Madame Blavatsky and Her Theosophy E-Book

Arthur Lillie

• Herausgeber: Jovian Press
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Seitenzahl: 412

Beschreibung

Still more remarkable has been the success with which this remarkable woman has succeeded in driving into the somewhat wooden head of the Anglo-Saxon the conviction-long ago arrived at by a select circle of students and Orientalists, of whom Professor Max Muller may be said to be the most distinguished living representative-that the East is, in matters of religious and metaphysical speculation, at least entitled to claim as much respect as the West. That indeed is stating it very mildly...

Leseprobe

MADAME BLAVATSKY AND HER THEOSOPHY

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Arthur Lillie

JOVIAN PRESS

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Copyright © 2017 by Arthur Lillie

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER I. TIBET

CHAPTER II. WHAT MADAME BLAVATSKY LEARNT IN TIBET.

CHAPTER III. THE SOCIÉTÉ SPIRITE.

CHAPTER IV. THE ‘MIRACLE CLUB.’

CHAPTER V. THE BROTHERS OF LUXOR.

CHAPTER VI. THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY.

CHAPTER VII. ÂRYA SAMÂJ.

CHAPTER VIII. THE ‘PIONEER.’

CHAPTER IX. ’THE SHRINE’

CHAPTER X. ANNA KINGSFORD.

CHAPTER XI. PROFESSOR KIDDLE.

CHAPTER XII. BUDDHISM, ‘ESOTERIC’AND GENUINE.

CHAPTER XIII. A CHANGE OF FRONT.

CHAPTER XIV. THEOSOPHY TRUE AND FALSE.

CHAPTER XV. CEREMONIAL MAGIC.

CHAPTER XVI. A LAST CHAPTER.

APPENDIX No. I. THE MAHATMA AND THE ‘WESTMINSTER GAZETTE.’

APPENDIX No. II. BLAVATSKYANA.

CHAPTER I. TIBET

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MADEMOISELLE HELENA PETROVNA HAHN WAS born at Ekaterinoslow, in the south of Russia, in 1831. She is described as being what is called mediumistic from her earliest youth. She was more in the company of phantom “hunchbacks” and Roussalkas (water sprites) than of flesh and blood playmates. Mr. Sinnett argues from this that the Mahatmas of Tibet put themselves in communication with the young girl from her very earliest childhood. But an alternative theory, of course, would be that the “Masters” (Sinnett, “Life of Madame Blavatsky,” p. 24) were never anything more than the spooks or spirit guides of a medium.

On the 7th July, 1848, Mademoiselle Hahn married General Blavatsky, a gentleman “nearer seventy than sixty.” With a humour that developed early she called her husband a “plumeless raven.” For three months they lived together, but not as husband and wife, and then she left him, Mr. Sinnett tells us.

If we wish to study a given religion, say Islam, we must begin with a picture of the Founder as he appeared to his disciples. We must study his biography, his teachings. We must examine the text of his Bible and see what the “apologists” have to say before we allow the “critical school” to cut in. From October, 1848, to May, 1857, comes a gap in the Russian lady’s existence. During these years she is said to have visited Tibet and learnt the secrets of the Mahatmas.

“After a course of occult study, carried on for seven years in a Himalayan retreat, Madame Blavatsky,” says Mr. Sinnett (“Occult World,” p. 24), “returned to the world.” A seven years’ probation, be also tells us, is considered quite necessary before any secrets are divulged to the chela. (“Occult World,” p. 17.) Madame Blavatsky confirms him here. In the journal called Light (August 9th, 1884) she wrote thus:—“I will tell him (a correspondent) also that I have lived in different periods in Little Tibet and Great Tibet, and these combined periods form more than seven years.”

But if this gap of eight years is very important, it is a little unfortunate that the school of the apologists have not given us very clear details about it. She went to “Egypt, Greece, and other parts of Eastern Europe.” At Paris “a famous mesmerist, still living as I write,” says Mr. Sinnett, “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 a 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.”

The visit to Paris is dated, according to conjecture, at about a year after her leaving her husband’s house, but she kept no diary, and “at this distance of time can give no very connected story of her complicated wanderings” (p. 60). Mr. Sinnett more than once apologises for his vagueness, but this is unfortunate, as it gives an opening to the critical school. She went to New Orleans and studied black magic with the Voodoos. In the year 1851 she was in Paris (p. 62), but this is giving her very little time for her “Course of occult study carried on for seven years in a Himalayan retreat.”

In the same year (Olcott, “People from the Other World,” p. 320) she passed the summer at Daratschi Tchag, an Armenian place of summer resort in the plain of Mount “Ararat.” Her husband, being Vice-Governor of Erivan, had a bodyguard of 50 Khourd warriors, amongst whom one of the strongest and bravest, named Safar Ali Bek was detailed as the lady’s personal escort. In 1875 this Khourd, having died, came to her at a séance in America, but this little anecdote scarcely harmonises with the statement made by Mr. Sinnett, that she fled from her husband for good and all in the month of October, 1848.

