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 deity and a deeper penetration of its essence. It differs from theology (v.), which is rational demonstration based on a revelation of God, in that the knowledge of God in theosophy occurs intuitively through imagination and feeling. Its mental products, even if rich in ideas, are more images than concepts. Theosophical were gnosis (v.), Neoplatonism (v.), and in modern times the speculations of G. Böhme (v.) and E. Swedenborg (v.).
From the 19th century onward, thanks to the development of Indology (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 guise and a scientific veneer without, however, losing its fundamental character as a fantastic intuition of reality.
Its fundamental Blavatsky (v.), a Russian occultist (b. in Ekaterinoslav on 31 July 1831, d. in London on 8 May 1891), who, after a sojourn in India, founded in 1875 in New York, together with Colonel H. S. Olcott, who was its true organizer, the Theosophical Society. Its threefold aim was: 1) to form the nucleus of a Universal Brotherhood of Humanity without distinction of race, creed, sex, caste, or color; 2) to encourage the comparative study of religions, philosophy, and the sciences; 3) to investigate the unexplained laws of nature and the latent powers of man. She was succeeded in the leadership of the Theosophical Society by Annie Besant (b. in London on 19 Oct. 1847, d. in Adyar on 20 Sept. 1933), who emphasized its ethical consequences. The present headquarters of the Theosophical Society is in Adyar (Madras), where, to bear witness to the theosophical universalistic vision, the first stone of four shrines dedicated to the religions of Zoroaster, 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 come down to the present. For the history of the Theosophical Society V. Besant Annie.
In its present constitution, given it by Blavatsky, theosophy, while declaring itself to be non-dogmatic, ends by being a complete system (albeit rejecting every dogmatic construction and considering “truth” as a prize to be attained) of philosophy ranging from epistemology to cosmology and ethics. The instruction concerning these supreme problems of thought and life it claims to have received from the Masters (Mahatmas), whose chain begins in an epoch anterior to that of present-day humanity, and whose doctrines, originating in India, spread to Egypt, Chaldea, and Persia, forming the basis of all religions without identifying with any one of them.
The provenance of theosophical doctrine from the unbroken chain of the Masters distinguishes it from spiritism, which instead receives its light from the consultation of the dead, generally illustrious, through the mediation of mediums who reveal their responses by means of a fairly uniform repertoire of phenomena: talking or moving tables, apparitions, materializations, various apportations, and which is therefore less organic and more haphazard, depending as it does ultimately on the culture and preparation of the mediums, whereas theosophy possesses a beautiful and coherent body of doctrine to which the theosophist adheres with a genuine act of faith, since no study or individual intuition can demonstrate the theosophical vision of cosmic origins or verify the unbroken continuity of the chain of the Masters in the ages prior to the appearance of man on earth.
The elements of the theosophical cosmic vision are as follows: 1) before the existence of things there is the One, inconceivable, beyond the limits of personality; 2) from this One (in esoteric terminology “superconsciousness”) there has proceeded, by its own will, the world producer (in the same terminology “cosmic consciousness”), who in various religions is called Ishvara, Logos, God. This producer has not a single but a triple personality; it is a triad (trimurti), exercising the three functions: Being (Mahadeva), Love (Vishnu), Intelligence (Brahma), by means of which the universe can attain its perfect completeness.
The regions of the cosmos are distributed according to seven planes, which, proceeding from the lowest to the highest, are: 1) the physical plane, or that of matter in its various forms; 2) the astral (stellar) plane of feeling and emotion; 3) the mental plane, or that of thought; 4) the Buddhic plane, or that of bliss; 5) the plane of reintegration, or of pure existence; 6) the plane of paranirvana, beyond Nirvana; 7) the plane of mahaparanirvana, greater than paranirvana: of the last two it is not possible to speak, since they are 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 that invest them, not to any diversity of substance, which remains constant in them. It should not be forgotten that vibration, as a manifestation of life, is the essential factor in evolution, which in turn is a necessary postulate of theosophy; the entire hierarchy of atoms, from those of the physical plane to those of the archetypal ideas, is based on a different dosage of vibratory waves.
Intelligence (Brahma) has arranged the seven planes with their sub-planes; Love (Vishnu) causes their forms to evolve; and Being (Mahadeva) fashions the human monad, which has as its fundamental characteristic self-consciousness and can traverse all seven planes of the cosmos, which are intercommunicating and allow the human monad to reach up to the supreme vision.
Yet to attain this vision a single life is not enough; a series of lives is required, each conditioned by the actions performed in the preceding life (law of Karma: V. KARMAN). Reincarnation (v.) is a fundamental dogma of theosophy.
Only through an indeterminable lapse of time can the human monad pass from its initial animality to reach 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 contains within himself the nature of God; that the fundamental purpose of each is to free the divine within himself. It is therefore a pantheism with a materialistic foundation, new only in that it appeals to science to justify, by means of the concept of evolution, the alleged chain of the teachings of the “Masters.”
The term theosophy is used by Rosmini in the comprehensive sense of the doctrine of being: it therefore embraces ontology (v.), cosmology (v.), natural theology (v.), and from this point of view may be considered as the doctrine of the Supreme Being studied in its totality. The five volumes bearing this title (Teosofia, Turin 1859–74) are incomplete and treat only of ontology (v. ROSMINI).