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Aries 7 (2007) 161-184

Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2007 DOI: 10.1163/157005907X202345

www.brill.nl/arie

Blavatsky, Dostoevskii, and Occult Starchestvo

Brendan FrenchSchool of Law, University of Western Sydney, and Centre for Continuing Education,

University of Sydney

AbstractBlavatsky, Dostoevski, et Starchestvo occulte

La Tosophie sous sa forme blavatskienne, du moins est une tradition reue, en ce sensquelle se prsente comme une sagesse sans ge, secrtement transmise par une fraternit de Ma-tres qui sont des adeptes. Les Matres sont des hommes qui, essentiellement grce leurs pro-pres efforts plutt que par quelque don dont ils auraient t gratifis, ont obtenu des facults etune longvit qui ne sont pas de lordre de ce monde. outefois, les pouvoirs paranormaux desMatres ne reprsentent quune moiti de leurs attributs; lautre moiti est lintensit de leurautorit spirituelle charismatique. Cet article a pour objet de montrer comment la premiretrouve son cho chez les volkhvyrusses, personnages quasi-chamaniques de la tradition populaire,tandis que la seconde est plutt comparable aux staretsde la tradition orthodoxe, saints asctesqui se prvalent dans spirituels pour ldification des croyants. Le programme blavatskien a tfond sur le dsir de Blavatsky de crer des modles de dveloppement et dinfluence spirituelssusceptibles dviter ces maldictions jumelles que sont (car elle les voyait ainsi) le matrialisme,et lautoritarisme ecclsiastique. Et cest l, quelle a dcouvert en la personne de Feodor Dos-toevsky (1821-1881) une parent bienvenue, car lui aussi tait la recherche de modles desobornost clairs. Blavatsky, qui donna une des premires traductions des Frres Karamazov,trouva en la personne sainte et claire du Pre Zossima, de quoi fournir un modle littraireidal pour les Matres. Blavatsky se sentait profondment attire par le dsir quavait Dostoievskide rendre force et vigueur ce type danesse spirituelle (starchestvo), et vit l un lment valablestratgiquement pour son entreprise thosophique. out en tudiant la tradition orthodoxe rela-tive cette question danesse, Blavatsky chercha aussi son inspiration dans la fraternit asctiquechrtienne prototypique; savoir, le monachisme rmitique copte. Les anachortes coptes sem-blaient runir comme une tunique sans couture tous les traits de ses Matres: on leur attribuaitcommunment de grands pouvoirs meta-empiriques, tandis quen mme temps ils possdaientdes talents paradigmatiques en matire de direction spirituelle. Ainsi, considr la lumire destraditions folkloriques et orthodoxes, lexercice thosophique apparat surtout comme une rvi-

sion moderne de ce genre littraire quest lapaideia, dont des collections telles que les Apotheg-mata Patrumconstituent des exemples.

KeywordsBlavatsky, H.P.; Teosophical Masters; Dostoevskii, F.M.; Eastern Orthodoxy; CopticChristianity

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1. Introduction

It is known that at the height of her tension regarding the Coulomb charges,with much of her lifes work and reputation in a precipitous state, HelenaPetrovna Blavatsky (1831-1891), co-Founder and ideologue of the Teosoph-ical Society, visited a Russian Orthodox church in Paris. Although it is impos-sible at this distance to determine her state of mind, 1 it is neverthelessintriguing that in a time of crisis she felt impelled to undertake something ofa pilgrimage to her past:

I stood there with my mouth wide open, as if standing before my own dear mother . . .I do not believe in any dogmas, I dislike every ritual, but my feelings towards our ownchurch service are quite different. I am driven to think that my brains lack their sev-enth stopper. Probably it is in my blood . . . I will certainly always say: a thousand timesrather Buddhism, a pure moral teaching, in perfect harmony with the teachings ofChrist, than modern Catholicism or Protestantism. But with the faith of the Russianchurch I will not even compare Buddhism. I cant help it. Such is my silly, inconsistentnature.2

Scholars have consistently erred in assessing Blavatskys response to Christian-ity. Her anti-papal diatribes, overt anticlericalism, and consistent disavowal ofReformation humanism have meant that scholars have painted their histories

with too broad a brush and have overlooked the nuanced demarcation she

regularly made between Christianity and Churchianity.3Although it couldnever be argued that the pre-Revolution Russian Orthodox Church of the latenineteenth century was not, if idiosyncratically, an authoritarian episcopal oli-

1) Such a caveatdoes not seem to have prevented Meade from employing an overtly psychologi-cal reading of the event: see Meade,Madame Blavatsky, 293-294.2) Blavatsky, Letters of H. P. Blavatsky, 237. On another occasion, upon viewing a portrait ofthe dead sar Alexander II, Blavatsky crossed herself in Russian style: So sudden it all was that Ifelt stupified [sic] with astonishment. Is it really I who during eight years, since the death offather, never thought of crossing myself, and then suddenly giving way to such sentimentality? Itis a real calamity (quoted in Neff, Personal Memoirs, 287). Vsevolod Solovyoff recalled thatBlavatsky once stated to him: I would gladly return, I would gladly be Russian, Christian,Orthodox. I yearn for it. But there is no returning; I am in chains; I am not my own (quoted inWebb, Te Occult Establishment, 161; it should be remembered that Vs. Solovyoff s commentscannot now be authenticated).3) For Blavatskys use of Churchianity see Blavatsky, Collected Writings, vol. VIII, 296-297;vol. X, 164, 243; vol. XII, 28, 268-270. For a discussion of Blavatskys attitudes to institutionalChristianity and the notion of Teosophical Christianity / Christian Teosophy (as well as ananalysis of the Liberal Catholic Church) see French, Te Teosophical Masters, vol. 1, 324-350 etpassim.



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garchy, it was nevertheless Blavatskys own dear mother, and would beexempted from the most obdurate of her attacks on Christianity. 4

2. Blavatsky and Eastern Orthodoxy

It would be unwise to dismiss Blavatskys early encounters with ByzantineOrthodoxy as less than formative. It is known that her family maintainedstrong links with various powerful Russian prelates, notably MetropolitanIsidore, Exarch of Georgia.5Blavatskys sister, Vera Zhelikhovskaia, recorded

an occasion when the two young women visited the Metropolitan:

[H]ardly had we taken our seats in the drawing-room of the Holy Metropolitan thana terrible hubbub, noises, and loud raps in every conceivable direction burst suddenlyupon us with a force to which even we were hardly accustomed; every bit of furniturein the big audience room cracked and thumped . . . Useless to say how confused andembarrassed we lookedthough truth compels me to say that my irreverent sistersembarrassment was tempered with a greater expression of fun than I would have

