People
testified that Madame Blavatsky could teleport cigarettes through space, and
three persons sent their testimonies to the Pioneer
newspaper, which published their letters.
Alice Gordon’s testimony
« Sir,
The account of the discovery of
Mrs. Hume's brooch has called forth several letters, and many questions have
been asked, some of which I may answer on a future occasion, but I think it
only right to first contribute further testimony to the occult powers possessed
by Madame Blavatsky.
In thus coming before the public,
one must be prepared for ridicule, but it is a weapon which we who know
something of these matters can well afford to despise.
On Thursday last, at about
half-past ten o'clock, I was sitting in Madame Blavatsky's room conversing with
her, and in a casual way asked her if she would be able to send me anything by
occult means when I returned to my home.
She said "No;" and
explained to me some of the laws under which she acts, one being that she must
know the place and have been there —the more recently the better— in order to
establish a magnetic current.
She then recollected that she had
been somewhere that morning, and after a moment's reflection remembered whose
house it was she had visited.* She said she could send a cigarette there, if I
would go at once to verify the fact. I, of course, consented.
I must here mention that I had
seen her do this kind of thing once before; and the reason she gives for
sending cigarettes is, that the paper and tobacco being always about her
person, are highly magnetized, and therefore more amenable to her power, which
she most emphatically declares is not supernatural, but merely the
manifestation of laws unknown to us.
To continue my story. She took out
a cigarette paper and slowly tore off a corner as zigzag as possible, I never
taking my eyes off her hands. She gave me the corner, which I at once put into
an envelope, and it never left my possession I can declare.
She made the cigarette with the remainder of the paper. She then said she would try an experiment
which might not succeed, hut the failure would be of no consequence with me.
She then most certainly put that
cigarette into the fire, and I saw it burn, and I started at once to the
gentleman's house, scarcely able to believe that I should find in the place
indicated by her the counterpart of the cigarette paper I had with me; but sure
enough there it was, and, in the presence of the gentleman and his wife, I
opened out the cigarette and found my corner piece fitted exactly.
It would be useless to try and
explain any theory in connection with these phenomena, and it would be
unreasonable to expect any one to believe in them, unless their own experience
had proved the possibility of such wonders.
All one asks or expects is, that
a few of the more intelligent, members of the community may be led to look into
the vast amount of evidence now accumulated of the phenomena taking place all
over Europe and America.
It seems a pity that the majority
should be in such utter ignorance of these facts; it is within the power of any
one visiting England to convince himself of their truth. »
(* Note; this house at which the
cigarette was found was Mr. O'Meara's. He is quite willing that this should be
stated.)
Captain P.J. Maitland’s testimony
« Sir,
I have been asked to give an
account of a circumstance which took place in my presence on the 13th instant.
On the evening of that day I was sitting alone with Madame Blavatsky and
Colonel Olcott in the drawing-room of Mr. Sinnett's house in Simla.
After some conversation on
various matters, Madame Blavatsky said she would like to try an experiment in a
manner which had been suggested to her by Mr. Sinnett.
She, therefore, took two
cigarette papers from her pocket and marked on each of them a number of
parallel lines in pencil. She then tore a piece off the end of each paper
across the lines, and gave them to me. At that time Madame Blavatsky was
sitting close to me, and I intently watched her proceedings, my eyes being not
more than two feet from her hands.
She declined to let me mark or
tear the papers, alleging that if handled by others they would become imbued
with their personal magnetism, which would counteract her own.
However, the torn pieces were handed directly to me, and I could not observe
any opportunity for the substitution of other papers by sleight of hand. The
genuineness or otherwise of the phenomena afterwards presented appears to rest
on this point.
The torn-off pieces of the paper
remained in my closed left hand until the conclusion of the experiment. Of the
larger pieces Madame Blavatsky made two cigarettes, giving the first to me to
hold while the other was being made up.
I scrutinized this cigarette very
attentively, in order to be able to recognize it afterwards. The cigarettes
being finished, Madame Blavatsky stood up, and took them between her hands,
which she rubbed together. After about twenty or thirty seconds, the grating
noise of the paper, at first distinctly audible, ceased.
She then said the current* is
passing round this end of the room, and I can only send them somewhere near
here. A moment afterwards she said one had fallen on the piano, the other near
that bracket.
