Asiatics throng to a possessor or reputed possessor of siddhis from the most selfish motives — to get sons from barren wives; cures for diseases, often the fruit of vice; recover lost valuables; influence the minds of masters to favour them; and to learn the future. They call this " asking the blessings of the Mihatma," but no one is deceived by the euphuism in the least, and in ninetynine cases out of a hundred, the begging hypocrite is dismissed unsatisfied.

 Even I, in my humble experience, came to know the meanness of this class, for out of the thousands of clamorous sick persons that I healed or relieved in my experimental researches of 1881, I doubt if one hundred were really grateful; and before the year was up, I had practically learnt how a Yogi must feel about exhibiting his psychical powers. Truly, indeed, does the Sage declare in Suta Samhita that the true Guru is not he who teaches one the physical sciences, who confers worldly pleasures, who trains one's powers until he may reach the gandharvas or develop the siddhis, for all these are sources of trouble and sorrow : the real Teacher and Master is he who imparts the knowledge of Brahman. This is taught likewise in Chandogya, Brahadaranya, and other Upanishads, where it is said that while the Yogi can by will-power make or destroy worlds, call to him pitris, gandharvas, and other spiritual beings, enjoy the power of Ishwara in unalloyed sathwa, yet he should avoid all these vanities as tending to foster the sense of separateness and as being hostile to the acquisition of true gndnam.

As for voluntarily consorting with the denizens of the astral spheres, invoking their favours and submitting to their behests, no right-minded, well-informed Asiatic would even dream of it. Sri Krishna sums it up most concisely in that famous verse of the GHa (Ch. IX.) : " Those who worship (invoke, make pujd to) the Devatas (higher elementals) go to them (after death); those who worship the Pitris, go to the Pitris. The worshippers of the Bhdtas (here defined by S'ankara as the lowest nature-spirits; but the word is also a synonym of Pisachas, meaning the souls of the dead or astral shells) go to the BhiUas. Only my worshippers (?'. s., the devotees of gndnam, the highest spiritual knowledge), come to me." To repeat, then H. P. B. would be respected as possessing siddhis, but blamed for showing phenomena; while M. A. Oxon would be looked down upon as the medium of Pisachas and Bhtitas, gifted as he may have been in mind, highly educated as the University may have made him, pure and unselfish as may have been his motives.

So much for the Asiatic view of our case. As for myself, I was through-and-through a Westerner in my way of looking at the wonders of H. P. B. and Stainton Moseyn. They were to me supremely important as psychical indications and as scientific problems. While I could not solve the riddle of her complex entity, I was convinced that the forces in and behind H, P. B. and her phenomena were skilfully handled by living persons who knew Psychology as a science, and by its practice had gained power over the elemental races.

In Stainton Moseyn's case there was an equal obscurity. His rooted idea was that his teachers, " Imperator," " Kabbila " [Kapila?], " Mentor," " Magus," " Sade " [Sadi ?], et al, were all disincarnate human spirits; some very ancient, some less so, but all wise and beneficent. They not only permitted but insisted that he should use his reason and work his own way upward; and with tireless patience answered his questions, solved his doubts, helped to develop his spiritual insight, aided him to project his astral body, and, by multifarious marvels, proved the nature of matter and force and the possibility of controlling natural phenomena : moreover, they taught him that a system of impartation of knowledge by teacher to pupil existed throughout the Cosmos, in ordinated stages of mental and spiritual development : like the classes in a school or college.

 In all these respects his teachings were identical with my own; and he never could convince me that, if not the same group, at least the same kind of Masters were occupying themselves in forming these two reformatory and evolutionary centres of New York and London. What a noble soul animated his body; how pure a heart, how high an aim, how deep a devotion to truth ! At once a scholar, a gentleman, a clear thinker and writer, he became the most eminent of all the leaders of the Spiritualist party; or, at least so it seems to me, and I have had the personal friendship of Davis, Sargent, Owen, and many others.

Before commencing this present chapter I have read and studied some seventy of his delightful letters to H. P. B. and myself — representing an interchange of above two hundred epistles; I have also consulted Mrs. Speer's " Records," and they have re-awakened the charm of our early intercourse. His close relation with us and the way in which our psychical experiences were interwoven, make it necessary that I should give more than a merely cursory glimpse of the man; and the best way to show what he was in thought, mind, and aspiration, will be to publish in this connection some portions of an autobiographical narrative contained in one of his letters to me. It is dated from University College, London, 29th April, 1876, and reads as follows :

" My life has been cut up into ' junks ' — generally of about five years' duration — and the discipline of each is peculiar; but all tends to the same. Illness in some form pervades all, and I seldom am left at one form of work more than five or seven years. I inherited good property : but it was taken from me. I lost it all in one day by an incursion of the sea. I was doing well at College — a likely First and Fellowship to follow. Ten days before examination I broke down from overwork, and was not able to read or even write a letter for two years, or rather I was obliged to defer work for my degree for two years, and then to take an ordinary one. During that two years I went all over Europe, and learned more really than I should have got from books. But it was a wreck of life's prospects.

" Then I had my five years, or six rather, at Theological work. I had a name in the Church, and was counted a preacher who would make a reputation, and get on. I was thoroughly orthodox, a more or less intelligent theologian who had really studied all round, and who had a knack of argument. I went to a wild country district. partly by doctor's advice, to have benefit by sea air and solitude to recruit my health shattered at Oxford, and then I read omnivorously, and worked hard. My people would do anything for me. I could lead them anywhere, and I got a reputation in Parish and Pulpit. I overdid myself again, and felt that I must get off the excessive work (30 square miles of district to work is no joke : and all in my hands). I came to the West of England, and was appointed to a grand position in the Diocese of Sarum — a sort of select preacher. I acted twice, and irreparably broke down. Doctors could make nothing of me. They said I was overwrought : that I must rest, etc. I did rest, and got no better. Physically I was not exactly ill, but I dare not try to do anything in public.

" Then I fell ill again, this time with a fever : and in a place where no good doctor was to be had. A visitor tended me — my life was barely snatched out of the fire, and he became my fast friend — Dr. Speer. I came to London, and he asked me to live in his house and coach his boy. My property was gone, my position, my health. He took me in and I lived with him. But I could do nothing in public. He could not understand it. I could not explain it : but it was an awful, ever-present fact. I felt my old life was done. Yet I had no doubts as to the faith I had always held, not one — not a bit of one.

" But by degrees I found the old landmarks getting fainter : the bread grew stale. Then one day a man broke down here [at the London Univ.] and the authorities wanted somebody to carry on lectures on Philology. Few could do it, for the thing requires preparation. I heard and offered. I have a way of pigeon-holing knowledge till it is wanted, and I had read Philology at Oxford. So I took up the thread, and they finally gave me a permanent appointment.

" Another change, you see. I could lecture well enough, but could not do my old clerical work. When friends found me at work again, they said, now you 'll take a Church in London, or So and So will be delighted to have you preach for him : but I simply could not. Yet I never write a lecture, and can go a session through without a note.

" Queer, Eh ?

" Well, Mrs. Speer fell ill with some serious ailment, and got hold of one of Dale Owen's books. As soon as she got down stairs she set at me. I pished and pshawed, but agreed to look into the thing. I went to Burns, got all I could, went to Heme and Williams, and in two months was in the thick of physical mediumship, such as is hardly credible. Our phenomena were far ahead of anything I have seen elsewhere. It went on for four years, and now it is dying out, and I am going into another phase — and there have been plenty more that I have passed over. Indeed, I have said too much of self. But you may as well know what sort of man I am.

" At the present I have lost all sectarian faith, i. e., all distinctive dogmatism. You will see in Spirit Teachings how I fought for it. Now I have lost the body, and kept the spirit. I no longer count myself a member of any Church, but I have got all the good I could out of them all. I am a free man : with such knowledge as Theological systems can give. I have thrown the husks away. And now, as soon as I have been sufficiently purified, I humbly hope to be allowed to enter within the veil, hoping there to repeat a process which, with some modifications, will be unceasing. Endless progress, perpetual purification, the lifting of veil after veil until — Eh ? where have I got to ? God bless you.

" Your friend and brother,

" M. A. Oxon."

At this stage had he arrived when we were brought together; thenceforth to keep in perfect sympathy and lovingly work together along parallel lines : our aspirations the same, our views not radically divergent. Often and often does he in his letters bemoan the fact that we were not living in the same city, where we might continually exchange ideas. Several chapters were devoted in the Theosophist to the subject of Stainton Moseyn's mediumship and the resemblance between his phenomena and H. P. B.'s, which may be read with profit.

