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- 7. Behold, oh Lanoo ! † the radiant Child of the two, the unparalleled refulgent Glory, Bright Space, Son of Dark Space, who emerges from the depths of the great Dark Waters. It is Oeaohoo, the Younger, the * * * (whom thou knowest now as Kwan-Shai-Yin. — Comment) (a). He shines forth as the Sun. He is the blazing Divine Dragon of Wisdom. The Eka is Chatur ( four), and Chatur takes to itself three, and the union produces the Sapta (seven) in whom are the seven which become the Tridasa ‡ (the thrice ten) the hosts and the multitudes (b). Behold him lifting the Veil, and unfurling it from East to West. He shuts out the above and leaves the below to be seen as the great Illusion. He marks the places for the shining ones (stars) and turns the upper (space) into a shoreless Sea of Fire, and the One manifested (element) into the Great Waters (c).
“ Bright Space, son of dark Space,” corresponds to the Ray dropped at the first thrill of the new “ Dawn ” into the great Cosmic depths, from which it re-emerges differentiated as Oeaohoo the younger, (the “ new life ”), to become, to the end of the life-cycle, the germ of all things. He is “ the Incorporeal man who contains in himself the divine Idea,” — the generator of Light and Life, to use an expression of Philo Judæus. He is called the “ Blazing Dragon of Wisdom,”
† Lanoo is a student, a chela who studies practical Esotericism.
‡ “ Tri-dasa,” or three times ten (30), alludes to the Vedic deities, in round numbers, or more accurately 33 — a sacred number. They are the 12 Adityas, the 8 Vasus, the 11 Rudras, and 2 Aswins — the twin sons of the Sun and the Sky. This is the root-number of the Hindu Pantheon, which enumerates 33 crores or over three hundred millions of gods and goddesses.
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because, firstly, he is that which the Greek philosophers called the Logos, the Verbum of the Thought Divine ; and secondly, because in Esoteric philosophy this first manifestation, being the synthesis or the aggregate of Universal Wisdom, Oeaohoo, “ the Son of the Son,” contains in himself the Seven Creative Hosts (The Sephiroth), and is thus the essence of manifested Wisdom. “ He who bathes in the light of Oeaohoo will never be deceived by the veil of Mâyâ.”
Kwan-Shai-Yin is identical with, and an equivalent of the Sanskrit Avalôkitêshwara, and as such he is an androgynous deity, like the Tetragrammaton and all the Logoi * of antiquity. It is only by some sects in China that he is anthropomorphized and represented with female attributes, † when, under his female aspect, he becomes Kwan-Yin, the goddess of mercy, called the “ Divine Voice.” ‡ The latter is the patron deity of Thibet and of the island of Puto in China, where both deities have a number of monasteries.§ (See Part II. Kwan-Shai-Yin and Kwan-yin.)
* Hence all the higher gods of antiquity are all “ Sons of the Mother ” before they become those of the “ Father.” The Logoi, like Jupiter or Zeus, Son of KronosSaturn, “ Infinite Time ” (or Kâla), in their origin were represented as male-female. Zeus is said to be the “ beautiful Virgin,” and Venus is made bearded. Apollo is originally bisexual, so is Brahmâ-Vâch in Manu and the Purânas. Osiris is interchangeable with Isis, and Horus is of both sexes. Finally St. John’s vision in Revelation, that of the Logos, who is now connected with Jesus — is hermaphrodite, for he is described as having female breasts. So is the Tetragrammaton=Jehovah. But there are two Avalôkitêshwaras in Esotericism ; the first and the second Logos.
† No religious symbol can escape profanation and even derision in our days of politics and Science. In Southern India the writer has seen a converted native making pujah with offerings before a statue of Jesus clad in woman’s clothes and with a ring in his nose. When asking the meaning of the masquerade we were answered that it was Jesu-Maria blended in one, and that it was done by the permission of the Padri, as the zealous convert had no money to purchase two statues or “ idols ” as they, very properly, were called by a witness — another but a non-converted Hindu. Blasphemous this will appear to a dogmatic Christian, but the Theosophist and the Occultist must award the palm of logic to the converted Hindu. The esoteric Christos in the gnosis is, of course, sexless, but in exoteric theology he is male and female.
‡ The Gnostic Sophia, “ Wisdom ” who is “ the Mother ” of the Ogdoad (Aditi, in a certain sense, with her eight sons), is the Holy Ghost and the Creator of all, as in the ancient systems. The “ father ” is a far later invention. The earliest manifested Logos was female everywhere — the mother of the seven planetary powers.
§ See “ Chinese Buddhism,” by the Rev. J. C. Edkins, who always gives correct facts, although his conclusions are very frequently erroneous.
