Theos-Talk Archives (April 2003 Message tt00093)

Sunday, April 20, 2003


Dear Friends:


Re: THE ESOTERIC SHE


There is an historical background to the article.

In 1890 Dr. Coues authored a libelous article about
Mme. Blavatsky that was published in the newspaper NEW YORK “SUN.” On
H P B’s behalf Mr. Judge sewed both Dr. Coues and the NEW YORK “SUN.”
In his article Dr. Coues brought together all the libels concerning
Mme Blavatsky and the THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY that had so far been aired.

H P B died in 1891 on May 8th. 

Although all suits terminated with her death, the
newspaper continued their independent research into the allegations
that Dr. Coues had made on her life and work and the Theosophical
Movement. They determined that all the libels made were false. And
they 
published a retraction.  

They also invited Mr. Judge to write an article on the
work and life of Mme. Blavatsky, and published it in their September
26th issue 1892 under this title:


THE ESOTERIC SHE

We reprint this herebelow.

	
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THE ESOTERIC SHE

The Late Mme. Blavatsky - A Sketch of Her Career
By William Quan Judge


A WOMAN who, for one reason or another, has kept the world - first her
little child world and afterward two hemispheres - talking of her,
disputing about her, defending or assailing her character and motives,
joining her enterprise or opposing it might and main, and in her death
being as much telegraphed about between two continents as an emperor,
must have been a remarkable person. such was Mme. Helena Petrovna
Blavatsky, born under the power of the holy Tzar, in the family of the
Hahns, descended on one side from the famous crusader, Count
Rottenstern, who added Hahn, a cock, to his name because that bird
saved his life from a wily Saracen who had come into his tent to
murder him.


Hardly any circumstance or epoch in Mme. Blavatsky's career was
prosaic. She chose to be born into this life at Ekaterinoslaw, Russia,
in the year 1831, when coffins and desolation were everywhere from the
plague of cholera. The child was so delicate that the family decided
upon immediate baptism under the rites of the Greek Catholic Church.
This was in itself not common, but the ceremony was - under the luck
that ever was with Helena - more remarkable and startling still. At
this ceremony all the relatives are present and stand holding lighted
candles. As one was absent a young child, aunt of the infant Helena,
was made proxy for the absentee, and given a candle like the rest.
Tired out by the effort, this young proxy sank down to the floor
unnoticed by the others, and, just as the sponsors were renouncing the
evil one on the babe's behalf, by three times spitting on the floor,
the sitting witness with her candle accidentally set fire to the robes
of the officiating priest, and instantly there was a small
conflagration, in which many of those present were seriously burned. 

Thus amid the scourge of death in the land was Mme. Blavatsky ushered
into our world, and in the flames baptized by the priests of a Church
whose fallacious dogmas she did much in her life to expose.


She was connected with the rulers of Russia. Speaking in 1881, her
uncle, Gen. Fadeef, joint Councillor of State of Russia, said that, as
daughter of Col. Peter Hahn, she was grand-daughter of Gen. Alexis
Hahn von Rottenstern Hahn of old Mecklenburg stock, settled in Russia,
and on her mother's side daughter of Héléne Fadeef and grand-daughter
of Princess Helena Dolgorouky. Her maternal ancestors were of the
oldest families in Russia and direct descendants of the Prince or
Grand Duke Rurik, the first ruler of Russia. Several ladies of the
family belonged to the imperial house, becoming Czarinas by marriage.
One of them, a Dolgorouky, married the grandfather of Peter the Great,
and another was betrothed to Czar Peter II. 

Through these connections it naturally resulted that Mme. Blavatsky
was acquainted personally with many noble Russians. In Paris I met
three princes of Russia and one well-known General, who told of her
youth and the wonderful things related about her then; and in Germany
I met the Prince Emile de Wittgenstein of one of the many Russo-German
families, and himself cousin to the Empress of Russia and aide-de-camp
to the Czar, who told me that he was an old family friend of hers, who
heard much about her in early years, but, to his regret, had never had
the fortune to see her again after a brief visit made with her father
to his house. But he joined her famous Theosophical Society by
correspondence, and wrote, after the war with Turkey, that he had been
told in a letter from her that no hurt would come to him during the
campaign, and such turned out to be the fact.

