Footnotes (continued 2)

454.

And what of the “Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin,” the words that “the fingers of a man's hand,” whose body and arm remained invisible, wrote on the walls of Belshazzar's palace? (Daniel, v.) What of the writings of Simon the Magician, and the magic characters on the walls and in the air of the crypts of Initiation, without mentioning the tables of stone on which the finger of God wrote the commandments? Between the writing of one God and other Gods the difference, if any, lies only in their respective natures; and if the tree is to be known by its fruits, then preference would have to be given always to the Pagan Gods. It is the immortal “To be or not to be.” Either all of them are—or at any rate, may be—true, or all are surely pious frauds and the result of credulity.

455.

Papyrus Magique, p. 186.

456.

See Maspero's Guide to the Bulak Museum, among others.

457.

De Mirville (from whom much of the preceding is taken), v. 81, 85.

458.

See De Mirville, v. 84, 85.

459.

One sees this difficulty arise even with a perfectly known language like Sanskrit, the meaning of which is far easier to comprehend than the hieratic writings of Egypt. Everyone knows how hopelessly the Sanskritists are often puzzled over the real meaning and how they fail in rendering the meaning correctly in their respective translations, in which one Orientalist contradicts the other.

460.

Op. cit., i. 297.

461.

Book II., Commentary.

462.

Bunsen and Champollion so declare, and Dr. Carpenter says that the Book of the Dead, sculptured on the oldest monuments, with “the very phrases we find in the New Testament in connection with the Day of Judgment ... was engraved probably 2,000 years before the time of Christ.” (See Isis Unveiled, i., 518.)

463.

De Mirville, v. 88. Just such a calendar and horoscope interdictions exist in India in our day, as well as in China and all the Buddhist countries.

464.

See De Mirville, iii. 65.

465.

Pap. Mag., p. 163.

466.

Ibid., p. 168.

467.

Maimonides in his Treatise on Idolatry says, speaking of the Jewish teraphim: “They talked with men.” To this day Christian Sorcerers in Italy, and negro Voodoos at New Orleans fabricate small wax figures in the likeness of their victims, and transpierce them with needles, the wound, as on the teraphim or Menh, being repercussed on the living, often killing them. Mysterious deaths are still many, and not all are traced to the guilty hand.

468.

The Ramses of Lepsius, who reigned some 1300 years before our era.

469.

One may judge how trustworthy are the translations of such Egyptian documents when the sentence is rendered in three different ways by three Egyptologists. Rougé says: “He found her in a state to fall under the power of spirits,” or “with her limbs quite stiff,” (?) another version; and Chabas translates: “And the Scribe found the Khou too wicked.” Between her being in possession of an evil Khou and “with her limbs quite stiff,” there is a difference.

470.

De Mirville, v. 247, 248.

471.

Some translators would have Lucian speak of the inhabitants of the city, but they fail to show that this view is maintainable.

472.

De Mirville, v. 256, 257.

473.

How can de Mirville see Satan in the Egyptian God of the great divine Name, when he himself admits that nothing was greater than the name of the oracle of Dodona, as it was that of the God of the Jews, IAO, or Jehovah? That oracle had been brought by the Pelasgians to Dodona more than fourteen centuries b.c. and left with the forefathers of the Hellenes, and its history is well-known and may be read in Herodotus. Jupiter, who loved the fair nymph of the ocean, Dodona, had ordered Pelasgus to carry his cult to Thessaly. The name of the God of that oracle at the temple of Dodona was Zeus Pelasgicos, the Zeuspater (God the Father), or as De Mirville explains: “It was the name par excellence, the name that the Jews held as the ineffable, the unpronounceable Name—in short, Jaoh-pater, i.e., ‘he who was, who is, and who will be,’ otherwise the Eternal.” And the author admits that Maury is right “in discovering in the name of the Vaidic Indra the Biblical Jehovah,” and does not even attempt to deny the etymological connection between the two names—“the great and the lost name with the sun and the thunder-bolts.” Strange confessions, and still stranger contradictions.

474.

Reuvens' Letter to Letronne on the 75th number of the Papyri Anastasi. See De Mirville. v. 258.

475.

The Eleusinian Fields.

476.

Fragments, ix.

477.

De Legibus, II. iv.

478.

Judaism and Paganism, i. 184.

479.

Frag. of Styg., ap. Stob.

480.

De Special. Legi.

481.

De Mirville, v. 278, 279.

482.

Isis Unveiled, i. 25.

483.

Isis Unveiled, i. 282, 283.

484.

De Mirville, v. 248.

485.

De Mirville, v. 281.

486.

Tod's Rajasthan, i. 28.

487.

Op. cit., ix. iii. 28.

488.

Vishnu Purâna, iv. i. Wilson's translation, iii. 248-254.

489.

There were no Brâhmans as a hereditary caste in days of old. In those long-departed ages a man became a Brâhman through personal merit and Initiation. Gradually, however, despotism crept in, and the son of a Brâhman was created a Brâhman by right of protection first, then by that of heredity. The rights of blood replaced those of real merit, and thus arose the body of Brâhmans, which was soon changed into a powerful caste.

490.

Des Initiations Anciennes and Modernes. “The mysteries,” says Ragon, “were the gift of India.” In this he is mistaken, for the Âryan race had brought the mysteries of Initiation from Atlantis. Nevertheless he is right in saying that the mysteries preceded all civilisations, and that by polishing the mind and morals of the peoples they served as a base for all the laws—civil, political, and religious.

491.

De Off., i. 33.

492.

Des Initiations, p. 22.

493.

Essais Historiques sur la Franc-Maçonnerie, pp. 142, 143.

494.

The word “patriarch” is composed of the Greek word “Patria” (“family,” “tribe,” or “nation”) and “Archos” (a “chief”), the paternal principle. The Jewish Patriarchs who were pastors, passed their name to the Christian Patriarchs; yet they were no priests, but were simply the heads of their tribes, like the Indian Rishis.

495.

There is no need to observe here that the resurrection of a really dead body is an impossibility in Nature.

496.

The kings of Hungary claimed that they could cure the jaundice; the Dukes of Burgundy were credited with preserving people from the plague; the kings of Spain delivered those possessed by the devil. The prerogative of curing the king's evil was given to the kings of France, in reward for the virtues of good King Robert. Francis the First, during a short stay at Marseilles for his son's wedding, touched and cured of that disease upwards of 500 persons. The kings of England had the same privilege.

497.

See Laurens' Essais Historiques for further information as to the world-wide, universal knowledge of the Egyptian Priests.

498.

Des Initiations, p. 24.

499.

The word comes from the Greek “hieros” (“sacred”) and “glupho” (“I grave”). The Egyptian characters were sacred to the Gods, as the Indian Devanâgarî is the language of the Gods.

500.

The same author had (as Occultists have) a very reasonable objection to the modern etymology of the word “philosophy,” which is interpreted “love of wisdom,” and is nothing of the kind. The philosophers were scientists, and philosophy was a real science—not simply verbiage, as it is in our day. The term is composed of two Greek words whose meaning is intended to convey its secret sense, and ought to be interpreted as “wisdom of love.” Now it is in the last word, “love,” that lies hidden the esoteric significance: for “love” does not stand here as a noun, nor does it mean “affection” or “fondness,” but is the term used for Eros, that primordial principle in divine creation, synonymous with πόθος, the abstract desire in Nature for procreation, resulting in an everlasting series of phenomena. It means “divine love,” that universal element of divine omnipresence spread throughout Nature and which is at once the chief cause and effect. The “wisdom of love” (or “philosophia,”) meant attraction to and love of everything hidden beneath objective phenomena and the knowledge thereof. Philosophy meant the highest Adeptship—love of and assimilation with Deity. In his modesty Pythagoras even refused to be called a Philosopher (or one who knows every hidden thing in things visible; cause and effect, or absolute truth), and called himself simply a Sage an aspirant to philosophy, or to Wisdom of Love—love in its exoteric meaning being as degraded by men then as it is now by its purely terrestrial application.

501.

Lev., xix. 18.

502.

“On,” the “Sun,” the Egyptian name of Heliopolis (the “City of the Sun”).

503.

Book of God, p. 160.

504.

Mr. Kenealy quotes, in his Book of God, Vallancey, who says: “I had not been a week landed in Ireland from Gibraltar, where I had studied Hebrew and Chaldaic under Jews of various countries, when I heard a peasant girl say to a boor standing by her ‘Feach an Maddin Nag’ (‘Behold the morning star’), pointing to the planet Venus, the Maddena Nag of the Chaldeans.”

505.

There was a time when the whole world, the totality of mankind, had one religion, as they were of “one lip.” “All the religions of the earth were at first one, and emanated from one centre,” says Faber.

506.

Chips from a German Workshop, i. 69, 70.

507.

Sûrya, the Sun, is one of the nine divinities that witness all human actions.

508.

[There is a gap in H. P. B.'s MS., and the paragraph in brackets supplies what was missing.—A. B.]

509.

In Isis Unveiled, Vol. II., pp. 41, 42, a portion of this rite is referred to. Speaking of the dogma of Atonement, it is traced to ancient “heathendom” again. We say: “This cornerstone of a church which had believed herself built on a firm rock for long centuries, is now excavated by science and proved to come from the Gnostics. Professor Draper shows it as hardly known in the days of Tertullian, and as having ‘originated among the Gnostic heretics’ (see Conflict Between Religion and Science, p. 224).... But there are sufficient proofs to show that it originated among them no more than did their anointed Christos and Sophia. The former they modelled on the original of the King Messiah, the male principle of wisdom, and the latter on the third Sephiroth, from the Chaldæan Kabalah, and even from the Hindu Brahmâ and Sarasvatî, and the Pagan Dionysius and Demeter. And here we are on firm ground, if it were only because it is now proved that the New Testament never appeared in its complete form, such as we find it now, till 300 years after the period of the apostles, and the Zohar and other Kabalistic books are found to belong to the first century before our era, if not to be far older still. “The Gnostics entertained many of the Essenean ideas; and the Essenes had their greater and minor Mysteries at least two centuries before our era. They were the Isarim or Initiates, the descendants of the Egyptian hierophants, in whose country they had been settled for several centuries before they were converted to Buddhistic monasticism by the missionaries of King Asoka, and amalgamated later with the earliest Christians: and they existed, probably, before the old Egyptian temples were desecrated and ruined in the incessant invasions of Persians, Greeks, and other conquering hordes. The hierophants had their atonement enacted in the Mystery of Initiation ages before the Gnostics, or even the Essenes, had appeared. It was known among hierophants as the Baptism of Blood, and was considered not as an atonement for the ‘fall of man’ in Eden, but simply as an expiation for the past, present, and future sins of ignorant, but nevertheless polluted mankind. The hierophant had the option of either offering his pure and sinless life as a sacrifice for his race to the gods whom he hoped to rejoin, or an animal victim. The former depended entirely on their own will. At the last moment of the solemn ‘new birth,’ the Initiator passed ‘the word’ to the initiated, and immediately after the latter had a weapon placed in his right hand, and was ordered to strike. This is the true origin of the Christian dogma of atonement.” As Ballanche says, quoted by Ragon: “Destruction is the great God of the World,” justifying therefore the philosophical conception of the Hindu Shîva. According to this immutable and sacred law, “the Initiate was compelled to kill the Initiator; otherwise initiation remained incomplete.... It is death that generates life.” Orthodoxie maçonnique, p. 104. All that, however, was emblematic and exoteric. Weapon and killing must be understood in their allegorical sense.

