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Title: Isis very much unveiled, being the story of the great mahatma hoax

Author: Edmund Garrett

Release Date: August 17, 2019 [EBook #60119]

Language: English

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ISIS
TOLD
VERY FROM
MUCH SOURCES
MAINLY
UNVEILED, THEOSOPHICAL,
BEING BY
THE EDMUND
GARRETT,
STORY AUTHOR
OF
OF “IN
AFRIKANDER
THE LAND,”
“IBSEN’S
GREAT BRAND
IN
ENGLISH
MAHATMA VERSE,”
&c.
HOAX.

LONDON:
“WESTMINSTER GAZETTE”
All Rights Reserved.
OFFICE,
TUDOR STREET, E.C.
 INDEX.
PAGE.

PART I.—THE STORY OF THE GREAT MAHATMA HOAX.

Chapter I.— Introduction 5

II.— No Mahatmas, no Members! 8
III.— Mystification under Madame Blavatsky 13
IV.— The Psychical Research Exposure 17
V.— Mystification under Mrs. Besant 22
VI.— Enter the Mahatma 27
VII.— Every Man his own Mahatma 32
VIII.— The Adventures of a Seal 36
IX.— The Climax of Theosophic Brotherhood 42
X.— The Mahatma Tries Threats 48
XI.— Mrs. Besant’s coup de main 55
XII.— A Meeting of the (Theosophical) Pickwick Club 60
XIII.— Questions and Challenges 67

PART II—ANSWERS AND THEOSOPHISTRIES.

I.— From Officials 75

II.— From Prominent Theosophists 80
III.— From Private Members 93

PART III.—A GENERAL REJOINDER.

Last Shreds of the Veil of Isis 99

POSTSCRIPT.
Mr. Judge’s Mahatma at Bay 108
L’Envoi: “The Society upon the Himalay” 117
A Reply from Mr. W. Q. Judge 121
An Appreciation of Mr. Judge’s “Reply” 133

ILLUSTRATIONS AND FACSIMILES.

Frontispiece, Portrait of Mme. Blavatsky 1

Portrait of Mrs. Besant 80–81
Portrait of Colonel Olcott 32–33
The “Mahatma’s Seal” 28
The Envelope Trick 35
Facsimiles of Mahatma Missives, of Mr. Judge’s Handwriting, 20, 33, 37, 38, 50, 52, 54,
&c. 115
Portrait Cartoon: “When Augur meets Augur” 119

MADAME BLAVATSKY

(From a photograph by Messrs. Elliott &

Fry, Baker-street, W.)
 PREFACE.

Tourists at Pompeii are shown a temple of Isis. The impartial cinders have
preserved for us there, not only the temple, but the secret passage which the
priests used in the production of what are nowadays called “phenomena.”
The following pages are designed to show the secret passage in the temple of
the Theosophic Isis, the goddess of Madame Blavatsky’s “Isis Unveiled.”
Instead of having to wait on the pleasure of Vesuvius, I am enabled to act as
cicerone while the temple is still (for the present) a going concern.
The important difference between the exposure of Madame Blavatsky’s box of
tricks by the Society for Psychical Research, and the present exposure of her
successors is, that in this case we have the high-priesthood giving evidence
against itself. My own part in the business is merely the humble one of seeing
that they shall all satisfactorily “get at” one another. In redacting, out of the mass
of various testimony which has fallen into my hands as clear and readable a story
as I could present, my main care has been to tone down the mutual insinuations.
Talk about augur meeting augur with a smile! It is the snarl which these augurs
cannot disguise.
As for myself, I have tried to render a service to truth; but I cannot see, with
some good people, that a sense of truth necessarily excludes a sense of humour.
Mrs. Besant is a lady whose character I have often defended in the press
though I have not always been able to accept the extremer estimates of her
intellectual power. She is about the only one of my dramatis personæ in whom
the public at large (like myself) feel any personal interest whatever. She is,
therefore, the strongest buttress of a fabric which she has now for some time
known to be rotten at the base. That is why I have dealt more seriously with her
than with these Olcotts and Judges. The President is too flabby to be worth
fighting; the Vice-President is already thrown over by all the shrewder and
honester members; even Mrs. Besant herself has now cabled her refusal to
accept his latest revelation, and discovered that his Mahatma is indeed a fraud—
when he “deposes” Mrs. Besant.
My pity is saved for those humbler dupes of the rank-and-file who have
trusted these others not wisely but too well. From some of them I have seen
pathetic letters; and if any gall has got upon my pen, it is the gall of the
bitterness of their disillusion. They are more widely spread, and more worth
saving from the quagmire of shams than most people suspect.
I need hardly remark that I was never a Theosophist myself. But my
Theosophical sources of information, referred to in the course of the story, have
been growing within the Society week by week ever since the exposure began.
There are no signs at present of any intention on the part of the three
Theosophic chiefs to return from the various continents to which they departed
last July—departed simultaneously with the issue of that “Report of an Inquiry”
(so-called) which is the starting-point of these chapters. Mrs. Besant has left
Australia to join Colonel Olcott in India; Mr. Judge remains just five days hence
at New York. And so, taking a cue from Mahomet and the Mountain, “Isis Very
much Unveiled” will now, in booklet form, go out to them.

F. EDMUND GARRETT.
ISIS VERY MUCH UNVEILED.
 PART I.

THE STORY OF THE GREAT MAHATMA HOAX.

 CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY.
“O my Theosophists.... What a pack of fools you are!”—MADAME BLAVATSKY.

This will be one of the queerest stories ever unfolded in a newspaper. Truth, as
worshipped by the Theosophists, is indeed stranger than fiction. But it is not here
told merely for entertainment. It has also a degree of importance and
instructiveness measured by the growing wealth and numbers of the
Theosophical Society, and the personal influence of Mrs. Besant. To-day the
Theosophical Society numbers some three or four thousand members in Europe,
India, and America. It supports two or three publishing businesses and several
score of magazines in various languages. It boasts offices and house property in
London, New York, and Adyar. It attracts donations and bequests. It numbers a
title or two and some money-bags. It consists almost entirely of educated or
semi-educated people, many of whom are intelligent, many sincere; a few both.
And it is likely, amid that debauch of sign-seeking and marvel-mongering into
which a century rationalistic in its youth has plunged in its dotage, to captivate
an increasing number of those who are bored with the old religions and yet agog
for a new.
It is especially to these that I dedicate the singular narrative which these
articles are to unfold. It may save them betimes a painful disillusionment, such
as it will, I fear, inflict on many who are as yet numbered among the faithful.
What is the situation at present?
Everybody knows that Madame Blavatsky, the original founder of the society,
supported its pretensions to an occult origin by the production of phenomena
which were pronounced by careful investigators to be due to systematic trickery;
but which are still believed by the faithful to have been produced at Madame’s
request, and in support of the Theosophic movement, by certain Eastern sages
possessed of transcendental powers over mind and matter.
Everybody will remember that Mrs. Besant, on whom the mantle of Madame
Blavatsky has fallen, made a sensational public assertion, some time after her
teacher’s death, to the effect that those “powers” were still at work (they were
indeed!), and that she was herself now the recipient of similar “communications”
from the “Mahatmas.”
A few people are aware that as the result of a sort of split among prominent
members of the society, there was recently a Theosophic meeting at which Mrs.
Besant confessed to her friends that there had been something wrong with the
“communications” which she had been in such a hurry to announce to the public;
made certain Theosophically obscure charges against a brother official of the
society; but persuaded those assembled to rest content with a general statement
and not to inquire into the facts further—in short, generally to hush the matter
up.
This the Theosophists, being a docile folk, conscientiously did; and as the
accused proceeded with Mrs. Besant’s sanction to deny, still in general terms,
what little assertion of fact Mrs. Besant herself had appeared to convey, after
which there was an affecting reconciliation: it is not surprising that to the outside
public the mystery remains exactly where it was.
Even of the Theosophists themselves the full facts are only known at present
to a few of the inner ring.
In view of what has gone before, this reticence appears misplaced; and as
circumstances have put me in possession of the facts, I propose to give them the
same publicity as was enjoyed by Mrs. Besant’s original statement.
I propose to show:—
That Mrs. Besant has been bamboozled for years by bogus “communications”
of the most childish kind, and in so ludicrous a fashion as to deprive of all value
any future evidence of hers on any question calling for the smallest exercise of
observation and common sense.
That she would in all probability be firmly believing in the bogus documents
in question to this day, but for the growing and at last irresistible protests of
some less greedily gullible Theosophists.
That the bamboozling in question has been practised widely and
systematically, ever since Madame Blavatsky’s death, pretty much as it used to
be during her lifetime.
That official acts of the society, as well as those of individual members, have
been guided by these bogus messages from Mahatmas.
That the exposure of them leaves the society absolutely destitute of any
objective communication with the Mahatmas who are alleged to have founded
and to watch over it, and of all other evidence of their existence.
 That Mrs. Besant has taken a leading part in hushing up the facts of this
exposure, and so securing the person whom she believes to have written the
bogus documents in his tenure of the highest office but one in the society.
And that therefore Mrs. Besant herself and all her colleagues are in so far in
the position of condoning the hoax, and are benefiting in one sense or another by
the popular delusion which they have helped to propagate.
I shall show, finally, that the only alternative to this set of conclusions is
another which would be even more discreditable to the personnel of the society,
and even more fatal to its continued existence on its present basis.
 CHAPTER II.
NO MAHATMAS, NO MEMBERS!
“If there are no Mahatmas the Theosophical Society is an absurdity, and there is no use in keeping it
up.”—MRS. BESANT, in Lucifer, December 15, 1890.

Before going any further I wish to emphasise one point. This society, as such,
must stand or fall with its “Mahatmas.” It should be realised how consistent, in
one sense, this miracle-mongering side of the Theosophical movement has been
throughout the society’s history; what an important part it has played and
continues to play in attracting popular interest; and how closely, along one of the
versatile thaumaturgist’s many lines, Madame Blavatsky has been followed by
her present-day imitator. I say this in justice to the latter, who, I think, may fairly
complain of the unkind criticisms passed on his Mahatma-missives by
colleagues who still cherish those produced under the auspices of Madame
Blavatsky.
It is true that the society does not officially vouch for Mahatmas. It is careful
not to demand belief in them as a condition of membership; and the shrewder
members are put into a panic by anything which tends to compromise its boasted
“neutrality” on this tender subject. But we shall soon see what this “neutrality” is
worth.
Madame Blavatsky taught that “the Masters” are certain sages, several
hundred years old or so, who by steeping themselves in the immemorial lore of
the East have attained powers transcending time, space, and the other puny limits
of Western science. By profound solitary meditation on Things in General, these
old gentlemen have arrived at a sort of Fourth Dimension, in which a Soul and a
Saucer come to very much the same thing. Their residence was shrouded in a
judicious mystery, which Madame declared herself under a solemn oath to
preserve. She at first located them in the recesses of the Himalayas; but one of
her most zealous disciples lately stated in the Daily Chronicle that “the two
principal Mahatmas now reside in an oasis of the Desert of Gobi.” At any rate,
these “adepts” prefer a sequestered spot, and remain occult in the strictest sense
of the word.
But on some points Madame was unequivocal about them. She declared that
she had sat at the feet of one of them as his chela (pupil); that the Theosophical
Society was founded under his distinct inspiration; and that he and his brothers
continued to intervene in its affairs. The original draft of the Society’s
constitution, in fact, like a more authentic Veda straight from heaven, had been
“precipitated” in New York by an exertion of the Masters’ psychic force from
Tibet. Hesitating converts and dubious subscribers were determined by the same
form of interposition; and somebody or other has taken steps, at all times of the
society’s history, to ensure that the more faithful of the “chelas” should be
comforted and encouraged as need arose, by missives from their invisible
“guru.” (A good, imposing word, “guru.” Do you remember the terrible old man
by the road in “David Copperfield,” who scared David almost out of his wits by
running out on him, and shouting “Guroo, guroo, guroo”?) Mrs. Besant herself
has admitted that Theosophy is to be regarded in the light of a “revelation” from
these exalted beings, as well as in that of a science or philosophy which can be
arrived at by more ordinary means.
In a word, Theosophy without Mahatmas would be “Hamlet” without the
Prince of Denmark. “Isis Unveiled” and “The Secret Doctrine” are works which
few would be found to wade through if their verbose pages were not lightened
by associations of that White Magic which lends a creepy interest even to such
avowed works of fiction as “Zanoni” and “Mr. Isaacs.” With belief in the
Mahatmas must go any believing of “H.P.B.,” who swore to them; and with
“H.P.B.” and her authorities must go those two volumes of solemn farrago,
which remain the society’s only contribution to philosophical knowledge. For all
that is new in them, if there is anything new except the blunders, is explicitly
given on the authority of “the Masters.”
The published “Objects” of the society run thus:—
(1) To form the nucleus of a Universal Brotherhood of Humanity without distinction of race, creed, sex,
caste, or colour.
(2) To promote the study of Aryan and other Eastern literatures, religions, and sciences.
(3) A third object—pursued by a portion only of the members of the Society—is to investigate
unexplained laws of nature and the psychical powers of man.
It will thus be seen that the “phenomenal” side of the society’s activities has
all along had a place, though guardedly, even in its published Objects. In point of
fact, as I have elsewhere insisted, this third Object is the only one in pursuit of
which the society has any substantial achievement to point to. As to the first
Object, my narrative will presently suggest the same sort of remark on the
brotherliness of the Universal Brothers as has sometimes been made by scoffers
on the sociability of Socialists. As to the second Object, it is observed that there
are people who study Oriental literatures, and there are people who belong to the
Theosophical Society; but they are not the same people. Professor Max Müller
has edited the only series of English translations of the Sacred Books of the East
with which I am acquainted, and Professor Max Müller lately published some
University lectures under the title of Theosophy. But his preface explained that
he did so in order to rescue that respectable and ancient philosophical term from
the associations of sciolism and miracle-mongering with which the Theosophical
Society have linked it in the public mind. In point of fact, there is no reason to
believe that any member of the society in Europe could pass an examination in
any Oriental language whatever. The third Object, on the other hand, has led to
some real achievements. The society has not, perhaps, done much in the
“investigation” line itself; but members of it have certainly supplied the most
astonishing “unexplained laws of nature” and “psychical powers” for
investigation by other people. It is this which has given it its success, its growth,
its world-wide notoriety. It is this which first attracted and convinced its best-
known converts, and it is this which has created the successive “booms” (as they
would be called in a more purely commercial connexion) which have produced
the biggest crops of entrance subscriptions from the wonder-loving public. I lay
stress on this because the Theosophists have shown a good deal of inconstancy
in their treatment of the third Object. They have always worked a given marvel
for all it was worth until it got somehow blown upon; then they turn round and
remark that mere material phenomena are, after all, of no great importance: the
thing is the study of those great spiritual ideas which, &c., &c. In fact, they want
to have it both ways. Mr. Sinnett, however, whose “Occult World” remains the
classic description of Madame Blavatsky as a wonder-worker, confesses
candidly in a memorial sketch of her which appeared in the Review of Reviews
how much stress she herself laid on such things, as long as she could get anyone
to believe in them:—
One could no more write a memoir on trigonometry and say nothing about triangles, than survey the
strange career just concluded and ignore the marvels coruscating through it. And at this early period of her
enterprise [he means, before the Psychical Research exposure] she seems to have depended more on the
startling effect of surprising powers she was enabled to exhibit than on the philosophical teaching ... which
became the burden of her later utterances.
Just so. It is easy to hold your miracles cheap—after they have been found
out. Madame Blavatsky fell back on Object Two—when Object Three was
discredited. But the taste for such things, even when it is de rigueur to describe
them as “occult applications of strictly natural laws,” is apt to grow upon any
religious sect which once dabbles in them. Mrs. Besant, too, in due course fell a
victim to the temptation to make capital out of the marvellous; and my readers
will now be prepared to put their proper value on the deprecating expressions in
this connexion which now, on the inevitable turn of the wheel, once more begin
to be heard, and which will be redoubled, no doubt, when this narrative is fully
before the public.
 CHAPTER III.
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.
 CHAPTER IV.
THE PSYCHICAL RESEARCH EXPOSURE.
“Either she is a messenger from the Mahatmas or else she is a fraud. In either case the Theosophical
Society would have had no existence without her.”—MRS. BESANT in Lucifer, December 15, 1890.

At the time of the Blavatsky season in London and Cambridge, the lately-
founded Psychical Research Society, which had close connexion with the
University town, was spoiling for something to investigate, and it decided to
investigate Madame Blavatsky. Madame and her friends were delighted with this
testimony to the stir which they had made, and entered into the thing with every
hope of converting the Researchers. Were they not all ready to asseverate that
such-and-such things had indeed happened——in India?
Whatever Theosophists may now say, the ‘S.P.R.’ was certainly not a hostile
tribunal. Its very existence and objects were a challenge to the average educated
prejudice which assumes that nothing can ever happen in nature which is not
accounted for in current scientific textbooks. The society had itself vouched for
“telepathy,” and coquetted with “phantasms of the living”; it has since bestowed
a statistical respectability on the common ghost. To the miracles of Adyar some
of its members had lent a more than friendly ear. One of the most prominent had
actually been dubbed a chela. Dr. Hodgson (now secretary of the S.P.R.
American Branch), who conducted the Indian part of the inquiry, declared that
whatever prepossessions he may have had “were distinctly in favour of
occultism and Madame Blavatsky.”
When Mr. Hodgson got to India he found people very much excited over some
highly suspicious and suggestive letters which had just appeared in a Madras
paper, communicated by the Madame Coulomb already spoken of, and alleged
by her to have been written by Madame Blavatsky. Mr. Hodgson had to inquire
on the spot: first, into the genuineness of these letters; secondly, into that of the
missives alleged to have been precipitated by Mahatmas; thirdly, into the
credibility of the evidence about other marvels given before the Psychical
Committee by Madame herself, Colonel Olcott, Mr. Sinnett, and Mohini. He
inquired and investigated for three months; and his report, with copious
facsimiles and plans, is on record in Part IX. of the S.P.R. Proceedings
(December, 1885).
The allegation of the Coulombs was that the whole series of miracles had been
a matter of vulgar trickery, some of which they had been employed to carry out
for Madame. During Madame’s absence in Europe, the people at Adyar had
quarrelled with them and dismissed the pair, partly for having at various times
hinted to outsiders the secrets which they now proceeded to make a clean breast
of. The origin of their close relationship with Madame Blavatsky is obscure. She
and Madame Coulomb had been associated at Cairo in the seventies in some
“page” which the foundress of Theosophy had expressed a wish to have “torn
out of the book of my life.” By the foundress’s own account, this torn-out page
was such as made it odd that she should pitch on the Coulombs when in want of
fit guardians for the sacred Shrine. Mrs. Besant once expounded to me a theory
that Madame did this, with the full foreknowledge that frauds would follow and
would discredit her and her Masters, partly from a sublime benevolence towards
the wicked Coulombs, partly because it was necessary that she should herself
“have her Calvary.” It was the same combined motives, no doubt, which led
Madame Blavatsky to act more than once exactly as if Madame Coulomb had
some secret hold over her. An agitated telegram from Paris, however, failed to
heal the present rupture; and the result was the giving to the press of a long
series of letters in Madame’s hand, teeming with veiled instructions to the
Coulombs which fitted in at every point with their accounts of jugglery at Adyar.
The Coulomb story tallied also with equal accuracy with such outside
circumstantial evidence as happened to touch it. Did Madame Coulomb allege
that a “miracle” was worked by the substitution of one vase for another exactly
similar, the shop she named proved to have record of the purchase of just such an
exact pair just before the date of the miracle. Did she make a similar statement
about a “miraculous” shower of roses, the like corroboration would be
forthcoming. Did her husband describe the famous “Shrine” cupboard as a trick-
cabinet with three sliding panels in the back, the panels had to be admitted, and
explained by Madame as “for convenience of packing in case of removal.” It had
hung against a hidden recess in the wall—there was the recess, the coincidence
had to be deplored as unfortunate. On the other side of that recess, in Madame’s
bedroom, the sideboard had a false back—that, too, was to be seen, and the
Theosophists must content themselves with alleging that M. Coulomb had made
it so after the miracles, and in the nick of time for the inquiry. As for the
scribbled instructions and letters in which some of these arrangements were
clearly hinted at, Madame was driven to the peculiar course of admitting some
letters and even parts of letters and denying the rest. This, by the way, was
exactly what she had done about a similar incriminating letter on the subject of a
trick “missive,” which was planted on Mr. C. C. Massey, in 1882; the discovery
of which led to the resignation of that gentleman and others from the Society.
As for the evidence of Madame and her friends about special “phenomena” it
had already so melted away under the application of ordinary evidential canons
as to leave the field clear for the Coulomb theory. The “tests” with which in
some cases the Mahatmas had insisted on supplementing the credibility of their
witnesses were as worthless and disingenuous as all the rest.
Last, what of the Mahatma missives?—precipitated from the Himalayas,
speaking in the persons and signed with the superscriptions of Mahatma Morya
and Koot Hoomi Lal Sing. These precious documents, which had been rained
among the faithful with a copiousness almost amounting to garrulity, had been a
little discredited already. The prosy and sometimes illiterate verbiage of the
Tibetan sages was a severe trial to the enthusiasm of the more critical
Theosophists even where it was apparently original. But it was too much of a
good thing when a long doctrinal treatise, which Koot Hoomi had addressed to
Mr. Sinnett, was found to be a gross plagiarism from a lecture by an American
gentleman which had been reported in a Spiritualist paper a few months before.
Nor did it mend matters when, after considerable delay, the illustrious Koot
condescended to the newspaper arena, and wrote—we mean precipitated—an
explanation which for its evasiveness and general “thinness” is probably unique
even in the records of convicted plagiarists.
But now came worse. For the same scrutiny which had identified Madame
Blavatsky as the writer of the unblushing letters to Madame Coulomb now found
exactly the same characteristics of expression, turns of phrase, and solecisms in
spelling in the compositions of Koot Hoomi Lal Sing. As to handwriting, it was
shown that the styles of the two august correspondents had been evolved
gradually by differentiation from Madame’s ordinary hand. The facsimiles in the
report deal only with “K.H.” documents; but the case against those of “M.” is
just as strong. I showed a mass of “M.” script, which lies before me as I write,
belonging to the earliest period, to a Theosophist well acquainted with
Madame’s writing, and in perfect innocence he at once took it for hers. At that
time almost the only difference between the two Mahatma scripts was that one
affected red pencil or ink, and the other blue.

FACSIMILE OF MAHATMA M.’S SIGNATURE. FROM AN

EARLY BLAVATSKY MISSIVE.
 In a word, it was declared that Koot Hoomi Lal Sing and Mahatma Morya
were the same person, and that person Madame Blavatsky. When a missive from
the Himalayas floated down into the neophyte’s lap, it was Madame’s own hand
which had prepared it, though it was the no less useful if humbler function of M.
Coulomb to jerk it from the ceiling at the critical moment with a string, or deftly
pass it through the sliding panel into the closed Shrine.
Passing by the committee’s report on Madame Blavatsky herself, what of her
leading disciples? Of Colonel Olcott it was declared proven that in a
Theosophical connexion he was either unable to describe anything as he really
saw it, or else to see anything as it really was. Mohini and Mr. Sinnett were
disposed of in much the same way. Damodar—the astral Damodar—was charged
explicitly as a confederate of Madame in missive-manufacturing. Mohini, the
fascinating saint, hurried back to India with a damaged halo. Mr. Sinnett has
since sprung to fame as a director—not of the regeneration of mankind, but of
the Hansard Union. Damodar announced that he was off to find his guru in the
Himalayas, disappeared, and has not been seen since by his friends.
William Q. Judge, having been left out in the cold when the hegira to India
took place, lived to fight another day, as we shall see. Mrs. Besant had not yet
loomed on the Theosophical horizon. Madame Blavatsky herself left England
and travelled till the storm had blown over. To the S.P.R. Report no serious
answer has ever appeared from that day to this; and it fairly killed the miraculous
phenomena. One class of them has reappeared under the ægis of Mrs. Besant;
but poor indeed, as we shall see, is the Late Besantine period of mythological
architecture beside its gorgeous predecessor.
 CHAPTER V.
MYSTIFICATION UNDER MRS. BESANT.
“I look to possible developments of her Theosophic views with the very gravest misgiving.”—CHARLES
BRADLAUGH, National Reformer, June, 1889.
“The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”—HAMLET.

I have said that the Psychical Research Report put a stop to most of the
Theosophic miracles. But there were obvious reasons why the Mahatmas should
continue to “precipitate” letters, even when the scoffs of a hard, cold world
drove them to restrain their wonder-working propensities in other respects. The
business was so beautifully safe and simple. It defied “tests.” The task of
proving that a scribble in red chalk on a scrap of paper found in a disciple’s
pocket is not the authentic handwriting of an inaccessible teacher, whose
devotees have doubtless the best reason for knowing that he can never be
produced as a witness—this is a task from which the boldest sceptic might well
recoil.
But what of the actual process of “precipitation”? Alas, it appears to be
surrounded by disappointingly obscure conditions. It is not given to see the scrap
of psychically-manufactured notepaper glimmer into being and become cream-
laid out of nothing before one’s eyes, nor to watch the mystic characters form
themselves in lines along it like the writing on Belshazzar’s wall. It is always the
finished result that is discovered ready-made, and this precisely resembles what
is produced if you or I write it in the ordinary way. The “precipitation,” in fact, is
a deed of darkness, and can only be done concealed from view, just as mediums
are wont to declare at a séance that the spirits are prevented from manifesting
themselves by the mere presence of a sceptical inquirer with a box of wax
vestas. Perhaps it is another side of the same retiring instinct which impels the
Mahatmas to live only in parts of the earth not penetrated to by vulgar explorers.
Theosophists sometimes speak as if they had seen the actual precipitation; but
cross-examine any credible witness, and he will reluctantly admit that he has not.
This is a point to note and bear in mind.
The Mahatma missive only becomes a matter of difficulty when it has to be
made to drop from the ceiling into the recipient’s hands, or spirited into a
cupboard found one moment before to be as empty as Mother Hubbard’s. Those
were stirring days for Theosophic neophytes when that kind of thing was a
common incident. But, ichabod! that glory is departed! Its departure precisely
synchronised with that of the nimble-fingered Coulombs. Their graceless avowal
that both special plant and skilful confederates were required for this kind of
miracle may have been a gross calumny on their employer; but the fact remains
that with the removal of the panel-backed Shrine at Adyar and the dismissal of
its custodians, the Masters abruptly ceased to resort to these more surprising
methods of aërial post.
Occasionally they would make the assurance of the faithful doubly sure by
artlessly “precipitating” the message inside a sealed envelope (a species of “test”
of which more anon); but for the most part they were content to endorse letters
passing through the ordinary post or discovered by the recipient in his blotting-
pad under circumstances equally consistent with a commonplace human agency.
Such was the state of things till Madame Blavatsky’s death.
But then came the rub. What the Psychical Research Committee held to be
proven was that Madame had written practically the whole body of these
documents with her own hand. What, then, if after her decease in May, 1891, the
same missives continued to be received?
Before the controversy which sprang up again over her ashes had well died
down, the public was asked to believe that this was indeed the case, on the word
of a woman whom it believed incapable of making a statement of the kind
without having first proved it to the uttermost and found it true.
Speaking in the Hall of Science on August 30, 1891, three months after
Madame Blavatsky’s death, Mrs. Besant said:—
“You have known me in this hall for sixteen and a half years. You have never
known me tell a lie. (‘No, never,’ and loud cheers.) I tell you that since Madame
Blavatsky left I have had letters in the same handwriting as the letters which she
received. (Sensation.) Unless you think dead persons can write, surely that is a
remarkable fact. You are surprised; I do not ask you to believe me; but I tell you
it is so. All the evidence I had of the existence of Madame Blavatsky’s teachers
of the so-called abnormal powers came through her. It is not so now. Unless even
sense can at the same time deceive me, unless a person can at the same time be
sane and insane, I have exactly the same certainty for the truth of the statements
I have made as I know that you are here. I refuse to be false to the knowledge of
my intellect and the perceptions of my reasoning faculties.”
It is no wonder that the reporter had to interpolate the word “Sensation.” The
audience was one rather of Freethinkers than of Theosophists; the hall itself was
identified with previous rhetorical successes of Mrs. Besant as the prophetess of
Materialism. The thing was dramatically done, and was well calculated to
impress on the outside public the fact that the personal reputation of Mrs. Besant
for intelligence and honesty was now pledged to the genuineness of
Theosophical wonder-working. In an interview in the Pall Mall Gazette of
September 1, 1891, Mrs. Besant carried her statement still further, and pledged
herself definitely to “precipitation”:—
“‘These letters are from a Mahatma whose pupil you are?’
“Mrs. Besant nodded assent.
“‘Did they just come through the post?’ our representative asked.
“But here he had hit the mystery.
“‘No, I did not receive the letters through the post,’ the lady replied. ‘They did
come in what some would call a miraculous fashion, though to us Theosophists
it is perfectly natural. The letters I receive from the Mahatmas are
“precipitated.”’
“‘How “precipitated”?’ ...
“Mrs. Besant was quite ready to explain.
“‘Well,’ she said, ‘you can hear voices by means of the telephone, and receive
a telegram which is actually written by the needle, not merely indicated by its
ticks. The Mahatmas go a step further. With their great knowledge of natural
laws they are able to communicate with us without using any apparatus at all.’
“‘But can you give me any details of the precipitation?’
“‘No; the Mahatmas only communicate with pupils who will not unwisely
divulge anything. You can easily imagine the reason why this knowledge should
be kept so secret. Were it possessed by a criminal it might be put to dreadful
purposes.’ ...
“Mrs. Besant repeated that she had made her startling statement in the lecture
deliberately, adding that there were many persons who knew her and would
accept her statements as true, but who might not believe in Madame Blavatsky,
because, Mrs. Besant was careful to add, they had not enjoyed the advantage of
knowing that lady.”

