Buck on the Nature and Aim of Theosophy

Jirah Dewey Buck · Theosophy and Theosophists Series · 25 pages

Twenty-five pages carrying Jirah Dewey Buck's pamphlet The Nature and Aim of Theosophy complete, in its second edition, first published in Cincinnati by Robert Clarke and Company in 1889. The frontispiece is a plate from Everard's 1650 Divine Pymander showing Psyche involved in the cycle of necessity, with the motto Palmam qui meruit ferat — let him bear the palm who has deserved it. *This is the only file in the batch that reproduces a whole book*, and it carries the original's own preface and pagination.

The preface to the second edition is where Buck states his purpose, and it is oddly modern. The pamphlet had been out of print for some time, and the demand for information about theosophy had by then given rise to two monthly magazines — Lucifer in London and The Path in New York — alongside The Theosophist in India. The branch societies and general membership had nearly doubled in four years, though he cautions that this by no means represents the diffusion of the doctrines or the strength of the movement, since in every community there are hundreds who have read these new-old views with interest and, if still unconvinced, are by no means willing to give up the quest. He then names the difficulty the pamphlet exists to meet: it is a common expression among such inquirers that theosophy may be all it is represented to be, but I cannot understand it. His explanation is that theosophy traverses the whole realm of human knowledge, including both man and nature, and explains also the nature and foundation of all religions — so it is not strange that an ordinary reader should fail to comprehend it in a few weeks, and there is a notable absence of both formulary and ultimatum. What he offers instead of a creed is a direction: theosophy places a man upon a path and assures him beyond question that he is journeying the right way, so that the light by which he walks no longer flickers. He is explicit that it never seeks to convert anyone from one religion to another, and that the genuine Christian will find his doubts and obscurities disappearing rather than his faith displaced. He is candid about the essay's limits too, calling it often crude and disjointed, and says he abandoned the idea of enlarging it because the appearance of Blavatsky's Key to Theosophy had made that unnecessary.

Read the full text (PDF, 0.9 MB, 25 pages)