Agama:

Agama. The tradition of the Tantrics and Kaula, as opposed to that of the orthodox or Aryans known as Veda. In Agamas, Shakti asks Shiva questions, and he replies. In Nigamas, this is reversed.

(See also: Agama , Tantra, Tantra Dictionary, Body Mind and Soul)

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Ad-i Name given by the Aryans to "the first speaking race of mankind" in the fourth round (SD 2:452). The root ad is prominent in many ancient words: Sanskrit adi (first, primeval); Hebrew 'Adon (lord), 'Adonim (angles or planetary lords) -- "the first spiritual and ethereal sons of the earth" (ibid.). The Sons of Adi (sons of the first) are often called Sons of the Fire-Mist (TG 6).

(See also: Ad-i , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

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Dravidians: The oldest known inhabitants of the Indian subcontinent. Archeological remains of their civilization have been found in the Indus River Valley dating back to 2700 BCE. In some areas, the Dravidians were conquered by the Aryans when they migrated from the West around 1500 BC.

(See also: Dravidians ,Yoga, Yoga Dictionary)

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Athravan, Atravan (Avestan), Atourban (Pahlavi), Azarban, Azarvan (Persian) Fire-guardian; the attendant of the sacred fire in Persian temples; the proper word for a priest in the Avesta, likewise Zoroaster's name with the Persians in far later times. Blavatsky interprets the word as "teacher of fire."

As the Persian scriptures says, it was not only the wearing of the priestly robes and bearing of the implements and the baresma which made one an athravan: "He who sleeps on throughout the night, who does not perform the Yasna nor chant the hymns, who does not worship by word or by deed, who does neither learn nor teach, with a longing for (everlasting) life, he lies when he says, 'I am an Athravan.' Him thou shalt call an Athravan who throughout the night sits up and demands of the holy wisdom, which makes man free from anxiety, with dilated heart, and which makes him reach that holy, excellent world, the world of paradise" (Vendidad 18:6, 7).

In Shah-Nameh (the Book of Kings) it was Jamshid (Yima) who categorized society into four classes. The first of these four were the Atourbans. The kings of the early Aryans were also chosen from among the first category, who were royal sages.

(See also: Athravan, Atravan , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

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Ramayana (Sanskrit) [from Rama an avatara of Vishnu + ayana goings, adventures]

One of the famous epic poems of India, relating the adventures of Rama, an avatara of Vishnu, in 48,000 lines. It is often termed the Iliad of the East.

"The whole History of that period [the struggle between the Atlantean and the Aryan adepts] is allegorized in the Ramayana, which is the mystic narrative in epic form of the struggle between Rama -- the first king of the divine dynasty of the early Aryans -- and Ravana, the symbolical personation of the Atlantean (Lanka) race. The former were the incarnations of the Solar Gods; the latter, of the lunar Devas. This was the great battle between Good and Evil, between white and black magic, for the supremacy of the divine forces, or of the lower terrestrial, or cosmic powers. . . . The Ramayana -- every line of which has to be read esoterically -- discloses in magnificent symbolism and allegory the tribulations of both man and soul" (SD 2:495-6).

The siege and subsequent surrender of Lanka (whose remnant is Ceylon or Sri Lanka) to Rama is placed by Hindu chronology -- based upon the zodiac -- at many hundreds of thousands of years ago, and the statement that the present island of Ceylon is the northern headland of ancient Lanka gives a hint as to how far back these events are to be placed.

(See also: Ramayana , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary)

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Magi (plural of Old Persian magus a wise man from the verbal root meh great; cf Sanskrit maha; cf Avestan mogaha, Latin plural magus, Greek magos, Persian mogh, Pahlavi maga)

An hereditary priesthood or sacerdotal caste in Media and Persia. Zoroaster, himself a member of the Society of the Magi, divides the initiates into three degrees according to their level of enlightenment: the highest were referred to as Khvateush (those enlightened with their own inner light or self-enlightened); the second were called Varezenem (those who practice); and the third, Airyamna (friends or Aryans). The ancient Parsis may be divided into three degrees of Magi: the Herbods or novitiates; the Mobeds or masters; and the Destur Mobeds or perfect masters -- the "Dester Mobeds being identical with the Hierophants of the mysteries, as practised in Greece and Egypt" (TG 197).

