Zirkoff B. - Appendices (BCW vol.14)

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Appendices

by Boris de Zirkoff

H. P. Blavatsky Collected Writtings, vol. 14, page(s) 455-502

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455

Appendices

457

Appendix I

SECTION ONE

[One appended portion of the Wurzburg Ms. is printed here for the first time. When C. Jinarajadasa published the opening section of the so-called “Wurzburg MS.” entitled “To the Readers,” the final portion (here called section II) was not published. It follows directly after the final word “Humanities” at the close of C.J.’s rendering in The Theosophist, LII, August, 1931, pp.601-07. I have received the appended closing portion from the Adyar Archives, January 1978, by permission of John Coats, late International President of the T.S. Some of this additional material is in the 1888 S.D., but not all of it, and will perhaps be of interest to the reader. We begin below with The Theosophist’s portion for the benefit of those who would like to compare H. P. B.’s Introductory remarks to the Secret Doctrine with her original draft.— Compiler.]

THE SECRET DOCTRINE First Draft TO THE READERS

“Strike but listen.”

Epictetus

Error runs down on an inclined plane, Truth has to climb laboriously its way up hill. This is a reflection suggested by daily life experience. The old truism of guarding against such error would be to keep one’s mind entirely free from all prejudice; and never to form a decisive opinion upon any subject under disputation before a thorough examination of it and from all its aspects.

458 This is said with regard to the largely prevailing mistake that by Esoteric Buddhism the tenets of the religious system preached by Gautama Buddha are meant. Nothing more erroneous than that could be ever imagined, but the error has now become so universal that many persons—even among the Fellows of the Theosophical Society—have fallen victims to it. This has to be laid directly at the door of those who, having been the first to bring the subject under public notice, have neglected to point out the difference between Buddhism—the religious system of ethics preached by Gautama and named after his title of Buddha—and Buddhi, the Wisdom or the faculty of cognizing, from the Sanskrit root “Budh” to know. The real culprits are we, the theosophists of India ourselves. To avoid the deplorable error was easy: the spelling of the word had only to be altered, and by common consent both pronounced and written—either Budhism or Bodhism instead of “Buddhism”.

The above remarks are more than necessary at the beginning of such a work as this one. “Wisdom-Religion” is the inheritance of all the nations the world over. ADI-BUDDHA the One (or First) primeval Wisdom, is a Sanskrit term, an appellation given by the earliest Aryans to Parabrahman—the word “Brahma” not being found in the Vedas and Brahmanas as rightly told in John Dowson’s Classical Dictionary (p. 57)—the absolute and secondless (Adwaita) Wisdom. Aeons of untold duration had, perhaps, elapsed, before the epithet of Buddha was so humanized, so to say, as to allow the term being applied to some mortals, and finally pronounced in connection with one whose unparalleled virtues caused him to receive the name of “Buddha of Wisdom unmoved”. Bodhi means the acquirement of divine knowledge; Buddha, one who has acquired “Bodhi”; and “Buddhi” is the faculty of cognizing the channel through which knowledge reaches the Ego. It is also that plane of existence in which spiritual individuality is evolved, and from which personality is 459eliminated. When “Buddhi” absorbs our Eco-tism and all its Vikaras, the Pratyagatma or “Avalokiteshvara” becomes manifested and Mukti is reached. It was all this (and still is) before “Bodhi” became simply “intelligence,” the “intellect” and even “the holy fig tree” as defined by Dr. Eitel in his Handbook of Chinese Buddhism.

Unwise are those and ungenerous, as the matter stands, who, in their blind and, in our age, untimely hatred of Buddhism—however right they may be from a personal standpoint to view it as a heresy—go against its esoteric teachings which are those also of the Brahmans, simply because the name reminds them of the (to the Monotheist) noxious doctrines. Unwise is the correct term to use in their case. For alone the Esoteric philosophy is calculated to withstand, in this age of crass and illogical materialism, its repeated attacks on all and everything man holds most dear and sacred to him, in his inner spiritual life.

The true philosopher, the student of the Esoteric Wisdom, entirely loses sight of personalities, dogmatic beliefs, and special religions. As there cannot be two absolute Infinitudes, so there cannot be two true religions. Esoteric philosophy reconciles them all, strips every one of its outward, human garments, and shows the root of one, identical with those of every other great religion. It proves the necessity of an Absolute divine Principle in nature. It 460denies Deity no more than it does the sun. Esoteric philosophy has never rejected God in nature, not even Deity, as the absolute and abstract Ens. It only refuses to accept any of the Gods of the so-called monotheistic religions—Gods created by man in his own image and likeness, a blasphemous and sorry caricature of the ever Unknowable. It is not, because the remnants of the once Universal Science and its occult literature are now claimed to be in the hands of the Trans-Himalayan Initiates of Tibet, that Esoteric Buddhi must necessarily be identified with Buddhism. The records we mean to place before the reader embrace the esoteric tenets of the whole world since the beginning of our Humanity, and Buddhistic occultism occupies in it only its legitimate place—and no more. Therefore even the alleged atheistical and materialistic Buddhism could be easily made to face the unmerited charge, were the task before us to give the public its esoteric doctrines alone, which it is not. Indeed the secret portions of the Dan or Dhyan of Gautama’s metaphysics, grand as they appear to one unacquainted with the tenets of the Wisdom-Religion of antiquity, are but a very small portion of the whole. The Hindu Reformer limited his teachings to the purely spiritual aspect of Wisdom-Religion, to the Soul Ethics and Man alone, leaving “things unseen” and uncorporeal Beings ouside of our terrestrial sphere entirely untouched. Time and human imagination made short work of the purity and the philosophy of even that small portion, once that it was transferred from the region of the purely esoteric circle of his Arhats to a soil less prepared for metaphysical conceptions than India. How its pristine purity was dealt with may be found in studying some of the so-called esoteric Buddhist schools of antiquity in their modern garb, in China, Japan and other Buddhist countries; also even among the lay laity and most of the uninitiated lamas of Tibet and Mongolia.

Thus the reader is asked to bear in mind the important difference between Buddhism and Bodhism, and also—since we shall have to refer to it in the course of this work—that the SECRET doctrine preached by Gautama Buddha differs 461vastly from his exoteric or public teachings. The Buddha was a born Aryan, a Hindu, a disciple of the initiated Dwijas —the twice-born. Unable to teach publicly all that had been imparted to him, he taught a philosophy built upon the ground-work of the true esoteric knowledge, he only gave the world its outward material body and kept the SOUL for his Elect.

Unlike all other books, this work could not stand alone on the authority of its own statements, and had to find allies, whether willing or unwilling. It has secured them in a long series of the well-known names of a number of respected, often illustrious, men of science. Though most of them have worked on entirely different lines and have made their researches with quite another object in view, they have, nevertheless, been made to help us in the propagation of more than one truth throughout the whole work.

Natural sciences, archaeology, theology, philosophy-all have been forced to give their evidence in support of the teachings herein propounded. Scripta manent: their published admissions cannot be made away with—even by the opponent; they have been made good use of. Had we acted otherwise, The Secret Doctrine, from the first chapter to the last, would have amounted to uncorroborated personal affirmations. Scholars and most of the latest discoveries in various departments of science being brought to testify to what might have otherwise appeared to the average reader as the most preposterous hypothesis based upon unverified assertions, the task proposed will now be made easier. Occult teachings will be examined in the light of both sciences—the physical as much as spiritual and psychical. Although the reader is offered no more than the bare outlines of the Mysteries and hardly a few of the innumerable occult subjects taught in Esoteric philosophy, it would yet be the height of conceit and pride to come out in such a dangerous battle against prejudice single-handed. Nor could more be given in a work of such dimension as now proposed.

462 As already said, The Secret Doctrine is quite a new version of Isis Unveiled, much of which could hardly be understood by theosophists in those days. It is an indispensable corollary to the first work.

Concerned chiefly with our Humanity—that is to say, from the commencement of the Fifth Root-race of the fourth Round up to our days—no more than a hurried glance can be thrown at present at the three antediluvian races that preceded the Atlantean family, or the Fourth Race. Nor can the vast catalogue of the Sciences taught by the Antediluvians be treated in any other than a cursory way, especially when concerned with such tremendous problems as Cosmic and Planetary Evolutions, the age of our globe and its Humanities.

