Purpose of Theosophy

Patience Edensor Sinnett’s The Purpose of Theosophy, first published in London by Chapman & Hall in 1885,  is a compact introductory manual to early Theosophy and is especially interesting because it comes from the immediate circle around Helena P. Blavatsky and the early Mahatma correspondence.

The author iwas Patience Sinnett, wife of Alfred Percy Sinnett, the prominent early Theosophist who received many of the letters later published as The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett. Patience herself was an active participant in that milieu and wrote this book as a straightforward explanation of Theosophy for newcomers. 

• Elementary Truths
• Outline of Occult History
• Western Misconceptions of Eastern Philosophy
• The Seen and the Unseen
• The Mahatmas
• Advice to Students

It belongs to the first decade of the Theosophical Society, when concepts such as karma, reincarnation, occult evolution, subtle planes, adeptship, and the Mahatmas were only beginning to enter English-language esoteric culture.

The book explicitly says its purpose is to correct the idea that Theosophy is simply another creed or sect. Sinnett instead presents it as a body of spiritual and occult knowledge concerned with human development, hidden laws of nature, and the relationship between visible and invisible reality. Later Theosophical editions preserved the characterization of it as an “introductory manual for beginners.”

The Mahatmas chapter is particularly significant. Because Patience Sinnett was part of the household through which the famous Mahatma correspondence unfolded, this was not merely a detached discussion of an exotic doctrine. The Sinnetts were intimately involved in the early Theosophical claim that advanced adepts or “Masters” were guiding the movement and transmitting occult teachings. That gives the book a kind of proximity to the foundational mythology of modern Theosophy that later introductory manuals lack.

There is also a useful publishing-context point. An 1885 notice in The Theosophist advertised The Purpose of Theosophyas filling a “long felt want” for an introductory manual and specifically recommended it as a book Theosophists could hand to curious friends. In other words, it was conceived almost as an official gateway text for the movement.