Pliny mentions three schools of Magi: one founded at an unknown antiquity; a second established by Osthanes and Zoroaster; and a third by Moses and Jambres.

"And all the knowledge possessed by these different schools, whether Magian, Egyptian, or Jewish, was derived from India, or rather from both sides of the Himalayas" (IU 2:361). According to Shahrestani (12th-century Islamic scholar) the Magi are divided into three sects: Gaeomarethians (Kayumarthians), Zarvanian (Zurvanian), and Zoroastrians. They all share the common belief that in this manifested universe the dualism of light and darkness is at work and that the final victory of the light is the day of resurrection.

Porphyry refers to the Magi as the learned men among the Persians who are in the service of the deity (Abst 4:16), while Philo Judaeus describes them as the most wonderful inquirers into the hidden mysteries of nature: holy men who set themselves apart from everything else on this earth, "contemplated the divine virtues and understood the divine nature of the gods and spirits, the more clearly; and so, initiated others into the same mysteries, which consist in one holding an uninterrupted intercourse with these invisible beings during life" (IU 1:94-5). It is likely that the use of the name and the order survived in times when their true dignity was no longer apparent.

In the Bible Magi is translated "wise men." The term has also become familiar through the story of the three wise men who came to the infant Jesus bearing gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

(See also: Magi , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

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Aethiopians, Ethiopians An undefined but powerful group of peoples, generally placed south of Egypt and east of Babylon; often spoken of as being at one time a monarchy and able to contribute kings to the Egyptian throne. Blavatsky shows the archaic racial connection between Egypt and India (SD 2:417; IU 1:569-70).

Migrants from northwestern India to Africa took with them the names of their great river, variously called Aethiops or Nila, now called the Indus. These immigrants were the so-called Sons of Horus or Blacksmiths of Egyptian records, mighty builders but somewhat later than the Atlantean descendants who built the first pyramids. This makes the Aethiopians -- and also, therefore, some of the Egyptians -- Aryans. A highly advanced urban civilization of Mohenjo-Daro has been discovered on the Indus "between Attock and Sind," exactly the location mentioned in The Secret Doctrine as the abode of the Aethiopians.

The reason classical Greek and Roman writers speak of the Egyptian Aethopians was that the Aethiopians of southern Egypt were then considered to be the last remnants of an Aryan immigration from South India, which took place in prehistoric antiquity, and Greek and Roman writers not infrequently contrasted and identified the Aethiopians of Egypt with the Eastern Aethiopians.

It was originally these Eastern Aethiopians who were known to the prehistoric Greek nations as the Aethiopians -- the only ones then considered as rightfully bearing this name. These Eastern Aethiopians inhabited the central and especially the southern part of the Indian peninsula including Ceylon, and therefore were the descendants of one of the last subraces of that portion of Atlantis existing earlier on a land south of India called Lanka, of which Ceylon, then one of its northern highlands, is the only present geological remnant.

See also Ethiopia

(See also: Aethiopians, Ethiopians , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

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Arya (Sanskrit) Lit., "the holy"; originally the title of Rishis, those who had mastered the "Aryasatyani" (q.v.) and entered the Aryanimarga path to Nirvana or Moksha, the great "four-fold" path.

But now the name has become the epithet of a race, and our Orientalists, depriving the Hindu Brahmans of their birth-right, have made Aryans of all Europeans. In esotericism, as the four paths, or stages, can be entered only owing to great spiritual development and "growth in holiness ", they are called the "four fruits". The degrees of Arhatship, called respectively Srotapatti, Sakridagamin, Anagamin, and Arhat, or the four classes of Aryas, correspond to these four paths and truths.

(See also: Arya , Theosophy, Spirituality, Body mind and Soul, Spiritual Dictionary,)

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Arya Samaj: Society of Aryans, founded in 1875 by the north Indian Swami Dayanand. He aimed to transform Hinduism from within by removing such extraneous, and often difficult to rationalize, elements as the Puranas, the epics that tell of the exploits of the various deities.

