Flame Dictionary

Jyota se jyota:

A chant; an invocation to the Guru asking for the flame of divine love in the disciple's heart to be kindled with the Guru's own heart flame.

(See also: Jyota se jyota , Yoga, Yoga Dictionary, Siddha Yoga, Siddha Yoga Dictionary)

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V X Y Z

Fire Fire has been venerated in all ages as the symbol of spirit as opposed to matter. Its essence or substance is spirit; with essential or substantial air or water -- considered as primordial elements -- it becomes soul; with the further addition of the element earth, it becomes animated bodies because ensouled and enlivened with the attributes and qualities of the preceding more ethereal elements.

 Great importance was attached in ancient times to keeping alive the sacred fires of hearth and altar. In all this it was recognized that terrestrial fire is the representative of celestial fire, a phase of cosmic consciousness. Deity is often spoken of as the cosmic fire of consciousness.

The ancient conception of fire thus embraced far more than the ordinary view of fire as chemical combustion or one of its phenomena. Among all the older peoples fire was multitudinous in both characteristics and attributes, ranging from divine-spiritual intellectuality through all intermediate stages of its manifestations to the physical heat arising from the burning of material such as wood, or the natural heat of the body. It is for this reason that certain ancient philosophers, such as Heracleitos, spoke of fire as the primordial element of the universe, in close accord with the archaic outlook.

Fire is the active, energic, vitalizing, quickening principle on all planes. It is often paired with water as spirit and form; contrasted with earth, as celestial and terrestrial; air is spoken of as its vehicle, as is also aether, because the root of cosmic aether is the celestial fire. The order of the elements varies, from different points of view and on different planes of manifestation. The Secret Doctrine states that from primordial chaos came forth a fire that was cold, formless, and luminous -- essential consciousness-substance. The first manifested hot fires and flames issued at a much later stage in manifestation. Concealed within the central sun is the triple formless invisible fire, which precedes the septenary manifested fire of cosmos. Fire, whether heavenly or terrestrial, is the most perfect and pure reflection of the one universal flame; it is life and death, creator and recreator; the origin and end of every material thing -- divine consciousness-substance. From one flame all lamps can be kindled: fire imparts infinitely without loss. Fire alone is One, on the plane of the one reality; and on the plane of illusion, its particles are fiery lives.

Like most other things, fire has its nether pole and hence its infernal aspect; but the fires of hell are purificatory. By his power of self-conscious choice an individual may set himself at variance with nature's processes, thus creating his own devils. Fire was the great agent of purification in medieval alchemy, for it removes the dross from the gold. The same is true on the moral plane, for spiritual aspiration calls down an inner fire that purifies the gold from the dross in the aspirant's heart. The two births or baptisms relate to water and fire; the former being carnal, the latter being the spiritual birth or baptism that comes to the aspirant.

See also AGNI; ELEMENT; FLAMES; TAIJASA-TATTVA

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

Flame Dream Symbols:

(Source: Myths - Dreams - Symbols)

Related pages: Dream Symbols, Dream Interpretation, Dream Symbol Flame, Dream Dictionary Flame, Meaning of dreams about Flame, Dream Interpretation Flame, Dream Analysis Flame, Dreaming of Flame

Flame, Fire

Ushnisha usnisa (Sanskrit) [from the verbal root ush to be warm, flaming; mystically warmth through inner light, intuition, vision]

A turban, diadem, or crown; also a kind of "excrescence" on the head of a buddha. Like the long ears so often seen in figures of the buddhas, the meaning of the ushnisha is entirely occult, and was in no sense whatsoever intended to signify a tuft of hair, nor any fleshly excrescence on the skull, but was a way of suggesting the radiating power of the eye of Siva or organ of vision and of intuition, working at relatively full power within the skull of a great adept.

The eye of Siva is the pineal gland; originally an external and active eye in the head of primitive mankind during this fourth round on earth, it gradually retreated within the skull, which grew to cover its place with bones, skin, and hair. As this presently so-called third eye retreated within the skull, its place was progressively taken by the two present organs of vision. At this period of our racial development it is buddhas, avataras, and other initiates of relatively high status who alone use the organ of spiritual vision, for in them the pineal gland has become active and is to some extent physiologically enlarged; although in everyone else it is more or less nonfunctional, yet to some degree functional.

