One of the most
impressive phenomena that Madame Blavatsky produced was the materialization of
an old brooch that belonged to Mrs. Hume, but that she had lost some time ago,
and in this chapter I am going to transcribe the testimonies that I have found
about that event.
TESTIMONY OF COLONEL OLCOTT
Colonel
Henry Olcott was present this day and he mentioned the following in his Diary:
« The incident of the finding of Mrs. Hume's brooch, so universally known
and so often commented upon, occurred that same evening at Mr. A.O. Hume's
house. I shall tell the story exactly as it happened, since not only are the
facts clearly present to my mind, but they are also given in my letter to
Damodar above-mentioned.
(Note: you
can read that letter here.)
One most important circumstance has hitherto been omitted from all the
versions published by eye-witnesses, one which weighs strongly in H.P.B.'s
favor and against the hypothesis of fraud.
Description of the event
The facts are these: a party of eleven of us — including Mr. and Mrs.
Hume, Mr. and Mrs. Sinnett, Mrs. Gordon, Captain M., Mr. H., Mr. D., Lieutenant
B., and H.P.B. and myself — were dining at Mr. Hume's. Of course, occultism and
philosophy were the topics of conversation. Psychometry was also broached, and
Mrs. Gordon, obtaining H.P.B.'s consent to try an experiment, went to her room
and fetched a letter in a plain envelope which she gave H.P.B. to
psychometrize.
The latter held it to her forehead a moment and began to laugh. “This is
queer," she said. "I see just the top of somebody's head with hair
standing up like spikes all over it. I can't see the face. Ah! now it begins to
rise slowly. Why, it is Dr. Thibaut, of course!" And so it was; the letter
was from him to Mrs. Gordon. The incident gave everybody the highest
satisfaction, and —as usually happens in this phenomena-hunting business— more
wonders were called for; would not Madame Blavatsky cause something to be
brought from a distance?
-
She looked calmly
around the table and said: "Well, who wants something?"
-
Mrs. Hume at once
spoke up: "I do," she said.
-
"What?"
asked H.P.B.
-
"If I could
really get it, I should like to have an old family jewel that I have not seen
for a long time; a brooch set round with pearls."
-
“Have you the image
of it clear in your mind?” Yes, perfectly clear; it has just come to me like a
flash," commented H.P.B.
H.P.B. looked fixedly at Mrs. H. for a while, seemed to be communing with
herself, looked up and said:
-
"It will not be
brought into this house but into the garden — I am told by a Brother."
After a pause, she asked Mr. Hume if he had in his garden a flower-bed
shaped like a star.
-
Yes, Mr. Hume said,
there were several.
H.P.B. stood up and pointed in a certain direction. "I mean
there," she said. Yes, there was one at that side. "Then, come with
me yourself and find it, as I have seen it drop like a point of light, in such
a bed."
There upon the company rose, put on their wraps, and gathered in the
drawing-room for the expedition — all save Mrs. Hume, who did not dare expose
herself to the cold night breeze. Before we started I put it to the company to
recall all the incidents, and say whether they lent themselves to any theory of
complicity, or leading up with conversation, or mental suggestion exercised by H.P.B.
-
"For," said
I, "if a shadow of doubt hangs over the occurrence, it will be useless for
us to go any further."
Those present looked questioningly at each other and with one accord
agreed that everything had been fair and stamped with good faith. This is the
missing link of all previous versions of the story, and I submit that, in view
of my challenge and the putting of them on their guard, it is nonsense to cook
up any theory of trickery when the facts are so very plain and so much candor
was used throughout.
We went searching the garden with lanterns, for it was a dark night and
nothing could be seen. We went by twos and threes here and there, H.P.B. with
Mr. Hume, Mrs. Sinnett with Captain M., etc. The large bed shaped like a star
was found and Mrs. Sinnett and Captain M. were the lucky finders of a small
white paper package with something hard within. They found it by pulling up a
tangled network of nasturtium and other vines that made a perfect mat of
verdure. H.P.B. and Mr. Hume were at some distance and I also, until the
finders called out to come and see what they had got.