4) It is not insignificant that the last three major biographies of Blavatsky (Meade, MadameBlavatsky, 1980; Overton Fuller, Blavatsky and her eachers, 1988; Cranston, H.P.B, 1993)which cover the spectrum from reductionism to religious apology (though with not muchbetween)have no index reference to Russian Orthodoxy or Orthodoxy.5) Blavatskys cousin, the tsarist statesman Count Sergei Iulevich Witte (1849-1915), noted that:[]he exarch of Georgia was Isidor, a fine old man, later metropolitan of Petersburg. He had thereputation of being a wise prelate, an outstanding administrator, and a true monk in his way oflife. He often dined at our house (Witte, Te Memoirs, 25). Interestingly, it appears that it wasIsidore who refused Nikifor Blavatskiis appeal for an annulment from Helena: see Cooper, TeLetters of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, 1. It might be noted that, following the absorption of theGeorgian Kingdom into the tsarist Russian Empire in 1811, the Georgian Orthodox Churchpreviously granted autocephaly in the eighth centurywas incorporated into the Church ofRussia. It did not regain its status as an independent Catholicosate until the Bolshevik revolutionof 1917. Tus it is that the Georgian Orthodox Church had no real autonomy for the entiretyof Blavatskys life. For a short history see Prokurat, Golitzin & Peterson, Historical Dictionary,136-137. For Isidore and the pre-Revolutionary Churchalthough with a strong bias in favourof the Moscow Patriarchate and against the Russian Orthodox Church in Exile (also known asthe Russian Orthodox Church Abroad or, most recently, as the Russian Orthodox Church Out-side of Russia [ROCOR]), see also Preobrazhensky, Te Russian Orthodox Church, 147ff. Inci-dentally, it might be noted that in the wake of the Communist ascendancy in Russia expatriateRussians were bitterly divided between the Rossiiskoe eosoficheskoe Obshchestvo (the RussianTeosophical Society) and Anna Kamenskaias Rossiiskoe eosoficheskoe Obshchestvo vne Rossii(theRussian Teosophical Society Outside Russia). Such a parallelism between Orthodoxy and Te-osophy is not unexpectedboth were equally unwelcome in Bolshevik and Stalinist Russia: fordetails of the competing Societies see Carlson, No Religion Higher Tan ruth, 180-187.



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wished for. Te Metropolitan Isidore saw at a glance our confusion, and understood,with his habitual sagacity, the true cause of it. He had read a good deal about the so-called spiritual manifestations, and on seeing a huge armchair gliding toward him,laughed, and felt a good deal interested in the phenomenon.6

Te Metropolitan, apparently unflustered by the Spiritualistic phenomena,then asked Blavatskys invisible a question, and, fascinated by the result,questioned itand herfor several hours. Vera records that the Metropoli-tan addressed advice to the young Blavatsky:

As for you, let not your heart be troubled by the gift you are possessed of, nor let itbecome a source of misery to you hereafter, for it was surely given to you for somepurpose, and you could not be held responsible for it. Quite the reverse! For if you useit with discrimination, you will be enabled to do much good to your fellow-creatures.7

With a considerable allowance for hyperbole and exaggerated reminiscence,Veras story indicates that even by 1860 (nine years after her first putativemeeting with her occult Master M[orya],8and well into her Teosophicalodyssey), Blavatsky was still well-disposed to her native faith. Such an attitude

would resurface intermittently throughout her subsequent career, not infre-quently coupled with overt patriotism:

Tus it would seem that it was Latinism which broke off from the Greek OrientalChurch and not the latter from Rome. Ergo, it is the Roman Church which has to beregarded not only as guilty of a schism but of rank heresyin the eyes of every impartialChristian acquainted with history. Hence, also, it is the Greek Oriental Church which isthe Mother and Mistress of all other Christian Churchesif any can claim the title. 9

6) Quoted in Sinnett, Incidents, 106-107. Hutch has suggested that the holy mans rosary itselfall began to shiver and vibrate: Hutch, Helena Blavatsky, 339. Tere is no indication in Zhelik-hovskaias account of such an eventand its inclusion in Hutchs analysis of Blavatskys Ortho-dox background gives one pause to consider his grasp of Orthodoxy, for the Eastern churcheshave no rosaries (though certain prayer beads and ropes are occasionally usedrarely, however,by senior clerics).7) Sinnett, Incidents, 108. It is interesting that this story was suppressed by the Russian censorwhen it was first considered for publication in Rebusin 1883. For details see Cranston, H.P.B.,73; cf. also Carlson, No Religion Higher Tan ruth, 44-45.8)For a discussion of the Ramsgate/London encounter of 1851 see French, Te TeosophicalMasters, vol. 1, 83ff.9) Blavatsky, Collected Writings, vol. IX, 340. It is significant that Blavatsky evidently believedthe highly cultivated Gnostics and their leaderssuch men as Saturninus, an uncompromising



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Te degree to which Blavatsky believed the Christianity of Russia to be theclosest extant echo of its founders ideals is proved by her response to a reviewof Te Key to Teosophyby the philosopher and sophiologist Vladimir Sergee-vich Solovyoff ([Solovev] 1853-1900):

[I]f our critic had studied the Teosophical teachings half as well as he has studiedPapism and Judaism, he would easily have succeeded in the difficult task of writingabout the meaning of our teachings. Ten he would probably have abstained fromwriting about the Key to Teosophy, since he would have understood that this book wasnot written for Russiathe only country where the pure ideal of Christ is still preserved. . .

it was written for pseudo-Christian countries like England and America.

10

Hitherto the only significant analysis of Blavatskys debt to Russian Ortho-doxy has been an article published in 1980 by Richard A. Hutch, entitled

ascetic, as Marcion, Valentinus, Basilides, Menander and Cerinthus were considered less a threatto the Eastern Patriarchates, than to the Western. She quoted Kenneth MacKenzie: Tey [theGnostics] were stigmatized by the later Roman Church because they came into conflict with thepurer Church of Christianitythe possession of which was usurped by the Bishops of Rome,but which original continues in its docility towards the founder, in the Primitive OrthodoxGreek Church (id., Collected Writings, vol. XIV, 70); cf. MacKenzie, Te Royal Masonic Cyclo-paedia, 256).10) Blavatsky, Collected Writings, vol. XII, 348-349. For Vl. Solovyoffs relationship with Teoso-phy see Carlson, No Religion Higher Tan ruth, 46-48. Solovyoff later characterised Blavatskyand Teosophy in the following terms: In the Teosophy of Mme Blavatsky and Company wesee the attempt of a charlatan to adapt actual Asiatic Buddhism to the mystical and metaphysicalneeds of a half-educated European society that is dissatisfied, for one reason or another, with itsown religious institutions and doctrines (quoted in ibid., 47). Carlson further documents thedegree to which Solovyoffs sophiology has been adopted and adapted by Russian (and other)Teosophistsa process which continues (see ibid.). It is certainly interesting that Solovyoffscriticisms of Teosophy and Blavatsky have now been forgotten by Teosophists and his workssell at many of their book stores, alongside other related thinkers such as Nikolai Berdiaev (1874-1948), who attempted to reconcile Orthodoxy with the conceptions of Boehme, and SergeiBulgakof (1871-1944). Indeed, the renewed popularity of the Russian Orthodox sophiologists isdue in no small part to the republication of their works by New Age and esoteric publishers, suchas the Lindisfarne Press. I suspect Bulgakof would not have been pleased with the description ofhis book Te Wisdom of God: A Brief Summary of Sophiologywhich graces the back of the 1993Lindisfarne Press edition: Tere is a great hunger to recover the feminine aspect of divinity. Butmuch searching has left Christians disappointed and seeking for the Goddess elsewhere. In thisbrave theological work, Bulgakof shows how the divine Sophia, in whom all things are created,is present in the Holy rinity itself and how, as the creaturely Sophia she works together withher divine counterpart in the work of the Holy Spirit for the redemption of the world (flynotesto Bulgakof, Sophia, 1993). In this context it is germane to observe that the Institute of Studiesof the Liberal Catholic Church (an entity with deep roots in the Teosophical Society) hasrecently changed its curriculum: the course on Teosophy has now become Teo Sophia.



