Blavatsky - 2/nov/2024

IT IS BLAVATSKY TIME

If people could be centuries, Mme Helena Petrovna Blavatsky would be the 19th. 

Baboon-owner, ardent anti-colonialist, world-traveling occult trendsetter, founder of comparative religious studies, self-admitted huckster, proto-feminist marajuana icon, diehard anti-racist, and innovative antisemite, Mme Blavatsky would combine the mythology of spiritualism with the doctrine of western esoterica. She is a revolution. There is occult history before Blavatsky, and there is occult history after Blavatsky. 

(She combined Spiritualism with the doctrine of Western Esotericism)

-(biggest knock-on effect of this was a significant secularization of western esotericism)

(She was the first big East-West syncretist)

Before we get into the nitty gritty, there is some groundwork to be laid. Primary sources about Blavatsky tends to come from one of three places: One, supporters who wrote about her in the social language of an apostle writing about Christ. Two, detractors who –in several cases– may have been supported by the English government, who thought she was a Russian spy. Or three, Blavatsky herself. And Blavatsky was not interested in down-to-earth biography. 

I have never seen scholarship more cleanly divided into “pro-blavatsky” and “anti-blavatsky” stances. Sympathetic authors show us Blavatsky the Prophet, Blavatsky the Social Crusader, a chaste, morally pure, ahead-of-her-time radical proponent of social and ethnic equality. Antagonistic stances show us Blavatsky the Fraud, the lascivious, self-obsessed, liar, cheater, and scammer who contributed to early nazi mythology. 

I will not claim to have any special insight on the True Blavatsky. The woman is tragically under-studied. Going forward, I will take a feminist position: A woman can be many things at once. 

THE BIRTH OF BLAVATSKY

Born August 12 1831 to a respected mishmash of European nobility. Her father, Colonel Peter Alexeyevich von Hahn (1798-1873), was a descendant of the medieval crusader Count Rottenstern. Her mother was a celebrated novelist who wrote under the pseudonym Zeneida R__va. The family traveled often. Blavatsky’s mother died when she was very young. As a result, she was sent to live with her grandparents in Saratov. 

Blavatsky would claim many things about this period. That she began to exhibit psychic abilities, that her grandfather was a high-ranking mason, and that she was given access to his vast occult library. It should also be said that Blavatsky herself said she provided contradictory accounts of her young life. 

At 18, she was married to Nikofor Blavatsky, a man nearly 40 years her senior. She obviously had little interest in this arrangement, and left him after three months. This would mark the beginning of her early wandering years. (Someone called this the Veiled Years) Information about her young adventures here is almost entirely uncorroborated. She would claim to visit Constantinople where she learned from Sufi mystics, Cairo where she collaborated with Coptic magicians. She would visit Quebec, and be disappointed that the native americans were not the mystical healers as depicted in her favorite James Fennimore Cooper novels. She would claim to visit New Orleans where she learned from Voudou practitioners, then to New Mexico, South America, India, Sri Lanka, trying and failing to enter Nepal, onto Bombay, Java, Singapore, etc etc etc. 

It should be said, that while the details of her adventures are impossible to confirm or deny, it is not impossible that she did in fact travel to these places. Blavatsky enjoyed a frankly unprecedented level of personal and financial freedom for a woman in 1850. 

BLAVATSKY TAKES NEW YORK

The story picks up around 1873, in New York City. This was a spooky place. Spiritualism and its french cousin Spiritisme were in full swing. A young woman couldn’t take two steps without knocking over a crystal ball. In a few years, the Fox sisters would send american fascination with the occult into the stratosphere. Blavatsky was in a good place for someone itching to found an occult research society. 

The whose-whos of 1873 New York were having themselves a Victorian Crisis of Faith. Science had been training in the off season. Geologists had just recently confirmed that the earth was far, far older than the Book of Genesis could account for. That rascal Darwin wrote a book about birds. A literal reading of the bible now directly conflicted with observable scientific fact. For folks who based their entire moral worldview on the Bible, this caused some problems. If your morals are based on the divinity of the bible, and the bible is just a book, what does it mean to be a good person? 

Many movements arose to mend the rift. America was awash in revival churches who doubled down. If science contradicts the bible, the science is wrong. You had the earliest murmurs of pagan reconstructionist movements, Romantic poets who wrote of an idealized pre-christian past dominated by druids, attic oracles, and wandering yogis. You had spiritualists who sold themselves as both spiritual re-awakening, and scientific study of those phenomena. 