Mrs. Besant did not overrate the extent of her public credit. She was implicitly
believed by many who would not have troubled their heads at all over an
assertion of Madame Blavatsky’s. A “boom” was the immediate result—the
second big boom in the society’s history. Mrs. Besant had the satisfaction of
seeing her statement honoured with a salvo of leading articles. “Can it be,” the
Daily Chronicle exclaimed, “that there are things in heaven and earth which
philosophy and science have not yet dreamed of?”—(Daily Chronicle, August
31.) And it opened its columns to a flood of correspondence on Theosophy and
things occult. Day after day a crop of letters attested the public appetite for the
marvellous.
The Theosophical Society has a sort of Press department, the business of
which is to get up sham fights in newspapers in order to advertise the society;
and whenever the excitement seemed to flag some member or other contributed
a screed which revived it. The time was well chosen. It was the “silly season,”
and under cover of Mrs. Besant more cautious papers than the Chronicle were
glad to let the Mahatma divide attention with the sea-serpent and the giant
gooseberry. The Theosophical Society reaped a fine harvest; though some
complaints were heard that the new inquirers after truth addressed themselves
more to the marvels which had attracted them than to the philosophisings to
which Mrs. Besant had designed the marvels as a bait. However, if their interest
was tepid on this side of Theosophy, their curiosity on the other side achieved
small gratification. In Mrs. Besant’s words, “The Mahatmas only communicate
with pupils who will not unduly divulge anything.”
But, as we have seen, what Mrs. Besant did divulge was enough to convey to
the public certain definite impressions: to wit, that she had received letters in a
certain handwriting, which did not come through the post, but “in what some
would call a miraculous fashion,” and that these letters were, in fact,
“precipitated” by the Mahatmas out of thin air. Also that she had satisfied herself
of the above propositions by evidential processes as certain as the assurance of
her own “sense” and “reasoning faculty” that her audience were before her as
she spoke.
And now let us see what were the facts on the strength of which Mrs. Besant
made these astonishing statements. So far, I have been occupied necessarily with
putting on record matters of history open to any careful student of the subject.
From this point I shall be dealing with a side of Isis which up to this moment has
been kept closely veiled indeed.
 CHAPTER VI.
ENTER THE MAHATMA.
“Answer the question I’ve put you so oft.... Give us a colloquy, something to quote. Make the world prick
up its ear!”—MASTER HUGUES, of Saxegotha.
“Thus has a Master spoken, and ... the word of a guardian of the Esoteric Philosophy is
authoritative.”—“Introduction to Theosophy,” by ANNIE BESANT.

Madame Blavatsky died May 8, 1891. Who was to succeed her as hierophant
of the mysteries of Tibet? There was none among her disciples who could aspire
to fill that rôle with anything resembling the hierophantine proportions of
Madame herself. But Mrs. Besant, whose conversion had been much advertised
to the public, was undoubtedly more fitted to pass muster as a prophetess than
any of the others.
The brief and late character of her acquaintance with Madame was rather in
her favour than otherwise, since it had left undisturbed in her ardent mind a
loftier conception of Madame’s ethical character than had been affected for some
time past by some who had known her longer. Mrs. Besant was even understood
to be in some sense designate for the succession.
Officially, however, she was subordinate to Colonel Olcott, the president, then
in India, and to Mr. William Q. Judge, vice-president, and head of the faithful in
America.
It soon appeared that the latter gentleman, at any rate, did not mean his claims
to Theosophical prominence to be ignored.
In reply to the announcement of “H.P.B.’s” death (Theosophists are wont to
refer to their foundress, as the ancient Hebrews to the Deity, under the guise of
initials) Mr. Judge promptly cabled to
“Do nothing till I come.”
Avenue-road was at first inclined to resent this ukase.
But Mr. Judge soon put a new face on matters when he arrived. That was a
time of sore searchings of heart. With “H.P.B.’s” death the society’s one link
with its unseen guides was broken, and “Masters” had let a fortnight elapse
without giving any sign that they survived the decease of their high-priestess.
William Q. Judge was to change all that.
THE “CABINET” MISSIVE. On the evening of May 23 (he lost no time
after his arrival), Mr. Judge suggested to Mrs. Besant that as they were in sore
need of some assurance from Masters, they should repeat an old recipe of
Madame Blavatsky’s for bringing those august beings to a point. He proposed
that they should write a certain question on paper, put it in an envelope, shut that
into a certain cabinet in “H.P.B.’s” room at Avenue-road, and invite the Masters
to “precipitate” replies.
Mrs. Besant agreed. Mr. Judge himself wrote the question and closed the
envelope, and put it into the cabinet.
Mrs. Besant did not stay in the room through the process of incubation. For
“He that hath ears to hear, let him hear,” the Theosophic scripture reads, “He that
hath eyes to see, let him put his Head in a Bag.”
After due delay, Mr. Judge took the letter out again. On his showing it to Mrs.
Besant, judge of that lady’s emotion at the discovery that at the end of the
question stood the word
“YES”
traced apparently in red chalk; also, a little lower down, the words
“AND HOPE,”
with the impression, in black carbon, of a peculiar seal, representing a
cryptograph M. (A simple way to produce this appearance is to hold a seal in
candle-smoke and impress with that.)
THE “MAHATMA’S SEAL.” IMPRESSION SHOWING CRYPTOGRAPH.

What need of further witness that the thing was the result of psychic
“precipitation” from Madame Blavatsky’s “Mahatma M,” away in Tibet? If that
gentleman had not, in his communications to Madame, been observed to use a
seal, still he certainly used to scribble them in the same sort of red chalk, and he
certainly used to sign himself similarly M.
Note one point here. It was not Mahatma M, but Mahatma K.H., who used to
be the more prolix correspondent in Madame Blavatsky’s time, and whose
handwriting appeared accordingly in copious specimens and comparisons with
her own, in the published Report of the Psychical Research Committee.
No specimens were there given of the writing which Madame called Mahatma
M’s: there were but a few scraps of it available.
When, therefore, Mr. William Q. Judge conjured a letter from him (I use
“conjure” in its old-fashioned sense, of course), it was not possible for Mrs.
Besant to compare it with any published specimens of the same script (with
private specimens I fancy she had never been favoured), even if the extremely
scanty and hurried nature of the message, and the temper of Mrs. Besant’s mind
had not in themselves forbidden any such partial measure of verification.
It is true that a few months later Mrs. Besant felt able to affirm with the
utmost confidence (as we have seen) that the handwriting was “the same as that
which Madame Blavatsky was accused of producing,” and this at first sight
appears to refer to the “K.H.” script, which afforded the gravamen of Mr.
Hodgson’s Report. In that case what Mrs. Besant asserted was that the writing
was the same as that which was not even supposed to be by the same person.

Next morning, there was a meeting of the “Inner Group,” at which Mr.
William Q. Judge at once took up that position of Senior Chela to which his
services as postman of the Mahatmas so well entitled him. There is some oath or
other of equality with fellow-members and of obedience to its head which
members of this Esoteric Section have to take: Mr. Judge pointed out that it was
quite unnecessary for him to take this oath.
THE “NOTE THE SEAL” MISSIVE. To which end he produced not only a
letter from Madame Blavatsky, but one from Mahatma M, which he had
personally received in America, he said. Its contents he did not feel able to
communicate to others who could not yet aspire to be on corresponding terms
with the Great Unseen: what he did show was the signature and seal impression
(which exactly resembled that “precipitated” in the cabinet overnight). He
specially begged those present to take note of the seal; “for,” said Mr. Judge,
“they might have need to recognise it on some future occasion.”
With eager eyes they all obeyed; each aspiring young chela fluttered with the
hope (for Mrs. Besant had noised the cabinet business about, and it seemed to
rain missives) that he too might soon be blest with one.
Mr. Judge is a man of some foresight. But that was not precisely what he had
in his mind when he bade them note the seal.

Three days after this (May 27) there was a meeting of the Esoteric Section
Council, to decide how the section should in future be governed, its head being
gone.
It had been expected that Mrs. Besant, having assumed the rôle of Teacher and
Expounder in succession to her friend, would succeed her also as official head of
the Esoteric Section Council. But William Q. Judge had drafted a plan under
which the Council was to dissolve, and its powers be delegated to Mrs. Besant
and himself as joint “Outer Heads”—the Inner Heads being, of course, Mr.
Judge’s august correspondents in the Himalayas.
THE “JUDGE’S PLAN IS RIGHT” MISSIVE. Mrs. Besant, it seems, was more
than content, in view of Mr. Judge’s newly-developed occult powers, with a
position of “high collateral glory.” But it was hardly to be expected that the
scheme should not be exposed to some discussion and criticism from other
members of the Council. At any rate, the Mahatma evidently deemed the
occasion to be a dignus vindice nodus. For what happened?
As Mrs. Besant, who took the chair and expounded the new scheme, was
turning over her papers on the table, there fluttered out a little slip of paper, at
which she just glanced, and was about to put it by, when William Q. Judge
pointedly asked her what it was?
The slip of paper bore the words in red pencil—
“JUDGE’S PLAN IS RIGHT.”
Signature and seal as before.
Tableau!
Round it went from hand to hand. None questioned that paper and script alike
had just been “precipitated” into their midst by “the Master.” Thanks to Mr.
Judge’s foresight, as we have just seen, all were in a position to recognise the
seal.
Under these circumstances discussion was obviously out of place. William Q.
Judge at once went and took his seat at Mrs. Besant’s side, and “Judge’s plan”
was unanimously adopted!

It will hardly be believed, but it is, nevertheless, a fact, which I challenge Mrs.
Besant to contradict, that when that lady, on a public platform, pledged the
evidence of her senses, her sanity, and her reasoning faculties, &c., &c., to
having received messages from the Mahatmas—messages which, as she assured
the subsequent interviewer, came “not through the post” but by “precipitation”
“in a way which some people would call miraculous”—these two documents,
produced as has been described, and only these, were all the pièces justificatives
that she had to go upon.
But the vice-president’s Mahatma had only made a beginning. There was
more, much more, to come. It will be my privilege to present the reader, in
succeeding Chapters, with facsimiles of several of his more interesting
compositions.
 CHAPTER VII
EVERY MAN HIS OWN MAHATMA.
“The T.S. is the agency chosen by the Masters ... but They do not directly guide, save where guidance is
strenuously sought and eagerly obeyed.”—“Introduction to Theosophy,” by ANNIE BESANT.

It was not surprising that the Vice-President, finding the Mahatma so

complaisant, should hasten to exploit him to the utmost. The resumption of the
broken communication could not fail to restore the confidence of doubting
disciples both in the society itself and in the favoured chela, who could not only,
Glendower-like, “call spirits from the vasty deep,” but also, to the satisfaction of
Theosophic Hotspurs, “make them come.” Forthwith letters began to be
showered about among such persons as it was considered desirable to keep up to
the mark, in which the sentiments of William Q. Judge were endorsed by the
Mahatma. Of those two it might truly be said that “their unanimity was
wonderful.”
THE “MASTERS WATCH US” MISSIVE. One of the first recipients was Mr.
Bertram Keightley, a gentleman whose services to Theosophy have been of a
material kind, and whose zeal has been rewarded more than once by gratifying
marks of approbation from Tibet. In fact, his experience, like that of Countess
Wachtmeister and some other liberal friends of the society, suggests the formula:
“Put a donation in the slot and you will receive a revelation.” For the Mahatma
obligingly honours the bills of the society.

COLONEL H. S. OLCOTT.

(From a photograph by Messrs. Elliott &

Fry, Baker-street, W.)

Under date May 29, 1891, the Vice-President wrote to Mr. Keightley from
Avenue-road a Pauline epistle, in which he says:—
Fear not, Bert! Masters watch us, and since May 8 have sent word here in writing.
Close beside the signature of “William Q. Judge” appeared in solemn
confirmation the M signature and seal impression—“precipitated,” doubtless,
during transit among Her Majesty’s mails. As the recipient was at Adyar,
Madras, and therefore, some thousands of miles nearer the home of the
Mahatmas than Mr. Judge, it will be seen to what roundabout methods the
Master was compelled in order to maintain his determination to have his
messages ushered into the world in some connexion or other with the one
favoured disciple.

THE “JUDGE IS THE FRIEND” MISSIVE. Another recipient was important

for other reasons than Mr. Keightley. Babula, a low-caste Hindu, formerly
Madame Blavatsky’s personal servant, was at this time in a position of trust at
the Theosophic quarters at Adyar. Since then he has got into trouble with his
employers, like others of Madame’s former confidants. But in July, 1891, Babula
was still in authority at Adyar, and the vice-president thought it worth while to
convince him that he, Judge, was his friend. A letter, dated some weeks later than
Mr. Keightley’s, from Avenue-road, terminated with the signature,

Your friend,
WILLIAM Q. JUDGE.

Under the words “Your friend,” the ever-

officious Mahatma has drawn a line, at the
end of which he has solemnly inscribed “YES,” and his signature and seal. The
seal is, as usual, impressed in black carbon; the writing is in red pencil; and
Judge’s signature is in ordinary ink.
Pity that the famous Mr. Codlin had not a Mahatma to back him thus
conveniently in his asseverations that “Codlin’s the friend, not Short.”

THE “MASTER AGREES” MISSIVE. Parallel to this corroborative use of the

Mahatma’s seal, though belonging to a different period of the story, was the case
of another letter of Mr. Judge’s to a brother official, in which, after expressing
certain views, Mr. Judge used these words:—
I believe the Master agrees with me, in which case I will ask him to put his seal here.
Plump on the written word came the seal. Inimitable Mahatma!

Mrs. Besant’s previous “communications,” as we have seen, did not come

through the post. But during that July Mr. Judge seems to have left Mrs. Besant’s
side for the express purpose of enabling his Mahatma to give her an exhibition of
his powers in this special line of “precipitation” during postal transit.
July 21, 1891, was the date of one such performance; which included
signature and seal complete. I pass over this and some equally commonplace
missives, which Mrs. Besant received at various dates, all equally under Mr.
Judge’s auspices, in order to deal more fully with one particular one in which she
was favoured with a “test condition.”
For lo! on cutting the envelope open in the usual way, along the top edge, Mrs.
Besant observed a line or so of pencilling inside written partly on the upper flap,
partly on the under flaps, of the adhesive part of the envelope.
THE “ENVELOPE TRICK” MISSIVE. Here was proof indeed of powers
occult! For this must obviously have been written or “precipitated” after the
envelope was stuck up: and there it was inside! For a Mahatma, of course, it was
as easy to produce it so as in any other way. He might do it in mere artless
absence of mind.
Ingenuous Mrs. Besant! Unfortunately for the test, the feat is equally easy for
any commonplace mortal—though in his case it would hardly be done quite
artlessly. The trick was first shown me by a student of “occultism”—a
Theosophist, in fact. But it is a very old affair, and can be found in any book of
parlour magic. It might be called “Every Man his own Mahatma.”
An envelope has four flaps. Three of these are stuck together in manufacture,
but with a much less adhesive sort of gum than that which is put on the
remaining flap to be stuck up by the user.
ENVELOPE, INSIDE VIEW. OUTSIDE VIEW, SHOWING INSERTION.

It is generally quite easy to insert a penknife behind the bottom flap, as in the
accompanying cut, and so make entrance and exit for a slip of paper. On this slip
you write the words backwards, as they would appear in a looking-glass, using a
black pencil of the “copying” kind. You then pass the slip in, push and shake it
into the right position, press till you feel sure the inside flaps have taken the
impression, and then out with your slip by the door it came in at. Moisten and fix
the flap again, and the “precipitation” is complete. A child can do it.
A Mahatma, of course, produces the result by mere psychic effort. But it is a
curious coincidence that M on this occasion abandoned his usual red pencil for
the black one which you or I would use if we were playing just the trick
described.
No doubt he felt that a more satisfactory test would have been wasted on Mrs.
Besant.
 Others, however, were a little more exacting. The story enters here on a less
smooth course.
 CHAPTER VIII.
THE ADVENTURES OF A SEAL.
“O that Heaven had set a seal upon men, that we might know them, honest from dishonest!”—EURIPIDES.

From the previous record of Colonel Olcott—described by Madame Blavatsky

herself, in an epigrammatically candid moment, as “a psychologised baby”—he
is almost the last person whom one would have expected to lead the way in any
sceptical examination of “miracles.”
And no doubt he might have been content, like Mrs. Besant, to open his
mouth and shut his eyes and take whatever Mr. Judge should send him, so long
as that gentleman’s thaumaturgy was confined to benefiting the common cause.
But it was another matter when the vice-president’s Mahatma showed a tendency
to favour the vice-president, and that at the expense of the president himself.
Had the oracle said “Olcott’s plan is right,” and declared that Olcott was the
“friend,” “not Lancelot nor another”; had it made Olcott, and not Judge, Outer
Head with Mrs. Besant—the president’s ears might have been an inch longer,
and the course of Theosophic history have been changed.
But there was, from the first, about Mr. Judge’s Mahatma a certain crudity, a
lack of tact in dissembling favouritism, which was bound, human nature being
what it is, to make enemies.
On the decease of “H.P.B.,” President Olcott, like Vice-President Judge, had
hurried to the headquarters at Avenue-road. He had to come from India,
however, and the American disciple naturally out-ran him. When the former
arrived, the latter’s Mahatma was already in full swing. On hearing of his
performances with the seal, a look of more than usual intelligence may have
crossed the president’s mild and venerable features; but, like Brer Rabbit, he
wasn’t “sayin’ nuffin,” “he just lay low.”
That busy July, ’91, the period of Mahatma M’s greatest activity, was also
marked by the assembling at Avenue-road of one of the periodical conventions
of Theosophic Europe. Some conversation occurred between the president and
vice-president about the expenses of this convention, and the former, being
“H.P.B.’s” legatee, mentioned a happy thought of his, of selling some of the
jewels that lady had left behind her, and giving the proceeds as her posthumous
contribution to the expenses.
THE “WITHOLD” MISSIVE. But here, too, Mr. Judge was prepared to “go
one better,” as his countrymen say, than the president-legatee. He responded
airily that Colonel Olcott need not trouble himself about it, as “Master” had
promised him (Judge) that the cash should be forthcoming, and also that he
would convey a “message” on the subject to Olcott himself.
The Colonel waited for his message. None came.
The Colonel jogged Mr. Judge’s memory. Mr. Judge said he had no more to
tell.
But that very day, on sitting down at his writing-table, and lifting up a piece of
blotting-paper, the Colonel found under it a piece of peculiar paper, reading as in
the following facsimile (reds and blacks as per former samples):—

Now, Colonel Olcott thought he recognised that particular quality of paper,

and also, so far as it was legible, that seal-impression. The facsimile here
necessarily makes it much clearer. In the original the impression was curiously
faint and vague, as if the Master did not wish, in the Colonel’s case, to burst that
seal upon him all at once; but preferred the manner of Tennyson’s Freedom, who
“part by part to men revealed The fulness of her face.”
So Brer Rabbit continued to say nuffin’, and to lie low.
Presently Mr. William Q. Judge left on the same writing-table the following
note (being scribbled on a torn-off scrap of paper, it also has rather a Mahatmic
look. But that is accidental):—

“Dear Olcott” “looked” accordingly; and sure enough, in the ordinary

envelope of a letter, previously opened and put by on the table, there was a piece
of paper bearing a message with all the proper Mahatma-marks about it. And this
time the Mahatma had taken heart and “precipitated” a decently clear impression
of the seal.
And then the Colonel “smiled a sorter sickly smile.” For now he did recognise
that seal. And this is its story.

Back in the palmy days of 1883, or ever the marvels of “H.P.B.” were
besmirched by slanderous tongues, the Colonel was in a certain city of the
Panjab. Passing an Urdu seal-engraver’s shop in the bazaar, he turned in and
ordered the man to make a seal bearing the cryptograph signature which
“H.P.B.” identified as that of the “Master of Wisdom,” Mahatma Morya.
What did the Colonel want the seal for? Let him explain himself:—
An idea occurred to me (he writes) of sending through “H.P.B.,” as a playful present to my Master M, a
seal bearing a facsimile of his cryptograph.
An odd idea, this “playful present” of the Colonel’s. Had the seal been
intended for use by an ordinary person—by “H.P.B.” herself, for instance—there
would have been some sense in it. But the Mahatma, of course, who
“precipitated” his letters and his signature psychically, might just as well
“precipitate” the latter in the shape of a seal impression as otherwise, if he
wanted to; and where, then, should the use of a brass seal come in? However, as
the Colonel says, the present was merely “playful.”
Back went the Colonel to Madras, where Madame was, and presented the seal
to her, with a “jocular remark” (I am again quoting his own account). Madame’s
keen eye dwelt on it a moment, and then she pointed out that the Colonel, in his
jocularly playful mood, had made a slight mistake. “The Master’s cryptograph
was not correctly drawn,” according to the pattern already familiar to recipients
of his precious missives. There was a twiddle too much, or a twiddle too little, in
it. The Colonel himself saw the blunder when it was pointed out, and he now
declares that he would know it anywhere.
For this sufficient reason the “playful present” was not sent on to the
Himalayas (Heaven knows, by the way, by what astral form of parcels-post
service the Colonel had expected it to be sent); neither did it appear in any of the
communications vouched for by Madame.
It went into Madame’s despatch-box, along with a lot of other mystical odds
and ends, properties of the occult stage; and among these it was remarked, as late
as 1888, by the Mr. Keightley already mentioned, who was then living with her
in Lansdowne-road.
This gentleman asked the prophetess what the little brass seal might be?
Madame Blavatsky’s answer—a characteristically racy “fragment of her prophet
voice”—was:—
“Oh, it’s only a flap-doodle of Olcott’s.”

In the same year, at a time when William Q. Judge was staying with Madame,
Mr. Judge’s Mahatma evidently determined to overlook the inaccuracy in the
seal, and to make use of it for the first time to save himself the trouble of a
psychic signature.
 He did this, of course, in a letter of Mr. William Q. Judge’s own, and in a
sense endorsing Mr. William Q. Judge’s wishes—in fact, the letter was the one
recorded in the last chapter, in which the Master’s seal came so plump upon the
disciple’s prayer for a sign.
I have not mentioned before, however, that the recipient of this ’88 letter was
Colonel Olcott. He presumably recognised, then as now, his own “playful
present,” his own “flap-doodle”; but he appears to have let it pass in silence.
From this date the seal seems to have disappeared from among Madame
Blavatsky’s belongings. It was, of course, intrinsically valueless.
THE TELEGRAM MISSIVE. But in 1890 it turned up again—in New York,
and in close contiguity with Mr. Judge. Madame sent a message through Mr.
Judge to a disciple, then in America, who happened to be the Mr. Keightley who
had remarked the “flap-doodle of Olcott’s” at Lansdowne-road. The context,
which is before me as I write, shows that Madame was persuading this disciple
to take some course distasteful to him. Judge added his persuasions to hers. But
what was bound to determine the disciple was the discovery on receiving the
missive from Mr. Judge’s hands, that the Mahatma had added his vote in transitu
by endorsing the word “RIGHT,” in red pencil, with cryptograph and impression
of the Panjab seal.
Mr. Keightley, too, must have recognised the “flap-doodle”; but he, too, like
Olcott, said never a word. He did, indeed, go so far as to ask Judge if he had
affixed the seal? But on receiving a blandly surprised assurance that Mr. Judge
did not so much as know there was a seal affixed, he let the matter drop.
These are, so far as I know, the only two instances in evidence of the use of
this peculiar seal in Mahatma missives during the lifetime of Madame Blavatsky,
and, as was to be expected from her objection to the seal, neither missive was
among those vouched for by her, for the message from herself to New York was
telegraphed, and it was the telegraph-form at the New York end that the
Mahatma endorsed. Nevertheless, it is clear that no intimate of Madame’s would
get hold of the seal and make use of it for bogus Mahatma missives under her
very nose, unless he were under the impression either that she had it for that
purpose herself, or that she might be relied on at least not to “peach” on a chela
who used it.
But why did neither Colonel Olcott nor Mr. Keightley speak? The only answer
I can suggest is that while Madame Blavatsky was in the flesh the faithful
thought twice before they expressed a doubt about anything or anybody. They
were accustomed to take their marvels as they found them, and be thankful.
 Otherwise, they might at least have pointed out to Mr. Judge, in order that he
might in turn apprise his Mahatma, whose supernal knowledge seems here to
have been somewhat at fault, what a fatal blunder he was making in palming off
upon the faithful a bogus edition of his own cryptograph, known as such by three
of the faithful themselves.
However, there are the facts; and but for the Mahatma’s trop de zéle in
pushing his favourite chela’s occult claims immediately on Madame Blavatsky’s
decease, I fear we should never have been vouchsafed this instructive side-light
on an earlier period of the Theosophical Society.
These Adventures of a Seal supply the clue to the great game of bluff between
the two highest Theosophical officials which must be depicted in the next
chapter.
 CHAPTER IX.
THE CLIMAX OF THEOSOPHIC BROTHERHOOD.
“To form the nucleus of a Universal Brotherhood of Humanity.”—THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY, Object I.
“Pestling a poisoned poison behind his crimson lights!”—“MAUD.”

