Zirkoff B. - EI : Instruction No. II

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EI : Instruction No. II

by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky

H. P. Blavatsky Collected Writtings, vol. 12, page(s) 542-580

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542

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INSTRUCTION NO. II

In view of the abstruse nature of the subjects dealt with, the present Instruction will begin with an explanation of some points which remained obscure in the preceding one, as well as some statements in which there was an appearance of contradiction.

Astrologers, of whom there are many among the Esotericists, are likely to be puzzled by some statements distinctly contradicting their teachings; whilst those who know nothing of the subject may perhaps find themselves opposed at the outset by those who have studied the exoteric systems of the Kabala and Astrology. For, let it be distinctly known, nothing of that which is printed broadcast, and available to every student in public libraries or museums, is really esoteric, but is either mixed with deliberate “blinds,” or cannot be understood and studied with profit without a complete glossary of occult terms.

The following teachings and explanations, therefore, may be useful to the student in assisting him to formulate the teaching given in the preceding Instruction.

In Diagram I, it will be observed that the 3, 7, and 10 centres are respectively as follows:

(a) The 3 pertain to the spiritual world of the Absolute, and therefore to the three higher principles in Man.

(b) The 7 belong to the spiritual, psychic and physical worlds and to the body of man. Physics, metaphysics and hyper-physics are the triad that symbolizes man on this plane.

(c) The 10, or the sum total of these, is the Universe as a whole, in all its aspects, and also its Microcosm––Man, with his ten orifices.

Laying aside, for the moment, the Higher Decad (Kosmos) and the Lower Decad (Man), the first three numbers of the separate sevens have a direct reference to the Spirit, Soul and Auric Envelope of the Human Being, as well as to the Higher Supersensual World. The lower four, or the four aspects, belong to Man also, as well as to the Universal Kosmos, the whole being synthesized by the Absolute.

543 If these three discrete or distributive degrees of being be conceived, according to the symbology of all the Eastern religions, as contained in one Ovum, or EGG, the name of that EGG will be Svabhavat, or the ALL-BEING on the manifested plane. This Universe has, in truth, neither center nor periphery; but in the individual and finite mind of man it has such a definition, the natural consequences of the limitations of human thought.

In Diagram II, as already stated therein, no notice need be taken of the numbers used in the left-hand column, as these refer only to the Hierarchies of the Colors and Sounds on the metaphysical plane, and are not the characteristic number of the human principles or of the planets. The human principles elude enumeration, because each man differs from every other, just as no two blades of grass on the whole earth are absolutely alike. Numbering is here a question of spiritual progress and the natural predominance of one principle over another. With one man it may be Buddhi that stands as number one; with another, if he be a bestial sensualist, the Lower Manas. With one, the physical body, or perhaps Prâna (the life-principle) will be on the first and highest plane, as would be the case in an extremely healthy man, full of vitality; with another it may come as the sixth or even seventh downward. Again, the colors and metals corresponding to the planets and human principles, as will be observed, are not those known exoterically to modern Astrologers and Western Occultists.

Let us see whence the modern Astrologer got his notions about the correspondence of planets, metals and colors. And here we are reminded of the modern Orientalist, who, judging on appearances, credits the ancient Akkadians (and also the Chaldeans, Hindus and Egyptians) with the crude notion that the Universe, and in like manner the earth, was like an inverted, bell-shaped bowl! This he demonstrates by pointing to the symbolical representations of some Akkadian inscriptions and to the Assyrian carvings. It is, however, no place here to explain how mistaken is the Assyriologist, for all such representations are simply symbolical of the Khargak kurra, the World-Mountain, or Meru, and relate only to the North Pole, the land of the Gods. Now, the Assyrians arranged their exoteric teaching about the planets and their correspondences as follows:

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NUMBERS		METALS	COLORS	SOLAR DAYS OF WEEK
1	Saturn	Lead	Black	Saturday (whence Sabbath, in honor of Jehovah)
2	Jupiter	Tin	White, but as often Purple or Orange	Thursday
3	Mars	Iron	Red	Tuesday
4	Sun	Gold	Yellow-Golden	Sunday
5	Venus	Copper	Green or Yellow	Friday
6	Mercury	Quicksilver	Blue	Wednesday
7	Moon	Silver	Silver-White	Monday

This is the arrangement now adopted by Christian Astrologers, with the exception of the order of the days of the week, of which, by associating the solar planetary names with the lunar weeks, they have made a sore mess, as has been already shown in Instruction I. This is the Ptolemaic geocentric system, which represents the Universe as in the following diagram, showing our Earth in the center of the Universe and the Sun a planet, the fourth in number:

And if the Christian chronology and order of the days of the week are being daily denounced as being based on an entirely wrong astronomical foundation, it is high time to begin a reform also in Astrology built on such lines, and coming to us entirely from the Chaldean and Assyrian exoteric mob.

But the correspondences given in our Instructions are purely esoteric. For this reason it follows that when the planets of the solar system are named or symbolized (as in Diagram II), it must not be supposed that the planetary bodies themselves are referred to, except as types on a purely physical plane of the septenary nature of the psychic and spiritual worlds. A material planet can correspond only to a material something. Thus when Mercury is said to correspond to the right eye it 545does not mean that the objective planet has any influence on the right optic organ, but that both stand rather as corresponding mystically through Buddhi. Man derives his Spiritual Soul (Buddhi) from the essence of the Mânasaputras, the Sons of Wisdom, who are the Divine Beings (or Angels) ruling and presiding over the planet Mercury.

In the same way Venus, Manas and the left eye are set down as correspondences. Exoterically there is, in reality, no such association of physical eyes and physical planets; but esoterically there is; for the right eye is the “Eye of Wisdom,” i.e., it corresponds magnetically with that occult centre in the brain which we call the “Third Eye” while the left corresponds with the intellectual brain, or those cells which are the organ on the physical plane of the thinking faculty. The Kabalistic triangle of Kether, Hokhmah and Bînâh shows this. Hokhmah and Bînâh, or Wisdom and Intelligence, the Father and the Mother, or, again, the Father and Son, are on the same plane and react mutually on one another.

When the individual consciousness is turned inward a conjunction of Manas and Buddhi takes place. In the spiritually regenerated Man this conjunction is permanent, the Higher Manas clinging to Buddhi beyond the threshold of Devachan, and the Soul, or rather the Spirit, which should not be confounded with Âtman (the Super-Spirit), is then said to have the “Single Eye.” Esoterically, in other words, the “Third Eye” is active. Now Mercury is called Hermes, and Venus Aphrodite, and thus their conjunction in man on the psycho-physical plane gives him the name of the Hermaphrodite, or Androgyne. The absolutely Spiritual Man is, however, entirely disconnected from sex. The Spiritual Man corresponds directly with the higher “colored circles,” the Divine Prism which emanates from the One Infinite White Circle; while physical man emanates from the Sephîrôth, which are the Voices or Sounds of Eastern Philosophy. And these “Voices” are lower than the “Colors,” for they are the seven lower Sephîrôth, or the objective Sounds, seen, not heard, as the Zohar (ii, 81, 6) shows, and even the Old Testament also. For, when properly translated, verse 18 of chapter xx, Exodus, would read: “And the people saw the Voices” (or Sounds, not the “thunderings”, as now translated); and these Voices or Sounds are the Sephîrôth.

In the same way the right and left nostrils, into which is breathed the “Breath of Lives” (Genesis ii, 7), are here said to correspond with the Sun and Moon, as Brahmâ-Prajâpati and Vâch, or Osiris and Isis, are the parents of the natural life. This Quaternary, viz., two eyes and 546two nostrils, Mercury and Venus, Sun and Moon, constitutes the Kabalistic Guardian Angels of the Four Corners of the Earth. It is the same in the Eastern esoteric philosophy, which, however, adds that the Sun is not a planet, but the central star of our system, and the Moon a dead planet, from which all the principles are gone, both being substitutes, the one for an invisible intra-Mercurial planet, and the other for a planet which seems to have now altogether disappeared from view. These are the Four Mahârâjas of The Secret Doctrine, the “Four Holy Ones” connected with Karma and Humanity, Kosmos and Man, in all their aspects. They are: the Sun, or its substitute Michael; Moon, or substitute Gabriel; Mercury, Raphael; and Venus, Uriel. It need hardly be said here again that the planetary bodies themselves, being only physical symbols, are not often referred to in the Esoteric System, but, as a rule, their cosmic, psychic, physical and spiritual forces are symbolized under these names. In short, it is the seven physical planets, which are the lower Sephîrôth of the Kabala and our triple physical Sun whose reflection only we see, which is symbolized, or rather personified, by the Upper Triad, or Sephirothal Crown. All this will be demonstrated.

Then, again, it will be well to point out that the numbers attached to the psychic principles in Diagram I appear the reverse of those in Plate I. This, again, is because numbers in this connection are purely arbitrary, changing with every school. Some schools count three, some four, some six, and others seven, as do all the Buddhist Esotericists. In Plate I, the numbers of the principles disagree with the numbers used in Diagram I, simply because the first are those hitherto used in the semi-exoteric teachings of Theosophy, for instance in Esoteric Buddhism. As said in The Secret Doctrine, since the fourteenth century the Esoteric School has been divided into two departments, one for the inner Lanoos, or higher Chelas, the other for the outer circle, or lay Chelas. Mr. Sinnett was distinctly told in the letters he received from one of the Gurus that he could not be taught the real Esoteric Doctrine given out only to the pledged Disciples of the Inner Circle. Therefore, it would perhaps simplify matters if each student would add to the exoteric enumeration of the order in Plate I the secret one as given in Diagram II. But even that would require special study. The 547numbers and principles do not go in regular sequence, like the skins of an onion, but the student must work out for himself the number appropriate to each of his principles, when the time comes for him to enter upon practical study. The above will suggest to the student the necessity of knowing the principles by their names and their appropriate faculties apart from any system of enumeration, or by association with their corresponding centers of action, colors, sounds, etc, until these become inseparable.

