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PAGE.

PART II--ANSWERS AND THEOSOPHISTRIES.

Last Shreds of the Veil of Isis 99

POSTSCRIPT.

Mr. Judge's Mahatma at Bay 108 L'Envoi: "The Society upon the Himalay" 117 A Reply from Mr. W. Q. Judge 121 An Appreciation of Mr. Judge's "Reply" 133

Frontispiece, Portrait of Mme. Blavatsky 1 Portrait of Mrs. Besant 80-81 Portrait of Colonel Olcott 32-33 The "Mahatma's Seal" 28 The Envelope Trick 35 Facsimiles of Mahatma Missives, of Mr. Judge's 20, 33, 37, 38, Handwriting, &c. 50, 52, 54, 115 Portrait Cartoon: "When Augur meets Augur" 119

PREFACE.

Tourists at Pompeii are shown a temple of Isis. The impartial cinders have preserved for us there, not only the temple, but the secret passage which the priests used in the production of what are nowadays called "phenomena."

The following pages are designed to show the secret passage in the temple of the Theosophic Isis, the goddess of Madame Blavatsky's "Isis Unveiled."

Instead of having to wait on the pleasure of Vesuvius, I am enabled to act as cicerone while the temple is still a going concern.

As for myself, I have tried to render a service to truth; but I cannot see, with some good people, that a sense of truth necessarily excludes a sense of humour.

My pity is saved for those humbler dupes of the rank-and-file who have trusted these others not wisely but too well. From some of them I have seen pathetic letters; and if any gall has got upon my pen, it is the gall of the bitterness of their disillusion. They are more widely spread, and more worth saving from the quagmire of shams than most people suspect.

I need hardly remark that I was never a Theosophist myself. But my Theosophical sources of information, referred to in the course of the story, have been growing within the Society week by week ever since the exposure began.

There are no signs at present of any intention on the part of the three Theosophic chiefs to return from the various continents to which they departed last July--departed simultaneously with the issue of that "Report of an Inquiry" which is the starting-point of these chapters. Mrs. Besant has left Australia to join Colonel Olcott in India; Mr. Judge remains just five days hence at New York. And so, taking a cue from Mahomet and the Mountain, "Isis Very much Unveiled" will now, in booklet form, go out to them.

F. EDMUND GARRETT.

ISIS VERY MUCH UNVEILED.

"O my Theosophists.... What a pack of fools you are!"--MADAME BLAVATSKY.

This will be one of the queerest stories ever unfolded in a newspaper. Truth, as worshipped by the Theosophists, is indeed stranger than fiction. But it is not here told merely for entertainment. It has also a degree of importance and instructiveness measured by the growing wealth and numbers of the Theosophical Society, and the personal influence of Mrs. Besant. To-day the Theosophical Society numbers some three or four thousand members in Europe, India, and America. It supports two or three publishing businesses and several score of magazines in various languages. It boasts offices and house property in London, New York, and Adyar. It attracts donations and bequests. It numbers a title or two and some money-bags. It consists almost entirely of educated or semi-educated people, many of whom are intelligent, many sincere; a few both. And it is likely, amid that debauch of sign-seeking and marvel-mongering into which a century rationalistic in its youth has plunged in its dotage, to captivate an increasing number of those who are bored with the old religions and yet agog for a new.

It is especially to these that I dedicate the singular narrative which these articles are to unfold. It may save them betimes a painful disillusionment, such as it will, I fear, inflict on many who are as yet numbered among the faithful.

What is the situation at present?

Everybody knows that Madame Blavatsky, the original founder of the society, supported its pretensions to an occult origin by the production of phenomena which were pronounced by careful investigators to be due to systematic trickery; but which are still believed by the faithful to have been produced at Madame's request, and in support of the Theosophic movement, by certain Eastern sages possessed of transcendental powers over mind and matter.

Everybody will remember that Mrs. Besant, on whom the mantle of Madame Blavatsky has fallen, made a sensational public assertion, some time after her teacher's death, to the effect that those "powers" were still at work , and that she was herself now the recipient of similar "communications" from the "Mahatmas."

