Introduction and links to related topics Below are some short introductions. Click on the blue hyperlinked word to get more related articles.
Race - Race, Races During evolution on each of the globes of the earth-chain, the human life-wave passes through seven evolutionary stages called root-races, of which we are at present in the fifth root-race of the fourth round on the fourth globe. Each root-race is divided into seven subraces, of which we are now in the fourth of the fifth root-race.
These subraces are themselves subdivided into smaller divisions, and these again into still smaller racial units. G. de Purucker divides each root-race into:
primary subrace;
secondary subrace;
family race;
national race;
tribal race;
tribal generation; and
individual man (about 72 years) -- each division containing seven of the succeeding type.
Each root-race reaches its evolutionary maximum at its midpoint, when a racial cataclysm occurs and the race begins to decline. At the same time the seeds of the succeeding root-race appear, and the new root-race in its infancy begins to run parallel with the race that is declining, so that there is continual overlapping.
The complex scheme of major races and their subdivisions -- overlapping each other and in various stages of their evolution, intermingling and crossing with one another -- gives rise to the immense variety of types which we see on earth today.
See also ROOT-RACE(S)
Race - Technically speaking, each of the five races of man (Caucasoid, Congoid, Mongoloid, Australoid and Capoid) is a Homo sapiens subspecies.
A subspecies is a branch showing slight but significant differences from another branch living in a different area. Few traits are unique to any one race. It is the combination of several traits that indicate racial identity. Accurate race determination can be made by blood analysis or by measuring and comparing certain body dimensions. Ninety-eight percent of all Hindus belong to the Caucasoid race. There are also large numbers of Hindu Mongoloids in Nepal and Assam and some Australoids, such as the Gond and Bhil tribes of India.
North and South Indians are among Earth''s 2.5 billion Caucasoids, whose traits include straight to wavy hair, thin lips, small to medium teeth, blue to dark brown eyes and a high incident of A2-Rh and Gm blood genes. Skin color, often erroneously attached to the idea of race, is now known to be adaptation to climate: over generations, people in northern climates have developed lighter complexions than their southern brothers.
Race-buddha - Race-Buddha, Racial Buddha On each globe of a planetary chain, as the life-wave touches it in a round, there appears a mahabuddha; and another mahabuddha appears when the life-wave leaves the globe after completing its round.
For each root-race during such a globe-round there appears a racial buddha, each of these being one of seven rays from the mahabuddha who appears at the opening of the round. At the middle of the root-race the racial buddha pertaining to it overshadows a human vessel and a manushya-buddha is born -- the latest of these known in history being Sakyamuni or Gautama.
The appearance of these buddhas, particularly of the mahabuddhas, is identic in more than one way with the appearances of the manus, whether of a round, a globe, or indeed a race. A manu opening the drama of life is called the root-manu, and the manu ending the drama for whatever period it may be is called the seed-manu.
See also MAITREYA-BUDDHA; MANUSHA-BUDDHA
Yellow Race - Yellow Race, Yellow Races The intermingling of races is very complicated, and has been an ethnological fact for almost innumerable millennia in the past, so that we can only use the term in the plural and say yellow races, in reference to peoples in which a yellow or near-yellow skin is predominant and characteristic.
Even during the fourth root-race on Atlantis "there were brown, red, yellow, white and black Atlanteans," "who represented several humanities, and almost a countless number of races and nations"; "The present yellow races are the descendants, however, of the early branches of the Fourth Race" (SD 2:433; 199). Certain European ethnologists say that three fundamental colors enter into the human complexion -- red, yellow, and black -- and that these mingle in various proportions, giving the numerous other shades.
The first physical or "solid" race (in contradistinction to the previous ethereal or astral races) appeared after the middle of the third root-race after the fall into generation. In its very beginnings, its color was light yellow or golden cream. This race gave birth to the fourth, and Siva transformed that part of humanity which became black with sin into red-yellow, whose descendants are Amerindians and Mongolians; and finally into brown-white races, which together with the yellow races, form the great bulk of present humanity (SD 2:250).
Moon-colored Races - Moon-colored Races Four principal racial colors are enumerated in the Stanzas of Dzyan: moon-colored (yellow-white), yellow like gold, red, and brown or black. The subraces of the fourth root-race had these colors in serial order, and every root-race repeats the sequence in its own time period. In one allegory, Siva as Svetalohita, a root-kumara, goes through these (and other unmentioned) transformations of color. The moon-colored race disappeared entirely when the present fifth root-race appeared.
Sixth Race - Sixth Race, Sixth Root-race.
See ROOT-RACE, SIXTH ROOT-RACE
Boneless Race - Boneless Race. See ROOT-RACE, SECOND
Seventh Race - Seventh Race, Seventh Root-race.
