The Authentic Letters of
H.P.B., As Edited by One
Of the Main Founders of the
Theosophical Movement
William Q. Judge
H.P.
Blavatsky and W.Q. Judge
Introduction to Chapter 3
of the Present Online Edition:
The
present chapter shows the contradictory
nature of Spiritualism.
In its higher dimensions, it has many points in common with theosophy
and deserves suport. In its lower and necromantic aspects, it promotes dangerously
unhealthy actions, against which the public must be warned with due information
and explanation.
The same complex view of Spiritualism is found in the Mahatma Letters. Camille
Flammarion, the famous astronomer, was an example of the theosophical level of
Spiritualism, while the necromantic sessions were always condemned. Alfred Russell Wallace, mentioned by William
Judge as a defender of Spiritualism, was one of the main scientists at the
origin of the theory of evolution, and his researches are discussed in “The
Secret Doctrine”.
Later on, H.P.B. describes in an ironical way the careful “phrenological
examination” to which her head was submitted.
Phrenology was a psychological theory based on the idea that one’s
mental faculties and character traits are indicated in the configurations of
one’s skull. Needless to say, no phrenologist could ever know one’s higher
self by examining the skull of one’s physical body. And the focus of consciouness and center of decisions of an
Initiate is precisely in the higher self.
At the point where H.P.B. discusses Huxley’s ideas and mentions “Anima
Mundi, ether, Archos of Plato...” there was a mistake in the printed text. It says “Anima Muni”. We made the correction.
The article on Huxley’s ideas which H.P.B. mentions in this chapter was published
in “Banner of Light”, Boston, in October 28, 1876.[1]
In the final paragraph of the chapter HPB examines - in a letter dated 8
July, 1878 - her emotional difficulties with becoming a North-American citizen.
Personal emotions apart, one must also consider
what she said in an article published a
little more than one year later. H.P.B. was
already living in India when she wrote, referring to the theosophical movement
by the term “Society”, in an article published in October 1879:
“Born in the United States, the Society was constituted in the model of
its Motherland. The latter, omitting from its Constitution the name of God lest
it should afford a pretext one day to
make a state religion, gives
absolute equality to all religions in
its laws. All support and each is in turn protected by the State.
The Society, modelled upon this Constitution, may fairly be termed ‘A
Republic of Conscience’.” [2]
(Carlos Cardoso Aveline)
NOTES:
[1] The article can be
found at “H.P. Blavatsky Collected Writings”, TPH, Volume I, pp. 226-233, under the title “Huxley and Slade: Who
is More Guilty of ‘False Pretences’?”
[2] From the article
“What Are The Theosophists?”, in “Theosophical Articles”, H.P. Blavatsky,
“Theosophy Company”, Los Angeles, 511 pp., 1981, volume I, pp. 48-55,
especially 53.
Letters of H.P. Blavatsky [1]
Chapter III
[THE PATH, Volume IX, New
York, February 1895, pp. 379-385.]
The
following letter was written before the foundation of the Theosophical Society.
A somewhat inaccurate translation appeared in Mr. Sinnett’s “Incidents in the
Life of Madame Blavatsky”, but as
some additions were made to the original it is interesting to see what was
actually written by H.P.B. at such an early
date.
“The more I see of spiritist séances in this cradle and hotbed of
Spiritism and mediums, the more clearly I see how dangerous they are for
humanity. Poets speak of a thin partition
between the two worlds. There is no partition whatever. Blind people have
imagined obstacles of this kind because
coarse organs of hearing, sight and feeling do not allow the majority of people
to penetrate the difference of being.
Besides, Mother Nature has done well in endowing us with coarse senses, for otherwise the individuality and personality of
man would become impossible, because the dead would be continually mixing with
the living, and the living would assimilate themselves with the dead. It would
not be so bad if there were around us only spirits of the same kind as
ourselves, the half-spiritual refuse of mortals who died without having
reconciled themselves to the great necessity
of death. Then we might submit to
the inevitable. One way or another, we cannnot help identifying ourselves
physically and in a perfectly
unconscious way with the dead, absorbing the constituent atoms of what lived
before us: with every breath we inhale them, and breathe out that which
nourishes the formless creatures, elementals floating in the air in the expectation of being transformed into
living beings. This is not only a physical process, but partly a moral one. We
assimilate those who preceded us, gradually
absorbing their brain molecules and exchanging mental auras - which
means thoughts, desires and tendencies.