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(b) “ The “ Dragon of Wisdom” is the One, the “ Eka ” (Sanskrit) or Saka. It is curious that Jehovah’s name in Hebrew should also be One, Echod. “ His name is Echod ” : say the Rabbins. The philologists ought to decide which of the two is derived from the other — linguistically and symbolically : surely, not the Sanskrit ? The “ One ” and the Dragon are expressions used by the ancients in connection with their respective Logoi. Jehovah — esoterically (as Elohim) — is also the Serpent or Dragon that tempted Eve, and the “ Dragon ” is an old glyph for “ Astral Light ” (Primordial Principle), “ which is the Wisdom of Chaos.” Archaic philosophy, recognizing neither Good nor Evil as a fundamental or independent power, but starting from the Absolute all (Universal Perfection eternally), traced both through the course of natural evolution to pure Light condensing gradually into form, hence becoming Matter or Evil. It was left with the early and ignorant Christian fathers to degrade the philosophical and highly scientific idea of this emblem (the Dragon) into the absurd superstition called the “ Devil.” They took it from the later Zoroastrians, who saw devils or the Evil in the Hindu Devas, and the word Evil thus became by a double transmutation D’Evil in every tongue (Diabolos, Diable, Diavolo, Teufel). But the Pagans have always shown a philosophical discrimination in their symbols. The primitive symbol of the serpent symbolised divine Wisdom and Perfection, and had always stood for psychical Regeneration and Immortality. Hence — Hermes, calling the serpent the most spiritual of all beings ; Moses, initiated in the wisdom of Hermes, following suit in Genesis ; the Gnostic’s Serpent with the seven vowels over its head, being the emblem of the seven hierarchies of the Septenary or Planetary Creators. Hence, also, the Hindu serpent Sesha or Ananta, “ the Infinite,” a name of Vishnu, whose first Vahan or vehicle on the primordial waters is this serpent. * Yet they all made a difference between the good and the bad Serpent (the Astral Light of
* Like the logoi and the Hierarchies of Powers, however, the “ Serpents ” have to be distinguished one from the other. Sesha or Ananta, “ the couch of Vishnu,” is an allegorical abstraction, symbolizing infinite Time in Space, which contains the germ and throws off periodically the efflorescence of this germ, the manifested Universe ; whereas, the gnostic Ophis contained the same triple symbolism in its seven vowels as the One, Three and Seven-syllabled Oeaohoo of the Archaic doctrine ; i.e., the One Unmanifested Logos, the Second manifested, the triangle concreting into the Quaternary or Tetragrammaton, and the rays of the latter on the material plane.
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the Kabalists) — between the former, the embodiment of divine Wisdom in the region of the Spiritual, and the latter, Evil, on the plane of matter. * Jesus accepted the serpent as a synonym of Wisdom, and this formed part of his teaching : “ Be ye wise as serpents,” he says. “ In the beginning, before Mother became Father-Mother, the fiery Dragon moved in the infinitudes alone ” (Book of Sarparâjni.) The Aitareya Brâhmana calls the Earth Sarparâjni, “ the Serpent Queen,” and “ the Mother of all that moves.” Before our globe became egg-shaped (and the Universe also) “ a long trail of Cosmic dust (or fire mist) moved and writhed like a serpent in Space.” The “ Spirit of God moving on Chaos ” was symbolized by every nation in the shape of a fiery serpent breathing fire and light upon the primordial waters, until it had incubated cosmic matter and made it assume the annular shape of a serpent with its tail in its mouth — which symbolises not only Eternity and Infinitude, but also the globular shape of all the bodies formed within the Universe from that fiery mist. The Universe, as well as the Earth and Man, cast off periodically, serpent-like, their old skins, to assume new ones after a time of rest. The serpent is, surely, a not less graceful or a more unpoetical image than the caterpillar and chrysalis from which springs the butterfly, the Greek emblem of Psyche, the human soul. The “ Dragon ” was also the symbol of the Logos with the Egyptians, as with the Gnostics. In the “ Book of Hermes,” Pymander, the oldest and the most spiritual of the Logoi of the Western Continent, appears to Hermes in the shape of a Fiery Dragon of “ Light, Fire, and Flame.” Pymander, the “ Thought Divine ” personified, says : The Light is me, I am the Nous (the mind or Manu), I am thy God, and I am far older than the human principle which escapes from the shadow (“ Darkness,” or the concealed Deity). I am the germ of thought, the resplendent Word, the Son of God. All that thus sees and hears in thee is the Verbum of the Master, it is the Thought (Mahat) which is God, the Father. †
* The Astral Light, or the Ether, of the ancient pagans (for the name of Astral Light is quite modern) is Spirit-Matter. Beginning with the pure spiritual plane, it becomes grosser as it descends until it becomes the Maya or the tempting and deceitful serpent on our plane.
† By “ God, the Father,” the seventh principle in Man and Kosmos are here unmistakeably meant, this principle being inseparable in its Esse and Nature from the seventh Cosmic principle. In one sense it is the Logos of the Greeks and the Avalôkitêswara of the esoteric Buddhists.
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The celestial Ocean, the Æther . . . . is the Breath of the Father, the life-giving principle, the Mother, the Holy Spirit, . . . . for these are not separated, and their union is life.”
