Youths English translations of the Sanskrit kumaras (virgins), applied mainly in ancient Hindu writings to spiritual, semi-spiritual, and occasionally ethereal beings, who follow evolutionary courses very different from those of present greatly materialized mankind, and who are looked upon as students of divine wisdom. Youths is applied to the dhyani-chohans, kumaras, or agnishvattas who "refused to incarnate."

In a more restricted sense, applied to the kumara-births of Siva, representative of spiritual beings in each root-race which are mythologically referred to in India as four youths: four white, four red, four yellow, four dark or brown. It means that in every root-race there are a number of karmically elect who strike the keynotes of evolution and succeeding civilizations in a root-race, and thus labor to keep alive and to increase the spiritual and intellectual fires during that race's evolutionary course.

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

`Uzza' (Hebrew) Also `aza'. Strength, might, power; an angel mentioned in the Qabbalah, representing one of the higher orders of pitris. In describing the attempts at forming man, the Zohar (iii, 208a) relates that after the 'elohim had formed man and he had sinned, the angels `Uzza' and `Aza'el or `Azza'el twitted the Holy One about it, whereupon they were told that, had they been in man's place, they would have done worse, and they were thrown from their high estate in heaven and changed into men upon earth. "This means simply that the 'Angels,' doomed to incarnation, are in the chains of flesh and matter, under the darkness of ignorance, till the 'Great Day,' which will come as always after the seventh round, after the expiration of the 'Week,' on the Seventh Sabbath, or in the post-Manvantaric Nirvana" (SD 2:491).

Here these angels represent that higher class of pitris who deferred their own incarnation on earth until a later date, and had to suffer the karmic consequences thereof.

(See also: `Uzza', Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Body mind and Soul)

Narada (Sanskrit). One of the Seven great Rishis, a Son of Brahma This "Progenitor" is one of the most mysterious personages in the Brahmanical sacred symbology. Esoterically Narada is the Ruler of events during various Karmic cycles, and the personification, in a certain sense, of the great human cycle; a Dhyan Chohan.

He plays a great part in Brahmanism, which ascribes to him some of the most occult hymns in the Rig Veda, in which sacred work he is described as "of the Kanwa family". He is called Deva-Brahma, but as such has a distinct character from the one he assumes on earth - or Patala. Daksha cursed him for his interference with his 5,000 and 10,000 sons, whom he persuaded to remain Yogins and celibates, to be reborn time after time on this earth (Mahabharata). But this is an allegory. He was the inventor of the Vina, a kind of lute, and a great "lawgiver". The story is too long to be given here.

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

Naraka (Sanskrit). In the popular conception, a hell, a "prison under earth". The hot and cold hells, each eight in number, are simply emblems of the globes of our septenary chain, with the addition of the "eighth sphere" supposed to be located in the moon.

This is a transparent blind, as these "hells" are called vivifying hells because, as explained, any being dying in one is immediately born in the second, then in the third, and so on; life lasting in each 500 years (a blind on the number of cycles and reincarnations).

As these hells constitute one of the six gati (conditions of sentient existence), and as people are said to be reborn in one or the other according to their Karmic merits or demerits, the blind becomes self-evident. Moreover, these Narakas are rather purgatories than hells, since release from each is possible through the prayers and intercessions of priests for a consideration, just as in the Roman Catholic Church, which seems to have copied the Chinese-ritualism in this pretty closely. As said before, esoteric philosophy traces every hell to life on earth, in one or another form of sentient existence.

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

Sila (Sanskrit) [from the verbal root sil to serve, practice]

Moral fortitude, ethical steadiness, one of the Buddhist paramitas. Described as "the key of Harmony in word and act, the key that counterbalances the cause and the effect, and leaves no further room for Karmic action" (VS 47). The Mahayana Sraddhotpada Sastra says of practicing sila: "Lay disciples, having families, should abstain from killing, stealing, adultery, lying, duplicity, slander, frivolous talk, covetousness, malice, currying favor, and false doctrines. Unmarried disciples should, in order to avoid hindrances, retire from the turmoil of worldly life and, abiding in solitude, should practise those ways which lead to quietness and moderation and contentment. . . . They should endeavor by their conduct to avoid all disapproval and blame, and by their example incite others to forsake evil and practise the good." {from FSO p. 45}

(See also: Sila, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary)

Reincarnating Ego In the intermediate aspect of man's being, manas-kama is the ordinary seat of human imbodied consciousness; the upper or aspiring part is buddhi-manas, the reincarnating ego, "that which undergoes periodical incarnation is the Sutratma, which means literally the 'Thread Soul.' It is a synonym of the reincarnating Ego -- Manas conjoined with Buddhi -- which absorbs the Manasic recollections of all our preceding lives" (Key 163).

