Hillarion
Master Hillarion (also known as Hillarion Smerdis, Hilarion, and Ilarion) was a Cyprian Adept (Cyprus is the third largest and third most populous island in the Mediterranean) that the Founders met in the flesh. He wrote some occult stories with Mme. Blavatsky and also is said to be the source of some of the teachings found in Light on the Path.
Visit to the Founders
On February 19, 1881, Master H. visited the the Founders, then in Bombay, in his physical body. The next day Mr. Sinnett receives a letter from Mahatma K. H. referring to the Master H. as "one of ours, who is passing through Bombay from Cyprus, on his way to Thibet".[1] Mme. Blavatsky also described this event in a letter to Mr. Arthur Lillie. On October 11, 1884, she commented on the letter as follows:
In it I speak of an “Eastern adept, who has since gone for his final initiation,” who had passed, en route from Egypt to Thibet, through Bombay and visited us in his physical body. . . Every Theosophist at headquarters knows that I meant a Greek gentleman whom I have known since 1860.[2]
Col Olcott also recorded his visit. In the February 19 entry on his diary he states:
Hilarion is here en route for Tibet and has been looking over, in, and through the situation. Finds B—something morally awful. Views on India, Bombay, the T.S. in Bombay, Ceylon (—), England and Europe, Christianity and other subjects highly interesting.[3]
This visit had important consequences. As the Col. wrote years later:
A Master visited her on the 19th and exposed to her the whole situation, about which I shall not go into details, as all has turned out as he forewarned us. On leaving, he left behind a much-worn gold-embroidered head-covering, of peculiar shape, which I took possession of, and have until this day. One result of this visit was that, on the 25th of the month, she and I had a long and serious discussion about the state of affairs, resulting—as my Diary says— “in an agreement between us to re-construct the T.S. on a different basis, putting the Brotherhood idea forward more prominently, and keeping the occultism more in the background, in short, to have a secret section for it.” This, then, was the seed-planting of the E. S. T., and the beginning of the adoption of the Universal Brotherhood idea in more definite form than previously.[4]
Publications
Occult Stories
Mme. Blavatsky wrote several occult stories, that after her death were published together in the book Nightmare Tales (London, New York and Madras, 1892). Boris de Zirkoff wrote:
["An Unsolved Mystery", "A Story of the Mystical", and "The Ensouled Violin"] at least, and possibly all of these stories, were written by H. P. B. in collaboration with the Cyprian Adept known as Hilarion. It is he that Master K. H. meant when, in a letter to Miss Francesca Arundale, he wrote of “the adept who writes stories with H. P. B.[5]
- "An Unsolved Mystery" originally printed in Spiritual Scientist, Vol. III, November 25, 1875, pp. 133-35.
- "A Story of the Mystical" originally published in The Sun, December 26, 1875, and republished by H.P.B. in The Theosophist, Vol. IV, January, 1883, pp. 99-101, under the title of “Can the ‘Double’ Murder?”
- "The Ensouled Violin" posthumously published almost simultaneously in Lucifer, Vol. X, March and April, 1892, and as part of the volume Nightmare Tales.
Light on the Path
Others
- A Letter from Surb Ohannes by X. . . . FTS
Notes
- ↑ Vicente Hao Chin, Jr., The Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett in chronological sequence No. 15 (Quezon City: Theosophical Publishing House, 1993), 52.
- ↑ Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, Collected Writings vol. IV (Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 1989), 291.
- ↑ Curuppumullage Jinarājadāsa, Letters from the Masters of the Wisdom Second Series No. 40 (Adyar, Madras: The Theosophical Publishing House, 1977), 82.
- ↑ Henry Steel Olcott, Old Diary Leaves Second Series (Adyar, Madras: The Theosophical Publishing House, 1974), 294.
- ↑ Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, Collected Writings vol. VI (Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 1989), 355.