On the evening of May 23 (he lost no time after his arrival), Mr. Judge suggested to Mrs. Besant that as they were in sore need of some assurance from Masters, they should repeat an old recipe of Madame Blavatsky’s for bringing those august beings to a point. He proposed that they should write a certain question on paper, put it in an envelope, shut that into a certain cabinet in “H.P.B.’s” room at Avenue-road, and invite the Masters to “precipitate” replies.
Mrs. Besant agreed. Mr. Judge himself wrote the question and closed the envelope, and put it into the cabinet.
Mrs. Besant did not stay in the room through the process of incubation. For “He that hath ears to hear, let him hear,” the Theosophic scripture reads, “He that hath eyes to see, let him put his Head in a Bag.”
After due delay, Mr. Judge took the letter out again. On his showing it to Mrs. Besant, judge of that lady’s emotion at the discovery that at the end of the question stood the word
traced apparently in red chalk; also, a little lower down, the words
with the impression, in black carbon, of a peculiar seal, representing a cryptograph M. (A simple way to produce this appearance is to hold a seal in candle-smoke and impress with that.)
| THE “MAHATMA’S SEAL.” | IMPRESSION SHOWING CRYPTOGRAPH. |
What need of further witness that the thing was the result of psychic “precipitation” from Madame Blavatsky’s “Mahatma M,” away in Tibet? If that gentleman had not, in his communications to Madame, been observed to use a seal, still he certainly used to scribble them in the same sort of red chalk, and he certainly used to sign himself similarly M.
Note one point here. It was not Mahatma M, but Mahatma K.H., who used to be the more prolix correspondent in Madame Blavatsky’s time, and whose handwriting appeared accordingly in copious specimens and comparisons with her own, in the published Report of the Psychical Research Committee.
No specimens were there given of the writing which Madame called Mahatma M’s: there were but a few scraps of it available.
When, therefore, Mr. William Q. Judge conjured a letter from him (I use “conjure” in its old-fashioned sense, of course), it was not possible for Mrs. Besant to compare it with any published specimens of the same script (with private specimens I fancy she had never been favoured), even if the extremely scanty and hurried nature of the message, and the temper of Mrs. Besant’s mind had not in themselves forbidden any such partial measure of verification.
It is true that a few months later Mrs. Besant felt able to affirm with the utmost confidence (as we have seen) that the handwriting was “the same as that which Madame Blavatsky was accused of producing,” and this at first sight appears to refer to the “K.H.” script, which afforded the gravamen of Mr. Hodgson’s Report. In that case what Mrs. Besant asserted was that the writing was the same as that which was not even supposed to be by the same person.
Next morning, there was a meeting of the “Inner Group,” at which Mr. William Q. Judge at once took up that position of Senior Chela to which his services as postman of the Mahatmas so well entitled him. There is some oath or other of equality with fellow-members and of obedience to its head which members of this Esoteric Section have to take: Mr. Judge pointed out that it was quite unnecessary for him to take this oath.
To which end he produced not only a letter from Madame Blavatsky, but one from Mahatma M, which he had personally received in America, he said. Its contents he did not feel able to communicate to others who could not yet aspire to be on corresponding terms with the Great Unseen: what he did show was the signature and seal impression (which exactly resembled that “precipitated” in the cabinet overnight). He specially begged those present to take note of the seal; “for,” said Mr. Judge, “they might have need to recognise it on some future occasion.”
With eager eyes they all obeyed; each aspiring young chela fluttered with the hope (for Mrs. Besant had noised the cabinet business about, and it seemed to rain missives) that he too might soon be blest with one.
Mr. Judge is a man of some foresight. But that was not precisely what he had in his mind when he bade them note the seal.
Three days after this (May 27) there was a meeting of the Esoteric Section Council, to decide how the section should in future be governed, its head being gone.
