A Wisdom Archive on People

The Early Middle Ages (AD 400 to 1450) saw a decline in awareness of classical culture. During this time, the only repositories of knowledge and records of early history was the Roman Catholic Church. Hermits, monks and priests used this historic period to write the first modern biographies. Their subjects were usually restricted to church fathers, martyrs, popes and saints. Their works were meant to be inspirational to people, vehicles for conversion to Christianity. See hagiography. One significant example of biography from this period which does not exactly fit into that mold is the life of Charle ...

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Alaparus (Chald.). The second divine king of Babylonia who reigned.. "three Sari". The first king of the divine Dynasty was Alorus according to Berosus. He was "the appointed Shepherd of the people" and reigned ten Sari (or 36,000 years, a Saros being 3,600 years).

 
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Votan A legislator and deified hero of ancient America, regarded as the traditional founder of culture in Central America. The traditions of the people as recorded by Abbe Brasseur de Bourbourg tell that he came across the waters in large ships, he and his companions wearing long flowing garments and speaking a language akin to the Nahuatl -- which is similar to the story told about Quetzalcoatl.
 
He found the people of Central America, from Darien to California, in a barbarous condition, living in rude huts or caverns, using skins of beasts for clothing. Votan instructed the people in the sciences and arts, such as in the use of agriculture and the art of weaving; established forms of government; and taught them the truth about the gods and their supreme head called the god of truth, who was at first worshiped without temples and without altars. According to legend he founded the city of Palenque, said to be the oldest city in Central America.
 
Votan is "probably the same as Quetzal-Coatl; a 'son of the snakes,' one admitted 'to the snake's hole,' which means an Adept admitted to the Initiation in the secret chamber of the Temple" (TG 366).

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

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Vril A tremendous magical force wielded by people in The Coming Race, a posthumous novel by Bulwer-Lytton. Blavatsky compared it with the Atlantean Mash-Mak, the vibratory force of J. W. Keely, the power of sound, Eliphas Levi''s astral light, akasa, etc.

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

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Yellow-faced Used in an archaic commentary on the Book of Dzyan (q SD 2:427-8), referring to people on Atlantis, the continent of the fourth root-race, who remained true to their teachers, in contradistinction to the Black-faced -- those who followed their sorcerer-leaders in practices of black magic -- who were engulfed in the cataclysm which submerged Atlantis. The Yellow-faced, the ancestors of the succeeding fifth root-race, were led to safety by their teachers, the Sons of Wisdom. Thus the fifth root-race -- sometimes referred to as Aryans because the Aryan Hindus are the descendants of the first subrace of the fifth root-race -- are said to be the descendants of "the yellow Adams, the gigantic and highly civilized Atlanto-Aryan race"; "they ''of the yellow hue'' are the forefathers of those whom Ethnology now classes as the Turanians, the Mongols, Chinese and other ancient nations; and the land they fled to was no other than Central Asia. There entire new races were born; there they lived and died until the separation of the nations. . . . Nearly two-thirds of one million years have elapsed since that period" (SD 2:426, 425).
 
The foregoing does not mean that the modern Chinese, for instance, are the first subrace of the fifth root-race; for actually the true Chinese are the remains existing today of the last or seventh subrace of the fourth root-race, although indeed, due to many millennia of intermarriage with more truly Aryan stocks, the Chinese today are to be classed as part of the fifth root-race.
 
There is an old legend prevalent among many peoples that the color of human skin changes from light to dark as the ages slowly pass by: the legend stating that the first in any new great racial group or stock is light-colored or moon-colored, slowly changing to a more ruddy shade verging into cream or yellow, becoming gradually brown and darker brown, and ending with chocolate or what is called black. Yet the meaning is not that every race runs through these changing tints from light to dark during the course of its evolution, but that the different minor racial groupings, appearing each in its day during the course of the slow evolution of a root-race, gradually range from the root-race''s beginning from the light, and passing gradually through the different stages to the chocolate. Nor is it again to be understood that theosophy teaches that all mankind sprang either from an original pair, as metaphorically taught in the Bible, but that in the beginnings of time seven primary seed-groupings appeared on earth from inner realms, each with its own tint or color as we would now say, and each of the seven having its own karmically defined position on the ladder of evolution.
 