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Helena Blavatsky Unveiled.11Hutch has suggested that Blavatsky modelledherself on two religio-ascetic paradigms of her homeland: the volkhvyand thestaretsi.12Te volkhvy(sing. volkh) are like shamans, to whom are always avail-able such divinatory and healing techniques as prophecy, clairvoyance, visions,trances, ecstatic dancing, telekinesis, and legerdemain.13 Te staretsi (sing.starets), on the other hand, are Christian ascetics who avail themselves as spir-itual elders for the edification of worldly lay persons and clerics.14

Unfortunately, Hutchs conclusions are marred to a significant degree by hislack of attention to the facts of Teosophical history, and by his earnest desireto make Teosophy conform to certain preordained patterns and behaviours.

It is not correct to suggest that Teosophy began with a trinitarian aspect:Colonel Henry Steele Olcott (the father); Gerry Brown (the son), and Bla-vatsky (the spirit).15Nor is it anywhere close to the mark to state that this

11) Hutch, Helena Blavatsky Unveiled, 320-341. One hopes that the temptation to includesome reference to unveiling in any study devoted to Blavatsky or Teosophy will soon exhaustitself. In 2001 I published an article on the sympathies between Orthodox notions of theosis(andthe Adamic imago dei) and what might be termed Blavatskian auto-soteriology: see French,H. P. Blavatsky and Orthodox Teology.12) Hutch has claimed that: []he seeming arch-heretic of Christianity always was unconsciouslymoved by the feeling that she was a true member of the spiritual lite of the Russian OrthodoxChurch, the staretsi, even to the last (in ibid., 340). Unfortunately for Hutch, there appears littleevidence to support the assertion that Blavatsky saw herselfas a latter-day Russian Orthodoxstarets. It is, after all, impossible to gauge what Blavatskys unconscious feelings were.13) Ibid., 326. For an examination of the volkhvy(and related occupations such as the koldun, thevedma, the veshchitsa, the znakhar, and the vorozhei) see the comprehensive treatment in Ryan,Te Bathhouse at Midnight, chap. 3 et passim.14) It might be noted that Hutchs definition of the staretsiis somewhat narrow in that he delim-its the field to an ordained priestly group (in ibid., 324). In fact starchestvo(spiritual eldership)can be exercised by male or female, ordained or lay; the key trait, it appears, is the possession ofa charismaticpaideiacoupled with an ascetical mode of living (to this degree the phenomenonof the staretsican be seen as natural progeny of the Eastern hesychasttradition, for which seeinfra). In fact, hermits and pilgrims were often consulted by the faithfulprecisely becausethey felloutside of the traditional ecclesiastical order. Fedotov characterised the staretsithus: Te eldercombined the spiritual activity of a monk with the life of a layman and the sanctification of apriest, nourished by the mystical experience of the Eucharist (Fedotov, Te Russian ReligiousMind, vol. II, 394). For details of the phenomenon of the staretsi see Parry, Melling, Brady,Griffith & Healey, Te Blackwell Dictionary of Eastern Christianity, 230-232, 460-461; Pascal,Te Religion of the Russian People, 49-53. For some famous staretsisee Dunlop, Staretz Amvrosy,1972; Tekla, Mother Maria, 1979; Alexander, Father John of Kronstadt, 1979, esp. 23-29;Hierotheos,A Night in the Desert, 1991; Sofrony, Te Undistorted Image, 1958. For an infamousvariant see Moynahan, Rasputin, 1998, esp. chap. 3. For the peripatetic/pilgrim model see[Anon.], Te Way of a Pilgrim, 1977; id., Te Pilgrim Continues His Way, 1974.15) Hutch, Helena Blavatsky Unveiled, 337.



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messenger was Koot Hoomi, Blavatskys spirit Master, whom later Teoso-phists associate with Gulab-Lal-Singh, a genuine nineteenth-century leader ofIndian Hinduism.16Further, it strains credulity to suggest that Blavatsky car-ried on her body the archetypal five wounds of the Christ figure.17Indeed, theTeosophical historian and bibliographer, Michael Gomes, dismissed Hutchsconclusions on the basis of his historiographical errors:

Pages upon pages are spent on patterns of belief in 19th century Russian religion as aconfirmation of this influence, but if his interpretation of data or events in her life isany indication of the reliability of his analysis, he is woefully off.18

Yet, if Hutchs methodology and suppositions are found wanting, he must atleast be congratulated for having brought Blavatskys native religion to theattention of scholars. Certainly, his desire to establish Blavatsky as a latter-dayshamanic volkhwith staretsipretensions ensured that his argument founderedupon the shoals of insufficient evidence, but the same cannot be said with regardto the Teosophical Masterswho much more closely approximate the Russianmodels.19In fact, the parallels between Blavatskys presentation of her Mastersand the volkhvyof native tradition and staretsiof Orthodox veneration aresufficient to warrant some attention.

16) Ibid., 338. Several other historiographical assumptions are made which the evidence does notwarrant. At this distance, e.g., it is not possible (contraMeade) to conclude that Youry (Yuri)was born to her [Blavatsky] and her lover, Metrovitch: in ibid., 333. Te question of Yurisparenting and birth remains a vexed one for Teosophists: see French, Te Teosophical Masters,vol. 1, 65n26.17) Ibid., 337. Certainly, Blavatsky claimed to have been wounded at the battle of Mentana inOctober, 1867, fighting on behalf of the Garibaldian forcesto help shooting the Papists andgot shot myself (Neff, Personal Memoirs, 154). Neff quotes Olcott as having seen the woundsincluding a stiletto stab, broken arm and two musket-bullets embedded in her right shoulder andleg (in ibid.). Nevertheless, there is no indication that Blavatsky or any of her contemporariesnoted stigmatic parallels with the wounds of Jesus.18) Gomes, Teosophy in the Nineteenth Century, 264.19) It is one of the defects of Hutchs argument that his references to the Masters are negligible,and that nowhere does he note the obvious similarities between their presentation and that of theRussian paradigms. It is not improbable that this lacuna is deliberate, as the identificationbetween the Masters and the volkhvy and staretsiundermines, to a marked degree, a similaridentification which he attempts between the Russian models and Blavatsky herself.



