Explanation of two diagrams from Isis Unveiled, herewith redrawn by Philaletheians, representing the chaotic and the formative periods before and after our universe began to be evolved. A side-by-side comparison of the Hindu and Chaldean Doctrines indicates that the esoteric Brahmanical, Buddhistic, and Chaldean standpoints agree in every respect with the evolutionary theory of modern science.
The Finns are a wonderfully simple nation, living in perfect touch and harmony with Nature. The old Finns clothed their perceptions of the world in a garland of sublime poetry. The Kalevala is more than 3,000 years old: it dates from the time when the Finnish tribes lived far south of their present home, probably on the Black Sea or the Caspian. The Finns are related to the peoples now settled on the tablelands of Tibet and Central Asia and stand to the Slavonian nations in the same mystical relation as the magicians and sorcerers of Thessaly stood to the rest of the Hellenes. In Russian folklore, Finn is almost a synonym of magician. Their cosmogonic myths and allegories are faithful echoes of the Dhyani-Chohans of the Secret Doctrine, a sublime radiation of Celestial Beings and fountainhead of humanity — formless on the plane of pure subjectivity — and their less spiritual emanations as they descend in the darkness of objectivity. Their beautiful duck corresponds exactly to Kalahamsa, the Swan out of Time and Space, convertible into the Swan in Time and Space of the Secret Doctrine.
At first the cosmogonical idea was one, everywhere. But as nations began fragmenting along tribal grooves, the original idea became gradually veiled with the overgrowth of human fancy. While in some countries the intelligent Powers of Nature received divine honours they were hardly entitled to, in others, the very thought of any such Power being endowed with intelligence seems absurd, and is proclaimed unscientific. Homer is silent with respect to the First Principle which, according to Proclus, is the Unity of Unities, more ineffable than all silence, more occult than all Essence. The Jews ascended no higher than the immediate artificer of the universe; for they degraded their metaphorical deity, as have the Christians, by accepting Jehovah as their one living yet personal God. The Jews invented the Tetragrammaton to celebrate life, to deify multiplication, and to mislead the profane. The Theosophist’s Deity is not the two-faced Tetragrammaton but the Crown, which has nought to do with the material world. The First Cause (Monad) is symbolised by a Point within the Circle of Heaven, or an Equilateral Triangle, from whence the First Cause has radiated is passed over in silence. That Point is the First Logos, not as yet the Architect of the world to be, but the unknown and unknowable cause of the Architect himself. Parabrahman cannot be seen as it is. It can only be seen by Logos but with a veil thrown over it: that veil is Mulaprakriti, the mighty expanse of cosmic matter. Mulaprakriti is the noumenon of matter, and is material to Logos, as any physical object is material to us. The Hidden Deity is represented by the circumference of a circle, the centre of which is everywhere and the circumference nowhere. Ain-Soph, the Kabbalistic Parabrahman, is inscrutable, unknowable, and unnameable — a Circle bound by the utmost stretch of our perception to the vault of a sphere. Deity is eternal perpetual motion, ever-becoming, universally-present, ever-existing. The Boundless Circle is its outward veil. Logos, represented by the central mathematical point, is only an organ in cosmic creation, through which radiate the energy and wisdom of Parabrahman. Logos is as unknown to us as Parabrahman is unknown in reality to Logos itself. In all those personations of Nature’s Female Powers, there are two distinct aspects: the noumenal and the phenomenal. The one is purely metaphysical, the other terrestrial and physical, and at the same time divine from the standpoint of human conception. The Powers of Nature all the symbols and personifications of Chaos, or the Primordial Waters of Space, the impenetrable veil between Absoluteness and the Logos of Creation. The feminine Logoi are all correlations, in their noumenal aspect, of Light, Sound, and Æther. There are four personations of Vach-Voice, vehicles of divine thought, corresponding with the higher Cosmic Principles. Vach is the female Logos, the loving mother of all that lives, milking forth sustenance and water. The most precious archaic records are utterly unknown to the Orientalists, and the dead-letter sense translations of popular Sanskrit works are merely blinds to the uninitiated. Hence the Orientalists refusing to be puzzled, they cut the Gordian knot of their perplexity by declaring the whole cosmogonical scheme figments of Brahmanical fancy and love of exaggeration. Prominent in every Cosmogony are the pre-cosmic Lords of Being, the Prajapatis or “Seven Builders,” symbolised by concentric circles. Osiris is the unknown “black God” because the realm of his noumenon is darkness to the mortal. He is the Egyptian Zagreus. Osiris is Avalokiteshvara, the Universal saviour and All-merciful Master, who moves the Waters of Space, fructifies and infuses the Breath of life into that germ that becomes the Golden Mundane Egg, and in which the male Brahmā is created. And thus, the first Prajapati, Lord of Beings, emerges and becomes the progenitor of mankind. Like Brahmā, Zeus and all other lower deities, Jehovah is an androgyne god. But he is neither the God worshipped by Moses, nor the Father of Jesus, nor yet the