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| the Universe | A Wisdom Archive on the Universe |  | the Universe A selection of articles related to the Universe:
World Egg, Mundane Egg The virgin or eternal egg is chaos, which is fecundated by the ray from spirit, and yet remains immaculate. According to the Stanzas of Dzyan, "The ray shoots through the virgin egg; the ray causes the eternal egg to thrill, and drop the non-eternal germ, which condenses into the world-egg" (SD 1:28). The non-eternal egg signifies the transitory worlds of manifestation and is often used for the universe in germ preceding its emanational unfolding
World Serpent or Snake Ideas connected with the world snake are not those associated with the legend of a hero slaying a serpent but with a more profound concept. In the Hindu system, there is Ananta-Sesha, the serpent of infinity; in the ancient Scandinavian cosmogony, the world serpent Nidhogg, is represented as encircling the globe with its tail in its mouth. The same representation is found in the Egyptian teachings: "In the oldest Egyptian imagery, as in the cosmogonic allegories of Kneph, the mundane snake, when typifying matter, is usually represented as contained within a circle; he lies straight across its equator, thus indicating that the universe of astral light, out of which the physical world evolved, while bounding the latter, is itself bound by Emepht, or the Supreme First Cause
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Monsoon, Monsoon - History, Monsoon - Monsoon systems, Monsoon - Northeast Winter Monsoon Asia, Monsoon - Processes, Monsoon - Southwest Summer Monsoon, Climate of India
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| | | | * Spiritual - TheosophyDictionary on World Serpent, Snake
World Serpent or Snake Ideas connected with the world snake are not those associated with the legend of a hero slaying a serpent but with a more profound concept. In the Hindu system, there is Ananta-Sesha, the serpent of infinity; in the ancient Scandinavian cosmogony, the world serpent Nidhogg, is represented as encircling the globe with its tail in its mouth. The same representation is found in the Egyptian teachings:
"In the oldest Egyptian imagery, as in the cosmogonic allegories of Kneph, the mundane snake, when typifying matter, is usually represented as contained within a circle; he lies straight across its equator, thus indicating that the universe of astral light, out of which the physical world evolved, while bounding the latter, is itself bound by Emepht, or the Supreme First Cause. . . . When the serpent represents eternity and immortality, it encircles the world, biting its tail, and thus offering no solution of continuity. It then becomes the astral light" (IU 157).
Another interpretation of the snake in the circle is that "The active is attracted by the passive principle and the Great Nag [Ananta-Sesha], the serpent emblem of the eternity, attracts its tail to its mouth forming thereby a circle (cycles in the eternity) in that incessant pursuit of the negative by the positive" (ML 71).
A sublime conception has also its human analog: the world serpent as the cosmic naga or grand universal ''Adam Qadmom, the sublime cosmic initiate, the cosmic wisdom which lives from manifesting universe to manifesting universe as its Purusha or spirit. It is the source of cosmic laws, wisdom, and life which infill the universe of which each such world serpent is the divine originating cause. The same thought in its human application refers to the great adept or master of wisdom and love.
(See also: World Serpent, Snake, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Body mind and Soul )
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| | | | * Spiritual - TheosophyDictionary on World Egg, Mundane Egg
World Egg, Mundane Egg The virgin or eternal egg is chaos, which is fecundated by the ray from spirit, and yet remains immaculate. According to the Stanzas of Dzyan, "The ray shoots through the virgin egg; the ray causes the eternal egg to thrill, and drop the non-eternal germ, which condenses into the world-egg" (SD 1:28). The non-eternal egg signifies the transitory worlds of manifestation and is often used for the universe in germ preceding its emanational unfolding. The first cause of a universe, its emanating spirit, was figurated as a bird which dropped an egg into chaos, the egg in course of aeons becomes the manifested universe.
According to the Laws of Manu, hiranyagarbha "is Brahma the first male formed by the undiscernible Causeless cause in a ''Golden Egg resplendent as the Sun,'' " (SD 1:89). The Rig-Veda says that the incomprehensible divine germ of our universe, " ''the one Lord of all beings . . . the one animating principle of gods and man,'' arose, in the beginning, in the Golden Womb, Hiranyagarbha -- which is the Mundane Egg or sphere of our Universe" (ibid.).
Ptah, the Egyptian god of creation, is represented as bringing forth beings from a lump of clay on a potter''s wheel. This lump of clay represents the world egg, out of which all the beings creep. And the winged globe, so prominent in Egyptian symbology, is another symbol of the world egg.
See also EGG
(See also: World Egg, Mundane Egg, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Body mind and Soul )
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| | | | * Spiritual - Theosophy Dictionary on Whirlwind
Whirlwind A gyrating wind; in theosophy, when applied to the movements of a universe, a name for the moving of the Great Breath and for the various functions and activities of fohat.
Motion, the divine breath, becomes the cosmic whirling or whirlwind and sets in motion the particles in space, bringing about now their coagulation and concretion, now their dissipation and dispersion.
