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Theosophy House
The Theosophical Glossary
By
H P Blavatsky
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The
Secret Doctrine by H P Blavatsky
AUTHOR
OF "ISIS UNVEILED", “THE SECRET DOCTRINE", " THE KEY TO THEOSOPHY"
London:
THE
THEOSOPHICAL PUBLISHING SOCIETY,
7,
The
Path Office: 132,
The
Theosophist Office: ADYAR,
1892
PREFACE.
The
Theosophical Glossary labours under the disadvantage of being an almost
entirely
posthumous work, of which the author only saw the first thirty-two
pages
in proof. This is all the more regrettable, for H.P.B., as was her wont,
was
adding considerably to her original copy, and would no doubt have increased
the
volume far beyond its present limits, and so have thrown light on many
obscure
terms that are not included in the present Glossary, and more important
still,
have furnished us with a sketch of the lives and teachings of the most
famous
Adepts of the East and West.
The
Theosophical Glossary purposes to give information on the principal
Sanskrit,
Pahlavi, Tibetan, Pâli, Chaldean, Persian, Scandinavian, Hebrew,
Greek,
Latin, Kabalistic and Gnostic words, and Occult terms generally used in
Theosophical
literature, and principally to be found in Isis Unveiled, Esoteric
Buddhism,
The Secret Doctrine, The Key to Theosophy, etc.; and in the monthly
magazines,
The Theosophist, Lucifer and The Path, etc., and other publications
of
the Theosophical Society. The articles marked [w.w.w.] which explain words
found
in the Kabalah, or which illustrate Rosicrucian or Hermetic doctrines,
were
contributed at the special request of H.P.B. by Bro. W. W. Westcott, M.B.,
P.M.
and P.Z., who is the Secretary General of the Rosicrucian Society, and
Præmonstrator
of the Kabalah to the Hermetic Order of the G.D.
H.P.B.
desired also to express her special indebtedness, as far as the
tabulation
of facts is concerned, to the Sanskrit-Chinese Dictionary of Eitel,
The
Hindu Classical Dictionary of Dowson, The Vishnu Purâna of
Royal
Masonic Cyclopædia of Kenneth Mackenzie.
As
the undersigned can make no pretension to the elaborate and extraordinary
scholarship
requisite for the editing of the multifarious and polyglot contents
of
H.P.B.’s last contribution to Theosophical literature, there must necessarily
be
mistakes of transliteration, etc., which specialists in scholarship will at
once
detect. Meanwhile, however, as nearly every Orientalist has his own system,
varying
transliterations may be excused in the present work, and not be set down
entirely
to the “Karma” of the editor.
G.
R. S. MEAD.
THEOSOPHICAL
GLOSSARY
A
---------
A
—The first letter in all the world-alphabets save a few, such for instance as
the
Mongolian, the Japanese, the Tibetan, the Ethiopian, etc. It is a letter of
great
mystic power and “magic virtue” with those who have adopted it, and with
whom
its numerical value is one. It is the Aleph of the Hebrews, symbolized by
the
Ox or Bull; the Alpha of the Greeks, the one and the first the Az of the
Slavonians,
signifying the pronoun “I” (referring to the “I am that I am”). Even
in
Astrology, Taurus (the Ox or Bull or the Aleph) is the first of the Zodiacal
signs,
its colour being white and yellow. The sacred Aleph acquires a still more
marked
sanctity with the Christian Kabalists when they learn that this letter
typifies
the Trinity in Unity, as it is composed of two Yods, one upright, the
other
reversed with a slanting bar or nexus, thus— a. Kenneth R. H. Mackenzie
states
that “the St. Andrew cross is occultly connected therewith”. The divine
name,
the first in the series corresponding with Aleph, is AêHêIêH or Ahih when
vowelless,
and this is a Sanskrit root.
Aahla
(Eg.). One of the divisions of the Kerneter or infernal regions, or Amenti
;
the word means the “Field of Peace”.
Aanroo
(Eg.). The second division of Amenti. The celestial field of Aanroo is
encircled
by an iron wall. The field is covered with wheat, and the “Defunct”
are
represented gleaning it, for the “Master of Eternity”; some stalks being
three,
others five, and the highest seven cubits high. Those who reached the
last
two numbers entered the state of bliss (which is called in Theosophy
Devachan)
; the disembodied spirits whose harvest was but three cubits high went
into
lower regions (Kâmaloka). Wheat was with the Egyptians the symbol of the
Law
of retribution or Karma. The cubits had reference to the seven, five and
three
human “principles
Aaron
(Heb.). The elder brother of Moses and the first Initiate of the
---------
Hebrew
Lawgiver. The name means the Illuminated, or the Enlightened. Aaron thus
heads
the line, or Hierarchy, of the initiated Nabim, or Seers.
Ab
(Heb.). The eleventh month of the Hebrew civil year; the fifth of the sacred
year
beginning in July.
[w.w.w.]
Abaddon
(Heb.). An angel of Hell, corresponding to the Greek Apollyon.
Abatur
(Gn.). In the Nazarene system the “Ancient of Days”, Antiquus Altus, the
Father
of the Demiurgus of the Universe, is called the Third Life or “Abatur”.
He
corresponds to the Third “Logos” in the Secret Doctrine. (See Codex Nazaræus)
Abba
Amona (Heb.). Lit., “Father-Mother”; the occult names of the two higher
Sephiroth,
Chokmah and Binah, of the upper triad, the apex of which is Sephira
or
Kether. From this triad issues the lower septenary of the Sephirothal Tree.
Abhâmsi
(
Demons,
Pitris and Men. Orientalists somehow connect the name with “waters”, but
esoteric
philosophy connects its symbolism with Akâsa—the ethereal “waters of
space”,
since it is on the bosom and on the seven planes of “space” that the
“four
orders of (lower) beings” and the three higher Orders of Spiritual Beings
are
born. (See Secret Doctrine I. p. 458, and “Ambhâmsi”.)
Abhâsvaras
(
upper
three celestial regions (planes) of the second Dhyâna (q.v.) A class of
gods
sixty-four in number, representing a certain cycle and an occult number.
Abhâva
(
substance,
or abstract objectivity.
Abhaya
(
As
an adjective, “Fearless,” Abhaya is an epithet given to every Buddha,
Abhayagiri
(
Monastery
in which the well-known Chinese traveller Fa-hien found 5,000 Buddhist
priests
and ascetics in the year 400 of our era, and a School called Abhayagiri
Vâsinah,,
“School of the
as
heretical, as the ascetics studied the doctrines of both the “greater” and
the
“smaller” vehicles— or the Mahâyâna and the Hinayâna systems and Triyâna or
the
three successive degrees of Yoga; just as a certain Brotherhood does now
beyond
the
as
unsectarian as their humble admirers the Theosophists
---------
are
now. (See “Sthâvirâh" School.) This was the most mystical of all the
schools,
and renowned for the number of Arhats it produced. The Brotherhood of
Abhayagiri
called themselves the disciples of Kâtyâyana, the favourite Chela of
Gautama,
the Buddha. Tradition says that owing to bigoted intolerance and
persecution,
they left
remained
ever since.
Abhidharma
(
philosophical
Buddhist work by Kâtyâyana.
Abhijñâ
(
acquired
in the night on which he reached Buddhaship. This is the “fourth”
degree
of Dhyâna (the seventh in esoteric teachings) which has to be attained by
every
true Arhat. In
powers,
but in
the
instantaneous view of anything one wills to see; the second, is Divyasrotra,
the
power of comprehending any sound whatever, etc., etc.
Abhimânim
(
words,
the first element or Force produced in the universe at its evolution (the
fire
of creative desire). By his wife Swâhâ, Abhimânim had three sons (the
fires)
Pâvaka, Pavamâna and Suchi, and these had “forty-five sons, who, with the
original
son of Brahmâ and his three descendants, constitute the forty-nine
fires”
of Occultism.
Abhimanyu
(
Mahâbhârata
on its second day, but was himself killed on the thirteenth.
Abhûtarajasas
(
Manvantara.
Abib
(Heb.) The first Jewish sacred month,
begins in March; is also called
Nisan.
Abiegnus
Mons (Lat.). A mystic name, from whence as from a certain mountain,
Rosicrucian
documents are often found to be issued— “Monte Abiegno”. There is a
connection
with
Ab-i-hayat
(Pers.). Water of immortality. Supposed to give eternal youth and
sempiternal
life to him who drinks of it.
Abiri
(Gr.). See Kabiri, also written Kabeiri, the Mighty Ones, celestials, sons
of
Zedec the just one, a group of deities worshipped in Phœnicia: they seem to
be
identical with the Titans, Corybantes, Curetes, Telchines and Dii Magni of
Virgil.
[w.w.w.]
Ablanathanalba
(Gn.). A term similar to “Abracadabra”. It is said by C. W. King
to
have meant “thou art a father to us”; it reads the same
---------
from
either end and was used as a charm in
(See
“Abracadabra”.)
Abracadabra
(Gn.). This symbolic word first occurs in a medical treatise in
verse
by Samonicus, who flourished in the reign of the Emperor Septimus Seveus.
Godfrey
Higgins says it is from Abra or Abar
“God”,
in Celtic, and cad ‘‘holy” ; it was used
as a charm, and engraved on
Kameas
as an amulet. [w.w.w.]
Godfrey
Higgins was nearly right, as the word “Abracadabra” is a later
corruption
of the sacred Gnostic term “Abrasax”, the latter itself being a still
earlier
corruption of a sacred and ancient Coptic or Egyptian word: a magic
formula
which meant in its symbolism ‘‘Hurt me not”, and addressed the deity in
its
hieroglyphics as “Father”. It was generally attached to an amulet or charm
and
worn as a Tat (q.v.), on the breast under the garments.
Abraxas
or Abrasax (Gn.). Mystic words which have been traced as far back as
Basilides,
the Pythagorean, of
for
Divinity, the supreme of Seven, and as having 365 virtues. In Greek
numeration,
a. 1, b. 2, r. 100, a. I, x 60, a. I, s. 200 = 365 days of the year,
solar
year, a cycle of divine action. C. W. King, author of The Gnostics,
considers
the word similar to the Hebrew Shemhamphorasch, a holy word, the
extended
name of God. An Abraxas Gem usually shows a man’s body with the head of
a
cock, one arm with a shield, the other with a whip.
[
w.w.w.]
Abraxas
is the counterpart of the Hindu Abhimânim (q.v.) and Brahmâ combined. It
is
these compound and mystic qualities which caused Oliver, the great Masonic
authority,
to connect the name of Abraxas with that of Abraham. This was
unwarrantable
; the virtues and attributes of Abraxas, which are 365 in number,
ought
to have shown him that the deity was connected with the Sun and solar
division
of the year——nay, that Abraxas is the antitype, and the Sun, the type.
Absoluteness.
When predicated of the UNIVERSAL PRINCIPLE, it denotes an abstract
noun,
which is more correct and logical than to apply the adjective “absolute ”
to
that which has neither attributes nor limitations, nor can IT have any.
Ab-Soo
(Chald.). The mystic name for Space, meaning the dwelling of Ab the
“Father”,
or the head of the source of the Waters of Knowledge. The lore of the
latter
is concealed in the invisible space or akasic regions.
Acacia
(Gr.). Innocence; and also a plant used in Freemasonry as a symbol of
initiation,
immortality, and purity; the tree furnished the sacred Shittim wood
of
the Hebrews. [w.w.w.]
Achamôth
(Gn.). The name of the second, the inferior Sophia.
---------
Esoterically
and with the Gnostics, the elder Sophia was the Holy Spirit (female
Holy
Ghost) or the Sakti of the Unknown, and the Divine Spirit; while Sophia
Achamôth
is but the personification of the female aspect of the creative male
Force
in nature; also the Astral Light.
Achar
(Heb.). The Gods over whom (according to the Jews) Jehovah is the God.
Âchâra
(
Âchârya
(
ethics”.
A name generally given to Initiates, etc., and meaning “Master”.
Achath
(Heb.). The one, the first, feminine; achad being masculine. A Talmudic
word
applied to Jehovah. It is worthy of note that the Sanskrit term ak means
one,
ekata being “unity”, Brahmâ being called ák, or eka, the one, the first,
whence
the Hebrew word and application.
Acher
(Heb.). The Talmudic name of the Apostle Paul. The Talmud narrates the
story
of the four Tanaim, who entered the
initiated;
Ben Asai, who looked and lost his sight; Ben Zoma, who looked and
lost
his reason; Acher, who made depredations in the garden and failed; and
Rabbi
Akiba, who alone succeeded. The Kabalists say that Acher is Paul.
Acheron
(Gr.). One of the rivers of Hades in Greek mythology.
Achit
(
intelligence.
Achyuta
(
Chyuta,
“fallen”. A title of Vishnu.
Acosmism
(Gr.). The precreative period, when there was no Kosmos but Chaos
alone.
Ad
(Assyr.). Ad, “the Father”. In Aramean ad means one, and ad-ad “the only
one”.
Adah
(Assyr.). Borrowed by the Hebrews for the name of their Adah, father of
Jubal,
etc. But Adah meaning the first, the one, is universal property. There
are
reasons to think that Ak-ad, means the first-born or Son of Ad. Adon was the
first
“Lord” of
Adam
(Heb.). In the Kabalah Adam is the “only-begotten”, and means also “red
earth”.
(See “Adam-Adami” in the S.D. II p. 452.) It is almost identical with
Athamas
or Thomas, and is rendered into Greek by Didumos, the “twin”—Adam, “the
first”,
in chap. 1 of Genesis, being shown, “male-female.”
Adam
Kadmon (Heb). Archetypal Man; Humanity. The
---------
“Heavenly
Man” not fallen into sin; Kabalists refer it to the Ten Sephiroth on
the
plane of human perception. [w.w.w.]
In
the Kabalah Adam Kadmon is the manifested Logos corresponding to our Third
Logos;
the Unmanifested being the first paradigmic ideal Man, and symbolizing
the
Universe in abscondito, or in its “privation” in the Aristotelean sense. The
First
Logos is the “Light of the World”, the Second and the Third—its gradually
deepening
shadows.
Adamic
Earth (Alch.). Called the “true oil of gold” or the “primal element” in
Alchemy.
It is but one remove from the pure homogeneous element.
Adbhuta
Brâhmana (
and
various phenomena.
Adbhuta
Dharma (
Buddhist
works on miraculous or phenomenal events.
Adept
(Lat.). Adeptus, “He who has obtained.” In Occultism one who has reached
the
stage of Initiation, and become a Master in the science of Esoteric
philosophy.
Adharma
(
Adhi
(
Adhi-bhautika
duhkha (
proceeding
from external things or beings”.
Adhi-daivika
duhkha (
proceeding
from divine causes, or a just Karmic punishment”.
Adhishtânam
(
Adhyâtmika
duhkha (
proceeding
from Self ”, an induced or a generated evil by Self, or man himself.
Adhyâtma
Vidyâ (
Sastras,
or the Scriptures of the Five Sciences.
Âdi
(Sk.) The First, the primeval.
Âdi
(the Sons of). In Esoteric philosophy the “Sons of Adi” are called the “Sons
of
the Fire-mist”. A term used of certain adepts.
Âdi-bhûta
(
Vishnu,
the “first Element” containing all elements, “the unfathomable deity”.
Âdi-Buddha
(
Church.
The Eternal Light.
Âdi-budhi
(
Mind.
Used of Divine Ideation, “Mahâbuddhi” being synonymous with MAHAT.
---------
Âdikrit
(
and
uncreate, but manifesting periodically. Applied to Vishnu slumbering on the
“waters
of space” during “pralaya” (q.v.).
Âdi-nâtha
(
Âdi-nidâna
(
the
principal cause (or the concatenation of cause and effect).
Âdi-Sakti
(
in
and of every male god. The Sakti in the Hindu Pantheon is always the spouse
of
some god.
Âdi-Sanat
(
“ancient
of days”, since it is a title of Brahmâ—called in the Zohar the
Atteekah
d’Atteekeen, or “the Ancient of the Ancients”, etc.
Âditi
(
aspect
of Parabrahman, though both unmanifested and unknowable. In the Vedas
Âditi
is the “Mother-Goddess”, her terrestrial symbol being infinite and
shoreless
space.
Âditi-Gæa. A compound term, Sanskrit and Latin, meaning
dual, nature in
theosophical
writings—spiritual and physical, as Gæa is the goddess of the earth
and
of objective nature.
Âditya
(
Âdityas
(
Âdi
Varsha (
first
races.
Adonai
(Heb.). The same as Adonis. Commonly translated “Lord”.
Astronomically—the
Sun. When a Hebrew in reading came to the name IHVH, which is
called
Jehovah, he paused and substituted the word “Adonai”, (Adni); but when
written
with the points of Alhim, he called it “Elohim”. [w.w.w.]
Adonim-Adonai,
Adon. The ancient Chaldeo-Hebrew names for the Elohim or creative
terrestrial
forces, synthesized by Jehovah.
Adwaita
(
philosophy
founded by Sankarâchârya, the greatest of the historical Brahmin
sages.
The two other schools are the Dwaita (dualistic) and the Visishtadwaita;
all
the three call themselves Vedântic.
Adwaitin
(
Adytum
(Gr.). The Holy of Holies in the pagan temples. A name for the secret and
sacred
precincts or the inner chamber, into which no
---------
profane
could enter; it corresponds to the sanctuary of the altars of Christian
Churches.
Æbe1-Zivo
(Gn.). The Metatron or anointed spirit with the Nazarene Gnostics; the
same
as the angel Gabriel.
Æolus
(Gr.). The god who, according to Hesiod, binds and looses the winds; the
king
of storms and winds. A king of Æolia, the inventor of sails and a great
astronomer,
and therefore deified by posterity.
Æon
or Æons (Gr.). Periods of time; emanations proceeding from the divine
essence,
and celestial beings; genii and angels with the Gnostics.
Æsir
(Scand.). The same as Ases, the creative Forces personified. The gods who
created
the black dwarfs or the Elves of Darkness in Asgard. The divine Æsir,
the
Ases are the Elves of Light. An allegory bringing together darkness which
comes
from light, and matter born of spirit.
Æther
(Gr.). With the ancients the divine luminiferous substance which pervades
the
whole universe, the “garment” of the Supreme Deity, Zeus, or Jupiter. With
the
moderns, Ether, for the meaning of which in physics and chemistry see
Webster’s
Dictionary or any other. In esotericism
Æther is the third principle
of
the Kosmic Septenary; the Earth being the lowest, then the Astral light,
Ether
and Âkâsa (phonetically Âkâsha) the highest.
Æthrobacy
(Gr.). Lit., walking on, or being lifted into the air with no visible
agent
at work; “levitation”. It may be conscious or unconscious; in the one case
it
is magic, in the other either disease
or
a power which requires a few words of elucidation. We know that the earth is
a
magnetic body; in fact, as some scientists have found, and as Paracelsus
affirmed
some 300 years ago, it is one vast magnet. It is charged with one form
of
electricity—let us call it positive—which it evolves continuously by
spontaneous
action, in its interior or centre of motion. Human bodies, in common
with
all other forms of matter, are charged with the opposite form of
electricity,
the negative. That is to say, organic or inorganic bodies, if left
to
themselves will constantly and involuntarily charge themselves with and
evolve
the form of electricity opposite to that of the earth itself. Now, what
is
weight? Simply the attraction of the earth. “Without the attraction of the
earth
you would have no weight”, says Professor Stewart; “and if you had an
earth
twice as heavy as this, you would have double the attraction”. How then,
can
we get rid of this attraction? According to the electrical law above stated,
there
is an attraction between our planet and the organisms upon it, which keeps
them
upon the surface of the globe. But the law of gravitation has been
counteracted
in many instances, by levitation of persons and inanimate objects.
How
---------
account
for this? The condition of our physical systems, say theurgic
philosophers,
is largely dependent upon the action of our will. If well-
regulated,
it can produce “miracles”; among others a change of this electrical
polarity
from negative to positive; the man’s relations with the earth-magnet
would
then become repellent, and “gravity”for him would have ceased to exist. It
would
then be as natural for him to rush into the air until the repellent force
had
exhausted itself, as, before, it had been for him to remain upon the ground.
The
altitude of his levitation would be measured by his ability, greater or
less,
to charge his body with positive electricity. This control over the
physical
forces once obtained, alteration of his levity or gravity would be as
easy
as breathing. (See Isis Unveiled, Vol. I., page xxiii.)
Afrits
(Arab.). A name for native spirits regarded as devils by Mussulmen.
Elementals
much dreaded in
Agapæ
(Gr.). Love Feasts; the early Christians kept such festivals in token of
sympathy,
love and mutual benevolence. It became necessary to abolish them as an
institution,
because of great abuse ; Paul in his First Epistle to the
Corinthians
complains of misconduct at the feasts of the Christians. [w.w.w.].
Agastya
(
reputed
author of hymns in the Rig Veda, and a great hero in the Râmâyana. In
Tamil
literature he is credited with having been the first instructor of the
Dravidians
in science, religion and philosophy. It is also the name of the star
“
Agathodæmon
(Gr.). The beneficent, good Spirit as contrasted with the bad one,
Kakodæmon.
The
“Brazen
Serpent” of the Bible is the former; the flying serpents of fire are an
aspect
of Kakodæmon. The Ophites called Agathodæmon the Logos and Divine Wisdom,
which
in the Bacchanalian Mysteries was represented by a serpent erect on a
pole.
Agathon
(Gr.). Plato’s Supreme Deity. Lit., “The Good”, our ALAYA, or “Universal
Soul”.
Aged
(Kab.). One of the Kabbalistic names for Sephira, called also the Crown, or
Kether.
Agla
(Heb.). This Kabbalistic word is a talisman composed of the initals of the
four
words “Ateh Gibor Leolam Adonai”, meaning “Thou art mighty for ever 0
Lord”.
MacGregor Mathers explains it thus “A, the first; A, the last; G, the
trinity
in unity; L, the completion of the great work”. [w.w.w.]
Agneyastra
(
Purânas
and the Mahâbhârata the magic weapons said to have been wielded by the
adept-race
(the fourth), the Atlanteans. This
---------
“weapon
of fire” was given by Bharadwâja to Agnivesa, the son of Agni, and by
him
to Drona, though the Vishnu Purâna contradicts this, saying that it was
given
by the sage Aurva to King Sagara, his chela. They are frequently mentioned
in
the Mahâbhârata and the Râmâyana.
Agni
(
in
all
the three, as he is the triple aspect of fire; in heaven as the Sun; in the
atmosphere
or air (Vâyu), as Lightning; on. earth, as ordinary Fire. Agni
belonged
to the earlier Vedic Trimûrti before Vishnu was given a place of honour
and
before Brahmâ and Siva were invented.
Agni
Bâhu (
Agni
Bhuvah (
of
Kshatriyas (the second or warrior caste) whose ancestors are said to have
sprung
from fire. Agni Bhuvah is the son of Agni, the God of Fire; Agni Bhuvah
being
the same as Kartti-keya, the God of War. (See Sec.Doct., Vol. II., p.
550.)
Agni
Dhätu Samâdhi (
Kundalini
is raised to the extreme and the infinitude appears as one sheet of
fire.
An ecstatic condition.
Agni
Hotri (
term
Agni Hotri is one that denotes oblation.
Agni-ratha
(
of
in ancient works of magic in
Agnishwattas
(
of
men. Our solar ancestors as contrasted with the Barhishads, the “lunar”
Pitris
or ancestors, though otherwise explained in the Purânas.
Agnoia
(Gr.). “Divested of reason”, lit., “irrationality”, when speaking of the
animal
Soul. According to Plutarch, Pythagoras and Plato divided the human soul
into
two parts (the higher and lower manas)—the rational or noëtic and the
irrational,
or agnoia, sometimes written “annoia”.
Agnostic
(Gr.). A word claimed by Mr. Huxley to have been coined by him to
indicate
one who believes nothing which can not be demonstrated by the senses.
The
later schools of Agnosticism give more philosophical definitions of the
term.
Agra-Sandhânî
(Sk.). The “Assessors” or Recorders who read at the
---------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK. CF24-1DL
judgment
of a disembodied Soul the record of its life in the heart of that
“Soul”.
The same almost as the Lipikas of the Secret Doctrine. (See Sec.Doct.,
Vol.
I., p. 105.)
Agruerus
; A very ancient Phœnician god. The same as Saturn.
Aham
(Sk.). “I”—the basis of Ahankâra, Self-hood.
Ahan
(Sk.). “Day”;the Body of Brahmâ, in the Purânas.
Ahankâra
(Sk.). The conception of “I”, Self-consciousness or Self- identity; the
“I”,
the egotistical and mâyâvic principle in man, due to our ignorance which
separates
our “I” from the Universal ONE-SELF Personality, Egoism.
Aheie
(Heb.). Existence. He who exists; corresponds to Kether and Macroprosopus.
Ah-hi
(Sensar), Ahi (Sk.), or Serpents. Dhyân Chohans. “Wise Serpents” or
Dragons
of Wisdom.
Ahi
(Sk.). A serpent. A name of Vritra, the Vedic demon of drought.
Ahti
(Scand.). The “Dragon” in the Eddas.
Ahu
(Scand.). “One” and the First.
Ahum
(Zend). The first three principles of septenary man in the Avesta ; the
gross
living man and his vital and astral principles.
Ahura
(Zend.). The same as Asura, the holy, the Breath-like. Ahura Mazda, the
Ormuzd
of the Zoroastrians or Parsis, is the Lord who bestows light and
intelligence,
whose symbol is the Sun (See “Ahura Mazda”), and of whom Ahriman,
a
European form of “Angra Mainyu” (q.v.), is the dark aspect.
Ahura
Mazda (Zend). The personified deity, the Principle of Universal Divine
Light
of the Parsis. From Ahura or Asura, breath, “spiritual, divine” in the
oldest
Rig Veda, degraded by the orthodox Brahmans into A -sura, “no gods”, just
as
the Mazdeans have degraded the Hindu Devas (Gods) into Dæva (Devils).
Aidoneus
(Gr.). The God and King of the Nether World; Pluto or Dionysos
Chthonios
(subterranean).
Aij
Talon. The supreme deity of the Yakoot, a tribe in Northern Siberia.
Ain-Aior
(Chald.). The only “Self-existent” a mystic name for divine substance.
[w.w.w.]
Ain
(Heb.). The negatively existent; deity in repose, and absolutely passive.
[w.w.w.]
Aindrî
(Sk.). Wife of Indra.
Aindriya
(Sk.). Or Indrânî, Indriya; Sakti. The female aspect or “wife” of
Indra.
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Ain
Soph (Heb.). The “Boundless” or Limitless; Deity emanating and extending.
[w.w.w.]
Ain
Soph is also written En Soph and Ain Suph, no one, not even Rabbis, being
sure
of their vowels. In the religious metaphysics of the old Hebrew
philosophers,
the ONE Principle was an abstraction, like Parabrahmam, though
modern
Kabbalists have succeeded now, by dint of mere sophistry and paradoxes,
in
making a “Supreme God” of it and nothing higher. But with the early Chaldean
Kabbalists
Ain Soph is “without form or being”, having “no likeness with
anything
else” (Franck, Die Kabbala, p. 126). That Ain Soph has never been
considered
as the “Creator” is proved by even such an orthodox Jew as Philo
calling
the “Creator” the Logos, who stands next the “Limitless One”, and the
“Second
God”. “The Second God is its (Ain Soph’s) wisdom”, says Philo (Quaest.
et
Solut.). Deity is NO-THING; it is nameless, and therefore called Ain Soph;
the
word Ain meaning NOTHING. (See Franck’s Kabbala, p. 153 ff.)
Ain
Soph Aur (Heb.). The Boundless Light which concentrates into the First and
highest
Sephira or Kether, the Crown. [w. w. w.]
Airyamen
Yaêgo (Zend). Or Airyana Vaêgo; the primeval land of bliss referred to
in
the Vendîdâd, where Ahura Mazda delivered his laws to Zoroaster (Spitama
Zarathustra).
Airyana-ishejô
(Zend). The name of a prayer to the “holy Airyamen”, the divine
aspect
of Ahriman before the latter became a dark opposing power, a Satan. For
Ahriman
is of the same essence with Ahura Mazda, just as Typhon-Seth is of the
same
essence with Osiris (q.v.).
Aish
(Heb.). The word for “Man".
Aisvarikas
(Sk.). A theistic school of Nepaul, which sets up Âdi Buddha as a
supreme
god ( Îsvara ), instead of seeing in the name that of a principle, an
abstract
philosophical symbol.
Aitareya
(Sk.). The name of an Aranyaka (Brâhmana) and a Upanishad of the Rig
Veda.
Some of its portions are purely Vedântic.
Aith-ur
(Chald.). Solar fire, divine Æther.
Aja
(Sk.). “Unborn”, uncreated; an epithet belonging to many of the primordial
gods,
but especially to the first Logos—a radiation of the Absolute on the plane
of
illusion.
Ajitas
(Sk.). One of the Occult names of the twelve great gods incarnating in
each
Manvantara. The Occultists identify them with the Kumâras. They are called
Jnâna
(or Gnâna) Devas. Also, a form of Vishnu in the second Manvantara. Called
also
Jayas.
Ajnâna
(Sk.) or Agyana (Bengali). Non-knowledge; absence of
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knowledge
rather than “ignorance” as generally translated. An Ajnâni means a
“profane”.
Akar
(Eg.). The proper name of that division of the Ker-neter infernal regions,
which
may be called Hell. [w. w. w.].
Akâsa
(Sk.). The subtle, supersensuous spiritual essence which pervades all
space;
the primordial substance erroneously identified with Ether. But it is to
Ether
what Spirit is to Matter, or Âtmâ to Kâma-rûpa.
It is, in fact, the
Universal
Space in which lies inherent the eternal Ideation of the Universe in
its
ever-changing aspects on the planes of matter and objectivity, and from
which
radiates the First Logos, or expressed thought. This is why it is stated
in
the Purânas that Âkâsa has but one attribute, namely sound, for sound is but
the
translated symbol of Logos—“Speech” in its mystic sense. In the same
sacrifice
(the Jyotishtoma Agnishtoma) it is called the “God Âkâsa”. In these
sacrificial
mysteries Âkâsa is the all-directing ‘and omnipotent Deva who plays
the
part of Sadasya, the superintendent over the magical effects of the
religious
performance, and it had its own appointed Hotri (priest) in days of
old,
who took its name. The Âkâsa is the indispensable agent of every Krityâ
(magical
performance) religious or profane. The expression “to stir up the
Brahmâ”,
means to stir up the power which lies latent at the bottom of every
magical
operation, Vedic sacrifices being in fact nothing if not ceremonial
magic.
This power is the Âkâsa—in another aspect, Kundalini—occult electricity,
the
alkahest of the alchemists in one sense, or the universal solvent, the same
anima
mundi on the higher plane as the astral light is on the lower. “At the
moment
of the sacrifice the priest becomes imbued with the spirit of Brahmâ, is,
for
the time being, Brahmâ himself”. (Isis Unveiled).
Akbar.
The great Mogul Emperor of India, the famous patron of religions, arts,
and
sciences, the most liberal of all the Mussulman sovereigns. There has never
been
a more tolerant or enlightened ruler than the Emperor Akbar, either in
India
or in any other Mahometan country.
Akiba
(Heb.). The only one of the four Tanaim (initiated prophets) who entering
the
Garden of Delight (of the occult sciences) succeeded in getting himself
initiated
while all the others failed. (See the Kabbalistic Rabbis).
Akshara
(Sk.). Supreme Deity; lit., “indestructible”, ever perfect.
Akta
(Sk.). Anointed: a title of Twashtri or Visvakarman, the highest “Creator”
and
Logos in the
Rig
-Veda. He is called the “Father of the Gods” and “Father of the sacred Fire”
(See
note page 101, Vol. II., Sec.Doct.).
Akûpâra
(Sk.). The Tortoise, the symbolical turtle on which the earth is said to
rest.
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Al
or El (Heb.). This deity-name is commonly translated “God’, meaning mighty,
supreme.
The plural is Elohim, also translated in the Bible by the word God, in
the
singular. [w.w.w.]
Al-ait
(Phœn.). The God of Fire, an ancient and very mystic name in Koptic
Occultism.
Alaparus
(Chald.). The second divine king of Babylonia who reigned.. “three
Sari”.
The first king of the divine Dynasty was Alorus according to Berosus. He
was
“the appointed Shepherd of the people” and reigned ten Sari (or 36,000
years,
a Saros being 3,600 years).
Alaya
(Sk.). The Universal Soul (See Secret Doctrine Vol. I. pp. 47 et seq.).
The
name belongs to the Tibetan system of the contemplative Mahâyâna School.
Identical
with Âkâsa in its mystic sense, and with Mulâprâkriti, in its essence,
as
it is the basis or root of all things.
Alba
Petra (Lat.). The white stone of Initiation. The “white cornelian”
mentioned
in St. John’s Revelation.
Al-Chazari
(Arab.). A Prince-Philosopher and Occultist. (See Book Al-Chazari.)
Alchemists; From Al and Chemi, fire, or the god and
patriarch, Kham, also, the
name
of Egypt. The Rosicrucians of the middle ages, such as Robertus de
Fluctibus
(Robert Fludd), Paracelsus, Thomas Vaughan (Eugenius Philalethes), Van
Helmont,
and others, were all alchemists, who sought for the hidden spirit in
every
inorganic matter. Some people— nay, the great majority—have accused
alchemists
of charlatanry and false pretending. Surely such men as Roger Bacon,
Agrippa,
Henry Khunrath, and the Arabian Geber (the first to introduce into
Europe
some of the secrets of chemistry), can hardly he treated as impostors—
least
of all as fools. Scientists who are reforming the science of physics upon
the
basis of the atomic theory of Democritus, as restated by John Dalton,
conveniently
forget that Democritus, of Abdera, was an alchemist, and that the
mind
that was capable of penetrating so far into the secret operations of nature
in
one direction must have had good reasons to study and become a Hermetic
philosopher.
Olaus Borrichius says that the cradle of alchemy is to be sought in
the
most distant times. (Isis Unveiled).
Alchemy
; in Arabic Ul-Khemi, is, as the name suggests, the chemistry of nature.
Ui-Khemi
or
Al-Kimia,
however, is only an Arabianized word, taken from the Greek chemeia,
(chemeia)
from cumoz— “juice”, sap extracted from a plant. Says Dr. Wynn
Westcott:
“The earliest use of the actual
term
‘alchemy’ is found in the works of
Julius Firmicus Maternus, who lived in
the
days of Constantine the Great. The
Imperial Library in Paris contains the
oldest-extant
alchemic treatise known in Europe;
it
was written by Zosimus the Panopolite
about 400 A.D.
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in
the Greek language, the next oldest is by Æneas Gazeus, 480 A.D.” It deals
with
the finer forces of nature and the various conditions in which they are
found
to operate. Seeking under the veil of language, more or less artificial,
to
convey to the uninitiated so much of the
mysterium magnum as is safe in the
hands
of a selfish world, the alchemist postulates as his first principle the
existence
of a certain Universal Solvent by which all composite bodies are
resolved
into the homogeneous substance from
which they are evolved, which
substance
he calls pure gold, or summa materia.
This solvent, also called
menstvuum
universale, possesses the power of removing all the seeds of disease
from
the human body, of renewing youth and prolonging life. Such is the lapis
philosophorum (philosopher’s stone). Alchemy first
penetrated into Europe
through
Geber, the great Arabian sage and
philosopher, in the eighth century of
our
era; but it was known and practised long ages ago in China and in Egypt,
numerous
papyri on alchemy and other proofs of its being the favourite study of
kings
and priests having been exhumed and
preserved under the generic name of
Hermetic
treatises. (See “Tabula Smaragdina”). Alchemy is studied under three
distinct
aspects, which admit of many different interpretations, viz.: the
Cosmic,
Human, and Terrestrial. These three methods were typified under the
three
alchemical properties—sulphur, mercury, and salt. Different writers have
stated
that there are three, seven, ten, and twelve processes respectively; but
they
are all agreed that there is but one object in alchemy, which is to
transmute
gross metals into pure gold. What that gold, however, really is, very
few
people understand correctly. No doubt that there is such a thing in nature
as
transmutation of the baser metals into the nobler, or gold. But this is only
one
aspect of alchemy, the terrestrial or purely material, for we sense
logically
the same process taking place in the bowels of the earth. Yet, besides
and
beyond this interpretation, there is in alchemy a symbolical meaning, purely
psychic
and spiritual. While the Kabbalist-Alchemist seeks for the realization
of
the former, the Occultist-Alchemist, spurning the gold of the mines, gives
all
his attention and directs his efforts only towards the transmutation of the
baser
quaternary into the divine upper trinity of man, which when finally
blended
are one. The spiritual, mental, psychic, and physical planes of human
existence
are in alchemy compared to the four elements, fire, air, water and
earth,
and are each capable of a threefold constitution, i.e., fixed, mutable
and
volatile. Little or nothing is known by the word concerning the origin of
this
archaic branch of philosophy; but it is certain that it antedates the
construction
of any known Zodiac, and, as dealing with the personified forces of
nature,
probably also any of the mythologies of the world; nor is there any
doubt
that the true secret of transmutation (on the physical plane) was known in
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days
of old, and lost before the dawn of the so-called historical period. Modern
chemistry
owes its best fundamental discoveries to alchemy, but regardless of
the
undeniable truism of the latter that there is but one element in the
universe,
chemistry has placed metals in the class of elements and is only now
beginning
to find out its gross mistake. Even sonic Encyclopædists are now
forced
to confess that if most of the accounts of transmutations are fraud or
delusion,
“yet some of them are accompanied by testimony which renders them
probable.
. . By means of the galvanic battery even the alkalis have been
discovered
to have a metallic base. The possibility of obtaining metal from
other
substances which contain the ingredients composing it, and of changing one
metal
into another . . . must therefore be left undecided. Nor are all
alchemists
to be considered impostors. Many have laboured under the conviction
of
obtaining their object, with indefatigable patience and purity of heart,
which
is earnestly recommended by sound alchemists as the principal requisite
for
the success of their labours.”
