Conceive Dictionary

conception: Power to imagine, conceive or create. Moment when a pregnancy is begun, a new earthly body generated.

the point of conception; the apex of creation: The simple instant that precedes any creative impulse and is therefore the source and summit of the powers of creation or manifestation. To become conscious of the point of conception is a great siddhi.

(See also: Conception , Hinduism, Body Mind and Soul)

Wheel Perpetual gyratory motion; a vortex, a center of revolving force. Matter is not only motion itself in low ranges of the cosmos, but has likewise many modes of motion, although not in the sense in which this phrase was used in the 19th century.

Lord Kelvin's vortex-atoms illustrate the point, for he showed that many of the properties attributed to atoms could be represented by regarding atoms as vortices in a frictionless, incompressible fluid. More recent analysis of the atom has failed to resolve it into anything more than electric particles whose properties are functions of their motions. "Atoms are called 'Vibrations' in Occultism . . . " (SD 2:633). Fohat traces spiral lines and forms wheels or centers of force around which primordial cosmic matter expands and contracts and passes through stages of consolidation ending in globes, and later through stages of etherealization. Vortical motion is a universal law, as seen in the stellar universe and in the electronic constitution of the physical atom, giving a fuller meaning to the word cycle.

Wheel, cycle, globes, and revolutions all pertain to the same fundamental conception of whirling, revolving, or gyratory motion of beings and substances; and as no motion can take place except in matter, space, and time, the whirlings and revolutions of beings and things include likewise the time periods or cyclic returns of beings and events throughout duration. Wherever there is a whirling or turning, whether of matter or of an event in time, it is because it is a being or thing which is active in reproducing itself in cyclic events (cf Ezekiel 1:15-21). This is one of the archaic ways of understanding what is now called the principle of Relativity. Indeed, so intimate and entangled are the actor and the act -- the being and its movements in time -- that it is not always easy to distinguish the actor inherent and moving from the effects in space and time of such movement; so that when we speak of a cycle of time we are perforce obliged to conceive of a moving entity producing the cycle, albeit the moving entity may not be visible to us and indeed may be incomprehensible. Hence, the frequent and often perplexing usage of wheel or wheelings found in ancient occult writings.

See also WINGED WHEEL; GLOBE, WINGED

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

A Theosophical definition of Monad :

Monad

A spiritual entity which to us humans is indivisible; it is a divine-spiritual life-atom, but indivisible because its essential characteristic, as we humans conceive it, is homogeneity; while that of the physical atom, above which our consciousness soars, is divisible, is a composite heterogeneous particle.

Monads are eternal, unitary, individual life-centers, conscious-ness-centers, deathless during any solar manvantara, therefore ageless, unborn, undying. Consequently, each one such  - and their number is infinite  - is the center of the All, for the divine or the All is THAT which has its center everywhere, and its circumference or limiting boundary nowhere.

Monads are spiritual-substantial entities, self-motivated, self-impelled, self-conscious, in infinitely varying degrees, the ultimate elements of the universe. These monads engender other monads as one seed will produce multitudes of other seeds; so up from each such monad springs a host of living entities in the course of illimitable time, each such monad being the fountainhead or parent, in which all others are involved, and from which they spring.

Every monad is a seed, wherein the sum total of powers appertaining to its divine origin are latent, that is to say unmanifested; and evolution consists in the growth and development of all these seeds or children monads, whereby the universal life expresses itself in innumerable beings.

As the monad descends into matter, or rather as its ray  - one of other innumerable rays proceeding from it  - is propelled into matter, it secretes from itself and then excretes on each one of the seven planes through which it passes, its various vehicles, all overshadowed by the self, the same self in you and in me, in plants and in animals, in fact in all that is and belongs to that hierarchy. This is the one self, the supreme self or paramatman of the hierarchy. It illumines and follows each individual monad and all the latter's hosts of rays  - or children monads. Each such monad is a spiritual seed from the previous manvantara, which manifests as a monad in this manvantara; and this monad through its rays throws out from itself by secretion and then excretion all its vehicles. These vehicles are, first, the spiritual ego, the reflection or copy in miniature of the monad itself, but individualized through the manvantaric evolution, "bearing" or "carrying" as a vehicle the monadic ray. The latter cannot directly contact the lower planes, because it is of the monadic essence itself, the latter a still higher ray of the infinite Boundless composed of infinite multiplicity in unity. (See also Individuality)

See also: Monad , Mysticism, Body Mind and Soul

a group, less formal than a coven, of witches who practice,
worship, celebrate, or study together

(See also: circle , Magic, Shamanism, Pagan Dictionary)

