Rudolf Steiner on HPB

For the past hundred years the St. Mark’s group in New York City has been meeting to study Rudolf Steiner’s writings. Earlier this month the NY Branch of the Antroposophical Society hosted a weeklong series of lectures to commemorate this centenary. Speakers included Robert McDermott, president emeritus of California Institute of Integral Studies, Christopher Bamford, editor of Steiner Books, Ralph White, creative director of the New York Open Center, and Michael Gomes, who wrote the entry on Theosophy in The Encyclopedia of New York State.

Gomes’ talk on “The NYC Spiritual Landscape in 1910” mentioned something of Steiner’s ambivalence about HPB. A whole book was published in 2002 on the subject, Spiritualism, Madame Blavatsky, and Theosophy: An Eyewitness View of Occult History, extracted from Dr. Steiner’s lectures. The following quote illustrates the complex character of HPB that those who studied with her had to interact with and the powerful bond that this created. Steiner says:

The Secret Doctrine is a weird mixture of themes, some of which should be eliminated, while others contain the highest wisdom. All this becomes comprehensible when we consider what was said by one of H. P. Blavatsky’s friends who had deep insight into her character. He said that Madame Blavatsky was really a threefold phenomenon. Firstly she was a dumpy, plain woman with a magical mind and a passionate nature, always losing her temper. To be sure, she was good-natured, affectionate, and compassionate, but she was certainly not what one calls a gifted woman. Secondly, when the great truths became articulated through her, she was the pupil of the great Masters. Then her facial expression and her gestures changed; she became a different person and the spiritual worlds spoke through her. Finally, there was a third, awe-inspiring, supreme, regal figure. This occurred in the rare moments when the Masters themselves spoke through her.

White Lotus Day Talk, May 8, 1912.

Evolution & the Occult

David Klinghoffer, a conservative writer who is connected with the Discovery Institute, “the organization that is the driving force behind the intelligent design movement,” has a piece on Beliefnet, March 4, 2010, titled “Darwin at the Mountains of Madness: Evolution & the Occult,” implicating HPB’s ideas in The Secret Doctrine about the races as an influence on Nazi development of the Aryan ideal.

By decapitating—so he thought—any rational case for belief in a divine or any other designer, Darwin created a gaping wound at the center of the Western soul. Something had to come along and fill that hole and it had to be, so to speak, Darwin-shaped. It had to speak in evolutionary terms, about races and competition. Madame Blavatsky happened to be the person who came up with an influential modern Darwinian myth that filled that role, disastrously.

“Disastrously” for evolutionism because it offered a successful alternative view. It was the esotericist reply to Darwin and those who would speak in his name. The rest can be read here.

The Darwinist blog The Sensuous Curmudgeon is appalled at the idea of any connection of HPB with Darwin and responds: If you’re sane and familiar with Darwin’s work, you’ll see nothing that even remotely connects his thinking with her ravings. But Klinghoffer somehow sees Madame Blavatsky as Darwin’s intellectual love-child.

“Ravings,” so no need to point out any error in her model, just dismiss it. The writer’s “ravings” continue here.

Blavatsky in Harper’s Magazine

In an interview in Harpers Magazine, March 4, 2010, with James Palmer, the British author of the biography, The Bloody White Baron: The Extraordinary Story of the Russian Nobleman Who Became the Last Khan of Mongolia (Basic Books, 2009), he is asked: “How did the popular occultism of the early twentieth century influence Ungern-Sternberg and drive him towards his mission to Mongolia?”

Palmer replies: Popular occultism was fascinated by Asia. Much of it was second-hand Buddhist or Hindu ideas, like a lot of “New Age” thought today. The archetypal example is the hugely influential Helena Blavatsky, a Russian émigré and fantasist who travelled widely in Asia and created Theosophy, which to us looks like a ridiculous hodge-podge of Buddhism, Hinduism, Western occultism, pseudo-evolutionary theory, and wild dreams, but was popular and influential on various subcultures from the 1880s to the 1930s.

Baron Roman von Ungern-Sternberg (1886-1921) is described as “a Baltic nobleman who fought in the service of the Russian tsar in World War I. Following the Bolshevik Revolution, Ungern led a ragtag White army to capture Mongolia, where he styled himself the human manifestation of a Buddhist god of war.” The rest of the interview is here.

