Helena Blavatsky

Helena Blavatsky, also known as Madame Blavatsky (Yekaterinoslav, August 12, 1831 – London, May 8, 1891), was a writer, occultist and theosophist. Russian. Her maiden name was Helena von Hahn, and after a brief marriage to Nikiphor Blavatsky she adopted the name Helena Petrovna Blavatskaya — Елена Петровна Блаватская , in Russian—

She was one of the founders of the Theosophical Society and contributed to the spread of Theosophy. The most important books of hers are Isis Unveiled and The Secret Doctrine , written in 1875 and 1888, respectively.

Biography

Origin, marriage and travel

Helena Blavatsky towards 1850

Blavatsky was the daughter of Peter von Hahn, a colonel of German origin established in Russia, and Helena de Fadéyev, daughter of a Russian noble family, who worked as a novelist. On her maternal side, she was the granddaughter of Princess Helena Dolgorukov, a botanist and writer. After her mother's untimely death in 1842, Helena grew up under the care of her grandmothers in Saratov, where her grandfather served as governor. Helena showed talent as a pianist and according to testimonies from some contemporaries, she was endowed with certain psychic or supernatural powers. From an early age she was interested in esotericism, and read some works from the personal library of her great-grandfather, who had been initiated into Freemasonry at the end of the century XVIII.

At the age of seventeen, in 1848, Helena married Nikífor Vasílievich Blavatsky, deputy governor of the province of Yerevan, in Armenia, who was forty years old. Helena agreed to marry in order to gain independence, although according to her, she never consummated her union. After three months of unhappy marriage, she took a horse and ran away from home across the mountains to her grandfather's house in Tbilisi.

According to her account, she began a series of trips to various countries, such as Egypt, Turkey and Greece, among others. On some of these trips, she was accompanied by Albert Rawson, a naturalist explorer from the United States who was also interested in esotericism and who was a member of Freemasonry.

She recounts that at the age of twenty, in 1851, she was with her father in London and that there she had her first meeting with what would be her teacher, whom she recognized from dreams and visions she had during her childhood. This teacher would be an Eastern Rajput initiate, Mahatma M. (or Master Morya), as he is known among Theosophists.

As she recounts, in the same year, Blavatsky sailed for Canada and later traveled to various parts of the United States, Mexico, South America, and India. Her first attempt to enter Tibet failed, and she then returned to England, passing through Java on the way.

In 1855 he returned to India and was successful in his attempt to enter Tibet through Kashmir and Ladakh. In Tibet he would go through a period of training under the direction of his teacher. In 1858 he went to France and Germany and returned to Russia the same year and spent a short period with his sister Vera in Pskov. From 1860 to 1865 he traveled and lived in the Caucasus, going through experiences and crises of a supernatural kind. This enabled, according to her, the power of her to acquire complete mastery of her psychic energies. She left Russia again in 1865 and traveled extensively in the Balkans, Greece, Egypt, Syria, and Italy, among other places.

In 1868 he returned to India, via Tibet. On this trip, Blavatsky met, according to her account, the teacher K.H. (or master Kuthumi) and stayed at his residence. At the end of 1870 he returned to Cyprus and Greece. He later took a ship to Egypt, in the port of Perea, in Greece.

The ship where he had embarked on his way to Egypt sank near the island of Spetses on July 4, 1871. After saving himself, he went to Cairo and founded the Spiritist Society, where he initially proposed to promote spiritist and mediumistic phenomena, described by Allan Kardec shortly before, in order to introduce the teachings of occultism and to demonstrate the mayavic (ie illusory from a theosophical perspective) nature of such practices. In her letters written to her relatives, Blavatsky was disappointed with the group's participants, as some pretended to be mediums, while others were stubborn egomaniacs. The group did not last long and did not reach the initial goals.

After several trips through the Middle East, he returned for a short period to Odessa, Ukraine, in July 1872. According to Helena, in the spring of 1873, his teacher instructed him to proceed to Paris and beyond. to New York.

Theosophical Society Foundation and Publications

Headquarters of the Theosophical Society in Paris

In October 1874, Blavatsky met Colonel Henry Olcott, as well as William Quan Judge, a young Irish lawyer in New York. The foundation of the Theosophical Society occurred on November 17, 1875, with the participation of sixteen Theosophists, Helena Blavatsky, Henry Steel Olcott, William Quan Judge, Charles Sotheram, Dr. Charles E. Simmons, W.L. Alden, G.H. Felt, J. Hyslop, D.E. from Lara. DC Massey, E.D. Monachesi, Henry J. Newton, H.M. Stevens, John Storer Cobb, Dr. Britten, and his wife. Their names appear in the minutes that Judge prepared while serving as secretary.

