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.

(See also: Sons of Will and Yoga, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary)

Rakshasas raksasas (Sanskrit) [from the verbal root raksh to protect]

The preservers; in modern popular superstition in India, commonly associated with evil spirits and demons. Esoterically they are the gibborim (giants) of the Bible, the fourth root-race or Atlanteans:

"when Brahma created the demons, Yakshas (from Yaksh, to eat) and the Rakshasas, both of which kinds of demons, as soon as born, wished to devour their creator, those among them that called out 'Not so! oh, let him be saved (preserved)' were named Rakshasas (Vishnu Purana Book I, ch. v.). The Bhagavata Purana (III, 20, 19-21) renders the allegory differently. Brahma transformed himself into night (or ignorance) invested with a body, upon which the Yakshas and Rakashasas seized, exclaiming 'Do not spare it; devour it.' Brahma then cried out, 'Do not devour me, spare me.' This has an inner meaning of course. The 'Body of Night' is the darkness of ignorance, and it is the darkness of silence and secrecy. Now the Rakshasas are shown in almost every case to be Yogis, pious Saddhus and Initiates, a rather unusual occupation for demons. The meaning then is that while we have power to dispel the darkness of ignorance, 'devour it,' we have to preserve the sacred truth from profanation. 'Brahma is for the Brahmins alone,' says that proud caste. The moral of the fable is evident" (SD 2:165n).

The rakshasas or men-demons of Lanka, the opponents conquered by Rama in the Ramayana, are some of the latest representatives of the Atlanteans in their last days. These rakshasas correspond to the Greek titans, the Egyptian colossal heroes, the Chaldean izdubars, the Jewish 'eimim (terrifiers) of the land of Moab, and with the famous giants anakim (`anaqim) mentioned in Numbers 13:33.

(See also: Rakshasas, raksasas, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary)

Michael micha'el (Hebrew) Who is as God; one of the seven archangels, in the Old Testament one of the chiefs of the heavenly host, regarded as the guardian angel or celestial patron of Israel. According to one legend, Michael was chief of the four or seven angels who surrounded the heavenly throne.

The Roman Catholic Church regards Michael in much the same light, his festival, Michaelmas, being held on September 29. With the Gnostics, the first of the Aeons, called the savior. In the New Testament Michael leads the angelic host against the Apocalyptic Dragon, repeating the familiar tale of many ancient mythologies. Again, he is the chief opponent of Samael, the principal antagonist of the heavenly host.

Originally, however, both Michael and Samael were as one, both proceeding from ruah (soul), neshamah (spirit), and nephesh (vitality) -- as taught in the Qabbalah (in the Chaldean Book of Numbers).

"Samael is the concealed (occult) Wisdom, and Michael the higher terrestrial Wisdom, both emanating from the same source but diverging after their issue from the mundane soul, which on Earth is Mahat (intellectual understanding), or Manas (the seat of Intellect). They diverge, because one (Michael) is influenced by Neschamah, while the other (Isamael) remains uninfluenced. This tenet was perverted by the dogmatic spirit of the Church; which . . . made of Samael-Satan (the most wise and spiritual spirit of all) -- the adversary of its anthropomorphic God and sensual physical man, the devil!" (SD 2:378).

In Ezekiel's vision of the Cherubim, or the four sacred animals, the angel with the face of the lion corresponds to Michael, as in the Ophite scheme.

(See also: Michael, micha'el, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary)

Solar System Commonly, the Sun with the nine principal planets -- Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto -- their satellites, and the minor planets, comets, and meteors; in theosophy, however, the solar system is a far more complex entity, for many of its worlds manifest on planes of being invisible to our senses.

The planets are individual manifestations of conscious intelligences, their distances from the sun being generally in rhythmical progression and their motions directed by mind and volition, as Kepler declared in his doctrine of Rectors, following the ancient teachings. The nebular hypothesis, once so popular in European scientific thought and now more or less rejected, was first suggested by Swedish seer Swedenborg and German philosopher Kant, and around the beginning of the 19th century was worked out in mathematical detail by the Frenchman Laplace. Though the nebular hypothesis as scientifically presented was unacceptable to theosophical thinkers, it nevertheless was based upon facts of cosmic evolution accepted by the ancient wisdom-religion and approximated somewhat more closely to what theosophy teaches as the facts of cosmogony than do the later tidal or planetesimal theories.