And in a short time the dates given to us by Mr. Sinnett begin to perplex us still more. It is recorded that in 1855 Madame Blavatsky went to India, and in the month of September, 1856, she passed into Tibet for the first time, being smuggled in “in an appropriate disguise” by a solitary Shaman, her “sole protector in those dreary wastes.” It is added that she came out again, and left India a short time before the Indian Mutiny broke out in 1857. This makes at most seven months instead of seven years.

For her trip to Tibet she started from Kashmir with “the Brothers N——,” and an ex-Lutheran minister, Mr. K——. The Brothers N—— were promptly sent back at the frontier, and the ex-Lutheran clergyman was arrested by fever, but not before he had witnessed a striking miracle.

Travellers from Tibet have told us that certain Lamas, to benefit humanity, abstain from Nirvana, and on their deathbed announce to their disciples that they will be reborn in such and such a spot. “At the death of one of these, the disciples repair to the place he has indicated and search for a newly-born child which bears the sacred marks, and is for other reasons the most probable incarnation of the departed saint. Having found the child, they leave him with his mother till he is four years old. Then they return, bringing with them a quantity of praying books, rosaries, praying wheels, bells, and other priestly articles, amongst which are those which belonged to the late incarnation. Then the child has to prove that he is the new incarnation by recognising the property that was his, and by relating reminiscences of his past” (“Where Three Empires meet,” E. F. Knight, c. viii.).

It is further added that this incarnating Lama is called a “skooshok,” and that only four of them exist in Ladak. Bat if we are to believe Madame Blavatsky, ordinary travellers can see these and greater miracles, even where no Lama has died.

“About four days’ journey from Islamabad, at an insignificant mud village, whose only redeeming feature was its magnificent lake, we stopped for a few days’ rest.” A native of Russia, a Shaman of Siberia, was of the party, and he told them that a large party of “Lamaic saints” on pilgrimage to various shrines, had taken up their abode in a cave temple near.” The Buddhist Trinity (Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha) were travelling with the party, a fact that gave the Bhikshus the power of working “miracles.” The Lutheran minister had plainly a little of the old Adam in him, for this statement seemed to have fired his old Protestant hatred of miracles. He determined to expose these cheats, and in consequence paid a visit to the Pase Budhu, the chief of these Lamaic saints, and demanded to see the process of a “re-incarnation” of “Buddha” in the body of a little child. This demand was naturally refused, as it is not stated that any old Lama had died, or that, in fact, any old Lama was within an hundred miles of the place. But Madame Blavatsky produced an A-yu from her pocket, and the Lamaic saints at once became her devoted servants. An A-yu is a talisman of cornelian with a triangle engraved upon it. “An infant of three or four months was procured from its mother, a poor woman of the neighbourhood,” and the magical processes began:—

“Suddenly we saw the child not raise itself, but violently jerked, as it were, into a sitting posture. A few more jerks, and then like an automaton sot in motion by concealed wires, the four months’ baby stood upon its feet. Not a hand had been outstretched, not a motion made, nor a word spoken, and yet here was a baby in arms standing as firm as a man.”

Here the testimony of the sceptical Mr. K is cited:—

“The baby turned his head and looked at me with an expression of intelligence that was simply awful. It sent a chill through me. The miraculous creature, as I fancied, making two steps towards me, resumed his sitting posture, and without removing his eyes from mine, repeated sentence by sentence, in what I supposed to be Tibetan language, the very words which I had been told in advance are commonly spoken at the incarnations of Buddha, beginning with, I am Buddha! I am the old Lama! I am his spirit in a new body, etc.” (“Isis Unveiled,” ii., p. 602).

But if Mr. K—— knew no Tibetan language, how did he know that this is what the baby said? Also, to what “old Lama” was the infant alluding? Islamabad is in Kashmir, which is peopled chiefly by Hindoos. There are no “skooshoks” within at least a six weeks’ journey. We will make some more quotations:—

“Many of the lamaseries contain schools of magic, but the most celebrated is the collegiate monastery of the Shutukt, where there are over 30,000 monks attached to it, the lamasery forming quite a little city. Some of the female nuns possess marvellous psychological powers” (“Isis,” vol. ii., p. 609).

She says also that the real religion of Buddha is not to be judged by the fetishism of some of his followers in Siam and Burmah:—

“It is in the chief lamaseries of Mongolia and Tibet that it has taken refuge, and here Shamanism, if so we may call it, is practised to the utmost limits of intercourse allowed between man and ‘spirit.’ The religion of the Lamas has faithfully preserved the primitive science of magic, and produces as great feats now as in the days of Kublai Khan…. At Buddha-lla, or rather Foht-lla (Buddha’s mount), in the most important of the many thousand lamaseries of that country, the sceptre of the Bodhhisgat (sic) is seen floating unsupported in the air, and its motions regulate the actions of the community. Whenever a Lama is called to account in the presence of the superior of the monastery, he knows beforehand it is useless for him to tell an untruth. The ‘regulator of justice’ (the sceptre) is there, and its waving motion, either approbatory or otherwise, decides instantaneously and unerringly the question of his guilt” (“Isis,” vol. ii., p. 616).

