Translation from German by Robert Hutwohl[1]
This 2-part article series is merged as a single document.
One of the most memorable figures of the last century was Helene Petrovna Blavatsky, a Russian by birth, who was endowed with very peculiar psychic powers and gifted with great willpower and intelligence. She can rightly be counted among the greatest reformers of modern thought; for whatever her many enemies and envious people may say against her personality, no one can deny that the teachings she spread opened the eyes of many thousands, drew them out of the swamp of materialism into the bright light of enlightenment, and saved them not only from tormenting doubts but also from despair. She was a fighter for light and for freedom. Her writings have probably contributed far more than any literature published in recent times to putting an end to both scientific and religious superstition; above all, they have given the impetus to the movement spreading everywhere which is based on a higher world view. The truth which she proclaimed is eternal and will be ever more widely recognized even if the name “Blavatsky” sinks into oblivion. What she taught was not her own invention and nothing essentially new, but the ancient wisdom which is contained hidden under symbols and allegories in all religious systems; but she lifted the veil of mystery and brought to light the spiritual kernel which was concealed in the hard shell. Nor did she claim to have made these discoveries by means of her own ingenuity, but she claimed to have been instructed and guided in them by certain adepts, that is, men of high spiritual development. The names of these adepts are of no interest to the public, as they make no claim to blind faith in authority and prefer to remain unknown.
When we consider the sublimity of the philosophy and worldview propagated by the Adepts through H. P. Blavatsky, a discussion of the personal qualities of this instrument of the Masters of Wisdom appears to us as meaningless as if we were to describe the brush with which Raphael painted his Madonna; but Blavatsky was not a blind instrument of the Adepts; she was not a spiritualistic “medium” in the ordinary sense of the word; she understood what she wrote. She received her instruction from the Masters and put the ideas communicated to her into a suitable form. It will, therefore, be of interest to many to know something more about this remarkable personality, and as I was intimately acquainted with her and spiritually connected with her for many years, I will be permitted to add a few notes to the accounts I have already written about her,[2] with a view to correcting erroneous notions.
In 1831 an old woman lived in great seclusion in Ekaterinoslav. She was rarely seen in public and had only a small circle of acquaintances. All that was known was that she was very charitable and rumors said that she was involved in occult matters, which is why some people revered her as a magician and others timidly regarded her as a witch. Among her few intimate acquaintances was the wife of the Russian colonel Peter Hahn, who later became the mother of H. P. Blavatsky.
The old woman once announced to her friends that she would die on a certain day, which she named, but that she would reincarnate immediately. She actually died on that day, without any previous illness. At the same hour, Helene Hahn, later known as H. P. Blavatsky, was born.
It may therefore be supposed that Helene was a reincarnation of the soul of this mysterious lady, and this view is made more probable by the fact that little Helene, when she could speak, told her mother things which had been confided to her by this deceased woman, her friend; also the child had the habit of going to the grave of this woman and remaining there for hours, although no one had informed her of the existence of this grave.
A large volume could be filled with anecdotes relating to Helene’s clairvoyant gifts and the “occult phenomena” which took place in her presence; but such events are not particularly noteworthy today, as they are known to every one who has studied spiritualism. Of much greater importance is the fact that she frequently had apparitions from the astral bodies of living people, and among these especially from two adepts who are said to live in Tibet. It is said that in later years she met these adepts on the physical plane and met with them in Tibet and India. These adepts were her teachers and taught her daily until the end of her life, even when they were thousands of miles away from her. This may seem strange to those who are not acquainted with the psychic powers which are still undeveloped in the ordinary human being; but it is no longer a secret nowadays that thoughts can be transmitted from one person to another by telepathy, and that the distance is of little consequence, just as in wireless telegraphy. The will is a force which carries the thought to a distance. Force and substance are essentially one and the same, and viewed in this light there is nothing supernatural about a man not only transmitting his thoughts to another with whom he is spiritually connected, but even appearing to him personally.
Helene was spiritually connected with her teachers. It is said that the soul which inhabited her body had in one of its previous incarnations been incorporated into the body of a disciple of these adepts in Tibet, and that it had now assumed this incarnation in order to bring the ancient wisdom of the Indians to the knowledge of the West on behalf of the masters. Helene was particularly suited to this task, not because of any special holiness or moral perfection, but because of the training she had acquired in her previous existence and also because of her remarkable psychic abilities and physical organization, which enabled her to live on the material plane and in the super-sensible world at the same time. The spiritual connection with her masters established in a previous existence continued in this life too. She brought the things the adepts taught her into a suitable form by means of her own intellect. In this way, her writings “Isis Unveiled,” “The Secret Doctrine,” and numerous other works and articles were created.
I am fully convinced that H. P. Blavatsky was an initiate, that is, that spiritual consciousness had awakened in her; but for this very reason she was understood by few, and she was called the “Sphinx of the nineteenth century.” But the Sphinx, as we know, has the upper body and head of a woman, and the body of a lion with eagle’s wings. Likewise, Blavatsky had not only a spirit and intellect, but also strongly developed material qualities with iron willpower and a high-flying imagination. As a result, she was temperamental, easily excitable, willful and not without vanity. For example, she felt hurt when her governess told her that she was such a bad girl that she would never get a husband, not even the ugly old General Blavatsky would marry her. In order to prove her governess wrong, she caught the old general, who was then governor of the Caucasus, in her net, and it was not long before the wedding took place, and Helene became Madame Blavatsky at the age of seventeen. The marriage ended just as quickly as it had begun, for Helene, or as we will now call her, H. P. B., ran away and traveled to distant parts of the world. Disguised as a cabin boy and hidden in the coal hold of a steamer, she traveled from Odessa to Constantinople. There she met a Countess K. . . . whom she knew, and traveled with her to Egypt, Greece, and other countries.
