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442
NOTE ON THE TRANSLITERATION OF SANSKRIT
The system of diacritical marks used in the Bibliographies and the Index (with square brackets), as well as in the English translations of original French and Russian texts, does not strictly follow any one specific scholar, to the exclusion of all others. While adhering to a very large extent to Sir Monier-Williams’ Sanskrit-English Dictionary, as for instance in the case of the Anusvâra, the transliteration adopted includes forms introduced by other Sanskrit scholars as well, being therefore of a selective nature.
It should also be noted that the diacritical mark for a long “a” was in the early days a circumflex, and therefore all of H.P.B.’s writings embody this sound in the form of “â.” No change has been made from this earlier notation to its more modern form of the “macron,” or line over the “a.” Such a change would have necessitated too many alterations, and almost certainly would have produced confusion; therefore the older usage has been adhered to throughout.
443
GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHY
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 (*).
*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.
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 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.
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 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 446purpose 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.
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, 4471817.-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.
*Appleton Cyclopaedia of Biography.
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.
BEAUMARCHAIS, PIERRE AUGUSTIN CARON DE (1732-99). *Le Barbier de Seville, 1775.-*Le Mariage de Figaro, 1778.
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.
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 448on 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.
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.
BUCHANAN, JOSEPH RODES (1814-99). See Vol. VI, pp. 429-30, for a biographical sketch.
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.
BUCKLE, HENRY THOMAS (1821-62). *History of Civilization in England. Vol. I in 1857; Vol. II in 1861.
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 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.
CAESAR, GAIUS JULIUS (102?-44 B.C.). *Commentarii de bello Gallico, written in 51 B.C. Loeb Classical Library.
CASSELS, W. R. (1826-1907). *Supernatural Religion, etc. London, 1874. 2 vols,; Vol. III in 1877. Many editions.
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.
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.
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 450at 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.
COOKE, JOSIAH PARSONS (1827-94). *The New Chemistry, 1872; 2nd. ed., London, 1874. See Vol. IX, p. 240, for biogr. sketch.
CORSON, EUGENE ROLLIN (1855-?). *Some Unpublished Letters of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. With an Introduction and Commentary. London: Rider & Co. [1929], 255 pp., facs. & ill.
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 451outstanding 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 452aspects 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 453she 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).
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 454of 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.)
DARWIN, CHARLES ROBERT (1809-82). *On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races 455in the Struggle for Life. Published on November 24, 1859, the entire edition of 1250 copies being exhausted on the day of issue.
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 456off 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 457of 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.”[1]
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 458scientific 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 459figures 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.
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.
DICKENS, CHARLES JOHN HUFFAM (1812-1870). *little Dorrit, 1857.-*Edwin Drood, 1870.
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. 460Infantry, 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 461Moultrie 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.
DUPOTET DE SENNEVOY, BARON JULES (1796-1881). See for biographical sketch Vol. VII, p. 368.
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.
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.
ELEAZAR I (Lazar, Eleazar ben Shammua’). See for biogr. sketch Vol. VI, p. 433.
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. 463He 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.
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.
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.
FLINT, CHARLES RANLETT (1850-1934). *Memories of an Active Life. New York and London: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1923. xviii, 349 pp.
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.
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.
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 464the 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.
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.
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.
*Guide to Theosophy, A. Collection of Selected Articles. Published by Tookaram Tatya, Bombay, 1887.
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.
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.
GUILLEMAIN DE SAINT-VICTOR, LOUIS. *Handbook of the Women Freemasons or the True Freemasonry of Adoption.
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.
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. 466Resigned 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.
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 467in 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.
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. 468Hare 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).
HAUG, DR. CARL FRIEDRICH. *Die Allgemeine Geschichte, Stuttgart, 1841.
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.
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.
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.
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. 470Appointed, 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.
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.
HURRYCHUND CHINTAMON. *Commentary on the Bhagavad-Gita.
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.
471 INMAN, THOS., *Ancient and Pagan Christian Symbolism, etc. London, 1869; 2nd ed., N.Y., 1871.
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.)
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.
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.
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, 4721925; 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.
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 473who 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 474handwritten 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.[2]
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.”[3]
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.[4]
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. [5]
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∴’ . . .”[6] 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. [7] When H.P.B., Col. Olcott and party arrived in Paris, March 28th, Judge was on hand to meet them.[8] According to some of his published letters,[9] 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 476was 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.[10] 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.[11] 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.[12] It was on that voyage that A. E. S. Smythe, future President of the Canadian Theos. Society, met him for the first time.[13]
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.
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.”[14]
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.”[15]
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 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.[16] 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.[17]
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 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. [18] 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.” [19]
The same year Judge was appointed by Col. Olcott as Vice- 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.”[20]
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
481
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.”[21]
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.[22]
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.” [23]
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 482Olcott'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.”[24] 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.[25]
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 483that 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.”[26]
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 484representatives 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 485the mental effect of this in Mrs. Besant's entire change of view, in other matters besides those of H.P.B. and Mr. Judge.”[27]
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.[28]
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 486constantly 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 487London 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.”[29] 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.”[30]
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:
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.”[31]
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 489precipitations, 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’.[32]
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.”[33]
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,”[34] 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.”[35] 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., 490was 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’.”[36]
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.
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.
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.
491 KNORR VON ROSENROTH, BARON CHRISTIAN (1636-1689). *Kabbalah denudata. Vol. I, Sulzbach, 1677-78; Vol. II, Frankfurt: J. D. Zunneri, 1684.
LARA, D. E. 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.
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 492himself 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).
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.
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.[37] 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 495K. 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.
LIVY (TITUS LIVIUS) (59 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 460brother of the Emperor Tiberius, in A.D. 9. Of these books only 35 are extant. Loeb Classical Library.
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 497as 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.
LORIS-MELIKOV, COUNT MICHAEL T. (1826-88). See for biogr. sketch Vol. II, footnote to art. “Armenians.”
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.
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).
MacKenzie, Kenneth Robert Henderson (?-1886). Prominent Mason known as “Cryptonymus.” *The Royal Masonic Cyclopaedia of History, Rites; Symbolism and Biography, London, 1877 [1875-77]. 8vo.
MACKEY, ALBERT GALLATIN (1807-1881). *Encyclopaedia of Freemasonry. Edited by Robert I. Clegg. Chicago: The Masonic History Co., 1929.
*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.
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.
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 498Chairman 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 499his 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.)
MAYER, ALFRED MARSHALL (1836-97). *The Earth a Great Magnet: a Lecture, etc. New Haven, Conn., 1872. 8vo.
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.
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.
MILL, JAMES (1773-1836). *The History of British India. London: Baldwin, Cradock, and Joy, 1817. 3 vols.; also 1848.
500 MOLIERE (JEAN BAPTISTE POQUELIN—1622-73). *Tartuffe, 1664.
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.
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 501attitude 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.
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.
