medium, Priestess of Isis, and founder of the Theosophical Society. Her
life is one long catalogue of wonders. In appearance she was enormously
fat, had a harsh, disagreeable voice, and a violent temper, dressed in a
slovenly manner, usually in loose wrappers, smoked cigarettes incessantly,
and cared little or nothing for the conventionalities of life. But in
spite of all--unprepossessing appearance and gross habits--she exercised a
powerful personal magnetism over those who came in contact with her. She
was the Sphinx of the second half of this Century; a Pythoness in tinsel
robes who strutted across the world's stage "full of sound and fury," and
disappeared from view behind the dark veil of Isis, which she, the
fin-de-siecle prophetess, tried to draw aside during her earthly career.
In searching for facts concerning the life of this really remarkable
woman--remarkable for the influence she has exerted upon the thought of
this latter end of the nineteenth century--I have read all that has been
written about her by prominent Theosophists, have talked with many who
knew her intimately, and now endeavor to present the truth concerning her
and her career. The leading work on the subject is "Incidents in the Life
of Madame Blavatsky," compiled from information supplied by her relatives
and friends, and edited by A. P. Sinnett, author of "The Occult World."
The frontispiece to the book is a reproduction of a portrait of Madame
Blavatsky, painted by H. Schmiechen, and represents the lady seated on the
steps of an ancient ruin, holding a parchment in her hand. She is garbed
somewhat after the fashion of a Cumaean Sibyl and gazes straight before
her with the deep unfathomable eyes of a mystic, as if she were reading
the profound riddles of the ages, and beholding the sands of Time falling
hot and swift into the glass of eternity--
"And all things creeping to a day of doom."
[Illustration: FIG. 32--MADAME BLAVATSKY.]
Sinnett's life of the High Priestess is a strange concoction of monstrous
absurdities; it is full of the weirdest happenings that were ever
vouchsafed to mortal. We cannot put much faith in this biography, and must
delve in other mines for information; but some of the remarkable passages
of the book are worth perusing, particularly if the reader be prone to
midnight musings of a ghostly character.
Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, the daughter of Col. Peter Hahn of the Russian
Army, and granddaughter of General Alexis Hahn von Rottenstern Hahn (a
noble family of Mecklenburg, Germany, settled in Russia), was born in
Eskaterinoslaw, in the south of Russia, in 1831. "She had," says Sinnett,
"a strange childhood, replete with abnormal occurrences. The year of her
birth was fatal for Russia, as for all Europe, owing to the first visit of
the cholera, that terrible plague that decimated from 1830 to 1832 in turn
nearly every town of the Continent.... Her birth was quickened by several
deaths in the house, and she was ushered into the world amid coffins and
desolation, on the night between July 30th and 31st, weak and apparently
no denizen of this world." A hurried baptism was given lest the child die
in original sin, and the ceremony was that of the Greek Church. During the
orthodox baptismal rite no person is allowed to sit, but a child aunt of
the baby, tired of standing for nearly an hour, settled down upon the
floor, just behind the officiating priest. No one perceived her, as she
sat nodding drowsily. The ceremony was nearing its close. The sponsors
were just in the act of renouncing the Evil One and his deeds, a
renunciation emphasized in the Greek Church by thrice spitting upon the
invisible enemy, when the little lady, toying with her lighted taper at
the feet of the crowd, inadvertantly set fire to the long flowing robes of
the priest, no one remarking the accident till it was too late. The result
was an immediate conflagration, during which several persons--chiefly the
old priest--were severely burnt. That was another bad omen, according to
the superstitious beliefs of orthodox Russia; and the innocent cause of
it, the future Madame Blavatsky, was doomed from that day, in the eyes of
all the town, to an eventful, troubled life.
"Mlle. Hahn was born, of course, with all the characteristics of what is
known in Spiritualism as mediumship in the most extraordinary degree, also
with gifts as a clairvoyant of an almost equally unexampled order. On
various occasions while apparently in an ordinary sleep, she would answer
questions, put by persons who took hold of her hand, about lost property,
etc., as though she were a sibyl entranced. For years she would, in
childish impulse, shock strangers with whom she came in contact, and
visitors to the house, by looking them intently in the face and telling
them they would die at such and such a time, or she would prophesy to them
some accident or misfortune that would befall them. And since her
prognostications usually came true, she was the terror, in this respect,
of the domestic circle."
