Theosophical Society cofounder Colonel Henry Steel Olcott's memoirs cover his years with Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky and the birth of the American occult—part of the new Tarcher Supernatural Library.

There are few more intriguing, or polarizing, figures in modern American spiritual history than Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. The cofounder of the Theosophical Society, Blavatsky remains a figure of fascination more than a century after her death.

In Isis in America—one of the most unique documents of recent American spiritual history—we get a closer look at Blavatsky, through the eyes of Theosophical Society cofounder, writer, lawyer, investigator, and Blavatsky confidant Henry Steel Olcott. Olcott spent years by Blavatsky's side, witnessing acts of aura projection and spontaneously produced objects—and undergoing his own spiritual awakening—as they laid the foundations for a new era in esoteric spirituality.

This special edition features a comprehensive timeline of the life of Henry Steel Olcott by Mitch Horowitz.

The first three titles released in Tarcher's Supernatural Library are Ghost Hunter (by Hans Holzer), Romance of Sorcery (by Sax Rohmer) and Isis in America (by Henry Steel Olcott). “There is just no getting around the Theosophical Society in the history of modern esoteric movements, and this firsthand account of its origins is both entertaining and revealing.”
—The Hermetic Library Blog