Fwd: THEOSOPHICAL FRAUD IN FRENCH SPIRITUALISM

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"Bhakti Ananda Goswami" bhakti.eohn

"Vrin Parker" vrnparker

THEOSOPHICAL FRAUD IN FRENCH SPIRITUALISM

Thu, 3 Apr 2003 03:10:53 -0800

About her own activities as a medium Blavatsky wrote in a letter to the Russian

Secret Police when she asked for a job there; "And thus I must confess that

three-quarters of the time the spirits spoke and answered in my words and out

of my own considerations, for the success of my own plans. Rarely, very rarely,

did I fail, by means of this little trap, to discover people's hopes, plans and

secrets." (Maria Carlson , No Religion Higher Than Truth, p. 316.)

 

THEOSOPHICAL FRAUD IN FRENCH SPIRITUALISM

an excerpt from:

Theosophists a Galore: Crossing Over P.6

http://mailbox.univie.ac.at/~muehleb9/crossingo6.html

The first people in France to explore Theosophy were Spiritists. Blavatsky, who

had an upper-class Russian's command of French, established a preliminary

connection with this group while visiting Paris in 1873. During her stay, she

became particularly friendly with Leymarie and his wife. (Quoted in Charles

Blech, Contribution d 1'histoire de la Societe Theosophique en France, Paris:

1933, 39. This text is a compilation of private correspondence. memoirs and

journal articles from the early years of French Theosophy.) By 1879, Leymarie

and others had formed a small Societe Theosophiqie desSpirites de France." As

long as no Theosophical texts were available in French, the Spiritists could

imagine that their movement and Blavatsky's were, as Leymarie wrote, -similar

forces that must unite. Blavatsky had earlier started a spirititist group based

of Alan Kardec, in Cairo. But accused of fraud she felt compelled to leave

Egypt. Later Blavatksy and Colonel Olcott attempted to start a similar

spiritist endeavour in New York, which H.P. Blavatsky claimed she had been told

to do by a "Master." About her own activities as a medium Blavatsky wrote in a

letter to the Russian Secret Police when she asked for a job there; "And thus I

must confess that three-quarters of the time the spirits spoke and answered in

my words and out of my own considerations, for the success of my own plans.

Rarely, very rarely, did I fail, by means of this little trap, to discover

people's hopes, plans and secrets." (Maria Carlson , No Religion Higher Than

Truth, p. 316.) In September, at Blavatsky's rooms in New York, following a

lecture on "The Lost Canon of Proportion of the Egyptians", the Miracle Club

was voted into existence, with Olcott as its chairman. At its next meeting it

was named the Theosophical Society. By Olcott's account, the word "Theosophy"

was picked by flipping through a dictionary. The word may have been chosen by

Charles Sotheran based on the title "Thosopher" used in the Masonic Rite of

Memphis, to which he belonged. Shortly thereafter Blavatsky started work in

earnest on her first book, Isis Unveiled., A Master-Key to the Mysteries of

Ancient and Modern Science and Theology. This two-volume set was largely

derived in form and title from the monumental two-volume work of comparative

religion by Godfrey Higgins entitled Anacalypsis: An Attempt to Draw Aside the

Veil of the Saitic Isis,- or an Inquity into the Origin of Languages, Nations,

and Religions, published in 1833 and 1836. Leslie Shepard wrote: [Anacalypsis]

has a special interest as the first comprehensive formulation of the materials

of Theosophy; it was clearly a fundamental sourcebook and inspiration for the

major works of Madame Blavatsky some forty years after Higgins. Her debt to

Higgins is acknowledged only by a few stray references on points of detail. At

the time that Madame Blavatsky wrote her own encyclopedic works the Anacalypsis

was scarce and not generally known. Higgins gives correct and generous

acknowledgment on all his materials. Madame Blavatsky's books have been

severely criticized by the Encyclopedia Britannica as "a mosaic of

unacknowledged quotations." It had been claimed that many of Madame

Blavatsky's materials were drawn from akashic records, but G. R. S. Mead-the

greatest scholar of the Theosophical movement-later admitted that three of his

friends had "'devilled' assiduously for H. P B. at the British Museum." This is

not the place to revive old controversies of ghost-writing and supernatural

reference. The plain fact is that Anacalypsis is the important prototype of the

Theosophical framework. Throughout his book Higgins insists on "a secret

doctrine" of esoteric knowledge guarded by the priests; it is significant that

the phrase itself should form the title of Madame Blavatsky's second large

treatise. It must be said that she brought to her writings a splendid genius

and insight of her own, and her books have rightly had tremendous influence. It

is time, however, to give Higgins his own credit. Anacalypsis has been described

as the last great scholarly work of nineteenth-century comparativism.