See ROOT-RACE, SEVENTH
Lunar Race - Lunar Race. See CHANDRA-VANSA
Family Race - Family Race In theosophy, each of the main seven racial cycles is first divided into seven primary subraces, each of which is again divided into seven secondary or sub-subraces, each of which latter is divided into seven so-called family races. The period of such a family race is generally given as that of the precessional cycle (25,920 years).
Prehuman Races - Prehuman Races In a physical sense, the races from the first root-race to about the middle of the third, before man had a physical form similar to his present one; these races may be called prehuman since they were astral or semi-astral or ethereal.
Again, it may refer to abortive attempts to produce beings on their way to future humanity. In another and far higher sense the prehuman races are the seeds of future humanity, these seeds being really lofty spiritual intellectual beings who had been men in a previous manvantara. These seeds have been called Sons of God, mind-born progeny of Brahma, rishis, prajapatis, manus, etc.
The Bible speaks of there having been giants in an early period in the earth''s history, and theology speaks of these as pre-Adamite races.
National Race - National Race {GdeP}
Solar Race - Solar Race.
See SURYAVANSA
Fourth Race - Fourth Race. See ROOT-RACE, FOURTH
Second Race - Second Race.
See ROOT-RACE, SECOND
Tribal Race - Tribal Race, Tribal Generation.
See RACE(S)
Hamitic Races - Hamitic Races Generally speaking, the races or tribes which are supposed to have been descended from Ham, one of the sons of Noah according to Biblical legend. Now used by scholars chiefly in a philological sense, referring to a class of languages represented principally by the ancient Egyptian, and its greatly modified modern descendant Coptic; the Libyan or Berber languages of Northern Africa; and the Ethiopic languages of Eastern Africa.
Chenresi - Chenresi spyan ras gzigs (chen-re-zi, or chen-re-si) (Tibetan) (short for spyan ras gzigs dbang phyug (chen-re-zi-wang-chung) from spyan ras penetrating vision (cf Sanskrit avalokita) + gzigs forms (cf Sanskrit rupa) + dbang phyug lord (cf Sanskrit isvara))
The Lord who sees forms with his penetrating vision; translation of Sanskrit Avalokitesvara. Exoterically Chenresi is the greatest protector of Asia in general and Tibet in particular, mystically considered to have eleven heads and a thousand arms, each with an eye in the palm of the hand, these arms radiating from his body like a forest of rays: the thousand eyes representing him as on the outlook to discover distress and to succor the troubled. In this form his name is Chantong (he of the thousand eyes) and Jigtengonpo (protector and savior against evil).
"Even the exoteric appearance of Dhyani Chenresi is suggestive of the esoteric teaching. He is evidently, like Daksha, the synthesis of all the preceding Races and the progenitor of all the human Races after the Third, the first complete one, and thus is represented as the culmination of the four primeval races in his eleven-faced form. It is a column built in four rows, each series having three faces or heads of different complexions: the three faces for each race being typical of its three fundamental physiological transformations. The first is white (moon-coloured); the second is yellow, the third, red-brown; the fourth, in which are only two faces -- the third face being left a blank -- (a reference to the untimely end of the Atlanteans) is brown-black. Padmapani (Daksha) is seated on the column, and forms the apex" (SD 2:178).
Exoterically the Dalai Lama is often regarded as an incarnation of Chenresi, as a popular legend says that whenever faith begins to die out in the world, Padmapani-Chenresi emits a brilliant ray of light, and forthwith incarnates himself in one of the two great Lamas -- the Dalai and Tashi Lamas. Esoterically he is called Bodhisattva Chenresi Vanchug (the powerful and all-seeing). Chenresi or Avalokitesvara "is the great Logos in its higher aspect and in the divine regions. But in the manifested planes, he is, like Daksha, the progenitor (in a spiritual sense) of men" (ibid.). In China, Chenresi becomes the great goddess of mercy, Kwan-yin, represented by a female figure bearing a child in her arms.
The true significance of Chenresi is the Third Logos of our solar system and the buddhi-manas of the individual human being, the active aspect of the human spiritual monad. The efflux or influence emanating from Chenresi and permeating the lower parts of the human constitution is Padmapani (the lotus-handed); Padmapani therefore is the bodhisattva of Avalokitesvara or Chenresi, and whether cosmically or psychologically the equivalent of the manifested potency of Brahma.
Arya - Arya (Sanskrit) (from the verbal root ri to rise, tend upward)
Holy, hallowed, highly evolved or especially trained; a title of the Hindu rishis. Originally a term of ethical as well as intellectual and spiritual excellence, belonging to those who had completely mastered the aryasatyani (holy truths) and who had entered upon the aryamarga (path leading to moksha or nirvana).
It was originally applicable only to the initiates or adepts of the ancient Aryan peoples, but today Aryan has become the name of a race of the human family in its various branches. All ancient peoples had their own term for initiates or adepts, as for instance among the ancient Hebrews the generic name Israel, or Sons of Israel.
