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NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY
A. BONNER.
23, Streathbourne Road,
UPPER TOOTING, LONDON, 8AV.
3T 5 l'S
VA udì
Um \/ci (eJ >
MADAME BLAVATSKY.
(From a photograph by Messrs. Elliott & Fry, Baker-streeti W.)
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ISIS«
VERY
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UNVEILED,
BEING
THE
STORY
OF
THE
GREAT
MAHATMA
HOAX'
ISndon :
raaVJ1 wHMEksTER. Gazette
Office,
Tudor Street, E.C.
auT
TOLD
FROM
SOURCES
MAINLY
THEOSOPHICAL]
BY
EDMUND
GARRETTO
author
OF
“IN
AFRIKANDER
LAND,”
“IBSEN’S. . "
BRAND
IN
ENGLISH
VERSE,”
All Right* Reserved.
�INDEX.
PART I.—The Story of the Great Mahatma Hoax.
Chapter I.— Introduction
„
II.—No Mahatmas, no Members ! ■....................................
„ III.—Mystification under Madame Blavatsky
„ IV.—The Psychical Research Exposure ..........................
,,
V.—Mystification under < Mrs. Besant.........................
» VI.—Enter the Mahatma
u VII.—Every Man his own Mahatma
,, VIII —The Adventures of a Seal
...................................
h IX.—The Climax of Theosophic .Brotherhood
„
X.—The Mahatma Tries Threats.....................................
„ XI.—Mrs. Besant’s coup de, main.....................................
» XII.—A Meeting of the (Theosophical) Pickwick Club ...
,, XIII.—Questions and Challenges..............
page.
•••
5
•••
13
17
22
27
32
36
42
48
55
60
67
...
•••
...
•••
...
PART II.—Answers and Theosophistries.
I.—From Officials
II.—From Prominent Theosophists
.............. ... ”
gg
III.—From Private Members ....................................
PART III.—A General Rejoinder.
Last Shreds of the Veil of Isis , .......................
POSTSCRIPT.
Mr. Judge’s Mahatma at Bay
>.............
L’Envoi : “The Society upon the Himalay”...
99
•»........................ 108
..............
Ix7
Illustrations and Facsimiles. .
Frontispiece. Portrait of Mme. Blavatsky.............
Portrait of Mrs. Besant.................................................
o s
„
Colonel Olcott................................... . '
The “ Mahatma’s Seal ”
...
...
...
Q. ”
The Envelope Trick...
...
...
...
... ”
®
Facsimiles of Mahatma Missives, of "Mr. judge’s" Handwriting^
. Portrait Cartoon
When Augur meets Augur3’ 3?.38' 5°’ 52’
�PREFACE.
Tourists at Pompeii are shown a temple of Isis. The impartial cinders
have preserved for us there, not only the temple, but the secret passage
which the priests used in the production of what are nowadays called
“ phenomena.”
The following pages are designed to show the secret passage in the
temple of the Theosophic Isis, the goddess of Madame Blavatsky’s “ Isis
Unveiled.”
Instead of having to wait on the pleasure of Vesuvius, I am enabled to
act as cicerone while the temple is still (for the present) a going concern.
The important difference between the exposure of Madame Blavatsky’s
box of tricks by the Society for Psychical Research, and the present
exposure of her successors is, that in this case we have the high-priesthood
giving evidence against itself. My own part in the business is merely the
humble one of seeing that they shall all satisfactorily “ get at ” one another.
In redacting, out of the mass of various testimony which has fallen into my
hands as clear and readable a story as I could present, my main care has
been to tone down the mutual insinuations. Talk about augur meeting
augur with a smile ! It is the snarl which these augurs cannot disguise.
As for myself, I have tried to render a service to truth; but I cannot
see, with some good people, that a sense of truth necessarily excludes a
sense of humour.
Mrs. Besant is a lady whose character I have often defended in the press,
though I have not always been able to accept the extremer estimates of
her intellectual power. She is about the only one of my dramatis persona
in whom the public at large (like myself) feel any personal interest
whatever. She is, therefore, the strongest buttress of a fabric which she
has now for some time known to be rotten at the base. That is why I
have dealt more seriously with her than with these Olcotts and Judges.
The President is too flabby to be worth fighting; the Vice-President is
�ii.
PREFACE.
already thrown over by all the shrewder and honester members ; even
Mrs, Besant herself has now cabled her refusal to accept his latest
revelation, and discovered that his Mahatma is indeed a fraud—when he
“ deposes ” Mrs. Besant.
My pity is saved for those humbler dupes of the rank-and-file who have
trusted these others not wisely but too well. From some of them I have
seen pathetic letters ; and if any gall has got upon my pen, it is the gall
of the bitterness of their disillusion. They are more widely spread, and
more worth saving from the quagmire of shams than most people suspect.
I need hardly remark that I was never a Theosophist myself. But my
Theosophical sources of information, referred to in the course of the
story, have been growing within the Society week by week ever since the
exposure began.
There are no signs at present of any intention on the part of the three
Theosophic chiefs to return from the various continents to which they
departed last July—departed simultaneously with the issue of that Report
of an Inquiry ”, (so-called) which is the starting-point of these chapters.
Mrs. Besant has left Australia to join Colonel Olcott in India ; Mr. Judge
remains just five days hence at New York. And so, taking a cue from
Mahomet and the Mountain, “ Isis Very much Unveiled ” will now, in
booklet form, go out to them.
F. Edmund Garrett.
�ISIS VERY MUCH UNVEILED.
PART
I.
THE STORY OF THE GREAT MAHATMA HOAX«
CHAPTER I.—INTRODUCTORY.
■“ O my Theosophists . . . What a pack of fools you are!”—Madame Blavatsky.
This will be one of the queerest stories ever unfolded in a news
paper. Truth, as worshipped by the Theosophists, is indeed stranger
than fiction. But it is not here told merely for entertainment. It has
also a degree of importance and instructiveness measured by the
growing wealth and numbers of the Theosophical Society, and
the personal influence of Mrs. Besant. To-day the Theosophical
Society numbers some three or four thousand members in
Europe, India, and America. It supports two or three publish
ing businesses and several score of magazines in various languages.
It boasts offices and house property in London, New York, and
Adyar. . It attracts donations and bequests. It numbers a title or two
and some money-bags. It consists almost entirely of educated or semi
educated people, many of whom are intelligent, many sincere; a few both.
And it is likely, amid that debauch of sign-seeking and marvel-mongering
into which a century rationalistic in its youth has plunged in its dotage,
to captivate an increasing number of those who are bored with the old
religions and yet agog for a new.
It is especially to these that I dedicate the singular narrative which
these articles are to un old. It may save them betimes a painful disillu
sionment, such as it will, I fear, inflict on many who are as yet
numbered among the faithful.
What is the situation at present ?
�6
ISIS VERY MUCH UNVEILED.
Everybody knows that Madame Blavatsky, the original founder of
the society, supported its pretensions to an occult origin by the pro
duction of phenomena which were pronounced by careful investigators
to be due to systematic trickery ; but which are still believed by the
faithful to have been produced at Madame’s request, and in support of
the Theosophic movement, by certain _ Eastern sages possessed of
transcendental powers over mind and matter.
Everybody will remember that Mrs. Besant, on whom the mantle
of Madame Blavatsky has fallen, made a sensational public assertion,
some time after her teacher’s death, to the effect that those “ powers
were still at work (they were indeed! ), and that she was herself now
the recipient of similar “communications” irom the “ Mahatmas.”
A few people are aware that as the result of a sort of split among
prominent members of the society, there was recently a Theosophic
meeting at which Mrs. Besant confessed to her friends that there had
been something wrong with the “communications” which she had
been in such a hurry to announce to the public; made certain
Theosophically obscure charges against a brother official of the society }
but persuaded those assembled to rest content with a general statement
and not to inquire into the facts further—in short, generally to hush
the matter up.
This the Theosophists, being a docile folk, conscientiously did J
and as the accused proceeded with Mrs. Besant’s sanction to deny, still
in general terms, what little assertion of fact Mrs. Besant herself had
appeared to convey, after which there was an affecting reconciliation :
it is not surprising that to the outside public the mystery remains
exactly where it was.
Even of the Theosophists themselves the full facts are only known
at present to a few of the inner ring.
In view of what has gone before, this reticence appears misplaced ;
and as circumstances have put me in possession of the facts, I propose
to give them the same publicity as was enjoyed by Mrs. Besant’s
original statement.
I propose to show :—
That Mrs. Besant has been bamboozled for years by bogus “com
�ISIS VERY MUCH UNVEILED.
7
munications ” of the most childish kind, and in so ludicrous a ¡ashion
as to deprive of all value any future evidence of hers on any question
calling for the smallest exercise of observation and common sense.
That she would in all probability be firmly believing in the bogus
documents in question to this day, but for the growing and at last
irresistible protests of some less greedily gullible Theosophists.
That the bamboozling in question has been practised widely and
systematically, ever since Madame Blavatsky’s death, pretty much as it
used to be during her lifetime.
That official acts of the society, as well as those of individual
members, have been guided by these bogus messages from Mahatmas.
That the exposure of them leaves the society absolutely destitute
of any objective communication with the Mahatmas who are alleged
to have founded and to watch over it, and of all other evidence of their
existence.
That Mrs. Besant has taken a leading part in hushing up the facts
of this exposure, and so securing the person whom she believes to have
written the bogus documents in his tenure of the highest office but one
in the society.
And that therefore Mrs. Besant herself and all her colleagues are in
so far in the position of condoning the hoax, and are benefiting
in one sense or another by the popular delusion which they have
helped to propagate.
I shall show, finally, that the only alternative to this set of con
clusions is another which would be even more discreditable to the
personnel of the society, and even more fatal to its continued existence
on its present bas’S.
�ISIS VERY MUCH UNVEILED.
CHAPTER
NO
MAHATMAS,
NO
II.
MEMBERS!
“ If there are no Mahatmas the Theosophical Society is an absurdity,
and there is no use in keeping it up.”—Mrs. Besant, in Lucifer, Decem
ber 15, i8go.
Before going any further I wish to emphasise one point. This
society, as such, must stand or fall with its “ Mahatmas.” It should
be realised how consistent, in one sense, this miracle-mongering side
of the Theosophical movement has been throughout the society’s
history ; what an important part it has played and continues to play
in attracting popular interest; and how closely, along one of the
versatile thaumaturgist’s many lines, Madame Blavatsky has been
followed by her present-day imitator. I say this in justice to the
latter, who, I think, may fairly complain of the unkind criticisms
passed on his Mahatma-missives by colleagues who still cherish
those produced under the auspices of Madame Blavatsky.
It is true that the society does not officially vouch for Mahat
mas. It is careful not to demand belief in them as a condition of
membership; and the shrewder members are put into a panic by
anything which tends to compromise its boasted “ neutrality ” on
this tender subject. But we shall soon see what this “ neutrality ”
is worth.
�ISIS VERY MUCH UNVEILED.
9
:
Madame Blavatsky taught that “ the Masters ” are certain sages,
several hundred years old or so, who by steeping themselves in the
immemorial lore of the East have attained powers transcending time,
space, and the other puny limits of Western science. By profound
solitary meditation on Things in General, these old gentlemen have
arrived at a sort of Fourth Dimension, in which a Soul and a Saucer
come to very much the same thing.
Their residence was shrouded
in a judicious mystery, which Madame declared herself under a solemn
oath to preserve. She at first located them in the recesses of the
Himalayas j but one of her most zealous disciples lately stated in the
Daily Chronicle that “ the two principal Mahatmas now reside in an oasis
of the Desert of Gobi.” At any rate, these “adepts” prefer a seques
tered spot, and remain occult in the strictest sense of the word.
But on some points Madame was unequivocal about them. She
declared that she had sat at the feet of one of them as his
chela (pupil); that the Theosophical Society was founded under
his distinct inspiration; and that he and his brothers continued
to intervene in its affairs. The original draft of the Society’s constitu'ion, in fact, like a more authentic Veda straight from heaven, had
been “precipitated” in New York by an exertion of the Masters’
psychic force from Tibet. Hesitating converts and dubious subscribers
were determined by the same form of interposition ; and somebody or
other has taken steps, at all times of the society’s history, to ensure
that the more faithful of the “ chelas" should be comforted and
encouraged as need arose, by missives from their invisible
“guru.” (A good, imposing word, “guru.” Do you remember the
terrible old man by the road in “David Copperfield,” who scared
David almost out of his wits by running out on him, and shouting
“Guroo, guroo, guroo”?) Mrs. Besant herself has admitted that
Theosophy is to be regarded in the light of a “ revelation ” from
these exalted beings, as well as in that of a science or philosophy
which can be arrived at by more ordinary means.
In a word, Theosophy without Mahatmas would be “Hamlet”
without the Prince of Denmark. “ Isis Unveiled ” and “ The Secret
Doctrine” are works which few would be found to wade through
�IO
ISIS VERY MUCH UN VEILED.
if their verbose pages were not lightened by associations of that White
Magic which lends a creepy interest even to such avowed works of fiction
as “ Zanoni ” and “ Mr. Isaacs.” With belief in the Mahatmas must
go any believing of “H.P.B.,” who swore to them; and.„with
“ H.P.B.” and her authorities must go those two volumes of solemn
farrago, which remain the society’s only contribution to philosophical
knowledge. For all that is new in them, if there is anything new
except the blunders, is explicitly given on the authority of “ the
Masters.”
The published “ Objects ” of the society run thus :—
(1) To form the nucleus of a Universal Brotherhood of Humanity
without distinction of race, creed, sex, caste, or colour.
(2) To promote the study of Aryan and other Eastern literatures,
religions, and sciences.
(3) A third object—pursued by a portion only of the members of the
Society—is to investigate unexplained laws of nature and the psychical
powers of man.
It will thus be seen that the “ phenomenal ” side of the society’s
activities has all along had a place, though guardedly, even in its pub
lished Objects. In point of fact, as I have elsewhere insisted, this third
Object is the only one in pursuit of which the society has any sub
stantial achievement to point to. As to the first Object, my narrative
will presently suggest the same sort of remark on the brotherliness of
the Universal Brothers as has sometimes been made by scoffers on
the sociability of Socialists. As to the second Object, it is
observed that there are people who study Oiiental literatures,
and there are people who belong to the Theosophical Society;
but they are not the same people. Professor Max Müller has edited
the only series of English translations of the Sacred Books of the East
with which I am acquainted, and Professor Max Müller lately published
some University lectures under the title of Theosophy. But his preface
explained that he did so in order to rescue that respectable and ancient
philosophical term from the associations of sciolism and miracle
mongering with which the Theosophical Society have linked it in the
public mind. In point of fact, there is no reason to believe
�ISIS VERY MUCH UNVEILED.
il
that any member of the society in Europe could pass an examination
in any ' Oriental language whatever. The third Object, on the o er
hand, has led to some real achievements.
The society has not,
perhaps, done much in the “ investigation ” line itself; but members
of it have certainly supplied the most astonishing “unexplained
laws of nature” and “psychical ‘ powers ” for investigation y
other people. It is this which has given it its success, its growt ,
its world-wide notoriety.
It is this which first attracted an COI\
vinced its best-known converts, and it is this which has created
the successive “ booms ” (as they would be called in a more pure y
commercial connexion) which have produced the biggest crops o
entrance subscriptions from the wonder-loving public. I ay stress
on this because the Theosophists have shown a good deal of incon
stancy in their treatment of the third Object. They have always worked a
given marvel for all it was worth until it got somehow blown upon ; then
they turn round and remark that mere material phenomena are, alter
all, of no great importance : the thing is the study of. t os®
great spiritual ideas which, &c., &c. In fact, they want to have.it ot
’ways.
Mr. Sinnett, however, whose “Occult World” remains the
classic description of Madame Blavatsky as a wonder-worker, con esses
candidly in a memorial sketch of her which appeared in the Review
of Reviews how much stress she herself laid on such things, as ong as
she could get anyone to believe in them:—
One could no more write a memoir on trigonometry and say nothlӣ
about triangles, than survey the strange career just concluded and ignore tne
marvels coruscating through it. And at this early period of er en erp
The means, before the Psychical Research exposure] she seems to have
depended more on the startling effect of surprising powers she was enableU
to exhibit than on the philosophical teaching .... which became tne
burden of her later utterances.
Just so. It is easy to hold your miracles cheap—after they have
been found out. Madame Blavatsky fell back on Object Two when
Object Three was discredited. But the taste for such things, even when
it is de rigueurto describe them as “ occult applications of strictly natural
laws,” is apt to grow upon any religious sect which once dabbles in
them. ’ Mrs. Besant, too, in due course fell a victim to the temptation
�Ï2
ISIS VERY MUCH UNVEILED.
to make capital out of the marvellous ; and my readers will now
be prepared to put their proper value on the deprecating expressions
in this connexion which now, on the inevitable turn of the wheel, once
more .begin to be heard, and which will be redoubled, no doubt, when
this narrative is fully before the public.
�ISIS .VERY MUCH .UNVEILED.
CHAPTER III.
MYSTIFICATION
UNDER
MADAME
BLAVATSKY.
“ Now, dear, let us change the programme . . . He is willing to'
’ give 10,000 rupees . . . if only he saw a little ‘ phenomenon ’ ! ” —
Blavatsky-Coulomb Letters.
It is no part of my present object to enter at length into the
history and character of the late Madame Blavatsky.
But a com
parison of the earlier phase of the Theosophical Society with that of
to-day is so indispensable to the right appreciation of both, that a
brief resume (borrowed mainly from previous sketches of my own
elsewhere) may be welcome at this point, even to readers already
familiar with the subject.
The Theosophical Society was born in America of Russo-Yankee
parentage. Helena Petrovna Blavatsky founded it at New York in
1874, with the aid first of Colonel Olcott, then a kind of journalist,
who became, and still is, the president, and soon afterwards of William
Q. Judge, then a lawyer’s clerk in Olcott’s brother’s office, who became,
arid still is, the vice-president.
The previous career of the Foundress had been remarkable
enough, if we accept hostile accounts of it—still more remarkable
if we accept her own ; but with this I am not concerned. From 1874
Madame Blavatsky’s history and that of the Theosophical Society
are one.
In 1878 the society moved its headquarters to India, and in
the congenial atmosphere of the mysterious East launched into marvels.
Eked out by performances not unlike a drawing-room Maskelyne and
�H
ISIS VERY MUCH UN VEILED.
Cook, Madame’s rehash of Neo-platonist and Kabbalistic mysticism
with Buddhist terminology soon “caught on” with the impressionable
natives. It had especial attraction for the educated and ardent young
Babu, that typical product of British India whom Mr. Rudyaid
Kipling has so often drawn for us. But it also carried away, thanks
to Madame’s intense personality—half repulsion, half charm—editors and officials of mark in the sceptical circles of AngloIndia.
It made Mr. A. P. Sinnett (then editor of the Pioneer)
turn evangelist in “ The Occult World,” and Mr. A. O. Hume (then
Government Secretary) follow suit with “ Hints on Esoteric Philosophy.”
And no wonder. Never was a new religion more industriously supplied
with miracles—those coups de main celestes, as a witty Frenchman has
defined them. Wherever Madame happened to be with a select circle
of friends, disciples, or laymen worth impressing, but especially
in and about the bungalow at Adyar, near Madras, the society’s head
quarters, the invisible Mahatmas were never tired of exhibiting their
astonishing psychic powers over ponderable matter. The two who
were especially at Madame’s disposal went by the names (reverently
breathed)of Mahatma Morya and MahatmaKootHoomi Lal Sing. In the
region of White Magic they could do almost anything—any feat which an
adroitly led-up conversation might happen to suggest. But the particular
lines of business (if I may be allowed the phrase) of which they made
a speciality were making objects appear and disappear : in Madame’s
jargon, integrating and disintegrat ng them by a psychical command
over astral vortices of atoms. Sitting in their studies 2,000 miles away
in Tibet, they could, by a mere effort of will, project an astral epistle, or
an astral body, oran astral cup and saucer, into the middle of an applauding
circle at afternoon tea or picnic in Madras or Bombay. Showers of roses
fluttered down from the ceiling. Invisible bells ’ tinkled from none
knew where. All kinds of tricks were played with Madame’s inter
minable cigarettes. Sketches and treatises were psychically “precipi
tated ” on to blank paper, nay, sometimes the very stationery was
created out of nothing to receive them. Such inferior sketches,
�ISIS VERY MUCH UNVEILED.
*5.
too, and such twaddling, such very twaddling, treatises ! One
disciple—Damodar K. Mavalankar, a youth passionately ambitious of
fame—even advanced to the acquirement of some of these extraordinary
powers in his own person. Merely to have seen the astral body of a
Mahatma became in a manner a cheap accomplishment. Damodar
boasted that he had once or twice projected his own—slipping spooklike through a brick wall.
_
'
Most of these marvels, as I have hinted, required the mise en scène
of the Adyar bungalow. Here Madame and the Colonel, and a few
favoured chelas, had apartments. “ Our domestic imbeciles ” and “ our
familiar muffs ” the latter are termed in one of the letters attributed to
Madame. Here, too, in the “ Occult Room ” adjoining Madame’s
bed-chamber, hung the famous “ Shrine,” a sort of cupboard containinga fancy portrait in oils of the condescending Koot. This became'
associated with as many marvels as the image of a mediaeval saint.
Suppose you are an intending Theosophist—a hesitating convert,
especially a moneyed one, like Mr. Jacob Sassoon.
You call at’
headquarters. You are shown round by Damodar, or by M. or MadameCoulomb, librarian and secretary.
With natural curiosity youask to gaze upon the Master’s features. You are told of hisindulgent concessions to deserving neophytes seeking for a sign. When'
the cupboard has been shut again, you are asked if there is anything'
you particularly desire from the Master. You indicate, not unna
turally, a message. It is about even chances wnether the said message
—reading generally not unlike Mr. Martin Tupper in his more
Oracular vein—is discovered in the cupboard immediately on reopening
the door, or descends from the cei.ing on to the top of your head.
The fame of these things, set out in the driest possible detail in the
pages of “ The Occult World,” aroused a furore of curiosity in this
country, where people were just beginning to take a new interest in
questions of psychical research. It was about the time when family
circles played the “ willing game,” and sat in the dark trying to see
purple flames coming out of a magnet. Quick to seize the psycho
logical'• moment, Madame Blavatsky came to England and
“ starred ” London in the season of 1884.
In her train came
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ISIS VERY MUCH UNVEILED.
Colonel Olcott and Mohini L. Chatterji.
Mohini, a Brahmin,
graduate of the University of Calcutta, shone like Damodar with a,
lustre not all reflected. He, it was whispered, was a chela of some
attainments. He was not to be touched. He held his hands politely
behind him when being introduced. There was a splendour as of
some astral oil about his dusky countenance and thick black locks;
while his big, dark eyes were as piercing as those of Madame herself.
Men gazed on Mohini with awe, and ladies with enthusiasm. In the
background hovered the recording Sinnett.
In spite of the disappointing fact that the London air proved
unfavourable to miracles, the tale of the Indian ones was greedily drunk
in, and Theosophy became the fashionable fad. Society people took to
calling themselves Esoteric Buddhists : some were enrolled as chelas at
short notice. The Theosophists went the round of the London drawing-,
rooms, penetrated to provincial towns, were not unheard of at the Univer
sities. Madame rolled cigarettes and swore and talked black magic in the
rooms of well-known Cambridge dons, till the hair of undergraduate
listeners stood on end.
Those were the days when a set of
enthusiastic pass-men lived “ the higher life ” on a course of Turkish
baths and a date diet; while three unlucky youths at Trinity nearly
poisoned themselves with hasheesh in an attempt to project their astral
bodies, and were only recovered at midnight by a relentless tutor armed,
with the college authority and a stomach-pump.
�ISIS VERY MUCH UNVEILED.
17
f>
CHAPTER
i
IV.
THE PSYCHICAL RESEARCH EXPOSURE.
' .
.
...
. 'i
“ Either she is a messenger from the’Mahatmas or else she is a fraud.
In either case the Theosophical Society would have had no existence
without her.”—Mrs. Besant in Lucifer., December 15, 1890.
At the time of the Blavatsky season in London and Cambridge,
the lately-founded Psychical Research Society, which had close con
nexion with the University town, was spoiling for something to investi
gate, and it decided to investigate Madame Blavatsky. Madame and
her friends were delighted with this testimony to the stir which they
had made, and entered into • the thing with every hope of converting
the Researchers. Were they not all ready to asseverate that such-andsuch things had indeed happened------ in India ? .
Whatever Theosophists may now say, the ‘S.P.R.’ was certainly not
a hostile tribunal. Its very existence and objects were a challenge to
tile average educated prejudice which assumes that nothing can ever
happen in nature which is not accounted for in current scientific text
books. The society had itself vouched for “telepathy,” and coquetted
with “phantasms of the living ” ; it has since bestowed a statistical
respectability on the common ghost. To the miracles of Adyar some
of its members had lent a more than friendly ear. One of the most
prominent had actually been dubbed a chela. Dr. Hodgson (now
. secretary of the S.P.R. American Branch), who conducted the Indian
' part of the inquiry, declared that whatever prepossessions he may have
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ISIS VERY MUCH UNVEILED.
had “ were distinctly in favour of occultism and Madame Blavatsky.”
When Mr. Hodgson got to India he found people very much excited
over some highly suspicious and suggestive letters which had5just
appeared in a Madras paper, communicated by the Madame Coulomb
already spoken of, and alleged by her to have been written by Madame
Blavatsky. Mr. Hodgson had to inquire on the spot: first, into the
genuineness of these letters; secondly, into that of the missives
alleged to have been precipitated by Mahatmas; thirdly, into the credi
bility of the evidence about other marvels given before the Psychical
Committee by Madame herself, Colonel Olcott, Mr. Sinnett, andMohini.
He inquired and investigated for three months; and his report, with
copious facsimiles and plans, is on record in Part IX. of the S.P.R.
Proceedings (December, 1885).
The allegation of the Coulombs was that the whole series of miracles
had been a matter of vulgar trickery, some of which they had
been employed to carry out for Madame. During Madame’s absence in
Europe, the people at Adyar had quarrelled with them and dismissed the
pair, partlyfor having at various times hinted to outsiders the secrets which
they now proceeded to make a clean breast of. The origin of their close
relationship with Madame Blavatsky is obscure. She and Madame
Coulomb had been associated at Cairo in the seventies in some “ page ”
which the foundress of Theosophy had expressed a wish to have “torn
out of the book of my life.” By the foundress’s own account, this
torn-out page was such as made it odd that she should pitch on the
Coulombs when in want of fit guardians for the sacred Shrine. Mrs.
Besant once expounded to me a theory that Madame did this, with the
full foreknowledge that frauds would follow and would discredit her and
her Masters, partly from a sublime benevolence towards the wicked
Coulombs, partly because it was necessary that she should her
self “ have her Calvary.”
