< Animal Magnetism & Homeopathy (continued from page 11-197) >
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<Untitled> (The Pioneer announcer...)
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<Untitled> (Raja...)
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Madame Blavatsky on “The Himalayan Brothers.”
Sir,—“On the authority of an adept” (?) “they” (the Theosophists and Madame Blavatsky) “are all mediums under the influence of the lower spirits.” Such is the sentence used by you in an editorial review of Mr. Sinnett’s “Occult World” (Spiritualist, June 17th) Doubtful as its pertinency might appear, I personally found nothing very objectionable in it, the more so, as elsewhere you do me the honour to express your conviction that (whether controlled by good or bad spirits) I yet am a “strong physical medium”—that term precluding at least the suspicion of my being a regular impostor. This letter then is not directed against you, but rather against the pretensions of a would-be “adept.” Another point should be also attended to before I proceed, in order that the situation may be as clearly defined as possible.
Finding myself for the period of nearly seven years one of the best abused individuals under the sun, I rather got accustomed to that sort of thing. Hence, I would hardly take up the pen now to defend my own character. If people, besides forgetting that I am a woman, and an old woman, are dull enough to fail to perceive that had I declared myself anything in creation, save a Theosophist and one of the founders of our Society, I would have been in every respect-— materially as well as socially—better off in the world’s consideration, and that therefore, since, notwithstanding all the persecution and opposition encountered, I persist in remaining and declaring myself one, I cannot well be that charlatan and pretender some people would see in me—I really cannot help it. Fools are unable, and the wise unwilling to see the absurdity of such an accusation, for as Shakespeare puts it:
“Folly in fools bears not so strong a note |
It is not then to defend myself that I claim space in your columns, but to answer one whose ex-cathedra utterances have revolted the sense of justice of more than one of our Theosophists in India, and to defend them—who have a claim on all the reverential feeling that my nature is capable of.
A new correspondent, one of those dangerous, quasi-anonymous individuals who abuse their literary privilege of hiding their true personality and thus shirk responsibility behind an initial or two, has lately won a prominent place in the columns of your journal. He calls himself an “adept;” that is easy enough, but does or rather can he prove it? To begin with, in the sight of the Spiritualists as much as in that of sceptics in general, an “adept,” whether he hails from Thibet, India, or London, is all one. The latter will persist in calling him an impostor; and the former, were he even to prove his powers, in seeing in him either a medium or a juggler. Now your “J. K.” when he states in the Spiritualist of June 24th, that “the phenomena attendant upon real adeptship are on an entirely different plane from Spiritualism” risks, may is sure to have every one of the above expletives flung in his face by both the above mentioned classes.
Could he but prove what he claims, namely, the powers conferring upon a person the title of an initiate, such epithets might well be scorned by him. Aye,— but I ask again, is he ready to make good his claim? The language used by him, to begin with, is not that which a true adept would ever use. It is dogmatic and <... continues on page 11-199 >
Editor's notes
Sources
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London Spiritualist, No. 468, August 12, 1881, pp. 80-2