MOUSSEAUX. See GOUGENOT DES MOUSSEAUX.
MULLER, MAX [FRIEDRICH MAXIMILIAN] (1823-1900). *Chips from a German Workshop. London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1867-75. 4 vols.
*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.
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 503for 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...”
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.
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. 504Morgan, 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.[38] 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.[39]
One of these possible ancestors was Nathan Alcock, who received his medical degree in 1737 and became an M.D. in 1741 at Jesus 505College, 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 506 506published in the 1858-64 edition of Appleton’s New American Cyclopaedia.[40] 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.[41]
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 507to 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 508anarchic 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 509fo1m, 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.[42]
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 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.[43]
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 511language, 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 512Sinhalese 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 513organizational 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...”[44]
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.[45]
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.[46] 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 514around, 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 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,[47] 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.”[48]
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 516abilities 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.[49] 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.[50]
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 517Adyar 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.’ ...”[51]
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 518old 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.[52]
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.”
Owen, Robert Dale. Statesman, social reformer and author, b. at Glasgow, Scotland, Nov. 9, 1801; d. at his Summer home on Lake George, N. Y., June 24, 1877. Eldest son of Robert Owen and Ann Caroline Dale. Mother was the daughter of David Dale, proprietor of the cottonmills at New Lanark, where Robert Owen was beginning to put into practice his theory of social reform. Almost the whole of Robert Dale Owen’s life was spent in the U.S., and was shaped by his father’s influence. Possessed of much of his father’s gift for original and liberal thought in social matters, he added to it a practicality and patience all his own. Instructed in New Lanark school and by private tutors until the age of eighteen when for four years he attended the progressive 519institution of Philipp Emanuel von Fellenberg, at Hofwyl, Switzerland, where his beliefs in human virtue and social progress were strengthened. Upon returning to his father’s cottonmill community, he took charge of the school and managed the factories in his father’s absence. Came to the U.S. with his father, November, 1825, where Robert Owen established a community at New Harmony, Ind., as an experiment in social reform. Robert Dale busied himself with teaching and editing the New Harmony Gazette. After the experiment failed, in the Spring of 1827, he became interested in another somewhat similar venture, the Nashoba (near Memphis, Tenn.) community founded by Frances Wright and devoted to the gradual emancipation of slaves. He went to Europe with her, meeting a number of prominent personalities. Back in the U.S., he engaged for about two years in the work of the “Free Enquirers,” a group opposed to organized religion and advocating liberal divorce laws, industrial education and a more equal distribution of wealth. In June, 1829, he moved to New York and devoted much of his time to editing the Free Enquirer; he took active part in various social and industrial reforms, meeting some degree of success as well as many obstacles. The work which he did in New York, promoting lectures, educational and health centers, and free-thinking publications, corresponded closely to the activities of his father, whom he joined in England in 1832. For a while, father and son were co-editors of The Crisis, but Robert Dale soon returned to New Harmony and began a different cycle in his varied life. He served three terms in the Indiana legislature (183638) and was elected to Congress in 1842 as a Democrat, serving two terms (1843-47), but was defeated for a third. In 1845 he introduced the bill under which the Smithsonian Institution was constituted and insisted that the work of the Institution should include popular dissemination of knowledge as well as investigation. In 1853, President Pierce appointed Robert Dale Owen charge d’affaire at Naples, and two years later made him minister. It was in Italy that Owen became seriously interested in Spiritualism, publishing later his two works on this subject: Footfalls on the Boundary of Another World (1860), and The Debatable Land between This World and the Next (1872).
When Owen returned to America in 1858, he became one of the leading advocates of emancipation. His letter to the President, dated Sept. 17, 1862, published with letters to Chase and Stanton in a pamphlet, The Policy of Emancipation (1863), was credited by Secretary Chase with having “had more influence on him 520[Lincoln] than any other document which reached him on the subject.” In 1863, Owen was appointed chairman of a Committee to investigate the conditions of the freedman, out of which study grew his volume, The Wrong of Slavery (1864), an understanding treatment of the whole problem. Owen was opposed to the immediate enfranchisement of the Negro, advocating a plan whereby the suffrage should be granted freedmen after a period of ten years.
Besides the works already mentioned, Owen was the author of: Pocahontas·. A Historical Drama (1837); Beyond the Breakers (1870), a novel; and many pamphlets on questions of public interest. In 1873-75, he contributed a number of autobiographical articles to the Atlantic Monthly. The first of these (Jan.-Nov., 1873), covering his first twenty-seven years, were published in book form under the title, Threading My Way (1874).
Owen was married twice: on April 12, 1832, to Mary Jane Robinson, who died in 1871; and on June 23, 1876, to Lottie Walton Kellogg.
(Sources: Autobiogr. sketches, as mentioned above; G.B. Lockwood, The New Harmony Movement (1905); F. Podmore, Robert Owen: A Biogr. (2 vols., 1906); L. M. Sears, “Robert Dale Owen as a Mystic,” Ind. Mag. of Hist., March, 1928.)
Pancoast, Dr. Seth. Born in Darby, Penna., July 28, 1823; d. in Philadelphia, Dec. 16, 1889. American physician, anatomist and Kabalist, descended from one of the settlers who came to America with William Penn; son of Stephen Pancoast, a paper manufacturer, and Anna Stroud. Preliminary education in local schools; first few years of adult life spent in business; began study of medicine when he was twenty-seven years old, in Oct., 1850, at the Univ, of Pennsylvania, from which he was graduated M.D. in 1852. Became Prof, of Anatomy in the Female Medical College of Pennsylvania; resigned, however, at the end of first year, to become Prof, of Anatomy at the Pennsylvania Medical College, in which position he continued until 1859 when he became Prof. Emeritus.
Apart from his medical work, Pancoast became greatly interested in Kabalistic literature, in which field he became a noted scholar and built up what was considered to be the largest library of books dealing with the occult sciences ever assembled in U.S.A, at the time. He blended his Kabalistic studies with his medical knowledge, producing several rather remarkable works, such as: The Kabbala; or the True Science of Light, New York: R. 521Worthington, 1877 and 1883; this book is said to have been the first written in English which attempted to explain the 10 Sephiroths and other similar subjects. It was followed by Blue and Red Light: or, Light and Its Rays as Medicine, 1877, which, while dealing with the therapeutic value of light, has a great deal of Kabalah in it also.
Dr. Pancoast was married three times: first, to Sarah Saunders Osborn; second, to Susan George Osborn; third to Carrie Almena Farnald; his family included children by all three wives. He was elected Vice-President of The Theosophical Society and remained a member until his death. He also wrote for Spiritualistic papers under the pseudonyms of ‘‘Lex” and “Lex et Lux.” H.P.B. always spoke with great respect of his erudition, but when, as Col. Olcott says (The Theos., XIV, Nov., 1892, p. 72), “it came to putting theory to the test, by evoking the unseen elemental races which guard the threshold of knowledge, he confessed he lacked courage, though she [H.P.B.] frequently offered to assist in the ceremonies and, if necessary, face the worst of the phantoms alone.”