It was the same combined motives,
no doubt, which led Madame Blavatsky to act more than once exactly
as if Madame Coulomb had some secret hold over her. An agitated
telegram from Paris, however, failed to heal the present rupture ; and
the result was the giving to the press of a long series of letters in
Madame’s hand, teeming with veiled instructions to the Coulombs
which fitted in at every point with their accounts of jugglery at Adyar
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J9
The Coulomb story tallied also with equal accuracy with
such outside circumstantial evidence as happened to touch it.
Did Madame Coulomb allege that a “ miracle ” was worked by the
substitution of one vase for another exactly similar, the shop sne named
proved to have record of the purcnase of just such an exact pair just
before the date of the miracle. Did she make a similar statement about a
“ miraculous ” shower of roses, the like corroboration would be forthcoming. . Did her husband describe the famous “Shrine” cupboard
as a trick-cabinet with three sliding panels in the back, the panels had to
be admitted, and explained by Madame as “for convenience of packing
in case of removal.” It had hung against a hidden recess in the wall—
there was the recess, the coincidence had to be deplored as unfortunate.
On the other side of that recess, in Madame’s bedroom, the sideboard
had a false back—that, too, was to be seen, and the Theosophists must
content themselves with alleging that M. Coulomb had made it so after
the miracles, and in the nick of time for the inquiry. As for the scribbled
instructions and letters in which some of these arrangements were clearly
hinted at, Madame was driven to the peculiar course of admitting some
letters and even parts of letters and denying the rest. This, by the way,
was exactly what she had done about a similar incriminating letter on
the subject of a trick “ missive,” which was planted on Mr. C. C. Massey,
in 1882 ; the discovery of which led to the resignation of that gentleman
and others from the Society.
As for the evidence of Madame and her friends about special
“ phenomena ” it had already so melted away under the application of
ordinary evidential canons as to leave the field clear for the Coulomb
theory. The “ tests ” with which in some cases the Mahatmas had
ins sted on supplementing the credibility of their witnesses were as
worthless and disingenuous as all the rest.
Last, what of the Mahatma missives ?—precipitated from
the Himalayas, speaking^ in the persons and signed with the
superscriptions of Mahatma Morya and Koot Hoomi Lal Sing.
These precious documents, which had been rained among
the laith ul with a copiousness almost amounting to garrulity, had
been a little discredited already. The prosy and sometimes illiterate
verbiage cf the Tibetan sages was a severe trial to the enthus asm of
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the more critical Theosophists even where it was apparently original.
But it was too much of a good thing when a long doctrinal
treatise, which Koot Hoomi had addressed to Mr. Sinnett, was
found to be a gross plagiarism from a lecture by an American
gentleman which had been reported in a Spiritualist paper a few months
before. Nor did it mend matters when, after considerable delay, the
illustrious Koot condescended to the newspaper arena, and wrote—we
mean precipitated—an explanation which for its evasiveness and
general “ thinness ” is probably unique even in the records of convicted
plagiarists.
But now came worse. For the same scrutiny which had identified
Madame Blavatsky as the writer of the unblushing letters to Madame
Coulomb now found exactly the same characteristics of expression, turns
of phrase, and solecisms in spelling in the compositions of Koot Hoomi
Lal Sing. As to handwriting, it was shown that the styles of the two
august correspondents had been evolved gradually by differentiation
lrom Madame’s ordinary hand. The facsimiles in the report deal only
with “ K.H.” documents ; but the case against those of “ M.” is just as
strong. I showed a mass of “M.” script, which lies before me as I write,
belonging to the earliest period, to a Theosophist well acquainted with
Madame’s writing, and in perfect innocence he at once took it for hers.
At that time almost the only difference between the two Mahatma
scripts was that one affected red pencil or ink, and the other blue.
FACSIMILE OF MAHATMA M.’S SIGNATURE.
FROM AN EARLY
BLAVATSKY MISSIVE.
In a word, it was declared that Koot Hoomi Lal Sing and Mahatma
Morya were the same person, and that person Madame Blavatsky. When
a missive from the Himalayas floated down into the neophyte’s lap, it
was Madanfe’s own hand which had prepared it, though it was the
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21
no less useful if humbler function of MT Coulomb to jerk it-from
the ceiling at the critical moment with a string, or deftly pass it through
the sliding panel into the closed Shrine.
Passing by the committee’s report on Madame Blavatsky herself,
what of her leading disciples ? Of Colonel Olcott it was declared proven
that in aTheosophical connexion hewas eitherunable to describe anything
as he really saw it, or else to see anything as it really was. Mohini
and Mr. Sinnett were disposed of in much the same way. Damodar—the
astral Damodar—was charged explicitly as a confederate of Madame in
Missive-manufacturing. Mohini, the fascinating saint, hurried back to
India with a damaged halo. Mr. Sinnett has since sprung to fame as a
director—not of the regeneration of mankind, but of the Hansard
Union. Damodar announced that he was off to find his guru in the
Himalayas, disappeared, and has not been seen since by his friends.
William Q. Judge, having been left out in the cold when the hegira
to India took place, lived to fight another day, as we shall see. Mrs.
Besant had not yet loomed on the Theosophical horizon. Madame
Blavatsky herself left England and travelled till the storm had blown over.
To the S.P.R. Report no serious answer has ever appeared from
that day to this ; and it fairly killed the miraculous phenomena. One
class of them has reappeared under the aegis of Mrs. Besant; but poor
indeed, as we shall see, is the Late Besantine period of mythological
architecture beside its gorgeous predecessor.
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ISIS VERY MUCH LN VEILED.
CHAPTER
V.
MYSTIFICATION UNDER MRS. BESANT.
“ I look to possible developments of her Theosophic views with the
very gravest misgiving.”—Charles Brad laugh, National Reformer,
June, i88g.
“ The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”—Hamlet.
I have said that the Psychical Research report put a stop to most
of the Theosophic miracles. But there were obvious reasons why the
Mahatmas should continue to “ precipitate ” letters, even when the
scoffs of a hard, cold world drove them to restrain their wonder-working
propensities in other respects. The business was so beautifully safe and
simple. It defied “ tests.” The task of proving that a scribble in red
chalk on a scrap of paper found in a disciple’s pocket is not the
authentic handwriting of an inaccessible teacher, whose devotees have
doubtless the best reason for knowing that he can never be pro
duced as a witness—this is a task from which the boldest sceptic might
well recoil.
But what of the actual process of “precipitation”? Alas, it
appears to be surrounded by disappointingly obscure conditions. It
is not given to seethe scrap of psychically-manufactured notepaper glimmer
into being and become cream-laid out of nothing before one’s eyes, nor
to watch the mystic characters form themselves in lines along it like' the
writing on Belshazzar’s wall. It is always the finished result that is
discovered ready-made, and this precisely resembles what is produced if
you or I write it in the ordinary way. The “precipitation,” in fact,
is a deed of darkness, and can only be done concealed from view,
just as mediums are wont to declare at a séance that the spirits
are prevented from manifesting themselves by the mere presence
of a sceptical inquirer with a box of wax vestas. Perhaps
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23
it is another side of the same retiring instinct which impels the
Mahatmas to live only in parts of the earth not penetrated to by
vulgar explorers. Theosophists sometimes speak as if they had seen
the actual precipitation; but cross-examine any credible witness, and
he will reluctantly admit that he has not. This is a point to note and
bear in mind.
The Mahatma missive only becomes a matter of difficulty when it*
has to be made to drop from the ceiling into the recipient’s hands, or
spirited into a cupboard found one moment before to be as empty as
Mother Hubbard’s. Those were stirring days for Theosophic neophytes
when that kind of thing was a common incident. But, ichabod 1 that
glory is departed 1 Its departure precisely synchronised with that of the
nimble-fingered Coulombs. Their graceless avowal that both special
plant and skilful confederates were required for this kind of miracle
may have been a gross calumny on their employer; but the fact
remains that with the removal of the panel-backed Shrine at Adyar andthe dismissal of its custodians, the Masters abruptly ceased to resort to
these more surprising methods of aerial post.
Occasionally they would make the assurance of the faithful doubly
sure by artlessly “ precipitating ” the message inside a sealed envelope(a species of “ test” of which more anon) ; but for the most part they
were content to endorse letters passing through the ordinary post or
discovered by the recipient in his blotting-pad under circumstances equally
consistent with a commonplace human agency.
Such was the state of things till Madame Blavatsky’s death.
But then came the rub. What the Psychical Research Committee
held to be proven was that Madame had written practically the whole
body of these documents with her own hand. What, then, if after her
decease in May, 1891, the same missives continued to be received?
Before the controversy which sprang up again over her ashes had
well died down, the public was asked to believe that this was indeed
the case, on the word of a woman whom it believed incapable of making
a statement of the kind without having first proved it to the uttermost
and found it true.
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' Speaking in the Hall of Science on August 30, 1891, three months
after Madame Blavatsky’s death, Mrs. Besant said :—
“ You have known me in this hall for sixteen and a half years.,
“You have never known me tell a lie. (‘No, never,’ and loud
cheers.) 1 tell you that since Madame Blavatsky left I have
« had letters in the same handwriting as the letters which she
“ received. (Sensation.) Unless you think dead persons can
“ write, surely that is a remarkable fact. You are surprised; I do
“ not ask you to believe me; but I tell you it is so. All the
“ evidence I had of the existence of Madame Blavatsky’s
<c teachers of the so-called abnormal powers came through
Unless even sense can at the
“ her.
It is not so now.
“ same time deceive me, unless a person can at the same
“ time be sane and insane, I have exactly the same certainty for the
“ truth of the statements I have made as I know that you are here.
“ I refuse td be false to the knowledge of my intellect and the percep“ tions of my reasoning faculties.”
It is no wonder that the reporter had to interpolate the word
“ Sensation.” The audience was one rather of Freethinkers than of
Theosophists; the hall itself was identified with previous rhetorical
successes of Mrs. Besant as the prophetess of Materialism. The thing
was dramatically done, and was well calculated to impress on the
outside public the fact that the personal reputation of Mrs. Besant
lor intelligence and honesty was now pledged to the genuineness of
Theosophical wonder-working. In an interview in the Pall Mall Gazette
of September 1, 1891, Mrs. Besant carried her statement still further,
and pledged herself definitely to “ precipitation ” :—
“ ‘ These letters are from a Mahatma whose pupil you are ? ’
“ Mrs. Besant nodded assent.
“ ‘ Did they just come through the post ? ’ our representative
“ asked.
“ But here he had hit the mystery.
“ ‘ No, I did not receive the letters through the post,’ the lady
“ replied. ‘ They did come in what some would call a miraculous
“ fashion, though to us Theosophists it is perfectly natural. The letters
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25
** I receive from the Mahatmas are “ precipitated.” ’
“ ‘ How “ precipitated ”? ’ ...
1
“ Mrs. Besant was quite ready to explain.
“ ‘Well,’ she said, ‘ you can hear voices by means of the telephone,
“ and receive a telegram which is actually written by the needle,
not merely indicated by its ticks.
The Mahatmas go a step
“ further. With their great knowledge of natural laws they are able
to communicate with us without using any apparatus at all.’
'i “ ‘But can you give me any details of the precipitation ?’
“ ‘ No; the Mahatmas only communicate with pupils who will not
“ unwisely divulge anything. You can easily imagine the reason why
“ this knowledge should be kept so secret. Were it possessed by a
f‘ criminal it might be put to dreadful purposes.’ . . .
“ Mrs. Besant repeated that she had made her startling statement
‘‘ in the lecture deliberately, adding that there were many persons
“ who knew her and would accept her statements as true, but who
“ might not believe in Madame Blavatsky, because, Mrs. Besant was
“ careful to add, they had not enjoyed the advantage of knowing that
“ lady.”
;
♦
*
*
♦
*
Mrs. Besant did not overrate the extent of her public credit. She
was implicitly believed by many who would not have troubled their
heads at all over an assertion of Madame Blavatsky’s. A “ boom ”
was the immediate result—the second big boom in the society’s
history. . Mrs. Besant had the satisfaction of seeing her statement
honoured with a salvo of leading articles. “ Can it be,” the Daily
Chronicle exclaimed, “ that there are things in heaven and earth which
philosophy and science have not yet dreamed of?”—(Daily Chronicle,
August 31.) And it opened its columns to a flood of correspondence
on Theosophy and things occult. Day after day a crop of letters
attested the public appetite for the marvellous.
The Theosophical Society has a sort of Press department, the
business of which is to get up sham fights in newspapers in
order to advertise the society ; and whenever the excitement
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ISIS VERY I1UCH LN VEILED.
seemed to flag some member or other contributed a screed
which revived it. The time was well chosen. It was the “silly
season,” and under cover of Mrs. Besant more cautious papers than
the Chronicle were glad to let the Mahatma divide attention with the seaserpent and the giant gooseberry. The Theosophical Society reaped a
fine harvest; though some complaints were heard that the new inquirers
alter truth addressed themselves more to the marvels which had attracted
them than to the philosophisings to which Mrs. Besant had designed
the marvels as a bait. However, if their interest was tepid on this side of
Theosophy, their curiosity on the other side achieved small gratifica
tion. In Mrs. Besant s words, “The Mahatmas only communicate
with pupils who will not unduly divulge anything.”
But, as we have seen, what Mrs. Besant did divulge was enough
to convey to the public certain definite impressions : to wit,
that she had received letters in a certain handwriting, which did
not come through the post, but “ in what some would call a miraculous
fashion,” and that these letters were, in fact, “ precipitated ” by the
Mahatmas out of thin air.
Also that she had satisfied herself
ot the above propositions by evidential processes as certain as the
assurance of her own “sense” and “reasoning I acuity ” that her
audience were before her as she spoke.
And now let us see what were the facts on the strength of which
Mrs. Besant made these astonishing statements. So far, I have been
occupied necessarily with putting on record matters of history open to
any careful student of the subject. From this point I shall be dealing
with a side of Isis which up to this moment has been kept closely
veiled indeed.
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■
CHAPTER
27
I *
VI.
ENTER THE MAHATMA.
“Answer the question I’ve put you so oft. . . . Give us a colloquy,
something to quote. Make the world prick up its ear ! ”—Master
Hugues, of Saxegotha.
“ Thus has a Master spoken, and .> . the word of a guardian of the
Esoteric Philosophy is authoritative.”—“Introduction to Theosophy,” by
Annie Besant.
Madame Blavatsky died May 8, 1891. Who was to succeed her as
hierophant of the mysteries of Tibet ? There was none among her
disciples who could aspire to fill that role with anything resembling the
hierophantine proportions of Madame herself. But Mrs. Besant, whose
conversion had been much advertised to the public, was undoubtedly
more fitted to pass muster as a prophetess than any of the others.
The brief and late character of her acquaintance with Madame
was rather in her favour than otherwise, since it had left undisturbed in
her ardent mind a loftier conception of Madame’s ethical character
than had been affected for some time past by some who had known her
longer. Mrs. Besant was even understood to be in some sense desig
nate for the succession.
Officially, however, she was subordinate to Colonel Olcott, the
president, then in India, and to Mr. William Q. Judge, vice-president,
and head of the faithful in America.
It soon appeared that the latter gentleman, at any rate, did not
mean his claims to Theosophical prominence to be ignored.
In reply to the announcement of “H.P.B.’s” death (Theosophists are wont to refer to their foundress, as the ancient Hebrews to
the Deity, under the guise of initials) Mr. Judge promptly cabled to
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ISIS VERY MUCH LNVEILED.
“ Do nothing till I come.”
Avenue-road was at first inclined to resent this ukase.
But Mr. Judge soon put a new face on matters when he arrived.
That was a time of sore searchings of heart. With “ H.P.B.’s ” death
the society’s one link with its unseen guides was broken, and “Masters ’*
had let a fortnight elapse without giving any sign that they survived the
decease of their high-priestess. William Q. Judge was to change all that.
On the evening of May 23 (he lost no time after his
the “cabinet”arrival), Mr. Judge suggested to Mrs. Besant that as
missive,
they were in sore need of some assurance from Masters,
they should repeat an old recipe of Madame Blavatsky’s
for bringing those august beings to a point. He proposed that they
should write a certain question on paper, put it in an envelope, shut
that into a certain cabinet in “ H.P.B.’s ” room at Avenue-road, and
invite the Masters to “precipitate” replies.
Mrs. Besant agreed. Mr. Judge himself wrote the question and
closed the envelope, and put it into the cabinet.
Mrs. Besant did not stay in the room through the process of
incubation.
For “ He that hath ears to hear, let him hear,” the
Theosophic scripture reads, “ He that hath eyes to see, let him put
his Head in a Bag.”
After due delay, Mr. Judge took the letter out again. On his
showing it to Mrs. Besant, judge of that lady’s emotion at the discovery
that at the end of the question stood the word
“Yes”
traced apparently in red chalk ; also, a little lower down, the words
“ And Hope,”
with the impression, in black carbon, of a peculiar seal, representing
a cryptograph M. (A simple way to produce this appearance is to
hold a seal in candle-smoke and impress with that.)
THE “ MAHATMA’S SEAL."
IMPRESSION SHOWING CRYPTOGRAPH.
�ISIS VERY MWH UNVEILED.
What need of further witness that the thing was the result of
psychic “precipitation” from Madame Blavatsky’s “Mahatma^M,”
away in Tibet ? If that gentleman had not, in his communications to
Madame, been observed to use a seal, still he certainly used to scribble
them in the same sort of red chalk, and he certainly used to sign him
self similarly M.
Note one point here. It was not Mahatma M, but Mahatma K. H.,
who used to be the more prolix correspondent in Madame Blavatsky’s
time, and whose handwriting appeared accordingly in copious specimens
and comparisons with her own, in the published Report of the
Psychical Research Committee.
No specimens were there given of the writing which Madame called
Mahatma M’s : there were but a few scraps of it available.
When, therefore, Mr. William Q. Judge conjured a letter from him
(I use “ conjure ” in its old-fashioned sense, of course), it was not
possible for Mrs. Besant to compare it with any published specimens
of the same script (with private specimens I fancy she had never been
favoured), even if the extremely scanty and hurried nature of the
message, and the temper of Mrs. Besant’s mind had not in themselves
forbidden any such partial measure of verification.
It is true that a few months later Mrs. Besant felt able to affirm
with the utmost confidence (as we have seen) that the handwriting was
“the same as that which Madame Blavatsky was accused of pro
ducing,” and this at first sight appears to refer to the “ K.H.” script,
which afforded the gravamen of Mr. Hodgson’s Report. In that case
what Mrs. Besant asserted was that the writing was the same as that
which was not even supposed to be by the same person.
«
*
*
*
♦
Next morning, there was a meeting of the “ Inner Group,” at
which Mr. William Q. Judge at once took up that position of Senior
Chela to which his services, as postman of the Mahatmas so well
entitled him. There is some oath or other of , equality with fellow
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ISIS VERY MUCH UNVEILED.
members and of obedience to its head which members of th:s Esoteric
Section have to take : Mr. Judge pointed out that it was quite un
necessary for him to take this oath.
To which end he produced not only a letter from
the
note
Madame Blavatsky, but one from Mahatma M, which
THz seal” he had personally received in America, he said. Its
missive.
contents he did not feel able to communicate to others
who could not yet aspire to be on corresponding terms with the Great
Unseen : what he did show was the signature and seal impression
(which exactly resembled that “precipitated” in the cabinet over
night). He specially begged those present to take note of the seal;
“for,” said Mr. Judge, “they might have need to recognise it on some
future occasion.”
With eager eyes they all obeyed; each aspiring young chela fluttered
with the hope (for Mrs. Besant had noised the cabinet business about,
and it seemed to rain missives) that he too might soon be blest
with one.
Mr. Judge is a man of some foresight. But that was not precisely
what he had in his mind when he bade them note the seal.
*****
Three days after this (May 27) there was a meeting of the Esoteric
Section Council, to decide how the section should in future be governed,
its head being gone.
It had been expected that Mrs. Besant, having assumed the role
of Teacher and Expounder in succession to her friend, would succeed
her also as official head of the Esoteric Section Council. But William
Q. Judge had drafted a plan under which the Council was to dissolve,
and its powers be delegated to Mrs. Besant and himself as joint “Outer
Heads”—the Inner Heads being, of course, Mr. Judge’s august corre
spondents in the Himalayas.
Mrs. Besant, it seems, was more than content, in
’he “judge’s view of Mr. Judge’s newly-developed occult powers,
plan is right”with a position of “high collateral glory.”
But it was
missive.
hardly to be expected that the scheme should not be
exposed to some discussion and criticism from other
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3r
members of the Council. At any rate, the Mahatma evidently deemed
the occasion to be a dignus vindice nodus. For what happened ?
As Mrs. Besant, who took the chair and expounded the new
scheme, was turning over her papers on the table, there fluttered
out a little slip of paper, at which she just glanced, and was
about to put it by, when William Q. Judge pointedly asked her
what it was ?
The slip of paper bore the words in red pencil—
“judge’s plan is right.”
Signature and seal as before.
Tableau !
Round it went from hand to hand. None questioned that paper
and script alike had just been “precipitated ” into their midst by “ the
Master.” Thanks to Mr. Judge’s foresight, as we have just seen, all
were in a position to recognise the seal.
Under these circumstances discussion was obviously out of place.
William Q. Judge at once went and took his seat at Mrs. Besant’s side,
and “Judge’s plan ” was unanimously adopted !
*****
It will hardly be believed, but it is, nevertheless, a fact, which I
challenge Mrs. Besant to contradict, that when that lady, on a public
platform, pledged the evidence of her senses, her sanity, and her
reasoning faculties, &c., &c., to having received messages from the
Mahatmas—messages which, as she assured the subsequent inter
viewer, came “ not through the post ” but by “ precipitation ” “ in
a way which some people would call miraculous ”—these two docu
ments, produced as has been described, and only these, were all the
pieces justificatives that she had to go upon.
But the vice-president’s Mahatma had only made a beginning.
There was more, much more, to come. It will be my privilege to
present the reader, in succeeding Chapters, with fac-similes of several
of his more interesting compositions.
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ISIS VERY MUCH UNVEILED.
CHAPTER
VII.
EVERY MAN HIS OWN MAHATMA.
“ The T. S. is the agency chosen by the Masters . . . but They
do not directly guide, save where guidance is strenuously sought and
eagerly obeyed.”—“ Introduction to Theosophy,” by Annie Besant.
It was not surprising that the Vice-President, finding the Mahatma so
complaisant, should hasten to exploit him to the utmost. The resump
tion of the broken communication could not fail to restore the confidence
of doubting disciples both in the society itself and in the favoured chela,
who could not only, Glen dower-like, “call spirits from the vasty
deep,” but also, to the satisfaction of Theosophic Hotspurs, “make
them come.” Forthwith letters began to be showered about among such
persons as it was considered desirable to keep up to the mark, in
which the sentiments of William Q. Judge were endorsed by the
Mahatma. Of those two it might truly be said that “ their unanimity
was wonderful.”
One of the first recipients was Mr. Bertram Keightley,
the “ masters a gentleman whose services to Theosophy have been of
watch us” a material kind, and whose zeal has been rewarded
missive.
more than once by gratifying marks of approbation from
Tibet. In fact, his experience, like that of Countess
Wachtmeister and some other liberal friends of the society, suggests
the formula: “ Put a donation in the slot and you will receive a
revelation.” For the Mahatma obligingly honours the bills of the
society.
Under date May 29, 1891, the Vice-President wrote to Mr.
�COLONSL H. S. OLCOTT.
(From a photograph by Messrs. Elliott & Fry, Baker-street, W.)
�i
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33
Keightley from Avenue-road a Pauline epistle, in which he says :—
Fear not, Bert !
in writing.
Masterswatch us,and since May 8 have sent wordhere
Close beside the signature of “ William Q. Judge ” appeared in solemn
confirmation the M signature and seal impression—“ precipitated,”
doubtless, during transit among Her Majesty’s mails. As the recipient
was at Adyar, Madras, and therefore, some thousands of miles nearer
the home of the Mahatmas than Mr. Judge, it will be seen to what
roundabout methods the Master was compelled in order to maintain his
determination to have his messages ushered into the world in some
connexion or other with the one favoured disciple.
*****
Another recipient was important for other reasons
the "judge !sthan Mr. Keightley.
Babula, a low-caste Hindu, forthe friend” merly Madame Blavatsky’s personal servant, was at this
missive. . time in a position of trust at the Theosophic quarters
at Adyar.
Since then he has got into trouble
with his employers, like others of Madame’s former confidants.
But in July, 1891, Babula was still in authority. at Adyar, and
the vice-president thought it worth while to convince him that he,
Judge, was his friend.
A letter, dated some weeks later than Mr.
Keightley’s, from Avenue-road, terminated with the signature,
Your friend,
YIwxapm. Q. Judge.
Under the words “Your friend,” the ever-officious Mahatma has
drawn a line, at the end of which he
has solemnly inscribed “ YES,” and
his signature and seal. The seal is,
as usual, impressed in black carbon ;
the writing is in red pencil ; and
Judge’s signature is in ordinary ink.
Pity that the famous Mr. Codlin
had not a Mahatma to back him thus conveniently in his assevera
tions that “ Codlin’s the friend, not Short.”
*
*
*
*
*
.j
c
�ISIS VERY MICH UNVEILED.
34
Parallel to this corroborative use of the Mahatma’s
** master seal, though belonging to a different period of the
agrees ”
story, was the case of another letter of Mr; Judge’s
missive.
to a brother official, in which, after expressing certain
the
views, Mr. Judge used these words:—
I believe the Master agrees with me, in which case I will ask him to put
his seal here.
Plump on the written word came the seal. Inimitable Mahatma!
'■
*
*
*........................... ♦
*.
Mrs. Besant’s previous “ communications,” as we have seen, did
not come through the post. But during that July Mr. Judge seems to
have left Mrs. Besant’s side for the express purpose of enabling his
Mahatma to give her an exhibition of his powers in this special line of
“ precipitation ” during postal transit.
July 21, 1891, was the date of one such performance ; which included
signature and seal complete. I pass over this and some equally common
place missives, which Mrs. Besant received at various dates, all equally
under Mr. Judge’s auspices, in order to deal more fully with one particular
one in which she was favoured with a “test condition.”
For lo ! on cutting the envelope open in the usual way, along the
top edge, Mrs. Besant observed a line or so of pencilling inside
written partly on the upper flap, partly on the under flaps, of the
adhesive part of the envelope.
Here was proof indeed of powers occult! For this
must obviously have been written or “precipitated”
the
enve- after the envelope was stuck zip : and there it was inside!
lope trick
por a Mahatj-Qa, of coursej it was as easy to produce
it so as in any other way. He might do it in mere
artless absence of mind.
Ingenuous Mrs. Besant ! Unfortunately for the test, the feat is
equally easy for any commonplace mortal—though in his case it would
hardly be done quite artlessly. The trick was first shown me by a
student of “occultism ”—a Theosophist, in fact. But it is a very o’d
affair, and can be found in any book of parlour magic. It might be
called “ Every Man his own Mahatma.”
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35
An envelope has four flaps. Three of these are stuck together
in manufacture, but with a much less adhesive sort of gum than
that which is put on the remaining flap to be stuck up by the user.
ENVELOPE, INSIDE VIEW.