Our Western friends will be interested in knowing that the Hindu who would enter upon a course of meditation, /. ^., of concentration of all one's mental faculties upon spiritual problems, has a triple system to observe. There is, first of all, to make the Sthalla S'uddhi, or ceremony, with the object of purifying the ground upon which he is to sit : cutting himself off from astral connection with the astral body of the earth and with the elementals which inhabit it \_Vide /sis, I., 379]. This isolation is helped by first purifying the ground by washing, and by the person sitting upon a spread of Kusa grass, one of the group of vegetables whose aura resists bad and attracts good elementals. In this category are also included the Neem (Margosa), Tulsi (sacred to Vishnu), and Bilwa (sacred to Shiva). Among trees infested with bad influences and which the " adversaries " of Imperator are believed to frequent, are the Tamarind and the Banyan : they also infest old wells, long-empty houses, cremation-grounds, cemeteries, battle-grounds, slaughtering places, sites of murders and all other places where blood has been spilt : this is the Hindu belief, and in this connection see /si's, Chaps. XII. and XIII., Vol. I. The ground having been purified and the operator isolated from terrene bad influences, he next makes the BMta S'uddhi, a recitation of verses having power to keep off the " adversaries " dwelling in the atmosphere, including both elementals and elementaries; assisting the operation by making circular (mesmeric) passes around his head with his hand. He thus creates a psychical barrier or wall about him. After having very carefully performed these two indispensable preliminaries — never to be forgotten or perfunctorily done — he then proceeds with the A'tma S'uddhi, or recitation of mantrams which assist in purifying his body and mind and in preparing the way for the awakening of the spiritual faculties, the absorption called " meditation," whose aim is the attainment of gndnam, knowledge. A pure spot, pure air, the absence of unclean persons, /. <-., the unwashed, the immoral, the unspiritually-minded, the overfed, the unsympathetic — are all indispensable for the seeker after divine truth.  

Imperator's admonitions to the Speer circle and, in fact, those which have been given to all really choice circles of spiritualistic investigators in all parts of the world, substantially accord with the Eastern rules. In short, the closer these precautions have been observed, the higher and nobler have been the teachings received. The revolting scenes .and disgusting language and instructions which have attended so many sdances where unprotected and unpurified mediums have given their services to mixed gatherings of foul and pure inquirers, are traceable to neglect of these protective conditions. Gradually, things have been changing for the better within these past sexenteen years; physical mediums and physical phenomena are slowly beginning to give place to the higher forms of mediumship and manifestations.  

The views of Imperator about the evils of mixed circles were reflected in Stainton Moseyn"s published writings, and, if possible, more strongly in his private correspondence. He fully comprehended that the experiences of centuries must have taught the Asiatics this \eritv, that pure spiritual aura can no more be passed untainted through a vile medium and incongruous circle, than the water of a mountain spring be made to run pure through a foul filter. Hence their strict and stern rules for the isolation of the postulant for knowledge from all corrupting influences, and for the thorough purification of his own self. When one sees the blind ignorance and rash confidence with which Western people go themselves and take their sensitive children into the sin-sodden aura of many a stance room, one can feel how thoroughly just is the stricture of M. A. Oxon's chief guide, about the surprising fatuity shown with respect to dealings with the spirits of the departed. The most " orthodox " of the Spiritualist writers are now only, after forty-odd years' experience with mediumistic phenomena, partly realising this truth. Yet these same persons, yielding to a rooted hatred of Theosophy — which they excuse on the score of their detestation of H. P. B. — will not hearken to the voice of the ancients nor take the precautions which experience dictates against the perils of the open circle and the public medium. The improvement above noticed is due rather to the general interest created by our literature, and its reflex action upon mediums and circles, than to the direct influence of editors, speakers, and writers. Let us hope that before long the views of the Theosophists respecting elementals and elementaries will be accorded the full attention they merit.  

CHAPTER XX.  

I SAT in the verandah at " Gulistan," my mountain cottage, one morning, looking northward above the sea of clouds that hid the Mysore plains from view. Presently, the vaporous ocean dissolved away, and the eye could distinctly see the Bilgirirangam Hills, seventy miles off; with a good glass the details could be easily made out. By association of ideas, the problem of the connection between Stainton Moses* and our two selves — H. P. B. and I — came to my mind.

* I use the distoite'I name under protest.

As I turned over the facts of our intercourse one by one, the confusing clouds of subsequent events rolled away, and in the distant past the glass of memory brought out his relationship to us and our Sages more distinctly than ever before. It is now clear to me that one directing Intelligence, pursuing a wide-reaching plan covering all nations and peoples, and acting through many agents besides ourselves, had in hand his development and mine, his body of psychical proofs and those given me by and through H. P. B. Who " Imperator," its agent, was, I know not — I do not even know who H. P. B. really was — but I have always been inclined to believe that he was either S. M.'s own Higher Self or an adept; and that " Magus " and others of S. M.'s band were adepts likewise. I had my band also — though not of " spirit controls." S. M. had an Arabian teacher, so had I; he an Italian philosopher, so had I; he had Egyptians, I had a Copt; he had a " Prudens," "versed in Alexandrian and Indian lore," so had I — several; he had Dr. Dee, an English mystic, I also had one— the one previously spoken of as " the Platonist "; and between his phenomena and H. P. B.'s there was a striking resemblance. Until Mrs. Speer's Records were published all these particulars were not known to me, but now everything is plain. No wonder that S. M. and I were so drawn together; it was inevitable. That he felt it too, his whole correspondence proves. He sums it up in these few words, in his letter of Jan. 24, 1876 : " My strongest attraction lies to you two; and I would give anything to be able to come to you " — in the Double, he means. The saddening thing to me is that he could not have known his " band " for what they were — or what I think they were, if you like. Supposing my surmise to be correct, the obstacle was his peculiar mental bias. His intellectual history resembles Mrs. Besant's in certain respects : each fought desperately for old ideas and changed them only under the compulsion of cumulative proofs; each sought only truth, and each stood bravely for it. How pathetic the story of Mrs. Besant's struggle against reason in the interest of her old faith, and her final brave yielding to logic ! So, the reader of Stainton Moses' published and unpublished personal narrative must see that Imperator and his colleagues had to contend against a combative incredulity in the mental man that would not loose its hold upon the medium's mind, until it had been swept out, so to say, by a tornado of psychical demonstrations.* He was, by temperament, a conscientious mule; but once brought to accept the new philosophy, he was courage and loyalty personiiied, a lion for fighting and bravery.

* Among many corroborative passages, see what Imperator says in Mr5. Speer's Record, XX. : Light, July 30, 1892.  

The first portrait that he sent me represents him as a thin-faced curate, seemingly as mild as milk; and no one could have guessed that that inoffensive parson was destined to become a chief leader of the party of spiritualistic free-thinkers. So necessary is trained clairvoyance to show us what our neighbour is behind his mdyd.

It will be objected to my hypothesis about Imperator that he declared himself a spirit; and so he was as regards S. M., whether he still had connection with a physical body or not. Must not babes be fed with milk ? See how ardently H. P. B. professed herself a Spirituahst in her first letters to the papers and her first interviews with reporters. See her at Philadelphia, doing phenomena in the Holmes seances, and allowing Gen. Lippitt, Mr. Owen, and myself to believe they were attributable to the mediumship of Mrs. Holmes whom, in our Scrap-Book, she brands as a common cheat. Was not I at first made to believe that I was dealing with disincarnate spirits; and was not a stalking-horse put forward to rap and write, and produce materialised forms for me, under the pseudonym of John King ? That this delusion was shortly dropped and the truth told me, I attribute to the fact of my chronic indifference to theologies and to the identity of personalities behind the phenomena. My record is clear in this respect, as I had committed my opinions to print as far back as 1853.*

* Vide the old Spiritual Telegraph journal, S. B. Britten Editor, for 1853 : articles of mine signed with my own name and the pseudonym " Amherst."

My bias of mind then was identical with my present one : which explains the fact why, with all my affection for H. P. B. and my reverence for our Masters — in neither of which do any of her disciples surpass me — I continually protest against the assertion that a fact or teaching is one whit better or weightier when associated with H. P. B. or one of our Masters or their chelas. No religion, philosophy, or expounder thereof is higher, greater, or more authoritative than Truth : for Truth and God are identical. Having no sectarian barriers to be pulled down, I was soon disabused about my teaching intelligences : whereas S. M. was obstinacy incarnate, and it is the greatest of wonders to me that his " band " were so patient, kind, and tolerant of what must have seemed to them the whimsies of a spoilt child. His health, never very robust, broke down from overwork, as he tells us, before the commencement of his mediumship; but we also see that the powers which were already shaping his destiny caused him to break down whenever there was a good chance of his reverting to ministerial work. He was compelled to keep out of it, whether he would or not.

In view of all the above (/. e., the facts and arguments given in the original version of this and the preceding chapter), am I far wrong in suspecting a close connection between the Intelligence behind Stainton Moses and that behind H. P. B. ? Rewrites me, December 31, 1876: "I do not know whether I rightly conjecture from Imperator this morning that she (H. P. B.) is about me, working about me, I mean, — for my good or enlightenment in some way. It is no use asking her; but I believe she is." October 10, 1876, he writes me that he had had " A splendid and perfectly complete ' vision ' — or, as I prefer to call it, interview with Isis.*

* One of several nicknames H. P. B.'s intimate friends used to give her; others being " Sphinx," " Popess," and the " Old Lady. "  

It was late, or rather near midnight — I have an accurate memo, at home — when I suddenly saw Isis in my sitting-room looking through the open door into my study, where C. C. M. was sitting and where I stood. I cried out and rushed into the next room, followed by M. He saw nil. I saw Isis as plain as possible, and talked with her for some time. I noticed my first rush into the room had the effect of ' dissipating ' the form, but it soon reappeared and went into my study, where M. says I seemed to pass into a sort of ' trance ' or abnormal state of some kind, and went through pantomimic gestures of masonic import."

