Mrs. Besant agreed. Mr. Judge himself wrote the question and closed the envelope, and put it into the cabinet.
Mrs. Besant did not stay in the room through the process of incubation. For “He that hath ears to hear, let him hear,” the Theosophic scripture reads, “He that hath eyes to see, let him put his Head in a Bag.”
After due delay, Mr. Judge took the letter out again. On his showing it to Mrs. Besant, judge of that lady’s emotion at the discovery that at the end of the question stood the word
“Yes”
traced apparently in red chalk; also, a little lower down, the words
“And Hope,”
with the impression, in black carbon, of a peculiar seal, representing a cryptograph M. (A simple way to produce this appearance is to hold a seal in candle-smoke and impress with that.)
| THE “MAHATMA’S SEAL.” | IMPRESSION SHOWING CRYPTOGRAPH. |
What need of further witness that the thing was the result of psychic “precipitation” from Madame Blavatsky’s “Mahatma M,” away in Tibet? If that gentleman had not, in his communications to Madame, been observed to use a seal, still he certainly used to scribble them in the same sort of red chalk, and he certainly used to sign himself similarly M.
Note one point here. It was not Mahatma M, but Mahatma K.H., who used to be the more prolix correspondent in Madame Blavatsky’s time, and whose handwriting appeared accordingly in copious specimens and comparisons with her own, in the published Report of the Psychical Research Committee.