes Gouriel, and of the
Princes Dadiani and Abashedsé, were ranked among her best
friends,
some others — all those who had a family hatred for the above named
— were, of course, her sworn enemies. In those days, we believe even
now, these countries — especially Mingrelia and Imeretia — were
regular hot-beds of titled paupers; of princes, descendants of
deposed and conquered sovereigns, and feud raged among them as
during the Middle Ages. These were and have remained her enemies.,
Some years later, to these were added all the bigots, church-goers,
missionaries, to say nothing of American and English spiritualists,
French spiritists, and their host of mediums. Stories after stories
were invented of her, circulated and accepted by all, except those
who knew her well — as facts. Calumny was rife, and her enemies now
hesitate at no falsehood that can injure her character.
She defied them all, and would submit to no restraint; would stoop
to adopt no worldly method of propitiating public opinion. She
avoided society, showing her scorn of its idols, and was therefore
treated as a dangerous iconoclast. All her sympathies went toward,
and with, that tabooed portion of humanity which society pretends to
ignore and avoid, while secretly running after its more or less
renowned members — the necromancers, the obsessed, the possessed,
and such like mysterious personages. The native Koodiani (magicians,
sorcerers), Persian thaumaturgists, and old Armenian hags — healers
and fortune-tellers — were the first she generally sought out and
took under her protection. Finally public opinion became furious,
and society — that mysterious somebody in general, and nobody in
particular — made an open levee of arms against one of its own
members who dared to defy its time-hallowed laws, and act as no
respectable person would — namely, roaming in the forests alone, on
horseback, and preferring smoky huts and their dirty inmates to
brilliant drawing-rooms and their frivolous denizens.
Her occult powers all this while, instead of weakening, became every
day stronger, and she seemed finally to subject to her direct will
every kind of manifestation. The whole country was talking of her.
The superstitious Gooriel and Mingrelian nobility began very soon to
regard her as a magician, and people came from afar off to consult
her about their private affairs. She had long since given up
communication through raps, and preferred — what was a far more
rapid and satisfactory method — to answer people either verbally or
by means of direct writing. [This was done always in full
consciousness, and simply, as she explained, watching people's
thoughts as they evolved out of their head in spiral luminous smoke,
sometimes in jets of what might be taken for some radiant material,
and settled in distinct pictures and images around them. Often such
thoughts and answers to them would find themselves impressed in her
own brain, couched in words and sentences in the same way as
original thoughts do. But, so far as we are all able to understand,
the former visions are always more trustworthy, as they are
independent and distinct from the seer’s own impressions, belonging
to pure clairvoyance, not “thought transference”, which is a process
always liable to get mixed up with one’s own more vivid mental
impressions.] At times, during such process, Mme Blavatsky seemed to
fall into a kind of coma, or magnetic sleep, with eyes wide open,
though even then her hand never ceased to move, and continued its
writing.[“Very naturally”, she explains, “since it was neither
magnetic sleep", nor coma, but simply a state of intense
concentration, an attention only too necessary during such
concentration, when the least distraction leads to a mistake. People
knowing but of mediumistic clairvoyance, and not of our philosophy
and mode of operation, often fall into such error”.] When thus
answering mental questions, the answers were rarely unsatisfactory.
Generally they astonished the querists — friends and enemies.
Meanwhile sporadic phenomena were gradually dying away in her
presence. They still occurred, but very rarely, though they were
always very remarkable. We give one.
It must, however, be explained that, some months previous to that
event, Mme. Blavatsky was taken very ill. From the verbal statements
of her relatives, recorded under their dictation, we learn that no
doctor could understand her illness. It was one of those mysterious
nervous diseases that baffle science, and elude the grasp of
everyone but a very expert psychologist. Soon after the commencement
of that illness, she began — as she repeatedly told her friends —
“to lead a double life”. What she meant by it, no one of the good
people of Mingrelia could understand, of course. But this is how she
herself describes that state: —
“Whenever I was called by name, I opened my eyes upon hearing it,
and was myself, my own personality in every particular. As soon as I
was left alone, however, I relapsed into my usual, half-dreamy
condition, and became somebody else (who, namely, Madame. B. will
not tell). I had simply a mild fever that consumed me slowly but
surely, day after day, with entire loss of appetite, and finally of
hunger, as I would feel none for days, and often went a week without
touching any food whatever, except a little water, so that in four
months I was reduced to a living skeleton. In cases when I was
interrupted, when in my other self, by the sound of my present name
being pronounced, and while I was conversing in my dream life — say
at half a sentence either spoken by me or those who were with my
second me at the time — and opened my eyes to answer the call, I
used to answer very rationally, and understood all, for I was never
delirious. But no sooner had I closed my eyes again than the
sentence which had been interrupted was completed by my other self,
continued from the word, or even half the word, it had stopped at.
When awake, and myself, I remembered well who I was in my second
capacity, and what I had been and was doing. When somebody else,
i.e. the personage I had become, I know I had no idea of who was H.
P. Blavatsky! I was in another far-off country, a totally different
individuality from myself, and had no connection at all with my
actual life.”
Such is Mme. Blavatsky's analysis of her state at that time. She was
residing then at Ozoorgetty, a military settlement in Mingrelia,
where she had bought a house. It is a little town, lost among the
old forests and woods, which, in those days, had neither roads nor
conveyances, save of the most primitive kind, and which, to the very
time of the last Russo-Turkish war, was unknown outside of Caucasus.
The only physician of the place, the army surgeon, could make
nothing of her symptoms; but as she was visibly and rapidly
declining, he packed her off to Tiflis to her friends. Unable to go
on horseback, owing to her great weakness, and a journey in a cart
being deemed dangerous, she was sent off in a large native boat
along the river — a journey of four days to Kutais — with four
native servants only to take care of her.
What took place during that journey we are unable to state
precisely; nor is Mme. Blavatsky herself certain of it, since her
weakness was so great that she lay like one apparently dead until
her arrival. In that solitary boat, on a narrow river, hedged on
both sides by centenarian forests, her position must have been
precarious.
The little stream they were sailing along was, though navigable,
rarely, if ever, used as a means of transit, at any rate not before
the war. Hence the information we have got came solely from her
servants and was very confused. It appears, however, that as they
were gliding slowly along the narrow stream, cutting its way between
two steep and woody banks, the servants were several times during
three consecutive nights frightened out of their senses by seeing,
what they swore was their mistress, gliding off from the boat, and
across the water in the direction of the forests, while the body of
that same mistress was lying prostrate on her bed at the bottom of
the boat. Twice the man who towed the canoe, upon seeing the “form”,
ran away shrieking, and in great terror. Had it not been for a
faithful old servant who was taking care of her, the boat and the
patient would have been abandoned in the middle of the stream. On
the last evening, the servant swore he saw two figures, while the
third — his mistress, in flesh and bone — was sleeping before his
eyes. No sooner had they arrived at Koutaïs, where Mme.
Blavatsky
had a distant relative residing, than all the servants, with the
exception of the old butler, left her, and returned no more.
It was with great difficulty that she was transported to Tiflis. A
carriage and a friend of the family were sent to meet her; and she
was brought into the house of her friends apparently dying.
She never talked upon that subject with anyone. But, as soon as she
was restored to life and health, she left the Caucasus, and went to
Italy. Yet it was before her departure from the country in 1863 that
the nature of her powers seems to have entirely changed.
One afternoon, very weak and delicate still, after the illness just
described, Mme. Blavatsky came in to her aunt's, N. A. Fadeef's,
room. After a few words of conversation, remarking that she felt
tired and sleepy, she was offered to rest upon a sofa. Hardly had
her head touched her cushion when she fell into a profound sleep.
Her aunt had quietly resumed some writing she had interrupted to
talk with her niece, when suddenly soft but quite audible steps in
the room behind her chair made her rapidly turn her head to see who
was the intruder, as she was anxious that Mme. Blavatsky should not
be disturbed. The room was empty! there was no other living person
in it but herself and her sleeping niece, yet the steps continued
audibly, as though of a heavy person treading softly, the floor
creaking all the while. They approached the sofa, and suddenly
ceased. Then she heard stronger sounds, as though someone was
whispering near Mme. Blavatsky, and presently a book placed on a
table near the sofa was seen by N. A. Padeef to open, and its pages
kept turning to and fro, as if an invisible hand were busy at it.
Another book was snatched from the library shelves, and flew in that
same direction.
More astonished than frightened — for everyone in the house had been
trained in and become quite familiar with such manifestations — N.
A. Fadeef arose from her arm-chair to awaken her niece, hoping
thereby to put a stop to the phenomena; but at the same moment a
heavy arm-chair moved at the other end of the room, and rattling on
the floor, glided toward the sofa. The noise it made awoke Mme.
Blavatsky, who, upon opening her eyes, inquired of the invisible
presence what was the matter. A few more whisperings, and all
relapsed into quietness and silence, and there was nothing more of
the sort during the rest of the evening.
At the date at which we write, every phenomenon independent of her
will, except such as the one described, and that Mme. Blavatsky
attributes to quite a different cause than spiritual manifestations,
has for more than twenty years entirely ceased. At what time this
complete change in her occult powers was wrought we are unable to
say, as she was far away from our observation, and spoke of it but
rarely — never unless distinctly asked in our correspondence to
answer the question. From her letters we learnt that she was always
traveling, rarely settling for any length of time in one place. And
we believe her statements with regard to her powers to have been
entirely true when she wrote to tell us, “Now (in 1866) I shall
never be subjected to external influences.” It is not H. P. B. who
was from that time forth victim to “ influences” which would have
without doubt triumphed over a less strong nature than was hers;
but, on the contrary, it is she who subjected these influences —
whatever they may be — to her will.
“The last vestige of my psycho-physical weakness is gone, to return
no more”, writes Mme. Blavatsky in a letter to a relation. “I am
cleansed and purified of that dreadful attraction to myself of stray
spooks and ethereal affinities. I am free, free, thanks to THOSE
whom I now bless at every hour of my life”. “I believe in this
statement”, said, in a conversation in May 1884 at Paris, her
sister, Mme. Jelihowsky, “ the more so as for nearly five years we
had a personal opportunity of following the various and gradual
phases in the transformations of that force. At Pskoff and Rougodevo
it happened very often that she could not control, nor even stop,
its manifestations. After that she appeared to master it more fully
every day, until after her extraordinary and protracted illness at
Tiflis she seemed to defy and subject it entirely to her will. This
was proved by her stopping any such phenomena at her will, and by
previous arrangement for days and weeks at a time. Then, when the
term was over, she could produce them at her command, and leaving
the choice of what should happen to those present. In short, as
already said, it is the firm belief of all that there, where a less
strong nature would have been surely wrecked in the struggle, her
indomitable will found somehow or other the means of subjecting the
world of the invisibles — to the denizens of which she has ever
refused the name of “spirits” and souls — to her own control. Let it
be clearly understood, however, that H. P. B. has never pretended to
be able to control real spirits, i.e. the spiritual monads, but only
Elementals; as also to be able to keep at bay the shells of the
dead.”]
CHAPTER 7
FROM APPRENTICESHIP TO DUTY
PROBABLY the years 1867 to 1870, if the story of these could be
properly told, would be found by far the most interesting of Mme.
Blavatsky's eventful life, but it is impossible for me to do more at
present than indicate that they were associated with great progress
in the expansion of her occult knowledge, and passed in the East.
The two or three years intervening between her residence at Tiflis
and the period I have named were spent indeed in European travel,
and there would be no necessity for holding back any information
concerning these — the latest of her relatively aimless wanderings —
of which I might have gained possession, but no watchful relatives
were with her to record what passed, and her own recollections give
us none but bare outlines of her adventures.
In 1870 she came back from the East by a steamer via the then
newly-opened Suez Canal, and after spending a short time in Piraeus
took passage for Spezzia on board a Greek vessel, which met with a
terrible catastrophe, and was blown up by an explosion of gunpowder
and fireworks forming part of the cargo. Mme. Blavatsky was one of a
very small number of passengers whose lives were saved. The
castaways were rescued with no more than the clothes they wore when
picked out of the water, and were momentarily provided for by the
Greek Government, who forwarded them to various destinations. Mme.
Blavatsky went to Alexandria and to Cairo, where, amid much
temporary inconvenience, she waited till supplies of money reached
her from Russia. I have headed this chapter “From Apprenticeship to
Duty”, because that is the great transition marked by the date of
Mme. Blavatsky's return to Europe in 1870. Till that period her life
had altogether been spent in the passionate search for occult
knowledge, on which her inborn instincts impelled her from her
earliest youth. This had now come upon her in ample measure. The
natural-born faculties of mediumship which had surrounded her
earlier years with a coruscation of wonders had given place now to
attributes for which Western students of psychic mysteries at that
date had no name. The time had not come for even the partial
revelations concerning the great system of occult initiation as
practised in the East, which has been embodied in books published
within the last few years. Mme. Blavatsky already knew that she had
a task before her — the task of introducing some knowledge
concerning these mysteries to the world, — but she was sorely
puzzled to decide how she should begin it. She had to do the best
she could in making the world acquainted with the idea that the
latent potentialities in human nature — in connection with which
psychic phenomena of various kinds were already attracting the
attention of large classes in both hemispheres — were of a kind
which, properly directed, would lead to the infinite spiritual
exaltation of their possessors, while wrongly directed they were
capable of leading downward towards disastrous results of almost
commensurate extent. She alone, at the period I refer to,
appreciated the magnitude of her mission, and if she did not
adequately appreciate the difficulties in her way, she had at all
events no companion to share her sense of the fact that these
difficulties were very great.
Probably she would be among those most willing to recognise, looking
back now upon the steps she took in the beginning, that she went to
work the wrong way, but very few people who have had a long and
arduous battle in life to fight — especially when that fight has
been chiefly waged against such moral antagonists as bigotry and
ignorance — would be in a position at the close of their efforts to
regard their earliest measures with satisfied complacency.
The only lever which, as the matter presented itself in the
beginning to Mme. Blavatsky's mind, seemed available for her to work
with, was the widespread and growing belief of large numbers of
civilized people in the phenomena and somewhat too hastily formed
theories of spiritualism. She set to work in Egypt — finding herself
there for the moment — to found a society which should have the
investigation of spiritualistic phenomena for its purpose, and which
she designed to lead through paths of higher knowledge in the end.
Some, among the many misrepresentations which have made her life one
long struggle with calumny from this time onward, arose from this
innocently intended measure. Because she set on foot her
quasi-spiritualistic society, she has been regarded as having been
committed at that date to an acceptance of the theory of psychic
phenomena which spiritualists hold. It will have been seen, however,
from the quotations I have given from her sister's narrative that,
even on her first return from the East in 1858, she was emphatic in
repudiating this view.
One of the persons who sought Mme. Blavatsky's acquaintance in
connection with this abortive society was the subsequently notorious
Mme. Coulomb, attached at that time to the personnel of a small
hotel at Cairo, who afterwards finding her way with her husband, in
a state of painful destitution, to India, fastened herself but too
securely on Mme. Blavatsky's hospitality at Bombay — only to repay
this in the end by rendering herself the tool of an infamous attack
made upon the Theosophical Society in the person of its Founder by a
missionary magazine at Madras. Of this I shall have occasion to
speak again later on.The narrative of the period beginning in 1871,
on which I am now entering, has been prepared, with a good deal of
assistance from Mme. Blavatsky herself, from writings by relatives
and intimate friends of her later years. It would be tedious to the
reader if this were divided into separate fragments of testimony,
and I shall therefore prefer — except in some special cases later on
— to weld these narratives into one, and the use of the plural
pronoun “we” will hereafter sufficiently identify passages which
have a composite authorship.
In 1871 Mme. Blavatsky wrote from Cairo to tell her friends that she
had just returned from India, and had been wrecked somewhere en
passant (near Spezzia). She had to wait in Egypt for some time
before she returned home, meanwhile she determined to establish a
Société Spirite for the investigation of mediums and
phenomena
according to Allen Kardec's theories and philosophy, since there was
no other way to give people a chance to see for themselves how
mistaken they were. She would first give free play to an already
established and accepted teaching and then, when the public would
see that nothing was coming out of it, she would offer her own
explanations. To accomplish this object, she said, she was ready to
go to any amount of trouble —
even to allowing herself to be
regarded for a time as a helpless medium. “They know no better, and
it does me no harm — for I will very soon show them the difference
between a passive medium and an active doer”. she explains.
A few weeks later a new letter was received. In this one she showed
herself full of disgust for the enterprise, which had proved a
perfect failure. She had written, it seems, to England and France
for a medium, but without success. En désespoir de cause, she
had
surrounded herself with amateur mediums — French female spiritists,
mostly beggarly tramps, when not adventuresses in the rear of M. de
Lesseps' army of engineers and workmen on the canal of Suez.
“They steal the Society's money”, she wrote, “ they drink like
sponges, and I now caught them cheating most shamefully our members,
who come to investigate the phenomena, by bogus manifestations. I
had very disagreeable scenes with several persons who held me alone
responsible for all this. So I ordered them out. . . . The
Société
Spirite has not lasted a fortnight — it is a heap of ruins,
majestic, but as suggestive as those of the Pharaoh's tombs. ... To
wind up the comedy with a drama, I got nearly shot by a madman — a
Greek, who had been present at the only two public séances we
held,
and got possessed I suppose by some vile spook.” [This literal
translation of a letter written by Mme Blavatsky to her aunt
fourteen years back shows that she never changed her way of viewing
communication with “spirits” for physical phenomena, as she was
accused of doing when in America.]
She broke off all connection with the “mediums”, shut up her
Société, and went to live in Boulak near the Museum.
Then it seems,
she came again in contact with her old friend the Copt of mysterious
fame, of whom mention has been made in connection with her earliest
visit to Egypt, at the outset of her travels. For several weeks he
was her only visitor. He had a strange reputation in Egypt, and the
masses regarded him as a magician. One gentleman, who knew him at
this time, declared that he had outlined and predicted for him for
twenty-five years to come nearly all his (the narrator's) daily
life, even to the day of his death. The Egyptian high officials
pretending to laugh at him behind his back, dreaded and visited him
secretly. Ismail Pasha, the Khedive, had consulted him more than
once, and later on would not consent to follow his advice to resign.
These visits of an old man, who was reputed hardly ever to stir from
his house (situated at about ten miles from town), to a foreigner
were much commented upon. New slanders and scandals were set on
foot. The sceptics who had, moved by idle curiosity, visited the
Société and witnessed the whole failure, made capital
of the thing.
Ridiculing the idea of phenomena, they had as a natural result
declared such claims to be fraud and charlatanry all round.
Conveniently inverting the facts of the case, they even went the
length of maintaining that instead of paying the mediums and the
expenses of the Society, it was Mme. Blavatsky who had herself been
paid, and had attempted to palm off juggler tricks as genuine
phenomena. The groundless inventions and rumors thus set on foot by
her enemies, mostly the discharged “French-women mediums”, did not
prevent Mme. Blavatsky from pursuing her studies, and proving to
every honest investigator that her extraordinary powers of
clairvoyance and clairaudience were facts, and independent of mere
physical manifestations, over which she possessed an undeniable
control. Also that her power, by simply looking at them, of setting
objects in motion and vibration without any direct contact with
them, and sometimes at a great distance, instead of deserting her or
even diminishing, had increased with years. A Russian gentleman, an
acquaintance of Mme. B., who happened to visit Egypt at that time,
sent his friends the most enthusiastic letters about Mme. Blavatsky.
Thus he wrote to a brother-officer in the same regiment a letter now
in the possession of her relatives, and from which we translate:
“She is a marvel, an unfathomable mystery. That which she produces
is simply phenomenal; and without believing any more in spirits than
I ever did, I am ready to believe in witchcraft. If it is after all
but jugglery, then we have in Mme. Blavatsky a woman who beats all
the Boscos and Robert Houdin's of the century by her address. . . .
Once I showed her a closed medallion containing the portrait of one
person and the hair of another, an object which I had had in my
possession but a few months, which was made at Moscow, and of which
very few know, and she told me without touching it, ' Oh ! it is
your godmother's portrait and your cousin's hair. Both are dead,'
and she proceeded forthwith to describe them, as though she had both
before her eyes. Now, godmother, as you know, who left my eldest
daughter her fortune, is dead fifteen years ago. How could she know
! ” etc..
In an illustrated paper of the time there is a story told of Mme.
Blavatsky by another gentleman. He met her at a table d'hôte
with
some friends in a hotel of Alexandria. Refusing to go with these to
the theatre after dinner, they remained alone, sitting on a sofa and
talking. Before the sofa there stood a little tea-tray, on which the
waiter had placed for Mr N----- a bottle of liqueur, some wine, a
wine-glass, and a tumbler. As he was carrying the glass with its
contents to his mouth, without any visible cause, it broke in his
hand into many pieces. She laughed, appearing overjoyed, and made
the remark that she hated liqueurs and wine and could hardly
tolerate those who used them too freely. The story goes on ...
“ ' You do not mean to infer that it is you who broke my wine-glass
. . . ? It is simply an accident. . . . The glass is very thin ; it
was perhaps cracked, and I squeezed it too strongly . . .!' I lied
purposely, for I had just made the mental remark that it seemed very
strange and incomprehensible, the glass being very thick and strong,
just as a verre à liqueur would be.”
But I wanted to draw her out.“
She looked at me very seriously, and her eyes flashed. ' What will
you bet,' she asked, ' that I do not do it again ?'
”' Well, we will try on the spot. If you do, I will be the first to
proclaim you a true magician. If not, we will have a good laugh at
you or your spirits to-morrow at the Consulate. . . .' And saying
so, I half-filled the tumbler with wine and prepared to drink it.
But no sooner had the glass touched my lips than I felt it shattered
between my fingers, and my hand bled, wounded by a broken piece in
my instinctive act at grasping the tumbler together when I felt
myself losing hold of it.“
"Entre les lèvres et la coupe, il y a quelquefois une
grande
distance,'' she observed sententiously, and left the room, laughing
in my face most outrageously”.
“ During the latter years”, Mme. de Jelihowsky states, “many were
the changes that had taken place in our family: our grandfather and
our aunt's husband, who had both occupied very high official
positions in Tiflis, had died, and the whole family had left the
Caucasus to settle permanently in Odessa. H. P. Blavatsky had not
visited the country for years, and there remained in Tiflis but
myself with my family and a number of old servants, formerly serfs
of the family, who, once liberated, could not be kept without wages
in the house they had been born in, and were gradually being sent
away. These people, some of whom owing to old age were unable to
work for their living, came constantly to me for help. Unable to
pension so many, I did what I could for them ; among other things I
had obtained a permanent home at the City Refuge House for two old
men, late servants of the family: a cook called Maxim and his
brother Piotre — once upon a time a very decent footman, but at the
time of the event I refer to an incorrigible drunkard, who had lost
his arm in consequence.”
That summer we had gone to reside during the hot months of the year
at Manglis — the headquarters of the regiment of Erivan — some
thirty miles from town, and Mme. Blavatsky was in Egypt. I had just
received the news that my sister had returned from India, and was
going to remain for some time at Cairo. We corresponded very rarely,
at long intervals, and our letters were generally short. But after a
prolonged silence I received from H. P. B. a very long and
interesting letter.“
A portion of it consisted of fly-sheets torn out from a note-book,
and these were all covered with pencil-writing. The strange events
they recorded had been all put down on the spot — some under the
shadow of the great Pyramid of Cheops, and some of them inside
Pharaoh's Chamber. It appears that Mme. B. had gone there several
times, once with a large company, some of whom were
spiritualists.[Some most wonderful phenomena were described by some
of her companions as having taken place in broad daylight in the
desert when they were sitting under a rock; whilst other notes in
Mme Blavatsky’s writing recorded the strange sight she saw in the
Cimmerian darkness of the King’s Chamber, when she has passed a
night alone comfortable settled inside a sarcophagus.]”
'Let me know, Vera', she wrote, 'whether it is true that the old
Pietro is dead ? He must have died last night or at some time
yesterday' (the date on the stamp of the envelope showed that it had
left Egypt ten days previous to the day on which it was received).
'Just fancy what happened ! A friend of mine, a young English lady,
and a medium, stood writing mechanically on bits of paper, leaning
upon an old Egyptian tomb. The pencil had begun tracing perfect
gibberish — in characters that had never existed here, as a
philologist told us — when suddenly, and as I was looking from
behind her back, they changed into what I thought were Russian
letters. My attention having been called elsewhere, I had just left
her, when I heard people saying that what she had written was now
evidently in some existing characters, but that neither she nor
anyone else could read them. I came back just in time to prevent her
from destroying that slip of paper as she had done with the rest,
and was rewarded. Possessing myself of the rejected slip, fancy my
astonishment on finding it contained in Russian an evident
apostrophe to myself!”
' “Barishnya (little or' young miss '), dear baryshnya! ” said the
writer, “help, oh help me, miserable sinner! ... I suffer: drink,
drink, give me a drink! . . . I suffer, I suffer!” From this term
baryshnya — a title our old servants will, I see, use with us two
even after our hair will have grown white with age — I understood
immediately that the appeal came from one of our old servants, and
took therefore the matter in hand by arming myself with a pencil to
record what I could myself see. I found the name Piotre Koutcherof
echoed in my mind quite distinctly, and I saw before me an
indistinguishable mass of grey smoke — a formless pillar — and
thought I heard it repeat the same words. Furthermore, I saw that he
had died in Dr Gorolevitch's hospital attached to the City Refuge,
the Tiflis workhouse where you had placed them both. Moreover, as I
made out, it is you who placed him there in company with his
brother, our old Maxim, who had died a few days before him. You had
never written about poor Maxim's death. Do tell me whether it is so
or not. . . .'
Further on followed her description of the whole vision as she had
it, later on, in the evening when alone, and the authentic words
pronounced by ' Piotre's spook' as she called it. The ' spirit' (?)
was bitterly complaining of thirst and was becoming quite desperate.
It was punishment, it said — and the spook seemed to know it well, —
for his drunkenness during the lifetime of that personality ! . . .
'An agony of thirst that nothing could quench — an ever living
fire,' as she explained it.”
Mme. Blavatsky's letter ended with a postscript, in which she
notified her sister that her doubts had been all settled. She saw
the astral spooks of both the brothers — one harmless and passive,
the other active and dangerous. [How dangerous is the latter kind
was proved on the spot. Miss O - , the medium, a young lady of
hardly twenty, governess in a rich family of bankers, an extremely
modest and gentle girl, had hardly written the Russian words
addressed to Mme Blavatsky, when she was seized with a trembling,
and asked to drink. When water was brought she threw it away, and
went on asking for a drink. Wine was offered her - she greedily
drank it, and began drinking one glass after another until, to the
horror of all, she fell into convulsions, and cried for “wine-a
drink!” till she fainted away, and was carried home in a carriage.
She had an illness after this that lasted several weeks. -
[H.P.B.]Upon the receipt of this letter, her sister was struck with
surprise. Ignorant herself of the death of the parties mentioned,
she telegraphed immediately to town, and the answer received from Dr
Gorolevitch corroborated the news announced by Mme. Blavatsky in
every particular. Piotre had died on the very same day and date as
given in H. P. Blavatsky's letter, and his brother two days earlier.
Disgusted with the failure of her spiritist society and the gossip
it provoked, Mme. Blavatsky soon went home via Palestine, and
lingered for some months longer, making a voyage to Palmyra and
other ruins, whither she went with Russian friends. Accounts of some
of the incidents of her journey found their way into the French and
even American papers. At the end of 1872 she returned in her usual
way without warning, and surprised her family at Odessa.
CHAPTER 8
RESIDENCE IN AMERICA
IN the beginning of 1873 Mme. Blavatsky left Russia and went in the
first instance to Paris. By this time the psychic relationship
between herself and her occult teachers in the East was already
established on that intimate footing which has rendered her whole
subsequent life subject to its practical direction. It is
unnecessary to inquire why she adopted this or that course; we shall
rarely discover commonplace motives for her action, and frequently
she herself would be no better able to say “why” she might be at any
given moment arranging to go here or there than the merest stranger
present. The immediate motive of her proceedings would be the
direction she would receive through occult channels of perception,
and for herself, rebellious and uncontrollable though she had been
in earlier life, “an order” from “her master” was now enough to send
her forward on the most uninviting errand, in patient confidence
that good results would ensue, and that whatever might be thus
ordered, would assuredly prove for the best.
The position is so unlike any which the experience of ordinary
mundane life supplies that I may usefully endeavor to explain the
relationship which exists in connection with, and arising out of,
occult initiation in the East between a pupil, or chela, of the
esoteric or occult doctrine and his teacher, master, or guru. I have
known many chelas within the last few years, and I can speak on the
subject from information that is not exclusively derived even from
that source.