THE “MASTER WILL PROVIDE” MISSIVE. We left the president of the

Theosophical Society staring at the impression of his own “flap-doodle” seal on
that which purported to be a missive from the Mahatma.
The purport of the missive was precisely what the prescient Judge had
foretold. Colonel Olcott was not to sell the Blavatsky jewels, as the money
would be provided.
Having shown it to a brother member, the Colonel replaced it in the envelope,
and went off to have a few words with Mr. William Q. Judge.
He remarked to Judge that he had missed a certain brass seal from among
Madame Blavatsky’s relics, and described the Panjab seal and the story of its
making; not mentioning, however, the name of the exact city where it was made.
Had Judge seen the seal?
Judge answered in the negative. Upon which the Colonel remarked meaningly
(I quote his own account) that he “hoped no scoundrel would get possession of
it, and use it to give colour to bogus Mahatma messages,” adding that he would
at once recognise an impression from the seal.
He did not mention that he had looked for and found the missive in the
envelope.
After two days he looked into the envelope for that missive again. It was
gone!
Some judicious hand had removed it. “Judicious,” says the Dictionary,
“literally: of or pertaining to a Judge.” Colonel Olcott concluded with some
assurance that the hand which had removed that missive, the hand which had put
it there, and the hand which had written it, were one and the same hand, and that
hand William Q. Judge’s. That is a conclusion which we must leave the two
gentlemen to settle between them.
 But note the sequel. The writer of the missive, whoever he was, was as good
as his word.
When the Convention in due course was held, it was announced that a
donation had been contributed towards the expenses in a peculiar way.
There had appeared to one of the brethren one afternoon a dark and
mysterious Oriental figure, who gave no name, but deposited two Bank of
England £10 notes (from Tibet?), which were backed with the familiar red
cryptograph, after which he, like Mr. Lewis Carroll’s Snark, “softly and silently
vanished away.”
It will not surprise the astute reader to learn that the brother favoured with this
substantial spectre was William Q. Judge.
Well, there was the £20, and the vice-president’s reputation as an occultist
stood higher than ever. There was a time, years before, when the society had
made much of a similar vision of its president’s, one which, the Colonel used to
explain, had first assured him of the truth of Madame Blavatsky’s doctrines. On
his asking for a sign, the Colonel’s figure, which was, of course, like Mr.
Judge’s, the “astral body” of a Mahatma, had materialised its turban, and
disappeared into several yards of substantial textile fabric. “And here,” the
Colonel was wont to conclude the story, “here, you see, is the turban!”—
whipping it from his coat-tail pocket. Ah! that was in the palmy eighties. But
now where was he? What was a chela who conjured up a turban beside one who
could conjure up £20 hard cash—“on the table,” as Hilda Wangel would say?
In a word, Colonel Olcott was altogether thrown into the shade by this bold
stroke, and had not even the face to suggest that perhaps Mr. Judge’s story was
only a donor’s graceful way of conveying assistance from his own pocket. The
Colonel pulled rather a sour face, however, over the heavy sum with which the
society’s chest was debited when Mr. Judge’s expenses at the Convention came
to be paid. For, Judge having attended in his official capacity, it was the
Colonel’s treasury at Adyar which had to foot the bill. Personally, I consider the
miracles cheap at the price.
This reminds me of the matter of Madame Blavatsky’s Rosicrucian jewel, in
which also the Mahatma stole an amusing march on the Colonel. This was a
pendant set with gems, which had the property of changing colour with every
change in Madame’s health—so she and the faithful Olcott used to swear. The
Colonel had his own ideas about the future of this mystic gewgaw; but what was
his disgust on getting to Avenue-road to learn that the Master had sent a message
for it to be given to Judge, and that Mrs. Besant had accordingly handed it over!
Nor was the Colonel’s chagrin lightened by the fact that the forgetful Mahatma
attempted (through Judge, of course) to put him off the track of the jewel by a
message to quite another effect—an exceedingly misleading message.
For all I know, the gift was as valueless intrinsically as the brass seal; but
Theosophically it was a distinct score for Mr. Judge and his Mahatma thus to
amalgamate the two mystic apparatuses in one firm’s hands, so to speak.

THE “INNER GROUP” MISSIVE. After the passages described above, Mr.
Judge’s Mahatma was chary of subjecting any more epistolary efforts to the eye
of Colonel Olcott. And he seems to have become more cautious altogether. In
the following September, however, he succumbed to the temptation of
intervening again in the administration of the society. A letter with the usual
trimmings was enclosed to the Inner Group, bearing upon its constitution and
future changes, in one of Mr. Judge’s on the same subject and in the same sense
(September 14).
Just at this time Colonel Olcott was visiting America, en route for Japan,
where he was to teach the Buddhists their own religion in a flying visit. He took
the opportunity of making some more pointed representations to Mr. Judge on
the vagaries of his Master.
The result was prompt and significant.
During the very next month Mrs. Besant, then preparing for her trip to India,
received a cablegram from the vice-president in America to this effect:—
You are desired not to go to India remain where you are grave danger Olcott await further particulars by
an early mail.
THE “GRAVE DANGER OLCOTT” MISSIVE. At Avenue-road this mysterious
telegram was at first read in the sense, “Grave danger to Olcott.” The president
was just then due at Tokyo, and there was a report of an earthquake thereabouts.
For a while there was a great flutter over this convincing case of Mahatmic
prescience. When, however, the “early mail” arrived with Mr. Judge’s
explanatory letter, quite a different complexion was put on the telegram. After
reading this letter, and one from the inevitable Mahatma which Mr. Judge
enclosed, the conclusion of the Inner Group was that the “grave danger” against
which the Master warned Mrs. Besant was “from Olcott.” The Tibetan founder
of the society, in short, warned Mrs. Besant against imperilling her safety in the
neighbourhood of its president!
The Mahatma had declared war on Colonel Olcott.
This was the first shot in the campaign.
 But what could this danger from Colonel Olcott be? Mr. Judge and his
Mahatma left that darkly vague. Some of their friends in England dotted the i’s
and crossed the t’s for them. It is hardly credible, but the suggestion was nothing
less preposterous than that Colonel Olcott intended to poison Mrs. Besant!
I have no great veneration for Colonel Olcott’s character, and none at all for
his intelligence; but I frankly apologise to him for having to mention this
astounding nonsense in connexion with his name. I mention it simply in order to
explain one of the documents which follow, and to throw a light on the minds of
the colleagues who made or believed the charge; and I suppose I need scarcely
add that I attach to it no other value whatever. Colonel Olcott is about as remote
as it is possible to conceive from the sort of stuff of which murderers are made. I
am sure he never had and never will have any more intention to poison Mrs.
Besant, or anybody else, than the Man in the Moon. Having said so much to
make any misunderstanding impossible, I return to the suspicions or pretended
suspicions of the Colonel’s professed “Brothers.”
Positively, the only material which these ladies and gentlemen had to work on
was an innocent conversation of the Colonel’s with a friend on the subject of
poisons, Indian and other, which took place at a date when Mrs. Besant was not
yet even a member of the society! The “evidence”—save the mark!—was such
as ordinary non-Theosophical folk would not give even a dog a bad name on.
But Mahatmas and their friends are different, and Mr. Judge’s Mahatma was well
served. For this trivial episode, buzzed about from mouth to mouth in connexion
with the sinister hints of “Mahatma M,” sufficed to make this monstrous charge
against their president currently believed at Avenue-road, for some weeks at
least, by the very inmost and governing circle of his colleagues, with Mrs.
Besant at their head!
A belief once discarded, it is easy to deny that it ever existed. But this
particular belief, or half-belief, showed itself in action. Mrs. Besant deferred her
visit to India, and to impatient Indian disciples wrote that “Master had forbidden
her to come,” and “till that order was countermanded” she would not budge.
Now just pause a moment, and enjoy the exquisite irony of this unique
situation. The Theosophic Society was to be “the nucleus of a Universal
Brotherhood of Mankind.” At this moment, taking the three chief exponents of
this new Brotherliness, the president believed the vice-president to be fabricating
bogus documents; the vice-president apparently believed the president to have
designs to poison the high-priestess; and the high-priestess, having these two
beliefs to choose from, coquetted at least, as we have seen, with the more
heinous of the two.
 Other Theosophists appear from their course of action to have accomplished
the intellectual feat of believing both.
 CHAPTER X.
THE MAHATMA TRIES THREATS.
“Be these juggling fiends no more believed, that palter with us in a double sense!”—“MACBETH.”
“Masters, it is proved already that you are little better than false knaves.”—“MUCH ADO ABOUT
NOTHING.”

While the Mahatma was thus stealthily undermining the president, he was also
busy strengthening his own outworks. In December one of the doubting ones, the
Mr. Keightley who had been making up his mind whether to believe his own
eyes ever since June, 1890, received in India a letter from Mr. Judge fortifying
him against the heterodox influences to which he would be exposed on Colonel
Olcott’s return to that country.
THE “FOLLOW JUDGE AND STICK” MISSIVE. Mr. Judge warned his “dear
Bert” that Olcott would try to shake his faith in the genuineness of Mr. Judge’s
Mahatma-missives; that he might even have the baseness to suggest that they
were fabricated by Mr. Judge himself. On opening this letter, Mr. Keightley
found a small slip of peculiar paper, which turned out (on a prosaic scrutiny) to
be the sort of tissue which is used to separate the sheets of typewriting transfer
paper. On this slip appeared in Mahatmic script the words:—
Judge leads right. Follow him and stick!

There was, however, no seal impression. The Mahatma had grown chary of
using that seal. From the material of this missive we gather that the Mahatma is
not so remote from typewriters as one would expect in the Himalayas; from its
diction we learn that, whatever the failings of his English, the august being has a
racy command of Yankee.
I may remark here that when Mahatmas “precipitate” their own notepaper, as
well as the writing upon it, it has always been the etiquette that the former
should have an Indian look about it, however European the latter might be. Even
tissue, as in this case, is considered more in keeping than commonplace
stationery, with, perhaps, the watermark of some English firm upon it. But the
“make” preferred, alike now and in the Blavatsky days, is a peculiar sort of
hand-made rice-paper, which the Psychical Researchers had some difficulty in
tracking to the maker’s. They were not assisted by Colonel Olcott. But now, the
same mystic paper having turned up in the productions of Mr. Judge’s Mahatma
(borrowed, perhaps, at the same time as the seal?) the Colonel resolves the
mystery at once. Wishing to suggest that Mr. Judge got it ready-made from
Madame Blavatsky, he mentions that Madame had gone about with a good
supply of it, adding that it was originally bought in Cashmere. He had bought it
himself at Jammos, in fact, as long ago as 1883, just as he had also been the
purchaser of the brass seal; and just as he explains that the seal was got merely
as a “playful present,” so he represents the original purpose of the Cashmere
stationery as the humble one of “packing books—it being both cheap and
strong.” From parcels post to astral notepaper is a distinct rise. But who first
promoted it? Another side-light unintentionally thrown on the old Blavatsky
days!
But to return to Mr. Judge’s Mahatma. His last attempt to bring Colonel Olcott
to a better mind by persuasion was made that autumn. In October he had resorted
to a bold device for overcoming scepticism, which he and Mahatma Koot Hoomi
had patented in the early Blavatsky days—that of waylaying (astrally, of course)
the post-bag of some disconnected and quite unconscious correspondent of the
sceptic, and so introducing a message through an obviously untainted channel.
For instance, Mr. Hume once “got a note from Koot Hoomi inside a letter
received through the post from a person wholly unconnected with our occult
pursuits, who was writing to him on some municipal business.” (“Occult World,”
p. 21.) The letter happened to have a large and noticeable envelope, and long
after, in the days of disillusion, Mr. Hume discovered that Madame’s servant
Babula had carried off just such a letter from the postman for Madame, and then
returned it to him with an apology for the mistake. (S. P. R. Report, p. 275.)
THE “JUDGE IS NOT THE FORGER” MISSIVE. In October, then, Colonel
Olcott, who was just returning to India, got a letter from a Mr. Abbott Clark, of
Orange County, California, a gentleman who was under no sort of suspicion of
having anything to do with Mahatmas. And in this, if you please, there had
somehow found its way into the envelope a slip of paper bearing a message in
the M script, with signature, but with seal too blurred to distinguish, in facsimile
as follows:—

So much is in the usual red pencil; the part represented by shading above is
smudged, as is the red blotch which represents the seal, apparently by being
rubbed with the finger. Across a margin of the paper is the following postscript,
in the black carbon usually devoted to the seal impression:—

Rather cryptic, this missive; but the meaning seems to be this. The Mahatma
has to explain to the suspicious Colonel several things: why the missives
habitually come in letters from Mr. Judge; why, nevertheless, Mr. Judge knows
nothing of them; why he, the Master, has used a bogus seal which bungles his
own cryptograph; and, above all, why the impressions of that seal have been
illegible ever since an exposure of it was threatened. He hints, accordingly, that
he “uses” Mr. Judge to assist in some undefined psychic way in the precipitation
process; but Judge’s part in this is unconscious—it must be “when he does not
know.” Also, the thing precipitated “fades out often”—and plump on the word
comes an illustration.
In saying that “Judge did not write Annie” (i.e., Mrs. Besant, for this spirit is a
familiar one), the Master is misinformed, as we have seen. Mr. Judge had just
“written Annie,” enclosing the Master’s own warning against Colonel Olcott.
Lastly, the remark about “facit per alium” (the Mahatma can use a tag of
lawyers’ Latin on occasion) seems to mean that when Colonel Olcott had the
“flap-doodle” seal made he was unconsciously prompted by the Master himself,
who had now adopted it, overlooking the blunder in engraving. The prescience
which foresaw that the “precipitation” would give out in just this letter is no less
remarkable than that which provided for an unexpressed doubt by the assurance,
“No, it is not pencil.”
But for Colonel Olcott the gem of this letter was none of these. It was the
reference to the Panjab seal as the “Lahore brass.” All that Mr. Judge knew, as
we have seen, was that the seal was made at a “certain city in the Panjab.” Mr.
Judge’s Mahatma assumes that this city was the capital of the province. It was a
likely guess—a good shot, if such a phrase may be used of the mental processes
of a Tibetan sage—and one calculated to end the Colonel’s doubts—if correct.
But that is just what it was not. The city at which the Colonel got the seal was
quite another city; so the Mahatma, though he hints that he psychically presided
over the purchase, does not even know where that purchase took place!
The result of this unlucky lapse of memory on the part of the Master was that
the missive made bad worse. Despite the distance of California, where Mr.
Clark’s envelope was posted, from New York, and the offices of Mr. William Q.
Judge, the Colonel suspected Mr. Judge’s hand in it. He wrote to Mr. Clark, and
discovered that Judge had spent two days in Orange County at the very date
when the Master availed himself of Mr. Clark’s envelope. Thereupon the
Colonel formed his own ideas as to how the Master had “used” his favourite
chela on that occasion.
THE “POISON-THREAT” MISSIVE. Can we wonder that the Master was
incensed by this incorrigible scepticism—a spirit, as the Colonel himself had
formerly taught, and as the event was to prove but too surely—fatal to
Theosophy?
Persuasion failing, the Master resorted to threats!
In January, 1892, the Colonel received an amicable letter from Mr. Judge,
reproaching him for not writing. On opening it, he found written along the
margin of the first page the following laconic message in Mahatma script
(signed, but again no seal: much reduced here):—

“Him” presumably means Judge. The bearing of the threat will be intelligible
to readers of the last Chapter. Certain rumours from Avenue-road made it
intelligible also to Colonel Olcott. The Master of Wisdom, the unapproachable
sage of the Himalayas, He-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed by Mrs. Besant and the whole
Theosophical Society, had thrown off the mask of benignity. Here he was plainly
adopting, as a weapon against his own unlucky president, that impossible
accusation which represents the lowest point of ethical squalor yet touched, in
this story at any rate, by Theosophic “brotherhood”! This was miching
Mallecho, thought the Colonel; it meant mischief with a vengeance. The voice
was the voice of the Mahatma, but again the Colonel thought it the hand of
Judge. So he wrote with some natural heat to ask that gentleman what he meant
by his “base insinuation.”
Only to receive, however, the blandly innocent reply:—
I have puzzled my head over your reference to “poison,” as if in one of mine; as I never referred to it I
cannot catch on, and have given it up in despair.
 After this the Colonel seems to have given the Mahatma up in despair, too.
But the Mahatma, on his part, was busily pushing up a column to take the
Colonel in the flank, and bring this story to a crisis.
Secure in the support of Mrs. Besant, he was to make the pusillanimous
president resign his office, and to enthrone William Q. Judge in his place!
 CHAPTER XI.
MRS. BESANT’S COUP DE MAIN.
“I did my utmost to prevent a public Committee of Enquiry of an official character.”—MRS. BESANT at
T.S. Convention, July 12, 1894.

How even a “psychologised baby” like Colonel Olcott came to succumb to a

movement for ousting him from office, backed by such methods as we have
examined, is to me a mystery. No doubt he had his own reasons for avoiding a
contest in disclosures with his old colleague Mr. Judge, who knows so much
about Theosophy ever since the days of its foundation. At any rate, succumb he
did. On receiving an emissary from Avenue-road, early in 1892, he threw up the
cards in the unequal game with the Mahatma, and formally resigned his
presidency.
Then was seen a touching sight. Cæsar pushed away the crown. Mr. Judge was
loth to succeed. Who could doubt it? Why, he got a “message” countermanding
the resignation, and forwarded it to the Colonel (March, 1892), just too late to be
acted on before the American Convention in April, which, with decent
reluctance, acclaimed Mr. Judge for the vacant office.
But now came a hitch. Colonel Olcott took the anti-resignation message au
grand sérieux. He forgot all his doubts about Mr. Judge’s Mahatma missives in
his simple joy at the tenor of this last one. It was but a typed copy which Mr.
Judge sent him. Never mind, it was a declaration of peace; and if ever there was
a man of peace it is the Colonel, despite his American brevet. He could not
disobey the Master; he did withdraw his resignation. Such was his answer to Mr.
Judge.
Mr. Judge expressed his delight. But in absence of mind—possibly excess of
joy—he quite forgot to mention either the Master’s message or the Colonel’s
consent at Avenue-road when, in the following July, the time came to make his
succession to the Colonel’s office definite.
The result was that Mr. Judge was then and there elected president for life.
Some voices were for a term; but Mrs. Besant arose in her eloquence and “swept
up the floor” (in the phrase of one Theosophic enthusiast), and the election was
“for life.” Alas! Contracts entered into for that period are notoriously apt to give
out at an earlier date.
Perhaps one thing which explains the Colonel’s small show of fight is the fact
that he was to be consoled with an “Olcott Pension Fund.” Unhappily the
treasurer defalcated some eight or nine thousand rupees, and then committed
suicide. Ill-luck seemed to dog the vanquished president.
But now came the turn of the tide.
On the announcement of Judge’s election, Colonel Olcott indignantly wrote to
Avenue-road to point out that there was no vacancy. And he printed in the
Theosophist the Master’s message which had led him to withdraw his
resignation.
He did more. The Theosophist, the official journal of the Indian section, has
come to be Colonel Olcott’s private property, just as Lucifer is Mrs. Besant’s,
and The Path Mr. William Q. Judge’s—an illustration of the odd mixture of
private and official capacities in this society. And now the Colonel plucked up
heart to publish in his paper the first note publicly heard of criticism—yes, actual
criticism—of Mr. Judge’s Mahatma.
Privately, there had been some troubled bleatings heard already among some
of the less docile of the Theosophic sheep. Mr. Judge had been obliged to take
up the cudgels for the merits of some of his Mahatma missives as philosophic
compositions. I find him claiming (in the true oracular spirit) that:—
A very truism, when uttered by a Mahatma, has a deeper meaning for which the student must seek, but
which he will lose if he stops to criticise and weigh the words in mere ordinary scales.
A sentiment printed with approbation in Mrs. Besant’s paper. Again, he is
parrying inquisitive questions about the Master’s seal. He “does not know” what
they mean. An inquirer sends him a sample letter with a good impression to look
at—one which had come from Mr. Judge himself, I presume—and gets it back
with the impression rubbed out (“it fades out often,” as we have seen above), and
the puzzled remark from Mr. Judge, “Where is your seal? I don’t see one.”
Finally, pressed, Mr. Judge declares that “Whether He” (the Master) “has a seal,
or uses one, is something on which I am ignorant.”
It was on this statement—which involves a total lapse of memory on Mr.
Judge’s part of events narrated in Chapter V.—that he was challenged in the
Theosophist of April, 1893, in an article signed by Messrs. W. R. Old and S. V.
Edge, both T.S. officials (secretaries, Indian section). The article is hardly what
would be called trenchant by non-Theosophical standards. But it just pointed out
that little discrepancy in a polite foot-note; and that was enough.
 If there is one thing more than another which is deemed to be bad form in
circles Theosophical, it is to corner a Theosophist on a definite matter of fact.
Anything undraped in verbiage is considered nude, even to indecency. The voice
of questioning has to be stifled at once.
By virtue of their joint position as Outer Heads of the Esoteric section, to
which they were elected under warrant of the very seal in question, Mrs. Besant
and Mr. Judge promptly “suspended” Messrs. Old and Edge from their Esoteric
membership.

In December, Mrs. Besant went to India. She had, therefore, thrown over the
Mahatma’s warning. But she had not thrown over the Mahatma—not a bit. She
declared that nothing on earth would induce her to give up believing that the
missives were indeed “precipitated” by Mahatma M, unless Mahatma M in
person appeared and repudiated them. If a person who had been told that the
Man in the Moon daily “precipitated” the Times leading articles should decline
to be convinced of the contrary till he heard it from the lips of the Man in the
Moon himself he would probably be “of the same opinion still” for some
considerable time.
In India, Mrs. Besant suddenly changed her mind. Had the Master indeed
appeared and fulfilled her conditions? She does not say so. Yet it can scarcely
have been on any mere, dull ground of fact and argument. She was presented
with a set of depositions establishing all of the substantial facts of this narrative,
given under the names of those personally cognisant of them, with Colonel
Olcott at their head, and summed up in the form of certain definite charges
against William Q. Judge. But many of these facts she already knew herself, as
well as anybody, and made naught of.
What did work the miracle, then?—As far as I can make out, it was this. Mrs.
Besant sat at the feet of G. N. Chakravati. And G. N. Chakravati just mentioned
that he did not believe in Judge.
This is the Hindu gentleman who was sent to represent the Theosophical
Society at the Chicago Parliament of Religions, at an expense of £500. This is
the teacher who has made “Annabai” so far a Hindu that she now protests
against harsh mention even of the child-widow horrors, the 12,000 temple
prostitutes of Madras, and the other religious indecencies of Hinduism. As Mr.
Bradlaugh led Mrs. Besant from the Church to Materialism, as Mr. Herbert
Burrows went hand-in-hand with her from Materialism to Madame Blavatsky, as
Judge made her believe in Judge, so she could only abandon Judge with the aid
of G. N. Chakravati. Whatever the explanation, the fact remains that, blessed by
this worthy pundit, the case formulated against Mr. Judge became strong—
convincing—irresistible. Mrs. Besant’s mind blossomed in a day into the full-
blown view that she had been deluded, that Judge had himself written the
missives to which she had pinned her faith—written them all with his own hand.
Appalling bathos!—and one which an Enquiry must needs result in publishing
to all the world. Yet an Enquiry there must be. The Indian section was
threatening to secede from the society if Mr. Judge’s presidency were confirmed
with the scandal unsifted. Judge himself, offered the alternative by cablegram of
resigning all his offices quietly or facing a “full publication of the facts,” replied
in a defiant sense which showed his conviction that there were others to whom
“full publication of the facts” (which it was easy to threaten, but which it has
been left for an outsider to carry out) would be more ungrateful even than to
himself. What was Mrs. Besant to do?
A happy thought struck her. She offered to adopt the charges, turn prosecutor,
and conduct the case against Mr. Judge herself.
The signatories of the evidence were delighted—especially Colonel Olcott,
who got behind Mrs. Besant now with the same alacrity as previously behind
Messrs. Old and Edge.
By this bold, yet simple stroke, the evidence, documents, and whole control of
the case passed into Mrs. Besant’s hands, where they, as she fondly hopes, or
hoped, now remain.
Not altogether!
 CHAPTER XII.
A MEETING OF THE (THEOSOPHICAL) PICKWICK CLUB.
THE CHAIRMAN felt it his imperative duty to demand of the hon. gentleman whether he had used the
expression “a humbug” in a common sense?
MR. BLOTTON had no hesitation in saying that he had not—he had used the word in its Pickwickian sense.
(Hear, hear.) He was bound to acknowledge that personally he entertained the highest esteem for the hon.
gentleman; he had merely considered him a humbug in a Pickwickian point of view.
MR. PICKWICK felt much gratified by the candid explanation of his hon. friend. He begged it to be at once
understood that his own observations had been merely intended to bear a Pickwickian construction.
(Cheers.)—The Pickwick Papers.

