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Zirkoff B. - Appendices (BCW vol.14): Difference between revisions

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{{Style P-No indent|(MS. p. 28 [Sinnett, pp. 113fn.-14fn.] ¡...speaking of spirit communications of the poet A. Poushkine.)}}
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<nowiki>*</nowiki>This was a genuine spirit manifestation·, i.e. a clumsy personification of the great poet by passing shells and spooks allowed to merge into the circle for a few moments. The rhymed complaint speaking of hell and devil was the echo of the feelings and thoughts of a pious governess present: most assuredly it was not any reflection from Madame B.’s brain, nor would her admiring respect for the memory of the greatest Russian poet have ever allowed her to make such a blasphemous joke under the cover of his name.
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{{Style P-No indent|(Unused portion below was on p. 29 of the MS.):}}
<nowiki>*</nowiki>The reader must remember that all this took place nearly thirty years ago, when Spiritualism was nearly unknown in Europe and had hardly begun in America. Now such physical phenomena have become very common—they were regarded as positively miraculous then.
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{{Style P-No indent|(MS. p. 34 [Sinnett, p. 122]:...H. P. B. describes a spirit seen there: “he wore a most strange looking cap, very high, and something similar to the Klobouk of our monks.”*)}}
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<nowiki>*</nowiki>The round tiara covered with a long black veil, worn by the Orthodox Greek monks.
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{{Style P-No indent|(MS. p. 35 [Sinnett, pp. 131-33]:....H. P. B:“How often,
how earnestly have I tried to see and recognize among the shadows that haunted some one of dear relatives or even a friend, stray acquaintances and distant relatives for which I cared little.”*)}}
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<nowiki>*</nowiki>And how often—Madame Blavatsky tells us—has she tried with the most famous mediums to evoke and communicate with those dearest to her & whose loss she has deplored. All was vain! “Communications” and “messages” she certainly did obtain, and got their signatures, and at two occasions their materialized forms. But the communications were couched in a gushing language quite unlike the style she knew so well; their signatures were obtained from her own brain; and on no occasion when the presence of a relative was announced and the form described by the medium, who was ignorant of the fact that Mme. B. could see as well as any of them— has she recognized the alleged relative in the host of spooks and elementarles that surrounded them (when the medium was a genuine one of course). Quite the reverse. For she often saw, to her disgust, how her own recollections and brain-images were drawn from her memory and disfigured in the confused amalgamation that took place between their reflection in the medium’s brain which instantly sent them out forth, and the shells which sucked them in, like a sponge and objectivised them—a hideous shape with a mask on in her sight. Even the materialized form of her uncle at the Eddy’s was the picture she sent out from her own mind, as she had come out to make experiments without telling it to anyone. It was like an empty outer envelope of her uncle that she threw on the medium’s astral body. She saw and followed the process. She knew Will Eddy as a genuine medium, and the phenomenon as real as it could be and she defended him in the papers. In short, for over 40 years of experience she never succeeded in identifying in one single instance, those she wanted to see. It is only in her dreams and personal visions that she was brought in direct contact with her own blood relatives and friends, those between whom & herself there had been a strong mutual spiritual love. Her conviction therefore, based as much on her personal experience as on that of the teaching of the occult doctrine is the following: For certain psycho-magnetic reasons, too long to be explained here, the shells of those spirits who loved us best, will not, with a very few exceptions approach us. They have no need of it, since, unless they were irretrievably wicked they have us with them in Devachan, that state of bliss, in which the monads are surrounded with all those, and that, which they have loved—objects of spiritual aspirations as well as human entities. “Shells” once separated from their higher principles have nought in common with the latter. They are not drawn to their relatives and friends, but {{Page aside|483}}rather to those with whom their terrestrial, sensuous affinities are the strongest. Thus the shell of a drunkard will be drawn to one who is either a drunkard already or has a germ of this passion in him—in which case they will develop it by using his organs to satisfy their shell-craving; one who died full of sexual passion for a still living partner will have its shell drawn to him or her etc: This is the reason—as explained by her for never seeing her “relatives”. We Theosophists and especially occultists must never lose sight of the profound axiom of the Esoteric doctrine which teaches us that it is we, the living, who are drawn toward the spirits—but that the latter can never even though they would, which they never do--descend to us, or rather into our sphere.
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{{Style P-No indent|(MS. p. 37. Koltoun.*) [Sinnett (p. 125 fn.) used a portion of the fn. where Blavatsky goes on to define:.....*“A terrible and disgusting skin disease very common in Lithuania and contracted only in its climate...”]}}
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{{Style P-No indent|(MS. p. 41; the sisters left Rougodevo in the Spring of 1860 for the Caucasus on a visit to their grandparents. The interim period of 1863 to 1871 Mme. Jelihovsky says she can no longer give her own eye-witness testimony but rely on that of others, giving first that of Mlle, de Fadeyeff—“a lady of unimpeachable veracity, of a highly honourable character and station in life”. H. P. B. has inserted in the middle of the page:)}}
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Here Olcott’s short narrative and my aunt’s letter must be inserted together with the letter from Mahatma KH addressed to my aunt: copy this, please, Miss Arundale<ref>[In Jinarajadasa’s introduction to Mrs. Violet ChristieJs article concerning Sinnett’s unused portions of H. P. B.’s notes, he stated that he received part of them from Miss F. Arundale.—Compiler.]</ref> for a memento for Olcott.
