Titans (Greek) In Greek mythology, builders of worlds, often called cosmocratores, and as microcosmic entities the progenitors of human races; as such, of various orders, so that in mythology they were considered good or bad, as angels or entities of matter.

Hesiod's original heaven-dwelling titans, six sons and six daughters of Ouranos and Gaia (heaven and earth), were Oceanos, Coios, Creios, Hyperion, Iapetos, Kronos, Theia, Rheia, Themis, Mnemosyne, Phoebe, and Tethys, but other names were later included, such as Prometheus and Epimetheus; and later still the name was given to any descendant of Ouranos and Gaia. Rebellions taking place against the rulers of heaven, followed by falls and castings out, refer to the descent of creative powers to form new worlds and races. In the rebellion of titans, first against Ouranos in favor of Kronos, then against Kronos in favor of Zeus, the titans are mixed up with other sons of heaven and earth -- Hecatoncheires (hundred-handed), Cyclopes, etc. -- and the accounts in detail are extremely intricate and confused.

The titans, in one respect, are fourth root-race giants, the Hindu daityas, who at one time obtain the sovereignty of earth and defeat the minor gods; they are thus fallen beings -- Python, suras and asuras, corybantes, curetes, Dioscuri, anaktes, dii magni, idaei dactyli, lares, penates, manes, aletae, kabeirio, manus, rishis, and dhyani-chohans -- who watched over and incarnated in the elect of the third and fourth root-races.

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

CREATION MYTH - myths about the origins of the world, often falling in one of four types.

1. creation from nothing in which God fashions Heaven and Earth from sound, word/thought.

2. creation from a cosmic egg in which the universe arises from complementary opposite principles.

3. an Earth diver story in which an emissary from the heavenly realm plunges into the chaos below and brings up clay or mud to fashion the Earth.

4. an emergence myth in which the first people emerge into the world of light from the underworld below. (NAD)

(See also: CREATION MYTH , Wiccan Pagan, Paganism, Pagan Dictionary)

Aditi (Sanskrit) (from a not + diti bound from the verbal root da to bind)

Unbounded, free; as a noun, infinite and shoreless expanse. In the Vedas, Aditi is devamatri (mother of the gods) as from and in her cosmic matrix all the heavenly bodies were born. As the celestial virgin and mother of every existing form and being, the synthesis of all things, she is highest akasa. Aditi is identified in the Rig-Veda with Vach (mystic speech) and also with the mulaprakriti of the Vedanta. As the womb of space, she is a feminized form of Brahma. The line in the Rig-Veda: "Daksha sprang from Aditi and Aditi from Daksha" has reference to "the eternal cyclic re-birth of the same divine Essence" (SD 2:247n). In one of its most mystic aspects Aditi is divine wisdom.

Aditi has correspondences in many ancient religions: the highest Sephirah in the Zohar; the Gnostic Sophia-Achamoth; Rhea, mother of the Greek Olympians; Bythos or the great Deep; Amba; Surarani; Chaos; Waters of Space; Primordial Light; and the source of the Egyptian seven heavens. Sometimes she is linked with the Greek Gaia, goddess of earth, to denote dual nature or the mother of both the spiritual and physical: Aditi, cosmic expanse or space being the mother of all things; and Gaia, mother of earth and, on the larger scale, of all objective nature (cf SD 2:65, 269).

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

Heaven and Hell In Christian theology, the abodes of Deity and the celestial hierarchy on the one hand, and of Satan and his fallen angels on the other hand; the final goal of those who are saved and of those who are damned. The origin of the doctrine is founded in the ancient Mystery teachings concerning the human afterdeath experiences and the corresponding experiences passed through by the candidate for initiation.

Hell may be likened to kama-loka and also avichi, though neither is eternal. Kama-loka is better represented, however, by purgatory. Heaven is a reflection of devachan, blended also with ideas of nirvanic states. Thus heaven and hell should both be used in the plural, as is commonly the case in their non-Christian equivalents: Elysium, nirvana, Paradise, Valhalla, Olympus, and many other names for heaven; and Tartarus, Gehenna, She'ol, Niflheim, etc., for hell.

Heaven and hell may denote states of consciousness experienced in daily life on earth. A rough division of cosmic spheres makes heaven the highest, hell or Tartarus the lowest, with the earth beneath heaven, and the underworld beneath it and preceding Tartarus. The crystalline spheres of medieval astronomy are called heavens surrounding the earth concentrically. Far from being adjudicated by a deity to happiness or torment, after death a person goes to that region to which he is attracted by the affinities which he has set up during his life.

