Madame Blavatsky and Her Theosophy

Arthur Lillie

• Publisher: Jovian Press
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781537822662
• Topic: Philosophie
• Subtopic: Orientalische Philosophie

Still more remarkable has been the success with which this remarkable woman has succeeded in driving into the somewhat wooden head of the Anglo-Saxon the conviction-long ago arrived at by a select circle of students and Orientalists, of whom Professor Max Muller may be said to be the most distinguished living representative-that the East is, in matters of religious and metaphysical speculation, at least entitled to claim as much respect as the West. That indeed is stating it very mildly...

CHAPTER I. TIBET

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MADEMOISELLE HELENA PETROVNA HAHN WAS born at Ekaterinoslow, in the south of Russia, in 1831. She is described as being what is called mediumistic from her earliest youth. She was more in the company of phantom “hunchbacks” and Roussalkas (water sprites) than of flesh and blood playmates. Mr. Sinnett argues from this that the Mahatmas of Tibet put themselves in communication with the young girl from her very earliest childhood. But an alternative theory, of course, would be that the “Masters” (Sinnett, “Life of Madame Blavatsky,” p. 24) were never anything more than the spooks or spirit guides of a medium.

On the 7th July, 1848, Mademoiselle Hahn married General Blavatsky, a gentleman “nearer seventy than sixty.” With a humour that developed early she called her husband a “plumeless raven.” For three months they lived together, but not as husband and wife, and then she left him, Mr. Sinnett tells us.

If we wish to study a given religion, say Islam, we must begin with a picture of the Founder as he appeared to his disciples. We must study his biography, his teachings. We must examine the text of his Bible and see what the “apologists” have to say before we allow the “critical school” to cut in. From October, 1848, to May, 1857, comes a gap in the Russian lady’s existence. During these years she is said to have visited Tibet and learnt the secrets of the Mahatmas.

“After a course of occult study, carried on for seven years in a Himalayan retreat, Madame Blavatsky,” says Mr. Sinnett (“Occult World,” p. 24), “returned to the world.” A seven years’ probation, be also tells us, is considered quite necessary before any secrets are divulged to the chela. (“Occult World,” p. 17.) Madame Blavatsky confirms him here. In the journal called Light (August 9th, 1884) she wrote thus:—“I will tell him (a correspondent) also that I have lived in different periods in Little Tibet and Great Tibet, and these combined periods form more than seven years.”

But if this gap of eight years is very important, it is a little unfortunate that the school of the apologists have not given us very clear details about it. She went to “Egypt, Greece, and other parts of Eastern Europe.” At Paris “a famous mesmerist, still living as I write,” says Mr. Sinnett, “though an old man now, discovered her wonderful psychic gifts, and was very eager to retain her under his control as a sensitive. But the chains had not yet been forged that could make her a prisoner. And she quitted Paris precipitately to escape this influence. She went over to London and passed some time in company with an old Russian lady of her acquaintance, the Countess B——, at Mivart’s Hotel.”

The visit to Paris is dated, according to conjecture, at about a year after her leaving her husband’s house, but she kept no diary, and “at this distance of time can give no very connected story of her complicated wanderings” (p. 60). Mr. Sinnett more than once apologises for his vagueness, but this is unfortunate, as it gives an opening to the critical school. She went to New Orleans and studied black magic with the Voodoos. In the year 1851 she was in Paris (p. 62), but this is giving her very little time for her “Course of occult study carried on for seven years in a Himalayan retreat.”

In the same year (Olcott, “People from the Other World,” p. 320) she passed the summer at Daratschi Tchag, an Armenian place of summer resort in the plain of Mount “Ararat.” Her husband, being Vice-Governor of Erivan, had a bodyguard of 50 Khourd warriors, amongst whom one of the strongest and bravest, named Safar Ali Bek was detailed as the lady’s personal escort. In 1875 this Khourd, having died, came to her at a séance in America, but this little anecdote scarcely harmonises with the statement made by Mr. Sinnett, that she fled from her husband for good and all in the month of October, 1848.

And in a short time the dates given to us by Mr. Sinnett begin to perplex us still more. It is recorded that in 1855 Madame Blavatsky went to India, and in the month of September, 1856, she passed into Tibet for the first time, being smuggled in “in an appropriate disguise” by a solitary Shaman, her “sole protector in those dreary wastes.” It is added that she came out again, and left India a short time before the Indian Mutiny broke out in 1857. This makes at most seven months instead of seven years.

