HPB’s Masonic Diploma

Per request, here is HPB’s Masonic Diploma. The original is in the TS Archives at Adyar. John Yarker (1833-1913), who issued it, deserves more study. J. M. Hamill’s paper, “John Yarker: Masonic Charletan?” published in Ars Quatuor Coronatorum, 109 (1996): 191-214, remains the major source on Yarker.

As Yarker dealt with what is regarded as “irregular” Masonic rites (those outside the three degrees), he is usually dismissed by orthodox Masons. This may be changing, one Masonic site recently observed: “Yarker was neither a degree-monger, nor a charlatan, for he believed what he wrote, that the many degrees he had discovered all predated regular Freemasonry. He never invented evidence but accepted, uncritically, the invented evidence of others.”

Yarker left behind two in-depth accounts of his relations with HPB. In a letter published in the London journal, Light, October 10, 1891, he states: “I gave to Madame Blavatsky no degrees beyond which she was entitled to receive by all the international rules and regulations of what is called high grade Masonry. At the same I am quite well aware that from older sources she was in possession of much that was not given to her by myself.”

Another letter of his in Chicago’s Universal Masonry, October 1910, cites a letter from HPB that for some reason is not included in the recently published edition of her Collected Letters. Yarker had written to her in 1878 of the results of his attempts with a mesmerized subject. She replied:

You have a very good clairvoyant, and she has described the temple very accurately. I know it well, but I am not permitted to say where it is. The tiger, Booboo, is known to all Adepts of the East.

John Yarker, 1833-1913