SECTION TWO

But even the little that can be given is better than complete silence upon those vital truths. The present world, in its mad career toward the unknown which it is too ready to confound with the unknowable, whenever the problem eludes the grasp of the physicist, is rapidly progressing on the earthly, material plane, and losing proportionately in the plane of spirituality. It has now become a vast \6<t>o^drr)s, the Valley of Death of the ancient Greek philosophers, a necropolis wherein lie buried the highest, the most holy aspirations of our Spirit-Soul. That· soul becomes with every new generation more paralyzed, and atrophy is rapidly setting in. The “Amiable infidels and accomplished profligates” of society spoken of by Greeley, care little for the revival of the dead sciences of the past, little thinking that they have themselves become the “whitened sepulchres” of their Scriptures. These can hardly be galvanized from within. But there is a fair minority of earnest students who are entitled to learn the few truths that may now be given to them.

463 Before giving out the occult and hitherto concealed teachings, an outline must be traced before the reader of the mechanical arrangement of the whole Doctrine, an extensive work as one can see. Much thought and labour have been bestowed upon the arrangement, such as would satisfy every reader— not only the student more or less familiar with the Occult Doctrine. If the work could have been published as a whole in so many volumes, the task might have been made easier. For reasons that would not interest the outside world, this could not be done and the writer had to conform to the original plan. The Secret Doctrine would come out in four distinct Parts—the Archaic, Ancient, Mediaeval and Modern Periods. Each Part had to cover a period of six months to be issued in two chapters monthly, thus forming 48 and with additions 49 chapters in their two years’ duration, and the four glossaries (one to each Part) making at the end an additional, or 50th chapter. Should the writer find at the end of that period that the subjects with which she has to deal are not yet exhausted, that this work meets with the approval of her readers, and that health and life are spared to her, The Secret Doctrine may probably extend its present limits. Moreover there was the difficult problem at first proposed to so arrange the subject matter that the contents of no one Part should infringe upon any of the three others, the Archaic period being forbidden to treat of that which belonged, say, to the Middle Ages, and the post and pre-Christian centuries or the Ancient Period having to be shut out from the purely Archaic age. How was this to be done! It was easy to fill Part I (Archaic Period) with a thesis which is but the verbal translation from the Catechisms and Elementary works of the Secret Doctrine on Cosmic and Planetary Evolution, the Birth of the Primeval Beings, “The Builders”; the subsequent task, the gradual formation of our Earth and its fellow-spheres of the chain, the progressive work throughout Aeons and Cycles of those “Heavenly Races” busy with the formation and the growth of our planet giving the impulse to the Kingdoms of the Earth; and finally the Birth of present Man, his gradual and irresistible Fall into Matter, then the four Races that 464preceded our actual Fifth Race, their history and development, the submerging of Atlantis—the real Cataclysm upon which were subsequently built all the legends of the Deluge, etc., etc., etc. The writer has all this placed before her, to hear, to see and—to copy. What would be the results(!) and the reader’s opinion thereon—save that of a few students and chelas? A fairy tale, woven out of abstruse problems, poised in and based on the air; and soap-bubbles bursting at the slightest touch of serious reflection, with no foundation as would be alleged to stand upon—even the ancient superstitions and credulous classics having no word of reference to it, and the symbols themselves failing to yield a hint at the existence of such a system! Such would be the criticism of the most benevolent among the critics, even of those desirous of 465learning something new and quite open to belief. Evidently the Archaic Period could not stand alone. Moreover before Part II could be read to its end, the teachings of the Secret System, so new and unfamiliar to the European ear would have been half, if not entirely forgotten, and the reader would have to turn back at every page of the second Part in order to be enabled to perceive and realize the ground upon which such or another symbol of later and esoteric systems was built, the root from which such or another shoot of some special religion had sprung. This would never do. Thus it was thought best to preface each Chapter with a stanza or two translated from the Book of Dzyan—barring such points that cannot be yet given out in this century. This book...is the extensive compendium of the History of our present Grand Period (Maha Kalpa) premising with a superficial and short account of the re-evolution of Kosmos and our own plantary System and starting to give more definite outlines from the appearance of man on Earth to our own age. It ends in 1897 agreeably with our chronology. Such an arrangement of chapters beginning each in an uninterrupted sequel with a first quotation from the Book of Dzyan, the subjects permitted to be discussed being divided into 49 parts, it becomes easy to explain that which most naturally would have appeared hazy when read independently; thus also the verses or stanzas given (as in the original) can be glossed and interpreted by, and in, the light of many a remark made by ancient writers never correctly understood by the modern, and by pointing out to the equally misconceived symbols bearing on each question or subject as it presents itself along one after the other.

Such were the difficulties now overcome, as it is hoped, in dealing with mysteries of such tremendous importance.

The Past could not be read with [out] rending asunder the veil behind which it lies concealed, drawn down by too cautious hands to screen it from the profane and the inappreciative: therefore the necessity of often touching upon subjects sacred to some readers and the dealing with which may as often give them pain. This being unavoidable is to be sincerely regretted—but truth is the first and ought 466to be the only criterion of every religion. No human born dogma, no institution, however sanctified by custom and antiquity can compare in sacredness with the dogma of Nature. The key of wisdom that unlocks the massive gates leading to the arcana of the innermost sanctuaries can be found hidden in her bosom only, and that bosom is—in the countries pointed to by the great Seer of the past century, Emanuel Swedenborg. There lies the heart of nature, that bosom whence issued primeval Humanity and which is the cradle of man.

The writer is too well acquainted with human nature and the state of modern society to hope for more than a few dozen of men who among the thousands will abstain from branding this work a priori as a fiction— perhaps an elaborately made-up mystification. It will be called a tissue of unverified and unverifiable assertions, at best superstitious legends and groundless traditions. We live in an age when everything which is not bluntly denied is at least strongly doubted; and History herself is dealt with by the so-called Christians as brutally as legendary lore. If Niebuhr could with one stroke of his pen cross out from his work (though he could hardly hope to blot them out from history) the first five centuries from Roman Empire, and Lewis choose to begin with Pyrrhus, and Schlosser—killing Cadmus, Danaus and Cecrops—commence his history with Minos, let us hope that all such historians may one day perceive their error and regret it as sincerely as Augustin Thierry did. The latter has at any rate made amende honorable, if one may believe his biographers. He deplored the erroneous principle that made them all (the would-be historiographers) lose their way, and each presuming to correct tradition “that vox populi, which nine times out of ten is vox Dei,” by their personal views and preconceived opinions; and he finally admitted that in legend alone rests real History; for legend, his biographer makes him add, “is living tradition ana three times out of four it is truer than what we call History.”

467 More dangerous even than the termites in one of Michelet’s tales, the modern recorders of Universal History are preparing for her the fate of most of the buildings in India. History will tumble down and break into atoms in the lap of the XXth Century—devoured to its foundations by her annalists, who are the white ants of our Century the XIXth.

The very fact, that a work with pretensions to philosophy and an exposition of the most abstruse problems has to be commenced by tracing the evolution of mankind from what is regarded as supernatural beings— Spirits—will arouse the most malevolent criticism. Believers in and the defenders of the Secret Doctrine, will have to bear the accusation of madness—and worse—as philosophically as the writer does. Whenever a theosophist is taxed with insanity, he ought to reply by quoting from Montesquieu’s Lettres Persannes'. “By opening so freely their lunatic asylums to their supposed madmen, men only seek to make one believe that they are not themselves mad.”

Nevertheless before proceeding to give out the translated Stanzas from the Book of Dzyan, on Cosmic Evolution and the work of Creative Spirits, a brief recapitulation must be made in Chapter I of the ideas upon Occult philosophy and Magic prevalent during the few centuries that preceded and followed our era. This was the last turning point in History, the period of the supreme struggle that ended by the throttling of Paganism in the Western world. From that time the vista into the far distant Past, beyond the “Deluge” and gardens of Eden, began to be forcibly and relentlessly closed by every fair and unfair means against the indiscreet gaze of posterity. Every issue was blocked up, every record that hands could be laid upon destroyed. Yet there remains enough among such mutilated records to warrant us in saying that there is there, in every evidence possible, proofs of the actual existence of a Parent Doctrine. Fragments have survived geological and political cataclysms to tell the story; and that very survival showing evidence that the now Secret Wisdom was once the one fountain-head, the ever perennial source at which were fed 468all its streamlets, the later religions of all nations—from the first down to the last. This period beginning with Buddha and Pythagoras at the one end, and the [Neo-Platonists] and Gnostics at the other, is the only focus left in history wherein converge for the last time the bright rays of light unobscured by the hand of bigotry and fanaticism, from the aeons of time gone by.

