Lotusblüten 1, no. 7 (April 1893), 305-40
[H. P. Blavatsky. Die “Sphinx” des 19. Jahrhunderts][1]
Translated from the German by Robert Hutwohl
“The restoration of the true spiritual church can not be accomplished by human effort and human wisdom, but solely by the manifestation of the spirit of truth within humanity.”
One of the most significant appearances of this century, and probably the strangest of all, was Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, née Hahn. She was the soul of the “Theosophical Society,” founded by her in collaboration with Col. H. S. Olcott and others, which spread its branches over the whole earth in a relatively short time. But this is probably the least of its merits; the main point is the doctrines which she revealed and spread by her disciples have brought about a major change in the general world view, and this shift is taking place in all areas of religion, science, and philosophy, and is ever increasing.
There is no doubt, therefore, H. P. Blavatsky’s name will sooner or later find its due place in world history, and such will be the case that the encyclopedia of conversation will contain as many lies about her character as it does about Cagliostro, Paracelsus, and other characters who were not understood by their contemporaries because they were above the mindset of their time. A noble soul can only be known and understood by noble souls; wickedness sees nothing in the noblest but its own [lower] image.
Just as it is the destiny of every great mind is to be misunderstood, ridiculed, and maligned in this foolish earthly world, so too was the case with H. P. Blavatsky. The ideals which it presented were far too lofty for the narrow, vain, and selfish to comprehend, and every tiny newspaper writer thought himself entitled to judge them, though he had not the slightest idea what it was. Persecuted and betrayed throughout her life, here and there after her death, one begins to recognize her high spirit and the philanthropy which permeated her. The “pious” are beginning to realize that which they taught is identical with the teachings of the wisest among the saints of the church, and that they are never against true religion, but only against the rubbish adhering to it, against what “religion” calls itself, but in truth actually is not. The philosophers who are capable of recognizing the spirit of the Indian teachings verily declared by them, begin to realize that without their own possession of the truth and its knowledge, all so-called knowledge is but a dream, a blind speculation and is a hiding in the dark; but as far as modern science is concerned, in so far as it relates to the investigation of the nature and essence of man, it too begins to awaken from slumber, rub its eyes and find that there are things of which it is so far not able to make out any idea. All this, however, we must primarily thank due to the suggestions of H. P. Blavatsky, although some who now adorn themselves with their feathers, yet are hostile to her memory and bring the things proclaimed by her onto the market under a different name as their own product. The light whose “condensing lens” was the function of H. P. Blavatsky, today enlightens some places where Egyptian darkness prevailed only a few years ago, and instead of knowledge based on mere hypotheses and theories, a true and original knowledge has begun to take hold, which does not, as with the scholasticism of former times, refer to mere appearances, but to the core of truth which pervades everything.
H. P. Blavatsky was a creature of whom, as long as what one knew about her only by hearsay, it was impossible to form even a remotely accurate concept, her talents being of a kind which is exceedingly seldom found, and the wild rumours which spread about them were likely to arouse suspicion. Anyone who personally came upon them could, unless he had a bias, could only speak of her with admiration. To those who cannot comprehend the mysteries of the inner human nature, it must of course remain a riddle; but for those who were able to penetrate into the sphere of their thoughts and feelings, their soul was an open book in which nothing was hidden.
A poet of modern times admirably says the following:
“There are two natures in every person,
One is a child of daylight,
It shows traces of the sun everywhere,
There is nothing dark and nothing obscure.
You can see through them to the core,
You do not take anything strange, there is no riddle,
There is insight, clarity and trust,
It is crystal clear, simple, as clear as day.
The other is as though it was born out of the night,
You do not know them and no one is measuring them;
Trial and reason shall be shamed upon her,
She is a foreign guest in her own house.
Intangible, she throws into the realities
Her flickering and crazy shadow play,
Like dreams which pass through the bright day,
Confuses the threads and hexes the target.”