In theosophy the universe is the product of cosmic mind or intelligence, whose all-permeant activities manifest on our material plane as the laws of nature. The universe and all in it, proceeding from cosmic consciousness, is imbued throughout with the qualities and attributes of its divine originators; and as there is but one primordial fundamental life -- and therefore one fundamental law -- energizing and guiding all, the ancient teaching of analogy is the master key to understanding universal nature.

Calling the primordial origins of every being and thing by the term monads, as Leibniz did following Pythagoras, these monads may be looked upon as the seeds of cosmic life, life-centers or energy points, and in such case naught in the universe is the product of chance, but is the offspring of mind. Thus the solar system itself sprang from such a cosmic seed or monad; and the same holds true for the planets, nebulae, comets, and all other individually enduring cosmic bodies.

Comets are coordinated with earlier and later stages of nebular evolution, playing an activating part in the formation of individual celestial bodies. The planets did not emerge from the sun, but the sun is their "co-uterine brother" with the same nebular origin. The sun is the great distributor of light and other radiations, including vital energy, throughout the solar system, and is itself a member of a hierarchy of solar beings.

The ancient wisdom speaks of seven sacred planets which are especially connected with the earth, as indeed our own earth is likewise especially connected with various planetary chains, which mutually assisted in the formation of the seven or twelve globes of the planetary chains. These sacred planets are: the Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn -- the Sun and Moon being substitutes for esoteric and invisible planets. The complete number of the planets of a solar system is twelve, which is the number of globes composing a planetary chain. These twelve sacred planets are closely linked with the twelve houses of the zodiac, these links of unity being the energic coordinates tying our solar system in with the life and structure of the galaxy.

Theosophy makes a distinction between the solar system and the universal solar system -- the former has especial reference to the twelve sacred planets, while the universal solar system refers to all bodies belonging to and revolving around a master- or king-sun (raja-sun) and within the latter's far-flung realm on seven or more planes of being. It therefore contains planets and suns invisible to our present range of sense perception. Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto are said not to belong to the solar system (nor are they included among the twelve sacred planets), but are members of the universal solar system.

In the Brahmanical system the solar system was regarded as an Egg of Brahma (brahmanda), the prakritic or prithivi-form of Brahma, so that its life span is equivalent to the length of Brahma's manifested life. A Day of Brahma for a planetary chain consists of a planetary manvantara -- seven rounds of the various life-waves around that chain -- a period of 4,320,000,000 terrestrial years. The ensuing pralaya or Night of Brahma is of an equivalent length, together equaling 8,640,000,000 terrestrial years. Forty-nine such planetary Days and Nights equal one solar manvantara, equivalent to a Year of Brahma; and each such year of Brahma is figured as being 360 of his Days; and 100 such Years of Brahma equal Brahma's Life, a period of 311,040,000,000,000 terrestrial years -- including in this vast time period the various twilights and dawns. Theosophic philosophy states that one-half of Brahma's Life has been spent, or 50 Years of Brahma. At the end of Brahma's Life, the final consummation of the solar system, so far as the planetary chain is concerned, will occur, and everything within the bounds of this system will vanish, and the succeeding solar pralaya will commence.

(See also: Solar System, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary)

Pyramid The square pyramid as a symbol is an amplification of the triangle: it has lines, triangles, and a square, proceeding from a point downwards or conversely upwards merging into a point at the apex. Thus we have the four numbers of the tetraktys represented by point, line, triangle, and square.

Reference is usually to stone monuments, especially those of Egypt and chiefly to the Great Pyramid of Cheops. All these pyramids, whether in Egypt, Central America, or elsewhere, are records constructed by initiates who journeyed to many lands, for the preservation of sacred knowledge through the dark ages, to be available to posterity.

