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- [00:05]
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- [00:26]
Peter Franker
Is it in you?
- [00:27]
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Now available nationwide.
- [00:32]
Afwa Hersh
Today we're talking about a woman whose influence is so vast, you've probably interacted with her ideas without ever knowing her name. If you've ever used the word karma in a casual conversation, talked about reincarnation or step foot inside a European or American yoga studio, you're living inside a cultural landscape that she helps to build.
- [00:57]
Peter Franker
We are talking about the undisputed godmother of the New Age movement. We're talking about a Russian aristocrat, a globe trotting adventurer, a chain smoking mystic, and arguably one of the most polarizing figures of the 19th century, Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky.
- [01:16]
Afwa Hersh
She practiced the occult and founded the Theosophical Society A, an organization that attempted to synthesize Western science, Eastern philosophy and ancient mysticism into one grand unifying theory of the universe.
- [01:33]
Peter Franker
No biggie. I mean, if you're going to be ambitious, you might as well go for it. Synthesize Western science. What do you say? Eastern philosophy and mysticism? Yes, it's a one giant theory. I mean, there's a best selling book in there, surely.
- [01:48]
Afwa Hersh
Well, it's funny you say that because, you know, some of us are a little bit skeptical of these binaries of west and east anyway. But there's no doubt that she was somebody who was trying to mine all of those traditions for her own new unique philosophy. But that's a risky business. She was shadowed by relentless accusations of fraud, forgery and basic parlor tricks. Was she a profound spiritual pioneer who bridged the gap between social called east and so called West? Or was she a brilliant charlatan who knew exactly what the Victorian public wanted to buy? We will find out in this episode on Helena Blavatsky.
- [02:40]
Peter Franker
Hello and welcome to a new episode of Legacy. I'm Peter Franker.
- [02:44]
Afwa Hersh
I'm AFWA Hash.
- [02:45]
Peter Franker
And this is Legacy, the show that explores the lives, events and ideas that have shaped our world and asks whether they have the reputations that they truly deserve.
- [03:02]
Afwa Hersh
This is Helena Blavatsky's karma.
- [03:12]
Peter Franker
Okay, Afra, this one is a new one for me. So I know Helena Blavatsky's name, but I didn't know anything about her before we started researching Apart from her name and the fact that she had a outsized reputation. But you've known about her for a long time.
- [03:27]
Afwa Hersh
I'm actually really surprised. Peter. Maybe that's just like me being very basic and assuming that you know about all things fashion and everything. CHAMBERLAY. But yes, I guess I have spent more time swimming in the murky waters of the New Age movement than perhaps you have. She is a gigantic figure, but not necessarily for all good reasons. So let's get into it. She was born Helena von Hahn in 1831 in what's now Ukraine, but was then part of Russia. And she was by any measure born into privilege. She was part of the Russian aristocracy. Her mother was a famous novelist, her grandmother was a self taught scientist. So in an era where women in general in Europe and Russia were not given opportunities to pursue their intellectual curiosity, she was from a lineage of fiercely independent, intellectual women who lived unapologetically with their minds.
- [04:23]
Peter Franker
And that spirit you could pick in her too. So when she's 17, she marries a much older man, Nikifor Blavatsky, who is the vice governor of Yerevan in what's now Armenia. And that marriage lasts basically a few months. She runs off, escapes on horseback, catches the steam at a Constantinople and essentially then disappears off the map. But she obviously is quite headstrong, quite impulsive, one might even say entitled.
- [04:52]
Afwa Hersh
I mean, it is an incredible story to basically escape your marriage on horseback, jump on a steamer to Constantinople and then disappear. And biographers call this period of her life the lost years because for the next two decades they don't know where she was. All we know is where she said she was. She claimed to have traveled the globe going to Egypt, Greece, the Americas and India. And the most crucial of these claims is that she says she spent time in Tibet. Now, Tibet in this era was completely closed to foreigners. And she claims that she was the exception who managed to get into Tibet where she studied under enlightened, spiritually advanced people called the Mahatmas, the masters of the ancient wisdom. Conveniently, a claim is very, very hard to verify because no one else could get into Tibet to find out.
- [05:45]
Peter Franker
I mean, look, this is, this is a world that is becoming more closely connected than in the past. I mean, it's an odd thing to claim to have done. You know, this is the age of the kind of steamboat. We did a series that and on, on how shipping starts to knit the world together. It's an age where telegraph lines are starting to be put down all around the world. And you know, if you are young. Providing you've got a private income of some kind, and not just that, but control of your own money, then it's not impossible that you get an opportunity to move around. It's thrilling, it's exciting. This is the age of, you know, remember the, the grand tour of British aristocrats traveling around the Mediterranean. That's 100 years earlier. So, you know, the, the, the first package draws to places like Egypt. The idea that you should go look at civilizations to the east is something that has a narrative. But if you are a young woman on your own, it's a little bit unusual, because how you get made to be, how you make your logistical plans. But if you've got enough money, you can. I have to say, most scholars think that she didn't make it to Tibet. But what isn't argued about is the fact that she obviously has spent some time absorbing, learning about, thinking about Egyptian philosophy and mysticism, about spiritualism, about Hinduism, about Buddhism, and she's busy building up an encyclopedic mental library. At the very least, she's intellectually incredibly curious. In this time of a world that is reshaping itself in the 19th century,
- [07:12]
Afwa Hersh
she has been absorbing these ideas. And when she emerges into the public eye decades later, in the 1870s, she is no longer just a runaway aristocrat. By now she is fully grown. She's magnetic, an imposing woman. She has these piercing blue eyes, this incredibly intense intellect, and a reputation for making physical objects materialize out of thin air. So let's work out how she got there. PETER we don't know where she was in the lost years, but there are things about her childhood we know that help make sense of why she had this hunger for these esoteric ideas. And it really starts actually in her aristocratic Russian upbringing.
