Two Replies

TWO REPLIES

WILLIAM Q. JUDGE

THE THEOSOPHY COMPANY
PREFACE

To emphasize the unique place of William Q. Judge in the Theosophical Movement, the Theosophy Company planned to publish a book titled The Case for Mr. Judge. Material was accumulated toward this end, including a number of quotations testifying to the fine qualities of Mr. Judge from those who knew him, many of them prominent theosophists. Upon reflection, however, it was decided that students of Theosophy familiar with the writings of Mr. Judge need no further evidence of his character, and mere testimony respecting his devotion and veracity carries little weight with others. It was determined, therefore, to let Mr. Judge speak for himself. Accordingly, two lengthy statements, long out of circulation, are herein returned to print. Given the cross-currents originating from outside the Movement at that time, it is left to the reader to evaluate what is said.

First, is a letter from Mr. Judge to the Sun, a newspaper in New York City which chose the title: “Isis and the Mahatmas.” it is a response to an attack aimed at Mr. Judge and the Society which appeared in the Westminster Gazette, a London newspaper, late in 1894. Second, is the final Reply by Mr. Judge to the charges against him, prepared for an informal meeting of members of the Theosophical Society in Boston, April 29, 1895.

Although agreeing broadly on theosophical principles, some present-day students, unfamiliar with the work of Mr. Judge, do not agree on the facts concerning prominent personages of the early days of the Society. The purpose of this booklet then, is to answer questions and to dispel any doubts that may linger from the past, as well as to invite all who have not benefited from Mr. Judge’s contributions to the theosophic literature, to do so.

Editors,

THEOSOPHY

FOREWORD

WE have crossed the threshold of the final decade of the twentieth-century, and it seems clear that the disintegrating forces that brought about the “Judge Case” in the last decade of the nineteenth century struck a note of discord that continued as an undertone to seriously influence the work of the Theosophical Movement for decades. It may be supposed, then, that today we are faced with a comparable period wherein the general tone that will resonate through the Theosophical Movement throughout the entire twenty-first century will be sounded during the next few years.

From 1875 to early 1896 the Messengers of the nineteenth century recorded a body of teachings now known as modern Theosophy. As a complement to the writings of H.P.B., there are more than two hundred clarifying articles by William Q. Judge. In addition to this wealth of material, students also have the advantage of the perspective provided by the events that have ensued since the death of H.P.B. in 1891 and of Mr. Judge in 1896. It is now time for a review, the time to trace and reflect upon the karmic effects resulting from a century of activity within the Theosophical Movement.

H.P.B. said that in the interest of furthering truth, “the vindication of calumniated but glorious reputations,” was among her goals in writing Isis Unveiled, her first major work. It seems fair to suggest that students of today make a similar effort in the interest of truth and brotherhood.

During the last three years of his life Mr. Judge was accused of forgery and a lack of straightforwardness. Although it was obvious that he had no personal stake in jurisdictional

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squabbles, the charges have left disquieting doubts in the minds of some.

Almost immediately after Mr. Judge left the scene in March, 1896, students concerned for the future of the Theosophical Movement began calling for a full revelation of the tensions that had developed among prominent theosophical workers before his death. It might be recalled that the last two decades of the nineteenth century were especially trying years for those furthering the Cause. Missionaries and certain Brahmins did what they could to undermine H.P.B. and continued to stir trouble within the Society following her death.

The best way to resolve any questions concerning either H.P.B. or Mr. Judge and attain a glimpse of their inner nature and character is through study of a significant portion of what they wrote on Theosophy. Since 1896 there has been an unbroken line of theosophical students, who, coming across the Judge Case, discovered for themselves that Mr. Judge was unfairly accused. The facts are available for students to consider and reflect upon.

It is highly significant that two of the most visible members of the Society during the lifetime of Mr. Judge—Col. H. S. Olcott and Mrs. Annie Besant—are reported to have acknowledged in the late years of their lives that they had underestimated Mr. Judge.

On a trip to the United States in 1906, the year before his death, Col. Olcott spoke of H.P.B. as his “dear old colleague,” and with respect to Mr. Judge, Mrs. Holloway recalled that he said, “We learn much and outgrow much, and I have outlived much and learned more, particularly as regards Judge. . . . I know, and it will comfort you to hear it, that I wronged Judge, not willfully or in malice; nevertheless, I have done this and I regret it.” In the early 1920’s, Mr. B.P. Wadia, who had carefully studied the claims and evidence presented by both sides in the Judge Case, questioned Mrs. Besant on the subject. She admitted to him that she had come to the conclusion some time

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back that Mr. Judge had been mistreated, though she insisted that it would be wrong to bring this old issue back to life. Mr. Wadia strongly disagreed and felt compelled to write the following:

With H.P.B. and Col. Olcott, he was a founder of the T.S. and worked by the right method of teaching with all those who came in his contact. His life and work must be judged by the same standard which I have always applied to H.P.B.—the illumination and inspiration of this teaching; the internal evidence of the validity of his message and its consistency; and in addition, the dovetailing of his teachings with the teachings of the Secret Doctrine; and I accept him as a good and true Theosophist who lived and toiled, who fought and died, leaving behind his own legacy to the Theosophical Movement of the century which began with 1875—a valiant servant of the Lodge and the Masters, who has been wronged in the T.S. and whose teachings remain unknown to this day to its members. I accept Wm. Q. Judge as a true Theosophist, not only because of his own fine character and his own wonderful ethical teachings, but because he stuck to the line of the Masters and remained unto death faithful to the Original Programme which They laid down. (A Statement by B.P. Wadia, p. 14.)

It is generally acknowledged among those using the name Theosophy that the original program which “They laid down” is embodied in the work of H.P.B., and it should be remembered, she called Mr. Judge her “co-worker,” one who has been “part of herself for several aeons.” He was, she said, for Americans the link between ‘the thought of their time and the Eastern secret wisdom.

The hallmark of genuine Theosophy is truth. In the first paragraph of “Rounds and Races,” an article that discusses doctrine reaching beyond the perceptual faculties of the Fifth Root Race, Mr. Judge says:

A fundamental axiom in Theosophy is that no one should accept as unquestionably true any statement of fact, principle, or theory which he has not tested for himself. This does not exclude a reasonable reliance upon testimony; but

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only that blind credulity which sometimes passes for faith. As we understand the rule, it is that we should at all times keep a clear and distinct boundary between what we know, and what we only accept provisionally on the testimony of those who have had larger experience until we reach a point of view from which we can see its truth. We owe it to ourselves to enlarge the sphere of clear knowledge and to push back as far as possible the boundary of opinion and hypothesis.

Surely, this is a man all students can trust.

“ISIS AND THE MAHATMAS”

On December 3, 1894, the New York Sun printed the following letter from William Q. Judge, together with the text of his letter to the Westminster Gazette, in reply to the elaborate attack which appeared in the latter journal, under the title of “Isis Very Much Unveiled.” Mr. Judge’s reply was inserted in the Westminster Gazette of December 8 and 10.

MR. JUDGE’S REPLY

To THE EDITOR OF The Sun.

SIR,— On Nov. 25th you devoted four columns of your editorial page to me, to the Theosophical Society, and to the “Mahatmas,” spreading before your readers so much that I would ask the favour of some space in your pages for a reply. It seems best to give you a copy of the reply sent to the London Westminster Gazette, and to ask you to insert that with these few preliminary words:

These three questions have been raised: (1) Have I been hoaxing the Society by bogus “messages from the Mahatmas?” (2) Are there any such beings, and what are they? (3) Do the prominent Theosophists live by or make money out of the Theosophical Society?

The last question is easily answered. No money is made; the entire work is a dead monetary loss to all of us; this is too easily proved to merit more words. The conclusion the worldly man will reach is that we are a lot of fanatics who are willing to spend all our money for a movement which destroys personal gain and glory; which makes all men appear as equally souls, thus destroying the power of the priest in earth or heaven, bringing the monarch and ‘the proud to the same place as the beggar and the humble, if such be needed for discipline; which ‘insists on universal brotherhood as a fact in nature due

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to the essential unity of all men; which says to every man that he is God in truth if he will but admit it; which explains the mystery of life and the cause, with the cure, of sorrow. Let us be such fanatics as this, but do not try to show that we are working for money or place.

