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  | item title  = Note on the Transliteration of Sanskrit
  | item title  = Appendix (BCW vol.1)
  | item author  = Zirkoff B.
  | item author  = Zirkoff B.
  | volume      = 1
  | volume      = 1
  | pages        = 442
  | pages        = 442-538
  | publications =  
  | publications =  
  | scrapbook    =  
  | scrapbook    =  
  | previous    = Zirkoff B. - The Diaries of H.P. Blavatsky
  | previous    = Zirkoff B. - The Diaries of H.P. Blavatsky
  | next        = Zirkoff B. - General Bibliography
  | next        = Zirkoff B. - Index
  | alternatives =  
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produced confusion; therefore the older usage has been
produced confusion; therefore the older usage has been
adhered to throughout.
adhered to throughout.
{{Page aside|443}}
{{Style P-Title|GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHY}}
{{Style P-Subtitle|(WITH SELECTED BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES)}}
{{Vertical space|}}
The material contained in the following pages is of
necessity a selective one, and is intended to serve three
purposes: (a) to give condensed information, not otherwise
readily available, about the life and writings of some
individuals mentioned by H. P. B. in the text, and who
are practically unknown to the present-day student;
(h) to give similar data about a few well-known scholars
who are discussed at length by H. P. B., and whose
writings she constantly quotes; and (c) to give full information
regarding all works and periodicals quoted or
referred to in the main text and in the Compiler's Notes,
with or without biographical data of their authors. All
such works are marked with an asterisk (*).
{{Vertical space|}}
<nowiki>*</nowiki>'''Adi-Granth'''. Sacred hook of the Sikh Gurus. It is an important
compilation of the utterances of the early Vaishnava saints or
Bhagats. It is from them that Nanak, the founder of the sect,
took his doctrines, and each of the 31 rags forming the body of
the Granth, is followed by utterances of the saints, chiefly of
Kabir, while the conclusion of the hook contains more verses by
the same authors, as well as by the celebrated Sufi, Shekh Farid
of Pakpattan. The Adi-Granth was compiled about 1600 by
Arjan, the fifth Guru; it is written in a special Sikh script, the
Gurmukhi, and sets forth the Sikh creed in its original pietistic
form, before it assumed its militant character. The texts are in
various dialects and even partly in Persian. Vide Ernst Trumpp,
The Adi-Granth or Holy Scriptures of the Sikhs, London, 1877.
{{Vertical space|}}
'''AGRIPPA VON NETTESHEIM, HENRY CORNELIUS (1486-1535)'''. German
writer, soldier, physician and magician. For many years in the
service of Maximilian I, the German King who sent him, 1510,
on a diplomatic mission to England. From 1511 to 1518, he was in
Italy in the service of William VI of Monferrato and of Charles
III of Savoy. His early interest in the occult sciences brought him
into open conflict with the Church at Dole, Pavia and Metz. He
practiced medicine in Cologne, Geneva, Freiburg and Lyon for
short periods, until Margaret, Duchess of Savoy and regent of the {{Page aside|444}} Netherlands, appointed him archivist and historiographer to the
Emperor. Eventually he went to France where he was arrested for
some disparaging words about the queen-mother, but was soon
released. He was married three times and had a large family.
Agrippa's famous De occulta philosophia, which brought him into
antagonism with the Inquisition, was written about 1510, partly
under the influence of the author's friend, John Trithemius, then
abbot of Wurzburg, but its publication was delayed until 1531,
when it appeared at Antwerp (also Lugduni: Fratres Beringo, 1533.
3 vols.). His other principal work is De incertitudine et vanitate
scientiarum, etc. (Antwerp, 1531), wherein he denounces the accretions
of theological Christianity. He also wrote De nobilitate et
praecellentia feminei sexus (Coloniae, 1532) . An edition of his
works was publ. at Leyden in 1550, with several later editions.
{{Vertical space|}}
'''AKSAKOV, ALEXANDER NIKOLAYEVICH'''. Russian author, philosopher and
prominent figure among writers on Spiritualism. He was born May
27/June 8, 1832, in the village of Repyevka, Gorodishchensky
uyezd, Province of Penza, on the estate of his father, Nikolay
Timofeyevich, brother of Serguey Timofeyevich, the author of the
renowned Family Chronicle. His mother was Catherine Alexeyevna
Panov, of an old aristocratic family of the Province of Simbirsk.
He was educated in the Alexander Lyceum of St. Petersburg, and
on graduation in 1851, entered service in the Ministry of the Interior.
Appointed on a Statistical Expedition, he spent some time
in the Provinces studying religious dissidents. In 1855-56 he attended
courses at the Faculty of Medicine at Moscow University, but soon
after resumed his service to the State in the Department of Governmental
Properties. He retired from Government service in 1873
with the rank of Actual Civil Councillor.
From his early years, Aksakov was interested in problems of
theology and philosophy, and, while still in the Lyceum, came in
contact with the teachings of Swedenborg; this was his introduction
to a philosophical outlook whereby he endeavored to establish an
empirical basis for his belief in the spiritual destiny of mankind.
As a result of his studies, he published the following works: 1)
On Heaven, the World of Spirits, and Hell, as Seen and Heard
by E. Swedenborg, Leipzig, 1863; 2) The Gospel according to
Swedenborg, Leipzig, 1864; 3) The Rationalism of Swedenborg, etc.,
Leipzig, 1870.
This latter work led him to the sphere of Spiritualism which {{Page aside|445}} absorbed his interest in the second half of the sixties. It is in the
writings of Andrew Jackson Davis that he found the clearest exposition
of his own _attitude, and so he proceeded to publish in
Germany a series of German translations from Davis’ works: Der
Reformator, Leipzig, 1867; Der Zauberstab, ditto, 1868; Die
Principien der Natur, ditto, 1869; Der Arzt, ditto, 1873. His special interest lay in the study of such psychic phenomena as would
provide evidence for the existence of a spiritual Principle in man.
ln so doing, Aksakov found a most sympathetic interest in Professor
Butlerov, the renowned Russian chemist, who openly declared his
belief in the reality of mediumistic phenomena.
During this period of his life, Aksakow translated into Russian
a large number of works, among which should be mentioned:
1) Manual of Magnetotherapy, of Count F. von Szapary. Trans.
from the French, St. Petersburg, 1860.
2) Experimental investigation of Spiritualism, of R. Hare. Trans.
from the English, Leipzig, 1866.
3) Spiritualism and Science. Investigations of Crookes’ Psychic
Force. St. Petersburg, 1872.
4) Outline of the History of the Committee on Mediumism of
the Physical Society at the St. Petersburg University, St. Petersburg,
1883.
5) Monument lo Scientific Prejudice. The conclusions of the committee on Mediumism, St. Petersburg, 1883.
He also wrote several monographs on Hellenbach and d’Assier
and their works. He published in German several of the works
mentioned above, adding lo the list two works by A. R. Wallace.
As far as is known, Aksakov himself paid all the expenses connected
with this vast literary output.
In 1874, Aksakov founded at Leipzig a monthly called Psychische
Studien dedicated to the investigation of little known psychic phenomena.
This periodical continued to be published until 1934,
having changed its name to Zeitschrift fur Parapsychologie in 1925.
A perusal of the contents of the early volumes of this publication
shows it to have been by far one of the most outstanding
periodicals on the subject published at the time.
Aksakov’s personal views concerning Spiritualism are clearly
outlined in his Preface to his first edition of Spiritualism and
Science (St. Petersburg, 1872), from which it appears that he
made a dear distinction between observed facts and the theories
current at the time to account for them. The basis and chief {{Page aside|446}}purpose of his literary activity was to observe and to record facts
of genuine mediumism, entirely devoid of any theory or hypothesis,
or religious and sectarian bias. He contended that a scientific
approach to this subject would require an array of scientifically
established facts, and that in due course of time some plausible
theory, or a series of them, would emerge to justify facts on some
reasonable basis. These views are further outlined in the January,
1878, issue of his periodical. It is evident, therefore, that the
views of Aksakov on this whole subject were very closely allied
to H.P.B.'s attitude towards the known facts and genuine manifestations
of the mediums of her time. She found in Aksakov a
splendid ally, and they both aroused rabid enmity on the part of
those whose minds had crystallized on mere theories, in the various.
factions of the Spiritualistic and Spiritistic movement.
At a later time, Aksakov published the following works:
1) Spiritism, by K. R. E. von Hartmann. Trans. by A. M.
Butlerov, 1887.
2) A. M. Butlerov on Mediumism. With a portrait of the author
and reminiscences of N. P. Wagner, 1889.
3) Forerunners of Spiritism for the last 250 Years [Russian
text]. St. Petersburg: V. Demakov, 1895; 513 pp.
4) A Case of partial dematerialization of the body of a medium.
Trans. from the French, Boston, 1898.
5) Animism and Spiritism [Russian text], 2nd ed., St. Petersburg:
V. Demakov, 1901. 679 pp.; German tr., Leipzig, 1894;
French tr., Paris, 1906.
Aksakov died in 1903, after a long and extremely useful life
in the cause of scientific research on little known lines, and in a
field suspect by official science. Most of his work along these lines
had to be located in Germany, on account of the enmity existing
then in Russia against anything pertaining to this field of research.
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'''ALDEN, WILLIAM LIVINGSTON'''. American author, b. at Williamstown,
Mass., October 9, 1837; d. in 1908. Graduated from Jefferson
College, Penna., 1858; married, 1865, Agnes M. McClure; admitted
to New York Bar, 1860; practiced until 1865; leader-writer
on New York World, Times, Graphic, etc., until 1885; U.S.
Consul-General at Rome, 1885-89; leader-writer on Paris Herald,
1890-93; since then resided in London (61, Clondesdale Road,
S.W.). Works: Canoe and Flying Proa, 1818.-Domestic Explosives, {{Page aside|447}}1817.-Life of Columbus, 1881.-Cruise of the “Ghost”, 1882.-New
Robinson Crusoe, 1888.-The Moral Pirates, 1904.-Told by
the Colonel, 1893.
Alden was present at the meeting of September 8, 1875, when
the organization of The Theosophical Society was proposed; he
was also present at the meeting of October 16th. He did not remain
a member for any length of time, however, and in 1881
ridiculed the Society in the newspapers. As a writer, he had considerable
repute for caustic and humorous criticisms upon current
topics. Consult Col. Olcott's Old Diary Leaves, I, pp. 123-24, for
the account of a curious experience which Alden had at New
York in 1874.
{{Vertical space|}}
<nowiki>*</nowiki>'''Appleton Cyclopaedia of Biography'''.
{{Vertical space|}}
'''BABINET, JACQUES'''. French physicist, b. at Lusignan, March 5, 1794;
d. Oct. 21, 1872. Studied at Ecole Polytechnique in Metz. After a
short time in an artillery regiment, became professor of physics at
Lycee Saint-Louis, then at College de France. Entered the Academie
des Sciences in 1840. Works: Resume complet de physique, etc.,
Paris, 1825.-Sur la mesure des forces chimiques, etc. He was a
talented journalist and an imaginative writer.
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'''BEAUMARCHAIS, PIERRE AUGUSTIN CARON DE (1732-99)'''. *Le Barbier
de Seville, 1775.-*Le Mariage de Figaro, 1778.
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'''BORELLI, GIOVANNI ALFONSO'''. Italian physiologist and physicist, b.
at Naples in 1608; d. in Rome, Dec. 31, 1679. Appointed professor
of mathematics at Messina, 1649, and at Pisa, 1656. Returned
to Messina, 1667, and retired to Rome in 1674, where he lived under
the protection of Christina, Queen of Sweden. His best known
work is De motu animalium (1680-81), in which he explains the
movements of the animal body on mechanical principles. In a
letter published under the pseudonym of Pier Maria Mutoli in
1665, he was the first to suggest the idea of a parabolic path for
a comet; among his many astronomical works is his Theoria
mediceorum planetarum ex causis physicis deducta (Florence, 1666),
in which he considered the influence of attraction on the satellites
of Jupiter.
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'''BREWSTER, SIR DAVID'''. Scottish physicist, and one of the founders of
the British Association; b. at Jedburgh, Dec. 11, 1781; d. at
Allerby, Feb. 10, 1868. He made his name by a series of investigations {{Page aside|448}}on the diffraction of light, the results of which he contributed from time to time to Philosophical Transactions and other
scientific journals. From 1859 on, Brewster was principal of
Edinburgh University, and succeeded J. J. Berzelius as one of the
eight "foreign associates" of the Institute of France. In addition
to his Treatise on Optics (1831) and other works, he edited the
Edinburgh Encyclopaedia (1808-30) and was one of the leading
contributors to the 7th and 8th ed. of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
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'''BROWN, ROBERT, JR. (1844-?)'''. *The Great Dionysiak Myth, London,
1877.-*Poseidon: A Link between Semite, Hamite, and Aryan, being
an Attempt to trace the cultus of the God to its sources, etc.,
London, 1872. 8vo.
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'''BUCHANAN, JOSEPH RODES (1814-99)'''. See Vol. VI, pp. 429-30, for a
biographical sketch.
{{Vertical space|}}
'''BUCHNER, LUDWIC'''. German philosopher and physician, b. at Darmstadt in 1824; d. at Darmstadt, May 1, 1899. Studied at Giessen,
Strasbourg, Wurzburg and Vienna. Became, 1852, lecturer in medicine at the Univ. of Tubingen, where he published his great work,
Kraft und Stoff (1855). The extreme materialism of this work
excited so much opposition that he was compelled to give up his
position. Retired to Darmstadt where he practiced as a physician.
He wrote also: Natur und Geist, 1857.-Aus Natur und Wissenschaft, 1862 and 1884.-Darwinismus und Socialismus, 1894.
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'''BUCKLE, HENRY THOMAS (1821-62)'''. *History of Civilization in England. Vol. I in 1857; Vol. II in 1861.
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'''BUTLEROV, ALEXANDER MIHAYLOVICH'''. Renowned Russian chemist,
founder of the so-called “Butlerov School,” b. Aug. 25/Sept. 6,
1828, at Chistopol’, Province of Kazan’; died Aug. 5/17, 1886, on
his estate of Butlerovka in the same Province. He was the son of
a lieutenant-colonel of modest means and was educated at home
and in the Gymnasium of Kazan’, before entering the physio-mathematical
department of the Kazan’ University. His unusual capacities
resulted in a rapid progress in his studies and a generous recognition on the part of his teachers. His University appointed him
to its Staff to teach chemistry and physical geography. In 1854
he became Doctor of Chemistry at Moscow University and was
retained there to teach Chemistry. During three separate trips abroad,
Butlerov spent considerable time studying the progress of chemistry {{Page aside|449}} in Europe, and establishing personal relations with a number
of outstanding scientists, such as Bunsen, Kekule and others. His
scientific research laid the foundation of chemistry in Russia and
coincided with the first marked development of organic chemistry
in Europe.
It is of special interest to students of Theosophy to note his
intense interest in Spiritualistic and allied phenomena. He became
versed in the subject and approached it from the purely scientific
viewpoint. On his initiative, there was organized in St. Petersburg
in 1871 the first scientific Committee for the investigation
of mediumistic phenomena, which included Professors Ovsyannikov,
Chebishev and Zion. He was also very active in the formation of
another Committee for the same purpose, suggested by Prof,
Mendeleyev and made up of members of the Physical Society at
the University of St. Petersburg. He was a constant contributor to
the Spiritualistic journal Rebus for which H.P.B. wrote. His articles
on the general subject of mediumship and psychic manifestations
were published at St. Petersburg in 1889, with reminiscences by
his life-long friend and co-worker, Prof. N. P. Wagner.
{{Vertical space|}}
'''CAESAR, GAIUS JULIUS (102?-44 B.C.)'''. *Commentarii de bello Gallico,
written in 51 B.C. Loeb Classical Library.
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'''CASSELS, W. R. (1826-1907)'''. *Supernatural Religion, etc. London,
1874. 2 vols,; Vol. III in 1877. Many editions.
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'''COBB, JOHN STORER'''. English barrister and Doctor of Laws; at one
time Editor of the New Era magazine, the organ of the Reformed
Jews in New York. Was a leader in the Cremation Movement. He
assisted in the formation of The Theosophical Society, and was
elected its Recording Secretary. In 1878 he was sent as Presidential
Agent by the Council of the T.S. in New York, to assist in the
formation of the British Theos. Society. He seems to have lost
interest soon after and was heard of no more.
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'''COLEMAN, CHARLES'''. *The Mythology of the Hindus, with Notices
of Various Tribes inhabiting the two Peninsulas of India and the
neighboring Islands, etc. 3 pt. London, 1832, 4to.
{{Vertical space|}}
'''COLEMAN, WILLIAM EMMETTE'''. American author and lecturer, b. at
Shadwell, Va., June 19, 1843. As a boy of twelve, was assistant
librarian in the Richmond Public Library, and at sixteen became
interested in various reformatory movements of the country and
became a Spiritualist. For a time he was a stage manager and
actor; later was reconstruction clerk at the military headquarters {{Page aside|450}}at Richmond, and after 1874 held a civilian position in the quartermaster's
department, U.S. Army. Settled in San Francisco in 1880.
Lectured widely on scientific subjects and was especially interested
in Oriental religions and languages, publishing a large number of
papers. He also wrote two extended works: Darwinism and Spiritualism
(1877), and Spiritualism-Cui Bono? (1878), in an attempt
to place Spiritualism on a scientific basis. For some peculiar
reason, Coleman opposed Theosophy and H. P. Blavatsky from
the very first, and published a number of articles trying to expose
H.P.B. as a literary fraud. It appears that he was preparing a
larger work for publication, Theosophy Unveiled, intended to be
a complete analysis of it as a mere humbug; but no such work
has ever been published. While a few of Coleman's strictures have
some small justification in fact, and cannot be completely rejected,
his arguments are shallow and his facts often confused.
{{Vertical space|}}
'''COOKE, JOSIAH PARSONS (1827-94)'''. *The New Chemistry, 1872; 2nd.
ed., London, 1874. See Vol. IX, p. 240, for biogr. sketch.
{{Vertical space|}}
'''CORSON, EUGENE ROLLIN (1855-?)'''. *Some Unpublished Letters of
Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. With an Introduction and Commentary.
London: Rider & Co. [1929], 255 pp., facs. & ill.
{{Vertical space|}}
'''CORSON, HIRAM'''. American educator and author, b. in Philadelphia,
Pa., Nov. 6, 1828; d. at Ithaca, N. Y., June 15, 1911. Received his
earliest schooling in the home of his parents, Joseph Dickinson and
Ann Hagey Corson. His father, a mathematician of exceptional
ability, trained him in mathematical thought; and it was not until
Hiram was fifteen that he was sent to the Treemount Seminary
·at Norristown, Pa., where, at the classical and mathematical school
of the Rev. Dr. Samuel Aaron, and later at the classical school of
the Rev. Dr. Anspach, at Barren Hill, Pa., he spent five years in
study, distinguishing himself both in mathematics and the knowledge
of Latin and Greek.
In the Fall of 1849, Hiram went to Washington, D.C., where
he utilized his knowledge of stenography by connecting himself
with the reporting corps of the United States Senate, for a time
serving also as private secretary to Senator Lewis Cass. In the
Summer of 1850 he became connected with the library of the
Smithsonian Institution, then under the vigorous direction of the
distinguished bibliographer, Prof. Charles Coffin Jewett. Under the
direction of the latter, Hiram received a thorough training in
bibliography and library management; he also attended for some
seven years the literary and scientific courses given there by {{Page aside|451}}outstanding men of science. Stimulated by these, he gave all his leisure
to the study of great literature-English, French and German. His
marriage, in Sept., 1854, to Caroline Rollin, a lady of French
birth and European education, deeply interested in literature,
strongly stimulated his literary trends.
In 1859, moving with his family to his native city, he became
a public lecturer on English literature, drawing to his audiences
many cultivated people. He became widely known and liked. In
1864 Princeton conferred on him the degree of Master of Arts;
and in the following year Girard College in Philadelphia elected
him to its chair of moral science, history and rhetoric. Soon after
he accepted the more congenial professorship of rhetoric and
English literature in St. John’s College at Annapolis, Md. In
1870, he became associated with Cornell University, where he taught
until 1903, when he was made professor emeritus, after a long
and most fruitful career.
“It is with his work as a teacher of English literature that
Prof. Corson is most familiarly associated, and by it he will perhaps
be longest remembered. Possessed not only of a great breadth of
culture and a rare discrimination, but of a voice of exceptional
range and singular sympathetic power, he has been an interpreter
and inspirer of no usual order ... For more than a generation
of human life he stood foremost among his colleagues as a spokesman of the higher interests of the soul; and in every class which
went out from Cornell he kindled something of his own noble
love of literature, of his sensitiveness to the ideal, of his contempt
for the merely material in act and life . . . However appreciative
of the old, no one was ever more impatient of mere convention
... No venerable imposture escaped his scorn; no seer-eyed heresy
failed of his welcome.” (W. T. Hewett, Cornell University, A History,
1905, Vol. II, pp. 39-40.)
In the many books which Prof. Hiram Corson wrote or edited,
he dealt with most of the great phases of English letters. Among
his works, the following should be mentioned as being, each one of
them, examples of deep learning and noble aim: Handbook of
Anglo-Saxon and Early English (1871); The University of the
Future (1875); An Introduction to the Study of Robert Browning’s
Poetry (1886); An Introduction to the Study of Shakespeare
(1889); A Primer of English Verse, etc. (1892); The Aims of
Literary Study (1895).
Prof. Corson did not limit his attention purely to letters; he
was a zealous opponent of slavery, publicly deprecated many {{Page aside|452}}aspects of organized religion, and was deeply apprehensive of the
social effects of concentrated wealth.
