1875
[H.P.B.
and the Term “Spiritualism”]
A Budget of Good News
To the Spiritualists of
A Card to the American Public
[The “Hiraf” Club and its Historical Background]
|
74 BLAVATSKY: COLLECTED WRITINGS
[H.P.B. AND THE
TERM “SPIRITUALISM”]
[A great deal of misunderstanding on the subject of H.P.B.’s
relation to modern Spiritualism arises from the fact that H.P.B. herself, as
well as some of the students of her writings, use the word “Spiritualism” in
more than one meaning.
Whenever H.P.B. states that she is a Spiritualist, that her early life
has been devoted to the defence of the cause of
Spiritualism, and other similar and cognate expressions, she does not mean the beliefs
of ordinary mediums and of those among their numerous followers who share
them. It is very important to bear in mind that a recognition
of the genuineness of certain mediumistic phenomena on the part of H.P.B.—phenomena
which she herself could duplicate at will and in full consciousness—never
implied an acceptance of current beliefs in the manifestation of
so-called “spirits” and their participation in séance phenomena. There
is abundant evidence of this in the words of H.P.B. herself.
Speaking of herself as a Spiritualist and a follower of Spiritualism,
H.P.B. meant what she called “ancient Spiritualism” and Spiritualism
according to the “ancient Alexandrian way.”
In The Theosophical Glossary, in a paragraph definitely
written in her own style, Spiritualism is defined as follows:
“In philosophy, the state or condition of mind opposed to materialism or
a material conception of things. Theosophy, a doctrine which teaches
that all which exists is animated or informed by the Universal Soul or Spirit,
and that not an atom in our universe can be outside of this omnipresent
Principle—is pure Spiritualism. As to the belief that goes under that
name, namely, belief in the constant communication of the living with the dead,
whether through the mediumistic powers of oneself or a so-called medium—it
is no better than the materialization of spirit, and the degradation of the
human and the divine souls. Believers in such communications are simply dishonouring the dead and performing constant sacrilege. It
was well called ‘Necromancy’ in days of old. But our modern Spiritualists take
offence at being told this simple truth.”
It is advisable to keep the above definition in mind when reading H.P.B.’s early articles on the subject of mediums and
phenomena contained in the present volume.—Compiler.]
WHO FABRICATES?
75
WHO FABRICATES?
SOME LIGHT ON THE KATIE
KING MYSTERY—MORE EVIDENCE—A
STATEMENT, AT LAST, WHICH SEEMS CONSISTENT WITH CIRCUMSTANCES—A LETTER FROM MADAME BLAVATSKY.*
[Spiritual Scientist,
In
the last Religio-Philosophical Journal (for
February 27th), in the
“I
have been waiting patiently for the excitement in reference to the Holmes fraud
to subside a little. I will now make some further statements and answer some
questions.”
Further:
“The
stories of my acquaintance with Mrs. White are all fabrications.”
Further
still:
“I
shall not notice the various reports put forth about my pecuniary relations,
farther than to say, there is a balance due to me for money loaned to the Holmeses.”
I
claim the right to answer the above three quotations, the more so, that the
second one consigns me most unceremoniously to the ranks of the liars.
Now, if there is, in my humble judgment, anything more contemptible than a
cheat, it is certainly a liar. The rest of this
letter—editorial—or whatever it may be, is
unanswerable, for reasons that will be easily understood by whoever reads it.
When the petulant Mr. Pancks [in Little Dorrit] spanked the benevolent Christopher Casby, this venerable patriarch only mildly lifted up his
blue eyes heavenward, and smiled more benignly than ever. Dr. Child, tossed
about and as badly spanked by public opinion, smiles as sweetly as Mr. Casby,
––––––––––
* [In her Scrapbook, Vol. I, p. 23, H.P.B.
appended a footnote to the cutting of this article, stating:]
Ordered to expose Dr. Child. I did so. The D’ is a hypocrite, a
liar & a fraud.
H.P.B.
––––––––––
76 BLAVATSKY: COLLECTED WRITINGS
talks of
“sunshine,” and quiets his urgent accusers by assuring them that “it is all
fabrications.”
I
don’t know whence Dr. Child takes his “sunshine” unless he draws it from the
very bottom of his innocent heart.