Much ink has been spilled as to whether Blavatsky was or was not a spiritualist. I consider this largely irrelevant. Blavatsky was peddling something unique. She was privy to the One True Religion, the ancient, secret tree of wisdom, from which all religion, science, and philosophy sprouted. The Bible conflicts with science? No it doesn't. The Bible you know is but a corrupted form, a third-hand translation of a translation of a translation of a lost text written in a lost divine language. Of course the bible conflicted with science. The Bible was just a pork chop. Blavatsky could show you the whole hog. 

In letters, Blavatsky would tell Christians she was Christian, Spiritualists she was a Spiritualist, and Buddhists she was a Buddhist. She even claimed to have converted to Druze at one point. Blavatsky’s detractors will claim this as evidence of deceit, telling people what they want to hear. This fails to understand Blavatsky’s theology: She is an initiate of the Root Religion. Therefore, she is a member of all religions. 

Around 1873 she would travel to the United States, where she became popular on a Victorian form of Social Media known as the newspaper. Through this, she would meet a man named Henry Steele Olcott. The two would become fast and lifelong friends. This was a double-edged sword. A lifelong friendship with Mme Blavatsky is a “high drama” ordeal, one plagued with constant infighting, disagreements, and public conflicts. Blavatsky was not one for criticism. 

Spiritualism was the hot topic of the day. (there will be a Spiritualism section before this dw) While Blavatsky would initially gain popularity defending spiritualism, she would gain more attention by turning against the grain. Where Spiritualism accentuated a scientific approach to the magical, Blavatsky emphasized the opposite. Her conception of Occultism was in part a reaction to the scientific trappings of spiritualism. Blavatsky would emphasize the esoteric, hidden, inner teachings she claimed were present within all religious doctrine. 

The idea of western esotericism having some form of shared hidden doctrine is nothing new. The Renaissance esotericists loved some comparative religious study. But when Pico Della Mirandola looks at the hidden inner doctrine present in pagan texts, the result looks suspiciously like Christianity. 

Blavatsky’s Occult doctrine is secular, in the sense that it does not belong to any particular sect. It is a Stew of Greek, Egyptian, Jewish, Christian, and Islamic, concepts. Plus, an innovative new ingredient. Blavatsky was one of the first westerners to incorporate (dubiously understood) concepts from eastasian religions like Hinduism and Buddhism. Given that she was one of the only occultists who had actually been to East Asia, she had a significant degree of authority over western occult conceptions of Hinduism and Buddhism. The local library probably didn’t have a comprehensive translation of the Pali Canon, or the Bhagavad Gita. People had to take Blavatsky at her word, and Blavatsky’s world was odd.

Blavatsky posited the existence of secret occult brotherhoods that passed down secret knowledge of the original true religion. Evidence of these secret brotherhoods could be found through esoteric analysis of scripture from around the world. While this theory was not out-of-step with the occult thought of the time, Blavatsky was eye-catchingly radical in her preaching. Where most spiritualists were content to simply compare the religions of the world, Blavatsky would claim they were all branches of the same ancient, esoteric, tree. But she wouldn’t stop there. She would claim to be in contact with an Ascended Master, an ancient, immortal priest of this lost religion who would appear to her in spirit form. His name was Koot Hoomi.

ASIDE: KOOT HOOMI AND THE ASCENDED MASTERS

Initially, Blavatsky would describe Koot Hoomi more in the vein of a tutelary spirit. He was a teacher, a spiritual guide that showed Blavatsky the way. Blavatsky would describe him as a “Kashmiri Brahman” with long hair and blue eyes. As her mythology developed, Koot Hoomi would take a more significant role. He would become one of many Ascended Masters, a person of supreme theosophical wisdom who appears on earth to guide members of the Theosophical Society towards the true path. For the more spiritually inclined members, the Ascended Masters were a load-baring brick. They were the source of spiritual wisdom that proved the Theosophical Society was on the right path. If it turned out that Blavatsky was lying about being in contact with an ancient spiritual being, it could be trouble for her. END ASIDE

In 1874, Blavatsky was living in New York and working on her first major work: Isis Unveiled. (More on this in a moment.) She became a celebrity. American occultists and socialites would regularly visit her apartment to hear wild tales of her adventures in Africa and The Orient. (give us some flavor here, add the anecdote about cornering the ostrich feather market or some shit). These impromptu salons would eventually become the Theosophical Society. 

