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Helena Blavatsky

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky · 1831 – 1891

HermétismeOccident1400 – 1900

Cofondatrice de la Société théosophique et autrice de ses ouvrages fondateurs (controversée).

Cette fiche n'existe pour l'instant qu'en anglais et en chinois.

Note on controversy

In 1885 the Society for Psychical Research (SPR) published a report by Richard Hodgson, who had investigated the Society's headquarters in India. He accused Blavatsky of fraud: of producing the 'Mahatma letters' attributed to her hidden Masters herself and of staging the phenomena seen there. In 1986 the SPR's journal published a reassessment by Vernon Harrison that strongly criticised Hodgson's methods, and the SPR distanced itself from the report; historians note that this was a partial reassessment and that many questions about the letters and phenomena remain open. Separately, her account of human 'root races' ranks peoples in a spiritual hierarchy, and passages in her writing are now criticised as racist and antisemitic; some of these ideas were later taken up by racist esoteric groups. We include her for her historical influence; this does not endorse these claims.

Sources for this note

Life

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky was born Helena von Hahn in Yekaterinoslav in the Russian Empire (now Dnipro, Ukraine). At seventeen she married the much older official Nikifor Blavatsky and soon left him. She spent the next decades travelling; her own accounts of these years, including study with hidden 'Masters' in Tibet, cannot be verified. In New York in 1875 she founded the Theosophical Society with Henry Steel Olcott and William Quan Judge, and published Isis Unveiled (1877). The founders moved to India in 1879 and later settled the Society's headquarters at Adyar near Madras. After the 1885 report of the Society for Psychical Research she left India for Europe, and in London wrote The Secret Doctrine (1888), The Key to Theosophy and The Voice of the Silence (both 1889). Her synthesis of Hindu and Buddhist ideas, Western occultism and evolutionary cosmology strongly influenced later esoteric movements, including Anthroposophy and the New Age. She died in London in 1891.

The system

  • A single 'ancient wisdom' said to underlie all religions, philosophies and sciences.
  • Cosmic and human evolution through cycles, planes and 'root races'.
  • Karma and reincarnation presented to a Western readership.
  • The Society's motto: 'There is no religion higher than truth.'

Key works

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Where to start

  • The Key to Theosophy is written as questions and answers and is the easiest start; an abridged, annotated edition of her 1888 magnum opus helps with the long work.

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What are the core ideas of Blavatsky's Theosophy, and why were the Theosophical Society's early phenomena so controversial?
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Sources