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3. Blavatsky and Russian Folklore

Vera Zhelikhovskaia recounted Blavatskys childhood fascination with Russianfolk tales (Helen never either forgot the stories or consented to recognisethem as fictions)20and with the shamanic powers attributed to certain Rus-sian elders:

People couldchange into animals and take any form they liked, if they only knew how;men couldfly, if they only wished sofirmly. Such wise men had existed in all ages, andexisted even in our own days, she assured us.21

Just such an elder lived near the childrens villa, in a forest known as BaranigBouyrak:

Te old man was a real magician, in the popular estimation; a sorcerer of a good,benevolent kind, who cured willingly all the patients who applied to him, but who alsoknew how to punish with disease those who sinned. He was greatly versed in theknowledge of the occult properties of plants and flowers, and could read the future, itwas said.22

Vera noted that the place had an irresistible attraction for the young Bla-vatsky, who would engage the centenarian in long dialogues and who learnedfrom him the language of bees, birds and animals.23Te man, in turn, notedthe young womans occult potential: Tis little lady is quite different from allof you. Tere are great events lying in wait for her in the future.24

Te degree to which such episodes are the revisionist exaggerations of Zhe-likhovskaia is impossible to determine. Regardless, Blavatsky showed herself

well aware of indigenous Russian folk traditions throughout her writings.Note, as just one example, her description of shamanistic healers:

20) Quoted in Sinnett, Incidents, 29.21) Ibid.22) Ibid., 30. It is intriguing that this man was, by trade, a beekeeper and herbalist. Tis particu-lar motif (of the aged herbalist as initiator of a young person who later founds a religiousmovement) is repeated throughout the modern history of esotericism, from Rudolf Steiner(whose teacher was the herb-gatherer Felix Koguzki [1833-1909]) to Carlos Castaneda (whowas instructed by the more elusive Don Juan). For Koguzki see Hemleben, Rudolf Steiner, 24-26.For Don Juan see Castaneda, Te eachings of Don Juan, 1970 (but cf. De Mille., Te Don JuanPapers, 1981). Castanedas works have spawned something of an industry: cf., e.g., Drury, DonJuan, Mescalito and Modern Magic, 1978.23) Sinnett, Incidents, 30.24) Ibid.



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Tis is the literal translation of the popular and mystic term Zagovarivat, in Russia.For the good men and women in towns and villages who play at local medicine-men(and the people willhave no others) literally talk away, by means of some strangewords which no one understands but themselves, and by breathing on the water, allkinds of diseases and ailments most effectively.25

It is not at all improbable that the volkhcentenarian of Blavatskys youth (asmuch as the old under-nurse of the Fadeyev household, who regaled her

with tales in which every idea [was] connected with superstition)26contrib-uted to her conception of the Teosophical Masters as magically-endowedelders. Yet the paranormal powers of the Masters are but one half of their attri-butes; the other, that of charismatic spiritual guidance and religious authority,is reminiscent, not so much of the shamanistic volkhvy, as of the pious asceticalstaretsi. Hutch marginalised the influence of the staretsphenomenon on Bla-vatsky (as opposed to the volkh, which he exaggerated), likely because he wasunable to find direct reference in her works to one or other staretsi.27But theroute to Blavatskys sources is rarely an obvious one and in this caseas withRosicrucianism28her chief model appears to have been a literary one.

25) Blavatsky, Collected Writings, vol. XI, 210. For an account of a Russian Wandering Jew-likecharacter, whom Blavatsky claimed to have encountered physically, see id., Isis Unveiled, vol. II,42n.26) Sinnett, Incidents, 29. Zhelikhovskaias description of the old nurse is highly evocative: Dur-ing the long summer twilights on the green grassy lawn under the fruit trees of the garden, orduring the still longer winter evenings, crowding around the flaming fire of our nursery-room,we used to cling to the old woman, and felt supremely happy whenever she could be prevailedupon to tell us some of those popular fairy tales, for which our northern country is so famous.Te adventures of Ivan Zarewitch, of Kashtey the Immortal, of the Gray-Wolf, the wickedmagician travelling in the air in a self-moving sieve; or those of Meletressa, the Fair Princess, shutup in a dungeon until the Zarevitch unlocks its prison door with a gold key, and liberatesherdelighted us all . . . [Blavatsky] thoroughly took to heart all the troubles of the heroes, andmaintained that all their most wonderful adventures were quite natural (in ibid.). Blavatskyremembered such stories, and elaborated upon them, throughout her life. For one example, seeher translation of olstois How a Devils Imp Redeemed his Loaf: or, the First Distillerin Blavatsky,Collected Writings, vol. XII, 9-13.27) Hutch stated that Staretsi are less important to Blavatsky than the tradition of the volkhvy:Hutch, Helena Blavatsky Unveiled, 326.28) I have elsewhere suggested that a significant ideational component in Blavatskys depiction ofthe Masters is Rosicrucianism. Te influence, however, was primarily mediated not by the litera-ture of Rosicrucianism itself, but by the genre of the Rosicrucian novelparticularly by EdwardBulwer-LyttonsZanoniof 1842. For details see French, Te Teosophical Masters, vol. 2, 557-607. It should be noted that delineating influences and typologies in Blavatskys depiction of theMasters in no way compromises their ontological status; determining the veracity of the latter,of course, is beyond the methodological apparatus of the scholar: see in ibid., vol. 1, 7-58.



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4. Blavatsky and Dostoevskii

It is highly significant that Blavatsky proffered upon Feodor MikhailovichDostoevskii (1821-1881) the distinction of being a theosophical writer. Cer-tainly no greater endorsement was possible:

If asked what is it then that will help, we answer boldly:- Teosophical literature; has-tening to add that under this term, neither books concerning adepts and phenomena,nor the Teosophical Society publications are meant . . . What the European worldnow needs is a dozen writers such as Dostoyevsky, the Russian author . . . It is writersof this kind that are needed in our day of re-awakening; not authors writing for wealth

or fame, but fearless apostles of the living Word of ruth, moral healers of the pustu-lous sores of our century . . . o write novels with a moral sense in them deep enoughto stir Society, requires a literary talent and a borntheosophist as was Dostoyevsky.29

Blavatsky was so impressed by Dostoevskiis Te Brothers Karamazovthat shetranslated sections of Book V, chapter five (Te Grand Inquisitor), for publi-cation in Te Teosophist.30Of profound significance for the present purposesis her introduction to the translation:

Dedicated by the ranslator to sceptics who clamour so loudly both in print and pri-vate letters: Show us the wonder-working Brothers, let them come out publiclyandwe will believe in Tem!31

Te Grand Inquisitor is one of only two portions of Te Brothers Karamazovwhich do not appear in the authorial voice, but are penned by characters.32

29) Blavatsky, Collected Writings, vol. XII, 6-8.30) Te translation appeared in the November and December issues of 1881. Te Brothers Karam-azovinitially appeared as a serial in Russkii vestnik(Te Russian Herald) between January 1879and November 1880the last instalment issued just two months prior to the authors death on28 January, 1881. It is significant that Blavatskys translation was the result of an order from theMaster Koot Hoomi: Te suggestion to translate the Grand Inquisitoris mine; for its author, onwhom the hand of Death was already pressing when writing it, gave the most forcible and truedescription of the Society of Jesus than was ever given before. Tere is a mighty lesson containedin it for many and even you may profit by it (Chin Jr., Te Mahatma Letters, [Letter No. 21:Autumn, 1881] 78). Given that Constance Garnetts full translation of the novel did not appearuntil 1912, it is not improbable that Blavatskys translation of Te Grand Inquisitor (Bk. V: ch. 5)was the first in the English language.31) Blavatsky, Collected Writings, vol. III, 324.32) Tat the two non-narratorial passages, Te Grand Inquisitor and the Life of Father Zos-sima are nevertheless demonstrably the authors homiletic, and thus the dual pivots of his



