The Russian witch who deceived the whole world: Helena Blavatskaya

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Helena Blavatsky can be called one of the most influential women in world history. She was called the "Russian Sphinx"; she opened Tibet to the world and "seduced" the Western intelligentsia with the occult sciences and Eastern philosophy.

Noblewoman from Rurikovich

Blavatsky's maiden name is von Hahn. Her father belonged to the Hahn von Rothenstern-Hahn family of hereditary Macklenburg princes. Along the line of her grandmother, the genealogy of Blavatsky goes back to the princely family of Rurikovich.

Blavatsky's mother, the novelist Helena Andreevna Gan, Vissarion Belinsky called the "Russian Georges Sand". The future "modern Isis" was born on the night of July 30 to 31, 1831 (according to the old style) in Yekaterinoslav (Dnepropetrovsk). In her childhood memories, she wrote sparingly: “My childhood? In it is pampering and leprosy on the one hand, punishment and bitterness on the other. Endless illness up to seven or eight years … Two governess - Frenchwoman Madame Peigne and Miss Augusta Sophia Jeffries, an old maid from Yorkshire. Several nannies … Father's soldiers took care of me. My mother died when I was a child."

Blavatsky received an excellent education at home, learned several languages as a child, studied music in London and Paris, was a good horsewoman, and drew well. All these skills were later useful to her during her travels: she gave piano concerts, worked in a circus, made paints and made artificial flowers.

Blavatsky and the ghosts

As a child, Madame Blavatsky was different from her peers. She often told her household that she saw various strange creatures, heard the sounds of mysterious bells. She was especially impressed by the majestic Indian, who was not noticed by others. He, according to her, appeared to her in dreams. She called him the Keeper and said that he was saving her from all troubles. As Elena Petrovna later wrote, it was Mahatma Moriah, one of her spiritual teachers. She met him "live" in 1852 in London's Hyde Park. Countess Constance Wachtmeister, widow of the Swedish ambassador in London, according to Blavatsky, conveyed the details of the conversation in which the Master said that he “needs her participation in the work that he is going to undertake”, and also that “she will have to spend three years in Tibet to prepare for this important task."

Traveler

The habit of moving in Helena Blavatsky was formed during her childhood. Due to the official position of the father, the family often had to change their place of residence. After the death of her mother in 1842 from consumption, the upbringing of Elena and her sisters was taken over by her grandparents.

At the age of 18, Elena Petrovna was engaged to the 40-year-old vice-governor of the Erivan province Nikifor Vasilievich Blavatsky, but 3 months after the wedding, Blavatskaya ran away from her husband. Her grandfather sent her to her father with two attendants, but Elena managed to escape from them. From Odessa on the English sailing ship "Commodore" Blavatsky sailed to Kerch, and then to Constantinople. Blavatsky later wrote about her marriage: "I got engaged in order to take revenge on my governess, not thinking that I could not terminate the engagement, but karma followed my mistake."

After fleeing from her husband, the story of Helena Blavatsky's wanderings began. Their chronology is difficult to restore, since she herself did not keep diaries and no one from her relatives was with her. In just the years of her life, Madame Blavatsky made two rounds of the world, she was in Egypt, and in Europe, and in Tibet, and in India, and in South America. In 1873, she was the first Russian woman to receive American citizenship.

Theosophical society

On November 17, 1875, the Theosophical Society was founded in New York by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky and Colonel Henry Olcott. Madame Blavatsky had already returned from Tibet, where, as she claimed, she received a blessing from the Mahatmas and Lamas for the transfer of spiritual knowledge to the world.

The tasks for its creation were stated as follows: 1. Creation of the nucleus of the Universal Brotherhood of Mankind without distinction of race, religion, sex, caste or skin color. 2. Promoting the study of comparative religion, philosophy and science. 3. Investigation of the unexplained laws of Nature and the forces hidden in man. Blavatsky wrote in her diary that day: “The child was born. Hosanna!.

