Sacred Science. The name given to the inner esoteric philosophy, the secrets taught in days of old to the initiated candidates, and divulged during the last and supreme Initiation by the Hierophants.

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

Oak, sacred. With the Druids the oak was a most holy tree, and so also with the ancient Greeks, if we can believe Pherecydes and his cosmogony, who tells us of the sacred oak "in whose luxuriant branches a serpent (i.e., wisdom) dwelleth, and cannot be dislodged". Every nation had its own sacred trees, pre-eminently the Hindus.

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

Sacred Animals Many ancient peoples have attached great importance to animals in their rituals; and they may have had facts to support their theories. If the hierarchical system of the universe is a reality, it follows that every animal is a feeble representative on its plane of comic potencies that descend from lofty sources. Ceremonial magic, however, may be better suited to one age than to another; so that it may be better to explain than to attempt to reintroduce the ancient practices as to the use of sacred animals in ritual.

It is equally true that such words as lion, bull, and scorpion are often used in occult writings to denote, not the physical animals, but the potencies to which they correspond. Zodiac means the circle of (sacred) animals. As man himself is on this earth the model and storehouse of all forms, those as yet unexpressed as well as those which have already appeared, he had in his own composition the ideal forms and attributes of all the various animals who in eons of past history as stocks were derivatives from him as their superior.

See also ZOOLATRY

(See also: Sacred Animals, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Sacred Four Used in the Stanzas of Dzyan in speaking of the primordial principles in cosmogenesis as numbers:

"I. The Adi-Sanat, the Number, for he is One.

II. The Voice of the Word, Svabhavat, the Numbers, for he is One and Nine.

III. The 'Formless Square.' (Arupa).

And these three enclosed within the O (boundless circle), are the sacred four" (SD 1:98).

The triad forms within the circle the tetraktys or sacred four, the square within the circle being the most potent of all magical figures.

The kumaras, though seven in number, are called the four, because the four chief of them sprang from the fourfold mystery. It is one of the several meanings of the swastika. This sacred four has to be distinguished from the manifested four or quaternary.

The most sacred oath of the Pythagoreans was "by the Sacred Four," or tetraktys.

See also ADI-NIDANA; ADI-SANAT; ARUPA; SVABHAVAT

(See also: Sacred Four, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary)

Sacred Heart. In Egypt, of Horus; in Babylon, of the god Bel; and the lacerated heart of Bacchusin Greece and elsewhere. Its symbol was the persea. The pear-like shape of its fruit, and of its kernel especially, resembles the heart in form. It is sometimes seen on the head of Isis, the mother of Horus, the fruit being cut open and the heart-like kernel exposed to full view. The Roman Catholics have since adopted the worship of the "sacred heart" of Jesus and of the Virgin Mary.

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

Sacred Fire An equivalent for sacred spark, with reference to the lighting of the fires of mind in man during the third root-race. Especially used in connection with the occult allegory of the ancient Greeks dealing with Prometheus, who is represented as bringing the sacred fire -- signifying the fire of mind and thought -- to mankind from heaven.

Also used in reference to the sacred Samothracian deities, the kabeiroi:

"the personified sacred Fires of the most occult powers of Nature" (SD 2:106).

Equated with Living Fire as "a figure of speech to denote deity, the 'One' life. A theurgic term, used later by the Rosicrucians. The symbol of the living fire is the sun, certain of whose rays develope the fire of life in a diseased body, impart the knowledge of the future to the sluggish mind, and stimulate to active function a certain psychic and generally dormant faculty in man" (TG 119).

(See also: Sacred Fire, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Sacr zachar (Hebrew) Also zakhar. Male, whether man or beast, as well as the masculine organ; and in connection with the Hebrew word for the feminine organ, neqebah (cavity), used whether of woman or beast, even from Hebrew times has been surrounded all too often with phallic significance.

These words, however, can have the same impersonal and abstract significance that have the linga and yoni in India. Zachar is generally rendered "male" in the English translation of the Bible: "It is the phallus which is the vehicle of the enunciation; and truly enough, as the sacr, or carrier of the germ, its use has passed down through ages to the sacr-factum of the Roman priest, and sacr-fice and sacr-ment of the English-speaking race" (Source of Measures 236).