As a child she was the wonder of the neighborhood and the terror of
the simpler serfs. Russia teems with superstitions and omens, and as
Helena was born on the seventh month and between the 30th and 31st
day, she was supposed by the nurses and servants to have powers and
virtues possessed by no one else. And these supposed powers made her
the cynosure of all in her early youth. She was allowed liberties
given none others, and as soon as she could understand she was given
by her nurses the chief part in a mystic Russian ceremony performed
about the house and grounds on the 30th of July with the object of
propitiating the house demon. 

The education she got was fragmentary, and in itself so inadequate as
to be one more cause among many for the belief of her friends in later
life that she was endowed with abnormal psychic powers, or else in
verity assisted by those unseen beings who she asserted were her
helpers and who were men living on the earth, but possessed of
developed senses that laughed at time and space. In girlhood she was
bound by no restraint of conventionality, but rode any Cossack horse
in a man's saddle, and later on spent a long time with her father with
his regiment in the field, where, with her sister, she became the pet
of the soldiers. In 1844, when 14, her father took her to London and
Paris, where some progress was made in music, and before 1848 she
returned home.

Her marriage in 1848 to Gen. Nicephore Blavatsky, the Governor of
Erivan in the Caucasus, gave her the name of Blavatsky, borne till her
death. This marriage, like all other events in her life, was full of
pyrotechnics. Her abrupt style had led her female friends to say that
she could not make the old Blavatsky marry her, and out of sheer
bravado she declared she could, and sure enough, he did propose and
was accepted. Then the awful fact obtruded itself on Helena's mind
that this could not - in Russia - be undone. They were married, but
the affair was signalized by Mme. Blavatsky's breaking a candlestick
over his head and precipitately leaving the house, never to see him
again. 

After her determination was evident, her father assisted her in a life
of travel which began from that date, and not until 1858 did she
return to Russia. Meanwhile her steps led her to America in 1851, to
Canada, to New Orleans, to Mexico, off to India, and back again in
1853 to the United States. Then her relatives lost sight of her once
more until 1858, when her coming back was like other events in her
history. It was a wintry night, and a wedding party was on at the home
in Russia. Guests had arrived, and suddenly, interrupting the meal,
the bell rang violently, and there, unannounced, was Mme. Blavatsky at
the door.


>From this point the family and many friends testify, both by letter
and by articles in the Rebus, a well-known journal in Russia, and in
other papers, a constant series of marvels wholly unexplainable on the
theory of jugglery was constantly occurring. They were of such a
character that hundreds of friends from great distances were
constantly visiting the house to see the wonderful Mme. Blavatsky.
Many were incredulous, many believed it was magic, and others started
charges of fraud. 

The superstitious Gooriel and Mingrelian nobility came in crowds and
talked incessantly after, calling her a magician. They came to see the
marvels others reported, to see her sitting quietly reading while
tables and chairs moved of themselves and low raps in every direction
seemed to reply to questions. 

Among many testified to was one done for her brother, who doubted her
powers. A small chess table stood on the floor. Very light - a child
could lift it and a man break it. One asked if Mme. Blavatsky could
fasten it by will to the floor. She then said to examine it, and they
found it loose. After that, and being some distance off, she said,
"Try it again." They then found that no power of theirs could stir it,
and her brother supposing from his great strength that this "trick"
could easily be exposed, embraced the little table and shook and
pulled it without effect, except to make it groan and creak. So with
wall and furniture rapping, objects moving, messages about distant
happenings arriving by aerial port, the whole family and neighborhood
were in a constant state of excitement. Mme. Blavatsky said herself
that this was a period when she was letting her psychic forces play,
and learning fully to understand and control them.


But the spirit of unrest came freshly again, and she started out once
more to find, as she wrote to me, "the men and women whom I want to
prepare for the work of a great philosophical and ethical movement
that I expect to start in a later time." Going to Spezzia in a Greek
vessel, the usual display of natural circumstances took place, and the
boat was blown up by an explosion of gunpowder in the cargo. Only a
few of those on board were saved, she among them. This led her to
Cairo, in Egypt, where, in 1871, she started a society with the object
of investigating spiritualism so as to expose its fallacies, if any,
and to put its facts on a firm, scientific, and reasonable basis, if
possible. But it only lasted fourteen days, and she wrote about it
then: "It is a heap of ruins - majestic, but as suggestive as those of
the Pharoahs' tombs."


