Mysticism Glossary - S

KUNDALINI

Sex power (Hindu serpent). The goddess in the form of a fire-serpent, who lies sleeping at the base of the spine. It is the supreme power of magic in man.

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

A Theosophical definition of Infinite :

Infinite

A term meaning that which is not finite. The expression is used sometimes with almost absurd inaccuracy, and is one which in all probability representing as it does imperfect understanding could never be found in any of the great religious or philosophical systems of the ancients. Occidental writers of the past and present often use the word infinite as applying to beings or entities, such as in the expression "an infinite personal deity"  - a ludicrous joining of contradictory and disparate words. The ancients rejected the phantom idea that this term involves, and used instead expressions such as the Boundless, or the Frontierless, or the Endless, whether speaking of abstract space or abstract time  - the latter more properly called unending duration. (See also Absolute)

See also: Infinite , Mysticism, Body Mind and Soul

A Theosophical definition of Asrama :

Asrama

(Sanskrit) A word derived from the root sram, signifying "to make efforts," "to strive"; with the particle a, which in this case gives force to the verbal root sram.

Asrama has at least two main significations.

1. The first is that of a college or school or a hermitage, an abode of ascetics, etc.; whereas the second meaning signifies a period of effort or striving in the religious life or career of a Brahmana of olden days. These periods of life in ancient times in Hindustan were four in number: the first, that of the student or brahmacharin;
2. second, the period of life called that of the grihastha or householder  - the period of married existence when the Brahmana took his due part in the affairs of men, etc.; third, the vanaprastha, or period of monastic seclusion, usually passed in a vana, or wood or forest, for purposes of inner recollection and spiritual meditation; and fourth, that of the bhikshu or religious mendicant, meaning one who has completely renounced the distractions of worldly life and has turned his attention wholly to spiritual affairs.

Brahmasrama. In modern esoteric or occult literature, the compound term Brahmasrama is occasionally used to signify an initiation chamber or secret room or adytum where the initiant or neophyte is striving or making efforts to attain union with Brahman or the inner god.

See also: Asrama , Mysticism, Body Mind and Soul

A Theosophical definition of Auric Egg :

Auric Egg

A term which appertains solely to the more recondite teachings of occultism, of the esoteric philosophy. Little can be said here about it except to state that it is the source of the human aura as well as of everything else that the human septenary constitution contains. It is usually of an oviform or egg-shaped appearance, whence its name. It ranges from the divine to the astral-physical, and is the seat of all the monadic, spiritual, intellectual, mental, passional, and vital energies and faculties of the human septiform constitution.

In its essence the auric egg is eternal, and endures throughout the pralayas as well as during the manvantaras, but necessarily in greatly varying fashion in these two great periods of kosmic life.

See also: Auric Egg , Mysticism, Body Mind and Soul

A Theosophical definition of Asana :

Asana according to Theosophy

(Sanskrit) "A word derived from the verbal root as, signifying "to sit quietly." Asana, therefore, technically signifies one of the peculiar postures adopted by Hindu ascetics, mostly of the hatha yoga school. Five of these postures are usually enumerated, but nearly ninety have been noted by students of the subject.

A great deal of quasi-magical and mystical literature may be found devoted to these various postures and collateral topics, and their supposed or actual psychological value when assumed by devotees; but, as a matter of fact, a great deal of this writing is superficial and has very little indeed to do with the actual occult and esoteric training of genuine occultists. One is instinctively reminded of other quasi-mystical practices, as, for instance, certain genuflections or postures followed in the worship of the Christian Church, to which particular values are sometimes ascribed by fanatic devotees.

