Elena Ivanova Shaposhnikova was born on February 12, 1879. Her father Ivan Shaposhnikov was an well-known architect who had designed many buildings in St. Petersburg, including a synagogue. He had been educated at the Academy of Arts in St. Peterburg, the institute that Nicholas Roerich would later attend. The Shaposhnikovs, Elena claimed, were an illustrious family, originally known as the von Tresslers, from Riga, in what is Latvia. Elena’s great-grandfather had supposedly once been the wealthy burgomaster of Riga. During a visit to Riga in the eighteen-century the Russian Czar Peter the Great had presented Elena’s great-grandfather with a hat trimmed with sable and adorned with jewels as a reward for his services to the Russian state. He also gave the von Tresslers a new Russian name, Shaposhnikov, based on the Russian word for hat (shapka). As least this was the story Elena told. The Russian genealogist I.V. Sakharov and other researchers who have examined the Shaposhnikov family history dismiss this account as highly improbable, however. The actual origins of the Shaposhnikov family remain cloudy. One of Elena’s uncles, Evgenii Ivanovich Shaposhnikov (1814-?) did take part in an expedition to Inner Asia sponsored by the Russian Geographical Society. He never returned and was presumed dead. Elena would later claim that he had actually hooked with the Himalayan Brotherhood and retired to one of their ashrams, where he was living under the alias of Mahometi. Elena also averred that this uncle was a reincarnation of Abu’l-Fazl (1551–1602), grand vizier of the Mughul emperor Akbar (1542–1605), and celebrated author of the emperor’s biography, the Akbarnama. These assertions are difficult to proof or refute.
Elena’s mother Ekaterina Vasilievna (1857–1913) was an accredited aristocrat who could trace her lineage back to the princely family of Golenistchev-Kutuzov. One of the Kutuzovs, Elena’s great-uncle, Mikhail Illarionovich Kutuzov, was the commander-in-chief of the Russian army that defeated Napoleon in 1812. One semi-hagiographical account also asserts that Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky (1839–1881), the famous composer of the opera Boris Godunov, the orchestral arrangement Night on Bald Mountain, and many other works, was Elena’s uncle. Elena also claimed that her great-grandmother, Anastasia Ivanovna Elchaninova (1809–1889), was a descendant of Chingis Khan’s grandson Batu, founder of the Golden Horde, which in the thirteen century controlled a huge swath of Eurasia, including much of Russia. This connection, Elena believed, gave her a special affinity with Asia, and especially with Mongolia.
In 1949, when she was seventy years old, Elena wrote a letter to Roerich devotee Sina Lichtmann in which she stated, “I have gathered up all of my prophetic dreams and visions, and the ensuing picture is a grand, truly apocalyptic one.” If we are to believe Elena’s account, her specialness was recognized while she was still on the womb: “The girl’s birth [Elena writing in the third person] was undesirable to the dark forces, and measures were taken by them to prevent her birth. During the pregnancy, her mother suffered from acute fits of nausea and vomiting.”
The “dark forces” apparently influenced Elena’s mother. Elena would later tell two of her devotees, Sina and Esther Lichtmann, that Ekaterina Vasilievna had tried to abort her. According to Esther Lichtmann, Elena confessed to her that, “the body of Elena Ivanovna was badly damaged when her mother was trying to exterminate her in the womb.” Esther added that Elena believed that “her mother committed an irreparable crime against her.” In Leaves of Morya’s Garden, Elena would write:
Mothers, in their wisdom, foresee the occult conditions at the birth of a child. The mother’s spirit knows how the enemy tries to harm the new wayfarer. During the transitory time of gestation it is easier to send the poison. It is easy to stir the mother’s anger and to fill the home with the dust of discontent. Mothers try wisely to direct their eyes toward the images of saints or to be comforted through the beauty of nature.