(Pop.
Encyclop.)
Alcyone
(Gr.), or Halcyone, daughter of Æolus, and wife of Ceyx, who was drowned
as
he was journeying to consult the oracle, upon which she threw herself into
the
sea. Accordingly both were changed, through the mercy of the gods, into
king-fishers.
The female is said to lay her eggs on the sea and keep it calm
during
the seven days before and seven days after the winter solstice. It has a
very
occult significance in ornithomancy.
Alectromancy
(Gr.). Divination by means of a cock, or other bird; a circle was
drawn
and divided into spaces, each one allotted to a letter; corn was spread
over
these places and note was taken of the successive lettered divisions from
which
the bird took grains of corn. [w.w.w.]
Alethæ
(Phœn) “Fire worshippers” from Al-alt, the God of Fire. The same as the
Kabiri
or divine Titans. As the seven emanations of Agruerus (Saturn) they are
connected
with all the fire, solar and” storm gods (Maruts).
Aletheia
(Gr.). Truth; also Alethia, one of Apollo’s nurses.
Alexadrian
School (of Philosophers). This famous school arose in Alexandria
(Egypt)
which was for several centuries the great seat of learning and
philosophy.
Famous for its library, which bears the name of “Alexandrian”,
founded
by Ptolemy Soter, who died in 283 B.C., at the very beginning of his
reign
; that library which once boasted of 700,000 rolls or volumes (Aulus
Gellius);
for its museum, the first real academy of sciences and arts ; for its
world-famous
scholars, such as Euclid (the father of scientific geometry),
Apollonius
of Perga (the author of the still extant work on conic sections),
Nicomachus
(the arithmetician); astronomers, natural philosophers, anatomists
such
as Herophilus and
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Erasistratus,
physicians, musicians, artists, etc., etc. ; it became still more
famous
for its Eclectic, or the New Platonic school, founded in 193 A.D., by
Ammonius
Saccas, whose disciples were Origen, Plotinus, and many others now
famous
in history. The most celebrated schools of Gnostics had their origin in
Alexandria.
Philo Judæus Josephus, lamblichus, Porphyry, Clement of Alexandria,
Eratosthenes
the astronomer, Hypatia the virgin philosopher, and numberless
other
stars of second magnitude, all belonged at various times to these great
schools,
and helped to make Alexandria one of the most justly renowned seats of
learning
that the world has ever produced.
Alhim
(Heb.). See “Elohim”.
Alkahest
(Arab.). The universal solvent in Alchemy (see "Alchemy "); but in
mysticism,
the Higher Self, the union with which makes of matter (lead), gold,
and
restores all compound things such as the human body and its attributes to
their
primæval essence.
Almadel; the Book. A treatise on Theurgia or White
Magic by an unknown mediæval
European
author; it is not infrequently found in volumes of MSS. called Keys of
Solomon.
[ w.w.w.]
Almeh
(Arab.). Dancing girls; the same as the Indian nautchies, the temple and
public
dancers.
Alpha
Polaris (Lat.). The same as Dhruva, the pole-star of 31,105 years ago.
Alswider
(Scand.). ‘‘ All-swift’’, the name of the horse of the moon, in the
Eddas.
Altruism
(Lat.). From alter = other. A quality opposed to egoism. Actions
tending
to do good to others, regardless of self.
Aize,
Liber; de Lapide Philosophico. An
alchemic treatise by an unknown German
author;
dated 1677. It is to be found reprinted in the Hermetic Museum; in it is
the
well known design of a man with legs extended and his body hidden by a seven
pointed
star. Eliphaz Lévi has copied it. [ w.w.w.]
Ama
(Heb.)., Amia, (Chald.). Mother. A title of Sephira Binah, whose “divine
name
is Jehovah” and who is called “Supernal Mother”.
Amânasa
(Sk.). The “ Mindless”, the early races of this planet; also certain
Hindu
gods.
Amara-Kosha
(Sk.). The “immortal vocabulary”. The oldest dictionary known in the
world
and the most perfect vocabulary of classical Sanskrit ; by Amara Sinha, a
sage
of the second century.
Ambâ
(Sk.). The name of the eldest of the seven Pleiades, the heavenly sisters
married
each to a Rishi belonging to the Saptariksha or the seven Rishis of the
constellation
known as the Great Bear.
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Ambhâmsi
(Sk.). A name of the chief of the Kumâras Sanat-Sujâta, signifying the
“waters”.
This epithet will become more comprehensible when we remember that the
later
type of Sanat-Sujâta was Michael, the Archangel, who is called in the
Talmud
“the Prince of Waters”, and in the Roman Catholic Church is regarded as
the
patron of gulfs and promontories. Sanat-Sujâta is the immaculate son of the
immaculate
mother (Ambâ or Aditi, chaos and space) or the “waters” of limitless
space.
(See
Secret Doctrine-, Vol. I., p. 460.)
Amdo
(Tib.). A sacred locality, the birthplace of Tson-kha-pa, the great Tibetan
reformer
and the founder of the Gelukpa (yellow caps), who is regarded as an
Avatar
of Amita-buddha.
Amên.
In Hebrew is formed of the letters A M N = 1,40,50 =91,and is thus a
simile
of “Jehovah Adonai”=10, 5, 6, 5 and 1,4, 50,10 =91 together; it is one
form
of the Hebrew word for “truth”. In common parlance Amen is said to mean “so
be
it”. [ w.w.w.]
But,
in esoteric parlance Amen means “the concealed”. Manetho Sebennites says
the
word signifies that which is hidden and we know through Hecatæus and others
that
the Egyptians used the word to call upon their great God of Mystery, Ammon
(or
“Ammas, the hidden god ”) to make himself conspicuous and manifest to them.
Bonomi,
the famous hieroglyphist, calls his worshippers very pertinently the
“Amenoph”,
and Mr. Bonwick quotes a writer who says: “Ammon, the hidden god,
will
remain for ever hidden till anthropomorphically revealed; gods who are afar
off
are useless”. Amen is styled “Lord of the new-moon festival”. Jehovah-Adonai
is
a new form of the ram-headed god Amoun or Ammon (q.v.) who was invoked by the
Egyptian
priests under the name of Amen.
Amenti
(Eg.). Esoterically and literally, the dwelling of the God Amen, or
Amoun,
or the “hidden”, secret god. Exoterically the kingdom of Osiris divided
into
fourteen parts, each of which was set aside for some purpose connected with
the
after state of the defunct. Among other things, in one of these was the Hall
of
Judgment. It was the “Land of the West”, the “Secret Dwelling”, the dark
land,
and the “doorless house”. But it was also Ker-noter, the “abode of the
gods”,
and the “land of ghosts” like the “ Hades” of the Greeks (q.v.). It was
also
the “Good Father’s House” (in which there are “many mansions”). The
fourteen
divisions comprised, among many others, Aanroo (q.v.), the hall of the
Two
Truths, the Land of Bliss, Neter-xev “the funeral (or burial) place”
Otamer-xev,
the “Silence-loving Fields”, and also many other mystical halls and
dwellings,
one like the Sheol of the Hebrews, another like the Devachan of the
Occultists,
etc., etc. Out of the fifteen gates of the abode of Osiris, there
were
two chief ones,
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the
“gate of entrance” or Rustu, and the “gate of exit” (reincarnation) Amh. But
there
was no room in Amenti to represent the orthodox Christian Hell. The worst
of
all was the Hall of the eternal Sleep and Darkness. As Lepsius has it, the
defunct
“sleep (therein) in incorruptible forms, they wake not to see their
brethren,
they recognize no longer father and mother, their hearts feel nought
toward
their wife and children. This is the dwelling of the god All-Dead. . . .
Each
trembles to pray to him, for he hears not. Nobody can praise him, for he
regards
not those who adore him. Neither does he notice any offering brought to
him.”
This god is Karmic Decree; the land of Silence—the abode of those who die
absolute
disbelievers, those dead from accident before their allotted time, and
finally
the dead on the threshold of Avitchi, which is never in Amenti or any
other
subjective state, save in one case, but on this land of forced re-birth.
These
tarried not very long even in their state of heavy sleep, of oblivion and
darkness,
but, were carried more or less speedily toward Amh the “exit gate”.
Amesha
Spentas (Zend). Amshaspends. The six angels or divine Forces personified
as
gods who attend upon Ahura Mazda, of which he is the synthesis and the
seventh.
They are one of the prototypes of the Roman Catholic “Seven Spirits” or
Angels
with Michael as chief, or the “Celestial Host”; the “ Seven Angels of the
Presence”.
They are the Builders, Cosmocratores, of the Gnostics and identical
with
the Seven Prajâpatis, the Sephiroth, etc. (q.v.).
Amitâbha.
The Chinese perversion of the Sanskrit Amrita Buddha, or the “Immortal
Enlightened”,
a name of Gautama Buddha. The name has such variations as Amita,
Abida,
Amitâya, etc., and. is explained as meaning both “Boundless Age” and
“Boundless
Light”. The original conception of the ideal of an impersonal divine
light
has been anthrdpomorphized with time.
Ammon
(Eg.). One of the great gods of Egypt. Ammon or Amoun is far older than
Amoun-Ra,
and is identified with Baal. Hammon, the Lord of Heaven. Amoun-Ra was
Ra
the Spiritual Sun, the “Sun of Righteousness”, etc., for—“the Lord God is a
Sun”.
He is the God of Mystery and the hieroglyphics of his name are often
reversed.
He is Pan, All-Nature esoterically, and therefore the universe, and
the
“Lord of Eternity”. Ra, as declared by an old inscription, was “begotten by
Neith
but not engendered”. He is called the “self- begotten” Ra,, and created
goodness
from a glance of his fiery eye, as Set-Typhon created evil from his. As
Ammon
(also Amoun and Amen), Ra, he is “Lord of the worlds enthroned on the
Sun’s
disk and appears in the abyss of heaven”. A very ancient hymn spells the
name
“Amen-ra”, and hails the “Lord of the thrones of the earth...Lord
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of
Truth, father of the gods, maker of man, creator of the beasts, Lord of
Existence,
Enlightener of the Earth, sailing in heaven in tranquillity. . . All
hearts
are softened at beholding thee, sovereign of life, health and strength We
worship
thy spirit who alone made us”, etc., etc. (See Bonwick’s Egyptian
Belief.)
Ammon Ra is called “his mother’s husband” and her son. (See “Chnourmis”
and
“Chnouphis” and also Secret Doctrine I, pp. 91 and It was to the
“ram-headed”
god that the Jews sacrificed lambs, and the lamb of Christian
theology
is a disguised reminiscence of the ram.
Ammonius
Saccas. A great and good philosopher who lived in Alexandria between
the
second and third centuries of our era, and who was the founder of the
Neo-Platonic
School of Philaletheians or “lovers of truth”. He was of poor birth
and
born of Christian parents, but endowed with such prominent, almost divine,
goodness
as to he called Theodidaktos, the “god-taught”. He honoured that which
was
good in Christianity, but broke with it and the churches very early, being
unable
to find in it any superiority over the older religions.
Amrita
(Sk.). The ambrosial drink or food of the gods; the food giving
immortality.
The elixir of life churned out of the ocean of milk in the Purânic
allegory.
An old Vedic term applied to the sacred Soma juice in the Temple
Mysteries.
Amûlam
Mûlam (Sk.). Lit., the “rootless root” ; Mulâprakriti of the Vedantins
the
spiritual “root of nature”.
Amun
(Copt.). The Egyptian god of wisdom, who had only Initiates or Hierophants
to
serve him as priests.
Anâ
(Chald.). The “invisible heaven”or Astral Light ; the heavenly mother of the
terrestrial
sea, Mar, whence probably the origin of Anna, the mother of Mary.
Anacalypsis
(Gr.)., or an “Attempt to withdraw the veil of the Saitic Isis”, by
Godfrey
Higgins. This is a very valuable work, now only obtainable at
extravagant
prices; it treats of the origin of all myths, religions and
mysteries,
and displays an immense fund of classical erudition. [ w.w.w.]
Anâgâmin
(Sk.). Anagam. One who is no longer to be reborn into the world of
desire.
One stage before becoming Arhat and ready for Nirvâna. The third of the
four
grades of holiness on the way to final Initiation.
Anâhata
Chakram (Sk.). The seat or “wheel” of life; the heart, according to some
commentators.
Anâhata
Shabda (Sk.). The mystic voices and sounds heard by the Yogi at the
incipient
stage of his meditation, The third of the four states
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of
sound, otherwise called Madhyamâ—the fourth state being when it is
perceptible
by the physical sense of hearing. The sound in its previous stages
is
not heard except by those who have developed their internal, highest
spiritual
senses. The four stages are called respectively, Parâ, Pashyantî,
Madhyamâ
and Vaikharî.
Anaitia
(Chald.). A derivation from Anâ (q.v.), a goddess identical with the
Hindu
Annapurna, one of the names of Kâlî—the female aspect of Siva—at her best.
Analogeticists.
The disciples of Ammonius Saccas (q.v.), so called because of
their
practice of interpreting all sacred legends, myths and mysteries by a
principle
of analogy and correspondence, which is now found in the Kabbalistic
system,
and pre-eminently so in the Schools of Esoteric Philosophy, in the East.
(See
“ The Twelve Signs of the Zodiac,” by T. Subba Row in Five Years of
Theosophy.)
Ânanda
(Sk.). Bliss, joy, felicity, happiness. A name of the favourite disciple
of
Gautama, the Lord Buddha.
Ânanda-Lahari
(Sk.). “The wave of joy”; a beautiful poem written by
Sankarâchârya,
a hymn to Pârvati, very mystical and occult.
Ânandamaya-Kosha
(Sk.). “The illusive Sheath of Bliss”, i.e., the mâyâvic or
illusory
form, the appearance of that which is formless. “Bliss”, or the higher
soul.
The Vedantic name for one of the five Koshas or “principles” in man;
identical
with our Âtmâ-Buddhi or the Spiritual Soul.
Ananga
(Sk.). The “Bodiless”. An epithet of Kâma, god of love.
Ananta-Sesha
(Sk.). The Serpent of Eternity—the couch of Vishnu during Pralaya
(lit.,
endless remain).
Anastasis
(Gr.). The continued existence of the soul.
Anatu
(Chald.). The female aspect of Anu (q.v.). She represents the Earth and
Depth,
while her consort represents the Heaven and Height. She is the mother of
the
god Hea, and produces heaven and earth. Astronomically she is Ishtar, Venus,
the
Ashtoreth of the Jews.
Anaxagoras
(Gr.) A famous Ionian philosopher who lived 500 B.C., studied
philosophy
under Anaximenes of Miletus, and settled in the days of Pericles at
Athens.
Socrates, Euripides, Archelaus and other distinguished men and
philosophers
were among his disciples and pupils. He was a most learned
astronomer
and was one of the first to explain openly that which was taught by
Pythagoras
secretly, namely, the movements of the planets, the eclipses of the
sun
and moon, etc. It was he who taught the theory of Chaos, on the principle
that
“nothing comes from nothing”; and of atoms, as the underlying essence and
substance
of all bodies, “of the same nature as the bodies which they formed”.
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These
atoms, he taught, were primarily put in motion by Nous (Universal
Intelligence,
the Mahat of the Hindus), which Nous is an immaterial, eternal,
spiritual
entity; by this combination the world was formed, the material gross
bodies
sinking down, and the ethereal atoms (or fiery ether) rising and
spreading
in the upper celestial regions. Antedating modern science by over 2000
years,
he taught that the stars were of the same material as our earth, and the
sun
a glowing mass; that the moon was a dark, uninhabitable body, receiving its
light
from the sun; the comets, wandering stars or bodies ; and over and above
the
said science, he confessed himself thoroughly convinced that the real
existence
of things, perceived by our senses, could not be demonstrably proved.
He
died in exile at Lampsacus at the age of seventy-two.
Ancients,
The. A name given by Occultists to the seven creative Rays, born of
Chaos,
or the “Deep”.
Anda-Katâha
(Sk.). The outer covering, or the “shell” of Brahmâ’s egg; the area
within
which our manifested universe is encompassed.
Androgyne
Goat (of Mendes). See “Baphomet”.
Androgyne
Ray (Esot.). The first differentiated ray; the Second Logos; Adam
Kadmon
in the Kabalah; the “male and female created he them”, of the first
chapter
of Genesis.
Audumla
(Scand.). The symbol of nature in the Norse mythology; the cow who licks
the
salt rock, whence the divine Buri is born, before man’s creation.
Angâraka
(Sk.). Fire Star; the planet Mars; in Tibetan, Mig-mar.
Augiras.
One of the Prajâpatis. A son of Daksha ; a lawyer, etc., etc.
Angirasas
(Sk.). The generic name of several Purânic individuals and things; a
class
of Pitris, the ancestors of man ; a river in Plaksha, one of the Sapta
dwîpas
(q.v).
Angra
Mainyus (Zend.). The Zoroastrian name for Ahriman; the evil spirit of
destruction
and opposition who (in the Vendidâd, Fargard I.) is said by Ahura
Mazda
to “counter-create by his witchcraft” every beautiful land the God
creates;
for “Angra Mainyu is all death”.
AnimaMundi
(Lat.). The“Soul of the World”, the same as the Alaya of the Northern
Buddhists;
the divine essence which permeates, animates and informs all, from
the
smallest atom of matter to man and god. It is in a sense the “seven-skinned
mother”
of the stanzas in the Secret Doctrine, the essence of seven planes of
sentience,
consciousness and differentiation, moral and physical. In its highest
aspect
it is Nirvâna, in its lowest Astral Light. It was feminine with the
Gnostics,
the early Christians and the Nazarenes; bisexual with other sects, who
considered
it only in its four lower planes. Of igneous, ethereal nature in the
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objective
world of form (and then ether), and divine and spiritual in its three
higher
planes. When it is said that every human soul was born by detaching
itself
from the Anima Mundi, it means, esoterically, that our higher Egos are of
an
essence identical with It, which is a radiation of the ever unknown Universal
ABSOLUTE.
Anjala
(Sk.). One of the personified powers which spring from Brahmâ’s body—the
Prajâpatis.
Anjana
(Sk.). A serpent, a son of Kasyapa Rishi.
Annamaya
Kosha (Sk.). A Vedantic term. The same as Sthûla Sharîra or the
physical
body. It is the first “sheath” of the five sheaths accepted by the
Vedantins,
a sheath being the same as that which is called “principle” in
Theosophy.
Annapura
(Sk.). See “Anâ”.
Annedotus
(Gr.). The generic name for the Dragons or Men-Fishes, of which there
were
five. The historian Berosus narrates that there rose out of the Erythræan
Sea
on several occasions a semi-dæmon named Oannes or Annedotus, who although
part
animal yet taught the Chaldeans useful arts and everything that could
humanise
them. (See Lenormant Chaldean Magic, p. 203, and also “Oannes”.)
[w.w.w.]
Anoia
(Gr.). “Want of understanding”, “folly”. Anoia is the name given by Plato
and
others to the lower Manas when too closely allied with Kâma, which is
irrational
(agnoia). The Greek word agnoia is evidently a derivation from and
cognate
to the Sanskrit word ajnâna (phonetically, agnyana) or ignorance,
irrationality,
absence of knowledge. (See “Agnoia” and “Agnostic”.)
Anouki
(Eg.). A form of Isis; the goddess of life, from which name the Hebrew
Ank,
life. (See “Anuki.”)
Ansumat
(Sk.). A Purânic personage, the “nephew of 60,000 uncles” King Sagara’s
sons,
who were reduced to ashes by a single glance from Kapila Rishi’s “Eye”.
Antahkarana
(Sk.)., or Antaskarana. The term has various meanings, which differ
with
every school of philosophy and sect. Thus Sankârachârya renders the word as
“understanding”;
others, as “the internal instrument, the Soul, formed by the
thinking
principle and egoism”; whereas the Occultists explain it as the path or
bridge
between the Higher and the Lower Manas, the divine Ego, and the personal
Soul
of man. It serves as a medium of communication between the two, and conveys
from
the Lower to the Higher Ego all those personal impressions and thoughts of
men
which can, by their nature, be assimilated and stored by the undying Entity,
and
be thus made immortal with it, these being the only elements of the
evanescent
Personality that survive death and time. It thus stands to reason
that
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only
that which is noble, spiritual and divine in man can testify in Eternity to
his
having lived.
Anthesteria
(Gr.). The feast of Flowers (Floralia): during this festival the
rite
of Baptism or purification was performed in the Eleusinian Mysteries in the
temple
lakes, the Limnae, when the
Mystæ
were made to pass through the “narrow gate” of Dionysus, to emerge
therefrom
as full Initiates.
Anthropology.
The Science of man; it embraces among other things :—Physiology,
or
that branch of natural science which discloses the mysteries of the organs
and
their functions in men, animals and plants; and also, and
especially,—Psychology
or the great, and in our days, too much neglected science
of
the soul, both as an entity distinct from the spirit, and in its relation to
the
spirit and body. In modern science, psychology deals only or principally
with
conditions of the nervous system, and almost absolutely ignores the
psychical
essence and nature. Physicians denominate the science of insanity
psychology,
and name the lunacy chair in medical colleges by that designation.
(Isis
Unveiled.)
Anthropomorphism
(Gr.). From “anthropos” meaning man. The act of endowing god or
gods
with a human form and human attributes or qualities.
Anu
(Sk.). An “atom”, a title of Brahmâ, who is said to be an atom just as is
the
infinite universe. A hint at the pantheistic nature of the god.
Anu
(Chald.). One of the highest of Babylonian deities, “King of Angels and
Spirits,
Lord of the city of Erech”. He is the Ruler and God of Heaven and
Earth.
His symbol is a star and a kind of Maltese cross—emblems of divinity and
sovereignty.
He is an abstract divinity supposed to inform the whole expense of
ethereal
space or heaven, while his “wife” informs the more material planes.
Both
are the types of the Ouranos and Gaia of Hesiod. They sprang from the
original
Chaos. All his titles and attributes are grapfiic and indicate health,
purity
physical and moral, antiquity and holiness. Anu was the earliest god of
the
city of Erech. One of his sons was Bil orVil-Kan, the god of fire, of
various
metals, and of weapons. George Smith very pertinently sees in this deity
a
close connection with a kind of cross breed between “the biblical Tubal Cain
and
the classical Vulcan” . .who is considered to be moreover “the most potent
deity
in relation to witchcraft and spells generally”.
Anubis
(Gr.) The dog -headed god, identical, in a certain aspect, with Horus. He
is
pre-eminently the god who deals with the disembodied, or the resurrected in
post
mortem life. Anepou is his Egyptian
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name.
He is a psychopompic deity, “the Lord of the Silent Land of the West, the
land
of the Dead, the preparer of the way to the other world ”, to whom the dead
were
entrusted, to be led by him to Osiris, the Judge. In short, he is the
“embalmer”
and the “guardian of the dead”. One of the oldest deities in Egypt,
Mariette
Bey having found the image of this deity in tombs of the Third Dynasty.
Anugîtâ
(Sk.). One of the Upanishads. A very occult treatise. (See The sacred
Books
of the East.)
Anugraha
(Sk.). The eighth creation in the Vishnu Purâna.
Anuki
(Eg.). “See Anouki” supra. “The word Ank in Hebrew, means ‘my life’, my
being,
which is the personal pronoun Anocki, from the name of the Egyptian
goddess
Anouki ”, says the author of the
Hebrew
Mystery, or the Source of Measures.
Anumati
(Sk.). The moon at the full; when from a god—Soma—she becomes a goddess.
Anumitis
(Sk.). Inference, deduction in philosophy.
Anunnaki
(Chald.). Angels or Spirits of the Earth; terrestrial Elementals also.
Anunit
(Chald.) The goddess of Akkad ; Lucifer, the morning star. Venus as the
evening
star
was
Ishtar of Erech.
Anupâdaka
(Sk.). Anupapâdaka, also Aupapâduka; means parentless”,
“self-existing”,
born without any parents or progenitors. A term applied to
certain
self-created gods, and the Dhyâni Buddhas.
Anuttara
(Sk.). Unrivalled, peerless. Thus Anuttara Bodhi means unexcelled or
unrivalled
intelligence”, Anuttara Dharma, unrivalled law or religion, &c.
Anyâmsam
Aniyasâm (Sk.). A no-ranîyânsam (in Bhagavad gîtâ). Lit., “the most
atomic
of the atomic; smallest of the small ”. Applied to the universal deity,
whose
essence is everywhere.
Aour
(Chald.). The synthesis of the two aspects of astro-etheric light; and the
od—the
life-giving, and the ob—the death-giving light.
Apâm
Napât (Zend). A mysterious being, corresponding to the Fohat of the
Occultists.
It is both a Vedic and an Avestian name. Literally, the name means
the
“Son of the Waters” (of space, i.e., Ether),
for
in the Avesta Apâm Napât stands between the fire-yazatas and the
water-yazatas
.
(See
Secret Doctrine, Vol. II., p. 400, note).
Apâna
(Sk.). “Inspirational breath”; a practice in Yoga. Prana and apâna are the
“expirational”
and the “inspirational” breaths. It is called “vital wind” in
Anugîta.
Apap
(Eg.), in Greek Apophis. The symbolical Serpent of Evil. The Solar Boat and
the
Sun are the great Slayers of Apap in the Book of the
l
l
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Dead.
It is Typhon, who having killed Osiris, incarnates in Apap, seeking to
kill
Horus. Like Taoer (or
Ta-ap-oer)
the female aspect of Typhon, Apap is called “the devourer of the
Souls”,
and truly, since Apap symbolizes the animal body, as matter left
soulless
and to itself. Osiris, being, like all the other Solar gods, a type of
the
Higher Ego (Christos), Horus (his son) is the lower Manas or the personal
Ego.
On many a monument one can see Horus, helped by a number of dog-headed gods
armed
with crosses and spears, killing Apap. Says an Orientalist : “The God
Horus
standing as conqueror upon the Serpent of Evil, may be considered as the
earliest
form of our well-known group of St. George (who is Michael) and the
Dragon,
or holiness trampling down sin.” Draconianism did not die with the
ancient
religions, but has passed bodily into the latest Christian form of the
worship.
Aparinâmin
(Sk.). The Immutable and the Unchangeable, the reverse of Parinâmin,
that
which is subject to modification, differentiation or decay.
Aparoksha
(Sk.) Direct perception.
Âpava
(Sk.) Lit. “He who sports in the Water”. Another aspect of Nârâyana or
Vishnu
and of Brahmâ combined, for Âpava, like the latter, divides himself into
two
parts, male and female, and creates Vishnu, who creates Virâj, who creates
Manu.
The name is explained and interpreted in various ways in Brahmanical
literature.
Apavarga
(Sk.). Emancipation from repeated births.
Apis
(Eg.), or Hapi-ankh. The “living deceased one” or Osiris incarnate in the
sacred
white Bull. Apis was the bull-god that, on reaching the age of
twenty-eight,
the age when Osiris was killed by Typhon—was put to death with
great
ceremony. It was not the Bull that was worshipped but the Osiridian
symbol;
just as Christians kneel now before the Lamb, the symbol of Jesus
Christ,
in their churches.
Apocrypha
(Gr.). Very erroneously explained and adopted as doubtful, or
spurious.
The word means simply secret, esoteric, hidden.
Apollo
Belvidere. Of all the ancient statues of Apollo, the son of Jupiter and
Latona,
called Phœbus, Helios, the radiant and the Sun, the best and most
perfect
is the one known by this name, which is in the Belvidere gallery of the
Vatican
at Rome. It is called the Pythian Apollo, as the god is represented in
the
moment of his victory over the serpent Python. The statue was found in the
ruins
of Antium, in 1503.
Apollonius
of Tyana (Gr.). A wonderful philosopher born in Cappadocia about the
beginning
of the first century; an ardent Pythagorean, who studied the Phœnician
sciences
under Euthydemus; and Pythagorean philosophy and other studies under
Euxenus
of
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Heraclea.
According to the tenets of this school he remained a vegetarian the
whole
of his long life, fed only on fruit and herbs, drank no wine, wore
vestments
made only of plant-fibres, walked barefooted, and let his hair grow to
its
full length, as all the Initiates before and after him. He was initiated by
the
priests of the temple of Æsculapius (Asciepios) at Ægae, and learnt many of
the
“miracles” for healing the sick wrought by the god of medicine. Having
prepared
himself for a higher initiation by a silence of five years, and by
travel,
visiting Antioch, Ephesus, Pamphylia and other parts, he journeyed via
Babylon
to India, all his intimate disciples having abandoned him, as they
feared
to go to the “land of enchantments”. A casual disciple, Damis, however,
whom
he met on his way, accompanied him in his travels. At Babylon he was
initiated
by the Chaldees and Magi, according to Damis, whose narrative was
copied
by one named Philostratus a hundred years later. After his return from
India,
he showed himself a true Initiate, in that the pestilences and
earthquakes,
deaths of kings and other events, which he prophesied duly
happened.
At Lesbos, the priests of Orpheus, being jealous of him, refused to
initiate
him into their peculiar mysteries, though they did so several years
later.
He preached to the people of Athens and other cities the purest and
noblest
ethics, and the phenomena he produced were as wonderful as they were
numerous
and well attested. “How is it”, enquires Justin Martyr in dismay—” how
is
it that the talismans (telesmata) of Apollonius have power, for they prevent,
as
we see, the fury of the waves and the violence of the winds, and the attacks
of
the wild beasts; and whilst our Lord’s miracles are preserved by tradition
alone,
those of Apollonius are most numerous and actually manifested in present
facts?”
. (Quaest, XXIV.). But an answer is easily
found to this in the fact that after
crossing
the Hindu Kush, Apollonius had been directed by a king to the abode of
the
Sages, whose abode it may be to this day, by whom he was taught unsurpassed
knowledge.
His dialogues with the Corinthian Menippus indeed give us the
esoteric
catechism and disclose (when understood) many an important mystery of
nature.
Apollonius was the friend, correspondent and guest of kings and queens,
and
no marvellous or “magic” powers are better attested than his. At the end of
his
long and wonderful life he opened an esoteric school at Ephesus, and died
aged
almost one hundred years.
Aporrheta
(Gr.). Secret instructions upon esoteric subjects given during the
Egyptian
and Grecian Mysteries.
Apsaras
(Sk.). An Undine or Water-Nymph, from the Paradise or Heaven of Indra.
The
Apsarases
are
in popular belief the “wives of the gods” and called Surânganâs, and by a
less
honourable term, Sumad-âtmajâs or the “daughters of pleasure”, for it is
fabled
of them
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that
when they appeared at the churning of the Ocean neither Gods (Suras) nor
Demons
(Asuras) would take them for legitimate wives. Urvasi and several others
of
them are mentioned in the Vedas. In Occultism they are certain
“sleep-producing”
aquatic plants, and inferior forces of nature.
Ar-Abu
Nasr-al-Farabi, called in Latin Alpharabius, a Persian, and the greatest
Aristotelian
philosopher of the age. He was born in 950 A.D., and is reported to
have
been murdered in 1047. He was an Hermetic philosopher and possessed the
power
of hypnotizing through music, making those who heard him play the lute
laugh,
weep, dance and do what he liked. Some of his works on Hermetic
philosophy
may be found in the Library of Leyden.
Arahat
(Sk.). Also pronounced and written Arhat, Arhan, Rahat, &c., “the worthy
one”,
lit., “deserving divine honours”. This was the name first given to the
Jain
and subsequently to the Buddhist holy men initiated into the esoteric
mysteries.
The Arhat is one who has entered the best and highest path, and is
thus
emancipated from rebirth.
Arani
(Sk.). The “female Arani” is a name of the Vedic Aditi (esoterically, the
womb
of the world).
Arani
is a Swastika, a disc-like wooden vehicle, in which the Brahmins generated
fire
by friction with pramantha, a stick, the symbol of the male generator. A
mystic
ceremony with a world of secret meaning in it and very sacred, perverted
into
phallic significance by the materialism of the age.
Âranyaka
(Sk.). Holy hermits, sages who dwelt in ancient India in forests. Also
a
portion of the Vedas containing Upanishads, etc.
Araritha
(Heb.). A very famous seven-lettered Kabbalistic wonder-word ; its
numeration
is 813 ; its letters are collected by Notaricon from the sentence
“one
principle of his unity, one beginning of his individuality, his change is
unity”.
[ w.w.w.].
Arasa
Maram (Sk.). The Hindu sacred tree of knowledge. In occult philosophy a
mystic
word.
Arba-il
(Chald.). The Four Great Gods. Arba is Aramaic for four, and il is the
same
as Al or El. Three male deities, and a female who is virginal yet
reproductive,
form a very common ideal of Godhead. [w.w.w.]
Archangel
(Gr.). Highest supreme angel. From the Greek arch, “chief” or
“primordial”,
and angelos,
“messenger
”.
Archæus
(Gr.). “The Ancient.” Used of the oldest manifested deity; a term
employed
in the Kabalah ;
“archaic
”, old, ancient.
Archobiosis
(Gr.). Primeval beginning of life.
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Archetypal
Universe (Kab.). The ideal universe upon which the objective world
was
built. [w.w.w.]
Archons
(Gr.). In profane and biblical language “rulers” and princes; in
Occultism,
primordial planetary spirits.
Archontes
(Gr.). The archangels after becoming Ferouers (q.v.) or their own
shadows,
having mission on earth; a mystic ubiquity; implying a double life; a
kind
of hypostatic action, one of purity in a higher region, the other of
terrestrial
activity exercised on our plane.
(See
Iamblichus, De Mysterüs II., Chap. 3.)
Ardath
(Heb.). This word occurs in the Second Book of Esdras, ix., 26. The name
has
been given to one of the recent “occult novels” where much interest is
excited
by the visit of the hero to a field in the Holy Land so named; magical
properties
are attributed to it. In the Book of Esdras the prophet is sent to
this
field called Ardath “where no house is builded” and bidden “eat there only
the
flowers of the field, taste no flesh, drink no wine, and pray unto the
highest
continually, and then will I come and talk with thee”. [w.w.w.]
Ardha-Nârî
(Sk.). Lit., “half-woman”. Siva represented as Androgynous, as half
male
and half female, a type of male and female energies combined. (See occult
diagram
in Isis Unveiled, Vol. II.)
Ardhanârîswara
(Sk.). Lit., “the bi-sexual lord”. Esoterically, the unpolarized
states
of cosmic energy symbolised by the Kabalistic Sephira, Adam Kadmon, &c.
Ares.
The Greek name for Mars, god of war; also a term used by Paracelsus, the
differentiated
Force in Cosmos.
Argha
(Chald.). The ark, the womb of Nature; the crescent moon, and a
life-saving
ship ; also a cup for offerings, a vessel used for religious
ceremonies.
Arghyanâth
(Sk.). Lit., “lord of libations”.
Arian.
A follower of Arius, a presbyter of the Church in Alexandria in the
fourth
century. One who holds that Christ is a created and human being, inferior
to
God the Father, though a grand and noble man, a true adept versed in all the
divine
mysteries.
Aristobulus
(Gr) An Alexandrian writer, and an obscure philosopher. A Jew who
tried
to prove that Aristotle explained the esoteric thoughts of Moses.
Arithmomancy
(Gr.). The science of correspondences between gods, men, and
numbers,
as taught by Pythagoras. [w.w.w.]
Arjuna
(Sk.) Lit., the “white”. The third of the five Brothers Pandu or the
reputed
Sons of Indra (esoterically the same as Orpheus). A disciple of Krishna,
who
visited him and married Su-bhadrâ, his
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sister,
besides many other wives, according to the allegory. During the
fratricidal
war between the Kauravas and the Pândavas, Krishna instructed him in
the
highest philosophy, while serving as his charioteer. (See Bhaguvad Gîtâ.)
Ark
of Isis. At the great Egyptian annual ceremony, which took place in the
month
of Athyr, the boat of Isis was borne in procession by the priests, and
Collyrian
cakes or buns, marked with the sign of the cross (Tat), were eaten.
This
was in commemoration of the weeping of Isis for the loss of Osiris, the
Athyr
festival being very impressive. “Plato refers to the melodies on the
occasion
as being very ancient,” writes Mr. Bonwick (Eg. Belief and Mod.
Thought).
“ The Miserere in Rome has been said to be similar to its melancholy
cadence,
and to be derived from it Weeping, veiled virgins followed the ark. The
Nornes,
or veiled virgins, wept also for the loss of our Saxon forefathers’ god,
the
ill-fated but good Baldur.”
Ark
of the Covenant. Every ark-shrine, whether with the Egyptians, Hindus,
Chaldeans
or Mexicans, was a phallic shrine, the symbol of the yoni or womb of
nature.
The seket of the Egyptians, the ark, or sacred chest, stood on the
ara—its
pedestal. The ark of Osiris, with the sacred relics of the god, was “of
the
same size as the Jewish ark”, says S. Sharpe, the Egyptologist, carried by
priests
with staves passed through its rings in sacred procession, as the ark
round
which danced David, the King of Israel. Mexican gods also had their arks.
Diana,
Ceres, and other goddesses as well as gods had theirs. The ark was a
boat—a
vehicle in every case. “Thebes had a sacred ark 300 cubits long,” and
“the
word Thebes is said to mean ark in Hebrew,” which is but a natural
recognition
of the place to which the chosen people are indebted for their ark.
Moreover,
as Bauer writes, “the Cherub was not first used by Moses.” The winged
Isis
was the cherub or Arieh in Egypt, centuries before the arrival there of
even
Abram or Sarai. “The external likeness of some of the Egyptian arks,
surmounted
by their two winged human figures, to the ark of the covenant, has
often
been noticed.” (Bible Educator.) And not only the “external” but the
internal
“likeness” and sameness are now known to all. The arks, whether of the
covenant,
or of honest, straightforward, Pagan symbolism, had originally and now
have
one and the same meaning. The chosen people appropriated the idea and
forgot
to acknowledge its source. It is the same as in the case of the “Urim”
and
“Thummin” (q.v.). In Egypt, as shown by many Egyptologists, the two objects
were
the emblems of the Two Truths. “Two figures of Re and Thmei were worn on
the
breast-plate of the Egyptian High Priest. Thmé, plural thmin, meant truth in
Hebrew.
