Cancer, Carcinoma A malignant opithelial tumor composed of a connective tissue-stroma surrounding groups or nests of multiplying epithelial cells. In general, carcinomas have capacity for unlimited growth, for invading adjacent tissues, and for producing similar typical growths in distant tissues in the same body or, as in experimental research, by grafts which take in another animal's body. These multiplying cells, drawing freely upon the nutritive materials of the living matter, pile up an unorganized, functionless, purposeless, uncontrolled local mass of its own cells running riot at the expense of the body.

The search for causes has held as suspect everything tangible in the human body and in the human milieu. Yet it is the different degree of development of the complex inner elements and urges of conscious quality which, giving personal play to the circulating life-forces, make the modern industrialized type just what it is as a human phenomenon of interacting spirit and matter. The searching analyses have yet to stress the reaction of modern people's combined mental, emotional, and ethical consciousness and vital forces upon the highly organized matter in their own bodies.

In each person the cosmic forces of vitality and intelligence manifest, perforce, according to individual karma. These combined factors are the noumena of all structural, chemical, functional, and biological phenomena. But these universal forces, in manifesting, are stepped down through the successive laya-centers of the inner person's spiritual, mental, emotional, and psychic nature. This series of conscious conditions provides and sets the stage, and directs the personal play of the manifesting impersonal forces. Every physical change as well as pathological phenomenon is "produced by certain conditions and changes in the tissues of the body which allow and force life to act in that body; . . . all this is due to those unseen creators and destroyers that are called in such a loose and general way, microbes" (SD 1:262).

During life the entire human constitution is suffused or permeated by the organic vital fluid of the reimbodying ego, which acts as a cohering factor for all the life-atoms of all the planes of the constitution to form an organic electrical field in which these life-atoms may inhere and work both collectively and individually, under the impulses and urges originating in the substance of the reimbodying ego. At times, the intense and unceasing vital activities of the life-atoms overcome the cohering, dominating influence of the organic psychoelectrical field. This is what brings about "many if perhaps not all of the various forms of disease of a lasting character. Cases of malignant disease are due to the same general cause but on account of specific and unusual circumstances are localized in some portion of the body where the power or control of the organic vitality becomes greatly weakened" (ET 813).

Lingering diseases are often preceded by a gradual withdrawal on inner lines of the higher parts of the human constitution which, being denied timely expression here, are drawn toward their native spiritual levels of existence. Thus the waning influence of the cohering, harmonizing, and balancing spiritual life-atoms and forces leaves the uncontrolled pranic forces to be expended upon the vital-astral-physical nature which manifests along the various materialistic mental, emotional, and sensuous levels and lines of life. An overdeveloped materialism is usurping the natural place and preventing the functional play of the duly awakening higher mind and spirit -- the essentials, at this stage, alike for our civilization's present safety and for its further progress.

This dangerous collective lack of balanced evolution is repeated in the play of the life-forces upon the cells of the cancerous individual. He is karmically responsible, as a self-conscious being with free will, for staging his own play of these impelling forces. His functionless cancer cell with its one primitive activity of self-division, localized out-of-time, is a biological throwback in type to the huge ethereal ovoid cell-forms of the first root-race. These primitive cells were then the normal encasement of the nascent, unself-conscious humans-to-be whose mode of reproduction was simple division. Now the normal body cell does not go off on its own, but adds its function to the complex organism in whose development it also has acquired its minor place to work and to evolve.

Nature, working always and everywhere to evolve suitable forms for the progressive imbodiments of the manifesting one life, leaves civilized man free to do his part by spiritually balancing his own human growth. Otherwise, he becomes an unnatural unit in the universal plan which makes ethics the natural cohering, harmonizing factor in the universe itself which actually is imbodied consciousness. Highly evolved culture without spiritual leaven is only sublimated selfishness.