Deity thus mystically becomes a whirlwind; pulsatory life assumes a whirling movement. Stages in world formation are described as diffused cosmic matter, then the fiery whirlwind, the first stage in the formation of a nebula, leading eventually to the formation of solar system and more particularly of a globe or group of solar or planetary globes.
The primordial seven forces, the first seven breaths of the cosmic dragon of wisdom or cosmic manifest intelligence, produce from their circumgyrating motions the fiery whirlwind. The first chapter of Ezekiel mentions a whirlwind and other descriptions of cosmic evolution, especially wheels.
(See also: Whirlwind, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Body mind and Soul )
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| | | | * Spiritual - TheosophyDictionary on Wheel
Wheel Perpetual gyratory motion; a vortex, a center of revolving force. Matter is not only motion itself in low ranges of the cosmos, but has likewise many modes of motion, although not in the sense in which this phrase was used in the 19th century.
Lord Kelvin''s vortex-atoms illustrate the point, for he showed that many of the properties attributed to atoms could be represented by regarding atoms as vortices in a frictionless, incompressible fluid. More recent analysis of the atom has failed to resolve it into anything more than electric particles whose properties are functions of their motions. "Atoms are called ''Vibrations'' in Occultism . . . " (SD 2:633). Fohat traces spiral lines and forms wheels or centers of force around which primordial cosmic matter expands and contracts and passes through stages of consolidation ending in globes, and later through stages of etherealization. Vortical motion is a universal law, as seen in the stellar universe and in the electronic constitution of the physical atom, giving a fuller meaning to the word cycle.
Wheel, cycle, globes, and revolutions all pertain to the same fundamental conception of whirling, revolving, or gyratory motion of beings and substances; and as no motion can take place except in matter, space, and time, the whirlings and revolutions of beings and things include likewise the time periods or cyclic returns of beings and events throughout duration. Wherever there is a whirling or turning, whether of matter or of an event in time, it is because it is a being or thing which is active in reproducing itself in cyclic events (cf Ezekiel 1:15-21). This is one of the archaic ways of understanding what is now called the principle of Relativity. Indeed, so intimate and entangled are the actor and the act -- the being and its movements in time -- that it is not always easy to distinguish the actor inherent and moving from the effects in space and time of such movement; so that when we speak of a cycle of time we are perforce obliged to conceive of a moving entity producing the cycle, albeit the moving entity may not be visible to us and indeed may be incomprehensible. Hence, the frequent and often perplexing usage of wheel or wheelings found in ancient occult writings.
See also WINGED WHEEL; GLOBE, WINGED
(See also: Wheel, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Body mind and Soul )
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| | | | * Spiritual - TheosophyDictionary on Woman
Woman In philosophy, symbolizes the mother aspect of nature or feminine characteristic of the universe always found in the triads of Father-Mother-Son (changed in the Christian scheme to Father, Son, and Holy Ghost -- the Holy Spirit in primitive Christianity always being considered feminine). From time immemorial it has been customary to associate primordial spirit-substance, later becoming matter, with the cosmic feminine principle represented symbolically by a horizontal line); and spirit has always been associated with the masculine principle (represented by a vertical line); but the words feminine and masculine are merely borrowed from human beings, and the characteristics of originating cosmic principles were far better expressed by pairs of opposites such as negative and positive.
In cosmogenesis, the feminine principle is represented by the waters of space or great deep, often called the womb of nature. From this figure of speech was born the conception found in some ancient cosmogonies, such as the Hebrew, of the ark, containing all the germs of lives of a universe and pictured as resting or moving on the cosmic waters. Another symbol for the feminine principle was that of the lotus, which likewise rests upon the water, finally rising above it when it blossoms. One symbol of the universe in germ before any aspect of manifestation occurs is the matripadma or closed "mother lotus," before the cosmic blossom has been quickened by spirit into expanding into becoming the universe. It is also referred to as devamatri (the divine mother), the matrix from which all the suns and planets were born.
In the cosmogony of the Hebrew Qabbalah, the first Sephirah which emanates from latent divinity is at times represented as feminine; yet when this feminine emanation becomes creative it is then represented as conjoining masculine traits with its own, so that at this stage it is envisaged as masculine-feminine. This first spiritual emanation, emanating from itself the next phase of cosmogonical production, is termed the Shechinah, the mother of all the successively emanated Sephiroth. Thus the Shechinah is an echo of archaic Hindu cosmogonic speculation, corresponding to pradhana or prakriti.
In theosophic cosmogony space is often called the Great Mother before cosmic activity commences and, at the opening of manvantara, Father-Mother with space becomes emanative and is called svabhavat or mother-space. Svabhavat is the emanation from cosmic space or darkness -- so called because its utter and undiluted essential spirit is virtually beyond the reach of the light of mind as manifested in humanity.
