West The forces of the four cardinal points have each a distinct occult property, and are ruled over by the four regents.

Blavatsky states that there is occult philosophy in the early Christian doctrine, echoes of which still linger in both the Orthodox Greek and the Roman Catholic Churches, that public calamities are due to invisible messengers from the north and west, and particularly from the west, the conjunction of the two points being combined in the northwest (SD 1:123).

Most good, on the other hand, flows forth from the north and east. The Egyptian goddess Hathor is spoken of as the infernal Isis, the goddess preeminently of the west or nether world. East and west are not localities but directions, and when used in reference to localities the meaning is purely relative. Good and evil, too, are relative terms as experienced by human beings, for such messengers and influences are in all cases strictly karmic agents; and often what people in their blindness and weakness think a calamity or misfortune may indeed be a blessing in disguise.

See also CARDINAL POINTS

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

Wheat Brought to earth by Lords of Wisdom from other spheres, as were all the grains, and indeed all plants and animals. Yet wheat is said not to be known in the wild state nor to have been developed from any grass. Plato speaks of inventors -- gods and demigods incarnate in human beings -- who appeared successively among the races of mankind after their divine rulers had departed, and discovered fire, wheat, and wine. The kabiri and also Isis are said to have brought wheat, as is Isis. In Egyptian symbology the Osirified defunct becomes Khem, who gleans the field of Aaru -- i.e., "he gleans either his reward or punishment, as that field is the celestial locality (Devachan) where the defunct is given wheat, the food of divine justice" (SD 1:221).

In ancient Greece wheat was always associated with Demeter or Ceres (whence the word cereal), and as Demeter was the preeminent goddess of the Mysteries, sheaves of wheat also were associated with the Mysteries. Maize held the same place in ancient America. In the Christian Church wheat is still the food in the bread -- the literal, physical "body of Christ."

(See also: Wheat, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, 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)

Whip of Osiris The nehbet (scepter), represented as a flail; one of the three instruments of power held by Osiris in the Egyptian representations of the god of judgment over the dead. These texts address the deity as having the fan in his hand "and who purges the Amenti of sinful hearts as a winnower sweeps his floor of the fallen grains and locks the good wheat into his garner."

In the Gospels John the Baptist speaks of him who shall come after him: "Whose fan is in his hand, and he will thoroughly purge his floor, and gather his wheat into the garner; but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire" (Matt 3:12).

(See also: Whip of Osiris, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Body mind and Soul)

Whirling Souls Used in reference to the Hebrew Gilgulim, the cyclic journeys or whirlings of the monad, and the Qabbalistic teaching that during the course of these peregrinations or transmigrations it enters body after body.

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

Whirlwind A gyrating wind; in theosophy, when applied to the movements of a universe, a name for the moving of the Great Breath and for the various functions and activities of fohat.

Motion, the divine breath, becomes the cosmic whirling or whirlwind and sets in motion the particles in space, bringing about now their coagulation and concretion, now their dissipation and dispersion.

Deity thus mystically becomes a whirlwind; pulsatory life assumes a whirling movement. Stages in world formation are described as diffused cosmic matter, then the fiery whirlwind, the first stage in the formation of a nebula, leading eventually to the formation of solar system and more particularly of a globe or group of solar or planetary globes.

The primordial seven forces, the first seven breaths of the cosmic dragon of wisdom or cosmic manifest intelligence, produce from their circumgyrating motions the fiery whirlwind. The first chapter of Ezekiel mentions a whirlwind and other descriptions of cosmic evolution, especially wheels.

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

Wisdom-eye.

See PINEAL GLAND

(See also: Wisdom-eye, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Body mind and Soul)

Wisdom-Religion, Wisdom-Science.

See THEOSOPHY

(See also: Wisdom-Religion, Wisdom-Science, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Body mind and Soul)

Witch of Endor The wise woman of Endor or 'Eyn-dor, mentioned in the Bible as having "a familiar spirit" (Sam 28:7-25), who called up the shade of Samuel at the request of the dejected Saul, saying: "I saw gods ascending out of the earth"; and the prophecy of Saul's death and Israel's fall into the hands of the Philistines proved to be correct.