We have now seen how, step by step, as by a resistless nemesis the rival
Theosophical leaders were led on to bring their quarrel to that which neither of
them had much stomach for—an inquiry into evidence. Bluff meeting bluff, the
thing got as far as the summoning from three continents of a Committee of
Investigation representing both parties. “Investigating” hidden forces in nature,
as we saw in Chapter II., is one of the professed “Objects” of the Theosophical
Society. The present chapter is to show what the Theosophical idea of
investigating is like.
There lies before me a pamphlet, reprinted from Lucifer of August last, which
bears the facetious title, “AN INQUIRY Into Certain Charges against the Vice-
President, Held in London, July 1894.” Anybody is at liberty to get this
publication—and make what head or tail of it he can.
THERE IS NO The plain matter of fact which lay behind the
proceedings in question was this. Mrs. Besant and
RELIGION HIGHER
THAN TRUTH Colonel Olcott had given away their friends and
compromised with Judge on the terms that he should
BADGE OF THE T.S. give Olcott back his presidency, Judge’s election
thereto being declared null and void, while they on
their part should suppress the evidence which the
Judicial Committee had been summoned to report on.
Mr. Judge had protested in a vehement circular, when first called on by the
President to appear before the committee, against one of his accusers proposing
to preside at his trial. There was reason in the objection at the time. He could not
foresee that the proceedings would take the form of the presiding judge and the
counsel for the prosecution combining to prevent the case from going to the jury.
This being the plain English of the affair, let us now see how it reads
translated into what I may call Theosophistry.
The first part of the pamphlet consists of the Judicial Committee’s minutes. Of
this, six-sevenths is devoted to an “Address of the President-Founder” proving
that they ought to do nothing. The remaining page is devoted to doing it.
The “charges of misconduct preferred by Mrs. Besant against the vice-
president” are nowhere formally stated at all. They are incidentally summarised
by the president as follows:—
“That he practised deception in sending false messages, orders, and letters, as
if sent and written by ‘Masters.’ ... That he was untruthful in various other
instances enumerated.”
The bulk of the address is occupied in discussing with great solemnity various
reasons alleged by Mr. Judge why these charges should not be gone into by the
committee.
One or two of these, such as the vice-president’s discovery that he had never
been really vice-president at all, and the contention that, whichever way the
decision went, it must “offend the religious feelings” of some member or
another, and that this was against the rules of the society—these were, after the
due amount of pomposity, declared against by the president.
But there were two other pleas of such irresistible force and weight that the
president found himself convinced by them “that this inquiry must go no
further.” Stripped of prolix circumlocutions, these may be put as an alternative,
thus:—
Either the Mahatma missives are genuine or they are fabricated.
(a) If found to be genuine, that implies the affirmation of the existence of
Mahatmas as a Theosophic dogma, and the abandonment of the society’s
precious “neutrality.” Which is unconstitutional.
(b) If found to be bogus missives produced by the vice-president, then it is
obvious that he must have done it in his private capacity; the production of
bogus documents being no part of his official duties. Therefore he cannot be
tried for it by an official tribunal.
Could anything be more delicious than this dilemma? It is worthy of a trial
scene in Gilbertian comic opera.
Mrs. Besant, like the president, was “convinced that the point was rightly
taken.” There was nothing more to be said.
The Judicial Committee “resolved” in the same sense, without any
inconvenient discussion, and forthwith committed hara-kiri with the
complaisance of a Chinese nobleman. Not only had they not investigated the
case, but, as far as I can make out, they had not even heard what it was, except in
the most abstract of summaries. Having gravely adjusted the bandage over each
other’s eyes, they separated with a good conscience. For many of them—worthy
investigators!—I believe I am the first to remove the bandage, and set them
blinking at the truth.
From (a) it follows, as the president pointed out en passant in the course of his
Address, that every Theosophist is in future free to circulate Mahatma messages,
but no Theosophist to test their genuineness.
From (b) it equally follows that no officer of the society is in future
responsible to it for any misdeed whatever, since such misdeed cannot well be
among his official duties.

Perhaps it is not very surprising that the result of the Judicial Committee,
which had been gathered to its task from the ends of the earth, was received with
disgust by the generality of members then met in London for one of their
interminable conventions. A demand was even heard for a private jury of
honour; or, failing that, for publication of the case for both sides, the course to
which one side, as we saw, had affected to pledge itself. Mr. Judge found himself
unable to refuse his assent to the jury proposal. Again Mrs. Besant dashed in and
triumphed in the sacred cause of obscurantism. At the third session of the
convention she announced that she and Mr. Judge had agreed upon a couple of
statements representing their different points of view, and proposed that the
convention should hear these, accept them, and let the matter drop. These two
statements compose the second part of the pamphlet; and they are at least as
bewildering as the first.
“We come to you, our brothers, to tell you what is in our hearts,” Mrs. Besant
read out. Her endeavour to “tell” fills four pages. The following are the
sentences which gyrate least round the point:—
I do not charge, and have not charged, Mr. Judge with forgery in the ordinary sense of the term, but with
giving a misleading form to messages received psychically from the Master in various ways.... Personally I
hold that this method is illegitimate.... I believe that Mr. Judge wrote with his own hand, consciously or
automatically I do not know, in the script adopted as that of the Master, messages which he received from
the Master, or from chelas; and I know that in my own case I believed that the messages he gave me in the
well-known script were messages directly precipitated or directly written by the Master. When I publicly
said that I had received, after H. P. Blavatsky’s death, letters in the writing that H. P. Blavatsky had been
accused of forging, I referred to letters given to me by Mr. Judge, and as they were in the well-known script
I never dreamt of challenging their source. I know now that they were not written or precipitated by the
Master, and that they were done by Mr. Judge; but I also believe that the gist of these messages was
psychically received, and that Mr. Judge’s error lay in giving them to me in a script written by himself and
not saying so.... Having been myself mistaken, I in turn misled the public.
The rest of Mrs. Besant’s statement is easily summarised. Part is devoted to
minimising the importance of the question whether Mr. Judge wrote, or the
Mahatma precipitated, the letters, by remarking that after all it did not matter so
very much, as Mahatmas sometimes communicate (like spiritualist “controls”)
by allowing ordinary people to write for them. “It is important,” quoth Mrs.
Besant, naïvely, “that the small part generally played by Masters in these
phenomena should be understood”—a remark with which the present writer
quite agrees, and a main object of the present narrative. But in the sense in which
Mrs. Besant meant it, it was not very relevant to an inquiry entirely dealing with
letters passed off as having been precipitated, and precipitated without Mr.
Judge’s knowledge, by the Mahatma himself.
Beyond this, Mrs. Besant’s statement consists about equally of blame directed
at the untheosophical “vindictiveness” of Mr. Judge’s accusers in pressing an
inquiry “painful” to Mr. Judge, and of laudatory tributes to the character and
Theosophical activity of Mr. Judge himself.
Down Mrs. Besant sat, and up rose Mr. Judge, and read his statement. It
contained the following sentences:—
I repeat my denial of the said rumoured charges of forging the said names and handwritings of the
Mahatmas, or of misusing the same.... I admit that I have received and delivered messages from the
Mahatmas ... they were obtained through me, but as to how they were obtained or produced I cannot state....
My own methods may disagree from the views of others.... I willingly say that which I never denied, that I
am a human being, full of error, liable to mistake, not infallible, but just the same as any other human being
like to myself, or of the class of human beings to which I belong. And I freely, fully, and sincerely forgive
anyone who may be thought to have injured or tried to injure me.
Now, so far as these sentences were an answer at all to such charges as Mrs.
Besant’s statement had allowed itself to convey, they were certainly a flat
contradiction. But that point was naturally overlooked by eyes moist from the
affecting “forgiveness” of Mr. Judge’s peroration, and his very handsome, if
somewhat tautologously expressed, admission that he was only a “human
being.” Without a word more, nemine contradicente, it was
Resolved: that this meeting accepts with pleasure the adjustment arrived at by Annie Besant and William
Q. Judge as a final settlement of matters pending hitherto between them as prosecutor and defendant, with a
hope that it may be thus buried and forgotten, and—
Resolved: that we will join hands with them to further the cause of genuine brotherhood in which we all
believe.
These resolutions were proposed by the Mr. Keightley (M.A. Cant.) whose
name has occurred so often in our story among the bamboozled ones, and
seconded by Dr. Buck, one of the nominees from Mr. Judge’s section to the
abortive committee.
And there ends the Pamphlet—and the “Enquiry.” It has since appeared that
the “joining of hands” between Mrs. Besant and Mr. Judge was for footlight
purposes only; for no sooner was the curtain rung down than the two joint Outer
Heads found they could no longer work together, and settled the matter by
splitting the Esoteric section into independent dominions, Mr. Judge taking
America, and Mrs. Besant Europe—to which she has since added India.
The result is one on which Mr. William Q. Judge must be congratulated. He
retains all his offices as head of his lodge, of his section, and of the American
Esoteric section; retains his vice-presidency of the whole society; retains the
status of heir-presumptive, at least, to the presidency; retains, also, I suppose,
either he or his Mahatma, the brass “flap-doodle,” to say nothing of the
Blavatsky relic, with full freedom to continue using the same as heretofore.
In a word, the Theosophical Society has chosen to stand or fall with its vice-
president.

Theosophy is a religion as well as a philosophy, and the T.S. masquerades as

in some sort a Church. Imagine the situation, then, in any other religious
denomination. Suppose that the Archbishop of Canterbury were to put forth
missives which he alleged to have fluttered down direct from St. Augustine in
heaven; and suppose after Convocation had governed the Church for years in
conformity with directions so received, the Archbishop of York were to declare
at a Church Congress his belief that his esteemed brother, whose services to the
Church were beyond all praise, had written the missives himself, an expedient
“which I personally hold to be illegitimate,” but into the details of which he
begged the Congress not to pry: suppose, then, that the Archbishop of
Canterbury on his part declared himself, like Mr. Pickwick, “much gratified with
the candid explanation of his hon. friend,” that he “merely considered him a
humbug in a Pickwickian point of view”—supposing all this, can you imagine
the Church Congress rising as one man to “bury” the dispute, and “join hands”
with the embracing disputants?
Probably not. But then, as Mrs. Besant remarked, the “standards of the world”
are “lower” than those of the Theosophical Society—and of the “Pickwick
Club.”
Nevertheless, I must ask leave to break in on the harmonious scene with a few
troublesome questions.
 CHAPTER XIII.
QUESTIONS AND CHALLENGES.
“Hath he said anything?”
“He hath, my lord; but, be you well assured,
No more than he’ll unswear.”—“OTHELLO.”

“Next in importance, or perhaps equal in value, to Devotion, is Truth.”—Circular on “Occultism and

Truth,” signed by H. S. OLCOTT, ANNIE BESANT, B. KEIGHTLEY, &c., July, 1894.

In my first chapter I set out certain conclusions. In succeeding chapters I have

given the facts on which my conclusions were based. I now assert that the
evidence for those facts, be it good or bad, is that of the Theosophical leaders
themselves, written and signed as the case against the Vice-President, and
adopted by Mrs. Besant as true. If it be not true, then Colonel Olcott, Mr. B.
Keightley, Mr. W. R. Old, and the other official witnesses must be guilty of a
conspiracy, as I said at the outset, “even more discreditable to the personnel of
the society.” It is not I who accuse Mr. Judge. It is Mr. Judge and his colleagues
who accuse each other. The rank-and-file of the Theosophists have paid their
money; they may now take their choice.
The fact is, before Mrs. Besant got hold of the evidence, at least one set of
complete and duly witnessed copies had been made, together with facsimiles of
the documents. It is these which lately fell into my hands, under circumstances
which left me free to take, as I do take, the moral and legal responsibility of that
publication which the president first promised and afterwards shirked.

In regard to Mr. William Q. Judge, vice-president, I do not feel called on to

labour any theory of my own as to that gentleman’s character and conduct. As
the Society for Psychical Research long ago remarked, the precise line between
rogue and dupe in the Theosophical Society has never been easy to draw. On any
view of Mr. Judge I have at least as much respect for him as for his virtuously
vacillating superior, whose mind seems to have been made up for him from one
stage to another by whatever party happened to be at the moment nearest and
most peremptory. With the facts of the preceding narrative before him, the reader
can form his own opinion about both officials.
 Equally unable am I to state what Mr. Judge’s own version of Mr. Judge’s acts
may be. I have read and re-read his “statement” at the “Enquiry,” and his circular
issued just previously. In these I have groped—faint, yet pursuing—among the
mazes of that Theosophical verbiage which always seems to be coming to the
point; but for me at least it has never quite got there. Where the denials are most
explicit, the thing denied is vaguest; where admission is most candid, the thing
admitted is least relevant to the issue. Mr. Judge admits, for instance, that he is a
“fallible human being”; he denies that he has “forged.” I, for one, should never
dream of disputing either position. The verb, to forge, definitely connotes in
English the imitation of the signature of a person who really exists, and who has
also an existent banking account. The worst I should dream of imputing to Mr.
Judge in this connexion is the imitation of someone else’s imitation of the
feigned signature of somebody who never existed.
Mr. Judge must see that between the mere human fallibility to which he
confesses, and the felony of which no one has accused him, it does not need a
sensitive ear to distinguish whole octaves of intervening notes. Thanks to Mrs.
Besant, he has not yet been obliged to locate himself at any one point of the
gamut. But, for all I know, he may now come forward and twit his associates
with deficient humour for not seeing that the whole thing was just a rollicking
hoax. Throwing off the rôle of an interpreter of Tibet, he may appear as William
Q. Judge, the American Humorist. He might fairly claim that many have
performed under a like title much less divertingly. He might say that the joke
was so obvious that it never struck him his colleagues would take it seriously;
that their evident determination not to spoil sport was an invitation no joker
could have resisted; and that he only kept it up so long for the fun of seeing,
through a graduated scale of absurdity, how much they really would stand. Of
course, to carry through a big practical joke one may be excused a few
taradiddles, to which the moralist might apply a harsher name. No doubt some
might question the taste of making a friend’s funeral the starting-point of even
the most innocent mauvaise plaisanterie. But American humour has never
spared the cemetery.

From my own position, then, and Mr. Judge’s position, I now pass to Mrs.
Besant’s. This is interesting from its bearing on the curious psychological puzzle
offered by Mrs. Besant’s own mind, to the study of which she herself continually
invites the public. Let us accept the invitation for a moment.
I take Mrs. Besant’s statement at the so-called “Enquiry,” that she believed
now that Judge wrote with his own hand the missives which he had induced her,
and she had induced the public, to regard as precipitations from Tibet of the kind
which “some people would call miraculous.”
Apparently Mrs. Besant considers that this avowal sufficed to clear her honour
towards her colleagues and the public whom she had “misled.” To me it appears
admirably calculated to mislead them again. Remember, even those whom Mrs.
Besant was addressing—much more the outside public—were ignorant of the
facts. Mrs. Besant had taken good care of that.
They did not know, as the reader does, the circumstances which surrounded
these various missives: The “Master Agrees” missive, the Telegram missive, the
Cabinet missive, the “Note the Seal,” the “Judge’s Plan is Right,” the “Judge is
the Friend,” the Envelope Trick, the “Withold,” the “Master will Provide,” the
Bank-note, the Inner Group, the “Grave Danger Olcott,” the “Judge is not the
Forger,” the “Follow Judge and Stick,” and the Poison Threat missive—as I have
severally named them.
Referring to those circumstances, as the reader now knows them, I ask of what
did and does Mrs. Besant mean to convict Mr. Judge?
If Judge “wrote with his own hand” the answers got from the cabinet oracle
(May 23, 1891), did he also use sleight-of-hand or some similar artifice to make
her accept the answers as precipitated in a sealed envelope in a closed drawer?
If Judge “wrote,” &c., the slip “Judge’s plan is right,” the sudden appearance
of which among Mrs. Besant’s papers made her and him joint officials on May
27, 1891—did he also place it among those papers on purpose to be so
discovered?
If Judge “wrote” &c., Mrs. Besant’s message of July 12, 1891, which was
across the inside flaps of a closed envelope—did he also insert the writing by the
trick described in the chapter which I entitled “Every Man his Own Mahatma”?
If Judge “wrote,” &c., all the various letters, notes, and endorsements to
which the “Mahatma’s” signature and seal were attached, missives backing
Judge’s own views, raising Judge’s own Theosophical status, and bluffing other
“servants” of that “Master,” to whom he and they cannot allude without capital
letters—did he also “with his own hand” take and affix the seal which he has
persistently denied having ever set eyes on?
If Mrs. Besant did not mean all this, and much more which hangs by the same
logic, then her Statement grossly calumniated Mr. Judge to the few who knew
the tenor of the case against him.
If she did mean it, then her Statement completely hoodwinked her audience
and the public.
 For will anybody assert that this, which has just been outlined, or anything
like it, was the picture naturally called up by Mrs. Besant’s carefully worded
description of “Mr. Judge’s error” as the negative one of “not mentioning”
certain circumstances, her suggestion that personal opinions might reasonably
differ on the “legitimacy” of his methods, her laudatory allusions to his general
character and Theosophic services, her public sanction of a statement on his part
which on this theory must have been utterly misleading, her eager lead in the
attempt to cloak up for ever the Great Mahatma Hoax, and to shield the hoaxer?
But there is another point. Mrs. Besant professes still to cling to the belief that
the Mahatmas had something to do with the letters. Mr. Judge wrote them, she
says, but what he wrote he had first “received psychically from the Master.”
Faith, fanatic faith, once wedded fast
To some dear falsehood, hugs it to the last.

Nobody can prove that those missives, or, for that matter, these articles, or
Shakespeare’s plays, were not due to the Master’s “psychical” authorship. Mr.
Judge and Mrs. Besant are both quite free to say so. But again I must point out to
Mrs. Besant the logical inferences from her position. In the attempt to hold on to
one spar in the general wreck, she just says enough to inculpate the Mahatma,
and not enough to exculpate Mr. Judge.
For, to apply theory once more to concrete fact: Does Mrs. Besant attribute to
the Mahatma the preposterous insinuations against Colonel Olcott? And does she
mean that the Mahatma made these insinuations and various direct false
statements in order to co-operate with Mr. Judge in shielding from discovery a
prolonged use of a bogus imitation of the Mahatma’s own seal and signature?
In this case, we are entitled to challenge Mrs. Besant to say whether she
herself now believes that the insinuations against Colonel Olcott were justified.
If yes, then I can only leave her to settle that matter with the Colonel. If no, then
what becomes of the supernal wisdom and lofty character of “Those Who to
some of us are most sacred”? Must it not be confessed that They have made
uncommon fools of Themselves?—not to give a stronger name to the extremely
shady methods of which Tibetan diplomacy is thus found guilty.
The public will await satisfactory answers to these questions. It will not, I
hope, for a moment suspect Mrs. Besant of conscious fraud, or of sordid
motives. I most certainly do not. With some of the lesser fry, who would be
bankrupt in every sense if Theosophy failed them, the consideration of pleasant
board and lodging at other people’s expense may be a governing one. With Mrs.
Besant, who brings far more to the organisation in the shape of gate-money, no
doubt, than she ever condescends to accept from it, the motives are subtler. Had
she boldly cut herself free from the rottenness at the core of the Theosophic
movement as soon as it was shown to her, she might have saved her reputation
for straightforwardness, if not for intelligence. In choosing instead the equivocal
policy of hushing up a scandal at all costs, she doubtless convinced herself that
she was acting only for the ends of edification and the good of her church. That
is the old, old story of priestcraft, and Mrs. Besant has been playing the high
priestess now for three years. But were there not also some more personal
motives at work? There is one thing which even the most candid hate to confess
—and that is, that they have been thoroughly bamboozled. It does not improve
matters when they have themselves helped in their own bamboozlement. To
confess how recklessly inaccurate were her statements about “the same
handwriting,” the “semi-miraculous precipitation,” the absolute assurance of her
own senses, and so forth; to let the public see for itself the childish twaddle
which she accepted, and helped to force upon others, as profound and oracular:
all this would have been a sad come-down from the Delphic tripod. I do not
wonder the poor lady shrank from it. I do wonder that Mrs. Besant cared to
evade it at the expense of a sort of confidence-trick. To this has come the woman
whom we once thought, whatever her other faults, at least fearless and open—
the woman whose epitaph, so she tells us, is to be—
She Sought To Follow Truth!
Lastly, a few words to the rank-and-file of the Theosophical Society, a large
proportion of whom are now gathering open-mouthed at Adyar. In Madame
Blavatsky few of the better-informed of the flock nowadays affect to believe—
except in public. They cling to her gifts, perhaps; they have thrown over her
morals. For fresh evidence has been coming to light, ever since that strange
woman died, as to the tricks to which she condescended, and encouraged her
chelas to condescend; and poor Colonel Olcott, though he continues to work the
old gold-mine in print, has been driven even there to enunciate the theory that
Madame Blavatsky herself was really killed at the battle of Mentana, and her
body thereafter occupied by seven distinct spirits who, of course, are not
responsible for contradicting each other. Till May, 1891, Madame was the
principal witness to the objective existence and attributes of Mahatmas. Since
that date, the principal witness is William Q. Judge. Soon the faithful at Adyar
will be filing into the Occult Room to gaze through peep-holes at the two August
Portraits, illuminated and set off by all the artifices associated here with
exhibitions by M. Jan van Beers. Will they dare, any of them, to ask their
officials plainly what evidence they can now offer that either of the subjects of
those fancy portraits ever existed?
And if on this and other questions suggested by these chapters, Mrs. Besant,
President Olcott, and Vice-President Judge do not succeed in satisfying their
followers——what next? No doubt each member of the trinity will sit secure in
his or her autocracy in his or her own continent, owning there, as I understand,
the official organ and the publishing plant which the society as a whole has built
up into prosperity. Yet something, surely, may be done by those who do not care
to remain unwilling parties to the Great Mahatma Hoax, to recover their own
self-respect, if not to save the Theosophical Society.
It is for them to decide whether the society, on its non-fraudulent side, is
worth saving. It may be a kind of university extension for the popularising of
Eastern philosophies. Or it may be, as some rather think, a mere smattering of
catch-words out of cribs for the use of Mutual Mystification clubs, tending to a
certain indigestion in the mental processes and a flatulent style of English
composition. In either case there is no reason why the organisation should
revolve about a vortex of tomfoolery and legerdemain into which honest
members are apt to be sucked before they realise its true nature.
PART II.
 “THE VOICE OF THE SILENCE.”
LETTERS ON VARIOUS SIDES FROM THEOSOPHISTS.

The foregoing chapters appeared in the Westminster Gazette, of October 29th,

and nine succeeding issues. They attracted wide notice and comment, and were
the subject of allusion in a large part of the London and provincial press. In
accordance with their usual custom, the official Theosophists in England are said
to have cabled to their leaders abroad to know what line they should take; but, if
so, they do not appear to have got any clear answer.
A mass of correspondence was addressed to the Westminster Gazette, and to
the author of the articles, some of it from officials, most of it from private
members; some admitting that “much is, and all may be true,” others denying
everything—in general terms; some throwing over the Vice-President, others
lauding him as a model of Theosophic rectitude; some rejoicing (“in
confidence”) at the “cleaning-out of this Augean stable of trickery,” others
declaring that, proved or disproved, the charges do not matter a pin.
In regard to the repeated accusations that the assailant of the society “waited”
till its three Theosophic chiefs were at a distance before challenging them on
their “Enquiry,” it was pointed out that they gave nobody any chance to wait, the
official Report of the Enquiry being sent round almost on the very day that Mrs.
Besant sailed for Australia.
The following is a representative selection from the letters:—
 I.—LETTERS FROM OFFICIALS.

FROM THE EUROPEAN SECRETARY: “DESERVING OF NO

ANSWER.”

SIR,—I have forwarded the copies of your paper containing the series of articles entitled “Isis Very Much
Unveiled” to my friends Colonel Olcott, Mrs. Besant, and Mr. Judge, who are respectively at their posts and
carrying out their engagements in India, Australia, and the United States of America.
The mass of insinuations and misrepresentations with which these articles abound is deserving of no
answer.
I enclose you a copy of the Enquiry held in July last, to which the full statements of Mrs. Besant and Mr.
Judge are appended. This was months ago issued to every member of the Theosophical Society and
published in full in our magazines. You can thus allow your readers to form their own opinion, instead of
relying on the insinuations of your contributor, if you choose to do so.
The writer of the articles has several times made reference to a private body of students, and endeavoured
to involve it in his attack. The informant of your contributor knows that he can with impunity make any
allegation he likes against that body, and that, although it is in a position to give, and has already given to its
own members, a denial to his allegations with regard to its council, it must, nevertheless, remain silent in
public because of obligations of honour.
For the rest, of the truth or falsity of the most serious allegations I am without any knowledge, and do not
propose to enter the arena of mere opinion.
But of this I am confident—that my friends Colonel Olcott, Mrs. Besant, and Mr. Judge, together with the
best part of the Theosophical Society, are not only ready and glad to face any obloquy in upholding their
individual ideals, but also that they are also willing to sacrifice everything for the cause they hold so dear,
except the privilege of working heart and soul for its final triumph.—I am, Sir, faithfully yours,

G. R. S. MEAD.

19, Avenue-road, Regent’s Park, N.W.

[The pamphlet forwarded by Mr. Mead is the so-called “Enquiry into Certain Charges,” which was the
starting-point of our articles, and which was very fully dealt with in the last two of the series.—ED. W. G.]

FROM THE VICE-PRESIDENT’S REPRESENTATIVES: “WE COULD

AN IF WE WOULD.”

SIR,—You appear to have expected an immediate reply to the series of articles entitled “Isis Very Much
Unveiled.” This expectation is astonishing in view of the fact that, while the three persons mainly attacked
by you were together in London for some weeks this summer, you waited until Mrs. Annie Besant and
Colonel Olcott are now respectively in Australia and India, and Mr. W. Q. Judge is on a lecturing tour in the
United States, as your informant knows. His time for attack is well chosen, but no just measure of surprise
can be felt, either that their replies—should they care to make any—are delayed, or that we should have
intended originally to await the close of your series before making our present brief remarks.
Your informant holds the position held among Freemasons by a brother who has broken his Masonic
pledge. Those who refuse to enter further into this subject follow the traditions of all private societies in like
circumstance. Englishmen will take at its proper valuation all information on whatever subject from such a
source. We beg to take distinct issue with you on the point of the minor importance of sources of
information. Our whole legal system is based upon the contrary fact. Character of witnesses has primary
weight with all civilised juries.
The Theosophical Society has no concern with the beliefs of its members, nor with questions of
Thaumaturgy. The endeavour to spread a contrary belief, to confuse the issue by slanders, or attacks against
individual members, to belittle and misrepresent the objects and work of the society, must alike fail in the
face of general disproof. The society pursues its way unaffected by all such attempts.
The Committee of Investigation appointed to consider the charges made against Mr. Judge threw out the
indictment on the ground that the constitution of the Theosophical Society rendered illegal all charges
involving questions of creed or belief. Mr. Judge came from the United States in readiness for their
investigation, and his defence had to be abandoned for the preservation of the freedom of our platform. We
do not, therefore, propose to bring the case to “trial by newspaper.” As representatives respectively of the
American Section of the T.S. and of the general secretary of that Section on the Committee of Investigation,
we are aware of the rebuttal evidence held in readiness by Mr. Judge. He holds affidavits from persons of
unblemished reputation disproving a number of the charges made then and now by you, of which evidence
detail is for the present reserved for the reasons above given. We need not further emphasise the danger of
conclusions formed from “plaintiff’s evidence” only.
In conclusion, we beg to state our long acquaintance with, and our confidence in the integrity and
standing of, Mr. Judge, a confidence shared, to our personal knowledge, to the fullest extent by the
American Section of the T.S., as the reports of its last Convention prove. The American is the largest and
the most active of our three Sections, one which not only carries on an enormous work, but which also
assists the other two Sections. It is in it that Mr. Judge’s long labour and personal sacrifices have won for
him the respect of the community.—Yours very truly,

ARCHIBALD KEIGHTLEY.
JAMES M. PRYSE.

30, Linden-gardens, Bayswater, W.,

November 6.

EDITORIAL NOTE APPENDED IN Westminster Gazette.

In regard to Dr. Keightley’s remarks on “the character of the witnesses,” from

which, in view of the law of libel, we have had to omit one or two phrases, it is
only fair to state that this letter was received before it had been made clear in the
articles that the chief witnesses were, in fact, not Mr. Old, who has resigned
office, but the President and Dr. Keightley’s brother, who retain it.

