BLAVATSKY, ELENA PETROVNA. - Founder of the Theosophical Society, b. at Ekaterinoslav, in southern Russia, on 31 July 1831, d. in London on 8 May 1891. In childhood she was subject to hallucinations. Later, as a traveler in Tibet, she was initiated into her own particular kind of theosophical studies. She was then in Egypt. The term theosophy goes back, in the 3rd century, to Ammonius Saccas, and its meaning has been gradually broadened through the heretical lucubrations of Simonians, Ophites, Gnostics, Valentinians, Neoplatonists (Plotinus, Porphyry, Iamblichus and Longinus), and was then carried in further directions both by the Hermetic and Rosicrucian Orders and through contributions made by Jacob Boehme, by Henry Vaughan and by Law. Theosophy, or esoteric philosophy, received in B.'s writings, one may say, an almost complete exposition. It started from the conception of man as a spiritual being and, as to essence, one with the Universal Spirit.
In 1873, B. went to the United States and there, two years later - still in connection with the Tibetan theosophical group that had initiated her - together with Colonel Henry S. Olcott, Wm. Q. Judge and others, she founded, in New York, the Theosophical Society. In its interest B. - besides translations from Sanskrit - created an entire literature of occultism of her own. To be mentioned: Isis unveiled (New York 1877), The secret Doctrine (ibid. 1888), The Key of Theosophy (ibid. 1890), The voice of silence (ibid. 1889), and the Theosophical glossary (ibid. 1892).
Various journals too were founded and directed by her. In 1895 Katharine Hilard made an epitome of all this Blavatskian production, certainly of doubtful scientific character. When B. died, her followers were reckoned to number one hundred thousand. There was no lack, however, of those who considered her "a charlatan."