It was, however, in the United States that she really began the work
that has made her name well known in Europe, Asia, and America; made
her notorious in the eyes of those who dislike all reformers, but
great and famous for those who say her works have benefited them.
Prior to 1875 she was again investigating the claims of spiritualism
in this country, and wrote home then analyzing it, declaring false its
assertion that the dead were heard from, and showing that, on the
other hand, the phenomena exhibited a great psycho-physiological
change going on here, which, if allowed to go on in our present merely
material civilization, would bring about great disaster, morally and
physically.


Then in 1875, in New York, she started the Theosophical Society, aided
by Col. H. S. Olcott and others, declaring its objects to be the
making of a nucleus for a universal brotherhood, the study of ancient
and other religions and sciences, and the investigation of the
psychical and recondite laws affecting man and nature.

There certainly was no selfish object in this, nor any desire to raise
money. She was in receipt of funds from sources in Russia and other
places until they were cut off by reason of her becoming an American
citizen, and also because her unremunerated labors for the society
prevented her doing literary work on Russian magazines, where all her
writings would be taken eagerly. 

As soon as the Theosophical Society was started she said to the writer
that a book had to be written for its use. Isis Unveiled was then
begun, and unremittingly she worked at it night and day until the
moment when a publisher was secured for it.
Meanwhile crowds of visitors were constantly calling at her rooms in
Irving Place, later in Thirty-fourth street, and last in Forty-seventh
street and Eighth avenue. 

The newspapers were full of her supposed powers or of laughter at the
possibilities in man that she and her society asserted. A prominent
New York daily wrote of her thus: "A woman of as remarkable
characteristics as Cagliostro himself, and one who is every day as
differently judged by different people as the renowned Count was in
his day. By those who know her slightly she is called a charlatan;
better acquaintance made you think she was learned; and those who were
intimate with her were either carried away with belief in her power or
completely puzzled." 

“Isis Unveiled” attracted wide attention, and all the New York papers
reviewed it, each saying that it exhibited immense research. The
strange part of this is, as I and many others can testify as
eyewitnesses to the production of the book, that the writer had no
library in which to make researches and possessed no notes of
investigation or reading previously done. All was written straight out
of hand. And yet it is full of references to books in the British
Museum and other great libraries, and every reference is correct.
Either, then, we have, as to that book, a woman who was capable of
storing in her memory a mass of facts, dates, numbers, titles, and
subjects such as no other human being ever was capable of, or her
claim to help from unseen beings is just.

In 1878, “Isis Unveiled” having been published, Mme. Blavatsky
informed her friends that she must go to India and start there the
same movement of the Theosophical Society. So in December of that year
she and Col. Olcott and two more went out to India, stopping at London
for a while. Arriving in Bombay, they found three or four Hindoos to
meet them who had heard from afar of the matter. A place was hired in
the native part of the town, and soon she and Col. Olcott started the
Theosophist, a magazine that became at once well known there and was
widely bought in the West.

There in Bombay and later in Adyar, Madras, Mme. Blavatsky worked day
after day in all seasons, editing her magazine and carrying on an
immense correspondence with people in every part of the world
interested in theosophy, and also daily disputing and discussing with
learned Hindoos who constantly called. 

Phenomena occurred there also very often, and later the society for
discovering nothing about the psychic world investigated these, and
came to the conclusion that this woman of no fortune, who was never
before publicly heard of in India, had managed, in some way they could
not explain, to get up a vast conspiracy that ramified all over India,
including men of all ranks, by means of which she was enabled to
produce pretended phenomena. I give this conclusion as one adopted by
many. For any one who knew her and who knows India, with its hundreds
of different languages, none of which she knew, the conclusion is
absurd. 

The Hindoos believed in her, said always that she could explain to
them their own scriptures and philosophies where the Brahmins had lost
or concealed the key, and that by her efforts and the work of the
society founded through her, India's young men were being saved from
the blank materialism which is the only religion the West can ever
give a Hindoo.

