Madame Blavatsky: The Mother of Modern Spirituality

"To the Masters, whoever they are..." introduces the reader to Gary Lachman's latest effort to get things right about the mysterious adepts, gurus, mystics and gadflies that populate the twilight or moonlit territory of occultism and New Age spirituality. Lachman may have sobered up in his spiritual quest since his younger years as a devotee of the Fourth Way teachings of G. I. Gurdjieff, but he has not given up. This is almost as apparent in this volume about HPB or Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831-1891) as it was clearly evident in his practically apologetic account of the life of Anthroposophy's founder Rudolf Steiner (died 1925).(Before I go on with this, I must again warn the reader of reviewer bias: Back in my serious seeker days into the early 1980s I pursued (eagerly if clumsily) a host of mystical and theosophical teachings and groups including the Agni Yoga Society and its illicit absorption by the Church Universal and Triumphant, then a thriving New Age cult led by Elizabeth Clare Prophet (1939-2009). Most of the groups and gurus that attracted me had one thing in common: They were maverick spawns of the enigmatic Blavatsky and her following of Theosophists. The claimed communication with other- worldly adepts, entities, and masters was a common thread. Another was a Gnostic milieu that more or less turns orthodoxy in Christianity on its head. For example, Blavatsky as neo-Gnostic bought into the anti-myth that the talking serpent that tempted Eve and Adam in the Garden of Eden actually did mankind a favor, releasing the species from submission to a `jealous God.' Ingesting the fruit of the mythical Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil was a necessary step in human spiritual evolution. In my labors to make sense of my embattled passage in and out of devotion to Theosophy's White Brotherhood, I wrote Mad B's Myth (1982), a 100 page unpublished (now in pdf) but widely distributed manuscript in the days before Internet. In that paper, I covered much of the same ground about Blavatsky as Lachman but not nearly as well and up to date as this fine author has. I cautiously recommend his book.)I want to cut to the chase without having to rehearse all the main if controversial facts in Blavatsky's outsized and colorful life. Lachman mentions many good critiques of `HPB' that I endorse by Rene Guenon (1921), K. Paul Johnson (1995), and Nicholas Goodrick-Clark (2004). Madame Blavatsky's Baboon by Peter Washington (1993) is popular and readable but contains some errors. Wikipedia has a credible brief about HPB on line. Lachman does not mention Bruce Campbell's fine 1980 study Ancient Wisdom Revived that best explored the Blavatsky story for me at the time. Another I liked despite its limited point of view was Modern Religious Movements in India by J. N. Farquhar (1915).[1] This is not to discredit Lachman--his book is for the general reader, thus his selection of references is entirely adequate to his task.Lachman writes that there are three Blavatsky biography approaches: The blinkered apologist, the hostile critic, and the realist. Lachman tells us he strives to be the realist. Lachman is realistic when he admits that Blavatsky's life history (as Gurdjieff's later) is fraught with contradiction and enigma, and like Gurdjieff, much of the confusion may have been intentional for three possible reasons:1. Blavatsky was truly an emissary of hidden wisdom if not for hidden masters or adepts that work to guide human affairs. In this she followed the pattern set by Freemasons and Rosicrucians. She was an embattled person that suffered from a host of maladies as well as her difficult mission, but she purposely misguided the unworthy to protect her sources and her masters. Her fraud if anything was a pious fraud.2. Blavatsky was a combination of precocious genius and a chronically disordered personality that passed for charisma to those who felt and feel an attraction to her. Blavatsky worked hard to mask her utter confusion, that her incredible maze of metaphysical ideas and paranormal experiences had no resolution in her undisciplined mind, and has no resolution in human reality. She could not prove a thing. She was not so much a fraud as she was flawed as a scholar and a failure as a guru.3. Actual spiritual forces and entities possessed Blavatsky and drove her to spell out an elaborate attack against orthodoxy in science, history, Christianity and Judaism. The adult Blavatsky claimed as much about herself, that the original jiva (her natal identity) no longer inhabited her body.I would place Lachman in the first opinion whereas I lean toward the second. Blavatsky I think would argue, if she could, for the third option. Of course, all three options describe one person, so