Isis Unveiled 1

Elena Petrovna Gan (July 30 - July 31, 1831 (O.S.) (August 12, 1831 (N.S.)) - May 8, 1891 London), better known as Helena Blavatsky or Madame Blavatsky, born Helena von Hahn, was a founder of the Theosophical Society.

She was married three weeks before she turned seventeen, on July 7, 1848, to the forty-year old Nikifor (also Nicephor) Vassilievitch Blavatsky, vice-governor of Erivan. After three unhappy months, she stole a horse, and escaped back over the mountains to her grandfather in Tiflis. Her grandfather shipped her off immediately to her father who was retired and living near Saint Petersburg. He travelled two thousand miles to meet her at Odessa, but she wasn't there. She had missed the steamer, and sailed away with the skipper of an English bark bound for Istanbul. According to her account, they never consummated their marriage, and she remained a virgin her entire life. It was in 1873 that she emigrated to New York City. Impressing people with her psychic abilities, she was spurred on to continue her mediumship. Mediumship (other psychical and spiritual sciences of the time), based upon the quasi-religion known as Spiritualism having began at Rochester, NY, was a widely popular and fast-spreading field upon which Blavatsky based her career. Throughout her career she claimed to have demonstrated physical and mental psychic feats which included levitation, clairvoyance, out-of-body projection, telepathy, and clairaudience. Another claim of hers was materialization, that is, producing physical objects out of nothing, though in general, her interests were more in the area of 'theory' and 'laws' rather than demonstration. In 1874 at the farm of the Eddy Brothers, Helena met Henry Steel Olcott, a lawyer, agricultural expert, and journalist who covered the Spiritualist phenomena. Soon they were working together in the "Lamasery" (alternate spelling: "Lamastery") where her book Isis Unveiled was written. She married her second husband, Michael C. Betanelly on April 3, 1875 in New York City. She separated from Betanelly after a few months, and their divorce was legalized on May 25, 1878. On July 8, 1878, she became a naturalized citizen of the United States.  She had moved to India, landing at Bombay February 16 1879. Sometime around December 1880, while at a dinner party with a group including A.O. Hume and his wife, she is stated to have been instrumental in causing the materialization of Mrs Hume's lost brooch. By 1882 the Theosophical Society became an international organization, and it was at this time that she moved the headquarters to Adyr near Madras, India. The society headquartered here for some time, but she later went to Germany for a while, in between she stayed at Ostend (15 July 1886 - 1 May 1887) where she easily could meet her English friends. She wrote a big part of the Secret Doctrie in Ostend  and there she had a revelation during an illness to continue the book at any cost. Finally she went to England. A disciple put her up in her own house in England and it was here that she lived until the end of her life. Suffering from heart disease, rheumatism, Bright's disease, and complications from influenza, Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky died at 19 Avenue Road, St Johns Wood,  the home she shared, in England on May 8, 1891.