The Letters of H.P. Blavatsky: Volume 1 -- The Controversy Begins
(From Fohat, Vol. VIII, No. 3, Fall 2004)
by R.Bruce MacDonald
What a brotherly organization the Theosophical Society has turned out to be. In projects big and small, it is nearly impossible to get theosophists to work cooperatively with others. The compiling of The Letters of H.P. Blavatsky proved to be no different a case. Due to the death of John Cooper and, for some, the consequent nullifying of certain agreements, battle lines were being drawn with various parties lining up on one side or another. John Patrick Deveney makes mention of this in his book review in Theosophical History, XI, no.3. Deveney writes:The editor [John Algeo] in his preface acknowledges the Herculean labors of the late John Cooper in adding to the corpus of letters and in preparing them for publication, but states that, for unspecified reasons, none of Cooper's work could be used "directly," and that even his transcriptions of texts were not used because they were "not accurate." This is a surprising charge, directed as it is toward a person known for his meticulous work and now unavailable to defend himself, and concealed behind the editor's comment undoubtedly lies the dissention [sic] that arose after Cooper's death over the use of his research. (p. 31)
To put it less diplomatically, this excuse by John Algeo is pure politics and to the average member of the Theosophical Society, incomprehensible. The average member of the Theosophical Society is somewhat bewildered as to why the members of a Society dedicated to Universal Brotherhood cannot just put aside their differences and get along. The historians know, and it is not a mystery to them. Until the average member makes an effort to learn their Society's ugly history, they will forever be uncomprehending pawns in the power plays of their respective leaderships.
Fohat received three letters wondering exactly the same thing: why did John Algeo include in this work a letter that for many is a certain fraud, in which Blavatsky describes herself as a political animal and psychic fraud looking to serve her Russian homeland as a spy -- an occupation that the Russian nobility looked upon with great contempt. Also, why did he reprint letters from Vsevolod Solovyov, a known enemy of Madame Blavatsky whose lies were thoroughly exposed in a series of articles by Beatrice Hastings printed in the Canadian Theosophist earlier this century. (These articles were collected and reprinted under the title Solovyov's Fraud by ETS and appear on the ETS website TheosophyCanada.com). If there are any originals to these letters, they have not been made available and inspected by any reputable theosophical historians.
There are very good political reasons for including those letters. Adyar and Wheaton embrace a brand of "theosophy" that is built upon the work of Annie Besant, Charles Leadbeater, and their worshipping followers. There were times during the lives of each when they were committed to ideas that were perversions and in direct opposition to the principles as laid down by H.P. Blavatsky, William Q. Judge, and their Masters. What makes this even more reprehensible is that the excuse for adopting these perverse ideas was laid at the feet of these very same Masters. Learn your history! Read the Krotona of Old Hollywood collections and read HPB's Collected Writings and the Mahatma Letters and ask yourself, if all the nonsense espoused by Besant and Leadbeater were not sanctioned by the Masters, would it still be believable in light of the earlier teachings? No! Certainly not.
Adyar and Wheaton have to believe, and they have to ensure that their members believe in the sainthood of at least Besant. This sainthood cannot be guaranteed if Blavatsky, Judge, and their interpretations of the Masters are not made suspect. The easiest way to accomplish this is to attack the reputations of these two founders of the society and attribute to them base, political motives, to make them as ethical as a Jesuit. Adyar and Wheaton obviously want these letters included in these collections and you can be sure that they will not be the last of their type. There will be other letters of the same ilk in future volumes. If you are members of these organizations, do not let your leadership get away with this.
Finally, on the side of light and truth, Ernest Pelletier is now releasing his book, The Judge Case. This book will be instrumental in identifying the early deceptions that lead finally to the necessity of having to destroy the reputations of both Judge and Blavatsky. If they avail themselves of no other historical investigation, the student of Theosophy should buy and study this book. It is a masterful work that allows the misguided villains of our early history to hang themselves with their own words. To understand the demise of the Theosophical Society as a true vehicle for the dissemination of the Ancient Wisdom Tradition, this book is a must read.
