Theosophy: A Modern Revival of Ancient Wisdom

Alvin Boyd Kuhn

Chapter 7

CHAPTER VII

STORM, WRECK, AND REBUILDING

Reverting from philosophy to history we must now give some account of what happened in India from the date the two Founders left America late in 1878.

India welcomed Theosophy with considerable warmth. Col. Olcott toured about, founding Lodges rapidly, and Madame Blavatsky bent herself to the more esoteric work of corresponding with her Masters and of establishing her official mouthpiece, The Theosophist. Though Isis Unveiled had been put forth in America, Theosophy was first really propagated in India.

The early history of the Society in India need not concern us here, save as it had repercussions in the United States. But it is necessary to touch upon the conspicuous events that transpired there in 1884-85, for they shook the Theosophic movement to its foundations and for a time threatened to end it. We refer to the official Reports issued in those two years by the Society for Psychical Research in England upon the genuineness of the Theosophic phenomena.1

The S.P.R., having been founded shortly before 1884 by prominent men interested in the growing reports of spiritistic and psychic phenomena (the early membership included at least three Theosophists, Prof. F. W. H. Myers, Mr. W. Stainton Moses and Mr. C. C. Massey), manifested a pronounced interest in the recently-published and widely-read works of Mr. Sinnett, The Occult World and Esoteric Buddhism. Madame Blavatsky's Isis Unveiled and the works and experiments of Prof. William Crookes had done much to foster this new study. Accordingly when Col. Olcott and
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1 The official reports of the S.P.R. are to be found in Vol. III, pages 201 to 400 of the Proceedings of the S.P.R. A very adequate review of the entire affair is made by William Kingsland in the text and appendix of his recent work, The Real H. P. Blavatsky (M. Watkins, London, 1928). Partial accounts are found in many other works, as for instance, The Theosophical Movement.

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Mohini M. Chatterji, a devoted follower of H.P.B., were in Europe in 1884, the S.P.R. requested the three to sit for friendly questioning concerning Madame Blavatsky's reported marvels. She was herself interrogated at this time. This procedure led to the publication "for private and confidential use" of the First Report of the Committee in the fall of 1884. In sum the Report expressed decided incredulity as to the genuine nature of the phenomena. Ascribing fraud only to Madame Blavatsky, it says:

"Now the evidence in our opinion renders it impossible to avoid one or other of two alternative conclusions: Either that some of the phenomena recorded are genuine, or that other persons than Madame Blavatsky, of good standing in society, and with characters to lose, have taken part in deliberate imposture."

The conclusion was:

"On the whole, however, (though with some serious reserves) it seems undeniable that there is a prima facie case for some part at least of the claim made, which . . . cannot, with consistency, be ignored."

Later in the same year the S.P.R. sent one of its members, Mr. Richard Hodgson, a young University graduate, to India to conduct further investigation of the phenomena reported to have taken place at the Headquarters of the Theosophical Society, at Madras. He was given untrammeled access to the premises and permitted to examine in person members of the household who had witnessed some of the events in question.

H.P.B.'s nemesis in these ill-started proceedings was one Madame Coulomb. In 1871, when Madame Blavatsky had been brought to Cairo, along with other survivors of their wrecked vessel, the French woman, a claimant to the possession of mediumistic powers, became interested in H.P.B.'s psychic abilities and rendered her some assistance. When, in 1879, the Founders arrived in India, Madame Coulomb in her turn resorted to her Russian friend for aid, and H.P.B. made her the housekeeper, and her husband the

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general utility man, of the little Theosophic colony. They proved to be ungrateful, meddlesome, and unscrupulous, became jealous and discontented, and when left in charge of Madame Blavatsky's own rooms in the building during her absence on the journey to Europe in 1884, they fell into bickering and open conflict with Mr. Lane-Fox, Dr. Franz Hartmann and others of the personnel over questions of authority and small matters of household management. Both they and the Theosophists took up the matters of dispute by letter with H.P.B. and Col. Olcott in Europe, and the two leaders urged conciliation and peace on both sides. But finally the ill-repressed resentment of Madame Coulomb broke out into secret machinations with the Christian missionaries to expose Madame Blavatsky as a fraud. Madame Coulomb placed in the hands of the missionaries letters allegedly written to her by her former friend, in which evidence of the latter's connivance with her French protégé to perpetrate deception in phenomena was revealed. Just before exploding this bombshell the Coulombs had become unendurable, and had finally been compelled to leave the premises.

