Theosophical Society,
THE
LIFE OF
H P Blavatsky
From Apprenticeship to Duty
1870 – 72
The Spiritist Society
in
The first meeting with Mme Coulomb
An extract from
Incidents in the Life of Madame Blavatsky -
compiled from information supplied by her relatives and friends and edited by A.P.Sinnett
First Published 1913
PROBABLY
the years 1867 to 1870, if the story of these could be properly told, would be
found by far the most interesting of Mme. Blavatsky's eventful life, but it is
impossible for me to do more at present than indicate that they were
associated with great progress in the expansion of
her occult knowledge, and
passed in the East. The two or three years intervening
between her residence at
there would be no necessity for holding back any
information concerning these —
the latest of her relatively aimless wanderings —
of which I might have gained
possession, but no watchful relatives were with her
to record what passed, and
her own recollections give us none but bare
outlines of her adventures.
In
1870 she came back from the East by a steamer via the then newly-opened
Canal,
and after spending a short time in
board a Greek vessel, which met with a terrible
catastrophe, and was blown up by
an explosion of gunpowder and fireworks forming
part of the cargo. Mme.
Blavatsky
was one of a very small number of passengers whose lives were saved.
The
castaways were rescued with no more than the clothes they wore when picked
out of the water, and were momentarily provided for
by the Greek
Government, who forwarded them to various
destinations.
Mme. Blavatsky went to
till supplies of money reached her from
Apprenticeship
to Duty”, because that is the great transition marked by the date
of Mme. Blavatsky's return to
altogether been spent in the passionate search for
occult knowledge, on which
her inborn instincts impelled her from her earliest
youth. This had now come
upon her in ample measure. The natural-born
faculties of mediumship which had
surrounded her earlier years with a coruscation of
wonders had given place now
to attributes for which Western students of
psychic mysteries at that date had
no name. The time had not come for even the
partial revelations concerning the
great system of occult initiation as practised in the East, which has been
embodied in books published within the last few
years. Mme. Blavatsky already
knew that she had a task before her — the task of
introducing some knowledge
concerning these mysteries to the world, — but she
was sorely puzzled to decide
how she should begin it. She had to do the best she
could in making the world
acquainted with the idea that the latent potentialities
in human nature — in
connection with which psychic phenomena of various
kinds were already attracting
the attention of large classes in both hemispheres
— were of a kind which,
properly directed, would lead to the infinite
spiritual exaltation of their
possessors, while wrongly directed they were
capable of leading downward towards
disastrous results of almost commensurate extent.
She alone, at the period I
refer to, appreciated the magnitude of her mission,
and if she did not adequately appreciate the difficulties in her way, she had
at all events no companion to share her sense of the fact that these
difficulties were very great.
Probably
she would be among those most willing to recognise,
looking back now
upon the steps she took in the beginning, that she
went to work the wrong way,
but very few people who have had a long and arduous
battle in life to fight —
especially when that fight has been chiefly waged
against such moral antagonists
as bigotry and ignorance — would be in a position
at the close of their efforts
to regard their earliest measures with satisfied
complacency.
The only lever which, as the matter presented
itself in the beginning to Mme.
Blavatsky's
mind, seemed available for her to work with, was the widespread and
growing belief of large numbers of civilized
people in the phenomena and
somewhat too hastily formed theories of
spiritualism. She set to work in
finding herself there for the moment — to found
a society which should have the
investigation of spiritualistic
phenomena for its purpose, and which she
designed to lead through paths of higher
knowledge in the end. Some, among the
many misrepresentations which have made her life one
long struggle with calumny
from this time onward, arose from this innocently
intended measure. Because she
set on foot her quasi-spiritualistic society, she
has been regarded as having
been committed at that date to an acceptance of the
theory of psychic phenomena
which spiritualists hold. It will have been seen,
however, from the quotations I
have given from her sister's narrative that, even on
her first return from the
East
in 1858, she was emphatic in repudiating this view.
One
of the persons who sought Mme. Blavatsky's acquaintance in connection with this
abortive society was the subsequently notorious Mme. Coulomb,
attached at that time to the personnel of a small
hotel at
finding her way with her husband, in a state of
painful destitution, to
fastened herself but too securely on Mme.
