Theosophy: A Modern Revival of Ancient Wisdom

Alvin Boyd Kuhn

Chapter 3

CHAPTER III

HELENA P. BLAVATSKY: HER LIFE AND
PSYCHIC CAREER

Who was Madame Blavatsky? Every new régime of belief or of social organization must be studied with a view to determining as far as possible how much of the movement is a contribution of the individuality of the founder and how much represents a traditional deposit. This inquiry is of first importance in a consideration of the Theosophical Society, because, more than in most systems, the personal endowment of its founder gave it its specific coloring, character and form. It should be said at this point that the career of Madame Blavatsky as outlined here does not purport to be a complete or authoritative biography. It was obviously impossible to undertake such an investigation of her life, as the difficulties of obscure research in three or four continents were practically prohibitive. We have been forced to base our study upon the body of biographical material that has been assembled around her name, emanating, first, from her relatives, secondly, from her followers and admirers, and thirdly, from her critics. Her life, up to the age of forty-two, narrowly escaped consignment to the realm of mythology, if not total oblivion, but was at least partially redeemed to the status of history by the exertions of Mr. A. P. Sinnett, who procured information from members of her own family in Russia. His book, Incidents in the Life of Madame Blavatsky, has been our chief source of information about her youth and early career. The Countess Wachtmeister's Reminiscences, Col. Olcott's Old Diary Leaves, V. Solovyoff's A Modern Priestess of Isis and William Kingsland's The Real Helena P. Blavatsky, together with Madame Blavatsky's own letters, especially those to Mr. And Mrs. A. P. Sinnett, are the main works relied upon to guide our

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story. If the eventful life of our subject is to be further redeemed from mystery and sheer tradition into which it already seems to be fading, a more thorough critical study of it should be undertaken, based upon authentic data collected from first-hand sources as far as this is possible.

It is to be understood, then, that the aim in this treatise is to present her career as it is told and believed by Theosophists, although it is admittedly already partly legendary. The precise extent it is to be regarded as mythological must be left to the individual reader, and to future study, to determine.

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky was born in the Ukrainian city of Ekaterinoslaw on the night between the 30th and 31st of July, 1831. Her father was Col. Peter Hahn, and her mother previous to her marriage, Helene Fadeef. The father was the son of Gen. Alexis Hahn von Rottenstern Hahn, from a noble family of Mecklenberg, Germany, settled in Russia. Her mother's parents were Privy Councillor Andrew Fadeef and the Princess Helene Dolgorouky. Madame Blavatsky's grandfather was a cousin of Countess Ida Hahn-Hahn, the authoress. Her own mother was known in the literary world between 1830 and 1840 under the nom de plume of Zenaïda R.--the first novel writer that had ever appeared in Russia, says the account. Though she died before her twenty-fifth year, she left some dozen novels of the romantic school, most of which have been translated into German. The theory of heredity would thus give us, apparently, abundant background for whatever literary propensities the daughter was later to display. On her mother's side she was a scion of the noble lineage of the Dolgorouky's, who could trace direct connections with Russia's founder, Rurik, and the Imperial line.

Madame Blavatsky came on to the Russian scene during a year fatal to the Slavic nation, as to all Europe, owing to the decimation of the population by the first visitation of the cholera. Her own birth was quickened by several deaths in the household. She was ushered into the world amid coffins and sorrowing. The infant was so sickly that a hurried baptism was resorted to in the effort to anticipate death. During

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the ceremony, which was signalized with elaborate Greek Catholic paraphernalia of lighted tapers, the child-aunt of the baby accidentally set fire to the long robes of the priest, who was severely burned. This incident was interpreted as a bad omen, and in the eyes of the townsfolk the infant was doomed to a life of trouble.

From the very date of her birth, a peculiar tradition operated to invest the life of the growing child with an odor of superstition and mystic awe. In Russia each household was supposed to be under the tutelary supervision of a Domovoy, or house goblin, whose guardianship was propitious, except on March 30th, when, for mysterious reasons, he became mischievous. But the tradition strangely excepted from this malevolent spell of the Domovoy those born on the night of July 30-31, a time closely associated in the annals of popular belief with witches and their doings. The child came early to learn why it was that, on every recurring March 30th, she was carried around the house, stables and cowpen and made personally to sprinkle the four corners with water, while the nurse repeated some mystic incantation. Her first conscious recognition of herself must thus have been tinged with a feeling that she was in some particular fashion set apart, that she was somehow the object of special care and attention from invisible powers.

The Dnieper aided in weaving a spell of enchantment about her infancy. No Cossack of Southern Ukraine ever crosses it without preparing himself for death. Along its banks, where the child strolled with her nurses, the Rusalky (undines, nymphs) haunted the willow trees and the rushes. She was told that she was impervious to their influences, and in this sense of superiority she alone dared to approach those sandy shores. She had heard the servants' tales of these nymphs. Filled with this realization of her favored standing with the Rusalky, she one day threatened a youngster who had roused her displeasure that she would have the nymphs tickle him to death, whereupon the lad ran wildly away and was found dead on the sands--whether from fright or from having stumbled into one of the treach-

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erous sandpits which the swirling waters quickly turn into whirlpools.

Her mother died when Mlle. Hahn was still a child. She and her younger sister were taken to live with her father, in barracks with his regiment, and until the age of eleven, they were entertained, amused and spoiled as les enfants du régiment. After that they went to live at Saratow with their grandmother, where their grandfather was civil governor. The child was "alternately petted and punished, spoiled and hardened," and was difficult to manage. She was of uncertain health, "ever sick and dying," a sleep walker, and given to abnormal psychic peculiarities, ascribed by her orthodox nurses to possession by the devil; so that, as she afterwards said, "she was drenched with enough holy water to float a ship," and exorcised by priests. She was a born rebel against restraint, and went into ungovernable fits of passion, which left her violently shaken; but at the opposite apogee of her disposition she was filled with impulses of the extremest kindliness and affection. Through life she had this dual temper. Those who knew her better nature tolerated the irascible element. She was lively, highly-gifted, full of humor, and of remarkable doing. She had a passionate curiosity for everything savoring of the weird, the uncanny, the mysterious; she was strangely attracted by the theme of death. Her imagination, wildly roaming, appeared to create about her a world of fairy or elfish creatures with whom she held converse in whispers by the hour. She defied all and everything. She had to be watched lest she escape from the house and mingle with ragged urchins. She preferred to listen to the tales of Madame Peigneur (her governess) than do her lessons. She would openly rebel against her text-books and run off to the woods or hide in the dusky corridors of the basement of the great house where her grandfather lived. In a secluded dark recess in the "Catacombs" she had erected a barrier of old broken chairs and tables, and there, up near the ceiling under an iron-barred window, she would secrete herself for hours, reading a book of popular legends known as Solomon's Wisdom. At times she bent to her books in a

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spasm of scholarly devotion to amend for mischief making. Her grandparents' enormous library was then the object of her constant interest. No less passionately would she drink in the wonders of narratives given in her presence. Every fairy-tale became a living event to her.

She would be found speaking to the stuffed animals and birds in the museum in the old house. She said the pigeons were cooing fairy-tales to her. She heard a voice in every natural object; nature was animate and, to her, articulate. She seemed to know the inner life and secrets of every species of insect, bird, and reptile found about the place. She would recreate their past and describe vividly their feelings. At this early date she detailed the events of the past incarnations of the stuffed animals in the museum.

Times without number the little girl was heard conversing with playmates of her own age, invisible to others. There was in particular a little hunchback boy, a favorite phantom companion of her solitude, for whose neglect by the servants and nurses she was often excited to resentment.

"But amidst the strange double life she thus led from her earliest recollections, she would sometimes have visions of a mature protector, whose imposing appearance dominated her imagination from a very early period. This protector was always the same, his features never changed; in after life she met him as a living man and knew him as though she had been brought up in his presence."1

In the neighborhood of the residence was an old man, a magician, whose doings filled the mind of the young seeress with wonder. The old man, a centenarian, learned to know the young girl and he used to say of her: "This little lady is quite different from all of you. There are great events lying in wait for her in the future. I feel sorry in thinking that I will not live to see my predictions of her verified; but they will all come to pass!"

Her whole career is dotted with miraculous escapes from
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1 Incidents in the Life of Madame Blavatsky, by A. P. Sinnett (Theosophical Publishing Society, London, 1913), p. 35. See also footnote at bottom of page 155, in Letters of H. P. Blavatsky to A. P. Sinnett (New York, Frederick A. Stokes Co.,

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danger and still more miraculous recoveries from wounds, sicknesses and fevers. One of the first appearances of a protective hand in her life came far back in her childhood. She had always entertained a marked curiosity about a curtained portrait in her grandfather's castle at Saratow. It was hung so high that it was far beyond her reach. Denied permission to see it, she awaited her opportunity to catch a glimpse of it by stealth; and when left alone on one occasion she dragged a table to the wall, set another table on that, and a chair on top, and managed to clamber up. On tiptoe she just contrived to pull back the curtain. The sight of the picture was so startling that she made an involuntary movement backwards, lost her balance and toppled with her pyramid to the floor. In falling she lost consciousness; but when she came to her senses some moments afterwards, she was amazed to see the tables, chairs, and everything in proper order in the room. The curtain was slipped back again on the rings, and no mark of the episode was left except the imprint of her small hand on the wall high up beside the picture.

At another time, when she was nearing the age of fourteen, her riding horse bolted and flung her, with her foot caught in the stirrup. As the animal plunged forward she expected to be dragged to death, but felt herself buoyed up by a strange force, and escaped without a scratch.

It was not many years more until the young girl's possession of gifts and extraordinary faculties, commonly classed as mediumistic, became an admitted fact among her relatives and close associates. She would answer questions locating lost property, or solving other perplexities of the household. She sometimes blurted out to visitors that they would die, or meet with misfortune or accident; and her prophecies usually came true.

