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LETTER FROM BLAVATSKY TO HER AUNT FADEYEV

 

 
 
New-York, [1877]
 
Friend of my soul, Nadéjinka [my little Nadine]
 
Do not be astonished that I write to you on paper which is not letter-paper. I do this because I absolutely must speak to you very seriously; since the very day of my getting your letter —and may the heavenly powers grant you happiness because of it— I am thinking, thinking all the time and I have at last decided to write to you the whole truth, such as it is.
 
I shall lay before you my whole inner being: my soul, my heart, my brain — and then, come what come may. If you understand me, then —thanks to God— fate will have favored me; if you do not understand, if you get angry — that will grieve and trouble me.
 
In the other world, in future life, where we shall certainly meet, all will be cleared up and we shall know who is right and who is wrong; but meanwhile, as we are both sincere and obey our conscience and do not deceive anyone because of fear or cowardness, however much we might be deceived in our calculations, our hopes, our beliefs, we nevertheless remain honest people.
 
If you were Madame Ghan or that foolish Romonof, I should not have spoken of these things. But you know yourself that you are extra-intelligent and that you are really much more learned than I am, for your learning is a solid emanation from your own brain and understanding and mine is hereditary.
 
 
I am but the reflection of an unknown bright light. However this may be, this light has gradually been incorporated into me, it has been filtered into me, it has, as it were, pierced through me; and, therefore, I cannot help myself that all these ideas have come into my brain, into the depth of my soul; I am sincere although perhaps I am wrong.
 
This long preface is called forth, because you and your uncle, through goodness of heart and family-feeling, wish to have two copies of my book Isis Unveiled. The first volume “Against Exact Science” will no doubt interest you very much. But I fear for the second volume “Against Theology and for Religion”.
 
I know how sincere and devout you are, how clear and pure your faith is, and my only hope is that you will understand that my books are not written against religion, against the Christ, but against the cowardly hypocrisy of those who murder, burn, kill in the name of the Almighty Son of God —even since the first moment after His death on the Cross for the whole of humanity, for the sinners, in particular for the fallen, for the heathens, for the fallen women and for those w ho have left the straight road— and all in His Name!
 
Where is Truth?  Where to find it?
 
 
Three great, so-called Christian, Churches; in England, Germany and other Protestant countries there are 232 sects, in America 176: everyone claims respect and wishes it to be recognized that its own dogmas are true and those of the other sects untrue.
 
“Where is truth—what is it?” asked Pilate of the Christ, and that is 1877 years ago. Where is it?
 
I, poor sinner, asked and nowhere is it to be found. Everywhere are found deceit, falsehood, ferocity — and the sad heritage of the Jewish Bible, which burdens the Christians and by which half of the Christian world has stifled the teachings of even the Christ.
 
Understand me: here our orthodoxy does not come in. The book does not mention it. I have refused once for all to analyze it, for I wish to keep at least one small corner of my heart, where doubt does not work its way in — a feeling which I put from me with all my strength.
 
The orthodox populace is sincere; their faith may be blind, unintelligent, but that faith leads the masses to the good. And though our priests are often drunkards and thieves (idiots often) yet their faith is pure and can but lead to the good.
 
The Master admits this and He says that the only people in the world, whose religion is not a speculation, are the orthodox people. As to our privileged classes, let them go to the devil. They are the same hypocrites everywhere. They do not believe in either God or devil, being full of nihilistic ideas and materializing all that exists. There is no question of them, but of universal religions.
 
What after all is the essence of all religion?
 
“Love your neighbor as yourself.”
 
 
Are these not the words spoken by Jesus?
 
 
Has He left behind even one single dogma, has He taught a single one of the thousand articles of faith which the Church-fathers have invented afterwards?
 
Not one. On the Cross, He prayed for His enemies and, in His Name, as well as in the name of Moloch, fifty to sixty million people have been thrown into the fire and burnt.
 
He spoke against the Jewish Sabbath and purposely belittled it, and here, in free America, fines and imprisonment are imposed for the violation of the Sabbath, called “Sabbath-day”, although they have altered it to Sunday (the day of the Resurrection); but what has been done?
 
“Saturne” has been changed into “Sol”, Dies Solis, day of the Sun and of Jupiter. At least with us Russians, Sunday reminds us of the day of Resurrection (Voskressénité), but with those heathenish Protestants and Catholics, it is only the day of the Sun, “Sunday”.
 
