Helena Blavatsky's Bread Knife

Origin
Helena Blavatsky (1831-1891) was a Russian spiritualist who was one of the founding members of the Theosophical Society in 1875, and was the leading theoretician of the organization. Blavatsky was introduced to many spiritual adepts over the course of her life, through which she claimed she developed her own psychic powers and received information from "The Masters of the Ancient Wisdom."

In 1877, Blavatsky published Isis Unveiled, in which she detailed Theosophy as a combination of science, religion, and philosophy. Theosophy spread quickly in India, where she moved to in 1880, but the thinking suffered after she was accused of being a fake. Nevertheless, her influence helped spread many Hindu and Buddhist philosophies into the European consciousness.

Effects
Imbued with Blavatsky's dedication to spiritualism and mental growth, holding the knife reestablishes memories of former lives. If the artifact is not neutralized, memories will jumble together as the user and their past lives "compete" for dominance. This can cause insanity or, in instances of particularly strong memories, permanent shifts in personality.

Collection: The Eady Case
Collected by Warehouse 12, following reports of a young girl named Dorothy Eady and her sudden personality shift following trauma at the age of three that culminated in her running around the Egyptian exhibit of the British Museum kissing the feet of statues years later. Agents were able to track down a former gardener for the Eady's, whose cousin had worked in the Blavatsky's British home. A kindly older gentleman who had grown fond of the young Dorothy, he had used the knife to bring her back to life after a fall down the stairs had nearly killed her in 1907. In the process, the gardener dredged up the memories of an ancient Egyptian priestess, Bentreshyt, in Dorothy's mind.

By the time agents located and neutralized the knife, however, Dorothy Eady's impressionable young mind had so completely adopted Bentreshyt's memories and personality that she was permanently altered for the rest of her life, as she become one of the most renown and respected Egyptologists in the 20th century.