However superficially, the public has also to be made acquainted with the efforts of other World-Adepts, and Initiates of those ages, to benefit Humanity with their knowledge and thus preserve the mother-philosophy; as also how the modern Teachers made themselves acquainted with the lore of the Archaic Age.

The Initiate of 1885 would remain indeed incomprehensible and forever an impossible myth, were not like Initiates shown in every other age in history. This may be done only by naming chapter and verse where the mention of these great characters may be found who were preceded and followed by a long and interminable line of other great Antediluvian and Postdiluvian Masters in the arts. Thus only can be shown on semi-traditional and semi-historical authority that the Occult knowledge and the powers it confers are not altogether fictions, but that they are as old as the world itself.

The Past, however, shall help to realize the PRESENT and the latter to better appreciate the PAST. The errors of the day must be explained and swept away. It is more than probable—since in the present case it amounts to certitude- -that once more the testimony of long ages and history shall fail to impress anyone but the very intuitional--which is equal to saying the very few. In such a case the true and the faithful may console themselves with presenting the sceptical modern Sadducee with the mathematical proof of his obdurate obstinacy and dullness. There still exists somewhere in the archives of the French Academy the famous law of probabilities. It was worked out by an algebraical process for the benefit of sceptics by certain mathematicians and runs thus. If two persons give their 469evidence to a fact and thus impart to it each of them 5/6 of certitude, that fact will have then 35/36 of certitude, i.e., its probability will have become to its improbability in proportion of 35 to 1. If three evidences are joined together, the certitude will have become 215/216. The agreement of ten persons giving each 1/2 of certitude will produce 1023/1024, etc., etc. The occultist may remain satisfied— and care for no more.

NOTE. It must not be imagined from the sub-title of the advertisements, “a new version of Isis Unveiled,” that The Secret Doctrine is simply a rearrangement of old matter. It is an entirely new work, with only occasional quotations and extracts from Isis to serve a double purpose. Because it has been often said (a) that the theosophical teachings clashed with the statements in the earlier work after the publication of Mr. Sinnett’s Esoteric Buddhism, and (b) to show that not only was the writer of the present familiar then with all the topics now given in The Secret Doctrine but that there is not a single contradiction, if properly understood. When Isis was written, only fragmentary portions could be given, but now the reader will be instructed how to fit in the disjointed pieces so as to perfect the whole.

NOTE. In view of the multiplicity of subjects every chapter will be divided into sections and whenever required, into numbered sub-sections.

SECTION THREE

[At this point we draw the reader’s attention to some comparisons of the WMS. in the form of notes added (by) Boris de Zirkoff to Jinarajadasa’s outline of the original draft. The Early History of the T.S., with Annotations by C. Jinarajadasa, appeared in The Theosophist, March 1925 issue, and were a continuation of the series from Volume XLV, No. 12, p. 798. We provide below a portion beginning with section XV:—Compiler.]

470 “Among the records of the T.S. at Adyar, one of the most striking is the original draft of the first volume oflhe Secret Doctrine. In January, 1885, H. P. B. was at Adyar in the midst of the turmoil of attacks fostered by the missionaries and their agents the Coulombs, against her with charges of fraud and immorality. She was desperately ill, and the doctor had no hopes at all of her recovery. When she was thus at death’s door, sick at heart at all the vilification and the treachery which surrounded her, she half hoped that her release would come. Then it was that her Master came and put before her two alternatives, one of immediate release from her suffering body and her martyrdom, and the other of going on for a few years longer and writing the Secret Doctrine. H. P. B., for the sake of the work, chose the latter alternative, though it meant more years of anxiety and difficulties.

“In Col. Olcott’s Diary for 1885, on Friday, January 9, he has entered as follows: H. P. B. got from M∴ the plan for her “Secret Doctrine” and it is excellent. Oakley and I had tried our hands at it last night, but this is much better.

“The documents which I publish, though they deal with other important matters, also mention the beginning of the Secret Doctrine. H. P. B. sailed on March 31st, 1885, for Naples. There accompanied her Miss Flynn, Bawaji and Dr. Franz Hartmann.

“The Secret Doctrine manuscript is not in the handwriting of H. P. B., but that of Countess Constance Wachtmeister. It contains 229 foolscap pages. Its contents are as follows:

VERA P. de ZHELIHOVSKIY 1835-1896

473

APPENDIX II

MISCELLANEOUS MATERIAL

Mr. de Zirkoff hoped to include in this volume certain items which had yet to be located. These included:

1) Marginal Notes by H. P. B. in printed copy of Emma Coulomb’s An Account, etc., the original being in the British Headquarters of the T.S. Mr. de Zirkoff said he had a microfilm and prints made, in a note dating back over a decade; but he added to this note in brackets: “Make no sense without lengthy excerpts of Coulomb’s own words.” This microfilm has not yet been located. However, recent research has been completed by Mr. Michael Gomes, and reprinted from The Theosophist (December 1984, January & February 1985) in a booklet called simply The Coulomb Case, 1884-1984. His article is the result of seven month’s investigation in Indian archives, and will do much to clarify this tragic episode which has only in this century been rectified by the Society for Psychical Research.

2) J. Ralston Skinner MSS. are hinted at by Mr. de Zirkoff. Much, indeed, if not all of the Blavatsky-Skinner correspondence has been located in the Harvard Andover Theological Seminary Archives. These letters will appear in the Collected Letters of H. P. Blavatsky at a future date, as part of the completed series.

3) Portions of H. P. B.’s English translation of her sister Vera P. de Zhelihovsky’s account of H. P. B.’s early life, partially published in Sinnett’s Incidents in the Life of Madame Blavatsky. In these portions H. P. B. appended notes and footnotes to her sister Vera’s text. Just as this portion of the book was about to be sent to the typesetter, Michael Gomes located it at Adyar!

The passages and notes of H. P. B. as compared to the 1886 original edition of A.P. Sinnett’s Incidents....are of such 474value we are basing their inclusion on the material Michael Gomes has typed out from the somewhat faded MS. copy of Vera’s journal. They begin on the following pages with an introduction based on Mr. C. Jinarajadasa’s foreword to extracts not used by Sinnett but selected by Mrs. Violet Christie for The Theosophist in 1926. Comparing her extracts from an earlier time helped fill in words which were found illegible. We are grateful to Mr. Gomes for this material as cited in various passages in the numbered footnotes, placed throughout the text. H. P. B.’s notes occur along with the separate pages still available, although the reader will note that some pages were missing in the archives.

In Mr. Jinarajadasa’s foreword to Mrs. Violet Christie’s article, “H. P. B.,” he refers to a small part of H. P. B.’s MS. which had been given to him by Miss F. Arundale. He goes on to state:

....The principal fact which is interesting is that, as H. P. B. wrote her autobiography, she referred constantly to her link with the Masters. Mr. Sinnett evidently thought it morejudicious after the Coulomb attack to say as little as possible on this aspect of H. P. B.’s life. The manuscript is not worth printing in its entirety, as most of it has been utilized almost verbatim by Mr. Sinnett.—C.J.

Due to the ravages of time this manuscript has now become faded and lacks completeness. Since the original 1886 edition is now rarely found, we feel it worthwhile to provide as much of the unpublished parts as possible, as well as extracts from the book itself in cases where it supplies words unclear in the MS. Such words are found in brackets. A few pertinent H. P. B. letters, included by Sinnett, are quoted for the reader’s interest when bearing on Vera’s account. Where Violet Christie’s passages appear more complete they are rendered along with MS. references.

Minor details or facts generally known to 20th century Theosophists, or incorporated into Sinnett’s text are 475omitted. It is a selection based on historical and teaching value. Passages sent to us by Mr. Gomes have been compared with a copy of the original edition. It is to be hoped that this 1886 edition may be reprinted at a future date with the missing portions, before the MS. at Adyar becomes completely faded.

