J.N. MASKELYNE AND ‘THEOSOPHY
EXPOSED’
By Emma-Louise Rhodes
John Nevil Maskelyne was born in Cheltenham in 1839. Starting out
as an amateur conjurer alongside George Alfred Cooke, the pair worked
their way up to become experts in the field.
Maskelyne’s interest in the Davenport brothers and his dislike
of Spiritualist frauds was evident early on in his career. His first
professional performance (with Cooke) was billed as:
‘Messrs. Maskelyne and Cooke, the only successful
rivals of the Davenport Brothers, will give a grand
exposition of the entire public séance in open
daylight, showing the possibility of accomplishing,
without the aid of spiritualism, not only all the
Davenport’s tricks, but many others, original and
more astounding, including escaping from a box.’
Maskelyne and Cooke later went on to perform a long run at the
Egyptian Hall in Piccadilly, calling it ‘England’s Home
of Mystery’ and performing magical feats such as the apparent
decapitation of Maskelyne’s head and the famous luminous skeleton
trick. On Cooke’s death in 1905, Maskelyne joined forces with
David Devant (the then President of the Magic Circle) and continued
to astonish and amaze audiences in London.
Maskelyne’s obsession with Spiritualist frauds was evident
from the early days of his career and the publication of his book,
Modern Spiritualism, confirmed that it was a lifelong mission.
In 1906, Maskelyne had sued Archbishop Thomas Colley (who had been
notoriously deceived by the fraudulent spirit photographer, William
Hope) after he was refused the £1000 reward for replicating
a spirit materialisation. Colley filed a counter claim for libel
and Maskelyne fought back with his highly successful show ‘The
Side Issue of the £1000 Ghost’.
Maskelyne also testified at the trial of Dr Henry Slade, the fraudulent
American spirit slate writer, in 1876 The outcome of the trial saw
Slade sentenced under the Vagrancy Act to three months imprisonment
with hard labour, this being nullified on technical grounds during
his appeal.
From his writings and demonstrations on Spiritualism, John Neville
Maskelyne turned his attentions to the fringe religion Theosophy
and, in particular, its founder, H.P Blavatsky.
THE PUBLICATION OF ‘THEOSOPHY EXPOSED’
In 1912, George Routledge and Sons Ltd, published the Maskelyne’s
booklet The Fraud of Theosophy Exposed. In his preface,
Maskelyne states that, after he expressed his opinions on the religion,
a letter appeared in the Globe stating that he was ‘foolish’
and asking for Maskelyne to ‘substantiate his statements from
a public platform by material means.’
The magician replied, stating that he had in his possession:
‘ … an overwhelming number of indisputable facts
proving that the society was founded solely upon
falsehood and fraud.’
The publication of his letter ‘raised a storm’ along
with calls for him to explain himself further and, within a month,
Maskelyne had produced his booklet uncovering, what he perceived
as, the true facts of Theosophy.
Maskelyne did not hold back in his condemnation of the comparatively
new religion. Theosophy Exposed, which was just under one
hundred pages in length, traced the religion from its beginnings,
to the death of its founder, through to its place in Edwardian Britain.
The meaning of the word Theosophy is derived from the Greek theo
‘divine’ and sophia ‘wisdom’. It was described
by one of its most devout subjects, Annie Besant, as being :
‘ …first used by Ammonius Saccas, in the third
century.’
However, there is no mention of either Theosophy as a religion
or the formation of any society representing it before 1875.
SPIRITUALISM AND THEOSOPHY
In 1858, the Russian Helena Petrovina Blavatsky met the renowned
Spiritualism Daniel Dunglass Home in Paris and was immediately converted
to the movement. In a letter to a friend, Home wrote:
‘… in order to attract attention she pretended
to be
a medium. My friend (Blavatsky’s lover at the
time) still thinks she is mediumistic, but he is also
just as fully convinced that she is a cheat.’
Born Helena Petrovina Hahn in 1831, she had married the seventy
year old General Blavatsky when she was just sixteen. Living with
him for only three months, she then, according to A.P Sinnett’s
The Life of Madame Blavatsky, visited Tibet sometime during
1847 and 1857 and lived with the Mahatmas.
Arriving back from Asia ‘with a block of truth … fully
impressed with the magnitude of her mission’, Blavatsky established
that the three main objectives of Theology were:
• To put down Spiritualism;
• To convert materialists;
• To prove the existence of the Mahatmas.
However, Maskelyne asks the question that, if Blavasky knew nothing
of Spiritualism before she met D.D Home, why did she state that
one of the main intentions was to bring down the religion?
