Isis very much unveiled, being the story of the great Mahatma hoax

by Fydell Edmund Garrett

“ISIS VERY MUCH UNVEILED.”

A REPLY FROM MR. WILLIAM Q. JUDGE.

To the Editor of The Westminster Gazette.

Sir,—You have published slanderous articles against the Theosophical Society, using me as the person; you have asked for a reply; I send it to you and ask that it be given place in your paper.—Yours truly,

William Q. Judge.

Theosophical Society, American Section,

General Secretary’s Office, New York, Nov. 26.

To the Editor of The Westminster Gazette.

Sir,—At the time your articles directed against the Theosophical Society under the above title were appearing, I was lecturing in the country, and only within a few days have I seen your last numbers. Time is required for writing on such a subject, and at this distance from London I cannot be accused of much delay. With the greatest interest and amusement I have read your long series of articles. The writer is an able man, and you and he together constitute one of the advertising agencies of the Theosophical Society. The immense range of your notices cannot be well calculated, and very truly we could never pay for such an advertisement. Do you mind keeping this part of my letter as all the remuneration we can give you for the work done by you in thus advertising the movement and bringing prominently to the notice of your public the long-forgotten but true doctrine of the possible existence of such beings as Professor Huxley says it would be impertinent to say could not exist in the natural order of evolution?

And while I look at it all as an advertisement, I cannot admire the treason developed therein, nor the spiteful unworthy tone of it, nor the divergence from fact in many cases when it suited the purpose, nor the officious meddling in the private affairs of other people, nor the ignoring and falsification in respect to possible motive, made out by you to be gain by some of us, when the fact is that we are all losers of money by our work. That fact a candid person would have stated, and marvelled at it that we should be willing to slave for the Theosophical Society, and always spend our money. Such a person would have given “the devil his due.” You have suppressed it and lied about it, and hence it is not admirable in you, but is quite mean and low. You advertise us and then try to befoul us. Well, we gain by the advertisement, and the course of time will wipe off the small stain you try to paint upon us. When you and your ready writer are both dead and forgotten, and some of you probably execrated for offences not as yet exposed, we will still live as a body and be affecting the course of modern thought, as we have been doing for nearly twenty years.

I am the principal object of your attack, though you also cruelly abuse a woman who has long enough fought the world of your conventional nation, and perhaps you expect me to either rise and explain, or keep silent. Well, I will do neither. I will speak, but cannot fully explain. Your paper is a worldly forum, a sort of court. In it there is neither place nor credence for explanations which must include psychic things, facts, and laws, as well as facts and circumstances of the ordinary sort. Were I to explain in full, no one would believe me save those students of the occult and the psychical who know psychic law and fact. Those who doubt and wish all to be reduced to the level of compass and square, of eye and word of mouth, would still be doubters. Nothing would be gained at all. That difficulty no intelligent person who has had psychic experience can overlook. That is why you are quite safe from a suit for libel. I assure you that had you published something not so inextricably tangled up with psychic phenomena I should be glad to have you in court, not to soothe wounded feelings I have not, but to show that our faulty law and so-called justice do sometimes right some wrongs.

Let me first emphatically deny the inference and assertion made by you, that I and my friends make money out of the T.S., or that the organisation has built up something by which we profit. This is untrue, and its untruth is known to all persons who know anything at all about the society. No salaries are paid to our officers. We support ourselves or privately support each other. I have never had a penny from the society, and do not want any. The little magazine, the Path, which I publish here in the interest of the society, is not supported by subscriptions from members, but largely by others, and it is kept up at a loss to me which will never be repaid. I publish it because I wish to, and not for gain. Thousands of dollars are expended in the T.S. work here each year over and above what is paid in for fees and dues. The dues are but four shillings a year, and three times as much as that is expended in the work. Where does it come from? Out of our private pockets, and if I had a million I would spend it that way. My friends and myself give our money and our time to the society without hope or desire for any return. We may be fanatics—probably are—but it is false and malicious to accuse us of using the society for gain. The only payment we get is the seeing every day the wider and wider spread of Theosophical theories of life, man, and nature. I am ready to submit all our books and vouchers to any auditor to support these statements. And you were in a position to find out the facts as I have given them.

It is also absolutely untrue, as you attempt to show or infer, that the society grows by talking of the Mahatmas or Masters, or by having messages sent round from them. The movement here and elsewhere is pushed along the line of philosophy, and each one is left to decide for himself on the question of the Mahatmas. “Messages from the Masters” do not go flying round, and the society does not flourish by any belief in those being promulgated. Nor am I, as you hint, in the habit of sending such messages about the society, nor of influencing the course of affairs by using any such thing. Send out and ask all the members and you will find I am correct. It is true that those Masters tell me personally what I am to do, and what is the best course to take, as they have in respect to this very letter, but that is solely my own affair. Could I be such a fool as to tell all others to go by what I get for my own guidance, knowing how weak, suspicious, and malicious is the human nature of to-day? You are on the wrong tack, my friend.

But you were right when you say that Mrs. Besant made a remarkable change in respect to me. That is true, and Mr. Chakravarti whom you name is, as you correctly say, the person who is responsible for it. Before she met Chakravarti she would not have dreamed of prosecuting me. This is a matter of regret, but while so, I fail to see how you aid your case against me by dragging the thing in thus publicly, unless, indeed, you intend to accuse him and her of going into a conspiracy against me.

There are two classes of “messages from the Masters” charged to me by you and by that small section of the T.S. members who thought of trying me. One class consists of notes on letters of mine to various persons; the other of messages handed to Mrs. Besant and Colonel Olcott and enclosure found in a letter to Colonel Olcott from a man in California.

I have never denied that I gave Mrs. Besant messages from the Masters. I did so. They were from the Masters. She admits that, but simply takes on herself to say that the Master did not personally write or precipitate them. According to herself, then, she got from me genuine messages from the Masters; but she says she did not like them to be done or made in some form that she at first thought they were not in. I have not admitted her contention; I have simply said they were from the Master, and that is all I now say, for I will not tell how or by what means they were produced. The objective form in which such a message is of no consequence. Let it be written by your Mr. Garrett, or drop out of the misty air, or come with a clap of thunder. All that makes no difference save to the vulgar and the ignorant. The reality of the message is to be tested by other means. If you have not those means you are quite at sea as to the whole thing. And all this I thought was common knowledge in the Theosophical world. It has long been published and explained.

One of those messages to Mrs. Besant told her not to go to India that year. I got it in California, and then telegraphed it to her in substance later, sending the paper. I had no interest in not having her go to India, but knew she would go later. The other messages were of a personal nature. They were all true and good. At the time I gave them to her I did not say anything. That I never denied. It was not thought by me necessary to insult a woman of her intellectual ability, who had read all about these things, by explaining all she was supposed to know. Those who think those messages were not from the Master are welcome to doubt it so far as I am concerned, for I know the naturalness of that doubt.

When Colonel Olcott resigned I was first willing to let him stay resigned. But I was soon directed by another “message” to prevent it if I could, and at once cabled that to him, and went to work to have the American Section vote asking him to stay in office. As I was the person mentioned to succeed him, we also, to provide for contingencies, resolved that the choice of America was myself as successor. But when he revoked, then my successorship was null and void until voted on at another period not yet reached. But it is absolutely false that I sent an emissary to him when I found he was minded to stay in office. Ask him on this and see what he says. I leave that to him. Truly enough I made an error of judgment in not telling the influential London members of my message when I told Olcott. But what of that? I did not tell the Americans, but left their action to the dictates of their sense and the trend of friendship and loyalty to our standard-bearer. The English voted against Olcott by doing nothing, but I asked them in the same way as I asked the Americans to request him to revoke. They had their chance. As India had done the same as America I saw the vote was final as my message directed, and so I dropped it from my mind—one of my peculiarities. I certainly did not use any pressure by way of “messages from the Masters” on anyone as to that, save on Olcott. And he reported a message to the same effect to himself. Did I invent that also? My message to him was copied by me on my type-writer and sent to him. I did it thus because I knew of spies about Olcott, of whom I had warned him to little effect. One of those confessed and committed suicide, and the other was found out.

A message was found in a letter from Abbot Clark, a Californian, to Colonel Olcott. This, you say, I made and put in the letter. I have the affirmation of Mr. Clark on the matter, which I send you herewith to be inserted at this place if you wish. It does not bear out your contention, but shows the contrary. It also shows that his letter to Colonel Olcott was opened in India by some other person before being sent on to Colonel Olcott. You can make what inference you like from this.

Your statement about putting a question in a cabinet for an answer when I stayed in the room and Mrs. Besant went out is false. No such thing took place. I deny that there was any such thing as a reception of “answers in a sealed envelope in a closed drawer.” That is supreme bosh from beginning to end, and cannot be proved by anybody’s testimony, unless you will accept perjury.

At the same time I can now say, as the sole authority on the point, that several of the contested messages are genuine ones, no matter what all and every person, Theosophist or not, may say to the contrary.