Violet Christie begins her 2nd series of selections with a new title, “H. P. B. and Spiritualism”, to reflect the emphasis of these selections. The unprinted portion found on pp. 26-27 of the MS. shows how concerned Madame Blavatsky was that scientific investigators be provided objective research, rather than the vagaries and fanciful speculations, which, instead of allowing Spiritualism to become a Science, injure the medium’s health and “change a portion of humanity into a herd of half-crazy fanatics.”

FRAGMENTS FROM H.P.B.’s “MYSTICAL HISTORY.”

[To the material Michael Gomes sent from Adyar included below, we have added in brackets any words or phrases either interpolated by him or found by us in comparing Mr. Sinnett’s text, other printed sources and those portions clarified in The Theosophist by Mrs. V. Christie. These sources have been footnoted separately from H. P. B.’s notes. The Blavatsky notes and footnotes appear directly in the text as Mr. Gomes found them: in connection with the pages of the manuscript (noted in parentheses) above H. P. B.’s notes. We are grateful for his synopsis of the passages to which her footnotes pertain. Large portions left out by Sinnett in the longer extracts are also shown by brackets. Mr. Gomes’ survey begins:]

This MS. is headed — Madame Blavatsky’s Mystical History (the words ‘Mystical History’ have been crossed out and under them H. P. B. has inserted in her handwriting: Fragments From Her Mystical History) Translated From The Russian.

476 It runs 80 legal size pages, the first fourteen pages are not in H. P. B.’s handwriting though she has amended them and added footnotes.

After the heading, the MS. begins: “The name of H. P. Blavatsky is one of those best known to readers of contemporaneous periodical literature. When the articles speak well of her it is by chance. Woe unto her when they are written in an unfavorable spirit! To repeat a portion only of the “....here the paper has been cut off and page 54 of the MS. stuck on.

–––––––

(MS. p. 2 is missing).

(MS. p. 3 begins with H. P. B.’s return to Russia during the winter of 1858, arriving at Pskoff where her sister, Vera, was temporarily residing with her late husband’s father “then the Marechal de Noblesse of Pskoff and his family.”*)

*The representative of the nobility of the province, an honorary office to which will carry three years—one among the noblemen and their own class.

(MS. p. 5 [See Sinnett’s Incidents.... 1886 ed., p. 80:] explaining the raps, sounds and mysterious manifestations that “had never ceased to follow her everywhere as in the early days of her infancy & youth”.)

*[In those far off days, when Spiritualism had hardly begun in America, belief in “Spirits” as the only agency at work in such raps and knocks was accepted in Russia as elsewhere, since few are acquainted even now with the theories of the occultists. The author in answer to our query whether she believed herself in spirits and mediumship, as she used the term, answered she knew of no other names to express the faculty of producing such raps and phenomena.] “I now remember,” [Vera] said “that when addressed as a medium, she (Mme. Blavatsky) used to laugh and assure us she was no medium but only a mediator between mortal beings we knew nothing about. But I could never understand the difference” [Vera] added.

477

(MS. p. 10 [Sinnett, p. 86fn.]...enumerating the phenomena during the stay of Mme. Blavatsky in Pskoff.)

*Thus, a governess, named Leontine, who wanted to know the fate of a certain young man she had hoped to be married to—learnt what had become of him—his name that she had purposely withheld being given in full—from a letter written in an unknown handwriting she found in one of her locked boxes placed inside a trunk equally locked...

(MS. breaks off in the middle of page 14 with Leonide trying to move a table. Page 15 is missing.)

(MS. p. 16 is in H. P. B.’s handwriting, and describes the methods of communication used in those days) [See Sinnett, pp.94-95]:

*From the first, that’s to say almost from her childhood and certainly in the days mentioned above, H. P. Blavatsky would, in such cases, see either the actual, present thoughts of the party which questioned, or its paler reflection—still quite distinct for her—of an event or a name or whatever it was in the past as though hanging around the person— generally in the vicinity of the head. She had but to copy it consciously, or allow her hand to do so mechanically. At any rate, she never felt herself helped or led on by an external power; i.e. no “Spirits” helped her in this process ever since she returned from her first voyages, she tells us. It seemed an action entirely confined to her own will, more or less consciously exercised by her, more or less premeditated, and put into play. Whenever the thought of a person had to be communicated through raps the process changed. She had first of all to read, sometimes to interpret the thought of the querist, and having done so, to remember it well after it had often disappeared; watch the letters of the alphabet as they were read or pointed out; prepare the will current that had to produce the rap at the right letter, and then have it strike at the right moment, a table, or any other object chosen as the medium for the repercussion of sounds or raps. A most difficult process & far less easy than direct writing.

478

(MS. p. 17 [Sinnett, p. 96fn.]: The word “Zaitchik” is rapped out for H. P. B.’s father.)

*Zaitchik—means literally “a little hare”—while Zaity is the Russian term for any hare. In the Russian language, every noun, substantive and adjective may be made to express the same thing only in a smaller form. Thus—a house is dom, while the idea of a small house is expressed by the word domik, etc.

(MS. p. 20 [Sinnett, p. 100fn.]: “During that time never was Mme. Blavatsky’s invisible helper or helpers found mistaken in one single instance!”*)

*Indeed not; for it was neither a “Spirit” nor “Spirits” but a living man who can draw before his eyes the picture of any book or manuscript wherever existing, and in case of need, even that of any long forgotten and unrecorded event. The astral light, the storehouse & record book of all things and deeds has no secrets for such men.

(MS. p. 23 [Sinnett, p. 104fn.]: Raps in H. P. B.’s presence describe the events of a local murder.)

*Mme B. denies point-blank any intervention of spirits in this case. She tells us she had the picture of the whole tragedy and its subsequent developments before her from the moment the Stanovoy (district officer) entered the house. She knew the names of the murderer, the confederate and of the village, for she saw them interlaced, so to say, with the visions. Then she guided the raps and thus gave the information. She would not have done so except for being defied.

(MS. p. 24 [Sinnett, p. 105]: “We arrived very soon at the conviction that the forces at work—as Madame B. constantly told us— had to be divided into several distinct categories. While the lowest on the scale of invisible beings produced most of the physical phenomena, the very highest among the agencies at work condescend but rarely to a communication or intercourse with strangers.”)

479

(MS. p. 24 [Sinnett, p. 105]: ...“the effects produced in physical manifestations seemed to depend but little on the will or volition of the ‘medium’.”*)

*[Quite the contrary, we believe, and if so, then how about the best physical phenomena produced during the greatest hubbub and confusion in the room, as the author tells us a few pages before? Had Mme. B.’s will nothing to do in the production of the manifestations then would harmony & quiet be the chief requisites, as well as complete passivity on her part—which was only as learnt later—only apparent. It is evident that while she could exercise a power over the Elementáis, she had but to sit passive and quiet when the “higher intelligences” or as the author calls them agencies— i.e. the will of the living chelas or their Masters was the means by which the phenomena were produced.] (Publisher)

(MS. p. 25 [Sinnett, p. 106fn.] ¡...complaining of a lack of phenomena when they wished to impress sceptics.)

*Simply because she was tired & disgusted with the ever growing thirst for phenomena. As in 1880—so in 1850 and 1860. People are never satisfied with what they get but ever crave more.

(MS. p. 26 [Sinnett, p. 108]: ...in those days whenever my sister Mme. B. sat, to please us, for ‘communications through raps’ we were asked by her to choose what we will have—‘Shall we have the mediumistic, the spook raps, or the raps by clairvoyant proxy?’ she asked.’’)

481

(MS. p. 28 [Sinnett, pp. 113fn.-14fn.] ¡...speaking of spirit communications of the poet A. Poushkine.)

*This was a genuine spirit manifestation·, i.e. a clumsy personification of the great poet by passing shells and spooks allowed to merge into the circle for a few moments. The rhymed complaint speaking of hell and devil was the echo of the feelings and thoughts of a pious governess present: most assuredly it was not any reflection from Madame B.’s brain, nor would her admiring respect for the memory of the greatest Russian poet have ever allowed her to make such a blasphemous joke under the cover of his name.