Madame Coulomb bartered her incriminating material to the missionaries for a considerable sum of money, and the purchasers spread the alleged exposure before the public in their organ, the Christian College Magazine.2 Madame Blavatsky, in Europe, made brief replies in the London Times and the Pall Mall Gazette, stating that the Coulomb letters were forgeries. She wished to bring recrimination proceedings against her accusers to vindicate herself and the Society. Friends dissuaded her, or deserted her, and nothing was done. But the Founders prepared to hasten back to India. Col. Olcott seems to have taken a vacillating course, and the resolution adopted at a Convention held in India upon their return expressed the opinion of the delegates that Madame Blavatsky should take no legal action.
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2 It was from some three hundred native students of this same Christian College that Madame Blavatsky received a welcoming ovation on her return from Paris to India, and was given a testimonial of their assured faith in her lofty motives.

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She resigned her office as Corresponding Secretary, but later was requested to resume her old place.

Mr. Hodgson submitted his report, which was published near the end of 1885.3 He had not witnessed any phenomena nor examined any. He questioned witnesses to several of the wonders a full year after the latter had taken place. He rendered an entirely ex parte judgment in that he acted as judge, accuser, and jury and gave no hearing to the defense. He ignored a mass of testimony of the witnesses to the phenomena, and accepted the words of the Coulombs whose conduct had already put them under suspicion.4 The merits of the entire case have been carefully gone into by William Kingsland in his The Real H. P. Blavatsky, and by the anonymous authors of The Theosophical Movement. The matter of most decisive weight in Mr. Hodgson's unfavorable judgment was the secret panel in H.P.B.'s "shrine" or cabinet built in the wall of her room, and a sliding door exhibited by the Coulombs to the investigators, and described as having been used by Madame Blavatsky for the insertion of alleged Mahatma letters from the next room by one of the Coulomb accomplices. The Theosophists resident at Headquarters charged that the secret window had been built in, at the instigation of the missionaries, by M. Coulomb during H.P.B.'s absence. He alone had the keys to Madame's apartment, and one of the points of his quarrel with the house members was the possession of the keys. He refused to give them up, alleging that Madame Blavatsky had placed him in exclusive charge of her rooms during her absence. The charges of course threw doubt upon the existence of the Masters, the genuineness of their purported letters and the whole Mahatmic foundation of Theosophy.
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3 In The Proceedings of the S.P.R., Vol. III, pp. 201 to 400.

4 Further distrust of the Coulomb's charges against H.P.B. is justifiable in view of the statement given on June 5, 1879 by Madame Coulomb to the Ceylon Times, of which she sent the subject of her remarks a copy. She wrote: "I have known this lady for the last eight years and I must say the truth that there is nothing against her character. We lived in the same town, and on the contrary she was considered one of the cleverest ladies of the age. Madame Blavatsky is a musician, a painter, a linguist, an author, and I may say that very few ladies and indeed few gentlemen, have a knowledge of things as general as Madame Blavatsky."

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A great point at issue was the comparison of H.P.B.'s handwriting with that of the Mahatma Letters. Two experts, Mr. F. G. Netherclift and Mr. Sims, first testified they were not identical, but later reversed their testimony. Mr. F. W. H. Myers confessed there was entire similarity between the handwriting of the Mahatma Letters and a letter received by Madame Blavatsky's aunt, Madame Fadeef, back in 1870 at Odessa, Russia, from the hand of a Hindu personage who then vanished from before her eyes. (Madame Blavatsky was at some other quarter of the globe at the time.) A distinguished German handwriting expert later declared there was no similarity between H.P.B.'s chirography and those of the Master M. and K.H.

