Pho.

See P'O

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

P'o (Chinese) In the I Ching "the full manifestation of the kwei" -- the kama-manas or animal soul.

(See also: P'o, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

P'u-to (Chinese) A sacred island in China, a famous seat of Buddhist teaching. Many statues are erected to Kwan-yin, the patron deity, and to Kwan-shai-yin.

(See also: P'u-to, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Secret Doctrine, The By H. P. Blavatsky

(See also: Secret Doctrine, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary)

Ring Employed in the early days of the Theosophical Society, especially in connection with the correspondence held by the mahatmas with A. P. Sinnett and A. O. Hume, to signify any one of the many evolutionary cyclings followed by the monads in and through the different kingdoms of nature, such as the elemental, mineral, vegetable, etc.

Any group of such monads thus collected together is called a life-wave. Every one of the seven, ten, or twelve classes of monads must follow every one of such rings in order to evolve the karmic and latent powers and capacities involved in the monad and held by it as evolutionary tendencies or urges.

In connection with the human kingdom or life-wave, ring or rings has been superseded by the term root-races.

See also ROUND

(See also: Ring, Mysticism, Mysticism 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)

Phlogiston [from Greek phlog fire]

In the 17th century modern chemistry was in process of birth and alchemical ideas still survived, particularly those of the four elements and of the triad of sulphur, salt, and mercury. Stahl (1660-1734) enumerated four elements -- water, acid, earth, phlogiston; and the phlogiston theory was elaborated by Priestley (1733-1804).

All combustible bodies, it was said, contain phlogiston, and when they are burnt the phlogiston leaves its latent state and escapes from the body in the form of heat and light, leaving behind the ash or dephlogisticated residue. For example, magnesium gives out its phlogiston in an intense light and an inert ash is left. But later chemistry banished the imponderables, and formulated a physical system composed of ponderable matter and energy.

Accordingly, when it was shown that the ash weighs more than the original substance, the phlogiston theory was abandoned, and in its place came abstract and indefinite conceptions quite as difficult of explanation as was the phlogiston theory itself, which may be grouped under the general term energy, and include heat, light, chemical energy, etc.

The more recent progress of science has proved that the atomo-mechanical system, the representation of the physical world as divisible into matter and energy, or mass and motion, however useful in interpreting molar physics and facilitating practical applications, does not suffice for an interpretation of the intra-molecular world. The distinction between matter (or mass) and energy has become obliterated.

The Mahatma Letters state that phlogiston is the lowest and densest form of a universal essence and serves as the vehicle for dhyanis of a corresponding degree (p. 56); and the name is also given to the magnetic electric aura of the photosphere (p. 164). The idea of phlogiston overlaps that of caloric, with which is it sometimes confused.

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

Sakti (Sanskrit) [from the verbal root sak to be powerful, energetic, have force]

Universal energy, the feminine aspect of fohat; one of the seven forces of nature, of which six are manifest and the seventh partly manifest. It is energy that proceeds through itself, not being due to the active or conscious will of the one that produces it. Popularly, the wives or consorts of the gods -- the energies or active powers of these deities represented as feminine influences.

"These anthropomorphic definitions are unfortunate, because misleading. The Saktis of Nature are really the veils, or sheaths, or vehicular carriers, through which work the inner and ever-active energies. As substance and energy, or force and matter, are fundamentally one, . . . it becomes apparent that even these Saktis, or sheaths, or veils, are themselves energic to lower spheres or realms through which they themselves work.

"The crown of the astral light, as H. P. Blavatsky puts it, is the generalized Sakti of Universal Nature in so far as our solar system is concerned" (OG 150).

Sakti in another sense is soul-power, the mental-psychic energy of the god as of the adept. In the Mahabharata, Draupadi, the wife or sakti of the five Pandava brothers, represents a spiritual power they all possessed in common. In legends and tales of the ancient peoples, the wives of the great heroes mystically represent the aggregate of the saktis or spiritual powers that the heroes had individually attained.

