Kurt Leland, an award-winning poet and composer and author of five nonfiction books, has been called one of the world's foremost experts on out-of-body experiences by What Is Enlightenment magazine. He maintains an intuitive counseling practice called 'Spiritual Orienteering' in the Boston area. Orienteering is the art of finding our way through a physical landscape without a map, using only a compass. Spiritual Orienteering expands that definition to include finding our way through the landscapes of our emotional, mental, and spiritual lives.
Helena Petrovna Blavatsky was born on August 12, 1831, at Dnepropetrovsk (Ekaterinoslav), Ukraine, daughter of Colonel Peter Alexeyevich von Hahn and novelist Helena Andreyevna (née de Fadeyev). In 1849 she married N. V. Blavatsky, and shortly thereafter began more than 20 years of extensive travel, which brought her into contact with mystic traditions the world over. She was the principal founder of the Theosophical Society in New York City in 1875, and devoted her extraordinary literary talents to its humanitarian and educational purposes until her death in London, England, on May 8, 1891. Along with writing her several books, H. P. Blavatsky kept up a voluminous correspondence and also contributed a steady stream of essays and articles to periodicals in English, French, and Russian.