For her trip to Tibet she started from Kashmir with “the Brothers N——,” and an ex-Lutheran minister, Mr. K——. The Brothers N—— were promptly sent back at the frontier, and the ex-Lutheran clergyman was arrested by fever, but not before he had witnessed a striking miracle.

Travellers from Tibet have told us that certain Lamas, to benefit humanity, abstain from Nirvana, and on their deathbed announce to their disciples that they will be reborn in such and such a spot. “At the death of one of these, the disciples repair to the place he has indicated and search for a newly-born child which bears the sacred marks, and is for other reasons the most probable incarnation of the departed saint. Having found the child, they leave him with his mother till he is four years old. Then they return, bringing with them a quantity of praying books, rosaries, praying wheels, bells, and other priestly articles, amongst which are those which belonged to the late incarnation. Then the child has to prove that he is the new incarnation by recognising the property that was his, and by relating reminiscences of his past” (“Where Three Empires meet,” E. F. Knight, c. viii.).

It is further added that this incarnating Lama is called a “skooshok,” and that only four of them exist in Ladak. Bat if we are to believe Madame Blavatsky, ordinary travellers can see these and greater miracles, even where no Lama has died.

“About four days’ journey from Islamabad, at an insignificant mud village, whose only redeeming feature was its magnificent lake, we stopped for a few days’ rest.” A native of Russia, a Shaman of Siberia, was of the party, and he told them that a large party of “Lamaic saints” on pilgrimage to various shrines, had taken up their abode in a cave temple near.” The Buddhist Trinity (Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha) were travelling with the party, a fact that gave the Bhikshus the power of working “miracles.” The Lutheran minister had plainly a little of the old Adam in him, for this statement seemed to have fired his old Protestant hatred of miracles. He determined to expose these cheats, and in consequence paid a visit to the Pase Budhu, the chief of these Lamaic saints, and demanded to see the process of a “re-incarnation” of “Buddha” in the body of a little child. This demand was naturally refused, as it is not stated that any old Lama had died, or that, in fact, any old Lama was within an hundred miles of the place. But Madame Blavatsky produced an A-yu from her pocket, and the Lamaic saints at once became her devoted servants. An A-yu is a talisman of cornelian with a triangle engraved upon it. “An infant of three or four months was procured from its mother, a poor woman of the neighbourhood,” and the magical processes began:—

“Suddenly we saw the child not raise itself, but violently jerked, as it were, into a sitting posture. A few more jerks, and then like an automaton sot in motion by concealed wires, the four months’ baby stood upon its feet. Not a hand had been outstretched, not a motion made, nor a word spoken, and yet here was a baby in arms standing as firm as a man.”

Here the testimony of the sceptical Mr. K is cited:—

“The baby turned his head and looked at me with an expression of intelligence that was simply awful. It sent a chill through me. The miraculous creature, as I fancied, making two steps towards me, resumed his sitting posture, and without removing his eyes from mine, repeated sentence by sentence, in what I supposed to be Tibetan language, the very words which I had been told in advance are commonly spoken at the incarnations of Buddha, beginning with, I am Buddha! I am the old Lama! I am his spirit in a new body, etc.” (“Isis Unveiled,” ii., p. 602).

But if Mr. K—— knew no Tibetan language, how did he know that this is what the baby said? Also, to what “old Lama” was the infant alluding? Islamabad is in Kashmir, which is peopled chiefly by Hindoos. There are no “skooshoks” within at least a six weeks’ journey. We will make some more quotations:—

“Many of the lamaseries contain schools of magic, but the most celebrated is the collegiate monastery of the Shutukt, where there are over 30,000 monks attached to it, the lamasery forming quite a little city. Some of the female nuns possess marvellous psychological powers” (“Isis,” vol. ii., p. 609).

She says also that the real religion of Buddha is not to be judged by the fetishism of some of his followers in Siam and Burmah:—

“It is in the chief lamaseries of Mongolia and Tibet that it has taken refuge, and here Shamanism, if so we may call it, is practised to the utmost limits of intercourse allowed between man and ‘spirit.’ The religion of the Lamas has faithfully preserved the primitive science of magic, and produces as great feats now as in the days of Kublai Khan…. At Buddha-lla, or rather Foht-lla (Buddha’s mount), in the most important of the many thousand lamaseries of that country, the sceptre of the Bodhhisgat (sic) is seen floating unsupported in the air, and its motions regulate the actions of the community. Whenever a Lama is called to account in the presence of the superior of the monastery, he knows beforehand it is useless for him to tell an untruth. The ‘regulator of justice’ (the sceptre) is there, and its waving motion, either approbatory or otherwise, decides instantaneously and unerringly the question of his guilt” (“Isis,” vol. ii., p. 616).