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Ivans brotherand Zossimas discipleAlyosha Karamazov)38 is carefullycrafted by Dostoevskii to conform to the genre of mimetic hagiography,39andis designed to witness to an affirmativeand Russianalternative to the spir-itual vacuum of Catholicism and socialism. In order, then, to establish Zossi-mas credentials as the spiritual culminating point40of the novel, Dostoevskiiturned to the paradigm of the staretsifor inspiration. Blavatsky could hardlyhave failed to notice that her quest and Dostoevskiis were sympatheticallyaligned, and that his descriptions of the staretsimirrored her conception of theMasters:

Among us there is sin, injustice, and temptation, but yet, somewhere on earth there issome one holy and exalted. He has the truth; he knows the truth; so it is not deadupon the earth; so it will come one day to us, too, and rule over all the earth accordingto the promise41

John Dunlop has convincingly argued that Dostoevskiis primary model forFather Zossima was Starets Amvrosi (Ambrose) Grenkov (1812-1891), amonk of the famed Optina Pustyn monastery for over fifty years.42According

38) For the master-disciple toposin Te Brothers Karamazov, particularly viz. Zossima and Alyo-sha, see Tompson, Te Brothers Karamazov, 13ff. It is significant (and would surely have beennoticed by Blavatsky) that Alyoshas writing of Zossimas vitawould presupposeas a structuralcharacteristic of the genrethat he had himself subsequently become the master upon hismas-ters demise. Tere are multiple examples of this in the classical texts of the genre: cf., e.g., Atha-nasius Life of Antony, Teodores Life of Pachomius, Paphnutius Life of Onophrius. Tis dynamicwas replicated several times in Teosophical discourse. For a detailed analysis of the latter seeFrench, Te Mercurian Master, 168-205.39)Dostoevskii is evidently employing the genre of the specifically Russian hagiography, thezhitiye.40) Quoted in Leatherbarrow, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, 61, 73.41) Dostoevskii, Te Brothers Karamazov, 27.42) See Dunlop, Staretz Amvrosy, esp. 58-60. Tat Starets Amvrosi was Dostoevskys template isevident from close similarities in Zossimas statements and Amvrosis letters, as well as in the lesssubtle modellings: both staretsi had a cell servant named Fr. Iosif, and both were the thirdacknowledged staretsin their monasteries (Amvrosi followed Starets Leonid/Lev Nagolkin [1768-1841] and Starets Macarius [1788-1860]: for short biographies of the three staretsi see France,Hermits, 57-85). Nadejda Gorodetzky has claimed that the model for Zossima was St. ikhonZadonsky (1724-1783): see Gorodetzky, Saint ikhon Zadonsky, 1951. It is entirely likely thatSt. ikhon furnished some of the saintly qualities of Zossima, but it is inherently less likely thathe was the major model for Dostoevskiis fictional starets. Gorodetzky herself notes that Amvrosiis a probable candidate: Tere is some justification for this claim (p. 180). Nonetheless, it mightbe noted that in the summer of 1860, Blavatsky visited Zadonsk, in the Province of Vopronezh,in order to venerate ikhons relics: see Cooper, Te Letters, vol. 1, 3. Optina Pustyn (monastery



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to Maria Carlson, the hesychastic elders of Optina provided a spiritual Meccafor many mystically inclined Russians, including Ivan Kireevskii (1806-1856),Nikolai Gogol (1809-1852), and Lev olstoi (1828-1910).43Starets Amvrosi,one of the most celebrated of the monks, was visited in the monastery byDostoevskii in 1878 following the death of the authors young son, Alyosha.44Te spiritual sustenance with which the staretswas able to comfort Dostoevskiiencouraged the latter to employ the staretsas the model for his much-soughtpristine religious icon: a saint45 capable of successfully vanquishinginmetaphysical termsthe Grand Inquisitor. Crucially for Blavatsky, Dos-toevskii presented his staretsas possessed of ancient pristine teachings which

had remained untrammelled by ecclesial dogmatism or modern nihilism. Tusit is that the staretsiwere recommended by Dostoevskii as a resolutely non-

Western tertium quid(exactly, as it happened, the sort of figure Blavatsky waspromoting in her occult orbit):

and skete) was likely established in the fifteenth century, and became famed for following thehesychastic model of the monastic reformer Paissii Velichkovskii (1722-1794). It was closed, andall monks expelled, in 1923, but was returned to the Orthodox in 1989. Dostoevskii was evi-dently well aware of the history of the monastery complex, and of the revitalisation of the staretsimodel under Velichkovskii, details of which he included in the novel: Dostoevskii, Te BrothersKaramazov, 24-25 et passim.43) Carlson, No Religion Higher Tan ruth, 220n22.44) Te contrapuntalism of Amvrosi-Alyosha and Zossima-Alyosha is self evident, and adds afurther idiosyncratic dimension to Te Brothers Karamazov: for details see the reminiscences ofDostoevskiis wife, Anna Grigorievna, in Dunlop, Staretz Amvrosy, 59-60. It should be a some-what amusing observation for Teosophists that Vladimir Solovyoff accompanied Dostoevskiion his pilgrimage to Optina, and has been interpreted as having provided the model for thematerialist and skeptic Ivan Karamazov: see Leatherbarrow, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, 19. Solovyoff sskepticism regarding Teosophy would surface some time later (for which see supra). Leather-barrow (Fyodor Dostoyevsky, 19) has suggested that a better model for Ivan might have been IvanS. urgenyev (1818-1883), who, incidentally, Blavatsky believed to have been the inspiration,albeit probably an inadvertent one, for the ranting spectre of Nihilist delirium, the red-handedsocialist (Blavatsky, Collected Writings, vol. II, 361). It is an intriguing observation that Zossimahad himself been visited as a layman by Te Mysterious Visitor who remains unnamedthroughout the narrative: Dostoevsky, Te Brothers Karamazov, 333-347. It is this figure wholeads Zossima to conversion and monasticism. Such unheralded visitations by mysterious sageswould later become a staple of Teosophical discourse.45) It is interesting that in the introduction to her translation of Te Grand Inquisitor, Bla-vatsky describes Alyosha as a young Christian mystic brought up by a saint in a monastery:Blavatsky, Collected Writings, vol. III, 325. Although it is not easy to discern her reason for plac-ing the term saint in inverted commas, it is not improbable that she is inferring, if elliptically,to Zossima as a sort of Master figure. Blavatsky is notorious for having absorbedor co-optedtraditional religious forms and types into her occult macrohistory.



