Talk:Christian theosophy/18-January-2015-draft-public-domain-content

From Columbian cyclopedia (1897)

Theosophy, n. (Ancient Greek: theosophia, divine wisdom – from theos, a god; sophia, wisdom; sophos, wise): literally, divine wisdom; knowledge of divine things; a philosophy which professes a direct, as distinguished from a revealed, knowledge of God, supposed to be attained by extraordinary illumination; supposed direct interaction with God and spirits.

Theosophy, (Ancient Greek: wisdom concerning God): knowledge of God by direct illumination, and without logical system and support as in theology. It differs from philosophy in that it starts from a transcendental apprehension of deity to explain the universe, and does not generalize from phenomena to the being and attributes of God; and it differs from mysticism in that it does not content itself with the relations of the soul to God, but speculates on the constitution and course of nature. It tends toward a pseudophilosophy (rarely a formal philosophy) of man and the universe; also toward a pretentious show of ontology, including that of the Divine nature, which, however, may be reduced to nothing that answers any idea of God, but rather to pantheism. The use of the word is very loose; it has been employed to designate a wide variety of claims, opinions, and practices.

From Dictionary of philosophy and psychology (1920)

Theosophy (Ancient Greek: θεοσοφία, divine wisdom)

The intensional definition of theosophy contains two meanings.

1. A stage into which philosophic reflection passes when its primary data are God and an organ through which he is revealed or mystically intuited.
2. A form of Buddhistic thinking which from the postulate of a divine principle deduces the fundamental law of things, a vibratory movement of evolution and involution, the application of which in the sphere of psychic life leads to the process of perpetual reincarnation.

In the first or general sense most oriental thinking is theosophic. Modern thought first became distinctively so in Neoplatonism, but the tendency has survived down to the present, and has taken on various embodiments.

The Buddhistic form is a direct importation from the East, and had Blavatsky for its great apostle. It has many votaries, and seems to be a growing cult.

From A religious encyclopaedia or dictionary of biblical, historical, doctrinal, and practical theology (1889)

Theosophy is distinguished from mysticism, speculative theology, and other forms of philosophy and theology, to which it bears a certain resemblance, by its claims of direct divine inspiration, immediate divine revelation, and its want, more or less conspicuous, of dialectical exposition. It is found among all nations — Hindus, Persians, Arabs, Greeks (the later Neoplatonism), and Jews (Cabala) — and presents itself variously under the form of magic (Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, Paracelsus),or vision (Emanuel Swedenborg, Louis Claude de Saint-Martin), or rapt contemplation (Jakob Böhme, Konrad Öttinger).

From The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia (1914)

Theosophy is knowledge of things divine; a philosophy based upon a claim of special insight into the divine nature, or a special divine revelation. It differs from most philosophical systems in that they start from phenomena and deduce from those certain conclusions concerning God, whereas theosophy starts with an assumed knowledge of God, directly obtained, through spiritual communication, and proceeds from those to a study and explanation of phenomena.

From New International Encyclopedia (1916)

Theosophy (Ancient Greek: θεοσοφία theosophia, "wisdom in divine things", "knowledge concerning God", from θεός, theos, god + σοφός, sophos, wise). Theosophy is a name used for any system of philosophy which starts from a supposed knowledge of God, and proceeds to state laws of the universe on the basis of revelation or of direct knowledge. Usually the claim of a supernatural revelation is made, though this is not essential, and usually, also, theosophy is mystical, holding that systems of truth are revealed through states of mystic feeling. The term has been applied to cults of varying tenets and diverse uses of the concepts of divinity at different periods. Ancient systems of belief falling under this head may be divided roughly into Oriental and Occidental, the former being the older. The earliest traces of theosophic thought are found in the Sanskrit Upanishads, which represent mystic meditation on the nature of the All-Soul or Atman. It is in a sense true that all subsequent Hindu philosophy is theosophic. From classical India this mystical speculation spread to Persia and from the Persians it was absorbed by the Arabs after the Muslim conquest of Persia. In a somewhat similar sense the I Ching and the Tao Te Ching of classical Chinese literature may be regarded as theosophic.

Among the Jews a theosophy attained wide currency in Europe between the 12th and 16th centuries. The teachings of Kabbalah, as represented in the 2nd century by Simeon bar Yochai and in the 14th century by Moses de León, however, are so widely different from the theosophy of India as to preclude any idea of Hindu influence. On the other hand, the doctrines of Kabbalah were profoundly modified by what may be regarded as the typical Occidental theosophy. Neoplatonism was represented in the 3rd century by Ammonius Saccas, Plotinus, Porphyry, and in the 4th century by Proclus; and Gnosticism was represented in the early 2nd century by Valentinus and Basilides. During the European late middle ages, theosophy was taught by Johannes Tauler, Eckhart von Hochheim, Paracelsus, Jan Baptist van Helmont, Robert Fludd, Thomas Vaughan, Heinrich Khunrath, Jakob Böhme, Johann Georg Gichtel, and later by Louis Claude de Saint-Martin and Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling. Throughout history men appeared, claiming to teach the immortality of the soul, and the existence of a vast cosmos, moved by occult forces, of which cosmos this earth is but an infinitesimal part. They claimed to show the instability of material existence, the reality of an occult world reaching everywhere into ours.

In modern times the name "theosophy" has been given to a form of belief promulgated by a Russian, Helena Blavatsky, who gave out doctrines concerning cosmogony and anthropology, which, she said, were obtained from certain Masters who had reached a higher plane of existence than ordinary mortals. The system of thought and the terms used are largely drawn from Hinduism and Buddhism. Adept, Master, Mahatma (q.v.) represent different degrees of individual spiritual development in the theosophical system, the Mahatma being the highest. "The authoritative work on modern theosophy" is Blavatsky's The Secret Doctrine, which states "the three fundamental propositions" as follows:

1. An omnipresent, eternal, boundless, and immutable principle on which all speculation is impossible, since it transcends the power of human conception and could only be dwarfed by any human expression or similitude.
2. The eternity of the universe in toto as a boundless plane, periodically the playground of numberless universes incessantly manifesting and disappearing — the law of periodicity.
3. The fundamental identity of all souls with the universal Over-Soul, the latter being itself an aspect of the unknown Root; and the obligatory pilgrimage of every soul — a part of the Over-Soul — through the cycle of incarnation in accordance with cyclic and karmic law, during the whole term. The esoteric philosophy admits no privileges or special gifts in man save those won by his own Ego through personal effort and merit throughout a long series of reincarnations.

According to theosophic teaching, God is said to be infinite and absolute. Therefore, no attempt is made to qualify or describe the Great Unknown, which is the source of both matter and spirit. These are the two aspects of one root nature. According to immutable law, the sprit involves into matter and matter evolves the spirit. Thus there is a circulation downward and upward, from spirit into matter and from matter to spirit. Evolution is accepted, but only as half a law, whose other half is involution.

All worlds pass through seven great periods of manifestations called rounds. Spiritual at first, they become denser and darker in the downward cycle, the fourth of which is the densest and our present material world. Thence begins its upward movement towards spirituality. The advantage gained is the experience and ultimately the emancipation of the soul. In each of these rounds, periods of incalculable duration, there are seven great root races. Each root race has seven subdivisions or subraces corresponding with the rounds, which become more material from the first to the fourth. We are at present in the fifth subrace of the fifth root race, and on the upward cycle of the fourth round. Evolution is constant progress, an unfolding of consciousness from the most primitive forms of life to the highest intelligence.

All souls are the same in essence, but they differ in degrees of development; each bears a certain relation to the others and to the whole. The more advanced souls are the natural guardians of the less developed. Man is composed of seven principles, which are divided into a lower or mortal, and a higher or immortal nature. The lower nature, constituting his personality, is fourfold. One-fourth, the physical body, is visible, three-fourths invisible. These three are the astral or design body (linga sarira), on which are molded the physical atoms, then the life principle, and the principle of desire. The physical body (sthula sarira) is material without form. It is held in form by the astral body, and moved to action by the fire of desire (kama). This fourfold nature is common to all animal beings, is mortal and subject to dissolution at death. The higher nature of man is threefold, the mind (manas), soul (buddhi), and spirit (atman). The mind distinguishes man from the animal. Entering the animal body, the mind thinks of itself as separate from others. The soul is universal, overcoming separateness and showing relationship of soul with soul. The spirit is the one indivisible which passes through all things and unites them with each other. Death is the separation of the principles. The physical body returns to the elements which gave it. The astral body disintegrates more slowly. The life (prana, literally "breath") passes at once into the universal life (jiva). Desire forms itself into a body (kamarupa) which gradually becomes exhausted, leaving seeds (skandhas) from which the returning soul forms a later and new personality.

The trinity of mind, soul, and spirit, when freed from the trammels of a mortal garment, passes through certain states of consciousness until it reaches the condition called heaven (devachan), where it enjoys a period of bliss and rest proportionate to its good thoughts and ideals while on earth. When these exalted ideals have been exhausted, its period of rest is at an end and it descends gradually to earth. The trinity, after enjoying its rest, and realizing those ideals which could not be attained on earth, is attracted again to earth by the unfulfilled longings and desires which remain behind as seeds. These it animates. It sinks into the emotional world, is attracted to a particular family, who can furnish a body and surroundings suited to its new experience, and is reborn into this world. The higher nature must become consciously immortal, i.e., it must acquire a continuity of consciousness, thus making it consciously immortal while in the physical body. One earth life is not sufficient. Hence rebirth into the school of life is the lot of the soul until all the lessons have been learned. This doctrine is closely associated with that of karma, which is the law of balance, of action and reaction, of effect inevitably connected with the preceding cause. It returns to man measure for measure his good or evil thoughts and deeds. It is inseparable from reincarnation. When at last karma is exhausted, and no desire, either good or evil, is left to produce a new karma, then reincarnation will cease.

The phenomenon of life is a question of planes or states of consciousness. Human or "I am I" consciousness (manas) is the self-identifying of the consciousness, as being distinct and separate from others by the intelligent principle of mind. At this point a man may rise to the divine or sink below the consciousness of the brute — at will.

Universal or "I am thou and thou art I" consciousness (buddhi) is the relating of the elements and of all souls with each other, thus overcoming the sense of separateness of the mind by the principle of the divine soul. Divine consciousness (Atman) sees no separateness, but unites all as one.

Hell (avīci) is a low and depraved condition on this earth. A life of intense selfishness and wickedness with no spiritual thoughts or aspirations causes the immortal soul to abandon the body before death. In such a case, it is not, however, the soul, but the body with the lower principles which is lost. After the death of such a body the desires with a reflection of the mind may be reincarnated in human form almost immediately. Such a creature is entirely material and animal, intensely selfish in its propensities, and doomed to final destruction, unless it makes a strong appeal to its divine soul, in which event the soul might again connect with it and try to help it on its upward path.

In man divine powers are latent, for he is essentially a soul, a divine being. By purification and training of the body, the latent and divine powers will develop and become active. In every period of evolution a number of souls reach perfection. They are men whom the bonds of personality no longer bind to the attractions of the senses. They have consciously related themselves to the source of their being and have become one with the divine. They watch over humanity and are its guardians. Although they have earned their freedom from rebirth, they prefer to remain in contact with men on earth, to teach and to guide them. At certain periods some appear among men as great lawgivers, rulers, teachers; and their agents found religious systems and schools of philosophy.

From Encyclopedia Britannica (1911)

Theosophy (from Ancient Greek: θεός, god, and σοφία, wisdom), a term used to denote those forms of philosophic and religious thought which claim a special insight into the Divine nature and its constitutive moments or processes. Sometimes this insight is claimed as the result of the operation of some higher faculty or some supernatural revelation to the individual; in other instances the theosophical theory is not based upon any special illumination, but is simply put forward as the deepest speculative wisdom of its author. But in any case it is characteristic of theosophy that it starts with an explication of the Divine essence, and endeavors to deduce the phenomenal universe from the play of forces within the Divine nature itself.

Theosophy is differentiated at once from all philosophic systems which attempt to rise from an analysis of phenomena to a knowledge, more or less adequate, of the existence and nature of God. in all such systems, God is the terminus ad quem, a direct knowledge of whom is not claimed, but who is, as it were, the hypothesis adopted, with varying degrees of certainty in different thinkers, for the explanation of the facts before them. The theosophist, on the other hand, is most at his case when moving within the circle of the Divine essence, into which he seems to claim absolute insight. This, however, would be insufficient to distinguish theosophy from those systems of philosophy which are sometimes called "speculative" and "absolute," and which also in many cases proceed deductively from the idea of God.

In a wide sense, the philosophy of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel or the philosophy of Baruch Spinoza may be cited as examples of what is meant. Albert Schwegler wrote that Böhme's theosophy is a complement to Spinoza's philosophy. Böhme described the procession of the finite from the eternal one, and the inner necessity of this procession; Spinoza, on the other hand, described the reflux of all finitude into the eternal one. Both Hegel and Spinoza claim to exhibit the universe as the evolution of the Divine nature. They must believe, therefore, that they have grasped the inmost principles of that nature: so much is involved, indeed, in the construction of an absolute system. But it is to be noted that, though there is much talk of God in such systems, the known universe – the world that now is – is nowhere transcended; God is really no more than the principle of unity immanent in the whole. Hence, while the accusation of pantheism is frequently brought against these thinkers, the term theosophical is never used in their regard. A theosophical system may also be pantheistic, in tendency if not in intention; but the transcendent character of its Godhead definitely distinguishes it from the speculative philosophies which might otherwise seem to fall under the same definition. God is regarded as the transcendent source of being and purity, from which the individual in his natural state is alienated and afar off. An historical survey shows, indeed, that theosophy generally arises in connexion with religious needs, and is the expression of religious convictions or aspirations. Accepting the testimony of religion that the present world lies in wickedness and imperfection, theosophy faces the problem of speculatively accounting for this state of things from the nature of the Godhead itself. It is thus in some sort a mystical philosophy of the existence of evil; or at least it assumes this form in some of its most typical representatives.

The term mysticism has a practical rather than a speculative reference; but it is currently applied to include the systems of thought on which practical mysticism was based. Thus, to take only one prominent example, the profound speculations of Meister Eckhart are always treated under the head of mysticism, but they might with equal right appear under the rubric theosophy. In other words, while an emotional and practical mysticism may exist without attempting philosophically to explain itself, speculative mysticism is almost another name for theosophy. There is still a certain difference observable, however, in so far as the speculative mystic remains primarily concerned with the theory of the soul's relation to God. while the theosophist gives his thoughts a wider scope, and frequently devotes himself to the elaboration of a fantastic philosophy of nature.