The three letters received by Fohat follow.
Letters to the Editor:
Thank you very much for your last Fohat, Summer 2004, which I received a couple of weeks ago. It has as usual very interesting articles. The only thing that was a little disappointing for me was the Book Review of The Letters of H. P. Blavatsky, vol. I, by Ted G. Davy, in which there is no mention at all of the inclusion within this book of the Solovyov letters. The Review is rather a description of the book, and of course the reviewer has the right to his own opinion.
The Solovyov letters included in the HPB Letters -- due to its contents, its origin and the absence of the original MS -- are suspect. Some of them clearly show unmistaken signs of being partial fabrications, especially letters No. 12, 17, 53, 69 and 76. Its source as we know is the book A Modern Priestess of Isis written by Vsevolod S. Solovyov, one of the bitterest enemies of HPB, and one who started the most foul calumnies against her.
On the other hand, letter No. 7, seems to be a cunning fabrication done by someone who knew many details of HPB's life, although not enough (one of her many enemies, known or unknown to us).
The content of this letter shows to have the aim to support the Russian-spy-theory of Richard Hodgson-Coulomb conspiracy. The whole tenor and language used in the letter is so un-Blavatsky! It is addressed to an almost anonymous entity: "The Director of the Third Department", signed in Odessa in Dec. 1872, when HPB was really in transit from the Ashram of her Master in the Himalayas to her important mission in America for the formation of the Parent Theosophical Society, in New York. The whole thing is so ridiculous and out of place. Whoever wrote this letter was unable to give it a clear aim other than a self exposé. The whole text is a mass of disjointed and unconnected ramblings. In the Introduction of the Letter No. 7, p.23, it says that "The genuineness of this letter has been questioned by a number of researchers. Several attempts to obtain a copy of the original, in order to compare the handwriting have not been successful." Thus if the Editor was not sure that the letter was authentic, and the content shows unmistaken signs of being a forgery, why publish it with the rest? Under what criterion? What is the hurry? The whole thing is out of place. But most people have no idea of the history of the Theosophical Movement and HPB, and these few letters are like rotten apples in a barrel of good ones, their presence pollutes the image of HPB.
What disturbs me the more is the Editor's little Jewish tale in his Preface, p.xv, where he says:
There is an old tale that Jewish scribes, when copying manuscripts, ALWAYS DELIBERATELY left something out or INTRODUCED AN ERROR -- to show that only God is perfect [ergo, as HPB is not God, she is imperfect]. In that respect, all of us who work with texts are Jewish scribes, perhaps not in our intention, but in our RESULTS. [Capitals mine]
Following this train of thought, are we to expect published in the next volumes the forgeries of Monsieur et Madame Coulomb, among the authentic letters of HPB, giving simply as a matter of course the references to the Christian College Magazine of Madras?
The whole effort to publish [these] letters is laudable and has involved the cooperation of the best workers in the field. The Editor has done a fine job, his intentions are good, but the inclusion of letter No. 7 -- before ascertain[ing] scientifically if it was written by HPB herself -- and the Solovyov letters -- for which there are no originals extant, and [their] source is one of the worse enemies of HPB -- will create bad results. I think that these letters should be taken out of the collection, and produce a 2nd edition free from this extraneous material. This could be done very easily, thanks to the present electronic technology of book making. It could take several weeks, but the effort would be worth while.
Let us not put in the mouth of HPB words that we are not certain she uttered.