Long-continued selfish emotions cause a distorted and inharmonious flow of the pranic currents of the body and they cause disease according to the type of the emotions. This concerns the majority today, for few have a working philosophy of life which can take things as they come. Aside from the frankly criminal and vicious types, the inner life of the many is self-centered and disturbed by the emotional play of worry, grief, disappointment, unhappiness, or a sense of futility or frustration -- for all of whom there seems to be no way of escape. Even the exceptional cases who have no articulate troubles, and who outwardly seem free from the prevailing restlessness, suffer from a muted unrest and an inward tension, a haunting feeling of self-reproach for somehow being unworthy of themselves, while a more satisfying reality of life is waiting to be attained. Evidently, the emotional effect of all these conditions -- to which the generally uncivilized are immune as yet -- react in disorder of the psychomagneto-electric forces flowing along the highly organized network of nerves. The retarded or short-circuited forces produce disease in one or another organ according to the type of the emotions. Back of all precancerous microscopical and chemical findings of changes in the blood, or in the polarity of the cells, or what not, are causative inharmonies or wrongs of the inner life.

No age or personal condition is wholly exempt from malignancy; and the karmic causes, in child or adult, may date back to a former life. Cancer, with its ability to grow in any living tissue, has been found in nearly all animals and in many plants, showing the closely knit natural relationships between all forms of life, each kingdom acting upon and reacting from harmonies or disturbances in other kingdoms. Experimental research has taken it over to the animal world countless times. Moreover, humanity's milieu is, in a real sense, an emanation of itself, because the vital human stream of incoming and outgoing material and of life-atoms on all planes is interchanged with and used by all other things and beings. Hence, humanity's unbalanced quality stamped upon this visible and invisible substance would predispose its impress to reappear, at times, in the physical forms of nature's less conscious entities.

(See also: Cancer, Carcinoma, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Chaos (Greek) (from chaino to gape, yawn open)

"The earth was without form and void," says Genesis in describing the first stages of cosmogony. In Greek mythology contains the same idea of the primordial emptiness and formlessness which precedes the rebirth of a universe after pralaya. It was the vacant and spiritual space which existed before the creation of the universe or of the world; from it proceeded Darkness and Night.

Chaos is "chaotic" only in the sense that its constituents are unformed and unorganized; it is the kosmic storehouse of all the latent or resting seeds from former manvantaras. It means space -- not the Boundless, parabrahman-mulaprakriti, but the space of any particular hierarchy descending into manifestation. In one sense it is the condition of a solar system or planetary chain during its pralaya, containing all the elements in an undifferentiated state. Aether and chaos are the two principles immediately posterior to the first principle.

Various terms more or less synonymous are akasa, the universal egg (from which Brahma issued as light), the virgin egg, the virgin mother, the immaculate root (fructified by the ray), the primeval deep, the abyss, the great mother. The divine ray and chaos are father-mother or cosmic fire and water. Chaos-Theos-Cosmos are the triple deity or all-in-all. Chaos was personified in Egypt by the goddess Neith, who is the Father-Mother of the Stanzas of Dzyan, the akasa of the Hindus, the svabhavat of the northern Buddhists, and the Icelandic ginnungagap.

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

Mount Carmel A mountain spur in Palestine, projecting into the sea south of Haifa, Israel; traditionally a sacred place and refuge, it is mentioned in the Bible (1 Kings 28:19) as the spot where Elijah publicly challenged the priests of Ba`al. Mt. Carmel was noted for its oracle, which was consulted by the emperor Vespasian.

It became a refuge for early Christian anchorites, and a monastery dedicated to Elijah existed there by 570. About 1156 the order of Carmelites was founded, dedicated to continuing on Mt. Carmel the way of life of Elijah, pictured as a monk and the founder of monasticism, and a monastery was built. St. John of the Cross, among others, uses it in metaphors for the mystic and spiritual journey. Blavatsky connects it with the Essenes.