- [07:55]
Peter Franker
PETER well, the Russians, you know, start as a state from the under, under Ivan the Terrible and others. That starts to grow from its base of Vladimir and then Moscow, which is nearby, and over the course of the 1700s, expands very rapidly, particularly under people like Catherine the Great. PETOMKIN One of the things that then goes through Russian intellectual thought, which you still see today, is how European is Russia, how Asian is Russia, and where are the sort of boundaries of what it means to be Russian? And those are complicated discussions even today, which take you up to how Russia engages with China, but also minorities within its own borders. But one of the kind of constants is about the presence of nomadic peoples in what's now Central Asia, Siberia and beyond. So in about the 1630s, the Kalmique, a nomadic Mongolic people who practice Tibetan Buddhism, are located in Central Asia and then move to the lower Volga region near the Caspian Sea, where they establish the Kalmiq Khanate. And that's one model of people who sit on the edge of what the Russians think of as their world, but offer a different type of living, a different. I mean, literally, not just a different language, but you know that nomadism and semi sedentarism is very different to the court of a. Of a tsar. And so if you're interested and engaged in trying to think about peripheries, borderlands, what people are thinking and doing, then these peoples, like the Kalmique, offer very interesting ways of you which you could project, because they don't offer the same kind of model as the British and empires moving towards into Africa and into Asia. Perhaps it's a bit more similar towards to what Europeans find in North America, where again, you find different kind of tribal groupings, but they get flattened in a way that populations on the Russian peripheries don't too. So the Kalmyk play an important role in all of this too. And they play an important role for her family, by the way.
- [09:54]
Afwa Hersh
So the Kalmyk, as you said, you know, they're practicing Tibetan Buddhism, they're nomadic, but they swear an oath of allegiance to the Russian tsar and they act essentially as a buffer state for Russia, protecting them, fighting with them against neighbouring empires and tribes. So, you know, in these kind of imperial systems, you get these groups from other cultural and ethnic backgrounds who are willing to work with, defend, protect the kind of imperial heartland and, and for their own strategic reasons, that's what they do. And in their sphere, as part of this, this Russian world, are governed by a trustee who's an official administrator for the Russian government, who happens to be Helena Blavatsky's grandfather. As a result, Helena and her mother spend their summers in Astrakhan at this kind of Kalmic summer camp. And this is where Helena, at an early age is not just exposed, but spends very formative periods of her childhood in this Kalmic world where she is learning about Tibetan Buddhism, where she's learning to ride horses the way they do, where she's learning to read rudimentary Tibetan. She is getting a whole other cultural education that the vast majority of European aristocrats would never have. And it obviously connects with her without
- [11:14]
Peter Franker
going down a rabbit hole of academia. The Kalmique, like all groups are, they are, they have to be negotiated with all the time and it's non static. So it's not that the Kalmyk are all Tibetan Buddhists or even Buddhists. They're what, they're what you want them to be if you're the Westerner who's writing down their history. So there are lots of belief systems within individual groups that's constantly being changed, what their role is on the edge of the Russian spheres of influence. But what's interesting about Helena is that she doesn't just have her eyes open because she goes to Astrakhan, but also she starts to engage with written materials and with interesting people. So, for example, her great grandfather, Prince Pavel Dolgorukov, who's living in Saratov, has an extensive library that she starts to read about. Dolgov is an unusual man, which in other words, means a man of his times who meets these extraordinary occult figures himself, magicians, philosophers all over Europe. His library is filled with esoteric books. Helena gravitates towards this world of people who are unusually interesting. When she's living with her aunt in Tiflis in Georgia, she befriends Alexander Vladimirovich Galitsyn, who is a Russian nobleman, a Freemason, who encourages her to think about and to explore the esoteric arts. So this must feel incredibly invigorating. This was a long way from the polite salons of societies and capital cities where people are thinking about what they're gonna eat, how they're gonna dance. This is kind of thrilling as well. And for a young, clever woman like Helena, she exposes herself to different life ways, different thinking, different ways of realising how rich that world is all around her. And it changes her character. It brings her out to become much more extroverted, doesn't it?
- [12:55]
Afwa Hersh
It does, but I think it chimes with her inherent character in a way as well, because she is, as a child, quite introverted, but also a gifted storyteller, somebody who naturally kind of rejects authority and dislikes rigid social structures. She was described as often socializing with lower class children in ways that wasn't really deemed appropriate for an aristocrat. She's very sensitive and I think, crucially, Peter, she believes that she has psychic abilities. And, you know, with these things, it's often the narrative that someone has about themselves that is such a defining factor. She believes that she has this special mission in life, to be guided by a higher power. And she says during these trips to Georgia or staying with her aunt in Georgia, that she experiences the paranormal. She has these visions of a mysterious Indian man and she's not even 20 years old when she starts holding seances in her grandfather's house for family and friends. And, you know, again, these things, I think can be a self fulfilling prophecy. If you're somebody who believes in the supernatural, the paranormal, you start to kind of think differently about your dreams. You start to think about experiences you've had or thoughts, ideas, and start to kind of insert them into this narrative of you having special powers and gifts. And again, I don't really know where you distinguish between real powers and gifts and the belief that you have real powers and gifts because the effect is often the same, that you kind of move through life as somebody on a bit of a different frequency. And you can see the origins of that in this very young Helena. We don't know where she went during the lost years, but she does Emerge in the 1870s in New York at an interesting time, as we'll find out, as this unique person who has this very unique idea of herself, idea of the world, and is in a place where these factors can collide to create something completely different.