ANOTHER AVENUE-ROAD OFFICIAL: “VOLUMINOUS

LITERATURE” v. HARD FACTS.
 SIR,—Now that you have had the only answer it is possible for the present to
make in connexion with that part of your articles which professes to disclose the
affairs of a secret body, I am at liberty to make some remarks on that part of
them which deals with the public affairs of the Theosophical Society, if you will
grant me the opportunity of reply which, as a member of an attacked society, I
have the right to demand.
In spite of all implications and assertions to the contrary, I must emphatically
assert it as my opinion that the majority of members of the society do not join on
account of phenomena; and I regard any attempt to prove the contrary as a
conscious or unconscious misrepresentation of the actual state of affairs. A large
mass of the public know well by this time that the chief activity of the society
consists in making known and advocating a certain system of philosophy, and
that appeals are made to the judgment and intellectual sense of the people as to
whether they shall accept or reject it. I do not know whether your intelligent
readers will consider themselves flattered when they read your contributor’s
notion of the kind of procedure that is necessary to captivate them; but I am
inclined to think that most of them must have common-sense enough to prefer
judging a philosophy by its own merits to accepting or rejecting it according to
the evidence for and against phenomena wrought in connexion with it. However,
if there be any who, indifferent to all questions of ethical and philosophical truth,
choose their faith according to its thaumaturgic properties alone, the society will
not be sorry to lose them, for such weak natures are a source of weakness to
every body in which they enrol themselves.
While declaring here my own belief in the integrity and sincerity of the
persons attacked in your articles, and regretting my inability lo communicate all
of that faith to others, I maintain, Sir, that Theosophy will not stand or fall by
any personal scandals, whether true or false, and that the Theosophical Society
will not cease to exist in Europe so long as there are even a few who believe as I
do.
Your contributor has sought to convey the impression that the Theosophists, or
at all events those who reside at the various headquarters, live in an atmosphere
of constant thaumaturgy and intrigue; ever in expectation of some new wonder,
ever ready to alter their deepest convictions at a moment’s notice in accordance
with some enigmatical message or some trumpery sign. I call upon those who
know the society, are habitués at its meetings, or have lived at headquarters, to
say whether there is a grain of truth in this, or whether, on the contrary, we are a
body of earnest students, living a prosaic life, and exhausting our energies in the
endeavour to place before others the truths we have found so helpful to
ourselves.
Your contributor makes much of his contention that the adepts were invented
by Madame Blavatsky. What does he expect to gain by this? If he can succeed in
discrediting Madame Blavatsky in the eyes of a few persons, he cannot disprove
the existence of adepts for them unless he is also prepared to discredit every one
of the other sources of information from which the evidence for the existence of
such exalted men is drawn. Madame Blavatsky has reminded the world of the
reality of those beings in which the more enlightened of its denizens have always
believed. Of the few who may have accepted the belief on her testimony alone I
would say, better they had taken the trouble to substantiate it from other sources.
Whether Madame Blavatsky invented the adepts or not, at all events I here and
now advance the theory, and refer for my evidence to the Theosophical literature
on the subject, which is plentiful.
Let our critics, after reading it, come forward and publicly refute us. We await
their onslaught with pleasure. Many points I am obliged to leave untouched on
account of the length my letter would otherwise assume; but I must just note the
absolute futility of the statement that “Max Müller has edited the only series of
English translations of the Sacred Books of the East with which I am
acquainted,” and the complete falsity of the statement that “there is no reason to
believe that any member of the society in Europe could pass an examination in
any Oriental language whatever.” Let these serve as samples of the quality of the
rest of the attack.
In conclusion, sir, I would call your readers’ attention to the fantastically
absurd position of an opponent who hopes to discredit, by his so-called
“exposure” of a certain group of manifestations, the whole sacred science of true
magic. I maintain that such a science as magic (in its true sense) exists, that it
teaches the mysteries of nature and of man, that the voice of the ages endorses it,
and that it is worthy of study to-day. I am prepared to support these contentions
publicly if called upon, and can meanwhile refer your readers to the voluminous
literature of the subject.—Yours truly,

HENRY T. EDGE.

19, Avenue-road, Regent’s Park, London, N.W., November 7.

 II.—LETTERS FROM PROMINENT THEOSOPHISTS.

FROM MR. HERBERT BURROWS: “A REPLY WE MUST HAVE, OR I

LEAVE THE SOCIETY.”

“What do you think of THE WESTMINSTER GAZETTE articles? What are the
Theosophical Society and what are its members going to do about them?” This is
the question which is asked me on all hands. I recognise that not only my own
personal friends but the public generally have a right to ask this question, and to
expect an answer, and I have asked the permission of the Editor to give the
answer from my own point of view, without in the smallest degree pledging
anyone else. Without the smallest tinge of egotism, I may say that, next to Mrs.
Besant, I am perhaps better known to the public generally than any other English
member of the Theosophical Society. I have tried to bring a good many people
into the fold of the faith, I know intimately the currents of thought inside the
society, and while no one is responsible for the opinions I express, I believe that
they represent the feelings of a large number of members.

The Old “Exposure” and the New.

When I read Mr. Garrett’s opening chapters, I said to myself, “Chestnuts!” We

had heard it so often before. All the while Mr. Garrett was writing about the
“S.P.R.” he was probably asking himself, How is it that this business did not kill
the Theosophical Society? The answer is, Because it was not conclusive. When
Mrs. Besant and I joined the society, apart from each other, I joining a few days
before her, Madame Blavatsky said to both of us, “You had better read what
there is against me,” and referred us to the Psychical Report. We read it
separately, analysed it, and joined. I brought to it my Civil Service training, what
business faculties I had, and a fair knowledge of the laws of evidence. I am a
sceptic by nature, and I was then a materialist, and the honest conclusion that I
came to was that the case for the prosecution was far too weak to warrant a
conviction. That opinion I still hold. If I thought differently I should be outside
the Theosophical Society instead of in it. I suppose that nine out of ten people
who talk glibly about the report have never seen even the covers of it.
 MRS. ANNIE BESANT.

(From a photograph by Messrs. Elliott &

Fry, Baker-street, W.)

But I am bound to say that as Mr. Garrett went on with this newer case the
situation altered. The details are too precise, and supported by too much
evidence, for me honestly to escape from the conclusion that, if the facts and
documents are correctly set forth, a primâ facie case has been established against
Mr. Judge.

“If Mr. Judge declines to answer.”

Some facts in the series of articles and many of the inferences are wrong, as I
shall have occasion to show; but enough is made clear to imperatively demand
an answer. The charge here is, of course, of no offence known to the law; but
were it otherwise, many men have been found guilty on charges which were
supported by less evidence than these.
I am quite aware that a goodly number of my fellow Theosophists will blame
me exceedingly for saying this, especially some of our younger members, whose
moral sense seems somehow or other to have become confused over this matter.
Let me put myself quite straight with them. My mind is perfectly open on the
subject. I have no opinion yet one way or the other as to Mr. Judge’s conduct, for
I have not heard his defence. For aught I know he may have a crushing,
triumphant reply, and Mr. Garrett and Mr. Old (and with them Mrs. Besant!) may
all have to go down on their knees to Mr. Judge. But that reply we must have,
and as a member of the Theosophical Society, whose motto is, “There is no
religion higher than Truth,” and who has appealed to the public to join it because
I believed that it was founded on truth, and that its chief officials and leaders
were upright, honourable people, I mean to use every legitimate effort to get it. If
Mr. Judge declines to give it, if he refuses to come out into the open fully and
squarely, or if his reply does not meet the case, then sadly and reluctantly I shall
have to leave the Theosophical Society, for it will be impossible any longer to
remain in an organisation whose vice-president is in such a position.

An Appeal to all Honest Theosophists.

Now it depends on the members of the society as to whether Mr. Judge’s reply
shall be forthcoming. They can make such strong representations to him as will
be impossible for him to ignore, and I hold that it is their duty to do so. Every
member of the society has an indefeasible right to know what manner of man
their vice-president is, and it ought to be made perfectly clear that the morality
of the organisation is at least as high as that of the best commercial morality, and
is not based on Jabez-Balfourism. If there is to be any talk, as there is already
among some members, of “letting by-gones be by-gones—saving the situation—
ignoring the attack for the sake of Theosophy, safeguarding occultism,” &c.,
then self-respecting members will have to protest strongly, and, if necessary,
clear out. All such talk comes from mental ostriches, and in this matter ostrich-
tactics won’t work. It is not a question of Mr. Judge, or of occultism, or the
Theosophical Society, but what is above and beyond all these, Truth, on which
Theosophy itself is based, as I firmly believe. If there is no religion higher than
truth, then truth must be had at all hazards. For the truth we shall have to wait,
perhaps, some months. Till we get it, minds should be perfectly open and
unbiassed. Only three people can give the truth—Mr. Judge, Mrs. Besant, and
Colonel Olcott. As far as lies in my power I mean to see that the truth is
forthcoming.

The Judicial Committee of Inquiry.

Over this Mr. Garrett has floundered somewhat. I was a member of it, and
know the facts. When Mr. Garrett says in his first article that “a few people are
aware ... that there was recently a Theosophic meeting at which Mrs. Besant
confessed to her friends that there had been something wrong with the
‘communications,’” and that she persuaded those assembled generally to hush
the matter up, he does not know his case. This is what really happened. After Mr.
Old had been some time in India he came to the conclusion that certain charges
against Mr. Judge, which up to then had been vaguely floating about, were true,
and he said so. In England we disbelieved them, for we had no real evidence, but
when Mrs. Besant reached India, and examined the evidence, she agreed with
Mr. Old. She formally adopted and formulated the charges, and the fact that she
had done so immediately became known all over the world. There was no hole-
and-corner work about it. An official investigation committee met, but found
itself blocked by the constitutional difficulties with which your readers are now
familiar.

Mrs. Besant and the Deadlock.

 Then I proposed that we should resolve ourselves into a voluntary jury of
honour. Mr. Judge did not agree to this, and so there was a deadlock. The
evidence had not been heard, although Mrs. Besant was ready with it, for the
inquiry had not been made, neither had we heard Mr. Judge’s defence. The next
stage in the proceedings was the reading, to a very full meeting of members from
all parts of the world—for it was our annual convention—of the statements by
Mrs. Besant and Mr. Judge, to which Mr. Garrett has so often referred. In her
statement Mrs. Besant said: “The vital charge is that Mr. Judge has issued letters
and messages in the script recognisable as that adopted by a Master with whom
H.P.B. was closely connected, and that these letters and messages were neither
written nor precipitated directly by the Master in whose writing they appear.”
That is pretty definite and precise. These two statements by the accuser and the
accused, together with all the proceedings of the committee, were published in
Lucifer on August 15, and they were reprinted in a pamphlet which was sent to
every member of the society, and I also know that the day before she sailed for
Australia Mrs. Besant made arrangements for that pamphlet to be sent to all the
principal papers of the United Kingdom. I have said all this at length in order to
dispel the idea that Mrs. Besant wished to bamboozle the society or hush up
charges of fraud. I know that it is asked why she did not publish the whole of the
evidence. If the official Enquiry had been proceeded with the evidence would
have been published with its other proceedings. But Mrs. Besant felt, rightly or
wrongly, that it would be unfair of her to publish it without the defence, and this
there were no means of getting.

The Unsatisfactory Position of the Society.

But now see the unsatisfactory position of the society. The most serious
charge possible had been made by its chief member against its second official,
one of its founders, the tried and trusty friend of Madame Blavatsky. The charges
were still hanging over his head, his members in America thoroughly disbelieved
them, the members in India as thoroughly believed them, and we in Europe did
not know what to think. They had been neither proved nor disproved. Colonel
Olcott was going back to India, Mr. Judge flitted back to America, and Mrs.
Besant rushed off to Australia to fulfil lecturing engagements made a year
previously, and so far as regards the society generally Mahomet’s coffin was not
in it for “floating.” Those of us who really took the thing to heart held our hands.
We fully recognised the gravity of the whole matter, but we determined to wait
till Mrs. Besant’s return before we moved, for without the evidence we were
powerless. But we reckoned without our WESTMINSTER!
In concluding this article, I say frankly that THE WESTMINSTER has really,
although quite unconsciously, done Mr. Judge a good turn. I do not for a moment
flatter myself that Mr. Garrett wishes any good to Theosophy! The tone of his
articles precludes that idea. But his attack on Mr. Judge puts the latter in this
position, that if he chooses he can defend himself without any fear whatever of
pledging the Theosophical Society to one jot or tittle of dogma with regard to
Mahatmas. He is attacked as a man, and as a man I sincerely hope that he will
manfully and satisfactorily reply.

HERBERT BURROWS.

FROM MR. W. R. OLD, EX-OFFICIAL: “A THOROUGH GRIP OF THE

FACTS.”

SIR,—As my name has been publicly mentioned by Mr. Mead, general

secretary of the European T.S., in connexion with the series of articles “Isis Very
Much Unveiled,” I think it advisable to state my own position and attitude in the
matter.
The writer of those articles has named me, quite correctly, as having taken the
first step in forcing an inquiry into the case against Mr. Judge. For this act of
mine, I was suspended from my membership in the Esoteric Section, under the
authority of the joint signatures of William Q. Judge and Annie Besant, Outer
Heads of the E.S.T., and my name was dishonourably mentioned before the
members of the E.S., among whom I numbered many an old colleague and
friend. The mandate somehow found its way into the public Press. However,
there was one advantage. After her official action in suspending me from
membership Mrs. Besant was, of course, bound to hear my justification. This
happened at Adyar in the winter of 1893. Mrs. Besant’s first remark to me after
reading the case and examining the documents was, “You were perfectly
justified by the facts before you.”

THE HEAD OFFICIALS PLEDGED TO PUBLISH THE FACTS.

In the presence of the president-founder Colonel Olcott, Mrs. Besant,

Countess Wachtmeister, Mr. E. T. Sturdy, together with Mr. Edge and myself, it
was decided that the task of officially bringing the charges should devolve upon
Mrs. Besant, and that the whole of the evidence should be published.
Consequently, the documents were handed over to Mrs. Besant for the purpose
of drawing up her charges, and the president sent an official letter—or, as
Colonel Olcott now claims, a “private letter” in official form—dated at Agra,
February 12, 1894, to Mr. Judge as vice-president, in which he said (I re-quote
from a circular issued by Mr. Judge, March 15, 1894):—“I place before you the
following options:—
1. To retire from all offices held by you in the T.S., and leave me to make a merely general public
explanation; or,
2. To have a Judicial Committee convened ... and make public the whole of the proceedings in detail.
In either alternative, you will observe, a public explanation is found necessary: in the one case, general;
in the other, to be full and covering all the details.”
It was the second alternative which was adopted, with the abortive and
disingenuous result already known. But what of the “full publication of all the
details”? What of us Theosophists who had brought these charges against Mr.
Judge? Were we not left in the position of persons who had brought charges
without proving them? The position was one which I felt to be intolerable. Mrs.
Besant had the full evidence in her hands by which to justify all the charges she
had engaged to bring against Mr. Judge, but for some reason best known to
herself involved the whole society in countenancing a systematic attempt to
bolster up a delusion by concealment of facts. Mrs. Besant was also in honour
bound to publish the facts, to all members of the society at least, since they were
of a nature to vitally affect the beliefs of Theosophists the world over. She was,
in short, bound to give them the same publicity as her former professions of
occult intercourse obtained.

“MORALLY BOUND TO GIVE PUBLICITY TO THE TRUTH.”

The T.S. is an organised body with a wide system of propaganda, and has
taken the public into its confidence in cases where its special claims appear to
have been supported by facts, and while the public are invited to join the society
it is only right and honest that they should know what of those claims are true
and what of those “facts” have stood the test of inquiry. This responsibility
cannot be avoided, and as I have personally been instrumental in the inquiry into
these claims and facts, I am morally bound to give what publicity I can to the
truth when arrived at. To rectify what I believed to be a fatal policy on the part of
those concerned with the charges against Mr. Judge, I resigned from all offices
held by me in the T.S., and left myself free to speak openly of the matter
whenever occasion presented itself. I do not believe that a system of truth can be
raised from a fabric of fraud. In the course of my travels I met with my friend
Mr. Garrett, to whom, upon inquiry, I gave the reasons of my resignation from
official connexion with the society. He asked my permission to publish the facts.
My reply was that although I could not unsay what I had said, I had not intended
such publication as he contemplated, and doubted whether the case could be put
forth with sufficient clearness and fairness by a “Philistine.” I soon found,
however, that he had a thorough grip of the facts; and on his representation, the
truth of which I had to admit, that the society had closed the inquiry, and would
not open its journals to a full discussion of the evidence, I let him take his own
course.
Certain persons, who seem unable to conceive that a man may act on principle
and without interested motives, have suggested that I was moved by some petty
personal grudge, or even by some pecuniary inducement. I repudiate both these
insinuations as lies. My independent action in this matter has involved certain
pecuniary sacrifices; I have in no way used it, and should scorn to use it, for
pecuniary gain.

MR. JUDGE AND MRS. BESANT.

It will, therefore, be clear to all members of the T.S. and the public generally
that I am responsible for the facts occurring in Mr. Garrett’s articles only so far
as they apply to the charges against Mr. Judge, and for these I have documentary
evidence produced under a legal hand, and duly witnessed. With Mr. Garrett’s
method of presenting the facts I am by no means in sympathy. I do not lose sight
of the fact that, however mistaken or misled many of the Theosophical Society
may be, as regards the traditional “Mahatmas” and their supposed
“communications,” they are nevertheless as sincere in their beliefs as many of
their more orthodox fellows, and have as much right to respectful consideration.
I regret particularly that Mrs. Besant should have been placed in this awkward
public position by the present exposure. Her intention I believe to have been
perfectly honest, but I think she made a fatal mistake in avoiding the publication
of the full facts, and in allowing the misconception to endure concerning her
own and Mr. Judge’s connexion with the Mahatmas.

MME. BLAVATSKY AND THE MAHATMAS.

Of Madame Blavatsky I speak as I knew her. At the time I made her

acquaintance she had forsworn all “phenomenalism,” so that I never saw any
occult phenomena at any time. I believe that for her the Mahatmas existed, and I
believe she thought them to be embodied personalities. Colonel Olcott has
another theory, and others have their own. Personally, I believe in the
extensibility of human faculty, and in the existence of an order of intelligences
higher than our own, but I do not require that they are embodied or terrestrial in
any sense of the word. Finally, I have been through the Theosophical Society
with my eyes open, and for more than five years have been, officially and
unofficially, as fully “in the Theosophical Society” as one can well be; and while
I am certain that many are fully convinced of the truth of their own beliefs in
these matters, I am also fully assured that a large number are in the position of
persons self-deceived, who have unfortunately committed themselves too far to
review their position without almost disastrous consequences to themselves and
others. But that of which I have the fullest conviction and the greatest amount of
presentable proof is the fact that no such thing as evidence of the existence (in an
ordinary sense) of the Mahatmas, or of their connexion with the T.S. as a body or
with its members individually, is obtainable by a person pursuing ordinary
methods of investigation.
For those who are willing to found their beliefs upon the mere statement of
another, without question of possible interestedness on the one hand, or self-
deception on the other, the position is of course otherwise. For such persons
proofs have no value whatever, what they are pleased to call their “beliefs” and
their “knowledge” being determined or determinable from the moment they sign
away their independence of judgment and freedom of thought.—Yours sincerely,

WALTER R. OLD.

P.S.—One misstatement of fact appears in your issue of November 3. What

Mr. Garrett refers to as “Madame Blavatsky’s Rosicrucian signet-ring” was not a
ring, but a jewel, used as a pendant. Also, the “dark gentleman” who delivered
the two £10 notes to Mr. Judge made his call (so we were told) in the early
afternoon, not in “the evening” as stated in Mr. Garrett’s text. I am bound to add
that, whatever may be my annoyance and regret at the tone of the articles and of
some of the inferences, as regards that part of the evidence which is known to
myself, I have noticed so far no other substantial error of fact.

[These slight corrections have been made in this reprint.—F. E. G.]

FROM MR. A. P. SINNETT: “OCCULTISTS MAY NOT TELL FIBS.”

 SIR,—The circular bearing this title—referred to in your leading columns
yesterday—was issued last July, and directly affects some questions you have
lately been discussing. Under the circumstances, I hope you will kindly consent
to give it fuller publicity. It was addressed to students of Occultism, and ran as
follows:—
The inevitable mystery which surrounds Occultism and the Occultist has given rise in the minds of many
to a strange confusion between the duty of silence and the error of untruthfulness. There are many things
that the Occultist may not divulge; but equally binding is the law that he may never speak untruth. And this
obligation to Truth is not confined to speech; he may never think untruth, nor act untruth. A spurious
Occultism dallies with truth and falsehood, and argues that deception on the illusory physical plane is
consistent with purity on the loftier planes on which the Occultist has his true life; it speaks contemptuously
of “mere worldly morality”—a contempt that might be justified if it raised a higher standard, but which is
out of place when the phrase is used to condone acts which the “mere worldly morality” would disdain to
practise. The doctrine that the end justifies the means has proved in the past fruitful of all evil; no means
that are impure can bring about an end that is good, else were the Good Law a dream and Karma a mere
delusion. From these errors flows an influence mischievous to the whole Theosophical Society,
undermining the stern and rigid morality necessary as a foundation for Occultism of the Right Hand Path.
Finding that this false view of Occultism is spreading in the Theosophical Society, we desire to place on
record our profound aversion to it, and our conviction that morality of the loftiest type must be striven after
by every one who would tread in safety the difficult ways of the Occult World. Only by rigid truthfulness in
thought, speech, and act on the planes on which works our waking consciousness, can the student hope to
evolve the intuition which unerringly discerns between the true and the false in the supersensuous worlds,
which recognises truth at sight and so preserves him from fatal risks in those at first confusing regions. To
cloud the delicate sense of truth here is to keep it blind there; hence every teacher of Occultism has laid
stress on truthfulness as the most necessary equipment of the would-be disciple. To quote a weighty
utterance of a wise Indian disciple:—
“Next in importance, or perhaps equal in value, to Devotion is TRUTH. It is simply impossible to over-
estimate the efficacy of Truth in all its phases and bearings in helping the onward evolution of the human
soul. We must love truth, seek truth, and live truth; and thus alone can the Divine Light which is Truth
Sublime be seen by the student of Occultism. When there is the slightest leaning towards falsehood in any
shape, there is shadow and ignorance, and their child, pain. This leaning towards falsehood belongs to the
lower personality without doubt. It is here that our interests clash, it is here the struggle for existence is in
full swing, and it is therefore here that cowardice and dishonesty and fraud find any scope. The ‘signs and
symptoms’ of the operations of this lower self can never remain concealed from one who sincerely loves
truth and seeks truth.”
To understand oneself, and so escape self-deception, Truth must be practised; thus only can be avoided
the dangers of the “conscious and unconscious deception” against which a Master warned his pupils in
1885.
Virtue is the foundation of White Occultism; the Pàramitàs, six and ten, the transcendental virtues, must
be mastered, and each of the Seven Portals on the Path is a virtue, which the Disciple must make his own.
Out of the soil of pure morality alone can grow the sacred flower which blossoms at length into Arhatship,
and those who aspire to the blooming of the flower must begin by preparing the soil.
H. S. OLCOTT, A. P. SINNETT, ANNIE BESANT, BERTRAM KEIGHTLEY, W. WYNN WESTCOTT , E. T. STURDY, C.
W. LEADBEATER.
I do not propose to discuss the merits of the case against Mr. Judge, but we
who signed this paper—without prejudging in their personal aspect accusations
which it had then been found impossible to thresh out thoroughly—conceived it
desirable to remind all fellow-students of Occultism that no beneficial results
along that path could possibly be attained except by a course of life which,
whatever else it might be, should be strictly in harmony with the dictates of
ordinary morality.
The Theosophical Society has grown in a few years to such extraordinary
proportions, and is so loosely jointed, that it cannot be correctly thought of as a
homogeneous association all parts of which are equally represented by the
officers nominally at its head. But it ought at this crisis to be generally
understood that the many persons of culture and earnest purpose to whom
spiritual progress along the original lines of Theosophic teaching is the main
object of existence are guided by evidence concerning the possibilities of their
higher evolution that is of a kind utterly unlike that which you not unreasonably
discredit. A great block of such evidence is in our possession concerning not
merely the existence but also the attributes of the great initiates, and to those of
us in a position to appreciate this the foundations of Theosophic knowledge are
quite unshaken by such incidents as those on which you have been commenting.
—I am, Sir, yours, &c.,

A. P. SINNETT.

November 17.

WHOM DID THE CIRCULAR REFER TO

[In reference to the subject of Mr. Sinnett’s letter, the following is an extract from the Westminster
Gazette under the heading;—“More Theosophistry: A Belated Piece of Bluff.”]
In the current number of the Review of Reviews a letter appears signed by the
Dr. Keightley who lately wrote to THE WESTMINSTER GAZETTE as a professed
representative of Mr. W. Q. Judge, Vice-President of the Theosophical Society.
The letter is worthy of some attention as an illustration of the tactics of Mr.
Judge’s friends, and of the line which they were taking towards any allusion in
the Press to certain events before the appearance of the recent exposure in this
journal.
The letter is dated October 25, and was therefore written at the time when the
Theosophists still hoped to maintain the great “hush up” inaugurated at the
Convention of last July, and before they dreamed that all London would
presently be discussing the facts which had been so industriously buried.
The occasion of the letter appears to have been a comment of Mr. Stead’s in
the last number of the Review on a circular lately issued under the title of
“Occultism and Truth.” This circular was issued just after the so-called “Enquiry
into Certain Charges against the Vice-President,” and (to this office, at any rate)
it was enclosed under one cover with the pamphlet report of that “Enquiry.” The
substance of it is an assurance to the Theosophical world, on the part of some
prominent Theosophists, that occultists have no more right than ordinary people
to fib. Coming at the time when it did, and signed as it was by all the principal
official Theosophists, with the one exception of the vice-president, the Editor of
the Review of Reviews very naturally interpreted it as having some connexion
with the charges against the last-named gentleman, and with what his colleagues
evidently felt to be their apparent condonation of the “occult methods” ascribed
to him.
The following is the substantial passage in the letter thereupon addressed to
the Review of Reviews by Mr. Judge’s representatives:—
Allow us to make a very necessary correction.... Mrs. Besant, who originated the circular, was asked
directly whether it was connected with the charges or whether it was in any way aimed at Mr. Judge. She
gave an emphatic denial to both questions to many who took the same view expressed by you.
Another fact is not generally known, and leads people—yourself among others—into unconsciously
committing an injustice. The charges against Mr. Judge were never substantiated, and the committee
appointed to inquire into them declared that they were illegally laid.
(The letter then concludes with a high tribute to Mr. Judge’s character for
truthfulness and every other virtue.)
Now, as regards the statement about the intention of the Circular, we will only
say that one co-signatory of it at least has committed himself to the precise view
of it which this letter denies. Nor is it obvious why the heads of any society
should issue a round robin to say it is naughty to tell taradiddles, unless some
current reference were intended to the affairs of the society.
Besides this, however, there is unmistakably conveyed the impression that Mr.
Judge’s accusers failed to substantiate their case, and that there was something
actually “illegal,” in the ordinary sense of the word, about some part of their
conduct.
As readers of “Isis Very Much Unveiled” are aware, both these things are
absolutely untrue. The simple fact was that, owing to the objections raised by
Mr. Judge, no opportunity was given for the charges to be either substantiated or
the reverse; while the only justification for the statement that they were “illegally
laid” is such as can be squeezed out of the fact that the Theosophical
Pickwickians were persuaded by Mr. Judge that inquiry was forbidden by the
constitution of their society.
It only remains to add, to complete the disingenuousness of this very
Theosophistical letter, that its signatories authenticate its statements by flaunting
the title of “Members of the Committee of Investigation”; the committee referred
to being the one which met only to decide that it could not investigate, and the
members of it as such having no knowledge whatever of the evidence either on
one side or the other!
 III.—LETTERS FROM MINOR OFFICIALS AND PRIVATE
MEMBERS.

