Race Dictionary

Ank, Ankh (Egyptian) The symbol of life in ancient Egypt, represented as the tau-cross surmounted by a circle, and often called crux ansata (cross with a handle). Usually placed in the hand of every representation of god or goddess; likewise in the hand of the initiant, and again on the mummy. Also the present astronomical planetary sign for Venus; and the ansated cross reversed is the sign of the earth.

One meaning of the ankh is "esoterically, that mankind and all animal life had stepped out of the divine spiritual circle and fallen into physical male and female generation. This sign, from the end of the Third Race, has the same phallic significance as the 'tree of life' in Eden" (SD 2:30-1).

(See also: Ank, Ankh , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Gold

• If you handle gold in your dream, you will be unusually successful in all enterprises. For a woman to dream that she receives presents of gold, either money or ornaments, she will marry a wealthy but mercenary man.
• To find gold, indicates that your superior abilities will place you easily ahead in the race for honors and wealth.
• If you lose gold, you will miss the grandest opportunity of your life through negligence.
• To dream of finding a gold vein, denotes that some uneasy honor will be thrust upon you.
• If you dream that you contemplate working a gold mine, you will endeavor to usurp the rights of others, and should beware of domestic scandals.

Source: 10 000 Dream Interpretations, by Gustavus Hindman Miller

(See also: Dream Archives, Meaning of Dreams, Dream Interpretation, Dream Dictionary, Dream Dictionary - Gold , Meaning of Dreams about Gold , Dream Interpretation Gold )

Idol, Idolotry (from Greek eidolon image, idol)

The use of images of divinities, which pertains to exotericism, as do visible symbols, ceremonies, and rituals in general. Attitudes vary among religions: Judaism, Islam, and Protestant Christianity absolutely forbid it; Orthodox Christianity permits icons, such as pictures of saints; Roman Catholicism, Hinduism, and Buddhism permit it altogether.

Varying degrees of ignorance or enlightenment may regard an idol as in itself a species of imbodied divinity, as transmitting the influence of a divinity or, more spiritually, as a reminder of a divinity. In a real sense, idolatry is the attaching of undue importance to the form rather than to the spirit, and often becomes degraded into worshiping the images made in our imagination and imbodied in work of the hands.

"Esoteric history teaches that idols and their worship dies out with the Fourth Race, until the survivors of the hybrid races of the latter (Chinamen, African Negroes, etc.) gradually brought the worship back. The Vedas countenance no idols; all the modern Hindu writings do" (SD 2:723).

(See also: Idol, Idolotry , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Agneyastra (Sanskrit) (from agneya fiery weapon from agni fire + astra missile weapon, arrow)

Fiery weapon; one of the magic weapons used by some of the gods and heroes of the Mahabharata and Ramayana. The Vishnu-Purana (3:8) recounts that the agneyastra was given by the sage Aurva to his disciple King Sagara. A magic weapon said to have been "wielded by the adept-race (the fourth), the Atlanteans" (TG 9), and to have been built of "seven elements" (SD 2:629).

It can signify a weapon of fiery character used in physical warfare, or on a cosmic scale can denote the employment of a force of nature by an intelligent being either for offensive or defensive purposes. In archaic thought fire, in its abstract sense, is almost equivalent to spirit, and permeates the sevenfold nature of the universe.

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

Titans (Greek) In Greek mythology, builders of worlds, often called cosmocratores, and as microcosmic entities the progenitors of human races; as such, of various orders, so that in mythology they were considered good or bad, as angels or entities of matter.

Hesiod's original heaven-dwelling titans, six sons and six daughters of Ouranos and Gaia (heaven and earth), were Oceanos, Coios, Creios, Hyperion, Iapetos, Kronos, Theia, Rheia, Themis, Mnemosyne, Phoebe, and Tethys, but other names were later included, such as Prometheus and Epimetheus; and later still the name was given to any descendant of Ouranos and Gaia. Rebellions taking place against the rulers of heaven, followed by falls and castings out, refer to the descent of creative powers to form new worlds and races. In the rebellion of titans, first against Ouranos in favor of Kronos, then against Kronos in favor of Zeus, the titans are mixed up with other sons of heaven and earth -- Hecatoncheires (hundred-handed), Cyclopes, etc. -- and the accounts in detail are extremely intricate and confused.