In September 1875, Blavatsky published her first major work, Isis Unveiled, a book dealing with the history and development of the occult sciences, the nature and origin of magic, the roots of Christianity and, according to the author's perspective, the failures of Christian theology and the errors established at that time by official science. In this same year, Blavatsky was granted US citizenship. In 1878, Blavatsky and Henry Olcott moved the headquarters of the Theosophical Society to the city of Adyar, in India. They then met Alfred Percy Sinnett, the editor of the official newspaper of the Government of India, "The Pioneer" of Prayagraj. This contact was very important for Blavatsky and the Theosophical Society.

Portrait of the Spanish-American painter Tomás Povedano

In October 1879 the publication of the first issue of the journal of theosophy began, which was called "The Theosophist" (which is still published), Blavatsky being the responsible editor. The Theosophical Society grew rapidly, and included persons of great importance as members.

In 1880 Blavatsky and Olcott had spent some time in Ceylon (present-day Sri Lanka), a stay that generated and increased interest in the ethical system of esoteric Mahāyāna Buddhism. In September of this year, Blavatsky and Olcott had visited Sinnett and his wife in Simla, India.

Sinnett's serious interest in the teachings and work of the Theosophical Society founded by Blavatsky was embodied in a correspondence between Sinnett and Mahatma K.H.. As a fruit of this correspondence, Sinnett wrote "The Hidden World " (1881) and "Esoteric Buddhism" (1883). Both books were highly influential and succeeded in increasing interest in Theosophy in general and in the Theosophical Society in particular. The responses and communications sent by the Mahatmas to Sinnett are contained in a correspondence which lasted from 1880 to 1885 and was published in 1923 as the "Letters of the Mahatmas to A.P. Sinnett". The original Mahatma Letters are held in the British Museum in London and can be viewed by special permission from the British Museum's department of rare manuscripts.

In May 1882 Blavatsky and Olcott had acquired a large property in Madras, India, in the Adyar neighborhood, where they officially established the international headquarters of the Theosophical Society.

Personal attacks against Blavatsky and her vindication

Helena Blavatsky and Colonel Olcott in 1888

Alexis and Emma Coulomb, two members of Adyar's task force, accused Blavatsky of fraud. She returned to Adyar on December 21, 1884 to better investigate the situation. She wanted to prosecute the Coulombs, in cahoots with the editors of a Madras publication, the Christian College Magazine, but the Theosophical Society bureaucracy delayed the case. Greatly disappointed, she resigned from the post of corresponding secretary at Adyar and left for Europe in 1885, never to return to India again.^{[citation needed]}

The Coulombs' attack, as later proved, had no solid foundation.^{[citation needed]} It was based on forged letters, supposedly written by Blavatsky, with instructions for the organization of fraudulent psychic phenomena. A magazine of Christian missionaries in Madras published most of the letters. ^{[citation required]}

The London Society for Psychical Research has created a special committee to investigate Madame Blavatsky. In December 1884, Richard Hodgson, a young member of the committee of that society, came to India to investigate and prepare the report on the Coulombs' accusations. Based on the Hodgson report, the committee, in an 1885 report, "accuses Madame Blavatsky as one of the greatest impostors in history". Hodgson also accused Blavatsky of being a Russian spy. This report was used for years as a basis to attack Madame Blavatsky and to try to prove the non-existence of the Masters or Mahatmas. The aforementioned report was later refuted and published by the same Society for Psychical Research in London, in vindication of the reputation of Helena Blavatsky.^{[citation required]}

In 1963, Adlai Waterman (a pseudonym for Walter Carrithers, Jr.) in his work "Obituary of Hodgson's Report on Madame Blavatsky", analyzed and refuted the accusations of Hodgson. Another more recent rebuttal can be found in Vernon Harrison's publication entitled "H.P. Blavatsky and the SPR: An Examination of Hodgson's 1885 Report" ('J'ACCUSE: An Examination of the Hodgson Report of 1885,' Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, April 1986.)

This attack severely affected Blavatsky's health. In Wurzburg, (Germany), he began writing The Secret Doctrine, which was his masterpiece. In May 1887, accepting the invitation of Theosophists from England, he removed to London.

Back to London

A moment of tranquility of H. Blavatsky, dedicated to his writings and readings.

By the time Blavatsky arrived in London, the activities of the Theosophists had intensified and established themselves according to the teachings of their founder. In England the magazine "Lucifer" (from the Latin lucifer, «bearer of light», applied to the planet Venus).