At death the lower part sinks into oblivion, and the reincarnating ego passes into devachan, carrying with it the noblest aspects of the person that was. In this state it remains within the monad, while the monad peregrinates from sphere to sphere, until the time comes for reincarnation on earth.

When the monad, passing through the spheres, approaches the earth, the reincarnating ego slowly reawakes to self-conscious activity, and is drawn by the karmic seeds of affinity within itself to the earth, attracting itself to the human seed whereby it builds its coming physical imbodiment.

(See also: Reincarnating Ego, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary)

Raven In every ancient cosmogony the precosmic generative source of all is denoted by a circle, head, or egg, which because of its abstraction in thought is always associated with darkness or blackness, as dark and night precede light.

Hence we find black birds -- ravens, black doves, black swans, etc. -- associated therewith, on the principle that birds are emblematic of the movements of the peregrinating monads in both time and space, wings being the important point here, in which connection we may include the winged globe of Egypt. Noah sends out first a raven after the Ark has settled; the deluge signifies cosmic pralaya, after which begins the real creation of our earth and humanity.

These cosmic birds, or the cosmic head or egg, do not dignify boundless space, but are the cosmic points or foci of evolutionary development out of which grow, as from seeds, the celestial bodies, their inhabitants, and their karmic attributes. The Raven (Corex) was also the lowest degree in the dignities of the Mithraic Brotherhood.

(See also: Raven, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary)

Oedipus Oidipous (Greek) Swollen-footed; Theban hero, son of Laius, named by the shepherd who found him with his feet swollen from the holes bored in them when he was exposed by his father, as it was predicted that he would kill his father and marry his mother -- which he subsequently did. In many cosmogonies there are characters who slay their fathers or who are represented as both husband and son of the same goddess. This symbolism, being interpreted literally in Oedipus' case, has made a fine story of horror for the tragedians.

Oedipus is also famous for having solved the riddle of the Theban Sphinx. Oedipus' romantic and tragic history formed the theme of three plays by Sophocles and by Aeschylus. The essential significance of the story is the inescapable consequences following upon karmic causes, from which there is no escape once these causes have been set in motion by man.

(See also: Oedipus, Oidipous, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary)

Pythagoreans The school founded at Crotona, Italy in the 6th century BC by Pythagoras of Samos. Pythagoras was an initiate not only into the Mysteries of his own native state, but also into those of the ancient Orient, where he had pursued extensive studies. His special work was to translate his esoteric knowledge into terms of the Grecian thought of that period. He shows the ultimate derivation of his wisdom and consequent teaching both by the content of his philosophical doctrines and by his insistence upon purity and self-mastery in life as a prime requisite to the attainment of wisdom.

His word metempsychoses is given as meaning the transference of the soul from one body to another; whereas by its Greek etymology it should mean the various highly occult transformations undergone by the soul-ego after death, and preceding the process of reensoulment -- something of larger significant content than what the word reincarnation has mainly come to mean today, as implying merely soul-reimbodiment. It is the teaching of the various successive karmic transformations and imbodiments of a monad during its evolutionary cycle -- not only in the larger sense of cosmic destiny, but also in the smaller sense of its karmic transformations between death and the succeeding physical birth.

Pythagoras is famous for his use of numerical and geometrical keys, which he illustrated by reference to the geometrical figures, the musical scale, astronomy, etc. He is supposed to have "discovered" the Divine Section, the regular polyhedra, and the proposition relating to the square of the hypotenuse; what he did was to show that these were keys to the interpretation of mysteries. Porphyry reports that the numerals of Pythagoras were "hieroglyphical symbols by means whereof he explained ideas concerning the nature of things: (Vita Pythag) or, Blavatsky adds, "the origin of the universe" (SD 1:361). His tetraktys is a gem of condensed esoteric symbolism.