“The lives of these holy men, miscalled idle vagrants, cheating beggars, who are supposed to pass their existence in preying upon the easy credulity of their victims, are miracles in themselves. Miracles because they show what a determined will and a perfect purity of life and purpose are able to accomplish, and to what degree of preternatural asceticism a human body can be subjected, and yet live and reach a ripe old age. At Bras-ss-Pungs, the Mongolian college, where over three hundred magicians (sorciers, as the French missionaries call them) teach about twice as many pupils, from twelve to twenty, the latter have many years to wait for their final initiation. Not one in a hundred reaches the highest goal” (“Isis,” vol. ii.,p. 617).

The Buddhist priests dance at times:—

“As in the instances of Corybantic and Bacchantic fury among the ancient Greeks, the spiritual crisis of the Shaman exhibits itself in violent dances and wild gestures. Little by little the lookers-on feel the spirit of imitation aroused in them. Seized with an irresistible impulse, they dance and become in their turn ecstatics” (“Isis,” vol. ii., p. 625).

Here is another marvel:—

“If our scientists are unable to imitate the mummy embalming of the Egyptians, how much greater would be their surprise to see, as we have, dead bodies preserved by alchemical art, so that after the lapse of centuries they seem as though the individuals were sleeping? The complexions were as fresh, the skin as elastic, the eyes as natural and sparkling as though they were in the full flush of health. The bodies of certain very eminent personages are laid upon catafalques in rich mausoleums.”

We now come to more important matters, the cave libraries:—

“Moreover, in all the large and wealthy lamaseries there are subterranean crypts and cave libraries cut in the rock wherever the gonpa and lhakhang are situated in the mountains. Beyond the Western Tsaydam, in the solitary passes of Kuen-lun, there are several such hiding-places. Along the ridge of Altyn Toga, whose soil no European foot has ever trodden so far, there exists a certain hamlet, lost in a deep gorge. It is a small cluster of houses, a hamlet rather than a monastery, with a poor-looking temple in it, with one old Lama, a hermit, living near to watch it. Pilgrims say that the subterranean galleries and halls under it contain a collection of books, the number of which, according to the accounts given, is too large to find room even in the British Museum” (“Secret Doctrine,” i., xxiv.).

But this is not the end of these wonders. It appears that the Brahmins and Buddhists are in league (p. xxviii.) to hide their genuine sacred literature from the Mlechchhas. This was the term applied by the ancient Aryans to the black savages that they tried to displace, and according to Madame Blavatsky, it is applied to white-faced Sanskrit professors and other white-faced respectabilities now. The Brahmins in giving us the Rig Veda, the Upanishads, the Mahâbhârata, etc., have foisted upon us “bits of rejected copies of some passages” only (p. xxx.). The large literature of Buddhism is a blind. It is given to conceal, not convey, the real teaching. The real books are hidden away. It is hinted that the Japanese followers of Lao Tse use the same places of concealment.

“The Japanese, among whom are now to be found the most learned of the priests and followers of Lao Tse, simply laugh at the blunders and hypotheses of European Chinese scholars, and tradition affirms that the commentaries to which our Western sinologues have access are not the real occult records, but intentional veils, and that the true commentaries, as well as almost all the texts, have long disappeared from the eyes of the profane” (p. xxv.).

These occult libraries are well guarded: “Built deep in the bowels of the earth, the subterranean stores are secure; and as their entrances are concealed in such oases, there is little fear that any one should discover them, even should several armies invade the sandy wastes where—

“ Not a pool, not a bush, not a house is seen,

And the mountain range forms a rugged screen.”

(P. xxxiii.)

But there is another great name to be added to this vast fraternity of concealment. Our best available authorities tell us that Confucius was not a religious teacher at all, and certainly not a mystic. He was a politician and an atheist, and he has enmeshed China in a vast network of ceremonialism that binds her hand and foot. This is erroneous. He too seems to have his real doctrine concealed in some underground crypt (p. xxv.) in some of these “immense libraries reclaimed from the sand,” the “secret crypts of libraries belonging to the occult fraternity” (p. xxxiv.).

But fortunately these great secrets are to be complete secrets no longer. In one of these concealed crypts (which one, perhaps, she is not allowed to state), Madame Blavatsky was allowed to peruse the Book of Dzyan or Dzan. It was “an archaic manuscript, a collection of palm leaves made impermeable to water, fire, and air, by some specific, unknown process” (p. i.). It is written “in a tongue absent from the nomenclature of languages and dialects with which philology is acquainted.” It is needless to say that it “ante-dates the Vedas” (p. xxxvii.).

We will quote a few verses of this great book:—

The eternal parent wrapped in her ever invisible robes Lad slumbered once again for Seven Eternities.

Time was not, for it lay asleep in the infinite bosom of duration.

Universal mind was not, for there was no AH-Hi to contain it.

The seven ways to bliss were not.

The great causes of misery were not, for there was no one to produce and get ensnared by them.

Darkness alone filled the boundless all, for Father, Mother, and Son were once more one, and the Son had not awakened yet for the New Wheel and his pilgrimage thereon.

The causes of existence had been done away with. The visible that was, and the invisible that is, rested on eternal non-being, the one being.

