Book Review: Madame Blavatsky
Lachman, Gary. Madame Blavatsky: The Mother of Modern Spirituality. Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin: NY, 2012.
If the subject weren’t so fascinating — Madame Blavatsky, that is — I would have given up because I really felt annoyed with the author. He sprinkles his fatphobia throughout the book so frequently that I lost count how many times — before I reached page 75.
Even though the book was published in 2012, not prior to the 1990s, he uses the “default male” pronouns only, never alternating between “he” and “she.” I also see why readers on StoryGraph and/or Goodreads say he jumps around chronologically.
I’ve decided I don’t want to read anything else by this author.
On that note, the book has plenty of fascinating information and paints a vivid picture of Madame Blavatsky, who was as eccentric and bohemian as I expected. I had no idea she was ace (asexual) and pretty much Buddhist. I read a few pages about her in Toil and Trouble: A Women’s History of the Occult by Lisa Kroger and Melanie R. Anderson, so it’s exciting to read an entire book about her. The more I read, the more I want to know. She was only briefly involved in Spiritualism and founded Theosophy.
The final chapter is less about Blavatsky — it’s about Theosophy after she died, and it’s about the mysterious “Masters” and whether they…