The old and familiar mode of reckoning the principles, given in The Theosophist and Esoteric Buddhism, leads to another apparently perplexing contradiction, though it is really none at all. In Plate I, it will be seen that the principles numbered 3 and 2, viz., Linga-Sarira and Prâna, or Jîva, stand in the reverse order to that given in Diagram I. A moment’s consideration will suffice to explain the apparent discrepancy between the exoteric enumeration, as printed in Plate I, and the esoteric order given in Diagram I. For in Diagram I, Linga-Sarira is defined as the vehicle of Prâna, or Jîva, the life-principle, and as such must, on the esoteric plane, of necessity be inferior to Prâna, not superior as the exoteric enumeration in Plate I would suggest.

The colored part of the Plate is profoundly esoteric, but the old and more familiar exoteric enumeration has been used to force upon the attention of the student the fact that the principles do not stand one above the other, and thus cannot be taken in numerical sequence, their order depending upon the superiority and predominance of one or another principle, and therefore differing in every man.

The Linga-Sarira is the double, or protoplasmic antetype of the body, which is its image. It is in this sense that it is called in Diagram II the parent of the physical body, i.e., the mother by conception of Prâna, the father. This idea is conveyed in the Egyptian mythology by the birth of Horus, the child of Osiris and Isis, although, like all sacred Mythoi, this has both a threefold spiritual, and a sevenfold psycho-physical application. To close the subject, Prâna, the life-principle, can, in sober truth, have no number, as it pervades every other principle, or the human total. Each number of the seven would thus be naturally applicable to Prâna-Jîva exoterically as it is to the Auric Body esoterically. As Pythagoras showed, Kosmos was produced not through or by number, but geometrically, i.e., following the proportions of numbers.

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To those who are unacquainted with the exoteric astrological natures ascribed in practice to the planetary bodies, it may be useful if we set them down here after the manner of Diagram II, in relation to their domain over the human body, colors, metals, etc., and explain at the 548same time why genuine Esoteric Philosophy differs from the astrological claims.

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PLANETS	DAYS	METALS	PARTS OF BODY	COLORS
♄Saturn	Saturday	Lead	Right Ear, Knees and Bony System	Black
♃Jupiter	Thursday	Tin	Left Ear, Thighs, Feet and Arterial System	Purple
♂Mars	Tuesday	Iron	Forehead and Nose, the Sex-functions and Muscular System	Red
☉Sun	Sunday	Gold	Right Eye, Heart and Vital Centers	Orange
♀Venus	Friday	Copper	Chin and Cheeks, Neck and Reins, and the Venous System	Yellow
☿Mercury	Wednesday	Quick-silver	Mouth, Hands, Abdominal Viscera and Nervous System	Dove or Cream
☽Moon	Monday	Silver	Breasts, Left Eye, the Fluidic System, Saliva Lymph, etc.	White

549 Thus it will be seen that the influence of the solar system in the exoteric Kabalistic Astrology is by this method distributed over the entire human body, the primary metals, and the gradations of color from black to white; but that Esotericism recognizes neither black nor white as colors, because it holds religiously to the seven solar or natural colors of the prism. Black and white are artificial tints. They belong to the Earth, and are only perceived by virtue of the special construction of our physical organs. White is the absence of all colors, and therefore no color; black is simply the absence of light, and therefore the negative aspect of white. The seven prismatic colors are direct emanations from the Seven Hierarchies of Being, each of which has a direct bearing upon and relation to one of the human principles, since each of these Hierarchies is, in fact, the creator and source of the corresponding human principle. Each prismatic color is called in Occultism the “Father of the Sound” which corresponds to it; sound being the Word, or the Logos, of its Father-Thought. This is the reason why sensitives connect every color with a definite sound, a fact well recognized in modern science (e.g., Francis Galton’s Nature and Nurture). But black and white are entirely negative colors, and have no representatives in the world of subjective being.

Kabalistic Astrology says that the dominion of the planetary bodies in the human brain also is defined thus: there are seven primary 550groups of faculties, six of which function through the cerebrum, and the seventh through the cerebellum. This is perfectly correct esoterically. But when it is further said that: Saturn governs the devotional faculties; Mercury, the intellectual; Jupiter, the sympathetic; the Sun, the governing faculties; Mars, the selfish; Venus, the tenacious; and the Moon, the instincts;––we say that the explanation is incomplete and even misleading. For, in the first place, the physical planets can rule only the physical body and the purely physical functions. All the mental, emotional, psychic and spiritual faculties are influenced by the occult properties of the scale of causes which emanate from the Hierarchies of the Spiritual Rulers of the planets, and not by the planets themselves. This scale, as given in Diagram II, leads the student to perceive in the following order: (1) color; (2) sound; (3) the sound materializes into the spirit of the metals, i.e., the metallic Elementals; (4) these materialize again into the physical metals; (5) then the harmonial and vibratory radiant essence passes into the plants, giving them color and smell, both of which “properties” depend upon the rate of vibration of this energy per unit of time; (6) from plants it passes into the animals; (7) and finally culminates in the “principles” of man.

Thus we see the divine essence of our Progenitors in heaven circling through seven stages; spirit becoming matter, and matter returning to spirit. As there is sound in nature which is inaudible, so there is color which is invisible, but which can be heard. The creative force, at work in its incessant task of transformation, produces color, sound and numbers, in the shape of rates of vibration which compound and dissociate the atoms and molecules. Though invisible and inaudible to us in detail, yet the synthesis of the whole becomes audible to us on the material plane. It is that which the Chinese call the “Great Tone,” or Kung. It is, even by scientific confession, the actual tonic of nature, held by musicians to be the middle Fa on the keyboard of a piano. We hear it distinctly in the voice of nature, in the roaring of the ocean, in the sound of the foliage of a great forest, in the distant roar of a great city; in the wind, the tempest and the storm: in short, in everything in nature which has a voice or produces sound. To the hearing of all who hearken, it culminates in a single definite tone, of an unappreciable pitch, which, as said, is the F, or Fa, of the diatonic scale. From these particulars, that wherein lies the difference between the exoteric and the esoteric nomenclature and symbolism will be evident to the student of Occultism. In short, Kabalistic Astrology as practiced in Europe, is the semi-esoteric secret science, adapted for the outer and not the inner circle. It is, furthermore, often left incomplete and not infrequently distorted to conceal the real truth. While it symbolizes and adopts its correspondences on the mere appearances of things, 551esoteric philosophy, which concerns itself pre-eminently with the essence of things, accepts only such symbols as cover the whole ground, i.e., such symbols as yield a spiritual as well as a psychic and physical meaning. Yet even Western Astrology has done excellent work, for it has helped to carry the knowledge of the existence of a Secret Wisdom throughout the dangers of Mediaeval Ages and their dark bigotry up to the present day, when all danger has disappeared.

The order of the planets in exoteric practice is that defined by their geocentric radii, or the distance of their several orbits from the Earth as a centre, viz.: Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury and Moon. In the first three of these we find symbolized the celestial triad of supreme power in the physical manifested universe, or Brahmâ, Vishnu and Śiva; while in the last four we recognize the symbols of the terrestrial quaternary ruling over all natural and physical revolutions of the seasons, quarters of the day, points of the compass, and elements. Thus:

Spring	Summer	Autumn	Winter
Morning	Noon	Evening	Night
Youth	Adolescence	Manhood	Age
Fire	Air	Water	Earth
East	South	West	North

But Esoteric Science is not content with analogies on the purely objective plane of the physical senses, and therefore it is obsolutely necessary to preface further teachings in this direction with a clear explanation of the real meaning of the word Magic.

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WHAT MAGIC IS, IN REALITY

[The superior numbers in the following pages refer to corresponding numbers in the Compiler’s Notes at end of this Instruction.]

Esoteric Science is, above all, the knowledge of our relations with and in divine magic, inseparableness from our divine Selves––the latter meaning something else besides our own higher spirit. Thus, before proceeding to exemplify and explain these relations, it may perhaps 552be useful to give the student a correct idea of the full meaning of this most misunderstood word “magic.” Many are those willing and eager to study Occultism, but very few have even an approximate idea of the science itself. Now, very few of our American and European students can derive benefit from Sanskrit works or even their translations, as these translations are for the most part merely blinds to the uninitiated. I therefore propose to offer to their attention demonstrations of the aforesaid drawn from Neo-Platonic works. These are accessible in translations; and in order to throw light on that which has hitherto been full of darkness, it will suffice to point to a certain key in them. Thus the Gnôsis, both pre-Christian and post-Christian, will serve our purpose admirably.

There are millions of Christians who know the name of Simon Magus and the little that is told about him in the Acts, but very few who have even heard of the many motley, fantastic and contradictory details which tradition records about his life. The story of his claims and his death is to be found only in the prejudiced, half-fantastic records about him in the works of the Church Fathers, such as Irenaeus, Epiphanius and St. Justin and especially in the anonymous Philosophumena.1 Yet he is an historical character, and the appellation of “Magus” was given to him and was accepted by all his contemporaries, including the heads of the Christian Church, as a qualification indicating the miraculous powers he possessed, and irrespective of whether he was regarded as a white (divine) or a black (infernal) magician. In this respect, opinion has always been made subservient to the Gentile or Christian proclivities of the chronicler.

