Helena Petrovna Blavatsky
If Modern Satanism had a mother…
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This is not an in-depth study of the works of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. On the contrary, this is research into the origins of the Global Satanic Cabal. Helena Blavatsky appears to be ground zero for the origins of the occult in America.
Born in Ukraine
Helena Petrovna von Hahn was born at Ekaterinoslav (now Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine), on 12 August 1831, daughter of Colonel Peter von Hahn (descendant of well known German earls) and Helena de Fadeyeva (descendant of the prince’s kin of Rurich), a renowned novelist. Her grandmother Princess Helena Dolgorukova was a noted botanist and writer.
Helena Blavatsky, née Helena Petrovna Hahn, (born August 12 [July 31, Old Style], 1831, Yekaterinoslav, Ukraine, Russian Empire [now Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine]—died May 8, 1891, London, England), Russian spiritualist, author, and cofounder of the Theosophical Society to promote theosophy, a pantheistic philosophical-religious system.
At the age of 17, Helena Hahn married Nikifor V. Blavatsky, a Russian military officer and provincial vice-governor, but they separated after a few months. She became interested in occultism and spiritualism and for many years traveled extensively throughout Asia, Europe, and the United States; she also claimed to have spent several years in India and Tibet, studying under Hindu gurus.
Early Life
Madame Blavatsky, born Helena Petrovna von Hahn, was the oldest child of Helena Andreyevna von Hahn (a novelist) and Pyotr Alexeyevich von Hahn, both of aristocratic heritage. She was born in the Ukrainian town of Yekaterinoslav, which was at the time part of the Russian Empire.
Helena's father, Pyotr, was a captain in the Russian Royal Horse Artillery whose career required his family to move frequently. Soon after her birth, the family moved to Romankovo; a year later her mother gave birth to a son who died in early childhood. In 1835, Helena and her mother moved to Odessa to be near her mother's parents; there, Helena's younger sister Vera Petrovna was born. In 1836, the family moved to Odessa and Saratov, and a brother was born.
In 1842, Blavatsky's mother died and the children were sent to live with their grandparents in Saratov. She was educated in the usual feminine skills of art, music, and the French language. Blavatsky also had the opportunity to vacation at a camp where she learned to speak Tibetan and ride horses.
According to her later writings, it was in Saratov that Blavatsky discovered her great-grandfather's library of esoteric books. She also claimed to have seen visions of a "mysterious Indian."
Blavatsky's family was aristocratic. Her mother was Helena Andreyevna Hahn von Rottenstern (Russian: Елена Андреевна Ган, 1814–1842; née Fadeyeva), a self-educated 17-year-old who was the daughter of Princess Yelena Pavlovna Dolgorukaya, a similarly self-educated aristocrat. Blavatsky's father was Pyotr Alexeyevich Hahn von Rottenstern (Russian: Пётр Алексеевич Ган, 1798–1873), a descendant of the German Hahn aristocratic family, who served as a captain in the Russian Royal Horse Artillery, and would later rise to the rank of colonel. Pyotr had not been present at his daughter's birth, having been in Poland fighting to suppress the November Uprising against Russian rule, and first saw her when she was six months old. As well as her Russian and German ancestry, Blavatsky could also claim French heritage, for a great-great grandfather had been a French Huguenot nobleman who had fled to Russia to escape persecution, there serving in the court of Catherine the Great.
As a result of Pyotr's career, the family frequently moved to different parts of the Empire, accompanied by their servants, a mobile childhood that may have influenced Blavatsky's largely nomadic lifestyle in later life. A year after Pyotr's arrival in Yekaterinoslav, the family relocated to the nearby army town of Romankovo. When Blavatsky was two years old, her younger brother, Sasha, died in another army town when no medical help could be found. In 1835, mother and daughter moved to Odessa, where Blavatsky's maternal grandfather Andrei Fadeyev, a civil administrator for the imperial authorities, had recently been posted. It was in this city that Blavatsky's sister Vera Petrovna was born.
After a return to rural Ukraine, Pyotr was posted to Saint Petersburg, where the family moved in 1836. Blavatsky's mother liked the city, there establishing her own literary career, penning novels under the pseudonym of "Zenaida R-va" and translating the works of the English novelist Edward Bulwer-Lytton for Russian publication. When Pyotr returned to Ukraine circa 1837, she remained in the city. After Fadeyev was assigned to become a trustee for the Kalmyk people of Central Asia, Blavatsky and her mother accompanied him to Astrakhan, where they befriended a Kalmyk leader, Tumen. The Kalmyks were practitioners of Tibetan Buddhism, and it was here that Blavatsky gained her first experience with the religion.
In 1838, Blavatsky's mother moved with her daughters to be with her husband at Poltava, where she taught Blavatsky how to play the piano and organized for her to take dance lessons. As a result of her poor health, Blavatsky's mother returned to Odessa, where Blavatsky learned English from a British governess. They next moved to Saratov, where a brother, Leonid, was born in June 1840. The family proceeded to Poland and then back to Odessa, where Blavatsky's mother died of tuberculosis in June 1842, aged 28.
The historian Richard Davenport-Hines described the young Blavatsky as "a petted, wayward, invalid child" who was a "beguiling story-teller". Accounts provided by relatives reveal that she socialized largely with lower-class children and that she enjoyed playing pranks and reading. She was educated in French, art, and music, all subjects designed to enable her to find a husband. With her grandparents she holidayed in Tumen's Kalmyk summer camp, where she learned horse riding and some Tibetan.
As early as the February of 1875, Blavatsky’s sketchbook writings start to describe her interest in, what we might term, the ‘traditional’ Western esoteric themes such as Rosicrucianism, Kabbalah, Renaissance Magic, and European High-Grade masonry.
…Blavatsky’s fusing of Eastern ideas with the Western occult tradition attracted a great many spiritually starved Europeans, as well as a great many American’s and Indians to her particular brand of esotericism. It is easy to see how Blavatsky cultivated within herself a distinctive aura of the East through her extensive and persistent travels as a youth. As the runaway bride of the vice governor of the Erivan province in Armenia, Nikifor Blavatsky (d.1838), Helena took flight to the Middle East, traveling throughout Turkey, Greece, and Egypt. She found a traveling companion in the form of a young American explorer Albert Rawson (1828-1902) and in 1850 they both entered a period of study with a Coptic magician in Cairo, Paolos Metamon.
In New York City
In 1873 she went to New York City, where she met and became a close companion of Henry Steel Olcott, and in 1875 they and several other prominent persons founded the Theosophical Society.
In 1877 her first major work, Isis Unveiled, was published. In this book she criticized the science and religion of her day and asserted that mystical experience and doctrine were the means to attain true spiritual insight and authority. Although Isis Unveiled attracted attention, the society dwindled.
She began to instruct Olcott in her own occult beliefs, and encouraged by her he became celibate, tee-totaling, and vegetarian, although she herself was unable to commit to the latter. In January 1875 the duo visited the Spiritualist mediums Nelson and Jennie Owen in Philadelphia; the Owens asked Olcott to test them to prove that the phenomena that they produced were not fraudulent, and while Olcott believed them, Blavatsky opined that they faked some of their phenomena in those instances when genuine phenomena failed to manifest.
Birth of Theosophy
At a Miracle Club meeting on 7 September 1875, Blavatsky, Olcott, and Judge agreed to establish an esoteric organization, with Charles Sotheran suggesting that they call it the Theosophical Society. The term theosophy came from the Greek theos ("god(s)") and sophia ("wisdom"), thus meaning "god-wisdom" or "divine wisdom". The term was not new, but had been previously used in various contexts by the Philaletheians and the Christian mystic, Jakob Böhme. Theosophists would often argue over how to define Theosophy, with Judge expressing the view that the task was impossible. Blavatsky however insisted that Theosophy was not a religion in itself. Lachman has described the movement as "a very wide umbrella, under which quite a few things could find a place".
Associating it closely with the esoteric doctrines of Hermeticism and Neoplatonism, Blavatsky described Theosophy as "the synthesis of science, religion and philosophy", proclaiming that it was reviving an "Ancient Wisdom" which underlay all the world's religions.
In India
In 1879 Blavatsky and Olcott went to India; three years later they established the Theosophical Society headquarters at Adyar, near Madras, and began publication of the society’s journal, The Theosophist, which Blavatsky edited from 1879 to 1888. The society soon developed a strong following in India.
…while in Ceylon, she and Olcott became the first people from the United States to formally convert to Buddhism.
In Europe
Soon thereafter she left India in failing health. She lived quietly in Germany, Belgium, and finally in London, working on her small, meditative classic The Voice of Silence(1889) and her most important work, The Secret Doctrine (1888), which was an overview of theosophical teachings. It was followed in 1889 by her Key to Theosophy. Her Collected Writings were published in 15 volumes (1950–91).
Lucifer Magazine
Lucifer was a journal published by Helena Blavatsky. The first edition was issued in September 1887 in London. The journal published articles on philosophical, theosophical, scientific and religious topics. It also contained book reviews, for example of Friedrich Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra.
The journal was first published by Blavatsky. The first issues were co-edited with Mabel Collins. From 1889 until Blavatsky's death in May 1891 Annie Besant was a co-editor. Besant then published the journal until September 1895, when George Robert Stowe Mead became a co-editor. The journal appeared twelve times a year and was 80 to 90 pages long. The last of twenty volumes was published in August 1897. More than 2800 articles were published in this journal between 1887 and 1897. Then the journal was renamed to The Theosophical Review.
On Satan
Occult symbolism furnishes the key to the mystery; theological symbolics conceal it still more. For the former explains many a saying in the Bible and even in the New Testament which has hitherto remained incomprehensible; while the latter, owing to its dogma of Satan and his rebellion, has belittled the character and nature of its would-be infinite, absolutely perfect god, and created the greatest evil and curse on earth -- belief in a personal Devil.
The Gandhi Connection
“He read Mme. Blavatsky’s Secret Doctrine, and on March 26, 1891, was enrolled as an associate member of the Blavatsky Lodge.“
Insights
While some have described Blavatsky as a charlatan who faked paranormal phenomenon, Bevir concentrates on two of her verifiable contributions to Western religion: giving occultism an Eastward orientation and helping to turn Europeans and Americans towards Eastern religions and philosophies. He argues that she was, in fact, instrumental in encouraging “the West to turns towards India for spiritual enlightenment.” Blavatsky dug deeper than most spirit-rappers, founding the Theosophical Society and publishing articles about her philosophy; she thought her “contemporaries needed a religion that could meet the challenge of modern thought, and she thought that occultism provided just such religion.”
Her Death
She died of influenza in 1891.
Books
The Complete Works
The Secret Doctrine
Closing
While often referred to as “Russian,” Blavatsky was born in Ukraine. Ukraine is the land of Khazar. She was raised in a aristocratic family. She was a known “storyteller”, a liar in modern terms.
Her family moved around a lot, thus exposing Blavatsky to many different ideals. The one that seemed to stick was Buddhism. Then she learned of the occult.
Theosophy appears to have been created from a mixture of old Khazar occultism and buddhism. Theosophy has become the religion of the New World Order, linked through Blavatsky’s understudy, Alice Bailey and her Lucis Trust.
Blavatsky became the mother of modern occultism.
