Theos-Talk Archives (November 2001 Message tt00480)

Daniel writes "Brigitte's latest "essay" on the Masters and 
Spirtualism -contains (1) numerous questionable assumptions (piled 
one upon the other), (2) statements with no supporting documentation, 
(3) misleading conclusions, (4) errors of facts, etc."

Next however Daniel skips all that, does NOT provide any evidence, 
NOT even information for the above, just skips it altoghether but 
makes it looks AS IF he "somehow" addressed the above by zeroing in 
on just ONE little detail at the verry tail of the mail (meaning 
Daniel probably doesn't even read the mails but just looks for a 
quick way to denounce them as his only objective)
Daniel has challenged, confronted, interrogated, but never indicated 
any interest in genuine dialogue. 
Daniel's "one issue/topic/subject at a time" scam has been dully 
exposed.
Although my e-mail might be not entirely foultless (but is this not 
an discussion group, are all the other e-mails on this list 100% 
faultless ? (See also my mail yesterday 3781 Double standards on 
theos-talk ? )
I think the majority of my mail below stands, making its case. 
So I like to ask Daniel to do like others and answer my mail as a 
whole, writing his comments agree or not agree with me is fine, 
inbetween. On that basis will I in turn also answer Daniels mails. 

Fact is that John King of whom HPB claimed "He is my only friend, 
and if I am indebted to anyone for the radical change in my ideas of 
life, my efforts and so on, it is to him alone"
Had first "appeared" to the Davenports in 1850 and not earlier , as 
claimed in error on Daniel's web site !
John King was a spirit guide (and soon also John King's "doughter", 
Katie) channeled by Jennie and Nelson Holmes. The "Kings", father and 
daughter, gained much notoriety from an 1874 incident. It appeared 
that the Holmes' had employed Katie King as more than just a spirit 
guide: the elderly Robert Dale Owen (1801-1877) claimed publicly that 
the jewellery he had been giving "Katie King",via the Holmes, had 
turned up in the possession of a woman by the name of Eliza White, 
who acknowledged that she had been employed by the Holmes' to 
impersonate the spirit. 

Already Daniel Douglas Home accused Blavatsky of fraud when she 
claimed to recognise during the seances in Clittenden a silver buckle 
supposedly buried with her father in Russia and materialised in 
Vermont for the occasion. Careful for his own credibility, Home based 
his charge not on the impossibility of materialising objects over 
distance, but on the assertion that the Russians do not burry 
decorations with their dead, adding that Blavatsky had also tried the 
same trick in Paris in 1858. Meaning Blavatsky knew a bit longer 
about "learning how to do the envellope trick" as some might think.
Having returned to New York from investigating Katie King, Blavatsky 
and Olcott were living in adjacent apartments, tough that did not 
prevent HPB from contractinga brief marriage to another man, the 
Georgian Michael Betanelly. The new Mdm Betanelly's marriage was also 
bigamous, as General Blavatsky was still alive.
Brendan French describes in his thesis that the Kings, father and 
daughter, gained much notoriety from an 1874 incident involving two 
Philadelphia mediums, Jennie and Nelson Holmes. It appeared that the 
Holmes' had employed Katie King as more than just a spirit guide: the 
elderly Robert Dale Owen (1801-1877) claimed publicly that the 
jewellery he had been giving Katie King, via the Holmes, had turned 
up in the possession of a woman by the name of Eliza White, who 
acknowledged that she had been employed by the Holmes' to impersonate 
the spirit. This incident is significant because Blavatsky, then 
resident in Philadelphia, rushed to the defence of the Holmes', 
insisting that Katie King was a genuine spirit.

Blavatsky knew the Davenports, the Davenports who later tought 
Houdini how to do his excape tricks.The Davenport's by the way used 
exactly the same kind of cabinet as Blavatsky later used in Adyar, 
and of wich Moncure Daniel Conway.reported: "After dinner the young 
men were all eager to have me go into the sacred room, though Mme. 
Blavatsky was rather reluctant. It was a small room and its only 
furniture the so called "shrine," - really a cabinet such as 
Spiritualists ordinarily use, though smaller, and such as Mme. 
Blavatsky herself probably used when a spirit-rapping medium in 
America.." 

