Madame Blavatsky

by Marion Meade

  By April, 1975, H.P.B. was finally beginning to develop a profile of her mission as an ethical and religious teacher. To be sure, there had for twenty-five years been fleeting glimpses of a special destiny but up until now the exact nature of this life work had eluded her. Suddenly, revelations germinating for forty-four years began to bubble into her consciousness, prompted either by the presence of John King, or by her own subconscious desires. She now felt certain that a secret Brotherhood had elected her to be its spokesperson in the world; it was she who would carry a message of Truth: that is, the secrets of the universe that lay hidden from a race ill-equipped to grasp the ungrasp-able. Each century, she contended, the keepers of the Truth seek someone to act as their agent; in the nineteenth century, however unsatisfactory she might appear to others, they had chosen Helena for this exalted task.

  No one can know if Helena viewed the discovery of her special mission with misgivings, or whether or not she questioned the validity of her perceptions. Did she consider that the Brotherhood might be nothing more than a functional symbol of her unconscious? Or was it a sign of mental illness? Did it occur to her that these images might have been long languishing in her unconscious, waiting for the chance to break through? Even so, her doubts must have quickly been overpowered by the radiance of her vision.

  As evidenced in her correspondence, Helena saw herself as a psychological cripple whose nervousness and mercurial temper revolted the sober-minded. Still, she was guiltless, since she had been born that way and could now even see how her disabilities helped qualify her for the unique future role. Her selection, she believed, was less the result of personal merit than the total willingness to sacrifice herself for the propagation of great truths. Few, if any, besides her would voluntarily accept the persecution and ridicule sure to accompany such a thankless assignment.

  The secret group under whose direct command she worked, she called the Brotherhood of Luxor. Unlike John King, the Brotherhood were not entities from the cosmic plane of existence, but rather living men with headquarters somewhere in Egypt. The chief adept and supervisor was Serapis Bey, but there were seven associate brothers, among them: Tuitit Bey, Polydorus Isurenus, Robert More. Some of their names were never revealed. While she called them her “Masters,”73 she does not seem to have conceived of herself as their servant but, rather, as their equal, as their St. Paul.

  Even though the spirit John King had pointed her in her present direction, she seems to have been uncertain about how to fit him into the overall scheme. She wrote to Aksakov that “John and I are acquainted from old times”74 before he began to materialize for every run-of-the-mill medium. For General Lippitt, she added further details: for the past fourteen years John King had been with her daily and saved her life in the shipwreck of the Eumonia and at the battle of Mentana. “He loves me, I know it.”75

  From these statements, it appears that she identified King with the invisible protector of her childhood. Eventually, however, John would find himself replaced by more dignified spirits, and even now she realized that John was too earthy to act as anything but messenger and servant of the Brotherhood of Luxor.

  Meanwhile Henry Olcott remained at Sansom Street with H.P.B. and Michael. Their interminable discussions must have excluded Michael, and no doubt the other odd happenings in the household did not contribute to his peace of mind. Helena, in addition, did not deign to concern herself with domestic matters. Since there were only a few ragged towels in the house, Henry bought a length of toweling, which he and Helena cut into pieces. Noting that she was about to use the fabric unhemmed, he protested such shoddy housekeeping and shamed her into getting out a needle. Suddenly, kicking the table, she yelled, “Get out, you fool!” but hastily explained that her remark had been directed not at Henry, but at an invisible being who had been tugging her skirt.

  “Capital,” Henry joked. “Make it hem these towels.”

  Towels, needles and thread were locked in a bookcase. Fifteen minutes later, Henry heard a squeaky sound “like a mouse’s pipe” and Helena informed him that “that nuisance” had finished the sewing. “So,” Olcott reported, “I unlocked the bookcase door and found the dozen towels actually hemmed, though after a clumsy fashion that would disgrace the youngest child in an infant-school sewing class.”76 However poor the job, he could not deny that the towels were indeed hemmed.

