Blavatsky and Russia

Article on oriental influence on Russian writers:

What Russian Writers Learnt From India

Aravindan Neelakandan - Jan 10, 2016

Viktor Vladimirovich Khlebnikov (1885-1922) was a major poet-philosopher of Russian Futurist movement. A minor planet has been named after him too. Influenced by Helena Blavatsky, the founder of theosophical movement, Khlebnikov considered her ‘the only one who traveled to India in search of what it means to be a Russian’ (4). In his lyrical prose work titled‘Yasir’ which means ‘captive’, he explores Indian themes elaborately. It is about Istoma, the alter-ego of Khlebnikov, who wanders in search of a principle that shall provide ‘liberty to all oppressed people’ and finds it in the all-embracing universal soul – Brahman and non-dualism (Advaita).
http://swarajyamag.com/culture/what-russian-writers-learnt-from-india

 

Peter Kropotkin - Blavatsky connection? She was an admirer of Tolstoi, so there is one. Covers Russian intellectual mood of the era.

Morality: The Lust For Pleasure -The Case of Peter Kropotkin

Milan Djurasovic — October 23, 2016

Russian literature of the mentioned period is replete with Nietzschean influences and extremely subjective and individualist themes (the abstract ideas of Helena P. Blavatsky and Nicholas Roerich, the obsession with the notion of fin de siècle of many artists and Symbolist writers such as Alexander A. Blok and Andrei Bely, the preoccupation with eternal life, the overbearing fear of the looming Asiatic invasion, etc.). Additionally, a number of predominantly English influential thinkers and scientists had isolated and focused only on the Malthusian aspects of Darwin’s theory of natural selection (intraspecific competition and overpopulation), and had manipulated these ideas to justify the brutal conquests of foreign lands as well as the extreme economic inequality in their own country.[2]

https://www.countercurrents.org/2016/10/23/morality-the-lust-for-pleasure-the-case-of-peter-kropotkin/
see Blavatsky article on Tolstoi: Tolstoi's Unecclesiastical Christianity

 

Why the Soviets Sponsored a Doomed Expedition to a Hollow Earth Kingdom

Dimitra Nikolaidou September 15, 2016

Unfortunately for the Roerichs, the area they aimed to investigate was all but inaccessible in the early 20th century. Tibet was closed to foreigners; moreover, the Soviets, the French, the English, the Chinese, the Japanese, the Mongolians and the Germans vied for control of the place. Spies, rebels and rogue warlords clashed daily in the mountain passes making the expedition extremely hazardous. The rivalry between the USSR and the British Empire in particular, was so intense it was nicknamed “the Great Game”.

http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/why-the-soviets-sponsored-a-doomed-expedition-to-a-hollow-earth-kingdom

In an article entitled “Turkish Barbarities”, she wrote during the Russo-Turkish war of 1877-1878:

 “I regard this war not as one of Christian against Muslim, but as one of humanity and civilization against barbarism.” 

http://www.katinkahesselink.net/blavatsky/articles/v1/y1877_009.htm

 

Blavatsky's translation of Leo Tolstoy's The Imp and the Crust (1889)

https://theosophyproject.blogspot.ca/2017/01/blavatskys-translation-of-leo-tolstois.html

 

Interesting Blavatsky article The Jews in Russia

New York World, Sept. 25th, 1877

http://blavatsky.net/index.php/jews-in-russia

Blavatsky Letter to J. Ralston Skinner

J. D. Buck

update 27/06/17: an esteemed correspondent, fc (aka friendly chap) has kindly sent in an alternate manuscript reading that seems considerably clearer, therefore we decided to replace the previous version with this one.
This post is a letter from HPB to the erudite Masonic kabbalist J. Ralston Skinner whom Blavatsky helped promote by quoting his remarkable Kabbalistic study Key to the Hebrew-Egyptian mystery in the source of measures in the Secret Doctrine. As this letter to Jirah Dewey Buck indicates, she was introduced to him via Buck, a prominent early American Theosophist from Cincinnati.

http://theosophy.wiki/w-en/index.php?title=James_Ralston_Skinner

http://theosophy.wiki/w-en/index.php?title=Jirah_Dewey_Buck

 

Accounts of Buck’s relation with Skinner can be found in his Modern World Movements (39-42) and more recently in Letters to the Sage (Bowen/Johnson) (107-113). The Blavatsky-Skinner correspondence is preserved at Harvard and includes a soon-to-be published 40-page (!) letter via Theosophical History.

 

The letter below was written during the stressful post-Coulomb/Hodgson affair period, accounts of which are vividly delineated in the Letters of H.P. Blavatsky to A. P. Sinnett.

 

HPB to JDB

My dear & kind brother, I lost Mr. Skinner‘s address so please pass him on this enclosed volume & please ask him to forgive me my flapdoodle English & unsteady writing. But I am in such hurry for want of time that every moment is precious to me.

I hope he won‘t mind my telling him the plain truth what I think, namely that he found or discovered only one of the 7 keys to esoteric interpretation & universal language. He ought not to dwarf the grandiose thoughts of old by squaring them all & limiting their many meanings on the Procrustean bed of terrestrial phallicism. He is too enthusiastic about the Jews altogether & sacrifices history of facts to his preconceptions in favor of the Hebrew which is not an ancient language unless one accepts Bible Chronology. 

