Theosophy (history of philosophy)

	Email		Print
	Bookmark		Link

Theosophy (history of philosophy)

Theosophy (Greek

Greek language

Greek is an Indo-European languages native to the southern Balkan peninsula, the language of the Greek people. It forms an independent branch within Indo-European....
: ?e?s?f?a theosophia "knowledge of things divine", literally "god-wisdom"), designates several bodies of ideas since Late Antiquity

Late Antiquity

Late Antiquity is a periodization used by historians to describe the transitional centuries from Classical antiquity to the Middle Ages, in both mainland Europe and the Mediterranean world: generally from the end of the Roman Empire's Crisis of the Third Century to the Islamic conquests and the re-organization of the Byzantine Empire under...
. The Greek term is attested on magical papyri (PMag. Leid. W.6.17: ? ??a? ?e?s?f?a).

term also appears in Neoplatonism

Neoplatonism

Neoplatonism is the modern term for a school of religious and mystical philosophy that took shape in the 3rd century AD, founded by Plotinus and based on the teachings of Plato and earlier Platonism....
. Porphyry

Porphyry (philosopher)

Porphyry of Tyre was a Phoenician Neoplatonism philosopher. He is important in the history of mathematics because of his Life of Pythagoras and his commentary on Euclid's Euclid's Elements, used by Pappus of Alexandria when he wrote his own commentary....
De Abstinentia (4.9) mentions "Greek and Chaldea

Chaldea

Chaldea , "the Chaldees" of the King James Version of the Bible Old Testament, was a Hellenistic designation for a part of Babylonia, mainly around Sumerian Ur, which became an independent kingdom under the Chaldees....
n theosophy", ????????, ?a?da??? ?e?s?f?a. The adjective ?e?s?f?? "wise in divine things" is applied by Iamblichus (De mysteriis 7.1) to the G?µ??s?f?sta?

Gymnosophists

Gymnosophists is the name given by the Ancient Greece to certain ancient Indian philosophy who pursued asceticism to the point of regarding food and clothing as detrimental to purity of thought ....
, i.e.

Discussion

Ask a question about 'Theosophy (history of philosophy)'

Start a new discussion about 'Theosophy (history of philosophy)'

Answer questions from other users

Full Discussion Forum

Encyclopedia

Theosophy (Greek

Greek language

Late Antiquity

Neoplatonism

The term also appears in Neoplatonism

Neoplatonism

Porphyry (philosopher)

Chaldea

Gymnosophists

Yogi

A yogi is a term for a male practitioner of various forms of spiritual practice. In contemporary english language yogin is an alternative rendering for the word yogi....
s or sadhu

Sadhu

In Hinduism, sadhu is a common term for an ascetic or practitioner of yoga who has achieved the first three Hindu Puru?artha: Kama , artha , and even dharma ....
s.

Eastern Christianity

The 6th century

6th century

The 6th century is the period from 501 to 600 in accordance with the Julian calendar in the Christian Era/Common Era. This century marks the end of Classical Antiquity and the beginning of the Dark Ages....
neo-platonist influenced Pseudo-Dionysius

Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite

Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, also known as Pseudo-Denys, is the anonymous theologian and philosopher of the late 5th century to early 6th century whose Corpus Areopagiticum was pseudepigraphy ascribed to Dionysius the Areopagite, the Athenian convert of Paul of Tarsus mentioned in ....
uses the term in Theologia Mystica (1.1)

Baroque period

The word was revived early in the 17th century, as Latin theosophia, to denote the Renaissance occultism

Renaissance magic

Renaissance humanism saw a resurgence in hermeticism and Neo-Platonic varieties of ceremonial magic.The Renaissance and the Industrial Revolution, on the other hand, saw the rise of scientism, in such forms as the substitution of chemistry for alchemy, the dethronement of the Ptolemaic theory of the universe assumed by astrology...
found in Cornelius Agrippa, Paracelsus

Paracelsus

Paracelsus was a Medieval physician, botanist, alchemy, astrologer, and general occultist. Born Phillip von Hohenheim, he later took up the name Philippus Theophrastus Aureolus Bombastus von Hohenheim, and still later took the title Paracelsus, meaning "equal to or greater than Celsus", a Roman encyclopedist, Aulus Cornelius Celsus fro...
, Robert Fludd

Robert Fludd

Robert Fludd, also known as Robertus de Fluctibus was a prominent England Paracelsus physician, astrologer, and mysticism. He was not a member of the Rosicrucians, as often alleged, but he defended their thoughts in the Apologia Compendiaria of 1616....
and others.

The name theosophy was applied specifically to Jacob Böhme, who showed at least stylistic influence by the Renaissance "theosophists": Böhme's writing shows the influence of neoplatonist and alchemical

Alchemy

Alchemy , a part of the Occult Tradition, is both a philosophy and a practice with an aim of achieving ultimate wisdom as well as immortality, involving the improvement of the alchemist as well as the making of several substances described as possessing unusual properties....
writers such as Paracelsus, while remaining firmly within a Christian tradition. Behmenism

Behmenism

Behmenism, also Behemenism and similar, is the English-language designation for a 17th Century European Christianity movement based on the teachings of Germans Mysticism and theosopher Jakob B?hme ....
was also an important source of German Romantic

Romanticism

Romanticism is a complex artistic, literary, and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Western Europe, and gained strength during the Industrial Revolution....
philosophy, influencing Schelling

Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling

Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling , later von Schelling, was a Germany philosopher. Standard histories of philosophy make him the midpoint in the development of German Idealism, situating him between Johann Gottlieb Fichte, his mentor prior to 1800, and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, his former university roommate and erstwhile friend....
in particular, as well as Enlightenment

Age of Enlightenment

The Age of Enlightenment or The Enlightenment is a term used to describe a time in Western philosophy and cultural life centered upon the eighteenth century, in which rationalism was advocated as the primary source and legitimacy for authority....
theologian Emanuel Swedenborg

Emanuel Swedenborg

was a Sweden scientist, philosopher, Christian mystic, and theologian. Swedenborg had a prolific career as an inventor and scientist. At the age of fifty-six he entered into a spiritual phase in which he experienced dreams and visions....
.

In Richard Bucke

Richard Bucke

Richard Maurice Bucke was an important Canada progressive psychiatry in the late nineteenth century. An adventurer in his youth, he went on to study medicine, practice psychiatry, and befriend several noted men of letters....
's 1901 treatise Cosmic Consciousness, special attention was given to the profundity of Böhme's spiritual enlightenment, which seemed to reveal to Böhme an ultimate nondifference, or nonduality

Nondualism

Nondualism implies that things appear distinct while not being separate. The word's origin is the Latin duo meaning "two" and is used as the English translation of the Sanskrit term advaita....
, between human beings and God.

Blavatsky

Finally, the word was revived in the nineteenth century by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky

Madame Blavatsky

Elena Petrovna Gan , better known as Helena Blavatsky or Madame Blavatsky, born Helena von Hahn, was a founder of Theosophy and the Theosophical Society....
to designate her religious philosophy which holds that all religion

Religion

A religion is an organized approach to human spirituality which usually encompasses a set of myth, symbols, beliefs and practices, often with a supernatural or transcendence quality, that give meaning to the practitioner's experiences of life through reference to a higher power or truth....
s are attempts by humanity to approach the absolute, and that each religion therefore has a portion of the truth. Together with Henry Steel Olcott

Henry Steel Olcott

Colonel Henry Steel Olcott was the founder and first president of the Theosophical Society; he was the first well-known person of European ancestry to make a formal conversion to Buddhism....
, William Quan Judge

William Quan Judge

William Quan Judge was a mysticism, esotericist, and occultist, and one of the founders of the original Theosophical Society. He was born in Dublin, Ireland....
, and others, Blavatsky founded the Theosophical Society

Theosophical Society

The Theosophical Society was the organization formed to advance the spiritual principles and search for Truth known as Theosophy....
in 1875.