Notable figures

Notable figures

• Helena Petrovna Blavatsky 1831–1891
  Co-founder; principal doctrinal author

  Russian-born occultist and writer whose Isis Unveiled (1877) and The Secret Doctrine (1888) established the doctrinal core of the Society. Her claim to receive direct instruction from a hidden brotherhood of Mahatmas remains the most contested element of her work.

• Henry Steel Olcott 1832–1907
  Co-founder; first President

  American attorney, journalist, and Civil War colonel who served as the Society’s first President from 1875 until his death. Olcott played a major role in the Buddhist revival in Ceylon (modern Sri Lanka) and is one of the few Westerners formally honoured there as a hero of that revival.

• Annie Besant 1847–1933
  President 1907–1933

  English socialist, freethinker, and women’s rights campaigner who joined the Society after reviewing The Secret Doctrine in 1889 and led it from 1907 until her death. She was deeply involved in Indian independence politics and in the Order of the Star in the East built around the young Krishnamurti.