| 116 | 116 |
- 3. He is their guiding spirit and leader. When he commences work, he separates the sparks of the lower kingdom (mineral atoms) that float and thrill with joy in their radiant dwellings (gaseous clouds), and forms therewith the germs of wheels. He places them in the six directions of space and one in the middle — the central wheel (a).
(a) “ Wheels,” as already explained, are the centres of force, around which primordial Cosmic matter expands, and, passing through all the six stages of consolidation, becomes spheroidal and ends by being transformed into globes or spheres. It is one of the fundamental dogmas of Esoteric Cosmogony, that during the Kalpas (or æons) of life, motion, which, during the periods of Rest “ pulsates and thrills through every slumbering atom ” * (Commentary on Dzyan), assumes an evergrowing
* It may be asked, as also the writer has not failed to ask, “ Who is there to ascertain the difference in that motion, since all nature is reduced to its primal essence, and there can be no one — not even one of the Dhyani-Chohans, who are all in Nirvana — to see it ?” The answer to this is : “ Everything in Nature has to be judged by analogy. Though the highest Deities (Archangels or Dhyani-Buddhas) are unable to penetrate the mysteries too far beyond our planetary system and the visible Kosmos, yet there were great seers and prophets in olden times who were enabled to perceive the mystery of Breath and Motion retrospectively, when the systems of worlds were at rest and plunged in their periodic sleep.”
| 117 | 117 |
tendency, from the first awakening of Kosmos to a new “ Day,” to circular movement. The “ Deity becomes a whirlwind.” They are also called Rotæ — the moving wheels of the celestial orbs participating in the world’s creation — when the meaning refers to the animating principle of the stars and planets ; for in the Kabala, they are represented by the Ophanim, the Angels of the Spheres and stars, of which they are the informing Souls. (See Kabala Denudata, “ De Anima,” p. 113.)
This law of vortical movement in primordial matter, is one of the oldest conceptions of Greek philosophy, whose first historical Sages were nearly all Initiates of the Mysteries. The Greeks had it from the Egyptians, and the latter from the Chaldeans, who had been the pupils of Brahmins of the esoteric school. Leucippus, and Democritus of Abdera — the pupil of the Magi — taught that this gyratory movement of the atoms and spheres existed from eternity. * Hicetas, Heraclides, Ecphantus, Pythagoras, and all his pupils, taught the rotation of the earth ; and Aryabhata of India, Aristarchus, Seleucus, and Archimedes calculated its revolution as scientifically as the astronomers do now ; while the theory of the Elemental Vortices was known to Anaxagoras, and maintained by him 500 years b.c., or nearly 2,000 before it was taken up by Galileo, Descartes, Swedenborg, and finally, with slight modifications, by Sir W. Thomson. (See his “ Vortical Atoms.”) All such knowledge, if justice be only done to it, is an echo of the archaic doctrine, an attempt to explain which is now being made. How men of the last few centuries have come to the same ideas and conclusions that were taught as axiomatic truths in the secrecy of the Adyta dozens of
* “ The doctrine of the rotation of the earth about an axis is taught by the Pythagorean Hicetas, probably as early as 500 B.C. It was also taught by his pupil Ecphantus, and by Heraclides, a pupil of Plato. The immobility of the Sun and the orbital rotation of the earth were shown by Aristarchus of Samos as early as 281 B.C. to be suppositions accordant with facts of observation. The Heliocentric theory was taught about 150 B.C., by Seleucus of Seleucia on the Tigris. — [It was taught 500 B.C. by Pythagoras. — H.P.B.] It is said also that Archimedes, in a work entitled Psammites, inculcated the Heliocentric theory. The sphericity of the earth was distinctly taught by Aristotle, who appealed for proof to the figure of the Earth’s shadow on the moon in eclipses (Aristotle, De Cœlo, lib. II., cap. XIV.). The same idea was defended by Pliny (Nat. Hist., II., 65). These views seem to have been lost from knowledge for more than a thousand years. . . .” (Comparative Geology, Part IV., “ Pre-Kantian Speculation,” p. 551, by Alex. Winchell, LL.D.).
| 118 | 118 |
millenniums ago, is a question that is treated separately. Some were led to it by the natural progress in physical science and by independent observation ; others — such as Copernicus, Swedenborg, and a few more — their great learning notwithstanding, owed their knowledge far more to intuitive than to acquired ideas, developed in the usual way by a course of study. * (See “ A Mystery about Buddha.”)
By the “ Six directions of Space ” is here meant the “ Double Triangle,” the junction and blending together of pure Spirit and Matter, of the Arupa and the Rupa, of which the Triangles are a Symbol. This double Triangle is a sign of Vishnu, as it is Solomon’s seal, and the Sri-Antara of the Brahmins.
That Swedenborg, who could not possibly have known anything of the esoteric ideas of Buddhism, came independently near the Occult teaching in his general conceptions, is shown by his essay on the Vortical Theory. In Clissold’s translation of it, quoted by Prof. Winchell, we find the following résumé : — “ The first Cause is the Infinite or Unlimited. This gives existence to the First Finite or Limited.” (The Logos in His manifestation and the Universe.) “ That which produces a limit is analogous to motion. (See first Stanza, supra.) The limit produced is a point, the Essence of which is Motion ; but being without parts, this Essence is not actual Motion, but only a connatus to it.” (In our Doctrine it is not a “ connatus,” but a change from eternal vibration in the unmanifested, to Vortical Motion in the phenomenal or manifested World). . . “ From this first proceed Extension, Space, Figure, and Succession, or Time. As in Geometry a point generates a line, a line a surface, and a surface a solid, so here the connatus of a point tends towards lines, surfaces and solids. In other words, the Universe is contained in ovo in the first natural point . . . the Motion toward which the connatus tends, is circular, since the circle is the most perfect of all figures . . . The most perfect figure of a Motion. . . must be the perpetually circular, that is to say, it must proceed from the centre to the periphery and from the periphery to the centre.” (Quoted from Principia Rerum Naturalia.) This is Occultism pure and simple.