On July 15, 1874, Corson’s only daughter died and the blow
was devastating. Hiram Corson found no comfort in the religion
of the Churches and gradually turned to Spiritualism for some
sign and assurance of the continued existence of his child. He
later became convinced of that and his belief in Spiritualism
became firmly established. He read Col. Olcott's articles in the
New York Daily Graphic about the manifestations at the Eddys’
homestead at Chittenden, Vt., and also H.P.B.'s articles attacking
Dr. Beard. He wrote to H.P.B. to learn the real facts and to
know more about her. From this casual contact their mutual friendship grew, and after some spirited correspondence, the Corsons invited
H.P.B. to visit their home in Ithaca, N. Y. The invitation
was accepted and H.P.B. spent a few weeks with them in the Fall
of 1875. The Corsons lived at that time in the Richardson Cottage,
on Heustis Street, prior to the time when they occupied
Cascadilla Cottage, where Hiram Corson died and where many
of his books are dated.
It is at Ithaca that H.P.B. started to write Isis Unveiled in
earnest, although the very beginning of it may have been already
laid before she left New York. She wrote about twenty-five closely
written foolscap pages a day, with no access to any books except
those in the extensive library of the Corsons, which had no
relation to her subject anyway. After H.P.B. returned to New York,
a few additional letters were exchanged with the Corsons, but
apparently, for one reason or another, their mutual friendship
cooled. Some light is thrown on this subject by Eugene Rollin
Corson, their son.
Caroline Rollin Corson, Prof. Corson’s wife, was pre-eminently
social by nature; she adopted with full heart her husband’s country,
and brought to him not only a rare intellectual sympathy, but to
the little world of his colleagues and students a breadth of travelled
experience, a refinement and grace of manner, a knowledge
of books and men, and a facile charm of conversation which made
their home a center of culture. She also became interested in
Spiritualism, but only moderately; it never possessed her as it did
Hiram Corson. She had accepted the loss of her daughter with
composure and resignation, and her interest in H.P.B. was more
in the woman herself than in her doctrines and mission. She was
not interested in Occultism; on the contrary, she was greatly opposed
to it. Eventually, she entered the Catholic Church, where {{Page aside|453}}she apparently found comfort, and she died May 21, 1901, at
a convent in Rochester where she was in the habit of going at odd
times for rest and retreat.
It would appear that Prof. Corson, being then a thorough believer
in Spiritualism, could not accept either H.P.B.’s strictures on
this Movement or her explanations concerning the phenomena of the
seance-room; nor was he any better pleased with certain utterances of Col. Olcott in his lectures. Corson sided with the Spiritualists
and published in the Banner of Light of Boston, Mass., some
accusations against H.P.B.’s good faith. According to his son, Prof.
Corson “was quite too hasty in his revulsion of feeling; he later
realized it and was quite willing to admit it. His sorrow and his state
of mind at the time may well explain the error he had fallen
into... My father followed the future history of the Theosophical
Society with great interest; he bought H.P.B.’s books as well as
a number of works which were the direct outcome of the Society
in India.”
The last preserved letter between H.P.B. and the Corsons was
written to Mrs. Corson and dated from New York, August 28,
1878. There is no further evidence of any direct contact between
them.
Prof. Corson's Spiritualistic views have been expressed by him
in a book entitled Spirit Messages which was published posthumously
in 1911.
Sources: H. Corson, Corson Family (1906); N.Y. Times, June
16, 17, 1911; Murray E. Poole, A Story Historical of Cornell
University, etc. (1916); W. T. Hewett, Cornell University, etc.
(1905); Eugene Rollin Corson, Some Unpublished Letters of Helena
Petrovna Blavatsky. lntrod. and Commentary (1929).
{{Vertical space|}}
'''COX, EDWARD WILLIAM'''. English Serjeant-at-Law, b. at Taunton, 1809;
d. November 24, 1879. Eldest son of Wm. Charles Cox, manufacturer
at Mill Hill, Middlesex, and Harriet, daughter of William
Upcott of Exeter. Educated at the college school of his native town;
called to the bar at the Middle Temple, May 5, 1843, but practiced
little as a barrister. Recorder of Helston and Falmouth,
1857-68, and recorder of Portsmouth from the latter date to his
death; chairman of the second court of Middlesex sessions, from
1870 to the end of his life. Established the Law Times, April 8,
1843, to which he thereafter devoted the greater part of his time.
Became proprietor of The Queen, a Lady’s Newspaper, started in
1861, and later established a journal known as Exchange and Mart.
Issued several other papers, and was the author of a large number {{Page aside|454}}of legal works, the most important of which, The Law and Practice
of Joint-Stock Companies, ran to six editions.
Cox married first, in 1836, Sophia, daughter of William Harris,
surgeon in the royal artillery; and later, 1844, Rosalinda Alicia,
daughter of J. S. M. Fonblanque.
On February 22, 1875, Cox founded in London the Psychological
Society of Great Britain, for the systematic investigation
of mediumistic and related phenomena, which were included under
the term “psychological.” Its membership included W. Stainton
Moses, Walter H. Coffin, C. C. Massey, Hensleigh Wedgwood, all
of whom later served on the first Council of the Society for Psychical
Research. When Cox died, his Society was dissolved, Dec. 31,
1879. Members of this body of “rationalists” ascribed the phenomena
of the seance-room to unconscious action of the normal faculties
of the medium, not to the work of the spirits of the dead. Cox,
well known as a leading English investigator of these phenomena
before founding his Society, suggested the term “Psychic Force”
to designate the origin of the mediumistic and related phenomena.
He regarded spirit and matter as basically one, with interchange
from one to the other; and the soul as a composition whose substance “is vastly more refined than the thinnest gas.” The Psychic
Force was the faculty of the soul which is the effective agent of
all mental and physical spiritualistic manifestations.
In the interest of his Society, Cox published several treatises of
originality and vigor, such as: What Am I? (1874). - The
Mechanism of Man (1876).-Spiritualism Scientifically Examined;
etc., a booklet issued in 1872.
Together with A. R. Wallace, Chas. Bradlaugh, Dr. James Edmunds,
Cox had been a member of the Committee deputed by
the London Dialectical Society to investigate the phenomena of
Spiritualism in January, 1869. The work of Cox and of his Society
represented a reaction against the prevailing passive acceptance
by believers of the notion that spirits of the dead were
the prime agents in the phenomena.
(Sources: Times, Nov. 26, 1879, p. 8; Law Times, Nov. 29,
1879, pp. 73, 88; Illustrated London News, March 5, 1859, p. 221;
and Dec. 6, 1879, pp. 529, 530 (with portrait); S. C. Hall’s
Retrospect of a Long Life, 1883, II, 121-26; Hatton’s journalistic
London, 1882, pp. 208-11; Proceedings, Psychological Society,
1875-79.)
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'''DARWIN, CHARLES ROBERT (1809-82)'''. *On the Origin of Species by
Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races {{Page aside|455}}in the Struggle for Life. Published on November 24, 1859, the
entire edition of 1250 copies being exhausted on the day of issue.
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'''DAVIS, ANDREW JACKSON'''. American Spiritualist and Seer, b. in
Blooming Grove, Orange Co., N. Y., August 11, 1826; d. Jan. 13,
1910. He was the son of Samuel Davis, a stern, poverty stricken
shoemaker, given to drink, and totally uneducated, as was also
Andrew’s mother, a woman with a weak body but strong visionary
powers. During the summer months, the father eked out his living
by hiring himself out as a farm-laborer. The family moved frequently
from one small town to another without seeming to better
themselves. Some time prior to 1842, they settled at Poughkeepsie,
N. Y., whence Andrew was later to receive his name of “the
Poughkeepsie Seer.” The young lad was an undersized, delicate hoy,
with next to no education, and in childhood of no conspicuous
ability. His academic training consisted of a total of five months
schooling acquired at different periods of a few weeks each.
In 1841 he was apprenticed to a shoemaker named Armstrong, and
worked at that trade for about two years. Incapable of really
learning the trade, he became employed by a merchant in a general
store, but he was a failure at this occupation also. In his later
boyhood, Davis’ latent psychic powers began to develop. He heard
voices in the field-gentle voices which gave him good advice and
comfort. Clairvoyance followed clairaudience, and the ability to
see visions of various kind.
In 1843, a certain Professor Grimes came to Poughkeepsie to
lecture on animal magnetism; he attempted to put Davis into a
trance, but the experiment failed; a few weeks later, however,
William Levingston, a local tailor and amateur mesmerizer, succeeded
in “magnetizing” him. The result was such a rare clairvoyance
that Levingston gave up his own business and devoted his
efforts to Davis, using his powers for the diagnosis and the cure
of disease. The human body became transparent to Davis’ inner
sight, and each organ stood out clearly and with a special radiance
of its own which was dimmed by disease. His ministrations were
not confined to those who were in his presence, as he was able
to diagnose cases at considerable distance. In this earlier phase
of Davis’ psychic experiences he had no immediate memory when
he returned from trance of what his impressions had been; being
registered, however, on a certain level of his inner consciousness,
he was able to recall them at a later date.
In March, 1844, a very strange episode occurred in his life.
He was suddenly possessed by some power which led him to take {{Page aside|456}}off on a rapid journey in a condition of trance. He found himself
among wild mountains and claimed to have met two venerable
men with whom he held intimate and inspiring exchanges upon
medicine and morals. Either prior to or during this experience, he
had wandered into the Catskill Mountains and was later found
some forty miles from home. Davis claimed that he had met
Galen and Swedenborg during this episode.
By 1845 Davis felt urged to turn from healing to writing. He
selected as magnetizer Dr. S. S. Lyon, a physician then practicing in
Bridgeport, Conn., and the Rev. Wm. Fishhough of New York, as
reporter and scribe. Both men gave up their practices and followed
the “call.” No money and no publicity of any kind was involved
in this matter, which makes it that much more remarkable. From
Nov. 28, 1845, to Jan. 25, 1847, Davis delivered while in a state
of trance one hundred and fifty-seven lectures, which were carefully
taken down verbatim and, after a minimum of editing, were
published in the Summer of 1847 in the shape of a large octavo
volume of nearly eight hundred closely printed pages, under
the title of Principles of Nature, Her Divine Revelations, and A
Voice to Mankind.
Among those who frequently attended the circle while this work
was being dictated, was the Rev. Dr. George Bush, Professor of
Hebrew in the University of New York, and a well-known
Swedenborgian. He writes:
“I can solemnly affirm that I have heard Davis correctly
quote the Hebrew language in his lectures, and display a
knowledge of geology which would have been astonishing in
a person of his age, even if he had devoted years to the study.
He has discussed, with the most signal ability, the profoundest
questions of historical and biblical archaeology, of mythology,
of the origin and affinity of language, and the progress of civilization
among the different nations of the globe ...”
The opening of the second part of this work will illustrate the
nature of the subject and the phraseology used to describe it:
“In the beginning the Univercoelum was one boundless, undefinable,
and unimaginable ocean of Liquid Fire! The most
vigorous and ambitious imagination is not capable of forming
an adequate conception of the height and depth and length and
breadth thereof. There was one vast expanse of liquid substance.
It was without bounds-inconceivable-and with qualities
and essence incomprehensible. This was the original condition {{Page aside|457}}of Matter. It was without forms, for it was but one Form. It had
not motions, but it was an eternity of Motion. It was without
parts, for it was a Whole. Particles did not exist, but the Whole
was as one Particle. There were no suns, but it was one Eternal
Sun. It had no beginning, and it was without end. It had not
length, for it was a Vortex of one Eternity. It had not circles, for
it was one Infinite Circle. It had not disconnected power, but it
was the very essence of all Power. Its inconceivable magnitude
and constitution were such as not to develop forces, but Omnipotent
Power.
“Matter and Power were existing as a Whole, inseparable.
The Matter contained the substance to produce all suns, all worlds,
and systems of worlds, throughout the immensity of Space. It
contained the qualities to produce all things that are existing
upon each of those worlds. The Power contained Wisdom and
Goodness, Justice, Mercy, and Truth. It contained the original and
essential Principle that is displayed throughout immensity of
Space, controlling worlds and systems of worlds, and producing
Motion, Life, Sensation, and Intelligence, to be impartially disseminated
upon their surfaces as Ultimates.”<ref>34th Amer. ed., Boston, 1876, pp. 121-22.</ref>
From these opening sentences Davis traces the evolution of the
Universe, which he terms Univercoelum, by a gradual process of
differentation into vast systems of suns, moving in concentric circles
of inconceivable magnitude round the Great Eternal Centre. Later
he describes the particular solar system to which we belong,
and the gradual progression through geological cycles of our own
planet. He seems to be as much at home in chemistry as in the
realm of marine fauna or the history of fossils. In a lecture of
March, 1846, he gives a fairly accurate description of an eighth
planet which was not identified until September of the same year
by Leverrier and Adams, and was given the name of Neptune.
Such was the beginning of Davis’ psychic revelations which extended
eventually over some twenty-six works in all and became
known as the “Hannonial Philosophy.” Among these should be
mentioned: The Great Harmonia, 1850-52; The Philosophy of
Spiritual Intercourse, 1856; The Penetralia, 1856. In some of these
and other works, Davis displayed a remarkable prophetic power.
He correctly described the automobile, the typewriter and flying
machines. He also gave a description of certain belts or sheaths
surrounding the earth, which are closely similar to present-day {{Page aside|458}}scientific discoveries of the magnetic belts around our globe. He
also gave a very precise and minute description of the manner in
which the dying person leaves his worn-out body.
Before he reached the age of twenty-one, Davis attained a state
when he needed no second person to induce his trance, but could
do so himself. Eventually, he attracted the attention of many
earnest people, Edgar Allan Poe being one of his visitors.
The object of life for Davis was to qualify for advancement in
the tremendous universal scheme of things, and the best method of
human advancement was purification and self-control. The return
to a simple life and to simple beliefs and a primitive brotherhood
were essential. Money, alcohol, lust, violence and priestcraft were
the chief impediments to racial progress. Davis consistently lived up
to his own professions. His view of the general social order was
along lines of idealistic Socialism, infused with the highest moral
code. He preached social reconstruction and spiritual regeneration.
The main source of information concerning his views and the story
of his early life is his own Autobiography, The Magic Staff; published
as early as 1857, this gives only a picture of his early years.
Davis’ literary output was enormous, and it stands to reason, of
course, that his writings contain a great many errors, misconceptions,
and somewhat confused ideas often expressed in very
complicated language. This is always so in the case of natural-born
visionaries and sensitives, and it is for the student himself to seek
in the midst of much trivial material gems of truth and pearls of
wisdom which abound in Davis’ philosophy of life. The Spiritualistic
movement has attempted for years to identify Davis with it; yet
it is obvious that his conceptions and his word-descriptions were
vastly different from anything that has ever come through ordinary
mediums; nor did he have any of the common Spiritualistic beliefs
in regard to manifestations and the appearances in seance-rooms.
His writings deserve a close study, especially by those who are
interested in the earliest attempts on the part of the Teachers to
introduce into the Western world long-forgotten ideas concerning
the true nature of the Universe and Man. It may be stated, without
fear of contradiction, that Davis’ writings contain scattered ideas
and conceptions reminiscent of The Secret Doctrine, especially with
regard to the origin and evolution of worlds. Even the language
of some of the passages is akin to later installments of the Esoteric
Philosophy. While it would be rash and unwise to consider Davis
in the light of a trained occultist, which he certainly was not, and
never claimed to be, yet he should be reckoned among those rare {{Page aside|459}}figures of extreme spiritual and psychic sensitivity whose inner Ego
can at times become attuned to invisible Realities and channel into
the brain-in a condition of trance and not self-consciously, however-
pictures impressed upon the Akasic waves.
It is therefore no great wonder that H.P.B. would have had
such profound respect for Andrew Jackson Davis, whom she considered
to be a Seer, and whose warnings against intercourse with
unprogressed entities in the astral world she quoted more than once.
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'''DEUTSCH, IMMANUEL OSCAR MENAHEM'''. German Orientalist, b. of
Jewish extraction at Neisse, Oct. 28, 1829; d. at Alexandria, May
12, 1873. Studied at the Univ. of Berlin and became a Hebrew and
classical scholar. Appointed, 1855, assistant in the British Museum
Library. He worked intensely on the Talmud and contributed more
than 190 papers to Chambers’ Encyclopaedia. He is the author of
a famous article on the Talmud in the Quarterly Review for October,
1867, which was translated into many European languages.
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'''DICKENS, CHARLES JOHN HUFFAM (1812-1870)'''. *little Dorrit, 1857.-*Edwin Drood, 1870.
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'''DOUBLEDAY, ABNER'''. American military man, b. at Ballston Spa, N.Y.,
June 26, 1819; d. at Mendham, N. J., Jan. 26, 1893. Son of Ulysses
Freeman and Hester Doubleday, his father being representative in
Congress. Educated at Cooperstown, N. Y. and privately. While at
school, invented the game of baseball, 1839. This claim was
thoroughly investigated by a commission set up in 1907, and of
which Col. A. G. Mills, a leader in U. S. amateur sports, was
chairman. The commission substantiated the claim and showed
that Abner Doubleday devised the diagram of bases and positions
for players in 1839. As a result of this, the National Baseball Hall
of Fame was established at Cooperstown.
Doubleday graduated in 1842 from the U. S. Military Academy
at West Point, being commissioned as brevet second lieutenant in
the 3rd U.S. Artillery. As second lieutenant of 1st U. S. Artillery,
he served with Gen. Zachary Taylor in the Mexican War, being
engaged in the battle of Monterey and in operations connected
with Buena Vista. In 1854-55 he was engaged against the Apache
Indians, and from 1856 to 1858 against the Seminole Indians in
Florida. He was in active service throughout the Civil War, 1861-65.
He was second in command at Fort Sumter, and aimed the first
gun fired in its defence, April 12, 1861, when attacked by the
Confederates. In May, 1861, he was made major of the 17th U. S. {{Page aside|460}}Infantry, and went into service with Gen. Patterson's campaign
column in the valley of the Shenandoah. In August, 1861, he was
assigned to the command of the artillery defences of Washington,
and on Feb. 3, 1862, of all the defences there, being appointed
brigadier-general of Volunteers.
In the following May, Abner Doubleday joined McDowell’s
column at Fredericksburg, Va., and in August reinforced the Federal
troops fighting at Cedar mountain. He withdrew on Aug. 19th,
with the remainder of Pope’s army, to hold the line of the Rappahannock
against the advance of the Confederates under Gen. Lee.
He drove the opposing forces across the river and checked the
advance of Stonewall Jackson at Gainsville. He was engaged in
the battle of Manassas, Aug. 29 and 30, 1862, and succeeded lo
the command of Hatch's division on the latter day. He commanded
a division in the army of the Potomac, Sept. 16, 1862-July 1, 1863.
At Antietam he held the extreme right and opened the battle. For
his gallantry in this action he was made brevet lieutenant-colonel
in the regular army. On Nov. 29, 1862, he was appointed a major-general
of Volunteers. He fought in the battles of Fredericksburg
and Port Conway and was sent on July 1, 1863 to Gettysburg by
Gen. Reynolds to reinforce Buford’s cavalry. After considerable
losses inflicted on the opposing forces, he was forced back lo
Cemetery Ridge, south of Gettysburg. On the third day of the
battle, Gen. Pickett’s charge struck Gen. Webb’s division on the
right of Doubleday’s command. In advancing, the charging column
exposed their right flank, and Gen. Doubleday’s front line struck
the vulnerable point and disordered the enemy’s advance to such
an extent that they were easily repulsed. When Reynolds fell,
Doubleday commanded the field until the arrival of Gen. Howard.
His heroic work at Gettysburg is commemorated by a bronze statue
unveiled on the battlefield Sept. 25, 1917.
On March 11, 1865, he was made brevet colonel, and March
13, brigadier-general and major-general for services rendered. In
August of the same year he was mustered out of Volunteer service
and assumed his position as lieutenant-colonel in the regular army.
From May, 1866, to November, 1867, he was in command of the
post at Galveston, Texas, and later was on duty as colonel at Fort
McKavett, Texas.
Doubleday retired from the regular army December 11, 1873.
Apart from his military career, he was an able engineer, and in
1870 obtained a charter in San Francisco for the first cable railway
ever built. He published Reminiscenses of Forts Sumter and {{Page aside|461}}Moultrie in 1860-61 (1876), Chancellorsville and Gettysburg (1882),
a pamphlet with maps, Gettysburg Made Plain, and articles in
periodicals on army matters, water supply for cities and other
topics. He was married in Washington, D.C., January, 1853, to
Mary, daughter of Robert Hewitt, a lawyer of Baltimore. He is
buried at the National Cemetery, Washington, D.C.
Very soon after the formation of the Theosophical Society he
joined its ranks, attended its meetings and became a staunch friend
of the Founders. After the departure of the latter for India, Double·
day was made the President pro tem in U.S.A., with W. Q. Judge
as Secretary. A gift from him of over seventy books to the Aryan
Branch of the T.S. in New York became the nucleus for a later
large library.
It has been stated that Doubleday translated into English Eliphas
Levi’s Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie and his Fables et Symboles; it is not known what became of these translations. Another
unfinished and most likely lost work of his was a complete Index
and Digest of the early issues of The Theosophist. It is a great pity
that this labor has not been preserved as it should have been for
the benefit of later students. On April 17, 1880, Doubleday was
elected Vice-President of the Theosophical Society, and the official
letter to this effect came from India bearing H.P.B.’s signature.
He was associated with the Aryan T.S. in New York until his
death. All in all, Abner Doubleday was a very remarkable man
and will be long remembered.
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'''DUPOTET DE SENNEVOY, BARON JULES (1796-1881)'''. See for biographical sketch Vol. VII, p. 368.