This is an interchange common to the entire human race and to all that lives. A
natural process, an outcome of the laws of the
economy of nature . . . . . It explains similarities external and moral .
. . . . But there exists another absolute law, which manifests itself
periodically and sporadically: this is a law, as it were, of artificial and
compulsory assimilation. During epidemics of this kind the kingdom of dead invades the region
of the living, though fortunately this kind of refuse are bound by the ties of
their former surroundings. And so, when evoked by mediums, they cannot break
through the limits and boundaries in which they acted and lived . . . . . And the wider the doors are opened to them
the further the necromantic epidemic is spread; the more unanimous the
mediums and the spiritists in spreading
the magnetic fluid of their
evocations, the more power and vitality are acquired by the glamour.”
Madame Jelihovsky says that “Helena Petrovna described many séances in
terms of horror in consequence of the sights she was enabled to see as a result
oh her clairvoyance. She saw details
hidden from the others present: perfect
invasions of hosts of soulless remains of mortals, ‘woven of fleshly passions,
of evil thoughts, of vicious feelings which had outlived the body’. And H.P.B. wrote:
“It stands to reason that this
mere earthly refuse, irresistibly drawn to the earth, cannot follow the soul
and spirit - these highest principles of man’s being. With horror and disgust I
often observed how a reanimated shadow of this kind separated itself from the
inside of the medium; how, separating itself from his astral body and clad in
someone else’s vesture, it pretended to be someone’s relation, causing the
person to go into ecstasies and making people open wide their hearts and their
embraces to these shadows whom they sincerely believed to be their dear fathers and brothers,
ressuscitated to convince them of life eternal, as well as to see them . . . . .
Oh, if they only knew the truth, if they only believed! If they saw, as I have often seen, a monstrous, bodiless
creature seizing hold of someone present at these spiritistic sorceries! It wraps the man as if with a
black shroud, and slowly disappears in him as if drawn into his body by each of
his living pores.”
In the year 1878, or thereabouts, a defense of modern Spiritualism was brought out by Alfred
Russell Wallace. This greatly pleased
H.P.B., who wrote on the subject to her sister:
“See how cleverly he proves how mistaken people are who say that we
propagate ancient prejudices and superstitions; how he proves that a body of
people who preach the study of man’s nature, who teach the acquirement of
eternal bliss as a consequence of attaining the full perfection of their moral
and spiritual powers, is the chiefest enemy, not only of gross materialism,
but also of all kinds of silly bigotry
and myth-worship. Spiritualism is an
experimental science; its development - which is the object of the Theosophical
Society [2] - will make it possible
to find a foundation for a true philosophy . There is only one truth, and it is
higher than anything else. Theosophy is bound to destroy such meaningless
expressions as ‘a miracle’ or the ‘supernatural’. In nature everything is natural, but
everything is not known; and yet there is nothing more miraculous than her
powers, hidden as well as revealed. Spiritualism, meaning the spiritual powers of man and the deeper knowledge of the
psychical aspects of life, which we Theosophists preach, will cure the old
evils of religious quarrels, owing to which the faith of man in the primitive
truths of immortality and repayment according to deserts is disappearing.
Wallace speaks the truth when he says that Spiritualism well deserves the
sympathy of moralists, philosophers, even of politicians and of everyone who
desires the perfecting of our society
and our life.”
H.P.B. did not spare herself when portraying the humorous side of her
surroundings. The American Phrenological Society wrote and asked for her
portrait and for a cast of her head, and Professor Buchanan, the phrenologist
and psychometer, called on her for an interview. She describes the incident in
writing to Madame Jelihovsky:
“And so the poor victim (victim in view of his awful task) was sent to
me - a phrenological occultist, who came in the company of a huge bouquet (as
if I were a prima donna!) and with three trunk-loads of compliments. He fingered my head and fingered it again; he
turned it on one side and then on the
other. He snorted over me - snorted like a steam-engine, until we both began to
sweat. And at last he spat in disgust. ‘Do you call this a head?’ he says;
‘It’s no head at all, but a ball of contradictions.’ ‘On this head’, he says, ‘there is an
endless war of most conflicting bumps; all Turks and Montenegrins.[3] I can’t make anything of this chaos of
impossibilities and confusion of Babel.