Thus theosophy teaches the existence of almost endless and widely varying spheres or regions, all inhabited by peregrinating entities; and of these regions the higher can be dubbed the heavens and the lowest the hells, and the intermediate can be called the regions of experiences and purgation. All spheres possessing sufficient materialized substance to be called imbodied spheres are hells by contrast with the ethereal and spiritual globes of the heavens. Therefore in a sense and on a smaller scale, the lower globes of a planetary chain may be called hells, and the higher globes of the chain, by contrast, heavens.

All evolving entities go to both the heavens and the hells of our solar system in accordance with their evolutionary necessities, and for the purpose of purgation through the suffering of material experience; but in all cases such peregrinating egos are attracted at the different times of their long evolutionary schooling to those spheres by sympathy or psychomagnetic pull. The immense justice of this idea, from which the heavens and hells of the different religions have come, is readily apparent.

See also LOKAS

(See also: Heaven and Hell , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Orphism, Orphic Mysteries [from Greek orphikos]

Orphism originally taught of the Causeless Cause on which all speculation is impossible; the periodical appearance and disappearance of all things, from atom to universe; reimbodiment; cyclic law; the essential divinity of all beings and things; and the duality in manifestation of the universe. It postulated seven emanations from the Boundless: aether (spirit) and chaos (matter), from which two spring the world egg, out of which is born Phanes, the First Logos; then Uranus (and Gaia) the Second Logos, with Kronos (and Rhea, mother of the Olympian gods) a later phase of the Second Logos; and Zeus, the Third Logos or Demiurge -- who starts a minor sevenfold hierarchy of emanation by begetting Zagreus-Dionysos the god-man, the divine son.

Characteristic of Orphic cosmogony is the important place given to the number seven. "The rise of the Orphic worship of Dionysos is the most important fact in the history of Greek religion, and marks a great spiritual awakening. Its three great ideas are (1) a belief in the essential Divinity of humanity and the complete immortality or eternity of the soul, its pre-existence and its post-existence; (2) the necessity for individual responsibility and righteousness; and (3) the regeneration or redemption of man's lower nature by his own higher Self" (F. S. Darrow).

The Orphic teachings were kept intact by the Golden or Hermetic Chain of Succession down to the days of the Neoplatonists after which (as symbolically told in the archaic story of Eurydice) they were killed -- obscured or lost, so far as the public was concerned. Their keynote was consecration to the mandates of the god within: perfect purity, perfect impersonal love, perfect understanding, and devotion to the interests of humanity.

The three Orphic mystery-gods were Zeus, the divine All-father; Demeter-Kore, the earth goddess as both mother and maid; and Zagreus-Dionysos, the divine son. This trinity finds its counterpart in Egyptian, Indian, Chaldean, Christian, and other religions. There were two forms of baptism, one purification by water, later adopted into the Christian ritual; and the other a ceremony in which the face of the neophyte was cleansed with a mixture of earth and bran, symbolizing the washing away of stains from the soul.

The ceremony of the Eucharist was also adopted by the Christians and as Orphic ritual forbade the use of wine (substituting for it a mead of honey and milk), in the rite as adopted by the primitive Christians the neophyte drank not only wine but also milk and honey. Under Orphism, the honey symbolized not only purification and preservation, or endless life and bliss, but the secret knowledge obtained during initiation. Bees, the gatherers of honey, were emblems of the reincarnating soul, as was the butterfly; and as the bees gathered the nectar from flowers and made it into honey, so the human soul in its various peregrinations gathers from the beings and things of life the mystic experience and stores it away in the chambers of the soul. Milk symbolized knowledge, which fed the inner man, as a child of eternity, just as milk feeds the human child.

Orphism flourished from before the 14th until the 6th century BC, and again, after some five centuries of obscuration, during the first four centuries of the Christian era. Plato, Empedocles, the Pythagorean teachings, some of the Greek dramatists and poets are our main source material for the earlier period, as well as the various Orphic fragments including the Orphic Tablets.

These Tablets, with the Orphic Hymns, consist of eight gold plates containing inscriptions, dating from about the 4th century BC. They consist of instructions given to the soul for its journey through the afterdeath worlds or states very reminiscent of the Egyptian Book of the Dead. The keynote is spoken by the soul: "I am a child of earth and of starry Heaven, but my race is of Heaven (alone). . . . Lo, I am parched with thirst . . ." For the later period we have the writings of the Neoplatonists and their opponents, the early Christian Fathers.

