The Figures

Helena Blavatsky

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831-1891) was a Russian-born writer who co-founded the Theosophical Society in New York in 1875; her Isis Unveiled (1877) read every religion through “Hermetic philosophy”. In 1884 she called herself the disciple of a brotherhood of adepts in Tibet; in 1885 a committee of the Society for Psychical Research called her “one of the most accomplished, ingenious, and interesting impostors in history” (SPR 1885, pp. 202, 207). Below, records, claims and borrowings are kept apart, checked against the 1877 scan.

When did Blavatsky live, and what did she found?

Blavatsky lived from 1831 to 1891 (Library of Congress). She was born in Yekaterinoslav, now Dnipro in Ukraine, on the night of 30-31 July 1831 (Brazier), Julian calendar; 11-12 August by ours. Her early travels, including the Tibet she later spoke of, rest mostly on her own telling.

On 7 September 1875, after a lecture in her New York rooms on the “Egyptian Cabbala”, Henry Steel Olcott (1832-1907) proposed a society “for this kind of study”. The next evening’s minutes give its aim as “the study and elucidation of Occultism, the Cabbala, etc.” and list sixteen names, among them William Quan Judge (1851-1896) (Olcott 1895, pp. 117-122). It was constituted on 17 November 1875, with Olcott as president and Blavatsky as corresponding secretary (pp. 135-136).

The two reached Bombay in February 1879, “took pânsil”, the Buddhist precepts, at Galle in Ceylon on 25 May 1880, and moved the headquarters to Adyar, near Madras, in December 1882 (Olcott 1900, pp. 167-168, 288). She sailed from Madras in spring 1885 (Olcott 1904, pp. 222-223), built The Secret Doctrine (London, 1888) on a “Book of Dzyan” that “is utterly unknown to our Philologists”, as she wrote (vol. I, p. xxii), and died in London on 8 May 1891 (Brazier).

How Hermetic is Isis Unveiled?

Isis Unveiled uses Hermes as a banner more than a source: across both volumes Plato, Kabbalah and Buddhism each appear about two to three times as often as Hermes, and Hermetic texts are quoted in only a few passages. The programme stands in vol. I: every scripture, “the Bible as much as the Vedas or the Buddhist Scriptures”, is understood only “by the light of Hermetic philosophy” (p. 307). Our count in the Cornell scans (13 November 2026; all word forms; minimums, as scans miss words):

The last row matters. In 1614 Isaac Casaubon (1559-1614) showed that the Corpus Hermeticum was Greek of the Christian era; Walter Scott put most of its treatises in the third century, “some perhaps in the second” (Scott 1924, I, p. 41). Isis never names Casaubon. It dates the writings of Hermes back “into the night of time”, citing Champollion by name only (p. 24); the Champollion-Figeac book it cites on p. 625 calls them mostly Greek, of unknown date (1839, p. 139).

Which of its Hermetic claims hold up?

Few hold as stated: the lines quoted are usually real, but the ages and meanings attached to them come from 19th-century writers. Four passages:

Page 507 shows the layering: the Tablet comes framed by an unsourced legend that it was found “on the dead body of Hermes, at Hebron”, and closed by a gloss, “the universal, magical agent, the astral light”. Lévi had called the Tablet’s force “la puissance magique universelle” and “la lumière astrale” (1861, II, p. 167).

Was Blavatsky exposed as a fraud in 1885?

A committee of the Society for Psychical Research (SPR) judged her phenomena fraudulent in 1885; in 1986 an SPR member, Vernon Harrison, attacked its evidence, but the SPR’s encyclopedia records no retraction. Richard Hodgson (1855-1905) joined the committee after it was formed in May 1884 (p. 201). Its key evidence became letters printed in a Madras magazine in autumn 1884, said to be hers to Emma Coulomb, former staff at the headquarters, and implying staged phenomena. She called them forgeries; Hodgson went to India in November 1884 and was back in April 1885 (p. 203).

The same page 207 also finds “deliberate plagiarism” in a letter credited to the Mahatma “Koot Hoomi”. Leslie Price’s SPR entry notes it “officially carried only the authority of its authors” and quotes Robert Thouless (1968): Hodgson’s conclusions “may well have been right”, but overstated (Price 2016). Harrison, an expert in photography and handwriting, published “J’Accuse” in the SPR’s Journal (vol. 53, 1986, pp. 286-310): in the Mahatma letters at the British Library he found no evidence that the “KH” and “M” scripts and her ordinary hand share a common origin, and Hodgson mishandled the Coulomb letters, which are lost. His 1997 verdict: “The Hodgson Report is not a scientific study” (Harrison 1997).