  On another day, Helena disappeared into her bedroom and did not return. Henry called her name, but there was no answer, and, when he looked in the closet and under the bed, he found no trace of her. Finally she did return and to his inquiries as to her whereabouts, she laughed and responded that she had had some occult business to attend to, and had made herself invisible.”77

  It would be years before Henry attributed these feats to hypnosis. Then, in Philadelphia, he was at least mystified, if not “psychologized,” as Helena had boasted he was. For Helena, it was less a matter of conning Henry than of comprehending the true nature of his character; he was clearly an extremely suggestible man who could be influenced against his better judgment, but who was also quick to respond to any appeal to his finer self. Above all, he was tantalized by occult knowledge, and eagerly sought to become her student. Little by little, H.P.B. set about weaning him both from Spiritualism and from his family, mistresses and clubs.

  By this time, while publicly portraying herself as a leading Spiritualistic supporter, she privately was beginning to break away from its orthodoxy. American Spiritualism, she decided, was a kitchen garden of spooks and ghouls; her version loftily preached the sacred truth of “spiritual spiritualism.” It was her duty, she believed, “to purify the new religion from all its filthy weeds.... In this desire and effort I have been thitherto alone. I am only now beginning to collect adepts; I have collected half a dozen.”78

  Actually she had corraled only Henry Steel Olcott, and even of him she could not be absolutely certain. What is interesting about her subjugation of Olcott is its matter-of-factness. Before his return to New York, Helena had convinced Olcott that the two leading Spiritualist papers, Banner of Light and the Religio-Philosophical Journal, were no longer dependable and suggested instead they support the more modest Boston periodical, Spiritual Scientist. While its publisher, Gerry Brown, was young and open to new ideas, his operation was failing until Helena threw herself into saving him. Contributing fifty dollars of her own money, she asked friends to invest and nagged Henry to find New York subscribers. “For God’s sake, do if you can. Why, they say the Lotus Club and all your numberless acquaintances can furnish hundreds and hundreds.”79

  Finally she suggested that Olcott fund and write a subscription circular for the Scientist. Titled “Important to Spiritualists,” the piece was a simple six-paragraph plea for readers. When Olcott had finished correcting the proofs, H.P.B. suggested that, rather than signing his own name, he attribute the work to “the Committee of Seven, BROTHERHOOD OF LUXOR.” And who, Henry demanded, was the Brotherhood of Luxor? At which point Helena revealed that her work was being supervised by a committee of seven adepts from the Egyptian branch of a universal mystic brotherhood. Henry, as usual, was impressed.

  H.P.B.’s next project for Henry was the creation of a “Miracle Club” for the investigation of psychic phenomena. Club members would be entitled to attend private seances, but were forbidden to speak of their experiences or even to disclose the address of the meeting place. As club medium, H.P.B. suggested David Dana, whom she said was an upstanding young man, whose brother, Charles Dana, was editor of the New York Sun.

  The club lasted only a few weeks, mainly because H.P.B. quarreled with David Dana, who, despite his distinguished family, demanded payment for his services. As the loyal Olcott put it delicately, “the wretch failed utterly not only as a medium, but was also reported to us as having spread calumnies against the one who had done him kindness.”80

  The failure of the Miracle Club hardly mattered to H.P.B., who was feeling increasingly unwell. John had cured her leg and ordered
three days of complete rest, but she had failed to follow his instructions, the leg felt “worse than ever” and she had caught a nasty head cold.81 No doubt John’s medical advice was echoed by her human physician, Dr. Seth Pancoast, a student of the Cabbala, whose advice she customarily ignored. As if these ailments were not enough, she awoke one morning at 3 a.m. dreaming of Nikifor Blavatsky, a phenomenon she took as “a premeditated insult on the part of Providence.”82

  On April 26, despite her physical discomfort, she made her way to Riverhead, Long Island, where her case against Clementine Gerebko, the woman who had absconded with Helena’s thousand dollars, finally had come to trial. For reasons known only to herself, Helena insisted upon giving her testimony in French so that an interpreter had to be rounded up, by no means an easy matter in rural Long Island. Since she planned to act as her own principal witness, her two attorneys, William Ivins and William Fales, carefully briefed her on the crucial points to make during her testimony. To their consternation, she ignored their advice once she took the witness stand, and proceeded in direct opposition to their instructions.

