Helena Blavatsky was an early traveler on spiritual roads that would be further explored in the twentieth century by the likes of Carl Jung, Joseph Campbell, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, and the current Dalai Lama - to name but a handful of modern explorers of the realms where human consciousness, physical phenomena, and the laws of nature converge. A native of Ukraine, Blavatsky is best remembered as a principal developer of "theosophy" - so named for the Greek words theos (divinity) and sophia (wisdom). Nonsectarian and based on tenets of universal community, the essential unity of all knowledge, and the interdependence of all phenomena, theosophy is also concerned with extrasensory and other untapped human powers. For this reason it tended to be seen as a variety of nineteenth-century "quack" spiritualism. Yet Blavatsky, in books such as Isis Unveiled (1877), proved far-seeing in her holistic treatment of topics such as gnosticism, Eastern cosmology, and Platonic philosophy. The Theosophical Society she helped found in 1875 continues to thrive today.
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