HPB-SD(ed.1) v.1 p.2 sec.14: Difference between revisions

{{Style S-Small capitals|Metaphysically}} and esoterically there is but One Element in nature, and at the root of it is the Deity ; and the so-called ''seven ''elements, of which five have already manifested and asserted their existence, are the garment, ''the veil'', ''of that deity ; ''direct from the essence whereof comes {{Style S-Small capitals|Man}}, whether physically, psychically, mentally or spiritually considered. Four elements only are generally spoken of in later antiquity, five admitted only in philosophy. For the body of ether is not fully manifested yet, and its noumenon is still “ the Omnipotent Father — Æther, the synthesis of the rest.” But what are these “ {{Style S-Small capitals|Elements}} ” whose compound bodies have now been discovered by Chemistry and Physics to contain numberless sub-elements, even the sixty or seventy of which no longer embrace the whole number suspected. (Vide ''Addenda'', §§ XI. and XII., quotations from Mr. Crookes’ Lectures.) Let us follow their evolution from the ''historical ''beginnings, at any rate.

The ''στοιχεῖα'' (Elements) of Plato and Aristotle, were thus the ''incorporeal principles ''attached to the four great divisions of our Cosmic World, and it is with justice that Creuzer defines those primitive beliefs . . . ''as a species of magism'', a ''psychic paganism'', and a ''deification of potencies ;'' a spiritualization which placed the believers in a close community with these potencies,” (Book IX, p. 850). So close, indeed, that the hierarchies of those potencies or Forces have been classified on a graduated scale of seven from the ponderable to the imponderable. They are Septenary, — not as an artificial aid to facilitate their comprehension — but in their real ''Cosmic ''gradation, from their chemical (or physical) to their purely spiritual composition. ''Gods'' — with the ignorant masses — gods independent and supreme ; dæmons with the fanatics, who, intellectual as they often may be, are unable to understand the Spirit of the philosophical sentence, ''in pluribus unum. ''With the hermetic philosopher they are forces ''relatively ''“ ''blind'',” or “ ''intelligent'',” according to which of the principles in them he deals with. It required long millenniums before they found themselves, in our cultured age, finally degraded into simple chemical elements.