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'''EDDY BROTHERS'''. Horatio and William Eddy were primitive folk farming a small holding at the hamlet of Chittenden, near Rutland,
Vermont. An observer described them as “sensitive, distant and
curt with strangers, looking more like hard-working rough farmers
than prophets or priests of a new dispensation, with dark complexions,
black hair and eyes, stiff joints and a clumsy carriage.”
They seem to have been at feud with some of their neighbours and
were not liked by them. The curious phenomena of materialization
which took place at the homestead became widely known and
aroused great curiosity. Guests who came to observe and investigate,
found accommodations and were boarded in a large room with
food as simple as their surroundings. For this board, the Eddys
charged a low rate, but they do not seem to have made any profit
from their psychic demonstrations.
{{Page aside|462}}
The ancestry of the Eddy Brothers was rather interesting. Not
only was there an unbroken record of psychic powers extending
over several generations, but their grandmother four times removed
had been burned as a witch as a result of the Salem trials
of 1692. When young, the Eddy Brothers were persecuted and even
tortured by their fanatical father, in order to stop the phenomena
which were taking place; their mother, herself a strong psychic,
was unable to stop this brutality. Later on, the father tried to
make some money out of the powers of his two sons by hiring them
out as mediums. This only added to their unfortunate plight.
The best account of the mediumship of the Eddy Brothers is the
one by Colonel Henry Steel Olcott. The Daily Graphic of New York
sent him to Chittenden to report his findings for that paper; this
was in October, 1874. The result of his ten-week's stay in Vermont
was a series of fifteen remarkable articles which appeared in October
and November, 1874, in the New York Daily Graphic. It is on
the basis of these articles that Col. Olcott prepared his work entitled
People from the Other World which was published, profusely
illustrated by Alfred Kappes and T. W. Williams, by the
American Publishing Company, Hartford, Conn., in 1875.
The Eddy Brothers seem to have covered just about the whole
range of physical mediumship; however, it was William Eddy’s
mediumship which took the form of materializations, while Horatio
gave seances of quite a different character. Some visitors, among
them a Dr. Beard of New York, tried to show up the alleged “tricks”
of the Eddy Brothers, but to no avail; they were genuine mediums
for physical manifestations as evidenced by several of the most
careful observers, notably Col. Olcott himself.
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'''ELEAZAR I (Lazar, Eleazar ben Shammua’)'''. See for biogr. sketch Vol. VI, p. 433.
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'''ELPHINSTONE, MOUNTSTUART'''. Scottish statesman and historian, b. in
1779; d. Nov. 20, 1859. Having received an appointment in the civil
service of the East India Company, he reached Calcutta in 1796.
Appointed, 1801, assistant to the British resident at Poona, at the
court of the peshwa. When war broke out, he acted as virtual
aide-de-camp to General Wellesley. Appointed, 1804, British resident
at Nagpur, and in 1808 as first British envoy to the court of Kabul.
He became, 1810, resident at Poona. Played important role in the
conflict with the Marathas. Appointed, 1819, lieutenant-governor of
Bombay, where he remained until 1827, his principal achievement
being the compilation of the “Elphinstone Code.” He may be regarded
as the founder of the system of State education in India. {{Page aside|463}}He returned to England in 1829. Chief works: *An Account of the
Kingdom of Caubul, and its dependencies in Persia, Tartary, and
India, etc., London, 1815.-*The History of India, London, 1841,
embracing the Hindu and Mohammedan periods.-The Rise of
British Power in the East, London, 1858.
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'''ENNEMOSER, JOSEPH'''. Austrian medico-philosophic writer, b. Nov. 15,
1787, at Hintersee, Tirol; d. at Egern, Sept. 19, 1854. After fighting
against the French in 1809 and again in 1813-14, he took his M.D.
at Berlin in 1816, and was appointed professor of medicine at the
Univ. of Bonn, 1819. Practiced at Insbruck, 1837-41; moved to
Munich where he became widely known by his use of hypnotism.
His chief work is: Der Magnetismus in seiner geschichtlichen Entwickelung,
1819; 2nd ed., 1844; partial Engl. trans. 1854.-He also
wrote: *The History of Magic, transl. from the German by Wm.
Howitt (1792-1879), London, 1854, 2 vols.
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'''FELT, GEORGE H'''. A New York engineer and architect, brilliant and
possessing genius, regarding whose life and career almost nothing
seems to be known. He lectured on “The Lost Canon of Proportion
of the Egyptians, Greeks and Romans” at the gathering held on
September 7, 1875, when the formation of the Theosophical Society
was proposed; he continued the same subject Sept. 13th. For a
short time he acted as Vice-President, but soon drifted out of the
Society. J. W. Bouton intended publishing a large volume outlining
Felt’s discoveries, but this venture apparently did not eventuate,
and only a most elaborate prospectus of this forthcoming work
survives. Consult Col. Olcott’s Old Diary Leaves, Vol. I, for details
about Felt’s ideas and claims.
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'''FLINT, CHARLES RANLETT (1850-1934)'''. *Memories of an Active Life.
New York and London: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1923. xviii, 349 pp.
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'''FOLGER, ROBERT B'''. *The Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, in
Thirty-three Degrees, etc. A full and complete history with an
appendix... New York, 1862; 2nd ed., N.Y., 1881.
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'''FRIEDENTHAL, KARL RUDOLF'''. Prussian statesman, b. at Breslau, Sept.
15, 1827; d. March 6, 1890. Industrialist. In German Reichstag,
1867-81; in 1870 also in Prussian House of Representatives; Minister
of Agriculture, 1874-79. Belonged to the Liberal Center Party.
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'''GALATINUS (PIERRE GALATIN or GALATINO)'''. French theologian and
scholar of the late 15th and early 16th century, b. in small town
of Pouille (whence his name) of poor and obscure parents. Joined
Order of St. Francis; was at Otrante when the Turks laid siege to {{Page aside|464}}the city. Sent to Rome where he perfected himself in Greek and
Oriental languages. Selected to teach theology and philosophy to
his co-brothers of the Order. Upon return to Naples, chosen as
“definiteur” of the Province of Bari. Called to Rome by Leon X,
and appointed his “penitencier.” Was still at Rome as late as 1539.
His only work is: Opus de arcanis catholicae veritatis, etc., Ortona,
1518, fol., the 1st ed. of which is very scarce; left at Rome some
15 volumes of MSS, which are in the Vatican Library.
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'''GORCHAKOV, PRINCE ALEXANDER MIHAYLOVICH'''. Russian statesman, b.
July 16, 1798; d. at Baden-Baden, March 11, 1883. Educated at
the lyceum of Tsarskoye Selo. Entered foreign office under Count
Nesselrode. When German confederation was re-established in 1850,
he was appointed Russian minister to the Diet and established ·
close personal ties with Bismarck. Transferred to Vienna during
the Crimean War. Appointed, 1856, minister of foreign affairs in
place of Nesselrode. Became Chancellor and was, for a time, the
most powerful minister in Europe. At the congress of Berlin, 1878,
at the end of the Russo-Turkish campaign, the aged chancellor
held nominally the post of first plenipotentiary, but left to Count
Shuvalov the odium for the concessions which Russia had to make
to Great Britian and Austria.
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'''GOUGENOT DES MOUSSEAUX, Le Chevalier HENRY-ROGER'''. French
writer, b. at Coulomniers (Seine-et-Marnes), April 22, 1805; d.
Oct. 5, 1878. Trained in diplomacy. Served at the Court of King
Charles X. Retired to his native town during revolution of 1830,
and devoted himself to archaeological, religious and spiritistic
studies. Ardent Catholic and prolific writer, whose passion for
accumulating factual data from the civilizations of the past was used
to great advantage by H.P.B. in her discussions of magic. Works:
Dieu et les Dieux, Paris: Laguy freres, 1854. 8vo. Often considered
as his chief work.-Moeurs et pratiques des demons. Paris, 1854;
2nd rev. ed., Paris, 1865.-*la Magie au xixme siecle, ses agents,
ses verites, ses mensonges. Paris: H. Pion, E. Dentu, 1860. 8vo;
augm. ed., Paris, 1864.-Les hauls phenomenes de la magie,
precedes du spiritisme antique. Paris: H. Pion, 1864. 8vo.-Le
juil, lejudaisme et la judaisation des peuples chretiens. Paris: H.
Pion, 1869. 8vo.; 2nd ed., Paris, 1886. Very scarce. This work produced a veritable sensation abroad and was translated into various languages.
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<nowiki>*</nowiki>'''Guide to Theosophy, A. Collection of Selected Articles'''. Published by
Tookaram Tatya, Bombay, 1887.
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[[File:Hpb_cw_01_464_1.jpg|center|x400px]]
<center>'''THE HOUSE AT 302 WEST 47TH STREET, NEW YORK'''</center>
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This drawing was made by Mr. Knapp of Cincinnati, Ohio, and was
published in The Pa.th, Vol. VIII, November, 1893, with this description:
“The illustration shows the narrow front porch of the house
facing Eighth avenue… The entrance to the apartments is down
on 47th Street under the rear suites of rooms. H.P.B. had the flat
which begins in the middle of the building, running to the front on
Eighth avenue and being immediately over the shop… Her
writing-room was in front, taking in the corner window and the
next two over the shop…”
This flat became known as the “Lamasery”; it is here that much
of I sis Unveiled was written, and where it was finished.
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[[File:Hpb_cw_01_464_2.jpg|center|x600px]]
<center>'''WILLIAM QUAN JUDGE'''</center>
<center>'''1851-1896'''</center>
<center>(Consult the Bio-Bibliographical Index for a comprehensive biographical outline.)</center>
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{{Page aside|465}}
'''GUIDO OF AREZZO'''. Italian musician who lived in the 11th century,
also known as Guido Aretinus, Fra Guittone, and Guy of Arezzo.
Has been called the father of modern music. Of his life very little
is known. He first appears in history as a monk in the Benedictine
monastery of Pomposa, where he taught singing and invented a
new educational method. Envy and jealousy drove him away and
he went to Arezzo; received, about 1030, an invitation to Rome
from Pope John XIV; the latter became his first pupil in Rome.
Later, his former superior induced him to return to Pomposa.
At one time he worked in the Benedictine monastery of St. Maur
des Fosses where he invented his novel system of notation and
taught the brothers to sing by it. There is no room for question
as to the importance of his musical reforms and innovations. There
is little doubt that the names of the first six notes of the scale,
ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la, still in use in France and Italy, were introduced
by him. They were derived from the first syllables of six
lines of a hymn to St. John the Baptist. One of his most important
treatises is the Micrologus Guidonos de disciplina artis musicae.
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'''GUILLEMAIN DE SAINT-VICTOR, LOUIS'''. *Handbook of the Women Freemasons or the True Freemasonry of Adoption.
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'''HALLEY, EDMUND'''. English astronomer, b. in London, Oct. 29, 1656;
d. Jan. 14, 1742. Educated at Queen’s College, Oxford. Studied
astronomy in his school days, publishing, 1676, a paper on planetary
orbits. Went to St. Helena to make observations in the Southern
hemisphere. Upon returning to England, began a friendship with
Newton, which resulted in the publication of the Principia, the expense
being borne by Halley. Observed the comet of 1682, calculated
its orbit, and predicted its return in 1757. Succeeded Flam
stead as astronomer-royal, 1720. Made innumerable contributions to
the science of astronomy. Principal works: Catalogus stellarum
australium, London, 1679.-Synopsis astronomiae cometicae, Oxford,
1705.-Astronomical Tables, London. 1752.-Translated the work of
Apollonius from the Arabic which he learned with this end in view.
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'''HAMMOND, WILLIAM ALEXANDER H'''. American physician, b. at Annapolis, Aug. 28, 1828; d. at Washington, Jan. 5, 1900. Son of a physician; studied at Harrisburg and graduated in medicine at New York Univ., 1848; Practiced at Philadelphia Hospital; then was Ass. Surgeon of the Army; 1859, Prof. of physiology and anatomy at Baltimore Univ.; 1860 went back to the Army, serving in Gen. Patterson’s Hdqrts.; 1862, became Brig.-General and Surgeon-Gen. of the Army. Founded the Army Medical Museum. {{Page aside|466}}Resigned in 1864, went to New York and became Prof. of Psychiatry and nervous diseases at College of Physicians and Surgeons; in 1874, held chair in these subjects at the Medical Faculty in New York. Chief works: The Medical and Surgical History of the Rebellion.-On Sleep and Its Derangements, Philadelphia, 1869.Physics and Physiology of Spiritualism, Philad., 1870.
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'''HARDINGE-BRITTEN, MRS. EMMA (?-1899)'''. An English woman who
in her youth had gone to New York with a theatrical company,
and had remained there with her mother. Being strictly Evangelical,
she was strongly repelled by what she considered the unorthodox
views of the Spiritualists, and fled in horror from her first seance.
In 1856, she was again brought into contact with the subject, and
received proof which made it impossible for her to doubt any
longer. She soon discovered that she was herself a powerful medium.
One of the best attested cases in the early history of Spiritualism
was that in -which she received intimation that the mail steamer
Pacific had gone down in mid-Atlantic with all aboard; she was
threatened with prosecution by the owners of the ship for repeating
what had been told her by an alleged returned spirit of one of
the crew. The information, however, proved to be correct, and the
vessel was never heard of again. Eventually the young lady became
a prominent orator, writer and traveller in the cause of Spiritualism.
She returned to England in 1866, where she wrote her work:
Modern American Spiritualism (New York, 1870). Mrs. Emma
Hardinge married a second time in 1870 and became Mrs. Britten.
Dr. W. Britten was also a Spiritualist. For many years, Mrs.
Britten travelled the length and breadth of the United States proclaiming
the doctrines of Spiritualism amid much opposition, for
she was militant and anti-Christian in her views. Some adherents
of Spiritualism have considered her as the female St. Paul of
that movement. In 1878, she and her husband went together to New
Zealand as missionaries of the cause, and stayed there several
years. During this period, Mrs. Britten wrote her Faiths, Facts and
Frauds of Religious History.
One of the most important contributions of Mrs. Britten to
the history of modern Spiritualism is her large work entitled
Nineteenth Century Miracles (Manchester, 1883) which is copiously
documented and illustrated with rare portraits. It is in this work
(pp. 296 and 441) that occurs an account of the formation of The
Theosophical Society in which both the Brittens took part from
the very first.
In 1876, while still working in America, Mrs. Britten published {{Page aside|467}}in New York a work called *Art Magic; or, Mundane, Sub-Mundane
and Super-Mundane Spiritism. She affirmed that this
work had been written by an Adept of her acquaintance whom she
had first met in Europe, and for whom she was but acting as
“Translator” and “Secretary.” His name, she said, was Chevalier
Louis. This work, whatever may have been its actual origin, deals
with some of the subjects outlined later at far greater length
in Isis Unveiled, but contains also a great many errors and curious
misstatements. We refer the student to the fascinating and important
chapter XII of Col. H. S. Olcott's Old Diary Leaves, Vol. I, wherein
the author gives the full background concerning this strange work.
This account is well worth a careful perusal.
Mrs. Britten published also Ghost Land; or Researches into the
Mysteries of Occultism (Boston, 1876) and founded the magazine
The Two Worlds at Manchester, England. She left an indelible
mark upon modern Spiritualism.
Mrs. Britten left the Theosophical Society fairly soon, although
she had some contact with its leaders until 1890. Her reputation
was somewhat clouded, however, when she joined Prof. Coues
and others in spreading the calumny that Isis Unveiled had been
written by Baron de Palm. Unfortunate and needless as such circumstances
are, and however much they may be regretted, they
seem to occur from time to time in many lives otherwise dedicated
to truth, as far as it can be realized; and there can hardly be
any doubt that Mrs. Britten's endeavor was to voice a great many
spiritual ideas and noble precepts for the benefit of others, even
though her own personal Karman led her to do so through a purely
psychic movement where truth and error are often sorely confused.
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'''HARE, ROBERT'''. American chemist, b. at Philadelphia, Jan. 17, 1781;
d. May 15, 1858. His father, also Robert, served in the Pennsylvania
legislature and was trustee of Pennsylvania University. Robert was
educated at home and studied chemistry under James Woodhouse.
For some years he managed his father’s brewery, devoting his
spare time to chemical research. Discovered, 1801, the oxy-hydrogen
blow-pipe, source of the highest degree of heat then known, which
led to the founding of the platinum industry. At this time he formed
a close friendship with Benjamin Silliman which became almost
a partnership in research. Elected, 1816, Prof. of Chemistry at the
Univ. of Penna. His greatest interest was in electricity; he invented
the calorimeter and the deflagrator for generating a high electric
current; we owe to him also the use of the mercury cathode in
electrolysis, and new methods for the analysis and synthesis of gases. {{Page aside|468}}Hare was a vigorous contributor to the American. Journal, of Science.
On his retirement in 1847, he gave his collection of apparatus to
the Smithsonian Institution and was elected honorary member of
that body. Apart from his various scientific papers and pamphlets,
he published under the pen-name of “Eldred Grayson” a novel,
Standish the Puritan. (1850). Hare was one of the first eminent
men of science who, setting out to expose the delusions of Spiritualism,
became firm believers instead. This happened in 1853. Being
a strong sceptic himself, he experimented for himself, and like
William Crookes at a later date, devised apparatus to use with
the mediums. He embodied his research in his work, Experimental
Investigation of the Spirit Manifestations, etc. (New York: Partridge
& Brittan, 1855, 460 pp., 2 portraits). This report led to a
disgraceful persecution of one who was, with the exception of
Agassiz, the best known man of science in America. The professors
of Harvard passed a resolution denouncing him and his “insane
adherence to a gigantic humbug.” He had already resigned his
chair, but suffered much in loss of reputation. The American
Association for the Advancement of Science howled him down
also, and placed themselves on record that the subject of Hare’s
research was unworthy of their attention.
Sources: E. F. Smith, The Life of Robert Hare (1917), and
Chemistry in America (1910); Henry Simpson, The Lives of
Eminent Philadelphians (1859).
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'''HAUG, DR. CARL FRIEDRICH'''. *Die Allgemeine Geschichte, Stuttgart, 1841.
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'''HAUG, MARTIN'''. German Orientalist, b. at Ostdorf, Wurttemberg; d.
at Munich, June 3, 1876. Studied Oriental languages, especially
Sanskrit, at Tubingen and Gottingen, and in 1854 settled as privatdozent
at Bonn. Removed to Heidelberg, 1856, where he assisted
Bunsen in his literary work. Went out to India in 1859, where he
became superintendent of Sanskrit studies and professor of Sanskrit
at Poona. The result of his researches into Zend literature was a
volume of Essays on the Sacred Language, Writings and Religion
of the Parsees, Bombay, 1862. Having returned to Stuttgart in
1866, he was called to Munich as professor of Sanskrit and comparative
philology in 1868. Haug also edited, translated and explained *The Aitareya Brahmanam of the Rigveda, Bombay, 1863, 2 vols.
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'''HIGGINS, GODFREY (1773-1833)'''. *Anacalypsis, an Attempt to Draw
Aside the Veil of the Saitic Isis, etc. 2 vols. London: Longman, etc., 1836. Very scarce.
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{{Page aside|469}}
'''HOME, DANIEL DUNGLAS'''. Scottish Spiritualistic medium, b. near Edinburgh,
March 20, 1833. When nine years old, was taken by aunt
to the USA. Became converted to Spiritualism in 1850, and for
the next five years gave seances in New York and elsewhere; sent
to Europe, 1855, by friends who provided the means for it; his
seances in Europe aroused very considerable interest and were
attended by a great many notables. Home subsisted until 1858 on
the bounty of his friends. In August, 1858, he married Alexandrine
(Sasha) de Kroll and settled in Russia with wealthy relatives. His
wife, however, died in 1862 and Home’s finances became again
unsettled. In 1866 he was adopted by a wealthy widow, Mrs. Lyon,
who provided him with money; she got tired of him after a
while and sued him for the recovery of her “gifts.” The Court gave
judgment in her favor. In 1870-72, Home had a series of sittings
with Sir Wm. Crookes. He married in 1871 another Russian
woman of means, and spent a number of years on the European
continent. He died at Paris, June 2, 1886 after a long and painful
illness. As a medium, he was connected with all known forms
of manifestation, and was never detected in any fraud. His phenomena
are the best attested in the history of Spiritualism. His
two works are: *Incidents in My Life. Series 1, 2. London: Longman,
Green, 1863-72. 8vo.; 2nd ed., Ser. 1. London, 1864. 8vo.;
5th ed., with Introd. by Judge Edmonds. Ser. 1. New York, 1864.
8vo.-Light and Shadows of Spiritualism. London, and New York:
G. W. Carleton & Co., 1877. 483 pp. (pp. 301-28 concern H. S.
Olcott); 2nd ed. London, 1878.
In spite of some statements to the contrary, H.P.B. did not
know Home personally and never met him. Cf. Collected Writings,
Vol. VI, pp. 73 and 289-90; also The Mahatma Letters to H. P.
Sinnett, p. 37, where it says that “...Home-the medium...
He is the bitterest and most cruel enemy O. and Mad. B. have,
though he has never met either of them...”
For further information about Home, consult the following works:
Madame D. Home. D. D. Home. His Life and Mission. London :
Trubner & Co., 1888. 8vo. viii, 428. Also Dutton & Co., l 921.The
Gift of D. D. Home, by the same author. London: Kegan
Paul & Co., 1890. 8 vo. viii, 388.-Horace Wyndham, Mr. Sludge,
The Medium. London, 1937. xii, 307.-Jean Burton, Heyday of a
Wizard. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1944.
