The following letter was written before the foundation of the
Theosophical Society. A somewhat inaccurate translation appeared in Mr. Sinnetts Incidents
in the Life of Madame Blavatsky, but as some additions were made to the original it is
interesting to see what was actually written by H.P.B. at such an early date.
"The more I see of spiritist seances in this cradle and
hotbed of Spiritism and mediums, the more clearly I see how dangerous they are for
humanity. Poets speak of a thin partition between the two worlds. There is no partition
whatever. Blind people have imagined obstacles of this kind because coarse organs of
hearing, sight, and feeling do not allow the majority of people to penetrate the difference
of being. Besides, Mother-Nature has done well in endowing us with coarse senses,
for otherwise the individuality and personality of man would become impossible, because
the dead would be continually mixing with the living, and the living would assimilate
themselves with the dead. It would not be so bad if there were around us only
spirits of the same kind as ourselves, the half-spiritual refuse of mortals who died
without having reconciled themselves to the great necessity of death. Then we might submit
to the inevitable. One way or another, we cannot help identifying ourselves physically and
in a perfectly unconscious way with the dead, absorbing the constituent atoms of what
lived before us: with every breath we inhale them, and breathe out that which nourishes
the formless creatures, elementals floating in the air in the expectation of being
transformed into living beings. This is not only a physical process, but partly a moral
one. We assimilate those who preceded us, gradually absorbing their brain-molecules and
exchanging mental auras -- which means thoughts, desires, and tendencies. This is an
interchange common to the entire human race and to all that lives. A natural process, an
outcome of the laws of the economy of nature... It explains similarities, external and
moral... But there exists another absolute law, which manifests itself periodically and
sporadically: this is a law, as it were, of artificial and compulsory assimilation. During
epidemics of this kind the kingdom of the dead invades the region of the living, though
fortunately this kind of refuse are bound by the ties of their former surroundings. And
so, when evoked by mediums, they cannot break through the limits and boundaries in which
they acted and lived... And the wider the doors are opened to them the further the
necromantic epidemic is spread; the more unanimous the mediums and the spiritists in
spreading the magnetic fluid of their evocations, the more power and vitality are acquired
by the glamour."
Madame Jelihovsky says that "Helena Petrovna described many
seances in terms of horror in consequence of the sights she was enabled to see as a result
of her clairvoyance. She saw details hidden from the others present: perfect invasions of
hosts of soulless remains of mortals, woven of fleshly passions, of evil thoughts,
of vicious feelings which had outlived the body". And H.P.B. wrote:
"It stands to reason that this mere earthly refuse, irresistibly
drawn to the earth, cannot follow the soul and spirit -- these highest principles of
mans being. With horror and disgust I often observed how a reanimated shadow of this
kind separated itself from the inside of the medium; how, separating itself from his
astral body and clad in someone elses vesture, it pretended to be someones
relation, causing the person to go into ecstasies and making people open wide their hearts
and their embraces to these shadows whom they sincerely believed to be their dear fathers
and brothers, resuscitated to convince them of life eternal, as well as to see them... Oh,
if they only knew the truth, if they only believed! If they saw, as I have often seen, a
monstrous, bodiless creature seizing hold of someone present at these spiritistic
sorceries! It wraps the man as if with a black shroud, and slowly disappears in him as if
drawn into his body by each of his living pores."
In the year 1878, or thereabouts, a defence of modern Spiritualism was
brought out by Alfred Russell Wallace. This greatly pleased H.P.B., who wrote on the
subject to her sister:
"See how cleverly he proves how mistaken people are who say that
we propagate ancient prejudices and superstitions; how he proves that a body of people who
preach the study of mans nature, who teach the acquirement of eternal bliss as a
consequence of attaining the full perfection of their moral and spiritual powers, is the
chiefest enemy, not only of gross materialism, but also of all kinds of silly bigotry and
myth-worship. Spiritualism is an experimental science; its development -- which is the
object of the Theosophical Society (1) -- will make it possible to find
a foundation for a true philosophy. There is only one truth, and it is higher than
anything else. Theosophy is bound to destroy such meaningless expressions as a
miracle or the supernatural. In nature everything is natural, but
everything is not known; and yet there is nothing more miraculous than her powers, hidden
as well as revealed. Spiritualism, meaning the spiritual powers of man and the deeper
knowledge of the psychical aspects of life, which we Theosophists preach, will cure
the old evils of religious quarrels, owing to which the faith of man in the primitive
truths of immortality and repayment according to deserts is disappearing. Wallace speaks
the truth when he says that Spiritualism well deserves the sympathy of moralists,
philosophers, even of politicians and of everyone who desires the perfecting of our
society and our life."
