Arian Heresy Originated by Arius (d. 336), a presbyter in Alexandria who did not confuse the cosmic Logos with its ray on earth, the Christ entity, whose human expression was called Jesus.

Arius could not accept a consubstantial trinity with the human Son as the first or second remove from its Father aspect -- he made a sharp distinction between the three Logoi and any human expression of such logoic triad manifesting on earth as an inspired man.

Arius in consequence taught that God was alone, unknowable, and separate from every created being; that the Son, or creative Logos was created by God, who through this Logos brought forth the world and all that is in it.

He held, therefore, that Christ was not God in the fullest sense and should be worshiped as a secondary deity, and that at the incarnation the Logos assumed a body but not a human soul. Arianism was condemned as heretical at the Councils of Nicaea (325) and Constantinople (381).

(See also: Arian Heresy , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Unborn Applied to the Logos, particularly to the First Logos, which radiates directly from the divine monad; also to kama, signifying not ordinary desire but cosmic love, born from the heart of Brahma; in another sense, Krishna as representing the Logos, or imbodying its ray. The Sanskrit word is aja, connected words are self-born and atman-bhu or atma-bhu.

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

Taurus The bull; second sign of the zodiac, a constellation containing the Pleiades. In astrology a fixed earthy sign, the night house of Venus, corresponding to the throat, neck, and base of the brain. It is the bull among the four sacred animals who are the Maharajas of the four quarters, and presides over the south. Called in Sanskrit Rishabha, dedicated to Yama, the god of the Underworld, it stands in Hindu reckoning for Pranava or Aum (12 Signs of the Zodiac). Frequently it is connected with Logos, Verbum, Vach -- for it is another form or aspect of the Third Logos.

Taurus stands for both sun and moon gods, its symbol being sometimes a bull and sometimes a cow, the Third Logos mystically being considered androgyne, differentiation into the two opposites not yet having supervened. Thus Taurus was usually connected with sun gods, such as Osiris; and at others connected with moon goddesses -- Isis, Diana, Cybele, etc. -- with the moon, and with the far higher Magna Mater (great mother), source of Taurus as the Second Logos, a distinctly feminine aspect.

Its symbol represents the cow horns which are also a symbol of the moon and lunar goddesses. "Ancient mystics saw the ansated cross, in the horns of Taurus (the upper portion of the Hebrew Aleph) pushing away the Dragon, and Christians connected the sign and constellation with Christ. St. Augustine calls it 'the great City of God,' and the Egyptians called it the 'interpreter of the divine voice,' the Apis-Pacis of Hermonthis" (TG 323).

Designated by the first letter of the alphabet, Taurus is described in many ancient systems as being number one among the signs, because this ascription took place and became static at a time in past history when Taurus opened the spring, and hence was reckoned as the first. Blavatsky suggests that the constellation Taurus was in the first sign of the zodiac at the beginning of kali yuga (3102 BC.), and consequently the equinoctial point fell therein (TG 387).

Associating the Hebrew patriarchs with the signs of the zodiac, Cain presides over Taurus (IU 2:465).

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

One By itself the One represents not pure unalloyed spirit, which is signified by the zero -- the all-containing womb of space and being -- but is the First Logos or Pythagorean Monas monadum (monad of monads). From this monad of monads flows forth through emanation the duad, then the triad, and then the entire manifested universe of interlocking hierarchies, emanated from the cosmic womb of being or the zero through the First Logos or the One of primordial manifested spirit.

"The sacredness of numbers begins with the great First -- the one, and ends only with the nought or zero -- symbol of the infinite and boundless circle which represents the universe. All the intervening figures, in whatever combination, or however multiplied, represent philosophical ideas, from vague outlines down to a definitely-established scientific axiom, relating either to a moral or a physical fact in nature. They are a key to the ancient views on cosmogony, in its broad sense, including man and beings, and the evolution of the human race, spiritually as well as physically" (IU 2:407).

The circle, zero, or nought is the symbol of the All, equivalent to Non-being, in contradistinction to being or the number One. With the Pythagoreans number One was equivalent to the cosmic monad, the Odd: odd numbers were considered by them to be perfect or celestial and the even numbers imperfect, manifested, or terrestrial. The cosmic One, the First Logos, alone was cosmic unity and therefore good and harmony, because no disharmony is to be found in the unitary One alone.