Madame V. P. Jelihowsy, a sister of the seeress, has furnished to the
world many extraordinary stories of Mme. Blavatsky's childhood, published
in various Russian periodicals. At the age of eleven the Sibyl lost her
mother, and went to live with her grandparents at Saratow, her grandfather
being civil governor of the place. The family mansion was a lumbering old
country place "full of subterraneous galleries, long abandoned passages,
turrets, and most weird nooks and corners. It looked more like a mediaeval
ruined castle than a building of the last century." The ghosts of
martyred serfs were supposed to haunt the uncanny building, and strange
legends were told by the old family servants of weir-wolves and goblins
that prowled about the dark forests of the estate. Here, in this House of
Usher, the Sibyl lived and dreamed, and at this period exhibited many
abnormal psychic peculiarities, ascribed by her orthodox governess and
nurses of the Greek Church to possession by the devil. She had at times
ungovernable fits of temper; she would ride any Cossack horse on the place
astride a man's saddle; go into trances and scare everyone from the master
of the mansion down to the humblest vodka drinker on the estate.
In 1848, at the age of 17, she married General Count Blavatsky, a gouty
old Russian of 70, whom she called "the plumed raven," but left him after
a brief period of marital infelicity. From this time dates her career as a
thaumaturgist. She travelled through India and made an honest attempt to
penetrate into the mysterious confines of Thibet, but succeeded in getting
only a few miles from the frontier, owing to the fanaticism of the
natives.
In India, as elsewhere, she was accused of being a Russian spy and was
generally regarded with suspicion by the police authorities. After some
months of erratic wanderings she reappeared in Russia, this time in
Tiflis, at the residence of a relative, Prince ----. It was a gloomy,
grewsome chateau, well suited for Spiritualistic séances, and Madame
Blavatsky, it is claimed, frightened the guests during the long winter
evenings with table-tippings, spirit rappings, etc. It was then the tall
candles in the drawing-room burnt low, the gobelin tapestry rustled, sighs
were heard, strange music "resounded in the air," and luminous forms were
seen trailing their ghostly garments across the "tufted floor."
[Illustration: FIG. 33--MAHATMA LETTER.]
The gossipy Madame de Jelihowsy, in her reminiscences, classifies the
phenomena, witnessed in the presence of her Sibylline sister, as follows:
1. Direct and perfectly clearly written and verbal answers to mental
questions--or "thought reading."
2. Private secrets, unknown to all but the interested party, divulged,
[especially in the case of those persons who mentioned insulting doubts].
3. Change of weight in furniture and persons at will.
4. Letters from unknown correspondents, and immediate answers written to
queries made, and found in the most out-of-the-way mysterious places.
5. Appearance of objects unclaimed by anyone present.
6. Sounds of musical notes in the air wherever Madame Blavatsky desired
they should resound.
In the year 1858, the High Priestess was at the house of General Yakontoff
at Pskoff, Russia. One night when the drawing-room was full of visitors,
she began to describe the mediumistic feat of making light objects heavy
and heavy objects light.
"Can you perform such a miracle?" ironically asked her brother, Leonide de
Hahn, who always doubted his sister's occult powers.
"I can," was the firm reply.
De Hahn went to a small chess table, lifted it as though it were a
feather, and said: "Suppose you try your powers on this."
"With pleasure!" replied Mme. Blavatsky. "Place the table on the floor,
and step aside for a minute." He complied with her request.
She fixed her large blue eyes intently upon the chess table and said
without removing her gaze, "Lift it now."
The young man exerted all his strength, but the table would not budge
an inch. Another guest tried with the same result, but the wood only
cracked, yielding to no effort.
[Illustration: FIG. 34--MAHATMA LETTER ENVELOPE.]
"Now, lift it," said Madame Blavatsky calmly, whereupon De Hahn picked it
up with the greatest ease. Loud applause greeted this extraordinary feat,
and the skeptical brother, so say the occultists, was utterly nonplussed.
Madame Blavatsky, as recorded by Sinnett, stated afterwards that the above
phenomenon could be produced in two different ways: "First, through the
exercise of her own will directing the magnetic currents so that the
pressure on the table became such that no physical force could move it;
second, through the action of those beings with whom she was in constant
communication, and who, although unseen, were able to hold the table
against all opposition."
