Helena Petrovna Blavatsky
From Free Encyclopedia of Thelema
Helena Petrovna Hahn (also Hélène) (July 31, 1831 (O.S.) (August 12, 1831 (N.S.)) - May 8, 1891 London, England), better known as Helena Blavatsky or Madame Blavatsky was the founder of Theosophy.
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Biography
She was born in Ekaterinoslav (now Dnepropetrovsk), Ukraine (then part of the Russian Empire), the daughter of Col. Peter Alexeivich von Hahn and Elena Fadeev. Her mother, also known as Helena Andreyvna Fadeyev, was a novelist, known as the "Russian George Sand", and died when Helena was eleven. Her father being in the armed forces, she was sent with her brother to live with her maternal grandmother, Helena Pavlovna de Fadeev, a princess of the Dolgorukov family and a famous botanist. Both her mother and grandmother were strong role models that allowed her to mature into a nonconformist.
She married when she was seventeen, on July 7, 1849, to the forty-year old Nikifor (also Nicephor) Vassilievitch Blavatsky. They never consummated their marriage. Within a few months, she abandoned her husband. According to her own story as told to a later biographer, she spent the years 1848 to 1858 traveling the world, claiming to have entered Tibet to study with the Masters for two years. She returned to Russia for a short stay in 1858 to soon leave with Italian opera singer Agardi Metrovich. In 1871, on a boat bound for Cairo an explosion claimed Agardi’s life, but H.P. Blavatsky continued on to Cairo herself. It was in Cairo that she formed the Societe Spirite for occult phenomena with Emma Cutting (later Emma Coulomb), which closed after dissatisfied customers complained of fraudulent activities.
It was in 1873 that she emigrated to New York City. Impressing people with her psychic abilities she was spurred on to continue her mediumship. Throughout her career she claimed to be able to perform physical and mental psychic feats which included levitation, clairvoyance, out-of-body projection, telepathy, and clairaudience. One new feat of hers was materialization, that is, producing physical objects out of nothing. Though she was apparently quite apt these feats, her interests were more in the area of theory and laws of how they work rather than performing them herself.
In 1874, Helena met Henry Steel Olcott; he was a lawyer, agricultural expert, and journalist who covered the Spiritualist phenomena. Soon they were living together in the "Lamasery" (alternate spelling: "Lamastery") where her work Isis Unveiled was created.
She married her second husband, Michael C. Betanelly on April 3, 1875 in New York City. She maintained that this marriage was not consummated either. She separated from Betanelly after a few months, and their divorce was legalized on May 25, 1878.
While living in New York City, she founded in Sep 1875, with Henry Steel Olcott, William Quan Judge and others, the Theosophical Society, a modern day Gnostic movement of the late nineteenth century that took its inspiration from Hinduism and Buddhism. She claimed that all religions were both true, in their inner teachings, and false or imperfect, in their external conventional manifestations. Imperfect men attempting to translate the divine knowledge had corrupted it in the translation. Her claim that esoteric spiritual knowledge is consistent with new science may be considered to be the first instance of what is now called New Age thinking. In fact, many researchers feel that much of New Age thought started with Blavatsky.
Blavatsky claimed to have been given access to what she called a 'secret doctrine' that had been passed down the ages from ancient sages of a White Brotherhood. In this respect Blavatsky's ideas followed in the tradition of Freemasonry and Rosicrucianism.
The difference was that Blavatsky's esoteric wisdom was supposed to be derived from Eastern sages, rather than from European esoteric currents. In particular, she pointed to the Mahatmas ("great souls") Morya and Koot Hoomi as her particular guides in the establishment of the T.S. In recent years, the scholarship of K. Paul Johnson has made important inroads on the historical identities of Blavatsky's "Masters," considering them as living human individuals (supernaturally empowered or not) of their period, rather than unearthly superbeings or legitimizing fabrications.
Furthermore, Blavatsy claimed that the ancient "Akashic" wisdom to which she had access was consistent with modern science, in particular with physics and evolutionary biology (for instance borrowing the name Lemuria from biologist P.L. Sclater as the name for the origin of her lost continent wich would serve as the origin for her third root race). This claim that esoteric spiritual knowledge is consistent with new science may be considered to be the first instance of what is now called New Age thinking. In fact, many researchers feel that much of New Age-thought started with Blavatsky.
Aleister Crowley recognized Blavatsky as a Sister of A.'.A.'. (i.e. a Master of the Temple 8°=3# in his system of spiritual grades), specifically pointing her out as his immediate predecessor in “The Temple of Truth,” published in The Heart of the Master through O.T.O. in 1938. He thought it especially noteworthy that he was born in the same year that the Theosophical Society was inaugurated. Crowley reissued Blavatsky’s Voice of the Silence (Extracts from the Book of the Golden Precepts, including “The Two Paths” and “The Seven Portals”) with his own commentary as Liber LXXI, a Class B publication of A.'.A.'.
By 1882 the Theosophical Society became an international organization and it was at this time that she moved the headquarters to Adyar near Madras, India.
Her last words in regard to her work were: "Keep the link unbroken! Do not let my last incarnation be a failure."
Suffering from heart disease, rheumatism, Bright's disease of the Kidneys and complications of influenza, Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky died at her home May 8, 1891. Her body was then cremated; one third of her ashes were sent to Europe, one third with William Quan Judge to the United States, and one third to India where her ashes were scattered in the Ganges River. May 8 is celebrated by Theosophists, and it is called White Lotus Day.
She was succeeded as head of the Theosophical Society, by her protege, Annie Besant.
Works
Her books included
- Isis Unveiled, a master key to the mysteries of ancient and modern science and theology (1877)[1]
- The Secret Doctrine, the synthesis of Science, Religion and Philosophy (1888)[2]
- The Voice of the Silence (1889) [3]
- The Key to Theosophy (1889) [4]
Her many articles have been collected in the H.P. Blavatsky Collected Writings. This series has 14 volumes including the index.
Books about her
- The Esoteric World of Madame Blavatsky by Daniel Caldwell [5]
- HPB: The Extraordinary Life and Influence of Helena Blavatsky by Sylvia Cranston
- H.P. Blavatsky and the Theosophical Movement by Charles Ryan [6]
- Madame Blavatsky's Baboon, by Peter Washington, Review
Quotations
"I am an old Buddhist pilgrim, wandering about the world to teach the only true religion, which is truth."
References
- Wikipedia (2005). Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. Retrieved March 2, 2005.