Ramon Sordo
Tepoztlan, Mexico
To the Editors of Fohat:
Probably many Theosophists, myself included, had been looking forward to see[ing] the first volume of The Letters of H. P. Blavatsky published. Not only on account of our interest in her life, but also because her Collected Writings would not have been complete without her large correspondence. So I ordered my copy with great expectations and with very little preparation to be disappointed. Some of the letters were just what we expected of H.P.B., however there were many others that surprised me considerably and left me wondering if I had understood them correctly. Also, scattered here and there among her letters were statements so foreign to everything we know about H.P.B. that one could not help doubting their authenticity. Even Mr. Algeo, the editor of this book, mentions, specifically with reference to Letter 7, that
the genuiness of this letter has been questioned by a number of researchers. Several attempts to obtain a photocopy of the original, in order to compare the handwriting, have not been successful. (p.23)
But since regardless of this fact Mr. Algeo decided to publish this Letter, we must conclude that he personally did not much question its authenticity and that its contents must not have disturbed him. This is a rather alarming situation, for there are still more volumes of The Letters of H. P. Blavatsky pending, and one wonders what other questionable letters -- even more discreditable to H.P.B. than this one -- might he not be tempted to publish.
In my opinion Letter 7 must have been fabricated and should never have been published. It is the most offensive of the 136 letters included in this volume, and unless we deny H.P.B. consistency in her way of acting, teaching and writing, such dishonourable thoughts as are revealed in this letter could hardly have been the outcome of her pen. Regretfully this infamous letter will now only serve to perpetuate the calumnies against H.P.B. and give her enemies a new weapon of attack.
It is not enough, however, to state how I personally feel about the authenticity of this letter (and of others in this volume too). I will also have to provide some arguments to uphold my feelings, and if factual evidence is lacking there is still internal evidence to support us. Upon analyzing the letter one finds that its purpose is clearly political. It even specifically states that her "aim is not profit" (p.27). But then the letter contradicts itself when it alleges that H.P.B. had accepted a payment of 2000 francs for some service she had rendered to a Russian military man (p.28) and "5 thousand francs from the Papal envoy for the time spent with him" discusing affairs related to the Papal Government to whom she made many promises for the future which she never intended to fulfil (p.26). In short, if we are to believe in the authenticity of Letter 7, then we have also to believe that H.P.B. had accepted bribes and had offered her services for the rest of her life to work as a Russian spy by taking advantage of her occult powers in seances that were often frequented by high government officials. She is shown as boasting that she "can find out everything through spirits and by other means, and can extract the truth from the most secretive person" (p.27) by which she meant government officials who carried state secrets, thereby being able to render great service to her country.
This letter, of which there is no original, is addressed to the Director of the Third Department, a Russian secret police of the mid 19th century responsible for political security, and is dated December 26, 1872. Its source is the Central State Archive of the October Revolution. I now intend to quote a few more of its spurious declarations and disprove them with H.P.B.'s own words.
On page 24 of The Letters of H. P. Blavatsky it states -- in the alleged words of H.P.B. -- that "I have been living abroad almost continuously. During those 20 years . . . I zealously watched current politics . . ."; on page 25 she is said to have written that while in Cairo, and availing herself of "spirits," "I found out about the secret acquisition of a huge quantity of arms left behind by the Turkish Government; I found out about all the intrigues of Nubar-Pasha [a Turkish prime minister], and of his talks with the German Consul General . . ."; and again on page 28 H.P.B. supposedly said that "love of struggle and perhaps for intrigues is in my [H.P.B.'s] character." And so in a similar vein she keeps on boasting in that Letter of all her political knowledge, abilities and cunning.
Now, what has H.P.B. to say about politics in her writings? In C.W. X-294 she wrote: "it so happens that I have never meddled in politics, am innocent of any knowledge of political intrigues, never bothered myself with this special science at any time of my long life," and in C.W. X-293 she declares that
I have never written in all my life on politics, of which I know nothing. I take no interest in political intrigues, regarding them as the greatest nuisance and a bore, the most false of all systems in the code of ethics. I feel the sincerest pity for those diplomats who, being honourable men, are nevertheless obliged to deceive all their lives, and to embody a living, walking LIE.
These quotations refer specifically to H.P.B.'s personal feelings about politics, but there are in addition the policies of the Theosophical Society and its Journals. In C.W. X-82 H.P.B. wrote that "politics does not enter into the programme of our magazine's activity." Then in C.W. IV-454 she adds:
feeling an innate and holy horror for everything connected with it [i.e., politics], we have avoided the subject most strenuously.
