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Theosophy House
Incidents
in the Life
of
Madame Blavatsky
compiled from information supplied by
her
relatives and friends and edited by A P Sinnett
The
Secret Doctrine by H P Blavatsky
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The Theosophical Publishing House, London 1913
AUTHOR'S PREFACE
THE first edition of this book, published in 1886, was issued during
Madame Blavatsky's lifetime as an indirect protest against the cruel and
slanderous attack on her embodied in the Report to the Committee of the
Psychical Research Society appointed to investigate the phenomena
connected with
the Theosophical Society. This Report was very effectually answered at
the time,
and the passages in my original book especially relating to it are
hardly worth
reproduction now. But the facts relating to Madame Blavatsky's life
which it
then dealt with are more interesting now than ever, in view of the
gigantic
development of the Theosophical Society; and the original edition having
been
long out of print, the present edition is prepared to meet a widespread
desire.
I need not now reproduce dissertations which the original edition
contained in
deprecation of the incredulity that still held sway twenty-five years
ago in
reference to the reality of occult phenomena. A great change in this
respect has
come over cultivated thinking within that period, and appeals for
tolerance on
behalf of those who give testimony concerning occult super-psychical phenomena
of which they may have been witness are no longer necessary.[6]
For the rest, the book is now republished as written, no attempt having
been
made to recast its language to suit the present time, when the subject
of the
memoir is no longer with us; but I have added some notes where later
events or
experience have seemed to claim them.
CONTENTS
Chapter Page
AUTHOR'S PREFACE 5
1CHILDHOOD 9
2MARRIAGE AND TRAVEL 39
3AT HOME IN RUSSIA, 1858 57
4MADAME DE JELIHOWSKY'S
NARRATIVE66
5MADAME DE JELIHOWSKY'S
NARRATIVE — continued87
6MADAME DE JELIHOWSKY'S
NARRATIVE — continued 105
7FROM APPRENTICESHIP TO
DUTY 121
8RESIDENCE IN AMERICA132
9ESTABLISHED IN INDIA169
10A VISIT TO EUROPE205
NOTE FOR THE PRESENT
EDITION255
MADAME BLAVATSKY
CHAPTER 1
CHILDHOOD
QUOTING the authoritative statement of her late uncle, General Fadeef,
made at my request in 1881, at a time when he was Joint-Secretary of
State in
the Home Department at St Petersburg, Mme. H. P. Blavatsky (Helena
Petrovna
Blavatsky, to give the name at full length) “ is, from her father's
side, the
daughter of Colonel Peter Hahn, and granddaughter of General Alexis Hahn
von
Rottenstern Hahn (a noble family of Mecklenburg, Germany, settled in
Russia);
and she is, from her mother's side, the daughter of Helene Fadeef, and
granddaughter of Privy Councillor Andrew Fadeef and of the Princess
Helene
Dolgorouky. She is the widow of the Councillor of State, Nicephore
Blavatsky,
late Vice-Governor of the Province of Erivan, Caucasus.”
Mademoiselle Hahn, to use her family name in referring to her childhood,
was
born at Ekaterinoslaw, in the south of Russia, in 1831. Von Hahn would
be the
proper German form of the name, and in French writing or conversation
the name,
as used by Russians, would be De Hahn, but in its strictly Russian form
the
prefix was generally dropped.[10]
For the following particulars concerning the family I am indebted to
some of its
present representatives who have taken an interest in the preparation of
these
memoirs.
“The Von Hahn family is well known in Germany and Russia. The Counts
Von Hahn
belong to an old Mecklenburg stock. Mme. Blavatsky's grandfather was a
cousin of
Countess Ida Hahn-Hahn, the famous authoress, with whose writings
England is
well acquainted. Settling in Russia, he died in its service a full
general. He
was married to the Countess Proêbstin, who, after his death,
married Nicholas
Wassiltchikof, the brother of the famous Prince of that name. Mme.
Blavatsky's
father left the military service with the rank of a colonel after the
death of
his first wife. He had been married en premières noces to
Mademoiselle H.
Fadeew, known in the literary world between 1830 and 1840 as an
authoress — the
first novel-writer that had ever appeared in Russia — under the nom de
plume of
Zenaida R . . . , and who, although dying before she was twenty-five,
left some
dozen novels of the romantic school, most of which have been translated
into the
German language. In 1846 Colonel Hahn married his second wife — a
Baroness Von
Lange, by whom he had a daughter referred to by Mme. Jelihowsky as '
little
Lisa' in the extracts here given from her writings, published in St
Petersburg.
On her mother's side Mme. Blavatsky is the granddaughter of Princess
Dolgorouky,
with whose death the elder line of that family became extinct in Russia.
Thus
her maternal ancestors belong to the oldest families of the empire,
since they
are the direct descendants of the Prince or Grand Duke Rurik, the first
ruler
called to govern Russia. Several ladies of that family belonged to the
Imperial
house, becoming Czarinas (Czaritiza) by marriage. For a Princess
Dolgorouky
(Maria Nikitishna) had been married to the grandfather of Peter the
Great, the
Czar Michael Fedorovitch, the first reigning Roman of; another, the
Princess
Catherine Alexeévna, was on the [11] eve of her marriage with
Czar Peter
the II when he died suddenly before the ceremony.
“A strange fatality seems always to have persecuted this family in
connection
with England; and its greatest vicissitudes have been in some way
associated
with that country. Several of its members died, and others fell into
political
disgrace, as they were on their way to London. The last and most
interesting of
all is the tragedy connected with the Prince Sergeéy
Gregoreevitch Dolgorouky,
Mme. Blavatsky's grandmother's grandfather, who was ambassador in
Poland. At the
advent of the Archduchess Anne of Courlang to the throne of Russia,
owing to
their opposition to her favourite of infamous memory, the Chancellor
Biron, many
of the highest families were imprisoned or exiled; others put to death
and their
wealth confiscated. Among these, such fate befell the Prince
Sergèey Dolgorouky.
He was sent in exile to Berezof (Siberia) without any explanation, and
his
private fortune, that consisted of 200,000 serfs, was confiscated. His
two
little sons were, the elder placed with a village smith as an
apprentice, the
younger condemned to become a simple soldier, and sent to Azof. Eight
years
later the Empress Anne laxnovna recalled the exiled father, pardoned
him, and
sent him as ambassador to London. Knowing Biron well, however, the
prince sent
to the Bank of England 100,000 roubles to be left untouched for a
century,
capital and accumulated interest, to be distributed after that period to
his
direct descendants. His presentiment proved correct. He had not yet
reached
Novgorod, on his way to England, when he was seized and put to death by
'quartering' (cut in four). When the Empress Elizabeth, Peter the
Great's
daughter, came to the throne next, her first care was to undo the great
wrongs
perpetrated by her predecessor through her cruel and crafty favourite
Biron.
Among other exiles the two sons and heirs of Prince Sergeéy
were recalled, their
title restored, and their property ordered to be given back. This,
however,
instead of being 200,000 serfs, had dwindled down to only 8000. The
younger son,
after a youth of extreme misery and [12] hardship, became a monk, and
died
young. The elder married a Princess Romadanovsky; and his son, Prince
Paul, Mme.
Blavatsky's great-grandfather, named while yet in his cradle a Colonel
of the
Guards by the Emperor, married a Countess du Plessy, the daughter of a
noble
French Huguenot family, emigrated from France to Russia. Her father had
found
service at the Court of the Empress Catherine II where her mother was
the
favourite dame d'honneur.
“The receipt of the Bank of England for the sum of 100,000 roubles, a
sum that
at the end of the term of one hundred years had grown to immense
proportions,
had been handed by a friend of the politically murdered prince to the
grandson
of the latter, the Prince Paul Dolgorouky. It was preserved by him with
other
family documents at Marfovka, a large family property in the government
of
Penja, where the old prince lived and died in 1837. But the document was
vainly
searched for by the heirs after his death ; it was nowhere to be found.
To their
great horror further research brought to light the fact that it must
have been
burnt, together with the residence, in a great fire that had some time
previous
destroyed nearly the whole village. Having lost his sight in a paralytic
stroke
some years previous to his demise, the octogenarian prince, old and ill,
had
been kept in ignorance of the loss of the most important of his family
documents. This was a crushing misfortune, that left the heirs bereft of
their
contemplated millions. Many were the attempts made to come to some
compromise
with the bank, but to no purpose. It was ascertained that the deposit
had been
received at the bank, but some mistake in the name had been made, and
then the
bank demanded very naturally the receipt delivered about the middle of
the last
century. In short, the millions disappeared for the Russian heirs. Mme.
Blavatsky has thus in her veins the blood of three nations — the
Slavonian, the
German, and the French.”
The year of Mademoiselle Hahn's birth, 1831, was fatal for Russia, as
for all
Europe, owing to the first visit of the cholera, that terrible plague
that
decimated from [13] 1830 to 1832 in turn nearly every town of the
continent, and carried away a large part of its populations. Her birth
was
quickened by several deaths in the house. She was ushered into the world
amid
coffins and desolation. The following narrative is composed from the
family
records :—
“Her father was then in the army, intervals of peace after Russia's
war with
Turkey in 1829 being filled with preparations for new fights. The baby
was born
on the night between July 30 and 31 — weak and apparently no denizen of
this
world. A hurried baptism had to be resorted to, therefore, lest the
child died
with the burden of original sin on her soul. The ceremony of baptism in
'orthodox' Russia is attended with all the paraphernalia of lighted
tapers, and
'pairs' of godmothers and godfathers, every one of the spectators and
actors
being furnished with consecrated wax candles during the whole
proceedings.
Moreover, everyone has to stand during the baptismal rite, no one being
allowed
to sit in the Greek religion — as they do in Roman Catholic and
Protestant
Churches — during the church and religious service. The room selected
for the
ceremony in the family mansion was large, but the crowd of devotees
eager to
witness it was still larger. Behind the priest officiating in the centre
of the
room, with his assistants, in their golden robes and long hair, stood
the three
pairs of sponsors and the whole household of vassals and serfs. The
child-aunt
of the baby — only a few years older than her niece aged twenty-four
hours, —
placed as ' proxy ' for an absent relative, was in the first row
immediately
behind the venerable protopope. Feeling nervous and tired of standing still
for
nearly an hour, the child settled on the floor, unperceived by the
elders, and
became probably drowsy in the overcrowded room on that hot July day. The
ceremony was nearing its close. The sponsors were just in the act of
renouncing
the Evil One and his deeds, a renunciation emphasised in the Greek
Church by
thrice spitting upon the invisible enemy, when the little lady, toying
with her
lighted taper at the feet of the crowd, [14] inadvertently set fire to
the
long flowing robes of the priest, no one remarking the accident until it
was too
late. The result was an immediate conflagration, during which several
persons —
chiefly the old priest — were severely burnt. That was another bad omen,
according to the superstitious beliefs of orthodox Russia; and the
innocent
cause of it — the future Mme. Blavatsky — was doomed from that day in
the eyes
of all the town to an eventful life, full of vicissitude and trouble.
“Perhaps on account of an unconscious apprehension to the same effect,
the
child became the pet of her grandparents and aunts, and was greatly
spoiled in
her childhood, knowing from her infancy no other authority than that of
her own
whims and will. From her earliest years she was brought up in an
atmosphere of
legends and popular fancy. As far back as her remembrances go, she was
possessed
with a firm belief in the existence of an invisible world of
supermundane and
sub-mundane spirits and beings inextricably blended with the life of
each
mortal. The 'Domovoy' (house goblin) was no fiction for her, any more
than for
her nurses and Russian maids. This invisible landlord — attached to
every house
and building, who watches over the sleeping household, keeps quiet, and
works
hard the whole year round for the family, cleaning the horses every
night,
brushing and plaiting their tails and manes, protecting the cows and
cattle from
the witch, with whom he is at eternal feud — had the affections of the
child
from the first. The Domovoy is to be dreaded only on March the 30th, the
only
day in the year when, owing to some mysterious reasons, he becomes
mischievous
and very nervous, when he teases the horses, thrashes the cows and
disperses
them in terror, and causes the whole household to be dropping and
breaking
everything, stumbling and falling that whole day — every prevention
notwithstanding. The plates and glasses smashed, the inexplicable
disappearance
of hay and oats from the stables, and every family unpleasantness in
general,
are usually attributed to the fidgetiness and nervous excitement of the
Domovoy.
Alone, those born on the night between July 30th and 31st are exempt
from his
freaks. It is from the philosophy [15] of her Russian nursery that
Mademoiselle Hahn learned the cause of her being called by the serfs the
Sedmitchka, an untranslatable term, meaning one connected with number
Seven; in
this particular case, referring to the child having been born on the
seventh
month of the year, on the night between the 30th and 31st of July — days
so
conspicuous in Russia in the annals of popular beliefs with regard to
witches
and their doings. Thus the mystery of a certain ceremony enacted in
great
secrecy for years during July the 30th, by the nurses and household, was
divulged to her as soon as her consciousness could realise the
importance of the
initiation. She learned even in her childhood the reason why, on that
day, she
was carried about in her nurse's arms around the house, stables, and
cow-pen,
and made personally to sprinkle the four corners with water, the nurse
repeating
all the while some mystic sentences. These may be found to this day in
the
ponderous volumes of Sacharof's ' Russian Demonology,' [The Traditions
of the
Russian People by J Sacharof in seven volumes, embracing popular
literature,
beliefs, magic, witchcraft, the sub-mundane spirits, ancient customs and
rites,
songs and charms, for the last 1000 years.] a laborious work that
necessitated
over thirty years of incessant travelling and scientific researches in
the old
chronicles of the Slavonian lands, and that won to the author the
appellation of
the Russian Grimm.”
Born in the very heart of the country which the Roussalka (the Undine)
has
chosen for her abode ever since creation — reared on the shores of the
blue
Dnieper, that no Cossack of Southern Ukraine ever crosses without
preparing
himself for death — the child's belief in these lovely green-haired
nymphs was
developed before she had heard of anything else. The catechism of her
Ukraine
nurses passed wholly into her soul, and she found all these weird
poetical
beliefs corroborated to her by what she saw, or fancied she saw, herself
around
her ever since her earliest babyhood. Legends seem to have [16] lingered
in
her family, preserved by the recollections of the older servants, of
events
connected with such beliefs, and they inspired the early tyranny she was
taught
to exercise, as soon as she understood the powers that were attributed
to her by
her nurses. The sandy shores of the rapid Dnieper encircling
Ekaterinoslaw, with
their vegetation of sallows, were her favorite rambling place, Once
there, she
saw a roussalka in every willow tree, smiling and beckoning to her; and
full of
her own invulnerability, impressed upon her mind by her nurses, she was
the only
one who approached those shores fearless and daring. The child felt her
superiority and abused it. The little four-year-old girl demanded that
her will
should be implicitly recognized by her nurse, lest she should escape
from her
side, and thus leave her unprotected, to be tickled to death by the
beautiful
and wicked roussalka, who would no longer be restrained by the presence
of one
whom she dared not approach. Of course her parents knew nothing of this
side of
the education of their eldest born, and learned it too late to allow
such
beliefs to be eradicated from her mind. It is only after a tragic event
that
would otherwise have passed hardly noticed by the family, that a foreign
governess was thought of. In one of her walks by the river side a boy
about
fourteen who was dragging the child's carriage incurred her displeasure
by some
slight disobedience. “I will have you tickled to death by a roussalka
! ”
she screamed. “There's one coming down from that tree . . . here she
comes . .
. See, see!” Whether the boy
saw the dreaded nymph or not, he took to his
heels, and, the angry commands of the nurse notwithstanding, disappeared
along
the sandy banks leading homeward. After much grumbling the old nurse was
constrained to return home alone with her charge, [17] determined to
have
“Pavlik” punished. But
the poor lad was never seen alive again. He ran away
to his village, and his body was found several weeks later by fishermen,
who
caught him in their nets. The verdict of the police was “drowning by
accident”. It was thought
that the lad, having sought to cross some shallow
pools left from the spring inundations, had got into one of the many
sand pits
so easily transformed by the rapid Dnieper into whirlpools. But the
verdict of
the horrified household — of the nurses and servants — pointed to no
accidental
death, but to the one that had occurred in consequence of the child
having
withdrawn from the boy her mighty protection, thus delivering the victim
to some
roussalka on the watch. The displeasure of the family at this foolish
gossip was
enhanced when they found the supposed culprit gravely corroborating the
charge,
and maintaining that it was she herself who had handed over her
disobedient serf
to her faithful servants the water-nymphs. Then it was that an English
governess
was brought upon the scene.
Miss Augusta Sophia Jeffries did not believe in the roussalkas or the
domovoys;
but this negative merit was insufficient to invest her with a capacity
for
managing the intractable pupil consigned to her care. She gave up her
task in
despair, and the child was again left to her nurses till about six years
old,
when she and her still younger sister were sent to live with their
father. For
the next two or three years the little girls were chiefly taken care of
by their
father's orderlies; the elder, at all events, greatly preferring these
to their
female attendants. They were taken about with the troops to which their
father
was attached, and were petted on all sides as the enfants du
régiment.
Her mother died when Mademoiselle Hahn was still a child, [18] and at
about
eleven years of age she was taken charge of altogether by her
grandmother, and
went to live at Saratow, where her grandfather was civil governor,
having
previously exercised similar authority in Astrachan. She speaks of
having at
this time been alternately petted and punished, spoiled and hardened;
but we may
well imagine that she was a difficult child to manage on any uniform
system.
Moreover, her health was always uncertain in childhood; she was “ever
sick and
dying”, as she
expresses it herself, a sleep walker, and remarkable for
various abnormal psychic peculiarities, set down by her orthodox nurses
of the
Greek Church to possession by the devil, so that she was drenched during
childhood, as she often says, in enough holy water to have floated a
ship, and
exorcised by priests who might as well have been talking to the wind for
all the
effect they produced on her.
Some notes concerning her childhood have been furnished, for the service
of the
present memoir, by her aunt, a lady who, as well as Madame Jelihowsky,
is known
personally to myself and to many others of Mme. Blavatsky's friends in
Europe.
Her strange excitability of temperament, still one of her most marked
characteristics, was already manifest in her earliest youth. Even then
she was
liable to ungovernable fits of passion, and showed a deep-rooted
disposition to
rebel against every kind of authority or control. Her warm-hearted
impulses of
kindliness and affection, however, endeared her to her relatives in
childhood,
much as they have operated to obliterate the irritation caused sometimes
by her
want of self-control in regard to the minor affairs of life with the
friends of
a later period. It is justly asserted by the memoranda before me, “she
has no
malice in her nature, no lasting resentment even against those who [19]
have wronged her, and her true kindness of heart bears no permanent
traces of
momentary disturbances”.
“We who know Madame Blavatsky well”, writes her
aunt, speaking for herself
and for another relative who had joined with her in the preparation of
the notes
I am now dealing with — “we who know her now in age can speak of her
with
authority, not merely from idle report. From her earliest childhood she
was
unlike any other person. Very lively and highly gifted, full of humour,
and of
most remarkable daring; she struck everyone with astonishment by her
self-willed
and determined actions. Thus in her earliest youth and hardly married,
she
disposed of herself in an angry mood, abandoning her country, without
the
knowledge of her relatives or husband, who, unfortunately, was a man in
every
way unsuited to her, and more than thrice her age. Those who have known
her from
her childhood would — had they been born thirty years later — have also
known
that it was a fatal mistake to regard and treat her as they would any
other
child. Her restless and very nervous temperament, one that led her into
the most
unheard of, un-girlish mischief; her unaccountable — especially in those
days —
attraction to, and at the same time fear of, the dead; her passionate
love and
curiosity for everything unknown and mysterious, weird and fantastical;
and,
foremost of all, her craving for independence and freedom of action — a
craving
that nothing and nobody could control; all this, combined with an
exuberance of
imagination and a wonderful sensitiveness, ought to have warned her
friends that
she was an exceptional creature, to be dealt with and controlled by
means as
exceptional. The slightest contradiction brought on an outburst of
passion,
often a fit of convulsions. Left alone with no one near her to impede
her
liberty of action, no hand to chain her down or stop her natural
impulses, and
thus arouse to fury her inherent combativeness, she would spend hours
and days
quietly whispering, as people thought, to herself, and narrating, with
no one
near her, in some dark corner, marvellous tales of travels in bright
stars and
other worlds, which her governess [20] described as 'profane gibberish';
but no sooner would the governess give her a distinct order to do this
or the
other thing, than her first impulse was to disobey. It was enough to
forbid her
doing a thing to make her do it, come what would. Her nurse, as indeed
other
members of the family, sincerely believed the child possessed 'the seven
spirits
of rebellion'. Her governesses were martyrs to their task, and never
succeeded
in bending her resolute will, or influencing by anything but kindness
her
indomitable, obstinate, and fearless nature.
“Spoilt in her childhood by the adulation of dependents and the
devoted
affection of relatives, who forgave all to ' the poor, motherless child'
— later
on, in her girlhood, her self-willed temper made her rebel openly
against the
exigencies of society. She would submit to no sham respect for or fear
of the
public opinion. She would ride at fifteen, as she had at ten, any
Cossack horse
on a man's saddle! She would bow to no one, as she would recede before
no
prejudice or established conventionality. She defied all and everyone.
As in her
childhood, all her sympathies and attractions went out towards people of
the
lower class. She had always preferred to play with her servants'
children rather
than with her equals, and as a child had to be constantly watched for
fear she
should escape from the house to make friends with ragged street boys.
So, later
on in life, she continued to be drawn in sympathy towards those who were
in a
humbler station of life than herself, and showed as pronounced
indifference to
the ' nobility ' to which by birth she belonged.”
The five years passed in safety with her grandparents seem to have had
an
important influence on her future life. Miss Jeffries had left the
family; the
children had another English governess, a timid young girl to whom none
of her
pupils paid any attention, a Swiss preceptor, and a French governess,
who had
gone through remarkable adventures in her youth. Madame Henriette
Peigneur was a
distinguished beauty in the days of the [21] first French Revolution.
Her
favorite narratives to the children consisted in the description of
those days
of glory and excitement when, chosen by the “Phrygian red-caps”, the
citoyens rouges of Paris to represent in the public festivals the
Goddess of
Liberty, she had been driven in triumph, day after day, along the
streets of the
grande ville in glorious processions. The narrator herself was now a
weird old
woman, bent down by age, and looked more like the traditional Fée
Carabosse than
anything else. But her eloquence was moving, and the young girls that
formed her
willing audience were greatly excited by the glowing descriptions — most
of all
the heroine of these memoirs. She declared then and there that she meant
to be a
“Goddess of Liberty” all her life.
The old governess was a strange mixture
of severe morality and of that brilliant flippancy that characterises
almost
every Parisienne to her deathbed unless she is a bigot — which Mme.
Peigneur was
not. But while her old husband — the charming, witty, kind-hearted Sieur
Peigneur, ever ready to screen the young girls from his wife's
pénitences and
severity — taught them the merriest songs of Béranger, his best
bons mots and
anecdotes, his wife had no such luck with her lesson books. The opening
of Noël
and Chopsal became generally the signal for an escape to the wild woods
that
surrounded the large villa occupied by Mademoiselle Hahn's grandparents
during
the summer months. It was only when roaming at leisure in the forest, or
riding
some unmanageable horse on a Cossack's saddle, that the girl felt
perfectly
happy.
For the following interesting reminiscence of this period I am indebted
to Mme.
Jelihowsky: —
“The great country mansion (datche) occupied by us at Saratow was an
old and
vast building, full of subterranean galleries, long abandoned passages,
turrets,
[22] and most weird nooks and corners. It had been built by a family
called
Pantchoolidzef, several generations of whom had been governors at
Saratow and
Penja — the richest proprietors and noblemen of the latter province. It
looked
more like a mediaeval ruined castle than a building of the past century.
The man
who took care of the estate for the proprietors — of a type now happily
rare,
who regarded the serfs as something far lower and less precious than his
hounds
— had been known for his cruelty and tyranny, and his name was a synonym
for a
curse. The legends told of his ferocious and despotic temper, of unfortunate
serfs beaten by him to death, and imprisoned for months in dark
subterranean
dungeons, were many and thrilling. They were repeated to us mostly by
Mme.