In 1844 the father, Col. Hahn, took Helena for her first journey abroad. She went with him to Paris and London, but proved a troublesome charge.

Her youthful marriage deserves narration with some fulness, if only because it precipitated the lady out of her home

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and into that phase of her career which has been referred to as her period of preparation and apprenticeship. As her aunt, Madame Fadeef, describes her marriage:

"she cared not whether she should get married or not. She had been simply defied one day by her governess to find any man who would be her husband, in view of her temper and disposition. The governess, to emphasize the taunt, said that even the old man she had found so ugly and had laughed at so much calling him a 'plumeless raven,' that even he would decline her for his wife. That was enough; three days afterwards she made him propose, and then, frightened at what she had done, sought to escape from her joking acceptance of his offer. But it was too late. All she knew and understood was--when too late--that she was now forced to accept a master she cared nothing for, nay, that she hated; that she was tied to him by the law of the country, hand and foot. A 'great horror' crept upon her, as she explained it later; one desire, ardent, unceasing, irresistible, got hold of her entire being, led her on, so to say, by the hand, forcing her to act instinctively, as she would have done if, in the act of saving her life, she had been running away from a mortal danger. There had been a distinct attempt to impress her with the solemnity of marriage, with her future obligations and her duties to her husband and married life. A few hours later at the altar she heard the priest saying to her: 'Thou shalt honor and obey thy husband,' and at this hated word 'shalt' her young face--for she was hardly seventeen--was seen to flush angrily, then to become deadly pale. She was overheard to mutter in response through her set teeth--'Surely I shall not.'

"And surely she has not. Forthwith she determined to take the law and her future life into her own hands, and--she left her husband forever, without giving him an opportunity to ever even think of her as his wife.

"Thus Madame Blavatsky abandoned her country at seventeen and passed ten long years in strange and out-of-the-way places,--in Central Asia, India, South America, Africa and Eastern Europe."2

True, before taking this drastic step she acceded to her father's plea to do the conventional thing; and she let the old General take her, though even then not without attempts to escape, on what may by courtesy of language be called a
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2 Incidents in the Life of Madame Blavatsky, by A. P. Sinnett, pp. 39-40.

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honeymoon, which drawled out, amid bickerings, to a length of three months, and was terminated after a bitter quarrel by the bride's dash for freedom on horseback. Gen. Blavatsky by this time saw the impossibility of the situation and acceded to the inevitable.

Tracing the life of Madame Blavatsky from this event through her personally-conducted globe-roaming becomes difficult, owing to the meagreness of information. Her relatives and her later Theosophic associates have done their best to piece together the crazy-quilt design of her wanderings and attendant events of any significance. She herself kept no chronicle of her journeys, and it was only at long intervals, when she emerged out of the deserts or jungles of a country to visit its metropolis, or when she needed to write for money, that she sent letters back home. The family was at first alarmed by her defection from the fireside, but were constrained to acquiesce in the situation by their recognition of her immitigable distaste for her veteran husband. If no other tie kept her attached to the home circle, her need of funds obliged her to keep in touch with her father, who supplied her with money without betraying her confidences as to her successive destinations. He acceded to her plans because he had tried in vain to secure a Russian divorce; and he felt that a few years of travel for his daughter might best ease the family situation. Ten years elapsed before the fugitive saw her relatives again.

Her first emergence after her disappearance was in Egypt. She seems to have traveled there with a Countess K------, and at that time began to pick up some occult teaching of a poorer sort. She encountered an old Copt, a man with a great reputation as a magician. She proved an apt pupil, and the instructor became so much interested in her that when she revisited Egypt years later, the special attention he (then a retired ascetic) showed her, attracted the notice of the populace at Bulak.

After her appearance in Egypt she seems to have bobbed up in Paris, where she made the acquaintance of many literary people, and where a famous mesmerist, struck with

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her psychic gifts, was eager to put her to work as a sensitive. To escape his importunities she appears to have gone to London. There she stayed for a time with an old Russian lady, a Countess B., at Mivart's Hotel. She remained for some time after her friend's departure, but could not afterwards recall where she resided.

Occasionally in her travels she fell in with fellow Russians who were glad to accompany her and sometimes to befriend her. She indulged in a tour about Europe in 1850 with the Countess B., but was again in Paris when the New Year of 1851 was acclaimed. Her next move was actuated by a passionate interest in the North American Indians, which she had acquired from a perusal of Fenimore Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales. Her zeal in this pursuit took her to Canada in July of 1851. At Quebec her idealizations suffered a rude shock, when, being introduced to a party of Indians, both the noble Redskins and some articles of her property disappeared while she was trying to pry from the squaws a recital of the secret powers of their medicine men. Dropping the Indians, she turned her interest to the rising sect of the Mormons, being attracted doubtless by their possession of an alleged Hermetic document obtained through psychic revelation. But the destruction of the original Mormon city of Nauvoo, Missouri, by a mob, scattered the sect across the plains, and Madame Blavatsky thought the time propitious for exploring the traditions and arcana of Mexico. She came to New Orleans. Here the Voodoo practices of a settlement of Negroes from the West Indies engaged her interest, and her reckless curiosity might have led her into dangerous contact with these magicians; but her protective power reappeared to warn her in a vision of the risk she was running, and she hastened on to new experiences.

Through Texas she reached Mexico, protected only by her own reckless daring and by the occasional intercession of some chance companion. She seems to have owed much in this way to an old Canadian, Père Jacques, who steered her safely through many perils.

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At Copau in Mexico she chanced to meet a Hindu, who styled himself a "chela" of the Masters (or adepts in Oriental occult science), and she resolved to seek that land of mystic enchantment and penetrate northward into the very lairs of the mystic Brotherhood. She wrote to an Englishman, whom she had met two years before in Germany, and who shared her interest, to join them in the West Indies. Upon his arrival the three pilgrims took boat for India. The party arrived at Bombay, via the Cape to Ceylon, near the end of 1852. Madame's own headstrong bent to enter Tibet via Nepal in search of her Mahatmas broke up the trio. She made the hazardous attempt to enter the Forbidden Land of the Lamas, but was prevented, she always believed, by the opposition of a British resident then in Nepal. Baffled, she returned to Southern India, thence to Java and Singapore and thence back to England.

But that country's embroilment in the Crimean War distressed her sense of patriotism, and about the end of the year 1853 she passed over again to America, going to New York, thence west to Chicago and on to the Far West across the Rockies with emigrant caravans. She halted a while at San Francisco. Her stay in America this time lengthened to nearly two years. She then once more made her way to India, via Japan and the Straits. She reached Calcutta in 1855.

In India, in 1856, she was joined at Lahore by a German gentleman who had been requested by Col. Hahn to find his errant daughter. With him and his two companions Madame Blavatsky traveled through Kashmir to Leli in Ladakh in company with a Tatar Shaman, who was instrumental in procuring for the party the favor of witnessing some magic rites performed at a Buddhist monastery. Her experiences there she afterwards described in Isis,3 and they are too long for recital here. One of the exploits of the old priest was the psychic vivification of the body of an infant who (not yet of walking age) arose and spoke eloquently of spiritual things and prophesied, while dominated
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3 Vol. II, p. 599.

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by a magnetic current from the operator.4 The psychic feat performed by her Shaman guide was even more wonderful. Yielding to Madame's importunities at a time when she was herself in grave danger, he released himself from his body as he lay in a tent, and carried a message to a friend of the young woman residing in Wallachia, from whom he brought back an answer.5 Shortly after this incident, perceiving their danger, the Shaman, by mental telepathy apprised a friendly tribal ruler of their situation, and a band of twenty-five horsemen was sent to rescue the two travelers, finding them in a locality to which they had been directed by their chief, yet of which the two had had no possible earthly means of informing him.

Safely out of the Tibetan wilds--and she came out by roads and passes of which she had no previous knowledge--she was directed by her occult guardian to leave the country, shortly before the troubles which began in 1857. In 1858 she was once more in Europe.

By this time her name had accumulated some renown, and it was freely mentioned in connection with both the low and the high life of Vienna, Berlin, Warsaw, and Paris. Her alleged absence from these places at the times throws doubt on the accuracy of these reports. After spending some months in France and Germany upon her return from India, she finally ended her self-imposed exile and rejoined her own people in Russia, arriving at Pskoff, about 180 miles from St. Petersburg, in the midst of a family wedding party on Christmas night. Her reason for going to Pskoff was that her sister Vera--then Madame Yahontoff--was at the
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4 Her recital of marvels seen in Tibet corresponds in the main with similar narratives related by the Abbé Huc in the first edition of his Recollections of Travel in Tartary, Tibet and China. Mr. Sinnett makes the statement, without giving his evidence, that the "miracles" related by the Abbé in his first edition were expurgated by Catholic authority in the later editions of the work.

5 Madame Blavatsky later verified the long distance phenomenon by receiving in writing, in response to an inquiry by mail, a letter from the Rumanian friend stating that at the identical time of the Shaman's concentration she had swooned, but dreamed she saw Madame Blavatsky in a tent in a wild country among menacing tribes, and that she had communicated with her. Madame Blavatsky states that the friend's astral form was visible in the tent.

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time residing there with the family of her late husband, son of the General N. A. Yahontoff, Marechal de Noblesse of the place.