- [14:52]
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- [15:07]
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- [15:56]
Peter Franker
So look, the middle of the 19th century. There are plenty of people, particularly in Europe, who are, I suppose you call it, dabbling with the occult, trying to find ways of connecting with paranormal. This is an age of ghost stories, of seances, where what Helena brings that's unusual and different is a whole set of new tools and new ideas from worlds that other people haven't really thought that much about. I mean, that western experiences with Africa, with Asia, with different belief systems, is it very extensive by this time? This is 300 years of European empires and a couple hundred years of European global empires. But there's Been no thought about how to really integrate that into the same way. It's perhaps not a surprise that AFWA that when she arrives in New York, a kind of melting point city where everything is brought together all over the world, that maybe that's a place that's going to be unusually receptive to her, to her ideas. So she arrives in 1873. AFW, how does it go from there?
- [16:52]
Afwa Hersh
It's a really interesting time to arrive in New York and in the US the whole country is still traumatized from the Civil War, and this is actually a massive catalyst for spiritualism in America. So you've had this generation that's experienced, experienced, you know, since the end of the Civil War in 1865, an unprecedented catastrophic loss of life for them. Roughly 750, 000 soldiers have died, many of them far from home in chaotic battlefields. You know, this is a country that's from its inception being wrought by violence, but that's mainly been the indigenous people who have died in massive numbers. This is the first time that kind of white Americans and of course many other ethnic groups, you know, Native Americans, African Americans who were caught up in the Civil War, are experiencing these losses as part of an American army. And until then they'd been able to especially kind of white America, have this idea of a good death, this Victorian noble death, dying at home in your bed, surrounded by family and friends, saying your final words. The war completely shattered this. Families are receiving letters that their sons, their husbands, their brothers are simply missing. You know, they're buried somewhere in mass, unmarked graves. This is something that Europeans are so familiar with from the First World War. But, you know, these Americans haven't experienced something like this before. And so they're looking to new solutions or sources of peace or comfort in this cataclysmic time. And they find that in spiritualism, they are starting to explore, sometimes out of desperation or trauma, ideas about how they can get closure with loved ones who have died. The seance becomes this newly appealing opportunity to say goodbye, to make sure a loved one was safe in the summerland, which is what spiritualists are calling heaven at the time. So you get this immense spiritual upheaval. And then of course, you have this immense electoral upheaval as well, Peter, that
- [18:50]
Peter Franker
sense of the foundations suddenly dissolving around you. I guess this is the one key example is the publication or the Origins of Species by Charles Darwin in 1859, and that starts to change literal biblical timelines about when creation happened, how it happened, why it happened so suddenly. Traditional Religious authority started to shift. Lots of Victorians feeling trapped between a rigid, traditional Christianity, often promising hellfire, death and destruction, and then the new cold scientific materialism that replaces it too. So you've got that on the move. You've got the technological context of change again today. Today's world of worrying about tech change. Those shifts in the middle of the 19th century, the industrialization, the ways in which fossil fuels of new inventions, of the telegraph, of the railways, distances suddenly becoming controlled, and, you know, these have profound impacts on how people are navigating the world around them. They offer huge opportunities, but also great uncertainty, too. Plus the idea of how this even works, that a man sitting in New York tapping out a message in Morse code can be heard in London. I guess that fuels the idea that if you can send messages like that over the ether effectively, then perhaps spiritual messages being telegraphed from one world to the next wasn't so far removed too. So you've got all these ideas that are on the move, and then you've got plenty more Afro, like gender models started to change.
- [20:21]
Afwa Hersh
Yeah, I mean, the tech is such a big factor because for most people, the idea of a telegraph is basically magic. You know, you used to have to send a letter and wait three weeks while it traveled across the ocean, and now you can instantly send messages across thousands of miles of wire. It feels like magic. Peter, when we did a bonus episode, which, if you haven't subscribed yet, subscribe, you can hear it about the remote control. You can imagine somebody who used to have to get up and push a button on their TV to now just be given a device that you compress and it changes the channel. You don't know how that works. It's just this kind of magical frequency. Spiritualism makes sense. It's like, well, if we can press a button and have the channel change, why can't we, you know, light a candle and have a spirit appear? And the role of women in this is such a big part of the story, because women are still, in the 1870s, barred from preaching in churches, from basically speaking on political matters in the public realm. But spiritualism offers a different paradigm. Beyond the strict patriarchal sphere. Anyone can be a medium. There's not really any barriers to entry. There's not really any accreditation. And actually, women uniquely have an advantage because people believe that women are more delicate and receptive to spiritual vibrations. So all of these ideas of a woman's kind of fragility and empathy that work against her in her being regarded as an equal to men, Here, they're an advantage because she is seen as somebody more able to work as a spirit guide. She's a vessel. And that is useful when it comes for channeling. So women are actually weaponizing this receptiveness to their spiritual abilities and then funneling this newfound power into all kinds of things that if they can speak to spirits, why can't they deliver speeches on abolition, on being allowed to vote, on marriage reform? And so Blavatsky is stepping into environment as a woman who claims to be a spiritualist and have these special powers. At a time when people are grieving, they are feeling anxiety and discomfort at the rate of change. They're also basically very gullible.
