BLAVATSKY, ELENA PETROVNA. – Founder of the Theosophical Society, born in Ekaterinoslav, in southern Russia, on 31 July 1831, died in London on 8 May 1891. As a child she was subject to hallucinations. Later, as a traveller in Tibet, she was initiated into its particular form of theosophical studies. She then went to Egypt. The term theosophy goes back, in the third century, to Ammonius Saccas, and its meaning was gradually broadened through the heretical speculations of the Simonians, Ophites, Gnostics, Valentinians, and Neoplatonists (Plotinus, Porphyry, Iamblichus, and Longinus); it was subsequently taken in further directions both by the Hermetic and Rosicrucian Orders and through contributions by Giacomo Boehme, Henry Vaughan, and Law. Theosophy, or esoteric philosophy, received, it may be said, an almost complete exposition in B.’s writings. It began from the conception of man as a spiritual being and, in essence, one with the Universal Spirit.
In 1873, B. went to the United States, and there, two years later—still in contact with the Tibetan theosophical group that had initiated her—she founded the Theosophical Society in New York together with Colonel Henry S. Olcott, Wm. Q. Judge, and others. For the benefit of the Society, B., in addition to translations from Sanskrit, created an entire body of occultist literature of her own. The following may 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 Theosophical glossary (ibid. 1892).
She also founded and directed several periodicals. In 1895 Katharine Hilard produced an epitome of this entire body of Blavatskian work, certainly of doubtful scientific character. When B. died, her followers were thought to number one hundred thousand. There were, however, also those who regarded her as “a charlatan.”