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'''HOOKE, ROBERT'''. English experimental physicist, b. at Freshwater,
Isle of Wight, July 18, 1635; d. in London, Mch. 3, 1703. After
1655, was employed and patronized by the Hon. Robert Boyle. {{Page aside|470}}Appointed, 1662, curator of experiments to the Royal Society, of
which he was elected a Fellow in 1633. Appointed, 1665, professor
of geometry in Gresham college. Secretary to the Royal Society,
1677-83, and published in 1681-82 the papers read before that body
under the title of Philosophical Collections. His optical investigations led him to adopt the undulatory theory of light; he was the
first to state clearly that the motions of the heavenly bodies must
be regarded as a mechanical problem; and he approached the discovery
of universal gravitation. Unfortunately, he was a man of
irritable temper and made some virulent attacks on Newton and
other men of science.
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'''HORROCKS, JEREMIAH'''. English astronomer, b. in 1619 at Toxteth Park,
near Liverpool. Student at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, 1832-35;
then tutor at Toxteth, studying astronomy in his spare time. He
calculated that, contrary to the prediction in Kepler’s Rudolphine
Tables, a transit of Venus would occur on November 24 (old
style), 1639. This was a Sunday, and Horrocks, acting at the time
as curate of Hoole, rushed from his clerical duties just in time
to see the transit actually take place. This was the first transit
of Venus to be observed. A brilliant young man, to whom are
due several important contributions to astronomical knowledge, he
died in his 22nd year, Jan. 3, 1641.
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'''HURRYCHUND CHINTAMON'''. *Commentary on the Bhagavad-Gita.
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'''HYSLOP, JAMES HENRY'''. American educator, b. at Xenis, O., August
18, 1854, d. June 17, 1920. Son of Robert Hyslop; graduated at
the Univ. of Wooster, O., 1877; Ph.D., Johns Hopkins, 1887;
married, Oct. 1, 1891, Mary Fry Hall, Philadelphia, Penn.; taught
in the University of Lake Forest, Ill.; Smith College, Northampton,
Mass.; Bucknell Univ., Lewisburgh, Penna.; and Columbia Univ.,
where he was Prof. of Logic and Ethics. Works: Elements of Logic,
1892.-Ethics of Hume, 1893.-Elements of Ethics, 1895.-Syllabus
of Psychology, 1899.-Articles and Reviews in various magazines
and the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, and later,
as his interest in psychic research developed: Science and a Future
Life, 1905.-Enigmas of Psychic Research, 1906.-Psychic Research
and the Resurrection, 1908.-Psychic Research and Survival,
1913.-Life after Death, 1918.-Contact with the Other World, 1919.
Hyslop was present at the meetings of September 8 and October
16, 1875, when The Theosophical Society was proposed
and organized, but he later lost interest in it.
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{{Page aside|471}}
'''INMAN, THOS'''., *Ancient and Pagan Christian Symbolism, etc. London, 1869; 2nd ed., N.Y., 1871.
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'''IVINS, WILLIAM MILLS'''. Distinguished American lawyer, b. at Upper
Freehold, N. J., April 22, 1851; d. in New York, July 23, 1915.
Son of Augustus and Sarah (Mills) Ivins. Graduated in 1869 from
Adelphi Academy, Brooklyn, N.Y. Studied at Columbia law school
and was admitted to the Bar in 1873. Began law practice as a mem·
her of the Brooklyn firm of Bergen & Ivins and during that period
represented H.P.B. in her lawsuit against Clementine Gerebko.
(Vide pp. 83-84 of the present volume.)
During 1885-88, Ivins was judge advocate general of New York
state. He was a close student of municipal government, and in
1881-82 was to a large extent acting mayor of New York under
Wm. R. Grace. As Chamberlain of the city, he fought a courageous
battle for various municipal reforms, and exposed corrupt conditions.
In 1907-09, was Chairman of a committee which prepared
a Charter for New York city, known as the Ivins Charter, which
became a model for other city charters. A formidable courtroom
opponent, he won a number of important law cases and took part
in political campaigns on the side of much-needed reforms. A
many-sided man, Ivins was interested in botany, biology, general
philosophy, assembled an extensive library on Napoleon which was
given to Columbia University after his death, and wrote several
works on legal matters. He was married to Emma Laura Yard; they
had five children. (Vide pp. 95-100 of the present volume for further
information on Ivins and the “Hiraf” Club.)
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'''JACOLLIOT, Louis (1837-1890)'''. *La Bible dans l’Inde. Vie de Jezeus
Christna. Paris, 1869. 8vo. Translated as The Bible in India.
Hindoo origin of Hebrew and Christian Revelation. London, 1870.
8vo.
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'''JENNINGS, HARGRAVE (1817?-1890)'''. *The Rosicrucians, their Rites and
Mysteries. London, 1870. 8vo.; 2nd ed., rev., corr. and enl., London,
1879; 3rd ed., newly rev., 1887.
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'''JINARAJADASA, C. (1875-1953)'''. *Letters from the Masters of the
Wisdom. 1881-1888. Transcribed and Compiled by C. J. First
Series. With a Foreword by Annie Besant. Adyar, Madras: Theosophical
Publishing House, 1919. 124 pp.; 2nd ed., 1923; 3rd
ed., 1945; 4th ed., with new and addit. Letters (covering period
1870-1900), 1948.-*Second Series. Adyar: Theos. Publ. House, {{Page aside|472}}1925; Chicago: The Theos. Press, 1926. 205 pp., facs.-*Did
Madame Blavatsky Forge the Mahatma Letters? Adyar: Theos.
Publ. House, 1934. 52 pp. with 30 ill.
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'''JUDGE, WILLIAM QUAN'''. One of the chief Founders of The Theosophical
Society. The life of Mr. Judge is so indissolubly involved in the
history and development of The Theosophical Society, that to
outline. the one is almost identical to outlining the other. We limit
ourselves here to the lesser known facts of Mr. Judge’s early life,
prior to his meeting H.P.B. and Col. Olcott.
The son of Frederick H. Judge and Mary Quan, William Quan
Judge was born in Dublin, Ireland, April 13, 1851, and spent his
early childhood in a country where material adversity often found
compensation in its natives’ awareness of the silent forces of nature.
At the age of seven a serious illness struck the lad and the doctor
informed the family gathered at his bedside that William was
dead. But before grief could overwhelm the would-be mourners,
to everyone's amazement the boy revived. His recovery was slow,
however, but during the year of his convalescence, he began to show
an interest in mystical subjects. Unaware of his ability to read, the
family found him engrossed in books dealing with Mesmerism,
Phrenology, Magic, Religion and similar subjects.
The Judge family came to the U.S.A. when William was thirteen,
sailing on the Inman Liner “City of Limerick,” which arrived in
New York on July 14, 1864. The mother had already died at the
birth of her seventh child in Ireland, and the father had to assume
the double responsibility of educating and providing for the
children. After a brief stay at the Old Merchant’s Hotel on Courtland
St., and later on Tenth St., New York, the family finally
settled in Brooklyn, N.Y.
Hardship was no stranger to the Judge household, but William
managed to finish his schooling before going to work. He
eventually became a clerk in the Law Office of George P. Andrews,
who later became Judge of the Supreme Court of New York,
and developed an interest in the legal profession, for which he
soon began to prepare himself. His father died soon after. On
coming of age, William became a naturalized American citizen in
April, 1872, and was admitted to the State Bar of New York one
month later. His industry, natural shrewdness and inflexible persistence
commended him to his clients and he became, as time
went on, a specialist in Commercial Law.
In 1874, Judge married a school teacher, Ella M. Smith of
Brooklyn (who died April 17, 1931), by whom he had a daughter {{Page aside|473}}who succumbed to diphtheria in infancy. The marriage was not
successful; his wife, a strict Methodist at the time, not only did
not share his later theosophical interests, but opposed them, both
on personal and religious grounds. The loss of their child added
to the unhappiness of their family life, especially so since Judge
was very fond of children, who responded to his affection.
It was in the Fall of 1874, shortly after his marriage, that
Judge came in contact with H. P. Blavatsky. According to Olcott,
he was then serving in the Law office of E. Delafield Smith, U.S.
Attorney for the Southern District of New York. After reading
Col. Olcott’s articles in the New York Daily Graphic (published
in March, 1875, as a work entitled People from the Other World)
outlining his experiences at the Eddy Homestead at Chittenden, Vt.,
where some weird Spiritualistic seances were being held, he wrote
to the Colonel asking for an introduction to Madame Blavatsky.
Eventually the desired invitation came, and resulted in an association that was to last throughout their lives.
Judge became a frequent visitor at H.P.B.’s apartment, at 46
Irving Place, New York, where the founding of the Theosophical
Society was soon to take place. According to Col. Olcott, one evening,
after a lecture by a New York architect, George H. Felt, on “The
Lost Canon of Proportion of the Egyptians, Greeks and Romans,”
Olcott wrote on a scrap of paper: “Would it not be a good thing
to form a Society for this kind of study?”-and gave it to Judge.
H.P.B. read the note and nodded assent. (H. S. Olcott, Old Diary
Leaves, I, 118).
A new life now commenced for the young lawyer, and his association with H.P.B. and Col. Olcott brought him his greatest
opportunity. His youth and his sense of insecurity, both material
and spiritual, prevented him at first from taking full advantage
of the gifts thus laid before him, but in his struggle with himself,
beset as he was, with adverse financial and domestic difficulties,
he developed an inner strength which later was to marshal into
activity all his hidden powers.
We do not have any information as to whether W. Q. Judge
participated at all in the preparation of Isis Unveiled, the writing
of which at the time demanded much of H.P.B.’s energy. His
younger brother, however, John H. Judge, rendered valuable serv·
ice in the matter of preparing H.P.B.’s manuscript for the printer,
by copying a good portion of the work. This was not an easy
task, for typewriters were unknown in those days, and it was
necessary to prepare manuscripts for publication by means of {{Page aside|474}}handwritten copy. Young John H. Judge met H.P.B. when he was
only seventeen years of age; he had a great admiration for H.P.B.
and considered it a signal privilege to assist her in her literary
task. John H. Judge visited the Point Loma Theosophical Headquarters
in California on August 25, 1914, and related these facts
to the body of students gathered to receive him.<ref>Cf. Raja-Yoga Messenger, Point Loma, Calif., Vol. X, No. 10, October, 1914, pp. 16-17.</ref>
Strangely enough, a short time before the actual publication of
H.P.B.’s first work, some disruption occurred in the relations
between H.P.B. and W. Q. Judge, possibly due to some occult
test. Writing about it, Olcott says: "During that year of interregnum
[which he places at between July 16, 1877 and Aug. 27,
1878] Mr. Judge did not visit us, owing to a difficulty between
Mme. Blavatsky and himself, nor did she write to him nor he to her, his only letters being addressed to me. This is mentioned merely
by way of explaining why his name does not appear at that period
in either of the Minute Books or in ‘Old Diary Leaves’... When
between us three were re-established, and continued down to the
death of H.P.B.”<ref> Historical Retrospect, etc., p. 19.</ref>
W. Q. Judge’s position as one of the three chief Founders of the
Theosophical Society-questioned as it has been by some ignorant
critics-is amply substantiated by both Col. Olcott and H.P.B. In
the light of their emphatic statements to this effect, there can
be no doubt on the subject.<ref> Consult the following sources: Letter from H.P.B. to Judge,
Ostende, July 27, 1886; also one dated August 22, 1886; H.P.B.’s
Letter to the Second Convention of the American Section, T.S., April,
1888; Report on above Convention, The Theosophist, IX, July, 1888,
pp. 620-621; H.P.B.’s Letter to Richard Harte, dated London, Sept.
12, 1889; H.P.B.’s “Preliminary Explanation” to E. S. Instruction
No. III, quoting Master’s own words; Richard Harte in The Theosophist,
XI, Suppl., to December, 1889, p. xlii; Statement published in
Lucifer, VIII, June, 1891, pp. 319-20; The Theosophist, XII, July,
1891, p. 634; Col. Olcott in The Theosophist, XII, Sept., 1891,
p. 707; Col. Olcott’s words in The Path, VI, Nov., 1891, p. 260;
Allan Griffiths in Lucifer, IX, Nov., 1891, p. 259; Annie Besant in
her Circular Letter to the Blavatsky Lodge, March 11, 1892. All
the above-mentioned passages are quoted in Theosophia, Los Angeles,
Calif., Vol. XVII, Spring, 1961.</ref>
{{Page aside|475}}
When H.P.B. and Olcott left the U.S.A. for India, December
17, 1878, the small group of Theosophists was left in the hands
of the Acting President, Major-General Abner Doubleday, of Civil
War fame, and W. Q. Judge. The Society had largely been conducted
as a “literary salon” with H.P.B. as the main attraction.
The vacuum she left behind could not be filled either by Doubleday
or Judge. During the years immediately following the removal
of the Founders to India, Judge was left very much alone both
by H.P.B. and the Masters. The golden days when Judge could
visit the Lamasery, as H.P.B.’s apartment in New York was
called, seemed gone for ever. Judge wrote rather despairingly to
Olcott, complaining that he was being left out in the cold. This
situation was undoubtedly connected with his trials as a probationary
chela. He asked for news about the Masters, just
anything. It is from the period of 1879-82 that Judge’s correspondence with Damodar K. Mavalankar dates. The replies of the
latter revealed to Judge a more intimate relationship between
Master and pupil than he had ever hoped for himself, and this
made Judge his fervent admirer and life-long friend. In the series
entitled “A Hindu Chela's Diary,” Judge paraphrases Damodar’s
mystical experiences, as described in his letters to him. <ref>Consult Sven Eek, Damodar and the Pioneers of The Theosophical Movement, Adyar, 1965, pp. 78-100.</ref>
In a letter to Damodar dated June 11, 1883, Judge writes:
“I have your last. On the back is written in red pencil 'Better
come M∴’ . . .”<ref>Original letter is in the Adyar Archives. The letter from Damodar referred to has been lost.</ref> It was in 1884, which year marked the
turning-point in Judge’s career, that he undertook his long wished
for journey to India. He went via Paris where he arrived March
25, 1884. <ref>The Word, XV, April, 1912, pp. 17-18.</ref> When H.P.B., Col. Olcott and party arrived in Paris,
March 28th, Judge was on hand to meet them.<ref>Olcott, Old Diary Leaves, III, 86.</ref> According to
some of his published letters,<ref>The Word, ibid.</ref> Judge was ordered by the Masters
to stay there and help H.P.B. in writing The Secret Doctrine, which
at that time was still envisioned as a new version of Isis Unveiled-a plan abandoned later. Judge worked for and with H.P.B.,
both in Paris and at Enghien, where they stayed for a while in
May as guests of Count and Countess Gaston d’Adhemar. He also {{Page aside|476}}was in London for a few days during H.P.B:s hurried trip there
in early April. Judge left Paris for India at the end of June,
arriving in Bombay July 15th, where he lectured the 18th on
“Theosophy and the Destiny of India.” After lecturing at Poona,
Hyderabad, Secunderabad and Gooty, he reached Adyar August
10th. His brief stay at Adyar seems to be shrouded in somewhat
of a mystery, which we may never be able to unravel for lack of adequate documentation.
It was during Judge’s stay at Adyar that the Christian College
Magazine of Madras published the article “The Collapse of Koot
Hoomi,” with fifteen forged letters purporting to have been written
by H.P.B. That period was one of grave anxiety and serious
trouble, and the atmosphere at Adyar must have been electrically
charged. We do not know exactly when Judge left Adyar on his
return trip to New York, but he does state himself that he was
in London in November, 1884, on his way home via England.<ref>Judge’s pamphlet entitled Light on the Path and Mabel Collins.</ref> It was on November 1st, 1884, that H.P.B. and party left London
and boarded the steamer at Liverpool, on their way to India
via Alexandria and Port Said. Olcott, on the other hand, sailed
from Marseilles for Bombay on October 20, arriving at his destination
November 10th.<ref>Olcott's original Diaries.</ref> From the above it follows that Judge left Adyar at about the time when both H.P.B. and Olcott were enroute to Adyar from Europe. Considering the routes used in those
days, it is most likely that their steamers met each other somewhere
in the Mediterranean, but no information has ever come to light
on this subject, nor any hint as to why Judge left Adyar so soon
and without waiting for the Founders’ arrival. There is no information
either on a meeting between Judge and Damodar and what
the former thought of him after personally contacting him.
Judge sailed for the U.S.A. from Liverpool, November 15, 1884,
on the British steamer SS Wisconsin, and reached New York
November 26th.<ref>Lloyd’s of London records.</ref> It was on that voyage that A. E. S. Smythe,
future President of the Canadian Theos. Society, met him for the
first time.<ref>Canadian Theosophist, XX, April, 1939, p. 35.</ref>
The fact, however, that Judge's visits to H.P.B. and to Adyar
marked the beginning of his exceptionally successful work for the
Society would indicate that he derived inspiration from his journey.
{{Page aside|477}}
Upon his return to New York, Judge found his financial prospects
greatly improved. He joined the law firm in which Olcott's
brother worked, and thus he was able to devote more time to
the Society.
Col. Olcott graphically describes the inner change which had
taken place in Judge. He says: “...Mr. Judge felt what you
may call the 'divine afflatus' to devote himself to the work and
to pick up the loose threads we had left scattered there in America
and carry on. The result shows what one man can do who is
altogether devoted to his cause.”<ref>Proceeding, First Annual Convention of the T.S. in Europe, London, July, 1891, p. 49.</ref>
In reviewing the situation in America, Judge realized that a
radical change was needed in the administration of the Society,
if it were to make any headway. Consequently, he wrote to H.P.B.
and Olcott suggesting that an American Section be formed. This
was done in June, 1886, with Judge elected as permanent General
Secretary. The new Section soon prospered under his vigorous
leadership and new branches were chartered all over the country.
Judge’s despondency and immaturity of earlier years seemed entirely
gone. He soon attracted to himself devoted workers who gladly
carried out his plans. Olcott comments again: “...His brain was
fertile in good practical ideas, and to his labours almost exclusively
was due the rapid and extensive growth of our movement in the
United States; the others, his colleagues, but carried out his plans.”<ref>Old Diary Leaves, IV, 508.</ref>
In April, 1886, Judge started his magazine The Path which was
to become the backbone of Theosophical publicity in the U.S.A. As
there were few qualified writers at the time in America, Judge
wrote a great many articles himself. He did so under a number of
pseudonyms, such as An American Mystic, Eusebio Urban, Rodriguez
Undiano, Hadji Erinn, William Brehon and others. His style was
simple and direct, and he dealt with a variety of theosophical and
allied subjects. H.P.B.’s admiration of this journal was very marked,
and she referred to it as “pure Buddhi.”
In the Summer of 1888, Judge published An Epitome of
Theosophy, a gem of succinct presentation of the chief tenets of
the Ancient Wisdom. In a much shorter form it had previously
appeared as a Theosophical “Tract,” and was also published in
The Path (Vol. II, Jan., 1888). So wide spread was its circulation
at the time, that the Theosophical Publication Society in England {{Page aside|478}} published the expanded version which Judge wrote specifically for
that purpose.
In 1889 Judge started a smaller magazine intended for inquirers
which he called The Theosophical Forum.<ref> A monthly of only eight pages at first, and not exceeding twelve pages later, it ran from April, 1889, through April, 1895, seventy issues in all. A New Series was inaugurated in May, 1895, slightly larger in size, and running through June, 1898; at this time another change in format took place, and the journal was published at Flushing, N. Y. under H. T. Hargrove and later A. H. Spencer, from July, 1898 through April, 1905. This later Series is very scarce today.</ref> His answers to questions
submitted are models of concise expression founded on a deep
knowledge of technical Theosophy. He also contributed articles to
The Theosophist and to Lucifer which H.P.B. started in London
in the Fall of 1887.<ref> Many of Judge's articles have been published in book form by The Theosophy Company of Los Angeles, London and Bombay. The first collection is entitled Vernal Blooms and appeared in 1946; the second is entitled The Heart Doctrine and was issued in 1951. Other of Judge's articles have been published from time to time in pamphlet form by various Theosophical groups.</ref>
Judge’s understanding of the Indian philosophy found expression
in an excellent interpretation of The Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali
which was produced with the assistance of James Henderson
Connelly and published in New York in 1889.
In 1890 Judge published Echoes from the Orient, a broad outline
of Theosophical tenets which originally appeared in Kate Field’s
Washington, under the pseudonym of “Occultus.”
In the same year appeared a rendering of the Bhagavad-Gita,
based mainly on the translation of J. Cockburn Thomson, hut
with valuable commentaries in footnotes. He also wrote further
Notes or Commentaries in The Path, and these were published
later in hook form.
In the latter part of 1891, appeared Judge’s Letters That Have
Helped Me, a series of letters written by him to “Jasper Niemand”
(Mrs. Julia ver Planck, later Mrs. Archibald Keightley) which
had originally appeared in The Path. Much later, namely in 1905,
there was published at New York a second series of Letters compiled
by Jasper Niemand and Thomas Green. Both series have
been repeatedly reprinted.
In 1893 Judge published The Ocean of Theosophy, which in {{Page aside|479}} subsequent years became one of the Theosophical classics, running
through innumerable editions.
Judge was also instrumental in publishing a large number of
Oriental Department Papers consisting of Sanskrit and other
Oriental Scriptures specially translated for this Department by
Prof. Manilal Dvivedi and Chas. Johnston. He also issued from
June, 1890, through March, 1894, the Department of Branch Work
Papers containing valuable suggestions for Theosophical work and
study. Both of these series of Papers are now quite scarce.
Approximately in 1894-95, Judge supplied the current edition of
Funk & Wagnalls’ The Standard Dictionary with definitions of
Theosophical terms, and was announced therein as a specialist on
the subject.