The world within us

(See also: microcosm , Magic, Shamanism, Pagan Dictionary)

traditionally a person who practices black magic, usually by aid
of malevolent spirits; modern term used by some magic-users to
differentiate themselves from witches

(See also: sorcerer, sorceress , Magic, Shamanism, Pagan Dictionary)

system of divination that uses yarrow stalks or coins Changes inscribed with hexagrams

(See also: I Ching, The Book of Chinese , Magic, Shamanism, Pagan Dictionary)

APOCATASTASIS

A closed reincarnated loop wherein the same lifetime is reexperienced over and over again with no alteration of details. Says Nicoli in "Living Time", "...it is in life that we have to 'perfect' ourselves. If we limit 'this life' to one single journey between birth and death there is not enough time. People give up trying just because of this appearance of things. They do not bend the life round in a circle, but leave the whole matter to the 'hereafter'. We cannot grasp that beyond the 'end' lies the beginning. Natural understanding will not conceive this. It can only conceive that beyond the end lies either nothingness or something entirely new. Beyond our life we meet - our life. We cannot turn in any other direction! Plato did not believe that the dimension of time in which life occured was absolutely apocatastic or needed to be "traversed endlessly without change." But to continue... "If the same time recurs and one remembers the same moment and changes something belonging to one's former experience of that moment, must it not follow that one changes what has been done in the former experience of that moment, because the time is the same?"

Thus it is always the same life that we repeat, but it can be an eternal, self-polishing jewel or self-perfecting work of art. On the other hand, if we so choose, it can be no more than a dreary and monotonously unvarying routine.

(See also: APOCATASTASIS , Magick, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Body Mind and Soul,)

A Theosophical definition of Evolution :

Evolution

As the word is used in theosophy it means the "unwrapping," "unfolding," "rolling out" of latent powers and faculties native to and inherent in the entity itself, its own essential characteristics, or more generally speaking, the powers and faculties of its own character: the Sanskrit word for this last conception is svabhava. Evolution, therefore, does not mean merely that brick is added to brick, or experience merely topped by another experience, or that variation is superadded on other variations  - not at all; for this would make of man and of other entities mere aggregates of incoherent and unwelded parts, without an essential unity or indeed any unifying principle.

In theosophy evolution means that man has in him (as indeed have all other evolving entities) everything that the cosmos has because he is an inseparable part of it. He is its child; one cannot separate man from the universe. Everything that is in the universe is in him, latent or active, and evolution is the bringing forth of what is within; and, furthermore, what we call the surrounding milieu, circumstances  - nature, to use the popular word  - is merely the field of action on and in which these inherent qualities function, upon which they act and from which they receive the corresponding reaction, which action and reaction invariably become a stimulus or spur to further manifestations of energy on the part of the evolving entity.

There are no limits in any direction where evolution can be said to begin, or where we can conceive of it as ending; for evolution in the theosophical conception is but the process followed by the centers of consciousness or monads as they pass from eternity to eternity, so to say, in a beginningless and endless course of unceasing growth.

Growth is the key to the real meaning of the theosophical teaching of evolution, for growth is but the expression in detail of the general process of the unfolding of faculty and organ, which the usual word evolution includes. The only difference between evolution and growth is that the former is a general term, and the latter is a specific and particular phase of this procedure of nature.

Evolution is one of the oldest concepts and teachings of the archaic wisdom, although in ancient days the concept was usually expressed by the word emanation. There is indeed a distinction, and an important one, to be drawn between these two words, but it is a distinction arising rather in viewpoint than in any actual fundamental difference. Emanation is a distinctly more accurate and descriptive word for theosophists to use than evolution is, but unfortunately emanation is so ill-understood in the Occident, that perforce the accepted term is used to describe the process of interior growth expanding into and manifesting itself in the varying phases of the developing entity.

Theosophists, therefore, are, strictly speaking, rather emanationists than evolutionists; and from this remark it becomes immediately obvious that the theosophist is not a Darwinist, although admitting that in certain secondary or tertiary senses and details there is a modicum of truth in Charles Darwin's theory adopted and adapted from the Frenchman Lamarck. The key to the meaning of evolution, therefore, in theosophy is the following: the core of every organic entity is a divine monad or spirit, expressing its faculties and powers through the ages in various vehicles which change by improving as the ages pass. These vehicles are not physical bodies alone, but also the interior sheaths of consciousness which together form man's entire constitution extending from the divine monad through the intermediate ranges of consciousness to the physical body. The evolving entity can become or show itself to be only what it already essentially is in itself  - therefore evolution is a bringing out or unfolding of what already preexists, active or latent, within. (See also Involution)

See also: Evolution , Mysticism, Body Mind and Soul

APO PANTAS KAKODAIMONES!