OUTSIDE VIEW, SHOWING INSERTION
It is generally quite easy to insert a penknife behind the bottom
flap, as in the accompanying cut, and so make entrance and exit for a
slip of paper. On this slip you write the words backwards, as they would
appear in a looking-glass, using a black pencil of the “ copying ” kind.
You then pass the slip in, push and shake it into the right position,
press till you feel sure the inside flaps have taken the impression, and
then out with your slip by the door it came in at. Moisten and fix the
flap again, and the “ precipitation ” is complete. A child can do it.
A Mahatma, of course, produces the result by mere psychic effort.
But it is a curious coincidence that M on this occasion abandoned
his usual red pencil for the black one which you or I would use if we
were playing just the trick described.
No doubt he felt that a more satisfactory test would have been
wasted on Mrs. Besant.
Others, however, were a little more exacting. The story enters
here on a less smooth course.
C 2
�36
ISIS VERY MUCH LNVEILED.
CHAPTER
VIII.
THE ADVENTURES OF A SEAL.
“ O that Heaven had set a seal upon men, that we might know them,
honest from dishonest! ”—Euripides.
From the previous record of Colonel Olcott — described by
Madame Blavatsky herself, in an epigrammatically candid moment, as
“ a psychologised baby ”—he is almost the last person whom one
would have expected to lead the way in any sceptical examination of
“ miracles.”
And no doubt he might have been content, like Mrs. Besant, to
open his mouth and shut his eyes and take whatever Mr. Judge should
send him, so long as that gentleman's thaumaturgy was confined to
benefiting the common cause. But it was another matter when the
vice-president’s Mahatma showed a tendency to favour the vice-pre
sident, and that at the expense of the president himself. Had the
oracle said “ Olcott's plan is right,” and declared that Olcott was the
“friend,” “not Lancelot nor another”; had it made Olcott, and not
Judi,e Outer Head with Mrs. Besant—the president’s ears might have
been an inch longer, and the course of Theosophic history have been
changed.
But there was, from the first, about Mr. Judge s Mahatma a certain
crudity, a lack of tact in dissembling favouritism, which was bound,
human nature being what it is, to make enemies.
On the decease of “H.P.B.,” President Olcott, like Vice-President
Tudge had hurried to the headquarters at Avenue-road. He had to
come from India, however, and the American disciple naturally out-ran
him. When the former arrived, the latter’s Mahatma was already in
full swing. On hearing of his performances with the seal, a' look of
more than usual intelligence may have crossed the president’s mild
and venerable features; but, like Brer Rabbit, he wasnt sayin
nuffin,” “he just lay low.”
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37
That busy July, ’91, the period of Mahatma M’s greatest activity,
was also marked by the assembling at Avenue-road of one of the
periodical conventions of Theosophic Europe. Some conversation
occurred between the president and vice-president about the expenses
of this convention, and the former, being “H.P.B.’s ” legatee, mentioned
a happy thought of his, of selling some of the jewels that lady had left
behind her, and giving the proceeds as her posthumous contribution to
the expenses.
But here, too, Mr. Judge was prepared to “go one
THE
better,” as his countrymen say, than the president“withold” legatee. He responded airily that Colonel Olcott need
missive.
not trouble himself about it, as “ Master ’ had promised
him (Judge) that the cash should be forthcoming, and
also that he would convey a “ message ” on the subject to Olcott
himself.
The Colonel waited for his message. None came.
The Colonel jogged Mr. Judge’s memory. Mr. Judge said he had
no more to tell.
But that very day, on sitting down at his writing-table, and lifting
up a piece of blotting-paper, the Colonel found under it a piece of
peculiar paper, reading as in' the following facsimile (reds and blacks
as per former samples) :—
�38
ISIS VE KY MUCH UNVEILED.
Now, Colonel Olcott thought he recognised that particular quality
of paper, and also, so far as it was legible, that seal-impression. The
facsimile here necessarily makes it much clearer. In the original the
impression was curiously faint and vague, as if the Master did not
wish, in the Colonel’s case, to burst that seal upon him all at once;
but preferred the manner of Tennyson’s Freedom, who “ part by part
to men revealed The fulness of her face.”
So Brer Rabbit continued to say nuffin’, and to lie low.
Presently Mr. William Q. Judge left on the same writing-table the
following note (being scribbled on a torn-off scrap of paper, it also
has rather a Mahatmic look. But that is accidental) :—
“ Dear Olcott ” “ looked ” accordingly ; and sure enough, in the
ordinary envelope of a letter, previously opened and put by on the
table, there was a piece of paper bearing a message with all the proper
Mahatma-marks about it. And this time the Mahatma had taken
heart and 11 precipitated ” a decently clear impression of the seal.
And then the Colonel “smiled a sorter sickly smile.” For now he
did recognise that seal. And this is its story.
*
»
Back in the palmy days of 1883, or ever the marvels of “H.P.B.”
were besmirched by slanderous tongues, the Colonel was in a certain
city of the Panjab. Passing an Urdu seal-engraver’s shop in the
bazaar, he turned in and ordered the man to make a seal bearing the
cryptograph signature which “H.P.B.” identified as that of the “Master
of Wisdom,” Mahatma Morya.
�ISIS VERY ML CH UNVEILED.
What did the Colonel want the seal for?
ffiimself:—
39
Let him explain
An idea occurred to me (he writes) of sending through “ H.P.B.,”
.as a playful present to my .Master M, a seal bearing a fac-simile of his crypto
graph.
Ah odd idea, this “ playful present ” of the Colonel’s. Had the
.seal been intended for use by an ordinary person — by “ H.P.B.” her
self, for instance—there would have been some sense in it. But the
Mahatma, of course, who “ precipitated ” his letters and his signature
psychically, might just as well “ precipitate ” the latter in the shape of
a seal impression as otherwise, if he wanted to ; and where, then,
should the use of a brass seal come in ? However, as the Colonel says,
the present was merely “playful.”
Back went the Colonel to Madras, where Madame was, and
presented the seal to her, with a “ jocular remark ” (I am again
quoting his own account). Madame’s keen eye dwelt on it a moment,
and then she pointed out that the Colonel, in his jocularly playful
mood, had made a slight mistake. “The Master’s cryptograph was
pot correctly drawn,” according to the pattern already familiar to
recipients of his precious missives. There was a twiddle too much, or
a twiddle too little, in it. The Colonel himself saw the blunder when
it was pointed out, and he now declares that he would know it
anywhere.
For this sufficient reason the “ playful present ” was not sent on to
the Himalayas (Heaven knows, by the way, by what astral form of
parcels-post service the Colonel had expected it to be sent) ; neither
did it appear in any of the communications vouched for by Madame.
It went into Madame’s despatch-box, along with a lot of other
mystical odds and ends, properties of the occult stage; and among
these it was remarked, as late as 1888, by the Mr. Keightley already
mentioned, who was then living with her in Lansdowne-road.
This gentleman asked the prophetess what the little brass seal
might be ? Madame Blavatsky’s answer—a characteristically racy
“ fragment of her prophet .voice’’—was :—
�40
ISIS VERY MUCH TjNVEILED.
*•' ■
“Oh, it’s only a flap-doodle of Olcott’s.”
In the same year, at a time when William Q. Judge was staying
with Madame, Mr. Judge’s Mahatma evidently determined to overlook
the inaccuracy in the seal, and to make use of it for the first time
to save himself the trouble of a psychic signature.
' He did this, of course, in a letter of Mr. William Q. Judge’s own,
and in a sense endorsing Mr. William Q. Judge’s wishes—in. fact, the
letter was the one recorded in the last chapter, in which the Master’s
seal came so plump upon the disciple’s prayer for a sign.
I have not mentioned beiore, however, that the recipient of this
8 letter was Colonel Olcott. He presumably recognised, then aS now,
his own “ playful present,” his own “ flap-doodle ” ; but he appears to
have let it pass in silence.
From this date the seal seems to have disappeared from among
Madame' Blavatsky’s belongings. It was, of course, intrinsically
valueless.
But in 1890 it turned up again—in New York, and in
the
close contiguity with Mr. Judge. Madame sent a
telegram
message through Mr. Judge to a disciple, then in
missive.
America, who happened to be the Mr. Keightley who
had remarked the “ flap-doodle of Olcott’s ” at Lansdowne-road. The context, which is before me as I write, shows that
Madame was persuading this disciple to take some course distasteful
to him. Judge added his persuasions to hers. But what was bound
to determine the disciple was the discovery on receiving the missive
from Mr. Judge’s hands, that the Mahatma had added his vote in
transitu by endorsing the word “ RIGHT,” in red pencil, with crypto
graph and impression of the Panjab seal.
Mr. Keightley, too, must have recognised the “ flap-doodle ” ; but
he, too, like Olcott, said never a word. He did, indeed, go so far as
to ask Judge if he had affixed the seal ? But on receiving a blandly
surprised assurance that Mr. Judge did not so much as know there
was a seal affixed, he let the matter drop.
These are, so far as I know, the only two instances in evidence of
the use of this peculiar seal in Mahatma missives during the life-time of
�ISIS VERY MUCH LNVEILED.
41
Madame Blavatsky, and, as was to be expected from her objection to
the seal, neither missive was among those vouched for by her, for the
message from herself to New York was telegraphed, and it was the
telegraph-form at the New York end that the Mahatma endorsed.
Nevertheless, it is clear that no intimate of Madame’s would get hold
of the seal and make use of it for bogus Mahatma missives under her
very nose, unless he were under the impression either that she had
it for that purpose herself, or that she might be relied on at least not
to “ peach ” on a chela who used it.
But why did neither Colonel Olcott nor Mr. Keightley speak ?
The only answer I can suggest is that while Madame Blavatsky was in
the flesh the faithful thought twice before they expressed a doubt about
anything or anybody. They were accustomed to take their marvels as
they found them, and be thankful.
Otherwise, they might at least have pointed out to Mr. Judge, in
order that he might in turn apprise his Mahatma, whose supernal know
ledge seems here to have been somewhat at fault, what a fatal blunder
he was making in palming off upon the faithful a bogus edition of his
own cryptograph, known as such by three of the faithful themselves.
However, there are the facts ; and but for the Mahatma’s trop de z'cle
in pushing his favourite chela!s occult claims immediately on Madame
Blavatsky’s decease, I fear we should never have been vouchsafed this
instructive side-light on an earlier pericd of the Theosophical Society.
These Adventures of a Seal supply the clue to the great game of
bluff between the two highest Theosophical officials which must be
depicted in the next chapter.
�ISIS VERY MUCH UNVEILED.
42
CHAPTER
IX.
'
THE CLIMAX OF THEOSOPHIC BROTHERHOOD.
“ To form the nucleus of a Universal Brotherhood of Humanity.”—
Theosophical Society, Object I.
“ Pestling a poisoned poison behind his crimson lights! ”—“Maud.”
We left the president of the Theosophical Society
THE
“ master staring at the impression of his own “ flap-doodle ” seal
on that which purported to be a missive from the
Mahatma.
The purport of the missive was precisely what the
prescient Judge had foretold. Colonel Olcott was not to sell the
Blavatsky jewels, as the money would be provided.
Having shown it to a brother member, the Colonel replaced it in
the envelope, and went off to have a few words with Mr. William Q
Judge.
He remarked to Judge that he had missed a certain brass seal from
among Madame Blavatsky’s relics, and described the Panjab seal
and the story of its making; not mentioning, however, the name of the
exact city where it was made. Had Judge seen the seal ?
Judge answered in the negative.
Upon which the Colonel
remarked meaningly (I quote his own account) that he “ hoped no
scoundrel would get possession of it, and use it to give colour to bogus
Mahatma messages,” adding that he would at once recognise an
impression from the seal.
He did not mention that he had looked for and found the missive
in the envelope.
will provide •’
missive.
�ISIS VERY MUCH UNVEILED.
43
After two days he looked into the envelope for that missive again.
It was gone.!
Some judicious hand had removed it. “Judicious,” says the Dic
tionary, “ literally: of or pertaining to a Judge.” Colonel Olcott con
cluded with some assurance that the hand which had removed that
missive, the hand which had put it there, and the hand which had
written it, were one and the same hand, and that hand William Q.
Judge’s. That is a conclusion which we must leave the two gentlemen
to settle between them.
*****
But note the sequel. The writer of the missive, whoever he was,
was as good as his word.
When the Convention in due course was held, it was announced
that a donation had been contributed towards the expenses in a peculiar
way.
There had appeared to one of the brethren one afternoon a dark and
■ mysterious Oriental figure, who gave no name, but deposited two Bank
of England £10 notes (from Tibet ?), which were backed with the
familiar red cryptograph, after which he, like Mr. Lewis Carroll’s Snark,
“ softly and silently vanished away.”
It will not surprise the astute reader to learn that the brother favoured
with this substantial spectre was William Q. Judge.
Well, there was the £20, and the vice-president's reputation as an
occultist stood higher than ever. There was a time, years before, when
the society had made much of a similar vision of its president’s, one
which, the Colonel used to explain, had first assured him of the truth
. of Madame Blavatsky’s doctrines. On his asking for a sign, the Colonel’s
' figure, which was, of course, like Mr. Judge's, the “ astral body ” of a
• Mahatma, had materialised its turban, and disappeared into several
yards of substantial textile fabric. “ And here,” the Colonel was wont
to conclude the story, “ here, you see, is the turban!”—whipping it
: from his coat-tail pocket. Ah ! that was in the palmy eighties. But
now where was he ? What was a chela who conjured up a turban
beside one who could conjure up £20 hard cash—“ on the table,” as
Hilda Wangel would say ?
In a word, Colonel Olcott was altogether thrown into the shade by
�ISIS
44
IEBY MICH
unveiled.
this bold stroke, and had not even the face to suggest that perhaps
Mr. Judge’s story was only a donor’s graceful way of conveying assist
ance from his own pocket. The Colonel pulled rather a sour face,
however, over the heavy sum with which the society’s chest was debited
when Mr. Judge’s expenses at the Convention came to be paid. For,
Judge having attended in his official capacity, it was the Colonel’s
treasury at Adyar which had to foot the bilL Personally, I consider
the miracles cheap at the price.
This reminds me of the matter of Madame Blavatsky’s Rosicrucian
jewel, in which also the Mahatma stole an amusing march on the
Colonel. This was a pendant set with gems, which had the property of
changing colour with every change in Madame’s health—so she and
the faithful Olcott used to swear. The Colonel had his own ideas about
the future of this mystic gewgaw ; but what was his disgust on getting
to Avenue-road to learn that the Master had sent a message for it to be
given to Judge, and that Mrs. Besant had accordingly handed it over !
Nor was the Colonel’s chagrin lightened by the fact that the forgetful
Mahatma attempted (through Judge, of course) to put him off the track
of the jewel by a message to quite another effect—an exceedingly mis
leading message.
For all I know, the gift was as valueless intrinsically as the brass
seal; but Theosophically it was a distinct score for Mr. Judge and his
Mahatma thus to amalgamate the two mystic apparatuses in one firm’s
hands, so to speak.
*
*
•
*
#
#
After the passages described above, Mr. Judge’s Mahatma
THE “ inner was chary of subjecting any more epistolary efforts to
group”
the eye of Colonel Olcott. And he seems to have
missive.
become more cautious altogether. In the following
September, however, he succumbed to the temptation of
intervening again in the administration of the society. A letter with the
usual trimmings was enclosed to the Inner Group, bearing upon its
constitution and future changes, in one of Mr. Judge’s on the same
subject and in the same sense (September 14).
�ISIS VERY MUCH UNVEILED.
45
Tust at this time Colonel Olcott was visiting America, en route
for Japan, where he was to teach the Buddhists their own religion in
a flying visit. He took the opportunity of making some more pointed
representations to Mr. Judge on the vagaries of his Master. The result was prompt and significant.
'
During the very next month Mrs. Besant, then preparing for her
trip to India, received a cablegram from the vice-president in America
to this effect:—
You are desired not to go to India remain where you are grave'
danger Olcott await further particulars by an early mail.
At Avenue-road this mysterious telegram was „at first
read in the sense, “ Grave danger to Olcott.” The
™E
president was just then due at Tokyo, and there was a
Olcott» report of an earthquake thereabouts. For a while there.
missive.
was a great flutter over this convincing case of
Mahatmic prescience. When, however, the “ early mail
arrived with Mr. Judge’s explanatory letter,. quite. a different com
plexion was put on the telegram. After reading this letter, and one
from the inevitable Mahatma which Mr. Judge enclosed, the conclusion of the Inner Group was that the “ grave danger ” against which
the Master warned Mrs. Besant was “from Olcott.” The Tibetan
founder of the society, in short, warned Mrs. Besant against imperil
ling her safety in the neighbourhood of its president !
The Mahatma had declared war on Colonel Olcott.
This was the first shot in the campaign.
But what could this danger from Colonel. Olcott be? Mr. Judge
and his Mahatma left that darkly vague. Some of their friends in
England dotted the i’s and ’’crossed the t’s for them. It is hardly
credible, but the suggestion was nothing less preposterous than that
Colonel Olcott intended to poison Mrs. Besant 1
I have no great veneration for Colonel Olcott’s character, and none
at all for his intelligence; but I frankly apologise to him for having to
mention this astounding nonsense in connexion with his name. I
.<
�46
ISIS VERY MUCH UNVEILED.
mention i simply in order to explain one of the documents which
follow, and to throw a light on the minds of the colleagues who made
attabeh‘letVed>the ChTgS' and 1 supP°se L need scarcely add®that I ■
attach to it no other value whatever. Colonel Olcott is about as:
remote as it is possible to conceive from - the sort of- stuff of which
murderers are made. I am .sure he never had and never will have any
San in SeM’0 ?
°r anybod>' else- lha"
Man m the Moon. Having said so much to make any misunderstandmg impossible I return to the suspicions or pretended suspicions
of the Colonel’s professed “Brothers.”
^prcions
Positively, the only material which these ladies and gentlemen had
to work on was an innocent conversation of the Colonel’s with a friend
when MrsbjBCt °f.P°,SOnS’ Indian and other> which took place at a date
when Mrs. Besant was not yet even a member of the society I The
evidence —save the mark !—was such as ordinary non-Theosophical
tfhehWf°illddn g'7ffGVen a d°S a bad name on. But Mahatmas and
their friends are different, and Mr. Judge’s Mahatma was well served.
For this trivial episode, buzzed about from mouth to mouth in con
nexion with the sinister hints of “Mahatma M,” sufficed to make
t is monstrous charge against their president currently believed at
Avenue-road for some weeks at least, by the very inmost and govern
ing circle of his colleagues, with Mrs. Besant at their head !
A belief once discarded, it is easy to deny that it ever existed.
But this particular belief, or half-belief, showed itself in action. Mrs
Besant deferred her visit to India, and to impatient Indian disciples
wrote that Master had forbidden her to come,” and “till that order
was countermanded ” she would not budge.
Now just pause a moment, and enjoy the exquisite irony of this
unique Slt^on. TheTheosophic Society was to be “the nucleus of a
Universal Brotherhood of Mankind.” At this moment, taking the three
chief exponents of this new Brotherliness, the president believed the vicepresident to be fabricating bogus documents ; the vice-president appa
�ISIS VERY MUCH UNVEILED.
47
rently believed the president to have designs to poison the highpriestess ; and the high-priestess, having these two beliefs to choose
from, coquetted at least, as we have seen, with the more heinous of
the two.
Other Theosophists appear from their course of action to have
accomplished the intellectual feat of believing both.
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ISIS VERY MICH UNVEILED.
CHAPTER
X.
THE MAHATMA TRIES THREATS.
“ Be these juggling fiends no more believed, that palter with us in a
double sense! ”—“ Macbeth.”
“ Masters, it is proved already that you are little better than false
knaves.”—“ Much Ado About Nothing.”
While the Mahatma was thus stealthily undermining the president,
he was also busy strengthening his own outworks. In December one
of the doubting ones, the Mr. Keightley who had been making up his
mind whether to believe his own eyes ever since June, 1890, received
in India a letter from Mr. Judge fortifying him against the heterodox
influences to which he would be exposed on Colonel Olcott’s return
to that country.
Mr. Judge warned his “dear Bert” that Olcott would
the “follow try to shake his faith in the genuineness of Mr. Judge’s
judge and Mahatma-missives ; that he might even have the basestick” missive, ness to suggest that they were fabricated by Mr. Judge
himself. On opening this letter, Mr. Keightley found
a small slip of peculiar paper, which turned out (on a prosaic scrutiny)
to be the sort of tissue which is used to separate the sheets of type
writing transfer paper. On this slip appeared in Mahatmic script the
words :—
Judge leads right. Follow him and stick!
There-was, however, no seal impression. The Mahatma had grown
chary of using that seal. From the material of this missive we gather
that the Mahatma is not so remote from typewriters as one would
�ISIS VERY MUCH. UNVEILED.
expect in the Himalayas ; from its diction we learn that, whatever the
failings of his English, the august being has a racy command of
Yankee.
I may remark here that when Mahatmas “precipitate” their own
notepaper, as well as the writing upon it, it has always been the etiquette
that the former should have an Indian look about it, however
European the latter might be. Even tissue, as in this case, is con
sidered more in keeping than commonplace stationery, with, perhaps,
the watermark of some English firm upon it.
But the “make”
preferred, alike now and in the Blavatsky days, is a peculiar
sort of hand-made rice-paper, which the Psychical Researchers had
some difficulty in tracking to the maker’s. They were not assisted by
Colonel Olcott. But now, the same mystic paper having turned up in
the productions of Mr. Judge's Mahatma (borrowed, perhaps, at the same
time as the seal?) the .Colonel resolves the mystery at once. Wishing
to suggest that Mr. Judge got it ready-made from Madame Blavatsky,
he mentions that Madame had gone about with a good supply
of
it, adding that it was originally bought in Cashmere.
He
had bought it himself at Jammos, in fact, as long
ago as 1883, just as he had also been the purchaser of the
brass seal; and just as he explains that the seal was got
merely as a “playful present,” so he represents the original purpose
of the Cashmere stationery as the humble one of “ packing books—it
being both cheap and strong.” From parcels post to astral note-paper
is a distinct rise. But who first promoted it ? Another side-light
unintentionally thrown on the old Blavatsky days 1
But to return to Mr. Judge’s Mahatma. His last attempt to bring
Colonel Olcott to a better mind by persuasion was made that autumn.
In October he had resorted to a bold device for overcoming scepticism,
which he and Mahatma Root Hoomi had patented in the early
Blavatsky days—that of waylaying (astrally, of course) the post-bag
01 some disconnected and quite unconscious correspondent of the
sceptic, and so introducing a message through an obviously untainted
channel. For instance, Mr. Hume once “ got a note from Koot Hoomi
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inside a letter received through the post from a person wholly uncon
nected with our occult pursuits, who was writing to him on some muni
cipal business.” (“ Occult World,” p. 21.) The letter happened to have
a large and noticeable envelope, and long after, in the days of disillusion,
Mr. Hume discovered that Madame’s servant Babula had carried off
just such a letter from the postman for Madame, and then returned it
to him with an apology for the mistake. (S. P. R. Report, p. 275.)
In October, then, Colonel Olcott, who was just returnthe “judge ’ng to India, got a letter from a Mr. Abbott Clarkj
is not
of Orange County, California, a gentleman who was
the forger” under no sort of suspicion of having anything to do
missive.
with Mahatmas.
And in this, if you please, there
had somehow found its way into the envelope a slip of
paper bearing a message in the M script, with signature, but with seal
too blurred'io distinguish, in facsimile as follows :—
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51
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ISIS VERY MUCH UNVEILED.
seal, apparently by being rubbed with the finger. Across a margin of
the paper is the following postscript, in the black carbon usually
devoted to the seal impression :—
Rather cryptic, this missive ; but the meaning seems to be this.
The Mahatma has to explain to the suspicious Colonel several
things : why the missives habitually come in letters from Mr. Judge ;
why, nevertheless, Mr. Judge knows nothing of them ; why he, the Master,
has used a bogus seal which bungles his own cryptograph; and, above all,
why the impressions of that seal have been illegible ever since an
exposure of it was threatened. He hints, accordingly, that he “uses”
Mr. Judge to assist in some undefined psychic way in the precipitation
process ; but Judge’s part in this is unconscious—it must be “ when he
does not know.” Also, the thing precipitated “fades out often”—and
plump on the word comes an illustration.
In saying that “Judge did not write Annie” (z>., Mrs. Besant,
for this spirit is a familiar one), the Master is misinformed, as
we have seen. Mr. Judge had just “written Annie,” enclosing the
Master’s own warning against Colonel Olcott. Lastly, the remark
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SY.
about “ facit per alium ” (the Mahatma can use a tag of lawyers’ Daem
on occasion) seems to mean that when Colonel Olcott had the “flap
doodle ” seal made he was unconsciously prompted by _ the Master
himself, who had now adopted it, overlooking the blunder in engraving.
The prescience which foresaw that the “ precipitation ” would give out
in just this letter is no less remarkable than that which provided for an
unexpressed doubt by the assurance, “ No, it is not pencil.
But for Colonel Olcott the gem of this letter was none of these.
It was the reference to the Panjab seal as the “ Lahore brass.”
All that Mr. Judge knew, as we have seen, was that the seal
was made at a “certain city in the Panjab.”
Mr. Judge’s
Mahatma assumes that this city was the capital of the province. It
was a likely guess—a good shot, if such a phrase may be used of the
mental processes of a Tibetan sage—and one calculated to end the
Colonel’s doubts—if correct. But that is just what it was not. The
city at which the Colonel got the seal was quite another city j so the
Mahatma, though he hints that he psychically presided over the
purchase, does not even know where that purchase took place !
The result of this unlucky lapse of memory on the part of the
Master was that the missive made bad worse. Despite the distance
of California, where Mr. Clark’s envelope was posted, from New York,
and the offices of Mr. William Q. Judge, the Colonel suspected Mr.
Judge’s hand in it. He wrote to Mr. Clark, and discovered that
Judge had spent two days in Orange County at the very date when the
Master availed himself of Mr. Clark’s envelope. Thereupon the
Colonel formed his own ideas as to how the Master had “ used ” his
favourite chela on that occasion.
Can we wonder that the Master was incensed by
the “ poison- this incorrigible scepticism—a spirit, as the Colonel
threat”
himself had formerly taught, and as the event was to
missive.
prove but too surely—fatal to Theosophy ?
Persuasion failing, the Master resorted to threats 1
In January, 1892, the Colonel received an amicable letter from
Mr. Judge, reproaching him for not writing. On opening it, he found
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written along the margin of the first page the following laconic message
in Mahatma script (signed, but again no seal: much reduced here) :—
“Him ” presumably means Judge. The bearing of the threat will be
intelligible to readers of the last Chapter. Certain rumours irom
Avenue-road made it intelligible also to Colonel Olcott. The Master
of Wisdom, the unapproachable sage of the Himalayas, He-Who-MustBe-Obeyed by Mrs. Besant and the whole Theos jphical Society, had
thrown off the mask of benignity. Here he was plainly adopting, as a
weapon against his own unlucky president, that impossible accusation
which repiesents the lowest point of ethical squalor yet touched, in
this story at any rate, by Theosophic “brotherhood”! This was
miching Mallecho, thought the Colonel ; it meant mischief with a,
vengeance. The voice was the voice of the Mahatma, but again the
Colonel thought it the hand of Judge. So he wrote with some
natural heat to ask that gentleman what he meant by his “ base
insinuation.”