Hence the ushnisha represents that radiant crown of buddhic fire that surrounds the head of initiates when they are in deep samadhi or meditation. The initiate's head becomes surrounded with rays from the vital inner fire of the third eye, the spiritual organ of the brain, which likewise is the source from which radiates the spiritual, intellectual, and psychovital nimbus or aura surrounding the head -- known to the iconographies of every religion. These rays thus form a glory around the head and sometimes even around the entire body. "They stream upwards from the back of the head, often symbolically represented in the buddha-iconography as one single, lambent flame soaring upwards from and over the top of the skull. In this case you may perhaps find that the ushnisha is missing, its place being taken by this flame issuing from the top of the head, a symbolic representation of the fire of the spirit and of the aroused and active buddhic faculty in which the man is at the time" (Fund 493).

Many statues of buddhas and bodhisattvas possess certain peculiar headgear called crowns or ushnishas. Hence ushnisha is also used in the sense of turban, because this particular headgear, given to these statues, somewhat resembles a turban of spiral conical form, somewhat like the spiral shell of some snails.

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

Nirvana:

(Lit., blowing out, as a flame) Annihilation of desire, passion, and ego; Liberation, characterized by freedom and bliss.

(See also: Nirvana , Sanskrit Dictionary, Body Mind and Soul)

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V X Y Z

Purnahuti:

(lit., full or complete offering) The culmination of any celebration, especially a saptah or a yajna. The final chant of a purnahuti is an arati, an invocation to the Guru entreating him to kindle the flame of divine love in the disciple's heart. Tradition states that to attend a purnahuti is to gain the merit of the entire celebration.

(See also: Purnahuti , Yoga, Yoga Dictionary, Siddha Yoga, Siddha Yoga Dictionary)

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V X Y Z

A dictionary Of Siddha Yoga Terminology. From Abhanga to Yogini.

Please note that all words in grey, like "enlightenment" or "kundalini" are hyperlinked to archives further explaining the term. At the corresponding archive you will also find articles related to the term.

Trisarana (Sanskrit) The three refuges or protections, also called triratna or ratnatraya (three jewels); the Buddhist formula Buddha, dharma, sangha or samgha. Originally bodhi, dharma, and sangha (wisdom, its laws, and its priests or spiritual exponents).

"The philosopher of the Yoga-charya School would say -- as well he could -- 'Dharma is not a person but an unconditioned and underived entity, combining in itself the spiritual and material principles of the universe, whilst from Dharma proceeded, by emanation, Buddha ['reflected' Bodhi rather]

as the creative energy which produced, in conjunction with Dharma, the third factor in the trinity, viz., "Samgha," which is the comprehensive sum total of all real life.' Samgha, then, is not and cannot be that which it is now understood to be, namely, the actual 'priesthood'; for the latter is not the sum total of all real life, but only of religious life. The real primitive significance of the word Samgha or 'Sangha' applies to the Arhats or Bhikshus, or the 'initiates,' alone, that is to say to the real exponents of Dharma -- the divine law and wisdom, coming to them as a reflex light from the one 'boundless light' " (TG 342).

Further, the Buddha meant is not any particular Buddha but Adi-Bodhi or the First Logos, "whose primordial ray is Mahabuddhi, the Universal Seal, Alaya, whose flame is ubiquitous, and whose influence has a different sphere on each of the three forms of existence, because, once again, it is Universal Being itself or the reflex of the Absolute" (TG 343).

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

Axieros, Axiokersa, Axiokersos, (Greek) Also Aschieros, Achiosera, Achiochersus. In ancient Greek mythology, three divinities whose Mysteries and worship were mainly centered in Samothrace. With Kadmilos, often said to be their parent, they were the kabiri (cf Chaldean gibbor, Hebrew geber beings of power or might, the great ones)

. Frequently Axieros, Axiokersa, and Axiokersos are stated to be the offspring of Hephaestus or Vulcan, the fiery flame of creative cosmic intellect or mahat. The kabiri are equivalent to the four kumaras of Hindu literature -- Sanat-kumara, Sananda, Sanaka, and Sanatana. The functions of both groups was as guardians, guides, inspirers, bringers of illumination and prosperity; and, in the kosmic sense, as divinities intimately involved in the intelligent productive energies of nature. Their number is the same as that of the kosmic elements -- four, occasionally five, and in reality seven or ten. The four named above are the lower quaternary of the kosmic septenary -- those divinities most closely involved in the intelligent building and architectural construction and therefore government of the four lower cosmic planes.

In connection with man, the kabiri are the four lower classes of spiritual entities otherwise known as pitris, kumaras, and agnishvattas -- all children of kosmic mahat. These divinities, although minor gods compared with the twelve great gods, were nevertheless held in the highest veneration particularly by those who were initiated into their Mysteries. Herodotus speaks of them and their functions with great reserve, but refers to them as being fire gods -- which they were because cosmically representing the divine powers of the creative intellectual fire which in humanity works in similar fashion as the intellectual fire- or solar pitris. Their human influence is connected directly with manas and buddhi-manas.