Learned critics have only tried to analyze the “other nature” of H. P. Blavatsky; her one, simple and true nature was not apparent to them. Yet, there are still enough people today who know nothing about Theophrastus Paracelsus, except that he got physical exercise in his leisure hours by waving his sword in the air, and believe that this was his only occupation. They realized that he left buckskin pants upon his death, but his philosophy does not exist for them. Likewise, H. Blavatsky’s critics could only see the mask of the personality which she wore, since in order to know the spirit, one must be in contact with their own spirit.
Like other human beings, H. P. Blavatsky was a person in whom a spiritual individuality manifested. The biography of this spiritual individuality includes many reincarnations, the events of which are beyond our observation. But the following may perhaps give us an inkling of how such reincarnations take place:
In 1831 a wealthy lady lived in Ekaterinoslav in great seclusion, who only socialized with a few acquaintances, including the wife of a colonel, Peter Hahn, who later became the mother of H. P. Blavatsky. Not much was known about her, other than that she was very charitable and was much concerned with mystical things. As a result of which she was regarded by many with superstitious awe. One day this lady, although she was in the best of health at the time, informed some of her friends that she was about to die but would reincarnate again shortly. The next morning she was found dead in her room and the doctors could not find a satisfactory explanation for her sudden death. On the same morning, Helena Petrovna Hahn was born. Whatever may be thought of, it is established by witnesses that when the child had learned to walk, her favorite walk was to the grave of the late lady, and that the girl repeated verbatim to her mother various confidential conversations which she had with that lady, which she had before H. P. Blavatsky was born.
It is asserted that this spiritual individuality was an Indian in a still earlier incarnation; but such speculations have no further value. If we mention them at all, it is only to alert the reader to the possibility of such reincarnations and the remembrance of them.
As to the kinship of the personality of H. P. Blavatsky, her father was the already mentioned Colonel Peter Hahn, and her mother was née Helene Fadif, a niece of the Privy Councilor Andreas Fadif and Princess Helene Dolgoruky. Regarding her youth, the strangest things were related by their relatives, for which “exact” science has no explanation and which our scholars will most readily come to terms with by regarding them as “invented.” Several anecdotes relating to this can be found in Sinnett’s Life of H. P. Blavatsky,[2] and we only emphasize that she was clairvoyant from an early age, so that, e.g., there was once a murderer who was hidden in a haystack who was discovered through her information, a feat which cost her father a heavy chunk of money to appease the Russian police, who of course assumed that if he hadn’t known about the murder himself, such a discovery could not have taken place. Little Helene seemed to be served by invisible forces, objects which she desired but could not reach came to her, carried by invisible hands; she read the minds of those present like an open book, prophesied events that came true later, etc. She was indeed a “prodigy,” an object of admiration and to the superstitious, an object of fear.
Being a Russian by birth, her nature had various peculiarities belonging particularly to the Russian nation, but especially a high degree of perseverance and willpower, which degenerated into stubbornness. There was nothing she couldn’t pull through when she wanted it, and that quality led to her marriage to sixty-year-old General Niceforo Blavatsky, a former governor of Erivan province in the Caucasus. When her governess once said to the then nineteen-year-old girl: “You are such a stubborn thing that you can never get a man; not even old General Blavatsky would marry you;” so she wanted to show her governess that she was wrong. Over a short time, she had gotten the general to ask her in marriage and soon afterwards, in 1848, the marriage took place. But when, after the wedding, he wanted to show his marital affection, her nature revolted and when he became intrusive, she became beside herself and knocked him to the ground with a silver candlestick and fled on horseback in the dark night, believing she had killed him. But General Blavatsky was not dead; he made a full recovery, but resolved that it would be better to consent to a divorce than to live any longer with so dangerous a wife.
After this event, H. P. Blavatsky travelled, spending many years in Central Asia, South America, Mexico and Africa. She met a Copt in Egypt who taught her the “secret” sciences; she visited the United States, Japan and India and attempted to invade Tibet in 1852, but did not succeed until 1856, after which she remained there for three years.
