THE DUCHESS OF POMAR
Lady Caithness, Duchess of Pomar, was a peculiar figure who described herself as Catholic and seems to have been a sincere one; but with her Catholicism was allied a 'Christian Theosophy' inspired, as we have noted, principally by Boehme and Swedenborg as well as by certain private conceptions that were even stranger. She expounded her ideas in numerous works, [1], and she also directed a review in Paris called L'Aurore du Jour Nouveau, an 'organ of Christian esoterism. [2] This journal was dedicated to 'Logosophy', which was defined thus:
Logosophy is the science of the Logos or Christ as this has been handed down to us in the esoteric doctrines of Indian savants and the Greek and Alexandrian philosophers.... Christ, or the Logos, who forms the basis of our teachings, is not precisely Jesus as an historical personage (the Son of Man), but rather Jesus in his divine aspect as Son of God, or Christ. This divinity, in which we believe, must be the goal of our aspirations. We have the right to make this claim, for we are all sons of the same God and consequently of a divine essence, and have we not been commanded to become perfect as our Father in Heaven is perfect? Logosophy is therefore the science of the divinity in man. It teaches us how to kindle the divine spark that every man brings with him when coming into this world. It is by its development that we can, even on this earth, exercise psychic powers that seem to be superhuman; and that, after our physical death, our spirit will be reunited with that of its divine Creator and will possess immortality in Heaven.
Here again it is the notion of an 'internal' Christianity that predominates, even though it is affirmed in a less exclusive manner than with Anna Kingsford. As to the development of 'psychic powers', this is nothing but the third of the Theosophical Society's goals, whose realization is reserved for the 'esoteric section'.
From 1882, Lady Pomar called herself 'President of the Theosophical Society of the East and of the West'; contrary to what might be believed, her society was never in competition with that of Mme Blavatsky, of which it really constituted on the contrary an 'esoteric section', which explains the reconciliation which we have noted. In May, 1884, Mme Blavatsky wrote to Solovioff:
For the past two years . . . a few persons [have met] in the home of a certain Duchess plus lady, who likes to call herself 'Président de la Société Théosophique d'Orient et d'Occident'. God bless her, let her call herself what she likes, she is rich, and has a superb hotel of her own here in Paris; that is no objection; she may be useful. [3]
Thus Mme Blavatsky was anxious to humor the Duchess of Pomar because of her wealth; and when she wished to establish a branch at Paris, the Duchess for her part thought that it might serve as a recruiting center for her own organization for which she intended to preserve a much more restricted character. What proves that there was no rivalry between the two women is that the Duchess, responding to Mme Blavatsky's hopes, in fact provided funds that enabled her to spread her doctrine in France; in particular, it has been ascertained that in 1884 the Duchess provided a sum of twenty-five thousand francs for that purpose. [4]
Nevertheless, Lady Pomar resigned from the Theosophical Society in September 1884, complaining that Olcott 'lacked tact' in her regard. [5] This resignation must have been withdrawn because she resigned again in 1886, this time in the company of Mme de Morsier and several other members of the Parisian branch, following the revelations of Solovioff. Despite this, at the time of the 'Spiritist and Spiritualist Congress' of September 1889, [6] for which she was offered the honorary presidency, [7] and where Papus declared in his general report that she had 'well served the spiritist cause', Lady Pomar did not cease to be the 'president of the Theosophical Society of the East and of the West'; she was thus in a situation analogous to that of Anna Kingsford with her 'Hermetic Society'. But a little later, in March 1890 to be precise, Mme Blavatsky established an independent 'esoteric section' in Paris, for whose statutes and rules no information was made public, and whose members were required by oath to passively obey the orders of the directors. It is no less true that toward the end of her life the Duchess maintained rather amicable relations with the Theosophical Society; thus in July, 1893 she wrote a letter to the secretary of the Paris branch which was published by the Lotus Bleu and in which can be read:
Whatever the differences of point of view that exist between me and the Theosophical Society, I very much wish to see it develop in France, knowing that it can only contribute to the progress of the ideas to which I am myself devoted. But the mission that has been confided to me by Him whom I call my Master, the Lord Jesus Christ, absorbs all the resources at my disposal.
Nevertheless, she registered an annual subscription of two hundred francs, and she continued her letter in these terms:
I want the MTS [Members of the Theosophical Society] to be aware of the fraternal sentiments which I bear them. If we sometimes follow different ways, the goal which we seek is the same, and I extend my very best wishes for your efforts.
Let us also note that on June 13, 1894 Lady Pomar entertained Mrs Besant, who gave a lecture in her home on the 'pilgrimage of the soul', and that this meeting was chaired by Colonel Olcott. On June 11, Mrs Besant had given another lecture at the Rudy Institute; it had not yet been deemed proper to place the Sorbonne at her disposal, as happened in 1911 and as happened again even this year [1921].
