An Interview with Madame Blavatsky, Theosophist

First of all, my thanks -- and the family's thanks -- to Claudia for the opportunity to converse with Mme Blavatsky and to attempt at first hand to reconcile the conflicting family myths concerning her influence on its past.



Me Mme Blavatsky, thank you for speaking with me.
Rightly or wrongly, my family blame you
for devastation wreaked upon us,
mainly through the agency of Great Aunt Min --
she of the parrot that would squark
at punters in her pub at closing time, to ask
why they'd not got no bleeding homes to go to. Min
maintained the parrot was a gift from you,
that you performed (her word) a seance for her
during which you caused the parrot to appear.

M.B. As if, my child! Am I a conjurer?
A party trickster, me? Am I a perpetrator
of such trivia?

Me It wasn't trivia. The parrot taught my aunt
a whole new lexicon of words --
words not respectable, nor Theosophical. And don't pretend
you are not into tricks, illusions and the like.
Did Eliot in his Waste Land not send you up,
characterise you as a Madame Sosostris,
famous clairvoyante?
She with the stinking cold and yet
the wisest woman in all Europe? -- That was you, I'm thinking?

M.B. The bird was Aunt Min's nature manifest.

Me That's a kosher way to talk about reality?
Theosophy can talk in those terms, yes?

M.B. Indeed, the way the Secret Document states:
as above, so below. The microcosm is
a tiny copy of the macrocosm. So peace be yours, my son.

Me But not quite yet. Min's husband was a sailor,
said you were an early terrorist, blew up
the ship you sailed in to Piraeus,
yet still arrived in Cairo in one piece --
and fit enough to launch your new Society...
He thought it certainly black magic! My family --
and half Min's punters -- thought you a witch.
So many patrons left, Aunt Min was close to bankruptcy.

M.B. Speak metaphysics and you'll be misunderstood.
But where are all the positives in this? That I --
Theosophy, in fact -- described the atom as divisible
before (and long before) your science had caught up.
And still has not. Our hidden science declares the atom
to be infinitely so. In other words, reality
is non-objective. Matter is pure energy.

Me Like Aunt Min's parrot, eh? --
Not easy, ma'am, to live with, would you say?

Written for Claudia's prompt at dVerse Poets in which she asks us to interact with an historical character.