(Unused portion below was on p. 29 of the MS.):

*The reader must remember that all this took place nearly thirty years ago, when Spiritualism was nearly unknown in Europe and had hardly begun in America. Now such physical phenomena have become very common—they were regarded as positively miraculous then.

(MS. p. 34 [Sinnett, p. 122]:...H. P. B. describes a spirit seen there: “he wore a most strange looking cap, very high, and something similar to the Klobouk of our monks.”*)

*The round tiara covered with a long black veil, worn by the Orthodox Greek monks.

(MS. p. 35 [Sinnett, pp. 131-33]:....H. P. B:“How often, how earnestly have I tried to see and recognize among the shadows that haunted some one of dear relatives or even a friend, stray acquaintances and distant relatives for which I cared little.”*)

482 *And how often—Madame Blavatsky tells us—has she tried with the most famous mediums to evoke and communicate with those dearest to her & whose loss she has deplored. All was vain! “Communications” and “messages” she certainly did obtain, and got their signatures, and at two occasions their materialized forms. But the communications were couched in a gushing language quite unlike the style she knew so well; their signatures were obtained from her own brain; and on no occasion when the presence of a relative was announced and the form described by the medium, who was ignorant of the fact that Mme. B. could see as well as any of them— has she recognized the alleged relative in the host of spooks and elementarles that surrounded them (when the medium was a genuine one of course). Quite the reverse. For she often saw, to her disgust, how her own recollections and brain-images were drawn from her memory and disfigured in the confused amalgamation that took place between their reflection in the medium’s brain which instantly sent them out forth, and the shells which sucked them in, like a sponge and objectivised them—a hideous shape with a mask on in her sight. Even the materialized form of her uncle at the Eddy’s was the picture she sent out from her own mind, as she had come out to make experiments without telling it to anyone. It was like an empty outer envelope of her uncle that she threw on the medium’s astral body. She saw and followed the process. She knew Will Eddy as a genuine medium, and the phenomenon as real as it could be and she defended him in the papers. In short, for over 40 years of experience she never succeeded in identifying in one single instance, those she wanted to see. It is only in her dreams and personal visions that she was brought in direct contact with her own blood relatives and friends, those between whom & herself there had been a strong mutual spiritual love. Her conviction therefore, based as much on her personal experience as on that of the teaching of the occult doctrine is the following: For certain psycho-magnetic reasons, too long to be explained here, the shells of those spirits who loved us best, will not, with a very few exceptions approach us. They have no need of it, since, unless they were irretrievably wicked they have us with them in Devachan, that state of bliss, in which the monads are surrounded with all those, and that, which they have loved—objects of spiritual aspirations as well as human entities. “Shells” once separated from their higher principles have nought in common with the latter. They are not drawn to their relatives and friends, but 483rather to those with whom their terrestrial, sensuous affinities are the strongest. Thus the shell of a drunkard will be drawn to one who is either a drunkard already or has a germ of this passion in him—in which case they will develop it by using his organs to satisfy their shell-craving; one who died full of sexual passion for a still living partner will have its shell drawn to him or her etc: This is the reason—as explained by her for never seeing her “relatives”. We Theosophists and especially occultists must never lose sight of the profound axiom of the Esoteric doctrine which teaches us that it is we, the living, who are drawn toward the spirits—but that the latter can never even though they would, which they never do--descend to us, or rather into our sphere.

(MS. p. 37. Koltoun.*) [Sinnett (p. 125 fn.) used a portion of the fn. where Blavatsky goes on to define:.....*“A terrible and disgusting skin disease very common in Lithuania and contracted only in its climate...”]

(MS. p. 41; the sisters left Rougodevo in the Spring of 1860 for the Caucasus on a visit to their grandparents. The interim period of 1863 to 1871 Mme. Jelihovsky says she can no longer give her own eye-witness testimony but rely on that of others, giving first that of Mlle, de Fadeyeff—“a lady of unimpeachable veracity, of a highly honourable character and station in life”. H. P. B. has inserted in the middle of the page:)

Here Olcott’s short narrative and my aunt’s letter must be inserted together with the letter from Mahatma KH addressed to my aunt: copy this, please, Miss Arundale for a memento for Olcott.

484

(MS. p. 41. Vera: “Her [H. P. B.’s] talented and quite exceptional nature* demanded constantly new activities, new interests, new occupations—to weaken as she often said—and put an extinguisher over her impatience to break loose from the civilized life in European Christian Society in order to roam once more at her will & pleasure in Asia, Africa and heaven knows where.”)

*Dear Miss Arundale permit me to hide my blushes— I am not responsible for my sister’s enthusiasm.

(MS. p. 46 [Sinnett, p. 146]: “H. P. Blavatsky resided at Tiflis less than two years; and not more than three in the Caucasus. The last year she passed roaming about in Imeretia, Gooria and Mingrelia.” During this time “she had long since given up communications through raps, and preferred—what was a far more rapid and satisfactory method—to answer people either verbally or by means of direct writing.”*)

[H. P. B.’s fn. is nearly the same in Sinnett.]:

*This was done always in full consciousness and simply by watching people’s mental thoughts as they evolved out of their heads in spiral luminous smoke, sometimes in jets of what might be taken for some radiant material—and settled in distinct pictures and images around them. Often such thoughts and answers to them would find themselves impressed in her own brain, couched in words and sentences, in the same way as original thoughts [do]. But, so far as we are able to understand—the former visions are always more trustworthy, as they were independent and distinct from her own impressions, belonging to pure clairvoyance not “thought transference” which is a process always liable to get mixed up with one’s own more vivid mental impressions.

(MS. p. 47 [Sinnett, p. 146]: ...“At times during such process, Mme. Blavatsky seemed to fall into a kind of coma, or magnetic sleep with eyes widely open, though even then her hand never ceased to move and continued its writing.”*)

485

[Sinnett, pp. 146fn.-147fn. (varies from below slightly)]:

*Very naturally, since it was neither “magnetic sleep” nor a coma but simply a state of intense concentration and attention, necessary during such operations; when the least distraction leads to a mistake. People knowing but of mediumistic clairvoyance and nothing of our philosophy & modes of operation fall often into such error.

(MS. p. 48. Just as some of the Mingrelian nobility were drawn to her because of these powers others “were as inimical to Mme. Blavatsky for one or another cause as some too orthodox American foggies, Spiritualists and their host of mediums—became later in the United States.*)

*The author seems to have forgotten a better example as an illustration of that terrible hatred based upon fear that has ever pursued Mme. Blavatsky wherever she went: India with its host of multicoloured padris & missionaries, its time serving anglicized Hindus, and fanatical Europeans and...(at the bottom of her sister’s text on p. 48, H. P. B. has added:)

Miss Arundale please leave here below a large space for Olcott to write down his effusions upon the subject.

(MS. p. 49. During her residence at Ozourgetty, in Mingrelia, Mme. Blavatsky was taken sick. “It was one of those mysterious nervous diseases that baffle science and eludes the grasp of everyone but an expert psychologist. As she told to some of her friends she began from that time to lead a ‘double life’. What she meant, none of the good people of Imeretia could understand.”*)

[Sinnett, pp. 147-48 employs her fn. in main text.]:

*“Whenever I was called by name”—Mme. Blavatsky tells us, “I opened the eyes upon hearing it and was myself in every particular. As soon as I was left alone, I relapsed into my usual half dreamy condition and became somebody else... In cases when I was interrupted during a conversation in the latter capacity —say, at half a sentence either spoken by me or some of my visitors—invisible of course to any other, for I was alone to whom they were realities—no 486sooner I closed my eyes than the sentence which had been interrupted—continued from the word it had stopped at. When awake and myself I remembered well who I was in my second capacity and what I was doing. When somebody else—I had no idea of who was H. P. Blavatsky. I was in another far off country, quite another individuality, and had no connection at all with my actual life.” [She will never say, however, who she was when “somebody else” nor give any more explicit details. She only said she was with her Master during that time.]