Considering the saktis as more or less conscious forces in nature, gives a picture of not only the turbulent and ever-active movements in the lower planes of nature, but likewise the calm and stately measures of spiritual activity. It is common in the West to associate power, activity, energy, and force with masculine correlations; but this is quite arbitrary, and an impassionate viewing of nature will show it to be continuously moved by vehicular as well as inspiriting causes.

Cosmically sakti or the saktis originate in the summit of the astral light or akasa, which in one sense may be considered as not only the womb of the cosmic saktis, but as their playground and in another sense as the saktis collectively themselves. In man, sakti is the buddhi in its higher aspect, and the activities of the various pranas in the human constitution in its lower aspect. There is no essential distinction between any divinity and its consort, between Brahman and pradhana, Brahma and prakriti, or between parabrahman and mulaprakriti. Furthermore, all the saktis are either conscious entities in nature, or vital effluxes or emanations, cosmic fluids, with which nature is infused throughout.

The reason the occultist of all ages looks askance at the tantric practices, or the Tantras dealing largely with the saktis, is because these tantric books and practices are almost wholly occupied in relations and correlations both in nature and in man of the saktis in their lower aspect. The kundalini, for instance, is likewise born in the buddhi in man, but descending through the human constitution has its pranic or psychovital physical representations in the various chakras or vital centers of the human frame, and thus the kundalini is an example of sakti or of its fluidic effluxes in the lower portions of the human constitution.

The early Christians looked upon the Holy Spirit as of distinctly feminine characteristics, influence, or svabhava, as the center not only of vital but of spiritual and intellectual activity, whether in the universe or man, so that the Holy Spirit corresponds to a divine sakti. A notable instance in Hinduism is the Sakti or goddess Durga, having both a lofty or spiritual, and an inferior or distinctly material, function in nature, and therefore a beneficent as well as a terrible action therein -- the very name Durga meaning "terrible in action," or "terrible in going." And yet Durga is the consort or sakti of Siva, often called the Mahesvara (Great Lord); and the name of this goddess arises from the utterly impartial, infinitely just, and yet often simply terrific action of the forces in nature, particularly when karmically directed to works of regeneration, often called destruction. Cosmic operations or cosmic justice are often indeed to human vision terrible in their operation, which can never be set aside, stayed, or diverted. Hence Durga is often represented in iconography as surrounded with a necklace of skulls or by similar ghastly emblems -- a series of ideas which the pragmatic West misinterprets and consequently depicts as horrible and revolting.

(See also: Sakti, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary)

Qabbalah (Hebrew) [from qabal to receive, hand down]

Also Cabala, Kabala, Kabbalah, etc. Tradition, that which is handed down; the theosophy of the Jews. Originally these truths were passed on orally by one initiate to chosen disciples, hence were referred to as the Tradition. The first one historically alleged to have reduced a large part of the secret Qabbalah of the Chaldees into systematic, and perhaps written, form was the Rabbi Shim`on ben Yohai, in the Zohar; but the work of this name that has come down to the present day -- through the medieval Qabbalists -- is but a compilation of the 13th century, presumably by Moses de Leon.

The principal doctrines of the Qabbalah deal with the nature of the divine incomprehensible All ('eyn soph); the divine emanations of the Sephiroth; cosmogony; the creation or emanation of angels and men, and of their destiny. The Jewish Qabbalah was derived from the Chaldean Qabbalah, and "mistaken is he who accepts the Kabalistic works of to-day, and the interpretations of the Zohar by the Rabbis, for the genuine Kabalistic lore of old! For no more to-day than in the day of Frederick von Schelling does the Kabala accessible to Europe and America, contain much more than 'ruins and fragments, much distorted remnants still of that primitive system which is the key to all religious systems' . . . The oldest system and the Chaldean Kabala were identical. The latest renderings of the Zohar are those of the Synagogue in the early centuries" (SD 2:461-2).