It is not our intention, in this short sketch, to give a detailed description of H. P. Blavatsky’s experiences. What appears to be the most interesting period in her life, from 1867 to 1870, is also shrouded in a mystical darkness. At that time, as she told her confidants, her body was in Tiflis[ii] in a state in which her outward consciousness returned only intermittently, while her inner “I” was in Tibet, maintaining her other self-conscious existence in association with her teachers. She said: “I was divided into two personalities at the time. When I left my sick body in Tbilisi, I was a person who cared nothing for H. P. Blavatsky and did not even notice its existence. When I awoke as H. P. Blavatsky, I was what I had been before, but remembered with reverence that second person.” We leave it to our philosophers, when they know the constitution of human nature, to make up this dichotomy, or, when they know nothing of such things, to only laugh at it.
The dealing with H. P. Blavatsky featured a daily series of so-called “unexplainable” events. By way of example only, we shall cite that the writer [Franz Hartmann] of these lines often received answers to his thoughts from her; that letters were written by invisible hands on paper in front of him, manuscripts locked in boxes were corrected in an “inexplicable” way, etc. Once, for example, I was sitting in a corner of the room while H. P. Blavatsky was busy writing in another corner. I thought wondering what had become of one of my friends who had died in America, H. P. Blavatsky handed me a piece of paper, on which, while I was thinking, she copied the well-chosen portrait of that friend, Mrs. K. . . . W . . . . as she lay in death. Beside it stood a strange-looking elemental who seemed to await the departing astral body of the dying, while the entrance of the spirit into the divine was indicated by a rainbow whose end lost itself in the sky.
Even as a child, she wrote so-called “ghost communications”. But one would be very wrong if one were to take her for a believing spiritualist; on the contrary, she scoffed at the spiritistic belief in spirits and gave completely different explanations about the occurrence of such things. The following may serve as an illustration. She says:
“When I was a young girl, I often saw the “ghost” of my aunt, who had moved to Germany with her son many years ago and who was believed to have died since nothing was heard from her. This “ghost” wrote through my hand in German (which I had never learned) and in my aunt’s handwriting (which I only saw later), told us how she had died. She also gave the details of her funeral and the text the pastor had preached on that occasion. In addition, the “spirit” of her son came and informed us that he had ended his earthly life by a suicidal hand and now deeply regrets this step, because he would have to suffer a lot. He also asked for the helpful prayers of those present. Everything was very touching, until it turned out that the aunt was alive and well in Berlin, and her son was also safely employed in a shop in London.”
H. P. Blavatsky’s explanation of such things was that once the germ of a certain idea has begun to develop in the mind, it develops according to a certain regularity, just as hearing a shot by a sleeping man leads to a dream about a whole murder story, may give rise to a series of consistent ideas in which there is none of the truth; that the brain, if not supervised by reason, works in a similar way, e.g., a music box which, once set in motion, plays one particular piece and no other, and no “spirit of a dead person” needs to be involved.
But such explanations were not at all to the liking of certain spiritists, who were enthusiastic about dealing with the “dear departed” and did not want to be disturbed in their sweet dreams in the fool’s paradise, and so it was that H. P. Blavatsky, while being decried as a spiritualist by the unbelievers, had the spiritualists themselves as their worst enemies, who took every opportunity to blaspheme her.
H. P. Blavatsky, for her part, fought spiritist superstition with the weapons of reason. It was not that she denied “miracles” which were marveled at by the spiritualists, but only disputed the interpretation of them, which in all circumstances, the Spiritualists ascribed these phenomena to the action of the spirits of the dead, but she explained them in a natural way. Yes, even more! In order to prove that any person endowed with the necessary faculties could produce these phenomena himself, without the help of “spirits,” since she had this talent, she produced them, and this was the reason why she was soon decried as a “swindler” by people who knew nothing of such things, and also did not understand the object of why she acted in such a way and among these ignorant ones, belonged the majority of the newspaper writers of the whole world.