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[W]hen the time comes [the monks] will show it to the tottering creeds of the world.Tat is a great thought. Tat star will rise out of the East. Tat is my view of the monk,and is it false? is it too proud? Look at the worldly and all who set themselves up abovethe people of God, has not Gods image and His truth been distorted in them? Teyhave science; but in science there is nothing but what is the object of sense. Te spiri-tual world, the higher part of mans being is rejected altogether, dismissed with a sortof triumph, even with hatred . . . Te monastic way is very different . . . Of old, leadersof the people came from among us, and why should they not again? Te same meekand humble ascetics will rise up and go out to work for the great cause.46

More than one commentator has concluded that Dostoevskiis Father Zossima

is described in terms similar to an Indian guru47

(indeed, Hutch noted thatthe staretzis to the West what the guru is to the East, but, remarkably, ignoredthe salient argument that the Masters are thereby indicated, not Blavatskyherself ).48Tat Blavatsky may have come to the same conclusion is supportedby the attitude of her followers.49 Nikolai Berdiaev astutely observed inhis autobiography the implied Teosophical identification of staretsi andMasters:

[N]ot only the neo-Christians revered the elders, but also the Teosophists andAnthroposophists, who really had little in common with the church. Tey saw theelders as initiates.50

It is surely no coincidence that the Russian equivalent of the Adyar estate wasPodborki, a Teosophical centre near Kaluga: Podborki was twelve milesfrom Optina Pustyn, which, perhaps unsurprising for a home of initiates,immediately became a regular site of Teosophical pilgrimage.51Indeed, theidea of a Teosophical monasterywhich Blavatsky considered a dream cher-ished by many a theosophist52was for a time very popular with the mem-

46) Dostoevsky, Te Brothers Karamazov, 347-349.47) Moynahan, Rasputin, 28.48) Hutch, Helena Blavatsky Unveiled, 325.49)Maria Carlsons meticulously researched study of Russian Teosophy includes the salientpoint that Russian Teosophists looked as much to olstoi, Dostoevskii, and Vladimir Solovevfor inspiration as to the Bhagavad Gitaor the Upanishads: Carlson, No Religion Higher Tanruth, 152. If such was the case, there seems no reason to believe that Blavatsky herselfaconfirmed slavophilewas not similarly drawn.50) Bediaev, Samopoznanie, 214: reproduced in translation in ibid., 220n22.51) Ibid., 63.52) Blavatsky, Collected Writings, vol. VIII, 134.



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bership.53Franz Hartmanns 1887 novel,An Adventure Among the Rosicrucians,is entirely devoted to the narrators encounter with a number of Masters whoescort him through the workings of a Teosophical Monastery.54One Mas-ter, Imperator, indicates the correlation between spiritual sanctity and Teo-sophical perfectionism; for him,Masters and monks are identical:

Verily the theosophical monastery of which I dream is even superior to ours. It islocated far away from this earth, and yet it can be reached without trouble and withoutexpense. Its monks and nuns have risen above the sphere of self. Tey have a temple ofinfinite dimensions, pervaded by the spirit of sancity [sic], being the common posses-

sion of all. Tere, the differentiation of the Universal Soul ceases, and Unificationtakes place . . . [each monastic] growing in strength and expanding in size, until heembraces the All and is one with it.55

It could be argued, of course, that Dostoevskiis presentation of the monasticStarets Zossima as the ideal personification of the religious path between thetwin shoals of materialism and absolutism arrived too late to influence Bla-vatsky, who was, by that time, already in India. Yet upon closer examination itbecomes clear that Te Grand Inquisitor and Te Life of Father Zossima

were published (in serial form) in the months immediately priorto the receiptof the first Mahatma letter (17 October, 1880),56and that no fewer than thirtyreviews of the novel-in-progress had already appeared in the St. Petersburg

53) Of course, the Teosophical communes of later years (such as Lomaland) can be seen in thislight: see French, Te Teosophical Masters, vol. 2, 699-763.54) A Student of Occultism [Franz Hartmann],An Adventure Among the Rosicrucians, 1887. Teterm Master is used explicitly by Hartmann, and references to Teosophy abound. It is curi-ous to wonder whether the name of one such Master, Teodorus, was chosen because of itsOrthodox pedigree (or whether the author was less subtle and simply intended the Master toprove a gift of God).55) Ibid., 70-71.56) Te Mahatma letters, as the Masters correspondence is called, constitute one of the severalabiding mysteries of Teosophy. What might be called the orthodox Teosophical canon werethose letters received in the early 1880s, mostly by two prominent Teosophists, Alfred PercySinnett (1840-1921) and Allan Octavian Hume (1829-1919). Tese documentsabout 170full or partial letters received in mysterious and occasionally sensational circumstanceswerelater deposited in the British Museum (Department of Manuscripts: Additional ManuscriptsMSS 45284, 45285, 45286), and run to about 1300 pages. Further letterssome of dubiousprovenancewere received for at least the next 45 years, the recipients numbering about30 persons and with seven Masters ascribed authorship. For an examination of the conceptualcomponent of the correspondence, as well as the vast secondary literature, see French, Te Teo-sophical Masters, vol. 1, 135-157 et passim.



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press by the end of 1879.57Blavatsky, who subscribed to a number of suchjournalsand contributed to more than a fewwould have had ample oppor-tunity to assimilate Dostoevskys literary staretsinto her own conceptualisingshould she have so chosen.58

5. Blavatsky and Coptic Christianity

It should also be noted that the medium of the Mahatma letter itself isprefigured by the pdeutical techniques of the Optina elders; as Joseph Allen

has astutely observed, spiritual eldership was often requested and giventhrough letters.59Tough a tradition of epistolary guidance had long existedthroughout the Christian worldas is evident in the extant writings of Sts.

John Chrysostom, Basil, and Augustinethe staretsiof Optina Pustyn devel-oped the form into a distinct genre. St. Macarius of Optina (1788-1860), afamed exponent of this method and Starets Amvrosis immediate predecessor,maintained an immense correspondence and encouraged his interlocutors tohighlight specific questions for him to address individuallya technique con-tinued by Amvrosi and, later, much favoured by the Teosophical Masters.60

Te phenomenon of the staretswas by no means limited to Russia. Indeed,the slavic notion of starchestvo, an integral part of the eighteenth centuryhesychastmonastic reforms,61was a deliberate replication of the paradigm of

spiritual eldership fostered in Egypt and Syria during the first centuries of the

57) Leatherbarrow notes that many more were published in provincial newspapers and journals:Leatherbarrow, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, 98-99.58) It can only be considered typical for the mercurial Blavatsky that she published a translationof Te Grand Inquisitor with a cryptic introduction more appropriate to Te Life of FatherZossimathereby giving not so much a hint of her interest in the staretsias providing some-thing of a treasure map for Masters-hunters.59) Allen, Inner Way, 37.60) Macarius, Russian Letters of Direction, 28. For a large selection of Amvrosis letters see Dun-lop, Staretz Amvrosy; see also France, Hermits, 63-85.61) Hesychasm(Gr. silence, quiet, leisure) is a monastic paradigm particular to the ByzantineOrthodox (although not unknown to the Oriental Orthodox). Its most renowned features are areliance on monological prayer and starchestvospiritual eldershipand its most famed apolo-gist was Gregory Palamas (1296-1359). During the eighteenth century, hesychasmunderwent arenaissance in the Byzantine communion, led in Russia by Paissii Velichkovskii, who, in 1793,translated the hesychast manual, Te Philokalia, into Slavonic (as Dobrotolubiye). For Velich-kovskiis importance to Optina see supra; cf. also Te Philokalia, 3 vols., 1979-1984.