The titans, in one respect, are fourth root-race giants, the Hindu daityas, who at one time obtain the sovereignty of earth and defeat the minor gods; they are thus fallen beings -- Python, suras and asuras, corybantes, curetes, Dioscuri, anaktes, dii magni, idaei dactyli, lares, penates, manes, aletae, kabeirio, manus, rishis, and dhyani-chohans -- who watched over and incarnated in the elect of the third and fourth root-races.

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

Arimaspi, Arimaspes arimastioi (Greek) In Greek mythology, a one-eyed people of the extreme northeast of Scythia, perhaps near the region of eastern Altai, mentioned by Aristeas of Proconnesus, from whom Herodotus derives his account.

They stole gold from the griffins who guarded it, and Apollo destroyed them with his shafts. The allegory, which is mixed up with history in Herodotus' account, refers to the supersession of a degraded remnant of third-eye people by the coming fifth root-race, as in the case of the Cyclopes.

(See also: Arimaspi, Arimaspes, arimastioi , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Amazarak In the Book of Enoch, one of the seven first instructors of the fourth root-race (SD 2:376).

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

Agathodaemon, Agathodaimon (Greek) The good genius (represented as a youth holding a horn of plenty and a bowl, or a poppy and ears of corn) to whom at Athens a cup of pure wine was drunk at dinner; in one of his many forms, the kosmic Christos, the serpent of eternity -- which in the human mind becomes the serpent of Genesis -- which after the fall of Mediterranean civilizations became Satan. Brahma, in order to create hierarchies, becomes fourfold and emanates successively daemons, angels, pitris, and men.

Agathodaimon refers to the first of these emanations, sons of kosmic darkness, signifying incomprehensible light which is prior to manifested light. Christian theology has recognized this in making Satan's host the first sons of God, but has unconsciously perverted their descent in order to enlighten man into a rebellion against Almighty Power. Thus in later times Agathodaimon became the enemy of divine goodness. The same has happened in the case of the asuras in India, and of the kosmic serpent. In Gnostic gems it appears under the name Chnouphis or Chnoubis.

Clement of Alexandria, as an initiated Neoplatonist, knew that Agathodaimon was the kosmic Christos and the true spiritual savior of mankind, like Prometheus -- an early form of the Agathodaimon teaching applied to the enlightening of the human race through the influence of an incarnating spiritual power. Opposite to him stands a Kakodaimon, the evil genius or lower serpent, the Satan who bids Christ worship him and "I will give thee all the kingdoms of the earth." Kakodaimon is the nether or inferior aspect of Agathodaimon, kama-manas the deluder as opposed to buddhi-manas the redeemer.

(See also: Agathodaemon, Agathodaimon , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Vedas

Veda is a generic name for the most ancient Indian sacred literature, i.e. the Rg-veda, Yajur-veda, Sama-veda and Atharva-veda. Each of these books is divided into two portions, mantra and brahmana. The term Veda is generally reserved for the mantras or metrical hymns, especially those of the Rg-veda. Sri Aurobindo has translated and/or commented on many of the Vedic hymns. Most of his writings related to the Vedas have been collected in Volumes 10 and 11of the Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library(SABCL), The Secret of the Veda, and Hymns to the Mystic Fire.

"I propose...that the Rig-Veda is itself the one considerable document that remains to us from the early period of human thought of which the historic Eleusinian and Orphic mysteries were the failing remnants, when the spiritual and psychological knowledge of the race was concealed, for reasons now difficult to determine, in a veil of concrete and material figures and symbols which protected the sense from the profane and revealed it to the initiated. One of the leading principles of the mystics was the sacredness and secrecy of self-knowledge and the true knowledge of the Gods.

The Veda...is an inspired knowledge as yet insufficiently equipped with intellectual and philosophical terms. We find a language of poets and illuminates to whom all experience is real, vivid, sensible, even concrete, not yet of thinkers and sytematisers to whom the realities of the mind and soul have become abstractions.

The Vedic Rishis believed that their Mantras were inspired from higher planes of consciousness and contained this secret knowledge. The words of the Veda could only be known in their true meaning by one who was himself a seer or mystic; from others the verses withheld their hidden knowledge.

Many of the lines, many whole hymns even of the Veda bear on their face a mystic meaning; they are evidently an occult form of speech, have an inner meaning.

Under pressure of the necessity to mask their meaning with symbols and symbolic words...the Rishis resorted to fix double meanings, a device easily manageable in the Sanskrit language where one word often bears several different meanings, but not easy to render in an English translation and very often impossible....The Rishis, it must be remembered, were seers as well as sages, they were men of vision who saw things in their meditation in images, often symbolic images which might precede or accompany an experience and put it in a concrete form, might predict or give an occult body to it. ...The mystics were and normally are symbolists, they can even see all physical things and happenings as symbols of inner truths and realities, even their outer selves, the outer happenings of their life and all around them."

