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Wu Wei (Chinese) Inaction, inactivity; quiescence, placidity. Used in Taoism in relation to the tao of man, the idea being that "Heaven is emptiness" and by practicing wu wei (inaction) and becoming "empty" one becomes at one with heaven or tao. Reminiscent of the highly mystical import of the Buddhist sunyata (Sanskrit, "emptiness," "void").
 
In all such words the difficulty is in finding ordinary language to convey the thought. There is not an absolutely empty point of space in all infinitude; what seems to the human senses to be cosmic vacuity is actually complete or absolute fullness, a pleroma as the Gnostics said.
 
Cosmic sunyata or wu wei is emptiness simply because it lacks the lowest forms of matter -- forms and bodies which are like the spume or bubbles on the sea of cosmic reality, which to human senses is empty because invisible, intangible, and not subject to sense perception.

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

Wraith, Wraie The fleeting apparition of a person, about the moment of death, to another person in kinship or psychomagnetic sympathy. Though wraith may cover different cases, in general it is due to the mayavi-rupa of the person who is dying. It is produced by his thought, though he is unaware of the effect he is producing. An intense and anxious thought about the person he wishes to
 
See becomes objective to the seer, and the apparition wears the aspect and commonly the ordinary clothing of the dying person. In some cases the apparition may not be due to any thought on the part of the dying person, but to abnormal sensitiveness or clairvoyance on the part of the seer. Being in close sympathy with the dying one, he bears the image of that one in his latent memory; and when the event occurs, his higher senses, being aware of it, cause the objectivization of this memory as a visual apparition.
 
The thought itself is objective to a mind capable of perception on that plane; but to become objective to the physical senses, it must clothe itself in matter of a lower grade; and this objectivization may vary from a picture in the mind''s eye to an apparition seen by the physical vision. In any case the organism of the seer can provide the necessary vehicle for such an objectivization. Distance plays no part in the phenomenon, and there is no projection of a physically substantial body through space from one place to another. The above case should be distinguished from an appearance of the astral double seen near the graves of the recently deceased.
 
See also EIDOLON; PHANTOM; SPECTER

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

Yathas (Persian) {SD 2:409-10}

 
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Xenocrates (395?-314 BC) Greek philosopher and poet; "founder of the Eleatic philosophy and of pantheism, inasmuch as he combated the anthropomorphic view of the gods dominant in Homer and Hesiod, and in the popular belief in general.
 
He asserted the doctrine of a one all-ruling divinity, who, as true existence, opposed to appearance or non-existence, as the One and the All, the Whole, undivided, unmoved, and eternal, underlies the universe and is identical with it" (Dictionary of Classical Antiquities, p. 700). {SD 2:55; BCW 6:207-9, 14:413}

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

Yajur-Veda The second Veda. {SD 2:548; BCW}

 
(See also: Yajur-Veda, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Body mind and Soul )

Xanthochroi {SD 2:315n; BCW 5:213, 217}

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

Wordpassing, Passwords Communication or passing of the word or words in two contexts: 1) in the sacred Mysteries, by one hierophant just before his death to his successor; and 2) as the culminating act of initiation, from the initiate to the candidate or neophyte, as in Freemasonry by the Master of the Lodge, representing King Solomon, to the candidate after his raising.
 
In the first case, the hierophant could either offer his pure life "as a sacrifice for his race to the gods whom he hoped to rejoin," or an animal victim. This last is a blind, for no initiate of the right-hand path ever sacrificed the life of an animal or any life. The sacrifice performed is the complete conquest of the lower, animal nature, either in this or a lower degree; hence the alternative. The sacrifice of their lives "depended entirely on their own will. At the last moment of the solemn ''new birth,'' the initiator passed ''the word'' to the initiated, and immediately after that the latter had a weapon placed in his right hand, and was ordered to strike. This is the true origin of the Christian dogma of atonement" (IU 2:42). Blavatsky mentions a widespread superstition among the Slavs and Russians that a magician or wizard cannot die before he has passed the word to a successor, which she traces to the ancient Mysteries.
 
In the Egyptian initiatory rites taking place in the Great Pyramid, the neophyte, "upon returning -- received the Word, with or without the ''heart''s blood'' of the Hierophant.
 
"Only in truth the Hierophant was never killed -- neither in India or elsewhere, the murder being simply feigned -- unless the Initiator had chosen the Initiate for his successor and had decided to pass to him the last and supreme Word, after which he had to die -- only one man in a nation had the right to know that word . . .
 