It remained for Mr. Hodgson to assign an adequate motive for Madame Blavatsky's colossal career of deception, and here he confesses difficulty. He finally concludes that her motive was patriotism for her native land: she was a Russian spy! Mr. Solovyoff, in his A Modern Priestess of Isis, gives some substance to this charge. It is conceivable that Madame Blavatsky could have felt sentimental interest in the Russianizing, rather than the Anglicizing, of India; yet it appears preposterous to think that she would have endured the privations and hardships to which she was subjected in her devotion to Theosophy merely to cloak a subterranean machination for Russian dominance in India. She was an American citizen, having been naturalized before she left the United States.

Mr. Hodgson declared Madame Blavatsky to be "one of the most accomplished, ingenious and interesting impostors in history." In a letter to Sinnett, June 21, 1885, she records her reciprocal opinion of Mr. Hodgson. She writes:

"They very nearly succeeded [in killing both her and the Theosophical Society]. At any rate they have succeeded in fooling Hume and the S.P.R. Poor Myers! and still more, poor Hodgson! How terribly they will be laughed at some day!"

The attack of the S.P.R. upon Theosophy and its leaders fell with great force upon the followers of the movement

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everywhere and only a few remained loyal through the storm.

Among the faithful in America was Mr. W. Q. Judge. It remained for him to effect a reorganization of the forces in the United States in 1885, when the S.P.R. attack was raging abroad. In the previous year he had gone to France, had met H.P.B., continued on to India and back to America. In 1885 he reorganized the sparse membership into the Aryan Lodge. In 1886 he started the publication of The Path, long the American organ for his expression of Theosophy. Active study and propaganda followed quickly thereupon and the number of branches soon tripled. Col. Olcott had appointed an American Board of Control. This body met at Cincinnati in 1886 and organized "The American Section of the Theosophical Society." In April, 1887, the branches held their first Convention, and adopted constitution and by-laws. Mr. Judge became General Secretary. The organization was a copy of that of the Federal Government, though allegiance was subscribed to the General Council in India. In 1888 the second Convention was held, with Mr. Archibald Keightley present as a representative from England. Theosophical organization was at last in full swing in America.

Brief mention may be made at this point of a somewhat divergent movement within the ranks of Theosophy itself about 1886. A Mr. W. T. Brown, of Glasgow, had had close fellowship with the Theosophists at Adyar, Madras, from 1884 to 1886. He then came to this country and associated himself with Mrs. Josephine W. Cables, who had been a Christian Spiritualist, but who had as early as 1882 organized the Rochester Theosophical Society. This was the first Theosophical Lodge established in America after the original founding in New York in 1875. But Mrs. Cables tried to represent Theosophy as a mixture of Christianity, Spiritualism, Mysticism, personal ideas on diet and occultism in general. She founded The Occult World, a magazine which Prof. Elliott Coues, then President of the American Board of Control, tried to make the official organ of Theosophy in

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America. But Mr. Judge's Path was in the field, and Mrs. Cables and Mr. Brown gave expression to some jealousy of the rival publication, alleging that the Theosophical Society was not a unique instrument for the spreading of occult knowledge, but that Christ was to be accepted as the final guide and authority. They referred to the Theosophic teaching as "husks," while Christ had fed the world the real kernel. To this H.P.B. replied through The Path for December, 1886, and cast the blame for their losing touch with her Masters on Mrs. Cables and Mr. Brown themselves.5 Mrs. Cables turned her Rochester Theosophical Society into the "Rochester Brotherhood" and her magazine into an exponent of Mystical Spiritualism. Mr. Brown returned to the fold of orthodox Christianity. Prof. Coues was destined to contribute a sensational chapter to Theosophic history before he broke with the movement forever.6

