Esoteric World of Madame Blavatsky Insights Into the Life of a Modern Sphinx

World traveler and student of religions, Blavatsky was among the first to bring Eastern wisdom to the West. Her writings excited such luminaries as W.B. Yeats, James Joyce, Wassily Kandinsky, Piet Mondrian, and Gustav Mahler. Here are first-handed accounts of her colorful life by family, friends, and enemies.

"A psychological enigma, a puzzle for future generations, a Sphinx!" is Helena P. Blavatsky's self-portrait. Those who knew her called her "The lady with the magical eyes". The most notable esoteric author of the nineteenth century, she widely influenced literature, art, and music and inspired the New Age. Her soirees were magnets for freethinking intellectuals and the sites of remarkable phenomena, as related here by family, friends, and even enemies.