Helena Petrovna Hahn (also Hélène) (July 31, 1831 (O.S.) (August 12, 1831 (N.S.)) - May 8, 1891 London), better known as Helena Blavatsky or Madame Blavatsky was the founder of the Theosophical Society. Biography She was born in Ekaterinoslav (now Dnipropetrovsk), Ukraine (then part of the Russian Empire), the daughter of Col. Peter Alexeivich von Hahn and Elena Fadeev. Her mother, also known as Helena Andreyvna Fadeyev, was a novelist, known as the “Russian George Sand”, and died when Helena was eleven. Her father being in the armed forces, she was sent with her brother to live with her maternal grandmother, Helena Pavlovna de Fadeev, a princess of the 
Dolgorukov family and a famous botanist. Both her mother and grandmother were strong role models that allowed her to mature into a nonconformist. She was cared for by servants who believed in the many superstitions of Old Russia and apparently encouraged her to believe she had supernatural powers at a very early age.
She married when she was seventeen, on July 7, 1849, to the forty-year old Nikifor (also Nicephor) Vassilievitch Blavatsky. According to her account, they never consummated their marriage, and within a few months, she abandoned her husband. Other sources say that she had several extramarital affairs, became pregnant, and bore a deformed child, Yuri, whom she loved dearly. She wrote that Yuri was a child of her friends the Metrovitches (C.W.I p. xlvi-ii, HPB TO APS p. 147). He died at the age of five, and Helena said that she ceased to believe in the Russian Orthodox God at this point. According to her own story as told to a later biographer, she spent the years 1848 to 1858 traveling the world, claiming to have entered Tibet to study for two years with the men she called Brothers. She returned to Russia for a short stay in 1858 to soon leave with Italian opera singer Agardi Metrovich. In 1871, on a boat bound for Cairo an explosion claimed Agardi’s life, but H.P. Blavatsky continued on to Cairo herself. It was in Cairo that she formed the Societe Spirite for occult phenomena with Emma Cutting (later Emma Coulomb), which closed after dissatisfied customers complained of fraudulent activities.
It was in 1873 that she emigrated to New York City. Impressing people with her psychic abilities she was spurred on to continue her mediumship. Throughout her career she was able to perform physical and mental psychic feats which included levitation, clairvoyance, out-of-body projection, telepathy, and clairaudience. One new feat of hers was materialization, that is, producing physical objects out of nothing. Though she was apparently quite adept at these feats, her interests were more in the area of theory and laws of how they work rather than performing them herself.
In 1874, Helena met Henry Steel Olcott, a lawyer, agricultural expert, and journalist who covered the Spiritualist phenomena. Soon they were living together in the “Lamasery” (alternate spelling: “Lamastery”) where her work Isis Unveiled was created.
She married her second husband, Michael C. Betanelly on April 3, 1875 in New York City. She maintained that this marriage was not consummated either. She separated from Betanelly after a few months, and their divorce was legalized on May 25, 1878. On July 8, 1878, she became a naturalized citizen of the United States.
While living in New York City, she founded the Theosophical Society in September 1875, with Henry Steel Olcott, William Quan Judge and others. The Society was a modern day Gnostic movement of the late nineteenth century that took its inspiration from Hinduism and Buddhism. Madame Blavatsky claimed that all religions were both true in their inner teachings and false or imperfect in their external conventional manifestations. Imperfect men attempting to translate the divine knowledge had corrupted it in the translation. Her claim that esoteric spiritual knowledge is consistent with new science may be considered to be the first instance of what is now called New Age thinking. In fact, many researchers feel that much of New Age thought started with Blavatsky.
By 1882 the Theosophical Society became an international organization, and it was at this time that she moved the headquarters to Adyar near Madras, India.
Her last words in regard to her work were: “Keep the link unbroken! Do not let my last incarnation be a failure.”
Suffering from heart disease, rheumatism, Bright’s disease of the kidneys, and complications from influenza, Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky died at her home May 8, 1891. Her body was then cremated; one third of her ashes were sent to Europe, one third with William Quan Judge to the United States, and one third to India where her ashes were scattered in the Ganges River. May 8 is celebrated by Theosophists, and it is called White Lotus Day.
She was succeeded as head of one branch of the Theosophical Society, by her protege, Annie Besant. Her friend, WQ Judge, headed the other branch.
