Theos-Talk Archives (October 2008 Message tt00368)

It was impossible to grow up in the US in the 1960s and have any interest  in 
the Occult without running into references to HPB but I pretty much passed  
them over as stuff from a previous century.  And somewhere along the line I  
ran into a letter my family has written by my great great grandfather when he  
was fighting with Garibaldi about a strange Russian noblewoman who ran the  
brothel.
 
Anyway, after a rather convoluted series of events I found myself in the TS  
and paying a bit more attention to the biography of HPB and there was this 
story  about Garibaldi.  And I wonder how many Russian noblewomen were with  
Garibaldi and maybe someone was changing the story a bit.
 
But hell, no one ever accused me of being a prude, not with my lifestyle,  
and the story I think is true only makes her more interesting to me for a simple 
 reason.  Blavatsky was not a statue in a church, not a saint, not a  
goddess.  She was a living, breathing human being.
 
And in my decades in the TS I keep hearing stuff claimed about her that  sort 
of makes my head spin.  There are people who will go berserk at the  thought 
that she might have had, gasp, sex.  And there is the little matter  of the 
drug use, even though it was a pain killer and she needed pain  killers.  Her 
body did not like her in her later years.
 
She never intended that her ideas be holy writ, though she could get  
downright abusive to those who had the temerity to remind her of that.  And  she 
could be wrong, dead wrong about some things.  And being a person of  her time she 
would naturally have ideas that would not stand the test of  time.  Her words 
are to be taken as what they are, words, to be studied,  questioned and in 
the end either accepted or not.  They are not golden  drippings from the nose of 
god, in spite of the ravings of the Judge  worshippers.  And they are not the 
last word for the simple reason that  there is no last word.  And those who 
regard her in that way do her a great  disservice because when her human 
weaknesses are discovered, there are people  who get very disappointed.  Better to 
know that there is no idol than to  have it fall over on you.
 
Better to admire her for what she was, a person of extraordinary energy and  
knowledge whose presence still looms over the world, who is a source of  
inspiration for us and of horror to our enemies.  Let us honor her for that  and at 
the same time have a good laugh at the extreme gravity of her person  which 
could break chairs and capsize boats if she looked over the side. (I used  to 
joke that she was the reason my family ended up in America because she caused  
the Great Pasta Famine.)
 
And let us never, ever forget her humanity.
 
Chuck the Heretic
 
 
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