International contact breeds syncretism, the combination of similar religious

symbols from different cultures. One great international culture before the

British Empire was the Roman Empire. In its popular mystery religions, it was

common to pray to deities such as Isis with a slew of names of similar figures

drawn from various traditions spread over thousands of miles. In the nineteenth

century, the train and the steamer created much the same effect that the Roman

roads and the sailing trade had centuries before. Everyone was looking for a

science of religion, a unifying principle that would weave all the confusing

and superficially dissimilar threads of world religion into a common whole. One

approach was abstract monotheism, as practiced by Freemasonry and the Baha'i

movement. All prophets were true messengers of the one God, and all religions

were distorted reflections of a single truth of divine revelation. Another was

abstract atheism, which derived the masks of world religion not from God but

from some great impersonal principle. The aims of the Theosophical Society

where described by Blavatsky as dealing with Magic and the "Jewish and

Egyptian" Cabala, Blavatsky wrote on Sept. 23, 1875: "We want to make an

experimental comparison between spiritualism and the magic of the ancients by

following literally the instructions of the old Cabbalas, both Jewish and

Egyptian." A new journal, The Theosophist did quite well, and its popularity

led the Theosophical Society to expand rapidly. However, the teachings of Allan

Kardec did not square at all with those of Blavatsky's later Mahatmas. Once the

avid Theosophist and army officer D.A. Courmes began to translate substantive

articles from the Theosophist for publication in the Revue Spirite, this

dissonance became increasingly clear. Blavatsky sought to resolve the problem

by authorizing the formation of two new Parisian branches. One presided over by

Dr. Fortin, a Theosophist of pronounced anti-Spiritist leanings, and the second

under the presidency of Lady Caithness, Duchess of Pomar, a wealthy aristocrat,

medium and hostess. This effort to neutralize the Spiritists through competition

did not prove successful, however. Fortin's group did not succeed 'In creating a

purely Theosophical journal, as Blavatsky had hoped it would, and Caithness'

circle remained too socially exclusive to serve as an entirely viable flagship

branch. At this point, Blavatsky and Olcott decided to address the conflicts

in French Theosophy by intervening personally. They arrived in Marseille on

March 12, 1884; after several weeks spent at Lady Caithness' villa in Nice, the

two founders went on to Paris. Olcott did not stay, there long, because a

second, considerably graver Theosophical controversy in London demanded his

attention (controversy in London involved the charismatic medium and visionary

Anna Kingsford, who had just repudiated Theosophy because of its anti-Christian

approach. As we will see, a similar problem would occur in France several years

later ). Blavatsky, however, visited London only briefly, then returned to

Paris, where she set about addressing the situation of French Theosophy. With

Olcott's approval, Blavatsky supervised the dissolution of both Fortin's branch

and the Spiritist group, leaving Caithness' circle as the only official

representative of the Theosophical Society in France. Caithness, however, had a

separate quarrel with Olcott, which led her to resign from the Theosophical

Society in September 1884, after Blavatsky had returned to Adyar. By the end of

the year, therefore, the Theosophical Society,. had no official branches in

France. In mid- 1886, the Theosophical Society's situation in France began to

improve when Louis Dramard, a socialist journalist who had joined the group two

years before, decided to finance the creation of a French Theosophical journal.

Since he lacked the money to establish a new publication, he instead chose to

give a donation to a small Spiritist jounal called L'Aliti-Matirialiste. At the

time, the journal had only 250 rs, and its editor, a retired engineer

named Rend Caillid, was running short of funds. In exchange for this subsidy,

Caillid agreed to change the name of his publication to La Revue des Hautes

Etudes, and to begin publishing articles on Theosophy. As part of the

agreement, however, Caillid insisted on retaining full editorial control of the

journal. (See the 1910 memoir by, Alfred Froment in Blech. 145-146 La Revue des

Hautes Etudes: 32.)