It is in his system and in that of Menander, his pupil and successor, that we find what the term “magic” meant for initiates in those days.

Simon, as all the other Gnostics, taught that our world was created by the lower angels, whom he called Aeôns [αἰών]. He mentions only three degrees of such, because it was and is useless, as explained in The Secret Doctrine, to teach anything about the four higher ones, and he therefore begins at the plane of globes A and G. His system is as near to occult truth as any, so that we may examine it, as well as his own and Menander’s claims about “magic,” to find out what they meant by the term. Now, for Simon, the summit of all manifested creation was Fire [πυρ]. It is, with him as with us, the Universal Principle, the Infinite Potency born from the concealed Potentiality. This Fire was the primeval cause of the manifested world of being, and was dual, having a manifested and a concealed or secret side.

553 “The secret side of Fire is concealed in its evident (or objective) side,” he writes, which amounts to saying that the visible is ever present in the invisible, and the invisible in the visible. This was but a new form of stating Plato’s idea of the Intelligible (τὸ νοητόν, to noeton) and Sensible (τὸ αἰσθητόν, to aistheton), and Aristotle’s teaching on the Power or Potentiality (δύναμις, dynamis) and Actual Existence (ἐνέργεια, energeia). For Simon, all that can be thought of, all that can be acted upon, was perfect intelligence. Fire contained all. And thus all the parts of that Fire, being endowed with intelligence and reason, are susceptible of development by extension and emanation. This is our teaching of the Manifested Logos, and these parts in their primordial emanation are our Dhyâni-Chohans, the “Sons of Flame and Fire,” or higher Aeôns. This “Fire” is the symbol of the active and living side of divine nature. Behind it lay “infinite Potentiality in Potentiality,” which Simon named “that which has stood, stands and will stand” [ὁ ἐστῶς, στας, στησόμενος, o estôs, stas, stesomenos] or permanent stability and personified Immutability.

From the Potency of Thought, Divine Ideation thus passed to Action. Hence the series of primordial emanations through Thought begetting the Act, the objective side of Fire being the Mother, the secret side of it being the Father. Simon called these emanations Syzygies [συζυγία] (a united pair or couple), for they emanated two-by-two, one as an active and the other as a passive Aeôn. Three couples thus emanated (or six in all, the Fire being the seventh), to which Simon gave the following names: Mind (νοῦς, Nous ) and Thought (ἐπίνοια, Epinoia), Voice (φωνή, Phone) and Name (ὄνομα, Onoma), Reason (λογισμός, Logismos) and Reflection (ἐνθύμησις, Enthumesis), the first in each pair being male, the last female. From these primordial six emanated the six Aeôns of the Middle World. Let us see what Simon himself says: “Each of these six primitive beings contained the entire infinite Potency [of its parent] but it was there only in Potency, and not in Act. That Potency had to be called forth (or conformed) through an image in order that it should manifest in all its essence, virtue, grandeur and effects; for only then could the emanated Potency become similar to its parent, the eternal and infinite Potency, If, on the contrary, it remained simply potentially in the six Potencies and failed to be conformed through an image, then the Potency would not pass into action, 554but would get lost”; in clearer terms, it would become atrophied, as the modern expression goes.

Now, what do these words mean if not that to be equal in all things to the Infinite Potency the Aeôns had to imitate it in its action, and becoming themselves, in their turn, emanative principles, as was their parent, giving life to new beings, and becoming Potencies in actu themselves? To produce emanations, or to have acquired the gift of Kriyâúakti, is the direct result of that power, an effect which depends on our own action. That power, then, is inherent in man, as it is in the primordial Aeôns and even in the secondary emanations, by the very fact of their and our descent from the One Primordial Principle, the infinite Power, or Potency. Thus we find in the system of Simon Magus that the first six Aeôns, synthesized by the seventh, the Parent Potency, passed into Act, and emanated, in their turn, six secondary Aeôns, which were each synthesized by their respective Parent. In the Philosophumena we read that Simon compared the Aeôns to the “Tree of Life.” “ ‘It is written,’ said Simon in The Great Revelation (ἡ μεγάλη ἀπόφασις, he Megale Apophasis), of which Simon himself is supposed to have been the author, ‘that there are two ramifications of the universal Aeôns, having neither beginning nor end, issued both from the same root, the invisible and incomprehensible Potentiality, Sige (Silence). One of these [series of Aeôns] appears from above. This is the Great Potency, Universal Mind [or Divine Ideation, the Mahat of the Hindus]: it orders all things and is male. The other is from below, for it is the Great [manifested] Thought, the female Aeôn, generating all things. These [two kinds of Aeôns] corresponding with each other, have conjunction and manifest the middle distance [the intermediate sphere, or plane], the incomprehensible Air which has neither beginning nor end’.” This female “Air” is our Ether, or the Kabalistic Astral Light. It is, then, the Second World of Simon, born of FIRE, the principle of everything. We call it the ONE LIFE, the Intelligent, Divine Flame, omnipresent and infinite. In Simon’s system, this Second World was ruled by a Being, or Potency, both male and female, or active and passive, good and bad. This Parent-Being, like the primordial infinite Potency, is also called “that which has stood, stands and will stand,” so long as the manifested Kosmos shall last. When it emanated in actu and became like unto its own Parent, it was not dual or androgyne.

555 It is the Thought that emanated from it (Sige) which became as itself (the Parent), having become like unto its own image (or antetype); the second had now become in its turn the first (on its own plane or sphere). As Simon has it:

“It [the Parent or Father] was one. For having it [the Thought] in itself, it was alone. It was not, however, first, though it was pre-existing; but manifesting itself to itself, from itself it became the second (or dual). Nor was it called Father before it [the Thought] gave it that name. As, therefore, itself developing itself by itself, manifested to itself its own Thought, so also the Thought being manifested, did not act, but seeing the Father, hid it in itself, that is, (hid) that Potency (in itself). And the Potency (Dynamis, viz. Nous) and Thought (Epinoia) are male-female. Whence they correspond with one another––for Potency in no way differs from Thought––being one. So from the things above is found Potency, and from those below, Thought. It comes to pass, therefore, that that which is manifested from them, although being one, yet is found to be twofold, the androgyne having the female in itself. So is Mind in Thought, things inseparable from each other, which though being one yet are found dual.’’

“He (Simon) calls the first Syzygy of the six Potencies and of the seventh, which is with it, Nous and Epinoia, Heaven and Earth: the male looks down from on high and takes thought for his Syzygy (or Spouse), for the Earth below receives those intellectual fruits which are brought down from Heaven and are cognate to Earth ”

Simon’s Third World with its third series of six Aeôns and the seventh, the Parent, is emanated in the same way. It is this same note which runs through every Gnostic system––gradual development downward into matter by similitude; and it is a law which is to be traced down to primordial Occultism, or Magic. With the Gnostics, as with us this seventh Potency, synthesizing all, is the Spirit brooding over the dark waters of undifferentiated Space, Nârâyana, or Vishnu, in India; the Holy Ghost in Christianity. But while in the latter the conception is conditioned and dwarfed by limitations necessitating faith and grace, Eastern Philosophy shows it pervading every atom, conscious or unconscious. Irenaeus supplements the information on the further development of these six Aeôns. We learn from him that Thought, having separated itself from its Parent, and knowing through its identity of Essence with the latter what it had to know, proceeded on the second or intermediate plane, or rather World (each of such Worlds consisting of two planes, the superior and inferior, male and female, the latter assuming finally both potencies and becoming androgyne), to create inferior Hierarchies, Angels and Powers, Dominions and Hosts, of every description, which in their turn created, or rather emanated out of their own Essence, our world with its men and beings, over which they watch.

It thus follows that every rational being––called Man on Earth––is of the same essence and possesses potentially all the attributes of the 556higher Aeôns, the primordial seven. It is for him to develop, “with the image before him of the highest,” by imitation in actu, the Potency with which the highest of his Parents, or Fathers, is endowed.2 Here we may again quote with advantage from the Philosophumena:

“So then, according to Simon, this blissful and imperishable (principle) is concealed in everything in potency, not in act. This is ‘that which has stood stands and will stand,’ viz: that which has stood above in ingenerable Potency, that which stands below in the stream of the waters generated in an image, that which will stand above, beside the blissful Infinite Potency, if it makes itself like unto this image. For three, he says, are they that stand, and without these three Aeôns of stability, there is no adornment of the generable which, according to them [the Simonians], is borne on the water, and being moulded according to the similitude is a perfect and celestial (Aeôn), in no manner of thinking inferior to the ingenerable Potency. Thus they say; ‘I and thou [are] one; before me [wast] thou; that which is after thee [is] I.’ This, he says, is the one Potency divided into above and below, generating itself, nourishing itself, seeking itself finding itself; its own mother, father, brother, spouse, daughter and son, one, for it is the Root of all.”

