Madame Blavatsky

by Marion Meade

  Shortly before 10 a.m. on the morning of May 11, the hearse moved quietly away from 19 Avenue Road with only three of the staff in attendance, H.P.B. having expressly forbade a cortege, and drove to Waterloo Station. Some twenty-five miles outside of London, at Woking, the coffin was transferred to another hearse for the trip to the Necropolis, where Madame would be cremated. Three months earlier the crematorium apparatus had been out of order and those who had wished to be burned, like Charles Bradlaugh, who had died in January, had to settle for burial instead. But now there was no problem.

  It was a fine May day with blue skies and birds chirping, a chilling contrast to the red-brick crematorium that blended the worst features of a chapel, factory and tile-kiln. The hundred or so persons who gathered to pay their last respects to Helena Petrovna Blavatsky congregated in the mortuary chapel; beyond, through heavy oak folding doors, they could see an inner chamber, where an immense iron object resembling a locomotive boiler stood embedded in masonry. When some of the more curious mourners crowded into the furnace chamber, an attendant opened a door at one end and everyone took turns peeping in, but most gave no more than a quick glance before turning away with a shudder.

  At the sound of the hearse on the gravel outside, people uncovered their heads and watched as the flower-laden coffin was borne into the chapel and laid on an oak trestle; then George Mead stepped forward to read a brief address that had been composed by the Headquarters staff. Finally the door to the cremation room creaked open and four men, who looked like stokers or butchers to eyewitnesses, advanced toward the coffin in a businesslike manner, lifted both coffin and trestle, and carried them inside. Four Theosophists followed this procession to the furnace but returned a moment later. Then the oak doors slammed and were bolted with a final thud like the fall of some macabre portcullis.

  H.P.B.’s ashes were placed in an urn and brought back to her bedroom. Later they were divided into three portions: that destined for India was carried to Adyar by Henry Olcott and buried under a statue that he erected to her memory in the Hall. A second portion was taken to New York by William Judge and today is in the keeping of the Theosophical Society at Pasadena, California. The third, kept in London for a time, was eventually removed to India by Annie Besant and dropped into the Ganges.

  EPITAPH

  Madame Blavatsky’s death was front-page news in England and the United States. The Pall Mall Gazette, for instance, headed its rather satirical obituary “The Prophetess of the Buried Tea-Cup,” but nevertheless admitted that she had been “one of the most remarkable women of our generation,” a person sincerely “possessed” by the ideas she had successfully inculcated in her not unintelligent followers.

  Although most New York papers took the sensational angle and rehashed the fraud charges, the Tribune said that while few women of the nineteenth century had been more persistently maligned, “there are abundant indications that her lifework will vindicate itself, that it will endure and that it will operate for good.” No one in the present generation, it thought, “has done more toward opening the long sealed treasures of Eastern thought, wisdom and philosophy.” The Religio-Philosophical Journal found it hard to believe that the announcement of H.P.B.’s death was not one of her schemes for attracting attention. “As a moral monstrosity she stands without peer among her sex in this century. The specious fake which she originated to gratify her love of deception and ambition, and to cover her real sins, has ended with her death.”

  That was wishful thinking. There was no question of the Society folding at H.P.B.’s death because she had taken care to ensure its continuation with Annie Besant. What was expected to end, however, were the messages from the Mahatmas. Both they and Madame had announced that when she was gone, there would be no more communications. These statements had been interpreted in two ways: by Theosophists to mean that when the Masters’ messenger died, they intended using no other to receive their messages; and by non-Theosophists to reflect the opinion that since Madame herself had written the letters, they would automatically cease.

  So it was a matter of some wonder when, four months after Helena’s death, Annie Besant electrified a sold-out lecture audience at the Hall of Science by casually remarking that if Madame Blavatsky had been a fraud, so was she herself. “I tell you,” she went on, “that since Mdme. Blavatsky left I have had letters in the same handwriting as the letters which she received. Unless you think dead persons can write, surely that is a remarkable feat. You are surprised; I do not ask you to believe me, but I tell you it is so.”

  The news reverberated around the world. Mostly the reaction consisted of jeers, satires, and speculation that Annie was deliberately trying to trigger a posthumous Blavatsky boom. More open-minded people raised the question of whether the Society for Psychical Research had possibly done Madame an injustice; and in any case they thought that Mrs. Besant should be given a chance to explain herself. Newspaper reporters descended on Avenue Road to quiz her for details on the controversial letters. Was this a case of postal communication from the world beyond, or had they arrived by ordinary mail? No, Annie replied, they had come by paranormal means, either falling from the ceiling or appearing suddenly in unexpected places when no other person was in sight. She refused to exhibit the letters to reporters nor, as she was urged, would she submit them to handwriting experts because, she said sharply, the purpose of Theosophy was not to play up the supernatural but to inaugurate a movement of international brotherhood. However, Isabel Cooper-Oakley was not quite so righteous because she wrote to several newspapers swearing that she had examined the letters; they were written in red or blue crayon on rice paper and the handwriting corresponded exactly with that in the communications H.P.B. had received from the Masters.

  The furor went on for several months: scores of letters were printed daily in the papers; attendance at the Blavatsky Lodge skyrocketed, as did that at Annie’s public lectures; the Theosophical Press Bureau was deluged with hundreds of letters a day and could barely keep up with the avalanche of clippings waiting to be filed; Mabel Collins’ most current novel, Morial the Mahatma, was being serialized in the magazine Short Cuts; a stylish hatter announced its new Mahatma hat for only three shillings, eleven pence. Among smart society people, the new trendy greeting was to ask one’s friends, “How’s your karma today?”

  Once again, however, the Theosophical miracles proved nothing of the kind; in this case, they were only part of a bitter struggle for power. Before H.P.B.’s death she had verbally invested Mrs. Besant with control of the Esoteric Section and had also informed William Judge that Annie would be “my successor when I shall be called to leave you.” As soon as news of her passing reached Judge, he cabled Annie: “Do nothing till I arrive” and took the next steamer for England; he proposed that the two of them share the Esoteric leadership, he in America and she in Europe. It was Judge who discovered Madame’s supply of rice paper and crayons, as well as the brass seal of the Mahatmas, and it was he who slipped a note into Annie’s drawer with the words, “Judge’s plan is right.” She accepted the message as genuine and the division of jurisdiction was made: the Mahatma messages continued.

  Two years later, a number of Theosophists, Mrs. Besant included, were beginning to question the genuineness of the letters and some went so far as to speculate that they did not come from Tibet at all but had been written by Judge. Admitted Annie: “When I publicly said that I had received, after H.P.B.’s death, letters in the writing H. P. Blavatsky had been accused of forging, I referred to letters given to me by Mr. Judge, and, as they were in the well-known script, I never dreamed of challenging their source. I know now that they were not written or precipitated by the Master, and also that they were done by Mr. Judge.”

  When his accusers asked for proof that the Mahatma letters were genuine, Judge refused to cooperate but, writing to a friend, he sniffed: “Proofs. Proofs be damned. What proof did they ever get from H.P.B.? None.” In 1894, a Judicial Committee was appointed to look into the a
lleged fraud, but Judge claimed that the Committee had no right to make an inquiry because it involved the question of whether or not the Masters existed. In the end, the Committee upheld him on that point and matters reached an impasse. In November of that year, Judge announced that he had received orders from the Masters insisting Mrs. Besant be removed as European head of the Esoteric Section because she was under the influence of “Dark Powers of evil”; instead the Masters had appointed him as the sole head. Most European Theosophists laughed at Judge, while most of the Americans supported him. The situation was resolved on April 28, 1895, when three-quarters of the American branches seceded from the parent Society and formed a new organization called “The Theosophical Society in America,” electing Judge as its lifetime president. Over the next several years, there was further splintering of the American Society.