The influence of his school may be traced in subsequent Greek history, inspiring such characters as Epaminondas; "It was Pythagoras who was the first to teach the heliocentric system, and who was the greatest proficient in geometry of his century. It was he also who created the word 'philosopher,' composed of two words meaning a 'lover of wisdom' -- philosophos. As the greatest mathematician, geometer and astronomer of historical antiquity, and also the highest of the metaphysicians and scholars, Pythagoras has won imperishable fame. He taught reincarnation as it is professed in India and much else of the Secret Wisdom" (TG 266).

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

Karma-Nemesis (from Sanskrit karma action, cause and effect + Greek Nemesis goddess of harmony or retribution)

The appointed karmic lot or destiny of any entity, latent in the entity's germinal existence and unfolded progressively in the course of its growth or evolution. The universe as a whole fulfills, in the course of its cyclic evolution, all that is contained in the germ at the dawn of its manifestation; and the individual, who in essence is a spark of the divine life, follows the same inscrutable law of destiny, as do also the worlds and all the beings in and on them.

The destiny which lies in the germ is the destiny which belongs to the spiritual entity in its various attributes behind that germ, and these attributes as a whole -- in other words the svabhava of the entity -- are born of that entity's portion of free will leading it off into strange bypaths during the ages-long course of its evolutionary growth. The incarnate person, having the power of choice, can wander temporarily far astray from the path of his divine destiny, lured by the attractions of the lower planes of manifestation. This stirring up of karmic results which actually becomes Karma-Nemesis, that which cannot be avoided and must be worked out, the beneficent but inexorable adjuster and restorer of harmony.

Thus destiny is not fatalism, but emphatically supports the idea of intrinsically spiritual free will. The stirring up of these seeds of Karma-Nemesis are the consequences or results of the entity's own will in act, feeling, and consequent result. Thus destiny is of two kinds: that which the evolving entity has stored up as character, propensities, biases, and svabhava in other lives; and that which the entity, using its modicum of free will, is now storing up for its future, but in accordance with its own exercise of will or choice.

See also FREE WILL; KARMA; NEMESIS

(See also: Karma-Nemesis, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Chatur-varna catur-varna (Sanskrit) (from chatur four + varna a caste, color, form, appearance)

The Hindu four castes as presented in the Laws of Manu: the Brahmana or priest, Kshatriya or warrior and administrator, Vaisya or merchant, and Sudra or agriculturalist and servant. These four castes, while very ancient, belonged to the archaic civilization. In the Hindu view karmic merit and demerit work to place a person in his position in life in repetitive incarnations on earth.

Thus a person might be a Brahmin, the highest of the castes, but if his life were such as to bring about a change in him, some subsequent incarnation would place him either in a higher or a lower position in life. A person might be a slave or beggar in one life, but if he lives in the higher part of his nature his next imbodiment might be that of a prince; or a prince in his palace might for karmic demerit, in his next life be born a slave.

The real person is the reimbodying ego, who carves its own destiny as and how it chooses, and its imbodiments correspond. It might readily happen that for the purposes of discipline and improvement of soul, a reimbodying ego might deliberately choose a body in which it would have to face, meet, and overcome a great many of what the world calls misfortunes.

It is not always therefore in the best interests of a learning and evolving soul to be born "with a silver spoon in its mouth," because with such surroundings as wealth and social position might bring, a weak soul could easily receive tendencies downwards because lacking the stern discipline urging it upwards and awakening the transcendent powers of the spirit within. Luxury, ease, power, and wealth are by no means always unmixed blessings, but quite frequently become positive misfortunes to weak souls.

Also, the four principal colors.

(See also: Chatur-varna, catur-varna, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Sephira, Sephirah, Sephiroth (Hebrew, Chaldean) [from saphar to mark, scrape, write, engrave, count or number; cf Sanskrit verbal root lip as in lipika] plural Sephiroth (qv). The emanations proceeding from 'eyn soph, these ten emanations being frequently called the Sephirothal Tree or the Qabbalistic Tree of (Cosmic) Life.

The primitive Qabbalists conceived the universe as coming into manifestation by a process of mathematical or numerical emanations, proceeding out of the bosom of 'eyn soph (no limit) in a series of nine or ten Sephiroth -- imbodying the idea of cosmic mathematical quantities on the one hand, and of cosmic karmic consequences from previous universes as being thus written or numbered from a former universe. Thus the universe is envisaged as a karmic picture of destiny unrolling itself from 'eyn soph in form or number, and therefore as being based on strictly mathematical relations derivative from destiny.

