Theosophy
GA 9
The first edition of this book, Theosophy: An Introduction to the Supersensory Knowledge of the World and Human Destiny, was published in 1904 by C. A. Schwetschke und Sohn, Berlin, and bore the inscription “Dedicated to the spirit of Giordano Bruno,” which was omitted in later editions. With this work, Rudolf Steiner, who had been General Secretary of the German Section of the Theosophical Society in Berlin since October 1902, moved unreservedly to publish purely spiritual research findings in book form. In the same year, he began publishing the essays How does one Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds? and The Akashic Records (now in GA 10 and 11) in the magazine Lucifer-Gnosis, which he edited.
In Theosophy, Rudolf Steiner presents for the first time the constitutional elements of the human being and the laws of reincarnation and karma, describes the higher worlds, and does not forget to outline a path to knowledge. He remains true to his path: “The author of this book describes nothing that he cannot testify to through experience, through the kind of experience that can be had in these areas. Only what has been personally experienced in this sense should be presented.” Conversely, this also applies to the reader if the book is to unfold its germinal power: “In a certain sense, every page, indeed every sentence, will have to be worked out by the reader. This has been deliberately intended. For only in this way can the book become to the reader what it is meant to be. Those who merely read through it will not have read it at all. Its truths must be experienced.”
The importance of this fundamental work to him is evidenced not only by the many new editions (21 alone until his death in 1925), but above all by the frequent and, in some cases, profound revisions and rewrites of the work, which were not given to any of his other writings to this extent. He thoroughly reviewed, revised, supplemented, expanded, and clarified it five times in new editions: in the 2nd edition in 1908, the 3rd edition in 1910, the 6th edition in 1914, the 9th edition in 1918, and the 19th edition in 1922. The “factual content of the first edition remained unchanged,” he emphasizes in the preface to the English edition of 1922, but he “attempted in individual parts to adapt the wording more precisely to the content of the spiritual view. This has been attempted in particular in the chapter on repeated earthly lives and destiny (karma).”
Theosophy
Rudolf Steiner Press, London, 1965, 151 pp., translated from the 28th German edition of 1961 by M. Cotterell and A. P. Shepherd
Theopsophy
Anthroposophic Press, New York, 1971, 1974, 1977, 1980, 1985, 195 pp., translated from the 19th German edition of 1922 by H. Monges and G. Church
