I[1]
Ostende,
December 5th [1885]
My dear Doctor:—
You must really forgive me for my seeming neglect, of you, my old friend. I give my word of honour, I am worried to death with work. Whenever I sit to write a letter all my ideas are scattered, and I cannot go on with the S. D. that day. But your letter (the last) is so interesting that I must answer it as asked. You will do an excellent thing to send to the Theosophist this experiment of yours. It has an enormous importance in view of Hodgson’s lies and charges, and I am happy you got such an independent corroboration; astral light, at any rate, cannot lie for my benefit.[2] I will only speak of No. 4 as the correctness about the three other letters you know yourself.
This looks like the private temple of the Teschu Lama near Tchigadze— made of the Madras cement-like material; it does shine like marble and is called the snowy “Shakang” (temple)—as far as I remember. It has no “sun or cross” on the top, but a kind of algiorna dagoba, triangular, on three pillars, with a dragon of gold and a globe. But the dragon has a swastica on it and this may have appeared a “cross.” I don’t remember any “gravel walk” —nor is there one, but it stands on an elevation (artificial) and a stone path leading to it, and it has steps—how many I do not remember (I was never allowed inside); saw from the outside, and the interior was described to me. The floors of nearly all Buddha’s (Songyas) temples are made of a yellow polished stone, found in those mountains of Chiral and in northern Tibet toward Russian territory. I do not know the name, but it looks like yellow marble. The “gentleman” in white may be Master, and the “bald-headed” gentleman I take to be some old shaven-headed priest. The cloak is black or very dark generally—(I brought one to Olcott from Darjeeling but where the silver buckles and the knee-breeches come from I am at a loss).[3] They wear, as you know, long boots—up high on the calves, made of felt and embroidered often with silver—like that devil of a Babajee had. Perhaps it is a freak of astral vision mixed with a flash of memory (by association of ideas) about some picture she saw previously. In those temples there are always movable “pictures,” on which various geometrical and mathematical problems are placed for the disciples who study astrology and symbology. The “vase” must be one of many Chinese queer vases about in temples, for various objects. In the corners of the temples there are numerous statues of various deities (Dhyanis). The roofs are always (almost always) supported by rows of wooden pillars dividing the roof into three parallelograms, and the mirror “Melong” of burnished steel (round like a sun) is often placed on the top of the Kiosque on the roof. I myself took it once for the sun. Also on the cupolas of the (dagoba) there is sometimes a graduated pinnacle, and over it a disk of gold placed vertically, and a pear-shaped point and often a crescent supporting a globe and swastica upon it. Ask her whether it is this she saw, Omt ram ah hri hum, which figures are roughly drawn sometimes on the Melong “mirrors”—(a disk of brass) against evil spirits—for the mob. Or perhaps what she saw was a row of slips of wood (little cubes), on which such things are seen: If so, then I will know what she saw. “Pine woods” all around such temples, the latter built expressly where there are such woods, and wild prickly pear, and trees with Chinese fruit on that the priests use for making inks. A lake is there, surely, and mountains plenty—if where Master is; if near Tchigadze—only little hillocks. The statues of Meilha Gualpo, the androgyne Lord of the Salamanders or the Genii of Air, look like this “sphinx”; but her lower body is lost in clouds, not fish, and she is not beautiful, only symbolical. Fisherwomen do use soles alone, like the sandals, and they all wear fur caps. That’s all; will this do? But do write it out.
Yours ever,
H. P. B.
II.
Würtzburg,
December ( ), 1885
My dear Conspirator[4]:—
Glad to receive from your letter such an emanation of true holiness. I too wanted to write you; tried several times and failed. Now I can. The dear Countess Wachtmeister is with me, and copies for me, and does what she can in helping, and the first five minutes I have of freedom I utilize them by answering your letter. Now, as you know, I also am occupied with my book. It took possession of me (the epidemic of writing) and crept on “with the silent influence of the itch,” as Olcott elegantly expresses it—until it reached the fingers of my right hand, got possession of my brain—carried me completely into the region of the occult.[5] I have written in a fortnight more than 200 pages (of the Isis shape and size). I write day and night, and sure that my Secret Doctrine shall be finished this—no, no, not this—year, but the next. I have refused your help, I have refused Sinnett’s help and that of everyone else. I did not feel like writing—now I do. I am permitted to give out for each chapter a page out of the Book of Dzyan—the oldest document in the world, of that I am sure—and to comment upon and explain its symbology. I think really it shall be worth something, and hardly here and there a few lines of dry facts from Isis. It is a completely new work.
