LONDON 1851 [Previously] London was filled with expectant energy owing to the Great Exhibition at the Crystal Palace. Blavatsky was in the heart of it all, staying in the Mivart’s Hotel with the entourage of ladies accompanying Countess Bagration.[1] More exciting was her first encounter with Master Morya in the flesh. The mysterious guide who she had known all her life had previously visited her in non-corporeal forms. He came out of the crowd and gave her instructions on... Read more
EGYPT 1851 [Previously] “Forty years have I before me in which to build a more enduring fame that that of the builder of the Great Pyramid,” Blavatsky told Countess Kazenova. It was 1851, and the women were sitting in a room in Cairo, in Samuel Shepheard’s Hotel des Anglais. “Who was he anyway?” Blavatsky continued. “Only a name, an oppressor of his fellow men. I will bless mankind by freeing them from mental bondage.” “That is sublime Helene,” replied... Read more
1851 For several months after leaving Erivan, Blavatsky lived in the Ottoman Capital of Constantinople, taking up residence in the Hotel d’Angleterre on the Grand Rue de Pera. The hostelry was kept by the hotelier James Missire, the former traveling servant who accompanied A.W. Kinglake, whose travels in the Middle East were immortalized in Eothen (1844.)[1] It was a popular resort for travelers, writers, politicians, and soldiers.[2] Blavatsky was a daughter of Russia, a land (and people) that vacillated... Read more
ANTI-MASON In the publisher’s office in the town of Batavia, New York, there were fresh proofs of the most recent printing, an exposé on the secret rites and oaths of Freemasonry by William Morgan. The gang of masked men felt vindicated for the severe beating they delivered to the owner of the printing press, and the destruction of his equipment. It was a warning to all. Nine days later the author of the exposé, William Morgan, was himself abducted.... Read more
On January 29, 1845, ten days after Edgar Allan Poe’s thirty-sixth birthday, The Evening Mirror (New York) printed an advanced copy of his new poem, “The Raven.” “In our opinion, it is the most effective single example of ‘fugitive poetry’ ever published in this country,” the paper stated, “and unsurpassed in English poetry for subtle conception, masterly ingenuity of versification, and consistent, sustaining of imaginative lift and ‘pokerishness.’ It is one of these ‘dainties bred in a book’... Read more
Franz Hartmann, one of the most prolific occult writers of the nineteenth century, was born in 1838, in Kempton, a town in Bavaria, Germany. In his youth, he spent much time in nature and reading the works of alchemists like Paracelsus and Cornelius Agrippa. Joseph Ennemoser’s 1844 work, Geschichte Der Magie (History Of Magic,) would have been readily available. “There is no ambiguity in his expressions,” Hartmann says of Paracelsus, “and if we follow the roads which he indicated, progressing... Read more
The more than occasional bumps in the road reminded Blavatsky that her wounds were still healing. All things considered, she was lucky to be alive after fighting in Garibaldi’s army at the Battle of Mentana.[1] Two months after the battle, her teacher instructed her to go to Constantinople, so she left Florence during the Christmas season of 1867. She passed through Serbia, where her teacher gave her further instructions in the Karpat Mountains. She then traveled in the direction of... Read more
In the last days of September 1859, Henry Steel Olcott, Associate Agricultural Editor of Horace Greeley’s New York Tribune, was in St. Louis, Missouri, covering a conference held by the St. Louis and Iron Mountain Railroad Company. During one of the noon recesses, Olcott and other members of the Press, were invited to Pomological Hall for a wine tasting by D. Nicholson (the celebrated grocer on Market Street.) They were soon joined by Robert Marcellus Stewart. Elected as the Governor... Read more
THE MYSTERIOUS “CLOUD-SKIMMERS” OF 1896 Tales of “Sea Serpents” trickled into the ports of the Pacific Coast, and widely printed in the San Francisco papers in the summer of 1896.[1] “The serpent seemed to have an almost human look,” it was said, “and its face closely resembled that of an ape.”[2] Sightings were reported as late as the middle of October 1896. When Captain Miller of the steam-schooner Navarro arrived in San Francisco harbor from the Clipperton Islands, he... Read more
Blavatsky and Olcott were entertaining Olcott’s sister, Belle, in the Lamasery.[1] Also present was Charles Sotheran, who brought with him two friends, Alice Hyneman, and Richard Harte. Hyneman was a poet, whose literary labor focused on social reform.[2] Harte was an “austere gentleman” of Irish extraction, having been born in County Limerick in 1840.[3] He was a journalist, but hypnotism, mesmerism, and “all their allied subjects,” had been the primary interest of his life since he was a youth.... Read more
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