Theos-Talk Archives (May 2006 Message tt00513)

In 1888, H.P. Blavatsky wrote:

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We have been asked by a correspondent why he should not 'be free to 
suspect some of the so-called 'precipitated' letters as being 
forgeries,' giving as his reason for it that while some of them bear 
the stamp of (to him) undeniable genuineness, others seem from their 
contents and style, to be imitations. This is equivalent to saying 
that he has such an unerring spiritual insight as to be able to 
detect the false from the true, though he has never met a Master, 
nor been given any key by which to test his alleged communications. 
The inevitable consequence of applying his untrained judgment in 
such cases, would be to make him as likely as not to declare false 
what was genuine, and genuine what was false. Thus what criterion 
has any one to decide between one 'precipitated' letter, or another 
such letter? Who except their authors, or those whom they employ as 
their amanuenses (the chelas and disciples), can tell? For it is 
hardly one out of a hundred 'occult' letters that is ever written by 
the hand of the Master, in whose name and on whose behalf they are 
sent, as the Masters have neither need nor leisure to write them; 
and that when a Master says, 'I wrote that letter,' it means only 
that every word in it was dictated by him and impressed under his 
direct supervision. Generally they make their chela, whether near or 
far away, write (or precipitate) them, by impressing upon his mind 
the ideas they wish expressed, and if necessary aiding him in the 
picture-printing process of precipitation. It depends entirely upon 
the chela's state of development, how accurately the ideas may be 
transmitted and the writing-model imitated. Thus the non-adept 
recipient is left in the dilemma of uncertainty, whether, if one 
letter is false, all may not be; for, as far as intrinsic evidence 
goes, all come from the same source, and an are brought by the same 
mysterious means. But there is another, and a far worse condition 
implied. For all that the recipient of 'occult' letters can possibly 
know, and on the simple grounds of probability and common honesty, 
the unseen correspondent who would tolerate one single fraudulent 
line in his name, would wink at an unlimited repetition of the 
deception. And this leads directly to the following. All the so-
called occult letters being supported by identical proofs, they have 
all to stand or fall together. If one is to be doubted, then all 
have, and the series of letters in the 'Occult World,' 'Esoteric 
Buddhism,' etc., etc., may be, and there is no reason why they 
should not be in such a case-frauds, 'clever impostures,' 
and 'forgeries' such as the ingenuous though stupid agent [Richard 
Hodgson] of the 'S.P.R.' has made them out to be. . . .  "Lodges of 
Magic," Lucifer, October, 1888