of such things does not do them justice. We involuntarily distinguish in our minds, for instance, between unconscious Absolute Consciousness, and unconsciousness, by secretly endowing the former with some indefinite quality that corresponds, on a higher plane than our thoughts. can reach, with what we know as consciousness in ourselves. But this is not any kind of consciousness that we can manage to distinguish from what appears to us as unconsciousness. STANZA II.-Continued. * HAD NOT YET 3. THE HOUR HAD NOT YET STRUCK; THE RAY HAD NOT YET FLASHED INTO THE GERM (a); THE MÂTRIPADMA SWOLLEN (b).† (a) The " "Ray" of the "Ever Darkness" becomes, as it is emitted, a Ray of effulgent Light or Life, and flashes into the "Germ "--the Point in the Mundane Egg, represented by Matter in its abstract sense. But the term "Point" must not be understood as applying to any particular point in Space, for a germ exists in the centre of every atom, and these collectively form the "Germ;" or rather, as no atom can be made visible to our physical eye, the collectivity of these (if the term can be applied to something which is boundless and infinite) forms the noumenon of eternal and indestructible Matter. (b) One of the symbolical figures for the Dual Creative Power in Nature (matter and force on the material plane) is "Padma," the water-lily of India. The Lotus is the product of heat (fire) and water (vapour or ether); fire standing in every philosophical and religious. system, even in Christianity, as a representation of the Spirit of Deity, the active, male, generative principle; and ether, or the soul of matter, the light of the fire, for the passive female principle, from which everything in this Universe emanated. Hence, ether or water is the Mother, and fire is the. Father. Sir William Jones-and before him archaic botany-showed that the seeds of the Lotus contain-even before they germinate-perfectly formed leaves, with the miniature shape of what one day, as perfect plants, they will become: nature thus giving us a specimen of the preformation of its production . . . the seeds of all phanerogamous plants bearing proper flowers containing an embryo plantlet ready formed. This explains the sentence, "The Mother-Lotus. + An unpoetical term, yet still very graphic. Mâtri-Padma had not yet swollen "-the form being usually sacrificed to the inner or root idea in archaic symbology. The Lotus, or Padma, is, moreover, a very ancient and favourite symbol for the Cosmos itself, and also for man. The popular reasons given are, firstly, the fact just mentioned, that the Lotus-seed contains within itself a perfect miniature of the future plant, which typifies the fact that the spiritual prototypes of all things exist in the immaterial world, before these things become materialized on earth. Secondly, the fact that the Lotus-plant grows up through the water, having its root in the Ilus, or mud, and spreading its flower in the air above. The Lotus thus typifies the life of man and also that of the Cosmos; for the Secret Doctrine teaches that the elements of both are the same, and that both are developing in the same direction. The root of the Lotus sunk in the mud represents material life, the stalk passing up through the water typifies existence in the astral world, and the flower floating on the water and opening to the sky is emblematical of spiritual being. STANZA II.-Continued. 4. HER HEART HAD NOT YET OPENED FOR THE ONE RAY TO ENTER, THENCE TO FALL, AS THREE INTO FOUR, INTO THE LAP OF Mâyâ. The Primordial Substance had not yet passed out of its precosmic latency into differentiated objectivity, or even become the (to man, so far) invisible Protyle of Science. But, as the "Hour strikes" and it becomes receptive of the Fohatic impress of the Divine Thought-the Logos, or the male aspect of the Anima Mundi, Alaya-its "Heart" opens. It differentiates, and the Three (Father, Mother, Son) are transformed into Four. Herein lies the origin of the double mystery of the Trinity and the Immaculate Conception. The first and fundamental dogma of Occultism is Universal Unity (or Homogeneity) under three aspects. This leads to a possible conception of Deity, which as an absolute Unity must remain forever incomprehensible to finite intellects. If thou wouldest believe in the Power which acts within the root of a plant, or imagine the root concealed under the soul, thou hast to think of its stalk or trunk, and of its leaves and flowers. Thou canst not imagine that Power independently of these objects. Life can be known only by the Tree of Life. Precepts for Yoga. ASTRAL LIGHT IS NOT ANIMA MUNDI. 89 The idea of Absolute Unity would be broken entirely in our conception, had we not something concrete before our eyes to contain that Unity. And the Deity being absolute, must be omnipresent; hence not an atom but contains It within itself. The roots, the trunk, and its many branches, are three distinct objects, yet they are one tree. Say the Kabalists: "The Deity is one, because It is infinite. It is triple, because It is ever manifesting." This manifestation is triple in its aspects, for it requires, as Aristotle has it, three principles for every natural body to become objective: privation, form, and matter.