A close study of the record will reveal that it was during these years that the germ of a hierarchical division in the Theosophical organization developed. In the theory of the existence and evolutionary attainments of the Masters themselves was enfolded the conception of a graded approach to their elevated status. As the Theosophical Society came to be understood as only an appanage of the Masters in their service of humanity, its inner intent was soon seen to be that of affording a means of access to these high beings. It was recognized as an organization whose supreme headship was vested in the Mahatmas and whose corporate membership formed a lower degree of spiritual discipleship. This hierarchical grading naturally fell into three degrees, predicated on the thesis that the Adepts accept pupils for personal tutelage. There were first, the Masters, then their accepted pupils or chelas, and lastly just plain Theosophists or mem-
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5 It is in this article that Madame Blavatsky gives out that important declaration of hers, that as soon as the sincere aspirant steps upon the Path leading to the higher initiations, his accumulated Karma is thrown upon him, in condensed form. The determination to pursue the occult life is therefore often spoken of as involving the "challenging of one's Karma."

6 He was the instigator of the "Sun Libel Case," which will be outlined in Chapter XII.

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bers of the Society. The third class might or might not be led to aspire to chelaship, on the terms of a serious pledge to consecrate all life's efforts to spiritual mastery. These three divisions came to be called the First, Second and Third Sections of the Theosophical Society. It is the theory advanced in the Theosophic Movement that H.P.B. represented the First Section, Mr. Judge the Second and Col. Olcott the Third. The Russian noblewoman was regarded as the only bona fide or authoritative link of communication with the First Section (though the Masters might at any time grant the favor of their special interest to others, as they did to Mr. Sinnett); Judge was held to be an accepted chela, in the high confidence of Madame Blavatsky and her mentors, their reliable agent to head the order of lay chelaship; Col. Olcott was the active and visible head of the Theosophical Society, the accepted instrument of the Masters in the work of building up that organization which was to present the ancient doctrine of their existence to the world and mark out anew the path of approach to them. H.P.B. and Judge worked behind the scenes, while Olcott stood in the gaze of the world. To them belonged the task of bringing out the teaching and keeping it properly related to its sources; to him fell the executive labor of providing ways and means to serve it to a sceptical public. The functions of the former two were esoteric; those of Olcott exoteric. It was understood that the Colonel was not advanced beyond the position of a lay or probationary chela. He himself seems to have accepted this ranking as deserved, and generously admitted that

"to transform a worldly man such as I was in 1874--a man of clubs, drinking parties, mistresses, a man absorbed in all sorts of worldly, public, and private undertakings and speculations--into that purest, wisest, noblest, and most spiritual of human beings--a 'Brother,' was a wonder demanding next to miraculous efficacy. . . . No one knows until he really tries it, how awful a task it is to subdue all his evil passions and animal instincts and develop his higher nature."7

The Theosophical Movement ascribes most of the trials and
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7 The Theosophical Movement, p. 132.

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tribulations of Theosophy to the Colonel's indifferent success, at times, in the "awful task." Years later, Olcott says:

"She was the teacher, I the pupil; she the misunderstood and insulted messenger of the Great Ones, I the practical brain to plan, the right hand to work out the practical details."8

Out of this situation eventuated the formation of the Esoteric Section of the Theosophical Society. So many members were reaching out after the chelaship that Judge wrote to H.P.B. in 1887 for advice as to what to offer them. She replied, telling him to go ahead in America and she would soon do something herself. She then began the publication of Lucifer, in which the qualifications, dangers, obstacles, and status of chelaship were set forth in article after article. Judge went to London; and there, at the request of Madame Blavatsky drew the plans and wrote the rules for the guidance of the new body. Col. Olcott looked on with some perturbation while his spiritual superiors stepped lightly over his authority to inaugurate the higher enterprise. In October, 1888, the first public statement relative to the Esoteric Section appeared. It announced the purpose of the formation of the Esoteric Section to be:

"To promote the esoteric interests of the Theosophical Society by the deeper study of esoteric philosophy."

All authority was vested in Madame Blavatsky and official connection with the Theosophical Society itself was disclaimed.

A further hint as to the impelling motive back of the new branch of activity was given by H.P.B. in the letter she addressed to the Convention of the American Section meeting in April, 1889. She says:

"Therefore it is that the ethics of Theosophy are even more necessary to mankind than the specific aspects of the psychic facts of nature and man . . ."

