From The Blavatsky
Foundation
A FRIENDLY WORD OF
WARNING
To Reviewers, Buyers and
Readers of:
By Marion Meade, M.A. (G.P. Putnam’s Sons; 1980)
By Bruce F. Campbell, Ph.D. (University of California Press;
1980)
(ABSTRACT)
The career of Mme Blavatsky (“H.P.B.”) is notable for controversy, claims
and counter-claims falling into four chief categories: (1) the
pro, and (2) the con, concerning her writings; (3) the
pro, and (4) the con, concerning her reputed paranormal
phenomena. Critical analysis of the content of these two books exposes
significant plagiarism, together with systematic suppression and
gross misrepresentation of historical facts, accompanied by a measure of
inexcusable fabrication of spurious “evidence.” As concentrated within
the indicated four most-important areas of basic controversy, these
findings—fully documented—are:
(1) While not
having read any one of the published books which represents H.P.B.’s principal
claim to fame, both Meade and Campbell, nevertheless, profess to expertly
evaluate the content, nature and worth of these writings, especially The
Secret Doctrine. But their summaries of this, H.P.B.’s magnum opus, are
plagiarized—largely word-for-word, without quotation marks or proper
credit (Meade: 136 passages of from 2 to 13 words seriatim; Campbell: 97
passages of 2 to 25 words seriatim)—from a conspectus of the same work published
in 1930 under the editorship of the Department of Philosophy of Columbia
University.
(2) Neither
are their criticisms of these writings the result of original reading and
analysis by Meade or Campbell, who both borrow heavily and selectively from an
1893 critique by W.E. Coleman, while suppressing all of Coleman’s serious
and indefensible self-contradictions, admissions, lacunae and
unfulfilled promises of “proofs” (for his uncorroborated allegations of
“plagiarism” by H.P.B.) thus omitting whatever they find discrediting his
boastful, post-Blavatsky charges. Additionally, to bolster this weak fund of
“con” evidence, Meade plagiarizes from another attack, published at
London in 1936, misappropriating without credit or quotation marks, many
passages verbatim (38 passages of 2 to 16 words seriatim), which
she proceeds to palm off as her own creation in language and ideas—while giving
no hint of the unchallenged rebuttals issued at the time in answer to
these self-same criticisms.
(3) Of the 10
major studies published since 1884 (8 during the last 53 years) defending the
paranormal reality of Mme Blavatsky’s phenomena—studies for the most part
unchallenged, and several untouched at all by critics of H.P.B.—, Campbell
quotes not a single word, and Meade only gives (or, rather,
plagiarizes without quotation marks or any notice of source), as if
her own, language and ideas appropriated from but one page of one
study (p. 134, Journal, A.S.P.R., July 1962)!
(4) To
enhance the spurious facade of scholarship attached to their books, both Meade
and Campbell refer familiarly to the content of the 5 primary sources
(printed in 1884, 1885 and 1893) in which are historically rooted the
counter-claims that Mme Blavatsky’s phenomena were fraudulent and faked. These 5
basic works comprise 524 printed pages—of which, for Campbell,
100-percent and for Meade, 98-percent are terra incognito,
fundamental historical data unread or unseen! All of the quotations given
and attributed by Campbell to any of these 5 primary sources—and at least 64 of
the 74 quotations in the Meade book and similarly attributed—have been traced to
later, more accessible books from which these quotations were copied at
second-hand and without credit to these unacknowledged secondary sources.
(And yet both Campbell and Meade heartily endorse W.E. Coleman’s definition
of this literary practice as one of PLAGIARISM.) Proof of this surreptitious
copying from secondary sources is evident in the slavish reproduction by
While
contemptuously dismissing 95 years of pro-Blavatsky defence as impotent to
overturn the “basic findings” of the so-called Hodgson Report of 1885—which he
sagely pontificates is “essential reading”—and without in any way attempting to
substantiate this derogatory falsehood, Dr. Campbell presents as his own
analysis of the 1884-85 missionary-Coulomb-Hodgson-S.P.R. Committee attacks,
what is, in fact, little more than a patchwork of close paraphrasing and
selected passages (36 passages of 2 to 22 words seriatim) plagiarized
verbatim, and without recognition or quotation marks, from a long-outdated and
originally defective critique published 66 years ago by an Anglo-Indian
missionary apologist!
Finally, to strengthen the negative position embraced by both against the
phenomenal powers claimed for Mme Blavatsky, Meade and Campbell contrive to
remedy deficiencies in the anti-H.P.B. case which have come to their notice, by
impudently foisting on their readers patently false and heretofore unheard-of
“evidences” of her “quilt”! In place of the facts-on-record and the
historical documentation a buyer-reader is led by boastful publishing claims to
expect upon paying $32.90 for their combined total of 787 pages, one receives
only such as this and the pitiful, preposterous results of these authors’
sham research. In Meade’s book at least, this literary legerdemain of
“switch” swindle, culminates in the reader receiving, as substitute for the
missing evidence, only what its author repeatedly exalts as “my opinion”—the
opinions in both books, on a variety of important controversies
surrounding Mme Blavatsky, being of such sheer worthlessness, given in total
disregard of all available facts, as are not likely to be soon excelled in
pseudo-biographical buffoonery.
THE BLAVATSKY
FOUNDATION
Post Office Box
1543,