Blavatsky, Helena Petrovna

(1831–1891), founder of theosophy. The granddaughter of a Russian princess, the woman known to the world as Madame Blavatsky was born Helena Petrovna Hahn in Ekaterinoslav (now Dnipropetrovs'k) in the Caucasus. At age fifteen she began to study alchemy. To escape continual family problems, she immersed herself in the occult. At age eighteen she married Nikifor Blavatsky, vice governor in Armenia. Within months she left him and escaped to Istanbul. From there she went to Cairo as a snake charmer, then on to London, Paris, and New York. Inspired by the teachings of anonmaterial "master," she developed an understanding of spiritualism.

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky in the 1880s. (BETTMANN/CORBIS)

In 1874 Blavatsky founded the Theosophical Society in association with Colonel Henry Olcott. Leaving New York in 1878, she settled in Madras (now Chennai), India, and established the society's headquarters in Adyar. Membership in the society grew, especially through Blavatsky's successful courting of rich Hindus interested in spiritualism. In 1884 she returned to Europe, where she slowly wrote The Secret Doctrine (1888), which influenced W. B. Yeats, George William Russell ("AE"), and Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi. Blavatsky returned to London in 1887 and spent her final years there. At her death, the Theosophical Society had close to 100,000 members, including many thousands of Westernized Indians attracted by her promises of a scientific demonstration of spiritual phenomena. Eventually, though, her promises proved empty, as her demonstrations were based more on chicanery than on science.

Meade, Marion. (1980) Madame Blavatsky, The Woman behind the Myth. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.