Helena Petrovna Blavatsky[lower-alpha 1] (néeHahn von Rottenstern; 12 August[O.S. 31 July]1831 – 8 May 1891), often known as Madame Blavatsky, was a Russian and American mystic and author who co-founded the Theosophical Society in 1875. She gained an international following as the leading theoretician of Theosophy.
Born into an aristocratic family in Yekaterinoslav, then in the Russian Empire (now Dnipro in Ukraine), Blavatsky traveled widely around the 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 also claimed 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 a deeper understanding of the synthesis of religion, philosophy, and science.
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 1875, New York City, Blavatsky co-founded the Theosophical Society with Olcott and William Quan Judge. 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 the Arya Samaj, a Hindu reform movement. That same year, while in Ceylon, she and Olcott became the first people from the United States to formally convert to Buddhism.[1]
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. Amid ailing health, in 1885 she returned to Europe, establishing the Blavatsky Lodge in London. There 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 1891.
Blavatsky was a controversial figure during her lifetime, championed by supporters as an enlightened Sage and derided as a 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.
Early life
Developing a reliable account of Blavatsky's life has proved difficult for biographers because in later life she deliberately provided contradictory accounts and falsifications about her own past.[2] Furthermore, very few of her own writings written before 1873 survive, meaning that biographers must rely heavily on these unreliable later accounts.[3] The accounts of her early life provided by her family members have also been considered dubious by biographers.[4]
Childhood: 1831–1849
Birth and family background
An illustration of Yekaterinoslav – Blavatsky's birthplace – as it appeared in the early 19th century
Blavatsky was born as Helena Petrovna Hahn von Rottenstern in the town of Yekaterinoslav, then part of the Russian Empire.[5] Her birth date was 12 August 1831, although according to the Julian calendar used in 19th-century Russia it was 31 July.[6] Immediately after her birth, she was baptized into the Russian Orthodox Church.[7] At the time, Yekaterinoslav was undergoing a cholera epidemic, and her mother contracted the disease shortly after childbirth; despite the expectations of their doctor, both mother and child survived the epidemic.[8]
Blavatsky's family was aristocratic.[9] Her mother was Helena Andreyevna Hahn von Rottenstern (Russian: Елена Андреевна Ган, 1814–1842; née Fadeyeva), a self-educated 17-year-old who was the daughter of Princess Yelena Pavlovna Dolgorukaya, a similarly self-educated aristocrat.[10] Blavatsky's father was Pyotr Alexeyevich Hahn von Rottenstern (Russian: Пётр Алексеевич Ган, 1798–1873), a descendant of the German Hahn aristocratic family, who served as a captain in the Russian Royal Horse Artillery, and would later rise to the rank of colonel.[11] Pyotr had not been present at his daughter's birth, having been in Poland fighting to suppress the November Uprising against Russian rule, and first saw her when she was six months old.[12] As well as her Russian and German ancestry, Blavatsky could also claim French heritage, for a great-great grandfather had been a French Huguenot nobleman who had fled to Russia to escape persecution, there serving in the court of Catherine the Great.[13]
As a result of Pyotr's career, the family frequently moved to different parts of the Empire, accompanied by their servants,[14] a mobile childhood that may have influenced Blavatsky's largely nomadic lifestyle in later life.[15] A year after Pyotr's arrival in Yekaterinoslav, the family relocated to the nearby army town of Romankovo.[16] When Blavatsky was two years old, her younger brother, Sasha, died in another army town when no medical help could be found.[17] In 1835, mother and daughter moved to Odessa, where Blavatsky's maternal grandfather Andrei Fadeyev, a civil administrator for the imperial authorities, had recently been posted. It was in this city that Blavatsky's sister Vera Petrovna was born.[18]
St. Petersburg, Poltava, and Saratov