what is the truth? Let's start with her mother Helena Andreyevna who died of tuberculosis when Helena Petrovna was but nearly eleven in 1842. One family witness recorded that one of the final things HPB's mother said was, "What is to become of little Helena?" Lachman does report the mother saying to HPB "that her life would not be that of other women, and that she would have much to suffer" (13). That much is true, that Blavatsky suffered as her mother predicted and much of that suffering was directly attributable to HPB's outrageous behavior. One wonders how an expert in psychology today might assess a willful young woman raised in privileged circumstance yet rebellious to authority in all its guises. That is what Helena the mother meant: This combative, unruly daughter was going to bring misery upon herself and those around her.One redeeming feature for the spoiled brat HPB, after her family finally withheld monetary support, was her ability to attract attention as well as funds or loans from people that found her psychic powers intriguing. One example was in 1872 in Cairo where she met a Madame Emma Coulomb (nee Cutting) who took HPB in at the hotel where she worked and gave her a considerable loan. At the time HPB claimed to be one of only sixteen survivors out of four hundred on a ship that sank in the Mediterranean. On that trip she claimed to have lost everything. Coulomb believed her but was also taken in by Blavatsky's claims to paranormal powers. Coulomb and her husband became devotees and donors, even following HPB to India into the early 1880s. After another internal squabble, Coulomb was instrumental in exposing a major Blavatsky hoax regarding the Masters. HPB apparently had a hidden panel in her bedroom in Adyar, India from which she could slip missives into an enclosed shrine dedicated to the hidden Masters. The shrine was in a meeting room opposite her bedroom wall. Theosophy disciples would leave questions at that shrine and answers written on exotic paper would appear as if out of thin air the next day perhaps, proving Blavatsky's so-called precipitation from the astral plane or ethers used by the Masters to communicate. (I have to laugh here as nearly every teenager on earth today has the potential to send missives through thin air on their mobile devices--no occult power needed!)Now Lachman and others suggest that Mme. Coulomb was a prying, manipulative woman who was resentful that she was not included in some inner circle decisions, thus she and her husband made it appear that HPB was faking the missives from Masters. This begs the question of why HPB would allow such a bitch to tag along with her for over a decade as well as accept financial support from the Coulombs. From all accounts, even to the end, the Masters (Koot Hoomi and Morya primarily) in their purported precipitated letters were ambivalent about Emma Coulomb. The infamous Hodgson report from the Psychical Research Society (PRS) that personally investigated the shrine affair concluded that HPB was indeed a hoaxer and an imposter. Lachman remains unconvinced, stating that Mme. Coulomb never produced the actual incriminating letters from Blavatsky and other evidence like the shrine that she claimed to have destroyed. Lachman also disregards the Hodgson report as "he never investigated any phenomena, merely gathered reports about them from others" (230). If anything, HPB was a most slippery target.In any case, Blavatsky's reputation was practically destroyed in the public eye by the PRS report. She resigned under duress as Secretary of the Theosophical Society and left India for good in 1885, leaving the society. However, Theosophy groups have been notoriously jealous creatures, splintering at the least provocation. One key sore point was who is really in contact with the Masters and who is not. This was Blavatsky's trump card all along. Blavatsky soon set up an inner sanctum of devotees called the Esoteric Section of Theosophy in England after she met Annie Besant. HPB became a psychic pope to her flock during the last year of her life as she presided over six female and six male members to direct them in private meditation rituals--note the 13 parallel to Jesus and the Apostles. Her primary focus thereafter was to write The Secret Doctrine which remains her magnum opus and the inspiration for any number of new cults as well as ongoing criticism. Of The Secret Doctrine, Lachman quotes Blavatsky saying that "reading it page by page will only end in confusion" (250). This is not a very promising recommendation by an author for any book! HPB died in 1891 at around age sixty--she packed a lot in during her tenure in that lifetime, and I say that because many Theosophists and New Agers claim that HPB reincarnated soon with an anonymous male body in which she won her freedom (moksa) or ascended in the 1920s.Lachman appears to yet be caught up in the charisma of many outrageous characters like Gurdjieff, Steiner and Blavatsky but without the sappy devotion attributed to the hard core disciples. He appears to have made an informed choice if this book is any indication. Yet, in the midst of his study, he makes an astonishing confession: "If the reader feels a bit dizzy after all this, I can't blame him, and to be honest I'm not sure that I grasp all the strands of this intriguing scenario myself" (121). He is talking about all the "mysteries behind the veil" that Blavatsky struggled to "unveil," and all the flip-flopping as HPB switched from adamant support for Spiritualism that did not believe in reincarnation to her newfound Theosophy that did. What exactly was she unveiling if not herself? That is a facetious question, by the way.Lachman rightly exonerates Blavatsky of any blame for what the proto-Nazis in Ariosophy gleaned from her writings. Yes, Theosophists value the Swastika as a holy symbol just as many subsequent radical groups have, but if anything, the Theosophists were early in the forefront to defend their brown-skinned brothers from further abuse by white Christian colonizers. Nevertheless, Blavatsky's notion of root races tumbling out of the etheric realms into matter through the ages easily lends itself to a naive elitism that yet exists among Theosophists and New Age cults. In contrast to the post-Darwinian racist idea of survival of the fittest, the typical Theosophist fancies himself ( humbly, mind you) among the more advanced or enlightened coming root race on earth, on the cutting edge of human spiritual evolution. One of Blavatsky's favorite books that Lachman points to was The Coming Race by the Rosicrician sympathizer Edward Bulwer-Lytton. The coming race had magic powers due to their ability to use vril or a pervasive energy called prana in Sanskrit, something New Agers call the life force energies of the universe.Rather than admit that Blavatsky's Secret Doctrine has been an utter failure as a sensible rendition of human reality, the HPB devotee holds on to the possibility that we will all evolve in future lifetimes to grasp its Truth. Ah, I say, spare us the unnecessary misery! I have read the thing...and wasted my time, her later Key to Theosophy for clarification notwithstanding. I do not disagree with its cosmology borrowed essentially from early "theosophists" (Boehme, for example) and Vedic tradition as well as Kabbalistic mysticism--all that makes esoteric sense in context, just as the feeling of oneness with the universe makes sense to a cannabis smoker. Entering Blavatky's astral light or a "time slip" that Lachman finds so divine is really no big deal (This is your brain on Theosophy)--what we encounter and do with it after is. It is the presentation and the pretense that HPB was somehow closer to the cosmic truth than the average parishioner in the pew that is most troubling. Lachman mentions almost in passing the Muslim convert Rene Guenon and his seminal critique (in English) Theosophism: The history of a pseudo-religion (original in French, 1921) but fails to appreciate Guenon's sobering insight that Blavatsky never grasped the sophistication of great world religions. She continually rebelled against that kind of authority to her downfall, thus her pseudo-religion, according to Guenon.Blavatsky, who could be delightful, charming, entertaining, temperamental, brutally honest, foul-mouthed and deceitful all at the same time, was in the end, a misfit obsessed with the occult, addicted to nicotine and with impulsive and manic tendencies. Her family appeared relieved to send her money to keep her from coming back home it seems, during her irascible young adult era. As she told W. B. Yeats and others in her last years, her role was to "write, write, write" in one body during the day and in another at night as if in trance (247). The pile of papers she submitted to her overwhelmed editors was anything but organized. It did not help that she often would not name her sources, making it appear that the information came directly from the astral, so to speak, when in fact most of her information came from the one hundred or so books she carried in a private trunk, a fact testified to by her most constant "chum" Colonel Olcott in his memoir Old Diary Leaves. Later, HPB would be accused of several thousands of instances of plagiarism in her Secret Doctrine. Whether this was a result of intentional fraud or the artifact of an undisciplined but photographic memory is up to the reader to decide, but the "one hundred books" were thus identified by researchers, especially William E. Coleman (153). In any case, the imaginary Masters that allegedly inspired HPB became an unnecessary factor.In February of 1886 (five