Isis Resurrected: Reckoning with Madame H.P. Blavatsky

The modern occult icon eludes facile analysis

Friends, It is difficult to name a modern figure of greater influence—and deeper controversy—than the unclassifiable Madame H.P. Blavatsky (1831-1891). This is the third in my series of historical portraits of modern occult revivalists, preceded by Eliphas Lévi (1810-1875) and P.B. Randolph (1825-1875). -M-

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Just how controversial is globe-spanning Russian occultist Madame H.P. Blavatsky (1831–1891), whose exploits and exotic claims enthralled Victorians and future generations?

Here is a story from my publishing days. In 2012, at the corner of Penguin Random House focused on metaphysical literature, I issued an excellent biography of the nineteenth-century icon by historian Gary Lachman.

The book received wide praise—along with scrutinizing and caustic coverage in arteries of mainstream culture, including Harper’s Magazine and The Paris Review. We had never sent them the book nor sought their attention.

I was surprised that bastions of lettered opinion dedicated significant space to a otherworldly traveler who died in 1891. Unremarkably, Blavatsky was depicted as a peddler of fake mysticism, manufactured mediumistic tricks, and charlatanry.

And that, mind you, is the duller end of the critics’ stick. The sharper one, pervasive online, calls her a purveyor of colonialism, genocide, and even a forerunner of Nazism.

Into the third decade of the twenty-first century, this figure of minor nobility who traversed the globe in search of esoteric wisdom, still attracts umbrage and debate—along with semi-devotional praise.