Since copying this out, I find, endorsed in my handwriting on the back of a letter of M. A. Oxon's, the following: "If between now and the 15th instant M. A. O. does not see H. P. B., she will not visit him any more. (Sgd.) H. S. O." And that very night he did see her, as described above. A year before (October 16, 1875), he thanks H. P. B. for her letter, and says it " throws a flood of light, not only on the phenomena of Spiritualism at large, but on many hints made to me which were not before clear." In short, she had helped him to understand his own spirit-teachings. Here is a beautiful passage from his letter of Oct. 7, 1876 :

" One thing alone fills my eye — the search for Truth. I don't look for anything else; and though I may turn aside to examine what claims to be Truth, I soon leave the sham and return to the straight road. Life seems to me given for that alone, and all else is subordinate to that end. The present sphere of existence seems to be only a means to that end, and when it has served its purpose, it will give place to one adapted to secure progress. Whether I live, I live for Truth : if I die, when I die, I die to pursue it better."

There is a true man's heart opened out to the sunlight. He remarks farther on :

" It is because I dimly see — and far more because he (Imperator) tells me that in Occultism I shall find a phase of Truth not yet known to me, that I look to it and you (H. P. B.). Probably the time will never come during my stay on earth when I shall have penetrated the veil, probably my life will be spent in searching for Truth, through means of which you are to me the present exponent."

As regards " Magus,'' I have some very interesting data, and have come to a much clearer opinion than I have as to Imperator. I am almost certain that he is a living adept; not only that, but one that had to do with us. In March, 1876, I sent S. M. a bit of cotton wool or muslin impregnated with a liquid perfume which H. P. B. could cause to exude from the palm of her hand at will, asking him if he recognised it. On the 23d of that month, he replies :

" That sandalwood scent is so familiar to me. One of the most persistent phenomena in our circle was the production of scent, either in a liquid form, or in that of a scent-laden breeze. The scent we always called ' The Spirit Scent ' was this; and we always had it under the best conditions. This for the past two years. My friends always knew when our best seances would be by the prevalence of that perfume in my atmosphere. The house where we used to meet would be redolent of it for days; and Dr. Speer's house in the Isle of Wight, when I was staying there, got so permeated with it that when it was reopened again six months after, the perfume was as strong as ever. What a marvellous power is it that these Brothers wield ... I stayed in my rooms all day trying to ease my racking cough. . . . At midnight I had a more than ordinarily severe fit of coughing. When it was over, I saw by my bedside, distant about two yards, and at the height about 5 ft. 6 in. from the floor, three ^ small phosphorescent balls of light about the size of a small orange. They were arranged thus and formed an equilateral triangle, the base of which would measure 18 in. First I thought it was an optical delusion caused by my violent cough. I fixed my gaze on them, and they remained quiet, glowing with a steady phosphorescent light which cast no gleam beyond itself. Satisfied that the phenomenon was objective, I reached a match-box and struck a match, I could not see the balls through the match-light; but when the match went out they came again into view just as before. I repeated the matchstriking six times (seven in all) when they paled, and gradually went out. It is the symbol that J. K. put at the back of your portrait. [While in transit through the post from me to him — O.] Was it he again ? It was not any of my own people, I believe."

As I have elsewhere explained, the three luminous spheres form the special symbol of the Lodge of our Adepts; and better proof of their proximity to Stainton Moses no one of us who have been their pupils would desire. He, too, says :

" Certainly all doubt as to the Brotherhood and their work is gone. I have no shred remaining. I believe, simply, and I labour so far as in me lies to fit myself for such work as they may design me for.''

" Do you know anything of my friend Magus ? " — he writes in another letter. " He is powerful, and is working on ras occultly." In another one — May 18, 1877 — he says to H. P. B. :

" Some of your friends have paid me a visit of late rather often, if I may judge by the atmosphere of sandalwood — the Lodge scent, O. calls it — which pervades my rooms and myself. I taste it, I exhale it, everything belonging to me smells of it, and there has recurred the old and inexplicable phenomenon which I have not seen for many months — more than a year — and which used to obtain with me in respect of other odours. From a welldefined spot just round the crown of the head [over the Brahmarandhra ? — O.], quite small (the size of a halfcrown piece), exudes a most powerful odour. It is now. this Lodge scent, so strong as to be almost unbearable. It used to be rose, or indeed that of any fresh flower in my neighbourhood. ... A friend gave me a Gardinia the other evening at a party. In a few minutes it gave an overpowering odour of the Lodge perfume, turned a mahogany-brown before our eyes, till the whole flower was of that colour, and it now remains dead and saturated with the odour. ... I feel myself in a transition state, and wait what turns up. ' Magus ' seems the presiding genius in many ways now."

Not at all strange, one would say, with S. M. saturated and all but stifled with the Lodge's scented atmosphere ! It is a most persistent odour. In 1877, I sent him a lock of H. P. B.'s natural hair, and with it a lock of the Hindu jet-black that I have spoken of above as having been cut from her head when she was the subject of an A'ves'am. I cut this lock myself to send S. M. He acknowledged its receipt in his letter to H. P. B. of March 25, 1877. Wishing to photograph the different kinds of hair for an illustration for this book, to show the actual contrasts in fibre and color, I asked C. C. M. to return these two specimens to me out of S. M.'s collection, and quite recently they reached my hand. The Lodge scent lingers still in the black tress after the lapse of sixteen years. Readers of Church history will recall the fact that in mediaeval times this odoriferous phenomenon was frequently observed among really pious and ascetic monks, nuns, and other recluses of the cloister, the cave, and the desert. It was then called " the odour of Sanctity "; although this was a misnomer, for otherwise all saintly personages would have smelt sweet, whereas we know too well that it was more often the opposite ! Sometimes from the mouth of an ecstatic, while lying in her trance, would trickle a sweet and fragrant liquor — the nectar of the Greek gods; and in the case of Marie Ange it was caught and preserved in bottles. Des Mousseaux,* the demonophobe, ascribes this product of psychical chemistry to the Devil. Poor fanatic !  

» Ilauts Phinomenes de la Magie, p. 377.  

 CHAPTER XXI.

NEW YORK HEADQUARTERS.

THE early story of the Theosophical Society is almost told. Little remains for me but to complete my first series of reminiscences, with some sketches of our social life in New York, up to the time of our embarkation for India.

From the close of 1876 to that of 1878, the Theosophical Society as a body was comparatively inactive : its By-laws became a dead letter, its meetings almost ceased. Its few public appearances have been described above, and the signs of its growing influence are found in the increase of the Founders' home and foreign correspondence, their controversial articles in the press, the establishment of Branch societies at London and Corfu, and the opening up of relations with sympathisers in India and Ceylon.

The influential Spiritualists who joined us at first had all withdrawn; our meetings in a hired room — the Mott Memorial Hall, in Madison Avenue, New York — were discontinued; the fees formerly exacted upon entrance of members were abolished, and the Society's maintenance devolved entirely upon us two. Yet the idea was never more vigorous, nor the movement more full of vitality, than when it was divested of its external corporateness, and its spirit was compressed into our brains, hearts, and souls. Our Headquarters' life was ideal throughout those closing years. United in devotion to a common cause, in daily intercourse with our Masters, absorbed in altruistic thoughts, dreams, and deeds, we two existed in that roaring metropolis as untouched by its selfish rivalries and ignoble ambitions as though we occupied a cabin by the seaside, or a cave in the primeval forest. I am not exaggerating when I say that a more unworldly tone would not be found in any other home in New York. The social distinctions of our visitors were left outside our threshold; and rich or poor, Christian, Jew, or Infidel, learned or unlearned, our visitors received the same hearty welcome and patient attention to their questions upon religious and other subjects. H. P. B. was born so great an aristocrat as to be at ease in the highest society, and so thorough a democratic altruist as to give cordial hospitality to the humblest caller.

One of the best read of our guests in Greek philosophy was a working house-painter, and I well remember how gladly H. P. B. and I signed his application-form as his sponsors and welcomed him into membership. Without a single exception those who published accounts of their visits to " The Lamasery " — as we humorously called our humble suite of rooms — declared that their experience had been novel and out of the usual course. Most of them wrote about H. P. B. in terms of exaggerated praise or wonder. In appearance there was not a shade of the ascetic about her : she neither meditated in seclusion, practised austerities in regimen, denied herself to the frivolous and worldly-minded, nor selected her company. Her door was open to all, even to those whom she knew meant to write about her with pens over which she could have no control. Often they lampooned her, but if the articles were witty, she used to enjoy them with me to the fullest extent.

Among our constant visitors was Mr. Curtis, one of the cleverest reporters on the New York press, and later, a member of our Society. He made yards of good " copy " out of the Lamasery, sometimes sober, sometimes farcical, but always bright and smart. He led us into a nice trap one evening : taking us off to a circus where, he said, two Egyptian jugglers were exhibiting certain marvels that might be ascribed to a knowledge of sorcery, but which, at any rate, he wished us to see and pronounce upon as experts in the uncanny. We listened to the voice of the syren and went. The show proved to be common-place and the Egyptians bondfide Frenchmen, with whom we had a long talk in the Manager's office between " acts." They had not even seen an Egyptian magician of the real sort described by Mr. Lane in his well-known work. On leaving the place I condoled with Curtis on the barrenness of his experiment, but he sent us into fits of laughter by replying that, on the contrary, he now had a free hand and could supply all needed facts to make a sensational article. He did. The next day's World contained an account headed " Theosophs at the Circus," in which our stale talk with the two Frenchmen was converted into a highly mystical interview, accompanied by no end of weird phenomena, of spectral apparitions, apports, and disappearances; the whole description proving, if not the reporter's veracity, at least, his fertile fancy. Another time he brought us a paper giving an account of the night-walking of the ghost of a defunct night-watchman, along the wharves of a certain district on the East side of the city, and begged us to go and see the phantom : the police, he said, were all agog, and the inspector of that district had made all preparations to have it seized that night. Forgetting our circus experience, again we accepted. It was a rather bleak starlit night, and we sat for hours well wrapped, on a pile of lumber, by the river side, beguiling the time with smoking and chaff with a score of newspaper reporters detailed to describe the events of the night. But " Old Shep " did not manifest his disreputable eiddlon that time, and in due course we returned to our Lamasery vexed at the waste of a whole evening. The next day's papers, to our ineffable disgust, paraded us as a couple of crack-brained persons who had expected the impossible, and half conveying the idea that we had kept " Old Shep " away to cheat the reporters of their lawful prey ! We even got into the illustrated papers, and I have preserved in our ScrapBook a picture representing us two, and the worshipful company of reporters as " Members of the Theosophical Society watching for Old Shep's ghost." Fortunately, the portraits of H. P. B. and myself looked no more like us than like the Man in the Moon.