Peigneur, who had been for the last twenty-five years the governess of
three
generations of children in the Pantchoolidzef family. Our heads were
full of
stories about the ghosts of the martyred serfs, seen promenading in
chains
during nocturnal hours; of the phantom of a young girl, tortured to
death for
refusing her love to her old master, which was seen floating in and out
of the
little iron-bound door of the subterranean passage at twilight; and
other
stories that left us children and girls in an agony of fear whenever we
had to
cross a dark room or passage. We had been permitted to explore, under
the
protection of half-a-dozen male servants and a quantity of torches and
lanterns,
those awe-inspiring 'Catacombs'. True, we had found in them more broken
wine
bottles than human bones, and had gathered more cobwebs than iron
chains, but
our imagination suggested ghosts in every flickering shadow on the old
damp
walls. Still Helen (Mme. Blavatsky) would not remain satisfied with one
solitary
visit, nor with a second either. She had selected the uncanny region as
a
Liberty Hall, and a safe refuge where she could avoid her lessons. A
long time
passed before her secret was found out, and whenever she was found
missing, a
deputation of strong-bodied servant-men, headed by the gendarme on
service in
the Governor's Hall, was despatched in search of her, as it required no
less
than one who was not a serf and feared her little to [23] bring her
up-stairs by force. She had erected for herself a tower out of old
broken chairs
and tables in a corner under an iron-barred window, high up in the
ceiling of
the vault, and there she would hide for hours, reading a book known as
Solomon's
Wisdom, in which every kind of popular legend was taught. Once or twice
she
could hardly be found in those damp subterranean corridors, having in
her
endeavours to escape detection lost her way in the labyrinth. For all
this she
was not in the least daunted or repentant, for, as she assured us, she
was never
there alone, but in the company of ' beings ' she used to call her
little '
hunch-backs ' and playmates.
“Intensely nervous and sensitive, speaking loud, and often walking in
her
sleep, she used to be found at nights in the most out-of-way places, and
to be
carried back to her bed profoundly asleep. Thus she was missed from her
room one
night when she was hardly twelve, and, the alarm having been given, she
was
searched for and found pacing one of the long subterranean corridors,
evidently
in deep conversation with someone invisible for all but herself. She was
the
strangest girl one has ever seen, one with a distinct dual nature in
her, that
made one think there were two beings in one and the same body; one
mischievous,
combative, and obstinate — everyway graceless; the other as mystical and
metaphysically inclined as a seeress of Prevorst. No schoolboy was ever
more
uncontrollable or full of the most unimaginable and daring pranks and
espiègleries than she was. At the same time, when the paroxysm
of
mischief-making had run its course, no old scholar could be more
assiduous in
his study, and she could not be prevailed to give up her books, which
she would
devour night and day as long as the impulse lasted. The enormous library
of her
grandparents seemed then hardly large enough to satisfy her cravings.
“Attached to the residence there was a large abandoned garden, a park
rather,
full of ruined kiosks, pagodas, and out-buildings, which, running up
hillward,
ended in a virgin forest, whose hardly visible paths were covered
knee-deep with
moss, and with thickets in it which perhaps no human foot had disturbed
for
centuries. [24] It was reputed the hiding-place for all the runaway
criminals and deserters, and it was there that Helen used to take
refuge, when
the ' catacombs' had ceased to assure her safety.”
Her strange temperament and character are thus described in a work
called
Juvenile Recollections Compiled for my Children, by Mme. Jelihowsky, a
thick
volume of charming stories selected by the author from the diary kept by
herself
during her girlhood: —
“Fancy, or that which we all regarded in these days as fancy, was
developed in
the most extraordinary way, and from her earliest childhood, in my
sister Helen.
For hours at times she used to narrate to us younger children, and even
to her
seniors in years, the most incredible stories with the cool assurance
and
conviction of an eye-witness, and one who knew what she was talking
about. When
a child, daring and fearless in everything else, she got often scared
into fits
through her own hallucinations. She felt certain of being persecuted by
what she
called ' the terrible glaring eyes,' invisible to everyone else, and
often
attributed by her to the most inoffensive inanimate objects; an idea
that
appeared quite ridiculous to the bystanders. As to herself, she would
shut her
eyes tight during such visions, and run away to hide from the ghostly
glances
thrown on her by pieces of furniture or articles of dress, screaming
desperately, and frightening the whole household. At other times she
would be
seized with fits of laughter, explaining them by the amusing pranks of
her
invisible companions. She found these in every dark corner, in every
bush of the
thick park that surrounded our villa during the summer months ; while in
winter,
when all our family emigrated back to town, she seemed to meet them
again in the
vast reception rooms of the first floor, entirely deserted from midnight
till
morning, Every locked door notwithstanding, Helen was found several
times during
the night hours in those dark apartments in a half-conscious state,
sometimes
fast asleep, [25] and unable to say how she got there from our common
bedroom on the top story. She disappeared in the same mysterious manner
in
daytime also. Searched for, called and hunted after, she would be often
discovered, with great pains, in the most unfrequented localities; once
it was
in the dark loft, under the very roof, to which she was traced, amid
pigeons'
nests, and surrounded by hundreds of those birds. She was ' putting them
to
sleep ' (according to the rules taught in Solomon's Wisdom], as she
explained.
[And, indeed pigeons were found if not asleep still unable to move, and
as
though stunned in her lap at such times.] At other times behind the
gigantic
cupboards that contained our grandmother's zoological collection — the
old
princess's museum of natural history having achieved a wide renown in
Russia in
those days, — surrounded by relics of fauna, flora, and historical
antiquities,
amid antediluvian bones of stuffed animals and monstrous birds, the
deserter
would be found, after hours of search, in deep conversations with seals
and
stuffed crocodiles. If one could believe Helen, the pigeons were cooing
to her
interesting fairy tales, while birds and animals, whenever in solitary
tête-à-tête with her, amused her with
interesting stories, presumably from their
own autobiographies. For her all nature seemed animated with a
mysterious life
of its own. She heard the voice of every object and form, whether
organic or
inorganic; and claimed consciousness and being, not only for some
mysterious
powers visible and audible for herself alone in what was to everyone
else empty
space, but even for visible but inanimate things such as pebbles,
mounds, and
pieces of decaying phosphorescent timber.
“With a view of adding specimens to the remarkable entomological
collection of
our grandmother, as much as for our own instruction and pleasure,
diurnal as
well as nocturnal expeditions were often arranged. We preferred the
latter, as
they were more exciting, and had a mysterious charm to us about them. We
knew of
no greater enjoyment. Our delightful travels in the neighbouring woods
would
last from 9 P.M. till I, and often 2, [26] o'clock A.M. We prepared for
them with an earnestness that the Crusaders may have experienced when
setting
out to fight the infidel and dislodge the Turk from Palestine. The
children of
friends and acquaintances in town were invited — boys and girls from
twelve to
seventeen, and two or three dozen of young serfs of both sexes, all
armed with
gauze nets and lanterns, as we were ourselves, strengthened our ranks.
In the
rear followed a dozen of strong grown-up servants, cossacks, and even a
gendarme
or two, armed with real weapons for our safety and protection. It was a
merry
procession as we set out on it, with beating hearts, and bent with
unconscious
cruelty on the destruction of the beautiful large night-butterflies for
which
the forests of the Volga province are so famous. The foolish insects,
flying in
masses, would soon cover the glasses of our lanterns, and ended their
ephemeral
lives on long pins and cork burial grounds four inches square. But even
in this
my eccentric sister asserted her independence. She would protect and
save from
death all those dark butterflies — known as sphynxes —whose dark
fur-covered
heads and bodies bore the distinct images of a white human skull. '
Nature
having imprinted on each of them the portrait of the skull of some great
dead
hero, these butterflies are sacred, and must not be killed,' she said,
speaking
like some heathen fetish-worshipper. She got very angry when we would
not listen
to her, but would go on chasing those ' dead heads' as we called them;
and
maintained that by so doing we disturbed the rest of the defunct persons
whose
skulls were imprinted on the bodies of the weird insects.
“No less interesting were our day-travels into regions more or less
distant.
At about ten versts from the Governor's villa there was a field, an
extensive
sandy tract of land, evidently once upon a time the bottom of a sea or a
great
lake, as its soil yielded petrified relics of fishes, shells, and teeth
of some
(to us) unknown monsters. Most of these relics were broken and mangled
by time,
but one could often find whole stones of various sizes on which were
imprinted
figures of fishes and plants and animals of kinds now wholly extinct,
but [
27] which proved their undeniable antediluvian origin. The marvellous
and
sensational stories that we, children and schoolgirls, heard from Helen
during
that epoch were countless. I well remember when stretched at full length
on the
ground, her chin reclining on her two palms, and her two elbows buried
deep in
the soft sand, she used to dream aloud and tell us of her visions,
evidently
clear, vivid, and as palpable as life to her! . . . How lovely the
description
she gave us of the submarine life of all those beings, the mingled
remains of
which were now crumbling to dust around us. How vividly she described
their past
fights and battles on the spot where she lay, assuring us she saw it
all; and
how minutely she drew on the sand with her finger the fantastic forms of
the
long-dead sea-monsters, and made us almost see the very colours of the
fauna and
flora of those dead regions. While listening eagerly to her descriptions
of the
lovely azure waves reflecting the sunbeams playing in rainbow light on
the
golden sands of the sea bottom, of the coral reefs and stalactite caves,
of the
sea-green grass mixed with the delicate shining anemones, we fancied we
felt
ourselves the cool, velvety waters caressing our bodies, and the latter
transformed into pretty and frisky sea-monsters; our imagination
galloped off
with her fancy to a full oblivion of the present reality. She never
spoke in
later years as she used to speak in her childhood and early girlhood.
The stream
of her eloquence has dried up, and the very source of her inspiration is
now
seemingly lost! She had a strong power of carrying away her audiences
with her,
of making them see actually, if even vaguely, that which she herself
saw. . . .
Once she frightened all of us youngsters very nearly into fits. We had
just been
transported into a fairy world, when suddenly she changed her narrative
from the
past to the present tense, and began to ask us to imagine that all that
which
she had told us of the cool, blue waves with their dense populations was
around
us, only invisible and intangible, so far. . . . 'Just fancy! A
miracle!' she
said ; ' the earth suddenly opening, the air condensing around us and
rebecoming
sea waves.....Look, look there, they begin already appearing and moving.
[
28] We are surrounded with water, we are right amid the mysteries and
the
wonders of a submarine world ! . . .'
“She had started from the sand, and was speaking with such conviction,
her
voice had such a ring of real amazement, horror, and her childish face
wore such
a look of a wild joy and terror at the same time, that when, suddenly
covering
her eyes with both hands, as she used to do in her excited moments, she
fell
down on the sand screaming at the top of her voice, 'There's the wave .
. . it
has come! . . . The sea, the sea, we are drowning !' . . . Every one of
us fell
down on our faces, as desperately screaming and as fully convinced that
the sea
had engulfed us, and that we were no more! . .
“It was her delight to gather around herself a party of us younger
children at
twilight, and, after taking us into the large dark museum, to hold us
there,
spell-bound, with her weird stories. Then she narrated to us the most
inconceivable tales about herself; the most unheard of adventures of
which she
was the heroine, every night, as she explained. Each of the stuffed
animals in
the museum had taken her in turn into its confidence, had divulged to
her the
history of its life in previous incarnations or existences. Where had
she heard
of reincarnation, or who could have taught her anything of the
superstitious
mysteries of metempsychosis, in a Christian family ? Yet she would
stretch
herself on her favourite animal, a gigantic stuffed seal, and caressing
its
silvery, soft white skin, she would repeat to us his adventures, as told
to her
by himself, in such glowing colours and eloquent style, that even
grown-up
persons found themselves interested involuntarily in her narratives.
They all
listened to, and were carried away by the charm of her recitals, the
younger
audience believing every word she uttered. Never can I forget the life
and
adventures of a tall white flamingo, who stood in unbroken contemplation
behind
the glass panes of a large cupboard, with his two scarlet-lined wings
widely
opened as though ready to take flight, yet chained to his prison cell.
He had
been ages ago, she told us, no bird, but a real man. He had committed
fearful
crimes and a murder, for which a great genius had changed him into [29]
a
flamingo, a brainless bird, sprinkling his two wings with the blood of
his
victims, and thus condemning him to wander for ever in deserts and
marshes. . .
.
“I dreaded that flamingo fearfully. At dusk, whenever I chanced to pass
through the museum to say goodnight to our grandmother, who rarely left
her
study, an adjoining room, I tried to avoid seeing the blood-covered
murderer by
shutting my eyes and running quickly by.
“If Helen loved to tell us stories, she was still more passionately
fond of
listening to other people's fairy tales. There was, among the numerous
servants
of the Fadeef family, an old woman, an under-nurse, who was famous for
telling
them. The catalogue of her tales was endless, and her memory retained every
idea
connected with superstition. During the long summer twilights on the
green
grassy lawn under the fruit trees of the garden, or during the still
longer
winter evenings, crowding around the flaming fire of our nursery-room,
we used
to cling to the old woman, and felt supremely happy whenever she could
be
prevailed upon to tell us some of those popular fairy tales, for which
our
northern country is so famous. The adventures of' Ivan Zarewitch,' of'
Kashtey
the Immortal,' of the 'Gray-Wolf', the wicked magician travelling in the
air in
a self-moving seive; or those of Meletressa, the Fair Princess, shut up
in a
dungeon until the Zarevitch unlocks its prison door with a gold key, and
liberates her — delighted us all. Only, while all we children forgot
those tales
as easily as we had learned them, Helen never either forgot the stories
or
consented to recognise them as fictions. She thoroughly took to heart
all the
troubles of the heroes, and maintained that all their most wonderful
adventures
were quite natural. People could change into animals and take any form
they
liked, if they only knew how; men could fly, if they only wished so
firmly. Such
wise men had existed in all ages, and existed even in our own days, she
assured
us, making themselves known, of course, only to those who were worthy of
knowing
and seeing them, and who believed in, instead of laughing at, them. . .
.
“As a proof of what she said, she pointed to an old man, a centenarian,
who
lived not far from the villa, in [30] a wild ravine of a neighbouring
forest, known as 'Baranig Bouyrak'. The old man was a real magician, in
the
popular estimation; a sorcerer of a good, benevolent kind, who cured
willingly
all the patients who applied to him, but who also knew how to punish
with
disease those who had sinned. He was greatly versed in the knowledge of
the
occult properties of plants and flowers, and could read the future, it
was said.
He kept beehives in great numbers, his hut being surrounded by several
hundreds
of them. During the long summer afternoons he could be always found at
his post,
slowly walking among his favourites, covered as with a living cuirass,
from head
to foot, with swarms of buzzing bees, plunging both his hands with
impunity into
their dwellings, listening to their deafening noise, and apparently
answering
them — their buzzing almost ceasing whenever he addressed them in his
(to us)
incomprehensible tongue, a kind of chanting and muttering. Evidently the
golden-winged labourers and their centenarian master understood each
other's
languages. Of the latter, Helen felt quite sure. ' Baranig Bouyrak' had
an
irresistible attraction for her, and she visited the strange old man
whenever
she could find a chance to do so. Once there, she would put questions
and listen
to the old man's replies and explanations as to how to understand the
language
of bees, birds, and animals with a passionate earnestness. The dark
ravine
seemed in her eyes a fairy kingdom. As to the centenarian ' wise-man',
he used
to say of her constantly to us: ' 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! . . .' ”
It would be impossible to write even a slight sketch of Mme. Blavatsky's
life
without alluding continually to the occult theories on which her own
psychological development turns, and I think the narrative will be
rendered most
intelligible if I frankly explain some of [31] these at the outset,
without
here being supposed to argue the question as to whether these theories
rest upon
a correct appreciation of natural laws (operating above and within those
of
physical existence), or whether they constitute an exclusive
hallucination to
which her mind has been subject. It will be seen, at all events, that,
according
to such a view, the hallucination has been very protracted and coherent,
so much
so that, as I say, the life which has been entirely subordinate to the
career
marked out for it by those to whom Mme. Blavatsky believes herself, and
always
has believed herself, guided and protected, would be meaningless without
reference to this vitalising thread running through it. Of course I have
no wish
to disguise my own adhesion to the view of nature on which Mme.
Blavatsky's
theory of life rests, nor my own conviction concerning the real
existence of the
living Adepts of occult science with whom I believe Mme. Blavatsky,
throughout
her life, to have been more or less closely associated. But to argue the
matter
would convert this memoir into a philosophical treatise going over a
great deal
of ground more fitly traversed in works of a purely theosophical
character. It
will be enough for my present purpose to expound the theory on which, as
I say,
Mme. Blavatsky's comprehension of her own life rests, merely for the
sake of
rendering the story which has to be set forth intelligible to the
reader.
The primary conception of oriental occultism, in reference to the human
soul,
recognises it as an entity, a moral and intellectual centre of
consciousness,
which not only survives the death of any physical body in which it may
be
functioning at any given time, but has also enjoyed many periods of both
physical and spiritual existence before its incarnation in that body. In
fact,
[32] the entity — the real individual according to this view — may be
identified by persons with psychic faculties sufficiently developed
through a
series of lives, and not merely in reference to one. The view of Nature
I am
describing — the Esoteric Doctrine — quite sufficiently accounts for the
fact
that, from the point of view of any given body, no incarnated person can
command
a prospect of the life-series through which he may have passed. Each
incarnation, each successive life of the series, is a descent into
matter from
the point of view of the real spiritual entity: a descent into a new
organism in
which the entity — which is only altogether its true or higher self on
the
spiritual plane of Nature — may function with greater or less success
according
to the qualifications of the organism. The organism only remembers, with
specific detail, the incidents of its own objective life. The true
entity
animating that organism may perhaps retain the capacity of remembering a
great
deal more, but not through the organism. Moreover, until the organism is
complete — that is to say, until the person concerned is grown up — the
true
entity is only immersed in it — if I may employ a materialistic
illustration to
suggest the idea which would be only fully expressible m metaphysical
language
of great elaboration — to a limited extent. The quite young child, as we
ordinarily phrase it, is not a morally responsible being: that is to
say, the
organism has not attained a development in which the moral sense of the
true
entity can function through the physical brain and direct physical acts.
But the
young child is already marked out as in process of becoming the
efficient
habitat of the entity or soul that has begun to function through its
organism;
and, therefore, if we imagine that there are in the world living men —
adepts in
the direction of forces on the [33] higher planes of Nature with which
physical science is not yet acquainted — we shall readily understand the
peculiar relations that exist between them and a child in process of
growing up,
and gradually taking into itself a soul that such adepts are already in
relations with.
Let me repeat that this mere statement of the occult science view of
human
nature is not put forward as a proof that things are so; but simply
because that
theory of things will be found a continuous thread upon which the facts
of Mme.
Blavatsky's life are strung. It may be that, as the story goes on, some
readers
will develop other theories to account for them, but all I have to say
would
appear disjointed and incoherent without this brief explanation, while
it
becomes, at all events, clearly intelligible with that clue to its
successive
incidents.
In this way I proceed to assume, as a working hypothesis, that even in
childhood
Mademoiselle Hahn was under the protection of a certain abnormal agency
capable
even of producing results on the physical plane when in extraordinary
emergencies these were called for. For example, I have more than once
heard her
tell a story of her childhood's days about a great curiosity she
entertained in
reference to a certain picture — the portrait of one of the ancestors of
the
family — which hung up in the castle where her grandfather lived, at
Saratow,
with a curtain before it. It hung at a great height above the ground in
a lofty
room, and Mademoiselle Hahn was a small mite at the time, though very
resolute
when her mind was set upon a purpose. She had been denied permission to
see the
picture, so she waited for an opportunity when the coast was clear, and
proceeded to take her own measures for compassing [34] her design. She
dragged a table to the wall, and contrived to set another small table on
that,
and a chair on the top of all, and then gradually succeeded in mounting
up on
this unstable edifice. She could just manage to reach the picture from
this
point of vantage, and leaning with one hand against the dusty wall,
contrived
with the other to draw back the curtain. The effect wrought upon her by
the
sight of the picture was startling, and the momentary movement back
upset her
frail platform. But exactly what occurred she does not know. She lost
consciousness from the moment she staggered and began to fall, and when
she
recovered her senses she was lying quite unhurt on the floor, the tables
and
chair were back again in their usual places, the curtain had been run
back upon
its rings, and she would have imagined the whole incident some unusual
kind of
dream but for the fact that the mark of her small hand remained
imprinted on the
dusty wall high up beside the picture.
On another occasion again her life seems to have been saved under
peculiar
circumstances, at a time when she was approaching fourteen. A horse
bolted with
her — she fell, with her foot entangled in the stirrup, and before the
horse was
stopped she ought, she thinks, to have been killed outright but for a
strange
sustaining power she distinctly felt around her, which seemed to hold
her up in
defiance of gravitation. If anecdotes of this surprising kind were few
and far
between in Mme Blavatsky's life I should suppress them in attempting to
edit her
memoirs, but, as will be seen later, they form the staple of the
narratives
which each person in turn, who has anything to say about her, comes
forward to
tell. The records of her return to Russia after her first long
wanderings are
full of evidence, [35] given by her relatives, compared to which these
little anecdotes of her childhood told by herself sink into insignificance
as
marvels. I refer to them, moreover, not for their own sake, but, as I
began by
saying, to illustrate the relations which appear to have existed in her
early
childhood between herself and those whom she speaks of as her
“Masters”,
unseen in body, unknown by her at that time as living men, but not
unknown to
the visions with which her child-life was filled.
In the narrative quoted above, it will have been seen that she was often
noticed
by her friends sitting apart in corners, when she was not interfered
with,
apparently talking to herself. By her own account she was at this time
talking
with playmates of her own size and apparent age, who to her were as real
in
appearance as if they had been flesh and blood, though they were not
visible at
all to anyone else about her. Mademoiselle Hahn used to be exceedingly
annoyed
at the persistent way in which her nurses and relatives refused to take
any
notice whatever of one little hunchback boy who was her favourite
companion at
this time. Nobody else was able to take notice of him, for nobody else
saw him,
but to the abnormally gifted child he was a visible, audible, and
amusing
companion, though one who seems to have led her into endless mischief.
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.
Students of spiritualism, of occultism, of clairvoyance [36] will find
this
record strangely confused at the first glance, but I think, by the light
of what
I have said above in reference to the occult theory of incarnation,
people who
hold that theory will be excused for thinking that they see their way
through
the entanglement pretty clearly. Mademoiselle Hahn was born, of course,
with all
the characteristics of what is known in spiritualism as mediumship in
the most
extraordinary degree, also with gifts as a clairvoyant of an almost
equally
unexampled order. And as a child, the time had not come at which it
would have
been possible for the occult protectors of the entity thus beginning to
function
in that organism to set on foot any of those processes of physical
training by
which such natural gifts can be tamed, disciplined, and utilised. They
had to
run wild for a time; thus we find Mademoiselle Hahn — looking at her
childhood's
history from the psychological point of view — surrounded by all, or a
large
number of the usual phenomena of mediumship, and also visibly under the
observation and occasional guardianship of the authorities to whose
service her
mature faculties were altogether given over, to the absolute repression
in after
life of the casual faculties of mediumship.
Her friends were half-interested, half-terrified by those of her
manifestations
which they could understand sufficiently to observe. Her aunt says that
from the
age of four years “she was a somnambulist and somniloquent. She would
hold, in
her sleep, long conversations with unseen personages, some of which were
amusing, some edifying, some terrifying for those who gathered around
the
child's bed. On various occasions, while apparently in the ordinary
sleep, she
would answer questions, put by persons who took hold [37] of her hand,
about lost property or other subjects of momentary anxiety, as though
she were a
sibyl entranced. Sometimes she would be missing from the nursery, and be
found
in some distant room of the mansion, or in the garden, playing and
talking with
companions of her dream-life. For years, in childish impulse, she would
shock
strangers with whom she came in contact, and visitors to the house, by
looking
them intently in the face and telling them that they would die at such
and such
a time, or she would prophesy to them some accident or misfortune that
would
befall them. And since her prognostications usually came true, she was
the
terror, in this respect, of the domestic circle.”
In 1844, the middle of the period during which she was growing up from
childhood
to girlhood at Saratow, her father took her on her first journey abroad.