(See also: Axieros, Axiokersa, Axiokersos , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

A Theosophical definition of Soulless Beings :

Soulless Beings

"We elbow soulless men in the streets at every turn," wrote H. P. Blavatsky. This is an actual fact. The statement does not mean that those whom we thus elbow have no soul. The significance is that the spiritual part of these human beings is sleeping, not awake. Soulless Beings are animate humans with an animate working brain-mind, an animal mind, but otherwise "soulless" in the sense that the soul is inactive, sleeping; and this is also just what Pythagoras meant when he spoke of the "living dead."

Soulless Beings are everywhere, these people. We elbow them, just as H. P. Blavatsky says, at every turn. The eyes may be physically bright, and filled with the vital physical fire, but they lack soul; they lack tenderness, the fervid yet gentle warmth of the living flame of inspiration within. Sometimes impersonal love will awaken the soul in a man or in a woman; sometimes it will kill it if the love become selfish and gross. The streets are filled with such "soulless" people; but the phrase soulless people does not mean "lost souls." The latter is again something else.

The term soulless people therefore is a technical term. It means men and women who are still connected, but usually quite unconsciously, with the monad, the spiritual essence within them, but who are not self-consciously so connected. They live very largely in the brain-mind and in the fields of sensuous consciousness. They turn with pleasure to the frivolities of life. They have the ordinary feelings of honor, etc., because it is conventional and good breeding so to have them; but the deep inner fire of yearning, the living warmth that comes from being more or less at one with the god within, they know not. Hence, they are "soulless," because the soul is not working with fiery energy in and through them.

A lost soul, on the other hand, means an entity who through various rebirths, it may be a dozen, or more or less, has been slowly following the "easy descent to Avernus," and in whom the threads of communication with the spirit within have been snapped one after the other. Vice will do this, continuous vice. Hate snaps these spiritual threads more quickly than anything else perhaps. Selfishness, the parent of hate, is the root of all human evil; and therefore a lost soul is one who is not merely soulless in the ordinary theosophical usage of the word, but is one who has lost the last link, the last delicate thread of consciousness, connecting him with his inner god. He will continue "the easy descent," passing from human birth to an inferior human birth, and then to one still more inferior, until finally the degenerate astral monad  - all that remains of the human being that once was  - may even enter the body of some beast to which it feels attracted (and this is one side of the teaching of transmigration, which has been so badly misunderstood in the Occident); some finally go even to plants perhaps, at the last, and will ultimately vanish. The astral monad will then have faded out. Such lost souls are exceedingly rare, fortunately; but they are not what we call soulless people.

If the student will remember the fact that when a human being is filled with the living spiritual and intellectual fiery energies flowing into his brain-mind from his inner god, he is then an insouled being, he will readily understand that when these fiery energies can no longer reach the brain-mind and manifest in a man's life, there is thus produced what is called a soulless being. A good man, honorable, loyal, compassionate, aspiring, gentle, and true-hearted, and a student of wisdom, is an "insouled" man; a buddha is one who is fully, completely insouled; and there are all the intermediate grades between.

See also: Soulless Beings , Mysticism, Body Mind and Soul

Dasa, Dasi:

Dasa, Dasi: (servant) instrument of the will of God, Krishna.

(See also: Dasa, Dasi , Hinduism, Hinduism Dictionary, Sanskrit Dictionary, Body Mind and Soul)

666

Many have been the designators of this apocalyptic finger, from Nero to the Popes, to Mohammed, to Ronald Wilson Reagan. But only through careful numerological analysis can we be certain of its true meaning. In The Dimensions of Paradise, John Mitchell shows clearly how this "number of the beast" is actually the Gnostic designation for Jesus Christ and the Crucifiction foisted on the world by the corrupt Church. Christ as an historical figure instead of a spiritual force was repugnant to the Gnostics. Decadent Babylon and the New Jerusalem are one and the same City of God, symbolizing the death rattle for the perverted religion and the birth of a new understanding. In Revelation, 666 refers to the phrase kai ho arithmos Chi-Xi-Sigma and stands for Jesus Christ as the idol on the cross rather than the Gnostic idea of the new Christ spirit, "the son of man," present in all men (much like our own "New Aeon" feeling). The New Jerusalem numbers are 3168, 1080, 1224 and 1764, but especially 864 and 666 (all of these, by the way, reduce to 9). New Jerusalem itself is 961 (seven), as is "the number of the leaves of the Tree of Life which are for the healing of nations."