My “satellite,”[6] I do not need him. He is plunged to his neck in the fascinations of Elberfeld, and is flirting in the regular style with the Gebhard family. They are dear people and are very kind to him. The “darling Mrs. ———” has shown herself a brick—unless done to attract attention and as a coup d’état in the bonnet business. But I shall not slander on mere speculation; I do think she has acted courageously and honourably; I send you the Pall Mall to read and to return if you please; take care of the paper—
To have never existed, good friend, is assuredly better. But once we do exist we must not do as the Servian soldiers did before the invincible Bulgarians or our bad Karma, we must not desert the post of honour entrusted to us. A room may be always had at Würtzburg; but shall you find yourself contented for a long time with it? Now the Countess is with me, and I could not offer you anything like a bed, since we two occupy the bedroom; but even if you were here, do you think you would not go fidgeting again over your fate? Ah, do keep quiet and wait—and try to feel once in your life—and then do not come at night, as you did two nights ago, to frighten the Countess out of her wits. Now you did materialize very neatly this time, you did.[7] Quite so.
Yours in the great fear of the year 1886—nasty number.
H. P. B.
III.
(No Date)
My dear Doctor:—
Two words in answer to what the Countess told me. I do myself harm, you say, “in telling everyone that Damodar is in Tibet, when he is only at Benares.” You are mistaken. He left Benares toward the middle of May, (ask in Adyar; I cannot say for certain whether it was in May or April) and went off, as everybody knows, to Darjeeling, and thence to the frontier via Sikkim. Our Darjeeling Fellows accompanied him a good way. He wrote a last word from there to the office bidding good-bye and saying: “If I am not back by July 21st you may count me as dead.” He did not come back, and Olcott was in great grief and wrote to me about two months ago, to ask me whether I knew anything. News had come by some Tibetan pedlars in Darjeeling that a young man of that description, with very long flowing hair, had been found frozen in the (forget the name) pass, stark dead, with twelve rupees in his pockets and his things and hat a few yards off. Olcott was in despair, but Maji told him (and he, D., lived with Maji for some time at Benares), that he was not dead,—she knew it through pilgrims who had returned, though Olcott supposes—which may be also—that she knew it clairvoyantly. Well I know that he is alive, and am almost certain that he is in Tibet—as I am certain also that he will not come back—not for years, at any rate. Who told you he was at Benares? We want him sorely now to refute all Hodgson’s guesses and inferences that I simply call lies, as much as my “spy” business and forging—the blackguard: now mind, I do not give myself out as infallible in this case. But I do know that he told me before going away—and at that moment he would not have said a fib, when he wept like a Magdalen. He said, “I go for your sake. If the Maha Chohan is satisfied with my services and my devotion, He may permit me to vindicate you by proving that Masters do exist. If I fail no one shall ever see me for years to come, but I will send messages. But I am determined in the meanwhile to make people give up searching for me. I want them to believe I am dead.”
This is why I think he must have arranged some trick to spread reports of his death by freezing.
But if the poor boy had indeed met with such an accident—why I think I would commit suicide; for it is out of pure devotion for me that he went.[8] I would never forgive myself for this, for letting him go. That’s the truth and only the truth. Don’t be harsh, Doctor—forgive him his faults and mistakes, willing and unwilling.
The poor boy, whether dead or alive, has no happy times now, since he is on probation and this is terrible. I wish you would write to someone at Calcutta to enquire from Darjeeling whether it is so or not. Sinnett will write to you, I think. I wish you would.
Yours ever gratefully,
H. P. B.
IV.
(No Date)
My dear Doctor:—
I read your part two—and I found it excellent, except two or three words you ought to change if you care for truth, and not to let people think you have some animas yet against Olcott.9] Such as at the end “Presidential orders” and too much assurance about “fictions,” nor are Masters (as living men) any more a fiction than you and I. But this will do. Thus, I have nothing whatever against your theory, though you do make of me a sort of a tricking medium.
