Contemporaries of Rudolf Steiner:

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (HPB, as she was often called) was born on August 12th, 1831 to a distinguished family of Russian nobility . She could trace her lineage back to Rurik, Viking founder of the Kievan Rus in the 9th Century, the first government of the region. Her family also included German and French Huguenot nobility, and her grandmother, Princess Helena Pavlovna Fadeyev, was an important scientist and self-taught polymath, fluent in five languages, and an important influence on HPB. Her mother, Helena Andreyevna von Hahn was an important novelist, considered the George Sand of Russia, whose books examined the status of women in society and social justice in general and still managed to be critically and commercially successful. On her father's side, HPB's grand-aunt Countess Ida Hahn-Hahn was an important novelist in German, writing about the same toand Ipics as HBP's mother. And her first Cousin, Count Witte, was a major reformer, first as Minister of Finance from 1894-1902 and later as the first Prime Minister of Russia in the reforms of 1905.

As a child HPB moved frequently. Her father was a military officer, and was frequently transferred. She experienced all of Russia from the capital city St. Petersburg, the Central-European small towns of the Ukraine, to the exotic Caucuses on the Eastern frontier. This allowed her to experience the range of cultures from Central Europe to the Orient and become familiar with non-European cultures and traditions while still a child. Her mother placed great importance on education; the young Helena learned five languages (including English from a native speaker) and became an accomplished musician. She was a voracious reader and diligent student but was also quite mischievous.  She seemed indifferent to her status as a member of the nobility, preferring to play with the common children, to the horror of her relatives.
Life brought her into contact with spiritual streams in many ways. An old nurse who was a master teller of fairy tales found a most earnest listener in HPB. As a teenager she sought out a local holy man who lived in a ravine of a nearby forest. He was versed in the secrets of nature, and she visited him frequently to learn all he could teach her about plants, herbs, and their properties. Her grandfather's library contained a large collection of books on alchemy and the occult. By fifteen she was thoroughly versed in the writings of Paracelsus, Heinrich Kunrath, Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim, and a host of others. What distinguished her were a keen intellect and a desire to understand systematically the hidden side of things.

When HPB was eleven, her mother died. She and her sister Vera then moved back with their maternal grandparents in the Ukraine. When she was fifteen, her grandfather was made State Treasurer of the newly conquered Caucuses region, and a year later the family moved to Tbilisi. There she met another person who was significant to her development, Prince Alexander Golitsyn, son of a family friend. Described as a famous freemason and mystic, he was a frequent visitor at the Fadeyev household for the three months that he was in Tbilisi, and he and HPB had many long conversations. By this time she had grown into a fiercely independent and willful young woman. And so the family began to look around for a suitable husband. HPB proved a challenge, for she was clearly not going to be the model of domesticity. Destiny struck through impetuousness.

One day HPB mocked an old man, a regional governor, calling him a "plumeless raven". Her governess in dismay declared that no man would ever be her husband, and that even the old man would decline her as a wife. Her dander up, HPB over the course of three days made the man, Nikifor Blavatsky, propose. She succeeded, and so at seventeen she was engaged. Startled at what she had done, she tried to back out. But the prevailing code of honor meant that if he would not release her, they had to go through with it. And he would not release her. So at seventeen she was married, and already on the day of the wedding made plans to escape. These were discovered, and she was placed under guard. They journeyed to his estate, and for three months she struggled, denying him conjugal rights, until one day the opportunity presented itself and she rode away on a horse, alone, all the way back to Tbilisi, a very dangerous undertaking in those days of banditry (the trip up to her new home had required a mounted guard of 200). From there she boarded a ship, ostensibly to travel back to her father in the Ukraine. But she gave her escort the slip, and sailed instead to Istanbul.

From Istanbul she moved around the near East, visiting Athens, Egypt and what is today Iraq. Everywhere she sought spiritual teachers and everywhere she was disappointed. No one had much to teach her.  "At Athens, in Egypt, on the Euphrates, everywhere I went I sought my [philosophers stone], … I have lived with the whirling Dervishes, with the Druses of Mt. Lebanon, with the Bedouin Arabs and the Marabouts of Damascus, I found it nowhere! I learned necromancy and astrology, crystal gazing and spiritualism – of "red Virgin" [an alchemical symbol for higher knowledge] no trace whatsoever!" She sometimes traveled in disguise, dressed as a young male scholar. In the end she would wander for over 20 years, sometimes spending time in Europe, visiting the United States several times, crossing the North American continent in the days before railroads, journeying to South (and probably also Central) America, India, Ceylon, and Kashmir. Her life reads like an improbable Victorian adventure novel and so unlikely for a woman traveling alone that it has been the source of contention from the outset. But enough of it has been documented that even if every last event is not proven and the exact dates of some are uncertain, she can easily be said to have been among the most widely traveled people of her generation. She was always searching for spiritual knowledge. She tells of learning voodoo in Louisiana, seeking out shamans in Eastern Canada, visiting Inca ruins in Peru, and of course of her attempts to find her spirit guide and Master in Tibet.

