Make Out City

Madame Blavatsky – The Mother of Modern Spirituality – by Gary Lachman

- 4/4 Stars

This was a great book. This is the third book I’ve read about H.P. Blavatsky, and I’m currently also about a third of the way into ‘Isis Unveiled’, and she is definitely fun to read about. This book just came out and is a ‘clarifying’ biography, meaning it tries to make sense of the cloudy past and past biographies of Madame Blavatsky, seeing as how she is shrouded in mystery and their is much contention over details of her life, her ‘works’ and the overall myth that surrounds her. But this was a good one. It is written by what I’d call a believer skeptic. He believes, but he can make enough sense of things to write the truth. He doesn’t let his belief get in the way of critical thinking, and it only tints the 1/10 of a percent where you ask yourself if their were any ‘miracles’ involved with Blavatsky’s life, the feats which she herself downplayed as unimportant to actual belief and understanding.

I’d also recommend ‘Madame Blavatsky’s Baboon’ by Peter Washington. It’s more critical and is also a more general history of Theosophy, covering more of the development of the Theosophical Society beyond Blavatsky,  whereas Lachman stuck to Blavatsky.

Gary Lachman is also a definitely recommended author. I’ve read ‘A Dark Muse: A History of the Occult’ and it was excellent and he’s written many other books about the occult and occult figures to date.

gnowing:

The Secret Teachings in HP Blavatsky’s Secret Doctrine Part 1 of 3

“The mesmerizer wills a thing, and if he is powerful enough, that thing is done. The medium, even if he had an honest purpose to succeed, may get no manifestation at all; the less he exercises his will, the better the phenomena: the more he feels anx…

Figure 1. Figure 2. Figure 3. Figure 4. image source
“In questions of testimony, certitude must absolutely cease the moment we cross the borders of the supernatural.”
- Agénor de Gasparinquoted in ‘Isis Unveiled’ by H.P. Blavatsky

      “There is one thing though, that Babinet has always stoutly denied, viz: the levitation of furniture without contact. De Mirville catches him proclaiming that such levitation is impossible: “simply impossible,” he says, “as impossib…

“In his oft-quoted work, Conflict between Religion and Science, Professor Draper shows a decided propensity to kick the beam of the scales of justice, and lay all such impediments to the progress of science at the door of the clergy alone. With all r…

I guess I will be ‘postponing’ doing a kickstarter project. I just don’t even want to try to get people involved, even in the way I was going to which was just to raise money to get the custom graphics I need, simply by offering people access to …

Introducing ‘The Fox Sisters’
from Georgetowncollege.edu:
The Hydesville Rappings were the first phenomenon, and it was the beginning of the Fox Sisters’ careers.
   The Fox family moved into a house in Hydesville, NY was the rappi…

Even before Chamberlain, volkisch thinkers had tried to weave together lessons from history proving the heroism of the ancient Germanic past. Many of them were admirers of the Theosophical Society, which combined for the first time certain elements int…