-- Sri Aurobindo, The Secret of the Veda, SABCL Vol. 10

(See also: Vedas , Hinduism, Vedic Scriptures, Yoga, Body Mind and Soul)

 - varna: The four varnas are as follows. - brahmin

(brahmana): "Mature, evolved soul." Scholarly,

pious souls of exceptional learning. Hindu scriptures

traditionally invest the brahmin class with the

responsibility of religious leadership, including

teaching and priestly duties. - kshatriya:

"Governing; endowed with sovereignty." Lawmakers

and law enforcers and military, also known as

rajanya. - vaishya: "Landowner, merchant."

Businessmen, financiers, industrialists; employers.

Those engaged in business, commerce and

agriculture. - shudra: (Sanskrit) "Worker, servant."

Skilled artisans and laborers. It is in keeping with

varna dharma that sons are expected to follow the

occupation of their father, as that is the occupation

that was chosen prior to birth.

 - jati: "Birth; position assigned by birth; rank, caste,

family, race, lineage." Jati, more than varna, is the

specific determinant of one's social community.

Traditionally, because of rules of purity each jati is

excluded from social interaction with the others,

especially from interdining and intermarriage. In

modern times there is also a large group (oneseventh

of India's population in 1981) outside the

four varnas. These are called scheduled classes,

untouchables, jatihita ("outcaste"), chandalas (specifically those who handle corpses) and harijan, a

name given by Mahatma Gandhi, meaning "children

of God." "Untouchable" jatis included the nishada

(hunter), kaivarta (fisherman) and karavara (leather

worker).

The varna dharma system - despite its widespread

discrimination against harijans, and the abuse of

social status by higher castes - ensures a high

standard of craftsmanship, a sense of community

belonging, family integrity and religio-cultural

continuity. Caste is not unique to Hinduism and

India. By other names it is found in every society.

The four varnas, or classes, and myriad jatis,

occupational castes, or guilds, form the basic

elements of human interaction.

See: dharma, Dharma

Shastras, jati.

(See also: Varna , Hinduism, Body Mind and Soul)

Betylos, Baetylus (Latin) (from Greek baitylos meteoric stone)

Also betylus, baetyl, betyles. In Classical antiquity a stone, either natural or artificially shaped, venerated as of divine origin, or as a symbol of divinity. There were a number of these sacred stones in Greece, the most famous being the one on the omphalos at Delphi. Likewise there were the so-called animated or oracular stones. "Strabo, Pliny, Helancius (Hellanicus)

-- all speak of the electrical, or electro-magnetic power of the betyli. They were worshipped in the remotest antiquity in Egypt and Samothrace, as magnetic stones, 'containing souls which had fallen from heaven'; and the priests of Cybele wore a small betylos on their bodies" (IU 1:332). In Persia they were called oitzoe; but their origin was of far greater antiquity, for "Lemuria, Atlantis and her giants, and the earliest races of the Fifth Root-Race had all a hand in these betyles, lithoi, and 'magic' stones in general" (SD 2:346n).

See also OPHITES; ROCKING-STONES

(See also: Betylos, Baetylus , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

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.

(See also: Race , Hinduism, Body Mind and Soul)

Second Root-race Like the first root-race of the present round on globe D of the earth-chain, the second was astral, though somewhat more concreted, physicalized, or materialized. The bodies were unlike what is now regarded as human, bearing but vaguely the human outline of a gelatinous, filamentoid, jelly-like nature, as yet without evolved bones, organs, hair, or true skin. Reproduction was by budding, as occurs in some lower organisms today.

About the middle of the race, these buds became numerous and the process became modified to one analogous to the casting off of spores or seeds, or to the exuding of drops of vital sweat. These beings were mindless and unmoral, innocent, guided unconsciously by their spiritual instincts, nevertheless largely under the sway of lower rather than spiritual impulses, somewhat like the animals of today. For as yet no intellectual fire from the manasaputras (sons of mind) had been communicated to them, so that as yet there was no working bridge of mentality between spirit and matter in them.

(See also: Second Root-race , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary)

Raga - a deep attachment which is permeated by spontaneous and intense absorption in the object of one’s affection. The primary characteristic of raga is a deep and overpowering thirst for the object of one’s affection.

