Blavatsky Cuts Down to Size a Sham Adept and Vulgar Bully

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky · Blavatsky Speaks Series · 13 pages

From the supplement to The Theosophist of March 1882, and reprinted in the Collected Writings under the title Doomed! A letter from a Mr R. Barnes Austin of Heathfield had been lying two months on the editorial table, and she begins by explaining that no apology would have been needed had it gone straight into the wastebasket, its language being as far from that of a drawing room as the smells of Hungerford Market are from those of St James's Palace.

What she could not resist was the letter's central assertion — that enquiry into occult philosophy in England is far more extensive, though secret, than is generally known, and that neither Blavatsky nor Colonel Olcott, do what they will, will ever be admitted to such company in England, India, or Tibet. The last item is what undoes him, and she says so: the news would have been stunning had he not spoilt it by claiming knowledge of the land of Bod Yul that nobody else in England possesses, beyond what may be found in the meagre accounts of Markham's Tibet. Thirteen pages, and among the clearest examples in the series of her method with a confident correspondent who has overreached.

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