False banishing mantram ("Away all evil demons!")

APOCALYPSE

We are aware that the muslims insist that there can be no Universal Eschatonic Implosion until the world has endured "40 years of rain." We would remind them that we have endured *more* than forty years of the "rain" of nuclear radiation and pollution. Aztec prophesies place the end of the world in the 20th Century (who can doubt it?). The Great Pyramid is said to contain, in its mystical measurements, similar predictions in stone of which the last is Sept. 17, 2001 A.D. Two thousand is commonly believed by western civilization to be the year of the Eschaton. The date given by Nostradamus, on the other hand, is slightly pre-millennial: 1999. This is just 13 years prior to the end of the great 160,000-year Mayan Cycle and Terence McKenna's Timescape Zero (based on Ancient Chinese cycles), both at 2012 C.E. And although many others cite 2020, there are interesting reasons for seizing on 1999.

First of all, there is a scientific reason. As meteorologists have noted, the 11-year sunspot cycles which serve to heat the earth, have not only been increasing in severity, they have progressively exacerbated the greenhouse effect. This resulted, during the drought of 1988, in the first of the summer-long record-breaking temperatures that continue to plague us. In '99 the sunspot activity could well have a cataclysmic effect.

Metaphysically, however, there are more compelling reasons. Since the exact interface betweeen the end of the Christian Aeon of Pisces and the beginning of the Humanist Aeon of Aquarius is impossible to pipoint, we are thrown back on sheer numerology. 1+9+9+9 = 28 = 2+8 = 10; numerologically and Pythagoras-wise ten is the number of perfect completion. In other words 1999 is the natural culmination of the Aeon, whereas 2000 is simply a thousandfold manifestation of the Duality: Two - that epitome of evil amongst numbers (from the cosmic point of view, the end of the world isn't necessarily evil). The date, January 16, 1999 adds up to 9. That date is also Julian Day number 2,451,195, which adds up to 9 as well. Ironically enough, most computer projections of disaster, based on current ecological trends, ozone depletion, demographic patterns, etc. predict the peak somewhere between January, 1999 and September, 2013 - by which time the population of the earth will be nine billion and the "end" of the human yardstick on this planet will have come.

And although the Bible stipulates that "no man knoweth the day or the hour" of the last day, I do not hesitate to name the 9th second of the 9th minute of the 9th hour of January 16, 1999 as the eschaton (or the 9th day of the 9th month September).

As one of the Archons of the Ending Aeon, however, I have chosen 999 as my personal sigil, not 1999, because I want to ally myself with the spirit of the ending process, rather than with the End itself. Moreover, from an opitimistic point of view, 999 is qabalistically virginal - it has nothing written on it. Yet I see no reason to dispute '99 as the Climax of the Apocalypse, and I take that most useful point of the Eschaton as the date of my own eschaton-count. My Newtime (13 month) calendar begins approximately on the winter solstice of 2000 (Newtime Year Zero), displacing Gregorian time forever. Hence I count forward from 1999, calling 1997 "Year Minus 3", etc.

It should be noted that "end of the world" predictions are always cropping up. For instance, there was Rev. Whisenant's eschatonic prediction that September 13, 1988 would be the Great Day. Newspapers were gleeful in reporting that the date came and went. What they failed to realize was that 1988, in fact, the beginning of the end - since it was in that year that the greenhouse effect was finally accepted by the planetary powers and acknowledged as the harbinger of the end. If nothing else, 1988 was the year in which the Shroud of Turin was finally pronounced an error by the Vatican. At any rate, the good Rev's numerology may have been naive and the particular fate he chose may have had little synchronistic sparkle, but his prediction wasn't entirely off the wall. Isn't it always the 11th hour? At least sub specie aeternitatis?

But with the 20th Century we leave eternity behind and enter the dimensional worlds. The date Whisenant gave has another meaning. As you know, we stand in the slough of time and at the perimeters of various magico/religious aeons - including the multitudinous segments of the Galilean era - all of which end at different points. The prophecies are fulfilled at different velocities in different ways. The world "ends" perennially because "World" derives from Anglo-Saxon wer-µld ("Man's Era" or "human time.")

Part of our confusion has to do with the fact that we tend to use "the world" and "the earth" as though they were synonyms. The earth is merely one of the stages on which the drama of the world is enacted. From the Olympian point of view, the end of a world isn't a tragedy. Everything has its ?ld. Even the gods have their time. Even the dinosaurs had an "Age" so the toymakers tell us. The word for "world", in every language, is invariably linked to the notion of time. Arabic duniya, "the present (world)", Hebrew olam "eternity", Latin mundus, originally a division into sections (of time), like the Greek kosmos. Religion is always, sooner or later, part of that chronometry.

