mantra

A short expression in sacred language chanted to purify the mind and fulfill various aspirations.

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

Sanskrit: The classical literary language of India. All the words relating to Yoga come from Sanskrit, the ancient Indo European language of Hinduism, the Vedas and other sacred texts.

(See also: Sanskrit, Yoga, Yoga Dictionary)

Mystery Language. The sacerdotal secret jargon employed by the initiated priests, and used only when discussing sacred things. Every nation had its own "mystery" tongue, unknown save to those admitted to the Mysteries.

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

HIEROGLYPHICS

(From Greek: "sacred carvings.") To the ancients all writing was magical or sacred, insofar as it could relate or influence events happening at distances of time (past, present, future) and space (heaven or earth). But to the Egyptians, particularly, their language was sacred already and Thoth-given. Pharaoh himself was "The Great Word." Indeed it is from the Egyptians that the Greek Logos ("word") came to have its occult meaning. The Egyptian word for "word," medu, also meant a "sceptre," "magic wand" or "sacred staff." Medu-Neter = "hieroglyph."

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

OGHAM: a cipher language used by the Druids to communicate Occult or Hidden knowledge.  Consisted of a series of marks in relationship to a center line. ie,,,,,  It is used today for both sacred writings and for divination.

(See also: OGHAM, Witchcraft, Wicca, Paganism, Pagan Dictionary)

Rhutaliai Derived from the huge, highly civilized island called Ruta, which perished many millennia ago and which was one of the last strongholds of Atlantean culture and civilization.

This island existed in the Pacific Ocean, and from it as from a focus flowed forth civilizing colonies into what were then virgin or quasi-inhabited lands of the Far East, these colonies carrying with them their religions, philosophies, customs, habits, laws, languages, and forms of writing.

In the distant past the sacred and secret language possessed by all schools of occult philosophers was spoken all over the civilized portions of the globe. This language included not merely the speech but the various forms of the written alphabets employed to imbody it.

The devanagari (god-city script), of which modern Hindu devanagari is the lineal descendant, was then the favorite alphabetic form, in which the sacred language was imbodied when used by initiates. It then was used almost exclusively by the central seat of occult learning of the time. (cf 5 Years of Theosophy 423).

(See also: Rhutaliai, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary)

Codex Nazaraeus or the Book of Adam (i.e., of man or humanity); the chief sacred scripture of the Nazarites and of the Mandaeans or Nasoraeans; written in a Chaldeo-Syrian dialect mixed with the mystery language of the Gnostics.

 It is an instance of esotericism in a sect whose origin was pre-Christian, but which survived for many centuries into the Christian era as an esoteric school running parallel with exoteric Christianity. Its symbolic teachings are shown to be identical with those in The Secret Doctrine.

(See also: Codex Nazaraeus, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Pahlavi (Persian) [from Old Persian parthawa Parthian]

Also Pehlevi. The language into which the Zoroastrian archaic sacred books were translated. It was due to this that the Pahlavi literature was preserved, for, other than these religious books, very few works are extant, principally the Minoi-Khiradh and the Bundahish. It is also called Middle Persian, in contradistinction to New Persian and Old Persian, the language of the ancient Persians during the time of Darius the Great which already shows distinct changes from that in which the Avesta was written.

Pahlavi was the language of the northeastern people of Iran (Parthians) who ruled over the country soon after the downfall of Ach Achaemenids until 224 AD under the name of Arsacids. For about nine centuries this remained the language of the whole empire. Pahlavi belongs to the Iranian class of the southern division of Aryan languages.

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

Avesta (Zend). Lit., "the Law". From the old Persian Abasta, "the law". The sacred Scriptures of the Zoroastrians. Zend means in the "Zend-Avesta" - a "commentary" or "interpretation". It is an error to regard " Zend" as a language, as "it was applied only to explanatory texts, to the translations of the Avesta"(Darmsteter).

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

Devanagari (Sanskrit) "Divine city writing," the alphabetic script of Aryan India, in which the Sanskrit language is usually written. The Devanagari alphabet and the art of writing it were kept secret for ages, and the dvijas (twice-born) and the dikshitas (initiates) alone were originally permitted to use this literary art.

In India, as in many other countries which have been the seat of archaic civilizations, sacred and secret records were committed to the tablets of the mind, rather than to material tablets. Alone the priesthood invariably had, in addition to the mnemonic records, an ideographic or syllabic script which was used when considered convenient or necessary, mainly for intercommunication between themselves and brother-initiates speaking other tongues.