Wilkinson says the figure of
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Truth
had closed eyes. Rosellini speaks of the Thmei being worn as a necklace.
Diodorus
gives such a necklace of gold and stones to the High Priest when
delivering
judgment. The Septuagint translates Thummin as Truth”. (Bonwick’s
Egyp.
Belief.)
Arka
(Sk.). The Sun.
Arkites.
The ancient priests who were attached to the Ark, whether of Isis, or
the
Hindu Argua, and who were seven in number, like the priests of the Egyptian
Tat
or any other cruciform symbol of the three and the four, the combination of
which
gives a male-female number. The Avgha (or ark) was the four-fold female
principle,
and the flame burning over it the triple lingham.
Aroueris
(Gr.). The god Harsiesi, who was the elder Horus. He had a temple at
Ambos.
if we bear in mind the definition of the chief Egyptian gods by Plutarch,
these
myths will become more comprehensible; as he well says: “Osiris represents
the
beginning and principle; Isis, that which receives; and Horus, the compound
of
both. Horus engendered between them, is not eternal nor incorruptible, but,
being
always in generation, he endeavours by vicissitudes of imitations, and by
periodical
passion (yearly re-awakening to life) to continue always young, as if
he
should never die.” Thus, since Horus is the personified physical world,
Aroueris,
or the “elder Horus”, is the ideal Universe; and this accounts for the
saying
that “he was begotten by Osiris and Isis when these were still in the
bosom
of their mother”—Space. There is indeed, a good deal of mystery about this
god,
but the meaning of the symbol becomes clear once one has the key to it.
Artephius.—A
great Hermetic philosopher, whose true name was never known and
whose
works are without dates, though it is known that he wrote his Secret Book
in
the XIIth century. Legend has it that he was one thousand years old at that
time.
There is a book on dreams by him in the possession of an Alchemist, now in
Bagdad,
in which he gives out the secret of seeing the past, the present, and
the
future, in sleep, and of remembering the things seen. There are but two
copies
of this manuscript extant. The book on Dreams by the Jew Solomon Almulus,
published
in Hebrew at Amsterdam in 1642, has a few reminiscences from the
former
work of Artephius.
Artes
(Eg.). The Earth; the Egyptian god Mars.
Artufas.
A generic name in South America and the islands for temples of nagalism
or
serpent worship.
Arundhatî
(Sk.). The “Morning Star”; Lucifer-Venus.
Arûpa
(Sk.). “Bodiless”, formless, as opposed to rûpa, “body”, or form.
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Arvâksrotas
(Sk.). The seventh creation, that of man, in the Vishnu Purâna.
Arwaker
(Scand.). Lit., “early waker”. The horse of the chariot of the Sun
driven
by the maiden Sol, in the Eddas.
Ârya
(Sk.) Lit., “the holy”; originally the title of Rishis, those who had
mastered
the “Âryasatyâni” (q.v.) and entered the Âryanimârga path to Nirvâna or
Moksha,
the great “four-fold” path. But now the name has become the epithet of a
race,
and our Orientalists, depriving the Hindu Brahmans of their birth-right,
have
made Aryans of all Europeans. In esotericism, as the four paths, or stages,
can
be entered only owing to great spiritual development and “growth in holiness
”,
they are called the “four fruits”. The degrees of Arhatship, called
respectively
Srotâpatti, Sakridâgamin, Anâgâmin, and Arhat, or the four classes
of
Âryas, correspond to these four paths and truths.
Ârya-Bhata
(Sk.) The earliest Hindu algerbraist and astronomer, with the
exception
of Asura Maya (q.v.); the author of a work called Ârya Siddhânta, a
system
of Astronomy.
Ârya-Dâsa
(Sk.) Lit., “Holy Teacher”. A great sage and Arhat of the Mahâsamghika
school.
Aryahata
(Sk.) The “Path of Arhatship”, or of holiness.
Âryasangha
(Sk.) The Founder of the first Yogâchârya School. This Arhat, a
direct
disciple of Gautama, the Buddha, is most unaccountably mixed up and
confounded
with a personage of the same name, who is said to have lived in
Ayôdhya
(Oude) about the fifth or sixth century of our era, and taught Tântrika
worship
in addition to the Yogâchârya system. Those who sought to make it
popular,
claimed that he was the same Âryasangha, that had been a follower of
Sâkyamuni,
and that he was 1,000 years old. Internal evidence alone is
sufficient
to show that the works written by him and translated about the year
600
of our era, works full of Tantra worship, ritualism, and tenets followed now
considerably
by the “red-cap” sects in Sikhim, Bhutan, and Little Tibet, cannot
be
the same as the lofty system of the early Yogâcharya school of pure Buddhism,
which
is neither northern nor southern, but absolutely esoteric. Though none of
the
genunine Yogâchârya books (the Narjol chodpa) have ever been made public or
marketable,
yet one finds in the Yogâchârya Bhûmi Shâstra of the
pseudo-Âryasangha
a great deal from the older system, into the tenets of which
he
may have been initiated. It is, however, so mixed up with Sivaism and
Tantrika
magic and superstitions, that the work defeats its own end,
notwithstanding
its remarkable dialectical subtilty. How unreliable are the
conclusions
at which our Orientalists arrive, and how contradictory the dates
assigned
by them, may be seen in the case in hand. While Csoma de Körös (who,
by-the-bye,
never
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became
acquainted with the Gelukpa (yellow-caps), but got all his information
from
“red-cap” lamas of the Borderland), places the pseudo-Âryasangha in the
seventh
century of our era; Wassiljew, who passed most of his life in China,
proves
him to have lived much earlier; and Wilson (see Roy. As. Soc., Vol. VI.,
p.
240), speaking of the period when Âryasangha’s works, which are still extant
in
Sanskrit, were written, believes it now “established, that they have been
written
at the latest, from a century and a half before, to as much after, the
era
of Christianity”. At all events since it is beyond dispute that the Mahâyana
religious
works were all written far before Âryasangha’s time—whether he lived
in
the “second century B.C.”, or the “seventh .A.D.”—and that these contain all
and
far more of the fundamental tenets of the Yogâchârya system, so disfigured
by
the Ayôdhyan imitator—the inference is that there must exist somewhere a
genuine
rendering free from popular Sivaism and left-hand magic.
Aryasatyâni
(Sk.). The four truths or the four dogmas, which are (1) Dukha, or
that
misery and pain are the unavoidable concomitants of sentient (esoterically,
physical)
existence; (2) Samudaya, the truism that suffering is intensified by
human
passions; (3) Nirôdha, that the crushing out and extinction of all such
feelings
are possible for a man “on the path”; (4) Mârga, the narrow way, or
that
path which leads to such a blessed result.
Aryavarta
(Sk.). The “land of the Aryas”, or India. The ancient name for
Northern
India. The Brahmanical invaders (“ from the Oxus” say the Orientalists)
first
settled. It is erroneous to give this name to the whole,of India, since
Manu
gives the name of “the land of the Aryas” only to “the tract between the
Himalaya
and the Vindhya ranges, from the eastern to the western sea”.
Asakrit
Samâdhi (Sk.). A certain degree of ecstatic contemplation. A stage in
Samâdhi.
Âsana
(Sk.). The third stage of Hatha Yoga, one of the prescribed postures of
meditation.
Asat
(Sk.). A philosophical term meaning “non-being”, or rather non-be-ness. The
“incomprehensible
nothingness”. Sat, the immutable, eternal, ever-present, and
the
one real “Be-ness” (not Being) is spoken of as being “ Born of Asat, and
Asat
begotten by Sat”. The unreal, or Prakriti, objective nature regarded as an
illusion.
Nature, or the illusive shadow of its one true essence.
Asathor
(Scand.). The same as Thor. The god of storms and thunder, a hero who
receives
Miölnir, the “storm-hammer”, from its fabricators, the dwarfs. With it
he
conquer Alwin in a “battle of
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words”
breaks the head of the giant Hrungir, chastises Loki for his magic;
destroys
the whole race of giants in Thrymheim; and, as a good and benevolent
god,
sets up therewith land-marks, sanctifies marriage bonds, blesses law and
order,
and produces every good and terrific feat with its help. A god in the
Eddas,
who is almost as great as Odin. (See “Miölnir” and “Thor’s Hammer”.)
Asava
Samkhaya (Pali). The “finality of the stream”, one of the six “Abhijnâs”
(q.v.).
A phenomenal knowledge of the finality of the stream of life and the
series
of re-births.
Asburj.
One of the legendary peaks in the Teneriffe range. A great mountain in
the
traditions of Iran which corresponds in its allegorical meaning to the
World-mountain,
Meru. Asburj is that mount “at the foot of which the sun sets”.
Asch
Metzareph (Heb.). The Cleansing Fire, a Kabbalistic treatise, treating of
Alchemy
and the relation between the metals and the planets. [w.w.w]
Ases
(Scand.). The creators of the Dwarfs and Elves, the Elementals below men,
in
the Norse lays. They are the progeny of Odin; the same as the Æsir.
Asgard
(Scand.). The kingdom and the habitat of the Norse gods, the Scandinavian
Olympus
; situated “higher than the Home of the Light-Elves”, but on the same
plane
as Jotunheim, the home of the Jotuns, the wicked giants versed in magic,
with
whom the gods are at eternal war. It is evident that the gods of Asgard are
the
same as the Indian Suras (gods) and the Jotuns as the Asuras, both
representing
the conflicting powers of nature—beneficent and maleficent. They
are
the prototypes also of the Greek gods and the Titans.
Ash
(Heb.). Fire, whether physical or symbolical fire; also found written in
English
as As, Aish and Esch.
Ashen
and Langhan (Kolarian). Certain ceremonies for casting out evil spirits,
akin
to those of exorcism with the Christians, in use with the Kolarian tribes
in
India.
Asherah
(Heb.). A word, which occurs in the Old Testament, and is commonly
translated
“groves” referring to idolatrous worship, but it is probable that it
really
referred to ceremonies of sexual depravity; it is a feminine noun.
[w.w.w.]
Ashmog
(Zend). The Dragon or Serpent, a monster with a camel’s neck in the
Avesta;
a kind of allegorical Satan, who after the Fall, “lost its nature and
its
name”. Called in the old Hebrew (Kabbalistic) texts the “flying camel”;
evidently
a reminiscence or tradition in both cases of the prehistoric or
antediluvian
monsters, half bird, half reptile,
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Ashtadisa
(Sk.). The eight-faced space. An imaginary division of space
represented
as an octagon and at other times as a dodecahedron.
Ashta
Siddhis (Sk.). The eight consummations in the practice of Hatha Yoga.
Ashtar
Vidyâ (Sk.). The most ancient of the Hindu works on Magic. Though there
is
a claim that the entire work is in the hands of some Occultists, yet the
Orientalists
deem it lost. A very few fragments of it are now extant, and even
these
are very much disfigured.
Ash
Yggdrasil (Scand.). The “Mundane Tree”, the Symbol of the World with the old
Norsemen,
the “tree of the universe, of time and of life”. It is ever green, for
the
Norns of Fate sprinkle It daily with the water of life from the fountain of
Urd,
which flows in Midgard. The dragon Nidhogg gnaws its roots incessantly, the
dragon
of Evil and Sin; but the Ash Yggdrasil cannot wither, until the Last
Battle
(the Seventh Race in the Seventh Round) is fought, when life, time, and
the
world will all vanish and disappear.
Asiras
(Sk.). Elementals without heads; lit., “headless” ; used also of the
first
two human races.
Asita
(Sk.). A proper name; a son of Bharata; a Rishi and a Sage.
Ask
(Scand.) or Ash tree. The “tree of Knowledge”. Together with the Embla
(alder)
the Ask was the tree from which the gods of Asgard created the first
man.
Aski-kataski-haix-tetrax-damnameneus-aision.
These mystic words, which
Athanasius
Kircher tells us meant “ Darkness, Light, Earth, Sun, and Truth”,
were,
says Hesychius, engraved upon the zone or belt of the Diana of Ephesus.
Plutarch
says that the priests used to recite these words over persons who were
possessed
by devils. [w.w.w.]
Asmodeus.
The Persian Aêshma-dev, the Esham-dev of the Parsis, “the evil Spirit
of
Concupiscence”, according to Bréal, whom the Jews appropriated under the name
of
Ashmedai, “the Destroyer ”, the Talmud identifying the creature with
Beelzebub
and Azrael (Angel of Death), and calling him the “ King of the Devils
”.
Asmoneans.
Priest-kings of Israel whose dynasty reigned over the Jews for 126
years.
They promulgated the Canon of the Mosaic Testament in contradistinction
to
the “Apocrypha” (q.v.) or Secret Books of the Alexandrian Jews, the
Kabbalists,
and maintained the dead-letter meaning of the former. Till the time
of
John Hyrcanus, they were Ascedeans (Chasidim) and Pharisees; but later they
became
Sadducees or Zadokites, asserters of Sacerdotal rule as
contradistinguished
from Rabbinical.
Asoka
(Sk.). A celebrated Indian king of the Môrya dynasty which
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reigned
at Magadha. There were two Asokas in reality, according to the
chronicles
of Northern Buddhism, though the first Asoka—the grand father of the
second,
named by Prof. Max Muller the “Constantine of India”, was better known
by
his name of Chandragupta. It is the former who was called, Piadasi (Pali)
“the
beautiful”, and Devânam-piya “the beloved of the gods”, and also Kâlâsoka;
while
the name of his grandson was Dharmâsôká—the Asoka of the good law-—on
account
of his devotion to Buddhism. Moreover, according to the same source, the
second
Asoka had never followed the Brahmanical faith, but was a Buddhist born.
It
was his grandsire who had been first converted to the new faith, after which
he
had a number of edicts inscribed on pillars and rocks, a custom followed also
by
his grandson. But it was the second Asoka who was the most zealous supporter
of
Buddhism; he, who maintained in his palace from 60 to 70,000 monks and
priests,
who erected 84,000 totes and stupas throughout India, reigned 36 years,
and
sent missions to Ceylon, and throughout the world. The inscriptions of
various
edicts published by him display most noble ethical sentiments,
especially
the edict at Allahahad, on the so-called “Asoka’s column ”, in the
Fort.
The sentiments are lofty and poetical, breathing tenderness for animals as
well
as men, and a lofty view of a king’s mission with regard to his people,
that
might be followed with great success in the present age of cruel wars and
barbarous
vivisection.
Asomatous
(Gr.). Lit., without a material body, incorporeal; used of celestial
Beings
and Angels.
Asrama
(Sk.). A sacred building, a monastery or hermitage for ascetic purposes.
Every
sect in India has its Ashrams.
Assassins.
A masonic and mystic order founded by Hassan Sabah in Persia, in the
eleventh
century. The word is a European perversion of “Hassan”, which forms the
chief
part of the name. They were simply Sufis and addicted, according to the
tradition,
to hascheesl-eating, in order to bring about celestial visions. As
shown
by our late brother, Kenneth Mackenzie, “they were teachers of the secret
doctrines
of Islamism; they encouraged mathematics and philosophy, and produced
many
valuable works. The chief of the Order was called Sheik-el-Jebel,
translated
the ‘Old Man of the Mountains’, and, as their Grand Master, he
possessed
power of life and death.’
Assorus
(Chald.). The third group of progeny (Kissan and Assorus) from the
Babylonian
Duad, Tauthe and Apason, according to the Theogonies of Damascius.
From
this last emanated three others, of which series the last, Aus, begat
Belus—“the
fabricator of the World, the Demiurgus”.
l
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Assur
(Chald.). A city in Assyria ; the ancient seat of a library from which
George
Smith excavated the earliest known tablets, to which he assigns a date
about
1500 B.C., called Assur Kileh Shergat.
Assurbanipal
(Chald.). The Sardanapalus of the Greeks, “the greatest of the
Assyrian
Sovereigns, far more memorable on account of his magnificent patronage
of
learning than of the greatness of his empire”, writes the late G. Smith, and
adds:
“Assurbanipal added more to the Assyrian royal library than all the kings
who
had gone before him”. As the distinguished Assyriologist tells us in another
place
of his “Babylonian and Assyrian Literature” (Chald. Account of Genesis)
that
“the majority of the texts preserved belong to the earlier period previous
to
B.C. 1600”, and yet asserts that “it is to tablets written in his
(Assurbanipal’s)
reign (B.C. 673) that we owe almost all our knowledge of the
Babylonian
early history”, one is well justified in asking, “How do you know?”
Assyrian
Holy Scriptures. Orientalists show seven such books: the Books of
Mamit,
of Worship, of Interpretations, of Going to Hades; two Prayer Books
(Kanmagarri
and Kanmikri: Talbot)
and
the Kantolite, the lost Assyrian Psalter.
Assyrian
Tree of Life. “Asherah” (q.v.). It is translated in the Bible by “grove
”
and occurs 30 times. It is called an “idol”; and Maachah, the grandmother of
Asa,
King of Jerusalem, is accused of having made for herself such an idol,
which
was a lingham. For centuries this was a religious rite in Judæa. But the
original
Asherah was a pillar with seven branches on each side surmounted by a
globular
flower with three projecting rays, and no phallic stone, as the Jews
made
of it, but a metaphysical symbol. “Merciful One, who dead to life raises!
was
the prayer uttered before the Asherah, on the banks of the Euphrates. The
“Merciful
One”, was neither the personal god of the Jews who brought the “grove”
from
their captivity, nor any extra- cosmic god, but the higher triad in man
symbolized
by the globular flower with its three rays.
Asta-dasha
(Sk.). Perfect, Supreme Wisdom; a title of Deity.
Aster’t
(Heb.). Astarte, the Syrian goddess the consort of Adon, or Adonai.
Astræa
(Gr.). The ancient goddess of justice, whom the wickedness of men drove
away
from earth to heaven, wherein she now dwells as the constellation Virgo.
Astral
Body, or Astral “Double”. The ethereal counterpart or shadow of man or
animal.
The Linga Sharira, the “Doppelgäinger”. The reader must not confuse it
with
the ASTRAL SOUL, another name for the lower Manas, or Kama-Manas so-called,
the
reflection of the HIGHER EGO.
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Astral
Light (Occult) The invisible region that surrounds our globe, as it does
every
other, and corresponding as the second Principle of Kosmos (the third
being
Life, of which it is the vehicle) to the Linga Sharira or the Astral
Double
in man. A subtle Essence visible only to a clairvoyant eye, and the
lowest
but one (viz., the earth), of the Seven Akâsic or Kosmic Principles.
Eliphas
Levi calls it the great Serpent and the Dragon from which radiates on
Humanity
every evil influence. This is so; but why not add that the Astral Light
gives
out nothing but what it has received; that it is the great terrestrial
crucible,
in which the vile emanations of the earth (moral and physical) upon
which
the Astral Light is fed, are all converted into their subtlest essence,
and
radiated back intensified, thus becoming epidemics— moral, psychic and
physical.
Finally, the Astral Light is the same as the Sidereal Light of
Paracelsus
and other Hermetic philosophers. “Physically, it is the ether of
modern
science. Metaphysically, and in its spiritual, or occult sense, ether is
a
great deal more than is often imagined. In occult physics, and alchemy, it is
well
demonstrated to enclose within its shoreless waves not only Mr. Tyndall’s
‘promise
and potency of every quality of life’, but also the realization of the
potency
of every quality of spirit. Alchemists and Hermetists believe that their
astral,
or sidereal ether, besides the above properties of sulphur, and white
and
red magnesia, or magnes, is the anima mundi, the workshop of Nature and of
all
the Kosmos, spiritually, as well as physically. The ‘grand magisterium’
asserts
itself in the phenomenon of mesmerism, in the ‘levitation’ of human and
inert
objects; and may be called the ether from its spiritual aspect. The
designation
astral is ancient, and was used by some of the Neo-platonists,
although
it is claimed by some that the word was coined by the Martinists.
Porphyry
describes the celestial body which is always joined with the soul as
‘immortal,
luminous, and star-like’. The root of this word may be found,
perhaps,
in the Scythic Aist-aer—which means star, or the Assyrian Istar, which,
according
to Burnouf has the same sense.” (Isis Unveiled.)
Astrolatry (Gr.). Worship of the Stars.
Astrology
(Gr.) The Science which defines the action of celestial bodies upon
mundane
affairs, and claims to foretell future events from the position of the
stars.
Its antiquity is such as to place it among the very earliest records of
human
learning. It remained for long ages a secret science in the East, and its
final
expression remains so to this day, its exoteric application having been
brought
to any degree of perfection in the West only during the period of time
since
Varaha Muhira wrote his book on Astrology some 1400 years ago. Claudius
Ptolemy,
the famous geographer and mathematician, wrote his treatise Tetrabiblos
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about
135 A.D., which is still the basis of modern astrology. The science of
Horoscopy
is studied now chiefly under four heads: viz., (1) Mundane, in its
application
to meteorology, seismology, husbandry, etc. (2) State or civic, in
regard
to the fate of nations, kings and rulers. (3) Horary, in reference to the
solving
of doubts arising in the mind upon any subject. (4) Genethliacal, in its
application
to the fate of individuals from the moment of their birth to their
death.
The Egyptians and the Chaldees were among the most ancient votaries of
Astrology,
though their modes of reading the stars and the modern practices
differ
considerably. The former claimed that Belus, the Bel or Elu of the
Chaldees,
a scion of the divine Dynasty, or the Dynasty of the king-gods, had
belonged
to the land of Chemi, and had left it, to found a colony from Egypt on
the
banks of the Euphrates, where a temple ministered by priests in the service
of
the “lords of the stars” was built, the said priests adopting the name of
Chaldees.
Two things are known: (a) that Thebes (in Egypt) claimed the honour of
the
invention of Astrology; and (b) that it was the Chaldees who taught that
science
to the other nations. Now Thebes antedated considerably not only “Ur of
the
Chaldees”, but also Nipur, where Bel was first worshipped—Sin, his son (the
moon),
being the presiding deity of Ur, the land of the nativity of Terah, the
Sabean
and Astrolatrer, and of Abram, his son, the great Astrologer of biblical
tradition.
All tends, therefore, to corroborate the Egyptian claim. If later on
the
name of Astrologer fell into disrepute in Rome and elsewhere, it was owing
to
the fraud of those who wanted to make money by means of that which was part
and
parcel of the sacred Science of the Mysteries, and, ignorant of the latter,
evolved
a system based entirely upon mathematics, instead of on transcendental
metaphysics
and having the physical celestial bodies as its upadhi or material
basis.
Yet, all persecutions notwithstanding, the number of the adherents of
Astrology
among the most intellectual and scientific minds was always very
great.
If Cardan and Kepler were among its ardent supporters, then its later
votaries
have nothing to blush for, even in its now imperfect and distorted
form.
As said in Isis Unveiled (1. 259): “Astrology is to exact astronomy what
psychology
is to exact physiology. In astrology and psychology one has to step
beyond
the visible world of matter, and enter into the domain of transcendent
spirit.”
(See “ Astronomos.”)
Astronomos
(Gr.). The title given to the Initiate in the Seventh Degree of the
reception
of the Mysteries. In days of old, Astronomy was synonymous with
Astrology;
and the great Astrological Initiation took place in Egypt at Thebes,
where
the priests perfected, if they did not wholly invent the science. Having
passed
through the degrees
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of
Pastophoros, Neocoros, Melanophoros, Kistophoros, and Balahala (the degree of
Chemistry
of the Stars), the neophyte was taught the mystic signs of the Zodiac,
in
a circle dance representing the course of the planets (the dance of Krishna
and
the Gopis, celebrated to this day in Rajputana); after which he received a
cross,
the Tau (or Tat), becoming an Astronomos and a Healer. (See Isis
Unveiled.
Vol. II. 365). Astronomy and Chemistry were inseparable in these
studies.
“Hippocrates had so lively a faith in the influence of the stars on
animated
beings, and on their diseases, that he expressly recommends not to
trust
to physicians who are ignorant of astronomy.’ (Arago.) Unfortunately the
key
to the final door of Astrology or Astronomy is lost by the modern
Astrologer;
and without it, how can he ever be able to answer the pertinent
remark
made by the author of Mazzaroth, who writes: “people are said to be born
under
one sign, while in reality they are born under another, because the sun is
now
seen among different stars at the equinox ”? Nevertheless, even the few
truths
he does know brought to his science such eminent and scientific believers
as
Sir Isaac Newton, Bishops Jeremy and Hall, Archbishop Usher, Dryden,
Flamstead,
Ashmole, John Milton, Steele, and a host of noted Rosicrucians.
Asura
Mazda (Sk.). In the Zend, Ahura Mazda. The same as Ormuzd or Mazdeô; the
god
of Zoroaster and the Parsis.
Asuramaya
(Sk.) Known also as Mayâsura. An Atlantean astronomer, considered as a
great
magician and sorcerer, well-known in Sanskrit works.
Asuras
(Sk.). Exoterically, elementals and evil, gods—considered maleficent;
demons,
and no gods. But esoterically—the reverse. For in the most ancient
portions
of the Rig Veda, the term is used for the Supreme Spirit, and therefore
the
Asuras are spiritual and divine It is only in the last book of the
Rig
Veda, its latest part, and in the Atharva Veda, and the Brâhmanas, that the
epithet,
which had been given to Agni, the greatest Vedic Deity, to Indra and
Varuna,
has come to signify the reverse of gods. Asu means breath, and it is
with
his breath that Prajâpati (Brahmâ) creates the Asuras. When ritualism and
dogma
got the better of the Wisdom religion, the initial letter a was adopted as
a
negative prefix, and the term ended by signifying “not a god”, and Sura only a
deity.
But in the Vedas the Suras have ever been connected with Surya, the sun,
and
regarded as inferior deities, devas.
Aswamedha
(Sk.) The Horse-sacrifice; an ancient Brahmanical ceremony.
Aswattha
(Sk.) The Bo-tree, the tree of knowledge, ficus religiosa.
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Aswins
(Sk.), or Aswinau, dual ; or again, Aswinî-Kumârau, are the most
mysterious
and occult deities of all; who have “puzzled the oldest
commentators”.
Literally, they are the “Horsemen”, the “divine charioteers”, as
they
ride in a golden car drawn by horses or birds or animals, and “are
possessed
of many forms”. They are two Vedic deities, the twin sons of the sun
and
the sky, which becomes the nymph Aswini. In mythological symbolism they are
“the
bright harbingers of Ushas, the dawn”, who are “ever young and handsome,
bright,
agile, swift as falcons”, who “prepare the way for the brilliant dawn to
those
who have patiently awaited through the night”. They are also called time
“physicians
of Swarga” (or Devachan), inasmuch as they heal every pain and
suffering,
and cure all diseases. Astronomically, they are asterisms. They were
enthusiastically
worshipped, as their epithets show. They are the “Ocean-born”
(i.e.,
space born) or Abdhijau, “crowned with lotuses” or Pushhara-srajam, etc.,
etc.
Yâska, the commentator in the Nirukta, thinks that “the Aswins represent
the
transition from darkness to light ”—cosmically, and we may add,
metaphysically,
also. But Muir and Goldstücker are inclined to see in them
ancient
“horsemen of great renown”, because, forsooth, of the legend “that the
gods
refused the Aswins admittance to a sacrifice on the ground that they had
been
on too familiar terms with men”. Just so, because as explained by the same
Yâska
“they are identified with heaven and earth”, only for quite a different
reason.
Truly they are like the Ribhus, “originally renowned mortals (but also
non-renowned
occasionally) who in the course of time are translated into the
companionship
of gods”; and they show a negative character, “the result of the-
alliance
of light with darkness”, simply because these twins are, in the
esoteric
philosophy, the Kumâra-Egos, the reincarnating “Principles” in this
Manvantara.
Atala
(Sk). One of the regions in the Hindu lokas, and one of the seven
mountains;
but esoterically Atala is on an astral plane, and was, once on a
time,
a real island upon this earth.
Atalanta
Fugiens (Lat.). A famous treatise by the eminent Rosicrucian Michael
Maier;
it has many beautiful engravings of Alchemic symbolism: here is to be
found
the original of the picture of a man and woman within a circle, a triangle
around
it, then a square: the inscription is, “From the first ens proceed two
contraries,
thence come the three principles, and from them the four elementary
states
; if you separate the pure from the impure you will have the stone of the
Philosophers”.
[ w.w.w.]
Atarpi
(Chald.), or Atarpi-nisi, the “man”. A personage who was “pious to the
gods”;
and who prayed the god Hea to remove the evil
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of
drought and other things before the Deluge is sent. The story is found on one
of
the most ancient Babylonian tablets, and relates to the sin of the world. In
the
words of G. Smith “the god Elu or Bel calls together an assembly of the
gods,
his sons, and relates to them that he is angry at the sin of the world”;
and
in the fragmentary phrases of the tablet: “ . . . . I made them . . . .
Their
wickedness I am angry at, their punishment shall not be small . . . . let
food
be exhausted, above let Vul drink up his rain”, etc., etc. In answer to
Atarpi’s
prayer the god Hea announces his resolve to destroy the people he
created,
which he does finally by a deluge.
Atash
Behram (Zend). The sacred fire of the Parsis, preserved perpetually in
their
fire-temples.
Atef
(Eg.), or Crown of Horus. It consisted of a tall white cap with ram’s
horns,
and the urœus in front. Its two feathers represent the two truths—life
and
death.
Athamaz
(Heb.). The same as Adonis with the Greeks, the Jews having borrowed all
their
gods.
Athanor
(Occult.) The “astral” fluid of the Alchemists, their Archimedean lever;
exoterically,
the furnace of the Alchemist.
Atharva
Veda (Sk.) The fourth Veda; lit., magic incantation containing
aphorisms,
incantations and magic formula One of the most ancient and revered
Books
of the Brahmans.
Athenagoras
(Gr.) A Platonic philosopher of Athens, who wrote a Greek Apology
for
the Christians in A.D. 177, addressed to the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, to
prove
that the accusations brought against them, namely that they were
incestuous
and ate murdered children, were untrue.
Athor
(Eg.) “Mother Night.” Primeval Chaos, in the Egyptian cosmogony. The
goddess
of night.
Atîvahikâs
(Sk.) With the Visishtadwaitees, these are the Pitris, or Devas, who
help
the disembodied soul or Jiva in its transit from its dead body to
Paramapadha.
Atlantidæ
(Gr.) The ancestors of the Pharaohs and the forefathers of the
Egyptians,
according to some, and as the Esoteric Science teaches. (See S.D.,
Vol.
II., and Esoteric Buddhism.) Plato heard of this highly civilized people,
the
last remnant of which was submerged 9,000 years before his day, from Solon,
who
had it from the High Priests of Egypt. Voltaire, the eternal scoffer, was
right
in stating that “the Atlantidæ (our fourth Root Race) made their
appearance
in Egypt It was in Syria and in Phrygia, as well as Egypt, that they
established
the worship of the Sun.” Occult philosophy teaches that the
Egyptians
were a remnant of the last Aryan Atlantidæ.
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Atlantis
(Gr.) The continent that was submerged in the Atlantic and the Pacific
Oceans
according to the secret teachings and Plato.
Atmâ
(or Atman) (Sk.). The Universal Spirit, the divine Monad, the 7th
Principle,
so-called, in the septenary constitution of man. The Supreme Soul.
Atma-bhu
(Sk.). Soul-existence, or existing as soul. (See “Alaya”.)
Atmabodha
(Sk.). Lit., “Self-knowledge”; the title of a Vedantic treatise by
Sankârachârya.
Atma-jnâni
(Sk.) The Knower of the World-Soul, or Soul in general.
Atma-matrasu
(Sk.) To enter into the elements of the “One-Self”. (See S. D.
I.,334
Atmamâtra is the spiritual atom, as contrasted with, and opposed to, the
elementary
differentiated atom or molecule.
Atma
Vidyâ (Sk.). The highest form of spiritual knowledge; lit.,
“Soul-knowledge”.
Atri,
Sons of (Sk.). A class of Pitris, the “ancestors of man”, or the so-called
Prâjapâti,
“progenitors”; one of the seven Rishis who form the constellation of
the
Great Bear.
Attavada
(Pali). The sin of personality.
Atyantika
(Sk.) One of the four kinds of pralaya or dissolution. The “absolute”
pralaya.
Atziluth
(Heb.) The highest of the Four Worlds of the Kabbalah referred only to
the
pure Spirit of God. [w. w. w.] See “Aziluth” for another interpretation.
Audlang
(Scand.). The second heaven made by Deity above the field of Ida, in the
Norse
legends.
Audumla
(Scand.) The Cow of Creation, the “nourisher”, from which flowed four
streams
of milk which fed the giant Ymir or Örgelmir (matter in ebullition) and
his
sons, the Hrimthurses (Frost giants), before the appearance of gods or men.
Having
nothing to graze upon she licked the salt of the ice-rocks and thus
produced
Buri, “the Producer” in his turn, who had a son Bör (the born) who
married
a daughter of the Frost Giants, and had three sons, Odin (Spirit), Wili
(Will),
and We (Holy). The meaning of the allegory is evident. It is the
precosmic
union of the elements, of Spirit, or the creative Force, with Matter,
cooled
and still seething, which it forms in accordance with universal Will.
Then
the Ases, “the pillars and supports of the World” (Cosmocratores), step in
and
create as All-father wills them.
Augoeides
(Gr.). Bulwer Lytton calls it the “Luminous Self ”, or our Higher Ego.
But
Occultism makes of it something distinct from
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this.
It is a mystery. The Augocides is the luminous divine radiation of the EGO
which,
when incarnated, is but its shadow—pure as it is yet. This is explained
in
the Amshaspends and their Ferouers.
Aum
(Sk.). The sacred syllable; the triple-lettered unit; hence the trinity in
One.
Aura
(Gr. and Lat.). A subtle invisible essence or fluid that emanates from
human
and animal bodies and even things. It is a psychic effluvium, partaking of
both
the mind and the body, as it is the electro-vital, and at the same time an
electro-mental
aura; called in Theosophy the âkâsic or magnetic aura.
Aurnavâbha
(Sk.) An ancient Sanskrit commentator.
Aurva
(Sk.). The Sage who is credited with the invention of the “fiery weapon”
called
Agneyâstra.
Ava-bodha
(Sk.). “Mother of Knowledge.” A title of Aditi.
Avâivartika
(Sk.) An epithet of every Buddha: lit., one who turns no more back;
who
goes straight to Nirvâna.
Avalokiteswara
(Sk.) “The on-looking Lord” In the exoteric interpretation, he is
Padmapâni
(the lotus bearer and the lotus-born) in Tibet, the first divine
ancestor
of the Tibetans, the complete incarnation or Avatar of Avalokiteswara;
but
in esoteric philosophy Avaloki, the “on-looker”, is the Higher Self, while
Padmapâni
is the Higher Ego or Manas. The mystic formula “Om mani padme hum” is
specially
used to invoke their joint help. While popular fancy claims for
Avalokiteswara
many incarnations on earth, and sees in him, not very wrongly,
the
spiritual guide of every believer, the esoteric interpretation sees in him
the
Logos, both celestial and human. Therefore, when the Yogâchârya School has
declared
Avalokiteswara as Padmâpani “to be the Dhyâni Bodhisattva of Amitâbha
Buddha”,
it is indeed, because the former is the spiritual reflex in the world
of
forms of the latter, both being one—one in heaven, the other on earth.
Avarasâila
Sanghârama (Sk.). Lit., the School of the Dwellers on the western
mountain.
A celebrated Vihâra (monastery) in Dhana-kstchâka, according to Eitel,
“built
600 B.C., and deserted A.D. 600”.
Avastan
(Sk.) An ancient name for Arabia.
Avasthas
(Sk.) States, conditions, positions.
Avatâra
(Sk.) Divine incarnation. The descent of a god or some exalted Being,
who
has progressed beyond the necessity of Rebirths, into the body of a simple
mortal.
Krishna was an avatar of Vishnu. The Dalai Lama is regarded as an avatar
of
Avalokiteswara, and the Teschu Lama as one of Tson-kha-pa, or Amitâbha. There
are
two kinds of avatars: those born from woman, and the parentless, the
anupapâdaka.
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Avebury
or Abury. In Wiltshire are the remains of an ancient megalithic Serpent
temple:
according to the eminent antiquarian Stukeley, 1740, there are traces of
two
circles of stones and two avenues ; the whole has formed the representation
of
a serpent. [w.w.w.]
Avesta
(Zend). Lit., “the Law”. From the old Persian Âbastâ, “the law”. The
sacred
Scriptures of the Zoroastrians. Zend means in the “Zend-Avesta”—a
“commentary”
or “interpretation”. It is an error to regard “ Zend” as a
language,
as “it was applied only to explanatory texts, to the translations of
the
Avesta”(Darmsteter).
Avicenna.
The latinized name of Abu-Ali al Hoséen ben Abdallah Ibn Sina; a
Persian
philosopher, born 980 AD)., though generally referred to as an Arabian
doctor.
On account of his surprising learning he was called “the Famous”, and
was
the author of the best and the first alchemical works known in Europe. All
the
Spirits of the Elements were subject to him, so says the legend, and it
further
tells us that owing to his knowledge of the Elixir of Life, he still
lives,
as an adept who will disclose himself to the profane at the end of a
certain
cycle.
Avidyâ
(Sk.). Opposed to Vidyâ, Knowledge. Ignorance which proceeds from, and is
produced
by the illusion of the Senses or Viparyaya.
Avikâra
(Sk.). Free from degeneration; changeless—used of Deity.