510.

Orthodoxie maçonnique, pp. 102-104.

511.

Op. cit., i. 15.

512.

Five Years of Theosophy, p. 258. A curious question to start and to deny, when it is well-known even to the Orientalists that, to take but one case, there is Yaska, who was a predecessor of Pânini, and his work still exists; there are seventeen writers of Nirukta (glossary) known to have preceded Yaska.

513.

La Mère d'Apis, p. 47.

514.

One just initiated is called the “first-born,” and in India he becomes dwija, “twice born,” only after his final and supreme Initiation. Every Adept is a “Son of God” and a “Son of Light” after receiving the “Word,” when he becomes the “Word” himself, after receiving the seven divine attributes or the “lyre of Apollo.”

515.

See De Mirville, iv. 15.

516.

II. Kings, xxiii. 4-13.

517.

Judges, xiii. 18. Samson, Manoah's son, was an Initiate of that “Mystery” Lord, Ja-va; he was consecrated before his birth to become a “Nazarite” (a chela) an Adept. His sin with Dalilah, and the cropping of his long hair that “no razor was to touch” shows how well he kept his sacred vow. The allegory of Samson proves the Esotericism of the Bible, as also the character of the “Mystery Gods” of the Jews. True, Môvers gives a definition of the Phœnician idea of the ideal sunlight as a spiritual influence issuing from the highest God, Iao, “the light conceivable only by intellect—the physical and spiritual Principle of all things; out of which the soul emanates.” It was the male Essence, or Wisdom, while the primitive matter or Chaos was the female. Thus the first two principles, co-eternal and infinite, were already with the primitive Phœnicians, spirit and matter. But this is the echo of Jewish thought, not the opinion of Pagan Philosophers.

518.

See Isis Unveiled, ii. 526.

519.

Beth-San or Scythopolis in Palestine had that designation; so had a spot on Mount Parnassus. But Diodorus declares that Nyssa was between Phœnicia and Egypt; Euripides states that Dionysos came to Greece from India; and Diodorus adds his testimony: “Osiris was brought up in Nyssa, in Arabia the Happy; he was the son of Zeus, and was named from his father (nominative Zeus, genitive Dios) and the place Dio-Nysos”—the Zeus or Jove of Nyssa. This identity of name or title is very significant. In Greece Dionysos was second only to Zeus, and Pindar says: “So Father Zeus governs all things, and Bacchus he governs also.”

520.

Ex., xvii. 15.

521.

Phædrus, Cary's translation, p. 326.

522.

Life of Pythagoras, p. 297. “Since Pythagoras,” he adds, “also spent two and twenty years in the adyta of the temples in Egypt, associated with the Magians in Babylon, and was instructed by them in their venerable knowledge, it is not at all wonderful that he was skilled in Magic or Theurgy, and was therefore able to perform things which surpass merely human power, and which appear to be perfectly incredible to the vulgar” (p. 298).

523.

This expression must not be understood simply literally; for, as in the initiation of certain Brotherhoods, it has a secret meaning that we have just explained; it was hinted at by Pythagoras, when he describes his feelings after the Initiation, and says that he was crowned by the Gods in whose presence he had drunk “the waters of life”—in the Hindu Mysteries there was the fount of life, and soma, the sacred drink.

524.

Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries, T. Taylor, p. 46, 47.

525.

ii. 111, 113.

526.

Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries, p. 63.

527.

Op. cit., p. 65.

528.

Quoted by Taylor, p. 66.

529.

Verses 35-38.

530.

Phædrus, 64, quoted by Taylor, p. 64.

531.

Isis Unveiled, ii. 114.

532.

This is false, and the Abbé Constant (Éliphas Lévi) knew it was so. Why did he promulgate the untruth?

533.

Dogme de la Haute Magie, i. 219, 220.

534.

Orthodoxie Maçonnique, p. 99.

535.

Five Years of Theosophy, p. 214.

536.

In I. Peter, ii. 3, Jesus is called “the Lord Chrestos.”

537.

Isis Unveiled, ii. 323.

538.

Buddhism in Tibet, p. 31.

539.

The Âryans replaced the living cow by one made of gold, silver or any other metal, and the rite is preserved to this day, when one desires to become a Brâhman, a twice-born, in India.

540.

Op. cit., p. 141.

541.

In Ragon's Orthodoxie Maçonnique, p. 105, note, we find the following statement—borrowed from Albumazar the Arabian, probably: “The Virgin of the Magi and Chaldæans. The Chaldæan sphere [globe] showed in its heavens a newly-born babe, called Christ and Jesus; it was placed in the arms of the Celestial Virgin. It was to this Virgin that Eratosthenes, the Alexandrian Librarian, born 276 years before our era, gave the name of Isis, mother of Horus.” This is only what Kircher gives (in Ædipus Ægypticus, iii. 5), quoting Albumazar: “In the first decan of the Virgin rises a maid, called Aderenosa, that is pure, immaculate virgin ... sitting upon an embroidered throne nursing a boy...; a boy, named Jessus ... which signifies Issa, whom they also call Christ in Greek.” (See Isis Unveiled, ii. 491.)

542.

Now called St. Reine (Côte d'Or) on the two streams, the Ose and the Oserain. Its fall is a historical fact in Keltic Gaulish History.

543.

Orthodoxie Maçonnique, p. 22.

544.

Op. cit., p. 22.

545.

The Christian mob in 389 of our era completed the work of destruction upon what remained; most of the priceless works were saved for students of Occultism, but lost to the world.

546.

Op. cit. p. 23. J. M. Ragon, a Belgian by birth, and a Mason, knew more about Occultism than any other non-initiated writer. For fifty years he studied the ancient Mysteries wherever he could find accounts of them. In 1805, he founded at Paris the Brotherhood of Les Trinosophes, in which Lodge he delivered for years lectures on Ancient and Modern Initiation (in 1818 and again in 1841), which were published, and now are lost. Then he became the writer in chief of Hermes, a masonic paper. His best works were La Maçonnerie Occulte and the Fastes Initiatiques. After his death, in 1866, a number of his MSS. remained in the possession of the Grand Orient of France. A high Mason told the writer that Ragon had corresponded for years with two Orientalists in Syria and Egypt, one of whom is a Kopt gentleman.

547.

Op. cit., iv. 462.

548.

History of Magic, ii. 11.

549.

Neo-Platonism and Alchemy, p. 15.

550.

Loc. cit.

551.

Op. cit., pp. 9, 10.

552.

This Divine Effulgence and Essence is the light of the Logos; only the Vedântin would not use the pronoun “He,” but would say “It.”

553.

Loc. cit., note, p. 10.

554.

Loc. cit., note.

555.

See Esoteric Buddhism, by A. P. Sinnett, Fifth Edition.

556.

See Isis Unveiled, Vol. I., pp. 589-595. The “Sons of God” and their war with the giants and magicians.

557.

Loc. cit., note.

558.

Op. cit., p. 18.

559.

Op. cit., p. 8.

560.

No orthodox Christian has ever equalled, far less surpassed, in the practice of true Christ-like virtues and ethics, or in the beauty of his moral nature, Ammonius, the Alexandrian pervert from Christianity (he was born from Christian parents).

561.

Op. cit., pp. 3, 4.

562.

Quoted by Dr. Wilder, p. 5.

563.

“Mortification” is here meant in the moral, not the physical sense; to restrain every lust and passion, and live on the simplest diet possible.

564.

This is the Neo-Platonic teaching adopted as a doctrine in the Roman Catholic Church, with its worship of the Seven Spirits.

565.

The Church has made of it the worship of devils. “Daimon” is Spirit, and relates to our divine Spirit, the seventh Principle and to the Dhyân Chohans. Jesus prohibited going to the temple or church “as Pharisees do” but commanded that man should retire for prayer (communion with his God) into a private closet. Is it Jesus who would have countenanced in the face of the starving millions, the building of the most gorgeous churches?

566.

Op. cit., p. 7.

567.

Op. cit., p. 7.

568.

Op. cit., p. 18.

569.

The Talmud gives the story of the four Tanaim, who are made, in allegorical terms, to enter into the garden of delights, i.e., to be initiated into the occult and final science. “According to the teaching of our holy masters the names of the four who entered the garden of delight, are: Ben Asai, Ben Zoma, Acher, and Rabbi Akiba.... “Ben Asai looked and—lost his sight. “Ben Zoma looked and—lost his reason. “Acher made depredations in the plantation” (mixed up the whole and failed). “But Akiba, who had entered in peace came out of it in peace; for the saint, whose name he blessed, had said, ‘This old man is worthy of serving us with glory.’ ” “The learned commentators of the Talmud, the Rabbis of the synagogue, explain that the garden of delight, in which those four personages are made to enter, is but that mysterious science, the most terrible of sciences for weak intellects, which it leads directly to insanity,” says A. Franck, in his Kabbalah. It is not the pure at heart and he who studies but with a view to perfecting himself and so more easily acquiring the promised immortality, who need have any fear; but rather he who makes of the science of sciences a sinful pretext for worldly motives, who should tremble. The latter will never understand the kabalistic evocations of the supreme initiation.—Isis Unveiled, ii. 119.

570.

Isis Unveiled, ii. 119.

571.