‘If Madame knew nothing about Spiritualism
until 1858, how came the Mahatmas to depute
her to put it down for so long? It is certain that
Madame went from Paris to Russia; her sister,
Madame de Jelihowsky, confirms this, and says
that she gave Spiritual séances, consisting of
messages from spirits by table-rapping. Madame
was evidently anxious to show off the tricks she
had learnt from Home, and she takes the credit of
converting her father to Spiritualism.’
In 1874 (a year before the Theosophical Society was formed) Blavatsky
had travelled to New York, where she observed a psychic show performed
by the Eddy Brothers (who later admitted to fraud). There she met
Colonel Henry S. Olcott, a solicitor by profession, with whom she
struck up a lifelong friendship. Blavatsky and Olcott went on to
befriend a Mr and Mrs Holmes, popular mediums of the time who, Maskelyne
writes, produced the infamous Katie King materialisation before
being exposed as frauds. Thus, Blavatsky left Spiritualism behind
and turned her attentions to forming the Miracle Club with Olcott,
which, in September 1875, became the Theosophical Society.
At the close of The Fraud of Theosophy Exposed, Maskelyne
described the Theosophical principals of reincarnation.
‘It appears that the great aim of a Theosophist
should be to become a Mahatma, but that is a
troublesome business and it occupies a long
time. Before a step can be taken towards this
goal we are told that we must abstain from flesh,
marriage and all worldly pleasures … We are
told that at death of one who has led such a life
his ego is divided into two parts, a good part and
a bad part. The bad part becomes a mischievious
spook that deceives people at spiritual séances
and haunts the earth for a time, and eventually
becomes annihilated. The good part of the ego
retires to devanchan (rosy sleep), in which
state it remains for 1500 years; after which it
becomes reincarnated. This process has to be
gone through at least 800 times, so that it takes
about 1,250,000 years to become a Mahatma.’
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle held the view that Theosophists and Spiritualists
were ‘roughly united’ on the Seven Principles of Spiritualism,
which were: Fatherhood of God; Brotherhood of man; Communion of
Saints and Ministry of Angels; Human survival after physical death;
Personal responsibility; Compensation or retribution for good and
evil deeds; Eternal progress open to every soul.
However, the main difference between Theosophy and Spiritualism
was the fact that the former relied heavily on the doctrine of reincarnation.
Spiritualist writer and medium, Emma Hardinge Britten, who founded
the Seven Principles, wrote that the belief was:
‘… utterly destructive of personal identity, is
tantamount to annihilation, and hence is almost
universally, rejected by Spiritualists. Furthermore,
it is an unproved doctrine, the assertion of its
advocates that all the millions of spirits that deny
it are “low spirits”, without knowledge, and the
few
that teach it are “high spirits”, who have knowledge,
being too assumptive even to admit to comment or
argument.’
In his book The Table Rappers, Ronald Pearsall takes a
look at the distinction between Spiritualism and Theosophy.
‘… there was one crucial difference between the
two beliefs. Theosophy had a person of great
personal magnetism at the head of it, Spiritualism
had none.’
Pearsall goes on to write that:
‘Spiritualists let Theosophy insinuate itself
before they realised what a danger it was to
themselves.’
Indeed, at its height in the late nineteenth century, Theosophy
had around one million followers worldwide, predominantly in Europe
and the United States. Famous Victorian mediums such as D.D Home
and Florence Cook might have been able to thrill their audiences
with supposed materialisations and levitation, but Theosophy presented
its followers with an exotic mix of Tibetan mysticism and non-sectarian
philosophy that the Spiritualist faith could not fulfil.
MASKELYNE’S ATTACK
Having already spent a good deal of his career attacking Spiritualism,
J. N Maskelyne’s assault on Theosophy was very much in keeping
with his style. The Fraud of Theosophy Exposed questions
whether Blavatsky ever even set foot in Tibet:
‘Madame Blavatsky says that she saw processions
of nuns and that some of them possessed
marvellous psychological powers. There are no
nuns in the country.’
Maskelyne also states that, in the early days of the Society, Blavatsky
did not believe in reincarnation and stated in her book, Isis
Unveiled:
‘Reincarnation is as rare as the teratological
phenomena of a two-headed infant.’
During Blavatsky’s time as president of the Society (an office
she held until her death) letters would mysteriously appear from
the Mahatmas, either on cabinets or hand delivered by servants.
Maskelyne cites one particular instance where an Irish maid had
been promised five dollars to impersonate a mysterious woman, thickly
veiled and strangely dressed, and hand a letter from the Mahatmas
to Blavatsky during a meeting. Unable to get her payment after the
event, the girl immediately exposed the fraud.
