BLAVATSKY OPINION ABOUT SPIRITISM

In this chapter I will compile the documentation that I find in this regard.

 

 

 

William Judge Testimony

 

William Judge was Blavatsky's main collaborator and on this matter he wrote in his magazine The Path:

 

« The following letter was written before the foundation of the Theosophical Society. A somewhat inaccurate translation appeared in Mr. Sinnett's Incidents in the Life of Madame Blavatsky, but as some additions were made to the original it is interesting to see what was actually written by H. P. B. at such an early date:

 

"The more I see of spiritist seances in this cradle and hotbed of Spiritism and mediums, the more clearly I see how dangerous they are for humanity. Poets speak of a thin partition between the two worlds. There is no partition whatever. Blind people have imagined obstacles of this kind because coarse organs of hearing, sight, and feeling do not allow the majority of people to penetrate the difference of being.

 

Besides, Mother-Nature has done well in endowing us with coarse senses, for otherwise the individuality and personality of man would become impossible, because the dead would be continually mixing with the living, and the living would assimilate themselves with the dead.

 

It would not be so bad if there were around us only spirits of the same kind as ourselves, the half-spiritual refuse of mortals who died without having reconciled themselves to the great necessity of death. Then we might submit to the inevitable. One way or another, we cannot help identifying ourselves physically and in a perfectly unconscious way with the dead, absorbing the constituent atoms of what lived before us: with every breath we inhale them, and breathe out that which nourishes the formless creatures, elementals floating in the air in the expectation of being transformed into living beings.

 

This is not only a physical process, but partly a moral one. We assimilate those who preceded us, gradually absorbing their brain-molecules and exchanging mental auras — which means thoughts, desires, and tendencies. This is an interchange common to the entire human race and to all that lives. A natural process, an outcome of the laws of the economy of nature. . . . It explains similarities, external and moral.

. . .

But there exists another absolute law, which manifests itself periodically and sporadically: this is a law, as it were, of artificial and compulsory assimilation. During epidemics of this kind the kingdom of the dead invades the region of the living, though fortunately this kind of refuse are bound by the ties of their former surroundings. And so, when evoked by mediums, they cannot break through the limits and boundaries in which they acted and lived. . . . And the wider the doors are opened to them the further the necromantic epidemic is spread; the more unanimous the mediums and the spiritists in spreading the magnetic fluid of their evocations, the more power and vitality are acquired by the glamour."

 

 

Madame Jelihovsky says that:

 

"Helena Petrovna described many seances in terms of horror in consequence of the sights she was enabled to see as a result of her clairvoyance. She saw details hidden from the others present: perfect invasions of hosts of soulless remains of mortals, 'woven of fleshly passions, of evil thoughts, of vicious feelings which had outlived the body'".

 

 

And H. P. B. wrote:

 

"It stands to reason that this mere earthly refuse, irresistibly drawn to the earth, cannot follow the soul and spirit — these highest principles of man's being. With horror and disgust I often observed how a reanimated shadow of this kind separated itself from the inside of the medium; how, separating itself from his astral body and clad in someone else's vesture, it pretended to be someone's relation, causing the person to go into ecstasies and making people open wide their hearts and their embraces to these shadows whom they sincerely believed to be their dear fathers and brothers, resuscitated to convince them of life eternal, as well as to see them.

. . .

Oh, if they only knew the truth, if they only believed! If they saw, as I have often seen, a monstrous, bodiless creature seizing hold of someone present at these spiritistic sorceries! It wraps the man as if with a black shroud, and slowly disappears in him as if drawn into his body by each of his living pores."

 

»

(February 1895)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Testimony of Alfred Sinnett

 

Here is Blavatsky's letter as it appears in Mr. Sinnett's book Incidents in the Life of Madame Blavatsky:

 

« In 1875 Madame Blavatsky wrote to her sister:

 

“The more I see of mediums —for the United States are a true nursery, the most prolific hot-bed for mediums and sensitives of all kinds, genuine and artificial— the more I see the danger humanity is surrounded with. Poets speak of the thin partition between this world and the other. They are blind: there is no partition at all except the difference of states in which the living and the dead exist, and the grossness of the physical senses of the majority of mankind. Yet, these senses are our salvation. They were given to us by a wise and sagacious mother and nurse — Nature; for, otherwise, individuality and even personality would have become impossible: the dead would be ever merging into the living, and the latter assimilating the former. Were there around us but one variety of 'spirits' —as well call the dregs of wine, spirits— the reliquae of those mortals who are dead and gone, one could reconcile oneself with it.

