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Regarding Theosophy

Theosophy is the quite obvious spiritual-intellectual background of this Web site. Etymologically it means God's Wisdom. Webster says it means "knowledge of the Divine Being obtained by spiritual ecstasy, direct intuition, or special individual relations." The Encyclopaedia Britannica further elaborates:

"Theosophy, 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 endeavours to deduce the phenomenal universe from the play of forces within the divine nature itself."

The founder of the modern Theosophical Society, H.P. Blavatsky, defined Theosophia in her Theosophical Glossary as the "substratum and basis of all the world-religions and philosophies, taught and practised by a few elect ever since man became a thinking being."

Blavatsky's major works online can be found at Electronic Editions of Theosophical University Press Publications, where you can read her Isis Unveiled and The Secret Doctrine. A very helpful research tool is the Encyclopedic Theosophical Glossary.

For further study of theosophy the web site Blavatsky Net would be a good starting point. On Alpheus you can find a very fine introduction to Theosophy by Cyril Scott and the the whole question about the existence and work of those exalted beings, called Mahatma's or Masters of Wisdom, who have realised their divine nature. From the same book come Nine Portraits of the Masters by David Anrias.

The founding of the Theosophical Society was only the first act of a still ongoing attempt by the Masters to present the Wisdom Religion in an idiom adapted to the modern world. The Masters and Their Emissaries: From H.P.B. to Guru Ma and Beyond tells the story of Their involvement with a series of messengers and organizations. The pivotal point in the history of the Theosophical Society was the coming and going of the World Teacher through Krishnamurti. A couple of days before K was overshadowed one Master communicated through Leadbeater a message From an Elder Brother, which commemorated 50 years of Theosophy and set the stage for the coming of the World Teacher. How this event of 'the coming' was seen by different theosophists is presented in Krishnamurti and the World Teacher Project: Some Theosophical Perceptions. One of the views not included was J.J. van der Leeuw's Revelation or Realization: The Conflict in Theosophy, which addresses some profound questions in an attempt to bring some clarity to the crisis caused by Krishnamurti.

Another response came from John R. Wilkinson in his article The Theosophical Society in Western History: A Study in Cycles, which places the many ups and downs of the TS in a larger historical perspective. The article is the introduction to a little project called Centennial Efforts and Counter-Efforts of the Millennium, which is an esoteric interpretation of the last millennium of western history and tries to identify the guiding hand of the Masters.

 

 

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