But this does not matter, since I wrote to Dr. S. H. and will write to all— “Mme. Blavatsky of the T. S. is dead.” I belong no longer to the European Society, nor do I regret it. You as a psychologist and a man of acute perception, must know that there are situations in this life, when mental agony, despair, disgust, outraged pride, and honour, and suffering, become so intense that there are but two possible results—either death from a broken heart, or ice-cold indifference and callousness. Being made to live for purposes I do not know myself—I have arrived at the latter state. The basest ingratitude from one I have loved as my own son, one whom I have shielded and protected from harm, whom I have glorified at the expense of truth and my own dignity, has thrown upon me that straw which breaks the camel’s back.[10] It is broken for the T. S. and for ever. For two or three true friends that remain I will write the S. D. and then depart for some quiet comer to die there. You have come to the conviction that the “Masters” are “planetary spirits”—that’s good; remain in that conviction.
I wish I could hallucinate myself to the same degree. I would feel happier, and throw off from the heart the heavy load, that I have desecrated their names and Occultism by giving out its mysteries and secrets to those unworthy of either. If I could see you for a few hours, if I could talk to you; I may open your eyes, perhaps, to some truths you have never suspected. I could show you who it was (and give you proofs), who set Olcott against you, who ruined your reputation, and aroused the Hindu Fellows against you, who made me hate and despise you, till the voice of one who is the voice of God to me pronounced those words that made me change my opinion.[11]
I could discover and unveil to you secrets for your future safety and guidance. But I must see you personally for all this and you have to see the Countess. Otherwise I cannot write. If you can come here, even for a few hours, to say good-bye to me and hear a strange tale, that will prove of benefit to many a Fellow in the future as to yourself, do so. If you cannot, I ask you on your honour to keep this private and confidential.
Ah, Doctor, Karma is a fearful thing; and the more one lives in his inner life, outside this world and in regions of pure spirituality and psychology, the less he knows human hearts. I proclaim myself in the face of all—the biggest, the most miserable, the stupidest and dullest of all women on the face of the earth. I have been true to all. I have tried to do good to all. I have sacrificed myself for all and a whole nation,—and I am and feel as though caught in a circle of flaming coals, surrounded on all sides like an unfortunate fly with tom-off wings—by treachery, hatred, malice, cruelty, lies; by all the iniquities of human nature, and I can see wherever I turn—but one thing—a big, stupid, trusting fool—“H. P. B.”—surrounded by a thick crowd circling her[12] of traitors, fiends, and tigers in human shape.
Good-bye if I do not see you, for I will write no more. Thanks for what you have done for me. Thanks, and may you and your dear, kind sister be happy.
Yours,
H. P. B.
V.
(No Date)
My dear Doctor:—
Every word of your letter shows to me that you are on the right path, and I am mighty glad of it for you. Still, one may be on the right way, and allow his past-self to bring up too forcibly to him the echoes of the past and a little dying-out prejudice to distort them. When one arrives at knowing himself, he must know others also, which becomes easier. You have made great progress in the former direction; yet, since you cannot help misjudging others a little by the light of old prejudices, I say you have more work to do in this direction. All is not and never was bad at Adyar. The intentions were all good, and that’s why, perhaps, they have led Olcott and others direct to fall, as they had no discrimination. The fault is not theirs, but of circumstances and individual karmas.
The first two pages of your letter only repeat that, word for word, which I taught Olcott and Judge and others in America. This is the right occultism. Arrived at Bombay, we had to drop Western and take to Eastern Rosicrucianism. It turned (out) a failure for the Europeans, as the Western turned (out) a failure for the Hindus. This is the secret, and the very root of the failure. But, having mixed up the elements in the so-desired Brotherhood—that could not be helped. Please do not misunderstand me. Occultism is one and universal at its root. Its external modes differ only. I certainly did not want to disturb you to come here only to hear disagreeable things, but (I) do try: (a) to make you see things in their true light, which could only benefit you; and (b) to show you things written in the Secret Doctrine which would prove to you that that which you have lately learned in old Rosicrucian works, I knew years ago, and now have embodied them. Cross and such symbols are world-old. Every symbol must yield three fundamental truths and four implied ones, otherwise the symbol is false. You gave me only one, but so far it is a very correct one. In Adyar you have learned many of such implied truths, because you were not ready; now you may have the rest through self-effort. But don’t be ungrateful, whatever you do. Do not feel squeamish and spit on the path—however unclean in some of its corners—that leads you to the Adytum at the threshold of which you now stand. Had it not been for Adyar and its trials you never would have been where you are now, but in America married to some new wife who would have knocked the last spark of mysticism out of your head, or confirmed you in your spiritualism, or what is worse, one of you would have murdered the other. When you find another man who, like poor Olcott, will love and admire you as he did—sincerely and honestly—take him, I say, to your bosom and try to correct his faults by kindness, not by venomous satire and chaff. We have all erred, and we have all been punished, and now we have learned better. I never gave myself out for a full-blown occultist, but only for a student of Occultism for the last thirty-five or forty years. Yet I am enough of an occultist to know that before we find the Master within our own hearts and seventh principle—we need an outside Master. As the Chinese Alchemist says, speaking of the necessity of a living teacher: “Every one seeks long life (spiritual), but the secret is not easy to find. If you covet the precious things of Heaven you must reject the treasures of the earth. You must kindle the fire that springs from the water and evolve the Om contained within the Tong; one word from a wise Master and you possess a draught of the golden water.”