Also applied as a title by the ancient Hindus to themselves in distinction from the peoples whom they had conquered.
Ida - Ida or Ila (Sanskrit) Refreshment, flow; the goddess of sacred speech, similar to Vach; in the Rig-Veda called the instructress of Manu, instituting the rules for the performing of sacrifices. The Satapatha-Brahmana represents Ida as arising from a sacrifice which Manu had performed for the purpose of obtaining offspring.
Although claimed by the gods Mitra and Varuna, she became the wife of Manu, giving birth to the race of manus. In the Puranas, she is daughter of Vaivasvata-Manu, wife of Budha (wisdom), and mother of Pururavas. In some accounts she is born a woman, becomes a man named Sudyumna, then rebecomes a woman before finally becoming a man again. This refers to the androgynous third root-race, as well as to the later part of the second root-race.
"In their most mystical meaning, the union of Swayambhuva Manu with Vach-Sata-Rupa, his own daughter (this being the first 'euhemerization' of the dual principle of which Vaivasvata Manu and Ila are a secondary and a third form), stands in Cosmic symbolism as the Root-life, the germ from which spring all the Solar Systems, the worlds, angels and the gods" (SD 2:148).
See also ILA
Elysian Fields - Elysian Fields, Elysium (Greek) Originally in Greek mythology, beautiful meadows or plains, or islands of the blest, located in the far west by the banks of Ocean.
There certain heroes of the fourth race who never experienced death were said to dwell in perfect happiness ruled by Rhadamanthus. The titans after being reconciled with Zeus also lived there under the rule of Kronos. Pindar holds that all who have passed blamelessly through life three times live there in bliss. Later, Elysium was located in the underworld as the abode of those whom the judges of the dead found worthy. The river Lethe (forgetfulness) flowed by the Elysian Fields.
See also AANROO; DEVACHAN; HADES ()
Ymir - The primeval being of Scandinavian mythology, father of all the giants. He was nourished by the four milky streams, which flowed from the cow Audhumla. The sons of Bor - Odin, Vili and Ve - slew Ymir and all the frost giants were drowned in his blood, which formed the world's lakes and seas. His bones and flesh became the mountains and the land, and his skull became the vault of heaven. A race of dwarfs grew within his carcass.
Son Of Man - Son of Man Frequently used in Ezekiel, applied to Ezekiel himself as a seer, by the voice of the Lord addressing him. Also used in the New Testament by Jesus, applied to himself. Of Qabbalistic origin, it refers not only to the cosmic Heavenly Man ('Adam Qadmon), but also to an initiated human being, because of springing forth like a fine evolutionary flower from the human stem.
Jesus makes a distinction between God and the Holy Ghost on the one hand, and himself on the other: he is not a god, he is a son of man. "Whosoever speaketh a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him; but whosoever speaketh against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him" (Matthew 12:32; cf Revelation 1:13).
In its cosmic mythical sense it is the equivalent of the first Manu of the Hindus, or Fetahil of the Gnostics. In several systems man as a race was regarded as the Third Logos: the monad, having attained the human stage of intellectual and spiritual self-consciousness, racially is the representation of the manifest or Third Logos on this earth (SD 2:25).
Ash Yggdrasil - Ash Yggdrasil (Scandianvian Norse). The "Mundane Tree", the Symbol of the World with the old Norsemen, the "tree of the universe, of time and of life". It is ever green, for the Norns of Fate sprinkle It daily with the water of life from the fountain of Urd, which flows in Midgard. The dragon Nidhogg gnaws its roots incessantly, the dragon of Evil and Sin; but the Ash Yggdrasil cannot wither, until the Last Battle (the Seventh Race in the Seventh Round) is fought, when life, time, and the world will all vanish and disappear.
Seventh Root-race - Seventh Root-race The seventh and last root-race of any round on any globe of a planetary chain. Reference is nearly always to the seventh root-race of the fourth round on globe D of the earth-chain.
It characteristics are analogous on a smaller scale to those of the seventh round, modified by the fact that it belongs to the fourth round. There is a return to conditions of purity which prevailed at the beginning of the round; but this return does not mean a going backward but an emanative evolutionary unfolding to the point where the cyclic motion brings all things back to the same plane, but on a higher subdivision.
The great adepts and initiates -- referring here specifically to the seventh root-race on globe D of the fourth round -- will once more produce mind-born sons immaculately, and there will be a race of buddhas, sons of god, the purity of the krita-age being reestablished (SD 2:274, 483). The invisible north polar continent will once more become visible, and the bodhisattva Maitreya will appear (SD 1:328, 470). A seventh element will appear as a presentment, not however to be fully manifested until the seventh round. In this race some of the greatest adepts will return.
Sight - Sight Among the elements, correlated with fire or light. Like the other senses it has its spiritual originant which expresses itself through its several forms, corresponding to the different planes.