Harrison tested evidence and method, not any phenomenon. Wikipedia and Encyclopedia.com (12 November 2026) say the SPR retracted the report in 1986, wholly or in part. Its press release of 8 May 1986 (copy) said only that the report had “wrongly” been taken as the SPR’s official view; Price records no retraction.

Did Blavatsky copy Isis Unveiled from other books?

She took many quotations from recent compilations without naming them: William Emmette Coleman (1843-1909) counted “some 2000 passages copied from other books without proper credit” and about 100 books used (Coleman 1895, p. 354), among them Dunlap’s Sod (134 passages) and Ennemoser’s History of Magic (107) (pp. 356-357). Olcott, from inside the movement, gives the same scale: “our whole working library scarcely comprised one hundred books of reference”, including Dunlap and “Eliphas Levi’s various works” (Olcott 1895, p. 207).

The defence, by the biographer Sylvia Cranston (1993): citing the original author without the book in between was common; Coleman himself borrowed uncredited from W. H. Burr; “only 22 percent is quoted material”; and Coleman’s promised full proof never appeared (Cranston, ch. 12). The facts are shared: old authors reached her through new books; the dispute is over the word.

How did Theosophy pass Hermes on?

Through people and print more than doctrine: a Hermetic Society grew out of her London lodge in 1884, her secretary translated the Hermetica in 1906, and a Buddhist Lodge began inside the Society in 1924. Anna Kingsford (1846-1888) and Edward Maitland (1824-1897) gave up the London Lodge’s presidency and vice-presidency when members wanted officers devoted wholly to Eastern teaching; their Hermetic Lodge opened on 9 April 1884 and became the independent Hermetic Society on 9 May (Maitland 1913, II, pp. 186-187; Olcott 1904, pp. 96-97). It took the name because the West saw “Hermes as the supreme initiator into the Sacred Mysteries of existence” (p. 195); in 1885 the two published Hermetic excerpts in English as The Virgin of the World.

George Robert Stow Mead (1863-1933), her private secretary in her last years (Mead 1904), published Thrice-Greatest Hermes (1906) with the Theosophical Publishing Society. Éliphas Lévi (1810-1875) gave her much of her magical vocabulary: Coleman traced 102 points of Theosophical teaching to him (pp. 365-366). The Golden Dawn (London, 1888) used “Hermetic” for a graded course in occult sciences. In 1924 Christmas Humphreys (1901-1983) founded the Buddhist Lodge “as an offshoot of the London branch of the Theosophical Society”, and a fifteen-year-old Alan Watts (1915-1973) wrote to it (Guy 2000). On the line from the Hermetica to modern systems, Theosophy is a switchyard: old names, new meanings. The old text is the source of a question, not the proof of an answer.

How do you check a “Hermes said” quotation in five minutes?

Find the words in a dated translation of a named Hermetic text; whatever you cannot find belongs to the person quoting, and to their date, not to Hermes. It works on Isis, on a blog post and on a chatbot answer (why AI answers need it).

1. Copy the sentence and the name it is credited to (Hermes, Trismegistus, Pimander).
2. Look for an edition or treatise number; if none, write “no edition”.
3. Search two or three unusual words, or the idea, in Mead’s translation of 1906 (free scans).
4. For each match note text, section, speaker and date (Poimandres, Asclepius, Stobaean fragments).
5. Mark what is left over: those words belong to the writer and their year.

Why it works: a quotation borrows its authority from a source you can test. Limit: it shows where words come from, not whether an idea is true (see ask for the date). Filled in for Isis I, pp. 624-625:

• Quote: “Truth alone,” says Pimander, “is eternal and immutable” … “He is become a GOD!” (scan). Edition: none.
• Match 1: “Truth is in no wise, Tat, upon the earth”: Stobaean excerpt, Hermes to Tat (Mead, III, pp. 17-21).
• Match 2: “the fear of death torture the multitude”: Asclepius 27, Hermes to Asclepius (Mead, II, p. 360).
• Match 3: the climb through seven zones: Corpus Hermeticum I.24-26, Poimandres speaking (Mead, II, pp. 16-17).
• Verdict: three texts joined as one speech by “Pimander”; her French source (Champollion-Figeac 1839, pp. 140, 142-143) keeps them apart. Quote them separately.

What this page does not claim

It does not decide whether the Masters existed or any phenomenon happened, and it judges neither Theosophists today nor the Buddhism and Hinduism Theosophy drew on. The reading check promises no insight or power, only slower, more honest reading.

