Laura Holloway, Theosophy and the

Mahatmas

David Pratt

January 2014

Contents

Introduction
Events in London
Psychic phenomena
The masters’ portraits
Visit to Elberfeld
Return to London
Aftermath: Holloway
Aftermath: Sinnett
Holloway’s later life
Holloway v. Sasson

Introduction

Laura Carter Holloway was born on 22 August 1843 in Nashville, Tennessee, the sixth
of 14 children of Samuel J. Carter, a farmer and innkeeper, and his wife, Anne. In 1862
Laura married Junius B. Holloway, an officer in the Union Army, and they had one child,
George, two years later. They separated within a couple of years, and for the rest of her
life Laura deducted five years from her age to obscure this part of her history; she also
claimed to be a widow. In 1866, after the end of the Civil War, she and her family left the
South and moved to Brooklyn, New York, where she pursued a career as a journalist
and author, and also lectured on social issues. Her second book, The Ladies of the
White House (1869), sold around 100,000 copies.1
 Laura Holloway in her thirties.

Laura Holloway was convinced that all religions shared essential truths, and was
particularly attracted to spiritualism. Among her close friends she was reputed to be a
gifted clairvoyant and medium. During the late 1860s and early 1870s, she published
spiritualist poetry and short fiction under her own name, but she then ceased to publicly
identify as a spiritualist, to safeguard her reputation. In 1873 she joined the staff of the
Brooklyn Daily Eagle, and wrote a great deal about women’s issues, especially the need
for economic independence. She occupied the post until early 1884, when she went on
a trip to Europe. In the late 1870s, she became closely allied with the Shakers; she
admired their ideals of celibacy and equality and their belief in spiritualism.

In the 1880s Holloway became interested in theosophy. Two introductory books that had
a major influence on her were The Occult World (1881) and Esoteric Buddhism (1883),
written by Alfred Percy Sinnett, largely based on his correspondence with Kuthumi (Koot
Hoomi, KH), one of the mahatmas closely connected with the formation of the
Theosophical Society in 1875. In January 1883 Holloway met William Quan Judge, a
leading TS official, who also lived in Brooklyn, and she joined the Society the same
year. Judge held sittings with her during which she would see visions, which were then
recorded and discussed.2 Previously she had seen the ‘spirits’ of her mother and other
dead relatives, but now she began to see astral forms of living beings bringing
knowledge and guidance – one of them was a Hindu, another a European.3 The
mahatmas indicated that they or their chelas were involved in some of these psychic
experiences.4
Holloway later gave testimony about these experiences to the British Society for
Psychical Research (SPR).

[S]he reports herself to have distinctly and repeatedly seen Koot Hoomi in
‘astral body,’ in a country distant from India, before she had even seen his
picture (which she subsequently recognised), and without discovering who
he was; that she acted on communications made to her in these interviews;
and that these communications were afterwards confirmed by letters in the
Koot Hoomi handwriting, addressed not only to Madame Blavatsky and
others, but to Mrs. X. [Holloway] herself, under such conditions that no other
person, as she maintains, could possibly have had a hand in them.

In its preliminary report, the SPR committee described her as ‘an exceptionally
conscientious, accurate, and trustworthy informant’.5

According to Holloway, the main reason for her trip to Europe in 1884 was the receipt of
a letter from Helena P. Blavatsky, who – along with Judge and Colonel Henry S. Olcott –
was one of the three main founders of the Theosophical Society. Holloway later wrote: ‘I
longed to know her, and to learn from her the meaning of some of the psychic
experiences I had before Mr. Judge left America.’6 At that time Blavatsky was on a visit
to Europe. She arrived in Paris with Olcott on 28 March 1884, where they were met by
Mohini M. Chatterji (a young Brahmin chela of KH), who had sailed with them from
India, and Judge, who was on his way to India. In a letter to Holloway dated 24 April
1884, Blavatsky wrote:

[A]ll you saw and experienced [in Brooklyn] was true albeit perhaps in some
small details ... I am not permitted to reveal all that I now know or could
discover. Time and your own powers will reveal all to you.7

At Blavatsky’s invitation, Holloway visited her in Paris, arriving in late May or early June.
Judge was still in Paris at the time, as the masters had ordered him to stop awhile and
help with the writing of The Secret Doctrine.8

In a letter to Olcott dated 30 April 1884, Judge referred to Holloway in the following
terms: ‘... I have got now a magnificent coadjutor, if not a successor to H.P.B. and one
who has trained scientific methods of literary work, as well as psychical abilities of the
kind that make H.P.B. so remarkable.’ Blavatsky suffered recurring ill health and Judge
thought that the masters would grant her wish to ‘vanish’ if Holloway was found suitable
as a channel for occult communications. He remarked that while someone was extolling
Holloway, ‘H.P.B. leaned back and said, “O my God, if I shall only find in her A
SUCCESSOR, how gladly I will PEG OUT!” ’9

Holloway became a pupil of KH and received several letters from him, but ultimately
failed to withstand the tests of chelaship, and, as with A.P. Sinnett, the correspondence
ceased. Holloway collaborated with Mohini in writing Man: Fragments of Forgotten
History, published in 1885. This book too failed to meet expectations. The reasons for
these failures will become clear below.

References
Abbreviations:
Mrs. Holloway and the Mahatmas, Daniel H. Caldwell (comp.), Blavatsky Study
H&M
Center, blavatskyarchives.com, 2012
The Letters of H.P. Blavatsky to A.P. Sinnett, Pasadena, CA: Theosophical
LBS
University Press (TUP), 1975 (1925)
Letters from the Masters of the Wisdom, Adyar, Madras: Theosophical
LMW
Publishing House (TPH), 1973/77
The Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett, A. Trevor Barker (comp.), TUP, 2nd ed.,
ML2
1975
The Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett, Vicente Hao Chin (ed.), Quezon City,
MLC
Metro Manila: TPH, chron. ed., 1993

1. Diane Sasson, Yearning for the New Age: Laura Holloway-Langford and late
Victorian spirituality, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2012; ‘Laura
Carter Holloway Langford (1843-1930)’, Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and
Culture, version 2.0, tennesseeencyclopedia.net.
2. Laura C. Holloway, ‘William Quan Judge: a reminiscence’, The Word, vol. 22, Nov.
1915, pp. 75-89 / Fohat, vol. 10, no. 1, spring 2006, pp. 15-22.
3. Yearning for the New Age, p. 63.
4. MLC, #126, pp. 422-6; ML2, #62, pp. 351-6.
5. First Report of the Committee of the Society for Psychical Research, appointed to
investigate the evidence for marvellous phenomena offered by certain members of
the Theosophical Society, 1884, blavatskyarchives.com.
6. Daniel H. Caldwell, ‘Mrs. Holloway and the mahatmas’, 2000,
blavatskyarchives.com.
7. H&M, pp. 62-3.
8. ‘Extracts from letters written by William Q. Judge from Paris’, The Word, vol. 15,
April 1912, pp. 17-24.
9. The Theosophist, vol. 53, Nov. 1931, pp. 201-2; Charles J. Ryan, H.P. Blavatsky
and the Theosophical Movement, TUP, 2nd ed., 1975, p. 289.

Events in London

After Holloway arrived in London from Paris on 13 June 1884, KH wanted her to work
with Mohini on their book at the house of Mary Anne Arundale, who lived with her
daughter, Francesca, at 77 Elgin Crescent; Blavatsky, too, stayed there when she
arrived in London shortly afterwards. A.P. Sinnett and his family had resettled in
England in April 1883, after his theosophical sympathies caused him to lose his job as
editor of the Anglo-Indian newspaper, The Pioneer, a post he had held for over 10
years. Sinnett invited Holloway to stay at his home, and Blavatsky later explained to
Sinnett what she had advised Holloway:

I said I saw no reason why she should not take rest – that the only order I
had received and which I know was in my Master’s letter to you was that she
should sleep at Mrs. Arundale[’s] every night, that she should come, in short
to live at their house if she wanted to write her book.1
 Laura Holloway.

However, Holloway did go to stay with the Sinnetts, and during this time Sinnett
mistakenly believed he was able to communicate with KH through her. In his
autobiography (1912), he wrote:

About this time Mrs. Holloway, a wonderfully gifted American psychic came
to stay with us ... She used to get vivid clairvoyant visions of the Masters, –
could pass on messages to me from K.H. and on one occasion he actually
made use of her to speak to me in the first person.2

In the second week of July 1884, Blavatsky received a letter from KH containing the
following:

Give her [Holloway] this as a help, now that she saw under my direct
influence, something she never has when giving bogus and fancy messages
to Mr. Sinnett purporting to come from me – she shall feel better and
stronger. Let her know thro’ this letter that it is we indeed who wanted her
and have caused her to come to Europe. It is Darb. Nath [Darbhagiri Nath, a
chela of KH] again and two others who were commissioned to set her writing
her book. It is all important she should write it and that it be published before
the end of the year. But unless she does Mohini’s bidding – who will have
direct orders from me – and follows out strictly the path prepared for her
under M’s orders [i.e. mahatma Morya, HPB’s teacher] she will make of it a
wretched failure. Every word that she repeated to you was said under my
influence. Anything said to the contrary by student – or any bogus astral
 chela is – a lie. Unfortunately for her she sees men as they appear to her
now – let her have patience and she will see things as they are without any
direct help from us. ... I am sorry for Mr. S[innett], very sorry, but since he
rejects those I send to him, ‘resents’ words uttered by Mohini under my direct
influence and refuses to be the ‘O.L.’s [Old Lady’s, i.e. HPB’s] messenger’
when the message comes from M., then his intuition is entirely at fault. Let
Mrs. H. sit no more for anyone – for her clairvoyance is entirely
untrustworthy owing to various bad influences: it will soon come back to her.3

In another letter to Blavatsky, received in mid-July, KH wrote:

Mrs H. sees better than she hears. She has either to allow herself to be
developed gradually and listen to the advice of our chelas or – to give up the
thing – which would be a pity. She does not discriminate well between the
things shown to her by chelas sent and the transference of ideas from the
mind of the one she sits for and which, of course, reflect that one’s personal
prejudices, preconceptions and inherent likes and dislikes. She too often
forgets what she has read or learnt about the laws of ‘animal magnetism.’
And this because she is a very impressionable sensitive as well as a born
clairvoyante. She has been playing with fire recently by acting the medium
for a bhuta [i.e. an astral shell, or kama-rupa, of a deceased human] in this
house. Warn her of the danger to her no less than to others – and warn Mr
Sinnett.4

KH also said that Holloway and Mohini should continue their ‘writing séances’ at the
Arundales’ home.

