The Process of Precipitating Handwritten Letters Explained

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky · Black versus White Magic Series · 9 pages

Of all the phenomena produced by occult agency in connection with the Society, Blavatsky writes, none had been witnessed by a wider circle of spectators, or more widely discussed in theosophical publications, than the mysterious production of letters. She declines to describe the phenomenon again — it had been done well enough in The Occult World and elsewhere — and sets about explaining instead how it is supposed to work.

That makes this a more exposed document than most. The precipitated letters were the single most contested feature of the early Society, and an account of the mechanism invites the obvious test in a way that a description of the effect does not. What she offers is a process rather than a marvel, closely comparable to the chemical and photographic senses of the word that W.Q. Judge sets out at length in his own study of precipitation in this section. Published in The Theosophist over December 1883 and January 1884, and republished in the sixth volume of the Collected Writings.

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