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Common Era.62Te Egyptian traditions, particularly, became the prototypesfor later models of anchoritic and cenobitic monasticism, and furnished per-haps the most abundant and influential literature of spiritual eldership in the

West, the most celebrated collection of which is known as the ApothegmataPatrumthe Sayings of the Desert Fathers [and Mothers].63

Blavatsky was well aware of the continuing Coptic64ascetical tradition fromher travels in Egypt, yet her interest in Coptic desert monasticism appearsnever to have garnered a mention in any study within the massive Teosophi-cal corpus.65Her observations are worth repeating at length:

Of forty-seven tombs of the kings, near Gornore, recorded by the Egyptian priests ontheir sacred registers, only seventeen were known to the public, according to DiodorusSiculus, who visited the place about sixty years B.C. Notwithstanding this historicalevidence, we assert that the whole number exist to this day, and the royal tomb discov-ered by Belzoni among the sandstone mountains of Biban-el-Melook (Melech?) is but

62) I suspect that Dostoevskii alluded to the desert origins of the staretsiby the choice of the nameZossima. In Coptic hagiology, Anba Zosima (Zosimus) was the desert father who met thefamed recluse, St. Mary the Egyptian, and later recorded her very influential vita.63) Tat Blavatsky was aware of theApothegmata Patrumand the Vitae Patrumis made clear, e.g., by her abundant references to the paradigmatic ascetic, St. Anthony the Great. Cf., e.g., Bla-vatsky, Collected Writings, vol. II, 125n, 180-181; vol. III, 243; vol. XII, 269; vol. XIV, 152 (inthe latter she indulges a creative iconographic exegesis of Anthonys au cross). For an enlight-ening study of desertpaideiasee Burton-Christie, Te Word in the Desert, 1993; cf. French TeWord in the Desert [rev art], 97-102. See also Vivian, Mountain and Desert, 15-21.64) It is worthwhile at this point to note that Coptic refers to the Copts, a self-designation forthe Orthodox Egyptian Christians whose ethnic, religious, and cultural hegemony preceded theArab invasion of Egypt in 640. Copts today number somewhere in the region of five to ten percent of the countrys population and also have an extensive community in diaspora. Te deriva-tion of the term is somewhat interesting in that it appears to be an Arabic contraction (into rootconsonants) of the GreekAigyptos/Aigyptioithus kpt. Te GreekAigyptos/Aigyptioiseems tohave been coined by the Hellenic conquerors in reference to the principal sanctuary of Lower(north) Egypt, the Het-ka-Ptah, or the divine house of the kaof Ptah, in Memphis.65) Te reason for this oversight is likely that her most detailed comments on Coptic monasti-cismin Isis Unveiledwere never cited in the indexunder Coptic, Monks, or Monasti-cism. Tis errorsomewhat remarkable considering the book is ostensibly devoted to thecontinuance of the Egyptian Mysteriesis to some degree mitigated by the paucity of Englishnotice given to the Copts at the time of publication, i.e., 1877 (this situation changed markedlyfollowing the British occupation of 1882: see Partrick, raditional Egyptian Christianity, 118ff).Blavatskys references in Te Secret Doctrinetend to be less about Coptic monastics quaproto-Masters and more about novel interpretations of Coptic language (Demotic) and Coptic textssuch as the Pistis Sophia. Such a change of attitude is hardly surprising given that Te SecretDoctrineis predicated not on the existence of the Brotherhood of Luxor (cf. Isis Unveiled), buton the trans-Himalayan Brotherhood [of Masters].



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a feeble specimen of the rest. We will add, furthermore, that the Arab-Christians, themonks, scattered around in their poor, desolate convents on the borderland of thegreat Lybian Desert, know of the existence of such unbetrayed relics. But they areCopts, sole remnants of the true Egyptian race, and the Copt predominating over theChristian monk in their natures, they keep silent; for what reason it is not for us to tell.Tere are some who believe that their monkish attire is but a blind, and that they havechosen these desolate homes among arid deserts and surrounded by Mahometantribes, for some ulterior purposes of their own. Be it as it may, they are held in greatesteem by the Greek monks of Palestine; and there is a rumor current among theChristian pilgrims of Jerusalem, who throng the Holy Sepulchre at every Easter, thatthe holy fire from heaven will never descend so miraculouslyas when these monks ofthe desert are present to draw it down by their prayers.66

Blavatskys description of Coptic desert monasticism is part of an elaboratehistoriography which traces the origin of the movement to the Egyptian Her-metists viathe Essenes.67Te latter, no doubt due to their oppositional behav-iour (and the paucity of records!) were ideal models for an infra-ecclesial 68

philosophia perennis, and have since been incorporated into most esoteric his-toriographies.69Te Essenes, then, provide a key link in the chain from the

Atlantean mysteries (inspired and orchestrated by the Masters) to the desertmonks for whom the monkish attire is but a blind to conceal the true linea-ments of their Masters-derived philosophy. Interpreted thus, the Coptic desertmonastics are nothing other than an extant occult Brotherhood.

Blavatsky admitted to having studied under a Coptic magician, PaolosMetamon, during the early 1850s and again in 1871.70Teosophists have longassumed that her knowledge of Egyptian arcana derived from this source, and

66) Blavatsky, Isis Unveiled, vol. II, 403-404.67) Cf., e.g., Blavatsky, Isis Unveiled, vol. I, 16; vol. II, 323-324.68) In the Blavatskian view, Jesus was trained in the high school of the Essenes: see Blavatsky,Collected Writings, vol. I, 106. Cf. also id., Isis Unveiled, vol. II, 323-324 et passim.69) It should be noted that the vast majority of occultists/esotericists have posited an Essene ori-gin for Christianity: cf., e.g., Blavatsky, Mead, Besant, Leadbeater, Steiner, Schur, Bailey, Dowl-ing, Heindel, Hodson, Lewis, Cayce, Fortune, inter alia. See French, Te Teosophical Masters,vol. 1, 340n65.70) Metamon is an abiding mystery of Teosophical history, and cannot be easily dismissed asfictive because he was also mentioned (disparagingly) by Albert Rawson: Rawson, Mme. Bla-

vatsky: A Teosophical Occult Apology, 210. Te fact of the Hellenic name means little as suchvariations wereand remainpopular, especially in Lower Egypt, where it is not uncommon tomeet, e.g., three brothers: Paolos/Paula, Pavlos, Boulos/Boula. Ren Gunon (1886-1951), theDescartes of esotericism according to Faivre (Access to Western Esotericism, 101) and the inspira-tion for the modern Perennialist school (which advocates a metaphysics predicated upon theexistence of a primordial tradition), has claimed that Paulos Metamon was actually the father ofthe elusive Max Ton (Louis Maximilien Bimstein, [1850?]-1927), the founder of theMouvement



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was enhanced by her membership of the rather mysterious Brotherhood ofLuxor.71Indeed, her reference to having spent weeks and months . . . with theMasters, in Egypt [and] in ibet would seem to support this.72Yet it is by nomeans unlikely that Blavatskys subsequent depiction of the Masters wasinfluenced by a personal knowledge of Coptic monasticism, and particularlyof the popular legends associated with the reclusive anchorites.73It is hardlyinsignificant that Blavatsky suggested the latter to be among the few survivorsof the mysterious brotherhood:

Solitary Copts, earnest students scattered hither and thither throughout the sandy

solitudes of Egypt, Arabia, Petra, Palestine, and the impenetrable forests of Abyssinia,though rarely met with, may sometimes be seen.74

Modern Copts ascribe wondrous feats to contemporary hermit fathers.Apart from the normative expectation of healing and intercessory powers, itis common in the Egyptian imagination for such anchorites to assumealmost docetic traits: Fr. Samaan El Souriany has noted that [a]t times they