The primary motive which governs people who become chelas is the
desire to achieve moral and spiritual exaltation that may lead
directly to a higher state of being than can be hoped for by the
unassisted operation of the normal law of nature. Referring back to
the esoteric view of the human soul's progress, it will be seen that
people may often be impelled, as Mme. Blavatsky was, for instance,
from childhood, by an inborn craving for occult instruction and
psychic development. Such people seek initiation under the guidance,
as it were, of a commanding instinct, which is unlike the
intellectually formed purpose to accomplish a spiritual achievement
that I have assigned above to chelas as their primary motive. But in
truth the motive would be regarded by occultists as the same at
different stages of development. For the normal law of Nature is
that a soul having accomplished a certain amount of progress — along
the path of spiritual evolution — in one physical life (one
incarnation), will be reborn without losing the attributes thus
acquired. All these constitute what are loosely spoken of as inborn
tendencies, natural tastes, inclinations, and so forth. And thus,
whether a chela is then, for the first time, seeking initiation or
watched over by a guru from his last birth, the primary motive of
his effort is the same.
And this being his own spiritual advancement, it may be, that if
circumstances do not require him to play an active part in any work
in the world, his duty will, to a large extent, be concentrated on
his own interior life. Such a man's chief obligation towards the
public at large, therefore, will be to conceal the fact that he is a
chela, for he has not yet, by the hypothesis, attained the right to
choose who shall and who shall not be introduced to the “mysteries”.
He merely has to keep the secrets entrusted to him as such. On the
other hand, the exigencies of his service may require him to perform
tasks in the world which involve the partial explanation of his
relationship with his masters, and then a very much more
embarrassing career lies before him. For such a chela — however
perfect his occult communications may be, through the channel of his
own psychic faculties, between himself and his masters — is never
allowed to regard himself for an instant as a blind automaton in
their hands. He is, on the contrary, a responsible agent who is left
to perform his task by the light of his own sagacity, and he will
never receive “orders” which seriously conflict with that principle.
These will be only of a general character, or, where they refer to
details, will be of a kind that do not, in occult phrase, interfere
with Karma; that is to say, that do not supersede the agent's moral
responsibility.
Finally, it should be understood in regard to “orders” among
initiates in occultism, that the order of an occult guru to his
chela differs in a very important respect from the order of an
officer to his soldier. It is a direction that in the nature of
things would never be enforced, for the disregard of which there
could be no positive or prescribed penalty, and which is only
imposed upon the chela by the consideration that if he gets an order
and does not obey it, he is unlikely to get any more. It is to be
regarded as an order because of the ardor of obedience on the side
of the chela, whose aspirations, by the hypothesis, are wholly
centered on the masters. The service thus rendered is especially of
the kind which has been described as perfect freedom.
All this must be borne in mind by any reader who would understand
Mme. Blavatsky and the foundation of the Theosophical Society, and
must be rigorously applied to the narrative of her later life. A
constant perplexity arises, for people who are slightly acquainted
with the circumstances of her career, from the indiscretions in
connection with the management of the Theosophical Society which she
has frequently fallen into. How can it be that the Mahatmas — her
occult teachers and masters, whose insight is represented as being
so great, whose interest in the theosophical movement is said to be
so keen, whose wisdom is vaunted so enthusiastically by their
adherents — permit their agent Mme. Blavatsky, with whom it is
alleged they are in constant communication, to make mistakes which
most people in her place would have avoided, to trust persons almost
obviously unworthy of her confidence, to associate herself with
proceedings that tend to lower the dignity of her enterprise, to
lose temper and time with assailants who might be calmly ignored,
and to spend her psychic energy in the wrong places, with the wrong
people, and at the wrong moments. The solution of the puzzle is to
be found entirely in the higher spiritual aspects of the
undertaking. The Theosophical Society is by a great way not the only
instrument through which the Mahatmas are working in the world to
foster the growth of spirituality among mankind, but it is the one
enterprise that has been confided, in a large measure, to Mme.
Blavatsky. If she were to fail with it, the Mahatma energy concerned
would be spent not in trying to bolster up her failure, but in some
quite different direction. If she succeeds with it, the principles
of moral responsibility are best vindicated by leaving her to
struggle through with her work in her own way. A general on a
campaign sending an officer to perform a specific duty is mainly
concerned with the result to be gained. If he thinks he can promote
this by interfering with fresh orders, he does so. But by the
hypothesis, a Mahatma interfering with his officer is throwing into
confusion the operation of the laws of Nature which have to do with
the causes — efficient on a plane above this of physical incarnation
— that are generated by what we call moral responsibility. Of course
it is open to people who know nothing of Eastern occultism, nor of
superior planes in Nature and so forth, to put all this aside and
judge Mme. Blavatsky's action by commonplace prosaic standards; but
it is not reasonable for the considerable number of people who in
various ways are quite ready to profess belief in the Mahatmas, and
in the reality of that occult world in which Mme. Blavatsky is
regarded by most theosophists as having been initiated, to say, in
spite of these beliefs, that the action of the Mahatmas in leaving
Mme. Blavatsky to make mistakes and trust the wrong people and so
forth is unintelligible. It is not unintelligible in principle, even
though, as I have indicated a page or two back, Mme. Blavatsky will
sometimes receive orders the immediate motive of which she does not
understand, but obeys none the less. This condition of things does
not violate the rule about not converting a responsible chela into a
blind automaton. Such interferences would never be found to take
place under conditions which would discharge the agent of moral
responsibility for the manner in which he might resume the guidance
of his enterprise from the point to which obedience to the order
received might have carried on or diverted him.
No special interest attaches to Mme. Blavatsky's brief residence in
Paris in 1873, where she stayed with a cousin of hers, Nicolas Hahn,
Rue de I'Université, for two months. She was directed to visit
the
United States, and make that place for a time the scene of her
operations.
She arrived at New York on 7th July 1873, and resided in that city —
with the exception of a few weeks and months when she had to visit
other cities and places — for over six years, after which time she
got her naturalization papers.
Although, as will have been seen from Mme. de Jelihowsky's
testimony, she was emphatic, even in 1858, in claiming for most of
the phenomena that took place in her presence a very different
origin from that usually assigned to such phenomena by
spiritualists, the experience of spiritualism and mediumship that
she acquired in America greatly enlarged her views on this subject.
In 1875 she wrote home: —
“The more I see of mediums — for the United States are a true
nursery, the most prolific hot-bed for mediums and sensitives of all
kinds, genuine and artificial — the more I see the danger humanity
is surrounded with. Poets speak of the thin partition between this
world and the other. They are blind: there is no partition at all
except the difference of states in which the living and the dead
exist, and the grossness of the physical senses of the majority of
mankind. Yet, these senses are our salvation. They were given to us
by a wise and sagacious mother and nurse — Nature; for, otherwise,
individuality and even personality would have become impossible: the
dead would be ever merging into the living, and the latter
assimilating the former. Were there around us but one variety of
'spirits' — as well call the dregs of wine, spirits — the reliquae
of those mortals who are dead and gone, one could reconcile oneself
with it. We cannot avoid, in some way or other, assimilating our
dead, and little by little, and unconsciously to ourselves, we
become they — even physically, especially in the unwise West, where
cremation is unknown. We breathe and devour the dead — men and
animals — with every breath we draw in, as every human breath that
goes out makes up the bodies and feeds the formless creatures in the
air that will be men some day. So much for the physical process; for
the mental and the intellectual, and also the spiritual, it is just
the same; we interchange gradually our brain-molecules, our
intellectual and even spiritual auras, hence — our thoughts,
desires, and aspirations, with those who preceded us. This process
is common to humanity in general. It is a natural one, and follows
the economy and laws of nature, insomuch that one's son may become
gradually his own grandfather, and his aunt to boot, imbibing their
combined atoms, and thus partially accounting for the possible
resemblance, or atavism. But there is another law, an exceptional
one, and which manifests itself among mankind sporadically and
periodically: the law of forced post-mortem assimilation, during the
prevalence of which epidemic the dead invade the domain of the
living from their respective spheres — though, fortunately, only
within the limits of the regions they lived in, and in which they
are buried. In such cases, the duration and intensity of the
epidemic depends upon the welcome they receive, upon whether they
find the doors opening widely to receive them or not, and whether
the necromantic plague is increased by magnetic attraction, the
desire of the mediums, sensitives, and the curious themselves; or
whether, again, the danger being signaled, the epidemic is wisely
repressed.
“Such a periodical visitation is now occurring in America. It began
with innocent children — the little Misses Fox — playing
unconsciously with this terrible weapon. And, welcomed and
passionately invited to ' come in,' the whole of the dead community
seemed to have rushed in, and got a more or less strong hold of the
living. I went on purpose to a family of strong mediums — the Eddys
— and watched for over a fortnight, making experiments, which, of
course, I kept to myself. . . . You remember, Vera, how I made
experiments for you at Rougodevo, how often I saw the ghosts of
those who had been living in the house, and described them to you,
for you could never see them. . . . Well, it was the same daily and
nightly in Vermont. I saw and watched these soulless creatures, the
shadows of their terrestrial bodies, from which in most cases soul
and spirit had fled long ago, but which throve and preserved their
semi-material shadows at the expense of the hundreds of visitors
that came and went, as well as of the mediums. And I remarked, under
the advice and guidance of my Master, that (I) those apparitions
which were genuine were produced by the ' ghosts' of those who had
lived and died within a certain area of those mountains; (2) those
who had died far away were less entire, a mixture of the real shadow
and of that which lingered in the personal aura of the visitor for
whom it purported to come; and (3) the purely fictitious ones, or as
I call them, the reflections of the genuine ghosts or shadows of the
deceased personality. To explain myself more clearly, it was not the
spooks that assimilated the medium, but the medium, W. Eddy, who
assimilated unconsciously to himself the pictures of the dead
relatives and friends from the aura of the sitters. . . .
“It was ghastly to watch the process! It made me often sick and
giddy; but I had to look at it, and the most I could do was to hold
the disgusting creatures at arm's length. But it was a sight to see
the welcome given to these umbroe by the spiritualists! They wept
and rejoiced around the medium, clothed in these empty materialized
shadows; rejoiced and wept again, sometimes broken down with an
emotion, a sincere joy and happiness that made my heart bleed for
them. 'If they could but see what I see', I often wished. If they
only knew that these simulacra of men and women are made up wholly
of the terrestrial passions, vices, and worldly thoughts, of the
residuum of the personality that was; for these are only such dregs
that could not follow the liberated soul and spirit, and are left
for a second death in the terrestrial atmosphere, that can be seen
by the average medium and the public. At times I used to see one of
such phantoms, quitting the medium's astral body, pouncing upon one
of the sitters, expanding so as to envelop him or her entirely, and
then slowly disappearing within the living body as though sucked in
by its every pore.
Under the influence of such ideas and thoughts, Mme. Blavatsky came
out finally quite openly with her protest against being called a
medium. She stoutly rejected the application of "Spiritist"
that was
being forced upon her by her foreign correspondents. Thus in 1877
she says in one of her letters:
"What kind of Spiritist can you see in, or make of me, pray? I I
have worked to join the Theosohical Society, in alliance offensive
and defensive with the Arya Samaj of India (of which we are now
forming a section within the parent Theosophical Society), it is
because in India all the Brahmins, whether orthodox or otherwise,
are terribly against the bhoots, [The simulacra or ghost of a
deceased person, - an "Elementary", or spook. ] the mediums,
or any
necromantic evocations or dealings with the dead in any way or
shape. That we have established our Society in order to combat,
under the banner of Truth and Science, every kind of superstitious
and preconceived hobbies. That we mean to fight the prejudices of
the Sceptics, as well as the abuse of power of the false prophets,
ancient or modern, to put down the high priests, the Calchases, with
their false Jupiterean thunders, and to show certain fallacies of
the Spiritists. If we are anything, we are Spiritualists, only not
on the modern American fashion, but on that of ancient Alexandria,
with its Theodadiktoi, Hypatias, and Porphyries...."
[For the new edition of this book I must here interpolate a note
warning the reader against too submissive an acceptance of the views
set forth in the letter quoted above. I do not think Mme. Blavatsky
would have endorsed them at a later stage of her occult education.
However frequently it may happen that communication from the astral
world may be confused and corrupted by the unconscious influence of
imperfectly developed mediums, it does not by any means follow that
in all cases the “spirits” of the seance room are “empty
materialized shadows” or “simulacra of men and women made up of
terrestrial passions and vices, etc..“It was not till long after the
date of the letter quoted that Mme. Blavatsky shared with myself in
India the fuller teaching concerning life on the astral and higher
planes of consciousness which put an intelligible face on the
variegated and often bewildering experiences of spiritualism. That
great movement was as definitely designed by higher wisdom for the
illumination of civilized mankind, as the far greater movement that
has since put us in touch with the mysteries of the higher occultism
— that it was simply designed to break down the materialistic drift
of thinking that was prevalent in the middle of the last century.
It; was designed simply to show us that there was another life for
human beings after the death of the physical! body. Those who had
passed on, and were living on the astral plane, were furnished with
a means of making their continued existence known to friends still
in incarnation. Of course these opportunities were available for
great numbers of astral entities surviving from the ignoble
varieties of mankind, and many of these may have flocked in during
Mme. Blavatsky's investigations of current spiritualism, confirming
impressions she had acquired concerning the characteristics of the
astral plane life; but multitudes of spiritualists knew perfectly
well that they often had touch with departed friends still
maintaining the personalities of the earth life, and in this way it
unfortunately happened that Mme. Blavatsky's sweeping condemnation
of all spiritualism as delusive and unwholesome alienated large
numbers of people who ought to have been the most ardent
sympathizers with the Theosophical movement. All later students of
occultism know now that the astral plane plays a much more important
part in the future life of most people “passing on” than the
misleading old “shell” theory led us to suppose in the beginning.]
The Theosophical Society was founded in October 1875 at New York,
with Colonel Olcott as life president — Mme. Blavatsky preferring to
invest herself with the relatively insignificant title of
corresponding secretary.
Colonel Olcott's acquaintance with Mme. Blavatsky was formed at a
farmhouse in Vermont — the house of two brothers, spiritualist
mediums named Eddy, famous in the annals of American spiritualism —
in October 1874. Referring to her in his book, called People from
the other World , published in 1875, he says: —
“This lady has led a very eventful life. . . .
The adventures she has encountered, the strange people she has seen,
the perils by sea and land she has passed through would make one of
the most romantic stories ever told by a biographer. In the whole
course of my experience I never met so interesting and, if I may say
it without offence, eccentric a character.”
In the year that elapsed between his first introduction to Mme.
Blavatsky and the inauguration of their joint enterprise, his
intercourse with her was intimate and his personal experiences
remarkable. These need not be reviewed here in detail, except so far
as some of them will throw light upon the circumstances of Mme.
Blavatsky's life at this period, and for the moment it is enough to
say that they induced him to throw up his professional career as a
“lawyer” (the distinctions between the different branches of the
profession in England, it will be remembered, do not hold good in
America) and devote his life to the pursuit of occult development as
a “chela” of the same master to whom Mme. Blavatsky's allegiance is
owing, and to the service of the theosophical movement.
As Colonel Olcott has shared some of the obloquy directed against
Mme. Blavatsky in recent years, it may be worth while to add a
paragraph concerning him written by Mr A. O. Hume, C.B., late
Secretary to the Government of India in the Agricultural Department.
This passage occurs in a letter by Mr Hume addressed to an English
paper, and is quoted in the preface to The Occult World: —
As regards Colonel Olcott's title, the printed papers which I send
by this same mail will prove to you that this gentleman is an
officer of the American army, who rendered good service during the
war (as will be seen from the letter of the Judge Advocate-General,
the Secretary of the Navy, and the Assistant Secretaries of War and
of the Treasury), and who was sufficiently well known and esteemed
in his own country to induce the President of the United States to
furnish him with an autograph letter of introduction and
recommendation to all Ministers and Consuls of the United States on
the occasion of his leaving America for the East at the close of
1878.”
In introducing some notes put together for the service of the
present memoir, Colonel Olcott writes :—
“A strange concatenation of events brought us together, and united
our lives for this work, under the superior direction of a group of
Masters, especially of One, whose wise teaching, noble example,
benevolent patience, and paternal solicitude have made us regard him
with the reverence and love that a true Father inspires in his
children. I am indebted to H. P. Blavatsky for making me know of the
existence of these Masters and their Esoteric Philosophy; and later,
for acting as my mediator before I had come into direct personal
intercourse with them.”
The earliest records of the Theosophical Society reveal the motives
for its formation which the fuller information since made public
concerning the character of Mme. Blavatsky's mission show to have
been present in her mind from the first, though the means by which
she should work them out lay before her then in a very nebulous and
hazy condition. She seems to have been embarrassed by the difficulty
of making her position intelligible to people who knew nothing of
the existence even, still less of the nature and powers, of those
proficients in occult science since so widely talked about — the
Adepts and Mahatmas. Her policy seems to have been to imitate, by
means of the occult powers which she either possessed herself or
could borrow from her masters from time to time, the phenomena of
spiritualism which then seemed to absorb the attention of all
persons in America having any natural leanings towards mysticism,
trusting to the sagacity of observers to show them that the
circumstances with which she would surround such phenomena were
quite unlike those to which they were used. In this way she seems to
have aimed at cutting the ground from under the feet of people
inclined to theorize too hastily on the basis of spiritualistic
observation — at persuading them that the evidence on which they
relied for the maintenance of their opinions did not afford adequate
justification for these, and at leading them into the path of a more
legitimate philosophical or theosophical research. The policy was
undeniably a bad one, and was carried out with little discretion and
with a waste of psychic energy which cannot but be deplored in the
retrospect by occult students who realize the consequences of such
waste. However, I merely wish to be sufficiently critical of Mme.
Blavatsky's proceedings, as this narrative advances, to elucidate
the operations in which we find her engaged, and I refrain from the
consideration here of the policies that might have been more
triumphant.
A vast array of unattainable purposes was set before themselves by
the little group of friends who organized the new society in 1875.
These were enumerated in one of the earlier codes of rules as
follows:—
(a) To keep alive in man his spiritual intuitions.
(b) To oppose and counteract — after due investigation and proof of
its irrational nature — bigotry in every form, whether as an
intolerant religious sectarianism or belief in miracles or anything
supernatural.
(c) To promote a feeling of brotherhood among nations, and assist in
the international exchange of useful arts and products, by advice,
information, and co-operation with all worthy individuals and
associations; provided, however, that no benefit or percentage shall
be taken by the Society for its corporate services.
(d) To seek to obtain knowledge of all the laws of Nature, and aid
in diffusing it; and especially to encourage the study of those laws
least understood by modern people, and so termed the occult
sciences. Popular superstition and folk-lore, however fantastical
when sifted, may lead to the discovery of long-lost but important
secrets of Nature. The Society, therefore, aims to pursue this line
of inquiry in the hope to widen the field of scientific and
philosophical observation.
(e) To gather for the Society's library and put into written forms
correct information upon the various ancient philosophic traditions
and legends, and, as the council shall decide it permissible,
disseminate the same in such practicable ways as the translation and
publication of original works of value, and extracts from and
commentaries upon the same, or the oral instruction of persons
learned in their respective departments.
(f) To promote in every practicable way in countries where needed
the spread of non-sectarian education.
(g) Finally and chiefly, to encourage and assist individual fellows
in self-improvement, intellectual, moral, and spiritual. But no
fellow shall put to his selfish use any knowledge communicated to
him by any member of the First Section: violation of this rule being
punished by expulsion. And before any such knowledge can be
imparted, the person shall bind himself by a solemn oath not to use
it to selfish purposes, nor to reveal it except with the permission
of the teacher.
One can readily discern in this formidable array of objects the
inarticulate purpose which Mme. Blavatsky had really in view — the
communication to the world at large of some ideas concerning the
Esoteric Doctrine or great “Wisdom Religion” of the East, shining
obscurely through the too ambitious programme of her new disciples,
which might be summed up as contemplating the reformation and
guidance of all nations generally — a programme which could hardly
have been floated in sober earnest elsewhere than in America, where
the mere magnitude of undertakings seems neither to daunt the
courage of their promoters nor touch their sense of the ludicrous.
This volume is indebted to Mr W. Q. Judge, one of the friends Mme.
Blavatsky made in the early part of her residence in America, for an
account of the miscellaneous marvels of which he was a witness
during the period with which we are now dealing. He writes: —
“My first acquaintance with H. P. Blavatsky began in the winter of
the year 1874. She was then living in apartments in Irving Place,
New York City, United States. She had several rooms en suite. The
front rooms looked out on Irving Place, and the back upon the
garden. My first visit was made in the evening, and I saw her there
among a large number of persons who were always attracted to her
presence. Several languages were to be heard among them, and Mme.
Blavatsky, while conversing volubly in Russian, apparently quite
absorbed, would suddenly turn round and interject an observation in
English into a discussion between other persons upon a different
topic to the one she was engaged with. This never disturbed her, for
she at once returned to her Russian talk, taking it up just where it
had been dropped.
“Very much was said on the first evening that arrested my attention
and enchained my imagination. I found my secret thoughts read, my
private affairs known to her. Unasked, and certainly without any
possibility of her having inquired about me, she referred to several
private and peculiar circumstances in a way that showed at once that
she had a perfect knowledge of my family, my history, my
surroundings, and my idiosyncrasies. On that first evening I brought
with me a friend, a perfect stranger to her. He was a native of the
Sandwich Islands, who was studying law in New York, and who had
formed all his plans for a lifelong stay in that city. He was a
young man, and had then no intention of marrying. But she carelessly
told him, before we left for home, that before six months he would
cross the continent of America, then make a long voyage, and,
stranger yet to him, that before all of this he would marry. Of
course, the idea was pooh-poohed by him. Still fate was too much for
him. In a few months he was invited to fill an official position in
his native land, and before leaving for that country he married a
lady who was not in America at the time the prophecy was uttered.
“The next day I thought I would try an experiment with Mme.
Blavatsky. I took an ancient scarabaeus that she had never seen, had
it wrapped up and sent to her through the mails by a clerk in the
employment of a friend. My hand did not touch the package, nor did I
know where it was posted. But when I called on her at the end of the
week the second time, she greeted me with thanks for the scarabaeus.
I pretended ignorance. But she said it was useless to pretend, and
then informed me how I had sent it, and where the clerk had posted
it. During the time that elapsed between my seeing her and the
sending of the package no one had heard from me a word about the
matter.
“Very soon after I met her, she moved to 34th Street, and while
there I visited her very often. In those rooms I used to hear the
raps in furniture, in glasses, mirrors, windows, and walls, which
are usually the accompaniment of dark 'spiritist' séances. But
with
her they occurred in the light, and never except when ordered by
her. Nor could they be induced to continue once that she ordered
them to stop. They exhibited intelligence also, and would at her
request change from weak to strong, or from many to few at a time.
“She remained in 34th Street only a few months, and then removed to
47th Street, where she stayed until her departure to India in
December 1878. I was a constant visitor, and know, as all others do
who were as intimate with her as I was, that the suspicions which
had been breathed about her, and the open charges that have from
time to time been made, are the foulest injustice or the basest
ingratitude. At times she has been incensed by these things, and
declared that one more such incident would forever close the door
against all phenomena. But over and over again she has relented and
forgiven her enemies.
“After she had comfortably settled herself in 47th Street, where, as
usual, she was from morning till night surrounded by all sorts of
visitors, mysterious events, extraordinary sights and sounds,
continued to occur. I have sat there many an evening, and seen in
broad gas light, large luminous balls creeping over the furniture,
or playfully jumping from point to point, while the most beautiful
liquid bell sounds now and again burst out from the air of the room.
These sounds often imitated either the piano or a gamut of sounds
whistled by either myself or some other person. While all this was
going on, H. P. Blavatsky sat unconcernedly reading or writing at
Isis Unveiled.
“It should be remarked here that Madame. Blavatsky never exhibited
either hysteria or the slightest appearance of trance. She was
always in the full possession of all her faculties — and apparently
of more than those of average people — whenever she was producing
any phenomena.
“In the month of November or the beginning of December of the same
winter, a photograph was received from a correspondent at Boston by
Colonel Olcott, which was the occasion of two very striking
phenomena. It purported to be the portrait of a person said to have
written the books called Art Magic and Ghost Land. The sender
required Colonel Olcott to return it almost immediately; which he
did on the following evening, and I myself, being there as a caller,
posted it in the nearest post-box. Two or three days later a demand
was made upon Mme. Blavatsky for a duplicate of the picture, in the
belief that it would be beyond even her powers, since she had no
model to copy from. But she actually did it; the process consisting
merely in her cutting a piece of cardboard to the requisite size,
laying it under a blotting-paper, placing her hand upon it, and in a
moment producing the copy demanded. Colonel Olcott took possession
of this picture, and laid it away in a book that he was then
reading, and which he took to bed with him. The next morning the
portrait had entirely faded out, and only the name, written in
pencil, was left. A week or two later, seeing this blank card lying
in Colonel Olcott's room, I took it to Mme. Blavatsky, and requested
her to cause the portrait to reappear. Complying, she again laid the
card under another sheet of paper, placed her hand upon it, and
presently the face of the man had come back as before; this time
indelibly imprinted.
“In the front room where she wrote, there was a bookcase that stood
for some time directly opposite her writing-desk. Upon its top stood
a stuffed owl, whose glassy, never - closing eye frequently seemed
to follow your movements. Indeed, I could relate things a propos of
that same defunct bird, but — in the words of Jacolliot — ' We have
seen things such as one does not relate for fear of making his
readers doubt his sanity. . . . Still we have seen them.' Well, over
the top of the doors of the bookcase was a blank space, about three
inches wide, and running the breadth of the case. One evening we
were sitting talking of magic as usual, and of 'the Brothers', when
Madame said, 'Look at the bookcase!'
“We looked up at once, and as we did so, we could see appear, upon
the blank space I have described, several letters apparently in
gold, that came out upon the surface of the wood. They covered
nearly all of the space. Examination showed that they were in gold,
and in a character that I had often seen upon some of her papers.
This precipitation of messages or sentences occurred very
frequently, and I will relate one which took place under my own hand
and eyes, in such a way as to be unimpeachable for me.
“I was one day, about four o'clock, reading a book by P. B.
Randolph, that had just been brought in by a friend of Colonel
Olcott. I was sitting some six feet distant from H. P. Blavatsky,
who was busy writing. I had carefully read the title-page of the
book, but had forgotten the exact title. But I knew that there was
not one word of writing upon it. As I began to read the first
paragraph I heard a bell sound in the air, and looking saw that Mme.
Blavatsky was intently regarding me.
“ 'What book do you read ? ' said she.
“Turning back to the title-page, I was about to read aloud the name,
when my eye was arrested by a message written in ink across the top
of the page which, a few minutes before, I had looked at and found
clear. It was a message in about seven lines, and the fluid had not
yet quite dried on the page — its contents were a warning about the
book. I am positive that when I took the volume in my hand, not one
word was written in it.
“On one occasion the address of a business firm in Philadelphia was
needed for the purpose of sending a letter through the mail, and no
one present could remember the street or number, nor could any
directory of Philadelphia be found in the neighborhood. The business
being very urgent, it was proposed that one of us should go down
nearly four miles to the General Post Office, so as to see a
Philadelphia directory. But H. P. B. said: ' Wait a moment, and
perhaps we can get the address some other way.' She then waved her
hand, and instantly we heard a signal bell in the air over our
heads. We expected no less than that a heavy directory would rush at
our heads from the empty space, but no such thing took place. She
sat down, took up a flat tin paper-cutter japanned black on both
sides and without having any painting on it. Holding this in her
left hand, she gently stroked it with her right, all the while
looking at us with an intense expression. After she had rubbed thus
for a few moments, faint outlines of letters began to show
themselves upon the black, shining surface, and presently the
complete advertisement of the firm whose address we desired was
plainly imprinted upon the paper-cutter in gilt letters, just as
they had had it done on slips of blotting paper such as are widely
distributed as advertising media in America — a fact I afterwards
found out. On a close examination, we saw that the street and
number, which were the doubtful points in our memories, were
precipitated with great brilliancy, the other words and figures
being rather dimmer. Mme. Blavatsky said that this was because the
mind of the operator was directed almost entirely to the street and
number, so that their reproduction was brought about with much
greater distinctness than the rest of the advertisement, which was,
so to speak, dragged in in a rather accidental way.
“About any object that might be transported mysteriously around her
room, or that came into it through the air by supermundane means,
there always lingered for a greater or less space of time, a very
peculiar though pleasant odour. It was not always the same. At one
time it was sandal-wood mixed with what I thought was otto of roses;
at another time some unknown Eastern perfume, and again it came like
the incense burnt in temples.
“One day she asked me if I would care to smell again the perfume.
Upon my replying affirmatively, she took my handkerchief in her
hand, held it for a few moments, and when she gave it back to me it
was heavy with the well-known odour. Then, in order to show me that
her hand was not covered with something that would come off upon the
handkerchief, she permitted me to examine both hands. They were
without perfume. But after I had convinced myself that there was no
perfumery or odoriferous objects concealed in her hands, I found
from one hand beginning to exhale one peculiar strong perfume, while
from the other there rolled out strong waves of the incense.