Here, for instance’, he says, poking my skull with his finger, ‘is a
bump of the most ardent faith and power of belief, and here, side by side with
it, the bump of scepticism, pessimism, and incredulity, proudly swelling
itself. And now, if you please, here is
the bump of sincerity for you, walking hand in hand with the bump of hipocrisy and cunning. The bump of domesticity and love for your
country boxes the ears of the bump of wandering and love of change. And do you mean to say you take this to be a
respectable head?’ he asked. He seized himself by the hair, and in his despair
pulled a considerable lock from his own respectable head, answering to the
highest standards of phrenology . . . . . But all the same he described,
drew, and published my poor head for the
amusement of the hundred thousand
subscribers to the Phrenological Journal. Alas, Alas, ‘heavy is the crown of Monomach! [4]
The aureola of my own greatness, acquired so undeservedly, is simply
crushing me. Here, I send you a copy of my poor head, which you are requested
to swallow without sauce. A hundred thousand Yankees are going to feast upon
it, and so I am certainly going to save a bit for my own blood!”
“Now listen to this, little brothers”,
she writes in her next letter, “I am sending you a great curio. Examine
it, wonder at it, and improve by it. The
Freemasons of England, whose Grand-Master is the Prince of Wales, have sent me
a diploma, which means to say that I am
raised to a high Masonic dignity, and so my title is
‘Mysterious Freemason’. Ah, me! Next I
shall probably be elected Pope of Rome for my virtues. The decoration they sent
me is very beautiful: a ruby cross and a
rose. I send you the cutting from the Masonic Journal.”
Many honors were showered upon H.P.B. as a result of the
publication of “Isis Unveiled”. A very
ancient Society in Benares, founded before the beginning of the Christian
Era, called the Sat-Bai, sent her a diploma in Sanskrit, decorated with many
symbols. It is remarkable that in this diploma Helena Petrovna is alluded to as
a “Brother of the female sex”. “Henceforward our brother Rad is entitled, owing
to his great knowledge, to power over the inferior grades of ministers, couriers, listeners,
scribes, and the dumb ones.” H.P.B. also received a very ancient copy of the “Bhagavad Gita”, in
a mother-of-pearl and gold binding, from
an Indian Prince. At the approach of the
Russo-Turkish war of 1877-1878, H.P.B. wrote many articles against the Roman
Catholics, because the Pope had blessed the weapons of the Turks. These articles she signed “A Russian Woman”. They created such a
stir that Cardinal McCloskey sent his Jesuit secretary to her, under the
pretext of making the acquaintance of “such a remarkable woman, and pioneer thinker, who knew how to shake
off the prejudice of patriotism and to create
for herself an independent
position in an independent country”.
In February, 1877, she wrote to
her sister:
“I told him his endeavors were in vain; that whatever I personally, as a
Theosophist, might believe was no business of his at all; that the faith of my Russian fathers was sacred to me; that I shall always stand
up for this faith and for Russia, and shall always write against the attacks of
the hypocritical Catholics upon them as
long as my hand can hold a pen, and without letting myself be frightened by the threats of their Pope or the wrath of
their Roman Church, the great Beast of the Apocalypse!”
The result of this visit was a
new article by her against the head of
the Western Christian Church, who blessed Musselmans that they might
better kill Christians, Slavs, and Russians. Soon after this move Mme.
Jelihovsky received newspaper cuttings containing the report of H.P.B.’s real
fight - but this time not with an ecclesiastic, but with a propagator of
materialistic views, of European renown. She writes to her sister in her usual
humorous way:
“I send you, friends, one more article of mine, which received by no
means small honors here and was reprinted by several New York papers. This is the
way it happened: the London scientist Huxley has been visiting here,
‘the progenitor of protoplasm and high-priest of psychophobia’, as I have
surnamed him. He delivered three lectures. At the first, he made short work of
Moses and abolished the whole of the Old Testament, declaring to the public
that man is nothing but the great-grandson of a frog of the Silurian period. At
the second he ‘beat everyone’, like a new Kit Kitich. [5] ‘You are all fools’, he
says, ‘you don’t understand anything . .