St. Paul clearly says that every one acts as he chooses: to one it is a day that pleases, to another something else. St. Justinian the Martyr is absolutely opposed to the observing of Sunday, because the heathens on that day observe the day of Jupiter; and here people are put into prison.
 
If we believe in the New Testament, then it is impossible to believe in the Old Testament. Jesus and the Old Testament and the ancient books are in opposition to each other.
 
His Sermon on the Mount (see the Gospel according to St. Mark) gives a diametrically opposed teaching to the Ten Commandments of Sinai. On the Mount of Sinai, in the books of Moses, it is said “a tooth for a tooth”, etc., and “But I say unto you”, etc.
 
Is this not a revolt against the ancient institutions of the Synagogue?
 
 
All the Churches may be against me, mankind may curse me, God, the great invisible God, sees why I rebel against the teaching of the Church.
 
I shall never believe that the absolutely pure personality of the Christ was the son of the Jehovah of the Jews, of that wicked, cruel Jehovah, who expressly rouses cruelty in the heart of the Pharaoh and, later, strikes him down for it; who tempts the Jewish people, who tempts it personally and who, from behind the clouds, hits them with stones like a Spanish bandit; who materializes himself in the cleft of a rock.
 
If the Christ had believed in Jehovah, He would not have been crucified. Has He ever, even once, pronounced His name?
 
[No]
 
Jehovah is a mere national God of the Jews, and they would never have admitted that He could have been the God of anyone except of the chosen people. They are wonderful, the chosen people! Jehovah is simply Bacchus and it can be proved, just as two and two make four. One of the names of Bacchus was Sabbaoth and El, and Bacchus was Dionysos, Dio-Nysos, the God of Niza — that is the Mount of Sinai, so that the Egyptians called Sinai, Niziel.
 
And what do we find in the Bible?
 
“And Moses built an altar on the mount and named it Jehova-Nizi.” (see Exodus from Egypt, Exodus XVII-15).
 
We find that all the names of Jehovah belong to heathen gods, all of them, even the last. Solomon has no idea of Jehovah, and David has taken that name from the Phoenicians. Yago was one of the four gods of the Kabiri — hidden gods who took a part in all the mysteries.
 
The old Jewish nationality is a legend. There has been no Jewish Nation until the second century B.C.; all their books are apocryphal.
 
Where are the historic documents to prove that their books are original?
 
Which is the first sacred Jewish book of note?
 
The Septuagint. It was translated by order of Ptolemy by seventy translators.
 
Who mentions it?
 
Only Josephus the writer, who upholds the Jews with all his might and who is a great liar.
 
Why is this story of the 70 translators never mentioned in any book, neither by Greek writers, nor in any archives or documents?
 
Who better than the Greeks and Romans could have made known the deeds of Ptolemy?
 
If all the divines of the whole world united, yet they never would find in any book, or in any record a single word on the “Jews as a nation”.
 
Who has ever heard it spoken of?
 
Herodotus, the most exact writer, traveler, historian, whose every word, every indication is now confirmed by archaeology, palaeology, philosophy and all the sciences, was born in 484 B.C.; he travelled in Assyria and in Babylonia during the life of Cyrus.
 
It is only half a century after the transformation of Nabuchodonosor into a bull by the prophet Daniel; during seven years that king bellowed as a bull; 42,000 Jews, under the guidance of Zorobabel, returned to Jerusalem (538 B.C.) after their exile to build a temple.
 
Herodotus resided there for a few years; now, he, who described so minutely and often with bothersome detail (see Book VI. 98) the reign of Nabuchodonosor (584 B.C.) after Jerusalem had been taken by him, who wrote of Cyrus, Darius and Artaxerxes, does not allude to this transport of the Jews, to the prophets, nor to any Jew who so ever. Except for a few lines, where he mentions that the Syrians inhabiting Palestine, have learned the practice of circumcision from the Egyptians — nothing more.
 
Is this possible?

An event like the metamorphosis of a king into a bull by the chief of the Magians (Daniel) would this not at least have been described by other historians as a legend?
 
