As a teenager, she did automatic writing. Her
mother died when Blavatsky was 12 years old and
she went to live with her grandfather. At 16 she
married General N. V. Blavatsky; however, claim-
ing that marriage did not accommodate her “free
spirit,” she left her husband and took residence in
Constantinople.
The trip to Turkey was the start of almost
two decades of extensive travel, taking her to
Egypt, England, India, and (it was claimed)
Tibet. She traveled around the world twice in the
decade 1851–61, continuing her investigations
in the occult, mediumship, and spiritualism. She
founded a spiritualist society in 1871 in Cairo,
but the organization failed almost immediately as
a result of some members’ assumptions that H.P.B.
had produced occult phenomena fraudulently.
H.P.B. arrived in New York in 1873 and
quickly became familiar with American spiritual-
ism. She met the Eddy brothers, mediums who
conducted materialization seances. While visit-
ing Vermont to demonstrate her own abilities at
materialization along with the Eddy brothers, she
met Henry Steel Olcott. In 1875, she and Olcott
were joined by the lawyer William Q. Judge to
found the Theosophical Society in New York City.
She began to research and write her first book, Isis
Unveiled, published in 1877.
To H.P.B., Theosophy superseded spiritual-
ism. Whereas spiritualism claimed contact with
spirits of the ordinary dead, she contacted the
masters or mahatmas, teachers of occult wisdom
who resided in elevated planes. She appeared to
receive messages on paper from the mahatmas,
which arrived, as if from the sky or from within a
specially constructed cabinet, at the Theosophical
headquarters. The source of the “letters from the
mahatmas” continues to be debated—were they
created by H.P.B. or delivered from the psychic
realm?
H.P.B. and Olcott moved to India in 1878. The
following year they began publishing The The-
osophist magazine. A donation of land at Adyar
near Madras (Chennai) in 1882 allowed them to
establish a center, which still conducts education
programs and retreats for members of the Theo-
sophical Society.
After securing the land for the Theosophical
Society, H.P.B. returned to London, where in 1884
she demonstrated her powers before the Society for
Psychical Research. The viewers were impressed.
However, her assistant in India, Emma Cutting
Coulomb, destroyed this favorable impression by
charging that H.P.B.’s abilities were fraudulent. In
1885, the society commissioned Richard Hodgson
to investigate the charges. His report concluded
that she was indeed an accomplished fraud.
While attempting to live down the scandal,
H.P.B. took up residence in Germany after 1885
and returned to London in 1887. Her major work,
The Secret Doctrine, was written there and pub-
lished in 1889. It remains one of the most influen-
tial occult works to appear in the West. Blavatsky
died in England on May 8, 1891. Her most famous
disciple, Annie BESANT, who became a convert to
THEOSOPHY after reading H.P.B.’s work, succeeded
her as head of the Theosophical Society.Further reading: Blavatsky, H. P., Collected Writings, 2
vols. (Wheaton, Ill.: Theosophical Press, 1950–1991);
———, Isis Unveiled (New York: J. W. Bouton, 1877);
———, The Key to Theosophy (London: Theosophical
Publishing Society, 1889); ———, The Secret Doc-
trine: The Synthesis of Science, Religion and Philosophy
(London: Theosophical Publishing Company, 1888);
Robert S. Ellwood, Alternative Altars: Unconventional
and Eastern Spirituality in America (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1979); Iverson L. Harris, Mme. Bla-
vatsky Defended (San Diego, Calif.: Point Loma, 1971);
Marion Meade, Madame Blavatsky: The Woman behind
the Myth (New York: Putnam, 1980); Howard Murphet,
When Daylight Comes: A Biography of Helena Petro-
vna Blavatsky (Wheaton, Ill.: Theosophical Publishing
House, 1975); Charles J. Ryan, H. P. Blavatsky and the
Theosophical Movement (Pasadena, Calif.: Theosophical
University Press, 1975); Gertrude Marvin Williams,
Priestess of the Occult: Madame Blavatsky (New York:
Alfred Knopf, 1946).Blavatsky, Helena Petrovna Hahn 87 J