- [22:32]
Peter Franker
And gullible provides a great business model. I mean, you know, it's really important to note that she's not alone. There are plenty of people offering these services of being able to connect with the paranormal, to explain things. Where Blavatsky is very clever is to say that she's not one of those. Not only is she not one of those who's just promising stuff is not true, she critiques it, saying, look, all this psychic stuff, maybe it's real, but it's not dead Aunt Mary knocking on the table. I can explain what's really going on here. And it's all to do with real ancient science. And that is a marketing genius, to be able to provide a context while also chipping away at people who are potentially her rivals. And that. That attracts a lot of interest and in particular attracts the attention of a journalist and a lawyer named Henry Steele Alcott. Afwa.
- [23:19]
Afwa Hersh
Henry Steele Alcott's an important figure in the Blavatsky story because he is respected by the establishment. He is a conventional figure. He is accreditized. He is an agricultural expert, a lawyer, a journalist. He's earned respect during the Civil War, where he served as a special commissioner investigating fraud and corruption in the military so well that the government gave him a special commendation. So here's someone who's built his reputation on evidence, bureaucracy, logic. And like many intellectuals of his era, he also had this lingering fascination with spiritualism. He wanted to know if it could be proven scientifically. And in 1874, he's working for the New York Daily Graphic, where he encounters Helena Blavatsky. And he is instantly seduced, basically, by her character, by her magnetism, by the exoticism of all her kind of Tibetan Buddhism and her coherent offering. She is giving people like Olcott a science of the soul. She's using the language that they want to hear of science of theses. She's saying that all of these psychic and seance experiences that people are having, they're not fake, they're just low level. They are just the shells or the psychic echoes. She can offer the complete framework for the paranormal. She is going straight to the top. And this completely blows Olcott's mind. He wants a framework, he wants a cohesive theory of the universe that can make it make sense. And so they start this partnership which offers the perfect complement. She's the visionary, she's magical, she's charismatic. He's the administrator. He can draft bylaws and run public organizations and handle disputes. He legitimizes Blavatsky. And now that they have each other, they're able to start a society. And this will become the Theosophical Society.
- [25:18]
Peter Franker
Peter so it's like finding exactly the right co host for a podcast fit, isn't it? You've got to have. You've got to the year.
- [25:25]
Afwa Hersh
I don't know, I'm still looking.
- [25:26]
Peter Franker
I think you're the Helena to my. Yeah, to my Odell. You know, I think I kind of
- [25:32]
Afwa Hersh
love that, minus the Charlotte skeleton bit. I, I'm taking that as a compliment.
- [25:37]
Peter Franker
I think it's that, that you're right. It's. It's realizing that there is a way which this is not just seen as a cynical business opportunity. It's a way of trying to explain things, introduce new ideas to people. And you know, Olcott, in fact goes on to have a incredible legacy of his own. He's still revered today as a figure in the revival of Buddhism in, in Sri Lanka. But their stated goals are really ambitious. In the 1870s, they've. They want to form a universe of brotherhood, of humanity, without distinction of race or creed or color, which is incredibly progressive for the time, even provocative, even even though the civil war in the US has just finished. But they want to study ancient Eastern religions, they want to investigate unexplained laws of nature. And in 1877, Blavatsky publishes her first massive book called ISIS Unveiled, which is a huge success. And its first printing runs out in just 10 days.
- [26:25]
Afwa Hersh
I need to sell out. A first print run in 10 days is a massive achievement for.
- [26:30]
Peter Franker
Well, I've done that, obviously, so have you. That's in it, no problem.
- [26:34]
Afwa Hersh
Not for a great of history and an eminent professor at Oxford, Peter. But this is a relatively unknown Russian immigrant who has kind of come out of nowhere and written also unlike you, whose books are very readable and accessible and Compelling. This is a 1,200 page.
- [26:54]
Peter Franker
Yeah, that's even longer divide. Yeah, yeah.
- [26:56]
Afwa Hersh
Pretty dense book. Offering a systematic takedown of the two biggest authorities of the 19th century. In the first volume, she's going for science. She attacks scientific materialism, the ideas championed by Darwin and Thomas Huxley, that the universe is this cold, mechanical, biological accident devoid of spiritual meaning. And in her second volume, she goes for religion. She turns her sights on the Christian church, arguing that the dogmatic, institutional religion of the church has completely lost its spiritual essence. It's replaced divine ancient wisdom with all these rigid rules and historical inaccuracies. And I have to say those are ideas that have aged very well, because I suspect there'll be many people listening to this who've never heard of Helena Blavatsky will have made or at least heard those same critiques today of science and religion. You know, science is too detached from the divine and the spiritual and meaning, and that religion has also lost its spiritual core and become about rules and institutions. Blavatsky offered a solution to these failings, and she called it the perennial philosophy.
- [28:07]
Peter Franker
And it's a kind of Da Vinci Code. You know, everything, throw the kitchen sink at it. So she argues that rather than Darwin or organ mainstream religion, there's an ancient, secret universal wisdom that predates all of this. And according to Blavatsky and Isis unveiled the great sages of history. You know, Buddha, Jesus, Plato, Pythagoras are all tapping into the exact same ancient source. And furthermore, magic and occult are not superstitions. She says they're highly advanced natural scientists that the ancients understood but the modern humanity had forgotten. So it solves all sorts of problems. I mean, the timing is absolutely spot on. The 1870s, a time of intense intellectual whiplash. Lots of people are upset by Darwin. They find it very difficult to unravel or to believe what he's saying. It's very challenging and provocative, too. Isis Unveil offers a thrilling new option. It says to readers, you don't have to abandon science to be spiritual. You don't have to go to church to understand the divine. So she frames mysticism as legitimate investigative science and also apolitical. And it's a kind of masterstroke.
