MADAME BLAVATSKY'S ANTECEDENTS
Helena Petrovna Hahn was born on August 12, 1831 in Ekaterinoslaw. She was the daughter of Col. Peter Hahn and the granddaughter of Lieutenant-General Alexis Hahn von RottensternHahn, a family originally from Mecklemburg and settled in Russia. Her mother, Helena Fadeeff, was the daughter of private consultant André Fadeeff and princess Helena Dolgorouki. The future Mme Blavatsky never forgot her noble origins, to which the neglected and even crude manners she affected formed a strange contrast. Even as a child she had behaved in an intolerable manner, throwing violent tantrums at the least annoyance, which made it impossible to give her a serious and steady education despite her great intelligence. At fifteen 'she swore in a manner that would have made a soldier blush', as her friend Olcott himself put it, and she retained this habit throughout her life. At sixteen, she was married off to General Nicephore Blavatsky, who was already quite old. She went with her husband to the province of Erivan, of which he was the vice-governor, but left the household at her first reprimand. It is said that the general died shortly after her departure, but we think this was not at all the case and that he lived another fifteen years, as Blavatsky mentions having spent a few days with him again in Tiflis in 1863.[1] In any event, this matter is of little importance.
Thus it was that in 1848 Mme Blavatsky's extraordinarily adventurous life began. During her travels through Asia Minor with her friend the Countess Kiseleff, she met a Copt (some say a Chaldean)
named Paulos Metamon, who claimed to be a magician and seems to have been something of a conjurer.[2] She continued her travels in the company of this individual, with whom she went to Greece and Egypt. Her funds nearly depleted, she then returned to Europe, and in 1851 we find her in London giving piano lessons for a living. Her friends claimed that she had come to this city with her father in order to study music, but this is obviously false, for at the time she was on bad terms with all her family, which explains why she dared not return to Russia. In London she frequented both spiritist[3] and revolutionary circles; in particular, she made friends with Mazzini, and around 1856 became a member of the Carbonarist association 'Young Europe'.
An extraordinary story is connected with this period, and it may be appropriate to say a few words about it. A special mission from Nepal came to London in 1851 (in 1854 according to others) and Mme Blavatsky was to later claim that among the members of this mission she had recognized a mysterious individual whom she had often seen at her side since childhood and who always turned up to help her when she was in difficulty. This protector, who was none other than the 'Mahätmä' Morya, then made known the role he had destined for her. As a result of this encounter Blavatsky supposedly traveled to India and Tibet, where she claims to have remained three years, during which the 'Masters' supposedly taught her occult science and developed her psychic faculties.[4] Such, at least, is the
version given by Countess Wachtmeister,[5] according to whom this stay was followed by another period in Egypt. This must have been Mme Blavatsky's second trip to this latter country, and we shall speak of this a little further on. On the other hand, Sinnett says that
after a course of occult study carried on for seven years in a Himalayan retreat, and crowning a devotion to occult pursuits extending over five-and-thirty or forty years, Madame Blavatsky reappeared in the world,
and he seems to place this retreat almost immediately prior to her departure for America. Now, even if such were the case, considering that Mme Blavatsky was only forty-two years old at the time of this departure, it would follow that her 'mystical studies' commenced directly at birth-or even a bit earlier! The truth is that this journey to Tibet is nothing but a pure invention of Mme Blavatsky, and according to what we just saw, one must admit that the descriptions she gave of this journey to various people were far from being in agreement. She did write an account of this journey, however, which came into the hands of Mrs Besant, who, when it was proven that the journey could not have taken place at the dates indicated, claimed that the account was not really by Blavatsky herself since she had written it under the dictation of a 'Mahätmä', and that her handwriting could not even be recognized. Moreover, the same was said about certain portions of her works, which is all too convenient a way of excusing the many contradictions and inconsistencies found therein. Be that as it may, it seems well-established that Mme
Blavatsky did not travel to India before 1878 and that until then there was never any question of 'Mahātmās'. What follows will provide sufficient proof of this.
Around 1858, Mme Blavatsky decided to return to Russia. She was reconciled with her father and stayed with him until 1863, during which time she went to the Caucasus, where she met her husband. A little later we find her in Italy where she had probably been called by a Carbonarist order. In 1866 she was with Garibaldi, accompanying him on his expeditions. She fought at Viterbo and then at Mentana, where she was gravely wounded and left for dead on the battlefield. However, she recovered and went to Paris to finish her convalescence. There, for some time she was under the influence of a certain Victor Michal, magnetizer and spiritist,[7] whose name is distorted at times in accounts relating to this period of her life: some called him Martial, others Marchal,[8] leading to his being mistaken for a vicar named Marchal who was also involved in hypnotism and psychic research. Michal, a journalist, was also a Mason, as was his friend Rivail, alias Allan Kardec, a former school teacher who became director of the Folies-Marigny theater and the founder of French spiritism.[9] It was Michal who developed Mme Blavatsky's mediumistic faculties, and in later days he always spoke with a certain horror of the 'split personality' she displayed from that period on, which well explains the very peculiar circumstances in which she later composed her works. Blavatsky was herself a spiritist at that time, or at least she said she was, and more precisely claimed to belong to the school of Allan Kardec, some of whose ideas she retained or later went back to, especially those regarding 'reincarnation'. If we seem dubious as to the sincerity of Mme Blavatsky's spiritism despite her numerous assertions on the subject prior to the foundation of her Society,[10] it is because she later declared that she had never been a 'spiritualist'[11] (in Anglo-Saxon countries this word
is often used as a synonym for spiritist).[12] One may well ask oneself at which moment she was lying.
However that may be, it is certain that from 1870 to 1872 Blavatsky practiced the profession of medium in Cairo, where she had encountered Metamon once again, and where, with his help and that of a French couple managing a hotel, the Coulombs, of whom we shall speak later, she founded her first 'miracles club', announced thus by a spiritist journal:
A society of spiritualists had been formed in Cairo [Egypt] under the direction of Mme Blavatsky, a Russian, assisted by several mediums. The sessions take place twice a week, on Tuesday and Friday evenings, with admission reserved to members only. The intention is to establish, jointly with the society, a reading room and a library of spiritualist and other works, as well as a journal entitled The Spiritualist Review of Cairo, which will be published on the 1st and the 15th of each month.[13]
This venture was not a success, however, for shortly thereafter Mme Blavatsky was convicted of fraud, as she was again to be some time later on several occasions in America, where she took up the same profession.[14] This is far from being rare among professional mediums, although we do not mean to say that everything in the phenomena that serve as a basis for spiritism is fake. Besides, these facts by themselves are entirely independent of the absurd interpretation that the spiritists give them. But in any case they have been frequently simulated by hoaxes, and anyone who makes a profession of producing these phenomena is highly suspect, for even in cases of real mediumistic capacities, personal interest can drive one to cheat when for one reason or another, real phenomena cannot be
produced. Such has certainly been the case of many well-known and reputed mediums, such as the famous Eusapia Paladino, and it was probably also true of Mme Blavatsky, especially at the beginning. When she was unmasked as an impostor, she hurriedly quit Cairo and returned to Paris, where she tried to live with her brother, but, unable to get along with him, she soon left for America, where two years later she was to found her Theosophical Society.