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 9
of the Present Online Edition:
In
this Chapter H.P.B. refers to Frederic Myers, of the Society for Psychical
Research. She demonstrates why the charges against her were absurd, and W.Q.
Judge reports about the clairvoyant and clairaudient writing of “The Secret
Doctrine”.
(Carlos Cardoso Aveline)
Letters of H.P. Blavatsky [1]
Chapter IX
[THE PATH, Volume X, New
York, August 1895, pp. 139-142.]
H.P.B. was in perfect raptures over the climate and
scenery of Switzerland. All her life she adored nature. “I have never breathed
so freely. I can even walk as I have not been able to walk for ten years past.”
At this time all the sad troubles of the past
year appeared to Helena Petrovna not in a black but in a humorous light. She
wrote to Madame Jelihovsky in September, 1885:
“My faithful Theosophists won’t let me alone.
They invite me to London. They want me to put myself at the head of the
European Theosophical Society; and to edit my Theosophist from
there. And the Hindus are also piling letters on me, telling me I must come back
to India, threatening poor Olcott with a mutiny without me. In their eyes he is
only the realizer of my inspirations, and I am the chief priestess and Pythia.
Have you read about the Psychists (the members of the S. P. R.) and their
meeting in London, publicly accusing me of having created Theosophy, of having
invented the Mahatmas, and of having played all kinds of tricks - all with the
only aim and object of political intrigue for Russia, which paid me for it?!!
Even such enraged Conservatives and Russophobes as Mr. Sinnett and Lord
Borthwick were disgusted with such meaningless rubbish. The only foundation for
their accusation is that during my arrival in India some Anglo-Indian papers
stopped abusing Russia, as they had been doing up till then. There is some
truth in this. Some of the editors of the best papers, as The Indian
Mirror, Amrita Bazaar Patrika, The Hindu, etc., are Theosophists and
my personal friends, and so they knew very well that every word uttered by them
against Russia cut me to the heart - especially if it is Englishly unjust. And
so they abstained from it, and for this I was promoted into a paid official
spy. Oh Lord, I recognize my usual fate! D’avoir la reputation, sans en
avoir eu la plaisir! And if I only had the consolation of having been
of some use to dear Russia: but such was not the case; only negative, trivial
results.”
“I understand,” wrote H.P.B. in another letter,
“that the Psychical Research Society could not help separating from us. Though
at the beginning it warmed itself in the nest of the Theosophical Society, like
the thievish cuckoo warming its progeny in someone else’s nest - at the time,
as you remember, when Myers so constantly wrote to you, [2] and also requested me to write to
you asking you to act as his Russian correspondent. It would be too dangerous
for Myers, as he makes a point of not separating himself from European Science,
to proclaim honestly and fearlessly what are no tricks and no lies but the
result of powers not known to European scientists. He would have against him
all the greatest social peers of England, the clergy and the corporations
representative of Science. As to us Theosophists, we have no fear of them, as
we swim against the stream. Our Society is a kind of constant poke-in-the-eye
for all the bigoted Jesuits and pseudo-scientists. As for me, being a Russian,
I am a regular scapegoat for them all. They had to explain my influence in some
way or another, and so they wrote an indictment - a whole book by a former
colleague and friend, Myers. It begins with the words: ‘We proclaim Madame
Blavatsky the grandest, the cleverest, the most consummate impostor of the
age!’ And in truth it looks like it! Just think of it: I arrive all alone in
America; choose Olcott, a spiritualist, and begin work on him as a kind of
prologue, driving him mad without any delay! But from an ardent follower of
Spiritualism he becomes a Theosophist; after which I, though unable at the time
to write three English words without a mistake, sit down and write Isis. Its
appearance produces a furore on one side and gnashing of teeth
on the other. Here I invent the Mahatmas, and immediately dozens of people take
to believing in them, many see them - there begins a series of phenomena under
the eyes of hundreds of people. In a year the Society counts a thousand
members. Master appears to Olcott ordering him to migrate to India. We start,
baking new Branches like hot loaves on our way, in London, in Egypt, in Corfu.
