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- 4. It is the root that never dies, the three-tongued flame of the four wicks * (a) . . . The wicks are the sparks, that draw from the three-tongued flame (their upper triad) shot out by the seven, their flame ; the beams and sparks of one moon reflected in the running waves of all the rivers of the earth (“ Bhumi, “ or “ Prithivi ”) † (b).
(a) The “ Three-tongued flame ” that never dies is the immortal spiritual triad — the Atma-Buddhi and Manas — the fruition of the latter assimilated by the first two after every terrestrial life. The “ four wicks ” that go out and are extinguished, are the four lower principles, including the body.
“ I am the three-wicked Flame and my wicks are immortal,” says the defunct. “ I enter into the domain of Sekhem (the God whose arm sows the seed of action produced by the disembodied soul) and I enter the region of the Flames who have destroyed their adversaries,” i.e., got rid of the sin-creating “ four wicks.” (See chap. i., vii., “ Book of the Dead,” and the “ Mysteries of Ro-stan.”)
(b) Just as milliards of bright sparks dance on the waters of an ocean above which one and the same moon is shining, so our evanescent personalities — the illusive envelopes of the immortal monad-ego — twinkle and dance on the waves of Maya. They last and appear, as the thousands of sparks produced by the moon-beams, only so long as the Queen of the Night radiates her lustre on the running waters of life : the period of a Manvantara ; and then they disappear, the beams — symbols of our eternal Spiritual Egos — alone surviving, re-merged in, and being, as they were before, one with the Mother-Source.
* The three-tongued flame of the four wicks corresponds to the four unities and the three Binaries of the Sephirothal tree (see Commentary on Stanza VI.).
† Useless to repeat again that the terms given here are Sanskrit translations ; for the original terms, unknown and unheard of in Europe, would only puzzle the reader more, and serve no useful purpose.