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{{Style P-No indent|(MS. p. 41. Vera: “Her [H. P. B.’s] talented and quite exceptional nature* demanded constantly new activities, new interests, new occupations—to weaken as she often said—and put an extinguisher over her impatience to break loose from the civilized life in European Christian Society in order to roam once more at her will & pleasure in Asia, Africa and heaven knows where.”)}}
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<nowiki>*</nowiki>Dear Miss Arundale permit me to hide my blushes— I am not responsible for my sister’s enthusiasm.
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{{Style P-No indent|(MS. p. 46 [Sinnett, p. 146]: “H. P. Blavatsky resided at Tiflis less than two years; and not more than three in the Caucasus. The last year she passed roaming about in Imeretia, Gooria and Mingrelia.” During this time “she had long since given up communications through raps, and preferred—what was a far more rapid and satisfactory method—to answer people either verbally or by means of direct writing.”*)}}
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[H. P. B.’s fn. is nearly the same in Sinnett.]:
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<nowiki>*</nowiki>This was done always in full consciousness and simply by watching people’s mental thoughts as they evolved out of their heads in spiral luminous smoke, sometimes in jets of what might be taken for some radiant material—and settled in distinct pictures and images around them. Often such thoughts and answers to them would find themselves impressed in her own brain, couched in words and sentences, in the same way as original thoughts [do]. But, so far as we are able to understand—the former visions are always more trustworthy, as they were independent and distinct from her own impressions, belonging to pure clairvoyance not “thought transference” which is a process always liable to get mixed up with one’s own more vivid mental impressions.
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{{Style P-No indent|(MS. p. 47 [Sinnett, p. 146]: ...“At times during such process, Mme. Blavatsky seemed to fall into a kind of coma, or magnetic sleep with eyes widely open, though even then her hand never ceased to move and continued its writing.”*)}}
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{{Style P-No indent|[Sinnett, pp. 146fn.-147fn. (varies from below slightly)]:}}
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<nowiki>*</nowiki>Very naturally, since it was neither “magnetic sleep” nor a coma but simply a state of intense concentration and attention, necessary during such operations; when the least distraction leads to a mistake. People knowing but of mediumistic clairvoyance and nothing of our philosophy & modes of operation fall often into such error.
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{{Style P-No indent|(MS. p. 48. Just as some of the Mingrelian nobility were drawn to her because of these powers others “were as inimical to Mme. Blavatsky for one or another cause as some too orthodox American foggies, Spiritualists and their host of mediums—became later in the United States.*)}}
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<nowiki>*</nowiki>The author seems to have forgotten a better example as an illustration of that terrible hatred based upon fear that has ever pursued Mme. Blavatsky wherever she went: India with its host of multicoloured padris & missionaries, its time serving anglicized Hindus, and fanatical Europeans and...(at the bottom of her sister’s text on p. 48, H. P. B. has added:)
Miss Arundale please leave here below a large space for Olcott to write down his effusions upon the subject.
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{{Style P-No indent|(MS. p. 49. During her residence at Ozourgetty, in Mingrelia, Mme. Blavatsky was taken sick. “It was one of those mysterious nervous diseases that baffle science and eludes the grasp of everyone but an expert psychologist. As she told to some of her friends she began from that time to lead a ‘double life’. What she meant, none of the good people of Imeretia could understand.”*)}}
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{{Style P-No indent|[Sinnett, pp. 147-48 employs her fn. in main text.]:}}
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<nowiki>*</nowiki>“Whenever I was called by name”—Mme. Blavatsky tells us, “I opened the eyes upon hearing it and was myself in every particular. As soon as I was left alone, I relapsed into my usual half dreamy condition and became somebody else... In cases when I was interrupted during a conversation in the latter capacity —say, at half a sentence either spoken by me or some of my visitors—invisible of course to any other, for I was alone to whom they were realities—no {{Page aside|486}}sooner I closed my eyes than the sentence which had been interrupted—continued from the word it had stopped at. When awake and myself I remembered well who I was in my second capacity and what I was doing. When somebody else—I had no idea of who was H. P. Blavatsky. I was in another far off country, quite another individuality, and had no connection at all with my actual life.” [She will never say, however, who she was when “somebody else” nor give any more explicit details. She only said she was with her Master during that time.]
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{{Style P-No indent|(MS. p. 52;...speaking of phenomena occuring in Mme. Fadeyeffs presence when H. P. B. was asleep in the room, H. P. B. adds:)}}
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<nowiki>*</nowiki>This can hardly be called “independent manifestations”, that is to say, such phenomena as occur in the presence of mediums independently of their previous knowledge or will. As well regard as a medium every one in the house who witnessed phenomena in his presence when alone, received letters or other objective proof of either Masters or chelas. Madame Blavatsky (tells) us that she has often seen her Master and his disciples in astral bodies so far back as 1859; distinctly [heard?] their voices and conversed with them. Once that we admit the manifestation [we think it] more philosophical to attribute them to the will of living persons than of dead men.