Mrs. Sinnett handed it to Mr. Hume, who opened it in the house, and
inside was the missing brooch that had been asked for. At the suggestion of
somebody — not of H.P.B. or myself — a protocol was drawn up by Mr. Hume and
Mr. Sinnett, read to the company and signed by all. Now this is the plain,
unvarnished story without concealment or exaggeration. Let any fair-minded
reader say whether it was or was not a true phenomenon.
Arguments for and against
It has been suggested that among some jewelry recovered from an
adventurer who had had an intimacy with Mr. Hume's family and improperly, got
possession of it, this brooch was included. Granting that to be so-if it
was-this no more lessens the mystery of the call for the brooch by Mrs. Hume
and its discovery in the garden-bed, than the probable previous ownership by H.P.B.
of the solid gold ring she caused to leap out of the rose I was holding in my
hand, weakens the wonderful force of that phenomenon in itself.
When Mme. Blavatsky, in response to the call for a phenomenon of the
apport class, looked around the table, she singled out nobody, but Mrs. Hume was
the first to speak, and almost simultaneously one or two others followed. She
being the hostess, the others yielded their own chances to her out of courtesy,
and it was then that H.P.B. asked what she wished. If somebody else's wish had
been given preference by the company H.P.B. would have had to deal with that
person, and where, then, would the theory of her having mentally suggested the
brooch to Mrs. Hume have come in?
This practical difficulty is, of course, gaily disposed of by the
further suggestion that H.P.B. hypnotised everybody present as to every detail,
so as to make Mrs. Hume ask for the article she could most easily procure.
Passing on from this, we are next confronted with the important facts
a)
that H.P.B. had never
set foot in Mr. Hume's garden;
b)
had never been
carried up the road to the door save at night;
c)
that the garden was
not lighted;
d)
that the star-shaped
bed was not within view from the drive, hence could not have been noticed by
her;
e)
that from the moment
when Mrs. Hume asked for the brooch nobody left the table until all rose
together; and that it was Mrs. Sinnett and Captain M. who found the packet, and
not H.P.B. who led Mr. Hume to it, as she might if she knew the exact place of
its hiding.
Then, supposing again that H.P.B. had the brooch in keeping, we must
account for its transport to the flower-bed between the time when asked for and
that when found — a few minutes only.
Those who do not positively hate our dear departed teacher, will, I am
sure, in view of the foregoing facts, give her the benefit of the doubt and
write this incident in the list of genuine proofs of her psycho-spiritual
faculty. »
(Old
Diary Leaves II, chapter 16, p.237-241)
TESTIMONY OF MR. SINNETT
The
person who detailed the most about this event was the journalist Alfred
Sinnett, who was also present this day, and below I transcribe what he put in
his book "The Occult World"
about that event:
« It was on the evening of the day of
the cup phenomenon that there occurred an incident destined to become the subject
of very wide discussion in all the Anglo-Indian papers. This was the celebrated
“brooch incident.” The facts were related at the time in a little statement
drawn up for publication, and signed by the nine persons who witnessed it. This
statement will be laid before the reader directly, but as the comments to which
it gave rise showed that it was too meagre to convey a full and accurate idea of
what occurred, I will describe the course of events a little more fully. In
doing this, I may use names with a certain freedom, as these were all appended
to the published document.
Narration of events
We, that is my wife and myself with
our guests, had gone up the hill to dine, in accordance with previous engagements,
with Mr. and Mrs. Hume. We dined, a party of eleven, at a round table, and Madame
Blavatsky, sitting next our host, tired and out of spirits as it happened, was unusually
silent. Dining the beginning of dinner she scarcely said a word, Mr. Hume
conversing chiefly with the lady on his other hand. It is a common trick at
Indian dinner-tables to have little metal plate warmers with hot water before
each guest, on which each plate served remains while in use.
Such plate warmers were used on the
evening I am describing, and over hers —in an interval during which plates had
been removed— Madame Blavatsky was absently warming her hands. Now, the
production of Madame Blavatsky’s raps and bell-sounds we had noticed sometimes
seemed easier and the effects better when her hands had been warmed in this
way; so some one, seeing her engaged in warming them, asked her some question,
hinting in an indirect way at phenomena.
