(See also: Virgo B'thulah, Magick, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Body Mind and Soul, )

(See also: Virgo B'thulah, Magick, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Body Mind and Soul, )

BÖN or BÖNPA

The aboriginal magicians of Tibet, prior to Buddhism, at first much opposed to the Lamas, but eventually joining them in their adoption of Tantric Buddhism. Like all major movements, Buddhism did not become popular until it learned how to take in and alter local beliefs. Dhyana (meditation) was used in Tibet before passing to Japan as Zen, though one cant be sure if its a non-stop link from Tibet to Japan. If it is, then why not Obon/Bon equivalence, as well? Bon was (is) very back-woodsy and little is known about it. Christmas Humphreys says it has roots in Asiatic (Mongol) Shamanism: nature worship, sex magic and psychic arts. Modern Bon are called black hats and are sorcerers of the Dug-pa sects of Bhutan and Ladak.

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

B'raisheeth, Brashith. See BERE'SHITH

(See also: Braisheeth, Brashith, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Bne' Alhim, B'ne Aleim, Bnei (ha-)Elohim. See BENEI 'ELOHIM

(See also: Bne Alhim, Bne Aleim, Bnei, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Bere'shith, B'raisheeth (Hebrew) The first two words of the Hebrew Genesis. As Hebrew was originally written from right to left in a series of consonants, without vowels, several renderings may be made of any passage, according to the manner of inserting vowels and of dividing the consonants into words.

Thus the original Hebrew {Hebrew char} (b r ' sh th) may be divided as be-re'shith, as is common in European translations, and rendered "in the beginning" (be in + re'shith beginning from re'sh or ro'sh chief, head, first part, summit); a second translation could be "in the first part." If the meaning "head" be taken, then as head signifies wisdom, the rendering "in wisdom" follows. But this same combination of letters could be rendered "by arrangement" or "by establishment," by dividing it as bare'-shith (from bare' forming + shith establishment, arrangement)

(See also: Bereshith, Braisheeth, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Buddhi (Sanskrit) (from the verbal root budh to awaken, enlighten, know)

The spiritual soul, the faculty of discriminating, the channel through which streams divine inspiration from the atman to the ego, and therefore that faculty which enables us to discern between good and evil -- spiritual conscience. The qualities of the buddhic principle when awakened are higher judgment, instant understanding, discrimination, intuition, love that has no bounds, and consequent universal forgiveness.

In the theosophical scheme, it is the sixth principle counting upwards in the human constitution: the vehicle of pure, universal spirit, hence an inseparable garment or vehicle of atman. In its essence of the highest plane of akasa or alaya, buddhi stands in the same relation to atman as, on the cosmic scale, mulaprakriti does to parabrahman.

Buddhi uses manas as its garment, and in the former are likewise stored the fruitages of the many incarnations on earth; hence buddhi is often called both the seed and flower of manas. Buddhi is truly the center of spiritual consciousness and therefore its qualities are enduring. The purer and higher part of manas must awaken, by rising to it, this essential energy that inherently resides in buddhi so that the latter may become active in a person's life. Buddha and Christ are examples of sages who had become human imbodiments of the usually latent qualities of buddhi. Buddhi becomes more or less conscious on this plane by the flowerings it draws from manas after every incarnation of the ego. "Buddhi would remain only an impersonal spirit without this element which it borrows from the human soul, which conditions and makes of it, in this illusive Universe, as it were something separate from the universal soul for the whole period of the cycle of incarnation" (Key 159-60).

"No purely spiritual Buddhi (divine Soul) can have an independent (conscious) existence before the spark which issued from the pure Essence of the Universal Sixth principle, -- or the over-soul, -- has (a) passed through every elemental form of the phenomenal world of that Manvantara, and (b) acquired individuality, first by natural impulse, and then by self-induced and self-devised efforts (checked by its Karma), thus ascending through all the degrees of intelligence, from the lowest to the highest Manas, from mineral and plant, up to the holiest archangel (Dhyani-Buddha)" (SD 1:17).

In the human constitution buddhi is a ray from the cosmic principle mahabuddhi or adi-buddhi, a synonym for alaya, pradhana, or the Second Logos, while akasa in its higher reaches is identic with alaya.

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

Blood The vital fluid circulating through the heart, arteries, and veins, supplying nutritive materials to all parts of the body, and receiving elements of waste for later discharge from the system. Occultism enlarges upon the truism that the blood is the life, by relating it to the spiritual and psychic life-forces circulating in the solar system. Blavatsky says

that (a) the Sun is the store-house of Vital Force, which is the Noumenon of Electricity; and (b) that it is from its mysterious, never-to-be-fathomed depths, that issue those life currents which thrill through Space, as through the organisms of every living thing on Earth. . . .

"Thus, there is a regular circulation of the vital fluid throughout our system, of which the Sun is the heart -- the same as the circulation of the blood in the human body -- during the manvantaric solar period, or life; . . . Could the human heart be made luminous, and the living and throbbing organ be made visible . . . then every one would see the Sun-spot phenomenon repeated every second -- due to its contraction and the rushing of the blood" (SD 1:531, 541-2).

