Mystic Ways Books

by Arch­bishop Charles Web­ster Lead­beater, co-founder of the Lib­eral Catholic Church

Theos­o­phy is a tech­nique from the 1600s that showed quite a bit of inter­est in eso­teric cir­cles of the twen­ti­eth cen­tury. The theosophist seeks to under­stand the mys­ter­ies of the uni­verse and the bonds that unite the uni­verse, human­ity and the divine. The goal of theos­o­phy is to explore the ori­gin of divin­ity and human­ity, and the end of world, life and human­ity. From inves­ti­ga­tion of those top­ics theosophists try to dis­cover a coher­ent descrip­tion of the pur­pose and ori­gin of the universe.

We often speak of Theos­o­phy as not in itself a reli­gion, but the truth, which lies behind all reli­gions alike.

As a phi­los­o­phy, it explains to us that the solar sys­tem is a care­fully ordered mech­a­nism, a man­i­fes­ta­tion of a mag­nif­i­cent life, of which man is but a small part. Nev­er­the­less, it takes up that small part, which imme­di­ately con­cerns us, and treats it exhaus­tively under three heads — present, past and future.