As I sat on a sofa with my back
to the wall the piano was opposite, and the bracket, supporting a few pieces of
china, was to the right, between it and the door, both were in full view across
the rather narrow room.
The top of the piano was covered
with piles of music books, and it was among these Madame Blavatsky thought a
cigarette would be found. The books were removed, one by one, by myself, but
without seeing anything. I then opened the piano, and found a cigarette on a
narrow shelf inside it.
This cigarette I took out and
recognized as the one I had held in my hand. The other was found in a covered
cup on the bracket. Both cigarettes were still damp where they had been
moistened at the edges in the process of manufacture.
I took the cigarettes to a table,
without permitting them to be touched or even seen by Madame Blavatsky and
Colonel Olcott. On being unrolled and smoothed out, the torn, jagged edges were
found to fit exactly to the pieces that I had all this time retained in my
hand. The pencil marks also corresponded. It would therefore
appear that the papers were actually the same as those I had seen torn.
Both the papers are still in my
possession. It may be added that Colonel Olcott sat near me with his back to
Madame Blavatsky during the experiment, and did not move till it was concluded. »
(* Observation: the theory is
that a current of what can only be called magnetism, can be made to convey
objects, previously dissipated by the same force, to any distance, and in spite
of the intervention of any amount of matter.)
Charles Francis Massy’s testimony
« Sir,
With reference to the
correspondence now filling your columns, on the subject of Madame Blavatsky's
recent manifestations, it may interest your readers if I record a striking
incident which took place last week in my presence.
I had occasion to call on Madame,
and in the course of our interview she tore off a corner from a cigarette
paper, asking me to hold the same, which I did. With the remainder of the paper
she prepared a cigarette in the ordinary manner, and in a few moments caused
this cigarette to disappear from her hands.
We were sitting at the time in
the drawing-room. I inquired if it were likely to find this cigarette again,
and after a short pause Madame requested me to accompany her into the
dining-room, where the cigarette would be found on the top of a curtain hanging
over the window.
By means of a table and a chair
placed thereon, I was enabled with some difficulty to reach and take down a
cigarette from the place indicated. This cigarette I opened, and found the
paper to correspond exactly with that I had seen a few minutes before in the
drawing-room. That is to say, the corner-piece, which I had retained in my
possession, fitted exactly into the jagged edges of the torn paper in which the
tobacco had been rolled.
To the best of my belief, the
test was as complete and satisfactory as any test can be. I refrain from giving
my opinion as to the causes which produced the effect, feeling sure that your
readers who take an interest in these phenomena will prefer exercising their
own judgment in the matter.
I merely give you an unvarnished
statement of what I saw. I may be permitted to add I am not a member of the
Theosophist Society, nor, so far as I know, am I biassed in
favour of occult science, although a warm sympathizer with the proclaimed
objects of the Society over which Colonel Olcott presides. »
Alfred Sinnett’s
commentaries
Mr. Sinnett, who at the time was the editor of that newspaper, commented
the following:
« Of course, anyone
familiar with conjuring will be aware that an imitation of this
"trick" can be arranged by a person gifted with a little sleight of
hand. You take two pieces of paper, and tear off a corner of both together, so
that the jags of both are the same. You make a cigarette with one piece, and
put it in the place where you mean to have it ultimately found.
You then hold the other piece
underneath the one you tear in presence of the spectator, slip in one of the
already torn corners into his hand instead of that he sees you tear, make your
cigarette with the other part of the original piece, dispose of that anyhow you
please, and allow the prepared cigarette to be found.
Other variations of the system
may be readily imagined, and for persons who have not actually seen Madame
Blavatsky do one of her cigarette feats it may be useless to point out that she
does not do: them as a conjuror would, and that the spectator, if he is gifted
with ordinary common sense, can never have the faintest shadow of a doubt about
the corner given to him being the corner torn off — a certainty which the
pencil-marks upon it, drawn before his eyes, would enhance, if that were
necessary.
However, as I say, though
experience shows me that the outsider is prone to regard the little cigarette
phenomenon as " suspicious," it has never failed to be regarded as
convincing by the most acute people among those who have witnessed it. With all
phenomena, however, stupidity on the part of the observer will defeat any
attempt to reach his understanding, no matter how perfect the tests supplied. »
(The Ocult World,
p.87-92)
OBSERVATIONS
That explanation of putting two
pieces of paper one on top of the other, so that when tearing them they have
the same shape, sounds good in theory, but the detail is that the people who
witnessed these phenomena were in front of Blavatsky, just a few centimeters
from she, and therefore those people could very well see the piece of paper and
realize if it was one or two pieces.
