What Is Theosophy? History, Teachings and Influence
What is Theosophy? A guide to Christian theosophy, Blavatsky's modern Theosophy, its teachings on karma and the Masters, and its wide cultural influence.
Theosophy, from the Greek theosophia, "divine wisdom", is a name given to two related currents: an older Christian theosophy of visionary writers such as Jacob Boehme, and the modern Theosophy founded by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky and her colleagues in New York in 1875. Modern Theosophy taught that all religions descend from a single ancient wisdom, preserved by hidden adepts, and that human beings evolve spiritually through karma and reincarnation. It became one of the most influential esoteric movements of the modern era.
The Word Theosophia and Its Early History§
The Greek term theosophia combines theos (god) and sophia (wisdom). Late antique Neoplatonists and Christian authors used it loosely for knowledge of divine things, and a compilation of pagan oracles known to scholars as the Tübingen Theosophy shows that the word had a recognisable meaning by around 500 CE. In the Middle Ages it was rare, but it returned in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as a name for a particular kind of religious thinking: intensely visionary, concerned with the inner life of God, the creation of the world and the fall and restoration of humanity, and expressed through symbolism drawn from alchemy and Kabbalah.
Historians of religion, notably Antoine Faivre, distinguish this early modern "theosophical current" from the modern movement that borrowed its name. Both share the conviction that true knowledge of God is not merely rational or doctrinal but arises from inner illumination, and both read nature as a book of divine signs.
Christian Theosophy from Boehme to Saint-Martin§
The great founder of Christian theosophy was the Lutheran shoemaker Jacob Boehme of Görlitz, whose Aurora (written 1612) described the self-birth of God from an unfathomable ground, the Ungrund. Boehme's writings were edited and spread by followers such as Johann Georg Gichtel in the Netherlands, and translated into English in the 1640s and 1650s, where they influenced radical Protestant groups and, later, William Law.
In the eighteenth century the Swabian pietist Friedrich Christoph Oetinger combined Boehme with Kabbalah, while the French philosopher Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin, "the Unknown Philosopher", wove Boehmian ideas into the Masonic and Martinist milieu. Emanuel Swedenborg, though not a Boehmian, is often grouped with these writers because of his visionary accounts of heaven, hell and the doctrine of correspondences. Christian theosophy remained a literary and contemplative tradition rather than an organised church, and it should not be confused with the movement that began in 1875.
Modern Theosophy and the Theosophical Society§
Modern Theosophy began in a New York drawing room. In September 1875, after a lecture on the proportions of Egyptian temples, a group around the Russian émigré Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831–1891), the lawyer and journalist Henry Steel Olcott (1832–1907) and the young lawyer William Quan Judge (1851–1896) resolved to form a society; Olcott gave its inaugural address on 17 November 1875. The founders chose the old word "theosophy" deliberately, signalling a claim to an ancient wisdom deeper than any single creed.
The Society's eventual three objects were to form a nucleus of universal brotherhood without distinction of race, creed, sex, caste or colour; to encourage the comparative study of religion, philosophy and science; and to investigate unexplained laws of nature and the powers latent in humanity. Its motto, adapted from a Sanskrit maxim, was "There is no religion higher than truth." In 1879 Blavatsky and Olcott moved to India, and from 1882 the international headquarters stood at Adyar, near Madras (now Chennai). The institutional story, including the schisms after Blavatsky's death, is told in our guide to the Theosophical Society.
Core Teachings of Blavatsky's Theosophy§
Blavatsky's first major work, Isis Unveiled (1877), attacked both dogmatic theology and materialist science and argued that the magic of antiquity rested on a real but forgotten knowledge. The Secret Doctrine (1888) presented a vast cosmology, framed as a commentary on stanzas from a "Book of Dzyan" that she said she had seen in a hidden library; no such text is known to scholars, and most historians regard the stanzas as her own composition drawing on Hindu, Buddhist, Kabbalistic and Hermetic sources.
The ancient wisdom and the Masters§
Theosophy claims that a single esoteric wisdom underlies all religions and has been guarded by an initiated brotherhood of adepts, the Mahatmas or Masters, among whom Blavatsky named Koot Hoomi and Morya as her teachers. Letters attributed to them, received chiefly by A. P. Sinnett, were later published as The Mahatma Letters (1923).
Cosmic cycles, root races and the seven principles§
The Secret Doctrine describes the universe as unfolding through immense cycles of manifestation and rest. Humanity is said to evolve through a series of "root races", associated with lost continents such as Lemuria and Atlantis. The human being is analysed into seven principles, from the physical body through vital, astral and mental levels to the divine spirit. The root-race scheme was a spiritual rather than biological theory, but it used the racial vocabulary of its time, and historians have noted how later writers turned it toward racial hierarchies that the Society's own first object rejected.
Karma and reincarnation§
Above all, Theosophy popularised in the West the Indian doctrines of karma and rebirth, reinterpreted as a law of moral cause and effect governing the soul's progressive evolution. This reading, more optimistic and evolutionary than its Hindu and Buddhist sources, became the basis of much later Western thought on reincarnation and the afterlife.
Controversy and Criticism§
Theosophy was controversial from the start. Blavatsky's reports of phenomena, including letters said to materialise from the Masters, were investigated by Richard Hodgson for the Society for Psychical Research, whose 1885 report accused her of fraud. Theosophists rejected the findings, and in 1986 the handwriting expert Vernon Harrison published a critique of Hodgson's methods in the Society's own journal; the debate has never been settled to everyone's satisfaction. Critics also accused Blavatsky of plagiarism, and the scholar William Emmette Coleman traced many passages in her books to contemporary works on religion and mythology.
Academic historians today generally approach Theosophy neither as revelation nor as fraud but as a significant religious synthesis of the late nineteenth century: an attempt to reconcile religion with evolutionary science, to answer Victorian materialism and to bring Asian religion into Western conversation.
The Influence of Theosophy on Modern Culture§
Theosophy's influence far exceeded its membership. In Asia, Olcott's Buddhist Catechism (1881) and his work in Ceylon contributed to the Buddhist revival there, and Annie Besant, president of the Society from 1907, became a leading figure in Indian politics and president of the Indian National Congress in 1917. The young Mohandas Gandhi first read the Bhagavad Gita in London with Theosophist friends.
In Europe, Theosophy shaped the abstract painting of Wassily Kandinsky, Piet Mondrian and Hilma af Klint, and the poetry of W. B. Yeats. Its offshoots include Rudolf Steiner's Anthroposophy, Alice Bailey's Arcane School, the "I AM" Activity and other Ascended Master groups, and, through all of these, the New Age movement. Ideas now widespread in popular spirituality, such as subtle bodies, auras, the chakras as a Western system, spiritual evolution and a hidden brotherhood of masters, owe much of their modern form to Theosophical writers.
Frequently asked questions§
Is Theosophy a religion?§
The Theosophical Society has always described itself as non-sectarian and open to members of any faith or none, and it does not require belief in any doctrine. In practice Blavatsky's teachings form a distinctive worldview, and scholars of religion usually classify Theosophy as a new religious movement within Western esotericism.
What is the difference between Christian theosophy and modern Theosophy?§
Christian theosophy is an early modern tradition of visionary Protestant and Catholic writers, especially Jacob Boehme and his followers. Modern Theosophy, often capitalised, refers to the movement founded in 1875, which drew heavily on Hindu and Buddhist ideas and claimed a universal ancient wisdom behind all religions.
What books should I read first on Theosophy?§
Blavatsky's The Key to Theosophy (1889) was written as an introduction in question-and-answer form. For a historical overview, Bruce F. Campbell's Ancient Wisdom Revived and Joscelyn Godwin's The Theosophical Enlightenment are reliable starting points.
Did the Masters really exist?§
Theosophists regard the Mahatmas as real adepts. The historian K. Paul Johnson has argued that they were idealised portraits of real people Blavatsky knew, while many critics consider them inventions. There is no independent historical evidence that confirms their existence as Blavatsky described them.
Sources and further reading§
- Isis Unveiled — Helena P. Blavatsky, 1877
- The Secret Doctrine — Helena P. Blavatsky, 1888
- The Key to Theosophy — Helena P. Blavatsky, 1889
- Old Diary Leaves — Henry Steel Olcott, 1895
- Ancient Wisdom Revived: A History of the Theosophical Movement — Bruce F. Campbell, 1980
- The Theosophical Enlightenment — Joscelyn Godwin, 1994
- Theosophy, Imagination, Tradition: Studies in Western Esotericism — Antoine Faivre, 2000
- The Masters Revealed — K. Paul Johnson, 1994
- Madame Blavatsky's Baboon — Peter Washington, 1993
- Handbook of the Theosophical Current — Olav Hammer and Mikael Rothstein (eds.), 2013