The organ of spiritual vision in the human body is the third eye. Some of the Atlantean magicians and initiates had this inner sight, which was even in their material race highly developed, so that their vision could pass any distance and penetrate opaque bodies.
In the order of evolution of the physical senses and their organs, sight comes third, and was evolved as a physical sense towards the end of the third root-race, though existing in rudimentary form in the preceding root-race. The third eye was once external and an organ of physical vision, but retreated inwards when it was replaced by the two eyes as at present functioning; the third eye has now become the pineal gland.
Devapi - Devapi (Sanskrit). A Sanskrit Sage of the race of Kuru, who, together with another Sage (Moru), is supposed to live throughout the four ages and until the coming of Maitreya Buddha, or Kalki (the last Avatar of Vishnu) ; who, like all the Saviours of the World in their last appearance, like Sosiosh of the Zoroastrians and the Rider of St. Johns Revelation, will appear seated on a White Horse. The two, Devapi and Moru, are supposed to live in a Himalayan retreat called Kalapa or Katapa. This is a Puranic allegory.
Sibac - Sibac (Quiche). The reed from the pith of which the third race of men was created, according to the scripture of the Guatemalians, called the Popol Vuh.
Rephaim - Rephaim repha'im (Hebrew) The sons of Raphah, a Canaanite race of giants; also the weak ones, shades or specters, the quiet and wan inhabitants of Hades or the Underworld, which were nevertheless considered beings of gigantic size, and hence the collocation of the meanings of gigantic magnitude coupled with intrinsic weakness. This last refers to the phantom or astral races of early mankind: the first, second, and early third root-races before they were illuminated and inspired by the manasaputric descent (SD 2:279).
The passage in Job (26:5) translated "Dead things are formed from under the waters, and the inhabitants thereof," should be "dead rephaim."
Ask - Ask (Scandinavian) Askr (Icelandic) Ash tree; in Norse myths the first humanity was fashioned by the three creative gods using Askr and Embla (the ash and, probably, the alder) as a physical basis. Allfather Odin and his two brothers endow these vegetative beings with spirit, mind, and desire coupled with will.
The universe is depicted as an ash tree, Yggdrasil, within which every lesser being is an ash tree in its own right. A Tree of Life is part of the traditions in every part of the world. "The Norse Ask, the Hesiodic Ash-tree, whence issued the men of the generation of bronze, the Third Root-Race, and the Tzite tree of the Popol-Vuh, out of which the Mexican third race of men was created, are all one" (SD 2:97).
The Norse tree of life is said to be rooted in the divine "ground" and to spread through the shelves of space, bearing living worlds upon its branches. Where the ash tree refers to humanity on earth it is the subject of the tale called "Askungen" (ash child or Cinderella), using an intricate play on words.
See also YGGDRASIL
Second Continent - Second Continent Used in The Secret Doctrine to signify the land mass or configuration of our earth-globe during the second root-race, as each root-race is said to have a continent or group of land masses for the scene of its life history.
"The ever-blooming lands of the Second Continent (Greenland, among others) were transformed, in order, from Edens with their eternal spring, into hyperborean Hades. This transformation was due to the displacement of the great waters of the globe, to oceans changing their beds; and the bulk of the Second Race perished in this first great throe of the evolution and consolidation of the globe during the human period" (SD 2:138).
Also called the Hyperborean continent.
See ROOT-RACE, SECOND
Sabean - Sabean, Sabaean, Sabian, Sabianism [from Hebrew tsaba host, army, celestial hosts]
A name given by the Shemitic peoples to those who worship the spiritual beings in the universe; and because the celestial bodies were the most evident manifestations of some classes of these spiritual beings, this religion naturally became confused with the worship of the celestial bodies themselves as the dwellings or mansions of the regents above, in, and behind the visible orbs. Hence the Sabeans were called astrolaters or star-worshipers; but it was not the physical bodies of the celestial orbs which were worshiped, but the spiritual entities, powers, or spirits which ensouled these orbs. This was one of the very archaic religions of the human race, found all over the globe in various forms; and in its origins Sabianism was undoubtedly an outpouring of occult teaching from the archaic Mysteries.
The word Sabean itself has come down to us mainly through Greek and Latin writers, but so thoroughly imbued were the ancient Hebrews with this idea of the celestial hosts or cosmic spirits that the Bible is full of references where the context even wrongly endows the celestial hosts with the properties of the Most High God, and it has been so understood by Christian theologians; forgetting, however, that manifested deities, however high, are but the manifestations of the infinite and ineffable Mystery or parabrahman, from which all the celestial hosts flow or emanate. Thus not only ancient and modern Judaism, but Christianity itself, is filled with the thought of the ancient Sabeans.