“On the table at which Isis Unveiled was written stood a little
Chinese cabinet with many small drawers. A few of the drawers
contained some trifles, but there were several that were always kept
empty. The cabinet was an ordinary one of its class, and repeated
examination showed that there were no devices or mechanical
arrangements in it, or connected with it; but many a time has one of
those empty drawers become the vanishing point of various articles,
and as often, on the other hand, was the birthplace of some object
which had not before been seen in the rooms. I have often seen her
put small coins or a ring or amulet, and have put things in there
myself, closed the drawer, almost instantly reopening it, and
nothing was visible. It had disappeared from sight Clever conjurers
have been known to produce such illusions, but they always require
some confederacy, or else they delude you into believing that they
had put the object in, when in reality they did not. With H. P. B.
there was no preparation. I repeatedly examined the cabinet, and
positively say that there was no means by which things could be
dropped out of sight or out of the drawer ; it stood on four small
legs, elevated about two inches above the desk, which was quite
clear and unbroken underneath. Several times I have seen her put a
ring into one of the drawers and then leave the room. I then looked
in the drawer, saw the ring in it, and closed it again. She then
returned, and without coming near the cabinet showed me the same
ring on her finger. I then looked again in the drawer before she
again came near it, and the ring was gone.
“One day Mrs Elizabeth Thompson, the philanthropist, who had a great
regard for H. P. B., called to see her. I was present. When about to
leave, the visitor asked Madame to lend her some object which she
had worn, as a reminder and as a talisman. The request being acceded
to, the choice was left to the lady, who hesitated a moment; Madame
then said, ' Take this ring,' immediately drawing it off and handing
it to her friend, who placed it upon her finger, absorbed in
admiring the stones. But I was looking at H. P. B.'s fingers, and
saw that the ring was yet on her hand. Hardly believing my eyes, I
looked at the other. There was no mistake. There were now two rings;
but the lady did not observe this, and went off satisfied she had
the right one. In a few days she returned it to Madame, who then
told me that one of the rings was an illusion, leaving it to me to
guess which one. I could not decide, for she pushed the returned
ring up along her finger against the old one, and both merged into
one.
“One evening several persons were present after dinner, all, of
course, talking about theosophy and occultism. H. P. B. was sitting
at her desk. While we were all engaged in conversation somebody said
that he heard music, and went out into the hall where he thought it
came from. While he was examining the hall, the person sitting near
the fireplace said that instead of being in the hall, the music,
which was that of a musical box, was playing up in the chimney. The
gentleman who had gone into the passage then returned and said that
he had lost the music, but at once was thoroughly amazed to find us
all listening at the fireplace, when he in turn heard the music
plainly. Just as he began to listen, the music floated out into the
room, and very distinctly finished the tune in the air over our
heads. I have on various occasions heard this music in many ways,
and always when there was not any instrument to produce it.
“On this evening, a little while after the music, Madame opened one
of the drawers of the Chinese cabinet and took from it an Oriental
necklace of curious beads. This she gave to a lady present. One of
the gentlemen allowed to escape him an expression of regret that he
had not received such a testimonial. Thereupon H. P. B. reached over
and grasped one of the beads of the necklace which the lady was
still holding in her hands, and the bead at once came off in
Madame's hand. She then passed it to the gentleman, who exclaimed
that it was not merely a bead but was now a breast-pin, as there was
a gold pin fastened securely in it. The necklace meanwhile remained
intact, and its recipient was examining it in wonder that one of its
beads could have been thus pulled off without breaking it.
“I have heard it said that when H. P. B. was a young woman, after
coming back to her family for the first time in many years, everyone
in her company was amazed and affrighted to see material objects
such as cups, books, her tobacco pouch and match-box, and so forth,
come flying through the air into her hand, merely when she gazed
intently at them. The stories of her early days can be readily
credited by those who saw similar things done at the New York
headquarters. Such aerial flights were many times performed by
objects at her command in my presence. One evening I was in a hurry
to copy a drawing I had made, and looked about on the table for a
paper-cutter with which to rub the back of the drawing so as to
transfer the surplus carbon to a clean sheet.
“As I searched, it was suggested by someone that the round smooth
back of a spoon bowl would be the best means, and I arose to go to
the kitchen at the end of the hall for a spoon. But Mme. Blavatsky
said, 'Stop, you need not go there; wait a moment.' I stopped at the
door, and she, sitting in her chair, held up her left hand. At that
instant a large table-spoon flew through the air across the room
from out of the opposite wall and into her hand. No one was there to
throw it to her, and the dining-room from which it had been
transported was about thirty feet distant; two brick walls
separating it from the front room.
“In the next room — the wall between being solid — there hung near
the window a water-color portrait in a frame with glass. I had just
gone into that room and looked at the picture. No one was in the
room but myself, and no one went there afterwards until I returned
there. When I came into the place where H. P. B. was sitting, and
after I had been sitting down a few moments, she took up a piece of
paper and wrote upon it a few words, handing it over to me to put
away without looking at it. This I did. She then asked me to return
to the other room. I went there, and at once saw that the picture
which, a few moments before, I had looked at, had in some way been
either moved or broken. On examining it I found that the glass was
smashed, and that the securely fastened back had been opened,
allowing the picture within to fall to the floor. Looking down I saw
it lying there. Going back to the other room I opened and read what
had been written on the slip of paper, it was :—
“ ' The picture of ------ in the dining-room has just been opened;
the glass is smashed and the painting is on the floor.'
“One day, while she was talking with me, she suddenly stopped and
said, 'So-and-so is now talking of me to -----, and says, etc.' I
made a note of the hour, and on the first opportunity discovered
that she had actually heard the person named saying just what she
told me had been said at the very time noted.
“My office was at least three miles away from her rooms”: One day,
at about 2 P.M., I was sitting in my office engaged in reading a
legal document, my mind intent on the subject of the paper. No one
else was in the office, and in fact the nearest room was separated
from me by a wide opening, or well, in the building, made to let
light into the inner chambers. Suddenly I felt on my hand a peculiar
tingling sensation that always preceded any strange thing to happen
in the presence of H. P. B., and at that moment there fell from the
ceiling upon the edge of my desk, and from there to the floor, a
triangularly-folded note from Madame to myself. It was written upon
the clean back of a printed Jain sutra or text. The message was in
her handwriting, and was addressed to me in her writing across the
printed face.
“I remember one phenomenon in connection with the making of a
water-color drawing of an Egyptian subject for her, which also
illustrates what the Spiritualists call apport, or the bringing
phenomenally of objects from some distant place. I was in want of
certain dry colors which she could not furnish me from her
collection, and as the drawing must be finished at that sitting, and
there was no shop nearby where I could purchase them, it seemed a
dilemma until she stepped towards the cottage piano, and, holding up
the skirt of her robe de chambre with both hands, received into it
seventeen bottles of Winsor & Newton dry colors, among them those I
required. I still wanted some gold-paint, so she caused me to bring
her a saucer from the dining-room, and to give her the brass key of
the door. She rubbed the key upon the bottom of the saucer for a
minute or two, and then, returning them to me, I found a supply of
the paint I required coating the porcelain.”
I should hardly venture to communicate the foregoing narrative to
the public if it were not for the obvious impossibility, in editing
memoirs of Mme. Blavatsky, of keeping the various experiences
recorded of her within the limits of that which is generally held to
be credible. Certainly no one person of those who have had
opportunities of observing the phenomena occurring in her presence
could hope to be regarded by the world at large as both sane and
truthful in relating his experience. But fortified as each witness
is in turn by the testimony of all the others, the situation must be
recognised as involving difficulties for critics who contend that
one and all, near relations, old friends, casual acquaintances, or
intimates of her later years, are all possessed with a mania for
trumping up fictitious stories about Mme. Blavatsky, or all in
different parts of the world, and at widely different periods,
sharing in an epidemic hallucination in regard to her, while in no
other respects exhibiting abnormal conditions of mind.
The first incident during her stay in America which seems to have
drawn the attention of the newspapers to Mme. Blavatsky was the
death and cremation, under the auspices of the Theosophical Society,
of an eccentric personage known in New York as “the Baron de Palm”.
Among other eccentricities that he committed, he made a will shortly
before his death professing to bequeath a considerable fortune to
the Theosophical Society, but on inquiry it turned out that the
property referred to in this document existed in his imagination
alone. The newspapers credited the Society with having acquired
great wealth by seducing the sympathies of this guileless
millionaire, when in reality his effects did not meet the cost of
the ceremonies connected with burning his body. However, the Society
and Mme. Blavatsky suddenly sprang into local notoriety.
“Fancy my surprise . . .” she wrote about this time to her sister.
“I am — heaven help us ! — becoming fashionable, as it seems I am
writing articles on Esotericism and Nirvana, and paid for them more
than I could have ever expected, though I have hardly any time for
writing for money. . . . Believe me, and you will, for you know me,
I cannot make myself realize that I have ever been able to write
decently. ... If I were unknown, no publisher or editor would have
ever paid any attention to me. . . . It's all vanity and fashion. .
. . Luckily for the publishers, I have never been vain.”
In the course of another family letter she writes: —
“Upon my word, I can hardly understand why you and people generally
should make such a fuss over my writings, whether Russian or
English! True, during the long years of my absence from home, I have
constantly studied and have learned certain things. But when I wrote
"/sis", I wrote it so easily that it was certainly no labor,
but a
real pleasure. Why should I be praised for it? Whenever I am told to
write, I sit down and obey, and then I can write easily upon almost
anything — metaphysics, psychology, philosophy, ancient religions,
zoology, natural sciences, or what not. I never put myself the
question: ' Can I write on this subject? . . .' or, ' Am I equal to
the task ?' but I simply sit down and write. Why ? Because somebody
who knows all dictates to me. . . . My MASTER, and occasionally
others whom I knew in my travels years ago. . . . Please do not
imagine that I have lost my senses. I have hinted to you before now
about them . . . and I tell you candidly, that whenever I write upon
a subject I know little or nothing of, I address myself to Them, and
one of Them inspires me, i.e. He allows me to simply copy what I
write from manuscripts, and even printed matter that pass before my
eyes, in the air, during which process I have never been unconscious
one single instant. ... It is that knowledge of His protection and
faith in His power that have enabled me to become mentally and
spiritually so strong . . . and even He (the Master) is not always
required; for, during His absence on some other occupation, He
awakens in me His substitute in knowledge. At such times it is no
more / who write, but my inner Ego, my ' luminous self,' who thinks
and writes for me. Only see . . . you who know me. When was I ever
so learned as to write such things? . . . Whence all this knowledge?
. . .”
On another occasion again she wrote also to her sister: —
“You may disbelieve me, but I tell you that in saying this I speak
but the truth; I am solely occupied, not with writing Isis, but with
"Isis" herself. I live in a kind of permanent enchantment, a
life of
visions and sights with open eyes, and no trance whatever to deceive
my senses! I sit and watch the fair goddess constantly. And as she
displays before me the secret meaning of her long lost secrets, and
the veil, becoming with every hour thinner and more transparent,
gradually falls off before my eyes, I hold my breath and can hardly
trust to my senses! . . . For several years, in order not to forget
what I have learned elsewhere, I have been made to have permanently
before my eyes all that I need to see. Thus night and day, the
images of the past are ever marshaled before my inner eye. Slowly,
and gliding silently like images in an enchanted panorama, centuries
after centuries appear before me, . . . and I am made to connect
these epochs with certain historical events, and I know there can be
no mistake. Races and nations, countries and cities, emerge during
some former century, then fade out and disappear during some other
one, the precise date of which I am then told by ... Hoary antiquity
gives room to historical periods; myths are explained by real events
and personages who have really existed ; and every important, and
often unimportant event, every revolution, a new leaf turned in the
book of life of nations — with its incipient course and subsequent
natural results — remains photographed in my mind as though
impressed in indelible colours. . . . When I think and watch my
thoughts, they appear to me as though they were like those little
bits of wood of various shapes and colors in the game known as the
casse tête: I pick them up one by one, and try to make them fit
each
other, first taking one, then putting it aside, until I find its
match, and finally there always comes out in the end something
geometrically correct. ... I certainly refuse point-blank to
attribute it to my own knowledge or memory, for I could never arrive
alone at either such premises or conclusions. ... I tell you
seriously I am helped. And He who helps me is my GURU. . . .”
As belonging to the period of Mme. Blavatsky's residence in America,
mention may here be made of a remarkable incident with which she was
closely concerned, though it was not accomplished by the exercise of
her own abnormal powers.
Prince Emile Wittgenstein, a Russian officer, and an old friend who
had known her from childhood, was in correspondence with her at the
time of the formation of the Theosophical Society. In consequence of
certain warnings addressed to him at spiritual seances concerning
fatalities which would menace him if he took part in the war on the
Danube then impending, Mme. Blavatsky was instructed by her unseen
spiritual chief to inform him that on the contrary he would be
specially taken care of during the campaign, and that the
spiritualistic warning would be confuted. The course of subsequent
events will best be described by the quotation of a letter
afterwards addressed by the Prince to an English journal devoted to
spiritualism. This was as follows: —
“ TO THE EDITOR OF THE '
SPIRITUALIST'.
“Allow me, for the sake of those
who believe in spirit
predictions, to tell you a story
about incidents which happened to
me last year, and about which I,
for months past, have wished to
talk to you, without, till now,
finding time to do so. The
narrative may perhaps be a
warning to some of the too credulous
persons to whom every medial
message is a gospel, and who too
often accept as true what are
perhaps the lies of some light
spirit, or even the reflection
of their own thoughts or wishes. I
believe that the fulfilment of a
prediction is such an exceptional
thing that in general one ought
to set no faith in such
prophecies, but should avoid
them as much as possible, lest they
have undue influence upon our
mind, faith, and free-will.
“A year and some months ago,
while getting ready to join our army
on the Danube, I received first
one letter, and afterwards a few
more, from a very kind friend of
mine and a powerful medium in
America, beseeching me, in very
anxious words, not to go to the
war — a spirit had predicted
that the campaign would be fatal to
me, and having ordered my
correspondent to write to me the
following words, ' Beware of the
war saddle ! It will be your
death, or worse still!'
“I confess that these reiterated
warnings were not agreeable,
especially when received at the
moment of starting upon such a
journey; but I forced myself to
disbelieve them. My cousin, the
Baroness Adelina von Vay, to
whom I had written about the matter,
encouraged me in doing so, and I
started.
“Now it seems that this
prediction became known also to some of my
theosophical friends at New
York, who were indignant at it, and
decided to do their utmost to
make it of no avail. And especially
one of the leading brethren of
the Society, and residing far away
from America, promised by the
force of his will to shield me from
every danger.
“The fact is, that during the
whole campaign, I did not see one
shot explode near me, and that,
so far as danger was concerned, I
could just as well have remained
at Vevey. I was quite ashamed of
myself, and sought occasion now
and then, to hear at least once
the familiar roar and whistle which, in my
younger years, were
such usual music to me. All in
vain I Whenever I was near a scene
of action, the enemy's fire
ceased. I remember having once, during
the third bloody storming of
Plevna, with my friend, your Colonel
Wellesley, stolen away from the
Emperor's staff, in order to ride
down to a battery of ours which
was exchanging a tremendous fire
with the redoubt of Grivitsa. As
soon as we, after abandoning our
horses further back in the brushwood,
arrived at the battery, the
Turkish fire ceased as by
enchantment, to begin again only when we
left it half-an-hour later,
although our guns kept on blazing away
at them without interruption. I
also tried twice to see some of
the bombarding of Guirgiewo,
where all the windows were broken,
doors torn out, roofs broken
down at the Railway Station by the
daily firing from Rustchuk. I
stopped there once a whole night,
and another time half a day,
always in the hope of seeing
something. As long as I was
there, the scene was quiet as in the
times of peace, and the firing
recommenced as soon as I had left
the place. Some days after my
last visit to Guirgiewo, Colonel
Wellesley passed it, and had
part of his luggage destroyed by a
shell, which, breaking through
the roof into the gallery, tore to
pieces two soldiers who were
standing near.
"I cannot believe all this
to be the sole result of chance. It was
too regular, too positive to be
explained thus. It is, I am sure
of it, magic — the more so as
the person who protected me thus
efficaciously is one of the most
powerful masters of the occult
science professed by the
theosophists. I can relate, by way of
contrast, the following fact,
which happened during the war on the
Danube, in 1854, at the siege of
Silistria. A very distinguished
Engineer General of ours, who
led our approaches, was a faithful
spiritualist, and believed every
word which he wrote down by the
help of a psychograph as a genuine
revelation from superior
spirits. Now these spirits had
predicted to him that he would
return from the war unhurt, and
covered with fame and glory. The
result of this was that he
exposed himself openly, madly, to the
enemy's fire, till at last a
shot tore off his leg, and he died
some weeks later. This is the
faith we ought to have in
predictions, and I hope my
narrative may be welcome to you, as a
warning to many.—
Truly yours,
“(PRINCE) E. WITTGENSTEIN
(F.T.S.).
“VEVEY, SWITZERLAND, ”
18th June 1878.”
Apart from the intrinsic interest of this narrative it is important
as showing definitely — what indeed is notorious for all who knew
Mme. Blavatsky at the period to which it refers — that she had
already, while the Theosophical Society was still in its infancy in
New York, declared the existence of “the Brothers”, whom she has
been so absurdly accused by her recent critics of inventing at a far
later date.
The Countess Wachtmeister, whose name will reappear in this
narrative later on, sends me another independent account of Mme.
Blavatsky's doings in America, communicated to her by the gentleman
concerned. She writes: —
“Mr Felix Cunningham, a young American of large fortune, describes a
scene which took place one evening when visiting Mme. Blavatsky in
America. For some time past he had been terribly annoyed by certain
manifestations which took place in his own presence : chairs would
suddenly begin to hop about the room, knives and forks would dance
upon the tables, and bells would ring all over the house; in fact,
such a carillon would sometimes be set going that the landlord would
politely request him to depart, and he would have to go in quest of
another apartment, where, after a few days' sojourn, the same comedy
would be repeated, until he felt like a wandering Jew, nearly driven
wild by his invisible foes. Having heard of Mme. Blavatsky's great
abnormal powers, he hoped through her to get a relief to his
sufferings, and it was with a feeling of intense curiosity that,
having been fortunate in obtaining an introduction to that lady, he
one evening entered her drawing-room, to find her surrounded by a
circle of admiring friends. When at last he was able to approach
her, she invited him to sit on the sofa near her, and patiently
listened to the long recital of his misfortunes. Mme. Blavatsky then
explained to him that these phenomena were the result partly of his
own psychic force and partly the work of elementals, and she
explained to him the process through which he might either rid
himself of such disturbances for the future, or else how he could
obtain complete control over these powers of nature, and produce
phenomena at will. This seemed, to Mr Cunningham as so utterly
incredible that, though he kept his feelings to himself, he classed
Mme. Blavatsky in his own mind as either a charlatan or a victim to
her delusions. What was his astonishment, then, when a few moments
later she turned to him in the midst of an animated discourse she
was holding with some professor on ' Darwin's System of Evolution,'
and said, ' Well, Mr Cunningham, so you think it is all a sham ? I
will give you a proof that it is not, if you like. Tell me, what
would you like to have ? [Page 163] Desire something without
mentioning it aloud, and you shall have it.” He thought of a rose,
there being no flowers in the room, and as the thought fastened
itself on his mind, his gaze was directed upwards, and there to his
astonishment he saw a large full-blown rose suddenly appear near the
ceiling; it descended swiftly but surely towards him, the stalk
going right through his buttonhole, and when he took out the rose to
examine it, he found that it had been freshly plucked, and that the
dew was hanging to the petals and leaves. Mme. Blavatsky, who had
never moved from her corner of the sofa, looked at his bewilderment
with amusement, and explained to him that when once man has obtained
control over the elementals, such a phenomenon is simple as child's
play.”
Some interesting reminiscences of Mme. Blavatsky's New York
residence are contained in an article published recently by the New
York Times in its issue of 2nd January 1885. The writer, noticing
some then current news illustrating the progress in India of the
Theosophical Society, says: —
““This intelligence is interesting to the general reader, mainly as
it serves to recall a most curious phase of modern thought. Its
development nearly ten years ago in New York attracted much
attention. The doings of the strange society mentioned in the French
flat at Eighth Avenue and Forty-seventh Street, where they had their
headquarters, were widely noticed by the press, and some influence
on the thought of certain classes of men and women undoubtedly
emanated from the small circle who gathered there.
“This influence was beyond a question the result of the strange
personal power of Mme. Blavatsky — a woman of as remarkable
characteristics as Cagliostro himself, and one who is today as
differently judged by different people as the renowned Count was in
his day. The Pall Mall Gazette recently devoted a half-column to the
lady. By those who knew her only slightly in this country she [Page
164] was invariably termed a charlatan. A somewhat better
acquaintance developed the thought that she was a learned, but
deluded enthusiast. And those who knew her intimately and enjoyed
her friendship were either carried away into a belief in her powers
or profoundly puzzled, and the longer and more intimate the
friendship was, the firmer the faith or the deeper their perplexity
became. The writer was one of the last class. The closest study of a
trained New York reporter failed for over two years to convince him
that she was either a fraud or self-deluded, or that her seeming
powers were genuine. That she wrought miracles will be denied
flatly, of course, by all persons whom the world calls sober-minded,
yet there are scores of people who will swear today that she did
work them in New York.
“A lady whose brother was an enthusiastic believer in the wonderful
Russian, but who was herself a devout Methodist and thoroughly
antagonistic to Theosophy (as the new system of thought was then
beginning to be called), was induced to make Mme. Blavatsky's
acquaintance. They became friends, though they continued widely
opposed in belief. One day Mme. Blavatsky gave the other lady a
necklace of beautifully carved beads of some strange substance that
looked like, but was not, hard wood. 'Wear them yourself', she said.
' If you let anyone else have them, they will disappear'. The lady
wore them constantly for over a year. Meantime she moved out of the
city. One day her little child, who was sick? and fretful, cried for
the beads. She gave them to him, half laughing at herself for
hesitating. The child put them around his neck and seemed pleased
with his new toy, while the mother turned away to attend to some
domestic duty. In a few minutes the child began crying, and the
mother found him trying to take the beads off. She removed them
herself and found that they were nearly one-third melted away and
were hot, while the child's neck showed marks of being burned. She
tells the story herself, and in the same breath denies that she
believes in 'any such things'.
“Such stories could be repeated by dozens, and for each one a
reputable witness could be produced to swear to the truth of it. It
was not, however, by the working of tricks or miracles, whichever
the reader may choose to regard them, that Mme. Blavatsky made the
impress she certainly made on the thought of the day. It was by the
power of her own personality, vigor of her intellect, freedom and
breadth of her thought, and the fluency and clearness of her powers
of expression. Her mental characteristics were as remarkable as her
appearance. A more impetuous or impulsive person than she never
lived. She was generous and hospitable to a fault. To her intimate
friends her house was Liberty Hall, and while there was nothing
sumptuous or pretentious about her mode of life, she lived well and
entertained constantly. She seemed physically indolent, but this was
on account of her size, which made bodily exertion onerous. Nothing
like mental indolence could be noticed in her conversation, and if
such a trait had ever been attributed to her, the publication of
Isis Unveiled, her work on Eastern mysteries and religions, would
have exonerated her from the charge. Without discussing the merits
of the book, it may be asserted that the labor involved in its
production was very great.
“As a friend Mme. Blavatsky was steadfast and devoted to an unusual
degree. Credulous by nature, she had been imposed upon by so many
that she learned to limit her circle, but up to the time she left
America she was always liable to imposition on the part of any
designing person.
“She was unconventional, and prided herself on carrying her
unconventionally to the utmost extremes. She would swear like a
dragoon when in anger, and often used in pure levity expressions
which served no other purpose than to emphasize her contempt for
common usages. Born, so it is said, of the best lineage in Russia,
she had been bred and educated not only as a lady but as an
aristocrat. Discarding, as she did, the traditional belief of her
family, she discarded at the same time the entire system of European
civilization. During her residence in America at least, for the
writer claims to know no more about her than was developed here, she
protested against our civilization vigorously. . . . The criticism
she drew on herself by this course was merciless, and from a
civilized standpoint was certainly deserved.
“Those who knew her best believe her to have been entirely incapable
of a mean act or a dishonest one.”
The writer goes on to quote the views which Mme. Blavatsky was in
the habit of expressing on the subject of spiritualism.
“ 'The phenomena that are presented are perhaps often frauds.
Perhaps not one in a hundred is a genuine communication of spirits,
but that one cannot be judged by the others. It is entitled to
scientific examination, and the reason the scientists don't examine
it is because they are afraid. The mediums cannot deceive me. I know
more about it than they do. I have lived for years in different
parts of the East and have seen far more wonderful things than they
can do. The whole universe is filled with spirits. It is nonsense to
suppose that we are the only intelligent beings in the world. I
believe there is latent spirit in all matter. I believe almost in
the spirits of the elements. But all is governed by natural laws.
Even in cases of apparent violation of these laws the appearance
comes from a misunderstanding of the laws. In cases of certain
nervous diseases it is recorded of some patients that they have been
raised from their beds by some undiscoverable power, and it has been
impossible to force them down. In such cases It has been noticed
that they float feet first with any current of air that may be
passing through the room. The wonder of this ceases when you come to
consider that there is no such thing as the law of gravitation as it
is generally understood. The law of gravitation is only to be
rationally explained in accordance with magnetic laws as Newton
tried to explain it, but the world would not accept it.
“ 'The world is fast coming to know many things that were known
centuries ago, and were discarded through the superstition of
theologians,' she continued. ' The church professes to reprobate
divination, and yet they chose their four canonical Gospels of
Matthew, Mark, [Page 167] Luke, and John by divination. They took
some hundred or so of books at the Nicene Council, and set them up,
and those that fell down they threw aside as false, and those that
stood being those four, they accepted as true, being unable to
decide the question in any other way. And out of the 318 members of
the Council only two — Eusebius, the great forger, and the Emperor
Constantine — were able to read.'
“Talking thus by hours together, when the right listener was
present, and speaking always 'as one having authority', it is small
wonder that Mme. Blavatsky made her modest apartments a common
meeting-ground for as strange a group of original thinkers as New
York ever held. Not all who visited her agreed with her. Indeed,
there were only a few who followed her teachings with implicit
faith. Many of her friends, and many who joined the Theosophical
Society which she formed, were individuals who affirmed little and
denied nothing.
“The marvels which were discussed and manifested in Mme. Blavatsky's
rooms were to the most of them merely food for thought. If the
bell-tones of the invisible 'attendant sprite' Pou Dhi where heard,
as they were heard by scores of different persons, this phenomenon,
so minutely described by Mr Sinnett in The Occult World, was as
likely to be chaffed good-naturedly by an obstinate sceptic as it
was to be wondered at by a believer. But even the sceptic would
shrug his shoulders and say, when hard pushed, ' It may be a spirit.
I can't tell what it is.' If the discussion turned on some marvel of
Eastern magic, or some fanciful doctrine of Eastern mythology, there
was always a witness to the magic and a believer in the mythology
present, and there was no one bold enough to deny what was affirmed,
however much it might be laughed at. Sensitive as Mme. Blavatsky was
to personal ridicule and to slander, she was truly liberal in
matters of opinion, and allowed us as great latitude in the
discussion of her beliefs as she took in discussing the beliefs of
others.
“The apartment she occupied was a modest flat of seven or eight
rooms in West Forty-seventh Street. It was furnished plainly but
comfortably, but of the furniture properly so called, it was hard to
get an exact idea, for the rooms, especially the parlors, were
littered and strewn with curios of most varied description. Huge
palm leaves, stuffed apes, and tigers' heads, Oriental pipes and
vases, idols and cigarettes, Javanese sparrows, manuscripts and
cuckoo clocks were items only in a confusing catalogue of things not
to be looked for ordinarily in a lady's parlor.”
CHAPTER 9
ESTABLISHED IN INDIA
JUDGED by ordinary standards of common sense, Mme. Blavatsky's long
stay in America was not a good preparation for her residence in
India. And yet her Theosophic mission appears to have had India as
its objective point from the outset. It is just possible, therefore,
that her alienation from the English population of India in the
first instance, due to the unreasonable prejudices against them
which she came possessed with, may have served the cause she had in
view in one way more than it told unfavorably in another. Unhappily
there is no good understanding widely diffused as yet amongst the
two races in India. Each sees the worst features in the character of
the other, and ill appreciates the best. The responsibility for this
state of things would, I think, be found very equally divided, but
at all events it is possible, that in wishing to secure the hearty
good-will of the natives, Mme. Blavatsky did not find herself really
so much impeded as I have sometimes been inclined to think, by
starting on terms which may almost be said to have cultivated the
ill-will of the Europeans. The too readily enlisted sentiment of
race antagonism may thus have put the natives all the more on her
side, when it was seen that she was not on intimate or friendly
relations with the Anglo-Indian community.
