Page:Isis very much unveiled - being the story of the great Mahatma hoax (IA b24884273).pdf/18

Cook, Madame’s rehash of Neo-platonist and Kabbalistic mysticism with Buddhist terminology soon “caught on” with the impressionable natives. It had especial attraction for the educated and ardent young Babu, that typical product of British India whom Mr. Rudyard Kipling has so often drawn for us. But it also carried away, thanks to Madame’s intense personality—half repulsion, half charm—editors and officials of mark in the sceptical circles of Anglo-India. It made Mr. A. P. Sinnett (then editor of the Pioneer) turn evangelist in “The Occult World,” and Mr. A. O. Hume (then Government Secretary) follow suit with “Hints on Esoteric Philosophy.” And no wonder. Never was a new religion more industriously supplied with miracles—those coups de main célestes, as a witty Frenchman has defined them. Wherever Madame happened to be with a select circle of friends, disciples, or laymen worth impressing, but especially in and about the bungalow at Adyar, near Madras, the society’s headquarters, the invisible Mahatmas were never tired of exhibiting their astonishing psychic powers over ponderable matter. The two who were especially at Madame’s disposal went by the names (reverently breathed) of Mahatma Morya and Mahatma Koot Hoomi Lal Sing. In the region of White Magic they could do almost anything—any feat which an adroitly led-up conversation might happen to suggest. But the particular lines of business (if I may be allowed the phrase) of which they made a speciality were making objects appear and disappear: in Madame’s jargon, integrating and disintegrating them by a psychical command over astral vortices of atoms. Sitting in their studies 2,000 miles away in Tibet, they could, by a mere effort of will, project an astral epistle, or an astral body, or an astral cup and saucer, into the middle of an applauding circle at afternoon tea or picnic in Madras or Bombay. Showers of roses fluttered down from the ceiling. Invisible bells tinkled from none knew where. All kinds of tricks were played with Madame’s interminable cigarettes. Sketches and treatises were psychically “precipitated” on to blank paper, nay, sometimes the very stationery was created out of nothing to receive them. Such inferior sketches,