In addition, H. P. Blavatsky claimed not only to be in possession of such powers, not “supernatural,” but extraordinary, but also to be in contact with certain people, her teachers, the “Masters” or “Adepts” in Tibet and Egypt who possessed the same and even higher spiritual powers; and indeed this seemed to be the case, since not only they themselves, but many others (including the author) frequently received so-called “Occult Letters” from these teachers, to which they were enlightened or advised about this and that. Such letters often seemed to suddenly pass from Professor Zöllner’s “fourth dimension into the third dimension,” i.e., from the subjective world invisible to us, into the visible objective world; they came unbidden and unsolicited, and often just at that moment when good advice was needed. The discovery of these facts, however, gave rise to new misunderstandings, for while those who were far from the matter now fancied that H. P. Blavatsky was cheating her followers with sleight of hand, there were among these devotees themselves a multitude who clung to these Tibetan adepts, or, as they called them, “Mahatmas,” with a superstitious deification, and regarded them not as men but as gods. Among these superstitious devotees were some eminent members of the “Theosophical Society,” and it was precisely these who, when the storm over H. P. Blavatsky finally broke free, fled in cowardly flight, because this storm threw to the ground the foolish idols which they had created for themselves.
What H. P. Blavatsky herself thought of these conditions will perhaps be made clear by the following extract from one of her letters to the author:
[Note from the translator: Surely Dr. Hartmann had possession of either the original or a copy of the April 3, 1886 letter. However, his insertion, which follows, is not verbatim to the original and only includes parts of the original. Plus, his letter begins with “Lieber Freund! . .” [Dear friend!] This does not appear in the original letter. The rest does, but is very paraphrased with much not included. This is understandable since the letter was private. Therefore, I use Hartmann’s paraphrase of H. P. B.’s letter, just as it is in the original German article, for my translation.[3]]]
Würzburg, April 3, 1886.
“Dear friend! . . Unfortunately, what you write about the mischief that is being done with the so-called “Mahatmas” is absolutely right. Haven’t I watched these follies for eight years? Didn’t I buck and fight N…s[4] exaggerated fantasies, trying every day to get him to settle into his exaggerations? Wasn’t he told, as you know, that if he doesn’t see our teachers for what they really are, and stops inflaming people’s imaginations with his exaggerations, he’s putting all the responsibility on himself would pull, for all evil that befalls us? Wasn’t he told even then that there were no such “Mahatmas” who he believes hold Mount Meru on their fingertips and physically fly about in the air at will? I foresaw everything that would come out of his exaggerations; I have fought against it in vain, and despairing of my helplessness I finally gave up the fight.
I was sent to America for a specific purpose. There I met N . . . engaged in spiritistic investigations and just as in love with the “spirits” as he later fell in love with the adepts. I was commissioned to show him that whatever happens in the “mediums” through their “spirits” gifted others to do so people can accomplish without the help of ‘spirits’, that the ringing of ‘astral bells’, mind reading, ‘spirit tapping’ and the like can be accomplished by anyone if he has the ability, in his physical body through the organs of his astral body all my family know that I have had this ability since I was 4. I could move furniture without making visible contact with it and make objects fly around in the air while my astral arms, which the same held, remained invisible I told N… that I met the Adepts in India, in Egypt and Spain, and that they are persons who still live there today; that calling these people “yogis,” “rosicrucians,” or “cabalists” would not change the matter; that these adepts were men who lived quiet and withdrawn, and did not associate themselves fully with anyone, unless one had, as I did, undergone seven and ten years of probation, and during that time had shown complete devotion and proved that one could keep silent, oneself in the face of impending death.
I fulfilled these conditions, and am — what I am.[5] All I have been allowed to say is that beyond the Himalayas, where there lives a core of Adepts who belong to different nationalities and are known to the Teshu Lama.[6] I know several of them personally and said that they could do amazing things, but that they did not dare to please the curiosity of any fool.
As N . . . and X . . .[7] heard about these things, they became obsessed. Then came D. . . .[8] and other fanatics who started calling the adepts “Mahatmas” and little by little we became friends, the adepts were turned into gods. They began to be invoked and worshiped, and made more and more fabulous and supernatural. Some Hindus imagined that these adepts were their ancient Rishis who had never died and were over 700,000 years old, that they lived invisibly in sacred trees and when visible appeared with long green hair and bodies made of moonshine.
Between these madnesses on the one hand and N . . . ’s crushes on the other hand, what could I do? With horror and anger I saw the wrong way they took. They believed that the “masters” must be omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent. If a Hindu or Parsee desired a son or a job, the “mahatmas”[9] should help him to get it, and if it didn’t, they felt they had been wronged in the “Theosophical Society” when any foolish thing was done, he said, “Why don’t the Mahatmas take better care of him?” That these adepts were human beings whose fortunes might be finite did not enter the minds of their admirers. . . .
The root cause of all this ignorance lies in the general ignorance of human nature, and in the failure of modern science and religion to give people anything better, higher, and nobler than a striving for money and reputation. Put that fact on one scale, and the confusion which modern spiritism has created in many minds on the other, and the riddle is solved.
Yours, etc. H. P. B.
In this we fully agree with H. P. Blavatsky’s views. The world in general was not mature enough to understand the theosophy which it proclaimed; the eyes of our scholarly world, accustomed to the darkness of ignorance, could not endure the light which spread their teaching; it was unable to follow the high flight of the Himalayan eagle. Unable to grasp the spirit of wisdom, it sought curiously the source from which that wisdom flowed, in order to throw dirt on it. And here the author cannot fail to add in parenthesis, that when he came to Germany in 1884, he found the same silliness and exaggerations among the members of the “Theosophical Society” at that time. The attempt to bring them back to their correct level failed. They wanted to believe either in supernatural miracles or in nothing at all; they wanted either ubiquitous “mahatmas” or no teachers at all, and when they believed their wildest expectations about the personalities of the adepts to be wrong, the swarm of “wisdom seekers” grabbed the banner and scattered it about like chaff in the wind and then people threw the baby out with the bathwater and wanted nothing more to do with real wisdom since the only ideal of wisdom they were looking for consisted in satisfying scientific curiosity.
Let’s go back to H. P. Blavatsky. In 1875 she founded in association with Col. H. S. Olcott and others, in New York, the “Theosophical Society” whose special purpose was the study of the literary treasures of the Orient and the secret sciences. This study soon made it clear that the ancient Indians were in possession of knowledge of which the modern world-view does not even understand the rudiments, and this fact was particularly illustrated by the appearance of two volumes, composed by H. P. Blavatsky, entitled “Isis unveiled.” In this book, as well as in the “Secret Doctrine” which appeared later, there are a lot of citations from works which H. P. Blavatsky has never seen, and yet these citations are all correct, even the page numbers given are found to be correct, which lends credence to H. P. Blavatsky’s claim that she saw these quotations in the astral light. Moreover, the contents of this book proved that she was initiated into the higher mysteries of Freemasonry, although these degrees, as is known, belong to the female sex which is not accessible in the usual way.
The revelations she made astounded the whole of America, and what was said about “Occult Phenomena” produced by her power soon gave rise to the most outlandish rumours. With that began their persecution by that part of the press which voluptuously appropriates any gossip just so they can deliver something sensational to its readers, unconcerned as to whether injustice is done to the cause of truth, and just as the big dogs beyond the oceans barked, so the little mutts gaped by the side, only H. P. Blavatsky herself took no part. There was nothing so untrue and silly that was not printed by newspaper writers and devoured by faithful readers. The more honorable of such papers, such as, for example, the New-York “Sun,” later retracted the accusations they brought; other newspapers, including German ones, would be recommended to do the same.