Alone, the one form of existence stretched boundless, infinite, causeless, in dreamless sleep, and life pulsated unconscious in universal space, throughout that all-presence which is sensed by that opened eye of the Dangma.

But where was the Dangma when the Alaya of the Universe was in Paramartha, and the great wheel was Arupadaka?

Where was the silence? Where the ears to sense it? No, there was neither silence nor sound. Naught save ceaseless eternal breath, which knows itself not. The hour had not yet struck.

Behold, oh, Lanoo, the radiant child of the two! It is Oeaohoo I He is the blazing divine Dragon of Wisdom.

The One is Four I And Four takes to itself Three, and the union is Sapta (seven).

The Dzyu becomes Fohat, the swift son of the divine sons, whose sons are the Lipika.

The eternity of the Pilgrim is like a wink in the eye of self-existence.

Madame Blavatsky does not explain how it is that if this poem is in the archaic unknown tongue, it bristles all over with Sanskrit and other languages. Fohat is not Sanskrit.

In “Isis Unveiled,” she announced that “Foht” was the Tibetan for Buddha. How does Buddha turn up in these very early MSS.?

I will give here Colebrooke’s translation of a celebrated passage in the Rig Veda:—

1. There was then neither nonentity nor entity; there was no atmosphere nor sky beyond it. What covered (all)? Where was the receptacle of each thing? Was it water, the deep abyss?

2. Death was not then, nor immortality; there was no distinction of day or night. That one breathed calmly, with svaddha (nature); there was nothing different from It (that One) or beyond It.

3. Darkness there was; originally enveloped in darkness, this universe was undistinguishable water; the empty (mass), which was concealed by a husk (or by nothingness), was produced singly by the power of austerity (or heat).

4. Desire first arose in It, which was the first germ of mind. This the wise, seeking in their heart, have discovered by the intellect to be the bond between nonentity and entity.

5. The ray which shot across these things,—was it from above, or was it below? There were productive energies and mighty powers; Nature (svaddha) beneath, and Energy (prayati) above.

6. Who knows, who here can declare whence has sprung, whence this creation? The gods are subsequent to its formation; who then knows from what it arose?

7. From what source this creation arose, and whether (any one) created it or not. He who in the highest heaven is its ruler, He knows, or He does not know.

If the Book of Dzyan was first in the field the Vedic author seems to have plagiarised from it.

Already we are met with a puzzle. When Mr. Sinnett’s narrative first appeared the misbelievers pointed out that if Madame Blavatsky had only been seven months in Tibet they did not see how she could have gone through a seven years’ training. To one of these Madame Blavatsky in a letter addressed to Light (July 27th, 1889) thus replied:—

“Sir,—It is perhaps hardly worth while to take up your space in exposing the careless and ignorant blundering of ‘Colenso’—a singularly inappropriate signature, by the way, for one so reckless about his facts. But, for this once, I will make a statement that may put an end to the incessant carping over trifles that can serve but to needlessly embitter controversy.

“There is no such thing known to occultists as a ‘seven years initiation.’ The probations, which ‘Colenso’ confuses with initiation, can be lived out anywhere, and this ‘Colenso’ would have known if he had read Mr. Sinnett’s paragraph with even ordinary care, since he says that any English gentleman can pass through it without observation. ‘Colenso’s’ inexorable arithmetic is thus wasted trouble, and his careful calculations on Himalayan ranges are wholly beside the mark; since the seven years’ initiation in one place is an absurdity, and a seven years’ probation attached to the skirts of the Masters is another. All this is a creation of his own imagination, and while I regret that my life does not fit into the framework made for it by him, and by other similar critics, the misfit is scarcely my fault. Bishop Colenso’s work would have fallen very flat if he had been as careless of his facts as the writer who now uses his name.

“But, apart from this latest attack, why should spiritualists feel so interested in my travels, studies, and their supposed dates? Why should they be so eager to unravel imagined mysteries, denounce alleged (or even possible) mistakes, in order to pick holes in everything theosophical? To even my best friends I have never given but very fragmentary and superficial accounts of the said travels, nor do I propose to gratify anyone’s curiosity, least of all that of my enemies. The latter are quite welcome to believe in and spread as many cock-and-bull stories about me as they choose, and to invent new ones as time rolls on and the old stories wear out.”

But does this quite meet “Colenso’s” arithmetical difficulties? In Light (August 9th, 1884) Madame Blavatsky herself had distinctly announced that “she had lived in different periods in Little Tibet and in Great Tibet, and that these combined periods form more than seven years.”

Mr. Sinnett is equally explicit:—

“Never, I believe, is less than seven years from the time at which a candidate for initiation is accepted as a probationer, is he ever admitted to the very first of the ordeals.” These ordeals are very severe, Mr. Sinnett tells us; indeed, I remember in the old days hearing that Madame Blavatsky’s ordeals had been by earth, air, and fire and water. But if no Brothers are by to inspect, how could these ordeals be quite satisfactory? A “probationer” might take a bath at Ostend and announce a “trial by water.”