In 1887 Mme. Blavatsky returned to England, and there started another
theosophical magazine, called “Lucifer,” and immediately stirred up
the movement in Europe. Day and night there, as in New York and India,
she wrote and spoke, incessantly corresponding with people everywhere,
editing Lucifer, and making more books for her beloved society, and
never possessed of means, never getting from the world at large
anything save abuse wholly undeserved. 

The “Key to Theosophy” was written in London, and also “The Secret
Doctrine,” which is the great text book for Theosophists. “The Voice
of the Silence” was written there too, and is meant for devotional
Theosophists. Writing, writing, writing from morn till night was her
fate here. Yet, although scandalized and abused here as elsewhere, she
made many devoted friends, for there never was anything half way in
her history. Those who met her or heard of her were always either
staunch friends or bitter enemies.

“The Secret Doctrine” led to the coming into the society of Mrs. Annie
Besant, and then Mme. Blavatsky began to say that her labors were
coming to an end, for here was a woman who had the courage of the
ancient reformers and who would help carry on the movement in England
unflinchingly. “The Secret Doctrine” was sent to Mr. Stead of the Pall
Mall Gazette to review, but none of his usual reviewers felt equal to
it and he asked Mrs. Besant if she could review it. She accepted the
task, reviewed, and then wanted an introduction to the writer. Soon
after that she joined the society, first fully investigating Mme.
Blavatsky's character, and threw in her entire forces with the
Theosophists. Then a permanent London headquarters was started and
still exists. And there Mme. Blavatsky passed away, with the knowledge
that the society she had striven so hard for at any cost was at last
an entity able to struggle for itself.

In her dying moment she showed that her life had been spent for an
idea, with full consciousness that in the eyes of the world it was
Utopian, but in her own necessary for the race. She implored her
friends not to allow her then ending incarnation to become a failure
by the failure of the movement started and carried on with so much of
suffering. 

She never in all her life made money or asked for it. Venal writers
and spiteful men and women have said she strove to get money from
so-called dupes, but all her intimate friends know that over and over
again she has refused money; that always she has had friends who would
give her all they had if she would take it, but she never took any nor
asked it. 

On the other hand, her philosophy and her high ideals have caused
others to try to help all those in need. Impelled by such incentive,
one rich Theosophist gave her $5,000 to found a working girls' club at
Bow, in London, and one day, after Mrs. Besant had made the
arrangements for the house and the rest, Mme. Blavatsky, although sick
and old, went down there herself and opened the club in the name of
the society.

The aim and object of her life were to strike off the shackles forged
by priestcraft for the mind of man. She wished all men to know that
they are God in fact, and that as men they must bear the burden of
their own sins, for no one else can do it. Hence she brought forward
to the West the old Eastern doctrines of karma and reincarnation. 

Under the first, the law of justice, she said each must answer for
himself, and under the second make answer on the earth where all his
acts were done. She also desired that science should be brought back
to the true ground where life and intelligence are admitted to be
within and acting on and through every atom in the universe. Hence her
object was to make religion scientific and science religious, so that
the dogmatism of each might disappear.

Her life since 1875 was spent in the unremitting endeavor to draw
within the Theosophical Society those who could work unselfishly to
propagate an ethics and philosophy tending to realize the brotherhood
of man by showing the real unity and essential non-separateness of
every being. And her books were written with the declared object of
furnishing the material for intellectual and scientific progress on
those lines. 

The theory of man's origin, powers, and destiny brought forward by
her, drawn from ancient Indian sources, places us upon a higher
pedestal that that given by either religion or science, for it gives
to each the possibility of developing the godlike powers within and of
at last becoming a co-worker with nature.

As every one must die at last, we will not say that her demise was a
loss; but if she had not lived and done what she did humanity would
not have had the impulse and the ideas toward the good which it was
her mission to give and to proclaim. And there are today scores, nay,
hundreds, of devout, earnest men and women intent on purifying their
own lives and sweetening the lives of others, who trace their hopes
and aspirations to the wisdom-religion revived in the West through her
efforts, and who gratefully avow that their dearest possessions are
the result of her toilsome and self-sacrificing life. If they, in
turn, live aright and do good, they will be but illustrating the
doctrine which she daily taught and hourly practised.

WILLIAM Q. JUDGE

New York Sun, Sept. 26, 1892
 
 

	






		


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