How can one reconcile, if the chronology of the Bible, established by our scholars and theologians is correct, that the prophet Ezekiel, who wrote in 605 B.C. speaks, twice over, of Daniel as of an ancient sage — although Daniel had not yet been born?
 
Why, if Judah was a nation w here Solomon, David, Saul and all those had reigned, is there now here in the world an ancient coin with a Hebrew inscription — that is Hebrew coins, although there are a number of Samaritan coins?
 
Would the Jews, who hated the Samaritans, have consented to use the coins of their enemies and would they not have coined their own money?
 
Coins, thousands of years old, are found again and again; tombs of those, w ho have lived before Moses, have been opened and some small indication is found confirming their existence. But of the Jewish nation — nothing.
 
Neither tombs, nor coins — nothing. It is as if all had evaporated and had disappeared by magic. Only the Sacred Books remain (the God of which has been killed by the Jew s) in which mankind must believe blindly.
 
But of such events as the exodus from Egypt by nearly 3 million people (as compared to the 70 taken by Jacob 150 years earlier —that means that they have multiplied quicker than red herrings— think this out according to statistical law!) surely of such events some trace would have been found on monuments for the dead, on tombs or in some ancient scripts. And there is nothing — dead silence!  Nowhere a hint, nowhere the slightest confirmation!
 
Impossible! And then as to the Scriptures — where is historical confirmation of their existence 200 or even 150 years B.C.?
 
The Hebrew language, that is the universal language, called old Hebrew, has never existed; it is a language without a single original root; it is a language composed from Greek, Arabic and Chaldean parts. I have proved this to Professor Rawson (Yale College). Take any Hebrew word whatsoever, and I shall prove to you that its root is Arabic, Greek or Chaldean. It is like a harlequin’s coat.
 
All the biblical names are composed of foreign words and they indicate why they have thus been composed. It is an Arabic-Ethiopean dialect with a mixture of Chaldean; and the Chaldean comes from Sanskrit. It has now been proved that Babylonia at one time was inhabitated by Brahmans and was a school for Sanskrit.
 
The Akkadians are recognized by our Assyriologists, so it seems, (according to Rawlinson) as coming from Armenia and taught the Magians a priestly language, that is a kind of sacred language; they are simply the Aryans from whom our Slavonic language has also come.
 
Here is an example (excuse the diversion) of the Rig-Veda:
 
Dyaurvah pita prithvi mata somo bhrataditih svasa.
 
(Hymn of the Mandalas to the Maruts. 1, 191-6)
 
Translated it is:
 
"Heaven is your father; Earth, your mother; Soma, your brother; Aditi, your sister."
 
 
This is why it is ridiculous to demand to believe that the Hebrew manuscripts are ancient revelations or the Word of God.
 
God would never have written nor dictated anything which would give occasion at the same time for the earth, created by Him, mankind, science, etc., to accuse Him of falsehood. To believe absolutely in the Jewish Scriptures and to believe at the same time in the Heavenly Father of Jesus is absurd, it is worse — it is sacrilege.
 
If the Father of Heaven and Earth, and the Father of the whole unlimited Universe had had to write, He would not have allowed mankind to be obliged to accuse Him of contra dictions, which are often without sense. 64'900 mistakes have been actually pointed out in the Bible by a “revision” society and when these mistakes had been corrected, as many contradictions were still found. This has all been done by the Jewish Massorah.
 
Yes, the most learned Rabbis have lost the key to their books and do not know how to correct them. It is well known that the Jews from Tiberia constantly amended their Bible, altering words and numbers, taking these from the Fathers of the Christian Church or accusing them of the evil habit of falsifying the texts and the chronology at every discussion, to defeat the opposing party. And that is how they have made a mess of it. For we have no MSS. of the Old Testament before the tenth century.
 
The Codex of the Bodleian is considered to be the oldest. And w ho can guarantee its exactness?
 
Tischendorf has stated in his history, and has persuaded the whole of Europe to believe him, that he has found in Sinai the so-called Codex of Sinai. And, as a matter of fact, two other scholars [one of whom is our Theosophist] who have lived in Palestine during several years and on the Mount of Sinai, are prepared to prove that such a Codex did not even exist in the library.
 
They have made investigations during two years, they have visited all the hidden places with a monk, w ho had lived in the country for 60 years and who had known Tischendorf. And this monk has sworn that for years he has known every script, every book, but that he never had heard that one spoken of.
 
