Theosophical Society,
THE
LIFE OF
H P Blavatsky
Madame Blavatsky in India
A Reply to Moncure D.
By
William Q. Judge
There
are three reasons when I reply to Moncure D. Conway's
article in the
October
ARENA, entitled "Madame Blavatsky at Adyar."
First,
I am an old and intimate friend of hers, while Mr. Conway met her but twice
according to his own account, and then only for a short time.
Second,
she has given up her mortal body and cannot reply to his attacks.
Third,
because, although his article is given as an account of her, it is, in fact, an
attack on the Theosophical Society I had the honor to take part in founding
with Madame Blavatsky and others, and with the history of which in all its
details I am well acquainted, from having been one of its secretaries ever
since its organization in 1875.
The
October article covers twelve pages, and is mainly a rehashing of old
charges made by other people, and about which
Mr. Conway has no personal
knowledge whatever, besides a good deal of matter
in which the mistakes
are too evident to mislead anyone who has really
given the theosophical
movement any study.
Let
us observe in the beginning the qualifications which Mr. Conway possesses as a
reporter. He says Adyar is fifteen miles from
In
this little scene he gives the command of a mahatma as the reason for a Hindu's
not shaking his hand; all travelers know that the Hindus do not shake
hands with one another, much less with strangers; Mr.
Conway must have
observed this as I did when there, if he met any
but the official English.
His
description of the "shrine," on page 582, is so far removed from fact
that I am constrained to doubt the accuracy even of his recollection of what
was said to him by Madame Blavatsky. I know the shrine well, have examined it
fully, and just after he was there, and not only that, but by own orders it was
taken from the wall, and its contents removed soon after he left India, and in
that removal I took chief part just before the famous so-called exposé, in the
Christian College magazine. According to Mr. Conway "it reached nearly to
the ceiling," the fact being that it was a wall cabinet and nothing more,
and its total height from bottom to top was not four feet, which would be a
very low ceiling. Its doors were painted black and varnished, but his
recollection attributes to it a decoration of "mystical emblems and
figures," perhaps to accord with what he thought a theosophical shrine out
to have. "The interior of the shrine was inlaid with metal work," he
says, and evidently he saw it but once in haste. I saw it for several days
together, examined it fully, took charge of it, with my own hands removed the
objects within it, and instead of its interior being inlaid with metal work it
was lined with common red plush.
The
description given by Mr. Conway makes a better newspaper story, however.
Painting the interior with his imagination, he says there was a Buddha there,
which is not so; and then occurs the crowing absurdity that the portrait of Koothumi "holds a small barrel-shaped praying machine
on his head." This is curious instance of hypnotism and bad memory mixing
facts, for there was a tibetan
prayer wheel in the shrine, but it lay on the bottom shelf, and the picture of Koothumi which I then removed, gives him with a fur cap on.
It sounds like a bad dream that the learned doctor had. But further, and this
is the case when any good journalist would have verified the mere facts of
record, he says, speaking of the effect of the scandals on the branches of the
society in India, that the seventy-seven branches there in 1879 are now (1891)
"withering away under the Blavatsky scandal," the fact being that now
over one hundred and fifty branches
exist
there which pass resolutions of high respect for her memory, and continue the
work she incited them to begin, included in that being a growing correspondence
with the increasing membership in America, and the helping forward of a special
department of the society's work, especially devoted to the translation of
their old books and the procurement of manuscripts and treatises that Max
Muller and others wish to have.
If
Mr. Conway had never before taken part in attacks upon Madame Blavatsky and the
society, some inaccuracy might be attributed to inexperience; but as
the case is otherwise, one is led to the conclusion
that some other motive than zeal for fact must have stimulated the present
article. And it may interest him to know that Madame Blavatsky herself said to
me of him after he had seen her:-"The gentleman is in his decadence, with
a great disappointment hanging over his life; from this point he will find
himself of less and less importance in the world, and you will find him at last
for a paltry pay attacking over my shoulders the cause you wish to serve,"
a part of which we know to be now true.
Since
I am trying to defend a friend who has passed beyond the veil, it is
impossible
to overlook the statement made in the note on page 582 of Mr. Conway's article,
in which he leaves the impression that that article is his first presentation
of the matter to the public; indeed, such is his declaration, the only
indefiniteness being the omission of the names of the "friends of Madame
Blavatsky" to whom he mentioned the affair so as to give them the chance
of replying. The omission of their names now prevents my having their
testimony, for I know all her friends and they are a
sort who would not fail to give me the facts. It may have escaped Mr. Conway's
recollection that after he had made his visit to Adyar and had his conversation
with Mme. Blavatsky, he wrote a long account of it to the Glasgow Herald
published in Glasgow, Scotland, in which he showed the same spirit as in the
one under review, and that I wrote a reply to it for the same paper, which the
paper published: and that later when I was in London on my way to Adyar he met
Colonel Olcott and myself over one of the
services
in South Place Chapel, in which he had advertised himself as to speak on
theosophy and spiritualism, but wholly omitted any reference to theosophy when
he saw us there; and that our conversation was in the underground railroad, in
the course of which he referred to the articles in the Glasgow Herald, and
exhibited the same vexation of which he accuses himself in the present one at
page 581, when he found that the shrine had been permanently closed just three
days before he got there.