Blavatsky refers to a work no longer extant, the Chaldean Book of Numbers, as the basis for the Qabbalah. Tentative mention is also made of an alleged manuscript left by Count Saint-Germain giving keys for interpreting the Qabbalah.

"The kabalist is a student of 'secret science,' one who interprets the hidden meaning of the Scriptures with the help of the symbolical Kabalah, and explains the real one by these means. The Tanaim were the first kabalists among the Jews; they appeared at Jerusalem about the beginning of the third century before the Christian era. The books of Ezekiel, Daniel, Henoch, and the Revelation of St. John, are purely kabalistical. This secret doctrine is identical with that of the Chaldeans, and includes at the same time much of the Persian wisdom, or 'magic.' History catches glimpses of famous kabalists ever since the eleventh century. The Mediaeval ages, and even our own times, have had an enormous number of the most learned and intellectual men who were students of the Kabala . . . The most famous among the former were Paracelsus, Henry Khunrath, Jacob Bohmen, Robert Fludd, the two Van Helmonts, the Abbot John Trithemius, Cornelius Agrippa, Cardinal Nicolao Cusani, Jerome Carden, Pope Sixtus IV., and such Christian scholars as Raymond Lully, Giovanni Pico de la Mirandola, Guillaume Postel, the great John Reuchlin, Dr. Henry More, Eugenius Philalethes (Thomas Vaughan), the erudite Jesuit Athanasius Kircher, Christian Knorr (Baron) von Rosenroth; then Sir Isaac Newton, Leibniz, Lord Bacon, Spinosa, etc., etc., the list being almost inexhaustible. As remarked by Mr. Isaac Myer, in his Qabbalah [p. 170], the ideas of the Kabalists have largely influenced European literature. 'Upon the practical Qabbalah, the Abbe de Villars (nephew of de Montfaucon) in 1670, published his celebrated satirical novel, "The Count de Gabalis," upon which Pope based his "Rape of the Lock." Qabbalism ran through the Mediaeval poems, the "Romance of the Rose," and permeates the writings of Dante.' No two of them, however, agreed upon the origin of the Kabala, the Zohar, Sepher Yetzirah, etc. Some show it as coming from the Biblical Patriarchs, Abraham, and even Seth; others from Egypt, others again from Chaldea. The system is certainly very old; but like all the rest of systems, whether religious or philosophical, the Kabala is derived directly from the primeval Secret Doctrine of the East; through the Vedas, the Upanishads, Orpheus and Thales, Pythagoras and the Egyptians. Whatever its source, its substratum is at any rate identical with that of all the other systems from the Book of the Dead down to the later Gnostics" (TG 167-8).

The Jewish Qabbalah even in its present partial or mutilated form is a more or less faithful echo of that once universal archaic wisdom-religion of mankind, which as the Qabbalah itself plainly states was originally delivered by " 'Divinity' to a select company of angels in Paradise," and from these angels -- occult initiates or adepts -- disseminated as the ages passed more or less faithfully among the different races of mankind.

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

P - Letter P. - The 16th letter in both the Greek and the English alphabets, and the 17th in the Hebrew, where it is called pé or pay, and is symbolized by the mouth, corresponding also, as in the Greek alphabet, to number 80. The Pythagoreans also made it equivalent to 100, and with a dash thus ( P) it stood for 400,000. The Kabbalists associated with it the sacred name of Phodeh (Redeemer), though no valid reason is given for it.

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

Para parâ (Sanskrit) Supreme, the ultimate bound or limit, applied to Vach (mystic speech). Vach is of four kinds: para, pasyanti, madhyama, and vaikhari. Para-vach is the heart and origin of every vaikhari or uttered speech.

Para-vach corresponds to Brahman in the cosmos, for the cosmological and cosmogonical significance of Vach very closely approximates the Greek cosmic Logos (cosmic Word).

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

Saktidhara (Sanskrit) Power-holder, holder of a spear; an epithet of the Hindu god Karttikeya in his mystical function as a warrior.