(MS. p. 52;...speaking of phenomena occuring in Mme. Fadeyeffs presence when H. P. B. was asleep in the room, H. P. B. adds:)

*This can hardly be called “independent manifestations”, that is to say, such phenomena as occur in the presence of mediums independently of their previous knowledge or will. As well regard as a medium every one in the house who witnessed phenomena in his presence when alone, received letters or other objective proof of either Masters or chelas. Madame Blavatsky (tells) us that she has often seen her Master and his disciples in astral bodies so far back as 1859; distinctly [heard?] their voices and conversed with them. Once that we admit the manifestation [we think it] more philosophical to attribute them to the will of living persons than of dead men.

(MS. p. 54 [Sinnett, p. 158]:....describes H. P. B.’s attempt in 1871 to establish the “Société Spirite” in Cairo, “for the investigation of mediums & phenomena according to Allan Kardec’s theories and philosophy...She would first give room to any already established and accepted teaching and then, when the public would see that nothing was coming out of it she would then offer then her own explanations. To accomplish this object, she said, she was ready to go to any amount of trouble, —even to allowing herself to be regarded for a time as a helpless medium. ‘They know no better and it does me no harm* — for I will very soon show them the difference between a passive medium & an active doer...’ she explains.”)

487 *[She was mistaken: for it has done her harm. In their eagerness to show her no higher than a common medium, editors of spiritual papers remembering that they had received at that time notices of the short lived Société Spirite—made capital of it and a good handle to the broom with which as they thought they would try to sweep out the Theosophical Society out of sight & existence.]

(There follows a continuation of this note but in the MS. it has been crossed out. It refers to Mr. Arthur Lillie, the compiler of what H. P. B. calls a “semi-libellous pamphlet.”)

(MS. p. 55. H. P. B.’s letter narrating the events which led to the closing of the ‘Société Spirite’ after a fortnight, is quoted—partially given by Sinnett in Incidents..., 1886 ed., p. 159; and more fully in The Theosophist, XLVIII, May 1926, p. 197-98, quoted below:)

....“H. P. B. was nearly shot by a madman ‘a Greek clerk who had been present at the only two public seances we held, and got possessed, I suppose, by some vile spook.* He premised by running about the pagan streets of Cairo with a cocked up revolver, screaming that I had sent to him during three nights running a host of she-demons, of spirits who were attempting to choke him!! He rushed into my house with his revolver, finding me in the breakfast room, declared that he had come to shoot me and would wait till I had done with my meal. It was very kind of him, in the meanwhile I forced him to drop his pistol and to rush out once more out of the house. He is now shut up in the lunatic asylum and I swear to put an end for ever to such public seances—they are too dangerous and I am not practiced and strong enough to control the wicked spooks that may approach my friends during such sittings....I have told you before now that [these kinds] of promiscuous seances with mediums in the circle, are a regular whirlpool —a maelstrom of bad magnetism, during which time the so-called spirits (Vile Kikimora!) feed upon us, suck in, sponge-like our vital powers and draw us down to their 488own plane of being. But you will never understand this without going over a portion at least, if not the whole range of writings that exist upon this subject.’.....”

(Violet Christie’s article in the May Theosophist goes on to quote a key passage unused by Sinnett, referring to her subsequent travels after Egypt, in Palestine, Palmira, and H. P. B.’s final return to Russia; which Vera said she left for the last time in April, 1873:)

....“In June of the same year she was in Paris, where she had intended to reside for some time, when suddenly she received a letter—‘an advice I have neither the desire, nor possibility of resisting’ as she explained to us in her correspondence—from one of her teachers in the Far East”.....

(“The outcome of H. P. B.’s swift departure to America was the founding of the Theosophical Society in November 1875,” Mrs. Christie’s article states, and goes on to explain that her investigations in spiritualism are amply covered by Mr. Sinnett’s Incidents and in many of H. P. B.’s books.)

(MS. p. 55 [Sinnett, p. 159fn.]:)

*This verbal translation of a letter written by Mme. Blavatsky 14 years back—shows that she never changed her way of viewing communications with “spirits” for physical phenomena—as she was accused of doing when in America.

(MS. p. 59; describing the visitation of the astral spooks of two brothers—“one harmonious & passive; the other active and dangerous.”)

[Sinnett, p. 167fn.; shows very few changes.]:

*How dangerous is the latter kind was proven on the spot. Miss O.— the medium, a young lady of hardly twenty—a governess in a rich 489family of bankers, an extremely modest & gentle character had hardly written the Russian words addressed to Mme. Blavatsky than she was seized with trembling and asked to drink. When water was brought she threw it away and went on asking for a drink. Wine was offered her—she greedily drank it, and began drinking one glass after the other until to the horror of all she fell in convulsions and cried for “Wine—a drink!” till she fainted away and was carried home in a carriage. She had a sickness after this that lasted for several weeks.

(MS. circa p. 62ff: This letter was totally included by Sinnett, [pp. 175-79] but is of such interest that we reproduce it below along with the final footnotes by H.P.B., not present in Sinnett’s Incidents...)

....In 1875 she wrote home:

“The more I see of mediums—for the United States are a true nursery, the most prolific hot-bed for mediums and sensitives of all kinds genuine and artificial—the more I see the danger humanity is surrounded with. Poets speak of the thin partition between this world and the other. They are blind: there is no partition at all except the difference of states in which the living and the dead exist, and the grossness of the physical senses of the majority of mankind. Yet, these senses are our salvation. They were given to us by a wise and sagacious mother and nurse - nature; for, otherwise, individuality and even personality would have become impossible: the dead would be ever merging into the living, and the latter assimilating the former. Were there around us but one variety of ‘spirits,’—as well call the dregs of wine, spirits,—the reliquae of those mortals who are dead and gone, one could reconcile oneself with it. We cannot avoid, in some way or other, assimilating our dead, and little by little, and unconsciously to ourselves, we become they—even physically, especially in the unwise West, where cremation is unknown. We breathe and devour the dead— men and animals—with every breath we draw in, as every human breath that goes out makes up the bodies, and feeds the formless creatures in the air that will be men some day. So much for the physical process; for the mental and the intellectual, and also the spiritual, it is just the same; we interchange gradually our brain-molecules, our 490intellectual and even spiritual auras, hence—our thoughts, desires, and aspirations, with those who preceded us. This process is common to humanity in general. It is a natural one, and follows the economy and laws of nature, insomuch that one’s son may become gradually his own grandfather, and his aunt to boot, imbibing their combined atoms, and thus partially accounting for the possible resemblance, or atavism. But there is another law, an exceptional one, and which manifests itself among mankind sporadically and periodically: the law of forced post-mortem assimilation, during the prevalence of which epidemic the dead invade the domain of the living from their respective spheres—though, fortunately, only within the limits of the regions they lived in, and in which they are buried In such cases, the duration and intensity of the epidemic depends upon the welcome they receive, upon whether they find the doors opening widely to receive them or not, and whether the necromantic plague is increased by magnetic attraction, the desire of the mediums, sensitives, and the curious themselves, or whether again, the danger being signalled, the epidemic is wisely repressed.”

“Such a periodical visitation is now occurring in America. It began with innocent children—the little Misses Fox—playing unconsciously with this terrible weapon. And, welcomed and passionately invited to ‘come in,’ the whole of the dead community seemed to have rushed in, and got a more or less strong hold of the living. I went on purpose to a family of strong mediums—the Eddys—and watched for over a fortnight, making experiments, which, of course, I kept to myself.... You remember, Vera, how I made experiments for you at Rougodevo, how often I saw the ghosts of those who had been living in the house, and described them to you, for you could never see them.... Well, it was the same daily and nightly in 491Vermont. I saw and watched these soulless creatures, the shadows of their terrestrial bodies, from which in most cases soul and spirit had fled long ago, but which throve and preserved their semi-material shadows, at the expense of the hundreds of visitors that came and went, as well as of the mediums. And I remarked under the advice and guidance of my Master, that (1) those apparitions which were genuine were produced by the ‘ghosts’ of those who had lived and died within a certain area of those mountains; (2) those who had died far away were less entire, a mixture of the real shadow and of that which lingered in the personal aura of the visitor for whom it purported to come; and (3) the purely fictitious ones, or as I call them, the reflections of the genuine ghosts or shadows of the deceased personality. To explain myself more clearly, it was not the spooks that assimilated the medium, but the medium, W. Eddy, who assimilated unconsciously to himself the pictures of the dead relatives and friends from the aura of the sitters....