It had been expected that Mrs. Besant, having assumed the rôle of Teacher and Expounder in succession to her friend, would succeed her also as official head of the Esoteric Section Council. But William Q. Judge had drafted a plan under which the Council was to dissolve, and its powers be delegated to Mrs. Besant and himself as joint “Outer Heads”—the Inner Heads being, of course, Mr. Judge’s august correspondents in the Himalayas.
Mrs. Besant, it seems, was more than content, in view of Mr. Judge’s newly-developed occult powers, with a position of “high collateral glory.” But it was hardly to be expected that the scheme should not be exposed to some discussion and criticism from other members of the Council. At any rate, the Mahatma evidently deemed the occasion to be a dignus vindice nodus. For what happened?
As Mrs. Besant, who took the chair and expounded the new scheme, was turning over her papers on the table, there fluttered out a little slip of paper, at which she just glanced, and was about to put it by, when William Q. Judge pointedly asked her what it was?
The slip of paper bore the words in red pencil—
Signature and seal as before.
Tableau!
Round it went from hand to hand. None questioned that paper and script alike had just been “precipitated” into their midst by “the Master.” Thanks to Mr. Judge’s foresight, as we have just seen, all were in a position to recognise the seal.
Under these circumstances discussion was obviously out of place. William Q. Judge at once went and took his seat at Mrs. Besant’s side, and “Judge’s plan” was unanimously adopted!
It will hardly be believed, but it is, nevertheless, a fact, which I challenge Mrs. Besant to contradict, that when that lady, on a public platform, pledged the evidence of her senses, her sanity, and her reasoning faculties, &c., &c., to having received messages from the Mahatmas—messages which, as she assured the subsequent interviewer, came “not through the post” but by “precipitation” “in a way which some people would call miraculous”—these two documents, produced as has been described, and only these, were all the pièces justificatives that she had to go upon.
But the vice-president’s Mahatma had only made a beginning. There was more, much more, to come. It will be my privilege to present the reader, in succeeding Chapters, with facsimiles of several of his more interesting compositions.
“The T.S. is the agency chosen by the Masters ... but They do not directly guide, save where guidance is strenuously sought and eagerly obeyed.”—“Introduction to Theosophy,” by Annie Besant.
It was not surprising that the Vice-President, finding the Mahatma so complaisant, should hasten to exploit him to the utmost. The resumption of the broken communication could not fail to restore the confidence of doubting disciples both in the society itself and in the favoured chela, who could not only, Glendower-like, “call spirits from the vasty deep,” but also, to the satisfaction of Theosophic Hotspurs, “make them come.” Forthwith letters began to be showered about among such persons as it was considered desirable to keep up to the mark, in which the sentiments of William Q. Judge were endorsed by the Mahatma. Of those two it might truly be said that “their unanimity was wonderful.”
One of the first recipients was Mr. Bertram Keightley, a gentleman whose services to Theosophy have been of a material kind, and whose zeal has been rewarded more than once by gratifying marks of approbation from Tibet. In fact, his experience, like that of Countess Wachtmeister and some other liberal friends of the society, suggests the formula: “Put a donation in the slot and you will receive a revelation.” For the Mahatma obligingly honours the bills of the society.
COLONEL H. S. OLCOTT.
(From a photograph by Messrs. Elliott & Fry, Baker-street, W.)
Under date May 29, 1891, the Vice-President wrote to Mr. Keightley from Avenue-road a Pauline epistle, in which he says:—
Fear not, Bert! Masters watch us, and since May 8 have sent word here in writing.
Close beside the signature of “William Q. Judge” appeared in solemn confirmation the M signature and seal impression—“precipitated,” doubtless, during transit among Her Majesty’s mails. As the recipient was at Adyar, Madras, and therefore, some thousands of miles nearer the home of the Mahatmas than Mr. Judge, it will be seen to what roundabout methods the Master was compelled in order to maintain his determination to have his messages ushered into the world in some connexion or other with the one favoured disciple.
