Blavatskyan Theosophy and The Theosophical Society
In 1875 Helena Blavatsky, Henry Steel Olcott, and William Quan Judge co-founded The Theosophical Society. Blavatsky combined Eastern religious traditions with Western esoteric teachings to create a synthesis she called the Perennial Religion. She developed this in in Isis Unveiled (1877) and The Secret Doctrine (1888), her major works and exposition of her Theosophy.
Eventually the Theosophical Society became virtually synonymous with Theosophy in the vernacular sense. There are many differences between traditional Western theosophy and the Theosophical movement begun by Helena Blavatsky, though the differences "are not important enough to cause an insurmountable barrier." When referring to the ideas related to Blavatsky and the Theosophical Society, the word "Theosophy" is capitalized; otherwise it is not.
Read more about this topic: Theosophy
Famous quotes containing the word society:
““I” is a militant social tendency, working to hold and enlarge its place in the general current of tendencies. So far as it can it waxes, as all life does. To think of it as apart from society is a palpable absurdity of which no one could be guilty who really saw it as a fact of life.”
—Charles Horton Cooley (1864–1929)