However this may be, Mme. Blavatsky came to India to plant the
Theosophical Society in the soil where she believed, not quite
correctly as subsequent events proved, that it was destined chiefly
to flourish, armed for her task (for good or evil as we like to look
at the matter) with a flourishing stock of misconceptions concerning
the social conditions of the country. She was guiltless of any
inclination to concern herself practically with politics, and
indeed, on the subject of politics, though greatly misconceiving the
true character of the English government at that time, was less
prejudiced than in other ways, for at any rate she consistently
recognized the theory that, bad though it might be, the English
Government was immeasurably the best India could acquire in the
present state of her degeneration, as compared with the era of
ancient Aryan grandeur. But her sympathies were always ready to
flame up on behalf of individual native wrongs, and since the organs
of native interests are apt in India to circulate stories too
hastily, if they seem to be flavored with native wrongs, Mme.
Blavatsky, living almost entirely at first in native society,
imbibed a good many ideas, on her first establishment in the
country, which used to be the subject of warm argument between her
and myself, when I first made her acquaintance.
This acquaintance was formed at the close of the year 1879, during
the earlier part of which she reached Bombay, accompanied by Colonel
Olcott and two persons who were supposed to be Theosophists in the
beginning, but fell off from the Society at an early date, under
circumstances which constituted the first of the long series of
troubles that have attended the progress of the Theosophical
movement. I never knew either of them, but they do not appear to
have been persons whom anyone of soberer judgment, in Mme.
Blavatsky's place, would have brought over as companions in an
enterprise like that she had in hand. The four strangely assorted
travelers settled down in one of the native quarters of Bombay, and
were very naturally objects of some suspicion with the authorities.
Their movements about the country and into the neighboring native
states were not of a kind that the ordinary habits of Europeans
would account for, and as a matter of course, in a country where
great interests have to be guarded from possible foreign intrigue,
they were put under surveillance.
But Englishmen are not clever at the tricks of police surveillance —
no more so in India than elsewhere — and the watch set upon the
movements of Mme. Blavatsky and Colonel Olcott was absurdly apparent
to the persons who — if it had been really required — should never
have been allowed to suspect it. Mme. Blavatsky fretted under the
sense of insult this espionage inflicted on her, with the intensity
of feeling she carries into everything. For my own part, I used
often to tell her, when we laughed over the narrative of her
adventures afterwards, I pitied the unhappy police officer, her spy,
a great deal more than herself. She pursued this officer with
sarcasms all the while that he, in the performance of his irksome
duty, pursued her in her vague and erratic wanderings. She would
offer him bags or letters to examine, and address him condolences on
the miserable fate that condemned him to play the part of a
mouchard. I suspect from what I heard at Simla at the time, that the
Bombay Government must have been treated by the superior authorities
to remarks that were anything but complimentary on the manner in
which they conducted this business. At any rate, the mistake
concerning the objects of the Theosophists was speedily seen
through, and the local government instructed to trouble itself no
more about them.
I had been in correspondence with Colonel Olcott and Mine.
Blavatsky, partly about this business, during the summer. Their
arrival in India had been heralded with a few newspaper paragraphs
dimly indicating that Mme. Blavatsky was a marvelous person,
associated with a modern development of “magic”, and I had seen her
great book, Isis Unveiled, which naturally provoked interest on my
part in the authoress. From some remarks published in the Pioneer,
of which I was at that time the editor, the first communications
between us arose. In accordance with arrangements made by letter
during the summer, she came to Allahabad to visit my wife and myself
at our cold weather home at that station in December 1879.
I well remember the morning of her arrival, when I went down to the
railway station to meet her. The trains from Bombay used to come
into Allahabad in those days at an early hour in the morning, and it
was still but just time for chota hazree, or early breakfast, when I
brought our guests home. She had evidently been apprehensive, to
judge from her latest letters, lest we might have formed some ideal
conception of her that the reality would shatter, and had recklessly
painted herself as a rough, old, “hippopotamus” of a woman, unfit
for civilized society; but she did this with so lively a humor that
the betrayal of her bright intelligence this involved more than
undid the effect of her warnings. Her rough manners, of which we had
been told so much, did not prove very alarming, though I remember
going into fits of laughter at the time when Colonel Olcott, after
the visit had lasted a week or two, gravely informed us that Madame
was under “great self-restraint” so far. This had not been the
impression my wife and I had formed about her, though we had learned
already to find her conversation more than interesting.
I would not venture to say that our new friends made a favorable
impression all round, upon our old ones, at Allahabad. Anglo-Indian
society is strongly colored with conventional views, and Mme.
Blavatsky was too violent a departure from accepted standards in a
great variety of ways to be assimilated in Anglo-Indian circles with
readiness. At the same time, the friends she made among our
acquaintances while under our roof were the best worth having, and
all who came to know her, and were gifted with the faculty of
appreciating bright and versatile talk, sparkling anecdote, and
first-rate dinner-table qualifications, were loud in her praises and
eager for her society. Her dinner-table qualifications it will, of
course, be understood did not include those of the bon vivant, for
her dislike of alcohol in all forms amounted to a kind of mania, and
led her to be vexatious sometimes in her attack on even the most
moderate wine-drinking on the part of others. An illustration,
by-the-by, of the manner in which Mme. Blavatsky is constantly made
the subject of the most extravagant falsehoods is afforded by a
statement which has, I hear, been made quite recently in London by
some ex-Anglo-Indian. He or she — I am glad to say I do not know who
the he or she is, and do not seek to know — told my informant that
he or she had actually seen Mine. Blavatsky intoxicated at Simla. As
I know her to be a total abstainer, not merely on principle (in
connection with her occult training), but by predilection as well —
by virtue indeed, as I have described, of an absolute horror of
alcohol — and as she has never resided at Simla under any roof but
my own and one other, beneath which I was myself at the same time a
guest — the statement is for me exactly as if it asserted that,
during her Simla visit, Mme. Blavatsky was double-headed like the
famous “Nightingale”.
I want to give my readers an idea of Mme. Blavatsky, as I have known
her, that shall be as nearly complete as I can make it, and I shall
not hesitate to put in the shadows of the picture. The first visit
she paid us was not an unqualified success in all respects. Her
excitability, sometimes amusing, would sometimes take an irritating
shape, and she would vent her impatience, if anything annoyed her,
by vehement tirades in a loud voice directed against Colonel Olcott,
at that time in an early stage of his apprenticeship to what she
would sometimes irreverently speak of as the “occult business”. No
one with the least discernment could ever fail to see that her
rugged manners and disregard of all conventionalities were the
result of a deliberate rebellion against, not of ignorance or
unfamiliarity with, the customs of refined society. Still the
rebellion was often very determined, and she would sometimes color
her language with expletives of all sorts, some witty and amusing,
some unnecessarily violent, that we should all have preferred her
not to make use of. She certainly had none of the superficial
attributes one might have expected in a spiritual teacher ; and how
she could at the same time be philosopher enough to have given up
the world for the sake of spiritual advancement, and yet be capable
of going into frenzies of passion about trivial annoyances, was a
profound mystery to us for a long while, and is only now partially
explainable, indeed, within my own mind, by some information I have
received relating to curious psychological laws under which
initiates in occult mysteries, circumstanced as she is, inevitably
come. By slow degrees only, and in spite of herself — in spite of
injudicious proceedings on her part that long kept alive suspicions
she might easily have allayed, if she could have kept calm enough to
understand them, — did we come to appreciate the reality of the
occult forces and unseen agencies behind her.
It is unnecessary for me to give an elaborate account here of occult
wonders performed by Mme. Blavatsky during her various visits to us
at Allahabad and Simla. These are, most of them, recorded in The
Occult World. Those which took place during her first visit were not
of great importance, and some of them were so little protected by
the conditions that would have been required to guarantee their bona
fide character that they were worse than useless. My wife and I were
patient observers, and by not jumping to any conclusions too
precipitately, were enabled in the long run to obtain the
satisfaction we desired; but guests, especially if they happened to
be of a very materialistic temperament, would regard anything Mme.
Blavatsky might do of an apparently abnormal character as so much
juggling, and hardly disguise these impressions from her. The result
in such cases would be a stormy end to our evening after such guests
had gone. To be suspected as an impostor deluding her friends with
trickery, would sting her at any time with a scorpion smart, and
bring forth a flood of passionate argument as to the cruelty and
groundlessness of such an imputation, the violence of which would
really have tended with most hearers to confirm suspicions rather
than to allay them.
Recollection of this time supplies me with a very varied assortment
of memory portraits of Madame, taken during different conditions of
her nerves and temper. Some recall her flushed and voluble, too
loudly declaiming against some person or other who had misjudged her
or her Society; some show her quiet and companionable, pouring out a
flood of interesting talk about Mexican antiquities, or Egypt, or
Peru, showing a knowledge of the most varied and far-reaching kind,
and a memory for names and places and archaeological theories she
would be dealing with, that was fairly fascinating to her hearers.
Then, again, I remember her telling anecdotes of her own earlier
life, mysterious bits of adventure, or stories of Russian society,
with so much point, vivacity, and finish, that she would simply be
the delight for the time being of everyone present.
I never could clearly make out her age at this time, and was led
partly by the look of things, for the hard life she has led has told
upon her complexion and features, and partly by her own vague
reference to remote periods in the past, to overestimate it by
several years. She has always had a dislike to telling her age with
exactitude, which does not spring in her case from the vanity which
operates with some ladies, but has to do with occult embarrassment.
The age of the body in which a given human entity may reside or
function, is held by occult initiates to be sometimes a very
misleading fact, and chelas under strict rules are, I believe,
forbidden to tell their ages. In Mme. Blavatsky's case the problem
was somewhat complicated by the fact that she had, within the few
years previous to my first knowledge of her, grown to somewhat
unwieldy proportions.
Mr A. O. Hume, whose name has been a good deal mixed up in very
different ways, both with the early beginnings of the Theosophical
movement in India and with some of its latest phases, was at
Allahabad when Mme. Blavatsky first came there, holding an
appointment for the time on the Board of Revenue in the N. W. P.,
and he took great interest in our remarkable guest. He presided one
afternoon at a public meeting which was held at the Mayo Hall to
give Colonel Olcott an opportunity of delivering an address on
Theosophy, and a passage from his brief speech on that occasion may
fitly find a place here as showing in graceful language the manner
in which, at that time, the subject was opening up: —
“This much I have gathered about the Society, viz. that one primary
and fundamental object of its existence is the institution of a sort
of brotherhood in which, sinking all distinction of race and
nationality, caste and creed, all good and earnest men, all who love
science, all who love truth, all who love their fellowmen, may meet
as brethren, and labor hand in hand in the cause of enlightenment
and progress. Whether this noble ideal is ever likely to germinate
and grow into practical fruition ; whether this glorious dream,
shared in by so many of the greatest minds in all ages, is ever
destined to emerge from the shadowy realms of Utopia into the broad
sunlight of the regions of reality, let no one now pretend to
decide. Many and marvelous are the changes and developments that the
past has witnessed; the impossibilities of one age have become the
truisms of the next; and who shall venture to predict that the
future may not have as many surprises for mankind as has had the
past, and that this may not be one amongst them. Be the success,
however, great or little of those who strive after this grand ideal,
one thing we know, that no honest efforts for the good of our
fellowmen are ever wholly fruitless. It may be long before that
fruit ripens ; the workers may have passed away long ere the world
discerns the harvest for which they wrought; nay, the world at large
may never realize what has been done for it, but the good work
itself remains, imperishable, everlasting. They who wrought it have
necessarily been by such efforts purified and exalted, the community
in which they lived and toiled has inevitably benefitted directly or
indirectly, and through it, the world at large. On this ground, if
on no other, we must necessarily sympathize with the Theosophists.
The Theosophists in those days had all their troubles before them in
an unsuspected future, and the movement seemed to be advancing gaily
with many friendly hands stretching out to aid it, and nothing but
petty squabbling among the members at the Bombay headquarters to
disturb the peace of its chiefs. But Mme. Blavatsky's temperament
always magnified the annoyance of the moment, whatever it might be,
till it overshadowed her whole sky. Colonel Olcott spoke at the
meeting which Mr Hume opened with the remarks just quoted, but one
of his hearers, at all events — his distinguished colleague, — was
not altogether pleased with his address, and no sooner were we clear
of the Hall compound on our drive back than she opened fire upon him
with exceeding bitterness. To hear her talk on this subject at
intervals during the evening one might have thought the aspirations
of her life compromised, though the meeting and the speech — about
which I do not remember that there was anything amiss — were not
important to the progress of the Society in any serious degree.
Colonel Olcott bore all these tantrums with wonderful fortitude,
taking them as all so much probation to be set down to the account
of his occult chelaship; and with all this exasperating behavior
Mme. Blavatsky nevertheless had a strange faculty of winning
affection. Her own nature was exceedingly warm-hearted and
affectionate, as it is still, and must remain as long as she lives,
in spite of the cruel disappointments and trials, the sickness and
suffering of later years, the poignant regret she has spent over
irremediable mistakes that have compromised the success of her
cause, and the passionate sense of wrong under which she fumes, as
the unteachable world complacently listens to the tales of her
traducers, or as flippant newspapers make fun of the wonderful
stories told about her, as though she were a mountebank or impostor.
Thus the prestige of her occult power, uncertain and capricious
though it has latterly become, invests her with so much interest for
people who have emerged from the bog of mere materialistic
incredulity about her, that anyone with a tendency towards mysticism
is apt to become possessed with something like reverence for her
attributes, in spite of the strangely unattractive shell with which
she sometimes surrounds them. Thus, in one way and another, large
numbers of people in India, who came to know her through ourselves,
learned to regard her with a very friendly feeling, rugged manners
and stormy temperature notwithstanding.
Mme. Blavatsky visited us again at Simla in the autumn of 1880, when
most of the phenomena described in The Occult World took place. She
was much better inclined now than on her first arrival in India to
conciliate European sympathy and support for the movement on which
she was engaged. She had learned the lesson which the best friends
of native interests in India must always learn sooner or later, if
they come in contact with the realities of the situation, that for
any practical work to be done, the natives want a European lead.
Even when the task in hand has to do with the revival of Indian
philosophy, its administration languishes when confided too
exclusively to native direction. Mme. Blavatsky therefore came to
Simla prepared for society. She would protest against the
“flap-doodle” of “Mrs Grundy” — favorite phrases often on her lips,
— but to serve her cause she would even condescend to put off
occasionally the red flannel dressing-gown in which she preferred to
robe herself, and sit down in black silk amid the uncongenial odors
of champagne and sherry. Of course, beyond a very narrow circle, the
wonders she wrought were quite ineffective in kindling that zeal for
intelligent inquiry into the higher psychic laws of nature by virtue
of which they were accomplished, which it was the intention of their
promoters to awaken. No one could understand Mme. Blavatsky without
studying her by the light of the hypothesis — even if it were only
regarded as such — that she was the visible agent of unknown occult
superiors. There was much in her character on the surface as I have
described it, which repelled the idea that she was an exalted
moralist trying to lead people upward towards a higher spiritual
life. The internal excitement, superinduced by the effort to
accomplish any of her occult feats, would, moreover, render her too
passionate in repudiating suspicions which could not but be
stimulated by such protests on her part. Conscious of her failure
very often to do more than leave people about her puzzled and
vaguely wondering how she did her “tricks”, she would constantly
abjure the whole attempt, profess violent resolutions to produce no
more phenomena under any circumstances for a sneering, undiscerning,
materialistic generation; and as often be impelled by her love of
wielding the strange forces at her command to fall into her old
mistakes, to hurriedly rush into the performance of some new feat as
she felt the power upon her, without stopping to think of the
careful conditions by which it ought to be surrounded, if she meant
to do more than aggravate the mistrust which drove her into frenzies
of suffering and wrath. Once, however, recognize her as the flighty
and defective, though loyal and brilliantly-gifted representative of
occult superiors in the background, making through her an experiment
on the spiritual intuitions of the world in which she moved, and the
whole situation was solved, the apparent incoherence of her
character and acts explained, and the best attributes of her own
nature properly appreciated.
So much exasperation and trouble have been brought about in recent
years by the disputes which have arisen concerning the authenticity
of Mme. Blavatsky's phenomena, that the general opinion of
Theosophists has been apt to condemn the whole policy under which
such displays have been associated with the attempt to recommend the
exalted spiritual philosophy of the “Esoteric Doctrine” to the outer
world. It is easy to be wise after the event; it is easy now to see
that in Europe, at all events, where sympathy with new or unfamiliar
ideas can best be courted by purely intellectual methods, the
Theosophical position, as now understood by its most devoted
representatives, would be stronger without, than with the record of
Mme. Blavatsky's phenomena behind it. Still I am very far myself
from thinking that the idea of awakening the attention of the world
in regard to the possibilities for all men of greatly elevating and
expanding their own inner nature and capabilities along the lines of
occult study, by the display of some of the powers which such study
was capable of bringing about, was in itself an injudicious idea. It
is plain, of course, that Mme. Blavatsky has to bear the
responsibility of having often misapplied that idea; that she is
suffering from the prompt retribution of circumstances in the
ignominy that has been heaped upon her of late, is also apparent.
But cool observation of the whole position will show that, with all
her mistakes, she has infused into the current of the world's
thinking a flood of ideas connected with the possibilities of man's
spiritual evolution, that many thinkers are at work with now in
profound disregard of, not to say ingratitude for, the source from
which they have come. Mme. Blavatsky's failures and mistakes are
glaring in the sight of us all; trumpeted in every newspaper that
mocks her as an impostor, and proclaimed (by the irony of fate) in
the proceedings of a Society that has stultified its own name by
investigating an episode in her career, as if psychical developments
were so much ironmongery, and the depth of nature's mysteries could
be expressed — by a sufficiently acute observer — in decimals of an
inch. But her successes are only apparent to those who have eyes to
see, and an enlightened understanding to comprehend.
And just as the history of Mme. Blavatsky's work is a party-colored
page, so her personality, her external character, is equally
variegated. I have said a good deal of her impetuosity and
indiscretions of speech and manner and of the way in which she will
rage for hours, if allowed, over trifles which a more phlegmatic,
not to speak of a more philosophical temperament would barely care
to notice. But it must be understood that, almost at any time, an
appeal to her philosophical intellect will turn her right off into
another channel of thinking, and then, equally for hours, may any
appreciative companion draw forth the stores of her information
concerning Eastern religions and mythology, the subtle metaphysics
of Hindu and Buddhist symbolism, or the esoteric doctrine itself, so
far as in later years some regions of this have been opened out for
public treatment. Even in the midst of passionate lamentations —
appropriate in vehemence to a catastrophe that might have wrecked
the fruits of a life-time — over some offensive sneer in a newspaper
article or letter, an allusion to some unsolved problem in esoteric
cosmogony, or misinterpretation by a European orientalist of some
Eastern doctrine, will divert the flow of her intense mental
activity, and sweep all recollection of the current annoyance, for
the moment, from her mind.
The record of Mme. Blavatsky's residence in India is, of course,
intimately blended with the history of the Theosophical Society, on
which all her energies are spent, directly or indirectly, and
indirectly in so far only as she was obliged during this period to
do what literary work she could for Russian magazines to earn her
livelihood, and supplement the narrow resources on which the
headquarters of the Society were kept up. The Theosophist, the
monthly magazine devoted to occult research, which she set on foot
in the autumn of her first year in India, paid its way from the
beginning, and gradually came to earning a small profit, subject to
the fact that its management was altogether gratuitous, and all its
work, in all departments, performed by the little band of
Theosophists at the headquarters ; but all the while that sneering
critics of the movement in the papers would be suggesting, from time
to time, that the founders of the Society were doing a very good
business with “initiation fees”, and living on the tribute of the
faithful, Mme. Blavatsky was really at her desk from morning till
night, slaving at Russian articles, which she wrote solely for the
sake of the little income she was able to make in this way, and on
which, in a far greater degree than on the proper resources of the
Society, the headquarters were supported, and the movement kept on
foot.
Thus energetically promoted, the Society continued to make steady
progress. Colonel Olcott travelled about the country with
indefatigable perseverance, founding new branches in all directions,
and Mme. Blavatsky herself went with him and some others to Ceylon
during the cold weather, 1880-81, where the theosophical party was
fêted by large and enthusiastic native audiences. The movement
took
firm root in the island at once, and flourished with wonderful
vigor.
Here, of course, Madame Blavatsky's open profession of Buddhism as
her religion was all in her favour, though it had been rather
against her in India, as exoteric Hindus and Buddhists are not at
all in sympathy, though the esoteric docrines of the initiates of
both schools are practically identical. The Singalese welcomed, with
delight, a lead which showed them how to set up schools in which
their children could be taught the essentials of secular education
without coming into contact with European missionaries.
During the autumn of 1881 I returned to India from a visit to
England, and on landing at Bombay spent a few days with Madame
Blavatsky at the headquarters of the Theosophical Society, then
established at Breach Candy, in a bungalow called the Crow's Nest,
perched up on a little eminence above the road. It had been
unoccupied for some time I heard, discredited by a reputation for
snakes and ghosts, neither of which encumbrances greatly alarmed the
new tenants. The building was divided into two portions — the lower
given over to the Society service and to Colonel Olcott's Spartan
accommodation ; the upper part, reached by a covered stairway,
corresponding to the slope of the hill, to Mme. Blavatsky and the
office work of the Theosophist. There was also a spare room in this
upper portion, all the rooms of which were on one level, and opening
on to a broad covered-in verandah, which constituted Mme.
Blavatsky's sitting, eating, and reception room all in one. Opening
out of it at the further end she had a small writing-room. On the
whole she was more comfortably housed than, knowing her wild
contempt for the luxuries of European civilisation, I had expected
to find her ; but the establishment was more native than
Anglo-Indian in its organisation, and the covered verandah was all
day long, and up to late hours in the evening, visited by an ebb and
flow of native guests, admiring Theosophists who came to pay their
respects to Madame. She used to like to get half a dozen or more of
them round her talking on any topic connected with the affairs of
the Society that might arise in a desultory, aimless way, that used
to be found rather trying by her European friends. The latest
embarrassment or little difficulty or annoyance, whatever it might
be, that had presented itself, used to fill her horizon for the
moment, and give her fretful anxiety out of keeping with its
importance, and there has rarely been a period during the five or
six years I have had to do with the Society when there has not been
some situation to be saved — in Mme. Blavatsky's estimation, — some
enemy to be guarded against, some possible supporter to be
conciliated. How it was possible for any nervous system to stand the
wear and tear of the perpetual agitation and worry in which —
largely in consequence of the peculiarities of her own temperament,
of course — Mme. Blavatsky spent her life, persons of calmer nature
could never understand. But she would generally be up at an early
hour writing at her Russian articles or translations, or at the
endless letters she sent off in all directions in the interest of
the Society, or at articles for the Theosophist; then during the day
she would spend a large part of her time talking with native
visitors in her verandah room, or hunting them away and getting back
to her work with wild protests against the constant interruption she
was subject to, and in the same breath calling for her faithful
“Babula”, her servant, in a voice that rang all over the house, and
sending for some one or other of the visitors she knew to be waiting
about below and wanting to see her. Then in the midst of some fiery
argument with a pundit about a point of modern Hindu belief that she
might protest against as inconsistent with the real meaning of the
Vedas, or a passionate remonstrance with one of her aides of the
Theosophist about something done amiss that would for the time
overspread the whole sky of her imagination with a thundercloud, she
would perhaps suddenly “hear the voice they did not hear” — the
astral call of her distant Master, or one of the other “Brothers”,
as by that time we had all learned to call them, — and forgetting
everything else in an instant, she would hurry off to the seclusion
of any room where she could be alone for a few moments, and hear
whatever message or orders she had to receive.
She never wanted to go to bed when night came. She would sit on
smoking cigarettes and talking — talking with a tireless energy that
was wonderful to watch — on Eastern philosophy of any sort, on the
mistakes of theological writers, on questions raised (but not
settled) in Isis, or, with just as much intensity and excitement, on
some wretched matter connected with the administration of the
Society, or some foolish sarcasm levelled against herself and the
attributes imputed to her in one of the local newspapers. To say
that she never would learn to, estimate occurrences at their proper
relative value, is to express the truth so inadequately that the
phrase does not seem to express it at all. Her mind seemed always
like the exhausted receiver of an air-pump, in which a feather or a
guinea let fall, drop with apparently the same momentum.
Of society in the European sense of the term she had absolutely none
at Bombay. She never paid visits, and as the custom of the English
communities in the East requires the new-comer to make the first
calls, she, ignoring this necessity, was left almost absolutely
without acquaintances of her own kind in that station of India where
she was supposed to be most at home. I often wondered that none of
the English residents at Bombay had the curiosity to break through
the conventionalities of the situation and take advantage of the
opportunity lying within reach of their hands for making friends
with one of, at all events, the most remarkable and
intellectually-gifted women in the whole country — rugged
eccentricities and cigarettes notwithstanding. But certainly at
first the quarters where Madame Blavatsky established herself, and
the habits of her heterogeneous native household, and the wild tales
which I have no doubt from the first were circulated about her, may
have intimidated any but the most adventurous of the English ladies
accustomed to the decorous routine of Anglo-Indian etiquette. She
herself may have fretted occasionally against her isolation, but at
all events did not regret the loss of European “society” in the
special sense of the word; she would have found it a terrible burden
to go out to formal parties of any kind, to forego the ease of the
nondescript costumes — loose wrappers — that she wore, to put
herself in any position in which her fingers would be restrained
from reaching, whenever the impulse prompted them to do so, for her
tobacco pouch and cigarette papers. Rebel as she had been in her
childhood against the customs of civilized life, so equally was she
a rebel against the usages of English society in India; and the
strange discipline of her occult training that had rendered her
spirit devoted and submissive to the one kind of control she had
learned to reverence, left the fierce independence of her outer
nature quite unaltered.
She joined me at Allahabad a few months after my return to India in
1881, and went up to Simla with me to be the guest for the remainder
of that season of Mr A. O. Hume. She was far from well at the time,
and the latter part of the journey — a trying one for the most
robust passenger — was an ordeal that brought out the peculiar
characteristics of her excitable temper in an amusing way, I
remember; for the “tongas” in which the eight-hours' drive up the
mountain roads from Kalka at the foot of the hills to the elevated
sanatorium is accomplished, are not luxurious conveyances. They are
low two-wheeled carts hung on a crank axle, so that the foot-boards
are only about a foot above the road, with seats for four persons,
including the driver, two and two back to back — just accommodation
enough in each for one passenger with his portmanteau (equivalent,
if he has one with him, to a passenger), and a servant. We had two
tongas between us, putting our servants with some of the luggage in
one, while Madame Blavatsky and I occupied the back seat of the
other with a porte manteau on the seat beside the driver. The only
recommendation of a tonga is that it gets over the ground rapidly,
and the ponies, frequently changed, trot or canter up all but the
steepest gradients. The traveler is jolted frightfully, but he is
not likely to be capsized, though even that happens sometimes, for
the mountain roads are very rough, and the ponies apt to be
troublesome. The general character of the tonga pony may be
appreciated from the fact that I have known a driver apologize to a
passenger for a particularly flighty pair, on the ground that they
had never been in harness before. The animals are attached to the
vehicle by a strong cross-bar resting in sockets on saddles they
carry for the purpose, and though on this system ponies and cart are
as firmly united as a bunch of keys by its steel ring, still they
are no less loosely linked together, and n nervous passenger is
liable to be disturbed by the extraordinary positions into which
they get during any little disagreement between the team and the
driver. One such disagreement arose soon after our start on the
journey of which I am speaking, and Madame's impassioned anathemas
directed against the whole service of the tonga dak and the
civilization of which it formed a part, ought not, I remember
thinking at the time, to have had their comicality wasted upon an
audience of one. Then, as the day and the dreary drive wore on,
Madame's indignation at the annoyance of the situation only waxed
more vehement, instead of settling down into the dogged despair with
which the more phlegmatic Briton as a rule accepts the disagreeables
of a tonga drive. Especially she used to be incensed whenever the
driver sounded his ear-piercing horn close behind us. She would
break off whatever she was talking about to launch invectives at
this unfortunate “trumpet” whenever it was blown, and as often, up
to the end of the journey; and, seeing that a tonga driver for
self-preservation's sake must blow his horn whenever he approaches a
turn in the road (which may conceal another tonga coming the other
way); also that the road from Kalka to Simla, the whole fifty or
sixty miles of it, consists chiefly of turns all the way up, the
trumpet was more effectually cursed by the time we got to our
destination than the jackdaw of Rheims himself.