The desire for water is called thirst. When the body is deprived of water, thirst arises. The greater the thirst, the greater the longing for water. When this thirst reaches the point that without water one can no longer maintain the body, it is known as an overpowering thirst.

Similarly, when the loving thirst to please the object of one’s affection becomes so intense that in the absence of such service one is on the verge of giving up his life, it is known as raga.

(See also: Raga , Bhakti, Bhakti Yoga, Bhakti Dictionary, Body Mind and Soul)

Root-race The main serial divisions of the human life-wave on any globe of a planetary chain; for instance, the root-races on our globe D include the third or Lemurian, the fourth or Atlantean, and the present fifth. Each such root-race contains many and various races as the word is commonly understood.

All the human beings alive today are part of the fifth root-race. Each life-wave when it has completed its cycle of seven root-races on one globe, transfers its life-energies to the next globe, whereupon begins the same sequence of seven root-races on that next globe. Thus each globe of a planetary chain has its seven root-races, which together constitute one globe-round, the whole set of seven globe-rounds completing one planetary round.

See also RACE(S)

(See also: Root-race , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary)

Madhavas (Sanskrit) In the plural, the descendants of Madhu, men of the race of Yadu, and hence often called Yadavas.

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

Salvation [from Latin salvatio from salvare to save]

In Christianity, the saving of individual souls from supposed damnation, usually by faith in the Atonement. In theosophy, as concerns the individual, salvation is achieved by victory of his divine self over the illusions created by the contact of the intermediate nature with the lower planes. In this sense the serpent of Eden, Satan even, is man's savior, as are Prometheus, Lucifer, etc.

Mankind as a whole is saved by those manasaputras who descended into intellectually senseless mankind of the third root-race and who, by thus enlightening the minds of early humanity, became the elect custodians of the mysteries revealed to mankind by its divine teachers. Again, the Silent Watchers in their various grades, who refuse to pass on into a greater light and maintain their post for the protection and guidance of humanity, are saviors also.

Yet no one can be saved by the vicarious merit of another; his salvation is achieved by means of that very free will and enlightened intelligence of his own through which he at first risks falling. But the great ones maintain the ideal which the multitude elect to follow, and thus light the path mankind will ultimately tread.

(See also: Salvation , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary)

Sixth Root-race The root-race which will succeed the present fifth root-race, sometimes called the Aryan race in theosophical literature because the Aryan Hindus were a part of the original first subrace of the fifth root-race. Care should be taken not to confuse the sixth root-race with the sixth subrace of the fifth root-race which was stated by Blavatsky to be in process of forming in America as seeds -- the earliest pioneers, although already beginning to appear, will not be numerous for several thousand years. The preparation for the sixth root-race will take place during the sixth and seventh subraces of the fifth root-race in the Americas. When the time arrives, this future sixth root-race will be predominant on the earth, new lands will have appeared, and many of the present lands will be submerged. The surface of the globe will, in time of course, be entirely changed, and there will then be more land than water (as also was the case during the fourth root-race).

During the sixth root-race, humanity will not be gigantic in size (as were the fourth and third root-races), for spirituality will be on the ascendancy and materiality decreasing, so that at the end of the sixth root-race the development of spirituality will be parallel to what it was at the beginning of the second root-race plus, however, the added evolutionary experience gained during the preceding root-races. The characteristics of sex will gradually disappear, and humanity will be slowly once again becoming androgynous. Offspring will be born in a manner generally similar to that which prevailed during the second and early third root-race periods: toward the close of the sixth, mankind will begin to manifest the first appearances of reproduction by kriyasakti (propagation by means of will and imagination). Toward the close of the sixth root-race, humanity will be showing a steadily increasing tendency to evolve out of fleshly into more ethereal physical vehicles. These various changes are presentments of what will in the due course be established in relative perfection during the sixth round -- coming events cast their shadows before. Indeed the sixth root-race will be as compared with our own fifth far in advance, spiritually, intellectually, psychically, and even physically; and the attainment by mankind of adeptship or mahatmaship will be notably more easy than is the case at present.

With the advent of each root-race a new cosmic element comes into proportionate manifestation, and a new physical sense apparatus appears: thus humanity in the sixth root-race will develop what is meant by a sixth sense. The fifth cosmic element (often named aether or akasa-tattva) will reach a development proportionate to the evolution of mankind during the fifth root-race in this fourth round; and after the same manner, a sixth cosmic element will make its appearance during the course of human evolution during the sixth root-race. Furthermore, just as a manushya-buddha comes to lead mankind in each root-race, so will one appear during the sixth root-race of the future.