In May 1875, the year the TS was started, HPB attempted to form 
a "Miracle club" in response to orders received from Tuitit Bey "to 
begin telling the public the truth about the phenomena and their 
mediums" 

Some of the new information involved regarding the conjuring 
of "phenomena" and Master visitations, are when Baburao had been 
hired by Thackersey at Blavatsky's request to deliver goods 
from "Master Goolab Singh" (see Old Diary Leaves, second series,46-
61) with earliest stagings reminding of some of the later 
Master "appearances" like the Christofolo doll incident in Adyar. 
Other occasions occurred in 1876 when Blavatsky orchestrated the 
appearance of an "elemental" in her New York apartment by the simple 
means of promising a maid five dollars if she would dress for the 
part. It seems she never paid the debt. 
(<http://blavatskyarchives.com/westbrook.htm>)

Writing in 1875, Blavatsky claimed her own association with the 
mysterious John King : 
[T]he spirit John King is very fond of me, and I am fonder of him 
than of anything on earth. He is my only friend, and if I am indebted 
to anyone for the radical change in my ideas of life, my efforts and 
so on, it is to him alone ...
Blavatsky apparently attempted to rehabilitate the reputation of 
Philadelphian Spiritualism - or at least so she had said at the time. 
It is during this period, however, that a subtle readjustment in 
explaining Spiritualist phenomena can be discerned in Olcott: 
Try to get private talk with "John King" - he is an initiate, and his 
frivolities of speech and action are meant to cover serious business.
There can be little doubt that Olcott's references to King's standing 
as an "initiate" were mediated to Olcott by Blavatsky. This shift 
from imaging the spirit entities as discarnate humans of no specific 
religious hue or status, to conceiving of them as in some sense 
spiritually adept is evidence of early Blavatskian revisionism. From 
the middle of 1875, Blavatsky would assign the impetus for the 
inception of Spiritualism, and indeed the governance and direction of 
esoteric orders as a whole, to a band of living adepts she called 
Masters: 
An attempt in consequence of orders received from T*** B*** [Tuitit 
Bey?] through P*** [the elemental?] personating J. K. [John King?]. 
Ordered to begin telling the public the truth about the phenomena & 
their mediums." 

Olcott's occult tutelage passed from Tuitit Bey to Serapis Bey at a 
very early stage. From the middle of 1875 until the latter part of 
1879, Olcott received many Masters letters' from Serapis, sometimes 
in concentrated volleys, at other times only intermittently. Arriving 
by regular mail (postmarked from Philadelphia and Albany), the first 
several letters are in the main unremarkable and concern themselves 
with relatively mundane details of Blavatsky's and Olcott's domestic 
life. The central topics appear to be Blavatsky's financial woes and 
her by now failed second - and bigamist - marriage to the Georgian 
Michael Betanelly.

At one time Serapis exhorted Olcott to approach relatives of his 
divorced wife for money for the sake of the Cause'; at another he 
attempted to involve Olcott in highly questionable business deals 
with Betanelly, Blavatsky's erstwhile husband. Serapis' assured 
Olcott that his "distant future is at Boston" and that "there are 
millions in the future in store for Betanelly". In fact, there is 
little about Serapis' self-revelation which would justify 
Theosophical claims that with the emergence of Blavatsky's Masters a 
new spiritual dispensation had begun. 
Re-established in her friendship with Olcott, Blavatsky next devoted 
herself further to her career in spiritualism. First she entered into 
an arrangement with Eldridge Gerry Brown, Editor of the Spiritual 
Scientist. In return for financial support he agreed to publiscise 
communications from Serapis and Tuitit Bey. But Brown lost interrest 
in Blavatsky and Olcott , and his magazine closed soon aftherwards he 
went bankrupt in 1878.

Only afther that apparently did she hit on the ideas that were to 
make her an international celebrity. Her problem was that she had to 
find a way of publicising the communications from the Brotherhood of 
Masters and thereby establish herself on an altogether higher occult 
level than mere spirit medium. This was not easy when she was in 
competition with other people pursuing the same goal. For the 1870's 
had produced a number of former spiritualists who claimed to be in 
communication with superior beings. For example

The solution to the problem was to embody the information she liked 
to convey in a form that would make the "Masters" accessible to a 
wider public while making it clear that those who subscribed to the 
doctrine were an elite. 
Despite the popularity of Isis Unveiled, the TS did not prosper and 
by the end of 1878 Olcott and HPB were almost alone. Combined with 
the failure of Ocott's book "People From the Other World", shortage 
of money, the only hope lay apparently with some contacts with 
Katkov who ended up paying HPB for writing for his nwspaper and a 
possible involvement in spying for Katkov and his Russian general 
friends who planned an invasion of India. For all logic, instead of 
India they might have gone to Egypt, home of Tuitit Bey, Serapis and 
the Luxor Brotherhood, but after 1878 we hear litle from Blavatsky 
about Egyptian Masters.

