Blavatsky H.P. - Madame Blavatsky Explains: Difference between revisions

Why all this disturbance? Simply because two humble individuals have spoken a few wholesome truths. If the grand beast of the Apocalypse with its seven heads, and the word “Blasphemy” written upon each, had appeared in heaven, there would hardly have been so much commotion there, as this; and there seems to be a concerted effort to pitch Colonel Olcott and myself, coupled like a pair of Hermetic Siamese twins, into the school of the Diakka. <ref> {{HPB-CW-comment|[When the cutting of this article was pasted in H.P.B.’s Scrapbook, Vol. I, p. 108, she corrected the word “school” to read “Scheol” and added the following footnote in pen and ink: Scheol—the hell of the Jews—you donkey printer. —Compiler.]}}</ref> Occultism seems to the superstitious, as ominous as a comet with fiery tail, and the precursor of war, plagues and other calamities. They seem to think that if they do not crush us, we will destroy Spiritualism.

As I am the only she-Cabalist in America, I cannot be mistaken as to the author’s meaning; so I cheerfully pick up the glove. While I am not responsible for the changes in the barometer of Col. Olcott’s spirituality (which, I notice, usually presage a storm), I am for the following facts: Since I left Chittenden, I have constantly and fearlessly maintained against every one, beginning with Dr. Beard, that their apparitions are genuine and powerful. Whether they are “spirits of hell or goblins damned,” is a question quite separate from that of their mediumship. Col. Olcott will not deny that when we met at Chittenden for the first time, and afterwards—and that more than once—when he expressed suspicions about the genuineness of May-Flower and George Dix, the spirits of Horatio’s dark séances, I insisted that so far as I could judge, they were genuine spirits. <ref>{{HPB-CW-comment|[In her Scrapbook, Vol. I, p. 108, H.P.B. corrected the word “spirits” to read “phenomena.”—Compiler.]}}</ref> He will also no doubt admit, since he is an eminently truthful man, that when the ungrateful behaviour of the Eddys, towards whom every visitor at the Homestead will testify that he was kinder than a brother—had made him ready to express his indignation, I interfered in their behalf, and begged that he would never confound mediums with other people as to their responsibility. Mediums have tried to shake my opinions of the Eddy boys, offering in two cases that I can recall, to go to Chittenden with me {{Page aside|190}} and expose the fraud. I acted the same with them that I did with the Colonel. Mediums have tried likewise to convince me that Mr. Crookes’ Katie King was but Miss F. Cook walking about, while a wax-bust, fabricated in her likeness and covered with her clothes, lay in the cabinet, representing her as entranced. Other mediums, regarding me as a fanatical Spiritualist, who would even be ready to connive at fraud rather than see the cause hurt by an exposure, have let, or pretended to let, me into the secrets of the mediumship of their fellow mediums, and sometimes incautiously into their own. My experience shows that the worst enemies of mediums are mediums. Not content with slandering each other, they assail and traduce their warmest and most unselfish friends.

{{HPB-CW-comment|[In H.P.B.’s Scrapbook, Vol. I, p. 111, may be found a cutting from the Banner of Light of January 15, 1876. The author, F.H.C., announces Col. Olcott’s lecture in Boston on Jan. 30th, and deals with the subject of Col. Olcott and the Elementaries.

{{HPB-CW-comment|[In H.P.B.’s Scrapbook, Vol. I, p. 112, there is pasted a cutting from the Banner of Light, of January 15, 1876, which is a Letter of Charles Sotheran to the Editor, in which he explains the reasons for his resignation from the Theosophical Society and indulges in some very uncomplimentary remarks about H.P.B. On the left margin of this article, H.P.B. wrote in pen and ink:]}}

{{HPB-CW-comment|[Col. H. S. Olcott replied in the pages of the Spiritual Scientist to the very outspoken criticism of Prof. Hiram Corson in regard to his Inaugural Address of November 17, 1875. He protested against the rather rude and unfair remarks of Prof. Corson. The last paragraph of his reply is quoted below, and the italicized words in it are those which have been underlined by H.P.B. when she pasted the cutting of this reply in her Scrapbook, Vol. I, p. 113:]}}

To this H.P.B. appended the following footnote when she pasted the cutting into her Scrapbook, Vol. I, p. 116:]}}