In 1879, Olcott and Blavatsky travelled to India with a handful
of other member of the Theosophical Society, in order to meet the
prominent preacher of the time, Dayanand Saraswati. After their
meeting, which did not go according to the plan of the Society,
Saraswati declared that Blavatsky was a trickster whose performances
were simply down to mesmerism, prearrangement and conjuring. Olcott
in turn denounced the preacher as a ‘humbug’.
Moving on to the then Spiritualist A.P Sinnett, who later wrote
her aforementioned biography, Blavatsky resided with him for a couple
of weeks, keen to show off her abilities. However, Maskelyne states
that Sinnett was not terribly impressed with her powers and later
stated that ‘she did nothing but some table rapping.’
On leaving Sinnett, Olcott rented a bungalow for both himself,
Blavatsky and the Coulombs, a couple they had met during their stay
in India. Maskelyne wrote that:
‘They prepared the ceilings of the rooms so that
letters would come floating down when required;
they prepared a cabinet from which letter to the
Mahatmas would disappear and in which replies
would arrive. Articles placed in the cabinet would
disappear; broken china would be miraculously
mended. Mahatmas were caused to be seen in the
garden gloaming, and they would mysteriously
disappear.’
Dr Hodgson for the Society for Physical Research investigated the
bungalow and the Coulombs admitted that it had been set up to produce
such phenomena and confessed to fraud. The press picked up on the
story and, Maskelyne stated that:
‘After this complete exposure the Theosophical
Society nearly collapsed …’
However, on their return to Europe Blavatsky and Olcott enlisted
the help of Annie Besant. Once both a devout Christian and sworn
atheist, Besant went on to become ‘the voice’ of the
Society, frequently lecturing and writing on the subject and embroiling
herself in a fierce battle with W.Q Judge in a bid to become president
after Blavatsky’s death. Maskelyne credits Besant for rescuing
the Society in its dark days with her fine oration and devout conviction.
H.P Blavatsky died in 1891 ‘a comparatively poor woman’.
As previously mentioned, the Vice President of the Society, Judge,
who also controlled the American branch, was intent on taking over
entirely and forged letters written by the Mahatmas, stating that
the overall presidency should be divided by himself and Annie Besant.
However, after probing the story with the help of Besant, the Westminster
Gazette exposed his intentions. Judge accused her of witchcraft
and black magic and threatened to establish a new society. Eventually
the argument between the two was quietened by the Society and Besant
continued her work, stating that she wanted to reconcile Christianity
with Theosophy, due to the fact that Christ was a Mahatma.
Ending his book on Theosophy and Blavatsky, Maskelyne wrote:
‘I expect much abuse from Theosophists for attacking
a dead woman, but when the misdeeds of the dead
are injuring the living, those misdeeds should be
attacked with every possible weapon.’
After Madame Blavatsky’s death, Maskelyne noted that there
was no record of any member of the Society seeing a Mahatma materialise,
apart from in visions or dreams. The two who had apparently appeared
to Blavatsky, Morya and Koot Hoomi, were never seen again, although
always fiercely defended by Besant.
THEOSOPHY TODAY
The Theosophical Society still exists both in England and America,
running courses, retreats and workshops. The Theosophical Society
in England state that:
‘H.P. Blavatsky … challenged both dogmatic
religious authority and scientific materialism.
Today we have to challenge the extremes of
indifference, religious fundamentalism and the
babble of many groups all claiming to exclusively
have the truth.’
The Society has forty ‘Lodges’ in England and also
operates a youth branch, ‘The Order of the Round Table’.
Although Theosophy is a still undoubtedly a fringe religion and
less known than Spiritualism, it maintains a steady stream of followers,
from the curious to the needy to the pious. Attacks on the religion
are less frequent than those on the Spiritualist faith, mainly due
to the fact that Theosophy does not prey on the bereaved or extort
money from those who are desperate for reassurance. However, Maskelyne’s
assault on Blavatsky as a person and his highlighting of her fraudulent
miracles upon which the religion is based is still an extremely
useful read in terms of early Theosophy as a splinter group of Spiritualism.
REFERENCES
Blavatsky, H.P. Isis Unveiled, reprinted by Quest Books,
1994.
Pearsall, Ronald, The Table-Rappers: The Victorians and the
Occult, Sutton Publishing, London, 1972.
Maskelyne, J.N, The Fraud of Theosophy Exposed, George
Routledge and Sons Ltd, London, 1912.
www.theosophical-society.org.uk |