“It was ghastly to watch the process! It made me often sick and giddy; but I had to look at it, and the most I could do was to hold the disgusting creatures at arm’s length. But it was a sight to see the welcome given to these umbrae by the spiritualists! They wept and rejoiced around the medium, clothed in these empty materialized shadows; rejoiced and wept again, sometimes broken down with an emotion, a sincere joy and happiness that made my heart bleed for them. ‘If they could but see what I see,’ I often wished. If they only knew that these simulacra of men and women are made up wholly of the terrestrial passions, vices, and worldly thoughts, of the residuum of the personality that was; for these are only such dregs that could not follow the liberated soul and spirit, and are left for a second death in the terrestrial atmosphere, that can be seen by the average medium and the public. At times I used to see one of such phantoms, quitting the medium’s astral body, pouncing upon one of the sitters, expanding so as to envelop 492him or her entirely, and then slowly disappearing within the living body as though sucked in by its every pore.”

(MS. p. 67. “No sooner a foreign paper—especially if it was English or a German periodical or daily—speak of herself or of her work in tones of praise than the press of her own country would raise up an indecent protest...one of the papers came out with the stupendous information that the Mme. Blavatsky, author of Isis Unveiled, was the same Mme. B. who at the age of 17 had murdered (?!) her venerable husband and then disappeared from Russia.”*)

*We resent and blame less, after this information, the Anglo-Indian & American papers, who very often invented [or perhaps repeated ?] the same idiotic calumnies. It only shows how little advanced is yet Western Civilization that an innocent woman should be so persecuted by her own countrymen, [word indecipherable here: attenuates, but does not solicitate—?] the villainy of the same act committed by the press in foreign countries, the hospitality of which, she trusts. More than ever we become impressed with the paradoxical saying, that “Christian charity is really practiced but in heathendom.”

(MS. pp. 67-8. “The libel was later on contradicted officially, but it never prevented other papers from going on to invent from time to time other libels.”*)

*And private individuals, (sometimes—though happily rarely—in high station of life) to repeat them, adding to these other lies—direct emanations from their own vicious brains & natures. Such a libel has been just set on foot by an ex-maid-of-honour of the Imperial 493Russian Court, a well known old spinster residing for many years in Paris, and famous in all Russia and France for her viper’s tongue and wicked gossiping. Some of our friends say to us:—“Oh, she is a mad-woman and known as such by everyone.”—“Very likely,” we answer. But since she is, so far, instead of being safely lodged in a lunatic asylum allowed to go free and to carry about her vile slanders and wicked inventions; and as, according to a well established axiom “however well proven to be false, there remains always something of a calumny”—; and that again those who know her but do not know at all Mme. Blavatsky, or the whole truth about her may be easily led into believing what Mlle. O. S—f (whose full name we withhold merely out of Mme. Blavatsky’s respect to the Imperial Court of Russia and the other maids-of-honour, a title she disgraces) would have people believe her to be—it is but just that facts should be restored, and the whole truth left on record. And since Mme. Blavatsky—no sooner were the calumnies brought home to her in the shape of a long and slanderous letter — Mlle.S —f to an alleged friend of hers (whom she traduces as much as she does all others) and a real friend of Mme. Blavatsky, the latter sent immediately an official petition to the Commander in Chief of the Caucasus praying that an inquest should be ordered and a certificate of the Police of the results of the same sent to her and that she has since received every legal proof of the falsity of the denunciation,—we can do no better than append the proofs to this volume... Mme. Blavatsky’s name has been too often and too unjustly traduced that we should not [seek?] every opportunity to defend it. (H.S.O. Editor)

(MS. pp. 68-9. “Baron de Palm, whose death and cremation in the United States had set the whole press of the two continents agog, was it seems, a very rich man. He left the whole of his great fortune to the Theosophical Society of New York, on the condition that the Theosophists should build a crematory, and reducing his body to ashes should preserve it as a memorial of what had been himself.”*)

[Sinnett, pp. 204-05, only briefly summarizes H. P. B.’s long fn. below]:

494 Not so; and the author of these letters was again misled by false reports in the American newspapers. When Baron von Palm joined the “Society” he was a ruined and a dying man; and it is out of pure philanthropy and pity for that lonely man, far away from his country and friends that Colonel Olcott accepted him as a fellow to his Society. Baron von Palm “had been”, a rich man, but at the time of his death he was completely ruined, though he kept to the last his own counsel and never let any one know of it. Nevertheless truth forces us to admit that the estimable German ex-diplomat played a rather unworthy trick upon his colleagues of the Theosophical Society: he drew a legal will and left in it all he had to the Society he belonged to...which was “found to amount to nothing”........[All the above and continued footnote is largely covered in H. S. Olcott’s Old Diary Leaves, Chapters X and XL]

(Since the 1886 edition of Incidents is out of print a few letters included by Sinnett [on pp. 205-06], will be of interest.) About the time of Baron de Palm’s cremation she wrote to Vera:

“Fancy my surprise...! am—heaven help us!—becoming fashionable, as it seems. I am writing articles on Esotericism and Nirvana, and paid for them more than I could have ever expected, though I have hardly any time for writing for money.... Believe me, and you will, for you know me, I cannot make myself realize that I have ever been able to write decently....If I were unknown, no publisher or editor would have ever paid any attention to me....It’s all vanity and fashion....Luckily for the publishers I have never been vain.”

In the course of another family letter she writes:—

“Upon my word, I can hardly understand why you and people generally should make such a fuss over my writings, whether Russian or English ¡....Whenever I am told to write, I sit down and obey, and then I can write easily upon almost anything—....I never put myself the question: 'Can I write on this subject?...’ or, ‘Am I equal to the task?’ but I simply sit down and write. Because somebody who knows all dictates to me....MY 495MASTER, and occasionally others whom I knew in my travels years ago....”

(MS. p. 74 [Sinnett, pp. 206-08]: While writing Isis Unveiled, H. P. B. wrote her sister a letter which “...is preserved and may yet prove of service)*”

....“You may disbelieve me, but I tell you that in saying this I speak but the truth: I am solely occupied—not with writing ‘Isis’, but with Isis herself....” It closes with the portion Sinnett includes from her MS.:

....I certainly refuse point-blank to attribute it to my own knowledge or memory, for I could never arrive alone at either such premises or conclusions....! tell you seriously I am helped. And he who helps me is my GURU...”

*Most assuredly it will, especially as a proof that Mme. Blavatsky credited Isis from the first to her Tibetan Masters and has not—as alleged by our opponents invented the "Brothers”, later on. (Ed.)

(MS. p. 75. “That which helped her [in writing ‘Isis’], in our humble opinion were natural gifts, and her memory developed by an incessant life labour and study.”*)

*Madame Blavatsky denies this positively; [MSS. faint here: we do not see the use or sense—?] of refusing any credit to herself—if her statements were not the truth.

496

(MS. p. 75. Mme. Blavatsky in her letters attributed her literary work to her “mysterious ‘Guru’ or Master”.)

*The esteemed author is evidently [MSS. broken here: prejudiced— ?] or perhaps, unwilling as a Christian to attribute such [MSS. broken here: great power—?] to non-Christian adepts. At all events as the [MSS. broken here] used tend only to the greater glory of Mme. Blavatsky herself, we have nothing to say. We respect the opinion of even those who differ with us. (Ed.)

(MS. p. 80. The MS. ends quoting an article by C. Fauvety, “Science et Theosophie” in the ‘Bulletin Mensuel des Sciences Psychologiques’ relating the prophesy of the St. Simonists who announced that “a woman from the East,* who shall unite the two populations of the East & the West, and shall become the mother of the [reformed] Society. ”)

*Mme. Blavatsky was born and bred in the East.