See also MOUNTAINS, MUNDANE (BCW 11:256-7)

(See also: Mount Carmel, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Cartesian System The system of Descartes, the great French philosopher (1596-1650), representing the first great attempt in Europe to develop philosophy on strict mathematical and scientific lines, as opposed to what seemed to him the futile subtilties of the Schoolmen.

Descartes is usually spoken of as a strong dualist. Defining substance as a thing which exists independently of any other thing, he says there can only be one real substance, God; but besides this one independent substance there exist realities dependent on God, which he calls created substances. These are of two kinds -- thinking and corporeal; the nature of the former being thought, and of the latter, extension. He made this dualism of the created world so absolute that only the continual interference of God could account for the harmony. Spirit differs radically from matter, a finite spirit is independent of its body, so that the physical universe is unhampered by spiritual law. The human body is a machine; and although human beings have souls, animals are entirely mechanical. This view of the universe laid the foundations of modern mechanistic science; and the independence of extended substance leads to the conclusion that every body is independent of every other.

This system contrasts with those of Spinoza and Leibnitz, Spinoza accentuating the monistic view and Leibnitz regarding Descartes's two substances as aspects of the One Substance (SD 1:628-9). It is stated, furthermore, that a combination of Spinoza with Leibnitz would give the essence of theosophical philosophy, according to which the universe, though essentially a unity, appears as a plurality of monads, manifesting under the dual -- yet essentially illusory -- aspects of spirit and matter. There is therefore no essential difference between spirit and matter, these being but mutually contrasted aspects of the one underlying and all-pervading substance.

In his theory of the physical universe Descartes recognizes one universally diffused matter which, by rotatory or vortical motion aggregates into planetary globes or into the physical elements, thus anticipating both the vortex theory of Thomson and the idea put forward by Crookes that the chemical elements are various modifications of an underlying protyle.

(See also: Cartesian System, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Catalepsy katalepsis (Greek) (from kata down + lambanein to seize)

A psychomotor condition of morbid sleep, associated with a peculiar plastic rigidity of the muscles which may be made to assume strained attitudes and retain them for an indefinite time. There is more or less profound loss of consciousness and of the skin sensibility. The origin of the name reflects the ancient view that the attacks are due to the sudden seizure of the victim by some supernatural influence, such as an evil spirit; the causes assigned by medical writers are extremely varied and oftentimes absurd.

The cataleptic state may occur in attacks of epilepsy, hysteria, chronic alcoholism, in various functional and organic mental and nervous diseases, and in that variety of dementia praecox known as catatonia. This list of diseases, characterized by general nervous and emotional instability, suggests the rationale of the ancient view that catalepsy is one of the many types of astral obsession. Textbook descriptions of typical cases are consistent pictures of an abnormal displacement of the conscious human ego whose helpless body then is subjected to purposeless, unnatural, and strained conditions and attitudes by some low-grade astral entity.

The cataleptic phenomena are sometimes induced in a profound hypnotic state, where the operator's will manifests through the intermediate nature of his subject. This explains the public hypnotic exhibitions of an unconscious person, rigidly stretched out, with only head and feet supported, while the body sustains excessive weight placed upon it. It is also possible, at times, for a person who is naturally psychic, or who has dabbled in attempts to cultivate psychic phenomena, to become dissociated from his normal physical status and, in a trance-like condition, to manifest the cataleptic state of beclouded consciousness and the wax-like rigidity of body. In such cases there is always danger that the lower quaternary including the unconscious body may be invaded by some astral entity which thus becomes an insidious and injurious link with kama-loka and its denizens.

Medical studies of catalepsy refer to the literary record of many classical examples of it, and claim that it has a close relationship with the ecstatic and trance-like states of mystics, but there is a marked contrast between the unnatural attitudes of the negative, unconscious cataleptic person, who remembers nothing of his entranced state, and the generally exalted spiritual consciousness of the genuine mystic who retains full memory of his self-induced experience.

(See also: Catalepsy, Cataleptic state, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Cube Often mentioned as equivalent to the square, tetrad, or quaternary. The line, square, and cube represent three stages of matter, with the cube derived from the square in the same way as the square is derived from the line.

