Blavatsky H.P. - Going To and Fro in the Earth: Difference between revisions

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<center>(Our Monthly Report)</center>

<center>[Lucifer, Vol. V, No. 25, September, 1889, pp. 69-77]</center>

The earnest recommendation of the Apostle of the Gentiles seems to fall flat on our Christian friends of the clerical persuasion, and suppressio veri, suggestio falsi appears to have become the motto of their public organs.

And yet all things differ in this world, even clerical papers. While a few of the type of the Church Reformer jubilate and almost glorify Theosophy for the pleasure of crowing victory over the discomfiture of Secularists; others, {{Page aside|402}}pre-eminent among them the Methodist Times, jump at the opportunity to exhume dried up mud for use against Theosophy and its leaders. This they do, we are told, with the object of opening the eyes of those who may have remained hitherto blind, and to refresh the public memory. But here again the Christian modus operandi varies in process and intention. When the God and MASTER of the Christians wanted to restore sight to the blind man “he spat” on the parched soil of a street in Jerusalem, “made clay of the spittle and anointed the eyes” of the patient, thus restoring his sight. The editor of the Methodist Times proceeds on other lines. He spits also, but it is only his venom, into the now fossilized mud of the Report of the S.P.R. He opens with it no one’s eyes, but relieves his Christian heart of some of its heavy weight of narrow sectarian bigotry and hatred for the freethinking Annie Besant, at the expense of the no less-hated H. P. Blavatsky. So empty is his own mind of any original conception that, in order to crush, as he fondly hopes, the latter individual, the man of God actually uses as weapons the arguments and expressions ad literatim of his mortal enemy—G. W. Foote, the editor of the Freethinker—and in his rapture conveniently forgets the quotation marks. The “notorious Infidel,” as Mr. Foote is generally called by the orthodox “Faithful,” having written in his pamphlet<ref>Mrs. Besant’s Theosophy.</ref> that Mdme. Blavatsky was now presumably Mrs. Besant’s “guide, philosopher and friend,” the reverend editor of the Methodist Times forthwith proceeds to repeat the lucky expression and to build thereupon an editorial which he calls “Mrs. Besant’s New Teacher, Madame Blavatsky, and her Indian Record.” This “record” in the Methodist Times consists of two kinds of fibs; of false hypotheses emanated from the prolific brain of a young Australian gentleman, a kind of “Jack-the-medium-killer,” who served the Psychical Researchers in the triple and quadruple capacity of detective, counsel for prosecution, judge and jury; and of equally false hallucinations of the said “Editor, Missionaries & Co.” Thus while he carefully repeats the stale and long exploded speculations of the Report, he {{Page aside|403}}adds to them such undeniably false statements as this: “So complete was this evidence [of fraud, if you please] . . . that this remarkable [theosophical] movement collapsed as speedily as it has risen, and today the number of men in all India willing to sign themselves F.T.S. might almost be counted on the fingers of one hand.”

If the correctness of Mdme Blavatsky’s “Record” is to be judged by this item in it, then is she fully vindicated. With the five newly-formed branches at Ceylon there are now in India 144 Theosophical Societies,<ref>“The hundred and forty and four . . . which were redeemed from the earth,” and its missionaries, verily! (Rev., xiv, 1-3.)</ref> i.e., many thousands of “Fellows” added to those of 1884.<ref>Vide the official records of the T.S. and the Supplement to The Theosophist for January, 1889.</ref> Not half-a-dozen of F.T.S.’s resigned in consequence of the “Report,” “Mr. Sinnett, Dewan Bahadur Ragunath Rao, the Rai Bahadurs and Ananda Charlu,” etc., all whose names are so carefully enumerated by the editor, are still F.T.S.’s, still members of our Society and as alive as ever. On the other hand, new members have steadily increased in number, and the T.S. is now assuming gigantic proportions—if we consider the incessant opposition, persecution, slanders and deadly warfare against the Theosophical Society.

Thus, one finds that what the Methodist Times quotes from other people’s writings is false; and the little that it adds as variations—is untrue. But even the latter sensational news about the collapse of the T.S. in India is a very stale invention. It appeared several months ago in the same Methodist Times when they had to defend themselves and their missionaries in India from the but too truthful accusations that Mr. Caine, M. P., brought against them.<ref>Vide our Reply in the March Lucifer of 1889, p. 83. “Thou shalt not bear false witness . . .”</ref>

But now comes the comical side of the situation. The good Christian editor quotes from the “Hodgson Report” a sentence which makes of Madame Blavatsky “an accomplished forger of other people’s handwriting.” This looks ominous as it stands. It might have led the writer of it four {{Page aside|404}}years ago to the dock of slanderers, wherein he would have to make good his calumny before jury and public, and it contains a libel gross enough to place the reverend editor of the Methodist Times in the same predicament now. But when one analyses the “terrible indictment,” what does one find? Why, that those “other people,” whose handwriting Madame Blavatsky is accused of having forged, are not people at all, according to the “Report.” They are not even materialized spooks, or astral forms, but simply “fictitious personages,” and “supposed” astral forms. How in the world, then, can one be accused of forging a non-existing handwriting?—the handwriting of something which does not exist, and has, therefore, no hand to write with? This is something that passes our comprehension.