The Canon · No. 092
Theosophy
The Theosophical Society
1875 CE – present · Esoteric / Occult · Living · US, India, Europe
VII. THE MODERN AGE — 1800 – 1945
How many
Perhaps 25,000–30,000 members, down from a peak of about 45,000 in the 1920s. Its indirect influence is enormous and mostly unattributed.
Who began it
Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831–1891), a Russian émigré, with Henry Steel Olcott and William Quan Judge, in New York in 1875.
What it is for
To form a nucleus of the universal brotherhood of humanity, to study comparative religion and philosophy, and to investigate the unexplained laws of nature and the powers latent in the human being. Those three objects are the society's stated constitution.
What it worships
None. Theosophy posits an impersonal absolute and a hierarchy of advanced beings — the Mahatmas or Masters — from whom Blavatsky claimed to receive teaching.
What it holds
There is one ancient wisdom tradition underlying all religions, which each has partially preserved and partially corrupted. Karma and reincarnation, taught to a Western audience decades before most Westerners had heard of Buddhism. Root races and cosmic cycles, an elaborate evolutionary scheme whose racial vocabulary was later selectively appropriated by others and is the most seriously criticised part of the system. Seven planes of existence; the astral body; the etheric double.
What it does
Study and lecture rather than ritual. Meditation. Vegetarianism widely adopted. Local lodges. Blavatsky's reported phenomena — materialised letters from the Masters, apports — were investigated by the Society for Psychical Research, which concluded in 1885 that she was a fraud, a verdict the SPR itself revisited and partially retracted in 1986.
After death
Reincarnation under karmic law across many lives, with periods in the astral and mental planes (kamaloka and devachan) between incarnations, where the person assimilates the last life's experience. The goal is eventual liberation and conscious participation in cosmic evolution. This is essentially an Indian model, restated in Victorian scientific idiom, and it is the channel through which reincarnation entered Western popular belief.
Its texts
Isis Unveiled (1877); The Secret Doctrine (1888); The Key to Theosophy; The Voice of the Silence. Later: Annie Besant and C. W. Leadbeater's extensive output.
Its branches
Theosophical Society Adyar; Theosophical Society Pasadena; United Lodge of Theosophists; Anthroposophy; Alice Bailey's Arcane School.
Of note
Theosophy is the single most important channel by which Indian religious concepts — karma, reincarnation, chakras, auras, gurus, meditation as self-development — entered Western popular culture. Most people using that vocabulary today have never heard of it.
Its timeline
- 1875 CE The Theosophical Society founded in New York.
- 1879, 1882 CE Blavatsky and Olcott move to India; headquarters established at Adyar, Madras.
- 1880 CE Olcott and Blavatsky formally take Buddhist vows in Ceylon; Olcott goes on to write a Buddhist catechism, design the international Buddhist flag and play a substantial role in the Sinhalese Buddhist revival.
- 1885 CE The Hodgson Report for the SPR denounces Blavatsky.
- 1891 CE Blavatsky dies; the society splits in 1895 into Adyar and American branches.
- 1907–1933 CE Annie Besant leads the society and simultaneously becomes a major figure in Indian nationalism, serving as president of the Indian National Congress in 1917.
- 1909–1929 CE Jiddu Krishnamurti is discovered as a boy and groomed as the World Teacher, with the Order of the Star built around him. In 1929 he dissolves it, declaring that truth is a pathless land and that no organisation can lead a person to it. He spends the next sixty years teaching against exactly that kind of authority.
- 1913 CE Rudolf Steiner breaks away to found Anthroposophy.
- 20th c. Theosophical ideas feed into Alice Bailey's writings, the Arcane School, the I AM movement, and from there directly into the New Age movement.
Sources
Not yet checked against named sources. This entry is the house's reading; until it is checked, treat each claim as unverified. Correct it, with a source.