Morticom incidents in Madame Blavatsky's life

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MADAME BLAVATSKY

INCIDENTS

1)
Madame Blavatsky was one of the giants of occultism during the 19th century, although her paranormal feats were sometimes very questionable.

2)
American painter, A.L. Rawson, encountered Madame Blavatsky in 1850, whilst he was on holiday in Cairo, Egypt, touring the Mediterranean countries. He claimed that Blavatsky was dressed as an Arab, regularly smoked hashish and took an avid interest in the occult. It has been assumed that Madame Blavatsky spent the years 1850 and 1851 studying magic in Cairo.

3)
Madame Blavatsky once claimed to be a Russian princess and whilst in Egypt she visited a Coptic magician (Egyptian Christian) and said, "We are students who have heard of your great learning and skill in magic, and wish to learn from you." The magician replied, "I perceive that you are two Feringhees (Europeans) in disguise and I have no doubt that you are in search of knowledge. I look for money." At this point Madame Blavatsky left.

4)
Madame Blavatsky was the type of character who always had improbable stories told about her. She once said, "There is not a day that some new story about me does not come out in the papers. Blavatsky was in Africa and went up to Livingstone with a balloon. Blavatsky was in the Sandwich Islands and dined with the cannibal king. Blavatsky converted the Pope of Rome to spiritualism; she predicted to the Emperor Napoleon III his forthcoming death; she cured the Queen of Spain's facial warts by means of spiritualism and so on... They say that I have spent several days at Salt Lake City, and I have induced Brigham Young to renounce polygamy."

5)
Madame Blavatsky's life was as extraordinary as any invented legends. It is sometimes thought that some of the rumors that were spread about her may have originally come from Madame Blavatsky herself, to keep herself in the public eye.

6)
Madame Blavatsky was born in the Ukraine in 1831, her original name being Helena Petrovna von Hahn. She was the daughter of a Russian army officer of German extraction.

7)
In 1849, just 18 years old, she married the much older, General Blavatsky, the Vice-Governor of Erivan, but she soon ran off to start a wandering life, at one point working as a bareback rider in a circus.

8)
She contracted a bigamous marriage with the famous opera singer, Metrovitch, and there is reason to believe that they had a child together. Blavatsky and Metrovitch had many quarrels and estrangement's during their marriage, and on one occasion she actually left him to become an assistant to the famous medium, D.D. Home. She then married bigamously for a third time, taking as her husband an anonymous Englishman, whom she rapidly deserted.

9)
In July 1871, Blavatsky and Metrovitch were aboard the steamship 'Eumonia' which sank after a boiler exploded. Blavatsky survived but Metrovitch did not. She was saved by a passing freighter and disembarked in Egypt.

10)
Madame Blavatsky soon became a wandering medium, although poverty stricken, she was always hoping for the patronage of the wealthy. In 1873, she arrived in New York, peniless, wearing a red shirt, and chain smoking hand rolled cigarettes. At first she lived in great poverty, and lived in a hostel for working girls. She even earned a precarious living making artificial flowers.

11)
In 1874, Madame Blavatsky's luck began to change. She met a spiritualist lawyer named Colonel Henry Olcott at the home of the occult wonders, the Eddy brothers, who were the most famous 'materialising mediums' of their time. Whilst there, Blavatsky and Olcott saw many remarkable things. Madame Blavatsky stated that she saw the spirit of her dead father, materialize so solidly in form that she could touch him, and also had a conversation with him in Russian, ending with her father giving her a medal that she claimed had been buried with him. When Blavatsky published her account of what happened, there was great controversy, because it was not the Russian practice to bury dead soldiers with their medals. After this incident Blavatsky was seen as a charlatan who was just publicizing her own mediumistic talents.

12)
During her time with Olcott, she impressed him with her 'spiritual miracles' performed at the farm. Olcott stated that the 'miracles' increased in number whenever Madame Blavatsky was present, something he attributed to her mediumistic powers. He considered her to be a remarkable person and he was fascinated by her tales of occult adventures in Mongolia and Russia. He was also taken by her 'mystical blue eyes'.
Madame Blavatsky herself was attracted to Olcott's kindliness and generosity, and he gave her a great deal of financial support in the early years, her exact needs being indicated to him by the spirit world, which materialized instructional letters onto his desk and even sometimes into his pockets.
Olcott's faith in Blavatsky never wavered even though there were many strains.

13)
Madame Blavatsky again married illegally, this time to a young Armenian named Michael Bettanelly, though they soon parted because of her new husband's sexual habits. She said that she had agreed to marry him on the promise that there would be no physical relationship between them. She then claimed that an evil spirit had temporarily possessed her, and forced her to get married.

