Theos-Talk Archives (December 2006 Message tt00163)

Friends, 

Below, a frank letter from José Ramón Sordo, a Mexican theosophist 
and editor, to Mr. Caldwell.  Is discusses the publication of 
slanders against HPB,  as if they were letters written by herself. 

Says Ramón Sordo: 

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo



Dear Daniel 

 

Please forgive me for taking so long to reply to your e-letter dated 
Sunday 3 October, 2004; but as I told you before I wanted to have 
Fohat in my hands before doing it. I only got it last October 29. 

 

Your first point is that I want to censor these letters. Well, I 
think that a definition of the word could help us. 

 

The Webster Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary defines the word 
censor as follows:

"(noun) An official who examines books, plays, news, reports, motion 
pictures, radio programs etc. for the purpose of suppressing parts 
deemed objectionable on moral, political, military or other 
grounds." "( verb) To delete (a word or passage of a text) in one's 
capacity as a censor"

 

The Larouse Illustrated International Encyclopedia, defines it 
as : "(noun) A person empowered to suppress publications or excise 
any matter in them thought to be inmoral, seditious or otherwise 
undesirable." "(verb) To examine ( letters, literature, etc.) in the 
capacity of a censor. To delete ( offensive material) from these, or 
ban ( a work)."

 

If you read carefully what I wrote, I never said to delete or ban 
those letters but "that these letters should be taken out of the 
collection", because they belong to the category clearly defined by 
Jerome Wheeler of : "1. Known fraudulent letters, 2. Suspected 
fraudulent letters". (see Fohat, Fall, 2004. Supplement, p. viii)

 

I agree with you that these fraudulent and suspect letters should be 
published (in fact, almost all of them are already published), but 
they should be published apart, either as a separate volume of 
Apocrypha, or as an Appendix in each volume with an introduction, a 
thorough assessment of the letters as a whole, and an analysis of 
each letter by itself, giving a good historical background, 
comparing the nonsense attributed to HPB with the letters and 
writings we know to be authentic. In the Supplement of Fohat refered 
to above, you have a good example of the kind of research that can 
be done for each letter.

 

If you want to have a good example of censorship, as the Dictionary 
defines it, just see the "Facsimile No.16 A photographic 
reproduction of the continuation of Mahatma KH's precipitated letter 
which Annie Besant received in 1900", opposite p. 359 in Geoffrey 
Barborka's The Mahatmas and Their Letters, published by the 
Theosophical Publishing House Adyar, Madras , India, 1973.  When 
Barborka´s book was published in 1973, his Facsimile No. 16 was 
censored; but the ban dated from 1919 when Mr. C. Jinarajadasa 
published the letter in question in his Letters from the Masters of 
the Wisdom, First Series (pp.99-100, ed. 1973). But this particular 
letter was only one of several other letters which were excised in 
that book, and also in the Second Series.

 

If you recall, I think it was last year when we talked about these 
letters and I asked you if you could publish the full text of the 
Serapis letters on your web site.

 

Now, coming back to HPB Letters, I.

 

As far as I can see after reading and examining this book – where a 
high percentage of the letters do not have any handwritten MS of the 
author extant – the compelling force guiding their compilation and 
publication seems to be a desire to find as many letters as 
possible, or rather pieces of paper in which there are 
transcriptions of letters allegedly written by HPB, regardless of 
the existence of any positive proof that she wrote them or not.

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

So far,  Sordo. 

Read the rest of this important document at the website of the  
Edmonton Theosophical Society: 

http://www.theosophycanada.com/fohat_dear_daniel.htm


Regards,   Carlos.