The doctrine and teachings of the Theosophical Society. The literal meaning of the word is “sacred science” or “divine wisdom.”
The society was founded in 1875 by a small group with a shared interest in Spiritualism and Occultism, centered around Madame Blavatsky and Col. Henry Steel Olcott. Olcott proposed to the group that they should form a society to study a range of phenomena that intrigued them: spiritualism, Pyramidology, Apparitions in short, anything that was considered outside the range of orthodox science and religion. Olcott was elected its first president and William Judge, a lawyer’s clerk, its secretary. Although the society purported to be studying occult and psychic phenomena objectively, many of its members were already committed to a belief in them. This was particularly so in the case of Blavatsky, who was writing Isis Unveiled (1877). “Was writing” is misleading; Blavatsky claimed that some of the text was produced by her unconsciously while under the influence of her guiding spirits or Masters, and that much was actually written by these beings overnight while she was asleep. The book was a best-seller.