Steve: "I recall there is a book called THE THEOSOPHICAL MOVEMENT 
which deals extensively with the Judge scandal and in which Annie 
Besant is quoted in connection with that scandal. In one of the 
Besant quotes she accuses Judge of writing letters in "the 
handwriting adopted by Madame Blavatsky for mahatma letters." I 
remember that ohrase because I was struck by it when I first 
encountered it."

Steve:"The content of the Judge Mahatma letters seems to have come 
through two spirit mediums Judge was using but it was probably Judge 
who forged the mahatma script. He sent a whole letter to someone over 
his own signature and in the KH script just to show he could do it. 
He seems to have swiped what was left of Blavatsky's supply of 
Chinese paper, that Blavatsky was used for the Mahatma letters,from 
her desk when she died. Besant and Olcott did not go after Judge for 
this, though, and Sinnett was doing the same thing. So were others." 

Brigitte: Sinnet said about the same thing, that Blavatsky wrote 
them: 

"I may as well at once explain, what I only came to realise myself in 
the progress of later years, the true charakter of this 
correspondence. The letters were not, in the beginning what I 
imagined them to be- letters actually written by the Master and then 
forwarded by occult means either to Blavatsky or deposited or 
deposited somewhere about the house where I should find them.- But 
for the most part , if not always, were dictations to a competent 
clairaudient amanuensis and Madame Blavatsky was generally the 
amanuensis in question." (A.P.Sinnet, The early days, p,27) 

However Theosophical apologetics will then of course quote Harrison 
who wrote that the Master script deffenetly was different from HPB's 
handwriting.

Paul Johnson when asked by me about that mentioned in an interview 
with me; 
The author is quite explicit in saying that he does not claim 
to "demonstrate from an analysis of Madame Blavatsky's 'ordinary' 
writing that she could not have been responsible for the KH letters." 
Nevertheless, I get the distinct impression that his study is being 
put to polemical use by Theosophists overinterpreting Harrison 
as "vindicating" HPB -- which he explicitly told me, in person, that 
he has not done. Harrison allows for the possibility that in altered 
states of consciousness HPB wrote in handwritings so different from 
that of her normal waking personality that they could not be 
recognized as coming from the same hand, even by experts. Given 
Olcott's testimony to this effect, and abundant references to HPB 
as "amanuensis" of the Masters, it seems to me the most plausible 
explanation of the physical origin of most of the Mahatma letters. 
There are two particular logical problems I find in Harrison's study, 
specifically in his Replies to Criticism. First, he distinguishes 
between Hodgson's thesis that HPB was "an ingenious but common 
fraudster and impostor having no supernatural powers whatever" who 
produced the KH letters with intent to deceive and the alternative 
that the writing was "received automatically, in trance, sleep, etc., 
unknown to the conscious personality until he or she reads it." These 
are presented as mutually exclusive alternatives that exhaust the 
possibilities. I think the evidence leads us rather to consider that 
different letters were produced in different circumstances, and that 
no one-size-fits-all assumptions about those circumstances can be 
stretched to accommodate the various instances of questionable 
authorship. 

Second, Harrison asks "if we accept Olcott's testimony as evidence 
that HPB could write in altered states of consciousness, do we accept 
his further testimony" about a specific paranormal event he 
witnessed, and "if not, why not? I do not see how you can select or 
reject evidence to suit your argument. Olcott's testimony is that HPB 
possessed psychic powers in abundance. You cannot accept both Olcott 
and Hodgson." My response to this is to say that we can accept 
Olcott's testimony as evidence of what he believed he had witnessed 
without accepting that his interpretation of his experience was 
accurate. That HPB appeared to be writing in a trance state from 
which she emerged with no memory, that she behaved as if this were 
the case, can be accepted as fact based on Olcott's testimony and 
others from the period. That she "possessed psychic powers in 
abundance" is Olcott's inference and not at all in the same category 
of evidence. Contemporary scholars cannot accept either Hodgson or 
Olcott as infallible interpreters of evidence, nor as unbiased 
reporters of that evidence. But each is a crucial primary source, and 
the testimony of each must be included in the process of sifting and 
weighing evidence for and against HPB's claims. Each deserves full, 
skeptical scrutiny. Neither can be assumed to be always right or 
always wrong. But the gist of Harrison's study, as I see it 
being "spun" by Theosophists, is to dismiss Hodgson across the board 
and allow continued acceptance of Olcott's and HPB's claims as 
entirely reliable. 