In seeking to explain the meaning of these records we are faced with the difficulty of interpreting an ancient science into terms of modern ideas. The science of those days was a comprehensive whole, which has become decomposed into sundered fragments, which seem to us, because of having lost the keys to the ancient wisdom which brought about the construction of these noble monuments, to be unrelated to each other.

Were the pyramids initiation chambers, records of astronomical data, of mathematical truths, or of standard measurements? They were all of these and more. When the candidate passed through the processes of initiation he enacted in his own person the self-same processes which occur on the cosmic scale, on the principle of the master-key of analogy, the size, shape, and orientation of the passages and chambers signifying at once cosmic and human mysteries.

A profound lore of numbers, measures, and their relation to the cosmic plan impelled their architects to build their records according to these now forgotten mathematical principles. Many investigators have discovered fragments of this lore but have not succeeded in reconstructing the whole out of the fragments.

The angle between a side of the base and the slant height is in the neighborhood of 51 degrees 50 minutes; and within the limits of a difference of only three minutes of arc we obtain three remarkable results: 1) the periphery of the base is 2 times the height; 2) the cosine of this angle is .618 . . ., the ratio of the Divine Section; and 3) the ratio of the slant height to a side of the base is that of the ten-month lunar year to the solar year.

If a certain ancient cubit be taken and used as unit, the side of the base gives the number of days in the solar year. Certain of our measures, usually believed to be arbitrary and modern, are thought by some to be based on cosmic facts and to be preserved in the Great Pyramid. That the decimal notation was used is shown by the fact that certain significant numbers are derived from each other by permutation of the digits, which would not hold good in any other scale or system of notation. The orientation shows the four cardinal points and symbolizes the four elements.

The age of the Great Pyramid is hinted by Blavatsky to be at least three precessional cycles, or about 78,000 years, old (SD 2:432).

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

Valhalla (Scandinavian) Valholl (Icelandic) [from val choice, death + hall, holl hall]

In Norse mythology, the hall of the chosen or of the slain where Odin's heroes, the One-harriers, are brought by the Valkyries at the end of each day's battles to feast with Ropt, the maligned or misunderstood god (Odin). "The hall of the chosen glows golden in Gladhome," one of the superior "shelves" or ethereal planes which are closely related to our planet earth.

The walls of Valhalla are built of the spears of the warriors, it is roofed with their shields, while inside the hall "the benches are strewn with byrnies." Over the entrance door are transfixed the wolf (bestiality) and the eagle (pride). All of these are symbolic of the sacrifice of properties that have been relinquished by Odin's chosen warriors, for these represent, in the Norse tales, the initiated adepts who have elected to serve the cause of universality and aid the progress of human evolution. Abandoning progressively all weapons of offense, then of defense, and finally all personal protection, exemplifies the universal service of the chosen.

The One-harriers of Odin emerge daily to do battle on the plain of consecration (Vigridsslatten, life on earth) and by night return to feast with Allfather Ropt in the sacred hall on the mead brewed from their experience of life.

At the feast of the warriors in Valhalla they are served three boars, representing three elements as well as three principles of cosmic life: Andrimner (air, spirit), Sarimner (water, mind), and Eldrimner (fire, desire). A suggestive verse in Grimnismal may then be read as: "Spirit lets mind be steeped in desire. Few know what nourishes the One-harriers."

The tales concerning Valhalla have been sadly misunderstood in popular mythologies. Far from being an account of gross debauchery, there is mystical meaning hidden in every detail of the description of Odin's domain and of the feasting of his warriors. For example, Valhalla is said to have 540 doors, through each of which 800 warriors issue abreast. This makes the number of One-harriers total 432,000, an oft-recurring number in Hindu and Babylonian time tables dealing with mystic and mythic history. Their message is in fact one of the noblest and most inspiring of mythic tales, when read between the lines of allegory, for here the warriors of emerge willingly to be "slain" daily in the cause of humanity's evolutionary progress.

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

Twelve Perhaps the most esoteric of all numerals; so profound was the reverence with which the ancients regarded it that the records concerning it are almost innumerable, found in virtually all branches of human thought and activity. Thus we find it in the twelve hours of the day and of the night; the twelve months of the year; the twelve great gods of ancient pantheons; the twelve apostles in the New Testament and the twelve tribes in the Old Testament; the twelve nidanas in Buddhism; and pointing directly to cosmogonical matters, the twelve signs of the zodiac.