This applied to ideographic characters which can be read with equal facility by those acquainted with them, whatever their spoken mother-tongue may be, and to written characters imbodying an archaic or sacred language, as was the case with the ancient Sanskrit. This is the main reason why these ancient peoples have so few allusions -- and sometimes no allusions at all -- to writing; in the civilizations of those far past times writing was not found to be a need and was kept as a sacred art for the temple scribes.

"Devanagari is as old as the Vedas, and held so sacred that the Brahmans, first under penalty of death, and later on, of eternal ostracism, were not even allowed to mention it to profane ears, much less to make known the existence of their secret temple libraries" (Five Years of Theosophy 360).

"Real Devanagari -- non-phonetic characters -- meant formerly the outward symbols, so to say, the signs used in the inter-communication between gods and initiated mortals. Hence their great sacredness and the silence maintained throughout the Vedic and the Brahmanical periods about any object concerned with, or referring to, reading and writing. It was the language of the gods" (ibid. 423).

The Devanagari characters as first used among initiates and privileged men were symbolic and ideographic in form. But these outlines by use gradually lost their mere picture-form, or idea-suggesting power, and through constant use and rapid writing continuously lost more and more of the details of the picture, until they finally became merely conventional signs or letters of the alphabet. The word devanagari is synonymous with the Hermetic and Hieratic Neter-Khari (divine speech) of the Egyptians.

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

Zend-Avesta (Pahli). The general name for the sacred books of the Parsis, fire or sun worshippers, as they are ignorantly called.

So little is understood of the grand doctrines which are still found in the various fragments that compose all that is now left of that collection of religious works, that Zoroastrianism is called indifferently Fire-worship, Mazdaism, or Magism, Dualism, Sun-worship, and what not.

The Avesta has two parts as now collected together, the first portion containing the Vendidad, the Visperad and the Yasna; and the second portion, called the Khorda Avesta (Small Avesta), being composed of short prayers called Gah, Nyayish, etc. Zend means "a commentary or explanation", and Avesta (from the old Persian abashta, "the law". (See Darmsteter.)

As the translator of the Vendidad remarks in a foot note (see int. xxx.): "what it is customary to call ‘the Zend language’, ought to be named ‘the Avesta language’, the Zend being no language at all and if the word be used as the designation of one, it can be rightly applied only to the Pahlavi". But then, the Pahlavi itself is only the language into which certain original portions of the Avesta are translated.

What name should be given to the old Avesta language, and particularly to the "special dialect, older than the general language of the Avesta" (Darmst.), in which the five Ghthas in the Yasna are written? To this day the Orientalists are mute upon the subject. Why should not the Zend be of the same family, if not identical with the Zen-sar, meaning also the speech explaining the abstract symbol, or the "mystery language," used by Initiates?

(See also: Zend-Avesta, Theosophy, Spirituality, Body mind and Soul, Spiritual Dictionary, )

Pali The language spoken in the north of India from and before the 7th century BC to about the 5th century AD. It is still the literary sacred language of Burma, Thailand, and Ceylon. There were two factors which made Pali one of the most important literary languages of the world: first, with the rise of the Kosalas into a kingdom, the language of its capital (Savatthi, in Nepal) become the form of speech almost universally adopted. Secondly, Gautama Buddha, being of Kosalan by birth, probably used the Pali language in giving forth his teachings, and therefore the subsequent philosophical writings of his disciples were similarly couched in this language.

Sanskrit, on the other hand, "was really the sacred language of the Brahmanas and held more or less private or secret by them. The Sanskrit even in those ancient times was the vehicle for the archaic Wisdom-teachings of the Aryan peoples of India, such as the Vedas, and the Puranas, and the Upanishads, and the great epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. But Pali was one of several other languages of culture in ancient India, all which were of so-called Prakrit character, although very little is known about these other literary languages. Pali has survived to the present time because . . . it became the linguistic vehicle in which were enshrined the teachings of Buddhism, i.e., of Southern Buddhism, much as Latin has survived because enshrining the teachings of early medieval Christianity. Just as there were in ancient Italy many other Italic tongues, each one having its literary or cultured form, and likewise its popular idiom, so was it in ancient India.

"Pali is not a 'washed-out Sanskrit.' Sanskrit was rather a mystery-language which was 'composed' or 'builded up' to perfection by initiates of the Sanctuaries; and because it was thus constructed into an almost perfect expression of human thought, at least for that day, it was called samskrita, which means 'composed,' 'constructed.' Thus Pali is not a true child of Sanskrit, but is and was the literary form of one of the ancient languages of India popularly spoken over an apparently wide stretch of the Indian Peninsula, . . ." (SOPh 694-5).

In the 3rd century BC the language used throughout Northern India was practically one, and it was derived directly from the speech of the Vedic Aryans, retaining many Vedic forms lost in the later classical Sanskrit. The basis of the language used in the Buddhist canon was that used in Ujjayini, the capital of the Avanti district. The chief doctrines of Buddhism are recorded in the works known as the Suttas (Sutras in Sanskrit) -- there being four Nikayas consisting of 16 volumes; the fifth Nikaya being the Jatakas (birth stories).

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

Carnac. A very ancient site in Brittany (France) of a temple of cyclopean structure, sacred to the Sun and the Dragon; and of the same kind as Karnac, in ancient Egypt, and Stonehenge in England. (See the "Origin of the Satanic Myth" in Archaic Symbolism.)

It was built by the prehistoric hierophant-priests of the Solar Dragon, or symbolized Wisdom (the Solar Kumaras who incarnated being the highest). Each of the stones was personally placed there by the successive priest-adepts in power, and commemorated in symbolic language the degree of power, status, and knowledge of each. (See further Secret Doctrine II. 381, et seq., and also " Karnac".)

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

Platonic School The philosophers of the Academy, who followed Plato and can be traced down to the days of Cicero, gradually undergoing change during that period and divisible into schools connected with the names of prominent philosophers.

Distinguished from the Aristotelian or Peripatetic school, much as philosophy is distinguished from science or as idealism is distinguished from naturalism. The principal feature is the Platonic dualism: of noumenon and phenomenon, of the self-moving and that which is moved, of the Idea and its manifestation in an organic being, of the permanent and the impermanent, of soul and body, nous and psyche, etc.

In epistemology this dualism appears as philosophia and sense experience -- the wisdom which apprehends reality and that which forms concepts from the data of sense experience; in morals, as the contrast between the Good, which is altruistic because it apprehends the unity of all beings, and the ethic of self-seeking based on the illusion of separateness.

Plato's message was that of a person initiated in the sacred Mysteries, but under the usual necessity of reticence, of speaking in veiled language, and of casting his knowledge into the prevalent molds of thought.

(See also: Platonic School, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Sutra (Sanskrit) [from siv to sew]

A string, thread; the sutras are strings of rules or aphorisms written in serve form, composed in terse and symbolic language with the obvious intention of their being committed to memory. This was a favorite form among the Hindus, as among all ancient peoples, of imbodying and transmitting rules of ancient religious and philosophic thought.

There are sutras written upon almost every subject, but the sutras commonly signify those connected with the Vedas, of which there are three kinds: the Kalpa-sutras (rules of ritual); the grihya-sutras (domestic rules) treating of ordinary family rites such as marriage, birth, name-giving, etc.; and the Samayacharika-sutras which treat of customs and temporal duties. The Kalpa-sutras belong to the class of writings called Srutis (heard or revealed); while the other two types of sutras belong to the Smritis (remembered), carried traditionally from generation to generation by word of mouth.

In Buddhist writings, the Sutras are the second division of sacred works, generally known under the equivalent Pali term Suttas.

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

DZYAN

A corruption of Sanskrit Dhyana, "meditation" > Chinese Ch'an, Japanese Zen. The word, however, has entirely different meanings in each language. The Book of Dzyan or Stanzas of Dzyan is one of the 90 treatises of the Buddhist and Pre-Buddhist "Book of the Golden Precepts" written in Senzar, the ancient, sacred precursor to Sanskrit, which HPB partially translated in Tibet. The Book of Klu-Te is apparently another esoteric Tibetan work. These incredibly ancient books comprise most of HPB's sources for her Secret Doctrine.

Major Keyhoe states that in The Book of Dzyan there is an account of beings who arrive on earth from the sky in metal ships, build rival cities, then destroy one another with nuclear missiles.

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

Sanskrit [from Sanskrit sanskrita or samskrita]

The ancient sacred language of the Aryans, originally the sacred or secret language of the initiates of the fifth root-race. The Sanskrit language possesses voluminous and valuable works in prose and in verse, some of which, like the Vedas, date back, in the opinion of certain scholars, to the years 30,000 BC or even far beyond. Almost every phase of philosophic thought, expressed and studied in the West, is represented in one form or another in ancient Hindu literature. Besides this, these old Sanskrit writings are replete with recondite subjects dealing with the wondrous potentialities of the human spirit and mind, the building and destruction of worlds and universes, etc.

The Sanskrit language, derives from one of the earliest of the Aryan tongues, a lineal descendant of an Atlantean progenitor.

"In ancient times in India, and in the homeland of the Aryans before they reached India by way of Central Asia, this very early Aryan speech was used not only by the Aryan populace, but in the sanctuaries of the Temples was taken in hand and developed or composed or builded to be a far finer vehicle for expressing abstract religious and philosophic conceptions and thoughts. This tongue thus composed or developed by initiates of the Aryan stock, because of this formative work upon it was finally given the name Sanskrita, signifying an original natural language which had become perfected by initiates for the purpose of expressing far more subtle and profound distinctions than ordinary people would ever find needful. So great was the admiration in which the Sanskrit language thus perfected was held, that it was commonly said of it that it was the work of the Gods, because it had thus become capable of expressing godlike thoughts: profound spiritual subtleties and philosophical distinctions. Thus it was that Sanskrit is really the mystery-language of the initiates of the Aryan race; as the Senzar of very similar history was the mystery-language of the later Atlanteans; and is still used as the noblest mystery-language by the Mahatmas.

"Sanskrit was not known as a spoken tongue to the Atlanteans in their prime, but in the degenerate or later times of Atlantis, when the earliest Aryans already had appeared on the scene of history, this early Aryan speech above alluded to, was already in existence; and the Aryan initiates were then in the course of perfecting it as their temple-language or mystery-tongue . . . Thus Sanskrit was not spoken among the Atlanteans, nor can it therefore be called an Atlantean language; although its verbal roots of course go back to earliest Atlantean times, but only its verbal roots" -- G. de Purucker

"The Vedas, Brahmanism, and along with these, Sanskrit, were importations into what we now regard as India. They were never indigenous to its soil. There was a time when the ancient nations of the West included under the generic name of India many of the countries of Asia now classified under other names. There was an Upper, a Lower, and a Western India, even during the comparatively late period of Alexander; and Persia (Iran) is called Western India in some ancient classics. The countries now named Tibet, Mongolia, and Great Tartary were considered by them as forming part of India. When we say, therefore, that India has civilized the world, and was the Alma Mater of the civilizations, arts, and sciences of all other nations (Babylonia, and perhaps even Egypt, included) we mean archaic, pre-historic India, India of the time when the great Gobi was a sea, and the lost 'Atlantis' formed part of an unbroken continent which began at the Himalayas and ran down over Southern India, Ceylon, and Java, to far-away Tasmania" (Five Years of Theosophy 179).

Blavatsky states that Sanskrit has never been known nor spoken in its true systematized form except by the initiated Brahmins. This form of Sanskrit was called -- as well as by other names -- Vach, the mystic speech, which resides in the sounds of the mantra. "The chanting of a Mantra is not a prayer, but rather a magical sentence in which the law of Occult causation connects itself with, and depends on, the will and acts of its singer. It is a succession of Sanskrit sounds, and when its strings of words and sentences is pronounced according to the magical formulae in the Atharva Veda, but understood by the few, some Mantras produce an instantaneous and very wonderful effect" (BCW 14:428n). This Vach, or the mystic self of Sanskrit, was the sacerdotal speech of the initiated Brahmins and was studied by initiates from all over the world.

"It is admitted that, however inferior to the classical Sanskrit of Panini, the language of the oldest portions of Rig Veda, notwithstanding the antiquity of its grammatical forms, is the same as that of the latest texts. Every one sees -- cannot fail to

See and to know -- that for a language so old and so perfect as the Sanskrit to have survived alone, among all languages, it must have had its cycles of perfection and its cycles of degeneration. And, if one had any intuition, he might have seen that what they call a 'dead language' being an anomaly, a useless thing in Nature, it would not have survived, even as a 'dead' tongue, had it not its special purpose in the reign of immutable cyclic laws; and that Sanskrit, which came to be nearly lost to the world, is now slowly spreading in Europe, and will one day have the extension it had thousands upon thousands of years back -- that of a universal language. The same as to the Greek and the Latin: there will be a time when the Greek of Aeschylus (and more perfect still in its future form) will be spoken by all in Southern Europe, while Sanskrit will be resting in its periodical pralaya; and the Attic will be followed later by the Latin of Virgil. Something ought to have whispered to us that there was also a time -- before the original Aryan settlers among the Dravidian and other aborigines, admitted within the fold of Brahmanical initiation, marred the purity of the sacred Sanskrita Bhasha -- when Sanskrit was spoken in all its unalloyed subsequent purity, and therefore must have had more than once its rise and fall. The reason for it is simply this: classical Sanskrit was only restored, if in some things perfected, by Panin. Panini, Katyayana, or Patanjali did not create it; it has existed throughout cycles, and will pass through other cycles still" (Five Years of Theosophy 419-20).

See also DEVANAGARI

(See also: Sanskrit, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary)

Targum (Chald.). Lit., "Interpretation", from the root targem to interpret. Paraphrases of Hebrew Scriptures.

Some of the Targums are very mystical, the Aramaic (or Targumatic) language being used all through the Zohar and other Kabbalistic works. To distinguish this language from the Hebrew, called the "face " of the sacred tongue, it is referred to as ahorayim, the " back part ", the real meaning of which must be read between the lines, according to certain methods given to students. The Latin word tergum, "back ", is derived from the Hebrew or rather Aramaic and Chaldean targum. The Book of Daniel begins in Hebrew, and is fully comprehensible till chap. ii., V. 4, when the Chaldees (the Magician-Initiates) begin speaking to the king in Aramaic - not in Syriac, as mistranslated in the Protestant Bible.

Daniel speaks in Hebrew before interpreting the king’s dream to him; but explains the dream itself (chap. vii.) in Aramaic. " So in Ezra iv., v. and vi., the words of the kings being there literally quoted, all matters connected therewith are in Aramaic ", says Isaac Myer in his Qabbalah. The Targumim are of different ages, the latest already showing signs of the Massoretic or vowel-system, which made them still more full of intentional blinds. The precept of the Pirke Aboth (c. i., i), " Make a fence to the Thorah " (law), has indeed been faithfully followed in the Bible as in the Targumim ; and wise is he who would interpret either correctly, unless he is an old Occultist-Kabbalist.

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

Anahita (Avestan) Nahid (Persian) (in full Aredvi-Sura-Anahita from ared to grow straight or high, expand + sura strong, powerful + anahita undefilable from a not + ahit unclean)

The Avestan goddess of the waters dwelling in the region of the stars; similar to the Hindu Ganga, she is described as "the large river, known afar, that is as large as the whole of the waters that run along the earth; that runs powerfully from the height Hukairya down to the sea Vouru-Kasha (the waters of space)

. All the shores of the sea Vouru-Kasha are boiling over, all the middle of it is boiling over, when she runs down there, when she streams down there, she, Ardvi Sura Anahita, who has a thousand cells and a thousand channels: the extent of each of those cells, of each of those channels is as much as a man can ride in forty days, riding on a good horse. From this river of mine (Ahura Mazda's) alone flow all the waters that spread all over the seven Karshvares (the seven globes of the earth-chain); this river of mine alone goes on bringing waters, both in summer and in winter" (Aban Yasht 3-5).

According to Berosus, it was Artaxerxes Mnemon (404-361 BC) who first instituted formal worship of a divinity hitherto held too holy and sacred for public adoration, erecting statues under the name of Venus-Anahita -- thus she became the Anaitis of the Greeks. Blavatsky equates her with the Hindu Sarasvati.

In the old Persian Language Aredvi-Sur-Nahid has been used in the sense of powerful and unblemished water; Nahid is also the name of Venus. Anahita represents the water of life or the primordial substance in which the life-giving Mithra penetrates and creates light. Mehr-Ab (Mithra + water) is the name given to the most sacred place of worship or altar in all mosques, usually represented with a triangle over a square, geometrically pertaining to the number seven. This symbol can also be seen in some carpet designs and many Persian artifacts of different periods, both Islamic and pre-Islamic.

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

Neophyte (Ancient Greek). A novice; a postulant or candidate for the Mysteries.

The methods of initiation varied. Neophytes had to pass in their trials through all the four elements, emerging in the fifth as glorified Initiates. Thus having passed through Fire (Deity), Water (Divine Spirit), Air (the Breath of God), and the Earth (Matter), they received a sacred mark, a tat and a tau, or a + and a ?. The latter was the monogram of the Cycle called the Naros, or Neros. As shown by Dr. E. V. Kenealy, in his Apocalypse, the cross in symbolical language (one of the seven meanings)"+ exhibits at the same time three primitive letters, of which the word LVX or Light is compounded. . . . The Initiates were marked with this sign, when they were admitted into the perfect mysteries. We constantly see the Tau and the Resh united thus ?.

Those two letters in the old Samaritan, as found on coins, stand, the first for 400, the second for 200 = 600. This is the staff of Osiris." Just so, but this does not prove that the Naros was a cycle of 600 years; but simply that one more pagan symbol had been appropriated by the Church.

(See "Naros" and "Neros" and also "I. H. S.")

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