It is clear that this monk will be made to disappear and as to Tischendorf, the Russian Government has simply deceived him with a falsehood. Out of 260 MSS., Hebrew, Greek, etc., of the Old and New Testaments, there are not two similar ones. And is this to be wondered at?
 
The books of Moses have been lost during several centuries. Suddenly Ezekiel finds them back in the year 600 B.C. Solomon’s temple is destroyed and his people are driven out . . . (II Kings XXIII) and again they all disappear.
 
Ezra writes them down from memory (40 books) in 40 days in 425 B. C.; again they are lost; Antiochus Epiphanus burns them all in 150 B.C.; once more, by a wonder, they are found.
 
All this is but a legend, there is not one historic fact.
 
Now comes the famous Massorah.
 
Jehovah is changed into Adonis and Adonais, with the help of the Massorites, and he might as easily have been transformed through their wily processes into Ivan Petrovitch as into Adonais. And at the same time their Cabalah teaches, as well as Onkelos, the most famous Rabbi of Babylonia, that Jehovah is not God, but that he is Nemro — a word which means Logos (the word).
 
Analyze the word Iodhevau and you will have Adam and Eve, because Jehovah is the first Adam (not the second), the chief of the creation of the world, not the earthly Adam, but the first chief male and female Elohim [bard]. A man was created that is an Adam Kadmon, fantastic, bi-sexual, whose name is composed of the letters of Iod and of the three letters of Eve.
 
Jehovah, the personification of sinful humanity — but enough of these Jewish fables!
 
(To be concluded)
 
(Note: letter addressed to Mademoiselle Nadine Fadeeff, who died at Odessa, cousin of Madame Blavatsky. The French translation of the letter, which was in Russian, was sent to Mr. Jinarajadasa by H.P.B's grand-niece. The English translation is by J.v.I.)
 
 
(Theosophist, October 1931, p.32-40)
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
OBSERVATION
 
I agree with Blavatsky that there are many lies on which the Judeo-Christian religions are based. When Blavatsky stated this in the 19th century, she caused a great shock, but today this asseveration is much more widely accepted.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

MEMORIES ON BLAVATSKY WHEN SHE LIVED IN NEW YORK IN 1873

 
  
 
 
A REMINISCENCE OF H. P. BLAVATSKY IN 1873
 
 
By Elizabeth G. K. Holt
 
In 1873, I had the very great privilege of living for some months under the same roof with H.P.B. This was exactly fifty-eight years ago last month [August, 1931].
 
Those of us who can recall the New York of that time have either gone on or are swiftly passing. I think in the stage, upon which H.P.B. was to introduce her great mission, could be placed before present-day people, her methods and the reasons for them would be better understood.
 
In a speech during war-time Lloyd George said something like this: that while the world, sometimes for centuries, rolled on monotonously with little change of condition, at other times it progressed by leaps and bounds, and conditions changed almost overnight. Those who have lived through the period from 1873 to the present must agree that this was such a changeful time.
 
New York in 1873, as compared to the present city, was small; neither elevated railroad nor subway nor automobile had been thought of; you reached the north end of Manhattan Island by horse-drawn vehicles, the public horse-cars taking hours for the trip; there were no bridges over the rivers, East or Hudson; if necessary to cross, you used a ferry-boat.
 
There were, of course, no sky-scrapers the down-town city was dominated by the Trinity Church steeple, the most conspicuous landmark for miles around. The north end of the island was mostly granite cliffs, not yet excavated into streets, even as far down town as East Fortieth St. There was a solid boulder from Third to Second Avenues, on which squatters had built for themselves nondescript shanties, and over which goats and squatter children played. Second and Third Avenues were not built up, in some sections not yet reclaimed from the East River waters.
 
The very population was different: the Mediterranean peoples, the peoples of Eastern Europe and of Asia, had not yet discovered us, or, at least, not in any great numbers; the immigrants who were crowding through Castle Garden, to dig out our boulders, and lay out our streets and railroads were Irish and German, with a sprinkling of Scandinavians, though the latter mostly went north-west to the farms. And the habits and thought of the people resembled today’s as little as that city of small homes resembles the present skyscraper city.
 