Returning to visit her family in Russia in 1859 at the age of 29, she manifested remarkable spiritualistic powers. Indeed, accounts of her abilities appear quite amazing, even impossible to skeptics and detractors. After five years in Russia, she again toured through the Middle East and at one point found herself in Italy in 1867, where she volunteered to assist Garibaldi in the cause of Italian independence. She was severely wounded in battle, but recovered and went east through the Balkans to India and again into Tibet, where she stayed for several years. Her stay proved to be the culmination of her quest. Through study at a Tibetan monastery she became thoroughly familiar with esoteric Buddhism. She would later write up what she had learned, along with commentary, in her book The Voice of the Silence, published in 1889. It was the first work to popularize Mahayana Buddhism in the West, and its authenticity and accuracy has been attested by many experts. It was even printed in Tibet and endorsed by the ninth Panchen Lama in 1927, who said she knew his predecessor well.

After her time in Tibet, she returned through the Middle East and sailed from Athens to Cairo. She became shipwrecked along the way when the boat she was in exploded (it was transporting gunpowder). Of 400 aboard, she was one of 20 to survive. In Cairo she attempted to set up a Spiritualistic society, but it was a disaster, as most of the "mediums" she recruited turned out to be frauds. She returned to Russia, then went west to Paris. While in Paris she received notice from her masters in Tibet to proceed to New York, and left the same night. She had a first class ticket, but on the way up to the ship met a woman with two small children crying. She stopped to ask what the matter was. The woman lamented that she had spent her last penny on steerage tickets to join her husband in New York, and they turned out to be counterfeit. Now she was stranded in a strange town with no money. HBP traded her first class ticket for four steerage tickets, and crossed the Atlantic in the cramped quarters of the lower class rather than above in luxury. It was a difficult crossing, but she arrived in New York in 1874.

HBP arrived in New York with a mission. Her teachers in Tibet wanted her to help save humanity from materialism. Her first job was to help convince people of the reality of other planes of existence, and towards this goal she sought out Olcott. She dazzled him and everyone else she met with her erudition and abilities, and in articles and lectures they promoted spiritualistic phenomenon. After about a year she started speaking out against the spiritualism, claiming the phenomena were insignificant, poorly controlled manifestations of a much larger and more important realm. She took on a few pupils and started imparting deeper esoteric secrets. Olcottt was one, W.Q. Judge another. Then she was told to found a society. A group of interested people were already meeting regularly to hear lectures. At one such meeting, Judge proposed to Olcott that they found a society, and Olcott agreed. At the next meeting they came up with the name: they would call it the Theosophical Society. A few more meetings were required to work out the rest of the details. On September 7th, 1875 Olcott gave the inaugural address as President and the Theosophical Society was officially founded.

The Theosophical Society grew slowly. HPB's attention was focused on writing a book, the 1800-page Isis Unveiled, which was published to much critical acclaim in 1877. Isis Unveiled was the most significant book on the occult yet published. It demonstrated a thorough knowledge of numerous occult traditions and exceeded in detail what was available from all other sources put together. Scholars of occultism, including numerous university professors, were amazed. Practitioners confirmed various claims. Interestingly, HPB did not claim direct authorship, but instead said she was presenting the message of her Masters.
Then in 1878 she suddenly moved to India, taking Olcott with her and leaving Judge in charge in New York. They initially set up headquarters for their Theosophical Society in Bombay, and it started growing. They traveled much over the next years, lecturing, holding private audiences, and writing numerous articles and pamphlets. Their work was popular, and they attracted many new members. Yet their work was not without opposition. While many yearned for spiritual knowledge, the general attitude of the educated classes at the time was empirical and scientific, with a strong materialistic bent. Such mainstream thinkers declared Blavatsky's work "hogwash"; she was clearly making everything up. A substantial exposé was published, and public opinion turned against her. She left India and traveled to London, leaving Olcott to manage the Society in India.

She returned to London well-known for her writings and immediately attracted a circle there. After a few years, this too ended with allegations of fraud, and HPB left for seclusion to Germany where she wrote her next book. This was The Secret Doctrine, a substantial two-volume work published in 1888. This would be her magnum opus, and the foundation of Theosophical work for the next century.  Helena Blavatsky died May 8th, 1891 working nearly to the end.