For
my part, since I came to
I
would strongly advise Dr. Child not to accuse me of “fabrication,”
whatever else he may be inclined to ornament me with. What I say I can prove,
and am ever willing to do so at any day. If he is innocent of all
participation in this criminal fraud, let him “rise and explain.” If he
succeeds in clearing his record, I will be the first to rejoice and promise to
offer him publicly my most sincere apology, for the “erroneous suspicions” I
labor under respecting his part in the affair; but he must first prove that he
is thoroughly innocent. Hard words prove nothing and he cannot hope to achieve
such a victory by simply accusing people of “fabrications.” If he does not
abstain [from] applying epithets unsupported by substantial proofs, he risks,
as in the game of shuttlecock and battledore, the chance of receiving the
missile back, and maybe that it will hurt him worse than he expects.
In
the article in question he says:
“The
stories of my acquaintance with Mrs. White are all fabrications. I did let her
in two or three times, but the entry and hall were so dark that it was
impossible to recognize her or anyone. I have seen her several times and knew
that she looked more like Katie King than Mr. (?) or Mrs. Holmes . . .”
Mirabile dictu! This beats our learned
friend, Dr. Beard! The latter denies, point-blank, not only “materialization,”
which is not yet actually proved to the world, but also every spiritual
phenomenon. But Dr. Child denies being acquainted with a woman, whom he
confesses himself to have seen “several times,” received in his office, where
she was seen repeatedly by others, and yet at the same time admits that he
“knew she looked like Katie King,” etc. By the way, we have all laboured under the impression that Dr. Child
WHO FABRICATES? 77
admitted
in The Inquirer that he saw Mrs. White for the first time, and
recognized her as Katie King, only on that morning when she made her affidavit
at the office of the justice of [the] peace. A “fabrication”
most likely. In the R.-P.
Journal for
“Your
report does not for a moment shake my confidence in our Katie King, as she
comes to me every day and talks to me. On several occasions Katie had come to
me and requested Mr. Owen and myself to go there (meaning to the Holmes) and
she would come and tell us just what she had told me alone.”
Did
Dr. Child ascertain where Mrs. White was at the time of the spirits’ visits to
him?
“As
to Mrs. White, I know her well. I have on many occasions let her into the
house. I saw her here at the time the manifestations were going on in
Blissfield. She has since gone to
And
still the Doctor assures us he was not acquainted with Mrs. White. What
signification does he give to the word “acquaintance” in such a case? Did he
not go in the absence of the Holmeses to their house
and talk with her and even quarrel with the woman? Another
fabricated story, no doubt. I defy Dr. Child to print again, if he dare, such a word as fabrication in relation to myself,
after he has read a certain statement that I reserve for the last.
In
all this pitiful, humbugging romance of an “exposure” by a too material
she-spirit, there has not been given us a single reasonable explanation of even
so much as one solitary fact. It began with a bogus biography, and threatens to
end in a bogus fight, since every single duel requires, at least, two
participants, and Dr. Child prefers extracting sunshine from the cucumbers of
his soul and letting the storm subside, to fighting like a man for his own fair
name. He says that “he shall not notice” what people say about his little
speculative transactions with the Holmeses. He
assures us that they owe him money. Very likely, but it does not alter
the alleged fact of his having paid $10 for every séance and pocketing
the balance. Dare he say that he did not do it? The Holmeses
say otherwise; and
78 BLAVATSKY: COLLECTED WRITINGS
the
statements in writing of various witnesses corroborate them.
The Holmeses may be scamps in the eyes of certain persons, and
the only ones in the eyes of the more prejudiced; but as long as their
statements have not been proven false, their word is as good as the word of Dr.
Child; aye, in a court of justice even, the “Mediums Holmes” would stand just
on the same level as any spiritual prophet or clairvoyant who might have been
visited by any same identical spirits that visited the former. So long
as Dr. Child does not legally prove them to be cheats and himself
innocent, why should not they be as well entitled to belief as himself?
From
the first hour of the Katie King mystery, if people have accused them,
no one so far as I know—not even Dr. Child himself—has proved, or even
undertaken to prove the innocence of their ex-cashier and recorder. The fact
that every word of the ex-leader and president of the Philadelphian
Spiritualists would be published by every spiritual paper (and here we must
confess to our wonder, that he does not hasten much to avail himself of this
opportunity) while any statement coming from the Holmeses
would be pretty sure of rejection, would not necessarily imply the fact that
they alone are guilty; it would only go towards showing, that
notwithstanding the divine truth of our faith and the teachings of our
invisible guardians, some Spiritualists have not profited by them, to learn
impartiality and justice.