14)
Madame Blavatsky came up with the idea of the Theosophical Society (literally meaning divine wisdom) on the 7th September 1875, when she and Olcott attended a lecture on the occult significance of the Egyptian pyramids. She once said, "Olcott is now organizing the Theosophical Society in New York. It will be composed of learned occultists and of passionate antiquaries and Egyptologists generally. We want to make an experimental comparison between spiritualism and the magic of the ancients by following literally the instructions of the old cabbalahs.....I have for many years been studying Hermetic philosophy in theory and practice, and am every coming to the conclusion that spiritualism in it's physical manifestations is nothing but.....the astral, or starry, light of Paracelsus...."

15)
Early Theosophists experimented in strange kinds of ways. They applied a mild electrical current to a living cat, causing it to rise some distance in the air. They then decided that this proved that levitation was an electrical phenomenon and increased the power, hoping the cat would achieve total weightlessness, but unfortunately the cat died.

16)
The Theosophical Society failed to attract many new members, mainly due to the tomfoolery of their existing members, but this changed in 1877, when Blavatsky published her book 'Isis unveiled' which was a study of the occult and was supposedly inspired by astral visions.

17)
Although Blavatskys book 'Isis unveiled' seemed at first sight to be impressive, and gives the impression that the author was a woman of immense learning and wisdom, American scholar, W.E. Coleman found no less than 2000 passages of the book had been plagiarized from many other books and said, "Blavatsky's ignorance is profound in all branches of knowledge."

18)
The book basically explained that spiritual seance rooms, materialization, table turning and rapping were all known to the ancients and through studying the lives and teachings of the ancients, spiritualists could receive spiritual communications at a much higher level than was normally available to them.
It also asserted that alchemy and magical treatises, which seemed like gibberish to modern readers revealed many spiritual truths, and hinted that Madame Blavatsky possessed the keys to this truth which would unlock a treasure house of wisdom, beauty and truth.
It was also strongly suggested that Madame Blavatsky had been entrusted by a secret organisation of spiritual supermen with the task of reviving old spiritual truths in the industrial world of the 19th century.
'Isis Unveiled' had only modest success on it's release but it did ensure the revival of interest in the Theosophical Society when it needed it most.

19)
D.D. Home, the most famous medium of all time, published a book in 1878, which told hostile and unpleasant stories about Madame Blavatsky. This upset her and Olcott so much, that they packed up their bags and moved to India. While they were there, the Theosophical Society met with considerable success, making many converts among both the English expatriates and the native Indians, their most famous convert being the journalist A.P. Sinnett, who was converted by a number of supposedly miraculous, but probably fraudulent phenomena produced by Madame Blavatsky. These 'miracles' included the disappearance of a missing cup and saucer at a picnic, which Madame Blavatsky claimed had been taken by the superhuman beings living in the Himalayas.

20)
Eventually some of the new converts wanted to be put in touch with these 'supermen', and Sinnett himself wrote them a letter, which Blavatsky insisted on passing on to them. A week later he received a reply when a letter mysteriously appeared on his desk, from someone who claimed to be the 'Mahatma Koot Hoomi'. A lengthy exchange of letters followed with Sinnett writing his questions on a wide variety of subjects, (always via Madame Blavatsky) and included topics such as the moon, spiritual evolution, and Atlantis. In the end Sinnett wrote books called 'Esoteric Buddhism' and 'The occult world' both of which sold well and enabled the Theosophical Society to expand in England, France and other European countries.

21)
In 1884 Blavatsky and Olcott visited Europe and called upon the Society for Psychical Research (SPR) to give evidence of the miracles they had seen. The SPR then sent out an investigator to report on the so called 'miracles'.
When the report eventually came back it stated that the 'miracles' were in fact fraudulent, and were the product of clever conjuring tricks carried out by Madame Blavatsky and friends. It was found that the 'Mahatma letters' were in Madame Blavatsky's writing and had been dropped through the gaps in the ceiling onto Sinnett's desk.

22)
The SPR quoted, "We regard her neither as the mouthpiece of hidden seers, nor as a mere vulgar adventuress; we think she has achieved a title to permanent remembrance as one of the most accomplished, ingenious and interesting impostors in history."

23)
Madame Blavatsky spent the remainder of her life living in England, lecturing to her still numerous followers, writing occult articles, essays, explanations and above all, her enormous book, 'The secret doctrine'.

24)
Madame Blavatsky died on 8th May 1891 and was cremated in Woking, England. The Society that she founded has survived and still flourishes, and there are many thousands of people who still consider that the SPR report on the Theosophical Society is adverse.