Blavatsky's hospitality at
only to repay this in the end by rendering herself
the tool of an infamous
attack made upon the Theosophical Society in the
person of its Founder by a
missionary magazine at
later on.The narrative of
the period beginning in 1871, on which I am now
entering, has been prepared, with a good deal of
assistance from Mme. Blavatsky
herself, from writings by relatives and intimate
friends of her later years. It
would be tedious to the reader if this were divided
into separate fragments of
testimony, and I shall therefore prefer — except
in some special cases later on
—
to weld these narratives into one, and the use of the
plural pronoun “we” will
hereafter sufficiently identify passages which
have a composite authorship.
In
1871 Mme. Blavatsky wrote from
returned from
She
had to wait in
determined to establish a Société
Spirite for the investigation of mediums and
phenomena according to Allen Kardec's
theories and philosophy, since there was
no other way to give people a chance to see for
themselves how mistaken they
were. She would first give free play to an already
established and accepted
teaching and then, when the public would see that
nothing was coming out of it,
she would offer her own explanations. To accomplish
this object, she said, she
was ready to go to any amount of trouble —even to
allowing herself
to be regarded for a time as a helpless medium.
“They know no better, and it
does me no harm — for I will very soon show them the
difference between a
passive medium and an active doer”. she explains.
A
few weeks later a new letter was received. In this one she showed herself full
of disgust for the enterprise, which had proved a
perfect failure. She had
written, it seems, to
désespoir de cause, she had
surrounded herself with amateur mediums — French
female spiritists, mostly
beggarly tramps, when not adventuresses in the rear of
M. de Lesseps' army of
engineers and workmen on the
“They
steal the Society's money”, she wrote, “ they drink
like sponges, and I
now caught them cheating most shamefully our
members, who come to investigate
the phenomena, by bogus manifestations. I had very
disagreeable scenes with
several persons who held me alone responsible
for all this. So I ordered them
out. . . . The Société Spirite has not lasted a fortnight — it is a heap of
ruins, majestic, but as suggestive as those of the
Pharaoh's tombs. ... To wind
up the comedy with a drama, I got nearly shot by a
madman — a Greek, who had
been present at the only two public séances we held,
and got possessed I suppose
by some vile spook.” [This literal translation of
a letter written by Mme
Blavatsky
to her aunt fourteen years back shows that she never changed her way
of viewing communication with “spirits” for
physical phenomena, as she was
accused of doing when in
She
broke off all connection with the “mediums”, shut up her Société,
and went
to live in Boulak near
the Museum. Then it seems, she came again in contact with
her old friend the Copt of mysterious fame, of whom
[Page 126] mention has been
made in connection with her earliest visit to
travels. For several weeks he was her only visitor.
He had a strange reputation
in
at this time, declared that he had outlined and
predicted for him for
twenty-five years to come nearly all his (the
narrator's) daily life, even to
the day of his death. The Egyptian high officials
pretending to laugh at him
behind his back, dreaded and visited him secretly. Ismail Pasha, the Khedive,
had consulted him more than once, and later on
would not consent to follow his
advice to resign. These visits of an old man, who was
reputed hardly ever to
stir from his house (situated at about ten miles
from town), to a foreigner were
much commented upon. New slanders and scandals were
set on foot. The sceptics
who had, moved by idle curiosity, visited the Société and witnessed the whole
failure, made capital of the thing. Ridiculing
the idea of phenomena, they had
as a natural result declared such claims to be
fraud and charlatanry all round.
Conveniently
inverting the facts of the case, they even went the length of
maintaining that instead of paying the mediums and
the expenses of the Society,
it was Mme. Blavatsky who had herself been paid,
and had attempted to palm off
juggler tricks as genuine phenomena. The
groundless inventions and rumors thus
set on foot by her enemies, mostly the discharged
“French-women mediums”, did
not prevent Mme. Blavatsky from pursuing her
studies, and proving to every
honest investigator that her extraordinary powers of
clairvoyance and
clairaudience were facts, and
independent of mere physical manifestations, over
which she possessed an undeniable control. Also that
her power, by simply
looking at them, of setting objects in motion
and vibration without
any direct contact with them, and sometimes at a
great distance, instead of
deserting her or even diminishing, had increased
with years. A Russian
gentleman, an acquaintance of Mme. B., who
happened to visit
sent his friends the most enthusiastic letters about
Mme. Blavatsky. Thus he
wrote to a brother-officer in the same regiment a
letter now in the possession
of her relatives, and from which we translate:
“She is a marvel, an unfathomable
mystery. That which she produces is simply
phenomenal; and without believing any
more in spirits than I ever did, I am ready to
believe in witchcraft. If it is
after all but jugglery, then we have in Mme.
