Scholars have not heretofore taken Blavatsky seriously, because it is generally accepted that she was proven to be a fraud.
There was therefore no reason or need to evaluate her writings.
However, in 1986 the century-old report which was primarily
responsible for branding her a fraud was itself put in serious
doubt. This original report of Richard Hodgson, published by
the Society for Psychical Research, London, in December 1885,
has now been examined by Dr. Vernon Harrison. His study is
also published by the Society for Psychical Research, in their
Journal for April 1986, almost exactly one hundred years later.
Dr. Harrison opens by referring to Hodgson’s conclusion that
Blavatsky was an “impostor,” noting that it “has been quoted in
book after book, encyclopaedia after encyclopaedia, without
hint that it might be wrong.” He continues:1
For years Hodgson has been presented as an example of a perfect psychical researcher, and his report a model of what a report
on psychical research should be. I shall show that, on the contrary, the Hodgson Report is a highly partisan document forfeiting all claim to scientific impartiality.
After showing this, he states in his conclusion:2
As detailed examination of this Report proceeds, one becomes
more and more aware that, whereas Hodgson was prepared to
use any evidence, however trivial or questionable, to implicate
HPB, he ignored all evidence that could be used in her favour.
His report is riddled with slanted statements, conjecture advanced as fact or probable fact, uncorroborated testimony of
unnamed witnesses, selection of evidence and downright falsity.
It is this Report on which virtually all modern assessments of
Blavatsky, other than those of her supporters, are ultimately
based.
2 Why Take Blavatsky Seriously?
Besides the evidence against the century-old assessment of
Blavatsky as a fraud that this new study provides, there exists
some very weighty evidence for her integrity that I believe has
been unduly neglected, even by her supporters. This is the
testimony of Gnostic scholar George R. S. Mead, who was
Blavatsky’s private secretary for the last three years of her life.
The neglect of this evidence by Blavatsky’s supporters can perhaps be explained by the fact that Mead left the Theosophical
Society “in utter disgust” in 1909, but this fact would for outside
investigators give his testimony all the more weight. He wrote
that when he came to work for her:3
She handed over to me the charge of all her keys, of her MSS.,
her writing desk and the nests of drawers in which she kept her
most private papers; not only this, but she further, on the plea of
being left in peace for her writing, absolutely refused to be bothered with her letters, and made me take over her voluminous
correspondence, and that too without opening it first herself.
He goes on to say that,
it convinced me wholly and surely that whatever else H.P.B. may
have been, she was not a cheat or trickster—she had nothing to
hide; for a woman who, according to the main hypothesis of the
S.P.R. Report, had confederates all over the world and lived the
life of a scheming adventuress, would have been not only incredibly foolhardy, but positively mad to have let all her private correspondence pass into the hands of a third party, and that, too,
without even previously opening it herself.
This, by the way, counters not only the Society for Psychical
Research Report by Hodgson, but also the hypotheses of an
elaborate scheme of deception put forward by K. Paul Johnson,
which have now received some attention in academic circles.4
The above was written by Mead in 1904, while he was still a
member of the Theosophical Society. But he repeated it practically verbatim in 1926, long after he had left the Theosophical
Society in 1909:5
Why Take Blavatsky Seriously? 3
I joined the Society in 1884, immediately on coming down from
Cambridge. In 1889 I gave up my profession of teaching, and
went to work with Yelena Petrovna Blavatskaia (generally known
as Mme. Blavatsky). For the last three years of her life I was her
private secretary, and in the closest intimacy with her. . . . Whatever else Yelena Petrovna was . . . , H. P. Blavatsky was not, within
my experience at any rate, the vulgar trickster and charlatan of
hostile popular legend. . . . When I first went to her to work permanently, I was a young man of whom she practically knew nothing, . . . Nevertheless, with childlike confidence, and with one of
those large and eccentric gestures of hers, she handed over to
me at once the keys of her desk and bookcases and tossed over,
unopened, her voluminous correspondence, bidding me answer
it as best I might (and ‘be d—d’), as she wanted all her time for
writing her articles and books. It was all very foolish and imprudent; but at any rate it was assuredly not the act of one who was
popularly supposed to be carrying on an elaborate fraud with
numerous confederates.
Yet by this time Mead had long since come to disagree with
Blavatsky’s teachings, having founded his own “Quest Society”
in 1909, so had nothing to gain by repeating this. He continues:
“This does not mean to say that I approve otherwise of her and
her ways by any means. I retain a great personal affection for
her bohemian and racy personality; but much she wrote I know
to be very inaccurate, to say the least of it; while her whole outlook on life was that of an ‘occultist’—a view I now hold most
firmly to be fundamentally false.” Mead’s firsthand and disinterested testimony is weighty evidence for Blavatsky’s integrity,
whatever one may think of her teachings.
The agnostic writer William Stewart Ross put it more
strongly:6
“‘Impostor’ indeed! She was almost the only mortal I
have ever met who was not an impostor.”