As Plato puts it in the Timaeus, the universe was constructed by divinity in accordance with geometrical laws, the first cosmogonic basis of which was the dodecahedron -- outside of the ever-productive and cosmically fecund One. Philo Judaeus likewise regarded twelve as a sacred number, writing that the sun visits serially the signs of the zodiac monthly, during the twelve months of the year, "and it is to honour that sign that Moses divided his nation into twelve tribes, established the twelve cakes (Levit. xxiv, 5) of the shewbread, and placed twelve precious stones around the ephod of the pontiffs (See De Profugis)" (SD 1:649).

In the Qabbalah it is said that creation was accomplished during the twelve hours of a day: "The 'twelve hours of the day' are again the dwarfed copy, the faint, yet faithful, echo of primitive Wisdom. They are like the 12,000 divine years of the gods, a cyclic blind. Every 'Day of Brahma' has 14 Manus, which the Hebrew Kabalists, following, however, in this the Chaldeans, have disguised into 12 'Hours.' The Nuctameron of Apollonius of Tyana is the same thing. 'The Dodecahedron lies concealed in the perfect Cube,' say the Kabalists. The mystic meaning of this is, that the twelve great transformations of Spirit into matter (the 12,000 divine years) take place during the four great ages, or the first Mahayuga" (SD 1:450).

In theosophic writings the complete number of globes of a planetary chain is given as twelve: five globes being unmanifested and seven manifested.

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

Swastika svastika (Sanskrit) An auspicious or lucky object; especially applied to the mystic symbol -- a cross with four equal arms, the extremities of which are bent sharply at right angles, all in the same direction -- marked upon persons and things in order to denote good luck, although originally the symbol had a far deeper significance. Sometimes the arms are bent to the left, sometimes to the right.

The symbol is very widespread, and extremely ancient, engraved on every rock-temple and prehistoric building in India, and wherever Buddhists have flourished, as well as in Greece, among the ancient Scandinavians, and in ancient America. It has been called the Jaina Cross; Fylfot, Mjolnir, or Thor's Hammer by the Scandinavian peoples; and in the Chaldean Book of Numbers the Worker's Hammer.

One of the most comprehensive, important, and philosophically scientific symbols, it is a symbolic summary of the whole work of evolution in cosmos and man, from Brahman down to the smallest biological unit. "Few world-symbols are more pregnant with real occult meaning than the Swastica. It is symbolized by the figure 6; for, like that figure, it points in its concrete imagery, as the ideograph of the number does, to the Zenith and the Nadir, to North, South, West, and East; . . . It is the emblem of the activity of Fohat, of the continual revolution of the 'wheels,' and of the Four Elements, the 'Sacred Four,' in their mystical, and not alone in their cosmical meaning; further its four arms, bent at right angles, are intimately related . . . to the Pythagorean and Hermetic scales. One initiated into the mysteries of the meaning of the Swastica, say the Commentaries, 'can trace on it, with mathematical precision, the evolution of Kosmos and the whole period of Sandhya.' Also 'the relation of the Seen to the Unseen,' and 'the first procreation of man and species' " (SD 2:587).

The bent arms also signify the continual revolution of the invisible cosmos of forces, which on our plane becomes the revolution in time of the world's axes and their equatorial belts. In alchemy its shows that by the unceasing revolution of the four elements, equilibrium about a stable center is attained, the circle is generated out of straight lines, the complex and changeful nature becomes one. The two crossed lines represent spirit and matter, male and female, positive and negative. It shows man to be a link between heaven and earth, for the horizontal arm having one hook pointing up, the other down. In its applicability to all planes it contains the key to the seven great mysteries of kosmos.

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

Music [from Greek mousike (techne) the art of the Muses]

The music of the Greeks did not signify merely the harmony of sounds, but actually imbodied the idea of inner harmony of the spirit, the becoming at one with the spirit of the Muses, so that the soul responded in harmonic rhythm to the beat of universal harmony.