Blavatsky speaks of her as "Sedecla, the Obeah woman of Endor" (IU 1:494); Sedecla may be a transliteration of an old Hebrew name Tsedeqlah [from tsedeq righteous, just, exact, accurate] -- a possible reference to her necromantic skill. She was one of the class of psychic seeresses so well known in ancient story, whose practices were almost universally condemned.

Passages in holy scriptures, such as 1 Samuel, have misled many Europeans into believing that such methods of attempting to peer into the future were proper and considered morally permissible by the wise of ancient days. Yet one has but to read this chapter to

See that the woman knew her practice was done against the law then prevailing, which apparently made necromantic intercourse of this type punishable with death (cf 28:9). Traffic with the dead was not infrequently resorted to in ancient times, but was censured as unholy, if not evil. Such raisings of the dead have been common in all ages by necromancers, sorcerers, and traffickers in lower magic; although it is quite true that ancient legend and story provides a number of instances where people of prominence resorted in moments of desperation to such methods in an attempt to gain foreknowledge of events coming to pass: for example, the incident related by Homer of the raising of the shade of the seer Teiresias by Odysseus (Odyssey bk 11) and again the necromantic practices of Sextus, the son of Pompey, through the "witch" Erictho on the plains of Thessaly, as described by Lucan (Pharsalia Bk 6, vv. 570-820).

(See also: Witch of Endor, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Body mind and Soul)

Witches' Sabbath [from Anglo-Saxon wicca from wit-ga seer, prophet; later, wizard, witch]

A gathering of witches for the purpose of celebrating their orgies, one of the functions of which was dancing around a goat, undoubtedly a remnant of the ancient worship of Pan. Every race and people believed that witches conferred directly with the devil, "and some believe in it still. Thus the chief headquarters and place of meeting of all the witches in Russian is said to be the Bald Mountains (Lyssaya Gora), near Kief, and in Germany the Brocken, in the Harz Mountains. In old Boston, U. S. A., they met near the 'Devil's Pond,' in a large forest which has now disappeared. At Salem, they were put to death almost at the will of the Church Elders, and in South Carolina a witch was burnt as late as 1865. In Germany and England they were murdered by Church and State in thousands, being forced to lie and confess under torture their participation in the 'Witches' Sabbath' " (TG 371).

One of the mystical and popular meanings in medieval times of the Hebrew sabbath -- signifying rest, inactivity, and therefore applicable in the cosmic scale to pralaya -- is a midnight meeting.

(See also: Witches' Sabbath, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Body mind and Soul)

Wittoba.

See VITTHALA

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

Wodan, Woden.

See ODIN

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

Wolf {Fund 273-4}

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

Woman In philosophy, symbolizes the mother aspect of nature or feminine characteristic of the universe always found in the triads of Father-Mother-Son (changed in the Christian scheme to Father, Son, and Holy Ghost -- the Holy Spirit in primitive Christianity always being considered feminine). From time immemorial it has been customary to associate primordial spirit-substance, later becoming matter, with the cosmic feminine principle represented symbolically by a horizontal line); and spirit has always been associated with the masculine principle (represented by a vertical line); but the words feminine and masculine are merely borrowed from human beings, and the characteristics of originating cosmic principles were far better expressed by pairs of opposites such as negative and positive.

In cosmogenesis, the feminine principle is represented by the waters of space or great deep, often called the womb of nature. From this figure of speech was born the conception found in some ancient cosmogonies, such as the Hebrew, of the ark, containing all the germs of lives of a universe and pictured as resting or moving on the cosmic waters. Another symbol for the feminine principle was that of the lotus, which likewise rests upon the water, finally rising above it when it blossoms. One symbol of the universe in germ before any aspect of manifestation occurs is the matripadma or closed "mother lotus," before the cosmic blossom has been quickened by spirit into expanding into becoming the universe. It is also referred to as devamatri (the divine mother), the matrix from which all the suns and planets were born.

