Of this character is Theosophy, an occult movement brought into
recent prominence by the activity and personality of Mme. Blavatsky.
The story of the checkered career of this remarkable woman is fairly
accessible. Born in Russia in 1831 as Helen Petrovna, daughter of
Colonel Hahn, of the Russian army, she was married at the age of
seventeen to an elderly gentleman, M. Blavatsky. She is described
in girlhood as a person of passionate temper and wilful and erratic
disposition. She separated or escaped from her husband after a few
months of married life, and entered upon an extended period of
travel and adventure. The search for "psychic" experiences and for
unusual persons and beliefs seemed to form the _leit-motiv_ of her
nomadic existence. She absorbed Hindu wisdom from the adepts of
India; she sat at the feet of a thaumaturgist at Cairo; she journeyed
to Canada to meet the medicine man of the Red Indians, and to New
Orleans to observe the practices of Voodoo among the negroes. It is
difficult to know what to believe in the accounts prepared by her
enthusiastic followers. Violations of physical law were constantly
occurring in her presence; and, to borrow a phrase from Mr. Lang,
"sporadic outbreaks of rappings and feats of impulsive pots, pans,
beds, and chairs insisted on making themselves notorious." In 1873
she came to New York and sat in "spiritualistic" circles, assuming
an assent to their theories, but claiming to see through and
beyond the manifestations the operations of her theosophic guides
in astral projection. At such a séance she met Colonel Olcott,
and assisted him in the foundation of the Theosophical Society in
New York in October, 1875. Mme. Blavatsky directed the thought of
this society to the doctrines of Indian occultism, and reported
the appearance in New York of a Hindu Mahatma, who left a turban
behind him as evidence of his astral visit. The Mahatmas, it was
explained, were a Society of Brothers, who dwelt in the fastnesses
of far-off Thibet, and there handed on by tradition the super-mortal
wisdom which their spirituality and contemplative training enabled
them to absorb. Later, this modern priestess of Isis and Colonel
Olcott (who remained her staunch supporter, but whom she referred
to in private as a "psychologized baby") exchanged the distracting
atmosphere of New York for the more serene environment of India;
and at Adyar established a shrine, from which were mysteriously
issued answers to letters placed within its recesses, from which
secret facts were revealed, and a variety of interesting marvels
performed. Discords arose within the household, and led to the
publication by M. and Mme. Coulomb, her confederates, of letters
illuminating the tricks of the trade by which the miracles had been
produced. Mme. Blavatsky pronounced the letters to be forgeries,
but they were sufficiently momentous to bring Mr. Hodgson to India
to investigate for the Society for Psychical Research. He was able
to deprive many of the miracles of their mystery; to show how the
shrine from which the Mahatma's messages emanated was accessible to
Mme. Blavatsky by the aid of sliding panels and secret drawers, to
show that these messages were in style, spelling, and handwriting
the counterpart of Mme. Blavatsky's, to show that many of the
phenomena were the result of planned collusion and that others were
created by the limitless credulity and the imaginative exaggeration
of the witnesses,--"domestic imbeciles," as madame confidentially
referred to them. Through the Akasic force, the medium of which was
the mysterious world-ether, Akaz, were brought messages that suddenly
appeared in space or fluttered down from the ceiling; yet M. Coulomb
explained how by means of a piece of thread, a convenient recess
in the plaster of the ceiling, and an arranged signal, the letters
could be made to appear at the proper dramatic moment. When a saucer
was left standing near the edge of a shelf in the shrine, and the
opening of the door brought it to the floor shattered to pieces, the
same mysterious force was sufficient to recreate it, without flaw
or blemish; but when Mr. Hodgson finds that at a shop at which Mme.
Blavatsky had made purchases, two such articles had been sold at the
price of two rupees eight annas the pair, the miracle becomes more
intelligible.
In brief, the report of the society convicted "the Priestess of Isis"
of "a long continued combination with other persons to produce by
ordinary means a series of apparent marvels for the support of the
Theosophic movement;" and concludes with these words: "For our own
part, we regard her neither as the mouthpiece of hidden seers nor as
a mere vulgar adventuress; we think that she has achieved a title to
permanent remembrance as one of the most accomplished, ingenious, and
interesting impostors in history." Mme. Blavatsky died in 1891, and
her ashes were divided between Adyar, London, and New York.
The Theosophic movement continues, though with abated vigor, owing
partly to the above-mentioned disclosures, but probably more to the
increasing propagandism of other cults, to the lack of a leader
of Mme. Blavatsky's genius, or to the inevitable ebb and flow of
such interests. Mme. Blavatsky continued to expound Theosophy after
the exposures, and although depressed by their publication still
occasionally essayed a miracle. Later, in a moment of confession
induced by the discovery of a package of Chinese envelopes ready
to serve for miraculous appearances, she is reported to have said,
"What is one to do, when in order to rule men it is necessary to
deceive them; when their very stupidity invites trickery, for
almost invariably the more simple, the more silly, and the more
gross the phenomena, the more likely it is to succeed?" Still,
even self-confession does not detract from the fervor of convinced
believers; and Mrs. Besant, Mr. Sinnett, and others were ready to
take up the work at her death. However, miracles are no longer
performed, and no immediately practical ends are proclaimed.
Individual development and evolution, mystic discourses on adeptship
and Karma and Maya and Nirvana, communion with the higher ends of
life, the cultivation of an esoteric psychic insight, form the goal
of present endeavor. The Mahatmas, says Mrs. Besant, are giving
"intellectual instructions, enormously more interesting than even the
exhibition of their abnormal powers." "Our European thinkers," thus
Mr. Podmore interprets Mr. Sinnett's attitude, "are like blind men
who are painfully learning to read with their fingers from a child's
primer, whilst these have eyes to see the universe, past, present,
and to come. To Mr. Sinnett it had been given to learn the alphabet
of that transcendent language." "He could make the most extravagant
mysticism seem matter of fact. He could write of _Manvantaras_
and _Nirvana_, and the septenary constitution of man, in language
which would have been appropriate in a treatise on kitchen-middens,
or the functions of the pineal gland. In his lucid prose the vast
conceptions of primitive Buddhism were fused with the commonplaces of
modern science; and whilst the cosmology which resulted from their
union dazzled by its splendid visions, the precise terminology of the
writer, and the very poverty of his imagination, served to reassure
his readers that they were listening to words of truth and soberness.
We were taught to look back upon this earth and all its mighty
sisterhood of planets and suns rolling onward in infinite space,
through cycle after cycle in the past. We were shown how, through
the perpetual flux and reflux of the spiritual and the natural, the
cosmic evolution was accomplished, and the earth grew, through the
life of crystal, and plant, and brute, to man. We saw how the worlds
throbbed in vast alternation of systole and diastole, and how the
tide of human life itself had its ebb and flow. And this fugitive
human personality--the man who works, and loves, and suffers--we saw
to endure but for a short life on earth, and for an age, shorter or
longer, in _Devachan_. Memory is then purged away, the eternal spirit
puts on a new dress, and a new life on earth is begun. And so through
each succeeding reincarnation the goal of the life preceding becomes
the starting-point of the life which follows." In such manner the
modern Theosophist seeks to appeal to men and women of philosophical
inclinations, for whom an element of mysticism has its charm, and
who are intellectually at unrest with the conceptions underlying
modern science and modern life. Such persons are quite likely to be
educated, refined, and sincere. We may believe them intellectually
misguided; we may recognize the fraud to which their leader resorted
to glorify her creed, but we must equally recognize the absence of
many pernicious tendencies in their teachings, which characterize
other and more practical occult movements.