Esoteric Christianity

Annie Besant — atheist freethinker turned Theosophist, labour organiser, and Indian independence campaigner — wrote Esoteric Christianity in 1901 as her sustained attempt to reread the Christian tradition through the lens of the Theosophical doctrine of the Mysteries.

The argument is that the early church preserved an inner instruction handed down from teacher to advanced pupil — what classical antiquity called the greater and lesser Mysteries — and that the apparent stumbling-blocks of Christian doctrine are clarified once that inner tradition is recovered. The fourteen chapters take up the Hidden Side of Religions, the nature of myth and historical Christ, the Trinity, the Atonement, the Resurrection, the priesthood and sacraments, revelation, prayer, and the forgiveness of sins.

This edition reproduces the complete 1901 first-edition text: Besant's Foreword and all fourteen Chapters. A short editor's preface places the volume in its biographical and intellectual context.