Another recipient was important for other reasons than Mr. Keightley. Babula, a low-caste Hindu, formerly Madame Blavatsky’s personal servant, was at this time in a position of trust at the Theosophic quarters at Adyar. Since then he has got into trouble with his employers, like others of Madame’s former confidants. But in July, 1891, Babula was still in authority at Adyar, and the vice-president thought it worth while to convince him that he, Judge, was his friend. A letter, dated some weeks later than Mr. Keightley’s, from Avenue-road, terminated with the signature,
Under the words “Your friend,” the ever-officious Mahatma has drawn a line, at the end of which he has solemnly inscribed “YES,” and his signature and seal. The seal is, as usual, impressed in black carbon; the writing is in red pencil; and Judge’s signature is in ordinary ink.
Pity that the famous Mr. Codlin had not a Mahatma to back him thus conveniently in his asseverations that “Codlin’s the friend, not Short.”
Parallel to this corroborative use of the Mahatma’s seal, though belonging to a different period of the story, was the case of another letter of Mr. Judge’s to a brother official, in which, after expressing certain views, Mr. Judge used these words:—
I believe the Master agrees with me, in which case I will ask him to put his seal here.
Plump on the written word came the seal. Inimitable Mahatma!
Mrs. Besant’s previous “communications,” as we have seen, did not come through the post. But during that July Mr. Judge seems to have left Mrs. Besant’s side for the express purpose of enabling his Mahatma to give her an exhibition of his powers in this special line of “precipitation” during postal transit.
July 21, 1891, was the date of one such performance; which included signature and seal complete. I pass over this and some equally commonplace missives, which Mrs. Besant received at various dates, all equally under Mr. Judge’s auspices, in order to deal more fully with one particular one in which she was favoured with a “test condition.”
For lo! on cutting the envelope open in the usual way, along the top edge, Mrs. Besant observed a line or so of pencilling inside written partly on the upper flap, partly on the under flaps, of the adhesive part of the envelope.
Here was proof indeed of powers occult! For this must obviously have been written or “precipitated” after the envelope was stuck up: and there it was inside! For a Mahatma, of course, it was as easy to produce it so as in any other way. He might do it in mere artless absence of mind.
Ingenuous Mrs. Besant! Unfortunately for the test, the feat is equally easy for any commonplace mortal—though in his case it would hardly be done quite artlessly. The trick was first shown me by a student of “occultism”—a Theosophist, in fact. But it is a very old affair, and can be found in any book of parlour magic. It might be called “Every Man his own Mahatma.”
An envelope has four flaps. Three of these are stuck together in manufacture, but with a much less adhesive sort of gum than that which is put on the remaining flap to be stuck up by the user.
| ENVELOPE, INSIDE VIEW. | OUTSIDE VIEW, SHOWING INSERTION. |
It is generally quite easy to insert a penknife behind the bottom flap, as in the accompanying cut, and so make entrance and exit for a slip of paper. On this slip you write the words backwards, as they would appear in a looking-glass, using a black pencil of the “copying” kind. You then pass the slip in, push and shake it into the right position, press till you feel sure the inside flaps have taken the impression, and then out with your slip by the door it came in at. Moisten and fix the flap again, and the “precipitation” is complete. A child can do it.
A Mahatma, of course, produces the result by mere psychic effort. But it is a curious coincidence that M on this occasion abandoned his usual red pencil for the black one which you or I would use if we were playing just the trick described.
No doubt he felt that a more satisfactory test would have been wasted on Mrs. Besant.
Others, however, were a little more exacting. The story enters here on a less smooth course.
“O that Heaven had set a seal upon men, that we might know them, honest from dishonest!”—Euripides.
From the previous record of Colonel Olcott—described by Madame Blavatsky herself, in an epigrammatically candid moment, as “a psychologised baby”—he is almost the last person whom one would have expected to lead the way in any sceptical examination of “miracles.”