See Neo-Platonism, p. 9.

572.

See the Code published by Sir William Jones, Chapter ix. p. 11.

573.

Pliny: Hist. Nat., xxx. 1; Ib., xvi. 14; xxv. 9, etc.

574.

Pomponius ascribes to them the knowledge of the highest sciences.

575.

Cæsar, iii. 14.

576.

Pliny, xxx. Isis Unveiled, i. 18.

577.

“The care which they took in educating youth, in familiarizing it with generous and virtuous sentiments, did them peculiar honour, and their maxims and discourses, as recorded by historians, prove that they were expert in matters of philosophy, metaphysics, astronomy, morality and religion,” says a modern writer. “If kings or princes desired the advice or the blessings of the holy men, they were either obliged to go themselves, or to send messengers. To these men no secret power of either plant or mineral was unknown. They had fathomed nature to its depths, while psychology and physiology were to them open books, and the result was that science that is now termed, so superciliously, magic.”

578.

Op. cit., p. 9.

579.

Op. cit., p. 11.

580.

Hermes, iv. 6.

581.

From Saraph שרף “fiery, burning,” plural (see Isaiah, vi. 2-6). They are regarded as the personal attendants of the Almighty, “his messengers,” angels or metatrons. In Revelation they are the “seven burning lamps” in attendance before the throne.

582.

Venus with the Chaldæans and Egyptians was the wife of Proteus, and is regarded as the mother of the Kabiri, the sons of Phta or Emepth—the divine light or the Sun. The angels answer to the stars in the following order: The Sun, the Moon, Mars, Venus, Mercury, Jupiter, and Saturn; Michael, Gabriel, Samael, Anael, Raphael, Zachariel, and Orifiel; this is in religion and Christian Kabalism; astrologically and esoterically the places of the “regents” stand otherwise, as also in the Jewish, or rather the real Chaldæan Kabalah.

583.

Loc. cit., xiv. 12.

584.

This is one more proof that the Ancients knew of seven planets besides the Sun; for otherwise which is the eighth in such a case? The seventh, with two others, as stated, were “mystery” planets, whether Uranus or any other.

585.

II. Sam., vi. 20-22.

586.

Judges, xxi. 21, et seq.

587.

I. Kings, xviii. 26.

588.

This dance—the Râsa Mandala, enacted by the Gopîs or shepherdesses of Krishna, the Sun-God, is enacted to this day in Râjputâna in India, and is undeniably the same theo-astronomical and symbolical dance of the planets and the Zodiacal signs, that was danced thousands of years before our era.

589.

Isis Unveiled, ii. 45.

590.

II. Epistle, i. 19. The English text says: “Until the day-star arise in your heart,” a trifling alteration which does not really matter—as Lucifer is the day as well as the “morning” star—and it is less shocking to pious ears. There are a number of such alterations in the Protestant bibles.

591.

Again the English translation changes the word “Sun” into “day-spring.” The Roman Catholics are decidedly braver and more sincere than the Protestant theologians. De Mirville: iv. 34, 38.

592.

Thus said the Egyptians and the Sabæans in days of old, the symbol of whose manifested gods, Osiris and Bel, was the sun. But they had a higher deity.

593.

Exiled from the Protestant bible but left in the Apocrypha which, according to Article VI. of the Church of England, “she doth read for example of life and instruction of manners” (?), but not to establish any doctrine.

594.

Cornelius a Lapide, v. 248.

595.

Ecclesiastes, xliii. The above quotations are taken from De Mirville's chapter “On Christian and Jewish Solar Theology,” iv. 35-38.

596.

Nevertheless the Church has preserved in her most sacred rites the “star-rites” of the Pagan Initiates. In the pre-Christian Mithraic Mysteries, the candidate who overcame successfully the “twelve Tortures” which preceded the final Initiation, received a small round cake or wafer of unleavened bread, symbolising in one of its meanings, the solar disc, and known as the manna (heavenly bread).... A lamb, or a bull even, was killed, and with the blood the candidate had to be sprinkled, as in the case of the Emperor Julian's initiation. The seven rules or mysteries that are represented in the Revelation as the seven seals which are opened in order were then delivered to the newly born.

597.

Truly says S. T. Coleridge: “Instinctively the reason has always pointed out to men the ultimate end of various sciences.... There is no doubt but that astrology of some sort or other will be the last achievement of astronomy; there must be chemical relations between the planets ... the difference of their magnitude compared with that of their distances is not explicable otherwise.” Between planets and our earth with its mankind, we may add.

598.

“Christ then,” the author says (p. 40), “is represented by the trunk of the candlestick.”

599.

De Mirville, iv. 41, 42.

600.

De Mirville, iv. 42.

601.

Notwithstanding the above, written in the earliest Christian period by the renegade Neo-Platonist, the Church persists to this day in her wilful error. Helpless against Galileo, she now tries to throw a doubt even on the heliocentric system!

602.

Stromateis, V., vi.

603.

The English bible has: “In them (the Heavens) hath he set a tabernacle for the sun,” which is incorrect and has no sense in view of the verse that follows, for there are things “hid from the heat thereof” if the latter word is to be applied to the sun.

604.

When the hierophant took his last degree, he emerged from the sacred recess called Manneras and was given the golden Tau, the Egyptian Cross, which was subsequently placed on his breast, and buried with him.

605.

The three secret names are “Sana, Sanat Sujâta, and Kapila;” while the four exoteric Gods are called, Sanat Kumâra, Sananda, Sanaka and Sanâtana.

606.

Another Kumâra, the “God of War” is called in the Hindu system the “eternal celibate”—“the virgin warrior.” He is the Âryan St. Michael.

607.

We give the original: “Coelestia corpora moveri a spirituali creatura, a nemine Sanctorum vel philosophorum, negatum, legisse me memini. (Opusc. X. art. iii.).... Mihi autam videtur, quod Demonstrative probari posset, quod ab aliquo intellectu corpora coelestia moveantur, vel a Deo immediate, vel a mediantibus angelis. Sed quod mediantibus angelis ca moveat, congruit rerum ordine, quem Dionysius infallibilem asserit, ut inferiora a Deo per Media secundum cursum communem administrentur” (Opusc. II. art. ii.), and if so, and God never meddles with the once for ever established laws of Nature, leaving it to his administrators, why should their being called Gods by the “heathen” be deemed idolatrous?

608.

In one of Des Mousseaux's volumes on Demonology (Œuvres des Demons) if we do not mistake the statement of the Abbé Huc is found, and the author testifies to having heard the following story repeatedly from the Abbé himself. In a lamasery of Tibet, the missionary found the following: It is a simple canvas without the slightest mechanical apparatus attached, as the visitor may prove by examining it at his leisure. It represents a moonlit landscape, but the moon is not at all motionless and dead; quite the reverse, for, according to the Abbé, one would say that our moon herself, or at least her living double, lighted the picture. Each phase, each aspect, each movement of our satellite, is repeated in her facsimile, in the movement and progress of the moon in the sacred picture. “You see this planet in the painting ride as a crescent, or full, shine brightly, pass behind the clouds, peep out or set, in a manner corresponding in the most extraordinary way with the real luminary. It is, in a word, a most perfect and resplendent reproduction of the pale queen of the night, which received the adoration of so many people in the days of old.” We know from the most reliable sources and numerous eye-witnesses, that such “machines”—not canvas paintings—do exist in certain temples of Tibet; as also the “sidereal wheels” representing the planets, and kept for the same purposes—astrological and magical. Huc's statement was translated in Isis Unveiled from Des Mousseaux's volume.

609.

Cedrenus, p. 338. Whether produced by clockwork or magic power, such machines—whole celestial spheres with planets rotating—were found in the Sanctuaries, and some exist to this day in Japan, in a secret subterranean temple of the old Mikados, as well as in two other places.

610.

Champollion's Égypte Moderne, p. 42.

611.

Musée des Sciences, p. 230.

612.

Translated by the Vicomte de Rougemont. See Les Annales de Philosophie Chrétienne, 7th year, 1861.

613.

Isaiah, lxiii. 9.

614.

Chapter xii. of Revelation: “There was war in heaven, Mikael and his angels fought against the Dragon,” etc. (7) and the great dragon was cast out (9).

615.

He is also the informing Spirit of the Sun and Jupiter, and even of Venus.

616.

Dogme et Rituel, ii. 116.

617.

If enumerated, they will be found to be the Hindu “divisions” and choirs of Devas, and the Dhyân Chohans of Esoteric Buddhism.

618.

But this fact has not prevented the Roman Church from adopting them all the same, accepting them from ignorant, though perchance sincere Church Fathers, who had borrowed them from Kaballists—Jews and Pagans.

619.

To call “usurpers” those who preceded the Christian Beings for whose benefit these same titles were borrowed, is carrying paradoxical anachronism a little too far!

620.

Or the divine ages, the “days and years of Brahmâ.”

621.

De Mirville, ii. 325, 326. So we say too. And this shows that it is to the Kabalists and Magicians that the Church is indebted for her dogmas and names. Paul never condemned real Gnosis, but the false one, now accepted by the Church.

622.

Sesostris, or Pharaoh Ramses II., whose mummy was unswathed in 1886 by Maspero of the Bulak Museum, and recognised as that of the greatest king of Egypt, whose grandson, Ramses III. was the last king of an ancient kingdom.

623.

Op. cit., p. 422.

624.

Summa, Quest. xv. Art. v., upon Astrologers, and Vol. III. pp. 2-29.

625.

“The principalities and powers [born] in heavenly places” (Ephes., iii. 10). The verse, “For though there be that are called Gods, whether in heaven or on earth, as there be Gods many and lords many” (I. Corinth., viii. 5), shows, at any rate, the recognition by Paul of a plurality of “Gods” whom he calls “dæmons” (“spirits”—never devils). Principalities, Thrones, Dominions, Rectors, etc. are all Jewish and Christian names for the Gods of the ancients—the Archangels and Angels of the former being in every case the Devas and the Dhyân Chohans of the more ancient religions.

626.

Answer by Reuvens to Letronne with regard to his mistaken notions about the Zodiac of Dendera.

627.