A few notes on letters of mine are brought forward by those who cannot give any expert testimony on matters too occult for the eye, and it is said that because those notes are on my letters therefore they are out of my brain, mere jokes of a passing hour, and that they never emanated from a Mahatma. I grant that in a court of law I could not prove they were from a Mahatma. But I most emphatically deny that they are hoaxes of mine. The fact is that I have sent probably five hundred or more “messages from the Masters” to various persons all over the world during the last nineteen years; they cannot be traced. They are incorporated in letters written by me, in my hand, among the sentences of the letters, and never named as being such messages to those who received them. This has not been alleged against me, but I now give it out freely as a confession, if you please to so term it. But I have not tried in any way to manage the Society by such messages.

Suppose the charge is for the once admitted, what do we find? This curious fact, that although I know many men of large means who would believe me were I to hand them a “message from the Masters,” and who would give money for those, I have never done so, and never tried at any time to gain either power or money thus, when all the time the Society needs money. A person engaged at any time in the giving out of bogus messages would do it where it would be most useful in a worldly way. But here there is no such thing. What motive is there, then and what consistency of pretence can be found? A great howl has been raised over a few personal messages, and one relating to the retention of Colonel Olcott in office, and all the time the other five hundred messages are unknown and unfound. It seems to me the hoax is in the nature of self delusion among those who hunt for hares’ horns. They strain

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at the letter and miss the truth all the time before them. I wrote to the editor of the Westminster Gazette as follows:

“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 our public the long—forgotten but true doctrine of the possible existence of such beings as Prof. 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, or 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 marveled at it that we should be willing to slave for the T.S., 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

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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 organization has built up something by which we profit. This is untrue, and its untruth is known to all per sons who know anything at all about the Society. No salaries are paid to our officers. We support ourselves, or privately sup port 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 paid. I publish it because I wish to, and not for gain. Thousands of dollars are expended on the T.S. work here each year over and above

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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 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 suspicious, and malicious is the human nature of today? You are on the wrong track, my friend.

“But you were right when you said that Mrs. Besant made a remarkable charge in regard to me. That is true, and Mr. Chakravarti, whom you name, is, as you correctly say, the person who is responsible for it. That was told by Mr. Old to your writer. 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

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dragging the thing in thus publicly, unless, indeed, you intend to accuse him or her of going into conspiracy against me.

“There are two classes of ‘Messages from the Masters’ charged to me by you and 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 enclosures 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 Masters 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 that year, 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 sup-

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posed to know. Those who think these messages were not from the Master are welcome to doubt it, as 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 for 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 typewriter 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 Abbott Clark, a Californian, to Colonel Olcott. This you say I made and put in the letter. I have affirmation of Mr. Clark on the matter, which I send you herewith, to be inserted at this place if you

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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 to Colonel Olcott. You can make whatever inference you like from this.

{The affirmation of Abbott Clark appears in the “Reply to Charges of Misuse of Mahatmas’ Names and Handwritings” see page 40 herein—Eds.]

“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.’ This 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 the 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

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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 super-sensual world; nor to those who think that because conjurors can imitate any physical 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 realization of all that is involved in these 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

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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 for 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 Enquiry 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 Theosophical Society. My Master so told me, and so it turned out. Will you

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give me no credit for this fore-knowledge? Was it 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 tenets of the Theosophical Society, and I succeeded in so doing. I might have been accused as an individual and not as an official member. But by the influence of Mr. Chakravarti, whom you mention, the whole power of the Society has 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 would 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 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 realms 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 doubting and the suspicious. Even as I

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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 communications 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 nought.

“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 anyway, 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.”

WILLIAM 0. JUDGE

New York, Nov. 26, 1894

REPLY BY WILLIAM Q. JUDGE

To Charges of

Misuse of Mahatmas’ Names and Handwritings.

Read at Boston Mass., on the afternoon of April 29, 1895, after the T.S. Convention, by Dr. A. Keightley on behalf of W. Q. Judge, before an informal crowded meeting of the Delegates and visiting members.

FOR over twelve months the attention of the Theosophical Society has been taken up by serious charges made against

me by a fellow-member. A mass of circulars, statements and letters has been poured forth about the case, and the greatest activity has been shown by the accusers in the effort to completely blacken my character and destroy, if possible, my usefulness. This activity and virulence seem to be confined to the European and Indian Sections, especially to the European.

I have already made three replies to these accusations, once in the Westminister Gazette, once in the New York Sun, and once in the formal statement made at the July European Convention.

Before the present attack vague charges were made for over a year. They came from India. But it was not until after the arrival in Europe of the Brahman delegate to the Religious Parliament at Chicago, and his resulting intimate acquaintance with Mrs. Besant, and after her arrival in India, that any definite form or great publicity was given to the accusations. She came to America with him, worked here with me at the Parliament, professing for me the old friendship and confidence but, I regret to say, having her mind full (as I discovered afterward from herself), of her plan to accuse me subsequently and force me out of office. But she kept silent while here. Her own letters state the above fact of having in her mind this

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matter at that time. When she arrived in India she notified me in letters of what was coming. They were to this purport: that the matter had been long on her mind; that she had concluded that communications through me, said to be from the Master, were not so but were forgeries by me; that I was a victim and led away by a high example, which meant, as I learned from herself, that H.P.B. was my “high example in fraud,” who had herself forged and authorized me to do the same; that this must be confessed and would be forgiven; that I must at once resign my office in the T.S. and E.S.; but if I would not give up my offices and confess she would lay evidence to prove my guilt before a Committee; she ended by informing me that she had been offered the Presidency of the Society and was considering it. At no time and in no letter to me did she ask for an explanation or denial, or propose that privately we might explain and perhaps clear up obscurities. Her letters were of a sort that rendered quite impossible anything but flat denial and deter mined repulse.

In February, 1894, Col. Olcott sent me official notice that I was charged, as Vice-President, with misuse of the names and handwritings of the Mahatmas, meaning forgery and hum bugging of members by falsely pretending to receive and transmit messages from the Masters. Coupled with this—and showing the same pre-judgment—were the alternatives of resignation for which was promised silence and hushing up of the charges, or the trying of the case before a Committee meant only for trying the two highest officers of the Society for offenses in office. I at once telegraphed to Col. Olcott and Mrs. Besant denying the charge. Col. Olcott acted as notifier to me of the charge and Mrs. Besant acted as official prosecutor.

I immediately raised the objection that the charge regarding messages from Masters could not be tried because it would involve the T.S. in dogmatism; and the further objection that the proper place to try me was before my Branch as the alleged acts were not done by the officer, Vice-President. Both of these objections were held good by a unanimous decision of the

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Council of the T.S. consisting of Col. Olcott, B. Keightley and G.R.S. Mead; the Judicial Committee concurred in the decision.

But there was an object in accusing me as Vice-President. The chief prosecutor has said in the presence of many persons that she would not prosecute me as an individual, and that the object of the attack was to make me give up the Vice-Presidency and an office which she called “Successor to the Presidency” but which had no existence. Her letters make it quite plain that there was a plan that as soon as my resignation should be secured Col. Olcott would resign and Mrs. Besant be put up for the Presidency.

This method of attack, calling for the convening of such a prominent and important committee, created widespread and deep excitement in the T.S. for which I cannot be held responsible. The official decision shows that the charge should never have been made in that manner, but should have been before my Branch. The right way has never been adopted because they did not wish that mode. But by the newspapers, by circulars, by virulent public speeches, the prosecutors have continued the attack ever since, and have apparently succeeded in staining my character in the eyes of many people in all parts of the world.

The charge first mentioned having been duly notified to me, the prosecutor drew up what should be called the specifications, but which she and many others continue to call “charges.” They were laid before the Committee, but of course not tried. They were six in number but should have been less; as they are drawn in an unworkmanlike manner by an amateur. But since then several new cases have been brought forward by others and furnished to London newspapers. For all I can tell the original prosecutor may have added new ones also.

When the Committee fell through I was asked to try the matter before a Committee of Honor, which I refused. I have been asked to explain this refusal. That is easy. My friends of

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course would not be allowed to compose the entire body; my enemies were proposed for it; none of those mentioned, pro posed, or available, were occultists capable of trying the questions involved. The main, in fact the only real questions, were whether I was able to communicate with the Mahatmas, had I such communications, and were certain messages declared by me to be from Mahatmas really so or not. These could not be tried as if we were inquiring into a land case or a debt on a note; they must be tried by those who know the Masters and know occultism, or are willing to be guided by the laws and principles of occultism. Hence I refused the Committee. I gave as my outer reason one which was perfectly true, to wit; my witnesses and my case were not ready, I having known in advance that there could be no trial.

Now the accusations rest on documentary proofs. That is: upon letters written by me; upon memoranda not in my hand appearing on those letters; and upon other papers and memoranda, such for instance as an old cablegram to B. Keightley from H.P.B. of many years ago.