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Aryavarta

The “home of the Aryans,” comprising the part of India bounded by seas on the west and east, by the Himalaya Mountains on the north, and by the Vindhya Mountains on the south.

(See also: Aryavarta , Bhakti, Bhakti Yoga, Bhakti Dictionary, Body Mind and Soul)

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Fifth Root-race The human race at present on earth; the fifth root-race on this globe D in the fourth round originated from the seed-race of the middle fourth root-race and as the ages passed began to occupy the lands which have since gradually taken form in our present continental distribution. It is subdivided, like all other root-races, into seven subraces, and these again each into smaller divisions. The present predominant sub-subrace is the fifth of its fourth primary subrace, only a little beyond the point of greatest materiality of this root-race.

In one general sense, the fifth root-race actually comprises the many and extremely varied stocks which exist on the earth today, simply because they all live in the time period of the fifth root-race, although many of the stocks are lineal descendants of the last subrace of the fourth root-race more or less intermixed with what can be described as more characteristic fifth root-race stock. The Chinese, for example, although descended from the latest subrace of the fourth root-race, yet because of living in fifth root-race times are to be reckoned among fifth root-race peoples, of which indeed they are among the very oldest. The Semites in all their divisions are to be considered as an early offshoot of the fifth root-race, and not as a race essentially or radically distinct.

The fifth root-race is sometimes spoken of as the Aryan race, merely because the Aryans of India are an existing example of the earliest branches of the fifth, though the term Aryan is not in accordance with the various ethnological and linguistic distinction to which that name is commonly applied. The characteristic language of this root-race is inflectional, such as Sanskrit or Greek. The symbol of the fifth or Aryan race is "that which is its most sacred symbol to this day, the bull (and the cow)" (SD 2:533).

(See also: Fifth Root-race , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary)

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Shemsu-Heru or Heru-Shemsu (Egyptian) Followers of Horus, commonly called the children of Horus; four minor deities represented as the helpers of Horus (Heru), especially in regard to the embalming of the deceased.

Hapi, dog-headed, and Tuamutef, jackal-headed, had charge of the two arms of the deceased; Mestha or Amset, a bearded man, and Qebhsennuf, hawk-headed, had charge of the two legs. These four deities also had surveillance of the four cardinal points: north, east, south, and west respectively.

Followers of Horus also applied to those early invaders and conquerors of Egypt who built up the great dynastic Egyptian civilization; over a number of centuries there was an inroad or influx from the Far East, possibly Southern India and Ceylon, or possibly even from the last remnants of the ancient Lanka of the Hindus, of immigrants who mingled with the then natives of Egypt -- Atlanto-Aryans from Poseidonis -- thus forming what became known in later days as the Egyptian people or race.

(See also: Shemsu-Heru, Heru-Shemsu , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary)

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Aeolians (from Latin Aeolis, Aeolia an ancient country in Asia Minor from Greek Aiolis)

A people who in early prehistoric times were settled in Thessaly and Boeotia, occupied some parts of the Peloponnesus before the Achaeans, and colonized Lesbos and the adjacent coast of Asia Minor. One of the connecting tribal links between a remnant of Atlantis and the early Aryans (BCW 5:215-19). Traditions represent them sailing through the Pillars of Hercules and settling in parts of northern Greece, adding that, though from the last islands of Atlantis, they were not Atlanteans but Aryan settlers of abandoned Atlantean islands who had acquired Atlantean affinities.

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Yellow-faced Used in an archaic commentary on the Book of Dzyan (q SD 2:427-8), referring to people on Atlantis, the continent of the fourth root-race, who remained true to their teachers, in contradistinction to the Black-faced -- those who followed their sorcerer-leaders in practices of black magic -- who were engulfed in the cataclysm which submerged Atlantis. The Yellow-faced, the ancestors of the succeeding fifth root-race, were led to safety by their teachers, the Sons of Wisdom. Thus the fifth root-race -- sometimes referred to as Aryans because the Aryan Hindus are the descendants of the first subrace of the fifth root-race -- are said to be the descendants of "the yellow Adams, the gigantic and highly civilized Atlanto-Aryan race"; "they 'of the yellow hue' are the forefathers of those whom Ethnology now classes as the Turanians, the Mongols, Chinese and other ancient nations; and the land they fled to was no other than Central Asia. There entire new races were born; there they lived and died until the separation of the nations. . . . Nearly two-thirds of one million years have elapsed since that period" (SD 2:426, 425).