  When the attorneys took her to task, H.P.B. casually replied that John King had been standing at her side the entire time dictating her testimony. To this, Ivins and Fales could only shake their heads.

  Still, a month later, Judge Calvin E. Pratt decided in Helena’s favor and ordered Gerebko to pay her $1146 plus the costs of the legal action.

  In New York sometime in early May, Henry Olcott received his first letter from the Brotherhood of Luxor. Although postmarked Philadelphia, the envelope appeared to be of foreign origin, possibly Egyptian. The Brotherhood seemed to communicate only in English and French, for the black-glazed envelope inscribed in gold ink and sealed with red wax was addressed to “Etats-Unis d’Amerique” and also included the words “Pour Messager Special.” Opening this exotic missive, Olcott found a thick sheet of green paper inscribed with the same gold ink:

  FROM THE BROTHERHOOD OF LUXOR, Section the Vth to Henry S. Olcott.

  Brother Neophyte, we greet thee.

  He who seeks us find us. Rest thy mind—banish all foul doubt. We keep watch over our faithful soldiers. Sister Helen is a valiant, trustworthy servant. Open thy Spirit to conviction, have faith and she will lead thee to the Golden Gate of truth. She neither fears sword nor fire but her soul is sensitive to dishonour and she hath reason to mistrust the future. Our good brother “John” hath verily acted rashly, but he meant well. Son of the World, if thou dost hear them both. TRY.

  The Brotherhood strong urged Henry to “effect an opprobrious punishment” on Dr. Henry Child who had exposed the Holmeses (by what means they did not specify) and to do his best to keep the Miracle Club afloat. The communication was signed:

  TUITIT BEY

  Observatory of Luxor

  Tuesday Morning.

  Day of Mars.83

  Subsequent letters arrived from Serapis Bey, who exhorted Henry to “Be courageous and hopeful,” to “Try,”84 and to work on Gerry Brown who suddenly had grown balky about turning his paper into Helena’s and Henry’s mouthpiece. According to Serapis, Brown had a sensitive nature “not unlike the Thibet Lotus—it shrinks and withdraws from the hand which tries to force open its tender petals.” He advised Olcott to see him alone, to “try to make him open his heart to you,”85 and to convince Brown to increase the paper to sixteen pages. Naturally, Helena was also growing disgusted with Brown and later she voiced her opinion with characteristic bluntness: “The man might have become a POWER, he preferred to remain an Ass.”86

  Apart from needing an outlet for her work, Helena had her reasons for boosting the Scientist. To her dismay, Spiritualism was falling so quickly out of vogue with the public that major papers would no longer touch the subject. Olcott blamed it on the Katie King scandal but he may simply have mistaken for a trend what was actually a fad. Even Helena had to admit that “it seems to be all over.”87 Crying disaster, she keened to Alexander Aksakov:

  Look at poor A. J. Davis; he can barely keep body and soul together, his books are not selling at all. The Banner has fallen from 25,000 subscribers to 12,000. Olcott is sitting on heaps of his People from the Other World, like Marius on the ruins of Carthage, and thinking bitter things. Not a thousand copies of his book have been sold in five months.88

  The American economy had not yet pulled itself out of the slump of 1873, and even H.P.B. could observe the effects of depression on her own life and on Betanelly’s foundering business. “There is terrible panic,” she wrote. “Those who have got money hide it, and those who have not are dying of hunger.” She told Aksakov that the previous year she had earned six thousand dollars by her writings, but the figure seems wildly high for a time when established writers rarely made five hundred. She went on to explain that she had spent it all on the Cause and once again faced hunger. Since she had Michael, she was being less than candid, but she still was not mentioning a husband to Aksakov. “Here, you see, is my trouble, tomorrow there will be nothing to eat. Something quite out of the way must be invented.”89

  Critical biographers of Madame Blavatsky have pounced upon those last words as evidence of crass commercialism, but this judgment seems overly harsh. Her devotion to Spiritualism had never gone much beyond lip service, and her private plans lay in a different direction. Her constant insecurity about money reflected less a preoccupation with wealth than with the assurance of subsistence. Her basic wants were restricted to food, books, travel; fashion did not interest her. What she needed more than money, however, was a new cause to sustain her, now that the prop of Spiritualism had been pulled from beneath her.

