Faith & RitualGreek → English
Theosophy
/θiˈɒsəfi/noun
Knowledge of God or ultimate reality claimed through mystical insight rather than doctrine or reason.
The Greek roots
θεός
theós
god
σοφία
sophía
wisdom
Literally: “divine wisdom”
The story of the word
The word is far older than the movement most people mean by it. Late antique Neoplatonists used θεοσοφία for wisdom about the divine, and seventeenth-century English applied it to mystics in the line of Jakob Böhme. Only in 1875 did Helena Blavatsky and Henry Olcott found the Theosophical Society in New York and give the term its present flavour of hidden masters and Eastern esoterica.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Medieval Latin → English
- First recorded
- 17th century
Same family
theologyphilosophyatheistsophisticatedpantheon
In a sentence
Her library ran from Blavatsky to Steiner, a full shelf of theosophy.