A cube opened out gives a cross of six squares, four in the vertical line and three in the horizontal, one square being common to both, which is an emblem of the human being with his spiritual and material nature meeting at the intersection.

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

Cup A container, vehicle, upadhi; having in certain connections the same general sense as graal, solar boat, ark, crescent moon, etc.; so that it answers to buddhi among human principles and to mahabuddhi cosmically, as the vahana or container of atman or paramatman.

 It may contain wine, the symbol of spiritual life. The cup figures in the Bacchic and Orphite Mysteries, a sacred cup being handed around; this has become the chalice of the Christian Eucharist. The Grail or Graal cup is well known in European legend.

The cup has always been one means of divination, whether by looking into it, or looking into water in it, or shaking up tea leaves or coffee grounds. These last gestures are physical adjuncts to the use of the clairvoyant vision. In the Tarots, the second suite was the cups, answering to the hearts in playing cards.

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

Clairvoyance Clear-seeing; generally, the power to use the psychic sense of vision to see things on the astral plane, the imperfect shadows of things to come or the astral records of things past. But this faculty is of restricted scope and very apt to mislead; prematurely developed in an untrained person, it is more likely to lead to error than to benefit.

True clairvoyance is the opening of spiritual vision, called in India the Eye of Siva and beyond the Himalayas the Eye of Dangma; a faculty which enables the seer to see the truth and to recognize it as such. Among the seven saktis (occult powers) is enumerated jnana-sakti, which in its higher aspects is the power of knowing, true clairvoyance, but which on lower planes becomes more or less perfect psychic clairvoyance.

True clairvoyance enables the seer to discern the reality behind its veils, to know right action, and to see what is happening in worlds removed by distance or difference of plane from our own. Retrospective clairvoyance interprets the past through its indelible records in the akasa.

(See also: Clairvoyance, Clear-seeing, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Climacteric A critical period; a year in which important changes are held to occur, as in one's 63rd year (grand climacteric). But climacteric year "has more than the usual significance, when used by Occultists and Mystics.

It is not only a critical period, during which some great change is periodically expected, whether in human or cosmic constitution, but it likewise pertains to spiritual universal changes" (SD 1:656n).

Each person has a climacteric point "when he must draw near to death; if he has squandered his life-powers, there is no escape for him; but if he has lived according to the law, he may pass through and so continue in the same body almost indefinitely" (BCW 8:400).

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

Crook, Episcopal Part of the insignia of bishops and abbots in the Roman Catholic Church, said to have been adopted from the augurs of Etruria; usually considered as representing a shepherd's crook, in allusion to Christ as the Good Shepherd and his delegated function as such. But, taken in connection with the archbishop's corzier, which has a cross at the end, it seems likely to be one of the ancient geometrical symbols, perhaps the serpent. Some Egyptian divinities are represented with scepters in the form of a crook or bearing a resemblance to it: it always appears in the hands of Osiris, especially in his aspect of judge of the underworld. The fundamental significance of the crook was of spiritual and intellectual dynamic energy or power usable at the will of its holder or possessor.

(See also: Crook, Episcopal, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Cross One of the most ancient, widespread, and important symbols, the vertical and horizontal lines representing Father and Mother Nature respectively. Some of its forms are the ank or tau, swastika or Thor's Hammer, crux ansata or cross with a handle, denoting power over material nature.

The four arms of the cross represent the four elements, and its central point their synthesis or laya-point. The bending of the arms in the swastika signifies rotation and equilibrium attained by managing the changes among the elements. If a cube is opened out, its six faces make a cross with the upright limb prolonged; and the cube was another favorite symbol of Hermes. In Classical times the symbols of Hermes-Mercury, the son of Jupiter and Maia, were cruciform and were placed at crossways; and, like Jesus after the resurrection, Hermes was the conductor of souls.