Paracelsus, Theophrastus Bombast von Hohenheim (ca. 14901541). *Astronomia magna: oder die gantze Philosophia sagax dergrossen und kleinen Well. Gedruckt bei Martin lechler, in Verlegung Hieronymus Feyerabends, Frankfurt, 1571. First ed. in British Museum 531.n.23.
Pashkov, Countess Lydia Alexandrovna de. Russian woman-writer and traveller of the middle 19th century. She was née Glinsky and had been first married to Teleshov. She travelled extensively in Egypt, Palestine and Syria, and was at one time correspondent of the Paris Figaro. Most of her works were written in French. Among them may be mentioned: La pension Vera Glinsky.—Un divorce en Russie.—Moeurs Russes (St. Petersburg, 1876-77).—En Orient. Drames et Paysages (St. Petersburg, 1879).
Once when she was travelling between Baalbek and the river Orontes, probably around 1872, the Countess met H.P.B. and her caravan. They camped together near Deir Mar Maroon between the Lebanon and the Anti-Lebanon. That night a Syrian ascetic who accompanied H.P.B. evoked the astral picture of an old priest who had been connected with the ancient temple, ruins of which were in the vicinity. They were also shown the place as it was when the temple stood there; a vast city spread then far and wide over the plains.
H.P.B. and Countess de Pashkov travelled together for a while, and various curious phenomena took place at the command of H.P.B.
522 See H. S. Olcott, Old Diary Leaves, I, 334-35, for a quotation from the New York World of April 21, 1878, and The Theosophist, Vol. V, April, 1884, p. 168.
Phillips, Wendell. American orator, writer and reformer, b. in Boston, Mass., Nov. 29, 1811; d. Feb. 2, 1884. Inherited not only a superb physique and family traditions of a high order, but also ample means. Educated at the Boston Latin School; graduated from Harvard, 1831. After three years at the Harvard Law School, he was admitted to the bar and opened an office in Boston, but was never enthusiastic about his profession. In 1837, he married Ann Terry Greene who soon became an invalid, but their domestic life was quite happy; they had no children.
Phillips early became identified with the anti-slavery movement, and was greatly encouraged in this by his wife. His great opportunity presented itself on Dec. 8. 1837, at a public meeting held in Faneuil Hall to protest against the murder of Elijah P. Lovejoy, the abolitionist editor, at Alton, Ill. Phillips listened in the audience while James T. Austin, attorney general of the commonwealth, compared the assassins of Lovejoy to the Revolutionary patriots; then he responded with a stirring indictment of the outrage. His passionate eloquence caught the imagination of the audience which responded with cheers. Thus, at the age of twenty-six, he took his place in the front rank of the anti-slavery movement. His ability as an orator and his family prestige, as well as his charm and persuasive power, made him invaluable as a champion. Disregarding hostility from various quarters, he devoted himself to advocating other moral causes as well, such as prohibition, reform in penal methods, votes for women, and the labor movement. His denunciation of the moneyed corporations and his urging of the laboring class to organize to further its own interests were regarded by some as aberrations of a noble mind. Actually, Phillips had an unusually clear perception of national trends and was ahead of his time. He also showed himself as an uncompromising critic of academic conservatives. An omnivorous reader and a thorough scholar, he knew how to impart his knowledge in a simple and appealing way. He was an aristocratic-looking man, with a rich, persuasive voice and a graceful, self-assured manner. Like many other men who have stirred their country to eliminate evils of various kind, Phillips was frequently sharp of tongue and sometimes unfair to his opponents, but he was courageous, self-sacrificing and magnanimous, and has been called the “Knight- Errant of Unfriended Truth.”
523 Among his many orations and speeches, there is one that stands out especially; its subject is “The Lost Arts” on which he spoke more than two thousand times. It is a speech which H.P.B. thought very highly of, and quoted from upon numerous occasions. It outlines some of the knowledge possessed by the Ancients and now lost.
Poe, Edgar Allan (1809-49). *Nevermore.
*Preamble and By-Laws of The Theosophical Society. Pamphlet dated October 30, 1875, and printed in New York.
Randolph, P. B. See Appendix in Volume III of this Series.
Reade, W. Winwood (1838-1875), *The Veil of Isis. London: Chas. J. Skeet, 1861. 250 pp.
*Rigveda.—Rigveda-Samhita. Ed. by Max Müller (Samhita and pada texts in nagari). 2nd ed., London: Trübner & Co., 1877. 2 vols. 8vo.—Transl. by Müller and Herman Oldenberg. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1891, 1897. SBE XXXII, XLVI.
Rossetti, Gabriele Pasquali Giuseppe (1783-1854), *Disquisitions on the antipapal spirit which produced the reformation·, its secret influence on the literature of Europe in general, and of Italy in particular. Transl. from the Italian by Miss Caroline Ward. London: Smith Elder & Co., 1834.
Rousselet, Louis (1845-1929), *l’Inde des Rajahs. Voyage dans l’Inde Centrale, Paris, 1875; Engl, transl. as India and its Native Princes. London, 1878.
Salverte, Anne-Joseph Eusebe Baconniere de (1771-1839). French politician and writer who was born and died in Paris. *Des Sciences Occultes; ou, Essai sur la magie, les prodiges et les miracles. Paris: Sedillot, 1829. 2 vols.; 2nd ed., Paris: J. B. Bailliere, 1843. —Transl. with Notes by Anthony Todd Thomson as *The Occult Sciences. The Philosophy of Magic, Prodigies and Apparent Miracles. London: A. Bentley, 1846; New York: Harpers, 1847, 1855.
Schwarzenberg, Prince Friedrich zu. Catholic ecclesiastic, b. at Vienna, April 6, 1809; d. March 27, 1885. Became a priest, 1833; Prince Archbishop of Salzburg, 1836; Cardinal, 1842; and Prince Archbishop of Prague, 1850. Occupied himself with trying to secure greater freedom of Church from State in Germany and Austria.
*Sepher Yetzirah. See Vol. VIII, p. 415, for particulars.
524 Shakespeare, John. English Orientalist, b. at Lount, August, 1774; d. 1858. Son of a small farmer; educated at a school kept by a clergyman who brought him to the notice of Marquis of Hastings, the lord of the manor; the latter sent him to London to learn Arabic. About 1805, he was appointed to an Oriental professorship at Royal Military College, Marlow; in 1809, he became professor of Hindustani in training college fur cadets opened by the East India Co.; retired in 1829. He was a very frugal man, unmarried, and set money aside. Chief works: Hindustani Grammar, 1813; 6th ed., 1855.—*A Dictionary: Hindustani and English, 1817, 4th ed., 1849 (with Engl.-Hind, added).—Introd, to the Hindustani Language, 1845.
