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It would probably be no exaggeration to say that the entire revival of occult and esoteric knowledge as a form of public knowledge, rather than as arcana known only to a few, stems from the tremendous intelligence and energy of one woman - Madame Helena Petrova Blavatsky (1831-1891), the founder of the Theosophical Society. If the Golden Dawn and its off-shoots represented the private face of occultism, the Theosophical Society was its public face.
Born of Russian Aristocratic parents, Blavatsky, a flamboyant and charismatic personality, was from an early age aware of her psychic abilities. She spent much of her life travelling through Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and America. Through her travels and under various teachers she was able to further develop her psychic powers. She claimed to have several times entered Tibet, which at that time was practically inaccessable to foreigners. It was there that she claimed to have met the secret Masters or Adepts who she said appointed her as their worldly representative.
The concept of Masters may have been derived from the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor, a little-known occult organisation that was established in London in 1870, that Blavatsky was involved in for a time, under the guidance of Max Theon (who according to Mirra Mother's Agenda, vol 3, p.452) she met in Cairo, although the matter of influence, and even if they actually did meet, is debatable - see Amazon com The Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor p.9). Blavatsky later broke with the H. B. of L., never mentioned anything at all about Theon. Neveretheless, the similarity in parts of Blavatsky and Theon's respective teachings are striking, especially as regards the series of planes and seven subplanes.
According to external link K. Paul Johnson, the most plausible sources for HPB's cosmological ideas are:
"1.Isma'ili gnosis, where all three uses of seven as in HPB's writings are combined: the sevenfold universe, sevenfold initiatory path, sevenfold evolutionary process. I know of nowhere else that those specific uses are found together.
2.Kabbalah, where the sephiroth, globes of the Tree of Life, are part of esoteric framework HPB refers to consistently as relevant to her own understanding.
3.The Sant Mat tradition, which in its Radhasoami manifestion encountered by HPB in 1880s India taught a system of multiple planes of existence that could be successfully navigated by Mahatmas and their initiates but not by others. But HPB took all this and gave it a pseudoscientific gloss. "
In another book, Amazon com The Masters Revealed: Madame Blavatsky and the Myth of the Great White Lodge, SUNY Press, Paul Johnson argues that the "mahatmas" were dramatised historical adepts with invented names. David Pratt opposes this thesis in his The Theosophical Mahatmas - A Critique of Paul Johnson's New Myth.
In New York in 1875, Madam Blavatsky, with the help of an American lawyer and former soldier Colonel Henry Steel Olcott (1832-1907), and an Irish-born lawyer external link William Q. Judge (1851-1896), founded a new society "to collect and diffuse a knowledge of the laws which govern the Universe". They called it the Theosophical Society, from theosophy, a Neoplatonic term meaning "Divine Wisdom" or "Wisdom of the Gods".
Travelling to India, Blavatsky and Olcott established themselves at Adyar, near Madras, the proporty they aquired there eventually becoming the world headquarters of the Society. They then vistited Ceylon, where they converted (at least nominally). Then in Europe they established the nucleus of the movement in Britian, and no less than three Theosophical Societies in Paris.
Coming at a time when Spiritualism and Mesmerism were all the rage, when Darwin's scientific discoveries had undermined the authority of the church, and a magical-occult revival was underway in France, the time was certainly propitious. The new society flourished, disseminating occult and Eastern teachings to the intelligent public at large, and providing a powerful alternative to the restrictive dogmas of the conservative churches, the arid vision of materialistic science, and the fairy-floss superficialities of Spiritualism.
Within a few short years other movements and organisations had sprung up alongside the Spiritualists and Blavatsky's Theosophical Society. Mary Baker Eddy's Christian Science, the Society for Psychical Research, and the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn were perhaps the three most important. The Occult rennaisance was well and truely flourishing. But it was to last only a few decades before conservatism once again took over. Not until the Counterculture movement of the mid-sixties would any comparable revolution of consciousness occur.
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