CALLIGRAPHY
Some
graphologists have commented that Kuthumi's handwriting, which appears
in some of the letters that this master wrote to Mr. Alfred Sinnett,
resembles Blavatsky's handwriting.
Blavatsky
explained that this is because the master used her as his energetic
intermediary to paranormally precipitate his letters over great
distances, and in doing so, Kuthumi's handwriting combined with
Blavatsky's handwriting.
On this matter, the Sanskrit scholar Charles Johnston had the following conversation with Blavatsky:
«
-
“There is one thing about the Society for Psychical Research Report
that I want you to explain to me. What about the handwriting of the
masters' letters?”
- “Well, what about it?” asked H. P. B., immediately interested.
-
“They say that you wrote them yourself, and that they bear evident marks of your handwriting and style. What do you say to that?”
- “Let me explain it this way,” she answered, after a long gaze at the end of her cigarette. “Have you ever made experiments in thought-transference? If you have, you must have noticed that the person who receives the mental picture very often colors it, or even changes it slightly, with his own thought, and this where perfectly genuine transference of thought takes place.
Well, it is something like that with the precipitated letters. One of our Masters, who perhaps does not know English, and of course has no English handwriting, wishes to precipitate a letter in answer to a question sent mentally to him. Let us say he is in Tibet, while I am in Madras or London. He has the answering thought in his mind, but not in English words.
He has first to impress that thought on my brain, or on the brain of someone else who knows English, and then to take the word-forms that rise up in that other brain to answer the thought. Then he must form a clear mind-picture of the words in writing, also drawing on my brain, or the brain of whoever it is, for the shapes. Then either through me or some Chela with whom he is magnetically connected, he has to precipitate these word-shapes on paper, first sending the shapes into the Chela’s mind, and then driving them into the paper, using the magnetic force of the Chela to do the printing, and collecting the material, black or blue or red, as the case may be, from the astral light.
As all things dissolve into the astral light, the will of the magician can draw them forth again. So he can draw forth colours of pigments to mark the figure in the letter, using the magnetic force of the Chela to stamp them in, and guiding the whole by his own much greater magnetic force, a current of powerful will.”
- “That sounds quite reasonable,” I answered. “Won’t you show me how it is done?”
- “You would have to be clairvoyant,” she answered, in a perfectly direct and matter-of-fact way, “in order to see and guide the currents. But this is the point: Suppose the letter precipitated through me; it would naturally show some traces of my expressions, and even of my writing; but all the same, it would be a perfectly genuine occult phenomenon, and a real message from that Mahatma.
Besides, when all is said and done, they exaggerate the likeness of the writings. And experts are not infallible. We have had experts who were just as positive that I could not possibly have written those letters, and just as good experts, too. But the Report says nothing about them.
And then there are letters, in just the same handwriting, precipitated when I was thousands of miles away. Dr. Hartmann received more than one at Adyar, Madras, when I was in London; I could hardly have written that."
»
(CW VIII, p.392-408)
Observation
Skeptical people will think that what Blavatsky said was made up, but esoterically it could be true. This characteristic, where the handwriting of the sender and receiver blend together, is observed in another occult phenomenon: when an entity writes through someone in a trance state, known as 'automatic writing.'
However, I perceive a significant difference between Blavatsky's handwriting and that of Master Kuthumi.
Blavatsky's handwriting
Kuthumi's handwriting
DRAFTING
Blavatsky
was also criticized for the peculiarities of Kuthumi's English in her
letters, which her detractors considered proof that she had written
them. However, Blavatsky explained that this was because Kuthumi had
taught her English, and that was why she had acquired these
peculiarities.
Regarding this matter, she wrote to Mr. Sinnett:
« Janvier 6, 1886. Wurzburg.
My dear Mr. Sinnett
I am impressed to give you the following: First let me tell you that the dear Countess went off to Munich like a shot to try and save Hubbe from his weakness and the Society from crumbling down. She was the whole evening in a trance, getting out and in from her body. She saw Master and felt him all the night. She is a great clairvoyant.
Well, after reading a few pages of the Report I was so disgusted with Hume's gratuitous lies and Hodgson's absurd inferences that I nearly gave up all in despair. What could I do or say against evidence on the natural worldly plane!
