She was a massive mountain of a woman, with crinkly brown hair, wide eyes and billowing chins. She lumbered among tier disciples in a dirty wrapper, fumbling endlessly in the tobacco pouch from which she rolled her cigarets. Again & again she was caught red-handed in chicaneries that would have made a carnival rifter blush.
But Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, founder of the occult, semi-religious Theosophical Society, had something that brought savants and social leaders to her feet and keeps her memory hallowed by the 50,000-odd Theosophists scattered around the world. What she had and...