years before she died) she sent a document headed "My Confession," to M. Solovyoff, in which she stated: "I have already written a letter to Sinnett forbidding him to publish my memoirs at his own discretion. I myself will publish them with all the truth. So there will be the truth about H. P. Blavatsky, in which psychology and her own and others' immorality and Rome and politics and all her own and others' filth once more will be sent out to God's world. I shall conceal nothing. It will be a Saturnalia of the moral depravity of mankind, this confession of mine, a worthy epilogue of my stormy life." [...] (212-213)No "all the truth" autobiographical memoir ever appeared, and even if it had I doubt it would satisfy Blavatsky's critics or devotees. If it had, my guess is it would be a wild precursor to Gurdjieff's Meetings with Remarkable Men, a mix of fact and self-indulgent fable. I for one am glad she regurgitated no such "Saturnalia" to add to her already caustic history. Whether anything good came of Blavatsky's life, Lachman I think overrates her achievement. In the end he says it does not matter to him whether she or Gurdjieff made up stories about a secret source of adepts or a hidden fraternity--the ideas "were exciting and compelling, and that was enough" (297). He says, "What we owe her is almost an embarrassment" (298). I am not sure who he means by "we" but I am not among the we folk.To the Masters, whoever they are is not a good way to approach Blavatsky. Lachman assumes the possibility that she had telepathic communication with these guys. With all their powers and high purpose to guide the human race, one would think that the hidden Masters would have the ability of the average mouse or rat to manifest to common human senses like mine. The danger here is that Blavatsky will tell you who they are, but the only way to get to them is in the person of Blavatsky. Therein is the danger of enthusiasm for a guru--if you do not believe her, just ask her.

If you like me have heard Blavatsky’s name over the years but wondered what her story was all about, this is a great resource for that. A very readable and accessible narrative about her life and work. When the available facts make things about her life uncertain, this author flags those things, but doesn’t drown out the narrative with them. He is favorable about the good she accomplished, and does a great job of explaining why he is, placing her in her historical and interpersonal context.

Blavatsky has long been an enthralling character to me, and I'm always a little surprised when I discover that, unless my conversation partner is an occult or conspiracy enthusiast, mentions of her name reveal complete unfamiliarity. This is especially perplexing if Lachman's case - that she's almost as influential on the course of the 20th century as Freud, Nietzsche, Marx or Hegel - is taken as correct.In "Madame Blavatsky", Lachman attempts to make this case- and doesn't entirely succeed. This is, paradoxically, neither his fault or the fault of his subject; Blavatsky is nearly impossible to nail down. Her life was so fraught with controversy- and nearly everything she did before the age of 40 so lightly documented- that she presents a massive challenge to a biographer. The remaining two decades of her life compound the challenge by presenting just the opposite problem of the prior four- there was such a massive deluge of writing, correspondence, journalism and investigations surrounding her life that picking fact from fiction becomes an exercise in sleuthing through mountains of prose- occasionally fascinating, but often turgid beyond measure.For those new to the world of H.P. Blavatsky, this book provides an introduction- and some clues to who she became. Lachman reveals that Blavatsky's upbringing- as the daughter of a line of exceptionally educated and accomplished women, and the granddaughter of an esoteric Freemason who governed the only Buddhist province in Europe, the stage was set early for a life as an exceptional seeker, who spent decades wandering before finally founding the Theosophical Society and penning her massive magnum opii,  Isis Unveiled , where she rebelled against Victorian-era materialism and attempts a reconstruction of the Neoplatonic and Hermetic tradition for the modern era, and  The Secret Doctrine , her massive cosmological revelation, loosely based in an interpretation of Esoteric Buddhism. But her genius was tainted by her unfortunate need to tie her work to the ridiculous mediumship craze of the time, and her insistence that her teaching was not her own, but that of Ascended Masters- exceptional (and all male) spiritual teachers who lived in secrecy throughout the world and "materialized" letters to her, revealing the teaching. While Lachman doesn't spend much time on her