MYSTIFICATION UNDER MADAME BLAVATSKY.
“Now, dear, let us change the programme.... He is willing
to give 10,000 rupees ... if only he saw a little
‘phenomenon’!”—BLAVATSKY-COULOMB LETTERS.
It is no part of my present object to enter at length into the history
and character of the late Madame Blavatsky. But a comparison of the
earlier phase of the Theosophical Society with that of to-day is so
indispensable to the right appreciation of both, that a brief _résumé_
(borrowed mainly from previous sketches of my own elsewhere) may be
welcome at this point, even to readers already familiar with the
subject.
The Theosophical Society was born in America of Russo-Yankee parentage.
Helena Petrovna Blavatsky founded it at New York in 1874, with the aid
first of Colonel Olcott, then a kind of journalist, who became, and
still is, the president, and soon afterwards of William Q. Judge, then a
lawyer’s clerk in Olcott’s brother’s office, who became, and still is,
the vice-president.
The previous career of the Foundress had been remarkable enough, if we
accept hostile accounts of it—still more remarkable if we accept her
own; but with this I am not concerned. From 1874 Madame Blavatsky’s
history and that of the Theosophical Society are one.
In 1878 the society moved its headquarters to India, and in the
congenial atmosphere of the mysterious East launched into marvels. Eked
out by performances not unlike a drawing-room Maskelyne and Cook,
Madame’s rehash of Neo-platonist and Kabbalistic mysticism with Buddhist
terminology soon “caught on” with the impressionable natives. It had
especial attraction for the educated and ardent young Babu, that typical
product of British India whom Mr. Rudyard Kipling has so often drawn for
us. But it also carried away, thanks to Madame’s intense
personality—half repulsion, half charm—editors and officials of mark in
the sceptical circles of Anglo-India. It made Mr. A. P. Sinnett (then
editor of the _Pioneer_) turn evangelist in “The Occult World,” and Mr.
A. O. Hume (then Government Secretary) follow suit with “Hints on
Esoteric Philosophy.” And no wonder. Never was a new religion more
industriously supplied with miracles—those _coups de main célestes_, as
a witty Frenchman has defined them. Wherever Madame happened to be with
a select circle of friends, disciples, or laymen worth impressing, but
especially in and about the bungalow at Adyar, near Madras, the
society’s headquarters, the invisible Mahatmas were never tired of
exhibiting their astonishing psychic powers over ponderable matter. The
two who were especially at Madame’s disposal went by the names
(reverently breathed) of Mahatma Morya and Mahatma Koot Hoomi Lal Sing.
In the region of White Magic they could do almost anything—any feat
which an adroitly led-up conversation might happen to suggest. But the
particular lines of business (if I may be allowed the phrase) of which
they made a speciality were making objects appear and disappear: in
Madame’s jargon, integrating and disintegrating them by a psychical
command over astral vortices of atoms. Sitting in their studies 2,000
miles away in Tibet, they could, by a mere effort of will, project an
astral epistle, or an astral body, or an astral cup and saucer, into the
middle of an applauding circle at afternoon tea or picnic in Madras or
Bombay. Showers of roses fluttered down from the ceiling. Invisible
bells tinkled from none knew where. All kinds of tricks were played with
Madame’s interminable cigarettes. Sketches and treatises were
psychically “precipitated” on to blank paper, nay, sometimes the very
stationery was created out of nothing to receive them. Such inferior
sketches, too, and such twaddling, such very twaddling, treatises! One
disciple—Damodar K. Mavalankar, a youth passionately ambitious of
fame—even advanced to the acquirement of some of these extraordinary
powers in his own person. Merely to have seen the astral body of a
Mahatma became in a manner a cheap accomplishment. Damodar boasted that
he had once or twice projected his own—slipping spook-like through a
brick wall.
Most of these marvels, as I have hinted, required the _mise en scène_ of
the Adyar bungalow. Here Madame and the Colonel, and a few favoured
_chelas_, had apartments. “Our domestic imbeciles” and “our familiar
muffs” the latter are termed in one of the letters attributed to Madame.
Here, too, in the “Occult Room” adjoining Madame’s bed-chamber, hung the
famous “Shrine,” a sort of cupboard containing a fancy portrait in oils
of the condescending Koot. This became associated with as many marvels
as the image of a mediæval saint. Suppose you are an intending
Theosophist—a hesitating convert, especially a moneyed one, like Mr.
Jacob Sassoon. You call at headquarters. You are shown round by Damodar,
or by M. or Madame Coulomb, librarian and secretary. With natural
curiosity you ask to gaze upon the Master’s features. You are told of
his indulgent concessions to deserving neophytes seeking for a sign.
When the cupboard has been shut again, you are asked if there is
anything you particularly desire from the Master. You indicate, not
unnaturally, a message. It is about even chances whether the said
message—reading generally not unlike Mr. Martin Tupper in his more
oracular vein—is discovered in the cupboard immediately on reopening the
door, or descends from the ceiling on to the top of your head.
The fame of these things, set out in the driest possible detail in the
pages of “The Occult World,” aroused a furore of curiosity in this
country, where people were just beginning to take a new interest in
questions of psychical research. It was about the time when family
circles played the “willing game,” and sat in the dark trying to see
purple flames coming out of a magnet. Quick to seize the psychological
moment, Madame Blavatsky came to England and “starred” London in the
season of 1884. In her train came Colonel Olcott and Mohini L.
Chatterji. Mohini, a Brahmin graduate of the University of Calcutta,
shone like Damodar with a lustre not all reflected. He, it was
whispered, was a _chela_ of some attainments. He was not to be touched.
He held his hands politely behind him when being introduced. There was a
splendour as of some astral oil about his dusky countenance and thick
black locks; while his big, dark eyes were as piercing as those of
Madame herself. Men gazed on Mohini with awe, and ladies with
enthusiasm. In the background hovered the recording Sinnett.
In spite of the disappointing fact that the London air proved
unfavourable to miracles, the tale of the Indian ones was greedily drunk
in, and Theosophy became the fashionable fad. Society people took to
calling themselves Esoteric Buddhists: some were enrolled as _chelas_ at
short notice. The Theosophists went the round of the London
drawing-rooms, penetrated to provincial towns, were not unheard of at
the Universities. Madame rolled cigarettes and swore and talked black
magic in the rooms of well-known Cambridge dons, till the hair of
undergraduate listeners stood on end. Those were the days when a set of
enthusiastic pass-men lived “the higher life” on a course of Turkish
baths and a date diet; while three unlucky youths at Trinity nearly
poisoned themselves with hasheesh in an attempt to project their astral
bodies, and were only recovered at midnight by a relentless tutor armed
with the college authority and a stomach-pump.