You have much talk about what you say is called the Master’s seal. You have proved by the aid of Colonel Olcott that the latter made an imitation in brass of the signature of the Master and gave it to H.P.B. as a joke. You trace it to her and there you leave it, and then you think I am obliged to prove I did not get it, to prove negatives again, when it has never been proved that I had it. I have long ago denied all knowledge of Master’s seal either genuine or imitated. I do not know if he has a seal; if he has, I have not yet been informed of it; the question of a seal owned by him as well as what is his writing or signature are both still beclouded. None of the members who have been in this recent trouble know what is the writing, or the seal, or the mark of the Master. It was long ago told by H.P.B. that the so-called writing of the Master was only an assumed hand, and no real knowledge is at hand as to his having a seal. I have seen impressions similar to what you have reproduced, but it is of no consequence to me. If there were a million impressions of seals on a message said to be from the Master, it would add nothing to the message in my eyes, as other means must be employed for discovering what is and what is not a genuine message. Seals and ciphers do not validate these things. Unless I can see for myself by my inner senses that a message is genuine, I will not believe it, be it loaded with seals I do not know. As I know the thousand and one magical ways by which impressions of things may be put on paper, even unconsciously to the human channel or focus, I have relied, and ask others to rely, on their own inner knowledge and not to trust to appearances. Others may think these little decorations of importance, but I do not. I never asked anyone at any meeting, private or public, to note or observe the seal-impression you give. Others may have done so, but I did not. Others may have gone into laboured arguments to show the value of such a thing, but I did not. The whole matter of this so-called seal is so absurd and childish that it has made me laugh each time I have thought of it.

Now I can do no more than deny, as I hereby do absolutely, all the charges you have been the means of repeating against me. I have denied them very many times, for I have known of them for about two years and a half. My denial is of no value to you; nor to those who think there is no supersensual world; nor to those who think that because conjurors can imitate any psychical phenomenon, therefore the latter has no existence; nor to those who deny the possibility of the existence of Mahatmas or great souls. These things are all foolishness to such persons, and I am willing to let it stay that way. Were I to go into all the details of all the messages you refer to, and were I to get from those who know, as I can, the full relation of all that is involved in those messages on my letters which I saw after the July “investigation” was ended, I would be opening the private doors to the secret hearts of others, and that I will not do. Already I know by means not generally accessible altogether too much of the private hearts of many of these people, and have no desire to know more.

Some of the matters you cite are related to a private body, once called the Esoteric Section, which is protected—nominally, so it seems, among your informants—by a pledge. The breaking of that by others gives me no right to add to their breach. I cannot, like Mr. Old and others more prominent, violate the confidences of others. His revelations cannot be analysed by me in public. He is in the position of those Masons who have attempted to reveal the secrets of Masonry; and either the public has listened to a liar or to one who has to admit that he does not regard his solemn obligation as worth a straw when it obstructs his purposes; in either case the information cannot be relied upon. His account and yours contain so many misrepresentations that none [of] it has any serious consideration from me.

And Mr. Old’s revelations, or those of any other members, amount to nothing. The real secrets have not been revealed, for they have not been put in the hands of such people; they have been given only to those who have shown through long trial and much labour that they are worthy to have the full relation of the plans of the master-builder exposed to their gaze. Let the dishonest, the perjured, and the vacillating go on with their revelations; they will hurt no one but themselves.

Now as to the Investigation at which you have laughed. I grant you it was matter for laughter from outside to see such a lot of labour and gathering from the four quarters to end in what you regard as smoke. Now, my dear sir, I did not call the Inquiry Committee. I protested against it and said from the beginning it should never have been called at all. Must I bear the brunt of that which I did not do? Must I explain all my life to a committee which had no right to come together, for which there was no legal basis? It was called in order to make me give up an official succession I did not have; months before it met I said it would come to nothing but a declaration written by me of the non-dogmatic character of the T.S. My Master so told me and so it turned out. Will you give me no credit for this foreknowledge? Was it a guess, or was it great ability, or did it come about through bribery, or what? I was told to use the opportunity to procure an official declaration that belief in Mahatmas or Masters was not and is not one of the T.S., and I succeeded in so doing. I might have been accused as an individual and not official member. But by the influence of the Mr. Chakravarti whom you mention the whole power of the society was moved against me, so as to try and cut me down root and branch officially and privately, so that it might thereby be made sure that I was not successor to the presidency. This is the fact. That is why I forgave them all; for it is easy to forgive; in advance I forgave them since they furnished such a splendid official opportunity for a decision we long had needed. The odium resulting from the attempt to try occult and psychical questions under common law rules I am strong enough to bear; and up to date I have had a large share of that.

I refused a committee of honour, they say. I refused the committee that was offered as it was not of persons who could judge the matter rightly. They would have reached no conclusion save the one I now promulgate, which is, that the public proof regarding my real or delusive communications from the Masters begins and ends with myself, and that the committee could not make any decision at all, but would have to leave all members to judge for themselves. To arrive officially at this I would have to put many persons in positions that they could not stand, and the result then would have been that far more bad feeling would come to the surface. I have at least learned after twenty years that it is fruitless to ask judges who have no psychic development to settle questions the one half of which are in the unseen realm of the soul where the common law of England cannot penetrate.

The “messages from the Masters” have not ceased. They go on all the time for those who are able and fit to have them, but no more to the doubter and the suspicious. Even as I write they have gone to some, and in relation to this very affair, and in relation to other revelations and pledge-breakings. It is a fact in experience to me, and to friends of mine who have not had messages from me, that the Masters exist and have to do with the affairs of the world and the Theosophical movement. No amount of argument or Maskelyneish explanation will drive out that knowledge. It will bear all the assaults of time and foolish men. And the only basis on which I can place the claim of communication by the Masters to me, so far as the world is concerned, is my life and acts. If those for the last twenty years go to prove that I cannot be in communication with such beings, then all I may say one way or the other must go for naught.

Why so many educated Englishmen reject the doctrine of the perfectibility of man, illustrated by the fact of there now existing Masters of wisdom, passes my comprehension, unless it be true, as seems probable, that centuries of slavery to the abominable idea of original sin as taught by theology (and not by Jesus) has reduced them all to the level of those who, being sure they will be damned any way, are certain they cannot rise to a higher level, or unless the great god of conventionality has them firmly in his grasp. I would rather think myself a potential god and try to be, as Jesus commanded, “perfect as the Father in heaven”—which is impossible unless in us is that Father in essence—than to remain darkened and enslaved by the doctrine of inherent original wickedness which demands a substitute for my salvation. And it seems nobler to believe in that perfectibility and possible rise to the state of the Masters than to see with science but two possible ends for all our toil: one to be frozen up at last, and the other to be burned up, when the sun either goes out or pulls us into his flaming breast.—Yours truly,

William Q. Judge.

[The following is the “affirmation” of Mr. Abbot Clark, enclosed with the above]:—

“San Francisco, Cal., April 21, 1894.

“I, Abbot Clark, a member of the Theosophical Society, do hereby state and affirm as follows: I have seen it stated in the newspapers that it is charged that I wrote Colonel H. S. Olcott in 1891 to India, and that in that letter was some message not known to me, and that Colonel Olcott replied, asking where William Q. Judge was at the time, and that I replied he was in my house. The facts are: That in 1891 W. Q. Judge was lecturing in this State, and I was with him at Santa Ana, and that I had no house and never had, being too poor to have one. Brother Judge stopped at the hotel in Santa Ana, where he came from my home, my father’s house at Orange, where he had been at dinner, and at Santa Ana I arranged his lectures and I stayed at my aunt’s at Santa Ana; while in the hotel a conversation arose with us, in which I spoke of Theosophical propaganda among the Chinese on this coast, and Brother Judge suggested that I write to Colonel Olcott, as he knew many Buddhists Theosophists, and might arrange it better than Brother Judge; and I then myself wrote to Colonel Olcott on the matter, showing the letter after it was done to Brother Judge to see if it should be improved or altered, and he handed me back the letter at once. I put it in my pocket and kept it there for several days waiting for a chance to buy stamps for postage as I was away from any post-office. Brother Judge left by himself the morning after I wrote the letter and went to San Diego, and the only time I saw him again was in the train just to speak to him on his return after about four days, and the letter was not mentioned, thought of, nor referred to.

“I assert on my word of honour that Brother Judge said nothing to me about any message pretended to be from Masters or otherwise, and so far as any reports or statements have been made relating to me herein different from the above they are absolutely false.

“From India I got a reply from Adyar T.S. office from one Charlu, saying he had opened my letter in Colonel Olcott’s absence, and had forwarded it to him; and Dharmapala told me he had seen letters from me to Colonel Olcott on the matter received in India away from Adyar. The said Charlu, in reply, also asked me where Brother Judge was when the letter was written, and I wrote that he had been at my house on that date, which is true as above stated, Orange being only three miles from Santa Ana, as I thought Charlu wished to have Brother Judge’s dates. But I thought also the questions put were peculiar from such a distance. I never got any reply to my sincere first question in that letter about propaganda from him, and never any reply of any sort from Colonel Olcott. When Dharmapala was here he did not bring any message in reply from Colonel Olcott, but referred to recollecting speaking with Olcott about a proposal from California to work with the Chinese. And Charlu did not speak of any enclosure in said letter. A year later I again wrote on the same matter to Colonel Olcott, which was answered by Gopala Charlu, now dead, saying but little, if anything, would be done by him. To all this I affirm on my honour.

“Abbot B. Clark.

“Witness: signatures:

Allen Griffiths, E. B. Rambo.”