The Extraordinary Life and Influence of Helena Blavatsky: Founder of the Modern Theosophical Movement [EXCERPT]by Sylvia Cranston
Carey Williams, Research Assistant
© 1993 by Sylvia Cranston
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Chapter 5: Travels ResumedAs when she left Tiflis more than a decade previously, HPB says she again fled ‘‘because I was sick at heart and my soul needed space.’’ It was the boredom of conventional life in Russia and the absence of real freedom that drove her away. [30] She went to Odessa for a while. Thereafter one cannot speak with certainty as to the sequence of her travels, but besides Iran, Syria, Lebanon, and Jerusalem, HPB appears to have been more than once in Egypt, Greece, and Italy. It may be during this time that she studied the Kabbalah under a learned rabbi. She corresponded with him until he died, and his portrait was always a treasured relic.
In 1867, HPB spent several months traveling through Hungary and the Balkans. The towns visited were recorded in a travel diary that still exists. [31] Her last stops were in Venice, Florence, and Mentana. [32] A small town northeast of Rome, Mentana has special historic significance: In Italy's long struggle for freedom, on November 3, 1867 it was the site of an important battle waged between the forces of the Italian liberator, Garibaldi, and those of the papists and the French.
When eight years later HPB was in New York, a reporter heard about her participation in this battle. He wrote under the caption ‘‘Heroic Women’’:
Her life has been one of many vicissitudes, and the area of her experiences is bounded only by the world. . . . in the struggle for liberty [she] fought under the victorious standard of Garibaldi. She won renown for unflinching bravery in many hard-fought battles, and was elevated to a high position on the staff of the great general. She still bears the scars of many wounds she received in the conflict. Twice her horse was shot under her, and she escaped hasty death only by her coolness and matchless skill.
Altogether Madame Blavatsky is
AN ASTONISHING WOMAN
When HPB included the clipping in her scrapbook she inked in these words: ‘‘Every word is a lie. Never was on ‘Garibaldi’s staff’. . . .’’
To Sinnett, she wrote: ‘‘The Garibaldis (the sons) are alone to know the whole truth; and [a] few more Garibaldians with them. What I did, you know partially; you do not know all.’’ [33] On another occasion she remarked, ‘‘[W]hether I was sent there, or found myself there by accident, are questions that pertain to my private life.’’ [34] One of Blavatsky’s inveterate critics, René Guenon, admits that a high-ranking Mason, John Yarker (whose writings HPB commends in Isis), was ‘‘a friend of Mazzini and Garibaldi’’ and ‘‘had once seen Madame Blavatsky in their entourage.’’ [35]
HPB told Olcott she was at Mentana as a volunteer with a number of other European ladies. He recalls ‘‘In proof of her story she showed me where her left arm had been broken in two places by a sabre stroke, and made me feel in her right shoulder a musket bullet, still embedded in the muscle, and another in her leg.’’ In all, five wounds were received and she was picked up out of a ditch for dead. Olcott is of the opinion that this near-death was a critical stage in her development, wherein she was able to use her personal self more effectively as a vehicle for the higher self within. In the early part of 1868, apparently recovered from her wounds, HPB was in Florence. Then via northern Italy she crossed over to the Balkans, according to her account spending some time there awaiting orders from her teacher. Finally word came to proceed to Constantinople and then on to India, [36] after which she journeyed to eastern Tibet. This trip is said to mark her first prolonged stay in that mysterious realm.
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Notes:31. Blavatsky, H. P. Blavatsky Collected Writings, 1:xlvii, 11–25
32. Blavatsky, The Letters of H. P. Blavatsky to A. P. Sinnett, 144
33. Blavatsky, The Letters of H. P. Blavatsky to A. P. Sinnett, 144; H. P. Blavatsky Collected Writings, 1:54–55
34. H. P. Blavatsky, ‘‘Mr. A. Lillie’s Delusions,’’ Light, London, England, Aug. 9, 1884, 323–24; Blavatsky, H. P. Blavatsky Collected Writings, 4:277–78
35. René Guenon, Le Théosophisme: Histoire d’une pseudo-religion, Paris, France, 43
36. Olcott, Old Diary Leaves, 1:9, 264; Blavatsky, The Letters of H. P. Blavatsky to A. P. Sinnett, 151–52