That the entire Orphic mythogony is intentionally allegorical does not invalidate that a great prehistoric religious reformer named Orpheus lived, worked, taught, and founded a religion as the outgrowth of a genuine Mystery school.

(See also: Orphism, Orphic Mysteries , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary)

Underworld Classical mythology divides the universe into the heavens, the earth, and the underworld, each presided over by its particular deity. The underworld was the nether pole of the cosmic hierarchy, great or small, and hence the land of shadows, synonymous with Dis, Hades, Pluto, Orcus, Limbo, Tartarus, Amenti, Atala, She'ol, etc. The underworld for human beings may be the lower ranges of kama-loka, the region of the shades; the mystical pit or Planet of Death; or all the ranges, in a generalizing sense, of the cosmic planes beneath the solar plane on which our earth is located.

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

Elements, The:

A classification system based upon the division of all phenomena into four or five categories; in Western occultism there are Earth, Water, Air, Fire and sometimes Spirit or Ether (or in India, Akasha); in Chinese occultism these are Earth, Water, Metal, Fire and Wood.

(See also: Elements , Pagan, Paganism, Pagan Dictionary)

Ammon (Egypt, Egyptian). One of the great gods of Egypt. Ammon or Amoun is far older than Amoun-Ra, and is identified with Baal. Hammon, the Lord of Heaven. Amoun-Ra was Ra the Spiritual Sun, the "Sun of Righteousness", etc., for - "the Lord God is a Sun".

He is the God of Mystery and the hieroglyphics of his name are often reversed. He is Pan, All-Nature esoterically, and therefore the universe, and the "Lord of Eternity". Ra, as declared by an old inscription, was "begotten by Neith but not engendered". He is called the "self- begotten" Ra,, and created goodness from a glance of his fiery eye, as Set-Typhon created evil from his. As Ammon (also Amoun and Amen), Ra, he is "Lord of the worlds enthroned on the Sun’s disk and appears in the abyss of heaven".

A very ancient hymn spells the name "Amen-ra", and hails the "Lord of the thrones of the earth...Lord of Truth, father of the gods, maker of man, creator of the beasts, Lord of Existence, Enlightener of the Earth, sailing in heaven in tranquillity. . . All hearts are softened at beholding thee, sovereign of life, health and strength We worship thy spirit who alone made us", etc., etc. (See Bonwick’s Egyptian Belief.)

Ammon Ra is called "his mother’s husband" and her son. (See "Chnourmis" and "Chnouphis" and also Secret Doctrine I, pp. 91 and It was to the "ram-headed" god that the Jews sacrificed lambs, and the lamb of Christian theology is a disguised reminiscence of the ram.

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

Avalokiteswara (Sanskrit) "The on-looking Lord" In the exoteric interpretation, he is Padmapani (the lotus bearer and the lotus-born) in Tibet, the first divine ancestor of the Tibetans, the complete incarnation or Avatar of Avalokiteswara; but in esoteric philosophy Avaloki, the "on-looker", is the Higher Self, while Padmapani is the Higher Ego or Manas.

The mystic formula "Om mani padme hum" is specially used to invoke their joint help. While popular fancy claims for Avalokiteswara many incarnations on earth, and sees in him, not very wrongly, the spiritual guide of every believer, the esoteric interpretation sees in him the Logos, both celestial and human.

Therefore, when the Yogacharya School has declared Avalokiteswara as Padmapani "to be the Dhyani Bodhisattva of Amitabha Buddha", it is indeed, because the former is the spiritual reflex in the world of forms of the latter, both being one - one in heaven, the other on earth.

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

Water A primary cosmic element with almost innumerable manifestations, corresponding to the Hindu apas tattva and to the akasic waters of space. Its most fundamental meaning is that of space or akasa, the great mother of all, the feminine receptive principle over and in which broods the fire of spirit. "The first principle of things, according to Thales and other ancient philosophers. Of course this is not water on the material plane, but in a figurative sense for the potential fluid contained in boundless space. This was symbolized in ancient Egypt by Kneph, the 'unrevealed' god, who was represented as the serpent -- the emblem of eternity -- encircling a water-urn, with his head hovering over the waters, which he incubates with his breath. 'And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.' (Gen. i). The honey-dew, the food of the gods and of the creative bees on the Yggdrasil, falls during the night upon the tree of life from the 'divine waters, the birth-place of the gods.' Alchemists claim that when pre-Adamic earth is reduced by the Alkahest to its first substance, it is like clear water. The Alkahest is 'the one and the invisible, the water, the first principle, in the second transformation' " (TG 368).

