The
Blavatski Connection
Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831-1891) was
a Russian clairvoyant
and medium, founder of the Theosophical Society [1]
and writer of several books on occultism, among them Isis Unveiled and
the Secret Doctrine. She was a woman of remarkable energy and character.
She was the daughter of Colonel Peter Hahn and cousin of Count Sergei
Yulievich Witte, a Tsarist prime minister. She received no formal education
and attended no university. Just a few weeks before her 17th birthday she
married Nikifor Blavatsky, Vice-Governor of the province of Erivan in Trans-Caucasia.
Just after a few months of marriage, she ran away from her husband and
began a life of adventure which took he from Constantinople to London,
Paris, Cairo and Tiflis, and for a while she was the assistant to Daniel
Douglas Home, a famous spiritualist and levitationist.
While visiting New York she met Colonel Henry Steel Scott, a writer
for the New York Daily Graphic. This was the beginning of a long and fructiferous
association. In 1875 Colonel Scott and H. P. Blavatsky organized the Theosophical
Society. The Society grew rapidly and soon after became international.
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Mme. Blavatsky's mystic brooch shows her initials in an hexagram topped by a short-legged sinistroverse swastika standing on one of its angles and enclosed in a circle formed by a snake biting its tail. The snake biting its tail, also called the ouroborus, is an old symbol of the infinite. |