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{{Style P-No indent|(MS. p. 54 [Sinnett, p. 158]:....describes H. P. B.’s
attempt in 1871 to establish the “Société Spirite” in Cairo, “for the investigation of mediums & phenomena according to Allan Kardec’s theories and philosophy...She would first give room to any already established and accepted teaching and then, when the public would see that nothing was coming out of it she would then offer then her own explanations. To accomplish this object, she said, she was ready to go to any amount of trouble, —even to allowing herself to be regarded for a time as a helpless medium. ‘They know no better and it does me no harm* — for I will very soon show them the difference between a passive medium & an active doer...’ she explains.”)}}
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<nowiki>*</nowiki>[She was mistaken: for it has done her harm. In their eagerness to show her no higher than a common medium, editors of spiritual papers remembering that they had received at that time notices of the short lived Société Spirite—made capital of it and a good handle to the broom with which as they thought they would try to sweep out the Theosophical Society out of sight & existence.]
(There follows a continuation of this note but in the MS. it has been crossed out. It refers to Mr. Arthur Lillie, the compiler of what H. P. B. calls a “semi-libellous pamphlet.”)<ref>[See B.C.W., Vol. VI, pp.269-80; pp.288-94 and index. The two lengthy articles there by H. P. B. expose several of Mr. Lillie’s pamphlets. — Compiler.]</ref>
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{{Style P-No indent|(MS. p. 55. H. P. B.’s letter narrating the events which led to the closing of the ‘Société Spirite’ after a fortnight, is quoted—partially given by Sinnett in Incidents..., 1886 ed., p. 159; and more fully in The Theosophist, XLVIII, May 1926, p. 197-98, quoted below:)<ref>“H. P. B. and Spiritualism” by Violet M. Christie, pp. 194-99.</ref>}}
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....“H. P. B. was nearly shot by a madman ‘a Greek clerk who had been present at the only two public seances we held, and got possessed, I suppose, by some vile spook.* He premised by running about the pagan streets of Cairo with a cocked up revolver, screaming that I had sent to him during three nights running a host of she-demons, of spirits who were attempting to choke him!! He rushed into my house with his revolver, finding me in the breakfast room, declared that he had come to shoot me and would wait till I had done with my meal. It was very kind of him, in the meanwhile I forced him to drop his pistol and to rush out once more out of the house. He is now shut up in the lunatic asylum and I swear to put an end for ever to such public seances—they are too dangerous and I am not practiced and strong enough to control the wicked spooks that may approach my friends during such sittings....I have told you before now that
[these kinds] of promiscuous seances with mediums in the circle, are a regular whirlpool —a maelstrom of bad magnetism, during which time the so-called spirits (Vile Kikimora!) feed upon us, suck in, sponge-like our vital powers and draw us down to their {{Page aside|488}}own plane of being. But you will never understand this without going over a portion at least, if not the whole range of writings that exist upon this subject.’.....”
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(Violet Christie’s article in the May Theosophist<ref>Ibid, p. 198.</ref> goes on to quote a key passage unused by Sinnett, referring to her subsequent travels after Egypt, in Palestine, Palmira, and H. P. B.’s final return to Russia; which Vera said she left for the last time in April, 1873:)
....“In June of the same year she was in Paris, where she had intended to reside for some time, when suddenly she received a letter—‘an advice I have neither the desire, nor possibility of resisting’ as she explained to us in her correspondence—from one of her teachers in the Far East”.....
(“The outcome of H. P. B.’s swift departure to America was the founding of the Theosophical Society in November 1875,” Mrs. Christie’s article states, and goes on to explain that her investigations in spiritualism are amply covered by Mr. Sinnett’s Incidents and in many of H. P. B.’s books.)
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{{Style P-No indent|(MS. p. 55 [Sinnett, p. 159fn.]:)}}
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<nowiki>*</nowiki>This verbal translation of a letter written by Mme. Blavatsky 14 years back—shows that she never changed her way of viewing communications with “spirits” for physical phenomena—as she was accused of doing when in America.
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{{Style P-No indent|(MS. p. 59; describing the visitation of the astral spooks of two brothers—“one harmonious & passive; the other active and dangerous.”)}}
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{{Style P-No indent|[Sinnett, p. 167fn.; shows very few changes.]:}}
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<nowiki>*</nowiki>How dangerous is the latter kind was proven on the spot. Miss O.— the medium, a young lady of hardly twenty—a governess in a rich {{Page aside|489}}family of bankers, an extremely modest & gentle character had hardly written the Russian words addressed to Mme. Blavatsky than she was seized with trembling and asked to drink. When water was brought she threw it away and went on asking for a drink. Wine was offered her—she greedily drank it, and began drinking one glass after the other until to the horror of all she fell in convulsions and cried for “Wine—a drink!” till she fainted away and was carried home in a carriage. She had a sickness after this that lasted for several weeks.