She
accompanied him to Paris and London, a child of fourteen, but a
troublesome
charge even then and even for him, though in her father's hands she was
docile
from the point of view of her demeanour in any other custody. One object
of the
visit to London was to get her some good music lessons, for she showed
great
natural talents as a pianist — which indeed have lingered about her in
later
life, though often in total abeyance for many years together. She had
some
lessons from Moscheles, and even, I understand, played a duet at a
private
concert with a then celebrated professional pianist. Colonel Hahn and
his
daughter went to stay for a week in Bath during this visit to England,
but the
only striking feature of this excursion that I can hear of had to do
with a
little difficulty that arose between mademoiselle and her father on the
subject
of riding. She wanted to go on a man's saddle, Cossack fashion, as she
had been
used [38] to, in face of all protests to the contrary, in Saratow. The
Colonel would not tolerate this, so there was a scene, and a fit of
hysterics on
the part of the young lady, followed by an attack of some more serious
illness.
He is represented as having been well satisfied to get her home again,
and lodge
her once more in the congenial wilds of Asia Minor. Her pride in another
accomplishment, her knowledge of the English language, received a rude
shock
during this early visit to London. She had been taught to speak English
by her
first governess, Miss Jeffries, but in Southern Russia people did not
make the
fine distinctions between different sorts of English which more
fastidious
linguists are alive to. The English governess had been a Yorkshire
woman, and as
soon as Mademoiselle Hahn began to open her lips among friends to whom
she was
introduced in London, she found her remarks productive of much more
amusement
than their substance justified. The combination of accents she employed
—
Yorkshire grafted on Ekaterinoslow — must have had a comical effect, no
doubt,
but Mdlle Hahn soon came to the conclusion that she had done enough for
the
entertainment of her friends, and would give forth her “hollow o's and
a's”
no more. With her natural talent for speaking foreign tongues, however,
she set
her conversation in another key by the time she next visited England in
1851.[39]
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK. CF24-1DL
CHAPTER 2
MARRIAGE AND TRAVEL
THE marriage by which Mdlle Hahn acquired the name she has since been
known by
took place in 1848. She was then, it will be seen, about seventeen, and
General
Blavatsky to whom she was united — as far as the ceremonies of the
Church were
concerned — was, at all events, a man of advanced age. Madame herself
believed
that he was nearer seventy than sixty. He was himself reluctant to
acknowledge
to more than about fifty. Other matrimonial opportunities of a far more
attractive character were, as I now learn from her relatives, open to
her really
at the time, but these would have rendered the marriage state, had she
entered
it with some of her younger admirers, a much more serious matter than
she
designed it to be in her case. Her demeanor, therefore, with the most
desirable
of her suitors was purposely intolerable. The actual adventure on which
she
launched herself — for in its precipitation and brevity it may fairly be
described by that phrase — seems to have been brought about by a
combination of
circumstances that could only have influenced a girl of Mademoiselle
Hahn's wild
temper and irregular training. Her aunt describes the manner in which
the
marriage was arranged as follows : —
“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 [40] 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 plume-less raven' — that even he would decline her
for a
wife! That was enough: three days after 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. Hence the fatal step. All she knew and
understood was — when too late — that she had been accepting, and 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
honour 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 — he left her ' husband ' for ever, without
giving
him any opportunity to ever even think of her as his wife.
“Thus Mme. 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.”
At the time the marriage took place, Mademoiselle Hahn was staying with
her
grandmother and some other relatives at Djellallogly, a mountain retreat
frequented in the summer by the residents of Tiflis. The young lady
herself had
never intended to do more than establish the [41] fact that General
Blavatsky would be ready to marry her, but with an engagement regularly
set on
foot, announced in the family, proclaimed to friends, and so forth, with
“congratulations” coming in, and the bridegroom claiming its
fulfilment, a
restoration of the status quo was found by the reckless heroine of the
complication more easily talked about than obtained. Her friends
protested
against the scandal that would be created if the engagement were broken
off for
no apparent reason. Pressed to go on with the wedding, she seems to have
consoled herself with the belief that she would be securing herself
increased
liberty of action as a married woman than ever she could compass as a
girl. Her
father was altogether off the scene, far away with his regiment in
Russia, and
though consulted by letter, was not sufficiently acquainted with the
facts of
the case to take up any decided attitude either way. The ceremony of the
marriage, at all events, duly took place on the 7th of July 1848.
Of course the theories concerning the married state entertained by
General
Blavatsky and his abnormally natured young bride differed toto coelo,
and came
into violent conflict from the day of the wedding — a day of unforeseen
revelations, furious indignation, dismay, and belated repentance.
Nothing was
ever imagined in fiction more extravagant than the progress of the brief
and
stormy though imperfect partnership. The intelligent reader will
understand that
a born occultist like Mademoiselle Hahn could never have plunged into a
relationship so intolerable, so impossible for her, as that of husband
and wife
if she had understood on the ordinary plane of human affairs what she
was about.
The day after the wedding she was conducted by the General to a place
called
Daretchichag, a summer retreat for Erivan residents. She tried already
on this
journey to make [42] her escape towards the Persian frontier, but the
Cossack she sought to win over as her guide in this enterprise betrayed
her
instead to the General, and she was carefully guarded. The cavalcade duly
reached the residence of the governor — the scene of his peculiar
honeymoon.
Certainly the position in which he was placed commands our retrospective
sympathy for some reasons ; but it is impossible to go into a discussion
of
details that might go far to qualify this. For three months the newly
married
couple remained together under the same roof, each fighting for
impossible
concessions, and then at last, in connection with a quarrel more violent
even
than the rest, the young lady took horse on her own account and rode to
Tiflis.
Family councils followed, and it was settled that the unmanageable bride
should
be sent to join her father. He arranged to meet her at Odessa, and she
was
despatched in the care of an old servant-man and a maid, to catch at
Poti a
steamer that would take her to her destination. But her desperate
passion for
adventure, coupled with apprehensions that her father might endeavour to
refasten the broken links of her nuptial bond, led her to design in her
own mind
an amendment to this programme. She so contrived matters on the journey
through
Georgia, to begin with, that she and her escort missed the steamer at
Poti. But
a small English sailing vessel was lying in the harbour. Mme. Blavatsky
went on
board this vessel — the Commodore she believes was the name, and, by a
liberal
outlay of roubles, persuaded the skipper to fall in with her plans. The
Commodore was bound first to Kertch, then to Taganrog in the Sea of
Azof, and
ultimately to Constantinople. Mme. Blavatsky took passage for herself
and
servants, ostensibly to Kertch. On arriving there, she sent the servants
ashore
to procure apartments and prepare for her landing [43] the following
morning. But in the night, having now shaken herself free of the last
restraints
that connected her with her past life, she sailed away in the Commodore
for
Taganrog in the first instance, as the vessel had business at that port,
and
afterwards returning to the Black Sea, for Constantinople.
The little voyage itself seems to have been full of adventures, which,
in
dealing with a life less crowded with adventures all through, than Mme.
Blavatsky's one would stop to chronicle. The harbour police of Taganrog
visiting
the Commodore on her arrival, had to be so managed as not to suspect
that an
extra person was on board. The only available hiding place — amongst the
coals —
was found unattractive by the passenger, and was assigned to the cabin
boy,
whose personality she borrowed for the occasion, being stowed away in a
bunk on
pretence of illness. Later on, when the vessel arrived at
Constantinople,
further embarrassments had developed themselves, and she had to fly
ashore
precipitately in a caique with the connivance of the steward to escape
the
persecutions of the skipper. At Constantinople, however, she had the
good
fortune to fall in with a Russian lady of her acquaintance, the Countess
K-----,
with whom she formed a safe intimacy, and travelled for a time in Egypt,
Greece,
and other parts of Eastern Europe.
Unfortunately, it is impossible for me to do more than sketch the period
of her
life that we now approach in the meagrest outline. For the full details
of her
childhood given in the foregoing pages, we are indebted to her relatives.
She
herself, though frequently able to tell disjointed anecdotes of her
childhood,
could never have put together so connected a narrative as that obtained
from
Mme. Jelihowsky, and there was no sister at hand to keep a record of her
subsequent adventures during her [44] wanderings all over the world. She
never kept diaries during this period, and memory at a distance of time
is a
very uncertain guide, but if the present record is uneven in its
treatment of
various periods, I can only point in excuse for this to the obvious
embarrassments of my task.
In Egypt, while travelling with the Countess K-----, Mme. Blavatsky
already
began to pick up some occult teaching, though of a very different and
inferior
order from that she acquired later. At that time there was an old Copt
at Cairo,
a man very well and widely known ; of considerable property and
influence, and
of a great reputation as a magician. The tales of wonder told about him
by
popular report were very thrilling. Mme. Blavatsky seems to have been a
pupil
who readily attracted his interest, and was enthusiastic in imbibing his
instruction. She fell in with him again in later years, and spent some
time with
him at Boulak, but her acquaintance with him in the beginning did not
last long,
as she was only at that time in Egypt for about three months. With an
English
lady of rank whom she met during this period she also travelled for a
time. Her
relatives at Tiflis had lost all traces of her from the time the
deserted
servants at Kertch reported her disappearance, but she herself
communicated
privately with her father, and secured his consent to her vague
programme of
foreign travel. He realised the impossibility of inducing her to resume
the
broken thread of her married life; and, indeed, considering all that had
passed,
it is not unreasonable to suppose that General Blavatsky himself was
ready to
acquiesce in the separation. He endeavoured, indeed, to obtain a formal
divorce
on the ground that his marriage had never been more than a form, and
that his
wife had run away; but Russian law at the time was not favourable to
divorce,
and the [45] attempt failed. Colonel Hahn, however, supplied his
fugitive
daughter with money, and kept her counsel in regard to her subsequent
movements.
Ten years elapsed before she again saw her relatives, and her restless
eagerness
for travel carried her during this period to all parts of the world. She
kept no
diary, and at this distance of time can give no very connected story of
these
complicated wanderings. Within about a year of their commencement she
seems to
have been in Paris, where she was intimate with many literary
celebrities of the
time, and where a famous mesmerist, still living as I write, though an
old man
now, discovered her wonderful psychic gifts, and was very eager to
retain her
under his control as a sensitive. But the chains had not yet been forged
that
could make her prisoner, and she quitted Paris precipitately to escape
this
influence. She went over to London, and passed some time in company with
an old
Russian lady of her acquaintance, the Countess B------, at Mivart's
Hotel, whom,
however, she out-stayed in London, remaining there in company with the
Countess's demoiselle de compagnie in a big hotel, she says, somewhere
between
the City and the Strand, “but as to names or numbers, you might as
well ask me
to tell you what was the number of the house you lived in in your last
incarnation.”
Connected as she was in Russia, she naturally met a good many of her own
countrymen abroad with whom she was either already acquainted, or who
were glad
to befriend her. Sometimes, when circumstances were favourable, she
would travel
with companions thus thrown in her way, at other times altogether alone.
Her
craving for adventure and for all strange and outlandish places and
people was
quite unsatiable. Her first long flight abroad was prompted by a
passionate
[46] enthusiasm for the North American Indians, contracted from the
perusal
of Fennimore Cooper's novels. After a little minor touring about Europe
with the
Countess B------ in 1850, she welcomed the New Year of 1851 at Paris,
and in the
July of that year went in pursuit of the Red Indians of her imagination
to
Canada. Fortunately her illusion on the subject of these heroes was
destined to
an early dissipation. At Quebec (she believes it was) a party of Indians
were
introduced to her. She was delighted to encounter the sons of the
forest, and
even the daughters thereof, their squaws. With some of these she settled
down
for a long gossip over the mysterious doings of the medicine men.
Eventually
they disappeared, and with them various articles of Madame's personal
property —
especially a pair of boots that she greatly prized, and which the
resources of
Quebec in those days could not replace. The Red Indian of actual fact
thus
ruined the ideal she had constructed in her fancy. She gave up her
search for
their wigwams, and developed a new programme. In the first instance, she
thought
she would try to come to close quarters with the Mormons, then beginning
to
excite public attention; but their original city, Nauvoo, in Missouri,
had just
been destroyed by the unruly mob of their less industrious and less
prosperous
neighbours, and the survivors of the massacre in which so many of their
people
fell were then streaming across the desert in search of a new home. Mme.
Blavatsky thought that under these circumstances Mexico looked an inviting
region in which to risk her life next, and she made her way, in the
meanwhile,
to New Orleans.
This apparently hasty sketch will give the reader no idea of the
difficulty with
which she has, at this long subsequent period, recalled even so much as is
here
set [47] down. It has only been by help of public events that she can
remember to have heard about at such and such places that I have been
enabled to
construct a skeleton diary of her wanderings, on which here and there
her
recollections enable me to put a little flesh and blood At New Orleans
the
principal interest of her visit centred in the Voodoos, a sect of
negroes,
natives of the West Indies, and half-castes, addicted to a form of magic
practices that no highly-trained occult student would have anything to
do with,
but which nevertheless presented attractions to Mme. Blavatsky, not yet
far
advanced enough in the knowledge held in reserve for her, to distinguish
“black” from “white” varieties of mystic exercise. The Voodoos'
pretensions were of course discredited by the educated white population
of New
Orleans, but they were none the less shunned and feared. Mme. Blavatsky
might
have been drawn dangerously far into association with them, fascinated
as her
imagination was liable to become by occult mysteries of any kind; but
the
strange guardianship that had so often asserted itself to her advantage
during
her childhood — which had by this time assumed a more definite shape,
for she
had now met, as a living man the long familiar figure of her visions —
again
come to her rescue. She was warned in a vision of the risk she was
running with
the Voodoos, and at once moved off to fresh fields and pastures new.
She went through Texas to Mexico, and contrived to see a good deal of
that
insecure country, protected in these hazardous travels by her own
reckless
daring, and by various people who from time to time interested
themselves in her
welfare. She speaks with special gratitude of an old Canadian, a man
known as
Père Jacques, whom she met in Texas, where at the time she was quite
without
any companionship. He saw her [48] safely through some perils to which
she
was then exposed, and thus by hook or by crook Madame always managed to
scramble
along unscathed; though it seems miraculous in the retrospect that she
should
have been able — young woman at that time as she was — to lead the wild
life on
which she was embarked without actually incurring disasters. There was
no
reliance in her case, as in that of Moore's heroine, on “Erin's honour
and
Erin's pride”. She passed through rough communities of all kinds,
savage as
well as civilised, and seems to have been guarded from harm, as
assuredly she
was guarded, by the sheer force of her own fearlessness, and her fierce
scorn
for all considerations however remotely associated with the “magnetism
of
sex”.
During her American travels, which for this period lasted about a year,
she was
lucky enough to receive a considerable legacy bequeathed her by one of
her
godmothers. This put her splendidly in funds for a time, though it is
much to be
regretted on her account that the money was not served out to her in
moderate
instalments, for the temperament, which the facts of her life so far
even will
have revealed, may easily be recognised as one not likely to go with
habits of
prudent expenditure. Madame, in the course of her adventures, has often
shown
that she can meet poverty with indifference, and battle with it in any
way that
may be necessary, but with her pockets full of money, her impulse has
always
been to throw it away with both hands. She is wholly unable to explain
how she
ran through her 80,000 roubles, except that amongst other random
purchases she
bought land in America, the very situation of which she has long since
totally
forgotten, besides having, as a matter of course, lost all the papers
that had
any reference to the transaction.
She resolved during her Mexican wanderings that she [49] would go to
India,
fully alive already to the necessity of seeking beyond the northern
frontiers of
that country for the further acquaintanceship of those great teachers of
the
highest mystic science, with whom the guardian of her visions was
associated in
her mind. She wrote, therefore, to a certain Englishman, whom she had
met in
Germany two years before, and whom she knew to be on the same quest as
herself,
to join her in the West Indies, in order that they might go to the East
together. He duly came, but the party was further augmented by the
addition of a
Hindu whom Mme. Blavatsky met at Copau, in Mexico, and whom she soon
ascertained
to be what is called a “chela”, or pupil of the Masters, or adepts
of
oriental occult science. The three pilgrims of mysticism went out via
the Cape
to Ceylon, and thence in a sailing ship to Bombay, where, as I make out
the
dates, they must have arrived at quite the end of 1852.
A dispersion of the little party soon followed, each being bent on
somewhat
different ends. Madame would not accept the guidance of the Chela, and
was bent
on an attempt of her own to get into Tibet through Nepal. For the time
her
attempt failed, chiefly, she believes, as far as external and visible
difficulties were concerned, through the opposition of the British
resident then
in Nepal. Mme. Blavatsky went down to Southern India, and then on to
Java and
Singapore, returning thence to England.
1853, however, was an unfortunate year for a Russian to visit this
country. The
preparations for the Crimean War were distressing to Mme. Blavatsky's
patriotism, and she passed over at the end of the year again to America,
going
this time to New York, and thence out West, first to Chicago, then an
infant
city compared to the Chicago of the present day, and afterwards to the
Far West,
and across the Rocky Mountains with emigrants' [50] caravans, till
ultimately she brought up for a time in San Francisco. Her stay in
America was
prolonged on this occasion altogether to something like two years, and
she then
made her way a second time to India via Japan and the Straits, reaching
Calcutta
in the course of 1855.
In reference to her prolonged wanderings her aunt writes: —
“For the first eight years she gave her mother's family no sign of
life for
fear of being traced by her legitimate 'lord and master', Her father
alone knew
of her whereabouts. Knowing, however, that he would never prevail upon
her to
return home, he acquiesced in her absence, and supplied her with money
whenever
she came to places where it could safely reach her.”
During her travels in India in 1856 she was overtaken at Lahore by a
German
gentleman known to her father, who, — in association with two friends,
having
laid out a journey in the East on his own account, with a mystic purpose
in
view, in reference to which fate did not grant him the success that
attended
Mme. Blavatsky's efforts — had been asked by Colonel Hahn to try if he
could
find his errant daughter. The four compatriots travelled together for a
time,
and went through Kashmir to Leli in Ladakh in company with a Tartar
Shaman, who
was instrumental in helping them to witness some psychological wonders
wrought
at a Buddhist monastery. Her companions, Mme. Blavatsky explains, had
all formed
what, referring to the incident in Isis Unveiled, she calls “the
unwise plan
of penetrating into Tibet under various disguises — none of them
speaking the
language, although one of them, a Mr K------, had picked up some Kasan
Tartar,
and thought he did”. The passage in Isis rather too long for quotation
here.
It begins on page 599, vol. ii of that book, and describes the [51]
animation of an infant by the psychic principles of the old Lama, the
superior
of the monastery. The passage as given in his is taken from a narrative
written
by Mr K-----, and put by him in Mme. Blavatsky's hands, and corresponds
in
outline to similar marvels related by the Abbé Huc in the first
edition of his
Recollections of Travel in Tartary, Tibet, and China. In the later
editions of
that book the testimony the author gives to the wonders he witnessed in
Tibet is
all cut down and mutilated. His story was found to be too striking in
recognition of “miracles” that were not, under the direction of the
church,
to be tolerated by the authorities in its earlier form ; but the first
edition
of the book can still be seen at the British Museum, where I have
verified the
accuracy of the quotation given in Isis.
In reference to the journey in the course of which the Russian
travellers
witnessed the transaction at the Buddhist monastery, Mme. Blavatsky
writes: —
“Two of them, the brothers N------, were very politely brought back to
the
frontier before they had walked sixteen miles into the weird land of
Eastern
Bod, and Mr K------, an ex-Lutheran minister, could not even attempt to
leave
his miserable village near Leli, as from the first days he found himself
prostrated with fever, and had to return to Lahore via Kashmir.”
The Tartar Shaman, referred to above, rendered Mme. Blavatsky more
substantial
assistance in her efforts to penetrate into Tibet than he was able to
afford to
her companions. Investing her with an appropriate disguise, he conducted
her
successfully across the frontier, and far on into the generally
inaccessible
country. It was to this journey that she vaguely refers in a striking
passage
occurring in the last chapter of Isis Unveiled. As the narrative, though
given
in Isis without any of [52] the surrounding circumstances, fits here
into
its proper place in these records, I quote it at full length. Reference
has just
been made to certain talismans which each shaman carries under his left
arm,
attached to a string. Mme. Blavatsky goes on : —
“ ' Of what use is it to you, and what are its virtues ? ' was the
question we
often offered to our guide. To this he never answered directly, but
evaded all
explanation, promising that as soon as an opportunity was offered and we
were
alone, he would ask the stone to answer for himself. With this very
indefinite
hope we were left to the resources of our own imagination.
“But the day on which the stone 'spoke' came very soon. It was during
the most
critical hours of our life; at a time when the vagabond nature of a
traveller
had carried the writer to far-off lands where neither civilisation is
known nor
security can be guaranteed for one hour. One afternoon, as every man and
woman
had left the yourta (Tartar tent) that had been our house for over two
months,
to witness the ceremony of the Lamaic exorcism of Tshoutgour, [An
elemental
demon, in which every native of Asia believes.’] accused of breaking and
spiriting away every bit of the poor furniture and earthenware of a
family
living about two miles distant, the Shaman, who had become our only
protector in
those dreary deserts, was reminded of his promise. He sighed and
hesitated, but
after a short silence, left his place on the sheepskin, and going
outside,
placed a dried-up goat's head with its prominent horns over a wooden
peg, and
then dropping down the felt curtain of the tent, remarked that now no
living
person would venture in, for the goat's head was a sign that he was ' at
work.'
“After that, placing his hand in his bosom, he drew out the little
stone,
about the size of a walnut, and, carefully unwrapping it, proceeded, as
it
appeared, to swallow it. In a few moments his limbs stiffened, his body
became
rigid, and he fell, cold and motionless as a corpse. But for a slight
twitching
of his lips at every question asked, the scene would have been
embarrassing, nay
dreadful. [53] The sun was setting, and were it not that the dying
embers
flickered at the centre of the tent, complete darkness would have been
added to
the oppressive silence which reigned. We have lived in the prairies of
the West,
and in the boundless steppes of Southern Russia; but nothing can be
compared
with the silence at sunset on the sandy deserts of Mongolia; not even
the barren
solitudes of the deserts of Africa, though the former are partially
inhabited,
and the latter utterly void of life. Yet, there was the writer, alone
with what
looked no better than a corpse lying on the ground. Fortunately this
state did
not last long.
“ ' Mahaudû !' uttered a voice which seemed to come from the
bowels of the
earth, on which the Shaman was prostrated, ' Peace be with you. What
would you
have me do for you ? '
“Startling as the fact seemed, we were quite prepared for it, for we
had seen
other Shamans pass through similar performances. 'Whoever you are', we
pronounced mentally, 'go to K-----, and try to bring that person's
thought here.
See what that other party does, and tell ----- what we are doing and how
situated.'
“ ' I am there,' announced the same voice. ' The old lady (kokona) is
sitting
in the garden. . . . she is putting on her spectacles and reading a
letter.'
“ 'The contents of it, and hasten', was the hurried order, while
preparing
note-book and pencil. The contents were given slowly, as if, while
dictating,
the invisible presence desired to put down the words phonetically, for
we
recognised the Vallachian language, of which we knew nothing beyond the
ability
to recognise it. In such a way a whole page was filled.
“ ' Look west . . . toward the third pole of the yourta,' pronounced
the
Tartar in his natural voice, though it sounded hollow, and as if coming
from
afar. 'Her thought is here.'
“Then with a convulsive jerk the upper portion of the Shaman's body
seemed
raised, and his head fell heavily on the writer's feet, which he
clutched with
both his hands. The position was becoming less and less attractive, but
curiosity proved a good ally to courage. [54] In the west corner was
standing, life-like, but flickering unsteady, and mist-like, the form of
a dear
old friend, a Roumanian lady of Vallachia, a mystic by disposition, but
a
thorough disbeliever in this kind of occult phenomena.
“ 'Her thought is here, but her body is lying unconscious. We could
not bring
her here otherwise', said the voice.
“We addressed and supplicated the apparition to answer, but all in
vain. The
features moved and the form gesticulated as if in fear and agony, but no
sound
broke forth from the shadowy lips; only we imagined — perchance it was a
fancy —
hearing, as if from a long distance, the Roumanian words, 'Non se pote'
('It
cannot be done' ).
“For over two hours the most substantial, unequivocal proofs that the
Shaman's
astral soul was travelling at the bidding of our unspoken wish were
given us.
Ten months later, we received a letter from a Vallachian friend in
response to
ours, in which we had enclosed the page from the note-book, inquiring of
her
what she had been doing on that day, and describing the scene in full.
She was
sitting, she wrote, in the garden on that morning,[The hour in Bucharest
corresponded perfectly with that of the country in which the scene had
taken
place.] prosaically occupied in boiling some conserves; the letter sent
to her
was word for word the copy of the one received by her from her brother;
all at
once, in consequence of the heat she thought, she fainted, and
remembered
distinctly dreaming she saw the writer in a desert place, which she
accurately
described, and sitting under a gipsy's tent,' as she expressed it. '
Henceforth,' she added, 'I can doubt no longer'.