Thus of this triple Aeôn, we learn the first exists as “that which has stood, stands and will stand,” or the uncreate Power, Âtman; the second is generated in the dark waters of Space (Chaos, or undifferentiated Substance, our Buddhi), from or through the image of the former reflected in those waters, the image of him, or It, which moves on them; the third World (or, in man, Manas) will be endowed with every power of that eternal and omnipresent Image if it but assimilates it to itself. For, “all that is eternal, pure and incorruptible is concealed in everything that is,” if only potentially, not actually. And “everything is that image, provided the lower image (man) ascends to that highest Source and Root in Spirit and Thought.” Matter as Substance is eternal and has never been created. Therefore Simon Magus, with all the great Gnostic teachers and Eastern philosophers, never speaks of its beginning. “Eternal Matter” receives its various forms in the lower Aeôn from the Creative Angels, or Builders, as we call them. Why, then, should not Man, the direct heir of the highest Aeôn, do the same, by the potency of his thought, which is born from Spirit? This is Kriyâśâkti, the power of producing forms on the objective plane through the potency of Ideation and Will, from invisible, indestructible matter.

Truly says Jeremiah, quoting the “Word of the Lord:” “before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee”; for Jeremiah stands here for Man when he was yet an Aeôn, or Divine Man, both with Simon Magus and Eastern Philosophy. The first three chapters of Genesis are as occult as what is given in Instruction No. I. For the terrestrial Paradise 557is the Womb, says Simon, Eden the region surrounding it. The river which went out of Eden to water the garden is the Umbilical Cord; this cord is divided into four Heads, the streams that flowed out of it, the four canals which serve to carry nutrition to the Foetus, i.e., the two arteries and the two veins which are the channels for the blood and convey the breathing air, the unborn child, according to Simon, being entirely enveloped by the Amnion, fed through the Umbilical Cord and given vital air through the Aorta.

The above is given for the elucidation of that which is to follow. The disciples of Simon Magus were numerous, and were instructed by him in magic. They made use of so-called “exorcisms” (as in the New Testament), incantations, philtres; believed in dreams and visions, and produced them at will; and finally forced the lower orders of spirits to obey them. Simon Magus was called “the Great Power of God” literally “the Potency of the Deity which is called Great.” That which was then termed Magic we now call Theosophia, or Divine Wisdom, Power and Knowledge.

His direct disciple, Menander,3 was also a great Magician. Says Irenaeus, among other writers: “The successor of Simon was Menander, a Samaritan by birth, who reached the highest summits in the Science of Magic.” Thus both master and pupil are shown to have attained the highest powers in the art of enchantments, powers which can be obtained only through “the help of the Devil,” as Christians claim; and yet their “works” were identical with those spoken of in the New Testament, wherein such phenomenal results are called divine miracles, and are, therefore, believed in and accepted as coming from and through 558God. But the question is, have these so-called “miracles” of the “Christ” and Apostles ever been explained any more than the magical achievements of so-called sorcerers and magicians? I say, never. We Occultists do not believe in supernatural phenomena, and the Masters laugh at the word “miracle.” Let us see, then, what is really the sense of the word Magic.

The source and basis of it lie in Spirit and Thought, whether on the purely divine or the terrestrial plane. Those who know the history of Simon have the two versions before them, that of White and of Black Magic, at their option, in the much talked of union of Simon with Helena, whom he called his Epinoia (Thought). Those who, like the Christians, had to discredit a dangerous rival, talk of Helena as being a beautiful and actual woman, whom Simon had met in a house of ill-fame at Tyre, and who was, according to those who wrote his life, the reincarnation of Helen of Troy. How, then, was she “Divine Thought”? The lower angels, Simon is made to say in Philosophumena, or the third Aeôns, being so material, had more badness in them than all the others. Poor man, created or emanated from them, had the vice of his origin. What was it? Only this: when the third Aeôns possessed themselves, in their turn, of the Divine Thought through the transmission into them of Fire, instead of making of man a complete being, according to the universal plan, they at first detained from him that divine spark (Thought, on Earth Manas); and that was the cause and origin of senseless man’s committing the original sin as the angels had committed it aeôns before by refusing to create. Finally, after detaining the Epinoia prisoner amongst them and having subjected the Divine Thought to every kind of insult and desecration, they ended by shutting it into the already defiled body of man. After this, as interpreted by the enemies of Simon, she passed from one female body into another through ages and races, until Simon found and recognized her in the form of Helena, the “prostitute,” the “lost sheep” of the parable. Simon is made to represent himself as the Saviour descended on earth to rescue this “lamb” and those men in whom Epinoia is still under the dominion of the lower angels. The greatest magical feats are thus attributed to Simon through his sexual union with Helena, hence Black Magic. Indeed, the chief rites of this kind of magic are based on such disgusting literal interpretation of noble myths, one of the noblest of which was thus invented by Simon as a symbolical mark of his own teaching. Those who understood it correctly knew what was meant by “Helena.” It was the marriage of Nous (Âtma-Buddhi) with Manas, the union through which Will and Thought become one and 559are endowed with divine powers. For Âtman in man, being of an unalloyed essence, the primordial divine Fire (or the eternal and universal “that which has stood, stands and will stand”), is of all the planes; and Buddhi is its vehicle or Thought, generated by and generating the “Father” in her turn, and also Will. She is “that which has stood, stands and will stand,” thus becoming in conjunction with Manas, male-female, in this sphere only. Hence, when Simon spoke of himself as the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, and of Helena as his Epinoia, Divine Thought, he meant the marriage of his Buddhi with Manas. Helena was the Śakti of the inner man, the female potency.

Now, what says Menander? The lower angels, he taught, were the emanations of ENNOIA (Έννοια, Designing Thought). It was Ennoia who taught the Science of Magic and imparted it to him, together with the art of conquering the creative angels of the lower world. The latter stand for the passions of our lower nature. His pupils, after receiving baptism from him, (i.e., after initiation), were said to “resurrect from the dead” and, “growing no older,” become “immortal.” The “resurrection” promised by Menander meant, of course, simply the passage from the darkness of ignorance into the light of truth, the awakening of man’s immortal Spirit to inner and eternal life. This is the Science of the Râja-Yogis–– Magic.

Every person who has read Neo-Platonic philosophy knows how its chief Adepts, such as Plotinus, and especially Porphyry, fought against phenomenal Theurgy. But, beyond all of them, Iamblichus, the author of the De Mysteriis, lifts high the veil from the real term Theurgy, and shows us therein the true Science of Râja-Yoga.

Magic, he says, is a lofty and sublime Science, divine, and exalted above all others. “It is the great remedy for all. . . . It neither takes its source in, nor is limited to, the body or its passions, to the human compound or its constitution; but all is derived by it from our upper Gods,” our divine Egos, which run like a silver thread from the Spark in us up to the primeval divine Fire.

Iamblichus execrates physical phenomena, produced, as he says, by the bad demons who deceive men (the spooks of the séance-room), as vehemently as he exalts divine Theurgy. But to exercise the latter, he teaches, the Theurgist must imperatively be “a man of high morality and a chaste soul.” The other kind of magic is used only by impure, selfish men and has nothing of the divine in it. . . . No real Vates would ever consent to find in its communications anything coming from our higher Gods. . . . Thus one (Theurgy) is the knowledge of our Father (the Higher Self); the other, subjection to our lower nature. . . . One requires 560holiness of the soul, a holiness which rejects and excludes everything corporeal; the other, the desecration of it (the Soul). . . .One is the union with the Gods (with one’s God), the source of all Good; the other, intercourse with demons (Elementals), which, unless we subject them, will subject us, and lead us step by step to moral ruin (mediumship). In short: “Theurgy unites us most strongly to divine nature. This nature begets itself through itself, moves through its own powers, supports all, and is intelligent. Being the ornament of the Universe, it invites us to intelligible truth, to perfection and imparting perfection to others. It unites us so intimately to all the creative actions of the Gods, according to the capacity of each of us, that the soul having accomplished the sacred rites is consolidated in their [the Gods’] actions and intelligences, until it launches itself into and is absorbed by the primordial divine essence. This is the object of the sacred Initiations of the Egyptians.”

Now Iamblichus shows us how this union of our Higher Soul with the Universal Soul, with the Gods, is to be effected. He speaks of Manteia [μαντεία] which is Samâdhi, the highest trance. He speaks also of dream which is divine vision, when man re-becomes again a God. By Theurgy, or Râja-Yoga, a man arrives at: (1) Prophetic Discernment through our God (the respective Higher Ego of each of us) revealing to us the truths of the plane on which we happen to be acting; (2) Ecstasy and Illumination; (3) Action in Spirit (in Astral Body or through Will); (4) and Domination over the minor, senseless Demons (Elementals) by the very nature of our purified Egos. But this demands the complete purification of the latter. And this is called by him Magic, through initiation into Theurgy.

But Theurgy has to be preceded by a training of our senses and the knowledge of the human Self in relation to the Divine SELF. So long as man has not thoroughly mastered this preliminary study, it is idle to anthropomorphize the formless. By “formless” I mean the higher and the lower Gods, the supermundane as well as mundane Spirits, or Beings, which to beginners can be revealed only in Colors and Sounds. For none but a high Adept can perceive a “God” in its true transcendental form, which to the untrained intellect, to the Chela, will be visible only by its Aura. The visions of full figures casually perceived by sensitives and mediums belong to one or another of the only three categories they can see: (a) Astrals of living men; (b) Nirmânakâyas (Adepts, good or bad, whose bodies are dead, but who have learned to live in the invisible space in their ethereal personalities); and (c) Spooks, Elementaries and Elementals masquerading in shapes borrowed 561from the Astral Light in general, or from figures in the “mind’s eye” of the audience, or of the medium, which are immediately reflected in their respective Auras.