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{{Style P-No indent|(MS. circa p. 62ff: This letter was totally included by Sinnett, [pp. 175-79] but is of such interest that we reproduce it below along with the final footnotes by H.P.B., not present in Sinnett’s Incidents...)}}
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....In 1875 she wrote home:
“The more I see of mediums—for the United States are a true nursery, the most prolific hot-bed for mediums and sensitives of all kinds genuine and artificial—the more I see the danger humanity is surrounded with. Poets speak of the thin partition between this world and the other. They are blind: there is no partition at all except the difference of states in which the living and the dead exist, and the grossness of the physical senses of the majority of mankind. Yet, these senses are our salvation. They were given to us by a wise and sagacious mother and nurse - nature; for, otherwise, individuality and even personality would have become impossible: the dead would be ever merging into the living, and the latter assimilating the former. Were there around us but one variety of ‘spirits,’—as well call the dregs of wine, spirits,—the reliquae of those mortals who are dead and gone, one could reconcile oneself with it. We cannot avoid, in some way or other, assimilating our dead, and little by little, and unconsciously to ourselves, we become they—even physically, especially in the unwise West, where cremation is unknown. We breathe and devour the dead— men and animals—with every breath we draw in, as every human breath that goes out makes up the bodies, and feeds the formless creatures in the air that will be men some day. So much for the physical process; for the mental and the intellectual, and also the spiritual, it is just the same; we interchange gradually our brain-molecules, our {{Page aside|490}}intellectual and even spiritual auras, hence—our thoughts, desires, and aspirations, with those who preceded us. This process is common to humanity in general. It is a natural one, and follows the economy and laws of nature, insomuch that one’s son may become gradually his own grandfather, and his aunt to boot, imbibing their combined atoms, and thus partially accounting for the possible resemblance, or atavism. But there is another law, an exceptional one, and which manifests itself among mankind sporadically and periodically: the law of forced post-mortem assimilation, during the prevalence of which epidemic the dead invade the domain of the living from their respective spheres—though, fortunately, only within the limits of the regions they lived in, and in which they are buried<ref>[Therefore when for example a medium in America personates a Russian (Sophie Perovsky, the regicide for inst.), fraud or a monomaniacal hallucination is invariably the real cause of it, for what we call “shells” cannot emerge out of a certain area of Kama Ioka; whereas if the same spook obsessed a medium at St. Petersburg or the vicinity we might easily admit the genuineness of the phenomena. Luckily few shells prevail longer than the term of a natural life. Translator}}</ref> In such cases, the duration and intensity of the epidemic depends upon the welcome they receive, upon whether they find the doors opening widely to receive them or not, and whether the necromantic plague is increased by magnetic attraction, the desire of the mediums, sensitives, and the curious themselves, or whether again, the danger being signalled, the epidemic is wisely repressed.”
“Such a periodical visitation is now occurring in America. It began with innocent children—the little Misses Fox—playing unconsciously with this terrible weapon. And, welcomed and passionately invited to ‘come in,’ the whole of the dead community seemed to have rushed in, and got a more or less strong hold of the living. I went on purpose to a family of strong mediums—the Eddys—and watched for over a fortnight, making experiments, which, of course, I kept to myself.... You remember, Vera, how I made experiments for you at Rougodevo, how often I saw the ghosts of those who had been living in the house, and described them to you, for you could never see them.... Well, it was the same daily and nightly in {{Page aside|491}}Vermont. I saw and watched these soulless creatures, the shadows of their terrestrial bodies, from which in most cases soul and spirit had fled long ago, but which throve and preserved their semi-material shadows, at the expense of the hundreds of visitors that came and went, as well as of the mediums. And I remarked under the advice and guidance of my Master, that (1) those apparitions which were genuine were produced by the ‘ghosts’ of those who had lived and died within a certain area of those mountains; (2) those who had died far away were less entire, a mixture of the real shadow and of that which lingered in the personal aura of the visitor for whom it purported to come; and (3) the purely fictitious ones, or as I call them, the reflections of the genuine ghosts or shadows of the deceased personality. To explain myself more clearly, it was not the spooks that assimilated the medium, but the medium, W. Eddy, who assimilated unconsciously to himself the pictures of the dead relatives and friends from the aura of the sitters....
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“It was ghastly to watch the process! It made me often sick and giddy; but I had to look at it, and the most I could do was to hold the disgusting creatures at arm’s length. But it was a sight to see the welcome given to these umbrae by the spiritualists! They wept and rejoiced around the medium, clothed in these empty materialized shadows; rejoiced and wept again, sometimes broken down with an emotion, a sincere joy and happiness that made my heart bleed for them. ‘If they could but see what I see,’ I often wished. If they only knew that these simulacra of men and women are made up wholly of the terrestrial passions, vices, and worldly thoughts, of the residuum of the personality that was; for these are only such dregs that could not follow the liberated soul and spirit, and are left for a second death in the terrestrial atmosphere,<ref>[In the shell of the Earth for its (to us) invisible astral form is the region in which, the umbrae linger after death, a grand truth given out in the exoteric doctrine of Hades of the ancient Latins.]</ref> that can be seen by the average medium and the public. At times I used to see one of such phantoms, quitting the medium’s astral body, pouncing upon one of the sitters, expanding so as to envelop {{Page aside|492}}him or her entirely, and then slowly disappearing within the living body as though sucked in by its every pore.”<ref>[A condensed version of the letter with a slightly different translation was reprinted by W.Q. Judge in The Path, Vol. IX, February, 1895, pp. 379-81.—Compiler]</ref>
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{{Style P-No indent|(MS. p. 67. “No sooner a foreign paper—especially if it was English or a German periodical or daily—speak of herself or of her work in tones of praise than the press of her own country would raise up an indecent protest...one of the papers came out with the stupendous information that the Mme. Blavatsky, author of Isis Unveiled, was the same Mme. B. who at the age of 17 had murdered (?!) her venerable husband and then disappeared from Russia.”*)}}
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<nowiki>*</nowiki>We resent and blame less, after this information, the Anglo-Indian & American papers, who very often invented [or perhaps repeated ?] the same idiotic calumnies. It only shows how little advanced is yet Western Civilization that an innocent woman should be so persecuted by her own countrymen, [word indecipherable here: attenuates, but does not solicitate—?] the villainy of the same act committed by the press in foreign countries, the hospitality of which, she trusts. More than ever we become impressed with the paradoxical saying, that “Christian charity is really practiced but in heathendom.”
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{{Style P-No indent|(MS. pp. 67-8. “The libel was later on contradicted officially, but it never prevented other papers from going on to invent from time to time other libels.”*)}}
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<nowiki>*</nowiki>And private individuals, (sometimes—though happily rarely—in high station of life) to repeat them, adding to these other lies—direct emanations from their own vicious brains & natures. Such a libel has been just set on foot by an ex-maid-of-honour of the Imperial {{Page aside|493}}Russian Court, a well known old spinster residing for many years in Paris, and famous in all Russia and France for her viper’s tongue and wicked gossiping. Some of our friends say to us:—“Oh, she is a mad-woman and known as such by everyone.”—“Very likely,” we answer. But since she is, so far, instead of being safely lodged in a lunatic asylum allowed to go free and to carry about her vile slanders and wicked inventions; and as, according to a well established axiom “however well proven to be false, there remains always something of a calumny”—; and that again those who know her but do not know at all Mme. Blavatsky, or the whole truth about her may be easily led into believing what Mlle. O. S—f (whose full name we withhold merely out of Mme. Blavatsky’s respect to the Imperial Court of Russia and the other maids-of-honour, a title she disgraces) would have people believe her to be—it is but just that facts should be restored, and the whole truth left on record. And since Mme. Blavatsky—no sooner were the calumnies brought home to her in the shape of a long and slanderous letter — Mlle.S —f to an alleged friend of hers (whom she traduces as much as she does all others) and a real friend of Mme. Blavatsky, the latter sent immediately an official petition to the Commander in Chief of the Caucasus praying that an inquest should be ordered and a certificate of the Police of the results of the same sent to her and that she has since received every legal proof of the falsity of the denunciation,—we can do no better than append the proofs to this volume... Mme. Blavatsky’s name has been too often and too unjustly traduced that we should not [seek?] every opportunity to defend it. (H.S.O. Editor)
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{{Style P-No indent|(MS. pp. 68-9. “Baron de Palm, whose death and cremation in the United States had set the whole press of the two continents agog, was it seems, a very rich man. He left the whole of his great fortune to the Theosophical Society of New York, on the condition that the Theosophists should build a crematory, and reducing his body to ashes should preserve it as a memorial of what had been himself.”*)}}
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{{Style P-No indent|[Sinnett, pp. 204-05, only briefly summarizes H. P. B.’s long fn. below]:}}
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Not so; and the author of these letters was again misled by false reports in the American newspapers. When Baron von Palm joined the “Society” he was a ruined and a dying man; and it is out of pure philanthropy and pity for that lonely man, far away from his country and friends that Colonel Olcott accepted him as a fellow to his Society. Baron von Palm “had been”, a rich man, but at the time of his death he was completely ruined, though he kept to the last his own counsel and never let any one know of it. Nevertheless truth forces us to admit that the estimable German ex-diplomat played a rather unworthy trick upon his colleagues of the Theosophical Society: he drew a legal will and left in it all he had to the Society he belonged to...which was “found to amount to nothing”........[All the above and continued footnote is largely covered in H. S. Olcott’s Old Diary Leaves, Chapters X and XL]
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{{Style P-No indent|(Since the 1886 edition of Incidents is out of print a few letters included by Sinnett [on pp. 205-06], will be of interest.) About the time of Baron de Palm’s cremation she wrote to Vera:}}
“Fancy my surprise...! am—heaven help us!—becoming fashionable, as it seems. I am writing articles on Esotericism and Nirvana, and paid for them more than I could have ever expected, though I have hardly any time for writing for money.... Believe me, and you will, for you know me, I cannot make myself realize that I have ever been able to write decently....If I were unknown, no publisher or editor would have ever paid any attention to me....It’s all vanity and fashion....Luckily for the publishers I have never been vain.”
In the course of another family letter she writes:—
“Upon my word, I can hardly understand why you and people generally should make such a fuss over my writings, whether Russian or English ¡....Whenever I am told to write, I sit down and obey, and then I can write easily upon almost anything—....I never put myself the question: 'Can I write on this subject?...’ or, ‘Am I equal to the task?’ but I simply sit down and write. Because somebody who knows all dictates to me....MY {{Page aside|495}}MASTER, and occasionally others whom I knew in my travels years ago....”<ref>[For a more complete translation of this by Boris de Zirkoff, see his Introductory to Isis Unveiled, (1977 ed.) Vol. I., pp. [23-24.] His important note concerning Sinnett’s Incidents (for which H. P. B. made further changes) shows uncertainty as to such modifications of her sister’s MS. as compared to excerpts in Rebus (No. 47, 1883) due to the lack of Russian originals of the complete letters which may have been destroyed.— Compiler.]</ref>
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{{Style P-No indent|(MS. p. 74 [Sinnett, pp. 206-08]: While writing Isis Unveiled, H. P. B. wrote her sister a letter which “...is preserved and may yet prove of service)*”}}
....“You may disbelieve me, but I tell you that in saying this I speak but the truth: I am solely occupied—not with writing ‘Isis’, but with Isis herself....” It closes with the portion Sinnett includes from her MS.:
....I certainly refuse point-blank to attribute it to my own knowledge or memory, for I could never arrive alone at either such premises or conclusions....! tell you seriously I am helped. And he who helps me is my GURU...”<ref>[Another version of this letter appeared in Russkoye Obozreniye (Russian Review), Vol. VI, Nov., 1891, p. 274. For a translation of this by Boris de Zirkoff, see his Introductory to Isis Unveiled, Vol. I., p.[21 ], and his important note on Sinnett’s Incidents compared to other translations on p.[22]. — Compiler.]</ref>
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<nowiki>*</nowiki>Most assuredly it will, especially as a proof that Mme. Blavatsky credited Isis from the first to her Tibetan Masters and has not—as alleged by our opponents invented the "Brothers”, later on. (Ed.)
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{{Style P-No indent|(MS. p. 75. “That which helped her [in writing ‘Isis’], in our humble opinion were natural gifts, and her memory developed by an incessant life labour and study.”*)}}
<nowiki>*</nowiki>Madame Blavatsky denies this positively; [MSS. faint here: we do not see the use or sense—?] of refusing any credit to herself—if her statements were not the truth.
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{{Style P-No indent|(MS. p. 75. Mme. Blavatsky in her letters attributed her literary work to her “mysterious ‘Guru’ or Master”.)}}
<nowiki>*</nowiki>The esteemed author is evidently [MSS. broken here: prejudiced— ?] or perhaps, unwilling as a Christian to attribute such [MSS. broken here: great power—?] to non-Christian adepts. At all events as the [MSS. broken here] used tend only to the greater glory of Mme. Blavatsky herself, we have nothing to say. We respect the opinion of even those who differ with us. (Ed.)
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{{Style P-No indent|(MS. p. 80. The MS. ends quoting an article by C. Fauvety, “Science et Theosophie” in the ‘Bulletin Mensuel des Sciences Psychologiques’ relating the prophesy of the St. Simonists who announced that “a woman from the East,* who shall unite the two populations of the East & the West, and shall become the mother of the [reformed] Society. ”)<ref>[In Violet Christie’s article on “H. P. B.”, (The Theosophist, March 1926, pp. 737-38) she goes on to quote from this journal:<br>
.....“Deceived by their impatient fancy, some of the St. Simonists started and went in 1831 to the Far East in search of that woman-type. Vain were their travels over Egypt, Syria and Asiatic Turkey.......They
had started on their journey too early: had they gone East 50 years later and pushed further on to India—they would have found in Madame Blavatsky—a Russian woman (from the East).....We had recently the
means of ascertaining personally how many Hindus feel for her an affectionate veneration, and prove it by regarding and even calling her their wise and affectionate Mother.”]</ref>}}
<nowiki>*</nowiki>Mme. Blavatsky was born and bred in the East.