Sephirah is especially applied to the first emanation, Kether (the Crown), the other nine Sephiroth being involved or held in germ within the first emanation, and emanating therefrom one by one in serial order as "nine splendid lights" (Zohar 111 288a).

The first Sephirah is also called 'eyn soph 'or (boundless light). "The Spiritual substance sent forth by the Infinite Light is the first Sephira or Shekinah: Sephira exoterically contains all the other nine Sephiroth in her. Esoterically she contains but two, Chochmah or Wisdom, 'a masculine, active potency whose divine name is Jah ({Hebrew char}),' and Binah, a feminine passive potency, Intelligence, represented by the divine name Jehovah ({Hebrew char}); which two potencies form, with Sephira the third, the Jewish trinity or the Crown, Kether" (SD 1:355).

(See also: Sephira, Sephirah, Sephiroth, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary)

Primary Creation Used in theosophy for the openings of the different dramas of life, as opposed to the secondary creation, their more or less present conditions and appearances. Yet primary creation in strict logic appertains to those primordial beginnings of manifested life which precede the operations of nature when it has once entered into its established habits due to past karma, these established habits or courses of action being the karmic results of precedaneous causes. For example, the creation of the hierarchies of the gods or dhyani-chohanic hosts, and of their various worlds and activities, belong to the so-called primary creation; and at the close of this creation opens the drama of established nature and of the hierarchies and their respective operations beneath those hierarchies of gods.

Ancient cosmogonies begin with the secondary creation in cosmic things; hence, before the creation of light, they postulated darkness. But this darkness is the eternal light shining through and guiding the primary cosmogonical creation, and it was called darkness only by contrast with the manifested light of the secondary creation.

In the beginning of the primary creation the world, and on a smaller scale the earth, was in the possession of the three elemental kingdoms, and its three elements were fire, air, and water. It is the evolution of worlds from primordial atoms and from the pre-primordial atom; yet in the subsequent portions of primordial creation came forth into active manifestation the various hierarchies called angelic or dhyani-chohanic. Mahat, called lord in the primary cosmogonical creation, is universal cognition, thought divine; but in the secondary creation that which was mahat becomes the vast range of hierarchical manases which construct, inhabit, develop, and even emanate, manifested worlds.

(See also: Primary Creation, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Penates (Latin) The household gods, or sometimes gods of the State, among the Romans. They were represented by images, to which honors were paid, and supposedly protected the hearth, home, and family. Aeneas transfers with great solicitude and piety the penates from Troy to his new Italian settlement.

The universe is filled with hierarchies of intelligent beings, ranging from the highest to the lowest, in addition to those representing the organic kingdoms of nature. No nation of antiquity, indeed no people today outside Western civilization, but had or has its protective divinities of the home, field, mart, etc. Even in Western civilization the same undying belief finds expression in a thousand habits, customs, and ceremonies.

The idea of the penates underwent progressive change and possible degeneration; however, they undoubtedly belong to the great class of genii, whether of a family or of a State, and genius is anything from a planetary spirit to what the simple fancy of Medieval Europe called a fairy. Hence it is easy to understand how names originating in the ancient Mystery schools may pass down into times when people are more concerned with their immediate physical needs, as at present. The consistent testimony of all Roman antiquity shows that the penates were the guardian angels supposed to watch over and, if possible, protect the individuals to whom these guardian angels were attached by karmic bonds.

As men individually and collectively are integral parts of nature, they are connected with spiritual powers of which mankind is not only the offspring, but in a certain sense the representative on earth. The reverence paid to the penates by the Romans is a manner of tacitly stating that every individual and group, such as a people, is under the watchful supervision of their spiritual prototypes in the celestial realms.

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

Mahabhutas (Sanskrit) (from maha great + bhuta element from the verbal root bhu to be, become)

Great or primordial element; the gross or vehicular cosmic elements in contradistinction from the subtle or causative cosmic elements (tanmatras) out of which the mahabhutas are evolved. Five are enumerated exoterically -- aether, fire, air, water, and earth -- but in the esoteric enumeration there are seven, ten, or twelve. Also an adjective meaning being great, or relating to the gross elements.

The mahabhutas are so called because they are the karmic fruits or resultants from the preceding cosmic manvantara, so that even these great cosmic elements begin their evolutionary courses in the new cosmic manvantara at the exact point in development which they had acquired when the preceding pralaya began.

