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Spiritualism and Theosophy
The handbills announce me as the President of the Theosophical Society, and you have gathered here to learn what Theosophy is and what are its relations with Spiritualism.
Let me say then, that in the sense given to it by those who first used it, the word means divine wisdom, or the knowledge of divine things. The lexicographers handicap the idea with the suggestion that it meant the knowledge of God, the Deity before their minds being a personal one; but such was not the intention of the early theosophists. Essentially, a theosophical society is one which favours man’s original acquisition of knowledge about the hidden things of the universe, by the education and perfecting of his own latent powers. Theosophy differs as widely from philosophy as it does from theology. It has been truly said that in investigating the divine nature and attributes, philosophy proceeds entirely by the dialectic method, employing as the basis of its investigation the ideas derived from natural reason; theology, still employing the same method, superadds to the principles of natural reason those derived from authority and revelation. Theosophy, on the contrary, professes to exclude all dialectical process, and to derive all its knowledge of God from direct and immediate intuition and contemplation. This Theosophy dates from the highest antiquity of which we have preserved any records, and every original founder of a religion was a seeker after divine wisdom by the theosophic process of self- illumination. Where do we find in our day the facilities for pursuing this glorious study? Where are the training schools that are worthy to be called the successors of those of the Neo-Platonists of Alexandria, the Hierophants of Egypt, the Theodidaktoi of Greece, or—and especially— the Rishis of Aryavarta, noblest of all initiates, if we except the stainless, the illuminated Gautama Buddha?
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Editor's notes
Sources
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London Spiritualist, No. 439, January 21, 1881, pp. 25-8