A Controversial Woma

Home , Isis Unveiled, Theosophical Society, Theosophy

HELENA PETROVNA BLAVATSKY’S ESOTERIC TRADITION

Tim Rudbøg

1. Introduction

H. P. Blavatsky (1831–1891), a controversial woman of Russian noble descent who also became one of the most influential esotericists of the ‘occult revival’ in the nineteenth century, spent a lifetime in cre- ative hunger for wisdom, which caused her to travel throughout most of the world in search of esoteric knowledge and esoteric traditions. In 1875 she co-founded the well-known Theosophical Society; apart from her two major works Isis Unveiled (1877) and The Secret Doctrine (1888), she also wrote what now constitutes fourteen large volumes of collected writings on esoteric topics related to many different traditions. The esotericism expounded in these works, usually labelled ‘Theosophy’ in its capitalized form, can be said, both historically and sociologically, to have formed the overall occult worldview of the time, as it came to represent an alternative cosmology to that of established religion and science, as well as fostering several social settings for the growing interest in occult knowledge and occult powers.1 H. P. Blavatsky’s Theosophy thus also represents one of the most comprehensive and influential constructions of an esoteric tradition in the domain of modern esotericism. Her esoteric tradition is strongly related to her famous ‘Mahatmas’ who were perceived to be the hidden custodians of Theosophy. While the masters are central to Theosophy and much scholarly work has been done to identify them historically,2 the aim of this paper is to focus on a less explored area: the particular function of the masters in relation to Blavatsky’s idea of a timeless

1 Hanegraaff has stated that ‘Theosophy may be considered the archetypal manifes- tation of occultist spirituality at least until far into the 1970s’, Hanegraaff, ‘The Study of Western Esotericism’, 496. For an account of Blavatsky’s life, influence and work see: Godwin, The Theosophical Enlightenment, 277–331; Goodrick-Clarke, Helena Blavatsky, 1–20; Cranston, H. P. B.; Hanegraaff, New Age Religion, 442–482; Santucci, ‘Blavatsky, Helena Petrovna’, 177–185. 2 See: Johnson, The Masters Revealed. Idem, In Search of The Masters. 162 tim rudbøg truth and the flux of history, or what in this article will be termed ‘the two traditions’. In the present article the notion of constructing an esoteric tradition is generally used with reference to the act of creatively constructing a narrative that explains how what is taken to be esoteric knowledge has been transmitted through history. That the construction of his- torical accounts and traditions is related to narration has been a central topic during the past fifty years after the ‘failure’ of law-governed accounts of history. In 1965 Arthur Danto already noted that ‘history tells stories’.3 Louis Mink further argued that narrative is the natural medium of historians and that it is ‘a primary and irreducible human capacity . . . so primary, in fact, that the real wonder is that the historians were so late in discovering it’.4 Paul Ricoeur went as far as stating that ‘the meaning of human existence is itself narrative’ and that history therefore should be understood as narrative.5 Following a similar line of thought, Roland Barthes argued that in every literary output or fabrication there is always some inherent argument that the narration proposed is reality itself—or as he wrote, narration is instituted as ‘the privileged signifier of the real’.6 Hayden White similarly argued that every construction of history inherently contains a metahistory or ide- ology prior to the writing of history. This ‘tropological mode’ shapes the narrative construction of history from beginning to end, White argued.7 Likewise, these theoretical considerations on writing history are used here to account for the narrative construction of esoteric traditions by esotericists.

2. Theosophy and Ancient Knowledge

The first step towards an understanding of Blavatsky’s construction of an esoteric tradition is her use and definition of the word ‘theosophy’ itself. Blavatsky’s idea of Theosophy is closely related to her notion of an esoteric tradition, not only because Theosophy is the pivotal ele- ment in Blavatsky’s work, but also because it is the wisdom or esoteric

3 Danto, Analytical Philosophy, 111. 4 Mink, ‘Everyman His or Her Own Annalist’, 239. 5 Ricoeur, ‘Dialogue’, 17. 6 Barthes, ‘The Discourse of History’, 18. Idem, ‘To Write’, 144. 7 White, Metahistory, 13, 30–31, 431.