Yet "in all such numerical divisions the One universal Principle, -- although referred to as (the) one, because the Only One -- never enters into the calculations. It stands, in its character of the Absolute, the Infinite, and the universal abstraction, entirely by Itself and independent of every other Power whether noumenal or phenomenal" (SD 2:598). Here the cosmic One is intimately intertwined with the universal zero, the last being equivalent to the universal All. Analogies in different systems of thought are numerous; for instance, the cosmic zero corresponds to parabrahman-mulaprakriti, whereas the cosmic One or monad corresponds to Brahman.

See also UNITY

(See also: One , Mysticism, Mysticism 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)

Daiviprakriti daiviprakrti (Sanskrit) (from daivi divine from the verbal root div to shine + prakriti original substance or nature)

Divine or original evolver; original source; divine matter or original substance. "As original substance manifests itself in the kosmic spaces as primordial kosmic Light . . . many mystics have referred to Daiviprakriti under the phrase 'the Light of the Logos.' Daiviprakriti is, in fact, the first veil or sheath or ethereal body surrounding the Logos, as Pradhana or Prakriti surrounds Purusha or Brahman in the Sankhya philosophy, and as, on a scale incomparably more vast, Mulaprakriti surrounds Parabrahman.

As Daiviprakriti, therefore, is elemental matter, . . . matter in its first and second stages of its evolution from above, we may accurately enough speak of those filmy ethereal wisps of light seen in the midnight skies as a physical manifestation of Daiviprakriti, because when they are not actually resolvable nebulae, they are worlds, or rather systems of worlds, in the making.

"When Daiviprakriti has reached a certain state or condition of evolutionary manifestation, we may properly speak of it under the Tibetan term Fohat. . . . although Fohat is the energizing power working in and upon manifested Daiviprakriti, or primordial substance, as the rider rides the steed, it is the kosmic Intelligence, or kosmic Monad as Pythagoras would say, working through both Daiviprakriti and its differentiated energy called Fohat, which is the guiding and controlling principle, not only in the Kosmos, but in every one of the subordinate elements and beings of the hosts of multitudes of them infilling the Kosmos.

The heart or essence of the sun is Daiviprakriti working as itself, and also in its manifestation called Fohat, but through the Daiviprakriti and the fohatic aspect of it runs the all-permeant and directive Intelligence of the solar divinity. The student should never make the mistake, however, of divorcing this guiding solar Intelligence from its veils or vehicles, one of the highest of which is Daiviprakriti-Fohat" (OG 32-3).

Blavatsky explains various meanings of daiviprakriti:

"Thus in the Esotericism of the Vedantins, Daiviprakriti, the Light manifested through Eswara, the Logos, is at one and the same time the Mother and also the Daughter of the Logos or Verbum of Parabrahmam; while in that of the trans-Himalayan teachings it is -- in the hierarchy of allegorical and metaphysical theogony -- 'the Mother' or abstract, ideal matter, Mulaprakriti, the Root of Nature; -- from the metaphysical standpoint, a correlation of Adi-Bhuta, manifested in the Logos, Avalokiteshwara; -- and from the purely occult and Cosmical, Fohat, the 'Son of the Son,' the androgynous energy resulting from this 'Light of the Logos,' and which manifests in the plane of the objective Universe as the hidden, as much as the revealed, Electricity -- which is Life" (SD 1:136).

Further she says that theosophy "teaches that it is this original, primordial prima materia, divine and intelligent, the direct emanation of the Universal Mind -- the Daiviprakriti (the divine light emanating from the Logos) -- which formed the nuclei of all the 'self-moving' orbs in Kosmos. It is the informing, ever-present moving-power and life-principle, the vital soul of the suns, moons, planets, and even of our Earth" (SD 1:602).

(See also: Daiviprakriti, daiviprakrti , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Adam Kadmon (Heb). Archetypal Man; Humanity. The "Heavenly Man" not fallen into sin; Kabalists refer it to the Ten Sephiroth on the plane of human perception.

In the Kabalah Adam Kadmon is the manifested Logos corresponding to our Third Logos; the Unmanifested being the first paradigmic ideal Man, and symbolizing the Universe in abscondito, or in its "privation" in the Aristotelean sense. The First Logos is the "Light of the World", the Second and the Third - its gradually deepening shadows.