I was very far from expecting
anything of the kind that evening, and Madame Blavatsky was equally far from
intending to do anything herself or from expecting any display at the hands of
one of the Brothers. So, merely in mockery, when asked why she was warming her
hands, she enjoined us all to warm our hands too and see what would happen.
Some of the people present actually
did so, a few joking words passing among them. Then Mrs. Hume raised a little
laugh by holding up her hands and saying, “But I have warmed my hands, what
next?”
Now Madame Blavatsky, as I have
said, was not in a mood for any occult performances at all, but it appears from
what I learned afterwards that just at this moment, or immediately before, she
suddenly perceived by those occult facilities of which mankind at large have no
knowledge, that one of the Brothers was present “in astral body” invisible to
the rest of us in the room. It was following his indications, therefore, that
she acted in what followed; of course no one knew at the time that she had
received any impulse in the matter external to herself.
What took place as regards the
surface of things was simply this: When Mrs. Hume said what I have set down
above, and when the little laugh ensued, Madame Blavatsky put out her hand
across the one person sitting between herself and Mrs. Hume and took one of
that lady’s hands saying, “Well then, do you wish for anything in particular?”
or as the lawyers say, “words to that effect.”
I cannot repeat the precise
sentences spoken, nor can I say now exactly what Mrs. Hume first replied before
she quite understood the situation; but this was made clear in a very few
minutes. Some of the other people present catching this first, exclaimed, “Think
of something you would like to have brought to you; anything you like not
wanted for any mere worldly motive; is there anything you can think of that will be very difficult to get ?”
Remarks of this sort were the only
kind that were made in the short interval that elapsed between the remark by Mrs.
Hume about having warmed her hands and the indication by her of the thing she
had thought of. She said then that she had thought of something that would do.
What was it? An old brooch that her mother had given her long ago and that she
had lost.
Now, when this brooch, which was
ultimately recovered by occult agency, as the rest of my story will show, came to
be talked about, people said: — “Of course Madame Blavatsky led up the conversation
to the particular thing she had arranged before hand to produce.” I have
described all the conversation which took place on this subject, before the
brooch was named.
There was no conversation about the
brooch or any other thing of the kind whatever, Five minutes before the brooch
was named, there had been no idea, in the mind of any person present that any
phenomenon in the nature of finding any lost article, or of any other kind,
indeed, was going to be performed. Nor while Mrs. Hume was going over in her
mind, the things she might ask for, did she speak any word indicating the
direction her thoughts were taking.
From the point of the story now
reached the narrative published at the time tells it almost as fully as it need
be told, and, at all events, with a simplicity that will assist the reader in
grasping all the facts — so I reprint it here in full.
This
document was first published in the Pioneer
newspaper of October 7, 1880, and later in The Theosophist magazine of November 1880 (p.35) and below I put
the facsimile.
In
the Theosophist magazine article, the
editor put the following introductory text:
« The phenomenon herein described by
a number of the most reputable persons in Indian official circles, is only one
of a series with which Madame Blavatsky has astounded the Simla public. Such
scientific experiments — for of course, it is understood that all supernatural
or spiritual cause for the phenomena of occult science is repudiated by Madame
Blavatsky, on behalf of the Indian occultists who taught her — have been made
by her during the past six years in America, Europe and Egypt. [In reality
these phenomena are generated by natural causes but that science still does not
know.]
It is hoped by her friends that a
compilation of the published accounts by eye-witnesses of these marvels may be
made at some convenient time, so as to show that the theory of spiritual
mediumship will not apply to them; but that they must be accounted for upon the
hypothesis that there are, indeed, still living in India men of that class who
were revered by our ancestors as Mahatmas. — P. »
The
document says the followings:
« On Sunday, the 3rd of October, at
Mr. Hume’s house at Simla, there were present at dinner Mr. and Mrs. Hume, Mr.
and Mrs. Sinnett, Mrs. Gordon, Mr. P. Hogg, Captain P. J. Maitland, Mr.