It amazes me that people, especially gullible Xtians, can be so blind as to expect everything to go on as it has done for millions of years when the end has, in fact, arrived. By now it should be clear even to rotting elephants and establishment flakes that the fulfillment of the prophesies is at hand. Even technocratic corporationism concedes that any time between now and the early 21st Century pollution, population, drought, disease and famine will have hit their strides (the "four horsemen" as the four elements: polluted air, sewage-laden water, barren earth, radiocative fire). Therefore 2000 also marks the beginning of the Age of Aquarius and the official end of the Piscean "Age of Jesus". After that date the Christians (all of whom by then will have been swept up into the arms of their Redeemer) will find themselves, or so asserts self-styled Neo-Xtian, Constance Cumbey, "preserved in their own bubble of spiritual sterility on the dimensional shelf of an alternate reality," where they may eternally contemplate the wonder of their salvation. Meanwhile, mankind's post-holocaustic, enlightened remnant (should such a remnant, by any miracle, remain) will be free to move ahead...to? Incidentally, by the word "holocaust" I do not refer to war but to the destruction of the biosphere by the ravages of unchecked human growth.

For remarks on the return of Christ or "Second Coming" (see PAROUSIA). Meanwhile, the elect, who are still being sacrificed, already inhabit the New Jerusalem. The safe and sound remainder are not saved at all, despite their belief. They call themselves Xtians, but they are Philistines. The zealous guardians of the faith are precisely those about whom Matthew was shouting: "Not everyone who saith unto me, Lord, Lord shall enter into the Kingdom of Heaven!", and of whom Mark said, "But woe to them that are with child, and to them that give suck in those days." Those who remain are increasingly damned to the hell that earth is henceforth becoming. September 13, 1988 was the last day before it would be too late to begin the task of repairing the biosphere and reversing daily descent to terracide. So the jubilant laughter of Whisenant's scoffers begins to sound increasingly hollow, doesn't it?

 Obviously, there are many of us who, though raised in the Xtian tradition, can view the Apocalyptic experience which the world is undergoing even now, without falling gibbering to our knees in a final paroxysm of millennial conversion. . . No matter what happens henceforth, will retain our Neo-Gnostic and Neo-Pagan allegiances and avoid the horror of "Salvation."

Other cultures are more confrontational. Coinciding with the Xtian Apocalypse is the Hopi ending of the "Fourth World". In their system, evolution produces new strengths but also creates new bad habits which must periodically be burned away. Those who have not been corrupted will become the seed people of the next world. Hindus and Yogis (q.v.) rather than living in the world, tend to think of themselves as living in an "age" - at present, that age is the evil "Kali Yuga" (quite similar, in fact, to our own "apocalyptic era" and not necessarily lengthier). The Chinese also live in an older world. As of this writing (1988), this is the year 4686 for them. And for the Jews it's 5748. But the Mayans (q.v.) dwell in almost inconceivably vast ages, called baktuns and the current one ends in 2012, our time. The "Harmonic Convergence" of July, 1987, marked the entry, for the Mayans, into the final lustrum of the penultimate 20-year period, before the "hotting up" time of 1992, which is the beginning of the final 20 years of a 160,000 year cycle!

The "world" is, in a very real sense, however, the creation of those who inhabit it. Thus, when our forefathers created the United States, they quite deliberately and correctly referred to this as a "new world" and gave the Great Seal the designation NOVUS ORDO SECLORUM ("New Order of the Ages"), which you can still read on every dollar bill. But every maker of a "new" world, whether secular or religious, brings in his own "Age." The makers of the R_publique Fran_aise, after the Revolution of 1789, even came up with a brand new calendar to mark their "new age," complete with new names for the months. Anton LaVey, high priest of the "San Francisco Church of Satan", proclaimed 1966 as the beginning of the "New Satanic Age". Jesus Christ, arriving at the beginning of the Piscean Age, brought with him an automatic 2000-year non-renewable lease on time, which runs out in this century, the beginning of the Aquarian Age. Magicians also fabricate their own elaborate times - Aleister Crowley, for instance, began his "Age of Horus" in 1904. Moreover, although it might be expected to have ended at his death in 1947, his followers, seeing him as an immortal, still maintain Crowley's "Thelemic" calendar in that system, 1996 C.E. would be AN 72.

Crowley's aeon was itself superseded in 1947 (the year of the saucers) when the doorway to the Hell of Universe B was opened by Jack Parsons and L. Ron Hubbard, whence the "Forgotten Ones" are now penetrating this world.