The writer has seen similar feats performed by hypnotizers with good
subjects without the intervention of any ghostly intelligences.
In 1870 the Priestess of Isis journeyed through Egypt in company with a
certain Countess K--, and endeavored to form a Spiritualistic society at
Cairo, for the investigation of psychic phenomena, but things growing
unpleasant for her she left the land of pyramids and papyri in hot haste.
It is related of her that during this Egyptian sojourn she spent one night
in the King's sepulchre in the bowels of the Great Pyramid of Cheops,
sleeping in the very sarcophagus where once reposed the mummy of a
Pharoah. Weird sights were seen by the entranced occultist and strange
sounds were heard on that eventful occasion within the shadowy mortuary
chamber of the pyramid. At times she would let fall mysterious hints of
what she saw that night, but they were as incomprehensible as the riddles
of the fabled Sphinx.
Countess Paschkoff chronicles a curious story about the Priestess of Isis,
which reminds one somewhat of the last chapter in Bulwer's occult novel,
"A Strange Story." The Countess relates that she was once travelling
between Baalbec and the river Orontes, and in the desert came across the
caravan belonging to Madame Blavatsky. They joined company and towards
nightfall pitched camp near the village of El Marsum amid some ancient
ruins. Among the relics of a Pagan civilization stood a great monument
covered with outlandish hieroglyphics. The Countess was curious to
decipher the inscriptions, and begged Madame Blavatsky to unravel their
meaning, but the Priestess of Isis, notwithstanding her great
archaeological knowledge, was unable to do so. However, she said: "Wait
until night, and we shall see!" When the ruins were wrapped in sombre
shadow, Mme. Blavatsky drew a great circle upon the ground about the
monument, and invited the Countess to stand within the mystic confines. A
fire was built and upon it were thrown various aromatic herbs and incense.
Cabalistic spells were recited by the sorceress, as the smoke from the
incense ascended, and then she thrice commanded the spirit to whom the
monument was erected to appear. Soon the cloud of smoke from the burning
incense assumed the shape of an old man with a long white beard. A voice
from a distance pierced the misty image, and spoke: "I am Hiero, one of
the priests of a great temple erected to the gods, that stood upon this
spot. This monument was the altar. Behold!" No sooner were the words
pronounced than a phantasmagoric vision of a gigantic temple appeared,
supported by ponderous columns, and a great city was seen covering the
distant plain, but all soon faded into thin air.
This story was related to a select coterie of occultists assembled in
social conclave at the headquarters in New York. The question is, had the
charming Russian Countess dreamed this, or was she trying to exploit
herself as a traveler who had come "out of the mysterious East" and had
seen strange things?
We next hear of the famous occultist in the United States, where she
associated chiefly with spirit-mediums, enchanters, professional
clairvoyants, and the like.
"At this period of her career she had not,"[4] says Dr. Eliott Coues, a
learned investigator of psychic phenomena, "been metamorphosed into a
Theosophist. She was simply exploiting as a Spiritualistic medium. Her
most familiar spook was a ghostly fiction named 'John King.' This fellow
is supposed to have been a pirate, condemned for his atrocities to serve
earth-bound for a term of years, and to present himself at materializing
séances on call. Any medium who personates this ghost puts on a heavy
black horse-hair beard and a white bed sheet and talks in sepulchral chest
tones. John is as standard and sure-enough a ghost as ever appeared before
the public. Most of the leading mediums, both in Europe and America, keep
him in stock. I have often seen the old fellow in New York, Philadelphia,
and Washington through more mediums that I can remember the names of. Our
late Minister to Portugul, Mr. J. O'Sullivan, has a photograph of him at
full length, floating in space, holding up a peculiar globe of light
shaped like a glass decanter. This trustworthy likeness was taken in
Europe, and I think in Russia, but am not sure on that point. I once had
the pleasure of introducing the pirate king to my friend Prof. Alfred
Russel Wallace, in the person of Pierre L. O. A. Keeler, a noted medium of
Washington.