After a return to rural Ukraine, Pyotr was posted to Saint Petersburg, where the family moved in 1836. Blavatsky's mother liked the city, there establishing her own literary career, penning novels under the pseudonym of "Zenaida R-va" and translating the works of the English novelist Edward Bulwer-Lytton for Russian publication.[19] When Pyotr returned to Ukraine c.1837, she remained in the city.[20] After Fadeyev was assigned to become a trustee for the Kalmyk people of Central Asia, Blavatsky and her mother accompanied him to Astrakhan, where they befriended a Kalmyk leader, Tumen.[21] The Kalmyks were practitioners of Tibetan Buddhism, and it was here that Blavatsky gained her first experience with the religion.[22]
A painting of Blavatsky and her mother, titled "Two Helens (Helena Hahn and Helena Blavatsky)" 1844–1845
In 1838, Blavatsky's mother moved with her daughters to be with her husband at Poltava, where she taught Blavatsky how to play the piano and organized for her to take dance lessons.[23] As a result of her poor health, Blavatsky's mother returned to Odessa, where Blavatsky learned English from a British governess.[24] They next moved to Saratov, where a brother, Leonid, was born in June 1840.[25] The family proceeded to Poland and then back to Odessa, where Blavatsky's mother died of tuberculosis in June 1842, aged 28.[26]
The three surviving children were sent to live with their maternal grandparents in Saratov, where their grandfather Andrei had been appointed Governor of Saratov Governorate.[27] The historian Richard Davenport-Hines described the young Blavatsky as "a petted, wayward, invalid child" who was a "beguiling story-teller".[28] Accounts provided by relatives reveal that she socialized largely with lower-class children and that she enjoyed playing pranks and reading.[29] She was educated in French, art, and music, all subjects designed to enable her to find a husband.[30] With her grandparents she holidayed in Tumen's Kalmyk summer camp, where she learned horse riding and some Tibetan.[31]
She later claimed that in Saratov she discovered the personal library of her maternal great-grandfather, Prince Pavel Vasilevich Dolgorukov (d. 1838); it contained a variety of books on esoteric subjects, encouraging her burgeoning interest in it.[32] Dolgorukov had been initiated into Freemasonry in the late 1770s and had belonged to the Rite of Strict Observance; there were rumors that he had met both Alessandro Cagliostro and the Count of St. Germain.[33] She also later stated that at this time of life she began to experience visions in which she encountered a "Mysterious Indian" man, and that in later life she would meet this man in the flesh.[34] Many biographers have considered this to be the first appearance of the "Masters" in her life story.[35]
According to some of her later accounts, in 1844–45 Blavatsky was taken by her father to England, where she visited London and Bath.[36] According to this story, in London she received piano lessons from the Bohemian composer Ignaz Moscheles, and performed with Clara Schumann.[37] However, some Blavatsky biographers believe that this visit to Britain never took place, particularly as no mention of it is made in her sister's memoirs.[38] After a year spent living with her aunt, Yekaterina Andreyevna Witte,[39] mother of the future first Prime Minister of the Russian Empire, Sergei Witte, she moved to Tiflis, Georgia, where her grandfather Andrei had been appointed director of state lands in Transcaucasia.[40] Blavatsky claimed that here she established a friendship with Alexander Vladimirovich Golitsyn, a Russian Freemason and member of the Golitsyn family who encouraged her interest in esoteric matters.[41] She would also claim that at this period she had further paranormal experiences, astral traveling and again encountering her "mysterious Indian" in visions.[42]
World travels: 1849–1869
Blavatsky's drawing of a boat scene, produced in England in 1851[43]
At age 17, she agreed to marry Nikifor Vladimirovich Blavatsky, a man in his forties who worked as Vice Governor of Erivan Province. Her reasons for doing so were unclear, although she later claimed that she was attracted by his belief in magic.[44] Although she tried to back out shortly before the wedding ceremony, the marriage took place on 7 July 1849.[45] Moving with him to the Sardar Palace, she made repeated unsuccessful attempts to escape and return to her family in Tiflis, to which he eventually relented.[46] The family sent her, accompanied by a servant and maid, to Odessa to meet her father, who planned to return to Saint Petersburg with her. The escorts accompanied her to Poti and then Kerch, intending to continue with her to Odessa. Blavatsky claimed that, fleeing her escorts and bribing the captain of the ship that had taken her to Kerch, she reached Constantinople.[47] This marked the start of nine years spent traveling the world, possibly financed by her father.[48]