But it is the only fault I find in him & I hope I am mistaken in his fanatical views. He is the grandest man & mind (in the direction of the occult) I know of at present; a natural born genius & helped beyond any doubt. I don‘t say ‘helped` mind you, in discovering in his independent research what he has, but helped from the lethal effects & influences of his discoveries. He would have become, uninitiated as he is, insane long ago, or dead or strangled at night under the pretext of an apoplexy - had it not been for the helping & watching hand above him; not of one of our masters but of a Dhyan Chohan, a Planetary - the rarest thing possible, & whom I verily fear he mistakes for God instead of a god-partie & conditioned on his plane. This I know from masters who spoke of him when I was yet at Adyar, referring to him as the "Ohio-Kabbalist & mathematician" - & that I had never heard his name even. Funny I should have never heard of him or his book when in America. His intuitional powers are as marvelous as his mathematical knowledge, indeed. Many thanks for his previous M.S.S.- etc. etc.

H. P. Blavatsky

Ostende

Received March 3rd, 1887

(from RJGA v.2, n.6, June 2013-w/emendations for readability)

Blavatsky and Buddhism

Colonel Olcott: Under Eastern Eyes
Uditha Devapriya – February 20, 2015
Not that he didn’t achieve. He established schools. He began with Ananda College in 1886. By 1907, the year he died, there were 183 Buddhist Theosophical Society (BTS) schools. That number multiplied as the decades went on. True to his “universalist” outlook, they sought to incorporate the best of East and West. Following a British curriculum while assimilating “localised” subjects like Pali and Sanskrit, they managed to bridge both worlds. In a way.
https://www.colombotelegraph.com/index.php/colonel-olcott-under-eastern-eyes/

Review of Buddhist chapter of Diana Eck’s 2001 book
 A New Religious America: How a “Christian Country” Has Become the World’s Most Religiously Diverse Nation:
From this insider’s division of understanding, Eck moves on to an outsider’s typology with sections running in a rough chronological order based on appearance in the U.S.: The Chinese in America, Japanese Buddhists in America, The Pioneers (early European Americans who adopted and adapted the religion), and onward… All, or at least nearly all, of the “big names” in American Buddhism are represented, from Anagarika Dharmapala and Soyen Shaku to Paul Carus and Henry David Thoreau and Helena Petrova Blavatsky; D.T. Suzuki and Jan Chozen Bays, Jack Kerouac and Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, Mahaghosananda, Henepola Gunaratana and Jack Kornfield, Sharon Salzberg and Sylivia Boorstein, and of course Thich Nhat Hanh and the Dalai Lama along with at least a dozen others. http://www.patheos.com/blogs/americanbuddhist/2016/02/exploring-a-new-buddhist-america.html

Article on early Theosophy opponent Charles Pfoundes
The hidden history of Buddhism in the West:
During his three year mission in London and elsewhere in the UK starting in 1888 Pfoundes’ lectures were well attended given that he was apparently an engaging and interesting speaker. A photograph of him at this time shows him in the full regalia of a Japanese prelate, accoutrements that must have increased his authority and made him appear even more interesting. Newspaper reports of the time show that Pfoundes’ two main subjects were Buddhist doctrine and criticisms of Theosophy which he dismissed as nonsense masquerading as Buddhism.
http://www.island.lk/index.php?page_cat=article-details&page=article-details&code_title=147069

French article on Tulpamancy current (negative appraisal of Theosophy, but interesting research) http://tulpa.wikia.com/wiki/Tulpamancy:
Donc l’interprétation de David-Néel est juste sans l’être. La pratique mentale utilisée est effectivement tibétaine, mais en revanche, la philosophie, les buts ne sont pas les mêmes. En fait nous rappelle Joffe, la croyance en la possibilité de créer des êtres par la force de la pensée est commune au sein de l’occultisme occidental… Le tulpa imaginée par Alexandra David-Néel était probablement influencée par l’ésotérisme « orientalisant » de la Société Théosophique et les écrits d’Helena Petrovna Blavatsky et Annie Besant, qui utilisaient les termes de « forme-pensée » et « d »élémental » pour décrire ce type de créature. Alexandra David-Neel était en effet membre de la Société Théosophique fondée par la première, puis dirigée par la seconde
http://internetactu.blog.lemonde.fr/2016/09/24/les-cultures-a-lheure-de-la-globalisation-pizzas-lamas-bols-chantants-et-tulpas/
see also:
https://earthenergyreader.wordpress.com/2016/12/15/tulpas-thought-forms-and-going-into-the-vortex/

New D. T. Suzuki collection mentions Theosophical connection:
Selected Works of D.T. Suzuki, Volume III: Comparative Religion, Volume 3
Univ of California Press, Aug 2, 2016 - 320 pages
https://books.google.ca/books?id=C4IkDQAAQBAJ&pg=PR24&lpg=PR24&dq=d+t+suzuki+theosophy&source=bl&ots=jVxC17pWeN&sig=zjoU7iLGGIGN33p1SVeVN4ZB474&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj2sMuu37XSAhXD64MKHcXGB1cQ6AEIPzAH#v=onepage&q=%20theosophy&f=false

Blavatsky and the Nine Unknown Men was a trendy topic recently - there's no substance to the story, but the Talbot Mundy novel is fun https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nine_Unknown :
http://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/the-copy-and-paste-mysteries-of-the-nine-unknown-men

A talk was given on Blavatsky recently at the Buddhist Society:

http://www.thebuddhistsociety.org/page/the-amazing-madame-blavatsky