Only to receive, however, the blandly innocent reply:—
I have puzzled my head over your reference to “ poison,” as if in one of
mine ; as I never referred to it I cannot catch on, and have given it up in
despair.
After this the Colonel seems to have given the Mahatma up in
despair, too. But the Mahatma, on his part, was busily pushing up a
column to take the Colonel in the flank, and bring this story to a
crisis.
Secure in the support of Mrs. Besant, he was to make the
pusillanimous president resign his office, and to enthrone William Q.
Judge in his place !
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CHAPTER
55
XI.
MRS. BESANT’S COUP DE MAIN.
“ I did my utmost to prevent a public Committee of Enquiry of an
official character.”—Mrs. Besant at T. S. Convention, July 12, 1894.
How even a “ psychologised baby ” like Colonel Olcott came to
succumb to a movement for ousting him from office, backed by such
methods as we have examined, is to me a mystery. No doubt he
had his own reasons for avoiding a contest in disclosures with his
old colleague Mr. Judge, who knows so much about Theosophy ever
since the days of its foundation. At any rate, succumb he did. On
receiving an emissary from Avenue-road, early in 1892, he threw up the
cards in the unequal game with the Mahatma, and formally resigned his
presidency.
Then was seen a touching sight. Cæsar pushed away the crown.
Mr. Judge was loth to succeed. Who could doubt it? Why, he got
a “ message ” countermanding the resignation, and forwarded it to the
Colonel (March, 1892), just too late to be acted on before the
American Convention in April, which, with decent reluctance,
acclaimed Mr. Judge for the vacant office.
But now came a hitch. Colonel Olcott took the anti-resignation
message au grand sérieux. He forgot all his doubts about Mr. Judges
Mahatma missives in his simple joy at the tenor of this last one.
It was but a typed copy which Mr. Judge sent him. Never mind,
it was a declaration of peace ; and if ever there was a man- of
peace it is the Colonel, despite his American brevet. He could not
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disobey the Master ; he did withdraw his resignation. Such was his
answer to Mr. Judge.
Mr. Judge expressed his delight. But in absence of mind—
possibly excess of joy—he quite forgot to mention either the Master’s
message or the Colonel’s consent at Avenue-road when, in the
following July, the time came to make his succession to the Colonel’s
office definite.
The result was that Mr. Judge was then and there elected president
for life. Some voices were for a term; but Mrs. Besant arose
in her eloquence and “ swept up the floor’* (in the phrase of
one Theosophic enthusiast), and the election was “ for life.”
Alas ! Contracts entered into for that period are notoriously apt to
give out at an earlier date.
Perhaps one thing which explains the Colonel’s small show of fight
is the fact 'that he was to be consoled with an “ Olcott Pension
Fund.” Unhappily the treasurer defalcated some eight or nine thou
sand rupees, and then committed suicide. Ill-luck seemed to dog the
vanquished president.
But now came the turn of the tide.
On the announcement of Judge’s election, Colonel Olcott indig
nantly wrote to Avenue-road to point out that there was no vacancy.
And he printed in the Theosophist the Master’s message which had led
him to withdraw his resignation.
He did more. The Theosophist, the official journal of the Indian
section, has come to be Colonel Olcott’s private property, just as
Lucifer is Mrs. Besant’s, and The Fath Mr. William Q. Judge’s—an
illustration of the odd mixture of private and official capacities in this
society. And now the Colonel plucked up heart to publish in his
paper the first note publicly heard of criticism—yes, actual criticism—
of Mr. Judge s Mahatma.
Privately, there had -been some troubled bleatings heard already
among some of the less docile of the Theosophic sheep.
Mr. Judge
had been obliged to toke up the cudgels for the merits of some of his
Mahatma missives as philosophic compositions. I find him claiming
(in the true oracular spirit) that: —
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57
A very truism, when uttered by a Mahatma, has a deeper
meaning for which the student must seek, but which he will lose if he stops
to criticise and weigh the words in mere ordinary scales.
A sentiment printed with approbation in Mrs. Besant’s paper.
Again, he is parrying inquisitive questions about the Master’s seal.
He “ does not know ” what they mean. An inquirer sends him a
sample letter with a good impression to look at—one which had come
from Mr. Judge himself, I presume—and gets it back with the
impression rubbed out (“it fades out often,” as we have seen
above), and the puzzled remark from Mr. Judge, “Where is your
seal ? I don’t see one.” Finally, pressed, Mr. Judge declares that
“ Whether He ” (the Master) “ has a seal, or uses one, is something
■on which I am ignorant.”
It was on this statement—which involves a total lapse of memory
on Mr. Judge’s part of events narrated in Chapter V.—that he was
challenged in the Theosophist of April, 1893, in an article signed by
Messrs. W. R. Old and S. V. Edge, both T.S. offic als (secretaries,
Indian section). The article is hardly what would be called trenchant
by non-Theosophical standards. But it just pointed out that little
discrepancy in a polite foot-note ; and that was enough.
If there is one thing more than another which is deemed to be bad
form in circles Theosophical, it is to corner a Theosophist on a
definite matter of fact. Anything undraped in verbiage is considered
nude, even to indecency. The voice of questioning has to be stifled
at once.
By virtue of their joint position as Outer Heads of the Esoteric
section, to which they were elected under warrant of the very seal in
question, Mrs. Besant and Mr. Judge promptly “suspended” Messrs.
Old and Edge from their Esoteric membership.
*****
In December, Mrs. Besant went to India. She had, therefore,
thrown over the Mahatma’s warning. But she had not thrown over
the Mahatma—not a bit.
She declared that nothing on earth
would induce her to give up believing that the missives were indeed
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** precipitated” by Mahatma M, unless Mahatma M in person appeared
and repudiated them. If a person who had been told that the Man in
the Moon daily “ precipitated ” the Times leading articles should decline
to be convinced of the contrary till he heard it from the lips of the
Man in the Moon himself he would probably be “ of the same opinion
still ” for some considerable time.
In India, Mrs. Besant suddenly changed her mind. Had the
Master indeed appeared and fulfilled her conditions ?
She
does not say so. Yet it can scarcely have been on any mere,
dull ground of fact and argument.
She was presented with a set
of depositions establishing all of the substantial facts of this narra
tive, given under the names of those personally cognisant of them, with
Colonel Olcott at their head, and summed up in the form of certain
definite charges against William Q. Judge.
But many of these facts
she already knew herself, as well as anybody, and made naught of.
What did work the miracle, then ?—As far as I can make out, it
was this. Mrs. Besant sat at the feet of G. N. Chakravati. And
G. N. Chakravati just mentioned that he did not believe in Judge.
This is the Hindu gentleman who was sent to represent the
Theosophical Society at the Chicago Parliament of Religions, at an
expense of £500.
This is the teacher who has made
“ Annabai ” so far a Hindu that she now protests against harsh
mention even of the child-widow horrors, the 12,000 temple
prostitutes of Madras, and the other religious indecencies of
Hinduism. As Mr. Bradlaugh led Mrs. Besant from the Church to
Materialism, as Mr. Herbert Burrows went hand-in-hand with her from
Materialism to Madame Blavatsky, as Judge made her believe in
Judge, so she could only abandon Judge with the aid of G. N.
Chakravati.
Whatever the explanation, the fact remains that,
blessed by this worthy pundit, the case formulated against Mr. Judge,
became strong—convincing—irresistible. Mrs. Besant’s mind blossomed
in a day into the full-blown view that she had been deluded, that Judge
had himself written the missives to which she had pinned her faithwritten them all with his own hand.
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59
Appalling bathos !—and one which an Enquiry must needs result in
publishing to all the world. Yet an enquiry there must be. The Indian
section was threatening to secede from the society if Mr. Judge s pre
sidency were confirmed with the scandal unsifted.
Judge himself,
offered the alternative by cablegram of resigning all his offices quietly or
lacing a “ full publication of the facts,” replied in a defiant sense which
showed his conviction that there were others to whom “ full publica
tion of the facts ” (which it was easy to threaten, but which it has been
left for an outsider to carry out) would be more ungrateful even than
to himself. What was Mrs. Besant to do ?
A happy thought struck her. She offered to adopt the charges,
turn prosecutor, and conduct the case against Mr. Judge herself.
The signatories of the evidence were delighted—especially Colonel
Olcott, who got behind Mrs. Besant now with the same alacrity as
previously behind Messrs. Old and Edge.
By this bold, yet simple stroke, the evidence, documents, and
whole control of the case passed into Mrs. Besant’s hands, where they,
as she fondly hopes, or hoped, now remain.
Not altogether 1
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■ ."¡..J
P
...
•
CHAPTER XII.
A MEETING OF THE (THEOSOPHICAL) PICKWICK CLUB.
The Chairman felt it his imperative duty to demand of the hon.
gentleman whether he had used the expression “ a humbug ” in a common
sense ?
Mr. Blotton had no hesitation in saying that he had not—he had used
the word in its Pickwickian sense. (Hear, hear.) He was bound to acknow
ledge that personally he entertained the highest esteem for the hon. gentle
man ; he had merely considered him a humbug in a Pickwickian point of
view.
Mr. Pickwick felt much gratified by the candid explanation of his hon.
friend. He begged it to be at once understood that his own observations had
been merely intended to bear a Pickwickian construction. (Cheers.)—The
Pickwick Papers,
We have now seen how, step by step, as by a resistless nemesis
the rival Theosophical leaders were led on to bring their quarrel to
that which neither of them had much stomach for—an inquiry into
evidence. Bluff meeting bluff, the thing got as far as the summoning
from three continents of a Committee of Investigation representing
both parties. “ Investigating ” hidden forces in nature, as we saw in
Chapter II., is one of the professed “Objects” of the Theosophical
Society. The' present chapter is to show what the Theosophical idea
of investigating is like.
There lies before me a pamphlet, reprinted from Lucifer of
August last, which bears the facetious title. “AN INQUIRY Into
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6i
Certain Charges against the Vice-President, Held in London, July
1894.” Anybody is at liberty to get this publication and make
what head or tail of it he can.
The plain matter of fact which lay behind
vv'G'0M
the proceedings in question was this. Mrs.
Besant and Colonel Olcott had given away
J*
A _ \ their friends and compromised with Judge on
i fi VS/ 1 x Ae terms that he should give Olcott back his
fi
presidency, Judge’s election thereto being
declared null and void, while they on their part
should suppress the evidence which the Judicial
badge of the T.s.
Committee had been summoned to report on.
Mr. Judge had protested in a vehement circular, when first called
on by the President to appear before the committee, against one of his
accusers proposing to preside at his trial. There was reason in the
objection at the time.
He could not foresee that the proceedings
would take the form of the presiding judge and the counsel for the
prosecution combining to prevent the case from going to the jury.
This being the plain English of the affair, let us now see how it
reads translated into what I may call Theosophistry.
The first part of the pamphlet consists of the Judicial Committee's
minutes. Of this, six-sevenths is devoted to an “Address or the
President-Founder ” proving that they ought to do nothing. The
remaining page is devoted to doing it.
The “ charges of misconduct preferred by Mrs. Besant against the
vice-president ” are nowhere formally stated at all. They are inci
dentally summarised by the president as follows :—
“ That he practised deception in sending false messages, orders,
and letters, as if sent and written by ‘ Masters.’ . . . That he was
untruthful in various other instances enumerated.”
The bulk of the address is occupied in discussing with great
solemnity various reasons alleged by Mr. Judge why these charges
should not be gone into by the committee.
One or two of these, such as the vice-president’s discovery that . he
had never been really vice-presid.nt at all, and the contention that, which-
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«ver way the decision went, it must “ offend the religious feelings ” of
some member or another, and that this was against the rules of the
society—these were, after the due amount of pomposity, declared
against by the president.
But there were two other pleas of such irresistible force and weight
that the president found himself convinced by them “ that this inquiry
must go no further.” Stripped of prolix circumlocutions, these may
be put as an alternative, thus:—
Either the Mahatma missives are genuine or they are fabricated.
(a) If found to be genuine, that implies the affirmation of the
existence of Mahatmas as a Theosophic dogma, and the abandonment
..of the society’s precious “ neutrality.” Which is unconstitutional.
(R) If found to be bogus missives produced by the vice-president,
..then it is obvious that he must have done it in his private capacity;
the production of bogus documents being no part of his official duties.
Therefore he cannot be tried for it by an official tribunal.
Could anything be more delicious than this dilemma? It is
.worthy of a trial scene in Gilbertian comic opera.
Mrs. Besant, like the president, was “ convinced that the point was
.rightly taken.” There was nothing more to be said.
The Judicial Committee “ resolved ” in the same sense, without any
inconvenient discussion, and forthwith committed hara-kiri with the
complaisance of a Chinese nobleman. Not only had they not investi
gated the case, but, as far as I can make out, they had not even heard
what it was, except in the most abstract of summaries. Having gravely
adjusted the bandage over each other’s eyes, they separated with a good
-conscience. For many of them—worthy investigators !—I believe I am
-the first to remove the bandage, and set them blinking at the truth.
From (a) it follows, as the president pointed out en passant in the
course of his Address, that every Theosophist is in future free to
circulate Mahatma messages, but no Theosophist to test their
genuineness.
From (¿) it equally follows that no officer of the society is in
future responsible to it for any misdeed whatever, since such misdeed
cannot well be among his official duties.
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*
*
*
•
63
•
Perhaps it is not very surprising that the result of the Judicial
Committee, which had been gathered to its task from the ends of the
earth, was received with disgust by the generality of members then met
in London for one of their interminable conventions. A demand was even
heard for a private jury of honour • or, failing that, for publication of
the case for both sides, the course to which one side, as we saw, had
affected to pledge itself. Mr. Judge found himself unable to refuse
his assent to the jury proposal. Again , Mrs. Besant dashed in and
triumphed in the sacred cause of obscurantism. . At the third session
of the convention she announced that she and Mr. Judge had agreed
upon a couple of statements representing their different points of view,
and proposed that the convention should hear these, accept them, and
let the matter drop. These two statements compose the second part
of the pamphlet; and they are at least as bewildering as the first.
“We come to you, our brothers, to tell you what is in our hearts,”
Mrs. Besant read out. Her endeavour to “ tell ” fills four pages. The
following are the sentences which gyrate least round the point:—
I do not charge, and have not charged, Mr. Judge with forgery in the
ordinary sense of the term, but with giving a misleading form to messages
received psychically from the Master in various ways. . . . Personally I hold
that this method is illegitimate. . . I believe that Mr. Judge wrote with his own
hand, consciously or automatically I do not know, in the script adopted as that
of the Master, messages which he received from the Master, or from
chelas j and I know that in my own case I believed that the messages he
gave me in the well-known script were messages directly precipitated or
directly written by the Master.
When I publicly said that I had
received, after H. P. Blavatsky’s death, letters in the writing that H. P.
Blavatsky had been accused of forging, I referred to letters given to me
by Mr. Judge, and as they were in the well-known script I never dreamt of
challenging their source. I know now that they were not written or preci
pitated by the Master, and that they were done by Mr. Judge ; but I also
believe that the gist of these messages was psychically received, and that
Mr. Judge’s error lay in giving them to mein a script written by himself and
not saying so. . . . Having been myself mistaken, I in turn misled the
public.
The rest of Mrs. Besant’s statement is easily summarised. Part is
devoted to minimising the importance of the question whether Mr.
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Judge wrote? or the Mahatma precipitated, the letters, by remarking
that after all it did not matter so very much, as Mahatmas sometimes
¡communicate (like spiritualist “ controls ”) by allowing ordinary people
to write for them. “ It is important,” quoth Mrs. Besant, • naively,.
“ that the small part generally played by Masters in these phenomena
should -be understood ”—a remark with which the present writer
quite agrees, and a main object of the present narrative. But
|n the sense in which Mrs. Besant meant it, it was not very relevant to an
inquiry entirely dealing with letters passed off as having been precipi
tated, and precipitated without Mr. Judge’s knowledge, by the Mahatma
himself.
Beyond this, Mrs. Besant’s statement consists about equally
of blame directed at the untheosophical “vindictiveness” of Mr. Judge’s
accusers in pressing an inquiry “ painful ” to Mr. Judge, and of lauda
tory tributes to the character and Theosophical activity of Mr. Judge
himself.
Down Mrs. Besant sat, and up rose Mr. Judge, and read his state
ment. It contained the following sentences :—
I repeat my denial of the said rumoured charges of forging the said
names and handwritings of the Mahatmas, or of misusing the same. . . .
I admit that I have received and delivered messages from the
Mahatmas . . . they were obtained through me, but as to how
they were obtained or produced I cannot state. . . . My own
methods may disagree from the views of others. ... I willingly say
that which I never denied, that I am a human being, full of error, liable to
mistake, not infallible, but just the same as any other human being like to
myself, or of the class of human beings to which I belong. And I freely,
fully, and sincerely forgive anyone who may be thought to have injured or
tried to injure me.
Now, so far as these sentences were an answer at all to such charges
as Mrs. Besant’s statement had allowed itself to convey, they were cer
tainly a flat contradiction. But that point was naturally overlooked by
eyes moist from the affecting “ forgiveness ” of Mr. Judge’s peroration,
and his very handsome, if somewhat tautologousjy expressed, admis
sion that he was only a “ human being.” Without a word more, nemine
contradicente^ it was
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65
Resolved : that this meeting accepts with pleasure the adjustment arrived
at by Annie Besant and William Q. Judge as a final settlement of matters
pending hitherto between them as prosecutor and defendant, with a hope
that it may be thus buried and forgotten, and—
Resolved : that we will join hands with them to further the cause of
genuine brotherhood in which we all believe.
These resolutions were proposed by the Mr. Keightley (M.A.
Cant.) whose name has occurred so often in our story among the bam
boozled ones, and seconded by Dr. Buck, one of the nominees from
Mr. Judge's section to the abortive committee.
And there ends the Pamphlet—and the “ Enquiry.” It has since
appeared that the ‘‘joining of hands ” between Mrs. Besant and Mr.
Tudge was for footlight purposes only ; for no sooner was the
curtain rung down than the two joint Outer Heads found they could
no longer work together, and settled the matter by splitting
the Esoteric section into independent dominions, Mr. Judge taking
America, and Mrs. Besant Europe—to which she has since added
India.
The result is one on which Mr. William Q. Judge must be con
gratulated. He retains all his offices as head of his lodge, of his
section, and of the American Esoteric section ; retains his vice
presidency of the whole society ; retains the status of heir-presumptive,
at least, to the presidency ; retains, also, I suppose, either he or his
Mahatma, the brass “ flap-doodle,” to say nothing of the Blavatsky
relic, with full freedom to continue using the same as heretofore.
In a word, the Theosophical Society has chosen to stand or fall
with its vice-president.
*****
Theosophy is » -religion as well as a philosophy, and the T.S.
masquerades as in some sort a Church. Imagine the situation, then,
in any other religious denomination. Suppose that the Archbishop
of Canterbury were to put forth missives which he alleged to have
fluttered down direct from St. Augustine in heaven ; and suppose,
after Convocation had governed the Church for years in conformity with
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directions so received, the Archbishop of York were to declare at a
Church Congress his belief that his esteemed brother, whose services to
the Church were beyond all praise, had written the missives himself, an
expedient “ which I personally hold to be illegitimate,” but into the
details of which he begged the Congress not to pry : suppose, then,
that the Archbishop of Canterbury on his part declared himself, like
Mr. Pickwick, “ much gratified with the candid explanation of his hon.
riend,” that he “ merely considered him a humbug in a Pickwickian
point of view”—supposing all this, can you imagine the Church
Congress rising as one man to “bury” the dispute, and “join bands”
with the embracing disputants ?
■
Probably not.
But then, as Mrs. Besant remarked, the
“ standards of the world ” are “ lower ” than those of the Theosophical
Society—and of the “Pickwick Club.”
Nevertheless, I must ask leave to break in on the harmonious
scene with a few troublesome questions.
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CHAPTER
XIII.
QUESTIONS AND CHALLENGES.
“ Hath he said anything ? ’’
“He hath, my lord ; but, be you well assured,
No more than he’ll unswear.”—“ Othello.”
“ Next in importance, or perhaps equal in value, to Devotion, is
Truth.”—Circular on “ Occultism and Truth,” signed by H. S. Olcott,
Annie Besant, B. Keightley, &c., July, 1894.
;
In my first chapter I set out certain conclusions. In succeeding
•chapters I have given the facts on which my conclusions were based.
I now assert that the evidence for those facts, be it good or bad, is
•that of the Theosophical leaders themselves, written and signed as the
ease against the Vice-President, and adopted by Mrs. Besant as true. If
it be not true, then Colonel Olcott, Mr. B. Keightley, Mr. W. R. Old, and
the other official witnesses must be guilty of a conspiracy, as I said at
The outset, “even more discreditable to the personnel of the society.” It
is not I who accuse Mr. Judge. It is Mr. Judge and his colleagues
who accuse each other.
The rank-and-file of the Theosophists have
paid their money ; they may now take their choice.
The fact is, before Mrs. Besant got hold of the evidence, at least
one set of complete and duly witnessed copies had been made,
together with facsimiles of the documents. It is these which lately
fell into my hands, under circumstances which left me free to take,
as I do take, the moral and legal responsibility of that publication
which the president first promised and afterwards shirked.
*
*
*
*
*
In regard to Mr. William Q. Judge, vice-president, I do
not feel called on to labour any theory of my own as to
e
2
�68
ISIS VERY MUCH UNVEILED.
that „ gentleman’s character and conduct.
As the Society for
Psychical Research long ago remarked, the precise line between rogue
and dupe in the Theosophical Society has never been easy to draw.
On any view of Mr. Judge I have at least as much respect lor him as
for his virtuously vacillating superior, whose mind seems to have been
made up for him from one stage to another by whatever party
happened to be at the moment nearest and most peremptory. With
the facts of the preceding narrative before him, the reader can form his
own opinion about both officials.
Equally unable am I to state what Mr. Judge’s own version of Mr.
Judge’s acts may be. I have read and re-read his “statement ” at the
“ Enquiry,” and his circular issued just previously. In these I have
groped—faint, yet pursuing—among the mazes of that Theosophical
verbiage which always seems to be coming to the point; but
for me at least it has never quite got there. Where the denials
are most explicit, the thing denied is vaguest; where admission is most
candid, the thing admitted is least relevant to the issue. Mr. Judge
admits, for instance, that he is a “fallible human being”; he denies
that he has “ forged.” I, for one, should never dream of disputing
either position. The verb, to forge, definitely connotes in English the
imitation of the signature of a person who really exists, and who has
also an existent banking account. The worst I should dream of
imputing to Mr. Judge in this connexion is the imitation of someone
else’s imitation of the feigned signature of somebody who never existed.
Mr. judge must see that between the mere human fallibility
to which he confesses, and the felony of which no one has■accused him, it does not need a sensitive ear to distin
guish whole octaves of intervening notes. Thanks to Mrs. Besant,
he has not yet been obliged to locate himself at any one
point of the gamut. But, for all I know, he may now come forward
and twit his associates with deficient humour for not seeing that the
whole thing was just a rollicking hoax.
Throwing off the
role of an interpreter of Tibet, he may appear as William
Q. Judge, the American Humorist. He might fairly claim that
many have performed under a like title much less divertingly. He
�ISIS VERY MUCH UR VEILED.
69
«light say that the joke was so obvious that it never struck
him his colleagues would take it seriously; that their evident
■determination not to spoil sport was an invitation no joker could
have resisted; and that he only kept it up so long for the
fun of seeing, through a graduated scale of absurdity, how much they
really would stand. Of course, to carry through a big practical joke one
may be excused a few taradiddles, to which the moralist might apply a
Harsher name. No doubt some might question the taste of making a
friend’s funeral the starting-point of even the most innocent mauvatse
fiiaUanterie. But American humour has never spared the cemetery.
*****
From my own position, then, and Mr. Judge’s position, I now pass
to Mrs. Besant’s. This is interesting from its bearing on the curious
psychological puzzle offered by Mrs. Besant’s own mind, to the study
of which she herself continually invites the public. Let us accept
the invitation for a moment.
I take Mrs. Besant’s statement at the so-called “Enquiry,” that she
believed now that Judge wrote with his own hand the missives which
.he had induced her, and she had induced the public, to regard as precip tations from Tibet of the kind which “some people would call
miraculous.”
Apparently Mrs. Besant considers that this avowal sufficed to clear
her honour towards her colleagues and the public whom she had
“ misled.” To me it appears admirably calculated to mislead them
again. Remember, even those whom Mrs. Besant was addressing—
much more the outside public—were ignorant of the facts. Mrs.
.Besant had taken good care of that.
They did not know, as the reader does, the circumstances which
surrounded these various missives : The “ Master Agrees ” missive, the
Telegram missive, the Cabinet missive, the “ Note the Seal,” the
“Judge’s Plan is Right,” the “Judge is the Friend,” the Envelope
Trick, the “ Withold,” the “ Master will Provide,” the Bank-note,
the Inner Group, the “ Grave Danger Olcott,” the “ Judge is not. the
Eorger,” the “Follow Judge and Stick,” and the Poison Threat
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ISIS VERY MUCH UNVEILED.
missive—as I have severally named them.
Referring to those circumstances, as the reader now knows them,
I ask of what did and does Mrs. Besant mean to convict Mr. Judge ?
If Judge “ wrote with his own hand ” the answers got from' the
Cabinet oracle (May 23, 1891), did he also use sleight-of-hand or
some similar artifice to make her accept the answers as precipitated in
a sealed envelope in a closed drawer ?
If Judge “wrote,” &c., the slip “Judge’s plan is right,” the sudden
appearance of which among Mrs. Besant’s papers made her and him
joint officials on May 27, 1891—did he also place it among those
papers on purpose to be so discovered ?
If Judge “ wrote ” &c., Mrs. Besant’s message of July 12, 1891,
which was across the inside flaps of a closed envelope—did he alsoinsert the writing by the trick described in the chapter which I entitled“ Every Man his Own Mahatma ” ?
If Judge “wrote,” &c., all the various letters, notes, and endorse
ments to which the “ Mahatma’s ” signature and seal were attached,
missives backing Judge’s own views, raising Judge’s own Theosophical
status, and bluffing other “servants” of that “Master,” to whom
he and they cannot allude without capital letters—did he also
“ with his own hand ” take and affix the seal which he has persistently
denied having ever set eyes on ?
If Mrs. Besant did not mean all this, and much more which hangs
by the same logic, thei her Statement grossly calumniated Mr. Judge
to the few who knew the tenor of the case against him.
If she did mean it, then her Statement completely hoodwinked her
audience and the public.