“But our experiment was proved better still. We had directed the
Shaman's
Inner Eye to the same friend heretofore mentioned in this chapter, the
Kutchi of
Lhassa, who travels constantly to British India and back. We know that
he was
apprised of our critical situation in the desert; for a few hours later
came
help, and we were rescued by a party of twenty-five horsemen, who had
been
directed by their chief to find us at the place where we were, which no
living
man endowed with common powers could have known. The chief of this [55]
escort was a Shaberon, an 'adept' whom we had never seen before, nor did
we
after that, for he never left his soumay (lamasary), and we could have
no access
to it. ... But he was a personal friend of the Kutchi.”
This incident put an end for the time to Mme. Blavatsky's wanderings in
Tibet.
She was conducted back to the frontier by roads and passes of which she
had no
previous knowledge, and after further travels in India, was directed by
her
occult guardian to leave the country, shortly before the troubles which
began in
1857.
She went in a Dutch vessel from Madras to Java, and thence returned to
Europe in
1858.
Meanwhile the fate to which she has been so freely exposed all through
her later
life was already asserting itself to her disadvantage, and without, up
to this
time, having challenged the world's antagonism, by associating her name
with
tales of wonder, she, nevertheless, already found herself — or rather,
in her
absence, her friends found her — the mark for slanders, no less
extravagant, in
a different way, than some that have been aimed at her quite recently by
people
claiming to take an interest in psychic phenomena, but unable to
tolerate those
reported to have been brought about by her agency. Her aunt writes: “
Faint
rumours reached her friends of her having been met in Japan, China,
Constantinople, and the far East. She passed through Europe several
times, but
never lived in it. Her friends, therefore, were as much surprised as
pained to
read, years afterwards, fragments from her supposed biography, which
spoke of
her as a person well known in the high life, as well as the low, of
Vienna,
Berlin, Warsaw, and Paris, and mixed her name with events and ancedotes
whose
scene was laid in these cities, at various epochs, when her friends had
every
possible proof of her being far [56] away from Europe. These anecdotes
referred to her indifferently under the several Christian names of
Julie,
Nathalie, etc which were those really of other persons of the same
surname; and
attributed to her various extravagant adventures. Thus the Neue Freie
Presse
spoke of Madame Heloise (?) Blavatsky, a non-existing personage, who had
joined
the Black Hussars — les Huzzards de la Mart — during the Hungarian
revolution,
her sex being found out only in 1849.” Similar stories, equally groundless,
were circulated at a later date. Anticipating this, her aunt goes on : —
“Another journal of Paris narrated the story of Mme. Blavatsky, 'a
Pole from
the Caucasus' (?), a supposed relative of Baron Hahn of Lemberg, who,
after
taking an active part in the Polish Revolution of 1863 (during the whole
of
which time Mme. H. P. Blavatsky was quietly living with her relatives at
Tiflis), was compelled, from lack of means, to serve as a female waiter
in a '
restaurant du Faubourg St Antoine'. ”
These, and many other infamous stories circulated by idle gossips, were
laid at
the door of Mme. Blavatsky, the heroine of our narrative.
On her return from India in 1858, Mme. Blavatsky did not go straight to
Russia,
but, after spending some months in France and Germany, rejoined her own
people
at last in the midst of a family wedding-party at Pskoff, in the
north-west of
Russia, about 180 miles from St Petersburg.
Concerning the next few years of Mme. Blavatsky's life, we are furnished
with
ample details by means of narrative written at the time by her sister,
Mme. V.
P.de Jelihowsky, and published in 1881 in a Russian periodical — the
Rebus — as
a series of papers, headed, “The Truth about H. P. Blavatsky”. To
this
source of information we may now turn. [57]
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206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK. CF24-1DL
CHAPTER 3
AT HOME IN RUSSIA, 1858
IN the course of certain Personal and Family Reminiscences, put together
by Mme
de Jelihowsky, she explains the attitude of mind in which she was
brought up,
interesting both as bearing on the narrative she has to relate and also
as
connected with the family history of the subject of this memoir. She
writes: —
“I was born and bred in a strictly orthodox, sincerely religious, yet
far from
being mystically-inclined, family. But if the spirit of mysticism had
failed to
influence its members, it was not in consequence of any predetermined
policy of
an a priori denial of everything unknown, or of a tendency to sneer at
the
incomprehensible only because it is far beyond one's capacities and
nature to
take it in; but as ' highly educated and polished people' can hardly be
expected
to confess their mental and intellectual failings, hence the conscious
efforts
of playing at incredulity and esprits forts. Nothing of the sort was to
be found
in our family. Nor was there any great superstition or bigotry amongst
them —
two feelings the best calculated to generate and develop faith in the
supernatural. But when, at the age of sixteen, I had to part with my
mother's
family, in which I had been brought up since her death, and went to live
with my
father, I met in him a man of quite a different 'nature. He was an
extreme
sceptic, a deist, if anything, and one of a most practical turn of mind;
a
highly intellectual and even a scientific man, one who [58] knew and had
seen a great deal in life, but whose erudition and learning had been developed
in full accordance with his own personal views, and not at all in any
spirit of
humility before the truths of Christianity, or blind belief in man's
immortality
and life beyond the grave.”
In 1858, when Mme. Blavatsky returned to Russia, her sister, the writer
of the
reminiscences from which I have just quoted, bore the name of Yahontoff
— that
of her first husband, who had died shortly before that date. She was
staying at
Pskoff with General N. A. Yahontoff — Maréchal de Noblesse of
that place — her
late husband's father. A wedding-party, that of her sister-in-law, was
in
progress, and Colonel Hahn was amongst the guests. On Christmas night,
Mme. de
Jelihowsky writes, “They were all sitting at supper, carriages loaded
with
guests were arriving one after the other, and the hall bell kept ringing
without
interruption. At the moment when the bridegroom's best men arose, with
glasses
of champagne in their hands, to proclaim their good wishes for the happy
couple
— a solemn moment in Russia — the bell was again rung impatiently. Mme.
Yahontoff, Mme. Blavatsky's sister, moved by an irrepressible impulse,
and
notwithstanding that the hall was full of servants, jumped up from her
place at
the table, and, to the amazement of all, rushed herself to open the
door. She
felt convinced, she said afterwards, though why she could not tell, that
it was
her long lost sister! ”
For some time this memoir will closely follow Mme. de Jelihowsky's
narrative,
now translated into English for the first time, but it will be
unnecessary to
load every page with quotation marks. Where the first person is used, it
will be
understood that Mme de [59] Jelihowsky is speaking, although she also
frequently refers to herself in the third person, as the narrative was
originally published in Russia anonymously. When I, the present editor,
have
occasion to intervene with comments, such passages will be enclosed in
brackets.
Spiritism (or spiritualism) was then just looming on the horizon of
Europe,
During her travels, the psychological peculiarities of Mme. Blavatsky's
childhood and girlhood had developed, and she returned already possessed
of
occult powers, which were in those days attributed to mediumship.
These powers asserted themselves in strange incessant knocks and raps
and
sounds, which many hearers mistook for the esprits frappeurs; in the
moving of
furniture without contact, in the increase and the decrease of the
weight of
various objects, in her faculty of seeing herself (and occasionally of
transferring that faculty to others) things invisible to ordinary sight,
and
living but absent persons who had resided years ago in the places where
she
happened to be, as well as spectral images of personages dead at various
epochs.
Well acquainted with a number of facts of the most striking character
which have
happened at that period of her life (which, however, has not lasted very
long,
as she succeeded very soon in conquering and even obtaining mastery over
the
influence of forces that surrounded her), I will describe only those
phenomena
of which I was an eye-witness.
For this I must return to the night of Mme. Blavatsky's arrival.
From that time all those who were living in the house remarked that
strange
things were taking place in it. Raps and whisperings, sounds, mysterious
and
[60] unexplained, were now being constantly heard wherever the newly
arrived inmate went. Not only did they occur in her presence and near
her, but
knocks were heard, and movements of the furniture perceived nearly in
every room
in the house, on the walls, the floor, the windows, the sofa, cushions,
mirrors,
and clocks ; on every piece of furniture, in short, about the rooms.
However
much Mme. Blavatsky tried to conceal these facts, laughing at them and
trying to
turn these manifestations into fun, it was useless for her to deny the
fact or
the occult significance of these sounds. At last, to the incessant
questions of
her sister, she confessed that those manifestations had never ceased to
follow
her everywhere as in the early days of her infancy and youth. That such
raps
could be increased or diminished, and at times even made to cease
altogether, by
the mere force of her will, she also acknowledged, proving her assertion
generally on the spot. Of course the good people of Pskoff, like the
rest of the
world, knew what was then occurring, and had heard of spiritualism and
its
manifestations. There had been mediums in Petersburg, but they had not
penetrated as far as Pskoff, and its guileless inhabitants had never
heard the
rappings of the so-called spirit.
[All who have become acquainted with Mme. Blavatsky in the present phase
of her
development will be aware of the eagerness with which she repudiates the
least
trace of mediumship as entering into the phenomena with which she had
been
associated in recent years. In 1858 she appears to have been in a
transition
state, already invested with occult will-power, which put her in a
position to
repress the manifestations of mediumship in emergencies, but still
liable to
their spontaneous occurrence when they were not thus under repression.
[61]
Expressly asked the question, she would always deny that she was a
medium —
which, indeed, she would appear no longer to have been, in the strict
sense of
the term — for she does not seem to have been controlled by the agencies
recognised in spiritualism, even when sometimes acquiescing in casual
manifestations on their part. Mme. de Jelihowsky, questioned on this
subject
recently, says: “I remember that when addressed as a medium, she (Mme.
Blavatsky) used to laugh and assure us she was no medium, but only a.
mediator
between mortals and beings we knew nothing about. But I could never
understand
the difference.”
This may be the best opportunity for bringing to the reader's notice
some
passages from Mme. Jelihowsky's Personal and Family Reminiscences which
bear on
the point, an important one as regards all psychic students of Mme.
Blavatsky's
phenomena and characteristics.
Her sister says :—
“Although everyone had supposed that the manifestations occurring in
H. P.
Blavatsky's presence were the results of a mediumistic power pertaining
to her,
she herself had always obstinately denied it. My sister H. P. Blavatsky
had
passed most of her time, during her many years' absence from Russia,
travelling
in India, where, as we are now informed, spiritual theories are held in
great
scorn, and the so-called (by us) mediumistic phenomena are said to be caused
by
quite another agency than that of spirits; mediumship proceeding, they
say, from
a source, to draw from which, my sister thinks it degrading to her human
dignity; in consequence of which ideas she refuses to acknowledge such a
force
in herself. From letters received by me from my sister, I found she had
been
dissatisfied with much that I had said of her in my ' Truth about H. P.
Blavatsky.' She still maintains, now as then, that in those days (of
1860) she
was influenced as well as she is now by quite [62] another kind of power
—
namely, that of the Indian sages, the Raj-Yogis — and that even the
shadows
(figures) she sees all her life, are no phantoms, no ghosts of the
deceased, but
only the manifestations of her powerful friends in their astral
envelopes.
However it may be, and whatever the power that produced her phenomena
only,
during the whole time that she lived with us at the Yahontoff such
phenomena
happened constantly before the eyes of all, believers and unbelievers
(relatives
and outsiders) — and they plunged everyone equally into amazement.”
As this memoir is a narrative and not an occult treatise, I refrain from
any
minute analysis of the psychological problem involved, and would only
point out
that the condition of things Mme. de Jelihowsky refers to, chimes in
with the
rough explanation I gave in the first chapter as to the occult theory of
Mme.
Blavatsky's development, which would recognise her natural born,
physical
attributes as only coming under control when the higher faculties of her
real
self, entering into union with the bodily organism as this reached
maturity, put
her in a position to be taught how to eradicate the weed-growth of her
abnormally fertile psychic faculties.]
With the arrival of Mme. Blavatsky at Pskoff, the news about the
extraordinary
phenomena produced by her spread abroad like lightning, turning the
whole town
topsy-turvy.
The fact is, that the sounds were not simple raps, but something more,
as they
showed extraordinary intelligence, disclosing the past as well as the
future to
those who held converse through them with those Mme. Blavatsky called
her
kikimorcy (or spooks). More than that, for they showed the gift of
disclosing
unexpressed thoughts, i.e. penetrating freely into the most secret
recesses of
[63] the human mind, and divulging past deeds and present intentions.
The relatives of Mme. Blavatsky's sister were leading a very fashionable
life,
and received a good deal of company in those days. Her presence
attracted a
number of visitors, no one of whom ever left her unsatisfied, for the
raps which
she evoked gave answers, composed of long discourses in several
languages, some
of which were unknown to the medium, as she was called. The poor
“medium”
became subjected to every kind of test, to which she submitted very
gracefully,
no matter how absurd the demand, as a proof that she did not bring about
the
phenomena by juggling. It was her usual habit to sit very quietly and
quite
unconcerned on the sofa, or in an arm-chair, engaged in some embroidery,
and
apparently without taking the slightest interest or active part in the
hubbub
which she produced around herself. And the hubbub was great indeed. One
of the
guests would be reciting the alphabet, another putting down the answers
received, while the mission of the rest was to offer mental questions,
which
were always and promptly answered. It so happened, however, that the
unknown and
invisible things at work favoured some people more than others, while
there were
those who could obtain no answers whatever. In the latter case, instead
of
replying to queries asked aloud, the raps would answer the unexpressed
mental
thought of some other person, first calling him by name. During that
time,
conversations and discussions in a loud tone were carried on around her.
Mistrust and irony were often shown, and occasionally even a doubt
expressed, in
a very indelicate way, as to the good faith of Mme. Blavatsky. But she
bore it
all very coolly and patiently, a strange and puzzling smile or an
ironical
shrugging of the [64] shoulders being her only answer to questions of
very
doubtful logic offered to her over and over again.
“But how do you do it, and what is it that raps ? ” people kept on
asking.
Or again, “but how can you so well guess people's thought ? How could
you know
that I had thought of this or that ? ”
At first H. P. B. sought very zealously to prove to people that she did
not
produce the phenomena, but very soon she changed her tactics. She
declared
herself tired of such discussions, and silence and a contemptuous smile
became
for some time her only answer. Again she would change as rapidly; and in
moments
of good-humour, when people would be foolishly and openly expressing the
most
insulting doubts of her honesty, instead of resenting them she used to
laugh
aloud in their faces. Indeed, the most absurd hypotheses were offered by
the
sceptics. For instance, it was suggested that she might produce her loud
raps by
the means of a machine in her pocket, or that she rapped with her nails;
the
most ingenious theory being that “when her hands were visibly occupied
with
some work, she did it with her toes.”
To put an end to all this, she allowed herself to be subjected to the
most
stupid demands ; she was searched, her hands and feet were tied with
string, she
permitted herself to be placed on a soft sofa, to have her shoes taken
off and
her hands and feet held fast against a soft pillow, so that they should
be seen
by all, and then she was asked that the knocks and rappings should be
produced
at the further end of the room. Declaring that she would try, but would
promise
nothing, her orders were, nevertheless, immediately accomplished,
especially
when the people were seriously interested. These raps were produced at
her
command on the ceiling, on the [65] window sills, on every bit of
furniture
in the adjoining room, and in places quite distant from her.
At times she would wickedly revenge herself by practical jokes on those
who so
doubted her. Thus, for example, the raps which came one day inside the
glasses
of the young Professor M------, while she was sitting at the other side
of the
room, were so strong that they fairly knocked the spectacles off his
nose, and
made him become pale with fright. At another time, a lady, an esprit
fort, very
vain and coquettish, to her ironical question of what was the best
conductor for
the production of such raps, and whether they could be done everywhere,
received
a strange and very puzzling answer. The word, “Gold”, was rapped
out, and
then came the words, “We will prove it to you immediately”.
The lady kept smiling with her mouth slightly opened. Hardly had the
answer
come, than she became very pale, jumped from her chair, and covered her
mouth
with her hand. Her face was convulsed with fear and astonishment. Why ?
Because
she had felt raps in her mouth, as she confessed later on. Those present
looked
at each other significantly. Previous even to her own confession all had
understood that the lady had felt a violent commotion and raps in the
gold of
her artificial teeth! And when she rose from her place and left the room
with
precipitation, there was a homeric laugh among us at her expense.[66]
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CHAPTER 4
MM DE JELIHOWSKY'S NARRATIVE
IT is impossible to give in detail even a portion of what was produced
in the
way of such phenomena during the stay of Mme. Blavatsky amongst us in
the town
of Pskoff. But they may be mentioned under general classification as
follows : —
1. Direct and perfectly clear written and verbal answers to mental
questions —
or “thought-reading”.
2. Prescriptions for different diseases, in Latin, and subsequent cures.
3. Private secrets, unknown to all but the interested party, divulged,
especially in the case of those persons who mentioned insulting doubts.
4. Change of weight in furniture and of persons at will.
5. Letters from unknown correspondents, and immediate answers written to
queries
made, and found in the most out-of-the-way mysterious places.[Thus a
governess,
named Leontine, who wanted to know the fate of a certain young man she
had hoped
to be married to, learnt what had become of him ; his name, that she had
purposely withheld, being given in full — from a letter written in an unknown
handwriting she found in one of her locked boxes, placed inside a trunk
equally
locked.]
6. Appearances and apport of objects unclaimed by any one present. [67]
7. Sounds as of musical notes in the air wherever Mme. Blavatsky desired
they
should resound.
All these surprising and inexplicable manifestations of an intelligent,
and at
times, I should almost say, an omniscient force, produced a sensation in
Pskoff,
where there yet remain many who remember it well. Truth compels us to
remark
that the answers were not always in perfect accord with the facts, but
seemed
purposely distorted as though for the purpose of making fun, especially
of those
querists who expected infallible prophecies.
Nevertheless, the fact remains of the manifestation of an intelligent
force,
capable of perceiving the thoughts and feelings of any person; as also
of
expressing them by rappings and motions in inanimate objects. The
following two
occurrences took place in the presence of many eye-witnesses during the
stay of
Mme. Blavatsky with us.
As usual, those nearest and dearest to her were, at the same time, the
most
skeptical as to her occult powers. Her brother Leonide and her father
stood out
longer than all against evidence, until at last the doubts of the former
were
greatly shaken by the following fact.
The drawing-room of the Yahontoffs was full of visitors. Some were
occupied with
music, others with cards, but most of us, as usual, with phenomena.
Leonide de
Hahn did not concern himself with anything in particular, but was
leisurely
walking about, watching everybody and everything. He was a strong,
muscular
youth, saturated with the Latin and German wisdom of the University, and
believed, so far, in no one and nothing. He stopped behind the back of
his
sister's chair, and was listening to her narratives of how some persons,
who
called themselves mediums, made light objects become so heavy that it
was
impossible to lift them; and others which were naturally heavy became
again
remarkably light.[68]
“And you mean to say that you can do it ? ” ironically asked the
young man
of his sister.
“Mediums can, and I have done it occasionally; though I cannot always
answer
for its success”, coolly replied Mme. Blavatsky.
“But would you try ? ” asked somebody in the room; and immediately
all
joined in requesting her to do so.
“I will try”, she said, “but I beg of you to remember that I
promise
nothing. I will simply fix this chess-table and try. ... He who wants to
make
the experiment, let him lift it now, and then try again after I shall
have fixed
it.”
“After you shall have fixed it ? ” said a voice, “ and what then ?
Do you
mean to say that you will not touch the table at all ? ”
“Why should I touch it ? ” answered Mme. Blavatsky, with a quiet
smile.
Upon hearing the extraordinary assertion, one of the young men went
determinedly
to the small chess-table, and lifted it up as though it were a feather.
“All right”, she said. “Now kindly leave it alone, and stand back!
”
The order was at once obeyed, and a great silence fell upon the company.
All,
holding their breath, anxiously watched for what Mme. Blavatsky would do
next.
She apparently, however, did nothing at all. She merely fixed her large
blue
eyes upon the chess-table, and kept looking at it with an intense gaze.
Then,
without removing her gaze, she silently, with a motion of her hand,
invited the
same young man to remove it. He approached, and grasped the table by its
leg
with great assurance. The table could not be moved !
He then seized it with both his hands. The table stood as though screwed
to the
floor.
Then the young man, crouching down, took hold of [69] it with both
hands,
exerting all his strength to lift it by the additional means of his
broad
shoulders. He grew red with the effort, but all in vain! The table
seemed rooted
to the carpet, and would not be moved. There was a loud burst of
applause. The
young man, looking very much confused, abandoned his task en
désespoir de cause,
and stood aside.
Folding his arms in quite a Napoleonic way, he only slowly said,
“Well, this
is a good joke ! ”
“Indeed, it is a good one ! ” echoed Leonide.
A suspicion had crossed his mind that the young visitor was acting in
secret
confederacy with his sister and was fooling them.
“May I also try ? ” he suddenly asked her,
“Please do, my dear”, was the laughing response.
Her brother upon this approached, smiling, and seized, in his turn, the
diminutive table by its leg with his strong muscular arm. But the smile
instantly vanished, to give place to an expression of mute amazement. He
stepped
back a little and examined again very carefully the, to him, well-known
chess-table. Then he gave it a tremendous kick, but the little table did
not
even budge.
Suddenly applying to its surface his powerful chest he enclosed it
within his
arms, trying to shake it. The wood cracked, but would yield to no
effort. Its
three feet seemed screwed to the floor. Then Leonide Hahn lost all hope,
and
abandoning the ungrateful task, stepped aside, and frowning, exclaimed
but these
two words, “How strange! ” his eyes turning meanwhile with a wild
expression
of astonishment from the table to his sister.
We all agreed that this exclamation was not too strong.
The loud debate had meanwhile drawn the attention of several visitors,
and they
came pouring in from the drawing-room into the large apartment where we
were.
[70]
Many of them, old and young, tried to lift up, or even to impart some
slight
motion to, the obstinate little chess-table. They failed, like the rest
of us.
Upon seeing her brother's astonishment, and perchance desiring finally
to
destroy his doubts, Mme. Blavatsky, addressing him with her usual
careless
laugh, said, “Try to lift the table now, once more I ”
Leonide H. approached the little thing very irresolutely, grasped it
again by
the leg, and, pulling it upwards, came very near to dislocating his arm
owing to
the useless effort: the table was lifted like a feather this time
[Madame
Blavatsky has stated that this phenomenon could only be produced in two
different ways:
1st.. Through the exercise of her own will directing the magnetic
currents so
that the pressure on the table became such that no physical force could
move it
; and
2nd. Through the action of those beings with whom she was in constant
communication, and who, although unseen, were able to hold the table
against all
opposition.]
And now to our second case. It occurred in St Petersburg, a few months
later,
when Mme. Blavatsky had already left Pskoff with her father and sister,
and when
all three were living in a hotel. They had come to St Petersburg on
business on
their way to Mme. Yahontoff’s property, in the district of Novorgeff,
where they
had decided to pass the summer. All their forenoons were occupied with
business,
their afternoons and evenings with making and receiving visits, and
there was no
time for, or even mention of, phenomena.
One night they received a visit from two old friends of their father;
both were
old gentlemen, one of them a school-fellow of the Corps des Pages, Baron
M------, the other the well-known K------w. [ Sceptics who insist upon
having
the full names are invited to apply to the writer of the above, Mme de
Jelihowsky, St Petersburg, Zabalkansky Prospect, No. 10 house, r.31
apartment’]
Both were much [71] interested in recent spiritualism, and were, of
course,
anxious to see something.
After a few successful phenomena, the visitors declared themselves
positively
delighted, amazed, and quite at a loss what to make of Mme. Blavatsky's
powers.
They could neither understand nor account, they said, for her father's
indifference in presence of such manifestations. There he was, coolly
laying out
his “grande patience” with cards, while phenomena of such a
wonderful nature
were occurring around him. The old gentleman, thus taken to task,
answered that
it was all bosh, and that he would not hear of such nonsense; such
occupation
being hardly worthy of serious people, he added. The rebuke left the two
old
gentlemen unconcerned. They began, on the contrary, to insist that
Colonel Hahn
should, for old friendship's sake, make an experiment, before denying
the
importance, or even the possibility of his daughter's phenomena. They
offered
him to test the intelligences and their power by writing a word in another
room,
secretly from all of them, and then asking the raps to repeat it. The
old
gentleman, more probably in the hope of a failure that would afford him
the
opportunity of laughing at his two old friends, than out of a desire to
humour
them, finally consented. He left his cards, and proceeding into an
adjoining
room, wrote a word on a bit of paper; after which, conveying it to his
pocket,
he returned to his patience, and waited silently, laughing behind his
grey
moustache.