(See also: Adam Kadmon , Theosophy, Spirituality, Body mind and Soul, Spiritual 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)

Jesus (Latin of Greek Iesous from Hebrew Yeshua` contraction of Yehoshua` a proper name meaning savior or helper, or that which is spacious or widespread)

Indubitably a historical character, whose life as narrated in the Gospels is pure allegory, a story of the initiation chamber. There is a story current from medieval times among the Jews, mentioned in the Sepher Toledoth Yeshua` (Book of the Generations of Jesus), to the effect that the Jesus of the Gospels was a Jehoshua ben Panthera, a Jewish adept living about 100 BC. Jesus illustrates the typical sequence in occult history: 1) the coming of a leader or teacher to a people needing to be led and taught; 2) his passing, followed by the adoration, even worship, of his followers; 3) the gradual transformation of historic facts into more or less embroidered legends or mythological tales, which in time cluster so thickly about his memory that his identity as a person, and even his name, are lost; 4) the myth, allegory, or legend; and 5) the efforts of other, later teachers to explain, interpret, and reinstate this earlier teacher, now a purely mythic figure or else materialized and misunderstood.

The Christian Gospels appear to have originated in mystery-dramas, beautiful and often sublime in their inner significances, in which were depicted the experiences of the neophyte and adept in his union with the Logos, and hence such unified individual was called a Logos incarnate as a man, the Logos itself being variously named as Christos or Dionysos, and to have been by stages adapted and given a semi-historical guise, as has happened in other instances besides the Christian mythos. Christ therefore, or the Christos, is not a particular man or an especial incarnation of divinity, but a generic term for the divine as incarnated in all human beings, although Jesus was undoubtedly the name of this great Jewish initiate-avatara as an individual. Hence this universal allegory in its Christian version has a true historical peg to hang from; for there did appear, sometime before the Christian era, a special cyclic messenger who was due to come on the change of the ecliptic point from one sign of the celestial zodiac to another, from the sign of Aries to Pisces. In theosophical literature, Jesus is considered to be an avatara, the messenger for the European Messianic or Piscean cycle. As such, Jesus represented a ray sent from the Wondrous Being or spiritual hierarch of the earth into the soul of a pure human being, while the racial buddha, Gautama Buddha, supplied the intermediate or psychological nature in this act of white magic.

"But it is probable that the theosophic effort which Jesus attempted to initiate did not endure for fifty years after his death. Almost immediately after his passing, his disciples, all half-instructed, and in some cases almost illiterate, men . . . foisted upon the world of their time the forms and beliefs of early Christianity; and had there been nothing but these, that religious system had not lived another fifty years. But what happened? During the oncoming of the dark cycle after Jesus (which began as before said about the time of Pythagoras), the last few rays from the setting sun of the ancient light shone feebly in the minds of certain of these Christian Fathers, Clement of Alexandria for one, and Origen of Alexandria for another, and in one or two more like these, who had been initiated at least in the lowest of some of the then degenerate pagan Mysteries; and these men entered into the Christian Church and introduced some poor modicum of that light, . . . which they still cherished; and these rays they derived mainly from the Neo-pythagorean and the Neoplatonic system" (Fund 486-7).

The Hebrew name Jah or Jehovah became identified in the mind of Christians with the name of Jesus, although Jesus never was in any wise identical with the Jewish Jehovah, but was identified in initiation through his own inner god or Father in Heaven, and the Jewish Jehovah mystically was the regent of the planet Saturn.

The first three letters in Greek make I.H.S. placed at the head of representations of the crucified Jesus, often said to stand for Iesus Hominum Salvator (Jesus the savior of men) or In hoc signo (in this sign), with reference to the alleged vision of a cross of the Emperor Constantine. Jesus is a form of a worldwide mystery-name, whose importance was its meaning, usually given as a three-letter monogram, analogous to the Sanskrit Aum. We find it in the Greek Gnostic Iao and variants are common in ancient Greece, such as Iasios, Iasion, Iason, Iasos; and initiates were known as Iasides or sons of Iaso.

See also AVATARA

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

Sophia (Greek) Wisdom. Used in a general sense by St. Paul, as when he speaks of earthly and heavenly wisdom; but by the Gnostics, especially Valentinus in his Pistis Sophia, it is the great Mother of all, corresponding to Sephirah, Isis, Vach, divine wisdom, akasa, anima mundi, and the Holy Ghost (when considered as feminine).