And no doubt he might have been content, like Mrs. Besant, to open his mouth and shut his eyes and take whatever Mr. Judge should send him, so long as that gentleman’s thaumaturgy was confined to benefiting the common cause. But it was another matter when the vice-president’s Mahatma showed a tendency to favour the vice-president, and that at the expense of the president himself. Had the oracle said “Olcott’s plan is right,” and declared that Olcott was the “friend,” “not Lancelot nor another”; had it made Olcott, and not Judge, Outer Head with Mrs. Besant—the president’s ears might have been an inch longer, and the course of Theosophic history have been changed.
But there was, from the first, about Mr. Judge’s Mahatma a certain crudity, a lack of tact in dissembling favouritism, which was bound, human nature being what it is, to make enemies.
On the decease of “H.P.B.,” President Olcott, like Vice-President Judge, had hurried to the headquarters at Avenue-road. He had to come from India, however, and the American disciple naturally out-ran him. When the former arrived, the latter’s Mahatma was already in full swing. On hearing of his performances with the seal, a look of more than usual intelligence may have crossed the president’s mild and venerable features; but, like Brer Rabbit, he wasn’t “sayin’ nuffin,” “he just lay low.”
That busy July, ’91, the period of Mahatma M’s greatest activity, was also marked by the assembling at Avenue-road of one of the periodical conventions of Theosophic Europe. Some conversation occurred between the president and vice-president about the expenses of this convention, and the former, being “H.P.B.’s” legatee, mentioned a happy thought of his, of selling some of the jewels that lady had left behind her, and giving the proceeds as her posthumous contribution to the expenses.
But here, too, Mr. Judge was prepared to “go one better,” as his countrymen say, than the president-legatee. He responded airily that Colonel Olcott need not trouble himself about it, as “Master” had promised him (Judge) that the cash should be forthcoming, and also that he would convey a “message” on the subject to Olcott himself.
The Colonel waited for his message. None came.
The Colonel jogged Mr. Judge’s memory. Mr. Judge said he had no more to tell.
But that very day, on sitting down at his writing-table, and lifting up a piece of blotting-paper, the Colonel found under it a piece of peculiar paper, reading as in the following facsimile (reds and blacks as per former samples):—
Now, Colonel Olcott thought he recognised that particular quality of paper, and also, so far as it was legible, that seal-impression. The facsimile here necessarily makes it much clearer. In the original the impression was curiously faint and vague, as if the Master did not wish, in the Colonel’s case, to burst that seal upon him all at once; but preferred the manner of Tennyson’s Freedom, who “part by part to men revealed The fulness of her face.”
So Brer Rabbit continued to say nuffin’, and to lie low.
Presently Mr. William Q. Judge left on the same writing-table the following note (being scribbled on a torn-off scrap of paper, it also has rather a Mahatmic look. But that is accidental):—
“Dear Olcott” “looked” accordingly; and sure enough, in the ordinary envelope of a letter, previously opened and put by on the table, there was a piece of paper bearing a message with all the proper Mahatma-marks about it. And this time the Mahatma had taken heart and “precipitated” a decently clear impression of the seal.
And then the Colonel “smiled a sorter sickly smile.” For now he did recognise that seal. And this is its story.
Back in the palmy days of 1883, or ever the marvels of “H.P.B.” were besmirched by slanderous tongues, the Colonel was in a certain city of the Panjab. Passing an Urdu seal-engraver’s shop in the bazaar, he turned in and ordered the man to make a seal bearing the cryptograph signature which “H.P.B.” identified as that of the “Master of Wisdom,” Mahatma Morya.
What did the Colonel want the seal for? Let him explain himself:—
An idea occurred to me (he writes) of sending through “H.P.B.,” as a playful present to my Master M, a seal bearing a facsimile of his cryptograph.
An odd idea, this “playful present” of the Colonel’s. Had the seal been intended for use by an ordinary person—by “H.P.B.” herself, for instance—there would have been some sense in it. But the Mahatma, of course, who “precipitated” his letters and his signature psychically, might just as well “precipitate” the latter in the shape of a seal impression as otherwise, if he wanted to; and where, then, should the use of a brass seal come in? However, as the Colonel says, the present was merely “playful.”