Avitchi
(Sk.) A state: not necessarily after death only or between two births,
for
it can take place on earth as well. Lit., “uninterrupted hell”. The last of
the
eight hells, we are told, “where the culprits die and are reborn without
interruption—yet
not without hope of final redemption. This is because Avitchi
is
another name for Myalba (our earth) and also a state to which some soulless
men
are condemned on this physical plane.
Avyakta
(Sk.). The unrevealed cause; indiscrete or undifferentiated; the
opposite
of Vyakta, the differentiated. The former is used of the unmanifested,
and
the latter of the manifested Deity, or of Brahma and Brahmâ.
Axieros
(Gr.). One of the Kabiri.
Axiocersa
(Gr.). " "
Axiocersus
(Gr.). " "
Ayana
(Sk.) A period of time; two Ayanas complete a year, one being the period
of
the Sun’s progress northward, and the other south ward in the ecliptic.
Ayin
(Heb.). Lit., “Nothing”, whence the name of Ain-Soph. (See“Ain”.)
Aymar,
Jacques. A famous Frenchman who had great success in the use of the
Divining
Rod about the end of the 17th century; he was often employed in
detecting
criminals; two M.D’s of the University of Paris,
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Chauvin
and Garnier reported on the reality of his powers. See Colquhoun on
Magic.
[ w.w.w.]
Ayur
Veda (Sk.). Lit., “the Veda of Life”.
Ayuta
(Sk.). 100 Kôti, or a sum equal to 1,000,000,000.
Azareksh
(Zend) A place celebrated for a fire-temple of the Zoroastrians and
Magi
during the time of Alexander the Great.
Azazel
(Heb.) “God of Victory”; the scape-goat for the sins of Israel. He who
comprehends
the mystery of Azazel, says Aben-Ezra, “will learn the mystery of
God’s
name”, and truly. See “Typhon” and the scape-goat made sacred to him in
ancient
Egypt.
Azhi-Dahaka
(Zend) One of the Serpents or Dragons in the legends of Iran and the
Avesta
Scriptures, the allegorical destroying Serpent or Satan.
Aziluth
(Heb.) The name for the world of the Sephiroth, called the world of
Emanations
Olam Aziluth. It is the great and the highest prototype of the other
worlds.
“Atzeelooth is the Great Sacred Seal by means of which all the worlds
are
copied which have impressed on themselves the image on the Seal; and as this
Great
Seal comprehends three stages, which are three zures (prototypes) of
Nephesh
(the Vital Spirit or Soul), Ruach (the moral and reasoning Spirit), and
the
Neshamah (the Highest Soul of man), so the Sealed have also received three
zures,
namely Breeah, Yetzeerah, and Aseeyah, and these three zures are only one
in
the Seal” (Myer’s Qabbalah). The globes A, Z, of our terrestial chain are in
Aziluth.
(See Secret Doctrine.)
Azoth
(Alch.). The creative principle in Nature, the grosser portion of which is
stored
in the Astral Light. It is symbolized by a figure which is a cross (See
“Eliphas
Lévi”), the four limbs of which bear each one letter of the word Taro,
which
can be read also Rota, Ator, and in many other combinations, each of which
has
an occult meaning.
A.
and Ω Alpha and Omega, the First and the Last, the beginning and
ending of
all
active existence; the Logos, hence (with the Christians) Christ. See Rev.
xxi,
6., where John adopts “Alpha and Omega” as the symbol of a Divine Comforter
who
“will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life
freely”.
The word Azot or Azoth is a mediæval glyph of this idea, for the word
consists
of the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet, A and Ω of the
Latin
alphabet, A and Z, and of the Hebrew alphabet, A and T, or aleph and tau.
(See
also “Azoth”.) [ w.w.w.]
B
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B
—The second letter in almost all the alphabets, also the second in the Hebrew.
Its
symbol is a house, the form of Beth, the letter itself indicating a
dwelling,
a shed or a shelter. “As a compound of a root, it is constantly used
for
the purpose of showing that it had to do with stone; when stones at Beth-el
are
set up, for instance. The Hebrew value as a numeral is two. Joined with its
predecessor,
it forms the word Ab, the root of ‘father’, Master, one in
authority,
and it has the Kabalistical distinction of being the first letter in
the
Sacred Volume of the Law. The divine name connected with this letter is
"Bakhour."
(R. M. [Cyclop.]
Baal
(Chald. Heb.). Baal or Adon (Adonai) was a phallic god. “Who shall ascend
unto
the hill (the high place) of the Lord; who shall stand in the place of his
Kadushu
(q.v.) ? ” (Psalms XX1V. 3.) The “circle dance” performed by King David
round
the ark, was the dance prescribed by the Amazons in the Mysteries, the
dance
of the daughters of Shiloh (Judges xxi., et seq.) and the same as the
leaping
of the prophets of Baal (I. Kings xviii). He was named Baal-Tzephon, or
god
of the crypt (Exodus) and Seth, or the pillar (phallus), because he was the
same
as Ammon (or Baal-Hammon) of Egypt, called “the hidden god”. Typhon, called
Set,
who was a great god in Egypt during the early dynasties, is an aspect of
Baal
and Ammon as also of Siva, Jehovah and other gods. Baal is the all
devouring
Sun, in one sense, the fiery Moloch.
Babil
Mound (Chald. Heb.). The site of the Temple of Bel at Babylon.
Bacchus
(Gr.). Exoterically and superficially the god of wine and the vintage,
and
of licentiousness and joy; but the esoteric meaning of this personification
is
more abstruse and philosophical. He is the Osiris of Egypt, and his life and
significance
belong to the same group as the other solar deities, all
“sin-bearing,”
killed and resurrected; e.g., as Dionysos or Atys of Phrygia
(Adonis,
or the Syrian Tammuz), as Ausonius, Baldur (q.v.), &c., &c. All these
were
put to death, mourned for, and restored to life. The rejoicings for Atys
took
place at the Hilaria on the “pagan” Easter, March 15. Ausonius, a form of
Bacchus,
was slain “at the vernal equinox, March 21st, and rose in three days”.
Tammuz,
the double of Adonis and Atys, was mourned by the women at the “grove”
of
his name “over Bethlehem, where the infant Jesus cried”, says St. Jerome.
Bacchus
is murdered and his mother collects the fragments of his lacerated body
as
Isis does those of Osiris, and so on.
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Dionysos
Iacchus, torn to shreds by the Titans, Osiris, Krishna, all descended
into
Hades and returned again. Astronomically, they all represent the Sun ;
psychically
they are all emblems of the ever-resurrecting “ Soul” (the Ego in
its
re-incarnation) ; spiritually, all the innocent scape-goats, atoning for the
sins
of mortals, their own earthly envelopes, and in truth, the poeticized image
of
DIVINE MAN, the form of clay informed by its God.
Bacon,
Roger. A Franciscan monk, famous as an adept in Alchemy and Magic Arts.
Lived
in the thirteenth century in England. He believed in the philosopher’s
stone
in the way all the adepts of Occultism believe in it; and also in
philosophical
astrology. He is accused of having made a head of bronze which
having
an acoustic apparatus hidden in it, seemed to utter oracles which were
words
spoken by Bacon himself in another room. He was a wonderful physicist and
chemist,
and credited with having invented gunpowder, though he said he had the
secret
from “Asian (Chinese) wise men."
Baddha
(Sk.). Bound, conditioned; as is every mortal who has not made himself
free
through Nirvâna.
Bagavadam
(Sk.). A Tamil Scripture on Astronomy and other matters.
Bagh-bog
(Slavon.). “God”; a Slavonian name for the Greek Bacchus, whose name
became
the prototype of the name God or Bagh and bog or bogh; the Russian for
God.
Bahak-Zivo
(Gn.). The “father of the Genii” in the Codex Nazarœus. The Nazarenes
were
an early semi-Christian sect.
Bal
(Heb.). Commonly translated “Lord”, but also Bel, the Chaldean god, and
Baal,
an "idol".
Bala
(Sk.), or Panchabalâni. The “five powers” to be acquired in Yoga practice;
full
trust or faith; energy ; memory; meditation ; wisdom.
Baldur
(Scand.). The “Giver of all Good”. The bright God who is “the best and
all
mankind are loud in his praise; so fair and dazzling is he in form and
features,
that rays of light seem to issue from him (Edda). Such was the
birth-song
chanted to Baldur who resurrects as Wali, the spring Sun. Baldur is
called
the “well-beloved”, the “Holy one”, “who alone is without sin”. He is the
“God
of Goodness”, who
“shall
be born again, when a new and purer world will have arisen from the ashes
of
the old, sin-laden world (Asgard)”. He is killed by the crafty Loki, because
Frigga,
the mother of the gods, “while entreating all creatures and all lifeless
things
to swear that they will not injure the well-beloved”, forgets to mention
“the
weak mistletoe bough”, just as the mother of Achilles forgot her son’s
heel.
A dart is made of it by Loki and he places it in the hands of blind Hödur
who
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kills
with it the sunny-hearted god of light. The Christmas misletoe is probably
a
reminiscence of the mistletoe that killed the Northern God of Goodness.
Bal-ilu
(Chal.). One of the many titles of the Sun.
Bamboo
Books. Most ancient and certainly pre-historic works in Chinese
containing
the antediluvian records of the Annals of China. They were found in
the
tomb of King Seang of Wai, who died 295 B.C., and claim to go back many
centuries.
Bandha
(Sk.). Bondage; life on this earth; from the same root as Baddha.
Baphomet
(Gr.). The androgyne goat of Mendes. (See Secret Doctrine, I. 253).
According
to the Western, and especially the French Kabalists, the Templars were
accused
of worshipping Baphomet, and Jacques de Molay, the Grand Master of the
Templars,
with all his brother-Masons, suffered death in consequence. But
esoterically,
and philologically, the word never meant “goat”, nor even anything
so
objective as an idol. The term means according to Von Hammer, “baptism” or
initiation
into Wisdom, from the Greek words bafh and mhtiz and from the
relation
of Baphometus to Pan. Von Hammer must be right. It was a Hermetico
Kabalistic
symbol, but the whole story as invented by the Clergy was false.
(See
“Pan ”.)
Baptism
(Gr.). The rite of purification performed during the ceremony of
initiation
in the sacred tanks of India, and also the later identical rite
established
by John “the Baptist” and practised by his disciples and followers,
who
were not Christians. This rite was hoary with age when it was adopted by the
Chrestians
of the earliest centuries. Baptism belonged to the earliest
Chaldeo-Akkadian
theurgy; was religiously practised in the nocturnal ceremonies
in
the Pyramids where we see to this day the font in the shape of the
sarcophagus;
was known to take place during the Eleusinian mysteries in the
sacred
temple lakes, and is practised even now by the descendants of the ancient
Sabians.
The Mendæans (the El Mogtasila of the Arabs) are, notwithstanding their
deceptive
name of “St. John Christians”, less Christians than are the Orthodox
Mussulman
Arabs around them. They are pure Sabians; and this is very naturally
explained
when one remembers that the great Semitic scholar Renan has shown in
his
Vie de Jésus that the Aramean verb seba, the origin of the name Sabian, is a
synonym
of the Greek baptizw. The modern Sabians, the Mendæans whose vigils and
religious
rites, face to face with the silent stars, have been described by
several
travellers, have still preserved the theurgic, baptismal rites of their
distant
and nigh-for gotten forefathers, the Chaldean Initiates. Their religion
is
one of multiplied baptisms, of seven purifications in the name of the seven
planetary
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rulers,
the “seven Angels of the Presence” of the Roman Catholic Church. The
Protestant
Baptists are but the pale imitators of the El Mogtasila or Nazareans
who
practise their Gnostic rites in the deserts of Asia Minor. (See “Boodhasp”.)
Bardesanes
or Bardaisan. A Syrian Gnostic, erroneously regarded as a Christian
theologian,
born at Edessa (Edessene Chronicle) in 155 of our era (Assemani
Bibl..
Orient. i. 389). He was a great astrologer following the Eastern Occult
System.
According to Porphyry (who calls him the Babylonian, probably on account
of
his Chaldeeism or astrology), “Bardesanes . . . . held intercourse with the
Indians
that had been sent to the Cæsar with Damadamis at their head” (De Abst.
iv.
17), and had his information from the Indian gymnosophists. The fact is that
most
of his teachings, however much they may have been altered by his numerous
Gnostic
followers, can be traced to Indian philosophy, and still more to the
Occult
teachings of the Secret System. Thus in his Hymns he speaks of the
creative
Deity as “Father-Mother”, and elsewhere of “Astral Destiny” (Karma) of
“Minds
of Fire” (the Agni-Devas) &c. He connected the Soul (the personal Manas)
with
the Seven Stars, deriving its origin from the Higher Beings (the divine
Ego);
and therefore “admitted spiritual resurrection but denied the resurrection
of
the body”, as charged with by the Church Fathers. Ephraim shows him preaching
the
signs of the Zodiac, the importance of the birth-hours and “proclaiming the
seven”.
Calling the Sun the “Father of Life” and the Moon the “Mother of Life”,
he
shows the latter “laying aside her garment of light (principles) for the
renewal
of the Earth”. Photius cannot understand how, while accepting “the Soul
free
from the power of genesis (destiny of birth)” and possessing free will, he
still
placed the body under the rule of birth (genesis). For “they (the
Bardesanists)
say, that wealth and poverty and sickness and health and death and
all
things not within our control are works of destiny” (Bibl. Cod. 223,
p.221—f).
This is Karma, most evidently, which does not preclude at all
free-will.
Hippolytus makes him a representative of the Eastern School. Speaking
of
Baptism, Bardesanes is made to say (loc. cit. pp. 985-ff “It is not however
the
Bath alone which makes us free, but the Knowledge of who we are, what we are
become,
where we were before, whither we are hastening, whence we are redeemed;
what
is generation (birth), what is re-generation (re.birth)”. This points
plainly
to the doctrine of re-incarnation. His conversation (Dialogue) with
Awida
and Barjamina on Destiny and Free Will shows it. “What is called Destiny,
is
an order of outflow given to the Rulers (Gods) and the Elements, according to
which
order the Intelligences (Spirit-Egos) are changed by their descent into
the
Soul, and the Soul by its descent into the body”. (See Treatise, found in
its
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Syriac
original, and published with English translation in 1855 by Dr. Cureton,
Spicileg.
Syriac. in British Museum.)
Bardesanian
(System). The “Codex of the Nazarenes”, a system worked out by one
Bardesanes.
It is called by some a Kabala within the Kabala; a religion or sect
the
esotericism of which is given out in names and allegories entirely
sui-generis.
A very old Gnostic system. This codex has been translated into
Latin.
Whether it is right to call the Sabeanism of the Mendaїtes (miscalled
St.
John’s
Christians),
contained
in the Nazarene Codex, “the Bardesanian system”, as some do, is
doubtful;
for the doctrines of the Codex and the names of the Good and Evil
Powers
therein, are older than Bardaisan. Yet the names are identical in the two
systems.
Baresma
(Zend). A plant used by Mobeds (Parsi priests) in the fire- temples,
wherein
consecrated bundles of it are kept.
Barhishad
(Sk.). A class of the “lunar” Pitris or “Ancestors”, Fathers, who are
believed
in popular superstition to have kept up in their past incarnations the
household
sacred flame and made fire-offerings. Esoterically the Pitris who
evolved
their shadows or chhayas to make there-with the first man. (See Secret
Doctrine,
Vol. II.)
Basileus
(Gr.). The Archon or Chief who had the outer super-vision during the
Eleusinian
Mysteries. While the latter was an initiated layman, and magistrate
at
Athens, the Basileus of the inner Temple was of the staff of the great
Hierophant,
and as such was one of the chief Mystæ and belonged to the inner
mysteries.
Basilidean
(System). Named after Basilides; the Founder of one of the most
philosophical
gnostic sects. Clement the Alexandrian speaks of Basilides, the
Gnostic,
as “a philosopher devoted to the contemplation of divine things”. While
he
claimed that he had all his doctrines from the Apostle Matthew and from Peter
through
Glaucus, Irenaeus reviled him, Tertullian stormed at him, and the Church
Fathers
had not sufficient words of obloquy against the “heretic”. And yet on
the
authority of St. Jerome himself, who describes with indignation what he had
found
in the only genuine Hebrew copy of the Gospel of Matthew (See Isis Unv.,
ii.,
181) which he got from the Nazarenes, the statement of Basilides becomes
more
than credible, and if accepted would solve a great and perplexing problem.
His
24 vols. of Interpretation of the Gospels, were, as Eusebius tells us,
burnt.
Useless to say that these gospels were not our present Gospels. Thus,
truth
was ever crushed.
Bassantin,
James. A Scotch astrologer. He lived in the 16th century and is said
to
have predicted to Sir Robert Melville, in 1562, the death and all the events
connected
therewith of Mary, the unfortunate Queen of Scots.
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Bath
(Heb.). Daughter.
Bath
Kol (Heb.). Daughter of the Voice: the Divine afflatus, or inspiration, by
which
the prophets of Israel were inspired as by a voice from Heaven and the
Mercy-Seat.
In Latin Filia Vocis. An analogous ideal is found in Hindu exoteric
theology
named Vâch, the voice, the female essence, an aspect of Aditi, the
mother
of the gods and primæval Light; a mystery. [ w.w.w.]
Batoo
(Eg.). The first man in Egyptian folk-lore. Noum, the heavenly artist,
creates
a beautiful girl—the original of the Grecian Pandora—and sends her to
Batoo,
after which the happiness of the first man is destroyed.
Batria
(Eg.). According to tradition, the wife of the Pharaoh and the teacher of
Moses.
Beel-Zebub
(Heb.). The disfigured Baal of the Temples. and more correctly
Beel-Zebul.
Beel-Zebub means -literally “god of flies” ; the derisory epithet
used
by the Jews, and the incorrect and confused rendering of the “god of the
sacred
scarabæi”, the divinities watching the mummies, and symbols of
transformation,
regeneration and immortality. Beel-Zeboul means properly the “
God
of the Dwelling:’ and is spoken of in this sense in Matthew x. 25. As
Apollo,
originally not a Greek but a Phenician god, was the healing god, Paiàn,
or
physician, as well as the god of oracles, he became gradually transformed as
such
into the “Lord of Dwelling”, a household deity, and thus was called
Beel-Zeboul.
He was also, in a sense, a psychopompic god, taking care of the
souls
as did Anubis. Beelzebub was always the oracle god, and was only confused
and
identified with Apollo latter on.
Bel
(Chald.). The oldest and mightiest god of Babylonia, one of the earliest
trinities,—Anu
(q.v.) ; Bel,
“Lord
of the World”, father of the gods, Creator, and “Lord of the City of
Nipur’;
and Hea, maker of fate, Lord of the Deep, God of Wisdom and esoteric
Knowledge,
and “Lord of the city of Eridu”. The wife of Bel, or his female
aspect
(Sakti), was Belat, or Beltis, “the mother of the great gods”, and the
“Lady
of the city of Nipur”. The original Bel was also called Enu, Elu and Kaptu
(see
Chaldean account of Genesis, by G. Smith). His eldest son was the Moon God
Sin
(whose names were also Ur, Agu and Itu), who was the presiding deity of the
city
of Ur, called in his honour by one of his names. Now Ur was the place of
nativity
of Abram (see “Astrology”). In the early Babylonian religion the Moon
was,
like Soma in India, a male, and the Sun a female deity. And this led almost
every
nation to great fratricidal wars between the lunar and the solar
worshippers—e.g.,
the contests between the Lunar and the Solar
Dynasties,
the Chandra and Suryavansa in ancient Aryavarta. Thus we find the
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same
on a smaller scale between the Semitic tribes. Abram and his father Terah
are
shown migrating from Ur and carrying their lunar god (or its scion) with
them
; for Jehovah Elohim or El—another form of Elu—has ever been connected with
the
moon. It is the Jewish lunar chronology which has led the European
“civilized”
nations into the greatest blunders and mistakes. Merodach, the son
of
Hea, became the later Bel and was worshipped at Babylon. His other title,
Belas,
has a number of symbolical meanings.
Bela-Shemesh
(Chald. Heb.). “The Lord of the Sun”, the name of the Moon during
that
period when the Jews became in turn solar and lunar worshippers, and when
the
Moon was a male, and the Sun a female deity. This period embraced the time
between
the allegorical expulsion of Adam and Eve from Eden down to the no less
allegorical
Noachian flood. (See Secret Doctrine, I. 397.)
Bembo,
Tablet of; or Mensa Isiaca. A brazen tablet inlaid with designs in Mosaic
(now
in the Museum at Turin) which once belonged to the famous Cardinal Bembo.
Its
origin and date are unknown. It is covered with Egyptian figures and
hieroglyphics,
and is supposed to have been an ornament in an ancient Temple of
Isis.
The learned Jesuit Kircher wrote a description of it, and Montfaucon has a
chapter
devoted to it.
[
w.w.w.]
The
only English work on the Isiac Tablet is by Dr. W. Wynn Westcott, who gives
a
photogravure in addition to its history, description, and occult significance.
Ben
(Heb.). A son; a common prefix in proper names to denote the son of
so-and-so,
e.g., Ben Solomon, Ben Ishmael, etc.
Be-ness.
A term coined by Theosophists to render more accurately the essential
meaning
of the untranslatable word Sat. The latter word does not mean “Being”
for
it presupposes a sentient feeling or some consciousness of existence. But,
as
the term Sat is applied solely to the absolute Principle, the universal,
unknown,
and ever unknowable Presence, which philosophical Pantheism postulates
in
Kosmos, calling it the basic root of Kosmos. and Kosmos itself— “Being” was
no
fit word to express it. Indeed, the latter is not even, as translated by some
Orientalists,
“the incomprehensible Entity”; for it is no more an Entity than a
non-Entity,
but both. It is, as said, absolute Be-ness, not Being, the one
secondless,
undivided, and indivisible All—the root of all Nature visible and
invisible,
objective and subjective, to be sensed by the highest spiritual
intuition,
but’ never to be fully comprehended.
Ben
Shamesh (Heb.). The children or the “Sons of the Sun”. The
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term
belongs to the period when the Jews were divided into sun and moon
worshippers—Elites
and Belites. (See “Bela- Shemesh”.)
Benoo
(Eg.). A word applied to two symbols, both taken to mean “Phœnix”. One was
the
Shen-shen
(the
heron), and the other a nondescript bird, called the Rech (the red one),
and
both were sacred to Osiris. It was the latter that was the regular Phœnix of
the
great Mysteries, the typical symbol of self-creation and resurrection
through
death—a type of the Solar Osiris and of the divine Ego in man. Yet both
the
Heron and the Rech were symbols of cycles; the former, of the Solar year of
365
days; the latter of the tropical year or a period covering almost 26,000
years.
In both cases the cycles were the types of the return of light from
darkness,
the yearly and great cyclic return of the sun-god to his birth-place,
or—his
Resurrection. The Rech-Benoo is described by Macrobius as living 660
years
and then dying; while others stretched its life as long as 1,460 years.
Pliny,
the Naturalist, describes the Rech as a large bird with gold and purple
wings,
and a long blue tail. As every reader is aware, the Phœnix on feeling its
end
approaching, according to tradition, builds for itself a funeral pile on the
top
of the sacrificial altar, and then proceeds to consume himself thereon as a
burnt-offering.
Then a worm appears in the ashes, which grows and developes
rapidly
into a new Phœnix, resurrected from the ashes of its predecessor.
Berasit
(Heb.). The first word of the book of Genesis. The English established
version
translates this as “In the beginning,” but this rendering is disputed by
many
scholars. Tertullian approved of “In power”; Grotius “When first”; but the
authors
of the Targum of Jerusalern, who ought to have known Hebrew if anyone
did,
translated it “In Wisdom”. Godfrey Higgins, in his Anacalypsis, insists on
Berasit
being the sign of the ablative case, meaning “in” and ras, rasit, an
ancient
word for Chokmah, “wisdom”. [ w. w.w.]
Berasit
or Berasheth is a mystic word among the Kabbalists of Asia Minor.
Bergelmir
(Scand.). The one giant who escaped in a boat the general slaughter of
his
brothers, the giant Ymir’s children, drowned in the blood of their raging
Father.
He is the Scandinavian Noah, as he, too, becomes the father of giants
after
the Deluge. The lays of the Norsemen show the grandsons of the divine
Bun—Odin,
Wili, and We— conquering and killing the terrible giant Ymir, and
creating
the world out of his body.
Berosus
(Chald.). A priest of the Temple of Belus who wrote for Alexander the
Great
the history of the Cosmogony, as taught in the
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Temples,
from the astronomical and chronological records preserved in that
temple.
The fragments we have in the soi-disant translations of Eusebius are
certainly
as untrustworthy as the biographer of the Emperor Constantine—of whom
he
made a saint (!!)—could make them. The only guide to this Cosmogony may now
be
found in the fragments of the Assyrian tablets, evidently copied almost
bodily
from the earlier Babylonian records; which, say what the Orientalists
may,
are undeniably the originals of the Mosaic Genesis, of the Flood, the tower
of
Babel, of baby Moses set afloat on the waters, and of other events. For, if
the
fragments from the Cosmogony of Berosus, so carefully re-edited and probably
mutilated
and added to by Eusebius, are no great proof of the antiquity of these
records
in Babylonia—seeing that this priest of Belus lived three hundred years
after
the Jews were carried captive to Babylon, and they may have been borrowed
by
the Assyrians from them—later discoveries have made such a consoling
hypothesis
impossible. It is now fully ascertained by Oriental scholars that not
only
“Assyria borrowed its civilization and written characters from Babylonia,”
but
the Assyrians copied their literature from Babylonian sources. Moreover, in
his
first Hibbert lecture, Professor Sayce shows the culture both of Babylonia
itself
and of the city of Eridu to have been of foreign importation; and,
according
to this scholar, the city of Eridu stood already “6,000 years ago on
the
shores of the Persian gulf,” i.e., about the very time when Genesis shows
the
Elohim creating the world, sun, and stars out of nothing.
Bes
(Eg.). A phallic god, the god of concupiscence and pleasure. He is
represented
standing on a lotus ready to devour his own progeny (Abydos). A
rather
modern deity of foreign origin.
Bestla
(Scand.). The daughter of the “Frost giants”, the sons of Ymir; married
to
Bun, and the mother of Odin and his brothers (Edda).
Beth
(Heb.). House, dwelling.
Beth
Elohim (Heb.). A Kabbalistic treatise treating of the angels, souls of men,
and
demons. The name means “House of the Gods".
Betyles
(Phœn.). Magical stones. The ancient writers call them the “animated
stones”
; oracular stones, believed in and used both by Gentiles and Christians.
(See
S.D. II. p. 342).
Bhadra
Vihara (Sk.). Lit., “the Monastery of the Sages or Bodhisattvas”. A
certain
Vihara or Matham in Kanyâkubdja.
Bhadrakalpa
(Sk.). Lit., “The Kalpa of the Sages”. Our present period is a
Bhadra
Kalpa, and the exoteric teaching makes it last 236 million years. It is
“so
called because 1,000 Buddhas or sages appear in the course of it”. (Sanshrit
Chinese
Dict.) “Four Buddhas have already appeared” it adds; but as out of the
236
millions, over 151
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million
years have already elapsed, it does seem a rather uneven distribution of
Buddhas.
This is the way exoteric or popular religions confuse everything.
Esoteric
philosophy teaches us that every Root- race has its chief Buddha or
Reformer,
who appears also in the seven sub-races as a Bodhisattva (q.v.).
Gautama
Sakyamuni was the fourth, and also the fifth Buddha: the fifth, because
we
are the fifth root-race; the fourth, as the chief Buddha in this fourth
Round.
The Bhadra Kalpa, or the “period of stability”, is the name of our
present
Round, esoterically—its duration applying, of course, only to our globe
(D),
the “1,000” Buddhas being thus in reality limited to but forty-nine in all.
Bhadrasena
(Sk.). A Buddhist king of Magadha.
Bhagats
(Sk.). Also called Sokha and Sivnath by the Hindus; one who exorcises
evil
spirits.
Bhagavad-gita
(Sk.). Lit., “the Lord’s Song”. A portion of the Mahabharata, the
great
epic poem of India. It contains a dialogue wherein Krishna—the
“Charioteer”—and
Arjuna, his Chela, have a discussion upon the highest spiritual
philosophy.
The work is pre-eminently occult or esoteric.
Bhagavat
(Sk.). A title of the Buddha and of Krishna. “The Lord” literally.
Bhao
(Sk.). A ceremony of divination among the Kolarian tribes of Central India.
Bhârata
Varsha (Sk.). The land of Bharata, an ancient name of India.
Bhargavas
(Sk.). An ancient race in India; from the name of Bhrigu, the Rishi.
Bhâshya
(Sk) A commentary.
Bhâskara
(Sk). One of the titles of Surya, the Sun; meaning “life- giver” and
“light-maker”.
Bhava
(Sk.). Being, or state of being; the world, a birth, and also a name of
Siva.
Bhikshu
(Sk.). In Pâli Bihkhu. The name given to the first followers of
Sâkyamuni
Buddha. Lit., “mendicant scholar”. The Sanskrit Chinese Dictionary
explains
the term correctly by dividing Bhikshus into two classes of Sramanas
(Buddhist
monks and priests), viz., “esoteric mendicants who control their
nature
by the (religious) law, and exoteric mendicants who control their nature
by
diet;” and it adds, less correctly: “every true Bhikshu is supposed to work
miracles”.
Bhons
(Tib.). The followers of the old religion of the Aborigines of Tibet; of
pre-buddhistic
temples and ritualism; the same as Dugpas,
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“red
caps”, though the latter appellation usually applies only to sorcerers.
Bhrantidarsanatah
(Sk.). Lit., “false comprehension or apprehension”; something
conceived
of on false appearances as a mayavic, illusionary form.
Bhrigu
(Sk.). One of the great Vedic Rishis. He is called “Son” by Manu, who
confides
to him his Institutes. He is one of the Seven Prajâpatis or progenitors
of
mankind, which is equivalent to identifying him with one of the creative
gods,
placed by the Purânas in Krita Yug, or the first age, that of purity. Dr.
Wynn
Westcott reminds us of the fact that the late and very erudite Dr. Kenealy
(who
spelt the name Brighoo), made of this Muni (Saint) the fourth, out of his
twelve,
“divine messengers” to the World, adding that he appeared in Tibet, A.N.
4800
and that his religion spread to Britain, where his followers raised the
megalithic
temple of Stonehenge. This, of course, is a hypothesis, based merely
on
Dr. Kenealy’s personal speculations.
Bhûmi
(Sk.). The earth, called also Prithivî.
Bhur-Bhuva
(Sk). A mystic incantation, as Om, Bhur, Bhuva, Swar, meaning “Om,
earth,
sky, heaven, This is the exoteric
explanation.
Bhuranyu
(Sk.). “The rapid” or the swift. Used of a missile— an equivalent also
of
the Greek Phoroneus.
Bhur-loka
(Sk). One of the 14, lokas or worlds in Hindu Pantheism; our Earth.
Bhutadi
(Sk.). Elementary substances, the origin and the germinal essence of the
elements.
Bhutan.
A country of heretical Buddhists and Lamaists beyond Sikkhim, where
rules
the Dharma Raja, a nominal vassal of the Dalaї Lama.
Bhûhta-vidyâ
(Sk.). The art of exorcising, of treating and curing demoniac
possession.
Literally, “Demon” or “Ghost-knowledge”.
Bhûta-sarga
(Sk.). Elemental or incipient Creation, i.e., when matter was
several
degrees less material than it is now.
Bhûtesa
(Sk.) Or Bhûteswara; lit., “Lord of beings or of existent lives”. A name
applied
to Vishnu, to Brahmâ and Krishna.
Bhûts
(Sk.). Bhûta.: Ghosts, phantoms. To call them “demons”, as do the
Orientalists,
is incorrect. For, if on the one hand, a Bhûta is “a malignant
spirit
which haunts cemeteries, lurks in trees, animates dead bodies, and
deludes
and devours human beings”, in popular fancy, in India in Tibet and
China,
by Bhûtas are also meant “heretics” who besmear their bodies with ashes,
or
Shaiva ascetics (Siva being held in India for the King of Bhûtas).
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Bhuya-loka
(Sk.). One of the 14 worlds.
Bhuvana
(Sk). A name of Rudra or Siva, one of the Indian Trimurti (Trinity).
Bifröst
(Scand.). A bridge built by the gods to protect Asgard. On it “the third
Sword-god,
known as Heimdal or Riger”, stands night and day girded with his
sword,
for he is the watchman selected to protect Asgard, the abode of gods.
Heimdal
is the Scandinavian Cherubim with the flaming sword, “which turned every
way
to keep the way of the tree of life”.
Bihar
Gyalpo (Tib.). A king deified by the Dugpas. A patron over all their
religious
buildings.
Binah
(Heb.). Understanding. The third of the 10 Sephiroth, the third of the
Supernal
Triad; a female potency, corresponding to the letter hé of the
Tetragrammaton
IHVH. Binah is called AIMA, the Supernal Mother, and “the great
Sea”.
[ w.w.w.]
Birs
Nimrud (Chald.). Believed by the Orientalists to be the site of the Tower
of
Babel. The great pile of Birs Nimrud is near Babylon. Sir H. Rawlinson and
several
Assyriologists examined the excavated ruins and found that the tower
consisted
of seven stages of brick-work, each stage of a different colour, which
shows
that the temple was devoted to the seven planets. Even with its three
higher
stages or floors in ruins, it still rises now 154 feet above the level of
the
plain. (”See Borsippa”.)
Black
Dwarfs. The name of the Elves of Darkness, who creep about in the dark
caverns
of the earth and fabricate weapons and utensils for their divine
fathers,
the Æsir or Ases. Called also “Black Elves”.
Black
Fire (Zohar.) A Kabbalistic term for Absolute Light and Wisdom; “black”
because
it is incomprehensible to our finite intellects.
Black
Magic (Occult.). Sorcery; necromancy, or the raising of the dead, and
other
selfish abuses of abnormal powers. This abuse may be unintentional; yet it
is
still “black magic” whenever anything is produced phenomenally simply for
one’s
own gratification.
B’ne
Alhim or Beni Elohim (Heb.). “Sons of God ”, literally or more correctly
“Sons
of the gods”, as Elohim is the plural of Eloah. A group of angelic powers
referable
by analogy to the Sephira Hôd.
[w. w. w.]
Boat
of the Sun. This sacred solar boat was called Sekti, and it was steered by
the
dead. With the Egyptians the highest exaltation of the Sun was in Aries and
the
depression in Libya. (See “Pharaoh”, the “Son of the Sun”.) A blue
light—which
is the “Sun’s Son”—is seen streaming from the bark. The ancient
Egyptians
taught
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that
the real colour of the Sun was blue, and Macrobius also states that his
colour
is of a pure blue before he reaches the horizon and after he disappears
below.
It is curious to note in this relation the fact that it is only since
1881
that physicists and astronomers discovered that “our Sun is really blue”.
Professor
Langley devoted many years to ascertaining the fact. Helped in this by
the
magnificent scientific apparatus of physical science, he has succeeded
finally
in proving that the apparent yellow-orange colour of the Sun is due only
to
the effect of absorption exerted by its atmosphere of vapours, chiefly
metallic;
but that in sober truth and reality, it is not “a white Sun but a blue
one”,
i.e., something which the Egyptian priests had discovered without any
known
scientific instruments, many thousands of years ago!
Boaz
(Heb.). The great-grandfather of David. The word is from B, meaning “in”,
and
oz “strength”, a symbolic name of one of the pillars at the porch of King
Solomon’s
temple. [w. w. w.]
Bodha-Bodhi
(Sk.). Wisdom-knowledge.
Bodhi
or Sambodhi (Sk.). Receptive intelligence, in contradistinction to Buddhi,
which
is the potentiality of intelligence.
Bodhi
Druma (Sk.). The Bo or Bodhi tree; the tree of “knowledge the Pippala or
ficus
religiosa in botany. It is the tree under which Sâkymuni meditated for
seven
years and then reached Buddhaship. It was originally 400 feet high, it is
claimed;
but when Hiouen-Tsang saw it, about the year 640 of our era, it was
only
50 feet high. Its cuttings have been carried all over the Buddhist world
and
are planted in front of almost every Vihâra or temple of fame in China,
Siam,
Ceylon, and Tibet.
Bodhidharma
(Sk.). Wisdom-religion; or the wisdom contained in Dharma (ethics).
Also
the name of a great Arhat Kshatriya (one of the warrior-caste), the son of
a
king. It was Panyatara, his guru, who “gave him the name Bodhidharma to mark
his
understanding (bodhi) of the Law (dharma) of Buddha”. (Chin. San. Diet.).
Bodhidharma,
who flourished in the sixth century, travelled to China, whereto he
brought
a precious relic, namely, the almsbowl of the Lord Buddha.
Bodhisattva
(Sk). Lit., “he, whose essence (sattva) has become intelligence
(bodhi)”;
those who need but one more incarnation to become perfect Buddhas,
i.e.,
to be entitled to Nirvâna. This, as applied to Manushi (terrestrial)
Buddhas.
In the metaphysical sense, Bodhisattva is a title given to the sons of
the
celestial Dhyâni Buddhas.
Bodhyanga
(Sk.). Lit., the seven branches of knowledge or understanding. One of
the
37 categories of the Bodhi pakchika dharma, comprehending seven degrees of
intelligence
(esoterically, seven states of
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consciousness),
and these are (1) Smriti “memory”; (2) Dharma pravitchaya,
“correct
understanding” or discrimination of the Law ; (3) Virya, “energy” ; (4)
Priti,
“spiritual joy” ; (5 )Prasrabdhi, “tranquillity” or quietude; (6)
Samâdhi,
“ecstatic contemplation”; and (7) Upeksha “absolute indifference”.
Boehme
(Jacob). A great mystic philosopher, one of the most prominent
Theosophists
of the mediæval ages. He was born about 1575 at Old Seidenburg,
some
two miles from Görlitz (Silesia), and died in 1624, at nearly fifty years
of
age. In his boyhood he was a common shepherd, and, after learning to read and
write
in a village school, became an apprentice to a poor shoemaker at Görlitz.