But after all, what does a person’s reputation matter? In this case, the importance lies only in the fact that such slanders may prevent those who believe in them, from examining and taking advantage of the doctrines which the person in question has proclaimed. This is the consequence which befalls oneself and this confirms H. P. Blavatsky’s teachings, that every act and every omission falls back on the one who commits it.
An old proverb says: “Where God builds a church, the devil builds a chapel next to it.” The more you can use a thing, the more you can abuse it. The spread of Christianity, the religion of philanthropy, had in its wake the atrocities of the crusaders, the courts of heretics, the burning at the stake, and the Inquisition; the glimpse which Western audiences had of certain Eastern teachings gave rise in some places to a renewed addiction to forbidden knowledge. Some even believed that schools should be set up in which the preparation of love potions, gold-making, witchcraft and magic could be learned, and many a man, when he saw his wild expectations deceived, declared himself to be deceived. But it is not the fault of truth that it is misunderstood, nor the fault of liberty that it is misused. In order to prevent all the evil which could possibly arise from the spread of enlightenment, there would be no other means other than spiritual slavery, the quiet of the churchyard, which is the ideal of stupidity. The light diffused by H. P. Blavatsky created life and threw deep shadows upon those who, filled with conceit and selfishness which ventured into his sphere. However, H. P. Blavatsky had not come to bring peace to fools, but rather, the sword of knowledge, which threatens the destruction of foolishness.
Since the main direction of the “Theosophical Society” was to learn about the secret sciences of the East, it was decided to move the Society’s headquarters to India. The move took place in December 1878, and H. P. Blavatsky took up residence first in Bombay and then in Adyar near Madras.
In India H. P. Blavatsky was received with joy and Rajas and Maharajas courted her favour. The natives regarded the members of the “Theosophical Society” as their liberators, as the restorers of their religion and national autonomy, which had been lost through the caste system. Col. Olcott never grew tired of trumpeting the merits of ancient Aryavartha[10] over that of modern civilization, to the world; the Indians had the unusual drama of being oppressed by Europeans for so long, so accustomed to looking up to them as demigods and as objects of fear, now saw Europeans who were showering them with praise and courting their favours; the consequence of this was that in a short time many Indians imagined they were just as good as every European, indeed much better.
H. P. Blavatsky’s teachings, — or that which was thought to be her teachings — spread rapidly in India; thousands followed Col. Olcott’s banner. Under these circumstances, a real sour pickle period began to come about for the Christian missionaries, who now saw the field of their activity as the “converters of pagans” becoming smaller and smaller, such that the possibility of H. P. Blavatsky’s removal became a burning question of existence for them. Indeed the “pagans” began to revert from Christian church-hood back to Brahminism, and the more the people came to know the true spirit of Christianity, the more they believed it to be found in the Buddhist community, or in Advaita philosophy, rather than in in the Christian sectarian system. The missionaries’ main concern was to undermine H. P. Blavatsky’s reputation, or at least to make her unpopular; for her teaching could not be attacked without destroying herself, since this teaching forms the basis of every religion and therefore also that of Christianity.
In order to harm H. P. Blavatsky personally, the missionaries were offered a favorable opportunity through their connection with a housekeeper of the Theosophical headquarters, who was later dismissed and with whom Blavatsky had dealt confidentially. She [Blavatsky] had carelessly written a number of letters to this person, mocking the fanaticism of some of her worshipers, calling one a “fool” and the other a “dreamer.” Even if the characteristics she gave were absolutely correct for the cases in question, it was to be assumed that the “theosophists,” who had been offended by their vanity, would withdraw from H. P. Blavatsky after the publication of these letters. The missionaries therefore bought forth these letters and published them with many disguises and additions.
This well-prepared publication enraged the world’s press. “Revelations” were babbled about, and perhaps never since the time when theologians argued over whether or not Adam had a navel, has so much ink and paper been wasted on so insubstantial a subject as when man imagined that self-knowledge of truth was dependent on believing in the credibility of H. P. Blavatsky’s personality. The intrigue which the missionaries had staged had no other success than spreading their reputation throughout the world and brought new members into the “Theosophical Society”; although some less discerning but all the more enthusiastic, whose whole theosophy consisted in a blind faith in H. P. Blavatsky’s personality, and in a thirst for the gratification of curiosity, were misled and denied the truth before the crowing of the rooster had announced the dawn of the day of their knowledge.