The foregoing does not mean that the modern Chinese, for instance, are the first subrace of the fifth root-race; for actually the true Chinese are the remains existing today of the last or seventh subrace of the fourth root-race, although indeed, due to many millennia of intermarriage with more truly Aryan stocks, the Chinese today are to be classed as part of the fifth root-race.

There is an old legend prevalent among many peoples that the color of human skin changes from light to dark as the ages slowly pass by: the legend stating that the first in any new great racial group or stock is light-colored or moon-colored, slowly changing to a more ruddy shade verging into cream or yellow, becoming gradually brown and darker brown, and ending with chocolate or what is called black. Yet the meaning is not that every race runs through these changing tints from light to dark during the course of its evolution, but that the different minor racial groupings, appearing each in its day during the course of the slow evolution of a root-race, gradually range from the root-race's beginning from the light, and passing gradually through the different stages to the chocolate. Nor is it again to be understood that theosophy teaches that all mankind sprang either from an original pair, as metaphorically taught in the Bible, but that in the beginnings of time seven primary seed-groupings appeared on earth from inner realms, each with its own tint or color as we would now say, and each of the seven having its own karmically defined position on the ladder of evolution.

The Negroes or people of chocolate-tinted skin are nevertheless not to be understood as being the seventh or last subrace of the fourth root-race, for the Chinese were these last. The chocolate-skinned men arose as a racial group at the very close of the Atlantean cycle, and are thus racially not degenerated from a previous higher evolutionary state, but are a human seed-stock born at the end of Atlantean development, destined in time through racial miscegenation to be one of the racial contributories to the humanity of the future.

See also YELLOW RACE

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Turanian A word of vague meaning, used as an alternative to Mongolian in that scheme which divides humanity into three main divisions of 1) Black, Ethiopian, or Negro; 2) Yellow, Mongolian, or Turanian; and 3) White, Caucasian.

It thus excludes Aryans, Semites, and Hamites, which are subdivisions of the Caucasian; also it incorrectly gives Ethiopian as synonymous with Negro.

The name is derived from Tur, one of three brothers in Persian legend who were ancestors of three divisions of the human race. In accordance with the idea of basing ethnography upon linguistics, it has since been replaced by the word Ural-Altaic, as denoting a group of peoples and their languages in northern and central Asia, eastern Russian, and Turks, Magyars, Finns, Basques, and Lapps in Europe. The languages are agglutinative.

(See also: Turanian , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Body mind and Soul)

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Yasatas (Avestan) Yaztan (Pahlavi) Yazdan, Izad (Persian) The adorable ones, worthy of worship; pure celestial spirits, gods lower in order than the Amesha Spentas. Their opposers were the Drvants. According to the Avesta there were yasatas of the fire and of the water, between whom stood Apam-napat -- both an Avestic and Vedic Sanskrit name -- meaning son, descendant, or offspring of the waters, i.e., the waters of space or of cosmic aether. Therefore Apan-napat corresponds to fohat and is a Sanskrit name sometimes given to Agni or cosmic fire. The emanational procession gives 1) the waters of space; 2) their offspring or son, Apan-napat, fohat, or Agni; from whom again, 3) spring the yasatas of fire.

Speaking of the great antiquity of the Zoroastrian scriptures, Blavatsky remarks that the forefathers of "the Neo-Aryans of the post-diluvian age . . . had met before the Flood, and conversed with the pure 'Yazathas' (celestial Spirits of the Elements), whose life and food they had once shared" (SD 2:356).

In later Zoroastrianism some of these yasatas are equivalent to the archangels. The best known among these divine beings represent the three aspects of truth in action; Atar (the life-giving force and consciousness); Sraosha (the awakening voice within); and Ashi (the resulting bliss). The number of Yasatas including the Amesha Spentas is often 33.

