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Helena Petrovna Blavatsky
1831 – 1891
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H P Blavatsky’s Life
In More Detail
1831 - Madame Blavatsky
born, at Ekaterinoslav,
Russia
at midnight
between 30 and 31 July. Daughter of Col. Peter Von Hahn and Helena Andreyevna,
née de Fadeyev, renowned novelist who died at only 29 years old. Granddaughter
on maternal side of Privy Councillor Andrey de Fadeyev and Princess Helena
Pavlovna Dolgorukov, who survived her education at Saratov and Tiflis,
Caucasus. Endowed from childhood with remarkable psychic powers and talented
pianist.
1849- She married General
Blavatsky, a very elderly man, from whom she soon separated.
1849-50 Left him and
traveled in Turkey,
Greece,
Egypt,
and France.
She studied magic in Egypt
with an aged Copt and joined 'The Druses of Lebanon,'
a secret society
1851 - Met her Master in London.
When walking with her father, she saw a tall and stately Rajput whom she
recognized as a Protector known in her visions from childhood. He spoke to her
of a future work she was to do under His direction after preparation in the
East.
1852 - Embarked for Canada
late in the year, went to New Orleans,
Mexico,
South America,
West Indies,
thence via the Cape
and Ceylon
to India.
1853 - Attempted but
failed to enter Tibet.
Returned to England
via Java.
1854 - Came to America
again, crossing the Rockies
with a caravan of immigrants. May have visited South
America again.
1855 - Left for India
late in the year, via Japan
and the Straits (Malaya).
1856-57 - Traveled thought
India,
Kashmir,
Ladakh, parts of Tibet,
Burma.
1858 - Returned to Europe
via Java, staying in France
and Germany.
Then returned to Russia
reaching Pskov
on Christmas night.
1860 - Left for the Caucasus
early in the year, where she traveled among the native tribes, remaining there
until 1864-65. Experienced several physical and psychic crisis acquiring
complete control over her occult powers.
1866-67 Left Russia
again and traveled extensive in Balkans,
Egypt,
Syria,
Italy.
Returned to Italy
in 1867 and paid a short visit to Southern Russia.
Blavatsky also was with Garibaldi at the battle of Mentana and 'was picked out
of a ditch for dead with her left arm broken in two places, musket balls
embedded in right shoulder and leg, and a stiletto wound in the heart.
1868 - Went to India
and Tibet
with her Master.
1870 - Returned to Greece.
1871 - Embarked for Egypt
and was shipwrecked near the Island
of Spetsai,
July 4. 1871-72 Settled in Cairo,
she made an unsuccessful attempt to found a spiritual society upon the basis of
phenomena. Then as 'Madame Laura,' she did concert tours in Italy
and Russia.
Traveled to Syria,
Palestine,
Lebanon
in 1872, returning for a short time to Odessa.
1873- After brief travels
in Eastern Europe,
went to Paris
where she lived with her brother, painting and writing (in addition to her
other accomplishments she was a fine artist and a very clever caricaturist).
Whilst in Paris
on her Masters orders she left to New
York, landing July 7. She was in New
York, without personal funds, having
exchanged her first class passage to steerage class (the cheapest) in order to
buy steerage class for a poor woman and children who had been swindled.
Although she had in her trunk 23,000 francs entrusted to her by her Master, she
earned her living by working for a maker of cravats. Still acting under orders
she finally took the money to the town of Buffalo
and gave it to an unknown man just in time to prevent him from committing
suicide. An unsuccessful business venture in a Long
Island Farm, used up the 1,000 Ruble legacy
she had received on the death of her father.
1874 - She was ordered to
go to the Eddy homestead in Chittenden. This was the scene of various occult
phenomena being investigated by Colonel H.S. Olcott.
1875- September 8, founded
the Theosophical Society, together with Col. Olcott, William Q. Judge and
others. Inaugural address of Col. Olcott delivered November 17.
The Theosophical Society
gets off the Ground
1877 - Published her first
great work, Isis
Unveiled, in the autumn. Her magnificent attack upon the materialism of
religion and science. She sent the first proceeds together with money received
for her various articles published by Russian newspapers and journals, to the
Red Cross in Russia to help her compatriots wounded in the Russo-Turkish war.