Blavatsky a woman who beats all the
Boscos and Robert Houdin's
of the century by her address. . . . Once I showed
her a closed medallion containing the portrait of
one person and the hair of
another, an object which I had had in my
possession but a few months, which was
made at
' Oh ! it is your godmother's
portrait and your cousin's hair. Both are dead,'
and she proceeded forthwith to describe them, as
though she had both before her
eyes. Now, godmother, as you know, who left my
eldest daughter her fortune, is
dead fifteen years ago. How could she know ! ” etc..
In
an illustrated paper of the time there is a story told of Mme. Blavatsky by
another gentleman. He met her at a table d'hôte
with some friends in a hotel of
alone, sitting on a sofa and talking. Before the sofa
there stood a little
tea-tray, on which the waiter had placed for Mr N----- a bottle of liqueur, some
wine, a wine-glass, and a tumbler. As he was
carrying the glass with its
contents to his mouth, without any visible cause,
it broke in his hand into many
pieces. She laughed,
appearing overjoyed, and made the remark that
she hated liqueurs and wine and could hardly
tolerate those who used them too
freely. The story goes on ...
“ ' You do not mean to infer that it is you who
broke my wine-glass . . . ? It
is simply an accident. . . . The glass is very thin ; it was perhaps cracked,
and I squeezed it too strongly . . .!' I lied
purposely, for I had just made the
mental remark that it seemed very strange and
incomprehensible, the glass being
very thick and strong, just as a verre
à liqueur would be.”
But
I wanted to draw her out.“
She
looked at me very seriously, and her eyes flashed. ' What
will you bet,' she
asked, ' that I do not do it again ?'
”'
Well, we will try on the spot. If you do, I will be the first to proclaim you
a true magician. If not, we will have a good
laugh at you or your spirits
to-morrow at the Consulate. . . .' And saying so,
I half-filled the tumbler with
wine and prepared to drink it. But no sooner had the
glass touched my lips than
I
felt it shattered between my fingers, and my hand bled, wounded by a broken
piece in my instinctive act at grasping the tumbler
together when I felt myself
losing hold of it.“
"Entre les lèvres et la coupe, il y a quelquefois une grande distance,'' she
observed sententiously, and left the room,
laughing in my face most
outrageously”.
“ During the latter years”, Mme. de Jelihowsky states, “many were the changes
that had taken place in our family: our grandfather
and our aunt's husband, who
had both occupied very high official positions in
whole family had left the
Blavatsky
had not visited the country for years, and there remained in
but myself with my family and a number of old
servants, formerly serfs of the
family, who, once liberated, could not be kept without
wages in the house they
had been born in, and were gradually being sent
away. These people, some of whom
owing to old age were unable to work for their
living, came constantly to me
for help. Unable to pension so many, I did what I
could for them ;
among other things I had obtained a permanent home at
the City Refuge House for
two old men, late servants of the family: a cook
called Maxim and his brother
Piotre — once upon a time a very decent footman, but
at the time of the event I
refer to an incorrigible drunkard, who had lost his
arm in consequence.”
That
summer we had gone to reside during the hot months of the year at Manglis —
the headquarters of the regiment of
Mme.
Blavatsky was in
returned from
corresponded very rarely, at long
intervals, and our letters were generally
short. But after a prolonged silence I received from
H. P. B. a very long and
interesting letter.“
A
portion of it consisted of fly-sheets torn out from a note-book, and these
were all covered with pencil-writing. The strange
events they recorded had been
all put down on the spot — some under the shadow of
the great Pyramid of Cheops,
and some of them inside Pharaoh's Chamber. It
appears that Mme. B. had gone
there several times, once with a large company, some
of whom were
spiritualists.[Some most wonderful phenomena were described by some of
her
companions as having taken place in broad daylight
in the desert when they were
sitting under a rock; whilst other notes in Mme
Blavatsky’s writing recorded the
strange sight she saw in the Cimmerian darkness
of the King’s Chamber, when she
has passed a night alone comfortable settled inside
a sarcophagus.]”