(See also: Saktidhara, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary)

Simha (Sanskrit) Lion; the fifth zodiacal sign, Leo, said by some mystics to represent the jivatman or spiritual ego, corresponding to the immanent christos.

(See also: Simha, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary)

Sabda (Sanskrit) A sound, word, or tone; sometimes used mystically to mean the cosmic Word, thus equivalent to the Greek Logos.

(See also: Sabda, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary)

Soma (Sanskrit) In Hinduism, the moon astronomically; mystically, a sacred beverage of initiates, "made from a rare mountain plant by initiated Brahmans" (TG 304).

As the moon, Soma is an occult mystery, for the moon as a symbol stands for both good and evil, yet more often a symbol of evil than of good. Astrologically, Soma is the regent of the invisible or occult moon, while Indu represents the physical moon. "Soma is the mystery god and presides over the mystic and occult nature in man and the Universe" (SD 2:45). Soma or lunar worship was once purely occult and its rites were based upon a minute and profound knowledge of nature.

According to Hindu tradition, Soma as a sacred juice gave mystic visions and trance-revelations, the result of which union was Budha (esoteric wisdom). This sacred beverage was drunk by Brahmins and initiates during their mysteries and sacrificial rites.

"The 'Soma' plant is the asclepias acida, which yields a juice from which that mystic beverage, the Soma drink, is made. Alone the descendants of the Rishis, the Agnihotri (the fire priests) of the great mysteries knew all its powers. But the real property of the true Soma was (and is) to make a new man of the Initiate, after he is reborn, namely once that he begins to live in his astral body . . .; for, his spiritual nature overcoming the physical, he would soon snap it off and part even from that etherealized form. . . .

"The partaker of Soma finds himself both linked to his external body, and yet away from it in his spiritual form. The latter, freed from the former, soars for the time being in the ethereal higher regions, becoming virtually 'as one of the gods,' and yet preserving in his physical brain the memory of what he sees and learns. Plainly speaking, Soma is the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge forbidden by the jealous Elohim to Adam and Eve or Yah-ve, 'lest Man should become as one of us' " (SD 2:498-9&n).

"A 'soma-drinker' attains the power of placing himself in direct rapport with the bright side of the moon, thus deriving inspiration from the concentrated intellectual energy of the blessed ancestors. . . .

"This which seems one stream (to the ignorant) is of a dual nature -- one giving life and wisdom, the other being lethal. He who can separate the former from the latter, as Kalahamsa separated the milk from the water, which was mixed with it, thus showing great wisdom -- will have his reward" (BCW 12:203-4).

"This Hindu sacred beverage answers to the Greek Ambrosia or nectar, drunk by the gods of Olympus. A cup of kykeon was also quaffed by the mysta at the Eleusinian initiation. He who drinks it easily reaches Brahma, or the place of splendor (Heaven). The soma-drink known to Europeans is not the genuine beverage, but its substitute; for the initiated priests alone can taste of the real soma; and even kings and rajas, when sacrificing, receive the substitute. . . . We were positively informed that the majority of the sacrificial priests of the Dekkan have lost the secret of the true soma. It can be found neither in the ritual books nor through oral information. The true followers of the primitive Vedic religion are very few; these are the alleged descendants from the Rishis, the real Agnihotris, the initiates of the great Mysteries. The soma-drink is also commemorated in the Hindu Pantheon, for it is called King-Soma. He who drinks of it is made to participate in the heavenly king, because he becomes filled with it, as the Christian apostles and their converts became filled with the Holy Ghost, and purified of their sins. The soma makes a new man of the initiate; he is reborn and transformed, and his spiritual nature overcomes the physical; it gives the divine power of inspiration, and develops the clairvoyant faculty to the utmost. According to the exoteric explanation the soma is a plant, but, at the same time it is an angel. It forcibly connects the inner, highest 'spirit' of man, which spirit is an angel like the mystical soma, with his 'irrational soul,' or astral body, and thus united by the power of the magic drink, they soar together above physical nature and participate during life in the beatitude and ineffable glories of Heaven.