Sophia among the Gnostics was considered the feminine aspect of the Logos, whether the Second of the Third. The idea of a cosmic mother precedes that of the cosmic father, and Sophia is the daughter, the feminine Logos of the cosmic mother; and this feminine Logos has seven sons, constituting the ogdoad. In the human constitution, Sophia may be equated with buddhi or on a somewhat lower plane, with the buddhi-manas.

According to the Pistis Sophia, the power of Sophia resides specially in the solar Logos, whose planetary vehicle is Venus. This dual symbol has an upper and a nether pole, like akasa and the astral light. The lower pole is called Achamoth; Sophia-Achamoth is used sometimes in the sense of the lower aspect, and sometimes to denote the two poles together.

(See also: Sophia , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary)

Thought In The Secret Doctrine, used in senses quite different from the ordinary: abstract absolute thought, of which mind is a concrete manifestation, or of which voice or the Logos is a manifestation. Pymander is quoted as saying that passive or unconscious mind generates active idea -- and active idea here is the same as the activity of the Logos. Thought, impressed on the astral light, exists in eternity, whether active or passive.

Kriyasakti, one of the innate human powers, is the power which thought has of expressing itself analogically in action. Thoughts are imbodied elemental energies. The human brain does not create them, it only transmits them, because the human brain is but the vehicle transmitting intellectual, mental, and emotional energy from the monadic center within, and this monadic center itself originates thought.

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

Sarasvati, Saraswati (Sanskrit) The ethereal, the elegant one; the divine consort or wife of Brahma, his feminine alter ego, a later form or aspect of Vach (voice or the Word), a title of the Third Logos in Greece as well as in India.

This parallels the Bath Qol (daughter of the voice, daughter of the Word) of mystical Hebrew thought, which can be taken either as the feminine aspect of the Logos itself, or as its daughter -- the inspiration flowing forth from, or the feminine or vehicular side of, the Logos. The goddess of hidden learning and esoteric wisdom, Sarasvati is usually shown riding on a peacock with its tail spread. She is similar to the Gnostic Sophia, to the Sephirah of the Hebrew Qabbalah, and to the Holy Ghost of the Christians.

Sarasvati is also a sacred river spoken of in the Vedas, and as a river goddess she was often invoked to bestow vitality, renown, and riches; elsewhere she is described as moving along a golden path and as destroying the monster-demon Vritra.

(See also: Sarasvati, Saraswati , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary)

Parabrahman (Sanskrit) [from para beyond + Brahman (neuter) universal self or spirit]

That which is beyond Brahman; the self-enduring, eternal, self-sufficient cause of all, the one essence of everything in the kosmos. It is before all things in the kosmos, and is the one sole limitless life-consciousness-substance from which starts into existence a center of force which may be called the Logos. In the Vedic cycle of writing it is referred to as tat (that) as opposed to the world of manifestation called idam (this).

"Parabrahman is intimately connected with Mulaprakriti. Their interaction and intermingling cause the first nebulous thrilling, if the words will pass, of the Universal Life when spiritual desire first arose in it in the beginnings of things. . . . Parabrahman is no entity, is no individual, or individualized being. It is a convenient technical word with conveniently vague philosophical significancy, implying whatever is beyond the Absolute or Brahman of any hierarchy. Just as Brahman is the summit of a kosmic Hierarchy, so, following the same line of thought, the Parabrahman is 'whatever is beyond Brahman' " (OG 121).

The parabrahman of the Vedantists is likewise conceived of as an eternal and periodical law which causes an active and creative force to emanate from the ever-concealed and incomprehensible one principle at the beginning of every mahamanvantara or new cycle of cosmic life.

"Parabrahmam is an unconditioned and absolute reality, and Mulaprakriti is a sort of veil thrown over it. Parabrahmam by itself cannot be seen as it is. It is seen by the Logos with a veil thrown over it, and that veil is the mighty expanse of cosmic matter. It is the basis of material manifestations in the cosmos" (Notes on BG 21). Parabrahman has the same relation to the Logos as our atman does to our karana-sarira; and parabrahman is the very foundation of the highest self.

Parabrahman is identical with the 'eyn-soph of the Chaldean Qabbalah.

