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H P Blavatsky
Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (Russian: Елена Петровна Блаватская, Yelena Petrovna Blavatskaya, often known as Madame Blavatsky; née von Hahn; Ukrainian: Олена Петрівна Блаватська, Olena Petrivna Blavatska; 12 August [O.S. 31 July] 1831 – 8 May 1891) was a Russian 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 of Russian-German descent 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.[citation needed] 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, there establishing the Blavatsky Lodge in London. 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.
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.
Blavatsky expounded what has been described as a "monotheistic, immanentist, and mystical cosmology".[285] Blavatsky was a pantheist,[286] and emphasized the idea of an impersonal divinity, referring to the Theosophical God as a "universal Divine Principle, the root of All, from which all proceeds, and within which all shall be absorbed at the end of the great cycle of being".[269] She was dismissive of the Christian idea of God in the Western world, describing it as "a bundle of contradictions and a logical impossibility."[269] She stated that the universe emanated from this Divine Principle, with each particle of matter being infused with a spark of the divine.[287] Lower Orders emanated from higher ones, before becoming increasingly dense and being absorbed back into the Divine Principle.[287] This cosmology exhibited commonalities with the scientific discoveries of geology and biological evolution, both of which had been revealed by scientific inquiry during the 19th century.[287]
In The Secret Doctrine, Blavatsky articulated the belief that in the beginning of time there was absolute nothingness. This primordial essence then separated itself into seven Rays, which were also intelligent beings known as the Dhyan Chohans; these Seven Rays then created the universe using an energy called Fohat.[288][289] The Earth was created and underwent seven Rounds, in each of which different living beings were created.[288]
Blavatsky advocated the idea of "Root Races", each of which was divided into seven Sub-Races.[290] In Blavatsky's cosmogony, the first Root Race were created from pure spirit and lived on a continent known as the "Imperishable Sacred Land".The second Root Race, known as the Hyperboreans, were also formed from pure spirit and lived on a land near to the North Pole, which then had a mild climate.[288] The third lived on the continent of Lemuria, which Blavatsky alleged survives today as Australia and Rapa Nui.Blavatsky alleged that during the fourth Round of the Earth, higher beings descended to the planet, with the beginnings of human physical bodies developing and the sexes separating.At this point, the fourth Root Race appeared, living on the continent of Atlantis; they had physical bodies but also psychic powers and advanced technology.She claimed that some Atlanteans were giants and built such ancient monuments as Stonehenge in southern England and that they also mated with "she-animals", resulting in the creation of gorillas and chimpanzees.The Atlanteans were decadent and abused their power and knowledge, so Atlantis sunk into the sea, although various Atlanteans escaped and created new societies in Egypt and the Americas.
The fifth Root Race to emerge was the Aryans and was found across the world at the time she was writing.She believed that the fifth Race would come to be replaced by the sixth, which would be heralded by the arrival of Maitreya, a figure from Mahayana Buddhist mythology.She further believed that humanity would eventually develop into the final, seventh Root Race.Lachman suggested that by reading Blavatsky's cosmogonical claims as a literal account of history, "we may be doing it a disservice."He instead suggested that it could be read as Blavatsky's attempt to formulate "a new myth for the modern age, or as a huge, fantastic science fiction story".
Blavatsky taught that humans composed of three separate parts: a divine spark, an astral fluid body, and the physical body.Later Blavatsky proclaimed the septenary of Man and Universe. According to Blavatsky, man is composed of seven parts: Atma, Buddhi, Manas, Kama rupa, Linga sharira, Prana, and Sthula sharira. In Isis Unveiled, Blavatsky denied that humans would be reincarnated back on the Earth after physical death.[300] However, by the time that she had authored The Secret Doctrine, she had changed her opinion on this issue, likely influenced by her time in India.Here, she stated that the law of reincarnation was governed by karma, with humanity's final purpose being the emancipation of the soul from the cycle of death and rebirth. She believed that knowledge of karma would ensure that human beings lived according to moral principles, arguing that it provided a far greater basis for moral action than that of the Christian doctrine.Blavatsky wrote, in Isis Unveiled, that Spiritualism "alone offers a possible last refuge of compromise between" the "revealed religions and materialistic philosophies". While she acknowledged that fanatic believers "remained blind to its imperfections", she wrote that such a fact was "no excuse to doubt its reality" and asserted that Spiritualist fanaticism was "itself a proof of the genuineness and possibility of their phenomena".
Goodrick-Clarke noted that Blavatsky's cosmology contained all four of the prime characteristics of Western esotericism that had been identified by the scholar Antoine Faivre: "(a) correspondences between all parts of the universe, the macrocosm and microcosm; (b) living nature as a complex, plural, hierarchical, and animate whole; (c) imagination and mediations in the form of intermediary spirits, symbols, and mandalas; and (d) the experience of transmutation of the soul through purification and ascent.
The biographer Peter Washington described Blavatsky as "a short, stout, forceful woman, with strong arms, several chins, unruly hair, a determined mouth, and large, liquid, slightly bulging eyes".She had distinctive azure colored eyes, and was overweight throughout her life.According to the biographer Marion Meade, Blavatsky's "general appearance was outrageously untidy". In later life, she was known for wearing loose robes, and wore many rings on her fingers. She was a heavy cigarette smoker throughout her life,[] and was known for smoking hashish at times.She lived simply and her followers believed that she refused to accept monetary payment in return for disseminating her teachings. Blavatsky preferred to be known by the acronym "HPB",[ a sobriquet applied to her by many of her friends which was first developed by Olcott. She avoided social functions and was scornful of social obligations.She spoke Russian, Georgian, English, French, Italian, Arabic, and Sanskrit.
That winter, Britain had been afflicted by an influenza epidemic (the global 1889–1890 flu pandemic), 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.

- H P Blavatsky

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