Theos-Talk Archives (March 2009 Message tt00343)

>   > Here are some references about "Practical Occultism" of Blavatsky. 
>   > [Blavatsky's housekeeper, Emma Coulomb, 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).
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>   When Blavatsky used the word occultism, perhaps she was referring to occult (hidden) hole in the ceiling from which she dropped so called 'Mahatma Letters'
> 

Now we understand what occultism meant to Blavatsky.