St. Augustine (De Gen., I. iii.) and Delrio (Disquisit., Vol. IV., chap. iii.) are quoted by De Mirville, to show that “the more astrologers speak the truth and the better they prophesy it, the more one has to feel diffident, seeing that their agreement with the devil becomes thereby the more apparent.” The famous statement made by Juvenal (Satires, vi.) to the effect that “not one single astrologer could be found who did not pay dearly for the help he received from his genius”—no more proves the latter to be a devil than the death of Socrates proves his daimon to have been a native from the nether world—if such there be. Such argument only demonstrates human stupidity and wickedness, once reason is made subservient to prejudice and fanaticism of every sort. “Most of the great writers of antiquity, Cicero and Tacitus among them, believed in Astrology and the realization of its prophecies;” and “the penalty of death decreed nearly everywhere against those mathematicians [astrologers] who happened to predict falsely diminished neither their number nor their tranquillity of mind.”

628.

Preparatio Evangelica, I. xiv.

629.

Ast., iv. 60.

630.

Hist., I. ii.

631.

All these particulars may be found more fully and far more completely in Champollion Figeac's Égypte.

632.

Op. cit., p. 230.

633.

Op. cit., p. 230.

634.

In the 1,326 places in the New Testament where the word “God” is mentioned nothing signifies that in God are included more beings than God. On the contrary in 17 places God is called the only God. The places where the Father is so-called amount to 320. In 105 places God is addressed with high-sounding titles. In 90 places all prayers and thanks are addressed to the Father; 300 times in the New Testament is the Son declared to be inferior to the Father; 85 times is Jesus called the “Son of Man;” 70 times is he called a man. In not one single place in the bible is it said that God holds within him three different Beings or Persons, and yet is one Being or Person.—Dr. Karl von Bergen's Lectures in Sweden.

635.

Kali Yuga, the Black or Iron Age.

636.

Virgil, Eclogue, iv.

637.

At the close of our Race, people, it is said, through suffering and discontent will become more spiritual. Clairvoyance will become a general faculty. We shall be approaching the spiritual state of the Third and Second Races.

638.

Vishnu Purâna, IV., xxiv. 228, Wilson's translation.

639.

Op. cit., p. 212.

640.

At any rate, the temple secret meaning was the same.

641.

Asiat. Res., vol. viii. p. 470, et seq.

642.

Theosophist, August, 1881.

643.

Aug., 1881 to Feb., 1882.

644.

Loc. cit., iv. 127.

645.

Theosophist, vol. iii. p. 22.

646.

The impartial study of Vaidic and Post-Vaidic works shows that the ancient Âryans knew well the precession of the equinoxes, and “that they changed their position from a certain asterism to two (occasionally three) asterisms back whenever the precession amounted to two, properly speaking, to 2 11/61 asterisms or about 29°, being the motion of the sun in a lunar month, and so caused the seasons to fall back a complete lunar month.... It appears certain that at the date of Sûrya Siddhânta, Brahmâ Siddânta, and other ancient treatises on astronomy, the vernal equinoctial point had not actually reached the beginning of Ashvinî, but was a few degrees east of it.... The astronomers of Europe change westward the beginning of Aries and of all other signs of the Zodiac every year by about 50" 25, and thus make the names of the signs meaningless. But these signs are as much fixed as the asterisms themselves, and hence the Western astronomers of the present day appear to us in this respect less wary and scientific in their observations than their very ancient brethren—the Âryas.”—Theosophist, iii. 23.

647.

A great deal of misconception is raised by a confusion of planes of being and misuse of expressions. For instance, certain spiritual states have been confounded with the Nirvâna of Buddha. The Nirvâna of Buddha is totally different from any other spiritual state of Samâdhi or even the highest Theophania enjoyed by lesser Adepts. After physical death the kinds of spiritual states reached by Adepts differ greatly.

648.

This region is the one possible point of conciliation between the two diametrically opposed poles of religion and science, the one with its barren fields of dogmas on faith, the other over-running with empty hypotheses, both overgrown with the weeds of error. They will never meet. The two are at feud, at an everlasting warfare with each other, but this does not prevent them from uniting against Esoteric Philosophy, which for two millenniums has had to fight against infallibility in both directions, or “mere vanity and pretence” as Antoninus defined it, and now finds the materialism of Modern Science arrayed against its truths.

649.

Whence some of the Gnostic ideas? Cerinthus taught that the world and Jehovah having fallen off from virtue and primitive dignity the Supreme permitted one of his glorious Æons, whose name was the “Anointed” (Christ) to incarnate in the man Jesus. Basilides denied the reality of the body of Jesus, and calling it an “illusion” held that it was Simon of Cyrene who suffered on the Cross in his stead. All such teachings are echoes of the Eastern Doctrines.

650.

A genuine initiated Adept will retain his Adeptship, though there may be for our world of illusion numberless incarnations of him. The propelling power that lies at the root of a series of such incarnations is not Karma, as ordinarily understood, but a still more inscrutable power. During the period of his lives the Adept does not lose his Adeptship, though he cannot rise in it to a higher degree.

651.

From the so-called Brahmâ Loka—the seventh and higher world, beyond which all is arûpa, formless, purely spiritual—to the lowest world and insect, or even to an object such as a leaf, there is perpetual revolution of the condition of existence, evolution and re-birth. Some human beings attain states or spheres from which there is only a return in a new Kalpa (a day of Brahmâ); there are other states or spheres from which there is only return after 100 years of Brahmâ (Mahâ-Kalpa, a period covering 311,040,000,000,000 years). Nirvâna, it is said, is a state from which there is no return. Yet it is maintained that there may be, as exceptional cases, re-incarnation from that state; only such incarnations are illusion, like everything else on this plane, as will be shown.

652.

This fact of the disappearance of the vehicle of Egotism in the fully developed Yogî, who is supposed to have reached Nirvâna on earth, years before his corporeal death, has led to the law in Manu, sanctioned by millenniums of Brâhmanical authority, that such a Paramâtmâ should be held as absolutely blameless and free from sin or responsibility, do whatever he may (see last chapter of the Laws of Manu). Indeed, caste itself—that most despotic, uncompromising and autocratic tyrant in India—can be broken with impunity by the Yogî, who is above caste. This will give the key to our statements.

653.

[The word “Adept” is very loosely used by H. P. B., who often seems to have implied by it no more than the possession of special knowledge of some kind. Here it seems to mean first an uninitiated disciple and then an initiated one.—Eds.]

654.

About fifty years before the birth of Copernicus, de Cusa wrote as follows: “Though the world may not be absolutely infinite, no one can represent it to himself as finite, since human reason is incapable of assigning to it any term.... For in the same way that our earth cannot be in the centre of the Universe, as thought, no more could the sphere of the fixed stars be in it.... Thus this world is like a vast machine, having its centre [Deity] everywhere, and its circumference nowhere [machina mundi, quasi habens ubique centrum, et nullibi circumferentiam].... Hence, the earth not being in the centre, cannot therefore be motionless ... and though it is far smaller than the sun, one must not conclude for all that, that she is worse [vilior—more vile].... One cannot see whether its inhabitants are superior to those who dwell nearer to the sun, or in other stars, as sidereal space cannot be deprived of inhabitants.... The earth, very likely [fortasse] one of the smallest globes, is nevertheless the cradle of intelligent beings, most noble and perfect.” One cannot fail to agree with the biographer of Cardinal de Cusa, who, having no suspicion of the Occult truth, and the reason of such erudition in a writer of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, simply marvels at such a miraculous foreknowledge, and attributes it to God, saying of him that he was a man incomparable in every kind of philosophy, by whom many a theological mystery inaccessible to the human mind (!), veiled and neglected for centuries (velata et neglecta) were once more brought to light. “Pascal might have read De Cusa's works; but whence could the Cardinal have borrowed his ideas?” asks Moreri. Evidently from Hermes and the works of Pythagoras, even if the mystery of his incarnation and re-incarnation be dismissed.

655.

This is the secret meaning of the statements about the Hierarchy of Prajâpatis or Rishis. First seven are mentioned, then ten, then twenty-one, and so on. They are “Gods” and creators of men—many of them the “Lords of Beings”; they are the “Mind-born Sons” of Brahmâ, and then they became mortal heroes, and are often shown as of a very sinful character. The Occult meaning of the Biblical Patriarchs, their genealogy, and their descendants dividing among themselves the earth, is the same. Again, Jacob's dream has the same significance.

656.

He “of the Seven Virtues” is one who, without the benefit of Initiation, becomes as pure as any Adept by the simple exertion of his own merit. Being so holy, his body at his next incarnation becomes the Avatâra of his “Watcher” or Guardian Angel, as the Christian would put it.

657.

The title of the highest Dhyân Chohans.

658.

Op. cit., ii. 367.

659.

“After death, the soul continueth in the aerial (astral) body, till it is entirely purified from all angry, sensual passions; then doth it put off by a second death [when arising to Devachan] the aerial body as it did the earthly one. Wherefore the ancients say that there is a celestial body always joined with the soul, which is immortal, luminous and star-like.” It becomes natural then, that the “aerial body” of an Adept should have no such second dying, since it has been cleansed of all its natural impurity before its separation from the physical body. The high Initiate is a “Son of the Resurrection,” “being equal unto the angels,” and cannot die any more (see Luke, xx. 36).

660.

St. John, xxi. 21.

661.

See the extract made in the Theosophist from a glorious novel by Dostoievsky—a fragment entitled “The Great Inquisitor.” It is a fiction, naturally, still a sublime fiction of Christ returning in Spain during the palmy days of the Inquisition, and being imprisoned and put to death by the Inquisitor, who fears lest Christ should ruin the work of Jesuit hands.

662.

When we say the “great Teacher,” we do not mean His Buddhic Ego, but that principle in Him which was the vehicle of His personal or terrestrial Ego.

663.

Five Years of Theosophy, New Edition, p. 3.

664.

Op. cit., p. 175, Fifth Edition.

665.

It would be useless to raise objections from exoteric works to statements in this, which aims to expound, however superficially, the Esoteric Teachings alone. It is because they are misled by the exoteric doctrine that Bishop Bigandet and others aver that the notion of a supreme eternal Âdi-Buddha is to be found only in writings of comparatively recent date. What is given here is taken from the secret portions of Dus Kyi Khorlo (Kâla Chakra, in Sanskrit, or the “Wheel of Time,” or duration).

666.