In The Key to Theosophy, pages 231-32, it is stated that
the whole present system of politics is built on the oblivion of such rights [as justice, kindness, consideration or mercy], and [on] the most fierce assertion of national selfishness.
Also that the Theosophical Society is not a political organization and "as a society it takes absolutely no part in any national or party politics." And finally on the same page she expresses the worthlessness of meddling in politics because "no lasting political reform can be ever achieved with the same selfish men at the head of affairs as of old." If such statements as these, together with the whole arsenal of Ethical teachings given to us by H.P.B. in her writings do not convince Mr. Algeo that such contemptible Letter as number 7 could never have been written by H.P.B., then I really do not know what will!
Out of 136 letters published in this volume, 19 of them have no Russian original available and were thus translated by Boris de Zirkoff from Solovyov's book on H.P.B. entitled Souvremennaya zhritza Isidi. Concerning the latter Sylvia Cranston writes in her biography of H.P.B., page 298:
Solovyov's version of his association with H.P.B. was first recorded in a series of articles in Russky Vyestnik in 1892 and was published as a book the following year. In 1895 an edited English translation by Walter Leaf was published on behalf of the Society for Psychical Research in London under the title A Modern Priestess of Isis.
Both of these versions, the Russian and the English, were meant to expose H.P.B. as a "charlatan" and to offer "some explanation of the remarkable success of her imposture" (Cranston, 299). However, according to Sylvia Cranston, when carefully analyzed "most of Solovyov's facts turned out to be fiction" (Cranston, 301).
If we only consider the following three facts, namely:
1) that this book was requested by the Society for Psychical Research which was already totally prejudiced against H.P.B.;
2) that from a great admirer and "friend" of H.P.B. Solovyov "became her bitter enemy," the reasons being that H.P.B. refused to teach him practical occultism and that "all his prayers to be taken as a Chela were utterly rejected" by her (Cranston, 307), and lastly,
3) that Solovyov wrote these articles after her death when H.P.B. no longer could defend herself, then we may rightfully ask how trustworthy such source of information can possibly be? How authentic are these 19 letters in this volume of The Letters of H.P. Blavatsky?
Much more could be refuted in these Letters, but it would take a volume to do so. Hopefully the few examples given above will serve as a warning sign to all Theosophists who have acquired this book, or intend to do so in the near future. But even more importantly, let us trust that Mr. Algeo will use a little more understanding of H.P.B.'s nature in his subsequent volumes of The Letters of H.P. Blavatsky, and take to heart the wise words of Mahatma K.H. when He stated that "so long as one has not developed a perfect sense of justice, he should prefer to err rather on the side of mercy than commit the slightest act of injustice." (Letters from the Masters of Wisdom, II-143.)
Elinor Roos
Victoria, BC, Canada
To the editors of Fohat,
I have read the latest compilation of the Letters of H.P.B, volume 1, and have had some doubts as to the truth in some of those letters. I am aware that perhaps nothing can be proven, and I would say that, most likely, that is a fact. But my question is, shouldn't the editors be more faithful to H.P.B., and not include those letters where their truth and authenticity is doubtful?
Boris de Zirkoff translated the letters from Solovyov's works, and I truly wonder how much one can trust Solovyov since he became such a bitter enemy of H.P.B. We can compare what those letters say, to most of the others and see some discrepancies in her character.
I would have my fortune secured if I wasn't carrying unfortunately my accursed name of Blavatsky. . . . These are the bitter fruits of my youth devoted to Satan, his pomps and works! (Letter 12, p. 49)
And then on page 194:
I am ready to sell my soul for spiritualism, but nobody will buy it, and I am living from hand to mouth and earning from $10 to $15 when necessity arises.