One evening Curtis was present when the Countess Paschkoff was relating an adventure she had with H. P. B. in the Libanus, she speaking in French and I translating into English. The tale was so weird and interesting that he asked permission to print it, and this being granted, it duly appeared in his paper. As it exemplifies the theory of the latency in the A'kas'a of pictures of human events and the power of calling them out which may be attained, I will quote a portion of it in this place, leaving the responsibility for the facts with the fair narrator :

"The Countess Paschkoff spoke again, and again Colonel Olcott translated for the reporter. ... I was once travelling between Baalbec and the river Orontes, and in the desert I saw a caravan. It was Mme. Blavatsky's. We camped together. There was a great monument standing there near the village of El Marsum. It was between the Libanus and the Anti-Libanus. On the monument were inscriptions that no one could ever read. Mme. Blavatsky could do strange things with the spirits, as I knew, and I asked her to find out what the monument was. We waited until night. She drew a circle and we went in it. We built a fire and put much incense on it. Then she said many spells. Then we put on more incense. Then she pointed with her wand at the monument and we saw a great ball of white flame on it. There was a sycamore tree near by; we saw many little flames on it. The jackals came and howled in the darkness a little way off. We put on more incense. Then Mme. Blavatsky commanded the spirit to appear of the person to whom the monument was reared. Soon a cloud of vapour arose and obscured the little moonlight there was. We put on more incense. The cloud took the indistinct shape of an old man with a beard, and a voice came, as it seemed, from a great distance, through the image. He said the monument was once the altar of a temple that had long disappeared. It was reared to a god that had long since gone to another world. "Who are you?" asked Mme. Blavatsky. "I am Hiero, one of the priests of the temple," said the voice. Then Mme. Blavatsky ordered him to show us the place as it was when the temple stood. He bowed, and for one instant we had a glimpse of the temple and of a vast city filling the plain as far as the eye could reach. Then it was gone, and the image faded away."*

* N. Y. World of 21st of April, 1878, article entitled "Ghost Stories Galore." ^

About the end of 1877, or beginning of 1878, we were visited by the Hon. John L. O'Sullivan, an American

 diplomat and an ardent Spiritualist, who was passing through New York on his way from London to San Francisco. He was kindly received by H. P. B. and stoutly defended his beliefs against her attacks. Some instructive phenomena were done for him, which he subsequently described in the Spiritualist for February 8, 1878, in the following terms :

" She had been toying with an oriental chaplet, in a lacquer cup or bowl, the aromatic wooden beads of which, strung together, were of about the size of a large marble, and copiously carved all round. A gentleman present took the chaplet in his hands, admired the beads, and asked if she would not give him one of them. 'Oh, I hardly like to break it,' she observed. But she took it presently, and resui-ned her playing with it in the lacquer bowl. My eyes were fixed upon them, under the full blaze of a large lamp just above her table. It soon became manifest that they were growing in number under her fingers as she handled them, till the bowl became nearly full. She presently lifted out of it the chaplet, leaving a considerable number of loose beads, of which she said he might take what he wanted. I have ever since regretted that I had not the presence of mind, or the venturesomeness, to ask for some for myself. I am sure she would have given them freely, for she is all kindness, as well as, apparently, a woman of all knowledge. My presumption about the beads thus created under our eyes was that they were ' apports,' brought in by spirits, in compliance with her wish or will. I believe (though not quite certain) that her idea, and Olcott's is that these phenomena are produced in some way by a great brother " <iJ<-/t ' in Thibet — the same one from whose old spinnet I was made to hear in the air overhead (as I have before mentioned, and as majiy other friends had done before) the faint but clear tinkling music which I was told came, borne on a current of " astral fluid,' from Thibet; to which home of her heart Madame Blavatsky said she was going back (never again to leave it), after she should have completed her mission, task, and business which was chiefly that of publishing her book.

■■ Another case of fabrication of material objects out of apparently nothing. Coming in late one afternoon ro her little parlour, where she usually spent seventeen hours out of the twenty-four at her writing-table, I found Colonel Olcott with her, occupied in correctingher earlier proof-sheets. I had by this time become somewhat intimate with her and Olcott, for both of whom I shall always retain a strong attachment as well as profound respect. He told me how there had taken place that afternoon one of those '/////<■ ir^Luris ' (as he calls them) which were of const.mt occurrence there. There had been a group of visitors, and an animated discussion on the comparat!\e civilisation of the ancient Orient and the modem West.

'■ The subject came up of the tissues fabricated in the one and the other. Madame Blavatsky is an enthusiast on the Orient side of this dispute. She suddenly put her hr.ud to her neck and drew forth from her ample bosom (from beneath the old dressing-gown, which is the only garb in which I have seen her), a handkerchief of silk crape, with a striped border, very like what is called ' carton crape,' and asked whether occidental looms produced anything superior to that. They assured me (and I have ample warrant for believing them) that it had not been there before that moment. It was in smooth, fresh folds, and the conversation had arisen accidentally. I admired it, recognised in time the peculiar sickly sweet and pungent odour which attends all these ' apports ' from Far Cathay (including the beads above mentioned), and observed the peculiar signature on one edge of the handkerchief, which I had seen on various objects, and which I was told was the name (in pre-Sanskrit characters) of a great brother ' Adept ' in Thibet to whom, by the way, she says she is very far inferior. When we were afterwards summoned to their very simple repast (to which had been added a hospitable bottle of wine for me, though they never touch it), she remarked to Olcott : ' Give me that handkerchief.' He gave it to her, out of the sheet of letter-paper in which he had carefully folded it in its smooth unruffled condition. She at once made a careless twist of it and tied it round her neck. When we returned from the dining-room to her warmer snuggery of a parlour, she took it off and threw it on the table by her side. I remarked, ' You treat it in a very unceremonious fashion. Will you give that one to me ? ' — ' Oh, certainly if you would like to have it '; and she tossed it over to me. I smoothed out its creases as well as I could, again wrapped it in a sheet of paper, and put it in my breast pocket. Later on, as I was taking my departure, and we were all on foot : she said : ' Oh, just give irie that handkerchief for a moment.' Of course I obeyed. She turned her back to me for an instant or two, and then, turning again to me, she held out two handkerchiefs, one in each hand, saying : ' Take which ever you please; I thought that perhaps you might prefer this one (handing me the new one) since you have seen it come.' Of course I did so, and after travelling about fifteen miles by rail that night, I gave it to the lady best entitled to receive a favour thus conferred upon me by another lady, which latter lady, by the way, claims to be a septuagenarian, though looking only about forty. When I left America, a few days afterwards, the handkerchief had not yet melted away, nor wafted back to Thibet, on a ' current of astral fluid,' I should add that the second handkerchief was a perfect fac-simile of the first, down to every detail of the name in ancient oriental characters; which, by the way, was evidently written or painted in some black pigment or ink, not stamped mechanically."

My recollection of the handkerchief incident differs slightly from Mr. O'Sullivan's narrative. The original specimen was made out of nothing — to use the faulty common expression, for something never was nor could be made out of nothing, theologists to the contrary notwithstanding — during a conversation between H. P. B. and our friend Monsieur Herrisse of the Haytian Legation. He had said that a relative of his had brought back from China some fine crape handkerchiefs which Western looms had not yet equalled. She thereupon produced a handkerchief of the same description and asked M. Herrisse if that was what he meant, to which he assented. I took possession of it, and, at the interview with Mr. O'Sullivan, mentioned the incident and showed him the article, whereupon he asked H. P. B. to give it him. She did so, and when I humorously said she had no right to give away my property without my consent, she said I was not to mind, as she would give me another. At that moment we were called to dinner and were moving towards the door, when she bade Mr. O'Sullivan lend her the handkerchief for a moment. Standing as we were together, she turned her back for an instant, wheeled back again with a duplicate handkerchief in each hand, one of which she gave Mr. O'Sullivan, the other myself. Returning from the dining-room and resuming our former seats, she felt a cold draft from the partly opened window behind her chair and asked me for something to put on her neck. I gave her my magic handkerchief, which she loosely put about her neck and went on talking. Observing that the ends were not long enough to be properly twisted, I got a pin and wanted her to let me fasten them; but she exclaimed, " Bother you and your pins; here take back your handkerchief ! " at the same time jerking it from her neck and throwing it at me. At the same instant we saw a second copy of the original still about her  

neck, and O' Sullivan starting forward and reaching out his hand, said : " That one — please give me that one, for I saw it formed under my own eyes ! " She good-naturedly gave it him, and the one he had was restored to her and the conversation proceeded. The original one made in Herrisse's presence I have still in my possession, the second one my sister has.