The three bodies are (1) the Nirmânakâya (Pru-lpai-Ku in Tibetan), in which the Bodhisattva after entering by the six Pâramitâs the Path to Nirvâna, appears to men in order to teach them; (2) Sambhogakâya (Dzog-pai-Ku), the, body of bliss impervious to all physical sensations, received by one who has fulfilled the three conditions of moral perfection; and (3) Dharmakâya (in Tibetan, Chos-Ku), the Nirvânic body.

667.

Five Years of Theosophy, art. “Personal and Impersonal God,” p. 129.

668.

Adhishtâthâ, the active or working agent in Prakriti (or matter).

669.

Vedânta-Sûtras, Ad. I. Pâda iv. Shi. 23. Commentary. The passage is given as follows in Thibaut's translation (Sacred Books of the East, xxxiv.), p. 286: “The Self is thus the operative cause, because there is no other ruling principle, and the material cause because there is no other substance from which the world could originate.”

670.

In Five Years of Theosophy (art. “Shâkya Muni's Place in History,” p. 234, note) it is stated that one day when our Lord sat in the Sattapanni Cave (Saptaparna) he compared man to a Saptaparna (seven leaved) plant. “Mendicants,” he said, “there are seven Buddhas in every Buddha, and there are six Bhikshus and but one Buddha in each mendicant. What are the seven? The seven branches of complete knowledge. What are the six? The six organs of sense. What are the five? The five elements of illusive being. And the One which is also ten? He is a true Buddha who develops in him the ten forms of holiness and subjects them all to the One.” Which means that every principle in the Buddha was the highest that could be evolved on this earth; whereas in the case of other men who attain to Nirvâna this is not necessarily the case. Even as a mere human (Manushya) Buddha Gautama was a pattern for all men. But his Arhats were not necessarily so.

671.

See Isis Unveiled, ii., 132.

672.

“Before one becomes a Buddha he must be a Bodhisattva; before evolving into a Bodhisattva he must be a Dhyâni-Buddha.... A Bodhisattva is the way and Path to his Father, and thence to the One Supreme Essence” (Descent of Buddhas, p. 17, from Âryâsanga). “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life: no man cometh unto the Father but by me” (St. John, xiv. 6). The “way” is not the goal. Nowhere throughout the New Testament is Jesus found calling himself God, or anything higher than “a son of God,” the son of a “Father” common to all, synthetically. Paul never said (I. Tim., iii. 10), “God was manifest in the flesh,” but “He who was manifested in the flesh” (Revised Edition). While the common herd among the Buddhists—the Burmese especially—regard Jesus as an incarnation of Devadatta, a relative who opposed the teachings of Buddha, the students of Esoteric Philosophy see in the Nazarene Sage a Bodhisattva with the spirit of Buddha Himself in Him.

673.

I. Corinth., xv. 36.

674.

Op. cit., Mandala x., hymn 90.

675.

Literally, “he who walks [or follows] in the way [or path] of his predecessors.”

676.

Schmidt, in Slanong Seetsen, p. 471, and Schlagintweit, in Buddhism in Tibet, p. 53, accept these precious things literally, enumerating them as “the wheel, the precious stone, the royal consort, the best treasurer, the best horse, the elephant, the best leader.” After this one can little wonder if “besides a Dhyâni-Buddhi and a Dhyâni-Bodhisattva” each human Buddha is furnished with “a female companion, a Shakti”—when in truth “Shakti” is simply the Soul-power, the psychic energy of the God as of the Adept. The “royal consort,” the third of the “seven precious gifts,” very likely led the learned Orientalist into this ludicrous error.

677.

A Bodhisattva can reach Nirvâna and live, as Buddha did, and after death he can either refuse objective reincarnation or accept and use it at his convenience for the benefit of mankind whom he can instruct in various ways while he remains in the Devachanic regions within the attraction of our earth. But having once reached Paranirvâna or “Nirvâna without remains”—the highest Dharmakâya condition, in which state he remains entirely outside of every earthly condition—he will return no more until the commencement of a new Manvantara, since he has crossed beyond the cycle of births.

678.

Tulpa is the voluntary incarnation of an Adept into a living body, whether of an adult, child, or new-born babe.

679.

Ku-sum is the triple form of the Nirvâna state and its respective duration in the “cycle of Non-Being.” The number seven here refers to the seven Rounds of our septenary System.

680.

Buddhism in Tibet, p. 52. This same generic use of a name is found among Hindus with that of Shankarâchârya, to take but one instance. All His successors bear his name, but are not reincarnations of Him. So with the “Buddhas.”

681.

[The words within brackets are supplied to introduce the following statements that are confused and contradictory as they stand, and which H. P. B. had probably intended to elucidate to some slight extent, as they are written two or three times with different sentences following them. The MS. is exceedingly confused, and everything H. P. B. said is here pieced together, the addition above made being marked in brackets to distinguish it from hers.—A. B.]

682.

King Suddhodana.

683.

There are several names marked simply by asterisks.

684.

Shankarâchârya died also at thirty-two years of age, or rather disappeared from the sight of his disciples, as the legend goes.

685.

Does “Tiani-Tsang” stand for Apollonius of Tyana? This is a simple surmise. Some things in the life of that Adept would seem to tally with the hypothesis—others to go against it.

686.

According to Esoteric teaching Buddha lived one hundred years in reality, though having reached Nirvâna in his eightieth year he was regarded as one dead to the world of the living. See article “Shâkyamuni's Place in History” in Five Years of Theosophy.

687.

It is a secret rite, pertaining to high Initiation, and has the same significance as the one to which Clement of Alexandria alludes when he speaks of “the token of recognition being in common with us, as by cutting off Christ” (Strom., 13). Schlagintweit wonders what it may be. “The typical representation of a hermit,” he says, “is always that of a man with long, uncut hair and beard.... A rite very often selected, though I am unable to state for what reason, is that of Chod (‘to cut’ or ‘to destroy’) the meaning of which is anxiously kept a profound secret by the Lamas.” (Buddhism in Tibet, p. 163.)

688.

Hlun-Chub is the divining spirit in man, the highest degree of seership.

689.

The secret meaning of this sentence is that Karma exercises its sway over the Adept as much as over any other man; “Gods” can escape it as little as simple mortals. The Adept who, having reached the Path and won His Dharmakâya—the Nirvâna from which there is no return until the new grand Kalpa—prefers to use His right of choosing a condition inferior to that which belongs to Him, but that will leave him free to return whenever He thinks it advisable and under whatever personality He may select, must be prepared to take all the chances of failure—possibly—and a lower condition than was His lot—for a certainty—as it is an occult law. Karma alone is absolute justice and infallible in its selections. He who uses his rights with it (Karma) must bear the consequences—if any. Thus Buddha's first reincarnation was produced by Karma—and it led Him higher than ever; the two following were “out of pity” and * * *.

690.

The Universe of Brahmâ (Sien-Chan; Nam-Kha) is Universal Illusion, or our phenomenal world.

691.

Âkâsha. It is next to impossible to render the mystic word “Tho-og” by any other term than “Space,” and yet, unless coined on purpose, no new appellation can render it so well to the mind of the Occultist. The term “Aditi” is also translated “Space,” and there is a world of meaning in it.

692.

Dang-ma, a purified soul, and Lha, a freed spirit within a living body; an Adept or Arhat. In the popular opinion in Tibet, a Lha is a disembodied spirit, something similar to the Burmese Nat—only higher.

693.

Kwan-yin is a synonym, for in the original another term is used, but the meaning is identical. It is the divine voice of Self, or the “Spirit-voice” in man, and the same as Vâchîshvara (the “Voice-deity”) of the Brâhmans. In China, the Buddhist ritualists have degraded its meaning by anthropomorphizing it into a Goddess of the same name, with one thousand hands and eyes, and they call it Kwan-shai-yin-Bodhisat. It is the Buddhist “daïmon”-voice of Socrates.

694.

Sangharama is the sanctum sanctorum of an ascetic, a cave or any place he chooses for his meditation.

695.

Amitâbha Buddha is in this connection the “boundless light” by which things of the subjective world are perceived.

696.

Esoterically, “the unsurpassingly merciful and enlightened heart,” said of the “Perfect Ones,” the Jîvan-muktas, collectively.

697.

These six worlds—seven with us—are the worlds of Nats or Spirits, with the Burmese Buddhists, and the seven higher worlds of the Vedântins.

698.

Two things entirely distinct from each other. The “faculty is not distinguished from the subject” only on this material plane, while thought generated by our physical brain, one that has never impressed itself at the same time on the spiritual counterpart, whether through the atrophy of the latter or the intrinsic weakness of that thought, can never survive our body; this much is sure.

699.

Vedânta Sâra, translated by Major Jacob, p. 123.

700.

Aditi is, according to the Rig Veda, “the Father and Mother of all the Gods”; and Âkâsha is held by Southern Buddhism as the Root of all, whence everything in the Universe came out, in obedience to a law of motion inherent in it; and this is the Tibetan “Space” (Tho-og).

701.

Mânava-Dharma-Shâstra, i. 6, 7.

702.

The “God” of Pythagoras, the disciple of the Âryan Sages, is no personal God. Let it be remembered that he taught as a cardinal tenet that there exists a permanent Principle of Unity beneath all forms, changes, and other phenomena of the Universe.

703.

Isis Unveiled, i. xvi.

704.

Isis Unveiled, i. xviii.

705.

Isis Unveiled i. 58.

706.

Isis Unveiled, i. 59.

707.

While they are to a great extent identical with those of Esoteric Buddhism, the Secret Doctrine of the East.

708.

Parerga, II. iii. 112; quoted in Isis Unveiled, i. 58.

709.

Five Years of Theosophy, p. 338, et seq.

710.

Prof. Max Müller, in a letter to The Times (April, 1857), maintained most vehemently that Nirvâna meant annihilation in the fullest sense of the word. (Chips from a German Workshop, i. 287.) But in 1869, in a lecture before the General Meeting of the Association of German Philologists at Kiel, “he distinctly declares his belief that the Nihilism attributed to Buddha's teaching forms no part of his doctrine, and that it is wholly wrong to suppose that Nirvâna means annihilation.” (Trubner's Amer. and Oriental Lit. Rec., Oct. 16th, 1869.)

711.

See the Kalama Sutta of the Anguttaranikayo, as quoted in A Buddhist Catechism, by H. S. Olcott, President of the Theosophical Society, pp. 55, 56.

712.

Œdipus Ægypt., II. i. 291.

713.

