Theos-Talk Archives (November 2002 Message tt00320)

The Mahatma Letters introduced and exhibited to the world a small 
company of persons variously called "The Universal Brotherhood", 
the "Masters of the Wisdom" and the "Occult Hierarchy". Whether or not 
there are such orders of beings; it is sufficient to say that if Blavatsky 
had on her own authority compel the world to believe her, by attempting 
to create an objective demonstration of the existence and work of 
certain Mahatmas, and to cast a glamour over her contemporaries by a 
series of marvels which many were unable to resist. Thus the occult 
hierarchy was organized and revealed with a wealth of personal detail, 
until it became fixed in the imagination of believers. The two Masters of 
1880 were soon multiplied to ten, and later to sixteen; they 
included "Hilarion" the Greek (identified with lamblichus, the 
Neoplatonist) and the "Count" (identified with the Comte de St. Germain 
of the eighteenth century). As a concession to Christians, "the Master 
Jesus", after due trial and probation, was admitted into the company of 
the elect.

As soon as the Indian belief in Reincarnation had been definitely 
accepted by Mr. Sinnett and his successors, Madame Blavatsky's 
Masters were provided by Mr. Leadbeater with an occult genealogy of 
their previous lives, which embedded her inventions more deeply in 
reality. K.H. was declared to be a reincarnation of the Chinese 
Philosopher Lao-tze, while, by the bounty of fortune, he appeared in 
Europe in the flesh of Pythagoras of Samos. Thus we had the surprising 
spectacle of a Mahatma's ancestral "double" gracing two continents at 
once, as soon as historians were able to show that the Chinese sage 
and the Greek philosopher had been contemporaries in the sixth century 
B.C.

Above the Tibetan Masters-who, after all, with their earthly jollity, their 
swearing and smoking, were very human creatures-Madame Blavatsky 
had given us faint glimpses of other and greater beings. In the course of 
time, through Mr. Sinnett and the smaller literary fry of his day, we have 
been told the names and functions of the occult officials who govern the 
world.

H. P. Blavatsky's "Chohans" and the "MahaChohan" are still in being, but 
we have also been allowed to hear of The Lord Vaivasvata Manu 
(extracted from Vedic legend), The Bodhisattva, The Lord Maitreya (both 
adopted from Mdhaya-na Buddhism), "The Director of Evolution", and 
even of "the Great King" of the Universe Himself. 

The Pauline and Gnostic hierarchies were similarly patronized and 
incorporated into the Theosophical Superstructure., to secure the 
adherence of both orthodox and heretical Christians.

Blavatsky must have smiled* to see poor Mr. Sinnett patiently building 
up, storey by storey, the pagodas of The Occult World and Esoteric 
Buddhism-with nothing more substantial than a pack of cards out of her 
own cabinet of magic. And what will the Theosophists think and say--
who have made Mr. Sinnett's two books the Leviticus and Deuteronomy 
of their Bible-when they see these paper edifices collapse before the 
first breath of truth?

The ethnologists and anthropologists of Science, who were ever doing 
their best to present a reasoned history of man, received scant respect 
from Blavatsky, Sinnett, Besant and the hundreds of neo-Theosophical 
leaders since then . just as the Mahatmic theory about chains and 
rounds of planets has become the stuff out of which thousands 
of "propaganda lectures" have been made, so the history of the human 
race, on Blavatsky's initiative, has been dislocated from the beginning. 
Yet H.P.B. made her Mahatmas reproach Mr. Sinnett for rushing into 
print with his books. When critics found fault with Esoteric Buddhism she 
and Subba Row defended it in The Theosophist. But when she published 
The Secret Doctrine she threw him over, and wrote to the critics 
(Maitland and Kingsford): "We were obliged to support him then 
because he represented us, but when the secret doctrine was 
concerned it was necessary to tell the truth" (Life of AX, Vol. n, p. 16o).

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