Beatson, Mr. David-son, Colonel Olcott, and Madame Blavatsky. Most of the
persons present having recently seen many remarkable occurrences in Madame Blavatsky’s
presence, conversation turned on occult phenomena, and in the course of this
Madame Blavatsky asked Mrs. Hume if there was anything she particularly wished
for.
Mrs. Hume at first hesitated, but in
a short time said there was something she would particularly like to have
brought her, namely, a small article of jewellery that she formerly possessed,
but had given away to a person who had allowed it to pass out of her
possession. Madame Blavatsky then said if she would fix the image of the article
in question very definitely on her mind, she, Madame Blavatsky, would endeavour
to procure it.
Mrs. Hume then said that she vividly
remembered the article, and described it as an old-fashioned breast-brooch set
round with pearls, with glass at the front, and the hack made to contain hair.
She then, on being asked, drew a rough sketch of the brooch. Madame Blavatsky
then wrapped up a coin attached to her watch-chain in two cigarette papers, and
put it in her dress, and said that she hoped the brooch might be obtained in
the course of the evening.
At the close of dinner she said to
Mr. Hume that the paper in which the coin had been wrapped was gone. A little
later, in the drawing-room, she said that the brooch would not be brought into
the house, but that it must be looked for in the garden, and then as the party
went out accompanying her, she said she had clairvoyantly soon the brooch fall
into a star-shaped bed of flowers. Mr. Hume led the way to such a bed in a
distant part of the garden.
A prolonged and careful search was
made with lanterns, and eventually a small paper packet, consisting of two cigarette
papers, was found amongst the leaves by Mrs. Sinnett. This being opened on the
spot was found to contain a brooch exactly corresponding to the previous
description, and which Mrs. Hume identified as that which she had originally
lost.
None of the party, except Mr. and
Mrs. Hume, had ever seen or heard of the brooch. Mr. Hume had not thought of it
for years. Mrs. Hume had never .spoken of it to any one since she parted with
it, nor had she, for long, even thought of it. She herself stated, after it was
found, that it was only when Madame Blavatsky asked her whether there was
anything she would like to have, that the remembrance of this brooch, the gift
of her mother, flashed across her mind.
Mrs. Hume is not a spiritualist, and
up to the time of the occurrence described was no believer either in occult
phenomena or in Madame Blavatsky’s powers. The conviction of all present was
that the occurrence was of an absolutely unimpeachable character, as an
evidence of the truth of the possibility of occult phenomena. The brooch is
unquestionably tile one which Mrs. Hume lost.
Even supposing, which is practically
impossible, that the article, lost months before Mrs. Hume ever heard of Madame
Blavatsky, and bearing no letters or other indication of original ownership,
could have passed in a natural way into Madame Blavatsky’s possession, even
then she could not possibly' have foreseen that it would be asked for, and Mrs.
Hume herself bad not given it a thought for months.
This narrative, read over to the
party, is signed by:
A.O. Hume, M.A. Hume, Fred R. Hogg,
A.P. Sinnett, Patience Sinnet, Alice Gordon, P.J. Maitland, V. Davíson, Stuart
Beatson. »
And
apart from the testimony, Mr. Sinnett also added his following reflections:
« The above remarkable statement
concerns an occurrence lying outside the range of those which can be accounted
for in an ordinary way; but it is one authenticated by nine witnesses, all
well-known in Simla society.
It has not la in with in the province
of a journal like the Pionner to collector
discuss the various tales of wonder connected with Madame Blavatsky’s powers that
have freely been circulating about India among persons interested in occult research,
with in the last twelve months.
But a special case is now presented to
public attention in a way which puts the facts in a light which, however
startling they may seem, illuminates them clearly enough for the purposes of
general consideration. It is rarely of much use to build theories, or even to attempt
they a guest speculation on strange anecdotes which are cloudy in their details,
or possibly subject to inaccurate narration. But in the present case we have a very
precise statement testified to by witnesses of unimpeachable character and
intelligence.