Blavatsky allowed Gerald B. Finch (then president of the London Lodge) to see this
letter. He passed it on to Sinnett, who then showed it to Holloway. In his next letter to
Blavatsky, KH expressed his displeasure, as this had caused ‘an unexpected shock’ to
Holloway’s ‘highly nervous and sensitive being’. He also wrote:

Tell her – or still better send her this note, since nothing seems likely to
reassure her except a message from one of us – that she has [done] nothing
at all that any one of us could disapprove of, except doing injury to herself.
She labors under the very kind but erroneous and injurious notion that, since
she has done it (consoling the elementaries [astral shells]) all her life – she
cannot be doing wrong in continuing to do so. Fatal error! She has, she does
wrong, a most serious one to herself: for she has thereby been for years
systematically destroying her health. This relationship during the course of
which the unclean shells have been constantly absorbing a part of her vitality
brought her to become the highly nervous and sickly sensitive. ... And let her
be impressed with the fact that whenever she thinks she sees a chela
appearing with, or seeming to take an interest, or show any connection with
those astral vampires – she yields simply to the cunning and crafty ways of
the shells. No Gelukpa chela ever meddles with the earth-bound remnants of
humanity ...
Comfort and console the poor suffering heart; assure her that tho’ neither
of us ‘masters’ can have as yet direct dealings with her, for she is a woman
as yet uninitiated and unprepared by a special and severe training and
physiological re-formation – yet we are quite ready to watch over and
 communicate with her by intermediate agencies.5

The theosophical teaching that mediums who contact the dead are usually contacting
only the decaying personal remnants or astral shells (kama-rupas) of the deceased,
rather than their higher souls, aroused fierce opposition from the spiritualist movement.
Laura Holloway later wrote:

Madame Blavatsky made friends and enemies everywhere she appeared by

the scathing denunciations of Spiritualism she uttered – friends of its
opponents, and enemies of its adherents. … She denounced mediumship
and denied the possibility of communication with the departed dead, except
in the case of ‘shells,’ ‘fragments of humanity and elementary spirits.’ They
would not listen to her statement of the old Hindoo ideas as to the state of
man after death, nor would they hear patiently the dangers of mediumistic
intercourse, or the ‘brutal selfishness,’ as she expressed it, of dragging back
the dead to gratify idle curiosity, feed self-conceit, and soothe selfish and
unnatural grief.6

In a letter to Blavatsky, received in mid-July, mahatma M wrote:

Had she [Holloway] been docile to advice given to her, had she avoided to
fall daily under magnetic influence that, after [the] first experiment, dragged
her down from the lofty plane of seership to the low level of mediumship, she
would have developed by this time sufficiently to trust in herself with her
visions. ...
You may tell her that if she stops for some time entirely with you [i.e. at the
Arundales’ home] then I can help on behalf of K. He surely has no time just
now. Did not she herself feel that after she had sat near S[innett] for half an
hour or so her visions began changing character? ... Of course she is
serving a purpose and knew it in Brooklyn, but was made to forget by the
other two magnetisms.7

On 16 July, Blavatsky sent Sinnett the following warning:

... I must tell you plainly that Mrs. H. having been sent from America here by
the Master’s wish who had a purpose in view – if you make her go astray
and force her unwittingly into a path that does not run in the direction of the
Master’s desire – then all communication between you and Master K.H. will
stop. I am ordered to tell you so. ...
I verily believe you want to run to your ruin.8

Enclosed with this letter was a note from KH:

The right is on her [HPB’s] side. Your accusations are extremely unjust, and
coming from you – pain me the more. ... She lacks charity, but indeed, you
lack – discrimination.9

Blavatsky then sent Sinnett the following very important message from KH:

My poor, blind friend – you are entirely unfit for practical occultism! ... I am
determined to make one more effort – (the last that I am permitted) – to open
 your inner intuition. If my voice ... fails to reach you as it has often before,
then our separation in the present and for all times to come – becomes
unavoidable. ... Unfortunately, however great your purely human intellect,
your spiritual intuitions are dim and hazy, having been never developed. ...
You ask me if you can tell Miss Arundale what I told you thro’ Mrs. H. You
are quite at liberty to explain to her the situation, and thereby justify in her
eyes your seeming disloyalty and rebellion against us as she thinks. You can
do so the more since I have never bound you to anything thro’ Mrs. H.; never
communicated with you or any one else thro’ her – nor have any of my, or
M.’s chelas, to my knowledge, except in America, once at Paris and another
time at Mrs. A.’s house. She is an excellent but quite undeveloped
clairvoyante. Had she not been imprudently meddled with, and had you
followed the old woman’s [HPB’s] and Mohini’s advice indeed, by this time I
might have spoken with you thro’ her – and such was our intention. It is
again your own fault, my good friend. You have proudly claimed the privilege
of exercising your own, uncontrolled judgment in occult matters you could
know nothing about – and the occult laws ... have turned round upon you
and have badly hurt you. It is all as it should be. If, throwing aside every
preconceived idea, you could TRY and impress yourself with this profound
truth that intellect is not all powerful by itself; that to become ‘a mover of
mountains’ it has first to receive life and light from its higher principle – Spirit,
... you would soon read the mystery right.10

Unfortunately for Sinnett, he refused to accept the authenticity of this letter and several
other KH letters received by or through Blavatsky while she was in London.11 He was
convinced that KH had spoken through and even possessed Holloway at a meeting on
6 July. Blavatsky responded as follows:

It is very strange that you should be ready to deceive yourself so willingly. I

have seen last night whom I had to see, and getting the explanation I wanted
I am now settled on points I was not only doubtful about but positively averse
to accepting. And the words in the first line are words I am bound to repeat
to you as a warning, and because I regard you, after all, as one of my best
personal friends. Now you have and are deceiving, in vulgar parlance,
bamboozling yourself about the letter received by me yesterday from the
Mahatma. The letter is from Him, whether written through a chela or not; and
– perplexing as it may seem to you, contradictory and ‘absurd,’ it is the full
expression of his feelings and he maintains what he said in it. For me it is
surpassingly strange that you should accept as His only that which dovetails
with your own feelings, and reject all that contradicts your own notions of the
fitness of things. ... Had I known last night what I have learnt since – i.e. that
you imagine, or rather force yourself to imagine that the Mahatma’s letter is
not wholly orthodox and was written by a chela to please me, or something
of the sort, I would not have rushed to you as the only plank of salvation.12

Laura Holloway received a letter from KH containing the following warning:

I have written and explained the situation to Mr Sinnett, my attitude toward

both of you and had hoped that I would not have to return to the subject
again. ... [I]f you care for your development, you must say to Mr Sinnett
honestly and firmly this: His persistency to seek further interviews with you
 after I had told him that your magnetisms being so contrary – such
interviews impeded your development and injured greatly its progress shows
plainly that he cares very little for my advice.
I will not claim my right to ‘unswerving obedience’ in everything
concerning his spiritual progress – I never do; I will simply retire from this
arena of quiproquos [French: ‘misunderstandings’] and stubborn opposition
and say no more. As to yourself you are warned for the last time. We have
no time to lose in futile controversies: either you desire further development
under our guidance, or you do not. If the former you cannot meet Mr Sinnett
for some time ... Your actions will determine whether this will be the last
letter of instruction you will receive from me or not.13

In another letter to Blavatsky, KH wrote:

If she [Holloway] has not learnt yet the fundamental principle in occultism
that every idle word is recorded as well as one full of earnest meaning – she
ought to be told as much, before being allowed to take one step further. I will
not tell you her future; nor should you try and see. You known it is against
the rules.14

In a subsequent, long letter to Blavatsky, KH says that Holloway ‘has grown much since
the Brooklyn days’ but will become an accepted chela only when she is ready. Holloway
wanted him to help her write a novel and a poem, and even to help her pay off a debt so
that she could go to India. But he ends his letter as follows:

Let her forget if she can that she is L.C.H. to think of herself only as a slave
to duty, as we are, the path of which is revealed by the atma. Let her ask
nothing but the privilege of showing what she can do unaided, and how
much she can deserve. ‘The gods help the self-helpful.’ One golden word of
counsel: Try.15
 The last page of the KH letter just quoted.

To Sinnett he wrote as follows:

When shall you trust implicitly, in my heart if not in my wisdom for which I
claim no recognition on your part? It is extremely painful to see you
wandering about in a dark labyrinth created by your own doubts ...16

In August 1884, Blavatsky, Francesca Arundale and Mohini Chatterji were invited to
Cambridge to meet members of the Society for Psychical Research (SPR), which was
interested in investigating psychic phenomena connected with the TS. Holloway relates
that Blavatsky told her sadly in her hotel room that she was there to select the
instrument through which the TS was to suffer. After meeting members of the SPR,
Blavatsky told her that the SPR would select Richard Hodgson to go to India. At the
time, Holloway could detect no hostility in Hodgson’s attitude towards Blavatsky and the
TS. The SPR did indeed select Hodgson as its investigator. He visited India from
November 1884 to April 1885, resulting in the publication of a report in December 1885
in which he dismissed Blavatsky as a fraudster, impostor and Russian spy. Holloway
remarks: ‘[W]hen Mr. Hodgson’s report was given to the world I could but regret that he
had not known that she predicted that he would be selected to do what he did, and that
he would do it in the way he did.’17

On 10 August, Blavatsky, Holloway, Mohini Chatterji, the Arundales, Bertram Keightley

and Gerald Finch were sitting around a table in Cambridge when Holloway and Mohini
saw something fall to the ground. A note from KH was found under Holloway’s chair. It
read: ‘You came together – why should you separate before you are all ready. You are
all wanted here for a purpose.’18 As a result, Keightley and Holloway decided to delay
their departure.

