Camp Gagnon - The OCCULTIST Behind EVERY Secret Society

Episode Date: January 15, 2026

Today we uncover the life of Helena Blavatsky, the woman who sparked a global mystical movement. From her mysterious early years and her secretive travels across the East to the formation of the Theosophical Society, her controversial Mahatma letters, and the enduring influence of The Secret Doctrine, this is the story of the occult’s most fascinating figure. Welcome to CAMP! 🏕️Shoutout to our sponsors: Flakes and BlueChewVisit https://byeflakes.com and use code 'CAMP' to get 20% off, a free scalp brush, and a 30-day money-back guarantee.👕🧢 SHOP CAMP MERCH HERE: http://camp-rd.com🎟️ 🎫 Comedy Tour Tickets Here: https://markgagnonlive.com🎩👽 Daily Dose Of History Here: https://www.dailytodayinhistory.comTimestamps:0:00 Helena’s Early Childhood3:59 The Lost Decade7:10 Meeting Mahatma Morya10:17 Forming Mystical Society11:56 Civil War Spiritualism16:30 Formation of Theosophical Society21:45 Mahatma Letters23:58 The SPR Investigation26:42 The Secret Doctrine33:20 The Scholarly Thoughts#foryou #history #podcast #knowledge #interesting #comedy #film #interview #mystery

Perhaps one of the most influential spiritual teachers of the 19th century wasn't a priest or a guru or a prophet. She was a chain-smoking Russian woman who claimed to talk to invisible masters. She survived things that should have killed her, and she wrote books referencing secret ancient texts. And she even convinced people that Tibetan monks were dropping mystical letters from the sky. She was accused of being one of history's greatest frauds, but her ideas ended up influencing everything from yoga studios, to UFO research. This is the story of Helena Blavatsky, the woman who took ancient mysticism, mixed it with modern science, and rewired how we think about spirituality. So if you were interested

in the occult ancient texts and one of the most controversial spiritual leaders of modern mysticism, this is the episode for you. So sit back, relax, and welcome to camp. What's up, people, and welcome back to camp. My name is Mark Gagnon, and thank you for joining me in my tent where every single week. We explore the most interesting, fascinating, controversial stories from around the world from all time forever. Yes, this is my tent where I go into deep dives and wormholes and rabbit holes and all sorts of different animals, holes to try to figure out what's going on in this great, crazy planet we live on. Yes. And today, oh boy, we got a good one. All right. At first, I just want to say thank you so much for tuning in and making this show possible. This is truly my dream just to read crazy

wormholes and go on Wikipedia and read books and then tell you guys about it. It's the greatest thing ever. you tune in and subscribe to this channel and comment. It turns my dreams into a reality and it keeps the fire burning here at the campsite. And I'm also grateful for my dear friend Christos. How are you, pal? What's up, everybody? Christos, we don't have time to jump into every little thing you want to talk about, all right? I'm sorry, the audience wants to hear about Helena Blavatsky.

You ever heard of her? A couple times. Oh, goodness. Enough with this, okay? That's so many episodes. Oh, yeah. We've mentioned her a lot. We have.

I will say that we've referenced her in passing, but I think the time has come where we owe it to her as one of the more controversial women in modern mysticism that we give her an episode. For sure. Is that fine with you, Christos? Yeah, absolutely. Fine.

All right, we'll do it. Geez, right? Enough with this guy. If you're clicking on this video, you're probably interested in modern mysticism and you're interested in where it all comes from. In my opinion, Helena Blavatsky is the great guy, of the kind of the current sort of mystical occult movement. And I know people, you know,

disagree. They'll say, oh, John D, da, da, da, da, I think Helena plays a pivotal role in how people understand ancient texts in the merging of like modern science or somewhat kind of science, as we'll explain that some of her things were a lot out there. But who is she? Why does she matter? And why have so many different occultists in the more recent years referenced her work? Well, it all starts on August 12th, Helena Petrovna Hahn was born in the Russian Empire to an aristocratic family already somewhat neck-deep in mystical societies. Her father, Peter Hahn, was a military officer, but the real sort of power comes from her mother's side. Her great-grandfather, Prince Pavel Degorokov, was a high-ranking Freemason. And allegedly, their family estate had a large library filled with all sorts of a

cult texts and mystical writings and, you know, banned books, if such a thing exists, everything from Rosicution Mysteries to Hermetic philosophy, occult traditions from, you know, the Russian Orthodox Church and everything in between, literally everything that you can imagine a high-ranking, you know, wealthy Freemason would have. And it said that growing up, Helena was genuinely frightening to be around. Now, let me just say so much of Helena's early life has been kind of reintegrated with lore and story and, you know, details that are difficult to parse from myth and reality. So take all of this with a grand assault. But it is said that she would go into these violent rages that would require adults to restrain her. And she claimed to see and speak