(See also: Sixth Root-race , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary)

Orphism, Orphic Mysteries [from Greek orphikos]

Orphism originally taught of the Causeless Cause on which all speculation is impossible; the periodical appearance and disappearance of all things, from atom to universe; reimbodiment; cyclic law; the essential divinity of all beings and things; and the duality in manifestation of the universe. It postulated seven emanations from the Boundless: aether (spirit) and chaos (matter), from which two spring the world egg, out of which is born Phanes, the First Logos; then Uranus (and Gaia) the Second Logos, with Kronos (and Rhea, mother of the Olympian gods) a later phase of the Second Logos; and Zeus, the Third Logos or Demiurge -- who starts a minor sevenfold hierarchy of emanation by begetting Zagreus-Dionysos the god-man, the divine son.

Characteristic of Orphic cosmogony is the important place given to the number seven. "The rise of the Orphic worship of Dionysos is the most important fact in the history of Greek religion, and marks a great spiritual awakening. Its three great ideas are (1) a belief in the essential Divinity of humanity and the complete immortality or eternity of the soul, its pre-existence and its post-existence; (2) the necessity for individual responsibility and righteousness; and (3) the regeneration or redemption of man's lower nature by his own higher Self" (F. S. Darrow).

The Orphic teachings were kept intact by the Golden or Hermetic Chain of Succession down to the days of the Neoplatonists after which (as symbolically told in the archaic story of Eurydice) they were killed -- obscured or lost, so far as the public was concerned. Their keynote was consecration to the mandates of the god within: perfect purity, perfect impersonal love, perfect understanding, and devotion to the interests of humanity.

The three Orphic mystery-gods were Zeus, the divine All-father; Demeter-Kore, the earth goddess as both mother and maid; and Zagreus-Dionysos, the divine son. This trinity finds its counterpart in Egyptian, Indian, Chaldean, Christian, and other religions. There were two forms of baptism, one purification by water, later adopted into the Christian ritual; and the other a ceremony in which the face of the neophyte was cleansed with a mixture of earth and bran, symbolizing the washing away of stains from the soul.

The ceremony of the Eucharist was also adopted by the Christians and as Orphic ritual forbade the use of wine (substituting for it a mead of honey and milk), in the rite as adopted by the primitive Christians the neophyte drank not only wine but also milk and honey. Under Orphism, the honey symbolized not only purification and preservation, or endless life and bliss, but the secret knowledge obtained during initiation. Bees, the gatherers of honey, were emblems of the reincarnating soul, as was the butterfly; and as the bees gathered the nectar from flowers and made it into honey, so the human soul in its various peregrinations gathers from the beings and things of life the mystic experience and stores it away in the chambers of the soul. Milk symbolized knowledge, which fed the inner man, as a child of eternity, just as milk feeds the human child.

Orphism flourished from before the 14th until the 6th century BC, and again, after some five centuries of obscuration, during the first four centuries of the Christian era. Plato, Empedocles, the Pythagorean teachings, some of the Greek dramatists and poets are our main source material for the earlier period, as well as the various Orphic fragments including the Orphic Tablets.

These Tablets, with the Orphic Hymns, consist of eight gold plates containing inscriptions, dating from about the 4th century BC. They consist of instructions given to the soul for its journey through the afterdeath worlds or states very reminiscent of the Egyptian Book of the Dead. The keynote is spoken by the soul: "I am a child of earth and of starry Heaven, but my race is of Heaven (alone). . . . Lo, I am parched with thirst . . ." For the later period we have the writings of the Neoplatonists and their opponents, the early Christian Fathers.

That the entire Orphic mythogony is intentionally allegorical does not invalidate that a great prehistoric religious reformer named Orpheus lived, worked, taught, and founded a religion as the outgrowth of a genuine Mystery school.

(See also: Orphism, Orphic Mysteries , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary)

Kabiri, Kabeiri, Kabeiroi, Kabarim, Kabirim, Kabiria (Greek) Cabiri (Latin) Plural name of certain very mysterious divinities, revered in nearly all the countries of the Near East. They were worshiped as divinities in Samothrace and on Lemnos (the island sacred to Vulcan) and were popularly represented as cosmic dwarves, the sons of Vulcan (Hephaestos), and masters of the art of working metals.