Having read the foregoing, students will now better comprehend the necessity of first studying the correspondences between our “principles”––which are but the various aspects of the triune (spiritual and physical) man––and our Paradigm, the direct roots of these in the Universe.

In view of this, we must resume our teaching about the Hierarchies directly connected and forever linked with man.

–––––––

HIERARCHIES

Enough has been said to show that while for the Orientalists and profane masses the sentence, Om Mani Padme Hûm, means simply “O, the Jewel in the Lotus,” esoterically it signifies “O, my God within me.” Yes; there is a God in each human being, for man was and will re-become God. The sentence points to the indissoluble union between Man and the Universe. For the Lotus is the universal symbol of Kosmos as the absolute totality, and the Jewel is Spiritual man or God.

In the preceding Instruction, the correspondences between Colors, Sounds and “Principles” were given; and those who have read the second volume of The Secret Doctrine will remember that these seven principles are derived from the seven great Hierarchies of Angels or Dhyâni-Chohans, which are, in their turn, associated with Colors and Sounds, and form collectively the Manifested Logos.

In the eternal music of the spheres we find the perfect scale corresponding to the colors, and in the number, determined by the vibrations of color and sound, which “underlies every form and guides every sound,” we find the summing-up of the Manifested Universe.

We may illustrate these correspondences by showing the relation of color and sound to the geometrical figures which, as explained in The Secret Doctrine, express the progressive stages in the manifestation of Kosmos.

But the student will certainly be liable to confusion, if, in studying the Diagrams, he does not remember two things: (1) That, our plane being a plane of reflection, and therefore illusionary, the various notations are reversed and must be counted from below upwards. The musical scale begins from below upwards, commencing with the deep 562Do and ending with the far more acute Si. (2) That Kâma-Rûpa (corresponding to Do in the musical scale), containing as it does all potentialities of matter, is necessarily the starting-point on our plane. Further, it commences the notation on every plane, as corresponding to the “matter” of that plane. Again, the student must also remember that these notes have to be arranged in a circle, thus showing how Fa is the middle note of Nature. In short, musical notes, or Sounds, Colors and Numbers proceed from one to seven, and not from seven to one as erroneously shown in the spectrum of the prismatic colors, in which red is counted first: a fact which necessitated my putting the principles and the days of the week at random in Diagram II. The musical scale and Colors, according to the scale of vibrations, proceed from the world of gross matter to that of spirit thus:

PRINCIPLES	COLORS	NOTES	NUMBERS	STATES OF MATTER
Chhâyâ, Shadow or Double	Violet	Si	1	Ether
Higher Manas, Spiritual Intelligence	Indigo	La	2	Critical State, called Air in Occultism
Auric Envelope	Blue	Sol	3	Steam or Vapor
Lower Mans, or Animal Soul	Green	Fa	4	Critical State
Buddhi, or Spiritual Soul	Yellow	Mi	5	Water
Prâna, or Life-Principle	Orange	Re	6	Critical State
Kâma-Rûpa, the seat of Animal Life	Red	Do	7	Ice

Here again the student is asked to dismiss from his mind any correspondence between “principles” and numbers, for reasons already given. The esoteric enumeration cannot be made to correspond with the conventional exoteric. The one is the reality, the other classified according to illusive appearances. The human principles, as given in Esoteric Buddhism, were tabulated for beginners, so as not to confuse their minds. It was half a blind.

To proceed: (see page 564).

The above is on the manifested plane; after which we get the seven and the Manifested Prism, or Man on Earth. With the latter, the Black Magician alone is concerned.

In Kosmos, the gradations and correlations of Colors and Sounds and therefore of Numbers, are infinite. This is suspected even in Physics 563for it is ascertained that there exist slower vibrations than those of the Red, the slowest perceptible to us, and far more rapid vibrations than those of the Violet, the most rapid that our senses can perceive. But on Earth in our physical world, the range of perceptible vibrations is limited. Our physical senses cannot take cognizance of vibrations above and below the septenary and limited gradations of the prismatic colors, for such vibrations are incapable of causing in us the sensation of color or sound. It will always be the graduated septenary and no more, unless we learn to paralyze our Quaternary and discern both the superior and inferior vibrations with our spiritual senses seated in the upper Triangle.⁴

Now, on this plane of illusion, there are three fundamental colors, as demonstrated by physical Science, Red, Blue, and Yellow (or rather Orange-Yellow). Expressed in terms of the human principles they are: (1) Kâma-Rûpa, the seat of the animal sensations, welded to, and serving as a vehicle for the Animal Soul or Lower Manas (Red and Green, as said, being interchangeable); (2) Auric Envelope, or the essence of man; and (3) Prâna, or Life Principle. But if from the realm of illusion, or the living man as he is on our Earth, subject to his sensuous perceptions only, we pass to that of semi-illusion, and observe the natural colors themselves, or those of the principles, that is, if we try to find out which are those that in the perfect man absorb all others, we shall find that the colors correspond and become complementary in the following way:

Violet (1) Red--------------------- -------- -------------------Green (2) Orange----------------- -------- --------------------Blue (3) Yellow----------------- -------- --------------------Indigo

564

565 Hence the full septenary man, symbolically as to the geometrical figures, and in reality as to the various colors of his principles, presents some such appearance as in Plate II.

A faint violet, mist-like form represents the Astral Man with an oviform bluish circle, over which radiate in ceaseless vibrations the prismatic colors. That color is predominant, of which the corresponding principle is the most active generally, or at the particular moment when the clairvoyant perceives it. Such man appears during his waking states; and it is by the predominance of this or that color, and by the intensity of its vibrations, that a clairvoyant, if he is acquainted with correspondences, can judge of the inner state or character of a person, for the latter is an open book to every practical Occultist.

In the trance state the Aura changes entirely, the seven prismatic colors being no longer discernible. In sleep also they are not all “at home.” For those which belong to the spiritual elements in the man, viz.: Yellow, Buddhi; Indigo, Higher Manas; and the Blue of the Auric Envelope will be either hardly discernible, or altogether missing. The Spiritual Man is free during sleep, and though his physical memory may not become aware of it, lives, robed in his highest essence, in realms on other planes, in realms which are the land of reality, called dreams on our plane of illusion.

A good clairvoyant moreover, if he had an opportunity of seeing a Yogi in the trance state and a mesmerized subject, side by side, would learn an important lesson in Occultism. He would learn to know the difference between self-induced trance and a hypnotic state resulting from extraneous influence. In the Yogi, the “principles” of the lower Quaternary disappear entirely. Neither Red, Green, Red-Violet nor the Auric Blue of the Body are to be seen; nothing but hardly perceptible vibrations of the golden-hued Prâna principle and a violet flame streaked with gold rushing upwards from the head, in the region where the Third Eye rests, and culminating in a point. If the student remembers that the true Violet, or the extreme end of the spectrum, is no compound color of Red and Blue, but a homogeneous color with 566vibrations seven times more rapid than those of the extreme Red, and that the golden hue is the essence of the three yellow hues from Orange-Red to Yellow-Orange and Yellow, he will understand the reason why: he lives in his own Auric Body, now become the vehicle of Buddhi-Manas. On the other hand, in a subject in an artificially produced hypnotic or mesmeric trance, an effect of unconscious when not of conscious Black Magic, unless produced by a high Adept, the whole set of the principles will be present, with the Higher Manas paralysed, Buddhi severed from it through that paralysis, and the red-violet Astral Body entirely subjected to the Lower Manas and Kâma-Rûpa (the green and red animal monsters in us).

One who comprehends well the above explanations will readily see how important it is for every student, whether he is striving for practical occult powers or only for the purely psychic and spiritual gifts of clairvoyance and metaphysical knowledge, to master thoroughly the right correspondences between the human or nature principles, and those of Kosmos. It is ignorance which leads materialistic science to deny the inner man and his divine powers; knowledge and personal experience that allow the Occultist to affirm that such powers are as natural to man as swimming to fishes. It is like a Laplander, in all sincerity, denying the possibility of the catgut, strung loosely on the sounding-board of a violin, producing comprehensive sounds or melody. Our principles are the Seven Stringed Lyre of Apollo, truly. In this our age, when oblivion has shrouded ancient knowledge, man’s faculties are no better than the loose strings of the violin to the Laplander. But the Occultist who knows how to tighten them and tune his violin in harmony with the vibrations of color and sound, will extract divine harmony from them. The combination of these powers and the attuning 567of the Macrocosm and the Microcosm, will when combined give the geometrical equivalent of the invocation “Om Mani Padme Hûm.”

This is why the previous knowledge of music and geometry was obligatory in the school of Pythagoras.

–––––––

THE ROOTS OF COLOR AND SOUND PLATE III

Further, each of the Primordial Seven, the first Seven Rays forming the Manifested Logos, is again sevenfold. Thus, as the seven colors of the solar spectrum correspond to the seven Rays, or Hierarchies, so each of these latter has again its seven divisions corresponding to the same series of colors. But in this case one color, viz: that which characterizes the particular Hierarchy as a whole, is predominant and more intense than the others. These Hierarchies can only be symbolized as concentric circles of prismatic colors; each Hierarchy being represented by a series of seven concentric circles, each circle representing one of the prismatic colors in their natural order. But in each of these “wheels” one circle will be brighter and more vivid in color than the rest and the wheel will have a surrounding Aura (a fringe, as the physicists call it) of that color. This color will be the characteristic color of that Hierarchy as a whole. Each of these Hierarchies furnishes the essence (the soul) and is the “Builder” of one of the seven kingdoms of Nature, which are the three elemental kingdoms, the mineral, the vegetable, the animal, and the kingdom of spiritual man. Moreover, each Hierarchy furnishes the Aura of one of the seven principles in man with its specific color. Further, as each of these Hierarchies is the Ruler of one of the Sacred Planets, it will easily be understood how Astrology came into existence, and that real Astrology has a strictly scientific basis.