- [29:14]
Afwa Hersh
If you listen to our episode on Nostradamus, you'll know that one of the pillars of occult practice has always been this excavating of lost ancient texts, this idea that the ancients had the answer, but we lost it, and now we can rediscover it. This is something that Helena Blavatsky also does. She's flooding her audiences with this dizzying mix of Kabbalah, Egyptian mythology, alchemy, early interpretations of Hinduism and, and Buddhism. And while scholars of these actual texts and religions go absolutely mental when they try to make sense of her interpretations because they're very flawed and they really betray, in many respects, a lack of depth or real knowledge, she was very good at packaging them and making them accessible to a reader in New York or London. Have you ever read the book the Secret, Peter?
- [30:04]
Peter Franker
No.
- [30:05]
Afwa Hersh
I'm so surprised it's not on your syllabus. I mean, what are you even teaching?
- [30:09]
Peter Franker
Tell me about the Secret. Is that one of these?
- [30:11]
Afwa Hersh
I don't know about the Secret.
- [30:13]
Peter Franker
No, I haven't been included in the circle of trust yet.
- [30:15]
Afwa Hersh
Damn. Okay, I am passing on the secret now. The Secret, I think, is a 21st century version of ISIS Unveiled. It's a book that builds up this height that I have the answer. There's this lost knowledge, there's this hidden system. It's the answer to every problem you have. If you're poor, if you're overweight, if you're lone, if you are affected by what, anything. I can solve your problem. You just need to know this ancient secret. And. Oh, no, now it's going to be a spoiler if you haven't read the Secret. But anyway, I'm not selling, I'm ordering
- [30:48]
Peter Franker
it as you, as you, as you, as you speak.
- [30:50]
Afwa Hersh
Yeah, I mean, unfortunately, it's a book that could be summarized in like one paragraph, but I think it's a really interesting paragraph. And it's basically about the Law of Attraction. It's the idea that basically all knowledge systems and religions understand the law of Attraction. That you manifest what you think about, what you feel like you already have. If you have this idea of abundance, you attract more abundance. That the universe kind of meets like with like and it presents it in the language of this is a law. This is like a law of physics and science and divinity and psychology, that it's this consistent across all parts of the living universal experience. And then it draws on specific ideas and prophets and, you know, there's a bit of Bible and a bit of Buddha and a bit of Torah and a bit of Quran. You know, there's everything pops up a little bit. I think ISIS Unveiled is a bit like that. It has enough substance that people can't dismiss it, that they are able to feel like this is a serious idea. But there is a lot of creative repackaging, invention and writing Honestly, kind of like thinking threading together this new narrative. And it is a very attractive mix. And by the way, I'm not dissing the secret. I actually have a lot of time for the Law of Attraction. But what I find so fascinating is the attempt to make it sound like it fits into the kind of Western scientific language that I think audiences want before they can trust that something is credible. And Helena Blavatsky gets it completely. And that is why her book sells out and her cultural impact becomes absolutely undeniable.
- [32:32]
Peter Franker
PETER but it's not without its problems. So soon after it's published, a researcher named William Emmett Coleman finds that she's been a prolific plagiarizer. So there are thousands of uncredited quotations, specific books that have been ripped off and bundled in together. And for her followers, it doesn't really matter what Blavatsky's written about. They're not interested in whether she's rigorous from a scholarly point of view. They don't see it as an academic thesis anyway, and in fact, as a revelation. The fact it's borrowed from elsewhere probably gives it extra credentials, too. But the idea of introducing these Eastern concepts to Western audiences doesn't really matter about whether it's correct, rigorous or done accurately. It's that it hits so many of these different touch points. I mean, for what it's worth, it goes on to have really important legacies as we're going to talk about, too, not just in the New Age movement, but elsewhere as well. But it shows that the way that she's written this is not because she's a freewheeling genius, but also that she's driven above all by the marketing skills of being able to work out to feed people what they want to hear.
- [33:39]
Afwa Hersh
And on that note, she and Olcourt make a move that is absolutely in sync with their brand. They pack up and move to India. And that is where the real magic and the real scandal truly begins. And we'll find out why after the break.
- [33:59]
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- [34:24]
Peter Franker
So it's 1879 now. Blavatsky has relocated her HQ to India, eventually settling in Adya in Madras in Tamil Nadu. And it's a strategic masterstroke, as you said. Afwa.
- [34:36]
Afwa Hersh
They bring their critique of the Christian church to a place where Indians are very receptive to a takedown of the British Christian missionary system. And so they're speaking a language that really resonates with the local Indian population who in many ways feel oppressed by this face of colonialism, really, because missionary Christianity and colonialist rule worked hand in hand to control and manage local populations. So actually, one of the ironic legacies of Blavatsky is that she's credited with helping spark a revival of pride in, in indigenous Indian religions against British colonial rule. Which, you know, is a complicated idea for someone who's basically appropriated those ideas from Indians in the first place. But anyway, then it starts to get messier than that even.
- [35:26]
Peter Franker
It gets really controversial because when she's in India, she claims that she's in regular physical contact with her Tibetan masters, primarily the two Mahatmas named Kut Humi and Moria. Who are the Mahatma Zafwa?