I do not think it worth while to add to the wonderful records of
Mme. Blavatsky's “phenomena”, contained in other portions of this
volume, any description of the relatively insignificant incidents of
that kind, which were all that occurred at the period to which I
have now come. The manifestations of abnormal occult power which had
been displayed so freely in the summer of 1880 had given rise to a
good deal of acrimonious discussion. Whatever policy had been under
trial, by the mysterious authorities whom Madame Blavatsky spoke of
as her Masters, when she was freely permitted to exercise whatever
abnormal gifts she possessed, and even helped to achieve results
beyond her own reach, had now fallen into discredit. The days of
phenomena working were all but over. All that occurred now were
concerned merely with the despatch and receipt of letters, or in
some way incidental to the work of the Theosophic movement. It would
rarely happen that even these presented themselves under conditions
that rendered the transaction complete enough to be described as a
wonder; though with the experience of Madame Blavatsky that most of
us about her at this time had had on other occasions, incidents that
were incomplete as tests of occult power, would necessarily share
the retrospective credit attaching to other similar incidents that
had been complete in the past. However, the mot d'ordre in the
Theosophical Society was now coming to be unfavorable to the craving
for phenomena as such, that each new set of acquaintances Madame
Blavatsky might make would necessarily feel at first. Mr Hume — who
at that time was greatly interested in the information I had begun
to obtain shortly before in reference to the views of Nature
entertained by the adepts of Indian occultism — and I, were far more
intent now on enlarging our comprehension of this “Esoteric
Doctrine” than on witnessing further displays of a mysterious power
of which we could not fathom the secrets. We used to spend long
hours together, day after day, in trying to develop the unmanageable
hints we obtained in the form of written answers to questions, with
the help of Mme. Blavatsky; but the task she had to perform in
endeavoring to elucidate these hints, was almost hopelessly
embarrassing; for though her own knowledge was very great, it had
not been originally implanted in her own mind on European methods;
it was not readily recast in a European mould, and above all, she
had no clear idea as to what she was at liberty to tell us, and how
far her general obligations of secrecy still applied. It was an
uphill and not very profitable beginning that was made at this time
with an enterprise that assumed considerable proportions in the end,
and it was not till a later period, when I had returned to my own
house at Allahabad, that my instruction in occult philosophy,
leading up to the subsequent development of the book called Esoteric
Buddhism, began to make real progress. By that time, to my lasting
regret, Mr Hume's sympathies had been alienated from the
undertaking.
It has been, in this way, Mme. Blavatsky's fate, throughout her work
on the Theosophical Society, to make and lose many friends. The
peculiarities of her character, which these memoirs will have
disclosed, sufficiently account for this checkered record of success
and failure. No personal demeanor could be imagined worse calculated
than hers to retain the confidence of people earnestly pursuing
exalted spiritual ideas, during that intermediate stage of
acquaintanceship intervening between the first kindling of an
interest in her general theories of occultism, and the establishment
of a profound intimacy. It is only people who know her hardly at
all, or only through her writings, and, at the other end of the
scale, those who knew her so thoroughly that she herself cannot
mislead them, by external roughness and indiscretion, into
distrusting the foundations of her character, who do her justice.
People who are familiar with her without being closely intimate and
long acquainted with the conflicting elements of her nature, can
hardly escape some shock to their confidence, sooner or later, some
uncomfortable suspicion about her code of truthfulness, of right or
wrong, which once planted in their minds, and not immediately
brought forward and frankly discussed with her, will be sure to
rankle and grow. It is easy for people whose work lies altogether on
the physical plane of existence, who deal with one another by the
light of principles which are perfectly well understood all round,
to remain beyond the reach of all moral reproach, to regulate their
conduct so that all men recognize the purity of their intentions,
and the high standards of right by which they are governed. The
course of life before an occult chela endeavoring to carry out a
work of spiritual philanthropy amongst people on the “physical
plane” — “in the world” — (as the occult phrase would express it,
distinguishing between the normal community of human kind at large,
and the secluded organization in contact with other modes of human
existence, besides those of ordinary living flesh) is immeasurably
more embarrassing. Such a person is entangled, to begin with, in a
network of reserve. He cannot but be cognizant of a great many facts
connected with the occult life which he is not at liberty to
disclose, which, indeed, he is bound to guard even from the betrayal
which an indiscreet silence in face of indiscreet questioning might
sometimes bring about. There would be no difficulty in his way if he
were simply a chela of the ordinary kind concerned as such merely
with his own spiritual and psychic development ; but when he has to
make some disclosures, and must not go too far with these — when he
is not allowed, withal, to be judge of what information he shall
communicate and what keep back, — his task may often be one that is
replete with the most serious embarrassment.
These embarrassments would, of course, be least for a person of
naturally cool and taciturn temperament, but amongst occultists, as
amongst people “in the world”, temperaments vary. Of course Mme.
Blavatsky's excitable and passionate disposition has been a
frightful stumbling-block in her way: but what is the use in an
orchard of the most gracefully shaped tree that bears no fruit ? She
might have been born with the manners of Mme. Récamier, and the
sedate discretion of an English judge, and have been perfectly
useless in her generation. Whereas, with all her defects, the
possession of her splendid psychic gifts, of her indomitable courage
— which carried her through the ordeals of initiation in the
mysteries of occult knowledge, and again held her up against the
protracted antagonism of materialistic opinion when she came back
into the world with an onerous mission to discharge, — and of her
spiritual enthusiasm, which made all suffering and toil as dust in
the balance compared with her allegiance to her unseen “Masters”,
the possession, in short, of her occult attributes has rendered her
an influence in the world of great potency. The tree may not have
assumed a shape that passing strangers would admire, but the fruit
it has borne has been a stupendous harvest.
When I say that suffering and toil have been with Mme. Blavatsky as
dust in the balance compared to her duty, I say that with deliberate
conviction; but, of course, the phrase must not be taken to mean
that she bears suffering and privation with philosophical calm or
equanimity. She is not capable of bearing the annoyance of a
pin-prick with equanimity. She cannot help fuming and fretting over
every annoyance, great or small, and when, as so often happens
inevitably, considering the stories told of her wonder working, and
the occasional manifestation of
her powers in this respect up to a
recent date, she is suspected of trickery, her indignation and
misery and incoherent protests are so vehement and unwise in their
expression that they only serve to strengthen unjust conclusions to
her disadvantage.
During the Simla visit of 1881, we established the Simla Eclectic
Theosophical Society — a branch which it was hoped at the time would
attract Anglo-Indian members. Mr Hume was its president for the
first year, and I myself for its second; but the movement never took
root firmly in Anglo-Indian society, and indeed at that time there
was nothing before the world that could give the movement an
adequate raison d'être for Europeans at large.
The record of Mme. Blavatsky's life in India for the next year or
two would be mainly a narrative of tiresome episodes connected with
attacks of one kind or another on the Theosophical Society. A
Calcutta newspaper called the Statesman made her and her Society the
object of frequent sarcasms, and sometimes of grave
misrepresentation, so that in December 1881 it was driven under a
threat of legal proceedings to publish a letter from solicitors on
Mme. Blavatsky's behalf. This may be usefully reproduced here as
illustrating at once the offensive nature and the groundlessness of
the attacks of which she was the object.
“CALCUTTA, December 16, 1881.
“SIR, —
In the Statesman of Tuesday, the
6th instant, there appears an
article having reference, among
other matters, to Madame Blavatsky
and Colonel Olcott, the founders
of the Theosophical Society. In
the course of that article it is
stated: —
“ 'It is now asserted not only
that the resources of both (Madame
Blavatsky and Colonel Olcott)
are exhausted, but that they are
largely in debt, on account, it
is alleged, of the expenses of the
Society. It is not difficult for
any one to arrive at the
conclusion that it would be
highly desirable and expedient for the
founders of the Theosophical
Society to have these debts paid off.
This is a simple and not
unpraiseworthy instinct. The question
that remains is, as regards the
means by which this consummation
is to be effected.'
“The remainder of the article,
which we need not quote at length,
is an elaborate insinuation that
Madame Blavatsky is endeavoring
to procure from a gentleman
named, by spurious representations,
the payment of her debts.
“Now, the allegation about
Madame Blavatsky being in debt is, we
are instructed, absolutely false
to begin with ; nor is the
Society which she helped to
found in debt, unless, indeed, it be
to herself. The accounts of the
Society, published in the
THEOSOPHIST for last May, show
that the outlay incurred on behalf
of the Society up to that date
had exceeded the receipts
(consisting of ' initiation fees
' Rs. 3900, and a few donations)
by a sum of Rs. 19,846, but this
deficit was supplied from the
private resources of Madame
Blavatsky and Colonel Olcott.
“We may further explain that
Madame Blavatsky is a Russian lady of
high rank by birth (though since
naturalized in the United
States), and has never been in
the penniless condition your
article insultingly ascribes to
her — whatever mistakes may have
arisen from the improper
publication of a private letter by
Colonel Olcott to a friend in
America, the careless exaggerations
of which, designed merely for a
correspondent familiar with the
real state of the affairs to
which these referred, have given you
occasion for some offensive
remarks.
“We therefore, duly instructed
on behalf of Madame Blavatsky and
Colonel Olcott, now require of
you that you should publish this
letter together with an apology
for the scandalous libel to which
you have been misled into giving
currency.
“We also require that in further
refutation of these, and in
general reply to the insulting
language of your article, you
should publish the enclosed
explanations extracted from the
Pioneer of the 10th instant.
“In the event of your failure
forthwith to comply with our
request, or to give up the name
of the writer of the article in
question, we are instructed to
proceed against you in the High
Court for recovery of damages
for the libelous attacks of which
our clients complain. —
Yours faithfully,
SANDERSON & Co.”
The publication of this letter was accompanied by a quasi-apology,
and the matter dropped. But next month the Theosophists were engaged
in another war of words with a Mr Joseph Cook, a missionary
preacher, who attacked the Society in certain lectures he gave at
Poona. All standards of European good sense applied to such a matter
would, of course, have required Mme. Blavatsky to remain perfectly
quiescent in face of such assailants, but her temperament forbade
this, and possibly the native Indian feeling on such subjects, very
unlike the European feeling in corresponding cases, may have made it
impossible for the leaders of the Theosophical Society to refuse an
answer to any charges made against them. At all events, poor Mme.
Blavatsky was never dragged out of one pool of hot water without
forthwith finding herself in another.
In the autumn of 1882, of which she spent the greater part at
Bombay, she became seriously ill, and was at length summoned to an
interview with her occult superiors across the Sikkim frontier, near
Darjeeling. In a note I had from her shortly before her departure
from Bombay, written in the middle of September, she bade my wife
and myself good-bye, in the expectation, apparently, that the term
of her physical life was nearly over. The note is so characteristic
that I give it here with only a few private allusions suppressed.
“MY DEAR FRIENDS, MRS AND MR
SINNETT,
I am afraid you will have soon
to bid me good-bye. This time I
have it well and good. Bright's
disease of the kidneys, and the
whole blood turned into water,
ulcers breaking out in the most
unexpected spots, blood, or
whatever it may be, forming into bags
à la kangaroo, and
other pretty extras and et ceteras. This all,
primo, brought on by Bombay
dampness and heat; and, secundo, by
fretting and bothering. I have
become so stupidly nervous that the
unexpected tread of Babula's
naked foot near me makes me start
with the most violent
palpitations of the heart. Dudley says — I
forced him to tell me this —
that I can last a year or two, and
perhaps but a few days, for I
can die at any time in consequence
of an emotion. Ye lords of
creation ! of such emotions I have
twenty a day. How can I last
then ? I give all the business over
to -----; ----- (meaning her
Master) wants me to prepare and go
somewhere for a month or so
toward end of September. He sent a
chela here from Nilgerri Hills,
and he is to take me off, where, I
don't know, but, of course,
somewhere in the Himalayas.
“ ... I can hardly write, I am
really too weak. Yesterday they
drove me down to the Fort to the
doctor. I got up with both my
ears swollen thrice their
natural size, and I met Mrs ------ and
sister, her carriage crossing
mine slowly. She did not salute nor
make a sign of recognition, but
looked very proud and disdainful.
Well, I was fool enough to
resent it. I tell you I am very sick.
Yes, I wish I could see you once
more, and dear ------ and -----.
“Well, good-bye all, and when I
am gone, if I go before seeing
you, do not think of me too much
as an 'impostor', for I swear I
told you the truth, however much
I have concealed of it from you.
I hope Mrs ----- will not
dishonor by evoking me with some medium.
Let her rest assured that it
will never be my spirit, nor anything
of me — not even my shell, since
this is gone long ago.
Yours in life yet,
H. P. B.”
Some particulars of her journey up to Darjeeling, made shortly after
this, are given in a narrative by an enthusiastic candidate for
chelaship, Mr S. Ramaswamier, who endeavored to accompany Mme.
Blavatsky, scenting the probability that she was really going to
meet one of the higher adepts or “Mahatmas”. I take a portion of
this narrative from the Theosophist of December 1882. It took the
form of a letter addressed by the writer to a brother Theosophist.
“... When we met last at Bombay
I told you what had happened to me
at Tinnevelly. My health having
been disturbed by official work
and worry, I applied for leave
on medical certificate, and it was
duly granted. One day in
September last, while I was reading in my
room, I was ordered by the
audible voice of my blessed Guru, M
------, to leave all and proceed
immediately to Bombay, whence I
had to go in search of Mme.
Blavatsky wherever I could find her
and follow her wherever she
went. Without losing a moment, I
closed up all my affairs and
left the station. For the tones of
that voice are to me the
divinest sound in nature; its commands
imperative. I travelled in my
ascetic robes. Arrived at Bombay, I
found Mme. Blavatsky gone, and
learned through you that she had
left a few days before; that she
was very ill ; and that, beyond
the fact that she had left the
place very suddenly with a Chela,
you knew nothing of her
whereabouts. And now, I must tell you what
happened to me after I had left
you.
“Really not knowing whither I
had best go, I took a through ticket
to Calcutta; but, on reaching
Allahabad, I heard the same
well-known voice directing me to
go to Berhampore. At Azimgunge,
in the train, I met, most
providentially I may say, with some
Babus (I did not then know they
were also Theosophists, since I
had never seen any of them), who
were also in search of Mme.
Blavatsky. Some had traced her
to Dinapore, but lost her track and
went back to Berhampore. They
knew, they said, she was going to
Tibet, and wanted to throw
themselves at the feet of the Mahatmas
to permit them to accompany her.
At last, as I was told, they
received from her a note,
informing them to come if they so
desired it, but that she herself
was prohibited from going to
Tibet just now. She was to
remain, she said, in the vicinity of
Darjeeling, and would see the
BROTHERS on the Sikkim Territory,
where they would not be allowed
to follow her. . . . Brother
Nobin, the President of the Adhi
Bhoutic Bhratru Theosophical
Society, would not tell me where
Mme. Blavatsky was, or perhaps
did not then know it himself.
Yet he and others had risked all in
the hope of seeing the Mahatmas.
On the 23rd, at last, I was
brought by Nobin Babu from
Calcutta to Chandernagore, where I
found Mme. Blavatsky, ready to
start, five minutes after, with the
train. A tall, dark-looking
hairy Chela (not Chunder Cusho), but a
Tibetan I suppose by his dress,
whom I met after I had crossed the
river with her in a boat, told
me that I had come too late, that
Mme. Blavatsky had already seen
the Mahatmas, and that he had
brought her back. He would not
listen to my supplications to take
me with him, saying he had no
other orders than what he had
already executed, namely — to
take her about 25 miles beyond a
certain place he named to me,
and that he was now going to see her
safe to the station, and return.
The Bengalee brother-Theosophists
had also traced and followed her,
arriving at the station
half-an-hour later. They crossed
the river from Chandernagore to a
small railway station on the
opposite side. When the train
arrived, she got into the
carriage, upon entering which I found
the Chela! And, before even her
own things could be placed in the
van, the train — against all
regulations and before the bell was
rung — started off, leaving
Nobin Babu, the Bengalees, and her
servant behind. Only one Babu
and the wife and daughter of another
— all Theosophists and
candidates for Chelaship — had time to get
in. I myself had barely the time
to jump in, into the last
carriage. All her things — with
the exception of her box
containing the Theosophical
correspondence — were left behind,
together with her servant. Yet,
even the persons that went by the
same train with her did not
reach Darjeeling. Babu Nobin Banerjee,
with the servant, arrived five
days later; and they who had time
to take their seats were left
five or six stations behind owing to
another unforeseen accident (?)
at another further place, reaching
Darjeeling also a few days
later! It requires no great stretch of
imagination to know that Mme.
Blavatsky had been, or was perhaps,
being again taken to the
BROTHERS, who, for some good reasons best
known to them, did not want us
to be following and watching her.
Two of the Mahatmas, I had
learned for a certainty, were in the
neighborhood of British
territory, and one of them was seen and
recognized, by a person I need
not name here, as a high chutuku of
Tibet.”
Mme. Blavatsky was only two or three days across the frontier with
her occult superiors, but she returned practically well again, and
cured for the time of the formidable diseases by which her life had
been menaced.On the 16th of December 1882, a farewell entertainment
was given by native friends to the founders of the Theosophical
Society, just before their departure from Bombay to take up their
residence at Adyar, Madras, where a house had been purchased for the
Society by subscription. At this entertainment an address was read
as follows:—
“On the eve of your departure
for Madras, we, the members of the
Bombay Branch, beg most
respectfully to convey to you our
heartfelt and sincere
acknowledgment for the benefit which the
people of this Presidency in
general, and we in particular, have
derived from your exposition of
the Eastern philosophies and
religions during the past four years.
Although the exigencies of
the Society's growing business
make it necessary to remove the
headquarters to Madras, we
assure you that the enthusiasm for
Theosophical studies and
universal Brotherhood which you have
awakened in us will not die out,
but will be productive of much
good in future. By your
editorial efforts and public lectures, you
have done much to awaken in the
hearts of the educated sons of
India a fervent desire for the
study of their ancient literature,
which has so long been
neglected; and though you have never
undervalued the system of
Western education for the people of
India, which to a certain extent
is necessary for the material and
political advancement of the
country, you have often justly
impressed upon the minds of
young men the necessity of making
investigations into the
boundless treasures of Eastern learning as
the only means of checking that
materialistic and atheistic
tendency engendered by an
educational system unaccompanied by any
moral or religious instruction.
“You have preached throughout
the country temperance and universal
brotherhood, and how far your
attempts in that direction have been
successful during the brief
period of four years was perfectly
manifest at the last anniversary
of the Parent Society, just held
in Bombay, when on one common
platform brave hearts from Lahore
and Simla to Ceylon, from
Calcutta to Kattiawar, from Gujerat and
Allahabad — Parsees, Hindus,
Buddhists, Jews, Mahomedans, and
Europeans — assembled under the
banner of Theosophy, and advocated
the regeneration of India, under
the benign influence of the
British rule. Such a union of
different communities, with all the
prejudices of sects, castes, and
creeds set aside, the formation
of one harmonious whole, and the
combining together for any
national object, in short, a
grand national union, are
indispensable for the moral
resuscitation of Hindustan.”
Your endeavors have been purely
unselfish and disinterested, and
they therefore entitle you to
our warmest sympathy and best
respects. We shall most
anxiously watch your successful progress,
and take an earnest delight in
the accomplishment of the objects
of your mission, throughout the
Aryawart.
“As a humble token of our sense
of appreciation of your labours of
love, and as a keepsake from us,
we beg most respectfully to offer
for your acceptance, on behalf
of our Branch, an article of Indian
make, with a suitable inscription.”
Thus by words as well as by deeds the native Theosophists of India
were showing their appreciation of the good work done by Mme.
Blavatsky and Colonel Olcott in spite of the perpetually renewed
slights they received all the while from the Anglo-Indian
newspapers.
The house at Madras in which Mme. Blavatsky was next established was
a great improvement on the cramped and comfortless bungalow at
Bombay from which she removed. Madras is a station of enormous
extent, straggling along seven or eight miles of the sea-shore.
Adyar is a suburb at the southern extremity, through which a small
stream finds its way to the sea, and just before it reaches the
beach spreads out into a broad shallow expanse of water, beside
which the Theosophical House stands in extensive grounds. Here we
found Mme. Blavatsky and her heterogeneous household comfortably
installed when my wife and I visited her on our way home from India
in March 1883. She was looking forward to final rest there, and was
hoping she had at last found the tranquil retreat in which she would
spend the remainder of her life. Her occult gifts have not included
the power of forecasting the vicissitudes of her own career, and she
was very far at that time from suspecting the renewed disturbance of
her destinies, which the next two or three years were preparing to
bring forth. The upper rooms of the house were her own private
domain. These did not cover the whole area of the lower storey, but
even with an addition that had just been made, stood on the roof
like the poop of a ship upon its deck. The new room just built had
been hurried forward that we might see it complete, and was destined
by Madame to be her “occult room”, her own specially private
sanctum, where she would be visited by none but her most intimate
friends. It came to be sadly desecrated by her worst enemies a year
or two later. In her ardor of affection for all that concerned the
“Masters”, she had especially devoted herself to decorating a
certain hanging cupboard to be kept exclusively sacred to the
communications passing between these Masters and herself, and
already bestowed upon it the designation under which it became so
sadly celebrated subsequently — the shrine. Here she had established
some simple occult treasures — relics of her stay in Tibet — two
small portraits she possessed of the Mahatmas, and some other
trifles associated with them in her imagination. The purpose of this
special receptacle was, of course, perfectly intelligible to
everyone familiar with the theory of occult phenomena — held by
Theosophists to be as rigidly subject to natural laws as the
behavior of steam or electricity. A place kept pure of all
“magnetism” but that connected with the work of integrating and
disintegrating letters, would facilitate the process, and the
“shrine” was used a dozen times for the transaction of business
between the Masters and the chelas connected with the Society for
every once it was made to subserve the purpose of any show
phenomenon.
At Madras Mme. Blavatsky was not quite so much neglected by the
European society of the place, in the beginning of her residence
there at all events, as she had been at Bombay. Some of the leading
Anglo-Indian residents went to see her and became her fast friends.
With some of these she spent part of the autumn at Ootacamund, the
hill station of Madras. An incident which took place during this
visit excited much local interest at the time, and is described by
the lady chiefly concerned, Mrs Carmichael, as follows: —
“I went to see Mme. Blavatsky,
who was at that time on a visit to
General and Mrs Morgan, who live
at Ootacamund. After some
interesting conversation with
her I left, expressing a desire to
see her again soon, and on my
third visit the following incident
occurred.
“It was about four o'clock in
the afternoon when I called on Mme.
Blavatsky, and was received by
her in the drawing-room. I sat
beside her on the sofa, and took
off my driving gloves.”
I had already several times
expressed to Madame Blavatsky my great
desire to see some occult
phenomenon, and also to be convinced by
some token of the presence of
the Mahatmas.“
After a short time spent in
conversation on this and other
subjects, in course of which I
said how much I should like to have
a ring duplicated in the same
way that Mrs Sinnett had, Mme.
Blavatsky took my hand, and
withdrawing from her hand a ring which
she called her occult ring, took
off also two rings from my hand,
one a blue sapphire, single
stone. She held the three rings for a
short time in her right hand,
and then returned me one saying — '
I can do nothing with this; it
has not your influence' (it was a
ring of my husband's which I had
put on accidentally that day).
She then proceeded to manipulate
in her right hand my blue
sapphire and her own occult
ring, at the same time holding my
right hand with her left."
After an interval of a minute or
two she extended her right hand
saying —“
'Here is your ring' — showing me
at the same instant two sapphire
rings, my own and another
identical in every respect, except that
the second was larger and a
better cut stone than my own. ' Why do
you give me this? ' I asked in
surprise.“
' I have not done it; it is a
gift from the Mahatmas,' answered
Mme. Blavatsky. ' Why should I
be so favored ?' I asked. '
Because,' said Mme. Blavatsky, '
the Mahatmas have allowed you to
have this as a token that they
recognize and thank you and your
husband for the deep interest
you have always shown to the
natives.' ”
About two months after, on my
return to Madras, I took the
duplicated sapphire ring to
Messrs Orr & Son, jewelers, and I was
told by them that they valued
the stone at 150 rupees, calling it
a party-colored sapphire.
(Signed) “ Sara M. CARMICHAEL.
“LONDON, August 14th, 1884.”
CHAPTER 10
A VISIT TO EUROPE
At the Convention of the Theosophical Society, held in December, it
was stated that there were then seventy-seven branches in India and
eight in Ceylon. The anniversary celebration went off with
éclat as
usual, in spite of some sparring in print between the President and
the Bishop of Madras, foreshadowing a fiercer conflict between the
Society and the local missionaries at a later date; and early in the
spring the leaders of the movement came on a visit to Europe.
Colonel Olcott had arranged to come some time previously on some
business connected with a case before the Colonial Office, in which
the interests of the Ceylon Buddhists were involved, and at the last
moment it was decided that Mme. Blavatsky should accompany him. Her
rescue, during the visit to the Sikkim frontier, from the death that
seemed awaiting her during the autumn of 1882, had not done more
than patch up physical machinery that was thoroughly out of order.
She was again falling into very bad health, and it was supposed that
the sea voyage to Europe and a few months' change would do her good.
It was not contemplated, in the beginning, that she should come as
far as London, and on her arrival at Nice, where she had friends, in
the beginning of March she wrote, in reply to various invitations
from London: — “
I have received the kind invitations of yourselves, of ------, and
------, and others. I am deeply touched by this proof of the desire
to see my unworthy self, but see no use to kick against fate and try
to make the realisable out of the unrealisable. I am sick, and feel
worse than I felt when leaving Bombay. At sea I had felt better, and
on land I feel worse. I was laid up for the whole day on first
landing at Marseilles, and am laid up now. At the former place it
was, I suppose, the vile emanations of a European civilised
first-class hotel, with its pigs and beef, and here — well, anyhow I
am falling to pieces, crumbling away like an old sea biscuit, and
the most I will be able to do, will be to pick up and join together
my voluminous fragments, and gluing them together, carry the ruin to
Paris. What's the use asking me to go to London? What shall I, what
can I, do amidst your eternal fogs and the emanations of the highest
civilisation ? I left Madras à mon corps défendant. I
did not want
to go — would return this minute if I could. Had not ------ ordered
it, I would not have stirred from my rooms and old surroundings. I
feel ill, miserable, cross, unhappy. ... I would not have come to
Nice but for Madame ------, our dear Theosophist from Odessa. Lady C
------ is the embodiment of kindness. She does everything in
creation to humor me. I came for two days, but I reckoned without my
host, the mistral of Provence, and the cold winds of Nice. As soon
as I am better, we mean to join the 'secretaries' in Paris, only to
begin fidgeting as soon as I am there, and wishing myself sooner in
Jericho than Paris. What kind of company am I to civilized beings
like yourselves ? . . . I would become obnoxious to them in seven
minutes and a quarter were I to accept it and land my disagreeable,
bulky self in England. Distance lends its charms, and in my case my
presence would surely ruin every vestige of it.
“The London Lodge is in its sharpest crisis. ... I could not
(especially in my present state of nervousness) stand by and listen
calmly to the astounding news that Sankaracharya was a theist, and
Sabba Row knows not what he is talking about, without kicking myself
to death; or that other still more astounding declaration that
Masters are evidently ' Swabhavikas.' And shall I begin contending
against the Goughs and Hodgsons who have disfigured Buddhism and
Adwaiticism even in their exoteric sense, and risk bursting a
blood-vessel in London upon hearing their arguments reiterated ? . .
. Let me die in peace if I have to die, or return to my Lares and
Penates in Adyar, if I am ever doomed to see them again.”
In spite of the reluctance thus expressed, she ultimately came to
London and stayed for several months, but meanwhile she remained in
Paris for a few weeks and was there joined by some of her Russian
relatives and friends. Mme. de Jelihowsky, whose writings have been
quoted so largely in the earlier chapters of this memoir, again took
pen in hand to describe some phenomena that occurred during this
period.
In an article contributed to a Russian newspaper, she says: — “When,
about the middle of May, we arrived in Paris for an interview with
Mme. Blavatsky, we found her surrounded by a regular staff of
members of their Society who had gathered at Paris, coming from
Germany, Russia, and even America, to see her after her five years'
absence in India ; and by a crowd of the curious who had heard of
the thaumaturgic atmosphere always around her, and were anxious to
become eye-witnesses to her occult powers. Truth compels me to say
that H. P. Blavatsky was very reluctant to satisfy idle curiosity.