In the cosmogony of the Hebrew Qabbalah, the first Sephirah which emanates from latent divinity is at times represented as feminine; yet when this feminine emanation becomes creative it is then represented as conjoining masculine traits with its own, so that at this stage it is envisaged as masculine-feminine. This first spiritual emanation, emanating from itself the next phase of cosmogonical production, is termed the Shechinah, the mother of all the successively emanated Sephiroth. Thus the Shechinah is an echo of archaic Hindu cosmogonic speculation, corresponding to pradhana or prakriti.

In theosophic cosmogony space is often called the Great Mother before cosmic activity commences and, at the opening of manvantara, Father-Mother with space becomes emanative and is called svabhavat or mother-space. Svabhavat is the emanation from cosmic space or darkness -- so called because its utter and undiluted essential spirit is virtually beyond the reach of the light of mind as manifested in humanity.

Metaphors such as woman and mother are always symbolical when referring to motherhood, and have no associations with physical sex, for "esotericism ignores both sexes. Its highest Deity is sexless as it is formless, neither Father nor Mother; and its first manifested beings, celestial and terrestrial alike, become only gradually androgynous and finally separate into distinct sexes" (SD 1:136n). This was clearly understood originally, so that there was no degrading or misinterpreting of these figures of speech. With descending cycles, however, humanity's religious conceptions equally materialized: the key ideas having been forgotten or lost, abstractions became concreted into materializations, a masculine Creator or feminine Creatrix were then placed at the summit of the various pantheons, and early religious philosophy -- which was as scientific as it was religious and philosophical -- cast upon the background of the spatial universe images of human surroundings and way of life; so that the deities in the mythologies finally became human images, more powerful but equally swayed by passion, driven by impulse, and restricted by these even as human beings are. Such projection of human attributes into the cosmic spaces led to a still more materialized visioning of the divinities, so that the feminine or productive characteristics of nature in the popular religious mythologies finally gave way before the masculine, and the earlier, essentially beautiful idea of the mother of nature was swallowed up in the purely masculine traits of national divinities, many of them distinctly male and evil, such as the Jewish Jehovah, who waxed wroth and smelt the sweet savor of burnt sacrifices, or again the Greek Zeus swayed by ignoble passions.

"No exoteric religious system has ever adopted a female Creator, and thus woman was regarded and treated, from the first dawn of popular religions, as inferior to man. It is only in China and Egypt that Kwan-yin and Isis were placed on a par with the male gods" (SD 1:136n). The aspects of Isis, for instance, are familiar enough: as the mother with her child, and as the faithful spiritual consort of Osiris -- these were for easier understanding by the populace; but in the sanctuary Isis remained universal cosmic nature, the cosmic producing mother, the goddess whose veil of nature no mere human had ever raised. Plutarch recorded an inscription addressed to Isis: "I am everything which has been, and which is, and which shall be, and no one has ever drawn my veil" (De Iside at Osiride); to which were added "the fruit of my womb became the Sun" (Proclus, Commentary on the Timaeus, 1:82).

In China, however, the ideal cosmic feminine was named Kwan-yin, the mother of mercy and knowledge, what in Hindustan is called mahat or cosmic buddhi; she is called the triple of Kwan-shai-yin "because in her correlations, metaphysical and cosmical, she is the 'Mother, the Wife and the Daughter,' of the Logos, just as in the later theological translations she became 'the Father Son and (the female) Holy Ghost' -- the Sakti or Energy -- the Essence of the three" (SD 1:136).

With the Gnostics truth itself was portrayed as a disrobed divinity, every part of her cosmic form being numbered and lettered. This divine wisdom they called Sophia, virtually the same as the Qabbalistic Shechinah. Even in the modern Occident, instinct has determined that justice shall be pictured as feminine, as also liberty and peace. "The Gnostic Sophia, 'Wisdom' who is 'the Mother' of the Ogdoad . . . is the Holy Ghost and the Creator of all, as in the ancient systems. The 'father' is a far later invention. The earliest manifested Logos was female everywhere -- the mother of the seven planetary powers" (SD 1:72n).

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

Womb The productive and reproductive powers of nature have often been symbolized by peoples in world history; and as production or reproduction is perhaps most familiar in the sacred function of motherhood, to many minds the womb has seemed an especially suggestive emblem in the small of nature's reproductive principles on the macrocosmic scale.