- [35:39]
Afwa Hersh
Well, there's a simple answer and a not so simple answer. So in theosophical speak, these are not spirits or gods. They are real, living, breathing men. They are higher evolved humans, masters of the ancient wisdom. And according to Blavatsky, because again, this is so difficult for anyone to verify because they can't get into Tibet. They belong to this secret elite brotherhood of enlightened beings often referred to as the Great White Brotherhood. This is not a white supremacy adjacent idea who guide the spiritual evolution of humanity from these hidden headquarters in the Himalayan mountains of Tibet. And again, I mean, I say it's not a white supremacy adjacent idea, but it is playing on these imaginings of the exotic realm of a place like Tibet that people can't actually get to and experience for themselves.
- [36:30]
Peter Franker
Well, and then this is how she characterizes the two masters. So there's Master Moria, often referred to as M, not from the James Bond movie, but she claims that Maurya is her personal guru. She says that he's a physically imposing Rajput prince from India, portrayed as a stern, powerful but demanding teacher who had first appeared to her when she was a young woman in London, setting on her global quest for knowledge. And then there's Master Khut, whom he often referred to as Kh who's presented as a Kashmiri Brahmin, one who's been highly educated in Europe, apparently at Oxford and at Leipzig. And he's considered the more gentle, the more philosophical, delicate and diplomatic of the two. He was supposed to be the author of the famous Mahatma letters sent to early theosophists who are acting as the bridge between Eastern esoteric thought and Western intellect. Why does she claim to be connected to these, these guys? Afa.
- [37:24]
Afwa Hersh
This gives her so much more credibility. She is a woman in the 19th century. She has no formal academic credentials. Her work's constantly being scrutinized and attacked by scientific and religious establishments. Here are these mahatmas, the true authors of her books, she claims that she's merely their humble translator. It's a much more comfortable position for people to put a woman in at the time. So she's giving herself this kind of, like, distance from her work. Any mistakes, that's on them. I'm just the translator. And on top of that, they are an amazing marketing tool. They are technically human, but with a status that is divine. They have reached the evolutionary finish line through rigorous study, meditation and adherence to theosophical principles. And she's saying anyone can evolve into a Mahatma. All you have to do is this work, this spiritual work, and then you can transcend death, master psychic abilities and achieve ultimate wisdom. And no one can prove that they don't exist because they are so conveniently in Tibet. So that's clever. But where it starts to fall apart is how she communicates with these isolated mahatmas in unreachable Tibet. And that is actually through quite a surprising technique. Peter. She communicates with them by letter, but not exactly through the post office.
- [38:49]
Peter Franker
No. They would mysteriously drop the ceiling during dinner parties or materialise inside locked cabinets.
- [38:56]
Afwa Hersh
I didn't mean to laugh. It was just the way you said it.
- [38:59]
Peter Franker
You're saying it like you don't believe in afwa. I'm, you know, open minded. That's our middle name on this podcast. I mean, it's a kind of. It's an odd thing to, to do because you're involving a whole unnecessary level of stuff that could go wrong and get you busted. So, I mean, they appear, you know, tucked in branches of trees. I mean, you find them wherever you want to find them, but they become very famous. They contain philosophical instructions, advice on how to run the society, predictions, but I mean, they're obviously total load of, of, of nonsense. So it looks like that that's the kind of thing in the, in the Netflix version, you know, there's going to
- [39:35]
Afwa Hersh
be trouble and trouble comes. So there's a couple called Emma and Alexis Coulombe, and they are members of Blavatsky's inner staff at her ADI headquarters in 1884. She has a bitter dispute with them and they go to the press. They make these sensational claims that Blavatsky is a total fraud and that they've got the receipts. And Alexis Cullum in particular, who's a carpenter, reveals that that he built secret sliding cabinets in the walls of the headquarters and a false back to a wooden cabinet. And Emma, his wife, claims that she would physically drop the letters through the cracks in the ceiling while Blavatsky distracted the guests below so that the letters could appear to fall from the air. And these revelations are an absolute, an international scandal. PETER yeah.
- [40:33]
Peter Franker
And so you then have, you know, the different sides who want to take her down for different reasons. So you've got the newly formed Society for Psychical Research in London, organization dedicated to the scientific investigation of the paranormal. They set up a committee to check whether she's the real deal or not. And it's very much in their interest to say that they have the purity of research and that, that they, that she doesn't. So they said that young ambitious Australian researcher called Richard Hodgson to, to Adyar to go and investigate her and to determine if the Mahatma letters are actually genuine. And in 1885 he publishes his report, the Hodgson Report. And spoiler alert, it's incredibly damning.
- [41:13]
Afwa Hersh
This is the absolute low point of Blavatsky's career. His report shatters her credibility and it's the ultimate public relations disaster for the Theosophical Society. So he spends months interviewing witnesses, examining these headquarters, collecting documents. And in 1885 Hodgson publishes this 200 page report, the Hodgson Report, that systematically dismantles all of Blavatsky's mystical claims. And there are three main pillars to his very damning conclusions.
- [41:43]
Peter Franker
Peter there's the trapdoors, the bits where Blavatsky's phenomena are reported and said that there were tricks involved. Then there are the whistleblowers. He pays a lot of attention to the coulombs and the disgruntled members of the staff and notes that these are all people who've been told to do stuff by Blavatsky that's completely wrong. And then handwriting analysis, perhaps most damaging of all, in the age of sort of graphology, Hodgson consults handwriting experts who analyze the Mahatma letters and conclude that they're written by Blavatsky herself. And he summarizes his findings, Alfred, with a legendary lethal quote.
- [42:21]
Afwa Hersh
Blavatsky is not a true mystic. Hodgson says she is, and I quote, one of the most accomplished, ingenious and interesting imposters in history. Harsh. I mean it's almost a compliment. It's like such high praise for the level of fraud but that doesn't protect Blavatsky. It's a complete annihilation of her character. And the fallout is swift and brutal and it really hurts the credibility of the Theosophical Society.
- [42:51]
Peter Franker
She heads back, she leaves India, heads back, back to Europe. But if the story doesn't end with the Hodgson Report, Theosophists always maintain that the report was biased and unfair. And about 100 years later, AFWA, I mean, it's a good plot twist. They're vindicated by a rather unusual, unlikely source.
- [43:07]
Afwa Hersh
So the. The Hodgson Report was published in 1885. In 1986, 101 years later, Vernon Harrison, a professional forgery expert and member of the Society for psychical research for 50 years, publishes a devastating report on the devastating report. He rigorously critiques the earlier Hodgson Report and concludes that it was very flawed. Hodgson was a terrible investigator. He ignored any evidence that favored Blavatsky while advancing conjecture as fact. The original report was highly partisan, he claims, for fitting all attempts at scientific impartiality riddled with slanted statements and downright falsity. And most importantly, he demolishes Hodgson's handwriting analysis. He states that the evidence that this handwriting was the same is so weak and confused that using the exact same metrics, one could just as easily prove that President Eisenhower or Mark Twain wrote the Mahatma letters. So in other words, there is no evidence, especially not definitive evidence, that Blavatsky actually wrote those letters herself. And the sbr. So the same organization that published the Hodgson Report, now 100 years later, publishes Harrison's findings, clarifying that the earlier Hodgson Report was not a definitive ruling, it was merely the opinion of, of Hodgson's specific committee. So that's basically what we're left with, Peter. We've got Hodgson's report and we've got Harrison's report, and they come to basically opposite conclusions. But crucially, neither of them prove that Blavatsky's claims are real. They just arguably prove that the earlier attempt to disprove them was very problematic.
- [44:57]
Peter Franker
I'm going to go on a limb here without having. I should admit I haven't read the Hodgson Report. I get a guess that the letters that appeared from the ceiling probably were sent through cracks, that even it wasn't her handwriting, it might have been somebody else's. But I mean, the point, I think, is that she is taken down by Hodgson and the incentive for him to do that is not just acute for her to, you know, to her celebrity, her fame, the threats that her business model pose two had a lot of incentive to do that. And in fact it does ruin her reputation in mainstream circles. She comes back to London in the 1880s. She has fallen out of, out of the popularity stakes, but still it doesn't stop her. In 1888, she publishes a book called the Secret Doctrine that's a massive, incredibly dense, another two volume number that outlines the origins of the universe, cosmic evolution, the spiritual history of humanity. She claims it's written on an ancient text called the Book of Zion. And, you know, you'd think it's just lunatic fringe version 2. This book, like her other work, actually has huge disproportionate influence. And in the case of the Secret Doctrine, it has a great deal of influence on the weirdo Nazis in the 1920s and 1930s who become obsessed by Eastern mysticism. Blavatsky has lots of ideas about race that align very neatly with ideas about Arianism and Indo European legacies that are incredibly uncomfortable and unpleasant to read. But it becomes a foundational doctrine source for not just Nazi part ideology, but also for a whole range of modern esoteric thought and influences a whole new generation of thinkers, artists and writers. And I guess one of the things that's interesting about Blavatsky, as it was with Nostradamus, is that you can project so much onto these texts and when they are uncomfortable and awkward, you can brush them out of the carpet and think of other things too. So Blavatsky becomes really important in New Age thinking and even in things like modern art and literature too. So talk about that a bit afra about the outsize influence that Blavatsky and her thoughts and writings have on other areas that we don't think about normally.
- [47:04]
Afwa Hersh
You definitely can learn a lot about Victorian era from Blavatsky. You know, about how starved of spiritual inspiration people felt. You know, these institutions like the church and science, they weren't feeding people's need for answers and understanding. And she was giving people to explore a more mystical side to existence, which I think is very fundamental to the human condition, that we yearn for that. And that explains why I think that theosophy was popular among artists like Yeats was a theosophist. The pioneers of abstract art, Piet Mondrian, Kandinsky, Hillmarth Klint, were so influenced by her writing because they were trying to paint invisible spiritual realms and manifest those in something visual. These are ideas that Blavatsky supported through her writing. But I think the most, for me, the most important legacy of Blavatsky is Her role in essentially creating the New Age movement. And that is really the foundation for all of our modern ideas about wellness and alternative spirituality. And when I say our, I mean in kind of industrialized Western societies where I think that we have this mix and match approach to spirituality. She was the first person who said you can do is kind of pick a mix. You can take a bit of cometic mysticism from ancient Egypt, you can take karmic and yogic ideas from India, some hermeticism from Greece. You can blend them into your own spiritual path. You know, if you've ever said, I'm not really religious, but I am spiritual, you are picking up the mantle laid down by Blavatsky. She gave people permission to kind of dispense with tradition, even the cultures that originated these ideas. She's like, you can kind of strip the ideas out and turn them into something that serves you. And I think that I can really see why that took off, but I think that it's really problematic because you can see now we've almost caricatured that to the point where people are kind of dropping bombs on children and then doing their Buddhist chants in the morning, you know, or they're kind of doing a matcha tea ceremony before they kind of go and build some incredibly destructive new tech company, that there's this commoditization of spirituality that's just become another consumer product. And you could argue she made that possible. And for me, the biggest problem with that is that it erases the cultural foundations of those ideas. You know, these ideas aren't meant to be taken in isolation. They're part of whole cultural and knowledge systems that are restrained by other ideas. And she's kind of excavated them and made them something you can consume.