The tanmatras are the inner vital cosmic principles, the causal rudiments, which evolve forth the mahabhutas. The distinction between them may be seen by an analogy drawn from the human constitution: the difference between sense as a faculty or power and sense organ as the vehicle of the sense faculty.

The five senses hitherto developed in the human being -- hearing, sight, touch, taste, and smell -- have their five corresponding sense organs, the senses producing through evolution and time their respective organs. Similarly on the cosmic scale, the tanmatras correspond to the senses in the human constitution, while the mahabhutas correspond to the sense organs in the human body.

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

Khepera (Egyptian) (from kheper to become, be born, arise into manifestation)

Originally one of three aspects of the sun:

"I am Khepera in the morning, and Ra at noon-day, and Temu in the evening." Later each of these aspects developed into a separate deity. Khepera was the god of regeneration and development in growth, a spiritual power regulating reimbodiments and transmigrations and the deity presiding over the Egyptian form of the creation, where he is the only thing in existence besides the watery abyss, Nu. The deity of the universe, Nebertcher (a form of Ra) says:

"I am he who came into being in the form of the god Khepera," the hieroglyphic text representing the word by the scarab surmounted by a circle. The universe, then, is but the re-manifestation of a previous universe: the scarab standing for rebirth and regeneration, and the circle for karmic destiny in the universe as containing the seeds of life, brought into activity through reimbodiment or rebirth. The primeval deities Shu and Tefnut were brought forth by Khepera, who was the developer of everything which comes into manifested being from latency. In The Book of the Dead Khepera is called the father of the gods.

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

Kronos (Greek) In Greek mythology, the youngest of the titans, son of Ouranos (heaven) and Gaia (earth). His mother gave him a sickle, emblem of karmic reapings in the course of time, when he led the war against his father. After castrating his father, he became ruler of the gods and, so he would not suffer a similar fate, he swallowed all his children by his wife-sister, Rhea. Eventually, however, he was overthrown by his youngest son, Zeus. In some accounts he was imprisoned in Tartarus, in others he was reconciled with Zeus and reigned with Rhadamanthys on the Islands of the Blessed.

Considered originally a harvest god, his name became interpreted as equivalent to Chronos (time) and many of his characteristics imply this. He was pictured as an old man with a mantle over the back of his head, holding a sickle in his hand. The Romans identified him with Saturnus, a harvest god. He is also identified in various ways with Jehovah, Saturn, and Kala, and sometimes made father of the seven titans. Blavatsky remarks that he personifies the Lemurians or third root-race humanity.

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

Ananta-sesha ananta-sesa (Sanskrit) (from an not + anta end + the verbal root sish to leave remainders)

Endless sishtas or remainders; name of the serpent of eternity described in the Puranas as the seat or carrier of the divine Vishnu during the periodical pralayas of the universe. It is thus infinite time itself, figurated as the great seven-headed serpent on which rests Vishnu, the manvantaric Logos when the Logos sinks into pralayic inactivity. This compound signifies the ever-continuing sishtas (spiritual cosmic seeds or residues) carried over from manvantara to manvantara through the intervening pralaya, and thus through eternity. It is on this endless aggregate of cosmic sishtas that Vishnu the cosmic Logos reclines, the thread of logoic consciousness being thus passed from manvantara to manvantara through the pralaya. Just as Vishnu in theosophy is a generalizing term for all the innumerable interblending hierarchies of beings and things which are unfolded during manvantara, so during pralaya Vishnu stands for the same aggregate of hierarchies conceived of as resting on the karmic remainders or "sleeping" webs of substance left over from the previous manvantara.

See also ADI-SESHA; SESHA

(See also: Ananta-sesha, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Erinyes (Greek) (cf Latin Furae furies)

Also Dirae. Furies, avenging goddesses; sometimes legion, sometimes three in number, according to the point of view of the ancient writers, named by Alexandrian authors, copying Euripides: Tisiphone (avenger of the slain), Megaera (the jealous), and Alecto (unceasing hatred). Their mission was to follow and reform evil doers, which has popularly been misunderstood to be persecution.

Aeschylus speaks of them as being daughters of Night, Sophocles as being born of Darkness and Earth, and Hesiod as having sprung from the blood of the injured Uranus. They dwell in the underworld, whence they issue to pursue the wicked towards reformation and the reestablishment of all broken natural equilibrium; upon the expiation of crime in Aeschylus they transform themselves into gracious and beneficent deities called the Eumenides. In Athens they were known as Semnae (the venerable ones).