"But the connection between the pirate and my story is this: Madame
Blavatsky was exploiting King at the time of which I speak, and several of
her letters to friends, which I have read, are curiously scribbled in red
and blue pencil with sentences and signatures of 'John King,' just as,
later on, 'Koot Hoomi' used to miraculously precipitate himself upon her
stationery in all sorts of colored crayons. And, by the way, I may call
the reader's attention to the fact that while the ingenious creature was
operating in Cairo, her Mahatmas were of the Egyptian order of
architecture, and located in the ruins of Thebes or Karnak. They were not
put in turbans and shifted to Thibet till late in 1879."
In 1875, while residing in New York, Madame Blavatsky conceived the idea
of establishing a Theosophical Society. Stupendous thought! Cagliostro in
the eighteenth century founded his Egyptian Free-Masonry for the
re-generation of mankind, and Blavatsky in the nineteenth century laid the
corner stone of modern Theosophy for a similar purpose. Cagliostro had his
High Priestess in the person of a beautiful wife, Lorenza Feliciani, and
Blavatsky her Hierophant in the somewhat prosaic guise of a New York
reporter, Col. Olcott, since then a famous personage in occult circles.
During the Civil War, Olcott served in the Quartermaster's Department of
the Army and afterwards held a position in the Internal Revenue Service of
the United States. In 18-- he was a newspaper man in New York, and was
sent by the _Graphic_ to investigate the alleged Spiritualistic phenomena
transpiring in the Eddy family in Chittenden, Vermont. There he met Madame
Blavatsky. It was his fate.
[Illustration: FIG. 35. COL. H. S. OLCOTT.]
Col. Olcott's description of his first sight of Mme. Blavatsky is
interesting:
"The dinner at Eddy's was at noon, and it was from the entrance door of
the bare and comfortless dining-room that Kappes and I first saw H. P. B.
She had arrived shortly before noon with a French Canadian lady, and they
were at table as we entered. My eye was first attracted by a scarlet
Garibaldian shirt the former wore, as being in vivid contrast with the
dull colors around. Her hair was then a thick blonde mop, worn shorter
than the shoulders, and it stood out from her head, silken, soft, and
crinkled to the roots, like the fleece of a Cotswold ewe. This and the
red shirt were what struck my attention before I took in the picture of
her features. It was a massive Kalmuck face, contrasting in its suggestion
of power, culture, and imperiousness, as strangely with the commonplace
visages about the room, as her red garment did with the gray and white
tones of the wall and woodwork, and the dull costumes of the rest of the
guests. All sorts of cranky people were continually coming and going at
Eddy's, to see the mediumistic phenomena, and it only struck me on seeing
this eccentric lady that this was but one more of the sort. Pausing on the
door-sill, I whispered to Kappes, 'Good gracious! look at _that_ specimen,
will you!' I went straight across and took a seat opposite her to indulge
my favorite habit of character-study."
Commenting on this meeting, J. Ransom Bridges, in the _Arena_, for April,
1895, remarks: "After dinner Colonel Olcott scraped an acquaintance by
opportunely offering her a light for a cigarette which she proceeded to
roll for herself. This 'light' must have been charged with Theosophical
_karma_, for the burning match or end of a lighted cigar--the Colonel does
not specify--lit a train of causes and their effects which now are making
history and are world-wide in their importance. So confirmed a pessimist
on Theosophical questions as Henry Sidgwick of the London Society for
Psychical Research, says, 'Even if it [the Theosophical Society] were to
expire next year, its twenty years' existence would be a phenomenon of
some interest for a historian of European society in the nineteenth
century.'"
[Illustration: FIG. 36. OATH OF SECRECY TAKEN BY CHARTER MEMBERS OF THE
THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY.
[Kindness of the _New York Herald_.]]
The séances at the Eddy house must have been character studies indeed. The
place where the ghosts were materialized was a large apartment over the
dining room of the ancient homestead. A dark closet, at one end of the
room, with a rough blanket stretched across it, served as a cabinet. Red
Indians and pirates were the favorite materializations, but when Madame
Blavatsky appeared on the scene, ghosts of Turks, Kurdish cavaliers, and
Kalmucks visited this earthly scene, much to the surprise of every one.
Olcott cites this fact as evidence of the genuineness of the
materializations, remarking, "how could the ignorant Eddy boys, rough,
rude, uncultured farmers, get the costumes and accessories for characters
of this kind in a remote Vermont village."