There is no testimony which had to be offered by any wit ness in order to sustain the six charges, except as to a conversation between Col. Olcott and myself, the witnesses there being Col. Olcott, Dr. Anderson and myself. The whole case on the side of the prosecution, legally consisted then in simply putting before the judges the documents and the testimony to the conversation, unless they had experts on the question of handwriting, which they should have had.

But, although the charges rested on those documents, the prosecutors simply proposed to give extracts from my letters as suited them and did not propose to put in evidence the entire letters. Mrs. Besant also proposed to indulge in a long argumentative statement, not resting on evidence and such as no court of justice would admit save as a prosecutor’s inflammatory address to a jury. This was to go in, according to the prosecutor-playing-lawyer, as a part of the proofs. This inflam-

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matory and argumentative address the prosecutor has persisted in calling “the evidence.” It is nothing of the sort.¹

Now, as I have already said in print, the prosecutors have kept from me all those documents during all the time I was in London, save at the last as I shall also show you; and they neglected, during that period to give me any inspection of the papers, some of which were over ten years old and all of which I was expected to explain at the risk of my reputation. I speak advisedly that the actions of those concerned raise a weighty presumption of deliberate intention not to let me see the documents. When I arrived, July, 5th, I asked for the documents, for an inspection, and for copies. This was my right, and when we know the fact that open enemies of mine, as well as the press, were given copies and facsimiles of the documents, it was still more imperative for me to have them. They were promised but not given. Day after day, the request was made and promise given but not fulfilled. At the meeting of the Committee, I asked for the copies and for the inspection. Reflect that in the ordinary course of the dreams of the prosecutors, that was the day the papers were to be sprung on me and trial opened. At that meeting Mr. Burrows, representing Europe, declared that I ought to be furnished with copies, to which the prosecutor replied, “Certainly, why of course.” But they were not furnished. On the 19th, my trunk being packed as I had to go to Liverpool to take steamer home, I made a final demand on Mrs. Besant for the papers and inspection. She said, “But I have given them to Col. Olcott the legal owner.” By the way, he was not the legal owner of my letters to H.P.B. I went at once to Col. Olcott, reiterated to him the demand, and he said, “Oh, why I’ve just sent them to India.” “What,” I said, “when did you?” “Just now, they are all packed up and gone off.” “Why Olcott,” I said, “you are not going there for two months, why did you do so? I must see them,”

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¹ She has published this just a week after the reading of this explanation.

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I then went back and told Mrs. Besant what Olcott said, and that I would go to the newspapers and put the thing in the press as my nearest redress. She then ran to Col. Olcott’s room in the next house. In a few minutes she returned and said it was now all right. I then went back to Olcott’s room, Dr. Buck being with me—was then late in the afternoon—and Olcott informed me that he “had made a mistake, they were in his despatch box.” Then in his room I hurriedly examined what papers he had, and took rapid shorthand unverified copies of a few of the shorter ones. Two or three were long letters of mine to H.P.B. and Damodar of years ago; some were long, to Olcott, and one, a long one, contained also a sheet of type written matter by me which is involved in one of the charges. These I could not copy, and I distinctly told him I was only making memoranda and he must furnish me with copies. He promised then, in Dr. Buck’s presence, to send me the copies. To this day it has not been done. Recollect that all of the papers were allowed to get into the hands of W.R. Old, who made complete copies, took facsimiles, and furnished both to a newspaper inimical to Theosophy and Theosophists. Recollect also, that when I had but the general main charge and no details, enemies and newspapers on the Pacific Coast were publishing details sent them from the Indian Headquarters people. And further, three months before the expected trial I wrote the prosecutor demanding full particulars and specifications, ending with these words:—“As a Theosophist I call your attention to the fact that although you and the President know that I have for a long time demanded facts and particulars, I have not yet received them, and that under these charges are facts alleged which I must have time to meet and should be apprised of; and that your action on its face pettifogs the whole case, as if you wished to entrap me when away from my station, as I will be in London. From spiteful enemies on this coast (California) I learn through the daily papers some of the particulars, and yet from you and the President, after months of questioning, I

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obtain nothing but these vague and indefinite charges.” In reply I received a copy of her statement for the committee containing incomplete extracts from the documents. I did not want this paper. It was an inflammatory address. It was my intention to object to the reading of such a paper full of assumptions. Others as well as Old, the Westminster Gazette, Coleman, Shroff—all enemies and some not members of the T.S. even—have had the documents, or seen them, or had copies. A Parsee judge in India writes that for some years he has been conversant with them. This he recently wrote to Dr. Hartmann. It would seem that fear, or a despicable plan to try and entrap me, has made the prosecutors refuse these copies to me. Lastly, Col. Olcott, writing me February 26, 1895, finally violating the promise made, says:

“I don’t know where you get your law from, but hang me if I ever heard of an accused who has been furnished with a copy of the charges pending against him expecting that the documentary proofs in the hands of the Prosecuting Attorney shall be given him before the issue is on for trial. By quashing the trial last July you rendered the papers in my hand non-valid so far as the case stood at that stage. I have given copies to no body: Olds’ copies were taken by him before the action began and while he was the custodian of the documents prior to their coming into my possession. He had no right to take them or to use them. How many duplicates he may have made and given out I cannot imagine.”

Very queer Theosophy and Brotherhood his letter indicates. He gave all the papers to these people; he doesn’t seem to care how many of my enemies may have copies to use and to distort, but it is very certain he is not going to furnish any to me. His law is wrong, for any tyro at the bar knows well that inspection and copying of documents before trial—even the photographing of them—is a legal right. But surely, Theoso- phists should not be more strict than legal procedure is. It must be obvious then, that not having the documents, my present explanation cannot be full and complete in all details.

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I will not be entrapped by attempting to recollect written papers not before me.

Let us now take up the six charges filed by the prosecutor. At the sitting of the Committee a virtue was made of a formal withdrawal of charge No. 1. But I will print it. Indeed it lies at the base of the whole attack as it was intended to destroy my credibility, so that, no faith being given me, it would be easy to build up assumptions for everything and throw suspicion on perfectly innocent acts. The reason given for withdrawing this was that it meant the using of my old private letters to H.P.B., and the prosecutor did not like to face English condemnation of this. This was pure conventionality, for surely the use of my letters to H.P.B.—which I was ready anyhow to concede—was harmless when compared with the violent attack on my good name and fame which the prosecutor was carrying on and has for a year continued quite as virulently. The paper of the so-called charges is as follows. It follows no rule of legal, military, or ecclesiastical procedure with which I am familiar. The real charge was the one sent me by Col. Olcott of misuse of Mahatmas’ names and handwritings; these so-called charges should have been in the form of proper specifications under the main charge.

CHARGES AGAINST WILLIAM Q. JUDGE, V.P., T.S.

1. Untruthfulness, in now claiming uninterrupted teaching from and communication with the Masters from 1875 to the present time, in flagrant contradiction with his own letters written during this period, letters in which he states that he has no such communications, and asks certain persons to try and obtain communications for him.

2. Untruthfulness, in denying that he has sent any letters or messages purporting to be from the Masters, whereas he has sent such by telegram and enclosed in letters from himself to Annie Besant and others.

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3. Deception practised towards H.S. Olcott with regard to the Rosicrucian jewel of H.P.B.

4. Lack of straightforwardness realleged Lodge message on H.S. Olcott’s tenure of the Presidency.

5. The use of a seal to substantiate certain messages supposed to be from a Master, which seal was not His.

6. The sending of messages, orders and letters, as if sent and written by Masters, such messages, etc., being proved to be non-genuine by

(a) Error in matter of fact.

(b) Threat based on a mistake.

Further, probability being against their genuineness and in

favour of their being written by W. Q. Judge, from

(a) Their occurring only in letters from W. Q. Judge, or in letters that have been within his reach.

(b) Their cessation when challenge was made as to their genuineness.

(d) The personal advantage to himself, directly in some cases, and indirectly generally as being the only person through whom such written messages are received.

Further, the possibility of such imitation of known scripts by him is shown by imitations done by him to prove the ease of such imitation.

(Signed) Annie Besant.

March 24, 1894, S.S. “Peninsular,” Indian Ocean.

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No. 1 is almost too absurd to be noticed. It is intended to show that I lied in respect to being in communication with Adepts, Mahatmas, or Masters, and of course to prove a general untruthfulness. Their argument is that because I wrote Col. Olcott in 1894 that I had been helped by Masters and been in communication with them ever since 1875, and had written H.P.B. and Damodar later than 1875 asking for news from Masters, expressing despair, saying the old channel seemed cut off, and that I of all the Theosophists was getting least, therefore I was a liar and was not in communication with the Masters. This is childish. The letters expressed the feelings of the day they were written. They were true. One has his periods of despair. I had when first left here alone. A man cannot always be up to the highest notch. To say that I got the least of all when I did not know what others were getting was only an irritable exhibition of jealousy on my part. Even the greatest of seers have times when all is black, when they might write that everything was cut off; but next day or week the clouds would be all gone. Though I am not a great seer, I am subject like my fellows to changes of feeling. I had periods of darkness very often in those old days. But they went away and the old guidance and help were resumed. The letters them selves assert the facts of guidance and help. So too the recent letter to Olcott is true. It does not mean that every instant I heard from Master. Letters between friends are not strictly construed as that. It was a last attempt to bring him round and out of what I thought was his jealousy of me. Singular pertinacity they have displayed in hunting out these letters—even if withdrawn at the last moment by the prosecutor who had asserted publicly a belief in exactly what I wrote to Olcott, that Master had guided and helped me. But who can know any thing of this but myself? All I can do is to point to the work in T.S. of nearly twenty years which has not been barren of result, and this I am compelled to say from the position I have been forced into.

No. 2 is also of untruthfulness. It should have been a specifi-

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cation under No. 1. This is either based on error as to what I said or is a deliberate misconstruction. But I have no copy of the connected documents. I am charged with denying that I ever sent letters or messages purporting to be from Masters. I have not denied this, because I sent several such messages. But I denied having sent them in the Society. This denial is I believe in a letter to Olcott, and I still make the same denial, although since the charges, I have sent messages to members privately. Many other points are referred to in the letter, as I was endeavoring to show him that he could not find anywhere any evidence that I used messages from Masters as pressure in the business of the Society. All my friends who were intimate with me knew that I had sent messages from Masters and had claimed some as such, but this was done privately, about private business or about the business of the E.S., and not in or about the T.S. For “in the T.S.” means officially, or to officials, or quasi-officially, or upon business of the organization. Other wise every private, or business, or social letter from one member to another would be “in the Society”—and that is absurd.

Charge No. 3 is that I deceived Col. Olcott about a Rosicrucian Jewel. This jewel is a silver emblem set with imitation gems. It is an extended compass within which is a phoenix and a ruby cross. It has a top forming a coronet. It was supposed to be Rosicrucian and belonged to H.P. Blavatsky. It was among her effects in London in 1891 and was given to me by Mrs. Besant. At the same time there was also found by Mrs. Besant a small silver object which she thought was a thing of great power; this she kept. The charge about this jewel is as contemptible as the preceding ones. The conversation which I had with Olcott in California about this emblem was to be used against me by the simple process of inserting a few words which would make it a deception or attempt at mystification by me. As Col. Olcott is quite wrong in his assertion that the conversation took place in the presence of Dr. Anderson, and as his memory is quite defective as many know, my account will have to be taken as the right one. In July 1894, in Lon-

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don, I prevailed on Col. Olcott to join me in a written statement regarding this matter so that we might have for future use and to remedy forgetfulness, an unalterable statement. It is as follows:

Re Rosicrucian Jewel. William Q. Judge and Col. H.S. Olcott hereby together agree in writing that the following states what said JUDGE said to said OLCOTT in October, 1891, in San Francisco, about Rosicrucian Jewel of H.P. Blavatsky at Dr. Anderson’s house.

W. Q. Judge says: Col. Olcott having stated that the jewel was at Adyar, I went into my room adjoining. In a few moments I came back to Col. Olcott’s room and said to him, “Colonel, Master says I may tell you that the jewel is not in Adyar, and you will not find it there.” No more was said and not a single word was uttered by me to the effect that Master had taken the jewel away.

Col. Olcott says: My recollection of the incident differs from the above. At the same time, as I have no notes of the conversation made by me at the time, it is but fair to say that my memory is as likely to have misled me as Mr. Judge’s or Dr. Anderson’s to have misled them. The scene occurred, to the best of my recollection in Mr. Judge’s bed room, which adjoined and connected with mine; the per sons present were Dr. Anderson, Mr. Judge and myself, and we were talking together in a desultory way awaiting the summons to dinner. I described to Dr. Anderson the well-known Rosicrucian jewel which H.P.B. used to wear and which had the mysterious property that the rows of crystals in it would change color, from white to brown or green, when H.P.B. was out of health. I said that on re turning to Adyar I should examine the jewel to see whether the crystals had resumed their proper hue or had perhaps turned black since H.P.B.’s death. Judge, who was standing next to me with folded arms, turned and said: “Olcott, the Master tells me that you will not find the jewel at Adyar.

. . .This will be a test for you of the genuineness of my communications.” The blank space [I have left] I should be

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disposed to fill with words to indicate that the Master had taken it away, but my memory fails me in this respect and I will not venture to say that such words were spoken. The clear impression on me, however, and that which remains, is that Judge was giving me a test of his power to get communications from the Masters; and to satisfy my doubts on this point, as soon as I got to Adyar I hunted for the jewel, and then discovered that I had myself taken it to London in 1888 and returned it to H.P.B. herself.

London, July 18, 1894 H. S. Olcott

Dr. Anderson makes a statement in writing denying that any such conversation took place in his presence or hearing, or any about the jewel. [And at the reading of this paper at Boston, April 29, 1895, before about 200 people, Dr. Anderson rose and publicly denied Col. Olcott’s statement as to his (Dr. A’s) presence.]

We therefore have two witnesses, Dr. Anderson and myself, contradicting Col. Olcott on an important point: hence his account is all doubtful.

A little more of the inside history of the incident is this. The conversation took place just before we went to sleep. Both were undressing and Olcott, who was to leave for Japan next day, spoke of many matters. He finally mentioned the Rosicrucian jewel and stated it was at Adyar. It was among my effects at that date and I wondered whether to tell Olcott and whether, if I did, he would demand it. So I went into my room and asked; “What shall I do?” The reply I got was “You can tell him it is not there and he will not find it there.” If I had simply told him that, and not added the fact that
the Master told me I might so tell him, this absurd charge would not have arisen.
With lapse of time Col. Olcott added many particulars, as is common with those who are not very careful. The “folded arms,” the “waiting for dinner,” the “explanation to Anderson,” are all imaginary. Inasmuch as Olcott and I had for twenty years held together the same belief in the same Master,

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with whom, through H.P.B., I had come in contact only a few months after he had, I naturally told him that Master had just spoken to me, adding what he said. But Olcott’s mind was suspicious, and he did not believe I could hear from Master, so he put my words down to boasting or mediumship. During the same visit to California he one day referred to Mrs. Besant’s statement that she had received messages from Masters, which declaration had made a stir in England, and he accused me of cooking the messages, saying: “Judge, that was a ten-strike of yours, but I advise you not to do it again.”

To this I replied, that any messages given by me to Mrs. Besant were genuine ones, at which he laughed. Then he said that when he heard of her direct assertion in public, that she had received such messages, he thought I had done it. Now, with such ideas about me, it is natural that he should distrust whatever I might say on occult subjects; this has ever been the case with him wherever I have been concerned.

No. 4. A charge of lack of straightforwardness in regard to a Lodge message on Col. Olcott’s tenure of the presidency at the time of his resignation. This is not correctly stated in the charge, for the message from the Master therein referred to is about 0lcott’s resignation, and not about his tenure of the presidency.

Why this charge was made up I do not know. Both Olcott and Besant admit that I got a message from the Master about the matter. Yet this item made a great and disagreeable impression on some of the London Lucifer household of July last. There is some sort of purely technical English conventionality involved in it which I do not understand. They seemed to think that because I had a message from Master by which I guided my own conduct and which I communicated to Olcott, ‘the other person concerned, therefore I did wrong in not also giving it to them, and in allowing them to follow their own nature about his remaining in office. But I was neither obliged nor ordered to tell them. As this charge involves a long letter to Olcott and a page of typewriting, I leave open to correction the explanation I now make.

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A great deal has been said about this resignation question. Indian and Californian calumniators have accused me of sending a bogus message to Olcott demanding his resignation, but I have been silent. But as it is now made as basis of a charge against me, and as agreements made respecting silence have been broken, I shall give facts to which hitherto I have not referred. It was to this event and the doings round about the resignation Miss F.H. Muller referred in an inflammatory speech against me last December at a meeting at Adyar, India, in the presence of Mrs. Besant and Col. Olcott who sat and listened to the untruth uttered by the speaker. She said I had before that made a serious charge against Col. Olcott so as to get him out of the Presidency. Those sitting by, knowing this to be false, said nothing. Is this true Theosophy to sit silent in such a case? It is about time then that something should be said.

When no resignation was thought of and Olcott had just returned to India from the United States and Australia, Mrs. Besant hurriedly took steamer for New York, previously cabling me an ominous message. She arrived here and in formed me that she had come over in such haste in order to lay before me as Vice-President and as the only person she had confidence in, a very grave accusation against Col. Olcott which, if true, not only required his resignation but made him out to be an exceedingly bad man, unfit to be President of the Society for a single hour. She said she was certain of the truth of the charge. And she demanded that I should write him asking his resignation. I took pains to have her repeat the details and charge to some of my good friends in New York, so that I should not be alone in the case. We cross-questioned her as to the facts and as to source of her information. She went over it all in detail and with particularity, and insisted on all and made out a very apparently clear case. We were disposed to give her credit since the matter did not apparently involve herself or her feelings. She had arranged that a London member, a man of means, would go to India as a special messenger so as to avoid all risks from spies at Adyar. It was then finally

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decided that I had better lay the matter before Olcott because I was Vice-President and an old friend of Olcott, and ask him whether, if the charge were true, he had not better resign. But I did this against my inclination and judgment, under great pressure and being also somewhat convinced by Mrs. Besant’s arguments. The special messenger delivered the letter and, although the charge was denied, Col. Olcott put in his resignation of the Presidency.

Later, however, I found for myself that Mrs. Besant had acted hurriedly, impulsively and injudiciously, and that no such letter should have gone from me to Col. Olcott. The resignation was still pending nevertheless and the American April Convention was near at hand. Then, at that date, I was informed by the Master that it was “not wise, nor time, nor just” that Olcott should go out, and that I must change the policy I had outlined in view of the resignation going into effect, and endeavor to get Olcott to revoke. I had had to outline distinctly for my guidance a policy to cover the whole field of Theosophical administration because in a very short time, if nothing interfered, I would have become President. No matter what my private feelings and desires were, I was compelled to adopt a policy regarding all matters connected with the Indian headquarters, with the expenses there, with changes which judgment showed me were essential, and with many other matters. So, the direction to “change policy” which included my favoring or opposing Col. Olcott’s retirement, was very significant.

This direction I immediately began to follow, writing to Olcott in type-written form a portion of what I had been told. The basis of this charge is that type-written paper. And I was very much relieved myself by the order to go the other way, because as all my near and intimate friends know, there was so much to be done in America I did not want to take the Presidency. I find also, that at that date, Mrs. Besant received a letter from me, across one corner of which were these words, signed by the Master, “Ordered to change his policy.” By the

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way, it is curious to note that this particular message which is in the form of writing to which the prosecutor objects and has charged me with forging, has not been incorporated into the charges. The type-written message to Olcott was enclosed separately in the letter. I sent it ‘thus because I was so directed. Intellectually speculating (as is natural) on the reasons for such direction, I came to the conclusion that it was because of the presence of the spies and traitors around Col. Olcott, which fact I had long before discovered psychically. I may refer you to the Path where I printed articles on a Plot against the T.S. solely on this information. Subsequent confessions and the suicide of the defaulting T.S. Treasurer proved that my information was correct. These spies were friends of our enemies and they opened as many of his letters as they could. And at the same time, or near it, that I sent the message to Olcott telling him to revoke, he also received, he says, in India a message himself to the same effect. This, he said, was a voice just as he was waking from a dream. My message was received while I was in possession of all my waking senses. That is just the difference between the two: in substance they were alike.

At the April Convention, I succeeded in having resolutions passed asking him to revoke; but I used arguments only, and no pressure. I said nothing to anyone of having any direction or message although there were many who would have been glad to hear it and accept at once. If I am or was ambitious for office as was and is charged against me, here was the very best opportunity to have taken the position of President, as the present prosecutors were then favorable to me and against Col. Olcott, and with America and Europe I could have out voted India. This, however, was not desired by me, and I thought more of pushing the American work than of taking all the offices in the Society. The actual fact and act conclusively prove that I did not want the office. As the Indian Section was also in favor of revocation, I dismissed that matter from my mind as settled, especially as I saw clearly that he would revoke.

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Later, in July, I went to the London Convention. But nearly all the influential ones at Headquarters disliked Olcott intensely then. They said they were glad he was going out, and they rather resented the Americans trying to make them vote the other way. I found myself hemmed in, with all of them from Mrs. Besant down, unwilling to listen to my arguments and appeals to brotherhood and to Olcott’s long record. Not one was in favor of him. I was then directed not to say anything to them about the message, but to let them act upon their own judgment as I had done all that was necessary to have them do the way that America had done. A notice then came from Olcott which I regarded as a loophole for his dignified revocation, but they said no, and when the Convention met, it of course voted on this in accordance with Headquarters influence—against Olcott.

Afterwards, the staff at London learned that I had the message, and they criticised me for not giving it also to them. Even Olcott wanted to know why I had not used it to make the Section vote right. He forgot that in the outer matters of the T.S. no one had any right to use such occult messages as pres sure; I did not use it in America, nor should I in Europe, and anyway I was forbidden to use it privately. A great deal of doubt and suspicion have arisen among those at Headquarters in London about this matter, but I have given you all of it. I can see nothing in this attack but the working of wounded pride on the part of the few who have taken it up at London. But the charge on it is lack of straight-forwardness. Now as I at once told Olcott, the person concerned, I was guilty of no lack of straightforwardness. To twist it round so as to punish me for not telling all my private affairs to the London staff is childish nonsense. Or else the item was introduced to build up a mass of things small and great against me, so that my case might be made so bad that few, if any, of my statements on the chief matters to follow would be believed.

The remaining two charges are meant to include that particular part of the attack which is based upon the assertion

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that I have manufactured and delivered bogus messages from the Masters. The fifth in order, avers that I have employed a certain seal, alleged to be not Master’s seal, to give a fictitious substantiation to some of these supposedly bogus messages. In the first place, it is impossible to prove that I have used a seal to substantiate messages, even though on the messages there appears an impression of a seal, for no man ever saw me use such a seal. Col. Olcott, Mrs. Besant and Bertram Keightley have united to prove that Col. Olcott had had made, in India, a brass seal, which was an attempted imitation of the signature said to be that of the Master, and that he gave that brass object to Madame Blavatsky. Their testimony is that the last person who saw or knew anything about that brass object is Bertram Keightley. It is not traced to my possession; there is not a scintilla of evidence to show that it ever was in my possession; and I do not think any American court would require me to prove a negative, that it is not and has not been in my possession. But I assert as I have from the beginning that I have not this object, that I never have had it, and that I know nothing whatever about it, as an object, except what I learn from the testimony of those three persons.

It is around this seal and the impressions resembling and supposedly taken from it that most of the confusion has arisen.

The seal itself has been confounded with the impression taken from it and that with its semblance by precipitation. It is well-known to a great many Theosophists,—such for in stance as Countess Wachtmeister, B. Keightley, A. Keightley, Mrs. Cooper-Oakley, George Mead, C.F. Wright and numerous others, that the impression on paper, now said to be that of this seal manufactured for Olcott, has appeared and been seen on messages from the Masters coming through H.P.B., on envelopes from her and other papers connected with her. The impression grew to be called “The Master’s Seal” in London. It was so-called by most of the persons I have named, and it is quite evident that, just as in the case of writing, the Masters adopted two forms of English writing for use in the

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Theosophical Society, so this seal impression was adopted to be used after the signature of one of them whenever he saw fit. Only those who are wholly ignorant of occultism, or those who have merely a theoretical knowledge of it would say “the Master’s real seal” and “the imitation of the Master’s seal,” because no person has ever seen the Master’s seal, either knowingly or unknowingly. He has a seal, but it has never been shown in the Theosophical Society. His real seal is as unknown as is the form of his real writing, which certainly is riot English.

This particular seal impression was one to which I paid no attention for a long time, having seen it but few times during the life of H.P.B., and when I did first see it, I looked at it merely as a mark which she had chosen to impress on the paper for some purpose of her own, until I discovered that it had been adopted for use under the sanction of the Master. It was in 1888, I think, when she told me distinctly that these impressions, made by occult power, were so adopted. And in that year, I sent to America to one person, an F.T.S., at H.P.B.’s request, one of the said impressions made by her on the slip of paper on which it appeared, as a souvenir, at the same time stating to him, as authorized by her, that it was “the Master’s seal,” meaning of course seal-impression. This was perfectly correct; and it is one of the pieces of “evidence” which the prosecutors were hoping to adduce with their own interpretation. I have said in print before now, in Lucifer, that I knew nothing about the Master’s seal, and that the appearance of any quantity of seals on letters or documents was of no consequence to me unless I myself knew the truth about the documents. These perfectly true statements have been misconstrued by the prosecutors into meaning that I assert ignorance of this particular brass object and its impress, however made, whether directly from it or by occult power, and that I denied a well-known fact that the seal-impression was known to me.

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The first piece of writing by me, upon which this seal-impression appears, is—I think—a letter sent to Col. Olcott in December, 1888, from London. The impression is on a blank part of the paper and, as I recall it, there is no reference to it in the letter. This letter was written with Madame Blavatsky’s pen, ink and paper, upon her desk and remained there some little time. There is no mention of the Masters in the letter and I certainly deny, most absolutely and solemnly, having put that impression there. My explanation is that Madame Blavatsky caused the impression to appear by occult power on the paper, as I have seen her often do with other marks and impressions.

After H.P.B. disappeared from the scene, some of the precipitated messages appearing on my letters to the persons I shall name, have this seal—also precipitated—upon them, and some have not.

The rumor has been started that I wrote to London asking Mrs. Besant to erase all seals from letters, papers or messages of mine, and I am asked to explain. I fail to see what difference it makes or what it proves if I did ask to have that done. For if I am assumed to be the fraud Mrs. Besant wishes to make out—a fraud engaged in humbugging her—then I certainly would not expose myself by asking her to erase proofs of fraud. Such a request in this case would rather appear to be evidence of innocence, for it now appears clearly that it is impossible to trace the seal of brass to my possession, while on the other hand, they do trace it, first to Col. Olcott and then to Bertram Keightley with the probability of its being in Mrs. Besant’s house. And as B. Keightley and Mrs. Besant are hand and glove in this prosecution, the circumstances are more against them than against me.

But I deny that I asked to have all these seal marks erased. If I wrote to Mrs. Besant asking her to erase any one certain seal mark, then I shall be able to explain why that single request was made, but cannot do so until I see the letter. If the word is in the plural by having the letter s added to the word seal, or if

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it says “all,” then I say that forgery by alteration has been committed upon my letters for the purpose of aiding the prosecutors.

Before going any further, it is absolutely necessary to make a statement about myself which hitherto I have refrained from making. And now it would not be made were it not that the prosecutors have forced me into the position where I must either state this or be silent; and I am also directed to make it. The prosecutors and their friends try to make people think that it is impossible that W. Q. Judge could have any occult powers and that this case can be decided outside of occult lines. This is improper and impossible. The whole matter has to be examined from the standpoint of occultism—or magic. Well, I have to state, that during all the years since 1875 I have been taught much about occultism by the Masters and their friends, and have been shown how to produce some phenomena, among others the precipitation of writing for the Masters at certain times. This is always in the form to which the prosecutors most foolishly object. These teachings began—not with standing ignorance of it in the part of Col. Olcott, who takes pains to say he knows nothing of it, and that I am probably a medium—in 1875 with H.P.B. In that year, the first precipitation done through me, was effected in New York. Madame Blavatsky told me not to inform Col. Olcott of what I was learning, because of certain special reasons she explained to me but which I need not explain here. From that time he knew nothing of what I was learning or doing with her. And, from that time on, with exceptions when I was physically in unfit condition, or when I allowed doubt, jealousy or other defects of character to interfere, I have been in communication with the Master and friends of his, receiving help and direction from him and them in my Theosophic work and sending for him, very frequently,—I may say hundreds of times—messages to friends and correspondents, without identifying them all as such. But it must not be supposed that because I could do this, and receive help, I could never make a mistake. Those

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who know sufficient about occultism and spiritism are aware that mistakes arise in consequence of the working of the physical brain which is being used. Often some of one’s own peculiarities, even what might be called trivial idiosyncrasies, can and do creep into the message which is reported, but it is very certain that the substance, the main idea, and, in the case of the Theosophical Movement itself, the exact idea, is never confused.

Now taking up the next charge, that I have sent such messages pretending them to be from the Master although in reality, as alleged, emanating from myself, it appears that eight affirmations, or grounds, or bases, are cited by the prosecutor in support of the charge. The first two are entirely false in fact. They allege, first, error in matter of fact and second, a threat based on a mistake. I have, as a matter of fact made no error in any of these messages and no threat whatever is made, either based on a mistake or otherwise. The first alleged error is that in a message said to have been sent by me, the brass seal previously referred to is called “the Lahore brass.” About this I know absolutely nothing. The alleged message was found by Col. Olcott in a letter from Abbott Clark, of California, at a time when I was in California, it is true, but Abbott Clark swears that I could not have done anything with his letter, and that he carried it around in his pocket for some time after it was written, while he waited to procure stamps for mailing it, and did not post it until after I had started for the East. It is in evidence, as admitted by the prosecutor, that the letter in which this message was found was opened in Adyar and for warded from there to Col. Olcott. There were at that time, in Adyar, certain spies and enemies, who gave out information to those who wished to hurt the Theosophical Society and those persons opened letters not addressed to themselves. I cannot repudiate as a fact Mr. Abbott Clark’s letter in which this appeared, but I can and do emphatically repudiate, in tow, the message alleged to have been made by me. In the statement made by the prosecutor, it is taken for granted, as if proved,

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that I was misled by Col. Olcott’s speaking of the Punjab and that I therefore came to the conclusion that the seal had better be called, in this alleged bogus message, “the Lahore brass.” The fact of the matter is that I know nothing about Lahore, or the Punjab, and all my knowledge of this brass seal, considered as an object, is derived from Col. Olcott’s testimony, together with that of Bertram Keightley. Abbott Clark says:

San Francisco, Calif.

April 21, 1894.

I, ABBOTT CLARK, a member of the THEOSOPHIC SOCIETY, do hereby state and affirm as follows:

I have seen it stated in the newspapers that it is charged that

I wrote Col. H. S. Olcott in 1891 to India and that in that letter was some message not known to me and that Col. Olcott re plied asking where William Q. Judge was at the time and that I replied he was in my house.

The facts are: That in 1891, Mr. 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. Bro. 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 lecture, and I stayed at my Aunt’s in 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 Bro. Judge suggested that I write to Col. Olcott as he knew many Buddhist Theosophists and might arrange it better than Bro. Judge, and I then myself wrote to Col. Olcott on the matter showing the letter after it was done to Bro. 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. Bro. 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

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four days and the letter was not mentioned, thought of, nor referred to.

I assert on my word of honor that Bro. 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 Col. Olcott’s absence, and had forwarded it to him; and Dharmapala told me he had seen letters to Olcott on the matter, received in India away from Adyar. The said Charlu in reply also asked me where Bro. 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 but three miles from Santa Ana, as I thought Charlu wished to have Bro. Judge’s dates, but thought also the questions 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 Col. Olcott. When Dharmapala was here he did not bring any message in reply from 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 Col. Olcott which was answered by Gopala Charlu, now dead, saying but little if anything could be done by him. To all this I affirm on my honor.

(Signed) Abbott Clark

Witness Signature,

(Signed) Allen L. Griffiths.

E. B. Rambo.

The next alleged error fact is this. I wrote a letter to Mr. Cooper-Oakley in 1887—at which time he was editing the Theosophist—in which I hinted that two ostensibly different writers in the magazine employing two signatures, were really one and the same person; from the last word in the letter about

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this matter, a red line runs to a marginal message, the words written in blue—”which should not be used to force my, or your, theory on its readers. By order of Hilarion”—after which are some hieroglyphics. The prosecutors claim that this writing is like that of the Master K.H. The fact of the matter is that it is not, nor was it intended to be. It is a precipitation, made by a friend of mine—to wit, the said “Hilarion”—and was in tended, as any person can see, who does not intend to twist and distort everything, to cast a doubt on my statement that they are by one and the same person. This I have learned directly by asking the said “Hilarion” what is the fact. Neither Col. Olcott, nor Mrs. Besant, nor any of the prosecutors, know “Hilarion;” they have heard of him vaguely and even spell his name wrongly. They even have two ideas as to what is his hand writing. But this particular inscription is a precipitation of his handwriting by himself. He certainly knows what he meant.

The next alleged error of fact is that in a letter of mine to Tookaram Tatya, in 1891, there is a short red message asking him to “help my colleague, work with him” signed by the Master. This is alleged to be bogus. They say that it was in tended to make Tatya help me with Prof. Dvivedi in the Oriental Department when, as a matter of fact, the said Professor had already written his letter of acceptance to me. This is simply, to my mind, nonsense. In the first place, the message is genuine. It is a precipitation and, of course it was made through me. My letter was about the Oriental Department, but what I wanted was that Tatya should help me in the whole matter as it was to extend over a long period of time. And I was then negotiating for more than one professor; B. Keightley, at Adyar, having actually, at the time, hired an additional one. As the Master had given to me, before this date, a photo graph of his picture and had endorsed on it a sentence calling me his “colleague,” it is hardly strange that he should use those words to Tookaram Tatya. The insinuation made by the prosecutor is that I was referring only to Prof. Dvivedi. Most certainly I know to the contrary.

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The next charge is that a message makes a threat, on the basis of a mistake. The letter is to Col. Olcott, in 1891. The words of the message, which are in red, are “I might tell him of your poison interview with. . . (name omitted here.)” The explanation thereof is this. There is not the slightest doubt in my mind that sentence was precipitated in that letter, through me, without my knowledge at the time. It is unfinished, but would have been completed but for the alteration of conditions at the time and various hindrances unnecessary to relate. it grew out of the fact of Mrs. Besant’s explicit statement to me that a certain person (whose truthfulness we had no reason to doubt) had thrown out hints about Col. Olcott’s being a man capable of administering poisons, and her further averment, at the same time, that Madame Blavatsky had hinted the same thing to her. This is not the first time Mrs. Besant has made to me accusations of a serious character against other persons. The statement did not command my credence, but at the same time I was disturbed by it and it caused some grave questions to arise in my mind. It influenced me to endeavor to procure from occult sources information on the subject, and I did obtain at least partial information. All this caused the precipitation of that incomplete message in the letter, which would have been finished and been a good deal longer were it not for the disturbance of the conditions necessary for its completion. It would then show that the Master might tell, or explain, to me about the poison interview which had been a weight on my mind but that the doubts and suspicions then existing on both sides prevented any useful messages being sent for mutual use. The person who should have least reason for surprise at the revelation in this explanation is Col. Olcott, for I have a letter from him in 1892 in which he says:

“What do I mean by ‘poison’? well you will learn in time; the simple fact is that certain people had the damnable wicked ness and impudence to hint that I might use it on third parties. Damn them.” The “people” he referred to were in England.

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The next averred reason is “triviality.” The prosecutors choose to say that they know what a Mahatma would write under all circumstances. One “triviality” is the name “Henry”; another to “tell a date”; another “Do you think S. would snip off a bit from a message?” Answer “Yes.” The prosecutor declared that Mr. Sinnett declined to “snip off a bit,” but the fact is that, afterwards or at that time, Mr. Sinnett did “snip off a bit” which he caused to be submitted to me, through Bertram Keightley, to learn what I would say about it. Dr. and Mrs. Keightley are witnesses to this fact. The prosecutors seem to think that if a message is not immediately and apparently applicable it is bogus. Another alleged triviality is the appearance on a letter from me to a servant of Madame Blavatsky in India, after her death, of the word “Yes,” in red, on the margin, connected with a statement in the letter that I was his friend. What nonsense this all is.

The next reason given to show, in the opinion of the prosecutor, that all the messages are bogus, is that they only occur in letters from me, or on paper that I have touched, or at least had near me. In a court of law, perhaps this would be a good reason, perhaps also those whose mechanical minds do not permit them to know occultism may so esteem it. But, as a matter of fact, if the messages occur only in that way, it means that I am the only person through whom, at present, they can occur, and if they do not occur in conjunction with the prosecutors, it is because they are not persons through whom such manifestations can happen. In other words: with what person should they occur if not with me?

It is further averred as another alleged reason for the charges against me, that the receipt of the messages by those persons ceased when a challenge was offered as to their genuineness. It is perfectly certain that, as soon as the prosecutors showed their hands, challenged messages, expressed doubts and alleged suspicions against me, no more messages would be delivered to them, except under special circumstances. They stopped of course, in regard to these personalities, but they

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did not stop in other places and cases where repellant suspicions did not exist and where they have still been received whenever occasion demanded and conditions permitted it. The only exception to this has been that, by order, one message was sent to Mrs. Besant after the attempted settlement in July, 1894. It was a short message, coupled with a statement that it was sent to her without explanation and for her to find out whether it was written, manufactured, precipitated, or what not. To this day she does not know whether it was written by hand in waking consciousness, or a state of trance, or a half-cataleptic condition, or automatically while conscious, or precipitated from the Akasa;—but she has written to certain persons in America that she has decided it is bogus.

The next reason given is that the messages only display such knowledge as I possess. I do not know how well informed the prosecutors are as to the limitations of my knowledge. They cannot know its extent and the statement they make is untrue. They first take up the matter of the Rosicrucian jewel—to which I have already referred—and attempt to show that the limitation of knowledge in the message was my knowing that I had the jewel. But the fact is that what I was told by the Master was advice that I might tell Olcott he could not find the jewel. It was not offered to Olcott as a statement of information given me by the Master.

The next reason advanced is that I gain an advantage from these messages, inasmuch as they tend, says the prosecutor, to make people think that I am the only person through whom they can come. This, to my mind and certainly to those hundreds of persons who know me and my work in America, seems to be a childish as well as ignorant statement. The messages are few in number. They are sent privately. They do not direct anything to be done for my benefit. They were never published by me. I never referred to them in public. I never gave out that I could get messages until these people, by their false accusations, forced me to make the avowal. In every way these messages have been a source of annoyance to me and it

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is a sincere satisfaction to myself that they have to be stopped in respect to those persons who have shown themselves incapable of understanding either them or me. Others, in America, can and do get messages from the Masters.

The last item brought forward by the prosecutor should, if a good piece of evidence, have been produced in the beginning of the charges. It is a letter written by me when I was in India in 1884, to the Parsee Judge Khandalavala, at the time of the Coulomb charges against Madame Blavatsky. He had written to me asking me to look at the originals of the published letters, if possible, and give him my opinion. I did see some of those letters and wrote to him on the subject, which was whether any of those letters could have been tampered with. In the middle of the letter I gave him four samples of imitations of handwriting which I say are written by a friend, the words being “witness these, by a friend,” after which follow bad imitations of Col. Olcott’s, Madame Blavatsky’s and other signatures. I also refer to a clever forgery, by Mme. Coulomb, of Dr. Hartmann’s handwriting. This letter proves nothing what ever except that I wanted to show this man that forgery could be committed. The prosecutor has hoped to make it appear by this letter, that the execution of a forgery was nothing to me. But if it be put forward to sustain that view, it is weak, because the imitations in it are poor, whereas the prosecutors say that my alleged imitations in messages are perfect. It could be used against me by suppressing the words, “witness these, by a friend.”

A number of other charges have been brought forward that I imposed on Mrs. Besant, Bertram Keightley, and meetings of Theosophists, and allegations have also been made of attempts to impose on Colonel Olcott. Of these I will take up those that are not actually puerile. There is a note in pencil of my own to Colonel Olcott which is published in the Westminster Gazette reading as follows:

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“Dear Olcott, Master says he has sent you a message in a queer envelope and you are to look for it.” This is quite true. I did write that to Olcott because that was said to me. The same newspaper publishes what purports to be a facsimile of an alleged bogus precipitation, reading: “I withhold the message until later,” connecting this with my pencil note. I have not seen the drawing from which the newspaper plate of this was made. There was a genuine message to that effect in 1891 to Olcott and for this reason:

On one of Olcott’s letters to me, received just before his arrival in London from Australia, I found on its corner a short line from the Master saying to me, “I have sent him a message,” meaning Olcott. This I showed to Olcott in a cab in which he and I rode up to the Headquarters on his arrival. He read it, and saying, “I have not received it yet,” handed it back to me. Later he asked me again about it and I think I said I did not know yet; at that time the above quoted message came.

Another charge is that a telegram to Bertram Keightley in New York at my office, had on it the word “right” in red in the accepted script, together with an impression of the seal and the Master’s signature. The prosecutors state that this message was opened by me first and then marked by me, after which they say Keightley read it. It is quite possible that if this message was sent to my name over the cable I opened it first. But, I emphatically deny placing those marks upon it. Its subsequent history, is that Madame Blavatsky recovered it in Lon don by producing it suddenly before B. Keightley and several others, after his return to London. Mr. Claude Falls Wright, who was present, says briefly that,

“In my presence and that of B. Keightley, Countess Wachtmeister, and Kenneth Austin, H.P.B. at London, immediately after the arrival of Bert Keightley, took a piece of cigarette paper and looking Bert in the face, while blowing him up for his loss of the telegram, suddenly said with a half smile, ‘Bert, would you like a telegram; wouldn’t you like a telegram, Bert?’ She rubbed the piece of paper between her fingers as she spoke

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and then unfolded it into the lost telegram! On it were several of the very seal marks about which there has been so much dispute. But Keightley claimed the telegram, but she insisted upon its being handed around to the rest of us, desiring us to examine it closely saying, ‘Look, those are the Master’s marks, look, you may have some day to know them again.’ Then she went on to say that we might mention the matter to anybody we chose, except Judge, for, she said, he does not want to be associated in any way with phenomena.

(Signed) Claude Falls Wright.”

Clearly if I am a fraud about this seal and seal-mark, then so was H.P.B.

Another false charge is about a paper which turned up at a private meeting. On this were the words, in the accepted script, “Judge’s plan is right.” This paper was discovered by Mrs. Besant among the other papers directly after reading the plan proposed by Judge.

This message was precipitated then and there through me. I have it now. The Westminster Gazette tries to show that it was a prestidigitation by me, but let me read you the statement signed by even my present official accuser and other friends. This has already been given out to the public, so that I am not violating any confidences.

“The plan for the reorganization of the E.S.T. rendered necessary by the passing away of H. P. Blavatsky, was laid before the English division of the General Council by Annie Besant, who had in her possession a bundle of letters from which she read extracts. These constituted William Q. Judge, H.P. Blavatsky’s representative with full powers in America, and appointed Annie Besant as Chief Secretary of the Inner Group (‘the highest grade in the E.S.T.), and Recorder of the Teachings. These were the documents upon which the reorganization of the School was based, and the recognition of William Q. Judge and Annie Besant as its Outer Heads was made. The arrangement was rendered inevitable by these let-

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ters of H.P. Blavatsky, its Head, and nothing beyond her expressed directions was necessary to ensure its acceptance by the Council. Towards the close of the proceedings a message was received from Master, ‘Judge’s plan is right.’ This was written on a small piece of paper found among the papers in the sight of all by Annie Besant. This message bore the impression of a seal, and the impression was recognised by Countess Wachtmeister and others as that of the Master, being identical with impressions on letters received during the life time with us of H.P. Blavatsky.

“The message was received as a most satisfactory sign of approval of the arrangement proposed, but that arrangement was in no sense arrived at in consequence of it, being, as above stated, based on H.P. Blavatsky’s own letters and accepted as by her directions.

(Signed)

Constance Wachtmeister, W. Wynn Westcott,

G.R.S. Mead, Laura M. Cooper,

Annie Besant, Alice Cleather.

“I myself selected from among many letters of H.P.B.’s those referred to above, and tied them together. There was no paper with Master’s writing bearing above words among them before the meeting.

London, July 14, 1893. Annie Bessant”

Claude Falls Wright makes the following statement:

“At the meeting of the Councillors of the E.S.T. held in the Blavatsky Lodge Hall at 19 Avenue Road, London, Eng land, on the afternoon of Wednesday the 27th May, 1891, a message from the Master among documents read by Annie Besant was found by her in full sight of all present. Annie Besant was sitting at a small table several feet distant from the group of Councillors, who sat opposite her while she read the

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documents. William Q. Judge was not seated by her at the time, but among the group and on the left side of the hail. Annie, after reading the plan proposed by Judge, went on to read a paper on which were the words, ‘Judge’s plan is right.’ Mr. Judge asked her to read that again as he did not understand it to have been among the other papers. She did so, and then for the first time seemed to comprehend that it was a message that had just been sent. On the paper were the signature of the Master and the seal-mark I had seen on papers received and precipitated by H.P.B. Annie then stated that she had had the documents previously for some time in her possession and that this paper was certainly not among them when she brought them into the room, and they had not left her hands. The Countess Wachtmeister then asked to see the paper, and having examined it said, ‘Yes, that is Master’s seal-mark!’ The slip was then handed round to all.

(Signed) Claude Falls Wright.

New York, April 24, 1895.”

“Dear Mr. Judge: At the meeting of the E.S. held at the Astor House, subsequent to H.P.B.’s death, sister Annie Besant stated, in the most positive and unqualified manner, that the message from the Master which she found at the meeting of the Council of the E.S. in London, amongst other papers, could not have been placed there by you or any one else. Her statement was so unequivocal, and made so forcibly, as practically to preclude question or discussion.

Yours most sincerely,

Henry Turner Patterson”

“I agree to the above as being what Mrs. Besant said.

Thaddeus P. Hyatt.”

“Mr. Patterson’s statement is correct. William Main.

464 Classon Ave., Brooklyn, December 6th, 1894.”

Afterwards, again in America, Mrs. Besant reiterated this statement and confirmed it before a great many persons at dif-

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ferent meetings. The evidence of these persons is procurable. The statements made in the Westminster Gazette as to this matter are from beginning to end either garbled or foolish or false.

What remains of any importance are messages delivered by me to Mrs. Besant. These I have never denied. I delivered them. They were genuine. She is and always was incapable of deciding as to their genuineness, having to rely on me or others. She has publicly admitted that she thinks their gist or contents were from the Master—hence genuine. She then went further than her knowledge would warrant in saying that they were not precipitated by the Master, and admitted that she did not know in what way they were made. Her opinion either way on this matter is, however, of no consequence, as she has no means of her own of deciding anything about the occult side of such matters. She having, according to her own statement, deluded the public by saying she had had messages from the Master which I in fact delivered to her, perhaps she is deluding the public now. Also, while accusing me of deluding her by allowing her to think that the Master had personally precipitated the message delivered to her, it does not seem to strike her or her friends that her public statement in the Hall of Science, to which she pledged her sanity, her intelligence, and her integrity—was precisely in effect the same offence with which she charges me. By thus personally pledging her self, she made the public and Theosophists think that she had received these messages directly instead of through me. I did not tell her to do so, nor did I lead her to think anything about the messages, and I do not consider it fair for her and her friends to have made this a strong point against me in her public statements.

All the messages I delivered to her were private and for her direction and every one was genuine. I do not make these statements for the purpose of hitting at Annie Besant or any one else, for I have no desire to do that and nothing to gain by it; but I think it has now become a matter of necessity that

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the Theosophical public at least should be informed more fully on these points.

I made a clear and true statement at the July Convention and Mrs. Besant made another statement, it being agreed then by her most solemnly that these should finish the matter and that it should not be carried any further. I made my statement very briefly, in perfect good faith, so as to make it as easy as possible for her. I could have explained then just as well as now, but did not do so because I was directed to wait.

For those of us who believe in the existence of the Masters and their exalted character and ethics, there are, in this case, absurdities, dilemmas and contradictions created by Mrs. Besant—and spread by her friends over the world as against me—which should dispose of her charges while they leave her in a pitiable light.

She and her near associates admitted as late as July last that I was a friend of the Master, that he helps me, that I not only heard in the past from him but had heard up to near that date; she said to many that she knew all the above to be true, and that I not only was helped and guided by the Master but that he had shown himself to her through my physical personality. Further than all that, she publicly admitted that the contents of the Master’s messages given to her by me were in fact received by me from the Master. She also admitted that in September, 1893,—which is after the dates given for the alleged wrongful acts—the Master sent me a message of thanks for and approval of all my work in the field of Theosophy. This certainly would include messages sent on his behalf. And she also knew that H.P.B. gave me a photograph of the Master’s picture on which he signed a sentence calling me his colleague.

Yet in face of all these facts and admissions she pursues me all round the world with charges such as I have been dealing with, while she privately claims that the same Master directed her to so pursue me.

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Now, if she is right, then it must follow that the Master she portrays is a Mephistopheles who wishes to destroy those who in any way trust or follow him. She makes him in September, 1893, thank me for my acts, and some few months after, she has him egging her and others on to try and convict me of forgery and false pretence, with a destruction of my character added as a final possible result. But if we take her admissions about me and my genuine messages and my standing, as true, and construe them with our best reason, as we must, then she and her coadjutors are all wrong from beginning to end.

Again, if she denies the genuineness of the photograph and its inscription, she has to charge H.P.B. and myself with conspiracy and fraud in getting up the inscription, the hand writing of which is H.P.B.’s, the signature being the Master’s. (Loud Applause.)

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At this point Dr. J. A. Anderson moved the following resolution which was carried by acclamation and with loud applause:

“That this meeting considers the explanation and reply just read for Brother Judge perfectly satisfactory, but that so far as we who are present are concerned, it was not necessary.”

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N0TE.—Theosophical Articles by William Q. Judge, Volume II. pp. 290-338, contains other writings and statements on this controversy that appeared in the Path. These are also available in pamphlet #27, “Issues in the T.S.”