Sephir, or Aditi (mystic Space). The Sephiroth, be it understood, are identical with the Hindu Prajâpatis, the Dhyân Chohans of Esoteric Buddhism, the Zoroastrian Amshaspends, and finally with the Elohim—the “Seven Angels of the Presence” of the Roman Catholic Church.

714.

According to the Eastern idea, the All comes out from the One, and returns to it again. Absolute annihilation is simply unthinkable. Nor can eternal Matter be annihilated. Form may be annihilated: co-relations may change. That is all. There can be no such thing as annihilation—in the European sense—in the Universe.

715.

Isis Unveiled, i. 289.

716.

The Secret Law, the “Doctrine of the Heart,” so called in contrast to the “Doctrine of the Eye,” or exoteric Buddhism.

717.

“Illusive matter in its triple manifestation in the earthly, and the astral or fontal Soul (the body), and the Platonian dual Soul—the rational and the irrational one.”

718.

Isis Unveiled, i. 289.

719.

Isis Unveiled, i. 290.

720.

It is from the texts of all these works that the Secret Doctrine has been given. The original matter would not make a small pamphlet, but the explanations and notes from the Commentaries and Glossaries might be worked into ten volumes as large as Isis Unveiled.

721.

The monk Della Penna makes considerable fun in his Memoirs (see Markham's Tibet) of certain statements in the Books of Kiu-te. He brings to the notice of the Christian public “the great mountain 160,000 leagues high” (a Tibetan league consisting of five miles) in the Himâlayan Range. “According to their law,” he says, “in the west of this world is an eternal world ... a paradise, and in it a Saint called Hopahma, which means ‘Saint of Splendour and Infinite Light.’ This Saint has many disciples who are all Chang-chub,” which means, he adds in a footnote, “the Spirits of those who, on account of their perfection, do not care to become saints, and train and instruct the bodies of the reborn Lamas ... so that they may help the living.” Which means that the presumably “dead” Yang-Chhub (not “Chang-chub”) are simply living Bodhisattvas, some of those known as Bhante (“the Brothers”). As to the “mountain 160,000 leagues high,” the Commentary which gives the key to such statements explains that according to the code used by the writers, “to the west of the ‘Snowy Mountain’ 160 leagues [the cyphers being a blind] from a certain spot and by a direct road, is the Bhante Yul [the country or ‘Seat of the Brothers’], the residence of Mahâ-Chohan ...” etc. This is the real meaning. The “Hopahma” of Della Penna is—the Mahâ-Chohan, the Chief.

722.

In some MSS. notes before us, written by Gelung (priest) Thango-pa Chhe-go-mo, it is said: “The few Roman Catholic missionaries who have visited our land (under protest) in the last century and have repaid our hospitality by turning our sacred literature into ridicule, have shown little discretion and still less knowledge. It is true that the Sacred Canon of the Tibetans, the Kahgyur and Bstanhgyur, comprises 1707 distinct works—1083 public and 624 secret volumes, the former being composed of 350 and the latter of 77 volumes folio. May we humbly invite the good missionaries, however, to tell us when they ever succeeded in getting a glimpse of the last-named secret folios? Had they even by chance seen them I can assure the Western Pandits that these manuscripts and folios could never be understood even by a born Tibetan without a key (a) to their peculiar characters, and (b) to their hidden meaning. In our system every description of locality is figurative, every name and word purposely veiled; and one has first to study the mode of deciphering and then to learn the equivalent secret terms and symbols for nearly every word of the religious language. The Egyptian enchorial or hieratic system is child's play to our sacerdotal puzzles.”

723.

Chinese Buddhism, p. 171.

724.

“Buddhi” is a Sanskrit term for “discrimination” or intellect (the sixth principle), and “Buddha” is “wise,” “wisdom,” and also the planet Mercury.

725.

This curious contradiction may be found in Chinese Buddhism, pp. 171, 273. The reverend author assures his readers that “to the philosophic Buddhists ... Amitâbha Yoshi Fo, and the others are nothing but the signs of ideas” (p. 236). Very true. But so should be all other deific names, such as Jehovah, Allah, etc., and if they are not simply “signs of ideas” this would only show that minds that receive them otherwise are not “philosophic”; it would not at all afford serious proof that there are personal, living Gods of these names in reality.

726.

The Chinese Amitâbha (Wu-liang-sheu) and the Tibetan Amitâbha (Odpag-med) have now become personal Gods, ruling over and living in the celestial region of Sukhâvatî, or Tushita (Tibetan: Devachan); while Âdi-Buddhi, of the philosophic Hindu, and Amita Buddha of the philosophic Chinaman and Tibetan, are names for universal, primeval ideas.

727.

See Theosophist for March, 1882.

728.

The intimate relation of the twenty-five Buddhas (Bodhisattvas) with the twenty-five Tattvas (the Conditioned or Limited) of the Hindus is interesting.

729.

It is curious to note the great importance given by European Orientalists to the Dalaï Lamas of Lhassa, and their utter ignorance as to the Tda-shu (or Teshu) Lamas, while it is the latter who began the hierarchical series of Buddha-incarnations, and are de facto the “popes” in Tibet; the Dalaï Lamas are the creations of Nabang-lob-Sang, the Tda-shu Lama, who was Himself the sixth incarnation of Amita, through Tsong Kha-pa, though very few seem to be aware of that fact.

730.

The chanting of a Mantra is not a prayer, but rather a magical sentence in which the law of Occult causation connects itself with, and depends on, the will and acts of its singer. It is a succession of Sanskrit sounds, and when its string of words and sentences is pronounced according to the magical formulæ in the Atharva Veda, but understood by the few, some Mantras produce an instantaneous and very wonderful effect. In its esoteric sense it contains the Vâch (the “mystic speech”), which resides in the Mantra, or rather in its sounds, since it is according to the vibrations, one way or the other, of ether that the effect is produced. The “sweet singers” were called by that name because they were experts in Mantras. Hence the legend in China that the singing and melody of the Lohans are heard at dawn by the priests from their cells in the monastery of Fang-Kwang. (See Biography of Chi-Kai in Tien-tai-nan-tchi.)

731.

The celebrated Lohan, Mâdhyantika, who converted the king and whole country of Kashmir to Buddhism, sent a body of Lohans to preach the Good Law. He was the sculptor who raised to Buddha the famous statue one hundred feet high, which Hiuen-Tsaung saw at Dardu, to the north of the Punjab. As the same Chinese traveller mentions a temple ten Li from Peshawur—350 feet round and 850 feet high—which was at his time (a.d. 550) already 850 years old, Koeppen thinks that so far back as 292 b.c. Buddhism was the prevalent religion in the Punjab.

732.

A title of the Tda-shu-Hlum-po Lama.

733.

The twelve Nidâwas, called in Tibetan Tin-brel Chug-nyi, which are based upon the “Four Truths.”

734.

The Srotâpatti is one who has attained the first Path of comprehension in the real and the unreal; the Sakridâgâmin is the candidate for one of the higher Initiations: “one who is to receive birth once more;” the Anâgâmin is he who has attained the “third Path,” or literally, “he who will not be reborn again” unless he so wishes it, having the option of being reborn in any of the “worlds of the Gods,” or of remaining in Devachan, or of choosing an earthly body with a philanthropic object. An Arhat is one who has reached the highest Path; he may merge into Nirvâna at will, while here on earth.

735.

[The Pratyeka Buddha stands on the level of the Buddha, but His work for the world has nothing to do with its teaching, and His office has always been surrounded with mystery. The preposterous view that He, at such superhuman height of power, wisdom and love could be selfish, is found in the exoteric books, though it is hard to see how it can have arisen. H. P. B. charged me to correct the mistake, as she had, in a careless moment, copied such a statement elsewhere.—A. B.]

736.

It is an erroneous idea which makes the Orientalists take literally the teaching of the Mahâyâna School about the three different kinds of bodies, namely, the Prulpa-ku, the Longehod-drocpaig-ku, and the Chos-ku, as all pertaining to the Nirvânic condition. There are two kinds of Nirvâna: the earthly, and that of the purely disembodied Spirits. These three “bodies” are the three envelopes—all more or less physical—which are at the disposal of the Adept who has entered and crossed the six Pâramitâs, or “Paths” of Buddha. Once He enters upon the seventh, He can return no more to earth. See Cosma, Jour. As. Soc. Beng., vii. 142; and Schott, Buddhismus, p. 9, who give it otherwise.

737.

Vedânta Sâra, translated by Major Jacob, p. 119.

738.

Ibid., p. 122.

739.

Der Buddhismus, pp. 327, 357, et seq., quoted by Schlagintweit.

740.

Buddhism in Tibet, p. 41.

741.

Jour. of As. Soc. Bengal, vii. 144, quoted as above.

742.

Buddhism in Tibet, p. 44.

743.

They maintain also the existence of One Absolute pure Nature, Parabrahman; the illusion of everything outside of it; the leading of the individual Soul—a Ray of the “Universal”—into the true nature of existence and things by Yoga alone.

744.

Nirmânakâya (also Nirvânakâya, vulg.) is the body or Self “with remains,” or the influence of terrestrial attributes, however spiritualized, clinging yet to that Self. An Initiate in Dharmakâya, or in Nirvâna “without remains,” is the Jivanmukta, the Perfect Initiate, who separates his Higher Self entirely from his body during Samâdhi. [It will be noticed that these two words are here used in a sense other than that previously given.—A. B.]

745.

The “Sacred” Books of Dus-Kyi Khorlo (“Time Circle”). See Jour. As. Soc., ii. 57. These works were abandoned to the Sikkhim Dugpas, from the time of Tsong-Kha-pa's reform.

746.

Glossary of Judicial and Revenue Terms, art. “Yoga,” quoted in Buddhism in Tibet, p. 47.

747.

Buddhism in Tibet, pp. 47, 48.

748.

Buddhism in Tibet, pp. 63, 64. The objects found in the casket, as enumerated in the exoteric legend, are of course symbolical. They may be found mentioned in the Kanjur. They were said to be: (1) two hands joined; (2) a miniature Choten (Stûpa, or reliquary); (3) a talisman with “Om mani padme hum” inscribed on it; (4) a religious book, Zamatog (“a constructed vehicle”).

749.

Alterthumskunde, ii. 1072.

750.

Op. cit., ii. 470.

751.