These
“mediums” are persecuted; so far, it is but justice, since they themselves
admitted their guilt about the photography fraud, and unless it can be shown
that they were thereunto controlled by lying spirits, their own
mouths condemn them; but what is less just, is, that they are slandered and
abused on all points and made to bear alone, all the weight of a
crime, where confederacy peeps out from every page of the story. No one
seems willing to befriend them—these two helpless uninfluential
creatures, who, if they sinned at all, perhaps sinned through weakness and
ignorance—to take their case in hand and by doing justice to them, do justice
at the same time to the cause of truth. If their guilt should
be as evident as the daylight at
WHO FABRICATES? 79
is it not
ridiculous that their partner Dr. Child should show surprise at being so much
as suspected! History records but one person, the legitimate spouse of the
great Caesar—whose name has to remain enforced by law [as] above suspicion;
methinks, that if Dr. Child possesses some natural claims to his self-assumed
title of Katie King’s “Father Confessor,” he can have none whatever to share
the infallibility of Madame Caesar’s virtue. Being pretty sure as to this
myself, and feeling, moreover, somewhat anxious to swell the list of pertinent
questions, which are called by our disingenuous friend “fabrications,” with at
least ONE
FACT, I will now
proceed to furnish your readers with the following:
“Katie’s”
picture has been, let us say, proved a fraud, an imposition on the credulous
world, and is Mrs. White’s portrait. This counterfeit has been proved by the
beauty of the “crooking elbow,” in her bogus autobiography (the proof sheets of
which Dr. Child was seen correcting) by the written confession of the Holmeses and—lastly by Dr. Child himself.
Out
of the several bogus portraits of the supposed spirit, the most spurious one,
has been declared—mostly on the testimony endorsed by Dr. Child and “over his
signature”—to be the one where the pernicious and false Katie King is standing
behind her medium.
The
operation of this delicate piece of imposture, proved so difficult as to oblige
the Holmeses to take into the secret of the
conspiracy the photographer.
Now
Dr. Child denies having anything whatever to do with the sittings for those
pictures. He denies it most emphatically, and goes so far as to say (we have
many witnesses and proofs to that), that he was out of town, four hundred miles
away, when the said pictures were taken. And so he was, bless his dear prophetic
soul! Meditating and chatting with the nymphs and goblins of
Unfortunately
for the veracious Dr. Child, “whose character and reputation for truthfulness
and moral integrity no one doubts.”
80 BLAVATSKY: COLLECTED WRITINGS
(Here
we quote the words of “Honesty” and “Truth,” transparent pseudonyms of an
“amateur” for detecting, exposing and writing under the cover of secrecy, who
tried to give a friendly push to the doctor in two articles—but failed in
both.)—
Unfortunately
for H. T. Child, we say, he got inspired in some evil hour to write a certain
article, and forgetting the wise motto, Verba
volant, scripta manent, to publish it in The Daily Graphic on
the 16th of November last, together with the portraits of John and Katie King.
Now
for this bouquet of the endorsement of a fact by a truthful man, “whose moral
integrity no one can doubt.”
To the Editor of The Daily Graphic.
On the evening of July 20th, after a large and successful séance,
in which Katie had walked out into the room in the presence of thirty
persons and had disappeared and reappeared in full view, she
remarked to Mr. Leslie and myself that if we, with four others whom she named,
would remain after the séance, she would like to try for her
photograph. We did so, and there were present six persons besides the
photographer. I had procured two dozen magnesium spirals and when all was
ready, she opened the door of the cabinet and stood in it, while Mr. Holmes on
one side, and I upon the other, burned these, making a brilliant light. We
tried two plates, but neither of them were
satisfactory.
Another effort was made on the 23rd of July, which was successful. We
asked her if she would try to have it taken by daylight. She said she would. We
sat with shutters open at
Mr. Holmes proposed that she should permit him to sit in front of the
camera, and should come out and place her hand upon his shoulder. To this she
assented and desired all present to avoid looking into her eyes, as this
disturbed the conditions very much. . . .