I have thought it worth while to tell this story and others still to come, to show the nature of proofs she constantly afforded us of her wonder-working power in those early New York days, before there were missionaries encamped across her path, and it was worth their while to invent, purchase, or honestly come by evidence or enlist witnesses to cast doubt upon her personal character. If nothing else had subsequently been given me, those early phenomena would have fixed forever my belief in her possession of certain of the Siddhis, and made me very wary about discrediting her teachings on the psycho-dynamical laws behind them. It was not at long intervals, but frequently, that her friends and other visitors had this cumulative evidence that the psychicallyendowed child of Sarotow had grown into the mysterious woman of 1875, without losing one of the supernormal faculties of her youth, but, on the contrary, had expanded and infinitely strengthened and augmented them. These incidents gave to her salon a fascinating attractiveness that was offered by no other in New York. Her personality, not the Theosophical Society, was the magnet of attraction, and she revelled in the excitement of the entourage. So miscellaneous was it, such a mixture of music, metaphysics, Orientalism, and local gossip, that I cannot give a better idea of it than by saying it was like the contents of Isis Unveiled, than which no literary product is a greater conglomerate.

CHAPTER XXII.

VARIOUS PHENOMENA DESCRIBED.

ALTHOUGH sad experience has taught us that psychical phenomena are weak things to build a great spiritual movement upon, yet they have a distinct value in their proper place when strictly controlled. That place is within the limits of the third of the Declared Objects of our Society. They have a paramount importance as elementary proofs of the power of the trained human will over the brute forces of nature. In this respect they bear upon the problem of the intelligence behind mediumistic phenomena. I think that the early phenomena of H. P. B. dealt a distinct blow at the theory, until then generally held, that the messages received through mediums must of necessity be from the dead. For here were things done in the absence of presumably necessary conditions, sometimes apparently in defiance of them. The records of them now survive only in clippings from contemporary newspapers, and in the memory of witnesses who have not yet put their experiences into print, but who, being still alive, are able to corroborate or correct my stories of phenomena that we saw together in her presence.

While highly suggestive in themselves, H. P. B.'s wonders were not usually led up to in conversation. When we were alone, she might produce some phenomenon to illustrate a teaching; or they might happen as if in answer to a query arising in my own mind as to the agency of some particular force in a given physical operation. Usually they were made, as it were, on the spur of the moment and independently of any prefatory suggestion by anybody present. Let me give an instance or two out of many that might be cited, to make my meaning clear.

One day an English Spiritualist and his friend called, and with the former his little son, a lad of lo or 12 years. The boy amused himself for awhile by going about the room, rummaging among our books, examining our curios, trying the piano, and indulging in other freaks of curiosity. He then began fretting to go, pulling his father's sleeve and trying to make him break off a very interesting conversation with H. P. B. The father could not stop his importunities and was about to leave, when H. P. B. said : " Oh, don't mind him, he merely wants something to amuse him; let me see if I can find him a toy." Thereupon she rose from her chair, reached her hand around one of the sliding doors just behind her, and pulled out a large toy sheep mounted on wheels, which, to my positive knowledge, had not been there the moment before !

Various Phenomena Described 345

On a Christmas eve my sister came down from her flat, on the floor above the " Lamasery," to ask us to step up and see the Christmas-tree she had prepared for her children — then asleep in their beds. We looked the presents all over, and H. P. B. expressed her regret that she had not had any money to buy something for the tree herself. She asked my sister what one of the lads, a favourite of hers, would like, and being told a loud whistle, said : " Well, wait a minute.'' Taking her bunch of keys from her pocket, she clutched three of them together in one hand, and a moment later showed us a large iron whistle hanging in their stead on the key-ring. To make it she had used up the iron of the three keys and had to get duplicates made the next day by a locksmith. Again. For a year or so after we took up housekeeping at the " Lamasery," my family silver was used for the table, but at last it had to be sent away, and H. P. B. helped me to pack it up. That day after dinner, when we were to have coffee, we noticed that there were no sugar tongs, and in handing her the sugar basin I put in it a teaspoon instead. She asked where were our sugar tongs, and upon my replying that we had packed it up to send away with the other silver, she said : " Well, we must have another one, must n't we ? " and, reaching her hand down beside her chair, brought up a nondescript tongs, the like of which one would scarcely find in a jeweller's shop. It had the legs much longer than usual, and the two claws slit like the prongs of a pickle-fork; while inside the shoulder of one of the legs was engraved the cryptograph of Mahdtma " M." I have the curio now at Adyar.

An important law is illustrated here. To create anything objective out of the diffused matter of space, the first step is to think of the desired object — its form, pattern, colour, material, weight, and other characteristics : the picture of it must be sharp and distinct as to every detail; the next step is to put the trained Will in action, •employ one's knowledge of the laws of matter and the process of its conglomeration, and compel the elemental spirits to form and fashion what one wishes made. If the operator fails in either of these details, his results will be imperfect. In this case before us it is evident that H. P. B. had confused in her memory the two different shapes of sugar-tongs and a pickle-fork and combined them together into this nondescript or hybrid table implement. Of course, the result was to give stronger proof of the genuineness of her phenomenon than if she had made perfect sugar-tongs : for such may be bought in shops anywhere.  

One evening, when our writing-room was full of visitors, she and I sitting at opposite sides of the room, she motioned to me to lend her a large signet intaglio that I was wearing that evening as a scarf-ring. She took it between her closed hands, without saying anything to anybody or attracting any one's attention save mine, and rubbed the hands together for a minute or two, when I presently heard the clink of metal upon metal. Catching my eye, she smiled, and, opening her hands, showed me my ring and along with it another, equally large but of a different pattern : the seal-tablet also being of dark green bloodstone, whereas mine was of red carnelian. That ring she wore until her death, and it is now worn by Mrs. Annie Besant and is familiar to thousands. The stone was broken on our voyage out to India, and if I remember aright, the present one was engraved and set at Bombay. Here, again, not a word of the passing conversation led up to the phenomenon; on the contrary, nobody save myself knew of its occurring until afterwards. Another instance. I had to go to Albany as special counsel to the Mutual Life Insurance Company of New York, to argue in Committee of the Legislature against a bill then under consideration. H. P. B. profited by the chance of an escort to go with me and make a longpromised visit to Dr. and Mrs. Ditson, of Albany. She was an unpractical creature as to common affairs, and a good deal dependent upon the kind offices of friends, for her packings and unpackings of trunks, among other things. Her former friend. Dr. L. M. Marquette, on this occasion packed the Gladstone bag she was to take, and it lay open in her room at the moment when the carriage drove up to take us to the Albany train. The bag was very full, and I had to repack some of the things on top and employ some strength to close the bag and lock it. I then carried it myself to the carriage, from I he carriage to the railway carriage, and our train sped i)Q its way. My reason for mentioning these details will presently be seen. Half way to Albany, a large bottle of sticky cough-medicine in her pocket got broken and made a mess of her tobacco, cigarette-papers, handkerchief, and the other contents of the pocket. This necessitated the re-opening of the bag and the taking out of a lot of things, to search for other smoking materials, etc. I did this myself, re-packed, closed, and re-locked the bag, and on reaching Albany I again carried it to the carriage and, at Dr. Ditson's house, took it up a flight of stairs and set it down on the landing outside the drawing-room door. The hostess at once began an animated conversation with H. P. ]!., whom she was seeing for the first time. Mrs. Ditson's little daughter was in the room and made friends with H. P. B., standing at her knee and petting her hand. The mysterious lady in question did not too higlily appreciate this interruption of her talk with the mother, and finally said : "There, there, my child, keep quiet a few moments and I '11 give you a nice present." " Where is it ? Please give it me now," the child replied. I, believing that the alleged piresent was still in some Albany toy-shop from which I should be asked to presently fetch it, maliciously whispered the little one to ask Madame where she was hiding the present, and she did. H. P. B. said " Now don't bother, my dear, I have it in my bag. " That was enough tor lue : I asked her for her keys, went outside and opened the bag and — found packed most artistically among the clothing, and right before one's eves upon the bag being opened, a harmonicon, or glass piano, of say 15 in. \ 4 in. in si.e, with its cork mallet lying beside i: 1 Now, H. P, B. did not pack her bag at New York; had not handled it up to that moment; I had closed and locked it betore starting, reopened, unpacked, re-packed, and relocked it midway on the journey; .and besides that bag. H. P. B. had no otherluggage. Whence the h.-.ruionicon came, and how in the world it could have been packed into a bag that was previously full to bursting, I do not know. Perhaps some S. P. R. will suggest that the engine-driver of the train h.ad been bribed and rendered invisible by H. P. B„ had opened the bag on the rioor at my feet by a ghostly picklock, and had made room for the musical toy by throwing some of H. P. B.'s clothes out of the car-window • Or — perhaps it was a genuine phenomenon and she w.xs not an absolute trickster, after all. If Pr. Mar-iuette still lives, she can testifv to seeing us and our luggage aboard the train : and if Pr. Pitson is alive, he can a'urua that he took us and the veritable Gladstone bag from the station at Albanv to his house. My prtrt, to tell the story as truthfuilv as I can. and leave it on record as an instance of the way in which my dear old colleague sometimes did a wonder merely to gratify a child, who had not the least idea of the importance of what had occurred.