"But he died, he was not killed. For killing, if really done, would belong to black, not to divine Magic. It is the transmission of light, rather than a transfer of life, of life spiritual and divine, and it is the shedding of Wisdom, not of blood" (BCW 14:262-4).
 
That the initiate was compelled to kill the initiator was allegorical and exoteric.
 
Turning to the second meaning, in Freemasonry every degree has its password or words, which are given to the neophyte during initiation into that degree, the possession of which is a requisite for admission into the working of that degree, and to the conferring of it upon others. By means of it, initiates, as of Freemasonry, may become known to one another. In the ancient Mysteries such words were key words, words of power -- not mere words or phrases which could be communicated to anyone merely after taking part in a ceremony however symbolic, but only to those who were inwardly qualified and worthy of receiving them; who, in fact, had achieved the right of demanding them. Thus in a sense such words were ineffable, not only not to be uttered but unutterable to anyone not entitled to receive them, anyone who had not attained through aspiration, self-conquest, and inner development of mind and heart that stage wherein an understanding of them would be possible. Such inner development must in fact have been begun before one could be truly initiated even into the lowest degree, and must be attained progressively in greater and greater measure as an indispensable qualification for advancement into a higher degree. This use of passwords is also seen in the Egyptian Book of the Dead.

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

Week The period of seven days was known to the Hindus, Egyptians, Hebrews, and other ancient nations, but not used by the Greeks or Romans until the Christian Emperor Theodosius. It is not based on any exact astronomical cycle, so far as is ordinarily known, though it may be considered roughly as a subdivision of the month. It was well known to the Hebrews, and in the New Testament the word week translates the Greek Sabbator which is the Hebrew Shabbath. Though commonly Sabbath is taken to mean a seventh day after six, a more esoteric sense makes it a period of seven time units of rest after a period of seven active time units -- in other words after a septenary manvantara comes a septenary pralaya. The word is also used of other sevenfold time periods, such as a week of years or of ages; for each of the days in a week of years represents 360 solar years, and the whole week 2,520 years. The Hebrews "had a Sabbatical week, a Sabbatical year, etc., etc., and their Sabbath lasted indifferently 24 hours or 24,000 years -- in their secret calculations of the Sods. We of the present times call an age a century" (SD 2:395).
 
The nomenclature of the seven days of the week according to the seven sacred planets is serially uniform in the various calendars, and points to a common origin of this knowledge. It can be arrived at by dividing the day into 24 hours and assigning a planet to each hour, for instance, first counting from Saturn, then Jupiter, then Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury, down to the Moon when, by this system of counting and pausing at every fourth, both inclusive, the first planetary hour of each day, beginning with the sunrise, will be found to be governed by the planet which is assigned to that day. The same occurs with a ten-hour day, or by counting the planets in order and giving one to each quarter of the day (cf Fund 250).
 
Here are the names of the days of the week in the English, ancient Anglo-Saxon, Scandinavian, Greek, and Latin systems as being sacred to their deities:
 
English // Anglo-Saxon // Scandinavian // Greek // Latin
Sunday // Sunnandaeg // Day of the Sun // Phoebus // Apollo
Monday // Monandaeg // Day of the Moon // Artemis // Diana
Tuesday // Tiwesdaeg // Day of Tiw // Ares // Mars
Wednesday // Wodnesdaeg // Day of Odin // Hermes // Mercurius
Thursday // Thunresdaeg // Day of Thor // Zeus // Jupiter
Friday // Frigedaeg // Day of Frigga // Aphrodite // Venus
Saturday // Saeterndaeg // Day of (?) // Kronos // Saturnus
 
Blavatsky writes that in the course of time the seven-headed or septenary Dragon-logos became split up into "four heptanomic parts or twenty-eight portions," which suggests the division of the week and the month, into the seven days of the week, and the 28 days of the lunar month, and the four seasons of the year. "Each lunar week has a distinct occult character in the lunar month; each day of the twenty-eight has its special characteristics; as each of the twelve constellations, whether separately or in combination with other signs, has an occult influence either for good or for evil" (SD 1:409).
 
The ancient Mexicans had a different system of dividing their weeks and months: their week consisted of five days, and their month of 20 days. There were likewise other weeks among other nations or peoples as, for instance, the Athenians had a week of ten days, etc.

