Theos-Talk Archives (January 2002 Message tt00216)

Steve: "The mahatmas and their
fraternity seem credible to me. You know when Moncure Conway 
interviewed
her she said (this is from memory): "It is all glamor.
They think they see what they do not see. That is
the whole of it." She told her sister the whole thing
was "psychological tricks," but never explained how
the tricks were done. It appears drugs may have been
part of the psycho tricks she mentioned. That would
explain how she was able to change hair color,
"materialize" pencils, and so forth.
I suspect the most honest methodology is to assume all
the stories are true, then try to figure out how they
were possible."

Brigitte: It is clear that one finds a lot of P.B.Randolph's
teachings back in Blavatsky's writings during the early TS period, 
including as you have shown, in the Mahatma letters.
Gustave Meyrink when he published a translation of one of
Randolph's books, wrote in the forward that Blavatsky was a personal 
student of Randolph.
He based this evidence on letters he had received from someone that  
must have indeed been in a position to know both Blavatsky and 
Randolph. The reason why I say this is because I now from German 
language customs expecially during the time of Meyrink who called
this personal friend   would only do so if he knew the person
well. 
In fact people that knew each other well for 20-30 years might still
call each other "Sie" until they moved on to the "Du"
indicating a friend if it was not already a close family members like wife =


or children.
My hunch is, and I like your own toughts on it aswell, is that this 
person was Franz Hartmann, for a list of reasons wich I will name;

1) Hartmann was indeed a €  '³friend€  '´ of Meyrink. ( I invite 
members of the list to mention other candidates in Meyrink's
life that could fit the bill as described, I think there are none.)


2) Hartmann was as far as I have been able to investigate the 
only person Meyrink both knew and was in correspondence with that 
met Blavatsky in the US and also would have some memory of being in 
Adyar,wich the writer of the letters claimed to have. 


3) The only other person that Meyrink as far I have been able 
to investigate was in correspondence with who had known Blavatsky in 
person was the secretary of Anton Bruckner, Friedrich Eckstein the
first president of the Adyar TS in Vienna.
But Eckstein, a friend of Hartmann (in fact Hartmann lived in
Eckstein's house after his return from Adyaru, had't spent the amount of 
time with Blavatsky (in Oostende) that the letter writer would have 
spend.
A reason for Meyrink's constant correspondence with Eckstein was
also because Meyrink was running a small Theosophical study-group, 
and Eckstein was the more knowledgeable (also because of Eckstein's 
proximity to Hartmann) person who was the closest president
of an official Theosophical branch to Meyrink€  '²s home town Prag. 
That Meyrink indeed wrote regularly for advice to Eckstein is evidenced 
by many of these original letters that are preserved in the Austrian 
National library.

4) Also, Meyrink could not have been fouled by someone, let 
stand a friend of whom he would have known his walk of
life well, because the first thing Meyrink would have done with such
controversial information as is the case, is ask his friends and regular 
correspondents Hartmann and Eckstein who expecially in the case of 
Hartmann did, know Blavatsky well over an extended period. Or/and 
these two then would in any case have been in a position to double 
check the facts for Meyrink, with some other theosophists from the
close proximity of Blavatsky if need be (before Meyrink would publicly
publish this, a famous writer as he was, in a book), unless of course 
indeed the person was Hartmann himself.


5) The nature of the information itself also explains 
why, Hartmann would not have given his permission to
mention his name. 

6) However hard core theosophists will still reject the 
information even if it was 100% certain it was Hartmann as they will 
point out the obvious laps of memory the writer of the letter(s) has
at one point by claiming Randolph would have died during the time the 
writer was visiting with Blavatsky in Adyar whereby Randolph died 
before.


7) In any case for what its worth and not making any claims 
myself about he content , for that I like to ask Steve who I know has 
both studied Blavatsky, and also has researched Randolph€  '²s life
well, here then some of these contents copied by Meyrink's : 
"Often, when I was sitting at tea with the Old Lady, she suddenly sprang 
up and called out: "What does this fellow want!" And then when I
accompanied her, we always encountered the Nigger...
The cause of hate that sprang up between Madame Blavatsky and 
Randolph is completely unknown to me. Perhaps it was rivalry. In any 
case the Old Lady was victorious"

Deveney in his book and thesis on Randolph claims Randolp, Blavatsky, 
and E.H.Britten at least would have used the same source ('s) , 
according to Godwin's Theosophical Enlightment such a source
could have been related to the circles Sotheran had contact with in 
England and therefore also be linked to wat Dr. Mathiesen mentions in 
Theosophical History Occasional Papers ,Dr. Mathiesen writes about ;

" The Orphic Circle admitted women as well as men to membership. 
During its lodge meetings the members practiced astral traveling as 
well as the invocation of spirits into mirrors and crystals, carrying 
out both activities within a ritual practice that owed something to 
Renaissance high magic, and entailed the use of both hymns and 
specially prepared fumigations. However, it was not the members 
themselves who traveled in spirit on the astral plane, or who saw and 
heard spirits in the mirrors and crystals; that was the work of young
clairvoyants (also called somnambules or lucides, as in France) who 
had been thrown into trance by currents of animal magnetism that were 
produced and directed by members of the Orphic Circle, and also by 
the specially prepared fumigations. 
This particular combination of practices taken from Freemasonry, from 
Mesmerism (or animal magnetism) and from ritual magic, as we now 
know, first arose in France in the late eigh- teenth century among 
identifiable groups of free-thinking aristocrats and gentlemen who 
were fascinated by Mesmerism, but also by occultism, and most of 
whom were also Freemasons "

Gomes, in Dawning of the Theosophical Movement, wrote €  '³ like 
Randolph she also taught that 
the work of the brotherhood was a collaboration between these living 
adepts and ,,the pure disembodied human and newly-embodied high 
Planetary Spirits, for the elevation and spiritualization of mankind." ( 
See also: "Madame Blavatsky on the Views of the Theosophists,"
The Spiritualist ,February 8, 1878: 68-69, reprinted in BCW, 1:290 if.


One hint of a possible direct connection between Blavatsky and 
Randolph precisely with regard to magic mirrors can be found in 
Randolph's Seership, in which he describes various fabulously 
expensive magic rnirrors he had seen. ,,The late Maha-Raja Dhuleep 
Singh possessed three: one an immense diamond, the other an 
enormous ruby, and the third composed of the largest emerald known in 
the world." Seership! 81. 




When Blavatsky was putting forth her Rosicrucian claims in the 
early 1870s the only context for the term Rosicrucian in the United 
States (besides the purely literary ones supplied by Hargrave 
Jennings's phalllc theories and Bulwer-Lytton's novels-both of which 
Madame Blavatsky knew and admired) was given by Randolph and his 
various Rosicrucian endeavors. Aside from Masonic high degrees with a 
Rosicrucian basis or coloring and quasi-Masonic bodies such as the 
Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia, Randolph's groups were the only 
Rosicrucians there were in America at the time, and to mention 
Rosicrucians from 1873 to 1875 was immediately and necessarily to 
call to mind Randolph and his work.

But W. Q. Judge's in a comment to Blavatsky's letters to her 
sister indicated that Blavatsky had a hard time learning to see what 
other members of the TS learned fasther then she did: €  '³About this
time H.P B. appears to have been greatly troubled, for though some 
members of the nascent Theosophical Society were able to get ,visions 
of pure Planetary Spirits,' she could only see ,earthly exhalations, 
elementary spirits' of the same category, which she said played the chief 
parts in materializing seances." 
 
=

Brigitte