Theos-Talk Archives (September 2006 Message tt00036)

In Oct. 1888, Madame Blavatsky must have felt it necessary to
discuss openly and publicly the following issue in the pages of 
LUCIFER where she writes:

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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 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, in order to raise 
in the public estimation the "scientific" acumen and standard of
his "Principals."...
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Quoted from:
http://theosophytrust.org/tlodocs/articlesHPB.php?
d=hpb/LodgesOfMagic.htm&p=109

Daniel
http://hpb.cc