Plate III demonstrates the fact by showing the symbol adopted in the Eastern school to represent the Seven Hierarchies of creative Powers; call them Angels, if you will, or Planetary Spirits, or, again, the 568 Seven Rulers of the Seven Sacred Planets of our system, as in our present case. At all events, the concentric circles stand as symbols for Ezekiel’s Wheels with some Western Occultists and Kabalists, and for the “Builders” or Prajapatis with us.

DIAGRAM III The student should carefully examine the adjoining Diagram.

Thus the Linga-Sarira is derived from the Violet sub-ray of the Violet Hierarchy; the Higher Manas is similarly derived from the Indigo sub-ray of the Indigo Hierarchy, and so on. Every man being born under a certain planet, there will always be a predominance of that planet’s color in him, because that “principle” will rule in him which has its origin in the Hierarchy in question. There will also be a certain amount of the color derived from the other planets present in his Aura, but that of the ruling planet will be strongest. Now a person in whom, say, the Mercury principle is predominant, will, by acting upon the Mercury principle in another person born under a different planet, be able to get him entirely under his control. For the stronger Mercury principle in him will overpower the weaker mercurial element in the other. But he will have little power over persons born under the same planet as himself. This is the key to the Occult Science of Magnetism and Hypnotism.

569 The student will understand that the Orders and Hierarchies are here named after their corresponding colors, so as to avoid using numerals, which would be confusing in connection with the human principles, as the latter have no proper numbers of their own. The real occult names of these Hierarchies cannot now be given.

The student must, however, remember that the colors which we see with our physical eyes are not the true colors of occult nature, but are merely the effects produced on the mechanism of our physical organs by certain rates of vibration. For instance, Clerk-Maxwell has demonstrated that the retinal effects of any color may be imitated by properly combining three other colors. It follows, therefore, that our retina has only three distinct color sensations, and we therefore do not perceive the seven colors which really exist, but only their “imitations,” so to speak, in our physical organism.

Thus, for instance, the Orange-Red of the first “Triangle” is not a combination of Orange and Red, but the “spiritual” Red, if the term may be allowed, while the Red (blood-red) of the spectrum is the color of Kma, animal desire, and is inseparable from the material plane.

THE UNITY OF DEITY

Esotericism, pure and simple, speaks of no personal God; therefore are we considered as Atheists. But, in reality, Occult Philosophy, as a whole, is based absolutely on the ubiquitous presence of God, the Absolute Deity; and if It itself is not speculated upon, as being too sacred and yet incomprehensible as a Unit to the finite intellect, yet the entire philosophy is based upon Its divine Powers as being the source of all that breathes and lives and has its existence. In every ancient religion the One was demonstrated by the many. In Egypt and India, in Chaldea and Phoenicia, and finally in Greece, the ideas about Deity were expressed by multiples of three, five, and seven; and also of eight, nine and twelve great Gods which symbolized the powers and properties of the One and Only Deity. This was related to that infinite subdivision by irregular and odd numbers to which the metaphysics of these nations subjected their ONE DIVINITY. Thus constituted, the cycle of the Gods had all the qualities and attributes of the ONE SUPREME AND UNKNOWABLE; for in this collection of divine personalities, or rather of symbols personified, dwells the ONE GOD, the GOD ONE, that God which, in India, is said to have no Second: “Oh God 570Ani (the Spiritual Sun), thou residest in the agglomeration of thy divine personages.”

These words show the belief of the ancients that all manifestation proceeds from one and the same source, all emanating from the one identical principle which can never be completely developed except in and through the collective and entire aggregate of its emanations.

The Pleroma of Valentinus is absolutely the Space of Occult Philosophy; for Pleroma means the “Fullness,” the superior regions. It is the sum total of all the divine manifestations and emanations expressing the plenum or totality of the rays proceeding from the ONE, differentiating on all the planes, and transforming themselves into divine Powers, called Angels and Planetary Spirits in the philosophy of every nation. The Gnostic Aeons and Powers of the Pleroma are made to speak as the Devas and Sddhus of the Purânas. The Epinoia, the first female manifestation of God, the “Principle” of Simon Magus and Saturninus,5 holds the same language as the Logos of Basilides;6 and each of these is traced to the purely esoteric Aletheia, the TRUTH of the Mysteries. All of them, we are taught, repeat at different times and in different languages the magnificent hymn of the Egyptian papyrus, thousands of years old: “The Gods adore thee, they greet thee, O the One Dark Truth”; and addressing R, they add: “The Gods bow before thy Majesty, by exalting the Souls of that which produces them . . . and say to thee, Peace to all emanations from the Unconscious Father of the Conscious Fathers of the Gods. . . . Thou producer of beings, we adore the Souls which emanate from thee. Thou begettest us, O thou Unknown, and we greet thee in worshipping each God-Soul which descendeth from thee and liveth in us.” (Hymn to Amon-Râ. This is the source of the assertion, “Know ye not that ye are Gods and the temple of God.” This is shown in the “Roots of Ritualism in Church and Masonry,” Lucifer for March 1889. Truly then, as said seventeen centuries ago, “Man cannot possess Truth (Aletheia) except he participate in the Gnosis.” So we may say now: No man can know the Truth unless he studies the secrets of the Plerôma of Occultism; and these secrets are all in the Theogony of the ancient Wisdom-Religion, which is the Aletheia of Occult Science.

H.P.B.∴

571

COMPILER’S NOTES

¹The available sources of information concerning Simon Magus fall under three heads:

I. THE SIMON OF THE NEW TESTAMENT:

Acts (viii, 9-24). Author and date unknown, but commonly supposed to be “by the author of the third gospel, traditionally known as Luke” (Wm. Smith, A Dictionary of the Bible, 1863 & 1893, s.v. “Acts of the Apostles.”).

II. THE SIMON OF THE CHURCH FATHERS:

Justin Martyr (Justinius Flavius, 100?-165 A.D.). First Apologia (I, 26.56), the probable date of which is A.D. 141. The single MS. preserved is cod. Paris, 450, A.D. 1364. Text: J.C.T. Eques de Otto, Justini philosophi et martyris opera quae feruntur omnia, 3rd ed. in 5 vols., Jena, 1876-81. English transl. by John Kaye, Edinburgh: John Grant, 1912. Also in the Oxford Library of the Fathers and the Ante Nicene Christian Library.––Second Apologia (II, 15), the probable date of which is uncertain. As above.––Dialogus cum Tryphone (120) the probable date of which is A.D. 142-148. As above.

Irenaeus, Greek Bishop of Lyons (97-147?––202-203 A.D.). Chief literary activity in the last decennium of the second century. Contra Haereses (I, xxiii, 1-4). MSS. probably of the 6th, 7th and 8th centuries. Text: Opera, ed. by Adolph Stieren, 2 vols., Leipzig, 1848-53. English transl. in Ante-Nicene Christian Library. Pertinent passages in G. R. S. Mead, Simon Magus, London, Theosophical Publishing Society, 1892, pp. 8-10. Originally published in Lucifer, London, Vols. X-XI, June––December, 1892.

Clemens Alexandrinus (Titus Flavius Clemens, 150? ––220 A.D.) Head of the Cathechetical School. Greatest literary activity about 190-203 A.D. Stromateis or Stromata (ii, 11; vii, 17), meaning Miscellanies. Preserved in one MS. only of the 11th century: Cod. Flor. (Laur. v. 3) (L). Greek and Latin edition of John Potter, Bishop of Oxford and later Archbishop of Canterbury, Oxford, 1715 and 1757, fol. 2 vols. Standard ed. of collected works by O. Stählin, Leipzig, 1905. English transl. of the Stromata in the Ante-Nicene Christian Library.

Tertullianus (Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus, ca. 155––ca. 220-240). De Prescriptionibus adversus Haereticos (46), ca. 199 A.D. Text: Liber de Praes., etc., ed. by H. Hurter, S. J. Oeniponti, 1870. Also in J. P. Migne, Patrologiae Cursus Completus, Series Latina, Paris, 1879. English transl. in Ante-Nicene Christian Library.––De Anima (34, 36), ca. 208-09 A.D. Text: Bibliothec. Patr. Eccles. Select. 572of Dr. G. B. Linder, Fasc. iv, Leipzig, 1859. English transl. in Ante-Nicene Christian Library, and pertinent passage in Mead, op. cit., p. 11.

Hippolytus Romanus (d. ca. 230 A.D.), Philosophumena (vi, 7-20). See below.

Origen (Origenes Adamantius, 185-86––254-55 A.D.). Contra Celsum (i, 57; v, 62, vi, 11). Principal apologetic work of the writer, written at Caesarea in the time of Philip the Arabian. Contains nearly the whole of the famous work of Celsus, Logos Alethes, against Christianity. The work shows a close affinity between Origen’s own views and those of Celsus on many subjects. MS. of 14th century. Greek text in J. P. Migne, Patrol. Gr., Vols. XI-XVII. English translation: by F. Crombie & W. H. Cairns in Ante-Nicene Christian Library, Vols. X & XXIII (Edinburgh, 1869-72); and by Henry Chadwick, with Introd. and Notes (Cambridge, Univ. Press, 1953; xl, 531 pp.), as well as copious Index and Bibliography. Pertinent passages in Mead, op. cit., pp. 22-23.