Ineffable Name of the Kabbalists. He is merely a composite name for membrum virile and Eve, a hermaphrodite. He is, in one sense, Noah (Hebrew Yah) or, literally translated, inch — the British inch! For those who love Truth for her own sake, and try to do good unselfishly without perpetually looking to reward and profit, the Cosmogony of Confucius is the most succinct and perhaps the most suggestive of all Cosmogonies. For those who are familiar with Occult Numerals, the Confucian figures indicate the progressive yet harmonious evolution of Kosmos and its beings, and the culmination of every perfection in heaven and on earth. The archaic map of Cosmogony is full of lines in the Confucian style, of concentric circles and dots. All these represent the most abstract and highest cosmogenic visions. Confucius, a contemporary of Pythagoras, was the Easter sage of the ancient world. He taught the sphericity of the Earth and the Heliocentric system; while, at about thrice years later, the infallible Popes threatened and even burnt “heretics” for asserting the same. The great Architect of the Universe gives the first impulse to the rotatory motion of our planetary system by stepping seriatim over each planet, causing each to turn around itself, and all around the Sun. Then after the Solar and Lunar Pitris take charge of their respective planets and earth to the end of the Kalpa. The Rishis are the mind-born sons of Brahmā, not priests. At the end of the first stage of evolution they are transformed into the seven stellar Rishis, the Saptarshis, while their human doubles appear as heroes, kings, and sages on this earth. There are many Rishis in the Vedas. It must however be understood that in every Creation the Vedas are revealed to the same men only. The opening sentence in every Cosmogony is either a Circle, an Egg, or a Head, often surrounded by Darkness — hence, black doves, black ravens, black tongues, black waters. They all relate to the birth of Universe and Man out of the latent germ in the Eternal Egg dwelling in Darkness. The Raven, yielding the same numerical value as the Head, is the symbol of the purely spiritual, sexless and androgyne man of the first three Root-Races, who vanished from earth forever. Eastern Esotericism asserts that only physical man was created in the image of deity; but that deity is but a minor god. The real God is the Imperishable Higher Ego or Nous, man’s true Individuality that cloths itself in a new personality at every new birth. Yet the Jews degraded the only ennobling religion of humanity to the most unspiritual and gross phallic religion.
“Man is a little world inside the great universe,” teaches Paracelsus. “A microcosm, within the macrocosm, like a foetus, he is suspended by his three principal spirits in the matrix of the universe.” These three spirits are described as double: 1. The spirit of the Elements (terrestrial body and vital principle); 2. The spirit of the stars (sidereal or astral body and will governing it); 3. The spirit of the spiritual world (the animal and the spiritual souls) — the seventh principle being an almost immaterial spirit or the divine Augoeides, Atma, represented by the central point, which corresponds to the human navel. This seventh principle is the Personal God of every man, say the old Western and Eastern Occultists. Man is the Jewel of the Macrocosm.
Matter is Mother and vice versa. Undifferentiated matter is composed of indestructible atoms; differentiated matter is destructible in form. The Circle of Life becomes triangular by hypothecating Absoluteness; the right line represents a metaphysical synthesis; the left, a physical one. When Mother Nature shall have made of her body the horizontal line joining these two, then will be the moment of the awakening of cosmic activity. In the manifested world, “the highest sees through the eye of the lowest.” First Logos is the real Pythagorean Tetractys. It is the Esoteric Logos of the Invisible Monad. Tetragrammaton is Logos Demiourgos; it is the Tetractys of the profane. In occult symbolism, Macroprosopus is the Square in the Circle and a veil over the Hierarchy of Compassion; Microprosopus, the Triangle in the Square. Macroprosopus is the Spiritual Tetrad; Microprosopus, the Material. The “Long Face” is Absoluteness, the Perfect Square within the Magic Circle, an ever Unknowable and Unmanifested Deity. The “Short Face” is the “Heavenly Man” or manifested Logos, the Triangle in the Square or the Sevenfold Cube. The Abstract Cross ceases to exist and becomes the Circle or Boundary, for below rules the physical procreation of mortals, whereas above reigns the noetic creation of Gods. The great circle or Ring Pass-Not is the “Rope of the Angels” that hedges off the phenomenal from the noumenal Kosmos. 31415 (7 x 2 = 14) is the numerical hierarchy of the Dhyani-Chohans (the twice seven), number of the inner, circumscribed world, and the mystic Svastika. In other words, the astronomical pi veils the Benefactors of the World from prying minds. It is the Lipikas, Recorders of the Karmic Ledger, that circumscribe the world of matter within a Ring Pass-Not thus making an impassable barrier between the personal ego of man and his impersonal Self, the Noumenon and Parent-Source of the former. This impassable barrier is neither a locality nor can it be measured by distance, for it exists in Absoluteness or Infinity. While numbers 1, 2, 3, 4 are successive emanations from Infinite Space, 4, 3, 2 veil the Infinite from objective perception and speculation. Number 1 is lost in its inaccessible solitude. Another veil unveiled!
The difference between Eternity and the “Seven Eternities” of the Secret Doctrine explained. Cosmic Pralaya differs greatly from deep sleep. Duration is infinite, time is a finite conception. Duration contains time but time has no duration. Space and duration are one and the same. One cannot image Space as not being. Space always is.
Unknown and Unknowable is the Supreme Mystery-God. It is the Voice of the Ineffable Name and the Wisdom of the Initiates (Epopteia). It is the Holy of Holies, the Unity of Unities, more ineffable than all Silence, more occult than all Essence. It is Plato’s Unspeakable All, He whom no person has seen, except the Son. It is Pythagoras’ Ineffable God’s Name, and key to the mysteries of the Kabbalah. It is the Holy Word of God that “no man knew but He himself.” The Name is Ineffable because non-existent. It permeates the Moon and Stars, yet It is different from the Moon and Stars. It never differentiates but only emanates. There is no need travelling to distant places to find It. The Name is very nigh unto thee, in thy mouth, and in thy heart. It may rush into infinite worlds in sleepless whirling, yet It remains latent in the deepest recesses of thy heart. The Ineffable Name is Deity Itself, but not God. Nameless, unpronounceable, yet universally diffused Essence, the Ineffable is Kama-Eros-Phanes or noumenon of Fohat, i.e., Divine Will or Eternal Desire of manifesting Itself through visible creation. The Name lies hidden within the Pythagorean Tetrad or Tetractys. It is expressed by the Tau Cross, signet of the Living God. The double motion of the philosophical cross is the great arcanum of life and being. Deity is Nameless, Numberless, No-thing, Absolute Darkness. God is quaternary: Ineffable–Silence–Father–Truth. All powers and great symphonies of physical and spiritual nature lie inscribed within the Perfect Square. That is why the Ineffable Name was replaced by the Sacred Tetrad or Tetractys, the most binding and solemn oath with the ancient mystics. There are three Tetrads: the Unfathomable Father (First Logos), Its creative emanation or Heavenly Man (Second Logos), and the embodied reflection of the latter in humanity at large (Third Logos), or the Tetragrammaton of the Jews. Only the first is the real, Pythagorean Tetractys; the other two are counterfeit. The Ineffable Word is identical with the “Ineffable Name” of the Masons and the Kabbalists. The Word itself is only a substitute for the Masonic “Lost Word,” and a comparatively modern invention. The “Lost Word” is no word at all, as in the case of the “Ineffable Name.” It ought to stand as “lost words” and lost secrets, in general. Nor the “Name” is a name, but Sound or rather Motion. The “Name” is not “ineffable,” it is “unpronounceable” or rather not to be pronounced.
In its highest aspect, Akasha is Divine mind reflected in the waters of Space or Chaos. It is undifferentiated Noumenal and Abstract Space, which will be occupied by Primordial Consciousness. Akasha has several fields: The first is the field of latent consciousness which is coeval with the duration of the First and Second Logos. Another Akashic field is coeval with the emergence of the Third Logos. From the latent potentiality there radiates a lower field of differentiated consciousness, which is Mahat, or the entire collectivity of those Dhyani-Chohans of sentient life of which Fohat is the representative on the objective plane and the Manasaputras on the subjective. 1. Akasha is eternal; Astral Light; periodic and ephemeral. The ideals of Divine Mind become reflected and reversed in the Astral Light, which also reflects the life of our Earth. 2. Akasha is eternal divine consciousness, undifferentiated, and unconditioned. Astral Light is a periodic projection of the One Celestial Unconsciousness to myriads of terrestrial, individualised consciousnesses. 3. Akasha is the germ within the acorn; Astral Light is the acorn. 4. Akasha is the Divine Soul of Thought and Compassion, a perpetually reasoning Divinity. Compassion, being the Spirit of Truth, is the Law of laws. 5. Akasha is the Soul of the World on the spiritual plane; Astral Light, the Body of the World on the psychic plane. 6. Astral Light is the dregs of Akasha polluted by man’s selfish and perverted thoughts and deeds, storehouse of all human and especially psychic iniquities. Astral Light is bi-sexual. The male part is purely spiritual; the female part, tainted with matter. 7. Astral Light is not even the thought substance of the Universe, but a mere recorder of every thought. Astral Light retains the thoughts and deeds of the animal man; Akasha, those of the Spiritual Man.