Influences
Blavatsky was influenced by the following authors:
William Blake
Edward Bulwer-Lytton
Blavatsky influenced the following authors, artists and musicians:
Annie Besant
C.W. Leadbeater
Raghavan Iyer
Sir Edwin Arnold
Col. James Churchward
Aleister Crowley
Charles Johnston
James Joyce
Wassily Kandinsky
Max Theon
Piet Mondrian
Boris Pasternak
Nicholas Roerich
George W. Russell
Alexander Scriabin
William Butler Yeats
Works
Her books included
Isis Unveiled, a master key to the mysteries of ancient and modern science and theology (1877)[1]
The Secret Doctrine, the synthesis of Science, Religion and Philosophy (1888)[2]
The Voice of the Silence (1889) [3]
The Key to Theosophy (1889) [4]
Her many articles have been collected in the H.P. Blavatsky Collected Writings. This series has 15 numbered volumes including the index.
Books about her
The Esoteric World of Madame Blavatsky by Daniel Caldwell [5]
HPB: The Extraordinary Life and Influence of Helena Blavatsky by Sylvia Cranston
Theosophy: History of a pseudo-religion, by René Guénon [6]
H. P. Blavatsky and the SPR by Vernon Harrison [7]
H.P. Blavatsky and the Theosophical Movement by Charles Ryan [8]
Blavatsky and The Secret Doctrine by Max Heindel (1933; from Max Heindel writings & with introduction by Manly Palmer Hall), [9]
Madame Blavatsky’s Baboon by Peter Washington Rebuttal/Review
“Madame Blavatsky: The Woman Behind the Myth” by Marion Meade
Quotations
There is no religion higher than truth.
“There is often greater martyrdom to live for the love of, whether man or an ideal, than to die” is a motto of the Mahatmas. (C.W. IV, p. 603)
Nothing of that which is conducive to help man, collectively or individually, to live—not “happily”—but less unhappily in this world, ought to be indifferent to the Theosophist-Occultist. It is no concern of his whether his help benefits a man in his worldly or spiritual progress; his first duty is to be ever ready to help if he can, without stopping to philosophize. (Collected Writings VOLUME XI, p. 465, October, 1889)
I speak “with absolute certainty” only so far as my own personal belief is concerned. Those who have not the same warrant for their belief as I have, would be very credulous and foolish to accept it on blind faith. Nor does the writer believe any more than her correspondent and his friends in any “authority” let alone “divine revelation”! (Collected Writings VOLUME XI, p. 466, October, 1889)
I am an old Buddhist pilgrim, wandering about the world to teach the only true religion, which is truth.
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article “Madame Blavatsky”.
The Great White Brotherhood is a Spiritual Organization composed of those Ascended Masters who have Arisen from our Earth into Immortality, and yet have said: “We are not going on into Cosmic Heights and leaving our brothers and sisters on Earth behind. We will stay and assist.” At this moment in Cosmic History, the Door is wide open. The Great White Brotherhood has been sponsoring the Release of the Spoken Word through conclaves, seminars, writings, books, and through personal discipleship and training. They are releasing the full Teachings that the Dispensations of Cosmic Law allow at the dawning of the Great Golden Age of Saint Germain.
The Great White Brotherhood is a Spiritual Order of Hierarchy, an organization of Ascended Masters united for the highest purposes of God in man as set forth by the Christ, Gautama Buddha, and other World Teachers. The Great White Brotherhood also includes Members of the Heavenly Host, the Spiritual Hierarchy directly concerned with the evolution of our world, Beneficent Members from other planets that are interested in our welfare, as well as certain unascended chelas. The word “white” refers not to race, but to the aura (halo) of the White Light of the Christ that surrounds the saints and sages of all ages who have risen from every nation to be counted among the Immortals. 6
The Great White Brotherhood is a Spiritual Order from every culture and race - Western saints, Eastern adepts, and so on - who have reunited with the Spirit of the Living God and who comprise the Heavenly Hosts. They have transcended the cycles of karma and rebirth and Ascended (accelerated) into that Higher Reality which is the eternal abode of the soul. The Ascended Masters of the Great White Brotherhood, united for the highest purposes of the brotherhood of man under the Fatherhood of God, have risen in every age from every culture and religion to inspire creative achievement in education, the arts and sciences, God-government and the abundant Life through the economies of the nations.
The Brotherhood also includes in Its ranks certain unascended chelas of the Ascended Masters. Jesus the Christ describes this Heavenly Order of Saints as being ‘robed in white’ 1 to his servant John in Revelation.” 5
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