Gary Lachman - Madame Blavatsky: The Mother of Modern Spirituality

ALSO BY GARY LACHMAN

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WRITTEN AS GARY VALENTINE

New York Rocker: My Life in the Blank Generation, with Blondie, Iggy Pop, and Others, 19741981

JEREMY P. TARCHER/PENGUIN

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Copyright 2012 by Gary Lachman

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Lachman, Gary, date.

Madame Blavatsky : the mother of modern spirituality / Gary Lachman.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-101-60138-9

1. Blavatsky, H. P. (Helena Petrovna), 18311891. 2. TheosophistsBiography. I. Title.

BP585.B6L33 2012 2012026169

299'.934092dc23

[B]

While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers, Internet addresses, and other contact information at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors, or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

To the Masters, whoever they are.

I was in search of the unknown...

HELENA PETROVNA BLAVATSKY

INTRODUCTION

WHO WAS MADAME BLAVATSKY?

O f all the names associated with modern spirituality, that of Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatskyor HPB, as she preferred to be calledis surely one of the most controversial. Although she died more than a century ago, Blavatskys name still turns up in serious discussions about ancient wisdom, secret teachings, and inner knowledge, and it is generally agreed that her Theosophical Society (or TS, as it is often called), which she founded in New York in 1875, with her colleagues Henry Steel Olcott and William Quan Judge, was more or less the official starting point of the modern spiritual revival. By modern spiritual revival, I mean our contemporary widespread interest in a direct, immediate knowledge and experience of spiritual reality, and in a more profound relationship to the cosmos than traditional religions and mainstream science can provide. Represented by a heterogeneous collection of different occult, esoteric, or spiritual pursuits, today this revival is popularly, if often mistakenly, associated with the New Age. This grassroots hunger for a sense of meaning and purpose that the official organs can no longer supply can be traced to the nineteenth centuryindeed, in this book I will look at some of the sources of itand can be said, I believe, to have been inspired by Blavatsky. In fact, as early as 1970, in an article for McCalls magazine, the novelist Kurt Vonnegut dubbed Blavatsky the Founding Mother of the Occult in America.

But one doesnt need to be a Theosophist to have felt Blavatskys considerable presence. Her contribution to modern spiritual thought, and to modern culture in general, is so great that it can easily be overlooked, in the way that some prominent feature of the landscape can be overlookedthat is to say, taken for granted. Yet if Blavatskys offering to our modern spiritual consciousness was to be suddenly removed, it would drag along with it practically everything we associate with the very notion of modern spirituality. And those of us who had taken Blavatskys contribution for granted would certainly notice the loss.

To press my point: Anyone who meditates, or considers himself a Buddhist, or is interested in reincarnation, or has thought about karma, or pursues higher consciousness, or has wondered about Atlantis, or thinks the ancients might have known a few things that we dont, or reads about esotericism, or who frequents an alternative health center or food shop, would be aware of it if modern spirituality somehow became HPB free. And this, of course, would include quite a few people who never heard of Blavatsky, or who have only the vaguest idea of what Theosophy is or of its place in the history of Western consciousness. Which is to say most people. If nothing else, our endless fascination with the wisdom of the East would not have arrived, or would have taken much longer to get here, if it were not for her efforts and those of her early followers. Its been said that all of modern Russian literature emerged from Nikolai Gogols short story The Overcoat. It can equally be said that practically all modern occultism and esotericism emerged from the ample bosom of his younger countrywoman and contemporary, HPB.

Yet, although she was one of the most remarkable women of the nineteenth century, to the general public, Blavatsky is virtually unknown. When Ive mentioned her in recent timeswhen asked what I was working on at the momentmore often than not the response was a shaking head and a baffled look, although a few acquaintances mustered some questions like Wasnt she a psychic? or a fraud? or a charlatan? Yet, those who are aware of her, and of her contribution to Western thought, have a different view. Like the historian of esotericism Christopher Bamford, they wonder why she is not, as Bamford believes she should be, counted with Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud as one of the creators of the twentieth century?