The Erinyes or Eumenides are thus seen as beings who function almost automatically as karmic agents in the restoration of broken or disturbed equilibrium in the universe, and therefore are inherent in the vegetative and automatic functions of nature; thus the human body, as an analogy, when injured in some part, will attempt by latent and automatic restorative functions, as it were, to heal the injury. Their functions therefore in the world are seen at once as avengers and beneficent healers or eumenides.

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

Euthanasia (from Greek eu well +thanatos death)

Easy death, a painless death; used for the practice of mercifully killing people who would otherwise suffer a painful death. To decide if a person should or should not be kept alive by artificial means or a life ended by artificial means requires almost superhuman discernment. An individual is not his body nor even his mind, but fundamentally a spiritual being.

Physical suffering from bodily ills, however unpleasant, provides an opportunity to meet and dispose of certain karmic causes, and thereby learn and grow. Aside from the difficulty of preventing abuses in legalized euthanasia, the ethical and spiritual questions surrounding artificial prolongation and shortening of life remain extremely complex. The Stoics held that life is a gift of the gods and therefore no person has the right to reject that gift -- for oneself or another -- until the gods themselves call it back.

Also used for the power possessed by adepts to quit or drop their physical body painlessly, in order to work as nirmanakayas, which is the meaning of the stories in the Bible which speak of men being taken to heaven without dying.

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

Gandharvas (Sanskrit) Hindu devas or divinities called celestial singers or musicians. Esoterically they are intermediaries between the gods and mankind, and hence can be called the instructors of humanity in the secret science.

"The Gandharva of the Veda is the deity who knows and reveals the secrets of heaven and divine truths to mortals. Cosmically -- the Gandharvas are the aggregate powers of the solar-fire, and constitute its Forces; psychically -- the intelligence residing in the Sushumna, Solar ray, the highest of the seven rays; mystically -- the occult force in the Soma (the moon, or lunar plant) and the drink made of it; physically -- the phenomenal, and spiritually -- the noumenal causes of Sound and the 'Voice of Nature.' Hence, they are called the 6,333 'heavenly' Singers and musicians of Indra's loka who personify (even in number) the various and manifold sounds in Nature, both above and below. In the latter allegories they are said to have mystic power over women, and to be fond of them. The esoteric meaning is plain. They are one of the forms, if not the prototypes, of Enoch's angels, the Sons of God, who saw that the daughters of men were fair (Gen. vi.) who married them, and taught the daughters of the Earth the secrets of Heaven" (SD 1:523n).

The heavenly consorts or saktis of the gandharvas are the apsarasas, their negative or vehicular aspects, much as a person's soul is the container and vehicular expression of his spirit and will.

The gandharvas are similar to the various classes of Greek daimones or to the classes of the Christian angels; the highest classes of the angels, or the highest gandharvas, are equivalent to the higher dhyani-chohans. They are intelligent streams in the cosmic economy, at times active and at times passive in the working out of karmic destiny.

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

Fundamental Propositions In theosophy, the three fundamental religio-philosophic principles or propositions which Blavatsky states in the Proem to The Secret Doctrine are the foundation on which theosophy presents its modern philosophical teachings:

1)    "An Omnipresent, Eternal, Boundless, and Immutable Principle on which all speculation is impossible, since it transcends the power of human conception";

2)    "The Eternity of the Universe in toto as a boundless plane; periodically 'the playground of numberless Universes incessantly manifesting and disappearing'"; and

3)    "The fundamental identity of all Souls with the Universal Over-Soul, the latter being itself an aspect of the Unknown Root; and the obligatory pilgrimage for every Soul -- a spark of the former -- through the Cycle of Incarnation (or 'Necessity') in accordance with Cyclic and Karmic law, during the whole term" (SD 1:14-17). There are also three fundamental propositions in volume 2:

As regards the evolution of mankind, the Secret Doctrine postulates three new propositions, which stand in direct antagonism to modern science as well as to current religious dogmas: it teaches

(a)   the simultaneous evolution of seven human groups on seven different portions of our globe;

(b)  the birth of the astral, before the physical body: the former being a model for the latter; and

(c)   that man, in this Round, preceded every mammalian -- the anthropoids included -- in the animal kingdom. -- 2:1

(See also: Fundamental Propositions, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)