Theosophy and occult synthesis

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky

1831 – 1891

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky was a Russian-born occultist, traveller, and author who co-founded the Theosophical Society in New York in 1875 with Henry Steel Olcott and William Quan Judge. Her two monumental works, Isis Unveiled (1877) and The Secret Doctrine (1888), presented a syncretic cosmology drawing on Hermeticism, Neoplatonism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Kabbalah, arguing for a universal Ancient Wisdom underlying all world religions. Blavatsky is widely regarded as the foundational figure of the modern Western esoteric revival, directly influencing Anthroposophy, the Golden Dawn, New Age spirituality, and virtually every current of twentieth-century occultism.