Sabeanism was unquestionably the main religious belief of the ancient Chaldeans and Assyrians, but likewise the very foundation stone of practically all the great religions of all the great peoples of the past. Upon the authority of the Jewish scholar Maimonides, scholars have considered the Sabeans as an ancient race whose principal religion was that of star-worship and closely affiliated with the Babylonians and Syrians. But the Sabeans were not a race, but those who followed and practiced the divine astrological astrolatry of the hoariest antiquity. Mohammed in the Koran mentions a sect between the Jews and Christians called Sabi una -- to whom certain privileges were granted; older Moslem theologians were agreed that the Sabeans possessed manuscripts which they regarded in the light of a revelation, and the Mandeans came under the same protection granted to the Sabeans; hence the Mandeans also came to be regarded as Sabeans. Another sect of polytheists, the Harranians (830 AD), also affiliated with the Sabeans and shielded themselves under the same privileges; they were a remnant of a Mesopotamian cult, and star-worship had a prominent place in their system.
Certain Arabian writers termed the Sabean language the science of astronomy, but what we now call astronomy was but a minor portion of ancient astrolatry; they also state that Seth or Set was the founder of Sabeanism, and that the pyramids were regarded as the place of sepulture of Seth or Agathodaimon. We see here confusion, reductions of general principles to details, and anthropomorphizations of cosmic principles. Hermes is in many senses the same as Seth, and the pyramids were consecrated to the regents of the stars, rather than to the orbs (SD 2:362).
Vaivaswata - Vaivaswata (Sanskrit). The name of the Seventh Manu, the forefather of the post-diluvian race, or our own fifth humankind. A reputed son of Surya (the Sun), he became, after having been saved in an ark (built by the order of Vishnu) from the Deluge, the father of Ikshwaku, the founder of the solar race of kings.
(See "Suryavansa".)
Samba - Samba or Samba (Sanskrit) The reputed son of Krishna by Jambavati. According to esoteric tradition Krishna had no son; therefore Samba is symbolic of some power attained by Krishna. Through a curse of some holy sages, Samba was condemned to produce offspring in the shape of a terrific iron club for the destruction of the race of Yadu. Samba accordingly brought forth as iron club which was pounded and cast into the sea. But one piece which could not be crushed was subsequently found in the belly of a fish, and was used to tip an arrow used by the hunter Jaras (old age) to unintentionally kill Krishna. Thus old age finally overtakes and gathers in all things; and our future karma flows forth from our emotional and mental offspring, and sooner or later overtakes us all through time or old age. The iron club may represent the blows of destiny, based upon the kama of which iron is often a symbol; we may attempt to destroy the effects of our feelings and thoughts, but always there will be one little portion which cannot be crushed, and which is the seed of the future destiny, at least of our lower self.
Raumasa - Raumasa (Sanskrit). A class of devas (gods) said to have originated from the pores of Verabhadra’s skin. An allusion to the pre-Adamic race called the "sweat-born". (Secret Doctrine, Vol. II.)
Jotun - Race of giants or gods who came before the Aesir and the Vanir. They can be compared roughly to the titans of Greek mythology.
Pramlocha Pramloca - Pramlocha pramloca (Sanskrit) [from pra forth + the verbal root mluch to go]
One sent forth; one of the apsarasas or celestial nymphs sent on earth by Kamadeva or Indra to tempt the sage Kandu from his devotions and austerities. She succeeded in her unholy purpose, and according to the account stayed with him 907 years six months and three days, which were to the sage as one day. After this she flew away, wiping the perspiration from her body with the leaves of the tress as she passed through the air.
The child she had conceived by the rishi came forth from the pores of her skin in drops of perspiration: the trees received the living dews, the winds collected them into one mass, Soma (the moon) matured them till they became the lovely girl Marisha. This story is an allegory founded on the physical mode of procreation of the second root-race or sweat-born.
"Pramlocha is the Hindu Lilith of the Aryan Adam; and Marisha, the daughter born of the perspiration of her pores, is the 'sweat-born,' and stands as a symbol for the Second Race of Mankind." The figures 907 years six months and three days are but the "exoteric figures given in a purposely reversed and distorted way, being the figure of the duration of the cycle between the first and second human race." The allegory "shows the psychic element developing the physiological, before the birth of Daksha, the progenitor of real physical men, made to be born from Marisha and before whose time living beings and men were procreated 'by the will, by sight, by touch and by Yoga' . . ." (SD 2:175-6).
Sons Of Will And Yoga - Sons of Will and Yoga Applied to the androgynous third root-race, before the separation of the sexes, which created by kriyasakti the Sons of Will and Yoga -- the ancestors or spiritual forefathers of all subsequent arhats and mahatmas.
After the separation of the sexes, they were invited to multiply as the rest of humanity did, but the Sons of Will and Yoga refused to do so until the seventh root-race, when humanity will once more have acquired the power of spiritual-intellectual or immaculate reproduction. In another sense they are the nagas or good serpents, and mythology recounts the struggles which took place when the Sons of Will and Yoga, together with the last "unfallen" remnants of the third root-race, warred against the "fallen" Atlantean sorcerers sunken in the beguilements and illusion of gross material existence. They took refuge from the great cataclysm which brought about the end of the Atlantean continental system, in the "Sacred Island" in Central Asia, whose site is now hid in mystery and surrounded by immense desert wastes.
The Sons of Will and Yoga is also a title given in any root-race to those who carry on the original divine archaic tradition from age to age -- the initiates of every race who thus form a group set apart, originating during the third root-race and continuing as a body of more or less steadily increasing numbers into our own day.
Swastika - Religious symbol found in Europe, Asia & America. Trevor Ravenscroft: "(In Atlantis) under the symbol of
the sun wheel or four-armed swastika,' the new (Aryan) Initiates took over the leadership of the race and became the mediators between the masses ... and the unseen higher powers. They taught a new religion ... (and) the Aryan peoples were led out of Atlantis by the great Manu, the last of the Sons of God or Supermen." In Hinduism the swastika signifies the two forms of Brahma, when clockwise, Pravritti, the universe flowing outward, when counter-clockwise (as in the German version), Nirvritti, the involution
of the universe. The "good" swastika is the fiery cross used by the original fire-priests of Persia. Its left
arm goes up in receptivity and its right arm down in blessing; this the creative fire of the 3rd Logos, or Holy Spirit.
It has been pointed out that although there are two directions for the swastika -- one pointing in one direction for the Nazis, the other in the opposite direction -- both are now considered Nazi emblems.
Polygenesis - Polygenesis Used in biology and anthropology, meaning arising from many germs or roots; opposed to monogenesis, arising from a single germ or root, although the two theories can be complementary.
The human race is distinctly polygenetic inasmuch as it was born from seven different psychomaterial foci on seven different centers of the earth; and mankind did not spring from an actual single couple.
Yet it is equally true that mankind is one in origin, all its creators being spiritual beings, working on us and upon lower beings of a psychomaterial nature (SD 2:249, 610). Regarding the evolution of races, differentiation has existed for long ages; yet go far enough towards the origin, and polygenesis merges into a fundamental spiritual unity.
Induvansa - Induvansa, Induvamsa (Sanskrit) (from indu moon + vansa race)
The lunar race or dynasty in ancient Hindu story.
See also CHANDRAVANSA
Ashmogh - Ashmogh (Pahlavi) Demon with disheveled hair of the race of wrath; Ahriman's disciple who encourages Azhi-Dahak (Bevar-Aspa) to rise up in order to destroy mankind and shouts: "Now it is nine thousand years that Fereydun is not living; why do you not rise up, although thy fetters are not removed, when this world is full of people and they have brought them the enclosure which Yima formed?" (SBE 5:234).
Also a dragon or serpent in the Avesta, described as a huge monster with a camel's neck, which after the Fall "lost its nature and its name"; similar to the flying camel of the Zohar -- the serpent used by Shamael to seduce Eve (SD 2:205).
See also Ashemogha
Spark - Spark, Sacred Used in the Stanzas of Dzyan in reference to the early history of the human race, and particularly to its intellectual evolution. It means the manas principle, which was awakened in man on this globe by the manasaputras at about the midpoint of the third root-race.
The fashioners of astral and physical man, the barhishad pitris, had brought the physical human being in evolutionary development to the point where mind could be contained and function therein: beings from an intellectual line of cosmic evolution, the manasaputras, awakened the intellectual spark in early humanity, and man thereafter became a reasoning, thinking, and intellectually and morally responsible entity.
Some races are said to be devoid of the sacred spark (SD 2:421), for they are still relatively unenlightened. Yet this condition is not radical but evolutionary only, for even these portions of the human race have intellect latent, though not evoked; indeed this last remark applies with equal truth to all the lower kingdoms of nature -- the animal, the vegetable, and the mineral.
See also FIRE, SACRED
Sephiroth - From the Sephiroth descend the four root races, each issuing from the one above it, the lower swallowing the higher: Atziluth -- the first and most spiritual race; Briah -- the second race composed of the servants of the first; Yetzirah, the third race (mankind being a fallen sub-race thereof) comprised of cherubim, seraphim, Lucifer, elohim and the sons of God. Finally, there is the fourth race, Assiah, containing the Atlanteans and the Qliphoth.
Incidentally, man, having sinned, is imprisoned in the material world with its eternal reincarnations as punishment until he manages to purify himself.
Sacrifice - Sacrifice The performance of sacred rites, but with the more restricted sense of ceremonies of invocation, communion, or propitiation between man and gods. Scholars, in studying these universal rites, are at a loss to find an essential significance by which to gather them all into one class, and as to which to include and which to exclude from such a class.
Sacrifices may take the form of a meal offered to the gods or shared with them, an oblation of first fruits of the harvest or flocks, or a propitiation or act of atonement. The Romans dedicated a portion of food or a libation to the lares or other deities; the Hebrews offered the first fruits of the harvest or the yearlings of the flock. The word also has the meaning of an act of self-dedication for a noble cause.
Christianity, in addition to a great many so-called pagan ideas, also inherited and adapted Jewish sacrificial ideas, but the word became limited to the sacrifice of Christ for the sins of the world, and the sacrifice by man of his personal desires to the behests of his divinity. The true origin of the Christian atonement is in the Mysteries, when the hierophant offered his pure and sinless life as a sacrifice for his race to the gods whom he hoped to rejoin (IU 2:42). The general sense in theosophy is that of sacrificing one's temporal interests to a lofty ideal.
Witches Sabbath - Witches’ Sabbath. The supposed festival and gathering of witches in some lonely spot, where the witches were accused of conferring directly with the Devil. Every race and people believed in it, and some believe in it still. Thus the chief headquarters and place of meeting of all the witches in Russia is said to be the Bald Mountain (Lyssaya Gora), near Kief, and in Germany the Brocken, in the Harz Mountains. In old Boston, U.S.A., they met near the "Devil’s Pond ", in a large forest which has now disappeared. At Salem, they were put to death almost at the will of the Church Elders, and in South Carolina a witch was burnt as late as 1865. In Germany and England they were murdered by Church and State in thousands, being forced to lie and confess under torture their participation in the " Witches’ Sabbath ".
Monkey - Monkey Any simian, but often restricted to the smaller, long-tailed simians, in contradistinction to apes. These monkeys according to occult history are descended from the offspring of unawakened human beings of the third root-race, who united with certain animals.
The larger anthropoid simians or apes were produced later by renewed intercourse between undeveloped Atlanteans and the then existing part-human, part-animal descendants of the creatures just described. Thus, in theosophical writings, a distinction is drawn between simians or true monkeys, and the anthropoids or true apes.
The earliest race of human beings on this earth, of the third root-race, presented an appearance which today would be called to a certain extent monkey-like, but not because they were monkeys or descended from simians, but because that was the appearance presented by early human bodies. The apes and monkeys being descended at different times from the human race as one side of their ancestry, naturally show somewhat of the physical characteristics of these early human parents of their own stock on one side.
See also ANTHROPOID
Speech - Speech The vocal expression of thought in language, which implies the existence of mind which has reached self-consciousness on this plane, was not fully developed in mankind until the fourth root-race.
The first root-race was devoid of mind on our plane; the second had a sound language of vowels, and its speech was largely onomatopoetic in character; the third developed in its beginning a speech which was little better than what are now known as animal sounds, but towards its end the first approximately fully developed human beings had monosyllabic speech, after the awakening of their minds by the manasaputras. Before that there was communication by what may be called thought-transference. After this monosyllabic speech, came the agglutinative, spoken by some Atlantean races, and then the inflectional language of the fifth root-race, represented by Sanskrit and its derivatives, and closely related languages such as Greek and Latin.
The great number and variety of languages is evidence of the great antiquity of the human race and its extensive division and subdivision. The elaborateness of languages spoken by so-called primitive peoples, especially their frequently highly complicated and extensive vocabulary, for which their modern representatives have but little use, shows that they are remnants of once highly civilized peoples.
That the priests of Atlantis addressed their gods in the language of those gods, is a mystical statement: they addressed the regents of the elements in the sound-language appropriate to the particular element. Vach is the mystic speech by which occult knowledge is communicated to man.
See also LOGOS; MANTRAS; SOUND
Mysteries - Mysteries, The [from Greek mysteria Mysteries from mystes one initiated into the Mysteries from mueo to initiate from muo to close the eyes or lips]
Applies chiefly to Greece, but once extended to Asiatic cults of religio-philosophical character, it acquired a wider range under the Romans, and is used in The Secret Doctrine in reference to equivalent institutions in any part of the world. The most celebrated in Greece were those of Eleusis pertaining to Demeter and Persephone, which gave rise to many branches and influenced schools of older foundation.
Others were those of Samothrace, the Orphic Mysteries, and the Festivals devoted to Dionysos. Schools like that of Pythagoras diffused their influence, as did Academies such as that of Plato. The history of Greece furnishes notable examples of great men who had been initiated into such Mysteries. The Mysteries came into Greece from India and Egypt, and their origin goes back to Atlantean times. They were in historic times, what remained of the means whereby man's divine ancestors communicated truths concerning the mysteries of cosmos and of human nature and of the communion divinity and man.
In times when sacred knowledge was whole and not divided into sacred and profane, the human body, not yet desecrated, was held as sacred as any other part of function of human nature; so that the teaching embraced medicine, hygiene, singing, dancing, the useful arts and crafts; and the teachers of religion, philosophy, science, and of crafts, the founders of cities, and great artists derived their powers from this source.