A suspicion had formed itself in my mind, and a passage from Colonel Olcott has rather confirmed it, otherwise I should not have liked to have brought it forward. This is, that when Madame Blavatsky talks about the “Blazing Divine Dragon of Wisdom” and similar matters her pen is sometimes guided by her spooks or her “masters.”

“She wrote me,” says Colonel Olcott, “that it (‘Isis Unveiled’) was a book on the history and philosophy of the Eastern schools, and their relations with those of our own times. She said she was writing about things she had never studied, and making quotations from books she had never read in all her life” (Theosophist, April, 1893).

The colonel goes on:—

“Whence did H. P. B. draw the materials which compose ‘Isis?’ From the Astral light—and by her soul senses from her teachers—the ‘Brothers,’ ‘Adepts,’ ‘Sages,’ ‘Masters.’ ”

He quotes her as saying:—

“At such times it is no more I who write, but my ‘luminous self,’ who thinks and writes for me” (Theosophist, April, 1893).

Professor Max Muller and several native scholars have attacked the Sanskrit of this good lady’s “luminous self,” and it is difficult to guess from what other source she has got much of her philology. Many prominent words in her system are nonsense. “Koot Hoomi Lai Singh” is said by Mr. Sinnett to be the “Tibetan baptismal name” of the great Adept. This statement was at once turned into ridicule by the editor of a native newspaper.

“Lal Singh” is Hindustani, and an expert at the British Museum assured me that the words “Koot” and “Hoomi” were not to be found in the language of Tibet. Then Dhyani Chohans is a made-up word. “Chohan” is not to be found in any Sanskrit dictionary nor in the admirable glossary of Sanskrit, Tibetan, and Chinese Buddhist words drawn up by Mr. Eitel. “Devachan” is a Tibetan word, but instead of being an abode of probation as Madame Blavatsky announces, it contains spirits that cannot return to earth. (Schlagintweit, “Buddhism in Tibet,” p. 102).

In “Isis Unveiled” (vol. ii., p. 290) she says that Buddha in Tibet is called “Ferho,” or “Faho,” or “Fo.” He is really called Behom-dan-hdas Sangs-r-gyâs.

In the same work (vol. ii., p. 599) she says that Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha are called in Tibet “Fo, fa, and Sengh.” Our dictionaries, on the contrary, tell us that Dharma is called T. Tch’os and Sangha d Ge hdun. We learn, too, that a monk is called a Shaman, the good lady being evidently under an impression that Chinese is the language of Tibet.

“Fohat” is another nonsensical word. In “Isis Unveiled” (vol. ii., p. 616) she says that Buddha-lla and Foht-lla are Tibetan words for “Buddha’s Mount.”

On February 20th, 1893, a paper was read by Captain Bower before the Geographical Society describing a trip into Tibet from Sri Nagar in Kashmir, the point of departure of the Russian lady.

He started on the 17th April, and took six weeks to get to Leh, a distance of some 130 miles from Sri Nagar as the crow flies. Between India and Tibet is the most formidable mountain wall in the world. It is everywhere from 70 to 120 miles thick—rock and glacier and precipice.

Captain Bovver had baggage ponies, but so steep is the Zoji La Pass that an army of coolies had to carry his baggage as far as Leh, and the ponies had to be led without burdens. The trip from Kashmir to Lha Sa occupied seven months. Before reaching that capital, he was stopped and forced to branch off to China. For five of these months he never encamped below 15,000 feet elevation. The thermometer registered minus 15°. Also the officials everywhere confessed that they had strict orders from the Chinese to murder all “Pelings” who tried to enter Tibet from Hindustan. Nothing but the good English breech-loaders of Captain Bower’s little army saved him. China gets annually a profit of eight millions sterling for her brick-tea, and she knows that the English could sell the same amount of tea at the quarter of the price.

Thus, when we read that Madame Blavatsky was smuggled into Tibet “in a suitable disguise,” and that her “sole protector in those dreary deserts” (“Isis,” vol. ii., p. 662) was a solitary Shaman, we must ask if this means that she succeeded in traversing the formidable ghats without baggage ponies, without tents, without an army of coolies, a store of food? It certainly does seem so on the surface, for she tells us that this Shaman was a Russian subject, who had quite as much need of being smuggled in as the Russian lady. He wanted to work round to his home in Siberia. (“Isis Unveiled,” vol. ii., p. 599.) Then Captain Bower, starting in April, had the summer months before him, whereas Madame Blavatsky, starting in September, and returning to India just in time to leave that country “shortly before the Mutiny troubles began,” must have travelled all the time in the middle of winter, when the ghats are choked with ice and snow. And yet she tells us in a letter to Light (August 9th, 1884) that she had “penetrated further than any traveller had penetrated before.”

One or two other passages are noteworthy:—

In “Isis Unveiled,” vol. ii., p. 609, is this statement:—“We met a great many nuns travelling from Lha Sa to Kandi They take refuge in caves or viharas prepared by their co-religionists at calculated distances.”

What would be thought of a modern traveller who announced that along the roads of Sussex he had met numbers of the “Valas” or prophetesses of Woden, and that at the stone circles, where they stopped for the night, mead and the flesh of the boar Saehrimmer were doled out to them. Buddhist viharas and Buddhist nuns have disappeared from Hindustan quite as long as the priests of Woden from England.

