The history of Theosophy reveals a current of esoteric thought and organization that continually transgressed geographical and religious boundaries in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Theosophy also contravened analytical categories such as religion, science, politics, and the arts. This edited volume in SUNY Press’s Western Esoteric Traditions series uncovers local histories throughout East Asia, Southeast Asia, South Asia, and Europe in which these breaches occurred. At the same time, it demonstrates the surprisingly widespread influence the Theosophical movement had across significant dimensions of human culture during the period of its greatest popularity (1875–1935).Editors Julian Strube and Hans Martin Krämer argue that the Theosophical Society has been largely overlooked by global historians as a key agent in historical debates about categories such as religion and science and East and West, as well as in studies of colonialism and transnational flows of knowledge. The activities of the Theosophists and their fellow travelers suggest that these global transfers were “not monodirectional but polyphonic and often ambiguous” (1). Part of this can be attributed to the privileging of the larger “world religions,” especially Christianity, in studies of nineteenth- and twentieth-century world history that go beyond economic exchanges and diplomacy and that take religion seriously as a significant factor in world events.Articles in this volume highlight the key role played by Theosophy in modern Asian history: for example, Henry Steele Olcott's support of an emergent Buddhist identity in Sri Lanka; Annie Besant's support for the Indian National Congress (and election as its president in 1917); the influence of Theosophical ideas on Mohandas Gandhi’s political vision; how both western and Japanese Theosophists rallied Buddhist reformers in Japan; and the Theosophical Society’s close relationship with Anagarika Dharmapala’s Maha-Bodhi Society and its efforts to reclaim Buddhist pilgrimage sites in North India from Hindu priests.The research in this volume demonstrates that intellectual and cultural exchanges between the “colonizers” and the “colonized” were not one dimensional. Rather than being passive recipients of colonizers’ hegemonic cultural ideas (as Said’s book Orientalism implies), the colonized took such esoteric currents as Theosophy and both shaped and reshaped contested signifiers such as religion, science, progress, tradition, and liberation, and in the process became agents in the creation of new religious and political identities appropriate to their local needs and agendas. Moreover, Theosophy’s serious engagement with various Hinduisms and Buddhisms in South and East Asia allowed for their widespread introduction to western audiences and led to the later popularity of yoga, meditation, belief in reincarnation, and other aspects of what would become New Age spirituality.The careful histories in this work also demonstrate the fluidity of key concepts in the varied esoteric landscapes of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries such as “Orient,” “Oriental Kabbalah,” and “Western esotericism.” Theosophists extended and reshaped each of these categories as they fought over identities that foregrounded western esoteric traditions and those that favored the wisdom of a pristine Orientalist past.The book is divided into two parts, the first of which is a “pioneering attempt to map the global landscape of Theosophy's manifold and often ambiguous influences” (9). This section uncovers the complex development of Theosophical doctrines during its founding generation, particularly as the society expanded into a global context that included Europe, the Middle East, South Asia, Southeast Asia and East Asia. This section's highlights includes Wouter Hanegraaff’s study of the society’s changing notion of the “East” in its first decade, from one focused on Egypt as the birthplace of a universal Kabbalah that lay at the root of the Ancient Wisdom to one increasingly envisioning India as the originator and preserver of the world’s wisdom traditions. Michael Bergunder’s chapter shows that the growing popularity of the Bhagavad Gita in modern India was not the result of European and American appreciations, the so-called “pizza effect,” but rather due to the engagement of Indian intellectuals with the Theosophical Society—thus highlighting the contribution of non-Westerners to developing Theosophical ideas and to forming modern Hinduism in colonial India. A third significant article is Boaz Huss' research into the Association of Hebrew Theosophists (founded 1925), who had to navigate strong opposition from Orthodox rabbis as well as H. P. Blavatsky's attempt to detach the Kabbalah from the “degenerated” Israelites. Hebrew Theosophists argued that ancient Jewish mysticism was identical with modern Theosophy and that it could serve as a means of renewing Jewish spirituality.Part 2 of this volume attempts to demonstrate that Theosophical ideas and chapters were significant players in politics, literature, and the arts in both East and West, even when members of the society itself were not the main actors. This part is focused less on religious studies or Western esotericism concerns and more on Theosophy as an important contributor within histories, literatures, and arts beyond the West. The article on Burmese branches of the Maha-Bodhi Society by Laurence Cox and Alicia Turner demonstrates that both this society and the Theosophical Society played key roles in the history of global Buddhism. This international influence, however, was sometimes shaped by local anticolonial agendas that were difficult for these societies’ central leadership to control.A second example of this part's emphasis is the article by Hans Martin Krämer on Paul Richard, a French traveler who blended an interest in esoteric wisdom with a commitment to progressive politics. His travels with his wife, Mirra (who later became the Mother of the Aurobindo ashram), led to their meetings in India with Aurobindo Ghose during his revolutionary period and to a sojourn in Japan where they fused anticolonialism with esoteric spirituality and became part of a budding pan-Asianist movement. Krämer’s main argument is that although Richard was never a member of the Theosophical Society, the society’s existence in Asia ensured an eager audience in reformist circles for his blend of spirituality and politics. The pioneering efforts of the society to present the spiritual East as an alternative to Western materialist culture allowed Richard to flourish as a public intellectual committed to social reform, anticolonialism, and spiritual renewal.There is much of value in this edited volume, with diverse voices representing different regions and countries and different disciplinary approaches. One criticism is that the broad sweep of interests and approaches represented in the work can lead the reader to sometimes lose the larger thematic threads—articulated by the editors in the introduction—in a welter of detailed historical research. I suppose this is always a hazard in edited volumes that cover such a wide representation material. Nevertheless, Theosophy Across Boundaries is recommended for upper-division and graduate courses in religious studies, history, cultural studies, and esoteric movements and currents.