Key facts

Born	30-31 July 1831 (Julian), Yekaterinoslav, now Dnipro, Ukraine
Died	8 May 1891, London
Founded	Theosophical Society, New York, 1875, with H. S. Olcott and W. Q. Judge
Main books	Isis Unveiled (1877); The Secret Doctrine (1888)
In India	Bombay 1879; Adyar from December 1882; left 1885
SPR inquiry	Report of 1885 (Proceedings III, pp. 201-400); Harrison’s critique, 1986
Hermetic links	Kingsford’s Hermetic Society (1884); Mead’s Hermetica (1906)
Checked	13 November 2026

Fair questions

Who was Madame Blavatsky?

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831-1891), a Russian-born writer who co-founded the Theosophical Society in New York in 1875 with Henry Steel Olcott and William Quan Judge. She wrote Isis Unveiled (1877) and The Secret Doctrine (1888) and died in London in 1891.

What is the connection between Theosophy and Hermeticism?

Isis Unveiled (1877) called “Hermetic philosophy” the key to every scripture, and in 1884 Anna Kingsford’s circle left the London lodge to found a Hermetic Society. Yet Plato, Kabbalah and Buddhism each appear in it about two to three times as often as Hermes.

Does Isis Unveiled quote Hermes Trismegistus accurately?

Partly. Some lines match known Hermetic texts, but she rarely names an edition, and a passage credited to “Pimander” (vol. I, pp. 624-625) joins three different texts. She also treats the Hermetica as immemorially old, against the dating of Casaubon (1614) and Scott (1924).

Was Blavatsky proven a fraud?

In 1885 a committee of the Society for Psychical Research called her one of the most “interesting impostors in history”. In 1986 Vernon Harrison, an SPR member and handwriting expert, argued that Richard Hodgson’s evidence and method were flawed; the SPR’s own encyclopedia calls this a critique and records no retraction.

Did Blavatsky plagiarize Isis Unveiled?

W. E. Coleman (1895) counted about 2,000 passages copied without proper credit from about 100 books, and Olcott confirmed her library held about a hundred. Her defenders reply that she usually named the original author, only not the book she took it from, and that quotation is about 22 percent of the text.

Sources & further reading

• H. P. Blavatsky, Isis Unveiled, 2 vols (New York: J. W. Bouton, 1877), vol. I, pp. 24, 33, 35, 307, 507, 624-625; vol. I, vol. II. Word counts ours.
• H. P. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine, vol. I (London: Theosophical Publishing Company, 1888), p. xxii; scan.
• H. S. Olcott, Old Diary Leaves (New York: Putnam, 1895), scan; Second Series (London, 1900), scan; Third Series (1904), pp. 96-97, 222-223, scan.
• “Report of the Committee appointed to investigate phenomena connected with the Theosophical Society”, Proceedings of the SPR 3 (1885), pp. 201-400; scan.
• Leslie Price, “The Hodgson Report on Theosophy”, Psi Encyclopedia (SPR, 2016, updated 2026); online.
• Vernon Harrison, H. P. Blavatsky and the SPR (Pasadena: Theosophical University Press, 1997), reprinting “J’Accuse”, Journal of the SPR 53 (1986), pp. 286-310; online.
• W. E. Coleman, “The Sources of Madame Blavatsky’s Writings”, in V. S. Solovyoff, A Modern Priestess of Isis (London: Longmans, 1895), pp. 353-366; scan.
• Sylvia Cranston, HPB (New York: Putnam, 1993), ch. 12, excerpt “Was Blavatsky a Plagiarist?”; online; sympathetic.
• Edward Maitland, Anna Kingsford, vol. II, 3rd ed. (London: Watkins, 1913), pp. 186-187, 195; scan.
• G. R. S. Mead, Thrice-Greatest Hermes (London: Theosophical Publishing Society, 1906), II, pp. 16-17, 360 (scan), III, pp. 17-21 (scan); W. Scott, Hermetica I (Oxford, 1924), p. 41 (scan).
• Éliphas Lévi, Dogme et rituel de la haute magie, II (Paris: Baillière, 1861), p. 167; scan.
• J.-J. Champollion-Figeac, Égypte ancienne (Paris: Firmin Didot, 1839), pp. 139-143; scan.
• Records consulted 12-13 November 2026: Library of Congress (life dates); S. Brazier, Women in World History, Encyclopedia.com; Wikipedia; D. Guy, “Christmas Humphreys”, Tricycle, 2000, online.