Constance Wachtmeister
Encyclopedia
Florence
Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area....
, Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
. Her father was French, her mother English.
In 1863 she married her cousin, the Count Wachtmeister, with whom she had a son, count Axel Raoul. After three years of marriage she moved to Stockholm
Stockholm
Stockholm is the capital and the largest city of Sweden and constitutes the most populated urban area in Scandinavia. Stockholm is the most populous city in Sweden, with a population of 851,155 in the municipality , 1.37 million in the urban area , and around 2.1 million in the metropolitan area...
where, in 1868, the count was appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs. After the death of her husband in 1871, she still lived in Sweden for several years. In 1879 the countess began investigating Spiritism
Spiritism
Spiritism is a loose corpus of religious faiths having in common the general belief in the survival of a spirit after death. In a stricter sense, it is the religion, beliefs and practices of the people affiliated to the International Spiritist Union, based on the works of Allan Kardec and others...
and in 1881 joined the Theosophical Society
Theosophical Society
The Theosophical Society is an organization formed in 1875 to advance the spiritual principles and search for Truth known as Theosophy. The original organization, after splits and realignments has several successors...
.
She was an important partner for Helena Blavatsky and essential support for the work of The Secret Doctrine
The Secret Doctrine
The Secret Doctrine, the Synthesis of Science, Religion and Philosophy, a book originally published as two volumes in 1888, is Helena P. Blavatsky's magnum opus. The first volume is named Cosmogenesis, the second Anthropogenesis...
. She has not left many written texts, but her work "Reminiscences of H. P. Blavatsky and the Secret Doctrine" is a source for a study on the personality of Madame Blavatsky. Subsequently organized the Theosophical Publishing Co. alongside Bertram Keightley, in order to publish the works of H.P.B. After working tirelessly to spread the Theosophical message, the countess died in 1910.