Philastrius, Bishop of Brixia (Brescia), d. ca. 387. De Haeresibus, i. Text: Patres Quarti Ecclesiae Saeculi, ed. by D. A. B. Caillau, Paris, 1842, and in Franz Oehler’s Corpus Haeresiologicum, Berlin, 1859-61. Pertinent passages in Mead, op. cit., pp. 23-24.

Epiphanius, Bishop of Salamis (310-20––404 A.D.). Contra Haereses or Panarion (ii, 1-6). MS. of the 11th century. Text: Opera, ed. by G. Dindorf, Leipzig, 1859; and by K. Holl, Leipzig, 1915. Greek and Latin edition by Franz Oehler in his Corpus Haeresiologicum, Berlin, 1859-61. Pertinent passages transl. into English in Mead, op. cit., pp. 24-28.

Jerome (Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymus, 340-420 A.D.). Commentarius in Evangelium secundum Matthaeum (IV, xxiv, 5), written ca. 387. Text: J. P. Migne, Patrol, Graec., VII, and Ser. Latina, XXVI, Paris, 1884. Pertinent passage in Mead, op. cit., p. 28.

Theodoretus, Bishop of Cyrrhus (ca. 386––453-58 A.D.). Haereticarum Fabularum Compendium (I, i). MS. of 11th century. Text: Greek and Latin ed. of Opera Omnia by the Jesuit Jac. Sirmond, Paris, 1642, re-edited by J. L. Schulze, Halae Sax., 1769-74. Pertinent passages transl. by Mead, op. cit., pp. 28-30.

III. THE SIMON OF THE LEGENDS:

References to Simon Magus are to be found in the so-called Clementine Literature, namely in the Recognitions (Text: Rufino Aquilei Presb. Interprete [curante E. G. Gersdorf], Leipzig, 1838), the Homiliae 573(Text: Bibliotheca Patrum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum Selecta, Vol. I, ed. Albertus Schwegler, Tubingensis, Stuttgardt, 1847), and the Apostolic Constitutions (Text: S.S. Patrum qui Temporibus Apostolicis Floruerunt Opera, ed. by J. B. Cotelerius, Amsterdam, 1742). A summery of the stories contained therein may be found in Mead, op. cit., pp. 31-37.

The sources enumerated above are of very unequal value. It is only when we come to the Simon of the Philosophumena that we feel on any safe ground. The prior part of it is of special interest on account of the quotations from The Great Revelation or Announcement (ή μεγάλη ἀπόφασις), a work supposed to have been written by Simon and which is not mentioned in any other source. It is obvious that the author of Philosophumena (called also the Elenchus), whoever he was, had access to some of the writings of the Simonians, from which he drew his copious citations.

It was not until the year 1842 that Minoides Mynas, a learned Greek, brought to Paris from one of the monastaries on Mount Athos, on his return from a literary mission given him by the French Government, a fourteenth century MS. in a mutilated condition. This was the MS. of the Philosophumena supposed to have been written in the first quarter of the third century by Hippolytus Romanus, Bishop of Ostia, in refutations of all heresies, divided into ten books, though beginning in the middle of the fourth one as the first three and a half books were missing. Emmanuel Miller, who published the book in 1851 for the University of Oxford, noticed that these newly-recovered books belonged to the same work as what had been published under the name of Origen’s Philosophumena by J. F. Gronovius (1611-71), and later in the Benedictine edition of Origen. Miller ascribed the whole text to Origen which gave rise to a very heated controversy. A number of scholars seemed to have found conclusive evidence that this work was written by Hippolytus, but its real authorship is still in question.

The Philosophumena or Refutatio Omnium Haeresium, first published by Miller in 1851, was edited by Lud. Duncker and F. G. Schneidewin, Göttingen, 1859. It may be consulted in Migne’s Patrologiae Cursus Completus, Ser. Gr.-Lat., XVI-3. Greek and Latin text edited by Patricius Cruice, Paris, Imprimerie Royale, 1860. English translation by the Rev. J. H. Macmahon in the Ante-Nicene Christian Library, Edinburgh, 1867-72 (Vol. I, 1868), and Buffalo, 1884-86. Pertinent passages in Mead, op. cit., pp. 12-22.

574 ²[Excerpts from G. de Purucker, Fountain-Source of Occultism. Theosophical University Press, Pasadena, Calif., 1974, pp. 193-97.]

ON THE GNOSTIC AEONS

²“During the two or three centuries following the downfall of the esoteric system in Europe and its appurtenant Mystery schools––a downfall which had its incipient stages around the beginning of the Christian era––there came into existence quite a number of mystical and quasi-occult schools of thought, some of them containing no small portion of the then fading light of esoteric wisdom, others only feeble rays.

“Among these schools thus rising into a temporary vogue were the different groups of the Gnostics, most of them commonly miscalled by Christian historical writers “heretical Christian sects,” although, as a matter of fact, they were far less Christian than they were declining rays from the original centers of esoteric teaching in the Mediterranean world. Yet it is true that some of these Gnostic groups, for one reason or another and mainly through expediency, had certain avenues of rapprochement with the different Christian sects, probably in order that they might be allowed to live more or less in peace and to continue in relative safety their private studies.

“The whole truth about these Gnostic sects has never yet been written. The Gnostic School of Simon was one of the most faithful in teaching some of the fundamental doctrines of the esoteric philosophy. Other Gnostic groups preserving elements of the archaic wisdom were those founded by Menander, Valentinus, Basilides, etc. Simon, because he taught in an age which, while avid and hungry for all kinds of occult and quasi-occult knowledge, was yet extremely critical and theologically unfriendly, obviously had to phrase his teaching in forms of speech that would not offend the dominant Christian power. Consequently, he abandoned very largely the sacred and ages-old phrases of teaching, and used manners of speech and illustrations which were often quite exoteric, and in certain cases were actually invented by him in order to conceal from the enemies of his school just what he really meant in his doctrines––the inner meaning of which was nevertheless perfectly comprehensible to his instructed followers. . . . .

“When H. P. B. refers to Simon’s system of Aeons as starting “at the plane of globes A and G,” the reader should remember that there are not just seven, but actually twelve different evolutionary stages of growth in the life history of an imbodiment of a planetary chain from its beginning to its end. She passed over in relative silence the first five preliminary stages, and takes up the chain really at its sixth stage, 575which she calls the ‘first.’ The following diagram may make the matter somewhat clearer:

Primordial Stages {1. Aetheric. 2. Etheric.

Elementary Evolution {1. First Elemental Kingdom. 2. Second Elemental Kingdom. 3. Third Elemental Kingdom.

The Seven Manifested Globes {1. Globe A fiery. 2. Globe B aery. 3. Globe C watery. 4. Globe D solid or earthy. 5. Globe E ethereal. 6. Globe F ethereal-spiritua. 7. Globe G quasi-spiritual.

“From this it is seen that preceding the evolution of the elemental kingdoms, which are the first to aid in building a globe on a plane, there are the aetheric and etheric stages, which really are the earliest cometary stage in its two chief divisions of development. Once these two primordial stages of preparation and quasi-materialization are ended, then the three main classes of elementals, which have been preparing themselves and have been separated and drawn into their three respective classes, begin their work of laying the foundations of a globe-to-be.

“Again, when the three classes of elementals have built the outline of the globe-to-be, each class following when the preceding one has finished its work, the true globe commences its existence in what is here called the first round, because, by the time the three elemental kingdoms have completed their task, the different families of monads have become more or less segregated into their respective groups, and hence are ready to begin their rounds as life-waves.

“From this time forwards, the seven rounds start and continue through serial progressions around all the globes of the chain; for it is to be noted that while the above description deals mainly with globe D, all the other globes have been likewise evolving or coming into manifestation pari passu with it. A round begins in the highest of the twelve globes and proceeds regularly from globe to globe around the chain. This is but another way of stating that every globe unfolds from itself its surplus of life, or lives.

“First of all we have the aetheric awakening into life of a laya-center, which, starting to move in its wanderings through space, gradually 576accretes to itself aetheric and etheric matter and thus slowly enters upon its second stage, the etheric; and when this stage is ended, the laya-center which is now manifesting as an ethereal comet, has just about become a member of the solar system to which its karmic destiny has inevitably drawn it back to embodiment as a planetary chain-to-be. Once the comet is settled in its orbit around the sun as a highly ethereal globe in the first, or first and second states, of the matter of the physical cosmic plane, the three kingdoms of the elementals in serial order begin their characteristic activities, and so gradually build a luminous and glowing or ‘cloudy’ body of very slight physical density, and a type which probably our astronomers would describe as ethereally fiery. (The word fiery is used to suggest the glowing or luciform nature of fire in its first stages rather than the physical fire producing heat, as we have it on earth; electric substance might perhaps convey the idea somewhat better.) When this stage has been finished then the ‘first round’ starts, and it is with this round that H.P.B. begins her marvelous exposition.

“The process of solidification or of materialization of the globes proceeds steadily until the middle of the fourth round, after which a re-etherealizing of the globe takes place, concomitant with and followed by the spiritualizing on the upward or luminous arc of the various families of monads which have been following or making these rounds up to the present point.”