1878 - 1878 - She became
an American citizen. Later that year, acting 'under orders,' she and Olcott
sailed for India;
they landed in Bombay
in February 1879.
1879- Launched her first
magazine, The Theosophist, in October, which resulted in rapid growth of
Theosophical work in India,
1879-83.
1880 - Blavatsky and
Olcott the two founders of the Theosophical Society toured Sri
Lanka on behalf of Buddhism
1881 - Blavatsky and
Olcott converted themselves to the Buddhism
1882 - The headquarters of
the Society was moved to its present site in Adyar, Madras.
She made various tours of India
between her arrival in 1879 and her visit to Europe
in 1884. In the absence of the Founders, came the one sided report of the
Society for Psychical Research, in an attempt to show her up as an impostor.
Since then, the S.P.R. has retracted the allegations against her. Despite the
intervention of her Master to restore her health, it deteriorated and she was
unable to remain at Adyar for more than a short visit paid later that year.
1884 - Left for Europe,
February, 20, accompanied by Col. Olcott and others. After visiting Nice,
settled for a while in Paris
to work on the Secret Doctrine. Briefly visited London.
Moved to Elberfeld,
Germany,
in the autumn. Went to London
in October and soon after sailed to India,
reaching Adyar December 21.
1885- Gravely ill, she
sailed to Naples
March 31, leaving India
for good. After a brief stay at Torre
del Greco, settled at Wurzburg,
Germany,
where she wrote a large part of The Secret Doctrine.
1886 - Moved to Ostende in
July, visiting Elberfeld on her way.
1887 - Transferred her
residence to London
in May, where the Blavatsky Lodge was established, and her second magazine,
Lucifer, was launched in September.
1888 - Published the first
two volumes of the Secret Doctrine, late autumn. Founded the Esoteric School.
1889 - Published the key
to Theosophy and the Voice of the Silence.
Voice
of the Silence
The Key To Theosophy
1890 - Established
European Headquarters of the Theosophical Society, at 19 Avenue Road, London,
where she died.
1891- She passed away in London.
Her ashes were divided between New
York, India,
and London,
and part of it is interred under her statue in Adyar.
In her will she requested
that each year, on the anniversary of her death, her friends should assemble
and read from The Light of Asia
and the Bhagavad Gita. By Colonel Olcott's wish, this anniversary came to be
known as 'White Lotus Day.' Colonel Olcott summed up the secret of H.P.B.'s
remarkable power in producing swift changes in the lives of those about her as
due to: Her amazing occult knowledge and phenomena-working powers, together
with her relation to the hidden Masters. Her sparkling talents, especially as a
conversationalist with her social accomplishments, wide travels, and
extraordinary adventures. Her insight into problems of philology, racial
origins, fundamental bases of religions, and keys to old mysteries and symbols.
Unflinching self-consecration to the Great Ones irradiated the life of H.P.B.
and she will ever be known as the 'Light-Bringer' of the Nineteenth Century.
H P Blavatsky Brief Life Chronology
H P Blavatsky and The Masters
Her Teachers Morya & Koot Hoomi
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Classic Introductory Theosophy Text
A Text Book of Theosophy By C W
Leadbeater
What Theosophy Is From the Absolute to Man
The Formation of a Solar System The Evolution of Life
The Constitution of Man After Death
Reincarnation
The Purpose of Life The Planetary Chains
The Result of Theosophical Study
An Outline of Theosophy
Charles Webster Leadbeater
Theosophy - What it is How is it Known?
The Method of Observation General Principles
The Three Great Truths
Advantage Gained from this
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The Deity The Divine Scheme The Constitution of Man
The True Man Reincarnation The Wider Outlook
Death Man’s Past and Future Cause and Effect
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The
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Quotes
from the Writings of
Helena
Petrovna Blavatsky
Blavatsky Quotation
That which is to be
shunned is pain not yet come. The past cannot be changed or amended; that which
belongs to the experience of the present cannot and should not be shunned; but alike to be shunned are
disturbing anticipations or fears of the
future, and every act or impulse that may cause present or future pain to
ourselves or others.