BLAVATSKY PART 2: THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY

On September 7th 1875, a man named George Henry Felt was giving a lecture to the local spiritualist community. It was titled “The Lost Canon of Proportion of the Egyptians”. Felt used the Egyptian zodiac to prove the existence of numerous elemental spirits present in all things. He claimed that these elemental spirits could potentially be harnessed to supernatural effect. The legend goes that during the lecture, Olcott passed Blavatsky a note that said “[would it] not be a good thing to form a society for this kind of study” Hanegraaf 180. (There was something about Felt being a grifter who ran off with a bunch of money but I need to find the citation for that.)

In 1875 the Theosophical Society is co-founded by Olcott and Blavatskty. Two years later, Blavatsky published Isis Unveiled to widespread success. She had a gift for surveying the field of occult writing, figuring out what people wanted, and giving it to them. (This honestly deserves a whole sidebar of its own. IU is a watershed text for Occultism.)

SIDEBAR: ISIS UNVEILED

Isis Unveiled is a history of the occult, but in the sense The Odyssey is a history. It is a grand mythological narrative that weaves the most interesting and topical elements of occult history into something dramatic. There is nothing original in Isis Unveiled, (the text was regularly* accused of plagiarism) but it demonstrates Blavatsky’s impressive skill for syncretism. The woman could weave one hell of a tale. The sales numbers prove this. Isis Unveiled sold so well the Blavatsky version of occult history continues to be a must-read for any serious occult scholar. (Good place to talk about the antisemitism)

*and accurately, in my opinion

END ASIDE

After publishing Isis Unveiled and founding the Theosophical Society, Bavatsky moves to India. She will never return to the United states. In 1879 she arrived in Delhi and she arrived a celebrity. Blavatsky’s brand of world-spanning syncretism was just as popular in India as it was in the west. Her arrival in Delhi was given press attention, as the editor of a local newspaper was a follower. She would almost immediately start a newsletter of her own; The Theosophist, which is still in print today. This choice to move would prove a double-edged sword. 

To Blavatsky and her followers, India was where magic came from, it was where all wisdom came from. By starting a second branch of the Theosophical Society in India, she could drink directly from the wellspring of theosophical knowledge. She was already famous for being one of the few westerners to travel to India and learn about their religion. Every moment spent in Delhi was another gallon of rocket fuel for her reputation. The reverse was also true. Her Indian followers were just as fascinated by this bizarre foreigner touting knowledge of ancient wisdom. For Blavatsky, it was a win-win. 

However, magical societies are not known for internal discipline. The Theosophical Society was already suffering from internal fractures. Without Blavatsky to assert direct control, the Theosophical Society would suffer near constant infighting. Even when Blavatsky was present, the society was plagued with constant infighting over the identity of the group. Were they Christian? Were they something else? Did they practice magic or just study it? Did they include spiritualists or oppose them, etc. When she left, these problems would only get worse. But that was a problem for future Blavatsky. 

In 1880, Blavatsky and Olcott would accept the Five Precepts and Three Gems, effectively becoming Buddhists. (Although Blavatsky had been calling herself a buddhist for some time.) Shortly after this, the pair would receive a series of letters from the Ascended Masters, who tell them the Theosophical Society is the true inheritor of the secret wisdom religion. They weren’t just studying the ancient secret wisdom religion anymore, they were the ancient secret wisdom religion. 

By this point, the Theosophical Society is at the peak of its popularity. Membership is at an all-time high. Public intellectuals and academics are now aware of, and being asked to comment on, her work. She is knocking on the door of mainstream success, and that means scrutiny from mainstream organizations. Blavatsky made huge gains by promoting Occultism along the same rigorous, “scientific” lines as Spiritualism. But if you claim something is scientific, it means you have to demonstrate repeatability in some way, potentially in laboratory settings. For Blavatsky, who relied on parlor tricks and sleight-of-hand, this could be disastrous. 

In 1884, Blavatsky and Olcott agreed to travel to England to meet with the Society for Psychical Research. In terms of actual scientific approaches to the magical and esoteric, the SPR are the gold standard. They are initially impressed with Blavatsky, but this will not last. 