Water corresponds with soul, representing the middle world between spirit or fire on the one hand, and matter or earth on the other. It corresponds to the astral plane as compared with the physical; and here we

See its quality of instability, mobility, having no fixed shape but adapting itself to other shapes, dissolving solid bodies and re-precipitating them. It corresponds to the psychomental nature as contrasted with the spiritual and the physical, and to the liquid state of physical matter, though in this sense it is the water subdivision of the earth element. Water and fire are necessary elements of life, as are their correspondences the moon and sun.

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

Cosmocratores Kosmokratores (Greek) (from kosmos world + kratores lords)

World lords; it occurs in Orphic literature, and in the New Testament Paul uses it of evil powers. In theosophy it is applied to the planetary regents who fabricated the solar system and who were hierarchically superior to the ones who fabricated our material earth (SD 2:23).

The word is especially used in reference to three principal groups, corresponding to similar groups of dhyan-chohans and lipikas. The first group rebuilds worlds after pralaya, the second builds our planetary chain, and the third are the progenitors of humanity.

Collectively they are the formative Logos, grouped under various names among different peoples, such as Osiris, Brahma-prajapati, Elohim, Adam-Qadmon, and Ormuzd. Again, "the Ases of Scandinavia, the rulers of the world which preceded ours, whose name means literally the 'pillars of the world,' its 'supports,' are thus identical with the Greek Cosmocratores, the 'Seven Workmen or Rectors' of Pymander, the seven Rishis and Pitris of India, the seven Chaldean gods and seven evil spirits, the seven Kabalistic Sephiroth synthesized by the upper triad, and even the seven Planetary Spirits of the Christian mystics" (SD 2:97). Following the plan of divine ideation they fashion systems out of primordial material, called aether, ilus, protyle, etc.

The cosmocratores, as the Masons of the World, work in the vehicular or matter side of nature and receive the impress for their work from the hierarchy that works in the spirit side, the dhyani-buddhas or architects.

In another aspect the cosmocratores relate to the genii or rectors of the seven sacred planets, and stand as the world-builders of the earth planetary chain.

(See also: Cosmocratores, Kosmokratores , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Aboriginal Dreaming

An English expression adopted by Australian Aborigines to convey ideas that, though related in their thought, are not usually denoted by a single word in any of their languages.

One sense is that of a primordial epoch, the Dreaming or Dreamtime, when beings with remarkable powers arose from the ground, descended from the sky, or appeared from over the horizon. They gave the earth its shape by creating physical features (often from parts of their own bodies), fixed life in species form, established human culture, and gave everything its name.

These creative beings, who in their totality are the ultimate explanation of all things, are themselves called Dreamings (roughly equivalent to the anthropological term totems).

Their significance to the Aborigines is not merely historical but personal and social, for each individual and group gains a distinctive identity through its association with one or more Dreamings. In many regions it is held that such beings reincarnate themselves as humans, or that they left relics behind that, to this day, are sufficiently potent to impregnate women.

This sense of oneness, in which past and present, spirit being and human being, are somehow fused, is also seen in ceremonies in which the actors wear designs and make movements symbolic or mimetic of what the Dreamings did in the Dreamtime. By extension, from these two senses of Dreaming, the Aborigines form other expressions, such as Dreaming-place (a site at which a Dreaming was active and left something of itself) and Dreaming-track (an imagined path along which a Dreaming traveled from place to place in the primordial epoch).

Contrary to what is sometimes suggested, the term has no necessary connection with the verb to dream, even though present-day revelations to humans by Dreamings normally occur while the recipient is in a dream or trance state.

See Astral World.

(See also: Aboriginal Dreaming , New Age Spirituality, Body Mind and Soul)

Jupiter (Zeus)

Greek god Zeus and the Roman god Jupiter are one and the same. Zeus is the god of gods. He is the creator of day, thunder and lightning, the seasons and is the "sky god." Zeus holds supreme power and his decisions are not questioned as he is the father of gods and men. He represents external order and authority. His wisdom, power and sense of fairness supports the structure of the ancient Greek and Roman universe. Jupiter, or Zeus, is a "good father" that provides the opportunity for growth, development, prosperity and health. Jupiter, as a planet, has a central position among the other planets in the solar system. Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars are on one side and Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto on the other. Astrologically, Jupiter represents balance, organization, abundance and optimism. If you are down on your luck or a bit disorganized, this dream may be calling for awareness of supportive internal and external forces. Our dreams often compensate for what is lacking in daily life. In this way, dreams attempt to balance the psyche. Thus, dreaming of Jupiter is reassuring and invites the dreamer to access the power in his own psyche and to embrace a positive attitude. Jupiter is a reminder that there is an order to the universe that provides us with an opportunity to have a prosperous, balanced and joyful life.