Soon afterwards, early in 1859, Madame Blavatsky and her sister went to reside with their father in a country house belonging to Madame Yahontoff. This was at Rougodevo, about 200 versts from St. Petersburg. About a year later, in the spring of 1860, both sisters left Rougodevo for the Caucasus on a visit to their grandparents, whom they had not seen for years. It was a three weeks' journey from Moscow to Tiflis, in coach with post horses. Madame Blavatsky remained in Tiflis less than two years, adding another year of roaming about in Imeretia, Georgia, and Mingrelia, exciting the superstitious sensibilities of the inhabitants of the Mingrelia region to an inordinate degree and gaining a reputation for witchcraft and sorcery. She was there taken down with a wasting fever, which an old army surgeon could make nothing of; but he had the good sense to send her off to Tiflis to her friends. Recovering after a time, she left the Caucasus and went to Italy. Here, the legend goes, she, with some other European women, volunteered to serve with Garibaldi and was under severe fire in the battle of Mentana.6

The four years intervening between 1863 and 1867 seem to have been spent in European travel, though the records are barren of accurate detail. But the three from 1867 to 1870 were passed in the East,7 and were quite fruitful and eventful.
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6 In 1873 while at the Eddy farmhouse with her new friend Col. Olcott, she revealed to him this chapter in her life, proving it by showing him where her left arm had been broken in two places by a saber stroke, and having him feel a musket ball in her right shoulder and another in her leg, revealing also a scar just below the heart where she had been stabbed by a stiletto.

7 It must have been about this time that Madame did some traveling in an altogether different capacity than occult research. She is known by her family to have made tours in Italy and Russia under a pseudonym, giving piano concerts. She had been a pupil of Moscheles, and when with her father in London as a young girl she had played at a charity concert with Madame Clara Schumann and Madame Arabella Goddard in a piece for three pianos.

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In 1870 she returned from the Orient, coming through the newly opened Suez Canal, spent a short time in Piraeus, and from there took passage for Spezzia on board a Greek vessel. On this voyage she was one of the very few saved from death in a terrible catastrophe, the vessel being blown to bits by an explosion of gunpowder and fireworks in the cargo. Rescued with only the clothes they wore, the survivors were looked after by the Greek government, which forwarded them to various destinations. Madame Blavatsky went to Alexandria and to Cairo, tarrying at the latter place until money reached her from Russia.

While awaiting the arrival of funds, the energetic woman determined to found a Société Spirite, for the investigation of mediums and manifestations according to the theories and philosophy of Allen Kardec. The latter was an outstanding advocate of Spiritualistic philosophy on the Continent. He had correlated the commonly reported spiritistic exploits to a more profound and involved theory of cosmic evolution and a higher spirituality in man. His work, Life and Destiny, written under the pseudonym of Leon Denis, unfolded a comprehensive system of spiritual truth identical in its main features with Theosophy itself. His interests were not primarily in spiritistic phenomena for themselves, but for what they revealed of the inner spiritual capacities and potentialities of our evolving Psyche.

It required but a few weeks to disgust Madame Blavatsky with her fruitless undertaking. Some French female spiritists, whom she had drafted for service as mediums, in lack of better, proved to be adventuresses following in the wake of M. de Lesseps' army of engineers and workmen, and they concluded by stealing the Society's funds. She wrote home:

"To wind up the comedy with a drama, I got nearly shot by a madman--a Greek, who had been present at the only two public séances we held, and got possessed I suppose, by some vile spook."8
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8 Incidents in the Life of Madame Blavatsky, by A. P. Sinnett, p. 125.

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She terminated the affairs of her Société and went to Bulak, where she renewed her previous acquaintance with the old Copt. His unconcealed interest in his visitor aroused some slanderous talk about her. Disgusted with the growing gossip, she went home by way of Palestine, making a side voyage to Palmyra and other ruins, and meeting there some Russian friends. At the end of 1872 she returned without warning to her family, then at Odessa.

In 1873 she again abandoned her home, and Paris was her first objective. She stayed there with a cousin, Nicholas Hahn, for two months. While in Paris she was directed by her "spiritual overseers" to visit the United States, "where she would meet a man by the name of Olcott," with whom she was to undertake an important enterprise. Obedient to her orders she arrived at New York on July 7th, 1873.9 She was for a time practically without funds; actually, as Col. Olcott avers, "in the most dismal want, having . . . to boil her coffee-dregs over and over again for lack of pence for buying a fresh supply; and to keep off starvation, at last had to work with her needle for a maker of cravats."10 During this interval she was lodged in a wretched tenement house in the East Side, and made cravats for a kindly old Jew, whose help at this time she never forgot.11 In her
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9 An incident highly characteristic of her nature marked her coming to this country, and her followers would hardly pardon our omitting it. Having purchased her steamer ticket, she was about to board the vessel when her attention was attracted to a peasant woman weeping bitterly on the wharf. Her quick sympathies touched, Madame Blavatsky approached her and inquired the trouble. She soon gathered that a "sharp" had sold the woman a worthless ticket, and that she was stranded without funds. Madame Blavatsky's finances had barely sufficed to procure her own passage, she having sent a dispatch to Russia instructing her father to forward her additional money in New York. In the emergency she did not hesitate. Going to the office of the Company, she arranged to exchange her cabin ticket for two steerage ones, and packed the grateful emigrant on board along with her.--See Old Diary Leaves, by Col. H. S. Olcott (New York and London, G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1895), pp. 28-29.

10 Old Diary Leaves, by Col. H. S. Olcott, Vol. I, p. 440.

11 Col. Olcott (Old Diary Leaves, Vol. I, p. 440) states that during this period of her own need she held in custody the sum of about 23,000 francs, which she later told him her "guardians" had charged her to deliver a person in the United States whose definite location would be given her after her arrival here. The order came after a time, and she went to Buffalo, was given a name and street number,

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squalid quarters she was sought out by a veteran journalist, Miss Anna Ballard, in search of copy for a Russian story. She received, in late October, a legacy from the estate of her father, who had died early in that month. A draft of one thousand rubles was first sent her, and later the entire sum bequeathed to her. Then in affluence she moved to better quarters, first to Union Square, then to East 16th Street, then to Irving Place. But her money did not abide in her keeping long. In regard to the sources of her income after her patrimony had been flung generously to the winds, we are told, upon Col. Olcott's pledged honor, that both his and her wants, after the organization of the Theosophical Society, were frequently provided for by the occult ministrations of the Masters. He claims that during the many years of their joint campaigns for Theosophy, especially in India, the treasure-chest at headquarters, after having been depleted, would be found supplied with funds from unknown sources. Shopping one day in New York with Colonel, she made purchases to the amount of about fifty dollars. He paid the bills. On returning home she thrust some banknotes into his hand, saying: "There are your fifty dollars." He is certain she had no money of her own, and no visitor had come in from whom she could have borrowed. Once during this period she created the duplicate of a thousand dollar note while it was held in the hand of the Hon. John L. O'Sullivan, formerly Ambassador to Portugal; but it faded away during the two following days. Its serial number was identical with that of its prototype. The knowledge that financial help would come at need, however, did not dispose Madame Blavatsky to relax her effort toward her own sustenance.12 During this time, and for nearly all the remainder of her life, the Russian noblewoman spent large stretches
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where she delivered the money without question to a man who was on the point of committing suicide. It was understood that she had been made the agent of rectifying a great wrong done him.

12 Mr. O'Sullivan rallied her about her possession of so easy a road to wealth. "No, indeed," she answered, "'tis but a psychological trick. We who have the power of doing this, dare not use it for our own or any other's interests, any more than you would dare commit the forgery by methods of the counterfeiters. It would be stealing from the government in either case."--Old Diary Leaves, Vol. I, p. 435.

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of her time in writing occult, mystic, and scientific articles for Russian periodicals. This constituted her main source of income. Col. Olcott states that her Russian articles were so highly prized that "the conductor of the most important of their reviews actually besought her to write constantly for it, on terms as high as they gave Turgenev."13

A chronicle of her life during this epoch may not omit her second marriage, which proved ill-fated at the first. It came about as follows: A Mr. B., a Russian subject, learning of her psychic gifts through Col. Olcott, asked the Colonel to arrange for him a meeting with his countrywoman. He proceeded to fall into a profound state of admiration for Madame Blavatsky, which deepened though he was persistently rebuffed, and he finally threatened to take his life unless she would relent. He proclaimed his motives to be only protective, and expressly waived a husband's claims to the privileges of married life. In what appears to have been madness or some sort of desperation, she agreed finally, on these terms, to be his wife. Even then it was specified that she retain her own name and be free from all restraint, for the sake of her work. A Unitarian clergyman married them in Philadelphia, and they lived for some few months in a house on Sansom Street. When taken to task by her friend Olcott, she explained that it was a misfortune to which she was doomed by an inexorable Karma; that it was a punishment to her for a streak of pride which was hindering her spiritual development; but that it would result in no harm to the young man. The husband forgot his earlier protestations of Platonic detachment, and became an importunate lover. Madame Blavatsky developed a dangerous illness at this time as a result of a fall upon an icy sidewalk in New York the previous winter, and her knee became so violently inflamed that a partial mortification of the leg set in. The physician declared that nothing but instant amputation could save her life; but she discarded his advice, called upon that source of help which had come to her in a number of exigencies, recovered immediately and left her
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13 Old Diary Leaves, Vol. I., p. 106.

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husband's "bed and board." He, after some months of waiting, saw her obduracy and procured a divorce on the ground of desertion.14

During the latter part of her stay in New York she and Col. Olcott took an apartment of seven rooms at the corner of 47th Street and 8th Avenue, which came to be called "The Lamasery," in jocular reference to her Tibetan connections. "The Lamasery" became a social and intellectual center during her residence there. Col. Olcott says:

". . . her mirthfulness, epigrammatic wit, brilliance of conversation, careless friendliness to those she liked . . ., her fund of anecdote, and, chiefest attraction to most of her callers, her amazing psychical phenomena, made the 'Lamasery' the most attractive salon of the metropolis from 1876 to the close of 1878."15

Madame spent her day-hours in writing, her custom for years; and held open house for visitors in the evening. There was always discussion of one or another aspect of occult philosophy, in which she naturally took the commanding part. She would pour out an endless flow of argument and supporting data, augmented at favorable times by a sudden exhibition of magical power. She seemed tireless in her psychic energy.