That same year, the Madras Christian Collective (fact check this, it could be Collective or College) would publish a scathing expose. The contents were largely based on correspondences between Blavatsky and Emma Coulomb, a former accomplice in many of Blavatsky’s scams, now turned traitor. The details of the so-called “Coulomb Affair” are hotly contested, but the end result was strong, public, evidence that Blavatsky was a huckster who knowingly falsified her supernatural abilities. The effects were, to say the least, disastrous. 

“For our own part, we regard her neither as the mouthpiece of hidden seers, nor as a mere vulgar adventuress; we think that she has achieved a title to permanent remembrance as one of the most accomplished, ingenious, and interesting impostors in history”

PART 3: THE SECRET DOCTRINE

Blavatsky left for India in disgrace, but became ill, and was forced to return to Europe. She would settle in Wurtzburg for a short while but loyal Theosophists eventually convinced her to return to London. Her public reputation in shambles, she would cloister herself in this London apartment, and begin work on her next great work: The Secret Doctrine. This apartment would become known as The Blavatsky Lodge. (fact check: was it an apartment? Or was she staying with some wealthy theosophist?) Once she was all settled in, she would do what she did best; establish a small newspaper. This one was called Lucifer. This publication was essentially a vehicle to build hype for the release of The Secret Doctrine. 

In 1890 she meets Annie Besant, who we do not have time to discuss. Under Blavatsky’s guidance, Besant would found the Esoteric Section of the Theosophical Society, an even more explicitly magical sub-group. Later that year, Secret Doctrine is published. 

SIDEBAR: THE SECRET DOCTRINE

The Secret Doctrine claims to be the root, the ancestor from which both Vedic and Western theology emerged. A text like this was inevitable. Stick a Victorian theologian in a room with the Bible and the Upanishads, it’s only a matter of time they try to stitch the two together. Blavatsky’s approach to this theological grafting is clever. Rather than invent a lost ancient text whole-cloth, The Secret Doctrine is structured as a translation and commentary of two “hitherto unknown” (read: nonexistent) ancient Tibetan works called the Book of Dyzan and the Golden Precepts. 

Volume one of The Secret Doctrine is split into two parts: cosmogenesis followed by anthropogenesis. Simply put, where the universe came from and how its structured, followed by where humans come from and their role in the grand story of reality. 

We don’t have time to summarize an entire creation story, but its safe to say that The Secret Doctrine landed on occult history like a meat mallet. It would change how an entire generation of occultists would approach occult history. Even if Blavatsky’s assertions were not universally accepted, they were accepted to the point where they had to be mentioned, and argued against, even by other occultists. 

First, the Theosophical Society is the inheritor of the ancient wisdom religion. History is filled with enlightened seers who transmit this doctrine, and convey wisdom from the higher beings watching over the “childhood of humanity.” 

Two, there is a single divine principal who manifests as the myriad divinities of world religion. One god, many faces. 

Three, the world follows the eastern concept of Maya. The world is illusory, like a great dream, and its nature is that of thought and consciousness. 

Four, the world follows the spiritual-alchemical Law of Correspondences, as above, so below. 

(There’s technically 6 stanzas here, but two of them are just reinforcing the earlier stanzas.)

To summarize volume two: This is the one with all the weird race science. If you’ve ever heard the term “Root Race” this is where it comes from. This section is an explicit rejection of darwinian evolution. (explain that) 

In the introduction to this section, I referred to Blavatsky as an “innovative antisemite”, this part of the text is why. Blavatsky wrote in an increasingly industrialized world. Writers and philosophers all across the western world saw our modernization and  detachment from nature akin to a spiritual fall from grace. Modern humans were disconnected from the earth and the natural forces that shaped our lives. The spiritualists mirrored this sentiment. The 1870s were flush with stories of ancient humans born with firm connections to the divine and incredible magical powers. Blavatsky made a critical addition to this mythology: A long time ago, these ancient magical humans were betrayed by a traitorous tribe, who coveted divinity and wanted to “draw the divine down to earth.” This traitor tribe of course, being the ancient semitic peoples. To summarize, Blavatsky says that humans can’t teleport anymore because the Jews wanted all the God to themselves. 