Back went the Colonel to Madras, where Madame was, and presented the seal to her, with a “jocular remark” (I am again quoting his own account). Madame’s keen eye dwelt on it a moment, and then she pointed out that the Colonel, in his jocularly playful mood, had made a slight mistake. “The Master’s cryptograph was not correctly drawn,” according to the pattern already familiar to recipients of his precious missives. There was a twiddle too much, or a twiddle too little, in it. The Colonel himself saw the blunder when it was pointed out, and he now declares that he would know it anywhere.
For this sufficient reason the “playful present” was not sent on to the Himalayas (Heaven knows, by the way, by what astral form of parcels-post service the Colonel had expected it to be sent); neither did it appear in any of the communications vouched for by Madame.
It went into Madame’s despatch-box, along with a lot of other mystical odds and ends, properties of the occult stage; and among these it was remarked, as late as 1888, by the Mr. Keightley already mentioned, who was then living with her in Lansdowne-road.
This gentleman asked the prophetess what the little brass seal might be? Madame Blavatsky’s answer—a characteristically racy “fragment of her prophet voice”—was:—
In the same year, at a time when William Q. Judge was staying with Madame, Mr. Judge’s Mahatma evidently determined to overlook the inaccuracy in the seal, and to make use of it for the first time to save himself the trouble of a psychic signature.
He did this, of course, in a letter of Mr. William Q. Judge’s own, and in a sense endorsing Mr. William Q. Judge’s wishes—in fact, the letter was the one recorded in the last chapter, in which the Master’s seal came so plump upon the disciple’s prayer for a sign.
I have not mentioned before, however, that the recipient of this ’88 letter was Colonel Olcott. He presumably recognised, then as now, his own “playful present,” his own “flap-doodle”; but he appears to have let it pass in silence.
From this date the seal seems to have disappeared from among Madame Blavatsky’s belongings. It was, of course, intrinsically valueless.
But in 1890 it turned up again—in New York, and in close contiguity with Mr. Judge. Madame sent a message through Mr. Judge to a disciple, then in America, who happened to be the Mr. Keightley who had remarked the “flap-doodle of Olcott’s” at Lansdowne-road. The context, which is before me as I write, shows that Madame was persuading this disciple to take some course distasteful to him. Judge added his persuasions to hers. But what was bound to determine the disciple was the discovery on receiving the missive from Mr. Judge’s hands, that the Mahatma had added his vote in transitu by endorsing the word “RIGHT,” in red pencil, with cryptograph and impression of the Panjab seal.
Mr. Keightley, too, must have recognised the “flap-doodle”; but he, too, like Olcott, said never a word. He did, indeed, go so far as to ask Judge if he had affixed the seal? But on receiving a blandly surprised assurance that Mr. Judge did not so much as know there was a seal affixed, he let the matter drop.
These are, so far as I know, the only two instances in evidence of the use of this peculiar seal in Mahatma missives during the lifetime of Madame Blavatsky, and, as was to be expected from her objection to the seal, neither missive was among those vouched for by her, for the message from herself to New York was telegraphed, and it was the telegraph-form at the New York end that the Mahatma endorsed. Nevertheless, it is clear that no intimate of Madame’s would get hold of the seal and make use of it for bogus Mahatma missives under her very nose, unless he were under the impression either that she had it for that purpose herself, or that she might be relied on at least not to “peach” on a chela who used it.
But why did neither Colonel Olcott nor Mr. Keightley speak? The only answer I can suggest is that while Madame Blavatsky was in the flesh the faithful thought twice before they expressed a doubt about anything or anybody. They were accustomed to take their marvels as they found them, and be thankful.
Otherwise, they might at least have pointed out to Mr. Judge, in order that he might in turn apprise his Mahatma, whose supernal knowledge seems here to have been somewhat at fault, what a fatal blunder he was making in palming off upon the faithful a bogus edition of his own cryptograph, known as such by three of the faithful themselves.