Several persons have left good word-pictures of her. Col. Olcott graphically describes her appearance upon the occasion of their first meeting in the old Eddy farmhouse, in Vermont, where they both came in '74 to study the "spooks." Col. Olcott had been on the scene for some time, as a representative of the New York Daily Graphic, when Madame Blavatsky arrived. He was struck by her general appearance, and he contrived to introduce himself to her through the medium of a gallant offer of a light for her cigarette.

"It was a massive Kalmuc face," he writes, "contrasting in its suggestion of power, culture and impressiveness, as strangely with the commonplace visages about the room, as her red garment did
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14 Mr. W. Q. Judge as her counsel and the decree was granted on May 25, 1878. Col. Olcott had retained the original papers in the case.

15 Old Diary Letters, Vol. I, p. 417.

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with the gray and white tones of the wall and the woodwork, and the dull costumes of the rest of the guests. All sorts of cranky people were continually coming and going at Eddy's, and it only struck me, on seeing this eccentric lady, that this was but one more of the sort. Pausing on the doorstep I whispered to Kappes, 'Good Gracious! Look at that specimen, will you!'"16

In her autobiography the Princess Helene von Racowitza makes some interesting references to Madame Blavatsky, whom she knew intimately.

"I discovered in her the most remarkable being (for one hardly dare designate her with the simple name of woman). She gave me new life; . . . she brought new interest into my existence. Regarding her personal appearance, the head, which rose from the dark flowing garments, was immensely characteristic, although far more ugly than beautiful. A true Russian type, a short thick nose, prominent cheek bones, a small clever mobile mouth, with little fine teeth, brown and very curly hair, and almost like that of a negro's; a sallow complexion, but a pair of eyes the like of which I had never seen; pale blue, grey as water, but with a glance deep and penetrating, and as compelling as if it beheld the inner heart of things. Sometimes they held an expression as though fixed on something afar, high and immeasurably above all earthly things. She always wore long dark flowing garments and had ideally beautiful hands.

"But how shall I attempt to describe . . . her being, her power, her abilities and her character? She was a combination of the most heterogeneous qualities. By all she was considered as a sort of Cagliostro or St. Germain. She conversed with equal facility in Russian, English, French, German, Italian and certain dialects of Hindustani; yet she lacked all positive knowledge--even the most superficial European school training.

"In matters of social life she . . . joined an irresistible charm in conversation, that comprised chiefly an intense comprehension of everything noble and great, with the most original and often coarse humor, a mode of expression which was the comical despair of prudish Anglo-Saxons.

"Her contempt for and rebellion against all social conventions made her appear sometimes even coarser than was her wont, and she hated and fought conventional lying with real Don Quixotic
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16 Ibid., p. 4.

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courage. But whoever approached her in poverty or rags, hungry and needing comfort, could be sure to find in her a warm heart and an open hand. . . . No drop of wine, beer or fermented liquors ever passed her lips, and she had a most fanatical hatred of everything intoxicating. Her hospitality was genuinely Oriental. She placed everything she possessed at the disposal of her friends."17

Mr. J. Ranson Bridges, a none too kindly critic, who had considerable correspondence with her from 1888 till her death, says:

"Whatever may be the ultimate verdict upon the life and work of this woman, her place in history will be unique. There was a Titanic display of strength in everything she did. The storms that raged within her were cyclones. Those exposed to them often felt, with Solovyoff, that if there were holy and sage Mahatmas, they could not remain holy and sage and have anything to do with Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. Yet she could be as tender and sympathetic as any mother. Her mastery of some natures seemed complete. . . . To these disciples she was the greatest thaumaturgist known to the world since the time of Christ."18

In a moment of gayety she once dashed off the following description of herself:

"An old woman, whether 40, 50, 60 or 90 years old, it matters not; an old woman whose Kalmuco-Buddhisto-Tartaric features, even in youth, never made her appear pretty; a woman whose ungainly garb, uncouth manners, and masculine habits are enough to frighten any bustled and corseted fine lady of fashionable society out of her wits."19

For all her psychic insight, she seemed unable to protect herself against those who fawned upon her, cultivated her society, and then repaid her by desertion or slander. She was open to any one who professed occult interest, and she readily took up with many such persons who later became bitter critics.

Much ado was made by delicate ladies in her day of her
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17 Published by The Constables, London, 1910.

18 The Arena, April, 1895.

19 Quoted in Old Diary Leaves, Vol. I, p. 4 (footnote), from a letter written by her entitled "The Knout" to the R. P. Journal of March 16, 1878.

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cigarette addiction. Her evident masculinity, her lack of many of the niceties which ladies commonly affect, her scorn of conventions, her failure to put on the airs of a woman of noble rank, her occasional coarse language, and her violence of temper over petty things, have led many people to infer that the message that she brought could not have been pure and lofty.

Theosophists put forward an explanation of her irascibility and nervous instability, in a theory which must sound exotic to the uninitiated. They state that when she studied in Tibet under her Masters, and was initiated into the mysteries of their occult knowledge, they extricated, by processes in which they are alleged to be adepts, one of her astral bodies and retained it so as to be able to maintain, through an etheric radio vibration, a constant line of communication with her in any part of the world. This left her in a state of unstable equilibrium nervously, and rendered her subject to a greater degree of irritation than would normally have been the case.

Madame Blavatsky's life story, covered now in its outward phases, is not complete without consideration of that remarkable series of psychic phenomena which give inner meaning to her career. In and of themselves they form a narrative of great interest, on a par with the legendary lives of many other saints. The story is a long one; a complete record of all her wonder-working, as told in the Theosophic accounts, would alone fill the space of this volume. A digest of this material must be made here, though a critical examination is, as said above, not attempted.

When, in 1858, she returned home from her first exile of ten years, Spiritualism was just looming on the horizon of Europe. Nothing seems to be mentioned in the several biographical sketches, of her coming in contact with the sweep of the Spiritualistic wave that was at full height in the United States during the early fifties, when she passed through that country. However the case may be, she returned home in 1858 with her occult powers already fully developed, and proceeded to make frequent display of them.

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At Pskoff, with her sister's husband's family, the Yahontoff's, raps, knocks, and other sounds occurred incessantly; furniture moved without any contact; particles changed their weight; and either absent living folk or the dead were seen both by herself and her relatives many times. Wherever the young woman went "things" happened. Laughing at the continued recurrence of these mysterious activities, she averred to her sisters that she could make them cease or redouble their frequency and power, by the sheer force of her own will.20 The psychic demonstrations supposedly took place in entire independence of her coöperation, but she could, if she chose, interject her will and assume control. Her sister, Madame de Jelihowsky, remembers Helena's laughing when addressed as a medium, and assuring her friends that "she was no medium, but only a mediator between mortals and beings we know nothing about."21 The reports of her wonderful exploits following her arrival at Pskoff in 1858 threw that town into a swirl of excited gossip. There was a great deal of fashionable company at the Yahontoff home in those days. Madame's presence itself attracted many. Seldom did any of the numerous callers go away unsatisfied, for to their inquiries the raps gave answer, often long ones in different languages, some of which were not in Madame Blavatsky's repertoire. The willing "medium" was subjected to every kind of test, to which she submitted gracefully.

An instance of her power was her mystification of her own brother, Leonide de Hahn. A company was gathered in the drawing room, and Leonide was walking leisurely about, unconcerned with the stunts which his gifted sister was producing for the diversion of the visitors. He stopped behind the girl's chair just as some one was telling how magicians
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20 Mr. Sinnett (Incidents in the Life of Madame Blavatsky, Chapter VI) emphasizes the fact that she was about this time in a transition state from passive mediumship to active control over her phenomena. He doubtless wishes to make this matter clear in view of its important bearing upon the divergence between Spiritualism and Theosophy which was accentuated when the latter put forth claims somewhat at variance with the usual theses presented by the former.

21 Incidents in the Life of Madame Blavatsky, p. 61.

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change the avoirdupois of objects. "And you mean to say that you can do it?" he asked his sister ironically. "Mediums can, and I have done it occasionally," was the reply. "But would you try?" some one asked. "I will try, but promise nothing." Hereupon one of the young men advanced and lifted a light chess table with great ease. Madame then told them to leave it alone and stand back. She was not near it herself. In the expectant silence that ensued she merely looked intently at the table. Then she invited the same young man who had just lifted it to do so again. He tried, with great assurance of his ability, but could not stir the table an inch. He grew red with the effort, but without avail. The brother, thinking that his sister had arranged the play with his friend as a little joke on him, now advanced. "May I also try?" he asked her. "Please do, my dear," she laughed. He seized the table and struggled; whereat his smile vanished. Try as he would, his effort was futile. Others tried it with the same result. After a while Helena urged Leonide to try it once more. He lifted it now with no effort.

A few months later, Madame Blavatsky, her father and sister, having left Pskoff and lodging at a hotel in St. Petersburg, were visited by two old friends of Col. Hahn, both now much interested in Spiritualism. After witnessing some of Helena's performances, the two guests expressed great surprise at the father's continued apathy toward his daughter's abilities. After some bantering they began to insist that he should at least consent to an experiment, before denying the importance of the phenomena. They suggested that he retire to an adjoining room, write a word on a slip of paper, conceal it and see if his daughter could persuade the raps to reveal it. The old gentleman consented, believing he could discredit the foolish nonsense, as he termed it, once for all. He retired, wrote the word and returned, venturing in his confidence the assertion that if this experiment were successful, he "would believe in the devil, undines, sorcerers, and witches, in the whole paraphernalia, in short, of old woman's superstitions; and you may prepare to offer me as

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an inmate of a lunatic asylum."22 He went on with his solitaire in a corner, while the friends took note of the raps now beginning. The younger sister was repeating the alphabet, the raps sounding at the desired letter; one of the visitors marked it down. Madame Blavatsky did nothing apparently. By this means one single word was got, but it seemed so grotesque and meaningless that a sense of failure filled the minds of the experimenters. Questioning whether that one word was the entire message, the raps sounded "Yes--yes--yes!" The younger girl then turned to her father and told them that they had got but one word. "Well what is it?" he demanded. "Zaïchik."23 It was a sight indeed to witness the change that came over the old man's face at hearing this one word. He became deadly pale. Adjusting his spectacles with a trembling hand, he stretched it out, saying, "Let me see it! Hand it over. Is it really so?" He took the slips of paper and read in a very agitated voice "Zaïchik." Yes; Zaïchik; so it is. How very strange!" Taking out of his pocket the paper he had written on in the next room, he handed it in silence to his daughter and guests. On it they found he had written: "What was the name of my favorite horse which I rode during my first Turkish campaign?" And lower down, in parenthesis, the answer,--" Zaïchik."