Shakespeare, William (1564-1616), *Macbeth, 1605-06.
Shamji Krishnavarma. See p. 437 in the present Volume.
Shimon ben Yohai. See Vol. VII, pp. 269-70, for particulars about his life and work.
Simmons, Charles Ezra. American physician, specializing in gynecology, b. at Troy, N. Y., Aug. 16, 1840; d. in New York, May 3, 1918. Son of Joseph Ferris and Mary Sophia Gleason, and great grandson of Albertus Simon, who was of Dutch extraction and settled in the colony of Rensselaerswyck, N. Y., on the Hudson River. His brother was a prominent New York financier. After three years at Williams College, 1857-60, Chas. Simmons entered Beloit College, Wis., where he graduated in 1861. He then spent a year at the University of Gottingen, Germany, and in 1862-63 studied at Jefferson medical college in Philadelphia; then he went to the college of physicians and surgeons at Columbia Univ., where he was graduated M.D., 1864. Thereafter he practiced at Troy and New York City where he had one of the largest practices. He was Commissioner of charities and corrections of New York, 1885-95. He was a man of energy and courage, a lover of people and animals, kindly in manner, and acquired a great many friends. He was a member of a great many medical and other societies. In 1865, he had married Sarah Ruby, daughter of Jacob Gould, a banker, a founder of Rochester, N. Y. and its first mayor. They had one son and two daughters.
Dr. Simmons, though an Episcopalian, was interested in various progressive movements; he was present at the formation of the Theos. Society, and became for a time one of its Councillors.
525 Sinnett, Alfred Percy (1840-1921). * Incidents in the Life of Madame Blavatsky. London: George Redway, 1886, xii, 324 pp.; 2nd ed., London: Theos. Publ. House, 1913, 256 pp. Somewhat abbreviated.—*The Letters of H. P. Blavatsky to A. P. Sinnett, and Other Miscellaneous Letters. Transcribed, Compiled and with an Introduction by A. T. Barker. New York: Frederick A. Stokes Co., 1924. xvi, 404 pp.—*The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett, 3rd & rev. ed., Adyar, Theos. Publ. House. 1962.
Slade, Dr. Henry. American medium principally known in connection with his slate-writing, and familiar to the mediumistic circles in Michigan as early as 1860. It was not, however, until his selection by the Blavatsky-Olcott committee that he first came to prominence. Information as to his birth and early life is lacking; he died in a private hospital in Michigan, in September, 1905.
Suspicions of fraud expressed by some of the observers at his seances have never been substantiated. On the other hand considerable testimony exists in corroboration of the genuineness of Slade’s mediumistic phenomena. In his paper, “The Possibility of Mal-Observation in Relation to Evidence of the Phenomena of Spiritualism,” read at a General Meeting of the Society for Psychical Research, July 5, 1886, C. C. Massey recounts a phenomenon produced by Slade in New York and witnessed by him in company with Col. Olcott, on the 14th of October. 1885. The phenomenon consisted in a chair, found to be free of all attachments, being raised and moved about, at Massey’s request, while the medium at a distance remained immobile and simultaneously observed. In the words of Massey: “No mediumistic phenomenon that I have witnessed has made stronger or more lasting impression upon me than this one” [Proceedings, S.P.R., Vol. IV, p. 81). Among those who came to acknowledge the reality of phenomena exhibited in Slade’s presence were Dr. Alfred Russel Wallace, Serjeant Edward W. Cox, Dr. C. Carter Blake, Dr. George Wyld, Miss Kislingbury (in 1876, Secretary to the British National Association of Spiritualists), Prof. Zollner and his colleagues Fechner, Weber and Scheibner. In Russia, Grand Duke Constantine, Prof. Butlerov and A. N. Aksakov were among those converted to belief by experiments with Slade.
Solovyov, Vsevolod S. (1849-1903). *A Modern Priestess of Isis. Translated from Russian into English (somewhat abridged) by Walter Leaf. London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1895. See Vols. VI, p. 446, and VII, pp. 332-34, for particulars about Solovyov and his writings.
526 Sotheran, Charles. Author, Bibliographer and Scholar, b. at Newington, Surrey, England, July 8, 1847; d. in New York in 1902. Son of Charles and Frances Elise (Hirst) Sotheran, and relative of the famous London Booksellers of the same name. Educated in England in private schools and St. Marie’s College, Rugby. Married Mrs. Alice (Hyneman) Rhine, Oct. 17, 1893. Came to the U.S.A. in 1874, and began reportorial work on the New York World. Was literary Editor of the New York Recorder and Star, and Editor of the New York Echo, a short-lived journal which he published for a time. Was connected with Sabin and Sons, Booksellers in New York, in the editing of their journal, The American Bibliopolist. Later he was connected editorially with several other journals both in U.S.A, and England. Sotheran was a prominent Mason and representative in U.S.A, of the Swedenborgian Rite. He was the author of the following works: Alessandro di Cagliostro, Impostor or Martyr?, 1875; Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Philosopher and Reformer, New York, 1876; Horace Greeley, and Other Pioneers of American Socialism, N. Y., 1892 and 1915; The Theatres of New York, 1893. Also numerous separate bibliographies.
His rather fiery temperament kept him and his friends in a turmoil. He took active part in the founding of the Theosophical Society, hut only three months later made some inflammatory speeches at a political street meeting, to which H.P.B. strongly objected. Sotheran resigned from the T.S. in a huff, but six months later apologized for various critical and unfriendly remarks he had made, and was reinstated. This episode, however, should not prejudice the reader against Sotheran. He was a remarkable man in more ways than one, and his role in the work of the Society in its early stages of growth should not be judged by the above mentioned unfortunate episode. We have a source of interesting information about Sotheran as a man and thinker in Mrs. Laura C. Langford-Holloway’s account entitled “Helena Petrovna Blavatsky: a Reminiscence,” published in The Word, New York, Vol. XXII, December, 1915, pp. 136-153, wherein she writes as follows:
“. . . Knowing as I did of the friendship existing between herself [H.P.B.] and Mr. Chas. Sotheran, one of the ablest newspaper writers ever in New York, a man of broad culture and a rarely noble character, I have sometimes wondered that her biographers have not manifested more interest in the man and his services to her. Mr. Sotheran was a member of the Rosicrucian Society, a Mason of exalted rank, and a writer versed in the history of all Oriental systems of religious thought. He 527was the originator of the word “Theosophy,” as the name for the new society, and he it was who introduced to Madame Blavatsky the scholarly men whose names are mentioned in connection with Isis Unveiled. He was the most influential champion Madame Blavatsky possessed while living in New York, and he was an ideal friend—royally true and unvaryingly helpful. He was eager that she should be identified with the circle of literary people about her, for he felt a real admiration for her great mental ability, and desired that others should appreciate her. A spirit of self-depreciation that decreased her influence, he had noted, and this he tried to help her overcome. It was a defect in her character, this tendency to underrate her ability, and he urged her to combat it. He had little success in this effort, for she cared not at all for her accomplishments and only sought recognition in her occult work.
