Online Edition published 1999 by The Blavatsky Archives Online.
Letter 16
From H.P. Blavatsky to W.Q. Judge
Dated Feb. 9, 1890
Feb. 9, 1890
London
My dear W.Q.J.
You suffer from liver, I, too. It seems to make you pessimistic, crotchety & not over friendly. It makes me appreciate only the more the difficulties your liver makes you labor under & to seek means to remedy it. I leave therefore important work to answer your letter seriatim, though I do not find it useful to point out your contradictions between e.g. your "OK"s, on the applications, meaning that you know they are all correct, & your fling at the new rules which would force you to find out about the fitness of the incoming members & the impossibility I place you & the Council under, by such a stupid "order". And this is "insidious"? Very well.
Now it so happens that the Presidents of the groups & the Councillors were appointed just for that very thing. No one wanted them or you to be spies but simply to "OK" them. You refuse threatening to resign well, do as you like.
Ever since the E.S. was formed I had nothing but worry with it in America & in America alone. I have here in England, about 80, & abroad 25 esotericists, 35 in the London Gupta Vidya alone, & not one ever since "M.C." left, not one has ever given trouble, or turned traitor, or gave any difficulty whatever. This is why being sure of these, I teach them the real thing as extras, sending to America only that which if ever printed will really do no harm, as they do not possess the lost [last?] key to correspondences & tattvic mysteries. Is it this, you call a "humbug"? Then after remarking that it is so much, & no more that is given the three (first) years to all who are taught by & live with the Masters I feel justified in my "humbug". I know who sent the things to Bundy & told you so; and the person who helped in Chicago, has left long ago the E.S. Pray do not imagine that because I hold my tongue as bound by my oath & duty that I do not know who is who. I know enough for my purposes, & this is sufficient. The charters were given and ordered to be distributed by the Masters. And if you did not do so then, instead of rejoicing I would feel, if I were you, that I have impeded the work. They are not given to those who receive extras in private & confidential letters from me, (tho' so far in America there are only two who have received such) but the Charters are meant as pretty toys to suit the tastes of those to whom only semi truths are given, so far. They are meant as outward signs for visible groups, in which the majority will ever remain only half trusted, and the minority alone an extremely great minority, if you pardon the Irish bull will learn in time the real thing. But if even this is too much for you & you see in them worse traitors than those who will henceforth enter then, throw up the whole thing, & say so publicly & openly. Tell them the work kills you, and that you cannot go on. What do I care! Does our American E.S. give me any benefit or glory or anything except worry & an eternal, everlasting jeremiad from you? You say it is the E.S. that made you ill? Throw it up, or pass the group's & the further Instructions to Mr. Fullerton; or shut up shop entirely, for what I care. There are in America half a dozen or perhaps a little more whom I will not abandon because you abandon the work. I will go on teaching them in private letters & that's all. But I prophecy & my prophecy will soon come to pass: destroy the groups of the E.S., withhold their Charters, do, as you do, and the T.S. will fall down into ruins in America beforesix months are over, just as it fell down & collapsed in 1878 when we left.
But the point is that if you go on as you do, it is I who will break with America, as I do not intend to keep on being bullied by you in every letter. Your opinion of me is quite flattering. I have been "egged" you think by someone. No Esotericist here will ever egg me. The rules were passed & added, just as the Gupta Vidya Lodge here was formed, in which the majority is to, & already belongs, to the inner circle you speak of. You never imagined, did you, that a body of about 500 men & women (473) could remain having all its members trusted as much as the few? I have begun the shifting long ago. But as the Master told me to do, so I did. [M\ glyph] said, only last January in a letter I have what I had to do & I only carry out his instructions, not mine. You seem to imagine that I care personally for this hard labour work, the tread-mill of the E.S. I say I do not in the least, except to benefit the T.S. at large. If you are "sick of the masses of letters from E.S. & constant violation of every rule & regulations" I am all that also. If you are sick "of the whole outfit as it is now worked" as it is yourself who have placed it on such footing, why did you do so? I have nothing to do with your work. I have made the rules for the few, and again tell you; & because there was absolute necessity for this; and if you kick against rules III & IV, I say leave them alone; only then no E.S. will receive any extra matter; no group will ever have its inner group and they will go on semi Esotericists because only half-trusted. In such case as I said I will choose here, those, few, with whom I will correspond, personally, & I need have no agent, no Secretary in America for it. Remember please, that if I could only forget that there is an America in this world & an E.S. that I could then earn easily £100 a month under my new contracts with the Russian journals. Remember that I have to receive 150 roubles in gold or £30 for every printed sheet or 16 pages of 300 words on each, which I can easily write in one day if I had nothing to think of; (1) and this I cannot do because I have not literally one moment of spare time; and here I am, obliged to accept from time to time alms from our Theosophists when they see me dying and have to send me off to recuperate on the sea-shore. All this; thanks to the E.S. of the T.S. Do as you like; This is my ultimatum.
And now to other things, less exalted but as necessary. I owe 7 Duke St. money on my books; & the Countess asks me for it from time to time. I gave her the £50 received by me from a New York Esotericist for I would not keep one penny of the money given by members for myself as he had asked me to do; and I gave her the other £20; but I owe Duke Street, for more it seems. Well, she laboured, I believe under the impression that I received money from you & did not say a word, the note enclosed from Fullerton is not likely to dispel her suspicion if she has any. You tell him, he says, that you made to me two remittances on my books? You never did as you know. You sent me once £7, for, or on the Secret Doctrine; I never received yet one cent on either the Key or the Voice. What does he or you mean then? Well, I feel sorry of having made the arrangement that you should send to me direct what I have to receive for the S.D. Key & Voice. It only gives you extra trouble, and to me the bother of speaking about money matters which I hate. I had done it when I thought that Duke St. would either go down to hell or remain in the hand of Arch & Bert, which would come to the same thing. Now that the Countess took the settlement of all the affairs upon herself and is the sole manager I beg you to regard my previous arrangement nil. I send you another legal script & give to the Countess one to the same effect. Let all business be transacted now officially & in a business sort of way. This will avoid me writing on money-matters and worrying; and must please you too. The less we have money transactions between us the healthier for our friendship. I gave the Countess your accounts about the Secret Doctrine & that's all I had from you.
Dixi.
And now wishing you better health & luck than my E.S. & "humbug" have brought to you, believe me your friend, as ever
HP Blavatsky
(1) There's my little article of hardly 3,000 words the Progress of Theosophy in the North American Review for February (or March) for which I have received a cheque of £20 from Doyle Brice.
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