The old Colonel, now assured there was more than child's play in his daughter's pretensions, rushed into the region of phenomena with great zeal. He did not matriculate at an asylum; instead he set Helena to work investigating his family tree. He was stimulated to this inquiry by having received the date of a certain event in his ancestral history of several hundred years before, which he verified by reference to old documents. Scores of historical events connected with his family were now given him; names unheard of, relationships unknown, positions held, marriages, deaths; and all were found on painstaking research to have been correct in every item! All this information was given rapidly and unhesitatingly. The investigation lasted for months.
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22 Ibid., p. 72.

23 In Russian, "little hare."

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In the spring of 1858 both sisters were living with their father in the country-house in a village belonging to Mme. Yahontoff. In consequence of a murder committed near their property, the Superintendent of the District Police passed through the villages and stopped at their house to make some inquiries. No one in the village knew who had committed the crime. During tea, as all were sitting around the table, the raps came, and there were the usual disturbances around the room. Col. Hahn suggested to the Superintendent that he had better try his daughter's invisible helpers for information. He laughed incredulously. He had heard of "spirits," he said, but was derisive of their ability to give information in "a real case." This scorn of her powers caused the young girl to desire to humble the arrogant officer. She turned fiercely upon him. "And suppose I prove to you the contrary?" she defiantly asked him. "Then," he answered, "I would resign my office and offer it to you, Madame, or, better still, I would strongly urge the authorities to place you at the head of the Secret Police Department." "Now look here, Captain," she said indignantly. "I do not like meddling in such dirty business and helping you detectives. Yet, since you defy me, let my father say over the alphabet and you put down the letters and record what will be rapped out. My presence is not needed for this, and with your permission I shall even leave the room." She went out, with a book, to read. The inquiry in the next room produced the name of the murderer, the fact that he had crossed over into the next district and was then hiding in the hay in the loft of a peasant, Andrew Vlassof, in the village of Oreshkino. Further information was elicited to the effect that the murderer was an old soldier on leave; he was drunk and had quarreled with his victim. The murder was not premeditated; rather a misfortune than a crime. The Superintendent rushed precipitately out of the house and drove off to Oreshkino, more than 30 miles distant. A letter came by courier the following morning saying that everything given by the raps had proved absolutely correct. This incident produced a great uproar in the district and Madame's work was viewed

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in a more serious light. Her family, however, had some difficulty convincing the more distant authorities that they had no natural means of being familiar with the crime.

One evening while all sat in the dining room, loud chords of music were struck on the closed piano in the next room, visible to all through the open door. On another occasion Madame's tobacco pouch, her box of matches and her handkerchief came rushing to her through the air, upon a mere look from her. Many visitors to her apartment in later years witnessed this same procedure. Again, one evening, all lights were suddenly extinguished, an amazing noise was heard, and though a match was struck in a moment, all the heavy furniture was found overturned on the floor. The locked piano played a loud march. The manifestations taking place when the home circle was unmixed with visitors were usually of the most pronounced character.

Sometimes there were alleged communications from the spirits of historical personages, not the inevitable Napoleon and Cleopatra, but Socrates, Cicero and Martin Luther, and they ranged from great power and vigor of thought to almost flippant silliness. Some from the shade of the Russian poet Pushkin were quite beautiful.

While the family read aloud the Memoirs of Catherine Romanovna Dashkoff, they were interrupted many times by the alleged spirit of the authoress herself, interjecting remarks, making additions, offering explanations and refutations.

In the early part of 1859 the sister, Madame Jelihowsky, inherited a country village from the estate of her late husband at Rougodevo, and there the family, including Helena, went to reside for a period. No one in the party had ever known any of the previous occupants of the estate. Soon after settling down in the old mansion, Madame discerned the shades of half a dozen of the former inhabitants in one of the unoccupied wings and described them to her sister. Seeking out several old servants, she found that every one of the wraiths could be identified and named by the aged domestics. The young woman's description of one man was

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that he had long finger nails, like a Chinaman's. The servant stated that one of the former residents had contracted a disease in Lithuania, which renders cutting of the nails a certain road to death through bleeding.

Sometimes the other members of the family would converse with the rapping forces without disturbing Helena at all. The forces played more strongly than every, it seemed, when Madame was asleep or sick. A physician once attending her illness was almost frightened away by the noises and moving furniture in the bedroom.

A terrible illness befell her near the end of the stay at Rougodevo. Years before, her relatives believed during her solitary travels over the steppes of Asia, she had received a wound. This wound reopened occasionally, and then she suffered intense agony, which lasted three or four days and then the wound would heal as suddenly as it had opened, and her illness would vanish. On one occasion a physician was called; but he proved of little use, because the prodigious phenomena which he witnessed left him almost powerless to act. Having examined the wound, the patient being prostrated and unconscious, he saw a large dark hand between his own and the wound he was about to dress. The wound was near the heart, and the hand moved back and forth between the neck and the waist. To make the apparition worse, there came in the room a terrific noise, from ceiling, floor, windows, and furniture, so that the poor man begged not to be left alone in the room with the patient.

In the spring of 1860 the two sisters left Rougodevo for a visit to their grandparents in the south of Russia, and during the long slow journey many incidents took place. At one station, where a surly, half-drunken station-master refused to lend them a fresh relay of horses, and there was no fit room for their accommodation over the night, Helena terrified him into sense and reason by whispering into his ear some strange secret of his, which he believed no one knew and which it was to his interest to keep hidden.

At Jadonsk, where a halt was made, they attended a church service, where the prelate, the famous and learned

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Isidore, who had known them in childhood, recognized them and invited them to visit him at the Metropolitan's house. He received them when they came with great kindliness; but hardly had they entered the drawing room than a terrible hubbub of noise and raps burst forth in every direction. Every piece of furniture strained and cracked, rocked and thumped. The women were confused by this demoniacal demonstration in the presence of the amazed Churchman, though the culprit in the case was hardly able to repress her sense of humor. But the priest saw the embarrassment of his guests and understood the cause of it. He inquired which of the two women possessed such strange potencies. He was told. Then he asked permission to put to her invisible guide a mental question. She assented. His query, a serious one, received an instant reply, precise and to the point; and he was so struck with it all that he detained his visitors for over three hours. He continued his conversation with the unseen presences and paid unstinted tribute to their seeming all-knowledge. His farewell words to his gifted guest were:

"As for you, let not your heart be troubled by the gift you are possessed of . . . for it was surely given to you for some purpose, and you could not be held responsible for it. Quite the reverse! For if you but use it with discrimination you will be enabled to do much good to your fellow-creatures."

Her occult powers grew at this period to their full development, and she seemed to have completed the subjection of every phase of manifestation to her own volitional control. Her fame throughout the Caucasus increased, breeding both hostility and admiration. She had risen above the necessity of resorting to the slow process of raps, and read people's states and gave them answers through her own clairvoyance. She seemed able, she said, to see a cloud around people in whose luminous substance their thoughts took visible form. The purely sporadic phenomena were dying away.

Her illness at the end of her stay in Mingrelia has already been noted. A psychic experience of unusual nature even for

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her, through which she passed during this severe sickness, seems to have marked a definite epoch in her occult development. She apparently acquired the ability from that time to step out of her physical body, investigate distant scenes or events, and bring back reports to her normal consciousness. Sometimes she felt herself as now one person, H. P. Blavatsky, and again some one else. Returning to her own personality she could remember herself as the other character, but while functioning as the other person she could not remember herself as Madame Blavatsky. She later wrote of these experiences: "I was in another far-off country, a totally different individuality from myself, and had no connection at all with my actual life."24 The sickness, prostrated her and appears to have brought a crisis in her inner life. She herself felt that she had barely escaped the fate that she afterwards spoke of as befalling so many mediums. She wrote in a letter to a relative:

"The last vestige of my psycho-physical weakness is gone, to return no more. I am cleansed and purified of that dreadful attraction to myself of stray spooks and ethereal affinities. I am free, free, thanks to Those whom I now bless at every hour of my life." (Her Guardians in Tibet.)25

Madame Jelihowsky writes too:

"After her extraordinary and protracted illness at Tiflis she seemed to defy and subject the manifestations entirely to her will. In short, it is the firm belief of all that there where a less strong nature would have been surely wrecked in the struggle, her indomitable will found somehow or other the means of subjecting the world of the invisibles--to the denizens of which she had ever refused the name of 'spirits' and souls--to her own control."26

As a sequel to this experience her conception of a great and definite mission in the world formulated itself before her vision. It is seen to provide the motive for her abortive enterprise in Cairo in 1871; it is again seen to be operative in her propagation of Theosophy in 1875. It will be con-
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24 Incidents in the Life of Madame Blavatsky, p. 116.

25 Ibid., p. 120
26 Ibid., p. 120

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sidered more at length in the discussion of her connection with American Spiritualism.