She made a plea for solidarity in the fellowship of the Theosophical Society, to form a nucleus of true Brotherhood.
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8 Old Diary Leaves, Vol. IV.

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Unity had to be achieved to withstand exterior onslaught, as well as interior discord. An attack upon one must be equally met by all. The first object of the Society is Universal Brotherhood. She asked in the finale:

"How many of you have helped humanity to carry its smallest burden, that you should all regard yourselves as Theosophists? Oh, men of the West, who would play at being the Saviors of mankind before they can spare the life of a mosquito whose sting threatens them! Would ye be partakers of Divine Wisdom or true Theosophists? Then do as the gods when incarnated do. Feel yourselves the vehicles of the whole humanity, mankind as part of yourselves, and act accordingly . . ."

She then sent out a formal letter, marked strictly private and confidential, to all applicants for entry into the new school. It contained an introductory statement, the "Rules of the Esoteric Section (Probationary) of the Theosophical Society" and the "Pledge of Probationers in the Esoteric Section." The latter was as follows:

"I pledge myself to support, before the world, the Theosophical Movement, its leaders and its members; and in particular to obey, without cavil or delay, the orders of the Head of the Section, in all that concerns my relation with the Theosophical Movement."

It can be seen that such a pledge carried the possibility of far-reaching consequences and might be difficult to fulfil under certain precarious conditions. Much controversy in the Society from 1906 onwards hinges about this pledge.

Madame Blavatsky went on to say:

"It is through an Esoteric Section alone . . . that the great exoteric Society may be redeemed and made to realize that in union and harmony alone lie its strength and power. The object of the Section, then, is to help the future growth of the Theosophical Society as a whole in the true direction, by promoting brotherly union at least among a choice minority."

The Book of Rules provided that the work to be pursued was not practical occultism, but mutual help in the Theosophic life; it outlined measures for suppressing gossip, slander, cant, hypocrisy, and injustice; for limiting the claims

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of occult interests and psychic inclinations; it inculcated the widest charity, tolerance, and mutual helpfulness as the prime condition of all true progress. Said the Rule:

"The first test of true apprenticeship is devotion to the interest of another."

It concludes:

"It is not the individual or determined purpose of attaining oneself Nirvana, which is, after all, only an exalted and glorious selfishness, but the self-sacrificing pursuit of the best means to lead our neighbor on the right path . . ."

Conditions for membership in the Esoteric Section were three: (1) one must be a Fellow of the Theosophical Society; (2) the pledge must be signed; (3) the applicant must be approved by the Head of the Section. And warning was issued that, while no duties would be required in the Order that would interfere with one's family or professional obligations, "it is certain that every member of the Esoteric Section will have to give up more than one personal habit . . . and adopt some few ascetic rules." The habits referred to were alcoholism and meat-eating, mainly, and the ascetic rules were those regulating meditation, sleep, diet, kindly speech, altruistic thought, etc.

The establishment of the Esoteric Section was one of the moves undertaken to rebuild the structure of Theosophy which had been so badly shattered by the S.P.R. attack and its consequences. But while this was going forward, largely under the direction of Judge, Madame Blavatsky had already begun to devote her tireless energies to the accomplishment of another great work of reconstruction. Its inception bore a logical relation to the promulgation of the Esoteric branch. If students were to be taken deeper into the essentials of the occult life, there was need of a fuller statement of the scheme of the world's racial and cosmogonic history, so that the task of personal and social development might be seen and understood in its most intimate rapport with the larger streams of life. The arcane knowledge had to be further unveiled.