Besides, as Mr. Spence Hardy tells us, there are no female recluses in Ceylon. (“Eastern Monachism,” p. 61.)

But there is more beyond. In the sharp controversies that Madame Blavatsky ‘s statements provoked in 1884, she was challenged to give at any rate the date of her trip, the name of the ship she went out in, or the name of some three or four Anglo-Indian officials that she had come across during her passage through India. Her reply (Light, August 9th, 1884) was a refusal. “As to the names of three or four English (or rather Anglo-Indians) who could certify to having seen me when I passed, I am afraid their vigilance would not be found at the height of their trustworthiness,” and then she went on to say that she evaded the Anglo-Indian officials. This is all very well, but in steering clear of one difficulty Ave sometimes run into another. She says now that in 1856 she entered Tibet through Kashmir, not knowing that the Maharajah at that date allowed no Feringhy in his dominions without a passport duly signed by an English official.

CHAPTER II. WHAT MADAME BLAVATSKY LEARNT IN TIBET.

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ACCORDING TO MR. SINNETT, MADAME Blavatsky, during this trip into Tibet, was instructed by the Mahatmas in the great gospel of “Theosophy” But this teaching was not made public until October, 1881, that is some twenty-four years afterwards. But we must anticipate matters, and give a short sketch of this gospel here, and then see if the utterances of Madame Blavatsky were always quite in harmony with this gospel. Mr. Sinnett tells us that for the first time a “block of absolute truth regarding spiritual things was given to the world” (“Esoteric Buddhism,” p. 6).

“Theosophy” proclaims that at death the individual becomes practically two individuals; one of which takes off all the good qualities to the “rosy slumber” of Devachan or Paradise. The second, with all the bad qualities, remains on the earth plane for a time, attends séances, deceives spiritualists, and is by and by annihilated. The only communications that mortals can receive from the unseen world are from these semi-fiends. Occultism should, in consequence, never be attempted, except under the supervision of the Mahatmas of Tibet. To this has been added the Indian doctrine of Karma. It is proclaimed that the good half of the individual must remain in Devachan for 1500 years. It is then reborn on earth; and Karma, or the causation of its previous acts, will force this process to be repeated, “at least 800 times.” Then perfection will be gained, and with it annihilation.

It will be seen at once that we have here two distinct schemes for gaining perfection.

By the first, perfection, even with an atrocious murderer, is obtained at the second of death, a perfection greater than that of the angel Gabriel, for the smallest blemish will be removed. By the second, even St. Paul will be 1,280,000 years obtaining perfection.

Now this may be thought a little extravagant, but in Madame Blavatsky’s first sketch of her doctrines (Theosophist, Oct., 1881) each point is to be found. “At death or before,” the division of the individual into a good and a bad half takes place. The good half “can never again span the abyss that separates its state from ours.” All that can come to the “seance room of the spiritualists are certain reliquiae of deceased human beings,” “elementaries,” “shells,” the bad half of the dead individual which recovers life for a time, and by and by dies out.

“In truth,” say the article, “mediumship is a dangerous, too often a fatal capacity, and if we oppose spiritualism as we have ever consistently done, it is not because we question the reality of their phenomena . . . but because of the irreparable spiritual injury which the pursuit of spiritualism inevitably entails on nine-tenths of the mediums.”

A letter that she wrote when she came to England in 1884, goes further than this. (Pall Mall Gazette, April 26th.) She says that the main object of theosophy was:—

1. To put down spiritualism.

2. To convert the materialists.

3. To prove the existence of the “Brothers.”

In the year 1858, Madame Blavatsky having left Tibet, returned to Europe. She was fully impressed “with the magnitude of her mission,” as Mr. Sinnett tells us. She now emerged from “apprenticeship to duty” (“Incidents, etc.,” p. 157). In 1858, Madame Blavatsky returned to Russia. Her sister, Madame de Jelihowsky, now gives a picture of her.

This picture is a little astonishing, for the diary kept by Madame de Jelihowsky, at least the portions quoted by Mr. Sinnett in his “Incidents, etc.,” describes the sister as nothing more or less than a “medium,” and by this name the sister tells us that she was then called. Raps came and questions were answered. “One of the guests would be reciting the alphabet, another putting down the answers received.”

Furniture was moved about without contact. Heavy tables were moved, and then rendered immovable. Change of weight in furniture and persons occurred at will. Prescriptions for different diseases were given in Latin.

“She was,” says Madame de Jelihowsky, “what would be called in our days a ‘good writing medium,’ that is to say, she could write out the answers herself while talking to those around her.” But the lady adds that the answers given were “not always in perfect accord with the facts.”

The spirits were called “Helen’s spirits,” and also her “post-mortem visitors.”

Madame de Jelihowsky says a little quaintly—

“From letters received by me from my sister I found that she had been dissatisfied with much that I had said of her in my ‘Truth about H. P. Blavatsky.’ ”

This seems very natural, for it is now announced that the “post-mortem visitors” were no “ghosts of the deceased, but only the manifestations of her powerful friends in their astral envelopes” (“Incidents, etc.,” p. 81).