In my friend, Dr. Upham's History of Salem Witchcraft, he tells us that in the case of one of the poor victims of that terrible, fanatical persecution of 1695, it was brought against her as proof of her compact with Satan, that she had walked with spotless skirts through mud and rain to a certain meeting. Upon which, the learned author suggests that the probability rather is that the accused was a tidy woman and so could keep her garments unspotted along the muddy road. Throughout his book he takes up the attitude of incredulity as to any spiritual agency having been at work behind the phenomena of obsession, without, it must be confessed, making good his case. Once, H. P. B. and I being in Boston, on a very rainy and muddy day, she walked through the streets in a pelting rain and reached her lodgings without a drop of rain or splash of mud soiling her dress; and once, I remember, we had been talking on the balcony outside her drawing-room window in Irving Place, New York, and being driven indoors by a heavy rain which lasted through the greater part of the night, I carelessly left outside a handsome velvet or brocadecovered chair. In the morning, when I called as usual on H. P. B. before going to my office, I recollected the chair and went and brought it in, expecting to find it sodden and spoilt by the rain. It was as dry as possible, on the contrary; why or how I cannot explain.

Mr. O'Sullivan's story of the duplicated China crape handkerchiefs in the preceding chapter will be fresh in the reader's memory. I saw her do a notable thing one evening for Wong Chin Fu, a Chinese lecturer, since well known in the United States. We three were chatting about the pictures of his country as lacking the elements of perspective, whereupon he said how admirable were the figure-paintings of their artists, how rich in colour and bold in drawing. H. P. B. concurred and, in the most casual way, as it seemed, opened the drawer where she kept her writing-paper, and drew forth a finely-executed painting of a Chinese lady dressed in full Court robes. I am sure as I can be that it was not there before, but as Wong Chin Fu was not specially interested in the occult science which for us had so great a charm, I made no remark. Our visitor took the picture in his hand, looked at it, remarked upon its beauty, but said : " This is not Chinese, Madam; it has no Chinese writing in the corner. It is probably Japanese." H. P. B. looked at me with an amused expression, returned the picture to the drawer, shut it for a moment, and then re-opening it, drew forth a second picture of a Chinese lady, but wearing different coloured robes, and handed it to Wong Chin Fu. This he recognised as unmistakably from his country, for it bore Chinese lettering in the left-hand lower corner, and he at once read it !

Here is an incident by which certain information about three members of my family was phenomenally communicated to me. H. P. B. and I were alone in the house, conversing about these persons, when a crash was suddenly heard in the next room. I hurried in there to ascertain the cause, and found that the photographic portrait of one of them, which stood on the mantelshelf, had been turned face inward towards the wall, the large water-colour portrait of another had been pulled from the nail and lay on the floor with the glass smashed, and the photo of the third stood on the mantel-shelf undisturbed. My questions were answered. An incorrect and fabulous version of this story having been circulated, I give the facts exactly as they occurred. Not a person save us two was in the flat at the time, and nobody save myself was interested in the questions at issue.

What a strange woman she was, and what a great variety in her psychical phenomena ! We have seen her duplicating tissues, let me recall incidents where letters were doubled. I received one day a letter from a certain person who had done me a great wrong, and read it aloud to H. P. B. "We must have a copy of that," she exclaimed, and, taking the sheet of note-paper from me, held it daintily by one corner and actually peeled off a duplicate, paper and all, before my very eyes ! It was as though she had split the sheet between its two surfaces. Another example, perhaps even more interesting, is the following : Under date of December 22, 1887, Stainton Moses wrote her a five-paged letter of a rather controversial, or, at any rate, critical, character. The paper was of square, full letter size, and bore the embossed heading " University College, London," and Si ^Iv ft-. A ^ \^' ^ ^ iiiLi.f^ii|i| ft iJ-'i^J^ril s < < a. h < z 111 1 o X o < s o o o o near the left-hand upper corner his monogram, — a W and M interlaced and crossed by the name "stainton" in small capitals. She said we must have a duplicate of this too, so I took from the desk five half-sheets of foreign letter-paper of the same size as Oxon's and gave her them. She laid them against the five pages of his letter, and then placed the whole in a drawer of the desk just in front of me as I sat. We went on with our conversation for some time, until she said she thought the copy was made and I had better look and see if that were so. I opened the drawer, took out the papers, and found that one page of each of my five pieces had received from the page with which it was in contact the impression of that page. So nearly alike were the original and copies that I thought them — as the reader recollects I did the copy of the Britten-Louis portrait — exact duplicates. I had been thinking so all these subsequent sixteen years, but since I hunted up the documents for description in this chapter, I see that this is not the case. The writings are almost duplicates, yet not quite so. They are rather like two original writings by the same hand. If H. P. B. had had time to prepare this surprise for me, the explanation of forgery would suffice to cover the case; but she had not. The whole thing occurred as described, and I submit that it has an unquestionable evidential value as to the problem of her possessing psychical powers. I have tried the test of placing one page over the other to see how the letters and marks correspond. I find they do not, and that is proof, at any rate, that the transfer was not made by the absorption of the ink by the blank sheet from the other; moreover, the inks are different, and Oxon's is not copying-ink. The time occupied by the whole phenomenon might have been five or ten minutes, and the papers lay the whole time in the drawer in front of my breast, so there was no trick of taking it out and substituting other sheets for the blank ones I had just then handed her. Let it pass to the credit of her good name, and help to make the case which her friends would offset against the intemperate slanders circulated against her by her enemies.

Mr. Sinnett prints in his Incidents in the Life of Madame Blavatsky (p. 199), a story given him by Mr. Judge about the production by her of some water colours for him to use in making an Egyptian drawing. I was present at the time and will add my testimony to his as an eye-witness. It happened one afternoon at the " Lamasery." Judge was sketching for her — I think — the figure of a god forming man on a potter's wheel, but for lack of colours could not finish it. H. P. B. asked him which shades he needed, and on being told, stepped over to the cottage piano just behind Judge's chair, and facing towards the corner made by the end of the piano and the wall, held her dress as an apron to receive something. She presently poured from the dress upon the table before Judge thirteen bottles of Winsor and Newton's dry colours, among which were those he had asked for, A little while after he said he would like some gold paint, whereupon she told him to fetch a saucer from the dining-room, which he did. She then asked him to hand her the brass door-key and, holding the two under the edge of the table, rubbed the key smartly upon the bottom of the saucer. In another moment she brought them into view again, and the flat part of the saucer bottom was found covered with a layer of gold-paint of the purest quality. To my question as to the function of the door-key in the experiment, she said that the soul of the metal was needed as a nucleus in which to collect together from the dkds'a the atoms of any other metal she meant to precipitate. For the same reason she had needed my signet ring as a help to form the other one that she made for her own use on the occasion above described. Is no hint given here of the principal at work when the alleged transmutation of metals is accomplished by the alchemist ? Is, I say, for it is pretended that this art is known to various living fakirs and sanyasis of modern India. And, moreover, do not the discoveries of Prof. Crookes as to the genesis of the elements* bring us to a point where, if science is to advance and not retrogress, she must move on to the Aryan hypothesis of Purusha and Prakriti ? And does not this latter theory show us the possibility of shifting the elements of one metal into fresh combinations which would result in the development of another metal by employing the irresistible power of the Will ? To do this by physical methods means — as Professor Crookes says — the carrying back of the elements of a given metal to that extreme point where they might be shunted off on the line which would develop and bring into aggregation the elements of the other desired metal; a thing not yet reached by physical science, even by employing the enormous resources of electricity. But what is so monstrously difficult for the chemist and electrician, who depends entirely upon the help of brute forces, may be quite easy to the Adept, whose active agent is the power of spirit, which he has learnt to bring into function : the power, in fact, which builds the Cosmos.

* Viz., that the atom is not a unity, but a composite of the worldstuff of space, resulting from the play of electricity.  

Between the point at which Crookes stood on the evening of January 15, 1891, when he delivered his Inaugural Address, as President of the Institution of Electrical Engineers, and made the brilliant experiments which proved the truth of his immortal hypothesis, and that occupied by European science only a quarter century before, there is a distance immeasurably greater than there is between it and the Gupta Vidya of our Aryan ancestors. Crookes, hero-like, while recognising the obstacles ahead and noting that " a formidable amount of hard work remains to be completed," is not in the least degree discouraged. " As for myself," he says,* " I hold the firm conviction that unflagging research will be rewarded by an insight into natural mysteries, such as now can scarcely be conceived. Difficulties, said a keen old statesman, are things to be overcome j and to my thinking Science should disdain the notion of finality."

* Vide your. Inst. Elec. Engineers, No. Vol. XX., p. 49. To have got so far as that is the harbinger of the brighter day, when men of science will see that their inductive method multiplies an hundredfold the difficulties of learning "natural mysteries"; that the key to all mysteries is the knowledge of spirit; and that the way to that knowledge leads, not through the laboratory fire, but through that fiercer flame which is fed by egoism, kept alight by the fuel of passion and fanned by the blast of desires.

When spirit is once more recognised as the supreme factor in the genesis of the elements and the building of the Cosmos, psychical phenomena like those of our lamented H. P. B. will acquire transcendent importance as elementary scientific facts, and no longer be looked on by one party as tricks of conjuring, by the other as miracles for the surfeiting of the gobe-mouches.  

CHAPTER XXIII.

PRECIPITATION OF PICTURES.