Apparently Elena believed that the “dark forces” poisoned her own mother with negative thoughts and induced her to attempt an abortion, which resulted in what one historian calls “‘perinatal trauma’” (the perinatal period is from the twentieth week of gestation to one to four weeks after birth). According to one psychical researcher such trauma can result in schizophrenia which manifests itself in “‘episodes of relatively pure ecstatic feelings of communication with God’” and other divine beings. Whether or not Elena was affected in such a way must remain a matter of speculation. In any case, the “dark forces” were overcome, at least for the moment, and Elena was allowed to enter this Vale of Tears. According to Elena, writing in the third person:
The girl’s physical development was normal, or maybe even accelerated, for she learned to walk when she was only ten months old and also began to speak at an early age. She soon demonstrated a considerable grasp of and sensitivity to the subtlest nuances of speech and manifestations of harshness and injustice. When she was three, for no apparent reason, she began to have sudden fits of crying, which would end in frenzied shouts.
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| Elena at age of five or six |
Elena was a precocious child. She taught herself the alphabet by studying toy blocks depicting the letters of the alphabet and by perusing picture books and newspapers, and by the age of six she could read and write in three languages—Russian, French, and German. Surrounding by nannies and governesses, she shunned other children her own age and instead sought refuge in books:
At a very early age she developed an interest in books. Books became her best tutors and friends. Her first and biggest joy was a two-volume Bible that had illustrations by Gustave Doré. These volumes were so big that the girl could not lift them. She could enjoy them only when an adult would hand them to her. But since the books were expensive, adults were reluctant to allow her to use them. For many years, these two volumes were a source of genuine joy. When she grew older, she would secretly carry a fat volume from her father’s study, bending under its weight, and bring it to her room, where she could again contemplate in awe and reverie a beloved Image of Christ and suffer His pains with Him.
She also found in her father’s library two huge, richly illustrated volumes about travel in Inner Asia and the Far East. The volumes were so thick she also used them as booster seats on her chair at the family table. These books left an “imprint in her imagination and upon her consciousness, which had not yet been spoiled by dull and deceitful children’s books.” She also devoured books by Alexandre Dumas, Mark Twain, and Jules Verne.
Then there were the visions. “At a very early age,” Elena tells us, “the girl began having remarkable dreams and visions. When she was only six, she had an unusual experience that was to remain forever fixed in her memory, without the loss of any of its original freshness and intensity of feeling.” While at the family summer estate Elena went out one morning to a small pond to look at the goldfish. Instead she saw on the opposite shore, “a tall male figure dressed in white. A recollection immediately surfaced in her consciousness that it was a Teacher of Light who lives somewhere far away. The girl’s heart began to tremble, her joy turned into exaltation, and her entire being longed to be with that distant, beloved, and Beautiful Being. Elsewhere Elena tells us that around this time “saw a blond man wearing a white Russian shirt. And suddenly she clearly saw a tall figure of a brunette.” Only much later in life would she realize that that the tall figure had been Master Morya, the Mahatma who would become her main teacher.
Along with the visions of a Teacher of Light came a foreboding of imminent doom:
From early childhood, a foreboding that the Earth would face a catastrophe, a destruction, reigned over her [Elena writing in the third person] mind. It might have been cast from biblical illustrations depicting formidable floods, or it might have been that those illustrations awakened her straight-knowledge. But the feeling was so strong that at times she was so completely overcome as to experience strong attacks of anguish.
At one point she had a terrifying dream:
. . . there is a deafening bang of either thunder or an explosion, and the earth begins to tremble. The terrified girl runs into the adjacent room where her parents are, and says, “Do you not see that the Earth is being destroyed and the end of the world has come?”
At the age of nine Elena was enrolled in Mariinsky Women’s Gymnasium. According to her own account, she was extremely popular:
. . . for seven years [at the Gymnasium] she suffered the adoration of other girls. Both classmates and senior students would not leave her alone, kissing her until she began to cry. The teachers had to take measures for her protection, and those who had no chance to approach her waited for her outside the gymnasium entrance door in order to continue their torturous adoration. As the girl grew older, the habit of adoration was not extinguished, but, in fact, spread out over her junior grades as well.
There is no indication that Elena returned these shows of affection.