Unless one obtains exact information and the right method, one's visions, however correct and true in Soul-life, will ever fail to get photographed in our human memory, and certain cells of the brain are sure to play havoc with our remembrances.

752.

Chinese Buddhism, p. 158. The Rev. Joseph Edkins either ignores, or—which is more probable—is utterly ignorant of the real existence of such Schools, and judges by the Chinese travesties of these, calling such Esotericism “heterodox Buddhism.” And so it is, in one sense.

753.

That country—India—has lost the records of such Schools and their teachings only so far as the general public, and especially the inappreciative Western Orientalists, are concerned. It has preserved them in full in some Mathams (refuges for mystic contemplation). But it may perhaps be better to seek them with, and from, their rightful owners, the so-called “mythical” Adepts, or Mahâtmâs.

754.

Chinese Buddhism, pp. 155-159.

755.

They certainly reject most emphatically the popular theory of the transmigration of human entities or Souls into animals, but not the evolution of men from animals—so far, at least, as their lower principles are concerned.

756.

It is quite consistent, on the contrary, when explained in the light of the Esoteric Doctrine. The “Western paradise,” or Western heaven, is no fiction located in transcendental space. It is a bonâ-fide locality in the mountains, or, to be more correct, one encircled in a desert within mountains. Hence it is assigned for the residence of those students of Esoteric Wisdom—disciples of Buddha—who have attained the rank of Lohans and Anâgâmins (Adepts). It is called “Western” simply from geographical considerations; and “the great iron mountain girdle” that surrounds the Avitchi, and the seven Lokas that encircle the “Western paradise” are a very exact representation of well-known localities and things to the Eastern student of Occultism.

757.

The word is translated by the Orientalists as “true man without a position,” (?) which is very misleading. It simply means the true inner man, or Ego, “Buddha within Buddha” meaning that there was a Gautama inwardly as well as outwardly.

758.

One of the titles of Gautama Buddha in Tibet.

759.

The “Esoteric” Schools, or sects, of which there are many in China.

760.

A school of contemplation founded by Hiuen-Tsang, the traveller, nearly extinct. Fa-siong-Tsung means “the School that unveils the inner nature of things.”

761.

Esoteric, or hidden, teaching of Yoga (Chinese: Yogi-mi-kean).

762.

The “tonsure knife” is made of meteoric iron, and is used for the purpose of cutting off the “vow-lock,” or hair from the novice's head during his first ordination. It has a double-edged blade, is sharp as a razor, and lies concealed within a hollow handle of horn. By touching a spring the blade jerks out like a flash of lightning, and recedes back with the same rapidity. A great dexterity is required in using it without wounding the head of the young Gelung and Gelung-ma (candidates to become priests and nuns) during the preliminary rites, which are public.

763.

Chagpa-Thog-mad is the Tibetan name of Âryâsanga, the founder of the Yogâchârya or Naljorchodpa School. This Sage and Initiate is said to have been taught “Wisdom” by Maitreya Buddha Himself, the Buddha of the Sixth Race, at Tushita (a celestial region presided over by Him), and as having received from Him the five books of Champaitehos-nga. The Secret Doctrine teaches, however, that he came from Dejung, or Shambhalla, called the “source of happiness” (“wisdom-acquired”) and declared by some Orientalists to be a “fabulous” place.

764.

It may not be, perhaps, amiss to remind the reader of the fact that the “mirror” was a part of the symbolism of the Thesmophoria, a portion of the Eleusinian Mysteries; and that it was used in the search for Atmu, the “Hidden One,” or “Self.” In his excellent paper on the above-named mysteries, Dr. Alexander Wilder of New York says: “Despite the assertion of Herodotus and others that the Bacchic Mysteries were Egyptian, there exists strong probability that they came originally from India, and were Shaivitic or Buddhistical. Kore-Persep-honeia was but the goddess Parasu-pani, or Bhavani, and Zagreus is from Chakra, a country extending from ocean to ocean. If this is a Turanian story we can easily recognise the ‘horns’ as the crescent worn by Lama-priests, and assume the whole legend [the fable of Dionysus-Zagreus] to be based on Lama-succession and transmigration.... The whole story of Orpheus ... has a Hindu ring all through.” The tale of “Lama-succession and transmigration” did not originate with the Lamas, who date themselves only so far back as the seventh century, but with the Chaldæans and the Brâhmans, still earlier.

765.

The state of absolute freedom from any sin or desire.

766.

The state during which an Adept sees the long series of his past births, and lives through all his previous incarnations in this and the other worlds. (See the admirable description in the Light of Asia, p. 166, 1884 ed.)

767.

See supra, ii. 188, 189.

768.

Wilson's translation, as amended by Fitzedward Hall, i. 40.

769.

Prâna is in reality the universal Life Principle.

770.

All the uterine contents, having a direct spiritual connection with their cosmic antetypes, are, on the physical plane, potent objects in Black Magic, and are therefore considered unclean.

771.

See supra, ii. Part I.

772.

The Solar System or the Earth, as the case may be.

773.

So are the animals, the plants, and even the minerals. Reichenbach never understood what he learned through his sensitives and clairvoyants. It is the odic, or rather the auric or magnetic fluid which emanates from man, but it is also something more.

774.

See supra, i. 181, for the Vedântic exoteric enumeration.

775.

See Lucifer, January, 1889, “Dialogue upon the Mysteries of After-Life.”

776.

See supra, i, 626-629.

777.

See supra, i, 228, et seq., and ii. passim.

778.

Op. cit., ii, 456, 461, 465 et seq.

779.

Jod-Hevah, or male-female on the terrestrial plane, as invented by the Jews, and now made out to mean Jehovah; but signifying in reality and literally, “giving being” and “receiving life.”

780.

See Notice sur le Calendrier, J. H. Ragon.

781.

See supra, ii. 373; and 152, et seq.

782.

See supra, ii. 302, et seq.

783.

Op. cit., ii. 81, 6.

784.

See Frank's Die Kabbala, p. 314, et seq.

785.

Genesis, ii. 7.

786.

Supra, i. 147.

787.

We may refer for confirmation to Origen's works, who says that “the seven ruling daimons” (genii or planetary rulers) are Michael, the Sun (the lion-like); the second in order, the Bull, Jupiter or Suriel, etc.; and all these, the “Seven of the Presence,” are the Sephiroth. The Sephirothal Tree is the Tree of the Divine Planets as given by Porphyry, or Porphyry's Tree, as it is usually called.

788.

Supra, i, 147.

789.

Esoterically, green, there being no black in the prismatic ray.

790.

Esoterically, light blue. As a pigment, purple is a compound of red and blue, and in Eastern Occultism blue is the spiritual essence of the colour purple, while red is its material basis. In reality, Occultism makes Jupiter blue because he is the son of Saturn, which is green, and light blue as a prismatic colour contains a great deal of green. Again, the Auric Body will contain much of the colour of the Lower Manas if the man is a material sensualist, just as it will contain much of the darker hue if the Higher Manas has preponderance over the Lower.

791.

Esoterically, the Sun cannot correspond with the eye, nose, or any other organ, since, as explained, it is no planet, but a central star. It was adopted as a planet by the post-Christian Astrologers, who had never been initiated. Moreover, the true colour of the Sun is blue, and it appears yellow only owing to the effect of the absorption of vapours (chiefly metallic) by its atmosphere. All is Mâyâ on our Earth.

792.

Esoterically, indigo, or dark blue, which is the complement of yellow in the prism. Yellow is a simple or primitive colour. Manas being dual in its nature—as is its sidereal symbol, the planet Venus, which is both the morning and evening star—the difference between the higher and the lower principles of Manas, whose essence is derived from the Hierarchy ruling Venus, is denoted by the dark blue and green. Green, the Lower Manas, resembles the colour of the solar spectrum which appears between the yellow and the dark blue, the Higher Spiritual Manas. Indigo is the intensified colour of the heaven or sky, to denote the upward tendency of Manas toward Buddhi, or the heavenly Spiritual Soul. This colour is obtained from the indigofera tinctoria, a plant of the highest occult properties in India, much used in White Magic, and occultly connected with copper. This is shown by the indigo assuming a copper lustre, especially when rubbed on any hard substance. Another property of the dye is that it is insoluble in water and even in ether, being lighter in weight than any known liquid. No symbol has ever been adopted in the East without being based upon a logical and demonstrable reason. Therefore Eastern Symbologists, from the earliest ages, have connected the spiritual and the animal minds of man, the one with dark blue (Newton's indigo), or true blue, free from green; and the other with pure green.

793.

Esoterically, yellow, because the colour of the Sun is orange, and Mercury now stands next to the Sun in distance, as it does in colour. The planet for which the Sun is a substitute was still nearer the Sun than Mercury now is, and was one of the most secret and highest planets. It is said to have become invisible at the close of the Third Race.

794.

Esoterically, violet, because, perhaps, violet is the colour assumed by a ray of sunlight when transmitted through a very thin plate of silver, and also because the Moon shines upon the Earth with light borrowed from the Sun, as the human body shines with qualifications borrowed from its double—the aërial man. As the astral shadow starts the series of principles in man, on the terrestrial plane, up to the lower, animal Manas, so the violet ray starts the series of prismatic colours from its end up to green, both being, the one as a principle and the other as a colour, the most refrangible of all the principles and colours. Besides which, there is the same great Occult mystery attached to all these correspondences, both celestial and terrestrial bodies, colours and sounds. In clearer words, there exists the same law of relation between the Moon and the Earth, the astral and the living body of man, as between the violet end of the prismatic spectrum and the indigo and the blue. But of this more anon.

795.

Magic, Magia, means, in its spiritual, secret sense, the “Great Life,” or divine life in spirit. The root is magh, as seen in the Sanskrit mahat, Zend maz, Greek megas, and Latin magnus, all signifying “great.”

796.

Philosophumena, vi. 9.

797.

Nous, Epinoia; Phône, Onoma; Logismos, Enthumêsis.

798.

Philosophumena, vi. 12.

799.

See supra, sub voce.

800.

The Great Revelation (Hê Megalê Apophasis), of which Simon himself is supposed to have been the author.

801.

Literally, standing opposite each other in rows or pairs.

802.

Philosophumena, vi. 18.

803.

Op. cit., vi. 18.

804.

Op. cit., i. 13.

805.

Op. cit., vi. 17.

806.

Op. cit., i. 5.

807.

Philosophumena, vi. 14.

808.