Cosmique. Tis almost certainly fanciful claim is of interest primarily in that it furnishes two ofPaul Johnsons identifications of Blavatskys Masters: Metamon as Serapis Bey and Bimstein asuitit Bey (see Johnson, Te Masters Revealed, 32 et passim). In fact, it is unlikely that Blavatskyencountered the ever-fascinating Ton in Cairo in 1871: see Godwin, Chanel & Deveney, TeHermetic Brotherhood of Light, 8-9, 438-442. It might be noted that the marked tendency toinclude Gunon among the Perennialists has more to do with their subsequent publishing of hisbooks, than with any overt historical causality (until the late 1970s, the Perennialists were knownas the raditionalists. Te change seems to have occurred in response to a desire for academicrecognition, and has been concretised by Faivres and Hanegraaff s consistent usage). For all ofhis protestations to the contrary, Gunon had more in common with Blavatsky than with suchraditionalists as Schuon, Coomaraswamy, and Nasr.71) One must separateas far as the sources allowBlavatskys Brotherhood of Luxor fromthe occult Order, the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor, ably studied by Godwin, Chanel, andDeveney. Blavatskys antipathy to the latter was certainly founded in her fierce dislike of compet-ing esotericisms. For a discussion of the two see in ibid.; see also, with care, Greenfield, Te Storyof the Hermetic Brotherhood of Light, 1997.72) Barker, Te Letters, 145.73) An intriguing, if somewhat idiosyncratic, account of the austerities undertaken by the desertmonastics, as well as a comprehensive survey of the paranormal powers and mystical visionsclaimed in their behalf, is to be found in MacDermot, Te Cult of the Seer, 1971. MacDermotsconclusions about modern drug-taking and psychotropics (contraWilliam James and AldousHuxley) are somewhat strained, though interesting nonetheless.74) Blavatsky, Isis Unveiled, vol. II, 306-307. Koot Hoomi called the Copts a hybrid remnant ofthe earlier Egyptian sub-Race: Te Mahatma Letters, 1993 ed., (Letter No. 93b: October, 1882)310.



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may even become absent from the physical world, and be lifted up in spirittoward heaven.75Interestingly, such ascetics are not deemed to live primarilyas solitaries, but in loose brotherhoods; they are popularly believed to beable to bilocate, to teleport, to levitate, to transport (through locked doors),to practice invisibility, and to enjoy great longevity.76 A recent (Coptic)definition of Hermits noted the following:

Tis type of monk has reached a very high level of spirituality where his spirit is heavierthan his body, because he is fervent in spirit, and he rarely eats. Tey live in groups andcan easily move from one place to another in a very short time, without anyone seeing

them.77

It is perhaps not inappropriate to suggest that in the Coptic imagination (asBlavatsky appears to have been well aware) the characteristics of the Russianvolkhvyand staretsiare fused in the figure of the hermit father. Te followingdescription of the anchorite, excerpted from no less an authority than TeCoptic Encyclopedia, is immediately suggestive of the Teosophical Masters:

Te word saih(pl. suwwah), meaning wanderer, is the Arabic term for an anchorite.o be among the suwwahis to have reached the highest spiritual rank for a monk. Tepopular belief is that a saihfeels no bodily pain, hunger, thirst, or lust. He is alsobelieved to be invisible except to those to whom he reveals himself. But some humans

may hear him or see the incense he or a group of suwwahhave burned during a mass.Tere is much controversy as to their number, which is believed in some instances tobe four hundred, and in others twelve only, while some hold that it is unlimited. Tosewho believe their number is limited emphasize the fact that it never varies. It is also

75) El Souriany, Te Hermit Fathers (Te Spirit Borne), 11.76) I undertook research into contemporary Coptic monasticism, particularly during a residencein the sixth-century monastery of Dayr Al-Suryan (Monastery of the Syrians) in the Wadi Al-Natrun in 1997, and conducted interviews with a number of monks, including the presentCoptic Patriarch of Alexandria, Pope Shenouda III. Space does not permit a fuller rendition ofthe feats ascribed to the hermit fathers (contemporary female monastics live in enclosed urbanconvents and are thus ipso factono longer considered desert ascetics), but their charismaticauthority and presumed paranormal powers are fully reminiscent of Blavatskys Masters (I shouldnote that none of the hermits I metincluding one who had not returned to his monastery for20 yearsshowed overt paranormal abilities, nor, indeed, any interest in such). A hint of Bla-vatskys awareness of traditions of longevity among Orthodox monastics is offered in a little-known response by Blavatsky to an article in Te Teosophist(vol. IV:9, June, 1883, 219) whichdealt with the length of mens hair: In Europe, the Greek and Russian clergy alone [actually,Coptic monks as well, although under a cowl], along with their monks, have preserved the wisehabit [of growing their hair], and the longevity of some of the last named is proverbial (Bla-vatsky, Collected Writings, vol. IV, 503).77) Agaiby & Girgis [& El-Antouny], Glossary of erms, 148.



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held that if one of the suwwahdies, the other suwwahchoose someone to replace thedeceased among the monks and summon him to join them. At the suwwahlevel, thereis no distinction made between men and women, and suwwahare held to be nearer intheir bodily and spiritual qualities to heavenly beings than are other human beings.78

Naturally, it is not possible at this distance to ascertain the depth of Blavatskysengagement with Coptic monasticism, or to estimate the influence which won-drous tales of the feats of spiritually-advanced monastics exerted upon her. Yet herpresumption that Coptic monks owe their first allegiance to the maintenance ofthe ancient Egyptian (thusAtlantean) mysteries, and that neither they nor shecan

speak of their ulterior purposes, indicates that her Egyptian pilgrimages of the1850s and 1870s may well have entailed exposure to, and close observation of,the prototypical Christianascetical brotherhood: Coptic eremitical monasticism.Indeed, it is a somewhat curious possibility that Blavatskys presentation of thefabled occult Brotherhood of Luxor may well have been at least partially mod-elled upon a personal redaction of the otherwise normative Pachomian Rule.

6. Conclusion

Te evidence supporting Blavatskys debt to the native traditions of her home-land is sufficient to warrant special analysis. Attracted to the pre-Christian andfolk survivals of her country, the volkhvy, no less than to the sagacious asceticalstaretsi, Blavatsky appears to have woven such paradigms into her own synthe-sis and thereby enriched her depiction of the Masters accordingly. Later in herlife she found an ideal template for the fusion of paideiaand meta-empiricalpowers in the figure of the Coptic anchorite, whose brotherhoods were popu-larly described in terms she subsequently employed for the TeosophicalBrotherhood. Tat Blavatsky should have availed herself of such traditions inthe articulation of the Masters Gestalt is hardly surprising given the ease with

which they could be incorporated into her anti-materialist, perfectibilist, andOrientalist program. When read as an idiosyncratic, occultistic redaction ofthe genre of spiritual eldership (starchestvo), the Masters-literature becomes anentirely compelling contribution to the field as well as proving to be an illumi-nating facet of modern religious discourse.

78) Wassef, ANCHORIE, 130. It is interesting to consider that Coptic anchorites are deemedto have passed through several stages of monasticism prior to their departure from human com-pany; they live first in community, then as hermits within the monastery, then in hermitageswithin the monastery precincts, and only then entirely extramurally. Perfection is thus attainedin degree. Such a model, of course, also underpins Blavatskian conceptualising.



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