“Well, our dispute will now be settled in a few moments”, said
K------w.
“What shall you say, however, old friend, if the word written by you
is
correctly repeated? Will you not feel compelled to believe in such a
case ? ”
“What I might say, if the word were correctly [72] guessed, I could
not
tell at present”, he skeptically replied. “One thing I could answer,
however, from the time I can be made to believe your alleged spiritism
and its
phenomena, I shall be ready to believe in the existence of the devil,
undines,
sorcerers, and witches — in the whole paraphernalia — in short, of old
women's
superstitions; and you may prepare to offer me as an inmate of a lunatic
asylum.”
Upon delivering himself thus, he went on with his patience, and paid no
further
attention to the proceedings. He was an old “Voltarian”, as the
positivists
who believed in nothing are called in Russia. But we, who felt deeply
interested
in the experiment, began to listen to the loud and unceasing raps coming
from a
plate brought there for the purpose.
The younger sister was repeating the alphabet; the old general marked
the
letters down; while Mme. Blavatsky did nothing at all — apparently.
She was what would be called, in our days, a “good writing medium”;
that is
to say, she could write out the answers herself while talking with those
around
her upon quite indifferent topics. But simple and more rapid as this
mode of
communication may be, she would never consent to use it.
She was too afraid to employ it, fearing as she explained, uncalled-for
suspicion from foolish people who did not understand the process.
[From the first, that is to say, almost from her childhood, and
certainly in the
days mentioned above, Mme. Blavatsky, as she tells us, would, in such cases,
see
either the actual present thought of the person putting the questions,
or its
paler reflection — still quite distinct for her — of an event, or a
name, or
whatever it was, in the past, as though hanging in a shadow world around
the
[73] person, generally in the vicinity of the head. She had but to copy
it
consciously, or allow her hand to do so mechanically. At any rate, she
never
felt herself helped or led on by an external power, i.e. no “spirits”
helped
her in this process after she returned from her first voyage, she avers.
It
seemed an action entirely confined to her own will, more or less
consciously
exercised by her, more or less premeditated and put into play.
Whenever the thought of a person had to be communicated through raps,
the
process changed. She had to read, first of all, sometimes to interpret
the
thought of the querist, and having done so, to remember it well after it
had
often disappeared; watch the letters of the alphabet as they were read
or
pointed out, prepare the will-current that had to produce the rap at the
right
letter, and then have it strike at the right moment the table or any
other
object chosen to be the vehicle of sounds or raps. A most difficult
process, and
far less easy than direct writing.']
By the means of raps and alphabet we got one word, but it proved such a
strange
one, so grotesquely absurd as having no evident relation to anything
that might
be supposed to have been written by her father, that all of us who had
been in
the expectation of some complicated sentence looked at each other,
dubious
whether we ought to read it aloud. To our question, whether it was all,
the raps
became more energetic in the affirmative sounds. We had several triple
raps,
which meant in our code — Yes ! . . . yes, yes, yes !!!
Remarking our agitation and whispering, Madame Blavatsky's father looked
at us
over his spectacles, and asked:
“Well! Have you any answer ? It must be something very elaborate and
profound
indeed! ”
He arose and, laughing in his moustache, approached [74] us. His
youngest
daughter, Mme. Yahontoff, then went to him and said, with some little
confusion
:
“We only got one word.”
“And what is it?”
“Zaïtchik! ” [Zaïchik means, literally,”a little
hare”, while Zaïtz is the
Russian term for any hare. In the Russian language every substantive and
adjective may be made to express the same thing, only in the diminutive.
Thus a
house is dom, while small house is expressed by the word domik, etc.]
It was a sight indeed to witness the extraordinary change that came over
the old
man's face at this one word! He became deadly pale. Adjusting his
spectacles
with a trembling hand, he stretched it out while hurriedly 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, — “
'Zaïtchik'.
Yes, Zaïtchik; so it is. How very strange!”
Taking out of his pocket the paper he had written upon in the adjoining
room, he
handed it in silence to his daughter and guests.
They found on it both the question offered and the answer that was
anticipated.
The words read thus:
“What was the name of my favorite war-horse which I rode during my
first
Turkish campaign ? ” and lower down, in parenthesis (“ Zaïtchik
”).
We felt fully triumphant, and expressed our feelings accordingly.
This solitary word, Zaïtchik, had an enormous effect upon the
old gentleman. As
it often happens with inveterate sceptics, once he had found out that
there was
indeed something in his eldest daughter's claims, and that it had
nothing to do
whatever with deceit or juggling, [75] having been convinced of this one
fact, he rushed into the region of phenomena with all the zeal of an
ardent
investigator. As a matter of course, once he believed he felt no more
inclined
to doubt his own reason.
Having received from Mme. Blavatsky one correct answer, her father
became
passionately fond of experimenting with his daughter's powers. Once he
inquired
of the date of a certain event in his family that had occurred several
hundred
of years before. He received it. From that time he set himself and Mme.
Blavatsky the difficult task of restoring the family chronology. The
genealogical tree, lost in the night of the first crusades, had to be
restored
from its roots down to his day.
The information was readily promised, and he set to work from morning to
night.
First, the legend of the Count von Rottenstern, the Knight Crusader, was
given
him. The year, the month, and the day on which a certain battle with the
Saracens had been fought; and how, while sleeping in his tent, the
Knight
Crusader was awakened by the cry of a cock (Hahn) to find himself in
time to
kill, instead of being stealthily killed by an enemy who had penetrated
into his
tent. For this feat the bird, true symbol of vigilance, was raised to
the honor
of being incorporated in the coat of arms of the Counts of Rottenstern,
who
became from that time the Rottenstern von Rott Hahn; to branch off later
into
the Hahn-Hahn family and others.
Then began a regular series of figures, dates of years and months, of
hundreds
of names by connection and side marriages, and a long line of descent
from the
Knight Crusaders down to the Countess Ida Hahn-Hahn — Mme. Blavatsky's
father's
cousin, and her father's family names and dates, as well as a mass of
contemporary events which had taken place in connection with that [76]
family's descending line, were given rapidly and unhesitatingly. The
greatest
historian, endowed with the most phenomenal memory, could never be equal
to such
a task. How then could one who had been on cold terms from her very
youth with
simple arithmetic and history be suspected of deliberate deceit in a
work that
necessitated the greatest chronological precision, the knowledge very
often of
the most unimportant historical events, with their involved names and
dates, all
of which upon the most careful verification were found to be correct to a
day.
True, the family immigrants from Germany since the days of Peter III.
had a good
many missing links and blanks in their genealogical tables, yet the few
documents that had been preserved among the various branches of the
family in
Germany and Russia — whenever consulted, were found to be the originals
of those
very exact copies furnished through Mme. Blavatsky's raps.
Her uncle, a high official at the General Post Office at St Petersburg,
whose
great ambition in those days was to settle the title of a Count on his
eldest
sons permanently, took the greatest interest in this mysterious work.
Over and
over again he would, in his attempts to puzzle and catch his niece in
some
historical or chronological inaccuracy, interrupt the regular flow of
her raps,
and ask for information about something which had nothing to do with the
genealogy, but was only some contemporaneous fact. For instance :
“You say that in the year 1572 Count Carl von Hahn-Hahn was married to
the
Baroness Ottilia, so and so. This was in June at the castle of — — at
Mecklenburg. Now, who was the reigning Kurfuerst at that time; what
Prince
reigned at ----- (some small German state); and who was the confessor of
the
Pope, and the Pope himself in that year ? ”[77]
And the answer, always correct, would invariably come without a moment's
pause.
It was often found far more difficult to verify the correctness of such
names
and dates than to receive the information. Mr J. A. Hahn, then Post
Director at
St Petersburg, Mme. Blavatsky's uncle, had to plunge for days and weeks
sometimes into dusty old archives, write to Germany, and apply for
information
to the most out-of-the-way places, that were designated to him, when he
found
difficulties in his way to obtain the knowledge he sought for in easily
obtainable books and records.
This lasted for months. Never during that time were Mme. Blavatsky's
invisible
helper or helpers found mistaken in any single instance. [Indeed not;
for it was
neither a “spirit” nor “spirits” but living men who can draw before
their eyes
the picture of any book or manuscript wherever existing, and in case of
need
even that of any long-forgotten and unrecorded event, who helped “Mme
Blavatsky”, The astral light is the storehouse and the record book of
all
things, and deeds have no secrets for such men. And the proof of it may
be found
in the production of Isis Unveiled.(Note by H.P. Blavatsky)] They only
asked
occasionally for a day or two to get at the correct information.
Unfortunately, these records, put down on fly-leaves and then copied
into a
book, are probably lost. The papers remained with Mme. Blavatsky's
father, who
treasured them, and with many other far more valuable documents were
stolen or
lost after his death. But his sister-in-law, Mme. Blavatsky's aunt, has
in her
possession letters from him in which he speaks enthusiastically of his
experiments.
One of the most startling of her phenomena happened very soon after Mme.
Blavatsky's return, in the early spring of 1858. Both sisters were then
living
with [78] their father, in their country house in a village belonging to
Mme. Yahontoff.
In consequence of a crime committed not far from the boundaries of my
property,
she writes — (a man having been found killed in a gin shop, the
murderers
remaining unknown) — the superintendent of the district police passed
one
afternoon through our village, and stopped to make some inquiries.
The researches were made very secretly, and he had not said one word
about his
business to anyone in the house, not even to our father. As he was an
acquaintance who visited our family, and stopped at our house on his
district
tour, no one asked him why he had come, for he made us very frequent
visits, as
to all the other proprietors in the neighborhood.
It was only on the following morning, after he had ordered the village
serfs to
appear for examination (which proved useless), that the inmates learned
anything
of his mission.
During tea, as they were all sitting around the table, there came the
usual
knocks, raps, and disturbance on the walls, the ceiling, and about the
furniture
of the room.
To our father's question why the police-superintendent should not try to
learn
something of the name and the whereabouts of the murderer from my sister's
invisible agents, the officer Captain O only incredulously smiled.
He had heard of the “all-knowing” spirits, but was ready to bet
almost
anything that these “horned and hoofed gentlemen” would prove
insufficient
for such a task. “They would hardly betray and inform against their
own”, he
added, with a silly laugh.
This fling at her invisible “powers”, and laugh, as she thought, at
her
expense, made Mme. Blavatsky [79] change color, and feel, as she said,
an
irrepressible desire to humble the ignorant fool, who hardly knew what
he was
talking about. She turned fiercely upon the police-officer.
“And suppose I prove to you the contrary ?” she defiantly asked him.
“Then”, he answered, still laughing, “I would resign my office,
and offer
it to you, Madame ; or, still better, 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 a 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 will even leave the room.”
She went away, and taking a book, placed herself on the balcony,
apparently
quite unconcerned with what was going on.
Colonel Hahn, anxious to make a convert, began repeating the alphabet.
The
communication received was far from complimentary in its adjectives to
the
address of the police-superintendent.
The outcome of the message was, that while he was talking nonsense at
Rougodevo
(the name of our new property), the murderer, whose name was Samoylo
Ivanof, had
crossed over before daylight to the next district, and thus escaped the
officer's clutches.
“At present he is hiding under a bundle of hay in the loft of a
peasant, named
Andrew Vlassof, of the village of Oreshkino. By going there immediately
you will
secure the criminal.”
The effect upon the man was tremendous! Our [80] Stanovoy (district
officer) was positively nonplused, and confessed that Oreshkino was one
of the
suspected villages he had on his list.
“But — allow me, however, to inquire”, he asked of the table from
which the
raps proceeded, and bending over it with a suspicious look upon his
face, “how
come you — whoever you are — to know anything of the murderer's name, or
of that
of the confederate who hides him in his loft ? And who is Vlassof, for I
know
him not ? ”
The answer came clear and rather contemptuous.
“Very likely that you should neither know nor see much beyond your own
nose.
We, however, who are now giving you the information, have the means of
knowing
everything we wish to know. Samoylo Ivanof is an old soldier on leave.
He was
drunk, and quarreled with the victim. The murder was not premeditated;
it is a
misfortune, not a crime.”
Upon hearing these words the superintendent rushed out of the house like
a
madman, and drove off at a furious rate towards Oreshkino, which was
more than
thirty miles distant from Rougodevo. The information agreeing admirably
with
some points he had laboriously collected, and furnishing the last word
to the
mystery of the names given — he had no doubt in his own mind that the
rest would
prove true, as he confessed some time after.
On the following morning a messenger on horseback, sent by the Stanovoy,
made
his appearance with a letter to her father.
Events in Oreshkino had proved every word of the information to be
correct. The
murderer was found and arrested in his hiding place at Andrew Vlassofs
cottage,
and identified as a soldier on leave named Samoylo Ivanof.
This event produced a great sensation in the district, and henceforward
the
messages obtained, through the [81] instrumentality of my sister, were
viewed in a more serious light. [Madame Blavatsky denies, point blank,
any
intervention of spirits in this case. She tells us she had the picture
of the
whole tragedy and its subsequent developments before her from the moment
the
Stanovoy entered the house. She knew the names of the murderers, the
confederate, and of the village, for she saw them interested, so to say,
with
the visions. Then she guided the raps, and thus gave the information.]
But this
brought, a few weeks after, very disagreeable complications, for the
police of
St Petersburg wanted to know how could one, and that one a woman who had
just
returned from foreign countries, know anything of the details of a
murder.
It cost Colonel Hahn great exertion to settle the matter and satisfy the
suspicious authorities that there had been no fouler play in the
business than
the intervention of supernatural powers, in which the police pretended,
of
course, to have no faith.
The most successful phenomena took place during those hours when we were
alone,
when no one cared to make experiments or sought useless tests, and when
there
was no one to convince or enlighten.
At such moments the manifestations were left to produce themselves at
their own
impulse and pleasure, none of us — not even the chief author of the
phenomena
under observation, at any rate as far as those present could see and
judge from
appearances — assuming any active part in trying to guide them.
We very soon arrived at the conviction that the forces at work, as Mme,
Blavatsky constantly told us, had to be divided into several distinct
categories. While the lowest on the scale of invisible beings produced
most of
the physical phenomena, the very highest among the agencies at work
condescended
but rarely to a communication or intercourse with strangers. The [82]
last-named “invisibles” made themselves manifestly seen, felt, and
heard
only during those hours when we were alone in the family, and when great
harmony
and quiet reigned among us.
It is said that harmony helps wonderfully toward the manifestation of
the
so-called mediumistic force, and that the effects produced in physical
manifestations depend but little on the volition of the “medium”.
Such feats
as that accomplished with the little chess-table at Pskoff were rare. In
the
majority of the cases the phenomena were sporadic, seemingly quite
independent
of her will, apparently never heeding anyone's suggestion, and generally
appearing in direct contradiction with the desires expressed by those
present.
We used to feel extremely vexed whenever there was a chance to convince
some
highly intellectual investigator, but through H. P. Blavatsky's
obstinacy or
lack of will nothing came out of it. For instance :
If we asked for one of those highly intellectual, profound answers we
got so
often when alone, we usually received in answer some impertinent
rubbish; when
we begged for the repetition of some phenomena she had produced for us
hundreds
of times before, our wish was only laughed at.
I well remember how, during a grand evening party, when several families
of
friends had come from afar off, in some cases from distances of hundreds
of
miles on purpose to witness some phenomena, to “hear with their ears
and see
with their eyes” the strange doings of Mme. Blavatsky, the latter,
though
mockingly assuring us she did all she could, gave them no result to
ponder upon.
This lasted for several days. [ She explains this by describing herself
as tired
and disgusted with the ever-growing public thirst for “miracles”.]
[83]
The visitors had left dissatisfied and in a spirit as skeptical as it
was
uncharitable. Hardly, however, had the gates been closed after them, the
bells
of their horses yet merrily tinkling in the last alley of the entrance
park,
when everything in the room seemed to become endowed with life. The
furniture
acted as though every piece of it was animated and gifted with voice and
speech,
and we passed the rest of the evening and the greater part of the night
as
though we were between the enchanted walls of the magic palace of some
Scheherazade.
It is far easier to enumerate the phenomena that did not take place
during these
forever memorable hours than to describe those that did. All those weird
manifestations that we had observed at various times seemed to have been
repeated for our sole benefit during that night. At one moment as we sat
at
supper in the dining-room, there were loud accords played on the piano
which
stood in the adjoining apartment, and which was closed and locked, and
so placed
that we could all of us see it from where we were through the large open
doors.
Then at the first command and look of Mme. Blavatsky there came rushing
to her
through the air her tobacco-pouch, her box of matches, her
pocket-handkerchief,
or anything she asked, or was made to ask for.
Then, as we were taking our seats, all the lights in the room were
suddenly
extinguished, both lamps and wax candles, as though a mighty rush of
wind had
swept through the whole apartment; and when a match was instantly
struck, there
was all the heavy furniture, sofas, arm-chairs, tables, cupboards, and
large
sideboard standing upside down, as though turned over noiselessly by
some
invisible hands, and not an ornament of the fragile carved work nor even
a plate
broken. Hardly had we gathered [84] our senses together after this
miraculous performance, when we heard again someone playing on the piano
a loud
and intelligible piece of music, a long marche de bravoure this time. As
we
rushed with lighted candles to the instrument (I mentally counting the
persons
to ascertain that all were present), we found, as we had anticipated,
the piano
locked, the last sounds of the final chords still vibrating in the air
from
beneath the heavy closed lid.
After this, notwithstanding the late hour, we placed ourselves around
our large
dining-table, and had a séance. The huge family dining-board began to
shake
with great force, and then to move, sliding rapidly about the room in
every
direction, even raising itself up to the height of a man. In short, we
had all
those manifestations that never failed when we were alone, i.e. when
only those
nearest and dearest to H. P. B. were present, and none of the strangers
who came
to us attracted by mere curiosity, and often with a malevolent and
hostile
feeling.
Among a mass of various and striking phenomena that took place on that
memorable
night, I will mention but two more.
And here I must notice the following question made in those days
whenever my
sister, Madame B sat, to please us, for “communications through raps”.
We
were asked by her to choose what we would have. “Shall we have the
mediumistic
or spook raps, or the raps by clairvoyant proxy ? ” she asked.
[To make this clearer and intelligible, I must give her (Mme.
Blavatsky's)
explanation of the difference.
She never made a secret that she had been, ever since her childhood, and
until
nearly the age of twenty-five, a very strong medium; though after that
period,
owing to a regular psychological and physiological training, she [85]
was
made to lose this dangerous gift, and every trace of mediumship outside
her
will, or beyond her direct control, was overcome. She had two distinct
methods
of producing communications through raps. The one consisted almost
entirely in
her being passive, and permitting the influences to act at their will,
at which
time the brainless Elementals, (the shells would rarely, if ever, be
allowed to
come, owing to the danger of the intercourse) chameleon-like, would
reflect more
or less characteristically the thoughts of those present, and follow in
a
half-intelligent way the suggestions found by them in Madame Blavatsky's
mind.
The other method, used very rarely for reasons connected with her
intense
dislike to meddle with really departed entities, or rather to enter into
their
“currents of thought” is this: — She would compose herself, and
seeking out,
with eyes shut, in the astral light, that current that preserved the
genuine
impress of some well-known departed entity, she identified herself for
the time
being with it, and guiding the raps made them to spell out that which
she had in
her own mind, as reflected from the astral current. Thus, if the rapping
spirit
pretended to be a Shakespeare, it was not really that great personality,
but
only the echo of the genuine thoughts that had once upon a time moved in
his
brain and crystallized themselves, so to say, in his astral sphere
whence even
his shell had departed long ago — the imperishable thoughts alone
remaining. Not
a sentence, not a word spelt by the raps that was not formed first in
her brain,
in its turn the faithful copier of that which was found by her spiritual
eye in
the luminous Record Book of departed humanity. The, so to express it,
crystallized essence of the mind of the once physical brain was there
before her
spiritual vision; her living brain photographed it, and her will
dictated its
expression by guiding the raps which thus became intelligent.]
And though few, if any, of us then understood clearly [86] what she
meant,
yet she would act either one way or the other, never uniting the two
methods.
We chose the former in this instance — the “spook-raps” — as the
easiest to
obtain, and affording us more amusement, and to her less trouble.
Thus, out of the many invisible and “ distinguished ” phantom
visitors of
that night, the most active and prominent among them was the alleged
spirit of
Poushkine.
I beg the reader to remember that we never for a moment believed that
spook to
be really the great poet, whose earthly remains rest in the
neighbourhood of our
Rougodevo, in the monk's territory known as the “holy mountain”.
We had been warned by Mme. Blavatsky, and knew well how much we could
trust to
the communications and conversation of such unseen visitors. But the
fact of our
having chosen for that séance the “spook raps”, does not at all
interfere
with the truth of that other assertion of ours, namely, that, whenever
we wanted
something genuine, and resorted to the method of “clairvoyant proxy”,
we had
very often communications of great power and vigor of thought,
profoundly
scientific and remarkable in every way; made not by but in the spirit of
the
great defunct personage in whose name they were given.
It is only when we resorted to the “spook raps” that,
notwithstanding the
world-known names of the eminent personages in which the goblins of the
séance-room love to parade, we got answers and discourses that
might do honor to
a circus clown, but hardly to a Socrates, a Cicero, or a Martin Luther.
Page 87]
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK. CF24-1DL
CHAPTER 5
MM. DE JELIHOWSKY'S NARRATIVE -CONTINUED-
I REMEMBER that we were deeply interested in those days in reading aloud
in our
little family circle, the Memoirs of Catherine Romanovna Dashkoff, just
then
published. The interest of this remarkable historical work was greatly
enhanced
to us owing to the fact that our reading was very often interrupted by
the
alleged spirit of the authoress herself. The gaps and hiatuses of a
publication,
severely disfigured and curtailed by the censor's pen and scissors, were
constantly filled up by comparing notes with her astral records.
By the means of guided raps — Mme. B. refusing, as usual, to help us by
direct
writing, preferring lazily to rest in her arm-chair — we received, in
the name
of the authoress, innumerable remarks, additions, explanations, and
refutations.
In some cases, her apparent and mistaken views in the days when she
wrote her
memoirs were corrected and replaced by more genuine thoughts. [ The fact
that
many of the remarks and notes were different in their character from the
original memoirs, and that errors and mistakes were corrected, can
easily be
explained. The old thoughts of Catherine Romanovna were expounded and
corrected
in the intellectual sphere of Madame B. The manner and nature of the
expression
would not cease to resemble that of the author, and, in the astral
light, the
original of the work, as conceived in the brain of the historian, would
certainly be returned in preference to the mutilated views of the
censor; while
the brain of Madame B would supply the rest.] [88] All such corrections
and
additional matter given, fascinated us deeply by their profundity, their
wit and
humor, often, indeed, with the natural pathos that was one of the
prominent
features of this remarkable historical character.
But I must return to my reminiscences of that memorable night. Thus,
among other
post-mortem visitors, we were entertained on that evening by A.
Poushkine.
The poet seemed to be in one of his melancholy and dark moments; and to
our
queries, what was the matter, what made him suffer, and what we could do
for
him, he obliged us with an extemporary poem, which I preserved, although
its
character and style are beneath criticism.
The substance of it — which is hardly worth translation — was to the
effect that
there was no reason for us to know his secret sufferings. Why should we
try to
know what he may be wishing for ? He had but one desire: to rest on the
bosom of
Death, instead of which he was suffering in great darkness for his sins,
tortured by devils, and had lost all hope of ever reaching the bliss of
becoming
a winged cherub, etc etc..[ In the recollection of Mme. Blavatsky, this
was a
genuine spirit-manifestation, i.e. a clumsy personification of the great
poet by
passing shells and spooks, allowed to merge into the circle for a few
moments.
The rhymed complaint speaking of hell and devils was the echo of the
feelings
and thoughts of a pious governess present ; most assuredly it was not
any
reflection from Madame Blavatsky's brain, nor would her admiring respect
for the
memory of the greatest Russian poet have ever allowed her to make such a
blasphemous joke under the cover of his name.]
“Poor Alexander Sergeïtch!” exclaimed Colonel Hahn, upon
hearing this wretched
production read; and so saying he rose as though in search of something.