For will anybody assert that this, which has just been outlined, or
anything like it, was the picture naturally called up by Mrs. Besant’s care
fully worded description of “Mr. Judge’s error” as the negative one of
“not mentioning” certain circumstances, her suggestion that personal
opinions might reasonably differ on the “legitimacy ” of his methods,,
her laudatory allusions to his general character and Theosophic services,
her public sanction of a statement on his part which on this theory
�ISIS VERY MUCH UR VEILED.
must have been utterly, misleading, her eager lead in the attempt to
cloak up for ever the Great Mahatma Hoax, and to shield the hoaxer?
But there is another point. Mrs. Besant professes still to cling to
the belief that the Mahatmas had something to do with the letters.
Mr. Judge wrote them, she says, but what he wrote he had first
“ received psychically from the Master.”
(
Faith, fanatic faith, once wedded fast
To some dear falsehood, hugs it to the last.
Nobody can prove that those missives, or, for that matter, these
articles, or Shakespeare’s plays, were not due to the Master’s
“ psychical ” authorship. Mr. Judge and Mrs. Besant are both quite
free to say so. But again I must point out to Mrs. Besant the logical
inferences from her position. In the attempt to hold on to one spar
in the general wreck, she just says enough to inculpate the Mahatma,
and not enough to exculpate Mr. Judge.
For, to apply theory once more to concrete fact: Does Mrs. Besant'
attribute to the Mahatma the preposterous insinuations against Colonel
Olcott ? And does she mean that the Mahatma made these insinua
tions and various direct false statements in order to co-operate with
Mr. Judge in shielding from discovery a prolonged use of a bogus
imitation of the Mahatma’s own seal and signature ?
'
■
In this case, we are entitled to challenge Mrs. Besant to say whether
she herself now believes that the insinuations against Colonel Olcott
were justified. If yes, then I can only leave her to settle that matter
with the Colonel. If no, then what becomes of the supernal wisdom,
and lofty character of “Those Who to some of us are most sacred ”?
Must it not be confessed that They have made uncommon fools of
Themselves ?—not to give a stronger name to the extremely shady
methods of which Tibetan diplomacy is thus found guilty.
The public will await satisfactory answers to these questions. It
will not, I hope, for a moment suspect Mrs. Besant of conscious
fraud, or of sord’d motives.
I most certainly do not. With some
of-the lesser fry, who would be bankrupt in every sense if
Theosophy failed them, the consideration of pleasant board and'
�72
ISIS VERY MUCH UNVEILED.
lodging at other people’s expense may be a governing one. With
Mrs. .Besant, who brings far more to the organisation in the shape of
gate-money, no doubt, than she ever condescends to accept from it, the
motives are subtler. Had she boldly cut herself free from the rottenness
at the core of the rheosophic movement as soon as it was shown to
her, she might have saved her reputation for straightforwardness, if not
for intelligence.
In choosing instead the equivocal policy of hushing
up a scandal at all costs, she doubtless convinced herself that she was
acting only for the ends of edification and the good of her church.
That is the old, old story of priestcraft, and Mrs. Besant has been
playing the high priestess now for three years. But were there not also
some more personal motives at work ? There is one thing which even
the most candid hate to confess—and that is, that they have
been thoroughly bamboozled.
It does not improve matters
when they have themselves helped in their own bamboozlement.
To confess how recklessly inaccurate were her statements about “the
Same handwriting,” the “semi-miraculous precipitation,” the absolute
assurance of her own senses, and so forth; to let the public see
for itself the childish twaddle which she accepted, and helped to force
upon others, as profound and oracu’ar : all this would have been a sad
come-down from the Delphic tripod. I do not wonder the poor lady
shrank from it. I do wonder that Mrs. Besant cared to evade it at the
expense of a sort of confidence-trick. To this has come the woman
whom we once thought, whatever her other faults, at least fearless and
open—the woman whose epitaph, so she tells us, is to be—
She Sought To Follow Truth!
Lastly, a few words to the rank-and-file of the Theosophical
Society, a large proportion of whom are now gathering open-mouthed
at. Adyar. In Madame Blavatsky few of the better-informed of
the flock nowadays affect to believe—except in public. They cling to
her gifts, perhaps ; they have thrown over her morals.
For fresh
evidence has been coming to light, ever since that strange woman died,
as to the tricks to which she condescended, and encouraged her chelas
to condescend; and poor Colonel Olcott, though he continues to work
�ISIS VERY MUCH UNVEILED.
73
the old gold-mine in print, has been driven even there, to
enunciate the theory that Madame Blavatsky herself was really killed
at the battle of Mentana, and her body thereafter occupied by seven
distinct spirits who, of course, are not responsible for contradicting
each other. Til! May, 1891, Madame was the principal witness to
the objective existence and attributes o Mahatmas. Since that date,
the principal witness is William Q. Judge. Soon the faithful at Adj ar
will be filing into the Occult Room to gaze through peep-holes at
the two August Portraits, illuminated and set off by all the artifices
associated here with exhibitions by M. Jan van Beers. Will they dare,
any of them, to ask their officials plainly what evidence they can now
offer that either of the subjects of those fancy portraits ever existed ?
And if on this and other questions suggested by these chapters,
Mrs. Besant, President Olcott, and Vice-President Judge do not
succeed in satisfying their followers------ what next? No doubt
each member of the trinity will sit secure in his or her autocracy
in his or her own continent, owning there, as I understand, the official
organ and the publishing plant which the society as a whole
has built up into prosperity. Yet something, surely, may be done by
these who do not care to remain unwilling parties to the Great
Mahatma Hoax, to recover their own self-respect, if not to save the
Theosophical Society.
It is or them to decide whether the society, on its non-fraudulent
side, is worth saving. It may be a kind of university extension
for the popularising of Eastern philosophies.
Or it may be, as
some rather think, a mere smattering of catch-words out of cribs
for the use of Mutual Mystification clubs, tending to a certain
indigestion in the mental processes and a flatulent style of
English composition. In either case there is no reason why
the organisation should revolve about a vortex of tomfoolery and
legerdemain into which honest members are apt to be sucked before
they realise its true nature.
�74
ASTS
VERY MUCH UNVEILED.
PART
“THE
VOICE
LETTERS
OF
II.
THE
SILENCE.”
ON VARIOUS SIDES
THEOSOPHISTS.
FROM
:
■ Thè foregoing chapters appeared in the Westminster Gazette, of
October 29th, and nine succeeding issues. They attracted widenotice and comment, and were the subject of allusion in a large parti
of the London and provincial press. In accordance with their usual,
custom, the official Theosophists in England are said to have cabled
to their leaders abroad to know, what line they should take ; but, if ;
so, they do not appear to have got any clear answer.
A mass of correspondence was addressed to the WestminsterGazette, and to the author of the articles, some of it from officials,
most of it from private members ; some admitting that “ much is,
and all may be true,” others denying everything—in general terms ;
some throwing over the Vice-President, others lauding him as a ’
model of Theosophic rectitude; some rejoicing (“ in confidence”)'
at the “ cleaning-out of this Augean stable of trickery,” others-,
declaring that, proved or disproved, the charges do not matter a pin. '
In regard to the repeated accusations that the assailant of the
society “ waited ” till its three Theosophic chiefs were at a distance
before challenging them on their “Enquiry,” it was pointed out
that they gave nobody any chance to wait, the official Report of the'
Enquiry being sent round almost on the very day that Mrs. Besant
sailed for Australia.
The following is a representative selection from the letters :—
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75
I.—LETTERS FROM OFFICIALS.
FROM THE EUROPEAN SECRETARY: “DESERVING OP' NO
ANSWER.”
Sir—I have forwarded the copies of your paper containing the series
of articles entitled “Isis Very Much Unveiled” to my friends Colonel
Olcott, Mrs. Besant, and Mr. Judge, who are respectively at their posts and
carrying out their engagements in India, Australia, and the United States
of America.
The mass of insinuations and misrepresentations with which these articles
abound is deserving of no answer.
I enclose you a copy of the Enquiry held in July last, to which the full
statements of Mrs. Besant and Mr. Judge are appended. This was months
ago issued to every member of the Theosophical Society and published in
full in our magazines. You can thus allow your readers to form their own
opinion, instead of relying on the insinuations of your contributor, if you
choose to do so.
The writer of the articles has several times made reference to a private
body of students, and endeavoured to involve it in his attack. The infoimant
of your contributor knows that he can with impunity make any allegation he
likes against that body, and that, although it is in a position to give, and has
already given to its own members, a denial to his allegations with regard to
its council, it must, nevertheless, remain silent in public because of obliga
tions of honour.
-- For the rest, of the truth or falsity of the most serious allegations I am
without any knowledge, and do not propose to enter the arena of mere
opinion.
But of this I am confident—that my friends Colonel Olcott, Mrs. Besant,
and Mr. Judge, together with the best part of the Theosophical Society, are
not only ready and glad to face any obloquy in upholding their individual
ideals, but also that they are also willing to sacrifice everything for the cause
they hold so dear, except the privilege of working heart and soul for its final
triumph.—I am, Sir, faithfully yours,
q r g, J4EAD.
-19, Avenue-road, Regent’s Park, N.W.
[The pamphlet forwarded by Mr. Mead is the so-called “ Enquiry into
Certain Charges,” which was the starting-point of our articles, and which
was very lully dealt with in the last two of the series.—Ed. W. G.]
�76
ISIS VERY MUCH UNVEILED.
FROM THE VICE-PRESIDENT’S REPRESENTATIVES: “ WE
COULD AN IF WE WOULD.”
You appear to have expected an immediate reply to the series
of articles entitled “Isis Very Much Unveiled.” This expectation is
astonishing in view of the fact that, while the three persons mainly
attacked by you were together in London for some weeks this summer,
you waited until Mrs. Annie Besant and Colonel Olcott are now respec
tively in Australia and India, and Mr. W. Q. Judge is on a lecturing tour in
the United States, as your informant knows. His time for attack is well
chosen, but no just measure of surprise can be felt, either that their replies
—should they care to make any—are delayed, or that we should have
intended originally to await the close of your series before making our present
brief remarks.
Your informant holds the position held among Freemasons by a brother
who has broken his Masonic pledge. Those who refuse to enter further
into this subject follow the traditions of all private societies in like
circumstance. Englishmen will take at its proper valuation all informa
tion on whatever subject from such a source. We beg to take
distinct issue with you on the point of the minor importance of sources of
information. Our whole legal system is based upon the contrary fact.
Character of witnesses has primary weight with all civilised juries.
The Theosophical Society has no concern with the beliefs of its members,
nor with questions of Thaumaturgy. The endeavour to spreal a contrary
belief, to confuse the issue by slanders, or attacks against individual mem
bers, to belittle and misrepresent the objects and work of the society, must
alike fail in the face of general disproof. The society pursues its way
unaffected by all such attempts.
The Committee of Investigation appointed to consider the charges made
against Mr. Judge threw out the indictment on the ground that the constitu
tion of the Theosophical Society rendered illegal all charges involving questions
ofcreed or belief. Mr. Judge came from the United States in readiness fortheir
investigation, and his defence had to be abandoned for the preservation of the
freedom of our platform. We do not, therefore, propose to bring the case
to “ trial by newspaper.” As representatives respectively of the American
Section of the T.S. and of the general secretary of that Section on the
Committeeof Investigation, we are aware of the rebuttal evidence held in readi
ness by Mr. Judge. He holds affidavits from persons of unblemished repu
tation disproving a number of the charges made then and now by you, of
which evidence detail is for the present reserved for the reasons above given
We need not further emphasise the danger of conclusions formed from
“plaintiffs evidence ” only.
�ISIS VERY liven UNVEILED.
17
In conclusion, we beg to state our long acquaintance with, and our con
fidence in the integrity and standing of, Mr. Judge, a confidence shared, to our
personal knowledge, to the fullest extent by the American Section of the T.S.,
as the reports of its last Convention prove. The American is the largest and
the most active of our three Sections, one which not only carries on an enormous
work, but which also assists the other two Sections. It is in it that Mr. Judge s
long labour and personal sacrifices have won for him the respect of the ccmmunity. —Yours very truly,
30, Linden-gardens, Bayswater, W.,
Archibald Keightley.
November 6.
James M. Pryse.
Editorial Note appended in
Gazette.
In regard to Dr. Keightley’s remarks on “ the character of
the witnesses,” from which, in view of the law of libel, we have
had to omit one or two phrases, it is only fair to state that
this letter was received before it had been made clear in the articles that
the chief witnesses were, in fact, not Mr. Old, who has resigned office,
but the President and Dr. Keightley’s brother, who retain it
�ISIS VERY MUCH UNVEILED.
7'8
ANOTHER
AVENUE ROAD OFFICIAL: “VOLUMINOUS
LITERATURE” v. HARD FACTS.
Sir,—Now that you have had the only answer it is poSsi Die lor the’
present to make in connexion with that part of your articles which professes
to disclose the affairs of a secret body, I am at liberty to make some
remarks on that part of them which deals with the public affairs of the/Theosophical Society, if you will grant me the opportunity of reply which, as a
member of an attacked society, I have the right to. demand.
In spite of all implications and assertions to the contrary, I must
emphatically assert it as my opinion that the majority of members of the
society do not join on account of phenomena; and I regard
any attempt to prove the contrary as a conscious or uncon
scious misrepresentation of the actual state of affairs.
A large
mass of the public know well by this time that the chief activity
of the society consists in making known and advocating a certain system
of philosophy, and that appeals are made to the judgment and intel
lectual sense of the people as to whether they shall acceptor reject it. I donot
know whether your intelligent readers will consider themselves flattered when
they read your contributor’s notion of the kind of procedure that is necessary to
captivate them ; but I am inclined to think that most of them must have
common-sense enough to prefer judging a philosophy by its own merits to
accepting or rejecting it according to the evidence for and against phenomena
wrought in connexion with it. However, if there be any who, indifferent to
all questions of ethical and philosophical truth, choose their faith according
to its thaumaturgic properties alone, the society will not be sorry to lose
them, for such weak natures are a source of weakness to every body in which
they enrol themselves.
While declaring here my own belief in the integrity and sincerity of the
persons attacked in your articles, and regretting my inability to communi
cate all of that faith to others, I maintain, Sir, that Theosophy will not
stand or fall by any personal scandals, whether true or false, and that
the Theosophical Society will not cease to exist in Europe so long as there
are even a few who believe as I do.
�.ISIS VERY MUCH UNVEILED.
79
Your contributor has sought to convey the impression that the Theoso"phists, or at all events those who reside at the various headquarters,
live in an atmosphere of constant thaumaturgy and intrigue ; ever in expec
tation of some new wonder, ever ready to alter their deepest convictions at
a moment’s notice in accordance with some enigmatical message or
"some trumpery sign. I call upon those who know the society, are
habitues at its meetings, or have lived at headquarters, to say whether
there is a grain of truth in this, or whether, on the contrary, we are a body
of earnest students, living a prosaic life, and exhausting our energies in
the endeavour to place before others the truths we have found so helpful
to ourselves.
Your contributor makes much of his contention that the adepts were
invented by Madame Blavatsky. What does he expect to gain by this ? If he
can succeed in discrediting Madame Blavatsky in the eyes of a few persons,
he cannot disprove the existence of adepts for them unless he is also
prepared to discredit every one of the other sources of information from
which the evidence for the existence of such exalted men is drawn. Madame
Blavatsky has reminded the world of the reality of those beings in which the
more enlightened of its denizens have always believed.
Of the few
who may have accepted the belief on her testimony alone I ‘would say,
/better they had taken the trouble to substantiate it from other sources.
. Whether Madame Blavatsky invented the adepts or not, at all events I here
: and now advance the theory, and refer for my evidence to the Theosophical
, literature on the subject, which is plentiful.
r
Let our critics, a:ter reading it, come forward and publicly refute us.
We await their onslaught with pleasure. Many points I am obliged to leave
untouched on account of the length my letter would otherwise assume ; but
I must just note the absolute futility of the statement that “Max Muller
has edited the only series of English translations of the Sacred Books of
the East with which I am acquainted,” and the complete falsity of the
statement that “there is no reason to believe that any member of the society
in Europe could pass an examination in any Oriental language whatever.”
'„Let these serve as samples of the quality of the rest of the attack.
In conclusion, sir, I would call your readers’ attention to the fantastically
absurd position of an opponent who hopes to discredit, by his
�8o
ISIS VERY MUCH UNVEILED.
so-called “exposure” of a certain group of manifestations, the whole
sacred science of true magic. I maintain that such a science as
magic (in its true sense) exists, that it teaches the mysteries of nature
and of man, that the voice of the ages endorses it, and that it is
worthy of study to-day. I am prepared to support these contentions
publicly if called upon, and can meanwhile refer your readers to the
voluminous literature of the subject.—Yours truly,
HENRY T. EDGE.
19, Avenue-road, Regent’s Park, London, N.W., November 7.
II.—LETTERS FROM PROMINENT
THEOSOPHISTS.
FROM MR. HERBERT BURROWS :
A REPLY WE MUST
HAVE, OR I LEAVE THE SOCIETY.”
“ What do you think of The Westminster Gazette articles ? What
are the Theosophical Society and what are its members going to de
about them ? ” This is the question which is asked me on all hands.
I recognise that not only my own personal friends but the public
generally have a right to ask this question, and to expect an answer,
and I have asked the permission of the Editor to give the answer from
my own point of view, without in the smallest degree pledging anyone
else. Without the smallest tinge of egotism, I may say that,
next to Mrs. Besant, I am perhaps better known to the public
generally than any other English member of the Theosophical Society.
I have tried to bring a good many people into the fold of the faith, I
know intimately the currents of thought inside the society, and while
no one is responsible for the opinions I express, I believe that they
represent the feelings of a large number of members.
The Old. “Exposure” and. the New.
When I read Mr. Garrett’s opening chapters, I said to myself,
“ Chestnuts ! ” We had heard it so often before. All the while Mr.
Garrett was writing about the “S.P.R.” he was probably asking himself,
How is it that this business did not kill the Theosophical Society ?
The answer is, Because it was not conclusive.
When Mrs. Besant
and I joined the society, apart from each other, I joining a few
�MRS. ANNIE BESANT,
(From a photograph by Messrs. Elliott & Fry, Baker-street, W.)
��ISIS VERY MUCH UNVEILED.
days before her, Madame Blavatsky said to both of us, “ You had
better read what there is against me,” and referred us to the Psychical
Report. We read it separately, analysed it, and joined. I brought to
it my Civil Service training, what business faculties I had, and a fair
knowledge of the laws of evidence.
I am a sceptic by nature,
and I was then a materialist, and the honest conclusion that
I came to was that the case for the prosecution was far too
weak to warrant a conviction. That opinion I still hold. If I thought
differently I should be outside the Theosophical Society instead of in
it. I suppose that nine out of ten people who talk glibly about
the report have never seen even the covers of it.
But I am bound to say that as Mr. Garrett went on with thif.
newer case the situation altered. The details are too precise, and
supported by too much evidence, for me honestly to escape from the
conclusion that, if the facts and documents are correctly set forth, a
prima facie case has been established against Mr. Judge.
“If Mp. Judge declines to answer.”
Some facts in the series of articles and many of the inferences are
wrong, as I shall have occasion to show; but enough is made clear to
imperatively demand an answer. The charge here is, of course, of no
offence known to the law; but were it otherwise, many men have
been found guilty on charges which were supported by less evidence?
than these.
_ I am quite aware rhat a goodly number of my fellow Theosophists will blame me exceedingly for saying this, especially some of
our younger members, whose moral sense seems somehow or other to
have become confused over this matter. Let me put myself quite straight
with them. My mind is perfectly open on the subject.
I have no
opinion yet one way or the other as to Mr. Judge’s conduct,
for I have not heard his defence.
For aught I know he may
have a crushing, triumphant reply, and Mr. Garrett and Mr. Old
(and with them Mirs. Besant 1) may all have to go down on their knees
to , Mr. Judge.
But that reply we must have, and as a member
of the Theosophical Society, whose motto is, “ There is no religion
F
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ISIS VERY MUCH UNVEILED.
higher than Truth,” ,and who has appealed to the :public to join it.
because I believed that it was founded on truth, and that its chief
officials and leaders were upright, honourable people, I mean to use
every legitimate effort to get it.
If Mr. Judge declines to.
give it, if he refuses to come out into the open fully and
squarely, or if his reply does not meet the case, then sadly and
reluctantly I shall have to leave the Theosophical Society, for it will be
impossible any longer to remain in an organisation whose vice-president
is in such a position.
An Appeal to all Honest Theosophists.
Now it depends on the members of the society as to whether Mr.
Judge’s reply shall be forthcoming. They can make such strong repre
sentations to him as will be impossible for him to ignore, and I hold
that it is their duty to do so. Every member of the society has an
indefeasible right to know what manner of man their vice-president
is, and it ought to be made perfectly clear that the morality
of the organisation is at least as high as that of the best
commercial morality, and is not based on Jabez - Balfourism.
If there is to be any talk, as there is already among some members, of
“letting by-gones be by-gones—saving the situation—ignoring the
attack for the sake of Theosophy, safeguarding occultism,” &c., then
self-respecting members will have to protest strongly, and, if necessary,
clear out. All such talk comes from mental ostriches, and in this
matter ostrich-tactics won’t work.
It is not a question of
Mr. Judge, or of occultism, or the Theosophical Society, but
what is above and beyond all these, Truth, on which Theosophy itself
is based, as I firmly believe. If there is no religion higher than truth
Tien truth must be had at all hazards. For the truth we shall have tG
wait, perhaps, some months. Till we get it, minds should be perfectly
open and unbiassed. Only three people can give the truth—Mr. Judge,
Mrs. Besant, and Colonel Olcott. As far as lies in my power I mean
to see that the truth is forthcoming.
The Judicial Committee of Inquiry.
Over this Mr. Garrett has floundered somewhat.
I was a
member of it, and know the facts. When Mr. Garrett says in his
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83
first article that “ a few people are aware . . . that there was recently a
Theosophic meeting ac which Mrs. Besant confessed to her friends that
there had been something wrong with the ‘ communications,’ ” and
that she persuaded those assembled generally to hush the matter up,
he does not know his case.
This is what really happened.
Alter Mr. Old had been some time in India he came to the
conclusion that certain charges against Mr. Judge, which up to
then had been vaguely floating about, were true, and he said
so.
In England we disbelieved them, for we had no real
evidence, but when Mrs. Besant reached India, and examined the
evidence, she agreed with Mr. Old. She formally adopted and formu
lated the charges, and the fact that she had done so immediately
became known all over the world. There was no hole-and-corner work
about it. An official investigation committee met, but found itself blocked
by the constitutional difficulties with which your readers are now familiar.
Mrs. Besant and the Deadlock.
Then I proposed that we should resolve ourselves into a voluntary jury
of honour. Mr. Judge did not agree to this, and so there was a dead
lock. The evidence had not been heard, although Mrs. Besant was
ready with it, for the inquiry had not been made, neither had we heard
Mr. Judge’s defence. The next stage in the proceedings was the reading,
to a very full meeting of members from all parts of the world_ for it was our annual convention—of the statements by Mrs. Besant and
Mr. Judge, to which Mr. Garrett has so often referred.
In her state
ment Mrs. Besant said : “The vital charge is that Mr. Judge has issued
letters and messages in the script recognisable as that adopted by a
Master with whom H.P.B. was closely connected, and that these lettersand
messages were neither written nor precipitated directly by the Master in
whose writing they appear.” That is pretty definite and precise. These
two statements by the accuser and the accused, together with all the
proceedings of the committee, were published in Lucifer on
August 15, and they were reprinted in a pamphlet which was
sent to every member of the society, and I also know
F2
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ISIS VERY MUCH UNVEILED.
that the day before she sailed for Australia Mrs. Besant
made arrangements for that pamphlet to be sent to all the
principal papers of the United Kingdom. I have said all this at
length in order to dispel the idea that Mrs. Besant wished to bam
boozle the society or hush up charges of fraud. I know that it is
asked why she did not publish the whole of the evidence. If the
official Enquiry had been proceeded with the evidence would have
been published with its other proceedings.
But Mrs. Besant
felt, rightly or wrongly, that it would be unfair of her to publish it
without the defence, and this there were no means of getting.
The Unsatisfactory Position of the Society.
But now see the unsatisfactory position of the society. The most
serious charge possible had been made by its chief member against
its second official, one of its founders, the tried and trusty friend of
Madame Blavatsky. The charges were still hanging over his head, his
members in America thoroughly disbelieved them, the members in India
as thoroughly believed them, and we in Europe did not know what to
think. They had been neither proved nor disproved. Colonel Olcott
was going back to India, Mr. Judge flitted back to America, and Mrs.
Besant rushed off to Australia to fulfil lecturing engagements made a year
previously, and so far as regards the society generally Mahomet’s
coffin was not in it for “ floating.” Those of us who really took the
thing to heart held our hands. We fully recognised the gravity of the
whole matter, but we determined to wait till Mrs. Besant’s return
before we moved, for without the evidence we were powerless. But
we reckoned without our Westminster 1
In concluding this article, I say frankly that The Westminster
has really, although quite unconsciously, done Mr. Judge a good turn.
I do not for a moment flatter myself that Mr. Garrett wishes
any good to Theosophy ! The tone of his articles precludes that
idea. But his attack on Mr. Judge puts the latter in this
position, that if he chooses he can defend himself without any fear
whatever of pledging the Theosophical Society to one jot or tittle of
dogma with regard to Mahatmas. He is attacked as a man, and as a
man I sincerely hope that he will manfully and satisfactorily reply.
Herbert Burrows.
�ISIS VERY MUCH UNVEILED.
FROM
MR.
W.
R. OLD, EX-OFFICIAL: “A
GRIP OF THE FACTS.”
85
THOROUGH
Sir,—As my name has been publicly mentioned by Mr. Mead,
general secretary of the European T.S., in connexion with the series of
articles “Isis Very Much Unveiled,” I think it advisable to state my own
position and attitude in the matter.
The writer of those articles has named me, quite correctly, as having
taken the first step in forcing an inquiry into the case against
Mr. Judge.
For this act of mine, I was suspended from my
membership in the Esoteric Section, under the authority of the
joint signatures of William Q. Judge and Annie Besant, Outer
Heads of the E.S.T., and my name was dishonourably mentioned
before the members of the E.S., among whom I numbered many an old
colleague and friend. The mandate somehow found its way into the public
Press. However, there was one advantage. After her official action in
suspending me from membership Mrs. Besant was, of course, bound to hear
my justification. This happened at Adyar in the winter of 1893.
Mrs.
Besant s first remark to me after reading the case and examining the
documents was, “You were perfectly justified by the facts before you.”
THE HEAD OFFICIALS PLEDGED TO PUBLISH THE FACTS.
In the presence of the president-founder Colonel Olcott, Mrs. Besant,
Countess Wachtmeister, Mr. E. T. Sturdy, together with Mr. Edge and
myself, it was decided that the task of officially bringing the charges should
devolve upon Mrs. Besant, and that the whole of the evidence should be
published. Consequently, the documents were handed over to Mrs. Besant
for the purpose of drawing up her charges, and the president sent an
official letter—or, as Colonel Olcott now claims, a “ private letter ” in
official form—dated at Agra, February 12, 1894, to Mr. Judge as
vice-president, in which he said (I re-quote from a circular issued by Mr.
