Theos-Talk Archives (July 2006 Message tt00015)

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Thanks for your comments below.

Concerning the Coulomb/missionary criminal
forgeries, I have discovered in my own research
that portions of some of these letters are
genuine and even HPB writes (BCW VI, 295-297. )
that certain portions are genuine. If the text
of these forged letters were included by
Boris de Zirkoff in Col. Writings, Vol. VI,
I see no good reason for excluding them from
a future Volume of the Letters. But one
could add commentary and refer students to
rebuttals of these forged letters by Hastings,
Vania, Fuller, and others. Let the reader
have access to all the material and let the
reader decide what is what.

I remember many years ago when I was first collecting material on
Blavatsky and Theosophy that some Theosophists chided me for
collecting the negative hostile material on HPB & Theosophy. I
remember one student telling me, "We all know none of that is
true." I said that at that point in time, I didn't know what was
what. When I asked if he had studied the hostile material, he
said "No."

>From day one I wanted to know everything about Blavatsky and her
Theosophical mission and I wanted to study first hand all the
primary souce documents (including the negative ones) and not rely
on some other student or writer who might filter it through his/her
point of view. Was it always comfortable to read all the negative
stuff about HPB? No, but it made me dig deeper and as a result I
came to many important discoveries including documents like the
complete text of THE INNER GROUP INSTRUCTIONS, etc.

I see in your letter you mention "scholars" and ------ in a previous
letter brings up that subject, too. Some Theosophical students
have even criticized me and described me as a "scholar". Apparently
that is a "put-down". Well, all I can say is I am a librarian but
years before I ever got a degree in librarianship or any other
academic or scholarly degree, I was seeking for "truth", more light,
etc. on these matters concerning HPB and Theosophy. Therefore, I
continue to view myself as a seeker of truth.

Concerning the Solovyoff letters, we are actually talking about the
letters from HPB to Aksakoff. Are these letters forgeries? I don't
really know. Some parts of the letters seem quite genuine, other
parts possibly tampered with. But why completely exclude them from
Volume I as the 3 readers in FOHAT and and FOHAT editor intitially
wanted?

Yes, one could add commentary on some of these letters and that
would be helpful. But allow readers access to all this material and
let each reader make up his/her own mind.

These letters were published in Russia in 1893 and Aksakoff did not
die until 1903. During this 10 year period, I have never
discovered any communication from Aksakoff declaring that Solovyoff
had forged or tampered with the letters he had received from HPB. I
guess you could assume Aksakoff was in league with Solovyoff to
sully HPB's name but I find no evidence in support of that
contention either.

Maybe one day the originals of these HPB letters to Aksakoff will be
discovered.

Do we also exclude the letters HPB supposedly wrote to Dondoukoff-
Korsakoff??

Jean Overton Fuller in her biography of HPB has an appendix
titled "The 'Bolt' or Dondoukoff-Korsakoff letters." She believes
these letters also were forgeries. But the original handwritten
Russian letters are at Adyar, and I have seen the microfilm of these
originals. I am not a "handwriting expert" but from reading and
transcripting hundreds of pages of HPB's original handwritten
letters, they appear to be in HPB's characteristic
handwriting.

In regards to John Cooper, I again repeat that John included the
letters in question in his dissertation and also in his manuscript
for the first volume of letters that he had contracted with the the
Theosophical Publishing House, Wheaton to edit. He certainly did
not exclude the specific letters mentioned in the last issue of
FOHAT. And in many phone conversations with him, I never once
gained the impression that it was ever his intent to exclude these
HPB letter in the series of volumes. I believe he would have
opposed any attempt to such exclusion as recommended in the last
issue of FOHAT.

Daniel H. Caldwell
Blavatsky Study Center
http://blavatskystudycenter.org