Theosophy
From Greek theos ('god') and sophia ('wisdom'), a movement founded in New York (1875) by Russian adventuress Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831-1891) as the Theosophical society. It promoted reincarnation and karma, rebirth of esoteric Christianity and a 'revival of the work of Ammonius Saccas', so as to 'reconcile all religiousschools, sects and nations under a common system of ethics, based on eternal verities.' In Isis Unveiled (1877) Blavatsky outlined Theosophy's objectives as: (1) 'to form the nucleus of a universal Brotherhood of Humanity, without distinction of race, creed, sex, caste or color'; (2) 'to promote the study of aryan and other Eastern literatures, religions, and sciences', later expanded to 'the comparative study of ancient and modern religions, philosophies, and sciences'; and (3) 'to investigate unexplained laws of nature and psychical powers of man.'
Pursued from America to India and back to Europe by accusations of fraud, and by now dying of Bright's disease, in The Secret Doctrine (1888) she maintained that the universe and humanity are older and more complex than science or religion realises. Yet fragment of a 'Parent doctrine...have survived geological and political cataclysms to tell the story.' Claiming that her account was dictated to her by discarnate teachers, she tells how, eighteen million years ago, 'Lords of flam' impregnated terrene matter with spark of life. Five 'Root Races' emerged, each perishing in a cataclysm. Each, save the first, arose in the last years of its predecessor. The first race were the Chhatas ('Shadows'): ethereal beings of fire-mist originating near the North Pole in an era before earth had condensed into solid form. Their 'continent', the 'Imperishable Sacred Land', is indestructible. The second "Hyperborean" race inhabited northern Asia and was sufficiently physical to divide into two sexes. The third, 'Lemurian' race, anthropoid telepathic giants, occupied a continent sunk in the Indian Ocean a million year ago. Fourth, the Atlanteans were destroyed by black magic 800,000 years ago, but some survived until 12,000 years ago, when the last part of Atlantis sank. Modern humanity, the 'Aryan', constitutes the fifth Root Race: we came into being about 850,000 years ago, before the first glacial period.
Claiming that pole-shift caused the Ice Ages, Blavatsky drew heavily on the book of Enoch and Egyptian records, commenting on a statement recorded by Herodotus (fifth century BC) that the sun has not always risen where it rises now. Insisting that the sixth Root Race will evolve from the present fifth to inhabit a renewed Lemuria, she prophesied that the seventh will leave Earth to inhabit the planet Mercury.
A century later, Theosophy retains a global following.
updated April7, 1998
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