READERS of Lane's Modern Egyptians, will recall the story of a young man who, upon visiting a certain wonder-working sheikh, obtained some marvellous proofs of his occult powers. His father, then at a distant place, being somewhat ailing, the son asked that he might have news of his condition. The sheikh consenting, told him to write the father a note of enquiry; which was done, handed him by the anxious son, and by the sheikh placed under the back-pillow against which he was leaning. Presently, the sheikh drew from the same place a letter answering the young man's enquiries. It was written by the father's own hand, and, if my memory serves — for I am trusting to recollection only — stamped with his seal. At his request, also, coffee was served to the company in the father's own cups {fingdn), which he had every reason to believe had been at the moment of asking in the paternal house in that far-off village. H. P. B. gave me one evening, without fuss or parade, a fact of the first of these two orders. I wished to hear from a certain Adept upon a certain subject. She bade me write my questions, put them in a sealed envelope, and place the letter where I could watch it for the time being. This was even better than the Egyptian sheikh incident, for in that case the letter was hidden from the enquirer by the back-pillow. As I was sitting at the moment before the grate, I put my letter behind the clock on the mantel, leaving just one edge of the envelope projecting far enough for me to see it. My colleague and I went on talking about a variety of things for perhaps an hour, when she said my answer had come. I drew out the letter, found my own envelope with its seal unbroken, inside it my own letter, and inside that the answer in the Adept's familiar manuscript, written upon a sheet of green paper of peculiar make, the like of which — I have every reason to believe — was not in the house. We were in New York, the Adept in Asia. This phenomenon was, I submit, of a class to which the theory of trickery could not apply, and therefore has much weight. There is just one explanation possible — a very lame one — besides that which I conceive to be the true theory. Granting H. P. B. to be possessed of extraordinary hypnotic power, she might have instantaneously benumbed my waking faculties, so as to prevent my seeing her rise from her chair, take my letter from behind the clock, steam the gum, open the cover, read my letter, write the reply in forged handwriting, replace the contents of the envelope, refasten it, place it back again on the mantel-shelf, and then restore me to the waking state without leaving in my memory the least trace of my experiences ! But I had and still preserve a perfect consciousness of having carried on the hour's conversation, of her moving about hither and thither, of her making and smoking a number of cigarettes, of my filling, smoking, and refilling my pipe, and, generally, doing what any waking person might do when his senses were alert as to a psychical phenomenon then in progress. If some forty years of familiarity with hypnotic and mesmeric phenomena and their laws go for anything, then I can positively declare that I was fully conscious of what was going on, and that I have accurately stated the facts. Perhaps even twice forty years' experience on the plane of physical Maya would not qualify one to grasp the possibilities in Oriental hypnotic science. Perhaps I am no more capable than the tyro of knowing what really passed between the times of writing my note and getting the answer. That is quite possible. But in such case what infinitesimally little weight should be given to the aspersions of H. P. B.'s several hostile critics, learned and lay, who have judged her an unmitigated trickster, without having had even a fourth of my own familiarity with the laws of psychical phenomena ! In the (London) Spiritualist for January 28, 1876, I described this incident with other psychical matters, and the reader is referred to my letter for the particulars.

I am not aware of there being a special class of hirsute phenomena, but if there is, then the following incident may be included in it, along with that of the sudden elongation of H. B. P.'s hair at Philadelphia, described in one of my earlier chapters. After having shaved my chin for many years I began to grow a full beard, under medical advice, as a protection to a naturally delicate throat, and at the time I speak of, it was about four inches long. One morning, when making my toilet after my bath, I discovered a tangle of long hair under my chin next the throat. Not knowing what to make of it, I very carefully undid the mass at the expense of almost an hour's trouble, and found, to my great amazement, that I had a lock of beard, fourteen inches long, coming down as far as the pit of the stomach ! Whence or why it had come no reading or experience helped me to guess; but there it was, a palpable fact and permanent phenomenon. Upon my showing it to H. P. B., she said it had been purposely done by our Guru while I slept, and advised me to take care of it as it would serve me as a reservoir of his helpful aura. I showed it to many friends, but none could venture any better theory to account for it, while all agreed that I ought not to cut it back to its former length. So I used to tuck it away inside my collar to hide it, and did so for years, until the rest of the beard had grown to match it. This accounts for the "Rishi beard," so often mentioned in friendly allusions to my personal appearance, and explains why I have not yielded to my long-felt wish to clip it into a more convenient and less conspicuous shape. Whatever the fact may be called, it assuredly is not a Mdyi, but a very real and tangible verity.

In the department of " precipitation " * of writings and pictures, H. P. B. was exceptionally strong, as will have been inferred from all that has preceded. It was one of M. A. Oxon's strong points likewise. On an evening of 1875 I sat at the house of the President of the Photographic Section of the American Institute, Mr. H. J. Newton, with a. private medium named Cozine, to witness his slate-writings, which were far more wonderful than Dr. Slade's. The communications came upon the slate in bright blue and red colours; no pencil or crayon was used in the experiment, and I myself held one end of the slate. Upon mentioning this to H. P. B., she said : " I think I could do that; at any rate, I will try." So I went out and bought a slate and brought it home; she took it, without crayons or pencil, into a small, pitch-dark closet bed-room and lay upon the couch, while I went out, closed the door, and waited outside. After a very few minutes she reappeared with the slate in her hand, her forehead damp with perspiration, and she seeming very tired. " By Jove ! " she exclaimed, " that took it out of me, but I 've done it; see ! " On the slate was writing in red and blue crayons, in handwritings not her own. M. A. Oxon once wrote me an account of a similar experience of his own, save that in his case Imperator was the agent and he the

 passive medium, which is quite another affair. At his request Imperator wrote messages to him in various coloured inks, one after the other, inside the pocket-book he had in the breast pocket of his coat at the time. Imperator being still the .v of Oxon's psychic life, perhaps it was the ethereal body of my friend which precipitated the coloured writings to appease the clamorous scepticism of his physical brain-consciousness, in which case his phenomenon and H. P. B.'s would be somewhat akin.

* A term, originally of my own invention, which seems to convey best of all an Idea of the method employed. Elsewhere I have mentioned H. P. B.'s having done for me a precipitated picture on satin, which showed me the stage that Oxon had reached in his attempt to gain the power of projecting his Double by force of concentrated will-power. I had better now give the details :

One evening, in the autumn of 1876, she and I were working, as usual, upon Ist's, at opposite sides of our writing-table, and dropped into a discussion of the principles involved in the conscious projection of the Double. Through lack of early familiarity with those subjects, she was not good then at explaining scientific matters, and I found it difficult to grasp her meaning. Her fiery temperament made her prone to abuse me for an idiot in such cases, and this time she did not spare her expressions of impatience at my alleged obtuseness. Finally, she did the very best thing by offering to show me in a picture how Oxon's evolution was proceeding, and at once made good her promise. Rising from the table, she went and opened a drawer from which she took a small roll of white satin — the remnant, I believe, of a piece she had had given her at Philadelphia — and laying it on the table before me, proceeded to cut off a piece of the size she wanted; after which she returned the roll to its place and sat down. She laid the piece of satin, face down, before her, almost covered it with a sheet of clean blotting-paper, and rested her elbows on it while she rolled for herself and lighted a fresh cigarette. Presently she asked me to fetch her a glass of water. I said I would, but first put her some question which involved an answer and some delay. Meanwhile I kept my eye upon an exposed edge of the satin, determined not to lose sight of it. Soon noticing that I made no sign of moving, she asked me if I did not mean to fetch her the water. I said : " Oh, certainly." " Then what do you wait for ? " she asked. " I only wait to see what you are about to do with that satin," I replied. She gave me one angry glance, as though seeing that I did not mean to trust her alone with the satin, and then brought down her clenched fist upon the blotting-paper, saying: " I shall have it now — this minute ! " Then, raising the paper and turning over the satin, she tossed it over to me. Imagine, if you can, my surprise ! On the sheeny side I found a picture, in colours, of a most extraordinary character.* There was an excellent portrait, of the head only, of Stainton Moses as he looked at that age, the almost duplicate of one of his photographs that hung " above the line ' on the wall of the room, over the mantel-shelf. From the crown of the head shot out spikes of golden flame; at the places of the heart and the solar plexus were red and golden fires, as it might be bursting forth from little craters; the head and the place of the thorax were involved in rolling clouds of pure blue aura, bespeckled throughout with flecks of gold; and the lower half of the space where the body should be was enwrapped in similarly rolling clouds of pinkish and greyish vapour, that is, of auras of a meaner quality than the superior cumuli.

* The photo-engraving process not having as yet advanced to the point of photographing in colours, our cut but very poorly represents the original picture on satin.

PICTURE ON SATIN REPRESENTING THE PARTIAL EVOLUTION OF THE DOUBLE; O'OH '>,fi!CH THE feAVir'l PICTURE RESEMBLES.

1SWTU»<---T^ :».'»rlt.Sf;NTirv3 THt f-a-Ai. EVOLUTION OF PORTRAIT OF M. A. OXON WHICH THE SATIN PICTURE RESEMBLES.