On one occasion the alleged ghost of Pushkin, the poet, came and laboriously rapped out a dreary poem, stating that “he had one desire, and that was 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.”

Mr. Sinnett describes all this as a subtle comedy. Madame Blavatsky, full of the secrets of Tibet, pretended to be a medium, and the table-rapping and table-turning were the ordinary properties of the play. He fails to see how damaging all this is to the Russian lady. What were the tremendous secrets of the Mahatmas? Simply that all the appearances from ghostland, the Samuels, the Moseses, the Eliases of scripture, the Pitri of the Rig Veda, the “spirits” of Swedenborg and Mr. Stainton Moses were deceptions. Instead of proving a hereafter to man these spirits were malignant fiends, and intercourse with them the crucial danger of humanity. And yet she goes at once to her own home, and makes her father and her sister dabble with them day and night. Was there no danger in this of her sister becoming a medium?

But the danger with Madame Blavatsky seems to be that she upsets the plea of her counsel before he has done speaking from his brief. Colonel Olcott lets out that she confessed in America in a letter which he quotes, that she knew nothing of spiritualism until she met Home the medium in Paris in 1858. “Home converted me to spiritualism (Theosophist, August, 1892, p. 649). But if she knew nothing of spiritualism until 1858, how did she set a mission to put it down in 1856?

CHAPTER III. THE SOCIÉTÉ SPIRITE.

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IN 1871, MADAME BLAVATSKY SET up a spiritualistic society in Cairo. Mr. Sinnett calls it a “quasi spiritualistic” society, but Madame Blavatsky calls it a Société Spirite. Attached to one of the hotels, at this time, was an English woman who afterwards married a M. Coulomb. The Times newspaper by and by published a number of letters professing to come from Madame Blavatsky to this lady. Of course any lady that betrays her friend is not the best of witnesses, but such as it is we give her account of this spiritualistic society. She was on intimate terms with Madame Blavatsky, and lent her money.

“In the year 1872, one day as I was walking through the street called ‘Sekke el Ghamma el harmar’—‘the street of the red mosque’—in Cairo, Egypt, I was roused from my pensive mood by something that brushed by me very swiftly. I looked up and saw a lady. ‘Who is that lady?’ I asked a passer-by. ‘She is that Russian spiritist who calls the dead and makes them answer your questions.’ This news was to me tidings of great joy, as I was just mourning for the death of my dear and only brother, whom I had recently lost. The idea of being able to hear his voice was for me heavenly delight. I was told that if I asked the secretary of her spiritualistic society to introduce me to her he would do so (he was a Greek gentleman of my acquaintance). I was introduced, and found her very interesting and very clever. My first essay at the spirits was not successful; I neither saw nor heard anything but a few raps. Having shown my disappointment to the secretary of the society, I was told that the spirits did not like to appear in a room which had not been purified and not exclusively used for the purpose, but if I would return in a few days I would see wonders, as they were preparing a closet where nothing else but séances were to be done. I went to see the closet, and saw that it was lined with red cloth, all over the four sides and also the ceiling, with a space between the wall and the cloth of about three inches. I was so ignorant of these things at the time that I formed no malicious idea of it. I called again when the closet was ready, but what was my surprise when, instead of finding the kind spirits there to answer our questions, I found a room full of people, all alive, and using most offensive language towards the founder of the society, saying that she had taken their money and had left them only with this, pointing at the space between the wall and the cloth, where several pieces of twine were still hanging which had served to pull through the ceiling a long glove stuffed with cotton, which was to represent the materialized hand and arm of some spirit. I went away, leaving the crowd as red as tire, ready to knock her down when she came back. Later on I met her again, and I asked her how she came to do such a thing; to which she answered that it was Madame Sebire’s doings (this was a lady who lived with Madame Blavatsky), so I let the matter drop. I saw that she looked very unhappy. I called on her the next day, and on hearing that she was really in want I gave her pecuniary help, and continued doing so for some time. As she could not repay me, she granted me receipts, which I left in my boxes in Egypt when I came away. Our acquaintance continued all the while she remained in the country.

“This money was lent cash, no bill, no account, nothing but cash. To my knowledge Madame Blavatsky while in Cairo never lived in an hotel. I have known her in three different apartments. The first was in ‘Sekke el Ghamma el harmar,’ the second at ‘Abdeen,’ and the third at ‘Kantara el dick.’ In ‘Abdeen’ she had opened her apartment to the public, who went there to consult her spirits, and where the fiasco of the materialized hand and arm took place as I have already said, and this in the year 1872.

“She left Cairo for Russia, and I did not hear anything more about her until I traced her name in an article reproduced from an American newspaper, in which I learned that she had started a society of a new kind; this was not a spiritualistic society, but a theosophical one.”

We will now give Madame Blavatsky’s story cited by Mr. Sinnett:—

“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 this comedy with a drama, I got nearly shot by a madman, who had been present at the only two public séances we held, and got possessed, I suppose, by some vile spook” (Sinnett, “Incidents, etc.,” p. 159).