A few people are aware that as the result of a sort of split among prominent members of the society, there was recently a Theosophic meeting at which Mrs. Besant confessed to her friends that there had been something wrong with the "communications" which she had been in such a hurry to announce to the public; made certain Theosophically obscure charges against a brother official of the society; but persuaded those assembled to rest content with a general statement and not to inquire into the facts further--in short, generally to hush the matter up.

This the Theosophists, being a docile folk, conscientiously did; and as the accused proceeded with Mrs. Besant's sanction to deny, still in general terms, what little assertion of fact Mrs. Besant herself had appeared to convey, after which there was an affecting reconciliation: it is not surprising that to the outside public the mystery remains exactly where it was.

Even of the Theosophists themselves the full facts are only known at present to a few of the inner ring.

In view of what has gone before, this reticence appears misplaced; and as circumstances have put me in possession of the facts, I propose to give them the same publicity as was enjoyed by Mrs. Besant's original statement.

I propose to show:--

That Mrs. Besant has been bamboozled for years by bogus "communications" of the most childish kind, and in so ludicrous a fashion as to deprive of all value any future evidence of hers on any question calling for the smallest exercise of observation and common sense.

That she would in all probability be firmly believing in the bogus documents in question to this day, but for the growing and at last irresistible protests of some less greedily gullible Theosophists.

That the bamboozling in question has been practised widely and systematically, ever since Madame Blavatsky's death, pretty much as it used to be during her lifetime.

That official acts of the society, as well as those of individual members, have been guided by these bogus messages from Mahatmas.

That the exposure of them leaves the society absolutely destitute of any objective communication with the Mahatmas who are alleged to have founded and to watch over it, and of all other evidence of their existence.

That Mrs. Besant has taken a leading part in hushing up the facts of this exposure, and so securing the person whom she believes to have written the bogus documents in his tenure of the highest office but one in the society.

And that therefore Mrs. Besant herself and all her colleagues are in so far in the position of condoning the hoax, and are benefiting in one sense or another by the popular delusion which they have helped to propagate.

Before going any further I wish to emphasise one point. This society, as such, must stand or fall with its "Mahatmas." It should be realised how consistent, in one sense, this miracle-mongering side of the Theosophical movement has been throughout the society's history; what an important part it has played and continues to play in attracting popular interest; and how closely, along one of the versatile thaumaturgist's many lines, Madame Blavatsky has been followed by her present-day imitator. I say this in justice to the latter, who, I think, may fairly complain of the unkind criticisms passed on his Mahatma-missives by colleagues who still cherish those produced under the auspices of Madame Blavatsky.

It is true that the society does not officially vouch for Mahatmas. It is careful not to demand belief in them as a condition of membership; and the shrewder members are put into a panic by anything which tends to compromise its boasted "neutrality" on this tender subject. But we shall soon see what this "neutrality" is worth.

The published "Objects" of the society run thus:--

To form the nucleus of a Universal Brotherhood of Humanity without distinction of race, creed, sex, caste, or colour.

To promote the study of Aryan and other Eastern literatures, religions, and sciences.

A third object--pursued by a portion only of the members of the Society--is to investigate unexplained laws of nature and the psychical powers of man.

One could no more write a memoir on trigonometry and say nothing about triangles, than survey the strange career just concluded and ignore the marvels coruscating through it. And at this early period of her enterprise she seems to have depended more on the startling effect of surprising powers she was enabled to exhibit than on the philosophical teaching ... which became the burden of her later utterances.

"Now, dear, let us change the programme.... He is willing to give 10,000 rupees ... if only he saw a little 'phenomenon'!"--BLAVATSKY-COULOMB LETTERS.

The Theosophical Society was born in America of Russo-Yankee parentage. Helena Petrovna Blavatsky founded it at New York in 1874, with the aid first of Colonel Olcott, then a kind of journalist, who became, and still is, the president, and soon afterwards of William Q. Judge, then a lawyer's clerk in Olcott's brother's office, who became, and still is, the vice-president.

The previous career of the Foundress had been remarkable enough, if we accept hostile accounts of it--still more remarkable if we accept her own; but with this I am not concerned. From 1874 Madame Blavatsky's history and that of the Theosophical Society are one.

