He did this, of course, in a letter of Mr. William Q. Judge’s own, and in a sense endorsing Mr. William Q. Judge’s wishes—in fact, the letter was the one recorded in the last chapter, in which the Master’s seal came so plump upon the disciple’s prayer for a sign.
I have not mentioned before, however, that the recipient of this ’88 letter was Colonel Olcott. He presumably recognised, then as now, his own “playful present,” his own “flap-doodle”; but he appears to have let it pass in silence.
From this date the seal seems to have disappeared from among Madame Blavatsky’s belongings. It was, of course, intrinsically valueless.
THE TELEGRAM MISSIVE.
But in 1890 it turned up again—in New York, and in close contiguity with Mr. Judge. Madame sent a message through Mr. Judge to a disciple, then in America, who happened to be the Mr. Keightley who had remarked the “flap-doodle of Olcott’s” at Lansdowne-road. The context, which is before me as I write, shows that Madame was persuading this disciple to take some course distasteful to him. Judge added his persuasions to hers. But what was bound to determine the disciple was the discovery on receiving the missive from Mr. Judge’s hands, that the Mahatma had added his vote in transitu by endorsing the word “RIGHT,” in red pencil, with cryptograph and impression of the Panjab seal.
Mr. Keightley, too, must have recognised the “flap-doodle”; but he, too, like Olcott, said never a word. He did, indeed, go so far as to ask Judge if he had affixed the seal? But on receiving a blandly surprised assurance that Mr. Judge did not so much as know there was a seal affixed, he let the matter drop.
These are, so far as I know, the only two instances in evidence of the use of this peculiar seal in Mahatma missives during the lifetime of Madame Blavatsky, and, as was to be expected from her objection to the seal, neither missive was among those vouched for by her, for the message from herself to New York was telegraphed, and it was the telegraph-form at the New York end that the Mahatma endorsed. Nevertheless, it is clear that no intimate of Madame’s would get hold of the seal and make use of it for bogus Mahatma missives under her very nose, unless he were under the impression either that she had it for that purpose herself, or that she might be relied on at least not to “peach” on a chela who used it.
But why did neither Colonel Olcott nor Mr. Keightley speak? The only answer I can suggest is that while Madame Blavatsky was in the flesh the faithful thought twice before they expressed a doubt about anything or anybody. They were accustomed to take their marvels as they found them, and be thankful.
Otherwise, they might at least have pointed out to Mr. Judge, in order that he might in turn apprise his Mahatma, whose supernal knowledge seems here to have been somewhat at fault, what a fatal blunder he was making in palming off upon the faithful a bogus edition of his own cryptograph, known as such by three of the faithful themselves.
However, there are the facts; and but for the Mahatma’s trop de zéle in pushing his favourite chela’s occult claims immediately on Madame Blavatsky’s decease, I fear we should never have been vouchsafed this instructive side-light on an earlier period of the Theosophical Society.