(p. 80. H. P. B. ends the MSS. with:)

“End of Flapdoodle”

497

APPENDIX III

[The materials below might have been inserted into earlier volumes had its existence been known at the time of their publication. They are now being printed as part of the present series:]

Professor A.M. Butleroff on Mediumistic Phenomena

[From a manuscript in H. P. B. ’s Handwriting]

Among the few men of Science who place their intimate convictions of truth higher and above public prejudice and who refuse to pander to it, the names of the two St. Petersburg professors—A.M. Butleroff and N. Wagner stand high and foremost in the rank. For years, and from the time that, owing to personal investigations, and careful scientific experiments—the phenomena of physical and psychological mediumship had become to them undeniable facts in the realm of nature, they have stood firm and undismayed by the public outcrys. They have fought almost singlehanded a formidable foe—the stubborn negations of their European and Russian colleagues, supported and reinforced by the immortal Public Opinion: that is to say by all the forces that religious and social bigotry could bring in aid to scientific intolerance and conceit, old prejudices and superstitions that grace the 498pious congregations and their clergy and the new prejudices and so-called scientific negations that disgrace the learned bodies and the profane laity. It was the old, old story over again. Scientific Russia was re-enacting the parody that has been performed in the name of Science to cover personal aversions, and enacted years ago in the United States, England and France. And, as the American Association of Science had levied arms against their veteran colleague Professor Hare; and the Royal Society of London had ostracized Mr. Crookes; and the French Academy of Science had tabooed mesmerism and psychological phenomena, so the St. Petersburg Commission appointed for the Investigation of mediumistic phenomena, a commission of learned ignoramuses and bigots, headed by Mr. Mendeleyeff, had tried their game on Professors Butleroff and Wagner. But these two were not the men to be so easily put down by the outcry of bigotry and blind prejudice. They never wavered, from that time down, as they never lost an opportunity to advocate the necessity of investigating mediumistic “manifestations”—a term that in the absence of final and definite proof of the agency at work at the bottom of phenomena they had scientifically and wisely substituted for that of “spiritualistic phenomena.”

And now we find Professor A.M. Butleroff at work once more, reading a paper on “The Study of Mediumistic Manifestations” before the general assembly of the Vllth meeting of Russian physicists, naturalists and physicians, at Odessa, August 27th, 1883.

We translate this lecture from the Rebus, for the benefit of our readers and sceptics in general. We hope to show to the latter, so numerous in every Society that while they, who most of them have never seen such manifestations and deny and reject that which they do not know, simply upon hearsay, the real, honest men, professors and specialists in sciences proceed on quite different lines. What one of the greatest naturalists of Russia had to say upon this 499unwelcome subject before a public meeting of Scientists is given below.

The Study Of Mediumistic Manifestations

Gentlemen,

The question, to which I propose to draw today your attention, has hitherto proved such an unwelcome stepchild of Natural Sciences, that it is not without hesitation I now lift my voice on its behalf. This qualification in relation with the name of the person, now standing before this audience, gives you no doubt already an insight into its nature and makes you surmise that it is of “mediumistic manifestations” that I am about to treat. In my opinion this subject is so serious and important, and my personal convictions with regard to it so firmly established that I would consider it a dereliction of my moral duty as a man of science before the face of truth—before Science, which is but a natural aspiration toward all truth—were I to keep silent, where I could profitably speak. Before a regular Scientific Society, forming a collective unity, one which no sooner a subject is broached than it proceeds if not to immediately investigate, at least to discuss it, so as to obtain its sanction or its rejection by a majority of votes —I confess —I would have hardly dared to touch upon this question; so little do I hope, at present, to find sympathy for it with the majority. But having met here for a short time and this meeting being our last; whatsoever on the whole the opinions of the scientific body, here present, taken in its totality, there will be certainly a few members of this learned association by whom this subject of mediumistic phenomena—one that has been hitherto laid aside, as being so dark as to be regarded virtually as nonexistent, a subject known through casual and generally disfigured references to it in the newspaper columns — may per chance owing to my mention of it be taken up some day or other. My present object goes no further. It is with no hope of seeing it immediately discussed and investigated that I bring this question forward. Such complicated, abstruse and important branches of knowledge require a long series of years of 500hard study before they can be worked out and made comprehensive. But what I believe myself entitled to say today to the physicists, naturalists and physicians before me is: Gentlemen! Seek seriously for an opportunity of getting acquainted with this domain of natural phenomena; devote a portion of your time and labour to form for yourself a clear conception of it, and a conviction based on personal and impartial observation, for thereby you will be only doing your duty to the Science you are serving, to the Society you belong to, and which, owing to the great scarcity of coolheaded, trained and scientific guides, wanders but too often in dangerous sidepaths and byways, groping in entire darkness.

Hitherto, Science, in the face of the majority of her representatives has either ignored or rejected the subject under discussion, and before it had obtained the assurance of the existence of the object to be investigated, has ever either ignored or rejected the subject under discussion. Is either of the two courses permissible? Science has no right to preconceptions or preconceived decisions, nor can it allow itself to be [goad guided] by its sympathies or antipathies, accepting the one, and rejecting the other, when both the one as well as the other exists and takes place in nature. I say again —I speak here of the majority not of the whole body of scientists. For even here, in our midst, may be found investigators who have approached the subject seriously and scientifically. May they avoid the shoals where their colleagues had wrecked! Let them not stop exclusively at those elementary phenomena the explanation of which one may yet succeed by hook or crook to bring under a general classification of well known principles. It is not in such phenomena, and their investigation that lies hidden the actual promise of a tremendous progress of our knowledge. For instance, the moving of objects in contact with the hand of the investigators may be explained as due to an unconscious, deliberate action of the muscles; but besides such moving, the domain of mediumistic manifestations, includes also the motion of objects without the least contact. Moreover, we have to explain the mediumistic raps with their seeming intelligence and many other phenomena —a series of manifestations whose undoubted reality is vouchsafed by myself and other serious observers who have personally investigated them. Surely, they too pertain to study and have to be explained!

501

Appendix III

HOSEA’S PROPHECY ABOUT ROTTEN RAILS

[Lucifer, Volume III, December 1888, p.334]

Sometime ago in an article, the “Tetragrammaton” (Theosophist), we remarked that by the Notarikon method of Kabalistic reading one could make Biblical sentences read almost anything. Here is an instance. A Kabalist, of the Abracadabric name of Katzenellenbogen, sent to the St. Petersburg Svyet a Kabalistic calculation made subservient by him for the occasion. It is verse 14 in chapter XIII. of Hosea, read by the Notarikon, and thus shown to foretell the catastrophe which happened to the Imperial train on October 17th (29th) and the miraculous escape of the Czar of Russia and his family. The Kabalistic combination struck the profane herds with amazement, and the ancient “prophecy” ran the round of all the Russian papers. We quote from the author’s article.

“If you add together the figures of every letter of the said Hebrew verse to the sum of the figures yielded by the words. Emperor Alexander, Empress Maria, their son, Heir to the Throne, Nicolas, etc., etc., the sum total will make 5649, i.e., the present year from the world’s creationaccording to Hebrew chronology, of course— or, in other words, St. (?) Hosea is proved to have prophesied the salvation of Russia in the present year 1888. For those acquainted with the original text, I (Katzenellenbogen) transliterate the ancient Hebrew characters into Russian (and we, into English.—Ed.) letters, with their Kabalistic numerals added:—Gameleh=95, Alexander=365, Vehamalka=106, Maria=252, Ubnom=98, Toresch=516, Etzer=360, Nicolas =211, Vek-hol=56, Scheol—337, 502Efdom=125, Mimovijess=486, AEg-Olem=75, AEgi=16, Dvorekha=236, Movess=446, AEgi=16, Kotovho=131, Scheol=337, Nokham=98, Tisokher=670, Meynoy=180; in all 5649, when translated it means:—

“The Emperor Alexander, the Empress Maria and their Son Nicolas, heir to the throne, and all the august family, I will ransom from the jaws of hell (“death” in the Christian Bible), in the year 1888 or 5649, and I will redeem them from death; ‘Oh, death, where is thy sting? Oh Hell, where is thy victory?’” (Novoye Vremya.)

The reader is reminded that the above sentence reads only in the Russian language and would hardly yield the same in any other. On the other hand, if tried by an English Kabalist, it might perhaps be discovered that Hosea prophesied for Whitechapel in 1888 “Jack Ripper,” as an atonement for the sins of Scotland Yard; and if resorted to by a French Kabalist, it is not at all unlikely that the said verse should be found threatening Zola with the stings of Scheol (hell) for plagiarizing in such flagrant manner Hosea’s epistolary style (vide Ch. i., ii., iii., et seq.), and thus illegally appropriating the Biblical monopoly of free and unparliamentary speech. Great are the possibilities of Kabala!

Footnotes

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