A similar attribution can be found in Kenneth Grant's work (Outside the Circles of Time). For him, as for the writer of Revelation, the number has special apocalyptic meanings: "The Christians misunderstood the Unspeakable Name (IHVH) and supposed that by causing a rift between the Old Ones and the life-wave on earth they could 'save' mankind, and incidentally [of course!] gain total mastery of the planet." In order to do this, they inserted the Hebrew letter Shin (Grant calls this the letter of "Spirit," others associate it with "fire") between IH and VH, the Sh of Spirit. Thus we derive the name Yeheshuah or Johoshuah (IHShVH), which in Latin we call Jesus. The Xtians proceeded from there to identify this mythological name with a real person who, as Gerald Massey demonstrated, could only have been -- in an historic sense -- Jesus ben Pandira, an Egyptian who lived a century earlier. This wizard's mother was named Mary Magdalene, and he was stoned to death for sorcery. But the letter Shin, Grant tells us, "represents the triple-tongued flame of the Great Old Ones, whose supreme concentration -- Choronzon -- exhibits the triple Firetongue in the number 333." The latter is "mirrored in the final Heh of Tetragrammaton, the daughter-letter, whose number becomes the trebled Hex and the Unholy Act of Earth's destruction, under the rule of the Son of Typhon who is Set/Satan and the Anti-Christ."

Thus, to this very day, the idol that the entire "Christian" world bows down to is not the Christos spirit at all, but the Anti-Christ. The washed faces, the white gloves, the alb and pale lilies of Sunday worship cannot dispel the blood of ages. Average Galileans are unable to display love of any kind for their fellow-man. Instead, they constantly evoke the images of sin, corruption, misery and damnation. All "holy books" contain contradictions, lies and false teachings, but the Xtian Bible is a monument of fabrications and contradictions, second only to the Koran.

(See also: 666 , Magick, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Body Mind and Soul,)

Panchaloha:

Panchaloha: it was a sheet of alloy of five metals, gold, silver, copper, brass and iron, the Panchaloha, out of which temple idols have to be made. (SSS-III)

(See also: Panchaloha , Hinduism, Hinduism Dictionary, Sanskrit Dictionary, Body Mind and Soul)

Tulku sprul sku (Tibetan) [short for sprul pa'i sku (tul-pe-ku) from sprul pa phantom, disembodied spirit; cf Sanskrit nirmanakaya body of magical transformation]

Applied to a lama of high rank, often to the head abbot of a monastery; specifically, to those lamas who have proved their ability of remembering their office and standing in a former incarnation, e.g., by selecting articles belonging previously to themselves, describing details of a former life, surroundings, etc. The two most important tulkus in the Tibetan Buddhist hierarchy are the Tashi and Dalai Lamas. Tulku is often referred to as an incarnation but, outside of the many varieties of an incarnating or imbodying power or energy, incarnation in popular usage is the direct continuance of a previous imbodiment. These so-called living buddhas of Tibet are one kind of tulku -- the transmission of a spiritual power or energy from one Buddha-lama of a Tibetan monastery when he dies, to a child or adult successor. If the transmission is successful, the result is tulku.

Tulku is of many different kinds and very closely parallels the Hindu doctrine of avatara. Taking Jesus as an example: here was a life-long tulku, a ray from a divinity; a tulku of that divinity so far as that ray goes, a divine manifestation, and hence a true avatara in the Brahmanical sense. Again, Gautama Buddha was tulku of his own inner buddha or inner god. The average person, however, is merely overshadowed occasionally, if he really aspires, by a touch of the divine flame from within the higher parts of his own constitution, and yet even for these fugitive instants such person is tulku. But when Gautama attained buddhahood, he was relatively infilled with his own inner buddha, and therefore was that god's human tulku. That was for Siddhartha the man, nirvana; he then entered dharmakaya and this portion of him was then known of men no more: that portion of him was a man become divine.

Another kind of tulku is where a human mahatma will send a ray from himself, or a part of himself, to take imbodiment, perhaps only temporarily, perhaps almost for a lifetime, in a neophyte-messenger that this mahatma is sending out into the world to teach. The messenger in this instance acts as a transmitter of the spiritual and divine powers of the mahatma. Blavatsky was such a tulku, imbodying frequently the very life of, and hence guided by, her own teacher. While this incarnation of the teacher's higher essence lasted, she was tulku. When for one reason or another the influence or ray was withdrawn for a longer or shorter period, tulku then and there became nonexistent.

