Theos-Talk Archives (July 2007 Message tt00138)

In a communication [apparently given April 1895] that is "supposed to 
be from the discarnate H.P.B." to W.Q. Judge, we find the following:

-----------------------------------------------------------
The ring you [W.Q. Judge] wear is mine.  She [Annie Besant] thinks 
she has mine and that you have hers.  But you are right.  It was done 
by [occult/psychic?] substitution, in the night by one of us.  
-----------------------------------------------------------
Quoted from:  http://blavatskyarchives.com/stokes/stokeswqjkt1.htm

I have added the words in brackets [  ].  

Was this "substitution" suppose to have occurred after H.P.B.'s death?

I give below Mrs. Annie Besant's comments (quoted by Mrs. Benjamin) 
about the H.P.B. ring as found in LUCIFER, June 15, 1895, pp. 269-70: 

-------------------------------------------------------------
In a letter from Mr. Judge, dated Jan. 24th, 1895, there is a P.S.:

"As a friend I would advise you to be careful in statements as to 
H.P.B.'s ring; you do not possess it." 

When I read this, I prepared for the circulation of a new myth, and I 
have just received a letter from America in which I am told that Mr. 
Judge, at a meeting of his School, in January last, "made the 
remarkable statement that by some peculiar means he came into 
possession of the ring which belonged to H.P.B., and that the one you 
have is a substitute." 

The facts as to the ring are very simple. H.P.B. often told me that I 
was to wear it after her death, in place of the duplicate she had 
given me in 1889. There were but the two large rings, the one she 
wore and the duplicate she had made for me, and these two are 
distinguishable by some very slight differences, only perceptible on 
close examination. I was absent when H.P.B. left her body, but she 
told Mrs. Cooper-Oakley that the ring was for me, and after her death 
it was drawn from her finger and locked up till I reached home, when 
it was given me, and I put off the duplicate and put on hers. It has 
never since left me, and I wore it continuously till the summer of 
1893, tied on my finger by some threads of silk, because it was too 
large for me; in the summer of 1893 I bought a gold ring to fit 
inside it, and so obviate the necessity of tying it on. The duplicate 
ring she gave me I gave to Mr. Judge, after he arrived in London in 
1891, and this is the one he is showing as H.P.B.'s ring. Such are 
the simple facts which are apparently being developed into "The myth 
of the Ring." 
---------------------------------------------------------------

Daniel
http://hpb.cc