What matters “Truth or Falsehood?”

SIR,—My husband and myself are two of the officials in one of the local
branches of the Theosophical Society. I write in his name and my own to say that
we have read with some interest your voluminous attack on the personal
characters of some of our leading members.
We were also amused by the ingenuous surprise of your reporter, that the
Blavatsky Lodge meeting in London, which he attended, was spent in
philosophic study, not in the discussion of psychic phenomena or of the personal
characters of members.
You say (Chapter II.):—“This society as such must stand or fall with its
Mahatmas.” This is not so. The Theosophical Society is entirely neutral on the
question of the existence or non-existence of such beings, and the reason why
the charges, of which you have published a more or less correct statement, were
not gone into by the authorities of the T.S. was, that to have done so would have
entailed an infringement of that neutrality.
The question whether Mrs. Besant was misled when she made the statement at
the Secular Hall in 1891 has been answered by her own clear withdrawal of that
statement.
The question as to Mr. Judge is entirely one as to his own truth or falsehood,
and may be well left to him to answer or not. It is not necessary for the public or
for the members of the Theosophic Society to judge him.—Faithfully yours,

SARAH CORBETT.

Manchester, November 6.

A Protest against “Condoning.”

 SIR,—Having read the revelations your correspondent has been pleased to give
to the public, and presuming them to be correct, it seems to me that there are
now three parties at fault in place of two as I had supposed, viz., Mr. Judge for
imposing (whether consciously as a deceiver or unconsciously) as a medium
obsessed by a spirit of ambition and the communicator of the facts (if a member
of the inner circle) for breaking his solemn pledge not to reveal or betray the
affairs of that circle. The recent correspondence now adds others as condoning
the offence of Mr. Judge—and all this has come from the love of pre-eminence
and the mere dabbling (child’s play) with the occult. Clearly, if the offence was
proved, the officers of the society were bound in truth and honour to expel the
offender, and all would then have been clear and straight. My advice to the
society would be to stick to their programme, which is a highly laudable one,
and let no word from an invisible and unknown be taken as of any external
value, but judged only by its internal worth.
The society, it seems to me, can no longer pretend to condemn the
communication with Spirits as a dangerous thing, nor cry out against the
occasional frauds of mediums, in conscious or unconscious state, seeing how
heavily they have fallen into the same snare, nor can they point the finger to
frauds or delusions in other bodies whether Catholic or non-Catholic. A greater
strictness and more uniform abstinence from flesh-eating and tobacco, as well as
alcohol (which last they eschew) should be enjoined on all its members by their
authorised officers, and their own three objects steadily pursued—separating
from the third all spurious imitations of magical wonders; and, above all, the
spirit of truth which accepts nothing on this or that authority without careful
verification should be cultivated. A want of bravery to do the right, to tell the
truth, and face the consequences, is the only thing that can be laid to the charge
of the presiding officers of the Indian and English sections. Are all societies and
Churches free from this? Has not a natural tenderness from long friendship, and
sympathy in noble and useful work, been often the cause of much to be
deplored? And in this instance, is not such over-tenderness of noble,
unsuspicious, and honourable souls, worthy rather of regret than of too severe
censure.—Yours,

A THEOSOPHIST.

“Abandon the T.S. in Disgust.”

SIR,—I see Mr. Mead is reported as saying that “what the articles [in THE
WESTMINSTER GAZETTE] would do, if they did anything, was to sift the society of
those who had simply joined for the sake of the marvellous.”
This remark shows the same utter oblivion of the appreciation of truth that has
unhappily shown itself in the society’s record before. It is not a question of
phenomena; it is one of good faith; and if this is the line taken, not the
phenomena-hunters merely, but seekers for truth and respecters of it, who
expected to find it in the Theosophical Society, will abandon that body in
disgust.
Mr. Mead continues:—“Theosophists could no more divulge secrets without
violating every sense of honour than a Mason could.”
To compare the Theosophical Society, as at present constituted, with an
honourable body like the Masons, is an insult to the latter, goose-guzzling and
luxuriant as they may have tended to become in these latter days.
There is a profound difference between hiding secrets, which are entrusted to
one, and which concern certain (perhaps) important facts in the nature of man,
and taking part in proceedings to gull a number of fellow-students and the
outside public. This is practically what has been done before, and the dissatisfied
either disappeared altogether or were well howled at as traitors to “the cause,”
whereas, in verity, they were doing their best for the disowned cause of truth; or,
again, they were coerced by the solemn warning of “your pledge, take care of
your pledge,” and thereby intimidated from seeing that they were making
themselves parties to a continuous misrepresentation of facts and a deliberate
fraud upon their less-informed fellow-members, not to mention the public.
“What have our troubles to do with the public?” has been the question. I reply,
“Everything,” for it is to the public that constant appeal is made and amongst its
ranks that proselytes are sought.
Nothing has, so far, been exposed in these articles that any right-thinking
truth-seeker would wish to have cloaked. The public are not being made
acquainted with any arcane wisdom; but if one-third of the statements made in
THE WESTMINSTER GAZETTE are supported by documentary and other evidence,
then the world certainly ought to be warned against a society that takes as its
motto, “There is no religion higher than TRUTH” and forthwith allows its leading
members to play such antics and engage in such grotesque jugglery without
bringing them sternly to book. As for continuing to work with these people in
the establishment of a “universal brotherhood,” rather will it become a universal
imposture to expose which were a service to the glorious old Wisdom of the
Venerable East, which it dishonoured by its sham Mahatmas.
 Those who are publishing the facts, if facts they be, are doing a service to the
cause of truth, and should have the thanks and gratitude of all of us in the
Theosophical Society whose motive in being there is to seek TRUTH, and to
combat error and fraud in religion, mysticism, or anything else.—I am, &c.,

A FELLOW OF THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY AND

MEMBER OF THE E.S.T.

“It all comes of not Sticking to Vegetables.”

SIR,—With every word of Brother Old’s letter of to-day’s issue I beg to

express my fullest sympathy. I deprecate the tone of the “revelations,” but of the
necessity of making the public fully acquainted with the facts I have not the least
doubt. As to the existence of “Mahatmas,” I can only say I do believe in the
existence on this earth of a higher order of beings who, by total abstinence from
and abhorrence of flesh-eating, alcohol, and tobacco, and other evil and impure
customs, and by adherence to a fixed rule of life, retiring early and early rising,
with daily ablutions, and by certain studies and training of body and mind, have
acquired certain attributes and powers so far in advance of ordinary human
beings as to be regarded by them as miraculous. Of this I have had evidence, not
from Theosophists, but from personal friends resident in India before ever they
heard of the name of Theosophy. Whether any of these have anything to do in
the direction of the Theosophical Society is quite another matter. There is
Theosophy and Theosophy, and one of these I would rather term
“Theophilosophy,” i.e., “the love and wisdom of God,” or “love and wisdom
religion”—and not wisdom only as is implied in the term “Theosophy.” Readers
of “The Perfect Way” and its companion volume, “Clothed with the Sun,” by
that noble woman Anna Kingsford and her colleague, will know what I mean.
Now, what about the future of the Theosophical Society? I believe its officers
may fall, but its work must endure. No doubt of that. The founders have had
their weaknesses and foibles like other mortals, but I hope none will ever forget
the gratitude they owe to Madame Blavatsky, especially to the blessings she has
conferred in founding the Theosophical Society and giving through its means to
all hungry and thirsty souls such priceless stores of knowledge and suggestive
thought (from the Oriental religions and philosophies which have made such
deep impress on the millions of the East) as are contained in the grand volumes
of “The Secret Doctrine,” with its index and glossary, and her other publications.
None can read these volumes, but must ask themselves, What manner of woman
must she have been who devoted so many long years of labour, from 7 a.m. to 7
p.m. daily, in their production, and that amidst incredible difficulties and
opposition and worry? Nor must we forget the debt that we owe to Colonel
Olcott and Madame Besant for having made this knowledge accessible to all
minds and conditions by their lectures and booklets.
What can be more noble than the promotion of universal brotherhood
irrespective of sex, colour, caste, or creed, united in the study of the ancient
religions of East and West, and of all that pertains to the hidden powers in man,
and their development for the good of the race? But these last, I say again, will
not be attained in purity but by prayer, and abstinence from flesh meal, alcohol,
and tobacco, and other evil customs of society, and the disuse of all things gotten
by cruelty to, or oppression of, our fellow-creatures the lower animals, and by
pure surroundings.—Yours,
I. G. OUSELEY, O.G.A. and F.T.S.

Evelyn-terrace, Brighton,
November 9.

“Folly and Fraud: but of such is the Kingdom.”

SIR,—No one should blame you, or resent the publication of the facts. Truth is
the first consideration, and though we who have interested ourselves in the
philosophy promulgated by the society may bitterly regret that folly and fraud
are to be found within its fold—as elsewhere—yet we can rest assured that
whatever there is in this philosophy which appeals to the enlightened
intelligence of mankind will remain when the superstructure raised by designing
intriguers or unwise enthusiasts shall have crumbled away. It is in consequence
of this belief that the writer, with others in the society, can read with calmness,
and not without some sense of amusement, this unpleasant disclosure; not
doubting but that a great deal of it is true, and that all may be so; and while
feeling unmixed contempt for the “informer,” can acknowledge that any editor is
well within his rights, and a public benefactor, when exposing fraud wherever it
is found.
Would that this feature were more pronounced in journalism generally, and
not indulged in only when such exposures fall in with public prejudice!
For several years the writer of this letter has been absent from the Avenue-
road centre: among other reasons, from a feeling of disapproval of certain follies
which may be called incipient relic worship, and which no sensible person could
tolerate for long. So it will be seen that all Theosophists have not fallen under
the spell of Mrs. Besant’s rash enthusiasm, which has done, and is doing, so
much to discredit her, now as heretofore, in the eyes of the world. Yet, in spite of
her indiscrimination and lack of sound judgment, which has alienated many, the
writer would rather stand in the pillory of public opprobrium with her than sit at
a banquet with the “informer” and those who can rejoice over the failings of a
beautiful soul. For it may be said of her, and a few others, “Of such is the
Kingdom of Heaven.” That there is to be found even one of these among
Theosophists may lead a few to suspect that there is something more in
Theosophy than can be discovered in your articles, and that, though fraud should
be proved, there may nevertheless be real occultists and true phenomena. Thus,
what at first sight appears a serious blow to our cause will perhaps induce further
inquiry among your readers, while doing useful work in destroying errors and
growing superstition.

F. T. S.
PART III.
 LAST SHREDS OF THE VEIL OF ISIS.

A REVIEW OF SOME THEOSOPHISTRIES.

As yet, “Isis Very Much Unveiled” remains very much unanswered. The
oracles are dumb. “No Dolphin rose, no Nereid stirred”; no Mahatma
“precipitated” a reply (as one of them did with such edifying results in the case
of the Kiddle plagiarism), nor disintegrated by psychic force the damaging
documents in my possession; Mrs. Besant, whose “astral body” has flitted across
oceans to visit Mr. Herbert Burrows “on pre-arranged evenings,” gave no sign
from Australia; Colonel Olcott, president, in India, disdained the more
commonplace agency of the cable; and Mr. William Q. Judge, vice-president,
whose official adytum is but five days away at New York, neglected to avail
himself of the ordinary post, whatever he may have done about the astral one.
Moreover, accustomed as are all these three officials to scouring the earth,
with all expenses paid, no intimation has been made public as to the date when
we may expect to receive anyone of them back from the various regions to
which they sped immediately after launching the report of their peculiar
“Enquiry.” Their colleagues in England continue to speak as if a trip to New
York carried one to the bourn from which no traveller returns.
But what of these colleagues themselves? Where is the “Voice of the Silence”
of Avenue-road, St. John’s Wood? At point after point, the Story of the Great
Mahatma Hoax touched matters to which one or other or all of them must have
been privy. It told of missives which they had accepted as genuine, orders which
they had acted upon, decisions in which they had agreed, fact after fact of which
they had full cognisance. When Mr. Mead, the European secretary, gave out that
he did not reply because he was not attacked, I did my best to oblige him; I
began at the beginning, and challenged him at once as having been present and
taken part in the “Judge’s-plan-is-right” decision; and I added that when he had
denied my version of that I would supply him with further matter for denial.
Whereupon the discreet European secretary subsided altogether.

The “Sacred Oath” Humbug.

 Of course, some excuse had to be offered, and we have been told that what
happens at meetings of the Esoteric Section is sacredly secret. Now, first, that
only covers a small part of my story, some of which dealt with circumstances
surrounding official acts of the society or its three sections. Secondly, the excuse
is eminently one that accuses, by implying that what I say happened at those
meetings did happen; for presumably members take no oath to keep secret what
does not occur? But, thirdly, this alleged secrecy is a mere pretext; else how
could Mrs. Besant publicly refer on platforms to “supernatural” experiences at
those meetings; and Messrs. Old and Edge (the latter to this day holding office)
raise questions about one such matter in print in Colonel Olcott’s journal; and
Mrs. Besant, the Colonel, and a full council of officials notify Mr. Judge that in a
certain eventuality (which did afterwards occur) they would make a “full
publication covering all the details” of that matter, and others concerning the
sacred Mahatma messages?
Whatever may be the “quasi-Masonic oath” of which we now hear, they
evidently held that it did not bind them to conceal, with their eyes open, a fraud
upon their fellow-members; and those who do so interpret it only throw a very
suggestive light on their own action in willingly taking such an oath. Was Mrs.
Besant quite right when she gave the public what she confesses was a
“misleading account” of these secrets, and only in the wrong when, along with
Colonel Olcott and the rest, she proposed to give what she now knew to be the
correct one? Is the position that a Theosophist may “tell”—anything he likes,
except the truth?

A Survey of the Present Situation.

The absence of Colonel Olcott and Mrs. Besant does not alter the fact that he
with others made, and she publicly adopted, certain charges against Mr. Judge,
vice-president. And the silence of their colleagues in England does not disguise
the fact that my account of the details has not been challenged as to one single
event, letter, or facsimile. The published “Report of an Enquiry” cries aloud for
some explanation: the explanation of “Isis Very Much Unveiled” holds the field
untouched. It leaves the vice-president only able to exculpate himself, if at all,
by further inculpating them. The “full rebuttal evidence held in reserve,”
therefore, at which his professed representative in England hints, can be
formidable only to the Theosophical Society, not to its critics. I am bound to say,
however, that if the would-be impressive fragments of it which have been
privately adumbrated to me are fair samples of the rest, it is not calculated to be
formidable to anybody. When the “affidavits” hinted at have been published, or
otherwise submitted to examination, I can promise them all the attention they
deserve. To say that any affidavit, until cross-examined upon, is worth exactly as
much as the paper it is written on would be an uncalled-for slight upon the
paper-maker.

The Excommunication of “Brother Old.”

A word or two about the attempt to create a diversion by attacking the

character of the one Theosophical official who has had the honesty to resign
office rather than shut his eyes to a fraud on the public. The attack on Mr. Old
cannot in any case discredit the story I have narrated. First, because the largest
and most important part of that story is from the undenied written evidence of
persons still holding office in the society, and especially of its “President-
Founder.” Secondly, because, even as regards Mr. Old’s part, the character of a
witness is only a relevant consideration where the truth of his testimony is
disputed. What I am now about to say is said, therefore, merely in justice to Mr.
Old himself. The attack on him has two lines. It is said that he had to perjure
himself to give any information whatever. It is hinted that what information he
did give was given for money. The former charge turns entirely on the “sacred
oath” humbug, which I have discussed already. As to the latter, it is true to my
knowledge that for the part he has taken in fulfilling what he regards as a public
duty to truth, Mr. Old neither asked nor received any consideration whatever. My
own acquaintance with Mr. Old began in an odd way, not without bearing on the
question of his sincerity. At the time of the Salvation Army riots at Eastbourne, a
gallant old Englishman, who could not bear that women, under any provocation,
should be publicly assaulted in English streets, went down there to stand up for
the “Hallelujah lasses.” He asked, through the Pall Mall Gazette, for five
hundred Englishmen to help. He got five. This Quixotic gentleman, this modern
Sieur de Marsac, was my friend Mr. Charles Money, of Petersfield. I went
myself to see that he did not get his head broken more than was necessary. His
company, as seedy a lot of knights-errant as ever I saw, consisted mainly of
Cockney journalists who did not believe in God. But one—a spruce, slight youth
—declared himself a Theosophist. The adventurers spouted to a yelling mob, got
off with whole skins, and by testimony of the local police actually achieved their
end. But Mr. Money and one other were knocked about a bit in the crowd. That
other—he quitted himself like a man—was Mr. W. R. Old, Theosophist. I may
be wrong: it was but a street row; but I regard that as a more practical service on
Mr. Old’s part to the “Universal Brotherhood of Humanity” than all the
hundredweights of vapid moralising on the subject ever vomited from “The
H.P.B. Press.”

Stewing in the Judge Juice.

Except Mr. Old, one prominent Theosophist, and one alone, has so far
publicly faced the facts. Mr. Herbert Burrows has had the honesty and the
courage to say out that this thing must be answered by Mr. Judge, and fully, or
he for one will quit the society. Mr. Burrows forgets that others besides Mr.
Judge have made themselves answerable. Other correspondents, again,
represented other factions, and showed how the society is seething with distrust
and shame. But the mass of the letters only serve to prove that, whatever else the
“occult powers” of the Theosophists may be, they do not include a command
either of plain English or of straight argument. If “Isis” does not yet stand before
us absolutely like Hans Breitmann’s “maiden mit nodings on,” it is a painfully
thin fabric of Theosophistries which alone shelters her from the cold wind of
public contempt. Let us examine it.

The Theosophistry about Proving a Negative.

“After all, you have not proved that Mahatmas do not exist, nor that occult
phenomena cannot occur.”
Certainly I have not, nor did I ever propose to try. I am quite prepared to
believe in both when evidence for them has been produced, and has stood the
test of such ordinary evidential canons as have been applied to kindred subjects
—for instance, by the Psychical Research Society. All that I have said is that
certain evidence on which the Theosophical Society has been building proves
nothing whatever, except the existence of a hotbed of humbug within the society
itself. As for the Mahatmas, there is no difficulty about conceiving that illiterate,
twaddling, and mendacious beings of a second-rate order of intelligence, such as
those reflected in the “missives” which I have reproduced, may exist in Tibet as
they unhappily do elsewhere. But when we are told that these beings have
acquired powers which rise superior to time and space, and that they use these
for communicating “in a quasi-miraculous manner” with the Theosophical
Society, we ask for facts; and we get—such facts as were investigated by Dr.
Hodgson and his colleagues, and such facts as have been exposed in “Isis Very
Much Unveiled.” What else is there? One Theosophist directs me to “our
literature on the subject, which is copious.” I don’t doubt it; but it is not
“literature” that I am in search of. Another declares “it does not all depend on
Madame Blavatsky and Mr. Judge; others have seen Mahatmas.” It seems that
Mrs. Besant has been telling her Australian audiences that she herself has been
so favoured (just as she told the Hall of Science audience that she had been
favoured with supernatural missives). Well, how did Mrs. Besant know her
Mahatma? By his “portrait,” I suppose, as others have done. And how was that
portrait produced? When Madame Blavatsky began to spell spiritualism
“Theosophy,” and turned her “spirit-control” “John King,” of whom Colonel
Olcott tells, into Master Koot Hoomi—whom she again subordinated, after the
Kiddle exposure, to Mahatma Morya, whom she, in turn, after the S.P.R. Report,
left over for exploitation by Mr. Judge—when Madame started the Mahatma on
this chequered career, it was one of her earliest steps to secure a counterfeit
presentment of her creation. Various artists and amateurs were set to paint
portraits under occult inspiration. The results may all have resembled the Protean
Mahatma; some of them were strikingly unlike each other. The two best were
done by Mr. Schmiechen, now a society portrait-painter, partly out of his head,
partly from directions given by Madame, and partly from a photograph of a
typical Hindu which she gave him for the purpose. Madame identified one as
Koot and the other as Morya, and declared they were speaking likenesses—an
opinion which nobody else was in a position to contradict. They hang to-day in
the “Occult Room” at Adyar, and are declared to have been painted from the
respective “astral bodies” of their subjects. Colonel Olcott, president, who
knows their origin perfectly well, exhibits them reverently to barefoot disciples
doing “puja.” Photographs from the fancy portrait of “M,” in locked cases, have
been distributed to the Esoteric few; Mrs. Besant always works with one facing
her; Madame Blavatsky made it part of a chela’s course to spend some time daily
staring at the image, and deliberately trying to “visualise” it in corners of the
room. What wonder if some of them have succeeded? It would have been
contrary to all experience of the phenomena of self-hypnotic hallucination if
they had not. The thing only begins to call for examination when the figure thus
“visualised” leaves something not entirely psychic behind him. The Master who
left a shower of roses once at Adyar turned out to have been M. Coulomb, eked
out with a mask, a bladder, and some white muslin; and the roses were traced
elsewhere than to Tibet. And the Master who precipitated the Judge missives?
——But perhaps the Theosophists would prefer not to put him forward. When
they have something better, I shall be glad to hear of it.

The Theosophistry of Throwing Over the Mahatmas.

 “What matter even if the Mahatmas do not exist, and the phenomena are
frauds? There still remain those sublime ideas which,” &c., &c.
I was quite prepared for this particular Theosophistry. That was why I started,
at the very beginning of my story (Chapter II.), by showing what an enormous
practical part the Mahatmas and their miracles have played in the movement. It
is easy for this Theosophist or that to protest that they never attracted him. The
fact remains that the big accessions to the society’s numbers have always
followed on the miracle “booms,” alike under Madame Blavatsky and under
Mrs. Besant. Moreover, it is not possible, even argumentatively, to dissociate
“those sublime ideas,” &c., from the Mahatmas on whose authority Madame
Blavatsky gave them out. If she spoke truth, they were the real authors of “Isis
Very Much Unveiled” and of “The Secret Doctrine.” If she lied, and the
authority for those teachings is her own, what is that lying authority worth? I
need not labour the point, as it was conclusively proved long ago by Mrs. Besant
herself. In an article in Lucifer of December, 1890, addressed apparently to
certain Theosophical schismatics who showed a tendency to throw over alike
their foundress and her “Masters,” Mrs. Besant accomplished the easy task of
showing that the society was tied hand and foot to both. It was founded by Her
at the bidding of “Them”; They have been the deus ex machinâ whenever She
was in a fix, and the society has so accepted Them. It can be “neutral” about
Them, and Their miracles, and Their prophetess, only when an heir is neutral
about his own title-deeds. As Mrs. Besant puts it in a nutshell: “If there are no
Masters, then the Theosophical Society is an absurdity.”

The Theosophistry of Throwing Over the “Inner Group.”

“The Esoteric Section is a private body, not officially connected with the
Theosophical Society; so the Society is not responsible for miracle-mongering in
the Section.”
The so-called Esoteric Section or E.S.T. (“Eastern School of Theosophy”), of
which the High-priesters and the Vice-President are now quarrelling for the
headship, and, in the words of the latter official, “the core of the Theosophical
Society.” The Inner Group, again, is the core of the E.S.T. Both were the special
creation of the Society’s foundress. The Group was to contain her top pupils.
The members of the group are almost to a man officials of the Society, living at
the Society’s expense. With the one exception of Colonel Olcott, practically all
the high panjandrums are included in it. Lastly, if it has been the centre of the
Mahatma communications, it is a centre that has radiated them in all directions
to the society’s circumference. The plop of a missive sends a ripple from the
Inner Group to the Esoteric Section, from the Esoteric Section to the society at
large, and from the society to the public.
Well, the yolk of an egg is not officially connected with the outer portion; but
when the yolk is bad, we call it a rotten egg without further parley.

The Theosophistry of Throwing Over the Society’s Personnel.

But that brings me to the most barefaced Theosophistry of all: “Even if all our
officials be proved to have lied and cheated, there still remains untouched their
grand ethical teaching!”
I simply state this, and leave it. Like the coster when his barrow broke down,
“Friends, I ain’t ekal to it.” I cannot do justice to such colossal impudence.
“Truth survives all attacks”; she does; she will even survive Theosophical
defences. “The noble religions and philosophies of the East exist”; they do, as
they did long centuries before the Theosophical Society was heard of, and will
do long centuries after it has been forgotten. But when Mahatmas, and miracles,
and the founders, and the officials, and the official acts of the Theosophical
Society are all thrown over—What remains of the society? “We have absolutely
no creed,” the European secretary told an interviewer the other day—(all
unfettered by the fact that he distributes broadcast Mrs. Besant’s “Introduction to
Theosophy” with a complete pseudo-Buddhistic cosmology about the Seven
Planes, &c., authenticated by direct reference to the Masters, and particularising,
for instance, that “Devachan” lasts “for average persons some fifteen
centuries”!)—“Absolutely no creed.” “You would simply call yours a moral or
religious society, then?” asked the puzzled interviewer. To which Mr. Mead
naïvely replies, “I don’t exactly know what you would call it.”—(Sunday Times,
Nov. 11.)
Since scholarship has opened the stores of the East to Western culture, there
has been a natural awakening of popular interest in Eastern directions. While
that lasts, people discussing each other’s souls will continue to sprinkle their
remarks, harmlessly enough, with those mingled jargons which make a true
Orientalist smile. If “Theosophy” means that, “Theosophy” has certainly some
life before it; but as for the Theosophical Society—“why cumbereth it the
ground?” It is an organised machine for taking in the Honest Enthusiast at one
end, passing him through the stages of the Willing Dupe and the Conscientious
Humbug, and turning him out at the other end at worst a conscious fraud, at best
a dreary and disillusioned cynic.
 Enough of the logical and ethical fog that Theosophy diffuses!—the
Mahatmosphere, as one might call it. It is a relief to escape from it into the fresh
air of common honesty and common sense.
POSTSCRIPT.
 A MAHATMA AT BAY:

THE VICE-PRESIDENT’S TRUMP CARD.