Practical
Occultism, Page 87
Blavatsky Quotation
Perfection, to be
fully such, must be born out of imperfection, the incorruptible must grow out
of the corruptible, having the latter as its vehicle and basis and contrast
The Secret Doctrine
, Volume 2, Page 100
Blavatsky Quotation
It is only by the
attractive force of the contrasts that the two opposites — Spirit and Matter — can be cemented
together on Earth, and, smelted in the fire of self-conscious experience and suffering, find
themselves wedded in Eternity.
The Secret Doctrine
, Volume 2, Page 108
Blavatsky Quotation
Strength to step
forward is the primary need of him who has chosen his path. Where is this to be
found? Looking round, it is not hard to see where other men find their
strength. Its source is profound conviction.
Practical
Occultism, Page 67
Blavatsky Quotation
It is the motive,
and the motive alone, which makes any exercise of power become black, malignant, or white,
beneficent Magic. It is impossible to employ spiritual forces if there is the
slightest tinge of selfishness remaining in the operator .... The powers and
forces of animal nature can equally be used by the selfish and revengeful, as
by the unselfish and the all-forgiving; the powers and forces of spirit lend
themselves only to the perfectly pure in heart — and this is Divine Magic.
Practical
Occultism, Page 7
Blavatsky Quotation
Finite reason
agrees with science, and says: “There is no God”. But, on the other hand, our
Ego, that which lives and thinks and feels independently of us in our mortal casket,
does more than believe. It knows that there exists a God in nature, for the
sole and invincible Artificer of all lives in us as we live in Him. No dogmatic
faith or exact science is able to uproot that intuitional feeling inherent in
man, when he has once fully realised it in himself.
Isis Unveiled,
Volume 1, Page 36
Blavatsky Quotation
It may be a pleasant dream to attempt to conceive of
the beauties of the spirit world; but the time can be spent more profitably in
a study of the spirit itself, and it is not necessary that the subject for
study should be in the spirit world.
Modern Panarion
Page 70
Blavatsky Quotation
Physical existence
is subservient to the spiritual, and all physical improvement and progress are
only the auxiliaries of spiritual progress, without which there could be no
physical progress.
Modern Panarion
Page 78
Blavatsky Quotation
Mankind — the majority at any rate — hates to think
for itself. It resents as an insult the humblest invitation to step for a
moment outside the old well-beaten tracks and, judging for itself, to enter
into a new path in some fresh direction.
The Secret Doctrine
, Volume 3, Page 14
Blavatsky Quotation
Even ignorance is better than
Head-learning with no Soul-wisdom to illuminate and guide it.
The Voice of the Silence, Page 43
Blavatsky Quotation
Many theosophists
have had slight conscious relations with elementals, but always without their
will acting, and upon trying to make elementals see, hear or act for them, a
total indifference on the part of the nature spirit is all they have got in
return. These failures are due to the fact that the elemental cannot understand
the thought of the person; it can only be reached when the exact scale of being
to which it belongs is vibrated, whether it be that of colour, form, sound, or
whatever else
Annotation - The
Path, May, 1888
Blavatsky Quotation
Parabrahman is not
“God” because It is not a God. “It is that which is supreme, and not supreme”.
....It is supreme as cause, not supreme as effect.
The Secret Doctrine
, Proem [Volume 1], Page 35
Blavatsky Quotation
The ancients .....
fully realised the fact that the reciprocal relations between the planetary bodies
is as perfect as those between the corpuscles of the blood, which float in a
common fluid; and that each one is affected by the combined influence of all
the rest, as each in its turn affects each of the others.
Isis, Volume 1,
Page 275
Blavatsky Quotation
Strength to step
forward is the primary need of him who has chosen his path. Where is this to be
found? Looking round, it is not hard to see where other men find their
strength. Its source is profound conviction.
Practical
Occultism, Page 67
Blavatsky Quotation
There are two kinds
of magnetic attraction: sympathy and fascination; the one holy and natural, the
other evil and unnatural.
Isis Unveiled,
Volume 1, Page 210
Blavatsky Quotation
In the phenomenal
and Cosmic World Fohat is that occult, electric, vital power, which, under the
Will of the Creative Logos, unites and brings together all forms, giving them
the first impulse, which in time becomes law.