³Menander, or Mainandros, was one of the teachers of the “Simonian” Gnosis, a native of the Samaritan town Capparatea, about whose personal life we know next to nothing. The center of his activity is said to have been Antioch, one of the most important commercial and literary cities of the Greco-Roman world. Menander has been singled out by Justin for special mention, because of his having led “many” away, which might easily be interpreted to mean that he built a considerable following among the seekers.

⁴“It is one of the fundamental teachings of the esoteric philosophy that every sound has its innate swbhvic color, and, conversely, that every color has its inherent swbhvic sound; and that, as a corollary, 577since both sound and color are expressions of rates of vibration, there can be no sound and no color without number, for every period of vibrational frequency has just so many units of vibration, which is equivalent to saying it is a number.

“From this standpoint, when we speak of sound we at once imply both color and number; or, whenever we speak of color we imply sound and the vibrational number which manifests it; and equally so, whenever we speak of number, had we the eyes to see it and the ears to hear it, we should see the color as well as hear the sound corresponding to such number or vibrational frequency. It is to this that Pythagoras alluded when he spoke of the majestic harmony of the spheres.

“Now as every atom in every object of nature, animate or inanimate, sings its own keynote and produces its own sound and has its own color and number, so every man, flower, tree, and every celestial body, is a play and interplay of sounds both loud and faint, interblending in a marvelous symphony, as well as being a beautiful intermingling of flashing and scintillating color. For instance, the auric egg of a man, because of the continuous activities of the prnic auras, is not only a mass of coruscating colors, but equally is a living organ producing harmonies of sound when the emotions, thoughts, and feelings are on a high plane, and horrible discord when they are characterized by hatred and other low passions.

“For many decades astronomers have been intrigued by the varying shades of color which the vast stellar host presents; some stars are bluish, others are yellowish, still others reddish. The scientific idea is that the colors of the stars represent different ages in their evolutionary development. Be that as it may, and viewing the matter from another angle, it would be wrong to say that all blue stars are more spiritual than all red stars, merely because red is given as the color of kma, and blue or indigo-blue as the color of the higher manas. For there is a spiritual red as well as a material red, and a spiritual blue as well as a material blue. Indeed, there are strong occult reasons for saying that for certain stars a reddish color would signify a more spiritual condition than the bright electric blue of certain others. The greater the intensity of vibration of light or radiation, the lower or more material in the scale that light is; and as the color of blue in our own octave of visible radiation is produced by a much higher frequency than is red, it is obvious that blue could signify a more material condition than the less intense vibration of red.

“H.P.B. has stated that ‘the true color of the Sun is blue’ because its vital aura is blue. It is the real sun in the same sense as the vital aura of a human being is the real man; nevertheless the real man, the essential core, is the spiritual source of his merely vital aura. It would 578not be correct to say that the sun’s vital aura is the interior sun; it is merely one of the coats or layers of its auric egg, and by no means one of the most interior. The blue force spoken of is the sun’s vital aura intermingled, to some extent, with intellectual and spiritual energy, which flows forth from the sun continuously and in all directions. The sun is constantly pouring forth this blue energy in simply inestimable volume.

“Other suns have other colors, which are the expressions of their complex swabhvas. Likewise, could we hear the sounds which the various celestial bodies make as their natural expression, we would realize that each sun, each star, each planetoid, has its own characteristic keynote. Our scientists already are able to ‘hear’ certain stars, that is, to transform the light coming from a particular luminary into sound. Curiously enough, when the moon’s rays lighted upon the photoelectric cell used in these experiments, they sent forth moaning sounds, as of the tolling of great bells; but when the light from the bright star Arcturus flashed, it gave forth brilliant, scintillating sounds. If we could know the scheme of the correspondence of colors and sounds and numbers, we would be able to judge of the qualities of a sun or a star: for instance, dark blue would signify an intellectual sun; yellow, a buddhi sun.

“The difficulty in attempting to determine what specific ray or class any particular sun may belong by its color, is that our atmosphere affects colors very greatly as well as other things that come to us from the celestial bodies. The airy atmosphere surrounding our earth is a remarkable changer and a solvent to a certain extent. Our atmosphere is a transmuter as well as a transmitter. It deforms and actually changes the light––and therefore the sound––that comes to us from the planetary and solar bodies. Spectroscopic observation is by no means so reliable as has hitherto been supposed.

“All the different colors of the solar spectrum originate in the sun and are represented on our earth in the form of light, in the form of forces––forces in the sun, every color of which is the outflow of a distinct swabhva or individual energy, or solar logos. The sun is the vehicle of a divinity; whatever flows forth from it is rooted in the divine. There are seven (or twelve) solar forces or element-principles, and therefore seven (or twelve) swabhvas making up the grand swabhva of the sun. From these solar individualities, powers, forces, minor logoi, flow streams of substance-energy, combined in the light which we receive as daylight, white light. Pass this solar beam through 579a prism, and it will be broken up into its component colors. These seven rays of the spectrum are seven auric flows of vitality from the solar heart, and these swbhvic energies combine to make light as we perceive it. Not one of the colors in essence is superior to any of the others. But on the plane of material existence, and having in view the work which each of the effluvia from the sun does on this scale of matter, we are bound to make distinctions and say that tman is colorless, buddhi is yellow, kma is red, and so forth. Yet all are divine in origin.

“Every minutest portion of Infinity contains every essential element and force and swabhva that Infinity contains. Likewise, every subdivision or subplane derives its own repetitive septenary from the surrounding universe. The microcosm repeats the macrocosm . . .”

⁵Saturninus, or Satornilus, is generally regarded as the founder of the Syrian Gnosis, somewhere about the end of the first and the beginning of the second century of our era. He is said to have taught at Antioch, but we have no information as to his nationality or any incidents of his life. He was especially distinguished for his rigid asceticism. Our information regarding him is derived mainly from Justin Martyr’s Dialogue with Trypho, xxxv, and from Irenaeus’ summary presumably based on the lost Compendium of Justin.

6Basilides was one of the greatest exponents of the Gnosis. Of his life nothing is known beyond the fact that he taught at Alexandria. His date is entirely conjectural, but several independent authorities indicate the reign of Hadrian (A.D. 117-138) as the time when Basilides flourished. We have no information either on his nationality, but, whether a Greek, an Egyptian, or a Syrian, he was steeped in Hellenic culture, and was learned in the wisdom of Egypt.

Our main sources of information about Basilides are: 1) Hippolytus in his Philosophumena; 2) Clement of Alexandria in his Stromateis; 3) the lost work of Agrippa Castor as cited by Eusebius, and later copied by Irenaeus; and 4) the Acts of the Disputation of Archelaus and Mani. The great work of Hippolytus is the most valuable source of information extant for the reconstruction of the great metaphysical system of Basilides. It is possible that Hippolytus had before him Basilides’ Exegetica, supposed to have been one of twenty-four books on the Gospels written by him. It is probable that the Basilidean School of the Gnosis became eventually amalgamated with the Valentinian movement of the latter half of the second century.

Consult for a detailed outline of Basilides’ teachings: A Dictionary of Christian Biography (Wm. Smith & Henry Wace), s.v. Basilides; 580and G. R. S. Mead, Fragments of a Faith Forgotten (London & Benares, Theos. Publ. Society, 1900), pp. 253-83. A second edition of this work was published in 1960 by University Books, New Hyde Park, N.Y. It includes an excellent Introduction by Kenneth Rexroth and a valuable Index which adds greatly to the value of this work.

Behind the Gnôstic movement of a later period stands the commanding figure of Valentinus, universally acknowledged to have been the greatest of the Gnôstics. He has been recognized, even by his opponents, for his great learning and eloquence and for the widespread influence of his teachings upon contemporary thought. Even though we have no sure indication of the date of Valentinus himself, it may be conjectured to extend from about A.D. 100 to A.D. 180.

Valentinus was an Egyptian born at Phebonit‘ on the Egyptian coast, and from about A.D. 130 was teaching Greek science and literature in Alexandria. He must have been in close intimacy with Basilides, though he is said to have stated that a certain Theodas, an “apostolic man,” was his witness to the direct tradition of the Gnosis. It would appear from available sources of information that Valentinus determined to synthesize the Gnosis and to formulate a universal system of religio-philosophical thought.

In regard to his writings, besides the fact that they were numerous and his technical treatises difficult and abstruse, we know very little. The remarkable texts known as the Askew Codex (Pistis Sophia) and the Bruce Codex, now in the British Library and the Bodleian Library respectively, may have been either written or compiled by him, or at least by some other prominent Gnostic of the Valentinian movement. The same would apply to the Gospel of Truth discovered in 1945 in Coptic translation at Nag Hammadi and published as part of the Jung Codex in 1956.

Of the other leaders of the movement, mention must be made of Marcus, Secundus, Ptolemaeus, Heracleon, Axionicus and Bardesanes. Information concerning them is very scant.

As in the case of other great Gnostic teachers, our most reliable information about Valentinus is derived from Hippolytus’s Philosophumena. Consult also: Smith and Wace, Dictionary Of Christian Biography, s.v. Valentinus; Mead’s Fragments of a Faith Forgotten; and Notes, Comments and Diagrams bearing on the Pistis-Sophia, in the opening pages of Volume XIII of H.P.B.’s Collected Writings.

In The Secret Doctrine, Vol. I, p. 568, H.P.B. quotes from a text which she identifies in a footnote as: Valentinus’s Esoteric Treatise on the Doctrine of Gilgul. No definite information has ever been found regarding this piece of writing.

Footnotes

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