A number of articles and essays from Judge's active pen appeared
in The Irish Theosophist, The Pacific Theosophist, The New
Californian, The Vahan, and the Proceedings of various Theosophical
Congresses and of the World’s Fair Parliament of Religions in
1893. His literary activity was outstanding, particularly considering
that it was limited to a period of hardly ten years
(reckoned from the founding of The Path), during which Judge
was often ill.
In December, 1888, Judge was in Dublin, Ireland, and there is
evidence that he went from there to London and assisted H.P.B.
in the formation of the Esoteric Section. <ref> The Path, III, March, 1889, p. 393.</ref> On December 14 of that
year H.P.B. issued a special order appointing Judge as her “only
representative for said Section in America” and as “the sole channel
through whom will be sent and received all communications between
the members of said Section and myself [H.P.B.,]” and
she did so “in virtue of his character as a chela of thirteen years
standing.” <ref> The text of this document was originally published in an undated E.S.T. Circular, issued almost immediately after May 27, 1891, the date on which a full meeting of the E.S. Council, appointed by H.P.B., was held at the Hdqrts. of the T.S. in Europe, 19 Avenue Road, London, England, following H.P.B.’s passing. The original is in the Archives of the former Point Loma Theos. Society, and a facsimile thereof may be found in Vol. X of the Collected Writings, p. 194. </ref>
The same year Judge was appointed by Col. Olcott as Vice- {{Page aside|480}} President of the Theosophical Society, and in 1890 was officially
elected to that office, the rules having been changed.
The special trust and confidence reposed in Judge by H.P.B.
may be better understood if the psychological mystery connected
with him is born in mind, a mystery which is better known in the
Orient and which had remained completely unknown in the West
until recent times. As explained by C. A. Griscom, one of Judge’s
friends and co-workers,
“It was the good fortune of a few of us to know something
of the real Ego who used the body known as Wm. Q. Judge.
He once spent some hours describing to my wife and me the
experience the Ego had in assuming control of the instrument it
was to use for so many years. The process was not quick nor an
easy one and indeed was never absolutely perfected, for to Mr.
Judge’s dying day, the physical tendencies and heredity of the
body he used would crop up and interfere with the full expression of the inner man’s thoughts and feelings. An occasional
abruptness and coldness of manner was attributable to this lack
of co-ordination. Of course Mr. Judge was perfectly aware of this
and it would trouble him for fear his real friends would be
deceived as to his real feeling. He was always in absolute control of his thoughts and actions, but his body would sometimes slightly modify their expression... Mr. Judge told me
in December 1894, that the Judge body was due by its Karma
to die the next year and that it would have to be tided over this
period by extraordinary means. He then expected this process
to be entirely successful, and that he would be able to use that
body for many years, but he did not count upon the assaults
from without, and the strain and exhaustion. This, and the
body’s heredity, proved too much for even his will and power.
Two months before his death he knew he was to die, but even
then the indomitable will was hard to conquer and the poor
exhausted, pain-racked body was dragged through two months
in one final and supreme effort to stay with his friends.”<ref> Letters that have Helped Me, Vol. II, pp. 119-20.</ref>
In this connection, the following passage from one of H.P.B.’s
letters to Judge, written from Ostende on October 3, 1886, is of
great interest:
“The trouble with you is that you do not know the great
change that came to pass in you a few years ago. Others have
{{Page aside|481}}
{{Vertical space|}}
[[File:Hpb_cw_01_481_1.jpg|center|x400px]]
'''<center>COL. HENRY STEEL OLCOTT</center>'''
'''<center>1832-1907</center>'''
<center>This photograph, taken in the early days of The Theosophical Society, is preserved in the Adyar Archives.</center>
{{Vertical space|}}
[[File:Hpb_cw_01_481_2.jpg|center|x400px]]
<center>'''DR. ALEXANDER WILDER'''</center>
<center>'''1823-1908'''</center>
<center>(Consult the Bio-Bibliographical Index for a biographical outline.)</center>
{{Vertical space|}}
{{Style P-No indent|occasionally their astrals changed and replaced by those of Adepts
(as of Elementaries) and they influence the outer, and the
higher man. With you, it is the NIRMANAKAYA not the ‘astral’ that
blended with your astral. Hence the dual nature and fighting.”<ref>The Theosophical, Forum, Point Loma, Calif., Vol. III, August 15, 1932, p. 253.</ref>}}
The fact referred to in both of these excerpts is what is known
as Tulku, a technical Tibetan term which describes the condition
when a living Initiate or High Occultist sends a portion of his consciousness to take embodiment, for a longer or shorter period of
time, in a neophyte-messenger whom that Initiate sends into the
outer world to perform a duty or to teach. There are many degrees
of this condition, and most of its mysteries remained under the
seal of secrecy until the present century, and are even today but
very imperfectly understood among students of the Movement. It
is this teaching which provides the key to the many apparent
contradictions in the character of Messengers and Chelas as witnessed
in the history of the Movement for many years past.<ref>This subject, and cognate Tibetan doctrines associated with Tulku,
as well as Avesa, are treated at length in the recently published work by Geoffrey A. Barborka entitled H. P. Blavatsky, Tibet and Tulku, The Theosophical Publishing House, Adyar, Madras, India, 1966.</ref>
In a forthright letter dated from London, Oct. 23, 1889, H.P.B.
spoke of Judge as being “part of herself since several aeons” and
wrote to him saying:
“The Esoteric Section and its life in the U.S.A. depends on
W.Q.J. remaining its agent and what he is now. The day
W.Q.J. resigns, H.P.B. will be virtually dead for the Americans.
“W.Q.J. is the Antaskarana between the two Manas(es) the
American thought and the lndian-or rather the trans-Himalayan
Esoteric Knowledge.” <ref> The Theosophical, Forum, Vol. III, June, 1932, where it was published from the original in the Archives of the Point Loma T.S. Facsimile in Theosophia, Vol. VII, March-April, 1951.</ref>
With H.P.B.’s death, May 8, 1891, a great cohering and vitalizing
influence was removed from the public activity of the T.S. At first,
the shock of her physical disappearance momentarily united all in
seeming solidarity, but the contest of strong wills which had existed
in the Society for some time past could only be delayed temporarily.
On May 13th Judge sailed for London. He attended the Convention
of the European Branches of the T.S., July 9-10, under {{Page aside|482}}Olcott's chairmanship; Annie Besant had arrived a few days after
H.P.B.’s death. It is during that period in London that the Esoteric
Section was placed under the joint Outer Headship of Judge and
Annie Besant. Judge returned to the U.S.A. on August 6th.
In January 1892, less than a year after H.P.B.’s passing, Col.
Olcott, an ailing man at the time, resigned the Presidency of the
T.S. in Judge’s favor, and prepared to devote his remaining years
to the writing of his memoirs and to other literary work. There
is strong evidence, however, that illness and fatigue were not the
only reasons for this action. Among other and more compelling
reasons, was one connected with the E.S. Olcott had originally opposed
its formation, hut yielded when learning that the Masters
themselves had ordered H.P.B. to organize such a Section. Eventually,
after H.P.B. had gone, the leading members of the Blavatsky
household in London began to look to Judge and Annie Besant for
leadership and direction. Olcott himself has written: “Every possible
thing was done to reduce my position to that of a cipher or
figurehead; so I met the thing half way with my resignation.”<ref>Old Diary Leaves, IV, p. 428.</ref> There is more to this story, however, than has ever appeared in print.
When Olcott's resignation came up for discussion and action
before the Blavatsky Lodge of London, Annie Besant, as President
thereof, addressed a strong letter to the membership of that Lodge,
dated March 11, 1892, expressing her candid view that “the present
Vice-President, and remaining Co-Founder of the Society, William
Quan Judge, is the most suitable person to guide the Society, and
one who cannot with justice he passed over.” This was an unqualified
endorsement of Judge as the future President of the T.S.<ref>Full text of this Letter may he found in Sven Eek’s Damodar, etc., p. 115.</ref>
At the Annual Convention of the American Section held at
Chicago, April 25, 1892, Judge’s election to the Presidency was
unanimous; this decision, however, was accompanied by an unanimous
Resolution, strongly supported by Judge, that Olcott should
revoke his resignation due to go into effect on May 1st.
The European Section did not hold its Convention in London
until July, 1892, at which time Judge was unanimously elected
President, the European members having understood that Olcott's
decision to resign was final. The situation was further complicated
and uncertain because Olcott himself had intimated in May 1892 {{Page aside|483}}that his resignation was still an open question “dependent upon
the contingencies of my health and the proof that my return to
office would be for the best interest of the Society.”
The Indian Section, as early as February of that year, had
unanimously agreed to recommend that the Presidential office should
not be filled during the lifetime of Olcott, but that his duties be
performed, if necessary, by the Vice-President acting as Pres. of
the T.S. Thus the Indian members were not actually called on to vote.
Col. Olcott had also raised an objection to Judge’s assuming the
Presidency immediately, demanding that Judge first resign his post
as General Secretary of the American Section, as otherwise this
would give him three votes out of five on the General Council.
On August 21st, 1892, Olcott issued an Executive Circular in
which he stated that on February 11th of that year “the familiar
voice of my Guru chided me for attempting to retire before my
time...” He also pointed out that on April 20th Judge had cabled
him from New York that he was not then able to relinquish the
Secretaryship of the American Section and wrote him enclosing a
transcript of a message he had also received “for me” [Olcott]
from a Master that “it is not time, nor right, nor just, nor wise,
nor the real wish of the ∴ that you should go out, either corporeally
or officially.” His communication ended with the following
statement:
“. . . I revoke my letter of resignation and resume the active
duties and responsibilities of office; and I declare William Q.
Judge, Vice-President, my constitutional successor and eligible
for duty as such upon his relinquishment of any other office
in the Society which he may hold at the time of my death.”<ref>The Path, Vol. VII, October, 1892, pp. 235-36.</ref>
Judge, in a Notice to the members of his own American Section,
gave an unqualified endorsement to this latest development and
expressed his satisfaction. This action alone, if nothing else, throws
a flood of light upon the nobility of his character.
The year 1893 was marked by an event which showed the great
impact that Theosophical publicity had made in America. It
spelled out Judge’s high point of success when, at his suggestion,
the Theosophical Society was invited to participate in the Parliament
of Religions held at Chicago during the World’s Fair. Distinguished {{Page aside|484}}representatives of Oriental religions were chosen from
the ranks of the T.S. Hevavitarana Dharmapala, the resuscitator
of Buddhism in Asia, came from Ceylon; Prof. G. N. Chakravarti
represented Brahmanism, bringing credentials from three Brahmanical
Sabhas. He was Professor of Mathematics at the University
of Allahabad (ancient Prayaga), and a member of the
T.S. Branch in that city. Judge organized the Theosophical meetings,
and officially represented Col. Olcott; he, with Annie Besant,
stimulated the Congress with their clear exposition of the ancient
teachings. The sessions were held on September 15, 16 and 17,
and were attended by overflow audiences.
It so happened that Annie Besant was especially strongly impressed
by the personality of Chakravarti, and from that time on
her opinions became colored by his point of view. Playing on her
desire for occult powers, Chakravarti “captured” Mrs. Besant in
less than two months. Judge watched his growing ascendency over
her mind with anxiety, as he intuitively felt that a subtle attempt
was being made then to divert her efforts from the genuine line
of occultism into a sectarian offshoot. He became more uneasy when,
on Mrs. Besant’s return to England with the party that included
Chakravarti, she prepared to go to India on a long lecture tour,
and he warned her that it was not an auspicious time to go. Before
leaving, she spent some time in London during which she saw a
good deal of the Brahmana; the latter left for India shortly before
Mrs. Besant and Countess Wachtmeister started for the Orient.
A vivid light is thrown upon this very critical period in the
history of the T.S. by Dr. Archibald Keightley, a successful physician,
a staunch supporter of H.P.B., and a most reliable student.
In the protest he made in defence of Judge in 1895, there occurs
the following passage. After giving instances of Chakravarti’s psychic
ability to throw a glamour over individuals or groups, he writes:
“I lived at Headquarters [London] during Mr. Chakravarti’s
visit there and knew from Mrs. Besant, from him and from
personal observation, of his frequent magnetisation of Mrs.
Besant. He said he did it to ‘co-ordinate her bodies for work
to be done.’ To a physician and a student of occultism, the
magnetisation of a woman advanced to the critical age of midlife,
a vegetarian, an ascetic, by a man, a meat-eater, one of
full habit, large appetite and of another and dark race, is not
wise. The latter magnetism will assuredly overcome the former,
however excellent the intentions of both persons. And I soon saw {{Page aside|485}}the mental effect of this in Mrs. Besant's entire change of view,
in other matters besides those of H.P.B. and Mr. Judge.”<ref>The Path, X, June, 1895, pp. 99-100.</ref>
It should be borne in mind here that for a number of years
during the mission of H.P.B., both in India and later, there existed
a growing antagonism on the part of certain groups of proud
Indian Brahmanas against the divulging by her of esoteric truths
to the “outcastes,” truths which they considered their jealously
guarded secret knowledge to which they believed they had exclusive
rights. Even individuals such as Subba Row fell victims
to this inbred feeling, apparently oblivious of the fact that H.P.B.’s
actions were taken on direct orders of her Teachers. Brahmanical
orthodoxy was entrenched in its age-old exclusiveness, and, even
though its votaries could not suppress the work of the Theosophical
Society, they could at least make repeated attempts to distort its
teachings and foil its main objectives. Even Col. Olcott repeatedly
fell under the same subtle and pernicious influence, and had to be
severely taken to task by H.P.B., as many of her letters to him
plainly show. The Allahabad Branch of the T.S. was a hotbed
of this Brahmanical exclusiveness and haughtiness, as is conclusively
shown by the message which Master M. ordered H.P.B. to convey
to A. P. Sinnett with regard to the Prayaga Branch-one of the
most important pronouncements from the Teachers.<ref>The Mahatma Letters, etc., Letter No. 134, dated from Dehra Dun, November 4, 1881.</ref>
Approximately at this time in the life of Judge we see the
gradual emergence of a simmering enmity against him on the part
of those whose secret jealousy and lust for personal power made
them a sounding board for nefarious influences the real nature
of which they obviously did not realize. Judge’s own declaration
that he was in personal touch with the Masters and received
communications from them, both for his own use and for transmission
to others, became fruitful soil upon which the thorny
weeds of enmity could grow. In some instances such feelings can
be readily understood, but to find both Olcott and Annie Besant
among these, proves both the subtle nature of the temptation and
their lack of intuition. While making complimentary statements
about Judge in print, they obviously indulged in vastly different
feelings behind the scenes. This is not intended as a cheap accusation.
The situation prevailing at the time should serve as a
lesson. An imperative need for all students of the occult is to {{Page aside|486}}constantly bear in mind that dedicated workers, pledged disciples,
and even merely sincere aspirants, wholeheartedly engaged in
Theosophical work, are tested, tried, and disciplined at every turn
by the sudden exteriorization of their pent up and delayed Karman,
an occult law stressed by H.P.B. herself. This is a process of purification
which nothing can stop or set aside, until the disciple has
worked off his negative karmic tendencies and has risen above his
weaknesses into the pure air of impersonal spirituality. Unless this
fact is understood, no satisfactory explanation can ever be found
for the recriminations, accusations, abuses and injustices which
occurred at the time to embitter Judge’s last remaining years.
While explaining their nature, the above occult law never justifies
wrong action or thought for which every student is fully responsible.
It would be inadvisable to give a full account of the so-called
“Judge Case” within the scope of the present outline. All pertinent
data on the subject may be obtained by the perusal of The
Theosophist, The Path and Lucifer for approximately the years
1893-96, and the following three main sources of information issued
at the time: The Case Against W. Q. fudge (London: Theos. Puhl.
Society, 1895) published by Annie Besant and prepared by her at
the request of Olcott; Reply by William Q. Judge, read by Dr.
A. Keightley on behalf of Judge before an informal meeting of
the T.S. Convention at Boston, Mass., on April 29, 1895, and
published in pamphlet form; and Isis and the Mahatmas published
by Judge in London in 1895, and dealing mainly with the attack
published in the Westminster Gazette.
The accusations against Judge grew mainly out of a number of
documents which Walter R. Old, at one time a devoted worker in
H.P.B.’s household in London, and Sidney V. Edge, brought to
Adyar in December, 1893, and which purported to prove that Judge
had been misusing the names and handwritings of the Masters to
bolster his own personal aims. Olcott considered the documents
incriminating. Acting on a formal request of Annie Besant, who
by then was at Allahabad with Prof. Chakravarti, Olcott wrote to
Judge, Feb. 7, 1894, offering him two alternatives: (1) resignation
from all offices, in which case only a general public explanation
would be made; (2) to have a Judicial Committee convened as
provided for in the Constitution of the Society. In the latter case,
the proceedings would be made public. Judge decided in favor of
the second alternative, and cabled March 10th in reply to Olcott:
“Charges absolutely false. You can take what proceedings you see
fit; going to London in July.” The Judicial Committee met in {{Page aside|487}}London on July 10th, 1894, to consider the six charges which had
been drawn by Annie Besant.
The basic charges were that Judge had been untruthful in claiming
uninterrupted teaching from, and communication with, the
Masters from 1875 to the present time; and that he had sent
messages, orders and letters as if sent and written by Masters.
Judge challenged the Committee’s jurisdiction in the case, pointing
out that “the President and Vice-President could only be tried as
such by such Committee, for official misconduct-that is misfeasances
and malfeasances.”<ref>Old Diary Leaves, V, p. 191. The Path, Vol. IX, Aug., 1894, p. 161.</ref> The Judicial Committee found itself
also face to face with its own limitations, on the very basis of
the T.S. Constitution, as it could not try anyone within the T.S.
on questions of personal beliefs. Upon motion duly made, the
charges were dismissed, and Olcott, concurring with this, made the
following historically important statement:
“Mr. Judge’s defense is that he is not guilty of the acts
charged; that Mahatmas exist, are related to our Society, and
in personal connection with himself [Judge]; and he avers his
readiness to bring many witnesses and documentary proofs to
support his statements. You will at once see whither this would
lead us. The moment we entered into these questions we should
violate the most vital spirit of our federal compact, its neutrality
in matters of belief. Nobody, for example, knows better than
myself the fact of the existence of the Masters, yet I would resign
my office unhesitatingly if the Constitution were amended so
as to erect such a belief into a dogma: everyone in our membership
is as free to disbelieve and deny their existence as I am to
believe and affirm it. For the above reason, then, I declare as
my opinion that this inquiry must go no farther; we may not
break our own laws for any consideration whatsoever.”<ref>Olcott, op.cit., V, pp. 186-87. From the Minutes of the Judicial Committee of the Theosophical Society, July 10, 1894.</ref>
In retrospect, it seems most curious that any kind of special
Judicial Committee should have been required to convene, with
all the attendant expenses of long journeys, in order to arrive at a
conclusion which anyone could have readily arrived at by carefully
consulting the Constitutional basis of the T.S.
In a sudden volte face, symptomatic of the many confused trends
of thought fighting for supremacy at the time, Annie Besant stated:
{{Page aside|488}}
“For some years past persons inspired largely by personal
hatred for Mr. Judge, and persons inspired Ly hatred for the
Theosophical Society and for all that it represents, have circulated
a mass of accusations against him, ranging from simple
untruthfulness to deliberate and systematic forgery of the handwritings
of Those Who to some of us are most sacred. The
charges were not in a form that it was possible to meet, a general denial could not stop them, and explanation to irresponsible
accusers was at once futile and undignified... I regard Mr.
Judge as an Occultist, possessed of considerable knowledge and
animated by a deep and unswerving devotion to the Theosophical
Society. I believe that he has sometimes received messages for
other people in one or other of the ways that I will mention in
a moment, but not by direct writing by the Master nor by his
direct precipitation; and that Mr. Judge has then believed himself
to be jusified in writing down in the script adopted by
H.P.B. for communications from the Master, the message psychically received, and in giving it to the person for whom it
was intended, leaving that person to wrongly assume that it was
a direct precipitation or writing by the Master himself-that is,
that it was done through Mr. Judge, but done by the Master.”<ref>Olcott, op.cit., Vol. V, pp. 195-96, 200-201. From the Statement by Annie Besant read at the Third Session of the European Convention of the T.S., July 12, 1894.</ref>
When this entire period is carefully viewed in retrospect, many
of the issues at stake appear rather childish and immature against
the background of additional information on certain occult subjects
which has become available since the publication in 1923 of The
Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett. Had the information contained
therein on the rationale behind the sending of letters and messages
by the Mahatmans, either by precipitation or otherwise, been available
at the time, it is quite possible that responsible officials could
have stemmed the tide of recrimination which enveloped the Society
for years.
Even then several partial explanations on this subject were
available in some of the writings of H.P.B., but somehow or other
they had either not been consulted or simply forgotten. Portions
of several of the Letters written by the Masters to Sinnett had
been copied by several of the officials and placed in the hands
of a few, carefully selected people; it is a wonder that certain
other excerpts from them, bearing upon the matter of messages and {{Page aside|489}}precipitations, had not been equally dealt with, thus avoiding a
great deal of unnecessary trouble.
The following two statements, among others, should he borne
in mind. Master K. H. wrote to Sinnett:
“In noticing M’s [Master Morya’s] opinion of yourself expressed
in some of his letters-(you must not feel altogether so
sure that because they are in his handwriting, they are written
by him, though of course every word is sanctioned by him to
serve certain ends)-you say he has ‘a peculiar mode of expressing
himself to say the least’.<ref>The Mahatma Letter, etc., p. 232; 3rd ed., p. 229.</ref>
On another occasion, Master K. H. explained:
“Very often our very letters-unless something very important
and secret-are written in our handwritings by our chelas.”<ref>Op.cit., p. 296; 3rd ed., 291.</ref>
ln the light of the above passages, what becomes of the accusation
that Judge, while transmitting admittedly genuine messages
from the Masters, yet gave them “a misleading material form,”<ref>Lucifer, XIV, Aug., 1894, pp. 459-60.</ref> meaning the handwriting used by Judge on those occasions?