In England, ever since allegations of fraud were raised in India, Blavatsky was repeatedly turned away by doctors. According to her own testimony, Helena received a visit one day from one of her Tibetan instructors who gave her, according to her, the following option: "either die freeing herself (from the diseased body) or continue living finishing the Secret Doctrine ". She recovered and continued to write her own work, which she completed and published in 1888, simultaneously in London and New York. Her assistants in transcribing and editing the manuscripts had been Bertram Keightley and Archibald Keightley.

The Secret Doctrine is Blavatsky's most important book. The first volume is dedicated to cosmogenesis and basically studies the composition and evolution of the universe. The skeleton of this volume is made up of seven stanzas translated from Dyzian's book with comments and explanations made by Blavatsky. In this volume are also explained the basic symbols contained in the great religions and mythologies of the world. The second volume contains another series of stanzas from Dzyan's book, describing human evolution (anthropogenesis).

The last words written by Blavatsky in this book were: "This work is dedicated to all true Theosophists".

Also in 1888 Madame Blavatsky founded the esoteric section of the Theosophical Society, dedicated to the deeper study of esoteric philosophy, and wrote three works for the students of this school.

In 1889 Blavatsky published the book The Key to Theosophy, an exposition of ethics, philosophy and science in the form of questions and answers that show the reasons why the Theosophical Society was founded, and What were his basic teachings? He also published The Voice of the Silence, a poetic book belonging to the Book of Golden Precepts, which he had memorized while living in a Tibetan lamaist monastery and which was translated into the Portuguese language by the writer, poet and scholar of esotericism Fernando Pessoa.

Work, dedication and controversies

Annie Wood Besant (1847 - 1933), Blavatsky style editor, opposed the original teachings and instructions of the Mahatmas after becoming the leader of the Theosophical Society.

According to witnesses of the time, Blavatsky worked incessantly on her projects. The volume of his work can be seen in the work & # 34; The Secret Doctrine & # 34;. It includes 2000 citations, with indications of pages and authors. Another example of his extensive work and dedication is the book Isis Unveiled , with more than 1300 pages.

Madame Blavatsky explained that she wrote both Isis Unveiled and The Secret Doctrine with the help of the Mahatmas and that they sometimes transferred their consciousness to her physical body, in a process called "tulku". Blavatsky affirmed that such a process was not mediumistic, because the mahatmas were not spirits of the dead, but true human beings in physical bodies. According to her, some descriptions and quotes were shown to her by them through the astral light; other times, while she slept. According to her version, entire pages were precipitated in her own handwriting, or the teachers' letters materialized on paper. These claims would strongly contribute to the fact that Blavatsky was taken as an impostor. ^{[citation required]}

On the other hand, her critics accuse her of racism, particularly when Blavatsky mentions some ethnic groups such as the Australian aborigines for example, as belonging to an inferior race, since she identifies them as "a cross between Atlanto-Lemurian". Regarding the Semites, particularly the Arabs, she said that they were "spiritually degenerate "; This is perhaps an interpretation and translation error from the English language. In the Secret Doctrine, Volume II (ed. in English) she refers to the Arabic and Hebrew languages that had become materialistic, ceasing to easily show the essence of things, as expressed by Sanskrit from which they derive.^{[citation required]}

Succession and testament

Helena Blavatsky died in London in 1891. Her body was cremated and one third of her ashes remained in Europe, one third in the United States, carried by William Quan Judge and the remaining third is at the international headquarters of the Society Theosophical, deposited inside a statue made in his memory. After the death of Blavatsky and that of Henry Steel Olcott, the leadership of the Theosophical Society was handed over to its secretary Annie Besant, who had already managed through her audacity to create a major schism that led to the departure of William Quan Judge, who was harassed and hunted down by Besant's followers.

In her last will, Blavatsky is said to have asked Theosophists to celebrate the date of her death as the day of the White Lotus: “I wish that every year, on the anniversary of my death, my friends gather in the Central Residence of the Theosophical Society, Adyar, to read a chapter from The Light of Asia by Sir Edwin Arnold and another from the Bhágavad Gita.” However, this seems to be a manipulation considering the events that originated in Adyar with the Coulomb betrayal, after which Subba Row turns his back on Blavatsky, allying himself with Charles W. Leadbeater in what is now known as The Theosophical Society..

In Spain, Blavatsky had an indefatigable follower, Mario Roso de Luna, known as "the Magician of Logrosán", who likes to define himself as "theosophist and athenian" and that he wrote a biography of HPB.

Works

And a large number of his articles from 1874 to 1891, collected in the 15 volumes of "The Collected Writings of H. P. Blavatsky" (work not published in Spanish).