Rudolf Steiner's 1904 foundational text (GA 9), which sets out the fourfold and ninefold human being, reincarnation and karma, and the path to supersensible knowledge.
Theosophy (Book) in Anthroposophy is Rudolf Steiner's foundational 1904 anthropology, published in Berlin as Theosophie: Einfuehrung in uebersinnliche Welterkenntnis und Menschenbestimmung and known in English as Theosophy: An Introduction to the Supersensible Knowledge of the World and the Destination of Man (GA 9). The book is organised in four parts: Part I, The Nature of Man, presents the fourfold (physical body, ether body, astral body, I) and ninefold composition. Part II, Re-embodiment of the Spirit and Destiny, gives Steiner's first systematic exposition of reincarnation and karma. Part III, The Three Worlds, describes the physical, soul (Kamaloka), and spirit (Devachan) worlds the human being passes through between death and rebirth. Part IV, The Path of Knowledge, opens the schooling that Knowledge of the Higher Worlds (GA 10) would then unfold. Steiner revised it through eight editions, with the final mature revision dated Stuttgart, 24 November 1922.
Theosophy is the 1904 book in which Rudolf Steiner first set out the working anthropology that the whole anthroposophical movement still uses. It was written before Steiner's break with the Theosophical Society in 1912 and 1913, but its content is his own supersensible research, especially the chapter on repeated earth lives. It remains a core training text in the General Anthroposophical Society and the First Class of the School of Spiritual Science at the Goetheanum.
In Steiner's Own Words
It is by inner exertion of soul that man must reach the supersensible world. That world would indeed have no value if it lay spread out complete before his consciousness. It would then be in no way different from the sense world. Before it can be known, there must be the longing to find what lies more deeply hidden in existence than do the forces of the world perceived by the senses. This longing is one of the inner experiences that prepare the way for a knowledge of the supersensible world. Even as there can be no blossom without first the root, so supersensible knowledge has no true life without this longing.
What it Means Today
Theosophy is still in print and still in use. The current English edition is the Catherine E. Creeger translation issued by SteinerBooks (Anthroposophic Press) under the title Theosophy: An Introduction to the Spiritual Processes in Human Life and in the Cosmos, paired with the 1994 revised translation that has supplanted the 1965 Rudolf Steiner Press version that older students read. Inside the General Anthroposophical Society, GA 9 sits with Knowledge of the Higher Worlds (GA 10) and An Outline of Occult Science (GA 13) as the three "basic books" of the movement, the trio that every member is expected to have worked through before approaching the First Class of the School of Spiritual Science at the Goetheanum in Dornach.
The book is also the doorway into Steiner's anthroposophic anthropology in any practical context. Waldorf teacher training, anthroposophic medical training, biodynamic farmer training, and eurythmy schools all open their first-year reading list with Theosophy, because Part I is where the fourfold member-language (physical, etheric, astral, I) that the rest of the corpus speaks gets defined. The chapter on reincarnation is also where Steiner crosses the bridge his Theosophical-Society lecture work in 1902 could not yet make, and steps onto his own ground. Reading GA 9 alongside the 1922 Preface lets you watch Steiner mark exactly where the book stops being Theosophical and starts being Anthroposophical: it is the same content, but the reader is now being asked to think it for themselves, not receive it.
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