'Let
me know, Vera', she wrote, 'whether it is true that the old Pietro
is dead
?
He must have died last night or at some time yesterday' (the date on the stamp
of the envelope showed that it had left
which it was received). 'Just fancy what happened ! A friend of mine, a young
English
lady, and a medium, stood writing mechanically on bits of
paper, leaning upon an old Egyptian tomb. The pencil
had begun tracing perfect
gibberish — in characters that had never existed
here, as a philologist told us
—
when suddenly, and as I was looking from behind her
back, they changed into
what I thought were Russian letters. My attention
having been called elsewhere,
I
had just left her, when I heard people saying that what she had written was
now evidently in some existing characters, but that
neither she nor anyone else
could read them. I came back just in time to prevent
her from destroying that
slip of paper as she had done with the rest, and was
rewarded. Possessing myself
of the rejected slip, fancy my astonishment on
finding it contained in Russian
an evident apostrophe to myself!”
'
“Barishnya (little or' young miss '), dear baryshnya! ” said the writer,
“help, oh help me, miserable sinner! ... I suffer: drink, drink,
give me a
drink! . . . I suffer, I suffer!” From this term baryshnya — a title our old
servants will, I see, use with us two even after
our hair will have grown white
with age — I understood immediately that the appeal
came from one of our old
servants, and took therefore the matter in hand
by arming myself with a pencil
to record what I could myself see. I found the
name Piotre Koutcherof
echoed in
my mind quite distinctly, and I saw before me an
indistinguishable mass of grey
smoke — a formless pillar — and thought I heard it
repeat the same words.
Furthermore,
I saw that he had died in Dr Gorolevitch's hospital
attached to the
City Refuge, the
made out, it is you who placed him there in company
with his brother, our old
Maxim, who had died a few days before him. You had never written
about poor
Maxim's death. Do tell me whether it
is so or not. . . .'
Further
on followed her description of the whole vision as she had it, later on,
in the evening when alone, and the authentic words
pronounced by ' Piotre's
spook' as she called it. The ' spirit' (?) was
bitterly complaining of thirst
and was becoming quite desperate. It was
punishment, it said — and the spook
seemed to know it well, — for his drunkenness during
the lifetime of
that personality ! . . . 'An agony of thirst that
nothing could quench — an ever
living fire,' as she explained it.”
Mme.
Blavatsky's letter ended with a postscript, in which she notified her
sister that her doubts had been all settled. She saw
the astral spooks of both
the brothers — one harmless and passive, the other
active and dangerous. [How
dangerous is the latter kind was proved on the
spot. Miss O - , the medium, a
young lady of hardly twenty, governess in a rich
family of bankers, an extremely
modest and gentle girl, had hardly written the Russian
words addressed to Mme
Blavatsky, when she was seized with a trembling,
and asked to drink. When water
was brought she threw it away, and went on asking
for a drink. Wine was offered
her - she greedily drank it, and began drinking one
glass after another until,
to the horror of all, she fell into convulsions,
and cried for “wine-a drink!”
till she fainted away, and was carried home in a
carriage. She had an illness
after this that lasted several weeks. - [H.P.B.]Upon the receipt of this letter,
her sister was struck with surprise. Ignorant
herself of the death of the
parties mentioned, she telegraphed immediately
to town, and the answer received
from Dr Gorolevitch
corroborated the news announced by Mme. Blavatsky in every
particular. Piotre had
died on the very same day and date as given in H. P.
Blavatsky's
letter, and his brother two days earlier.
Disgusted
with the failure of her spiritist society and the
gossip it provoked,
Mme.
Blavatsky soon went home via
longer, making a voyage to
Russian friends. Accounts of some of the
incidents of her journey found their
way into the French and even American papers. At
the end of 1872 she returned in her usual way without warning, and surprised
her family at
Theosophical Society,