I got my drop from my Master (the living one); you, because you went to Adyar. He is a saviour, he who leads you to finding the Master within yourself. It is ten years already that I preach the inner Master and God and never represented our Masters as saviours in the Christian sense. Nor has Olcott, gushing as he is. I did think for one moment that you had got into the epidemic of a “Heavenly Master and Father God,” and glad I am to find my mistake. This was only natural. You are just one of those with whom such surprises may be expected at any moment. Commit one mistake, and turn for one moment out of the right path you are now pursuing, and you will land in the arms of the Pope. Olcott does not preach what you say, Doctor. He teaches the Hindus to rely upon themselves,[13] and that there is no Saviour save their own Karma. I want you to be just and impartial; otherwise you will not progress. Well, if you do not come and have a talk—I will feel sorry, for I will never see you again. If you do, the Countess and I will welcome you.
Yours ever truly,
H. P. B.
(To be continued)
Notes:
[1] Letters of H. P. B. to Dr. Franz Hartmann. I. Ostende, December 5th [1885]; II. Würtzburg, December ( ), 1885; III. (No Date); IV. (No Date); V. (No Date). Theosophical Quarterly 23, no. 3 (January 1925), 212-218. {This article was reformatted from the original, but with the content unchanged other than fixing minor typos, by Robert Hutwohl, ©2025}
[2] This refers to the clairvoyant (psychometric) examination of an occult letter which was printed, together with the picture, in the Theosophist of 1886. The psychometer was a German peasant woman, entirely uninformed in regard to such things; but gave as it appears a correct description of a Buddhist temple in Tibet, with its surroundings and the inscriptions within; also of the lamas or priests and of the Master, and also of some people working in the neighbourhood of the temple. The picture could not have been read from my own mind, as I have never seen such a temple, or if I have been there in the spirit, that visit has left no trace in my personal memory.—Franz Hartmann.
[3] The explanation of seeing the gentleman in knee-breeches may be that I was just then very much occupied with the spirit of the well-known occultist, Carl von Eckartshausen.—F. H.
[4] H. P. B. used to call me in fun her “conspirator” or “confederate,” because the stupidity of certain persons went so far as to accuse me of having entered into a league with her for the purpose of cheating myself.—F. H.
[5] This was in answer to a letter in which I complained of the irresistible impulse that caused me to write books, very much against my inclination, as I would have preferred to devote more time, to “self-development.”—F. H.
[6] Babajee.—F. H.
[7] I know nothing about it.—F. H.
[8] The fact is that Damodar was never asked to go to Tibet, but begged to be permitted to go there, and at last went with the permission of H. P. B., on which occasion I accompanied him to the steamer.—F. H.
[9] This refers to my Report of Observation at the Headquarters at Adyar.—F. H.
[10] Babajee, whose Brahmanical conceit caused him to turn against H. P. B. when he became convinced that he could not make her a tool for the propaganda of his creed.—F. H.
[11] This explains the letter printed in the notorious book of V. S. Solovyoff, page 124. The intrigue was acted by Babajee, who, while professing great friendship for me, acted as a traitor and spy.—F. H.
[12] The crowd alluded to it the same Brahmano-Jesuitical army which has now ensnared certain well-meaning but short-sighted “leaders” of the European Section T. S.—F. H.
[13] The reputed “Postscript” in No. 7, Vol. XVI, of the Theosophist, goes to show that in this case H. P. B. was wrong.—F. H.