The second picture was then taken in which she stands
behind Mr. Holmes. When the camera was closed, she showed great
signs of weakness, and it was necessary to assist her back to the cabinet, and
when she got to the door she appeared ready to sink to the floor and disappeared
(?). The cabinet door was opened, but she was not to be seen.
“IMPORTANT NOTE”
Pasted by H.P.B. in her Scrapbook, Vol. I, pp. 20-21.
(See page 73 of the present volume for transcription.)
H. P. BLAVATSKY IN 1875
Photograph by Beardsley,
WHO FABRICATES? 81
In a few minutes she appeared again, and remarked that she had not been
sufficiently materialized and said she would like to try again, if we could
wait a little while. We waited about fifteen minutes, when she rapped on
the cabinet, signifying that she was ready to come out. She did so, and we obtained
the third negative.
(Signed) Dr. H. T. Child.
And
so, Dr. Child, we have obtained this, we did that, and we did
many other things. Did you? Now, besides Dr. Child’s truthful assertions about
his being out of town, especially at the time this third negative was
obtained, we have the testimony of the photographer, Dr. Selger, and other witnesses to corroborate the fact. At the
same time, I suppose that Dr. Child will not risk a denial of his own article.
I have it in my possession and keep it, together with many others as curious,
printed like it, and written in black and white. Who fabricates stories?
Can the doctor answer?
How
will he creep out of this dilemma? What rays of his spiritual “sunshine” will
be able to dematerialize such a contradictory fact as
this one? Here we have an article taking up two spacious columns of The
Daily Graphic, in which he asserts as plainly as possible, that he
was present himself at the sittings of Katie King for her portrait; that
the spirit came out boldly, in full daylight, that she
disappeared on the threshold of the cabinet, and that he, Dr.
Child, helping her back to it on account of her great weakness, saw that there
was no one in the said cabinet, for the door remained opened. Who
did he help? Whose fluttering heart beat against his paternal arm and waistcoat?
Was it the bonny Eliza? Of course, backed by such reliable testimony, of such a
truly trustworthy witness, the pictures sold like wildfire. Who
got the proceeds? Who kept them? If Dr. Child was not in town when the pictures
were taken, then this article is an “evident fabrication.” On the other hand,
if what he says in it is truth, and he was present at all, at the attempt of
this bogus picture taking, then he certainly must have known “who was who, in
1874,” as the photographer knew it, and as surely it did not require Argus-eyes
to recognize in full daylight, with only one shutter partially
closed, a materialized, ethereal spirit, from a
82 BLAVATSKY: COLLECTED WRITINGS
common,
“elbow-crooking” mortal woman, whom, though not acquainted with her, the
doctor still “knew her well.”
If
our self-constituted leaders, our prominent recorders of the phenomena, will
humbug and delude the public with such reliable statements as this one, how can
we Spiritualists wonder at the masses of incredulous scoffers that keep on
politely taking us for “lunatics” when they do not very rudely call us “liars
and charlatans” to our faces? It is not the occasionally cheating “mediums”
that have impeded or can impede the progress of our cause; it’s the exalted
exaggerations of some fanatics on one hand and the deliberate, unscrupulous
statements of those, who delight [in] dealing in “wholesale fabrications” and
“pious frauds” that have arrested the unusually rapid spreading of Spiritualism
in 1874, and brought it to a dead stop in 1875. For how many years to come yet,
who can tell?
In
his “After the Storm the Sunshine,” the Doctor makes the following melancholy
reflection:
“It
has been suggested that going into an atmosphere of fraud, such as surrounds
these mediums (the Holmeses) and being sensitive [O,
poor Yorick!] I was more liable to be deceived
than others.”
We
shudder indeed at the thought of the exposure of so much sensitiveness to so
much pollution! Alas, soiled dove! How very sensitive must a person be who
picks up such evil influences that they actually force him into the grossest of
fabrications, and which make him invent stories and endorse facts that he has
not and could not have seen. If Dr. Child, victim to his too sensitive nature,
is liable to fall so easily as that under the control of wicked “Diakka” our friendly advice to him is, to give up
Spiritualism as soon as possible, and join the Young Men’s Christian
Association; for then, under the protecting wing of the true Orthodox Church,
he can begin a regular fight, like a second St. Anthony, with the Orthodox
Devil. Such Diakka, as he fell in with at the Holmeses, must beat Old Nick by long odds, and if he could
not withstand them by the unaided strength of his own pure soul, he may with
“bell, book and candle,” and the use of holy water, be more fortunate in a tug
with Satan;
H.P.B.’S LAWSUIT IN
crying as
other “Father Confessors” have heretofore, “Exorciso
vos in nomine Lucis!” and signifying his triumph, with a
robust “Laus Deo!”
