as an occultist, spirit medium, and author who co-founded the Theosophical Society in 1875. She gained an international following as the leading theoretician of Theosophy, the esoteric movement that the Society promoted.
Born into an aristocratic Russian-German family, Blavatsky traveled widely around the Russian Empire as a child. 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. She alleged that during this period she encountered a group of spiritual adepts, the "Masters of the Ancient Wisdom", who sent her to Shigatse, Tibet, where they trained her to develop her own psychic powers. 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; although defending the genuine existence of Spiritualist phenomena, she argued against the mainstream Spiritualist idea that the entities contacted were the 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, attention that included public accusations of fraudulence.
In New York City, Blavatsky co-founded the Theosophical Society with Olcott and William Quan Judge in September 1875. In 1877 she published Isis Unveiled, a book outlining her Theosophical world-view. Associating it closely with the esoteric doctrines of Hermeticism and Neoplatonism, Blavatsky described Theosophy as "the synthesis of science, religion and philosophy", proclaiming that it was reviving an "Ancient Wisdom" which underlay all the world's religions. In 1880 she and Olcott moved to India, where the Society was allied to Dayananda Saraswati's Arya Samaj, a Hindu reform movement. That same year, while in Ceylon she and Olcott became the first Euro-Americans to officially convert to Buddhism. Although opposed by the British administration, Theosophy spread rapidly in India, although experienced internal problems after Blavatsky was accused of producing fraudulent paranormal phenomena in the Coulomb Affair. Amid ailing health, in 1885 she returned to Europe, eventually settling in London, where she established the Blavatsky Lodge. Here she published The Secret Doctrine, a commentary on what she claimed were ancient Tibetan manuscripts, as well as two further books, The Key to Theosophy and The Voice of the Silence. She died of influenza in the home of her disciple and successor, Annie Besant.
Blavatsky was a controversial figure during her lifetime, championed by supporters as an enlightened guru and derided as a fraudulent charlatan by critics. 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.
Blavatsky alleged that she departed Tibet with the mission of proving to the world that the phenomena identified by Spiritualists was objectively real, thus defending it against accusations of fraud made by scientific materialists. However, she also stated that the entities being contacted by Spiritualist mediums were not the spirits of the dead, as the Spiritualist movement typically alleged, but instead mischievous entities which existed on a plane of existence between the living and the dead.She proceeded via the Suez Canal to Greece, where she met with another of the Masters, Hilarion. She set sail for Egypt aboard the SS Eumonia, but in July 1871 it exploded during the journey; Blavatsky was one of only 16 survivors.Reaching Cairo, she met up with Metamon, and with the help of a woman named Emma Cutting established a société spirite, which was based largely on Spiritism, a form of Spiritualism founded by Allan Kardec which professed a belief in reincarnation, in contrast to the mainstream Spiritualist movement. However, Blavatsky believed that Cutting and many of the mediums employed by the society were fraudulent, and she closed it down after two weeks. In Cairo, she also met with the Egyptologist Gaston Maspero, and another of the Masters, Serapis Bey.It was also here that she met up with Metrovitch, although he soon died of typhoid, with Blavatsky claiming to have overseen the funeral.
Leaving Egypt, she proceeded to Syria, Palestine, and Lebanon, there encountering members of the Druze religion. It was during these travels that she met with the writer and traveler Lidia Pashkova, who provided independent verification of Blavatsky's travels during this period In July 1872 she returned to her family in Odessa, before departing in April 1873. She spent time in Bucharest and Paris before – according to her later claims – Morya instructed her to go to the U.S., arriving in New York City in July 1873.There, she moved in to a women's housing cooperative on Manhattan's Lower East Side, earning a wage through piece work sewing and designing advertising cards. It was here that she attracted attention, and was interviewed by the journalist Anna Ballard of the New York newspaper The Sun; this interview was the earliest textual source in which Blavatsky claimed to have spent time in Tibet. Indeed, it was while in New York that "detailed records" of Blavatsky's life again become available to historians. Soon after, Blavatsky received news of her father's death, thus inheriting a considerable fortune, allowing her to move into a lavish hotel. In December 1874, Blavatsky met the Georgian Mikheil Betaneli
Blavatsky was intrigued by a news story about William and Horatio Eddy, brothers based in Chittenden, Vermont, who it was claimed could levitate and manifest spiritual phenomena. She visited Chittenden in October 1874, there meeting the reporter Henry Steel Olcott, who was investigating the Eddy's claims for the Daily Graphic.Claiming that Blavatsky impressed him with her own ability to manifest spirit phenomena, Olcott authored a newspaper article on her.They soon became close friends, giving each other the nicknames of "Maloney" (Olcott) and "Jack" (Blavatsky). He helped attract greater attention to Blavatsky's claims, encouraging the Daily Graphics' editor to publish an interview with her,and discussing her in his book on Spiritualism, People from the Other World (1875), which her Russian correspondent Alexandr Aksakov urged her to translate into Russian. She began to instruct Olcott in her own occult beliefs, and encouraged by her he became celibate, tee-totaling, and vegetarian, although she herself was unable to commit to the latter. In January 1875 the duo visited the Spiritualist mediums Nelson and Jennie Owen in Philadelphia; the Owens asked Olcott to test them to prove that the phenomena that they produced were not fraudulent, and while Olcott believed them, Blavatsky opined that they faked some of their phenomena in those instances when genuine phenomena failed to manifest.