But even supposing that Blavatsky
could have fooled them with that trick.
1) In the first case, how did
Blavatsky take the cigarette to that house that she had visited in the morning,
if Blavatsky no longer moved and Alicia Gordon was the one who moved to that
house?
If we suppose that Blavatsky had
left a cigarette when she visited that house in the morning, but then the piece
of paper from that cigarette would no longer match the piece of paper that
Blavatsky broke in front of Mrs. Gordon.
And suppose that Blavatsky had an
accomplice. Well, is very difficult that this individual could have run to that
house and come in to deposit the cigarette without having been discovered by
Mr. O'Meara, and also with the risk of being imprisoned for trespassing on
someone else's property.
2) And in the second case:
How did Blavatsky manage to put
the cigarette inside the piano, when Mr. Maitland was in front of the piano and
therefore he would have immediately noticed?
And how did Blavatsky make it so
that the two parallel lines that she put on the piece of paper also appeared on
the supposed hidden paper, if she only could mark these two lines on the
visible piece of paper?
3) And in the third case:
How did Blavatsky manage to put
the cigarette on the window curtain, if she did not part with Mr. Massy?
And assuming once again that she
had an accomplice, how did that individual manage to put the cigarette in a
place that was so high? Throwing the cigarette several times to see if in one
of those attempts he would finally have success?
That doesn't seem feasible to me.
WILLIAM JUDGE'S TESTIMONY
And Blavatsky not only teleported
cigarettes, but also teleported other small objects as William Judge noted in
an article titled "Occult Arts" where he wrote the following:
« Regarding the phenomenon of teleportation, I can only say that I have seen this done, and that many testimonies
have been offered by others at various times for the same thing. In the records
of Spiritualism there are a great many witnesses to this effect, and accepting
all cases in that field which are free from fraud the same remarks as were made
about precipitation apply.
With mediums it is unconsciously
done; the laws governing the entire thing are unexplained by the medium or the
alleged spirits; the whole matter is involved in obscurity so far as that cult
is concerned, and certainly the returning spooks will give no answer until they
find it in the brain of some living person. But the fact remains that among
powerful physical mediums the operation has been performed by some unknown
force acting under hidden guidance, itself as obscure.
This feat is not the same as
apportation, the carrying or projecting of an object through space, whether it
be a human form or any other thing. Buddhist and Hindu stories alike teem with
such apportations; it is alleged of Apollonius the Greek, of Tyana; Christian
saints are said to have been levitated and carried. In the Buddhist stories
many of the immediate disciples of Buddha, both during his life and after his
death, are said to have flown through the air from place to place; and in the
history of Rama, some ascetics and Hanuman an the monkey god are credited with
having so levitated themselves.
. . .
A gentleman of high character and
ability in the northwest told me that one day a man unknown in his village came
to the door, and exhibiting some rings of metal made one pass through the
other, one of the rings seeming to melt away at the point of contact.
H.P. Blavatsky has narrated to me
many such cases, and I have seen her do the same thing. As, for instance, she
has taken in my sight a small object such as a ring, and laying it on the table
caused it to appear without her touching it inside of a closed drawer near by.
Now in that instance either she disintegrated it and caused it to pass into the
drawer, or disintegrated the drawer for a sufficient space, or she hypnotized
me with all my senses on the alert, putting the object into the drawer while I
was asleep and without my perceiving any sort of change whatever in my
consciousness.
The latter I cannot accept, but
if it be held as true, then it was more wonderful than the other feat. The
circumstances and motive were such as to exclude the hypnotizing theory; it was
done to show me that such a phenomenon was possible and to give me a clue to
the operation, and also to explain to me how the strange things of spiritualism
might be done and, indeed, must be done under the laws of man's mind and
nature.
. . .
All this may seem fanciful, but
there are those who know of their own knowledge that it is all according to
fact. And it is doubtless true that in no long time modern science will begin,
as it is even now slowly starting, to admit all these things by admitting in
full the ideal nature of the cosmos, thus removing at once the materialistic
notions of man and nature which mostly prevail at the present day. »
(Path, December 1893)
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