By 1871 her power in certain phases had been greatly enhanced. She was able, merely by looking fixedly at objects, to set them in motion. In an illustrated paper of the time there was a story of her by a gentleman, who met her with some friends in a hotel at Alexandria. After dinner he engaged her in a long discussion. Before them stood a little tea tray, on which the waiter had placed a bottle of liquor, some wine, a wine glass and a tumbler. As the gentleman raised the glass to his lips it broke to pieces in his hands. Madame Blavatsky laughed at the occurrence, remarking that she hated liquor and could hardly tolerate those who drank. He knew the glass was thick and strong, but, to draw her out, declared it must have been an accidental crumbling of a thin glass in his grasp. "What do you bet I do not do it again?" she flashed at him. He then half-filled another tumbler. In his own words:

"But no sooner had the glass touched my lips than I felt it shattered between my fingers, and my hand bled, wounded by a broken piece in my instinctive act of grasping the tumbler together when I felt myself losing hold of it."

"Entre les lèvres et la coupe, il y a quelquefois une grande distance," she observed, and left the room, laughing in his face "most outrageously."27

Another gentleman, a Russian, who encountered her in Egypt, sent the most enthusiastic letters to his friends about her wonders.

"She is a marvel, an unfathomable mystery. That which she produces is simply phenomenal; and without believing any more in spirits than I ever did, I am ready to believe in witchcraft. If it is after all but jugglery, then we have in Madame Blavatsky a woman who beats all the Boscos and Robert Houdin's of the country by her address. . . . Once I showed her a closed medallion containing a portrait of one person and the hair of another, an object which I had had in my possession but a few months, which was made at Moscow, and of which very few knew, and she told me
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27 Ibid., p. 128.

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without touching it: 'Oh! It is your godmother's portrait and your cousin's hair. Both are dead,' and she proceeded forthwith to describe them, as though she had both before her eyes. How could she know?"28

At Cairo she wrote her sister Vera that she had seen the astral forms of two of the family's domestics and chided her sister for not having written her about their death during her absence. She described the hospital in which one of them had passed away, and other circumstances connected with their history since she had last been in touch with them. It was only afterwards that she learned that when her letter from Egypt was received by Madame Jelihowsky, the latter was herself not aware of the death of the two servants. Upon inquiry she found every circumstance in relation to their late years and their death precisely as Helena had depicted it.

Upon Madame Blavatsky's arrival in America her open espousal of the cause of Theosophy was prefaced by much work done in and for the Spiritualistic movement. Col. Olcott has brought out the fact that the phenomena taking place at the Eddy farmhouse in Vermont in 1873 changed character quite decidedly the day she entered the household. Up to the time of her appearance on the scene the figures that had shown themselves were either Red Indians or Americans or Europeans related to some one present. But on the first evening of her stay spirits of other nationalities came up. A Georgian servant body from the Caucasus, a Mussulman merchant from Tiflis, a Russian peasant girl, and others, appeared. Later a Kurdish cavalier and a devilish-looking Negro sorcerer from Africa joined the motley group.

From the Vermont homestead Madame Blavatsky went to New York, where Col. Olcott joined her shortly afterwards. Rappings and messages were much in evidence during this sojourn in the metropolis, the disembodied intelligence in the background purporting to be one "John King," a name familiar to all spiritists for many years before. The spirit finally declared itself to be the earth-haunting soul
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28 Ibid., p. 127

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of Sir Henry Morgan, famous buccaneer, and so showed itself to the sight of Col. Olcott during the séances with the Holmes mediums some months later in Philadelphia. From him as ostensible source came many messages both grave and gay.

All the while Madame Blavatsky posed as a Spiritualist and mingled in the Holmes séances in Philadelphia for the purpose of lending some of her own power to the rather feeble demonstrations effected by Mr. and Mrs. Holmes to bolster their reputation in the face of Robert Dale Owen's public denunciation of them as cheats. She says that on one occasion Mrs. Holmes was herself frightened at the real appearance of spirits summoned by herself.

One of the first indications Col. Olcott was to have of the interest of her distant sages in his own career was shown during the time that Madame Blavatsky was in Philadelphia. At her urgent invitation the Colonel determined quite suddenly to run over and spend a few days with her. On the evening of the same day on which he left his address at the Philadelphia Post Office the postman brought him several letters from widely distant places, all bearing the stamp of the sending station, but none that of the receiving station, New York. They were addressed to him at his New York office address, yet had come straight to him at Philadelphia without passing through the New York office. And nobody in New York knew his Philadelphia address. He took them himself from the postman's hand; so they could not have been tampered with by his occult friend. But the marvel did not end there. Upon opening them he found inside each something written in the same handwriting as that in letters he had received in New York from the Masters, the writing having been made either in the margins or on any other space left blank by the writers.

"These were the precursors of a whole series of those phenomenal surprises during the fortnight or so that I spent in Philadelphia. I had many, and no letter of the lot bore the New York stamp, though all were addressed to me at my office in that city."29
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29 Old Diary Leaves, Vol. I, p. 36. In this work Col. Olcott undertakes to classify the various types of phenomena produced by Madame Blavatsky.

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The series of vivid phenomena which took place during the Philadelphia visit may be listed briefly as follows:

1.--Col. Olcott purchased a note-book in which to record the rap messages. On taking it out of the store wrapper he found inside the first cover: "John King, Henry de Morgan, his book, 4th of the fourth month in A.D. 1875." And underneath this was a whole pictorial design of Rosicrucian symbols, the word Fate, the name Helen, the phrase "Way of Providence," a monogram, a pair of compasses, and various letters and signs. No one had touched it since its purchase at the stationary shop.

2.--Madame Blavatsky caused a photograph on the wall to disappear suddenly from its frame and give place to a sketch portrait of "John King" while a spectator was looking at it.

3.--Col. Olcott had bought a dozen unhemmed towels. As his companion was no seamstress, he bantered her to let an elemental do the hemstitching on the lot. She told him to put the towels, needle and thread inside a bookcase, which had glass doors curtained with green silk. He did so. After twenty minutes she announced that the job was finished. He found them actually, if crudely, hemmed. It was four P.M., and no other persons were in the room.

4.-- Madame Blavatsky once suddenly disappeared from the Colonel's sight, could not be seen for a period, and then as suddenly reappeared. She could not explain to him how she did it.

5.--The increase overnight in the length of her hair, of about four to five inches, and its later recession to its normal length.

6.--The projection of a drawing of a man's head on the ceiling above the Colonel's head, where he had seen nothing a minute before.

7.--The precipitation by "John King," in answer to the Colonel's challenge to duplicate a letter he had in his pocket, of the said duplicate, correct in every word.

8.--The precipitation of a letter into the traveling bag of a Mr. B. while on the train, the letter not having been packed there originally.

9.--The same Mr. B. begged Madame Blavatsky to create for him a portrait of his deceased grandmother. She went to the window, put a blank piece of paper against the pane, and handed it to him in a moment with the portrait of a little old woman with many wrinkles and a large wart, which Mr. B. declared a perfect likeness of his ancestor.

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10.--The actual production by an Italian artist, through "his control of the spirits of the air," during one evening of entirely clear sky, of a small shower of rain, sufficient to wet the sidewalks. Previously Madame Blavatsky had created a butterfly, following a similar production by the Italian visitor.

11.--The materialization by Madame Blavatsky of a heavy gold ring in the heart of a rose which had been "created" shortly before by Mrs. Thayer, a medium whom Col. Olcott was testing with a view to sending her to Russia for experimentation at a university there.

12.--The Colonel's own beard grew in one night from his chin down to his chest.30

After the return from Philadelphia psychic events continued with great frequency at the apartments in New York. In December of 1875, Madame Blavatsky, having invited a challenge to reproduce the portrait of the Chevalier Louis, reputed Adept author of Mrs. Emma Hardinge Britten's Art Magic, rubbed her hand over a sheet of paper and the desired photograph appeared on the under side. She had laid the bare sheet on the surface of the table. Col. Olcott had the opportunity nine years later of comparing this reproduction with the original photograph of the Chevalier Louis, and found the likeness perfect, yet the lines would not meet precisely when the one was superimposed on the other. It could not have been a lithographic reproduction.

Early in 1878, Mr. O'Sullivan asked Madame Blavatsky for one of a chaplet of large wooden beads which she was wearing. She placed one in a bowl and produced the bowlful of them.

For the same gentleman in plain sight of several people, she triplicated a beautiful handkerchief which he had admired.

To amuse the child of a caller, an English Spiritualist, one day she produced a large toy sheep mounted on wheels. Col. Olcott claimed it had not been there a moment before.

On Christmas eve of that year when she and the Colonel, went to his sister's apartment, Madame expressed regret
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30 Ibid., Vol. I, Chapter III, pp. 40 ff.

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that she had brought nothing for the youngsters. But saying, "Wait a minute," she took her bunch of keys from her pocket, clutched three of them together in one hand, and a moment later showed the party a large iron whistle hanging on the ring instead of the three keys. Col. Olcott had to get three new keys from a locksmith.

Another time to placate a little girl Madame promised her "a nice present," and indicated to Col. Olcott that he should take it out of their luggage bag in the hall. He unlocked the already stuffed bag and immediately on top was a harmonica, or glass piano, about fifteen inches by four in size, with its cork mallet beside it. Colonel had himself packed the bag, having to use all his strength to close it, had reopened it on the train, and there was not a moment when his friend could have slipped an object of such size into it.

It was in New York at this epoch that she took Col. Olcott's large signet ring, rubbed it in her hands and presently handed him his original and another like it except that the new one was mounted with a dark green bloodstone, whereas the original was set with a red carnelian. That ring she wore till her death, and it has since been the valued possession of Mrs. Annie Besant.

Once, in Boston, Madame walked through the streets in a pelting rain and reached her lodgings without the trace of dampness or mud on her dress or shoes. Similarly the Colonel found a handsome velvet-covered chair entirely dry, not even damp, after being left out all night in a driving rain.

One time when the two were talking about three members of the Colonel's family, a crash was heard in the next room. Rushing in he found that the photograph of one of the three had been turned face inward, the large water-color picture of another lay smashed on the floor, while the photograph of the third was unmolested.

