Theos-Talk Archives (August 1998 Message tt00371)

Research resource for the production of *The Mahatma Letters to A. P.
Sinnett*

H. P. Blavatsky and the SPR: An Examination of the Hodgson Report of
1885, Vernon Harrison, Theosophical University Press, 1997.

Full text available on-line at:
http://www.theosociety.org/pasadena/hpb-spr/hpbspr-h.htm


Dr. Harrison is a leading counterfeit and forgery expert.  He describes
the book:

"This book is divided into two parts. Part 1 reprints my earlier paper
entitled "J'Accuse," published in the Journal of the Society for
Psychical Research, Vol. 53, No. 803 (April 1986), pp. 286-310, plus a
few footnotes for clarity's sake. This is, in the main, a study of the
Hodgson Report itself, supplemented by as detailed a study of the
Mahatma Letters as time and opportunity to visit the British Library
permitted. It is reproduced here because the Journal of the Society for
Psychical Research does not circulate widely outside the SPR and some
libraries.

Part 2 describes work done after 1986 and records the findings of a
line-by-line microscopical examination of each and every one of the
1,323 color slides in the British Library set. Several pages of these
documents are reproduced in this book. Hodgson gave no illustration
whatever of the alleged incriminating Blavatsky-Coulomb letters, of
which he made much; and the only illustrations of the Mahatma Letters
given in his Report are fragments, mostly isolated characters torn from
their context and from documents which, for the most part, can neither
be identified nor accurately dated."

<snip>

"My conclusions from this examination are:

FIRST: The Hodgson Report is not a scientific study. It is more like the
address of a counsel for the prosecution who is interested only in
evidence, however dubious, which can be made to support his views.
Hodgson shows that he was either ignorant or contemptuous of the basic
principles of English justice -- and the rest of the Committee seemed
little better. As said, he quotes verbal and uncorroborated statements
of unnamed witnesses; he cites documents which are neither reproduced in
his report nor identifiable; he advances conjecture as established fact;
and he makes his handwriting experts change their minds until they give
him the answers he wants. The possibility that someone other than HPB
could have written the Mahatma Letters was never considered. This list
of misdemeanors alone would render the Hodgson Report inadmissible in a
court of law.

SECOND: In cases where it has been possible to check Hodgson's
statements against the direct testimony of the Letters preserved in the
British Library, his statements are found to be either false or of no
significance in the context. He makes three cardinal statements on which
hangs his whole contention that Madame Blavatsky wrote the Mahatma
Letters herself with intent to deceive. These I summarize as follows:

(i) That there are clear signs of development in the KH handwriting,
various strong resemblances to Madame Blavatsky's ordinary handwriting
having been gradually eliminated;

(ii) That special forms of letters proper to Madame Blavatsky's ordinary
writing, and not proper to the KH writing, occasionally appear in the
latter;

(iii) That there are certain very marked peculiarities of Madame
Blavatsky's ordinary writing which appear throughout the KH writing.

The first two are demonstrably false; the third could apply to many
other writers and does not pinpoint HPB as the writer to the exclusion
of all other possible writers. These downright falsities coupled with
the procedural errors, make it impossible for me to accept as a fair,
impartial statement of fact those parts of the Hodgson Report that I can
verify from primary evidence. This being so, I may perhaps be pardoned
for regarding with suspicion the remainder of the Hodgson Report for
which supporting firsthand evidence is no longer extant.

<snip>

LAST: I find no evidence of common origin of the KH and M scripts and
HPB's ordinary, consciously-made handwriting. That is to say, I find no
evidence that the Mahatma Letters were written by Madame Blavatsky in a
disguised form of her ordinary writing made for fraudulent purposes.
What may have come through her hand in trance, dislocation, or other
forms of altered consciousness is another matter; but writing so made
cannot be classed as either fraud or imposture."

The book includes 13 color plates of the Mahatma Letters.



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