HPB-SD(ed.1) v.1 p.2 sec.12: Difference between revisions

{{Style S-Small capitals|To}} thoroughly comprehend the idea underlying every ancient cosmology necessitates the study, in a comparative analysis, of all the great religions of antiquity ; as it is only by this method that the root idea will be made plain. Exact science — could the latter soar so high, while tracing the operations of nature to their ultimate and original sources — would call this idea the hierarchy of Forces. The original, transcendental and philosophical conception was one. But as systems began to reflect with every age more and more the idiosyncracies of nations ; and as the latter, after separating, settled into distinct groups, each evolving along its own national or tribal groove, the main idea gradually became veiled with the overgrowth of human fancy. While in some countries the Forces, or rather the intelligent Powers of nature, received divine honours they were hardly entitled to, in others — as now in Europe and the ''civilized ''lands — the very thought of any such Force being endowed with intelligence seems absurd, and is proclaimed ''unscientific. ''Therefore one finds relief in such statements as are found in the ''Introduction ''to “ Asgard and the Gods : Tales and Traditions of our Northern Ancestors,” by W. S. W. Anson. The author remarks, on p. 3 : “ Although in Central Asia, or on the banks of the Indus, in the land of the Pyramids, and in the Greek and Italian peninsulas, and even in the North, whither Kelts, Teutons and Slavs wandered, the religious conceptions of the people have taken different forms, ''yet their common origin ''is still perceptible. We point out this connection between the stories of the gods, and the deep thought contained in them, and their importance, in order that the reader may see that ''it is not a magic world of erratic fancy ''which opens out before him, but that . . .  ''Life and nature ''formed the basis of the existence and action of these divinities.” And though it is impossible for any Occultist or student of Eastern Esotericism to concur in the strange idea that “ the religious con-

{{Style P-No indent|immediate artificer of the universe, ''is not the highest god ; ''any more than Sir Christopher Wren in his physical, human aspect is the Mind in him which produced his great works of art. Homer, therefore, is not only silent with respect to the first principle, but likewise with respect to those two principles immediately posterior to the first, the ''Æther ''and ''Chaos ''of Orpheus and Hesiod, and the ''bound ''and infinity of Pythagoras and Plato. * . . . . Proclus says of this highest principle that it is. . . . “ the Unity of Unities, and beyond the first adyte. . . . . more ineffable than all silence, and more occult than all Essence. . . . . concealed amidst the intelligible gods.” (''Ibid.'')}}

This first, or rather {{Style S-Small capitals|one}}, principle was called “ the circle of Heaven,” symbolized by the hierogram of a point within a circle or equilateral triangle, the point being the {{Style S-Small capitals|Logos}}. Thus, in the Rig Veda, wherein Brahmâ is not even named, Cosmogony is preluded with the ''Hiranya-gharba'', “ the Golden Egg,” and Prajâpati (Brahmâ later on), from whom emanate all the hierarchies of “ Creators.” The Monad, or point, is the original and is the unit from which follows the entire numeral system. This Point is the First Cause, but {{Style S-Small capitals|that}} from which it emanates, or of which, rather, it is the expression, the Logos, is passed over in silence. In its turn, the universal symbol, the ''point within the circle'', was not yet the Architect, but the cause of that Architect ; and the latter stood to it in precisely the same relation as the point itself stood to the ''circumference ''of the Circle, which cannot be defined, according to Hermes Trismegistus. Porphyry shows that the Monad and the Duad of Pythagoras are identical with Plato’s ''infinite ''and ''finite ''in “ Philebus ” — or what Plato calls the ἄπειρον and πέρας. It is the latter only (the mother) which is substantial, the former being the “ ''cause of all unity and measure of all things ”'' (''Vit. Pyth. p. ''47) ; the Duad (Mulaprakriti, the Veil) being thus shown to be the mother of the Logos and, at the same time, his ''daughter'' — ''i.e.'', the object of his perception — the produced