H.P.B. did not spare herself when portraying the humorous side of her
surroundings. The American Phrenological Society wrote and asked for her portrait and for
a cast of her head, and Professor Buchanan, the phrenologist and psychometer, called on
her for an interview. She describes the incident in writing to Madame Jelihovsky:
"And so this poor victim (victim in view of his awful task) was
sent to me -- a phrenological occultist, who came in the company of a huge bouquet (as if
I were a prima donna!) and with three trunk-loads of compliments. He fingered my head and
fingered it again; he turned it on one side and then on the other. He snorted over me --
snorted like a steam-engine, until we both began to sweat. And at last he spat in disgust.
Do you call this a head?, he says; Its no head at all, but a ball
of contradictions. On this head, he says, there is an endless war
of most conflicting bumps; all Turks and Montenegrins. (2) I cant
make anything of this chaos of impossibilities and confusion of Babel. Here, for
instance, he says, poking my skull with his finger, is a bump of the most
ardent faith and power of belief, and here, side by side with it, the bump of scepticism,
pessimism, and incredulity, proudly swelling itself. And now, if you please, here is the
bump of sincerity for you, walking hand in hand with the bump of hypocrisy and cunning.
The bump of domesticity and love for your country boxes the ears of the bump of wandering
and love of change. And do you mean to say you take this to be a respectable head?
he asked. He seized himself by the hair, and in his despair pulled a considerable lock
from his own respectable head, answering to the highest standards of phrenology... But all
the same he described, drew, and published my poor head for the amusement of the hundred
thousand subscribers to the Phrenological Journal. Alas, alas, heavy is the
crown of Monomach! (3) The aureola of my own greatness,
acquired so undeservedly, is simply crushing me. Here, I send you a copy of my poor head,
which you are requested to swallow without any sauce. A hundred thousand Yankees are going
to feast upon it, and so I am certainly going to save a bit for my own blood!"
"Now listen to this, little brothers", she writes in her next
letter, "I am sending you a great curio. Examine it, wonder at it, and improve by it.
The Freemasons of England, whose Grand-Master is the Prince of Wales, have sent me a
diploma, which means to say that I am raised to a high Masonic dignity, and so my title is
Mysterious Freemason. Ah me! next I shall probably be elected Pope of Rome for
my virtues. The decoration they sent me is very beautiful: a ruby cross and a rose. I send
you the cutting from the Masonic Journal."
Many honors were showered upon H.P.B. as a result of the publication of
Isis Unveiled. A very ancient Society in Benares, founded before the beginning of
the Christian era, called the Sat-Bai, sent her a diploma in Sanskrit, decorated with many
symbols. It is remarkable that in this diploma Helena Petrovna is alluded to as a
"Brother of the female sex". "Henceforward our brother Rad is entitled,
owing to his great knowledge, to power over the inferior grades of ministers, couriers,
listeners, scribes, and the dumb ones." H.P.B. also received a very ancient copy of
the Bhagavad-Gita, in a mother-of-pearl and gold binding, from an Indian Prince. At
the approach of the Russo-Turkish war of 1877-1878, H.P.B. wrote many articles against the
Roman Catholics, because the Pope had blessed the weapons of the Turks. These articles she
signed "A Russian Woman". They created such a stir that Cardinal McCloskey sent
his Jesuit secretary to her, under the pretext of making the acquaintance of "such a
remarkable woman, and pioneer thinker, who knew how to shake off the prejudice of
patriotism and to create for herself an independent position in an independent
country". In February, 1877, she wrote to her sister:
"I told him his endeavors were in vain; that whatever I
personally, as a Theosophist, might believe was no business of his at all; that the faith
of my Russian fathers was sacred to me; that I shall always stand up for this faith and
for Russia, and shall always write against the attacks of the hypocritical Catholics upon
them as long as my hand can hold a pen, and without letting myself be frightened by the
threats of their Pope or the wrath of their Roman Church, the Great Beast of the
Apocalypse!"