We leave it for the present as it
stands, as the task of elucidating it by any explanation of the occult theories
on which phenomena of the kind described would appear to rest, can hardly be
undertaken at a moment’s notice. It is enough to add that any one who has looked
in to Madame Blavatsky’s great work, Isis
Unveiled, will be aware of the general character of the position she takes
up in reference to such phenomena as this now before us.
They are not alleged to be the work
of “spirits” in any way. On the contrary, the weight of all the argument in the
book mentioned is turned against the conclusions of the spiritualists. But it
is contended by Madame Blavatsky that many forces residing in nature are of a
kind which ordinary science has altogether failed to comprehend, and that by
means of these the wonderful phenomena she describes, — and in the present
case, it appears, has exhibited — are accomplished. »
Pretexts that were later argued for
discredit this phenomenon
It is needless to state that when
this narrative was published the nine persons above mentioned were assailed with
torrents of ridicule, the effect of which, however, has not been in any single
ease to modify, in the smallest degree, the conviction which their signatures
attested at the time, that the incident related was a perfectly conclusive
proof of the reality of occult power. Floods of more or less imbecile criticism
have been directed to show that the whole performance must have been a trick;
and for many persons in India it is now, no doubt, an established explanation
that Mrs. Hume was adroitly led up to ask for the particular article produced,
by a quantity of preliminary talk about a feat which Madame Blavatsky specially
went to the house to perform.
A further established opinion with a
certain section of the Indian public is, that the brooch which it appears Mrs.
Hume gave to her daughter, and which her daughter lost, must have been got from
that young lady about a year previously, when she passed through Bombay, where
Madame Blavatsky was living, on her way to England. The young lady’s testimony
to the effect that she lost the brooch before she went to Bombay, or ever saw
Madame Blavatsky, is a little feature of this hypothesis which its contented
framers do not care to inquire into.
Nor do persons who think the fact that
the brooch once belonged to Mrs. Hume’s daughter, and that this young lady once
saw Madame Blavatsky at Bombay, sufficiently “suspicious” to wipe out the effect
of the whole incident as described above — ever attempt, as far as I have
discerned, to trace out a coherent chain of events as illuminated by their
suspicions, or to compare these with the circumstances of the brooch’s actual
recovery.
No care, however, to arrange the
circumstances of an occult demonstration so that the possibility of fraud and
delusion may really be excluded, is sufficient to exclude the imputation of
this afterwards by people for whom any argument, however illogical really, is
good enough to attack a strange idea with.
As regards the witnesses of the
brooch phenomenon the conditions were so perfect that when they were
speculating as to the objections which might be raised by the public, when the
story should come to ho told, they did not foresee either of the objections
actually raised afterwards — the leading up in conversation theory, and the
theory about Miss Hume having put Madame Blavatsky in possession of the brooch.
They knew that there had been no
previous conversation at all about the brooch or any other proposed feat that
the idea about getting something Mrs. Hume should ask for, arose all in a
moment, and that almost immediately afterwards, the brooch was named. As for
Miss Hume having unconsciously contributed to the production of the phenomenon,
it did not occur to the witnesses that this would be suggested, because they
did not foresee that any one could be so foolish as to shut their eyes to the
important circumstances, to concentrate their attention entirely on one of
quite minor importance.
As the statement itself says, even
supposing, which is practically impossible, that the brooch could have passed
into Madame Blavatsky’s possession in a natural way, she could not possibly
have foreseen that it would have been asked for.
The only conjectures the witnesses
could frame to explain, beforehand the tolerably certain result that the public
at large would refuse to be convinced by the brooch incident, were that they
might be regarded as misstating the facts and omitting some which the superior
intelligence of their critics — as their critics would regard the matter —
would see to upset the significance of the rest, or that Mrs. Hume must be a
confederate.
Now, this last conjecture, which
will no doubt occur to readers in England, had only to be stated, to be, for the
other persons concerned in the incident, one of the most amusing results to
which it could give rise. We all knew Mrs. Hume to be as little predisposed
towards any such a conspiracy as she was morally incapable of the wrong-doing
it would involve.