The Mysteries were divided into the Greater and Less, inner and outer, esoteric and partly exoteric; and, as the former were guarded by well-observed secrecy the sources of ordinary information are mostly based on the latter. The more recondite Mysteries could not, from their very nature, be publicly divulged; they were revelations, appreciable only by an awakened spiritual perception and incommunicable to anyone not thus awakened. The Greater Mysteries were successive initiations for prepared candidates. The Less consisted of symbolic and dramatic representations for the public, in which, among other things, the profound symbology of the Greek mythology was employed.
The elevating and unifying influence of these institutions was acknowledged by Greek and Roman authorities and is apparent from a study of Greek history. With the advance of a cycle of materialism, the Mysteries became degraded, especially in Asia Minor in Roman times; the symbolism was perverted and even made to palliate licentious practices. What little was left to abolish was formally abolished by Justinian, who closed the mystic and quasi-esoteric Neoplatonic School of Athens in 529.
In a recognition of the ancient Mysteries we find a clue to the meaning of the universal prevalence, among peoples fallen into a degenerate and falsely called primitive state of life, of strange rites and black magical practices. These are the very dregs and distortions of the ancient holy teachings; but even here unprejudiced inquirers find that, when sympathetically approached, the existence of secret cults which preserve at least remnants of some of the essential teachings of the ancient wisdom.
As formal institutions, the Mysteries had their earliest origin during the fourth root-race, Atlantis, after its fourth subrace. Indeed, the still more primitive roots of the Mysteries can be traced to a much earlier time, probably during the third subrace of the Atlanteans, when the rapid degeneration of mankind into the worship of matter had brought about the absolute need of segregating the nobler and finer spirits of the human race into groups or schools where they could, under the vows of inviolable secrecy, study the deeper mysteries of nature and their own oneness with the divine. From that time the Mysteries became with every subrace more and more secret and entrance into them became ever more difficult. After the fifth root-race came upon the scene, the Mysteries had become well established in all countries of the globe, and their rites and functions, both of the Greater and the Less, were conducted as functions of the State.
Even from the time of the incarnation of the manasaputras in the third root-race, there has been an unbroken line, stream, or succession of lofty spiritual teachers guarding the ancient god-wisdom received in primordial ages from the dhyanis; and the Mysteries, even in their heyday of splendor and in their most secret lines of work, were the outer side of clothing of this inner stream of inspiration and sublime teaching. The light has not yet died from off the earth, and the spiritual stream still exists and does its work in the world, although for ages it has been acting more secretly and esoterically than ever. However, the time is coming when the Mysteries will again be reestablished and will receive the common reverence and respect from mankind that in former ages they universally had.
Volsung - Volsung, Volsungar (Icelandic, Scandinavian) [from volsi phallus + unge child]
In Norse mythology, an early race of humanity, the first to reproduce by sexual means, remote descendants of the Niflungar (children of the mist), who represent humanity before the globe had condensed from the primordial nebula. The tale of Sigurd the Volsung is one of the classic stories in the younger or prose Edda.
Surya-siddhanta - Surya-Siddhanta (Sanskrit) A celebrated astronomical and cosmogonical work of ancient India of enormous antiquity. This work shows marvelous mathematical skill and comes very close to the modern time periods of astronomy that the most skilled mathematicians and astronomers have determined. It also deals with yugas in their various lengths, divisions of time itself into infinitesimal quantities, and general astronomical subjects, including not only the time periods of the sun, moon, and planets, but also eclipses, seasons of the year, etc.
The Surya-Siddhanta states that it was dictated more than two million years ago, towards the end of the krita yuga (golden age) by the sun himself, through a projected solar representative, to the great sage Asuramaya who wrote down the revelation. From the commencement of our kali yuga to the end of the satya yuga is 2,164,965 years ago.
The Surya-Siddanta was therefore a very late Atlantean work or an early work of the fifth root-race, for though the so-called Aryan or fifth root-race was already nearly 1,728,000 years old at the time of the writing of this work, the race was still in its early periods, and was still practically a part of the Atlantean civilization; hence Asuramaya has been called an Atlantean astronomer. The fifth root-race has been a race sui generis for only about a million years from our present time.
Sons Of Anak - Sons of Anak, Anakim `anaq, `anaqim (Hebrew) An ancient race of giants in the Bible. When Moses sent Joshua to spy out the land of Canaan, the people seen were "men of a great stature. And there we saw the giants, the sons of Anak, which come of the giants: and we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight" (Numbers 13:32-3).
Blavatsky comments that the giants of antiquity "lived and flourished one million rather than between three and four thousand years ago. The Anakim of Joshua . . . are thus a piece of Israelite fancy, unless indeed the people of Israel claim for Joshua an antiquity and origin in the Eocene, or at any rate in the Miocene age, and change the millenniums of their chronology into millions of years" (SD 2:340).
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