Perhaps
the "glamour" of Adyar still lingers around his recollections.
I
come now to the particular incident around which the October article revolves.
It is the explanation supposed to have been offered by Madame Blavatsky of all
her life and work to a visitor who told her he wanted an explanation to give to
his flock (in South Place Chapel) who were always ready to admit facts. From
his account it is clear that he did not inquire of her as to the philosophical
doctrines of man and mind, and theories as to cosmogenesis
she had been engaged in promulgating, nor of the objects and purposes of the
Theosophical Society to which her life was devoted, and then as now an active
body working not only in India but in Europe and America. His sole inquiry was
about paltry phenomena that she never spoke of with any particular interest.
For, he goes on: "Now,' I said, 'what do these
rumors mean? I hear of your lifting teapots from beneath your chair, summoning
lost jewels, conversing with Mahatmas a thousand miles away."
If
this is all that passed-and no more is given of questions by him-there is not a
work in it relating to philosophy nor any of the many other important subjects
upon which Madame Blavatsky had been for long before assiduously writing and
talking. Her reply therefore attaches solely to the question. It is given by
him: "It is glamour, people think they see what
they do not. That is the whole of it."
This
reply has naught to do with the existence of Mahatmas, nor
with their powers, nor with the theories of cosmogenesis
and anthropogenesis given by her, nor with the aims and work of her society,
nor with her views as to many hidden and natural powers of man, on which she
had before that spoken and written much. It simply offered an explanation she
had never failed to give, included in the "glamour." This power of
producing glamour is now well known to the French and other schools of
hypnotists, and it is a correct explanation of many of her very best and most
wonderful phenomena.
It
is the explanation of numerous extraordinary feats to be witnessed in
By
its means a letter could be brought into the room and deposited anywhere
without a person present seeing either letter or messenger. For grant the power, and the limits of the exercise cannot be fixed. Take
the production of a teacup from beneath a chair where a moment or two before it
had not been. The same power of glamouring would
enable her to leave the room, still seeming to be present, to procure a teacup
from the adjoining apartment and then to produce it suddenly from beneath the
chair, all the while the spectators thinking they saw her sitting there.
This
is one of the possibilities of the realm of glamour, and admitted by Mr. Conway
in my presence as I shall show. Glamour is only another name for hypnotism,
partly understood by Dr. Charcot and his pupils, but
fully known to Madame Blavatsky, who was taught in a school were the science is
elaborated with a detail that western schools have not yet reached to but
eventually will. And this she has often asserted of many of her own phenomena,
for she has deliberately called them "psychological frauds."
I
have said Mr. Conway admitted in my presence something germane to this inquiry.
It was in his own South Place Chapel where I went in 1884 to hear him discourse
on a subject which he advertised to be upon spiritualism and
theosophy. For some reason unknown to me, he
omitted all reference to
theosophy, but dwelt at length on his experiences
in
I
do not think, as some have said, that she was making fun of him by thinking:
"You soft-headed and innocent old goose, do you really suppose that I am
going seriously to answer a person who proclaims in advance his mission here as
you did and expects to see me execute phenomena whereon he may write a sermon
for his London babes?" (1) On the contrary,
she was ready to go on with him further if he chose to proceed beyond mere
marvels that she had often dubbed with the name of glamour before he came. But
he went no further, and calmly proceeded, plodding
along with grotesque solemnity that is refreshing in the extreme.
In
fine, all that Mr. Conway's somewhat labored article amounts to is that we are
asked by him to believe that after Madame Blavatsky had duped some of the
brightest minds of both West and East, and secured a firm hold on their
loyalty, reverence, and affection,-including many hundred Hindus of learning
and wide experience in their own land of marvels, as they have told me with
their own lips-had succeeded in establishing a system of imposture upon which,
if we accept his view, she must depend, she was ready in a casual conversation
to confess all her acts to be frauds and to throw herself on the mercy of Mr.
Conway merely because he preached in South Place Chapel and had a
congregation-hardly. If confession,-"an unwitnessed
confession" as he calls it,-were her determination at the interview, it is
interesting to ask why she did not confess to him that there were trap-doors
and sliding panels to help phenomena? But there was no such confession, no
trap-doors, no frauds.
On
p. 587, Mr. Conway says: "The most curious thing about this turbaned
spiritualism is its development of
the Koothoomi myth. I asked Sir. W. W.
Hunter,
Gazetteer-General of
It
is easy to lose one's self in the
The
name is the same as the one spelled "Koothoomi"
in The Arena, for the double "o" stands for "u".