The result of this visit was a new article by her against the head of
the Western Christian Church, who blessed Musselmans that they might the better kill
Christians, Slavs, and Russians. Soon after this move Mme. Jelihovsky received newspaper
cuttings containing the report of H.P.B.s real fight -- but this time not with an
ecclesiastic, but with a propagator of materialistic views, of European renown. She writes
to her sister in her usual humorous way:
"I send you, friends, one more article of mine, which received by
no means small honors here and was reprinted by several New York papers. This is the way
it happened: the London scientist Huxley has been visiting here, the progenitor of
protoplasm and high-priest of psychophobia, as I have surnamed him. He delivered
three lectures. At the first, he made short work of Moses and abolished the whole of the Old
Testament, declaring to the public that man is nothing but the great-grandson of a
frog of the Silurian period. At the second he beat everyone, like a new Kit
Kitich. (4) You are all fools, he says, you
dont understand anything... Here is the four-toed foot of Hipparion, the
antediluvian horse, for you, from which it is evident that we, five-toed men, are closely
related to it as well, through our origin. There is an insult for you! But at the
third lecture our wise psychophob tried to sing it altogether too high, and so
started telling fibs. Listen to me, he says, I have looked into the
telescopes, I have whistled under the clouds in balloons, I have looked out for God
everywhere with great zeal; and nowhere, in spite of all my researches, did I see or meet
him! Ergo -- there is no God and there never was any such! It was worth these
peoples while paying him $5,000 for three lectures of this sort of logic.
Also, he says, the human soul... where is it now? Show it to me as I can
show you the heart and the rest of the inwards. Anima Muni, ether, Archos of
Plato... I have searched for the soul with the aid of spy-glasses and microscopes; I have
observed the dying and anatomized the dead, but upon my word of honor, there is no trace
of it anywhere! It is all a lie of the spiritists and the spiritualists. Dont
you, he says, believe them. I felt awfully sorry at all this. So sorry
as even to be angry. So I thought to myself, let me go and write an article against this
self-willed, self-opinionated Kit Kitich. And what do you think? I have written it. And it
came out not at all so bad, as you can see by the enclosed copy. Needless to say, I
immediately took this article, sealed it, and sent it through our corresponding members to
London, to be delivered to Huxley with my most earnest compliments."
H.P.B. was compelled for various reasons to become an American citizen.
This troubled her considerably, as, like all Russians, she was passionately devoted to her
country. She wrote to Madame Fadeef:
"My dearest, I write to you because otherwise I would burst with a
strange feeling which is positively suffocating me. It is the 8th of July to-day, an
ominous day for me, but God only knows whether the omen is good or bad. To-day it is
exactly five years and one day since I came to America, and this moment I have just
returned from the Supreme Court where I gave my oath of allegiance to the American
Republic and Constitution. Now for a whole hour I have been a citizen with equal rights to
the President himself. So far so good: the workings of my original destiny have forced me
into this naturalization, but to my utter astonishment and disgust I was compelled to
repeat publicly after the judge, like a mere parrot, the following tirade: that I
would renounce all obedience to the powers established by him and the government of
Russia, and that I would accept the duty to defend, love, and serve the Constitution of
the United States alone. So help me God in whom I believe! I was awfully scared when
pronouncing this blackguardly recantation of Russia and the emperor. And so I am not only
an apostate to our beloved Russian Church, but a political renegade. A nice scrape to get
into, but how am I to manage to no longer love Russia or respect the emperor? It is easier
to say a thing than to act accordingly."
Endnotes
(1) At this time a wide distinction was drawn
between "Spiritualism" and "Spiritism". It will be seen from
H.P.B.s own definition that she was not speaking of "Spookology" as the
object of the Theosophical Society.
(2) This was during the war in 1877.
(3) The coronation crown of Russia; this was said by
one of the Tsars.
(4) Kit Kitich, or in Academic Russian Tit
Titich, is a stage character whose favorite saying is: "Who can beat Kit Kitich when
Kit Kitich will beat everyone first?" He has long become the synonym of a bully, a
petty, self-willed, domestic tyrant. The popular Russian dialect quite unconsciously
transforms "Titus, the son of Titus" (Tit Titich) into "the Whale, the son
of the Whale" ("Kit" means "whale" in Russian); and H.P.B. used
this unconscious pun to make fun of the biological evolutionist who claimed to be, in some
sense, the son of the whale, and whose doctrine she found to be "very like a
whale", too. But a pun, unlike a bishop, loses by translation.
Continued in Part IV
Return to Table of Contents for
Letters of H.P. Blavatsky to Her Family in Russia