H. P. Blavatsky interview in The Star newspaper. December 18, 1888.

Hi everyone. As someone deeply interested in the occult world, I've spent time reading H. P. Blavatsky’s work and have always found it fascinating. In several writings on occultism, I noticed repeated references to an interview she gave to The Star newspaper (London) on December 18, 1888.

Although I was able to find other interviews by Blavatsky, this particular one didn’t seem to be available online. A few months ago, I contacted the Duplication Services of the U.S Library of Congress, and they kindly provided me with a copy.

Below, you’ll find the transcription of the interview along with the original facsimile. Enjoy the reading!

Courtesy of the Library of Congress of the United States of America.

THEOSOPHY AND THEOSOPHISTS.

An Interview with Madame Blavatsky, and an Evening with the Brothers.

There are nearly as many Madame Blavatskys as you please. There is, for example, the Madame Blavatsky of the Psychical Research Society, which, if I remember rightly, has in one of its oracular reports assigned her a distinguished place on the roll of the world’s impostors. There is the Madame Blavatsky, of popular repute and report, who looks large and uncertain,

Monstrum informe, ingens, horrendum

in the imagination of Europe — a sort of female Cagliostro, or wonder-worker, who is wafted through stone walls, like Mrs. Guppy, and bodily up into the heavens like the just Enoch. There is then the Madame Blavatsky (known to the Brotherhood as "H. P. B.") of her own Theosophical Society, the members of which look upon her as a searcher after and teacher of truths not known to or not understanded of the many, as the foremost exponent (in Europe at all events) of the so-called Occult Science, and as a depositary in some measure of that so-called Secret Doctrine which is supposed to contain the essential veracities of all the religions and philosophies that are or ever were.

Once more there is the Madame Blavatsky, whom strangers from the outer darkness are occasionally permitted to see at her house in Holland-park, and to whom she reveals herself as a lady of 

EXCEPTIONAL CHARM.

of manner, wonderful variety of information, and powers of conversation which recall the giant talkers of a bygone literary age.

It was as one from the outer darkness, says a Star man, that I visited her a day or so ago. I had a delightfully humorous little note in my pocket, inviting me to tea, and warning me that I should find the writer “as easy to interview as a sacred crocodile of old Nile.” The envelope of this note bore a mystic symbol, and the unimpeachable motto that “There is no religion higher than truth.”

I was led into a little snug room on the ground floor of a substantial house, where two lamps and a gas stove glowed like a triple star. I smelt Turkish tobacco strongly, and

 BEHIND THE RED DISC OF A CIGARETTE

I saw the broad and impressive countenance of Madame Blavatsky. Short and redundant, and swathed rather than fitted in black silk, she is a very remarkable figure. The dark, almost swarthy face, looks a little heavy at first (my immediate impressions was of a feminine reincarnation of Cagliostro), with its wide nostrils, large soft eyes, and full and weighty lips. But by and by it shows itself a mobile and expressive face, very sympathetic, and very intellectual. And whilst on this gross subject of personal description (a liberty for which the interviewer should always apologise sincerely to the interviewed) let me note the delicate plumpness of the hands.

A circular box of carved wood at her elbow furnishes Madame Blavatsky with the tobacco for the cigarettes, which she smokes incessantly, from six in the morning, when she commences work, until she puts out her lamp for the night. Besides the tobacco-box, there is only one other notable object in her sanctum the portrait of 

THE MAHATMA MORYA

(a descendant, she says, of the old dynasty of the Moryas) whom she calls her Master, a dark and beautiful Indian face, full of sweetness and wisdom. This dusky seer Madame Blavatsky has seen, she says, at various times in the flesh; in England once, in India on many occasions, and some years ago she went to seek him in the fastnesses of Thibet — a romantic pilgrimage, by no means free from [illegible world] during which she penetrated several of the Buddhist monasteries or Llawaseries, and had converse of the recluses there. But Madame Blavatsky's disciples have many stories to tell of the extraordinary ways in which her Mahatma communicates with her. Letters that never paid postage, nor passed through St. Martin’s-le-Grand, are seen to

FLUTTER DOWN INTO HER LAP.

Literary quotations that she is sometimes bothered to find when at work are put into her hand written out upon slips of paper. The manuscript that she leaves on her desk overnight is often found by her in the morning, with passages corrected, expunged, or re-written, marginal notes inserted, and so on, in the handwriting of the Mahatma Morya.

Sufficiently surprising, too, are the powers with which her theosophical associates credit Madame herself. Those who live with her in Clarence-road see wonders daily, and have left off being surprised. One accept the theory that the psychic faculties latent within us are capable, under certain conditions, of being developed to any extent, and magical doings of all sorts become easy of credence; and belief in what are called, I think, the astral powers is a cardinal article of faith with the Theosophists. Here’s a funny little circumstance which one of the Blavatsky household — an intelligent American gentleman — related gravely and in evident good faith. Madame Blavatsky rolled a cigarette, and was going to light it, but found that her match-box was empty. Over her head was a swinging lamp, so high that she could not have reached it had she mounted on her chair to do so. The American gentleman, who was sitting with her at the time, declares that he saw her gradually elongate herself — so it appeared to him — until she could lean over the lamp, when she lighted her cigarette, then sank back into her chair, and resumed her writing. But these phenomena are not witnessed by everybody, and perhaps I need scarcely add that Madame Blavatsky (though freely offering me the contents of her tobacco-box) declined to work a miracle for me. Doubtless her refusal was wise, for if I had seen one of these uncanny sights with my own eyes, which you would have believed my report of it?

We talked of many things.

“What is theosophy, Madame?” I asked. “Do you call it a religion?”

“Most distinctly not,” she replied. “There are too many religions in the world already. I do not propose to add to the number.”

