SECULAR MODERNITY AND RECONSTRUCTIONS OF WISDOM UNDERLYING BUDDHISM, ZOROASTRIANISM AND EARLY INDIAN DARSANA
The efforts of the Theosophists have always been cheapened by descriptions of Theosophy bordering on personal annoyance by the person writing about it. There are many mistakes that Theosophists made, and after over a century, people still cannot get beyond certain controversies and elements of the past and get to the meat of it so we can move on.
When you read a description about Theosophy that describes Theosophy simply as, e.g., “a tradition that aimed to synthesize various religious and philosophical traditions,” this is incorrect and can tell it is from an ignorant person or a machine. Theosophy is not a synthesis of different religions and philosophies. It applies methods since antiquity by which the inner meanings of myths, folklore, etc, are read, understood and interpreted.
Theosophists are of various religious and philosophical traditions with varying depth of learning and scholarship; and discuss other religions and schools to demonstrate the esotericism of each, their origins and their ultimate source, but also that there is no need to selectively mix them. Truth transcends these human expressions of interpretating and observing nature and Man — the miniature of the cosmos.
So, the conversation on SPACE or Emptiness/Fullness is key. For Freemasonry, e.g., God functions like the Monarch that binds the Abrahamic religions, but Theosophy is saying something beyond even the notion of God that is capable of bringing non-Abrahamic religions and philosophical schools into the narrative and discussion, and not as distinct or foreign (or incapable of being comprehended).
So, the history of the word “God” and the construction of monotheism come into play.
The “synthesis” is the subtitle of Blavatsky’s two big books, Isis Unveiled and The Secret Doctrine. This was Blavatsky’s attempt at showing a deeply relational approach to human endeavors, truth and justice in the world — through Theology, Science and Philosophy in a combined effort, which directly challenges the story of Western Civilization itself created during the Secular Enlightenment and in the emerging dominance of Materialism. Therefore, saying Theosophy is a synthesis of different religions and philosophies is a lazy generated description copy-and-pasted by many persons. It was represented through a strongly anti-materialist movement scapegoated as the harbinger of a hyper-capitalist (materialist, psychic-oriented and consumerist) modern spiritual movement (New Ageism) and Catholic heresy.
This description of Theosophy (“mix,” “buffet,” “blend,” or “pot-pourri,”) devalues its actual purpose and its analogetic approach.
Say, in our spirit of fraternity, friendship or brotherhood, I band together a group of patriots from three different religions, schools, and countries right. . ., and the manner in which we speak about each other’s religions would not be a mix, but a level of understanding them emerges that is different from conventionalist or typical view. Why would a Coptic Greek Christian be hanging out with a Zoroastrian with Gathas in hand, and another in Bengal who studies Upanishadic philosophy? Yet this was the kind of rich philosophical environment H.P. Blavatsky, G.I. Gurdjieff and Azar Kaivan engaged in.
Where are efforts today similar to the authorship of the Dabistān‑i Mazāhib (“School of Religions,” c. 1650)?
With all our capabilities to communicate with each other today, such past efforts show we have gone backwards since the nineteenth-century!
The term eclecticism has also undergone a cheapened description, different from older meanings, due to the secularized materialist view of things.
In Time’s Circle in Zurvanite Philosophy and Theosophy, we learn that Blavatsky views orthodox Zoroastrianism as exoteric and corrupted, with its dualism (Ormuzd vs. Ahriman) as a veil for deeper non-duality. She criticizes Zurvanism’s later mythological personalizations as degradations from its original spiritual essence. The Theosophical position on the Absolute is entirely abstract and beyond imagination, like the concept of Ein or Parabrahman, while Zurvanism did sometimes anthropomorphize Zurvan as a god with passions or forms. The relation is one of philosophical synthesis and revival, where Theosophy positions Zurvanism as part of a perennial Wisdom-Religion, an esoteric remnant of pre-Zoroastrian Magianism that Theosophy revives and integrates into its global framework.
It is said that Blavatsky reconstructs Zurvanite and Simorghian mythology. This is why Zurvanism as a development is emphasized, because of its focus on this concept of the Root Deity (Zurvan) as Infinity.
In works like Zoroastrianism in the Light of Theosophy, articles from Theosophical magazines interpret Zoroastrian texts esoterically, connecting Zurvanite non-duality to Theosophy’s teachings on the seven Karshvares (globes of the earth chain) and Fravashi (equivalent concept to Atma). The esoteric explanation is that Ahura Mazda is not a personal god, but the divine Ego in man, with Ahriman as lower principles, and both — twins from a neutral source. Blavatsky connected Zurvan to the Greek concept of Infinite Time and the Orphic Phanes; and in Isis Unveiled, she argues that the “Chaldean” wisdom (which influenced the Magi) clearly taught a triad cosmogonical phase of “The One,” “The Father,” and “The World.”
This should be taken into consideration, when it is argued, that the twin symbols became materialized/anthropomorphized, and that Good and Evil are not cosmic absolutes. The “Twins” (Spirit and Matter) became seen as two gods, forgetting the changeless “ONE” (Zurvan) that united them and remains whether there are worlds or none. The similarity of the Zurvanite system and the Gnostic systems (like the Valentinians) are taken to support the idea that this was the underlying philosophy of the ancient Near East.
The American Minervan 
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