Judge, March 15, 1894):—“ I place before you the following options :—
1. To retire from all offices held by you in the T.S., and leave me to
make a merely general public explanation ; or,
2. To have a Judicial Committee convened .... and make public the
whole ot the proceedings in detail.
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ISIS VERY MUCH UNVEILED.
In either alternative, you will observe, a public explanation is found
necessary : in the one case, general ; in the other, to be full and covering
all the details.”
It was the second alternative which was adopted, with the abortive and
disingenuous result already known. But what of the “ full publication of all
the details ” ? What of us Theosophists who had brought these charges
against Mr. Judge? Were we not left in the position of persons who had
brought charges without proving them ? The position was one which I
felt to be intolerable. Mrs. Besant had the full evidence in her hands by
which to justify all the charges she had engaged to bring against Mr. Judge,
but for some reason best known to herself involved the whole society in countenancinga systematic attempt to bolsterup a delusionjoy concealmentof facts.
Mrs. Besant was also in honour bound to publish the facts, to all members
of the society at least, since they were of a nature to vitally affect the beliefs
of Theosophists the world over. She was, in short, bound to give them the
same publicity as her former professions of occult intercourse obtained.
“MORALLY BOUND TO GIVE PUBLICITY TO THE TRUTH.”
The T.S. is an organised body with a wide system of propaganda, and
has taken the public into its confidence in cases where its special claims
appear to have been supported by facts, and while the public are invited to
join the society it is only right and honest that they should know what of
those claims are true and what of those “ facts ” have stood the test of
inquiry. This responsibility cannot be avoided, and as I have personally
been instrumental in the inquiry into these claims and facts, I am
morally bound to give what publicity I can to the truth when arrived at
To rectify what I believed to be a fatal policy on the part of those concerned
with the charges against Mr. Judge, I resigned from all offices held by me
in the T.S., and left myself free to speak openly of the matter whenever
occasion presented itself. I do not believe that a system of truth can be raised
from a fabric of fraud. In the course of my travels I met with my friend
Mr. Garrett, to whom, upon inquiry, I gave the reasons of my resignation
from official connexion with the society. He asked my permission to
publish the facts. My reply was that although I could not unsay what I
�ISIS VERY MUCH UNVEILED.
87
had said, I had not intended such publication as he contemplated, and
doubted whether the case could be put forth with sufficient clearness - and
fairness by a “ Philistine.” I soon found, however, that he had a thorough
grip of the facts ; and on his representation, the truth of which I had to
admit, that the society had closed the inquiry, and would not open its
journals to a lull discussion of the evidence, I let him take his own course.
Certain persons, who seem unable to conceive that a man may act on
principle and without interested motives, have suggested that I was moved
by some petty personal grudge, or even by some pecuniary inducement. I
repudiate both these insinuations as lies. My independent action in this
matter has involved certain pecuniary sacrifices ; I have in no way used it,
and should scorn to use it, for pecuniary gain.
MR. JUDGE
AND
MRS.
BESANT.
It will, therefore, be clear to all members of the T.S. and the public gene
rally that I am responsible for the facts occurring in Mr. Garrett’s articles
only so far as they apply to the charges against Mr. Judge, and for these I have
documentary evidence produced under a legal hand, and duly witnessed.
With Mr. Garrett’s method of presenting the facts I am by no means in
sympathy. I do not lose sight of the fact that, however mistaken or misled
many of the Theosophical Society may be, as regards the traditional
“ Mahatmas ” and their supposed “ communications,” they are nevertheless
as sincere in their beliefs as many of their more orthodox fellows, and have
as much right to respectful consideration. I regret particularly that Mrs.
Besant should have been placed in this awkward public position by the
present exposure. Her intention I believe to have been perfectly honest,.
but I think she made a fatal mistake in avoiding the publication of the full
fscts, and in allowing the misconception to endure concerning her own
and Mr. Judge’s connexion with the Mahatmas.
MME.
BLAVATSKY
AND
THE
MAHATMAS.
Of Madame Blavatsky I speak as I knew her. At the time I made her
acquaintance she had forsworn all “phenomenalism,” so that I never saw
any occult phenomena at any time. I believe that./or her the Mahatmas
existed, and I believe she thought them to be embodied personalities.
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Colonel Olcott has another theory, and others have their own. Personally,
I believe in the extensibility of ¿araan faculty, and in the existence- of an
order of intelligences higher than, our own, but I do not require that they are
■embodied or terrestrial in any set se of the word. Finally, I have been through
the Theosophical Society vrith my eyes open, and for more than five years have
been, officially and unofficially, as fully “ in the Theosophical Society ” as
one can well be ; and while I am certain that many are fully convinced of the
truth of their own beliefs in these matters, I am also fully assured that a
large number are in the position of persons self-deceived, who have
unfortunately committed themselves too far to review their position without
almost disastrous consequences to themselves and others. But that of which
1 have the fullest conviction and the greatest amount of presentable proof
is the fact that no such thing as evidence of the existence (in an ordinary
sense) of the Mahatmas, or of their connexion with the T.S. as a body or
with its members individually, is obtainable by a person pursuing ordinary
methods of investigation.
For those who are willing to found their beliefs upon the mere state
ment of another, without question of possible interestedness on the one
hand, or self-deception on the other, the position isot course otherwise. For
such persons proofs have no value whatever, what they are pleased to call
their “ beliefs ” and their “ knowledge ” being determined or determinable
from the moment they sign away their independence of judgment and
freedom of thought.—Yours sincerely,
Walter R. Old.
P.S.—One misstatement of fact appears in your issue of November 3.
What Mr. Garrett refers to as “ Madame Blavatsky’s Rosicrucian signet
ring ” was not a ring, but a jewel, used as a pendant. Also, the “ dark
gentleman” who delivered the two £10 notes to Mr. Judge made his call
(so we were told) in the early afternoon, not in “ the evening ” as stated
in Mr. Garrett’s text. I am bound to add that, whatever may be my
annoyance and regret at the tone of the articles and of some of the inferences,
as regards that part of the evidence which is known to myself, I have
noticed so far no other substantial error offact.
[These slight corrections have been made in this reprint.—F. E. G.J
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FROM
MR.
A.
P.
SINNETT: “OCCULTISTS
TELL FIBS.”
89
MAY
NOT
Sir,—The circular bearing this title—referred to in your leading
columns yesterday—was issued last July, and directly affects some
questions you have lately been discussing. Under the circumstances, I
hope you will kindly consent to give it fuller publicity. It was addressed
to students of Occultism, and ran as follows :—
The inevitable mystery which surrounds Occultism and the Occultist has given
rise in the minds of many to a strange confusion between the duty of silence
and the error of untruthfulness. «''There are many things that the Occultist
may not divulge; but equally binding is the law that he may never speak
untruth. And this obligation to Truth is not confined to speech ; he may
never think untruth, nor act untruth. A spurious Occultism dallies with truth and false
hood, and argues that deception on the illusory physical plane is consistent with purity
on the loftier planes on which the Occultist has his true life; it speaks con
temptuously of “mere worldly morality”—a contempt that might be justified if
it raised a higher standard, but which is out of place when the phrase is used
to condone acts which the “ mere worldly morality ” would disdain to
practise. The doctrine that the end justifies the means has proved in the past
fruitful of all evil; no means that are impure can bring about an end that is good,
else were the Good Law a dream and Karma a mere delusion. From these errors
.flows an influence mischievous to the whole Theosophical Society, undermining the
stern and rigid morality necessary as a foundation for Occultism of the Right Hand
Path.
•'
Finding that this false view of Occultism is spreading in the Theosophical
Society, we desire to place on record our profound aversion to it, and our
conviction that morality of the loftiest type must be striven after by every
one who would tread in safety the difficult ways of the Occult World. Only by
rigid truthfulness in thought, speech, and act on the planes on which works our waking
consciousness, can the student hope to evolve the intuiton which unerringly discerns
between the true and the false in the supersensuous worlds, which recognises
truth at sight and so preserves him from fatal risks in those at first confusing regions.
To cloud the delicate sense of truth here is to keep it blind there; hence every
teacher of Occultism has laid stress on truthfulness as the most necessary equipment
of the would-be disciple. To quote a weighty utterance of a wise Indian disciple :—
“Next in importance, or perhaps equal in value, to Devotion is Truth. It
is simply impossible to over-estimate the efficacy of Truth in all its phases
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ISIS VERY MUCH UNVEILED.
and bearings in helping the onward evolution of the human soul. We must
love truth, seek truth, and live truth; and thus alone can the Divine
Light which is Truth Sublime be seen by 'the student of Occultism When
there is the slightest leaning towards falsehood in any shape, there is shadow and
ignorance, and their child, pain. This leaning towards falsehood belongs to the lower
personality without doubt. It is here that our interests clash, it is here the struggle for
existence is in full swing, and it is therefore here that cowardice and dishonesty and
fraud find any scope. The ‘ signs and symptoms ’ of the operations of this lower
self can never remain concealed from one who sincerely loves truth and seeks truth. ”•
> To understand oneself, and so escape self-deception, Truth must be practisedthus only can be avoided the dangers of the “ conscious and unconscious deception ”
against which a Master warned his pupils in 1885.
Virtue is the foundation of White Occultism ; the Paramitas, six and ten the
transcendental virtues, must be mastered, and each of the Seven Portals on the’Path
is a virtue, which the Disciple must make his own/ Out of the soil of pure morality
alone can grow the sacred flower which blossoms at length into Arhatship, and those
who aspire to the blooming of the flower must begin by preparing the soil.
H. S. Olcott, A. P. Sinnett, Annie Besant, Bertram Keightley W
Wynn Westcott, E. T. Sturdy, C. W. Leadbeater.
I do not propose to discuss the merits of the case against Mr. Judge,
but we who signed this paper—without prejudging in their personal aspect
accusations which it had then been found impossible to thresh out thoroughly
conceived it desirable to remind all fellow-students of Occultism that no
beneficial results along that path could possibly be attained except by a
course of life which, whatever else it might be, should be strictly in harmony
with the dictates of ordinary morality.
The Theosophical Society has grown in a few years to such
extraordinary proportions, and is so loosely jointed, that it cannot be
correctly thought of as a homogeneous association all parts of which
are equally represented by the officers nominally at its head. But it
ought at this crisis to be generally understood that the many
persons of culture and earnest purpose to whom spiritual progress along
the original lines of Theosophic teaching is the mam object of existence are
guided by evidence concerning the possibilities of their higher evolution
that is of a kind utterly unlike that which you not unreasonably discredit.
�ISIS VERY MUCH UNVEILED.
91
4 great block of such evidence is in our possession concerning not merely
the existence but also the attributes of the great initiates, and to those of us
in a position to appreciate this the foundations of Theosophic knowledge are
quite unshaken by such incidents as those on which you have been com.menting.—I am, Sir, yours, &c.,
p. SlNNETT.
N ovember 17.
WHOM
DID
THE
CIRCULAR
REFER
TO ?
[In reference to the subject of Mr. Sinnett’s letter, the following is an extract
from the Westminster Gazette under the heading;—“ More Theosophistry. A
Belated Piece of Bluff.”]
In the current number of the Review <f Reviews a letter appears
signed by the Dr. Keightley who lately wrote to The Westminster
Gazette as a professed representative of Mr. W. Q. Judge, Vice-President
of the Theosophical Society. The letter is worthy of some attention as
an illustration of the tactics of Mr. Judge’s friends, and of the line which
they were taking towards any allusion in the Press to certain events before
the appearance of the recent exposure in this journal.
The letter is dated October 25, and was therefore written at the time
when the Theosophists still hoped to maintain the great “ hush up ”
inaugurated at the Convention of last July, and before they dreamed that
all London would presently be discussing the facts which had been so
industriously buried.
The occasion of the letter appears to have been a comment of Mr.
Stead’s in the last number of the Review on a circular lately issued under
the title of “Occultism and Truth.” This circular was issued just after
the so-called “ Enquiry into Certain Charges against the Vice-President,”
and (to this office, at any rate) it was enclosed under one cover with the
pamphlet report of that “ Enquiry.” The substance of it is an assusance
to the Theosophical world, on the part of some prominent Theosophists, that
occultists have no more right than ordinary people to fib. Coming at the
time when it did, and signed as it was by all the principal official Theoso
phists, with the one exception of the vice-president, the Editor of the
Review of Reviews very naturally interpreted it as having some connexion
with the charges against the last-named gentleman, and with what his
colleagues evidently felt to be their apparent condonation of the “ occult
methods ” ascribed to him.
The following is the substantial passage in the letter thereupon
addressed to the Review or Reviews by Mr. Judge’s representatives :—
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ISIS VERY MUCH UNVEILED.
. Allow us .to make a very necessary correction. . . . Mrs. Besant, who
originated the circular, was asked directly whether it was connected with the charges
or whether it was in any way aimed at Mr. Judge. She gave an emphatic denial to
both questions to many who took the same view expressed by you.
Another fact is not generally known, and leads people—yourselt among others_
imo unconsciously committing an injustice. The charges against Mr. Judge were
never substantiated, and the committee appointed to inquire into them declared that
they were illegally laid.
(The letter then concludes with a high tribute to Mr. Judge’s character for
truthfulness and every other virtue.)
Now, as regards the statement about the intention of the Circular, we
will only say that one co-signatory of it at least has committed himself to
the precise view of it which this letter denies. Nor is it oovious why the
heads of any society should issue a round robin to say it is naughty to
tell taradiddles, unless some current reference were intended to the affairs
of the society.
Besides, this, however, there is unmistakably conveyed the impression
that Mr. Judges accusers failed to substantiate their case, and that there
was something actually “ illegal,” in the ordinary sense of the word, about
some part of their conduct.
As readers of “Isis Very Much Unveiled” are aware, both these
things are absolutely untrue. The simple fact was that, owing to
the objections raised by Mr. Judge, no opportunity was given for
the charges to be either substantiated or the reverse ; while the only
justification for the statement that they were “ illegally laid ” is such
as can be squeezed out of the fact that the Theosophical Pickwickians
were persuaded by Mr. Judge that inquiry was forbidden by the constitu
tion of their society.
It only remains to add, to complete the disingenuousness of this very
Theosophistical letter, that its signator.es authenticate its statements by
flaunting the title of “Members of the Committee of Investigation”; the
committee referred to being the one which met only to decide that it could
not investigate, and the members of it as such having no knowledge whatever
of the evidence either on one side or the other !
�i
I
ISIS VERY MUCH UNVEILED.
III.—LETTERS FROM MINOR OFFICIALS
PRIVATE MEMBERS.
93
AND
'll;
What matters “Truth or Falsehood?”
Sir,—My husband and myself are two of the officials in one of the
local branches of the Theosophical Society. I write in his name and my
own to say that we have read with some interest your voluminous attack on
the personal characters of some of our leading members.
We were also amused by the ingenuous surprise of your reporter, that
the Blavatsky Lodge meeting in London, which he attended, was spent in
philosophic study, not in the discussion of psychic phenomena or of the
personal characters of members.
You say (Chapter II.):—“This society as such must stand or fall
with its Mahatmas.” This is not so. The Theosophical Society is entirely
neutral on the question of the existence or non-existence of such beings, and
the reason why the charges, of which you have published a more or less
correct statement, were not gone into by the authorities of the T.S. was, that
to have done so would have entailed an infringement of that neutrality.
The question whether Mrs. Besant was misled when she made the state
ment at the Secular Hall in 1891 has been answered by her own clear with
drawal of that statement.
The question as to Mr. Judge is entirely one as to his own truth or false
hood, and may be well left to him to answer or not. It is not necessary for
the public or for the members of the Theosophic Society to judge him.—
Faithfully yours,
Sarah Corbett.
Manchester, November 6.
A Protest ag-ainst “Condoning-.”
Sir,—Having read the revelations your correspondent has been
pleased to give to the public, and presuming them to be correct, it seems to
me that there are now three parties at fault in place of two as I
had supposed, viz., Mr. Judge for imposing (whether consciously
as a deceiver or unconsciously as a medium obsessed by a spirit of
ambition and the communicator of the facts (if a member of
the inner circle) for breaking his solemn pledge not to reveal or
betray the affairs of that circle. The recent correspondence now adds others
�ISIS VERY MUCH UNVEILED.
as condoning the offence of Mr. Judge—and all this has come from the
love of pre-eminence and the mere dabbling (child’s play) with the
occult. Clearly, if the offence was proved, the officers of the society were
bound in truth and honour to expel the offender, and all would then have
My advice to the society would be to stick to
their programme, which is a highly laudable one, and let no word
from an invisible and unknown be taken as of any external value, but judged
only by its internal worth.
The society, it seems to me, can no longer pretend to condemn
the communication with Spirits as a dangerous thing, nor cry out
against the occasional frauds of mediums, in conscious or unconscious state,
seeing how heavily they have fallen into the same snare, nor can they point
the finger to frauds or delusions in other bodies whether Catholic or non
Catholic. A greater strictness and more uniform abstinence from flesh
eating and tobacco, as well as alcohol (which last they eschew) should
be enjoined on all its members by their authorised officers, and their
own three objects steadily pursued — separating from the third all
spurious imitations of magical wonders j and, above all, the spirit
of truth which accepts nothing on this or that authority without
careful verification should be cultivated.
A want of bravery to
do the right, to tell the truth, and face the consequences, is the
only thing that can be laid to the charge of the presiding officers
of the Indian and English sections. Are all societies and Churches
free from this? Has not a natural tenderness from long friendship,
and sympathy in noble and useful work, been often the cause of much to be
deplored ? And in this instance, is not such over-tenderness - of noble,
unsuspicious, and honourable souls, worthy rather of regret than of too severe
censure.—Yours,
A Theosophist.
been clear and straight.
‘ Ibandon tl»e T.S. in Bisgnst.”
SiR,—I see Mr. Mead is reported as saying that “what the articles
[in The Westminster Gazette] would do, if they did anything, was to
sift the society of those who had simply joined for the sake of the
‘marvellous.”
■ -.........................
�ISIS VERY MUCH UNVEILED.
95
This remark shows the same utter oblivion of the appreciation of truth
that has unhappily shown itself in the society’s record before. It is not a
question of phenomena; it is one of good faith ; and if this is the line taken,
not the phenomena-hunters merely, but seekers for truth and respecters of it,
who expected to find it in the Theosophical Society, will abandon that,
body in disgust.
Mr. Mead continues:—“Theosophists could no more divulge secrets
without violating every sense of honour than a Mason could.”
To compare the Theosophical Society, as at present constituted, with an.
honourable body like the Masons, is an insult to the latter, goose-guzzling
and luxuriant as they may have tended to become in these latter days.
There is a profound difference between hiding secrets, which are
entrusted to one, and which concern certain (perhaps) important facts
in the nature of man, and taking part in proceedings to gull a
niimber of fellow-students and the outside public.
This is prac
tically what has been done before, and the dissatisfied either disap
peared altogether or were well howled at as traitors to “the cause,”
Whereas, in verity, they were doing their best for the disowned cause of
truth ; or, again, they were coerced by the solemn warning of “ your pledge,
take care of your pledge,” and thereby intimidated from seeing that they
were making themselves parties to a continuous misrepresentation of facts and
a deliberate fraud upon their less-informed fellow-members, not to mention
the public. “ What have our troubles to do with the public ? ” has been the
question. I reply, “ Everything,” for it is to the public that constant appeal
is made and amonqst its ranks that proselytes are sought.
Nothing has, so far, been exposed in these articles that any rightthinking truth-seeker would wish to have cloaked. The public are not being
made acquainted with any arcane wisdom ; but if One-third of the state
ments made in The Westminster Gazette are supported by documentary
and other evidence, then the world certainly ought to be warned against
a society that takes as its motto, “ There is no religion higher than
TRUTH” and forthwith allows its leading members to play such antics
and engage in such grotesque jugglery without bringing them sternly to
book. As for continuing to work with these people in the establishment of a
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“ universal brotherhood,” rather will it become a universal imposture
to expose which were a service to the glorious old Wisdom of the
Venerable East, which it dishonoured by its sham Mahatmas.
Those who are publishing the facts, if facts they be, are doing a service
to the cause of truth, and should have the thanks and gratitude
of all of us in the Theosophical Society whose motive in being there is to
seek TRUTH, and to combat error and fraud in religion, mysticism, or
anything else.—I am, &c.,
A Fellow of the Theosophical Society and
Member of the E.S.T.
“It all comes of not Sticking- to Veg-etalbles.”
Sir,—With every word of Brother Old’s letter of to-day’s issue I beg
to express my fullest sympathy. I deprecate the tone of the “revelations,”
but of the necessity of making the public fully acquainted with the*"facts
I have not the least doubt. As to the existence of “ Mahatmas,”
I can only say I do believe in the existence on this earth of a higher order
of beings who, by total abstinence from and abhorrence of flesh-eating,
alchohol, and tobacco, and other evil and impure customs, and by adherence
to a fixed rule of life, retiring early and early rising, with daily ablutions,
and by certain studies and training of body and mind, have acquired certain
attributes and powers so far in advance of ordinary human beings as
to be regarded by them as miraculous. Of this I have had evidence,
not from Theosophists, but from personal friends resident in India
before ever they heard of the name of Theosophy. Whether any of
these have anything to do in the direction of the Theosophical Society is
quite another matter. There is Theosophy and Theosophy, and one of these
I would rather term “ Theophilosophy,” i.e., “ the love and wisdom of God,”
or “love and wisdom religion”—and not wisdom only as is implied in
the term “ Theosophy.” Readers of “ The Perfect Way ” and its companion
volume, “ Clothed with the Sun,” by that noble woman Anna Kingsford and
her-colleague, will know what I mean. Now, what about the future of the
Theosophical Society? I believe its officers may fall, but its work must
endure. No doubt of that. The founders have had their weaknesses and
foibles like other mortals, but I hope none will ever forget the gratitude they
owe to Madame Blavatsky, especially to the blessings she has conferred in
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97
founding the Theosophical Society and giving through its means to all
•hungry and thirsty souls such priceless stores of knowledge and suggestive
thought (from the Oriental religions and philosophies which have made such'
deep impress on the millions of the East) as are contained in the grand
volumes of “The Secret Doctrine,” with its index and glossary, and her
o:her publications. None can read these volumes, but must ask themselves,
What manner of woman must she have been who devoted so many long
years of labour, from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. daily, in their production, and that
amidst incredible difficulties and' opposition and worry? Nor must we
forget the debt that we owe to Colonel Olcott and Madame Besant for having
made this knowledge accessible to all minds and conditions by their lectures
and booklets.
What can be more noble than the promotion of universal brotherhood
irrespective of sex, colour, caste, or creed, united in the study of the ancient
religions of East and West, and of all that pertains to the hidden powers in
man, and their development for the good of the race ? But these last, I say
again, will not be attained in purity but by prayer, and abstinence from flesh
meat, alcohol, and tobacco, and other evil customs of society, and the disuse
of all things .gotten by cruelty to, or oppression of, our fellow-creatures the
lower animals, and by pure surroundings.—Yours,
Evelyn-terrace, Brighton,
I. G. Ouseley, O.G.A. and F.T.S.
November 9.
• lolly and fraud: but of Mich is tire Kingdom.”
Sir,—No one should biame you, or resent the publication or tne Tacts.
Truth is the first consideration, and though we who have interested our
selves in the philosophy promulgated by the society may bitterly regret that
folly and fraud are to be found within its fold—as elsewhere—yet we can
rest assured that whatever there is in this philosophy which appeals to
the enlightened intelligence of mankind will remain when the superstructure
raised by designing intriguers or unwise enthusiasts shall have crumbled
away. It is in consequence of this belief that the writer, with others in the
society, can read with calmness, and not without some sense of amusement
this unpleasant disclosure ; not doubting but that a great deal of iu is true’
and that all may be so ; and while feeling unmixed contempt for the
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“ informer,” can acknowledge that any editor is well within his rights, and a
public benefactor, when exposing fraud wherever it is found.
Would that this feature were more pronounced in journalism generally,
and not indulged in only when such exposures fall in with public prejudice !
For several years the writer of this letter has been absent from the
Avenue-road centre : among other reasons, from a feeling of disapproval
of certain follies which may be called incipient relic worship, and which no
sensible person could tolerate for long. So it will be seen that all
Theosophists have not fallen under the spell of Mrs. Besant’s rash
enthusiasm, which has done, and is doing, so much to discredit her, now as
heretofore, in the eyes of the world. Yet, in spite of her indiscrimmation
and lack of sound judgment, which has alienated many, the writer would
rather stand in the pillory of public opprobrium with her than sit at a
banquet with the “ informer ” and those who can rejoice over the failings
of a beautiful soul. For it may be said of her, and a few others,
“ Of such is the Kingdom of Heaven.” That there is to be found even one of
these among Theosophists may lead a few to suspect that there is something
more in Theosophy than can be discovered in your articles, and that, though
fraud should be proved, there may nevertheless be real occultists and true
phenomena. Thus, what at first sight appears a serious blow to our
cause will perhaps induce further inquiry among your readers, while doing
useful work in destroying errors and growing superstition.
F. T. S.
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PART
99
III.
LAST SHREDS OF THE VEIL OF ISIS.
A REVIEW OF SOME THEOSOPHISTRIES.
As yet, “ Isis Very Much Unveiled ” remains very much unanswered.
The oracles are dumb. “ No Dolphin rose, no Nereid stirred ” \ no
Mahatma “ precipitated ” a reply (as one of them did with such edifying
results in the case of the Kiddle plagiarism), nor disintegrated by
psychic force the damaging documents in my possession ; Mrs. Besant,
whose “ astral body ” has flitted across oceans to visit Mr. Herbert
Burrows “ on pre-arranged evenings,” gave no sign from Australia;
Colonel Olcott, president, in India, disdained the more commonplace
agency of the cable; and Mr. William Q. Judge, vice-president, whose
official adytum is but five days away at New York, neglected to avail
himself of the ordinary post, whatever he may have done about the
astral one.
Moreover, accustomed as are all these three officials to scouring
the earth, with all expenses paid, no intimation has been made public
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as to the date when we may expect to receive anyone of them back
from the various regions to which they sped immediately after launching
the report of their peculiar “ Enquiry.”
Their colleagues in England
continue to speak as if a trip to New York carried one to the bourn
from which no traveller returns.
But what of these colleagues themselves ? Where is the “Voice of
the Silence” of Avenue-road, St. John’s Wood? At point after point,
the Story of the Great Mahatma Hoax touched matters to which one or
other or all of them must have been privy. It told of missives which
they had accepted as genuine, orders which they had acted upon,
decisions in which they had agreed, fact after fact of which they had
full cognisance. When Mr. Mead, the European secretary, gave out
that he did not reply because he was not attacked, I did my best tooblige him ; I began at the beginning, and challenged him at once as
having been present and taken part in the “Judge’s-plan-is-right ” deci
sion ; and I added that when he had denied my version of that I
would supply him with further matter for denial. Whereupon thediscreet European secretary subsided altogether.