The Coulomb story tallied also with equal accuracy with such outside circumstantial evidence as happened to touch it. Did Madame Coulomb allege that a "miracle" was worked by the substitution of one vase for another exactly similar, the shop she named proved to have record of the purchase of just such an exact pair just before the date of the miracle. Did she make a similar statement about a "miraculous" shower of roses, the like corroboration would be forthcoming. Did her husband describe the famous "Shrine" cupboard as a trick-cabinet with three sliding panels in the back, the panels had to be admitted, and explained by Madame as "for convenience of packing in case of removal." It had hung against a hidden recess in the wall--there was the recess, the coincidence had to be deplored as unfortunate. On the other side of that recess, in Madame's bedroom, the sideboard had a false back--that, too, was to be seen, and the Theosophists must content themselves with alleging that M. Coulomb had made it so after the miracles, and in the nick of time for the inquiry. As for the scribbled instructions and letters in which some of these arrangements were clearly hinted at, Madame was driven to the peculiar course of admitting some letters and even parts of letters and denying the rest. This, by the way, was exactly what she had done about a similar incriminating letter on the subject of a trick "missive," which was planted on Mr. C. C. Massey, in 1882; the discovery of which led to the resignation of that gentleman and others from the Society.

As for the evidence of Madame and her friends about special "phenomena" it had already so melted away under the application of ordinary evidential canons as to leave the field clear for the Coulomb theory. The "tests" with which in some cases the Mahatmas had insisted on supplementing the credibility of their witnesses were as worthless and disingenuous as all the rest.

Last, what of the Mahatma missives?--precipitated from the Himalayas, speaking in the persons and signed with the superscriptions of Mahatma Morya and Koot Hoomi Lal Sing. These precious documents, which had been rained among the faithful with a copiousness almost amounting to garrulity, had been a little discredited already. The prosy and sometimes illiterate verbiage of the Tibetan sages was a severe trial to the enthusiasm of the more critical Theosophists even where it was apparently original. But it was too much of a good thing when a long doctrinal treatise, which Koot Hoomi had addressed to Mr. Sinnett, was found to be a gross plagiarism from a lecture by an American gentleman which had been reported in a Spiritualist paper a few months before. Nor did it mend matters when, after considerable delay, the illustrious Koot condescended to the newspaper arena, and wrote--we mean precipitated--an explanation which for its evasiveness and general "thinness" is probably unique even in the records of convicted plagiarists.

But now came worse. For the same scrutiny which had identified Madame Blavatsky as the writer of the unblushing letters to Madame Coulomb now found exactly the same characteristics of expression, turns of phrase, and solecisms in spelling in the compositions of Koot Hoomi Lal Sing. As to handwriting, it was shown that the styles of the two august correspondents had been evolved gradually by differentiation from Madame's ordinary hand. The facsimiles in the report deal only with "K.H." documents; but the case against those of "M." is just as strong. I showed a mass of "M." script, which lies before me as I write, belonging to the earliest period, to a Theosophist well acquainted with Madame's writing, and in perfect innocence he at once took it for hers. At that time almost the only difference between the two Mahatma scripts was that one affected red pencil or ink, and the other blue.

In a word, it was declared that Koot Hoomi Lal Sing and Mahatma Morya were the same person, and that person Madame Blavatsky. When a missive from the Himalayas floated down into the neophyte's lap, it was Madame's own hand which had prepared it, though it was the no less useful if humbler function of M. Coulomb to jerk it from the ceiling at the critical moment with a string, or deftly pass it through the sliding panel into the closed Shrine.

William Q. Judge, having been left out in the cold when the hegira to India took place, lived to fight another day, as we shall see. Mrs. Besant had not yet loomed on the Theosophical horizon. Madame Blavatsky herself left England and travelled till the storm had blown over. To the S.P.R. Report no serious answer has ever appeared from that day to this; and it fairly killed the miraculous phenomena. One class of them has reappeared under the aegis of Mrs. Besant; but poor indeed, as we shall see, is the Late Besantine period of mythological architecture beside its gorgeous predecessor.

"The lady doth protest too much, methinks."--HAMLET.

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