Blavatsky News

* The Summer 2012 issue of Lapham’s Quarterly, the literary magazine published by the American Agora Foundation in New York, is titled Magic Shows, and the opinions of a wide array of authors, from antiquity to the present, are cited throughout the volume’s 225 pages. Among them Mme. Blavatsky, who is pictured as one of the contributors, along with Euripides, H.P. Lovecraft, J.R. R. Tolkien, Lucius Apuleius, and others. The passage from Blavatsky is taken from her 1886 piece, “Ancient Egyptian Magic.” There is also an article by Jamie James on “W.B. Yeats, Magus,” which is marred by his statement that “the Theosophists expelled him [Yeats] in 1890.” Though this keeps being erroneously repeated as fact, it has already been shown that it was not the case.

James offers an insightful observation by the author Helen Vendler, who has written on Yeats. “Our present discomfort in imagining Yeats at Madame Blavatsky’s arises from our feeling that there are more respectful ways of approaching the esoteric, forgetting that a concrete encounter is the only one likely to appeal to a mind peculiarly attuned to words and visual symbols.”

The back cover of this issue, shown here, features Blavatsky prominently.

* The Summer 2012 issue of Quest magazine from the American Branch of the Theosophical Society at Adyar contains an interesting interview with Theosophical historian Michael Gomes, where he talks above his work over the past 45 years. Interviewed by the magazine’s editor, Richard Smoley, he was asked: “What advice would you give to someone interested in researching this field?”

His reply is worth noting: To be aware that aside from accessing the mental world that the people around Blavatsky existed in, there is a temporal aspect of the lives. The physicality of it, the place itself. This is why I have always stressed the value of on-the-ground research. Finding A.O. Hume’s home in Simla, India, walking through its grounds, gave a spatial understand about the events that had occurred when Blavatsky was his guest there. In knowing the limitations and extremes of these situations, one begins to understand and appreciate the remarkable contribution of these early members, who risked ridicule and scorn so we could enjoy freedom of belief.

The issue also includes a posthumous piece by Sri Madhava Ashish giving the history of “Mirtola: a Himalayan Ashram with Theosophical Roots.” Mirtola, near Almora in India, was established by Sri Yashoda Ma, the wife of Gyanendra Nath Chakravarti. The article looks at the Theosophists who were connected with its work, including Bertam Keightley, who helped edit The Secret Doctrine.

Theosophy was a Spiritualist Movement?

The May 2012 installment of PsyPioneer, the online journal that focuses on some obscure items of Spiritualist history, has an unusually large amount of material on Blavatsky. Leslie Price provides a brief review of Jeffrey D. Lavoie’s 2012 The Theosophical Society: The History of a Spiritualist Movement. But even Price questions the central thesis of the book: that basically Blavatsky was, is, and remained a spiritualist throughout her Theosophical career and that her Society was essentially a Spiritualist one. This allows Lavoie to post a lengthy reply commenting on Price’s comments. Garth Willey, who is connected with the journal, adds the somewhat skeptical note:

Lavoie limits his study to the period 1875 to 1891. The major national Spiritualist bodies had not been fully established during that period – conferences had been held (over a couple of decades) and principles debated: and the Spiritualists’ National Federation (UK) held its inaugural meeting in July 1890 – but ‘churches’ were somewhat ‘individualistic’ (aren’t they still!). The point is: Spiritualism had not been fully and categorically defined during the study period. The much looser terminology ‘spiritualist’ and ‘spiritualism’ may have been more appropriate throughout Lavoie’s work rather than attributing our contemporary understanding of Spiritualism to The Theosophical Society’s and Blavatsky’s origins.

Lavoie in his reply claims that Blavatsky’s description of elementals—non-human agencies as the source of much of séance-room phenomena—was not unique to her but also used by Andrew Jackson Davis’s in his 1880 book The Diakka. But with Davis the Diakka, “some of whom were Indians of every nationality” (p. 80), “were once human beings, once sons and daughters in human homes” (p. 79). It was a useful way of explaining why mediums were sometimes found cheating: it was the Diakka, these unprincipled spirits, acting through the medium (p. 80).