He
was a natural clairvoyant of most wonderful powers. With no education or
acquaintance
with science he wrote works which are now proved to be full of
scientific
truths; but then, as he says himself, what he wrote upon, he “saw it
as
in a great Deep in the Eternal”. He had “a thorough view of the universe, as
in
a chaos”, which yet “opened itself in him, from time to time, as in a young
plant”.
He was a thorough born Mystic, and evidently of a constitution which is
most
rare one of those fine natures whose material envelope impedes in no way
the
direct, even if only occasional, intercommunion between the intellectual and
the
spiritual Ego. It is this Ego which Jacob Boehme, like so many other
untrained
mystics, mistook for God; “Man must acknowledge,” he writes, “that his
knowledge
is not his own, but from God, who manifests the Ideas of Wisdom to the
Soul
of Man, in what measure he pleases.” Had this great Theosophist mastered
Eastern
Occultism he might have expressed it otherwise. He would have known then
that
the “god” who spoke through his poor uncultured and untrained brain, was
his
own divine Ego, the omniscient Deity within himself, and that what that
Deity
gave out was not in “what measure pleased,” but in the measure of the
capacities
of the mortal and temporary dwelling IT informed.
Bonati,
Guido. A Franciscan monk, born at Florence in the XIIIth century and
died
in 1306. He became an astrologer and alchemist, but failed as a Rosicrucian
adept.
He returned after this to his monastery.
Bona-Oma,
or Bona Dea. A Roman goddess, the patroness of female Initiates and
Occultists.
Called also Fauna after her father Faunus. She was worshipped as a
prophetic
and chaste divinity, and her cult was confined solely to women, men
not
being allowed to even pronounce her name. She revealed her oracles only to
women,
and the ceremonies of her Sanctuary (a grotto in the Aventine) were
conducted
by the Vestals, every 1st of May. Her aversion to men was so great
that
no male person was permitted to approach the house of the consuls where
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her
festival was sometimes held, and even the portraits and the busts of men
were
carried out for the time from the building. Clodius, who once profaned such
a
sacred festival by entering the house of Caesar where it was held, in a female
disguise,
brought grief upon himself. Flowers and foliage decorated her temple
and
women made libations from a vessel (mellarium) full of milk. It is not true
that
the mellarium contained wine, as asserted by some writers, who being men
thus
tried to revenge themselves.
Bono,
Peter. A Lombardian; a great adept in the Hermetic Science, who travelled
to
Persia to study Alchemy. Returning from his voyage he settled in Istria in
1330,
and became famous as a Rosicrucian. A Calabrian monk named Lacinius is
credited
with having published in 1702 a condensed version of Bono’s works on
the
transmutation of metals. There is, however, more of Lacinius than of Bono in
the
work. Bono was a genuine adept and an Initiate ; and such do not leave their
secrets
behind them in MSS.
Boodhasp
(Chald.) .An alleged Chaldean; but in esoteric teaching a Buddhist (a
Bodhisattva),
from the East, who was the founder of the esoteric school of
Neo-Sabeism,
and whose secret rite of baptism passed bodily into the Christian
rite
of the same name. For almost three centuries before our era, Buddhist monks
overran
the whole country of Syria, made their way into the Mesopotamian valley
and
visited even Ireland. The name Ferho and Faho of the Codex Nazaraeus is but
a
corruption of Fho, Fo and Pho, the name which the Chinese, Tibetans and even
Nepaulese
often give to Buddha.
Book
of the Dead. An ancient Egyptian ritualistic and occult work attributed to
Thot-Hermes.
Found in the coffins of ancient mummies,
Book
of the Keys. An ancient Kabbalistic work.
Borj
(Pers.). The Mundane Mountain, a volcano or fire-mountain; the same as the
Indian
Meru.
Borri,
Joseph Francis. A great Hermetic philosopher, born at Milan in the 17th
century.
He was an adept, an alchemist and a devoted occultist. He knew too much
and
was, therefore, condemned to death for heresy, in January, 1661, after the
death
of Pope Innocent X. He escaped and lived many years after, when finally he
was
recognised by a monk in a Turkish village, denounced, claimed by the Papal
Nuncio,
taken back to Rome and imprisoned, August 10th, 1675. But facts show
that
he escaped from his prison in a way no one could account for.
Borsippa
(Chald.). The planet-tower, wherein Bel was worshipped in the days when
astrolaters
were the greatest astronomers. It was dedicated to Nebo, god of
Wisdom.
(See “Birs Nimrud ”.)
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Both-al
(Irish). The Both-al of the Irish is the descendant and copy of the
Greek
Batylos and the
Beth-el
of Canaan, the “house of God” (q.v.).
Bragadini,
Marco Antonio. A Venetian Rosicrucian of great achievements, an
Occultist
and Kabbalist who was decapitated in 1595 in Bavaria, for making gold.
Bragi
(Scand.). The god of New Life, of the re-incarnation of nature and man. He
is
called “the divine singer” without spot or blemish. He is represented as
gliding
in the ship of the Dwarfs of Death during the death of nature (pralaya),
lying
asleep on the deck with his golden stringed harp near him and dreaming the
dream
of life. When the vessel crosses the threshold of Nain, the Dwarf of
Death,
Bragi awakes and sweeping the strings of his harp, sings a song that
echoes
over all the worlds, a song describing the rapture of existence, and
awakens
dumb, sleeping nature out of her long death-like sleep.
Brahma
(Sk.). The student must distinguish between Brahma the neuter, and
Brahmâ,
the male creator of the Indian Pantheon. The former, Brahma or Brahman,
is
the impersonal, supreme and uncognizable Principle of the Universe from the
essence
of which all emanates, and into which all returns, which is incorporeal,
immaterial,
unborn, eternal, beginningless and endless. It is all-pervading,
animating
the highest god as well as the smallest mineral atom. Brahmâ on the
other
hand, the male and the alleged Creator, exists periodically in his
manifestation
only, and then again goes into pralaya, i.e., disappears and is
annihilated.
Brahmâ’s
Day. A period of 2,160,000,000 years during which Brahmâ having emerged
out
of his golden egg (Hiranyagarbha), creates and fashions the material world
(being
simply the fertilizing and creative force in Nature). After this period,
the
worlds being destroyed in turn, by fire and water, he vanishes with
objective
nature, and then comes Brahmâ's Night.
Brahmâ’s
Night. A period of equal duration, during which Brahmâ. is said to be
asleep.
Upon awakening he recommences the process, and this goes on for an AGE
of
Brahmâ composed of alternate “Days”, and “Nights”, and lasting 100 years (of
2,160,000,000
years each). It requires fifteen figures to express the duration
of
such an age; after the expiration of which the Mahapralaya or the Great
Dissolution
sets in, and lasts in its turn for the same space of fifteen
figures.
Brahmâ
Prajâpati (Sk.). “Brahmâ the Progenitor”, literally the “Lord of
Creatures”.
In this aspect Brahmâ is the synthesis of the Prajâpati or creative
Forces.
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Brahmâ
Vâch (Sk.) Male and female Brahmâ. Vâch is also some-times called the
female
logos; for Vâch means Speech, literally.
(See Manu Book I., and Vishnu
Purâna.)
Brahma
Vidyâ (Sk.) The knowledge, the esoteric science, about the two Brahmas
and
their true nature.
Brahmâ
Virâj. (Sk.) The same: Brahmâ separating his body into two halves, male
and
female, creates in them Vâch and Virâj. In plainer terms and esotericlly
Brahmâ
the Universe, differentiating, produced thereby material nature, Virâj,
and
spiritual intelligent Nature, Vâch—which is the Logos of Deity or the
manifested
expression of the eternal divine Ideation.
Brahmâcharî
(Sk.) A Brahman ascetic; one vowed to celibacy, a monk, virtually,
or
a religious student.
Brahmajnâni
(Sk.) One possessed of complete Knowledge; an Illuminatus in
esoteric
parlance.
Brâhman
(Sk.) The highest of the four castes in India, one supposed or rather
fancying
himself, as high among men, as Brahman, the ABSOLUTE of the Vedantins,
is
high among, or above the gods.
Brâhmana
period (Sk.) One of the four periods into which Vedic literature has
been
divided by Orientalists.
Brâhmanas
(Sk.) Hindu Sacred Books. Works composed by, and for Brahmans.
Commentaries
on those portions of the Vedas which were intended for the
ritualistic
use and guidance of the “twice-born (Dwija) or Brahmans.
Brahmanaspati
(Sk.). The planet Jupiter; a deity in the Rig -Veda, known in the
exoteric
works as Brihaspati, whose wife Târâ was carried away by Soma (the
Moon).
This led to a war between the gods and the Asuras.
Brahmâpuri
(Sk.) Lit., “the City of Brahmâ.
Brahmâputrâs
(Sk.) The Sons of Brahmâ.
Brahmarandhra
(Sk.) A spot on the crown of the head connected by Sushumna, a
cord
in the spinal column, with the heart. A mystic term having its significance
only
in mysticism.
Brahmârshîs
(Sk.). The Brahminical Rishis.
Bread
and Wine. Baptism and the Eucharist have their direct origin in pagan
Egypt.
There the “waters of purification” were used (the Mithraic font for
baptism
being borrowed by the Persians from the Egyptians) and so were bread and
wine.
“Wine in the Dionysiak cult, as in the Christian religion, represents that
blood
which in different senses is the life of the world” (Brown, in the
Dionysiak
Myth). Justin Martyr says, “In imitation of which the devil did the
like
in the
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Mysteries
of Mithras, for you either know or may know that they also take bread
and
a cup of water in the sacrifices of those that are initiated and pronounce
certain
words over it”. (See “Holy Water”.)
Briareus
(Gr.) A famous giant in the Theogony of Hesiod. The son of Cœlus and
Terra,
a monster with 50 heads and 100 arms. He is conspicuous in the wars and
battles
between the gods.
Briatic
World or Briah (Heb.) This world is the second of the Four worlds of the
Kabbalists
and referred to the highest created “Archangels”, or to Pure Spirits.
[
w.w.w.]
Bride.
The tenth Sephira, Malkuth, is called by the Kabbalists the Bride of
Microprosopus;
she is the final Hé of the Tetragrammaton ; in a similar manner
the
Christian Church is called the Bride of Christ.
[
w.w.w.]
Brihadâranyaka
(Sk.) The name of a Upanishad. One of the sacred and secret books
of
the Brahmins; an Aranyaka is a treatise appended to the Vedas, and considered
a
subject of special study by those who have retired to the jungle (forest) for
purposes
of religious meditation.
Brihaspati
(Sk.) The name of a Deity, also of a Rishi. It is like wise the name
of
the planet Jupiter. He is the personified Guru and priest of the gods in
India
; also the symbol of exoteric ritualism as opposed to esoteric mysticism.
Hence
the opponent of King Soma—the moon, but also the sacred juice drunk at
initiation—the
parent of Budha, Secret Wisdom.
Briseus
(Gr.) A name given to the god Bacchus from his nurse, Briso. He had also
a
temple at Brisa, a promontory of the isle of Lesbos.
Brothers
of the Shadow. A name given by the Occultists to Sorcerers, and
especially
to the Tibetan Dugpas, of whom there are many in the Bhon sect of the
Red
Caps (Dugpa). The word is applied to all practitioners of black or left hand
magic.
Bubasté
(Eg.) A city in Egypt which was sacred to the cats, and where was their
principal
shrine. Many hundreds of thousands of cats were embalmed and buried in
the
grottoes of Beni-Hassan-el Amar. The cat being a symbol of the moon was
sacred
to Isis, her goddess. It sees in the dark and its eyes have a
phosphorescent
lustre which frightens the night-birds of evil omen. The cat was
also
sacred to Bast, and thence called “the (destroyer of the Sun’s (Osiris’)
enemies”.
Buddha
(Sk.). Lit., “The Enlightened”. The highest degree of knowledge. To
become
a Buddha one has to break through the bondage of sense and personality;
to
acquire a complete perception of the REAL SELF and learn not to separate it
from
all otherselves; to learn
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by
experience the utter unreality of all phenomena of the visible Kosmos
foremost
of all; to reach a complete detachment from all that is evanescent and
finite,
and live while yet on Earth in the immortal and the everlasting alone,
in
a supreme state of holiness.
Buddha
Siddhârta (Sk.) The name given to Gautama, the Prince of Kapilavastu, at
his
birth. It is an abbreviation of sarvârtthasiddha and means, the “realization
of
all desires”. Gautama, which means, on earth (gâu) the most victorious (tama)
“was
the sacerdotal name of the Sâkya family, the kingly patronymic of the
dynasty
to which the father of Gautama, the King Suddhodhana of Kapilavastu,
belonged.
Kapilavastu was an ancient city, the birth-place of the Great Reformer
and
was destroyed during his life time. In the title Sâkyamuni, the last
component,
muni, is rendered as meaning one mighty in charity, isolation and
silence”,
and the former Sâkya is the family name. Every Orientalist or Pundit
knows
by heart the story of Gautama, the Buddha, the most perfect of mortal men
that
the world has ever seen, but none of them seem to suspect the esoteric
meaning
underlying his prenatal
biography,
i.e., the significance of the popular story. The Lalitavistûra tells
the
tale, but abstains from hinting at the truth. The 5,000 jâtakas, or the
events
of former births (re-incarnations) are taken literally instead of
esoterically.
Gautama, the Buddha, would not have been a mortal man, had he not
passed
through hundreds and thousands of births previous to his last. Yet the
detailed
account of these, and the statement that during them he worked his way
up
through every stage of transmigration from the lowest animate and inanimate
atom
and insect, up to the highest—or man, contains simply the well-known occult
aphorism
: “a stone becomes a plant, a plant an animal, and an animal a man”.
Every
human being who has ever existed, has passed through the same evolution.
But
the hidden symbolism in the sequence of these re-births (jâtaka) contains a
perfect
history of the evolution on this earth, pre and post human, and is a
scientific
exposition of natural facts. One truth not veiled but bare and open
is
found in their nomenclature, viz., that as soon as Gautama had reached the
human
form he began exhibiting in every personality the utmost unselfishness,
self-sacrifice
and charity. Buddha Gautama, the fourth of the Sapta (Seven)
Buddhas
and Sapta Tathâgatas was born according to Chinese Chronology in 1024
B.C;
but according to the Singhalese chronicles, on the 8th day of the second
(or
fourth) moon in the year 621 before our era. He fled from his father’s
palace
to become an ascetic on the night of the 8th day of the second moon, 597
BC.,
and having passed six years in ascetic meditation at Gaya, and perceiving
that
physical self-torture was useless to bring enlightenment, be decided upon
striking
out a new path, until he reached the state of
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Bodhi.
He became a full Buddha on the night of the 8th day of the twelfth moon,
in
the year 592, and finally entered Nirvâna in the year 543 according to
Southern
Buddhism. The Orientalists, however, have decided upon several other
dates.
All the rest is allegorical. He attained the state of Bodhisattva on
earth
when in the personality called Prabhâpala. Tushita stands for a place on
this
globe, not for a paradise in the invisible regions. The selection of the
Sâkya
family and his mother Mâyâ, as “the purest on earth,” is in accordance
with
the model of the nativity of every Saviour, God or deified Reformer. The
tale
about his entering his mother’s bosom in the shape of a white elephant is
an
allusion to his innate wisdom, the elephant of that colour being a symbol of
every
Bodhisattva. The statements that at Gautama’s birth, the newly born babe
walked
seven steps in four directions, that an Udumbara flower bloomed in all
its
rare beauty and that the Nâga kings forthwith proceeded ‘‘to baptise him ”,
are
all so many allegories in the phraseology of the Initiates and
well-understood
by every Eastern Occultist. The whole events of his noble life
are
given in occult numbers, and every so-called miraculous event—so deplored by
Orientalists
as confusing the narrative and making it impossible to extricate
truth
from fiction—is simply the allegorical veiling of the truth, it is as
comprehensible
to an Occultist learned in symbolism, as it is difficult to
understand
for a European scholar ignorant of Occultism. Every detail of the
narrative
after his death and before cremation is a chapter of facts written in
a
language which must be studied before it is understood, otherwise its dead
letter
will lead one into absurd contradictions. For instance, having reminded
his
disciples of the immortality of Dharmakâya Buddha is said to have passed
into
Samâdhi, and lost himself in Nirvâna—from which none can return., and yet,
notwithstanding
this, the Buddha is shown bursting open the lid of the coffin,
and
stepping out of it ; saluting with folded hands his mother Mâyâ who had
suddenly
appeared in the air, though she had died seven (days after his birth,
&c.,
&c. As Buddha. was a Chakravartti (he who turns the wheel of the Law), his
body
at its cremation could not be consumed by common fire. What happens
Suddenly
a jet of flame burst out of the Swastica on his breast, and reduced his
body
to ashes. Space prevents giving more instances. As to his being one of the
true
and undeniable Saviours of the World, suffice it to say that the most rabid
orthodox
missionary, unless he is hopelessly insane, or has not the least regard
even
for historical truth, cannot find one smallest accusation against the life
and
personal character of Gautama, the “Buddha”. Without any claim to divinity,
allowing
his followers to fall into atheism, rather than into the degrading
superstition
of deva or idol-worship, his walk in life is from the beginning to
the
end, holy and
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divine.
During the years of his mission it is blameless and pure as that of a
god—or
as the latter should be. He is a perfect example of a divine, godly man.
He
reached Buddhaship—i.e., complete enlightenment—entirely by his own merit and
owing
to his own individual exertions, no god being supposed to have any
personal
merit in the exercise of goodness and holiness. Esoteric teachings
claim
that he renounced Nirvâna and gave up the Dharmakâya vesture to remain a
“Buddha
of compassion” within the reach of the miseries of this world. And the
religious
philosophy he left to it has produced for over 2,000 years generations
of
good and unselfish men. His is the only absolutely bloodless religion among
all
the existing religions tolerant and liberal, teaching universal compassion
and
charity, love and self-sacrifice, poverty and contentment with one’s lot,
whatever
it may he. No persecutions, and enforcement of faith by fire and sword,
have
ever disgraced it. No thunder-and-lightning-vomiting god has interfered
with
its chaste commandments; and if the simple, humane and philosophical code
of
daily life left to us by the greatest Man-Reformer ever known, should ever
come
to he adopted by mankind at large, then indeed an era of bliss and peace
would
dawn on Humanity.
Buddhachhâyâ
(Sk.). Lit., “the shadow of Buddha”. It is said to become visible
at
certain great events, and during some imposing ceremonies performed at
Temples
in commemoration of glorious acts of Buddhas life. Hiouen-tseng, the
Chinese
traveller, names a certain cave where it occasionally appears on the
wall,
but adds that only he whose mind is perfectly pure”, can see it.
Buddhaphala
(Sk) Lit., “the fruit of Buddha”, the fruition of Arahattvaphalla,
or
Arhatship.
Buddhi
(Sk.). Universal Soul or Mind. Mahâbuddhi is a name of Mahat (see
“Alaya”);
also the spiritual Soul in man (the sixth principle), the vehicle of
Atmâ
exoterically the seventh.
Buddhism.
Buddhism is now split into two distinct Churches : the Southern and
the
Northern Church. The former is said to be the purer form, as having
preserved
more religiously the original teachings of the Lord Buddha. It is the
religion
of Ceylon, Siam, Burmah and other places, while Northern Buddhism is
confined
to Tibet, China and Nepaul. Such a distinction, however, is incorrect.
If
the Southern Church is nearer, in that it has not departed, except perhaps in
some
trifling dogmas due to the many councils held after the death of the
Master,
from the public or exoteric teachings of Sâkyamuni—the Northern Church
is
the outcome of Siddhârta Buddha’s esoteric teachings which he confined to his
elect
Bhikshus and Arhats. In fact, Buddhism in the present age, cannot he
justly
judged either by one or
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the
other of its exoteric popular forms. Real Buddhism can be appreciated only
by
blending the philosophy of the Southern Church and the metaphysics of the
Northern
Schools. If one seems too iconoclastic and stero:, and the other too
metaphysical
and transcendental, even to being overgrown with the weeds of
Indian
exotericism—many of the gods of its Pantheon having been transplanted
under
new names to Tibetan soil—it is entirely due to the popular expression of
Buddhism
in both Churches. Correspondentially they stand in their relation to
each
other as Protestantism to Roman Catholicism. Both err by an excess of zeal
and
erroneous interpretations, though neither the Southern nor the Northern
Buddhist
clergy have ever departed from truth consciously, still less have they
acted
under the dictates of priestocracy, ambition, or with an eye to personal
gain
and power, as the two Christian Churches have.
Buddhochinga
(Sk) The name of a great Indian Arhat who went to China in the 4th
century
to propagate Buddhism and converted masses of people by means of
miracles
and most wonderful magic feats.
Budha
(Sk. “The Wise and Intelligent”, the Son of Soma, the Moon, and of Rokini
or
Taraka, wife of Brihaspati carried away by King Soma, thus leading to the
great
war between the Asuras, who sided with the Moon, and the Gods who took the
defence
of Brihaspati (Jupiter) who, was their Purohita (family priest). This
war
is known as the Tarakamaya. It is the original of the war in Olympus between
the
Gods and the Titans and also of the war (in Revelation between Michael
(Indra)
and the Dragon (personifying the Asuras).
Bull-Worship
(See “Apis” ). The worship of the Bull and the Ram was addressed to
one
and the same power, that of generative creation, under two aspects— the
celestial
or cosmic, and the terrestrial or human. The ram-headed gods all
belong
to the latter aspect, the bull—to the former. Osiris to whom the Bull was
sacred,
was never regarded as a phallic deity ; neither was Siva with his Bull
Nandi,
in spite of the lingham. As Nandi is of a pure milk-white colour, so was
Apis.
Both were the emblems of the generative, or of evolutionary power in the
Universal
Kosmos. Those who regard the solar gods and the bulls as of a phallic
character,
or connect the Sun with it, are mistaken, it is only the lunar gods
and
the rams, and lambs, which are priapic, and it little becomes a religion
which,
however unconsciously, has still adopted for its worship a god
pre-eminently
lunar, and accentuated its choice by the selection of the lamb,
whose
sire is the ram, a glyph as pre-eminently phallic, for its most sacred
symbol—to
vilify the older religions for using the same symbolism. The worship
of
the bull, Apis, Hapi Ankh, or the living Osiris, ceased over 3,000 years ago
the
worship of the ram and lamb continues to this day. Mariette Bey discovered
the
Serapeum, the
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Necropolis
of the Apis-bulls, near Memphis, an imposing subterranean crypt 2,000
feet
long and twenty feet wide, containing the mummies of thirty sacred bulls.
If
1,000 years hence, a Roman Catholic Cathedral with the Easter lamb in it,
were
discovered under the ashes of Vesuvius or Etna, would future generations be
justified
in inferring therefrom that Christians were “lamb” and “dove”
worshippers
? Yet the two symbols would give them as much right in the one case
as
in the other. Moreover, not all of the sacred “Bulls” were phallic, i.e.,
males;
there were hermaphrodite and sexless “bulls”. The black bull Mnevis, the
son
of Ptah, was sacred to the God Ra at Heliopolis; the Pacis of Hermonthis—to
Amoun
Horus, &c., &c., and Apis himself was a hermaphodite and not a male
animal,
which shows his cosmic character. As well call the Taurus of the Zodiac
and
all Nature phallic.
Bumapa
(Tib.). A school of men, usually a college of mystic students.
Bunda-hish.
An old Eastern work in which among other things anthropology is
treated
in an allegorical fashion.
Burham-i-Kati.
A Hermetic Eastern work.
Burî
(Scand) “The producer”, the Son of Bestla, in Norse legends.
Buru
Bonga. The “Spirit of the Hills”. This Dryadic deity is worshipped by the
Kolarian
tribes of Central India with great ceremonies and magical display.
There
are mysteries connected with it, but the people are very jealous and will
admit
no stranger to their rites.
Busardier.
A Hermetic philosopher born in Bohemia who is credited with having
made
a genuine powder of projection. He left the bulk of his red powder to a
friend
named Richthausen, an adept and alchemist of Vienna. Some years after
Busardier’s
death, in 1637, Richthausen introduced himself to the Emperor
Ferdinand
III, who is known to have been ardently devoted to alchemy, and
together
they are said to have converted three pounds of mercury into the finest
gold
with one single grain of Busardier’s powder. In 1658 the Elector of Mayence
also
was permitted to test the powder, and the gold produced with it was
declared
by the Master of the Mint to be such, that he had never seen finer.
Such
are the claims vouchsafed by the city records and chronicles.
Butler.
An English name assumed by an adept, a disciple of some Eastern Sages,
of
whom many fanciful stories are current. It is said for instance, that Butler
was
captured during his travels in 1629, and sold into captivity. He became the
slave
of an Arabian philosopher, a great alchemist, and finally escaped, robbing
his
Master of a large quantity of red powder. According to more trustworthy
records,
only the last portion of this story is true. Adepts who can be robbed
without
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knowing
it would be unworthy of the name. Butler or rather the person who
assumed
this name, robbed his “Master” (whose free disciple he was) of the
secret
of transmutation, and abused of his knowledge—i.e., sought to turn it to
his
personal profit, but was speedily punished for it. After performing many
wonderful
cures by means of his “stone (i.e., the occult knowledge of an
initiated
adept), and producing extraordinary phenomena, to some of which Val
Helmont,
the famous Occultist and Rosicrucian, was witness, not for the benefit
of
men but his own vain glory, Butler was imprisoned in the Castle of Viloord,
in
Flanders, and passed almost the whole of his life in confinement. He lost his
powers
and died miserable and unknown. Such is the fate of every Occultist who
abuses
his power or desecrates the sacred science.
Bythos
(Gr.). A Gnostic term meaning “Depth” or the “great Deep”, Chaos. It is
equivalent
to space, before anything had formed itself in it from the primordial
atoms
that exist eternally in its spatial depths, according to the teachings of
Occultism.
C
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C.—The
third letter of the English alphabet, which has no equivalent in Hebrew
except
Caph, which see under K.
Cabar
Zio (Gnost.). “The mighty Lord of Splendour” (Codex Nazaraeus), they who
procreate
seven beneficent lives, “who shine in their own form and light” to
counteract
the influence of the seven “badly-disposed” stellars or principles.
These
are the progeny of Karabtanos, the personification of concupiscence and
matter.
The latter are the seven physical planets, the former, their genii or
Rulers.
Cabeiri
or Kabiri (Phœn) Deities, held in the highest veneration at Thebes, in
Lemnos,
Phrygia, Macedonia, and especially at Samothrace. They were mystery
gods,
no profane having the right to name or speak of them. Herodotus makes of
them
Fire-gods and points to Vulcan as their father. The Kabiri presided over
the
Mysteries, and their real number has never been revealed, their occult
meaning
being very sacred.
Cabletow
(Mas.). A Masonic term for a certain object used in the Lodges. Its
origin
lies in the thread of the Brahman ascetics, a thread which is also used
for
magical purposes in Tibet.
Cadmus
(Gr.). The supposed inventor of the letters of the alphabet. He may have
been
their originator and teacher in Europe and Asia Minor; but in India the
letters
were known and used by the Initiates ages before him.
Caduceus
(Gr.). The Greek poets and mythologists took the idea of the Caduceus
of
Mercury from the Egyptians. The Caduceus is found as two serpents twisted
round
a rod, on Egyptian monuments built before Osiris. The Greeks altered this.
We
find it again in the hands of Æsculapius assuming a different form to the
wand
of Mercurius or Hermes. It is a cosmic, sidereal or astronomical, as well
as
a spiritual and even physiological symbol, its significance changing with its
application.
Metaphysically, the Caduceus represents the fall of primeval and
primordial
matter into gross terrestrial matter, the one Reality becoming
Illusion.
(See Sect.Doct. I. 550.) Astronomically, the head and tail represent
the
points of the ecliptic where the planets and even the sun and moon meet in
close
embrace. Physiologically, it is the symbol of the restoration of the
equilibrium
lost between Life, as a unit, and the currents of life performing
various
functions in the human body.
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Cæsar.
A far-famed astrologer and “professor of magic,” i.e., an Occultist,
during
the reign of Henry IV of France. “He was reputed to have been strangled
by
the devil in 1611,” as Brother Kenneth Mackenzie tells us.
Cagliostro.
A famous Adept, whose real name is claimed (by his enemies) to have
been
Joseph Balsamo. He was a native of Palermo, and studied under some
mysterious
foreigner of whom little has been ascertained. His accepted history
is
too well known to need repetition, and his real history has never been told.
His
fate was that of every human being who proves that he knows more than do his
fellow-
creatures; he was “stoned to death” by persecutions, lies, and infamous
accusations,
and yet he was the friend and adviser of the highest and mightiest
of
every land he visited. He was finally tried and sentenced in Rome as a
heretic,
and was said to have died during his confinement in a State prison.
(See
“ Mesmer”.) Yet his end was not utterly undeserved, as he had been untrue
to
his vows in some respects, had fallen from his state of chastity and yielded
to
ambition and selfishness.
Cain
or Kayn (Heb.) In Esoteric symbology he is said to be identical with
Jehovah
or the “Lord God” of the fourth chapter of Genesis. It is held,
moreover,
that Abel is not his brother, but his female aspect.
(See
Sec.Doct., sub voce.)
Calvary
Cross. This form of cross does not date from Christianity. It was known
and
used for mystical purposes, thousands of years before our era. It formed
part
and parcel of the various Rituals, in Egypt and Greece, in Babylon and
India,
as well as in China, Mexico, and Peru. It is a cosmic, as well as a
physiological
(or phallic) symbol. That it existed among all the “heathen”
nations
is testified to by Tertullian. “How doth the Athenian Minerva differ
from
the body of a cross?” he queries. “The origin of your gods is derived from
figures
moulded on a cross. All those rows of images on your standards are the
appendages
of crosses; those hangings on your banners are the robes of crosses.”
And
the fiery champion was right. The tau or T is the most ancient of all forms,
and
the cross or the tat (q.v.) as ancient. The crux ansata, the cross with a
handle,
is in the hands of almost every god, including Baal and the Phœnician
Astarte.
The croix cramponnée is the Indian Swastica. It has been exhumed from
the
lowest foundations of the ancient site of Troy, and it appears on Etruscan
and
Chaldean relics of antiquity. As Mrs. Jamieson shows: “The ankh of Egypt was
the
crutch of St. Anthony and the cross of St. Philip. The Labarum of
Constantine
. . . was an emblem long before, in Etruria. Osiris had the Labarum
for
his sign; Horus appears sometimes with the long Latin cross. The Greek
pectoral
cross is Egyptian. It was called by
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the
Fathers the devil’s invention before Christ . The crux ansata is upon the
old
coins of Tarsus, as the Maltese upon the breast of an Assyrian king ...The
cross
of Calvary, so common in Europe, occurs on the breasts of mummies. . . it
was
suspended round the necks of sacred Serpents in Egypt. . . . Strange Asiatic
tribes
bringing tribute in Egypt are noticed with garments studded with crosses,
and
Sir Gardner Wilkinson dates this picture B.C. 1500.” Finally, “Typhon, the
Evil
One, is chained by a cross”.
(Eg.
Belief and Mod. Thought).
Campanella,
Tomaso. A Calabrese, born in 1568, who, from his childhood exhibited
strange
powers, and gave himself up during his whole life to the Occult Arts.
The
story which shows him initiated in his boyhood into the secrets of alchemy
and
thoroughly instructed in the secret science by a Rabbi-Kabbalist in a
fortnight
by means of notavicon, is a cock and bull invention. Occult knowledge,
even
when a heirloom from the preceding birth, does not come back into a new
personality
within fifteen days. He became an opponent of the Aristotelian
materialistic
philosophy when at Naples and was obliged to fly for his life.
Later,
the Inquisition sought to try and condemn him for the practice of magic
arts,
but its efforts were defeated. During his lifetime he wrote an enormous
quantity
of magical, astrological and alchemical works, most of which are no
longer
extant. He is reported to have died in the convent of the Jacobins at
Paris
on May the 21st, 1639.
Canarese.
The language of the Karnatic, originally called Kanara, one of the
divisions
of South India.
Capricornus
(Lat.) The 10th sign of the Zodiac (Makâra in Sanskrit), considered,
on
account of its hidden meaning, the most important among the constellations of
the
mysterious Zodiac. it is fully described in the Secret Doctrine, and
therefore
needs but a few words more. Whether, agreeably with exoteric
statements,
Capricornus was related in any way to the wet-nurse Amalthæa who fed
Jupiter
with her milk, or whether it was the god Pan who changed himself into a
goat
and left his impress upon the sidereal records, matters little. Each of the
fables
has its significance. Everything in Nature is intimately correlated to
the
rest, and therefore the students of ancient lore will not be too much
surprised
when told that even the seven steps taken in the direction of every
one
of the four points of the compass, or —28 steps—taken by the new-born infant
Buddha,
are closely related to the 28 stars of the constellation of Capricornus.
Cardan,
Jérome. An astrologer, alchemist, kabbalist and mystic, well known in
literature.
He was born at Pavia in 1501, and died at Rome in 1576.
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Carnac.
A very ancient site in Brittany (France) of a temple of cyclopean
structure,
sacred to the Sun and the Dragon; and of the same kind as Karnac, in
ancient
Egypt, and Stonehenge in England. (See the “Origin of the Satanic Myth”
in
Archaic Symbolism.) It was built by the prehistoric hierophant-priests of the
Solar
Dragon, or symbolized Wisdom (the Solar Kumâras who incarnated being the
highest).
Each of the stones was personally placed there by the successive
priest-adepts
in power, and commemorated in symbolic language the degree of
power,
status, and knowledge of each. (See further Secret Doctrine II. 381, et
seq.,
and also “ Karnac”.)
Caste.
Originally the system of the four hereditary classes into which the
Indian
population was divided: Brahman, Kshatriya, Vaisya, and Sudra (or
descendants
of Brahmâ, Warriors, Merchants, and the lowest or Agriculturalists).
Besides
these original four, hundreds have now grown up in India.
Causal
Body. This “body”, which is no body either objective or subjective, but
Buddhi,
the Spiritual Soul, is so called because it is the direct cause of the
Sushupti
condition, leading to the Turya state, the highest state of Samadhi. It
is
called Karanopadhi, “the basis of the Cause”, by the Târaka Raja Yogis; and
in
the Vedânta system it corresponds to both the Vignânamaya and Anandamaya
Kosha,
the latter coming next to Atma, and therefore being the vehicle of the
universal
Spirit. Buddhi alone could not be called a “Causal Body ”, but becomes
so
in conjunction with Manas, the incarnating Entity or EGO.
Cazotte,
Jacques. The wonderful Seer, who predicted the beheading of several
royal
personages and his own decapitation, at a gay supper some time before the
first
Revolution in France. He was born at Dijon in 1720, and studied mystic
philosophy
in the school of Martinez Pasqualis at Lyons. On the 11th of
September
1791, he was arrested and condemned to death by the president of the
revolutionary
government, a man who, shameful to state, had been his
fellow-student
and a member of the Mystic Lodge of Pasqualis at Lyons. Cazotte
was
executed on the 25th of September on the Place du Carrousel.
Cecco
d’Ascolî. Surnamed “Francesco Stabili.” He lived in the thirteenth
century,
and was considered the most famous astrologer in his day. A work of his
published
at Basle in 1485, and called Commentarii in Sphaeram Joannis de
Sacrabosco,
is still extant. He was burnt alive by the Inquisition in 1327.
Cerberus
(Gr., Lat.). Cerberus, the three-headed canine monster, which was
supposed
to watch at the threshold of Hades, came to the Greeks and Romans from
Egypt.
It was the monster, half-dog and
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half-hippopotamus,
that guarded the gates of Amenti. The mother of Cerberus was
Echidna—a
being, half-woman, half-serpent, much honoured in Etruria. Both the
Egyptian
and the Greek Cerberus are symbols of Kâmaloka and its uncouth
monsters,
the cast-off shells of mortals.
Ceres
(Lat.) In Greek Demeter. As the female aspect of Pater Æther, Jupiter, she
is
esoterically the productive principle in the all-pervading Spirit that
quickens
every germ in the material universe.
Chabrat
Zereh Aur Bokher (Heb.) An Order of the Rosicrucian stock, whose members
study
the Kabbalah and Hermetic sciences; it admits both sexes, and has many
grades
of instruction. The members meet in private, and the very existence of
the
Order is generally unknown. [ w.w.w.]
Chadâyatana
(Sk.). Lit., the six dwellings or gates in man for the reception of
sensations;
thus, on the physical plane, the eyes, nose, ear, tongue, body (or
touch)
and mind, as a product of the physical brain and on the mental plane
(esoterically),
spiritual sight, smell, hearing, taste, touch and perception,
the
whole synthesized by the Buddhi-atmic element. Chadâyatana is one of the
12
Nidânas,
which form the chain of incessant causation and effect.
Chaitanya
(Sk) The founder of a mystical sect in India. A rather modern sage,
believed
to be an avatar of Krishna.
Chakna-padma-karpo
(Tib.) “He who holds the lotus”, used of Chenresi, the
Bodhisattva.
It is not a genuine Tibetan word, but half Sanskrit.
Chakra
(Sk.) A wheel, a disk, or the circle of Vishnu generally. Used also of a
cycle
of time, and with other meanings.
Chakshub
(Sk.) The “eye ”. Loka-chakshub or “the eye of the world” is a title of
the
Sun.
Chaldean
Book of Numbers. A work which contains all that is found in the Zohar
of
Simeon Ben-Jochai, and much more. It must be the older by many centuries, and
in
one sense its original, as it contains all the fundamental principles taught
in
the Jewish Kabbalistic works, but none of their blinds. It is very rare
indeed,
there being perhaps only two or three copies extant, and these in
private
hands.
