Chapter 5 Tibetan Theosophy: Helena Blavatsky’s Tantric Connection
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Abstract
The co-founders of the Theosophical Society, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831–1891) and Henry Steel Olcott (1832–1907), were among the very first Westerners to officially declare themselves Buddhists (1880) and to play a major role in the world-wide propagation of this religion. Blavatsky asserted having been instructed for a total of seven years in Tibet by the “Mahatmas” Koot Hoomi and Morya. Blavatsky and her Society based their claim to authority on her continuing contact with these instructors, whose missives from Tibet (“The Mahatma Letters”) reached her by occult means. Critics of Blavatsky claim that she never set foot in Tibet and wrote the Mahatma Letters herself, but her supporters reject graphological analyses to this effect and maintain that Madame had studied secret Tibetan sources, most importantly the “Book of Dzyan,” which forms the basis of her main work, The Secret Doctrine (1888). To clarify Madame Blavatsky’s connection with Tibet, this chapter takes a novel approach. It closely examines claims to Tibetan authority in two manuscripts from Madame’s hand that were found in her desk after her death. They contain information purportedly furnished by Tibetans, most importantly by the “Chohan-Lama of Rinch-cha-tze (Tibet), the Chief of the Archive-registrars of the secret Libraries of the Dalaï and Ta-shü-hlumpo-Lamas-Rimpoche” who is said to be both a member of the Theosophical Society and “a ‘Pan-chhen,’ or great teacher, one of the most learned theologians of Northern Buddhism and esoteric Lamaism.” The chapter traces the Tibetan expressions that appear in these texts (purportedly furnished by Madame’s Tibetan informants) to a hitherto unknown source, namely, the mimeographed Romanized Tibetan and English Dictionary (1866) by the Moravian missionary and Tibetologist Heinrich August Jäschke (1817–1883). This dictionary contains not only almost all of the “Tibetan” informants’ terms but also some of their explanations. In addition, it is shown to be the source for the hitherto mysterious name “Koot Hoomi.” Furthermore, close analysis proves that much of the rest of the information furnished by Blavatsky’s “Tibetan” informants stems not from Tibetan teachers or secret Tibetan Tantric manuscripts but rather from Western sources published in languages familiar to Madame.