In 1980 Mickey Mouse and Jesus joined forces to end personal liberty in the United States (the end of the Democratic Party forever). In 1983 the Hopis announced the end of the 5th World - henceforth man would be obliged to boost his own stock, somehow. In July of 1987, the world entered the final lustrum of the penultimate katun of the Mayan aeon - another time of tribulation. 1992 was the beginning of yet another 20-year battle of armageddon. On January 6, 1999 Julian Day 2,415,195, the world will end by Nostradamus's calculation. Few will notice, perhaps, sind the "end" refers merely to the official passing of the Galilean Age and the world will be so desperately struggling to survive that there will be little time for outmoded messiahs.

Zoroaster, who died in 1000 B.C., will be reborn and complete the end of futility and Ahriman's rule. His seed at the bottom of a lake, it was prophesied, would thrice conceive maidens at three millennial points. The final chapter in the Zoroastrian cycle and yet another eschaton in our time.

Finally, it should be noted, in 2012, Terence McKenna's Timescape reaches Absolute Zero, the point of infinite novelty (See AUTOPOETIC LAPIS). And, interestingly, Jung also predicted the outer limit as occurring approximately fifty years after his death, which was in 1961.

You will understand that these 'end of the world' dates constitute a map of reality, but are obviously not Reality itself (apart from the fact that there is no "reality", as such). One doesn't necessarily visit every town on the map. We can choose to live out our allotted span to 1999 or 2012, and perhaps save the world, after all, or we can commit mass suicide beforehand in any of a hundred different ways, thus escaping the horror that is building up. The date of the Apocalypse isn't important. What matters is its immediacy. We have to understand that we've reached the outer limit of our dimension - THERE IS NO FUTURE - or at least very little. Like the amoeba in his drop of water it's time to turn away from the edge and move back to the center.

At any rate, by now it should be clear that we're moving quickly, not only metaphysically and synchronistically, but literally into the charged nexus of all the "ending aeons", into a kind of central transformer which is approaching its limit like an overworked fuse. The task of the archons of the ending aeons is to guide the confused through the wreckage of our disintegrating society.

(See also: APO PANTAS KAKODAIMONES! , Magick, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Body Mind and Soul,)

type of knot magic in which charms are knotted or braided,
with specific magical intention, into cords, to make a powerful
talisman

(See also: witch's ladder , Magic, Shamanism, Pagan Dictionary)

A Theosophical definition of Gods :

Gods

The old pantheons were builded upon an ancient and esoteric wisdom which taught, under the guise of a public mythology, profound secrets of the structure and operations of the universe which surrounds us. The entire human race has believed in gods, has believed in beings superior to men; the ancients all said that men are the "children" of these gods, and that from these superior beings, existent in the azure spaces, men draw all that in them is; and, furthermore, that men themselves, as children of the gods, are in their inmost essence divine beings linked forever with the boundless universe of which each human being, just as is the case with every other entity everywhere, is an inseparable part. This is a truly sublime conception.

One should not think of human forms when the theosophist speaks of the gods; we mean the arupa  - the "formless"  - entities, beings of pure intelligence and understanding, relatively pure essences, relatively pure spirits, formless as we physical humans conceive form. The gods are the higher inhabitants of nature. They are intrinsic portions of nature itself, for they are its informing principles. They are as much subject to the wills and energies of still higher beings  - call these wills and energies the "laws" of higher beings, if you will  - as we are, and as are the kingdoms of nature below us.

The ancients put realities, living beings, in the place of laws which, as Occidentals use the term, are only abstractions  - an expression for the action of entities in nature; the ancients did not cheat themselves so easily with words. They called them gods, spiritual entities. Not one single great thinker of the ancients, until the Christian era, ever talked about laws of nature, as if these laws were living entities, as if these abstractions were actual entities which did things. Did the laws of navigation ever navigate a ship? Does the law of gravity pull the planets together? Does it unite or pull the atoms together? This word laws is simply a mental abstraction signifying unerring action of conscious and semi-conscious energies in nature.

See also: Gods , Mysticism, Body Mind and Soul

Space Usually the universe as perceived by our physical senses. It is disputed whether space exists apart from objects or is a property of objects, and also whether it is objective or subjective. Such difficulties arise from our attempt to abstract extension from the reality of which it is an aspect, just as we attempt to abstract matter and energy. The physical basis of our universe appears under these three aspects, and the attempt to conceive each of the three as separate existences and to construct the universe out of them is to court contradiction and to proceed in the inverse order.