In the same interview Paul Johnson mentioneed; Rather than HPB 
writing them alone (the Meade 
version) or their being psychic dictation from distant Masters (the 
orthodox version) the only plausible explanation to my mind is that 
they are a collaboration between HPB and Indian associates who are 
feeding her information. As to how they were physically produced, I 
consider that a blind alley and waste of time. No one will ever know. 
Damodar could have been helpful as a source drawn on by HPB for his 
inside knowledge of Indian religion, as were Subba Row and Mohini. 
The volume of the letters does not require a large network of fellow 
conspirators, or a small one, or in fact any at all. Given what we 
know of HPB's ability to produce a large volume of writing in a short 
time, composing the Mahatma letters in the time period in which they 
appeared is quite within her abilities. The circumstances of the 
letters' delivery would, in a few cases, require some conspirators. 
Among those suggested by other writers have been Damodar and the 
servant Babula; in the case of the Coulombs two witnesses confessed 
to having been part of a conspiracy. 


And Sotheran a verry experienced esotericist, who had worked verry 
closely with Blavatsky and was also co-founder of the TS, made it 
clear that the "confident interpretations of the Society are 
fallacious" and that hPB was totally without occult power. "Afther 
intimate knowledge of her for a considerable period. I can affirm 
that in my humble opinion she possesses NONE WHATEVER, 
notwithstanding she may have psychlologized herself and her champions 
into believing so"(Sotheran, "To the Editor of the Banner of Light" 
28/26, Januari 15,1876)

Afther having joined the TS with Dayananda, Blavatsky trye'd to 
employ Chintamon in spiritualistic type "phenomena" later 
attributed to Morya and K.H., Chintamon, "revealed as a thief, and 
who later told C. Massey that he had never been even a chela and had 
no occult powers whatsoever. Blavatsky in January 1879, on her way to 
India, caused a china pot to be produced in Massey's presence, and 
topped that wonder by causing a small Indian card case to appear in 
his overcoat pocket with a slip of paper inside bearing Chintamon's 
signature-proof of the origin of the phenomenon." Chintamon, revealed 
as a thief, later told C. Massey that he had never been even a chela 
and had no occult powers whatsoever.( John Deveney Astral Projection 
or Liberating of the Double and the Work of the Early Theosophical 
Society, pp 62-63.)

Reg. Parapsychological research I am not a disbeliever in some forms 
of "clairvoyance".
But Blavatsky writes herself about her own abilitys;
"And thus I must confess that three-quarters of the time the spirits 
spoke and answered in my words and out of my own considerations, for 
the success of my own plans. Rarely, very rarely, did I fail, by 
means of this little trap, to discover people's hopes, plans and 
secrets. "( Maria Carlson , No Religion Higher Than Truth, p. 316.)
An important factor seems to be therefore the conclusion b
rendan comes to in his thesis:" There can be little doubt that 
Blavatsky mined the experience of such men as Rawson in her quest for 
an
occult synthesis. In this latter, she would subsequently prove to 
be , gifteded with remarkable recall and able to synthesise any 
number of seemingly disparate streams of information into
her overarching systematising of esoteric lore. In the early 1870s, , 
it appears that Blavatsky was intent upon immersing herself in the 
myriad esotericisms of her era, with the objective, perhaps, of
eventually establishing her own occult organisation. If an idealised 
speculative Freemasonry, mediated to Blavatsky by mythopÏic Masonic 
entrepreneurs, provided the model for her regarding a society of
esotericists, then the ground had been more than amply fertilised by 
her experiences of Spiritualism. She understood that adherents of 
both Freemasonry and Spiritualism were earnestly seeking a satisfying 
occult worldview - and that it would be from these that she could 
form the nucleus of her new collegium Blavatsky was a collector, 
receiving and classifying information in an order idiosyncratic to 
herself, and, until her publications of the late 1870s at the 
earliest, it is often unclear exactly what policy governed her 
acquisitions."

And:" When the Masters made history into mythology, and mythology 
into history, they became none other than Harlequin - in a turban. 
There is no need to search for Oriental Bodhisattvas when Blavatsky's 
Hermesian modelling is fully acknowledged." 
 
Brigitte
P.S. In "THE BRITISH LETTER" Massey writes about deceptions he 
observed for example: in his letter from 6th Nov. 84 :

"She (HPB) knew that Mrs. Billing had failed to deceive me. "-
" I think the case of an intended deception upon me, and the motive, 
are sufficiently apparent without more. There is a curious parallel 
between this instruction to Mrs. Billing and that in the alleged 
letter to Mme. Coulomb directing Damodar to be similarly imposed 
upon."-"similar charge of hiding the things at Mme. Tousseau's (sic-
LP) wax works in London in 1879, which was made in Light of May 6th 
1882 by a correspondent signing himself R.B.A. The statement was 
quite unsubstantiated by details and I wrote to Light very 
indifferently about it at the time. But it is curious that these two 
methods - sending letters to an accomplice, and hiding things 
herself - shd be alleged agst her from entirely unconnected quarters."