I know the Nazi’s were big fans of her writings, but considering that the Nazi’s were nutbags, I have to wonder if anyone else thinks that she did valid work. Is she simply a flake, whose remembered solely because some of the evilest folks to walk the face of the earth seized upon her writings as justifications for their own brutality? Or is she a serious writer/thinker who had the misfortune of having the bad guys twisting her work into the force behind darkest hours of human history?
Generally, she’s simply recognized as a flake. I don’t know anyone who pays a lot of attention to the fact that some Nazis might have borrowed some of her stuff. She is mostly considered a rather harmless kook. Martin Gardner’s Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science mentions her and the Theosophists a few times in passing, but does not dwell on her. L. Sprague de Camp has a good laugh at her in his Ancinet Engineers and his book on Atlantis (the title of which I forget), but I have never seen anyone blame her for the fact that the Nazis were stupid enough to believe some Theosophist tripe.
As it happens, my grandfather wrote a book on Theosophy, and published many papers on Blavatsky. He and I talked frequently. I’d never heard of the Nazis being fond of her work. In general, they avoided anything that implied morality and personal responsibility.
As to whether she was a flake – sigh – well, it’s very complicated. She spurred many (extremely) intelligent people to contemplate their spiritual side.
What would you like to know? I’m not an expert, but I did go to “Theosophy School” for some years as a child.
L. Sprague de Camp’s book is Lost Continents, and it’s well worth reading. I have some other good books about Blavatsky and the Theosophists at home, but I can’t recall the titles. There is evidence that Blavatsky herself didn’t believe a lot of what she said, and it sounds pretty flaky to me.
One thing that’s annoying is that the Theosophists really messed up Western perceptions of Buddhism. Although some of them did some nice work (like Col. Olcott’s “Buddhist Catechism”), they also managed to promulgate some off-the-wall notions that aren’t really sound Buddhism at all. I was appalled to find that some of these had crept into the otherwise respectable book Buddhism by Christmas Humphreys, part of the Pelican series on Religion.
The Theosophists are still around, although their numbers are decreased. I once had the horrible experience of speaking at length about how absurd the Theosophical beliefs were to someone who, I later learned, had been raised in a Theosophical household. It was hard to look them in the eye later. What were the odds I’d run into one?
AFAIK, the Nazis didn’t directly subscribe to her specific ideas, but the whole late 19th Century general occultist type schools of thought and the ideas about secret/lost knowledge from ancient tribes (races) of masters of some sort had a powerful influence on Nazi theology/philosophy as practiced by some of the high leaders such as Himmler.
IIRC Blavatsky believed or stated she’d got some or all of her special knowledge from “masters” she’d met during her alleged travels in Tibet; Himmler later sent some expeditons there to seek out these masters and their knowledge. Himmler also had a whole pseudo-anthropoligical department dedicated to rediscovering the heritage of these lost masters, who were supposed to be the founders of the Aryan master race.