H. P. BLAVATSKY.
––––––––––
* [In her Scrapbook, Vol. I, p. 23,
H.P.B. made a notation on top of the page indicating that this article was
written
––––––––––
—————
[H.P.B.’S
LAWSUIT IN
[When H.P.B. lived for a time in Brooklyn, N. Y. with the French people
who came to the United States when she did, she was induced to invest in two
parcels of land at the East end of Long Island. One of these tracts was in the
North part of Huntington, and the other in the neighborhood of the
From the existing Court Records, it appears that this land had been purchased
by a certain Clementine Gerebko, the deed of
conveyance being dated June 2nd, 1873, in other words prior to H.P.B.’s arrival in the United States, July 7, 1873.
On June 15/27, 1873, H.P.B.’s father, Col.
Peter Alexeyevich von Hahn, died at
H.P.B. went to live on the farm, but very soon found herself in
litigation with Clementine Gerebko as to the validity
of the
––––––––––
† Cf. H.
––––––––––
84 BLAVATSKY: COLLECTED WRITINGS
agreement of the defendant to execute a
mortgage to the plaintiff, and returned to
The law firm of
From the recollections of William M. Ivins,
Attorney at Law, who became a very good friend of H.P.B.’s,
we learn some of the circumstances of this curious trial. He wrote:
“Long Island in those days was a long ways from
Ivins, in addition to being a
brilliant lawyer, was a bookworm with a phenomenal memory. More as a joke than
in earnest, he deluged his client with Occultism, Gnosticism, Cabalism and
white and black magic. Fales, taking his key from Ivins, gave long dissertations on mystical arithmetic,
astrology, alchemy, mediaeval symbolism, Neo-Platonism, Rosicrucianism
and quaternions. It is a great pity that none of this
was apparently recorded, and therefore cannot be recovered from the Court
Records.
Another sidelight on this interesting episode may be derived from a
passage in a work of Charles R.
“The
circumstances of the trial were interesting, for Madame, who was her own
principal witness, testified quite contrary to the way in which her attorneys
assumed she would testify. Ivins had associated with
him in the trial Fales, who was then a law student.
As cautious lawyers, they had gone over the testimony with Madame before the
trial, and had advised her as to what points she should emphasize; but, to
their great discomfiture, on the witness stand she took the bit in her teeth
and galloped along lines of evidence quite opposed to their
––––––––––
* Recorded by Mrs. Laura Holloway-Langford in a handwritten manuscript
now unfortunately destroyed.
––––––––––
IMPORTANT TO SPIRITUALISTS 85
instructions, giving as a reason, when
they complained of her testimony, that her ‘familiar,’ whom she called Tom
[John] King, stood at her side (invisible to everyone but her), and prompted
her in her testimony. After the court had taken the matter under advisement,
Madame left the city, but wrote several letters to Ivins
asking him as to the progress of the suit, and finally astonished him by a
letter giving an outline of an opinion which she said the court would render in
the course of a few days, in connection with a decision in her favor. In accordance
with her prediction, the court handed down a decision sustaining her claim upon
grounds similar to those which she had outlined in her letter.”*
—Compiler.]
––––––––––
* Charles R. Flint, Memories of an Active Life.
––––––––––
—————
[In the
issue of
“The readers of the Scientist will be no more surprised to read
the circular which appears on our front page than we were to receive the same
by post . . . . . Who may be our unknown
friends of the ‘Committee of Seven,’ we do not know, nor who the ‘Brotherhood
of Luxor’; but we do know that we are most thankful
for this proof of their interest, and shall try to deserve its continuance. Can
anyone tell us of such a fraternity as the above? And what
86 BLAVATSKY: COLLECTED WRITINGS
IMPORTANT TO SPIRITUALISTS.