Compare it to a previous letter (#37):
I am ready to give my life for the spread of the sacred truth. (p. 143)
These are not only discrepancies, but exactly two totally opposite views. In let. 11 she quotes from something Aksakoff said to A.J. Davis:
I have heard of Madame Blavatsky from one of her parents, who spoke of her as a rather strong medium. Unfortunately her communications reflect her morals, which have not been very strict. (p. 44)
Isn't it strange that it is in those letters taken out of Solovyov's work where HPB specifically speaks about her lack of morals, her sins, etc. and her materialistic views. Is there anything anywhere which supports that she actually did write those letters, and if not, shouldn't the reader be warned of their probable inauthenticity, or even better not include them at all?
Quoting Boris de Zirkoff, Collected Writings XII, p. 334, he says:
V.S. Solovyov (1853-1900), who reviewed H.P.B.'s The Key to Theosophy, was an outstanding Russian philosopher and writer, most of whose writings have never yet been translated into English. He was the brother of Vsevolod S. Solovyov, the novelist, who, after a brief association with H.P.B. and the Theosophical Movement, became a bitter enemy.
What did this "outstanding" philosopher do, when he reviewed The Key? In the words of HPB:
the review by Mr. [Vladimir] Solovyov is no review at all, and not even ordinary criticism, but simply a wholesale distortion of the book from the first paragraph to the last, as much of its entirety as of the few and skillfully chosen points which have appeared to the critic as "especially curious." (CW XII, p. 335 "Neo-Buddhism")
Obviously the two brothers were against her.
In Sylvia Cranston's book, The Extraordinary Life and Influence of Helena Blavatsky, [she] quotes the following paragraph from a letter of Vs. Solovyov:
This absolute blindness on the part of people who were perfectly rational in everything but the question of "Madame's" impeccability, forced me finally to adhere to my original plan. Whatever came I would collect such proofs of all these deceptions as should be sufficient not only for me but for all these blind dupes. I would no longer give way to the involuntary sympathy and pity, which in spite of everything, still attracted me to Helena Petrovna. I would in the first place deal only with Madame Blavatsky, the thief of souls, who was trying to steal my soul too. She was duping me under the veil of personal friendship and devotion; she was trying to entangle and exploit me; and so my hands were free. (pp. 304-305)
Mrs. Cranston's accounts on Solovyov are extent, and shows rather clearly the type of man he was. There will be many who upon reading these letters will be ignorant as to who the Solovyov brothers were. I truly hope that John Algeo and the editors will be more careful in their choice of material especially when they come to the era of the Coulombs.
In letter #7, the editor did write that "the genuineness of this letter has been questioned by a number of researchers", and we still can question it. No one who has read the life of H.P.B. can imagine her setting traps on people to elicit their secrets, hopes and plans for the so called good of Mother Russia. This goes completely against her character and morals, for she was, decidedly, not a deceitful person. Here we are told that the original is in the Central State Archive of the October Revolution, but it also seems that no one has read it. Are we to believe that she was using her "powers" to obtain secrets? Is this the same woman who worked for truth all her life?
Quoting from Jean O. Fuller's book Blavatsky and her Teachers, she says: "In it [i.e. A Modern Priestess of Isis], Solovioff claims it was Madame Blavatsky who offered him her services as a spy for Russia" (p. 187) while previous to this, Ms. Fuller quotes from a letter of Sinnett saying what HPB told him:
Solovioff is either crazy or acts so because having compromised himself with his offer of espionage to me he is now afraid I should speak and compromise him at St. Petersburg . . .
Solovioff will not forgive me for rejecting his proposition. (British Museum, Additional MSS.45287, LXXX; Letters, p. 193) (p. 186)
Here we have again further discrepancies between what allegedly H.P.B. wrote according to Solovyov, and those of other people, including herself to Sinnett.
Perhaps we will never know the truth, but what do we, as Theosophists, gain in bringing out the dirt and lies promoted by others to bring down H.P.B. and possibly the movement. Don't we have a duty to our readers and fellow Theosophists to search for the truth, and if not available, then to ignore those letters, consider them inauthentic, and therefore not include them in HER collected letters? There is already so much controversy about these letters, that I feel one shouldn't add any more.
Karin D. Smith
Toronto, ON, Canada
RETURN TO COMMENTS ON LETTERS OF HPB, VOL. I