The history of Theosophy reveals a current of esoteric thought and organization that continually transgressed geographical and religious boundaries in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Theosophy also contravened analytical categories such as religion, science, politics, and the arts. This edited volume in SUNY Press’s Western Esoteric Traditions series uncovers local histories throughout East Asia, Southeast Asia, South Asia, and Europe in which these breaches occurred. At the same time, it demonstrates the surprisingly widespread influence the Theosophical movement had across significant dimensions of human culture during the period of its greatest popularity (1875–1935).
Editors Julian Strube and Hans Martin Krämer argue that the Theosophical Society has been largely overlooked by global historians as a key agent in historical debates about categories such as religion and science and East and West, as well as in studies of colonialism and transnational flows of knowledge. The activities of the Theosophists and their...
University of California Press