At first there are the omphalo-mesenteric vessels, two arteries and two veins, but these afterwards totally disappear, as does the “vascular area” on the Umbilical Vesicle, from which they proceed. As regards the “Umbilical Vessels” proper, the Umbilical Cord ultimately has entwined around it from right to left the one Umbilical Vein which takes the oxygenated blood from the mother to the Fœtus, and two Hypogastric or Umbilical Arteries which take the used-up blood from the Fœtus to the Placenta, the contents of the vessels being the reverse of that which prevails after birth. Thus Science corroborates the wisdom and knowledge of ancient Occultism, for in the days of Simon Magus no man, unless an Initiate, knew anything about the circulation of the blood or about Physiology. While this Paper was being printed, I received two small pamphlets from Dr. Jerome A. Anderson, which were printed in 1884 and 1888, and in which is to be found the scientific demonstration of the fœtal nutrition as advanced in Paper I. Briefly, the Fœtus is nourished by osmosis from the Amniotic Fluid and respires by means of the Placenta. Science knows little or nothing about the Amniotic Fluid and its uses. If any one cares to follow up this question, I would recommend Dr. Anderson's Remarks on the Nutrition of the Fœtus. (Wood & Co., New York.)

809.

Supra, vol. ii.

810.

See Eusebius, Hist. Eccles., lib. iii. cap. 26.

811.

De Mysteriis, p. 100, lines 10 to 19; p. 109, fol. 1.

812.

De Mysteriis, p. 290, lines 15 to 18, et seq., caps. v. and vii.

813.

Ibid., p. 100, sec. iii, cap. iii.

814.

See supra, i. 34; i. 4, et seq.; ii. 39, et seq., and 625, et seq.

815.

The following table lists the wave-lengths in Millimetres, and the number of vibrations in Trillions, of the various colours. Violet extreme: 406, 759 Violet: 423, 709 Violet-Indigo: 439, 683 Indigo: 449, 668 Indigo-Blue: 459, 654 Blue: 479, 631 Blue-Green: 492, 610 Green: 512, 586 Green-Yellow: 532, 564 Yellow: 551, 544 Yellow-Orange: 571, 525 Orange: 583, 514 Orange-Red: 596, 503 Red: 620, 484 Red-extreme: 645, 465

816.

See Five Years of Theosophy, pp. 273 to 278.

817.

Apud Grêbaut Papyrus Orbiney, p. 101.

818.

See “Genius,” Lucifer, Nov., 1889, p. 227.

819.

See Voice of the Silence, pp. 68 and 94, art. 28, Glossary.

820.

The references to “Nature's Finer Forces” which follow, have respect to the eight articles which appeared in the pages of the Theosophist and not to the fifteen essays and the translation of a chapter of the Shivâgama which are contained in the book called Nature's Finer Forces. The Shivâgama in its details is purely Tântric, and nothing but harm can result from any practical following of its precepts. I would most strongly dissuade any student from attempting any of these Hatha Yoga practices, for he will either ruin himself entirely, or throw himself so far back that it will be almost impossible to regain the lost ground in this incarnation. The translation referred to has been considerably expurgated, and even now is hardly fit for publication. It recommends Black Magic of the worst kind, and is the very antipodes of spiritual Râja Yoga. Beware, I say.

821.

Prâna, on earth at any rate, is thus but a mode of life, a constant cyclic motion from within outwardly and back again, an out-breathing and in-breathing of the One Life, or Jîva, the synonym of the Absolute and Unknowable Deity. Prâna is not absolute life, or Jîva, but its aspect in a world of delusion. In the Theosophist, May, 1888, p. 478, Prâna is said to be “one stage finer than the gross matter of the earth.”

822.

Remember that our re-incarnating Egos are called the Mânasaputras, “Sons of Manas” (or Mahat), Intelligence, Wisdom.

823.

It is erroneous to call the fourth human principle “Kâma Rûpa.” It is no Rûpa or form at all until after death, but stands for the Kâmic elements in man, his animal desires and passions, such as anger, lust, envy, revenge, etc., the progeny of selfishness and matter.

824.

Here the world of effects is the Devachanic state, and the world of causes, earth life.

825.

It is this Kâma Rûpa alone that can materialize in mediumistic séances, which occasionally happens when it is not the Astral Double or Linga Sharîra, of the medium himself which appears. How, then, can this vile bundle of passions and terrestrial lusts, resurrected by, and gaining consciousness only through the organism of the medium, be accepted as a “departed angel” or the Spirit of a once human body? As well say of the microbic pest which fastens on a person, that it is a sweet departed angel.

826.

This is accomplished in more or less time, according to the degree in which the personality (whose dregs it now is) was spiritual or material. If spirituality prevailed, then the Larva, or Spook, will fade out very soon; but if the personality was very materialistic, the Kâma Rûpa may last for centuries and—in some, though very exceptional cases—even survive with the help of some of its scattered Skandhas, which are all transformed in time into Elementals. See the Key to Theosophy, pp. 141 et seq., in which work it was impossible to go into details, but where the Skandhas are spoken of as the germs of Karmic effect.

827.

Key to Theosophy, p. 141

828.

Following Shivâgama, the said author enumerates the correspondences in this wise; Âkâsha, Ether, is followed by Vâyu, Gas; Tejas, Heat; Âpas, Liquid; and Prithivî, Solid.

829.

See Fitz-Edward Hall's notes on the Vishnu Purâna.

830.

The pair which we refer to as the One Life, the Root of All, and Âkâsha in its pre-differentiating period answers to the Brahma (neuter) and Aditi of some Hindus, and stands in the same relation as the Parabrahman and Mûlaprakriti of the Vedântins.

831.

See above, i. diagram, p. 221.

832.

Anupâdaka, Opapatika in Pâli, means the “parentless,” born without father or mother, from itself, as a transformation, e.g., the God Brahmâ sprung from the Lotus (the symbol of the Universe) that grows from Vishnu's navel, Vishnu typifiying eternal and limitless Space, and Brahmâ the Universe and Logos; the mythical Buddha is also born from a Lotus.

833.

See Theosophist, February, 1888, p. 276.

834.

Sœmmerring, De Acervulo Cerebri, vol. ii. p. 322.

835.

In the Greek Eastern Church no child is allowed to go to confession before the age of seven, after which he is considered to have reached the age of reason.

836.

De Caus. Ep., vol xii.

837.

Advers. Med., ii. 322.

838.

De Lapillis Glandulæ Pinealis in Quinque Ment Alien, 1753.

839.

See “Stray Thoughts on Death and Satan” in the Theosophist, vol. iii. No. 1; also “Fragments of Occult Truth,” vols. iii. and iv.

840.

Op. cit., ii. 368, et seq.

841.

The essence of the Divine Ego is “pure flame,” an entity to which nothing can be added and from which nothing can be taken; it cannot, therefore, be diminished even by countless numbers of lower minds, detached from it like flames from a flame. This is in answer to an objection by an Esotericist who asked whence was that inexhaustible essence of one and the same Individuality which was called upon to furnish a human intellect for every new personality in which it is incarnated.

842.

The brain, or thinking machinery, is not only in the head, but, as every physiologist who is not quite a materialist will tell you, every organ in man, heart, liver, lungs, etc., down to every nerve and muscle, has, so to speak, its own distinct brain or thinking apparatus. As our brain has naught to do in the guidance of the collective and individual work of every organ in us, what is that which guides each so unerringly in its incessant functions; that make these struggle, and that too with disease, throws it off and acts, each of them, even to the smallest, not in a clock-work manner, as alleged by some materialists (for, at the slightest disturbance or breakage the clock stops), but as an entity endowed with instinct? To say it is Nature is to say nothing, if it is not the enunciation of a fallacy; for Nature after all is but a name for these very same functions, the sum of the qualities and attributes, physical, mental, etc., in the universe and man, the total of agencies and forces guided by intelligent laws.

843.

See Key to Theosophy, pp. 147, 148, et seq.

844.

Kâma Rûpa, the vehicle of the Lower Manas, is said to dwell in the physical brain, in the five physical senses and in all the sense-organs of the physical body.

845.

Tanmâtra means subtle and rudimentary form, the gross type of the finer elements. The five Tanmâtras are really the characteristic properties or qualities of matter and of all the elements; the real spirit of the word is “something” or “merely transcendental,” in the sense of properties or qualities.

846.

See Theosophist, August, 1883, “The Real and the Unreal.”

847.

As the author of Esoteric Buddhism and the Occult World called Manas the Human Soul, and Buddhi the Spiritual Soul, I have left these terms unchanged in the Voice, seeing that it was a book intended for the public.

848.

In the exoteric teachings of Râja Yoga, Antahkarana is called the inner organ of perception and is divided into four parts: the (lower) Manas, Buddhi (reason), Ahankâra (personality), and Chitta (thinking faculty). It also, together with several other organs, forms a part of Jîva, Soul called also Lingadeh. Esotericists, however, must not be misled by this popular version.

849.

The Earth, or earth-life rather, is the only Avîtchi (Hell) that exists for the men of our humanity on this globe. Avîtchi is a state, not a locality, a counterpart of Devachan. Such a state follows the Soul wherever it goes, whether into Kâma Loka, as a semi-conscious Spook, or into a human body, when reborn to suffer Avîtchi. Our Philosophy recognizes no other Hell.

850.

See Voice of the Silence, p. 97.

851.

Loc. cit.

852.

Read the last footnote on p. 368, vol. ii. of Isis Unveiled, and you will see that even profane Egyptologists and men who, like Bunsen, were ignorant of Initiation, were struck by their own discoveries when they found the “Word” mentioned in old papyri.

853.

See Theosophist, vol. iii., October, 1882, p. 13.

854.

Read pp. 40 and 63 in the Voice of the Silence.

855.

See Voice of the Silence, p. viii.

856.

The following notes were contributed by students and approved by H. P. B.

857.

See page 444.

858.

All these “spaces” denote the special magnetic currents, the planes of substance, and the degrees of approach that the consciousness of the Yogî, or Chelâ, performs towards assimilation with the inhabitants of the Lokas.

859.

[If the Nidânas are read the reverse way, i.e., from 12 to 1, they give the evolutionary order.—Ed.]

860.

[I.e., an Initiate, the word Adept being used by H. P. B. to cover all grades of Initiation. As above seen, she used the words Mâyâvi Rûpa in more than one sense.—Ed.]