Providing that the position of the body be comfortable so that the mind is least distracted, genuine meditation and spiritual and actual introspection can be readily and successfully attained by any earnest student without the slightest attention being paid to these various postures. A man sitting quietly in his armchair, or lying in his bed at night, or sitting or lying on the grass in a forest, can more readily enter the inner worlds than by adopting and following any one or more of these various asanas, which at the best are physiological aids of relatively small value." (See also Samadhi)

See also: Asana , Mysticism, Body Mind and Soul

A Theosophical definition of Astrology :

Astrology

The astrology of the ancients was indeed a great and noble science. It is a term which means the "science of the celestial bodies." Modern astrology is but the tattered and rejected outer coating of real, ancient astrology; for that truly sublime science was the doctrine of the origin, of the nature, of the being, and of the destiny of the solar bodies, of the planetary bodies, and of the beings who dwell on them. It also taught the science of the relations of the parts of kosmic nature among themselves, and more particularly as applied to man and his destiny as forecast by the celestial orbs. From that great and noble science sprang up an exoteric pseudo-science, derived from the Mediterranean and Asian practice, eventuating in the modern scheme called astrology  - a tattered remnant of ancient wisdom.

In actual fact, genuine archaic astrology was one of the branches of the ancient Mysteries, and was studied to perfection in the ancient Mystery schools. It had throughout all ancient time the unqualified approval and devotion of the noblest men and of the greatest sages. Instead of limiting itself as modern so-called astrology does to a system based practically entirely upon certain branches of mathematics, in archaic days the main body of doctrine which astrology then contained was transcendental metaphysics, dealing with the greatest and most abstruse problems concerning the universe and man. The celestial bodies of the physical universe were considered in the archaic astrology to be not merely time markers, or to have vague relations of a psychomagnetic quality as among themselves  - although indeed this is true  - but to be the vehicles of starry spirits, bright and living gods, whose very existence and characteristics, individually as well as collectively, made them the governors and expositors of destiny.

See also: Astrology , Mysticism, Body Mind and Soul

Absorption (from Latin absorbere to suck up, swallow)

In The Secret Doctrine, the reabsorption of all manifestation at the coming on of the Great Night or mahapralaya, "when Pralaya will have reduced not only material and psychical bodies, but even the spiritual Ego(s) to their original principle -- the Past, Present, and even Future Humanities, like all things, will be one and the same. Everything will have re-entered the Great Breath" (1:265-6).

Likewise the reentering of the human into the divine, of the personality into the individuality, achieved in moments of samadhi even during the lifetime of the initiate on earth; also entrance of the individual into the nirvanic condition.

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

A Theosophical definition of Avatara :

Avatara

(Sanskrit) The noun-form derived from a compound of two words: ava, prepositional prefix meaning "down," and tri, verb-root meaning to "cross over," to "pass"; thus, avatri  - to "pass down," or to "descend." Hence the word signifies the passing down of a celestial energy or of an individualized complex of celestial energies, which is equivalent to saying a celestial being, in order to overshadow and illuminate some human being  - but a human being who, at the time of such connection of "heaven with earth," of divinity with matter, possesses no karmically intermediate or connecting link between the overshadowing entity and the physical body: in other words, no human soul karmically destined to be the inner master of the body thus born.

The intermediate link necessary, so that the human being-to-be may have the human intermediate or psychological apparatus fit to express the invisible splendor of this celestial descent, is supplied by the deliberate and voluntary entrance into the unborn child  - and coincidently with the overshadowing of the celestial power  - of the psychological or intermediate principle of one of the Greater Ones, who thus "completes" what is to be the pure and lofty human channel through which the "descending" divinity may manifest, this divinity finding in this high psychological principle a sufficiently evolved link enabling it to express itself in human form upon earth.

Hence an avatara is one who has a combination of three elements in his being: an inspiring divinity; a highly evolved intermediate nature or soul, which is loaned to him and is the channel of that inspiring divinity; and a pure, clean, physical body.

See also: Avatara , Mysticism, Body Mind and Soul

Emotion(s). See KAMA; SENSES

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

Svastika (Sanskrit). In popular notions, it is the Jaina cross, or the "four-footed" cross (croix cramponnée). In Masonic teachings, "the most ancient Order of the Brotherhood of the Mystic Cross" is said to have been founded by Fohi, 1,027 B.C., and introduced into China fifty-two years later, consisting of the three degrees.