  William Judge died in 1896, Henry Olcott in 1907. During the last months of Olcott’s life, his thinking became increasingly muddled; in his final illness he would leap out of bed and fall to his knees, claiming that K.H. and M. were in the room. His death left Annie Besant as the acknowledged head of the Society. Soon after, she made her permanent home at Adyar and became part of the destiny of India.

  It seemed the Society’s karma to suffer periodic scandals. After H.P.B.’s death, Annie Besant came to depend greatly on Charles Leadbeater and made him assistant secretary of the European Section, after which he achieved a solid reputation as a clairvoyant, writer, speaker and teacher. In the early years of the twentieth century, he made long lecture tours of the United States, Canada and Australia, always accompanied by several young boys. The growing gossip about him was indignantly denied by Annie Besant, until, in 1906, two of his proteges told their shocked parents that Leadbeater had encouraged them to masturbate. A type-written note in cipher was found on the floor of a Toronto apartment where he had stayed with one of the boys and was said to have been written by Leadbeater. Decoded, it read: “Glad sensation is so pleasant. Thousand kisses, darling.”

  Leadbeater denied having written the incriminating note, but he did not deny having advocated masturbation. He maintained that when celibacy was impossible and marriage out of the question, masturbation was a lesser evil than consorting with prostitutes. This view was fiercely condemned by most Theosophists, and, when the Society put him on trial, he accounted for his sexual philosophy by saying that in a former incarnation he had been an ancient Greek. He was asked to resign. When made public, this scandal shook the Society to its foundations; three years later, however, Annie Besant took him back into her advisory circle and he was invited to rejoin the Society by a nearly unanimous vote of the general secretaries.

  None of this dimmed Annie’s personal prestige; indeed it increased with the years, particularly in India, where she attracted some of the country’s most outstanding minds. Thirteen-year-old Jawaharlal Nehru joined the Society after hearing her lecture at Allahabad and was initiated by Annie herself. He would always retain warm admiration for her and call her “the most magnificent lady” he had ever met, but the ideas of Indian nationalism soon drove Theosophy from his head. Politically oriented herself, she became president of the Indian National Congress and was once imprisoned briefly by her own countrymen for her activities on behalf of Indian independence. With the rise of Mohandas Gandhi, her influence in the Indian Home Rule movement began to wane and it was then she confined herself to Theosophy. Becoming more mystical, she instituted rites and rituals and adopted flowing white robes as her everyday dress.

  In 1909 Annie took as her protege a young Hindu boy, Jiddu Krishnamurti, and before long she was hailing him as the avatar of the New Messiah who would regenerate the world. It was the Mahatmas themselves, she said, who had warned her of the coming of the World Teacher and now she believed that she had found him. The care and education of both Jiddu and his brother Nitya were entrusted to Charles Leadbeater, despite the fact that the boys’ father brought an unsuccessful suit for the custody of his sons. Mrs. Besant, convinced that the voice of Jesus spoke through Krishnamurti, announced to the Associated Press that “the Divine Spirit has descended once more on a man, Krishnamurti, one who in his life is literally perfect... The World Teacher is here.”

  In the 1920s, Mahatmas Koot Hoomi and Morya were still very much alive in the minds of Theosophists; their messages were received by Leadbeater, Francesca Arundale’s nephew George and a few others who claimed to be communicating clairvoyantly on the astral plane. Many of these messages contained directives for Krishnamurti, and once Master K.H. was said to have appeared in astral form to Nitya, with the message that Krishnaji was to develop a larger vocabulary.

  As Annie grew older, she offered her protege reverence and humility in such an ostentatious manner that she would insist upon sitting on the floor at his feet during public events. Nevertheless, by 1926, it was clear that the Coming was going wrong. Krishnamurti seemed to be moving away from the role written for him; there were occasions when he was heard to speak as if he did not believe in the Masters. Three years later he severed himself from the Theosophical Society and repudiated all claims to Messiahship, although he has continued his career as a spiritual teacher. It had never occurred to Annie that the World Teacher might disown the organization that had proclaimed him, or that the Masters could have been wrong.

  In her eighties, she was visibly weary and there were rumors among her intimates of her senility, but to the world at large she remained one of the most remarkable women of the age. The New York Times placed her in the company of Madame Curie, Jane Addams and Anna Pavlova; a London paper called her one of the most unique women of all time, to be ranked with the Duchess of Marlborough and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. She died at Adyar on September 20, 1933, age eighty-six, after five days of semi-consciousness in which she refused to eat or drink water. Her body, clad in white silk, was cremated on a pyre of sandalwood.

  To the last she believed that she had kept faith with H.P.B.’s message, but the fact was that she had not; along with Leadbeater, Arundale and others, she gradually betrayed the original vision by enveloping Theosophy in a religious atmosphere that its founder would have considered odious. Helena’s sublime aims of brotherhood were neglected in expectation of the Messiah, her Esoteric Buddhism watered down and relegated to the background in favor of an Esoteric Christianity. Finally a full circle was made when Leadbeater and Arundale declared themselves bishops and, under the name of the Liberal Catholic Church, instituted candles, High Mass and vestments, and labored to build up exactly that which H.P.B. had tried to destroy.

  The Theosophical Society today continues to thrive in sixty countries. There are approximately forty thousand members worldwide, with some fifty-five hundred in the United States. The international headquarters, still at Adyar, is now a beautiful estate of two hundred sixty-six acres along the banks of the Adyar River, and the Adyar Library is world famous for its unique collection of Oriental literature.

  Each year, Theosophists commemorate the anniversary of H.P.B.’s death on May 8, which they call White Lotus Day.

  APPENDIX A:

  The Question of H.P.B.’s Psi Faculties

  H.P.B. is associated with a wide range of paranormal phenomena, some of which was confirmed by witnesses. Physical phenomena she is said to have produced include spirit photography, levitation of objects, raps, apports, poltergeists, materializations called “ectoplasm,” and out-of-body experiences. In the category of mental phenomena, Madame Blavatsky claims to have had psi faculties for telepathy, clairvoyance, clairaudience, clairsentience (the sensing of unseen presences), and mediumistic communications.

  Whether or not H.P.B. possessed all or some of these capabilities, it is necessary to examine the evidence of such phenomena because they are as controversial today as they were during the past century. Few parapsychologists are convinced about the reality of most of the physical phenomena that flourished in H.P.B.’s time. Such things as ectoplasm, apports, levitation and psychic photography are reg
arded as doubtful, firstly because almost every physical medium of the nineteenth century is known to have cheated on occasion, thus casting doubt on the genuineness of all the other phenomena. Secondly, very few agreed to scientific testing under controlled conditions. It is ironic, and perhaps to be expected, that today when the techniques for detecting fraud have advanced enormously, physical mediums have become extremely rare. Just about the only physical phenomena for which there is some evidence would be “poltergeists,” now termed Recurrent Spontaneous Psychokinesis, or RSPK.

  In recent years the paranormal phenomena receiving the most attention from both parapsychologists and the general public are those falling into the category of mental phenomena. The widely held assumption is that certain persons do have the psi faculty (General Extrasensory Perception). Recently, complicated machinery and procedures have been devised to determine the existence of telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition and retrocognition. A type of mental phenomena currently under investigation, one which directly relates to H. P. Blavatsky, involves mediumistic data. The term medium, first used in a religious context by Spiritualists to denote a person who could communicate with the surviving spirits of the dead, is no longer in vogue. Parapsychologists prefer “sensitive” or “psychic,” terms that do not imply acceptance of survival after death.

  One kind of sensitive is the “trance medium,” who is able to put herself (the majority of psychics are women) into a self-induced hypnotic state that may range from a very light dissociation to an extremely deep one. While in this altered state of consciousness, another personality appears to control the psychic’s body and voice, either by involuntary (“automatic”) writing or by “direct voice,” that is, directly controlling the sensitive’s entire body. It is a matter of debate whether a psychic’s controlling personality is in fact the discarnate it often claims to be, or merely a secondary personality, or a dream-creation existing only when the psychic is entranced. The dream-creation is consolidated by repetition into personalities consistent enough to play their assigned roles.