Source: Dream Lover Incorporated, http://www.dreamloverinc.com

(See also: Dream Archives, Meaning of Dreams, Dream Interpretation, Dream Dictionary, Dream Dictionary - Jupiter (Zeus) , Meaning of Dreams about Jupiter (Zeus) , Dream Interpretation Jupiter (Zeus) )

Airavata (Sanskrit) (from iravat moisture-possessing from ira drink, food)

Son of Iravati; a vast elephant produced at the churning of the ocean and appropriated by the god Indra. When seated upon Airavata, Indra blesses the earth with rain, i.e., with the water that is drawn up by Airavata from the underworld. According to the Matangalila, Airavata was born when Brahma sang over the halves of the shell from which Garuda hatched, followed by seven more male and eight female elephants.

In the Mahabharata (Adi-parvan, ch 66) Airavata guards the eastern zone. Four such "elephants" (sometimes eight, each with its sakti or feminine potency) uphold the structure of the earth. The mighty four-tusked Airavata, therefore, represents one of the lokapalas (world protectors) -- called by Buddhists maharajas (great kings) -- which are the guardians and supporters of the universe. They are also mystically connected with the lipikas, the eternal karmic scribes. In the Bhagavad-Gita (10:2, 7) Krishna, in naming his divine manifestations, says that among elephants he is Airavata.

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

ELEMENTS: the four basic manifestations of matter; earth, fire, water and air; also spirit or ether. These 4 essences are the building blocks of the Universe.   These are Earth, Air, Fire, Water, and the fifth element of pure spirit in, of and outside them all. Each Pagan tradition has their own tools, directions, and correspondences. Everything that exists, or has the potential to exist, contains one or more of these energies. These 4 elements formed from Primal Essence or power, Akasha. AND for the Practitioner who wonders, "What the HECK are those people talking about?"

(See also: ELEMENTS , Witchcraft, Wicca, Paganism, Pagan Dictionary)

Akasic Magnetism In theosophy both electricity and magnetism are considered as the vital fluids or effluxes of living beings, which flow forth from them and, interblending and interworking, produce the multimyriad forms of electric and magnetic phenomenal activity common everywhere. This means that both magnetism and electricity are to be traced to their source in cosmic akasa, which is in the great what the magnetism of an individual is in the small.

 The changes occurring in the earth's magnetism "are due to akasic magnetism incessantly generating electric currents which tend to restore disturbed equilibrium" (ML 160). Hence all magnetic or electrical activity on earth is produced by astral magnetism and electricity incessantly generating electric and magnetic currents which reproduce themselves in the physical sphere.

(See also: Akasic Magnetism , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Neophyte (Ancient Greek). A novice; a postulant or candidate for the Mysteries.

The methods of initiation varied. Neophytes had to pass in their trials through all the four elements, emerging in the fifth as glorified Initiates. Thus having passed through Fire (Deity), Water (Divine Spirit), Air (the Breath of God), and the Earth (Matter), they received a sacred mark, a tat and a tau, or a + and a ?. The latter was the monogram of the Cycle called the Naros, or Neros. As shown by Dr. E. V. Kenealy, in his Apocalypse, the cross in symbolical language (one of the seven meanings)"+ exhibits at the same time three primitive letters, of which the word LVX or Light is compounded. . . . The Initiates were marked with this sign, when they were admitted into the perfect mysteries. We constantly see the Tau and the Resh united thus ?.

Those two letters in the old Samaritan, as found on coins, stand, the first for 400, the second for 200 = 600. This is the staff of Osiris." Just so, but this does not prove that the Naros was a cycle of 600 years; but simply that one more pagan symbol had been appropriated by the Church.

(See "Naros" and "Neros" and also "I. H. S.")

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

Peratae (Latin) Peratai (Greek) One of the Gnostic bodies or associations, the Naaseni or Ophites, the "Serpent Gnostics," so called because of the mystical prominence of the serpent symbol in their rites and observances.

This Gnostic body is said by scholars to have been founded by Euphrates, who possessed wide astrological knowledge, and because of the teachings which his school followed were they named Peratai -- wanderers, i.e., on this earth of trial and tribulation; or "those of the other side," signifying individuals who regarded themselves as merely wanderers or pilgrims in regions far from their native home, the spirit.