She has her own way of looking very contemptuously at any physical
phenomena, hates to waste her powers in a profitless manner, and
was, moreover, at the time quite ill. Every phenomenon produced at
her will invariably costs her several days of sickness.“ I say ' at
her will,' for phenomena, independent of her, took place far more
frequently in their midst than those produced by herself. She
attributes them to that mysterious being whom they all call their '
Master.' Such manifestations of forces (to us) unknown leave her
unhurt. Every time that an accord or arpeggio of some invisible
chords resounded in the air, wherever she was, and with whatever
occupied, she used to hasten to her room, from whence she emerged
with some order or news. Most of the ' secretaries' of the Society
received very often such summons quite independently of her. ... I
give one instance. On May the 18th, Colonel Olcott returned from
London and showed to us a curious Chinese envelope with a similar
paper in it, a letter he had received personally, as he tells us,
from one of the Masters on April 6th, in a railway carriage, in the
presence of witnesses. The letter had dropped on his knees, and
warned him of a grave treason that was being prepared for them all
at Adyar (their Madras headquarters) by persons whom they had
trusted, and who owed to them all during their five years' long stay
in their house. Every detail in the letter was corroborated two
months after. Mme. Blavatsky paid little attention to it at the
time. But when the news corroborative of the prophecy arrived, she
felt extremely hurt. . . .“
As to phenomena produced at will, this is what Professor Thurmann
heard in company of several persons, myself included.”
He was telling us one night of some musical sounds he had heard at a
spiritual séance in the dark. H. P. Blavatsky, who was sitting
in
her arm-chair, quietly laying out a Russian patience with cards,
laughed at the narrative, and remarked, ' Why should darkness be
necessary for such manifestations ? When there is no deception there
is no need of darkness. . . . ' And upon saying this, with one hand
upon the table, she lifted the other in the air as though throwing
off some current, and said: ' Now, listen !'”
At the same instant we heard, in that corner of the room towards
which she had waved her hand, the harmonious sound as though of a
harp or zither. . . . The scale of melody resounded clear and sharp,
and then died away in the air. Again she lifted her hand, moving it
in an opposite direction, and the same phenomenon was produced! . .
. We all started from our seats, struck with amazement. For the
third time she moved her hand in a third direction, as though
cutting the air through with her arm — this time toward a large
bronze chandelier over our heads — and, at the same instant, the
chandelier emitted a sound, as if in every one of its jets lay
concealed a musical chord, which had vibrated in response to her
command. ...”
Mme. de Jelihowsky also recounts the following incident: — “
We were, four of us, at Rue Notre Dame des Champs, 46 — Mme. N. A.
Fadeeff, Mme. Blavatsky, the eminent Russian author, M. Soloviof,
and I, — having tea at the same table of the little drawing-room,
about 11 P.M. . Mme. B. was asked to narrate something of her '
Master,' and how she had acquired from him her occult talents. While
telling us many things which would be out of place in public print,
she offered us to see a portrait of his in a gold medallion she wore
on a chain round her neck, and opened it. It is a perfectly flat
locket, made to contain but one miniature and no more. It passed
from hand to hand, and we all saw the handsome Hindu face in it,
painted in India."
Suddenly our little party felt disturbed by something very strange,
a sensation which it is hardly possible to describe. It was as
though the air had suddenly changed, was rarefied, the atmosphere
became positively oppressive, and we three could hardly breathe. . .
. H. P. B. covered her eyes with her hand and whispered:—
“ 'Attention !'...! feel that something is going to happen. . . .
Some phenomenon. . . . He is preparing to do it. . . .' ”
She meant by 'He', her guru-master, whom she considers so powerful.
. . .
" At that moment M. Soloviof fixed his eyes on a corner of the
room,
saying that he saw something like a ball of fire, of oval form,
looking like a radiant golden and bluish egg. ... He had hardly
pronounced these words when we heard, coming from the farthest end
of the corridor, a long melodious sound, as if some one had brushed
the chords of a harp — a melody far fuller and more definite than
any of the musical sounds we had previously heard.
" Once more the clear notes were repeated, and then died away.
Silence reigned again in the rooms." I left my seat and went into
the passage hall, brightly lighted with a lamp. Useless to say that
all was quiet, and that it was empty. When I returned to the
drawing-room I found H. P. Blavatsky sitting quietly as before at
the table between Mme. Fadeeff and M. Soloviof. At the same time, I
saw as distinctly as can be, the figure of a man, a greyish, yet
quite clear form, standing near my sister, and who, upon my looking
at him, receded from her, paled, and disappeared in the opposite
wall. This man — or perhaps his astral form — was of a slight build,
and of middle size, wrapped in a kind of mantle, and with a white
turban on his head. The vision did not last more than a few seconds,
but I had all the time to examine it, and to tell everyone what I
distinctly saw, though, as soon as it had disappeared I felt
terribly frightened and nervous. . . . Hardly come back to our
senses, we were startled with another wonder, this one palpable and
objective. H. P. B. suddenly opened her locket, and instead of one
portrait of a Master, there were two — her own facing his!
“ Firmly set inside the other half of the medallion, under its oval
glass, there was her own miniature likeness, which she had just
casually mentioned."
The locket was once more carefully examined by the three witnesses,
and passed from hand to hand.
” This was not the finale. A quarter of an hour later the magical
locket, from which we three literally never took off our eyes for
one second, was opened at the desire of one of us — her portrait was
no more to be found in it. . . . It had disappeared.”The statement
that follows, relating to another incident of Mme. Blavatsky's stay
in Paris, was published in Light for July 12, 1884: —
“The undersigned attest the following phenomenon:
"On the morning of the IIth of June, instant, we were present in
the
reception room of the Theosophical Society at Paris, 46 Rue Notre
Dame des Champs, when a letter was delivered by the postman. The
door of the room in which we were sitting was open, so that we could
see into the hall; and the servant who answered the bell was seen to
take the letter from the postman and bring it to us at once, placing
it in the hands of Mme. Jelihowsky, who threw it before her on the
table round which we were sitting. The letter was addressed to a
lady, a relative of Mme. Blavatsky's, who was then visiting her, and
came from another relative in Russia. There were present in the
room, Mme. de Morsier, secretary-general of the '
Société
Théosophique d'Orient et d'Occident'; M. Soloviof, son of the
distinguished Russian historian, and attaché of the Imperial
Court,
himself well known as a writer; Colonel Olcott, Mr W. Q. Judge,
Mohini-Babu, and several other persons. Mme. Blavatsky was also
sitting at the table. Mme. Jelihowsky, upon her sister (Mme.
Blavatsky) remarking that she would like to know what was in the
letter, asked her, on the spur of the moment, to read its contents
before its seal was broken, since she professed to be able so to do.
"Thus challenged, Mme. Blavatsky at once took up the closed letter,
held it against her forehead, and read aloud what she professed to
be its contents. These alleged contents she further wrote down on a
blank page of an old letter that lay on a table. Then she said she
would give those present, since her sister still laughed at and
challenged her power, even a clearer proof that she was able to
exercise her psychic power within the closed envelope. Remarking
that her own name occurred in the course of the letter, she said
that she would underline this through the envelope in red crayon. In
order to effect this she wrote her name on the old letter (on which
the alleged copy of the contents of the sealed letter had been
written), together with an interlaced double triangle or ' Solomon's
seal' below the signature, which she had copied as well as the body
of the letter. This was done in spite of her sister remarking that
her correspondent hardly ever signed her name in full when writing
to relatives, and that in this at least Mme. Blavatsky would find
herself mistaken. 'Nevertheless,'she replied,'I will cause these two
red marks to appear in the corresponding places within the letter.'”
She next laid the closed letter beside the open one upon the table,
and placed her hand upon both, so as to make (as she said) a bridge,
along which a current of psychic force might pass. Then, with her
features settled into an expression of intense mental concentration,
she kept her hand quietly thus for a few moments, after which,
tossing the closed letter across the table to her sister, she said,
'Tiens, c'est fait.' ('The experiment is successfully finished.')
Here it may be well to add, to show that the letter could not have
been tampered with in transit — unless by a Government official, —
that the stamps were fixed on the flap of the envelope, where a seal
is usually placed."
Upon the envelope being opened by the lady to whom it was addressed,
it was found that Mme. Blavatsky had actually written out its
contents ; that her name was there; that she had really underlined
it in red, as she had promised; and that the double triangle was
reproduced below the writer's signature, which was in full, as Mme.
Blavatsky had described it.”
Another fact of exceptional interest we noted. A slight defect in
formation of one of the two interlaced triangles, as drawn by Mme.
Blavatsky, had been faithfully reproduced within the closed
letter."
This experiment was doubly valuable, as at once an illustration of
clairvoyant perception, by which Mme. Blavatsky correctly read the
contents of a sealed letter, and of the phenomenon of precipitation,
or the deposit of pigmentary matter in the form of figures and lines
previously drawn by the operator in the presence of observers.
(Signed)
“ VERA JELIHOWSKY.
VSEVOLOD SOLOVIOF.
NADEJDA A. FADÉEFF.
EMILIE DE MORSIER.
WILLIAM Q. JUDGE.
H. S. OLCOTT. PARIS,
Paris, June 2lst, 1884.”
In the St Petersburg Rebus (a periodical of psychological sciences)
of July 1, 1884, No. 26, the same account appeared over the
signature of V. Soloviof, an eye-witness to the above fact, under
the title of
INTERESTING PHENOMENON
[Since then the author, between whom and Mme Blavatsky there have
been personal differences, tried to throw a doubt over the
genuineness of this phenomenon, saying it may have been due to
psychological glamour thrown over the witnesses. On that hypothesis,
the bare fact of Mme Blavatsky possessing the power of collectively
mesmerizing a group of people in full daylight, so that they thought
they saw a series of occurrences that they did not see, is to say
the least, sufficiently astonishing.]
A LETTER TO THE EDITOR.
“Several persons, among that
number myself, met casually H. P.
Blavatsky (the founder of the
Theosophical Society, then on a
visit to Paris) about 10 A.M. in
the forenoon. A postman entered
and brought, among others, a
letter for a relative of Mme. B.,
then on a visit to the latter,
but owing to the early morning hour
still absent in her bedroom.
From the hands of the postman the
letter passed on, in the
presence of all present, upon the table
in the parlour, where we were
all gathered. Glancing at the
postmark and the address of that
particular letter, both Mme.
Blavatsky and her sister, Mme.
Jelihowsky, remarked that it came
from a mutual relative then at
Odessa. The envelope was not only
completely closed on all its
flaps, but the post-stamp itself was
glued on the place where the
seal is habitually placed — as I got
convinced by carefully examining
it myself. H. P. Blavatsky, who
was on that morning, as I had
remarked, in very high spirits,
undertook, unexpectedly for all
of us, with the exception of her
sister, who was the first one to
propose it and to defy Mme. B. to
do it, to read the letter in its
closed envelope. After this she
placed it on her forehead, and
with visible efforts began to read
it out, writing down the
pronounced sentences on a sheet of paper.
When she finished, her sister
expressed her doubts as to the
success of the experiment,
remarking that several of the
expressions read out and written
down by Mme. B. could hardly be
found in a letter from the
person who had written it. Then H. P.
B. became visibly irritated by
this, and declared that in such
case she would do still more.
Taking the sheet of paper again she
traced upon it with red pencil,
at the foot of the sentences
supposed to be contained in the
closed letter, noted down by her,
a sign, then she underlined a
word, after which, with a visible
effort on her face, she said : '
This sign that I make must pass
into the envelope at the end of
the letter, and this word in it be
found underlined, as I have done
it here.' . .
.“ When the letter was opened,
its contents were found identical
with what Mme. Blavatsky had
written down, and, at the end of it,
we all saw the sign in red
pencil correctly repeated, and the word
underlined by her on her paper
was not only there, but equally
underlined in red pencil."
After that an exact description
of the phenomenon was drawn up,
and all of us, the witnesses
present, signed our names under it.”
The circumstances under which
the phenomenon occurred in its
smallest details, carefully
checked by myself, do not leave in me
the smallest doubt as to its
genuineness and reality. Deception or
fraud in this particular case
are entirely out of question.
Vs. SOLOVIOF.
PARIS, 10 (22) June 1884.
The Theosophical movement in London, when Mme. Blavatsky ultimately
came over from Paris on the 7th of April — arriving unexpectedly on
the evening of a meeting of the “London Lodge”, — was already
established on a footing which was leading many of its most
prominent representatives to look with no sympathetic eye on such
“phenomena” as have just been described, illustrative of occult
power operating on the physical plane of Nature. And no one
acquainted in any degree with the course that movement has taken —
ever since a sufficient volume of philosophical teaching has been
given out by the “adepts” to show how very elevated a purpose lies
in reality before the students of Esoteric Theosophy — will make the
mistake of imagining that the London Society consists of people
attracted to it by the mere rumor of Mme. Blavatsky's wonder-working
power. But wherever Mme. Blavatsky may be, abnormal occurrences,
even in recent years, when they have been practically suppressed as
compared with the abundance of the manifestation at an earlier
period of her life, have been more or less frequently observed. And
the present volume, concerned as it is with her own personal history
in a greater degree than with that of the movement with which the
latter part of her career has been so ultimately blended, must
maintain its character to the end. Mme. Blavatsky and her most
attached friends in the Theosophical movement have, as I have just
said, come to feel a very great distaste for all phenomenal stories,
owing to the strife of words they have evoked and the hostile
incredulity they have excited. They are now in a position to rely
entirely in recommending Theosophic study to the world, on the
intrinsic, intellectual, and philosophical claims of the esoteric
doctrine, and it cannot be too strongly or frequently emphasized
that the final purpose of Mme. Blavatsky's life, since her return
from India in 1870, has been to convey something of this doctrine,
of this spiritual philosophy, to the world, and not to dazzle the
narrow circle of people immediately around her at any given time
with displays of occult power.
Still, partly owing to the principle on which, as the reader will
have seen, she has endeavoured all along to carry out her task —
partly because her love of exercising her abnormal faculties
continually overcomes her irritation at the annoyances for her to
which their exercise has often given rise — she has displayed these
from time to time up to a recent period.
She stayed with us for a week only on her first arrival in London
and then returned to Paris. She came over to London again on the
29th of June, and stayed with friends in Elgin Crescent, Notting
Hill, where she remained till early in August, going over then to
Germany with a party of Theosophists on a visit to friends in
Elberfeld. Her presence in London during the period referred to
became rather widely known, and large numbers of people contrived to
make her acquaintance. Streams of visitors were constantly pouring
in to see her, and with her usual abandon of manner she would
receive her callers in any costume, in any room which happened to be
convenient to her for the moment — in her bedroom, which she also
made her writing-room and study, or in her friends' drawing-room
thick with the smoke of her innumerable cigarettes, and of those
which she hospitably offered to all who cared to accept them.
Occasionally it happened that some manifestations of her occult
powers would be given on these occasions, as, for example, on the
evening referred to in the following letter: —
HOLLOWAY'S HOTEL,
48 DOVER STREET, PICCADILLY,
LONDON,
August 9, 1884.“
MY DEAR MR-----,—
I see no difficulty whatever in
telling you what happened in my
presence a few days ago at Mrs
Arundale's house, where I had been
dining with Mme. Blavatsky.
”In the midst of the
conversation, referring to various subjects,
Mme. Blavatsky became silent,
and we all distinctly heard a sound
that might be compared to that
produced by a small silver bell."
The same phenomenon was produced
later on in the drawing-room,
adjoining the dining-room.
" I was naturally surprised
at this manifestation, but still more
by the following incident. I had
been singing a Russian song that
I had brought with me that
evening, and which seemed to give much
pleasure to my audience. After
the last chord of the accompaniment
had died away, Mme. Blavatsky
said, ' Listen!' and held up her
hand, and we distinctly heard
the last full chord, composed of
five notes, repeated in our
midst.”
I have, of course, not the
slightest means for giving any kind of
explanation, but the facts were
such as I have stated.
(Signed)
“ OLGA NOVIKOFF, née
KIRÉEF.”
The “phenomena” wrought during this period, however, were not of an
important character, and are scarcely worth recording after those
that have been already described; but for obvious reasons it is
worth while to include mention of one incident which, though quite
disconnected from Mme. Blavatsky's influence, is all the more worth
notice on that account, as throwing light upon the assurance she
constantly gives that a great many of the wonders worked in her
presence are really performed by the agency of her “Masters”. Dr
Hübbe Schleiden, who writes the following letter, became
president
of the branch of the Theosophical Society which was formed in
Germany. He says, addressing Mme. Blavatsky: —
“ELBERFELD, August, 1884.
“ DEAR MADAM,
You requested me to state to you
the particular circumstances
under which I received my first
communication from Mahatma K. H..
I have much pleasure in doing
so.
“On the morning of the first of
this month Colonel Olcott and I
were travelling by an express
train from here to Dresden. A few
days before I had written a
letter to the Mahatmas, which Colonel
Olcott had addressed and
enclosed to you, which, however, as I now
hear, never reached you, but was
taken by the Masters while it was
in the hands of the post
officials. At the time mentioned I was
not thinking of this letter, but
was relating to Colonel Olcott
some events of my life,
expressing also the fact that since my
sixth or seventh year I had
never known peace nor joy, and asking
Colonel Olcott's opinion on the
meaning of some striking hardships
I have gone through.
“In this conversation we were
interrupted by the railway guard
demanding our tickets. When I
moved forward and raised myself
partly from the seat, in order
to hand over the tickets, Colonel
Olcott noticed something white
lying behind my back on that side
of me which was opposite to the
one where he was sitting. When I
took up that which had appeared
there, it turned out to be a
Tibetan envelope, in which I
found a letter from Mahatma K. H.,
written with blue pencil in his
well-known and unmistakable
handwriting. As there were
several other persons unacquainted with
us in the compartment, I suppose
the Master chose this place for
depositing the letter near me
where it was the least likely to
attract the unwelcome attention
and curiosity of outsiders.
“The envelope was plainly
addressed to me, and the communication
contained in the letter was a
consoling reflection on the opinion
which I had five or ten minutes
ago given on the dreary events of
my past life. The Mahatma
explained that such events and the
mental misery attached to it
were beyond the ordinary sum of life,
but that hardships of all kinds
would be the lot of one striving
for higher spiritual
development. He very kindly expressed his
opinion that I had already
achieved some philanthropic work for
the good of the world.
“In this letter were also
answered some of the questions which I
had put in my first-mentioned
letter, and an assurance was given
me that I was to receive
assistance and advice when I should be in
need of it.
“I dare say it would be
unnecessary for me to ask you to inform
the Mahatma of the devoted
thankfulness which I feel towards him
for the great kindness shown to
me, for the Master will know of my
sentiments without my forming
them into more or less inadequate
words.
“I am, dear Madam, in due
respect, yours faithfully,
(Signed) " Dr HUBBE
SCHLEIDEN.
“To MM. BLAVATSKY,
ELBERFELD.”
At Elberfeld, Mme. Blavatsky was the guest of Mr and Mrs Gebhard,
and one of their sons, Mr Rudolph Gebhard writes as follows:—
“I have always taken a great
interest in conjuring tricks. When in
London I had an opportunity of
taking lessons from Professor
Field, a most skilful
sleight-of-hand conjurer, who very soon made
me quite proficient in his art.
From that time forward I have
given performances wherever I
went (as an amateur, of course), and
made the acquaintance of nearly
all our renowned ' wizards,' with
whom I exchanged tricks. As
every conjurer has some favourite
sleight in which he excels, I
was bound to be very careful in
watching them in order to make
myself perfect in all the different
lines of card or coin conjuring,
or the famous mediumistic feats.
This, of course, made me in good
time a pretty close observer as
far as tricks are concerned; and
I feel justified in giving here
an opinion on the phenomena
which came under my observation.
“Two of them occurred in our
house in Elberfeld, during the stay
in it of Mme. Blavatsky, Colonel
Olcott, and a small party of
friends and Theosophists.
“The first one was a letter from
Mahatma K. H. to my father, and
took place one evening in the
presence of a number of witnesses,
partly members of our Society,
and of Major-General D. O. Howard,
of the U.S. Army. It was about
nine P.M. We were sitting in the
drawing-room discussing
different topics, when Mme. Blavatsky's
attention was suddenly attracted
by something unusual taking place
in the room. After a while she
said that she felt the presence of
the 'Masters'. That they had,
perhaps, the intention of doing
something for us, and so she
asked us to think of what we should
like to occur. Then a little
discussion took place as to what
would be the best thing, and
finally it was unanimously resolved
that a letter should be asked
for, addressed to my father, Mr G.
Gebhard, on a subject on which
he should mentally decide himself.
“Now my father had, at the time
being, great anxiety about a son
in America, my elder brother,
and was very eager to get advice
from the Master concerning him.
“Meanwhile, Mme. B., who, on
account of her recent illness, was
resting on a sofa, and had been
looking around the room, suddenly
exclaimed that there was
something going on with a large oil
painting hanging over the piano
in the same room, she having seen
like a ray of light shooting in
the direction of the picture. This
statement was immediately
corroborated by Mrs H-----, and then by
my mother also, who, sitting
opposite a looking-glass and turning
her back to the picture, had
also observed in the mirror like a
faint light going towards the
painting. Mme. B. then required Mrs
H----- to see, and say what was
going on, when Mrs H-----said that
she saw something forming over
the picture, but could not
distinctly make out what it was.
“Everybody's attention was now
fixed in the direction of the wall
high above and under the
ceiling, where so many saw bright lights.
But, I must confess, that for my
part, not being clairvoyant, I
could neither see lights nor any
other thing except what I had
always seen on that wall. And
when Mme. Blavatsky said she now
felt absolutely sure that there
was something going on. I got up
(we had kept our seats all this
while) and climbing on the piano
lifted the picture right off the
wall, but not off the hook, shook
it well and looked behind it —
nothing! The room was well lit up,
and there was not an inch of the
picture which I could not see. I
dropped the frame, saying that I
could see nothing; but Mme.
Blavatsky told me that she felt
sure that there must be something,
so up I climbed once more and
tried again.
“The picture in question was a
large oil painting, suspended from
the wall by a hook and a rope,
which made it hang over at the top,
so that when the lower part of
the frame was lifted off the wall,
there was a space of fully six
inches between the wall and the
back of the picture, the latter
being virtually entirely off the
wall. There being a wall
gas-bracket fixed on each side of the
painting, the space between the
latter and the wall was well lit
up. But the second time, no
better than the first, was I able to
detect anything, though I looked
very close. It was in order to
make perfectly sure that I got
up on the piano, and passed my hand
twice very carefully along the
frame, which is about three inches
thick, up and down — nothing.
Letting the picture drop back, I
then turned round to Mme.
Blavatsky to ask her what was to be done
further, when she exclaimed: ' I
see the letter; there it is !' I
turned quickly back to the
picture, and saw at that moment a
letter dropping from behind it
on to the piano. I picked it up. It
was addressed to ' Herrn Consul
G. Gebhard,' and contained the
information he had just asked
for. I must have made rather a
perplexed face, for the company
laughed merrily at the ' family
juggler.'
“Now for me this is a most
completely demonstrated phenomenon.
Nobody had handled the picture
but myself ; I was careful to
examine it very closely, and as
I was searching for a letter, such
a thing could not have escaped
my attention, as perhaps would have
been the case if I had been
looking for some other object; as then
I might not have paid any
attention to a slip of paper. The letter
was fully four by two inches, so
by no means a small object.
“Moreover, it was the company
that had decided upon Mr G. Gebhard
as the person who should be the
recipient of a letter; and as I
knew what was weighing on my
father's mind at the time, it was I
myself who had suggested that he
should ask for an answer on that
special object, when he said he
would.
“Let us consider this phenomenon
from a sleight-of-hand point of
view.
“Suppose several letters had
been prepared beforehand, addressed
to different persons, treating
of different subjects. Is it
possible to get a letter to an
appointed place by a
sleight-of-hand trick ? Quite
possible ; it only depends what
place it is, and if our
attention is drawn beforehand to such a
place or not. To get that letter
behind that picture would have
been very difficult, but might
have been managed if our attention
had for a moment been directed
to another place, the letter being
thrown behind the picture in the
meantime. What is sleight-of-hand
? Nothing else but the execution
of a movement more or less swift,
in a moment when you are not
observed. I draw your attention for a
short while to a certain spot,
say, for instance, my left hand, my
right is then free to make
certain movements unobserved ; as to '
the quickness of the hand
deceives the eye' theory, it is entirely
erroneous. You cannot make a
movement with your hand so quickly
that the eye would not follow
and detect it, the only thing you
can do is either to conceal the
necessary movement by another one
which has nothing to do with
what you are about, or to draw the
attention of the looker-on to
another point, and then quickly do
what is required.
“Now, in this instance all our
attention had been drawn to the
picture, before ever the
question was put as to what we should
like to have, and was kept there
all the while; it would have been
impossible for anyone to throw a
letter without being observed. As
for the letter having been
concealed behind the picture
beforehand, this, is out of the
question altogether, it could not
have escaped my attention while
I repeatedly searched for it.
Suppose the letter had been
placed on the top of the frame, and my
hand had disturbed it passing
along without my knowing it, this
would have caused the letter to
drop down instantly, whereas,
about thirty seconds passed
before it put in an appearance. Taking
all circumstances together, it
seems to me an impossibility to
have worked this phenomenon by a
trick.
“The day after this had
occurred, I went into Madame's room about
noon ; but seeing that she was
engaged I retired to the
drawing-room, where we had been
sitting the night before, and just
then the idea struck me to try
that picture again, in order to
make perfectly sure that the
letter could not have been concealed
somewhere behind it, without
being detected. I was alone in the
room, and during my examination
of the painting nobody entered it;
I fully satisfied myself that a
letter could not have escaped my
attention, had it been concealed
behind the picture. I then went
back to Madame's room, where I
found her still engaged with the
same woman. In the evening we were
again sitting together.
“ 'The Masters watched you
today, and were highly amused with your
experiments. How you did try to
find out if that letter could not
have been concealed behind the
picture.'
“Now I am positively certain,
first, that nobody was in the room
at the time I tried the picture
; and secondly, that I had told no
one in the house of my
experiment. It is impossible for me to
explain how Madame could have
found out my movements, except
through her clairvoyance. . . .
RUDOLPH GEBHARD.
“ELBERFELD(Cologne), September,
1884.”
More than a year later, when a report was issued by the Society for
Psychical Research, in which discredit was cast on a great many
phenomena recorded in connection with Mme. Blavatsky, but for the
most part not mentioned in the course of this memoir, it was
suggested in regard to Mr Gebhard's story, of which the Society had
received a somewhat briefer account than that given above, that Mr
Gebhard did not seem to have contemplated the possibility of a
confederate having been present who might have thrown the letter
without being observed — not a very forcible suggestion in regard to
an incident occurring in the presence of several persons all
watching for its occurrence, and in a private room with only members
of the family and intimate guests present. However, on that subject,
Mr Gebhard writes to me under date 18th January 1886, as follows:—
“ELBERFELD, I8th January 1886.
“MY DEAR MR SINNETT, —
Many thanks for your kind letter, with enclosures, which I received
yesterday morning. Considering the very weak way the S.P.R. report
has met my letter to Hodgson regarding the letter phenomenon in
Elberfeld, I think it may be some use to point out that (I) an
account of the phenomenon was written by me a very few days after
the occurrence, a copy of which I found this morning; (2) in this
first account I have very seriously considered the possibility of
the letter having been thrown by a confederate; but having, I think,
conclusively shown that such a thing was out of the question, I
never came back to it in later reports. The two reports absolutely
tally in the main points, the only two differences being that in the
first report I give the space between picture and wall as 6 in., in
the second as 8 in. Secondly, the size of the letter is given in the
first instance as 4 in. x 2 in in the second report as 5 in. x
2½
in. (the latter is the right size, as I have taken exact measure of
the letter today). The second report is even somewhat more detailed
than the first one, owing, as I think, to questions which I was
repeatedly asked by people to whom I related the incident, and which
I wanted to guard against from the outset.
“I made this morning rather a curious discovery, and am only sorry
that I did not make the same trial before. Taking the identical
letter, I got up on the piano, and threw it behind the picture, but
the letter stuck between the picture and the wall, and repeated
trials showed me that the picture, being very heavy, rests with the
bottom part so closely to the wall that not even a letter can fall
between it and the wall. I lifted up the picture several times and
let it fall back again, but the effect was always the same. I am
more than ever at a loss to explain, because, to my best knowledge,
the letter fluttered from behind the picture on to the piano.”
The close of Mme. Blavatsky's European visit was overshadowed by a
disagreeable incident which gave rise to widely ramifying results.
A magazine at Madras — an organ of the Christian missionaries at
that place — the Christian College Magazine by name, published a
series of letters purporting to have been written by Mme. Blavatsky
to a certain Mme. Coulomb, who had lived with her in India for some
years, first at Bombay and then at Madras. Mme. Coulomb and her
husband formerly kept a hotel at Cairo, where Mme. Blavatsky had
made their acquaintance, to her sorrow, in the days of her abortive
Société Spirite. Years afterwards, the Coulombs turned
up in India
in great straits, and were hospitably sheltered by Mme. Blavatsky at
Bombay. They eventually settled down as members of her household,
Mme. Coulomb looking after the housekeeping in return for her board
and lodging, and her husband being supposed for a long time to be
looking out for work. The arrangement was altogether of a very
informal kind, but it continued longer than many such arrangements
established to begin with on a more permanent basis. In progress of
time, however, the kindly feelings on both sides, out of which it
may be supposed the arrangement took its rise, gave place, on Mme.