Drumming up interest for their ideas, Blavatsky and Olcott published a circular letter in Eldridge Gerry Brown's Boston-based Spiritualist publication, The Spiritual Scientist. There, they named themselves the "Brotherhood of Luxor", a name potentially inspired by the pre-existing Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor. Allegedly encouraged by the Masters, Blavatsky and Olcott established the Miracle Club, through which they facilitated lectures on esoteric themes in New York City It was through this group that they met an Irish Spiritualist, William Quan Judge, who shared many of their interests.
At a Miracle Club meeting on 7 September 1875, Blavatsky, Olcott, and Judge agreed to establish an esoteric organisation, with Charles Sotheran suggesting that they call it the Theosophical Society.The term theosophy came from the Greek theos ("god(s)") and sophia ("wisdom"), thus meaning "god-wisdom" or "divine wisdom" The term was not new, but had been previously used in various contexts by the Philaletheians, Neo-Platonists, and the Christian mystic Jakob Böhme. Theosophists would often argue over how to define Theosophy, with Judge expressing the view that the task was impossible. Blavatsky however insisted that Theosophy was not a religion in itself. Lachman has described the movement as "a very wide umbrella, under which quite a few things could find a place" On foundation, Olcott was appointed chairman, with Judge as secretary, and Blavatsky as corresponding secretary, although she remained the group's primary theoretician and leading figure. Prominent early members included Emma Hardinge Britten, Signor Bruzzesi, C.C. Massey and William L. Alden; many were prominent and successful members of the establishment, although not all would remain members for long.
In summer 1875, Blavatsky began work on a book outlining her Theosophical worldview, much of which would be written while staying in the home of Hiram Corson, a Professor of English Literature at Cornell University. Although she had hoped to call it The Veil of Isis, it would be published as Isis Unveiled.While writing it, Blavatsky claimed to be aware of a second consciousness within her body, referring to it as "the lodger who is in me", and stating that it was this second consciousness that inspired much of the writing. In Isis Unveiled, Blavatsky quoted extensively from other esoteric and religious texts, although her contemporary and colleague Olcott always maintained that she had quoted from books that she did not have access to. Writing more than a century after her death Lachman conjectured that if this had been the case, then she may have had an eidetic memory, such that, while relying on earlier sources, the book represented an original synthesis that connected disparate ideas not brought together before.
Revolving around Blavatsky's idea that all the world's religions stemmed from a single "Ancient Wisdom", which she connected to the Western esotericism of ancient Hermeticism and Neoplatonism, it also articulated her thoughts on Spiritualism, and provided a criticism of Darwinian evolution, stating that it dealt only with the physical world and ignored the spiritual realms. The book was edited by Professor of Philosophy Alexander Wilder and published by J.W. Bouton in 1877 Although facing negative mainstream press reviews, including from those who highlighted that it extensively quoted other sources without acknowledgement, it proved such a commercial success, with its initial print run of 1000 copies selling out in a week that the publisher requested a sequel, although Blavatsky turned down the offer. While Isis Unveiled was a success, the Society remained largely inactive. This was despite the fact that new lodges of the organisation had been established throughout the U.S. and in London, and prominent figures like Thomas Edison and Abner Doubleday had joined
he Theosophical Society had established links with an Indian Hindu reform movement, the Arya Samaj, which had been founded by the Swami Dayananda Saraswati; Blavatsky and Olcott believed that the two organisations shared a common spiritual world-view
Edison gifted them a phonograph to take with them to India. They left New York City aboard the Canada, which took them to London. After meeting with well-wishers in the capital, they traveled to Liverpool, there setting sail aboard the Speke Hall, arriving in Bombay in February 1879
In July 1879, Blavatsky and Olcott began work on a monthly magazine, The Theosophist, with the first issue coming out in October. The magazine soon obtained a large readership, with the management being taken over by Damodar K. Mavalankar, a Theosophist who introduced the idea of referring to the Masters as mahatmas.In December, Blavatsky and Olcott traveled to Allahabad, there visiting Alfred Percy Sinnett, the editor of The Pioneer and keen Spiritualist. A.O. Hume was also a guest at the Sinnett's home, and Blavatsky was encouraged to manifest paranormal phenomena in their presence. From there, they traveled to Benares, where they stayed at the palace of the Maharaja of Vizianagram. Blavatsky and Olcott were then invited to Ceylon by Buddhist monks. There they officially converted to Buddhism, apparently the first Euro-Americans to do so, taking the Five Precepts in a ceremony at Ramayana Nikayana on May 1880