The judicial verdict of the Committee was received with mixed
feelings. The charges had been met on legal grounds, but human
emotions are never satisfied with merely legal decisions, and so
Judge’s guilt or innocence was to be decided rather by public
opinion than otherwise. The minds of important officials in the
Society were already made up for reasons which were not necessarily
expressed in official sessions of Councils and Committees.
On September 27, 1894, Walter R. Old, then Treasurer and
Recording Secretary of the T.S., sent in his resignation being
“unable to accept the official statement with regard to the inquiries
held upon the charges preferred against the Vice-President of the
T.S.”<ref>Old Diary Leaves, V, p. 256.</ref> This was of course his privilege; but he went one fatal
step further. He published in the Westminster Gazette the entire
series of papers in the so-called Judge Case which had been entrusted
to him by Col. Olcott. This breach of faith precipitated
a number of recriminations, accusations and emotion-whipped
opinions as if Pandora's box had been suddenly opened. Charges
and countercharges followed. At the Adyar Annual Convention, in
December, 1894, Judge who was still Vice-President of the T.S., {{Page aside|490}}was slandered, and Col. Olcott, occupying the Chair, unfortunately
did nothing to improve the prevailing Theosophical climate. Annie
Besant renewed her charges against Judge and was supported by
others. It soon became obvious that no satisfactory agreement
could be reached between the contending parties. The final outcome
of this unfortunate state of affairs was the decision of the
American Section, the largest of the three then existing Sections, to
become an independent body as “The Theosophical Society in
America,” under the Presidentship of Judge. This became a fact
at the Boston Convention on April 28-29, 1895, by a majority vote
of 190 against 9.
A large number of the English lodges took a similar course.
Some lodges and individual members in Continental Europe and
Australia withdrew at a later date and affiliated with the Society
m America. Judge expressed the general feeling in these words:
“The Unity of the Theosophical Movement does not depend
upon singleness of organization, but upon similarity of work
and aspiration; and in this we will ‘KEEP THE LINK UNBROKEN’.”<ref>Report of the American Convention, 1895, p. 24.</ref>
Judge’s health had long been very poor. He had contracted
Chagres fever in South America which had had debilitating effect
on him. Later tuberculosis set in. During the Parliament of Religions
he was at times unable to speak above a whisper, and he had
many premonitions of death. The concerted enmity of some of his
former co-workers must have contributed a great deal in depleting
his physical resistance and he passed away on March 21, 1896, at
about nine o’clock in the morning, at his New York home, in
the presence of Mrs. Judge, E. T. Hargrove and an attending nurse.
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'''KAPILA'''. *The Aphorisms of the Sankhya Philosophy of Kapila, with
illustrative extracts from the Commentaries. Text and Translation
by James R. Ballantyne. Allahabad: Presbyterian Mission Press,
1852, 1854, 1856; 3rd ed., London, Trubner & Co., 1885.
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'''KHUNRATH, HENRY (b. about 1560)'''. *Amphitheatrum Sapientiae
Aeternae solius verae, Christiano-Kabbalisticum, divinomagicum,
etc., an unfinished work which appeared after his death with preface
and conclusion by Erasmus Wohlfahrt. Hanoviaec Giulielmus Antonius,
1609. fol. 2 pts. French transl., Paris: Chacornac, 1898.
2 Vols. 8vo. 12 plates. See also Vol. V (1883), pp. 376-77, of the
present Series.
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{{Page aside|491}}
'''KNORR VON ROSENROTH, BARON CHRISTIAN (1636-1689)'''. *Kabbalah
denudata. Vol. I, Sulzbach, 1677-78; Vol. II, Frankfurt: J. D. Zunneri, 1684.
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'''LARA, D. E. {{Style S-Small capitals|de}}'''. A learned old gentleman of Portuguese-Hebrew extraction
who was present at the meeting of September 8, 1875,
when the Theosophical Society was formed. Both H.P.B. and Col.
Olcott had great affection for him. He seems to have remained
a member till he died, but very little is known about his life and
work.
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'''LEVI ZAHED, ELIPHAS'''. Pseudonym of Alphonse-Louis Constant, renowned
French occultist and writer. He was born February 8, 1810,
in a poor family; his father was Jean-Joseph Constant, a shoemaker,
and his mother, a very pious woman of considerable intelligence,
was Jeanne-Agnes Beaucourt. The life of Eliphas Levi-who
is much better known by this literary pseudonym-can very
definitely be divided into three distinct epochs. During the first
of these, his associations were religious and clerical He received
his early education in a school for boys established by the Abbe
J.-B. Hubault Malmaison in Paris, and partook of his first communion
at the age of twelve. Partly because of his own inclination, and partly as a result of the influences he was subjected to
at the time, he was given a “push” in the direction of a clerical
profession. In October, 1825, he entered the Seminary of Saint-Nicolas
du Chardonnet, to complete his classical studies and familiarize
himself with Hebrew. He graduated in 1830 and went to the
College of Issy, to study literature; from there he moved to the
Seminary of Saint-Sulpice where he showed considerable talent for
poetry, a talent which he used throughout his life. In December,
1835, he became an assistant deacon, received his tonsure, and
took very strict vows which included celibacy. This must have been
the result of youthful enthusiasm at an age when, as he himself has
said, he was unaware of life's experiences. While giving lessons to
young girls, he became enamored of one Adele Allenbach. Eventually
he had to confess this to his superior, and the result was that
he never was ordained and left the Seminary in June, 1836. His
father had already died, and his poor mother, deeply shocked by
what her son had done, committed suicide.
There followed years during which Alphonse-Louis eked out a
livelihood by drawing, painting, and literary work, for all of
which he had real talent. His closest friends were Flora Tristan
and Alphonse Esquiros, well-known writers of the day. Within {{Page aside|492}}himself there was a constant struggle between early tendencies
to a life of retirement and meditation, and more worldy inclinations
which assailed his peace of mind and thwarted his plans.
In July, 1839, yielding to his early tendencies, he went to the
Benedictine monastery of Solemnes, planning to remain there permanently. He was totally disappointed in the way of life he encountered
there, although his stay was productive of some good results,
as he wrote there his Le Rosier de Mai (Paris: Gaume,
1839) a book of canticles and legends. He had occasion to dip into
the writings of the Gnostics, the early Fathers of the Church,
Cassien, and even Madame Guyon, all of whom influenced his mind
very considerably. He left Solemnes with little but recommendations,
and returned to Paris with no definite plan in view.
It is approximately at this time that begins the second epoch
of his life, partially overlapping the first. After brief periods
during which he got some work supervising studies in religious
schools, he met Le Gallois, an Editor, who enthusiastically decided
to publish his manuscript entitled La Bible de la Liberte, a
work which he had written in a spirit of great rebelliousness and
in his search for freedom from oppression. As this work was
dangerous to the Church, the clerics sought to bribe him with
money, to consent to stop the book's publication. They did not
succeed, however, and the work was placed on sale at Versailles, on
Feb. 13, 1841. An hour later, most of the copies were confiscated
by the authorities and Alphone-Louis himself was arrested in
early April, 1841, hailed into Court for attacking public and
religious morals, and sentenced to eight months in prison and a
three hundred franc fine. While in prison, he discovered the
writings of Swedenborg, another mystic who exercised a very
marked influence upon his mind. He was helped in prison by his
friend Flora Tristan who brought him additional food.
Leaving the prison of Sainte-Pelagie in April, 1842, Alphonse-Louis
began another two years of wandering and mental uncertainty.
He engaged in some painting of murals, and tried for
a while to reinstate himself with the clergy. Under the name of
Beaucourt, he stayed at Choisy and Evreux, living there in the
Seminary and distinguishing himself by his eloquence. Unfavorable
publicity in the newspapers, probably due to his enemies
among the clergy, ruined his stay there and he left. At this time,
he was studying the writings of Lully, Agrippa and Postel, and
wrote another work entitled La Mere de Dieu (Paris: Gosselin,
1844).
{{Page aside|493}}
It was in the Fall of 1844 that Alphonse-Louis forsook his
clerical garb, and apparently renounced the vows he had taken.
The emotional side of his life, denied all expression through
the years of strenuous religious discipline, was in a turmoil. He
had an affair with a Mlle. Eugenie C. which resulted in a son
born three months after he was married in a civil ceremony to
Mlle. Naomi Cadiot, July 13, 1846, a girl who was considerably
younger than he. This marriage lasted some seven years during
which his wife was very helpful to him in various difficult circumstances. He seems to have paid no attention whatsoever to the fate of his natural son until many years later.
In 1846, he published La Voix de la famine (Paris: Ballay aine,
1846. 8vo), a work which was interpreted as instigating class
warfare, and which landed him in prison again; while sentenced
for one year and a fine of one thousand francs, he managed to
leave after six months, mainly due to his wife's exertions.
In 1848, he founded a paper entitled la Tribune du peuple, and
wrote a number of pamphlets, most of which contained very radical
ideas, which of course did not help him in his rather strained
circumstances. While political in nature, these pamphlets reflected
a very high idealism and an inner revolt against the injustices
of the times. On the side, he was doing some interior decorating
of an artistic nature, was rebuilding furniture and renovating old
vases. In 1850, he met the renowned Abbe Migne, and was commissioned
by him to prepare for his enormous Patrological Series
the Dictionnaire de litterature chretienne (Migne, 1851, 4to), which
forms Vol. VII of his Nouvelle encyclopedie theologique.
In the course of his married life, he had four children, all of
whom died in infancy. In 1853, his wife, infatuated by another
man, ran away-a circumstance which left a deep wound in
Alphonse-Louis' heart which was never entirely healed.
In the Spring of 1854 he went to London, met Bulwer-Lytton
and engaged with him in some magical evocations, such as one of
Apollonius of Tyana, concerning which H.P.B. writes in the present
Volume. In 1855 he founded with Charles Fauvety la Revue philosophique
et religieuse, a monthly which lasted some three years
or so. It is at about this time of his life that Eliphas Levi-as
he now signed himself-began publishing in serial installments
his Dogme et Rituel de la haute magic which appeared in book
form in 1856 (Paris, Germer-Bailliere). Another “subversive”
piece of literature, a poem this time, landed him in prison once
more, but he was pardoned by Napoleon III.
{{Page aside|494}}
In 1859 and 1861 respectively, appeared from the same publisher
two other works by Eliphas Levi, namely, l'Histoire de la
magie and La Clef des grands mysteres-works which brought
him considerable prestige, reputation and esteem; this was a rather
peaceful period in his life during which a growing number of
disciples and followers, among people of power and wealth in Paris,
helped him financially as well.
For a short time in 1861, he became a Freemason in the Lodge
called Rose du parfait silence, but he quit on becoming disgusted
with what he found therein.
He made another trip to London and most likely had a considerable
influence on the studies of Bulwer-Lytton, as the latter's
work, A Strange Story, definitely reflects.
In 1865, Eliphas Levi published La Science des esprits.
His wife, after some years of absence, suddenly sued him, and
in January, 1865, a Civil Court annuled his marriage, as having
been contracted by a cleric, this being against the laws of the
land. This fact, if nothing else, goes to show that Eliphas Levi
was never “defrocked,” as has been wrongly stated by a number
of writers.
The period oi 1869-70 was one of creative eftort but also of
failing health. Eliphas Levi had a bad heart which troubled him
more and more.
In 1870, his fortunes sustained another blow on account of
the Franco-Prussian War. Most of his income stopped and he was
very hard up. After the Commune, in July, 1871, he went by
invitation to visit his great friend, Madame Mary Gebhard, at
Elbedeld, Germany, and stayed there about two months. This, of
course, was before Mary Gebhard had met H.P.B., and at a time
when she had found in Eliphas Levi’s works what she had been
looking for. She remained his staunch disciple until his death,
and used to travel to Paris once a year to see him.<ref>Vide Vol. VI of H.P.B.’s Collected Writings where, on pp. 434-36, will he found a comprehensive account of the Gebhard Family. Mary Gebhard was horn in Dublin in 1832, and for a time was educated in the Convent of Sacre Coeur in Paris.</ref> She received
from him the original manuscript of Les Paradoxes de la Haute
Science (Paradoxes of the Highest Science). By consulting Vol.
VI, pp. 257-63, of the present Series, the reader will find a comprehensive
exposition of the background connected with this manuscript,
and how it was finally published with comments by Master {{Page aside|495}}K. H. Madame Gebhard contributed to the pages of The Theosophist
(Vol. VIII, Jan., 1886, pp. 241-42) some brief “Personal
Recollections of Eliphas Levi,” which, unfortunately give a somewhat
inaccurate picture of this remarkable man.
As the years went by, Eliphas Levi continued to write and some
of his unpublished MSS were copied by different people from among
his immediate pupils. A number of these fragments found their
way into the hands of Theosophists, probably through Baron
Spedalieri, one of his pupils, and were published in English translation
at various times in the early volumes of The Theosophist.
Eventually Eliphas Levi’s heart condition brought about dropsy,
and he died quietly on May 31, 1875. The Catholic clergy promoted
a story that he had recanted and received communion
before his death-a story which has been denied by his closest
friends who knew the circumstances. He was interred at the Cemetery
of Ivry, but in 1881 was placed in a common grave the
location of which is not known.
Three other works from the pen of Eliphas Levi were published
posthumously. These are: Le Livre des Splendeurs; Le
Grand Arcane (Paris: Chamuel, 1896; 2nd ed., 1921); and Le
Livre des Sages (Paris: Chacornac, 1913).
Most of the chief works mentioned above have been translated
at various times into foreign languages, and received world-wide
distribution, so that the writings of Eliphas Levi have become very
well known throughout the world.
H.P.B. had a very considerable regard for Eliphas Levi and his
learning, but warned her students against accepting literally some
of his teachings. According to her, he expounded “the true Hermetic
Philosophy in the rather coarse language of the Jewish Seers
and for the benefit of a Christian-born public”; to her he was
“undoubtedly a great occultist,” but “being a charming and witty
writer,” has “more mystified than taught in his many volumes
on magic.” Under no circumstances did she look upon him as an
initiate or a practical occultist.
For a comprehensive and rather detailed account of Eliphas Levi’s
life and work, consult Paul Chacornac, Eliphas Levi: 1810-1875.
Renovateur de I”occultisme en France. Paris: Chacornac Freres,
1926. xviii, 300 pp., ill.
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'''LIVY (TITUS LIVIUS) (59 {{Style S-Small capitals|b.c.-a.d}}. 17)'''. *History of Rome (Ah urbe condita libri); was in 142 books and told the story of Rome from the arrival of Aeneas in Italy down to the death of Drusus, younger {{Page aside|460}}brother of the Emperor Tiberius, in A.D. 9. Of these books only 35 are extant. Loeb Classical Library.
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'''LIPPITT, GENERAL FRANCIS J'''. Born in Providence, R.I., July 19, 1812;
d. in 1902. Son of Joseph F., and Caroline S. Lippitt. Graduated
from Brown, 1830. Captain 1st N.Y. volunteers in Mexican War;
served in Civil War as Colonel 2nd Calif. Inf. and Bvt. Brig.-Gen.
U.S. volunteers. Married, Sept. 25, 1865, Mrs. Pickering Dodge.
Counsel for U.S. in Dpt. of Justice, 1877-82. Was guest of Lafayette
at La Grange, 1832, and present at his burial, 1834. Assisted De
Toqueville in preparing his La Democratic aux Etats-Unis, 1834.
Attached to American Legation in Paris, 1834-35. Member, State
Constitutional Convention, Calif., 1894. Lecturer at Boston Univ.
Law School, 1873-74, and at Naval War College, Newport, 1896,
1897, 1900. Author of several military works, law treatises and
musical compositions.
General Lippitt was greatly interested in Spiritualism, and became
an intimate friend of both Col. Henry S. Olcott and H. P.
Blavatsky in the very early days of The Theosophical Society in the
U.S.A. Strangely enough, he does not refer to this association in
his Reminiscences (Providence, R.I.: Preston and Rounds Co.,
1902) written “for his Family, his near relatives and intimate
friends.” In 1888, Gen. Lippitt published a pamphlet under the title
of Physical Proofs of Another Life. A few years prior to this, a
rich Spiritualist, Henry Seybert, died ai Philadelphia, Pa., leaving
a considerable sum of money by will to the University, on condition
that a committee of respectable and impartial scientists
should be formed to investigate the mediumistic phenomena and
report upon the same. The trust was accepted, the committee appointed,
and their report appeared in due time. It was most unsatisfactory.
Thousands of intelligent men and women could have
done the work, and done what this committee did not do-given
the facts of mediumship as they are. Among a host of indignant
protests appeared Gen. Lippitt's pamphlet, able, conclusive and
scathing. In the words of Col. Olcott: “General Lippitt is a gentleman
held in high esteem throughout America for his blameless
character and excellent scholarship, as well as for his courageous
support of his convictions. The present pamphlet, which embraces
a series of letters to the Seybert Commission, embodying narratives
of highly interesting personal tests and experiences with phenomena,
is worthy of his literary reputation, and shows how different might
have been the report if the members of the Commission had cared {{Page aside|497}}as much to get at the truth of spiritualism as to boycott it.” (The
Theosophist, Vol. X, Nov. 1888, p. 132.)
A number of letters written by H.P.B. to Gen. Lippitt during
the period of March to July, 1875, exist in the Adyar Archives.
Presumably Gen. Lippitt returned them to Col. Olcott after H.P.B.’s
death in 1891. They have been published in the Series known as
H.P.B. Speaks, Vols. I and II (Adyar: Theos. Publ. House, 1950
and 1951). During this period, H.P.B. resided in Philadelphia, and
the letters contain most interesting information concerning her views
about the mediums of the day and the character of Spiritualism.
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'''LORIS-MELIKOV, COUNT MICHAEL T. (1826-88)'''. See for biogr. sketch Vol. II, footnote to art. “Armenians.”
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'''LUNDY, DR. JOHN PATTERSON (1823-92)'''. *Monumental Christianity, or the Art and Symbolism of the Primitive Church as Witnesses and Teachers of the one Catholic Faith and Practice. New York: J. W. Bouton, 1876. xviii, 453 pp.
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'''LURIA, ISAAC BEN SOLOMON (1534-1572)'''. *Commentarius in librum
Zeniutha. Tractatus de revolutionibus animarum. Contained in the
Second Volume of C. Knorr von Rosenroth’s Kabbala Denudata,
Frankfurt, 1684 (Vol. I was publ. at Sulzbach, 1677-78).
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'''M{{Style S-Small capitals|ac}}K{{Style S-Small capitals|enzie}}, K{{Style S-Small capitals|enneth}} R{{Style S-Small capitals|obert}} H{{Style S-Small capitals|enderson}} (?-1886)'''. Prominent Mason known as “Cryptonymus.” *The Royal Masonic Cyclopaedia of History, Rites; Symbolism and Biography, London, 1877 [1875-77]. 8vo.
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'''MACKEY, ALBERT GALLATIN (1807-1881)'''. *Encyclopaedia of Freemasonry.
Edited by Robert I. Clegg. Chicago: The Masonic History Co., 1929.
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'''<nowiki>*</nowiki>Manavadharmasastra (Laws of Manu)'''. Text critically edited by J. Jolly. London: Trubner & Co., 1887. Trubner Oriental Series.-Transl. by G. Buhler. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1886. SBE XXV.
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'''MARSHALL, WM. S., Lieut.-Col'''. *A Phrenologist Among the Todas, or the Study of a Primitive Tribe in South India. London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1873. xx, 271, ill.
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'''MASSEY, CHARLES CARLETON'''. English Barrister and Writer, b. Dec.
23, 1838 at Hackwood Park, Basingstoke, the residence of his
granduncle, Lord Bolton; died of heart failure March 29, 1905.
His father, an MP, was Under Secretary for the Home Office and {{Page aside|498}}Chairman of Committees during the administration of Lord Palmerston, and later Minister of Finance for India. C. C. Massey was
educated at Westminster School. He studied law, was called to the
bar and quickly gained a flourishing practice; however, he threw
it over, to devote himself to the study of philosophy and psychology,
especially the investigation of psychic phenomena. Only once did
he return to the bar in later years, and it was to take up the
defense of Dr. Henry Slade at his famous trial in London; he did
so without fee when he became convinced that the medium had
been treated unfairly by Prof. Ray Lankester. Massey never married
and most of his work was of a literary kind. He translated into
English Prof. Zollner’s report on his experiments with Slade and
published it under the title of Transcendental Physics (London,
1880), a work which was reviewed at length by H.P.B. in The
Theosophist (Vol. II, Feb., 1881, pp. 95-97). He also translated
E. von Hartmann’s Spiritism, and translated and annotated Baron
Carl du Prel’s learned work on The Philosophy of Mysticism (Lon·
don, Redway, 1889, 2 vols.).
Massey became in 1882 one of the Founders of the Society for
Psychical Research. Sir William F. Barrett who convened the
meeting at which the Society was organized says: “...It was in
his rooms we used to meet for consultation and Committee work,
and to his generous hospitality and ungrudging expenditure of time
we were constantly indebted. [Massey was] a profound student
of philosophy and psychology, and one of the most original and
suggestive thinkers I have ever known...” (S.P.R. Journal, Vol.
