Who Was Madame Blavatsky?

The Autumn 2012 issue of Esoterica, the journal of the Foundation for Theosophical Studies (for the Theosophical Society in England), has an excerpt from Gary Lachman’s forthcoming book on Blavatsky due in October. Prefacing the excerpt titled “Who Was Madame Blavatsky?”, Lachman says:

In it, I pose a question that runs throughout the book: why is that, although she was enormously influential, both in the esoteric worlds and in mainstream culture, to the wider public Madame Blavatsky still remains relatively unknown? One answer is that even within the spiritual and esoteric community she is not really well-known, by which I mean ‘accurately’ known. If anything, what most people know of her is the ‘Blavatsky legend,’ a collection of myths and misconceptions that she herself contributed to greatly.

The printed excerpt in Esoterica cites a lot of opinions on Blavatsky but does not answer the question. Perhaps Mr. Lachman is saving it for his book. As Blavatsky News has shown, scarcely a week goes by without some reference to Helena Petrovna Blavatsky in the media. Part of the problem is that too many “experts” have helped obfuscate the matter with disinformation.

Gary Lachman will be talking on “Madame Blavatsky: The Mother of Modern Spirituality” (the title of his book), at the Foundation for Theosophical Studies (the Theosophical Society in England) in London on Sunday September 30 at 6 PM.