There are various applications of the emblem; mystically as well as historically, the moon is one such, being not only the cosmic mother of the earth, but in fact its former material imbodiment. Hence both moon and womb are considered to have been, or to be, the containers and nourishers of the seeds of life. Very frequently instead of the womb, nature itself is considered. In a personified sense, it is called the Great Mother, mother-space, or primeval chaos. In a somewhat less clear application, nature's womb is considered to be the waters of space, as found for instance in Genesis, for the manifested universes are conceived and nourished therein.

Still another emblem is that of the ark or argha, well known in the Occident from the Bible story, the ark here meaning the container or seeds of lives left by a departed life-wave or group of life-waves, remaining stored in the womb of nature for the generation of new races.

In a more mystical sense, the same series of ideas is connected with emblems such as the solar boat of ancient Egypt carrying the seeds of life across the waters of space from one cosmic world to another; even the navis or nave of a temple or church was connected with the original idea of the birth of the new person, the nave being but a later popular appearance of the initiation chamber of the sanctuary, which was the womb of the new life giving birth to the reborn -- the dvijas of ancient India.

In archaic Sanskrit writings the same general ideas are frequently noted, as in the Sanskrit compound hiranyagarbha (golden womb), the life-germ enclosed in the golden light or womb of space, and more mystically for the individual, the golden womb of his inner consciousness, out of which regeneration of character into the new life is born.

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

Wondrous Being Often equivalent to Silent Watcher, the supreme head of a hierarchy; and since hierarchies are innumerable, there are innumerable Wondrous Beings. Thus there is a Wondrous Being or Silent Watcher of cosmic magnitude for the Brotherhood of Compassion; a Wondrous Being for our globe, who is identical on a smaller scale; and a Wondrous Being for our planetary chain. In the other direction, there are Wondrous Beings for all less hierarchies even down to that of the atom: it is the highest egoic form of the divine spark everywhere. In The Secret Doctrine the Wondrous Being is made equivalent to the root-base or ever-living-human-banyan.

"This 'Wondrous Being' descended from a 'high region,' they say, in the early part of the Third Age, before the separation of the sexes of the Third Race. . . .

"The 'Being' just referred to, which has to remain nameless, is the Tree from which, in subsequent ages, all the great historically known Sages and Hierophants, such as the Rishi Kapila, Hermes, Enoch, Orpheus, etc., etc., have branched off. As objective man, he is the mysterious (to the profane -- the ever invisible) yet ever present Personage about whom legends are rife in the East, especially among the Occultists and the students of the Sacred Science. It is he who changes form, yet remains ever the same. And it is he again who holds spiritual sway over the initiated Adepts throughout the whole world. He is, as said, the 'Nameless One' who has so many names, and yet whose names and whose very nature are unknown. He is the 'Initiator,' called the 'great sacrifice.' For, sitting at the threshold of light, he looks into it from within the circle of Darkness, which he will not cross; nor will he quit his post till the last day of this life-cycle" (SD 1:207-8).

The Wondrous Being of the human constitution is the higher monad called atma-buddhi-manas or the inner god, to which Jesus referred when he spoke of his Father.

See also WATCHER

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

Word In religious and philosophical usage, a translation of the Greek logos or Latin verbum. Its meaning here is that of reason manifested, employed mainly in a cosmogonic sense. "The esoteric meaning of the word Logos (speech or word, Verbum) is the rendering in objective expression, as in a photograph, of the concealed thought. The Logos is the mirror reflecting divine mind, and the Universe is the mirror of the Logos, though the latter is the esse of that Universe. As the Logos reflects all in the Universe of Pleroma, so man reflects in himself all that he sees and finds in his Universe, the Earth" (SD 2:25). This word was chosen because human thought, or immanent conscious intelligence or mind, manifests itself through words. It is familiar to Christians through the opening verse of John: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God"; "And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us" (1:1, 14). In the former quotation the meaning is entirely cosmogonic; in the latter, it has been diminished to signify the innate Word or divinity in man, which when in full control of the human adept can, by a stretch of metaphor, mean that the innate Christ, Buddha, or god in man so controls the human personality as to have become the latter, and thus to manifest among men.