with people who weren't even there and would sleepwalk throughout the house, having full conversations with imaginary friends or invisible entities. And her family was high class, but they were also terrified of their own kid. It said that one of her tutors allegedly resigned after Helena warned her that a close relative would die within days, and then three days later that exact relative died. Again, do we know? These accounts come from memoirs and letters that were written years later, which makes them impossible to verify. But what we can agree on is from the earliest foundation of her reputation is that she was someone that was unnatural, long before she ever entered into occult circles. Then at 17 years old, Helena does something that looks completely normal,

but is actually a part of potentially a bigger plan. On July 7th, 1849, she marries a man named Nikofor Vladmerevich Blavatsky, and he is the vice governor of the Arevon province. And he's about 40 years old. He's more than twice her age at this point. But shortly after getting married, Helena abandons him, like either on their honeymoon or shortly after their honeymoon and just basically separates from them and just runs off in the middle of the night. But why did she do this? Well, in 19th century Russia, married woman could travel internationally without male guardianship and, you know, she could operate more independently if she was married than if she was under the tutelage of, you know, her family name or her father. However, single woman needed their father's permission

for everything they could do and couldn't leave the country without a male relative as an escort. So she basically used marriage as like a legal hack to gain freedom and actually cross international borders. And oh boy, did she. Now, once she had this legal status of married woman, she could kind of disappear and, you know, go around and didn't have to tell Russian authorities where she was. And if she got, you know, caught up at a checkpoint, she wasn't forced to return. And this is basically what she did for an entire decade. Now, this is what we call the lost decade of her life between like 1850 and 18. and it's a pretty suspicious gap. And there's all sorts of claims about where she went. Some say she went to

Egypt and Greece and Tibet, India, South American, even studied with Native American shamans in Canada and the American Southwest. While it's clear there's a lot of, you know, myth and story around her early years, what we do know is that she definitely spent time in Cairo between 1850 and 1851, where she lived in the European quarter. She's also documented to be in Paris around 1852, where she briefly worked as a circus performer, apparently as a bareback rider. Can I get a y-haw? I was hoping for a y-haw, but whatever. There's also some evidence that she made it to Canada, maybe even to New Orleans, where she was learning or studying voodoo. Now, during this decade, she becomes fluent in French and English and Russian and Greek and even some Sanskrit, so much so that she was able to be able to. to impress university scholars with her grasp on this very specific language. She also would learn

some Arabic and Tibetan script and different Indian dialects. It's pretty remarkable how many languages she learned, but more importantly than the languages, the languages were just a conduit for her to study her real passion. She developed an advanced knowledge of Hindu cosmology and Buddhist metaphysics and Jewish Kabbalah and Gnostic Christianity and Islamic mysticism. And these were not even really available to most Europeans at the time. The translations were often in their own dialects, which is why she probably learned so many languages. And this is in the 1850s, keep in mind. The first reliable like Sanskrit to English dictionaries are just starting to be published. And even then, they're pretty hard to come by. While Tibetan Buddhism is basically unknown to the West at this point.

So, you know, who teaches a Russian woman comparative religion without leaving an academic record? well, that takes us to August of 1851. While walking near Hyde Park in London, Helena spots a tall guy in Eastern looking at higher walking with a group of Indian princes who were in London for the great exhibition. Now, Helena recognizes him as someone she's been seeing in visions since childhood, and she later identifies him as Matma Moria.

This man is a Tibetan scholar or a Tibetan adept, you could say, who basically becomes her spiritual, spiritual guide. Helena later claims that when their eyes met, he approaches her and speaks fluent English, somehow knowing details about her life that he shouldn't know. Again, this is from her own records, but this is the story. He tells her that she's been chosen for a specific purpose, and this purpose is very clear. It's to confront Western materialism by proving that psychic phenomena and ancient knowledge are real. Now, it's important to note that Helena describes Moria as completely real. He's not like a vision or like a voice or one of the entities she's talking to as a kid. He's

standing right there in front of her in broad daylight speaking to her like a normal person. Yet he also accurately describes events from her childhood in Russia, knows details about her family and gives her specific instructions about her future that only makes sense years later. Now, she calls this an encounter because it basically becomes the blueprint for every ascended master and basically like a channeling story that follows. Helena does. doesn't frame it as this religious vision or like a psychological episode. She describes it as a recruitment meeting with a real person who just possesses extraordinary knowledge and abilities about her personal life that no one should know. In 1867, she fell from a horse in Italy and

broke several ribs and developed a chronic breathing problem. And then at some point later, while traveling through the Balkans, she contracted a fever that local doctors just expected to kill her. And then in 1871, she reportedly survived a ship. shipwreck off the Greek island of Spetsis where most passengers drowned. And this is also where she develops her legendary chain smoking habit. Again, reports vary on this, but it said that she would go through like 200 cigarettes a day. She was a heavy smoker and was just chain smoking all the time. And these near death episodes later become central to her metaphysical ideas.

Helena claims that during her most like severe illnesses, her consciousness would separate from her body and she could watch doctors. treating her from above. And she took this as proof that human awareness is not something that's local to the brain, that, you know, this is something that can potentially exist outside of us. And this is an idea that, you know, she's talking about in like the 1860s and 70s that wouldn't even really be formally studied until the 70s to the 1970s. And it's an idea that, you know, some people suggest that perhaps our consciousness is non-local and that exists, you know, outside of our brains. Again, she's talking about this stuff way before anyone. interesting. But in 1871, she then goes to Cairo and attempts to establish the Society

Sparit, essentially a mystical study group that would investigate psychic phenomena using scientific methods. So she rents a house in the European quarter and manages to attract 30 regular members, but the society basically just dissolves within six months. Helena reportedly demonstrates phenomena that the group can't explain. Things like objects moving, without contact and flowers and jewelry appearing from nowhere and voices coming from empty rooms. And instead of convincing these people and emboldening them, it just terrified them. And they all left. Local religious authorities, both from the Islamic and the Coptic Christian communities, accused her of just being a witch. They said she's practicing black magic.

And some just said she was a fraud and that she was doing magic tricks. And so, as you can imagine, half the members were like, ah, this is baloney. The other half was like, she's terrifying. And everyone basically just dipped. Egyptian police would even investigate reports of unnatural activities at her house. While they didn't arrest her outright, they made it very clear that continuing this practice would result in legal issues. So she's forced to end the society and just leave Egypt entirely. But here's the thing. Helena learns that psychic demonstrations alone don't create a lasting movement. It just kind of creates fear and doubt and suspicion. She realizes you can't just drop European mysticism into other cultures without understanding how local religions will react. And now this takes us to

the next stage of her life, Helena goes to America. On July 8th, 1871, Helena arrives in New York City with very little money and speaks with a heavily accented English and just has a single suitcase. But she landed at the exact right historical moment. This is post-Civil War America and it is obsessed with death and contact with the deceased. And, you know, at this point, more than 600,000 people are killed in the Civil War, leaving families and entire communities just longing for a connection with their lost relatives. So as a result, spiritualism is exploding into this national obsession. And there are millions upon millions of Americans that are attending seances and other non-traditional religious formats to try to understand where their ancestors are. And the people

that they lost that were close to them. There's so much fervor for connecting with this other world. So you have professional mediums like the Fox Sisters who start doing this spiritual craze. And they're making a fortune by charging $50 a session, roughly like $1,200 in today's money, which a little fun fact here, Mary Todd Lincoln, first lady married to Abraham Lincoln, remember him? She would actually hold seances in the White House. That's how much of a movement this was at the time. But Helena doesn't become a medium or a clairvoyant. She actually just dismantles the industry. So she attends seances held by famous performers like the Davenport brothers and publicly shows how like their spiritual manifestations are just stage tricks and psychological manipulation.

She basically goes and is like, hey, this whole thing is a Fugazi. So instead of competing with the spiritualist in America, she just reframes the combo. and she claims to be offering a scientific explanation for this psychic spiritual phenomena. She argues that most mediums are frauds or just unknowingly like channeling lower astral entities which are confused spirits with no access to higher knowledge. So basically she's like, hey, that's actually not your brother that died. That's just like a low level spirit that she's talking to and it's not really him. Now, for most people who lost their loved ones, the last thing that they want to hear is that the

communication that they received with their brother that just died. was fake, but Helena isn't telling them that it's fake. She's telling them that the methods are risky and that actually she can offer a safer, more reliable portal to access this real spiritual knowledge. It's a very clever trick, but it works really well. And you got to wonder if this is something she picked up while she was in Egypt, right, that people were casting doubt on her, so she comes to America and she's like, yeah, this is all fake. I'm the one that has the real connection. And this ultimately leads her to probably her most famous partnership, and that is with Colonel Henry Steele Alcott. So October 1874, Helena meets Henry Alcott. He's a 42-year-old

Civil War veteran. He's a successful lawyer. He's an agricultural journalist who basically has this reputation for exposing insurance fraud and then investigating fake mediums for major newspapers, which is right up Helena's alley, right? She's like, hey, we both have a, you know, alignment and exposing these frauds. So Alcott had been commissioned by the New York son to investigate the Eddie brothers, who were these Vermont farmers who claimed that their farmhouse was haunted by spirits

that actually appear physically during seances and they're charging people to come and experience these spirits. Again, it's this big revival for spiritualism in America. So Alcott arrives expecting to, you know, just expose another fraud. But instead, he witnesses something

that he has a difficult time explaining. Full body apparition. that speak different languages and objects materializing and dematerializing and musical instruments playing by themselves while floating in midair. But what really impresses him, and his biggest takeaway from that evening is not the crazy things that he saw or the spirits. It's meeting Helena, who was at the farmhouse witnessing the exact same thing. She begins explaining to him how psychic phenomena are witnessed across cultures and explains like the historical precedence for everything that they're seeing. And within weeks, Alcott becomes Helena's most important partner,

but more importantly, he brings what she lacks, which is organizational discipline and legal know-how and, you know, financial connections and maybe above all just a real trust from the public. So Alcott begins handling the paperwork and legal structures and fundraising and public relations and all the bureaucratic things that allow these mystical movements to actually function in the real world, which takes us directly to the most influential occult society maybe ever formed, and that is a theosophical society. So September 7, 1875, in Helena and Alcott's apartment at 302 West 47th Street, right here in New York City. 17 people gather to formally establish what we call the Theosophical Society. The founding members include Alcott as the president, Helena as the corresponding secretary, William Judge as the council, and a bunch of different lawyers.

and doctors and journalists, spiritualists, anyone you can imagine, right? But typically pretty high society people. Now, the society has three main objectives. First, to form a universal brotherhood without the distinction of race, creed, sex, cast, or color. It's pretty honorable. The second, to encourage the study of comparative religion, philosophy, and science. And the third is to perform scientific investigations of psychic phenomena. Now, here's the crazy part.

the official charter specifically states that members are not required to accept any particular belief or give up their existing religious affiliation. So that means if you're Christian or Jewish or Muslim, even non-believers can join. So Helena frames Theosophy as a scientific investigation of the spiritual, not a faith-based belief system. And for that reason, it really attracts a lot of educated professionals who want a mystical experience or to join in on this. this spiritual craze that's taking over the country, but they need a rational framework to justify it. Within the first year, the society is already having scholarship and meetings with many prestigious universities around the country. And now this is giving them an academic and sort of

just a social credibility boost at a time when it could have easily just been dismissed as another cult. Then in September 1877, two years after forming the society, Helena publishes ISIS unveiled a master key to the mysteries of ancient and modern science and theology. And the academic world is pretty confused by this. The book is over 1,300 pages long. And Helena claims to have written the entire thing in 18 months. But here's what makes a lot of people suspicious is that she's working without a research library, yet citing hundreds of sources. I mean, for context, at the time, if you were going to write a paper or a dissertation that is 1,300 pages long, you'd probably have access to the library at Oxford, a library at Harvard. You would have tons of different texts

in front of any that you could pull from. But yet, Helena references 1,200 different books from the ancient Greek world to Latin text, to Sanskrit manuscripts, even like grimwares and medieval alchemical works, like anything you can imagine. However, many of her citations are so obscure that university librarians can't actually locate the source material. But despite this, the most unsettling part is some of her accuracy. So when scholars are actually verifying her references, her quotes and descriptions are pretty correct, even when she's citing books and languages that she can't even read fluently. What's up, guys? We're going to take a break real quick because we've got to have some real talk, all right? If you've ever brushed off white flakes from a black t-shirt,

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can't even be traced to known publications. And it's almost as if she's citing books that don't exist in public collections or maybe they're not available in Europe or the Americas. At this point, Helena and Alcott saw that there was a massive movement happening in India with a lot of British migration in Bombay. There were many people living there that were heavily influenced by this Eastern tradition, not to mention so much of their philosophical work was based on Hinduism and Buddhism. And if you are centering your sort of life philosophy around these, you know, lifestyles and these religions, then it would make sense to be in the place where they're born. So they moved to India. Now, Indian intellectuals educated in British schools suddenly encounter this Russian woman insisting that Hindu cosmology contains advanced knowledge that Western science doesn't really understand.

And immediately, there's interest. Helena gives lectures explaining the concepts like karma and reincarnation and cyclical time, are these sophisticated metaphysical principles rather than, you know, backward religious beliefs that the British were trying to get rid of. And the idea explodes across Indian society. And within two years, theosophical lodges are established in 15 Indian cities. Most of the members include a lot of British officers and, you know, well-educated Hindu lawyers and Parsi merchants and even some progressive Muslim scholars.