At last in India we grow to be many thousands. And, mind you, all these are my
tricks. Letters of the Mahatmas simply pour from all the points of the compass,
in all languages; in Sanskrit, in Indian dialects, in ancient Telugu - which is
little known, even in India. I fabricate all this and still alone. But after a short
time I very adroitly make confederates out of those whom till then I had
deceived, leading them by their noses; I teach them how to write false letters
in handwritings which I have invented and how to produce jugglers’ tricks. When
I am in Madras, the phenomena happening in Bombay and Allahahad are produced by
my confederates. Who are they, these confederates? This has not been made
clear. Take notice of this false note. Before Olcott, Hubbe-Schlieden, the
Gordons, the Sinnetts, and other people of standing, Myers politely excuses
himself, acknowledging them to be only too credulous, poor dupes of mine. Then
who are the deceivers with me? This is the problem which my judges and accusers
cannot explain anyhow. Though I point out to them that these people must
necessarily exist: otherwise they are threatened with the unavoidable necessity
of proclaiming me an out-and-out sorceress. How could it be otherwise? In five
years I create an enormous Society, of Christians, Hindus and Buddhists.
Without going anywhere, being constantly ill, sitting as if rooted at my work,
the results of which are evident - I, an old Russian ‘gossip,’ spreading nets
over thousands of people who without any signs of insanity believe in my
phenomena; as also hundreds of thinkers and learned people who from being
materialists became visionaries - how can people help seeing
in me the ‘greatest impostor of the age’?
“In the enumeration of my sins, it is openly
proclaimed: ‘You naive Anglo-Saxon Theosophists, do not believe that Madame Blavatsky’s
influence in India only reaches you; it goes far further. When she came back to
Madras, about eight-hundred students, not Theosophists at all, presented her
with an address of sympathy. Her influence is immense. Nothing would be easier
for her than to instil hatred towards England in the hearts of the Hindus, and
to prepare the soil slowly but surely for a Russian invasion.’ So this is what
they fear, is it? A Russian spy indeed! no spy at all, but a regular conqueror.
You may be proud of such a sister . . . . . . . .
“It is no longer my business, but the business
of all Theosophists. Let them fight for me; as for me, I am sitting quietly in
Wurtzburg, waiting for Nadya’s (Madame Fadeef’s) promised visit, and won't stir
from here. I am writing a new book which will be worth two such as Isis.”
About the same time she informed her friends
that the phenomena of her clairvoyance and clairaudience, which took place many
years ago in New York, were taking place again and were considerably
intensified. She said she saw “such wonderful panoramas and antediluvian
dramas,” had such clear glimpses and vistas into the hoary past, maintaining
she had never heard or seen better with her inner faculties.
About this time the half-restored health of
Madame Blavatsky came to grief again. The worry of her final rupture with V. S.
Solovioff, whom she had taken for a true disinterested friend until then, and
the death of a beloved cousin of hers were partial causes of it. Her sister
writes concerning it: “V. S. Solovioff did not succeed in his earnest wish to
‘ruin’ Madame Blavatsky, but by this new scratch at her sore heart he certainly
succeeded in shortening her life.” The result of all was a day’s swoon.
“I have frightened them all, poor people,”
writes H.P.B., “I am told that for half an hour I was like one dead. They
brought me back to life with digitalis. I fainted in the drawing room, and
returned to consciousness when undressed in my bed, with a doctor at the foot
of my bedstead, and Mlle. Hoffman crying her eyes out over me. The kind hearted
Hubbe-Schleiden, President of the German Society, brought the doctor personally
from town, and my kindly ladies, wives of the painters Tedesco and Schmiechen,
and Mlle. Hoffman sat up all night with me.”
NOTES:
[1] Copyright,
1895.
[2] He wrote so
often asking questions about H.P.B. that Madame Jelihovsky’s family got wearied
and almost gave the postman directions not to deliver the letters! (W.Q.J.)
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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.
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