In most arguments about the nature of space, space is unconsciously assumed at the outset of the inquiry, so that the reasoning becomes viciously circular. Is space the ultimate residue left after we have removed everything conceivable? In that case how can we define it in terms of anything which is supposed to be derived from it? We must either leave it undefined, as a primary postulate, or else define it in terms of something which lies beyond the physical plane altogether.

Again, the question whether the dimensions belong to space or to material objects arises from a false separation between these two, so that we speak of objects being in space, just as we speak of life as being in matter. We think of space as an absence of matter, as we think of darkness as an absence of light, and silence as absence of sound; and having thus created vacuums we proceed to fill them. In the view of occultism it would be nearer the truth to say that light is the absence of darkness, sound the absence of silence, and matter a form of the presence of space; and this is true in the sense that those things which appear to us most real are derived from those which seem to us most unreal, because not immediately physically perceivable. In theosophy, space is the infinite, eternal background of Being, Being itself, the ever-lasting substratum of, as well as the presence of, the universe; its apparent vacuity is due only to its lack of physical qualities to which our senses respond, and also to its perfect unity and uniformity. Space is living, incomprehensibly conscious, and hence a divinity; it is the only real world, while our manifested world born from and in it is a mayavi (illusory) one.

Theosophy, regarding the physical universe as merely one of many planes of kosmos, applies the term space to a much larger range. Yet it has the same characteristic meaning in all its applications: it figures, for instance, as one aspect of the trinity of space, energy, matter which is equivalent to the primordial unity. The fundamental hypostases are all derivative from ever-enduring, frontierless space, and Be-ness is symbolized by space, which no mind can either exclude nor conceive, and motion. In this conception are combined abstract space, motion, and duration.

Space is symbolized by the circle; a central point denotes spiritual monadic activity arising within abstract space. It is equivalent to akasa or aether, water or the waters; Chaos as the spatial deeps. Sometimes space in its manifestation is represented as a serpent with seven heads or as the great sea or deep. Occasionally called aupapaduka (parentless), because it is primary and the source of all, it is spoken of both as mulaprakriti and as parabrahman. In its manifested aspect it is bright space, son of dark space, the former being the ray dropped into cosmic depths. Parent space is the eternal ever-present cause of all -- the incomprehensible divinity, whose invisible robes are the mystic root of all matter and of the universe. Space is called Mother before its cosmic activity, and Father-Mother at the first stage of reawakening of manifestation.

In this connection a very clear distinction is drawn between abstract space, the limitless, frontierless, beginningless, and endless encompasser, container of all the various manifested spaces, which as individuals appear from and in its fathomless womb; and these latter spaces which are its offspring and which are collectively and individually the spatial ranges comprised within the boundaries of any manifested universe, such as a galaxy or solar system. Thus, we have the boundless spatial All or abstract space, and the innumerable universe or limited spaces arising within it. The former is absolute infinity and eternity; the later are the innumerable, relative spaces or universe scattered over the fields of the Boundless, called the spawn of the Great Mother.

Physical space is said to have six directions, the four cardinal points plus the zenith and nadir; or eight directions given by the axes joining the opposite corners of a cube. The six and the eight combine in the cube and octahedron. Nothing in the definition of geometrical space excludes the possibility of other spatial constructions, coexistent with our space and interblended with it and with each other. This helps in understanding such matters as chains of globes -- which, when we attempt to represent them by drawn diagrams, seem so confusing and contradictory -- and the manner in which other planes of consciousness and of objectivity may be related to the physical.

(See also: Space , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary)

person who has been reincarnated several times

(See also: Old Soul , Magic, Shamanism, Pagan Dictionary)

A type of healing in which the healer draws on the help of the spirits, deities, or God to heal a patient.

(See also: Spiritual healing , Magic, Shamanism, Pagan Dictionary)

God In its widest sense, the origin and root of all that is. Absolute being may be regarded perhaps as one equivalent expression, but even being itself may be regarded as a condition or attribute, and beyond it we must therefore postulate be-ness.

The idea of a root or origin sometimes connotes supreme power and governance; but such conception of a rootless root or infinite origin does not exist, for whatever is, or has been, or ever will be, must ultimately spring from the womb of boundless infinitude, and we can speak only of a power and governance in connection with the subordinate or minor -- however supernal or sublime they may be -- which spring forth from the Boundless in virtually infinite numbers through beginningless and endless duration.

Monotheists recognize but one God, conceived as a supreme personality and usually endowed with attributes pertaining to human personality, this mental image of God therefore being but a reflection of the human mind, with its inherent limitations and biases; yet even monotheists tacitly recognize other gods under the name of natural forces. Polytheism recognizes hierarchies of divine beings, and pantheism discerns divine power as everywhere and eternally present.