But the most significant converts are Indian independence activists. Leaders like Annie Bessent, who later becomes president of the, the Theosophical Society and Bal Gutahar Talak use Theosophy as a way to argue that Indian civilization is not behind European civilization. Not only is it not equal, it's actually more advanced in the understanding of the spiritual. So Helena essentially tells Indian thinkers that their traditions are not only important, but they're arguably more important and not as superstitions or as myths that people read about in America, but as an advanced metaphysical system that can stand alongside modern science. So by 1884, the Theosophical Society has exploded into this global

operation. But at the same time, something weird starts to happen. So letters start to appear out of nowhere, again, according to Helena. And she claims that they're written by the Mahatmas. These are ancient Tibetan masters, as she says, live in remote Himalayan regions, and they operate beyond the normal physical limits. And this is what she says, Mahatma Moria. the guy that she saw in London with all the Tibetan monks that knew stuff about her. That's who she says that he was. Now, the letters basically drop from the sky in front of multiple different witnesses, either from the ceiling, inside of closed room,

or just on the ground when they're walking. And they're often locked in these drawers that haven't been opened in days. And in one famous incident, the Theosophical Headquarters, a letter materializes inside a sealed wooden shrine in front of five witnesses, including two British. colonial officials. What's strange is that these letters are written on handmade Tibetan paper using ink that isn't even available in India at the time. And they're written in multiple languages, sometimes mixing like English and Tibetan and Sanskrit all into one paragraph. And the handwriting

also shows three distinct styles that forensic analysis later identifies coming from different individuals. Where these letters come from, who knows? But what the letters say, is even stranger. The letters include detailed instructions on theosophical policy, personal guidance for the members, and all sorts of complicated philosophical discussions showing deep knowledge of not only Eastern, but also Western mystical traditions. Now, a lot of people assume it was just Helena writing these letters, but they continued appearing even when she wasn't present. So in 1883 and 84, while she's traveling in Europe, letters from the masters, quote unquote masters, are continuing to materialize at

Theosophical Headquarters in India, witnessed by Alcott and other residents. Later, handwriting analysis showed that some letters were written in her writing, but others, particularly those manifesting during her absence, remain unknown. Were they written by Alcott or someone else entirely? Who's to say? Now, this takes us to the next major stage in Helena's life, and this is the SPR investigation. So, in December 1884, the Society for Psychical Research sent a man named Richard Hodgson, a 29-year-old Australian researcher to India in order to investigate claims about

Helena's psychic abilities and these materialized Mahatma letters. So Hodgson spends three months at theosophical headquarters in India, interviewing witnesses and examining evidence and testing Helena's demonstrations. And by the end of his investigation, Hodgson labels Helena one of the most accomplished ingenious and interesting impostors in history. He claims that these Mahatma letters are produced through a combination of, you know, Confederates, basically like, you know, people working for her that are kind of like stagehands, you could say, secret passages and basically like slight of hand, you know, card magic techniques. But here's what's problematic about the investigation.

He arrived already convinced that these types of phenomena are impossible, and his job is basically to debunk them. He refuses to witness any demonstrations under controlled settings and relies heavily on testimony from Emma Colombe, a former theosophical employee who was fired for embezzlement, and so some say she had a clear motive for revenge. This one single investigation essentially destroys Helena's public reputation at the time. Newspapers across Europe and America just brand her as a fraud. And a lot of her educated supporters began to distance themselves from Theosophy to avoid embarrassment. But something unexpected actually happens in the wake of this. You would think that she would just pack it up or no one would take her seriously ever again, right? This guy Richard Hudson from a reputable organization meant to debunk people, debunked her. But instead, her influence begins to grow. Later proponents of Helena's work identify what they would consider serious flaws in his initial investigation. In 1986, about a full century later, the SPR published a reassessment, and they concluded that Hodgson's report was biased and methodologically unsound, and they basically say that he acted as the judge, the jury, and the

executioner. Now, more importantly, attacking Helena personally didn't stop her ideas from spreading. And by 1885, Theosophy had developed such enormous momentum on its own that it basically survived the founder's reputation being destroyed. But now Helena was about to drop her craziest bombshell yet. And this is something known as the secret doctrine. In October of 1888, Helena published a book called The Secret Doctrine, the synthesis of science, religion, and philosophy. And this book became very dangerous in some ways, not because of what Helena intended, but because of how other people weaponized it. The book is massive. Over 1,500 pages. across multiple volumes claiming to reveal the hidden history of human evolution based on ancient texts that Helena call the stanzas of Zion.

A text supposedly preserved in Tibetan monasteries, but never actually seen by Western scholars. Now, you can see where this is going, right? Helena introduces several ideas that appear, you know, not as harmful in their original context, but later became foundational for extremist movements. Firstly, and maybe worse of all, she describes something called root races. And she claims that human evolution proceeded through seven successive races, each developing different physical and mental capabilities. So according to her, we are currently in the fifth root race that she calls the Aryan root race. Yeah.

And this will eventually be succeeded by more advanced forms. Secondly, she refers to cyclical destructions, where she claims that, human civilization undergoes these periodic cataclysms that basically destroy most existing knowledge, requiring spiritual teachers to preserve and restore ancient wisdom. And then finally, she describes lost advance civilizations. This one I like. She claims places like Atlantis and Lemoria were technologically sophisticated societies that were destroyed because they misused psychic power for selfish purposes. Now, over time, different groups would bar, her ideas. So many Nazi occultists like Heinrich Himmler and others would misuse her root

race concept to push Aryan supremacy, even though Helena at the onset opposed this type of racism and tried to teach human unity. I mean, that obviously went sideways. And as you can see, the idea of the root race was very easily co-opted by racial extremists. Now, whether or not that was her intention, it's difficult to really pin down. But, But if you're talking about root races, it's not the best look. Now, ancient alien researchers take her stories about lost civilizations and then turn them into claims about extraterrestrial, shaping human history, and many different types of conspiracy theorists use her idea of repeating collapse of civilization,

to argue that secret groups are regularly resetting the world to basically, you know, purge humanity. But the most crucial part is that Helena didn't really seem to intend for these people to use her work, and it's difficult for her to have foreseen this, but still, it was used in that way. Now, her influence doesn't stop with the conspiracy world. It also runs through some of the most controversial occult figures of the 20th century. So, Alistair Crowley. Now, Crowley is, in many ways, influenced by Helena Blavatsky. Now, he openly criticizes theosophy later in his life when he actually creates his own religion, Thelma,

but he kept the core structure, the secret masters and hidden knowledge, and ancient wisdom disguised as like, you know, modern science. And his ideas about contacting higher intelligences and learning from non-human beings and unlocking human potential through rituals. They're not really new. They were just more extreme and darker versions of Blavatsky's initial framework. So even Crowley himself and the famous entities like Iwas fit the exact mold of Helena's Mahatmas.

Iwas was this higher being that Crowley believed existed beyond normal reality, that that he would communicate with while he was in Cairo. And, you know, he wasn't the only one to be influenced. We do a whole episode on Crowley, if you want to check that one out. But many different people have directly or indirectly drawn on her ideas. So Dionne Fortune, a Western ceremonial magician and Manly P. Hall and, you know, his cataloging of secret societies and, you know, ancient mythology, Jack Parsons, a rocket scientist, also a cultist who would mix rituals with his passion for space exploration.

and even like Alice Bailey, who literally popularized the term New Age. And it said that she influenced many of them either directly through her writings or through this movement of theosophy that she created. Now remember, Helena introduced the idea that non-human intelligences were ultimately guiding humanity from behind the scenes. Now, today, we would just call that aliens. Or maybe if you're Christian, you would call it demons or angels. Now, she doesn't call them any of those things. She calls them masters or watchers or advanced beings from earlier cycles of civilization. But the structure is pretty spot on with like modern UFO contact stories. You know, so when UFOology, for lack of a better word, exploded in the 1950s, what are the stories that people say?

There are these, you know, contactees that receive messages from these higher beings. And there's typically some type of warning about consciousness or nuclear war or, you know, civilization collapse. and there's claims of, you know, other civilizations that are more advanced than ours and this idea that humanity is being prepared or guided. And many people will draw the connection to say that this is just Blavatsky just with, you know, spacecraft or aliens rather than astral planes or these Mahatmas. Now, Helena eventually died on May 8th, 1891, at 59 years old. She had been in poor health for years, and when a severe flu outbreak hit London, she got sick and her body just couldn't recover. cover. By the time of her passing, she never really built a massive empire, never gained any real

tangible political power, and eventually lost control of what her ideas were and ultimately who co-opted them. But despite that, her influence is still huge. She didn't just start a movement. She just invented an entire spiritual system. And that's what makes Helena Blavoski so hard to pin down. Was she a fraud? Was she a genius? Was she a myth maker who somehow got something right it's difficult to say what we do know is that she definitely took ancient mysticism wrapped it in a modern language and created a framework that still shapes how people talk about consciousness and form spiritual societies and how they interface with hidden knowledge and non-human intelligences more than 130 years later and that ladies and gentlemen is the story of helena blavatsky fascinating woman

I mean, it's one of these things that I can't tell, but all the stuff that she researched and went in on are all the things that I'm curious about, with the exception of the root race part. That's not great. But again, I actually think, I mean, she spoke out against, like, anti-Semitism and, like, European colonization. Like, she thinks that the colonial powers were terrible. So, like, yeah, I think a lot of the language that she used and the vocab, again, I haven't read all of her work. So I'll reserve the right to be wrong here. But, like, a lot of her Her language is probably bad. And even the way she was approaching, like, race was probably, like, misinformed. But I think she probably would have been, like, against the Nazis using her ideas to, like, create a genocide. I think that's probably fair to say based off what I know about her. With that said, her ideas being like, I want to study ancient texts. I want to learn about everything. I want to go in on ancient civilizations.

I want to talk about, like, these beings that are guiding civilization. Like, it's all stuff that would just, like, be on the Discovery Channel today. maybe the history channel. Yeah. It's crazy that like, it's all in the same zeitgeist. And she kind of like was one of the first people to really pull it all together

into like one source and like one text. We're like, you know, you had people talking about like Buddhist philosophy and you had people talking about like, you know, occultism. But she's one of the first people to like really pull it all together and then distribute it for the mainstream. She's like the OG like ancient aliens, like history channel doc.

Yeah. You know? Carlander had good things to say about her as far as being the the source of a lot of the occult practices. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And again, I don't know her work well enough to say like was she like, you know,

a racial supremacist? I don't think so. But that's like really the biggest knock against her. Is that like Nazi occultist like took her work and like turned it into that? But a lot of the other stuff I just find interesting. Like she would be the ultimate JRE guest. Yeah. Right?

Like. Also 200 cigarettes a day? Yeah, she was a chain smoking son of a gun. That's crazy. She was just ripping darts talking about aliens and beings. Also, dead eyes. There is nothing behind those eyes. That's just a Russian woman.

Right? You've seen a babushka before? Sure. Supermodel, supermodel, supermodel, supermodel, babushka. It just overnight it happens and that's what you get. Can you get a picture of her when she was young? I bet you she was a stunner, dude. That's my hot take. She was probably a rocket

or a cosmonaut. Is that what they call him? Cosmonaut? You never heard that before? No. That's what a Russian astronaut is. Like a Soviet astronaut. They call them cosmonauts. Kind of a sick name, to be honest. Kind of better than astronaut, in my opinion. I got to tell you Blavoski Young doesn't look much better than Blavisky old. Yeah.

Yeah, she kind of looked in the mirror when she was 20 and was like, All right, better write some books. I come up with some weird shit. Yeah. But I went into this kind of having a negative view of her, to be honest. Like before I was doing research, I was kind of like, I think she's like a bad lady. And sure, you know, kind of bastardizing religion and kind of like pulling from a bunch of different things to like create her own sort of faith system.

There's some moral quandary with that. But she's not as explicitly like bad. I thought she was like a racist Satanist. Right. Which I don't think that's true after. some further reflection. Yeah. And also she had the smear campaign from this guy. True, which

accordingly, it seems like the institution like kind of rescinded their initial judgment on her. That's what it seemed like. Which is also really interesting. They're like that many years later they would pull back. But I wonder if that's because they were facing scrutiny. There's probably some political stuff with that. Now, what that said, I would have loved, oh, I would have loved Christos to have been

alive in America in the 1870s and gone to a farmhouse and witnessed these magical shows. Because to be honest with you, if I had to guess, gun to my head, I think these guys were just really, really talented magicians. And I think that they were showmen and they were putting on these experiences for people to be like, oh, this is real. And I'm surprised that no one does that now.

You know what I mentioned? Not magicians, but magicians that fake it. Like, I would love if there was like, so I'm sure someone must. do this. But like, I would love, because you go to a magic show and it's like, hey, I'm going to show you a bunch of tricks. Here's how good I am at magic. Watch my tricks. You go see Copperfield. It's like, we know it's not real, but how did he do it? I would love to see someone that's like, hey, you can only get to it through like in person show up. Like, you have to just come at a certain time and it's in someone's apartment. And they're like, my apartment's haunted. It's probably demonic or

something. And here's all the crazy stuff. And then it's just a magic show, but with the feeling of like spirituality built into it. It's a good. idea, right? Someone should do that. Like what the Davenport brothers, I think of those their name. Like what they were doing at that, you know, barn house where they were like, yeah, it's haunted. And then they saw like instruments playing themselves, which to be honest, I don't think these people were dumb. Like the people going to these shows, like they were somewhat educated. They were watching this and they were like, I don't know how they do it. How do they do it? Yeah. Like how would you make a like a mandolin fly over like the

table and play itself? In the 1800s. Yeah, like that's pretty impressive. I'm sure there was some kind of string and pulley system. Sure, I'm with you. But still, I mean, the fact that, like, so many of the writings from the Mahatma's were just in her handwriting. Also doesn't bode super well. And then when she leaves, they're not in her handwriting. And it's like, all right.

I wonder how you did it. But still, like, I don't know. I mean, the skeptical part of me wants to be like, she's obviously just, like, a really talented magician that, pulled off these amazing stunts and was able to like dupe all these people but the the child in me is like I want to believe that she had some type of mystical force I'm curious by this guy Alcott

like I'm so curious why he just like rolled with it like he was like a pretty astute guy I wonder if you saw like an opportunity to catch a lick like I wonder when he passed away but did he make any money of the the theosophical society I would imagine not but don't be don't underestimate how smart people

people could get entranced by the occult. Yeah. You're talking about me? No. I was talking about the Nazis, but... Whoa. I mean, yeah, this guy, Alcott is really interesting. Because it seems like he joins this movement,

because he goes in, remember, as a skeptic that's meant to, like, debunk these spiritual movements, goes to the seance. It's the Eddie brothers. Those are the guys. And he goes to this Eddie Brothers thing and is like, oh, man, this is pretty crazy. And Theosophy gives him this really convenient framework

to basically explore the stuff, give some explanation as to what he's seeing without, with kind of like a quasi-spiritual scientific lens. And so he's able to be like, you know, consciousness matters and, you know, we are all one and we're all connected and there is some type of higher power. And he can explain it without Christianity or any other type of mainstream religion. It's kind of pull from all of them. And it also gives him like a real legacy and purpose, right? like post-sivil war.

He's like, what am I going to do? I'm a lawyer. Like, da-da-da-da-da. It's not like his life was like super exciting. And now he gets to travel the world and he has like prestige in a specific circle. And he's connected to this woman who's extremely famous. Da-da-da-da-da. And I think at the time it solved a lot of things for him.

It's also kind of like a lottery ticket. If he's right about it being right. Yeah, I guess. Like a smart person. Yeah. But it just, I guess it ties him to something that's really cool and gives him a ton of purpose. And on top of that it gives him. like an explanation for the things that he can't explain.

And so instead of just being like, oh, yeah, this is all fake, he's seeing stuff that you can't explain and he's like, well, some of it might be true and here's how. And he's able to blend in like the pseudo-scientific, mystical kind of framework to it. Just a fascinating time to be alive. And the amount of people she influenced, I mean, we've read, you know, through Eric Curlander and his like, you know, Nazi occult work as well as like Alastair Crowley. A lot of them have opinions and feelings in some way, directly or indirectly, some credit to give to Blavatsky. Pretty interesting.

It's also crazy that we know her by her name and it's her married name. I wonder what happened to her husband. You know, like he ended up going off and meeting some other. Mr. Blavatsky? Yeah. Just met some other lady and opened like a parogi shop or something. I would love to know. But anyway, people, that is our episode on Helena Blavatsky.

love to know if you have read her works or if you are a scholar in the occult, is there anything that I missed? Again, I am not immune to correction. I would love to know the truth, whatever it may be. Some of my research could be faulty. I admit that. So I would love to know, please correct the record. If you never heard of her and you just think this is interesting, what are your thoughts? Do you think that all of these guys are just, you know, really crafty magic or were they magic? You know what I mean? What do you think? Please drop a comment. If you like this channel. Thank you so much. I appreciate you guys subscribing to camp. We do interviews on this channel. We do deep dives and all sorts of weird stuff that I'm into. If this isn't really your vibe,

great news. We also have history camp for a little bit more grounded content, just going into crazy history deep dives. We also have religion camp. If you were interested in more questions of the spiritual, we go through every religion from Islam, Hinduism, Christianity, Judaism, anything you can imagine. Of course, you can also check out the merch. I'm wearing the hoodie right now because it's freezing in this tent. And you can also see me on the road. Mark Acknowledge. live. I got a couple more tour stops this year and many more to be announced. I just am so grateful for all of you, for being campers, for joining us here in the tent every single week and just turning my dream into a reality just to be able to go down crazy wormholes and teach people and

learn for myself. I mean, what better joy is there than sit in the tent my pal Christos and learning, right? All right, all right, Christos, enough, okay? All right, guys, thank you guys so much. Appreciate you dearly, and I'll see you next time. Thanks.