Madame once made instantly a copy of a scurrilous letter received by the Colonel from a person who had done him an injustice. Again she duplicated a five-page letter from the eminent Spiritualist, W. Stainton Moses. There was not time for the receipt of the letter until its duplication for

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any one to have copied it. The second sheets were copies, but not strictly duplicate, as the lines would not match when the two were placed together and held before the light.

At "The Lamasery" she produced an entire set of water colors, which Mr. W. Q. Judge needed in making an Egyptian drawing. Next he needed some gold paint, whereupon she took a brass key, scraped it over the bottom of an empty saucer, and found the required paint instantly. The brass key was not consumed in the process, but was needed, she explained, to help aggregate the atomic material for the gold color.

When Olcott stated one evening that he would like to hear from one of the Adepts (in India) upon a certain subject, Madame told him to write his questions, seal them in an envelope, and place it where he could watch it. He did so, putting it behind the clock on the mantel, with one end projecting in plain view. The two went on talking for an hour, when she announced that the answer had come. He drew out his own envelope, the seal unbroken, found inside it his own letter, and inside that the Mahatma's answer in the script familiar to him, written on a sheet of green paper, such as he had not had in the house.

Through her agency the portrait of the Rev. W. Stainton Moses was precipitated on satin. It was a distinct likeness, and the head was rayed around with spiculae of light. It was surrounded with rolling clouds of vapor, his astral vehicle.

Olcott, Judge and a Dr. Marquette one evening asked her to produce the portrait of a particular Hindu Yogi on some stationery of the Lotus Club that the Colonel had brought home that same evening. She scraped some lead from a pencil on a half sheet of the paper, laid the other half-sheet over it, placed them between her hands, and showed the result. The likeness to the original could not be verified, but it was pronounced by Le Clear, the noted portrait painter, to be one "that no living artist within his knowledge could have produced."

Once Col. Olcott desired a picture of his Guru, or Hindu teacher, as yet unseen by him, and Madame essayed to have

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it painted through the hand of a French artist, M. Herisse. The artist's only instructions were that his subject was a Hindu. Madame concentrated, and he painted. The features, finished in an hour, were afterwards vouched for by Col. Olcott as being the likeness of his Guru, whom he met years later.

The Colonel testified to having seen Madame Blavatsky's astral form in a New York street while she was in Philadelphia; also that of a friend of his then in the South; again that of one of the Adepts, then in Asia, in an American railway train and on a steamboat. He stated that he took from the hand of another Mahatma at Jummu a telegram from H.P.B.31 who was in Madras, the messenger vanishing a moment later; and that he, H.P.B. and Damodar, a young Hindu devotee of hers, were greeted by one of these Teachers one evening in India. But the occurrence of this kind which he regarded as the most striking, affecting as it did his whole future career, happened at the close of one of his busy days, when his evening's toil with the composition of Isis was finished. He had retired to his own room and was reading, the room door locked. Suddenly he perceived a white radiance at his side and turning saw towering above him the great stature of an Oriental, clad in white garments and wearing a head-cloth of amber-striped fabric, hand-embroidered in yellow floss silk.

"Long raven hair hung from under his turban to the shoulders; his black beard, parted vertically on the chin in the Rajput fashion, was twisted up at the ends and carried over the ears; his eyes were alive with soul-fire; eyes which were at once benignant and piercing in glance; the eyes of a mentor and judge, but softened by the love of a father who gazes on a son needing counsel and guidance. He was so grand a man, so imbued with the majesty of moral strength, so luminously spiritual, so evidently above average humanity, that I felt abashed in his presence, and bowed my head and bent my knee as one does before a god or a god-like personage. A hand was laid lightly on my head, a sweet though strong voice bade me be
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31 Theosophists are so much in the habit of referring to their leader by her three initials that we may be pardoned for falling into the same convenient usage at times.

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seated, and when I raised my eyes the Presence was seated in the other chair beyond the table. He told me that he had come at the crisis when I needed him; that my actions had brought me to this point; that it lay with me alone whether he and I should meet often in this life as coworkers for the good of mankind; that a great work was to be done for humanity and I had the right to share in it if I wished; that a mysterious tie, not now to be explained to me, had drawn my colleague and myself together; a tie which could not be broken, however strained it might be at times."32

Then he arose and reading the Colonel's sudden but unexpressed wish that he might leave behind him some token of his visit, he untwisted the fehta from his head, laid it on the table, saluted benignantly and was gone.

Many a time, according to the Colonel's version, they were regaled with most exquisite music, or single bell sounds, coming from anywhere in the room and softly dying away.

Olcott tells of the deposit of one thousand dollars to his bank account by a person described by the bank clerk as a Hindu, while he (Olcott) was absent from the city for two months on business which he had undertaken at the behest of the Master through H.P.B. He had told her that his errand would cost him about five hundred dollars per month through his neglect of his business for the time.

In 1878 the Countess Paschkoff brought to light an adventure which she had had years before while traveling with Madame Blavatsky in the Libanus. The two women encountered each other in the desert and camped together one night near the river Orontes. Nearby stood a great monument on the border of the village. The Countess asked Madame to tell her the history of the monument. At night the thaumaturgist built a fire, drew a circle about it and repeated several "spells." Soon balls of white flame appeared on the monument, then from a cloud of vapor emerged the spirit of the person to whom it had been dedicated. "Who are you?" asked the woman. "I am Hiero, one of the priests of the temple," said the voice of the spirit.
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22 Old Diary Leaves, Vol. I, p. 380.

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He then showed them the temple in the midst of a vast city. Then the image vanished and the priest with it.

To round out the story of her phenomena it is necessary to relate with the utmost brevity the incidents of the kind that transpired from the time of the departure from America to India at the end of 1878 until the latter days of her life. This narrative will include occurrences taking place in India, France, Germany, and England.

It was in India that the so-called Mahatma Letters were precipitated, upon which the basic structure of Theosophy is seen to rest. Mr. A. P. Sinnett, British journalist, editor of "The Pioneer," living in India, is the main authority for the events of the Indian period in Madame Blavatsky's life.

During the first visit of six weeks to Mr. Sinnett's home at Allahabad there were comparatively few incidents, apart from raps. A convincing exploit of her power was granted, however, for one evening while the party was sitting in the large hall of the house of the Maharajah of Vizianagaram at Benares, three or four large cut roses fell from the ceiling. The ceiling was bare and the room well lighted.

About the beginning of September 1880 she visited the Sinnetts at their home in Simla. Here some more striking incidents took place. During an evening walk with Mrs. Sinnett to a neighboring hilltop, Madame, in response to a suddenly-expressed wish of her companion, obtained for her a little note from one of the "Brothers." Madame had torn off a blank corner of a sheet of a letter received that day and held it in her hand for the Master's use. It disappeared. Then Mrs. Sinnett was asked where she would like the paper to reappear. She whimsically pointed up into a tree a little to one side. Clambering up into the branches she found the same little corner of pink paper sticking on a sharp twig, now containing a brief message and signed by some Tibetan characters.

A little later the most spectacular of the marvels said to have been performed by the "Messenger of the Great White Brotherhood" took place. A picnic party to the woods some miles distant was planned one morning and six persons

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prepared to set off. Lunches were packed for six, but a seventh person unexpectedly joined the group at the moment of departure. As the luncheon was unpacked for the noontide meal, there was a shortage of a coffee cup and saucer. Some one laughingly suggested that Madame should materialize an extra set. Madame Blavatsky held a moment's mental communication with one of her distant Brothers and then indicated a particular spot, covered with grass, weeds, and shrubbery. A gentleman of the party, with a knife, undertook to dig at the spot. A little persistence brought him shortly to the rim of a white object, which proved to be a cup, and close to it was a saucer, both of the design matching the other six brought along from the Sinnett cupboard. The plant roots around the China pieces were manifestly undisturbed by recent digging such as would have been necessary if they had been "planted" in anticipation of their being needed. Moreover, when the party reached home and Mrs. Sinnett counted their supply of cups and saucers of that design, the new ones were found to be additional to their previous stock. And none of that design could have been purchased in Simla.33

Before this same party had disbanded it was permitted to witness another feat of equal strangeness. The gentleman who had dug up the buried pottery was so impressed that he decided then and there to join the Theosophical Society. As Col. Olcott, President of the Society, was in the party, all that was needed was the usual parchment diploma. Madame Blavatsky agreed to ask the Master to produce such a document for them. In a moment all were told to search in the underbrush. It was soon found and used in the induction ceremony.

This eventful picnic brought forth still another wonder.
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33 Mr. Sinnett devotes some pages of his little volume, The Occult World, to a critical examination of every conceivable possibility of this incident's being other than it ostensibly was, and he is unable to find a loophole for the admission of any theory of deception. All the witnesses to the event made affidavit to the effect of its evident genuineness. The reader is referred to his analysis of the case, to be found on pages 64-71 in the work just mentioned. For close scrutiny of the other events of the same period the same volume should be consulted.

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Every one of the water bottles brought along had been emptied when the need for more coffee arose. The water in a neighborhood stream was unfit. A servant, sent across the fields to obtain some at a brewery, stupidly returned without any. In the dilemma Madame Blavatsky took one of the empty bottles, placed it in one of the baskets, and in a moment took it out filled with good water.

Some days later the famous "brooch" incident occurred. The Sinnett party had gone up the hill to spend an evening with Mr. and Mrs. A. O. Hume, who were likewise much interested in the Blavatskian theories. Eleven persons were seated around the table and some one hinted at the possibility of a psychic exploit. Madame appeared disinclined, but suddenly gave a sign that the Master was himself present. Then she asked Mrs. Hume if there was anything in particular that she wished to have. Mrs. Hume thought of an old brooch which her mother had given her long ago and which had been lost. Neither she nor Mr. Hume had thought of it for years. She described it, saying it contained a lock of hair. The party was told to search for it in the garden at a certain spot; and there it was found. Mrs. Hume testified that it was the lost brooch, or one indistinguishable from it.