 

We cannot avoid, in some way or other, assimilating our dead, and little by little, and unconsciously to ourselves, we become they — even physically, especially in the unwise West, where cremation is unknown. We breathe and devour the dead —men and animals— with every breath we draw in, as every human breath that goes out makes up the bodies and feeds the formless creatures in the air that will be men some day. So much for the physical process; for the mental and the intellectual, and also the spiritual, it is just the same; we interchange gradually our brain-molecules, our intellectual and even spiritual auras, hence — our thoughts, desires, and aspirations, with those who preceded us.

 

This process is common to humanity in general. It is a natural one, and follows the economy and laws of nature, insomuch that one's son may become gradually his own grandfather, and his aunt to boot, imbibing their combined atoms, and thus partially accounting for the possible resemblance, or atavism. But there is another law, an exceptional one, and which manifests itself among mankind sporadically and periodically: the law of forced post-mortem assimilation, during the prevalence of which epidemic the dead invade the domain of the living from their respective spheres — though, fortunately, only within the limits of the regions they lived in, and in which they are buried. In such cases, the duration and intensity of the epidemic depends upon the welcome they receive, upon whether they find the doors opening widely to receive them or not, and whether the necromantic plague is increased by magnetic attraction, the desire of the mediums, sensitives, and the curious themselves; or whether, again, the danger being signaled, the epidemic is wisely repressed.

 

Such a periodical visitation is now occurring in America. It began with innocent children —the little Misses Fox— playing unconsciously with this terrible weapon. And, welcomed and passionately invited to ' come in,' the whole of the dead community seemed to have rushed in, and got a more or less strong hold of the living.

 

I went on purpose to a family of strong mediums —the Eddys— and watched for over a fortnight, making experiments, which, of course, I kept to myself You remember, Vera, how I made experiments for you at Rougodevo, how often I saw the ghosts of those who had been living in the house, and described them to you, for you could never see them Well, it was the same daily and nightly in Vermont. I saw and watched these soulless creatures, the shadows of their terrestrial bodies, from which in most cases soul and spirit had fled long ago, but which throve and preserved their semi-material shadows at the expense of the hundreds of visitors that came and went, as well as of the mediums.

 

And I remarked, under the advice and guidance of my Master, that (I) those apparitions which were genuine were produced by the ' ghosts' of those who had lived and died within a certain area of those mountains; (2) those who had died far away were less entire, a mixture of the real shadow and of that which lingered in the personal aura of the visitor for whom it purported to come; and (3) the purely fictitious ones, or as I call them, the reflections of the genuine ghosts or shadows of the deceased personality.

 

To explain myself more clearly, it was not the spooks that assimilated the medium, but the medium, W. Eddy, who assimilated unconsciously to himself the pictures of the dead relatives and friends from the aura of the sitters.

. . .

It was ghastly to watch the process! It made me often sick and giddy; but I had to look at it, and the most I could do was to hold the disgusting creatures at arm's length. But it was a sight to see the welcome given to these umbroe by the spiritualists! They wept and rejoiced around the medium, clothed in these empty materialized shadows; rejoiced and wept again, sometimes broken down with an emotion, a sincere joy and happiness that made my heart bleed for them. 'If they could but see what I see', I often wished.

 

If they only knew that these simulacra of men and women are made up wholly of the terrestrial passions, vices, and worldly thoughts, of the residuum of the personality that was; for these are only such dregs that could not follow the liberated soul and spirit, and are left for a second death in the terrestrial atmosphere, that can be seen by the average medium and the public. At times I used to see one of such phantoms, quitting the medium's astral body, pouncing upon one of the sitters, expanding so as to envelop him or her entirely, and then slowly disappearing within the living body as though sucked in by its every pore.”

 

 

Later Alfred Sinnett comments:

 

For the new edition of this book I must here interpolate a note warning the reader against too submissive an acceptance of the views set forth in the letter quoted above. I do not think Mme. Blavatsky would have endorsed them at a later stage of her occult education.

 

However frequently it may happen that communication from the astral world may be confused and corrupted by the unconscious influence of imperfectly developed mediums, it does not by any means follow that in all cases the “spirits” of the seance room are “empty materialized shadows” or “simulacra of men and women made up of terrestrial passions and vices, etc.” »

(Chapter 8)

 

 

It is true that not all the astral entities that communicate through mediums are those horrendous dark entities that Blavatsky pointed out, and which pose as deceased relatives, famous historical figures, or spiritual teachers, but most of the time they are. Mr. Sinnett tried to reduce the repudiation that Blavatsky showed towards seances because later he was very interested in Spiritism.

 

 

 

 

 

CONCLUSION

 

We see that Blavatsky did have a very negative opinion towards Spiritism.