Chaldeans,
or Kasdim. At first a tribe, then a caste of learned Kabbalists. They
were
the savants, the magians of Babylonia, astrologers and diviners. The famous
Hillel,
the precursor of Jesus in philosophy and in ethics, was a Chaldean.
Franck
in his Kabbala points to the close resemblance of the “secret doctrine”
found
in the Avesta and the religious metaphysics of the Chaldees.
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Chandra
(Sk.) The Moon; also a deity. The terms Chandra and Soma are synonyms.
Chandragupta
(Sk.) The first Buddhist King in India, the grand-sire of Asoka ;
the
Sandracottus of the all-bungling Greek writers who went to India in
Alexander’s
time. (See “Asoka”.)
Chandra-kanta
(Sk.) “The moon-stone”, a gem that is claimed to be formed and
developed
under the moon-beams, which give it occult and magical properties. It
has
a very cooling influence in fever if applied to both temples.
Chandramanam
(Sk.) The method of calculating time by the Moon.
Chandrayana
(Sk.) The lunar year chronology.
Chandra-vansa
(Sk.) The “Lunar Race”, in contradistinction to Suryavansa, the
“Solar
Race”. Some Orientalists think it an inconsistency that Krishna, a
Chandravansa
(of the Yadu branch) should have been declared an Avatar of Vishnu,
who
is a manifestation of the solar energy in Rig -Veda, a work of unsurpassed
authority
with the Brahmans. This shows, however, the deep occult meaning of the
Avatar
; a meaning which only esoteric philosophy can explain. A glossary is no
fit
place for such explanations; but it may be useful to remind those who know,
and
teach those who do not, that in Occultism, man is called a solar-lunar
being,
solar in his higher triad, and lunar in his quaternary. Moreover, it is
the
Sun who imparts his light to the Moon, in the same way as the human triad
sheds
its divine light on the mortal shell of sinful man. Life celestial
quickens
life terrestrial. Krishna stands metaphysically for the Ego made one
with
Atma-Buddhi, and performs mystically the same function as the Christos of
the
Gnostics, both being “the inner god in the temple”—man. Lucifer is “the
bright
morning star”, a well known symbol in Revelations, and, as a planet,
corresponds
to the EGO. Now Lucifer (or the planet Venus) is the Sukra-Usanas of
the
Hindus ; and Usanas is the Daitya-guru, i.e., the spiritual guide and
instructor
of the Danavas and the Daityas. The latter are the giant-demons in
the
Purânas, and in the esoteric interpretations, the antetypal symbol of the
man
of flesh, physical mankind. The Daityas can raise themselves, it is said,
through
knowledge “austerities and devotion” to “the rank of the gods and of the
ABSOLUTE”.
All this is very suggestive in the legend of Krishna ; and what is
more
suggestive still is that just as Krishna, the Avatar of a great God in
India,
is of time race of Yadu, so is another incarnation, “God incarnate
himself”—or
the “God-man Christ”, also of the race Iadoo—the name for the Jews
all
over Asia. Moreover, as his mother, who is represented as Queen of Heaven
standing
on the crescent, is identified in Gnostic philosophy, and
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also
in the esoteric system, with the Moon herself, like all the other lunar
goddesses
such as Isis, Diana, Astarte and others—mothers of the Logoi, so
Christ
is called repeatedly in the Roman Catholic Church, the Sun-Christ, the
Christ-Soleil
and so on. If the later is a metaphor so also is the earlier.
Chantong
(Tib.) “He of the 1,000 Eyes”, a name of Padmapani or Chenresi
(Avalokitesvara).
Chaos
(Gr.) The Abyss, the “Great Deep”. It was personified in Egypt by the
Goddess
Neїth, anterior to all gods. As Deveria says, “the only God, without
form
and sex, who gave birth to itself, and without fecundation, is adored under
the
form of a Virgin Mother”. She is the vulture-headed Goddess found in the
oldest
period of Abydos, who belongs, accordingly to Mariette Bey, to the first
Dynasty,
which would make her, even on the confession of the time-dwarfing
Orientalists,
about 7,000 years old. As Mr. Bonwick tells us in his excellent
work
on Egyptian belief—“Neїth, Nut, Nepte, Nuk (her names as variously
read !)
is
a philosophical conception worthy of the nineteenth century after the
Christian
era, rather than the thirty-ninth before it or earlier than that”. And
he
adds: “ Neith or Nout is neither more nor less than the Great Mother, a yet
the
Immaculate Virgin, or female God from whom all things proceeded”.
Neїth is
the
“Father-mother”
of the Stanzas of the Secret Doctrine, the Swabhavat of the
Northern
Buddhists, the immaculate Mother indeed, the prototype of the latest
“Virgin”
of all; for, as Sharpe says, “the Feast of Candlemas—in honour of the
goddess
Neїth— is yet marked in our Almanacs as Candlemas day, or the
Purification
of the Virgin Mary”; and Beauregard tells us of “the Immaculate
Conception
of the Virgin, who can henceforth, as well as the Egyptian Minerva,
the
mysterious Neїth, boast of having come from herself, and of having
given
birth
to God”. He who would deny the working of cycles and the recurrence of
events,
let him read what Neїth was years ago, in the conception of the
Egyptian
Initiates,
trying to popularize a philosophy too abstract for the masses; and
then
remember the subjects of dispute at the Council of Ephesus in 431, when
Mary
was declared Mother of God; and her Immaculate Conception forced on the
World
as by command of God, by Pope and Council in 1858. Neїth is Swabhdvat
and
also
the Vedic Aditi and the Purânic Akâsa, for “she is not only the celestial
vault,
or ether, but is made to appear in a tree, from which she gives the fruit
of
the Tree of Life (like another Eve) or pours upon her worshippers some of the
divine
water of life”. Hence she gained the favourite appellation of “Lady of
the
Sycamore”, an epithet applied to another Virgin (Bonwick). The resemblance
becomes
still more marked when Neїth is found on old pictures represented as
a
Mother
embracing
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the
ram-headed god, the “Lamb”. An ancient stele declares her to be “Neut, the
luminous,
who has engendered the gods”—the Sun included, for Aditi is the mother
of
the Marttanda, the Sun—an Aditya. She is Naus, the celestial ship ; hence we
find
her on the prow of the Egyptian vessels, like Dido on the prow of the ships
of
the Phœnician mariners, and forth with we have the Virgin Mary, from Mar, the
“Sea”,
called the “Virgin of the Sea”, and the “Lady Patroness” of all Roman
Catholic
seamen. The Rev. Sayce is quoted by Bonwick, explaining her as a
principle
in the Babylonian Bahu (Chaos, or confusion) i.e., “merely the Chaos
of
Genesis . . . and perhaps also Môt, the primitive substance that was the
mother
of all the gods”. Nebuchadnezzar seems to have been in the mind of the
learned
professor, since he left the following witness in cuneiform language, “I
built
a temple to the Great Goddess, my Mother”. We may close with the words of
Mr.
Bonwick with which we thoroughly agree “She (Neїth) is the Zerouâna
of the
Avesta,
‘time without limits’. She is the Nerfe of the Etruscans, half a woman
and
half a fish” (whence the connection of the Virgin Mary with the fish and
pisces)
; of whom it is said: “From holy good Nerfe the navigation is happy. She
is
the Bythos of the Gnostics, the One of the Neoplatonists, the All of German
metaphysicians,
the Anaita of Assyria.”
Charaka
(Sk.). A writer on Medicine who lived in Vedic times. He is believed to
have
been an incarnation (Avatara) of the Serpent Sesha, i.e., an embodiment of
divine
Wisdom, since Sesha-Naga, the King of the “Serpent” race, is synonymous
with
Ananta, the seven-headed Serpent, on which Vishnu sleeps during the
pralayas.
Ananta is the “endless” and the symbol of eternity, and as such, one
with
Space, while Sesha is only periodical in his manifestations. Hence while
Vishnu
is identified with Ananta, Charaka is only the Avatar of Sesha. (See
“Ananta”
and “Sesha”.)
Charnook,
Thomas. A great alchemist of the sixteenth century; a surgeon who
lived
and practiced near Salisbury, studying the art in some neighbouring
cloisters
with a priest. It is said that he was initiated into the final secret
of
transmutation by the famous mystic William Bird, who “had been a prior of
Bath
and defrayed the expense of repairing the Abbey Church from the gold which
he
made by the red and white elixirs” (Royal Mas. Cyc.). Charnock wrote his
Breviary
of Philosophy in the year 1557 and the Enigma of Alchemy, in 1574.
Charon
(Gr.) The Egyptian Khu-en-ua, the hawk-headed Steersman of the boat
conveying
the Souls across the black waters that separate life from death.
Charon,
the Sun of Erebus and Nox, is a variant of Khu en-ua. The dead were
obliged
to pay an obolus, a small piece of money, o this grim ferryman of the
Styx
and Acheron; therefore the ancients
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always
placed a coin under the tongue of the deceased. This custom has been
preserved
in our own times, for most of the lower classes in Russia place
coppers
in the coffin under the head of the dead for post mortem expenses.
Châryâka
(Sk.) There were two famous beings of this name. One a Rakshasa (demon)
who
disguised himself as a Brâhman and entered Hastinâ-pura; whereupon the
Brahmans
discovered the imposture and reduced Châryâka to ashes with the fire of
their
eyes,—i.e., magnetically by means of what is called in Occultism the
“black
glance” or evil eye. The second was a terrible materialist and denier of
all
but matter, who if he could come back to life, would put to shame all the
“Free
thinkers” and “Agnostics” of the day. He lived before the Râmâyanic
period,
but his teachings and school have survived to this day, and he has even
now
followers, who are mostly to be found in Bengal.
Chastanier,
Benedict. A French mason who established in London in 1767 a Lodge
called
“The
Illuminated Theosophists”.
Chatur
mukha (Sk) The “four-faced one”, a title of Brahmâ.
Chatur
varna (Sk.) The four castes (lit., colours).
Châturdasa
Bhuvanam (Sk.) The fourteen lokas or planes of existence.
Esoterically,
the dual seven states.
Chaturyonî
(Sk.) Written also tchatur-yoni. The same as Karmaya or “the four
modes
of birth”—four ways of entering on the path of Birth as decided by Karma :
(a)
birth from the womb, as men and mammalia (b) birth from an egg, as birds and
reptiles;
(c) from moisture and air-germs, as insects; and (d) by sudden
self-transformation,
as Bodhisattvas and Gods (Anupadaka).
Chava
(Heb.) The same as Eve: “the Mother of all that lives” "Life"
Chavigny,
Jean Aimé de. A disciple of the world-famous Nostradamus, an
astrologer
and an alchemist of the sixteenth century. He died in the year 16O4.
His
life was a very quiet one and he was almost unknown to his contemporaries;
but
he left a precious manuscript on the pre-natal and post-natal influence of
the
stars on certain marked individuals, a secret revealed to him by
Nostradamus.
This treatise was last in the possession of the Emperor Alexander
of
Russia.
Chelâ
(Sk.) A disciple, the pupil of a Guru or Sage, the follower of some adept
of
a school of philosophy (lit., child).
Chemi
(Eg.). The ancient name of Egypt.
Chenresi
(Tib.) The Tibetan Avalokitesvara. The Bodhisattva Padmâpani, a divine
Buddha.
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Cheru
(Scand) Or Heru. A magic sword, a weapon of the “sword god” Heru. In the
Edda,
the Saga describes it as destroying its possessor, should he be unworthy
of
wielding it. It brings victory and fame only in the hand of a virtuous hero.
Cherubim
(Heb.) According to the Kabbalists, a group of angels, which they
specially
associated with the Sephira Jesod. in Christian teaching, an order of
angels
who are “watchers”. Genesis places Cherubim to guard the lost Eden, and
the
O.T. frequently refers to them as guardians of the divine glory. Two winged
representations
in gold were placed over the Ark of the Covenant; colossal
figures
of the same were also placed in the Sanctum Sanctorum of the Temple of
Solomon.
Ezekiel describes them in poetic language. Each Cherub appears to have
been
a compound figure with four faces—of a man, eagle, lion, and ox, and was
certainly
winged. Parkhurst, in voc. Cherub, suggests that the derivation of the
word
is from K, a particle of similitude, and RB or RUB, greatness, master,
majesty,
and so an image of godhead. Many other nations have displayed similar
figures
as symbols of deity ; e.g., the Egyptians in their figures of Serapis.
as
Macrohius describes in his Saturnalia; the Greeks had their triple-headed
Hecate,
and the Latins had three-faced images of Diana, as Ovid tells us, ecce
procul
ternis Hecate variata figuris. Virgil also describes her in the fourth
Book
of the Æneid. Porphyry and Eusebius write the same of Proserpine. The
Vandals
had a many-headed deity they called Triglaf. The ancient German races
had
an idol Rodigast with human body and heads of the ox, eagle, and man. The
Persians
have some figures of Mithras with a man’s body, lion’s head, and four
wings.
Add to these the Chimæra Sphinx of Egypt, Moloch, Astarte of the Syrians,
and
some figures of Isis with Bull’s horns and feathers of a bird on the head. [
w.w.w.]
Chesed
(Heb.) “Mercy ”, also named Gedulah, the fourth of the ten Sephiroth; a
masculine
or active potency. [ w.w. w.]
Chhâyâ
(Sk.) “Shade” or “ Shadow”. The name of a creature produced by Sanjnâ,
the
wife of Surya, from herself (astral body). Unable to endure the ardour of
her
husband, Sanjnâ left Chhâyâ in her place as a wife, going herself away to
perform
austerities. Chhâyâ is the astral image of a person in esoteric
philosophy.
Chhandoga
(Sk) A Samhitâ collection of Sama Veda;
also a priest, a chanter of
the
Sama Veda.
Chhanmûka
(Sk) A great Bodhisattva with the
Northern Buddhists, famous for his
ardent
love of Humanity; regarded in the esoteric schools as a Nirmanakâya.
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Chhannagarikah
(Tib.). Lit., the school of six cities. A famous philosophical
school
where Chelas are prepared before entering on the Path.
Chhassidi
or Chasdim. In the Septuagint Assidai, and in English Assideans. They
are
also mentioned in Maccabees I., vii., 13, as being put to death with many
others.
They were the followers of Mattathias, the father of the Maccabeans, and
were
all initiated mystics, or Jewish adepts. The word means ‘‘ skilled learned
in
all wisdom, human and divine”. Mackenzie (R.M.C.) regards them as the
guardians
of the Temple for the preservation of its purity ; but as Solomon and
his
Temple are both allegorical and had no real existence, the Temple means in
this
case the “ body of Israel ” and its morality.“ Scaliger connects this
Society
of the Assideans with that of the Essenes, deeming it the predecessor of
the
latter.”
Chhaya
loka (Sk.) The world of Shades; like Hades, the world of the Eidola and
Umbræ.
We call it Kâmaloka.
Chiah
(Heb.) Life; Vita, Revivificatio. In the Kabbala, the second highest
essence
of the human soul, corresponding to Chokmah (Wisdom).
Chichhakti
(Sk.) Chih-Sakti; the power which generates thought.
Chidagnikundum
(Sk.). Lit., “the fire-hearth in the heart” ; the seat of the
force
which extinguishes all individual desires.
Chidâkâsam
(Sk); The field, or basis of consciousness.
Chiffilet,
Jean. A Canon-Kabbalist of the XVIIth century, reputed to have
learned
a key to the Gnostic works from Coptic Initiates; he wrote a work on
Abraxas
in two portions, the esoteric portion of which was burnt by the Church.
Chiim
(Heb.) A plural noun—“lives”; found in compound names Elohim Chum, the
gods
of lives, Parkhurst translates “the living God” and Ruach Chiim, Spirit of
lives
or of life. [ w.w. w.]
China,
The Kabbalah of. One of the oldest known Chinese books is the Yih King,
or
Book of Changes. It is reported to have been written 2850 B.C., in the
dialect
of the Accadian black races of Mesopotamia. It is a most abstruse system
of
Mental and Moral Philosophy, with a scheme of universal relation and
divination.
Abstract ideas are represented by lines, half lines, circle, and
points.
Thus a circle represents YIH, the Great Supreme; a line is referred to
YIN,
the Masculine Active Potency; two half lines are YANG, the Feminine Passive
Potency.
KWEI is the animal soul, SHAN intellect, KHIEN heaven or Father, KHWAN
earth
or Mother, KAN or QHIN is Son; male numbers are odd, represented by light
circles,
female numbers are even, by black circles. There are two most
mysterious
diagrams, one called “HO
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or
the River Map”, and also associated with a Horse ; and the other called “The
Writing
of LO” ; these are formed of groups of white and black circles, arranged
in
a Kabbalistic manner. The text is by a King named Wan, and the commentary by
Kan,
his son ; the text is allowed to be older than the time of Confucius. [ w.
w.w.]
Chit
(Sk.) Abstract Consciousness.
Chitanuth
our (Heb.). Chitons, a priestly garb; the coats of skin given by Java
Aleim
to Adam and Eve after their fall,
Chitkala
(Sk.). In Esoteric philosophy, identical with the Kumâras those who
first
incarnated into the men of the Third Root-Race. (See Sec.Doct.; Vol. 1. p.
288
n.)
Chitra
Gupta (Sk.) The deva (or god) who is the recorder of Yâma (the god of
death),
and who is supposed to read the account of every Soul’s life from a
register
called Agra Sandhâni, when the said soul appears before the seat of
judgment.
(See “Agra Sandhâni ”.)
Chitra
Sikkandinas (Sk). The constellation of the great Bear ; the habitat of
the
seven Rishis (Sapta Riksha). Lit., “ bright-crested”.
Chnoumis
(Gr) The same as Chnouphis and Kneph. A symbol of creative force ;
Chnoumis
or Kneph is “the unmade and eternal deity” according to Plutarch. He is
represented
as blue (ether), and with his ram’s head with an asp between the
horns,
he might be taken for Ammon or Chnouphis (.q.v’. ). The fact is that all
these
gods are solar, and represent under various aspects the phases of
generation
and impregna tion. Their ram’s heads denote this meaning, a ram ever
symbolizing
generative energy in the abstract, while the bull was the symbol of
strength
and the creative function. All were one god, whose attributes were
individualised
and personified. According to Sir G. Wilkinsen, Kneph or Chnoumis
was
“the idea of the Spirit of God” ; and Bonwick explains that, as Av, “matter”
or
“flesh”, he was criocephalic (ram- headed), wearing a solar disk on the head,
standing
on the Serpent Mehen, with a viper in his left and a cross in his right
hand,
and bent upon the function of creation in the underworld (the earth,
esoterically).
The Kabbalists identify him with “Binah, the third Sephira of the
Sephirothal
Tree, or Binah, represented by the Divine name of Jehovah”. If as
Chnoumis-Kneph,
he represents the Indian Narayâna, the Spirit of ( moving on the
waters
of space, as Eichton or Ether he holds in his mouth an Egg, the symbol of
evolution
; and as Av he is Siva, the Destroyer and the Regenerator ; for, as
Deveria
explains:“His Journey to the lower hemispheres appears to symbolize the
evolutions
of substances, which are born to die and to be reborn.” Esoterically,
however,
and as taught by the Initiates of the inner temple, Chnoumis-Kneph was
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pre-eminently
the god of reincarnation. Says an inscription: “I am Chnoumis, Son
of
the Universe, 700”, a mystery having a direct reference to the reincarnating
EGO.
Chnouphis
(Gr.). Nouf in Egyptian. Another aspect of Ammon, and the
personification
of his generative power in actu, as Kneph is of the same in
potentia.
He is also ram-headed. If in his aspect as Kneph he is the Holy Spirit
with
the creative ideation brooding in him, as Chnouphis, he is the angel who
“comes
in” into the Virgin soil and flesh. A prayer on a papyrus, translated by
the
French Egyptologist Chabas, says; ‘ 0 Sepui, Cause of being, who hast formed
thine
own body! 0 only Lord, proceeding from Noum ! 0 divine substance, created
from
itself! 0 God, who hast made the substance which is in him! 0 God, who has
made
his own father and impregnated his own mother.” This shows the origin of
the
Christian doctrines of the Trinity and immaculate conception. He is seen on
a
monument seated near a potter’s wheel, and forming men out of clay. The
fig-leaf
is sacred to him, which is alone sufficient to prove him a phallic
god—an
idea which is carried out by the inscription: “he who made that which is,
the
creator of beings, the first existing, he who made to exist all that
exists.”
Some see in him the incarnation of Ammon-Ra, but he is the latter
himself
in his phallic aspect, for, like Ammon, he is “ his mother’s husband”,
i.e.,
the male or impregnating side of Nature. His names vary, as Cnouphis,
Noum,
Khem, and Khnum or Chnoumis. As he represents the Demiurgos (or Logos)
from
the material, lower aspect of the Soul of the World, he is the Agathodæmon,
symbolized
sometimes by a Serpent ; and his wife Athor or Maut (Môt mother), or
Sate,
“the daughter of the Sun”, carrying an arrow on a sunbeam (the ray of
conception),
stretches “mistress over the lower portions of the atmosphere”.
below
the constellations, as Neїth expands over the starry heavens. (See
“Chaos”.)
Chohan
(Tib.) “Lord” or “Master” ; a chief; thus Dhyan-Chohan would answer to
“Chief
of the Dhyanis”, or celestial Lights—which in English would he translated
Archangels.
Chokmah
(Heb) Wisdom; the second of the ten Sephiroth, and the second of the
supernal
Triad. A masculine potency corresponding to the Yod (I) of the
Tetragrammaton
IHVH, and to Ab, the Father.
[w.w.w.]
Chréstos
(Gr.) The early Gnostic form of Christ. It was used in the fifth
century
B.C. by Æschylus, Herodotus, and others. The Manteumata pythochresta, or
the
“oracles delivered by a Pythian god” “through a pythoness, are mentioned by
the
former (Choeph.901). Chréstian is not only “the seat of an oracle”, but an
offering
to, or for, the oracle.
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Chréstés
is one who explains oracles, “a prophet and soothsayer”, and
Chrésterios
one who serves an oracle or a god. The earliest Christian writer,
Justin
Martyr, in his first Apology calls his co-religionists Chréstians. It is
only
through ignorance that men call themselves Christians instead of
Chréstians,”
says Lactantius (lib. iv., cap. vii.). The terms Christ and
Christians,
spelt originally Chrést and Chréstians, were borrowed from the
Temple
vocabulary of the Pagans. Chréstos meant in that vocabulary a disciple on
probation,
a candidate for hierophantship. When he had attained to this through
initiation,
long trials, and suffering, and had been ‘‘anointed’’ (i.e., “rubbed
with
oil”, as were Initiates and even idols of the gods, as the last touch of
ritualistic
observance), his name was changed into Christos, the “purified”, in
esoteric
or mystery language. In mystic symbology, indeed, Christés, or
Christos,
meant that the “Way”, the Path, was already trodden and the goal
reached
; when the fruits of the arduous labour, uniting the personality of
evanescent
clay with the indestructible INDIVIDUALITY, transformed it thereby
into
the immortal EGO. “At the end of the Way stands the Chréstes”, the
Purifier,
and the union once accomplished, the Chrestos, the “man of sorrow”,
became
Christos himself. Paul, the Initiate, knew this, and meant this
precisely,
when he is made to say, in bad translation : ‘‘I travail in birth
again
until Christ be formed in you” (Gal. iv.19), the true rendering of which
is
. . . ‘‘until ye form the Christos within yourselves” But the profane who
knew
only that Chréstés was in some way connected with priest and prophet, and
knew
nothing about the hidden meaning of Christos, insisted, as did Lactantius
and
Justin Martyr, on being called Chréstians instead of Christians. Every good
individual,
therefore, may find Christ in his “inner man” as Paul expresses it
(Ephes.
iii. 16,17), whether he be Jew, Mussulman, Hindu, or Christian. Kenneth
Mackenzie
seemed to think that the word Chréstos was a synonym of Soter, “an
appellation
assigned to deities, great kings and heroes,” indicating
‘‘Saviour,’’—and
he was right. For, as he adds:“It has been applied redundantly
to
Jesus Christ, whose name Jesus or Joshua bears the same interpretation. The
name
Jesus, in fact, is rather a title of honour than a name—the true name of
the
Soter of Christianity being Emmanuel, or God with us (Matt.i, 23.).Great
divinities
among all nations, who are represented as expiatory or
self-sacrificing,
have been designated by the same title.’’ (R. M. Cyclop.) The
Asklepios
(or Æsculapius) of the Greeks had the title of Soter.
Christian
Scientist. A newly-coined term for denoting the practitioners of an
art
of healing by will. The name is a misnomer, since Buddhist or Jew, Hindu or
Materialist,
can practise this new form of
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Western
Yoga, with like success, if he can only guide and control his will with
sufficient
firmness. The
“Mental
Scientists” are another rival school. These work by a universal denial
of
every disease and evil imaginable, and claim syllogistically that since
Universal
Spirit cannot be subject to the failings of flesh, and since every
atom
is Spirit and in Spirit, and since finally, they—the healers and the
healed—are
all absorbed in this Spirit or Deity, there is not, nor can there he,
such
a thing as disease. This prevents in no wise both Christian and Mental
Scientists
from succumbing to disease, and nursing chronic diseases in their own
bodies
just like ordinary mortals.
Chthonia
(Gr.) Chaotic earth in the Hellenic cosmogony.
Chuang.
A great Chinese philosopher.
Chubilgan
(Mongol.) Or Khubilkhan. The same as Chutuktu.
Chutuktu
(Tib.) An incarnation of Buddha or of some Bodhisattva, as believed in
Tibet,
where there are generally five manifesting and two secret Chutuktus among
the
high Lamas.
Chyuta
(Sk.) Means, “the fallen” into generation, as a Kabbalist would say; the
opposite
of achyuta, something which is not subject to change or
differentiation;
said of deity.
Circle.
There are several “Circles” with mystic adjectives attached to them.
Thus
we have: (1) the
“Decussated
or Perfect Circle” of Plato, who shows it decussated in the form of
the
letter X ; (2) the
“Circle-dance”
of the Amazons, around a Priapic image, the same as the dance of
the
Gopis around the Sun (Krishna), the shepherdesses representing the signs of
the
Zodiac ; (3) the “Circle of Necessity”
of
3,000 years of the Egyptians and of the Occultists, the duration of the cycle
between
rebirths or reincarnations being from 1,000 to 3,000 years on the
average.
This will be treated under the term
“Rebirth”
or “Reincarnation”.
Clairaudience.
The faculty, whether innate or acquired by occult training, of
hearing
all that is said at whatever distance.
Clairvoyance.
The faculty of seeing with the inner eye or spiritual sight. As
now
used it is a loose and flippant term, embracing under its meaning a happy
guess
due to natural shrewdness or intuition, and also that faculty which was so
remarkably
exercised by Jacob Boehme and Swedenborg. Real clairvoyance means the
faculty
of seeing through the densest matter (the latter disappearing at the
will
and before the spiritual eye of the Seer), and irrespective of time (past,
present
and future) or distance.
Clemens
Alexandrinus. A Church Father and a voluminous writer, who had been a
Neo-Platonist
and a disciple of Ammonius Saccas. He
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lived
between the second and the third centuries of our era, at Alexandria.
Cock.
A very occult bird, much appreciated in ancient augury and symbolism.
According
to the Zohar, the cock crows three times before the death of a person;
and
in Russia and all Slavonian countries whenever a person is ill on the
premises
where a cock is kept, its crowing is held to be a sign of inevitable
death,
unless the bird crows at the hour of midnight, or immediately afterwards,
when
its crowing is considered natural. As the cock was sacred to Æsculapius,
and
a the latter was called the Soter (Saviour) who raised the dead to life, the
Socratic
exclamation “We owe a cock to Æculapius”, just before the Sage’s death,
is
very suggestive. As the cock Was always connected in symbology with the Sun
(or
solar gods), Death and Resurrection, it has found its appropriate place in
the
four Gospels in the prophecy about Peter repudiating his Master before the
cock
crowed thrice. The cock is the most magnetic and sensitive of all birds,
hence
its Greek name alectruon.
Codex
Nazaraeus (Lat.) The “Book of Adam”—the latter name meaning anthropos, Man
or
Humanity. The Nazarene faith is called sometimes the Bardesanian system,
though
Bardesanes (B.C. 155 to 228) does not seem to have had any connection
with
it. True, he was born at Edessa in Syria, and was a famous astrologer and
Sabian
before his alleged conversion. But he was a well-educated man of noble
family,
and would not have used the almost incomprehensible Chaldeo dialect
mixed
with the mystery language of the Gnostics, in which the Codex is written.
The
sect of the Nazarenes was pre-Christian. Pliny and Josephus speak of the
Nazarites
as settled on the banks of the Jordan 150 years B.C. (Ant.Jud. xiii.
p.
9); and Munk says that the “Naziareate was an institution established before
the
laws of Musah” or Moses. (Munk p. 169.) Their modern name is in Arabic— El
Mogtasila;
in European languages—the
Mendæans
or “Christians of St. John”. (See “Baptism”.) But if the term Baptists
may
well be applied to them, it is not with the Christian meaning: for while
they
were, and still are Sabians, or pure astrolaters, the Mendæans of Syria,
called
the Galileans, are pure polytheists, as every traveller in Syria and on
the
Euphrates can ascertain, once he acquaints himself with their mysterious
rites
and ceremonies. (See Isis Unv. ii. 290, et seq.) So secretly did they
preserve
their beliefs from the very beginning, that Epiphanius who wrote
against
the Heresies in the14th century confesses himself unable to say what
they
believed in (i. 122); he simply states that they never mention the name of
Jesus,
nor do they call themselves Christians (loc. cit. 190. Yet it is
undeniable
that
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some
of the alleged philosophical views and doctrines of Bardesanes are found in
the
codex of the Nazarenes. (See Norberg’s Codex Nazaræous or the “Book of
Adam”,
and also “Mendæans ”.)
Coeur,
Jacques. A famous Treasurer of France, born in 1408, who obtained the
office
by black magic. He was reputed as a great alchemist and his wealth became
fabulous;
but he was soon banished from the country, and retiring to the Island
of
Cyprus, died there in 1460, leaving behind enormous wealth, endless legends
and
a bad reputation.
Coffin-Rite,
or Pastos. This was the final rite of Initiation in the Mysteries
in
Egypt, Greece and elsewhere. The last and supreme secrets of Occultism could
not
be revealed to the Disciple until he had passed through this allegorical
ceremony
of Death and Resurrection into new light. “The Greek verb teleutaó,”
says
Vronsky, “signifies in the active voice ‘I die’, and in the middle voice ‘I
am
initiated”. Stobæus quotes an ancient author, who says, “The mind is affected
in
death, just as it is in the initiation into the Mysteries ; and word answers
to
word, as well as thing to thing ; for teleutan is ‘ to die ‘, and teleisthai
‘to
be initiated’”. And thus, as Mackenzie corroborates, when the Aspirant was
placed
in the Pastos, Bed, or Coffin (in India on the lathe, as explained in the
Secret
Doctrine), “he was symbolically said to die.”
Collanges,
Gabriel de. Born in 1524. The best astrologer in the XVlth century
and
a still better Kabbalist. He spent a fortune in the unravelling of its
mysteries.
It was rumoured that he died through poison administered to him by a
Jewish
Rabbin-Kabbalist.
College
of Rabbis. A college at Babylon; most famous during the early centuries
of
Christianity. Its glory, however, was greatly darkened by the appearance in
Alexandria
of Hellenic teachers, such as Philo Judæus, Josephus, Aristobulus and
others.
The former avenged themselves on their successful rivals by speaking of
the
Alexandrians as theurgists and unclean prophets. But the Alexandrian
believers
in thaumaturgy were not regarded as sinners or impostors when orthodox
Jews
were at the head of such schools of “hazim”. These were colleges for
teaching
prophecy and occult sciences. Samuel was the chief of such a college at
Ramah;
Elisha at Jericho. Hillel had a regular academy for prophets and seers;
and
it is Hillel, a pupil of the Babylonian College, who was the founder of the
Sect
of the Pharisees and the great orthodox Rabbis.
Collemann,
Jean. An Alsatian, born at Orleans, according to K. Mackenzie; other
accounts
say he was a Jew, who found favour owing to his astrological studies,
with
both Charles VII. and Louis XI., and that he had a bad influence on the
latter.
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Collyridians.
A sect of Gnostics who, in the ear]y centuries of Christianity,
transferred
their worship and reverence from Astoreth to Mary, as Queen of
Heaven
and Virgin. Regarding the two as identical, they offered to the latter as
they
had done to the former, buns and cakes on certain days, with sexual symbols
represented
on them.
Continents.
In the Buddhist cosmogony, according to Gautama Buddha’s exoteric
doctrine,
there are numberless systems of worlds (or Sakwala) all of which are
born,
mature, decay, and are destroyed periodically. Orientalists translate the
teaching
about “the four great continents which do not communicate with each
other”,
as meaning that “upon the earth there are four great continents” (see
Hardy’s
Eastern Monachism, p. 4), while the doctrine means simply that around or
above
the earth there are on either side four worlds, i.e., the earth appearing
as
the fourth on each side of the arc.
Corybantes,
Mysteries of the. These were held in Phrygia in honour of Atys, the
youth
beloved by Cybele. The rites were very elaborate within the temple and
very
noisy and tragic in public. They began by a public bewailing of the death
of
Atys and ended in tremendous rejoicing at his resurrection. The statue or
image
of the victim of Jupiter’s jealousy was placed during the ceremony in a
pastos
(coffin), and the priests sang his sufferings. Atys, as Visvakarma in
India,
was a representative of Initiation and Adeptship. He is shown as being
born
impotent, because chastity is a requisite of the life of an aspirant. Atys
is
said to have established the rites and worship of Cybele, in Lydia. (See
Pausan.,
vii., c. 17.)
Cosmic
Gods. Inferior gods, those connected with the formation of matter.
Cosmic
ideation (Occult.) Eternal thought, impressed on substance or
spirit-matter,
in the eternity ; thought which becomes active at the beginning
of
every new life-cycle.
Cosmocratores
(Gr.). “Builders of the Universe”, the “world architects”, or the
Creative
Forces personified.
Cow-worship.
The idea of any such “worship” is as erroneous as it is unjust. No
Egyptian
worshipped the cow, nor does any Hindu worship this animal now, though
it
is true that the cow and bull were sacred then as they are to-day, but only
as
the natural physical symbol of a metaphysical ideal; even as a church made of
bricks
and mortar is sacred to the civilized Christian because of its
associations
and not by reason of its walls. The cow was sacred to Isis, the
Universal
Mother, Nature, and to the Hathor, the female principle in Nature, the
two
goddesses being allied to both sun and moon, as the disk and the cow’s
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horns
(crescent) prove. (See “Hathor ‘ and “isis”.) In the Vedas, the Dawn of
Creation
is represented by a cow. This dawn is Hathor, and the day which
follows,
or Nature already formed, is Isis, for both are one except in the
matter
of time. Hathor the elder is “the mistress of the seven mystical cows ”
and
Isis, “the Divine Mother is the “cow-horned” the cow of plenty (or Nature,
Earth),
and, as the mother of Horus (the physical world)—the “mother of all that
lives
The outa was the symbolic eye of Horus, the right being the sun, and the
left
the moon. The right “eye” of Horus was called “the cow of Hathor”, and
served
as a powerful amulet, as the dove in a nest of rays or glory, with or
without
the cross, is a talisman with Christians, Latins and Greeks. The Bull
and
the Lion which we often find in company with Luke and Mark in the
frontispiece
of their respective Gospels in the Greek and Latin texts, are
explained
as symbols—-which is indeed the fact. Why not admit the same in the
case
of the Egyptian sacred Bulls, Cows, Rams, and Birds?
Cremer,
John. An eminent scholar who for over thirty years studied Hermetic
philosophy
in pursuance of its practical secrets, while he was at the same time
Abbot
of Westminster While on a voyage to Italy, he met the famous Raymond Lully
whom
he induced to return with him to England. Lully divulged to Cremer the
secrets
of the stone, for which service the monastery offered daily prayers for
him.
Cremer, says the Royal Masonic Cyclopedia, “having obtained a profound
knowledge
of the secrets of Alchemy, became a most celebrated and learned adept
in
occult philosophy . . . lived to a good old age, and died in the reign of
King
Edward III.”
Crescent.
Sin was the Assyrian name for the moon, and Sin-ai the Mount, the
birth-place
of Osiris, of Dionysos, Bacchus and several other gods. According to
Rawlinson,
the moon was held in higher esteem than the sun at Babylon, because
darkness
preceded light. The crescent was, therefore, a sacred symbol with
almost
every nation, before it became the ‘standard of the Turks. Says the
author
of Egyptian Belief, “ The crescent is not essentially a Mahometan ensign.
On
the contrary, it was a Christian one, derived through Asia from the
Babylonian
Astarte, Queen of Heaven, or from the Egyptian Isis . . . . whose
emblem
was the crescent. The Greek Christian Empire of Constantinople held it as
their
palladium. Upon the conquest of the Turks, the Mahometan Sultan adopted it
for
the symbol of his power. Since that time the crescent has been made to
oppose
the idea of the cross.”
Criocephale
(Gr.). Ram-headed, applied to several deities and emblematic
figures,
notably those of ancient Egypt, which were designed
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about
the period when the Sun passed, at the Vernal Equinox, from the sign
Taurus
to the sign Aries. Previously to this period, bull-headed and horned
deities
prevailed. Apis was the type of the Bull deity, Ammon that of the
ram-headed
type: Isis, too, had a Cow’s head allotted to her. Porphyry writes
that
the Greeks united the Ram to Jupiter and the Bull to Bacchus. [w.w.w.]
Crocodile.
“The great reptile of Typhon.” The seat of its “worship” was
Crocodilopolis
and it was sacred to Set and Sebak—its alleged creators. The
primitive
Rishis in India, the Manus, and Sons of Brahmâ, are each the
progenitors
of some animal species, of which he is the alleged “father”; in
Egypt,
each god was credited with the formation or creation of certain animals
which
were sacred to him. Crocodiles must have been numerous in Egypt during the
early
dynasties, if one has to judge by the almost incalculable number of their
mummies.
