THEOSOPHY. — From θεός “God” and σοφία “wisdom,” it is the knowledge of God, and in general of divine things, obtained not so much through a discursive process of the intellect as through the ardor of religious feeling that yearns for a mystical union with the divinity and for a deeper penetration of
its essence. theology (v.), which is rational demonstration based on a revelation of God, insofar as the knowledge of God in theosophy occurs intuitively through imagination and feeling. Its mental products, even when rich in ideas, are more images than concepts. gnosis (v.), Neoplatonism (v.), and in modern times the speculations of G. Böhme (v.) and E. Swedenborg (v.).
With the nineteenth century, thanks to the development of Indology (the philosophy of the Upanishads, elements of the Sankhya and Yoga systems, Mahayana Buddhism) and of the physical and natural sciences, theosophy assumed a more objective character and a scientific veneer, without, however, losing its fundamental character as a fantastic intuition of reality.
Its fundamental principles were established by Elena Blavatski (v.), a Russian occultist (born in Jekaterinoslaw on 31 July 1831, died in London on 8 May 1891), who, after a stay in India, founded in New York in 1875, together with Colonel H. S. Olcott, who was its true organizer, the Theosophical Society, with the threefold aim of: 1) forming the nucleus of the Universal Brotherhood of humanity without distinction of race, creed, sex, caste, or color; 2) encouraging the comparative study of religions, philosophy, and the sciences; 3) investigating the unexplained laws of nature and the latent powers of man. She was succeeded in the direction of the Theosophical Society by Annie Besant (born in London on 1 October 1847, died at Adyar on 20 September 1933), who developed its consequences on the ethical plane. The present headquarters of the Theosophical Society are at Adyar (Madras), where, as a testimony to the universalist vision of theosophy, the foundation stone of four sanctuaries dedicated to the religions of Zarathustra, Christianity, Islam, and Judaism was laid in 1925, in addition to those of Hinduism and Buddhism, which theosophy regards as so many vehicles through which theosophical thought has reached the present day. Concerning the history of the Theosophical Society V. BESANT ANNIE.
In its present constitution, given to it by Blavatski, theosophy, although declaring itself non-dogmatic, ends by becoming a complete system (despite rejecting every dogmatic constraint and regarding “truth” as a prize to be attained) of philosophy extending from gnoseology to cosmology and ethics. It claims to have received its teaching concerning these greatest problems of thought and life from the Masters (Mahatmas), whose chain began in an epoch preceding that of present-day humanity, and whose doctrines spread from India into Egypt, Chaldea, and Persia, forming the basis of all religions without being identified with any of them.
The derivation of the theosophical doctrine from the unbroken chain of the Masters distinguishes theosophy from spiritualism, which instead receives its illumination by consulting the dead, generally illustrious ones, through the services of mediums, who reveal their responses by means of a fairly uniform stock of manifestations: talking or self-moving tables, apparitions, materializations, various apportations; and which is consequently less organic and more fluctuating, since it ultimately depends on the culture and preparation of the mediums, whereas theosophy possesses a fully formed body of doctrine, to which the theosophist adheres through a true act of faith, because neither study nor individual intuition can demonstrate the theosophical vision of cosmic origins or verify the uninterrupted continuity of the chain of the Masters in the ages preceding the appearance of man on earth.
The elements of the cosmic vision proper to theosophy are as follows: 1) before the existence of things, there exists the One, inconceivable and beyond the limits of personality; 2) from this One (in esoteric terminology, “superconsciousness”), by its own desire, there derives the producer of the world (in the same terminology, the “center of consciousness”), who in the various religions is called Ishvara, Logos, or God. This producer has not a single but a threefold personality; he is a triad (trimurti), insofar as he exercises the three functions: Being (Mahadeva), Love (Vishnu), and Intelligence (Brahma), through which the Universe can attain its perfect completeness.
The regions of the cosmos are distributed according to seven planes, proceeding from the lowest to the highest: 1) the physical plane, or that of matter in its various forms; 2) the astral (stellar) plane of feeling and emotions; 3) the mental plane, or that of thought; 4) the buddhic plane, or that of bliss; 5) the nirvanic plane, or that of pure existence; 6) the paranirvanic plane, beyond Nirvana; 7) the mahaparanirvanic plane, greater than the paranirvanic: concerning the last two, it is impossible to speak, because they lie beyond human comprehension.
The difference found among the elements or atoms of these seven planes is due to the greater or lesser intensity of the vibrations affecting them, not to any difference in substance, which remains constant in all of them. One must not forget that vibration, a manifestation of life, is the essential factor of evolution, which in turn is the necessary postulate of theosophy; the entire hierarchy of atoms, from those of the physical plane to those of the archetypal ideas, is founded on a different proportioning of vibratory waves.
Intelligence (Brahma) is what arranged the seven planes with their corresponding subplanes; Love (Vishnu) causes their forms to evolve; and Being (Mahadeva) fashions the human monad, whose fundamental characteristic is self-consciousness and which can traverse all seven planes of the cosmos, interconnected with one another and enabling the human monad to attain the supreme vision.
But to attain this vision, a single life is not enough; a series of lives is required, each of which is conditioned by the actions performed during the preceding life (the law of Karma: V. KARMAN). Reincarnation (v.) is a fundamental dogma of theosophy.
Only through an indeterminate span of time can the human monad pass from its initial animality to attain consciousness of its identity with that One from which the Universe proceeds. For it is a fundamental thesis of theosophy that all souls are sparks of the universal Soul; that the life of the world is a manifestation of the life of God; that man bears within himself the nature of God; and that the fundamental purpose of each person is to liberate the divine within. It is therefore a pantheism with a materialistic foundation, new only in that it appeals to science to justify, thanks to the concept of evolution, the supposed chain of the teaching of the “Masters.”
The word theosophy is used by Rosmini in the comprehensive sense of the doctrine of being: ontology (v.), cosmology (v.), theology (v.), and from this point of view it may be considered the doctrine of the supreme Being, studied in its totality. The five volumes bearing this title (Teosofia, Turin 1859–74) are incomplete and deal only with ontology (v. ROSMINI).