She also claimed that during this period she encountered a group of spiritual adepts, the "Masters of the Ancient Wisdom", who sent her to Shigatse, Tibet, where they trained her to develop a deeper understanding of the synthesis of religion, philosophy, and science.

[13] As a result of Pyotr's career, the family frequently moved to different parts of the Empire, accompanied by their servants,[14] a mobile childhood that may have influenced Blavatsky's largely nomadic lifestyle in later life.

Blavatsky's mother liked the city, there establishing her own literary career, penning novels under the pseudonym of "Zenaida R-va" and translating the works of the English novelist Edward Bulwer-Lytton for Russian publication.

[31] She later claimed that in Saratov she discovered the personal library of her maternal great-grandfather, Prince Pavel Vasilevich Dolgorukov (d. 1838); it contained a variety of books on esoteric subjects, encouraging her burgeoning interest in it.

[62] She later claimed that she then headed back to Europe by ship, surviving a shipwreck near to the Cape of Good Hope before arriving in England in 1854, where she faced hostility as a Russian citizen due to the ongoing Crimean War between Britain and Russia.

[66] She claimed that this time she was successful, entering Tibet in 1856 through Kashmir, accompanied by a Tartar shaman who was attempting to reach Siberia and who thought that as a Russian citizen, Blavatsky would be able to aid him in doing so.

[84] It has been highlighted that during the nineteenth century, Tibet was closed to Europeans, and visitors faced the perils of bandits and a harsh terrain; the latter would have been even more problematic if Blavatsky had been as stout and unathletic as she would be in later life.

[102][103] There, she moved into a women's housing cooperative on Madison Street in Manhattan's Lower East Side, earning a wage through piece work sewing and designing advertising cards.

[121] They began living together in a series of rented apartments in New York City, which they decorated with taxidermied animals and images of spiritual figures; their life was funded largely by Olcott's continued work as a lawyer.

[125] At a Miracle Club meeting on 7 September 1875, Blavatsky, Olcott, and Judge agreed to establish an esoteric organization, with Charles Sotheran suggesting that they call it the Theosophical Society.

In 1875, Blavatsky began work on a book outlining her Theosophical worldview, much of which would be written during a stay in the Ithaca home of Hiram Corson, a Professor of English Literature at Cornell University.

[136] Writing more than a century after her death Lachman conjectured that if this had been the case, then she had had an eidetic memory,[137] such that, while relying on earlier sources, the book represented an original synthesis that connected disparate ideas not brought together before.

[142] Although facing negative mainstream press reviews, including from those who highlighted that it extensively quoted around 100 other books without acknowledgement,[143] it proved to be such a commercial success, with its initial print run of 1,000 copies selling out in a week,[144] that the publisher requested a sequel, although Blavatsky turned down the offer.

[148] The Theosophical Society established links with an Indian Hindu reform movement, the Arya Samaj, which had been founded by the Swami Dayananda Saraswati; Blavatsky and Olcott believed that the two organizations shared a common spiritual world-view.

[156] In April, Blavatsky took Olcott, Babula, and their friend Moolji Thackersey to the Karla Caves, announcing that they contained secret passages that led to an underground place where the Masters assembled.

[169] Sinnett was eager to contact the Masters himself, convincing Blavatsky to facilitate this communication, resulting in the production of over 1400 pages allegedly authored by Koot Hoomi and Morya, which came to be known as the Mahatma Letters.

[178] Olcott had decided to establish the Buddhist Education Fund to combat the spread of the Christian faith in Ceylon and encourage pride and interest in Buddhism among the island's Sinhalese population.

The society refused to pay them and expelled them from their premises, at which the couple turned to the Madras-based Christian College Magazine, who published an exposé of Blavatsky's alleged fraudulence using the Coulombs' claims as a basis.

[190] In response, in November 1884 Blavatsky headed to Cairo, where she and Theosophist Charles Webster Leadbeater searched for negative information on Emma Coulomb, discovering stories of her alleged former history of extortion and criminality.

[200] For our own part, we regard [Blavatsky] neither as the mouthpiece of hidden seers, nor as a mere vulgar adventuress; we think that she has achieved a title to permanent remembrance as one of the most accomplished, ingenious, and interesting imposters in history.

[216] In London, Blavatsky founded a magazine, controversially titling it Lucifer; in this Theosophical publication she sought to completely ignore claims regarding paranormal phenomena, and focus instead on a discussion of philosophical ideas.

The biographer Peter Washington described Blavatsky as "a short, stout, forceful woman, with strong arms, several chins, unruly hair, a determined mouth, and large, liquid, slightly bulging eyes".

[245] The religious studies scholar Bruce F. Campbell noted that she had been a "strong-willed, independent child", and that the harsh environment of her childhood might have resulted in her "difficulty in controlling her temper and ... her tendency to swear".

[246] According to Goodrick-Clarke, the Theosophical Society "disseminated an elaborate philosophical edifice involving a cosmogony, the macrocosm of the universe, spiritual hierarchies, and intermediary beings, the latter having correspondences with a hierarchical conception of the microcosm of man.

While she acknowledged that fanatic believers "remained blind to its imperfections", she wrote that such a fact was "no excuse to doubt its reality" and asserted that Spiritualist fanaticism was "itself a proof of the genuineness and possibility of their phenomena".

[301] Goodrick-Clarke noted that Blavatsky's cosmology contained all four of the prime characteristics of Western esotericism that had been identified by the scholar Antoine Faivre: "(a) correspondences between all parts of the universe, the macrocosm and microcosm; (b) living nature as a complex, plural, hierarchical, and animate whole; (c) imagination and mediations in the form of intermediary spirits, symbols, and mandalas; and (d) the experience of transmutation of the soul through purification and ascent.

[310][173] The Traditionalist School writer René Guénon wrote a detailed critique of Theosophy in which he claimed that Blavatsky had acquired all her knowledge naturally from other books rather than supernatural so-called "masters".

[311] After her death, Blavatsky continued to be accused of having fraudulently produced paranormal phenomena by skeptics such as John Nevil Maskelyne,[312] Robert Todd Carroll,[313] and James Randi.

[351] The Theosophical Society had a major influence on Buddhist modernism and Hindu reform movements,[352] while Blavatsky and Olcott took part in Anagarika Dharmapala's revival of Theravada Buddhism in Ceylon.

"[359] Blavatsky responded to those academic specialists in Indian religion who accused her of misrepresenting it by claiming that they understood only the exoteric nature of Hinduism and Buddhism and not the inner esoteric secrets of these faiths, which she traced back to the ancient Vedas.