The “ Sacred Oath ” Humbug-.
Of course, some excuse had to be offered, and we have been told
that what happens at meetings of the Esoteric Section is sacredly secret.
Now, first, that only covers a small part of my story, seme of which
dealt with circumstances surrounding official acts of the society or
its three sections. Secondly, the excuse is eminently one that accuses,
by implying that what I say happened at those meetings did happen;
for presumably members take no oath to keep secret what does not
occur ? But, thirdly, this alleged secrecy is a mere pretext; else how
could Mrs. Besant publicly refer on platforms to “ supernatural ” expe
riences at those meetings ; and Messrs. Old and Edge (the latter to this
day holding office) raise questions about one such matter in print in
Colonel Olcott’s journal; and Mrs. Besant, the Colonel, and a full
council of officials notify Mr. Judge that in a certain eventuality (which
did afterwards occur) they would make a “ full publication covering all
the details ” of that matter, and others concerning the sacred Mahatma
messages ?
Whatever may be the “ quasi-Masonic oath ” of which we nohr
hear, they evidently held that it did not bind them to conceal, with their
eyes open, a fraud upon their fellow-members ; and those who do so
interpret it only throw a very suggest ve light on their own action in
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ioi
^willingly taking such an oath. Was Mrs. Besant quite right when
she - gave the public what she confesses was a “ misleading
account ” of these secrets, and only in the wrong.'" when,
along with Colonel Olcott and the rest, she proposed to give
what she now knew to be the correct one F
Is the position
that a Theosophist may “tell”—anything he likes, except the truth?
A Survey of the Present Situation.
The absence of Colonel Olcott and Mrs. Besant does not'alter the
fact that he with others made, and she publicly adopted, certain
■charges against Mr. Judge, vice-president. And the silence of their
•colleagues in England does not disguise the fact that my account of
the details has not been challenged as to one single event, letter, or
facsimile. The published “ Report of an Enquiry ” cries aloud for some
■explanation : the explanation of “ Isis Very Much Unveiled ” holds the
field untouched. It leaves the vice-president only able to exculpate
himself, if at all, by further inculpating them. The “ full rebuttal
■evidence held in reserve,” therefore, at which his professed representa
tive in England hints, can be formidable only to the Theosophical
Society, not to its critics. I am bound to say, however, that if the
would-be impressive fragments of it which have been privately adum
brated to me are fair samples of the rest, it is not calculated to be
formidable to anybody. When the “ affidavits ” hinted at have been
published, or otherwise submitted to examination, I can promise them
all the attention they deserve. To say that any affidavit, until cross.examined upon, is worth exactly as much as the paper it is written
on would be an uncalled-for slight upon the paper-maker.
The Excommunication of “Brother* Old.”
A word or two about the attempt to create a diversion by
attacking the character of the one Theosophical official who has had
the honesty to resign office rather than shut his eyes to a
fraud on the public. The attack on Mr. Old cannot in any case
discredit the story I have narrated. First, because the largest and
most important part of that story is from the undenied written
evidence of persons still holding office in the society, and especially
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of its “ President-Founder.”
Secondly, because, even as regards
Mr. Old’s part, the character of a witness is only a relevant
consideration where the truth of his testimony is disputed.
What I am now about to say is said, therefore, merely in justice toMr. Old himself. The attack on him has two lines. It is said that
he had to perjure himself to give any information whatever. It ishinted that what information he did give was given for money.
The former charge turns- entirely on the “sacred oath”
humbug, which I have discussed already.
As to the latter, it
is true to my knowledge that for the part he has taken in
fulfilling what he regards as a public duty to truth, Mr. Old
neither asked nor received any consideration whatever. My own
acquaintance with Mr. Old began in an odd way, not without bearing
on the question of his sincerity. At the time of the Salvation Army
riots at Eastbourne, a gallant old Englishman, who could not
bear that women, under any provocation, should be publicly
assaulted in English streets, went down there to stand up for the
“Hallelujah lasses.”
He asked, through the Pall Mall Gazette,
for five hundred Englishmen to help.
He got five.
This
Quixotic gentleman, this modern Sieur de Marsac, was my friend Mr.
Charles Money, of Petersfield. I went myself to see that he did not
get his head broken more than was necessary. His company, as seedy
a lot of knights-errant as ever I saw, consisted mainly of Cockney
journalists who did not believe in God. But one—a spruce, slight
youth—declared himself a Theosophist. The adventurers spouted toa yelling mob, got off with whole skins, and by testimony of the local
police actually achieved their end. But Mr. Money and one
other were knocked about a bit in the crowd. That other—he
quitted himself like a man—was Mr. W. R. Old, Theosophist.
I may be wrong : it was but a street row; but I regard that as a more
practical service on Mr. Old’s part to the “ Universal Brotherhood of
Humanity than all the hundredweights of vapid moralising on the
subject ever vomited from “The H.P.B. Press.”
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103
Stewing- in tlie Judge Juice.
Except Mr. Old, one prominent Theosophist, and one alone, has
so far publicly faced the facts. Mr. Herbert Burrows has had the
honesty and the courage to say out that this thing must be answered
by Mr. Judge, and fully, or he for one will quit the society. Mr.
.Burrows forgets that others besides Mr. Judge have made them
selves answerable. Other correspondents, again, represented other
factions, and showed how the society is seething with distrust and
shame. But the mass of the letters only serve to prove that, whatever
else the “ occult powers ” of the T'heosophists may be, they do not
include a command either of plain English or of straight argument.
If “ Isis ” does not yet stand before us absolutely like Hans Breitmann’s “ maiden mit nodings on,” it is a painfully thin fabric of
Theosophistries which alone shelters her from the cold wind of public
contempt. Let us examine it.
The Theosophistpy about Proving- a Negative.
“ After ally you have not proved that Mahatmas do not exist, nor
that occult phenomena cannot occurV
Certainly I have not, nor did I ever propose to try. I am quite
prepared to believe in both when evidence for them has been produced,
and has stood the test of such ordinary evidential canons as have
been applied to kindred subjects—for instance, by the Psychical
Research Society. All that I have said is that certain evidence
on which the Theosophical Society has been building proves nothing
whatever, except the existence of a hotbed of humbug within the
society itself. As for the Mahatmas, there is no difficulty about con
ceiving that illiterate, twaddling, and mendacious beings of a secondrate order of intelligence, such as those reflected in the “ missives ”
wh:ch I have reproduced, may exist in Tibet as they unhappily do
elsewhere. ’But when we are told that these beings have acquired
powers which rise superior to time and space, and that they use these
for communicating “ in a quasi-miraculous manner ” with the Theo
sophical Society, we ask for facts; and we get—such facts as were
investigated by Dr. Hodgson and his colleagues, and such facts as
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ISIS VERY MUCH UNVEILED.
have been exposed in “ Isis Very Much Unveiled.” What else is there ?
One Theosophist directs me to “ our literature on. the subject,
which is copious. I don’t doubt it; but it is not “ literature ” that I
am in search of. Another declares “ it does not all depend on Madame
Blavatsky and Mr. Judge; others have seen Mahatmas.” It seems
that Mrs. Besant has been telling her Australian audiences that she
herself has been so favoured (just as she told the Hall of Science
audience that she had been favoured with supernatural missives). Well,
how did Mrs Besant know her Mahatma ? By his “ portrait,” I sup
pose, as others have done. And how was that portrait produced ?
M hen Madame Blavatsky began to spell spiritualism “Theosophy,”
and turned her “spirit-control”
“John King,” of whom
Colonel Olcott tells, into Master Koot Hoomi — whom she
again subordinated, after the Kiddle exposure, to Mahatma Morya, whom
she, in turn, after the S.P.R. Report, left over for exploitation by
Mr.Judge when Madame started the Mahatma on this chequered
career, it was one of her earliest steps to secure a counterfeit present
ment of her creation. Various artists and amateurs were set to paint
portraits under occult inspiration. The results may all have resembled
the Protean Mahatma; some of them were strikingly unlike each other.
I he two best were done by Mr. Schmiechen, now a society portrait
painter, partly out of his head, partly from directions given by Madame,
and partly from a photograph of a typical Hindu which she gave him
lor the purpose. Madame identified one as Koot and the other as
Morya, and declared they were speaking likenesses-—an opinion which
nobody else was in a position to contradict. They hang to-day in the
“ Occult Room ” at Adyar, and are declared to have been painted
from the respective “astral bodies” of their subjects. Colonel Olcott,
president, who knows their origin perfectly well, exhibits them reverently
to barefoot disciples doing “puja.”
Photographs from the" fancy
portrait of “M,” in locked cases, have been distributed to the Esoteric
few; Mrs. Besant always works with one facing her; Madame
Blavatsky made it part of a chela's course to spend some time daily
staring at the image, and deliberately trying to “ visualise ” it in corners
of the room. What wonder it some of them have succeeded ? It would
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105
have been contrary to all experience of the phenomena of self-hypnotic
hallucination if they had not.
The thing only begins to call for
examination when the figure thus “ visualised ” leaves something not
entirely psychic behind him. The Master who left a shower of roses
■once at Adyar turned out to have been M. Coulomb, eked out with
a mask, a bladder, and some white muslin; and the roses were traced
elsewhere than to Tibet. And the Master who precipitated the Judge
missives?——But perhaps the Theosophists would prefer not to put
him forward. When they have something better, I shall be glad to
hear of it.
The Theosophistpy of Throwing Over the Mahatmas.
“ What matter even if the Mahatmas do not exist, and the phenomena
.are frauds I There still remain those sublime ideas which,” &c., &c.
I was quite prepared for this particu’ar Theosophistry. That was why
I started, at the very beginning of my story (Chapter II.), by showing
what an enormous practical part the Mahatmas and their miracles have
played in the movement. It is easy for this Theosophist or that to
protest that they never attracted him. The fact remains that the big
accessions to the society’s numbers have always followed on the miracle
“booms,” alike under Madame Blavatsky and under Mrs. Besant.
Moreover, it is not possible, even argumentatively, to dissociate
“ those 'sublime ideas,” &c., from the Mahatmas on whose
authority Madame Blavatsky gave them out. If she spoke truth, they
were the real authors of “ Isis Very Much Unveiled” and of “The
Secret Doctrine.” If she lied, and the authority for those teachings is
her own, what is that lying authority worth ? I need not labour the
point, as it was conclusively proved long ago by Mrs. Besant herself.
In an article in Lucifer of December, 1890, addressed apparently to
certain Theosophical schismatics who showed a tendency to throw over
alike their foundress and her “ Masters,” Mrs. Besant accomplished the
easy task of showing that the society was tied hand and foot to both.
It was founded by Her at the bidding of “ Them ” : They have been
the deus ex machind whenever She was in a fix, and the society has so
accepted Them. It can be “ neutral ” about Them, and Their
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ISIS VERY MUCH UNVEILED.
miracles, and Their prophetess, only when an heir is neutral about his
own title-deeds. As Mrs. Besant puts it in a nutshell: “ If there are
no Masters, then the Theosophical Society is an absurdity.”
The Theosophistpy of Throwing Over the “Inner Group.”
“ The Esoteric Section is a private body, not officially connected with
the Theosophical Society ; so the Society is not responsible for miracle
mongering in the Section.”
The so-called Esoteric Section or E.S.T. (“ Eastern School of Theo
sophy”), of which the High-priesters and the Vice-President are now
quarrelling for the headship, and, in the words of the latter official, “ the
core of the Theosophical Society.” The Inner Group, again, is the core
of the E. S. T. Both were the special creation of the Society’s foun
dress. The Group was to contain her top pupils The members
of the group are almost to a man officials of the Society, living
at the Society’s expense. With the one exception of Colonel
Olcott, practically all the high panjandrums are included in it.
Lastly, if it has been the centre of the Mahatma communications, it is
a centre that has radiated them in all directions to the society’s cir
cumference. The plop of a missive sends a ripple from the Inner
Group to the Esoteric Section, from the Esoteric Section to the society
at large, and from the society to rhe public.
Well, the yolk of an egg is not officially connected with the outer
portion ; but when the yolk is bad, we call it a rotten egg without
further parley.
The Theosophistpy of Throwing Over the Society’s Personnel.
But that brings me to the most barefaced Theosophistry of all:
“ Even if all our officials be proved to have lied and cheated, there still
remains untouched their grand ethical teaching ” /
I simply state this, and leave it. Like the coster when his barrow
broke down, “ Friends, I ain’t ekal to it.” I cannot do justice to such
colossal impudence. “Truth survives all attacks she does; she will even
survive Theosophical defences. “ The noble religions and philosophies
of the East exist ”; they do, as they did long centuries before the
Theosophical Society was heard of, and will do long centuries after it
has been forgotten. But when Mahatmas, and miracles, and the
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107
founders, and the officials, and the official acts of the Theosophical
Society are all thrown over—What remains of the society ?
“ We have absolutely no creed,” the European secretary
told an interviewer the other day—(all unfettered by the
fact that he distributes broadcast Mrs. Besant’s “Introduction
to Theosophy ” with a complete pseudo-Buddhistic cosmology about
the Seven Planes, &c., authenticated by direct reference to the Masters,
and particularising, for instance, that “ Devachan ” lasts “ for average
persons some fifteen centuries”!)—“Absolutely no creed.” “You
would simply call yours a moral or religious society, then ? ” asked the
puzzled interviewer. To which Mr. Mead naively replies, “ I don’t
exactly know what you would call z/.”—(Sunday Tinies^ Nov. 11.)
Since scholarship has opened the stores of the East to Western
culture, there has been a natural awakening of popular interest in Eastern
directions. While that lasts, people discussing each other’s souls will
continue to sprinkle their remarks, harmlessly enough, with those
mingled jargons which make a true Orientalist smile. If “Theosophy”
means that, “Theosophy ” has certainly some life before it; but as for
the Theosophical Society—“ why cumbereth it the ground? ” It is an
organised machine for taking in the Honest Enthusiast at one end,
passing him through the stages of the Willing Dupe and the Con
scientious Humbug, and turning him out at the other end at worst a
conscious fraud, at best a dreary and disillusioned cynic.
Enough of the logical and ethical fog that Theosophy diffuses !—
the Mahatmosphere, as one might call it. It is a relief to escape from
it into the fresh air of common honesty and common sense.
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Io8
POSTSCRIPT.
A
THE
MAHATMA
AT
VICE-PRESIDENT’S
BAY :
TRUMP
CARD.
The following appeared in the BAs/wzwsiter Gazette^ under the
headings: “ OPEN SPLIT BETWEEN THEOSOPHICAL
OFFICIALS”; “RIVAL REVELATIONS FROM THE
SAME MASTER”; “MR. JUDGE GETS A MISSIVE DE
POSING MRS. BESANT ”
Just as the Story of the Great Mahatma Hoax is going to press
in" its collected form, just in the nick of time to be included,
comes the material for a new chapter of more extravagant
humour than all the rest. Readers of the “ Isis ” chapters will recall
that the Theosophic embroglio has gone through the following stages:—
(1) The vice-president’s “Mahatma” makes reflections on the president.
(2) The president and other officials make charges of “forging”
Mahatma missives against the V.P.
(3) Mrs. Besant, after
some vacillation, adopts these charges, and joins with the
others in offering the V.P. the choice of retiring quietly
or an exposure. (4) The V.P. bluffs them all into silence, and they
all join in inducing the “ Convention ” of last July to separate
without looking further into the matter. (5) Mrs. Besant and the V.P.
“ join hands,” in public, on her statement that though he wrote the
alleged missives “ with his own hand,” yet he had “ psychically received”
their contents from the Mahatma. (6) In private, Mrs. Besant separates
herself from the V.P. by dissolving their joint headship of the
Esoteric Section (“ the core of the Theosophical Society,” as Mr. Judge
justly calls it below) : Mr. Judge, V.P., to retain the American section
oc the section, and she herself the European, to which she has since
added the Indian.
Now we learn Phase 7. Seven is a highly Theosophical numeral,
and this phase is certainly a rich one. Mr. Judge sends round to the
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iog>
Esoteric Section a pamphlet in ^which he announces that Mrs. Besant
is, in effect, possessed of a devil, and that the Mahatma (under whose
direction she also professes to be acting) has ordered him to depose
her altogether, and take over the whole thing himself! ! Which, in
a formal “ Order,” he accordingly proceeds to do.
The pamphlet, which among other things professes to give the Jud^e
version of the true inwardness of the abortive “Enquiry” in July,
has just been sent round to the'Esoteric Theosophists. Copies were
not sent to some who were considered dangerous ; but the recent
unveiling has made a good many so who were safe enough,
from the Judge point of view, before, and thanks to one of the e
who does not acknowledge-any headship of Mr. Judge over the Euro
pean Esotericists since Mrs. Besant’s dissolution thereof, it is possib.e
to give to mankind what was meant by Mr. Judge for a party. . The
following are the salient passages, followed by the Order deposing
Mrs. Besant (the titles in capitals are Mr. Judge’s; the paragraph •
headings are not):—
BY MASTER’S DIRECTION.
I now send you this, all of it being either direct quotations from the
messages to me, or else in substance what I am directed to say to you,
the different details and elaborations being my own.
We have now to deal with the E. S.T. and with our duty to it and toeach other ; and among those others, to Mrs. Besant.
The Greatness of Wm. Q. Judge.
I am not a pledged member of the E.S T., and never made a pledge
in it, as my pledges were long before to the Master direct. I was one of
its founders, with H. P.B., and she, at the beginning, made me manager
and teacher in it from the first, under her, for the American part
especially. You can remember all she said of that. I wrote the rules
of the E.S.T. myself in London in 1888 at H.P.B.’s request, and
under the direction of the Master. Those were not altered by her, but
after reading them and further consulting the Master she added somegeneral paragraphs. I am the only one standing in that position. Mrs.
Besant and all other members are pledged and certified in the ordinary
way. . . .
An Inner Group was later on formed by H.P. B. at London, so that she
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ISIS VERY MUCH -UNVEILED,
might give out teachings to be recorded by the members, and, if possible
teach them practical Occultism. O: this Mrs. Besant, with George Mead
to help her, was made the Secretary, because she had great ability in a
literary way, was wholly devoted, and perfectly fit for the task. But this
did not make her a teacher.
The Littleness of Mps. Besant.
•
Therdeath of
destroyed, of course, any further value in the
office of “ Recorder.”
The conversations of H.P.B. with the Inner Group were taken down
in a more or less fragmentary form by the different members, in notes,
and later Mrs. Besant and George Mead wrote them out, as Secretaries,
have a complete copy of these, and so has each member of the Inner
Group, and those copies comprise all the “Instructions” left in the
possession of Mrs. Besant or the Inner Group. In my possession, and
within my control, is a large body of instructions given to me all the
time from 1875, which I shall give out and have given out, as far as I am
directed. ...
Mrs. Annie Besant has been but five years in this work, and not all of
that time engaged in occult study and practice.......................
Since 1889 she has done great service to the T.S. and devoted herself
to it. But all this does not prevent a sincere person from making errors
in Occultism, especially when he, as Mrs. Besant did, tries to force himself
along the path of practical work in that field. Sincerity does not confer
of itself knowledge, much less wisdom.
Singular Disinterested ..ess of Wm. Q. Judge.
I wish it to be clearly understood that Mrs. Besant has had herself no
conscious evil intention : she has simply gone for awhile outside the line of
her Guru (H.P. B.), begun work with others, and fallen under their
influence. We should not push her farther down, but neither will the true
sympathy we have blind our eyes, so as to let her go on, to the detri
ment of the movement.
I could easily retire from the whole T. S., but
my conceptions of duty are different, although the personal cost
to myself in this work is heavy, and as I am ordered to stay I will stay
and try my best to aid her and everyone else as much as possible. And
the same authority tells me that “ could she open her eyes and see her
real line of work, and correct the present condition in herself as well as the
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in
one she has helped to make in the T.S. and E.S.T., she would find
herself in mental, spiritual, and physical conditions of a kind much better
than ever before, for her present state is due to the attacks of the dark
powers, unconsciously to her.
Black Magic and. the Plot Behind the Scenes.
And now it becomes necessary under instructions received to give the
members of the School some account of the things behind the scenes in
connexion with the recent investigation attempted at London upon the
charges against me. ...
I was made the object of an attack in the guise of an attempt to
purify the Society, and Mrs. Besant was thrown forward as the official
accuser of myself—a friend who was certified to her by H.P. B., her
teacher, well known as working for the T.S. for many years. All this
needs light, and the best interests ol Mrs. Besant and of the E.S.T.
demand that some of the secret history shall be given out,
however disagreeable it may be, in order that the very purgation which
was improperly directed to the wrong quarter shall take p ace now. The
difficulty arose when in January or February Annie Besant finally lent
herself unconsciously to the plot which I detail herein.
The plot exists among the Black Magicians, who ever war against the
White, and against those Black ones we were constantly warned by H.P.B.
This is no fiction, but a very substantial ¡act. I have seen and also been
shown the chief entity among those who thus work against us. . . .
How Mr. Judge’s Master Caught Out Mrs. Besant's Friend.
The name of the person who was worked upon so as to, if possible,
use him as.a minor agent of the Black Magicians, and for the influencing
of Mrs. Besant, is Gyanendra N. Chakravarti, a Brahman, of Allahabad,
India, who came to America on our invitation to the Religious Parliament
in 1893. He permitted ambition to take subtle root in his heart ;
he is no longer in our lines.
He was then a Chela of a minor
Indian Guru, and was directed to come to America by that Guru, who
had been impressed to so direct him by our Master. . . . While
in that relation he was telepathically impressed in Chicago with some of
the contents of a message received by me from the Master.
It corro
borated outwardly what I had myself received.
It was, however, but
a part, and was, moreover, deficient in matter, Chakravarti himself being
only aware of it as a mental impression, and I am informed that at the time
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ISIS VERY MUCH UNVEILED.
he was not fully aware of what he was doing. His. ability to be used asanunconscious vehicle was made known to me when he was made to receive the
message. Although he was not fully aware ol it, not only was the whole of his
tour here well guarded and arranged, but he was personally watched by the
agents ot the Master’s scattered through the country unknown to him, who
reported to me.
On several occasions he has taken people into his con
fidence, believing that he was instructing them, when in fact they
were observing him closely from the Lodge, helping him where right, and
noting him fully, though they did not tell him so. This was also so in
those parts of his tour when he believed himself alone or only with Mrs
Besant. ...
“If I am a Fraud so are H.P.B. and the Masters.”
If I was guilty of what I was accused, then Master would be shown
as conniving at forgery and lying—a most impossible thing. The only
other possibility is that Mr. Chakravarti and I “ got up ’’ the message.
But he and Mrs. Besant have admitted its genuineness, although she is
perectly unable herself to decide on its genuineness or falsity; but further
Mrs. Besant admitted to several that she had seen the Master himself
come and speak through my body while I was perfectly conscious. Andstill further, H.P.B. gave me in 1889 the Master’s picture, on which he
put this messege, “To my dear and loyal colleague, W. Q. Judge.”
Now, then, either I am bringing you a true message from the Master,
or the. whole T. S. and E. S.T, is a lie, in the ruins of which must be
buried the names of H.P.B. and the Masters. All these stand together
as they fall together.
How Mrs. Besant Privately Thinks H.P.B. a Fraud.
As final proof of the delusions worked through this man and hisfriends, I will mention this
Many years ago—in 1881—the Masters
sent to the Allahabad Brahmans (the Prayag T.S.) a letter which
was delivered by H.P.B. to Mr. A. P. Sinnett, who handed a
copy over to them, keeping the original; it dealt very plainly
with the Brahmans. This letter the Brahmans do nc t like, and
Mr. Chakravarti tried to make me think it was a pious fraud by
H.P.B. He succeeded with Mrs. Besant in this, so that since she met
him she has on several occasions, said she thought it was a fraud
by H.P.B., made up entirely, and not from the Master. I say now on.
Master’s authority that it was from the Master, and is a right letter. Only
�IQIS VERY ML CH LNVEILED.
“3
delusion would make Mrs. Besant take this position: deliberate intention]
makes the others do it.
It is an issue which may not be evaded, lor if
that letter be a fraud, then ail the rest sent through our old teacher and
on which Esoteric Buddhism was made, are the same. I shall rest on
that issue : we all rest on it.
Mrs. Besant’s Rival Revelations.
Mrs. Besant was then made to agree with these people under the
delusion that it was approved by the Masters.
--------- She regarded herself
as their servant.
It was against the ___ _
E.S.T. rules.
When the
rule is broken it is one’s duty to leave the E.S.T.
, and when
I got the charges from her I asked her
to leave it if
it did not suit her. The depth of the plot
was not shown
to Mrs. Besant at all, for if it 'had been
she would have
refused, Nor was Colonel Olcott aware of it.
Mrs. Besant was
put in such a frightful position that while she was writing me most kindly
and wnrkincr With ma eko was «11 the time thinking that - was a former
__
- 1•
. I
7
and working with me she
all
and that I had blasphemed the Master. She was made to conceal from
me, when here, her thoughts about the intended charges, but was made to
tell Mr. B. Keightley, in London, and possibly few others. Nor until
the time was ripe did she tell me, in her letter, in January, from India
y II"16!0 res£nfrom the E.S.T. and the T.S. offices, saying that
rf I did and would confess guilt, all would be forgiven, and everyone
would work with me as usual. But I was directed differently/and fully
informed. She was induced to believe that the Master was endorsing
the prosecution, that he was ordering her to do what she did. At
the same time, I knew and told her that it was the plan there to have
° On? °,cott res'gn when I had been cut off, the presidency to be then
to er’ •
waS
to her, and she was made to believe it was
the Masters wish for her “not to oppose.” She then waited. I did not
resign, and the plot so far was spoilt for the time. .
She felt and expressed to me the greatest pain to have to do such
t mgs to me. I knew she so felt, and wrote her that it was the Black
Magmians. She replied, being still under the delusion, that I was failing
to do Master’s will.
6
How Mrs. Besant Tried Witchcraft.
Her influencers also made her try psychic experiments on me and on
two others in Europe. They failed. On me they had but a passing
effect, as I was cognisant of them; on one of the others they
H
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114
reflected on health, although she did not desire any harm at all : she was
made
think it best and for my good. She then sent word to these
people that she had not succeeded. This is all the effect■
P
delusion ; the variance between such things and her «sual charaCter u
shown in her all the time writing me the most kind letters. In
this Mr. Chakravarti was her guide, with others. She was writing
all the time about it. He went so far as to write me on a matter he w
supposed to know nothing of: “No matter what Annie may do to you as
co-head of the E.S. she means you no harm.”
■
'
“Every Man His Own Mahatma.”’
, '
Informed as I was of these inside facts, I drew up under Masters
direction my circular on the charg s in March, 1894, and‘ l^eM°ul^n*
what would be done. It was all done as I said, and as the Master in
March told me would be the case. The London investigation ended as
Master predicted through me in my circular, tand for t e en
TS
But all that time the conspirators used all means aga
.