The Secret Doctrine
, Volume 1, Page 134
Blavatsky Quotation
Oaths will never be
binding till each man will fully understand that humanity is the highest
manifestation on earth of the Unseen Supreme Deity, and each man an
incarnation of his
God; and when the sense of personal responsibility will be so
developed in him
that he will consider forswearing the greatest possible insult to himself, as
well as to humanity. No oath is now binding, unless taken by one who, without
any oath at all, would solemnly keep his simple promise of honour.
Isis Unveiled,
Volume 2, Page 374
Blavatsky Quotation
It is the motive,
and the motive alone, which makes any exercise of power become
black, malignant,
or white, beneficent Magic. It is impossible to employ spiritual forces if
there is the slightest tinge of selfishness remaining in the operator .... The
powers and forces of animal nature can equally be used by the selfish and
revengeful, as by the unselfish and the all-forgiving; the powers and forces of
spirit lend themselves only to the perfectly pure in heart — and this is Divine
Magic.
Practical
Occultism, Page 7
Blavatsky Quotation
Woe to those who
live without suffering. Stagnation and death is the future of all that
vegetates without change. And how can there be any change for the better
without proportionate suffering during the preceding stage?
The Secret Doctrine
, Volume 2, Page 498
Blavatsky Quotation
The person who is
endowed with this faculty of thinking about even the most trifling things from
the higher plane of thought has, by virtue of that gift which he possesses, a
plastic power of formation, so to say, in his very imagination. Whatever such a
person may think about, his thought will be so far more intense than the
thought of an ordinary person, that by this very intensity it obtains the power
of creation.
Lucifer, December,
1888
Blavatsky Quotation
Finite reason
agrees with science, and says: “There is no God”. But, on the other hand, our
Ego, that which lives and thinks and feels independently of us in our mortal
casket, does more than believe. It knows that there exists a God in nature, for
the sole and invincible Artificer of all lives in us as we live in Him. No
dogmatic faith or exact science is able to uproot that intuitional feeling
inherent in man, when he has once fully realised it in himself.
Isis Unveiled,
Volume 1, Page 36
Blavatsky Quotation
Our voice is raised
for spiritual freedom, and our plea made for enfranchisement from all tyranny, whether of Science of
Theology.
Isis Unveiled,
Volume 1, I2.
Blavatsky Quotation
If through the Hall
of Wisdom thou wouldst reach the Vale of Bliss, Disciple, close fast thy senses
against the great dire heresy of Separateness that weans thee from the rest.
Voice of the
Silence, Page 23
Blavatsky Quotation
From strength to
strength, from the beauty and perfection of one plane to the
greater beauty and
perfection of another, with accessions of new glory, of fresh
knowledge and power
in each cycle, such is the destiny of every Ego, which thus
becomes its own
saviour in each world and incarnation.
The Key to
Theosophy, Page 105
Blavatsky Quotation
The assertion that
“Theosophy is not a Religion” , by no means excludes the fact that “Theosophy
is Religion” itself. A religion in the true and only correct sense is a bond
uniting men together — not a particular set of dogmas and beliefs. Now
Religion, per se, in its widest meaning is that which binds not only all Men
but also all Beings and all things in the entire Universe into one grand whole.
Lucifer, November,
1888
Blavatsky Quotation
The Present is only a mathematical line which divides that
part of Eternal Duration which we call the Future from that part which we call
the Past
The Secret Doctrine
, Volume 1, Page 69
Blavatsky Quotation
The mind receives
indelible impressions even from chance acquaintance or persons
encountered but
once. As a few seconds' exposure of the sensitized photographic plate is all
that is requisite to preserve indefinitely the image of the sitter, so is it
with the mind.
Isis Unveiled,
Volume 1, Page 311
Blavatsky Quotation
“Beneficent Magic” , so called, is
divine magic, devoid of selfishness, love of power, of ambition or lucre, and
bent only on doing good, to the world in general and one's neighbour in
particular. The smallest attempt to use one's abnormal powers for the
gratification of self makes of these powers sorcery or black magic.
The Key to
Theosophy, Page 228
Blavatsky Quotation
Believing in a
spiritual and invisible Universe, we cannot conceive of it in any other way
than as completely dovetailing and corresponding with the material, objective
Universe; for logic and observation alike teach us that the latter is the
outcome and visible manifestation of the former, and that the laws governing both
are immutable.
Modern Panarion
Page 137
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