Masonic, Occult and Esoteric Online Library
The Truth About Madame Blavatsky.
By Walter A. Carrithers
IV. H. P. B.s MORALITY
H. P. Blavatsky maintained that the first prerequisite of practical Occultism is absolute physical and mental purity, (17) reaffirming the immemorial austerity of the East. You have painted H.P.B. in the scarlets of the Paris demi-monde and have mothered on her scandal and bastard!
Your predecessor, Bechofer-Roberts, believed Mme. Blavatsky to have been a liar, and was not confounded when he discovered the name of a "Dr. Leon Oppenheim" appended to a certain medical document. He regarded it as a flagrant invention before he troubled himself to check his suspicions. Bechofer-Roberts, on examining the civil records of the city of Wurzburg, Germany, found a celebrated gynaecologist, a specialist, Dr. Leon Oppenheimer, resident practitioner, 1867 - 1912. (See The Mysterious Madame.)
But you declare that the following is "...another apocryphal document scrambled together ... signed by the misspelled name of a Wurzburg physician... To make the paper more impressive, Madame added the signatures of her most prominent German Theosophists... Madame’s facility with pen and ink..." (18) Ah, a forgery, no less!
It is significant that though challenging this document, you do not reproduce it, being even more prudent in the matter than was Bechofer-Roberts who, tottering on a fragile hypothesis, abridged it unmercifully!
The facts are that on the insistence of friends, eager to still the yap of slander’s chatter, H.P.B. consented to a medical examination and received the following certificate:
"The undersigned testifies, as requested, that Madame Blavatsky of Bombay -- New York Corresponding Secretary of the Theosophical Society -- is at present under the medical treatment of the undersigned. She suffers from Anteflexio Uteri, most probably from the day of her birth; because, as proven by a minute examination, she has never borne a child, nor has she had any gynaecological illness.
(signed) Dr. Leon Oppenheim
Wurzburg, 3rd November, 1885.
The signature of Dr. Leon Oppenheim is
hereby officially attested. Wurzburg,
3rd November, 1885.
The Royal Medical Officer of the District.
(signed) Dr. Med. Roeder.
We the undersigned hereby certify that the
above is a correct translation of the German
original now before us. Wurzburg,
November 4, 1885.
(Signed) Hubbe-Schleiden
(Signed) Franz Gebhard."
As noted, the above is a translation from the German -- and so, of course, your sly trap set for an unwary reader is simply a farce, for the Doctor’s name is not misspelt but only an obvious Anglicized rendition! It was pointed out at the time that the concluding phrase regarding "gynaecological illness," in the original, nullified any possibility of miscarriage, etc. Hence, this is all distinct proof that H. P. Blavatsky never had a child -- except in the befouled fancy of scandal-mongering, 19th-Century vilifiers! (19) (Document now in the archives of the Theosophical Society at Adyar, Madras, India.) (20)
Your theory of forgery is absurdly stupid. Drs. Oppenheim, Roeder, Schleiden, as well as Gebhard, were fully aware of this document. It was made public during their lifetimes and after H.P.B.’s death. It is dealt with at length in the letters of the Countess Wachtmeister, widow of the Swedish ambassador to London, as well as in other contemporary literature. (21)
In 1892, Mme. Blavatsky received an unconditional, public retraction of libel from the then most influential of American newspapers, The New York Sun. (22) The paper’s legal staff, inspired by all the resourcefulness of its brilliant Elihu Root, "...before Judge Beach of the Supreme Court of the State of New York, confessed in open court their inability to prove their charge of immorality..." (23) As the Editors of the Sun conceded in their pages, charges of immorality were "without solid foundation ... not sustained by evidence." Thus the only time the question came to legal-court, the traducers recanted!
If Mme. Blavatsky ever assured Prof. Aksakov that any "rumours of immorality" that he chanced to hear were true, it was for an obvious and diplomatic reason. She was working and battling day and night in the vanguard of American Spiritualism "for what little truth there is in it," surrounded by the elite of that army -- Sargent, Lippett, Owens, and the others -- she could not afford to be drawn into any racketing controversy over trivialities and personal recriminations in an hour of such public crisis. She could only have vindicated herself by implicating Aksakov’s personal friend, Baron Meyendorff, in the first instance -- while in the second, his relative and her old and bitter enemy, D. D. Home, stood ready at the Professor’s ear anxious to whisper new vilifications! Rather than scandalize the movement in the eyes of the public, or feed fodder to the asinine scribes of mockery, she sacrificed herself -- and kept silence.
Why is this dossier of facts missing from Priestess of the Occult, any informed reader can ask. Simply because it is an unshakable contravention to the yellow-journal fables, rescued from a morgue of dead slanders by a hasty scribe!