In Christianity, the symbol was not derived from the crucifixion, for though the cross is a frequent early Christian symbol it is not found with a man upon it till the 6th century. It was a symbol of the mystic Christ or Christos -- the Word made flesh or the Son of the trinity.

The cross may also be considered in its relation to the circle and the crescent, with which it forms a trinity of symbols, denoting Father-Mother-Son. These three are found in various combinations with each other, especially in the signs denoting the sacred planets. Thus we have the cross placed severally above the circle (the sign of Mars ), within it (the sign of the Earth , and below it (the sign of Venus ) -- thus representing the lower and higher nature and the balance or midway point.

The sign of Mercury combines the three elements, representing head, heart, and organs; or sun, moon, and earth. Again, a circle with vertical and horizontal diameters signifies that humanity has separated into two sexes; when the circle disappears, the fall of mankind into matter is accomplished. Originally denoting the union of spirit and matter to form spirit-matter or life, or the Second Logos, it may become a phallic symbol of physical generation. The cross has many significations, both spiritual and material as well as cosmic, earthly, and human.

For the use of the cross in initiation ceremonies,

See also CRUCIFIXION.

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

Crown In the Qabbalah, the first or highest Sephirah, Kether (Crown). In the Stanzas of Dzyan, "Fohat traces spiral lines to unite the sixth to the seventh -- the Crown" (SD 1:31), which means that fohat, in this case working as Eros or divine love, strives to blend atman with buddhi, and the same on the corresponding cosmic planes.

Crown also signifies the summit of attainment in initiation, spiritual sovereignty, or dignity or splendor, and is much used in those senses in both the Old and New Testaments, and was typically so employed in pagan initiatory rites.

The kings and pontiffs of modern times are the feeble imitators of former king-initiates, whose insignia comprised the crown, representative of the glory or buddhic splendor, which actually encircled the head of the initiate as a nimbus, as it does in the case of the yogi in samadhi and of the buddha. The ceremony of coronation was performed in the Mysteries as the outward symbol of the completion of this attainment; and that ceremony is still perpetuated. The later Roman emperors adopted the Eastern royal fillet, which they called by the Greek name diadema; the Papal tiara goes back through it to the Persian royal headdress of that name. The American Indian wears feathers imitating the rays of light from the head.

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

Cosmic Ideation Another name for divine thought, out of which springs the activity of universal mind -- the collective aggregate of all individualized dhyani-chohanic consciousnesses everywhere.

Theosophy postulates the appearance and disappearance of worlds, whether visible or invisible, as a continuous process, each world being a link in an endless chain of interlocking cosmic hierarchies. As one of these comes into manifested existence it is likened to an outbreathing of the divine breath, each such outbreathing being a thought of the cosmic ideation, this thought becoming a world.

This divine breath, then, may be assumed to be cosmic ideation entering into the activity of manvantara; and cosmic ideation is the root again of all individual consciousness everywhere. Just as precosmic ideation is regarded as the root of consciousness, so precosmic substance is the spiritual substratum of matter. Thus manvantara is produced by means of the interlocking and interacting motion of cosmic ideation with primordial cosmic substance. Further, fohat is the intelligent energy behind this interlocking activity, which during manvantara joins these two together.

Cosmic ideation and cosmic substance are one in their primordial character, yet as the reawakening of the universal mind into manvantara needs the appropriate cosmic fields of action, cosmic substance may be said to be the manvantaric vehicle of cosmic ideation. Conversely, during cosmic pralaya, all the varied differentiations of cosmic substance are resolved back or indrawn once again into cosmic unity, a subjective condition, and hence during the cosmic pralaya cosmic ideation can no longer be called active, but passive.

(See also: Cosmic Ideation, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Cosmogenesis (from Greek kosmos world + genesis birth)

The genesis of worlds, as distinguished from anthropogensis or the genesis of mankind; as defined by Blavatsky: "At the commencement of a great Manvantara, Parabrahm manifests as Mulaprakriti and then as the Logos. This Logos is equivalent to the 'Unconscious Universal Mind,' etc., of Western Pantheists. It constitutes the Basis of the subject-side of manifested Being, and is the source of all manifestations of individual consciousness. Mulaprakriti or Primordial Cosmic Substance, is the foundation of the object-side of things -- the basis of all objective evolution and Cosmogenesis" (SD 2:24). The word is not restricted to earth, but includes innumerable globes; nor is it confined to those worlds which happen to be visible to our eye, but includes worlds on all the various planes of manifested substance.

It does not mean that the worlds were created ex nihilo by divine fiat, nor that they were merely the productions from dead, unconscious, albeit eternal and uncreate matter. Again, cosmogenesis is not a process which has occurred only once and for all, but a process which is repeated indefinitely during manvantaras and after great pralayas. Thus worlds are evolved from the state of latency or pralaya into which they passed at the close of the preceding manvantara, and both primordial matter and primordial spirit come from the same source -- parabrahman -- and are resolved again into it.

The process is one of evolution or progressive manifestation on various planes of objectivity of the potentialities latent in the spiritual germ. World must be understood, not with regard to any standards of size, but as including a universe of stars on the one hand and an atomic speck on the other.

The births and rebirths of worlds are not the haphazard productions of a consciousness eternal in its working on matter, eternal in itself and different from consciousness; but are the offspring or productions of consciousness-life-substance periodically manifesting its inherent life and powers by the appearances of different world systems -- be these galaxies, solar systems, individual suns, or planetary bodies; or again, in the infinitesimal realms, atoms and their component electronic monads. The entire process of the appearances and disappearances of world systems is dependent on inherent karmic causality manifesting on all planes and taking its rise in the characteristics and action of consciousness and consciousnesses.

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

Consciousness (from Latin conscio knowing with, knowing together)

The active state of spirit or the supreme fundamental in manifested existence. Like light, consciousness can become manifest only by means of a vehicle, and it can have various degrees of manifestation according to the planes.

Individual consciousness originates in the Logos of any hierarchy. Every manifested entity is conscious to some degree, and is an expression of divine consciousness or spirit. Buddhi is said to be latent spiritual consciousness which becomes manifest intellectually in manas, so far as the human constitution goes (SD 2:275). Human consciousness is also closely linked to the senses.

The term consciousness is often used as alternative to spirit, as where it is said that consciousness and matter are the two aspects of parabrahman or that consciousness is the purest form of cosmic force; yet, strictly speaking, consciousness is an attribute of active spirit. It is sometimes called the universal life, the kosmic force-substance.

The relative use of the word enables us to speak of states or degrees of consciousness, according to the state in which the essence is manifested on one plane or another; or to call one state unconscious by contrast with another, as when we compare waking consciousness with the consciousness of sleep or trance.

See also SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS

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

Controls In Spiritualism, one of the two intermediaries between the living receiver of the communications and the so-called spirit from whom the communications come. These intermediaries are the medium, who is on earth, and the control, who is beyond and serves as the agent of the communicating spirit and who controls the medium.

Sometimes "guides" is used in a similar sense. In common with the spirits themselves, controls are spurious personalities engendered out of the temporary interaction of various elements in the astral light and the constitution of the medium and sitters.

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

Celestial Body Taken from Coleridge, who divined that in the human celestial body must be stored the memory of all preexistent experiences of the soul. The phrase is said to mean the thought-vehicle of the monad in devachan, through which functions the manasic ego (Key 137).

The range of stored memory of experiences varies in extent according to the degree of sublimity of the different vestures. Ancient mysticism taught that the self has several vestures, each of which may be called a body or sheath through which the monad acts and by which it comes in contact with the particular worlds in which it may be functioning. "There are also celestial bodies and bodies terrestrial" (1 Cor 15:40).