Because of the function of the human organs of generation, even from ancient times these organs were considered with reverential awe as being the representatives of the creative or productive abstract forces of nature; and so greatly was the creative function held among the ancients that marriage and its functions were invariably considered to be a religious rite. Hence the presence of zachar or sacr in such words as sacrament and sacrifice, always with the religious meaning, has prevailed to our own days. The archaic symbology of the separation of the sexes was represented by a horizontal line, crossed by a perpendicular, surrounded by a circle: with the Hebrews, however, this became degraded into the purely phallic meaning of the sacr and n'cabvah (zachar and neqebah).

(See also: Sacr, zachar, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary)

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

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

Sacred Name Most names are labels, and according to ancient occult theory to disclose the real name of a being is to evoke the presence of that being, a knowledge which is made use of in magical evocations.

To name the Deity would be an initiation, a revelation, fit only for ears prepared to receive it. Supreme deities are said to be ineffable -- their names cannot or may not be spoken -- as was the case with the Hebrew Tetragrammaton, IHVH, often written Jehovah, Jahveh, etc., but whose real pronunciation was secret and sacred.

Qabbalists, in order to screen the real mystery-name of 'eyn soph (the boundless), substituted the name of one of the personal creative 'elohim, the hermaphrodite Jah-Eve; and the name was made sacred in order to conceal the deception (SD 2:126).

As a substitute for Jehovah the name 'Adonai (my Lords), was afterwards used when reading the ancient Hebrew scriptures aloud for and instead of the, which appeared written on the manuscript, because YHVH was considered too holy for utterance.

(See also: Sacred Name, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary)

sacred thread: Yajnopavita.

See: upanayana.

(See also: Sacred thread, Hinduism, Body Mind and Soul)

Sacred Heart In modern times a Roman Catholic cult which uses the heart as a symbol, especially the heart of Jesus, to which they address devotions.

From time to time there have been various Christians who have particularly stressed this aspect of their religious views, among them St. Gertrude and St. Francis of Sales (17th century) who gave this symbol to his order as its object. By edict of Pope Pius IX (1856) the day is observed in the general calendar of the Church.

In ancient times the heart was also a sacred symbol, in Egypt associated with Horus, in Babylon, with Bel, while in Greece the lacerated heart was connected with Bacchus. "Its symbol was the persea. The pear-like shape of its fruit, and of its kernel especially, resembles the heart in form. It is sometimes seen on the head of Isis, the mother of Horus, the fruit being cut open and the heart-like kernel exposed to full view" (TG 283).

(See also: Sacred Heart, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary)

Sacred Sleep The sleep of the neophyte when he is thrown into oblivion by magical processes and draughts of soma remaining entranced as through dead for several days while he becomes the receptacle for divine communications from his Augoeides (IU 1:357).

What he reveals while in this state is not known to him, nor to anyone but the few adepts privileged to be present. The same thing is referred to by Isaiah, in describing the purification necessary for a prophet: "Then flew one of the seraphims unto me having a live coal in his hand . . . and he laid it upon my mouth, and said, Lo, this hath touched thy lips; and thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin purged" (6:6, 7). The state is in some respects different from the trance of the priestesses of Delphi, exhibited before the multitude.

(See also: Sacred Sleep, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary)

In India we find the oldest continually operating pilgrimage tradition in the entire world. The practice of pilgrimage in India is so deeply embedded in the cultural psyche and the number of pilgrimage sites is so large that the entire subcontinent may actually be regarded as one grand and continuous sacred space. Martin Gray spent the last 20 years visiting more than thousand sacred sites around the world and he guides us to some of the sacred sites of India.

Read more here: » Sacred Places: Sacred Sites, places and temples in India

Heat In science heat is a class of effects called thermal, and diagnosed as vibratory affections of the particles of bodies, produced by solar radiation, mechanical means, chemical action, or the flow of electric current. In seeking the unity which may reconcile these diversities, science has agreed to call heat a mode of motion or one of the forms of energy.

According to this theory, heat energy and mechanical energy are mutually convertible. Heat in the terms of modern physics cannot be described either as a fluid or as a mode of motion; but like all physical phenomena, whether we call them substantial or dynamic, it is a function of the activities of some substratum whose nature science is still striving to define.

Theosophically, heat is a manifestation of one of seven forces emanating from the fount of cosmic life and manifesting itself by various effects on various planes. It is a form of one of the seven primordial conscious forces emanating from anima mundi, one of the seven sons of fohat, or one of seven radicals -- one aspect of universal motion; in other words, the emanation from a living entity expressing itself on our plane as heat.