However, there are the facts; and but for the Mahatma’s trop de zéle in pushing his favourite chela’s occult claims immediately on Madame Blavatsky’s decease, I fear we should never have been vouchsafed this instructive side-light on an earlier period of the Theosophical Society.
These Adventures of a Seal supply the clue to the great game of bluff between the two highest Theosophical officials which must be depicted in the next chapter.
“To form the nucleus of a Universal Brotherhood of Humanity.”—Theosophical Society, Object I.
“Pestling a poisoned poison behind his crimson lights!”—“Maud.”
We left the president of the Theosophical Society staring at the impression of his own “flap-doodle” seal on that which purported to be a missive from the Mahatma.
The purport of the missive was precisely what the prescient Judge had foretold. Colonel Olcott was not to sell the Blavatsky jewels, as the money would be provided.
Having shown it to a brother member, the Colonel replaced it in the envelope, and went off to have a few words with Mr. William Q. Judge.
He remarked to Judge that he had missed a certain brass seal from among Madame Blavatsky’s relics, and described the Panjab seal and the story of its making; not mentioning, however, the name of the exact city where it was made. Had Judge seen the seal?
Judge answered in the negative. Upon which the Colonel remarked meaningly (I quote his own account) that he “hoped no scoundrel would get possession of it, and use it to give colour to bogus Mahatma messages,” adding that he would at once recognise an impression from the seal.
He did not mention that he had looked for and found the missive in the envelope.
After two days he looked into the envelope for that missive again. It was gone!
Some judicious hand had removed it. “Judicious,” says the Dictionary, “literally: of or pertaining to a Judge.” Colonel Olcott concluded with some assurance that the hand which had removed that missive, the hand which had put it there, and the hand which had written it, were one and the same hand, and that hand William Q. Judge’s. That is a conclusion which we must leave the two gentlemen to settle between them.
But note the sequel. The writer of the missive, whoever he was, was as good as his word.
When the Convention in due course was held, it was announced that a donation had been contributed towards the expenses in a peculiar way.
There had appeared to one of the brethren one afternoon a dark and mysterious Oriental figure, who gave no name, but deposited two Bank of England £10 notes (from Tibet?), which were backed with the familiar red cryptograph, after which he, like Mr. Lewis Carroll’s Snark, “softly and silently vanished away.”
It will not surprise the astute reader to learn that the brother favoured with this substantial spectre was William Q. Judge.
Well, there was the £20, and the vice-president’s reputation as an occultist stood higher than ever. There was a time, years before, when the society had made much of a similar vision of its president’s, one which, the Colonel used to explain, had first assured him of the truth of Madame Blavatsky’s doctrines. On his asking for a sign, the Colonel’s figure, which was, of course, like Mr. Judge’s, the “astral body” of a Mahatma, had materialised its turban, and disappeared into several yards of substantial textile fabric. “And here,” the Colonel was wont to conclude the story, “here, you see, is the turban!”—whipping it from his coat-tail pocket. Ah! that was in the palmy eighties. But now where was he? What was a chela who conjured up a turban beside one who could conjure up £20 hard cash—“on the table,” as Hilda Wangel would say?
In a word, Colonel Olcott was altogether thrown into the shade by this bold stroke, and had not even the face to suggest that perhaps Mr. Judge’s story was only a donor’s graceful way of conveying assistance from his own pocket. The Colonel pulled rather a sour face, however, over the heavy sum with which the society’s chest was debited when Mr. Judge’s expenses at the Convention came to be paid. For, Judge having attended in his official capacity, it was the Colonel’s treasury at Adyar which had to foot the bill. Personally, I consider the miracles cheap at the price.
This reminds me of the matter of Madame Blavatsky’s Rosicrucian jewel, in which also the Mahatma stole an amusing march on the Colonel. This was a pendant set with gems, which had the property of changing colour with every change in Madame’s health—so she and the faithful Olcott used to swear. The Colonel had his own ideas about the future of this mystic gewgaw; but what was his disgust on getting to Avenue-road to learn that the Master had sent a message for it to be given to Judge, and that Mrs. Besant had accordingly handed it over! Nor was the Colonel’s chagrin lightened by the fact that the forgetful Mahatma attempted (through Judge, of course) to put him off the track of the jewel by a message to quite another effect—an exceedingly misleading message.
