Helena Petrovna Blavatsky is one of the greatest mystics of all times and peoples, if only because no woman has had such a tremendous influence, including on men, without being endowed with bodily beauty. From 1848 to 1875, she made almost three round-the-world voyages, but she is famous not for this, but for the theosophy created by her.
Few people know Helena Hahn-Rottenstein and almost no one knows who Helena Betanelli is. But Elena Petrovna Blavatsky still has a large number of fans all over the world. Meanwhile, this is the same woman who, like samurai, changed her name several times in her life. For a completely banal reason - she got married twice.
Helena Blavatskaya was born on July 31 (August 12), 1831 in Yekaterinoslav under the name of Helena Petrovna von Hahn-Rottenstein. On the maternal side, Blavatsky's ancestors, through Mikhail Chernigovsky, ascended to the legendary founder of statehood in Russia - Rurik and Yaroslav the Wise. Mother Elena Andreevna Gan (nee Fadeeva) was a famous writer who earned the nickname “Russian Georges Sand).
On the line of her father - Peter Alekseevich Hahn, Elena Petrovna belonged to the Baltic, or, as they said then, the Ostsee, German clan Hahn (Hahn). Some have argued that the count family von Hahn of Basedow (Mecklenburg) was related to the Carolingian dynasty and the Germanic crusader knights. Apparently, it was an overkill for fortune so that the genes of two dynasties merged in one person - no documentary confirmation of this information has yet been found.
Like all the famous mystics of the past and future, Elena experienced several extraordinary episodes in her adolescence. One day, a 13-year-old girl was riding a horse suddenly carried away. Helen hung, entangled in the stirrups, and all the time, until the horse was caught, she felt how someone's invisible hands were supporting her body.
Blavatsky's bibliographer Boris Tsyrkov writes that “Elena was an extraordinary child and early on began to feel that she was different from those around her. She amazed her family and friends with her extraordinary psychic abilities. Extremely headstrong, Elena did not recognize any authorities, however, she was endowed with a very sensitive nature and a wide variety of talents. She had a brilliant ability for languages, she played the piano and drew excellently, in addition, she was a brave rider, fearlessly making horseback riding on half-run horses - she generally had an unusually subtle sense of nature. Even as a child, she began to realize that her life would become some kind of high service, that she was being guided and protected."
The girl will become Elena Petrovna Blavatsky at the age of 17 after her first marriage. Actually, her union with the vice-governor of the Erivan province Nikifor Vasilyevich Blavatsky, who was a good 20 years older than his chosen one, cannot be called a marriage.
The virgin bride vanished during the honeymoon, with all the ensuing consequences for the union of Hymen. At this time, Elena writes in her notebook the phrase: "A woman finds her happiness in the acquisition of supernatural powers, and love is only a bad dream, delirium." After escaping, she travels to Turkey, Egypt and Greece, living on the money that her father sends her.
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After the second marriage, her official name will sound like Helena Betanelly. In 1851, 20-year-old Blavatsky in London meets for the first time a man whom she already knows from her childhood visions - a Rajput initiate, teacher Morya. The Indian guru told Elena about what she had to do. Among the military-feudal class of the Rajputs (translated from the North Indian languages it means “son of the king”), women were highly respected and held a high position. It should be noted that during the period of the Muslim rulers of North India (12-18 centuries), it was the Rajputs who acted as the main defenders of Hindu values.
Blavatsky's rise to fame begins in 1874, after her arrival in New York, where she meets a lawyer, Colonel Henry Steel Olcott, a man of high moral character. In the fall of 1875, Blavatsky with Olcott and several other like-minded people created the Theosophical Society - the Theosophical Society. On November 17, 1875, Olcott officially announced its creation as president.
In September 1877, Blavatsky's Isis Unveiled, Isis Unveiled, was published in a New York publishing house, and the first thousand copies sold out in two days.
On July 8, 1878, Helena Blavatsky became the first Russian woman to become an American citizen. A variety of newspapers blared about this extraordinary event. However, after that she lived in the United States for only three years, after which she left with Olcott for Bombay. There they established the headquarters of the Society (later it would be moved to the city of Adyar). There they began publishing the first theosophical journal, The Theosophist, edited by H. P. Blavatsky.
In May 1880, Olcott and Elena went to Ceylon (Sri Lanka), where they began work on the revival of Buddhism in India. They both take panca sila (Five Sacred Commandments or Vows Required for Buddhists). The colonel himself later said that this step was simply a formal confirmation of their long-standing convictions with Elena.
Olcott and Blavatsky devote themselves completely to educational activities: they travel to different remote regions of India, found new branches of the Society, receive visitors, prepare materials for publication in their own magazine. The target audience of the articles was the Hindus themselves, in whom the Theosophists wanted to awaken an interest in the spiritual values that were contained in the ancient scriptures of their homeland.
In 1884, Olcott and Blavatsky departed for London, where they were taking a petition to the British government from the Buddhists of Ceylon. Despite the fact that Elena's health had already deteriorated greatly by that time, she is working on one of her most important final works - the "Secret Doctrine".
Meanwhile, during their journey with Olcott, in India the Jesuits were preparing a conspiracy against them. Moreover, it was attended by two of Blavatsky's servants. Elena, in order to find out the situation on the spot, returns to Adyar. She wants to sue her servants, suing them for libel in the allegedly fraudulent nature of her activities. However, other members of the Theosophical Society decide not to make this matter public, and Madame Blavatsky, without achieving the triumph of justice, leaves for Europe in March 1885. She will never return to India again.
Later it turned out that the whole "case" was completely fabricated by the Jesuits, who hated both the Theosophical Society itself and its founder.
Madame Blavatsky died in London on 8 May 1891 during a flu epidemic. Her remains were incinerated at the Woking Crematorium in Surrey. According to Colonel Olcott, one of the reasons why he decided to publish his memoirs was the desire "to leave for the future the most accurate description of the great and mysterious personality of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, one of the founders of the Theosophical Society."
The colonel, distinguished by decency, wrote: “It was precisely because I knew her much better than others that she was more mysterious to me than to everyone around her … What part of her conscious life belonged only to her, and what part came from some essence that remained in the shadow ? I dont know. If we accept the hypothesis that she was the medium of the Great Teachers, and no one else, then the riddle is easily solved, since in this case it is possible to explain the changes in her mind, character, tastes, inclinations."
“Elena Petrovna Blavatskaya, truly our national pride. Great Martyr for Light and Truth, - the philosopher Nicholas Roerich admired her.
Booker Igor