Mr. Price also adds a note that since “Madame Blavatsky [Radda-Bai] herself fearlessly put her name to some very outspoken criticisms,” we should do the same here. (We wonder what Adlai E. Waterman might say about this?) Perhaps it is a generational thing; but for many of those who come here, looking for accurate information on H. P. Blavatsky, it is a non-issue. The bottom line is: are the facts accurate? Do they hold up to same scrutiny that its authors judge Blavatsky by? No doubt Mr. Price knows that there has been a consistent practice in parts of the Theosophical movement (United Lodge of Theosophists, for instance) for over a century to get away from this emphasis on the authority of personalities (“Personality is the curse in the Theosophical Society, as it is everywhere,” Blavatsky once commented), believing that ideas should stand on their merit and not under the shadow of great names. “Why not follow her example?” Price asks. But if Blavatsky was really the unscrupulous lying, cheating conniver (though not embezzler) that Lavoie portrays in his writings, and which Mr. Price finds “a fine example of the new wave” (!), why would anyone want to follow her example as a moral authority in anything?

The latest issue of Theosophical History (dated October 2011!) also raises a number of concerns regarding Lavoie’s methodology in its notice of his book.

Lost in Translation

Blavatsky News alerted readers in a December 9 posting about Isaac Lubelsky’s Celestial India: Madame Blavatsky and the Birth of Indian Nationalism due in May of this year. With such a provocative title we had hoped that it would offer some new insights into the part played by Theosophists in the development of Indian nationalism. Alas, we were misled. The first 76 pages are a straightforward retelling of “the birth of Orientalist study,” focusing on F. Max Müller. Another hundred pages are devoted to a straightforward retelling of Theosophical history until the time of Blavatsky’s death in 1891. There is a chapter on “The Sources of Theosophical Doctrine,” which seems to regard every esoteric text ever published as an influence on the development of modern Theosophy. The rest of the book deals with Annie Besant, especially in regard to J. Krishnamurti and the World Teacher movement, though without comment that sizable portions of the organization looked askance on the project. There is the brief mention of Besant’s tenure as President of the Indian National Congress, though next to nothing about her Home Rule movement at the beginning of the twentieth century.

We learn that the author first heard about the Theosophical Society in 1999. “I quickly learned of the ‘historian’s paradise’, awaiting in the relatively unexplored body of Theosophical writings, and in the personal stories of the Society’s leaders.” We suppose works like Alvin Boyd Kuhn’s thesis at Columbia University, published in 1930 as Theosophy: a Modern Revival of Ancient Wisdom by Henry Holt and Company as part of their Religion in America series, don’t count for much, or the numerous studies done by Theosophists. We also learn that Lubelsky’s book was translated from the Hebrew of his unpublished thesis, so perhaps something is lost in translation.

There are some things that can’t be attributed to faulty translation. On page 109 Lubelsky makes the claim that “Emma Coulomb maintained that Blavatsky had abandoned a baby she bore during her stay in Cairo.” Unfortunately no source is given for this addition to Theosophical lore. While he may have read that someone attributed this statement to her, it does not appear in Emma Coulomb’s 1884/1885 tell-all pamphlet, nor in the two major sources of dirt gathered about Blavatsky, Elliott Coues’ 1890 newspaper piece and W. Emmette Coleman’s 1893 Critical Historical Review of the movement. Nor does Richard Hodgson bring this up in his 1893 “Defence of the Theosophists.”

What about his claim that Blavatsky received the “book of Dzian” from Swami Dayananda (p. 127)? Or the mixing up of the Theosophical Congress held during the 1893 World‘s Parliament of Religions with the Parliament itself? What a disappointment, for there is really nothing on what the book’s title suggests: “Madame Blavatsky and the Birth of Indian Nationalism”, especially since the hardcover version sells for £60. in the UK ($95.00 US) and £19.99 ($34.95 US) for the paperback. The book itself seems like some curious relic from the 1990s than from something one would expect today.

The Hermaphrodite Satanist

“The Hermaphrodite Satanist: Madame Blavatsky’s Theosophical Subversion of Gender Categories and Christian Misogynist Mythology” was the subject of a presentation by Per Faxneld at the 4th Global Conference: Evil, Women and the Feminine held in Prague, May 6 to 8. Per Faxneld’s paper was given as part of the session A Different Monstrous Mother, which included papers on Lady Gaga and Lady Macbeth. Faxneld, who is a doctoral research fellow in the History of Religions at Stockholm University, Sweden, says

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831–1891) was the chief ideologist of the Theosophical Society – around the turn of the century the most influential international movement in the realm of alternative spirituality. Her books sold hundreds of thousands of copies, and in 1889 the society had 227 sections all over the world. Theosophy can be considered part of a broad counter culture, which included socialists, vegetarians and feminists. While Blavatsky did not self-designate as a feminist, she nonetheless made several contributions to the feminist struggle. A celebration in her esoteric system of the “divine hermaphrodite”, along with an insistence on the uselessness of the soul, made it clear that in her opinion no individual ought to be subjugated because of what flesh their spirit was temporarily housed in. Her public rejection of “proper” Victorian womanhood – traveling extensively on her own, occasionally dressing up in men’s clothing, swearing and smoking profusely, reviling marriage – also helped destabilize gender categories. It has further been suggested she herself was a physical hermaphrodite, though this theory is mere speculation. This paper focuses on Blavatsky’s reinterpretation of the story of the Fall of man in Genesis 3, where she lauds Satan as a helper of mankind. Since Genesis 3 has traditionally been used in Christian culture to legitimise the subordination of woman (wicked Eve being the one to first eat of the forbidden fruit), Blavatsky’s counter-hegemonic reading has far-reaching implications. As will be demonstrated, some theosophist women incorporated Blavatsky’s Satanist Bible interpretation in their polemics against the Christian patriarchy, while others engaged in a feminizing of the cherished figure of Satan. Using Satan as a symbol of liberation in this manner was, the paper shows, an established part of many types of anti-clerical and progressive discourse at the time, and theosophical feminist Satanism thus becomes culturally logical in its specific political context.

Though not related, the paper presented by Krishna Menon, an Associate Professor in the Department of Science, Lady Shri Ram College for Women, University of Delhi, India, on “The Construction of Gender and Music in modern South India,” which detailed “the re-invention of new hegemonic tradition of classical music in south India” at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century, is also worth mentioning here.

Laura Holloway-Langford

Although H. P. Blavatsky has received numerous biographical studies (mostly critical), none of the other leading Theosophists of her time have been so covered. The sole exception is Annie Besant, but mainly for her involvement in the Indian Freedom Movement. The President-Founder, Col. Olcott, is the subject of two books. W. Q. Judge still awaits a book length study. Over the past decade Kim Farnell produced two monographs, one on Walter Gorn Old, and one on Mabel Collins.

So we are encouraged to see publication of a book length biographical study on Laura Holloway-Langford (1843-1930), Yearning for the New Age: Laura Holloway-Langford and Late Victorian Spirituality, as part of Indiana University Press’s series Religion in North America. The writer is Diane Sasson, a professor at Vanderbilt University, who fortuitously received the remaining books and other papers of LCH while on a research trip. (Our pre-publication notice of the book can be seen here.)

Laura Holloway-Langford’s transit through the Theosophical Society was brief, coming from Brooklyn, New York, to meet Olcott and Blavatsky in London during their visit of 1884. She co-wrote, Man: Fragments of Forgotten History (1885), an attempt at elucidating Theosophical principles with Mohin Chatterji, who had come from India with Olcott and Blavatsky. Yet these events form the major part of Sasson’s book. Blavatsky is depicted as a “puppet-master, manipulating the strings from behind the stage” (p. 76), but aside from simplifications like this Sasson tells her story well. She laments the loss of the manuscript of Holloway-Langford’s reminiscences of this period written in the 1920s. “If this manuscript is indeed extant, it has not been made public so that it can be inspected by scholars,” noting it has been cited by Daniel Caldwell in his online “Mrs. Holloway and the Mahatmas,” which reprints the Mahatma Letters received by Holloway. Perhaps this has prodded Mr. Caldwell to finally release the manuscript, for he announces it will be available through lulu.com for $39.95.