* Privation meant in the mind of the great philosopher that which the Occultists call the prototypes impressed in the Astral Light-the lowest plane and world of Anima Mundi. The union of these three principles depends upon a fourth-the Life which radiates from the summits of the Unreachable, to become a universally diffused Essence on the manifested planes of Existence. And this Quaternary (Father, Mother, Son, as a Unity, and a Quaternary-as a living manifestation) has been the means of leading to the very archaic idea of Immaculate Conception, now finally crystallized into a dogma of the Christian Church, which has carnalized this metaphysical idea beyond any common sense. For one has but to read the Kabalah and study its numerical methods of interpretation to find the origin of the dogma. It is purely astronomical, mathematical, and preeminently metaphysical: the Male Element in Nature (personified by the male deities and Logoi-Virâj, or Brahmâ, Horus, or Osiris, etc., etc.) is born through, not from, an immaculate source, personified by the "Mother," for the Abstract Deity being sexless, and not even a Being but Be-ness, or Life itself that Male having a "Mother" cannot have a "Father." Let us render this in the mathematical language of the author of The Source of Measures. Speaking of the "Measure of a Man" and his numerical (Kabalistic) value, he writes that in Genesis, iv. 1— It is called the "Man even Jehovah" Measure, and this is obtained in this way, viz.: .: 113×5=565, and the value 565 can be placed under the form of expression 56.5×10=565. Here the Man-number 113 becomes a factor of 56.5 × 10, and the A Vedantin of the Visishthadvaita Philosophy would say that, though the only independent Reality, Parabrahman is inseparable from His Trinity. That He is three, “Parabrahman, Chit, and Achit," the last two being dependent Realities unable to exist separately; or, to make it clearer, Parabrahman is the Substance-changeless, eternal, and incognizable-and Chit (Atmâ) and Achit (Anâtma) and its qualities, as form and colour are the qualities of any object. The two are the garment, or body, or rather aspect (sharira) of Parabrahman. But an Occultist would find much to say against this claim, and so would the Advaiti Vedantin. (Kabalistic) reading of this last numbered expression is Jod, He, Vau, He, or Jehovah. The expansion of 565 into 56.5 × 10 is purposed to show the emanation of the male (Jod) from the female (Eva) principle; or, so to speak, the birth of a male element from an immaculate source, in other words, an immaculate conception. Thus is repeated on earth the mystery enacted, according to the Seers, on the divine plane. The Son of the Immaculate Celestial Virgin (or the Undifferentiated Cosmic Protyle, Matter in its infinitude) is born again on earth as the Son of the terrestrial Eve, our mother Earth, and becomes Humanity as a total-past, present, and future-for Jehovah, or Jod-Hé-Vau-Hé, is androgyne, or both male and female. Above, the Son is the whole Kosmos; below, he is Mankind. The Triad or Triangle becomes Tetraktys, the sacred Pythagorean number, the perfect Square, and a six-faced Cube on earth. The Macroprosopus (the Great Face) is now Microprosopus (the Lesser Face); or, as the Kabbalists have it, the Ancient of Days, descending on Adam Kadmon whom he uses as his vehicle to manifest through, gets transformed into Tetragrammaton. It is now in the "Lap of Mâyâ," the Great Illusion, and between itself and the Reality has the Astral Light, the Great Deceiver of man's limited senses, unless Knowledge through Paramârthasatya comes to the rescue. STANZA II.-Continued. 5. THE SEVEN WERE NOT YET BORN FROM THE Web of Light. DARKNESS ALONE WAS FATHER-MOTHER, SVABHÂVAT; AND SVABHAVAT WAS IN DARKNESS. The Secret Doctrine, in the Stanzas here given, occupies itself chiefly, if not entirely, with our Solar System, and especially with our Planetary Chain. The "Seven Sons," therefore, are the creators of the latter. This teaching will be explained more fully hereafter. Svabhâvat, the "Plastic Essence" that fills the Universe, is the root of all things. Svabhâvat is, so to say, the Buddhistic concrete aspect of the abstraction called in Hindû philosophy Mûlaprakriti. It is the body of the Soul, and that which Ether would be to Âkâsha, the latter being the informing principle of the former. Chinese mystics have made of it the synonym of "Being." In the Chinese translation of the Ekashloka-Shastra of Nâgârjuna (the Lung-shu of China), called the Yih-shu-lu-kia-lun, it is said that the term "Being," or "Subhâva,” .Sc., Sons. (Yeu in Chinese) means "the Substance giving substance to itself"; it is also explained by him as meaning "without action and with action," "the nature which has no nature of its own." Subhâva, from which Svabhâvat, is composed of two words: su fair, handsome, good; sza, self, and bhava, being or states of being. STANZA II.—Continued. 6. THESE TWO ARE THE GERM, AND THE GERM IS ONE. THE UNIVERSE WAS STILL CONCEALED IN THE DIVINE THOUGHT AND THE DIVINE BOSOM. The "Divine Thought" does not imply the idea of a Divine Thinker. The Universe, not only past, present and future-a human and finite idea expressed by finite thought-but in its totality, the Sat (an untranslateable term), Absolute Being, with the Past and Future crystallized in an eternal Present, is that Thought itself reflected in a secondary or manifested cause. Brahman (neuter), as the Mysterium Magnum of Paracelsus, is an absolute mystery to the human mind. Brahmâ, the male-female, the aspect and anthropomorphic reflection of Brahman, is conceivable to the perceptions of blind faith, though rejected by human intellect when it attains its majority. Hence the statement that during the prologue, so to say, of the drama of creation, or the beginning of cosmic evolution, the Universe, or the Son, lies still concealed "in the Divine Thought," which had not yet penetrated into the "Divine Bosom." This idea, note well, is at the root, and forms the origin, of all the allegories about the "Sons of God" born of immaculate virgins. STANZA III. I. . . . THE LAST VIBRATION OF THE SEVENTH ETERNITY THRILLS THROUGH INFINITUDE (a). THE MOTHER SWELLS, EXPANDING FROM WITHIN WITHOUT, Like the BUD OF THE LOTUs (b). (a) The seemingly paradoxical use of the term, "Seventh Eternity," thus dividing the indivisible, is sanctified in Esoteric Philosophy. The latter divides boundless Duration into unconditionally eternal and universal Time (Kâla); and conditioned Time (Khandakâla). One is the abstraction or noumenon of infinite Time the other its phenomenon appearing periodically, as the effect of Mahat-the |