Helena Blavatsky

Lore & Background

Blavatsky was born into an aristocratic family in Yekaterinoslav in the Russian Empire. Largely self-educated, she developed an interest in Western esotericism during her teenage years. According to her later claims, in 1849 she embarked on a series of world travels, visiting Europe, the Americas, and India, and claimed to have encountered a group of spiritual adepts, the 'Masters of the Ancient Wisdom,' who trained her in Tibet. Both contemporary critics and later biographers have argued that some or all of these foreign visits were fictitious, and that she spent this period in Europe.

By the early 1870s, Blavatsky was involved in the Spiritualist movement but argued against the mainstream Spiritualist idea that the entities contacted were spirits of the dead. Relocating to the United States in 1873, she befriended Henry Steel Olcott and rose to public attention as a spirit medium, drawing accusations of charlatanry. In 1875, in New York City, she co-founded the Theosophical Society with Olcott and William Quan Judge. In 1877, she published 'Isis Unveiled,' outlining her Theosophical world-view. In 1880, she and Olcott moved to India, where the Society tried to ally with the Arya Samaj, a Hindu reform movement. That same year, while in Ceylon, they became the first people from the United States to formally convert to Buddhism.

Reader's Guide

Blavatsky was a controversial figure during her lifetime, championed by supporters as an enlightened sage and derided by critics as a charlatan. Her Theosophical doctrines influenced the spread of Hindu and Buddhist ideas in the West, as well as the development of Western esoteric currents like Ariosophy, Anthroposophy, and the New Age Movement. Although opposed by the British colonial administration, Theosophy spread rapidly in India but experienced internal problems after Blavatsky was accused of producing fraudulent paranormal phenomena. In ailing health, she returned to Europe in 1885, establishing the Blavatsky Lodge in London, where she published 'The Secret Doctrine,' 'The Key to Theosophy,' and 'The Voice of the Silence.' She died of influenza in 1891. Her legacy remains deeply contested, with her life story deliberately obscured by her own contradictory accounts and falsifications, making a reliable biography difficult.

Did You Know?

• Blavatsky was born into an aristocratic family in Yekaterinoslav, Russian Empire (now Dnipro, Ukraine).
• She co-founded the Theosophical Society in New York City in 1875.
• In 1882, while in Ceylon, she and Henry Steel Olcott became the first people from the United States to formally convert to Buddhism.
• Both contemporary critics and later biographers have argued that some or all of her claimed world travels were fictitious.

Notable Quotes (Wikiquote)

"There is often greater martyrdom to live for the love of, whether man or an ideal, than to die" is a motto of the Mahatmas." — Helena Blavatsky "Maitreya is the secret name of the Fifth Buddha, and the Kalki Avatar of the Brahmins - the last Messiah who will come at the culmination of the Great Cycle." — Helena Blavatsky "This is the age which, although proclaimed as one of physical and moral freedom, is in truth the age of the most ferocious moral and mental slavery, the like of which was never known before." — Helena Blavatsky "Those who translate Pistis by "Faith," are utterly wrong. The word "faith" as grace or something to be believed in through unreasoned or blind faith, is a word that dates only since Christianity." — Helena Blavatsky