“The lives of these holy men, miscalled idle vagrants, cheating beggars, who are supposed to pass their existence in preying upon the easy credulity of their victims, are miracles in themselves. Miracles because they show what a determined will and a perfect purity of life and purpose are able to accomplish, and to what degree of preternatural asceticism a human body can be subjected, and yet live and reach a ripe old age. At Bras-ss-Pungs, the Mongolian college, where over three hundred magicians (sorciers, as the French missionaries call them) teach about twice as many pupils, from twelve to twenty, the latter have many years to wait for their final initiation. Not one in a hundred reaches the highest goal” (“Isis,” vol. ii.,p. 617).

The Buddhist priests dance at times:—

“As in the instances of Corybantic and Bacchantic fury among the ancient Greeks, the spiritual crisis of the Shaman exhibits itself in violent dances and wild gestures. Little by little the lookers-on feel the spirit of imitation aroused in them. Seized with an irresistible impulse, they dance and become in their turn ecstatics” (“Isis,” vol. ii., p. 625).

Here is another marvel:—

“If our scientists are unable to imitate the mummy embalming of the Egyptians, how much greater would be their surprise to see, as we have, dead bodies preserved by alchemical art, so that after the lapse of centuries they seem as though the individuals were sleeping? The complexions were as fresh, the skin as elastic, the eyes as natural and sparkling as though they were in the full flush of health. The bodies of certain very eminent personages are laid upon catafalques in rich mausoleums.”

We now come to more important matters, the cave libraries:—

“Moreover, in all the large and wealthy lamaseries there are subterranean crypts and cave libraries cut in the rock wherever the gonpa and lhakhang are situated in the mountains. Beyond the Western Tsaydam, in the solitary passes of Kuen-lun, there are several such hiding-places. Along the ridge of Altyn Toga, whose soil no European foot has ever trodden so far, there exists a certain hamlet, lost in a deep gorge. It is a small cluster of houses, a hamlet rather than a monastery, with a poor-looking temple in it, with one old Lama, a hermit, living near to watch it. Pilgrims say that the subterranean galleries and halls under it contain a collection of books, the number of which, according to the accounts given, is too large to find room even in the British Museum” (“Secret Doctrine,” i., xxiv.).

But this is not the end of these wonders. It appears that the Brahmins and Buddhists are in league (p. xxviii.) to hide their genuine sacred literature from the Mlechchhas. This was the term applied by the ancient Aryans to the black savages that they tried to displace, and according to Madame Blavatsky, it is applied to white-faced Sanskrit professors and other white-faced respectabilities now. The Brahmins in giving us the Rig Veda, the Upanishads, the Mahâbhârata, etc., have foisted upon us “bits of rejected copies of some passages” only (p. xxx.). The large literature of Buddhism is a blind. It is given to conceal, not convey, the real teaching. The real books are hidden away. It is hinted that the Japanese followers of Lao Tse use the same places of concealment.

“The Japanese, among whom are now to be found the most learned of the priests and followers of Lao Tse, simply laugh at the blunders and hypotheses of European Chinese scholars, and tradition affirms that the commentaries to which our Western sinologues have access are not the real occult records, but intentional veils, and that the true commentaries, as well as almost all the texts, have long disappeared from the eyes of the profane” (p. xxv.).

These occult libraries are well guarded: “Built deep in the bowels of the earth, the subterranean stores are secure; and as their entrances are concealed in such oases, there is little fear that any one should discover them, even should several armies invade the sandy wastes where—

“ Not a pool, not a bush, not a house is seen,

And the mountain range forms a rugged screen.”

(P. xxxiii.)

But there is another great name to be added to this vast fraternity of concealment. Our best available authorities tell us that Confucius was not a religious teacher at all, and certainly not a mystic. He was a politician and an atheist, and he has enmeshed China in a vast network of ceremonialism that binds her hand and foot. This is erroneous. He too seems to have his real doctrine concealed in some underground crypt (p. xxv.) in some of these “immense libraries reclaimed from the sand,” the “secret crypts of libraries belonging to the occult fraternity” (p. xxxiv.).

But fortunately these great secrets are to be complete secrets no longer. In one of these concealed crypts (which one, perhaps, she is no...