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missioned by the spirits to put it down, by substituting the oriental kind! Crude spiritism had a limited range, and was too simple a fraud to catch many thinking Christian people. So the dev ils invented something more subtle, in tellectual, and imitative of Christian ity, cunningly using the Bible with a show of respect while perverting it unto destruction. The Theosophical Society began as a spiritistic circle, and th a t is what it is now, only developed into a cult of more complicated and intellectual subtlety. Circumstances (some say the mahat mas) led Blavatsky and Olcott to go to India, where they developed their sys tem along oriental lines, and incidental ly got some notoriety by an exposure of frauds perpetrated by Blavatsky as al leged miracles. Anne Besant poses as the present world-leader of the movement. She was the wife of a clergyman of the Church of England, who was also master of a college. She was apparently a Christian until the birth of a child, when she sud denly left home, child and church. She joined a free-thought society in Lon don, professed atheism, and poured scorn and ridicule upon Christ and Christianity. Then she became a so cialist zealot, and was associated in the publication of “The F ruits of Philoso phy,” described as “one of the most ob scene pamphlets ever w ritten.” In a much later book she deplored the part she took in that, admitting herself to have been mistaken, but without ex pressing penitence or contrition. Besant’s acquaintance with the doe- trines of Christianity made her a valu able medium for the false teachings; for she is able to clothe them in the sem blance of Christian verbiage, making them more deceitful and alluring. A townsman of her earlier life says that she has an inordinate vanity, with an “ irresistible desire to be ‘in the lime light’—to be in a position to display her marvelous gifts of speech.”
even without further evidence. Yet such a strange condition prevails in the world, th a t thousands of educated peo ple have been, and are being, bewitched by the strange fascination of the sys tem of thought and practice such a woman foisted upon the world. Blavatsky claimed to have visited Thibet, where she discovered a very an cient book in an unknown language, but which she was enabled to read by oc cult wisdom. Something like Joe Smith and the Book of Mormon! She claimed to have also met in Thibet certain “Wise Ones” (whom we shall presently locate under the title “mahatmas” ) who in structed her and commissioned her to enlighten the world by 1. Putting down spiritism. 2. Converting materialists. 3. Proving the existence of the ma hatmas. This was claimed to have occurred in 1856. But Blavatsky also said th a t she was taught spiritism by Home in 1858, and knew nothing about it until then. Slipped a cog there, madam! Now why did she learn and practice, and enthusi astically boost spiritism for years fol lowing 1858 if she had been commis sioned in 1856 to put it down? Her ac counts of Thibet and its people did not check with facts, and it was proven that she never was in th a t country. She professed to have come from Prance to America because she knew this to be the cradle of Spiritualism, and she wanted to be a t headquarters. She claimed th a t her mahatma ordered her to come. Blavatsky and Olcott, then a newspaper reporter, met at some spirit seances, and at once became associated in spiritistic and occult investigations. For some time Blavatsky associated with spiritists as a medium, and then undertook to reform the movement by teaching a higher (?) form of spiritism, incorporating the oriental mysticism she had picked up. This raw western coun try knew only a crude, elemental kind of spiritism, and Blavatsky was com
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