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The combined attack of the Coulombs, the Christian missionaries and the English Psychic Research Society on Madame Blavatsky in 1885 was indeed a fiery-furnace test. She had vigorously, in Isis and elsewhere, attacked orthodoxy and conservative interests in religion and science. She was now to feel the full force of the blow which society, through the representatives of these vested interests, was impelled to strike back at her, and it was greater than she had anticipated. It nearly ended her career. Not that she was one to cringe and wince under attack. Far from it. She wanted to bring suit against her calumniators. She burned under a sense of injustice. She even contemplated the possibility of startling a crowded court room with a display of her suspected phenomena. But--the trial would have necessitated dragging her beloved Masters into the mire of low human emotions, and this she could not do. Instead, the storm within her soul had to wear itself out by degrees. It nearly cost her life itself; but she was saved, as has been maintained, by the intervention of her Master's power. She wished to die, feeling that her life work was irreparably defeated. At this juncture she was summoned, as we gather from her letters to the Sinnetts, to a quiet nook north of Darjeeling, met the Mahatmas in person, and returned after a few days to her friends, "fixed" once more. Whatever the "inside" facts in the case, she went north broken in body and spirit, and two days later emerged from her retirement apparently well, and with a new zest for life, ready to battle again for her "Cause."

Not long thereafter came the journey from India, which she was never to see again, back to Europe, where she spent more peaceful days of work among devoted friends, the Gebhards at Würzburg, Germany, the Countess Wachtmeister, the Keightleys, and many more in Belgium, France, and England. She said the secret of her new lease on life at this time was that the Master had indicated to her that he wished her to perform one more service in the interests of Theosophy before she relinquished the body. Her task was not finished. Isis was little more than a clearing away

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of old rubbish and the announcement that a great secret science lay buried amid the ruins of ancient cities. The Mahatma Letters gave but a fragmentary outline of the great Teaching, enough to stimulate inquiry in the proper direction. But the magnum opus, the fundamentals of the Secret Doctrine, had not yet been produced. The "Secret Doctrine" was still secret. Restored to comparative health, and given certain reassurances of support from her Masters, her courage we renewed. One finds the motive of vindication running strong in her mind at this time; all thought of defence, of retaliation given up, she would disprove all the charges of knavery, deception and disingenuousness of every stripe by a master-work before whose brilliance all suggestion of petty human motives would vanish. She writes in a letter to Sinnett:

"As for [the charges of] philosophy and doctrine invented, the Secret Doctrine shall show. Now I am here alone, with the Countess [Wachtmeister] for witness. I have no books, no one to help me. And I tell you that the Secret Doctrine will be twenty times as learned, philosophical and better than Isis, which will be killed by it. Now there are hundreds of things which I am permitted to say and explain. I will show what a Russian spy can do, an alleged forger-plagiarist, etc. The whole doctrine is shown to be the mother stone, the foundation of all the religions including Christianity, and on the strength of exoteric published Hindu books, with their symbols explained esoterically. The extreme lucidity of 'Esoteric Buddhism' [Mr. Sinnett's book expounding the summarized teaching of the Mahatma Letters] will also be shown, and its doctrines proven correct, mathematically, geometrically, logically and scientifically. Hodgson is very clever, but he is not clever enough for truth, and it shall triumph, after which I can die peacefully."9

The work was intended in its first conception to be an "expansion of Isis." It was soon seen, however, that the fuller clarification of the hints in the earlier work would necessitate the practically complete unveiling of the whole occult knowledge. So Isis was forgotten, and the new production made to stand on its own feet.
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9 Found in the Appendix to The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett, pp. 480-481.

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The hint in her letter just quoted that she would do the actual writing of the new volumes practically without the aid of reference or source books is to be taken to mean, doubtless, that the very manner of her production of the work would constitute the final irrefutable proof of the existence and powers of the Mahatmas. The composition as well as the contents of the book was to be phenomenal. She says in a letter to Madame Jelihowsky, her sister, written at this time that "it is the phenomena of Isis all over again." Yet there were some variations. In a Sinnett letter she writes:

"There's a new development and scenery every morning. I live two lives again! Master finds that it is too difficult for me to be looking consciously into the astral light for my Secret Doctrine, and so, it is now about a fortnight, I am made to see all I have to as though in my dream. I see large and long rolls of paper on which things are written, and I recollect them. Thus all the Patriarchs from Adam to Noah were given me to see, parallel with the Rishis; and in the middle between them the meaning of these symbols or personifications. I was ordered to . . . make a rapid sketch of what was known historically and in literature, in classics and in profane and sacred histories--during the five hundred years that followed it; of magic, the existence of a universal Secret Doctrine known to the philosophers and Initiates of every country, and even to several of the Church Fathers such as Clement of Alexandria, Origen and others, who had been initiated themselves. Also to describe the Mysteries and some rites; and I can assure you that the most extraordinary things are given out now, the whole story of the Crucifixion, etc., being shown to be based on a rite as old as the world--the Crucifixion of the Lathe of the Candidate--trials, going down to Hell, etc., all Aryan . . . I have facts for twenty volumes like Isis; it is the language, the cleverness for compiling them, that I lack."10

Writing to her niece, Madame Vera Johnston, she said:

"You are very green if you think that I actually know and understand all the things I write. How many times am I to repeat
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10 Letters of H. P. Blavatsky to A. P. Sinnett (New York: Frederick A. Stokes Co.), p. 194.

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to you and your mother that the things I write are dictated to me; that sometimes I see manuscripts, numbers and words before my eyes of which I never knew anything?"11

In a letter to Judge in America, March 24, 1886, H.P.B. says:

"Such facts, such facts, Judge, as Masters are giving out, will rejoice your old heart. . . . The thing is becoming enormous, a wealth of facts."

Madame Johnston quotes Franz Hartmann, who accompanied Madame Blavatsky on her trip from Madras to Europe in April, 1885, when she was so ill that she had to be hoisted aboard, as saying that

"while on board the S.S. 'Tibre' and on the open sea, she very frequently received in some occult manner many pages of manuscript referring to the Secret Doctrine, the material of which she was collecting at the time. Miss Mary Flynn was with us, and knows more about it than I; because I did not take much interest in those matters, as the receiving of 'occult correspondence' had become almost an everyday occurrence with us."12

The person who had most continuous and prolonged opportunity to witness whatever display of extraordinary assistance was afforded the compiler of The Secret Doctrine was the Countess Constance Wachtmeister, already mentioned as being the companion and guardian of Madame Blavatsky during must of the period of the composition at Würzburg, Ostend, and in London. In her Reminiscences of H. P. Blavatsky, and The Secret Doctrine she writes in detail of the many facts coming under her observation which pointed to exterior help in the work. She wrote:

"The Secret Doctrine will be indeed a great and grand work. I have had the privilege of watching its progress, of reading the manuscripts, and witnessing the occult way in which she derived her information."

The Countess states that on two or three occasions she saw on H.P.B.'s desk in the morning numbers of sheets of manu-
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11 The Path, Vol. IX, p. 300.

12 Ibid., p. 266.

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script in the familiar handwriting of the Masters. She writes that at times a piece of paper was found on the desk in the morning with unfamiliar characters traced in red ink. It was an outline of the author's work for the day,--the "red and blue spook-like messages." Questioned how it was precipitated, H.P.B. stated that elementals were used for the purpose, but that they had nothing to do with the intelligence of the message, only with the mechanics of the feat.

More significant, perhaps, than these details is the question of the origin of the many quotations and references, as in Isis, from old works, or from books not in her possession. The testimony on this score is more voluminous and challenging than in the case of Isis. 13

Madame Blavatsky was practically without reference books and was too ill to leave the house to visit libraries. She worked from morning until night at her desk. Dr. Hübbe-Schleiden, her German convert, says she had scarcely half-a-dozen books. Her niece writes:

"Later on when we three went to Ostend [in the very midst of the work], it was I who put aunt's things and books in order, so I can testify that the first month or two in Ostend she decidedly had no other books but a few French novels, bought at railway stations and read whilst traveling, and several odd numbers of some Russian newspapers and magazines. So there was absolutely nothing where her numerous quotations could have come from."14

Two young Englishmen, Dr. Bertram Keightley and his nephew Archibald, worked with Madame Blavatsky on the arrangement of her material. It fell to them eventually to edit the work for her. They contribute their testimony as to what took place of a phenomenal sort. Says Bertram:

"Of phenomena in connection with The Secret Doctrine I have very little indeed to say. Quotations, with full references, from
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13 The Countess Wachtmeister herself went to the pains of verifying a quotation already written out by Madame Blavatsky, which the latter said would be found in a volume in the Bodleian Library. She found the excerpt to be correct as to wording, page, chapter, and title of the book quoted. She adds that Miss Emily Kislingbury, a devoted member of the Society, verified a quotation from Cardinal Weisman's Lectures on Science and Religion.