(See also: Yasatas , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Body mind and Soul)

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Daitya (Avestan) In the Vendidad, the river in Airyana-Vaeja, the original homeland of the Aryans, the first land created by Ahura Mazda and the center of the earth.

See also AIRYANMEN VAEJA {SD 2:365}

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Prachetasas, Prachetasah pracetasas, pracetasah (Sanskrit) [from pra before + chetas mind, understanding]

The preeminently intelligent ones; the ten prachetasas were sons of Prachinabarhis and (according to the Vishnu-Purana) Savarna, the daughter of the ocean -- although Savarna is stated elsewhere to be the wife of the sun. They refer historically and physiologically to the latter portions of the second root-race and to the first portions of the third root-race. The reference here is to the inspiring evolutional influence on the early human races brought about by the union or marriage of the mind-born sons of Brahma (manasaputras) with the early sweat-born and egg-born portions of the human race. Thenceforth the human race became truly intelligent and self-conscious. As nature repeats itself, they also represent the rishis of the early fifth root-race, standing for the adepts of the right-hand path.

The adepts of the left-hand path or the Atlantean sorcerers were called trees in ancient India, although trees likewise symbolized adepts of any kind. Hence, "When Vishnu Purana narrates that 'the world was overrun with trees,' while the Prachetasas -- who 'passed 10,000 years of austerity in the vast ocean' -- were absorbed in their devotions, the allegory relates to the Atlanteans and the adepts of the early Fifth Race -- the Aryans. Other 'trees (adept Sorcerers) spread, and overshadowed the unprotected earth; and the people perished . . . unable to labour for ten thousand years.' Then the sages, the Rishis of the Aryan race, called Prachetasas, are shown 'coming forth from the deep' [symbol of wisdom and of occult learning]

, and destroying by the wind and flame issuing from their mouths, the iniquitous 'trees' and the whole vegetable kingdom; until Soma (the moon), the sovereign of the vegetable world, pacifies them by making alliance with the adepts of the Right Path, to whom he offers as bride Marisha, 'the offspring of the trees' " (SD 2:495). This is an allegory of the struggle between the Sons of Light and the Sons of the Dark Wisdom.

Daksha is the son of the prachetasas and Marisha. In connection with the legend concerning the birth of Marisha, the "Sweat-born," Daksha represents the earliest egg-born human races, those of the first portion of the third root-race. All these archaic allegories of ancient peoples are applicable, mutatis mutandis, to different periods of time, when cyclical events, under karmic government, reproduce themselves with more or less completeness. Thus it is that the prachetasas are sometimes referred to in connection with a later, Atlantean period.

The prachetasas are identical with the five ministers of Chozzar (Poseidon) of the Peratae Gnostics.

(See also: Prachetasas, Prachetasa, pracetasas, pracetasah , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

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Kolarian The indigenous non-Aryan races of India are divided into three great classes: Tibeto-Burmese, Kolarian, and Dravidian. Although generally regarded as aboriginal, the Kolarians are known to have entered Bengal by means of the northeastern passes: they encountered the Dravidians in central India, who broke up the Kolarians and pushed them towards the east and west.

Thus when the Aryans entered India, the Kolarians again succumbed to the invaders and were still more scattered into smaller groups. There are nine principal languages of the Kolarian group of which the most important is Santali. It is not akin to the Sanskrit, nor does it employ the Devanagari alphabet.

Interestingly, the Kolarians count by 20 rather than by 10, the same method employed by the Mayas in Central America.

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Aryavarta (Sanskrit) Abode of the noble or excellent ones or the sacred land of the Aryans; the ancient name for northern and central India. It extended from the eastern to the western sea and was bounded on the north and south by the Himalaya and Vindhya mountains respectively.

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Mlechchhas mlecchas (Sanskrit) [from the verbal root mlech to speak indistinctly cf Greek barbaroi]

Outcastes; Hindu name for all foreigners or non-Aryans.

(See also: Mlechchhas mlecchas , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary)

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