“What, may I ask, is the theosophical attitude towards these too numerous religions?”

Madame Blavatsky hereupon entered into a long and interesting explanation on this subject, from which I gathered that theosophy looks upon all religions as good in one sense, and all religions as bad in another sense. There are truths underlying all, and there are falsities over-lying all. Most faiths are good at the core, all are more or less wrong in their external manifestations; and all the trappings of religions, all their shows and ceremonies, are entirely repudiated by the theosophists.

The conditions under which aspirants become members of the Theosophical Society are few and simple. Merely to join the society it is sufficient to profess oneself in sympathy with its objects, of which there are three in chief — the promotion of

UNIVERSAL BROTHERHOOD AMONG MEN,

the study of religions, and the development of the psychic faculties latent in man. The last-named object is for the attainment of advanced members, who have gained admittance to the esoteric section of the society. It is only to the esoteric section, for example, that you can expect to learn how to elongate yourself.

Madame herself, in her vigorous, intellectual way, is quite as dogmatic as the most dogmatic professors of what (under theosophical favor) are called the exact sciences; and, indeed, dogmatism, both in affirmation and denial, seems the badge off all the theosophical tribe. Here, for instance, is a clever and handsome Miss Mabel Collings — a recognished light of the society — who has just published an esoteric novel called “The Blossom and the Fruit,” which she prefaces by some words to the effect (I quote from memory), that nobody need read it who is not prepared to accept the reincarnation of souls "as a living fact." But, it is to be hoped (in the interests of what Mr. Chadband calls Terewth) that no one outside the esoteric or elongating section is prepared to accept such a "fact" on bare theosophical authority.

Madame Blavatsky went on to tell me of the establishment of the American Theosophical Society by herself and Coronel Olcott, in New York, in 1874, and of the spread of theosophy in this country during the past 10 years. There are 30 branch societies, or lodges, in America, 150 or more in India, and besides the two lodges in London —

THE LONDON AND THE BLAVATSKY

— there are lodges in Liverpool, Glasgow, Dublin, and one under the nose of the hated Psychical Society in Cambridge. 

It was seven o’clock before Madame Blavatsky had exhausted my interest, or I, as I hoped, her patience; and at seven the members of the household assemble for dinner. The household consists of six or seven persons, including a young doctor of medicine, a student of law, a Frenchman, an American (the friend of Edison who was mentioned in The Star the other day), and a Swedish Countess. These were all particulars disciples, who receive close and constant instruction from the lips of the priestess, and who may be regarded as well on the way towards the attainment of the elongating principle. The flourishing prospects of Madame's new work

"THE SECRET DOCTRINE,"

the first edition of which is already disposed of, though the volumes are scarcely out of the printer’s hands, were discussed during the meal. Madame's years — she is bordering on the sixties — and her occasional difficulties with the language — she is a Russian by birth — do not prevent her from being the most energetic and entertaining talker at her table.

It was the evening on which the Blavatsky Lodge holds its weekly meeting, and by about half-past eight the sanctum, whither we adjourned after dinner, was filled by a little gathering of would-be elongators of both sexes. The subject for discussion was Dreams. The circular tobacco-box having been replenished by Madame’s little maid, and the president, in evening dress, having taken his place by Madame’s side, the secretary of the lodge began to read questions from a paper.

WHAT IS A DREAM?

What part of us is it that dreams? What is a true dream and what is a false dream? What is the meaning of a dream which you have no recollection of ever having dreamed, but which you feel that you either dreamed or ought to have dreamed? And so on. Some of the questions seemed a little lacking in lucidity.

Each question as it was propounded was answered by Madame Blavatsky, and many of her answers were very striking and very suggestive. She seemed to have the literature as well as the science of the subject at her fingers’ ends, but was always with an  original speculation. When the questions on the paper had all been disposed of, members began to relate their own dreams, and to seek for interpretations. Every Joseph there had dreamed his dream; we only wanted to complete the set, that unique and fathomless vision of Bottom the weaver.

The most persistent of the questions seemed to come from a pair of

LARGE BLUCHER SHORS,

which protruded themselves from over the edge of an ottoman couch against the wall. At rapid intervals the blue bluchers would be agitated; a long forefinger extended, and behind all a voice speaking in the soft Hibernian brogue would utter a query. The bluchers were especially concerned about a dream they had had in which a serpent's body was joined to a horse’s head, and plaintively eager to know the oracle whether this unusual synthesis might be supposed to have any basis in actuality. Another inquirer wanted an explanation of a dream in which a certain place or building seemed exactly to resemble some other place or building, while at the same time it was utterly and in all respects different from. Madame Blavatsky, drawing frequent inspiration from the peculiar tobacco-box, or like Rabelais’s Bridlegoose from his dice-box, expounded dream after dream. But for me, the soulless spectator from outer darkness, the scene began gradually to lose all meaning of reality. I was cast loose in some transcendental jungle, where spooks and spectres in their thousands importuned me with dreams which I could not resolve for them. One thing only availed to keep me in some sort of sensible relation with my surroundings — those great firm, blucher shoes, from which I never for a moment allowed my gaze to wander. To whom these bluchers belong I have not the slightest idea; but I will speak of them with respect, even with gratitude. Amid my gathering nightmare of the Immaterial, they stood to me for MATTER. Had I dared, I would have leaned forward, and clutched them. In the midst of the non-existent, they were the one absolute existence. I hugged them with my vision, I gloated over them. Large, lonely, and enduring, they stood out there, to me a rock of ages. Behind lay the phantasmagoria, the fata morgana of theosophical illusions, they beckoned me with “Lo, here is Truth!” Had I for a single instant lost sight or consciousness of these bluchers, I should have screamed.

Original facsimile: The Star_London England_Microfilm 3310_ Dec 18 1888_Page 7.pdf