The forces of physics are manifestations of elementals, which themselves are manifestations of noumena on a still higher plane. Heat is both substantial and energic in character, and we may speak of it as being actually a fluidic emanation from living bodies; although it is equally possible to produce heat in so-called inanimate matter because of the stirring up of the same fluid in these bodies by means of intelligence acting to that end.

(See also: Heart, Sacred, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Seven Sacred Planets.

See PLANETS, (SEVEN) SACRED

(See also: Seven Sacred Planets, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary)

SACRED APES OF BENARES

Schopenhauer's term for women.

(See also: SACRED APES OF BENARES, Magick, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Body Mind and Soul, )

Seven Sacred Planets The ancients spoke of seven planets which they named the seven sacred planets, and they were serialized as Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury, and Moon.

The Sun and Moon are, however, used as substitutes for two secret planets, one near the sun and one over the moon, these secret planets being invisible to us at present. That near the Sun, an intra-mercurial planet, has been called Vulcan and was supposed to have been discovered in 1859, when a black spot was seen in transit across the solar disk; but since that time the discovery has not been verified by astronomers.

The teaching regarding it is that it became invisible to our physical senses at about the midpoint of the third root-race; but as we have now reached again, on the upward arc, the plane corresponding to the same degree of development, in a relatively short cyclic period it should begin again to show itself.

The planet for which the Moon stands as a substitute, sometimes called the Planet of Death, is near the Moon and also invisible to our physical senses. It has a retrograde motion and is slowly dying.

Each of these seven planets is, like our earth, a chain of globes, sevenfold or twelvefold in composition, having six superior globes of finer, more ethereal matter above the physical globe. Only those globes which are on the same cosmic plane of nature are physically visible to each other. For instance, we can see only the fourth-plane planetary globes of each of the other planetary or sidereal chains because we are on the fourth cosmic plane.

These seven planets are called sacred because every one of the globes of the earth chain is under the dominant guidance, and is actually largely formed by, one of these planets, assisted in each case by the other six. Further, every root-race of every one of the globes during each round is under the protection and guidance of one of the seven sacred planets.

But the main reason for calling them sacred is that our universal solar system is composed of seven planes of being, or worlds, over which are the seven primordial logoi. These are subdivided into seven minor logoi or powers, forming sevenfold groups or minor solar systems, and our solar system is one such group. In our solar system, our sacred planets are the respective houses, each house containing the seven forces of one of the seven chief rays of the solar logos: one such chief ray being our particular logos.

(See also: Seven Sacred Planets, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary)

Imperishable Sacred Land. See MOUNTAINS, MUNDANE; POLES, TERRESTRIAL AND CELESTIAL; SVETA-DVIPA

(See also: Imperishable Sacred Land, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

SACRED WHEEL WICCA: An eclectic neo-Pagan path which was organized in Delaware within the past decade. Calling themselves Wiccan, they focus on balance and learning. Celtic beliefs are a Part of their teachings. They state that they are a Wiccan religion dedicated to the health of Mother Earth, and to all her children in whatever forms they may take.

(See also: SACRED WHEEL WICCA, Pagan Organisations, Paganism, Pagan Dictionary, Wicca, )

SACRED WHEEL WICCA: An eclectic neo-Pagan path based on Celtic beliefs, that focuses on balance and learning. Celtic beliefs are a part of their teachings. They state that they are a Wiccan religion dedicated to the health of Mother Earth, and to all her children in whatever forms they may take.

(See also: SACRED WHEEL WICCA, Magickal Traditions, Magickal Paths, Paganism, Pagan Dictionary)

Since prehistoric times sacred places have exerted a mysterious attraction on billions of people around the world. Ancient legends and modern day reports tell of extraordinary things that have happened to people while visiting these places. Different sacred sites have the power to heal the body, enlighten the mind, increase creativity, develop psychic abilities, and awaken the soul to a knowing of its true purpose in life.

Normally, when one thinks of such places, the mind imagines terrestrial locations, fixed and unmoving, such as mountains, lands and caves. But the planet is a water place too with more than 70% of the surface of the earth covered with water. Many sacred sites are connected to water.

Read more here: » Sacred Sites: Sacred waters around the World.