Blavatsky wasn’t a Nazi, she was born too early to join, but her ideas would prove fertile ground for the people who would eventually become the Nazis. A few decades later, a man named Guido Von List would reinforce the ugliest elements of this theology, and it would become foundational mythology for one of the groups that would eventually become the German Nazi party. 

What’s more, the book fell under criticism from fellow occultist William Emmette Coleman, who claimed the book was plagiarized from contemporary occult sources. He names over one hundred sources that Blavatsky copied from without credit. While the book is undoubtedly a towering work of plagiarism, it is unclear whether or not Blavatsky intended to plagiarize. None of the authors she plagiarized from ever called her out. It is entirely possible she was simply unconcerned with proper citation. But plagiarism is plagiarism, intentional or not. 

On May 8th, 1891, after years of grappling with a toxic reputation, Mme Blavatsky would kick the bucket. She died in disgrace, but also as one of the most influential occult writers of all time. While lacking in originality, she was undeniably a skilled syncretist. Her influence can be seen in everything from the New Age, to Nazi race science, to the science fiction and fantasy novels of the early 20th century. 

(give us a little blavatsky retrospective. How do we evaluate her career at the end of her life.)

ToDo:

• Add to the sidebars about her two major texts

Roots:

• A generalized western mysticism

• James Fenimore Cooper novels about native americans

• Reacting to Spiritualism

• Before her we need a section on spiritualism.

• Raymond Lull, Robert Fludd, Henry More

• Karl Von Eckhartschausen

Notable Ideas:

• Occultism v spiritualism

• Ancient Wisdom Religion

• The Theosophical Society

• Ascended Masters

Influenced:

• I mean basically everyone

General Outline:

ERA 1: YUNG VATSKY

• Born August 12 1831 to a mishmash of european nobility.

• Supposedly a medium at a young age

“I remember that when addressed as a medium, she (Mme. Blavatsky) used to laugh and assure us she was no medium, but only a mediator between mortals and beings we knew nothing about’.” - Blavatsky’s Sister speaking about her quoted in Hanegraaf 178

• Claimed that her grandfather was a mason who gave her access to a grand occult library

• In 1849, at the age of 18, she was married to Nikofor Blavatsky, and left him 3 months later

• She had an unprecedented level of freedom at that point in history, much less for a woman. She had access to essentially bottomless wealth and complete freedom of movement. 

• She traveled the world, circumnavigating the globe several times. This bitch was everywhere. 

• FIRST KOOT HOOMI LETTER

• Around 1871 she arrives in Cairo and founded the Societe Spirite. Which is initially a more “scientific” occult investigation group that rapidly just becomes a magical society. This would be the blueprint for the Theosophical Society

ERA 2: VATSKY AND OLCOTT

• July 7th 1873 she arrives in the US. iN 1874 She meets Henry Steel Olcott. The two rapidly become BFFS and lifelong creative partners. 

• Blavatsky loves getting involved in the local newspaper scene

• Here, we get the first peek into her views on Occultism vs Spiritualism

  • Spiritualism: Concerned with the investigation of psychic phenomena, but devoid of doctrine.

  • Occultism: Spiritualism + the doctrine of Western Esotericism

• Her theory being that all these seemingly unconnected organizations in history actually have a common doctrinal thread. 

• So she makes a name for herself by publishing a lot about eastasian religions and her theories on these ancient “Occult Brotherhoods” this makes her pretty popular. 

• Shes working on her first big work. People come to visit her at her apartment while she works, and these meetings eventually become the Theosophical Society.

“On September 7, a lecture was given here by George Henry Felt (1831-1906) entitled “The Lost Canon of Proportion of the Egyptians”. In which he proved the existence of numerous elemental spirits within the Egyptian zodiac, and implied that these spirits could be invoked through ritual and chemical means. 

• Olcott reportedly passed Blavatsky a note that posed “[would it] not be a good thing to form a society for this kind of study” hanegraaf 180

ERA 3 - THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY

1875 the Theosophical Society is founded in America by Olcott and Blavatskty

• 1877, Isis Unveiled is published. This is basically Blavatsky’s thesis for the existence of the “ancient wisdom religion” identified with magic and the occult

SIDEBAR: ISIS UNVEILED

• We gotta talk about this its a watershed text of western esotericism

• Heavily criticized for Plagarism and yeah

• 1879 she moves to India and never returns to the US. Her arrival in India gets a ton of favorable press attention. The editor of one magazine was even a fan. 