Elena Petrovna wrote that “the members of the Society retain complete freedom of religious conviction and, entering the society, promise the same tolerance in relation to any other conviction and belief. Their connection is not in common beliefs, but in a common striving for Truth."

In September 1877, at the New York publishing house J. W. Bouton published the first monumental work of Helena Blavatsky, Isis Unveiled, and the first edition of a thousand copies was sold out within two days.

Opinions about the book of Blavatsky were polar. Blavatsky's work was called "a great dish of leftovers" in The Republican, "rubbish thrown away" in The Sun, and a New York Tribune reviewer wrote: awareness of the author”.

However, the Theosophical Society continued to expand, in 1882 its headquarters was moved to India. In 1879, the first issue of The Theosophist magazine was published in India. In 1887, the magazine Lucifer began to be published in London, after 10 years it was renamed The Theosophical Review.

At the time of Madame Blavatsky's death, the Theosophical Society had more than 60,000 members. This organization had a great influence on public thought, it consisted of prominent people of their time, from the inventor Thomas Edison to the poet William Yates. Despite the ambiguity of Blavatsky's ideas, in 1975 the government of India issued a commemorative stamp dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Theosophical Society. The stamp depicts the seal of the Society and its motto: "There is no religion higher than truth."

Blavatsky and the theory of races

One of the controversial and contradictory ideas in the work of Blavatsky is the concept of the evolutionary cycle of races, part of which is set forth in the second volume of the Secret Doctrine.

Some researchers believe that the theory of races "from Blavatsky" was taken as a basis by the ideologists of the Third Reich.

American historians Jackson Spalevogel and David Redles wrote about this in their work "Hitler's Racial Ideology: Content and Occult Roots."

In the second volume of The Secret Doctrine, Blavatsky wrote: “Humanity is clearly divided into God-inspired people and into lower beings. The difference in intelligence between the Aryan and other civilized peoples and savages such as the South Sea islanders is unexplained for no other reason. The "Sacred Spark" is absent in them, and only they are now the only lower races on this Planet, and fortunately - thanks to the wise balance of Nature, which is constantly working in this direction - they are rapidly dying out."

Theosophists themselves, however, argue that Blavatsky in her works did not mean anthropological types, but the stages of development through which all human souls pass.

Blavatsky, quackery and plagiarism

To draw attention to her work, Helena Blavatsky demonstrated her superpowers: letters from friends and teacher Kuta Humi fell from the ceiling of her room; objects that she held in her hand disappeared, and then ended up in places where she was not at all.

A commission was sent to test her abilities. In a report published in 1885 by the London Society for Psychical Research, Madame Blavatsky was said to be "the most educated, witty and interesting deceiver that history has ever known." After the exposure, the popularity of Blavatsky began to decline, many of the Theosophical societies disintegrated.

Helena Blavatsky's cousin, Sergei Witte, wrote about her in his memoirs: “Telling unprecedented things and lies, she, apparently, herself was sure that what she was saying really was, that it was true, - therefore I cannot but say that there was something demonic in her, that there was in her, having simply said that it was damnable, although, in essence, she was a very gentle, kind person."

In 1892-1893, the novelist Vsevolod Solovyov published a series of essays on meetings with Blavatsky under the general title "The Modern Priestess of Isis" in the Russian Bulletin magazine. “To own people, you need to deceive them,” Elena Petrovna advised him. - I have long ago understood these souls of people, and their stupidity gives me sometimes enormous pleasure … The simpler, stupider and rougher a phenomenon, the more surely it succeeds. " Soloviev called this woman a "catcher of souls" and mercilessly exposed her in his book. As a result of his efforts, the Paris branch of the Theosophical Society ceased to exist.

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky died on May 8, 1891. Her health was negatively affected by constant smoking - she smoked up to 200 cigarettes a day. After her death, it was burned, and the ashes were divided into three parts: one part remained in London, the other in New York, and the third in Adyar. The day of remembrance of Blavatsky is called the Day of the White Lotus.