XII, pp. 95-96). Although Massey was on the first Council of the
S.P.R. in 1882, he resigned from it in October, 1886, remaining,
however, a member of the S.P.R. until a couple of years before his
death. He contributed a number of important papers to the publications of the Society. As to his own ideas, Massey was convinced that the phenomena of Spiritualism neither afforded nor
could ever afford evidence of what we mean by immortality. He
believed that self-realization can be attained only through what he
called the “process of the Cross,” self-surrender and spiritual realization.
Massey was also one of the chief organizers of the British
Theosophical Society, which held its first meeting at 38, Great
Russell St., London, on June 27, 1878. Massey was chosen as
President and Miss E. Kislingbury as Secretary.
As is evidenced from a number of letters written by H.P.B. to
various people, she had a very high regard for C. C. Massey and {{Page aside|499}}his sterling qualities, even though they did not always see eye
to eye with each other.
(Consult: Thoughts of a Modem Mystic. A Selection from the Writings of the late C. C. Massey. Ed. by Prof. W. F. Barrett, London, 1909.)
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'''MAYER, ALFRED MARSHALL (1836-97)'''. *The Earth a Great Magnet:
a Lecture, etc. New Haven, Conn., 1872. 8vo.
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'''MAYO, RICHARD SOUTHWELL BOURKE, SIXTH EARL OF (1822-72)'''. Born
in Dublin, educated at Trinity College. After travels in Russia,
entered Parliament and was chief secretary for Ireland, 1852-66.
Appointed Viceroy of India, 1869, where he consolidated the
frontiers and re-organized the finances, putting India on a paying
basis. He promoted irrigation projects, railways, forestry. Assassinated
by a convict while inspecting convict settlements on Andaman Islands.
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'''MENDELEYEV, DMITRIY IVANOVICH'''. Russian chemist, the youngest of
a family of seventeen, b. at Tobolsk, Siberia, Feb. 7, 1834; d.
at St. Petersburg, Feb. 2, 1907. Attended the gymnasium of his
native town; studied science at St. Petersburg, was graduated in
chemistry, 1856, subsequently becoming privatdozent. Became, 1863,
prof. of chemistry in the technological school at St. Petersburg, and
three years later succeeded to the chair in the University. Resigned
professorship, 1890, and became director of the Bureau of Weights
and Measures.
Mendeleyev’s name is best known for his work on the Periodic
Law. His Periodic Tables of Elements embodies in its conception
an aspect of the Sevenfold Nature of the Universe; it has stood
the test of time and was fully supported by the most recent developments
of atomic physics. It still remains a corner stone of
modern science. H.P.B. herself refers to it on various occasions
throughout her writings. [Cf. The Secret Doctrine, II, 627.]
Mendeleyev’s best known work is The Principles of Chemistry,
1868-70 (Engl. ed., 2 vols., 1905), which has gone through many
subsequent editions in various languages. The author was considered
one of the finest teachers of his time.
Peculiarly enough, Mendeleyev assumed a very prejudiced attitude towards Spiritualistic manifestations and his astute scientific mind failed to do justice to the subject when it came up for investigation before a scientific committee.
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'''MILL, JAMES (1773-1836)'''. *The History of British India. London: Baldwin, Cradock, and Joy, 1817. 3 vols.; also 1848.
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'''MOLIERE (JEAN BAPTISTE POQUELIN—1622-73)'''. *Tartuffe, 1664.
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'''MONACHESI, HERBERT D'''. American newspaper reporter, Italian by birth and of very psychic temperament. He was responsible for a very lucid article regarding the original programme of the T.S. published in the Sunday Mercury of New York in 1875. He seems to have dropped out very soon after, and no further information about him has been found.
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'''MOSES, WILLIAM STAINTON'''. English clergyman and medium, b. at
Donington, Lincolnshire, Nov. 5, 1839; d. in 1892. Known for
many years to Spiritualists all over the world under the pseudonym
of “M.A., Oxon.” His father was headmaster of the Grammar
School in his native town. At Bedford Grammar School, which
he entered when sixteen, he carried off several prizes. He matriculated
at Exeter College, Oxford, 1858, taking a third class in
Classical Moderations in 1860. Shortly before his final examination his health broke down and he was compelled to go abroad
for a year, visiting among other places Mount Athos. Having turned
his thoughts toward the ministry, he was ordained, and from 1863
to 1870 acted as curate, first in the Isle of Man and later in the
West of England. Towards the end of this period his health again
failed, and an affection of the throat compelled him to give up
parish work. In 1870 he came to London, and took up his residence
with his friends, Dr. and Mrs. Stanhope Speer, acting as
tutor to their young son. The following year he obtained an
appointment as English master in University College School, which
he held until 1889, when failing health forced him to retire. In
his last years he suffered from extreme depression and nervous
prostration, as well as severe neuralgic pains. The immediate cause
of his death was Bright’s disease. In his various capacities he discharged
his duties efficiently and conscientiously, and retained the
respect and warm regard of those he came in contact with.
It was in 1872 that Stainton Moses contacted Spiritualism through
the reading of R. Dale Owen’s book, The Debatable Land. He
visited various mediums, sat in many private circles, and soon developed
strong mediumistic powers of his own, which manifested
themselves first in physical phenomena and later in automatic
writing. He rapidly came to the front of the Spiritualistic movement, took a leading part in founding the British National Association of Spiritualists, served on the Council of the Psychological Society, and, until 1886, on that of the Society for Psychical Research, when he resigned from that body because of the Society’s {{Page aside|501}}attitude towards Eglinton and other public mediums. From 1884
to his death he was also President of the London Spiritual Alliance.
He also acted for many years as Editor of the magazine Light.
While Stainton Moses was an exponent of almost all the various
phases of mediumship, he is best known for his automatic writings
excerpts from which were published under the title of Spirit Teachings
(London: The Psychological Press Ass’n, 1883; also as
“Memorial Edition,” London, 1894). They began in March, 1872,
and continued for about ten years. The teachings given in the
published volume are supposed to emanate from an entity who
calls himself + Imperator and delivers orations of a rather noble-minded
type and in flowing language.
Other works of Stainton Moses are: Psychography, London,
1878; Spirit Identity, 1879; and The Higher Aspects of Spiritualism,
1880.
The first contact between Stainton Moses and Col. Olcott took
place in April, 1875, when he wrote to the Colonel about his
recently published book. A close friendship developed, not only with
the Colonel hut with H.P.B. whom Moses held in very high regard.
A more complete account of this association may be found in
H. S. Olcott’s Old Diary Leaves, I, 60, 300-329, where many highly
interesting facts are brought out. Students should also consult The
Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett, for various passages wherein the
identity of Moses’ “controls” is hinted at.
From what Col. Olcott says, it would appear that a rather lively
exchange of correspondence went on for several years between
Moses and the Founders. While Moses’ own letters are in the
Adyar Archives, the letters of the Colonel and of H.P.B. have
never been located, in spite of considerable search having been
made in the Spiritualistic Archives and Libraries of London,
where the papers of Stainton Moses are deposited.
Sources: Dictionary of National Biography; “Records of Private
Seances,” Light, 1892, 1893; “The Experiences of W. Stainton
Moses,” by F. W. H. Myers, in Proceedings, S.P.R., Vols. IX and
X; Podmore, Modern Spiritualism.
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'''MOSHEIM, JOHANN LORENZ VON'''. German evangelical theologian, b. at
Lubeck, October 9, 1684; d. at Gottingen, Sept. 9, 1775. Cofounder
of the Gottingen University, and its Chancellor, 1747. Regarded
as the founder of modern Church history. Chief works: lnstitutiones
historiae ecclesiasticae, 1726; German ed., 1769-78 in nine vols.;
Engl. tr. by Archibald Maclaine, New York, 1880.-lnstitutiones
historiae christianae majores, 1763.
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'''MOUSSEAUX'''. See GOUGENOT DES MOUSSEAUX.
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'''MULLER, MAX [FRIEDRICH MAXIMILIAN] (1823-1900)'''. *Chips from a German Workshop. London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1867-75. 4 vols.
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'''<nowiki>*</nowiki>New American Cyclopaedia, 1858-63''', 16 vols.; edited by Geo. Ripley and Chas. A. Dana. New edition, as American Cyclopaedia, 1873-76, 16 vols., was prepared by the same editors.
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'''NEWTON, HENRY JOTHAM'''. American manufacturer and inventor, b.
at Hartleton, Pa., Feb. 9, 1823; d. in New York, Dec. 23, 1895;
younger son of Dr. Jotham and Harriet (Wood) Newton, both
originally from Connecticut. When the father, a young physician of
promise, died within a year of his son’s birth, the mother returned
to her father’s home in Somers, Conn. Henry was sent to school
there and afterwards finished at the Literary Institute of Suffield.
He was then apprenticed for four years to Whittlesey Brothers,
piano makers of Salem, Conn. His progress was so rapid that in
three years he became a member of the firm. Five years later,
1849, he went to New York where he associated himself with
Ferdinand Lighte in the piano business. In further association with
the Bradbury Brothers, the firm soon won a leading place in the
trade. In 1858 Newton retired with a competency, which he invested
so judiciously in New York real estate that he died a millionaire.
Early freed for the rest of his life to devote himself to his various
hobbies, the chief of which was photography, he worked under
the guidance of Chas. A. Seely, publisher of the American Journal
of Photography; he outfitted a laboratory in his own home and
engaged in innumerable experiments. He became known as “the
father of the dry-plate process,” and was a pioneer in the preparation
of ready-sensitized paper and the production of the paraffin
paper process. For a long time he was Treasurer of the American
Photographical Society, and after 1867, Chairman of the Photographic Section of the American Institute of the City of New York.
A scientific interest in spirit photography led Newton to the study
of Spiritualism; he exposed a number of fraudulent mediums,
including the famous Etta Roberts, by apparatus and tests which
he originated. His faith in the truths of Spiritualism remained
unshaken, however, and for the last twenty years of his life he
was President of the First Society of Spiritualists in New York.
Newton became one of the original “formers” of The Theosophical
Society in 1875 and its Treasurer for the first few years.
He was directly involved, together with Col. Olcott, in arranging {{Page aside|503}}for the first scientific cremation in America, when, on Dec. 6,
1876, the body of Baron de Palm was cremated in Washington,
Penna. He had been the executor of the Baron’s Will, and the
event received nation-wide publicity, interestingly described by Col.
Olcott in Vol. I of his Old Diary Leaves. Newton, however, did
not accept H.P.B.’s explanation of Spiritualistic phenomena, and
was greatly disturbed by what he read in Isis Unveiled. He later
resigned from the T.S. with considerable bitterness.
Newton’s wife, Mary A. Gates, of Wetherfield, Conn., whom he
married in 1850, was an accomplished musician and shared her
husband's unorthodox views and interests. They had two daughters.
Newton was run over and killed by a street car during an evening
rush hour as he was crossing Broadway between 22nd and 23rd
Streets, then “the most dangerous spot in New York.”
In the opinion of Col. Olcott (The Theos., XIV, Nov., 1892, p.
72), Newton was “a man of dauntless moral courage, most tenacious
of his opinions and, having been for many years a firm Spiritualist,
withdrew from our Society when he found that neither Mr. Felt nor
H.P.B. were going to show him either an adept or an elemental...”
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'''NIEBUHR, BARTHOLD GEORG'''. German statesman and historian, b. at
Copenhagen, Aug. 27, 1776; d. at Bonn, Jan. 2, 1831. Studied
at Univ. of Kiel; became private secretary to Count Schimmel-mann,
Danish minister of finance; in 1799, entered state service.
Chief director of the National Bank from 1804 to 1806, when he
took a similar appointment in Prussia. In 1810, was made royal
historiographer and professor at Berlin University, and two years
later published two volumes of his Romische Geschichte (Engl.
transl., 1847-51). In 1816, while on his way to Rome to take
up post as ambassador, discovered in the cathedral of Verona
the long-lost Institutes of Gaius. While in Rome, he discovered
and published fragments of Cicero and Livy, and collaborated
with Cardinal Mai and von Bunsen. He retired in 1823 and went
to Bonn.
Niebuhr’s Roman History (to which he added a 3rd vol. in
1832) counts among epoch-making historical works for its momentous
influence on the general conception of history.
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'''OLCOTT, HENRY STEEL'''. President-Founder of The Theosophical Society.
Born at Orange, N. J., August 2, 1832. Eldest son of Henry
Wyckoff Olcott and Emily Steel who were married October 19,
1831, and had six children. Henry Steel married Mary Epplee
Morgan, April 26, 1860, her father being the Rev. Richard U. {{Page aside|504}}Morgan, D.D., Rector of Trinity Parish, New Rochelle, N. Y. They
had three sons and a daughter; the youngest son and daughter
died in infancy.<ref>The four children were: Morgan, b. Jan. 20, 1861; William
Topping, b. June 11, 1862; Henry Steel, b. March 20, 1864; and Bessie, b. June 21, 1868.</ref> Olcottss two surviving sons kept in contact
with him even after his divorce and his identification with the
Theosophical Society. His sister, Isabella (Belle) Buloid (married
in 1860 to William Hinckley Mitchell of New York), remained
his staunchest friend throughout his life.
Around 1630 a number of well-to-do Puritan families had migrated
to New England from their homeland. Two men by the
name of Thomas Olcott are known to have settled in the New World
at this time. One was a prosperous farmer, but he lived in Boston.
The earliest record of him dates from 1630. The other whom
Col. Olcott believed was most probably his American ancestor was
first heard of in 1635. He then lived in Newtown (now Cambridge,
Mass.). In June of that year he left for Hartford, Conn., where
he became a prosperous merchant. He founded a center for trade
and commerce for the Colony of Connecticut.
Col. Olcott was greatly interested in genealogy and did a good
deal of research, particularly in regard to his own ancestors. He
came across a book by Nathaniel Goodwin (1782-1855) entitled
The Descendants of Thomas Olcott, etc., published at Hartford,
Conn. in 1845, giving detailed biographical information concerning
the Puritans and early settlers. Col. Olcott edited and published
a new edition of this book at Albany, N. Y. in 1874, in which he
included various pertinent information he had gathered himself.
He also investigated the English progenitors of his family, but did
not find any absolute proof that any of the six families he traced
were his ancestors. There were different names which doubtless
indicated a close relationship, such as Alcock, Alcocks, Alcocke,
Allcocks, Allcox, Alcot, Alcott, Ollcot, Olcot, and Olcott. The
Heraldic Crests consisted of a cock standing on a crown, a globe
or a single bar, in some cases crowing and in others silent.<ref>Consult also the work of Mary Louisa Beatrice Olcott entitled The Olcotts and their Kindred from Anglo-Saxon times through Roncesvalles to Gettysburg and after. 2nd ed., New York: National Americana Publications, 1956; 315 pp., ill., bibliography.</ref>
One of these possible ancestors was Nathan Alcock, who received
his medical degree in 1737 and became an M.D. in 1741 at Jesus {{Page aside|505}}College, Cambridge. The man whom Olcott himself believed was
his most likely ancestor was Dr. John Alcock who was born at
Beverley, Yorkshire, about 1430, and died Oct. 1, 1500. He was
Dean of Weslminster, Bishop of Rochester and Worcester, and in
1486 succeeded the celebrated Morton as Bishop of Ely. He founded
in 1486 a school at Kingston-upon-Hull, and in 1496 Jesus College
at Cambridge, which he established on the site of the former
convent of St. Radigund.
The family name was a corruption of two Saxon words: eald
(German ald, alt) meaning old, and coc, a male bird. The coat
of arms used by Thomas Olcott consisted of three cocks’ heads,
showing similarity to that of the von Hahn family from which
H.P.B. was descended. Olcott later placed a bas-relief over the
door of the Western Library at Adyar combining the two symbols.
Limited finances curtailed Olcott’s education. His father's business
failed in 1851, thus compelling Henry to take up farming.
He had studied at the College of the City of New York and later
at Columbia University. He now worked a small farm on a share
basis for two years, then returned to New York where he devoted
himself to the scientific study of agriculture. When most young
men are beginning their career, Olcott had already won, at the
age of twenty-three, international recognition as an outstanding
scientist of agriculture for his work on the Model Farm of
Scientific Agriculture at Newark, N. J. He became cofounder with
Henry C. Vail, of the Westchester Farm School, near Mt. Vernon,
N. Y., which pioneered the present system of agricultural education
in the U.S. based on the Swiss model, and was the only private
school exclusively devoted to agriculture. His work attracted the
attention of the Greek Government which offered him the chair
of Agriculture at the University of Athens, an honour which he
declined. His research in sorgum, just then imported into the U.S.A.,
and his recognition of its economic importance, resulted in the
publication of his first book, Sorgho and lmphee, the Chinese and
African Sugar-Canes (New York: A. 0. More, 1858), which ran
through seven editions, was ordered to be placed in the libraries
of the State of Illinois and prescribed as a school text. The Government
of the United States offered Olcott the Directorship of Agriculture,
and two private owners offered him the managership of
two immense properties; Olcott declined these offers, as he preferred
to carry on independently.
In 1858, Olcott paid his first visit to Europe, aimed at the improvement
of agriculture, and his Report of what he saw was {{Page aside|506}} {{Page aside|506}}published in the 1858-64 edition of Appleton’s New American
Cyclopaedia.<ref>Edited by George Ripley and Charles A. Dana. Olcott’s article therein is entitled “Agricultural Schools”; it may be found in Vol. I of this Cyclopaedia, and gives a rather comprehensive account of the history of such Schools in Europe and America. <br>
Olcott also wrote Outlines of the first Course of Yale Agricultural Lectures, with an Introduction by John A. Porter. New York: C. M. Saxton, Barker & Co., 1860; 186 pp.</ref> Recognized as an expert, he became the American
correspondent of the well-known Mark Lane Express and Associate
Agricultural Editor of the famous New York Tribune. This phase
of Olcott's life concluded with the outbreak of the American Civil
War.
On December 2nd, 1859, Olcott was present at the hanging of
John Brown at Charlestown, Va. This man had been a fervent
advocate for the abolition of slavery, but had taken matters into
his own hands in occupying a small town with a band of his followers.
He was captured and sentenced to be hanged. The Virginians
were determined that no Northerner should witness the hanging,
but the New York Tribune wanted someone on the spot. Olcott
volunteered to go. When he got to Charlestown, he realized he
had forgotten to claim his trunk which had a New York label
with his initials. Baggage had to be examined by the Provost
Marshal. The situation was desperate but fortunately a young officer
who was a brother Mason recognized a secret sign which Olcott
gave and fetched the trunk from the Court House. Some fourteen
years later, Olcott wrote a spirited account of what he had witnessed,
which is a masterpiece of reportorial writing.<ref>tCol. Olcott’s account is entitled “How We Hanged John Brown.” It was published in the weekly Magazine New India, New Series, November 17, 1928. It is evident from the text itself that the account was penned fourteen years after the event. In spite of considerable research, it has not been possible to ascertain which American newspaper or magazine published it in the first place, or what was the source from which New India republished it.</ref>
Olcott’s passion for liberty drove him to enlist in the Northern
Army; he went through the whole of the North Carolina Campaign
under General Burnside, and was invalided to New York, having
contracted dysentery, which periodically plagued him later in life.
As soon as he recovered, he prepared to start again for the front,
but the Government, noting his great ability and courage, chose him {{Page aside|507}}to conduct an inquiry into fraud, corruption and graft at the New
York Mustering and Disbursing Office. He was made Special Commissioner
of the War Department. Every means was tried to stop
his resolute investigation, but neither bribes nor threats could
check the determined young officer in his conduct of a campaign
more dangerous than in combat. He fought through four years of
opposition and calumny, and rounded up every criminal, sending
the worst one to Sing Sing for ten years. The Government expressed
its appreciation on this occasion by writing that the “conviction was as important to Government as the winning of a great
battle,” and rewarded Olcott by promoting him to the rank of
Colonel.
Soon the Navy Department applied for the use of Olcott’s services,
to eradicate abuses in the Navy Yards. With resolute and
unsparing zeal he cleansed the Department, and reformed the sys·
tern of accounts. The extent of the Government’s appreciation of
his work is seen in the letter Col. Olcott received from the Secretary
of the Navy, wherein he writes:
“I wish to say that I have never met with a gentleman entrusted
with important duties, of more capacity, rapidity, and
reliability than have been exhibited by you throughout. More
than all, I desire to bear testimony to your entire uprightness
and integrity of character, which I am sure have characterized
your whole career, and which to my knowledge, have never been
assailed. That you have thus escaped with no stain upon your
reputation, when we consider the corruption, audacity and power
of the many villains in high position whom you have prosecuted
and punished, is a tribute of which you may well be proud,
and which no other man occupying a similar position and performing similar services in this country has ever achieved.”
Col. Olcott received similar acknowledgements from the Judge
Advocate-General of the Army and other Officials.
Resigning his Commission in 1865, Olcott devoted himself to
the study of Law. The New York Bar Association confirmed in a
recent letter that he was admitted to the Bar in May of 1868. On
the other hand, the University of New York, in a letter dated
April 16, 1964, stated that there is no record of where Olcott
studied Law. They suggested that he probably studied in some
law office and was admitted to the Bar on the strength of his
work and experience. With his customary energy, Olcott grappled
with the intricacies of barely formulated insurance law, codifying {{Page aside|508}}anarchic practices. He became a specialisl in Customs, Revenue
and Insurance cases, and soon acquired a large and prosperous
clientele. The Treasury of the City of New York retained him as
its attorney to handle large suits against the City. As Secretary of
the first National Insurance Convention, he prepared Notes which
were published in two volumes. They have served as a standard
work on insurance and the Insurance Journal’s opinion was that
“no addition to insurance literature more valuable than this compact
octavo has yet been published.” He drafted an insurance statute
which was accepted by ten States of the Union and enacted into
law. The Life Mutual Insurance Company of New York also retained him to represent the insurance profession in the State Legislature.