She did not keep a diary at the time, and was not accompanied by relatives who could verify her activities.[49] Thus, historian of esotericism Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke noted that public knowledge of these travels rests upon "her own largely uncorroborated accounts", which are marred by being "occasionally conflicting in their chronology".[50] For religious studies scholar Bruce F. Campbell, there was "no reliable account" for the next 25 years of her life.[51] According to biographer Peter Washington, at this point "myth and reality begin to merge seamlessly in Blavatsky's biography".[52]
She later claimed that in Constantinople she developed a friendship with a Hungarian opera singer named Agardi Metrovitch, whom she first encountered when saving him from being murdered.[53] It was also in Constantinople that she met the Countess Sofia Kiselyova, who she would accompany on a tour of Egypt, Greece, and Eastern Europe.[54] In Cairo, she met the American art student Albert Rawson, who later wrote extensively about the Middle East,[55] and together they allegedly visited a Coptic magician, Paulos Metamon.[56] In 1851, she proceeded to Paris, where she encountered the mesmerist, Victor Michal, who impressed her.[57] From there, she visited England, and would claim that it was here that she met the "mysterious Indian" who had appeared in her childhood visions, a Hindu whom she referred to as the Master Morya. While she provided various conflicting accounts of how they met, locating it in both London and Ramsgate according to separate stories, she maintained that he claimed that he had a special mission for her, and that she must travel to Tibet.[58]
Helena Blavatsky, c.1850
She made her way to Asia via the Americas, heading to Canada in autumn 1851. Inspired by the novels of James Fenimore Cooper, she sought out the Native American communities of Quebec in the hope of meeting their magico-religious specialists, but was instead robbed, later attributing these Natives' behavior to the corrupting influence of Christian missionaries.[59] She then headed south, visiting New Orleans, Texas, Mexico, and the Andes, before transport via ship from the West Indies to Ceylon and then Bombay.[60] She spent two years in India, allegedly following the instructions found in letters that Morya had sent to her.[61] She attempted to enter Tibet, but was prevented from doing so by the British colonial administration.[62]
She later claimed that she then headed back to Europe by ship, surviving a shipwreck near to the Cape of Good Hope before arriving in England in 1854, where she faced hostility as a Russian citizen due to the ongoing Crimean War between Britain and Russia.[63] It was here, she claimed, that she worked as a concert musician for the Royal Philharmonic Society.[64] Sailing to the U.S., she visited New York City, where she met up with Rawson, before touring Chicago, Salt Lake City, and San Francisco, and then sailing back to India via Japan.[65] There, she spent time in Kashmir, Ladakh, and Burma, before making a second attempt to enter Tibet.[66] She claimed that this time she was successful, entering Tibet in 1856 through Kashmir, accompanied by a Tartar shaman who was attempting to reach Siberia and who thought that as a Russian citizen, Blavatsky would be able to aid him in doing so.[67] According to this account, they reached Leh before becoming lost, eventually joining a traveling Tartar group before she headed back to India.[68] She returned to Europe via Madras and Java.[69]
After spending time in France and Germany, in 1858 she returned to her family, then based in Pskov.[70] She later claimed that there she began to exhibit further paranormal abilities, with rapping and creaking accompanying her around the house and furniture moving of its own volition.[71] In 1860, she and her sister visited their maternal grandmother in Tiflis. It was there that she met up with Metrovitch, and where she reconciled with Nikifor in 1862.[72] Together they adopted a child named Yuri, who would die aged five in 1867, when he was buried under Metrovitch's surname.[73]
In 1864, wh
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