In the above acceptation of the term, the Neoplatonic emanationism from the supra-essential One, the emanation doctrine of some of the Gnostics, for example, the aeons of Valentinianism, and the elaborate esoteric system of the Kabbalah, to which the two former in all probability largely contributed, are generally included under the head of theosophy. In the two latter instances there may be noted the allegorical interpretation of traditional doctrines and sacred writings which is a common characteristic of theosophical writers. Still more typical examples of theosophy are furnished by the mystical system of Eckhart and the doctrine of Jacob Böhme, the father of theosophic mysticism. Eckhart's doctrine asserts behind God a predicateless Godhead, which, though unknowable not only to man but also to itself, is, as it were, the essence or potentiality of all things. From it proceed, and in it, as their nature, exist, the three persons of the Trinity, conceived as stadia of an eternal self-revealing process. The eternal generation of the Son is equivalent to the eternal creation of the world. But the sensuous and phenomenal, as such, so far as they seem to imply independence of God, are mere privation and nothingness; things exist only through the presence of God in them. and the goal of creation, like its outset, is the repose of the Godhead. The soul of man, which as a microcosmos resumes the nature of things, strives by self-abnegation or self-annihilation to attain this unspeakable reunion, which Eckhart calls being "buried in God". Regarding evil simply as privation, Eckhart does not make it the pivot of his thought. as was afterwards done by Böhme; but his notion of the Godhead as a dark and formless essence is a favourite thesis of theosophy.

Besides mystical theology, Böhme was indebted to the writings of Paracelsus. This circumstance is not accidental, but points to an affinity in thought. The natural philosophers of the European Renaissance, such as Nicholas of Cusa, Paracelsus, Gerolamo Cardano and others, curiously blend scientific ideas with speculative notions derived from Scholasticism, from Neoplatonism and even from the Kabbalah. Hence it is customary to speak of their theories as a mixture of theosophy and physics, or theosophy and chemistry, as the case may be. Böhme offers us a natural philosophy of the same sort. As Böhme is the typical theosophist, and as modern theosophy has nourished itself almost in every case upon the study of his works, his dominating conceptions supply us with the best illustration of the general trend of this mode of thought. His speculation turns, as has been said, upon the necessity of reconciling the existence and the might of evil with the existence of an all-embracing and all-powerful God, without falling into Manichaeism on the one hand, or, on the other, into a naturalistic pantheism that denies the reality of the distinction between good and evil. He faces the difficulty boldly, and the eternal conflict between the two may be said to furnish him with the principle of his philosophy. It is in this connexion that he insists on the necessity of the No to the Yes, of the negative to the positive. Eckhart's Godhead appears in Böhme as the abyss, the eternal nothing, the essenceless quiet. But, if this were all, the Divine Being would remain an abyss dark even to itself. In God, however, as the condition of His manifestation, lies, according to Böhme, the "eternal nature" or the Mysterium Magnum, which is as anger to love, as darkness to light, and, in general, as the negative to the positive. This principle (which Böhme often calls the evil in God) illuminates both sides of the antithesis, and thus contains the possibility of their real existence. By the "Qual" or torture, as it were, of this diremption, the universe has qualitative existence, and is knowable. Even the three persons of the Trinity, though existing idealiter beforehand, attain reality only through this principle of nature in God, which is hence spoken of as their matrix. It forms also the matter, as it were, out of which the world is created, without the dark and fiery principle, we are told, there would be no creature. Hence God is sometimes spoken of as the father, and the eternal nature as the mother, of things. Creation (which is conceived as an eternal process) begins with the creation of the angels. The subsequent fall of Lucifer is explained as his surrender of himself to the principle of nature, instead of dwelling in the heart of God. He sought to make anger predominate over love; and he had his will, becoming prince of hell, the kingdom of God's anger, which still remains, however, an integral part of the Divine universe. It is useless to follow Böhme further, for his cosmogony is disfigured by a wild Paracelsian symbolism, and his constructive efforts in general are full of the uncouth straining of an untrained writer. In spite of these defects, his speculations have exercised a remarkable influence.

Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling's Philosophical Inquiries into the Essence of Human Freedom (1809) is almost entirely a reproduction of Böhme's ideas, and forms, along with Franz Xaver von Baader's writings, the best modern example of theosophical speculation. In his philosophy of identity, Schelling had already defined the Absolute as pure indifference, or the identity of subject and object, but without advancing further into theogony. He now proceeded to distinguish three moments in God, the first of which is the pure indifference which, in a sense, precedes all existence — the primal basis or abyss, as he calls it, in agreement with Böhme. But, as there is nothing before or besides God, God must have the ground or cause of His existence in Himself. This is the second moment, called nature in God, distinguishable from God, but inseparable from Him. It is that in God which is not God Himself, it is the yearning of the eternal One to give birth to itself. This yearning is a dumb unintelligent longing, which moves like a heaving sea in obedience to some dark and indefinite law, and is powerless to fashion anything in permanence.

But in correspondence to the first stirring of the Divine existence there awakes in God Himself an inner reflective perception, by means of which — since no object is possible for it but God — God beholds Himself in His own image. In this, God is for the first time as it were realized, although as yet only within Himself. This perception combines, as understanding, with the primal yearning, which becomes thereby free creative will, and works formatively in the originally lawless nature or ground. In this wise is created the world as we know it. In every natural existence there are, therefore, two principles to be distinguished – first, the dark principle, through which this is separated from God,and exists, as it were, in the mere ground; and, secondly, the Divine principle of understanding. The first is the particular will of the creature, the second is the universal will. In irrational creatures the particular will or greed of the individual is controlled by external forces, and thus used as an instrument of the universal. But in man the two principles are consciously present together, not, however, in inseparable union, as they are in God, but with the possibility of separation. This possibility of separation is the possibility of good and evil. In Böhme's spirit, Schelling defended his idea of God as the only way of vindicating for God the consciousness which naturalism denies, and which ordinary theism emptily asserts. This theosophical transformation of Schelling's doctrine was largely due to the influence of Baader, his contemporary. Baader distinguishes, in a manner which may be paralleled from Böhme, between an immanent or esoteric process of self-production in God, through which He issues from His unrevealed state, and the emanent, exoteric or real process, in which God overcomes and takes up into Himself the eternal "nature" or the principle of selfhood, and appears as a Trinity of persons. The creation of the world is still further to be distinguished from these two processes as an act of freedom or will; it cannot, therefore, be speculatively constructed, but must be historically accepted. Baader, who combined his theosophy with the doctrines of Roman Catholicism, has had many followers. Among thinkers on the same lines, but more or less independent, Franz Joseph Molitor is perhaps the most important. Emanuel Swedenborg is usually reckoned among the theosophists, and some parts of his theory justify this inclusion; but his system as a whole has little in common with those speculative constructions of the Divine nature which form the essence of theosophy, as strictly understood.

Oriental theosophy

Beginning in the late 19th and early 20th century, the term "theosophy" was widely used in a "in a restricted signification" to designate "the beliefs and teachings of the Theosophical Society". This society was founded in the United States of America in 1875 by Helena Blavatsky, with Henry Steel Olcott and others. The three main objects of the Theosophical Society were:

• To establish a nucleus of the universal brotherhood of humanity

As regards the first object the mere fact of joining the society and becoming an "initiated fellow" was supposed to involve a certain kind of intellectual and social brotherhood, [...] The society's theory of universal brotherhood was, however, of far wider scope, being based upon a mystical conception of "the One Life" — an idea derived from and common to various forms of Eastern thought, Vedic and Buddhist.

It implies the necessary interdependence of all that is — that ultimate Oneness which underlies and sustains all phenomenal diversity, whether inwardly or outwardly, whether individual or universal.

The theosophical conception of brotherhood is thus rather transcendental than materialistic, and is not therefore to be regarded as the exact equivalent of the socialistic doctrine of the solidarity of the human race.

• to promote the study of comparative religion and philosophy

The second object of the society, the study of comparative religion and philosophy, soon crystallized into an exposition of a more or less definite system of dogmatic teaching. The leading thesis seems to have been that all the great religions of the world originated from the same supreme source, and that they were all to be regarded as so many divers expressions of one and the same fundamental truth, or "Wisdom Religion," in such form and dress as was best adapted to suit the times and the people for whose spiritual growth and development religious instruction was required. Now, in order to discern this underlying truth in the various and apparently conflicting world creeds, appeal was made to a "Secret Doctrine" and "Esoteric Teaching" which Blavatsky proclaimed had been held for ages as a sacred possession and trust by certain mysterious adepts in occultism, or Mahatmas, with whom she claimed to communicate through both extrasensory perception and physical senses.

• to make a systematic investigation into the mystic potencies of life and matter, or what is usually termed occultism.

It is here that the theosophical movement showed its most serious shortcomings. From time to time Blavatsky's numerous friends and associates were allowed to witness the manifestations of "occult phenomena", which she averred were the outcome of her connection with these Mahatmas. The fraudulent character of the "phenomena" was on several occasions exposed by numerous painstaking investigators. There are, moreover, numerous passages in the sacred books of the East, especially those of the Buddhists, which warn the student against the assumption that "magical" performances of any kind are to be regarded as proving the truth of the performer's teaching; and indeed it must be owned in justice to Blavatsky that similar warnings are to be found scattered throughout their writings; while even Blavatsky herself was wont to expatiate on the folly of accepting her "phenomena" as the mark of spiritual truth. Yet at the same time it cannot well be denied that she was in the habit of pointing to the said marvels as evidence of her Mahatma's existence.

If theosophy were to be judged solely by the published revelations of this "Secret Doctrine" it would hardly be deserving of serious consideration; for, as suggested in the separate article on Blavatsky, the revelations themselves appear to have been no more than a crude compilation of vague, contradictory and garbled extracts from various periodicals, books and translations. It was an article of faith with her disciples that the outward and visible Blavatsky was on certain occasions the vehicle of psychic powers of transcendent spiritual import. Although there is not much to justify such a proposition, it may perhaps be conceded that she was in many respects abnormal and that some of her work is characteristic of a process known to modern psychologists as automatism, or in other words that it is the result of a spasmodic uprush to the surface of sub-conscious mental activities. Apart, however, from these pseudo-revelations the Theosophical Society has given rise to an extensive literature, some of which displays a high degree of argumentative and expository ability; and moreover the movement has from time to time attracted the attention and secured the co-operation of many earnest seekers, of some few of whom it can be truly said that they possessed undoubted spiritual power, insight and knowledge.

Soon after Blavatsky's death, a split in the society was brought about by William Quan Judge of New York, who claimed the leadership; and there came into existence two if not three separate theosophical societies (following Judge and later Katherine Tingley in America, Olcott and Annie Besant in America and India, with a more or less independent organizatiqn in England), each one contending that the original afflatus of the founder had descended upon it exclusively. The fortunes of the societies are, however, of less importance than their leading doctrine.

It will be surmised from what has been said that any concise statement of orthodox theosophy is hardly to be expected; though from the materials available a fairly definite outline of its leading tenets can be deciphered. We will try to give a cursory review of three of the most important of these, that is, the constitution and development of the personality or ego; the doctrine of karma; and the Way or Path towards enlightenment and emancipation. Human personality, we learn, is the temporary manifestation of a complex organization consisting of "seven principles", which are united and interdependent, yet divided into certain groups, each capable of maintaining temporarily a spurious kind of personality of its own and sometimes capable of acting, so to speak, as a distinct vehicle of our conscious individual life. Each "principle" is composed of its own form of matter, determined and conditioned by its own laws of time, space and motion, and is, as it were, the repository of our various memories and volitions. These seven "principles", starting from the most gross — the physical body, or rūpa – become more and more subtle and attenuated until we reach the Universal Self (Atma), the centre as also the matrix of the whole, both individual and universal. Now that which binds together these elements of our nature and maintains their interrelation in their respective spheres of activity – that which determines an individual's powers, his tastes, his opportunities, advantages and drawbacks, in a word, the character – is his karma. Broadly speaking, it is the sum of an individual's bodily, mental and spiritual growth; having its roots, as it were, spread over many lives, past and future. The two sentences, "as a man soweth, so must he reap," and "as he reaps so also he must have sown," give comprehensive expression to the idea of Karmic activity.

The doctrine of karma is with modification common to both Buddhism and Brahminism, and in their expositions theosophists have apparently drawn from both sources.

The theosophic "Path" to the final goal of emancipation or Nirvana, is in a great measure derived from Buddhist texts, available to the English-speaking peoples through numerous excellent translations, more especially those of Thomas William Rhys Davids, and also from the many translations in all the European languages of the Bhagavad Gita and Upanishads. Theosophic teachings on this subject are not, however, exclusively Oriental, for following their contention that they are the exponents of the universal and unchangeable "Wisdom Religion" of all the ages, theosophists have selected from various sources – Vedic, Buddhist, Greek and Cabalistic – certain passages for the purpose of exposition and illustration. To the uninitiated it would appear that this selection has been made, generally speaking, at random; it is at any rate lacking in the wise discrimination one would expect from the supposed source of its inspiration. Nevertheless theosophists by their investigations and expositions have undoubtedly been brought in touch with some of the most profund thought in both ancient and modern worlds; and this fact in itself has assuredly had an inspiring and ennobling influence upon their lives and work. The histories of all the great religious and philosophic movements show them as developments of an evolutionary process, arriving at their accepted dogmas through long periods of contention between numerous tendencies and cross-currents, resulting in some compromises and not a little confusion of thought. So it is in the main with theosophy. It has followed Buddhism in deprecating any reliance upon ritual. Ceremonial and sacrificial observances of all kinds are held to be useless in themselves, but operative for good or ill indirectly by their effect upon the mental attitude of those who practise them. Theosophists insist, however, that all religious observances had their origin in some mystical process, the true meaning of which has in most instances been lost. The Path is represented as the great work whereby the inner nature of the individual is consciously transformed and developed. The views of life held by the ordinary mortal as well as his aims and motives must be radically altered; and simultaneously a change must take place in his modes of speech, conduct and thought.

The Path is said to be long and difficult, and with most individuals must extend over many lives. It is: divided into four stages, each one representing the degree of spiritual growth and karmic development at which the disciple (chela) has arrived. But even the entrance upon the very first stage implies something more than, and something fundamentally different from, the life of an ordinary layman, however morally excellent this life may be. Morality, important though it be as preparatory to the "higher life," does not alone lend itself to that awakening of the spiritual faculties without which progress along the Path is not possible. In good citizenship morality is practised out of regard to certain preconceived notions of the needs, the health and happiness of ourselves, our fellows and the community at large. According to theosophy, it would appear that these notions are for the most part mistaken, or at any rate they are quite insignificant in comparison with the interests with which the traveller along the Path soon finds himself absorbed. It is not that human needs are to be disregarded, but that the pabulum which he now sees that humanity really requires is of an incomparably higher order than that which is generally so considered. The physical methods and spiritual exercises recommended by theosophists are those inculcated in the systems known in Hindu philosophy as Raja Yoga in contradistinction to the Hatha Yoga system, which is most commonly to be met with in India, and in which the material aspects are given greater prominence. The Path has an active and a passive side. Fresh knowledge, new forces and faculties, have to be acquired by positive and strenuous efforts, while, on the other hand, delusions and superstitions are to be abandoned by an attitude of conscious neglect; or nescience (avidya) – the mental state of the unenlightened – through which the individual energies are scattered and dissipated in futile effort, is gradually replaced by vidya, the higher wisdom which dispels the darkness of the mind, awakens our latent faculties and concentrates our efforts in the direction of that harmonious union, which ultimately results in Nirvana. Although the way of the disciple or chela is always represented as long and difficult, it is said that as he proceeds, the transcendental faculties which arise to help him enable him to pursue the right course with ever increasing confidence and security. These powers of the mind (siddhi) should never be sought for their own sake, or be used for selfish purposes. The attempt to develop and use them without regard to the higher purpose is spoken of as practising the arts of black magic, the exercise of which invariably leads to disaster. It is proclaimed that were the chela to attempt to make an improper use of his powers – that is to say, were he to yield to the promptings of selfishness, lust or antagonism – such a lapse would at once set in action counteracting forces, which not only retard his upward growth, but which would, were such evil courses persisted in, lead ultimately to the obliteration of all his newly acquired psychic possessions.

The Path may also be described in terms of the "seven principles." It may be said to be a process of unification, whereby the centres of volition, consciousness and active memory are systematically shifted upwards from the lower to the higher "principles" until they have become firmly established in the buddhi, or "sixth principle." As this last stage is approached the chela becomes less and less dependent on the guidance of traditions and scriptures. The truth becomes revealed to him by the opening of his inner vision, and he learns to see dharma, the Eternal Law, as it were, face to face. Thus theosophists may be said to accept in their own sense the saying: "He who does the Will shall know the doctrine."

Along the Path are ranged ten great obstacles, or fetters, the Buddhist sanyojanas, which have to be successively overcome before the final goal is reached. As these sanyojanas give a very good idea of what has been termed the negative aspect of the Path, we may enumerate them as follows:

1. The delusion of personality — the belief in a permanent and unchangeable egoentity
2. Doubt as to the use of the higher efforts, or as to the possibility of solving the great mysteries of life
3. The reliance upon ritual — seeking salvation through outward acts
4. Lust
5. Ill-will, or antagonism
6. Love of this life and its possessions — "The care of the world and the deceitfulness of riches"
7. The egoistic longing for a future life
8. Pride
9. Self-righteousness
10. Nescience

A few words should be added as to the theosophic hell (avīci) which is described as a long drawn-out dream of bitter memories — a vivid consciousness of failure without volition, or the power of initiative — a dream of lost opportunities and futile regrets, of ambitions thwarted and hopes denied, of neglected duties, abused powers and impotent hate; a dream ending ultimately in the oblivion of utter annihilation.

There is no doubt much of valuable suggestion to be found in the philosophic system, or rather the conglomerate of systems, which pass today under the name of theosophy; and probably much has been done by means of its propaganda to popularize Eastern thought in the West, and in the East to reawaken a truer appreciation of its own philosophic treasures; but however that may be, the serious student would be well advised to seek his information and his inspiration from the fountain-heads of the theosophists' doctrines, which are all easily accessible in translations; and to avoid the confusions and errors of writers who in most cases have but a superficial if any knowledge of the original languages and systems from which their doctrine has been arbitrarily culled.

From Catholic Encyclopedia (1912)

θεοσοφία, "wisdom concerning God".

Theosophy is a term used in general to designate the knowledge of God supposed to be obtained by the direct intuition of the Divine essence. In method it differs from theology, which is the knowledge of God obtained by revelation, and from philosophy, which is the knowledge of Divine things acquire by human reasoning. It is often incorrectly confounded with mysticism, for the latter is properly the thirst for the Divine, the aspiration for the invisible, and hence a natural manifestation of the religious sentiment. By intuition or illumination the initiated Theosophists are considered to be in harmony with the central principle of the universe. This knowledge of the secret forces of nature of the true relation between the world and man frees them from the ordinary limitations of human life, and gives them a peculiar power over the hidden forces of the macrocosm. Their exceptional faculties are alleged as experimental proof of their superior science: they are the only guarantee of the truth of their teaching. They are said to transmit this truth by way of revelation. Thus theosophy appeals to tradition but not in the Christian sense.

(1) India is the home of all theosophic speculation. Paul Oltramere says that the directive idea of Hindu civilization is theosophic. This development covers a great many ages, each represented in Indian religious literature. There are formed the basic principles of theosophy. Knowledge of the occult laws in nature and in life, the intuitive method, superhuman powers, hostility to established religion are not all equally apparent in each age, but are present conjunctively or separately through the whole course of its history. The early Brahmanic writings contain the germs, which have gradually developed into a rich vegetation of ideas and beliefs. These ideas are organized into systems, not however homogeneous or autonomous but mixed with other belief. Then they leave the schools to act upon the masses, either in forming a religion, e.g. Buddhism, or in penetrating popular religions already existing, e.g. Hinduism. Thus the Upanishads teach: that the individual soul is identical with the universal soul, hence the doctrine of nondualism (advaita); that the individual existence of the soul is a state of suffering, hence the doctrine of metempsychosis (samsara); that the individual soul is delivered from suffering by its reunion with the universal soul, a reunion realized by seizing the consciousness of identity with it, hence the doctrine of salvation (moksha). The orthodox (āstika) doctrines of both Vedanta and Samkhya are monistic Pantheism, intuition as the supreme means to reach truth, metempsychosis, the world of sense is only a very little part of the category of things, the theory and method of salvation strictly intellectual. These systems developed from the Upanishads. The final development is Yoga. Yoga, i.e. "one who fits himself, or exercises", refers to the exercises practiced to free the soul from the body, [...]. Some of these exercises were: to rid one's self of moral faults (though the masters do not agree as to what these faults are); [...] to place the soul in a particular part of the body, and so gradually acquire mastery over it, or, rather, let the soul, the true self, acquire mastery over the body; to stave and learn to subsist on air or even without it; to concentrate thought by meditation, i.e. to think of nothing. Thyana, the highest state of which is the cataleptic trance (samadhi), in which the mind is suppressed but the soul is in full activity. In this state the person is a mahatma, i.e. master-soul and can enjoy a temporary release from the body which it leaves to go roaming about, performing wonderful feats on material nature and controlling other less powerful souls.

(2) Theosophic teaching comes to the front in the period of Hellenistic philosophy. Hence it is found in the Jewish-Greek philosophy with Neoplatonism. The theosophic atmosphere due to the influence of the Orient is plainly shown in Plotinus. Gnosticism reveals more theosophy than theology and in the Jewish Kabbalah is found a theosophy mixed with various forms of magic and occultism. The European Renaissance brought Neoplatonism and the Kabbalah into early modern philosophy, e.g. Johann Reuchlin (d. 1522), Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa (d. 1535), Paracelsus (d. 1540), Gerolamo Cardano (d. 1576), Valentin Weigel (d. 1588). More important is the teaching of Jakob Böhme (d. 1624). He taught that the "eternal dualism" of God is the ultimate cause of all evil; that there is a "dark" negative principle in God, which evil element makes manifest His goodness. Without this there would be no revelation. Further, were it not for this principle God could not know Himself. Böhme's teaching influenced Franz Xaver von Baader, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Theosophic principles colour the theology of Emanuel Swedenborg, and are found in the group of modern thinkers, especially neo-Hegelians, who claim that the existence of God is know by direct intuition or by a special faculty of the soul.

A new importance of these teachings in modern thought is due to the school of Modern theosophy dating from the foundation of the Theosophical Society in New York City by Helena Blavatsky in 1875. She is the chief and only authority for the revelation of so-called Tibetan occultism. Alfred Percy Sinnett however used the term Esoteric Buddhism. They claimed to have the true solution for the problems of the universe and of man from the Upanishads and Buddhist Sutras through Oriental savants, Mahatmas, the faithful depositories of a profound and superhuman wisdom. In fact, a great part of their nomenclature is derived from India, and they seek there for a justification of teachings drifting about in modern thought and derived to a great extent, if not wholly, from Neoplatonic and Jewish sources through the European Renaissance. The objects of the society are:

• to form the nucleus of a Universal Brotherhood of Humanity, without distinction of race, creed, sex, caste, or colour
• to encourage the study of comparative religion, philosophy, and science
• to investigate the unexplained laws of Nature and the powers latent in man

This last clause gives occasion to include magic, the occult, the uncanny, and the marvelous in any and every form. Blavatsky and Olcott went to India in 1878. Shortly afterwards her frauds were exposed, in the Coulomb Affair, through letters written by Blavatsky and published by Coulomb and his wife, who had been in her service. This was acknowledged by the Society for Psychical Research, in the Hodgson Report, which in 1884 sent Richard Hodgson to investigate. In spite of this, however, the teaching was continued and propagated by her disciples Annie Besant, Olcott, Sinnett, and others.

Modern theosophy claims to be a definite occult science. Its teachings are the product of thought, and its source is consciousness, not any Divine revelation. As a science it is supposed to be based on investigation and experimentation of the occult laws in nature and in human life. Only those qualified for the inquiry can grasp these laws and they gain from this knowledge certain superhuman powers. Besant calls it the great synthesis of life, i.e. of religion, science, and philosophy, as old as thoughtful humanity, proclaimed in a new form suited to the present time. Its aim is that spirit is and can become the master of matter. Hence it is considered as a protest against materialism which teaches that thought and feeling are the results of the aggregations of matter. Theosophy on the contrary sees matter as an instrument of life, and thought as the creative and moulding power of matter.

A basic teaching of theosophy is the universal brotherhood of humanity. Hence springs the preaching of toleration to all persons and to all varieties of belief, e.g. Buddhists, Christians, Atheists, It considers the different religions as methods adopted by man in the search for God. They are of necessity various, because men differ in temperament, type, needs, and stages of evolution. Hence they are different and imperfect expressions of truth. As such it says: "we cannot afford to lose any of the world's religions, for each has its partial truth and its characteristic message which the perfect man must acquire." Hence theosophy appeals to men as the great peacemaker, for it teaches that all religions mean one and the same thing, or rather that they are all branches of a single tree. In this sense it attacks comparative mythology which tries to show that religion was originally the fruit of man's ignorance and will disappear with the increase of knowledge, whereas in fact religion comes from Divine knowledge, i.e. theosophy.

The principle of universal brotherhood rest upon the solidarity of all living, of all that is, in the one life and one consciousness. Solidarity springs from the belief in the immanence of God, the only and external life manifested in the multiplicity of creation. All forces are external; there is no supernatural, except the superhuman and supersensuous, i.e. powers greater that those normally exercised by man, which, however, can be developed. Ignorance therefore makes the miracle. Hence there is on personal God, and for this reason Blavatsky and Besant say that theosophy is more readily embraced by atheists and agnostics. Hence William Colville could teach that the spirit or soul in man is the only real and permanent part of his being; everything else pertaining to him is illusory and transitory. Solidarity, i.e. the common life pervading all things, is thus made the basis of morality. Hence a wrong done to one is done to all, as e.g. an injury inflicted on one part of the human organism results in pain diffused and felt throughout. At the same time we are told that God is good and man immortal, that the "immanence of God justifies religion", i.e. the search after Him, that all things move to good and to man's benefit, that man must understand and co-operate with the scheme of things.

Man has seven aspects, or rather is being composed of seven principles. These are viewed in two groups: the Quarternary, corresponding to our animal nature, i.e. soul and body, the mortal part of man, the products of evolution; and the Triad, corresponding to our spiritual nature, i.e. spirit, for theosophists say that Christian philosophy hold the threefold division of body; soul, and spirit in man. The Quaternary is made up of physical body (Sthula Sharira), astral body (Linga Sharira), principle of life (prana), and passional nature (Kama). The Triad is composed of mind or the thinker (manas), dwelling-place of spirit (buddhi), and spirit (atnir). Hence we find Atnir-Buddhi used conjointly. This Triad is called the Immortal Triad. It is united to the Quaternary by Manas, in itself viewed as Higher Manas, sending out a Ray, which as Lower Manas is imbedded in karma. Thus Kama-Manas is the link joining our animal to our spiritual nature, and is the battle-ground of life's struggles. Man is primarily divine, a spark of the Divine life; this living flame passing out from the Central Fire, weaves for itself coverings within which it dwells and thus becomes the Triad, the Atma-Buddhi-Manas, the Immortal Self. This sends out its Ray, which becomes encased in grosser matter, in the Kamic body, in the astral body, and in the physical body. The astral body, i.e. rarer matter, the exact double of the physical body, plays a great part in spiritualistic phenomena. The Manas is the real I, the reincarnating ego makes the human personality. The Quaternary as a whole is viewed as the Personality, i.e. the shadow of the self. In fact each principle or aspect may be considered a Personality in so far as it undervalues Atma, i.e. throws its shadow over Atma, i.e. the One Eternal Existence. The seer however knows that Atma is the one reality, the essence of all things, that Atma-Buddhi is the Universal One Soul, itself an aspect of Atma, that Atma-Buddhi-Manas is the individual mind or Thinker, that the shadow of Manas, our Atma-Buddhi, makes men say "my soul" and "thy soul", whereas in reality we are all one with Atma, the Unknown Root. After death all of the Manasic Ray that is pure and unsoiled gradually disentangles itself, carrying with it such of life's experiences as are of a nature fit for assimilation with the Higher Ego. The Manasic Ego united to Atma-Buddhi passes into the Devachonic state of consciousness, rapt in blissful dreams coloured by the experiences of the earth-life. This state is a continuation of the earth-life shorn of its sorrows, and a completion of its noble and pure wishes.

Theosophy is not only a basis of religion; it is also a philosophy of life. As such, its main teachings are reincarnation and karma. Karma is the outcome of the collective life, a law of ethical causality. In the past incarnation the ego had acquired certain faculties, set in motion certain causes. The effect of these causes and of causes set in motion in previous incarnations and not yet exhausted are its karma and determine the conditions into which the ego is reborn. Thus inequalities of natural gifts, e.g. genius, of temperament and of character are explained. The law of progress is the law of involution and evolution, the returning of the Divine Spark into a unity with Spirit through various reincarnations, which are viewed as a process of purification. Sin, poverty, and suffering are the fruits of ignorance, and are gradually removed as the spirit in us becomes freed from earthly dross. There is no heaven nor hell. Death is the passage from this state of life to another. There is an evolution behind and before, with absolute certainty of final attainment for every human soul, i.e. to be one with the Absolute. As man advances in this process his spirit becomes stronger, and can develop latent powers, not shown in ordinary mortals.

Criticism

In of a Christian ethical phraseology, theosophy is a form of pantheism, and denies a personal God and personal immortality. Its appeal to the spiritual in man, and its striving after union with the Divine are based upon a contradictory metaphysics, an imaginary psychology, a system of ethics which recognizes no free will, but only the absolute necessity of karma. No evidence or proof is given for its teaching except the simple statements of its leaders. The denial of a personal God nullifies its claim to be a spiritualistic philosophy. Judging it as presented by its own exponents, it appears to be a strange mixture of mysticism, charlatanism, and thaumaturgic pretension combined with an eager effort to express its teaching in words which reflect the atmosphere of Christian ethics and modern scientific truths.

From Encyclopedia Americana (1920)

Theosophy, as its Greek derivatives signify, means Divine Wisdom — wisdom concerning God.

It is that general system of thought which has appeared in all ages shaping itself in one form and another and which has attempted to explain the nature of God, the universe and man's relation thereto. Among the Orientals it is conspicuous in the philosophic systems of China, India and Egypt. It is seen in the works of Gnosticism, Neoplatonism, and Kabbalah, and in the speculations of Böhme, Schelling, Eckhart and in the teaching of Kapila and Adi Shankara, Pythagoras and Plato, Valentinus and Plotinus, Simon Magus and Apollonius of Tyana, Paracelsus and Giordano Bruno. It represents a body of tradition which has been preserved from earliest times and is not only found in the philosophic and speculative writings of those above mentioned and many others, but has been taught from time to time by sundry religious and mystical orders, — in the Far East by the Gurus and Initiates, and in Greece by the various schools of the mysteries. During the Middle Ages traces of the teaching are to be found in Freemasonry and Medieval Mysticism, and later in the Order of Rosicrucians, and it has at all times comprised the esoteric side of the great religions of the world.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, this name, theosophy, is given to an amalgam of occult, Indian and modern spiritualism made by Helena Blavatsky who, in 1875, founded at New York City the Theosophical Society with Henry Steel Olcott, and modern theosophical thought owes its origin and propaganda to the writings and efforts of herself and her colleagues in this society. These objects were framed as:

the purpose of the movement was to stem the tide of materialism and agnosticism, which then threatened to engulf the thought of the age, and to stimulate transcendental research.

From Theosophy and New thought (1916)

Cosmological theories

Theosophy asserts the eternity of the world, though certainly with doubtful consistency by Blavatsky. On the one hand she lays down, as a fundamental proposition, "the eternity of the universe in toto as a boundless plane, periodically the playground of numberless universes, incessantly manifesting and disappearing." She asserts, furthermore, that matter is eternal, the basis on which the Universal Mind builds its ideation. On the other hand she says: "The Creative Force is eternal as noumenon; as a phenomenal manifestation in its aspects it has a beginning and must therefore have an end." Moreover, having defined creation as the Eternal Reality casting a periodical reflection of itself on the infinite spatial depths, she adds: "This reflection which you regard as the objective material universe, we consider as a temporary illusion and nothing else." Putting the various statements together we seem to reach the conclusion that the world, as distinguished from the Primal Cause or Eternal Reality, had a beginning as a phenomenal manifestation, and is in fact a temporary illusion. A succession of such worlds is indeed affirmed; but it is not warrantable to assume that the addition of the temporal inaugurates the eternal. The thesis on the illusory character of the world, which Blavatsky borrowed from Hindu philosophy, is repeated by Theosophists. Thus Arthur Wells remarked: "We must never forget that, after all, the great law of Karma, and everything with which it deals, are but portions of the great illusion – the Maya which defends our weak eyes from the overpowering radiance of the divine glory." Some Theosophists diverge from the Hindu doctrine of maya. Sinnett interpreted the doctrine as denoting only the relative impermanency of the world. Another general characteristic affirmed of the world is the universal diffusion of life and even of sentience. Hylozoism is, in its philosophical meaning, correct pantheism for Blavatsky. Everything in the universe, she says, even down to the stones, has a consciousness of its kind.

Judge asserts that "all nature is sentient." "There is no difference," writes Burcham Harding, "save in degree, between the lives that are found in the minerals, in plants and trees, in animal and human bodies—for all are parts of the One Life." Blavatsky wrote that the Theosophical Society was a bulwark against a threatening materialism. Likewise, "I look upon the reproclamation of Theosophy," wrote Besant, "as the deliberate answer of the Masters, the Adepts, to the rise of materialism in the Western world." There is a disparity between such statements and Theosophical writings, according to Sheldon, which did not "appear thoroughly charged with spiritualistic or anti-materialistic teachings" as expected.

Theosophy is a compromise with materialism rather than a consistent opposition, according to Sheldon, since it does not uniformly assign a distinct primacy to spirit over matter.

Statements like "spirit is both Alpha and Omega," by William Colville, may be found. But different representations also occur. Blavatsky wrote that spirit and matter "are but the two facets of the one Absolute Existence;" and asserted that, "spirit and matter are one, being the two opposite poles of the universal manifested substance;" and she insists that spirit is potential matter, "and matter simply crystallized spirit, just as ice is solidified steam."

In her psychological theory, as cited by Besant, Blavatsky gives a thoroughly materialistic representation that "thought is matter." Besant unequivocally adopts this point of view, and carries it out in a series of statements as materialistic as can be found in the literature of modern materialism. "A Thought form," she affirms, "is a material image created by the mind out of the subtle matter of the higher psychic plane in which it works. This form, composed of the rapidly vibrating atoms of the matter of that region, sets up vibrations all around it." "Pure and lofty thoughts," Besant says, "are composed of rapid vibrations. [...] Vibrations of consciousness are ever shaking out one kind of matter and building in another." "Thought images," she tells us, "once generated, assume an existence of their own, pass outward into the astral realm, and act therefrom on the minds of other men, influencing them to action." Commending the same point of view, Charles Webster Leadbeater teaches that thoughts are in a real sense things and to clairvoyant sight assume form and color. Rate of vibration, he indicates, is a principal determinant of the grade of being. "Physical matter may become astral, or astral may become mental, if only it be sufficiently subdivided, and caused to vibrate with the proper degree of rapidity." While the soul of man, urges Sinnett, is much more subtle and lasting than the body, it is itself "a material reality." With Judge we find the comprehensive statement that the universe exists "for the purpose of raising the entire mass of manifested matter up to the stature, nature, and dignity of conscious godhood;" and Besant makes it an important part of man's task to sublime matter into spirit. In short, it is plain enough that Theosophy, as understood by its leading exponents, has broad materialistic tenets. So far at least as psychological theory is concerned, it rivals declarations of materialists such as Karl Vogt, Jacob Moleschott, Ludwig Büchner, and Pierre Jean George Cabanis.

A detailed description of the universe as a whole does not appear to have been attempted by representatives of modern Theosophy. The domain of discourse with which they are specially concerned is that complex sphere which serves as a theater of man's multiplied peregrinations. About this they have, or at least claim to have, a mass of information that is truly astonishing. Our earth, they tell us, is one in a chain of seven planets. This chain is quite extraordinary, most of its members being entirely unknown to astronomy as commonly understood. Only our earth, according to Blavatsky, is in the visible domain. Sinnett, on the other hand, includes Mars and Mercury in that domain, and assumes that only four out of the seven planets in the chain are composed of matter so ethereal that telescopes cannot aid in their observation. Reckoning Mars as third in the list, the earth as fourth, and Mercury as fifth, Sinnett supposes existence on the first and seventh to be of the Devachanic (or heavenly) type, on the second and sixth to be astral in nature. Man as a subject of evolution and progress is under compulsion to visit these several spheres in a series of rounds, and the time required for the repeated gyrations of his pilgrimage is nothing less than enormous. Even the number of periods which he must spend on the earth, is overwhelming to contemplate. "An individual unit, arriving on a planet for the first time in the course of a round, has to work through seven races on that planet before he passes on to the next, and each of these races occupies the earth for a long time. Within the limits of each race there are seven subdivisional races, and again within the limits of each subdivision there are seven branch races. Through all these races, roughly speaking, each individual human unit must pass during his stay on earth, each time he arrives there, on a round of progress, through the planetary system."

Supposing the recollection of one journey to be carried on to the next, the intinerant would have an opportunity to note great changes in the earth's surface, such as the sinking of the immense continent of Atlantis in the region now occupied by the Atlantic Ocean, and also the submergence of the greater part of the continent of Lemuria, which once stretched from the Indian Ocean to Australia. The one event occupied, we are informed with remarkable precision, a period of 11,466 years, and the other took place about 700,000 years earlier. With an insight in like manner greatly transcending the measures of ordinary-science our authorities assure us that besides the planetary chain of which the earth is a member there are six others within the solar system; but any considerable number of details respecting these seems not to have been divulged by the Mahatmas.

Theosophists prefer for ancient mythology, over against the inductions of recent science, is very strikingly illustrated by their assumption on the very important relation sustained by the moon to the earth. The moon, Blavatsky wrote, "plays the largest and most important part, as well in the formation of the earth itself, as in the peopling thereof with human beings;" "is far older than the earth;" "it is the latter which owes its being to the former;" and "the moon is the giver of life to our globe."

Theosophical information about deep orifices in the polar regions differs from observable evidence. "It has been vaguely known," says Sinnett, "by occult students for a long time that in the neighborhood of the north pole there is an orifice in the ground penetrating to inconceivable depths. This wonderful shaft has been regarded as fulfilling some mysterious need of the earth, analogous to breathing, and it has been supposed that a similar shaft connects the south pole with the interior."

Another aspect of mythology syncretized into Theosophy is illustrated in notions on the existence and functions of elementals. Blavatsky gives this name to the creatures evolved in the four kingdoms of earth, air, fire, and water. "These elementals are the principal agents of disembodied but never visible spirits at seances, and the producers of all the phenomena except the subjective." The Adepts, Sinnett informs us, have good reasons for preserving a relative silence respecting the elementals; he considers himself, however, qualified to state that they are semi-intelligent creatures of the astral light, one division of which may have been formed by the human will from the ocean of elemental essence, while other varieties are due to natural evolution.

The history of man began no less than 18,000,000 years ago.

Conceptions of man and his destiny

To achieve a clear exposition of Theosophical conceptions of man and his destiny is no easy task. The predilection of Theosophists for the grandiose and complex, their pedantic multiplication of Sanskrit terms in place of plain English, and their slovenly neglect of the proper distinction between the material and the spiritual, combine to weary and puzzle the mind of the interpreter. If any should be disposed to blame us for lack of clarity and simplicity in our treatment of the present subject, let him blame still more the Mahatmas for not having furnished better guidance to the oracles of Theosophical wisdom. In the evolutionary scheme of Theosophy the genesis of man is depicted as starting from the divine essence, and then effected through successive stages up to the present stage of concreteness or condensation. "When the globe was forming," according to Judge, "the first root-race was more or less ethereal and had no such body as we now inhabit. The cosmic environment became more dense and a second race appeared, soon after which the first wholly disappeared. Then the third came on the scene, after an immense lapse of time, during which the second had been developing the bodies needed in the third. At the coming of the fourth root-race it is said that the present human form was evolved, although gigantic, and in some respects different from our own. It is from this point—the fourth race – that the Theosophical system begins to speak of man as such." That the race which eventuated in man proper is not represented in the fossil record is explained by the tenuity of the astral bodies which at that stage were in evidence. In fact, as Leadbeater assures us, in tracing man's genesis we are carried back to a kind of nebula, a basis of humanity which consisted simply in a great cloud of divine essence. A gaseous entity of the sort indicated could not be expected to leave definite memorials in the geological record. That much we concede to the Theosophic apologist, though not a little taken back by his identification of the divine essence with an extended and volatile substance. But what about our nearer antecedents, the gigantic men of the fourth root-race? We suppose that Blavatsky refers to this race when she teaches that "physical man was originally a colossal pretertiary giant," and that "he existed 18,000,000 years ago." What has become of his remains? Possibly it will be suggested that the gigantic race, as being identical with the Atlanteans, went below the plane of observation in the sinking of the continent of Atlantis. But, according to the reported figures, it took that continent 11,466 years to pass to its ocean grave, and it would seem that during so long a period some of the Atlanteans would have had the discretion to emigrate to higher and safer ground. Americans and Europeans are defined as lineal descendants of the Atlanteans, or, more precisely, as Atlantean monads reincarnated. As a further aid in locating ourselves we may note that in the septenary scheme which Theosophic insight has discovered to obtain in the cosmos we are in the fifth sub-race of the fifth race of the fourth round.

This location involves the conclusion that our cyclic movements must go on for an incalculable period. Nothing can secure our release from any of the rounds or from any of the minor circles included therein. In Theosophical anthropology the assumption that man is septenary in nature, or includes within the compass of his being seven principles, is a fundamental dogma. Yet, strangely enough, Blavatsky had not arrived at the knowledge of it at the time she wrote Isis Unveiled. In that treatise she not only failed to inculcate the septenary nature of man, but taught a contradictory view, as appears in this statement: "Man is triune: he has his objective physical body, his vitalizing astral body (or soul), the real man; and these are brooded over by the third – the sovereign, the immortal spirit."

	Judge	Sinnett	Besant
perishable quatenary	body, or rūpa	physical body	dense body
	astral body	etheric double	etheric double
	vitality, or pranajiva	life-force, or jiva	vitality, or prana
	animal soul, or kama-rupa	astral vehicle	animal soul, or kama
immortal triad	human soul, or manas	manas	manas
	spiritual soul, or buddhi	buddhi	buddhi
	spirit, or atma	atma	atma

It accords with the Theosophical disparagement of personality that this term should be applied to the perishable quatenary.

The true man, the lasting individuality, is left thus to be identified with manas, buddhi, and atma. But it is not altogether clear how this triad is to be construed. One exponent of Theosophy tells us that the spirit, or atman, is no individual property of any man, but the divine essence which by its omnipresent light radiated through buddhi, its vehicle and direct emanation, pervades the whole body. A second exponent informs us that both atma and buddhi are not properly incarnated in the present race, but occupy the body simply by shining upon manas, the principle which is really incarnated. In any case the description of the triad, in which man's higher self consists, does not seem to introduce us to a well-compacted human subject. What we are led to contemplate is a mental or psychical principle with which, at first-hand or second-hand, a divine ray is connected.

Among the specifications on the composition and history of the human subject, found in Theosophical literature, Sheldon selected the following: The etheric double is a precise duplicate of the dense body, and the medium through which the electrical and vital currents play. It is composed of four ethers, distinguished by different degrees of fineness. Normally the etheric double is separated from the dense body only at death, but occasionally spiritualistic mediums experience at least a partial separation during the period of earthly fife. In its separate state the etheric double is dissipated after a brief interval. The astral body is composed of a different and more subtle kind of matter. In this body the seven substates of astral matter are combined. It travels with exceeding rapidity, and either during earthly life or after may show itself apart from the physical body. To one who is clairvoyant the manifestation easily occurs, and in case of one who is not it is possible by a greater or less appropriation of physical matter from the atmosphere for the astral body to acquire visibility. During earthly life the seven substates of astral matter are intermingled, but after death they are sorted into concentric shells, the densest being outside. These shells may function in spiritualistic seances. They must all be disintegrated before the deceased person can pass into the blissful region of Devachan. The period of disintegration, longer or shorter according to the preceding record of the subject, is properly characterized as a purgatorial period. To the region where the purgation takes place is given the name of Kamaloka. The elimination of the astral body leaves the person with the mind-body, which is composed of more subtle matter still, taken from the four lower levels of Devachan, and disintegrating when these levels have been passed. It is egg-shaped, richly colored, and without differentiation of the senses.

The life in Devachan, as Theosophists call their heaven, is not of strictly fixed duration, but is said to last from 10 to 15 centuries. The measure of happiness enjoyed in Devachan is not claimed to be uniform for all subjects, but Theosophical writers are quite unanimous in the affirmation that no pain, sorrow, or disappointment can enter there. "It is," according to Besant, "a specially guarded part of the mental plane whence all sorrow and all evil are excluded by the action of the great spiritual intelligences who superintend human evolution." Devachanic life is purely subjective, though it is far from being recognized as such by the one who has entered into it.

"The forms, scenery, etc., which the consciousness perceives in that condition are the creatures of its own mental energies." There results, however, a gradual exhaustion of force, passing into semi-consciousness and ending in "birth into another personality." It is in this reincarnate state that the sinner in general must reap the fruits of his evil deeds. Only the exceptional criminal is deprived of the temporary immunity from sufferings enjoyed in Devachan and is made to pay in Avitchi the penalty of subjective spiritual misery for a period. In spite of the emphatic description of the unalloyed bliss of Devachan, it would appear that the happy state is not perfectly guarded against an element of unrest. Even there arises the desire for active life, the thirst for sentient existence, which is the fundamental cause of reincarnation, as of all manifestation. This is the inner ground of reincarnation operative in the individual. In addition there is the working of karma, that is, of an unerring law of retribution, an impersonal ever-active principle which grips the world and determines both the fact and the conditions of rebirth. Until his score has been paid a man must be reborn, and in rebirth be given a lot correspondent with his antecedent record. The doctrine of reincarnation was taken from Hinduism into the fundamentals of Theosophy, though it was modified by rejecting the idea that a man may be reborn as an animal. The borrowing is apparent not only from the content of the doctrine as set forth in standard writings, but also from the fact that it was first taken up and promulgated by the Theosophical leaders after they had gone to India. In Isis Unveiled, which was written in the United States, Blavatsky repudiated reincarnation as any part of a regular economy, and treated it as emphatically exceptional. "Reincarnation," she wrote, "that is, the appearance of the same individual, or, rather, of the astral monad, twice on the same planet, is not a rule of nature; it is an exception, like the teratological phenomenon of a two-headed infant. It is preceded by a violation of the laws of harmony of nature, and happens only when the latter, seeking to restore its disturbed equilibrium, violently throws back into earth-life the astral monad which had been tossed out of the circle of necessity by crime or accident."

Neither Gautama nor Pythagoras, Blavatsky declared, intended to teach a literal metempsychosis, but employed the term in its esoteric sense and applied it to "the purely spiritual peregrinations of the human soul." In the face of these unequivocal statements, her subsequent attempt to explain away her denial of reincarnation is, according to Sheldon, only a "perfectly obvious and perfectly abortive prevarication." Olcott, with better discretion and honesty, stood by the facts and declared that at the time of embarking for India (December 17, 1878), both Blavatsky and himself thought that reincarnation was exceptional, and that the doctrine was not fully launched till 1881–82, though in 1879 it was alluded to in The Theosophist. Olcott could not explain why the Mahatmas permitted this mistake and he conceded it was insoluble.

From repudiating reincarnation, Theosophy changed to affirming it. "The actual normal number of incarnations for each monad is not far short of eight hundred."

Since monads, or souls, are ever on hand for reincarnation, the demand for the creation, emanation, or evolution of new souls is evidently modified quite appreciably. We are informed that nothing of that kind has occurred since the middle of the fourth race, and that "the total number of human egos included in our evolution is in round numbers about sixty billions."

The question of how to reconcile a limited quantity of monads with a common historical induction, about the progressive increase of population on the earth, has been satisfactorily answered, according to Sheldon. Besant's plea that those incarnated at any time constitute only a minor portion of the total number of souls is no real answer. Since souls are reincarnated after passing through a proper round of experiences, or, generally speaking, once in fifteen hundred years, a reason for a change of proportion between the incarnated and those awaiting incarnation is not apparent.

Lack of recollection of a previous life, it is claimed, is not an objection to the fact of preexistence, since the organs instrumental to reminiscence, which were operative in the former stage of existence, have perished; moreover, Buddhas and Initiates, it is averred, do remember their past incarnations, not to discuss what may be possible for less advanced spirits.

As positive grounds for belief in reincarnation such facts are alleged as the appearance of great diversities within the limits of a given family, infant precocity, exceptional genius, and seeming discrepancy between present lot and desert.

The ideal goal toward which the series of incarnations is supposed to lead is Nirvana. However, the meaning attached to this term seems not to have been the same in Theosophical circles. Blavatsky's description implies the complete submergence or negation of individuality. The consummation is not reached, she tells us, "till the unit is merged in the all, and subject and object alike vanish in the absolute negation of the Nirvanic state."

The immortality of an entity is to be understood only in relation to its cycle. At the end of its cycle, it is "one and identical with the Universal Spirit, and no longer a separate entity."

On the other hand, statements occur in Theosophical writings which are designed to convey the impression that the individual does not so much suffer extinction as gain expansion in Nirvana. It does not appear that anything worth while has been accomplished toward clearing away Buddhistic mist on this subject.

Theosophy does not explain if Nirvana an absolute or a relative finality. But if Besant represents the prevailing conviction, the decision is for relative finality. She wrote that the one who has attained Nirvana returns to cosmic activity in a new cycle of manifestation.

As much is implied by Blavatsky that, according to the Brahmanical and esoteric doctrine, there is an endless evolution and reinvolution (or reabsorption) of the cosmos.

This suggests that what is in Nirvana is evolved again. If Blavatsky meant to indorse this view, she would need to explain how the completely vanished individuals of her scheme could be recovered. On the whole, the conclusion is warranted that Theosophy sets forth no ultimate goal for men, unless it be in the complete cessation of personal existence. It does not offer any prospect of a satisfactory escape from the fearfully drawn out alternation between life and death, birth and dissolution.

Doctrine of god

Theosophic dogma is denial of a personal god, that is, of god considered as the supreme being, the absolute. "We reject," says Blavatsky, "the idea of a personal or extra-cosmic and anthropomorphic God," and from other statements we gather that the rejection extends to the assumption of divine personality in any form in which it has had currency in the Christian Church. Her fundamental preference for the impersonal appears in her substitution of "Universal Principle" or "Absolute Principle" for the name of god, as also in such declarations as that the Absolute does not think or exist but is, rather, thought and existence. Scarcely less distinctly it appears in her rating of Karl Robert Eduard von Hartmann's philosophy as the highest philosophy of the West. To a Being thus conceived, creation, as the execution of plan or purpose, must evidently be counted foreign, and we have in place of it the notion of an inexplicable alternation of the differentiation and reabsorption of the world. "The esoteric doctrine," writes Blavatsky, "teaches, like Buddhism and Brahmanism, and even the Kabala, that the one infinite and unknown essence exists from all eternity, and in regular and harmonious successions is either passive or active. In the poetical phraseology of Manu these conditions are called the 'day' and the 'night' of Brahma." Consistently with the negation of the personality of God, Blavatsky rules out the propriety of prayer except in the sense of an internal command; and this she decides to let pass as a prayer to the Father in heaven in the esoteric meaning of the phrase – that is, to God in man himself. Wells provided an equivalent interpretation of the Father in heaven. Some representatives of Theosophy may have been rather more appreciative of prayer in its objective relation than was Blavatsky, but in common they reject the personality of a supreme being.

Closely associated with this feature is an emphasis on the transcendence of God as Absolute Principle. Speculation on the Ultimate Principle, Blavatsky informs us, is impossible. "It is beyond the range and reach of thought." In spite of the paradoxical appearance of the statement, in the Absolute is realized "the idea of eternal Non-Being which is the One Being. It cannot be conceived to have any relation to the finite and conditioned." "As to the Absolute," says Judge, "we can do no more than say, It Is. None of the great teachers of the School ascribe qualities to the Absolute." "The term Absolute," remarked Mead, "must be kept for the idea of the Deity beyond being."

It is quite obvious that in pursuing this point of view the exponents of Theosophy have not respected greatly either the claims of rationality or of internal consistency. They might have reminded themselves that to place the Absolute beyond being is no more eligible than to place Him below being, since either form of expression relegates him to nonentity or negates his being, and involves also the feat of getting a plenum out of a vacuum, since all things are confessedly from the Absolute. They would likewise have written to better edification if, while declaring the Absolute to be inconceivable, they had not applied to it such terms as omnipresent, eternal, boundless, and immutable; for these terms, if there is any justification for using them, fulfill a descriptive function, while yet the strictly inconceivable is entirely out of the range of description. Equally, a normal respect for the demands of internal consistency would have vetoed the combination of the statement, that "all that which is emanates from the Absolute," with the declaration that the Absolute can have no relation with the finite and conditioned, the rational verdict being that between source and product there is unavoidably a real relation. Like all ultra dogmatism which makes a pretense of agnosticism and high-flying transcendentalism, Theosophy gets badly mixed up in its exposition of ultimate reality.

What has been said thus far in the present chapter implies that the Theosophical doctrine of God and the universe is roundly pantheistic. Theosophists are not at all backward in confessing that their doctrine has this character. Besant says that "the Wisdom-Religion teaches a profound pantheism," that technically she is a pantheist, and that "in theology Theosophy is pantheistic." Blavatsky abundantly illustrates every prominent feature of pantheistic historical Vedic religion which evolved into Vedanta Hindu philosophy. As has been noted, she adopts the theory of differentiations from the Absolute, alternating with reabsorptions. In her interpretation the evolved world is a temporary illusion, as unreal as the reflection of the moon on the surface of the waters. As all is from the Absolute, evil has no other source; in fact, good and evil are aspects or sides of the One Being. To all grades of individuated being reabsorption is the appointed destiny. The Gods at the end of the cycle are merged in the one Absolute.

Blavatsky once wrote that, "there is no God, personal or impersonal," but this atheistic declaration was the exception and to be emphasized. Properly she is characterized as a radical pantheist, with a leaning to polytheism and against monotheism. This leaning comes out, on the one hand, in contemptuous references to the monotheistic religions, and, on the other, in polytheistic representations of the creative function. In one instance she ascribes the creation of the bodies of men to the Lunar Pitris and the endowment of men with their immortal egos to the solar angels, and in another instance she employs this language: "It is not the Principle, One and Unconditioned, nor even its reflection, that creates, but only the Seven Gods who fashion the universe out of eternal matter, unified into objective life by the reflection into it of the One Reality." This polytheistic phase was duplicated by Besant. "Each Logos," she wrote, "is to his own universe the central object of adoration, and his radiant ministers are rightly worshiped by those who cannot rise to the conception of this central deity." It might be inferred from this statement that we do very well to stop with the Logos or Deity of our solar system, and so Leadbeater advises us. Sinnett postulates an object of reverence somewhat more local, telling us that a Mighty Being, the Spirit of the Earth, presides over the growth and health of the planet. Evidently, in Theosophy pantheism has made friends with polytheism, and herein the assimilation to Hinduism is very marked.

From The mystics of Islam (1914)

Dhul-Nun al-Misri's mystical speculations mark him out as the father of Muslim theosophy.

The marifa of Sufism is the 'gnosis' of Hellenistic theosophy.

Abu Bakr Shibli was a pupil of the famous theosophist Junayd of Baghdad.

From History of medieval philosophy (1909)

Johannes Scotus Eriugena

Johannes Scotus Eriugena (c. 815 – c. 877) 9th century

Eriugena influenced the development of both scholastic and anti-scholastic medieval philosophy. The main anti-scholastic tendencies for which Eriugena's philosophy is responsible are:

• Medieval Rationalism – Reason, deified, is made the sovereign source of knowledge, excelling and surpassing authority and revelation. The rationalism of Eriugena has in it an appreciable tinge of theosophy.

• Theosophy – was a form of rationalism peculiar to the Middle Ages. In opposition to modern rationalism, which tries in the name of reason to brush aside as unreal the data of Christian Revelation, medieval theosophy endeavoured, also in the name of reason, to prove to demonstration, as evidently true and real, these same revealed data in their full scope and meaning. Even mysteries were claimed to be so accessible to human intelligence that it could establish them by demonstrative arguments. Eriugena used deductive reasoning to interpret Christian dogma to construct a Christian Neoplatonism.

According to Wulf, Eriugena's theosophical rationalism was calculated to mislead; since, so far from opposing or defying Christian dogma, proclaimed and protested that he was ever and always loyal to the Catholic faith. He was constantly quoting Scripture and the Fathers. But he attached to those writings a symbolic meaning, which was to be determined in the last resort by reason itself.

• Heterodox mysticism – which assigns substantial union of the soul with God as the goal of the mystic life.

• Pantheism – denies the real distinction which scholasticism affirms between God and creatures; denies at the same time the separate individuality of each creature. So far as we know, according Wulf, Eriugena was the only avowed pantheist prior to the 12th century. His contemporaries appear to have consulted him merely for his opinion about the questions proposed by Porphyry. And we know his reply: being a pantheist, he was, of course, a fortiori, the standard-bearer of extreme realism. Subsequently, those who espoused pantheism were inspired by Eriugena's Neoplatonism, some of them more and some less; and his influence is likewise traceable in all the various popular excesses and distortions of mysticism. The Church condemned De divisione naturae, but could not banish it from circulation.

Ramon Llull

Ramon Llull (c. 1232 – c. 1315), a Catalonian

the studied of Arabic and logic, Franciscan. He wrote against Averroism. Llull is not merely a philosopher; he is also a mystic, a scholar, a linguist, and the most brilliant Catalonian writer of the Middle Ages.

The original element in Llull's philosophy is his elaboration of a theosophical system and the planning of Ars Magna.

Llull wrote against Averroism's theory of the two truths, Llull sets up a theosophic conception of the relations between philosophy and theology: the whole content of faith being reasonable, reason can and ought to demonstrate everything, even mysteries. There is no dividing line between the rational and the supra-rational, between natural truth and revealed truth. To convert Muslims, for Llull, there is no need to prove that their beliefs are false, but merely to demonstrate that Catholicism is true. Herein exclusively lies the function of philosophy. Llull thus perverts the scholastic system of relations between philosophy and theology; and, furthermore, he confounds the latter with apologetics. To the error of Averroism he opposes the opposite error. It is indeed true that the fundamental principle of Lullism just mentioned, is somewhat balanced and supplemented by this other principle: that faith is a preliminary condition required for all intellectual knowledge whatsoever. Faith is not an end in itself; it is but a preparatory disposition by virtue of which reason is enabled to deduce a priori all truth, natural and supernatural. It grows in intensity with increase of knowledge; to use the philosopher's favourite figure, it is like oil which ever mounts with the water, but never mingles with it Llull follows out the applications of his principles in various works and undertakes to demonstrate Catholic dogma in all its details.

For the purpose of carrying out a detailed, deductive exposition of all truth, Llull claimed to have discovered a logical method which he called the Ars Magna, Scientia Generalis – a method which, according to Llull, was to complete the ordinary methodological teaching of scholasticism. This latter he regarded as an ascensus setting out from sense-observation and rising to a knowledge of suprasensible realities. It must be completed by a descensus of the understanding, a deductive movement of thought. The Ars Magna was thus a sort of reasoning machine, consisting of general tables of ideas or termini, which, apparently, one would need only to combine according to a prescribed method in order to find the solution of any question whatsoever.

Combinations of letters stood for combinations of ideas, and Llull expressed them by means of synoptic tables and geometrical figures. Later on, the Ars Magna became more complicated; it embodied schemata for theology, philosophy, law and medicine. The manipulation of its letters and figures was supposed not merely to furnish technical aids to memory, but to yield new positive knowledge. In this the Ars Magna differs essentially from the analytico-synthetic method of scholasticism which guides us in the pursuit of knowledge, but has no pretensions to create knowledge. In philosophy, a pure deductive method is of course a pure chimera. Llull was hunting after the philosopher's stone for science, just as many others in the Middle Ages were hunting after the philosopher's stone for the metals.

Lullism.—Apart from the two theories just outlined, Llull maintained the traditional teaching of scholasticism. We find its doctrines incorporated promiscuously in novel and artificial settings invented by a fertile and uncontrolled imagination. For example, in Duodecim Prindpia Philosophiae., Dame Philosophy complains to Llull of the injury done her by Averroism and presents him with her twelve constitutive principles.

Llull had many admirers and followers. He was called Doctor Illuminatus, Tuba Spiritus Sancti. His theosophy was less lasting than his Ars Magna. The automatic processes of the Ars Magna had a certain fascination for all who ever afterwards sought to build up philosophy according to the deductive, mathematical method. Giordano Bruno, Agrippa, Bernard de Lavinheta and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz all spoke of it with enthusiasm.

Circa 1372, Nicholas Eymerich brought complaints against Llull's doctrines to a papal inquisition, and an inquisitorial procedure was opened by Pope Gregory XI; but, according to Wulf, it is unknown whether that judicial process resulted in a condemnation. In his Dialogus contra Lullistas. and in Directorium Inquisitorum, Eymerich published a papal bull of 1376, ordering the works of Llull to be withdrawn and prohibiting Llull's teaching. But the Lullists accused Eymerich of imposture, and the long-standing dispute about the authenticity of the bull is not yet settled.

Deviation from scholasticism

There were at least four secondary systems which retained some doctrines of scholasticism but assimilated various foreign principles: scholastics influenced by Averroism, such as John Baconthorpe; scholastics influenced by German mysticism, such as Meister Eckhart; scholastics influenced by the theosophy of Raymond of Sabunde; and, scholastics influenced by the theosophic mysticism of Nicholas of Cusa.

John Baconthorpe

Besides Averroists, some scholastics were influenced by Averroism in the 13th and 14th century, for example, John Baconthorpe, a Carmelite provincial, was suspected of Averroism. Though Baconthorpe admitted plurality of forms in man and taught that the intellectual soul in all its completeness is the form of the body, he doubted Aquinas' arguments against Averroism's interpretation of active intellect, and seemed inclined to subscribe to Averroism's interpretation. Baconthorpe's philosophy is not sufficiently known.

Meister Eckhart

Eckhart, a Dominican, propounded an equivocal sort of mysticism which it is not easy to absolve from the charge of pantheism. Eckhart's metaphysical system supports pantheism. Eckhart is thoroughly imbued with the doctrines of scholasticism, except about the question of essence and existence; and here we get a full view of the characteristic—and fundamental—error of his whole philosophy. God alone, the Actus Purus, is His own being. In the creature, on the contrary, the essence or quiddity is distinct from the existence. Yet, an intimate bond attaches the creature to God, for God is the existence of the creature; the latter has no being (existence) other than God in Whom it subsists. God, therefore, constitutes the actuality of the world; He is to the contingent essence or quiddity what act is to potency, what form is to matter, what unity is to number. Since the created essence is held to be distinct from God and has corresponding to it, as such, an idea in the Divine Mind of the Creator, Eckhart's is not a system of pantheistic emanation wherein all things would be reduced to mere phenomena or moments of the Divine Life. But still, the identity of existence which envelops Creator and creature, and in which Eck- hart finds a proof of the Divine Ubiquity and of the eternity of Creation, seems to compromise the distinction between finite and Infinite: Eckhart borders on pantheism.

Eckhart built on scholasticism – Eckhart took his ideas, his terminology, and his method from scholasticism – and was not a renegade, but, according to Wulf, failed to free himself from "unfortunate confusion and misapplication of ideas".

This confusion, according to Wulf, is perceptible in Eckhart's psychology. The human soul is the being of God; in loving man, God loves Himself; He could not do without man, any more than man could do without Him. We must aim at freeing ourselves from ourselves and at being swallowed up in the abyss of the Deity; in this "deification" we shall find perfect happiness.

Eckhart was a promoter, but not the founder, of the popular mystical movement called German mysticism. It was embodied mainly in sermons and characterized by the language it made use of no less than by the teaching it contained. It created a German terminology and carried over the scholastic vocabulary into the vernacular German language. Its favourite themes also were borrowed from the treasures of scholasticism : over and over again the German mystics studied the Deity in the majestic tranquillity and impenetrable mystery of His Being : exalted outpourings of the soul in the contemplation of the Divine Life, the Divine Knowledge and the intercommunications of Divine Love in the Blessed Trinity, are the constantly recurring subjects of their writings and discourses.

Eckhart's successors were deeply influenced by the study of his writings. This is noticeable in Henry Suso (c. 1295-1366), in Johannes Tauler (1290-1361), and in the anonymous author of Theologia Germanica. While Eckhart was more brilliant than his successors, according to Wulf, many ofEckhart's successors better defined the relations between Creator and creature. But on the other hand, his mystical teaching was exploited and exaggerated by many popular sects in support of a growing practice of pantheistic morality. In this way his mystical teaching contributed indirectly to the Protestant Reformation.

Raymond of Sabunde

According to Raymond of Sabunde, man reads truth in two books, the book of Nature and the book of the Sacred Scriptures. Their contents are identical: but to decipher the former we must have recourse to reasoning; to secure the latter we have only to believe in its instructions and precepts. It is undeniable that the reading of the book of Nature must precede that of the inspired book, for to believe the word of God we must first know that God exists; and it is equally certain that there are truths, like the mystery of the Blessed Trinity, which reason could never discover from a study of the world; and others again which it could not discover in this way, had not revelation already pointed them out to us: those facts show clearly that man obtains his knowledge through two distinct channels which pour truth in parallel streams into his soul. Man is the connecting-link between visible nature and God. In this conception of the nature and state of humanity the Theologia Naturalis seeks an explanation of all the mysteries of the Christian Religion.

Nicholas of Cusa

Nicholas of Cusa was influenced by Neoplatonism; he was much closer to Plotinus and Proclus than Witelo and Theodoric of Freiberg were in the 13th century.

The theosophical lines on which he established relations between philosophy and theology are likewise in keeping with his Neo-Platonic sympathies. His teaching is borrowed from the theosophy of Llull. On the one hand, the light of faith is indispensable for the discovery of truth: without it the human spirit is like one born blind. On the other hand, reason is but a blossoming of faith, and can therefore attain to a demonstrative knowledge of mysteries. To get fully at the mind of Nicholas we must put this theosophical theory into relation with the mysticism of the Docta Ignorantia.

For Nicholas, knowledge of God is negative. We cannot describe as truth either sense knowledge (sensus), or abstract, rational knowledge (ratio) based on the former, for both alike are changeable and fragmentary. Intellect alone, sustained by the supernatural aid of grace, can raise us up to the one, immutable Truth, which is God. Then we can understand how the Infinite is impenetrable and unknowable to us. And this consciousness of our own ignorance constitutes true wisdom, Docta Ignorantia: which should be made the basis of a new and negative theology to take the place of the false and misleading speculations of the current or positive theology.

While reason often arrives at divergent or contradictory conclusions, intellect attains to the intuition of the Divine Unity. In God, all contradictories are merged and coincide. Nicholas used analogies from mathematics, and compared this coincidence of contradictories with a curve that becomes a straight line by lessening the curvature indefinitely, or with the hypotenuse which coincides with the other two sides of a triangle when the angle between the latter is increased indefinitely. God, according to Nicholas' ontological argument, is infinitely great, and therefore, since God could not be any less than He is; excluding from His being everything opposed to Himself, God is the sole being; He is the complicatio omnium; in Him are all the manifold beings of the universe reduced to unity. Man can have positive knowledge of no essence whatsoever, because he can have no positive knowledge of God, Who contains them all.

Nicholas borrowed the theory, from German mysticism, which influenced his philosophy profoundly, that God is a sort of consubstantial substratum; that the universe contains explicitly what God contains implicitly; or, things are only divine theophanies.

Since Nicholas used Eriugena's terminology and sympathized with David of Dinant, an Amalrician, Wulf implied that Nicholas was a pantheist, and concluded that Nicholas, like Eckhart, preserved his orthodoxy at the expense of his logic, and that he deliberately repressed the natural conclusions from his premisses.

Nicholas taught about the created universe, that God created matter, or being, in potency, but that matter cannot exist as such, that it needed a substantial form. And when he had described God as the form of all things, actus omnium, he added, in order to avoid pantheism, that God is in the creature only as the prototype of the creature, not as identical with its reality. Man is the centre of creation and the most perfect image of God, for he embodies the universe in a manner within himself, by the mental representation he forms of it; as God also sums up in Himself the reality of all created things.

Nicholas' psychology is scholastic: the soul, the substantial form of the body, is spiritual and immortal. Our abstract cognitions have their origin in sense knowledge; but above reason there is intellect, which puts us into contact with the supreme Truth. In this exalted vision of things, wherein all the contradictions of human science are resolved, the union of the soul with God is so intimate that it is a sort of deification.

Jacques Lefèvre d'Étaples spread Nicholas' philosophy in France and edited his works, together with the works of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite. Lefèvre's followers were known as Fabrists. One of Lefèvre's disciples, Charles de Bovelles, is the author of a number of works which clearly reveal, in addition to original thought, the influence of Nicholas. Bovelles professed the purest theosophy, according to Wulf.

From History of philosophy (1888)

Prevailing subject of philosophical inquiry during the third period of Greek philosophy was the divine nature and the relation of the world and man to it – in other words, the predominance of theosophy – but not excluding physics, ethics, and logic.

While the form of philosophy during the second period was characterized by the idea of definition as a tool of inquiry, the form of philosophy during the third period was characterized by the idea of mystical absorption in the Absolute.

In the third period, the Hellenic mode of thought was blended with the Oriental and the representatives of the philosophy, which become theosophy, were either Jews under Hellenic influence, Egyptians and other Orientals, or men Hellenic in race who were deeply impregnated with Orientalism.

Although scientific discipline was gradually covering a greater range of experiences, the period is distinguished as "the downfall of Greek philosophy" by the loss of the sense of the systematic order essential to ancient Greek philosophy and by decadence. Greek and Roman philosophy, during the third period of ancient Greek philosophy, looked outside of the mind for the source of certitude and declined into syncretism and fanaticism.

Hegel distinguished the second period philosophical science becomes split up into particular systems; each system is a theory of the universe founded entirely on a one-sided principle, a partial truth being carried to the extreme in opposition to its complementary truth and so expanded into a totality in itself (systems of Stoicism and Epicureanism, of whose dogmatism Skepticism constitutes the negative face).

Hegel distinguished the third period as the affirmative period, in which what was previously opposed became harmoniously united in a divine ideal world.

For Zeller, all independent speculation during the third period was about the truth of subjective thought and the manner of life calculated to bring subjective satisfaction; thought withdrawn from objective world into itself. Even Neoplatonism, which sought transcendent theosophy, was not an exception to the subjective character of the third period, in Zeller's opinion, since its constant and all-controlling concern is the inward satisfaction of the subject.

The incarnation of the Logos in Christ forms the fundamental speculative doctrine by which Christianity separated from Alexandrian theosophy.

The principles of Christianity, previous to their formal enunciation they had been foreshadowed and the ground had been prepared for them partly in the general principles of Judaism, and partly and more particularly in connection with the attempt among the Jews to revive the ancient gift of prophecy and in the religions philosophy of the Alexandrian Jews, which arose through the contact of Judaism with Hellenism.

The essential object of the allegorical interpretation of Scripture and of theosophy was to spiritualize the ideas contained in the Old Testament. The sensible manifestations of God were interpreted as manifestations of a divine power distinct from God and operating in the world; in other words, the power of God, which dwells in the world, is distinguished from God in his absolute existence; and the Wisdom of God is distinguished from God himself.

Philo terms God the cause of the world, by whom it had its origin, distinguishing from him the Logos, through whom he formed it, and the four elements which constitute it materially; in like manner, the Son of God is represented as he through whom God creates, and all things that were created were created through the Logos.

But the Alexandrian theosophy did not admit the possibility of the incarnation of the divine Logos, nor could it admit this, since, according to it, matter was impure, and the descent of the soul into a mortal body was the penalty of moral delinquency on the part of the former. For the adherents of this theosophy, therefore, the identification of the Messiah with the divine Logos was impossible.

These radical differences indicate that the Alexandrian philosophy belongs to the ante-Christian period, and it can only be regarded as one of the stepping-stones, although it must at the same time be received as the last and nearest stepping-stone, to Christianity.

The allegorical interpretation of the Holy Scriptures by the Jews who were educated at Alexandria was in substance gnosis.

The idea that Judaism was a preparation for Christianity was expressed in the doctrine of Cerinthus — who lived in Asia Minor c. 115 CE, and was perhaps educated at Alexandria — in the form of a distinction between the God worshiped by the Jews and who created tlie world, and the supreme and true God. The latter, according to Cerinthus, caused the Aeon Christ to descend on Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph and Mary, at his baptism; this Aeon Christ proclaimed through Jesus the true God, but left Jesus before his death and had no part in his passion. By this it is scarcely probable that we are to understand that, the doctrines of the Church having already been brought to a relatively advanced stage of development, a regressive Judaizing movement was begun in the doctrine of Cerinthus, but simply that in his doctrine vestiges were visible of the original intimate union of Christianity with Judaism; the theosophy of Cerinthus shows throughout a very decided tendency to pass over all the barriers of Judaism. Ceriuthus must have been influenced in his doctrine by the Pauline doctrine of the law as a preparation for Christianity, and by such ideas as prevail in the Epistle to the Hebrews. Employing the Philonic distinction between God and His world-creating power, he went on to define the difference between Judaism and Christianity as arising from the non-identity of the divine beings worshiped by each.

From History of philosophy (1896)

Theosophy is a mixture of new ideas and old superstitions, that are partially Neoplatonic and represent a transitional convergence between theology and philosophy, before the divergence from philosophy into science.

It rests upon an inner revelation instead of sensible experience and reasoning.

It is a study of nature in order to discover traces of the mysterious Being which nature hides as well as reveals. The object of theosophy is a search for secret doctrines. Hence the enthusiasm which the teachings of the Jewish Cabala and of Neoplatonism arouse in Giovanni Francesco Pico della Mirandola, who compares them with those of the Bible, and in Johann Reuchlin, who exalts them in his De verbo mirifico and his De Arte Cabbalistica?

Böhme, like Francis Bacon and Bruno, was an exponent of this transition period. Each of these three dealt with the transition in a different way; Bacon through empiricism, Bruno through poetic pantheism, and Böhme through theosophic mysticism.

According to Alfred Weber, the desire of theosophy is not to understand nature, but is the desire to control nature. Theosophy claims to attain a knowledge of things by means of secret doctrines, and, according to Weber, it boasts of being able to control them by secret arts, by formulas and mysterious practices. That is to say, it necessarily becomes magic or theurgy. Magic is based upon the Neoplatonic principle that the world is a hierarchy of divine forces, a system of agencies forming an ascending and descending scale, in which the higher agencies command and the lower ones obey. Hence, in order to govern nature and to change it according to his wishes, the theosophist must be united with the higher forces on which the sublunary sphere depends; and since, according to Aristotle and Ptolemy, the heavenly powers or the sidereal agencies are such higher forces, astrology plays an important part in theosophy. This union of Platonism, or rather Pythagoreanism, with theurgy and magic is exemplified in Reuchlin's disciple, Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, who wrote against scholastic dogmatism; in Gerolamo Cardano, whose teachings were a mixture of astrological superstitions and anti-Christian liberal ideas; in Paracelsus, who shared the belief of Pico, Reuchlin, and Agrippa in the inner light "that is much superior to bestial reason," and their love for the Cabala, whose doctrines his system identifies with those of Christianity. From the Adam Kadmon, who is Christ, spring, according to Paracelsus, the soul of the world and the many spirits governed by it, and whoever, through absolute obedience to the divine will, is united with the Adam Kadmon and with the heavenly intelligences, is the best physician, and possesses the universal panacea — the philosopher's stone. With a great deal of superstition and a little charlatanism, the precursors of the scientific revolution combined a love of nature and a profound aversion to Scholasticism.

While the Protestant Reformation produced no immediate change in philosophy, according to Weber, and universities continued to teach traditional Peripateticism in a form adapted by Philipp Melanchthon to Protestant dogma, there was 16th and 17th century anti-scholastic opposition. For example, the opposition of Reuchlin, Agrippa, and Paracelsus was continued by Valentine Weigel, Jan Baptist van Helmont, Franciscus Mercurius van Helmont, Robert Fludd, who based his cosmology on biblical cosmology, Jan Ámos Komenský, whose trinity of matter, light, and spirit recalls Plotinus' three stages of being and recalls the three Peripatetic principles of matter, motion, and action; finally, by Böhme the theosophist.

From History of intellectual development on the lines of modern evolution (1902)

Modern Theosophy is a modern mixture of Hinduism and Buddhism.

It is the sole representative in the Western World of a type and mode of thought which culminated in the East about two millenia ago, and "has remained stagnant" since it was dissociated from European influences.

British philosopher John Beattie Crozier, after scrutinizing Sinnett's Esoteric Buddhism, commented on two characteristics of modern Theosophy: its method, and its doctrine of the planetary chain. The method Theosophy used, according to Crozier, to arrive at knowledge about the world is the method of clairvoyance, hypnosis, and mediumship, in other words, mentalism. Crozier observed that the Mahatmas, in presenting their system to the world, have substituted for the genuine results of their method, totally different and illegitimate ones which "were not necessarily the expression of real facts at all," as if they were one and the same thing.

Crozier noted that the one indispensable condition for their success is, that the things they reveal while in the trance shall be previously known to some living mind or minds with whom the medium is able to talk to. There is no increase of knowledge but only its transfer or exchange. The contents of one mind are appropriated by another, and the sum-total of knowledge in the world remains the same as before. The Mahatmas object is the same as that of the medium, that is, to pass into a trance; their methods, too, are the same, Crozier discerned that since their object and their method are the same, there is no reason, why their powers should differ in kind from those of other mediums. And yet, they have assumed that because they can read facts that were known to other minds, they could equally read facts that were altogether unknown. Crozier pointed out the distinction between the two is that one claims no new knowledge, while the other claims the virtual assumption of all knowledge. Crozier also pointed out that the belief in the Mahatmas rests not on any personal experience which the disciple himself had of these powers, but on the false assumption that they are really and logically analogous with those other powers of mentalism which the disciple had experienced.

Crozier believed that if extraordinary methods of mentalism, were to supersede the ordinary methods of science – observation, experiment, induction, and verification – the effect would be degeneration into superstition.

Crozier concluded that arguments for the two characteristics contain informal fallacies that fail to adequately support their proposed conclusions.

The planetary chain is constructed as a mere duplicate of the varieties of life; this is what Crozier called a false explanation of the world since it does not show how and why a life-principle on its way round the other globes of the planetary chain, developed or evolved before it reached the Earth. Further evidence, according to Crozier, that the planetary chain is only a product of imagination, is that the relations which subsist between these different planes, principles, or forces, and in which alone true knowledge consists, is absent from the system of the planetary chain. The truth is, according to Crozier, that these planes or principles of being have no real independent existence in fact, but only in relation to each other, and only exist as aids to the processes of thought. The Mahatmas, instead of structuring these abstract principles into a system of true knowledge by bonds of relation, have merely arranged them into the planetary chain without interconnection; the consequence is that the Mahatmas cannot, from a lack of insight into the relations of these planes, give us true knowledge. Theosophy with all its pretensions, according to Crozier, has done nothing for the progress or civilization of the world since it ignores true knowledge which consists of relations.

From Physical realism (1888)

Thomas Case wrote that David Hume was particularly attracted by George Berkeley's philosophy; for instance, his theory of general ideas, and his theory of primary and secondary qualities. Berkeley's hypothesis, in A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge (PHK), of the inactivity of ideas, anticipated Hume's philosophical skepticism about power in causation; while, in the An essay towards a New Theory of Vision (NTV), the hypothesis that Berkeley's hypothesis, in PHK, of the inactivity of ideas, anticipated Hume's skepticism about power in causation; while, in NTV, the hypothesis that visible ideas suggest tangible ideas, without any inference of an external object common to touch and vision, gave the first hint for Hume's substitution of association for reasoning. "Hume's skepticism is the dark shadow of Berkeley's theosophy, giving a logical warning—if no matter, then no spirit, and no God. Hume had no suspicion that Berkeley's so-called principles were hypotheses, any more than modern idealists have. Hence Hume says of Berkeley's arguments that 'they admit of no answer, and produce no conviction'."

From The cyclopaedia of fraternities (1907)

The leading doctrines studied in the Theosophical Society are: the unity of existence; the three Logoi; the nature of the universe and of man, as macrocosm and microcosm, evolving in a sevenfold order; the One Self as the root of Being, its infoldment in matter and the unfoldment of its powers therein; the inherent divinity in man, his constitution and powers; his evolution by reincarnation, treading in turn the physical, astral, and mental worlds, time after time, under the law of causation, or karma, until perfection is gained; the quickening of evolution by the study and practice of the science of the soul; the present existence of men who have attained perfection, and who remain on earth to help onward the evolution of their less advanced brethren; the presence of such men in all ages, as custodians of a body of knowledge respecting God, the universe, man, and their relations to each other, leading to a knowledge of the Self, the divine wisdom; the existence and continual activity of Intelligences – spiritual and others – engaged in carrying on and directing all the processes of nature, with whom man can come into contact by virtue of the spiritual intelligence latent within himself. It is asserted that these doctrines are common to all religions, and that where any of them have become overlaid by efflux of time, it is necessary, in order to preserve the religion, that they should be restored. Their presence in the various religions can be proven by the common language of symbolism, in which they are expressed, the leading symbols of great religions being identical. The study of symbolism is carefully pursued in the Branches of the Society.

The Eastern School, or Esoteric Section, is the oath bound initiation group within the Theosophical Society. The Esoteric Section, or Eastern School, is a secret society. The Eastern School members follow a regular course of study and practice, designed to prepare them, according to Besant, for "admission into successive stages of the path which leads up to definite discipleship under one of the great Masters, or Adepts, who are the custodians of the divine wisdom."

From Immanuel Kant's Critique of pure reason (1881)

Ludwig Noiré points out that René Descartes' substance dualism, between consciousness and matter, "produced a great advantage" because matter was "unspiritualised" and governed only by classical mechanics. "For although Aristotle had so defined matter as to represent it in its fundamental nature as something purely passive, as materia prima, nevertheless" Aristotle "had introduced by a back door the entelechies, the potential powers or forms, and recognised in them the true essence of things, and thus invested them with substantiality. Descartes disrupted this dichotomy of potentiality and actuality, "by showing that these very forms are the unreal, the illusive, the purely phenomenal, and that in order to arrive at the true essence of things the whole outer world must be conceived as one mechanical problem, to be solved by mathematics only. The different qualities must therefore in the end be reducible to one, in which all depends on a more or less, [...] on quantitative distinctions. Here we perceive clearly the connection between Descartes and", the important distinction established by John Locke, in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, between primary and secondary qualities. The mechanistic materialism of Democritus' atomism and Greek mathematics of Pythagorean sacred geometry which were separate in ancient times, were combined in Descartes' mind, and the Aristotelian concept of matter was "enclosed within clear and definite limits, excluding all heterogeneous elements." Although Descartes did not differentiate between organic and inorganic types of being, he perceived that the physical world, "must be conceived as a thoroughly homogeneous substance, obeying mechanical laws only, and to be explained in all its modifications by these laws." While the early modern 17th century beliefs, wrote Noiré, included "mystic and theosophic tendencies, when spirits of all kinds, vital and animal, having their seats in different parts of the body, sympathies and antipathies, good and evil demons, influences of the stars, and similar fancies were running riot (all this being supported even by Bacon in submission to the general belief)," 17th-century philosophy beginning with Cartesian doubt contributed to the historically development of natural science from natural philosophy, and the true scientific method which, for centuries, led to new knowledge about nature.

From The philosophical system of Antonio Rosmini-Serbati (1882)

For Antonio Rosmini-Serbati (1797 – 1855), religion was not part of philosophy; but reason included both absolute knowing, which Rosmini attributed only to God, and religion.

Rosmini distinguished between regressive philosophy, which, "by way of reflection, conducts the mind to find the principle from which the science of being is derived; progressive philosophy, or Theosophy, which is that same science of being, derived from its principle; and mediate philosophy, which furnishes the conditions, formal (Logic) as well as material (Psychology), of the passage of the mind from regressive philosophy (Ideology) to progressive philosophy (Theosophy)". Schelling made the same distinction between regressive and progressive philosophy.

Theosophy is the theory of being: "being both as abstract and universal, and as, in its act, complete and absolute."

For Rosmini, theosophy contained three disciplines: cosmology, natural theology, and ontology, which are not complete separately.

Philosophy proceeds from the certainty that things seem to the certainty that they are; in other words, from subjective persuasion to objective conviction.

From other sources

The peculiar note of the last period of ancient Greek philosophy was theosophy, a mysticism that sometimes degenerated into superstition. It was during this period that Greece and the East met and were fused in Alexandria, Imperial Roman Egypt; that Philo (c. 25 BCE – c. 50 CE), a Middle Platonist Hellenistic Jew, made his attempt to syncretize Judaism with Hellenism; that Apollonius of Tyana (c. 15 – c. 100 CE) combined the working of miracles with Neopythagoreanism; that Plotinus (c. 204 – 266 CE) transformed the Platonic doctrine, and preached the return to God by means of ecstasy. Science was more and more confused with mythology. "The term Philosophy lost all exact meaning." A Linus or an Orpheus were then considered to be the fathers of philosophy. Their apocryphal poems were in their vague mysticism supposed to contain all wisdom. Consecrations, theurgical superstitions, the hallucinations of ecstasy, all announced the end of ancient Greek philosophy.

Theosophy is similar to mysticism but theosophy is distinguished from mysticism in that it is mostly about dogmatic details of esoteric cosmology and subordinates experience.

Neoplatonism was antiquities last attempt at a philosophy which should resolve the dualism between the subjective and the objective.

The common characteristic of all the Neoplatonists is a tendency to mysticism, theosophy, and theurgy. The majority of them gave themselves up to magic and sorcery, and the most distinguished boasted that they were the subjects of divine inspiration and illumination, able to look into the future, and to work miracles. They professed to be hierophants as much as philosophers, and exhibited an unmistakable desire to establish a pagan copy of Christianity, which should be at the same time a philosophy and a universal religion.

William James called "theosophy and mysticism" his "fool's paradise" in 1878.

Socialist philosopher Joseph Dietzgen wrote that by recognizing that there is in a whole something of a higher life to which the individual parts are subordinated, there is no necessity of going back to religion and mysticism. But, Dietzgen wrote, even critical thinking intelligent people cannot do away with all philosophic mysticism; they take refuge either in a philosophy of the unconscious, which attributes will and conception to unconscious things, or to spiritualism and theosophy.

Some of Blavatsky's statements are controversial, for example, she wrote that "[t]he true esoteric view about 'Satan'," was published in Anna Kingsford and Edward Maitland's book The Perfect Way. "It is 'Satan who is the God of our planet and the only God', and this without any metaphorical allusion to its wickedness and depravity," wrote Blavatsky. "For he is one with the Logos." He is whom "every dogmatic religion, preeminently the Christian, points out as [...] the enemy of God, [... but is] in reality, the highest divine Spirit – Occult Wisdom on Earth. [...] Thus, the Latin Church [... and] the Protestant Church [... both] are fighting against divine Truth, when repudiating and slandering the Dragon of Esoteric Divine Wisdom. Whenever they anathematize the Gnostic Solar Chnouphis, the Agathodaemon Christos, or the Theosophical Serpent of Eternity, or even the Serpent of Genesis."

Many mystics at various periods of history have called themselves theosophists. The Neoplatonists of the Alexandrian school were theosophists; the Alchemists and Kabbalists during the medieval ages were likewise so called, also the Martinists, the Quietists, and other kinds of mystics, whether acting; independently or incorporated in a brotherhood or society. All real lovers of divine Wisdom and Truth had, and have, a right to the name, rather than those who, appropriating the qualification, live lives or perform actions opposed to the principles of Theosophy. Kenneth R. H. Mackenzie described the Theosophists of the past centuries as "entirely speculative, and founding no schools, have still exercised a silent influence upon philosophy; and, no doubt, when the time arrives, many ideas thus silently propounded may yet give new directions to human thought. One of the ways in which these doctrines have obtained not only authority, but power, has been among certain enthusiasts in the higher degrees of Freemasonry. This power has, however, to a great degree died with the founders, and modern Freemasonry contains few traces of theosophic influence."According to Mackenzie, the ideas of Emanuel Swedenborg, Antoine-Joseph Pernety, Paschalis, Louis Claude de Saint-Martin, Jean Étienne Marconis de Nègre, Jean-Marie Ragon, Bénédict Chastanier, and other theosophists from the 16th through the 18th century had "little direct influence on society." The difference between 19th century theosophy in contrast to the past, according to Blavatsky and Mead, is that 19th century theosophy introduced people to desire philosophy in preference for dogmatic faith.

atheistic,

John Murdoch, in Theosophy Unveiled, stated that theosophy comes from theos God and sophos wise. He quoted Olcott's definition of theosophia as "divine wisdom" where Olcott clarifies that it "was not meant to convey the crude idea of a wisdom similar to that ascribed to any personal god, for the concept of those who coined the term was of an all pervading eternal Principle in Nature, with which the interior intuitive faculty in man was akin."

In 1888, Theosophy was presented, in Lucifer, as a human approximation of divine knowledge that was accumulated and checked by personal observation and experience of occultism or esoteric science; "the only exact science." Theosophy claims "a universal omniscience," rejects materialism, inductive methods, and the methods of science, but includes Spiritualism "among its sciences, based on knowledge and the experience of countless ages." It asserts that "the phenomena of Spiritualism are facts" and "more true and philosophical than any church dogma." It asserts that it is not a religion but religion itself; "not a particular set of dogmas and beliefs" but that which unites "all things in the entire Universe into one grand whole." Theosophy claims to be both religion and science, and "the essence of both." The "practical work" of Theosophy as the alembic, in alchemical terminology, "transmutes [...] every ritualistic and dogmatic creed [...] into [...] fact and truth, and thus truly produces a universal panacea for the ills of mankind."

Theosophy is practically another name for speculative mysticism.

Theosophy has also come to signify the tenets and teachings of the founders of the Theosophical Society.

The study of comparative religion emerged into a dogmatically fixed system of belief.

"It is the same spiritualism," wrote Blavatsky to Alexandr Aksakov in 1875, "but under another name."

Santayana (1905)

George Santayana wrote in The Life of Reason that superstition justifies itself by fable. Since reason seldom discredits magic altogether, because of a lack of resources and observations, reasonable men assimilate magic into what is already mastered and familiar to make as intelligible as possible. Magic is thus reduced to a sort of system, regulated by principles of its own and naturalised in science. It usually takes one of two forms. Santayana wrote that "when the miracle is interpreted dramatically, by analogy to human life, we have mythology; when it is interpreted rationalistically, by analogy to current logic or natural science, we have metaphysics or theosophy." The metaphysical sort of superstition had never taken deep root in the western world.

Carruth (1904)

According to American poet William Herbert Carruth, Friedrich Schiller's religion was "the longing and the striving for harmony with the spirit and tendency of the universe" – like in his essay Theosophie des Julius. Carruth wrote that a "theosophy is a philosophy of the universe, and it is not yet religion. It may be a very important basis of religion, or again it may merely be abstracted from religion, but it is not itself religion. As Matthew Arnold defined religion to be 'morality touched with emotion,' so from another side of the same subject, one may define religion as theosophy touched with emotion." Carruth found Schiller's "philosophical speculations touched with emotion" in his poems, which according to Carruth makes the poems religious.

From Superstition in medicine (1908)

The theosophical and medical speculation of Essenes and Therapeutae was not to obtain knowledge of the body from observation, on which physicians relied, according to Hugo Magnus, but to obtain that knowledge from interpretation of sacred scriptures. They also believed in the existence of beings who, while they were lower than God, at the same time were higher than man, they had the rarest resources to draw upon for the practise of their feats of miraculous medicine.

During the 2st century CE, Neopythagorism combined monotheism with the ancient cult of subordinate gods and demons. Neopythagorism displaced the physico-mechanical concept of corporeal phenomena by various theosophic ideas, and used metaphysical therapeutic methods. The Neopythagoreans believed that the practise of medicine was indispensable to the true philosopher, and that every one, therefore, provided he had attained the required fitness by his interaction with demons, was able to act as a physician.

While there ideas paved the way for "the most abominable abuse and superstitions", and, Neopythagoreans offered as the art of healing to the patients was nothing but a mixture of mysterious customs, conjurations, and witchcraft; on the other hand, Neopythagoreans urged people to lead pure and temperate lives. The chief representative of Neopythagorism was Apollonius of Tyana, in Cappadocia. He is considered by some, including Magnus, "as a magician engaged, like a common charlatan, in conjuring tricks."

According to Magnus a sample of "his medical activity is sufficient to characterize Apollonius as a charlatan of the most contemptible class," and he considered it "perfectly absurd" to have a "high estimate of a trickster."

These theosophic vagaries reached their climax in 3nd century CE Neoplatonism founded by Alexandrian Ammonius Saccas, and elaborated by Plotinus. Neoplatonism stood in direct opposition to the physico-mechanical concept of disease; it explained sickness from a theistic standpoint, and, as a logical consequence, rejected the treatment of disease by professional physicians.

This theistic concept of disease was based on the assumption that the universe is filled with demons, spirits which, although essentially superior to man, are inferior to God. Such demons were supposed to be the spiritus rector of all terrestrial occurrences, and all evil events were attributed to them.

As the demons played havoc with the condition of the human body, protection against them could not be expected from a professional physician, but only from someone well versed in all their tricks and devices, and, therefore, alone able to punish them thoroughly for their mischievous behavior. This taming of the demon could be accomplished in various ways. Porphyry enumerated three methods of gaining an influence over the host of demons:

1. Theosophy, the principal method, attempted to obtain favor – to restore health to incurable patients, and even to raise the dead – by attaining the intimate union with God. Prayer, abstraction of all thought from things earthly, and absorption in God were supposed to be the means of participation in certain divine powers.However, the acquisition of such extraordinary powers demanded certain qualifications of character such as vegetarianism and celibacy.
2. Theurgy, the second method, attempted to counteract the evil influence of demons by prayer and offerings to ward off disease or other misfortune.
3. Goetia, the third method, attempted to exorcise the evil demons by evocations and incantations.

They attempted to obtain directly from the demons such magic words as were endowed with curative power.

Neoplatonists preferred banishing disease by means of various kinds of magic formulae to all other specially medical methods of treatment. Plotinus was said to possess his own demon, and with its aid he performed other wonders, such as prophesying. Porphyry claimed even that the demons personally taught him to expel those pathogenic demons.

From The open court (1928)

"The first 'Theosophical Society' in the world, bearing that name, was formed in London in 1783, eleven years after the death of Swedenborg. Its leading principles were derived from the above mentioned theosophical works of his."

Theosophists "differ from the mystics who have been styled Theopathetic, whose object is passively to receive the supposed communication of the Divinity and expatiate on the results."

"Whatever significance we may attach to the above definitions they seem to indicate that the deniarkation line between Theosophy and Mysticism is very thin and is to be found rather in the difference of methods than of results, which latter in both cases are the same, though in the former they are arrived at by means of spon- taneous activity and efforts while in the latter a passive expectance serves the same purpose."

Lundberg wrote that while Swedenborg "seems to be" Pantheistic. "Swedenborg stands on a strictly theistic vantage-ground and sharply distinguishes between God and the created world. And right here the distinction between this herald of Occidental Theosophy and for instance Hegel, or Buddhism or Oriental Occultism or other Pantheistic systems appears in full light, for he evades the trap, in which so many thinkers have fallen at this crossroad, by an original and keen reasoning."

"the oriental doctrine of reincarnation has no place in this system of Occidental Theosophy. According to Swedenborg man's spirit never returns"

"thus leaving no room for a pantheistic conception of the universe." According to Swedenborg God in no way can be confounded with the universe, which is his creation. Man also is created by God as an individual and will remain such to all eternity. No evolution or growth can ever transform a man into a god. If this were possible then man sooner or later, during his course of evolution, would reach a stage where his individuality was lost, and he would, as it were, merge into 'the all' (universe) and disappear as a drop of rain in the ocean, which also, according to Oriental Theosophy, is his final destiny. Swedenborg therefore is a Theistic Theosophist. This much so far as Swedenborg's relation to Oriental Theosophy is concerned."

Psychology of modern Theosophy

Jastrow (1900)

Psychologist Joseph Jastrow wrote that the concepts of science and of truth, of the nature of logic and of evidence, are not as universally held as assumed. Almost every fundamental and indisputable tenet of science is regarded as erroneous by some would be reformer.

General abuse of logic, delusive analogy, and baseless assumptions, which Jastrow characterized as insane or crank productions, are readily found in occultism literature.

This form of occultism reaches its fullest and purest expression in Oriental wisdom-religions. Jastrow wrote that when perspectives of an ancient foreign civilization's world view are forcibly transplanted into the context of modernity, those perspectives, outside that world view, conflict with the truth of accumulated knowledge and their reference is profoundly altered. Those obsolete perspectives become associated with dubious practices and come within the circle of the modern occult. According to Jastrow, Theosophy is that type of modern occult movement.

Blavatsky was reported to have asked the rhetorical question, "What is one to do, when in order to rule men it is necessary to deceive them;" when their very stupidity invites trickery, "for almost invariably the more simple, the more silly, and the more gross the phenomena, the more likely it is to succeed?"

The psychological problem of modern Theosophy, according to Joseph Jastrow is "how such marvelous pretensions come to be believed, by what influences conviction is formed," and how are "doctrines spread."

Bentley (1901)

Popular belief subsists on tradition or demonstration. Psychologist Isaac Madison Bentley, reviewing Jastrow (1900), wrote that, for centuries, science and philosophy have protested against a "substitution of emotion, prejudice, and tradition, for logic, open-mindedness, and truth;" in other words, "the ability," as Jastrow wrote, "to distinguish between the plausible and the true, the firmness to support principle in the face of paradox and seeming non-conformity, to think clearly and consistently in the absence of the practical reproof of nature." "It is only as the result of a prolonged and conscientious training, aided by an extensive experience, and by a knowledge of the historical experience," wrote Jastrow, "that the inherent rational tendencies develop into established logical habits and principles of belief." Jastrow deals with the occult as a psychological phenomenon, rather than as a serious claimant for distinction in the ranks of knowledge.

The occult is characterized by Jastrow as a "mixed aggregate" of aberrant beliefs which show a "marked divergence ... from the recognized standards and achievements of human thought"; divergence in "attitude, and logic, and general perspective." It may show itself as an actual distortion of facts and truths, or simply as an "unconscious susceptibility for the unusual and eccentric, combined with an instability of conviction regarding established beliefs."

Occult doctrines are "attracted to such themes as the ultimate nature of mental action, the conception of life and death, the effect of cosmic conditions upon human events and endowment, the delineation of character, the nature and treatment of disease; or indeed to any of the larger or smaller realms of knowledge that combine with a strong human, and at times a practical, interest, a considerable complexity of basal principles, and general relations."

The motives to occultism are operative at the present time in theosophy, spiritualism, phrenology, palmistry, Christian science, clairvoyance, metaphysical healing, and other like cults. None of these cults are new; they are all revisions of older doctrines; all remnants of the time when "pseudo-science flourished in the absence of true knowledge; and imaginative speculation and unfounded belief held the office intended for inductive reason." The type of individual that is attracted by the occult is skilfully drawn. "It is a weak though comprehensible nature," wrote Jastrow, "that becomes bewildered in the presence of a few experiences that seem homeless among the generous provisions of modern science, and runs off panic-stricken to find shelter in a system that satisfies a narrow personal craving at the sacrifice of broadly established principles, nurtured and grown strong in the hardy and beneficent atmosphere of science." The believer in the occult possesses an "intensely personal temperament," one "that finds a paramount significance in the personal interpretation of experience, ... that inwardly cherishes an intense belief in the personal purport of the order of events, and earnestly seeks for a precise explanation of individual happenings."

Belief in the occult is fostered by the argument from analogy. A mystery is named by an analogy and, once named, the mystery is supposed to be explained. "The safest and most efficient antidote to the spread of the pernicious tendencies inherent in the occult lies in the cultivation of a wholesome and whole-souled interest in the genuine and profitable problems of nature and of life, and in the cultivation with it of a steadfast adherence to common sense, that results in a right perspective of the significance and value of things."

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• Zeller, Eduard (1876) [1st ed. pub. in 1856]. Die philosophie der Griechen in ihere geschichtlichen Entwicklung (in German). Vol. 1 (4th ed.). Leipzig: Fues's Verlag (R. Reisland). OCLC 612599691. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• The Theosophist. 3. Madras. May 1882. ISSN 0972-1851. {{cite journal}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
• "[Review of] The Theosophical Society : its objects and creed, its attitude towards christianity and its work in India". The Theosophist. 3 (12). Madras: 315. Sep 1882. ISSN 0972-1851.
• One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain: Columbian cyclopedia. Vol. 29. Buffalo: Garretson, Cox. 1897. pp. [736]–[738]. OCLC 697051140 http://books.google.com/books?id=1ctRAAAAYAAJ&pg=PT749. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)