In spite of his preoccupation with agriculture, Government duties
and legal work, Olcott felt a deep fascination for the occult and
mystical. He had followed with keen interest various psychic
phenomena, such as those connected with the Steel Sisters, from
1851 onwards; he studied whatever books were available on the
subject of mesmerism, hypnotism and allied research, and discovered
that he had himself a ce1tain amount of mesmeric power
which he once successfully tried on the daughter of a friend who
was about to undergo a dental operation. But his interest in such
matters occupied but a subordinate position to his professional
duties until, in 1874, his attention was attracted to some remarkable
Spiritualistic phenomena.
One day in July of 1874, while working in his New York law
office, Olcott had a sudden urge to investigate contemporary Spiritualism.
He purchased a copy of the Boston Banner of Light and
read in it the account of the curious phenomena which were then
taking place at the Eddy farmhouse in the township of Chittenden,
Vt., and decided to go there to see for himself. He secured an
assignment as special reporter for the New York Sun, for that
purpose and left for Chittenden. After a brief stay there he wrote
articles which created a sensation and were republished by other
leading papers of the country.
Upon his return to New York, Olcott was persuaded by the New
York Daily Graphic to return to Chittenden and to write a series
of articles for that paper, with sketches to be made by an artist.
Olcott returned to the Eddys’ Homestead Sept. 17th; his articles
appeared twice a week for twelve weeks, and the papers containing
his stories were sold for as much as a dollar a copy. A number
of Publishers competed for the right to put these. reports in book {{Page aside|509}}fo1m, and they were finally published in March, 1875, under the
title of *People from the Other W odd by the American Publishing
Company of Hartford, Conn., illustrated by Alfred Kappes and
T. W. Williams.
Olcott stayed at Chittenden until early November, 1874, and,
as is well known, met H.P.B. who had come there on October 14th
accompanied by a French Canadian lady.<ref> Olcott, Old Diary Leaves, I, 1-5, 10. </ref>
Such was the background of the future President-Founder of The
Theosophical Society. Olcott brought to his Theosophical task an
unsullied record of public service, a keen capacity, a great ability
to work, and an altruism which H.P.B. declared at a later date
she had never seen equalled outside the Asrama of the Masters.
Col. Olcott’s life-story from 1874 on is almost identical with
the history of the T.S. itself, from its founding to his death in
1907. His many journeys and the chief events in his Theosophical
career, from 1874 to after H.P.B.’s passing in May of 1891, are
chronologically listed (with source references) in the special Chronological
Surveys appended to every Volume of the Collected Writings,
and therefore will not be repeated here. A few special points,
however, require elucidation, as they cannot be clearly outlined
in any brief Chronological Survey.
The role played by Col. Olcott in the production of Isis Unveiled
is fully explained in the Introductory portion of the edition of
this work which is part of the present Series of Collected Writings.
The Letters from the Masters of the Wisdom, First and Second
Series, transcribed and annotated by C. Jinarajadasa, should also
be consulted for various sidelights on the early period of Theosophical
work in U.S.A.
During that period Col. Olcott had many problems to solve
other than those of a Theosophical nature. His wife did not approve
of his new activities, as they obviously interfered with his
professional work as a breadwinner for the family. On the eve
of his departure for India he evidently lost a fee of ten thousand
dollars for some legal work, which he might have salvaged had
he remained in America.
When Col. Olcott was about to leave for India, he received from
the President of the U.S. a signed letter to all American Ambassadors
and Consuls, while the Secretary of State had issued
to him a special diplomatic passport, charging him with the duty {{Page aside|510}} of promoting cultural and other relations between the U.S. and other countries of the world.
On Indian soil, Col. Olcott found poverty, disease and ignorance,
and plunged at once into far flung activity aimed at an over-all regeneration
of India. He travelled-both alone and with H.P.B.-far
and wide lecturing to thousands of people; he organized the first
Swadeshi Exhibition of Indian arts and crafts, urging the people to
protect their national arts and industries; he founded a school for the
Panchamas, the untouchables, the first one of its kind in India; he
gave a great impetus to the revival of Sanskrit, established a unique
Library at Adyar and started collecting palm-leaf manuscripts which
today number 15,000 or more. He pleaded for the reformation of
social life become decadent with age and aroused the patriotism of the
people, which resulted in the formation of the Indian National Union
in 1884, changed the following year to the Indian National Congress
in which A. 0. Hume was so active. A considerable number of his
lectures on the great religions and allied subjects were issued as
A Collection of Lectures on Theosophy and Archaic Religions
(publ. by A. Theyaga Rajier, F.T.S., Madras, 1883. 218 pp.); a
revised and enlarged ed. under the title of Theosophy, Religion
and Occult Science was published by Geo. Redway in London in
1885.<ref> Col. Olcott’s literary activity was very considerable. Most of his contributions were in the nature of articles and essays on a great variety of occult and theosophical subjects, published in the early days in the Spiritual Scientist of Boston, Mass., and the London Spiritualist, and from October, 1879, in the pages of The Theosophist. A few scattered articles and reviews appeared in other, non-theosophical journals. Olcott also translated into English Adolphe d’Assier’s renowned work I’Humanite posthume under the title of Posthumous Humanity. A Study of Phantoms (London: Geo. Redway, 1887), to which he added an Appendix showing the popular beliefs current in India respecting the post-mortem vicissitudes of the human entity. </ref>
Olcott's contribution towards the revival of Buddhism in Ceylon
is one of the most significant by-products of his Theosophical activity,
repercussions of which are heard even today in various parts
of the Buddhist world.
We should bear in mind that in the second half of the nineteenth
century, the British, following the Portuguese and Dutch
domination, had firmly established themselves in Ceylon and their {{Page aside|511}}language, religion and customs had taken firm root. People used
English for their routine work and thought it degrading to use
Sinhalese or Tamil. Education in missionary schools was geared
to produce clerks for Government service and British mercantile
firms. Local cottage industries and paddy cultivation-the mainstay
of earlier economy-were regarded as inferior occupations.
Ancient dagobas and viharas were in ruins. In order to obtain a
post in the Government service one had to embrace Christianity.
Except for two or three pirivenas, there were only two Buddhist
schools. Western customs took precedence over Sinhalese, and
Western modes of dress were considered a sign of respectability.
Native customs and traditions were eclipsed and their value ignored.
After the arrival of H.P.B. and Olcott in Ceylon, in 1880, and
the formation of the first branch of the T.S., things began to
change in a very extraordinary manner. Shortly after the commencement
of their work, a marked transformation in the national
life of the country took place, in the form of a resurgent love for
the native religion, language and culture. This was mainly due to
the Buddhist school-movement, the Sinhalese newspaper Sarasavi
Sandaresa and the English journal The Buddhist which had been
started. On his three successive trips to Ceylon, Olcott organized
educational institutions where Buddhist children would not be
forced to study Christianity and attent chapel services. Ananda
College for boys and Musaeus College for girls are the result of
his inspiration, and he invited educated men and women from
America and Europe to come to serve in these institutions. From
this small beginning there grew a vast educational movement directed
by the Buddhists themselves. Through Olcott's initiative they
obtained Government grants, such as were given to schools of other
faith. Today there are over 400 Buddhist schools in Ceylon, and
portraits of Col. Olcott hang in each of them. In 1962, the Ceylonese
Government introduced legislation to nationalize the schools, and
most of them now are operated by the State.
So many years after, it is difficult to picture the tremendous vigor
and persistence of Col. Olcott in this work. Accompanied by an interpreter,
usually D. B. Jayatileke (later, Sir and Chief Minister
of the Ceylon Government), and the young Hewavitarne Dharmapala,
he jounced through jungle roads by bullock cart at night and lectured
to the villagers during the day, collected funds for schools
and roused the spirit of the people to a national rebirth along
various lines.
His most outstanding work for the sake of Buddhism was the
writing of a Buddhist Catechism which was first published in {{Page aside|512}}Sinhalese on July 24, 1881. It was acceptable to the various sects
of the religion and became a standard text for teaching Buddhism
to children on approved lines-a book that has gone through more
than fifty editions in English and possibly an equal number in
various languages of the Buddhist countries of Asia.
In his defence of Buddhists in Ceylon, Olcott established friendly
relations with the British Governor, Sir Arthur Gordon, later
Lord Stanmore, who was sympathetic and helped redress various
grievances which were brought to his attention. Later Col. Olcott,
representing the Ceylonese Buddhists, went to London to obtain
various reforms from the Secretary of State for the Colonies,
where he was highly successful. The declaration of the Vesakha,
May Full Moon Day, as a public holiday in Ceylon, was directly
due to Col. Olcott's efforts.
Another great service to Buddhism was rendered by Col. Olcott’s
two very successful visits to Japan, during which he addressed
thousands of people. As a result of these trips, he was able to
formulate Fourteen Fundamental Propositions as a basis of union
between all the schools of Buddhism-a Code of Conduct which
was unanimously approved at a Buddhist Congress at Adyar in
1891.
Another most valuable achievement was the designing of flag
for the Buddhists from the colors traditionally known as those in
the aura of Gautama the Buddha. In due time this flag came to
symbolize the unity of the entire Buddhist world. It was adopted
as the common flag of Buddhism by the World Fellowship of Buddhists
which met for the first time in Ceylon in 1950, and its acceptance was confirmed by the Fellowship meeting in Japan in
1952. It is now used in some sixty countries during festivities of
various kinds.
Small wonder that the people of Ceylon should honor the day of
Col. Olcott’s passing every year as a holiday, and that during his
lifetime seven leading Buddhist Priests of Ceylon should have given
him a Letter of Authorization to admit people to Buddhism, an
honor never before or since conferred upon a Westerner!
As has often been the case with many prominent students of
occultism and active workers in the Cause, Olcott’s character exhibited
some curious contradictions and marked duality. He had
some striking limitations, one of them being his long established
habit of judging from externals. He shared with other “Yankees”
an innate love “to show off” upon occasion, and his remarkable
organizing ability made him prone at times to exaggerate the {{Page aside|513}}organizational aspect of the Movement to the disadvantage of the
underlying spirit. In one of the most important letters received by
him from K.H., he is flatly warned against permitting his suspicions
and resentment against some of H.P.B.’s “follies” to bias
his intuitive loyalty to her. He is reminded that “With occult
matters she has everything to do... She is our direct agent...”<ref>Letter received on board the SS Shannon, Aug. 22, 1888. Cf. Letters from the Masters of the Wisdom, First Series, Letter 19.</ref>
The careful perusal of the correspondence between Olcott and
H.P.B. over a period of years would show any impartial student
that Olcott often misunderstood H.P.B.’s motives and aims, instead
of suspending judgment when his mind was temporarily confused.
When Olcott permitted himself to be influenced by subtle forces
emanating from insidious origins through Brahmanical channels, he
imagined that a “Blavatsky cult” or something of that nature was
about to be established within the Movement and set about to
counteract it. This proved to be quite superfluous. The impact on
him of the Coulomb troubles resulted in his trying to play down
the existence of both the Masters and occult phenomena, a fact
which was pointed out by K.H. in a message to H.P.B.<ref>Ibid., Second Series, pp. 68-69, quoting an excerpt from a memorandum in H.P.B.’s handwriting in the Adyar Archives.</ref>
On the positive side of Olcott’s character, we must bear in mind
his many outstanding and rare qualities which are not frequently
met with. No one knew more about these than H.P.B. herself. On
several distinct occasions, she came out forcefully in defence of
Olcott. “It would be desirable for the cause of theosophy and
truth,” she said, “were all the critics of our President in general,
less learned, yet found reaching more to the level of his all-forgiving
good nature, his thorough sincerity and unselfishness.<ref>“The Original Programme of The Theosophical Society,” a Manuscript signed by H.P.B. and dated by her Ostende, Oct. 3rd., 1886. Cf. Collected Writings, Vol. VII, pp. 135 et seq.</ref> Further on in the same manuscript she says that
“... ‘truth does not depend on show of hands’; but in the case
of the much-abused President-Founder it must depend on the
show of facts. Thorny and full of pitfalls was the steep path he
had to climb up alone and unaided for the first years. Terrible
was the opposition outside the Society he had to build-sickening
and disheartening the treachery he often encountered within
the Head-Quarters. Enemies gnashing their teeth in his face {{Page aside|514}}around, those whom he regarded as his staunchest friends and
coworkers betraying him and the Cause on the slightest provocation.
Still, where hundreds in his place would have collapsed
and given up the whole undertaking in despair, he, unmoved
and unmovable, went on climbing up and toiling as before, unrelenting
and undismayed, supported by that one thought and
conviction that he was doing his duty. What other inducement
has the Founder ever had, but his theosophical pledge and the
sense of his duty toward THOSE he had promised to serve to
the end of his life? There was but one beacon for him-the
hand that had first pointed to him his way up: the hand of the
MASTER he loves and reveres so well, and serves so devotedly
though occasionally perhaps, unwisely.....for cleverer in administrative
capacities, more learned in philosophy, subtler in
casuistry, in metaphysics or daily life policy, there may be
many around him; but the whole globe may be searched through
and through and no one found stauncher to his friends, truer
to his word, or more devoted to real, practical theosophy-than
the President-Founder; and these are the chief requisites in a
leader of such a movement-one that aims to become a Brotherhood
of men...”
Col. Olcott was a natural healer; he had that gift from early
youth, and had studied mesmerism in the then available works
which were mainly from French sources. When he travelled up
and down India, he rediscovered that power within himself which
had remained latent and unused for many years. He began to heal
the sick and to alleviate their sufferings. His success was phenomenal,
and hundreds of people trailed behind him seeking relief.
This of course contributed substantially to his success in publicizing
the work and the teachings of the Society. After some years,
his vitality began to ebb due to the immense strain upon his natural
powers, and his Teacher ordered him to cease his ministrations.
When in 1888 H.P.B. organized the Esoteric Section, Col. Olcott
at first opposed its formation because he feared it would become
an empire within an empire and would militate against the basic
principles of the Theosophical Constitution. His attitude-which
theoretically had some justification-was modified when he received
a Letter from Master K.H. while on his way to Europe,
but his doubts on this subject were never altogether resolved. His
own individual relation to the E.S. is fully clarified by the following
passage from the E.S.T. Circular of November 1894, entitled {{Page aside|515}} "By Master's Direction" wherein on page 3 W. Q. Judge writes:
“....Colonel Olcott is the old standard-bearer, and has been the medium for teaching, himself having Chelas whom he has instructed, but always on the lines laid down by the Master through H.P.B. ∴ He was selected by the Master to do a certain and valuable work not possible for anyone else, and he was never taken into the E.S. by a pledge, for, like myself, he was in the very beginning pledged directly to the Master.”
Col. Olcott’s own testimony is quite explicit. On September 13, 1890, he wrote from Adyar:
“The Esoteric Section was created by Mdme. Blavatsky with
my concurrence, to gather together under a common bond of
pupilage all such of our Colleagues as were anxious to study
the Esoteric Philosophy under Mdme. Blavatsky’s teachership.
Already nearly 1,000 persons, scattered over the world have
enrolled themselves in her list. She is the Chief of that Sectionas—as
Mr. Harte truly says--and its sole Manager; to her alone
her pupils have to look for results. After watching results for
a whole year and finding a great satisfaction expressed with her
teachings I consented last summer while in London,<ref>This is an error. H.P.B.’s appointment of Col. Olcott as confidential agent for the E.S. in Asiatic countries is dated London, December 25, 1889.</ref> to be her intermediary for Asiatic countries, to forward documents and correspondence. This is all my connection with the Section, and this in my private, not my public capacity. The Society is quite neutral in all such matters.”<ref>Madras Times, Sept. 15, 1890. Letter addressed to the Editor of the lndi.an Daily News.</ref>
Circumstances connected with Olcott’s attempted resignation from
the Presidency of the T.S., some time after H.P.B.’s passing, and
the vicissitudes of the so-called “Judge Case” have already been
explained in the biographical outline of Judge’s life and work to
which the reader is referred for the chief facts of that period.
Olcott’s lecturing and administrative activities continued practically unabated for a number of years beyond the lifetime of H.P.B. He travelled widely, promoted the cause of Buddhism and the growth of the Theosophical Society, and kept in constant touch with a great variety of people throughout the world. His executive {{Page aside|516}}abilities continued to be felt everywhere, yet the passing of H.P.B.
meant a lessening of his contact with the Adept-Brothers who by
then communicated but rarely with anyone—a circumstance which
should be regarded as a natural closing of a temporary cycle of
direct contact between them and their most promising agents and
pupils.
Soon after H.P.B.’s death Olcott decided to begin publishing in
The Theosophist-the oldest Theosophical Journal-monthly installments
of a historical outline intended to describe the formation
of the T.S., his early association with H.P.B. in the U.S.A.,
and the gradual growth of the Movement. The first installment of
these reminiscences which were to be entitled Old Diary Leaves
appeared in The Theosophist, Vol. XIII, March, 1892, and the
First Series was concluded in Vol. XV, September, 1894, with the
description of the Founders' departure for India.<ref>A second edition of Vol. I appeared in 1941, published this time, as was the case with all the later volumes, by The Theosophical Publishing House, Adyar, Madras, India.</ref> An “Oriental
Series” began the very next month, and the consecutive installments
of this historical outline continued with great regularity into
the years of the twentieth century, and were eventually published
in book form, running into six volumes.
Rightly or wrongly, Olcott felt that a strong tendency to hero-worship
was setting in with regard to H.P.B., and one of the main
objectives of his outline was to counteract it. In doing so, he
allowed himself to deal rather flippantly with certain phases and
aspects of H.P.B.’s life and character, and laid himself open to
severe criticism for having “belittled” his old colleague and friend.
Certain passages of the First Series were construed by some of
his co-workers as irreverent and were resented by them to such an
extent that when Olcott asked Countess Wachtmeister to have the
First Series published as a book by the H.P.B. Press in London,
she refused unless he expunged portions distasteful to her. This
he declined to do, and the volume was published in 1895 by G.
Putnam's Sons, London and New York.<ref>J. Ransom, Short History of The Theosophical Society, p. 294.</ref>
Old Diary Leaves, in spite of many shortcomings and errors,
must be considered Col. Olcott’s magnum opus. Without this work,
little would have been known of the history of the Theosophical
Society. Most of the text was written several years after the events
described, but on the basis of his personal Diaries, now in the {{Page aside|517}}Adyar Archives. Volume One, however, was largely written from
memory as his Diaries for the period of 1874-78 had mysteriously
vanished. Nevertheless, the first volume remains the most important
and well written of them all.
When in 1906 Col. Olcott visited America for the last time, he
wrote to an old friend, most likely William Mitchell, the husband
of Belle Mitchell, Olcott’s sister, who had passed away in 1896,
suggesting a long-delayed visit together. Olcott was rather sad and
depressed when they met. He felt very keenly the absence of H.P.B.
and, realizing his own infirmities and advancing age, experienced
loneliness and homesickness. In the course of the conversation, the
subject of William Quan Judge was brought up and Olcott’s friend
asked him whether he did not mourn him at all. To quote from
the narrative:
“’Yes, yes,’ he interrupted, ‘I know how you feel about him
and always have felt.’ Then, taking my hand in his, he gave
my face a searching glance, before he answered, in a manner
subdued and most impressive:
“’We learn much and outgrow much, and I have lived much
and learned more, particularly as regards Judge.’ ...
“’I know now, and it will comfort you to hear it; that I
wronged Judge, not wilfully or in malice; nevertheless, I have
done this and I regret it.’ ...”<ref>The Word, New York, Vol. XXII, October, 1915, pp. 7-19, where an anonymous account was published under the title of “Colonel Olcott: A Reminiscence.”</ref>
On September 25, Olcott embarked for India. When the ship
was outside Genoa, Italy, he had a fall which injured his right
knee and caused severe bruises. He was carried ashore and taken
to a hospital where he stayed for twenty-eight days. He continued
his voyage to India on November 7th, going first to Colombo,
Ceylon, and later, on December 3rd, to Adyar.
The physicians declared him seriously ill with heart trouble and
evidently did not hold out much hope for recovery. He set about
his most important tasks, but early in February, 1907, had to remain
in bed. He passed away on the 17th of February, at 7:17 a.m.
Some of those who attended him just before his passing testified
to the appearance of three of the Adept-Brothers around his deathbed,
which, as usual, is something which can neither be proved
nor disproved. It is, however, safe to say that the passing of the {{Page aside|518}}old warrior could not have remained unnoticed by his superiors whom he served so well.
As a superb organizer, devoted to his Teachers and to the interests
of the Society which he left behind, Col. Olcott is undoubtedly
the man to whom we owe the world-wide structure of
the organized Movement. Without his dynamic activities, the esoteric
work of H.P.B., the direct Messenger of the Adept-Brothers,
would not have been as potent as it proved to be. Col. Olcott's
figure is better known in the Buddhist world than it is in the
West, although time helps to bring him into correct historical
perspective even in the Occident.
On February 17, 1962, on the fifty-fifth anniversary of Col.
Olcott's passing, tribute was paid to him at the United Nations ·
Headquarters in New York by Dr. G. P. Malalasekera, permanent
representative of Ceylon to the United Nations, who lighted a lamp
of the type lit in thousands of homes throughout Ceylon, when
yearly he and his work are honoured with religious ceremonies
through the length and breadth of the Island. The flame of the
lamp stands as a symbol of the love and gratitude which the
Buddhist people feel for the man who restored their privileges and
their right to a Buddhist education, and renewed their national
consciousness which today has created a new and independent
nation.<ref>New York Herald Tribune, February 18, 1962.</ref>
Offering flowers and burning incense, thousands of Ceylonese meditate on this yearly occasion and pray:
“May the merit we have gained by these good deeds pass on to Col. Olcott, and may he gain happiness and peace.”
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