Thousands upon thousands have been excavated from the grottoes of
Moabdeh,
and many a vast necropolis of that Typhonic animal is still left
untouched.
But the Crocodile was only worshipped where his god and “father”
received
honours. Typhon (q.v.) had once received such honours and, as Bunsen
shows,
had been considered a great god. His words are, “ Down to the time of
Ramses
B.C. 1300, Typhon was one of the most venerated and powerful gods, a god
who
pours blessings and life on the rulers of Egypt.” As explained elsewhere,
Typhon
is the material aspect of Osiris. When Typhon, the Quaternary, kills
Osiris,
the triad or divine Light, and cuts it metaphorically into 14 pieces,
and
separates himself from the “god”, he incurs the execration of the masses; he
becomes
the evil god, the storm and hurricane god, the burning sand of the
Desert,
the constant enemy of the Nile, and the “slayer of the evening
beneficent
dew”, because Osiris is the ideal Universe, Siva the great
Regenerative
Force, and Typhon the material portion of it, the evil side of the
god,
or the Destroying Siva. This is why the crocodile is also partly venerated
and
partly execrated. The appearance of the crocodile in the Desert, far from
the
water, prognosticated the happy event of the coming inundation—hence its
adoration
at Thebes and Ombos. But he destroyed thousands of human and animal
beings
yearly—hence also the hatred and persecution of the Crocodile at
Elephantine
and Tentyra.
Cross.
Mariette Bey has shown its antiquity in Egypt by proving that in all the
primitive
sepulchres “the plan of the chamber has the form of a cross”. It is
the
symbol of the Brotherhood of races and men; and was laid on the breast of
the
corpses in Egypt, as it is now placed on the corpses of deceased Christians,
and,
in its Swastica form (croix
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cramponnée)
on the hearts of the Buddhist adepts and Buddhas. (See “Calvary
Cross”.)
Crux
Ansata (Lat.). The handled cross,T; whereas the tau is T, in this form, and
the
oldest Egyptian cross or the tat is thus +. The crux ansata was the symbol
of
immortality, but the tat-cross was that of spirit-matter and had the
significance
of a sexual emblem. The crux ansata was the foremost symbol in the
Egyptian
Masonry instituted by Count Cagliostro; and Masons must have indeed
forgotten
the primitive significance of their highest symbols, if some of their
authorities
still insist that the crux ansata is only a combination of the cteis
(or
yoni) and phallus (or lingham). Far from this. The handle or ansa had a
double
significance, but never a phallic one; as an attribute of Isis it was the
mundane
circle; as symbol of law on the breast of a mummy it was that of
immortality,
of an endless and beginningless eternity, that which descends upon
and
grows out of the plane of material nature, the horizontal feminine line,
surmounting
the vertical male line—the fructifying male principle in nature or
spirit.
Without the handle the crux ansata became the tau T, which, left by
itself,
is an androgyne symbol, and becomes purely phallic or sexual only when
it
takes the shape +.
Crypt
(Gr.) A secret subterranean vault, some for the purpose of initiation,
others
for burial purposes. There were crypts under every temple in antiquity.
There
was one on the Mount of Olives, lined with red stucco, and built before
the
advent of the Jews.
Curetes.
The Priest-Initiates of ancient Crete, in the service of Cybele.
Initiation
in their temples was very severe ; it lasted twenty-seven days,
during
which time the aspirant was left by himself in a crypt, undergoing
terrible
trials. Pythagoras was initiated into these rites and came out
victorious.
Cutha.
An ancient city in Babylonia after which a tablet giving an account of
“creation”
is named.
The
“Cutha tablet” speaks of a temple of Sittam”, in the sanctuary of Nergal,
the
“giant king of
war,
lord of the city of Cutha”, and is purely esoteric, it has to be read
symbolically,
if at all.
Cycle.
From the Greek Kuklos. The ancients divided time into end less cycles,
wheels
within wheels, all such periods being of various durations, and each
marking
the beginning or the end of some event either cosmic, mundane, physical
or
metaphysical. There were cycles of only a few years, and cycles of immense
duration,
the great Orphic cycle, referring to the ethnological change of races,
lasting
120,000 years, and the cycle of Cassandrus of 136,000, which brought
about
a complete
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change
in planetary influences and their correlations between men and gods—a
fact
entirely lost sight of by modern astrologers.
Cynocephalus
(Gr.) The Egyptian Hapi. There was a notable difference between the
ape-headed
gods and the “Cynocephalus” (Simia hamadryas), a dog-headed baboon
from
upper Egypt. The latter, whose sacred city was Hermopolis, was sacred to
the
lunar deities and Thoth Hermes, hence an emblem of secret wisdom—as was
Hanuman,
the monkey-god of India, and later, the elephant-headed Ganesha. The
mission
of the Cynocephalus was to show the way for the Dead to the Seat of
Judgment
and Osiris, whereas the ape-gods were all phallic. They are almost
invariably
found in a crouching posture, holding on one hand the outa (the eye
of
Horus), and in the other the sexual cross. Isis is seen sometimes riding on
an
ape, to designate the fall of divine nature into generation.
D
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D. Both in the English and Hebrew alphabets the
fourth letter, whose numerical
value
is four. The symbolical signification in the Kabbala of the Daleth is
“door”.
It is the Greek delta D, through which the world (whose symbol is the
tetrad
or number four,) issued, producing the divine seven. The name of the
Tetrad
was Harmony with the Pythagoreans, “because it is a diatessaron in
sesquitertia”.
With the Kabbalists, the divine name associated with Daleth was
Daghoul.
Daath
(Heb.) Knowledge; “the conjunction of Chokmah and Binah, Wisdom and
Understanding”:
sometimes, in error, called a Sephira. [w.w.w.]
Dabar
(Heb.) D (a) B (a) R (im), meaning the “Word”, and the “Words” in the
Chaldean
Kabbala, Dabar and Logoi. (See Sec.Doct. I. p. 350, and “Logos”, or
“Word”.)
Dabistan
(Pers.) The land of Iran; ancient Persia.
Dache-Dachus
(Chald.) The dual emanation of Moymis, the progeny of the dual or
androgynous
World-Principle, the male Apason and female Tauthe. Like all
theocratic
nations possessing Temple mysteries, the Babylonians never mentioned
the
“One” Principle of the Universe, nor did they give it a name. This made
Damascious
(Theogonies) remark that like the rest of “ barbarians” the
Babylonians
passed it over in silence. Tauthe was the mother of the gods, while
Apason
was her self-generating male power, Moymis, the ideal universe, being her
only-begotten
son, and emanating in his turn Dache-Dachus, and at last Belus,
the
Demiurge of the objective Universe.
Dactyli
(Gr.) From daktulos, “a finger”. The name given to the Phrygian
Hierophants
of Kybele, who were regarded as the greatest magicians and
exorcists.
They were five or ten in number because of the five fingers on one
hand
that blessed, and the ten on both hands which evoke the gods. They also
healed
by manipulation or mesmerism.
Dadouchos
(Gr.) The torch-hearer, one of the four celebrants in the Eleusinian
mysteries.
There were several attached to the temples but they appeared in
public
only at the Panathenaic Games at Athens, to preside over the so-called
“torch-race”.
(See Mackenzie’s R.M, Cyclopædia.)
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Dæmon
(Gr.) In the original Hermetic works and ancient classics it has a meaning
identical
with that of “god”, “angel” or “genius”. The Dæmon of Socrates is the
incorruptible
part of the man, or rather the real inner man which we call Nous
or
the rational divine Ego. At all events the Dæmon (or Daimon of the great Sage
was
surely not the demon of the Christian Hell or of Christian orthodox
theology.
The name was given by ancient peoples, and especially the philosophers
of
the Alexandrian school, to all kinds of spirits, whether good or bad, human
or
otherwise. The appellation is often synonymous with that of gods or angels.
But
some philosophers tried, with good reason, to make a just distinction
between
the many classes.
Dænam
(Pahlavi) Lit., “Knowledge”, the principle of understanding in man,
rational
Soul, or Manas, according to the Avesta.
Dag,
Dagon (Heb.). “Fish” and also “Messiah”. Dagon was the Chaldean man-fish
Oannes,
the mysterious being who arose daily out of the depths of the sea to
teach
people every useful science. He was also called Annedotus.
Dâgoba
(Sk.), or Stûpa. Lit: a sacred mound or tower for Buddhist holy relics.
These
are pyramidal-looking mounds scattered all over India and Buddhist
countries,
such as Ceylon, Burmah, Central Asia, etc. They are of various sizes,
and
generally contain some small relics of Saints or those claimed to have
belonged
to Gautama, the Buddha. As the human body is supposed to consist of
84,000
dhâtus (organic cells with definite vital functions in them), Asoka is
said
for this reason to have built 84,000 dhâtu-gopas or Dâgobas in honour of
every
cell of the Buddha’s body, each of which has now become a dhârmadhâtu or
holy
relic. There is in Ceylon a Dhâtu-gopa at Anurâdhapura said to date from160
years
B.C. They are now built pyramid-like, but the primitive Dâgobas were all
shaped
like towers with a cupola and several tchhatra (umbrellas) over them.
Eitel
states that the Chinese Dâgobas have all from 7 to 14 tchhatras over them,
a
number which is symbolical of the human body.
Daitya
Guru (Sk.) The instructor of the giants, called Daityas (q.v.)
Allegorically,
it is the title given to the planet Venus-Lucifer, or rather to
its
indwelling Ruler, Sukra, a male deity
(See
Sec. Doct.. ii. p. 30).
Daityas
(Sk.) Giants, Titans, and exoterically demons, but in truth identical
with
certain Asuras, the intellectual gods, the opponents of the useless gods of
ritualism
and the enemies of puja sacrifices.
Daivi-prakriti
(Sk.) Primordial, homogeneous light, called by some Indian
Occultists
“the Light of the Logos” (see Notes on the Bhagavat Gita, by T. Subba
Row,
B.A., L.L.B.); when differentiated this light becomes FOHAT.
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Dâkinî
(Sk.) Female demons, vampires and blood-drinkers (asra-pas). In the
Purânas
they attend upon the goddess Kâli and feed on human flesh. A species of
evil
“Elementals” (q.v.).
Daksha
(Sk.) A form of Brahmâ and his son in the Purânas But the Rig Veda states
that
“Daksha sprang from Aditi, and Aditi from Daksha”, which proves him to be a
personified
correlating Creative Force acting on all the planes. The
Orientalists
seem very much perplexed what to make of him; but Roth is nearer
the
truth than any, when saying that Daksha is the spiritual power, and at the
same
time the male energy that generates the gods in eternity, which is
represented
by Aditi. The Purânas as a matter of course, anthropomorphize the
idea,
and show Daksha instituting “sexual intercourse on this earth”, after
trying
every other means of procreation. The generative Force, spiritual at the
commencement,
becomes of course at the most material end of its evolution a
procreative
Force on the physical plane ; and so far the Purânic allegory is
correct,
as the Secret Science teaches that our present mode of procreation
began
towards the end of the third Root-Race.
Daladâ
(Sk.)A very precious relic of Gautama the Buddha; viz., his supposed left
canine
tooth preserved at the great temple at Kandy, Ceylon. Unfortunately, the
relic
shown is not genuine. The latter has been securely secreted for several
hundred
years, ever since the shameful and bigoted attempt by the Portuguese
(the
then ruling power in Ceylon) to steal and make away with the real relic.
That
which is shown in the place of the real thing is the monstrous tooth of
some
animal.
Dama
(Sk.). Restraint of the senses.
Dambulla
(Sk.) The name of a huge rock in Ceylon. It is about 400 feet above the
level
of the sea. Its upper portion is excavated, and several large
cave-temples,
or Vihâras, are cut out of the solid rock, all of these being of
pre-Christian
date. They are considered as the best- preserved antiquities in
the
island. The North side of the rock is vertical and quite inaccessible, but
on
the South side, about 150 feet from its summit, its huge overhanging granite
mass
has been fashioned into a platform with a row of large cave-temples
excavated
in the surrounding walls—evidently at an enormous sacrifice of labour
and
money. Two Vihâras may he mentioned out of the many: the Maha Râja Vihâra,
172
ft. in length and 75 in breadth, in which there are upwards of fifty figures
of
Buddha, most of them larger than life and all formed from the solid rock. A
well
has been dug out at the foot of the central Dâgoba and from a fissure in
the
rock there constantly drips into it beautiful clear water which is kept for
sacred
purposes. In the other, the Maha
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Dewiyo
Vihâra, there is to be seen a gigantic figure of the dead Gautama Buddha,
7
feet long, reclining on a couch and pillow cut out of solid rock like the
rest.
“This long, narrow and dark temple, the position and placid aspect of
Buddha,
together with the stillness of the place, tend to impress the beholder
with
the idea that he is in the chamber of death. The priest asserts . . . .
that
such was Buddha, and such were those (at his feet stands an attendant) who
witnessed
the last moments of his mortality” (Hardy’s East. Monachism). The view
from
Dambulla is magnificent. On the large rock platform which seems to he now
more
visited by very intelligent tame white monkeys than by monks, there stands
a
huge Bo-Tree, one of the numerous scions from the original Bo-Tree under which
the
Lord Siddhârtha reached Nirvâna. “About 50 ft. from the summit there is a
pond
which, as the priests assert, is never without water.”
(The
Ceylon Almanac, 1834.)
Dammâpadan
(Pali.) A Buddhist work containing moral precepts.
Dâna
(Sk.). Almsgiving to mendicants, lit., “charity”, the first of the six
Paramitas
in Buddhism.
Dânavas
(Sk.). Almost the same as Daityas; giants and demons, the opponents of
the
ritualistic gods.
Dangma
(Sk.) In Esotericism a purified Soul. A Seer and an Initiate; one who has
attained
full wisdom.
Daos
(Chald.) The seventh King (Shepherd) of the divine Dynasty, who reigned
over
the Babylonians for the space of ten sari, or 36,000 years, a saros being
of
3,600 years’ duration. In his time four Annedoti, or Men-fishes (Dagons) made
their
appearance.
Darâsta
(Sk) Ceremonial magic practised by the central Indian tribes, especially
among
the Kolarians.
Dardanus
(Gr.) The Son of Jupiter and Electra, who received the Kabeiri gods as
a
dowry, and took them to Samothrace, where they were worshipped long before the
hero
laid the foundations of Troy, and before Tyre and Sidon were ever heard of,
though
Tyre was built 2,760 years B.C.
(See
for fuller details “Kabiri”.)
Darha
(Sk.) The ancestral spirits of the Kolarians.
Darsanas
(Sk.) The Schools of Indian philosophy, of which there are six;
Shad-darsanas
or six demonstrations.
Dasa-sil
(Pali.) The ten obligations or commandments taken by and binding upon
the
priests of Buddha; the five obligations or Pansil are taken by laymen.
Dava
(Tib.) The moon, in Tibetan astrology.
Davkina
(Chald.) The wife of Hea, “the goddess of the lower regions,
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the
consort of the Deep”, the mother of Merodach, the Bel of later times, and
mother
to many river-gods, Hea being the god of the lower regions, the “lord of
the
Sea or abyss”, and also the lord of Wisdom.
Dayanisi
(Aram.). The god worshipped by the Jews along with other Semites, as
the
“Ruler of men”; Dionysos—the Sun; whence Jehovah Nissi, or Iao-Nisi, the
same
as Dio-nysos or Jove of Nyssa.
(See
Isis Unveil. II. 526.)
Day
of Brahmâ. See “Brahmâ's Day” etc.
Dayus
or Dyaus (Sk). A Vedic term. The unrevealed Deity, or that which reveals
Itself
only as light and the bright day—metaphorically.
Death,
Kiss of. According to the Kabbalah, the earnest follower does not die by
the
power of the Evil Spirit, Yetzer ha Rah, but by a kiss from the mouth of
Jehovah
Tetragrammaton, meeting him in the Haikal Ahabah or Palace of Love.
[w.w.w.]
Dei
termini (Lat.). The name for pillars with human heads representing Hermes,
placed
at cross-roads by the ancient Greeks and Romans. Also the general name
for
deities presiding over boundaries
and
frontiers.
Deist.
One who admits the existence of a god or gods, but claims to know nothing
of
either and denies revelation. A Freethinker of olden times.
Demerit.
In Occult and Buddhistic parlance, a constituent of Karma. It is
through
avidya or ignorance of vidya, divine illumination, that merit and
demerit
are produced. Once an Arhat obtains full illumination and perfect
control
over his personality and lower nature, he ceases to create merit and
demerit
Demeter
The Hellenic name for the Latin Ceres, the goddess of corn and tillage.
The
astronomical sign, Virgo. The Eleusinian Mysteries were celebrated in her
honour.
Demiurgic
Mind.The same as “Universal Mind”. Mahat, the first “product” of
Brahmâ,
or himself.
Demiurgos
(Gr) The Demiurge or Artificer; the Supernal Power which built the
universe.
Freemasons derive from this word their phrase of “Supreme Architect ”.
With
the Occultists it is the third manifested Logos, or Plato’s “second god”,
the
second logos being represented by him as the “Father”, the only Deity that
he
dared mention as an Initiate into the Mysteries.
Demon
est Deus inversus (Lat) A Kabbalistic axiom; lit., “the devil is god
reversed”;
which means that there is neither evil nor good, but that the forces
which
create the one create the other, according to the nature of the materials
they
find to work upon.
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Demonologia
(Gr.). Treatises or Discourses upon Demons, or Gods in their dark
aspects.
Demons.
According to the Kabbalah, the demons dwell in the world of Assiah, the
world
of matter and of the “shells”’ of the dead. They are the Klippoth. There
are
Seven Hells, whose demon dwellers represent the vices personified. Their
prince
is Samael, his female companion is Isheth Zenunim—the woman of
prostitution:
united in aspect, they are named “The Beast”, Chiva. [w.w.w.]
Demrusch
(Pers.). A Giant in the mythology of ancient Iran.
Denis,
Angoras. “A physician of Paris, astrologer and alchemist in the XIVth
century”
(R.M.C.).
Deona
Mati. In the Kolarian dialect, one who exorcises evil spirits.
Dervish.
A Mussulman—Turkish or Persian—ascetic. A nomadic and wandering monk.
Dervishes,
however, sometimes live in communities. They are often called the
“whirling
charmers”. Apart from his austerities of life, prayer and
contemplation,
the Turkish, Egyptian, or Arabic devotee presents but little
similarity
with the Hindu fakir, who is also a Mussulman. The latter may become
a
saint and holy mendicant the former will never reach beyond his second class
of
occult manifestations. The dervish may also be a strong mesmerizer, but he
will
never voluntarily submit to the abominable and almost incredible
self-punishment
which the fakir invents for himself with an ever-increasing
avidity,
until nature succumbs and he dies in slow and excruciating tortures.
The
most dreadful operations, such as flaying the limbs alive; cutting off the
toes,
feet, and legs ; tearing out the eyes and causing one’s self to be buried
alive
up to the chin in the earth, and passing whole months in this posture,
seem
child’s play to them. The Dervish must not be confused with the Hindu
sanyâsi
or yogi. (See “Fakir”).
Desatir.
A very ancient Persian work called the Book of Shet. It speaks of the
thirteen
Zoroasters, and is very mystical.
Deva
(Sk.). A god, a “resplendent” deity. Deva-Deus, from the root div “to
shine”.
A Deva is a celestial being—whether good, bad, or indifferent. Devas
inhabit
“the three worlds”, which are the three planes above us. There are 33
groups
or 330 millions of them.
Deva
Sarga (Sk.). Creation: the origin of the principles, said to be
Intelligence
born of the qualities or the attributes of nature.
Devachan
(Sk.). The “dwelling of the gods”. A state intermediate between two
earth-lives,
into which the EGO (Atmâ-Buddhi-Manas, or the Trinity made One)
enters,
after its separation from Kâma Rupa, and the disintegration of the lower
principles
on earth.
Devajnânas
(Sk.). or Daivajna. The higher classes of celestial beings, those who
possess
divine knowledge.
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Devaki
(Sk.). The mother of Krishna. She was shut up in a dungeon by her
brother,
King Kansa, for fear of the fulfilment of a prophecy which stated that
a
son of his sister should dethrone and kill him. Notwithstanding the strict
watch
kept, Devaki was overshadowed by Vishnu, the holy Spirit, and thus gave
birth
to that god’s avatara, Krishna. (See “Kansa”.)
Deva-laya
(Sk.). “The shrine of a Deva”. The name given to all Brahmanical
temples.
Deva-lôkas
(Sk.). The abodes of the Gods or Devas in superior spheres. The seven
celestial
worlds above Meru.
Devamâtri
(Sk.). Lit., “the mother of the gods”. A title of Aditi, Mystic Space.
Dêvanâgarî
(Sk.). Lit., “the language or letters of the dêvas” or gods. The
characters
of the Sanskrit language. The alphabet and the art of writing were
kept
secret for ages, as the Dwijas (Twice-born) and the Dikshitas (Initiates)
alone
were permitted to use this art. It was a crime for a. Sudra to recite a
verse
of the Vedas, and for any of the two lower castes (Vaisya and Sudra) to
know
the letters was an offence punishable by death. Therefore is the word lipi,
‘‘writing”,
absent from the oldest MSS., a fact which gave the Orientalists the
erroneous
and rather incongruous idea that writing was not only unknown before
the
day of Pânini, but even to that sage himself That the greatest grammarian
the
world has ever produced should be ignorant of writing would indeed be the
greatest
and most incomprehensible phenomenon of all.
Devapi
(Sk.). A Sanskrit Sage of the race of Kuru, who, together with another
Sage
(Moru), is supposed to live throughout the four ages and until the coming
of
Maitreya Buddha, or Kalki (the last Avatar of Vishnu) ; who, like all the
Saviours
of the World in their last appearance, like Sosiosh of the Zoroastrians
and
the Rider of St. Johns Revelation, will appear seated on a White Horse. The
two,
Devapi and Moru, are supposed to live in a Himalayan retreat called Kalapa
or
Katapa. This is a Purânic allegory.
Devarshis,
or Deva-rishi (Sk). Lit., “gods rishis” ; the divine or god like
saints,
those sages who attain a fully divine nature on earth.
Devasarman
(Sk.). A very ancient author who died about a century after Gautama
Buddha.
He wrote two famous works, in which he denied the existence of both Ego
and
non-Ego, the one as successfully as the other.
Dhârana
(Sk). That state in Yoga practice when the mind has to be fixed
unflinchingly
on some object of meditation.
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0
Dhâranî(Sk.).
In Buddhism—both Southern and Northern—and also in Hinduism, it
means
simply a mantra or mantras—sacred verses from the Rig Veda. In days of old
these
mantras or Dhâranî were all considered mystical and practically
efficacious
in their use. At present, however, it is the Yogâchârya school alone
which
proves the claim in practice. When chanted according to given instructions
a
Dhâranî
produces wonderful effects. Its occult power, however, does not reside
in
the words but in the inflexion or accent given and the resulting sound
originated
thereby. (See “Mantra” and “Akasa”).
Dharma
(Sk.). The sacred Law; the Buddhist Canon.
Dharmachakra
(Sk.). Lit., The turning of the “wheel of the Law”. The emblem of
Buddhism
as a system of cycles and rebirths or reincarnations.
Dharmakâya
(Sk). Lit., “the glorified spiritual body” called the “Vesture of
Bliss”.
The third, or highest of the Trikâya (Three Bodies), the attribute
developed
by every “Buddha”, i.e., every initiate who has crossed or reached the
end
of what is called the “fourth Path” (in esotericism the sixth “portal” prior
to
his entry on the seventh). The highest of the Trikâya, it is the fourth of
the
Buddhakchêtra, or Buddhic planes of consciousness, represented figuratively
in
Buddhist asceticism as a robe or vesture of luminous Spirituality.
In
popular Northern Buddhism these vestures or robes are:
(1)
Nirmanakâya (2) Sambhogakâya (3) and
Dharmakâya the last being the highest
and
most sublimated of all, as it places the ascetic on the threshold of
Nirvâna.
(See, however, the Voice of the Silence, page 96, Glossary, for the
true
esoteric meaning.)
Dharmaprabhasa
(Sk). The name of the Buddha who will appear during the seventh
Root-race.
(See “Ratnâvabhâsa Kalpa”, when sexes will exist no longer).
Dharmasmriti
Upasthâna (Sk). A very long compound word containing a very
mystical
warning. “Remember, the constituents (of human nature) originate
according
to the Nidânas, and are-not originally the Self”, which means—that,
which
the Esoteric Schools teach, and not the ecclesiastical interpretation.
Dharmâsôka
(Sk.). The name given to the first Asoka after his conversion to
Buddhism,—King
Chandragupta, who served all his long life “Dharma”, or the law
of
Buddha. King Asoka (the second) was not converted, but was born a Buddhist.
Dhâtu
(Pali). Relics of Buddha’s body collected after his cremation.
Dhruva
(Sk). An Aryan Sage, now the Pole Star. A Kshatriya (one of the warrior
caste)
who became through religious austerities a
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Rishi,
and was, for this reason, raised by Vishnu to this eminence in the skies.
Also
called Grah-Âdhâr or “the pivot of the planets”.
Dhyan
Chohans (Sk). Lit., “The Lords of Light”. The highest gods, answering to
the
Roman Catholic Archangels. The divine Intelligences charged with the
supervision
of Kosmos.
Dhyâna
(Sk.). In Buddhism one of the six Paramitas of perfection, a state of
abstraction
which carries the ascetic practising it far above this plane of
sensuous
perception and out of the world of matter.
Lit.,
“contemplation”. The six stages of Dhyan differ only in the degrees of
abstraction
of the personal Ego from sensuous life.
Dhyani
Bodhisattyas (Sk.). In Buddhism, the five sons of the Dhyani-Buddhas.
They
have a mystic meaning in Esoteric Philosophy.
Dhyani
Buddhas (Sk.). They “of the Merciful Heart”; worshipped especially in
Nepaul.
These have again a secret meaning.
Dhyani
Pasa (Sk.). “The rope of the Dhyanis” or Spirits; the Ring “Pass not”
(See
Sec.Doct., Stanza V., Vol. I., p. 129).
Diakka.
Called by Occultists and Theosophists “spooks” and “shells”, i.e.,
phantoms
from Kâma Loka. A word invented by the great American Seer, Andrew
Jackson
Davis, to denote what he considers untrustworthy “Spirits”. In his own
words:
“A Diakka (from the Summerland) is one who takes insane delight in
playing
parts, in juggling tricks, in personating opposite characters; to whom
prayer
and profane utterances are of equi-value; surcharged with a passion for
lyrical
narrations; . . . morally deficient, he is without the active feelings
of
justice, philanthropy, or tender affection. He knows nothing of what men call
the
sentiment of gratitude; the ends of hate and love are the same to him; his
motto
is often fearful and terrible to others—SELF is the whole of private
living,
and exalted annihilation the end of all private life. Only yesterday,
one
said to a lady medium, signing himself Swedenborg, this: ‘Whatsoever is, has
been,
will be, or may be, that I AM.; and private life is but the aggregative
phantasms
of thinking throb- lets, rushing in their rising onward to the central
heart
of eternal death’
(The
Diakka and their Victims; “an explanation of the False and Repulsive in
Spiritualism.”)
These “Diakka” are then simply the communicating and
materializing
so-called “Spirits” of Mediums and Spiritualists.
Dianoia
(Gr.). The same as the Logos. The eternal source of thought, “divine
ideation”,
which is the root of all thought. (See “Ennoia.”)
Dido,
or Elissa. Astarte; the Virgin of the Sea—who crushes the Dragon under her
foot;
The patroness of the Phoænician mariners. A Queen of Carthage who fell in
love
with Æneas according to Virgil.
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Digambara
(Sk.). A naked mendicant. Lit., “clothed with Space”. A name of Siva
in
his character of Rudra, the Yogi.
Dii
Minores (Lat.). The inferior or “reflected group of the twelve gods ” or Dii
Majores,
described by Cicero in his De Natura Deorum, I. 13.
Dîk
(Sk). Space, Vacuity.
Diktamnon
(Gr.), or Dictemnus (Dittany). A curious plant possessing very occult
and
mystical properties and well-known from ancient times. It was sacred to the
Moon-Goddesses.
Luna, Astarte, Diana. The Cretan name of Diana was Diktynna, and
as
such the goddess wore a wreath made of this magic plant. The Dihtamnon is an
evergreen
shrub whose contact, as claimed in Occultism, develops and at the same
time
cures somnambulism. Mixed with Verbena it will produce clairvoyance and
ecstasy.
Pharmacy attributes to the Dihtamnon strongly sedative and quieting
properties.
It grows in abundance on Mount Dicte, in Crete, and enters into many
magical
performances resorted to by the Cretans even to this day.
Diksha
(Sk). Initiation. Dikshit, an Initiate.
Dingir
and Mul-lil (Akkad.). The Creative Gods.
Dinur
(Heb.). The River of Fire whose flame burns the Souls of the guilty in the
Kabbalistic
allegory.
Dionysos
(Sk.). The Demiurgos, who, like Osiris, was killed by the Titans and
dismembered
into fourteen parts. He was the personified Sun, or as the author of
the
Great Dionysiak Myth says “He is Phanes, the spirit of material visibility,
Kyklops
giant of the Universe, with one bright solar eye, the growth-power of
the
world, the all-pervading animism of things, son of Semele Dionysos was born
at
Nysa or Nissi, the name given by the Hebrews to Mount Sinai (Exodus xvii.
15),
the birthplace of Osiris, which identifies both suspiciously with “Jehovah
Nissi”.
(See Isis Unv. II. 165, 526.)
Dioscuri
(Gr.). The name of Castor and Pollux, the sons of Jupiter and Leda.
Their
festival, the Dioscuria, was celebrated with much rejoicing by the
Lacedæmonians.
Dîpamkara
(Sk.). Lit., “the Buddha of fixed light”; a predecessor of Gautama,
the
Buddha.
Diploteratology
(Gr.). Production of mixed Monsters; in abbreviation teratology.
Dis
(Gr.). In the Theogony of Damascius, the same as Protogonos, the “first born
light”,
called by that author “the disposer of all things.
Dises
(Scand.). The later name for the divine women called Walky-rics, Norns,
&c.,
in the Edda.
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Disk-worship.
This was very common in Egypt but not till later times, as it
began
with Amenoph III., a Dravidian, who brought it from Southern India and
Ceylon.
It was Sun-worship under another form, the Aten-Nephru, Aten-Ra being
identical
with the Adonai of the Jews, the “ Lord of Heaven” or the Sun. The
winged
disk was the emblem of the Soul. The Sun was at one time the symbol of
Universal
Deity shining on the whole world and all creatures; the Sabæans
regarded
the Sun as the Demiurge and a Universal Deity, as did also the Hindus,
and
as do the Zoroastrians to this day. The Sun is undeniably the one creator of
physical
nature. Lenormant was obliged, notwithstanding his orthodox
Christianity,
to denounce the resemblance between disk and Jewish worship. “Aten
represents
the Adonai or Lord, the Assyrian Tammuz, and the Syrian Adonis”(The
Gr.
Dionys. Myth.)
Divyachakchus
(Sk.). Lit., “celestial Eye” or divine seeing, perception. It is
the
first of the six
“Abhijnas”
(q.v.) ; the faculty developed by Yoga practice to perceive any
object
in the Universe, at whatever distance.
Divyasrôtra
(Sk). Lit., “celestial Ear” Or divine hearing. The second “Abhijna”,
or
the faculty of understanding the language or sound produced by any living
being
on Earth.
Djâti
(Sk.). One of the twelve “Nidanas” (q.v.); the cause and the effect in the
mode
of birth taking place according to the “Chatur Yoni”(q.v.), when in each
case
a being, whether man or animal, is placed in one of the six (esoteric
seven)
Gâti or paths of sentient existence, which esoterically, counting
downward,
are: (1) the highest Dhyani (Anupadaka); (2) Devas ; (3) Men; (4)
Elementals
or Nature Spirits; (5) Animals; (6) lower Elementals; (7) organic
Germs.
These are in the popular or exoteric nomenclature, Devas, Men, Asûras,
Beings
in Hells, Prêtas (hungry demons), and Animals.
Djin
(Arab.). Elementals ; Nature Sprites; Genii. The Djins or Jins are much
dreaded
in Egypt, Persia and elsewhere.
Djnâna
(Sk), or Jnâna. Lit., Knowledge; esoterically, “supernal or divine
knowledge
acquired by Yoga”. Written also Gnyana.
Docetæ
(Gr.). Lit.,“The Illusionists”. The name given by orthodox Christians to
those
Gnostics who held that Christ did not, nor could he, suffer death
actually,
but that, if such a thing had happened, it was merely an illusion
which
they explained in various ways.
Dodecahedron
(Gr.). According to Plato, the Universe is built by “the first
begotten”
on the geometrical figure of the Dodecahedron. (See Timaeus).
Dodona
(Gr.). An ancient city in Thessaly, famous for its Temple of
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Jupiter
and its oracles. According to ancient legends, the town was founded by a
dove.
Donar
(Scand.), or Thunar, Thor. In the North the God of Thunder. He was the
Jupiter
Tonans of Scandinavia. Like as the oak was devoted to Jupiter so was it
sacred
to Thor, and his altars were over shadowed with oak trees. Thor, or
Donar,
was the offspring of Odin, “the omnipotent God of Heaven”, and of Mother
Earth.
Dondam-pai-den-pa
(Tib.). The same as the Sanskrit term Paramarthasatya or
“absolute
truth”, the highest spiritual self-consciousness and perception,
divine
self-consciousness, a very mystical term.
Doppelgänger
(Germ.). A synonym of the “Double” and of the “Astral body” in
occult
parlance.
Dorjesempa
(Tib.). The “Diamond Soul”, a name of the celestial Buddha.
Dorjeshang
(Tib.). A title of Buddha in his highest aspect; a name of the
supreme
Buddha; also Dorje.
Double.
The same as the “Astral body” or “Doppelgänger”.
Double
Image. The name among the Jewish Kabbalists for the Dual Ego, called
respectively:
the Higher, Metatron, and the Lower, Samael. They are figured
allegorically
as the two inseparable companions of man through life, the one his
Guardian
Angel, the other his Evil Demon.
Dracontia
(Gr.). Temples dedicated to the Dragon, the emblem of the Sun, the
symbol
of Deity,
of
Life and Wisdom. The Egyptian Karnac, the Carnac in Britanny, and Stonehenge
are
Dracontia
well
known to all.
Drakôn
(Gr.) or Dragon. Now considered a “mythical” monster, perpetuated in the
West
only on seals,. &c., as a heraldic griffin, and the Devil slain by St.
George,
&c. In fact an extinct antediluvian monster In Babylonian antiquities it
is
referred to as the “scaly one” and connected on many gems with Tiamat the
sea.
“The Dragon of the Sea” is repeatedly mentioned. In Egypt, it is the star
of
the Dragon (then the North Pole Star), the origin of the connection of almost
all
the gods with the Dragon. Bel and the Dragon, Apollo and Python, Osiris and
Typhon,
Sigur and Fafnir, and finally St. George and the Dragon, are the same.
They
were all solar gods, and wherever we find the Sun there also is the Dragon,
the
symbol of Wisdom—Thoth-Hermes. The Hierophants of Egypt and of Babylon
styled
themselves “Sons of the Serpent-God” and “Sons of the Dragon”. “I am a
Serpent,
I am a Druid”, said the Druid of the Celto-Britannic regions, for the
Serpent
and the Dragon were both types of Wisdom, Immortality and Rebirth. As
the
serpent casts its old skin only to reappear in a new one, so does the
immortal
Ego cast off one personality but to assume another.
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Draupnir
(Scand.). The golden armlet of Wodan or Odin, the companion of the
spear
Gungnir which he holds in his right hand; both are endowed with wonderful
magic
properties.
Dravidians.
A group of tribes inhabiting Southern India; the aborigines.
Dravya
(Sk.). Substance (metaphysically).
Drishti
(Sk.). Scepticism; unbelief.
Druids.
A sacerdotal caste which flourished in Britain and Gaul. They were
Initiates
who admitted females into their sacred order, and initiated them into
the
mysteries of their religion. They never entrusted their sacred verses and
scriptures
to writing, but, like the Brahmans of old, committed them to memory;
a
feat which, according to the statement of Cæsar took twenty years to
accomplish.
Like the Parsis they had no images or statues of their gods. The
Celtic
religion considered it blasphemy to represent any god, even of a minor
character,
under a human figure. It would have been well if the Greek and Roman
Christians
had learnt this lesson from the “pagan” Druids. The three chief
commandments
of their religion were:—“Obedience to divine laws; concern for the
welfare
of mankind; suffering with fortitude all the evils of life”.
Druzes.
A large sect, numbering about 100,000 adherents, living on Mount Lebanon
in
Syria. Their rites are very mysterious, and no traveller, who has written
anything
about them, knows for a certainty the whole truth. They are the Sufis
of
Syria. They resent being called Druzes as an insult, but call themselves the
“disciples
of Hamsa ”, their Messiah, who came to them in the ninth century from
the
“Land of the Word of God”, which land and word they kept religiously secret.
The
Messiah to come will be the same Hamsa, but called Hakem—the “All-Healer ”.
(See
Isis Unveiled, II 308, et seq.)
Dudaim
(Heb.). Mandrakes. The Atropa Mandragova plant is mentioned in Genesis,
XXX.,
14, and in Canticles: the name is related in Hebrew to words meaning
“breasts”
and “love”, the plant was notorious as a love charm, and has been used
in
many forms of black magic. [ w.w.w.]
Dudaim
in Kabbalistic parlance is the Soul and Spirit; any two things united in
love
and friendship (dodim). “Happy is he who preserves his dudaim (higher and
lower
Manas) inseparable.”