In Esoteric Philosophy, the most mystic and ancient diagram. It is "the originator of the fire by friction, and of the ‘ Forty-nine Fires’." Its symbol was stamped on Buddha’s heart, and therefore called the " Heart’s Seal". It is laid on the breasts of departed Initiates after their death ; and it is mentioned with the greatest respect in the Ramayana. Engraved on every rock, temple and prehistoric building of India, and wherever Buddhists have left their landmarks; it is also found in China, Tibet and Siam, and among the ancient Germanic nations as Thor’s Hammer. As described by Eitel in his Hand-Book of Chinese Buddhism. .

(1) it is "found among Bonpas and Buddhists";

(2) it is "one of the sixty-five figures of the Sripada" ; ( it is "the symbol of esoteric Buddhism" ;

(4) "the special mark of all deities worshipped by the Lotus School of China". Finally, and in Occultism, it is as sacred to us as the Pythagorean Tetraktys, of which it is indeed the double symbol.

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

A Theosophical definition of Daiviprakriti :

Daiviprakriti

(Sanskrit) A compound signifying "divine" or "original evolver," or "original source," of the universe or of any self-contained or hierarchical portion of such universe, such as a solar system. Briefly, therefore, daiviprakriti may be called "divine matter," matter here being used in its original sense of "divine mother-evolver" or "divine original substance."

Now, as original substance manifests itself in the kosmic spaces as primordial kosmic light  - light in occult esoteric theosophical philosophy being a form of original matter or substance  - 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, or matter in its sixth and seventh stages counting from physical matter upwards or, what comes to the same thing, 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 term fohat. Fohat, in H. P. Blavatsky's words, is

"The essence of cosmic electricity. An occult Tibetan term for Daivi-prakriti, primordial light: and in the universe of manifestation the ever-present electrical energy and ceaseless destructive and formative power. Esoterically, it is the same, Fohat being the universal propelling Vital Force, at once the propeller and the resultant."  - Theosophical Glossary, p. 121

All this is extremely well put, but it must be remembered that 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.

See also: Daiviprakriti , Mysticism, Body Mind and Soul

KNOWLEDGE

"Knowledge is the excrement of experience." -- Austin Osman Spare.

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

WEST

The Realm of the Dead, which is veiled by Isis.

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

A Theosophical definition of Antaskarana :

Antaskarana

(Sanskrit) Perhaps better spelled as antahkarana. A compound word: antar, "interior," "within"; karana, sense organ. Occultists explain this word as the bridge between the higher and lower manas or between the spiritual ego and personal soul of man. Such is H. P. Blavatsky's definition. As a matter of fact there are several antahkaranas in the human septenary constitution  - one for every path or bridge between any two of the several monadic centers in man. Man is a microcosm, therefore a unified composite, a unity in diversity; and the antahkaranas are the links of vibrating consciousness-substance uniting these various centers.

See also: Antaskarana , Mysticism, Body Mind and Soul

A Theosophical definition of Ethics :

Ethics

The theosophical teachings are essentially and wholly ethical. It is impossible to understand the sublime wisdom of the gods, the archaic wisdom-religion of the ancients, without the keenest realization of the fact that ethics run like golden threads throughout the entire system or fabric of doctrine and thought of the esoteric philosophy. Genuine occultism, divorced from ethics, is simply unthinkable because impossible. There is no genuine occultism which does not include the loftiest ethics that the moral sense of mankind can comprehend, and one cannot weigh with too strong an emphasis upon this great fact.

Ethics in the theosophical philosophy are not merely the products of human thought existing as a formulation of conventional rules proper for human conduct. They are founded on the very structure and character of the universe itself. The heart of the universe is wisdom-love, and these are intrinsically ethical, for there can be no wisdom without ethics, nor can love be without ethics, nor can there be ethics deprived of either love or wisdom.

The philosophic reason why the ancients set so much store by what was commonly known as virtus among the Latins, from which we have our modern word "virtue," is because by means of the teaching originating in the great Mystery schools, they knew that virtues, ethics, were the offspring of the moral instinct in human beings, who derived them in their turn from the heart of the universe  - from the kosmic harmony. It is high time that the Occidental world should cast forever into the limbo of exploded superstitions the idea that ethics is merely conventional morality, a convenience invented by man to smooth the asperities and dangers of human intercourse.