“It was often asserted—on what basis of proof I never knew —that Mr. Sotheran was acquainted with one, at least, of the Brotherhood of Adepts, and was, in some way, identified with their broad aims for the betterment of the race. And it was generally understood that he had met Madame Blavatsky abroad, and knew of the task she was undertaking in this country. He, at least, held an exalted view of her genius, and urged her to write, and deprecated her interest in religious “fads” as he characterized spiritism. He opposed public séances in an uncompromisingly bitter way. So strong was his hostility to the subject, that he would never engage in conversation on it, or kindred themes. Nor did he ever concur in the claim that Madame Blavatsky’s position required that she should investigate the matter thoroughly.
“His attitude was that she was a genuine occultist, with reasonable powers of mind, and had been trained to use them. And he often asserted that occultism was a noble study, and one about which the West did not know anything whatever.
“The services of this man to the Theosophical Society in its beginnings have never been justly recognized. He was a helper, without whom the work of society organization, of research work in connection with Isis Unveiled, of securing a publisher for this work, and then of having it properly placed before the public, would not have been half so efficiently performed.
“Mr. Sotheran knew New York, and had a position among men that was unique. His life was singularly free of entanglements; he was most fortunately situated to enjoy his advantages 528as a man of great ability and attainments, of ample financial resources, a bachelor, and one of a group of New Yorkers who lent character and dignity and prestige to the best circle of society.
“He was an admitted occultist, but was opposed to the prominence given occult phenomena on the ground that it could but add to the burdens imposed by the ignorant upon those who demonstrated laws they could not master. And he deplored the tendency of many about Madame Blavatsky to have her become the miracle-worker of the age. He spoke of her intellectual ability as of far greater value to the new Society than any mere psychic power she possessed, and he tried to counteract the influence of those who, appreciating her less, would have had her waste her time upon phenomena. A wise friend he was, and a true prophet, for he counseled her to discourage those who expected her to entertain them with signs and wonders, and to insist upon the serious study of the hidden forces of nature...”
This description, while showing ignorance of certain facts which pertain to the orders received by H.P.B. from her Superiors to work for a time with the outward Spiritualistic, Movement, gives nevertheless an interesting picture of Sotheran’s many-sided character and should be recorded here for posterity.
Stewart, Balfour (1828-87). *The Sun and the Earth. In Science Lectures for the People. Fourth Series, 1872-73, delivered in Manchester, England.
*Talmud. Tide Vol. VIII, p. 416, for comprehensive data. Also art. by I. O. M. Deutsch in the Quarterly Review for October. 1867.
Tappan, Cora L. V. (later Tappan-Richmond). American trancemedium of considerable renown. Under her maiden name of Scott she had very early made her appearance in the Spiritualistic Movement. At the age of thirteen she was already addressing audiences in Wisconsin; three years later she went to New York, and from that time onwards she became famous throughout the States as a Spiritualist lecturer. In 1873 she came to England, receiving there also an enthusiastic welcome. Her lectures and her poetry are supposed to have been delivered under spirit-inspiration. They show some degree of eloquence and surpass those of other trance-mediums in coherence and intelligence.
Textor de Ravisi, Baron Anatole-Arthur. French Catholic Orientalist, b. at Bourges, 1822; d. in Paris, 1902. Actively 529engaged, 1847-52, in the colonization of the Island of Réunion, and in 1853-63 in developing the maritime commerce of Karikal, India; was for a while Governor of that city, but resigned in 1864 and became engaged in financial transactions. Works: Architecture hindoue, etc., 1870-7-1.—Âme et corps, d’après la théologie égyptienne.
Varley, Cromwell Fleetwood. Electrical engineer, b. at Kentish Town, London, England, April 6, 1828; d. at Cromwell House, Bexley Heath, Kent, Sept. 2, 1883. He was the son of Cornelius Varley, watercolor-painter, and was named after two of his ancestors, Oliver Cromwell and General Fleetwood. He was educated at St. Saviour’s, Southwark. After leaving school he studied telegraphy, and was engaged in 1846 by the Electric and International Telegraph Co. in whose employ he remained until 1868, when he retired, spending much of his time producing new inventions.
The first improvement he introduced in telegraphy was the “killing” of the wire by giving it a slight permanent elongation; next he devised a method of localizing the faults in submarine cables; in 1854, he patented the double current key and relay, by which it became possible to telegraph from London to Edinburgh direct; then came the polarized relay, and his translating system for use in connection with the cables of the Dutch lines. In 1870, he patented an instrument called cymaphen, for the transmission of audible signals, and it is claimed for him that it contained the essentials of the modern telephone. Thus, one year before the date of the Bell patent, namely in 1870, music was transmitted by this instrument from the Canterbury Music Hall in Westminster Bridge Road to the Queen’s Theatre in Long Acre over an ordinary telegraph wire with complete success.
Varley’s name is chiefly remembered in connection with the Atlantic cable; the first cable, laid in August, 1858, was a failure. Varley conceived the idea of making an artificial line composed of resistances and condensers, which should exactly represent the working conditions of a submarine cable. This paved the way to further and successful attempts at Trans-Atlantic telegraphy. In 1871, Varley was elected a fellow of the Royal Society. He is the author of various technical papers on electricity, etc., mainly in the Philosophical Transactions and the Electrician.
By his first wife, from whom he was divorced, Varley had two sons and two daughters; his second wife was Jessie, daughter of Captain Charles Smith of Forres, Scotland. His two brothers, Frederick Henry and Samuel Alfred, were also inventors. Varley was buried at Christ Church, Bexley.
530 Varley’s interest in Spiritualism dates from about 1850. He undertook experiments which showed that the phenomenon of table-rapping was not due to any detectable electrical or magnetic force. He later developed an electrical control designed to detect any attempt by the medium to leave his or her assigned position under cover of séance-room darkness; this was used in the investigation of Florence Cook and other mediums (see The Spiritualist, London, March 20, 1874); Varley maintained in this connection that his apparatus showed that Miss Cook was not only in the dark chamber while “Katie King” was in sight, but also perfectly quiescent. Varley testified before the Dialectical Society in 1869, relating his positive success with D. D. Home. He himself experienced numerous psychic manifestations in his own home, believed himself to be possessed of mesmeric healing power, and observed a number of apparitions. His wife demonstrated clairvoyance and prophetic trance.
(Rf.: Times, Sept. 3 and 11, 1883; Engineering, Sept. 7, 1883; Telegraphic Journal, Sept. 15, 1883; Report on Spiritualism of the Committee of the London Dialectical Society, etc. London: Longmans, Green, Reader and Dyer, 1871, pp. 157-72.)
Ventura di Raulica. See Vol. VII, p. 400 for information.