14 Reminiscences of H. P. Blavatsky and The Secret Doctrine, Appendix, p. 105 ff.

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books which were never in the house--quotations verified after hours of search, sometimes at the British Museum, for a rare book--of such I saw and verified not a few."15

The nephew speaks to the same effect. As a matter of fact, during the writing of the latter portions of the book in London, Madame Blavatsky kept two or three young men, students from the University of Dublin, busily engaged in the daily search for quotations, which she said would be found in books of which she gave not only the titles, but the exact location of the passages. These men have repeatedly borne testimony to the facts in this connection. They were Mr. E. Douglass Fawcett, Mr. S. L. McGregor Mathers, Mr. Edgar Saltus, and one or two more.16

There were frequent and notable visitors in the evenings, when the day's writing was put aside. Mr. Archibald Keightley tells that:

"Mr. J. G. Romanes, a Fellow of the Royal Society, comes in to discuss the evolutionary theory set forth in her Secret Doctrine. Mr. W. T. Stead, Editor of the Pall Mall Gazette, who is a great admirer of The Secret Doctrine, finds much in it that seems to invite further elucidation. Lord Crawford, Earl of Crawford and Balcarres, another F.R.S.--who is deeply interested in occultism and cosmography, and who was a pupil of Lord Lytton and studied with him in Egypt--comes to speak of his special subject of concern. Mr. Sidney Whitman, widely known for his scathing criti-
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15 Ibid., Appendix, p. 89 ff.

16 The experience of Mr. C. Carter Blake, a scientist is pertinent on this point. He asserts that her learning was extraordinary, in consideration of her lack of early education and her want of books. He testifies that she knew more than he did on his own lines of anthropology, specifying her abstruse knowledge on the subject of the Naulette jaw. He says: "Page 744 in the Second Volume of the Secret Doctrine refers to facts which she could not easily have gathered from any published book." She had declared that the raised beaches of Tarija were pliocene, when Blake argued that they were pleistocene. She was afterwards proved correct. On page 755 of Vol. II, she mentions the fossil footprints at Carson, Indiana. Says Blake: "When Madame Blavatsky spoke to me of the footprints I did not know of their existence, and Mr. G. W. Bloxam, Assistant Secretary of the Anthropological Institute, afterwards told me that a pamphlet on the subject in the library had never been out. Madame Blavatsky certainly had sources of information (I don't say what) transcending the knowledge of experts on their own lines."--Reminiscences of H. P. Blavatsky and The Secret Doctrine, Appendix, pp. 117 ff.

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cism upon English cant, has ideas to express and thoughts to interchange upon the ethics of Theosophy; and so they come."17

Untiringly through 1885, 1886 and 1887, in Germany with the Gebhards, then in Belgium and finally in London, she labored to get the voluminous material in form. Unable on account of her dropsical condition to take exercise, she was again and again threatened with complete breakdown by the accumulation of toxins in her system. A young physician of London, Dr. Bennett, who attended her at times, pronounced her condition most grave, on one occasion declaring it impossible for her to survive the night. In our third chapter we have seen Countess Wachtmeister's account of her surprising recovery. The Countess alleges that Madame destroyed many pages of manuscript already written, in obedience to orders from the Master. There was left, however, enough material for some sixteen hundred close-printed pages which now make up the two volumes commonly accepted as her genuine product. To an examination of the contents of this pretentious work we now invite the reader.
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17 Reminiscences of H. P. Blavatsky and The Secret Doctrine, Appendix, pp. 96 ff.

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