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More on the HPB letters

May 28, 2005 10:54 AM
by Daniel H. Caldwell


------,

Thanks for your comments below.

Concerning the Coulomb/missionary criminal 
forgeries, I have discovered in my own research 
that portions of some of these letters are 
genuine and even HPB writes (BCW VI, 295-297. ) 
that certain portions are genuine. If the text 
of these forged letters were included by 
Boris de Zirkoff in Col. Writings, Vol. VI, 
I see no good reason for excluding them from
a future Volume of the Letters. But one 
could add commentary and refer students to 
rebuttals of these forged letters by Hastings, 
Vania, Fuller, and others. Let the reader 
have access to all the material and let the 
reader decide what is what.

I remember many years ago when I was first collecting material on 
Blavatsky and Theosophy that some Theosophists chided me for 
collecting the negative hostile material on HPB & Theosophy. I 
remember one student telling me, "We all know none of that is 
true." I said that at that point in time, I didn't know what was 
what. When I asked if he had studied the hostile material, he 
said "No."

>From day one I wanted to know everything about Blavatsky and her 
Theosophical mission and I wanted to study first hand all the 
primary souce documents (including the negative ones) and not rely 
on some other student or writer who might filter it through his/her 
point of view. Was it always comfortable to read all the negative 
stuff about HPB? No, but it made me dig deeper and as a result I 
came to many important discoveries including documents like the 
complete text of THE INNER GROUP INSTRUCTIONS, etc.

I see in your letter you mention "scholars" and ------ in a previous 
letter brings up that subject, too. Some Theosophical students 
have even criticized me and described me as a "scholar". Apparently 
that is a "put-down". Well, all I can say is I am a librarian but 
years before I ever got a degree in librarianship or any other 
academic or scholarly degree, I was seeking for "truth", more light, 
etc. on these matters concerning HPB and Theosophy. Therefore, I 
continue to view myself as a seeker of truth.

Concerning the Solovyoff letters, we are actually talking about the 
letters from HPB to Aksakoff. Are these letters forgeries? I don't 
really know. Some parts of the letters seem quite genuine, other 
parts possibly tampered with. But why completely exclude them from 
Volume I as the 3 readers in FOHAT and and FOHAT editor intitially 
wanted?

Yes, one could add commentary on some of these letters and that 
would be helpful. But allow readers access to all this material and 
let each reader make up his/her own mind.

These letters were published in Russia in 1893 and Aksakoff did not 
die until 1903. During this 10 year period, I have never 
discovered any communication from Aksakoff declaring that Solovyoff 
had forged or tampered with the letters he had received from HPB. I 
guess you could assume Aksakoff was in league with Solovyoff to 
sully HPB's name but I find no evidence in support of that 
contention either. 

Maybe one day the originals of these HPB letters to Aksakoff will be 
discovered.

Do we also exclude the letters HPB supposedly wrote to Dondoukoff-
Korsakoff??

Jean Overton Fuller in her biography of HPB has an appendix 
titled "The 'Bolt' or Dondoukoff-Korsakoff letters." She believes 
these letters also were forgeries. But the original handwritten 
Russian letters are at Adyar, and I have seen the microfilm of these 
originals. I am not a "handwriting expert" but from reading and 
transcripting hundreds of pages of HPB's original handwritten 
letters, they appear to be in HPB's characteristic
handwriting.

In regards to John Cooper, I again repeat that John included the 
letters in question in his dissertation and also in his manuscript 
for the first volume of letters that he had contracted with the the 
Theosophical Publishing House, Wheaton to edit. He certainly did 
not exclude the specific letters mentioned in the last issue of 
FOHAT. And in many phone conversations with him, I never once 
gained the impression that it was ever his intent to exclude these 
HPB letter in the series of volumes. I believe he would have 
opposed any attempt to such exclusion as recommended in the last 
issue of FOHAT. 

I've rambled too much so will close....

Daniel H. Caldwell
Blavatsky Study Center
http://blavatskystudycenter.org
danielhcaldwell@yahoo.com




 

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