Madame Blavatsky: The Woman Behind the Myth

by Marion Meade

Madame Helena Blavatsky, the founder of Theosophy, was the granddaughter of a White Russian princess. She became the first internationally famous professional psychic and she was also a brilliant occult con artist who drew such figures as G. B. Shaw and William Butler Yeats into her bizarre web. A fervent flower child, she journeyed to the East in search of enlightenment almost 100 years before the hippie hegira of the 1960s.

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction, History, Occult, Spirituality, Mythology, Mysticism

544 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1980

About the author

Marion Meade is an American biographer and novelist, whose subjects stretch from 12th century French royalty to 20th century stand-up comedians. She is best known for her portraits of literary figures and iconic filmmakers.

Her new book, Lonelyhearts: The Screwball World of Nathanael West and Eileen McKenney, is a joint biography of a husband and wife whose lives provide a vivid picture of the artistic milieu of the Jazz Age and the Great Depression.

For more information on Lonelyhearts--and an exciting photo gallery--visit http://www.nathanaelwest.com

Reviews

[George · Rating 3 out of 5]

DESULTORY FLAPDOODLE.

“…she possessed a genuine daring and a vastness of body and soul that compels admiration. In every way, she was an immense person. She weighed more than other people, ate more, smoked more, swore more, and visualized heaven and earth in terms that dwarfed any previous conception.” (Kindle Location 103)

Too long, too tedious, very disjointed, quite confusing, and often chaotic. Sometime interesting, but not often enough. The three appendices at the end of the book were its most readable and interesting passages. I was looking for another Sister Aimee [Semple McPherson] character, and I was sorely disappointed. Two-and-a-half stars would be generous.

Recommendation: After having read all 660 pages of the Kindle Edition of Madame Blavatsky: The Woman Behind the Myth, I am left only with that perennial existential question: Who in their right mind would read all 660 pages of this flapdoodle (one of Madame B’s favorite words)—and I cannot think of even one thing about this book that might prompt me to recommend it. For my money, the droll and rather unexciting Helena P. Blavatsky could well have remained Behind the Myth, without any detriment to the reading public.

“As a moral monstrosity she stands without peer among her sex in this century. The specious fake which she originated to gratify her love of deception and ambition, and to cover her real sins, has ended with her death.” (Kindle Location 9,708)

Open Road Media. Kindle Edition. 660 pages. 11,274 Kindle Locations

[Pablo Flores · Rating 4 out of 5]

Before this book, I had only barely heard about H.P.B.'s life and exploits, and like most people of a skeptical bent (I guess) I considered her just a common scammer that had achieved fame. This book didn't turn that idea on its head (because Madame Blavatsky was undoubtedly a fraud on many respects) but let me peer into the depths of her mind. I'm prepared now to accept that one may be both a mystic and a fraud, at the same time an advocate for the good of mankind and a profoundly self-centered person. It only takes being a victim of one's own delusions for a certain time.

Theosophical thought itself takes up very little of the book, which is fine by me; on the other hand, there are some stretches where excessive attention is given to minutiae and to people who didn't really account for much in the big picture of H.P.B.'s life. On the whole, however, the book remains balanced and engaging until the very end.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ms. Meade’s biography of Madame Blavatsky is one of the few balanced efforts now available in print and, seemingly, the only one available as a eBook on Amazon.

It is refreshing to experience a biographer who weighs the good with the bad and comes down somewhere square in the middle, and if not, precisely, square then close enough to being so. HPB, as Helena Petrovna Blavatsky preferred to be called, has not made a biography a simple matter for her personal historians and those following the Spiritualist and Theosophical worlds.

That she suffered from deep-seated neuroses, which may well have been pathological, is difficult to deny. That she manufactured many of her so-called phenomena, most especially the Mahatma Letters as well as other ‘physical’ phenomena, is hardly beyond doubt—excepting for those devoted to the ‘cult of Blavatsky’, or ‘pope Blavatsky’. As well, many of her contemporary followers come off looking horribly gullible. Most notably Henry Olcott and Annie Besant—both were looking for a further purpose in life, or a greater meaning, and were drawn into the orbit of the Madame’s charisma and long-con.

The author, Ms. Meade, does not treat any of these adherents with anything less than sympathy, which is refreshing—though they hardly deserve it.

HPB was one of the most interesting Spiritualists of the 19th Century and she continues to have many followers to this day, but taking her as a whole—and she was a considerable whole—the woman probably had some level of genuine PSI ability, if you are predisposed to believe in such matters, but she was also a Spiritual Grifter, a drama queen, emotionally unstable, an inveterate liar, and an emotional toxic dump. This, however, seems to be the norm, rather than the exception, for ‘sensitives’. It is unclear whether or not this is an explanation of their behavior or an excuse for. The reader, as always, will have to make up their own mind about this.

This was one of the best biographies available out there on the life of HPB.

As a biography it deserves 5 stars, but the Kindle edition of the book has two serious flaws.

1. The endnote references are not activated.
2. The font cannot be changed, so the reader is stuck with the publisher font.

As a result this book, eBook, gets 4 out of 5 stars.

Still, taking the good with the bad, this biography is highly recommended for readers interested in the life of HPB and the world of 19th Century Spiritualism, as well as those readers who enjoy the world of gnostic dementia.

[Sara Altshul · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting

Obviously, exceedingly well researched. This biography is not a terribly exciting read. It’s rather dull. However, I knew nothing about Madame Blavatsky before and learned quite a bit. It’s also fairly obvious that the authors point of view about Madame Blavatsky is that she was a fake. I also felt the book was very long and somewhat tedious to get through. I am, however, grateful that I learned as much as I did.

[Avery · Rating 4 out of 5]

A truly balanced account of Blavatsky's life, warts and all. Meade writes without fear or favor, revealing unsightly aspects of HPB that are not to be found on Wikipedia or in Theosophical publications, but not hesitating to emphasize the more mysterious phenomena surrounding her as well.

[Cooper Renner]

I read most of the first half and a bit of the latter, mostly the death and funeral. I simply lost interest. Can’t biographers edit and select and “get a feel” for the essential anymore? Do biographies have to be both exhaustive and exhausting?

[Simeon Readingape]

#003.07 Appendix C: Parallel Cases p.467 "According to psychologist Walter Franklin Prince, who spent ten months studying Mrs. Curran, she was an intelligent, vivacious woman who had never manifested any talent for literature, philology, history or deep philosophical thinking prior to the emergence of "Patience Worth". Neither did she possess an extraordinary memory, so that he was forced to rule out the possibility of her having spent years in libraries indulging a passion for antiquities and philology before the accumulated knowledge suddenly burst forth when she was thirty-one. Because she failed to display the common symptoms of hysteria, such as childhood illnesses, somnambulism, nervousness, sensory hallucinations, Prince rejected the theory that a self-conscious secondary personality with "Patience's" knowledge and aptitudes had formed within Mrs. Curran's conscious mind.
Dr. Prince concluded: "Either our concept of what we call the subconscious must be radically altered, so as to include potencies of which we hitherto have had no knowledge, or else some cause operating through but not originating in the subconscious of Mrs. Curran must be acknowledged." The "Patience Worth" case remains as puzzling today as when Dr. Prince studied it in 1927."

[Luce Cronin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I always wondered about this very controversial woman. And now I know her life story - a sad one on the whole, I think. But what a woman of determination , power and strength. I have gained not just respect , but compassion , for this woman who created a whole new philosophy of brotherhood... Some say she was a quack, a fraud, but somehow, after reading this lengthy biography, I feel not. A very poignant story on the whole.