The following appeared in the Westminster Gazette, under the headings:

“OPEN SPLIT BETWEEN THEOSOPHICAL OFFICIALS”; “RIVAL
REVELATIONS FROM THE SAME MASTER”; “MR. JUDGE GETS A
MISSIVE DEPOSING MRS. BESANT”:—
Just as the Story of the Great Mahatma Hoax is going to press in its collected
form, just in the nick of time to be included, comes the material for a new
chapter of more extravagant humour than all the rest. Readers of the “Isis”
chapters will recall that the Theosophic embroglio has gone through the
following stages:—(1) The vice-president’s “Mahatma” makes reflections on the
president. (2) The president and other officials make charges of “forging”
Mahatma missives against the V.P. (3) Mrs. Besant, after some vacillation,
adopts these charges, and joins with the others in offering the V.P. the choice of
retiring quietly or an exposure. (4) The V.P. bluffs them all into silence, and they
all join in inducing the “Convention” of last July to separate without looking
further into the matter. (5) Mrs. Besant and the V.P. “join hands,” in public, on
her statement that though he wrote the alleged missives “with his own hand,” yet
he had “psychically received” their contents from the Mahatma. (6) In private,
Mrs. Besant separates herself from the V.P. by dissolving their joint headship of
the Esoteric Section (“the core of the Theosophical Society,” as Mr. Judge justly
calls it below): Mr. Judge, V.P., to retain the American section of the section, and
she herself the European, to which she has since added the Indian.
Now we learn Phase 7. Seven is a highly Theosophical numeral, and this
phase is certainly a rich one. Mr. Judge sends round to the Esoteric Section a
pamphlet in which he announces that Mrs. Besant is, in effect, possessed of a
devil, and that the Mahatma (under whose direction she also professes to be
acting) has ordered him to depose her altogether, and take over the whole thing
himself!! Which, in a formal “Order,” he accordingly proceeds to do.
The pamphlet, which among other things professes to give the Judge version
of the true inwardness of the abortive “Enquiry” in July, has just been sent round
to the Esoteric Theosophists. Copies were not sent to some who were considered
dangerous; but the recent unveiling has made a good many so who were safe
enough, from the Judge point of view, before, and thanks to one of these who
does not acknowledge any headship of Mr. Judge over the European Esotericists
since Mrs. Besant’s dissolution thereof, it is possible to give to mankind what
was meant by Mr. Judge for a party. The following are the salient passages,
followed by the Order deposing Mrs. Besant (the titles in capitals are Mr.
Judge’s; the paragraph headings are not):—

BY MASTER’S DIRECTION.

I now send you this, all of it being either direct quotations from the messages to me, or else in substance
what I am directed to say to you, the different details and elaborations being my own....
We have now to deal with the E.S.T. and with our duty to it and to each other; and among those others, to
Mrs. Besant....

The Greatness of Wm. Q. Judge.

I am not a pledged member of the E.S.T., and never made a pledge in it, as my pledges were long before
to the Master direct. I was one of its founders, with H.P.B., and she, at the beginning, made me manager and
teacher in it from the first, under her, for the American part especially. You can remember all she said of
that. I wrote the rules of the E.S.T. myself in London in 1888 at H.P.B.’s request, and under the direction of
the Master. Those were not altered by her, but after reading them and further consulting the Master she
added some general paragraphs. I am the only one standing in that position. Mrs. Besant and all other
members are pledged and certified in the ordinary way....
An Inner Group was later on formed by H.P.B. at London, so that she might give out teachings to be
recorded by the members, and, if possible, teach them practical Occultism. Of this Mrs. Besant, with
George Mead to help her, was made the Secretary, because she had great ability in a literary way, was
wholly devoted, and perfectly fit for the task. But this did not make her a teacher....

The Littleness of Mrs. Besant.

The death of H.P.B. destroyed, of course, any further value in the office of “Recorder.”
The conversations of H.P.B. with the Inner Group were taken down in a more or less fragmentary form
by the different members, in notes, and later Mrs. Besant and George Mead wrote them out, as Secretaries. I
have a complete copy of these, and so has each member of the Inner Group, and those copies comprise all
the “Instructions” left in the possession of Mrs. Besant or the Inner Group. In my possession, and within my
control, is a large body of instructions given to me all the time from 1875, which I shall give out and have
given out, as far as I am directed....
Mrs. Annie Besant has been but five years in this work, and not all of that time engaged in occult study
and practice....
Since 1889 she has done great service to the T.S. and devoted herself to it. But all this does not prevent a
sincere person from making errors in Occultism, especially when he, as Mrs. Besant did, tries to force
himself along the path of practical work in that field. Sincerity does not confer of itself knowledge, much
less wisdom....

Singular Disinterestedness of Wm. Q. Judge.

I wish it to be clearly understood that Mrs. Besant has had herself no conscious evil intention: she has
simply gone for awhile outside the line of her Guru (H.P.B.), begun work with others, and fallen under their
influence. We should not push her farther down, but neither will the true sympathy we have blind our eyes,
so as to let her go on, to the detriment of the movement. I could easily retire from the whole T.S., but my
conceptions of duty are different, although the personal cost to myself in this work is heavy, and as I am
ordered to stay I will stay and try my best to aid her and everyone else as much as possible. And the same
authority tells me that “could she open her eyes and see her real line of work, and correct the present
condition in herself as well as the one she has helped to make in the T.S. and E.S.T., she would find herself
in mental, spiritual, and physical conditions of a kind much better than ever before, for her present state is
due to the attacks of the dark powers, unconsciously to her.”

Black Magic and the Plot Behind the Scenes.

And now it becomes necessary under instructions received to give the members of the School some
account of the things behind the scenes in connexion with the recent investigation attempted at London
upon the charges against me....
I was made the object of an attack in the guise of an attempt to purify the Society, and Mrs. Besant was
thrown forward as the official accuser of myself—a friend who was certified to her by H.P.B., her teacher,
well known as working for the T.S. for many years. All this needs light, and the best interests of Mrs.
Besant and of the E.S.T. demand that some of the secret history shall be given out, however disagreeable it
may be, in order that the very purgation which was improperly directed to the wrong quarter shall take place
now. The difficulty arose when in January or February Annie Besant finally lent herself unconsciously to
the plot which I detail herein....
The plot exists among the Black Magicians, who ever war against the White, and against those Black
ones we were constantly warned by H.P.B. This is no fiction, but a very substantial fact. I have seen and
also been shown the chief entity among those who thus work against us....

How Mr. Judge’s Master Caught Out Mrs. Besant’s Friend.

The name of the person who was worked upon so as to, if possible, use him as a minor agent of the Black
Magicians, and for the influencing of Mrs. Besant, is Gyanendra N. Chakravarti, a Brahman, of Allahabad,
India, who came to America on our invitation to the Religious Parliament in 1893. He permitted ambition to
take subtle root in his heart; he is no longer in our lines. He was then a Chela of a minor Indian Guru, and
was directed to come to America by that Guru, who had been impressed to so direct him by our Master....
While in that relation he was telepathically impressed in Chicago with some of the contents of a message
received by me from the Master. It corroborated outwardly what I had myself received. It was, however, but
a part, and was, moreover, deficient in matter, Chakravarti himself being only aware of it as a mental
impression, and I am informed that at the time he was not fully aware of what he was doing. His ability to
be used as an unconscious vehicle was made known to me when he was made to receive the message.
Although he was not fully aware of it, not only was the whole of his tour here well guarded and arranged,
but he was personally watched by the agents of the Master’s scattered through the country unknown to him,
who reported to me. On several occasions he has taken people into his confidence, believing that he was
instructing them, when in fact they were observing him closely from the Lodge, helping him where right,
and noting him fully, though they did not tell him so. This was also so in those parts of his tour when he
believed himself alone or only with Mrs. Besant....

“If I am a Fraud so are H.P.B. and the Masters.”

If I was guilty of what I was accused, then Master would be shown as conniving at forgery and lying—a
most impossible thing. The only other possibility is that Mr. Chakravarti and I “got up” the message. But he
and Mrs. Besant have admitted its genuineness, although she is perfectly unable herself to decide on its
genuineness or falsity; but further, Mrs. Besant admitted to several that she had seen the Master himself
come and speak through my body while I was perfectly conscious. And still further, H.P.B. gave me in 1889
the Master’s picture, on which he put this message, “To my dear and loyal colleague, W. Q. Judge.”
Now, then, either I am bringing you a true message from the Master, or the whole T.S. and E.S.T. is a lie,
in the ruins of which must be buried the names of H.P.B. and the Masters. All these stand together as they
fall together....

How Mrs. Besant Privately Thinks H.P.B. a Fraud.

As final proof of the delusions worked through this man and his friends, I will mention this:—Many
years ago—in 1881—the Masters sent to the Allahabad Brahmans (the Prayag T.S.) a letter which was
delivered by H.P.B. to Mr. A. P. Sinnett, who handed a copy over to them, keeping the original; it dealt very
plainly with the Brahmans. This letter the Brahmans do not like, and Mr. Chakravarti tried to make me think
it was a pious fraud by H.P.B. He succeeded with Mrs. Besant in this, so that since she met him she has on
several occasions said she thought it was a fraud by H.P.B., made up entirely, and not from the Master. I say
now on Master’s authority that it was from the Master, and is a right letter. Only delusion would make Mrs.
Besant take this position: deliberate intention makes the others do it. It is an issue which may not be evaded,
for if that letter be a fraud, then all the rest sent through our old teacher, and on which Esoteric Buddhism
was made, are the same. I shall rest on that issue: we all rest on it.

Mrs. Besant’s Rival Revelations.

Mrs. Besant was then made to agree with these people under the delusion that it was approved by the
Masters. She regarded herself as their servant. It was against the E.S.T. rules. When the rule is broken it is
one’s duty to leave the E.S.T., and when I got the charges from her I asked her to leave it if it did not suit
her. The depth of the plot was not shown to Mrs. Besant at all, for if it had been she would have refused.
Nor was Colonel Olcott aware of it. Mrs. Besant was put in such a frightful position that while she was
writing me most kindly and working with me she was all the time thinking that I was a forger and that I had
blasphemed the Master. She was made to conceal from me, when here, her thoughts about the intended
charges, but was made to tell Mr. B. Keightley, in London, and possibly few others. Nor until the time was
ripe did she tell me, in her letter, in January, from India, asking me to resign from the E.S.T. and the T.S.
offices, saying that if I did and would confess guilt, all would be forgiven, and everyone would work with
me as usual. But I was directed differently, and fully informed. She was induced to believe that the Master
was endorsing the prosecution, that he was ordering her to do what she did. At the same time, I knew and
told her that it was the plan there to have Colonel Olcott resign when I had been cut off, the presidency to
be then offered to her. It was offered to her, and she was made to believe it was the Master’s wish for her
“not to oppose.” She then waited. I did not resign, and the plot so far was spoilt for the time....
She felt and expressed to me the greatest pain to have to do such things to me. I knew she so felt, and
wrote her that it was the Black Magicians. She replied, being still under the delusion, that I was failing to do
Master’s will.
 How Mrs. Besant Tried Witchcraft.

Her influencers also made her try psychic experiments on me and on two others in Europe. They failed.
On me they had but a passing effect, as I was cognisant of them; on one of the others they reflected on
health, although she did not desire any harm at all; she was made to think it best and for my good. She then
sent word to these people that she had not succeeded. This is all the effect of pure delusion; the variance
between such things and her usual character is shown in her all the time writing me the most kind letters. In
all this Mr. Chakravarti was her guide, with others. She was writing him all the time about it. He went so far
as to write me on a matter he was supposed to know nothing of: “No matter what Annie may do to you as
co-head of the E.S. she means you no harm.”

“Every Man His Own Mahatma.”

Informed as I was of these inside facts, I drew up under Master’s direction my circular on the charges in
March, 1894, and there outlined what would be done. It was all done as I said, and as the Master in March
told me would be the case. The London investigation ended as Master predicted through me in my circular,
and for the benefit of the T.S. But all that time the conspirators used all means against me. They had all
sorts of letters sent me from India with pretended messages from the Masters asking me to resign and
confess. But Master kept me informed and told me what steps to take. He even told me that, much as it
might seem the contrary from the official papers, Colonel Olcott would be the central figure and the one
through whom the adjustment would come. This also turned out true.

Migration of Mahatmas to—New York?

The Master says that the T.S. movement was begun by Them in the West by western people; that cyclic
law requires the work in the West for the benefit of the world; that They do not live in India.
They also say that Nature’s laws have set apart woe for those who spit back in the face of their teacher,
for those who try to belittle her work, and make her out to be part good and part fraud....
A distinct object H.P.B. had in view I will now, on the authority of the Master, tell you, unrevealed before
by H.P.B. to anyone else that I know of: it is, the establishment in the West of a great seat of learning, where
shall be taught and explained and demonstrated the great theories of man and nature which she has brought
forward to us, where Western occultism, as the essence combined out of all others, shall be taught.
I also state on the same authority that H.P.B. has not reincarnated....
We are all, therefore, face to face with the question whether we will abide by Masters and their
Messenger on the one hand, or by the disrupting forces that stand on the other, willing to destroy our great
mission if we will but give them the opportunity.

“I Declare Mrs. Besant’s Headship at an End!”

The pamphlet closes with the following “E.S.T. ORDER,” dated November 3,
and signed in manuscript:—
I now proceed a step further than the E.S.T. decisions of 1894, and solely for the good of the E.S.T. I
resume in the E.S.T., in full, all the functions and powers given to me by H.P.B. and that came to me by
orderly succession after her passing from this life, and declare myself the sole head of the E.S.T. This has
been done already in America. So far as concerns the rest of the E.S.T. I may have to await the action of the
members, but I stand ready to exercise those functions in every part of it. Hence, under the authority given
me by the Master and H.P.B., and under Master’s direction, I declare Mrs. Annie Besant’s headship in the
E.S.T. at an end.
This, then, is Mr. Judge’s
response to the case against
him, and, as was expected, it takes the form of attacking his colleagues, but
keeps strictly to generalities as regards the evidence against himself. The date
affixed is one when Mr. Judge had probably heard of the articles in THE
WESTMINSTER by cable, but had no idea of the detailed nature of the attack. The
parts quoted throw many interesting side-lights, but perhaps the most delightful
thing is the picture presented of all the Theosophists playing off the Mahatma on
one another: Mr. Judge, Mrs. Besant, Mr. Chakravarti, and others, giving the
most contradictory messages from the same Tibetan source; and Mr. Judge now
finally “going one better” than all the rest, for has he not, in a very real sense, the
Mahatma in his pocket?
At any rate, the battle has now well begun. The prophets of Baal are cutting,
not themselves as of old, but one another. More power to all their elbows!
Mrs. Besant was willing enough to accept Mr. Judge’s anti-Olcott missives as
“psychically” from the Mahatma; we shall now see how it strikes her when the
same weapon is turned against herself.[1]
1. We have seen. Vide Preface.
[In the same issue was published a “vote of censure passed on the President by one of the local ‘Lodges’
of the T.S. (Bournemouth), declaring that the articles recently published in the Westminster Gazette disclose
a primâ facie case against the Vice-President,” “of fraud upon his fellow Theosophists.” “The Vice-
President should not continue to lie,” the Bournemouth Lodge remarks, “under such a charge.” Other
Lodges have also taken one side or the other.]
 THE SOCIETY UPON THE HIMALAY.

(THEOSOPHICALLY ADAPTED FROM BRET HARTE.)

I reside at Table Mountain, and my name is Truthful James;

I am not fond of pious frauds or Oriental games;
And I’ll tell in simple language, as well as I can say,
What broke up our Society upon the Himalay.

But first I would remark that there must needs be painful scenes
When Theosophic gents begin to give each other Beans;
And though Mahatma missives do pan out a little queer,
We should avoid disturbances in the Mahatmosphere.[2]

Now nothing could be nicer or more full of harmony

Than the first few months that followed the decease of “H.P.B.”;
Till Judge of Calaveras produced a curious set
Of missives in red pencil what he said were from Tibet.[3]

From these he reconstructed a Mahatma (very rare),

A Nest of that peculiar kind pertaining to a Mare;
But Mrs. Besant found a rival missive on the shelf,[4]
And said she fancied Mr. Judge had written his himself.[5]

Then Judge’s smile took on a most unpleasant sort of curve;

He said he would not trespass so on Mrs. B.’s preserve.
He was a most resourceful man, that quiet Mr. Judge;
He got another missive saying Mrs. B.’s was fudge.[6]

Now, it is not edifying for a Theosophic priest

To call another one a fraud—to all intents, at least;
Nor should the individual who happens to be meant
Reply by throwing things about to any great extent.

Then Olcott, H., of Adyar, raised a point of order, when

A chunk of old red pencil took him in the abdomen;[7]
And he smiled a kind of sickly smile and curled up on the floor,
And the subsequent proceedings interested him no more.[8]

For, in less time than I write it, all the meeting got upset
With “precipitating” missiles which did not come from Tibet;
And the things they called each other in their anger were a sin—
Till the public got disgusted, and the temple roof caved in.

And this is all I have to say of these improper games,

For I live at Table Mountain and my name is Truthful James;
And I’ve told in simple language all I know about the fray
That broke up our Society upon the Himalay.

2. “Any action in these controversial matters tends to set up a perfect whirlwind on other planes.”—
Mrs. Besant in Lucifer.
3. “Mahatma Morya affects red pencil, Koot Hoomi blue.”—“Isis Very Much Unveiled.”
4. “She wrote ... it was Master’s wish ... that Master ordered her to do as she did.”—Mr. Judge’s
circular to the E.S.T.
5. “I now know that they were written by Mr. Judge.”—Mrs. Besant, “Report of an Enquiry,” &c.
6. “Under Master’s direction, I declare Mrs. Besant’s headship at an end.”—Mr. Judge’s circular to the
E.S.T.
7. “Isis,” Chapters IX., X.
8. “I declare, as my opinion, that this Enquiry must go no farther.”—Colonel Olcott, “Report of an
Enquiry,” &c.

F. E. G.

“WHEN AUGUR
MEETS AUGUR”—

“It is rather a squalid fight between the

augurs that the curtain has been raised
upon; but it has got to be fought out now
before the public, and it is in vain to try to
ring the curtain down again.”
 “ISIS VERY MUCH UNVEILED.”

A REPLY FROM MR. WILLIAM Q. JUDGE.

To the EDITOR of THE WESTMINSTER GAZETTE.

SIR,—You have published slanderous articles against the Theosophical

Society, using me as the person; you have asked for a reply; I send it to you and
ask that it be given place in your paper.—Yours truly,
WILLIAM Q. JUDGE.

Theosophical Society, American Section,

General Secretary’s Office, New York, Nov. 26.

To the EDITOR of THE WESTMINSTER GAZETTE.

SIR,—At the time your articles directed against the Theosophical Society
under the above title were appearing, I was lecturing in the country, and only
within a few days have I seen your last numbers. Time is required for writing on
such a subject, and at this distance from London I cannot be accused of much
delay. With the greatest interest and amusement I have read your long series of
articles. The writer is an able man, and you and he together constitute one of the
advertising agencies of the Theosophical Society. The immense range of your
notices cannot be well calculated, and very truly we could never pay for such an
advertisement. Do you mind keeping this part of my letter as all the
remuneration we can give you for the work done by you in thus advertising the
movement and bringing prominently to the notice of your public the long-
forgotten but true doctrine of the possible existence of such beings as Professor
Huxley says it would be impertinent to say could not exist in the natural order of
evolution?
And while I look at it all as an advertisement, I cannot admire the treason
developed therein, nor the spiteful unworthy tone of it, nor the divergence from
fact in many cases when it suited the purpose, nor the officious meddling in the
private affairs of other people, nor the ignoring and falsification in respect to
possible motive, made out by you to be gain by some of us, when the fact is that
we are all losers of money by our work. That fact a candid person would have
stated, and marvelled at it that we should be willing to slave for the
Theosophical Society, and always spend our money. Such a person would have
given “the devil his due.” You have suppressed it and lied about it, and hence it
is not admirable in you, but is quite mean and low. You advertise us and then try
to befoul us. Well, we gain by the advertisement, and the course of time will
wipe off the small stain you try to paint upon us. When you and your ready
writer are both dead and forgotten, and some of you probably execrated for
offences not as yet exposed, we will still live as a body and be affecting the
course of modern thought, as we have been doing for nearly twenty years.
I am the principal object of your attack, though you also cruelly abuse a
woman who has long enough fought the world of your conventional nation, and
perhaps you expect me to either rise and explain, or keep silent. Well, I will do
neither. I will speak, but cannot fully explain. Your paper is a worldly forum, a
sort of court. In it there is neither place nor credence for explanations which
must include psychic things, facts, and laws, as well as facts and circumstances
of the ordinary sort. Were I to explain in full, no one would believe me save
those students of the occult and the psychical who know psychic law and fact.
Those who doubt and wish all to be reduced to the level of compass and square,
of eye and word of mouth, would still be doubters. Nothing would be gained at
all. That difficulty no intelligent person who has had psychic experience can
overlook. That is why you are quite safe from a suit for libel. I assure you that
had you published something not so inextricably tangled up with psychic
phenomena I should be glad to have you in court, not to soothe wounded
feelings I have not, but to show that our faulty law and so-called justice do
sometimes right some wrongs.
Let me first emphatically deny the inference and assertion made by you, that I
and my friends make money out of the T.S., or that the organisation has built up
something by which we profit. This is untrue, and its untruth is known to all
persons who know anything at all about the society. No salaries are paid to our
officers. We support ourselves or privately support each other. I have never had a
penny from the society, and do not want any. The little magazine, the Path,
which I publish here in the interest of the society, is not supported by
subscriptions from members, but largely by others, and it is kept up at a loss to
me which will never be repaid. I publish it because I wish to, and not for gain.
Thousands of dollars are expended in the T.S. work here each year over and
above what is paid in for fees and dues. The dues are but four shillings a year,
and three times as much as that is expended in the work. Where does it come
from? Out of our private pockets, and if I had a million I would spend it that
way. My friends and myself give our money and our time to the society without
hope or desire for any return. We may be fanatics—probably are—but it is false
and malicious to accuse us of using the society for gain. The only payment we
get is the seeing every day the wider and wider spread of Theosophical theories
of life, man, and nature. I am ready to submit all our books and vouchers to any
auditor to support these statements. And you were in a position to find out the
facts as I have given them.
It is also absolutely untrue, as you attempt to show or infer, that the society
grows by talking of the Mahatmas or Masters, or by having messages sent round
from them. The movement here and elsewhere is pushed along the line of
philosophy, and each one is left to decide for himself on the question of the
Mahatmas. “Messages from the Masters” do not go flying round, and the society
does not flourish by any belief in those being promulgated. Nor am I, as you
hint, in the habit of sending such messages about the society, nor of influencing
the course of affairs by using any such thing. Send out and ask all the members
and you will find I am correct. It is true that those Masters tell me personally
what I am to do, and what is the best course to take, as they have in respect to
this very letter, but that is solely my own affair. Could I be such a fool as to tell
all others to go by what I get for my own guidance, knowing how weak,
suspicious, and malicious is the human nature of to-day? You are on the wrong
tack, my friend.
But you were right when you say that Mrs. Besant made a remarkable change
in respect to me. That is true, and Mr. Chakravarti whom you name is, as you
correctly say, the person who is responsible for it. Before she met Chakravarti
she would not have dreamed of prosecuting me. This is a matter of regret, but
while so, I fail to see how you aid your case against me by dragging the thing in
thus publicly, unless, indeed, you intend to accuse him and her of going into a
conspiracy against me.
There are two classes of “messages from the Masters” charged to me by you
and by that small section of the T.S. members who thought of trying me. One
class consists of notes on letters of mine to various persons; the other of
messages handed to Mrs. Besant and Colonel Olcott and enclosure found in a
letter to Colonel Olcott from a man in California.
I have never denied that I gave Mrs. Besant messages from the Masters. I did
so. They were from the Masters. She admits that, but simply takes on herself to
say that the Master did not personally write or precipitate them. According to
herself, then, she got from me genuine messages from the Masters; but she says
she did not like them to be done or made in some form that she at first thought
they were not in. I have not admitted her contention; I have simply said they
were from the Master, and that is all I now say, for I will not tell how or by what
means they were produced. The objective form in which such a message is of no
consequence. Let it be written by your Mr. Garrett, or drop out of the misty air,
or come with a clap of thunder. All that makes no difference save to the vulgar
and the ignorant. The reality of the message is to be tested by other means. If
you have not those means you are quite at sea as to the whole thing. And all this
I thought was common knowledge in the Theosophical world. It has long been
published and explained.
One of those messages to Mrs. Besant told her not to go to India that year. I
got it in California, and then telegraphed it to her in substance later, sending the
paper. I had no interest in not having her go to India, but knew she would go
later. The other messages were of a personal nature. They were all true and good.
At the time I gave them to her I did not say anything. That I never denied. It was
not thought by me necessary to insult a woman of her intellectual ability, who
had read all about these things, by explaining all she was supposed to know.
Those who think those messages were not from the Master are welcome to doubt
it so far as I am concerned, for I know the naturalness of that doubt.
When Colonel Olcott resigned I was first willing to let him stay resigned. But
I was soon directed by another “message” to prevent it if I could, and at once
cabled that to him, and went to work to have the American Section vote asking
him to stay in office. As I was the person mentioned to succeed him, we also, to
provide for contingencies, resolved that the choice of America was myself as
successor. But when he revoked, then my successorship was null and void until
voted on at another period not yet reached. But it is absolutely false that I sent an
emissary to him when I found he was minded to stay in office. Ask him on this
and see what he says. I leave that to him. Truly enough I made an error of
judgment in not telling the influential London members of my message when I
told Olcott. But what of that? I did not tell the Americans, but left their action to
the dictates of their sense and the trend of friendship and loyalty to our standard-
bearer. The English voted against Olcott by doing nothing, but I asked them in
the same way as I asked the Americans to request him to revoke. They had their
chance. As India had done the same as America I saw the vote was final as my
message directed, and so I dropped it from my mind—one of my peculiarities. I
certainly did not use any pressure by way of “messages from the Masters” on
anyone as to that, save on Olcott. And he reported a message to the same effect
to himself. Did I invent that also? My message to him was copied by me on my
type-writer and sent to him. I did it thus because I knew of spies about Olcott, of
whom I had warned him to little effect. One of those confessed and committed
suicide, and the other was found out.
A message was found in a letter from Abbot Clark, a Californian, to Colonel
Olcott. This, you say, I made and put in the letter. I have the affirmation of Mr.
Clark on the matter, which I send you herewith to be inserted at this place if you
wish. It does not bear out your contention, but shows the contrary. It also shows
that his letter to Colonel Olcott was opened in India by some other person before
being sent on to Colonel Olcott. You can make what inference you like from this.
Your statement about putting a question in a cabinet for an answer when I
stayed in the room and Mrs. Besant went out is false. No such thing took place. I
deny that there was any such thing as a reception of “answers in a sealed
envelope in a closed drawer.” That is supreme bosh from beginning to end, and
cannot be proved by anybody’s testimony, unless you will accept perjury.
At the same time I can now say, as the sole authority on the point, that several
of the contested messages are genuine ones, no matter what all and every person,
Theosophist or not, may say to the contrary.
You have much talk about what you say is called the Master’s seal. You have
proved by the aid of Colonel Olcott that the latter made an imitation in brass of
the signature of the Master and gave it to H.P.B. as a joke. You trace it to her and
there you leave it, and then you think I am obliged to prove I did not get it, to
prove negatives again, when it has never been proved that I had it. I have long
ago denied all knowledge of Master’s seal either genuine or imitated. I do not
know if he has a seal; if he has, I have not yet been informed of it; the question
of a seal owned by him as well as what is his writing or signature are both still
beclouded. None of the members who have been in this recent trouble know
what is the writing, or the seal, or the mark of the Master. It was long ago told by
H.P.B. that the so-called writing of the Master was only an assumed hand, and no
real knowledge is at hand as to his having a seal. I have seen impressions similar
to what you have reproduced, but it is of no consequence to me. If there were a
million impressions of seals on a message said to be from the Master, it would
add nothing to the message in my eyes, as other means must be employed for
discovering what is and what is not a genuine message. Seals and ciphers do not
validate these things. Unless I can see for myself by my inner senses that a
message is genuine, I will not believe it, be it loaded with seals I do not know.
As I know the thousand and one magical ways by which impressions of things
may be put on paper, even unconsciously to the human channel or focus, I have
relied, and ask others to rely, on their own inner knowledge and not to trust to
appearances. Others may think these little decorations of importance, but I do
not. I never asked anyone at any meeting, private or public, to note or observe
the seal-impression you give. Others may have done so, but I did not. Others
may have gone into laboured arguments to show the value of such a thing, but I
did not. The whole matter of this so-called seal is so absurd and childish that it
has made me laugh each time I have thought of it.
Now I can do no more than deny, as I hereby do absolutely, all the charges
you have been the means of repeating against me. I have denied them very many
times, for I have known of them for about two years and a half. My denial is of
no value to you; nor to those who think there is no supersensual world; nor to
those who think that because conjurors can imitate any psychical phenomenon,
therefore the latter has no existence; nor to those who deny the possibility of the
existence of Mahatmas or great souls. These things are all foolishness to such
persons, and I am willing to let it stay that way. Were I to go into all the details
of all the messages you refer to, and were I to get from those who know, as I can,
the full relation of all that is involved in those messages on my letters which I
saw after the July “investigation” was ended, I would be opening the private
doors to the secret hearts of others, and that I will not do. Already I know by
means not generally accessible altogether too much of the private hearts of many
of these people, and have no desire to know more.
Some of the matters you cite are related to a private body, once called the
Esoteric Section, which is protected—nominally, so it seems, among your
informants—by a pledge. The breaking of that by others gives me no right to add
to their breach. I cannot, like Mr. Old and others more prominent, violate the
confidences of others. His revelations cannot be analysed by me in public. He is
in the position of those Masons who have attempted to reveal the secrets of
Masonry; and either the public has listened to a liar or to one who has to admit
that he does not regard his solemn obligation as worth a straw when it obstructs
his purposes; in either case the information cannot be relied upon. His account
and yours contain so many misrepresentations that none [of] it has any serious
consideration from me.
And Mr. Old’s revelations, or those of any other members, amount to nothing.
The real secrets have not been revealed, for they have not been put in the hands
of such people; they have been given only to those who have shown through
long trial and much labour that they are worthy to have the full relation of the
plans of the master-builder exposed to their gaze. Let the dishonest, the perjured,
and the vacillating go on with their revelations; they will hurt no one but
themselves.
Now as to the Investigation at which you have laughed. I grant you it was
matter for laughter from outside to see such a lot of labour and gathering from
the four quarters to end in what you regard as smoke. Now, my dear sir, I did not
call the Inquiry Committee. I protested against it and said from the beginning it
should never have been called at all. Must I bear the brunt of that which I did not
do? Must I explain all my life to a committee which had no right to come
together, for which there was no legal basis? It was called in order to make me
give up an official succession I did not have; months before it met I said it would
come to nothing but a declaration written by me of the non-dogmatic character
of the T.S. My Master so told me and so it turned out. Will you give me no credit
for this foreknowledge? Was it a guess, or was it great ability, or did it come
about through bribery, or what? I was told to use the opportunity to procure an
official declaration that belief in Mahatmas or Masters was not and is not one of
the T.S., and I succeeded in so doing. I might have been accused as an individual
and not official member. But by the influence of the Mr. Chakravarti whom you
mention the whole power of the society was moved against me, so as to try and
cut me down root and branch officially and privately, so that it might thereby be
made sure that I was not successor to the presidency. This is the fact. That is why
I forgave them all; for it is easy to forgive; in advance I forgave them since they
furnished such a splendid official opportunity for a decision we long had needed.
The odium resulting from the attempt to try occult and psychical questions under
common law rules I am strong enough to bear; and up to date I have had a large
share of that.
I refused a committee of honour, they say. I refused the committee that was
offered as it was not of persons who could judge the matter rightly. They would
have reached no conclusion save the one I now promulgate, which is, that the
public proof regarding my real or delusive communications from the Masters
begins and ends with myself, and that the committee could not make any
decision at all, but would have to leave all members to judge for themselves. To
arrive officially at this I would have to put many persons in positions that they
could not stand, and the result then would have been that far more bad feeling
would come to the surface. I have at least learned after twenty years that it is
fruitless to ask judges who have no psychic development to settle questions the
one half of which are in the unseen realm of the soul where the common law of
England cannot penetrate.
The “messages from the Masters” have not ceased. They go on all the time for
those who are able and fit to have them, but no more to the doubter and the
suspicious. Even as I write they have gone to some, and in relation to this very
affair, and in relation to other revelations and pledge-breakings. It is a fact in
experience to me, and to friends of mine who have not had messages from me,
that the Masters exist and have to do with the affairs of the world and the
Theosophical movement. No amount of argument or Maskelyneish explanation
will drive out that knowledge. It will bear all the assaults of time and foolish
men. And the only basis on which I can place the claim of communication by the
Masters to me, so far as the world is concerned, is my life and acts. If those for
the last twenty years go to prove that I cannot be in communication with such
beings, then all I may say one way or the other must go for naught.
Why so many educated Englishmen reject the doctrine of the perfectibility of
man, illustrated by the fact of there now existing Masters of wisdom, passes my
comprehension, unless it be true, as seems probable, that centuries of slavery to
the abominable idea of original sin as taught by theology (and not by Jesus) has
reduced them all to the level of those who, being sure they will be damned any
way, are certain they cannot rise to a higher level, or unless the great god of
conventionality has them firmly in his grasp. I would rather think myself a
potential god and try to be, as Jesus commanded, “perfect as the Father in
heaven”—which is impossible unless in us is that Father in essence—than to
remain darkened and enslaved by the doctrine of inherent original wickedness
which demands a substitute for my salvation. And it seems nobler to believe in
that perfectibility and possible rise to the state of the Masters than to see with
science but two possible ends for all our toil: one to be frozen up at last, and the
other to be burned up, when the sun either goes out or pulls us into his flaming
breast.—Yours truly,
WILLIAM Q. JUDGE.

