Proclaimed by her disciples as the greatest occult initiate in the history of Western civilization. Blavatsky was born at Ekaterinoslav, Russia, 1831. She had every advantage that wealth, culture, and high social position can bestow. Her father was descended from the Counts van Halm of Mecklenburg, and her mother was the daughter of Privy Councillor Audrey Fadeyeff and Princess Helena Dolgorouky. Her ancestry show connection to the Grand Duke Rurik, the first actual ruler of Russia. Her mother was an accomplished writer.

From her childhood H.P.B. displayed unusual qualities. When very young her eager sympathy and compassion were deeply aroused by the heartrending scene of misery and despair, she saw among the exiles who were driven in weary files past her father’s magnificent estate, on their terrible journey to Siberia. Her love for nature was great; everything, the rocks, the trees, the birds, spoke to her. She spent five years wither grandparents at Saratoff where her grandfather was Civil Governor, and where she had the advantage of using his enormous library, in which she read extensively if not very systematically. 1845 her father took her abroad, and in France, Germany, Italy, and England she was introduced to the greater world of art and culture. During this period, she took lessons from the famous German composer and pianist, Ignaz Moscheles. Appeared in a concert in London, where she took part in a trio for three pianos, with the great pianists, Clara Schumann, and Arabella Goddard. In 18973, when she touched the piano, she made a profound impression by the spiritual power and beauty of her playing. Col. Olcott often heard her in New York. See Old Diaries Leaves Volume I, 458-9. She had control over the elementals, the goblins with which Russian folklore is well supplied, and her career, gives reason she certainly true in her case. Her clairvoyant, clairaudient, and telepathic powers were remarkably developed at the age of four. Although her psychic faculties had run wild, so to speak, she had to take a course of training in which they became disciplined under the guardianship of her Master, an Indian Rajput, the Mahatma Morya, or as he is generally called, the Master M. She did not know him as a living man, but when she met him afterwards in bodily form, He was no stranger. She told her family that this guardian, whom of course they could not see. She insisted that Wise Men, great Sages, existed on earth, who knew the greatest secrets of Nature but who only revealed themselves to those who deserved help.

In 1848 at seventeen, accepted an offer of marriage from the man whose name she afterward bore. General Nicephore Blavatsky, Councillor of State, Vice-Governor of Erivan. She left husband without explaining. Always under the eye of her unseen protector, her Master.

She never kept a diary, so it is impossible to be sure about the exact period of some of her journeys. In 1851 she met her Master Morya for the first time in His physical body, though she had frequently seen him clairvoyantly. Around twenty she begins her private Scrapbook. The Master held in London that year, an outline of a plan for H.P.B.’s future and showed her how to prepare for the Work for which she had been chosen. She was to prepare for a Society, which should be a nucleus of a Universal Brotherhood. Her travels were under the occult supervision of her master for the rest of her life.

In 1875 she found the Theosophical Society in New York November 17, by 1884 she meets C.W.L, and by 1888, she meets Annie Besant. Annie Besant’s first visit to American Section was at the death of H.P.B. in 1891.