Three Teachers in Changing Times: Blavatsky, Steiner, and Gurdjieff

Edited by Aaron Michael Ullrey.

The following Research Reflection is part of an ongoing series spotlighting CSWR scholars and their research.

The eclectic late twentieth-century spiritual marketplace popularized esoteric teachings of an earlier age by promoting the teachings of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831-1891), Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925), and George Ivanovich Gurdjieff (c. 1866-1949) to a rapidly expanding consumer public who could easily purchase their books, could read them without joining a group or studying with a teacher, and could take up once secret practices selectively according to individual, personal needs. These three teachers’ intent was not individual advancement, wealth, or wellness but articulating humanity’s destiny in terms of reincarnation, karma, and soul cultivation, thereby challenging the mainstream Christianity of their era. In their lifetimes, their personal charisma inspired esoteric movements that implemented their teachings. But, in the 1980s, the era-defining desires for material gain replaced goals of spiritual evolution among New Age enthusiasts. Blavatsky, Steiner, and Gurdjieff were rediscovered and widely disseminated, but their teachings were divorced from their articulated programs of human transformation. Teachings originally meant to challenge changed to affirm an increasingly materialist mainstream.

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky was a trailblazer, leaving her aristocratic Russian family at age 17, traveling to exotic places, eventually becoming a renowned spiritualist medium. She co-founded the Theosophical Society in New York in 1875. Isis Unveiled (1877) and The Secret Doctrine (1888) melded Hermeticism and Neo-Platonism from the West with Hindu and Buddhist doctrines from the East, creating a religion for modern humanity in line with ever-advancing technology. Blavatsky’s bold arguments flowered from her unorthodox life, and her potent persona bolstered early Theosophy. Her legacy is vast. Theosophy was a wellspring for many religions and esoteric groups and a gateway to alternative spiritual paths for 150 years.

Rudolf Steiner was a dynamo who wrote plays, designed a movement system called Eurythmy, pioneered biodynamic agriculture, made artworks, and exhibited flair as an expressionist architect. His books include Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment (1904) and Cosmic and Human Metamorphosis (1917). Once the head of the German branch of the Theosophical Society, he founded Anthroposophy—the Wisdom of Man—an esoteric system based on Christ as the ideal human, including reincarnation and karmic cycles. His esoteric ideas spread through Waldorf-Steiner schools (usually called Waldorf schools), a global, alternative education program attracting parents—Anthroposophists and non-Anthroposophists—who wanted non-traditional, creative education for their children. Steiner advocated soul development embodied through movement and education.

George Ivanovich Gurdjieff was well-versed in Theosophy, though he was never a Society member; like Blavatsky, he claimed to unite the wisdom of the East and knowledge of the West. Gurdjieff fled Russia with his pupils during the revolution, founding the Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man—first in Tiflis, Georgia, then later in Paris—where he choreographed his esoteric dance system The Movements, composed music with Thomas de Hartmann, and wrote his posthumously published trilogy, All and Everything. Gurdjieff’s embodied approach utilized communal living, esoteric dance, and contemplative exercises that all support followers doing “the Work” to wake from mechanical sleep and develop a “real I.”

Blavatsky, Steiner, and Gurdjieff retain their exotic, romantic glow through the devotion of followers who wrote memoirs immortalizing them, but also because outsiders wrote novels featuring them as characters. In Rosa Praed’s Affinities: A Romance of Today (1885), Blavatsky is Madame Tamvasco, who frees the heroine from a dangerous, vampiric sorcerer. In Andrej Belyj’s Moscow series of novels (1926-1932), Dr. Donner is a malicious portrait of Rudolf Steiner. Gurdjieff features in multiple novels, appearing in J. B. Priestley’s bestselling Angel Pavement (1930) as Mr. Golspie, in Peter Neagoe’s reverential The Saint of Montparnasse: A Novel Based on the Life of Constantin Brancusi (1965) as himself, and in Leonora Carrington’s satirical The Hearing Trumpet (1974) as Dr. Gambit. Readers recognized the identities behind these figures, generating new and deeper interest in their teachings, further expanding their following. These three teachers’ charisma gained a certain textual immortality, inspiring readers who never met them or their followers to self-identify with their teachings. Such individuals sought lifeways that resonated powerfully with their needs.

Blavatsky, Steiner, and Gurdjieff’s teachings were widely spread through their books, but it was through books that their message could be softened, even misinterpreted. In the late twentieth century, especially in the 1980s, the so-called New Age movement—characterized by self-directed spirituality without committing to a single path, joining a group, or altering lifestyles—rediscovered these three teachers. The New Age was a soft, consumer version of esoteric paths for this corporate capitalist “greed is good” decade. This “pick’n’mix” spirituality for maximum personal gain and fulfillment did not demand members radically engage in teachings and practices that would transform their lives. In the twenty-first century, this tendency to favor personal spiritualities has intensified, facilitated by the internet, hyper-individualism, and even more consumerist approaches to lifeways.