What H. P. Blavatsky taught was based on something like this:
“The world is caught up in a dream-life or a make-believe life; true life only begins when man truly recognizes himself. Do not think that true knowledge is what you think you know because someone else has said it is so and so, or because it seems so and so. A mere opinion, hypothesis or theory is by no means your own knowledge. Don’t look for the truth in the multitude of opinions, but look for it in truth itself, which is simple. Listen to the word of truth which speaks within you, to the voice of silence, which can only be heard when the storm of passions has calmed down. Opinions are ephemeral and changeable, but the truth revealed in one’s higher self-awareness is eternal. Strive for purity and unity so that the Spirit of Truth may manifest within you. Believe this teaching, not because I preach it, but because you know the truth of it in your heart.”
Instead of following this advice, people argued about whether the “occult letters” which they and others received from the adepts were genuine or not, and whether the “Mahatmas” really existed, otherwise one cannot believe the teachings
“Do not concern yourself with appearances, but seek true being,” H. P. Blavatsky addressed. “All that is perishable is but a parable; appearances prove nothing other than that of appearing. After all, if someone were to shake the sun to prove a lie to be true, that would prove nothing other than that the person can shake the sun; but not that the lie is the truth.”
Instead of understanding this, people argued about whether certain occult phenomena produced by H. P. Blavatsky were real or sleight of hand, and wanted to make belief in the wisdom teachings she proclaimed, dependent on this. The headquarters of the “Theosophical Society” became the scene of a fool’s comedy in which the missionaries stood in the place of the clowns.
The whole world raved about the “revelations” in Adyar, without anyone but the initiated seeming to know what they were about. A member of a “scientific club” which was devoted to mind reading and the study of ghost stories (“the Society for Psychic Research in London”) came to India to play the role of an “expert” in giving his verdict as to what was the source of H. P. Blavatsky’s wisdom, and whether the letters she and others received from the adepts were really written by those adepts or by H. P. Blavatsky herself. Just as the Adepts did not appear before him to prove their authorship to him, and just as he could not measure the depth of H. P. Blavatsky’s thought with a cubit stick, he found no other way of avoiding damaging his reputation as an “expert” than to declare whole thing a “fraud.” He wrote a book about how he imagined that this and that could have been done by sleight of hand, but with no further proof other than that it was done that way. Going into the details of this comedy again today would be a waste of time. Suffice it to say that in view of this report, H. P. Blavatsky was unanimously declared by the association concerned as “the greatest fraudster of the century,” and that this declaration was trumpeted in all directions as an “ipse dictum” [“so it is”] of science and prayed after by the faithful.
Nowadays however, the opinions of most of the members of that society have changed as well. At the time, the impression made on H. P. Blavatsky by all these suspicions was not particularly pleasant. She was ill at the time and a consultation with eminent medical authorities decided that she could not live another 24 hours. Since it was known that she wished to have her body cremated upon her death, official permission for the cremation was obtained in view of the scientific opinion. But the following night her health was miraculously restored, and she decided, instead of being burned, to make a change of air by traveling to Europe. A few days later she left for Naples, accompanied by the author of these lines and a companion, lived for two months in Torre del Greco at the foot of Mount Vesuvius, then went to Würzburg, later to Ostend and finally to London, where she founded her magazine Lucifer and completed her great work “The Secret Doctrine,” after she had already received a lot of the manuscript for this work from invisible hands and in an “inexplicable” way at the above-mentioned places, as well as on board the steamer during our crossing from Madras to Naples, although the world has not heard of this circumstance until now.