[
89] “ What are you looking for? ” we asked. “My long pipe! I have
had
enough of these cigars, and I cannot find my pipe ; where can it be ? ”
“You have just smoked it, after supper, father”. I replied.
“I did; and now Helen's spirits must have walked off with it or hidden
it
somewhere.”
“One, two, three! One, two, three! ” affirmed triple raps around us,
as
though mocking the old gentleman.
“Indeed! Well, this is a foolish joke. Could not our friend Poushkine
tell us
where he has hidden it ? Do let us know, for life itself would be
worthless on
this earth without my old and faithful pipe.”
“One, two, three ! One, two, three ! ” knocked the table.
“Is this you, Alexander Sergei'tch ? ” we asked.
At this juncture my sister frowned angrily, and the raps suddenly
stopped.
“No”, she said, after a moment's pause, “it is somebody else”.
And
putting her hand upon the table she set the raps going again.
“Who is it, then ? ”
“It is me; your old orderly, your honor: Voronof.”
“Ah, Voronof! very glad to meet you again, my good fellow. . . . Now,
try to
remember old times: bring me my pipe.”
“I would be very happy to do so, your honor, but I am not able;
somebody holds
me fast. But you can take it yourself, your honor. See, there it is
swinging
over your head on the lamp.”
We all raised our heads. Verily, where a minute before there was nothing
at all,
there was now the huge Turkish pipe, placed horizontally on the
alabaster shade,
and balancing over it with its two ends sticking [90] out at both sides
of
the lamp which hung over the dining table.
This new physical demonstration filled with astonishment even those of
us who
had been accustomed to live in a world of marvels for months. Hardly a
year
before we would not have believed even in the possibility of what we now
regarded as perfectly proved facts.
In the early part of the year 1859, as above stated, soon after her
return to
Russia, Mme. Blavatsky went to live with her father and sister in a
country
house of a village belonging to Mme. Jelihowsky at Rougodevo.[In the
district of
Novorgeff, in the Government of Pskoff - about 200 versts from St
Peterburg. It
was at that time a private property, a village of several hundred serfs,
but
soon after emancipation of the land passed into other hands.]
It had been bought only a year before by my deceased husband from
parties
entirely unknown to us till then, and through an agent; and therefore no
one
knew anything of their antecedents, or even who they really were. It was
quite
unexpectedly that, owing to the sudden death of M. Yahontoff, I decided
to
settle in it for a time, with my two baby sons, our father, and my two
sisters,
H. P. Blavatsky and Lisa, the youngest, our father's only daughter by
another
wife.
I could therefore have no acquaintance with our neighbors or the landed
proprietors of other villages, or with the relatives of the late owner
of my
property. All I knew was, that Rougodevo had been bought from a person
named
Statkovsky, the husband of the granddaughter of its late owners — a
family named
Shousherin. Who were those Shousherins, the hereditary proprietors of
those
picturesque hills and mountains, of the dense pine forests, the lovely
lakes,
our old park, and nearly as old a mansion, from the top of which one
could take
a [91] sweeping view of the country for 30 versts around, its present
proprietors could have no conception whatever; least of all, H. P. B.,
who had
been out of Russia for over ten years, and had just then returned.
It was on the second or third evening after our arrival at Rougodevo. We
were
two of us walking along the side of the flower-beds, in front of the
house.
The ground-floor windows looked right into the flower-garden, while
those of its
three other sides were surrounded with large, old, shaded grounds.
We had settled on the first floor, which consisted of nine or ten large
rooms,
while our elderly father occupied a suite of rooms on the ground floor,
on the
right-hand side of the long entrance hall. The rooms opposite to his, on
the
left side, were uninhabited, and in the expectation of future visitors,
stood
empty, with their doors securely locked. The rooms occupied by the
servants were
at the back of the mansion, and could not be seen from where we were.
The
windows of the empty apartment came out in bright relief, especially the
room at
the left angle ; its windows, reflecting the rays of the setting sun in
full
glory, seemed illuminated through and through with the effulgence of the
bright
sunbeams.
We were slowly walking up and down the gravel walk under the windows,
and each
time that we approached the angle of the house, my sister (H. P. B.)
looked into
the windows with a strange searching glance, and lingered on that spot,
a
puzzling expression and smile settling upon her face.
Remarking at last her furtive glances and smiles, I wanted to know what
it was
that so attracted her attention in the empty room ?
“Shall I tell ? Well, if you promise not to be frightened, then I
may”, she
answered hesitatingly. [92]
“What reason have I to be frightened ! Thank heaven, I see nothing
myself.
Well, and what do you see? Is it, as usual, visitors from the other
world ? ”
“I could not tell you now, Vera, for I do not know them. But if my
conjectures
are right, they do seem, if not quite the dwellers themselves, at least
the
shadows of such dwellers from another, but certainly not from our,
world. I
recognize this by certain signs.”
“What signs ? Are their faces those of dead men ? ” I asked, very
nervously,
I confess.
“Oh, no! ” she said; “for in such a case I should see them as dead
people
in their beds, or in their coffins. Such sights I am familiar with. But
these
men are walking about, and look just as if alive. They have no mortal
reason to
remind me of their death, since I do not know who they are, and never
knew them
alive. But they do look so very antiquated. Their dresses are such as we
see
only on old family portraits. One, however, is an exception.”
“How does he look ? ”
“ Well, this one looks as though he were a German student or an
artist. He
wears a black velvet blouse, with a wide leather sash. . . . Long hair
hanging
in heavy waves down his back and shoulders. This one is quite a young
man. ...
He stands apart, and seems to look quite in a different direction from
where the
others are.”
We had now again approached the angle of the house, and halting, were
both
looking into the empty room through the bright window panes. It was
brilliantly
lit up by the sunbeams of the setting sun, but the room was empty
evidently, but
only for one of us. For my sister it was full of the images probably of
its
long-departed late inmates.[93]
Mme. Blavatsky went on looking thoughtfully, and describing what she
saw.
“There, there, he looks in our direction. See ! ” she muttered, “
he looks
as though he is startled at seeing us! Now he is there no longer. How
strange!
he seems to have melted away in that sunbeam ! ”
“Let us call them out to-night, and ask them who they are”, I
suggested.
“We may, but what of that ? Can any one of them be relied upon or
believed ? I
would pay any price to be able to command and control as they, . . .
some
personages I might name, do; but I cannot. I must fail for years to
come”, she
added, regretfully.
“Who are they ? Whom do you mean ? ”
“Those who know and can — not mediums”, she contemptuously added.
“But
look, look, what a sight! Oh, see what an ugly monster! Who can it be ?
”
“Now, what's the use in your telling me ' look, look' and see ? How
can I look
when I see nothing, not being a clairvoyant as you are. . . . Tell me,
how does
that other figure appear ? Only if it is something too dreadful, then
you had
better stop”, I added, feeling a cold chill creeping over me. And,
seeing she
was going to speak, I cried out, “Now, pray do not say anything more
if it is
too dreadful”.
Don't be afraid, there is nothing dreadful in it, it only seemed to me
so. They
are there now — one, however, I can see very hazily; it is a woman, and
she
seems to be always merging into and again emerging from that shadow in
the
corner. Oh, there's an old, old lady standing there and looking at me,
as though
she were alive. What a nice, kind, fat old thing she must have been. She
has a
white frilled cap on her head, a white kerchief crossed over her
shoulders, a
short grey narrow dress, and a checked apron.” [94]
“Why, you are painting some fancy portrait of the Flemish school”,
laughed
I. “Now, look here, I am really afraid that you are mystifying me.”
“I swear I am not. But I am so sorry that you cannot see.”
“Thanks; but I am not at all sorry. Peace be upon all those ghosts !
How
horrible ! ”
“Not at all horrible. They are all quite nice and natural, with the
exception,
maybe, of that old man.”
“Gracious ! what old man ? ”
“A very, very funny old man. Tall, gaunt, and with such a suffering
look upon
his worn-out face. And then it is his nails, that puzzle me. What
terrible long
nails he has, or claws rather; why, they must be over an inch long!”
“Heaven help us! ” I could not help shrieking out. “Whom are you
describing? Surely it must be” — I was going to say, “the devil
himself”,
but stopped short, overcome by a shudder.
Unable to control my terror, I hastily left the place under the window
and stood
at a safe distance.
The sun had gone down, but the gold and crimson flush of its departing
rays
lingered still, tinting everything with gold — the house, the old trees
of the
garden, and the pond in the background.
The colors of the flowers seemed doubly attractive in this brilliant
light; and
only the angle of the old house, which cut the golden hue in two, seemed
to cast
a gloomy shadow on the glorious scene. H. P. Blavatsky remained alone
behind
that obscure angle, overshadowed by the thick foliage of an oak, while I
sought
a safe refuge in the glow of the large open space near the flower-beds,
and kept
urging her to come out of her nook and enjoy instead the lovely
panorama, and
look at the [95] far-off wooded hills, with their tops still glowing in
the
golden hue, on the quiet smooth ponds and the large dormant lake,
reflecting in
its mirror-like waters the green chaotic confusion of its banks, and the
ancient
chapel slumbering in its nest of birch.
My sister came out at last, pale and thoughtful. She was determined, she
said,
to learn who it was whom she had just seen. She felt sure the shadowy
figures
were the lingering reflections of people who had inhabited at some time
those
empty rooms. “I am puzzled to know who the old man can be”, she kept
saying.
“Why should he have allowed his nails to grow to such an extraordinary
Chinese
length ? And then another peculiarity, he wears a most strange-looking
black
cap, very high, and something similar to the klobouk of our monks.”
[The round
tiara, covered with a long black veil, worn by the orthodox Greek
monks.]
“Do let these horrid phantoms alone. Do not think of them! ”
“Why ? It is very interesting, the more so since I now see them so
rarely. I
wish I were still a real medium, as the latter, I am told, are
constantly
surrounded by a host of ghosts, and that I see them now but occasionally,
not as
I used to years ago, when a child. . . . Last night, however, I saw in
Lisa's
room a tall gentleman with long whiskers.”
“What! in the nursery room near the children ? Oh, please, drive him
away from
there, at least. I do hope the ghost has only followed you there, and
has not
made a permanent abode of that place. How you can keep so cool, and feel
no fear
when you see, is something I could never understand ! ”
“And why should I fear them ? They are harmless in most cases, unless
encouraged. Then I am too [96] accustomed to such sights to experience
even
a passing uneasiness. If anything, I feel disgust, and a contemptuous
pity for
the poor spooks! In fact, I feel convinced that all of us mortals are
constantly
surrounded by millions of such shadows, the last mortal image left of
themselves
by their ex-proprietors.”
“Then you think that these ghosts are all of them the reflection of
the dead ?
”
“I am convinced of it — in fact, / know it ! ”
“ Why, then, in such a case, are we not constantly surrounded by those
who
were so near and dear to us, by our loved relatives and friends ? Why
are we
allowed to be pestered only by a host of strangers, to suffer the
uninvited
presence of the ghosts of people whom we never knew, nor do we care for
them ?
”
“A difficult query to answer! How often, how earnestly, have I tried
to see
and recognize among the shadows that haunted me some one of our dear
relatives,
or even a friend! . . . Stray acquaintances, and distant relatives, for
whom I
care little, I have occasionally recognized, but they never seemed to
pay any
attention to me, and whenever I saw them it was always unexpected and
independently of my will. How I longed from the bottom of my soul, how I
have
tried — all in vain ! As much as I can make out of it, it is not the
living who
attract the dead, but rather the localities they have inhabited, those
places
where they have lived and suffered, and where their personalities and
outward
forms have been most impressed on the surrounding atmosphere. Say, shall
we call
some of your old servants, those who have been born and lived in this
place all
their lives ? I feel sure that, if we describe to them some of the forms
I have
just seen, that they will recognize in them people they knew, and who
have died
here.” [97]
The suggestion was good, and it was immediately put to the test; we took
our
seats on the steps of the entrance door, and sent a servant to inquire
who were
the oldest serfs in the compound. An ancient tailor, named Timothy, who
lived
for years exempt from any obligatory work on account of his services and
old
age, and the chief gardener, Oulyan, a man about sixty, soon made their
appearance. I felt at first a little embarrassed, and put some
commonplace
questions, asking who it was who built one of the outhouses near by.
Then I put
the direct query, whether there had ever lived in the house an old man,
very
strange to look at, with a high black head-gear, terribly long nails,
wearing
habitually a long grey coat, etc., etc.
No sooner had I given this description than the two old peasants,
interrupting
each other, and with great volubility, exclaimed affirmatively that they
“Knew
well who it was whom the young mistress described.”
“Don't we know him ? of course we do — why, it is our late barrin
(master)!
Just as he used to be — our deceased master Nikolay Mihaylovitch ! ”
“Statkowsky ? ”
“No, no, mistress. Statkowsky was the young master, and he is not
dead; he was
our nominal master only, owing to his marriage with Natalya Nikolavna —
our late
master's, Nikolay Mihaylovitch Shousherin's granddaughter. And, as you
have
described him, it is him, for sure — our late master, Shousherin.”
My sister and I interchanged a furtive glance. “We have heard of him”,
said
I, unwilling to take the servants into our confidence, ” but did not
feel sure
it was he. But why was he wearing such a strange-looking cap, and, as it
seemed,
never cut his nails ? ”
“This was owing to a disease, mistress — an incurable [98] disease, as
we
were told, that the late master caught while in Lithuania, where he had
resided
for years. It is called the Koltoun,[The “plica polonica”, a terrible
skin
complaint, very common in Lithuania, and contracted only in its climate.
The
hair, as is well known, is grievously diseased, nor can nails on the
fingers and
toes be touched, their cutting leading to a bleeding to death] if you
have heard
of it. He could neither cut his hair nor pare his nails, and had to
cover
constantly his head with a tall velvet cap, like a priest's cap.”
“Well, and how did your mistress, Mrs Shousherin, look ? ”
The tailor gave a description in no way resembling the Dutch-looking old
lady
seen by Mme. Blavatsky. Further cross-examination elicited, however,
that the
woman, in her semi-Flemish costume, was Mina Ivanovna, a German
housekeeper, who
had resided in the house for over twenty years; and the young man, who
looked
like a German student in his velvet blouse, was really such a student
who had
come from Göttingen. He was the youngest brother of Mr
Statkowsky, who had died
in Rougodevo, of consumption, about three years before our arrival. This
was not
all, moreover. We found out that the corner room in which H. P. B. had
seen on
that evening, as she has later on, on many other occasions, the phantoms
of all
these deceased personages of Rougodevo, had been made to serve for every
one of
them, either as a death-chamber when they had breathed their last, or
had been
converted for their benefit into a mortuary-chamber when they had been
laid out
awaiting burial. It was from this suite of apartments, in which their
bodies had
invariably passed from three to five days, that they had been [99]
carried
away into yonder old chapel, on the other side of the lake, that was so
well
seen, and had been examined by us from the windows of our sitting-room.
Since that day, not only H. P. B., but even her little sister, Lisa, a
child of
nine years old, saw more than once strange forms gliding noiselessly
along the
corridors of the old house, so full of lingering events of the past, and
of the
images of those who had passed away from it. The child, strange to say,
feared
the restless ghosts no more than her elder sister; the former taking
them
innocently for living persons, and concerned but with the interesting
problem,
“where they had come from, who they were, and why no one except her '
old'
sister and herself ever consented to notice them.”
She thought this very rude — the little lady. Luckily for the child, and
owing
perhaps to the efforts of her sister, Mme. Blavatsky, the faculty left
her very
soon, never to return during her subsequent life.[The young lady is now
over
thirty, and was saying but last year how lucky it was for her that she
no longer
saw these trans-terrestrial visitors.] As for Helena Petrovna, it never
left her
from her very childhood. So strong is this weird faculty in her that it
is a
rare case when she has to learn of the death of a relative, a friend, or
even an
old servant of the family from a letter. We have given up advising her
of any
such sad events, the dead invariably precede the news, and tell her
themselves
of their demise; and we receive a letter in which she describes the way
she saw
this or that departed person, at the same time, and often before the
post
carrying our notification could have reached her, as it will be shown
further
on.
[The pamphlet already referred to, Personal and Family Reminiscences, by
Mme.
Jelihowsky, may here [100] be laid under contribution in reference to
incidents taking place at the period we are now dealing with.]
Having settled in our property at Rougodevo, we found ourselves as
though
suddenly transplanted into an enchanted world, in which we got gradually
so
accustomed to see self-moving furniture, things transferred from one
place to
another, in the most inexplicable way, and to the strong interference
with, and
presence in, our matter-of-fact daily life of some unknown to us, yet
intelligent power, that we all ended by paying very little attention to
it,
though the phenomenal facts struck everyone else as being simply
miraculous.
Verily, habit becomes second nature with men! Our father, who had
premised by
saying that he gave permission to everyone to incarcerate him in a
lunatic
asylum on that day that he would believe that a table could move, fly,
or become
rooted to the spot at the desire of those present, now passed his days
and parts
of his nights talking with “Helen's spirits”, as he called it. They
informed
him of numerous events and details pertaining to the lives of his ancestors,
the
Counts Hahn von Rottenstern Hahn; offered to get back for him certain
title-deeds, and told us such interesting legends and witty anecdotes,
that
unbelievers as well as believers could hardly help feeling interested.
It often
happened that my sister, being occupied with her reading, we — our
father, the
governess, and myself — unwilling to disturb her, communicated with the
invisible power, mentally and in silence, simply thinking out our
questions, and
writing down the letters rapped out either on the walls or the table
near us.
... I remember having had a remarkable phenomenon of this kind, at a
station in
the Swyatee Goree (Holy Mountains), where the poet A. Poushkine is
buried, and
when my sister was fast [101] asleep. Things were told to me, of which
positively no one in this world could know anything, I alone being the
depositary of these secrets, together with an old gentleman living for
years on
his far-away property. I had not seen him for six years; my sister had
never
heard of him, as I had made his acquaintance two years after she had
left
Russia. During that mental conversation, names, dates, and the
appellation of
his property were given to me. I had thought and asked, Where is he who
loved me
more than anyone on this earth ? Easy to know that I had my late husband
in my
mind. Instead of that, I received in answer a name I had long forgotten.
First I
felt perplexed, then indignant, and finally the idea became so comical
that I
burst out in a fit of laughter, that awoke my sister. How can you prove
to me
that you do not lie ? I asked my invisible companions. Remember the
second
volume of Byron's poetry, was the answer I received. I became cold with
horror !
No one had ever been told of it, and I myself had forgotten for years
that
circumstance which was now told to me in all its details, namely, that
being in
the habit of sending books, and a series of English classics for me to
read,
that gentleman, old enough to be my grandfather, had thought of offering
marriage to me, and found no better means for it than by inserting in
Volume II.
of Byron's works a letter to that effect. ... Of course my
“informers”,
whoever they were, played upon me a wicked trick by reminding me of
these facts,
yet their omniscience had been brilliantly proven to me by them in this
case.
It is most extraordinary that our silent conversations with that
intelligent
force that had ever manifested itself in my sister's presence were found
by us
the most successful during her sleep, or when she was very ill. [102]
Once
a young physician, who visited us for the first time, got so terribly
frightened
at the noises, and the moving about of things in her room when she was
on her
bed lying cold and senseless, that he nearly fainted himself. Such
tragi-comical
scenes happened very often in our house, but the most remarkable of all
such
have already been told in the pages of the Rebus, in 1883, as having
taken place
during her two years' stay with us. As an eye-witness, I can only once
more
testify to all the facts described, without entering upon the question
of the
agency that produced them, or the nature of the agents. But I may recall
some
additional inexplicable phenomena that occurred at that time, testified
to by
other members of our family, though some of them I have not witnessed
myself.
All the persons living on the premises, with the household members, saw
constantly, often in full noonday, vague human shadows walking about the
rooms,
appearing in the garden, in the flower-beds in front of the house, and
near the
old chapel. My father (once the greatest sceptic), Mademoiselle
Leontine, the
governess of our younger sister, told me many a time, that they had just
met and
seen such figures quite plainly. Moreover, Leontine found very often in
her
locked drawers, and her trunks, some very mysterious letters, containing
family
secrets known to her alone, over which she wept, reading them
incessantly during
whole weeks; and I am forced to confess that once or twice the events
foretold
in them came to pass as they had been prophesied to us.
[Some comments on various parts of the foregoing narrative, furnished by
Mme.
Blavatsky herself, will here be read with interest. She says she has
tried with
the most famous mediums to evoke and communicate with those dearest to
her, and
whose loss she had deplored, but could never succeed.“Communications
and
messages” [103] she certainly did receive, and got their signatures, and
on two occasions their materialized forms, but the communications were
couched
in a vague and gushing language quite unlike the style she knew so well.
Their
signatures, as she has ascertained, were obtained from her own brain;
and on no
occasion, when the presence of a relation was announced and the form
described
by the medium, who was ignorant of the fact that Mme. Blavatsky could
see as
well as any of them, has she recognized the “spirit” of the alleged
relative
in the host of spooks and elementaries that surrounded them (when the
medium was
a genuine one of course). Quite the reverse. For she often saw, to her
disgust,
how her own recollections and brain-images were drawn from her memory
and
disfigured in the confused amalgamation that took place between their
reflection
in the medium's brain, which instantly sent them out, and the shells
which
sucked them in like a sponge and objectivised them — “a hideous shape
with a
mask on in my sight”, she tells us. “Even the materialized form of
my uncle
at the Eddys' was the picture; it was I who sent it out from my own
mind, as I
had come out to make experiments without telling it to anyone. It was
like an
empty outer envelope of my uncle that I seemed to throw on the medium's
astral
body. I saw and followed the process, I knew Will Eddy was a genuine
medium, and
the phenomenon as real as it could be, and therefore, when days of
trouble came
for him, I defended him in the papers. In short, for all the years of
experience
in America, I never succeeded in identifying, in one single instance,
those I
wanted to see. It is only in my dreams and personal visions that I was
brought
in direct contact with my own blood relatives and friends, those between
whom
and myself there had been a strong mutual spiritual love”. Her
conviction
[104] therefore, based as much on her personal experience as on that of
the
teachings of the occult doctrine, is as follows: — “For certain
psycho-magnetic reasons, too long to be explained here, the shells of
those
spirits who loved us best will not, with a very few exceptions, approach
us.
They have no need of it since, unless they were irretrievably wicked,
they have
us with them in Devachan, that state of bliss in which the monads are
surrounded
with all those, and that, which they have loved — objects of spiritual
aspirations as well as human entities. ' Shells ' once separated from
their
higher principles have nought in common with the latter. They are not
drawn to
their relatives and friends, but rather to those with whom their
terrestrial,
sensuous affinities are the strongest. Thus the shell of a drunkard will
be
drawn to one who is either a drunkard already or has a germ of this
passion in
him, in which case they will develop it by using his organs to satisfy
their
craving; one who died full of sexual passion for a still living partner
will
have its shell drawn to him or her, etc.. We Theosophists, and
especially
occultists, must never lose sight of the profound axiom of the Esoteric
Doctrine
which teaches us that it is we, the living, who are drawn towards the
spirits —
but that the latter can never, even though they would, descend to us, or
rather
into our sphere.”] [105]
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK. CF24-1DL
CHAPTER 6
MM. DE JELIHOWSKY'S NARRATIVE - (CONTINUED)
THE quiet life of the sisters at Rougodevo was brought to an end by a
terrible
illness which befell Mme. Blavatsky. Years before, perhaps during her
solitary
travels in the steppes of Asia, she had received a remarkable wound. We
could
never learn how she had met with it. Suffice to say that the profound
wound
reopened occasionally, and during that time she suffered intense agony,
often
bringing on convulsions and a death-like trance. The sickness used to
last from
three to four days, and then the wound would heal as suddenly as it had
reopened, as though an invisible hand had closed it, and there would
remain no
trace of her illness. But the affrighted family was ignorant at first of
this
strange peculiarity, and their despair and fear were great indeed. A
physician
was sent for to the neighboring town; but he proved of little use, not
so much
indeed through his ignorance of surgery, as owing to a remarkable
phenomenon
which left him almost powerless to act through sheer terror at what he
had
witnessed. He had hardly examined the wound of the patient prostrated
before him
in complete unconsciousness, when suddenly he saw a large, dark hand
between his
own and the wound he was going to anoint. The gaping wound was near the
heart,
and the hand kept slowly moving at several intervals [106] from the neck
down to the waist. To make his terror worse, there began suddenly in the
room
such a terrific noise, such a chaos of noises and sounds from the
ceiling, the
floor, window-panes, and every bit of furniture in the apartment, that
he begged
he might not be left alone in the room with the insensible patient.