2. What is Theosophy.
Let us turn aside at this juncture to ask, "What is Theosophy." The word
Theosophy (Theosophia--divine knowledge) appears to have been used about
the Third century, A. D., by the Neo-Platonists, or Gnostics of
Alexandria, but the great principles of the doctrine, however, were taught
hundreds of years prior to the mystical school established at Alexandria.
"It is not," says an interesting writer on the subject, "an outgrowth of
Buddhism although many Buddhists see in its doctrines the reflection of
Buddha. It proposes to give its followers the esoteric, or inner-spiritual
meaning of the great religious teachers of the world. It asserts repeated
re-incarnations, or rebirths of the soul on earth, until it is fully
purged of evil, and becomes fit to be absorbed into the Deity whence it
came, gaining thereby Nirvana, or unconsciousness." Some Theosophists
claim that Nirvana is not a state of unconsciousness, but just the
converse, a state of the most intensified consciousness, during which the
soul remembers all of its previous incarnations.
Madame Blavatsky claimed that "there exists in Thibet a brotherhood whose
members have acquired a power over Nature which enables them to perform
wonders beyond the reach of ordinary men. She declared herself to be a
_chela_, or disciple of these brothers (spoken of also as 'Adepts' and as
'Mahatmas'), and asserted that they took a special interest in the
Theosophical Society and all initiates in occult lore, being able to cause
apparitions of themselves in places where their bodies were not; and that
they not only appeared but communicated intelligently with those whom they
thus visited and themselves perceived what was going on where their
phantoms appeared." This phantasmal appearance she called the projection
of the _astral_ form. Many of the phenomena witnessed in the presence of
the Sibyl were supposed to be the work of the mystic brotherhood who took
so peculiar an interest in the Theosophical Society and its members. The
Madame did not claim to be the founder of a new religious faith, but
simply the reviver of a creed that has slumbered in the Orient for
centuries, and declared herself to be the Messenger of these Mahatmas to
the scoffing Western world.
Speaking of the Mahatmas, she says in "Isis Unveiled": * * * "Travelers
have met these adepts on the shores of the sacred Ganges, brushed against
them on the silent ruins of Thebes, and in the mysterious deserted
chambers of Luxor. Within the halls upon whose blue and golden vaults the
weird signs attract attention, but whose secret meaning is never
penetrated by the idle gazers, they have been seen, but seldom recognized.
Historical memoirs have recorded their presence in the brilliantly
illuminated salons of European aristocracy. They have been encountered
again on the arid and desolate plains of the Great Sahara, or in the caves
of Elephanta. They may be found everywhere, but make themselves known only
to those who have devoted their lives to unselfish study, and are not
likely to turn back."
The Theosophical Society was organized in New York, Nov. 17, 1875.
Mr. Arthur Lillie, in his interesting work, "Madame Blavatsky and Her
Theosophy," speaking about the founding of the Society, says:
"Its moving spirit was a Mr. Felt, who had visited Egypt and studied its
antiquities. He was a student also of the Kabbala; and he had a somewhat
eccentric theory that the dog-headed and hawk-headed figures painted on
the Egyptian monuments were not mere symbols, but accurate portraits of
the 'Elementals.' He professed to be able to evoke and control them. He
announced that he had discovered the secret 'formularies' of the old
Egyptian magicians. Plainly, the Theosophical Society at starting was an
Egyptian school of occultism. Indeed Colonel Olcott, who furnishes these
details ('Diary Leaves' in the _Theosophist_, November to December, 1892),
lets out that the first title suggested was the 'Egyptological Society.'"
There were strange reports set afloat at the time of the organization of
the Society of the mysterious appearance of a Hindoo adept in his astral
body at the "lamasery" on Forty-seventh street. It was said to be that of
a certain Mahatma Koot Hoomi. Olcott declared that the adept left behind
him as a souvenir of his presence, a turban, which was exhibited on all
occasions by the enterprising Hierophant. William Q. Judge, a noted writer
on Spiritualism, who had met the Madame at Irving Place in the winter of
1874, joined the Society about this time, and became an earnest advocate
of the secret doctrine. One wintry evening in March, 1889, Mr. Judge
attended a meeting of the New York Anthropological Society, and told the
audience all about the spectral gentleman, Koot Hoomi. He said: