Theosophy across Boundaries

<p><b>Offers a new approach to Theosophy that takes into account its global dimensions and its interaction with highly diverse cultural contexts.</b></p><p><i>Theosophy across Boundaries</i> brings a global history approach to the study of esotericism highlighting the important role of Theosophy in the general histories of religion science philosophy art and politics. The first half of the book consists of seven perspectives on the activities of the Theosophical Society in very different regional contexts ranging from India Vietnam China and Japan to Victorian Britain and Israel shedding new light on the entanglement of Western and Oriental ideas around 1900. The second half explores specific cultural influences that Theosophy exerted in the spheres of literature art and politics using case studies from Sri Lanka Burma India Japan Ireland Germany and Russia. The examples clearly show that Theosophy was part of a truly global movement thus providing an outstanding example of the complex entanglements of the global religious history of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.</p>