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

A Theosophical definition of Vach :

Vach

(Sanskrit) A term which means "speech" or "word"; and by the same procedure of mystical thought which is seen in ancient Greek mysticism, wherein the Logos is not merely the speech or word of the Divinity, but also the divine reason, so Vach has come to mean really more than merely word or speech. The esoteric Vach is the subjective creative intelligent force which, emanating from the subjective universe, becomes the manifested or concrete expression of ideation, hence Word or Logos. Mystically, therefore, Vach may be said to be the feminine or vehicular aspect of the Logos, or the power of the Logos when enshrined within its vehicle or sheath of action. Vach in India is often called Sata-rupa, "the hundred-formed." Cosmologically in one sense daiviprakriti may be said to be a manifestation or form of Vach

See also: Vach , Mysticism, Body Mind and Soul

Wisdom. The " very essence of wisdom is contained in the Non- Being ". say the Kabbalists; but they also apply the term to the WORD or Logos, the Demiurge, by which the universe was called into existence. "The one Wisdom is in the Sound ", say the Occultists; the Logos again being meant by Sound, which is the substratum of Akasa. Says the Zohar, the " Book of Splendour" "It is the Principle of all the Principles, the mysterious Wisdom, the crown of all that which there is of the most High". (Zohar, iii., fol. 288, Myers Qabbalah.) And it is explained, "Above Kether is the Ayin, or Ens, i.e., Ain, the NOTHING". "It is so named because we do not know, and it is impossible to know, that which there is in that Principle, because . . . it is above Wisdom itself." (iii., fol. 288.) This shows that the real Kabbalists agree with the Occultists that the essence, or that which is in the principle of Wisdom, is still above that highest Wisdom.

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

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)

Madhyama (Sanskrit) (feminine of madhyama)

One of the states of vach (mystic speech), which is of four kinds according to its differentiation: para, pasyanti, madhyama, and vaikhari. The madhyama vach is the link between the mental form (in the Logos) and the manifested form (in matter). It corresponds mystically to the Light of the Logos. Vach, though often equivalent to Logos, is the feminine counterpart of Brahma, the masculine side of the Logos. Thus Vach is the spiritual aspect of prakriti.

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

Ish Amon (Gnostic) Among some Jewish Gnostics such as the Nazarenes, the equivalent of the divine thought abiding in quiescence or semi-activity in the pleroma or the Boundless, synonymous with Ferho which in the Nazarene system, together with Chaos (Dark Water) and Ptahil, form a trinity equivalent to the Christian Father-Mother-Son.

Equivalent in theosophical terms to the unmanifest or First Logos. This Logos at the beginnings of the evolution of a universe produces the Second Logos, described as feminine because productive or generative, and out of this latter again is generated the creative or Third Logos, called in Gnostic systems Iukabar Zivo.

(See also: Ish Amon , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Hierarchy of Compassion, Spiritual-psychological Hierarchy The hierarchy of spiritual beings extending from the highest solar or galactic monad, to the least element forming its vehicles or being.

"It is built of divinities, demigods, buddhas, bodhisattvas, and great and noble men, who serve as a living channel for the spiritual currents coming to this and every other planet of our system from the heart of the solar divinity, and who themselves shed glory and light and peace upon that pathway from the compassionate deeps of their own being. . . .

"On our earth there is a minor hierarchy of light. Working in this sphere there are lofty intelligences, human souls, having their respective places in the hierarchical degrees. These masters or mahatmas are living forces in the spiritual life of the world; and awakened minds and intuitive hearts sense their presence, at least at times" (FSO 467-8). The head of the terrestrial spiritual-psychological hierarchy is a being sometimes called the Silent Watcher, who acts as a channel for all the spiritual forces flowing to and from the earth, and who is connected inwardly with all the beings on earth.

In theosophical literature, the Hierarchy of Compassion of our solar system is sometimes given as:

1)    adi-buddhi (primal wisdom), the mystic universally diffused essence;

2)    mahabuddhi (universal buddhi), the Logos;

3)    daiviprakriti (universal divine light), universal life, the Second Logos;

4)    ) Sons of Light, the seven cosmic logoi, the logoi of cosmic life, the Third Logos;

5)    dhyani-buddhas (buddhas of contemplation);

6)    dhyani-bodhisattvas (bodhisattvas of contemplation);

7)    manushya-buddhas (human buddhas), racial buddhas;

8)    bodhisattvas; and

9)    men.

Here, the Sons of Light or the seven cosmic logoi emanating from the sun and working in its kingdom are the parents of the rectors or planetary spirits of the seven sacred planets. The seven dhyani-buddhas, also called the celestial buddhas or causal buddhas, through their emanated representatives each govern one round of the septenary cycles of evolution on a planetary chain. The seven dhyani-bodhisattvas, or bodhisattvas of the celestial realms, similarly through their emanated representatives each govern one of the seven globes comprising a planetary chain.