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In Egypt, H. P. Blavatsky became acquainted with an old Copt who had the reputation of being a magician. She joined him and was taught occult matters by him. Her relatives in Tiflis knew nothing of her stay, but she corresponded secretly with her father, who also provided her with travel expenses.
In 1851 she went to Canada and stayed for a while among an Indian tribe; then she visited New Orleans, where she learned the magic arts of the Negroes known as “Vudu.” She then went to Texas and Mexico and the West Indies and in 1853 to Bombay. From there she tried to get to Tibet through Nepal accompanied by an Englishman and a Hindu “Cela,” but she was unsuccessful. She then went to southern India and from there to England and back to America, lived in New York, Chicago and San Francisco, and in 1855 she travelled for the second time to India via China and Japan and landed in Calcutta.
In 1856 she met a German in Lahore who had undertaken a journey with two friends to the Far East for mystical purposes. With these and a Tartar shaman she travelled through Kashmir to Leli in Ladakh and on this occasion saw amazing occult arts which are described in her “Isis Unveiled,” Volume II, pages 599 and 626.
With this shaman, she penetrated into areas that few Europeans had yet entered. She left Tibet in 1857, shortly before the rebellion.
In 1858 she returned to Russia via France and Germany. In 1866 she went to India again, and this time she managed to penetrate into Tibet, from where she returned in 1871 and then traveled to New York again. During her stay in Tibet she is said to have lived with the adepts and to have been taught by them.[3]
She visited America, Mexico, India and Egypt and penetrated into some parts of Asia that were still little known. Her main purpose was to learn about things related to occultism. In 1875 the Theosophical Society was founded in New York and a few years later its headquarters were moved to India, first to Bombay and then to Adyar, a village near Madras, where H. S. Olcott ran the business. H. P. Blavatsky lived and wrote there until she came to Italy (Torre del Greco near Naples) in 1885 accompanied by the author of these lines. She then moved to Würzburg, later to Ostend and finally to London, where she died on May 8, 1891.
The idolatry of Blavatsky’s person by her worshippers is as foolish as the insults of conceited heroes of virtue who cannot distinguish the tool from the master. She was accustomed to speaking her mind out loud, and her witty remarks were most resented by those who most deserved them; but her bitterest enemies were always to be found among certain megalomaniac “Celas”[4] who, having been disappointed in their expectations of being made adepts by her, turned against her with wounded ambition.
Had Blavatsky’s purpose been merely to astonish the world with occult phenomena, and had the Theosophical Society been tasked with testing these phenomena for their “authenticity,” or had it been her intention to exploit the public, the phenomena caused by Blavatsky would deserve detailed discussion, but for Blavatsky they were only a means to an end, and that end was to lure men out of the dark caves of materialism and superstition, and to induce them to study their own religious systems and to seek that truth which cannot be found in books or in any phenomena, real or fake, and which can ultimately be found nowhere but in one’s own higher self. Her purpose was to lead men to think for themselves and independently of belief in authority, to descend into the temple of God within themselves, where the Spirit of Truth dwells. Their teaching was nothing other than what all the wise men of the world, including Socrates, had taught, namely, “Man, know thyself!” Salvation can be found within ourselves. He who finds himself in truth finds God and immortality, and anyone who teaches man the right way to this self-knowledge or leads him to seek this way is a savior of mankind. Viewed in this light, H. P. Blavatsky appears to me as a savior and benefactor of men, before whose great spirit the faults and weaknesses of their person sink into insignificance. The “Theosophical Society” may disappear from the scene because there are few people who are ripe to realize the ideals set before it, and the name “Blavatsky” may be forgotten, but the mists which Blavatsky dispelled to open a way for the light of enlightenment will no longer stand in the way of that light. Many of the discoveries which she published in her “Secret Doctrine” have been confirmed by academic science since her death, and many of her prophecies have been fulfilled. It broadened the horizon of the scientific world view, raised science itself to a higher spiritual level and connected it with the spirit of religion.
[Finis]
Notes:
[1]Two articles merged as one: H. P. Blavatsky. Dr. Franz Hartmann. Theosophischer Wegweiser 8, no. 8 (May 1907), 241-246; Theosophischer Wegweiser 8, no. 9 (June 1907), 267-270 {This article was reformatted from the original, but with the content unchanged other than minor typos, translation from German by Robert Hutwohl, ©2025}
[2]See “Lotusblüthen” 1893, Volume I.
[3]These details are partly taken from Blavatsky’s own stories and partly from the reports of her sister (Madame Jelihowsky).
[4][R.H.—Dr. Hartmann’s spelling is actually correct, unlike how most people spell it (chela). They probably incorporate an “h” to help them pronounce it. I actually discovered the word is a Hindī word while working with David Reigle to go through the Sanskrit and Tibetan words for the Blavatsky Collected Writings Cumulative Index, Volume XV.]