Kabiri was a generic title: as the mighty they were of both sexes, gods and mortals, terrestrial, celestial, and kosmic. Blavatsky describes the kabiri as the seven divine titans identical with the seven rishis saved from the flood by Vaivasvta-Manu (SD 2:142). The "mighty men of renown" (gibborim) who date from the days of the earliest Atlantean subraces while yet Lemuria had not wholly disappeared -- became in the fifth root-race the teachers whom the Egyptians and Phoenicians called kabiri, the Greeks titans, and the Hindus rakshasas and daityas.

In short, the kabeiroi, identical with the kumaras and rudras, classed with the dhyani-buddhas and with the 'elohim of Jewish theology, directing "the mind with which they endued men" to the arts and sciences that build civilization, and closely linked with solar and earthly fires, are no other than the kumara-agnishvatta-manasaputras of theosophy: kumaras in their unsoiled divinity; agnisvattas (those who have tasted the fire) or solar lhas; and manasaputras (sons of mind) who in pity took upon themselves the heavy cross of incarnation that they might help struggling humanity to come up higher. They are classed as three, four, or seven; the names of four being Axieros, Axiokersa, Axiokersos, and Kadmilos.

These very mysterious and powerful divinities of the archaic ages, whatever name may be given to them, are in the cosmic hierarchies the same as the dhyani-buddhas and the dhyanis of modern theosophy, equivalent to the archangels and angels of the Christian hierarchical scheme. Thus they are the children of cosmic spiritual fire, this fire in its turn being equivalent to the luminous and warming effulgence of action of the hierarchies of cosmic mind. They are the most occult divinities of the archaic wisdom-religion, and the worship of them under whatever name they were known was invariably marked by a high degree of spiritual and philosophic profundity and deep religious devotion.

(See also: Kabiri, Kabeiri, Kabeiroi, Kabarim, Kabirim, Kabiria , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

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.

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

Zohar, or Sohar. A compendium of Kabbalistic Theosophy, which shares with the Sepher Yetzirah the reputation of being the oldest extant treatise on the Hebrew esoteric religious doctrines.

 Tradition assigns its authorship to Rabbi Simeon ben Jochai, AD. 80, but modern criticism is inclined to believe that a very large portion of the volume is no older than 1280, when it was certainly edited and published by Rabbi Moses de Leon, of Guadalaxara in Spain. The reader should consult the references to these two names. In Lucifer (Vol. I., p. 141) will be found also notes on this subject: further discussion will be attainable in the works of Zunz, Graetz, Jost, Steinschneider, Frankel and Ginsburg. The work of Franck (in French) upon the Kabalah may be referred to with advantage.

The truth seems to lie in a middle path, viz., that while Moses de Leon was the first to produce the volume as a whole, yet a large part of some of its constituent tracts consists of traditional dogmas and illustrations, which have come down from the time of Simeon ben Jochai and the Second Temple. There are portions of the doctrines of the Zohar which bear the impress of Chaldee thought and civilization, to which the Jewish race had been exposed in the Babylonish captivity.

Yet on the other hand, to condemn the theory that it is ancient in its entirety, it is noticed that the Crusades are mentioned; that a quotation is made from a hymn by Ibn Gebirol, A,D. 1050; that the asserted author, Simeon ben Jochai, is spoken of as more eminent than Moses; that it mentions the vowel-points, which did not come into use until Rabbi Mocha (AD. 570) introduced them to fix the pronunciation of words as a help to his pupils, and lastly, that it mentions -a comet which can be proved by the evidence of the context to have appeared in 1264.

There is no English translation of the Zohar as a whole, nor even a Latin one. The Hebrew editions obtainable are those of Mantua, 1558; Cremona, 1560; and Lublin, 1623. The work of Knorr von Rosenroth called Kabbala Denudata includes several of the treatises of the Zohar, but not all of them, both in Hebrew and Latin. MacGregor Mathers has published an English translation of three of these treatises, the Book of Concealed Mystery, the Greater and the Lesser Holy Assembly, and his work includes an original introduction to the subject.

The principal tracts included in the Zohar are: - " The Hidden Midrash", "The Mysteries of the Pentateuch", "The Mansions and Abodes of Paradise and Gaihinnom", "The Faithful Shepherd", "The Secret of Secrets", "Discourse of the Aged in Mishpatim" (punishment of souls), "The Januka or Discourse of the Young Man", and "The Tosephta and Mathanithan", which are additional essays on Emanation and the Sephiroth, in addition to the three important treatises mentioned above. In this storehouse may be found the origin of all the later developments of Kabbalistic teaching.

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