Helena Blavatsky

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (Yekaterinoslav, 1831 - London, 1891) was a Russian-born writer and occultist who later took American citizenship and became one of the central figures of modern esotericism. In New York City she co-founded the Theosophical Society in 1875. She is best known as the main promoter of Theosophy, a belief system that aimed to recover an ancient wisdom shared by the world's religions. Her importance lies in how she carried many Eastern ideas into Western culture.

The daughter of a colonel of German descent and a novelist from the Russian nobility, she grew up in various army towns across the Empire and, after her mother died in 1842, was raised by her grandparents in Saratov. By her own account, she married Nikifor Blavatsky, a considerably older official, at seventeen, and left him a few months later. Many journeys through the Middle East, Europe and the Americas are attributed to her from this period, though much of this is hard to verify, and some biographers doubt that they happened as she described.

In 1873 she settled in the United States, where she met Colonel Henry Steel Olcott and became known as a spirit medium, which earned her both followers and accusations of charlatanry. With Olcott and William Quan Judge she founded the society. In 1877 she published Isis Unveiled, a study of the history of occult sciences that also criticized Christian theology, and in 1888 The Secret Doctrine, a long commentary that presented itself as the teaching of ancient Tibetan masters. In 1878 she moved with Olcott to India, where the society established its headquarters at Adyar and the magazine The Theosophist began publication.

Theosophical ideas proposed a single spiritual tradition underlying all religions, and a view of human and cosmic evolution unfolding through cycles and levels of consciousness. Blavatsky argued for uniting science, religion and philosophy, and she showed a strong interest in Buddhism. In Ceylon she and Olcott formally converted to it, becoming the first Americans to do so.

Her work was controversial from the start. In 1884 Alexis and Emma Coulomb accused her of fraud at Adyar, and critics such as Arthur Lillie, René Guénon and Carl Jung questioned the originality of her writings and the existence of her masters. She returned to Europe in 1885, settled in London, and died there in 1891. Her legacy is ambiguous: she was mocked and admired in equal measure, yet her Theosophy helped spread Hindu and Buddhist ideas in the West and shaped later movements such as Anthroposophy and the New Age.