Cosmogonically, theosophy considers the universe and all in it, from its first divine appearance to its last material modification, as being in toto as well as in all manifested details an emanation from the universal mind. This emanation takes place at the beginning of a manvantara in three separate stages or degrees: the First or unmanifest Logos; the Second or manifest-unmanifest Logos; and finally the Third or manifest Logos. Logos is applicable to these three stages because each is the manifesting of the wisdom in its divine predecessor, each stage carrying within itself, on the principle of the emanational scheme, the attributes or qualities of its predecessors. The Second Logos has invariably been considered feminine, and the Third Logos is regarded as the creative power.

Corresponding to the three Logoi in the Hindu scheme are Brahman, Brahma, and Isvara emanating originally from parabrahman-mulaprakriti. In the highly philosophical visioning of Mahayana Buddhism is adi-buddha, mahabuddhi, and the celestial buddha, occasionally indirectly called dharmakaya. On a scale of less magnitude, Hindu thought has developed the triad Brahma, the emanator or original emanation; Vishnu, the supporter or sustainer, a feminine characteristic nevertheless; and Siva at once the regenerator and producer in the sense of destroying but to regenerate. Still a third Hindu scheme is found in the series of paramatman, mahabuddhi or alaya, and mahat or cosmic creative mind.

A somewhat similar usage in the Qabbalah is Meimra, or 'imrah (word, particularly from divinity) [both from Hebrew verbal root amar to say, speak, use words]. One of the Stanzas of Dzyan refers to the Army of the Voice, which is explained to be "the prototype of the 'Host of the Logos,' or the 'word' of the Sepher Jezirah, called in the Secret Doctrine 'the One Number issued from No-Number' -- the One Eternal Principle" (SD 1:94).

See also LOGOS

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

Wordpassing, Passwords Communication or passing of the word or words in two contexts: 1) in the sacred Mysteries, by one hierophant just before his death to his successor; and 2) as the culminating act of initiation, from the initiate to the candidate or neophyte, as in Freemasonry by the Master of the Lodge, representing King Solomon, to the candidate after his raising.

In the first case, the hierophant could either offer his pure life "as a sacrifice for his race to the gods whom he hoped to rejoin," or an animal victim. This last is a blind, for no initiate of the right-hand path ever sacrificed the life of an animal or any life. The sacrifice performed is the complete conquest of the lower, animal nature, either in this or a lower degree; hence the alternative. The sacrifice of their lives "depended entirely on their own will. At the last moment of the solemn 'new birth,' the initiator passed 'the word' to the initiated, and immediately after that the latter had a weapon placed in his right hand, and was ordered to strike. This is the true origin of the Christian dogma of atonement" (IU 2:42). Blavatsky mentions a widespread superstition among the Slavs and Russians that a magician or wizard cannot die before he has passed the word to a successor, which she traces to the ancient Mysteries.

In the Egyptian initiatory rites taking place in the Great Pyramid, the neophyte, "upon returning -- received the Word, with or without the 'heart's blood' of the Hierophant.

"Only in truth the Hierophant was never killed -- neither in India or elsewhere, the murder being simply feigned -- unless the Initiator had chosen the Initiate for his successor and had decided to pass to him the last and supreme Word, after which he had to die -- only one man in a nation had the right to know that word . . .

"But he died, he was not killed. For killing, if really done, would belong to black, not to divine Magic. It is the transmission of light, rather than a transfer of life, of life spiritual and divine, and it is the shedding of Wisdom, not of blood" (BCW 14:262-4).

That the initiate was compelled to kill the initiator was allegorical and exoteric.

Turning to the second meaning, in Freemasonry every degree has its password or words, which are given to the neophyte during initiation into that degree, the possession of which is a requisite for admission into the working of that degree, and to the conferring of it upon others. By means of it, initiates, as of Freemasonry, may become known to one another. In the ancient Mysteries such words were key words, words of power -- not mere words or phrases which could be communicated to anyone merely after taking part in a ceremony however symbolic, but only to those who were inwardly qualified and worthy of receiving them; who, in fact, had achieved the right of demanding them. Thus in a sense such words were ineffable, not only not to be uttered but unutterable to anyone not entitled to receive them, anyone who had not attained through aspiration, self-conquest, and inner development of mind and heart that stage wherein an understanding of them would be possible. Such inner development must in fact have been begun before one could be truly initiated even into the lowest degree, and must be attained progressively in greater and greater measure as an indispensable qualification for advancement into a higher degree. This use of passwords is also seen in the Egyptian Book of the Dead.

