have been contrary to all experience of the phenomena of self-hypnotic hallucination if they had not. The thing only begins to call for examination when the figure thus “visualised” leaves something not entirely psychic behind him. The Master who left a shower of roses once at Adyar turned out to have been M. Coulomb, eked out with a mask, a bladder, and some white muslin; and the roses were traced elsewhere than to Tibet. And the Master who precipitated the Judge missives?But perhaps the Theosophists would prefer not to put him forward. When they have something better, I shall be glad to hear of it. The Theosophistry of Throwing Over the Mahatmas.
“What matter even if the Mahatmas do not exist, and the phenomena are frauds? There still remain those sublime ideas which,” &c., &c.
I was quite prepared for this particular Theosophistry. That was why I started, at the very beginning of my story (Chapter II.), by showing what an enormous practical part the Mahatmas and their miracles have played in the movement. It is easy for this Theosophist or that to protest that they never attracted him. The fact remains that the big accessions to the society’s numbers have always followed on the miracle “booms,” alike under Madame Blavatsky and under Mrs. Besant. Moreover, it is not possible, even argumentatively, to dissociate “those sublime ideas,” &c., from the Mahatmas on whose authority Madame Blavatsky gave them out. If she spoke truth, they were the real authors of “Isis Very Much Unveiled” and of “The Secret Doctrine.” If she lied, and the authority for those teachings is her own, what is that lying authority worth? I need not labour the point, as it was conclusively proved long ago by Mrs. Besant herself. In an article in Lucifer of December, 1890, addressed apparently to certain Theosophical schismatics who showed a tendency to throw over alike their foundress and her “Masters,” Mrs. Besant accomplished the easy task of showing that the society was tied hand and foot to both. It was founded by Her at the bidding of “Them”; They have been the deus ex machinâ whenever She was in a fix, and the society has so accepted Them. It can be “neutral” about Them, and Their