According to the statements of Alice Gordon, a visitor at the Sinnett home, Madame Blavatsky rolled a cigarette, and projected it ethereally to the house of a Mrs. O'Meara in another part of Simla, in advance of Miss Gordon's going thither. To identify it she tore off a small corner of the wrapper jaggedly, and gave it to Miss Gordon. The latter found it at the other home and the corner piece matched.

Captain P. J. Maitland recites a "cigarette" incident which occurred in Mr. Sinnett's drawing room. Madame took two cigarette papers, with a pencil drew several parallel lines clear across the face of both, then tore off across these lines a piece of the end of each paper and handed the short end pieces to Captain Maitland; then she rolled cigarettes out of the two larger portions, moistened them on her tongue, and caused them to disappear from her hands. The Captain was told he would find one on the piano and the other on a

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bracket. He found them there, still moist along the "seam," and unrolling them found that the ragged edges of the torn sections and the pencil lines exactly matched.

Some days later came the "pillow incident." Mr. Sinnett had the impression that he had been in communication with the Master one night. During the course of an outing to a nearby hill the following day, Madame Blavatsky turned to him (he had not mentioned his experience to her) and asked him where he would like some evidence of the Master's visit to him to appear. Thinking to choose a most unlikely place, he thought of the inside of a cushion against which one of the ladies was leaning. Then he changed to another. Cutting the latter open, they found among the feathers, inside two cloth casings, a little note in the now familiar Mahatma script, in the writing on which were the phrases--"the difficulty you spoke of last night" and "corresponding through--pillows!" While he was reading this his wife discovered a brooch in the feathers. It was one which she had left at home.

Perhaps it was these cigarette feats which assured Madame Blavatsky that she now had sufficient power to dispatch a long letter to her Mahatma mentors. Mr. Sinnett first suggested the idea to her, and her success in that first attempt was the beginning of one of the most eventful and unique correspondences in the world's history. It began his exchange of letters with the Master Koot Hoomi Lal Singh (abbreviated usually to K.H.), on which Theosophy so largely rests.

On several telegrams received by Mr. Sinnett were snatches of writing in K.H.'s hand speaking of events that transpired after the telegram had been sent. Replies were received a number of times in less time than it would have taken Madame Blavatsky to write them (instantaneously in a few cases), yet they dealt in specific detail with the material in his own missives. More than once his unexpressed doubts and queries were treated. In many cases his own letter in a sealed envelope would remain in sight and within a very short interval (thirty seconds in one instance) be found to contain the distant Master's reply, folded in-

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side his own sheets, with an appropriate answer,--the seal not even having been broken. Sometimes he would place his letter in plain view on the table, and shortly it would be gone. For a time when the Master K.H. was called away to other business, Mr. Sinnett continued to receive communications from the brother Adept, Master Morya, while Madame Blavatsky was hundreds of miles away. They continued in the distant absence of both H.P.B. and Col. Olcott. And not only were such letters received by Mr. Sinnett, and Mr. Hume, but by other persons as well. The list includes Damodar K. Mavalankar; Ramaswamy, an educated English-speaking native of Southern India in Government service; Dharbagiri Nath; Mohini Chatterji; and Bhavani Rao. Dr. Hübbe-Schleiden received a missive of the kind later on a railway train in Germany. Mr. Sinnett would frequently find the letters on the inside of his locked desk drawers or would see them drop upon his desk. Their production was attended with all manner of remarkable circumstances.

Then there was the notable episode of the transmission by the Master of a mental message to a Mr. Eglinton, a Spiritualist, on board a vessel, the Vega, far out at sea, and the instantaneous transmission of the letter's response, written on board ship, to some of his friends in India, the whole thing done in accordance with an arrangement made by letter to Mr. Sinnett by the Adept two days before. This incident has a certain importance from the fact that the Master had said in the preliminary letter that he would visit Mr. Eglinton on the ship on a certain night, impress him with the untenability of the general Spiritualistic hypothesis regarding communications, and if possible lead him to a change of mind on the point. Mr. Eglinton's reply recorded the visit of the Mahatma on the ship and admitted the desirability of a change to the Theosophic theory of the existence of the Brothers.

An interesting chapter of events in the sojourn of the two Theosophic leaders in India is that of the thousands of healings made by Col. Olcott, who states that he was given

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the power by the Overlords of his activities for a limited time with a special object in view. He is said to have cured some eight thousand Hindus of various ailments by a sort of "laying on of hands." Like Christ he felt "virtue" go out of his body until exhaustion ensued; and he stated that he was instructed to recharge his nervous depletion by sitting with his back against the base of a pine tree.

In 1885 Madame Blavatsky herself experienced the healing touch of her Masters when she was ordered to meet them in the flesh north of Darjeeling. Going north on this errand, she was in the utmost despondency and near the point of death. After two days spent with the Adepts she emerged with physical health and morale restored, her dynamic self once more.

The last sheaf of "miracles" takes us from India to France, Germany, Belgium, and England. In Paris, in 1884, her rooms were the resort of many people who came if haply they might get sight of a marvel, her thaumaturgic fame being now world-wide. A Prof. Thurmann reported that in his presence she filled the air of the room with musical sounds, from a variety of instruments. She demonstrated that darkness was not necessary for such manifestations.

Madame Jelihowsky is authority for the account of the appearance and disappearance of her sister's picture in a medallion containing only the small photograph of K.H.

A most baffling display of Madame's gifts took place in the reception room of the Paris Theosophical Society on the morning of June 11th, 1884. Madame Jelihowsky, Col. Olcott, W. Q. Judge, V. Solovyoff and two others were present and attested the bona fide nature of the incident in a public letter. In sight of all a servant took a letter from the postman and brought it directly to Madame Jelihowsky. It was addressed to a lady, a relative of Madame Blavatsky, who was then visiting her, and came from another relative in Russia. Madame Blavatsky, seeing that it was a family letter, remarked that she would like to know its contents. Her sister ventured the suggestion that she read it before it was opened. Helena held the letter against her forehead and proceeded to

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read aloud and then write down what she said were the contents. Then, to demonstrate her power further, she declared that she would underscore her own name, wherever it occurred within the letter, in red crayon, and would precipitate in red a double interlaced triangle, or "Solomon's Seal," beneath the signature. When the addressee opened the letter, not only was H.P.B.'s version of its contents correct to the word, but the underscoring of her name and the monogram in red were found, and oddly enough, the wavering in several of the straight lines in the triangle, as drawn first by Madame Blavatsky outside the letter, were precisely matched by the red triangle inside. Postmarks indicated it had actually come from Russia.34

While at Elberfeld, Germany, with her hospitable benefactress, Madame Gebhard, some of the usual manifestations were in evidence. Mr. Rudolph Gebhard, a son, recounts several of them. One was the receipt of a letter from one of the Masters, giving intelligence about an absent member of the household, found to be correct.

The Countess Constance Wachtmeister, who became Madame Blavatsky's guardian angel, domestically speaking, during the years of the composition of The Secret Doctrine in Germany and Belgium, has printed her account of a number of extraordinary occurrences of the period. She speaks of a succession of raps in H.P.B.'s sleeping room when there was special need of her Guardians' care. She also tells of the thrice-relighted lamp at the sleeper's bedside, she herself having twice extinguished it. She tells of her receiving a letter from the Master, inside the store-wrapper of a bar of soap which she had just purchased at a drug store.
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34 Vlesevold Solovyoff, who afterwards sought to discredit Madame Blavatsky's genuine status, himself witnessed this scene. In fact he wrote out his own statement of the occurrence and sent it for publication to the St. Petersburg Rebus, which printed it on July 1, 1884, over his signature. He closes that account with the following paragraph: "The circumstances under which the phenomenon occurred in its smallest details, carefully checked by myself, do not leave in me the smallest doubt as to its genuineness and reality. Deception or fraud in this particular case are really out of the question."

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It was under the Countess Wachtmeister's notice that there occurred the last of Madame Blavatsky's "miraculous" restorations to health. She had suffered for years from a dropsical or renal affection, which in those latter days had progressed to such an alarming stage that her highly competent physicians at one crisis were convinced that she could not survive a certain night. The great work she was writing was far from completed; the Countess was heart-broken to think that, after all, that heroic career was to be cut off just before the consummation of its labors for humanity; and she spent the night in grief and despair. Arising in the morning she found Madame at her desk, busy as before at her task. She had been revivified and restored during the night, and would not say how.

The Countess records the occasion of an intercession of the Masters in her own affairs, on behalf of their messenger. At her home in Sweden, while she was packing her trunks in preparation for a journey to some relatives in Italy, she clairaudiently heard a voice, which told her to place in her trunk a certain note-book of her containing notes on the Bohemian Tarot and the Kabala. It was not a printed volume but a collection of quotations from the above works in her own hand. Surprised, and not knowing the possible significance of the order, she nevertheless complied. Before reaching Italy she suddenly changed her plans, and postponed the trip to Italy and visited Madame Blavatsky in Belgium instead. Upon arriving and shortly after greeting her beloved friend, she was startled to hear Madame say to her that her Master had informed her that her guest was bringing her a book dealing with the Tarot and the Kabala, of which she was to make use in the writing of The Secret Doctrine.

This must end, but does not by any means complete, the chronicle of "the Blavatsky phenomena." The list, long as it has become, is but a fragment of the whole. Without the narration of these phenomena an adequate impression of the personality and the legend back of them could not be given. Moreover they belong in any study of Theosophy, and their

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significance in relation to the principles of the cult is perhaps far other than casual or incidental. If her own display of such powers was made as a demonstration of what man is destined to become capable of achieving in his interior evolution, these things are to be regarded as an integral part of her message. They became, apparently in spite of herself, a part of her program and furnished a considerable impetus toward its advancement. Theosophy itself re-publishes the theory of man's inherent theurgic capacity. It can hardly be taken as an anomaly or as an irrelevant circumstance, then, that its founder should have been regarded as exemplifying the possession of that capacity in her own person.

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