Her activity in London gave rise to a new revival of theosophical societies in England and throughout Europe. To the proportion that as their teachings were understood, prejudices against them fell, and while in her lifetime the booksellers of London, out of fear of causing offense, refused to undertake the sale of her writings, to-day they quarrel over publishing them.
On May 8th, 1891, H. P. Blavatsky died, surrounded by her friends and disciples, at the European headquarters of the “Theosophical Society” in London, without any particularly conspicuous antecedent ill health, and it is not impossible that the great spirit who, through her personality, was so active for a long time and with such great success in the work of the spiritual evolution of humanity, sooner or later will appear again in a different human shell, as a new herald of eternal truth.
Notes:
[1] {Incidents in the Life of Madame Blavatsky. Compiled from information supplied by her relatives and friends, edited by A.P. Sinnett. With a portrait reproduced from an original painting by Hermann Schmiechen. London, George Redway, 1886.}
[2] {R.H.—This was the pre-1936 name of the now Tbilisi, Georgia, which is located in the heart of the Caucasus, between Europe and Asia.}
[3] {The text of the original letter may be found in: Letter of H. P. Blavatsky to Dr. Franz Hartmann, Theosophical Quarterly 23, no. 4 (April 1926), 322-326 and on the, spiritofthesunpublications.com website, which is down for a period, undergoing a rebuild.}
[4] {Here, Hartmann inserts “N,” to stand for an abbreviation of the person H. P. B. is referring to. In the original letter, she is referring to Col. Olcott. Hartmann did this so as not to offend Col. Olcott, because it is the principle being taught by Blavatsky and the specific personality is not of issue for what Hartmann is trying to illustrate. But in the same letter, further on, H. P. B. praises Col. Olcott for all the good he has done.}
[5] {Translator: H.P.B. is saying here, exactly what Cagliostro said during his life. It should be noted, Franz Hartmann, when he asked, [See: Cagliostro. Franz Hartmann. The Occult Review XI/1 (Jan. 1910) 11-15] “One day in the year 1884 I was talking with H. P. Blavatsky in her room at Adyar. We spoke about reincarnation and other things, and in the course of conversation I expressed a wish to have her portrait. Without answering she went to a drawer and produced a picture of Cagliostro, which she presented to me and of which a copy is reproduced in the present article.”}
[6] {Tashi or Panchen Lama}
[7] {H.P.B. mentions others in the letter. So, it is uncertain who this “X” might be. It could have been Judge, or Serrvai, as she indicates they all became fanatics about the Adepts, who described them as ““Mahatmas”; and, little by little, the Adepts were transformed into Gods on earth.”}
[8] {This could be Damodar, but Hartmann abbreviates with a “D” in order to protect him in this public German journal.}
[9] Hartmann’s note: „Mahatmas“, von „Maha“ — gross und „Atma” — Geist, bedeutet soviel als ein grosser Geist, ein hohes Genie, und entspricht im Deutschen dem Ausdruck „Euer Hochwohlgeboren!” {Translator: “Mahatmas,” from “Maha” — great and “Atma” — spirit, means something like a great spirit, a high genius, and corresponds in German to the expression “Your Highness!”}
[10] {Sanskrit for āryāvarta, the abode of the āryas.}
[11] {H. P. Blavatsky. Die “Sphinx” des 19. Jahrhunderts [H.P. Blavatsky. The “Sphinx” of the nineteenth century.] By Franz Hartmann, M.D. Lotusblüten 1, no. 7 (April 1893), 305-40. Translated from the German by Robert Hutwohl, ©2025}
Reprinted in: Theosophischer Wegweiser, as: “H. P. Blavatsky”; Theosophischer Wegweiser, Calw: Schatzkammer-Verlag, n.d., 93-6, 125-27, 148-51. I did not refer to, but republished as: Helena Petrowna Blavatsky, die Sphinx des 19. Jahrhunderts. Calw-Wimberg (Württemberg): Schatzkammerverlag Hans Fändrich, n.d. but ca. 1975-76, 12 pp.}