Here we find the unmistakeable echo of the Archaic Secret Doctrine, as now expounded. Only the latter does not place at the head and Evolution of Life “ the Father,” who comes third and is the “ Son of the Mother,” but the “ Eternal and Ceaseless Breath of the All.” The Mahat (Understanding, Universal Mind, Thought, etc.), before it manifests itself as Brahmâ or Siva, appears as Vishnu, says Sânkhya Sâra (p. 16) ; hence Mahat has several aspects, just as the logos has. Mahat is called the Lord, in the Primary Creation, and is, in this sense, Universal Cognition or Thought Divine ; but, “ That Mahat which was first produced is (afterwards) called Ego-ism, when it is born as “ I,” that is said to be the second Creation ” (Anugîtâ, ch. xxvi.). And the translator (an able and learned Brahmin, not a European Orientalist) explains in a foot-note (6), “ i.e., when Mahat develops into the feeling of SelfConsciousness — I — then it assumes the name of Egoism,” which, translated into our esoteric phraseology, means when Mahat is transformed into the human Manas (or even that of the finite gods), and becomes Aham-ship. Why it is called the Mahat of the Second creation (or the ninth, that of the Kumâra in Vishnu Purâna) will be explained in Book II. The “ Sea of Fire ” is then the Super-Astral (i.e., noumenal) Light, the first radiation from the Root, the Mulaprakriti, the undifferentiated Cosmic Substance, which becomes Astral Matter. It is also called the “ Fiery Serpent,” as above described. If the student bears in mind that there is but One Universal Element, which is infinite, unborn, and undying, and that all the rest — as in the world of phenomena — are but so many various differentiated aspects and transformations (correlations, they are now called) of that One, from Cosmical down to microcosmical effects, from super-human down to human and sub-human beings, the totality, in short, of objective existence — then the first and chief difficulty will disappear and Occult Cosmology may be mastered. * All the Kabalists and Occultists, Eastern and Western, recognise (a)
* In the Egyptian as in the Indian theogony there was a concealed deity, the one, and the creative, androgynous god. Thus Shoo is the god of creation and Osiris is, in his original primary form, the “ god whose name is unknown.” (See Mariette’s Abydos II., p. 63, and Vol. III., pp. 413, 414, No. 1122.)
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the identity of “ Father-Mother ” with primordial Æther or Akâsa, (Astral Light) * ; and (b) its homogeneity before the evolution of the “ Son,” cosmically Fohat, for it is Cosmic Electricity. “ Fohat hardens and scatters the seven brothers ” (Book III. Dzyan) ; which means that the primordial Electric Entity — for the Eastern Occultists insist that Electricity is an Entity — electrifies into life, and separates primordial stuff or pregenetic matter into atoms, themselves the source of all life and consciousness. “ There exists an universal agent unique of all forms and of life, that is called Od, † Ob, and Aour, active and passive, positive and negative, like day and night : it is the first light in Creation ” (Eliphas Lévi’s Kabala) : — the first Light of the primordial Elohim — the Adam, “ male and female ” — or (scientifically) electricity and life.
(c) The ancients represented it by a serpent, for “ Fohat hisses as he glides hither and thither ” (in zigzags). The Kabala figures it with the Hebrew letter Teth ט, whose symbol is the serpent which played such a prominent part in the Mysteries. Its universal value is nine, for it is the ninth letter of the alphabet and the ninth door of the fifty portals or gateways that lead to the concealed mysteries of being. It is the magical agent par excellence, and designates in Hermetic philosophy “ Life infused into primordial matter,” the essence that composes all things, and the spirit that determines their form. But there are two secret Hermetical operations, one spiritual, the other material-correlative, and for ever united. “ Thou shalt separate the earth from the fire, the subtile from the solid . . . that which ascends from earth to heaven and descends again from heaven to earth. It (the subtile light), is the strong force of every force, for it conquers every subtile thing and penetrates into every solid. Thus was the world formed ” (Hermes).
It was not Zeno alone, the founder of the Stoics, who taught that the
* See next note.
† Od is the pure life-giving Light, or magnetic fluid ; Ob the messenger of death used by the sorcerers, the nefarious evil fluid ; Aour is the synthesis of the two, Astral Light proper. Can the Philologists tell why Od — a term used by Reichenbach to denominate the vital fluid — is also a Tibetan word meaning light, brightness, radiancy ? It equally means “ Sky ” in an occult sense. Whence the root of the word ? But Akasa is not quite Ether, but far higher than that, as will be shown.
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Universe evolves, when its primary substance is transformed from the state of fire into that of air, then into water, etc. Heracleitus of Ephesus maintained that the one principle that underlies all phenomena in Nature is fire. The intelligence that moves the Universe is fire, and fires is intelligence. And while Anaximenes said the same of air, and Thales of Miletus (600 years b.c.) of water, the Esoteric Doctrine reconciles all those philosophers by showing that though each was right the system of none was complete.