While we believe that any unbiased investigation will
confirm Blavatsky’s integrity, our concern is with the material
she brought out in her writings, which must stand or fall on its
own merits. We have said this much only to show that the neglect of her writings by scholars due to fraud charges is, after all,
4 Why Take Blavatsky Seriously?
unwarranted. My evaluation of the originality of the teachings
from the secret “Book of Dzyan,” the basis of her magnum opus,
The Secret Doctrine, may be found in the article, “The Secret
Doctrine: Original Genesis and the Wisdom Tradition.” Certain
scholars of last century, such as F. Max Müller to whom we are
indebted for the first Sanskrit edition of the ‰g-veda and
Såyaña’s commentary, held the opinion that the stanzas from
Blavatsky’s secret books were taken from known Sanskrit and
Pali works.7
Yet from then until now, no one has been able to
trace a single stanza from the “Book of Dzyan” in any known
work, and some of us have been trying for many years to do
just that.
Notes
1. Vernon Harrison, “J’Accuse: An Examination of the Hodgson
Report of 1885,” Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, London,
vol. 53, no. 803, April 1986, pp. 286-310; quotation cited from p. 287.
This article has recently been reprinted along with new material in:
Vernon Harrison, H. P. Blavatsky and the SPR: An Examination of the
Hodgson Report of 1885, Pasadena: Theosophical University Press, 1997.
2. Vernon Harrison, “J’Accuse,” p. 309. Dr. Harrison in the
opening of his 1997 book comments further on this earlier statement
of his: “If this seem hyperbole, I reply that now that I have had the
opportunity of re-reading the Hodgson Report in the light of the hard
evidence that still remains to us (i.e., the Mahatma Letters preserved
in the British Library), the Hodgson Report is even worse than I had
thought.”
3. G. R. S. Mead, “Concerning H.P.B. (Stray Thoughts on
Theosophy),” Adyar Pamphlets, no. 111, Adyar, Madras: Theosophical
Publishing House, 1920, pp. 8-10; reprinted from The Theosophical
Review, vol. XXXIV, April 1904, pp. 130-144.
4. These hypotheses of an elaborate scheme of deception on the
part of Blavatsky are found in K. Paul Johnson’s three books: In Search
of the Masters, privately published, 1990; The Masters Revealed, Albany:
State University of New York Press, 1994; Initiates of Theosophical Masters, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995. For a carefully
Why Take Blavatsky Seriously? 5
researched and well-reasoned critique of these books, see: Daniel H.
Caldwell, K. Paul Johnson’s House of Cards? A Critical Examination of
Johnson’s Thesis on the Theosophical Masters Morya and Koot Hoomi, privately published, P.O. Box 1844, Tucson, Arizona 85702, November
1996 [this now available at: www.blavatskyarchives.com/johnson.htm,
along with K. Paul Johnson’s also well-reasoned response].
[Additional note, June, 2011: In the original note, and in the
sentence that it goes with, I had used the phrase “conspiracy theories,”
which I have now changed to “hypotheses of an elaborate scheme of
deception.” It has come to my attention that the phrase “conspiracy
theory” today usually has derogatory connotations, and may be “used
in a pejorative sense to automatically dismiss claims that are deemed
ridiculous, misconceived, paranoid, unfounded, outlandish or irrational” (Wikipedia). None of these are at all what I intended. I meant by
it nothing more than hypotheses of conspiracy in the sense of an
elaborate scheme of deception. These hypotheses, per se, are no more
or less valid than any other hypotheses, including those that take the
form of the beliefs usually accepted by most Theosophists. My point
was that Mead’s testimony would be evidence against the hypotheses
of an elaborate scheme of deception on the part of Blavatsky. There
was no intention to denigrate the valuable research conducted by K.
Paul Johnson and made available in his books. His premise, that the
Theosophical Masters can be identified with living men who were well
known in India, is closer to what Blavatsky had taught about them than
the idea of “Ascended Masters” that developed later. Blavatsky had
always insisted that her teachers were living men.]
5. G. R. S. Mead, “‘The Quest’—Old and New: Retrospect and
Prospect,” The Quest, London, vol. XVII, no. 3, April, 1926, pp. 289-
291. I am indebted to Jerry Hejka-Ekins for a copy of this article.
6. William Stewart Ross (“Saladin”), Agnostic Journal and Eclectic
Review, May 16, 1891; reprinted as “How an Agnostic Saw Her,” Lucifer,
June 1891, pp. 311-16; cited in Sylvia Cranston, HPB: The Extraordinary
Life and Influence of Helena Blavatsky, Founder of the Modern Theosophical
Movement, New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1993, p. xvii.
7. See: G. R. S. Mead, “Concerning H.P.B. (Stray Thoughts on
Theosophy),” Adyar Pamphlets, no. 111, pp. 14-16; this material is also
cited in Sylvia Cranston, HPB: The Extraordinary Life and Influence of
Helena Blavatsky, Founder of the Modern Theosophical Movement, p. 384-85.
6 Why Take Blavatsky Seriously?
[The foregoing article was written by David Reigle and published as
the Introduction to Blavatsky’s Secret Books: Twenty Years’ Research, by
David Reigle and Nancy Reigle, San Diego: Wizards Bookshelf, 1999,
pp. 1-5. This online edition is published by Eastern Tradition Research
Institute, copyright 2004. An alteration was made on p. 2, and to the
corresponding note 4, in June, 2011, and an addition was made to that
note.]