THE spiritual movement resembles
every other in this respect: that its
growth is the work of time, and its refinement and solidification the result of
causes working from within outward. The
twenty-seven years which have elapsed since the rappings
were first heard in
UNTIL the present time these advanced thinkers have had no
special organ for the Interchange of opinions. The leading spiritual papers are of necessity
compelled to devote most of their space to communication of a trivial and
purely personal character, which are interesting only to the friends of the
spirits sending them, and to such as are just beginning to give attention to
the subject. In England the London Spiritualist,
and in France the Revue Spirite, present to us
examples of the kind of paper that should have been established in this country
long ago—papers which devote more space to the discussion of principles, the
teaching of philosophy, and the display of conservative critical ability, than
to the mere publication of the thousand and one minor occurrences of private
and public circles.
IT is the standing
reproach of American Spiritualism that it teaches so few things worthy of a
thoughtful man’s attention; that so few
of its phenomena occur under conditions satisfactory to men of scientific
training; that the propagation of its doctrines is in the hands of so many
ignorant, if not positively vicious, persons; and that it offers, in exchange
for the orderly arrangements of prevailing religious creeds, nothing but an
undigested system of present and future moral and social relations and accountability.
THE best thoughts of
our best minds have heretofore been confined to volumes whose
price has, is most instances, placed them beyond the reach of the
masses, who most needed to be familiar with them. To remedy this evil, to bring our authors
into familiar intercourse with the great body of spiritualists, to create an
organ upon which we may safely count to lead us in our fight with old
superstitions and mouldy creeds, a few earnest
spiritualists have now united.
INSTEAD of undertaking the
doubtful and costly experiment of starting a new paper, they have selected the
Spiritual Scientist, of
THE price of the Spiritual
Scientist is $2.50 per annum, postage included. A person sending five yearly subscription, is entitled to a copy for himself without
extra charge. Subscriptions may be made
through any respectable agency, or by direct communication with the editor, E.
GERRY BROWN,
For the Committee of Seven,
BROTHERHOOD OF
IMPORTANT TO SPIRITUALISTS 87
Writing
about this Circular in his Old Diary Leaves, Vol. 1, pp. 74-76,
Col. Olcott says:
“I wrote every word of this circular myself,
alone corrected the printer’s proofs, and paid for the printing. That is to
say, nobody dictated a word that I should say, nor
interpolated any words or sentences, nor controlled my action in any visible
way. I wrote it to carry out the expressed wishes of the Masters that we —
H.P.B. and I — should help the Editor of the [Spiritual] Scientist at
what was to him, a difficult crisis, and used my best judgment as to the
language most suitable for the purpose. When the circular was in type at the
printer’s and I had corrected the proofs, and changed the arrangement of the
matter into its final paragraphs, I enquired of H.P.B. (by letter) if she
thought I had better issue it anonymously or append my name. She replied that
it was the wish of the Masters that it should be signed thus: ‘For the
Committee of Seven, BROTHERHOOD OF LUXOR.’ And so it was signed and published. She
subsequently explained that our work, and much more of the same kind, was being
supervised by a Committee of seven Adepts belonging to the Egyptian group of
the Universal Mystic Brotherhood. Up to this time she had not even seen the
circular, but now I took one to her myself and she began to read it
attentively. Presently she laughed, and told me to read the acrostic made by
the initials of the six paragraphs. To my amazement, I found that they spelt
the name under which I knew the (Egyptian) adept under whose orders I was then
studying and working.* Later, I received a certificate, written in gold ink, on
a thick green paper, to the effect that I was attached to this ‘Observatory,’
and that three (named) Masters had me under scrutiny. This title, Brotherhood
of Luxor, was pilfered by the schemers who started,
several years later, the gudgeon-trap called ‘The H.
B. of L.’ The existence of the real lodge is mentioned in Kenneth
Mackenzie’s Royal Masonic Cyclopaedia (p.
461).
“Nothing in my early occult experience during this H.P.B. epoch, made a
deeper impression on my mind than the above acrostic . . .”
When H.P.B. pasted a copy of this Circular in her Scrapbook, Vol. I, p. 29 (originally 23), she wrote
above the title:]
Sent to E. Gerry Brown by the order of S*** and T*** B*** — of Lukshoor. (Published and Issued by Col