[The following is the “affirmation” of Mr. Abbot Clark, enclosed with the
above]:—

“San Francisco, Cal., April 21, 1894.

“I, Abbot Clark, a member of the Theosophical Society, do hereby state and
affirm as follows: I have seen it stated in the newspapers that it is charged that I
wrote Colonel H. S. Olcott in 1891 to India, and that in that letter was some
message not known to me, and that Colonel Olcott replied, asking where
William Q. Judge was at the time, and that I replied he was in my house. The
facts are: That in 1891 W. Q. Judge was lecturing in this State, and I was with
him at Santa Ana, and that I had no house and never had, being too poor to have
one. Brother Judge stopped at the hotel in Santa Ana, where he came from my
home, my father’s house at Orange, where he had been at dinner, and at Santa
Ana I arranged his lectures and I stayed at my aunt’s at Santa Ana; while in the
hotel a conversation arose with us, in which I spoke of Theosophical propaganda
among the Chinese on this coast, and Brother Judge suggested that I write to
Colonel Olcott, as he knew many Buddhists Theosophists, and might arrange it
better than Brother Judge; and I then myself wrote to Colonel Olcott on the
matter, showing the letter after it was done to Brother Judge to see if it should be
improved or altered, and he handed me back the letter at once. I put it in my
pocket and kept it there for several days waiting for a chance to buy stamps for
postage as I was away from any post-office. Brother Judge left by himself the
morning after I wrote the letter and went to San Diego, and the only time I saw
him again was in the train just to speak to him on his return after about four
days, and the letter was not mentioned, thought of, nor referred to.
“I assert on my word of honour that Brother Judge said nothing to me about
any message pretended to be from Masters or otherwise, and so far as any
reports or statements have been made relating to me herein different from the
above they are absolutely false.
“From India I got a reply from Adyar T.S. office from one Charlu, saying he
had opened my letter in Colonel Olcott’s absence, and had forwarded it to him;
and Dharmapala told me he had seen letters from me to Colonel Olcott on the
matter received in India away from Adyar. The said Charlu, in reply, also asked
me where Brother Judge was when the letter was written, and I wrote that he had
been at my house on that date, which is true as above stated, Orange being only
three miles from Santa Ana, as I thought Charlu wished to have Brother Judge’s
dates. But I thought also the questions put were peculiar from such a distance. I
never got any reply to my sincere first question in that letter about propaganda
from him, and never any reply of any sort from Colonel Olcott. When
Dharmapala was here he did not bring any message in reply from Colonel
Olcott, but referred to recollecting speaking with Olcott about a proposal from
California to work with the Chinese. And Charlu did not speak of any enclosure
in said letter. A year later I again wrote on the same matter to Colonel Olcott,
which was answered by Gopala Charlu, now dead, saying but little, if anything,
would be done by him. To all this I affirm on my honour.
“ABBOT B. CLARK.

“Witness: signatures:
ALLEN GRIFFITHS, E. B. RAMBO.”
 THE MAHATMA OF NEW YORK.

An Appreciation of Mr. Judge’s “Reply,” by the Author of “Isis Very Much

Unveiled.”

A convicted person has one last refuge. He may contrive to suggest imbecility,
and so appeal from the sense of justice to that of pity. To the average reader it
might seem that this, and this alone, could be the real object of the astounding
piece of self-revelation which I have been privileged to extract from Mr. William
Q. Judge, vice-president of the Theosophical Society. But we must remember
that with the Theosophical reader it may be otherwise. To the Theosophical
Society this “Reply” from the man they have delighted to honour may seem, for
all I know, a model of candour, of coherence, and of cogency. That is not, I
confess, what I hear privately; but, so far as any public word goes, the good,
docile folk have evidently determined to wait till Mrs. Besant comes home and
tells them what to think, and (still more important) what to say. For their benefit,
then, and still more for the benefit of those potential converts to Theosophy in
whom the atrophy of the mental processes is not yet complete, I will, as gravely
as I can, examine the vice-president’s utterance.

How Much is Admitted.

Now, first, let us see how many of the “Mahatma missives” Mr. Judge directly
or indirectly admits. Those which I have referred to as produced by Mr. Judge
included the following:—

The Cabinet missive.

The “Note the Seal” missive.
The “Judge’s Plan is Right” missive.
The “Masters Watch us” missive.
The “Judge is the friend” missive.
The “Master agrees” missive.
The Envelope Trick missive.
The “I withold” missive.
The Telegram missive.
The “Master will Provide” missive.
The Inner Group missive.
The “Grave Danger Olcott” missive.
The “Follow Judge and Stick” missive.
The “Judge is not the Forger” missive.
The Poison Threat missive.

(Besides these I have referred to other Mahatma letters or endorsements on

letters, on bank-notes, &c.; but those enumerated will do for the present.)
Out of all these Mr. Judge disputes only two. As regards the “Note the Seal”
missive, all that he denies is the statement that it was he who drew the special
attention of the Inner Group to the seal upon it—a denial which I shall deal with
presently. He denies the whole story of the Cabinet missive, and in regard to the
“Judge is not the Forger” missive, he denies that it was fabricated by him, but
suggests that it was fabricated by some other Theosophist.
The facts about the whole of the remaining thirteen (and more) missives he
thus implicitly admits, using such general phrases as these:—“Several of the
contested messages are genuine ones”; “they were all good and true”; “they were
from the Master”; “I have not admitted her [Mrs. Besant’s] contention” [that
they were only psychically from the Master, and were written in Mahatmascript
by Judge]; and, finally, “I will not tell how or by what means they were
produced.” The “Grave Danger Olcott” missive, by the way, he admits explicitly.
It is for the Theosophists, therefore, now to consider whether the substance of
these admitted missives (to say nothing of this “Reply,” in which also Mr. Judge
asserts the Master’s collaboration) squares with their conception of “the Master
of Wisdom,” that “god-like” exemplar of “the perfectibility of man,” as his own
“Messenger” describes him.

The Two Contested Missives.

 The reason why Mr. Judge selected just these two for denial is, no doubt, the
damaging suggestiveness of the contents of the one and of the circumstances
under which the other was produced. I for my part applaud his choice, because it
will bring him into sharp conflict, as regards the one missive, with Mrs. Besant,
and as regards the other, with Colonel Olcott.

(1) The Cabinet Missive: Judge v. Besant.

In regard to all those missives which were palmed off on Mrs. Besant herself,
my account is based, as regards generalities, on Mrs. Besant’s own statements
and Mr. Judge’s own admissions. As regards details, however, I have had to rely
on intimates and colleagues at Avenue-road, to whom Mrs. Besant told the
wondrous tale at the time.
The story of the Cabinet missive is briefly this (see “Isis Very Much
Unveiled,” p. 28). Mr. Judge suggests to Mrs. Besant that they should put a
question to the Masters by writing it on paper, and placing this in a certain
cabinet in “H.P.B.’s” room. The result was the endorsement of the paper with the
words, “Yes,” “And hope,” in the red script used in all these communications,
and also the impression of what Madame Blavatsky called the “flap-doodle”
seal, under circumstances which demonstrated either psychic precipitation on the
part of the Master, or else vulgar trickery on the part of Mr. Judge.
Mr. Judge declares “no such thing took place.”
Now, on the facts stated, it is obvious that only one person can authoritatively
contradict Mr. Judge here: to wit, Mrs. Besant. This I am bound to suppose that
she will do; for my version of the story is that given by her on the day after the
occurrence to a colleague, who quoted it from his diary. Mrs. Besant also
showed what purported to be the missive, sealed and endorsed as described, and
this to several people. At Adyar, at the beginning of this year, when the Judge
missives were being blown upon all round, she repeated the story, with only one
correction—a notable one—that she had not, as she at first implied, stayed in the
room all the time during Mr. Judge’s working of the Cabinet oracle.
What Mr. Judge will do if Mrs. Besant sticks to her version of the story I do
not know. But he has already, in the secret circular lately divulged, disposed of
the rest of her action in this matter as due to possession by a devil; so no doubt
he will say that here, too, it was “the Black Magicians” (per Brother
Chakravarti) who both imposed the delusion and manufactured the missive to fit
it. Note that he does not appeal to Mrs. Besant to bear him out, but says: “It
cannot be proved by anybody’s testimony, unless you will accept perjury.” This
is not the only passage in his Reply where Mr. Judge foreshadowed his readiness
to extend his accusations of lying, pledge-breaking, &c. (as, indeed, he is
logically bound to), from Mr. Old to Mr. Old’s fellow-sinners, Mrs. Besant and
Colonel Olcott.

(2) The “Judge Is not the Forger” Missive: Judge v. Olcott.

The other missive with which Mr. Judge disclaims connexion is the only one
in the whole series which was apparently not produced in immediate
juxtaposition with him, and under his personal superintendence. That, indeed,
was just the point of it; it was enclosed in a letter from another person, with all
the distance between New York and California to prove that Mr. Judge could
have had no hand in it. It was, in fact, a last desperate attempt to lull the
suspicions of the recipient, Colonel Olcott, who, however, discovered that Mr.
Judge had been in California, and in the company of Mr. Clark, from whom the
letter came, at the very date of the letter. (“Isis,” pp. 50-52.)
I told this story—quoting Colonel Olcott’s evidence—and forthwith was
assured, publicly, in general terms (“Isis,” p. 76), then specifically through a
private source, that Mr. Judge could annihilate it by producing an affidavit from
the Mr. Clark in question. (“Abbot Clark”—the name comically recalls that of
“Abner Dean” in Bret Harte’s “Society upon the Stanislaus.”) I was not much
perturbed by this announcement, as the reserve evidence in my hands happened
to include the substance of a letter from Mr. Abbot Clark himself, offering
abundant material for cross-examination upon the boasted “affidavit,” if and
when this was produced.
And lo! now we have this precious “affidavit” (which, by the way, turns out
not to be an affidavit at all), testifying—what? Why, that Mr. Judge had
abundant opportunities for inserting or getting inserted any enclosure he wished
in Mr. Clark’s letter, and that the letter which provided the opportunity was
actually written at Mr. Judge’s suggestion, and passed once through Mr. Judge’s
fingers, besides spending several days in Mr. Clark’s coat pocket!
The guilelessness with which Mr. Abner De—I mean Mr. Abbot Clark—adds,
among the rest of the plaintive verbiage of his statement, that “on my word of
honour Brother Judge said nothing to me about any missive,” completes the
charm of this document. Ah! it would be a poor world for the William Q. Judges
if it did not contain a good percentage of Abbot Clarks.

Whom does Mr. Judge Accuse?

 But now arises another point. Mr. Judge does not number this missive among
the “several genuine” ones. It was not the Mahatma’s; it was not fabricated by
Mr. Judge; therefore it must have been fabricated by somebody else. “You can
make what inference you like,” Mr. Judge liberally remarks; but the only
inferences possible from what he says are that the guilty person is Colonel Olcott
or Colonel Olcott’s manager at the Theosophist office. (The latter, by name T.
Vijiaraghava Charlu, was the person who received and forwarded the letter and
enclosure to Colonel Olcott. Mr. Judge and his satellite appear to wish to confuse
this person with another Charlu, Theosophical treasurer, who committed suicide
after peculation.)
Now, as I have made sufficiently clear, I hold no sort of brief for any
Theosophist, and especially none for any Theosophical official. In the past, Mr.
Judge has had no monopoly of the missive-manufacturing industry; and if he can
prove that there are colleagues in the business even now, I shall be glad to
consider the evidence. But, in this particular case, just look at the probabilities.
First, there is the handwriting, which is apparently exactly the same in this
missive as in others of the series with which, admittedly, these other gentlemen
had nothing, and Mr. Judge had everything, to do.
Then there are the contents. These also fit admirably into the chain. The
Master is made to declare that “Judge is not the forger”—a point of which Mr.
Judge was trying hard to convince the Colonel; also, to provide explanations of
various suspicious circumstances in other missives which tended to show that
Judge was “the forger”; also to exculpate Judge for various misstatements by
suggesting that he was an unconscious vehicle.
Then, there is the description of the “flap-doodle” seal as “the Lahore
brass”—a bad shot at the place of origin known to Olcott, but only half known to
Judge. Attribute this to Mr. Judge trying to startle his colleague, and it exhibits
just that mixture of fatuity and cunning which appears throughout the vice-
president’s transactions. Attribute it to Colonel Olcott manufacturing a pretended
Judge forgery, and it becomes a refinement of malignant ingenuity such as his
worst enemy, I fancy, will not suspect Colonel Olcott of compassing, either
himself or through an agent.
It needs no Sherlock Holmes to point the bearing of these probabilities.

The Evidence of the Seal.

We have it now on Mr. Judge’s authority that “the whole matter of this so-
called seal ... has made me laugh whenever I have thought of it.” If so, it shows
how much harmless mirth a trivial and apparently useless nick-nack may be the
cause of. Throughout its history this Mahatma-signet seems to have had a
magical effect on the risible muscles. We saw how Madame Blavatsky smiled at
it as “a flap-doodle of Olcott’s”; Colonel Olcott himself has told us that he had it
manufactured in the first instance as “a playful present,” and accompanied the
gift with “a jocular remark”; and there is no doubt that he has enjoyed many a
quiet chuckle since over the unwary use of it by his rival, who may yet prove to
have sealed his own official death-warrant in sealing the Mahatma’s “missives.”
Well, since it is so provocative of pleasant emotions, let us look again into this
matter of the Master’s seal. For, indeed, it is only since certain other things have
been found out that Mr. Judge has discovered how little the question of the seal’s
genuineness matters either way. It is all very well now for him to declare that
internal evidence is the only test of Mahatmic origin: that in a message, for
instance, like “Follow Judge and stick” (“Isis,” p. 48), it is the words themselves
whose very sweetness giveth proof
That they were born for immortality.

But that was not always Mr. Judge’s line. After all, somebody must have been
at pains to see to the seal impression in those missives which Mr. Judge vouched
for—to say nothing of such other external and material things as the texture of
the paper, quite unlike any found elsewhere, and the handwriting and signature,
all of which used to be triumphantly cited as evidence by Mr. Judge’s satellites
(the present quotation is from a pamphlet on “Mahatmas,” embellished with
learned references to “Lord Bacon,” which is by Mr. Judge’s private secretary,
and bears the imprimatur of Mr. Judge). Mr. Judge denies that it was he who
called special attention to the seal impression as authenticating his first pioneer
missive in 1891 (the “Note the Seal” missive, as I have called it). As he does not
deny my statement that he excused himself to the others present for not showing
the contents of the letter, perhaps he will explain what it was that he did call
attention to, if not the seal and signature. But why labour the point, when there is
the direct evidence afforded by one of his own seal-bearing letters—one which
he has not denied—in which he wrote, “I believe the Master agrees with me, in
which case I will ask him to put his seal here”—and “plump on the written word
came the seal” (“Isis,” p. 34). In those days at any rate Mr. Judge was of those
who “think these little decorations of importance,” as he now puts it.
“You trace it [the seal] to her [H.P.B.], and there you leave it,” Mr. Judge says;
“and then you think I am obliged to prove I did not get it—to prove negatives.”
But I traced it rather farther than to H.P.B. I traced the seal to Lansdowne-road in
1888 (Mr. B. Keightley’s evidence). I traced an impression of it on a letter from
Mr. Judge at Lansdowne-road in 1888 (Colonel Olcott’s evidence). I showed that
when Mr. Judge went back to America, the seal went too (telegram impression,
New York, 1890; evidence of Mr. B. Keightley). I showed that thenceforward it
appeared on missives produced by Mr. Judge, and on no others, again and again.
I showed how, in the missives planted on Colonel Olcott, as if dubious how far
the Colonel would carry on the complaisance of Madame Blavatsky, Mr. Judge’s
complete letter-writer tried the seal on gradually; first, an illegible impression,
and then a bold one; how, when the Colonel threatened to “peach,” the latter
pièce à conviction was suddenly and stealthily removed from the spot where Mr.
Judge had taught the Colonel to find it; how, after that, legible impressions were
reserved for others, and the Colonel only got illegible ones; how, finally (this
was after the Colonel had threatened to reproduce any he saw anywhere,
together with the whole story of the seal, in the Theosophist), seal-impressions
ceased altogether; and how Mr. Judge erased such as he could get hold of, and
began quibbling and equivocating about the seal as he is doing up to the present
moment.
These facts, again, I leave to tell their own story; in face of which it matters
little how many “stories” Mr. Judge may tell.

Quibbling about the Mahatma.

Mr. Judge’s particular version of the old Theosophistry about the small part
played by Mahatmas and their missives in the society is conveniently adjacent in
this Reply to statements of his own in the exactly opposite sense. While in one
breath he denies “influencing the course of affairs by any such thing,” a few
lines lower down he tells us how he got a message directing him to prevent the
president’s resignation, “and at once cabled to him and went to work to have the
American section vote”; and, again, how he stopped Mrs. Besant going to India,
“under direction”; and, again, how authoritative messages are going round “even
as I write,” “and in relation to this very affair.” Compare these, too:—
MR. JUDGE IN HIS “REPLY.” MR. JUDGE ELSEWHERE.

It is absolutely untrue that the society grows by I am not acting impulsively in my many public
talking of the Mahatmas or Masters, or by statements as to Masters.... Experience has shown that a
having messages sent round from them. The springing up of interest in Theosophy has followed
movement here and elsewhere is pushed along declarations, and men’s minds are more powerfully
the line of philosophy.... Messages from the drawn.... The Masters have said, “It is easier to help in
Masters do not go flying around, and the America, because our existence has been persistently
society does not flourish by any belief in those declared.”—(Mr. Judge, letter in Lucifer, April, 1893.)
being promulgated.

Nor am I, as you hint, in the habit of sending I now send you this, all of it being either direct
such messages about the society, nor of quotations from the messages to me or else in substance
influencing the course of affairs by using any what I am directed to say to you.... We are all,
such things. Could I be such a fool as to tell all therefore, face to face with the question whether we
others to go by what I get for my own will abide by Masters and their messenger.—(Mr.
guidance? Judge, circular to “the core of the T.S.,” deposing Mrs.
Besant, November, 1894.)

What Mr. Judge Lives On.

Mr. Judge pretends that I have said that his motive is mere pecuniary gain. I
have throughout treated the vice-president as a spiritual Jabez, not a financial
one; and I wish him joy of the distinction. But since he has raised the question at
such length, I will examine it a moment. Mr. Judge says: “No salaries are paid to
our officers. We support ourselves, or privately support each other.” As he has
elsewhere explained that he, for one, gives his whole time to the society, it will
be seen that the Theosophical officials supply a parallel to those famous Scilly
Islanders who “eked out a precarious existence by taking in each others’
washing.” The statement about the salaries is directly contradicted, on turning to
the 1894 Convention Report, by an extra vote of £150 for the officials at
Avenue-road. But I am well aware that the ready money of the T.S. is drawn far
more from a few individuals with means and from special funds than from the
small annual subscription, and I have said already that the “free board and
lodging” amid the temple groves at Adyar, Avenue-road, and New York is more
than their small salary to those of “the smaller fry” to whom such things are a
consideration. As for Mr. Judge, he does not deny that it is he to whom the Path,
and the press and publishing business connected with it, now belong; but he
makes the curious statement that the proceeds, whatever they may be, come out
of the pockets, not of “members, but largely of others.” In other words, it is not
Theosophists, but the outside public, who support the official organ of
Theosophy! Can it be that the Path is widely taken in as a comic paper?

A Few Other Curiosities.

Note the information conveyed, in this Reply and in Mr. Judge’s recent
Circular, that both Mrs. Besant and Colonel Olcott also profess to get “messages
from the Master.” “If you may get messages (he asks in effect) why not I
missives?” Why, indeed?
Note the reproach about “abusing a woman who has long enough fought,” &c.
This from the man who has just issued a circular ordering the deposition of the
said woman for being possessed of a devil!
Note the threat, addressed to me and the Editor of THE WESTMINSTER, that Mr.
Judge’s Master will get us “execrated for offences not yet exposed,” and that he
has already let Mr. Judge into “altogether too much of the secret hearts” of his
Theosophical colleagues. This is an old line which Madame Blavatsky used to
find very effective with weak-minded disciples.
Note the claim to prophetic “foreknowledge,” based on the fact that Mr. Judge
said, long before the July “Enquiry,” that it would come to nothing. It must be
granted that this does imply a complete prescience on the part of Mr. Judge—of
the tactics which Mr. Judge in due course adopted.
Note, lastly, Mr. Judge’s plain avowal that he declines to face any inquiry of
any sort or kind. He declines the Law Courts, which, I frankly agree, are no
possible tribunal for him. He declines the Judicial Committee of the T.S.,
because he, the vice-president, is a private member. He declined a Theosophical
Jury of Honour in July, which would have tried him as a private member,
because they, too, were not occult enough for him. And he avows that he will
decline everything and anything else, because the “proof” of the New York
Mahatma “begins and ends with myself.” Need I add a word more?

F. EDMUND GARRETT.
 TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
1. Silently corrected typographical errors and variations in spelling.
2. Retained anachronistic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as printed.
3. Footnotes have been re-indexed using numbers.

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