Music with the Greeks, therefore, included, besides vocal and instrumental music, choral dancing, rhythmic motions, and various modes of harmony expressed in action, perhaps most particularly that part of education which we should now classify as a striving for harmony in life combined with aesthetic, in contrast with intellectual and physical branches of study and development. It was culture of the essential person, the ego or soul, whereas the other two divisions care for and supply the needs of the mind and of the body.

Music, considered as the essential harmony not only in cosmic but in human life, has fallen from that high estate to being little more than the harmony of sounds, cultivated piecemeal under a number of varieties: one may be an expert instrumentalist without having much harmony in one's soul.

In this modern, limited sense music combines and appeals to the aesthetic and the mathematical. For, while we have the power to be enraptured by harmony and melody, we can also learn how these effects are related to numbers, ratios, vibrations, and all those physical facts studied in acoustics and the laws of modern musical harmony and counterpoint. When these two components of a full musical knowledge are sundered, both branches of study suffer.

Harmony and rhythm underlie the cosmos, as is expressed in the phrase, "the music of the spheres"; and number and proportion underlie the whole process of evolution. Apollo, uniting the attributes of the sun, bears in his hand a heptachord or seven-stringed lyre. The sacred number seven is characteristic of divisions of the octave, and we have the first six notes of the harmonic chord, to which may be added a seventh.

Music, in all its various branches is represented as having been taught to man by his divine and divine-human ancestors, such as Isis-Osiris, Thoth, Edris (in the Koran), etc. It is one of the elements of the power known as mantrikasakti. Music was represented as one of four divisions of mathematics, the others being arithmetic, astronomy, and geometry. The music of sound arouses in us a power which needs to be controlled, as it can carry us to heights from which we may fall. If regarded as a sensual indulgence, even though a refined one, its true import is not realized. If carried into our lives, so as to aid in harmonizing our relationships to other lives, then it is the unfolding influence of the real music of the spheres of cosmic harmony. For music is "the most divine and spiritual of arts" (ML 188).

(See also: Music, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary)

Abraxas, Abrasax (Gnostic) Mystical term used by the Gnostics to indicate the supreme entity of our cosmic hierarchy or its manifestation in the human being which they called the Christos. Abrasas has the value of 365, based on numerical equivalents of the Greek alphabet. Because 365 represents the cycle of one revolution of our planet around the sun, they held that in Abraxas were mystically contained the full number of families of entities composing a hierarchy. These entities received from their supreme illuminator, Abraxas, the streams of life and inspiration governing their existence. Thus in a sense Abraxas is the cosmic Oversoul, the creative or Third Logos, Brahma. The Basilidean Gnostics taught that from this supreme God was created nous (mind). Abraxas also was identified with the Hebrew 'Adonai, the Egyptian Horus, and the Hindu Prajapati.

Gnostic amulets known as Abraxas gems depicted the god as a pantheos (all-god), with the head of a cock, herald of the sun, representing foresight and vigilance; a human body clothed in armor, suggestive of guardian power; legs in the form of sacred asps. In his right hand is a scourge, emblem of authority; on his left arm a shield emblazoned with a word of power. This pantheos is invariably inscribed with his proper name IAO and his epithets Abraxas and Sabaoth, and often accompanied with invocations such as SEMES EILAM, the eternal sun (Gnostics and Their Remains 246), which Blavatsky equates with "the central spiritual sun" of the Qabbalists (SD 2:214). Though written in Greek characters, the words SEMES EILAM ABRASAX are probably Semitic in origin: shemesh sun; `olam secret, occult, hid, eternity, world; Abrasax Abraxas. Hence in combination the phrase may be rendered "the eternal sun Abraxax."

(See also: Abraxas, Abrasax, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Book of Dzyan (probably from Sanskrit dhyana intense spiritual meditation, wisdom, divine knowledge)

An archaic work of enormous antiquity upon which Blavatsky based her Secret Doctrine. Dzyan has been variously spelled or transliterated, and under this form is a derivative of the Tibetan. Dzyan, dzen, or ch'an is the general term for the esoteric schools and their literature.