The analogy is seen in these streams of solar living fire stepped down into vital electricity on earth, and also in the psychic and astral-physical currents of lunar life which influence generation and all terrestrial growth. In chemical composition, the plasma or fluid part of the blood is said to be identical with that of primordial sea water, ocean water having since become more concentrated.

The blood is actively protean in representing on this plane the streams of higher vitality manifesting in body, soul, and spirit. Thus, its pranic oxygen is the agent of the solar fire; its white and red corpuscles represent the psychic life-force and the red kamic energies, all acting together in their material forms. The leucocytes or white corpuscles are formed in the lymphatic glands, in the spleen, and in bone marrow. They correspond in a sense to the lunar chhayas or builders of the ethereal forms of the second and early third root-races which "needed no warm blood, no atmosphere, no feeding" (SD 1:609). These spherical ameboid cells have both the primordial, changeable pudding-bag form and the autogenerative type of propagation. Their relation to the formation of the red cells typifies that of the early astral forms which, gradually becoming physicalized, evolved into the red-blooded, bisexual, manas-endowed beings of the later third root-race. The red cells, without autogenerative nuclei, are born in special leucocyte cells of red bone marrow, where they are produced at the rate the effete red cells are destroyed.

In human beings the pranic life-currents become impregnated with the manasic quality conferred by the agnishvattas. The lower elements of kama-prana are used in the blood offerings and sacrifices of voodoo rites and other forms of black magic:

"Blood begets phantoms. . . . Paracelsus writes that with the fumes of blood one is enabled to call forth any spirit we desire to see; for with its emanations it will build itself an appearance, a visible body -- only this is sorcery" (IU 2:567).

The old Greeks said that a divine fluid or ichor ran in the veins of the gods. It is also our physical destiny in the far distant future to evolve into bodies without blood as we understand it, in which nobler currents of conscious life will circulate.

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

Jacob Boehme, Jakob Bohme (1575-1624). Great German mystic philosopher, one of those individuals who, showing unusual spiritual insight due to excellent past karma, are especially watched over by the Great Lodge in preparation for future work. A shepherd as a boy, he became a shoemaker after learning to read and write.

"He was a natural clairvoyant of most wonderful powers. With no education or acquaintance with science he wrote works which are now proved to be full of scientific truths; but then, as he says himself, what he wrote upon, he 'saw it as in a great Deep in the Eternal.' He had 'a thorough view of the universe, as in a chaos,' which yet 'opened itself in him, from time to time, as in a young plant.' He was a thorough born Mystic, and evidently of a constitution which is most rare; one of those fine natures whose material envelope impedes in no way the direct, even if only occasional, intercommunion between the intellectual and the spiritual Ego.

It is this Ego which Jacob Boehme, like so many other untrained mystics, mistook for God; 'Man must acknowledge,' he writes, 'that his knowledge is not his own, but from God, who manifests the Ideas of Wisdom to the Soul of Man, in what measure he pleases.' Had this great Theosophist mastered Eastern Occultism he might have expressed it otherwise. He would have known then that the 'god' who spoke through his poor uncultured and untrained brain, was his own divine Ego, the omniscient Deity within himself, and that what that Deity gave out was not in 'what measure he pleased,' but in the measure of the capacities of the mortal and temporary dwelling IT informed" {TG 60}.

(See also: Jacob Boehme, Jakob Bohme, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Brahmarandhra (Sanskrit) (from Brahman cosmic spirit + randhra opening, fissure, cavity)

Brahman's crevice; a mystical suture or opening in the crown of the head, through which a person leaves his body at death. Connected with the heart by means of the sushumna-nadi, a psychovital channel in the spinal column. "A mystic term having its significance only in mysticism" (TG 63). Anatomically the fontanel is a soft, pulsating, unossified area in the skull of an infant, which hardens as the child develops.

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

Brigu, Brighou. See BHRIGU

(See also: Brigu, Brighou, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Bronze Age. See HESIOD, AGES OF; DVAPARA YUGA

(See also: Bronze Age, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Brotherhood of Compassion. See HIERARCHY OF COMPASSION; MAHATMA

(See also: Brotherhood of Compassion, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Brothers of Light. See RIGHT-HAND PATH

(See also: Brothers of Light, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Builders. See COSMOCRATORES

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

Buddhas of Contemplation. See DHYANI-BUDDHA

(See also: Buddhas of Contemplation, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

B  - The second letter in almost all the alphabets, also the second in the Hebrew. Its symbol is a house, the form of Beth, the letter itself indicating a dwelling, a shed or a shelter. "As a compound of a root, it is constantly used for the purpose of showing that it had to do with stone; when stones at Beth-el are set up, for instance. The Hebrew value as a numeral is two. Joined with its predecessor, it forms the word Ab, the root of ‘father’, Master, one in authority, and it has the Kabalistical distinction of being the first letter in the Sacred Volume of the Law. The divine name connected with this letter is "Bakhour." (R. M. [Cyclop.]

(See also: B - Letter B, Theosophy, Spirituality, Body mind and Soul, Spiritual Dictionary, )

Buddhaphala (Sanskrit) (from buddha enlightened + phala fruit)

The fruit of the Buddha, which is won when the arhat has attained the fruition of arhatship (arhattvaphala).

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

Buddha-Siddhartha. See GAUTAMA

(See also: Buddha-Siddhartha, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)