References

1. LBS, #38, p. 91.

2. Autobiography of Alfred Percy Sinnett, Theosophical History Centre, 1986, p. 27.
3. H&M, p. 65; Caldwell, ‘Mrs. Holloway and the mahatmas’, letter 2.
4. H&M, pp. 66-71; cf. ‘Mrs. Holloway and the mahatmas’, letters 4 and 7.
5. H&M, pp. 72-5.
6. H&M, p. 13. See Life beyond death: evidence for survival, section 3,
http://davidpratt.info.
7. H&M, pp. 76-9; cf. LMW 1:157-8.
8. LBS, #38, p. 91; H&M, p. 81.
9. MLC, #B, p. 464; ML2, #75, p. 375.
10. MLC, #126, pp. 422-6; ML2, #62, pp. 351-6.
11. Autobiography of Alfred Percy Sinnett, pp. 28-9.
12. MLC, #127, pp. 426-8; ML2, #133, pp. 460-1.
13. H&M, pp. 103-6; cf. ‘Mrs. Holloway and the mahatmas’, letter 10.
14. H&M, pp. 107-8; cf. LMW 1:155-6.
15. H&M, pp. 112-7.
16. MLC, #129, pp. 429-30; ML2, #60, p. 349.
17. H&M, pp. 15-6.
18. H&M, pp. 96-7.

Psychic phenomena

Laura Holloway was witness to various paranormal phenomena produced by Blavatsky.

At a gathering of members of the Paris branch of the TS, after angrily rebuking a young
member who wanted to see her perform some phenomena, Blavatsky relented and
walked across the drawing room to a large mirror. She placed both hands lightly upon it,
and after a brief silence a loud crash was heard, like the sound of breaking and falling
glass – yet the mirror was still intact.

There was a general exclamation of surprise and wonder, and the curious
ones examined the glass critically. As Madame Blavatsky turned away
looking bored and weary, some one suggested that she put her hands on a
pane of glass in the large window in the front part of the room. She did so
and this time we waited longer than before for results. But finally there came
a loud crashing sound, as if some one had struck a mass of glass with a
hammer. The glass was unharmed.1

Holloway also witnessed Blavatsky’s ability to produce a sound like the chime of bells,
‘low and sweet, but perfectly clear’. In addition, she notes that Blavatsky ‘would know
what was going on in other parts of the building, and one day reproached one of the
party for something that was said in the park, fully a mile away ...’2

The letters that pupils such as Holloway received from the mahatmas were transmitted
and produced by paranormal means, just as their own letters reached the masters by
paranormal means. Physically, the mahatma sending such a letter was usually
hundreds or thousands of miles away from the location where it was materialized. He
sometimes precipitated the letter himself, assisted by the sympathetic ‘magnetism’ or
aura of a chela at the location in question; the letter might be seen to fall out of the air or
later be found somewhere in the room. Sometimes the mahatma dictated the letter or
transmitted its mental impression to the chela, who then precipitated it onto paper.3

Helena P. Blavatsky in 1889.

‘I am an old Buddhist pilgrim, wandering about the world
to teach the only true religion, which is truth.’4
On one occasion in London, Holloway went to Blavatsky with a sealed letter that she
wanted to send to KH. Blavatsky told her to put it in an empty drawer of her desk.
Moments later, Holloway asked on a sudden impulse whether the letter had gone and,
before Blavatsky could reply, she pulled open the drawer and found that it had
disappeared. The next morning, while getting dressed, Holloway felt a sudden electric
signal and went to the side of her bed; she saw a red mark growing between her
pillowcase and the pillow, which turned out to be a letter in KH’s handwriting. She later
wrote: ‘Even after the lapse of nearly twenty years, I feel again the spiritual exaltation;
the overmastering sense of gratitude, and humility which possessed me.’5 On another
occasion, she asked Blavatsky what had happened to a letter she had written to KH a
few days earlier, and ‘it suddenly occurred to me ... that it was answered. I ran my hand
into the pocket of my dress and there was a letter folded and sealed in a Chinese
envelope. I have it now and I sometimes read it over for the instruction I get from it.’6

References

1. H&M, pp. 27-8.

2. H&M, p. 19.
3. A. Trevor Barker, ‘The writing of the mahatma letters’, ML2, appendix.
4. H&M, p. 21.
5. H&M, pp. 40-1; First Report of the SPR Committee, appendix 33.
6. H&M, p. 21.

The masters’ portraits

At Henry Olcott’s request, Hermann Schmiechen, a well-known German artist who had
recently joined the TS and was living in London, agreed to paint the portraits of M and
KH. He was shown a profile portrait of M produced for Olcott by an amateur French
artist named Harrisse in New York, based on Olcott’s description plus thought
transference by Blavatsky.1 Schmiechen began work on M’s portrait 19 June 1884 and
finished on 9 July. Olcott visited his studio four times alone and once with Blavatsky, and
says that they were ‘enchanted with the gradual development of the mental image
which had been vividly impressed upon his brain’. Schmiechen ‘gave the face in full
front view, and poured into the eyes such a flood of life and sense of the indwelling soul
as to fairly startle the spectator. It was as clear a work of genius and proof of the fact of
thought-transference as I can imagine.’ Schmiechen made several copies of the
portraits of M and KH, but Olcott says that they lacked the lifelike character of the
originals.2
 Portraits of M and KH.

In a letter to Blavatsky, M wrote: ‘Take her [Holloway] with you to Schmiechen and tell
her to see. ... Say to S[chmiechen] that he will be helped. I myself will guide his hands
with brush for [KH’s] portrait.’3 KH confirmed to Sinnett that the portrait by Schmiechen
‘was painted with M.’s hand on the artist’s head, and often on his arm’.4 Holloway visited
Schmiechen’s studio with Blavatsky and says she saw one of the mahatmas, matching
KH’s description, standing next to him. She also relates that Blavatsky, who was sitting
where she could not see the easel, called out advice to the artist: ‘Be careful,
Schmiechen; do not make the face too round; lengthen the outline, and take note of the
long distance between the nose and the ears.’5 Schmiechen made some final slight
alterations to the portraits in August, when he visited Blavatsky during her stay in
Elberfeld, where he also painted two portraits of her.6

References

1. H.S. Olcott, Old Diary Leaves, Adyar, Madras: TPH, 1900-1941, 1:370-3.
2. Ibid., 3:162-4.
3. H&M, pp. 76-9; cf. LMW 1:157-8.
4. MLC, #129, pp. 429-30; ML2, #60, p. 349.
 5. H&M, pp. 51-2; Daniel Caldwell (comp.), The Esoteric World of Madame
Blavatsky: Insights into the life of a modern sphinx, Wheaton, IL: Quest, 2000, pp.
258-60.
6. Virginia Hanson, Masters and Men, Wheaton, IL: TPH, 1980, p. 257.

Visit to Elberfeld

In late July 1884 Olcott left London to travel to Elberfeld, Germany, to stay with Mary
and Gustav Gebhard and their family, and also to visit other German theosophists.
Blavatsky, her aunt Nadyezhda A. Fadeyev, Laura Holloway, the Arundales, Mohini, and
Bertram Keightley arrived in Elberfeld on 17 August. Holloway had been instructed to do
so by KH. On 4 August, for example, she received a letter from Isabel Cooper-Oakley,
containing an invitation to visit her in the London borough of Enfield with Blavatsky,
Mohini and Francesca Arundale. Across the letter was written a note from KH advising
her to go to Elberfeld.1

On 22 August, Laura Holloway received a letter from KH:

[T]he lake in the mountain heights of your being is one day a tossing waste
of waters, as the gust of caprice or temper sweeps thro’ your soul; the next –
a mirror as they subside, and peace reigns in the ‘house of life.’ One day you
win a step forward; the next you fall two back. Chelaship admits none of
these transitions; its prime and constant qualification is a calm, even,
contemplative state of mind (not the mediumistic passivity), fitted to receive
psychic impressions from without, and to transmit one’s own from within. ...
[Y]ou cannot acquire psychic power until the causes of psychic debility are
removed. Your trouble is that you ‘cannot take in’ the doctrine of shells.
Nevertheless it is not unreasonable emotionalism that can remove a fact
from nature. Your ex-friend is a shell, and one more dangerous for you than
the other shells for his feeling for you was intense and earthly. The little of
the spirituality in it is now in Devachan – and there remains in Kama-loka but
the dross he tried so vainly to repress. And now listen and remember:
Whether you sit for friends in America or London, or elsewhere as
medium – tho’ you now hate the word – or seeress, or revelator, since you
have scarcely learned the elements of self-control in psychism, you must
suffer bad consequences. You draw to yourself the nearest and strongest
influences – often evil – and absorb them, and are psychically stifled or
narcotised by them. The airs become peopled with resuscitated phantoms.
They give you false tokens, misleading revelations, deceptive images. Your
vivid creative fancy evokes elusive Gurus and chelas, and puts into their
mouths words coined the instant before in the mint of your mind, unknown to
yourself. The false appears as real, as the true, and you have no exact
method of detection, since you are yet prone to force your communications
to agree with your preconceptions. Mr Sinnett against his own wish and
unconsciously to himself has attracted about him a cloud of elementaries,
whose power is such over him as to make him miserably unhappy for the
moment and shake his constance. ... I cannot help him; he must help
 himself. ... At this moment he is enwrapped in a mist of maya, and whenever
he approached you, you too were lost in it. I have denied black on white
communicating with him thro’ you. I have never done so, and this I repeat;
but he clings to his unwholesome illusion and by implication makes me a
falsifier. ...
How can you know the real from the unreal, the true from the false? Only
by self-development. How get that? By first carefully guarding yourself
against the causes of self-deception, and chief among them, the holding of
intercourse with Elementaries as before, whether to please friends (?), or
gratify your own curiosity. And then, by spending a certain fixed hour or
hours each day, all alone, in self-contemplation, writing, reading, the
purification of your motives, the study and correction of your faults, the
planning of your work in the external life. These hours should be sacredly
reserved for this purpose, and no one, not even your most intimate friends or
friend, should be with you then. Little by little your sight will clear, you will
find the mists pass away, your interior faculties strengthen, your attraction
towards us gain force, and certainty replace doubts. ...
As for Upasika [HPB] you love her more than you respect her advice. You
do not realize that when speaking of, or as from, us she dares not mix up her
own personal opinions with those she tells you are ours. None of us would
dare do so, for we have a code that is not to be transgressed. Learn child to
catch at a hint thro’ whatever agency it may be given.2

In early September, Francesca Arundale, the treasurer of the London Lodge, received a
letter from KH in which he wrote:

Deeds are what we want and demand. L.C.H. has done ... more in that
direction during two months than the best of your members in these five
years. ...
Think you that the truth has been shown to you for your sole advantage?
That we have broken the silence of centuries for the profit of a handful of
dreamers only? The converging lines of your Karma have drawn each and
all of you into this Society as to a common focus ...3

On 10 September the happy mood of the gathering was dampened when a letter arrived
from Damodar, a chela of KH and one of those left in charge of the TS headquarters in
Adyar, India.4 He warned of a plot against the TS by Emma and Alexis Coulomb, who
lived for a time at the headquarters. The next day an article appeared in The Christian
College Magazine in India publicising the Coulombs’ claims that Blavatsky had
fabricated mahatma letters and produced bogus psychic phenomena with the help of
themselves and other confederates. This attack received financial backing from the
Christian missionaries.