For all I know, the gift was as valueless intrinsically as the brass seal; but Theosophically it was a distinct score for Mr. Judge and his Mahatma thus to amalgamate the two mystic apparatuses in one firm’s hands, so to speak.
After the passages described above, Mr. Judge’s Mahatma was chary of subjecting any more epistolary efforts to the eye of Colonel Olcott. And he seems to have become more cautious altogether. In the following September, however, he succumbed to the temptation of intervening again in the administration of the society. A letter with the usual trimmings was enclosed to the Inner Group, bearing upon its constitution and future changes, in one of Mr. Judge’s on the same subject and in the same sense (September 14).
Just at this time Colonel Olcott was visiting America, en route for Japan, where he was to teach the Buddhists their own religion in a flying visit. He took the opportunity of making some more pointed representations to Mr. Judge on the vagaries of his Master.
The result was prompt and significant.
During the very next month Mrs. Besant, then preparing for her trip to India, received a cablegram from the vice-president in America to this effect:—
You are desired not to go to India remain where you are grave danger Olcott await further particulars by an early mail.
At Avenue-road this mysterious telegram was at first read in the sense, “Grave danger to Olcott.” The president was just then due at Tokyo, and there was a report of an earthquake thereabouts. For a while there was a great flutter over this convincing case of Mahatmic prescience. When, however, the “early mail” arrived with Mr. Judge’s explanatory letter, quite a different complexion was put on the telegram. After reading this letter, and one from the inevitable Mahatma which Mr. Judge enclosed, the conclusion of the Inner Group was that the “grave danger” against which the Master warned Mrs. Besant was “from Olcott.” The Tibetan founder of the society, in short, warned Mrs. Besant against imperilling her safety in the neighbourhood of its president!
The Mahatma had declared war on Colonel Olcott.
This was the first shot in the campaign.
But what could this danger from Colonel Olcott be? Mr. Judge and his Mahatma left that darkly vague. Some of their friends in England dotted the i’s and crossed the t’s for them. It is hardly credible, but the suggestion was nothing less preposterous than that Colonel Olcott intended to poison Mrs. Besant!
I have no great veneration for Colonel Olcott’s character, and none at all for his intelligence; but I frankly apologise to him for having to mention this astounding nonsense in connexion with his name. I mention it simply in order to explain one of the documents which follow, and to throw a light on the minds of the colleagues who made or believed the charge; and I suppose I need scarcely add that I attach to it no other value whatever. Colonel Olcott is about as remote as it is possible to conceive from the sort of stuff of which murderers are made. I am sure he never had and never will have any more intention to poison Mrs. Besant, or anybody else, than the Man in the Moon. Having said so much to make any misunderstanding impossible, I return to the suspicions or pretended suspicions of the Colonel’s professed “Brothers.”
Positively, the only material which these ladies and gentlemen had to work on was an innocent conversation of the Colonel’s with a friend on the subject of poisons, Indian and other, which took place at a date when Mrs. Besant was not yet even a member of the society! The “evidence”—save the mark!—was such as ordinary non-Theosophical folk would not give even a dog a bad name on. But Mahatmas and their friends are different, and Mr. Judge’s Mahatma was well served. For this trivial episode, buzzed about from mouth to mouth in connexion with the sinister hints of “Mahatma M,” sufficed to make this monstrous charge against their president currently believed at Avenue-road, for some weeks at least, by the very inmost and governing circle of his colleagues, with Mrs. Besant at their head!
A belief once discarded, it is easy to deny that it ever existed. But this particular belief, or half-belief, showed itself in action. Mrs. Besant deferred her visit to India, and to impatient Indian disciples wrote that “Master had forbidden her to come,” and “till that order was countermanded” she would not budge.