Meanwhile the visions keep reoccurring, and again the Teacher of Light made an appearance:
When she was about twelve years old, an awareness arose in her of the existence of a Teacher of Light. This awareness remained with the girl for a long time and was especially strong during the period between her eleventh and thirteenth year. In her mind there was a vivid Image of a Teacher Who possessed unlimited knowledge. The girl clearly visualized herself as the Teacher’s student, seeing herself living in His house and studying under His guidance. She definitely knew that the Teacher was engaged in speeding up some physiological process in her organism, and that this development was taking place under His direct supervision. This awareness would not leave the girl for long periods of time.
We can see here a foreshadowing of the Masters, or Mahatmas, who would later come to dominate her life and who instructed her and her family to make a khora through Inner Asia.
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Elena as a young girl
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Elena’s recollections from her early youth give the impression that she was a strange little girl subsumed in an almost continuous deluge of oracular visions and prophetic dreams—we have only touched the surface here—but as she entered her teens she blossomed into an attractive young woman, one of the “gilded youth” of the Russian aristocracy. One contemporary remembers, “‘She was tall, slim, well-formed, elegant and womanly, full of grace and some inner charm which involuntarily attracted everyone’s gaze . . . She had a very melodious and gentle voice and treated people most kindly and she addressed her close relatives by their pet names.’” Also, “‘she was fond of smart clothes and was always dressed according to the latest fashion, wearing ear-rings, necklaces and other objects of adornment.’” From an early age she began frequenting balls and dances, once attending attended thirty-two balls in a period of two months, often not arriving home until six or seven in the morning. She obviously cut quite a figure, and from the available photos of her it was clear she was a beauty, maybe even a hottie.
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| Elena as a young hottie |
Then another change occurred. “When she was in her seventeenth year . . . she became acutely aware of the banality and emptiness of the surrounding life,” Elena tells us.” Hoping to broaden her horizons, Elena wanted to enroll in Higher Women’s Courses at a St. Petersburg college but her father objected, afraid that she would get infected with the bacterium of revolutionary thought which was then plaguing institutes of higher learning in Russia. Instead she stayed at home, practicing the piano and reading her way through the family library, which included among much else books from IndIa, including the Bhagavad Gita, the Mahabharata, and the Three Vedas—Rig, Yajur, and Sama.
It was at this juncture, in 1899, that she was invited to the house party at the home of Prince Putyatin, who was married to the sister of Elena’s mother. There she had her fateful meeting with Nicholas Roerich. Years later Elena would tell her disciple Sina Lichtmann about this first encounter:
He [Nicholas] arrived in the evening. “The first thing I saw,” says E.I. [Elena], “was a dusty leg, or rather a dusty boot, that stepped through the window right onto the balcony.” E.I. approached the window, and N.K. [Nicholas] asked, “Is this the estate of the Grand Duke Putyatin?” E.I. went to her aunt’s room and told her, “Auntie, there is a courier, or maybe a farmer, here to see you.” Her aunt directed her to the footman who [was told to] take him to see her husband. In the evening at tea it came out that it was some archaeologist; no one had seen him yet. Her aunt says, “An archaeologist? Must be some geezer—let him sleep in the Duke’s office.” And the next day at breakfast, everyone saw the guest and he turned out to be young and pretty, so they decided to move him to the guest bedroom. He stayed there for three days. E.I. said that he won them over by how subtly and diplomatically he discussed the antiquity of the name Roerich and his family, for the entire Putyatin family was interested in genealogy.
Presumably Nicholas told them the story about the Roerichs being descended from Rurik, the ninth-century Scandinavian chieftain who had founded the Rurik Dynasty, and left out the fact that his own father had been born the illegitimate son of Eduard von der Ropp, scion of the von der Ropp family, and a housemaid. He was not necessarily lying. Biographers would later aver that he did not know about his father’s true origins and by then he may have convinced himself that he was in fact a descendant of the legendary Rurik. In any case, their courtship began. Nicholas was twenty-five years old at the time; Elena was twenty.