In the spring of 1860 both sisters left Rougodevo for the Caucasus, on a
visit
to their grandparents, whom they had not seen for long years.
During the three weeks' journey from Moscow to Tiflis, performed in a
coach with
post horses, there occurred many a strange manifestation.
At Zadonsk — the territory of the Cossack army of the Don, a place of
pilgrimage
in Russia, where the holy relics of St Tihon are preserved — we halted
for rest,
and I prevailed upon my lazy sister to accompany me to the church to
hear the
mass. We had learned that on that day church service would be conducted
near the
said relics by the then Metropolitan [One of the three “Popes” of
Russia, so to
say, the highest of the ecclesiastical hierarchy of the Orthodox Greek
Church]
of Kiew (at present, in 1884, the Metropolitan of St Petersburg), the
famous and
learned Isidore, [Now a man past ninety years of age] whom both of us
had well
known in our childhood and youth at Tiflis, where he was for so many
years the
Exarch [The spiritual chief of all the archbishops, and the head of the
Church
in Georgia] of Georgia (Caucasus). He had been a friend of our family
for years,
and had often visited us. During service the venerable old man
recognized us,
and immediately dispatched a monk after us, with an invitation to visit
him at
the Lord Archbishop's house. He received us with great kindness. But
hardly had
we taken our seats in the drawing-room of the Holy [107] Metropolitan
than
a terrible hubbub, noises, and loud raps in every conceivable direction
burst
suddenly upon us with a force to which even we were hardly accustomed;
every bit
of furniture in the big audience room cracked and thumped — from the
huge
chandelier under the ceiling, every one of whose crystal drops seemed to
become
endowed with self-motion, down to the table, and under the very elbows
of his
holiness who was leaning on it.
Useless to say how confused and embarrassed we looked — though truth
compels me
to say that my irreverent sister's embarrassment was tempered with a
greater
expression of fun than I would have wished for. The Metropolitan Isidore
saw at
a glance our confusion, and understood, with his habitual sagacity, the
true
cause of it. He had read a good deal about the so-called “spiritual”
manifestations, and on seeing a huge armchair gliding toward him,
laughed, and
felt a good deal interested in this phenomenon. He inquired which of us
two
sisters had such a strange power, and wanted to know when and how it had
begun
to manifest itself. We explained to him all the particulars as well as
we could,
and after listening very attentively, he suddenly asked Mme. Blavatsky
if she
would permit him to offer her “invisible” a mental question. Of
course, his
holiness was welcome to it, she answered. We do not feel at liberty to
publish
what the question was. But when his very serious query had received an
immediate
answer — precise and to the very point he wanted it to be — his holiness
was so
struck with amazement, and felt so anxious and interested in the
phenomenon,
that he would not let us go, and detained us with him for over three
hours. He
had even forgotten his dinner. Giving orders not to be interrupted, the
venerable gentleman continued to hold conversation with [108] his unseen
visitors, expressing all the while his profound astonishment at their
“all-knowledge”. [Vseznaïstvo - the word used can hardly be
translated by
the term omniscience; it is an attribute of a less absolute character,
and
refers to the things of the earth.]
When bidding good-bye to us, the venerable old man blessed the
travelers, and,
turning to Mme. Blavatsky, addressed to her these parting words: —
“As for you, let not your heart be troubled by the gift you are
possessed of,
nor let it become a source of misery to you hereafter, 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.”
These are the authentic words of His Holiness, Isidore, the Metropolitan
of our
Orthodox Greek Church of Russia, addressed by him in my presence to my
sister
Mme. Blavatsky. [The Russian Censor has not allowed this letter to
appear in the
Rebus in the original.]
At one of the stations where we had to change horses, the station-master
told us
very brutally that there were no fresh horses for us, and that we had to
wait.
The sun had not yet gone down, it was full moon, the roads were good,
and with
all this, we were made to lose several hours ! This was provoking.
Nevertheless
there was nothing to be done, the more so as the station-master, who was
too
drunk to be reasoned with, had found fit to disappear, and refused to
come and
talk with us. We had to take the little unpleasantness as easily as we
could,
and settle ourselves as best we knew how for the night; but even here we
found
an impediment. The small station-house had but one room for the
travelers [
109] near a hot and dirty kitchen, and even that one was locked and
bolted, and
no one would open the door for us without special orders. Mme. Blavatsky
was
beginning to lose patience.
“Well, this is fine ! ” she went on. “We are refused horses, and
even the
room we are entitled to is shut for us ! Why is it shut ? Now, I want to
know
and insist upon it”. But there was no one to tell us the reason why,
for the
station-house seemed utterly empty, and there was not a soul to be seen
about.
H. P. B. approached the little low windows of the locked room, and
flattened her
face against the window panes. “A-ha!” she suddenly exclaimed;
“that's
what it is ! Very well, then, and now I can force the drunken brute to
give us
horses in five minutes.”
And she started off in search of the station-master. Curious to know
what secret
there was in the mysterious room, I approached the window in my turn,
and tried
to fathom its unknown regions. But although the inside of the room was
perfectly
visible through the window, yet my uninitiated eyes could see nothing in
it save
the ordinary furniture of a dirty station-house, dirty as they all are.
Nevertheless, to my delight and surprise, ten minutes had not passed
when three
excellent and strong post-horses were brought out, under the supervision
of the
station-master himself, who, pale and confused, had become, as though by
magic,
polite and full of obsequiousness. In a few minutes our carriage was
ready, and
we continued our journey.
To my question what sorcery had helped her to achieve such change in the
drunken
station-master, who but a moment before would pay no attention to us,
Mme.
Blavatsky only laughed. [110]
“Profit, and ask no questions!” she said. “Why should you be so
inquisitive ? ” It was but on the following day that she condescended
to tell
me that the wretched station-master must have most certainly taken her
for a
witch. It appears that upon finding him in a back-yard, she had shouted
to him
that the person whose body had been just standing in a coffin in the
“travelers' room” was there again, and asked him not to detain us,
for we
would otherwise insist upon our right to enter into the room, and would
disturb
her spirit thereby. And when the man upon hearing this opened his eyes,
without
appearing to understand what she was referring to, Mme. Blavatsky
hastened then
to tell him that she was speaking of his deceased wife, whom he had just
buried,
and who was there, and would be there, in that room until we had gone
away. She
then proceeded to describe the ghost in such a minute way that the
unfortunate
widower became as pale as death itself, and hurried away to order fresh
horses !
Some interesting details concerning Mme. Blavatsky's family home at
Tiflis have
been published quite lately in a Russian memoir, “Reminiscences of
Prince A.
T. Bariatinsky”, by General P. S. Nikolaeff, formerly his aide-de-camp
at
Tiflis. This memoir appears in the Historical Vyestnick (Messenger], a
Russian
magazine of high repute, dedicated, as its name shows, to historical
Notes,
Memoirs, and Biographies. Referring to the family of the Fadeefs,
General
Nikolaeff, writing of a period coincident with that of Mme. Blavatsky's
visit to
Tiflis, says: —
“They were living in those years in the ancient mansion of the Princes
Tchavtchavadze, the great building itself carrying the imprint of
something
weird or peculiar about it — something that carried one back to the
epoch of
Catherine the Great. A long, lofty, and [111] gloomy hall was hung with
the
family portraits of the Fadeefs and the Princes Dolgorouky. Further on
was a
drawing-room, its walls covered with Gobelin tapestry, a present from
the
Empress Catherine, and near at hand was the apartment of Mademoiselle N.
A.
Fadeef — in itself one of the most remarkable of private museums. The
collection
gathered into this museum attracted attention by their great variety.
There were
brought together the arms and weapons from all the countries of the
world;
ancient crockery, cups, and goblets, archaic house utensils, Chinese and
Japanese idols, mosaics and images of the Byzantine epoch, Persian and
Turkish
carpets, and fabrics worked with gold and silver, statues, pictures,
paintings,
petrified fossils, and, finally, a very rare and most precious library.
“The emancipation of the serfs had altered in no way the daily life of
the
Fadeefs. The whole enormous host of their valetaille (ex-serfs), [Forty
men and
women; and this for twenty-two years in Tiflis, where old General Fadeef
was one
of the three Imperial Councillors on the council under the Viceroys from
Prince
Porontzoff to the Grand Duke Michael] having remained with the family as
before
their freedom, only now receiving wages ; and all went on as before with
the
members of that family — that is to say, luxuriously and plentifully (it
means
in their usual hospitable and open way of living). I loved to pass my
evenings
in that home. At precisely a quarter to eleven o'clock, the old general,
brushing along the parquets with his warmly muffled-up feet, retired to
his
apartments. At that same moment, hurriedly and in silence, the supper
was
brought in on trays, and served in the interior rooms; and immediately
after
this the drawing-room doors would be closely shut, and an animated
conversation
take place on every topic. Modern literature was reviewed and
criticized,
contemporary social questions from Russian life discussed; at one time
it was
the narratives of some visitor, a foreign traveler, or an account given
of a
recent skirmish by one of its heroes, some sunburnt officer just
returned from
the battlefield (in the Caucasian Mountains), would be [112] eagerly
listened to; at another time the antiquated old Spanish-mason (then an
officer
in the Russian army), Quartano, would drop in and give us thrilling
stories from
the wars of Napoleon the Great. Or, again, 'Radda Bay' — H. P.
Blavatsky, the
granddaughter of General A. M. Fadeef — would put in an appearance, and
was made
to call forth from her past some stormy episode of her American life and
travels
; when the conversation would be sure to turn suddenly upon the mystic
subjects,
and she herself commence to ' evoke spirits.' And then the tall candles
would
begin to burn low, hardly flickering toward the end, the human figures
on the
Gobelin tapestry would seem to awaken and move, and each of us feel
queer from
an involuntary creeping sensation; and this generally lasted until the
eastern
portion of the sky began itself to pale, on the dark face of the
southern
night.”
Mme. Blavatsky resided at Tiflis less than two years, and not more than
three in
the Caucasus. The last year she passed roaming about in Imeretia,
Georgia, and
Mingrelia. Throughout the Trans-Caucasian country, and all along the
coasts of
the Black Sea, the various peoples, notwithstanding that their Christian
persuasion dates from the fourth century A.D., are as superstitious as
any
Pagan, especially the half-savage, warlike Apkhasians, the Imeretenes,
and the
Mingrelians — the descendants, perhaps, of those ancient Greeks who came
with
Jason in search of the Golden Fleece; for, according to historical
legend, it is
the site of the archaic Colchide, and the river Rion (Pharsis) rolled
once upon
a time its rapid waves upon golden sand and ore instead of the modern
gravel and
stones. Therefore it was but natural that the princes and the landed
“noblemen”, who live in their “castles” scattered through, and
stuck
like nests in thick foliage, in the dense woods and forests of Mingrelia
and
Imeretia, and who, hardly half a century back, were nearly all [113]
half-brigands when not full-blown highwaymen, who are fanatical as
Neapolitan
monks, and ignorant as Italian noblemen — that they should, we say, have
viewed
such a character as was then Mme. Blavatsky in the light of a witch,
when not in
that of a beneficent magician. As, later in life, wherever she went, her
friends
in those days were many, but her enemies still more numerous. If she
cured and
helped those who believed themselves sincerely bewitched, it was only to
make
herself cruel enemies of those who were supposed to have bewitched and
spoiled
the victims. Refusing the presents and “thanks” of those she
relieved of the
“evil eye” — she rejected, at the same time, with equal contempt,
the bribes
offered by their enemies. No one, at any rate, and whatever her other
faults may
be, has succeeded in showing her a mercenary character, or one bent upon
money-making for any motive. Thus, while people of the class of the
Princes
Gouriel, and of the Princes Dadiani and Abashedsé, were ranked
among her best
friends, some others — all those who had a family hatred for the above
named —
were, of course, her sworn enemies. In those days, we believe even now,
these
countries — especially Mingrelia and Imeretia — were regular hot-beds of
titled
paupers; of princes, descendants of deposed and conquered sovereigns,
and feud
raged among them as during the Middle Ages. These were and have remained
her
enemies., Some years later, to these were added all the bigots,
church-goers,
missionaries, to say nothing of American and English spiritualists,
French
spiritists, and their host of mediums. Stories after stories were
invented of
her, circulated and accepted by all, except those who knew her well — as
facts.
Calumny was rife, and her enemies now hesitate at no falsehood that can
injure
her character.[114]
She defied them all, and would submit to no restraint; would stoop to
adopt no
worldly method of propitiating public opinion. She avoided society,
showing her
scorn of its idols, and was therefore treated as a dangerous iconoclast.
All her
sympathies went toward, and with, that tabooed portion of humanity which
society
pretends to ignore and avoid, while secretly running after its more or
less
renowned members — the necromancers, the obsessed, the possessed, and
such like
mysterious personages. The native Koodiani (magicians, sorcerers),
Persian
thaumaturgists, and old Armenian hags — healers and fortune-tellers —
were the
first she generally sought out and took under her protection. Finally
public
opinion became furious, and society — that mysterious somebody in
general, and
nobody in particular — made an open levee of arms against one of its own
members
who dared to defy its time-hallowed laws, and act as no respectable
person would
— namely, roaming in the forests alone, on horseback, and preferring
smoky huts
and their dirty inmates to brilliant drawing-rooms and their frivolous
denizens.
Her occult powers all this while, instead of weakening, became every day
stronger, and she seemed finally to subject to her direct will every
kind of
manifestation. The whole country was talking of her. The superstitious
Gooriel
and Mingrelian nobility began very soon to regard her as a magician, and
people
came from afar off to consult her about their private affairs. She had
long
since given up communication through raps, and preferred — what was a
far more
rapid and satisfactory method — to answer people either verbally or by
means of
direct writing. [This was done always in full consciousness, and simply,
as she
explained, watching people's thoughts as they evolved out of their head
in
spiral luminous smoke, sometimes in jets of what might be taken for some
radiant
material, and settled in distinct pictures and images around them. Often
such
thoughts and answers to them would find themselves impressed in her own
brain,
couched in words and sentences in the same way as original thoughts do.
But, so
far as we are all able to understand, the former visions are always more
trustworthy, as they are independent and distinct from the seer’s own
impressions, belonging to pure clairvoyance, not “thought transference”,
which
is a process always liable to get mixed up with one’s own more vivid
mental
impressions.] At times, during such process, Mme [115] Blavatsky seemed
to
fall into a kind of coma, or magnetic sleep, with eyes wide open, though
even
then her hand never ceased to move, and continued its writing.[“Very
naturally”,
she explains, “since it was neither magnetic sleep", nor coma, but
simply a
state of intense concentration, an attention only too necessary during
such
concentration, when the least distraction leads to a mistake. People
knowing but
of mediumistic clairvoyance, and not of our philosophy and mode of
operation,
often fall into such error”.] When thus answering mental questions, the
answers
were rarely unsatisfactory. Generally they astonished the querists —
friends and
enemies.
Meanwhile sporadic phenomena were gradually dying away in her presence.
They
still occurred, but very rarely, though they were always very
remarkable. We
give one.
It must, however, be explained that, some months previous to that event,
Mme.
Blavatsky was taken very ill. From the verbal statements of her
relatives,
recorded under their dictation, we learn that no doctor could understand
her
illness. It was one of those mysterious nervous diseases that baffle
science,
and elude the grasp of everyone but a very expert psychologist. Soon
after the
commencement of that illness, she began — as she repeatedly told her
friends —
“to lead a double life”. What she meant by it, no one of [116] the
good
people of Mingrelia could understand, of course. But this is how she
herself
describes that state: —
“Whenever I was called by name, I opened my eyes upon hearing it, and
was
myself, my own personality in every particular. As soon as I was left
alone,
however, I relapsed into my usual, half-dreamy condition, and became
somebody
else (who, namely, Madame. B. will not tell). I had simply a mild fever
that
consumed me slowly but surely, day after day, with entire loss of
appetite, and
finally of hunger, as I would feel none for days, and often went a week
without
touching any food whatever, except a little water, so that in four
months I was
reduced to a living skeleton. In cases when I was interrupted, when in
my other
self, by the sound of my present name being pronounced, and while I was
conversing in my dream life — say at half a sentence either spoken by me
or
those who were with my second me at the time — and opened my eyes to
answer the
call, I used to answer very rationally, and understood all, for I was
never
delirious. But no sooner had I closed my eyes again than the sentence
which had
been interrupted was completed by my other self, continued from the
word, or
even half the word, it had stopped at. When awake, and myself, I
remembered well
who I was in my second capacity, and what I had been and was doing. When
somebody else, i.e. the personage I had become, I know I had no idea of
who was
H. P. Blavatsky! I was in another far-off country, a totally different
individuality from myself, and had no connection at all with my actual
life.”
Such is Mme. Blavatsky's analysis of her state at that time. She was
residing
then at Ozoorgetty, a military settlement in Mingrelia, where she had
bought a
house. It is a little town, lost among the old forests and woods, which,
in
those days, had neither roads nor conveyances, save of the most
primitive kind,
and [117] which, to the very time of the last Russo-Turkish war, was
unknown outside of Caucasus. The only physician of the place, the army
surgeon,
could make nothing of her symptoms; but as she was visibly and rapidly
declining, he packed her off to Tiflis to her friends. Unable to go on
horseback, owing to her great weakness, and a journey in a cart being
deemed
dangerous, she was sent off in a large native boat along the river — a
journey
of four days to Kutais — with four native servants only to take care of
her.
What took place during that journey we are unable to state precisely;
nor is
Mme. Blavatsky herself certain of it, since her weakness was so great
that she
lay like one apparently dead until her arrival. In that solitary boat,
on a
narrow river, hedged on both sides by centenarian forests, her position
must
have been precarious.
The little stream they were sailing along was, though navigable, rarely,
if
ever, used as a means of transit, at any rate not before the war. Hence
the
information we have got came solely from her servants and was very
confused. It
appears, however, that as they were gliding slowly along the narrow
stream,
cutting its way between two steep and woody banks, the servants were
several
times during three consecutive nights frightened out of their senses by
seeing,
what they swore was their mistress, gliding off from the boat, and
across the
water in the direction of the forests, while the body of that same
mistress was
lying prostrate on her bed at the bottom of the boat. Twice the man who
towed
the canoe, upon seeing the “form”, ran away shrieking, and in great
terror.
Had it not been for a faithful old servant who was taking care of her,
the boat
and the patient would have been abandoned [118] in the middle of the
stream. On the last evening, the servant swore he saw two figures, while
the
third — his mistress, in flesh and bone — was sleeping before his eyes.
No
sooner had they arrived at KoutaĂŻs, where Mme. Blavatsky had a distant
relative
residing, than all the servants, with the exception of the old butler,
left her,
and returned no more.
It was with great difficulty that she was transported to Tiflis. A
carriage and
a friend of the family were sent to meet her; and she was brought into
the house
of her friends apparently dying.
She never talked upon that subject with anyone. But, as soon as she was
restored
to life and health, she left the Caucasus, and went to Italy. Yet it was
before
her departure from the country in 1863 that the nature of her powers
seems to
have entirely changed.
One afternoon, very weak and delicate still, after the illness just
described,
Mme. Blavatsky came in to her aunt's, N. A. Fadeef's, room. After a few
words of
conversation, remarking that she felt tired and sleepy, she was offered
to rest
upon a sofa. Hardly had her head touched her cushion when she fell into
a
profound sleep. Her aunt had quietly resumed some writing she had
interrupted to
talk with her niece, when suddenly soft but quite audible steps in the
room
behind her chair made her rapidly turn her head to see who was the
intruder, as
she was anxious that Mme. Blavatsky should not be disturbed. The room
was empty!
there was no other living person in it but herself and her sleeping
niece, yet
the steps continued audibly, as though of a heavy person treading
softly, the
floor creaking all the while. They approached the sofa, and suddenly
ceased.
Then she heard stronger sounds, as though someone was whispering near
Mme.
Blavatsky, and [119] presently a book placed on a table near the sofa
was
seen by N. A. Padeef to open, and its pages kept turning to and fro, as
if an
invisible hand were busy at it. Another book was snatched from the
library
shelves, and flew in that same direction.
More astonished than frightened — for everyone in the house had been
trained in
and become quite familiar with such manifestations — N. A. Fadeef arose
from her
arm-chair to awaken her niece, hoping thereby to put a stop to the
phenomena;
but at the same moment a heavy arm-chair moved at the other end of the
room, and
rattling on the floor, glided toward the sofa. The noise it made awoke
Mme.
Blavatsky, who, upon opening her eyes, inquired of the invisible
presence what
was the matter. A few more whisperings, and all relapsed into quietness
and
silence, and there was nothing more of the sort during the rest of the
evening.
At the date at which we write, every phenomenon independent of her will,
except
such as the one described, and that Mme. Blavatsky attributes to quite a
different cause than spiritual manifestations, has for more than twenty
years
entirely ceased. At what time this complete change in her occult powers
was
wrought we are unable to say, as she was far away from our observation,
and
spoke of it but rarely — never unless distinctly asked in our
correspondence to
answer the question. From her letters we learnt that she was always
traveling,
rarely settling for any length of time in one place. And we believe her
statements with regard to her powers to have been entirely true when she
wrote
to tell us, “Now (in 1866) I shall never be subjected to external
influences.” It is not H. P. B. who was from that time forth victim to
“
influences” which would have without doubt triumphed over a less
strong nature
than was hers; [120] but, on the contrary, it is she who subjected these
influences — whatever they may be — to her will.
“The last vestige of my psycho-physical weakness is gone, to return no
more”, writes Mme. Blavatsky in a letter to a relation. “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”. “I believe in this statement”, said, in a conversation
in May
1884 at Paris, her sister, Mme. Jelihowsky, “ the more so as for
nearly five
years we had a personal opportunity of following the various and gradual
phases
in the transformations of that force. At Pskoff and Rougodevo it
happened very
often that she could not control, nor even stop, its manifestations.
After that
she appeared to master it more fully every day, until after her
extraordinary
and protracted illness at Tiflis she seemed to defy and subject it
entirely to
her will. This was proved by her stopping any such phenomena at her
will, and by
previous arrangement for days and weeks at a time. Then, when the term
was over,
she could produce them at her command, and leaving the choice of what
should
happen to those present. In short, as already said, 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 has ever
refused the
name of “spirits” and souls — to her own control. Let it be clearly
understood, however, that H. P. B. has never pretended to be able to
control
real spirits, i.e. the spiritual monads, but only Elementals; as also to
be able
to keep at bay the shells of the dead.”] [121]
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK. CF24-1DL
CHAPTER 7
FROM APPRENTICESHIP TO DUTY
PROBABLY the years 1867 to 1870, if the story of these could be properly
told,
would be found by far the most interesting of Mme. Blavatsky's eventful
life,
but it is impossible for me to do more at present than indicate that
they were
associated with great progress in the expansion of her occult knowledge,
and
passed in the East. The two or three years intervening between her
residence at
Tiflis and the period I have named were spent indeed in European travel,
and
there would be no necessity for holding back any information concerning
these —
the latest of her relatively aimless wanderings — of which I might have
gained
possession, but no watchful relatives were with her to record what
passed, and
her own recollections give us none but bare outlines of her adventures.
In 1870 she came back from the East by a steamer via the then newly-opened
Suez
Canal, and after spending a short time in Piraeus took passage for
Spezzia on
board a Greek vessel, which met with a terrible catastrophe, and was
blown up by
an explosion of gunpowder and fireworks forming part of the cargo. Mme.
Blavatsky was one of a very small number of passengers whose lives were
saved.
