Occult Profiles: When Col. Olcott Met Madame Blavatsky

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky and Henry Steel Olcott in 1888

Theosophical Society President-Founder Col. Henry Steel Olcott wrote about his first encounter with the woman who would be the society's Co-Founder/Corresponding Secretary, Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, in Old Diary Leaves (1895) and his case study of paranormal phenomena People From The Other World (1875). The latter chronicled the various phenomena associated with the mediumship of brothers William and Horatio Eddy at their homestead in Chittenden, Vermont. The book included reports that had originally appeared in The Daily Graphic newspaper. Sketches by Alfred Kappes and T. W. Williams offer precise depictions of incidents at the homestead.

William H. Eddy (left) and Horatio G. Eddy

The phenomena included materializations of people who'd made the transition to the afterlife, direct voice (disembodied) communication, and spirit-writing.

Madame Blavatsky arrived on October 14, 1874 and after dinner, Olcott began a conversation with her. He recalled in Old Diary Leaves: "She asked me how long I had been there and what I thought of the phenomena; saying that she herself was greatly interested in such things, and had been drawn to Chittenden by reading the letters in the Daily Graphic: the public were growing so interested in these that it was sometimes impossible to find a copy of the paper on the book-stalls an hour after publication, and she had paid a dollar for the copy of the last issue . . . We became friends at once. Each of us felt as if we were of the same social world, cosmopolitans, free-thinkers, and in closer touch than with the rest of the company, intelligent and very worthy as some of them were."

Olcott described in People From The Other World the seances that were held nightly except on Sundays. Previously, the materialized people had been Native American Indians or Americans and Europeans who were friends or relatives of seance attendees. As Blavatsky had traveled the world, the seven seance "spirits" she recognized from associations earlier in her life were considerably more exotic. One of Blavatsky's earliest known writings is a commentary that soon thereafter appeared in the Daily Graphic newspaper in response to a skeptical article about the Eddy manifestations. She wrote in the letter that she was backed "by the testimony of hundreds of reliable witnesses" and that "all of the wardrobe of Niblo's Theater would not suffice to attire the number of 'spirits' that emerge night after night from an empty little closet." The letter can be read in A Modern Panarian: A Collection of Fugitive Fragments From the Pen of H. P. Blavatsky (1895).

Here are sketches from the book of some of these manifested people as they appeared, several of whom spoke to Blavatsky.

The first of these sketches shows a Georgian boy. Blavatsky wrote: "Requested by me in his mother tongue (upon the whispered suggestion of Colonel Olcott) to play the Lezguinka, a Circassian dance, he did so immediately upon the guitar."

In People From The Other World, the Georgian boy is identified as Michalko Guegidze. Olcott was able to corroborate Michalko's identity with two letters (included verbatim in the book) from a Philadelphia merchant who himself was a native of Georgia, M. C. Betanelly.

Michalko appeared at the first seance attended by Blavatsky. Also seen materialized by seance participants that night was M. Zephirin Boudreau, "late of Canada, the father of a lady who accompanied Mme. De Blavatsky to Chittenden, and who, of course, was attending her first seance. She addressed her questions to him in French, he responding by rapping with his hand against the door-frame, except in one instance when he uttered the word 'Oui.'"

Only those who have read my case study Testament (available to be read in a free Internet edition) might understand how my trip to Centrahoma in 1995 to investigate a so-called 'talking poltergeist' haunting would be the life-changing event in my life comparable to the Chittenden visit in HPB's.

The Eddy Homestead

Among the many surprising occurrences following the publication of People From The Other World as chronicled in Old Diary Leaves, the aforesaid Mr. Betanelly arranged with Olcott to visit New York and "talk over Spiritualism" with HPB. Not long thereafter, HPB married Michael C. Betanelly. He was granted a divorce in 1878. Later that same year, she became a citizen of the United States. The names of Michalko and HPB's second husband are noteworthy in consideration for what I have called the 'Michael Pattern' in previous blog posts (see "Some Further Observations about the Michael Pattern").

After my own experiences, it may be easier for me than it is for others to make sense of the unexplained phenomena manifesting in proximity to HPB. Books chronicling these incidents include A. P. Sinnett's The Occult World (revised American edition 1885) and Incidents in the Life of Madame Blavatsky (1886). The latter book includes revealing anecdotes related by HPB's sister Mme. V. P. de Jelihowsky. One chapter of the book presents Jelihowsky's reports about phenomena that occurred in proximity to HPB in the town of Pskoff: "All these surprising and inexplicable manifestations of an intelligent, and at times, I should almost say, an omniscient force, produced a sensation in Pskoff, where there yet remain many who remember it well."

As one example of Jelihowsky's observations of various phenomena, she wrote that HPB "had two distinct methods of producing communications through raps. The one consisted almost entirely in her being passive, and permitting the influences to act at their will . . ." The remainder of this statement encompassing the second method ("used very rarely") is unsupportable as the events when evaluated in the entirety make evident that they are manifestly 'influences.' Although HPB often attributed the unexplained phenomena to "the Masters," there were times when she professed that some of the uncanny occurrences were produced by herself at will. One comment by Sinnett in Incidents in the Life of Madame Blavatsky perhaps better expresses her quandary: ". . . the prestige of her occult power, uncertain and capricious though it has latterly become, invests her with so much interest for people . . . ."

H. S. Olcott's People From The Other World is his startling testimonial of an astonishing variety of "invisible powers" — "a truthful narrative of what befell in the Eddy Homestead, from the latter part of August to the first week in December, 1874." Here is a perhaps revealing anecdote about the family reported by Olcott.

They killed, a while ago, by accident, an old goose which used to get under the windows, some stormy night and say, in sepulchral tones, "God save my poor goslings!" and "Oh, dear! What shall I do?" and sometimes cry out "Murder!" Horatio Eddy, in telling me this tough yarn, said that of course he did not believe that the bird's organs of speech were so changed that it could utter words like a Christian, but that "George Dix" or some other jovial spirit "materialized" a voice close to the creature's mouth.

In comparison, during my 1995 interviews with Maxine Mc Wethy and her family in Centrahoma, Oklahoma, on one occasion Maxine mentioned in relation to the manifesting entities that they nicknamed 'Michael': "Once I had a little black and white dog that Brenda gave me — an Australian Shepherd . . . Well, one time it got so full of ticks and everything you find around here that the poor thing couldn't even walk on its hind legs. Twyla and I were out there and she was picking ticks off of him and Michael hollered, 'HELP ME, MAXINE' just like he was concerned about it."