  That she had gone out of fashion as swiftly as she had come in thoroughly shook Helena’s confidence. In addition, her physical condition continued to deteriorate until, toward the middle of May, periostitis and partial mortification of the leg set in. When Dr. Pancoast told her the limb could not be saved, Helena consulted a clairvoyant, Mrs. Michener, who promised that amputation need not be necessary “if I do as she tells me.”90 Despite Mrs. Michener’s treatment, Helena, in excruciating pain, saw her leg, swollen to twice its normal size, begin to turn black.

  On May twenty-sixth, she again summoned Dr. Pancoast who urged amputation. Terrified and enraged, Helena began to scream that she didn’t care if the leg was mortified; she would not let him cut it off. Michael’s long face infuriated her further, and she insisted that he leave the house. He could come back, she shouted, “when I write that I am better or when somebody else writes him that I am gone home, or kicked the bucket....”

  Once Michael and Pancoast had left, she sent for Mrs. Michener “and had a talk with her. In short I had prepared myself to die—didn’t care—but decided to die with both legs.” For the next two days she cursed Michael for “a soft ninny” and the doctor as an “unclean goblin” as her maid applied cold water poultices to reduce the swelling. Unbelievably, within forty-eight hours the swollen area looked considerably better, and the person most surprised was Helena herself. Of course, she immediately invented a somewhat repellent miracle to account for it, writing to General Lippitt that “a white pup, a dog by night laid across the leg, cured all in no time.”

  Two weeks later, she was still “very weak, cross, and generally feel mad from 12 a.m. to 12 p.m.,” but apparently had enough energy to write an entertaining letter to Lippitt: “Fancy my father’s daughter—on a wooden leg; fancy my leg going in the spirit land before me...” Her dramatic recovery she now attributed to her own willpower or “because I am not wanted yet in the bosom of Abraham.”91 With Michael still barred from the house, she was being cared for by Madame Magnon, who had come in from New York, and by David Dana, with whom she must again have been on good terms. Her third companion, John King, had finally begun to get on her nerves. “He has his vices and considerably vicious vices, too,”92 she complained breezily to Lippitt, rambling on to describe every occasion on which John had behaved spitefully, lied, stole, and forged people’s handwriting
s. Obviously she was feeling better because she told Lippitt that in two or three weeks she planned to visit Hiram Corson, a Cornell professor and well-known Spiritualist with whom she had been corresponding, and after leaving Ithaca she proposed she might go to the seashore until October.

  What she desperately wanted was to sequester herself in “some isolated spot on this globe.”93 Instead, she had to face Michael. That same day, rebelling against being locked out of his own house, he returned to force a resolution. Helena, at best ambivalent about her husband, did not want him back but dreaded losing him. She must have been profoundly shocked when Michael, at the end of his rope, threatened to return to Russia. Since his business was virtually bankrupt and his wife no longer loved him, why should he remain?

  Helena responded by withdrawing into what appeared to be a trance. She lay on her bed, Michael recalled, “as one dead for two or three hours at the time, pulse and heart stopped, cold and pale as dead.”94 The next morning his distress gave way to bewilderment when he found Helena sitting up in bed, writing letters and acting as if nothing had happened. This cheerfulness continued until the pettiest household disruption would propel her into a temper, after which she lapsed into trance, seemingly oblivious to her surroundings.

  According to Magnon and Dana, there was no cause for alarm when Madame appeared to be comatose; it only meant her spirit was traveling. Perhaps, Michael retorted tartly, but to him she certainly looked dead. By this point he felt sufficiently suspicious to check with the maid, who told him that Madame rose during the night and walked around on her leg; it was only during the day that she became paralyzed.