Coulomb's part at all events, to sentiments of a very different
sort. The whole matter but for its after consequences would be too
ignominious to discuss, but without even now going into details,
which could only be treated, if at all, at a length altogether
disproportionate to their importance, it may be explained that Mme.
Coulomb supplied the editor of the magazine with a series of letters
apparently from Mme. Blavatsky to herself, some of which, if
genuine, would have shown her to have employed Mme. Coulomb and her
husband as confederates in a long succession of fraudulent
phenomena.
When the magazine containing the letters was received in Europe,
Mme. Blavatsky wrote the following letter on the subject to the
Times. It appeared on October the 9th :—
Sir, —
With reference to the alleged
exposure at Madras of a dishonorable
conspiracy between myself and
two persons of the name of Coulomb
to deceive the public with
occult phenomena, I have to say that
the letters purporting to have
been written by me are certainly
not mine. Sentences here and
there I recognize, taken from old
notes of mine on different matters, but they
are mingled with
interpolations that entirely
pervert their meaning. With these
exceptions the whole of the
letters are a fabrication.
“The fabricators must have been
grossly ignorant of Indian
affairs, since they make me
speak of a 'Maharajah of Lahore', when
every Indian schoolboy knows
that no such person exists.”
With regard to the suggestion
that I attempted to promote the
'financial prosperity' of the
Theosophical Society by means of
occult phenomena, I say that I
have never at any time received, or
attempted to obtain, from any
person any money either for myself
or for the Society by any such
means. I defy anyone to come
forward and prove the contrary.
Such money as I have received has
been earned by literary work of
my own, and these earnings, and
what remained of my inherited
property when I went to India, have
been devoted to the Theosophical
Society. I am a poorer woman
today than I was when, with
others, I founded the Society. —
Your obedient Servant,
H. P. BLAVATSKY.
“77 ELGIN CRESCENT, NOTTING
HILL, W.,
“ October 7.”
The same paper also contained on the same date a letter from Mr St
George Lane Fox:—
“Sir,
In the Times of September 20 and
September 29 you publish
telegrams from your Calcutta
correspondent referring to the
Theosophical Society. As I have
just returned from India, and am a
member of the board of control
appointed to manage the affairs of
the Society during the absence
from India of Colonel Olcott and
Madame Blavatsky, I hope you
will allow me through your columns to
add a few words to the news you
publish. First, then, these
Coulombs, who, in conjunction
with certain missionaries, are now
trying to throw discredit on the
Theosophical Society, were
employed at the Society's
headquarters at Adyar as housekeepers,
and the board of control,
finding that they were thoroughly
unprincipled, always trying to
extort money from members of the
Society, discharged them. They
had meanwhile been constructing all
sorts of trap-doors and sliding
panels in the private rooms of
Madame Blavatsky, who had very
indiscreetly given over these rooms
to their charge. As to the
letters purporting to have been written
by Madame Blavatsky, which have
recently been published in an
Indian 'Christian' paper, I, in
common with all who are acquainted
with the circumstances of the
case, have no doubt whatever that,
whoever wrote them, they are not
written by Madame Blavatsky. I
myself attach very little
importance to this new scandal, as I do
not believe that the true
Theosophic cause suffers in the
slightest degree.
“The Theosophical movement is
now well launched, and must go
ahead, in spite of obstacles.
Already hundreds, if not thousands,
have been led through it to
perceive that, for scientific and not
merely sentimental reasons,
purity of life is advisable, and that
honesty of purpose and unselfish
activity are necessary for true
human progress and the
attainment of real happiness. —
Your obedient Servant,
ST G. LANE FOX, F.T.S.
“ LONDON, October 5.”
A good deal of anxiety was nevertheless felt among some persons who
had been greatly interested in the reports of Mme. Blavatsky's
occult achievements in India, as to how far the letters might be
genuine, and, finally, the Society for Psychical Research decided to
send out to Madras one of their own members willing to undertake the
investigation on the spot of all the transactions to which the
letters referred. Mr Richard Hodgson, the gentleman in question,
went out to India in November 1884, and stayed there till the
following April. On his return he gave his Society a report that was
altogether unfavorable to Mme. Blavatsky, and the committee of the
Society appointed to inquire into the character of the phenomena
“connected with the Theosophical Society” reported in their turn to
a meeting of the Society held on the 24th of June, that the letters
were genuine in the opinion of the experts, and that they sufficed
to prove that Mme. Blavatsky “has been engaged in a long-continued
combination with other persons to produce by ordinary means a series
of apparent marvels for the support of the Theosophical movement.”
Meanwhile Mme. Blavatsky had returned to India. On the arrival at
Madras of the steamer in which she came, a delegation of native
students of the Madras colleges went on board to welcome her. The
meaning of the demonstration turned upon the fact that the current
charges against her had originated in the letters alleged to be
written by her, and published in a magazine professedly identified
with one of the colleges. Conducted to a public hall where a large
number of natives were assembled, the student delegates read her the
following address:—
“In according to you this our
heartiest of welcomes on your return
from the intellectual campaigns
which you have so successfully
waged in the West, we are
conscious we are giving but a feeble
expression to the ' debt immense
of endless gratitude' which India
lies under to you.
“You have dedicated your life to
the disinterested services of
disseminating the truths of
Occult Philosophy. Upon the sacred
mysteries of our hoary Religion
and Philosophies you have thrown
such a flood of light by sending
into the world that marvelous
production of yours, the
"Isis Unveiled". By your exposition has
our beloved Colonel been induced
to undertake that gigantic labor
of love — the vivifying on the
altars of Aryavarta the dying
flames of religion and
spirituality.
"While at one quarter of
the globe you had been with all your
heart and soul addressing
yourself to the work of propagating
eternal Truth, your enemies on
this side have been equally
industrious. We allude to the
recent scandalous events at Madras,
in which an expelled domestic of
yours has been made a convenient
cat's-paw of. While looking upon
such futilities with the
indignant scorn which they
certainly deserve, we beg to assure you
that our affection and
admiration, earned by the loftiness of your
soul, the nobility of your
aspirations, and the sacrifices you
have made, have become too
deeply rooted to be shaken by the rude
blasts of spite, spleen, and
slander, which, however, are no
uncommon occurrences in the
history of Theosophy.”
That the revered Masters whose
hearts are overflowing with love
for Humanity will continue as
ever to help you and our esteemed
Colonel in the discovery of
Truth and the dissemination of the
same, is the earnest prayer of,
—
Dear and Revered Madame, your
affectionate Servants,
“ STUDENTS OF THE COLLEGES OF
MADRAS.”
The address was signed by more than three hundred students.
During a great part of the time spent by Mr Hodgson at Madras, Mme.
Blavatsky lay on a sick-bed, dying as her friends believed, and as
she herself supposed, her restoration to comparative health in the
end constituting in itself one of the not least surprising
“phenomena” connected with the story of her life. She wrote to me
towards the close of this period: —
“I am compelled to write to you
once more. My own reputation and
honor I have made a sacrifice
of, and for the few months I have
yet to live, I care little what
becomes of me. But I cannot leave
the reputation of poor Olcott to
be attacked as it is by Hume and
Mr Hodgson, who have become
suddenly mad with their hypotheses of
fraud more phenomenal than
phenomena themselves. I, with a
thousand other Theosophists,
protest against the manner and way
the investigations are carried
on by Mr Hodgson. He examines only
our greatest enemies, thieves
and robbers like ------, and being
shown by him some letters
received by him, as he assures Hodgson,
seven years ago from America,
Hodgson copies some paragraphs from
them that he believes the most
damaging, and builds on that the
theory of my being a Russian
spy. . . . You know how I tried to
conciliate the Hindus with the
English. How I did all in my power
to make them realize that this
government, bad as it seemed to
them, was the best they could
ever have. I defy to find a
respectable, trustworthy Hindu
who will say that I ever breathed a
disloyal word to them. And yet
because of a certain paper stolen
from me by ------, and that the
missionaries have shown to him a
paper, partially or wholly
written in cipher, Mr Hodgson has
publicly proclaimed me a Russian
spy.”
Recurring to this a little further on she says:—
“They (meaning the missionaries) took it to the Police Commissioner,
had the best experts examine it, sent it to Calcutta for five
months, moved heaven and earth to find out what the cipher meant,
and now gave it up in despair. It is one of my Zenzar MSS. I am
perfectly confident of it, for one of the sheets of my book, with
numbered pages, is missing.”
Zenzar is a mystic language, with a peculiar character of its own,
used by the initiated occultists of Tibet.
Mme. Blavatsky remained for a time at a hotel near Naples, when she
reached Europe on her return after her illness, and thence wrote to
my wife on the 21st of June, in reply to a letter of sympathy.
“The sight of your familiar handwriting was a welcome one indeed,
and the contents of your letter still more so. No. . . . I never
thought that you could have believed that I played the tricks I am
now accused of, neither you nor any one of those who have Masters in
their hearts, not on their brains. Nevertheless, here I am, and
stand accused without any means to prove the contrary, of the most
dirty villainous deceptions ever practised by a half-starved medium.
What can I do, and what shall I do ? Useless to either write to
persuade, or try to argue with people who are bound to believe me
guilty, to change their opinions. Let it be. The fuel in my heart is
burnt to the last atom. Henceforth, nothing is to be found in it but
cold ashes. I have so suffered that I can suffer no more. I simply
laugh at every new accusation.
“'Notwithstanding the experts,' you say. Ah! they must be famous
those experts who found all the Coulombs' letters genuine. The whole
world may bow before their decision and acuteness, but there is one
person at least in this wide world whom they can never convince that
those stupid letters were written by me, and it is H. P. Blavatsky.
“Now, look here, and I want you to know these facts. To this day I
have never been allowed to see one single line of those letters. Why
could not Mr Hodgson come and show me one of them at least ? . . .
Pray, tell me, is it the legal thing in England to accuse publicly
even a street sweeper in his absence without giving him the chance
of saying one single word in his defense ; without letting him know
even of what he is precisely accused, and who it is who accuses him,
and is brought forward as chief evidence ? For I do not know the
first word of all this. Hodgson came to Adyar, was received as a
friend, examined and cross-examined all whom he wanted to; the boys
(the Hindus) at Adyar gave him all the information he needed. If he
now finds discrepancies and contradictions in their statements, it
only shows that, feeling as they all did, that it was (in their
sight) pure tomfoolery to doubt the phenomena of the Masters, they
had not prepared themselves for the scientific cross-examination,
may have forgotten many of the circumstances. . . .
“Here I am. Where I shall go next, I know no more than the man in
the moon. Why they should want to keep me still in life, is
something too strange for me to comprehend; but their ways are, and
always have been, incomprehensible. What good am I now for the cause
? Doubted and suspected by the whole creation except a few, would I
not do more good to the T.S. by dying than by living ? ”
Two months later she moved on from Italy to a quiet little town in
Germany, where I visited her last autumn (1885). In the interim the
Psychic Research Society had held its meetings, at which the
Committee “appointed to investigate phenomena connected with the
Theosophical Society”, had reported that the Coulomb letters were
really written by Mme. Blavatsky, that the “shrine” at Adyar was
elaborately designed to subserve treachery and false manifestations,
and that the marvels related of the occult power of the Mahatmas
were deliberate deceptions carried out by and at the instigation of
Mme. Blavatsky. In August she wrote to me: —
“... Trust and friendship, or distrust and resentment — neither
friends nor foes will ever realise the whole truth; so what's the
use. . . . The only difference between Coulomb-Patterson-Hodgson
charges now and those previous to the Adyar scandal is this: Then
the newspapers only hinted, now they affirm. Then they were
restricted, however feebly, by fear of law and a sense of decency;
now they have become fearless, and have lost all and every manner of
decency. Look at Prof. Sidgwick. He is evidently a gentleman and an
honourable man by nature, fair minded, as most Englishmen are. And
now tell me, can any outsider (the opinion of the Fathers of S.P.R.
is of course valueless) presume to say that his printed opinion of
me is either fair, legal, or honest ? If, instead of bogus
phenomena, I were charged with picking the pockets of my victims, or
of something else, the charging with which, when unproved, is
punishable by law, if not wholly demonstrated, would Prof. Sidgwick,
you think, have a leg to stand upon in a court of justice ?
Assuredly not. Then what right has he to speak publicly (and have
his opinion printed) of my deceptions, fraud, dishonesty, and tricks
? Shall you maintain that it is fair of him, or honest, or even
legal, to take advantage of his exceptional position and the nature
of the question involved to slander me, or, if you prefer, I shall
say, to charge me thus and dishonor my name on such wretched
evidence as they have through Hodgson ? . . . Can you blame, after
this ----- and other Russian Theosophists for saying that the chief
motive of their wrath against me is that I am a Russian ? I know it
is not so, but they, the Russians, like------, and the Odessa
Theosophists, cannot be made to see the cause of such a glaring
injustice in any other light.
“Please read . . . about their disclaiming any intention of imputing
wilful deception to poor Olcott. Following this there comes the
question of envelopes in which the Mahatma's writing was found —
which might have been previously opened by me or others. Letters
from the Masters received at Adyar when I was in Europe ' might'
have been in all cases arranged by Damodar. The disappearance of the
Vega packet ' can be easily accounted for ' by the fact of a
venetianed door near Babula's room — a door, by-the-by, which was
hermetically covered and nailed over (walls and door) with my large
carpet, if you remember. But we shall suppose that the Vega packet
was made to evaporate fraudulently at Bombay. How then shall Mr
Hodgson, Myers & Co. account for its immediate instantaneous
reappearance at Howrah, Calcutta, in the presence of Mrs and Colonel
Gordon and of our Colonel, if the said Colonel is so obviously
immaculate that the Dons of S.P.R. felt bound to offer him public
excuses. One thing is obvious : either Colonel Gordon or Mrs Gordon
or Colonel Olcott was, one of them, at that time my confederate, or
they, the gods of S.P.R., are making fools of themselves. Surely, as
------says, no sane man with sound reasoning, acquainted with the
circumstances of the Vega case, or the broken plaster portrait case,
or Hübbe Schleiden's letter, received on the German railway
while I
was in London, and so many other cases, shall ever dare to write
himself down such an ass as to say that while I am a full-blown
fraud, and all my phenomena tricks, that the Colonel is to be
charged simply with ' credulity and inaccuracy in observation and
inference.' ”
In a tone of bitter mockery, after some scornful language concerning
the intelligence of the S.P.R. inquirers, she goes on to leave her
“scientific friends” to assume that Isis Unveiled, and all the best
articles in the Theosophist, as every letter from both Mahatmas,
whether in English, French, Telegu, Sanscrit, or Hindi were written
by Mme. H. P. Blavatsky. She is willing to have it believed, that
for more than twenty years she has bamboozled the most intellectual
men of the century in Russia, America, India, and especially in
England. Why, genuine phenomena, when the author herself of the one
thousand bogus manifestations on record before the world, is such a
living incarnated phenomenon as to do all that and much more. . . .
“Why should I complain ? Has not Master left it to my choice to
either follow the dictates of Lord Buddha, who enjoins us not to
fail to feed even a starving serpent, scorning all fear lest it
should turn round and bite the hand that feeds it; or to face Karma,
which is sure to punish him who turns away from the sight of sin and
misery, or fails to relieve the sinner or the sufferer. . . . Am I
greater or in any way better than were St Germain and Cagliostro,
Paracelsus, and so many other martyrs whose names appear in the
Encyclopedia of the nineteenth century over the meritorious title of
charlatans and impostors? It shall be the Karma of the blind and
wicked judges, not mine.
“... I can do more good by remaining in the shadow, than by becoming
prominent once more in the movement. Let me hide in unknown places,
and write, write, write, and teach whoever wants to learn. Since
Master forced me to live, let me live and die now in relative peace.
It is evident He wants me still to work for the T.S., since He does
not allow me to make a contract with ----- [mentioning a foreign
publisher, who had offered her very favourable pecuniary terms] to
write exclusively for his journal and paper. He would not permit me
to sign such a contract last year in Paris when proposed, and does
not sanction it now, for He says my time shall have to be occupied
otherwise. Ah ! the cruel wicked injustice that has been done to me
all round. Fancy the horrid calumny of the C.C.M. [Christian College
Magazine], whose statement that I sought to defraud Mr Jacob Sassoon
of Rs. 10,000 in that Poona business has been allowed to go
uncontradicted even by ----- and -----, who know as well as they are
sure of their own existence that this special charge, at any rate,
is the most abominable lying calumny.
“Who of the public knows that after having worked for and given my
life to the progress of the Society for over ten years, I have been
forced to leave India a beggar depending on the bounty of the
Theosophist (my own journal, founded and created with my own money)
for my daily support. I made out to be a mercenary impostor, a fraud
for the sake of money, when thousands of my own money earned by my
Russian articles have been given away, when for five years I have
abandoned the price of "Isis" and the income of the
Theosophist to
support the Society. . . . Pardon me for saying all this and showing
myself to be so selfish, but it is a direct answer to the vile
calumny, and it is but right that the Theosophists in London should
know of it.”
The assurances mentioned above that her time would be “otherwise
occupied” in her German retreat than in writing stories and social
articles for Russian magazines has been very fully vindicated.
Within the last three months of 1885 she began to receive the occult
“inspiration”, or whatever it may be called by people more or less
acquainted with the circumstances of her higher life, required for
the production of the long-promised book on "The Secret
Doctrine".
This book was foreshadowed by notices in the Theosophist as far back
as the beginning of February 1884. It was then proposed that the
work should be “a new version of "Isis Unveiled", with a new
arrangement of the matter, large and important additions, and
copious notes and commentaries” ; and Mme. Blavatsky's intention in
the first instance had been that it should be issued in monthly
parts, beginning in March 1884, or, provided so early a date could
not be managed, in June. Mme. Blavatsky's visit to Europe, however,
in the spring of that year interfered with the undertaking, and in
Europe the multifarious claims made on her time stood fatally in its
way. Then, in the summer of 1884, the “Coulomb scandal” exploded,
and, with all its exasperating consequences, operated to render it
impossible for her to begin a task claiming steady and prolonged
devotion, concentration of purpose, and something like tranquillity
of mind.
"The Secret Doctrine" was still untouched in September 1885,
when my
wife and I saw her in Germany. We found her settled in an economical
way, but in comfort and quietude, cheered just then by the
companionship of her aunt, Mme. Fadeef, to whom she is warmly
attached. She was naturally seething with indignation at the wrongs
she had suffered at the hands of the S.P.R. committee, even though
the cruel and calumnious report by Mr Hodgson, on which they
professed to have based their conclusions, had not been finally
perfected. On the whole, however, she seemed in better health and
spirits than we expected, and some premonitory symptoms indicated
that the preparation of "The Secret Doctrine" might shortly be
set
on foot.
A month or so after our return to London in October I received a
note from Mme. Blavatsky, in the course of which she wrote: —
“I am very busy on Secret D. The thing at New York [meaning the
circumstances under which "Isis Unveiled" was written] is
repeated —
only far clearer and better. I begin to think it shall vindicate us.
Such pictures, panoramas, scenes, antediluvian dramas, with all
that! Never saw or heard better.”
Early in December I received a letter from the Countess
Wachtmeister, then staying on a visit with Mme. Blavatsky. The
Countess is an English lady, though bearing a foreign title, herself
gifted with clairvoyant faculties of a high order, lifting her
entirely out of the reach of the clumsy scraps of materialistic
evidence with which the denser-minded enemies of the Theosophic
cause were so busily assailing her trusted and esteemed friend. She
wrote: —
“The Secret Doctrine contains a translation of ------ [certain
occult writings of which the world at large knows nothing]. The
public at present will have but a faint idea of its real meaning,
but as years roll by it will penetrate deeper into the hearts of
men.”
And again, a fortnight later, she wrote: —
“I consider it a great privilege to be allowed to witness the
marvelous way in which this book is being written.”
A few day later some indiscreet or wantonly mischievous person sent
Mme. Blavatsky a copy of Mr Hodgson's famous, or, as Theosophists
think, infamous, report, published in the Proceedings of the
Psychical Research Society. The Countess wrote: —
“We have had a terrible day, and the ------ [using a familiar name
for Mme. Blavatsky] wanted to start off to London at once. I have
kept her as quiet as I could, and now she has relieved her feelings
in the enclosed letter.”
For a whole fortnight the tumult of Mine. Blavatsky's emotions
rendered any further progress with her work impossible. Her volcanic
temperament renders her in all emergencies a very bad exponent of
her own case, whatever that may be. The letters, memoranda, and
protests on which she wasted her energies during this miserable
fortnight were few, if any, of a kind that would have helped a cold
and unsympathetic public to understand the truth of things, and it
is not worth while to resuscitate them here. I induced her to tone
down one protest into a presentable shape for insertion in a
pamphlet I issued in the latter part of January, and for the rest,
few but her most intimate friends would correctly appreciate their
fire and fury. Her language, when she is in fits of excitement,
would lead a stranger to suppose her thirsting for revenge, beside
herself with passion, ready to exact savage vengeance on her enemies
if she had the power. It is only those who know her as intimately as
half-a-dozen of her closest friends may, who are quite aware through
all this effervescence of feelmg that if her enemies were really put
suddenly in her power, her rage against them would collapse like a
broken soap-bubble.
Mr Hodgson's report was not actually published till December 1885 —
having in the interim apparently undergone additions and amendments.
This delay and subsequent preparation of the document on which the
committee of inquiry based their decision was deeply resented by
Mme. Blavatsky's friends as showing a disposition to make out a case
against her. When at last it appeared, it occupied 200 pages of
small print, and a minute criticism of its contents would naturally
require a considerably greater space. To attempt that here,
therefore, is out of the question. The report consists mainly of
circumstantial evidence calculated to throw suspicion on the
phenomena Mr Hodgson endeavored to investigate, and of a very
elaborate comparison of various handwriting designed to show that
the letters I had received in India during my acquaintance with Mme.
Blavatsky — as I believed (and believe still) from two of the
“Mahatmas” or secluded proficients of occult science spoken of in
this volume as “the Masters” exercising spiritual authority over
Mme. Blavatsky — were really written by her and one other person in
the ordinary way and passed off on me for what I supposed them. I
shall most conveniently indicate the character of the report by
quoting the introductory passages of a pamphlet [The Occult World
Phenomena, and the Society for Psychical Research; George Redway, 15
York Street, Covent Garden.]
The Report which has been addressed by Mr R. Hodgson to the
Committee of the Psychical Research Society, ' appointed to
investigate phenomena connected with the Theosophical Society,' is
published for the first time in the December number of the
Proceedings of that Society — six months after the meetings were
held at which the Committee concerned announced its general adhesion
to the conclusions Mr Hodgson had reached. In a letter addressed to
Light on the 12th of October, I protested against the action thus
taken by the Psychical Research Society in publicly stigmatizing
Mme. Blavatsky as having been guilty of ' a long-continued
combination with other persons to produce, by ordinary means, a
series of apparent marvels for the support of the Theosophic
movement,' while holding back the documentary evidence on the
strength of which their opinion had been formed.
“In a note to the present Report (page 276) Mr Hodgson says: " I
have now in my hands numerous documents which are concerned with the
experiences of Mr Hume and others in connection with Mine. Blavatsky
and the Theosophical Society. These documents, including the K.H.
MSS. above referred to, did not reach me till August, and my
examination of them, particularly of the K.H. MSS., has involved a
considerable delay in the production of this Report.' In other
words, Mr Hodgson has employed the time during which his Report has
been improperly withheld in endeavoring to amend and strengthen it
so as to render it better able to bear out the committee's hasty
endorsement of the conclusions he reached before he obtained the
evidence he now puts forward.
“But even if the committee had been in possession — which it was not
— of the Report as it now stands, its action in promulgating the
conclusions it announced on the 24th of June, would have been no
less unwarrantable and premature. The committee has not at any stage
of its proceedings behaved in accordance with the judicial character
it has arrogated to itself. It appointed as its agent to inquire, in
India, into the authenticity of statements relating to occurrences
extending over several years — alleged to have taken place at
various parts of India, and in which many persons, including natives
of India and devotees of occult science in that country were mixed
up — a gentleman of great, of perhaps too great, confidence in his
own abilities, but at all events wholly unfamiliar with the
characteristics of Indian life and the complicated play of feeling
in connection with which the Theosophical movement has been
developed in India during recent years.
" Nothing in his Report even as it now stands — amended with the
protracted assistance of more experienced persons unfriendly to the
Theosophical movement — suggests that even yet he has begun to
understand the primary conditions of the mysteries he set himself to
unravel. He has naively supposed that everyone in India visibly
devoted to the work of the Theosophical Society might be assumed, on
that account, desirous of securing his good opinion and of
persuading him that the alleged phenomena were genuine. He shows
himself to have been watching their demeanor and stray phrases to
catch admissions that might be turned against the Theosophical case.
He seems never to have suspected what any more experienced inquirer
would have been aware of from the beginning, that the Theosophical
movement, in so far as it has been concerned with making known to
the world at large the existence in India of persons called Mahatmas
— very far advanced in the comprehension of occult science — and of
the philosophical views they hold, has been one which many of the
native devotees of these Mahatmas and many among the most ardent
disciples and students of their occult teaching, have regarded with
profound irritation.
" The traditional attitude of mind in which Indian occultists
regard
their treasures of knowledge, is one in which devotion is largely
tinged with jealousy of all who would endeavor to penetrate the
secrecy in which these treasures have hitherto been shrouded. These
have been regarded as only the rightful acquirement of persons
passing through the usual ordeals and probations. The Theosophical
movement in India, however, involved a breach of this secrecy. The
old rules were infringed under an authority so great that occultists
who found themselves entangled with the work could not but submit.
But in many cases such submission has been no more than superficial.
Anyone more intimately acquainted than the agent of the S.P.R. with
the history and growth of the Theosophical Society would have been
able to indicate many persons among its most faithful native
members, whose fidelity was owing entirely to the Masters they
served, and not to the idea on which they were employed — at all
events not so far as it was connected with the demonstration of the
fact that abnormal physical phenomena could be produced by Indian
proficients in occult science.
" Now for such persons the notion that European outsiders, who had,
as they conceived, so undeservedly been admitted to the inner arcana
of Eastern occultism, were blundering into the belief that they had
been deceived — that there was no such thing as Indian occultism,
that the Theosophical movement was a sham and a delusion with which
they would no more concern themselves — was enchanting in its
attractions ; and the arrival in their midst of an exceedingly
self-reliant young man from England attempting the investigation of
occult mysteries by the methods of a Scotland Yard detective, and
laid open by total unfamiliarity with the tone and temper of modern
occultism to every sort of misapprehension, was naturally to them a
source of intense satisfaction. Does the committee of the S.P.R.
imagine that the native occultists of the Theosophical Society in
India are writhing at this moment under the judgment it has passed?
I am quite certain, on the contrary, that for the most part they are
chuckling over it with delight. They may find the situation
complicated as regards their relations with their Masters in so far
as they have consciously contributed to the easy misdirection of Mr
Hodgson's mind, but the ludicrous spectacle of himself which Mr
Hodgson furnishes in his Report — where we see him catching up
unfinished sentences and pointing out weak places in the evidence of
some among the Indian chelas, against whom, if he had better
understood the task before him, he ought to have been most on his
guard — is, at all events, one which we can understand them to find
amusing.
" I regard the committee of the S.P.R. — Messrs E. Gurney, F. VV.
H.
Myers, F. Podmore, H. Sidgwick, and J. H. Stack — much more to blame
for presuming to pass judgment by the light of their own unaided
reflections on the raw and misleading report supplied to them by Mr
Hodgson, than he for his part is to blame, even for misunderstanding
so lamentably the problems he set out naturally ill-qualified to
investigate. It would have been easy for them to have called in any
of several people in London, qualified to do so by long experience
of the Theosophical movement, to report in their turn on the prirna
facie case, so made out against the authenticity of the Theosophical
phenomena, before proceeding to pass judgment on the whole
accusation in the hearing of the public at large. We have all heard
of cases in which judges think it unnecessary to call on the defense
; but these have generally been cases in which the judges have
decided against the theory of the prosecution. The committee of the
S.P.R. furnish us with what is probably an unprecedented example of
a judicial refusal to hear a defense on the ground that the ex parte
statement of the prosecutor has been convincing by itself. The
committee brooded, however, in secret over the Report of their
agent, consulted no one in a position to open their eyes as to the
erroneous method on which Mr Hodgson had gone to work, and concluded
their but too independent investigation by denouncing as one of the
most remarkable impostors in history — a lady held in the highest
honour by a considerable body of persons, including old friends and
relations of unblemished character, and who has undeniably given up
station and comfort to struggle for long years in the service of the
Theosophical cause amidst obloquy and privation.