Everything went against me and I had but to die. I went to bed and I had the most extraordinary vision. I had vainly called upon the Masters — who came not during my waking state, but now in my sleep I saw them both, I was again (a scene of years back) in Mahatma K.H.'s house. I was sitting in a corner on a mat and he walking about the room in his riding dress, and Master was talking to someone behind the door. "I remind can't" — I pronounced in answer to a question of His about a dead aunt. — He smiled and said "Funny English you use."
Then I felt ashamed, hurt in my vanity, and began thinking (mind you, in my dream or vision which was the exact reproduction of what had taken place word for word 16 years ago) "now I am here and speaking nothing but English in verbal phonetic language I can perhaps learn to speak better with Him."
(To make it clear with Master I also used English, which whether bad or good was the same for Him as he does not speak it but understands every word I say out of my head; and I am made to understand Him — how I could never tell or explain if I were killed but I do. With D.K. I also spoke English, he speaking it better even than Mahatma K.H.)
Then, in my dream still, three months after as I was made to feel in that vision — I was standing before Mahatma K.H. near the old building taken down he was looking at, and as Master was not at home, I took to him a few sentences I was studying in Senzar in his sister's room and asked him to tell me if I translated them correctly — and gave him a slip of paper with these sentences written in English.
He took and read them and correcting the interpretation read them over and said "Now your English is becoming better — try to pick out of my head even the little I know of it." And he put his hand on my forehead in the region of memory and squeezed his fingers on it (and I felt even the same trifling pain in it, as then, and the cold shiver I had experienced) and since that day He did so with my head daily, for about two months.
Again, the scene changes and I am going away with Master who is sending me off, back to Europe. I am bidding good bye to his sister and her child and all the chelas. I listen to what the Masters tell me. And then come the parting words of Mahatma K.H. laughing at me as He always did and saying "Well, if you have not learned much of the Sacred Sciences and practical Occultism — and who could expect a woman to — you have learned, at any rate, a little English. You speak it now only a little worse than I do!" and he laughed.
Again the scene changes I am 47th St. New York writing Isis and His voice dictating to me. In that dream or retrospective vision I once more rewrote all Isis and could now point out all the pages and sentences Mahatma K.H. dictated — as those that Master did — in my bad English, when Olcott tore his hair out by handfuls in despair to ever make out the meaning of what was intended.
I again saw myself night after night in bed — writing Isis in my dreams, at New York, positively writing it in my sleep and felt sentences by Mahatma K.H. impressing themselves on my memory.
Then, as I was awakening from that vision (in Würzburg, now) I heard Mahatma K. H.'s voice — "and now put two and two together, poor blind woman. The bad English and the construction of sentences you do know, even that you have learned from me . . . take off the slur thrown upon you by that misguided, conceited man (Hodgson): explain the truth to the few friends who will believe you — for the public never will to that day that the Secret Doctrine comes out."
I awoke, and it was like a flash of lightning; but I still did not understand what it referred to. But an hour after, there comes H[um]ubbe Schleiden's letter to the Countess, in which he says, that unless I explain how it is that such a similarity is found and proven by Hodgson between my faulty English and Mahatma K.H.'s certain expressions, the construction of sentences and peculiar Gallicisms — I stand accused for ever of deceit forgery (!!) and what not.
Of course I have learned my English from Him! This Olcott even shall understand. You know and I told it to many friends and enemies — I was taught dreadful Yorkshire by my nurse called governess. From the time my father brought me to England, when fourteen, thinking I spoke beautiful English — and people asked him if he had me educated in Yorkshire or Ireland — and laughed at my accent and way of speaking — I gave up English altogether trying to avoid speaking it as much as I could.
From fourteen till I was over forty I never spoke it, let alone writing and forgot it entirely. I could read — which I did very little in English — I could not speak it. I remember how difficult it was for me to understand a well written book in English so far back only as 1867 in Venice.
All I knew when I came to America in 1873 was to speak a little and this Olcott and Judge and all who knew me then can testify to. I wish people saw an article I once attempted to write for the Banner of Light when instead of sanguine I put sanguinary, etc.
I learned to write it through Isis, that's sure and Prof. A. Wilder who came weekly to help Olcott arranging chapters and writing Index can testify to it. When I had finished it (and this Isis is the third part only of what I wrote and destroyed) I could write as well as I do now not worse nor better. My memory and its capacities seem gone since then.
What wonder then that my English and the Mahatma's show similarity!
Olcott's and mine do also in our Americanisms that I picked up from him these ten years. I translating mentally all from the French would not have written sceptic with a k; though Mahatma K.H. did and when I put it with a c Olcott and Wilder and the proof reader corrected it.