Still another aspect of the tulku doctrine is illustrated by the case of Blavatsky. Where is she now? Blavatsky has not yet again reincarnated -- she has not yet been born as a child -- but she has at certain times, and for one certain individual, with that individual's consent, organized as it were tulku for that individual. For the time being, therefore, we can say that Blavatsky has partially imbodied in that chosen individual for the purpose of special transmission. In all cases of tulku, they are incarnations or appearances. If Blavatsky, for instance, were to make tulku of a person for a month or a year, for the time being that person would be tulku, but when that particular work was done, the influence would be withdrawn and tulku would stop.

There is again another kind of avataric incarnation or tulku, a temporary physical appearance of an adept in the mayavi-rupa. Certain Tibetan lamas are known to be able to perform this feat, and thus they too have been properly called tulkus, which is the type of tulku that certain Orientalists have referred to as "an appearance."

Another type of tulku of an opposite and essentially evil character is that brought about by a hypnotist who temporarily displaces the psychological nature of his entranced subject through psychologization or even hypnosis plus mesmerism. This, however, is more often than not an act of black magic and fraught with grave dangers, both to the hypnotist and the one entranced. Every clever hypnotist actually makes a tulku of his victim in a black magic sense. When he puts an idea into the brain of his victim, that one week from now at three o'clock in the afternoon he is going to do some essentially foolish or undignified act -- for the time being that hypnotist is working a black magic tulku on that victim, and every psychologist and hypnotist knows the possibility of this fact, though the scientific explanation of the term may be strange to him. A key example of black magic tulku was what the medieval Europeans used to call werewolves. This doctrine of the tulku, however, is at heart beautiful and sublime, and hence highly reverenced by the Tibetans.

(See also: Tulku, sprul sku , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Body mind and Soul)

Holy Ghost (from Greek hagion pneuma holy spirit or breath)

The Holy Ghost or Spirit in the Occident usually means the Third Person of the Christian Trinity or Triune God. The typical form of the primary philosophic and cosmogonic triad is Father-Mother-Son with the female potency figuring both as mother, wife, and daughter of the Son. The Holy Ghost is strictly speaking the feminine principle in the Christian Trinity, and in primitive Christianity was counted the second in serial order or procession, although in later times the West, led by the Roman Catholic Church, transferred the position of the Holy Ghost from second to third.

Thus the original series was Father, Holy Ghost or Mother, and Son, whereas the Occident now reckons the series in the procession as Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; and this difference of opinion which arose in the Middle Ages was one of the great factors splitting the Christian Church into the Eastern or Greek Orthodox and the Western. In Christianity, the Son is said to be God made manifest in a particular man; the Holy Ghost is the divine spirit which works in all men and brings them into conformity with the image of the Son or Christ.

The Holy Ghost is the spiritual ray from the central sun, which passes down through the planes of manifestation, penetrating all hierarchies in its course and therefore likewise the human mind when it is permitted ingress into his soul. It is equivalent to the Light of the Logos, daiviprakriti, the Gnostic Sophia, the Qabbalistic Shechinah (or perhaps Sephirah), the Mother of the Ogdoad, and in Indian thought the feminine sakti. But while daiviprakriti is the Light of the Logos, this is only because the Logos transmits to itself the light from above.

(See also: Holy Flame , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Holy Flame Qabbalistic term (particularly among Eastern Asiatic Semites), synonymous with anima mundi (the soul of the world). Initiates were called Sons of the Holy Flame.

(See also: Holy Flame , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

akasa:

akasa (aakaasha). Sky, space, ether.

(See also: akasa , Hinduism, Hinduism Dictionary, Sanskrit Dictionary, Body Mind and Soul)

Bapu and Amma:

Bapu and Amma: Father and mother (RRV-4)

(See also: Bapu and Amma , Hinduism, Hinduism Dictionary, Sanskrit Dictionary, Body Mind and Soul)

Sathya Sai Nagar:

Sathya Sai Nagar: Suburb of bungalows where Sai devotees live (SSS-II)

(See also: Sathya Sai Nagar , Hinduism, Hinduism Dictionary, Sanskrit Dictionary, Body Mind and Soul)

Hanuman:

Hanuman (Anjaneya): Monkey warrior who became Rama's devoted friend and servant. (RRV2-4a), also called "Sun of the Wind-God Vayu" (RRV-5a) [BG 1:20: Then the son of Pandu, who's flag was marked with Hanuman and who was looking from his chariot upon the sons of Dhritarastra in preparing to take up his bow and shoot his arrows, O King, at that time spoke the following words to Hrisikesa [Krishna as the Lord of the senses].]

(See also: Hanuman , Hinduism, Hinduism Dictionary, Sanskrit Dictionary, Body Mind and Soul)