Among other ideas, they held that the celestial bodies in a person's horoscope are the instruments of destiny or karma, which because of causes engendered in other lives bring the individuals to birth on this earth under the destined yoke marked in the celestial spaces by the sun, moon, and planets; and in order to protect themselves from the malignant influence of the genii of the planets they wore serpent sigils or talismans.

C. W. King states that the Ophites were the descendants of the Bacchic Mystae, basing this on the fact that coins of the period bear the Bacchic serpent, which is represented as raising himself out of the sacred coffer, while the reverse side of the coin shows two serpents entwined around torches (Gnostics and Their Remains 225).

(See also: Peratae, Peratai , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Horus (Egypt, Egyptian). The last in the line of divine Sovereigns in Egypt, said to he the son of Osiris and Isis.

He is the great god "loved of Heaven", the "beloved of the Sun, the offspring of the gods, the subjugator of the world".

At the time of the Winter Solstice (our Christmas), his image, in the form of a small newly-born infant, was brought out from the sanctuary for the adoration of the worshipping crowds. As he is the type of the vault of heaven, he is said to have come from the Maem Misi, the sacred birth-place (the womb of the World), and is, therefore, the "mystic Child of the Ark" or the argha, the symbol of the matrix.

Cosmically, he is the Winter Sun. A tablet describes him as the "substance of his father", Osiris, of whom he is an incarnation and also identical with him. Horus is a chaste deity, and "like Apollo has no amours. His part in the lower world is associated with the judgment.

He introduces souls to his father, the judge" (Bonwick). An ancient hymn says of him, "By him the world is judged in that which it contains. Heaven and earth are under his immediate presence. He rules all human beings. The sun goes round according to his purpose. He brings forth abundance and dispenses it to all the earth. Everyone adores his beauty. Sweet is his love in us."

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

Omoroka (Greek) [from Chaldean, cf Hebrew `amaq to be deep, profound; Hebrew `amar to heap together, overwhelm; and Arabic `amar to overwhelm with water]

The deep, the ocean, whether physically or mystically; used in the Babylonian account of creation. One legend tells of Belus cutting Omoroka in two, from one part of which the heavens were formed, and from the other, the earth -- showing that Omoroka signifies space.

In Chaldean mythology, Omoroka was a woman personifying the spatial deeps, and therefore divine water or the productive Logos of all manifestation. It likewise became connected with the moon, being equivalent to Selene, and was often used as the manifested wisdom or spirit.

In The Secret Doctrine Omoroka (the moon) presides over the monstrous creation of nondescript beings slain by the dhyanis; and further, while the gods were generated in svabhavat (mother-space), the reflection of wisdom became on earth Omoroka -- the Chaldean Thalatth, the Greek Thalassa.

(See also: Omoroka , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary)

Adonai 'adonai (Hebrew) (from 'adon lord)

My Lords; through usage, Lord, a plural of excellence. Originally a sort of appeal or prayer to the hierarchical spiritual powers of the earth planetary chain, and more particularly of the planetary spirit of the earth itself; later it became a mere substitute for the unutterable name of God, usually for Tetragrammaton (YHVH).

"As the inner nature of YHVH is hidden; therefore He (YHVH) is only named with the Name of the Shekhinah, Adonai, i.e., Lord; therefore the Rabbins say (of the name YHVH); Not as I am written (i.e., YHVH) am I read. In this world My Name is written YHVH and read Adonai, but in the world to come, the same will be read as it is written, so that Mercy (represented by YHVH) shall be from all sides" (Zohar iii 320a). Adonai is rendered Lord in the Bible, although it means "my Lords"; whereas 'elohim is translated God in the English Authorized Version.

In the Sephirothal scheme, the Divine Name of the Sephirah of Malchuth was 'Adonai. The Gnostics taught that Iurbo and Adonai were names of Iao-Jehovah, who is an emanation of Ilda Baoth. According to Origen the Gnostics considered Adonai the genius of the sun. Blavatsky writes: "Both Aidoneus and Dionysius (Dionysus)

are the bases of Adonai, or 'Jurbo Adonai,' as Jehovah is called in Codex Nazaraeus. . . . Baal-Adonis of the sods or Mysteries of the pre-Babylonian Jews became the Adonai by the Massorah, the later-vowelled Jehovah" (SD 1:463).

See also 'ADON; IAO; JEHOVAH

(See also: Adonai, adonai , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)