motivations for doing the latter, I've long suspected that her upbringing as an educated woman in the mid 19th century Russian Empire left her unable to believe that such a teaching would ever be taken seriously if it were seen as the product of a woman, and men of the time would be more likely to listen to fictional Tibetan, Egptian and Punjabi adepts than a charismatic Russian countess. Lachman doesn't go in this direction, but he does explore the possible roots of the ascended masters idea, which he believes are a fictional gloss upon Blavatsky's real teachers (who wanted to remain semi-anonymous); he identifies some possible candidates for the "true" identities of such characters as Koot Hoomi and Morya.The whole book is presented as an antidote to the current biographies of Blavatsky- which either suffer from being Theosophical works that present a superhuman and unquestioning view of their "prophet", or skeptical works that take Blavatsky to be a blatant fraud and nothing more. Lachman walks a "middle path" (an appropriate treatment for a biography of a Buddhist and the author of  The Voice of the Silence  ) and suggests that she was a great spiritual teacher who was also a product of her time- and her attempts at teaching using the limitations of the tools, vices and prejudices of the time permanently limited her and Theosophy as a movement, but not without planting seeds that would resonate on a massive scale (I'd also add that it's a good corrective to the very entertaining but also extremely flawed  Madame Blavatsky's Baboon ). Indian independence, the INC, Hindutva, Fascism, Nazism, Ceremonial Magic, Neopaganism, and virtually everything "New Age" have their roots with the movement and characters that she inspired, and Lachman gives due credit to her indelible mark on the global psychic landscape (a few minor oversight being no mention of Sri Aurobindo, whose philosophy is essentially Blavatsky with the serial numbers filed off, and Ken Wilber, who while he never gives credit to Blavatsky, is essentially her 21st century heir).The book suffers a bit from Lachman's tendency to weave together plot threads without explaining them sufficiently- to truly do her entire story justice, though, the book would have had to have been three times longer. He also has a tendency to reuse passages and quips between books (though, admittedly, when you have one as good as his quip about Krishnamurti's lawsuit against Leadbeater - "involving sodomy and deification, unique in the annals of the Raj"- you have to repeat it) and extensively references his own books. But when you're telling stories as good as his, these are small quibbles indeed. "Madame Blavatsky" is an excellent work for people curious about the life and teaching of one of the 19th century's most incredible women.

I was utterly gripped by this book! Meticulously researched and referenced, this biography of 'HPB' (as Madame Blavatsky was called), is beautifully written and leads us deftly through the veritable labyrinth of complexity that was this unique woman's life. He manages the delicate art of not being polemic in either direction, as regards her teachings, but pursues the story-line with respect, reflection and wit. The book also offers the reader a wealth of fascinating background material about the cultural influences which were active during her life, which surely adds another dimension of understanding. A great read.

quick concise factual and fair. A tad dull as misses the opportunity to flesh out various anecdotes but if he did that then a very big book would result, however, the details can be found in other biographies. Good if you want to give yourself an accurate potted history, not good if you want to be entertained.

A very good book on one of the founders of the Theosophical Society.

amazing lady

I had heard of M. Blavatsky while taking a course on spiritual formation in my priesthood training. She was mentioned but not elaborated on. I encountered her name again in relation to the New York School of abstract expressionism and her influence on W. Kandinsky's 'Concerning the Spiritual in Art'. The book on M.Blavatsky is well researched as a biography about a very controversial and unique 'mystic' who , largely, introduced Eastern mystical traditions from Hinduism and Buddhism to Western civilization, which in turn gave rise to a number of important 'spiritual developments' in the West. She also introduced Gandhi to Hinduism, something that surprisingly he had little knowledge of until he met her in London. This is only a biography and does not cite or explore any of her books and other publications. For the literature that she wrote you will have to find another book(s), but it is a good introduction to the (arguably) the founder of a large part of contemporary Western 'spirituality'.