For instance, the Vedantic classification of the kosas (sheaths of atman) gives annamayakosa (physical body), pranamayakosa (vital-astral body), manomayakosa (psychological or lower manasic body), vijnanamayakosa (higher manasic body), and anandamayakosa (buddhic body). In the Taraka Raja-Yoga system are the following upadhis or vehicles of atman: sthulopadhi (gross vehicle), sukshmopadhi (subtile vehicle), and karanopadhi (causal vehicle or self).

Different schools have different enumerations, for though the truth is one and the same, yet when it is formally expressed, we must expect adaptations rather than exactitudes. One theosophical division gives 1) the divine monad; 2) its first vehicle, the spiritual soul; then 3) the human soul; 4) the astral-vital soul; and 5) the physical body.

See also PRINCIPLES

(See also: Celestial Body, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Ceremonies, Ceremonials Originally and essentially acts of magic, designed to bring about particular and definite results, but now almost wholly ritual observances performed from habit, from unthinking reverence to misunderstood tradition, or merely to impress the devotional imagination.

The anointing of a candidate in the Mysteries was actually the completion of a process which began on higher planes and in the candidate's inner nature, not a mere symbol intended to fix his attention or to impress his mind. In two of its ecclesiastical analogs, baptism and confirmation, we find them regarded by some churches as the "outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace," and by others as an actual conveying of grace to the candidate; and the same with other Church sacraments.

In real ceremonial magic this is fully recognized, and success depends upon the exact fulfillment of the necessary conditions; similarly in white magic, but the knowledge and proficiency required for the fulfillment of the requisite conditions is apparently beyond the attainments of the great multitude of people today. It comes only in higher degrees of chelaship and is carefully guarded from profanation. For ceremonial magic, whether white or black, means the evocation of various forces of nature, stronger or weaker depending upon their nature, demanding for their control a resolute will, an inflexible mind, and an immaculately pure heart. Ceremonies performed in ignorance may be as barren of results as a static electric machine worked in a fog.

There is a thread-soul of quasi-intuitive understanding running through the traditions of human history which impels people to keep up, however ignorantly, forms and ceremonies through the ages, often when their real significance is lost, like seeds preserved in an ark to await the time when the flood waters shall recede.

(See also: Ceremonies, Ceremonials, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Chakravartin cakravartin (Sanskrit) (from chakra wheel, cycle + vartin turning, one who governs)

Sovereign of the world, universal ruler; a title applied to several Hindu emperors, but referring particularly to Vishnu, who in the treta yuga in the form of a universal monarch protected the three worlds.

At the end of kali yuga, legend states that Vishnu will appear again under his form of the Kalki-avatara, or Maitreya as the Buddhists say, reforming or doing away with the wicked and inaugurating a realm of spirituality and righteousness. Equivalent to the Hebrew Enduring King (Enoch 36:3).

(See also: Chakravartin, cakravartin, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Chakshu cakshu (Sanskrit) (from the verbal root chaksh to become visible, see)

The eye; "the faculty of sight, or rather, an occult perception of spiritual and subjective realities . . . " (TG 323). Chakshus, in addition to meaning eye, as a neuter noun denotes the faculty of seeing, light, clearness. The compound loka-chakshus (eye of the world) is a title of the sun.

(See also: Chakshu, cakshu, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Chang-chub byang chub (jang-chub, chang-chub) (Tibetan) Also Byang-tzyoobs, Tchang-chub.

Translation for Sanskrit bodhi (enlightenment, awakening). Byang chub sems dpa' (jang-chub-sem-pa) translates the Sanskrit bodhisattva, one who has attained a high degree of spiritual knowledge and mystic power; "An adept who has, by the power of his knowledge and soul enlightenment, become exempt from the curse of UNCONSCIOUS transmigration -- may, at his will and desire, and instead of reincarnating himself only after bodily death, do so, and repeatedly -- during his life if he chooses.

He holds the power of choosing for himself new bodies whether on this or any other planet -- while in possession of his old form, that he generally preserves for purposes of his own" (ML 285).

(See also: Chang-chub, byang chub, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)