Theosophy - Or, Psychological Religion is an unchanged, high-quality reprint of the original edition of 1898. Hansebooks is editor of the literature on different topic areas such as research and science, travel and expeditions, cooking and nutrition, medicine, and other genres. As a publisher we focus on the preservation of historical literature. Many works of historical writers and scientists are available today as antiques only. Hansebooks newly publishes these books and contributes to the preservation of literature which has become (...) rare and historical knowledge for the future. (shrink)

English summary: Rudolf Steiners book Theosophy (1904) is regarded as the definitive account of the anthroposophical understanding of man (Menschenkunde). It documents how deeply Steiner delved into the theosophical world view of Annie Besant and Charles Leadbeater around the turn of the century, seeking to harmonize them with the idealistic and developmental concepts of his own Philosophy of Freedom of 1894. The edition at hand reveals the rich textual development of this foundational work in Anthroposophy through several major reworkings (...) and critically contextualizes its concepts. Also included is a fragment of 1910 titled Anthroposophie which outlines Steiner's theory of the senses (Sinneslehre). German description: Die Theosophie (1904) stellt Rudolf Steiners klassische Darstellung der anthroposophischen Menschenkunde dar. Sie dokumentiert Steiners intensives Eintauchen in die theosophische Gedankenwelt Annie Besants und Charles Leadbeaters um die Jahrhundertwende und seinen Versuch einer Harmonisierung derselben mit seiner eigenen, stark vom deutschen Idealismus sowie von der Entwicklungslehre Ernst Haeckels gepragten Philosophie der Freiheit von 1894. Der vorliegende Band, der die wechselvolle Textgeschichte dieses Grundwerks der Anthroposophie dokumentiert und kritisch begleitet, wird erganzt durch die Fragment gebliebene Skizze einer anthroposophischen Sinneslehre (Anthroposophie) aus dem Jahre 1910. (shrink)

No doubt the Western conceptualization of the East generally served to subjugate the Indians to their colonial rulers, but it also provided a set of beliefs to which disgruntled Western occultists and radicals, and also Western-educated Indians, could appeal in order to defend the dignity and worth of Indian religion and society. No doubt the founding theosophists had no intention of promoting political radicalism on the subcontinent, but the discourse they helped to establish provided others with an instrument they could (...) use for political ends. Indeed, the formation of the Indian National Congress shows how Western-educated Indians were able to join with Hume to promote their political ends using the particular advantages that involvement in the Theosophical Society had given them. The founders of the Indian National Congress relied on the contacts and commitments generated within the Society; they relied on a capacity for, and a belief in, cooperation, both at an all-India level and also between Indian nationalists and liberal Britons; and they relied on a background discourse that emphasized the strength and claims of India, its heritage and religion.Although we have focused on the origins of the Indian National Congress, the process we have uncovered continued to operate for much of the nationalist era. Annie Besant, like Hume and Sinnett, used theosophy to resolve the Victorian crisis of faith after she had spent some time investigating spiritualist phenomena, and her theosophy combined with her radicalism to take her into the nationalist movement, where she became the only Western woman ever to be elected as president of the Indian National Congress (Taylor 1992). Gandhi (1948), like Malabari, Rao, and Sen, used theosophy to help restore his pride in his native culture to support his vision of ancient India as a vital, rational, and moral society. British occultists such as Besant and Western-educated Indians such as Gandhi turned to theosophy for different reasons, but once they had done so, they shared practices and intellectual commitments that helped sustain the nationalist movement. (shrink)

German-born Sanskritist and philologist Max Müller was a pioneer in the field of comparative mythology and religion. Settling in England in 1846, during his distinguished career he served as Taylorian professor of modern European languages, curator of the Bodleian Library and Oxford's first professor of comparative philology. The content of this book was originally presented as part of a lecture series delivered at the University of Glasgow in 1893, where Müller was serving as the Gifford Lecturer. Müller's aim in presenting (...) these lectures was to show that the only way of properly understanding religious phenomena was through utilising historical method. The three volumes preceding this one focused on 'physical religion', 'natural religion' and 'anthropological religion'; this fourth book, on theosophy, contains fifteen lectures, the subject matter ranging from Alexandrian Christianity and the eschatology of Plato to the journey of the soul after death. (shrink)

This chapter investigates Bohme’s influence on the German poet Johann Scheffler, called Angelus Silesius after his conversion to Catholicism. Scheffler’s Cherubinische Wandersmann, one of the most outstanding works of seventeenth-century German religious poetry, was published 1657 and 1675. This chapter argues that despite Scheffler’s post-conversion self-fashioning as a devout Catholic, he is deeply indebted to the theosophical network around his friend Abraham von Franckenberg, whom he met in his late twenties. While studying in Leiden, Scheffler came into contact with Bohme’s (...) works, and also owned and appreciated Aurora. In Franckenberg’s circle, he read Hermetic, spiritualist and Catholic texts and adopted Franckenberg’s critical distance to Lutheran orthodoxy. Franckenberg knew Bohme personally and penned his biography in 1651. That same year, Scheffler apparently began his Cherubinische Wandersmann. The work, which was not published until 1657, contains daring statements about God and the soul. This chapter maintains that Scheffler’s poetry reflects concepts discussed in Franckenberg’s circle and traces in particular Bohme’s influence. After Franckenberg’s death, however, Scheffler turned to Catholicism as the denomination that, in contrast to Lutheranism, embraced mysticism, and he even worked actively in Counter Reformation efforts. Thus, he not only dissimulated his passion for nonconformist literature, but he also tamed his poetic furor, channeling it into more traditionally Catholic forms of religious writing. (shrink)

Purpose: Transcendent theosophy or as known as Al-hikmah al-Muta’aliyah is the third school of Islamic philosophy founded by Mulla Sadra, and is the result of reconciliation of previous Islamic thoughts. This school is based on three main principles, namely: intellectual-intuition, rational proof, and Islamic sharia. The purpose of this paper was to uncover the reconciliation model of transcendent theosophy in reconciling various schools of Islamic thoughts, namely: traditional normative thought of Islamic sharia (Al-Qur’an and Sunnah), classical tradition of (...) dialectical theology (Kalam science), Peripatetic Islamic philosophy, the teachings of Sunni Sufi represented by al-Gazali, Philosophy of Suhrawardi illumination, as well as the mystical thought of Ibn ‘Arabi. This paper is a text analysis research using qualitative-descriptive analysis methods, namely: identifying, understanding, and interpreting texts. The text is carefully and systematically described to clearly portray the synthetic model or reconciliation carried out by Mulla Sadra on several previous Islamic thoughts. The results of this study indicate that Mulla Sadra elaborated and harmonized various Islamic thoughts with “integrative-complementary” model, which embraced the construction of new Islamic philosophical thoughts known as “transcendent theosophy”. This paper suggests to conduct further studies to find a correct format in reconciling various schools of the recent Islamic understanding in order to eliminate the claim truth among Muslims. (shrink)

Eine weitere Etappe im Prozess der ‚Hinwendung zum Osten‘ bedeutete Anfang des 20. Jahrhunderts in der Monarchie und somit auch in Ungarn das Aufblühen der Theosophie. Besonders wichtig war dabei die theosophisch-esoterisch-kosmische Auslegung des Christentums. Im Konzept von Annie Besant, der engsten Mitarbeiterin von Blavatsky, wird Christus, bzw. Jesus vornehmlich als Lehrer eines ‚geheimen Wissens‘, als ‚Eingeweihter‘ (Initiierter), als ‚aufgestiegener Meister‘ und als ‚Weltlehrer‘ gesehen. Christus hier also nicht mehr der Sohn Gottes, sondern ein höher entwickelter Mensch, ein Erleuchteter, der (...) die Vollendung auch erst nach vielen Wiederverkörperungen (Reinkarnationen) in vielen Lebenszyklen erreicht, also ein Arier. In gewissen Perioden würden ‚große Weltlehrer‘ (Manu) in der Welt erscheinen, um die Menschheit zu erleuchten. Diese theosophische Auslegung des Christentums, die in Ungarn großen Anklang erfuhr, bis in die Gegenwart hinein relevant ist und sogar in der gegenwärtigen Regierungsideologie propagiert wird, steht nicht nur dem christlichen Universalismus diametral entgegen, sondern bereitet den geistigen Boden für die Vorstellung über die Notwendigkeit einers ‚spirituellen Führers‘, der ‚die Idee‘ einer ‚neuen Weltordnung‘ weiterträgt. (shrink)

Annie Besant is primarily remembered as the international president of the Theosophical Society. One of the most important aspects of her career were the years that she was a professional atheist, which has given her a place in history as a pioneer feminist. _The Origins of Theosophy _contains thirteen of Besant’s pamphlets, originally published from 1883-1890. This book is ideal for students of theology.

The Theosophical Society, founded in New York in 1875, was, at the turn of the Twentieth Century, a global phenomenon with 100,000 members. New Age philosopher Dr Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925) was appointed as the first Secretary General of the German Section of the Theosophical Society on 19 October 1902. The Theosophical Society offered Rudolf Steiner a platform, a ready-made audience, infrastructure, and the insider experience of the world’s leading New Age spiritual society. The success of the Theosophical Society demonstrated that (...) there was a public appetite to hear about reincarnation, karma, maya, kamaloca, and other Eastern and alternative spiritual ideas. The Theosophical Society provided Rudolf Steiner a capable, multilingual, and determined personal assistant, Marie von Sivers (1867-1948). For Rudolf Steiner the Theosophical Society offered the perfect training ground for what would be, a decade later, his life’s work, the Anthroposophical Society. Rudolf Steiner grew the membership of the German Section of the Theosophical Society from 377 in 1905 to 3,702 in 1913. He earned cash from ticketing of his lectures and his Mystery plays, and from book sales of his personal publishing house, ‘Philosophisch-Theosophischer Verlag’. Another enterprise, the ‘Johannes-Bau-Verein’ (Johannes Building Association) was founded in 1911, independent of the Theosophical Society, to build a theatre in Munich to present Rudolf Steiner's plays. The building application was rejected by the Munich municipal authorities in 1912. The resistance to a build in Munich, provided impetus for the move to build in Dornach, Switzerland. The Anthroposophical Society was founded 28 December 1912 in Cologne, Germany. Most of the members of the German Section of the Theosophical Society members followed Rudolf Steiner into the Anthroposophical Society. The Theosophical Society expelled Rudolf Steiner from the Theosophical Society on 7 March 1913. The foundation stone for the Goetheanum (then still called the ‘Johannesbau’) was laid 20 September 1913. The Theosophical Society had served as the ideal prototype and springboard for founding and growing the Anthroposophical Society. (shrink)

A keen student of theology, August Friedrich Gfrörer became professor of history at the University of Freiburg and also sat as a representative in the Frankfurt parliament, agitating for the reunification of Protestantism and Catholicism. His academic work marked the modern period in the Christian study of Judaism, making full use of primary sources without pursuing an obvious apologetic or polemical agenda. This two-volume work, published in 1831, is a critical study of early Christianity and the influence that Judaism had (...) on the New Testament. Volume 1 provides a thorough exposition of Philo of Alexandria's philosophy and theology. Gfrörer also offers a biographical sketch of Philo and gives an informative overview of his writings and his time. (shrink)

A keen student of theology, August Friedrich Gfrörer became professor of history at the University of Freiburg and also sat as a representative in the Frankfurt parliament, agitating for the reunification of Protestantism and Catholicism. His academic work marked the modern period in the Christian study of Judaism, making full use of primary sources without pursuing an obvious apologetic or polemical agenda. This two-volume work, published in 1831, is a critical study of early Christianity and the influence that Judaism had (...) on the New Testament. Volume 2 is devoted to substantiating the thesis that the core principles of Philo's theology were already discernible among the Alexandrian Jews. Gfrörer traces how Philo's theology and philosophy were transplanted to Palestine via such sects as the Therapeutae and the Essenes as well as through the historian Josephus. The Apocrypha serve as Gfrörer's main primary source. (shrink)

A keen student of theology, August Friedrich Gfrörer became professor of history at the University of Freiburg and also sat as a representative in the Frankfurt parliament, agitating for the reunification of Protestantism and Catholicism. His academic work marked the modern period in the Christian study of Judaism, making full use of primary sources without pursuing an obvious apologetic or polemical agenda. This two-volume work, published in 1831, is a critical study of early Christianity and the influence that Judaism had (...) on the New Testament. Volume 1 provides a thorough exposition of Philo of Alexandria's philosophy and theology. Gfrörer also offers a biographical sketch of Philo and gives an informative overview of his writings and his time. (shrink)

These appropriations fall into two main groups: those pertaining to the name Böhme or a life assigned to it, and those involving concepts or images from the mystic's oeuvre. The first group constituted an attempt to co-opt the aura of sanctity attached to portrayals of the poet-prophet in order to invest Romantic Poesie with the sacral standing of religion. The second group, exemplified by Friedrich Schlegel and Friedrich Schelling, involved the borrowing and radical redefinition of a few concepts and images (...) from Böhme's work in the hope of bridging the gap between the abstract first principle of idealism and the personal God that became an emotional necessity for both thinkers. Jena Romanticism and Its Appropriation of Jakob Böhme treats the Romantic reception of Böhme as a striking example of how the past is appropriated and rewritten in the service of self-affirmation. Analysing the need and the techniques for this self-affirmation sheds light on the nature of the self to be affirmed and on the content and underlying motivation of the Romantic program. (shrink)

In this paper, the attributes of Jesus as the second person of Trinity in Christianity and Muhammadan Reality in Islamic Theosophy were compared. The term ''Muhammadan Reality'' in Islamic Theosophy refers to transcendental and divine being of Muhammad rather than his human and historic existence. According to this research, both Jesus and Muhammadan Realities have divine attributes. They are lights of God, the Word or the Pen of God, the creators of the word, omniscience, omnipotent, omnibenevolent as well (...) as the intermediaries between God and humans. In this study, it is demonstrated that what happened to Jesus in Christianity, it has also happened to Muhammad in Islamic theosophy with some differences. The influence of Greek philosophy, especially Platonic, in ascribing these attributes to Jesus in Christianity and Muhammad in Islamic theosophy is undeniable. There is a strong temptation among the scholars of both religions, Islam and Christianity, to extend Jesus and Muhammad to the level of divinity and godhead. (shrink)

This volume deals with the transformation of unchurched religious creativity in the late modern West.

Karl von Eckartshausen (1752–1803) is usually remembered for his short book on Christian mysticism—The Cloud Upon the Sanctuary (1802)—that inspired many later esoteric thinkers in Britain and the continent. Although mostly known during his lifetime as a popular Catholic author, Eckartshausen was also discussed by his German Romantic contemporaries—including Hamann, Novalis, Goethe, and Schiller—notably earning Herder’s admiration. Eckartshausen also formatively influenced Franz von Baader, who shared his affinity for Martinist theosophy and helped transmit Jakob Böhme’s mysticism to Hegel and (...) Schelling. This article situates Eckartshausen within the history of philosophy by examining his original theosophical reception of Kant’s idealism, and more provisionally, by relating his ideas to post-Kantian thought. Discussion centers on Eckartshausen’s Neopythagorean “number-theory” and his notion of a latent “spiritual sensorium” that opens with the moral “regeneration” of the will and enables intuition of things-in-themselves. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 39.2 (2001) 307-308 [Access article in PDF] Mayer, Paola. Jena Romanticism and Its Appropriation of Jakob Böhme: Theosophy, Hagiography, Literature. McGill-Queen's Studies in the History of Ideas, no. 25. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1999. Pp. x + 242. Cloth, $65.00. Paolo Mayer sets out to revise the accepted image of the influence of Jakob Böhme, the sixteenth-century mystic and theosophist, (...) on the romantic poets and philosophers who congregated at Jena in the years 1798-1803. She convincingly argues that, except for the philosophers and critics Friedrich Schlegel and F. W. J. Schelling, Böhme's direct influence was negligible, more a matter of the self-proclaimed new religion of romanticism making ideological use of a controversial, in some sense subversive, forerunner in German literary history. In the hands of Ludwig Tieck, for instance, or Novalis, Böhme becomes a symbol of the new religion of Poesie and the hostile reception afforded by the orthodox evangelical pastors of his time becomes an allegory for the hostility that the new, "let it all hang out" aesthetic of romanticism encountered in the more classical and form-loving members of the literary culture. In Mayer's terms, Böhme's reception among the poets was hagiographic; he was the romantics' poster child.Böhme lived from 1575 to 1624. The son of peasants, but by no means unlettered, the "mystic shoemaker of Görlitz" claimed the source of his teachings was direct divine revelation. He claimed to have visions in 1600 and 1610, whose content he translated into his unusually graphic writings, interspersed with Pietist attacks on reason and on outward religious observances. This unusual 'theology' blended themes that F. Schlegel and Schelling, at least, found attractive: (a) the idea of a self-generating or developmental God, (b) an approach to the problem of evil that logically seems to place responsibility on God, and (c) a large systematic role for desire and will, rather than reason, in the origin of the world and in human salvation. Notable also is the physicalism of Böhme's theology, and the assignment of a wrathful nature to God the Father. Böhme's reception in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, determined largely by a first biography written in 1652 by a disciple named von Furstenburg, was generally warm in pietist circles, cool in rationalist quarters, e.g., in that of Lessing and Leibniz.The established story is that all the major romantic writers, poets as well as philosophers, were influenced through a direct study of Böhme's texts. Mayer takes issue with that, especially in the case of the poets Tieck and Novalis and the scientists J. W. Ritter. Though each of them writes glowingly of Böhme as a poet—in fact a persecuted poet, a near-martyr for the religion of Poesie—Mayer finds no sound evidence for a direct transmission, either of ideas or of terminology, from Böhme to these figures. What other literary critics have advanced as evidence is, she argues, a body of ideas and vocabulary common to the Neoplatonic, mystic tradition and to Christian thinking in general. If a stricter standard of proving "reception" than mere similarity of language is adopted, it seems that Tieck, Novalis, and Ritter had a slim acquaintance with Böhme's writings, but nonetheless advanced a hagiographic view of the "folk poet." Others among the Jena circle—Schleiermacher, A. W. Schlegel, Dorothea and Caroline Schlegel—took a skeptical view of this propagandistic ploy. Only the more philosophical minds, F. Schlegel and Schelling, read Böhme in any depth or ventured elaborate appropriations. Mayer argues that both these figures went [End Page 307] through an initial phase of enthusiasm for Böhme, to be later followed by personal reservations about him and, eventually, by public criticism from a philosophical or orthodox theological stance. Mayer obviously relishes the irony, in this case, of an initial idolization of Böhme as a representative of the 'new religion... (shrink)

This is a review of Julie Chajes, Recycled Lives: A History of Reincarnation in Blavatsky’s Theosophy, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2019. The book, which falls under the broader umbrella of the academic study of Western esotericism, is concerned with the Russian occultist Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831–1891), her doctrine of reincarnation, its development through the different phases of her literary work, and her sources, whether these be Indian philosophy, Ancient Greek philosophy, or nineteenth-century science. Blavatsky’s project, which lies at the (...) crossroads of spiritualism and comparative philology, was to uncover what she believed was a primeval wisdom, parts of which, she thought, had been preserved in diffuse forms in the mythologies, religions, philosophies, and science of ancient civilizations (Hindus, Chaldeans, Egyptians, Greeks, Jews, etc.). According to Blavatsky, one of the fundamental elements of this primitive wisdom-religion is the belief in reincarnation. But—and this is the main focus of the book—it so happens, or so the author claims, that Blavatsky defended two different theories of reincarnation at different stages of her literary career; in Isis Unveiled (1877) she defended the theory of metempsychosis, whereas in The Secret Doctrine (1888) she defended a theory of reincarnation simpliciter. In this review, I briefly present each of these two theories from the author’s perspective before addressing the author’s take on the Ancient Greek and nineteenth-century sources of Blavatsky. (shrink)

The author gives a clear explanation of the philosophy of Sard al-Din Shirazi.

뵈메와 셸링은 공통적으로 신을 비근거로 파악한다. 이것을 통해서 그들은 선과 악을 세계 속의 대립된 요소로 해명할 수 있게 된다. 신은 선과 악을 초월하여 존재하기 때문에, 그들은 신이 악의 근원일 수 없다고 해명한다. 뵈메는 악의 문제를 신지학적 관점에서 영적 의지의 타락에서 논의한다. 그는 순수한 영적 의지와 타락된 영적 의지, 즉 욕망의지를 구별하고, 욕망의지에서 죄와 악이 야기된다고 파악한다. 영적 의지는 신적 의지의 계시를 이해하는 능력이고, 욕망의지는 물질에 집착하며, 물질적 형상을 자신의 본성으로 파악하려는 망상을 가진다. 욕망의지의 망상이 신적 의지에서 이탈된 죄이며 악이다. 셸링도 (...) 영혼의 욕망과 오성의 대립적 성향에서 악의 문제를 다룬다. 그는 욕망을 생명의 근거의지로 파악하며, 그 자체로 죄와 악이 되지 않는다고 본다. 욕망은 자유의지이며 개별의지이다. 악은 보편의지를 지배하려는 개별의지의 행위에서 야기된다. 뵈메와 셸링은 공통적으로 이성이 아니라 오성을 인간의 근원적 본성으로 파악한다. 인간의 오성은 신적 의지, 즉 보편의지를 이해하고 순응하려는 내적인 힘이지만 활성화되지 못한 능력이다. 오성은 욕망에 대립적이지만 욕망을 완전히 제어할 수 있는 힘이 아니다. 이 때문에 그들은 오성이 활성화되는 영적 각성과 신적 사랑을 숙고한다. (shrink)

Mullā Sadrā appeared in the philosophical field when the prevalent philosophical questions were principality of existence and principality of quiddity. Although he first held the theory of principality of quiddity, later in a cognitional rotation he accepted the theory of principality of existence. Such a rotation gradually causes a wide revolution in the realm of philosophy, and consequently it yields principles such as unity of existence, analogicity of existence, and intensification of existence. He propounds external objectivity of existence, knowledge, beauty (...) and other qualities of perfection as his philosophical principles. Thus, due to Mullā Sadrā’s basic principles, we can attain to principles such as principality of beauty, unity of beauty, analogicity of beauty, and intensification of beauty. (shrink)

Der Band bietet die erstmalige Edition der handschriftlich überlieferten Autobiographie des mystischen Spiritualisten Friedrich Breckling (1629-1711). Die Quelle, die detailliert kommentiert wird, enthält exakte genealogische Daten zu Brecklings familiären Verhältnissen sowie zu seinem Lebenslauf und gibt u.a. Aufschluss über die Beschaffenheit von Brecklings dichtem Kommunikationsnetz. Autobiographie, Chronik und apokalyptischer Traktat verbinden sich in dieser Schrift zu einer literarischen Mischgattung, die unter den frühneuzeitlichen "Ego-Dokumenten" eine wenn nicht einzigartige, so doch besondere Stellung einnehmen dürfte. Detaillierte Register erschließen das Werk.