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Marina Alexandrova, Associate Professor of Instruction, The University of Texas at Austin

White Lotus Day celebrates the 'founding mother of occult in America,' Helena Petrovna Blavatsky

America Buddhism India Russia
Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, photographed in New York circa 1874. Universal Images Group via Getty Images

Every May 8, thousands of people celebrate White Lotus Day, commemorating a remarkable and controversial Russian American woman: spiritual leader Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, who died in 1891.

HPB, as followers affectionately call her, is remembered as a co-founder of the Theosophical Society. Aiming to create a universal brotherhood of humanity, theosophy claimed that its tenets came from spiritual masters in the Himalayas.

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