* Vihiva Pûnnûttee Sùtra or Bhâgvati Sutra. Publ. by Ookerdhaboy Shewjee, Bombay, 1877.
Vishnu Bawa Brahmâchâri. *An Essay in Marathi (unidentified).
Volney, Constantin Francois Chassebeuf, Comte de. French savant, b. at Craon (Maine-et-Loire), Feb. 3, 1757; d. in Paris, April 25, 1820. Was at first surnamed Boisgirais from his father’s estate, but assumed the name of Volney. Spent some four years in Egypt and Syria, publishing his Voyage en Égypte et en Syrie in 1787. Was a member of both the States-General and of the Constituent Assembly. In 1791 appeared his Les Ruines, ou méditations sur les révolutions des empires, an essay on the philosophy of history. Volney tried to put his politico-economic theories into practice in Corsica. He was thrown into prison during the Jacobin triumph, but escaped the guillotine. He went to the U.S.A., 1795, where he was accused of being a French spy, and returned to France, 1798. He was not a partisan of Napoleon, but served him in the senate. Became a member of the Institute, 1795.
Wachtmeister, Countess Constance (1838-1910). *Reminiscences of H. P. Blavatsky and “The Secret Doctrine.” London: Theos. 531Publ. Soc.; New York: The Path·, and Madras: Theos. Soc., 1893. 162 pp. Tide Vol. VI, p. 448, in the present Series, for detailed biographical data.
Wagner, Prof. Nikolay Petrovich (1829-1907). See Vol. VI, p. 449, for biographical data.
Westbrook, Judge R. B. No definite information is available about him. He was for a time a Professor of Philology at a British University, it would seem. He was made one of the Councillors of the T.S., and became a Vice-President of it in 1877. H.P.B. had a high regard for him, but it is not clear what became of him at a later date.
Wilder, Dr. Alexander. Distinguished physician, author and Platonic scholar, b. at Verona, Oneida Co., N.Y., May 14, 1823; d. at Newark, N.J., September 8, 1908. Descendant of a New England family which came from Lancaster, England, to Massachusetts Bay in 1638. Sixth son of Abel and Asenath (Smith) Wilder, and the eighth child of a family of ten. Educated at first in the common schools of New York state. Being precocious beyond years, started teaching school at fifteen, studying by himself the higher branches of mathematics and the classics, to which were added later French, Hebrew and political science. The circumstances of the deaths of several of his father’s family demolished his confidence in current medical methods, and he began studies in medicine, in order to render himself as far as possible independent of physicians. Meantime, he worked at farming and type-setting, reading medicine with local physicians, and was awarded in 1850 a diploma by the Syracuse Medical College. Became then a general practitioner, lecturing for about two years on anatomy and chemistry in the college. After several assignments as Editor of various dailies, he settled in New York City and became, 1858, a member of the editorial staff of the Evening Post with which he remained connected for thirteen years. Despite his repeated refusals, Dr. Wilder was made to accept in 1873 a professorship of physiology in the Eclectic Medical College of New York, but left there in 1877 on account of internal dissensions and dishonest practices beyond his control. From 1878-83, he taught psychology at the U. S. Medical College, until it went out of existence by a decision of the courts. In 1876, he became secretary of the National Eclectic Medical Association, and held the office until 1895, meantime editing and publishing nineteen volumes of its Transactions, besides contributing extensively 532to its literature. However, to quote Dr. Wilder’s own words: “…my observation of medical colleges is not favorable to them as schools of morals or as promoters of financial probity. The more there is professed, the less it seems to be believed . . . physicians boasted loudly then, as now, of being a learned body and invoked special legislation to protect them from competitors . . .” He allowed himself to become for a while a subject in such experimentations, and had abundant reasons, as he says himself, to regret this. He was influenced to a very considerable extent by the study of Swedenborg, and later by the writings of General Hitchcock on Alchemy and Hermetic Philosophy. He experienced a number of radical changes in his religious views, identified himself for a time, together with his brothers, with several religious movements of a revivalist kind, but finally grew out of them and into a sphere of spiritual freedom, and became an outstanding—yet, unfortunately, not well recognized—exponent of Platonism and the Hermetic Philosophy. A strong individuality brings with it into life a forgotten knowledge of its real work, but it takes often many years to bring it out into the open.
In 1882, Dr. Wilder attended the School of Philosophy at Concord, Mass., and a year later took part in the organization of the American Akademe, a philosophic society holding meetings at Jacksonville, Ill. He edited its journal for four years, contributing many monographs on such subjects as: “The Soul,” “Philosophy of the Zoroasters,” “Life Eternal,” “Creation and Evolution,” and others. He also made a translation from the Greek of the Dissertation of lamblichus On the Mysteries of the Egyptians (orig. publ. in The Platonist; issued in book form in 1911 by The Metaphysical Publ. Co., New York).
Dr. Wilder wrote a number of most scholarly and illuminating articles in The Evolution, a Journal published in New York, on such subjects as: “Bacchus the Prophet-God” (June, 1877), “Paul, the Founder of Christianity” (Sept., 1877), “Paul and Plato,” and others. He contributed philosophical essays to The Metaphysical Magazine of New York around 1894-95, and wrote extensively on various metaphysical and Platonic subjects for The Word, from 1904 on. One of the most valuable pamphlets issued by him is entitled New Platonism and Alchemy: A Sketch of the Doctrines and Principal Teachers of the Eclectic or Alexandrian School; also an Outline of the Interior Doctrines of the Alchemists of the Middle Ages (Albany, N.Y., 1869). H.P.B. quoted many passages from the various writings mentioned above, and expressed her delight 533over the attitude of Dr. Wilder towards the subjects of which they treat.
In addition to various essays on medical subjects, such as Thought, Cerebration, the Ganglionic Nervous System, Vaccination as a medical fallacy, and others, Dr, Wilder wrote a History of Medicine (New Sharon, Main: New England Eclectic Publ. Co., 1901. 946 pp. Index), and contributed invaluable Notes and Comments to special editions of the works of other scholars, such as: Ancient Symbol-Worship by Westropp and Wake (Boston, 1874); Symbolical Language of Ancient Art and Mythology by R. Payne Knight (New York, 1876).
Dr. Wilder contributed a good deal of material to the section of Isis Unveiled entitled “Before the Veil,” the circumstances of which are fully explained in the Introductory chapter to the edition of that work forming an integral part of the present Series. He was a staunch friend of both H.P.B. and Col. H. S. Olcott, and had a very high regard for their work. Dr. Wilder was a tall man, spare of person, with a massive head and piercing eyes; he spoke fluently, was an omnivorous reader, and possessed a remarkable memory. His many-sided writings should someday be compiled into a uniform edition and published for the benefit of present-day scholars who are quite unaware of his intuitive insight into so many different regions of thought.