The Duchess of Pomar died on November 3, 1895; we excerpt the following lines from the obituary by Commandant Courmes which appeared in the Lotus Bleu, and we scrupulously respect his style:
It is a great and truly noble existence which has just been extinguished, for if the Duchess did not refuse to enjoy the wealth that karma had placed at her disposal, she certainly used it all the more in every kind of charity, whose number and particulars are innumerable, and also by acting eminently on the terrain of high intellectual charity by spreading, especially in France, her country of adoption, the waves of 'Knowledge'.... Spiritualist from the first hour, the Duchess of Pomar entered the Theosophical Society at its beginning in 1876, and she was intimately linked with Mme Blavatsky. She was president of the French branch 'Orient et Occident', whose Theosophical spirit, though independent, retained a more particularly Christian and even somewhat spiritist character. We would assuredly have preferred that she might have remained among oriental teachings, which appear to
us closer to the primary sources; but of course it is the right of Theosophists to follow, in their quest for the truth, the ways that best agree with their natural dispositions. [8]
These are truly strange facts: the alliance of Lady Pomar with Mme Blavatsky and her school, and the affirmation of a common goal between the movements directed by the two. What is perhaps no less curious is the extremely secret character the Duchess gave her organization. Here is what she wrote to Arthur Arnould in a letter which he published in 1890 on the occasion of the quarrel with Papus, or that, more exactly, he inserted in a document which he characterized as 'strictly private', but which nevertheless was sent to people outside the Theosophical Society:
The Theosophical Society of the East and West, over which I have the honor of presiding, being most esoteric and consequently most secret, I do not understand why Colonel Olcott had the imprudence to speak of it, for I had asked him to keep our secret. Our meetings are wholly secret, and we are forbidden to speak of them to anyone whomsoever outside our now rather numerous circle which counts among its members some of the greatest minds of France, but to which one is admitted only after the highest of initiations and very serious tests. When I say that we receive our instructions directly from the highest spheres, you will understand that we desire to keep the strictest secrecy....
What then were these instructions and these mysterious communications, whose means were probably not very different from those in use by ordinary spiritists, and what was the mission that Mme de Pomar claimed to have received? In a letter dated February 2, 1892, the original of which is in our hands, she said in this regard:
the devotion which I profess for Mary Stuart applies less to the the memories of her earthly personality than to her always living celestial individuality [9] which for more than thirty years has given
me numerous proofs of her spiritual [sic] presence at my side. This being, already so great, so noble on earth, has continued to develop according to the eternal law of the life of the Spirit, and today having come to possess the truth which makes one free, she has passed far beyond her former religious convictions. [10] Her mission is to give to the world today and especially to France, the Truths of the New Day which must lead the evolution of the race in the direction of a higher spirituality, and I have had the privilege of being chosen by her as earthly intermediary to labor at her work.
Further on she adds that 'this Queen is today an angel of the highest celestial spheres', spheres which she calls elsewhere the 'Circle of Christ' and the 'Circle of the Star'.
This 'New Day' which the Duchess of Pomar was thus charged with announcing and preparing for was a new revelation, an era which would succeed Christianity as Christianity succeeded the old Law; in a word, it was the 'arrival of the Holy Spirit' conceived of, gnostically, as the 'divine feminine. [11] This is again
the manifestation of the sons and daughters of God, not as a unique being, but as many; this more perfect race will humanize the earth which we know to have already passed through periods of mineral, vegetable, and animal development; and we see that this last period of development is nearly complete.
And the Duchess goes so far as to specify that
We can say truly that the old world ended in 1881 and that the Lord has again created a new heaven and a new earth and that we are going to enter the new year of Our Lady, 1882. [12]
These citations are taken from a curious brochure, full of Kabbalistic calculations, which has as title only the two dates 1881-1882, and at the end of which one reads this:
While I write these lines, the hours of 1881, the last year of the Old Revelation, rapidly approach the end, and the first hour of the celestial Spouse approaches. [13]
One may be excused for finding that the idea of a collective Messiah, as expressed here, is rather bizarre; but it is not entirely new, and we will point out in this connection that one encounters in Judaism ideas that tend to identify the Messiah with the people of Israel themselves. Whatever the case, it is precisely Messianism under one form or another that seems to provide the key for this 'end [times] community' which Lady Pomar affirms for the Theosophical Society, just as it is a more or less openly avowed messianism that is at the root of many other 'neo-spiritualist' movements.
If it was hardly a dozen years that the idea of a 'future Messiah', was expressed among the Theosophists, it is no less true that it had already been announced in these terms my Mme Blavatsky herself:
the next impulse will find a numerous and united body of people ready to welcome the new torch-bearer of Truth. He will find the minds of men prepared for his message, a language ready for him in which to clothe the new truths he brings, an organization awaiting his arrival, which will remove the merely mechanical, material obstacles and difficulties from his path. Think how much one, to whom such an opportunity is given, could accomplish. [14]
This therefore is the common aim of Lady Pomar's and of Mme Blavatsky's undertaking; but the latter, who carefully refrained from advancing precise dates, probably prophesied with foreknowledge; for it must be assumed that she had given to her Society, as secret mission, not only to prepare the way for 'Him who must come', but also to provoke his very appearance at the moment that seemed propitious. This mission Mrs Besant, Mme Blavatsky's former secretary and her last confidante, would accomplish with the aid of the former Anglican minister, Charles W. Leadbeater, who seems to
have played in her regard a role analogous to that of Olcott in regard to the founder of the Society. Only the 'Christian' complexion which had been given to the messianic movement on its way to realization did not perhaps correspond entirely to the views of Mme Blavatsky; and further, if one refers to what we said in the previous chapter, it can be seen that the disagreement is more apparent than real. Besides, the unstable and fleeting character of the Theosophical pseudo-doctrine has the advantage of permitting the most unforeseen transformations. To those who see its contradictions, the response is that they have not understood, just as the defenders of Bergsonian intuitionism do in their own case.