” She is witnessed against chiefly for Mr Hodgson, as anyone who
will read his Report will see, in spite of his affected indifference
to their testimony, by two persons who endeavour to blacken her
character by first exhibiting themselves as engaged in fraud and
deception, and by then accusing her of having been base enough to
make such people as themselves her confederates. These are the
persons whom his Report shows Mr Hodgson to have made principal
allies of his inquiry. It is on the strength of writings obtained
from such persons that the committee of the S.P.R. chiefly proceeds
in coming to the conclusion that Mine. Blavatsky is an impostor. And
this course is pursued by a body of men who, in reference to
psychical phenomena at large (which the designation of their Society
would suggest that they are concerned with), decline all testimony,
however apparently overwhelming, which comes from spiritualistic
mediums tainted by receiving money for the display of their
characteristics. I am not suggesting that they ought to be careless
in accepting such testimony, but merely that they have violated the
principles they profess — when the repression of unacceptable
evidence is at stake — in a case in which, by their disregard, it
was possible to frame an indictment against persons — whom I am not
justified in assuming that they were prejudiced against from the
first, but whom, at all events, they finished by condemning unheard.
" And going further than this, they have not hesitated to publish,
with all the authority their proceedings can confer, a groundless
and monstrous invention concerning Mme. Blavatsky, which Mr Hodgson
puts forward at the conclusion of his report to prop up its obvious
weakness as regards the whole hypothesis on which it rests. For it
is evident that there is a powerful presumption against any theory
that imputes conscious imposture and vulgar trickery to a person
who, on the face of things, has devoted her life to a philanthropic
idea, at the manifest sacrifice of all the considerations which
generally supply motives of action to mankind. Mr Hodgson is alive
to the necessity of furnishing Mme. Blavatsky with a motive as
degraded as the conduct he has been taught by M. and Mme. Coulomb to
believe her guilty of, and he triumphs over the difficulty by
suggesting that she may be a Russian political agent, working in
India to foster disloyalty to the British Government. It is nothing
to Mr Hodgson that she has notoriously been doing the reverse; that
she has frequently assured the natives orally, by writings, at
public meetings, and in letters that can be produced, that with all
its faults the British Government is the best available for India,
and repeatedly from the point of view of one speaking en
connaissance de cause she has declared that the Russian would be
immeasurably worse. It is nothing to Mr Hodgson that her life has
been passed coram populo to an almost ludicrous extent ever since
she has been in India, that her whole energies and work have been
employed on the Theosophic cause, or that the Government of India,
after looking into the matter with the help of its police when she
first came to the country, soon read the riddle aright, and
abandoned all suspicion of her motives. Mr Hodgson is careless of
the fact that everyone who has known her for any length of time
laughs at the absurdity of his hypothesis. He has obtained from his
guide and counsellor — Mme. Coulomb — a fragment of Mme. Blavatsky's
handwriting, picked up, it would seem, some years ago, and cherished
for any use that might ultimately be made of it — which refers to
Russian politics, and reads like part of an argument in favor of the
Russian advance in Central Asia. This is enough for the Psychical
Researcher, and the text of this document appears in his Report in
support of his scandalous insinuation against Mme. Blavatsky's
integrity. The simple explanation of the paper is, that it is
evidently a discarded fragment from a long translation of Colonel
Grodekoffs Travels in Central Asia (or whatever title the series
bore) which Mme. Blavatsky made at my request for the Pioneer (the
Indian Government organ), of which I was at that time editor. I will
not delay this pamphlet to write to India and get the dates at which
the Grodekoff series of articles appeared in the Pioneer. They ran
for some weeks, and must have appeared in one of the latter years of
the last decade, or possibly in 1880. By applying to the Pioneer
printers, Mr Hodgson could perhaps obtain, if the MS. of this
translation has been preserved, several hundred pages of Mme.
Blavatsky's writing, blazing with sentiments of the most ardent
Anglophobia. It is most likely, as I say, that the pilfered slip of
which he is so proud, was some rejected page from that translation;
unless, indeed, which would be more amusing still, it should happen
to have fallen from some other Russian translations which Mme.
Blavatsky, to my certain knowledge, once made for the Indian Foreign
Office during one of her visits to Simla, when she made the
acquaintance of some of the officials in that department, and was
employed to do some work in its service.
” I venture to think that if Mme. Blavatsky had not been known to be
too ill-supplied with money to claim redress at the costly bar of
British justice — if she had not been steeped to the lips in the
flavor, so ungrateful to British law courts, of Psychic mystery, the
committee of the S.P.R. would hardly have thought it well to accuse
her, in a published document, of infamous conduct which, if she were
really guilty of it, would render her a public foe in the land of
her adoption and an object of scorn to honorable men — at the
flippant suggestion of their private agent in desperate need of an
explanation for conclusions which no amount of pedantically ordered
circumstances could render, without it, otherwise than incredible.”
Mme. Blavatsky contributed to this pamphlet a Protest in her own
name, which ran as follows:—
“The 'Society for Psychical
Research' have now published the
Report made to one of their
Committees by Mr Hodgson, the agent
sent out to India to investigate
the character of certain
phenomena, described as having
taken place at the headquarters of
the Theosophical Society in
India and elsewhere, and with the
production of some of which I
have been directly or indirectly
concerned. This Report imputes
to me a conspiracy with the
Coulombs and several Hindus to
impose on the credulity of various
persons around me by fraudulent
devices, and declares to be
genuine, a series of letters
alleged to be written by me to Mme.
Coulomb in connection with the supposed
conspiracy, which letters
I have already myself declared
to be in large part fabrications.
Strange to say, from the time
the investigation was begun,
fourteen months ago, and to this
day, when I am declared guilty by
my self-instituted judges, I was
never permitted to see those
incriminating letters. I draw
the attention of every fair-minded
and honorable Englishman to this
fact.
“Without at present going into a
minute examination of the errors,
inconsistencies, and bad reasoning
of this Report, I wish to make
as publicly as possible my
indignant and emphatic protest against
the gross aspersions thus put
upon me by the Committee of the
Psychic Research Society at the
instigation of the single,
incompetent, and unfair inquirer
whose conclusions they have
accepted. There is no charge
against me in the whole of the
present Report that could stand
the test of an impartial inquiry
on the spot, where my own
explanations could be checked by the
examination of witnesses. They
have been developed in Mr Hodgson's
own mind, and kept back from my
friends and colleagues while he
remained at Madras abusing the
hospitality and unrestrained
assistance in his inquiries
supplied to him at the headquarters of
the Society at Adyar, where he
took up the attitude of a friend,
though he now represents the
persons with whom he thus associated
— as cheats and liars. These
charges are now brought forward
supported by the one-sided
evidence collected by him, and when the
time has gone by at which even
he could be confronted with
antagonistic evidence and with
arguments which his very limited
knowledge of the subject he
attempted to deal with do not supply
him. Mr Hodgson having thus constituted
himself prosecutor and
advocate in the first instance,
and having dispensed with a
defense in the complicated
transactions he was investigating,
finds me guilty of all the
offences he has imputed to me in his
capacity as judge, and declares
that I am proved to be an
arch-impostor.
” The Committee of the S.P.R.
have not hesitated to accept the
general substance of the
judgment which Mr Hodgson thus
pronounces, and have insulted me
publicly by giving their opinion
in favor of their agent's
conclusions — an opinion which rests
wholly and solely on the Report
of their single deputy.
" Wherever the principles
of fairness and honorable care for the
reputation of slandered persons
may be understood, I think the
conduct of the Committee will be
regarded with some feeling
resembling the profound
indignation of which I am sensible. That
Mr Hodgson's elaborate but
misdirected inquiries, his affected
precision, which spends infinite
patience over trifles and is
blind to facts of importance, his
contradictory reasoning and his
manifold incapacity to deal with
such problems as those he
endeavored to solve, will be
exposed by other writers in due
course — I make no doubt. Many
friends who know me better than the
Committee of the S.P.R. will
remain unaffected by the opinions of
that body, and in their hands I
must leave my much-abused
reputation. But one passage in
this monstrous Report I must, at
all events, answer in my own
name.
“ Plainly alive to the
comprehensive absurdity of his own
conclusions about me, as long as
they remained totally unsupported
by any theory of a motive which
could account for my life-long
devotion to my Theosophical work
at the sacrifice of my natural
place in society in my own
country, Mr Hodgson has been base
enough to concoct the assumption
that I am a Russian political
agent, inventing a sham
religious movement for the sake of
undermining the British
Government in India! Availing himself, to
give color to this hypothesis,
of an old bit of my writing,
apparently supplied to him by
Mme. Coulomb, but which he did not
know to be, as it was, a
fragment of an old translation I made for
the Pioneer, from some Russian
travels in Central Asia, Mr Hodgson
has promulgated this theory
about me in the Report, which the
gentlemen of the S.P.R. have not
been ashamed to publish. Seeing
that I was naturalized nearly
eight years ago a citizen of the
United States, which led to my
losing every right to my pension of
5000 roubles yearly as the widow
of a high official in Russia;
that my voice has been
invariably raised in India to answer all
native friends that bad as I
think the English Government in some
respects — by reason of its
unsympathetic character — the Russian
would be a thousand times worse;
that I wrote letters to that
effect to Indian friends before
I left America on my way to India,
in 1879; that everyone familiar
with my pursuits and habits and
very undisguised life in India,
is aware that I have no taste for
or affinity with politics
whatever, but an intense dislike to
them; that the Government of
India, which suspected me as a spy
because I was a Russian when I
first went to India, soon abandoned
its needless espionage, and has
never, to my knowledge, had the
smallest inclination to suspect
me since — the Russian spy theory
about me which Mr Hodgson has
thus resuscitated from the grave,
where it had been buried with
ridicule for years, will merely help
to render his extravagant
conclusions about me more stupid even
than they would have been
otherwise in the estimation of my
friends and of all who really
know me. But looking upon the
character of a spy with the
disgust which only a Russian who is
not one can feel, I am impelled
irresistibly to repudiate Mr
Hodgson's groundless and
infamous calumny with a concentration of
the general contempt his method
of procedure in this inquiry seems
to me to merit, and to be
equally deserved by the Committee of the
Society he has served. They have
shown themselves, by their
wholesale adoption of his
blunders, a group of persons less fitted
to explore the mysteries of
psychic phenomena than I should have
thought — in the present day,
after all that has been written and
published on the subject of late
years — could have been found
among educated men in England.
" Mr Hodgson knows, and the
committee doubtless share his
knowledge, that he is safe from
actions for libel at my hands,
because I have no money to
conduct costly proceedings (having
given all I ever had to the
cause I serve), and also because my
vindication would involve the
examination into psychic mysteries
which cannot be dealt fairly
with in a court of law; and again,
because there are questions
which I am solemnly pledged never to
answer, but which a legal
investigation of these slanders would
inevitably bring to the front,
while my silence and refusal to
answer certain queries would be
misconstrued into ' contempt of
court.' This condition of things
explains the shameless attack
that has been made upon an
almost defenseless woman, and the
inaction in face of it to which
I am so cruelly condemned.”
H. P. BLAVATSKY.
“Jan. 14, 1886.”
I am glad to be permitted to insert here the following letter from
the Countess Wachtmeister, summing up the general impressions of her
long visit to Mme. Blavatsky at Würzburg:—
“ DEAR MR SINNETT,—
Last autumn, having left Sweden
to spend the winter in a more
congenial climate, and hearing
that Madame Blavatsky was
suffering, ill and lonely at
Wurzburg, I offered to spend some
time with her, and do what I
could to render her position more
comfortable, and to cheer her in
her solitude. My acquaintance
with H. P. Blavatsky was a very
slight one. I had met her casually
in London and Paris, but had no
real knowledge or experience in
regard to herself or her
character. I had been told a great deal
against her, and I can honestly
say that I was prejudiced in her
disfavour, and it was only a
sense of duty and gratitude (such as
all true students of theosophy
should feel towards the founder of
a society, which,
notwithstanding all its drawbacks, has been of
great benefit and service to
numbers of individuals), which caused
me to take upon myself the task
of alleviating her troubles and
sorrows to the best of my
ability.
”Having heard the absurd rumors
circulating against her, and by
which she was accused of
practicing black magic, fraud and
deception, I was on my guard,
and went to her in a calm and
tranquil frame of mind,
determined to accept nothing of an occult
character and coming from her
without sufficient proof; to make
myself positive, to keep my eyes
open, and to be just and true in
my conclusions. Common sense
would not permit me to believe in her
guilt without proof, but if that
proof had been furnished, my
sense of honor would have made
it impossible for me to remain in a
society, the founder of which
committed cheating and trickery,
therefore my frame of mind was
bent on investigation, and I was
anxious to find out the truth.
" I have now spent a few
months with Madame Blavatsky. I have
shared her room, and been with
her morning, noon, and night. I
have had access to all her boxes
and drawers, have read the
letters which she received and
those which she wrote, and I now
openly and honestly declare that
I am ashamed of myself for having
ever suspected her, for I
believe her to be an honest and true
woman, faithful to death to her
Masters and to the cause for which
she has sacrificed position,
fortune, and health. There is no
doubt in my mind that she made
these sacrifices, for I have seen
the proofs of them, some of
which consisted of documents whose
genuineness is above all
suspicion.
” From a worldly point of view
Madame Blavatsky is an unhappy
woman, slandered, doubted, and
abused by many; but looked at from
a higher point of view, she has
extraordinary gifts, and no amount
of vilification can deprive her
of the privileges which she
enjoys, and which consist in a
knowledge of many things that are
known only to a few mortals, and
in a personal intercourse with
certain Eastern adepts.
” On account of the extensive
knowledge which she possesses and
which extends far into the
invisible part of nature, it is very
much to be regretted that all
her troubles and trials prevent her
giving to the world a great deal
of information which she would be
willing to impart if she were
permitted to remain undisturbed and
in peace. Even the great work in
which she is now engaged, The
Secret Doctrine, has been
greatly impeded by all the persecutions,
offensive letters, and other
petty annoyances to which she has
been subjected this winter; for
it should be remembered that H. P.
Blavatsky is not herself a
full-grown adept, nor does she claim to
be one; and that, therefore, in
spite of all her knowledge, she is
as painfully sensitive to insult
and suspicion as any lady of
refinement in her position could
be expected to be.
“The Secret Doctrine will be
indeed a great and grand work. I have
had the privilege of watching
its progress, of reading the
manuscripts, and of witnessing
the occult way in which she derived
her information. I have latterly
heard among people who style
themselves 'Theosophists',
expressions which surprised and pained
me. Some such persons said that
' if it were proven that the
Mahatmas did not exist, it would
not matter,' that theosophy was
nevertheless a truth, etc., etc.
Such and similar statements have
come into circulation in
Germany, England, and America; but to my
understanding they are very
erroneous, for, in the first place, if
there were no Mahatmas or Adepts
— that is to say, persons who
have progressed so far in the
scale of human evolution, as to be
able to unite their personality
with the sixth principle of the
universe (the universal Christ),
then the teachings of that system
which has been called '
Theosophy,' would be false; because there
would be a break in the scale of
progression, which would be more
difficult to be accounted for
than the absence of the ' missing
link' of Darwin. But if these
persons refer merely to those Adepts
who are said to have been active
in the foundation of the '
Theosophical Society,' they seem
to forget that without these
Adepts we would never have had
that society, nor would Isis
Unveiled, the Esoteric Buddhism,
the Light on the Path, the
Theosophist, and other valuable
theosophical publications ever
have been written ; and if in
the future we should shut ourselves
out from the influence of the
Mahatmas and be left entirely to our
own resources, we should soon
become lost in a labyrinth of
metaphysical speculation. It
must be left to science and
speculative philosophy to
confine themselves to theories and to
the obtaining of such
information as is contained in books.
Theosophy goes farther, and
acquires knowledge by direct interior
perception. The study of
theosophy means, therefore, practical
development, and to attain this
development a guide is necessary
who knows that which he teaches,
and who must have attained
himself that state by the
process of spiritual regeneration.
“After all that has been said in
these ' Memoirs' about the occult
phenomena taking place in the
presence of Madame Blavatsky, and
how such phenomena have been a
part and parcel of her life,
occurring at all times both with
and without her knowledge, I need
only add that during my stay
with her, I have frequently witnessed
such genuine phenomena. Here, as
in every other department of
life, the main point is to learn
to discriminate properly and to
estimate everything at its true
value. —
Yours sincerely,
“ CONSTANCE WACHTMEISTER,
F.T.S.”
This letter has already been printed in an American newspaper
devoted to Theosophy, where it appears with the following remarks
appended to it by Dr Franz Hartmann:—
“ KEMPTEN, BAVARIA, May 10, 1886 —
I have read the above statement written by the Countess
Wachtmeister, and I fully agree with every sentence contained
therein. I myself, like my friend the Countess, have passed through
a state of incredulity and doubt before I arrived at knowledge. I
have often been perplexed, and had to grope in the dark, but I can
now say without any hesitation, sincerely and truthfully, that those
who desire an explanation of the great commotion that has taken
place within the sphere of the ' Theosophical Society' will have to
look for it deeper than in any desire of deception on the part of
Madame Blavatsky. The accusations of Mr Hodgson and others are only
based upon external appearances and upon superficial reasoning. To
recognize, then, the truth requires not only sharpness and wit, but
the power of intuition, which a scientist who reasons merely from
the plane of illusions cannot be expected to possess, and which he
would not be permitted to use, even if he possessed it, because by
doing so he would act in contravention to the laws upon which
material science is based. This power of intuition is ' the
corner-stone,' which the (material) builders have rejected so often,
and which they will continue to reject. It is the power whose
possession is required to arrive at spiritual knowledge, which is
the highest of all sciences, and its development is the first law on
which progress in practical occultism depends. Let those who desire
to arrive at the truth develop this power and make it alive in their
hearts, and they will obtain a guide and a Master whose voice they
will know and whose words they will not doubt, and whose hand will
lead them out of the illusions of the senses and out of the meshes
of theoretical speculation into the bright sunlight of the eternal
truth. Let the members of the Theosophical Society stop and think
before they spit on the way that has led them up higher and brought
them nearer to the God that is slumbering in the paradise of their
souls, and let us all be thankful to those Children of Light who
have awakened us from our sleep and called our attention to the fact
that the morning is dawning. Let us listen to their teachings, grasp
their doctrines with our understanding, and test them upon the
touchstone of reason, and as we assimilate them we will ourselves
grow stronger and greater. When the Paraclete arrives he will be
attracted to those temples on whose altars he finds his own fire
burning; but the unfaithful, the sceptic, and the distorter of the
truth will see nothing but the smoke that rises from his own brain.
The owl loves the darkness, but the eagle mounts towards the sun.”
The mental suffering Mme. Blavatsky went through while the insults
of the S.P.R. Report were still recent outrages, need not be
displayed in too minute detail to unsympathetic observation, and all
the more is it unnecessary here to go step by step over the stories
to Mme. Blavatsky's prejudice told to Mr Hodgson by the Coulombs and
absurdly accepted as evidence by the committee of the S.P.R.
Certainly the appearance of these Memoirs has been precipitated by
the attack on Mme. Blavatsky instituted by the S.P.R. I should have
preferred to have kept them back until, by the accumulation of more
information, the story of her life could have been told more
completely. But even as that story is here told, I look forward with
very great confidence to its recognition by all thoughtful readers
as an indirect refutation, more effective than any wrangling over
the circumstances which clouded Mr Hodgson's understanding at Adyar,
of the monstrous and unprincipled assertion put forward by the
Psychic Research Committee that she is an “impostor”. The Society
which that committee represents is probably not destined to a very
prolonged existence. It rose like a rocket on a brilliant stream of
fire that might have carried it high into the heavens, but a
misdirection of its course turned it back to earth almost instantly,
and the force which should have borne it aloft now buries its head
more deeply in the sand. But the literary fruits of Mme. Blavatsky's
life will long survive the recollection which this generation will
retain, of the efforts made to disparage the interest of those
physical wonders she has so often been concerned in working and
which really constitute the least important circumstances of her
career. For the tales of wonder with which Mme. Blavatsky has thus
been associated, though they have filled this volume so largely, are
really no more than the foam on the surface of the current that has
been set flowing through human thought, in our time, under her
auspices.
NOTE FOR THE PRESENT EDITION
THIS imperfect biography was originally published in 1886, several
years before Mme. Blavatsky's laborious life came to an end. The
Countess Wachtmeister, who spent a great deal of time with her
during her stay at Wurzburg and afterwards at Ostend has left an
interesting record relating to this period. The Theosophical Society
was then in a state of obscuration, the consequence of the attack
described in the preceding pages; but Mme. Blavatsky continued to
work steadily at her great book, The Secret Doctrine, and in the
year 1887, at the request of many friends, came to London, staying
for a time at Norwood, and afterwards at 17 Lansdowne Road, Notting
Hill. Here she soon found herself almost overwhelmed by crowds of
visitors, and it was at this period that Mrs Besant made her
acquaintance. Eventually she moved to a house in the Avenue Road, St
John's Wood, and there she used to be present at large meetings of
the “Blavatsky Lodge” of the Theosophical Society, founded in her
honor soon after her arrival in London. She died there on the 8th of
May 1891, surrounded by loving friends. The end came rather suddenly
as she was sitting in a chair by her bedside. Her doctor had left
her that morning under the impression that she was not any longer in
immediate danger.
Those who are desirous of learning more about the later years of her
life will find abundant information in the Countess Wachtmeister's
book entitled Reminiscences of H. P. Blavatsky, and in a collection
of papers by many of her friends and pupils, put together shortly
after her passing. [ In Memory of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. By some
of her pupils. With portrait. Theosophical Publishing Society.]
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Cardiff Theosophical Society in
Theosophy House
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK. CF24
-1DL
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Theosophy Cardiff’s Instant Guide
One liners and quick explanations
H P Blavatsky is
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Theosophist that
most people have ever
heard of. Let’s
put that right
The Voice of the Silence Website
An Independent Theosophical Republic
Links to Free Online Theosophy
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Topics include
Quantum Theory and Socks,
Dick Dastardly and Legendary Blues Singers.
A selection of articles
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Cardiff
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The Voice of the Silence Website
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No Aardvarks were harmed in the
The Spiritual Home of Urban Theosophy
The Earth Base for Evolutionary Theosophy
A B C D EFG H IJ KL M N OP QR S T UV WXYZ
Complete Theosophical Glossary in Plain Text Format
1.22MB
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Preface
Theosophy and the Masters General Principles
The Earth Chain Body and Astral Body Kama – Desire
Manas Of Reincarnation Reincarnation Continued
Karma Kama Loka
Devachan
Cycles
Arguments Supporting Reincarnation
Differentiation Of Species Missing Links
Psychic Laws, Forces, and Phenomena
Psychic Phenomena and Spiritualism
Quick Explanations with Links to More Detailed Info
What is Theosophy ? Theosophy Defined (More Detail)
Three Fundamental Propositions Key Concepts of Theosophy
Cosmogenesis Anthropogenesis Root Races
Ascended Masters After Death States
The Seven Principles of Man Karma
Reincarnation Helena Petrovna Blavatsky
Colonel Henry Steel Olcott William Quan Judge
The Start of the Theosophical
Society
History of the Theosophical
Society
Theosophical Society Presidents
History of the Theosophical
Society in Wales
The Three Objectives of the
Theosophical Society
Explanation of the Theosophical
Society Emblem
The Theosophical Order of
Service (TOS)
Glossaries of Theosophical Terms
Index of Searchable
Full Text Versions of
Definitive
Theosophical Works
H P Blavatsky’s Secret Doctrine
Isis Unveiled by H P Blavatsky
H P Blavatsky’s Esoteric Glossary
Mahatma Letters to A P Sinnett 1 - 25
A Modern Revival of Ancient Wisdom
(Selection of Articles by H P Blavatsky)
The Secret Doctrine – Volume 3
A compilation of H P Blavatsky’s
writings published after her death
Esoteric Christianity or the Lesser Mysteries
The Early Teachings of The Masters
A Collection of Fugitive Fragments
Fundamentals of the Esoteric Philosophy
Mystical,
Philosophical, Theosophical, Historical
and Scientific
Essays Selected from "The Theosophist"
Edited by George Robert Stow Mead
From Talks on the Path of Occultism - Vol. II
In the Twilight”
Series of Articles
The In the Twilight”
series appeared during
1898 in The
Theosophical Review and
from 1909-1913 in The Theosophist.
compiled from
information supplied by
her relatives and friends and edited by A P Sinnett
Letters and
Talks on Theosophy and the Theosophical Life
Obras Teosoficas En Espanol
Theosophische Schriften Auf Deutsch
An Outstanding
Introduction to Theosophy
By a student of
Katherine Tingley
Elementary Theosophy Who is the Man? Body and Soul
Body, Soul and Spirit Reincarnation Karma
Guide to the
Theosophy Wales King Arthur Pages
Arthur draws the Sword from the Stone
The Knights of The Round Table
The Roman Amphitheatre at Caerleon,
Eamont Bridge, Nr Penrith, Cumbria, England.
(History of the Kings of Britain)
The reliabilty of this work has long been a subject of
debate but it is the first definitive account of Arthur’s
Reign
and one which puts Arthur in a historcal context.
and his version’s political agenda
According to Geoffrey of Monmouth
The first written mention of Arthur as a heroic figure
The British leader who fought twelve battles
King Arthur’s ninth victory at
The Battle of the City of the Legion
King Arthur ambushes an advancing Saxon
army then defeats them at Liddington Castle,
Badbury, Near Swindon, Wiltshire, England.
King Arthur’s twelfth and last victory against the Saxons
Traditionally Arthur’s last battle in which he was
mortally wounded although his side went on to win
No contemporary writings or accounts of his life
but he is placed 50 to 100 years after the accepted
King Arthur period. He refers to Arthur in his inspiring
poems but the earliest written record of these dates
from over three hundred years after Taliesin’s death.
Mallerstang Valley, Nr Kirkby Stephen,
A 12th Century Norman ruin on the site of what is
reputed to have been a stronghold of Uther Pendragon
From
wise child with no earthly father to
Megastar
of Arthurian Legend
History of the Kings of Britain
Drawn from the Stone or received from the Lady of the Lake.
Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur has both versions
with both swords called Excalibur. Other versions
5th & 6th Century Timeline of Britain
From the departure of the Romans from
Britain to the establishment of sizeable
Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms
Glossary of
Arthur’s uncle:- The puppet ruler of the Britons
controlled and eventually killed by Vortigern
Amesbury, Wiltshire, England. Circa 450CE
An alleged massacre of Celtic Nobility by the Saxons
History of the Kings of Britain
Athrwys / Arthrwys
King of Ergyng
Circa 618 - 655 CE
Latin: Artorius; English: Arthur
A warrior King born in Gwent and associated with
Caerleon, a possible Camelot. Although over 100 years
later that the accepted Arthur period, the exploits of
Athrwys may have contributed to the King Arthur Legend.
He became King of Ergyng, a kingdom between
Gwent and Brycheiniog (Brecon)
Angles under Ida seized the Celtic Kingdom of
Bernaccia in North East England in 547 CE forcing
Although much later than the accepted King Arthur
period, the events of Morgan Bulc’s 50 year campaign
to regain his kingdom may have contributed to
Old Welsh: Guorthigirn;
Anglo-Saxon: Wyrtgeorn;
Breton: Gurthiern; Modern Welsh; Gwrtheyrn;
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An earlier ruler than King Arthur and not a heroic figure.
He is credited with policies that weakened Celtic Britain
to a point from which it never recovered.
Although there are no contemporary accounts of
his rule, there is more written evidence for his
existence than of King Arthur.
How Sir Lancelot slew two giants,
From Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur
How Sir Lancelot rode disguised
in Sir Kay's harness, and how he
From Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur
How Sir Lancelot jousted against
four knights of the Round Table,
From Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur
Try these if you are looking for a local
Theosophy Group or Centre
UK Listing of Theosophical Groups
Cardiff
Theosophical Society in Wales
Cardiff, Wales, UK. CF24 – 1DL
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Cardiff Picture Gallery
Cardiff
Millennium Stadium
The Hayes Cafe
Outside Cardiff Castle Circa 1890
Church Street
Cardiff View
Royal
The Original
Norman Castle which stands inside
the Grounds of
the later
Inside the
Grounds at
Cardiff Street
Entertainment
Cardiff Indoor
Market
All
Wales Guide to Theosophy Instant Guide to
Theosophy
Theosophy
Wales Hornet Theosophy Wales Now
Cardiff
Theosophical Archive Elementary Theosophy
Basic
Theosophy Theosophy in Cardiff
Theosophy in Wales Hey Look! Theosophy in
Cardiff
Streetwise Theosophy Grand
Tour
Theosophy
Aardvark Theosophy
Starts Here
Theosophy 206 Biography of William Q Judge
Theosophy Cardiff’s Face Book of Great Theosophists
Theosophy Evolution Theosophy Generally Stated
Biography of Helena Petrovna
Blavatsky
Cardiff
Theosophical Society in Wales