“Helena Blavatsky and the Mystery in the Soap”

“Perhaps no one person has contributed so much to the archetype of the shrouded, thickly-accented Eastern-European mystic as Helena Petrovna Blavatsky.” So posts The Condenser—a blog that “roots through the flotsam of antiquity and clips out only the most entertaining, bizarre and obscure morsels”—under the above heading. It offers up an out-of-the-ordinary event narrated by Countess Wachtmeister in her 1893 Reminiscences of H.P. Blavatsky and The Secret Doctrine that took place independently of HPB’s agency. It is one of those unusual incidents that challenges the way we see the world. The Countess was HPB's sole companion during her writing The Secret Doctrine, and reading her account of the events of that time one can only conclude that she was either dissembling, delusional, or something unusual did happen. The extract is given here.

Olcott Day, Sri Lanka, 2010

The Daily News from Colombo, Sri Lanka, for February 18, 2010, commemorating Olcott Day (February 17—the day of his passing) carries an article by C.V. Agarwal about Col. Olcott that mentions HPB. Dr. Agarwal, a former General Secretary of the Theosophical Society in India, who died at the Society’s international headquarters at Adyar, Chennai, India, last summer, worked to bring about a greater interaction between the Theosophical and Buddhist movements in India and Sri Lanka. The article had been published previously in the Daily News and was reprinted in part as recognition of his work. His article can be read here.



Rather than illustrate this piece with a photo of Olcott or even the stamp issued by Ceylon in 1967 to commemorate the sixtieth anniversary of his passing, this picture of the Ananda Viharaya at Ananda College in Colombo serves as a better fit. In 1886 Olcott founded the school that became Ananda College, and it has gone on to become one of the leading Buddhist colleges in South Asia, providing a number of Sri Lankan members of Parliament, journalists, and cricketers! The Viharaya at the College opened in 1969 and recently completed renovations in time for its fortieth anniversary.

Blavatsky and Art, Again

“Divine Abstractions: Spiritual Expressions in Art” is an exhibition touring the state of Nebraska in the U.S. Sponsored by the Sheldon Museum of Art there and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, it is presently at the Columbus Art Gallery, in Columbus, Nebraska, and ends on July 9 at the West Nebraska Arts Center, Scottsbluff, Nebraska.

In the catalog of the exhibition, Susan J. Soriente, Sheldon Statewide Curator, noting the influence of HPB’s ideas, adds:

Not every abstract work of art is a divine abstraction, but the spiritual dimension has been an influential factor in determining the look and purpose of much of the world’s art, including contemporary art. The challenge is to become sensitive to abstract art’s spiritual interests, to keep an open mind about its possible presence and how it may work in abstract art.

The catalog can be seen here.

Blavatsky in Canada

The Walrus, “Canada’s best magazine,” has an insightful piece on the influence that a group of Canadian Theosophists exercised on the arts in the 1920s and 30s. Under the headline of “The Secret: The Group of Seven’s infatuation with the occult mysticism of Madame Blavatsky,” Brett Grainger writes:

While current debates over the role of religion in public life are flush with hostile caricature and mutual mistrust, few realize that previous generations brought spiritual resources to bear on questions of national identity without succumbing to either the xenophobia of fundamentalism or the wan procedural pieties of the secular nation-state.

Theosophy has had a long and distinguished history in Canada. Its first Lodge, the Toronto Theosophical Society, whose 1891 charter was one of the last to bear HPB’s signature, included the first woman to practice medicine in Canada and her daughter, the first woman to gain a medical degree in Canada, along with the writer, Algernon Blackwood, Roy Mitchell, who helped develop Canadian theater, Albert E.S. Smythe, whose son Connie (also a member) built Maple Leaf Gardens that helped make hockey Canada’s most familiar sport. Theosophy even has its own entry in The Canadian Encyclopedia, as can be seen here.

Through the artists known as The Group of Seven, Theosophy, or more accurately HPB’s ideas (as Theosophy in Canada favored the Blavatskian type), entered into the national dialogue. “And artists like Lawren Harris and Emily Carr were Canada’s answer to Emerson — homegrown prophets who glimpsed in the country’s vast landscapes a faint evocation of Nature’s nation,” says Grainger. The rest of the article can be read here.

Pine Tree and Red House, Winter, 1924, by Lawren Harris
sold for $2.8 million in 2007