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Helena Blavatsky

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, }} (; – 8 May 1891), often known as Madame Blavatsky, was a Russian-born mystic and writer who emigrated to the United States where she co-founded the Theosophical Society in 1875. She gained an international following as the primary founder of Theosophy as a belief system.

Born into an aristocratic family in Yekaterinoslav, Blavatsky traveled widely around the empire as a child. Largely self-educated, she developed an interest in Western esotericism during her teenage years. According to her later claims, in 1849 she embarked on a series of world travels, visiting Europe, the Americas, and India. She also claimed that during this period she encountered a group of spiritual adepts, the "Masters of the Ancient Wisdom", who sent her to Shigatse, Tibet, where they trained her to develop a deeper understanding of the synthesis of religion, philosophy, and science.

Spiritualism or calling of the dead spirits was in vogue in Europe and America and Blavatsky wrote articles to clarify exactly what these 'spirits' were. While defending the genuine existence of Spiritualist phenomena, she argued against the mainstream Spiritualist idea that the entities contacted were the spirits of the dead. Relocating to the United States in 1873, she befriended Henry Steel Olcott.

In 1875, in New York City, Blavatsky co-founded the Theosophical Society with Olcott and William Quan Judge. In 1877, she published ''Isis Unveiled'', a book outlining her Theosophical world-view. Associating it closely with the esoteric doctrines of Hermeticism and Neoplatonism, Blavatsky described Theosophy as "the synthesis of science, religion and philosophy", and claimed it revived the "Ancient Wisdom" which underlay all the world's religions. In 1880, she and Olcott moved to India, where the Society tried to ally with the Arya Samaj, a Hindu reform movement. That same year, while in Ceylon, she and Olcott became the first people from the United States to formally convert to Buddhism.

Although opposed by the British colonial administration, Theosophy spread rapidly in India, Europe and America. In ailing health, in 1885 she returned to Europe, establishing the Blavatsky Lodge in London. There she published ''The Secret Doctrine'', a commentary on what she claimed were ancient Tibetan manuscripts, as well as two further books, ''The Key to Theosophy'' and ''The Voice of the Silence''. She died of influenza in 1891.

Blavatsky was a controversial figure during her lifetime, championed by supporters as an enlightened sage, a brilliant writer, an empathetic friend of all. Her Theosophical doctrines influenced the spread of Hindu and Buddhist ideas in the West, as well as the development of Western esoteric currents like Ariosophy, Anthroposophy, and the New Age Movement and subsequently the Krishnamurti movement. Provided by Wikipedia