I can remember that Darwin and the evolutionary Theory were live subjects of angry dispute, I remember quite vividly the sermon preached by our clergy-man —incidentally a most kindly gentleman— upon a horror which had shocked the city. A theatre in Brooklyn had been burned down the previous week; the fire had occurred during an afternoon matinee, and some three hundred people, mostly women and children had been burned to death. The clergy-man told us that God, in His just anger, had sent the fire to punish the frivolous who were spending their time in so evil a place as a theatre.
 
Even in social affairs we were very respectable Victorians in those days. There were, of course, no women in business; a few, a very few were beginning to be heard, clamoring for their “rights”; but the women who had to go out in the world to earn a living were teachers, telegraphers, sewers of various kinds and workers at small trades which paid very badly.
 
The typewriter had not yet been invented, there were no stenographers, nor had women invaded the businesses of men. A lady travelling alone was not received in the better hotels, being looked upon as under suspicion when unaccompanied by a male relative.
 
The first step toward changing this condition was made at our time, when the newspapers voiced indignation at the treatment vouchsafed to some nationally prominent woman, whose name I have forgotten, who, coming into New York unescorted, was refused admittance at the better hotels.
 
It was probably this difficulty of finding proper accommodation that led H.P.B. to the house in which I met her. I have always wondered how she, a strange coming into New York, had discovered it. The house itself was unique and a product of that particular era. In those days it was hard for respectable women workers of small means to find a fitting place in which to live; so it happened that some forty of them launched a small experiment in co-operative living. They rented a new tenement house, 222 Madison Street, one of the first built in New York, I think; certainly one of a group of three tenements which were the first built in Madison Street.
 
It was a street of small two-storey houses occupied by their owners, who were proud of their shade-trees and kept their front and back gardens in order. I may add here that the co-operative experiment, having neither capital nor business efficiency behind it, failed, lasting in all only some months, the small houses were sold by their owners, who saw the shadow of the coming slum, and were vacated and many of them pulled down to make room for tenements, even before the co-operatives disappeared.
 
My mother and I had spent the summer of 1873 in Saratoga. In order to be ready for school when it opened, I was sent home in August to the Madison Street house, where we had a friend who would take me somewhat under her friendly protection, and there I found Madame Blavatsky.
 
So far as I know, this was her first stopping-place in New York. She had a room on the second floor and my friend had a duplicate room next to her, so that they became very friendly neighbors. Being a co-operative family, we all knew one another familiarly, and kept a room next to the street-door as a common sitting-room or office, a meeting-place for members and a place where mail and messages were cared for.
 
My small apartment was directly opposite, so that I saw a good deal of Madame Blavatsky, w ho sat in the office a large part of her time, but she seldom sat alone; she was like a magnet, powerful enough to draw round her everyone who could possibly come. I saw her, day by day, sitting there, rolling her cigarettes and smoking incessantly; she had a conspicuous tobacco pouch, the head of some fur-bearing animal which she wore around her neck. She was certainly an unusual figure.
 
I think she must have been taller than she looked, she was so broad, she had a broad face, and broad shoulders, her hair was a lightest brown and crinkled like that or some Negroes. Her whole appearance conveyed the idea of power.
 
I read somewhere lately an account of an interview with Stalin; the writer said that when you entered the room you felt as if there was a powerful dynamo working. You felt something like that when you were near H.P.B., I am sure I did not analyze these things then, but looking back, I can see that there was a sort of suppressed excitement in the house because of her presence, an excitement wholly pleasant and yet somewhat tinged a little with awe.
 
Mr. Leadbeater has spoken of Madame Blavatsky's telling of weird tales of the supernatural to fellow-travelers on her sea voyages, and that her listeners invariably went below and through the ship's passengers in groups, never alone. I can testify to something similar.
 
My friend, Miss Parker, was a Scotch-Irish lady, in her early thirties, logical, level-headed and not, as I remember, given to imagine things; but after she became well acquainted with Madame, and probably heard some of these experiences, (I never heard any of them) when she came home from business late in the evening, rather than go up the two flights of dark stairs to her own room, she would stay all night with me; she owned quite frankly that she was afraid. I would like to say here that the H.P.B. whom Colonel Olcott described in his Old Diary Leaves, Vol. I, seems a perfectly accurate picture of the H.P.B. I knew.
 