Wimbridge, Edward. An English architect in New York, who with Miss Rosa Bates accompanied the Founders to India. He was an artist and carved on wood the first cover of The Theosophist in October, 1879. He also etched on copper a portrait of H.P.B. When Miss Bates quarrelled with Emma Coulomb and the Founders, and left them, Mr. Wimbridge went with her. “Since then, a furniture manufacturing business, for which I helped him, along with the late K. N. Seervai, to find the capital, enriched him, but I have never heard that his thirst for spirituality, survived the shock. He made the best furniture in India, however.” (H. S. Olcott in The Theosophist, Vol. XIX, Aug., 1898, p. 703.) He died at Bombay, May 13, 1898.
Windthorst, Ludwig (1812-1891). German Catholic statesman at Hanover, and leader of the Party of the Center; Minister of Justice, 1862-65; elected to Reichstag in 1867.
Wittgenstein, Prince Emil-Karl-Ludwig von Sayn-. (Spelled with only one “t” in Russia.) Russian Lieutenant-General who belonged to a Princely House (now extinct) which was a branch of the 534German family Sayn-Wittgenstein-Barleburg. He was born in 1824. In 1845, he accompanied Prince Alexander of Hesse to the Caucasus; in 1848, he took part in the war against Denmark; then entered Russian service, and soon became aide-de-camp to Prince Vorontzov, Viceroy of the Caucasus, where he took part in the military operations. In 1862, he was attached to the Grand-Duke Konstantine Nikolayevich in Warsaw, Poland. During the Turkish War with Russia, 1877-78, he was in the suite of the Emperor. He died in 1878. He was a close friend of H.P.B. and her family, and became one of the earliest and most earnestly interested members of the T.S. As appears from an Editorial Note by H.P.B. in The Theosophist (Vol. IV, March, 1883, pp. 141-42), Prince von Wittgenstein received, for some reason or other, special protection from the Brothers in times of great danger.
Aside from poetry, he wrote Kavalerie-Skizzen (Darmstadt, 1859) and Deutschland in die Schranken (Darmstadt, 1860).
Yarker, John (1833-?), *Notes on the Scientific and Religious Mysteries of Antiquity, etc., 1872; 2nd ed., New York: J. W. Bouton, 1878.
Zhelihovsky, Vera Petrovna de, younger sister of H. P. Blavatsky, b. at Odessa, Southern Russia, April 17/29, 1835; d. May 5/18, 1896. She was first married to Nikolay Nikolayevich de Yahontov (1827-58) which accounts for the fact that some of her writings are signed with the letter “Y”; some years after the death of her husband, she married Vladimir Ivanovich de Zhelihovsky. She had two sons by her first marriage, and one son (who died in infancy) and three daughters by the second. (For details consult the Genealogical Table in the present Volume.)
As the years went by, she became widely known in Russia and some European countries as a writer of children’s stories, and as an unusually clever contributor to various Russian periodicals. At certain periods in her life, her financial circumstances were strained, and she was able to supplement her slim income by writing, which in her day was not an easy thing for a woman in Russia to do. She was a person of great courage and tireless energy.
Among her many stories, some of which appeared serially in Russian magazines and others were later published in book-form, the following may be mentioned: Prince Iliko: Young Caucasian Prisoner; In a Tatar Hangout; Caucasian Legends (St. Petersburg, 1901); Adventures (1898); Stars: Christmas Stories for Children; 535The Czar and the Cossack (Moscow, 1904); Spring Dawn (St. Petersburg, 1904); Yermolov in the Caucasus (St. Petersburg, 1889).
Those especially interested in H.P.B.’s family background, are grateful to her sister for having written a most valuable and authentic biographical sketch of their mother, under the title of “Helena Andreyevna von Hahn: Romantic Writer.” It was published in the well-known Journal Russkaya Starina (Russian Old Days), Vol. 53, March, 1887, pp. 733-66, and should sometime be published in English.
Madame de Zhelihovsky published several essays concerned with H.P.B.’s life; these should be considered an important source material, as she kept a diary and was very careful about her statements and their chronological sequence. The most valuable of these writings is her serial article entitled “The Truth about H. P. Blavatsky” (Pravda o Yelene Petrovne Blavatskoy) which appeared in the journal called Rebus (Vol. II, 1883: Nos. 40, 41, 43, 44, 46, 47, 48) and was later circulated in pamphlet form. It deals with H.P.B.’s early years and recounts a number of interesting psychic experiences. It is from this account that A. P. Sinnett quotes at considerable length in his Incidents in the Life of H. P. Blavatsky (London and New York, 1886). He is in error, however, with regard to his source of information, and this error should be corrected.
When Sinnett was writing his account of H.P.B.’s life, a project with which H.P.B. herself was by no means in sympathy, he pressed her for various information and data. H.P.B. therefore translated into English most of her sister’s story above referred to, in order to provide Sinnett with the facts which he sought. As stated by Sinnett himself (p. 6 of the Introductory to his book), H.P.B.’s sister had recently revised and corrected her story specifically for the purpose in view. It appears that “the Rebus . . . was committed deeply to certain rigid views concerning the origin and cause of such phenomena as those with which it dealt. This led to some mutilation of the narrative at the time of its publication, but the authoress has now endeavoured to restore it as far as possible to its proper shape, with the help of the original manuscript, which she had preserved, and from which portions missing from the periodical have now been translated.”
H.P.B.’s translation is quite lengthy; it is in her own handwriting and is preserved in the Archives of the Theosophical Society at Adyar, India. It may be said to be an almost exact 536translation of the printed Series to which have been added those passages which, apparently, the Editor of Rebus thought fit to eliminate. In addition, H.P.B. has added here and there some sentences of her own and a few footnotes, a fact which is quite obvious from their context and style, one or two of them being even signed “Translator.” Some of the sheets on which H.P.B. wrote have various notes scribbled and crossed out on their reverse side; however, after close scrutiny, these have been proved to be duplications, draft-translations, and occur in a far better form in the main text.
When some short excerpts from this translation were published in The Theosophist (Vol. XLVII, March and May, 1926), C. Jinarájadása stated in a prefatory note that he had received it from Miss Francesca Arundale; it may well be that the latter got it from Sinnett while in London, and if so, that would account for the fact that this translation of Vera Petrovna’s text is not complete in the Archives; the beginning of the story is missing, and the MS starts from that part which tells about H.P.B.’s father and his “Voltairian” tendencies. Writing to Sinnett, H.P.B. refers to this translation and incidentally identifies the source of the material (See The Letters of H. P. Blavatsky to A. P. Sinnett. pp. 149, 155).
While Sinnett does mention the Rebus essay by its actual title, he also refers to certain “Personal and Family Reminiscences” put together by Madame de Zhelihovsky and from which he intends to quote, but actually did not. Vera Petrovna de Zhelihovsky wrote in 1884 an entirely different series of articles entitled “The Inexplicable or the Unexplained: From Personal and Family Reminiscences.” These were also published in the Rebus (Vol. Ill, Nos. 43-48; Vol. IV, Nos. 4-7, 9-11, 13-14) and consist of an outline of various mediumistic and psycho-mental phenomena which took place in the life of the author in Russia. Some of them are quite remarkable, and to some extent similar to those which took place in H.P.B.’s early youth. The Series gives some interesting sidelights about various members of the family, among them Peter A. von Hahn, H.P.B.’s and Vera’s father. But there are very few references to H.P.B., and the Series does not contain any of the material wrongly ascribed to it by Sinnett. H.P.B. herself makes a passing reference to this Series in her Letters to Sinnett, pp. 155-56, and briefly quotes from it. Beyond that one quoted passage, this later Series is not included in Sinnett’s book.
Another outline of H.P.B.’s life and character was written by 537her sister for the Russian Review (Russkoye Obozreniye) under the title of “H. P. Blavatsky: A Biographical Sketch,” and appeared in November and December, 1891 (Vol. VI, pp. 242-94, 567-621). It has considerable historical value. It appeared in French in the pages of the Nouvelle Revue of 1892, and was almost completely translated into English and published in Lucifer (Vols. XV and XVI, Nov., 1894—April, 1895).
Another biographical sketch in Russian was appended to the Russian edition of H.P.B.’s Mysterious Tribes of the Blue Hills and The Durbar in Lahore (St. Petersburg: V. I. Gubinsky, 1893). It was translated into English by Kirk and Lieven and published in The London Forum (incorp. The Occult Review), Vols. LX, LX1, LXII, Dec., 1934-July, 1935.
We have two other accounts from the pen of Vera Petrovna which are of great interest; they deal with her own early years in Russia, and provide fascinating glimpses into the family background and the customs of the day. One of them is entitled When I was Small (Kak ya bila malen’koy) and is an account of her childhood up to her seventh year (2nd rev. and enl. ed., St. Petersburg: A. F. Devrient, 1894, 269 pp., fig.), and another is My Adolescence (Moyo otrochestvo), a continuation of the subject into later years (St. Petersburg: Ed. Off. of “Readings for Children,” 1893, 295 pp.; 3rd ed., ca. 1900; 4th ed., 1902). Many of H.P.B.’s own rather vague dates and facts pertaining to her early years can be verified or corrected by these two books.
Valuable accounts concerning some of H.P.B.’s startling occult phenomena are provided by Vera Petrovna in her articles in Rebus, July 15 and 22, 1884; also No. 50 of 1884; Novosti i Birzhevaya Gazeta, June 13 and 20, 1889; and her outspoken reply to V. S. Solovyov’s hostile book, her own title being H. P. Blavatsky and a Modern Priest of Truth (St. Petersburg, 1893).
A most cordial affection existed throughout the years between H.P.B. and her sister Vera. If Madame de Zhelihovsky did not always understand the real “H.P.B.,” she nevertheless always trusted her and defended her to the very last. It has been said that the mental suffering which she experienced when Solovyov attacked H.P.B. broke down her health and hastened her death. She felt very keenly the injustices under which W. Q. Judge suffered and defended him whenever she could do so. She travelled several times to Western Europe to visit H.P.B. and their reunions meant always a great deal to both of them.
538 *Zohar, or Midrash ha-Zohar and Sepher ha-Zohar. See Vol. VII, p. 402, for complete data about Hebrew text and translations.
Zollner, Johann K. F. (1834-82). *Wissenschaftliche Abhandlungen. Leipzig, 1878-81. 4 vols. Fide Vol. V, pp. 265-67, for bio-bibliographical data.
Footnotes
- ↑ 34th Amer. ed., Boston, 1876, pp. 121-22.
- ↑ Cf. Raja-Yoga Messenger, Point Loma, Calif., Vol. X, No. 10, October, 1914, pp. 16-17.
- ↑ Historical Retrospect, etc., p. 19.
- ↑ 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.
- ↑ Consult Sven Eek, Damodar and the Pioneers of The Theosophical Movement, Adyar, 1965, pp. 78-100.
- ↑ Original letter is in the Adyar Archives. The letter from Damodar referred to has been lost.
- ↑ The Word, XV, April, 1912, pp. 17-18.
- ↑ Olcott, Old Diary Leaves, III, 86.
- ↑ The Word, ibid.
- ↑ Judge’s pamphlet entitled Light on the Path and Mabel Collins.
- ↑ Olcott's original Diaries.
- ↑ Lloyd’s of London records.
- ↑ Canadian Theosophist, XX, April, 1939, p. 35.
- ↑ Proceeding, First Annual Convention of the T.S. in Europe, London, July, 1891, p. 49.
- ↑ Old Diary Leaves, IV, 508.
- ↑ 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.
- ↑ 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.
- ↑ The Path, III, March, 1889, p. 393.
- ↑ 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.
- ↑ Letters that have Helped Me, Vol. II, pp. 119-20.
- ↑ The Theosophical, Forum, Point Loma, Calif., Vol. III, August 15, 1932, p. 253.
- ↑ 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.
- ↑ 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.
- ↑ Old Diary Leaves, IV, p. 428.
- ↑ Full text of this Letter may he found in Sven Eek’s Damodar, etc., p. 115.
- ↑ The Path, Vol. VII, October, 1892, pp. 235-36.
- ↑ The Path, X, June, 1895, pp. 99-100.
- ↑ The Mahatma Letters, etc., Letter No. 134, dated from Dehra Dun, November 4, 1881.
- ↑ Old Diary Leaves, V, p. 191. The Path, Vol. IX, Aug., 1894, p. 161.
- ↑ Olcott, op.cit., V, pp. 186-87. From the Minutes of the Judicial Committee of the Theosophical Society, July 10, 1894.
- ↑ 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.
- ↑ The Mahatma Letter, etc., p. 232; 3rd ed., p. 229.
- ↑ Op.cit., p. 296; 3rd ed., 291.
- ↑ Lucifer, XIV, Aug., 1894, pp. 459-60.
- ↑ Old Diary Leaves, V, p. 256.
- ↑ Report of the American Convention, 1895, p. 24.
- ↑ 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.
- ↑ 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.
- ↑ 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.
- ↑ 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.
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. - ↑ 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.
- ↑ Olcott, Old Diary Leaves, I, 1-5, 10.
- ↑ 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.
- ↑ Letter received on board the SS Shannon, Aug. 22, 1888. Cf. Letters from the Masters of the Wisdom, First Series, Letter 19.
- ↑ Ibid., Second Series, pp. 68-69, quoting an excerpt from a memorandum in H.P.B.’s handwriting in the Adyar Archives.
- ↑ “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.
- ↑ 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.
- ↑ Madras Times, Sept. 15, 1890. Letter addressed to the Editor of the lndi.an Daily News.
- ↑ 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.
- ↑ J. Ransom, Short History of The Theosophical Society, p. 294.
- ↑ 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.”
- ↑ New York Herald Tribune, February 18, 1962.