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{{Style P-No indent|(p. 80. H. P. B. ends the MSS. with:)}}
“End of Flapdoodle”
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{{Style P-Title|APPENDIX III}}
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[The materials below might have been inserted into earlier volumes had its existence been known at the time of their publication. They are now being printed as part of the present series:]
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{{Style P-Subtitle|<center>Professor A.M. Butleroff</center>
<center>on</center>
<center>Mediumistic Phenomena</center>}}
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<center>[From a manuscript in H. P. B. ’s Handwriting]<ref>[In typing her article from the microfilm print-out of the original manuscript, Mr. de Zirkoff has altered the spelling of “Boutlerof” to the form H. P. B. preferred in later documents. Also keep in mind that in the S.D. Index Mr. de Zirkoff used the Russian varient of “Butlerov”. This is but one small example of the difficulties facing the compilers of the Master Index now being computerized for future typesetting.— Compiler.]</ref></center>
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Among the few men of Science who place their intimate convictions of truth higher and above public prejudice and who refuse to pander to it, the names of the two St. Petersburg professors—A.M. Butleroff and N. Wagner stand high and foremost in the rank. For years, and from the time that, owing to personal investigations, and careful scientific experiments—the phenomena of physical and psychological mediumship had become to them undeniable facts in the realm of nature, they have stood firm and undismayed by the public outcrys. They have fought almost singlehanded a formidable foe—the stubborn negations of their European and Russian colleagues, supported and reinforced by the immortal Public Opinion: that is to say by all the forces that religious and social bigotry could bring in aid to scientific intolerance and conceit, old prejudices and superstitions that grace the {{Page aside|498}}pious congregations and their clergy and the new prejudices and so-called scientific negations that disgrace the learned bodies and the profane laity. It was the old, old story over again. Scientific Russia was re-enacting the parody that has been performed in the name of Science to cover personal aversions, and enacted years ago in the United States, England and France. And, as the American Association of Science had levied arms against their veteran colleague Professor Hare; and the Royal Society of London had ostracized Mr. Crookes; and the French Academy of Science had tabooed mesmerism and psychological phenomena, so the St. Petersburg Commission appointed for the Investigation of mediumistic phenomena, a commission of learned ignoramuses and bigots, headed by Mr. Mendeleyeff, had tried their game on Professors Butleroff and Wagner. But these two were not the men to be so easily put down by the outcry of bigotry and blind prejudice. They never wavered, from that time down, as they never lost an opportunity to advocate the necessity of investigating mediumistic “manifestations”—a term that in the absence of final and definite proof of the agency at work at the bottom of phenomena they had scientifically and wisely substituted for that of “spiritualistic phenomena.”
And now we find Professor A.M. Butleroff at work once more, reading a paper on “The Study of Mediumistic Manifestations” before the general assembly of the Vllth meeting of Russian physicists, naturalists and physicians, at Odessa, August 27th, 1883.
We translate this lecture from the Rebus, for the benefit of our readers and sceptics in general. We hope to show to the latter, so numerous in every Society that while they, who most of them have never seen such manifestations and deny and reject that which they do not know, simply upon hearsay, the real, honest men, professors and specialists in sciences proceed on quite different lines. What one of the greatest naturalists of Russia had to say upon this {{Page aside|499}}unwelcome subject before a public meeting of Scientists is given below.
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{{Style P-Subtitle|The Study Of Mediumistic Manifestations<ref>From the reports of the Odessa newspapers we find that the Hall of the assembly rooms was crowded to suffication by the choicest public. The lecture of the famous St. Petersburg professor of chemistry called forth a deserved sympathy as much for its subject as for the lecturer, whose scientific achievements have become famous far beyond the territory of Russia (Editor, Rebus).</ref>}}
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Gentlemen,
The question, to which I propose to draw today your attention, has hitherto proved such an unwelcome stepchild of Natural Sciences, that it is not without hesitation I now lift my voice on its behalf. This qualification in relation with the name of the person, now standing before this audience, gives you no doubt already an insight into its nature and makes you surmise that it is of “mediumistic manifestations” that I am about to treat. In my opinion this subject is so serious and important, and my personal convictions with regard to it so firmly established that I would consider it a dereliction of my moral duty as a man of science before the face of truth—before Science, which is but a natural aspiration toward all truth—were I to keep silent, where I could profitably speak. Before a regular Scientific Society, forming a collective unity, one which no sooner a subject is broached than it proceeds if not to immediately investigate, at least to discuss it, so as to obtain its sanction or its rejection by a majority of votes —I confess —I would have hardly dared to touch upon this question; so little do I hope, at present, to find sympathy for it with the majority. But having met here for a short time and this meeting being our last; whatsoever on the whole the opinions of the scientific body, here present, taken in its totality, there will be certainly a few members of this learned association by whom this subject of mediumistic phenomena—one that has been hitherto laid aside, as being so dark as to be regarded virtually as nonexistent, a subject known through casual and generally disfigured references to it in the newspaper columns — may per chance owing to my mention of it be taken up some day or other. My present object goes no further. It is with no hope of seeing it immediately discussed and investigated that I bring this question forward. Such complicated, abstruse and important branches of knowledge require a long series of years of {{Page aside|500}}hard study before they can be worked out and made comprehensive. But what I believe myself entitled to say today to the physicists, naturalists and physicians before me is: Gentlemen! Seek seriously for an opportunity of getting acquainted with this domain of natural phenomena; devote a portion of your time and labour to form for yourself a clear conception of it, and a conviction based on personal and impartial observation, for thereby you will be only doing your duty to the Science you are serving, to the Society you belong to, and which, owing to the great scarcity of coolheaded, trained and scientific guides, wanders but too often in dangerous sidepaths and byways, groping in entire darkness.
Hitherto, Science, in the face of the majority of her representatives has either ignored or rejected the subject under discussion, and before it had obtained the assurance of the existence of the object to be investigated, has ever either ignored or rejected the subject under discussion. Is either of the two courses permissible? Science has no right to preconceptions or preconceived decisions, nor can it allow itself to be [goad guided]<ref>[MS. not clear.]</ref> by its sympathies or antipathies, accepting the one, and rejecting the other, when both the one as well as the other exists and takes place in nature. I say again —I speak here of the majority not of the whole body of scientists. For even here, in our midst, may be found investigators who have approached the subject seriously and scientifically. May they avoid the shoals where their colleagues had wrecked! Let them not stop exclusively at those elementary phenomena the explanation of which one may yet succeed by hook or crook to bring under a general classification of well known principles. It is not in such phenomena, and their investigation that lies hidden the actual promise of a tremendous progress of our knowledge. For instance, the moving of objects in contact with the hand of the investigators may be explained as due to an unconscious, deliberate action of the muscles; but besides such moving, the domain of mediumistic manifestations, includes also the motion of objects without the least contact. Moreover, we have to explain the mediumistic raps with their seeming intelligence and many other phenomena —a series of manifestations whose undoubted reality is vouchsafed by myself and other serious observers who have personally investigated them. Surely, they too pertain to study and have to be explained!
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{{Style P-Title|Appendix III}}
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{{Style P-Subtitle|HOSEA’S PROPHECY ABOUT ROTTEN RAILS}}
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<center>[Lucifer, Volume III, December 1888, p.334]</center>
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Sometime ago in an article, the “Tetragrammaton” (Theosophist), we remarked that by the Notarikon method of Kabalistic reading one could make Biblical sentences read almost anything. Here is an instance. A Kabalist, of the Abracadabric name of Katzenellenbogen, sent to the St. Petersburg Svyet a Kabalistic calculation made subservient by him for the occasion. It is verse 14 in chapter XIII. of Hosea, read by the Notarikon, and thus shown to foretell the catastrophe which happened to the Imperial train on October 17th (29th) and the miraculous escape of the Czar of Russia and his family. The Kabalistic combination struck the profane herds with amazement, and the ancient “prophecy” ran the round of all the Russian papers. We quote from the author’s article.
“If you add together the figures of every letter of the said Hebrew verse to the sum of the figures yielded by the words. Emperor Alexander, Empress Maria, their son, Heir to the Throne, Nicolas, etc., etc., the sum total will make 5649, i.e., the present year from the world’s creationaccording to Hebrew chronology, of course—<ref>Which chronology? The latter differs in every Hebrew scroll almost and the Masters of Israel agree but to disagree. So according to the Septuagint 7240 years have passed since tne world’s creation; the Samaritan text gives 6065; the Asiatic Jews count 6000; Josephus gives 7508 years; and the received chronology shows 5892.—(Ed.)</ref> or, in other words, St. (?) Hosea is proved to have prophesied the salvation of Russia in the present year 1888. For those acquainted with the original text, I (Katzenellenbogen) transliterate the ancient Hebrew characters into Russian (and we, into English.—Ed.) letters, with their Kabalistic numerals added:—Gameleh=95, Alexander=365, Vehamalka=106, Maria=252, Ubnom=98, Toresch=516, Etzer=360, Nicolas =211, Vek-hol=56, Scheol—337, {{Page aside|502}}Efdom=125, Mimovijess=486, AEg-Olem=75, AEgi=16, Dvorekha=236, Movess=446, AEgi=16, Kotovho=131, Scheol=337, Nokham=98, Tisokher=670, Meynoy=180;<ref>The Hebrew is Katzenellenbogen’s.—[ED.]</ref> in all 5649, when translated it means:—
“The Emperor Alexander, the Empress Maria and their Son Nicolas, heir to the throne, and all the august family, I will ransom from the jaws of hell (“death” in the Christian Bible)<ref>We have in the Hebrew text “the jaws of Hell” instead of the words “the power of death” as translated in the English Protestant Bible.</ref>, in the year 1888 or 5649, and I will redeem them from death; ‘Oh, death, where is thy sting? Oh Hell, where is thy victory?’” (Novoye Vremya.)
The reader is reminded that the above sentence reads only in the Russian language and would hardly yield the same in any other. On the other hand, if tried by an English Kabalist, it might perhaps be discovered that Hosea prophesied for Whitechapel in 1888 “Jack Ripper,” as an atonement for the sins of Scotland Yard; and if resorted to by a French Kabalist, it is not at all unlikely that the said verse should be found threatening Zola with the stings of Scheol (hell) for plagiarizing in such flagrant manner Hosea’s epistolary style (vide Ch. i., ii., iii., et seq.), and thus illegally appropriating the Biblical monopoly of free and unparliamentary speech. Great are the possibilities of Kabala!


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