Blanchfleur
Granddaughter of the Duke of Ferrara and heroine of the romance Florice and Blanchefleur, which is probably of Spanish origin. She and Florice, son of the King of Murcia, loved each other from infancy, and she gave him a magical ring. He was banished for his love and Blanchfleur was eventually shipped to Alexandria to be sold as a slave. Florice, however, found her there, partly by aid of the mystic ring, and they were happily united.
Blavatsky, Helena Petrovna: was born at Ekaterinoslav Russia, on the 31st of July, 1831. She was the daughter of Colonel Peter Hahn, a member of a Mecklenburg family settled in Russia. She married, at the age of seventeen Nicephore Blavatsky, a Russian official in Caucasia, a man very much older than herself. Her married life was of short duration as she separated from her husband in a few months. The next year or so she occupied chiefly in travelling, Texas Mexico, Canada and India, were each in turn the scene of her wanderings, and she twice attempted to enter Tibet. on one occasion she managed to cross its frontier in disguise but lost her way, and after various adventures was found by a body of horsemen and escorted homewards. The period between 1848 and 1858, she described as the " veiled" time of her life, refusing to divulge anything that happened to her in these ten years, save stray allusions to a seven years' stay in Little and Great Tibet, or in a Himalayan Retreat." In 1858 she returned to Russia, where she soon achieved distinction as a spiritualistic medium. Later on she went to the United States where she remained for six years, and became a naturalised citizen. She became prominent in spiritualistic circles in America about 1870. It was there that she founded her school of Theosophy. The idea occurred to her of combining her spiritualistic "control" with Buddhistic legends about Tibetan sages, and she professed to have direct "astral" communication with two Tibetan mahatmas. 66
With the aid of Col. Henry Olcott, she founded in New York, in 1875, the Theosophical Society with a threefold aim: (1) to form a universal brotherhood of man; (2) to study and make known the ancient religions, philosophies and sciences; (3) to investigate the laws of nature and develop the divine powers latent in man. In order to gain converts to Theosophy she was obliged to appear to perform miracles. This she did with a large measure of success, but her "methods" were on several occasions detected as fraudulent. Nevertheless her commanding personality secured for her a large following, and when she died, in 1891, she was at the head of a large body of believers in her teaching, numbering about 100,000 persons. (See Theosophy.) Blindfolding a Corpse: The Afritans of the Shari River in Central America were wont to blindfold a corpse before burying it, to prevent it from returning to haunt the survivors.