Proceeding
with his peculiar analysis of this "myth," Mr. Conway says: "I
was assured on good authority that the name was originally 'Cotthume'
and a mere mixture of Ol-Cott and Hume, Madame
Blavatsky's principal adherents." The evident recklessness of statement
here is noticeable and inexcusable. No name of the "good authority"
is given; certainly it was not Mr. Sinnett who first
gave publicity to the name Koothoomi; perhaps it was
some learned orientalist who never read John
Garrett's book. But as I knew H.P. Blavatsky well in 1874, before she met
Messrs. Sinnett or Hume, and before this name-now
dubbed a myth-was ever given to the public, I may be allowed to say that it was
not originally "Cotthume," but was one that
I and others in New York were perfectly familiar with through his
correspondence with us at that time on matters connected with the society.
And
when Mr. Sinnett published his Esoteric Buddhism,
giving this name to the world, we all felt that ribaldry would follow. I wrote
then to Madame Blavatsky expressing regret that the name was given out. To this
she replied:
Do
not be alarmed nor grieved. The name was bound to come
out some day,
and as it is a real one its use instead of the
The
remainder of the article shows an utter lack of acquaintance with the
theosophical movement which has been
classed by the great Frenchman Emile
Burnouf, as
one of the three great religious movements of the day.
Mr.Conway appears to think it depends on Colonel
Olcott, ignoring the many
other persons who give life to the
"propaganda." Such men as Mr. A.P. Sinnett,
and women like Mrs. Annie Besant, are left out of account, to say nothing of
the omission to notice the fact that in each of the three great divisions of
the globe, Europe, Asia, and America, there is a well-organized section of the
society, and that there is a great body of literature devoted to the work. This
was so well known to others that shortly before her death an article by Madame
Blavatsky was printed by the North American Review, describing the progress of
the movement. But Mr. Conway would have us suppose that Colonel Olcott's few published speeches represent us or indicate
our future, and he gravely advises that headquarters should be fixed in
"If
theosophy is to live, it must 'take refuge in Buddha' " a stale, emaciated
joke. The convention of the society in
All
of this was the subject of newspaper reports, column after column having been
devoted to it, with an immediate exhaustion of morning editions. It seems more
likely that theosophy will "take refuge" in
Having
now directly answered Mr. Conway's article I will take advantage of the
opportunity to append some facts directly known to myself, about the
"shrine" and the rooms at Adyar.
I
went to Adyar in the early part of the year 1884, with full power from the
president of the society to do whatever seemed best for our protection against
an attack we had information was about to be made in conjunction with the
missionaries who conducted the Christian College at Madras. I found that Mr.
Coulomb had partly finished a hole in the wall behind the shrine. It was so new
that its edges were ragged with the ends of laths and the plaster was still on
the floor. Against it he had placed an unfinished teak-wood cupboard, made for
the occasion, and having a false panel in the back that hid the hole in the wall.
But the panel was too new to work and had to be violently kicked in to show
that it was there.
It
was all unplaned, unoiled,
and not rubbed down. He had been dismissed
before he had time to finish. In the hall that opened
on the stairs he had made a cunning panel, opening the back of a cupboard
belonging to the "occult room." This was not finished and force had
to be used to make it open, and then only by using a mallet. Another movable
panel he also made in the front room, but event the agent of the psychical
society admitted that it was very new. It was of teak, and I had to use a
mallet and file to open it. All these things were discovered and examined in
the presence of many people, who then and there wrote their opinions in a book
I provided for the purpose, and which is now at headquarters. The whole
arrangement was evidently made up after the facts to fit them on the theory of
fraud. That it was done for money was admitted, for a few days after we had
completed our examination the principal of the Christian College came to the
place-a thing he had never done before-and asked that
he and his friends be allowed to see the room and
the shrine.
He
almost implored us to let him go up, but we would not, as we say he merely
desired to finish what he called his "exposure." He was then asked in
my presence by Dr. Hartmann what he had paid to Coulomb for his work, and
replied, somewhat off his guard, that he had paid him somewhere about one
hundred rupees. This supports the statement by Dr. Hartmann (made in print),
that Coulomb came to him and said that ten thousand rupees were at his disposal
if he could ruin the society. He merely exaggerated the amount to see if we
would give him more to be silent.
The
assailants of H.P. Blavatsky and the Theosophical Society have ever seemed to
be beset by a singular fatuity. It seems that they must, as it were by force,
deny all accepted laws of motive and of life in judging these things,
explaining the conduct of members of the society on principles the reverse of
any ever known to human beings, facts as plain as noonday being ignored, and
other facts construed on theories which require the most tremendous credulity
to accept. They perceive no fine impulse, and laugh at the idea of our desiring
to give a basis for ethics although not a word in all the writing of Madame
Blavatsky shows her or us in any other light.
The
Arena, March 1892
Footnote:
(1) Theosophical
Forum, November, 1891
Theosophical Society,