- [49:39]
Peter Franker
And you're the right person to ask af. I mean, do you see this in the context of a kind of form of intellectual colonialism where you cherry pick and take what you want and then repackage it and make it greater than some of the parts and then even profit from it? I mean, I hadn't realized, to my embarrassment, before we started doing this one, about how Blavatsky traces to her the ways that mainstream ideas like and words like karma or nirvana, hugely important in South Asian traditions, but how they start to get mainstreamed, does this fit within the model of how parts of the world are just being asset stripped and mined for ideas and reformulated by Europeans, or is that too stark?
- [50:19]
Afwa Hersh
I think so. I don't think we can blame Blavatsky for that. You know, a European project of many centuries by the time she was even born to kind of asset strip and commoditize, you know, the interesting or useful parts of other parts of the world's knowledge. But she certainly elevated it to a level of consumerism that I think is still very visible today. And, you know, it's a genuine daily struggle for many people. I know lots of my Indian friends are so triggered by the way people kind of say namaste and go to their yoga class with like a 20 pound turmeric latte with biodynamic milk in hand, you know, and it's so for them, an offensive appropriation of ideas that have, like, much deeper meaning and rooting in identity for them. And I'm not saying we should kind of rigidly stick to the cultural ideas we were born with. Of course it makes sense that we're curious about other ideas and constantly exchanging. But I think there's something about appropriating the ideas while continuing to exploit or degrade the cultures. You know, we still have racist ideas about the very same cultures whose spirituality we're enjoying commoditizing. And that's really jarring. And I think she made that easier because she packaged it in a book that people could read and practices people could do without thinking too deeply about the underlying source. So, like, how much of that is her fault and how much of that is on us and the systems around us for just running with that without thinking more critically about it, I think is a bigger question. But she certainly made it easy. And, you know, when I think about my childhood, I mean, I was born in the 80s. It was still very much a world in which New Age people had a yin and Yang symbol on their necklace and then they had Indian incense burning and, you know, they were doing yoga. And it was. Was all seen as very sophisticated, almost the status symbol. And I don't feel like there was a deeper connection with the cultures that those ideas came from. And I don't feel 40 years later like there's been any real redistribution of global resources. We just made more and more of the ideas as it suits us.
- [52:35]
Peter Franker
And, you know, you mentioned about abstract art and Kandinsky and so on, and people like Mondrian with his famous grids of red and blue and yellow. He's not just playing with geometry. He's tried to visually map the theosophical cosmic order, you know, or. Hilma F. Klint explicitly claimed her groundbreaking abstract art is being guided by high masters. I mean, Blavatsky is Everywhere and you try to find out. I do think that that bit of the cherry picking the bits of esoteric Eastern philosophy and art is a double edged sword and a quite uncomfortable one. Like you said, it's. It smacks of privilege and superficiality because you're taking the bits that you like without bothering to think about anything else that underpins it. But just to finish us off, Afwa, you know, we talked a bit before about sci fi and fantasy and pop culture. How does Blavatsky fit into that? Having some, some link to some of those ideas as well.
- [53:28]
Afwa Hersh
I mean, in a way it's a win win for Blavatsky. Even you believe that she had real psychic powers, in which case, like that's amazing, or you believe she was making it up, in which case she had an inclusion incredible imagination. I mean, she was building a world that people believed in and that has really inspired generations of fantasy and science fiction writers. She was obsessed, for example, with the lost city of Atlantis and Lemuria. She treated them not as myths, but as real historical periods that people with advanced psychic abilities could decipher and find. Or the trope of the hidden ancient brotherhood of monks guarding the secrets of the universe in a remote mountain temple, aka Dr. Strange or the Jedi Order. These stories owe their modern cultural prominence largely to her stories of her Tibetan Mahatma. So as a, as a writer of fiction, I think she probably deserves a less complicated level of applause than she does as someone with actual scientific or psychic abilities. But even then, and you know, even taking into account how problematic her legacy is, I still think that in itself is kind of a superpower. To be able to invent and create and advance a new way of seeing things, even if it's negative, is something that most people, even if they want to, couldn't do. And there was definitely something unique about Helena Blavatsky.
- [54:55]
Peter Franker
Look, Afwa, I'm very grateful to you. I mean, a name that I was, you know, very obscure, had heard about but knew nothing to see how deeply embedded. I mean, that's one of the joys of doing these series and hopefully for all of you, what a treat to listen to. So Helen Blavatsky, who gave the world some of those ideas about vocabularies that become so familiar, the ways in which the occult, the ways in which a woman on the peripheries of European society had an outsized impact, are fascinating to talk to. So thanks Afwa for you for prompting us onto this one. And thank you all for listening to Legacy.
- [55:28]
Afwa Hersh
To dive deeper and support the show, please sign up to Legacy plus, you will get to enjoy brilliant bonus episodes that no one else gets to hear. Early access, fewer ads, Q&As and much more. Go to legacy.supportingcast FM.
- [55:45]
Peter Franker
Don't forget, you can watch all our episodes on Spotify and YouTube too. And for everything else, including our substack and updates on TikTok and Instagram, just check out the show notes or search Legacy Podcast I'm Peter Frankenpan.
- [55:57]
Afwa Hersh
I'm Afwa Hersh, and we'll see you on the next episode of Legacy.
- [56:18]
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