At that stage of my occult education I had heard nothing about the six chakrams, or psychical evolutionary centres in the human body, which are mentioned in Yoga S'astras, and are familiar to every student of Patanjali. I therefore did not grasp the significance of the two flaming vortices over the cardiac and umbilical regions; but my later acquaintance with the subject gives this satin picture an enhanced value, as showing that the practical occultist who made it apparently knew that, in the process of disentangling the astral from the physical body, the will must be focussed in succession at the several nerve-centres, and the disengagement completed at each in turn before moving on to the next centre in the order of sequence. I take the picture to mean that Stainton Moses' experiment was being conducted as an intellectual rather than as a spiritual process, wherefore he had completely formed and got ready for projection his head, while the other parts of his astral body were in a state of nebulous disturbance, but had not yet settled into the stage of rl^pa, or form. The blue clouds would represent the pure but not most luminous quality of the human aura — described as shining, or radiant; a silvery nimbus. The flecks of gold, however, that are seen floating in the blue, typify sparks of the spirit, the " silvery spark in the brain," that Bulwer so beautifully describes in his Strange Story; while the greyish and pinkish vapours of the inferior portions show the auras of our animalistic, corporeal qualities. This grey becomes darker and darker as a man's animalism preponderates over his intellect, his moral and spiritual qualities, until in the wholly depraved, as the clairvoyants tell us, it is inky black. The aura of adeptship is described as a blended tint of silver and gold, as some of my readers, I am sure, must know from personal observation, and as the poets and painters of all ages have depicted in their sublimer flights of spiritual perception. This T^jas or soul-light, shines out through the mystic's face, lighting it up with a glow which, once seen, can never thereafter be mistaken. It is the " shining countenance " of the Biblical angels, the " glory of the Lord," the light that beamed in the face of Moses when descending from the Mount with such splendour that men could not bear to look upon his countenance; a radiance that even transfigures the wearer's robes into " shining garments." The Hebrews call it shekinah, and I once heard the term used by some Bagdad Jews to describe the face of a spiritual-minded visitor on that occasion. So, too, the word " shining " is applied similarly by various other nations; the pure spirits and pure men glow with the white light, the vicious and evil ones are veiled in blackness.

In the case of another precipitated portrait, made by H. P. B., there was no aura shown : I refer to that of an Indian yogi, which is described in Sinnett's Occult World and Incidents in the Life of Mme. Blavatsky j the documents respecting which were originally published in the Spiritualist shortly after the occurrence of the incident. It happened in this wise : On my way home to " The Lamasery " one day, I stopped at the Lotos Club and got some of the club note-paper and envelopes to use at home as occasion might require. It was late when I reached the house, and H. P. B. was at the dinner table already, with Mr. Judge and Dr. Marquette as guests. I laid the package of stationery on my desk in the writing-room (between which and the dining-room there was a dead wall, by the way), made a hurried toilet, and went to my seat at the table. At the close of the dinner we had drifted into talk about precipitations, and Judge asked H. P. B. if she would not make somebody's portrait for us. As we were moving towards the writingroom, she asked him whose portrait he wished made, and he chose that of this particular yogi, whom we knew by name as one held in great respect by the Masters. She crossed to my table, took a sheet of my crested clubpaper, tore it in halves, kept the half which had no imprint, and laid it down on her own blotting-paper. She then scraped perhaps a grain of the plumago of a Faber lead pencil on it, and then rubbed the surface for a minute or so with a circular motion of the palm of her right hand; after which she handed us the result. On the paper had come the desired portrait and, setting wholly aside the question of its phenomenal character, it is an artistic production of power and genius. Le Clear, the noted American portrait painter, declared it unique, distinctly an " individual " in the technical sense; one that no living artist within his knowledge could have produced. The yogi is depicted in Samadhi, the head drawn partly aside, the eyes profoundly introspective and dead to external things, the body seemingly that of an absent tenant. There is a beard and hair of moderate length, the latter drawn with such skill that one sees through the upstanding locks, as it were — an effect obtained in good photographs, but hard to imitate with pencil or crayon. The portrait is in a medium not easy to distinguish; it might be black crayon, without stumping, or black lead; but there is neither dust nor gloss on the surface to indicate which, nor any marks of the stump or the point used : hold the paper horizontally towards the light and you might fancy the pigment was below the surface, combined with the fibres. This incomparable picture was subjected in India later to the outrage of being rubbed with india-rubber to satisfy the curiosity of one of our Indian members, who had borrowed it as a special favour " to show his mother," and who wished to see if the pigment was really on or under the surface ! The effect of his vandal-like experiment is now seen in the obliteration of a part of the beard, and my sorrow over the disaster is not in the least mitigated by the knowledge that it was not due to malice but to ignorance and the spirit of childish curiosity. The yogi's name was always pronounced by H. P. B. " Tiravala," but since coming to live in Madras Presidency, I can very well imagine that she meant Tiruvalluvar, and that the portrait, now hanging in the Picture Annex of the Adyar Library, is really that of the revered philosopher of ancient Mylapur, the friend and teacher of the poor Pariahs. As to the question whether he is still in the body or not I can venture no assertion, but from what H. P. B. used to say about him I always inferred that he was. And yet to all save Hindus that would seem incredible, since he is said to have written his immortal " Kural " something like a thousand years ago ! He is classed in Southern India as one of the Siddhas, and like the other seventeen, is said to be still living in the Tirupati and Nilgiri Hills; keeping watch and ward over the Hindu religion. Themselves unseen, these Great Souls help, by their potent willpower, its friends and promoters and all lovers of mankind. May their benediction be with us !

In recalling the incidents for the present narrative, I note the fact that no aura or spiritual glow is depicted around the yogi's head, although H. P. B.'s account of him confirms that of his Indian admirers, that he was a person of the highest spirituality of aspiration and purest character.

The same remark applies to the first portrait of my Guru, the one done in black and white crayons at New York by M. Harrisse : there is no nimbus. In this case at least, I can testify to the likeness, along with others who have had the happiness of seeing him. Its production was, like that done in oils at London in 1884 by Herr Schmiechen, an example of thought-transference. I think I have never published the facts before, but in any case they should have a place in this historical retrospect.

One naturally likes to possess the portrait of a distant correspondent with whom one has had important relations; how much more, then, that of a spiritual teacher, the beginning of relations with whom has substituted a nobler for a commonplace ideal of life in one's consciousness. I most earnestly wished to be able to have in my room at least the likeness of my reverend teacher, if I might not see him in life; had long importuned H. P. B. to procure it for me; and had been promised it at a favourable time. In this case my colleague was not permitted to precipitate it for me, but a simpler yet most instructive method was resorted to : a non-medium and non-occultist was made to draw it for me without knowing what he was doing. M. Harrisse, our French friend, was a bit of an artist, and one evening when the conversation turned upon India and Rajput bravery, H. P. B. whispered to me that she would try to get him to draw our Master s portrait if I could suppljthe materials. There were none in the house, but I went to a shop close by and purchased a sheet of suitable paper and black and white crayons. The shopkeeper did up the parcel, handed it me across the counter, took the haif-SrlJar CiV'i I gave him, and I left the shop. On reaching home I unrolled my parcel and, as I finished doing it, the sum of half a dollar, in fzco siVrcr fif.-cs <'/" j j.v j r,-;'-./.^ll: ?■ ^jcA dropped on tlie iloor ! The Master, it will be seen. meant to give me his portrait without cost to mj-self. Harrisse w.as then asked by H. P. B. to draw us the head oi a Hindu chieftain, as he should conceive one might look. He said he had no clear idea in his mind to go upon, and wanted to sketch us something else; but to gratify my importunity went to drawing a Hindu head. H. P. B. motioned me to remain quiet at the other side of the room, .and herself went and sat down near the artist and quietly smoked. From time to time she went softly behind him as if to watch the progress of his work. but did not speak until it was finished, say an hour later. I thankfully received it, had it framed, and hung it in my little bed-room. But a strange thing h.ad happened. After we gave the picture a last glance as it lay before the artist, and while H. P. B. was taking it from him and handing it to me, the cryptograph signature of my Guru came upon the paper; thus affixing, as it were, hi? imprimatur upon, and largely enhancing the value of his gift. But at that time I did not know if it resembled the Guru or not. as I had not vet seen him. 'WTien I did. later on, I found it a true likeness and, moreover, was presented by him with the turban which the amateur artist had drawn in the picture as his head-covering. Here was a genuine case of thought-transference, the transfer of the likeness of an absent person to the brainconsciousness of a perfect stranger. Was it or was it not passed through the thought of H. P. B. ? I think so. I think it was effected in the identical way in which the thought-images of geometrical and other figures were transferred to third parties in the convincing experiments recorded by the S. P. R. in its earlier published reports. With the difference, however, that H. P. B.'s own memory supplied the portrait to be transferred to Harrisse's mind, and her trained occult powers enabled her to effect the transfer direct, viz., without an intermediary; that is to say, without the necessity of having the drawing first made on a card, for her to visualise it in her own mind and then pass it on to the recipient brain. The painting by Schmiechen, of the magnificent portraits in oils of the same and another Master, which now hang in the Adyar Library, was an even more interesting circumstance, for the likenesses are so perfect and so striking as to seem endowed with life. Their eyes speak to one and search one to the bottom of his heart; their glance follows one everywhere as he moves about; their lips seem about to utter, as one may deserve, words of kindness or of reproach. They are an inspiration rather than an illustration of thought-transference. The artist has made two or three copies of them but not one has the soul in i: :r.a: is in the origin.Us. They were not done in the di^nne mood of inspir.-.tion. snd the Masters' will-power is not foctissed in them. The originals are the palladium of onr headquarters : the copies, like images seen in a mirror, possess the details of form and colour, biit axe devoid of the enercisini: snirit.  

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