Blavatsky and Spiritualism

Richard Smoley article - Blavatsky and Spiritualism article in the New Dawn:

“To dismiss these ideas out of hand would, in my view, be foolish. On the other hand, to verify them would require an intense training in esoteric practices that is difficult to come by. For our purposes, though, the essential point is clear. There is a middle ground between the allegations of the skeptics – that all spiritualistic phenomena are simply fraudulent – and the beliefs of the credulous, who take everything at face value. While there have been fraudulent mediums, it would be overhasty to dismiss every spiritualistic experience as a fraud. At least some of the phenomena associated with Spiritualism seem to be the play of forces in the astral realm, that domain of thoughts and images that is as plastic as the figments of our imaginations – and indeed contains them.”
http://www.newdawnmagazine.com/articles/madame-blavatsky-the-spirit-world

A lengthy, well-researched piece on Blavatsky by James Galant in the Fortnightly Review  focusing on supernatural and spiritualistic aspects:

“The Russian Blavatsky, in her forties at the time, had spent most of her mature life traveling the world in exploration of esoteric spiritual practices. She had supposedly studied with both an Egyptian magician and a New Orleans voodoo doctor, and when she left Paris for New York in 1873 it was at the behest of Tibetan monks in the Himalayas. The monks, alarmed by the sway of materialism both East and West, hoped to create a lay society, with chapters worldwide, for the study ancient Asian spirituality. Blavatsky was to be their agent in New York.”
http://fortnightlyreview.co.uk/2016/04/madame-blavatsky/

Philadelphia spiritualist travel stop linked to Blavatsky:

https://www.amandalinettemeder.com/blog/mediumship-travel-spots-in-the-us

A nice article on the Fox sisters, the pioneers of American spiritualism:http://www.salon.com/2015/09/14/the_sisters_who_founded_spiritualism_and_punkd_america_partner/


Doukhobors like their Blavatsky (plus an excellent recipe for Doukhobor borscht soup):
"A Doukhobor source claims, “The Bible scriptures can be considered to be inspired of God, but no more so than any other written work of great dedication or inspiration, be it other great religious texts, such as the Tao Te Ching, Bhagavad-Gita, Upanishads, Koran, etc. or the inspiring writings of many great teachers and leaders such as Gibran, Thoreau, Tolstoy, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Helena Blavatsky, Helen Caldicott, Eckhart Tolle and countless others.”
http://www.cdapress.com/news/life_styles/article_9dc0d4a6-7aab-11e5-b43e-c7523d24113b.html