Of course every scholar knows that the words morals and ethics come from the Latin and Greek respectively, as signifying the customs or habits which it is proper to follow in civilized communities. But this fact itself, which is unquestionable, is in a sense disgraceful, for it would almost seem that we had not yet brought forth a word adequately describing the instinct for right and truth and troth and justice and honor and wisdom and love which we today so feebly express by the words ethics or morals. "Theosophist is who Theosophy does," wrote H. P. Blavatsky, and wiser and nobler words she never wrote. No one can be a theosophist who does not feel ethic-ally and think ethically and live ethically in the real sense that is hereinbefore described. (See also Morals)

See also: Ethics , Mysticism, Body Mind and Soul

A Theosophical definition of Gods :

Gods

The old pantheons were builded upon an ancient and esoteric wisdom which taught, under the guise of a public mythology, profound secrets of the structure and operations of the universe which surrounds us. The entire human race has believed in gods, has believed in beings superior to men; the ancients all said that men are the "children" of these gods, and that from these superior beings, existent in the azure spaces, men draw all that in them is; and, furthermore, that men themselves, as children of the gods, are in their inmost essence divine beings linked forever with the boundless universe of which each human being, just as is the case with every other entity everywhere, is an inseparable part. This is a truly sublime conception.

One should not think of human forms when the theosophist speaks of the gods; we mean the arupa  - the "formless"  - entities, beings of pure intelligence and understanding, relatively pure essences, relatively pure spirits, formless as we physical humans conceive form. The gods are the higher inhabitants of nature. They are intrinsic portions of nature itself, for they are its informing principles. They are as much subject to the wills and energies of still higher beings  - call these wills and energies the "laws" of higher beings, if you will  - as we are, and as are the kingdoms of nature below us.

The ancients put realities, living beings, in the place of laws which, as Occidentals use the term, are only abstractions  - an expression for the action of entities in nature; the ancients did not cheat themselves so easily with words. They called them gods, spiritual entities. Not one single great thinker of the ancients, until the Christian era, ever talked about laws of nature, as if these laws were living entities, as if these abstractions were actual entities which did things. Did the laws of navigation ever navigate a ship? Does the law of gravity pull the planets together? Does it unite or pull the atoms together? This word laws is simply a mental abstraction signifying unerring action of conscious and semi-conscious energies in nature.

See also: Gods , Mysticism, Body Mind and Soul

Mind

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

ANKH, (W)UDJA(T), SENEB

"May he live, be prosperous, be healthy". A common Egyptian salutation appropriate for kings - abbreviated to L.H.S. (Life,Health, Strength).

(See also: ANKH, WUDJA, T, SENEB , Magick, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Body Mind and Soul,)

A Theosophical definition of Ahankara :

Ahankara

(Sanskrit) A compound word: aham, "I"; kara, "maker" or "doer," from the verb-root kri, "to do," "to make"; egoism, personality. The egoistical and mayavi principle in man, born of the ignorance or avidya which produces the notion of the "I" as being different from the universal One-Self.

See also: Ahankara , Mysticism, Body Mind and Soul

A Theosophical definition of Esoteric Doctrine :

Esoteric Doctrine

The body of mystical and sacred teachings reserved for students of high and worthy character. This body of teachings has been known and studied by highly evolved individuals in all ages. The esoteric doctrine is the common property of mankind, and it has always been thus. In all the various great religions and philosophies of the world, the student will find fundamental principles in each which, when placed side by side and critically examined, are easily discovered to be identic. Every one of such fundamental principles is in every great world religion or world philosophy; hence the aggregate of these world religions or world philosophies contains the entirety of the esoteric doctrine, but usually expressed in exoteric form.