Mr. Sinnett tells us that in consequence of all this “slanders and scandals were set on foot.” People “even went the length of maintaining that instead of paying the mediums and the expenses of the society, it was Madame Blavatsky, who had herself been paid and had attempted to pass off juggler tricks as genuine phenomena” (“Incidents, etc.,” p. 161).

Into this great question we cannot enter. Oar main inquiry is this—Is there any evidence that in these days Madame Blavatsky knew anything of the Brothers of Tibet and their crusade against the spiritualists? When a lady gets up even a “quasi spiritualistic” society, we should say that the evidence is rather the other way.

One small gleam of light falls on the period which precedes the foundation of the Cairo society. Professor Coues has a letter from Mr. Hodgson, announcing that Madame Coulomb had a secret against Madame Blavatsky which was in some way connected with one Metrovitch, whom Madame Blavatsky eventually married. They appeared, I believe, on platforms together, in a sort of “variety entertainment,” to use the language of the music halls.

CHAPTER IV. THE ‘MIRACLE CLUB.’

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IN THE MONTH OF JULY, 1874, a literary gentleman was sent by the editor of the New York Sun to write articles upon some strange spiritualistic phenomena that were occurring at Chittenden, under the mediumship of the brothers Eddy. This gentleman, whose name was Olcott, had served during the great war in the detective department of the military police, and had been rewarded with the honorary rank of colonel. His articles attracted attention, and in the month of September he went to Chittenden once more, this time with an artist, Mr. Kappes. There he met a strange lady:—

“I remember our first day’s acquaintance as if it were yesterday; besides which, I have recorded the main facts in my Eddy book (“People from the Other World,” pp. 293 et seq.). It was a sunny day, and even the gloomy old farm-house looked cheerful. It stands amid a lovely landscape, in a valley bounded by grassy slopes that rise into mountains covered to their very crests with leafy groves. This was the time of the ‘Indian summer,’ when the whole country is covered with a faint bluish haze, like that which has given the ‘Nilgiri’ mountains their name, and the foliage of the beeches, elms and maples, touched by early frosts, has been turned from green into a mottling of gold and crimson that gives the landscape the appearance of being hung all over with royal tapestries. One must go to America to see this autumnal splendour in its full perfection.

“The dinner hour at Eddy’s was noon, and it was from the entrance door of the bare and comfortless dining-room that Kappes and I first saw H. P. B. She had arrived shortly before noon with a French Canadian lady, and they were at table as we entered. My eye was first attracted by a scarlet Garibaldian shirt the former wore, as being in vivid contrast with the dull colours around. Her hair was then a thick blonde mop, worn shorter than the shoulders, and it stood out from her head, silken, soft, and crinkled to the roots, like the fleece of a Cotswold ewe. This and the red shirt were what struck my attention before I took in the picture of her features. It was a massive Calmuck face, contrasting in its suggestion of power, culture and imperiousness, as strangely with the commonplace visages about the room, as her red garment did with the grey and white tones of the walls and woodwork, and the dull costumes of the rest of the guests. All sorts of cranky people were continually coming and going at Eddy’s, to see the mediumistic phenomena, and it only struck me on seeing this eccentric lady that this was but one more of the sort. Pausing on the door-sill, I whispered to Kappes, ‘Good gracious! look at that specimen, will you.’ I went straight across and took a seat opposite her to indulge ray favourite habit of character-study.2 The two ladies conversed in French, making remarks of no consequence, but I saw at once from her accent and fluency of speech that, if not a Parisian, she must at least be a finished French scholar. Dinner over, the two went outside the house, and Madame Blavatsky rolled herself a cigarette, for which I gave her a light as a pretext to enter into conversation. My remark having been made in French, we fell at once into talk in that language. She asked me how long I had been there, and what I thought of the phenomena; saying that she herself was greatly interested in such things, and had been drawn to Chittenden by reading the letters in the DailyGraphic: the public were growing so interested in these that it was sometimes impossible to find a copy of the paper on the bookstalls an hour after publication, and she had paid a dollar (about 3 rupees) for a copy of the last issue. ‘I hesitated before coming here,’ she said, ‘because I was afraid of meeting that Colonel Olcott.’ ‘Why should you be afraid of him, madame?’ I rejoined. ‘Oh! because I fear he might write about me in his paper.’ I told her that she might make herself perfectly easy on that score, for I felt quite sure Colonel Olcott would not put her in his letters unless she wished it. And I introduced myself. We became friends at once. Each of us felt as if we were of the same social world, cosmopolitans, freethinkers, and not in close touch with the rest of the company, intelligent and very worthy as some of them were. It was the voice of common sympathy with the higher occult side of man and nature; the attraction of soul to soul, not that of sex to sex. Neither then, at the commencement, nor ever afterwards, had either of us the sense of the other being of the opposite sex. We were simply chums; so regarded each other, so called each other. Some base people from time to time dared to suggest that a closer tie bound us together, as they had heard that poor, malformed, persecuted H. P. B. had been the mistress of various other men, but no pure person could hold to such an opinion after passing any time in her company, and seeing how her every look, word, and action, proclaimed her sexlessness.