POSTSCRIPT.
A MAHATMA AT BAY:
THE VICE-PRESIDENT’S TRUMP CARD.
The following appeared in the Westminster Gazette, under the headings: “OPEN SPLIT BETWEEN THEOSOPHICAL OFFICIALS”; “RIVAL REVELATIONS FROM THE SAME MASTER”; “MR. JUDGE GETS A MISSIVE DEPOSING MRS. BESANT”:—
Just as the Story of the Great Mahatma Hoax is going to press in its collected form, just in the nick of time to be included, comes the material for a new chapter of more extravagant humour than all the rest. Readers of the “Isis” chapters will recall that the Theosophic embroglio has gone through the following stages:—(1) The vice-president’s “Mahatma” makes reflections on the president. (2) The president and other officials make charges of “forging” Mahatma missives against the V.P. (3) Mrs. Besant, after some vacillation, adopts these charges, and joins with the others in offering the V.P. the choice of retiring quietly or an exposure. (4) The V.P. bluffs them all into silence, and they all join in inducing the “Convention” of last July to separate without looking further into the matter. (5) Mrs. Besant and the V.P. “join hands,” in public, on her statement that though he wrote the alleged missives “with his own hand,” yet he had “psychically received” their contents from the Mahatma. (6) In private, Mrs. Besant separates herself from the V.P. by dissolving their joint headship of the Esoteric Section (“the core of the Theosophical Society,” as Mr. Judge justly calls it below): Mr. Judge, V.P., to retain the American section of the section, and she herself the European, to which she has since added the Indian.
Now we learn Phase 7. Seven is a highly Theosophical numeral, and this phase is certainly a rich one. Mr. Judge sends round to the
