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The Letters of H. P. Blavatsky to A. P. Sinnett - 1925

By A. T. Barker

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Letter No. 17

{Bombay, Sept. 11}

(Private, not for Mr. Hume.)

Monday.

Mr dear Mr. Sinnett,

This morning I got up from my bed for the first time this week. But never mind me. Your letters enclosing copy to Mr. Hume yesterday and today's enclosing his answers to it show only that you are of the true stuff, and I hope only I won't die before you have been rewarded for all your devotion and affection for K. H. by seeing him. And how easy — oh gods! to see him! Read this:

I will remain about 23 miles off Darjeeling till Sep. 26th — and if you come you will find me in the old place. You misunderstood entirely what I shouted to you this morning - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - in the Theosophist stands as tho' it were - - - - - - - - [Undecipherable Tibetan characters appear here in the original. This note in K. H.'s writing is pasted on to H. P. B.'s letter. — Ed.]

K. H.

I received this yesterday after the operation. Neither of the two answers by Hume astonished me. I sent them off for the delectation of M. and chelas. Only mark my word: Hume is beginning to be off his head. My last illness brought me back several years and I now see what I could never have seen without their help a fortnight ago. "K. H. knows" he says what he Hume knows. Well I guess he does, and mighty more. He bamboozles himself into the insane belief that he is fast becoming an adept and he sees sights and believes in them as revelations. But he is not delicate enough to comprehend that K. H. will to the last be kind and polite. The day I sent you my letter with his "Notes" K. H. had prevailed upon me not to write to him but to send to you instead. I did so; but feeling that I suffocated I got up from bed and wrote him a short letter where I told Hume what I thought of him. To this K. H. did not object but said that as Hume was necessary to them for some purposes yet, he would send him an antidote to soothe his anger against me. The antidote went to Hume in the shape of a telegram from K. H. from somewhere out of Bombay telling Hume as I see . . . "a foolish letter sent against my advice, you must pardon the passion of an old and very, very sick woman," and then on the following day advised me for the good of the Society to sacrifice my feelings and since he Hume had once offered me his excuses, asked me that I should do the same. I wrote him therefore, another letter, telling him that since K. H. and M. thought I better apologize for some of my rude expressions I do so. At the same time, having devoted half a page to express sorrow if I had hurt his feelings I believe I told him worse things on the three other pages than the day before. But now — I will abuse him no more. When in Tibet a criminal is going to receive just punishment they try to make him as happy as possible during the interval between sentence and the day of his doom. I know he is doomed AND BY HIS OWN ACTIONS.

He "behind the veil"! Behind Magy's nightcap. He knows and K. H. knows he knows! Oh holy Moses! How grand and mysterious. He thinks "it very possible that nothing but your personal relations with these Brothers may survive and yet the movement, the real spirit of it, may make no less rapid progress. There are other powers coming on the stage — as they know — if the O. L. don't." Now please compare this very mysterious sentence, prophetic and blood-chilling, with that other phrase which winds up the 8-column long article of Oxley in the Theosophist . . . "with profound respect and acknowledgment of a power, which, though about to be changed, is as yet as much in its proper place, as that which preceded and will follow" (p. 303, 1st Col.).

Hume must be in correspondence with Oxley surely. I tell you he is off his head, and will yet become a spiritualist. Perhaps he may find out some day that "the other powers" are the Dugpas, who are in a dangerous proximity with himself. Let him remember the universal Kabalistic axiom. "To know, to dare, to will and be silent." Let him read the impressive phrase translated by Eliphas Levi from the Book of Numbers in Vol. I of "Dogme de la Haute Magie," p. 115.

"Dans la voie des hautes sciences, il ne faut pas s'engager temerairement, mais, une fois en marche, il faut arriver ou perir. Douter c'est devenir fou; s'arreter, c'est tomber; reculer, c'est se precipiter dans un gouffre."

You have chosen the right path and you will learn all that a "lay chela" can learn and more without any danger. He wanted to force the hand, to out-Brother the Brothers. Well, well, well, we will see.

The Theos. Soc. will of course prosper "the movement, the real spirit of it, will of course make no less rapid progress." But it will be our Society or rather M. and K. H.'s Society, and not his — the new one that he has taken it into his head to found in India, with the help of a few insane mystics — spiritualists, whom he will go on bossing.

That's the secret. He wants to sink "the old Society" and inaugurate a new movement against the Brothers. He took it into his head last March and April. I know all now. Yes, K. H. knows, "if the O. L. don't" — and K. H. trembles! Bon voyage.

Yes. September, October and — then buss — the last round of the Wheel of the Cycle "Connu!" and it can never frighten me. The "O. L." may be a fool one side of her; but when the other side awakes even the monstrous intellect of the Opposing power called Hume, does not affect her much.

Well adieu. He corrects and calls it "a letter not an article." Well, for me and those who are not so literary as he is, article or letter is one thing in a magazine when it has a heading. In my editorial protest I call it a letter, and the chelas call it in theirs indifferently — "article" and "letter" and I did not correct the word.

Good-bye, you, the only English gentleman I know in India; the only true and faithful friend. I now see the difference between a Conservative and a Liberal!! Oh Jesus.

My sincerest fondest love to Mrs. Sinnett and Den.
Yours ever,
H. P. Blavatsky.