Blavatsky describes the Book of Dzyan, saying: "An Archaic Manuscript -- a collection of palm leaves made impermeable to water, fire, and air, by some specific unknown process -- is before the writer's eye. On the first page is an immaculate white disk within a dull black ground. On the following page, the same disk, but with a central point" (SD 1:1).

"The 'very old Book' is the original work from which the many volumes of Kiu-ti were complied. Not only this latter and the Siphrah Dzeniouta but even the Sepher Jezirah, the work attributed by the Hebrew Kabbalists to their Patriarch Abraham (!), the book of Shu-king, China's primitive Bible, the sacred volumes of the Egyptian Thoth-Hermes, the Puranas in India, and the Chaldean Book of Numbers and the Pentateuch itself, are all derived from that one small parent volume.

Tradition says, that it was taken down in Senzar, the secret sacerdotal tongue, from the words of the Divine Beings, who dictated it to the sons of Light, in Central Asia, at the very beginning of the 5th (our) race; for there was a time when its language (the Sen-zar) was known to the Initiates of every nation, when the forefathers of the Toltec understood it as easily as the inhabitants of the lost Atlantis, who inherited it, in their turn, from the sages of the 3rd Race, the Manushis, who learnt it direct from the Devas of the 2nd and 1st Races. . . . The old book, having described Cosmic Evolution and explained the origin of everything on earth, including physical man, after giving the true history of the races from the First down to the Fifth (our) race, goes no further" (SD 1:xliii).

See also STANZAS OF DZYAN.

(See also: Book of Dzyan, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Birds Birds are regarded as originating from certain families of reptiles: "They of the long necks in the water, became the progenitors of the fowls of the air. . . . This is a point on which the teachings and modern biological speculation are in perfect accord. The missing links representing this transition process between reptile and bird are apparent to the veriest bigot, .

"So far as our present Fourth Round terrestrial period is concerned, the mammalian fauna are alone to be regarded as traceable to prototypes shed by Man. The amphibia, birds, reptiles, fishes, etc., are the resultants of the Third Round, astral fossil forms stored up in the auric envelope of the Earth and projected into physical objectivity subsequent to the deposition of the first Laurentian rocks" (SD 2:183, 684).

Birds have always had a prominent place in symbology, associated, for instance, with the deities of the ancient pantheons, generally as celestial messengers; and with the human and spiritual souls (buddhi and manas). Sometimes the bird in symbolism represented the atman. The ancient Persians at times also symbolized the human mind-soul as a bird, Karshipta.

There are a number of reasons, mainly derivative from the life habits and characteristics of birds, which account for their selection as symbols of spiritual things, chief perhaps among these the fact that birds lay eggs, the source of new lives, whence sprang the idea of the cosmic egg appearing in and from the womb of cosmic spirit. For instance, in the Finnish Kalevala, a bird lays six golden eggs and one iron egg -- the last becoming our earth -- a clear reference to the seven globes of the planetary chain; and there was the cosmic egg of the Orphics in Greece and the hiranyagarbhas of Hindustan, etc.

Virtually all ancient religions comprised references to birds, sacred and otherwise -- for example, the phoenix, the simorgh of the ancient Persians, the ancient Egyptian ibis, golden hawk, and bennu, and Garuda and the kalahansa of ancient India. This last is the white swan of eternity, born in and from the Eternity or the Timeless: "The Nest of the eternal Bird, the flutter of whose wings produces life, is boundless space. . ." (SD 2:293).

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

Upanishad (Sanskrit) [from upa according to + ni down + the verbal root sad to sit]

Following or according to the teachings which were received when sitting down; esoteric doctrine. "Literary works in which the rahasya -- a Sanskrit word meaning esoteric doctrine or mystery -- is imbodied. The Upanishads belong to the Vedic cycle and are regarded by orthodox Brahmans as a portion of the Sruti or 'Revelation.' It was from these wonderful quasi-esoteric and very mystical works that was later developed the highly philosophical and profound system called the Vedanta" (OG 179).

The Upanishads belong to the third division of the Vedas and are appended to the Brahmanas. The number of Upanishads hitherto known is about 170, though probably only a score are now complete without evident marks of excision or interpolation. These Upanishads belong to different periods of antiquity, some being of a much later date than others. Although the Upanishads are usually considered by modern scholars to be as a whole of later date than the Brahmanas, the original Upanishads were composed in an antiquity which anteceded that of the Brahmanas, and are probably coeval with the composition of the Vedas themselves.

"The Upanishads must be far more ancient than the days of Buddhism, as they show no preference for, nor do they uphold, the superiority of the Brahmans as a caste. On the contrary, it is the (now) second caste, the Kshatriya, or warrior class, who are exalted in the oldest of them. As stated by Professor Cowell in Elphinstone's History of India -- 'they breathe a freedom of spirit unknown to any earlier work except the Rig-Veda . . . The great teachers of the higher knowledge and Brahmans are continually represented as going to Kshatriya Kings to become their pupils.' The 'Kshatriya Kings' were in the olden times, like the King-Hierophants of Egypt, the receptacles of the highest divine knowledge and wisdom, the Elect and the incarnations of the primordial divine Instructors -- the Dhyani Buddhas or Kumaras. There was a time, aeons before the Brahmans became a caste, or even the Upanishads were written, when there was on earth but one 'lip,' one religion and one science, namely, the speech of the gods, the Wisdom-Religion and Truth. This was before the fair fields of the latter, overrun by nations of many languages, became overgrown with the weeds of intentional deception, and national creeds invented by ambition, cruelty and selfishness, broke the one sacred Truth into thousands of fragments" (TG 354).

Thirteen of the principal Upanishads are: Aitareya, Kaushitaki, Kena, Taittiriya, Maitri, Katha, Brihadaranyaka, Prasna, Mundaka, Mandukya, Isa, Chhandogya, and Svetasvatara.

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

Holy of Holies. The Assyriologists, Egyptologists, and Orientalists, in general, show that such a place existed in every temple of antiquity.

The great temple of Bel-Merodach whose sides faced the four cardinal points, had in its extreme end a "Holy of Holies" hidden from the profane by a veil: here, "at the beginning of the year ‘the divine king of heaven and earth, the lord of the heavens, seats himself’."

According to Herodotus, here was the golden image of the god with a golden table in front like the Hebrew table for the shew bread, and upon this, food appears to have been placed. in some temples there also was "a little coffer or ark with two engraved stone tablets on it". (Myer’s Qabbalah.) In short, it is now pretty well proven, that the "chosen people" had nothing original of their own, but that every detail of their ritualism and religion was borrowed from older nations. The Hibbert Lectures by Prof. Sayce and others show this abundantly.

The story of the birth of Moses is that of Sargon, the Babylonian, who preceded Moses by a couple of thousand years; and no wonder, as Dr. Sayce tells us that the name of Moses, Mosheh, has a connection with the name of the Babylonian sun-god as the "hero" or "leader". (Hib. Lect., p. 46 et seq.)

Says Mr. J. Myer, "The orders of the priests were divided into high priests, those attached or bound to certain deities, like the Hebrew Levites; anointers or cleaners ; the Kali, ‘illustrious’ or ‘elders’; the soothsayers, and the Makhkhu or ‘great one’, in which Prof. Delitzsch sees the Rab-mag of the Old Testament. . . The Akkadians and Chaldeans kept a Sabbath day of rest every seven days, they also had thanksgiving days, and days for humiliation and prayer. There were sacrifices of vegetables and animals, of meats and wine. . . . The number seven was especially sacred. . . . The great temple of Babylon existed long before 2,250 B.c. Its ‘Holy of Holies’ was with in the shrine of Nebo, the prophet god of wisdom." It is from the Akkadians that the god Mardak passed to the Assyrians, and he had been before Merodach, "the merciful", of the Babylonians, the only son and interpreter of the will of Ea or Hea, the great Deity of Wisdom. The Assyriologists have, in short, unveiled the whole scheme of the "chosen people".

(See also: Holy of Holies, Theosophy, Spirituality, Body mind and Soul, Spiritual Dictionary, )

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