The human being also in essence is a divinity. The attribution of personality to God is justly regarded as an inadmissible limitation; but there is a lack of clearness as to the meaning of such words as personality, self, and individuality, which unfortunately leads some monotheistic minds to the fear that the denial of personality will reduce the conception of divinity to merely an empty abstraction. Yet our inability to conceive the inconceivable has nothing to do with our intuition and duty, nor with the vision of the inner god as the supreme guide in a human life.

See also PERSONAL GOD

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

God (Gods) and Goddess (Goddesses) A generalizing term signifying all self-conscious entities superior to humankind, most often restricted to the three dhyani-chohanic kingdoms. The gods have differing places in nature's hierarchical scheme, running through innumerable grades of cosmic intelligences. Theosophy teaches that human beings who successfully reach the seventh round on this earth chain will pass, at the conclusion of this last round, into the kingdom superior to the human, that of the lowest dhyani-chohans.

One function of dhyani-chohans (gods or demigods of a lower type) is the watching over of all hierarchies below them, some being guardians of the human host, others guarding and protecting the less evolved kingdoms. The higher hierarchical ranges of gods or divinities in our universe "are Entities of the higher worlds in the hierarchy of Being, so immeasurably high that, to us, they must appear as Gods, and collectively -- God. . . . To the highest, we are taught, belong the seven orders of the purely divine Spirits; to the six lower ones belong hierarchies that can occasionally be seen and heard by men, and who do communicate with their progeny of the Earth; which progeny is indissoluble linked with them, each principle in man having its direct source in the nature of those great Beings, who furnish us with the respective invisible elements in us" (SD 1:133).

These beings belong to two general divisions, the arupa (formless) and the rupa (form) divinities. Those having forms should not be imagined as necessarily having human forms as in the ancient pantheons, yet rupa gods do have highly ethereal forms, some perhaps resembling the present human shape and others of quite different construction. But the arupa divinities are to our power of imagination "beings of pure intelligence and of understanding, pure essences, pure spirits, formless as we conceive form" (Fund 347).

Tradition has it that in the immemorial past, certain lower gods associated intimately with their children, humanity, on this globe; but as time went by and mankind became more immersed in material pursuits, people grew to become increasingly forgetful of their divine origin and of the presence of the shining divinities instructing and guiding their forebears, so that the gods and demigods were remembered only in mythologies and religious metaphors of the various races.

What did the ancients mean by their gods and goddesses? They were intended to represent the guiding intelligences present within or in back of all invisible secrets, as well as astral and physical manifestations of nature. During the third root-race there were beings who were

"endowed with the sacred fire from the spark of higher and then independent Beings, who were the psychic and spiritual parents of Man, as the lower Pitar Devata (the Pitris) were the progenitors of his physical body. That Third and holy Race consisted of men who, at their zenith, were described as, 'towering giants of godly strength and beauty, and the depositaries of all the mysteries of Heaven and Earth.'. . .

". . . the chief gods and heroes of the Fourth and Fifth Races, as of later antiquity, are the deified images of these men of the Third. The days of their physiological purity, and those of their so-called Fall, have equally survived in the hearts and memories of their descendants. Hence, the dual nature shown in those gods, both virtue and sin being exalted to their highest degree, in the biographies composed by posterity" (SD 2:171-2).

The primeval human deity worship degenerated during the fourth root-race (the Atlantean), the ideal at first becoming confused with the form, and the latter finally almost superseding the spirit -- thus in the relatively complete materialization of idea into form, the later Atlanteans in time began to worship themselves, what was to them the powers of nature appearing through themselves as human beings; the degeneration of the ideal proceeding so far that ultimately the worst kind of idol worship became relatively universal, except for the seed of the newer and somewhat higher mankind of the fifth root-race then beginning.

"The moderns are satisfied with worshipping the male heroes of the Fourth race, who created gods after their own sexual image, whereas the gods of primeval mankind were 'male and female,' " i.e., hermaphrodite (SD 2:135).

See also DEITY

(See also: God, Goddess , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Matter In the widest sense, the negative pole of the one universal life regarded as a duality. The manifested One, considered as a unit, is called the manifested Logos; and as a duad it becomes spirit-matter or life.

Matter is thus co-eternal with spirit, forming the vehicular or passive aspect of every plane. It is equivalent to prakriti (or sakti, maya, or pradhana), and just as there are seven, ten, or twelve prakritis, so there are seven, ten, or twelve matters: the root-essence of all the series is what the Hindus called mulaprakriti (root-nature). Equivalently, matter may also be defined as the illusory aggregate of veils surrounding the fundamental essence of the universe.