Now Mahatma K.H. has preserved the habit and stuck to it and I never did since I went to India. I would have never put carbolic instead of "carbonic" — and I was the first to remark the mistake when Hume Mahatma's letter, at Simla, in which it occurs. It is mean and stupid of him to publish it, for, if he says this referred to a sentence found in some magazine, then the word correctly written was there before my eyes or those of any chela who precipitated the letter, and therefore it is evidently a lapsus calami if there were any calami in precipitation.
"Difference in handwritings" — oh the great wonder! Has Master K.H. written himself all His letters? How many chelas have been precipitating and writing them — heaven only knows. Now if there is such a marked difference between letters written by the same identical person mechanically, (as the case with me for instance who never had a steady handwriting) how much more in precipitation, which is the photographic reproduction from one's head.
And I bet anything that no chela (if Masters can) is capable of precipitating his own handwriting twice over in precisely the same way — a difference and a marked one there shall always be, as no painter can paint twice over the same likeness (see Schmiechen with his (Master's portraits).
Now all this shall be easily understood by theosophists (not all) and those who have thought over deeply and know something of the philosophy. Who shall believe all I say in this letter outside of the few? No one.
And yet, I am demanded an explanation and when it comes out (if you write it out from facts I can give you) no one shall believe it. Yet you have to show at least one thing: occult transactions, letters handwriting etc. cannot be judged by the daily standard, experts, this that and the other. There are no three solutions but two: Either I have invented the Masters, their philosophy, written their letters etc. or, I have not.
If I have and the Masters do not exist, then their handwritings could not have existed, either: I have invented them also; and if I have — how can I be called a "forger"? They are my handwritings and I have the right to use them if I am so clever. As for philosophy and doctrine invented the S.D. shall show.
Now I am here alone with the Countess for witness. I have no books no one to help me. And I tell you that the Secret Doctrine will be 20 times as learned, philosophical and better than Isis which will be killed by it.
Now there are hundreds of things I am permitted to say and explain. It will show what a Russian spy can do, an alleged forger plagiarist etc. The whole Doctrine is shown the mother stone the foundation of all the religions including Xty, and on the strength of exoteric published Hindu books, with their symbols explained esoterically.
The extreme lucidity of "Esoteric Buddhism" will also be shown and its doctrines proven correct mathematically, geometrically logically and scientifically. Hodgson is very clever, but he is not clever enough for truth and it shall triumph after which I can die peacefully. »
(ML 140, p.478-481 )
Blavatsky also gave this explanation to Dr. Hübbe:
« To Dr. Hübbe-Schleiden, President of the Theosophical Society of Germany and the other German regions.
. . .
I
am also accused of "similarity of style" — the same mistakes — spelling, gallicisms etc etc. Ergo I am Mahatma KH and he is I . But why not explain it in the correct way?
Ask Olcott, Judge & all those who knew me in America before I wrote Isis. They will tell you that I hardly spoke English. That most of the pages of Isis, where there is anything worth reading were dicated to me by Master KH. — sometimes 30, 40 pages at a time without one mistake as Olcott & Dr Wilder know; that I learned to write English with him, the Master & spelt as he did in Isis sceptic with a K & Bakkus instead of Bacchus & so on.
Till 1868, I had ceased to speak English having learned it in my childhood. And only from February 1868 till 70, some nine or ten months & then for about six months I spoke only English for I knew neither Tibetan nor Hindi, nor anything — with the Mahatma.
I may say I relearned the little English I knew when I came to America in 1873 from Him. I learned positively to write, from him while writing Isis.
When I arrived to India I began spelling sceptic (a word unfortunately too often used in our Society) with a c having been laughed at for my previous spelling & [4] KH. went on spelling it in His own way.
He precipitated & wrote through me hundreds of letters before I went to America & met Olcott but my Master protested saying it was mediumship. I actually thought the first letter He wrote to Mr Sinnett had been written through me at Simla; only I was told by Him I was mistaken. Nor would Mr Sinnett believe it.
As to my Master — he does not know one word of English. Every letter he wrote he had to take his English either from my head or that of one of his English speaking chelas. There are no miracles in nature. Everything that occurs must have its cause its effect.
(www.blavatskyarchives.com/hpblet010486.htm)
Observation
It makes very sense that if Master Kuthumi taught Blavatsky English, then Blavatsky speaks this language as Kuthumi does.