Madame referred often to her life in Paris; for one thing, she told us that she had decorated the Empress Eugenie’s private apartments; I thought of her as dressed in blouse and trousers, mounted on a ladder and doing the actual work, and I think this is what she told us; but I cannot be sure whether she said that she did the actual painting, frescoing, etc., or whether she merely designed it. Later she gave practical demonstration that she had ability in the arts. I had a piano, and Madame sometimes played on it, usually because someone passed her to do so.
 
She described their past life to the people, who asked her to do so, and these accounts must have been accurate, they made such a profound impression. I never heard that she told them their future, but she may have done so without my knowing about it.
 
My friend, Miss Parker, was greatly startled when Madame told her incidents in her life which, my friend said, were known only to herself and to the dead. She was considered to be a Spiritualist, although I never heard her say she was one, but the things she said which touched on those subjects, were Theosophical rather than Spiritualistic.
 
Miss Parker had lost her mother, many years before, and when she asked Madame to put her into communication with her mother, Madame Blavatsky said it was impossible for her to do so, as her mother was absorbed in higher things, and had progressed beyond reach. The spirits she spoke continually about were the diaki, tricksy little beings, evidently counterparts of the fairies of Irish folklore, and certainly non-human from her description of them and of their activities.
 
Madame Blavatsky continually described herself as being under the authority of unseen powers; there was quite a vogue of Spiritualism at that time and the people around her thought that these unseen powers were her “Spirit Guides”. This was the most natural conclusion for people to reach, who had never heard of unseen directing powers outside of the Church or among the Spiritualists.
 
I never looked upon Madame Blavatsky as an ethical teacher. For one thing she was too excitable; when things seemed wrong to her, she could express her opinion about them with a vigor which was very disturbing. I would say here that I never saw her angry with any person or thing at close range. Her objections had an impersonality about them; even if directed at someone, the someone was usually distant and the cause for blame quite apparent. In mental or physical dilemma, you would instinctively appeal to her, for you felt her fearlessness, her unconventionality, her great wisdom and wide experience, and hearty goodwill -- her sympathy with the underdog.
 
An instance of this kind comes to mind: the two tenements near us were filling up; undesirable people were beginning to move into the street and the neighborhood was changing rapidly. One evening one of our young girls coming home late from work, was followed and greatly frightened; she flung herself breathlessly into a chair in the office. Madame Blavatsky interested herself and finally drew from some fold of her dress a knife (I think she used it to cut her tobacco, but it was sufficiently large to be a formidable weapon of defense) and she said she had that for any man who molested her.
 
At this time Madame Blavatsky was greatly troubled about money; the income she had received regularly from her father in Russia had stopped, and she was almost penniless. She had some idea that this condition was caused by the machinations of some person or persons in touch with her father, and she expressed herself about these persons with customary vigor.
 
Some of the more conservative people in our house suggested that she was, after all, an adventuress, and they want of money was only what might be expected; but my friend Miss Parker, whom she took with her to the Russian Consul, assured me that she was really a Russian Countess, that the Consul knew of her family, and had promised to do all he could to get into touch with them and find out what was the difficulty. I may say here, that the holding up of her income was caused by the death of her father and the consequent time required to settle up his affairs, and that this delay continued until Madame Blavatsky had left 222 Madison Street.
 
The owner of our house was a Mr. Rinaldo, who personally collected his rents, and so became acquainted with our people. Like everyone else he became interested in H.P.B., and introduced two young friends of his to her. They came very often to see her and were of practical aid to her, in suggesting and giving her work. They got her to design picture advertising-cards for themselves and for others; I think these gentlemen had a collar and shirt factory, for the card I remember best was of little figures (diaki perhaps), dressed in the collars and shirts of their manufacture. I think these were the first picture advertising-cards used in New York.
 
Madame Blavatsky also tried ornamental work in leather, and produced some very fine and intricate examples, but they did not sell, and she abandoned the leather work.
 
 
About this time she completed the unfinished novel Edwin Drood, which Charles Dickens had not completed when he died in 1870. I am under the impression that these Jewish friends of Madame Blavatsky were Spiritualists and that they urged her to complete the book with spirit-aid. She had a long table in her private room and I saw her for days, perhaps weeks, steadily writing page after page of manuscript. I was told she was finishing Edwin Drood and that "the spirits" were helping her.
 
