Theos-Talk Archives (February 2009 Message tt00364)

Following passages are taken from a book. 
 
  " [Blavatsky's housekeeper, Emma Cutting, demonstrated] how she and
HPB had made a doll together, which they ... manipulated on a long
bamboo pole in semi-darkness to provide the Master's alleged
apparitions. Emma had also dropped "precipitated" letters on to
Theosophical heads from holes in the ceiling, while her husband had
made sliding panels and hidden entrances into the shrine room
[adjoining HPB's bedroom] to facilitate Blavatsky's comings and goings
and make possible the substitution of all the brooches, dishes and
other objects that she used in her demonstrations [i.e., as purported
materializations or "apports"].... 

    The Russian journalist V. S. Solovieff claimed to have caught
[Blavatsky] red-handed with the silver bells which produced astral
music [in séances].... Blavatsky confessed to Solovieff quite bluntly
that the phenomena were fraudulent, adding that one must deceive men
in order to rule them (Washington, 1995). "