"Thus the Hindu soma is mystically, and in all respects the same that the Eucharist supper is to the Christian. The idea is similar. By means of the sacrificial prayers -- the mantras -- this liquor is supposed to be transformed on the spot into real soma -- or the angel, and even into Brahma himself" (IU 1:xl-xli).

The mystical drink has been known in all ages and among all peoples. The ancient Teutonic tribes, whether of the Germanic or Anglo-Saxons, spoke of their divine mead, the drink of the gods. The Hindus spoke of Soma, the direct distillation from the moon and from the overseeing and guiding eye of the sun; the Greeks of the Homeric age spoke of ambrosia or nectar, a drink of the gods which renewed their understanding and gave them inspiration as well. Another branch of the Greeks belonging to the Dionysian and Orphic branches of mystical thought, spoke equally mystically of the mystic wine, and also of the mystic cereal, partaken of during the Mysteries, and it is from this last that the mystical wine and cereal or bread of the Christians was taken over almost completely from the Dionysian Eucharist, only among Christians even from quite early times it became degraded into actual blood and flesh of Jesus.

The evident meaning must be connected with the old occult thought that wine, or the mead of the northern peoples where the grape and soma were unknown or uncultivated, all had the meaning of the inspiration of initiation, a kind of ecstasy of vision and knowledge brought about through initiation, of which the physical intoxication of wine, mead, or the soma juice has all the lower and materialized aspect, every spiritual thing having its material counterpart, every right-hand thought or rule in occultism having its left-hand or sorcerer perversion or counterpart. Thus in the highest initiation, even today and from immemorial time, the holy drink or potation was entirely mystical, and had a dozen of these significances, all bound up together; yet despite this fact, for some of the lower initiations where a student found difficulty in throwing off the physical and astral influences, a harmless -- when administered rightly -- drug or drink was given which temporarily stupefied the lower quaternary; but it is to be noted that this substitute of the physical drink came about when neophytes began to find it very difficult to do what their more spiritual forerunners had done: raising themselves solely by inner aspiration up to inspiration, by inner insight up to the epopteia or vision.

Thus the question whether the mystical drink was an actual drink, or merely a mystical one, cannot be answered by a simple yes or no. Originally it was entirely mystical, later it remained as mystical as ever, but the body with its grossness, and the astral influences with their terrible power over the men and women of the time, were temporarily reduced to quiescence by a preparation known to initiates to have the power of bringing about the condition required, without any permanent or even long after-effect, very much as a sedative will be given by a physician today. It is of course true that if this drink, however relatively innocent in a single instance, were to be constantly repeated, it would have developed into a drug habit.

Some of the later peoples in their initiations actually did use a kind of physical soma which had the effect of bringing about a dulling of the restless brain-mind for the time being, so that the inner powers were temporarily freed from the clogging influences of the astral light and the body.

The use of drugs in initiatory ceremonies of any kind, however, is a relatively late and degenerate practice, and has never at any time been, nor will it ever be, introduced by the Mother-Lodge coming down to us even from the middle of the third root-race. With it the old tradition burns more brightly than ever that the true soma, the true mead of the gods or wine of the spirit, is the raising of the human into the spiritual by aspiration, training, and strict following of the traditional laws of discipleship, so that finally the neophyte feels the sunlight from above stealing through the moon of his mind.

So strongly is this the case, that even today in theosophical occult studies, drug taking of any kind is strictly forbidden, including alcohol, for alcohol is a drug, a product of natural decay and decomposition, and while less spectacular and violent as a rule than drugs such as opium and its derivatives, it is far more easily procurable and is therefore more specifically pointed to as objectionable. The idea of the occult student is to have the body absolutely normal, healthy, clean, and functioning in the smoothness of health, so that even overeating is seen to be a harmful thing, because it clogs the body, dulls the mind, and could even actually lead to physical disability.

