How is it that a rebellious, strong-willed and charismatic woman born to the lesser Russian nobility in the first third of the 19th century would, over the course of 60 years, become one of the most celebrated and controversial spiritual figures of her time?

And how is it that she created a spiritual movement whose influences today pervade almost every aspect of the contemporary spiritual revival while at the same time being widely considered by some scholars to have been a gifted fraud and charlatan?

As Gary Lachman puts it in his exhaustively researched and fascinating biography, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky also known as HPB has affected anyone who meditates, who considers himself a Buddhist, or is interested in reincarnation, or has wondered about Atlantis, or pursues higher consciousness,' or thinks the ancients might have known a few things that we don't.

One of the founders of the still-active Theosophical Society, Madame Blavatsky created an organization dedicated to forming a nucleus of the universal brotherhood of humanity without distinction of race, creed, sex, caste or color. In addition, the society aimed to study the powers latent in man.

As innocuous as such aims might seem today, in the second half of the 19th century they were, as Lachman points out, a significant challenge to a world dominated by a dogmatically materialistic, reductionistic science and sclerotic, rigid religions.

They were even more of a challenge when focused through what Lachman paints as Blavatsky's leonine, laser-like will, amplified by her reportedly amazing ability to produce extraordinary psychic phenomena ranging from ordinary spirit raps to the materialization of objects such as intact porcelain teacups dug out of the ground and rains of roses.

Lachman does an extraordinary job of deciphering the difference between history and mystery in Blavatsky's extremely colorful life. He chronicles it with care to both factual detail and the nuances of the complex relationships she established with her principal partners in the Theosophical enterprise not to mention her presumed trips to Tibet and Nepal in search of higher knowledge and her varied encounters with the secretive spiritual teachers she called the Masters.

Lachman engagingly profiles the rich panoply of unusual people drawn to Blavatsky and the Theosophical Society, from mediums and members of secret societies to such exceptional political figures as Mahatma Gandhi and the ornithologist A. O. Hume, who both played major roles in the struggle for Indian independence.

At the same time, Lachman does not shrink from detailing the way in which Blavatsky's high-handed approach to the people who served her, and her tendency to attack her followers with blistering assaults on their personality faults, produced more than one accusation of fraud and chicanery.

Lachman approaches the most controversial aspects of her legacy which include a series of supposed letters from her Masters which reportedly simply materialized with an even, dispassionate hand. He provides, as well, an excellent summary of recent re-appraisals of Blavatsky and her work by such scholars as Paul K. Johnson and others.

Continued here:

The mother of modern spirituality