. . . Here is the four-toed foot of Hypparion,
the antediluvian horse, for you, from which it is evident that we,
five toed men, are closely related to it
as well, through our origin.’ There is
an insult for you! But at the third lecture our wise psychophob
tried to sing it altogether too
high, and so started telling fibs. ‘Listen to me’, he says, ‘I have looked into
the telescopes, I have whistled under the clouds in balloons, I have looked out for God
everywhere with great zeal; and nowhere, in
spite of all my researches, did I see or meet him! Ergo – there is no God and there was never
any such!’ It was worth these people’s
while paying him $ 5,000 for three
lectures of this sort of logic. ‘Also’,
he says, ‘the human soul . . . . . where is it?
Show it to me as I can show you the heart and the rest of the
‘inwards’. Anima Mundi, ether, Archos of
Plato . . . . . I have searched for the
soul with the aid of spy-glasses and
microscopes; I have observed the dying
and anatomized the dead, but upon my word
of honor, there is no trace of it
anywhere! It is all a lie of the spirits
and the spiritualists. Don’t you’, he says, ‘believe them’. I felt awfully sorry at all this. So sorry as
even to be angry. So I thought to myself, let me go and write an article
against this self-willed, self-opinionated Kit Kitich. And what do you think? I
have written it. And it came out not at all so bad, as you can see by the enclosed
copy. Needless to say, I immediately took this article, sealed it, and sent it through our
corresponding members to London, to be delivered to Huxley with my most earnest
compliments.”
H.P.B. was compelled for various reasons to become an American citizen.
This troubled her considerably, as, like all Russians, she was passionately
devoted to her country. She wrote to
Madame Fadeef:
“My dearest, I write to you because otherwise I would burst with a
strange feeling which is positively suffocating me. It is the 8th of
July to-day, an ominous day for me, but God only knows whether the omen is good
or bad. Today it is exactly five years
and one day since I came to America, and this moment I have just returned from
the Supreme Court where I gave my oath of allegiance to the American Republic
and Constitution. Now for a whole hour I have been a citizen with equal rights
to the President himself. So far so good: the
workings of my original destiny have forced me into this naturalization,
but to my utter astonishment and disgust I was compelled to repeat publicly
after the judge, like a mere parrot, the following tirade: that I ‘would
renounce for ever and even to my death every kind of submission and obedience
to the Emperor of Russia, and that I would renounce all obedience to the powers
established by him and the government of Russia, and that I would accept the
duty to defend, love and serve the Constitution of the United States alone. So
help me God in whom I believe!’ I was
awfully scared when pronouncing this blackguardly recantation of Russia and the
emperor. And so I am not only an apostate to our beloved Russian Church, but a
political renegade. A nice scrape to get into, but how am I to manage to no
longer love Russia or respect the emperor? It is easier to say a thing than to
act accordingly.”
NOTES:
[1] Copyright 1895.
[2] At this time a wide distinction was drawn
between “Spiritualism” and “Spiritism”. It will be seen by H.P.B.’s own definition that she was not speaking of
“Spookology” as the object of the
Theosophical Society. (W.Q.J.)
[3] This was during
the war in 1877. (W.Q.J.)
[4] The coronation
crown of Russia; this was said by one of
the Tsars. (W.Q.J.)
[5] Kit Kitich, or in
Academic Russian Tit Titich, is a stage character whose favorite saying is:
“Who can beat Kit Kitich when Kit Kitich
will beat everyone first?” He has long become the synonym of a bully, a petty,
a self-willed, domestic tyrant. The popular Russian dialect quite unconsciously
transforms “Titus, the son of Titus”
(Tit Titich) into “the Whale, the son of the Whale” (“Kit” means “whale” in
Russian); and H.P.B. used this unconscious pun to make fun of the bilogical evolutionist who claimed to
be, in some sense, the son of the whale,
and whose doctrine she found to be “very like a whale”, too. But a pun,
unlike a bishop, loses by translation. (W.Q.J.)
000
On the role of the esoteric movement in the
ethical awakening of mankind during the 21st century, see the book “The Fire
and Light of Theosophical Literature”, by Carlos Cardoso Aveline.
Published in 2013 by The Aquarian Theosophist, the volume has 255 pages and can be
obtained through Amazon Books.
000