The manushya-buddhas are the buddhas which watch over the root-races in a round, two appearing in every race, one near the commencement and one near the midpoint of each root-race. Gautama Buddha was the second racial buddha of the fifth root-race.

The bodhisattvas of earth are those spiritual and intellectually advanced human beings who leave the nirvana of buddhahood in order to remain on earth for their sublime work of aiding, stimulating, and guiding those hosts of entities, including humanity, trailing behind them.

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

Vairaja(s) (Sanskrit) [from viraj widely shining one]

A class of gods emanating from Brahma in his aspect of creator collectively as Viraj, the Third Logos; hence, the celestial beings immediately derived from Viraj. Identified with the kumaras and the manasaputras, as well as the agnishvattas. They are the hierarchies of cosmic conscious and self-conscious dhyani-chohans who spring forth directly from the Third Logos, and furnish the intellectual background and vital urge of the hierarchies of beings who later produce the manifested universe from the ideation emanating from the Third Logos and the vairajas.

"In the popular belief, semi-divine beings, shades of saints, inconsumable by fire, impervious to water, who dwell in Tapo-loka with the hope of being translated into Satya-loka -- a more purified state which answers to Nirvana. The term is explained as the aerial bodies or astral shades of 'ascetics, mendicants, anchorites, and penitents, who have completed their course of rigorous austerities.' [Vishnu-Purana, Wilson, 2:229]

Now in esoteric philosophy they are called Nirmanakayas, Tapo-loka being on the sixth plane (upward) but in direct communication with the mental plane. The Vairajas are referred to as the first gods because the Manasaputras and the Kumaras are the oldest in theogony, as it is said that even the gods worshipped them (Matsya Purana); those whom Brahma 'with the eye of Yoga beheld in the eternal spheres, and who are the gods of gods' (Vayu Purana)" (TG 358).

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

Osiris (Greek) As-ar, Us-ar (Egyptian) The most famous deity of the Egyptian pantheon, corresponding to Zagreus-Bacchus of the Eleusinian Mysteries. In Plutarch's On Isis and Osiris, Osiris is represented as the son of Nut, space and primordial matter (equivalent to the Greek Rhea) by Seb, celestial fire (Kronos). He became king of Egypt, teaching the people the worship of the gods, and husbandry, and formulating laws. His brother Set, filled with envy, brought about his destruction. Isis, his distraught wife, set out in search of the body, and finally recovered it. But Set then dismembered the body into fourteen pieces, scattering them over Egypt, of which Isis recovered all but one.

After meeting with death on earth Osiris became resurrected, and then became the ruler of the other world (Khenti-Amentet). His death and resurrection depict the drama of the initiation chamber which is one interpretation of glorification or osirification of the defunct human, as mystically portrayed in the Book of the Dead.

Cosmologically, Osiris is the Third Logos, containing in himself the seeds of all things and beings in the universe to be unrolled from the Logos:

"the self-existent and self-creative god, the first manifesting deity (our third Logos), identical with Ahura Mazda and other 'First Causes.' For as Ahura Mazda is one with, or the synthesis of, the Amshaspends, so Osiris, the collective unit, when differentiated and personified, becomes Typhon, his brother, Isis and Nephtys his sisters, Horus his son and his other aspects. . . . The four chief aspects of Osiris were -- Osiris-Phtah (Light), the spiritual aspect; Osiris-Horus (Mind), the intellectual manasic aspect; Osiris-Lunus, the 'Lunar' or psychic, astral aspect; Osiris-Typhon, Daimonic, or physical, material, therefore passional turbulent aspect. In these four aspects he symbolizes the dual ego -- the divine and the human, the cosmico-spiritual and the terrestrial" (TG 243).

Osiris' place in cosmological mythology is seen to be that of the cosmic creator; thus on a more abstract scale Osiris is equivalent to the svabhavat of Buddhist thought. As in other archaic religions and philosophies, when Osiris is considered as an individual divinity, he becomes the cosmic source from which flow forth in hierarchical series of emanations the gradually descending groups of the hierarchy of Light; and from this aspect he is the chief of all initiates of the right-hand path, who thus trace their spiritual ascendance and origin directly to the Third Logos itself.

(See also: Osiris, As-ar, Us-ar , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary)