Theosophy

Blavatsky

Original sense

Theosophy, she said, is not a new religion and not her invention. It is the perennial ‘wisdom-religion’ underlying the world’s faiths, now restated. The Society had three objects: universal brotherhood; the study of comparative religion, philosophy, and science; and investigation of unexplained laws of nature and the powers latent in man. Dogma was formally refused; a very large unofficial dogma was in fact taught.

Theosophy is the shoreless ocean of universal truth, love, and wisdom, reflecting its radiance on the earth… Theosophy is divine nature, visible and invisible.

She positioned Theosophy against both missionary Christianity and materialist science, and against spiritualist séance culture. The books (Isis Unveiled, The Secret Doctrine, The Voice of the Silence) are the canon New Age later mined without keeping the Society.

New Age

Later sense

Either an unknown word, or a slightly dusty ancestor mentioned in a footnote. New Age took the contents — karma, reincarnation, masters, planes, Atlantis — and left the name, the first object, and the demand to study. ‘Spiritual but not religious’ is the sociological heir.

Typical use. Rare. When used, often confused with ‘theology’ or with a generic mystic vibe.