This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.
Blavatsky's central claim, direct paranormal contact with the hidden Mahatmas whose wisdom she said she was transmitting, was investigated directly by the Society for Psychical Research, a British organization founded specifically to examine claims of exactly this kind under something closer to scientific scrutiny than a religious movement's own internal testimony would provide.
In 1885 that investigation concluded against her: the Society for Psychical Research rejected her claimed contact with the Masters as fraudulent, a formal, published finding rather than an informal rumor or a rival's unsubstantiated accusation. Theosophists have long disputed that finding, a live disagreement the movement's own literature continues to carry rather than one settled decisively in either direction by the passage of time since.
Whether that 1885 verdict undermines the wisdom tradition Blavatsky presented is a question theosophical writers and outside historians still answer differently: for critics the finding discredits her claimed source of authority entirely, while for Theosophists it is either a mistaken investigation or, at most, a judgment on one specific claim rather than on the substance of the teaching she transmitted through it.