They had all sorts of letters sent me from J"«» “VuXur
messages from the Masters asking me to resign and confess. But Master
“ept me informed and told me what steps to take. He even told me ha ,
much as it might seem the contrary from the official papers, Colonel Olcot
would be the central figure and the one through whom the adjustment
would come.
This also turned out true.
Migration of Mahatmas to-New York?
.. The Master says that the T.S. movement was begun by Them m t e
West by western people ; that cyclic law requires the work in the West
the benefit of the world ; that They do not live in India.
They also say that Nature’s laws have set apart woe for t
h
spit back in the face of their teacher, for those who try to belittle he
work, and make her out to be part good and part fraud. . . .
q{
A distinct object H.P.B. bad m view I will now, on the _Jth y
the Master, tell you, unrevealed before by H.P.B. to anyone else hat I
know of: it is, the establishment in the West of a great seat of learn g,
where shall be taught and explained and demonstrated the great theor
of man and nature'which she has brought orward to us ^ere Western
occultism, as the essence combined out of a 11 o
^al^be taught^
I also state on the same authority that H.P. .
hated.
...
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”5
We are all, therefore, face to face with the question whether we will
abide by Masters and their Messenger on the one hand, or by the
disrupting forces that stand on the other, willing to destroy our great
mission if we will but.give them the opportunity.
“I Daclap© Mps. Bssant's Headship at an End!”
The pamphlet closes with the following “E.S.T. ORDER,” dated
November 3, and signed in manuscript:—
I now proceed a step further than the E.S.T. decisions of 1894, and
solely for the good of the E.S.T. I resume in the E.S.T.,.in full, all
the functions and powers given to me by H. P. B. and that came to me by
orderly succession a ter her passing from this life, and declare myseli the
sole head of the E.S.T. This has been done already in America. So
far as concerns the rest of the E.S.T. I may have to await the
action of the members, but I stand ready to exercise those functions
in every part of it. Hence, under the authority given me by the Master
and H.P.B., and under Master’s direction, I declare Mrs. Annie Besant’s
headship in the E.S.T. at an end.
This, then, is Mr. Judge’s response to the case against him, and,
as was expected, it takes the form of attacking his colleagues, but
keeps strictly to generalities as regards the evidence against himself.
The date affixed is one when Mr. Judge had probably heard of the
articles in The Westminster by cable, but had no idea of the
detailed nature of’ the attack.
The parts quoted throw many
interesting side-lights, but perhaps the most delightful thing
is the picture presented of all the Theosophists playing off
the Mahatma on one another:
Mr. Judge, Mrs. Besant,
Mr. Chakravarti, and others, giving the most contradictory messages
from the same Tibetan source ; and Mr. Judge now finally “ going one
better ” than all the rest, for has he not, in a very real sense, the
Mahatma in his pocket ?
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ISIS VERY MUCH UNVEILED.
At any rate, the battle has now well begun. The prophets of
Baal are cutting, not the.nselves as of old, but one another. More
' power to all their elbows 1
Mrs. Besant was willing enough to accept Mr. Judge’s anti-Olcott
missives as “ psychically ” from the Mahatma ; we shall now see how
it strikes her when the same weapon is turned against herself. *
[In the same issue was published a “ vote of censure passed on the
President by one of the local ‘Lodges’ of the T.S. ‘(Bournemouth),
declaring that the articles recently published|in the Westminster Gazette
disclose a prima facie case against the Vice-President,” “ of fraud upon
his fellow Theosophists.” “ The Vice-President should not continue to
lie,” the Bournemouth Lodge remarks, “ under such a charge.” Other
Lodges have also taken one side or the other.]
k
I
We have seen.
Vide Preface.
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THE SOCIETY UPON THE
HIMALAY.
117
"
(THEO5OPHICALLY ADAPTED FROM BRET HARTE.)
I reside at Table Mountain, and my name is Truthful James ;
I am not fond of pious frauds or Oriental games;
And I’ll tell in simple language, as well as I can say,
What broke up our Society upon the Himalay.
But first I would remark that there must needs be painful scenes
When Theosophic gents begin to give each other Beans ;
And though Mahatma missives do pan out a little queer,
We should avoid disturbances in the Mahatmosphere.*
Now nothing could be nicer or more full of harmony
Than the first few months that followed the decease of “H.P.B.”;
-Till Judge of Calaveras produced a curious set
Of missives in red pencil what he said were from Tibet, f
From these he reconstructed a Mahatma (very rare),
A Nest of that peculiar kind pertaining to a Mare;
But Mrs. Besant found a rival missive on the shelf, J
And said she fancied Mr. Judge had written his himself. §
Then Judge’s smile took on a most unpleasant sort of curve;
He said he would not trespass so on Mrs. B.’s preserve.
He was a most resourceful man, that quiet Mr. Judoe :
He got another missive saying Mrs. B.’s was fudge.||
Now, it is not edifying for a Theosophic priest
To call another one a fraud—to all intents, at least;
Nor should the individual who happens to be meant
Reply by throwing things about to any great extent.
Then Olcott, H., of Adyar, raised a point of order, when
A chunk of old red pencil took him in the abdomen ; 51
And he smiled a kind of sickly smile and curled up on the floor,
And the subsequent proceedings interested him no more.**
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Ïi8
For, in less time than I write it, all the meeting got upset
With “ precipitating ” missiles which did noi come from Tibet ;
And the" things they called each other in their anger-wer-e-a sin—
Till the public got disgusted, and thè temple roof caved in.
And this is all I have to say of these improper games,
For I live at Table Mountain and my name is Truthful James}
And I've told in simple language all I know about the fray
That broke up our Society upon the Himalay.
* “ Any action in these controversial matters tends to set up a perfect whirlwind
on other planes.’’—Mrs. Besar.t in Lucifer.
+ “ Mahatma Morya affects red pencil, Koot Hoomi blue.”—“ Isis Very Much
Unveiled.”
J “ She wrote .... it was Master’s wish'.... that Master ordered her to do
as she did.”—Mr. Judge’s circular to the E.S.T. ..
:§ “ I now know that they were written by Mr. Judge.”—Mrs. Besant, “Report
of an Enquiry,” &c.
|| “ Under Master’s direction, I declare Mrs. Besant’s headship at an end.”—
Mr. Judge’s circular to the E.S.T.
“Isis,” Chapters IX., X.
** “ I declare, as my opinion, that this e’nquiry must go no farther.”—Colonel
Olcott, “ Report of all Enquiry,” &c.
F. E. G.
a.
rio ’o
o
. . A
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“WHEN AUGUR
MEETS
1x9
AUGUR”—
“ It is rather a squalid fight between the augurs that the curtain has been
raised upon ; but it has got to be fought out now before the public, and it is in
vain tn try to ring the curtain down again.”
�I
|| fi
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“ISIS
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A REPLY FROM MR. WILLIAM Q. JUDGE.
To the Editor of The Westminster Gazette.
Sir,—You have published slanderous articles against the
Theosophical Society, using me as the person ; you have asked for a
reply; I send it to you and ask that it be given place in your paper.
•—Yours truly,
William Q. Judge.
Theosophical Society, American Section,
General Secretary’s Office, New York, Nov. 26.
To the Editor of The Westminster Gazette.
Sir,—At the time your articles directed against the Theosophical
Society under the above title were appearing, I was lecturing in the
country, and only within a few days have I seen your last numbers.
Time is required for writing on such a subject, and at this distance
from London I cannot be accused of much delay. With the greatest
interest and amusement I have read your long series of articles. The
writer is an able man, and you and he together constitute one of the
advertising agencies of the Theosophical Society. The immense range of
your notices cannot be well calculated, and very truly we could never
pay for such an advertisement. Do you mind keeping this part of my
letter as all the remuneration we can give you for the work done by
�122
ISIS VERY MUCH UN VEILED.
you in thus advertising the movement and bringing prominently to the
notice of your public the long-forgotten but true doctrine of the possible
existence of such beings as Professor Huxley says it would be
impertinent to say could not exist in the natural order of evolution ?
And while I look at it all as an'^advertisement, I cannot admire
the treason developed therein, nor the spiteful unworthy tone of it,
nor the divergence from fact in many cases when it suited the purpose,
nor the officious meddling in the private affairs of other people, nor
the ignoring and falsification in respect to possible motive, made out
by you to be gain by some of us, when the fact is that we are all
losers of money by our work. That fact a candid person would
have stated, and marvelled at it that we should be willing to slave
for the Theosophical Society, and always spend our money. Such
a person would have given “ the devil his due.” You have suppressed
it and lied about it, and hence it is not admirable in you, but is quite
mean and low. You advertise us and then try to befoul us. Well,
we gain by the advertisement, and the course of time will wipe off the
small stain you try to paint upon us. When you and your ready
writer are both dead and forgotten, and some of you probably execrated
for offences not as yet exposed, we will still live as a body and be
affecting the course of modern thought, as we have been doing for
nearly twenty years.
I am the principal object of your attack, though you also cruelly
abuse a woman who has long enough fought the world of your con
ventional nation, and perhaps you expect me to either rise and explain,
or keep silent. Well, I will do neither. I will speak, but cannot fully
explain. Your paper is a worldly forum, a sort of court. In it there
is neither place nor credence for explanations which must include
psychic things, facts, and laws, as well as facts and circumstances of
the ordinary sort. Were I to explain in full, no one would believe me
save those students of the occult and the psychical who know psychic
law and fact. Those who doubt and wish all to be reduced to the
level of compass and square, of eye and word of mouth, would still be
doubters. Nothing would be gained at all. That difficulty no
intelligent person who has had psychic experience can overlook.' That
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133
is why you are quite safe from a suit for libel. I assure you that had-.
you published something not so inextricably tangled up with psychic
phenomena I should be glad to have you in court, not to soothe
wounded feelings I have not, but to show that our faulty law and so- .
called justice do sometimes right some wrongs.
L?t me first emphatically deny the inference and assertion made by .
you, that I and my friends make money out of the T.S., or that the
organisation has built up something by which we profit. This is untrue,
and its untruth is known to all persons who know anything at all about the
society. No salaries are paid to our officers. We support ourselves
or privately support each other. I have never had a penny from the
society, and do not want any. The little magazine, the Pathy which I.
publish here in the interest of the society, is not supported by subscrip
tions from members, but largely by others, and it is kept up at a loss to
me which will never be repaid. I publish it because I wish to, and not
for gain. Thousands of dollars are expended in the T.S. work here
each year over and above what is paid in for fees and dues. The dues are
but four shillings a year, and three times as much as that is expended in
the work. Where does it come from ? Out of our private pockets,
and if I had a million I would spend it that way. My friends and
myself give our money and our time to the society without hope or.
desire for any return. We may be fanatics—probably are—but it is
false and malicious to accuse us of using the society for gain. The
only payment we get is the seeing every day thè wider and wider
spread of Theosophical theories of life, man, and nature. I am ready
to submit all our books and vouchers to any auditor to support these
statements. And you were in a position to find out the facts as I have
given them.
It is also absolutely untrue, as you attempt to show or infer, that
the society grows by talking of the Mahatmas or Masters, or by
having messages sent round from them. The movement here and
elsewhere is pushed along the line of philosophy, and each one is left
to decide for himself on the question of the Mahatmas. “ Messages from
the Masters ” do not go flying round, and the society does not flourish
by any belief in those being promulgated. Nor am I, as you hint, in
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ZSIS VEBY MUCH UNVEILED.
the habit of sending such messages about the society, nor of
influencing the course of affairs by using any such thing. Send out
and ask all the members and you will find I am correct. It is true that
those Masters tell me personally what I am to do, and what is the best
course to take, as they have in respect to this very letter, but that is'
solely my own affair. Could I be such a fool as to tell all others to go
by what I get for my own guidance, knowing how weak, suspicious,
and malicious is the human nature of to-day ? You are on the wrong
tack, my friend.
‘ But you were right when you say that Mrs. Besant made a remark
able change in respect to me. That is true, and Mr. Chakravarti whom
you name is, as you correctly say, the person who is responsible for it.
Before she met Chakravarti she would not have dreamed of prosecuting
me. This is a matter of regret, but while so, I fail to see how you aid
your case against me by dragging the thing in thus publicly, unless, in
deed, you intend to accuse him and her of going into a conspiracy
against me.
There are two classes of “ messages from the Masters ” charged to
me by you and by that small section of theT.S. members who thought
of trying me. One class consists of notes on letters of mine to various
persons; the other of messages handed to Mrs. Besant and Colonel
Olcott and enclosure found in a letter to Colonel Olcott from a man in
California.
I have never denied that I gave Mrs. Besant messages from the
Masters. I did so. They were from the Masters. She admits that,
but simply takes on herself to say that the Master did not personally
write or precipitate them. According to herself, then, she got from
me genuine messages from the Masters ; but she says she did not
like them to be done or made in some form that she at first
thought they were not in. I have not admitted her contention ; I have
simply said they were from the Master, and that is all I now say,
for I will not tell how or by what means they were produced. The
objective form in which such a message is of no consequence.
Let it be written by your Mr. Garrett, or drop out of the misty air, or
come with a clap of thunder. All that makes no difference save to
�ISIS' VERY MUCH UNVEILED.
125
the vulgar and the ignorant. The reality of the message is to be
tested by other means. If you have not those means you are quite
at sea as to the whole thing. And all this I thought was common
knowledge in the Theosophical world. It has long been published and
explained.
One of those messages to Mrs. Besant told her not to go to India
that year. I got it in California, and then telegraphed it to her in
substance later, sending the paper. I had no interest in not having
her go to India, but knew she would go later. The other messages
were of a personal nature. They were all true and good. At the
time I gave them to her I did not say anything. That I never
denied. It was not thought by me necessary to insult a woman of
her intellectual ability, who had read all about these things, by
explaining all she was supposed to know. Those who think those
messages were not from the Master are welcome to doubt it so far as I
am concerned, for I know the naturalness of that doubt.
When Colonel Olcott resigned 1 was first wiling to let him stay
resigned. But I was soon directed by another “ message ” to prevent
it if I could, and at once cabled that to him, and went to work to have
the American Section vote asking him to stay in office. As I was the
person mentioned to succeed him, we also, to provide for contingencies,
resolved that the choice of America was myself as successor. But
when he revoked, then my successorship was null and void until
voted on at another period not yet reached.
But it is absolutely false
that I sent an emissary to him when I found he was minded to stay in
office. Ask him on this and see what he says. I leave that to him. Truly
enough I made an error of judgment in not telling the influential
London members of my message when I told Olcott. But what of that ?
I did not tell the Americans, but left their action to the dictates of
■their sense and the trend of friendship and loyalty to our standardbearer.
The English voted against Olcott by doing nothing, but I
asked them in the same way as I asked the Americans to request him
to revoke. They had their chance. As India had done the same as
America I saw the vote was final as my message directed, and so . I
dropped it from my mind—one of my peculiarities. I certainly did
�I2Ó
ISIS
VERY MUCH UNVEILED.
not use any pressure by way of “ messages from the Masters ” on any
one as to that, save on Olcott. And he reported a message to the
same effect to himself. Did I invent that also ? My message to him
was copied by me on my type-writer and sent to him.
I did it thus
because I knew of spies about Olcott, of whom I had warned him to
little effect. One of those confessed and committed suicide, and the
other was found out.
A message was found in a letter from Abbot Clark, a Californian,
to Colonel Olcott. This, you say, I made and put in the letter. I
have the affirmation of Mr. Clark on the matter, which I send you
herewith to be inserted at this place if you wish. It does not bear out
your contention, but shows the contrary. It also shows that his letter
to Colonel Olcott was opened in India by some other person before
being sent on to Colonel Olcott. You can make what inference you
like from this.
Your statement about putting a question in a cabinet for an answer
when I stayed in the room and Mrs. Besant went out is false. No such
thing took place. I deny that there was any such thing as a reception
of “ answers in a sealed envelope in a closed drawer.” That is supreme
bosh from beginning to end, and cannot be proved by anybody’s testi
mony, unless you will accept perjury.
At the same time I can now say, as the sole authority on the
point, that several of the contested messages are genuine ones,
no matter what all and every person, Theosophist or not, may say to
the contrary.
You have much talk about what you say is called the Master’s
seal. You have proved by the aid of Colonel Olcott that the latter
made an imitation in brass of the signature of the Master and gave it
to H.P.B. as a joke.
You trace it to her and there you leave it, and
then you think I am obliged to prove I did not get it, to prove nega
tives again, when it has never been proved that I had it. I have long
ago denied all knowledge of Master’s seal either genuine or imitated. I
do not know if he has a seal; if he has, I have not yet been informed
of it; the question of a seal owned by him as well as what is his
writing or signature are both still beclouded. None of the members
who have been in this recent trouble know what is the writing, or the
�ISIS VERY MUCH UNVEILED.
127
seal, or the mark of the Master. It was long ago told by H.P.B. that
the so-called writing of the Master was only an assumed hand, and no
real knowledge is at hand as to his having a seal. I have seen impres
sions similar to what you have reproduced, but it is of no consequence
to me. If there were a million impressions of seals on a message
said to be from the Master, it would add nothing to the message in
my eyes, as other means must be employed for discovering what is and
what is not a genuine message. Seals and ciphers do not validate
these things. Unless I can see for myself by my inner senses that
a message is genuine, I will not believe it, be it loaded with
seals I do not know. As I know the thousand and one magical ways
by which impressions of things may be put on paper, even uncon
sciously to the human channel or focus, I have relied, and ask others to
rely, on their own inner knowledge and not to trust to appearances.
Others may think these little decorations of importance, but I do not.
I never asked anyone at any meeting, private or public, to note or
observe the seal-impression you give. Others may have done so, but I
did not. Others may have gone into laboured arguments to show the
value of such a thing, but I did not. The whole matter of this socalled seal is so absurd and childish that it has made me laugh each
time I have thought of it.
Now I can do no more than deny, as I hereby do absolutely, all the
charges you have been the means of repeating against me. I have
denied them very many times, for I have known of them for about two
years and a half. My denial is of no value to you ; nor to those who think
there is no supersensual world ; nor to those who think that because
conjurors can imitate any psychical phenomenon, therefore the latter
has no existence ; nor to those who deny the possibility of the existence
of Mahatmas or great souls. These things are all foolishness to su~h
persons, and 1 am willing to let it stay that way. Were 1 to go into all
the details of all the messages you refer to, and were I to get' from
those who know, as I can, the full relation of all that is involved in
those messages on my letters which I saw after the July “ investiga
tion ” was ended, I would be opening the private doors to the secret
hearts of others, and that I will not do. Already ! know by .means
�128
ISIS VERY MUCH UNVEILED.
not. generally accessible altogether too much of the private hearts of
many of these people, and have no desire to know more.
Some of the matters you cite are related to a private body, once
called the Esoteric Section, which is. protected—nominally, so it
seems, among your informants—by a pledge. The breaking of that
by others gives me no right to add to their breach. I cannot, like
Mr. Old and others more prominent, violate the confidences of others.
His revelations cannot be analysed.by me in public. He is in the
position of those Masons who have attempted to reveal the secrets of
Masonry ; and either the public has listened to a liar or to one who
has to admit that he does not regard his solemn obligation as worth
a straw when it obstructs his purposes; in either case the information
cannot be relied upon.
His account and yours contain so many
misrepresentations that none [of] it has any serious consideration
from me.
And Mr. Old’s revelations, or those of any other members, amount
to nothing. The real secrets have not been revealed, for they have
not been put in the hands of such people ; they have been given only
to those who have shown through long trial and much labour that they
are worthy to have the full relation of the plans of the master-builder
exposed to their gaze. Let the dishonest, the perjured, and the vacil
lating go on with their revelations ; they will hurt no one but them
selves.
Now as to the Investigation at which you have laughed. I grant
you it was matter for laughter from outside to see such a lot of labour
and gathering from the lour quarters to end in what you regard as
smoke. Now, my dear sir, I did not call the Inquiry Committee. I
protested against it and said from the beginning it should never have
been called at all. Must I bear the brunt of that which I did not do ?
Must I explain all my life to a committee which had no right to come
together, for which there was no legal basis ? It was called in order
to make me give up an official succession I did not have ; months before
it met I said it would come to nothing but a declaration written by
me of the non-dogmatic character of the T.S. My Master so told me
and so it turned out. Will you give me no credit for this foreknowledge?
�ISIS VERY MUCH UNVEILED,
129
Was it a guess, or was it great ability, or did it come about through
bribery, or what ? I was told to use the opportunity to procure an
official declaration that belief in Mahatmas or Masters was not and is
not one of the T.S., and I succeeded in so doing. I might have been
accused as an individual and not official member. But by the influence
of the Mr. Chakravarti whom you mention the whole power of the
society was moved against me, so as to try and cut me down root and
branch officially and privately, so that it might thereby be made sure
that I was not successor to the presidency. This is the fact. That is
why I forgave them all; for it is easy to forgive; in advance I
forgave them since they furnished such a splendid official
opportunity for a decision we long had needed. The odium resulting
from the attempt to try occult and psychical questions under common
law rules I am strong enough to bear; and up to date I have had a
large share of that.
I refused a committee of honour, they say. I refused the committee
that was offered as it was not of persons who could judge the matter
rightly. They would have reached no conclusion save the one I now
promulgate, which is, that the public proof regarding my real or delusive
communications from the Masters begins and ends with myself, and
that the committee could not make any decision at all, but would have to
leave all members to judge for themselves. To arrive officially at this
I would have to put many persons in positions that they could not
stand, and the result then would have been that far more bad feeling
would come to the surface. I have at least learned after twenty years
that it is fruitless to ask judges who have no psychic development to
y.ettle questions the one half of which are in the unseen realm of the
soul where the common law of England cannot penetrate.
The “ messages from the Masters ” have not ceased. They go on
all the time for those who are able and fit to have them, but no more
to the doubter and the suspicious. Even as I write they have gone to
some, and in relation to this very affair, and in relation to other
revelations and pledge-breakings. It is a fact in experience to me,
and to friends of mine who have not had messages from me, that the
Masters exist and have to do with the affairs of the world and the
�130
ISIS VERY MUCH UNVEILED.
Theosophical movement. No amount of argument or Maskelyneish’
explanation will drive out that knowledge. It will tear all the assaults
of time and foolish men. And the only basis on which I can place
the claim of communication by the Masters to me, so far as the world
is concerned, is my life and acts. If those for the last twenty years,
go to prove that I cannot be in communication with such beings, then
all I may say one way or the other must go for naught.
Why so many educated Englishmen reject the doctrine of the.
perfectibility of man, illustrated by the fact of there now existing
Masters of wisdom, passes my comprehension, unless it be true, as
seems probable, that centuries of slavery to the abominable idea of
original sin as taught by theology (and not by Jesus) has reduced them
all to the level of those who, being sure they will be damned any way,
are certain they cannot rise to a higher level, or unless the great god
of conventionality has them firmly in his grasp. I would rather
think myself a potential god and try to be, as Jesus commanded,
“ perfect as the Father in heaven ”—which is impossible unless in us is
that Father in essence—than to remain darkened and enslaved by the
doctrine of inherent original wickedness which demands a substitute
for my salvation. And it seems nobler to believe in that perfectibility
and possible rise to the state of the Masters than to see with science
but two possible ends for all our toil: one to be frozen up at last, and
the other to be burned up, when the sun either goes out or pulls us
into his flaming breast.—Yours truly,
William Q. Judge.
[The following is the “ affirmation ” of Mr. Abbot Clark, enclosed
with the above]:—
“San Francisco, Cal., April 21, 1894.
“ I, Abbot Clark, a member of the Theosophical Society, do hereby
state and affirm as follows: I have seen it stated in the newspapers
that it is charged that I wrote Colonel H. S. Olcott in 1891 to
India, and that in that letter was some message not known to me.
and that Colonel Olcott replied, asking where William Q.
Judge was at the time, and that I replied he was in my house,
The facts are: That in 1891 W. Q. Judge was lecturing in
�ISIS VERY MUCH CNVElLElJ.
this State, and I was with him at Santa Ana, and that I . had
no house and never had, being too poor to have one. Brother Judge
stopped at the hotel in Santa Ana, where he came from my home, m.y
father’s house at Orange, where he had been at dinner, and at Santa
Ana I arranged his lectures and I stayed at my aunt’s at Santa Ana;
while in the hotel a qonversation arose with us, in which I spoke of
Theosophical propaganda among the Chinese on this coast, and Brother
Judge suggested that I write to Colonel Olcott, as he knew many
BuddhistsTheosophists, and might arrange it better than Brother Judge;
and I then myself wrote to Colonel Olcott on the matter, showing
the letter after it was done to Brother Judge to see if it should be
improved or altered, and he banded me back the letter at once. I put
it in my pocket and kept it there for several days waiting for a chance
to'buy stamps for postage as I was away from any post-office. Brother
Judge left by himself the morning after I wrote the letter and went to
San Diego, and the only time I saw him again was in the train just to
speak to him on his return after about four days, and the letter was
not mentioned, thought of, nor referred to.
“ I assert on my word of honour that Brother Judge said nothing
to me about any message pretended to be from Masters or otherwise,
and so far as any reports or statements have been made relating to me
herein different from the above they are absolutely false.
“ From India I got a reply from Adyar T.S. office from one Charlu,
saying he had opened my letter in Colonel Olcott’s absence, and had for
warded it to him; andDharmapala told me he had seen letters from me to
Colonel Olcott on the matter received in India away from Adyar.
The said Charlu, in reply, also asked me where Brother Judge was when
the letter was written, and I wrote that he had been at my house
on that date, which is true as above stated, Orange being only
three miles from Santa Ana, as I thought Charlu wished to
have Brother Judge’s dates. But I thought also the questions
put were peculiar from such a distance. I never got any reply to
my sincere first question in that letter about propaganda from him,
and never any reply of any sort from Colonel Olcott. When Dharmapala
was here he did not bring any message in reply from Colonel Olcott,
�132
ISIS VERY MUCH UNVEILED.
but referred to recollecting speaking with Olcott about a proposal from
California to work with the Chinese. And Charlu did not speak of
any enclosure in said letter. A year later I again wrote on the same
matter to Colonel Olcott, which was answered by Gopala Charlu, now
dead, saying but little, if anything, would be done by him. To all
this I affirm on my honour.
“Abbot B Clark
“ Witness : signatures :
“Allen Griffiths, E. B. Rambo.”
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Victorian Blogging
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Title
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Isis very much unveiled : being the story of the great Mahatma hoax
Creator
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Garrett, Fydell Edmund [1865-1907]
Description
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Place of publication: London
Collation: ii, 132 p. : ill. (ports., facsims.) ; 19 cm.
Notes: Stamp on leaf before title page: 'A. Bonner, 23 Streathbourne Road, Upper Tooting, London, S.W.' "Mr Lillie's books on theosophical subjects" (Swan Sonnenschein) and other publications listed inside back cover. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
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Westminster Gazette
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[n.d.]
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N278
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Theosophy
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Isis very much unveiled : being the story of the great Mahatma hoax), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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Text
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English
Helena Petrovna Blavatsky
NSS
Theosophy