The castaways were rescued with no more than the clothes they wore when
picked
out of the [122] water, and were momentarily provided for by the Greek
Government, who forwarded them to various destinations. Mme. Blavatsky
went to
Alexandria and to Cairo, where, amid much temporary inconvenience, she
waited
till supplies of money reached her from Russia. I have headed this
chapter
“From Apprenticeship to Duty”, because that is the great transition
marked
by the date of Mme. Blavatsky's return to Europe in 1870. Till that
period her
life had altogether been spent in the passionate search for occult
knowledge, on
which her inborn instincts impelled her from her earliest youth. This
had now
come upon her in ample measure. The natural-born faculties of mediumship
which
had surrounded her earlier years with a coruscation of wonders had given
place
now to attributes for which Western students of psychic mysteries at
that date
had no name. The time had not come for even the partial revelations
concerning
the great system of occult initiation as practised in the East, which
has been
embodied in books published within the last few years. Mme. Blavatsky
already
knew that she had a task before her — the task of introducing some
knowledge
concerning these mysteries to the world, — but she was sorely puzzled to
decide
how she should begin it. She had to do the best she could in making the
world
acquainted with the idea that the latent potentialities in human nature
— in
connection with which psychic phenomena of various kinds were already
attracting
the attention of large classes in both hemispheres — were of a kind
which,
properly directed, would lead to the infinite spiritual exaltation of
their
possessors, while wrongly directed they were capable of leading downward
towards
disastrous results of almost commensurate extent. She alone, at the
period I
refer to, appreciated the magnitude of her mission, and if she [123] did
not adequately appreciate the difficulties in her way, she had at all
events no
companion to share her sense of the fact that these difficulties were
very
great.
Probably she would be among those most willing to recognise, looking
back now
upon the steps she took in the beginning, that she went to work the
wrong way,
but very few people who have had a long and arduous battle in life to
fight —
especially when that fight has been chiefly waged against such moral
antagonists
as bigotry and ignorance — would be in a position at the close of their
efforts
to regard their earliest measures with satisfied complacency.
The only lever which, as the matter presented itself in the beginning to
Mme.
Blavatsky's mind, seemed available for her to work with, was the
widespread and
growing belief of large numbers of civilized people in the phenomena and
somewhat too hastily formed theories of spiritualism. She set to work in
Egypt —
finding herself there for the moment — to found a society which should
have the
investigation of spiritualistic phenomena for its purpose, and which she
designed to lead through paths of higher knowledge in the end. Some,
among the
many misrepresentations which have made her life one long struggle with
calumny
from this time onward, arose from this innocently intended measure.
Because she
set on foot her quasi-spiritualistic society, she has been regarded as
having
been committed at that date to an acceptance of the theory of psychic
phenomena
which spiritualists hold. It will have been seen, however, from the
quotations I
have given from her sister's narrative that, even on her first return
from the
East in 1858, she was emphatic in repudiating this view.
One of the persons who sought Mme. Blavatsky's acquaintance in
connection with
this abortive society [124] was the subsequently notorious Mme. Coulomb,
attached at that time to the personnel of a small hotel at Cairo, who
afterwards
finding her way with her husband, in a state of painful destitution, to
India,
fastened herself but too securely on Mme. Blavatsky's hospitality at
Bombay —
only to repay this in the end by rendering herself the tool of an
infamous
attack made upon the Theosophical Society in the person of its Founder
by a
missionary magazine at Madras. Of this I shall have occasion to speak
again
later on.The narrative of the period beginning in 1871, on which I am
now
entering, has been prepared, with a good deal of assistance from Mme.
Blavatsky
herself, from writings by relatives and intimate friends of her later
years. It
would be tedious to the reader if this were divided into separate
fragments of
testimony, and I shall therefore prefer — except in some special cases
later on
— to weld these narratives into one, and the use of the plural pronoun
“we”
will hereafter sufficiently identify passages which have a composite
authorship.
In 1871 Mme. Blavatsky wrote from Cairo to tell her friends that she had
just
returned from India, and had been wrecked somewhere en passant (near Spezzia).
She had to wait in Egypt for some time before she returned home,
meanwhile she
determined to establish a Société Spirite for the
investigation of mediums and
phenomena according to Allen Kardec's theories and philosophy, since
there was
no other way to give people a chance to see for themselves how mistaken
they
were. She would first give free play to an already established and
accepted
teaching and then, when the public would see that nothing was coming out
of it,
she would offer her own explanations. To accomplish this object, she
said, she
was ready to go to any amount of trouble — [125] even to allowing
herself
to be regarded for a time as a helpless medium. “They know no better,
and it
does me no harm — for I will very soon show them the difference between
a
passive medium and an active doer”. she explains.
A few weeks later a new letter was received. In this one she showed
herself full
of disgust for the enterprise, which had proved a perfect failure. She
had
written, it seems, to England and France for a medium, but without
success. En
désespoir de cause, she had surrounded herself with amateur
mediums — French
female spiritists, mostly beggarly tramps, when not adventuresses in the
rear of
M. de Lesseps' army of engineers and workmen on the canal of Suez.
“They steal the Society's money”, she wrote, “ they drink like
sponges,
and I now caught them cheating most shamefully our members, who come to
investigate the phenomena, by bogus manifestations. I had very
disagreeable
scenes with several persons who held me alone responsible for all this.
So I
ordered them out. . . . The Société Spirite has not
lasted a fortnight — it is a
heap of ruins, majestic, but as suggestive as those of the Pharaoh's
tombs. ...
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.” [This literal translation of a letter
written by
Mme Blavatsky to her aunt fourteen years back shows that she never
changed her
way of viewing communication with “spirits” for physical phenomena, as
she was
accused of doing when in America.]
She broke off all connection with the “mediums”, shut up her
Société, and
went to live in Boulak near the Museum. Then it seems, she came again in
contact
with her old friend the Copt of mysterious fame, of whom [126] mention
has
been made in connection with her earliest visit to Egypt, at the outset
of her
travels. For several weeks he was her only visitor. He had a strange
reputation
in Egypt, and the masses regarded him as a magician. One gentleman, who
knew him
at this time, declared that he had outlined and predicted for him for
twenty-five years to come nearly all his (the narrator's) daily life,
even to
the day of his death. The Egyptian high officials pretending to laugh at
him
behind his back, dreaded and visited him secretly. Ismail Pasha, the
Khedive,
had consulted him more than once, and later on would not consent to
follow his
advice to resign. These visits of an old man, who was reputed hardly
ever to
stir from his house (situated at about ten miles from town), to a
foreigner were
much commented upon. New slanders and scandals were set on foot. The
sceptics
who had, moved by idle curiosity, visited the Société
and witnessed the whole
failure, made capital of the thing. Ridiculing the idea of phenomena,
they had
as a natural result declared such claims to be fraud and charlatanry all
round.
Conveniently inverting the facts of the case, they even went the length
of
maintaining that instead of paying the mediums and the expenses of the
Society,
it was Mme. Blavatsky who had herself been paid, and had attempted to
palm off
juggler tricks as genuine phenomena. The groundless inventions and
rumors thus
set on foot by her enemies, mostly the discharged “French-women
mediums”,
did not prevent Mme. Blavatsky from pursuing her studies, and proving to
every
honest investigator that her extraordinary powers of clairvoyance and
clairaudience were facts, and independent of mere physical
manifestations, over
which she possessed an undeniable control. Also that her power, by
simply
looking at them, of setting objects in motion and vibration [127]
without
any direct contact with them, and sometimes at a great distance, instead
of
deserting her or even diminishing, had increased with years. A Russian
gentleman, an acquaintance of Mme. B., who happened to visit Egypt at
that time,
sent his friends the most enthusiastic letters about Mme. Blavatsky.
Thus he
wrote to a brother-officer in the same regiment a letter now in the
possession
of her relatives, and from which we translate: “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 Mme.
Blavatsky a
woman who beats all the Boscos and Robert Houdin's of the century by her
address. . . . Once I showed her a closed medallion containing the
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 know,
and she
told me 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. Now, godmother, as you know, who
left my
eldest daughter her fortune, is dead fifteen years ago. How could she
know ! ”
etc..
In an illustrated paper of the time there is a story told of Mme.
Blavatsky by
another gentleman. He met her at a table d'hôte with some
friends in a hotel of
Alexandria. Refusing to go with these to the theatre after dinner, they
remained
alone, sitting on a sofa and talking. Before the sofa there stood a
little
tea-tray, on which the waiter had placed for Mr N----- a bottle of
liqueur, some
wine, a wine-glass, and a tumbler. As he was carrying the glass with its
contents to his mouth, without any visible cause, it broke in his hand
into many
pieces. She [128] laughed, appearing overjoyed, and made the remark that
she hated liqueurs and wine and could hardly tolerate those who used
them too
freely. The story goes on ...
“ ' You do not mean to infer that it is you who broke my wine-glass .
. . ? It
is simply an accident. . . . The glass is very thin ; it was perhaps
cracked,
and I squeezed it too strongly . . .!' I lied purposely, for I had just
made the
mental remark that it seemed very strange and incomprehensible, the
glass being
very thick and strong, just as a verre à liqueur would be.”
But I wanted to draw her out.“
She looked at me very seriously, and her eyes flashed. ' What will you
bet,' she
asked, ' that I do not do it again ?'
”' Well, we will try on the spot. If you do, I will be the first to
proclaim
you a true magician. If not, we will have a good laugh at you or your
spirits
to-morrow at the Consulate. . . .' And saying so, I half-filled the
tumbler with
wine and prepared to drink it. 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 at 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 sententiously, and left the room, laughing in my face most
outrageously”.
“ During the latter years”, Mme. de Jelihowsky states, “many were
the
changes that had taken place in our family: our grandfather and our
aunt's
husband, who had both occupied very high official positions in Tiflis,
had died,
and the whole family had left the Caucasus to settle permanently in
Odessa. H.
P. Blavatsky had not visited the country for years, and there remained in
Tiflis
but myself with my family and a number of old servants, formerly serfs
of the
family, who, once liberated, could not be kept without wages in the
house they
had been born in, and were gradually being sent away. These people, some
of whom
owing to old age were unable to work for their living, came constantly
to me
[129] for help. Unable to pension so many, I did what I could for them ;
among other things I had obtained a permanent home at the City Refuge
House for
two old men, late servants of the family: a cook called Maxim and his
brother
Piotre — once upon a time a very decent footman, but at the time of the
event I
refer to an incorrigible drunkard, who had lost his arm in
consequence.”
That summer we had gone to reside during the hot months of the year at
Manglis —
the headquarters of the regiment of Erivan — some thirty miles from
town, and
Mme. Blavatsky was in Egypt. I had just received the news that my sister
had
returned from India, and was going to remain for some time at Cairo. We
corresponded very rarely, at long intervals, and our letters were
generally
short. But after a prolonged silence I received from H. P. B. a very
long and
interesting letter.“
A portion of it consisted of fly-sheets torn out from a note-book, and
these
were all covered with pencil-writing. The strange events they recorded
had been
all put down on the spot — some under the shadow of the great Pyramid of
Cheops,
and some of them inside Pharaoh's Chamber. It appears that Mme. B. had
gone
there several times, once with a large company, some of whom were
spiritualists.[Some most wonderful phenomena were described by some of
her
companions as having taken place in broad daylight in the desert when
they were
sitting under a rock; whilst other notes in Mme Blavatsky’s writing
recorded the
strange sight she saw in the Cimmerian darkness of the King’s Chamber,
when she
has passed a night alone comfortable settled inside a sarcophagus.]”
'Let me know, Vera', she wrote, 'whether it is true that the old Pietro
is dead
? He must have died last night or at some time yesterday' (the date on
the stamp
of the envelope showed that it had left Egypt ten days previous to the
day on
which it was received). 'Just fancy what happened ! A friend of mine, a
young
English [130] lady, and a medium, stood writing mechanically on bits of
paper, leaning upon an old Egyptian tomb. The pencil had begun tracing
perfect
gibberish — in characters that had never existed here, as a philologist
told us
— when suddenly, and as I was looking from behind her back, they changed
into
what I thought were Russian letters. My attention having been called
elsewhere,
I had just left her, when I heard people saying that what she had
written was
now evidently in some existing characters, but that neither she nor
anyone else
could read them. I came back just in time to prevent her from destroying
that
slip of paper as she had done with the rest, and was rewarded.
Possessing myself
of the rejected slip, fancy my astonishment on finding it contained in
Russian
an evident apostrophe to myself!”
' “Barishnya (little or' young miss '), dear baryshnya! ” said the
writer,
“help, oh help me, miserable sinner! ... I suffer: drink, drink, give
me a
drink! . . . I suffer, I suffer!” From this term baryshnya — a title
our old
servants will, I see, use with us two even after our hair will have
grown white
with age — I understood immediately that the appeal came from one of our
old
servants, and took therefore the matter in hand by arming myself with a
pencil
to record what I could myself see. I found the name Piotre Koutcherof
echoed in
my mind quite distinctly, and I saw before me an indistinguishable mass
of grey
smoke — a formless pillar — and thought I heard it repeat the same
words.
Furthermore, I saw that he had died in Dr Gorolevitch's hospital
attached to the
City Refuge, the Tiflis workhouse where you had placed them both.
Moreover, as I
made out, it is you who placed him there in company with his brother,
our old
Maxim, who had died a few days before him. You had never written about
poor
Maxim's death. Do tell me whether it is so or not. . . .'
Further on followed her description of the whole vision as she had it,
later on,
in the evening when alone, and the authentic words pronounced by '
Piotre's
spook' as she called it. The ' spirit' (?) was bitterly complaining of
thirst
and was becoming quite desperate. It was punishment, it said — and the
spook
seemed to know it [131] well, — for his drunkenness during the lifetime
of
that personality ! . . . 'An agony of thirst that nothing could quench —
an ever
living fire,' as she explained it.”
Mme. Blavatsky's letter ended with a postscript, in which she notified
her
sister that her doubts had been all settled. She saw the astral spooks
of both
the brothers — one harmless and passive, the other active and dangerous.
[How
dangerous is the latter kind was proved on the spot. Miss O - , the
medium, a
young lady of hardly twenty, governess in a rich family of bankers, an
extremely
modest and gentle girl, had hardly written the Russian words addressed
to Mme
Blavatsky, when she was seized with a trembling, and asked to drink.
When water
was brought she threw it away, and went on asking for a drink. Wine was
offered
her - she greedily drank it, and began drinking one glass after another
until,
to the horror of all, she fell into convulsions, and cried for “wine-a
drink!”
till she fainted away, and was carried home in a carriage. She had an
illness
after this that lasted several weeks. - [H.P.B.]Upon the receipt of this
letter,
her sister was struck with surprise. Ignorant herself of the death of
the
parties mentioned, she telegraphed immediately to town, and the answer
received
from Dr Gorolevitch corroborated the news announced by Mme. Blavatsky in
every
particular. Piotre had died on the very same day and date as given in H.
P.
Blavatsky's letter, and his brother two days earlier.
Disgusted with the failure of her spiritist society and the gossip it
provoked,
Mme. Blavatsky soon went home via Palestine, and lingered for some
months
longer, making a voyage to Palmyra and other ruins, whither she went
with
Russian friends. Accounts of some of the incidents of her journey found
their
way into the French and even American papers. At the end of 1872 she
returned in
her usual way without warning, and surprised her family at Odessa.[132]
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK. CF24-1DL
CHAPTER 8
RESIDENCE IN AMERICA
[132] IN the beginning of 1873 Mme. Blavatsky left Russia and went in
the
first instance to Paris. By this time the psychic relationship between
herself
and her occult teachers in the East was already established on that
intimate
footing which has rendered her whole subsequent life subject to its practical
direction. It is unnecessary to inquire why she adopted this or that
course; we
shall rarely discover commonplace motives for her action, and frequently
she
herself would be no better able to say “why” she might be at any given
moment
arranging to go here or there than the merest stranger present. The
immediate
motive of her proceedings would be the direction she would receive
through
occult channels of perception, and for herself, rebellious and
uncontrollable
though she had been in earlier life, “an order” from “her master” was
now enough
to send her forward on the most uninviting errand, in patient confidence
that
good results would ensue, and that whatever might be thus ordered, would
assuredly prove for the best.
The position is so unlike any which the experience of ordinary mundane
life
supplies that I may usefully endeavor to explain the relationship which
exists
in connection with, and arising out of, occult initiation in the East
between a
pupil, or chela, of the esoteric or [133] occult doctrine and his
teacher,
master, or guru. I have known many chelas within the last few years, and
I can
speak on the subject from information that is not exclusively derived
even from
that source.
The primary motive which governs people who become chelas is the desire
to
achieve moral and spiritual exaltation that may lead directly to a
higher state
of being than can be hoped for by the unassisted operation of the normal
law of
nature. Referring back to the esoteric view of the human soul's
progress, it
will be seen that people may often be impelled, as Mme. Blavatsky was,
for
instance, from childhood, by an inborn craving for occult instruction
and
psychic development. Such people seek initiation under the guidance, as
it were,
of a commanding instinct, which is unlike the intellectually formed
purpose to
accomplish a spiritual achievement that I have assigned above to chelas
as their
primary motive. But in truth the motive would be regarded by occultists
as the
same at different stages of development. For the normal law of Nature is
that a
soul having accomplished a certain amount of progress — along the path
of
spiritual evolution — in one physical life (one incarnation), will be
reborn
without losing the attributes thus acquired. All these constitute what
are
loosely spoken of as inborn tendencies, natural tastes, inclinations,
and so
forth. And thus, whether a chela is then, for the first time, seeking
initiation
or watched over by a guru from his last birth, the primary motive of his
effort
is the same.
And this being his own spiritual advancement, it may be, that if
circumstances
do not require him to play an active part in any work in the world, his
duty
will, to a large extent, be concentrated on his own interior life. Such
a man's
chief obligation towards the public at large, therefore, will be to
conceal the
fact that he is a chela, [134] for he has not yet, by the hypothesis,
attained the right to choose who shall and who shall not be introduced
to the
“mysteries”. He merely has to keep the secrets entrusted to him as such.
On the
other hand, the exigencies of his service may require him to perform
tasks in
the world which involve the partial explanation of his relationship with
his
masters, and then a very much more embarrassing career lies before him.
For such
a chela — however perfect his occult communications may be, through the
channel
of his own psychic faculties, between himself and his masters — is never
allowed
to regard himself for an instant as a blind automaton in their hands. He
is, on
the contrary, a responsible agent who is left to perform his task by the
light
of his own sagacity, and he will never receive “orders” which seriously
conflict
with that principle. These will be only of a general character, or,
where they
refer to details, will be of a kind that do not, in occult phrase,
interfere
with Karma; that is to say, that do not supersede the agent's moral
responsibility.
Finally, it should be understood in regard to “orders” among initiates
in
occultism, that the order of an occult guru to his chela differs in a
very
important respect from the order of an officer to his soldier. It is a
direction
that in the nature of things would never be enforced, for the disregard
of which
there could be no positive or prescribed penalty, and which is only
imposed upon
the chela by the consideration that if he gets an order and does not
obey it, he
is unlikely to get any more. It is to be regarded as an order because of
the
ardor of obedience on the side of the chela, whose aspirations, by the
hypothesis, are wholly centered on the masters. The service thus
rendered is
especially of the kind which has been described as perfect freedom.
[135]
All this must be borne in mind by any reader who would understand Mme.
Blavatsky
and the foundation of the Theosophical Society, and must be rigorously
applied
to the narrative of her later life. A constant perplexity arises, for
people who
are slightly acquainted with the circumstances of her career, from the
indiscretions in connection with the management of the Theosophical
Society
which she has frequently fallen into. How can it be that the Mahatmas —
her
occult teachers and masters, whose insight is represented as being so
great,
whose interest in the theosophical movement is said to be so keen, whose
wisdom
is vaunted so enthusiastically by their adherents — permit their agent
Mme.
Blavatsky, with whom it is alleged they are in constant communication,
to make
mistakes which most people in her place would have avoided, to trust
persons
almost obviously unworthy of her confidence, to associate herself with
proceedings that tend to lower the dignity of her enterprise, to lose
temper and
time with assailants who might be calmly ignored, and to spend her
psychic
energy in the wrong places, with the wrong people, and at the wrong
moments. The
solution of the puzzle is to be found entirely in the higher spiritual
aspects
of the undertaking. The Theosophical Society is by a great way not the
only
instrument through which the Mahatmas are working in the world to foster
the
growth of spirituality among mankind, but it is the one enterprise that
has been
confided, in a large measure, to Mme. Blavatsky. If she were to fail
with it,
the Mahatma energy concerned would be spent not in trying to bolster up
her
failure, but in some quite different direction. If she succeeds with it,
the
principles of moral responsibility are best vindicated by leaving her to
struggle through with her work in her own way. A general on a campaign
sending
[136] an officer to perform a specific duty is mainly concerned with the
result to be gained. If he thinks he can promote this by interfering
with fresh
orders, he does so. But by the hypothesis, a Mahatma interfering with
his
officer is throwing into confusion the operation of the laws of Nature
which
have to do with the causes — efficient on a plane above this of physical
incarnation — that are generated by what we call moral responsibility.
Of course
it is open to people who know nothing of Eastern occultism, nor of
superior
planes in Nature and so forth, to put all this aside and judge Mme.
Blavatsky's
action by commonplace prosaic standards; but it is not reasonable for
the
considerable number of people who in various ways are quite ready to
profess
belief in the Mahatmas, and in the reality of that occult world in which
Mme.
Blavatsky is regarded by most theosophists as having been initiated, to
say, in
spite of these beliefs, that the action of the Mahatmas in leaving Mme.
Blavatsky to make mistakes and trust the wrong people and so forth is
unintelligible. It is not unintelligible in principle, even though, as I
have
indicated a page or two back, Mme. Blavatsky will sometimes receive
orders the
immediate motive of which she does not understand, but obeys none the
less. This
condition of things does not violate the rule about not converting a
responsible
chela into a blind automaton. Such interferences would never be found to
take
place under conditions which would discharge the agent of moral
responsibility
for the manner in which he might resume the guidance of his enterprise
from the
point to which obedience to the order received might have carried on or
diverted
him.
No special interest attaches to Mme. Blavatsky's brief residence in
Paris in
1873, where she stayed with a cousin of hers, Nicolas Hahn, Rue de
I'Université,
for [137] two months. She was directed to visit the United States, and
make
that place for a time the scene of her operations.
She arrived at New York on 7th July 1873, and resided in that city —
with the
exception of a few weeks and months when she had to visit other cities
and
places — for over six years, after which time she got her naturalization
papers.
Although, as will have been seen from Mme. de Jelihowsky's testimony,
she was
emphatic, even in 1858, in claiming for most of the phenomena that took
place in
her presence a very different origin from that usually assigned to such
phenomena by spiritualists, the experience of spiritualism and
mediumship that
she acquired in America greatly enlarged her views on this subject. In
1875 she
wrote home: —
“The more I see of mediums — for the United States are a true nursery,
the most
prolific hot-bed for mediums and sensitives of all kinds, genuine and
artificial
— the more I see the danger humanity is surrounded with. Poets speak of
the thin
partition between this world and the other. They are blind: there is no
partition at all except the difference of states in which the living and
the
dead exist, and the grossness of the physical senses of the majority of
mankind.
Yet, these senses are our salvation. They were given to us by a wise and
sagacious mother and nurse — Nature; for, otherwise, individuality and
even
personality would have become impossible: the dead would be ever merging
into
the living, and the latter assimilating the former. Were there around us
but one
variety of 'spirits' — as well call the dregs of wine, spirits — the
reliquae of
those mortals who are dead and gone, one could reconcile oneself with
it. We
cannot avoid, in some way or other, assimilating our dead, and little by
little,
and unconsciously to ourselves, we become they — even physically,
especially in
the unwise West, where cremation is unknown. We breathe and devour the
dead —
men and animals — with every [138] breath we draw in, as every human
breath
that goes out makes up the bodies and feeds the formless creatures in
the air
that will be men some day. So much for the physical process; for the
mental and
the intellectual, and also the spiritual, it is just the same; we
interchange
gradually our brain-molecules, our intellectual and even spiritual
auras, hence
— our thoughts, desires, and aspirations, with those who preceded us.
This
process is common to humanity in general. It is a natural one, and
follows the
economy and laws of nature, insomuch that one's son may become gradually
his own
grandfather, and his aunt to boot, imbibing their combined atoms, and
thus
partially accounting for the possible resemblance, or atavism. But there
is
another law, an exceptional one, and which manifests itself among
mankind
sporadically and periodically: the law of forced post-mortem
assimilation,
during the prevalence of which epidemic the dead invade the domain of
the living
from their respective spheres — though, fortunately, only within the
limits of
the regions they lived in, and in which they are buried. In such cases,
the
duration and intensity of the epidemic depends upon the welcome they
receive,
upon whether they find the doors opening widely to receive them or not,
and
whether the necromantic plague is increased by magnetic attraction, the
desire
of the mediums, sensitives, and the curious themselves; or whether,
again, the
danger being signaled, the epidemic is wisely repressed.
“Such a periodical visitation is now occurring in America. It began with
innocent children — the little Misses Fox — playing unconsciously with
this