Now just pause a moment, and enjoy the exquisite irony of this unique situation. The Theosophic Society was to be “the nucleus of a Universal Brotherhood of Mankind.” At this moment, taking the three chief exponents of this new Brotherliness, the president believed the vice-president to be fabricating bogus documents; the vice-president apparently believed the president to have designs to poison the high-priestess; and the high-priestess, having these two beliefs to choose from, coquetted at least, as we have seen, with the more heinous of the two.
Other Theosophists appear from their course of action to have accomplished the intellectual feat of believing both.
“Be these juggling fiends no more believed, that palter with us in a double sense!”—“Macbeth.”
“Masters, it is proved already that you are little better than false knaves.”—“Much Ado About Nothing.”
While the Mahatma was thus stealthily undermining the president, he was also busy strengthening his own outworks. In December one of the doubting ones, the Mr. Keightley who had been making up his mind whether to believe his own eyes ever since June, 1890, received in India a letter from Mr. Judge fortifying him against the heterodox influences to which he would be exposed on Colonel Olcott’s return to that country.
Mr. Judge warned his “dear Bert” that Olcott would try to shake his faith in the genuineness of Mr. Judge’s Mahatma-missives; that he might even have the baseness to suggest that they were fabricated by Mr. Judge himself. On opening this letter, Mr. Keightley found a small slip of peculiar paper, which turned out (on a prosaic scrutiny) to be the sort of tissue which is used to separate the sheets of typewriting transfer paper. On this slip appeared in Mahatmic script the words:—
There was, however, no seal impression. The Mahatma had grown chary of using that seal. From the material of this missive we gather that the Mahatma is not so remote from typewriters as one would expect in the Himalayas; from its diction we learn that, whatever the failings of his English, the august being has a racy command of Yankee.
I may remark here that when Mahatmas “precipitate” their own notepaper, as well as the writing upon it, it has always been the etiquette that the former should have an Indian look about it, however European the latter might be. Even tissue, as in this case, is considered more in keeping than commonplace stationery, with, perhaps, the watermark of some English firm upon it. But the “make” preferred, alike now and in the Blavatsky days, is a peculiar sort of hand-made rice-paper, which the Psychical Researchers had some difficulty in tracking to the maker’s. They were not assisted by Colonel Olcott. But now, the same mystic paper having turned up in the productions of Mr. Judge’s Mahatma (borrowed, perhaps, at the same time as the seal?) the Colonel resolves the mystery at once. Wishing to suggest that Mr. Judge got it ready-made from Madame Blavatsky, he mentions that Madame had gone about with a good supply of it, adding that it was originally bought in Cashmere. He had bought it himself at Jammos, in fact, as long ago as 1883, just as he had also been the purchaser of the brass seal; and just as he explains that the seal was got merely as a “playful present,” so he represents the original purpose of the Cashmere stationery as the humble one of “packing books—it being both cheap and strong.” From parcels post to astral notepaper is a distinct rise. But who first promoted it? Another side-light unintentionally thrown on the old Blavatsky days!
But to return to Mr. Judge’s Mahatma. His last attempt to bring Colonel Olcott to a better mind by persuasion was made that autumn. In October he had resorted to a bold device for overcoming scepticism, which he and Mahatma Koot Hoomi had patented in the early Blavatsky days—that of waylaying (astrally, of course) the post-bag of some disconnected and quite unconscious correspondent of the sceptic, and so introducing a message through an obviously untainted channel. For instance, Mr. Hume once “got a note from Koot Hoomi inside a letter received through the post from a person wholly unconnected with our occult pursuits, who was writing to him on some municipal business.” (“Occult World,” p. 21.) The letter happened to have a large and noticeable envelope, and long after, in the days of disillusion, Mr. Hume discovered that Madame’s servant Babula had carried off just such a letter from the postman for Madame, and then returned it to him with an apology for the mistake. (S. P. R. Report, p. 275.)