Blavatsky - 9/july/2024

IT IS BLAVATSKY TIME

ToDo:

• Add to the sidebars about her two major texts

Roots:

• A generalized western mysticism

• James Fenimore Cooper novels about native americans

• Reacting to Spiritualism

• Before her we need a section on spiritualism.

• Raymond Lull, Robert Fludd, Henry More

Notable Ideas:

• Occultism v spiritualism

• Ancient Wisdom Religion

• The Theosophical Society

• Ascended Masters

Influenced:

• I mean basically everyone

General Outline:

ERA 1: YUNG VATSKY

• Born August 12 1831 to a mishmash of european nobility.

• Supposedly a medium at a young age

“I remember that when addressed as a medium, she (Mme. Blavatsky) used to laugh and assure us she was no medium, but only a mediator between mortals and beings we knew nothing about’.” - Blavatsky’s Sister speaking about her quoted in Hanegraaf 178

• Claimed that her grandfather was a mason who gave her access to a grand occult library

• In 1849, at the age of 18, she was married to Nikofor Blavatsky, and left him 3 months later

• She had an unprecedented level of freedom at that point in history, much less for a woman. She had access to essentially bottomless wealth and complete freedom of movement. 

• She traveled the world, circumnavigating the globe several times. This bitch was everywhere. 

• FIRST KOOT HOOMI LETTER

• Around 1871 she arrives in Cairo and founded the Societe Spirite. Which is initially a more “scientific” occult investigation group that rapidly just becomes a magical society. This would be the blueprint for the Theosophical Society

ERA 2: VATSKY AND OLCOTT

• July 7th 1873 she arrives in the US. iN 1874 She meets Henry Steel Olcott. The two rapidly become BFFS and lifelong creative partners. 

• Blavatsky loves getting involved in the local newspaper scene

• Here, we get the first peek into her views on Occultism vs Spiritualism

  • Spiritualism: Concerned with the investigation of psychic phenomena, but devoid of doctrine.

  • Occultism: Spiritualism + the doctrine of Western Esotericism

• Her theory being that all these seemingly unconnected organizations in history actually have a common doctrinal thread. 

• So she makes a name for herself by publishing a lot about eastasian religions and her theories on these ancient “Occult Brotherhoods” this makes her pretty popular. 

• Shes working on her first big work. People come to visit her at her apartment while she works, and these meetings eventually become the Theosophical Society.

“On September 7, a lecture was given here by George Henry Felt (1831-1906) entitled “The Lost Canon of Proportion of the Egyptians”. In which he proved the existence of numerous elemental spirits within the Egyptian zodiac, and implied that these spirits could be invoked through ritual and chemical means. 

• Olcott reportedly passed Blavatsky a note that posed “[would it] not be a good thing to form a society for this kind of study” hanegraaf 180

ERA 3 - THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY

1875 the Theosophical Society is founded in America by Olcott and Blavatskty

• 1877, Isis Unveiled is published. This is basically Blavatsky’s thesis for the existence of the “ancient wisdom religion” identified with magic and the occult

SIDEBAR: ISIS UNVEILED

• We gotta talk about this its a watershed text of western esotericism

• Heavily criticized for Plagarism and yeah

• 1879 she moves to India and never returns to the US. Her arrival in India gets a ton of favorable press attention. The editor of one magazine was even a fan. 

• 1879 they start publishing a monthly magazine called The Theosophist (I have some issues of this lol)’

• 1880 two important things happen:

  • Blavatsky and Olcott accept the five precepts and three gems, becoming buddhists. Although Blavatsky already kinda called herself a buddhist.

  • They get a long seris of letters from the AMs who tell them the Theosophical Society is the inheritor of the secret wisdom religion

• Also around this time. We should mention that the Theosophical Society is CONSTANTLY fracturing, or threatening to fracture.

• The Theosophical Society is also now popular enough that it is coming under fire from other groups. The fact that Blavatsky is attempting to sell Occultism with an edge of science opens it to more scrutiny than usual. 

• 1884 Blavatsky and Olcott agree to a meeting with the Society for Psychical Research, who are generally impressed with her, but that will not last. 

• The Madras Christian Collective publishes a SCATHING expose in 1884, based on some correspondences B had with Emma Coulomb. This was essentially an accusation of fraud.

• 1885 the SPR sends an observer to India to do some investigation into the fraud. Specifically, to investigate the competency of the witnesses. The findings could not be more damming. 

‘For our own part, we regard her neither as the mouthpiece of hidden seers, nor as a mere vulgar adventuress; we think that she has achieved a title to permanent remembrance as one of the most accomplished, ingenious, and interesting impostors in history’.

ERA 4 - THE BLAVATSKY LODGE

• Leaves in relative disgrace for India, becomes Ill, heads back to europe, floats around Wurtzburg for a bit, ends up in London working on Secret Doctrine. In 1887 she becomes the Blavatsky Lodge.

• Establishes a magazine called Lucifer as public propaganda for Secret Doctrine

• 1890 we meet Annie Besant

• 1890 B establishes the Esoteric Section of the Theosophical Society, a few days later, Secret Doctrine is published

  • Much of SD is based on translations of a “hitherto unknown” tibetan text called the Book of Dyzan, and later The Golden Precepts. These books almost definitely never existed lol. 

• Now, plenty of people criticized her, but the most damning was actually fellow Occultist William Emmette Coleman, who claimed she plagarized contemporary sources like “Ennemoser’s History of Magic and Demonologia, Dunlap’s Sod: The Son of Man and Sod: The Mysteries of Adoni, King’s Gnostics, Jacolliot’s Christna et le Christ and Le Spiritisme dans le monde. He goes on to name about ONE HUNDRED secondary sources. Though to be fair, none of the living authors who she plagarized ever indicted her. Editorial position: Its likely she never actually intended to plagarize. She is not the sort of person who cares overmuch for formal citation standards, but plagiarism is plagiarism. 

• When she died, Theosophists described her significant achievements as lying not in her mediumship, but in her skill as a syncretist. I am inclined to agree.