In this book Mrs. Holloway tells the story of her association with H.P. Blavatsky and other leading Theosophists of the day and about her encounters and relationship with Madame Blavatsky’s Masters. This book includes numerous published and unpublished letters written by the Mahatmas Koot Hoomi and Morya to Mrs. Holloway, H.P. Blavatsky and Henry S. Olcott. Almost 60 pages of full color photographic reproductions of letters from the Masters K.H. and M. (plus a few photographs of Mrs. Holloway, Madame Blavatsky and Colonel Olcott never before published) make this book a unique volume in Theosophical literature.

Blavatsky News

* Gary Lachman spoke to a sold out event at Tredwell’s book store in Bloomsbury, London on Wednesday May 9. His subject was “Madame Blavatsky: Magician, Radical, Feminist,” which he amply expounded on, talking about the difficulties that face a biographer of her. Mr. Lachman, who has authored a number of spiritual biographies, including of Rudolf Steiner, C.G. Jung, and more recently, Emanuel Swedenborg, announced his newest addition, a biography of Blavatsky to be published in October by Tarcher in New York. It will be over 200 pages. The cover can be seen here.

* Marking the centenary of Penn State professor and author Warren Sylvester Smith (1912-1984), a dramatic reading of his one-woman play, “Blavatsky,” will be performed at the State Theatre on campus in University Park, Pennsylvania, at 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, May 16. Admission is free, but donations are encouraged. “In the play, the life of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, a 19th-century spiritualist and founder of the Theosophist movement, is shown in six conversations set at various points in her controversial career.…Well-read, well-traveled and a prolific writer, Blavatsky is portrayed as both charismatic and crude, a true believer in the spiritual entities she called ‘the Masters,’ but not above using conjurers’ tricks to convince her followers and skeptics.”

Warren Sylvester Smith, who taught in Penn State’s Department of Theatre Arts, is remembered in connection with our subject for his 1968 book, The London Heretics, 1870-1914, which looks at the reactions to the growing climate of Victorian doubt through a number of Christian, nonconformist, and non-Christian groups that arose. He gives an extended, if somewhat skeptical, survey of Blavatsky’s life with special emphasis on Annie Besant’s joining the movement, which, he says, “tends to make the power of Helena Petrovna seem more potent than ever.”

Visit to the House Where H.P. Blavatsky was Born

The Theosophist, the journal founded by Mme. Blavatsky in 1879 and still published at Adyar, Chennai, India, carries an account in its May issue of a recent “Visit to the House Where H.P. Blavatsky was Born.” The travelogue by Jan Jelle Keppler, General Secretary of the Belgian Section of the Theosophical Society, begins at the Ukrainian capital, Kiev. “It was well after midnight when we arrived at the building [where he was staying], where it appeared that the elevator did not work, so we had to carry our luggage to the fourth floor ourselves. This was a good introduction to the general state of affairs in the country.”

Dnepropetrovsk, Blavatsky’s birth place (then known as Ekaterinoslav), is reached by train from Kiev. “The area around the house has become industrialized and most of the old buildings have been demolished.” But Blavatsky’s birthplace, near the centre of the old part of the town, has survived. The ground floor includes a large entrance room, followed by a smaller room, another large room, where Blavatsky’s grandmother, the Princess Dolgoruki, resided, and then a smaller one in the back of the house that contained the library of her uncle, Prince Pavel Dolgoruki, famed for its rich collection of occult books.

“There was a big garden at the back of the house, where HPB’s grandmother had a vast collection of plant species. Her family had some fourteen servants, some of whom belonged to a family of serfs, who had been there for generations.” The building was bought by Blavatsky’s grandfather, Andrei de Fadeyev, when he became head of the Bureau for Foreign Colonists in 1815.

The HPB Museum Centre is open to the public two days a week during the summer. The building, parts of which are in disrepair, it is under the authority of the Literature Museum, which in turn is under the authority of the Historical Museum. “We were told that in the Literature Museum were stored some 5,000 objects of HPB and her family, waiting to be put on display.” The piece is illustrated by a photograph of the house (a better picture was given in a previous post) and a colour reproduction of a portrait of “the fourteen-year-old Helena with her mother, painted after the death of the latter” seen here. At one time it was credited to Blavatsky herself. It appears this is no longer part of the official story.

The May issue of The Theosophist also carries a short piece by Patrizia Moschin Calvi on “Helena Petrovna Blavatsky and Italy.” It is an English extension of her article published in Italian, and covered here in October 2011.