Archaic Theosophy Is Pre-Buddhist Wisdom-Religion

William Quan Judge · Theosophy and Theosophists Series · 33 pages

*Thirty-three pages, the longest file in this batch after the French controversy, and the one that comes closest to being a summary of the whole teaching in one place. It is by William Quan Judge, opened by an abstract and train of thoughts and by a foreword from the compiler of Echoes of the Orient*, with every point carrying its page number.

It begins by defining theosophy as the Aletheia of occult science and the religion of reason, followed by a section headed simply Theosophy in a nutshell and by the prerequisites and qualifications for aspirants. The three fundamental propositions of The Secret Doctrine are then set out one after another — cosmogenesis, law governing Kosmos and man, and anthropogenesis — which makes this file a useful companion to the three Proposition sections held elsewhere on the site. What follows is the practical half. Spiritual nature, it insists, cannot be cultivated in the way a skill is; but a sincere lover of the race can accomplish more in three incarnations during Kali-Yuga than in a much greater number in any other age. Planetary rounds, globes and races are surveyed, with the question of what the moment of choice is. Akasha is distinguished from the Astral Light. The elementals are described as spirits of the four elements of the terrestrial world, densely populating the earth as mystifying centres of energy which coalesce around our thoughts, take colour from them, and so act as impartial agents of karma — a mechanism the file uses to explain why curses, like chickens, come home to roost, universal law containing within itself both the means of its own accomplishment and the punishment for its violation, and requiring no further authority to carry out its decrees. The closing sections deal with the origin of man, his so-called original sin and his destiny, and with the doctrine of reincarnation.

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