Letters of H.P. Blavatsky, The

Helena P. Blavatsky (1831-1891) is widely celebrated as the leading esoteric thinker of the nineteenth century who influenced an entire generation of artists and intellectuals and introduced Eastern spirituality to the West. Until now, however, readers have been able to know this fascinating woman only through her public writings. Few may have realized that H.P.B. was also a tireless correspondent with family and colleagues, friends and foes, the learned and the simple. Her personal correspondence reveals for the first time the private H.P.B. in all of her sphinx-like complexity rarely visible in her published material. This unparalleled offering contains all known letters H.P.B. wrote between 1860 and the time just before she left for India in 1879. Meticulously edited by John Algeo, former President of the Theosophical Society in America and current Vice President of the international Society, the volume also contains letters to and about Blavatsky, articles, and editorial commentary. Among them are controversial and colorful letters, like the one H.P.B. sent to the director of the Russian secret police offering to join their ranks. Also documented are her attempts to begin a Society of Spiritualists in Cairo, Egypt and the tragic and at times comedic troubles she experienced in doing so. You will receive a behind-the-scenes look at the establishment of the Theosophical Society and of the heated debates, both internal and external, surrounding its emergence. And you will experience H.P.B.'s infectious enthusiasm as she corresponds about beginning her first published work, Isis Unveiled. The first of four planned volumes being presented as the H. P. Blavatsky Collected Letters Series, this book delivers all you didn’t know about H.P.B. and with the humor and eloquence of her spellbinding personality.

656 pages

About the author: Helena Petrovna Blavatsky(1831-1891), one of the founders of the Theosophical Society, was a remarkable woman who has made a great impact on the thought of the Western world. In her own day, she was controversial because of her abilities of extrasensory perception, her forthright nature, and her fearless attacks on hypocrisy and bigotry. From earliest childhood she attracted attention with her ability to produce psychic phenomena at will. Yet she was not interested in such powers for their own sake, but for the principles and laws of nature that govern them. She became a student of metaphysical lore and traveled to many lands, including Tibet, in search of hidden knowledge. These were extraordinary travels for a lone woman in the nineteenth century. In the 1870s H. P. Blavatsky came to New York, and with Col. H. S. Olcott and others, formed the Theosophical Society in 1875. In 1878 she became the first Russian woman ever to become an American citizen. In 1879, she and Col. Olcott moved to India, and in 1882 established the headquarters of the Theosophical Society at Adyar, near Madras. This remains the international headquarters today. H. P. Blavatsky devoted her life to the service of humanity, to bringing the Wisdom of the ancients back into the awareness of her contemporaries. That Divine Wisdom, which she called Theosophy, inspires a compassion for the suffering of our fellow human beings and a practical altruism that seeks not merely to alleviate the symptoms of misery, but to remove its cause: ignorance of our fundamental unity with all other beings. HPB's life and works were directed entirely to that goal.