Dugpas
(Tib.). Lit., “Red Caps,” a sect in Tibet. Before the advent of
Tsong-ka-pa
in the fourteenth century, the Tibetans, whose Buddhism had
deteriorated
and been dreadfully adulterated with the tenets of the old Bhon
religion,—were
all Dugpas. From that century, however, and
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after
the rigid laws imposed upon the Gelukpas (yellow caps) and the general
reform
and purification of Buddhism (or Lamaism), the Dugpas have given
themselves
over more than ever to sorcery, immorality, and drunkenness. Since
then
the word Dugpas has become a synonym of “sorcerer”, “adept of black magic”
and
everything vile. There are few, if any, Dugpas in Eastern Tibet, but they
congregate
in Bhutan, Sikkim, and the borderlands generally. Europeans not being
permitted
to penetrate further than those borders, the Orientalists never having
studied
Buddho-Lamaism in Tibet proper, but judging of it on hearsay and from
what
Cosmo di Köros, Schlagintweit, and a few others have learnt of it from
Dugpas,
confuse both religions and bring them under one head. They thus give out
to
the public pure Dugpaism instead of Buddho-Lamaism. In short Northern
Buddhism
in its purified, metaphysical form is almost entirely unknown.
Dukkha
(Sk.). Sorrow, pain.
Dumah
(Heb.). The Angel of Silence (Death) in the Kabbala.
Durga
(Sk). Lit., “inaccessible”. The female potency of a god; the name of Kali,
the
wife of Siva, the Mahesvara, or “the great god”.
Dustcharitra
(Sk.). The “ten evil acts”; namely, three acts of the body viz.,
taking
life, theft and adultery; four evil acts of the mouth, viz., lying,
exaggeration
in accusations, slander, and foolish talk; and three evil acts of
mind
(Lower Manas), viz., envy, malice or revenge, and unbelief.
Dwapara
Yuga (Sk.). The third of the “Four Ages” in Hindu Philosophy ;
or
the second age counted from below.
Dwarf
of Death. In the Edda of the Norsemen, Iwaldi, the Dwarf of Death, hides
Life
in the depths of the great ocean, and then sends her up into the world at
the
right time. This Life is Iduna, the beauti- ful maiden, the daughter of the
“Dwarf”.
She is the Eve of the Scandinavian Lays, for she gives of the apples of
ever-renewed
youth to the gods of Asgard to eat ; but these, instead of being
cursed
for so doing and doomed to die, give thereby renewed youth yearly to the
earth
and to men, after every short and sweet sleep in the arms of the Dwarf.
Iduna
is raised from the Ocean when Bragi (q.v.), the Dreamer of Life, without
spot
or blemish, crosses asleep the silent waste of waters. Bragi is the divine
ideation
of Life, and Iduna living Nature—Prakriti, Eve.
Dwellers
(on the Threshold). A term invented by Bulwer Lytton in Zanoni; but in
Occultism
the word “Dweller” is an occult term used by students for long ages
past,
and refers to certain maleficent astral Doubles of defunct persons.
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Dwesa
(Sk.). Anger. One of the three principal states of mind (of which 63 are
enumerated),
which are Râga—pride or evil desire, Dwesa— anger, of which hatred
is
a part, and Moha—the ignorance of truth. These three are to be steadily
avoided.
Dwijâ
(Sk.). “Twice-born”. In days of old this term was used only of the
Initiated
Brahmans; but now it is applied to every man belonging to the first of
the
four castes, who has undergone a certain ceremony.
Dwija
Brahman (Sk.). The investure with the sacred thread that now constitutes
the
“second birth”. Even a Sudra who chooses to pay for the honour becomes,
after
the ceremony of passing through a silver or golden cow—a dwijâ.
Dwipa
(Sk.). An island or a continent. The Hindus have seven (Sapta dwipa ); the
Buddhists
only four. This is owing to a misunderstood reference of the Lord
Buddha
who, using the term metaphorically, applied the word dwipa to the races
of
men. The four Root-races which preceded our fifth, were compared by
Siddhârtha
to four continents or isles which studded the ocean of birth and
death—Samsâra.
Dynasties.
In India there are two, the Lunar and the Solar, or the Somavansa and
the
Suryavansa. In Chaldea and Egypt there were also two distinct kinds of
dynasties,
the divine and the human. In both countries people were ruled in the
beginning
of time by Dynasties of Gods. In Chaldea they reigned one hundred and
twenty
Sari, or in all 432,000 years; which amounts to the same figures as a
Hindu
Mahayuga 4,320,000 years. The chronology prefacing the Book of Genesis
(English
translation) is given “Before Christ, 4004”. But the figures are a
rendering
by solar years. In the original Hebrew, which preserved a lunar
calculation,
the figures are 4,320 years. This “coincidence” is well explained
in
Occultism.
Dyookna
(Kab.). The shadow of eternal Light. The “Angels of the Presence” or
archangels.
The
same as the Ferouer in the Vendidad and other Zoroastrian works.
Dzyn
or Dzyan (Tib.). Written also Dzen. A corruption of the Sanskrit Dhyan and
jnâna
(or gnyâna phonetically)—Wisdom, divine knowledge. In Tibetan, learning is
called
dzin.
.
E
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E.—The
fifth letter of the English alphabet. The he (soft) of the Hebrew
alphabet
becomes in the Ehevi system of reading that language an E. Its
numerical
value is five, and its symbolism is a window; the womb, in the
Kabbala.
In the order of the divine names it stands for the fifth, which is
Hadoor
or the “majestic” and the “splendid.”
Ea
(Chald.) also Hea. The second god of the original Babylonian trinity composed
of
Anu, Hea and Bel. Hea was the “Maker of Fate”, “Lord of the Deep”, “God of
Wisdom
and Knowledge”, and “Lord of the City of Eridu”.
Eagle.
This symbol is one of the most ancient. With the Greeks and Persians it
was
sacred to the Sun; with the Egyptians, under the name of Ah, to Horus, and
the
Kopts worshipped the eagle under the name of Ahom. It was regarded as the
sacred
emblem of Zeus by the Greeks, and as that of the highest god by the
Druids.
The symbol has passed down to our day, when following the example of the
pagan
Marius, who, in the second century B.C. used the double-headed eagle as
the
ensign of Rome, the Christian crowned heads of Europe made the double-headed
sovereign
of the air sacred to themselves and their scions. Jupiter was
satisfied
with a one-headed eagle and so was the Sun. The imperial houses of
Russia,
Poland, Austria, Germany, and the late Empire of the Napoleons, have
adopted
a two-headed eagle as their device.
Easter.
The word evidently comes from Ostara, the Scandinavian goddess of
spring.
She was the symbol of the resurrection of all nature and was worshipped
in
early spring. It was a custom with the pagan Norsemen at that time to
exchange
coloured eggs called the eggs of Ostara. These have now become
Easter-Eggs.
As expressed in Asgard and the Gods: “Christianity put another
meaning
on the old custom, by connecting it with the feast of the Resurrection
of
the Saviour, who, like the hidden life in the egg, slept in the grave for
three
days before he awakened to new life”. This was the more natural since
Christ
was identified with that same Spring Sun which awakens in all his glory,
after
the dreary and long death of winter. (See “Eggs”.)
Ebionites
(Heb.). Lit., “the poor”; the earliest sect of Jewish Christians, the
other
being the Nazarenes. They existed when the term “Christian” was not yet
heard
of. Many of the relations of Iassou (Jesus), the adept ascetic around whom
the
legend of Christ was formed, were among the Ebionites. As the existence of
these
mendicant ascetics can
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be
traced at least a century earlier than chronological Christianity, it is an
additional
proof that lassou or Jeshu lived during the reign of Alexander
Jannæus
at Lyd (or Lud), where he was put to death as stated in the Sepher
Toldos
Jeshu.
Ecbatana.
A famous city in Media worthy of a place among the seven wonders of
the
world. It is thus described by Draper in his Conflict between Religion and
Science,
chap. i, . . “ The cool summer retreat of the Persian Kings, was
defended
by seven encircling walls of hewn and polished blocks, the interior
ones
in succession of increasing height, and of different colours, in
astrological
accordance with the seven planets. The palace was roofed with
silver
tiles; its beams were plated with gold. At midnight in its halls, the sun
was
rivalled by many a row of naphta cressets. A paradise, that luxury of the
monarchs
of the East, was planted in the midst of the city. The Persian Empire
was
truly the garden of the world.”
Echath
(Heb.). The same as the following—the “One”, but feminine.
Echod
(Heb or Echad. “One”, masculine, applied to Jehovah.
Eclectic
Philosophy. One of the names given to the Neo-Platonic school of
Alexandria.
Ecstasis
(Gr.). A psycho-spiritual state; a physical trance which induces
clairvoyance
and a beatific state bringing on visions.
Edda
(Iceland.). Lit., “great-grandmother”of the Scandinavian Lays. It was
Bishop
Brynjϋld Sveinsson, who collected them and brought them to light in
1643.
There
are two collections of Sagas, translated by the Northern Skalds, and there
are
two Eddas. The earliest is of unknown authorship and date and its antiquity
is
very great. These Sagas were collected in the XIth century by an Icelandic
priest;
the second is a collection of the history (or myths) of the gods spoken
of
in the first, which became the Germanic deities, giants, dwarfs and heroes.
Eden
(Heb.). “Delight”, pleasure. In Genesis the “Garden of Delight” built by
God
; in the Kabbala the
“Garden
of Delight”, a place of Initiation into the mysteries. Orientalists
identify
it with a place which was situated in Babylonia in the district of
Karduniyas,
called also Gan-dunu, which is almost like the Gan-eden of the Jews.
(See
the works of Sir H. Rawlinson, and G. Smith.) That district has four
rivers,
Euphrates, Tigris, Surappi, Ukni. The two first have been adopted
without
any change by the Jews; the other two they have probably transformed
into
“ Gihon and Pison”, so as to have something original. The following are
some
of the reasons for the identification of Eden, given by Assyriologists. The
cities
of Babylon, Larancha and
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Sippara,
were founded before the flood, according to the chronology of the Jews.
“Surippak
was the city of the ark, the mountain east of the Tigris was the
resting
place of the ark, Babylon was the site of the tower, and Ur of the
Chaldees
the birthplace of Abraham.” And, as Abraham,
“the
first leader of the Hebrew race, migrated from Ur to Harran in Syria and
from
thence to Palestine”, the best Assyriologists think that it is “so much
evidence
in favour of the hypothesis that Chaldea was the original home of these
stories
(in the Bible) and that the Jews received them originally from the
Babylonians”.
Edom
(Heb.). Edomite Kings. A deeply concealed mystery is to he found in the
allegory
of the seven Kings of Edorn, who “reigned in the land of Edom before
there
reigned any King over the children of Israel”. (Gen. xxxvi. 31.) The
Kabbala
teaches that this Kingdom was one of “unbalanced forces’ and necessarily
of
unstable character. The world of Israel is a type of the condition of the
worlds
which came into existence subsequently to the later period when the
equilibrium
had become established. [ w.w. w.]
On
the other hand the Eastern Esoteric philosophy teaches that the seven Kings
of
Edom are not the type of perished worlds or unbalanced forces, but the symbol
of
the seven human Root-races, four of which have passed away, the fifth is
passing,
and two are still to come. Though in the language of esoteric blinds,
the
hint in St. John’s Revelation is clear enough when it states in chapter xvii
,
10: “And there are seven Kings; five are fallen, and one (the fifth, still)
is,
and the other (the sixth Root- race) is not yet come Had all the seven Kings
of
Edom perished as worlds of “unbalanced forces”, how could the fifth still be,
and
the other or others “not yet come” ? In The Kabbalah Unveiled, we read on
page
48, “ The seven Kings had died and their possessions had been broken up”,
and
a footnote emphasizes the statement by saying, “these seven Kings are the
Edomite
Kings”.
Edris
(Arab.), or Idris. Meaning “the learned One”, an epithet applied by the
Arabs
to Enoch.
Eggs
(Easter). Eggs were symbolical from an early time. There was the “Mundane
Egg”,
in which Brahmâ gestated, with the Hindus the Hiranya-Gharba, and the
Mundane
Egg of the Egyptians, which proceeds from the mouth of the “unmade and
eternal
deity”, Kneph, and which is the emblem of generative power. Then the Egg
of
Babylon, which hatched Ishtar, and was said to have fallen from heaven into
the
Euphrates. Therefore coloured eggs were used yearly during spring in almost
every
country, and in Egypt were exchanged as sacred symbols in the spring-time,
which
was, is, and ever will be, the emblem of birth
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or
rebirth, cosmic and human, celestial and terrestrial. They were hung up in
Egyptian
temples and are so suspended to this day in Mahometan mosques.
Egkosmioi
(Gk). “The intercosmic gods, each of which presides over a great
number
of daemons to whom they impart their power and change it from one to
another
at will”, says Proclus, and he adds, that which is taught in the
esoteric
doctrine. In his system he shows the uppermost regions from the zenith
of
the Universe to the moon belonging to the gods, or planetary Spirits,
according
to their hierarchies and classes. The highest among them were the
twelve
Huper-ouranioi, the super-celestial gods. Next to the latter, in rank and
power,
came the Egkosmioi.
Ego
(Lat.). “ Self” ; the consciousness in man “I am I”—or the feeling of
“I-am-ship”.
Esoteric philosophy teaches the existence of two Egos in man, the
mortal
or personal, and the Higher, the Divine and the Impersonal, calling the
former
“personality” and the latter “Individuality Egoity. From the word “Ego”.
Egoity
means “individuality”, never “personality”, and is the opposite of egoism
or
“selfishness”, the characteristic par excellence of the latter.
Egregores.
Eliphas Lévi calls them “the chiefs of the souls who are the spirits
of
energy and action” ; whatever that may or may not mean. The Oriental
Occultists
describe the Egregores as Beings whose bodies and essence is a tissue
of
the so-called astral light. They are the shadows of the higher Planetary
Spirits
whose bodies are of the essence of the higher divine light.
Eheyeh
(Heb.). “I am”, according to Ibn Gebirol, but not in the sense of “I am
that
I am”.
Eidolon
(Gr.). The same as that which we term the human phantom, the astral
form.
Eka
(Sk.). “One”; also a synonym of Mahat, the Universal Mind, as the principle
of
Intelligence.
Ekana-rupa
(Sk.). The One (and the Many) bodies or forms; a term applied by the
Purânas
to Deity.
Ekasloka
Shastra (Sk.). A work on the Shastras (Scriptures) by Nagarjuna; a
mystic
work translated into Chinese.
El-Elion
(Heb.). A name of the Deity borrowed by the Jews from the Phœnician
Elon,
a name of the Sun.
Elementals.
Spirits of the Elements. The creatures evolved in the four Kingdoms
or
Elements—earth, air, fire, and water. They are called
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by
the Kabbalists, Gnomes (of the earth), Sylphs (of the air), Salamanders (of
the
fire), and Undines (of the water). Except a few of the higher kinds, and
their
rulers, they are rather forces of nature than ethereal men and women.
These
forces, as the servile agents of the Occultists, may produce various
effects;
but if employed by” Elementaries” (q.v.)_in which case they enslave the
mediums—they
will deceive the credulous. All the lower invisible beings
generated
on the 5th 6th, and 7th planes of our terrestrial atmosphere, are
called
Elementals Peris, Devs, Djins, Sylvans, Satyrs, Fauns, Elves, Dwarfs,
Trolls,
Kobolds, Brownies, Nixies, Goblins, Pinkies, Banshees, Moss People,
White
Ladies, Spooks, Fairies, etc., etc., etc.
Elementaries.
Properly, the disembodied souls of the depraved; these souls
having
at some time prior to death separated from themselves their divine
spirits,
and so lost their chance for immortality; but at the present stage of
learning
it has been thought best to apply the term to the spooks or phantoms of
disembodied
persons, in general, to those whose temporary habitation is the Kâma
Loka.
Eliphas Lévi and some other Kabbalists make little distinction between
elementary
spirits who have been men, and those beings which people the
elements,
and are the blind forces of nature. Once divorced from their higher
triads
and their bodies, these souls remain in their Kâma-rupic envelopes, and
are
irresistibly drawn to the earth amid elements congenial to their gross
natures.
Their stay in the Kâma Loka varies as to its duration; but ends
invariably
in disintegration, dissolving like a column of mist, atom by atom, in
the
surrounding elements.
Elephanta.
An island near Bombay, India, on which are the well- preserved ruins
of
the cave-temple, of that name. It is one of the most ancient in the country
and
is certainly a Cyclopeian work, though the late J. Fergusson has refused it
a
great antiquity.
Eleusinia
(Gr.). The Eleusinian Mysteries were the most famous and the most
ancient
of all the Greek Mysteries (save the Samothracian), and were celebrated
near
the hamlet of Eleusis, not far from Athens. Epiphanius traces them to the
days
of Inachos (1800 B.c.), founded, as another version has it, by Eumolpus, a
King
of Thrace and a Hierophant. They were celebrated in honour of Demeter, the
Greek
Ceres and the Egyptian Isis; and the last act of the performance referred
to
a sacrificial victim of atonement and a resurrection, when the Initiate was
admitted
to the highest degree of “Epopt” (q.v.). The festival of the Mysteries
began
in the month of Boëdromion (September), the time of grape-gathering, and
lasted
from the 15th to the 22nd, seven days. The Hebrew feast of Tabernacles,
the
feast of Ingatherings, in the month of Ethanim (the seventh), also began on
the
15th and ended on the 22nd of that month,
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The
name of the month (Ethanim) is derived, according to some, from Adonim,
Adonia,
Attenim, Ethanim, and was in honour of Adonai or Adonis (Thammuz), whose
death
was lamented by the Hebrews in the groves of Bethlehem. The sacrifice of
both
“ Bread and Wine” was performed before the Mysteries of initiation, and
during
the ceremony the mysteries were divulged to the candidates from the
petroma,
a kind of book made of two stone tablets (petrai), joined at one side
and
made to open like a volume.
(See
Isis Unveiled II., pp. 44 and 91, et seq., for further explanations.)
Elivagar
(Scand.). The waters of Chaos, called in the cosmogony of the Norsemen
“the
stream of Elivagar”.
Elohîm
(Heb.). Also Alhim, the word being variously spelled. Godfrey Higgins,
who
has written much upon its meaning, always spells it Aleim. The Hebrew
letters
are aleph, lamed, hé,yod, mem, and are numerically 1, 30, 5, 10, 40 =
86.
It seems to be the plural of the feminine noun Eloah, ALH, formed by adding
the
common plural form IM, a masculine ending; and hence the whole seems to
imply
the emitted active and passive essences. As a title it is referred to
“Binah”
the Supernal Mother, as is also the fuller title IHVH ALHIM, Jehovah
Elohim.
As Binah leads on to seven succeedent Emanations, so “ Elohim” has been
said
to represent a sevenfold power of godhead. [ w.w. w.]
Eloї
(Gn.). The genius or ruler of Jupiter; its Planetary Spirit. (See Origen,
Contra
Celsum.)
Elu
(Sing.). An ancient dialect used in Ceylon.
Emanation
the Doctrine of. In its metaphysical meaning, it is opposed to
Evolution,
yet one with it. Science teaches that evolution is physiologically a
mode
of generation in which the germ that develops the foetus pre-exists already
in
the parent, the development and final form and characteristics of that germ
being
accomplished in nature; and that in cosmology the process takes place
blindly
through the correlation of the elements, and their various compounds.
Occultism
answers that this is only the apparent
mode, the real process being
Emanation,
guided by intelligent Forces under an immutable LAW. Therefore, while
the
Occultists and Theosophists believe thoroughly in the doctrine of Evolution
as
given out by Kapila and Manu, they are Emanationists rather than
Evolutionists.
The doctrine of Emanation was at one time universal. It was
taught
by the Alexandrian as well as by the Indian philosophers, by the
Egyptian,
the Chaldean and Hellenic Hierophants, and also by the Hebrews (in
their
Kabbala, and even in Genesis). For it is only owing to deliberate
mistranslation
that the Hebrew word asdt has been translated “angels” from the
Septuagint,
when it
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means
Emanations, Æons, precisely as with the Gnostics. Indeed, in Deuteronomy
(xxxiii.,
2) the word asdt or ashdt is translated as” fiery law”, whilst the
correct
rendering of the passage should be “from his right hand went [ not a
fiery
law, but a fire according to law “; viz., that the fire of one flame is
imparted
to, and caught up by another like as in a trail of inflammable
substance.
This is precisely emanation. As shown in Isis Unveiled : “In
Evolution,
as it is now beginning to he understood, there is supposed to be in
all
matter an impulse to take on a higher form—a supposition clearly expressed
by
Manu and other Hindu philosophers of the highest antiquity. The philosopher’s
tree
illustrates it in the case of the zinc solution. The controversy between
the
followers of this school and the Emanationists may he briefly stated thus
The
Evolutionist stops all inquiry at the borders of ‘ the Unknowable “; the
Emanationist
believes that nothing can be evolved—or, as the word means,
unwombed
or born—except it has first been involved, thus indicating that life is
from
a spiritual potency above the whole.”
Empusa
(Gr.). A ghoul, a vampire, an evil demon taking various forms.
En
(or Ain) Soph (Heb.). The endless, limitless and boundless. The absolute
deific
Principle, impersonal and unknowable. It means literally “no-thing” i.e.,
nothing
that could be classed with anything else. The word and ideas are
equivalent
to the Vedantic conceptions of Parabrahmn. [ w.w.w.]
Some
Western Kabbalists, however, contrive to make of IT, a personal “He”, a
male
deity instead of an impersonal deity.
En
(Chald.). A negative particle, like a in Greek and Sanskrit. The first
syllable
of “En-Soph” (q.v.), or nothing that begins or ends, the “Endless”.
Enoichion
(Gr.). Lit., the inner Eye” ; the “Seer”, a reference to the third
inner,
or Spiritual Eye, the true name for Enoch disfigured from Chanoch.
Ens
(Gr.). The same as the Greek To On “Being”, or the real Presence in Nature.
Ephesus
(Gr.). Famous for its great metaphysical College where Occultism
(Gnosis)
and Platonic philosophy were taught in the days of the Apostle Paul. A
city
regarded as the focus of secret sciences, and that Gnôsis. or Wisdom, which
is
the antagonist of the perversion of Christo-Esotericism to this day. It was
at
Ephesus where was the great College of the Essenes and all the lore the
Tanaim
had brought from the Chaldees,
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Epimetheus
(Gr.). Lit., “He who takes counsel after” the event. A brother of
Prometheus
in Greek Mythology.
Epinoia
(Gr.). Thought, invention, design. A name adopted by the Gnostics for
the
first passive Æon.
Episcopal
Crook. One of the insignia of Bishops, derived from the sacerdotal
sceptre
of the Etruscan Augurs. it is also found in the hand of several gods.
Epoptes
(Gr.). An Initiate. One who has passed his last degree of initiation.
Eridanus
(Lat.). Ardan, the Greek name for the river Jordan.
Eros
(Gr.). Hesiod makes of the god Eros the third personage of the Hellenic
primordial
Trinity composed of Ouranos, Gæa and Eros. It is the personified
procreative
Force in nature in its abstract sense, the propeller to “creation”
and
procreation. Exoterically, mythology makes of Eros the god of lustful,
animal
desire, whence the term erotic esoterically, it is different. (See “
Kâma”.)
Eshmim
(Heb.). The Heavens, the Firmament in which are the Sun, Planets and
Stars;
from the root Sm, meaning to place, dispose ; hence, the planets, as
disposers.
[ w. w.w.]
Esoteric
(Gr.). Hidden, secret. From the Greek esotericos, “inner” concealed.
Esoteric
Bodhism. Secret wisdom or intelligence from the Greek esotericos
“inner”,
and the Sanskrit Bodhi, “knowledge”, intelligence— in contradistinction
to
Buddhi, “the faculty of knowledge or intelligence” and Buddhism, the
philosophy
or Law of Buddha (the Enlightened). Also written “ Budhism”, from
Budha
(Intelligence and Wisdom) the Son of Soma.
Essasua.
The African and Asiatic sorcerers and serpent charmers.
Essenes.
A hellenized word, from the Hebrew Asa, a “healer”. A mysterious sect
of
Jews said by Pliny to have lived near the Dead Sea per millia sæculorum—for
thousands
of ages. “ Some have supposed them to be extreme Pharisees, and
others—which
may be the true theory—the descendants of the
Benim-nabim
of the Bible, and think that they were ‘Kenites and Nazarites. They
had
many Buddhistic ideas and practices; and it is noteworthy that the priests
of
the Great Mother at Ephesus, Diana-Bhavani with many breasts, were also so
denominated.
Eusebius, and after him De Quincey, declared them to be the same as
the
early Christians, which is more than probable. The title ‘ brother’, used in
the
early Church, was Essenean ; they were a fraternity, or a koinobion or
community
like the early converts.”
(Isis
Unveiled.)
Ether.
Students are but too apt to confuse this with Akâsa and with
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Astral
Light. It is neither, in the sense in which ether is described by
physical
Science. Ether is a material agent, though hitherto undetected by any
physical
apparatus; whereas Akâsa is a distinctly spiritual agent, identical, in
one
sense, with the Anima Mundi, while the Astral Light is only the seventh and
highest
principle of the terrestrial atmosphere, as undetectable as Akâsa and
real
Ether, because it is something quite on another plane. The seventh
principle
of the earth’s atmosphere, as said, the Astral Light, is only the
second
on the Cosmic scale. The scale of Cosmic Forces, Principles and Planes,
of
Emanations—on the metaphysical—and Evolutions—on the physical plane—is the
Cosmic
Serpent biting its own tail, the Serpent reflecting the Higher, and
reflected
in its turn by the lower Serpent. The Caduceus explains the mystery,
and
the four-fold Dodecahedron on the model of which the universe is said by
Plato
to have been built by the manifested Logos—synthesized by the unmanifested
First-Born—yields
geometrically the key to Cosmogony and its microcosmic
reflection—our
Earth.
Eurasians.
An abbreviation of “European-Asians”. The mixed coloured races: the
children
of the white fathers and the dark mothers of India, or vice versa.
Evapto.
Initiation; the same as Epopteia.
Evolution.
The development of higher orders of animals from lower. As said in
Isis
Unveiled: “Modern Science holds but to a one-sided physical evolution,
prudently
avoiding and ignoring the higher or spiritual evolution, which would
force
our contemporaries to confess the superiority of the ancient philosophers
and
psychologists over themselves. The ancient sages, ascending to the
UNKNOWABLE,
made their starting- point from the first manifestation of the
unseen,
the unavoidable, and, from a strictly logical reasoning, the absolutely
necessary
creative Being, the Demiurgos of the universe. Evolution began with
them
from pure spirit, which descending lower and lower down, assumed at last a
visible
and comprehensible form, and became matter. Arrived at this point, they
speculated
in the Darwinian method, but on a far more large and comprehensive
basis.”
(See “Emanation”.)
Exoteric.
Outward, public; the opposite of esoteric or hidden.
Extra-Cosmic.
Outside of Kosmos or Nature; a nonsensical word invented to assert
the
existence of a personal god, independent of, or out side, Nature per se, in
opposition
to the Pantheistic idea that the whole Kosmos is animated or informed
with
the Spirit of Deity, Nature being but the garment, and matter the illusive
shadow,
of the real unseen Presence.
Eye
of Horus. A very sacred symbol in ancient Egypt. It was
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called
the outa the right eye represented the sun, the left, the moon. Says
Macrobius
: “ The outo (or uta) is it not the emblem of the sun, king of the
world,
who from his elevated throne sees all the Universe below him”?
Eyes
(divine). The “eyes” the Lord Buddha developed in him at the twentieth hour
of
his vigil when sitting under the BO-tree, when he was attaining Buddhaship.
They
are the eyes of the glorified Spirit, to which matter is no longer a
physical
impediment, and which have the power of seeing all things within the
space
of the limitless Universe. 0n the following morning of that night, at the
close
of the third watch, the “ Merciful One” attained the Supreme Knowledge.
Ezra
(Heb.). The Jewish priest and scribe, who, circa 450 B.c., compiled the
Pentateuch
if indeed he was not the author of it) and the rest of the Old
Testament,
except Nehemiah and Malachi. [w.w.w.]
Ezra
(Heb.). The same as Azareel and Azriel, a great Hebrew Kabbalist. His full
name
is Rabbi Azariel ben Manahem. He flourished at Valladolid, Spain, in the
twelfth
century, and was famous as a philosopher and Kabbalist. He is the author
of
a work on the Ten Sephiroth.
F
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F
—The sixth letter of the English alphabet, for which there is no equivalent in
Hebrew.
It is the double F F of the Æolians which became the Digamma for some
mysterious
reasons. It corresponds to the Greek phi. As a Latin numeral it
denotes
40, with a dash over the letter (F) 400,000.
Faces
(Kabbalistic), or, as in Hebrew, Partzupheem. The word usually refers to
Areekh
Anpeen or Long Face, and Zeir-Anpeen, or Short Face, and Resha Hivrah the
“White
Head” or Face. The Kabbala states that from the moment of their
appearance
(the hour of differentiation of matter) all the material for future
forms
was contained in the three Heads which are one, and called Atteekah
Kadosha
(Holy
Ancients and the Faces). It is when the Faces look toward each other, that
the
Holy Ancients” in three Heads, or Atteekah Kadosha, are called Areek
Appayem,
i.e., “Long Faces”. (See Zohar iii., 292a.) This refers to the three
Higher
Principles, cosmic and human.
Fafnir
(Scand.). The Dragon of Wisdom.
Fahian
(Chin.). A Chinese traveller and writer in the early centuries of
Christianity,
who wrote on Buddhism.
Fa-Hwa-King
(Chin.). A Chinese work on Cosmogony.
Faizi
(Arab.). Literally the “heart”. A writer on occult and mystic subjects.
Fakir
(Arab.). A Mussulman ascetic in India, a Mahometan “Yogi”. The name is
often
applied, though erroneously. to Hindu ascetics; for strictly speaking only
Mussulman
ascetics are entitled to it. This loose way of calling things by
general
names was adopted in Isis Unveiled but is now altered.
Falk,
Caїn Chenul. A Kabbalistic Jew, reputed to have worked “miracles”.
Kenneth
Mackenzie
quotes in regard to him from the German annalist Archenoiz’ work on
England
(1788) :—“ There exists in London an extraordinary man who for thirty
years
has been celebrated in Kabbalistic records. He is named Caїn Chenul
Falk.
A
certain Count de Rautzow, lately dead in the service of France, with the rank
of
Field-Marshal, certifies that he has seen this Falk in Brunswick, and that
evocations
of spirits took place in the presence of credible witnesses.” These
“spirits”
were Elementals, whom Falk brought into
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view
by the conjurations used by every Kabbalist. His son, Johann Friedrich
Falk,
likewise a Jew, was also a Kabbalist of repute, and was once the head of a
Kabbalistic
college in London. His occupation was that of a jeweller and
appraiser
of diamonds, and he was a wealthy man. To this day the mystic writings
and
rare Kabbalistic works bequeathed by him to a trustee may be perused in a
certain
half-public library in London, by every genuine student of Occultism.
Falk’s
own writings are all still in MS., and some in cypher.
Farbauti
(Scand.). A giant in the Edda; lit., “the oarsman”; the father of Loki,
whose
mother was the giantess Laufey (leafy isle); a genealogy which makes W. S.
W.
Anson remark in Asgard and the Gods that probably the oarsman or Farbauti
“was
the giant who saved himself from the flood in a boat, and the latter
(Laufey)
the island to which he rowed”—which is an additional variation of the
Deluge.
Fargard
(Zend.). A section or chapter of verses in the Vendidad of the Parsis.
Farvarshi
(Mazd.). The same as Ferouer, or the opposite (as contrasted) double.
The
spiritual counterpart of the still more spiritual original. Thus, Ahriman is
the
Ferouer or the Farvarshi of Ormuzd— “demon est deus inversus”—Satan of God.
Michael
the Archangel, “he like god”, is a Ferouer of that god. A Farvarshi is
the
shadowy or dark side of a Deity—or its darker lining.
Ferho
(Gnost.). The highest and greatest creative power with the Nazarene
Gnostics.
(Codex
Nazaræus.)
Fetahil
(Gr.). The lower creator, in the same Codex.
First
Point. Metaphysically the first point of manifestation, the germ of
primeval
differentiation, or the point in the infinite Circle “whose centre is
everywhere,
and circumference nowhere“.
The
Point is the Logos.
Fire
(Living). A figure of speech to denote deity, the “One” life. A theurgic
term,
used later by the Rosicrucians. The symbol of the living fire is the sun,
certain
of whose rays develope the fire of life in a diseased body, impart the
knowledge
of the future to the sluggish mind, and stimulate to active function a
certain
psychic and generally dormant faculty in man. The meaning is very
occult.
Fire-Philosophers.
The name given to the Hermetists and Alchemists of the Middle
Ages,
and also to the Rosicrucians. The latter, the successors of the
Theurgists,
regarded fire as the symbol of Deity. It was the source, not only of
material
atoms, but the container of the spiritual and psychic Forces energizing
them.
Broadly analyzed, fire is
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a
triple principle; esoterically, a septenary, as are all the rest of the
Elements.
As man is composed of Spirit, Soul and Body, plus a four fold aspect:
so
is Fire. As in the works of Robert Fludd (de Fluctibus) one of the famous
Rosicrucians,
Fire contains (1) a visible flame (Body); (2) an invisible, astral
fire
(Soul); and (3) Spirit. The four aspects are heat (life), light (mind),
electricity
(Kâmic, or molecular powers) and the Synthetic Essence, beyond
Spirit,
or the radical cause of its existence and manifestation. For the
Hermetist
or Rosicrucian, when a flame is extinct on the objective plane it has
only
passed from the seen world unto the unseen, from the knowable into the
unknowable.
Fifty
Gates of Wisdom (Kab.). The number is a blind, and there are really 49
gates,
for Moses, than whom the Jewish world has no higher adept, reached,
according
to the Kabbalas, and passed only the 49th. These “gates” typify the
different
planes of Being or Ens. They are thus the “gates” of Life and the
“gates”
of understanding or degrees of occult knowledge. These 49 (or 50) gates
correspond
to the seven gates in the seven caves of Initiation into the
Mysteries
of Mithra (see Celsus and Kircher). ‘I’he division of the 50 gates
into
five chief gates, each including ten—is again a blind. It is in the fourth
gate
of these five, from which begins, ending at the tenth, the world of
Planets,
thus making seven, corresponding to the seven lower Sephiroth—that the
key
to their meaning lies hidden. They are also called the “gates of Binah” or
understanding.
Flagæ(Herm.).
A name given by Paracelsus to a particular kind of guardian angels
or
genii.
Flame
(Holy). The “ Holy Flame” is the name given by the Eastern Asiatic
Kabbalists
(Semites) to the Anima Mundi the “world- soul” The Initiates were
called
the “Sons of the Holy Flame.
Fludd
(Robert), generally known as Robertus de Fluctibus, the chief of the
“Philosophers
by Fire”. A celebrated English Hermetist of the sixteenth century,
and
a voluminous writer. He wrote on the essence of gold and other mystic and
occult
subjects.
Fluvii
Transitus (Lat.). Or crossing of the River (Chebar). Cornelius Agrippa
gives
this alphabet. In the Ars Quatuor Coronatorum, Vol. III., part 2, 1890,
which
work is the Report of the proceedings of the Quatuor Coronati Lodge of
Freemasons,
No. 2076, will be found copies of this alphabet, and also the
curious
old letters called Melachim, and the Celestial alphabet, supplied by W.
Wynn
Westcott, P.M. This Lodge seems to be the only one in England which really
does
study “the hidden mysteries of Nature and Science” in earnest.
Fohat
(Tib.). A term used to represent the active (male) potency of
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the
Sakti (female reproductive power) in nature. The essence of cosmic
electricity.
An occult Tibetan term for Daiviprakriti primordial light: and in
the
universe of manifestation the ever-present electrical energy and ceaseless
destructive
and formative power. Esoterically, it is the same, Fohat being the
universal
propelling Vital Force, at once the propeller and the resultant.
Foh-tchou
(Chin.). Lit., “Buddha’s Lord”, meaning, however, simply the teacher
of
the doctrines of Buddha. Foh means a Guru who lives generally in a temple of
Sakyamuni
Buddha—the Foh-Maeyu.
Fons
Yitæ (Lat.). A work of Ibn Gehirol, the Arabian Jewish philosopher of the
Xlth
century, who called it Me-gôr Hayyûn or the “Fountain of Life” (De Materia
Universali
and Fons Vitæ). The Western Kabbalists have proclaimed it a really
Kabbalistic
work. Several MSS.,Latin and Hebrew, of this wonderful production
have
been discovered by scholars in public libraries; among others one by Munk,
in
1802. The Latin name of Ibn Gebirol was Avicebron, a name well-known to all
Oriental
scholars.
FourAnimals.
The symbolical animals of the vision of Ezekiel (the Mercabah). “
With
the first Christians the celebration of the Mysteries of the Faith was
accompanied
by the burning of seven lights, with incense, the Trishagion, and
the
reading of the book of the gospels, upon which was wrought, both on covers
and
pages, the winged man, lion, bull, and eagle” (Qabbalah, by Isaac Myer,
LL.B.).
To this day these animals are represented along with the four
Evangelists
and prefixing their respective gospels in the editions of the Greek
Church.
Each represents one of the four lower classes of worlds or planes, into
the
similitude of which each personality is cast. Thus the Eagle (associated
with
St. John) represents cosmic Spirit or Ether, the all-piercing Eye of the
Seer;
the Bull of St. Luke, the waters of Life, the all-generating element and
cosmic
strength ; the Lion of St. Mark, fierce energy, undaunted courage and
cosmic
fire; while the human Head or the Angel, which stands near St. Matthew is
the
synthesis of all three combined in the higher Intellect of man, and in
cosmic
Spirituality. All these symbols are Egyptian, Chaldean, and Indian. The