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

World Frequently used to signify various facts of nature: a cosmic plane or subplane, a cosmic sphere, or less accurately an entire cosmic hierarchy. Hence it is common to speak of superior and inferior worlds, or worlds of spirit and of matter, which are not separated from each other; for the worlds of spirit or the superior worlds are the origins of the lower or inferior worlds, as these latter are in the course of cosmic emanation unfolded from cosmic space.

A division is generally made between the superior (arupa or formless) worlds and the inferior (rupa or form) worlds, the latter situated on the four lower planes of the septenary hierarchy. These are also referred to as the noumenal and phenomenal, unmanifested and manifested, "the worlds of Idea and the worlds of Matter. 'As above, so below,' states the Hermetic philosophy. This lower world is formed on its prototype -- the higher world; and 'everything in the lower is but an image (a reflection) of the higher.' (Zohar, ii, fol. 20 A.)" (TG 372).

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

World Egg, Mundane Egg The virgin or eternal egg is chaos, which is fecundated by the ray from spirit, and yet remains immaculate. According to the Stanzas of Dzyan, "The ray shoots through the virgin egg; the ray causes the eternal egg to thrill, and drop the non-eternal germ, which condenses into the world-egg" (SD 1:28). The non-eternal egg signifies the transitory worlds of manifestation and is often used for the universe in germ preceding its emanational unfolding. The first cause of a universe, its emanating spirit, was figurated as a bird which dropped an egg into chaos, the egg in course of aeons becomes the manifested universe.

According to the Laws of Manu, hiranyagarbha "is Brahma the first male formed by the undiscernible Causeless cause in a 'Golden Egg resplendent as the Sun,' " (SD 1:89). The Rig-Veda says that the incomprehensible divine germ of our universe, " 'the one Lord of all beings . . . the one animating principle of gods and man,' arose, in the beginning, in the Golden Womb, Hiranyagarbha -- which is the Mundane Egg or sphere of our Universe" (ibid.).

Ptah, the Egyptian god of creation, is represented as bringing forth beings from a lump of clay on a potter's wheel. This lump of clay represents the world egg, out of which all the beings creep. And the winged globe, so prominent in Egyptian symbology, is another symbol of the world egg.

See also EGG

(See also: World Egg, Mundane Egg, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Body mind and Soul)

World-germs A metaphor for cosmic monads, fundamental elementary principles of all ancient religious and philosophical systems. Each monad is an eternal cosmic unity, albeit they appear, disappear, and reappear during the eternally revolving cosmic cycles. In themselves they are divine consciousness-centers, divine-spiritual particles, points of abstract, conscious, cosmic substance existing during manvantaras in a state of primeval differentiation.

The world-germs, are scattered like spawn throughout space. Each one pursues its karmic destiny, descending from a state of pure spirit through various phases by emanating from itself a series of sheaths or veils until the karmic limit has been reached, when each has become the cosmic spirit of a universe, world, sun, planet, etc., as the case may be. The spiritual essence of any world-germ or cosmic monad at no time actually descends or leaves its own high plane or status, but in the words of Krishna in the Bhagavad-Gita, each establishes a world, universe, or hierarchy with karmically destined portions of itself, and yet remains separate, transcendent.

During the course of this descent into manifestation, fohat sets in motion the primordial world-germs, the aggregation of cosmic atoms and matter, some one way, some another. The world-germs come into frequent meetings and separations, or collisions and partings, until forming their final cosmic aggregation; afterwards as individuals they pass through the nebular phase and then become comets in space.

World-germs are "viewed by Science as material particles in a highly attenuated condition, but in Occult physics as 'Spiritual particles,' i.e., supersensuous matter existing in a state of primeval differentiation" (SD 1:200-1).

(See also: World-germs, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Body mind and Soul)

World of Action.

See `ASIYYAH

(See also: World of Action, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Body mind and Soul)