Page:Isis very much unveiled - being the story of the great Mahatma hoax (IA b24884273).pdf/63

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A sentiment printed with approbation in Mrs. Besant’s paper. Again, he is parrying inquisitive questions about the Master’s seal. He “does not know” what they mean. An inquirer sends him a sample letter with a good impression to look at—one which had come from Mr. Judge himself, I presume—and gets it back with the impression rubbed out (“it fades out often,” as we have seen above), and the puzzled remark from Mr. Judge, “Where is your seal? I don’t see one.” Finally, pressed, Mr. Judge declares that “Whether He” (the Master) “has a seal, or uses one, is something on which I am ignorant.”

It was on this statement—which involves a total lapse of memory on Mr. Judge’s part of events narrated in —that he was challenged in the Theosophist of April, 1893, in an article signed by Messrs. W. R. Old and S. V. Edge, both T.S. officials (secretaries, Indian section). The article is hardly what would be called trenchant by non-Theosophical standards. But it just pointed out that little discrepancy in a polite foot-note; and that was enough.

If there is one thing more than another which is deemed to be bad form in circles Theosophical, it is to corner a Theosophist on a definite matter of fact. Anything undraped in verbiage is considered nude, even to indecency. The voice of questioning has to be stifled at once.

By virtue of their joint position as Outer Heads of the Esoteric section, to which they were elected under warrant of the very seal in question, Mrs. Besant and Mr. Judge promptly “suspended” Messrs. Old and Edge from their Esoteric membership.

In December, Mrs. Besant went to India. She had, therefore, thrown over the Mahatma’s warning. But she had not thrown over the Mahatma—not a bit. She declared that nothing on earth would induce her to give up believing that the missives were indeed