• 1879 they start publishing a monthly magazine called The Theosophist (I have some issues of this lol)’

• 1880 two important things happen:

  • Blavatsky and Olcott accept the five precepts and three gems, becoming buddhists. Although Blavatsky already kinda called herself a buddhist.

  • They get a long series of letters from the AMs who tell them the Theosophical Society is the inheritor of the secret wisdom religion

• Also around this time. We should mention that the Theosophical Society is CONSTANTLY fracturing, or threatening to fracture.

• The Theosophical Society is also now popular enough that it is coming under fire from other groups. The fact that Blavatsky is attempting to sell Occultism with an edge of science opens it to more scrutiny than usual. 

• 1884 Blavatsky and Olcott agree to a meeting with the Society for Psychical Research, who are generally impressed with her, but that will not last. 

• The Madras Christian Collective publishes a SCATHING expose in 1884, based on some correspondences B had with Emma Coulomb. This was essentially an accusation of fraud.

• 1885 the SPR sends an observer to India to do some investigation into the fraud. Specifically, to investigate the competency of the witnesses. The findings could not be more damming. 

‘For our own part, we regard her neither as the mouthpiece of hidden seers, nor as a mere vulgar adventuress; we think that she has achieved a title to permanent remembrance as one of the most accomplished, ingenious, and interesting impostors in history’.

ERA 4 - THE BLAVATSKY LODGE

• Leaves in relative disgrace for India, becomes Ill, heads back to europe, floats around Wurtzburg for a bit, ends up in London working on Secret Doctrine. In 1887 she becomes the Blavatsky Lodge.

• Establishes a magazine called Lucifer as public propaganda for Secret Doctrine

• 1890 we meet Annie Besant

• 1890 B establishes the Esoteric Section of the Theosophical Society, a few days later, Secret Doctrine is published

  • Much of SD is based on translations of a “hitherto unknown” tibetan text called the Book of Dyzan, and later The Golden Precepts. These books almost definitely never existed lol. 

• Now, plenty of people criticized her, but the most damning was actually fellow Occultist William Emmette Coleman, who claimed she plagarized contemporary sources like “Ennemoser’s History of Magic and Demonologia, Dunlap’s Sod: The Son of Man and Sod: The Mysteries of Adoni, King’s Gnostics, Jacolliot’s Christna et le Christ and Le Spiritisme dans le monde. He goes on to name about ONE HUNDRED secondary sources. Though to be fair, none of the living authors who she plagarized ever indicted her. Editorial position: Its likely she never actually intended to plagarize. She is not the sort of person who cares overmuch for formal citation standards, but plagiarism is plagiarism. 

• When she died, Theosophists described her significant achievements as lying not in her mediumship, but in her skill as a syncretist. I am inclined to agree.

ADDITIONAL NOTES

• Described as a “magpie” for spiritualism

• Start with Orientalism?

  • In the 1600s, Egypt is kinda the center of the ideas of magic

  • But eventually it moves to India, thats largely because of Voltaire, specifically in The Princess of Babylon, which has a golden age civilization on the banks of Ganghes

  • Probably the most influential orientalist of his day, (1694-1778)

  • “On The Spirit of Nations” which lists China and India as the oldest. This wasn’t an archealogical argument, it was for DIFFUSIONISM

DIFFUSIONISM: Its the Atlantis myth. The idea that all culture and technology are descendant from a few ancient civilizations. Radical diffusionists believe in the Atlantis myth.

• Voltaire was arguing against the primacy of Judeo-christian ideas as the progenitor of all wisdom. By arguing that China and India were older, he’s making a pretty big claim for the time.

• He also argues the jews stole their culture from other people whoops

Dan Eddlestien. Blavatsky and the Hyperborean Atlantis

https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=view_citation&hl=en&user=gs3RA3QAAAAJ&citation_for_view=gs3RA3QAAAAJ:zYLM7Y9cAGgC 

https://pismin.com/10.1353/sec.2010.0055 

Okay. Her defenders will say that she was simply echoing the mentality of her time. Her detractors will say that she was not just a mirror, she contributed something new. She combined two previously disconnected ideas; antisemitism and the new atlantis theory. She gave antisemitism “cosmological importance.” The jews were now an inevitable enemy on a cosmic scale. Although, to be fair, the Jews as some ultimate spiritual enemy is nothing new. One need only look at the history of christian polemics. The greatest effect here is, I think, the secularization of a previously christian idea. 