At one stage of the proceedings,
moreover, we had considered the question as to the extent to which the
conditions of the phenomenon were satisfactory. It had often happened that
faults had eventually been found with Madame Blavatsky’s phenomena by reason of
some oversight in the conditions that had not been thought of at first. One of
our friends, therefore, on the occasion I am describing, had suggested, after
we rose from the dinner- table, that before going any further the company generally
should be asked whether, if the branch could be produced, that would under the
circumstances be a satisfactory proof of occult agency in the matter.
We carefully reviewed the manner in
which the situation had been developed, and we all came to the conclusion that
the test would be absolutely complete, and that on this occasion there was no
weak place in the chain of the argument. Then it was that Madame Blavatsky said
the brooch would be brought to the garden, and that we could go out and search
for it.
An interesting circumstance for
those who had already watched some of the other phenomena I have described was this:
the brooch, as stated above, was found wrapped up in two cigarette papers, and
these, when examined in a full light in the house, were found still to bear the
mark of the coin attached to Madame Blavatsky’s watch chain, which had been
wrapped up in them before they departed on their mysterious errand. They were
thus identified for people who had got over the first stupendous difficulty of
believing in the possibility of transporting material objects by occult agency,
as the same papers that had been seen by us at the dinner-table.
Explanation of this phenomenon
The occult transmission of objects
to a distance not being “magic,” as Western readers understand the word, is susceptible
of some partial explanation even for ordinary readers, for whom the means by
which the forces employed are manipulated must remain entirely mysterious. It
is not contended that the currents which are made use of, convey the bodies
transmitted in a solid mass just as they exist for the senses. The body, to be
transmitted, is supposed first to be disintegrated, conveyed on the currents in
infinitely minute particles, and then reintegrated at its destitution.
In the case of the brooch, the first
thing to be done must have been to find it. This, however, would simply be a
feat of clairvoyance — the scent of the object, so to speak, being taken up
from the person who spoke of it and had once possessed it — and there is no
clairvoyance of which the Western world has any knowledge, comparable in its
vivid intensity to the clairvoyance of an adept in occultism. Its resting-place
thus discovered, the disintegration process would come into play, and the
object desired would be conveyed to the place where the adept engaged with it
would choose to have it deposited.
The part played in the phenomenon by
the cigarette papers would be this: In order that we might be able to find the brooch,
it was necessary to connect it by an occult scent with Madame Blavatsky. The
cigarette papers, which she always carried about with her, were thus
impregnated with her magnetism, and taken from her by the Brother, left an
occult trail behind them. Wrapped round the brooch, they conducted this trail
to the required spot.
The magnetization of the cigarette
papers always with her, enabled Madame Blavatsky to perform a little feat with
them which was found by every one for whom it was done an exceedingly complete
bit of evidence; though here again the superficial resemblance of the
experiment to a conjuring trick misled the intelligence of ordinary persons who
read about the incidents referred to in the newspapers. The feat itself may be
most conveniently discussed by the quotation of three letters which appeared in
the Pioneer of the 23rd of October, 1880. »
(The Occult World, p.77-87)
OBSERVATIONS
These three
letters can be found in this other article (link) and after having analyzed the phenomenon and the
testimonies, I consider that for the materialization of the brooch, to have
been a trick, the complicity of Mrs. Hume would have been required, but I see this
highly unlikely because Mr. Hume would have lost not only his reputation, but
also his professional career, as he was an important politician in India.
So I don't
see why Mr. and Mrs. Hume would have risked losing their wealthy lives and
especially their reputations (which was so important in Victorian times) just
to participate in a charade.
And though
my research has led me to conclude that Blavatsky also had its own powers, the
recovery of the old lost brooch was much more difficult, and therefore I
suspect that in reality was Master Kuthumi who recovered it (or replicated it)
and then he projected it in the garden.
And I think
that the master brought about this phenomenon to enthuse and motivate Hume and
Sinnett to collaborate with him in the dissemination of theosophical teaching.
But the
great discussion that later was generated around this phenomenon, and with all
the fraud theories that were later wielded, Master Kuthumi had to carry out
another materialization to demonstrate to those involved that the hidden powers
do indeed exist, and this second materialization is detailed in this other article
(see link).
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