The Silent Brother

Attributed to Blavatsky and Hillarion Smerdis · Black versus White Magic Series · 12 pages

The second piece of fiction in the section, and like the Ensouled Violin it is presented as a true account. It appeared in The Theosophist in April and May 1880 signed only with a count's title and a row of asterisks for the name Boris de Zirkoff's introductory note works through the authorship: the story closely resembles others written by Blavatsky with the Adept Hillarion Smerdis, and the initials may stand for Endreinek Agardi, a pupil of Master M.

The narrator offers three reasons why the story cannot be doubted — the circumstances are still remembered by the oldest inhabitants of Palermo, the shock turned the twenty-six-year-old teller's hair white in one night and left him a raving lunatic for six months, and there is an official record of the criminal's death-bed confession in the family chronicles of a named prince. The tale proper concerns Glauerbach, who wanted to be Cagliostro's pupil and was refused, and who obtained from the Grand Copt only one small art: to make those around him utter their secret thoughts aloud without knowing their lips had moved. What he does with an art he never fully mastered is the story.

Read the full text (PDF, 0.5 MB, 12 pages)