it is another side of the same retiring instinct which impels the Mahatmas to live only in parts of the earth not penetrated to by vulgar explorers. Theosophists sometimes speak as if they had seen the actual precipitation; but cross-examine any credible witness, and he will reluctantly admit that he has not. This is a point to note and bear in mind.
The Mahatma missive only becomes a matter of difficulty when it has to be made to drop from the ceiling into the recipient’s hands, or spirited into a cupboard found one moment before to be as empty as Mother Hubbard’s. Those were stirring days for Theosophic neophytes when that kind of thing was a common incident. But, ichabod! that glory is departed! Its departure precisely synchronised with that of the nimble-fingered Coulombs. Their graceless avowal that both special plant and skilful confederates were required for this kind of miracle may have been a gross calumny on their employer; but the fact remains that with the removal of the panel-backed Shrine at Adyar and the dismissal of its custodians, the Masters abruptly ceased to resort to these more surprising methods of aërial post.
Occasionally they would make the assurance of the faithful doubly sure by artlessly “precipitating” the message inside a sealed envelope (a species of “test” of which more anon); but for the most part they were content to endorse letters passing through the ordinary post or discovered by the recipient in his blotting-pad under circumstances equally consistent with a commonplace human agency.
Such was the state of things till Madame Blavatsky’s death.
But then came the rub. What the Psychical Research Committee held to be proven was that Madame had written practically the whole body of these documents with her own hand. What, then, if after her decease in May, 1891, the same missives continued to be received?
Before the controversy which sprang up again over her ashes had well died down, the public was asked to believe that this was indeed the case, on the word of a woman whom it believed incapable of making a statement of the kind without having first proved it to the uttermost and found it true.