However, no one of these world religions or world philosophies gives in clear and explicit shape or form the entirety of the body of teachings which are at its heart; some religions emphasize one or more of such fundamental principles; another religion or philosophy will emphasize others of these principles; in either case others again of the principles remaining in the background. This readily accounts for the fact that the various world religions and world philosophies vary among themselves and often, to the unreflecting mind, superficially seem to have little in common, and perhaps even to be contradictory. The cause of this is the varying manner in which each such religion or philosophy has been given to the world, the form that each took having been best for the period in which it was promulgated. Each such religion or philosophy, having its own racial sphere and period of time, represents the various human minds who have developed it or who, so to say, have translated it to the world in this or in that particular promulgation.

These manners or mannerisms of exoteric thinking we may discard if we wish; but it is the fundamental principles behind every great religion or great philosophy which in their aggregate are the universal esoteric doctrine. In this universal esoteric doctrine lies the mystery-field of each great religion or philosophy  - this mystery-teaching being always reserved for the initiates. The esoteric philosophy or doctrine has been held from time immemorial in the guardianship of great men, exalted seers and sages, who from time to time promulgate it, or rather portions of it, to the world when the spiritual and intellectual need for so doing arises. The origins of the esoteric doctrine are found in the mystery-teachings of beings from other and spiritual spheres, who incarnated in the early humanity of the third root-race of this fourth round of our globe, and taught the then intellectually nascent mankind the necessary certain fundamental principles or truths regarding the universe and the nature of the world surrounding us.

See also: Esoteric Doctrine , Mysticism, Body Mind and Soul

A Theosophical definition of Elemental (Elementals) :

Elemental (Elementals)

Nature-spirits or sprites. The theosophical usage, however, means beings who are beginning a course of evolutionary growth, and who thus are in the elemental states of their growth. It is a generalizing term for purposes of convenient expression for all beings evolutionally below the minerals. Nevertheless, the minerals themselves are expressions of one family or host or hierarchy of elemental beings of a more evolved type.

The vegetable kingdom likewise manifests merely one family or host of elemental beings happening to be in the vegetable phase of their evolution on this earth. Just so likewise is it as regards the beasts. The beasts are highly evolved elemental beings, relatively speaking. Men in far distant aeons of the kosmic past were elemental beings also. We have evolved from that elemental stage into becoming men, expressing with more or less ease, mostly very feebly, the innate divine powers and faculties locked up in the core of the core of each one of us.

An elemental is a being who has entered our universe on the lowest plane or in the lowest world, degree, or step on the rising stairway of life; and this stairway of life begins in any universe at its lowest stage, and ends for that universe in its highest stage  - the universal kosmic spirit. Thus the elemental passes from the elemental stage through all the realms of being as it rises along the stairway of life, passing through the human stage, becoming superhuman, quasi-divine  - a quasi-god  - then becoming a god. Thus did we humans first enter this present universe.

Every race of men on earth has believed in these hosts of elemental entities  - some visible, like men, like the beasts, like the animate plants; and others invisible. The invisible entities have been called by various names: fairies, sprites, hobgoblins, elves, brownies, pixies, nixies, leprechauns, trolls, kobolds, goblins, banshees, fawns, devs, jinn, satyrs, and so forth.

The medieval mystics taught that these elemental beings were of four general kinds:

1. those arising in and frequenting the element of fire  - salamanders;
2. those arising in and frequenting the element air  - sylphs;
3. those arising in and frequenting the element water  - undines;
4. those arising in and frequenting the element earth  - gnomes.

See also: Elemental (Elementals) , Mysticism, Body Mind and Soul

A Theosophical definition of Akasa :

Akasa

(Sanskrit) The word means "brilliant," "shining," "luminous." The fifth kosmic element, the fifth essence or "quintessence," called Aether by the ancient Stoics; but it is not the ether of science. The ether of science is merely one of its lower elements. In the Brahmanical scriptures akasa is used for what the northern Buddhists call svabhavat, more mystically Adi-buddhi  - "primeval buddhi''; it is also mulaprakriti, the kosmical spirit-substance, the reservoir of Being and of beings. The Hebrew Old Testament refers to it as the kosmic "waters." It is universal substantial space; also mystically Alaya. (See also Mulaprakriti, Alaya)

See also: Akasa , Mysticism, Body Mind and Soul