A.P. Sinnett and his wife had not been invited to accompany Blavatsky and others to the
Gebhards; Sinnett resented this and blamed Blavatsky. Instead, the Sinnetts had spent
August travelling through Switzerland. Towards the end of the month Laura Holloway
received a note from KH saying: ‘Better send for Mr. and Mrs. Sinnett as soon as you
can. ... I will make his visit harmless. He is a changed man.’5 Sinnett initially refused to
go, demanding to know why he had not been invited earlier, but Mary Gebhard
managed to persuade him.6 The Sinnetts arrived on 1 October.
Sinnett received his next letter from KH sometime in the next four days. It is written on
Laura Holloway’s notepaper, and the envelope bears the words: ‘A.P. Sinnett, Esq., c/ of
L.C.H.’ – which Sinnett took to mean that KH had used Holloway as the intermediary
rather than Blavatsky.

And now, friend, you have completed one of your minor cycles; have
suffered, struggled, triumphed. Tempted, you have not failed, weak you have
gained strength, and the hard nature of the lot and ordeal of every aspirant
after occult knowledge is now better comprehended by you, no doubt. Your
flight from London and from yourself was necessary; as was also your
choice of the localities where you could best shake off the bad influences of
your social ‘season’ and of your own house. It was not best that you should
have come to Elberfeld sooner; it is best that you should have come now.
For you are better able now to bear the strain of the present situation.

Referring to the Coulomb conspiracy, KH continues:

The air is full of the pestilence of treachery; unmerited opprobrium is

showering upon the Society and falsehood and forgery have been used to
overthrow it. ...
Those who have watched mankind through the centuries of this cycle,
have constantly seen the details of this death-struggle between Truth and
Error repeating themselves.

Regarding Holloway, he writes:

We have gained our object as regards L.C.H. She is much improved, and
her whole life hereafter will be benefited by the training she is passing thro’.
To have stopped with you would have been to her an irreparable psychic
loss. ... [H]er mind was being rapidly unsettled and made useless as an
occult instrument. False teachers were getting her into their power and false
revelations misled her and those who consulted her. Your house, good
friend, has a colony of Elementaries quartering in it, and to a sensitive like
her, it was as dangerous an atmosphere to exist in as would be a fever
cemetery to one subject to morbific physical influences. You should be more
than ordinarily careful when you get back not to encourage sensitiveness in
your household, not to admit more than can be helped the visits of known
mediumistic sensitives. It would be well also to burn wood-fires in the rooms
now and then, and carry about as fumigators open vessels (braziers?) with
burning wood. You might also ask Damodar to send you some bundles of
incense-sticks for you to use for this purpose. These are helps, but the best
of all means to drive out unwelcome guests of this sort, is to live purely in
deed and thought. The talismans [locks of KH’s hair] you have had given
you, will also powerfully aid you if you keep your confidence in them and in
us unbroken. (?)7

On 4 October, Holloway received a short letter from KH, in which he said:

If S[innett] gives you a letter addressed to me take it in silence and place it

under the cloth on the spot you will have found the present and without
attracting to this H.P.B.’s attention. I want from you silence, and no more. I
 will try during the day to have his letter taken, and send an answer. ... But
Sinnett must never know that I do not correspond direct with you.

The letter was addressed: ‘To L.C.H. – Read this and show it to no one.’ According to
Holloway:

I disobeyed this instruction, and instead of doing as directed I went to

Madame Blavatsky’s room, handed her the letter and told her I declined to
receive from Mr. Sinnett any letter, or to speak to him again on the subject of
the Masters or their letters.
She made no reply, and I left her presence.8

References

1. H&M, pp. 92-5, 109-11.

2. H&M, pp. 118-23; cf. LMW 1:147.
3. LMW 1:16-20; H&M, p. 126.
4. Olcott, Old Diary Leaves, 3:187.
5. H&M, p. 128.
6. A.P. Sinnett, The Early Days of Theosophy in Europe, London: TPH, 1922, pp. 72-
3; Autobiography of Alfred Percy Sinnett, pp. 29-30.
7. MLC, #130, pp. 431-4; ML2, #55, pp. 322-5.
8. H&M, p. 135.

Return to London

Sinnett received his next, long letter from KH on 10 October, just after he had returned
to London from Elberfeld. Blavatsky, Holloway and Rudolf Gebhard had arrived four
days earlier, and were staying with the Arundales. According to the postmark, the letter
had been posted the previous day at Bromley, Kent. The address is not written in KH’s
script, unlike the letter, which reads:

For reasons perfectly valid though not necessary for me to enter into in
detail, I could neither answer your letter at Elberfeld, nor transmit it to you
through L.C.H. Since it has become impossible to utilize the main channel –
H.P.B. thro’ which I have hitherto reached you, because of your personal and
mutual relations with her I employed the common post. Even this required
more expenditure of power from a friend than you can imagine. ...
... I must tell you that you ought to put a close watch upon yourself, if you
would not put an end for ever to my letters. Insensibly to yourself you are
encouraging a tendency to dogmatism and unjust misconception of persons
and motives. ...
Beware then, of an uncharitable spirit, for it will rise up like a hungry wolf
in your path, and devour the better qualities of your nature that have been
springing into life. Broaden instead of narrowing your sympathies; try to
 identify yourself with your fellows, rather than to contract your circle of
affinity. ... You forget that he who approaches our precincts even in thought,
is drawn into the vortex of probation. ... [Holloway] is a magnificent subject
naturally but so distrustful of herself and others, so apt to take the real for
hallucination and vice versa that it will require a long time before she
becomes thoroughly controllable even by herself. She is far, far from being
ready ...
We had found Mrs. H. in America, we impressed her to prepare for the
writing of the book she has produced with the aid of Mohini. Had she
consented to stop at Paris, as requested, a few days longer and come over
to England with H.P.B. the later complication could have been averted. The
effect of her coming to your house has been described to you by her before;
and in resenting what Mohini and H.P.B. were saying to you and Mrs. H. you
have been simply resenting our personal wishes. You will resent my words
even now when I tell you that you have been – unconsciously, I agree – in
my way, in her development. Yet you would have been the first one to profit
thereby. ... You either trust in me, or do not. And I must frankly tell you that
my friendly regard suffered a shock from the hearing of your ‘ultimatum’
which may be condensed thus: – ‘Either Mrs. H. passes a week or so at our
house, or I (you) leave the L.L. [Sinnett was then vice-president of the
London Lodge] to get on as best it can.’ It almost meant this; ‘... I must and
shall show the L.L. that anything they may have heard about this affair was
false, and that the “Masters” would never consent to any action hurtful to my
pride ...’ My friend, this is treading upon dangerous ground. ... [B]eware of
Pride and Egoism, two of the worst snares for the feet of him who aspires to
climb the high paths of Knowledge and Spirituality. You have opened a joint
of your armour for the Dugpas [sorcerers, brothers of the shadow] – do not
complain if they have found it out and wounded you there. ... [T]his makes
my position still more embarrassing before my chief, who, of course has had
the ‘ultimatum’ put on record. You deny having ever applied to be accepted
as a chela: Ah! my friend, with such feelings smouldering in your heart, you
could not be even a ‘lay chela.’ ...
Some, most unjustly, try to make H.S.O. and H.P.B. solely responsible for
the state of things. Those two are, say, far from perfect – in some respects,
quite the opposite. But they have that in them ... which we have but too
rarely found elsewhere – UNSELFISHNESS, and an eager readiness for self-
sacrifice for the good of others; what a ‘multitude of sins’ does not this cover!
... It is a true manhood when one boldly accepts one’s share of the collective
Karma of the group one works with, and does not permit oneself to be
embittered, and to see others in blacker colours than reality ...
One who would have higher instruction given to him has to be a true
theosophist in heart and soul, not merely in appearance.1

Sinnett again wanted Holloway to stay at his home, but in a further note to Blavatsky,
KH wrote:

I do not want her to sleep one single night at Sinnett’s house or even stop
there beyond an hour or so. The influence there is so strong that it would
destroy at one sweep the labour of six weeks.2

Around mid-October, Holloway wrote KH a letter containing various questions about

theosophical work, and also mentioned her intention to return to America on 18 October,
as her duty called. KH answered her questions, approved her plans to return home, and
ended as follows:

Courage and fidelity, truthfulness and sincerity always win our regard. Keep
on child, as you have been doing. Fight for the persecuted and the wronged
... I will correspond with you thro’ her [HPB] – but not unless you keep to
yourself faithfully the secret. ... Blessings on you, child, and keep off shells.3

This was the last known letter that Laura Holloway received from KH.

In a letter to Francesca Arundale, received in London around the same time, KH wrote:

I have watched your many thoughts. ... I take the opportunity, one of the last
there are to write to you directly, to say a few words. You know of course that
once H.P.B.’s aura in the house is exhausted you can have no more letters
from me. ...
First about your friend – Mrs H. Poor child! By placing so constantly her
personality over and above her inner and better Self – tho’ she knows it not –
she has done all she could for the last week to sever herself from us for
ever. Yet so pure and genuine she is that I am ready to leave a chink in the
door she slams unconsciously to herself into her own face, and await for the
entire awakening of that honest nature whenever that time comes. She is
without artifice or malice, entirely truthful and sincere, yet at times quite false
to herself. As she says her ways are not our ways, nor can she comprehend
them.

Referring to an incident the previous evening, when Blavatsky, acting on her master’s
orders, clashed with Holloway, KH writes:

She [Holloway] allowed her womanly pride and personality – which were
entirely out of the question, at any rate out of H.P.B.’s thoughts – to get
mixed up and prime in a question of pure rules and discipline. ... I pray you
to use your influence with her ... to have her book published before the year
1885. Tell her also, since she has cut herself away from me, that she will
have in good time the help of the adept who writes stories with H.P.B.4

KH is referring here to the adept known as Hilarion, but it seems that the collaboration
he envisaged never took place.

References

1. MLC, #131, pp. 434-8; ML2, #66, pp. 366-70.

2. H&M, pp. 137-8.
3. H&M, pp. 144-9; cf. LMW 1:158.
4. LMW 1:48-54; H&M, pp. 141-3.
Aftermath: Holloway

Blavatsky left Liverpool for her return voyage to India at the start of November 1884.
Holloway returned to New York shortly before Blavatsky’s departure. She remained a
theosophist, but ceased to be actively involved in the movement. She did, however,
write at least one article for The Path,1 and a couple of newspaper articles.2 Judge
informed Blavatsky in March 1886 that she was ‘writing a book on the theosophical
movement, to be embellished with pictures. She is great on catching the passing
emotions of the people, for a sale.’ However, she never published such a book. Before
Holloway left England, Blavatsky appointed her as her agent in matters concerning J.W.
Bouton, the publisher of Isis Unveiled and, later, The Secret Doctrine.3

In a letter to Sinnett written in Würzburg on 19 August 1885, Blavatsky praised his novel
entitled Karma4. One of the characters, Mrs Lakesby, a clairvoyant, is based on Laura
Holloway. Blavatsky writes:

In Karma the original of Mrs. Lakesby is neither flattered nor her defects
exaggerated. You have taken but the real existing features as though from
life, passing all the very prominent defects in charitable silence. But, is it only
‘charitable silence,’ my dear Mr. Sinnett? I am afraid you are still somewhat
under the spell.

She then relates what Holloway had said about Sinnett just before she left England.

I authorise you to do with the MS. (a kind of my phenomenal biography)

entitled ‘Madame Blavatsky’ – whatever you like. Mrs. Holloway made a row
with me (ask Miss Arundale and Mohini) for asking you to look it over,
correct and publish it. She chaffed me and called me a fool, saying that I
voluntarily gave you up that which would bring me fame and money; that
once you got it into your hands you would never give it me back, but use it
and publish it in some new book of yours. Ah, she did say of you
complimentary things on that day – a few days before her departure. I was
disgusted but held my tongue. Please keep it and accept it as a present if
you can ever use it.5

The manuscript in question was a translation by Blavatsky of an account of her life

written by her sister, Vera P. de Zhelihovsky.6 Sinnett made extensive use of it when
writing his biography of Blavatsky.

A discussion about Mrs Lakesby took place in the pages of Lucifer in 1887, and relates
to Holloway’s hesitancy in accepting the teaching about astral shells and elementaries.
A correspondent pointed out that in Karma Mrs Lakesby is depicted as being very fond
of conversing with the ‘spirits’ of the dead on the astral plane, and wondered how this
was to be reconciled with Esoteric Buddhism, where Sinnett indicates that ‘souls or
spirits pass the long interval between the one incarnation and another in a sort of
quiescent, and at least half-unconscious, state’. Blavatsky replied as follows:

The normal course of events will conduct a human being who quits the
material body through Kama-Loka to the Devachanic state, in which Mrs.
 Lakesby would not be able to interview him. But while in Kama-Loka she
might at least imagine she did this, and, perhaps not too wisely, indulge in
the practice of so doing. If we remember rightly, the Baron in Karma, who is
represented as knowing a good deal more than Mrs. Lakesby, gifted as she
is, throws some discredit upon her view concerning the Astral plane and its
inhabitants. At the best when a clairvoyant can gain touch with a soul in
Kama-Loka, it is the lower self remaining there, though it has left the body,
that she deals with. And though that lower self may be very recognizable for
people who have known it in the earthly manifestation, it will be lower than
the lower self of earth and not higher because ethereal. That is to say on
earth the living man is more or less under the guidance of his higher self. But
the higher has no longer any business to transact with the lower self of
Kama-Loka, and does not manifest there at all.7

On 9 November 1884, Blavatsky wrote Sinnett a letter from Algiers while on her return
journey to India. She enclosed a letter from KH that the latter’s chela, Djual Khul, had
produced in her cabin the previous night. She explains:

Last night as we were hopelessly tossed about and pitched in our Clan
wash-tub Djual K. put in an appearance [in his thought-body, or mayavi-rupa]
and asked in his Master’s name if I would send you a chit. I said I would. He
then asked me to prepare some paper – which I had not. He then said any
would do. I then proceeded to ask some from a passenger not having Mrs.
Holloway to furnish me with [it]. Lo! I wish those passengers, who quarrel
with us every day about the possibility of phenomena could see what was
taking place in my cabin on the foot of my berth! How D.K.’s hand, as real as
life, was impressing the letter at his Master’s dictation which came out in
relief between the wall and my legs. He told me to read the letter but I am no
wiser for it. I understand very well that it was all probation and all for the
best; but it is devilish hard for me to understand why it should all be
performed over my long suffering back. She [Holloway] is in correspondence
with Myers [a leading member of the SPR] and the Gebhards and many
others. You will see what splatters I will receive as an effect of the causes
produced by that probation business. I wish I had never seen the woman.
Such treachery, such a deceit I would never have dreamt of. I was also a
chela and guilty of more than one flapdoodle; but I would have thought as
soon of murdering physically a man as to murder morally my friends as she
has.8

In the letter precipitated by Djual Khul, KH says that he is not replying to the letter that
Sinnett had sent through Mohini, a letter written ‘entirely under the influence of a
creature of Attavada [self-conceit]’, and ‘based entirely on the crafty insinuations of your
would-be sibyl’ – these being references to Laura Holloway. He further writes:

Her clairvoyance is a fact, her selection and chelaship, another. However

well fitted psychically and physiologically to answer such selection, unless
possessed of spiritual, as well as of physical unselfishness a chela whether
selected or not, must perish as a chela in the long run. Self personality,
vanity and conceit harboured in the higher principles are enormously more
dangerous than the same defects inherent only in the lower physical nature
of man. They are the breakers against which the cause of chelaship, in its
probationary stage, is sure to be dashed to pieces unless the would-be
disciple carries with him the white shield of perfect confidence and trust in
those he would seek out through mount and vale to guide him safely toward
the light of Knowledge. ... The mass of human sin and frailty is distributed
throughout the life of [a] man who is content to remain an average mortal. It
is gathered in and centred, so to say, within one period of the life of a chela –
the period of probation. That which is generally accumulating to find its
legitimate issue only in the next rebirth of an ordinary man, is quickened and
fanned into existence in the chela – especially in the presumptuous and
selfish candidate who rushes in without having calculated his forces.
‘One who dug so many and deep pit-falls for her friends and brothers fell
into them herself’ – said M. to H.P.B. on the night of the mutual revelations. I
tried to, but could not save her. She had entered, or rather I should say –
forced herself into the dangerous path, with a double purpose in view:
(1) To upset the whole structure in which she had no part, and thus
obstruct the path to all others, if she did not find the system and Society at
the level of her expectations; and
(2) To remain true and work out her chelaship and natural gifts, that are
considerable indeed, only if those expectations were all answered. It is the
intensity of that resolution that first attracted my attention. Led on gradually
and gently into the right direction the acquisition of such an individuality
would have been invaluable. But there are persons, who, without ever
showing any external sign of selfishness, are intensely selfish in their inner
spiritual aspirations. These will follow the path once chosen by them with
their eyes closed to the interests of all but themselves, and see nothing
outside the narrow pathway filled with their own personality. They are so
intensely absorbed in the contemplation of their own supposed
‘righteousness’ that nothing can ever appear right to them outside the focus
of their own vision distorted by their self-complacent contemplation, and their
judgment of the right and wrong. Alas, such an one is our new mutual friend
L.C.H. ... Aroused some 18 months ago to spasmodic, hysterical curiosity by
the perusal of your Occult World and later on by that of Esoteric Buddhism to
enthusiastic envy, she determined to ‘find out the truth’ as she expressed it.
She would either become a chela herself – first and foremost, to write books,
thus eclipsing her ‘lay’ rival, or upset the whole imposture in which she had
no concern. She decided to go to Europe and seek you out. Her surexcited
fancy, putting a mask on every stray spook, created the ‘Student’ and made
him serve her purpose and desire. She believed in it sincerely. At this
juncture foreseeing the new danger I interfered. Darb: Nath was despatched
and made to impress her thrice in my name. Her thoughts were for a certain
period guided, her clairvoyance made to serve a purpose. Had her sincere
aspirations conquered the intense personality of her lower self I would have
given the T.S. an excellent help and worker. The poor woman is naturally
good and moral; but that very purity is of so narrow a kind, of so presbyterian
a character, if I may use the word, as to be unable to see itself reflected in
any other but her own Self. She alone is good and pure. All others must and
shall be suspected. ...
And now she will receive a letter from me which will contain my ultimatum
and conditions. She will not accept them, but will complain bitterly to several
among you, suggesting new hints and insinuations against one whom she
 professed to adore. Prepare. A plank of salvation is offered to her but there
is very little hope that she will accept it. However, I will try once more; but I
have no right to influence her either way. If you will accept my advice,
abstain from any serious correspondence with her until some fresh
development. Try to save ‘Man’ by looking it over with Mohini, and by erasing
from it the alleged inspirations and dictation by ‘Student.’ Having had also
‘an object and a purpose’ in view, I had to leave her under her self-delusion
that this new book was written with the view of ‘correcting the mistakes’ of
Esoteric Buddhism (– of killing it – was the true thought); and it was only on
the eve of her departure that Upasika was ordered to see that Mohini should
carefully expunge from it all the objectionable passages. During her stay in
England Mrs. H. would have never permitted you to see her book before the
final publication. But I would save five months labour of Mohini and will not
permit it to remain unpublished.9

Blavatsky left India for good in March 1885, in the wake of the Coulomb crisis, and went
to Europe to recuperate her health. In a letter to W.Q. Judge, written in Torre del Greco
on 1 May 1885, she says: ‘Look at Mrs Holloway. Do you still admire her?’ She refers to
the ‘Sinnett-Holloway imbroglio when she bamboozled all of us & tried to bamboozle the
Mahatmas, but came out second best’, and when ‘she set Sinnett against Olcott & me &
the Mahatmas and O., me & the Arundales against Sinnett etc. etc.’10

In a letter received by Sinnett in March 1885, Blavatsky refers to Arthur Gebhard’s

suspicion that she had practised deception and fraud in relation to a mahatma letter,
and explains why he is mistaken. She also refers to ‘revelations and hints’ about other
cases of alleged fraud ‘insinuated by kitten-like Mrs. Holloway’. She tells Sinnett:

Say then to the ‘friends’ who may have received letters from the Master
through me that I never was a deceiver; that I never played tricks upon them.
I have often facilitated phenomena of letter-transmission by easier but still
occult means.11

She then proceeds to describe different methods of thought transference.

A year later, on 17 March 1886, Blavatsky wrote to Sinnett:

Does not all around you show the indestructibility of the Society, if we see
how the fierce waves raised by the Dugpa-world have been for the last two
years heaving and spreading and beating ferociously around the Society to
break, what? only the rotten chips of the ‘Ark of the Deluge.’ ...
The first bomb-shell from the Dugpa world came from America; you
welcomed and warmed it in your own breast, you drove the writer of this
more than once to the verge of despair, your thorough-going, sincere
earnestness, your devotion to truth and the ‘Masters’ having been made
powerless for the time being, for discerning the real truth, for sensing that
which was left unsaid for it could not be said and thus leaving the widest
margin for suspicion. The latter was not unfounded. The Dugpa element
triumphed fully at one time – why? because you believed in one who was
sent by the opposing powers for the destruction of the Society and permitted
to act as she and others did by the ‘higher powers,’ as you call them, whose
duty it was not to interfere in the great probation save at the last moment. To
 this day you are unable to say what was true, what false ...12

She concludes the letter by saying, ‘try to recognise the foreign from my own words’.

In a subsequent letter to Sinnett, Blavatsky writes:

Holloway was sent, and was in the programme of trials and destruction. She
has done you ten times more harm than to the Society but this is your fault
entirely and now she is dancing the war-dance around Olcott, who is as fast
friends with her and more than you were. It is a weekly correspondence
incessant and endearing, charming to behold. She is his dear agent in
Brooklyn, for things occult etc.13

KH had wanted Man: Fragments of Forgotten History to be published before the end of
1884, but it ended up being published towards the end of 1885.14 The same year,
Holloway and Mohini also published another book, Five Years of Theosophy,15
containing selected articles from The Theosophist.

According to the title page, Man was written by ‘Two Chelas in the Theosophical
Society’. However, it was marred by passages produced by Holloway under the
inspiration of a character created by her imagination, named ‘Student’. Blavatsky
explained:

The four chapters written by Mohini are of course good, but wherever the
spring of inspiration has let loose its waters, it is rough, unsystematic, reads
like a meaningless jibbering of a schoolboy – makes ugly patches in the
work and will certainly do no credit to the ‘two chelas’ supposed to have
written under the direct inspiration of a student.16

She prepared a letter about the book, dated 7 November 1885, probably intended for
The Theosophist, but it was never published. In it she writes:

MAN is the production of two ‘Chelas’ of whom one, the ‘Eastern Chela’, was
a pucka disciple, the other, the ‘Western Chela’ – a candidate who failed. I ...
ask the Theosophists to have patience ... until it comes out in its second
corrected edition. The ‘Western Chela’ left it in a chaotic half-finished
condition and went away from London, leaving the ‘Eastern Chela’ in a very
perplexed state. Those who had ordered the book to be written to try the
psychical developments of Chela and Candidate – would have nothing more
to say about it. ... [W]ith the exceptions of those portions that relate to the
Rounds, Root-races and Sub-races in which there is a most terrible
confusion, there is nothing incorrect in the book.17

Blavatsky prepared a number of corrections,18 but none were included in subsequent

editions. In The Secret Doctrine, she writes:

‘Man,’ which came later [than Esoteric Buddhism], was an attempt to present
the archaic doctrine from a more ideal standpoint, to translate some visions
in and from the Astral Light, to render some teachings partly gathered from a
Master’s thoughts, but unfortunately misunderstood. This work also speaks
of the evolution of the early Races of men on Earth, and contains some
 excellent pages of a philosophical character. But so far it is only an
interesting little mystical romance. It has failed in its mission, because the
conditions required for a correct translation of these visions were not
present.

While Esoteric Buddhism ‘has too pronounced a bias toward materialistic science’, Man
‘is decidedly too idealistic, and is, at times, fantastic’.19

References

1. ‘Teachings of the master. Recorded by one of the authors of “Man: Fragments of

Forgotten History” ’, parts 1 and 2, The Path, vol. 1, no. 8, Nov. 1886, pp. 253-56,
and vol. 1, no. 9, Dec. 1886, pp. 278-81.
2. E.g.: ‘The Theosophists’, The Leader, 14 Oct. 1888, p. 14; ‘Blavatsky’s
mesmerism’, Current Literature, March 1889, pp. 243-4. See H&M, pp. 9-17, 19-
21; blavatskyarchives.com.
3. LBS, #160, pp. 314-5.
4. A.P. Sinnett, Karma: A novel, London: Chapman & Hall, 1885; Chicago: Yogi
Publication Society, archive.org.
5. LBS, #46, pp. 106-16.
6. H.P. Blavatsky Collected Writings, Wheaton, IL: TPH, 1950-91, 11:364fn.
7. Ibid., 8:252-3; see Karma, pp. 177-83.
8. MLC, #133, pp. 438-9; ML2, #137, p. 467.
9. MLC, #134, pp. 439-43; ML2, #64, pp. 358-61.
10. blavatskyarchives.com; H&M, pp. 157-8.
11. MLC, #135, pp. 443-8; ML2, #138, pp. 468-75.
12. MLC, #140, pp. 457-60; ML2, #141, pp. 482-6.
13. MLC, #141, pp. 460-2; ML2, #139, pp. 475-7.
14. London: Reeves and Turner, 1885; 2nd ed., 1887, 3rd ed., 1893; hpb.narod.ru,
blavatskyarchives.com, theosophical.ca.
15. London: Reeves and Turner, 1885; 2nd ed., 1894.
16. LBS, #40, p. 93.
17. Blavatsky Collected Writings, 6:412-3.
18. LBS, #120, pp. 254-61.
19. H.P. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine, TUP, 1977 (1888), 1:160-1.

Aftermath: Sinnett

The last letter from KH to Sinnett was received in the autumn of 1885. It read simply:
‘Courage, patience, and hope, my brother.’1 Subsequently, Blavatsky sometimes passed
on messages from the masters in her own letters to Sinnett.2 The Sinnetts visited
Blavatsky in Würzburg in late September 1885, when she was working on The Secret
Doctrine. At the time Sinnett was writing a biography about Blavatsky, which was
published the following year.3 Sinnett also visited Blavatsky in Ostende in August 1886.
In May 1887 Blavatsky moved to London, where she launched a new magazine, Lucifer,
and founded the Blavatsky Lodge. Sinnett issued a notice saying that any members of
the London Lodge (of which he was president) who wished to join the new Lodge were
at liberty to leave – and a great many did so. He declined the invitation to join the
Esoteric Section, formed the next year with Blavatsky as its outer head.4 Charles W.
Leadbeater became one of the main psychics in the London Lodge. He had travelled to
India with Blavatsky in 1884 and received three messages from KH. After returning to
London in 1889, he too was not involved in the ES or connected in any way with
Blavatsky.

Sinnett’s breach with Blavatsky widened further when the first volume of The Secret
Doctrine was published in November 1888. In it, Blavatsky corrected various errors
made by early theosophists, including himself. One of Sinnett’s misunderstandings was
that Mars and Mercury were globes C and E respectively of the earth planetary chain,5
whereas the correct teaching is that all the other globes of the earth chain are on higher
planes and therefore invisible to us, while Mars and Mercury are the lowest globes of
separate planetary chains. Sinnett claimed that ‘KH’ had told him through a medium that
he was right and Blavatsky was wrong; Leadbeater, based on his own clairvoyant
observations, supported Sinnett.6 It is worth noting that in letters to William Hübbe-
Schleiden, received in August 1886, KH said that The Secret Doctrine would be the
‘triple production’ of himself, M and Blavatsky, and M confirmed that the book was partly
dictated by himself and KH.7

In his book The Early Days of Theosophy in Europe, Sinnett openly accused Blavatsky
of fraud, deception and jealousy.

[In June 1884] we made the acquaintance of an American lady who was for
a time very conspicuous amongst us – Mrs. Holloway – a remarkable
clairvoyant and pupil of the Master K.H. Her coming from America had been
heralded by impressive stories concerning her psychic gifts and relationship
with the Higher world and we found her an extremely attractive personality.
She was a guest of Miss Arundale’s in the first instance and in June came
over to stay with us. ... At first while staying with us she was to some extent
a link between ourselves and the Master K.H. Madame Blavatsky returned to
London (and to the Arundale’s [sic] house) at the end of June and by
degrees some troublesome friction ensued between her and ourselves ...
On the evening of the 6th July we had an interview with the Master K.H.
through Mrs. Holloway. On this occasion he actually took possession of her
and spoke to us in the first person. Previously she had merely a
consciousness and repeated whatever he said. ... And the situation became
entangled by a new development of fury ... on the part of the O.L. [Old Lady]
... [E]vidently she had become angrily jealous of the way in which Mrs.
Holloway was becoming a link between ourselves and the Master
independently of her. She insisted on Mrs. Holloway leaving us and coming
back to the Arundales. ... Mrs. Holloway was frightened into obedience and
returned to the Arundales. She had received a (spurious) letter apparently
from K.H. ordering her to remain there, and declaring that we were deceived,
that she was merely a medium and saw falsely.
As days went on the situation became worse instead of better. Letters
passed to and fro between ourselves and the Arundales, now pretty
completely under Madame Blavatsky’s influence. The name and handwriting
 of the Master were taken in vain more than once ...8

After Holloway’s departure from London in 1884, Sinnett continued searching for a
channel of communication with KH independent of Blavatsky. In April 1886 he met
Maude Travers (to whom he gave the fictitious name ‘Mary’), who, when he made
mesmeric passes over her, went into trance and allegedly saw clairvoyantly the
mountain region in Tibet where KH lived. She went to stay with the Sinnetts once or
twice a year, and until 1898 they would hold frequent mesmeric sittings at which KH
allegedly either spoke to Sinnett or dictated what he wanted to say; Sinnett believed he
had obtained a great deal of occult information in this way.9

Once again, however, KH expressly denied any such communications. On 22 August

1888, while Olcott was sailing to Europe with the intention of stopping Blavatsky from
forming an Esoteric Section, a letter from KH was precipitated in his cabin:

Since 1885 I have not written, nor caused to be written save thro’ her
[HPB’s] agency, direct or remote, a letter or line to anybody in Europe or
America, nor communicated orally with, or thro’ any third party. Theosophists
should learn it. You will understand later the significance of this declaration
so keep it in mind. Her fidelity to our work being constant, and her sufferings
having come upon her thro’ it, neither I nor either of my Brother associates
will desert or supplant her. ...
With occult matters she has everything to do. We have not abandoned
her; she is not ‘given over to chelas’. She is our direct agent. ...
I have also noted, your thoughts about the ‘Secret Doctrine’. Be assured
that what she has not annotated from scientific and other works, we have
given or suggested to her. Every mistake or erroneous notion, corrected and
explained by her from the works of other theosophists was corrected by me,
or under my instruction. ...
Prepare, however, to have the authenticity of the present denied in certain
quarters.10

When Sinnett was shown this letter in London, he did indeed deny it, writing privately to
Leadbeater as follows:

It reads to me very much en suite with the other letters in blue handwriting
that came during the 1884 crisis, – when Mme. B. herself admitted to me
afterwards that during that time the Masters had stood aside and left
everything to various chelas including freedom to use the blue handwriting.
... The letter is all just glorification of Mme. B.11

In 1887 Sinnett tried unsuccessfully to mesmerize Alice Leighton Cleather, a member of

the Blavatsky Lodge and later a member of Blavatsky’s Inner Group. When Blavatsky
learned of this, she forbade Cleather from allowing Sinnett or anyone else to try such
experiments again.12 Until his death in 1921, Sinnett used a number of clairvoyants to
supposedly communicate with KH and other masters.13 KH allegedly told him to reveal
nothing about these contacts to Blavatsky. After Sinnett’s death, one of the sensitives he
used to consult revealed that he had once given Sinnett a ‘message’ which the latter
immediately decided came from KH. ‘He was so pathetically pleased, poor old chap,
that I had not the heart to undeceive him,’ commented the medium.14
According to Sinnett, KH told him through a medium that Blavatsky had turned some
passages in his letters into ‘a travesty of his meaning’. Sinnett asserted that Blavatsky
had fabricated and distorted letters and had sometimes used trickery to produce occult
phenomena because at times her body was taken over by evil entities; through one of
his mediums, Blavatsky had supposedly confirmed this from beyond the grave!15

Sinnett found Blavatsky’s rough manners and unrefined speech ‘repellent’, and felt that
her return to England in 1887 had defeated his efforts to establish theosophy in ‘the
upper levels of society’, so that it could then ‘filter downwards with social authority
behind it’.16 On 1 November 1891, William Judge received a letter from M, intended for
Sinnett. It reads:

We sent him [i.e. Judge] to London [after HPB’s death] and made him stay
so long in order to lay down currents which have since operated, for
inasmuch as ‘sacred names’ were assailed long ago the present reaction in
England more than counterbalances the assault on us which you so much
deplore. But the only thing we deplore is the sorrow of the world, which can
only be cut off by the philosophy you were such a potent factor in bringing to
the West, and which now other disciples are promulgating also. This is the
age of the common people although you may not agree – but so it is – and
as we see forces at work and gathering by you unseen, we must commend
all efforts that give widespread notice to even one word of the philosophy.

Judge says that the letter refers to the ‘great public excitement’ about theosophy in
England around that time, during which the ‘sacred names’ of the masters were publicly
mentioned. He adds that the letter confirms the widespread view that ‘this is the era of
the masses’, and that the masters have ‘more interest in efforts for their good than in
the progress of any particular person or class’.17

References

1. MLC, #138, p. 453; ML2, #145, p. 488.

2. MLC, #139, pp. 453-57 / ML2, #140, pp. 478-81; MLC, #140, pp. 457-60 / ML2,
#141, pp. 482-6; MLC, #141, pp. 460-2 / ML2, #139, pp. 475-7.
3. A.P. Sinnett, Incidents in the Life of Madame Blavatsky, London: George Redway,
1886.
4. The Early Days of Theosophy in Europe, pp. 87-9.
5. ‘Fragments of occult truth, no. VII’, The Theosophist, April 1883, pp. 161-4 (p.
162); A.P. Sinnett, Esoteric Buddhism (1883), 5th ed., 1885, Wizards Bookshelf,
1973, p. 136.
6. Autobiography of Alfred Percy Sinnett, pp. 39-41; The Early Days of Theosophy in
Europe, pp. 92-4; see The twelve sacred planets, section 3.
7. LMW 2:126-7; W.Q. Judge, Echoes of the Orient, 1st ed., San Diego, CA: Point
Loma Publications, 1975-87, 1:321-9 / 2nd ed., TUP, 2009-10, 1:342-9; H.P.
Blavatsky, An Invitation to The Secret Doctrine, TUP, 1988, last 6 pages.
8. The Early Days of Theosophy in Europe, pp. 58-63.
9. The Autobiography of Alfred Percy Sinnett, pp. 33-46; Theosophical History, Oct.
1986, pp. 205-7, Apr. 1987, pp. 51-2.
 10. LMW 1:44-8.
11. C. Jinarajadasa, The ‘K.H.’ Letters to C.W. Leadbeater, Adyar, Madras: TPH,
1980, p. 75.
12. Alice Leighton Cleather, H.P. Blavatsky As I knew Her, Calcutta and Simla:
Thacker, Spink & Co, 1923, pp. 31-2.
13. Autobiography of Alfred Percy Sinnett, pp. 49ff.
14. H.P. Blavatsky As I knew Her, p. 31.
15. The Early Days of Theosophy in Europe, pp. 27-8, 67-8, 73, 92.
16. Ibid., pp. 44-5, 47-8.
17. William Q. Judge, ‘An old message from the master’, The Irish Theosophist, Feb.
1895, pp. 84-5.

Holloway’s later life

After returning to the US in 1884, Laura Holloway continued her career as an author
and editor. In 1889 she founded and became president of the Seidl Society of Brooklyn,
which held concerts and promoted musical culture among women and children; the
organization fell into demise after the death of the conductor Anton Seidl in 1898. In
1890 she married Colonel Edward L. Langford, and became Laura C. Langford; her
husband died in 1902.

Holloway remained loyal to William Judge when, a few years after Blavatsky’s death in
May 1891, he was accused by Olcott, Annie Besant and other prominent theosophists
of misusing the mahatmas’ names and handwriting – i.e. of ‘fabricating’ mahatma
letters, or at least of passing off as direct precipitations by the mahatmas, messages
that had merely been psychically transmitted through him (a charge that overlooks the
fact that most mahatma letters were received this way).1 The dispute resulted in most of
the TS branches in the US, with the support of several branches in other countries,
separating from the Adyar TS and forming the Theosophical Society in America in April
1895, under the presidency of Judge.

After Judge’s death in March 1896, Katherine Tingley took over as leader of the
organization. Holloway rejected her leadership and in 1899 she and a few other
theosophists formed a separate organization, the Theosophical Society of New York. It
published a magazine, The Word, to which she contributed several articles, but
anonymously, as she did not want to publicly identify as a theosophist.2

In 1906, a year before his death, Olcott visited America for the last time. He wrote to
Laura Holloway, asking to see her. Holloway had been a good friend of Olcott’s sister,
Belle Mitchell, who had already passed away. In his conversation with Holloway, Olcott
indicated how much he missed Blavatsky’s ‘mighty mentality’ and guidance. Holloway
then reminded him that there was a third coworker – Judge – to whom Olcott had
become hostile. In response, Olcott took her hand and said ‘in a manner subdued and
most impressive’:

We learn much and outgrow much, and I have outlived much and learned
more, particularly as regards Judge. ... I know now, and it will comfort you to
 hear it, that I wronged Judge, not wilfully or in malice; nevertheless, I have
done this and I regret it.3

Holloway worked on several philanthropic projects with the Shakers, but her relations
with them were difficult, as she demanded that they accept her own ideas rather than
adapting herself to their needs. In 1906 she bought a farm from the Shakers in Canaan,
New York, and lived there from 1912 until her death on 10 July 1930. During this period
she struggled with severe financial difficulties.

Correspondence with Alice Cleather, which began in 1919, gave Holloway the idea that
she could avoid insolvency by writing a book about Blavatsky. Cleather had recently
moved to India and was promoting a ‘Back to Blavatsky Movement’ in opposition to the
neotheosophy of Besant and Leadbeater. A pupil of Cleather living in the US, Hildegard
Henderson, corresponded with Holloway, and provided a great deal of financial
assistance to help her pay her mortgage and publish her book.

In 1922 the Adyar TS published Sinnett’s book The Early Days of Theosophy in Europe.
After reading it, Holloway wrote to Henderson that she was ‘amazed to read of myself
as a medium and one who “claimed to be the Master’s mouthpiece” ’. She said she was
determined to publish all her letters from KH to contradict Sinnett’s version of events.4
Her own letters began to reflect the self-importance she felt for having received so much
attention from the adept brotherhood. She wrote:

I went into exile after the summer of 1884 ... and have to all practical
purposes remained in the wilderness of Silence for forty years. At the end of
this self-inflicted exile I was promised the opportunity to serve the Masters in
a way that no other could.5

Meanwhile, Henderson was growing impatient with the delay in publishing the book, and
suspected that Holloway was becoming senile. To avoid losing Henderson’s support,
Holloway described an alleged visitation by Blavatsky and KH on board the steamer as
she prepared to return to the US in October 1884:

The room was filled with a blazing light that came like a flood upon me. Two
Masters stood in the midst of this light and conversed with me. It was the
most transcendent Vision I had ever seen, or shall hope to see again, and
while these enlightened Beings were with me they instructed me regarding
my future. They informed me I would outlive Mr. Sinnett and would answer
his final conclusions regarding H.P.B.

She then makes an oblique reference to Cleather:

Many surprising prophecies were confided to me, one that will interest you
was that when I was ready to emerge from the retirement of this long period,
I should have word of a sister in India who would reveal her identity to me,
and together we would serve.6

All this smells highly suspect. In the same letter, she asked Henderson for another one
or two thousand dollars in cash.

Towards the end of 1924 Henderson launched a lawsuit against Holloway, demanding
repayment of the money she had given her and the surrender of her manuscript. An
agreement was reached whereby Holloway handed over the manuscript of her book,
but its publication was forbidden. After reading the manuscript Henderson informed
Cleather that it contained nothing remotely antagonistic to Blavatsky but revealed how
‘poisonous’ Sinnett really was. It included nine complete letters to Holloway from KH,
including critical passages. Henderson allowed others to see the manuscript, but what
became of it is unclear.7

References

1. See: Sven Eek and Boris de Zirkoff, ‘William Quan Judge: his life and work’, in:
Echoes of the Orient, 1st ed., 1:xix-lxviii / 2nd ed., 1:xvii-lxvii; Kirby Van Mater,
‘William Quan Judge: a biographical sketch’, Sunrise, April/May 1996, pp. 99-111;
Patrick Powell, ‘Judge’s life: a personal viewpoint’, Sunrise, April/May 1996, pp.
183-91; Ernest E. Pelletier, The Judge Case: A conspiracy which ruined the
theosophical cause, Edmonton Theosophical Society, 2004.
2. E.g.: ‘Madame Blavatsky: a pen picture’, The Word, vol. 14, Feb. 1912, pp. 262-9;
‘The mahatmas and their instruments’, parts 1 and 2, The Word, vol. 15, May
1912, pp. 69-76, and July 1912, pp. 200-6; ‘William Quan Judge: a reminiscence’,
The Word, vol. 22, Nov. 1915, pp. 75-89 / Fohat, vol. 10, no. 1, spring 2006, pp.
15-22; ‘Helena Petrovna Blavatsky: a reminiscence’, The Word, vol. 22, Dec.
1915, pp. 136-53. See H&M, pp. 23-9, 39-45, 47-53; blavatskyarchives.com.
3. ‘Colonel Olcott: a reminiscence’, The Word, vol. 22, Oct. 1915, pp. 7-14;
‘Supplementary letter’, The Word, Oct. 1915, pp. 14-9; The Theosophical
Movement 1875-1950, Los Angeles, CA: Cunningham Press, 1951, pp. 299-300;
Sven Eek, Damodar and the Pioneers of the Theosophical Movement, Adyar,
Madras: TPH, 1965, pp. 657-8.
4. Sasson, Yearning for the New Age, p. 244.
5. Ibid., p. 247.
6. Ibid., p. 248; Daniel H. Caldwell, A Casebook of Encounters with the Theosophical
Mahatmas, 2003, case 49, blavatskyarchives.com.
7. Yearning for the New Age, pp. 253-4.

Holloway v. Sasson

Despite her failure as a chela, Laura Holloway remained loyal to Blavatsky and the
masters till the very end. This is something that Holloway’s biographer, Diane Sasson,
finds incomprehensible. With a dramatic flourish she writes:

Surely, in retrospect, Holloway-Langford felt betrayed by Blavatsky, who had

derailed her ambitions, undermined her self-confidence, and humiliated her
in front of friends. ... Likewise, Holloway-Langford kept mum about whatever
she knew about the Masters and their messages, and about the production
of occult phenomena ...1
Although Sasson does not explicitly accuse Blavatsky of fraud, she strongly implies that
Blavatsky and various confederates concocted mahatma messages and produced
fraudulent psychic phenomena. She appears to take the hostile allegations and
speculations contained in the Hodgson Report seriously, and passes in complete
silence over a mass of evidence that refutes them.2 She describes Blavatsky as a
‘puppet-master, manipulating the strings from behind the stage’, with the help of
mahatma letters. She suggests that Blavatsky fell out with Sinnett and Holloway
because they were not ‘malleable’ enough and challenged her power to ‘control
communication with the Adept Brotherhood’.3

According to Sasson, Holloway became a pawn in a power struggle between Blavatsky

and Sinnett and also ‘between conflicting gender and cultural ideologies’.4 Sinnett, we
are informed, ‘is best understood as a spiritual colonizer’, who ‘craved command of
psychic space’; he supposedly believed he had a right to dominate Holloway, since she
was a woman, whereas the masters, as members of inferior races, had no such right.
He allegedly saw KH’s advice to rise above social and cultural prejudices as a demand
to ‘relinquish manhood’. KH often calls Holloway ‘child’, which to Sasson means that he
‘asserted male dominance and female inferiority by appealing to patriarchal power’.5
She maintains that KH and Holloway ‘were playing a cat-and-mouse game, each trying
to outmaneuver the other’.6

She also claims that KH ‘attacked [Holloway] in gendered language that suggested her
relationship with Sinnett was sexually impure’.7 This accusation is based on a blatant
misinterpretation of a passage in which KH criticizes Holloway for acting as a medium
for a bhuta, or kama-rupa, in Sinnett’s house. He states: ‘The “unsatisfied desire” in this
case is a bad one, begotten of selfishness and bigotry; and to encourage a hope that it
might be gratified would be to add to, not curtail, the being’s time in Kama-loka ...’8 KH is
clearly referring here to the bhuta’s unsatisfied desire, but in Sasson’s mind he is
referring to Sinnett’s lust for Holloway! Sasson’s misconceptions and wild speculations
reveal more about her own obsessions with sex and gender than about theosophical
history.

Sasson insinuates that Holloway was one of Blavatsky’s accomplices. Regarding the
incident when Holloway and Mohini saw a KH letter fall to the ground in Cambridge, she
states that they ‘cooperated in the transmission of a letter in order to support her desire
not to return to London ahead of Blavatsky’.9 In other words, Holloway supposedly
transmitted a fake letter to herself in order to persuade herself to stay in Cambridge an
extra day or two! Sasson says that, during her stay in Elberfeld, Holloway ‘became more
deeply implicated in the transmission of letters from the Masters’ – the word ‘implicated’
clearly suggesting wrongdoing.10

We are told that Blavatsky and KH feared that Holloway might reveal ‘embarrassing
information’ about occult phenomena, but that she agreed to keep silent in exchange for
future communications from KH.11 Given that Holloway received no letters from KH after
returning to the US yet revealed no ‘embarrassing information’, Sasson is clearly
groping in the dark. She suggests that Holloway valued letters from the masters
because they placed her among a select few, but doubts whether she believed in
mahatmas ‘on a literal level’.12 She appears to see nothing absurd in the idea that
Holloway was keen to acquire esoteric knowledge from purely ‘metaphorical’ mahatmas.
There can be no doubt, however, that Holloway had certain, inner knowledge that the
occult world, occult powers and genuine mahatmas existed. Unable to grasp this,
Sasson is completely out of her depth in trying to understand the psychic dimension of
Holloway’s life.

Sasson also exposes her prejudice in her comments on Holloway’s visit to

Schmiechen’s studio to watch him painting the mahatmas’ portraits.13 Blavatsky told
Holloway, a nonsmoker, to light a cigarette and assured her it would not make her
nauseous; Holloway says that it produced a ‘curious quietening of nerves’. Sasson
jumps to the conclusion that Blavatsky had put hashish in it to enhance Holloway’s
ability to ‘see’ KH clairvoyantly. It should be noted that Holloway says she made the
cigarette herself using Blavatsky’s mild Egyptian tobacco. On this occasion, Holloway
noticed a resemblance between Mohini and the astral figure of KH. Sasson interprets
this to mean that Holloway thought KH had projected his astral form into Mohini’s
physical body, making him KH’s double – an idea so daft that it raises questions about
what Sasson herself may have been smoking ...☺

References

1. Sasson, Yearning for the New Age, p. 163.

2. See e.g. Vernon Harrison, H.P. Blavatsky and the SPR: An examination of the
Hodgson Report of 1885, TUP, 1997; Michael Gomes, The Coulomb Case,
Fullerton, CA: Theosophical History, 2005; Victor A. Endersby, The Hall of Magic
Mirrors, New York: Hearthstone, 1969; Adlai E. Waterman (Walter A. Carrithers),
Obituary: The ‘Hodgson Report’ on Madame Blavatsky, Adyar, Madras: TPH,
1963; The theosophical mahatmas, http://davidpratt.info.
3. Yearning for the New Age, pp. 76, 87, 84-5.
4. Ibid., p. 94.
5. Ibid., p. 88.
6. Ibid., p. 145.
7. Ibid., pp. 86-8.
8. H&M, pp. 66-71.
9. Yearning for the New Age, p. 145.
10. Ibid., p. 140.
11. Ibid., p. 152.
12. Ibid., pp. 255, 267.
13. Ibid., pp. 142-3; H&M, pp. 51-3.

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