7 MADAME BLAVATSKY'S POWER OF SUGGESTION

IN SPITE OF EVERYTHING THAT CAN BE SAID against Mme Blavatsky, it nevertheless remains true that she possessed a certain aptitude, and even some intellectual capacity, however relative it undoubtedly was, that really seems quite lacking in her successors, for whom the doctrinal side of Theosophy has indeed tended more and more to pass into the background, yielding to sentimental declamations of the most deplorable banality. What cannot be denied the founder of the Theosophical Society is that she exercised a strange power of suggestion—of fascination so to speak—over her entourage, and that it sometimes pleased her to emphasize this in most offensive terms regarding her disciples. Concerning Judge, who fasted and saw apparitions, she wrote, "You see how foolish they are, and how I lead them by the nose."^[1] We have already seen how, later, she appreciated Olcott,^[2] whose stupidity proved not to be so 'incurable' as some others', but who sometimes behaved tactlessly in the presidential functions she had confided in him in order to provide cover for herself, and who trembled before all those who, like Franz Hartmann, knew too much about the hidden side of the Society.

In the course of her disclosures to Solovioff, Mme Blavatsky says again:

What is one to do... when in order to rule men it is necessary to deceive them, when in order to persuade them to let themselves be driven where you will, you must promise them and show them playthings? Why, suppose my books and the _Theosophist_ had been a thousand times more interesting and more serious, do you imagine I should have had any sort of success anywhere, if behind all that there had not been the 'phenomena...? Do you know that almost invariably the more simple, the more silly and the more gross a phenomenon, the more likely it is to succeed...? The vast majority of people who are reckoned clever by themselves and others are inconceivably silly. If you only knew how many lions and eagles in every quarter of the globe have turned into asses at my whistle, and obediently wagged their great ears in time as I piped the tune!^[3]

These passages are quite characteristic of Mme Blavatsky's mentality, and they admirably define the true role of the 'phenomena' which were always the principal element of success of Theosophy in certain circles, and which contributed powerfully in supporting the Society... and its leaders.

Thus, as Solovioff recognized, Mme Blavatsky was endowed with 'a kind of magnetism, which attracted to her with an irresistible force';^[4] if finally he knew enough to free himself from this influence, Solovioff himself had not always escaped so completely, for he signed at least one of the famous statements that Mme de Morsier, with the utmost sincerity, had written out under Mrs Blavatsky's supervision and revision. Arthur Arnould, too, has said that 'her power of suggestion was formidable'; in this connection he used to recount that in London she would sometimes say to someone, "Look at your knees," and the person who looked saw, terrified, an enormous spider. Then she would smilingly say, "That spider does not exist, I made you see it." Olcott, for his part, wrote as follows in his _Old Diary Leaves_:

No one was more captivating than she when it suited her purpose, which was when she wished to attract people in her public work. Then she was affectionate in tone and manners, making one feel oneself her best if not her only friend.... I could not say that she was straightforward.... I believe we were for her nothing more than pawns in a game of chess, for she was not sincerely fond of us.^[5]

We have mentioned above the case of Bavaji, who was led by hypnotic suggestion to become as it were an unconscious accomplice in Mme Blavatsky's frauds for nearly the entire time he was at Adyar. Ordinarily, however, Blavatsky used suggestion in the waking state, as is seen in the anecdote reported by Arthur Arnould. This kind of suggestion is usually more difficult to execute than the other and requires much greater will-power and training, but it was generally facilitated by the very restricted diet Mme Blavatsky imposed on her disciples under the pretext of 'spiritualizing' them. Such things as this were already happening in New York:

Our Theosophists are in general required not only to swear off even a drop of liquor but to fast continually. I teach them not to eat this or that, and if they don't die they will learn; but they cannot resist, which is so much better for them.^[6]

It goes without saying that Blavatsky herself was far from adopting a similar regime. While energetically recommending vegetarianism and even proclaiming it indispensable to 'spiritual development', she never adopted it herself, nor did Olcott; moreover she smoked almost continually from morning till night. Not everyone is equally amenable to suggestion, however, and it was probably when Mme Blavatsky was powerless to bring about hallucinations of sight and hearing that she had recourse to 'Mahātmās in muslin' and her silver bell.

The attraction exercised by Mme Blavatsky is all the more astonishing in that her physical appearance was far from pleasant. W.T. Stead went so far as to say that she was 'hideously ugly-looking, monstrously obese, of crude and violent manners, a dreadful character, and a profane tongue'; and again that she was 'cynical, mocking, absurd, and impassioned,—in a word that she was 'everything that a hierophant of the divine mysteries must not be.'^[7] In spite of this, her magnetic action is undeniable, a striking example being the immediate influence she exerted over Annie Besant when in 1889 the latter was introduced to her by the socialist Herbert Burrows. This future President of the Theosophical Society, who till then had been a fierce free-thinker, was won over from the first meeting in a 'conversion' so sudden that it would have been difficult to credit had she herself not recounted all the circumstances with a truly disconcerting innocence.^[8] It is true that at the time Mrs Besant seems at the very least to have been especially unsettled and impressionable, one of her old friends having said that 'she does not have the gift of originality; she is at the mercy of her emotions and especially of her most recent friends.^[9]' Also, she was in all likelihood sincere in the beginning, perhaps even throughout the remaining life of Mme Blavatsky, whose secretary she became and who, in the course of a journey to Fontainbleau, made 'Mahātmā' Morya materialize before her. On the other hand it is extremely doubtful, to put it mildly, that she continued to be as sincere afterward, although like Blavatsky herself, and like Olcott and yet others, she may often have been influenced before influencing others. What makes one hesitate to form an absolute judgment in such a matter is that all these personages seem to have been neither truly unconscious of the role they played nor altogether free to withdraw voluntarily.