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

Word In religious and philosophical usage, a translation of the Greek logos or Latin verbum. Its meaning here is that of reason manifested, employed mainly in a cosmogonic sense. "The esoteric meaning of the word Logos (speech or word, Verbum) is the rendering in objective expression, as in a photograph, of the concealed thought. The Logos is the mirror reflecting divine mind, and the Universe is the mirror of the Logos, though the latter is the esse of that Universe. As the Logos reflects all in the Universe of Pleroma, so man reflects in himself all that he sees and finds in his Universe, the Earth" (SD 2:25). This word was chosen because human thought, or immanent conscious intelligence or mind, manifests itself through words. It is familiar to Christians through the opening verse of John: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God"; "And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us" (1:1, 14). In the former quotation the meaning is entirely cosmogonic; in the latter, it has been diminished to signify the innate Word or divinity in man, which when in full control of the human adept can, by a stretch of metaphor, mean that the innate Christ, Buddha, or god in man so controls the human personality as to have become the latter, and thus to manifest among men.
 
Cosmogonically, theosophy considers the universe and all in it, from its first divine appearance to its last material modification, as being in toto as well as in all manifested details an emanation from the universal mind. This emanation takes place at the beginning of a manvantara in three separate stages or degrees: the First or unmanifest Logos; the Second or manifest-unmanifest Logos; and finally the Third or manifest Logos. Logos is applicable to these three stages because each is the manifesting of the wisdom in its divine predecessor, each stage carrying within itself, on the principle of the emanational scheme, the attributes or qualities of its predecessors. The Second Logos has invariably been considered feminine, and the Third Logos is regarded as the creative power.
 
Corresponding to the three Logoi in the Hindu scheme are Brahman, Brahma, and Isvara emanating originally from parabrahman-mulaprakriti. In the highly philosophical visioning of Mahayana Buddhism is adi-buddha, mahabuddhi, and the celestial buddha, occasionally indirectly called dharmakaya. On a scale of less magnitude, Hindu thought has developed the triad Brahma, the emanator or original emanation; Vishnu, the supporter or sustainer, a feminine characteristic nevertheless; and Siva at once the regenerator and producer in the sense of destroying but to regenerate. Still a third Hindu scheme is found in the series of paramatman, mahabuddhi or alaya, and mahat or cosmic creative mind.
 
A somewhat similar usage in the Qabbalah is Meimra, or ''imrah (word, particularly from divinity) [both from Hebrew verbal root amar to say, speak, use words]. One of the Stanzas of Dzyan refers to the Army of the Voice, which is explained to be "the prototype of the ''Host of the Logos,'' or the ''word'' of the Sepher Jezirah, called in the Secret Doctrine ''the One Number issued from No-Number'' -- the One Eternal Principle" (SD 1:94).
 
See also LOGOS

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

Whirlwind A gyrating wind; in theosophy, when applied to the movements of a universe, a name for the moving of the Great Breath and for the various functions and activities of fohat.
 
Motion, the divine breath, becomes the cosmic whirling or whirlwind and sets in motion the particles in space, bringing about now their coagulation and concretion, now their dissipation and dispersion.
 
Deity thus mystically becomes a whirlwind; pulsatory life assumes a whirling movement. Stages in world formation are described as diffused cosmic matter, then the fiery whirlwind, the first stage in the formation of a nebula, leading eventually to the formation of solar system and more particularly of a globe or group of solar or planetary globes.
 
The primordial seven forces, the first seven breaths of the cosmic dragon of wisdom or cosmic manifest intelligence, produce from their circumgyrating motions the fiery whirlwind. The first chapter of Ezekiel mentions a whirlwind and other descriptions of cosmic evolution, especially wheels.

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

Wing, Wings Often signifying flight, but more accurately the soaring power of the spirit, literally or metaphorically, as in the wings of Mercury, of Christian, Hebrew, and other angelic figures of the Mesopotamian nations, of the horse Pegasus, of the sphinxes representative of the several human powers, of the winged dragons, of the winged wheels mentioned in Ezekiel''s vision of initiation, and also as descriptive of the workings of fohat. The eternal bird, the flutter of whose wings produces life, represents the dual forces proceeding from boundless space, and the emblem is equivalent to Hansa, the Hindu bird of wisdom. Similar to this is the winged globe of Egypt.
 
As the emblem in ancient symbolic art, representative of the soaring power of the human spirit-soul within, and from this fundamental idea the emblem has been applied to derivative symbolic ideas, such as the flight of the inner self into interior worlds during the trials of initiation, or the soaring intelligence of the initiate penetrating into the mysteries and secrets of interior worlds.

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