Matter in the scientific sense is a percept resulting from the interaction of our physical senses with the physical plane of prakriti. Formerly regarded as having an existence independently of the observer, its illusory nature is now better recognized.

 In attempting to conceive of matter in a general sense the mind must be relieved of familiar notions of physically extended space, of resistance, mass, bulk, etc. -- properties peculiar to the physical plane of consciousness, but which we are apt to transfer unwittingly to our notions of other kinds of matter. We may speak of mind-stuff as the scene of mental activity and the vehicle of thought-force; but we can hardly view this as a kind of rare gas. Grossness, inertness, and immobility are attributes of the physical plane, rather than of matter itself. Yet the word matter has come to be significant of grossness, animalism, and materialism, although it is but the shadow or veil of cosmic spirit, spirit concreted or manifesting under the multifarious forms of the planes of the universe.

(See also: Matter , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary)

God (Gods) and Goddess (Goddesses) A generalizing term signifying all self-conscious entities superior to humankind, most often restricted to the three dhyani-chohanic kingdoms. The gods have differing places in nature's hierarchical scheme, running through innumerable grades of cosmic intelligences. Theosophy teaches that human beings who successfully reach the seventh round on this earth chain will pass, at the conclusion of this last round, into the kingdom superior to the human, that of the lowest dhyani-chohans.

One function of dhyani-chohans (gods or demigods of a lower type) is the watching over of all hierarchies below them, some being guardians of the human host, others guarding and protecting the less evolved kingdoms. The higher hierarchical ranges of gods or divinities in our universe "are Entities of the higher worlds in the hierarchy of Being, so immeasurably high that, to us, they must appear as Gods, and collectively -- God. . . . To the highest, we are taught, belong the seven orders of the purely divine Spirits; to the six lower ones belong hierarchies that can occasionally be seen and heard by men, and who do communicate with their progeny of the Earth; which progeny is indissoluble linked with them, each principle in man having its direct source in the nature of those great Beings, who furnish us with the respective invisible elements in us" (SD 1:133).

These beings belong to two general divisions, the arupa (formless) and the rupa (form) divinities. Those having forms should not be imagined as necessarily having human forms as in the ancient pantheons, yet rupa gods do have highly ethereal forms, some perhaps resembling the present human shape and others of quite different construction. But the arupa divinities are to our power of imagination "beings of pure intelligence and of understanding, pure essences, pure spirits, formless as we conceive form" (Fund 347).

Tradition has it that in the immemorial past, certain lower gods associated intimately with their children, humanity, on this globe; but as time went by and mankind became more immersed in material pursuits, people grew to become increasingly forgetful of their divine origin and of the presence of the shining divinities instructing and guiding their forebears, so that the gods and demigods were remembered only in mythologies and religious metaphors of the various races.

What did the ancients mean by their gods and goddesses? They were intended to represent the guiding intelligences present within or in back of all invisible secrets, as well as astral and physical manifestations of nature. During the third root-race there were beings who were

"endowed with the sacred fire from the spark of higher and then independent Beings, who were the psychic and spiritual parents of Man, as the lower Pitar Devata (the Pitris) were the progenitors of his physical body. That Third and holy Race consisted of men who, at their zenith, were described as, 'towering giants of godly strength and beauty, and the depositaries of all the mysteries of Heaven and Earth.'. . .

". . . the chief gods and heroes of the Fourth and Fifth Races, as of later antiquity, are the deified images of these men of the Third. The days of their physiological purity, and those of their so-called Fall, have equally survived in the hearts and memories of their descendants. Hence, the dual nature shown in those gods, both virtue and sin being exalted to their highest degree, in the biographies composed by posterity" (SD 2:171-2).

The primeval human deity worship degenerated during the fourth root-race (the Atlantean), the ideal at first becoming confused with the form, and the latter finally almost superseding the spirit -- thus in the relatively complete materialization of idea into form, the later Atlanteans in time began to worship themselves, what was to them the powers of nature appearing through themselves as human beings; the degeneration of the ideal proceeding so far that ultimately the worst kind of idol worship became relatively universal, except for the seed of the newer and somewhat higher mankind of the fifth root-race then beginning.

"The moderns are satisfied with worshipping the male heroes of the Fourth race, who created gods after their own sexual image, whereas the gods of primeval mankind were 'male and female,' " i.e., hermaphrodite (SD 2:135).

See also DEITY

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

Follower of a nature-based religion. The term Neopagan means
"new Pagan" and is not a popular term.

(See also: Pagan, Neopagan , Magic, Shamanism, Pagan Dictionary)