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H.P. Blavatsky, her life and influenceKatinka Hesselink |
H.P.
Blavatsky
or
H.P.B.
as she was often called, was born July 31st 1831 (or August 12th
western calendar) at Ekaterinosklav in
Historians think of H.P. Blavatsky as the person who started what is currently called New Age. H.P. Blavatsky is not unique in the fact that she talked of occultism as a live factor in her life. Nor was she the first to search in the orient for wisdom. What she did though was combine these two in her (in my opinion) two major achievements. First the founding of the Theosophical Society, which embraces free research into both these realms. Second the writing of articles and books. For instance The Secret Doctrine, which synthesises east and west, science and occultism into one great vision of past present and future. Included in her writings is also her last book: "The Voice of the Silence", which places the individual searcher on the path of illumination, moderated by ethics and self-knowledge.
H.P. Blavatsky was in her time, and is still, a controversial figure. As a female public figure at the end of the nineteenth-century (she lived from 1831 till 1891) she was bound to be scorned. The fact that her opinions were unusual to say the least and scorned even by the people who she started out championing (the spiritualists) did not help. The phenomena she produced caused the attention she needed to start her work. But it also gave her the name of a juggler, a deceiver and those around her were (in the public opinion) either dupes or accomplices. Aside from this she had a temper which was terrible even in her own estimation. She was no saint, in the ordinary sense of the word. Founder of the Theosophical Society, which members these days are in a majority vegetarians, she ate meat and a lot of it.
- Blavatsky's articles are published on this website. See the Blavatsky Collected Writings. Included is a chronological survey of each year of her public life - with each volume.
- See also a general outline of her life prior to her public work
- and an inventory of her earliest known writings.
(*) An Abridgement of the Secret Doctrine, by E. Preston en Chr. Humphries.
More on her life:
Hpb, reminiscences by Countess Wachtmeister - hpb remembered by Pryse - Blavatsky's occult phenomena: the Mahatma Letters - details of Blavatsky's and Olcott's lives