Madame Blavatsky: The Mother of Modern Spirituality by Gary Lachman

https://www.amazon.com/Madame-Blavatsky-Mother-Modern-Spirituality/dp/1585428639/ref=asc_df_1585428639?tag=bngsmtphsnus-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=80814225697823&hvnetw=s&hvqmt=e&hvbmt=be&hvdev=c&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=&hvtargid=pla-4584413753927889&psc=1 

• Europeans see themselves as conquering the whole world and they’re like damn maybe this happened before. Hence the Atlantis myth becomes pretty popular

Jean Sylvane Bailey tries to find atlantis.

• In bailey we see a new appreciation for mythology. Previously seen as the purview of “pre rational” civilizations, 

• The idea being that there’s truth in a lot of myths so we should study them. But many scholars decide that they are all branches of a great historical truth that has been corrupted or fallen. 

• Imagine. IF you think that Atlantis was just like you but in the past. Your civilization is kinda the inheritor of their mythology. Thats YOUR mythology. 

• Bailey is who MOVED atlantis. He read old greek mythology and theorized that based on the position and occurrences of an eclipse, that Atlantis was actually closer to the north pole. In Hyperborea.

• His argument is not terribly popular. 20,000 leagues under the sea is kinda Verne mocking Bailey. 

• Blavatsky’s dad is a military guy. So she is moving all the time

• Blavatsky’s dad is a celebrated novelist. All her books are a bout unhappy women in marriages to brutes

• Blavatsky gets to spend time with the Kalmuk (a nomadic russian steppe tribe who are buddhist) bc a family member i

s appointed some position of ambassadorship or something idk check the Lachman biography

• Blavatsky was friends with a Wizard-Prince named Alexsander Gollittzin maybe

• Who was apparently friends with KARL VON ECKHARTSCHAUSEN

• Blavatskys favorite Bullwer-lytton book was Zononi, which is about the rosicrucians

• A big part of theosophy is Aeceticism. So its worth discussing her apparent asexuality.

https://www.amazon.com/Madame-Blavatsky-Woman-Behind-Myth-ebook/dp/B00J2IK7YK 

Madame Blavatsky: The Woman Behind the Myth

SHWEP BIOGRAPHY

https://www.blavatskyarchives.com/theosophypdfs/early_theosophical_publications_authors.htm 

Bevir, Mark. “The West Turns Eastward: Madame Blavatsky and the Transformation of the Occult Tradition” Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Vol. 62, No. 3 (Autumn, 1994), 747-767. 

Carlson, Maria.  ‘No Religion Higher than Truth’: A History of the Theosophical Movement in Russia, 1875-1922. Princeton University Press, 1993.

Chajes, Julie. Recycled Lives: A History of Reincarnation in Blavatsky’s Theosophy. Oxford University Press, 2019.

Faxneld, Per. “Blavatsky the Satanist: Luciferianism in Theosophy, and Its Feminist Implications.” Temenos 48.2 (2013).

Ferguson, Christine. “The Luciferian Public Sphere: Theosophy and Editorial Seekership in the 1880s.” Victorian Periodicals Review 53.1 (2020): 76–101.

French, Brendan. “Blavatsky, Dostoevskii, and Occult Starchestvo.” Aries (Leiden, Netherlands) 7.2 (2007): 161–184.

Hokanson, Katya. “Russian Women Travelers in Central Asia and India.” The Russian Review, Vol. 70, No. 1 (January 2011), 1-19.

Lachman, Gary. Madame Blavatsky: The Mother of Modern Spirituality. Tarcher Perigee, 2012.

Lubelsky, Isaac, and Yael Lotan, trans. Celestial India: Madame Blavatsky and the Birth of Indian Nationalism. Equinox, 2012.

Murphet, Howard. When Daylight Comes: A Biography of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. Quest, 1975.

Reenberg Sand, Erik, and Tim Rudbøg. Imagining the East: The Early Theosophical Society. Oxford UP, 2020 [contains several excellent articles, too numerous to list separately].

Viswanathan, Gauri. “In Search of Madame Blavatsky: Reading the Exoteric, Retrieving the Esoteric.” Representations, Vol. 141 No. 1, Winter 2018; 67-94.