There is and has been a great deal of confusion, not only at present but throughout the ages, about these matters, and several mystical schools have even chosen the language of the tavern and drinking house as the cloak for conveying occult or semi-occult teaching. A noted example is the Sufi school with its poems lauding the flowing bowl and the joys of the tavern and the bosom friends therein, and the beloved's breast. Here the tavern was the universe, the flowing cup or wine was the wine of the spirit bringing inner ecstasy, the bosom of the beloved was the raising oneself into inner communion with the god within, of which the Jewish bosom of Abraham is a feeble correspondence. The friends of the tavern are those perfect human relations brought about by a community of spiritual and intellectual interests, and the associations of the tavern are the mysteries of the world around us with their marvels and arcana. Nevertheless in various countries as the fourth root-race ran toward its evil culmination, the mystic became translated into the material, the spiritual degenerated into the teaching of matter, so that indeed in later Atlantean times the drugging of initiates was common, and the results always disastrous, this being one of the sorceries for which the Atlanteans in occult history have remained infamous. Yet even in the fifth root-race, due to the heavy Atlantean karma still weighing on us, many nations as late as historic times employed more or less harmless potations to bring about a temporary dulling or stupefying of the brain and nervous system -- a procedure always vigorously opposed by the theosophic occult school which has never at any time allowed it.

(See also: Soma, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary)

Rosicrucians [from Latin rosa rose + crux cross]

Rosy cross or rose cross, referring to the cross of the rose, the general medieval idea of the rose being an emblem of divine love, and the cross of renunciation and self-conquest. A medieval European mystical and quasi-occult fraternity, probably dating from about the mid-15th century. It represented one of the many cyclic attempts to reintroduce and keep alive the ancient wisdom, and its history is typical of most such enterprises.

The name was first given to the disciples of a learned adept, Christian Rosenkreuz, the alleged surname itself being a German translation of rose-cross, leaving open whether Rosenkreuz was actually a family name or a surname mystically adopted to designate a particular body of mystical thought; the name Christian may be another such mystical name-adoption. At any rate, Rosenkreuz returned form a journey in Asia and founded a mystical order in Europe. He and his disciples encountered the determined opposition of the Christian Church which then held sway over so much of Europe.

He dressed up his teachings in a Christian garb, using such names as Jehovah as screens for the real meaning, and communicating to his disciples the keys for an interpretation of his doctrines. He founded no formal association and built no colleges, for the utmost secrecy was necessary to escape persecution and even death. It is for these reasons that the true history of the Rosicrucians is so difficult to trace. The original Rosicrucians were fire-philosophers, successors of the theurgists and the Magi.

The symbol of a cross within a circle, supposed to represent a rose with a cross in it, is really a perversion by Western Christian Qabbalists, who call it the great mystery of occult generation, whereas the true symbol of the reawakening of the universe is a circle with a point in it, and the circle with a cross is the true mundane cross.

The real symbol of the Rosicrucians is that of a pelican tearing open its breast to feed its seven little ones -- the symbol of the 18th degree of the order. The rosy cross is the cube unfolded (cf SD 2:19, 80, 601). Many associations, since the disappearance of the medieval Rosicrucians, have existed and still exist, who have borrowed the name and apparently as much of the Rosicrucians' teachings as they could understand. Blavatsky mentions Paracelsus as having been a true Rosicrucian, and Eliphas Levi as having had access to Rosicrucian manuscripts.

(See also: Rosicrucians, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary)

Saraswati, Dayanand.

See DAYANANDA SARASWATI

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

Saratman (Sanskrit) [from sarva all + atman self]

The all-self; in the Vedas, the all-pervading spirit of the universe.

(See also: Saratman, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary)

Saptasati (Sanskrit) Seven hundred; the feminine of Saptasata; the name of several works composed of 700 verses.

(See also: Saptasati, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary)