The Society for Psychical Research (SPR) is famous for its 'Hodgson Report' where it accuses Madame Blavatsky of being a charlatan.
But what few people know is that at the request of the SPR members themselves, Madame Blavatsky performed paranormal phenomena in front of them.
TESTIMONY OF FRANCESCA ARUNDALE
Francesca Arundale was an English theosophist who hosted Blavatsky at her home when she was in London in 1884, and on this subject Mrs. Arundale wrote the following:
« The few months of the summer of 1884 which she passed in our house in Elgin Crescent were marked by events of a curious and exceptional character, all alike bearing witness to the fact that the personality called Madame Blavatsky was different in most characteristics from those around, and crowds of visitors of all classes testified to the interest she evoked.
It was her custom while with us to devote the earlier part of the day to writing; she usually began at seven o'clock, but often earlier, and it was very rarely indeed that when I went into her room at about eight o'clock in the morning I did not find her already at her desk, at which she continued with a slight interval for lunch till about three or four o'clock in the afternoon. Then it was that the reception time began, and from early afternoon to late evening, one constant succession of visitors arrived.
The old lady sitting in her armchair in the small drawing-room, which was barely large enough for the influx of guests, would be the centre of an enquiring circle. Many, of course, drawn by the fame of her great powers, merely came from curiosity. In those days the Psychical Research Society had not issued its famous report, and some of its members were often present, seeking the signs and wonders they so much desired to behold.
One afternoon a small party had assembled in the back drawing-room and among them some prominent members of the S.P.R. Madame Blavatsky was earnestly solicited to produce some phenomena. She laughingly answered, as she so often did to similar requests:
- "What do you want with phenomena? They are but psychological tricks and of little value to earnest students."
However, she at length consented to try if she could do anything, and sitting among the others round the large table, she joined in conversation, and talk flowed on for a short time in the easy way it always did when she was surrounded with intellectual minds. In a very little while a strikingly sweet and crystal-like sound known as the astral hell made itself heard, and was repeated several times, to the great delight and pleasure of those who had never heard it before.
The gentlemen present belonging to the S.P.R. professed themselves more than satisfied, remarking more than once that there could be no doubt as to the genuineness of that phenomenon. »
(In Memory of HPB, p.69-73)
TESTIMONY OF THE SPR
Theosophical historian Walter A. Carrithers Jr. discovered that the SPR reported on these events:
« After 75 years of general, contrary presumption, it has been discovered that Madame Blavatsky did perform phenomena for members of this investigating Committee.
In 1960, in consequence of a prior petition addressed to the Council of the S.P.R., the records or extant data remaining on this case in the closed files of the archives of the Society, for the first time were microfilmed and made available for study — an historic landmark not heretofore disclosed to the membership in general. A number of unpublished documents of unique importance were thus brought to light, some of which until then were unknown to historians.
One of these is a rejected draft (in printer’s proof) of the Committee’s preliminary and provisional report of 1884, a portion of which is quoted in a paper on Madame Blavatsky printed in the July, 1962 number of The Journal of The American Society for Psychical Research (pp. 131-139).
This article, since 1893 the longest notice —and the first non-committal study— of Madame Blavatsky published in an official organ of a recognized Society for Psychical Research, is unknown to the members of the S.P.R. by reason of the curious fact that, for some cause, it, and only it, was omitted from mention among the contents when this number of the A.S.P.R. Journal was otherwise accurately reviewed in the S.P.R. Journal for December, 1962 (pp. 424-25).
The passages quoted (pp. 134) from the newly-discovered draft reveal that two members (F. W. H. Myers and Edmund Gurney) of the investigating Committee were originally listed as among the witnesses to Theosophical phenomena, since on two occasions following the inauguration of the official inquiry, once in company with Sir William F. Barrett, they themselves had heard the ‘astral bell’ in Madame Blavatsky’s presence and were unable to explain it in normal terms to their own satisfaction. »
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But the SPR did not take these testimonies into consideration when preparing its disastrous report.
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