when Blavatsky took the side of the Coulombs, Bates and Winbridge returned to the U.S.Blavatsky was then invited to Simla to spend more time with Sinnett,Sinnett was eager to contact the Masters himself, convincing Blavatsky to facilitate this communication, resulting in the production of over 1400 pages allegedly authored by Koot Hoomi and Morya, which came to be known as the Mahatma Letters. Sinnett summarised the teachings contained in these letters in his book Esoteric Buddhism although scholars of Buddhism like Max Müller publicly highlighted that the contents were not Buddhist, and Blavatsky herself disliked the misleading title.Since the book's publication, there has been much debate as to the authenticity of the letters, with some arguing that they were written by Blavatsky herself, and others believing that they were written by separate individuals.
Theosophy was unpopular with both Christian missionaries and the ruling British establishment, with India's English-language press being almost uniformly negative toward the Society. While Blavatsky had emphasized its growth among the native Indian population rather than among the British elite, she moved into a bungalow in the Bombay suburb of Breach Candy, which was more accessibly to Western visitors. Olcott had decided to establish the Buddhist Education Fund to combat the process of Christianization in Ceylon and encourage pride and interest in Buddhism among the island's Sinhalese population. Although Blavatsky initially opposed the idea, stating that the Masters would not approve, Olcott's project proved a success, and she changed her opinion about it
she agreed to accompany Olcott on his trip to Britain, where he was planning to argue the case for Ceylonese Buddhism and sort out problems with the Society's London Lodge.Sailing to Marseilles in France, she spent time in Nice with the Countess of Caithness, who had founded the Society's French branch, before continuing to Paris. In London, she made an unexpected appearance at the Lodge's meeting, where she sought to quell arguments between Sinnett on the one hand and Anna Kingsford and Edward Maitland on the other. Unsatisfied, Kingsford – whom Blavatsky thought "an unbearable snobbish woman" – proceeded to split from the Theosophical Society to form the Hermetic Society In London, Blavatsky made contact with the Society for Psychical Research (SPR) through Frederic W. H. Myers. She complied with their request to undertake a study of her and the paranormal abilities that she claimed to possess, although wasn't impressed by the organisation and mockingly referred to it as the "Spookical Research Society"
While Blavatsky had been in Europe, trouble had broken out at the Society's Adyar headquarters in what came to be known as the Coulomb Affair. The Society's Board of Control had accused Emma Coulomb of misappropriating their funds for her own purposes, and asked her to leave their center. The Society refused to pay them and expelled from their premises, at which the couple turned to the Madras-based Christian College Magazine, who published an expose of Blavatsky's alleged fraudulence using the Coulomb's claims as a basis. The story attracted international attention and was picked up by London-based newspaper, The Times. In response, in November 1884 Blavatsky headed to Cairo, where she and Theosophist Charles Webster Leadbeater searched for negative information on Emma Coulomb, discovering stories of her alleged former history of extortion and criminality.
in July 1890 inaugurated the new European headquarters of the Theosophical Society in Besant's house.There, she authored a book containing questions and corresponding answers, The Key to Theosophy. This was followed by The Voice of the Silence, a short devotional text which she claimed was based on a Senzar text known as The Book of the Golden Precepts. As with The Secret Doctrine, most scholars of Buddhism have doubted that this latter text was an authentic Tibetan Buddhist document,although D. T. Suzuki thought it "real Mahayana Buddhism".She continued to face accusations of fraud; U.S. newspaper The Sun published a July 1890 article based on information provided by an ex-member of the Society, Elliott Coues. Blavatsky sued the newspaper for libel, and they publicly retracted their accusations in September 1892. That winter, Britain had been afflicted by an influenza epidemic, with Blavatsky contracting the virus; it led to her death on the afternoon of 8 May 1891, in Besant's house. The date would come to be commemorated by Theosophists ever since as White Lotus Day. Her body was cremated at Woking Crematorium on 11 May
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