Later, Miss Parker lent me a copy of the book, a paper-covered 9 x 5.5 inch book. Harper and Appleton both published similar series of popular books, and I cannot say which publisher issued Madame Blavatsky's book.
 
Miss Parker wanted me to pick out the line at which Madame Blavatsky took up the story, and pointed it out to me when I was unable to do so. In recent years, I read in The New York Times Book Review an account of a sequel to Edwin Drood, written in 1873 by a Mr. James of Brattleboro, Vermont, under mediumistic influence. I think this must be the volume I saw Madame writing, although the writer of the article claimed to have known Mr. James.*
 
Shortly after this and while Madame was still without income, she met and became intimate with a French lady, a widow, whose name I have forgotten, if I ever knew it, for though she became a familiar visitor to the house, she was usually called “ the French Madame,” while H.P.B. remained ever "the Madame” . It was this lady who afterwards went with H.P.B. to the Eddy farm. At this time she lived a short distance away in Henry Street, a street parallel to Addison; she offered to share her home with H.P.B. until the latter’s money difficulties had passed. This offer was accepted, and Madame left our house.
 
Many of our people, however, and notably my friend, Miss Parker, kept in close touch with her, and attended the Sunday evening meetings inaugurated by the two ladies, from which, to my great disappointment, I was shut out, perhaps because was not wanted, and also, I know, because Miss Parker knew that my mother would not have approved.
 
One of the stories about the diaki dates from this time: one morning Madame did not appear for breakfast and her friend finally went to her bedroom to see what was the matter; there she found H.P.B. unable to rise because her night-gown was securely sewed to the mattress, and sewed in such a manner that it would have been impossible for Madame to have done it herself, and so thoroughly had the sewing been done that the stitches had to be cut before Madame could rise. This was the work of the diaki.
 
Shortly after this, Madame received money from Russia, and she moved to the north-east corner of 14th Street and Fourth Avenue. The house was very unpretentious, with a liquor saloon on the street floor, and the two upper floors let as furnished rooms. To this house Miss Parser took me in order to visit Madame, and small Victorian that I was, I remember wondering whether it was quite respectable to adventure into a house over a saloon, but I must add, to my credit, I was wholly glad to go.
 
There I found Madame in a poorly furnished top-floor room; her bed was an iron cot, and beside her bed on a table was a small cabinet with three drawers. Madame was in a state of great excitement; earlier in the day her room had been on fire; she said it had been purposely set on fire in order to rob her. After the fire was out, and the firemen and curious strangers had gone, she found that her valuable watch and chain had been stolen.
 
When she complained to the proprietor of the saloon, who was her landlord, he intimated that she had never had a watch to lose. She told us that she asked “Them” to give her some proof which she could show her landlord and convince him that she had really lost her property, as she claimed; immediately there appeared before her a sheet of paper of the size usually used in typewriters, all gray with smoke except for white spots, the size and shape of a watch and chain and indicating that after the fire had darkened the paper, the watch and chain had been lifted from it, revealing the white spots which they had covered.
 
She went on to tell us that when she needed money, she had only to ask “Them” for it, and she would find what she needed in one of the drawers of the little cabinet on her table. I could not understand this. I had always heard the “They” and “Them” explained by the people who were around her as referring to her "Spirits Guides"; naturally I thought she spoke of them; I had known how sorely she had been in need of money, and I could not understand how this statement could be true. I knew nothing of Occultism, its pledges, nor of the selflessness it demands from its followers.
 
Sometime after this, I heard that she went to Ithaca, to give to Professor Corson, of Cornell University, a ring entrusted to her by one of her mysterious directors, which would identity her as an authentic messenger from them. But my visit to H.P.B. was the last time I saw her; from that time on her life has been well known and described by others
 
 
 
 
Note
 
* A copy of this work bearing H.P.B.'s autograph, and dated Philadelphia, March, 1875, exists at Adyar in the collection of her autographed library. There is on the inside cover a note by Colonel referring to a book called Rifts in the Veil, no author given, published in London 1878, for details of the completion of Edwin Drood through the medium J.P. James. It would seem that Colonel had never heard H.P.B. allude to any share which she may have had the matter, as he would surely have noted down such a noteworthy incident in her life. — C. Jinarajadasa
 
 
(Theosophist, December 1931, p.257-266)