The Negroes or people of chocolate-tinted skin are nevertheless not to be understood as being the seventh or last subrace of the fourth root-race, for the Chinese were these last. The chocolate-skinned men arose as a racial group at the very close of the Atlantean cycle, and are thus racially not degenerated from a previous higher evolutionary state, but are a human seed-stock born at the end of Atlantean development, destined in time through racial miscegenation to be one of the racial contributories to the humanity of the future.
 
See also YELLOW RACE

 
(See also: Yellow-faced, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Body mind and Soul )

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West The forces of the four cardinal points have each a distinct occult property, and are ruled over by the four regents.
 
Blavatsky states that there is occult philosophy in the early Christian doctrine, echoes of which still linger in both the Orthodox Greek and the Roman Catholic Churches, that public calamities are due to invisible messengers from the north and west, and particularly from the west, the conjunction of the two points being combined in the northwest (SD 1:123).
 
Most good, on the other hand, flows forth from the north and east. The Egyptian goddess Hathor is spoken of as the infernal Isis, the goddess preeminently of the west or nether world. East and west are not localities but directions, and when used in reference to localities the meaning is purely relative. Good and evil, too, are relative terms as experienced by human beings, for such messengers and influences are in all cases strictly karmic agents; and often what people in their blindness and weakness think a calamity or misfortune may indeed be a blessing in disguise.
 
See also CARDINAL POINTS

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

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Atarpi (Chald.), or Atarpi-nisi, the "man". A personage who was "pious to the gods"; and who prayed the god Hea to remove the evil of drought and other things before the Deluge is sent. The story is found on one of the most ancient Babylonian tablets, and relates to the sin of the world. In the words of G. Smith "the god Elu or Bel calls together an assembly of the gods, his sons, and relates to them that he is angry at the sin of the world"; and in the fragmentary phrases of the tablet: " . . . . I made them . . . . Their wickedness I am angry at, their punishment shall not be small . . . . let food be exhausted, above let Vul drink up his rain", etc., etc. In answer to Atarpi’s prayer the god Hea announces his resolve to destroy the people he created, which he does finally by a deluge.

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

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Yezidis (Arabic) [possibly from Persian yazdan god; or the 2nd `Omayyad Caliph, Yezid (720-4); or Persian city Yezd]
 
A sect dwelling principally in Kurdistan, Armenia, and the Caucasus, who call themselves Dasni. Their religious beliefs take on the characteristics of their surrounding peoples, inasmuch as, openly or publicly, they regard Mohammed as a prophet, and Jesus Christ as an angel in human form. Points of resemblance are found with ancient Zoroastrian and Assyrian religion. The principal feature of their worship, however, is Satan under the name of Muluk-Taus. However, it is not the Christian Satan, nor the devil in any form; their Muluk-Taus is the hundred- or thousand-eyed cosmic wisdom, pictured as a bird.

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

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Vishnu-Purana Visnu-Purana (Sanskrit) One of the most celebrated of the 18 principal Puranas, conforming more than any other to the definition of pancha-lakshana (five distinguishing marks) assigned as being the character of a complete Purana by Amara-Simha, an ancient Sanskrit lexicographer. It consists of six books: the first treats of the creation of the universe from cosmic prakriti, and the peopling of the world by the prajapatis or spiritual ancestors; the second book gives a list of kings with many geographical and astronomical details; the third treats of the Vedas and caste; the fourth continues the chronicle of dynasties; the fifth gives the life of Krishna; and the sixth book describes the dissolution of the world, and the future re-issuing of the world after pralaya.

 
(See also: Vishnu-Purana, Visnu-Purana, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Body mind and Soul )

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Zartaoth (Chaldean) Also `Onioth. The mule or ass; in the Chaldean system, one of the hierarchies of nature powers. In addition to Zartaoth, there were Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, Thantabaoth, etc. (cf SD 2:115n), all names of the genii presiding over the constellations and therefore by influence over the planets, according to the astrological and astrolatrical systems of the ancient Shemitic peoples.

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

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Atlantide (Ancient Greek) The ancestors of the Pharaohs and the forefathers of the Egyptians, according to some, and as the Esoteric Science teaches. (See S.D., Vol. II., and Esoteric Buddhism.) Plato heard of this highly civilized people, the last remnant of which was submerged 9,000 years before his day, from Solon, who had it from the High Priests of Egypt. Voltaire, the eternal scoffer, was right in stating that "the Atlantide (our fourth Root Race) made their appearance in Egypt It was in Syria and in Phrygia, as well as Egypt, that they established the worship of the Sun." Occult philosophy teaches that the Egyptians were a remnant of the last Aryan Atlantide.

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

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