Metaphors such as woman and mother are always symbolical when referring to motherhood, and have no associations with physical sex, for "esotericism ignores both sexes. Its highest Deity is sexless as it is formless, neither Father nor Mother; and its first manifested beings, celestial and terrestrial alike, become only gradually androgynous and finally separate into distinct sexes" (SD 1:136n). This was clearly understood originally, so that there was no degrading or misinterpreting of these figures of speech. With descending cycles, however, humanity''s religious conceptions equally materialized: the key ideas having been forgotten or lost, abstractions became concreted into materializations, a masculine Creator or feminine Creatrix were then placed at the summit of the various pantheons, and early religious philosophy -- which was as scientific as it was religious and philosophical -- cast upon the background of the spatial universe images of human surroundings and way of life; so that the deities in the mythologies finally became human images, more powerful but equally swayed by passion, driven by impulse, and restricted by these even as human beings are. Such projection of human attributes into the cosmic spaces led to a still more materialized visioning of the divinities, so that the feminine or productive characteristics of nature in the popular religious mythologies finally gave way before the masculine, and the earlier, essentially beautiful idea of the mother of nature was swallowed up in the purely masculine traits of national divinities, many of them distinctly male and evil, such as the Jewish Jehovah, who waxed wroth and smelt the sweet savor of burnt sacrifices, or again the Greek Zeus swayed by ignoble passions.
"No exoteric religious system has ever adopted a female Creator, and thus woman was regarded and treated, from the first dawn of popular religions, as inferior to man. It is only in China and Egypt that Kwan-yin and Isis were placed on a par with the male gods" (SD 1:136n). The aspects of Isis, for instance, are familiar enough: as the mother with her child, and as the faithful spiritual consort of Osiris -- these were for easier understanding by the populace; but in the sanctuary Isis remained universal cosmic nature, the cosmic producing mother, the goddess whose veil of nature no mere human had ever raised. Plutarch recorded an inscription addressed to Isis: "I am everything which has been, and which is, and which shall be, and no one has ever drawn my veil" (De Iside at Osiride); to which were added "the fruit of my womb became the Sun" (Proclus, Commentary on the Timaeus, 1:82).
In China, however, the ideal cosmic feminine was named Kwan-yin, the mother of mercy and knowledge, what in Hindustan is called mahat or cosmic buddhi; she is called the triple of Kwan-shai-yin "because in her correlations, metaphysical and cosmical, she is the ''Mother, the Wife and the Daughter,'' of the Logos, just as in the later theological translations she became ''the Father Son and (the female) Holy Ghost'' -- the Sakti or Energy -- the Essence of the three" (SD 1:136).
With the Gnostics truth itself was portrayed as a disrobed divinity, every part of her cosmic form being numbered and lettered. This divine wisdom they called Sophia, virtually the same as the Qabbalistic Shechinah. Even in the modern Occident, instinct has determined that justice shall be pictured as feminine, as also liberty and peace. "The Gnostic Sophia, ''Wisdom'' who is ''the Mother'' of the Ogdoad . . . is the Holy Ghost and the Creator of all, as in the ancient systems. The ''father'' is a far later invention. The earliest manifested Logos was female everywhere -- the mother of the seven planetary powers" (SD 1:72n).
(See also: Woman , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Body mind and Soul)
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| | | | * Spiritual - TheosophyDictionary on Yang
Yang (Chinese) The bright aspect -- as the sunny side of a hill -- in contrast to yin, the dark side. In mystic Chinese literature and in Taoism, yang is associated with the masculine aspect, while yin refers to the feminine aspect. Thus tao is regarded as the interaction of the revolving changes produced by the yang and yin: yang referring to immaterial, celestial force and substance; yin, to material equivalents.
Popularly everything of a beneficial aspect is associated with yang, while everything of maleficent tendency is related to yin. However, this limits the original conception of yang and yin as forming the two contrasted sides of the universe, for one cannot exist without the other, and each in its own way is as important as the other.
(See also: Yang, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Body mind and Soul )
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| | | | * Spiritual - Theosophy Dictionary on Waters of Space
Waters of Space Chaos, the great deep, the great cosmic Mother, the universal cosmic matrix. According to Thales and other ancient philosophers, the water of cosmic space was the first principle emanating from the spatial deeps of spirit and producing the universe through emanational evolution. Various Greek philosophers have represented aether, fire, air, or water as the primordial cosmic principle; and each of these was true, though giving only a part of the truth. These philosophies as aspects of a whole in much the same way as the several great schools of Hindu philosophy are.
Thus the waters of space are equivalent to the veil of cosmic spirit. Water in ancient cosmogonies corresponded to the Hindu prakriti or pradhana, and like the Greek Second Logos was endowed with feminine or productive characteristics. Thus the archaic Greeks in one form of their cosmogonical philosophy taught that all things, including the gods, came forth from Ocean and his wife Tethys:
"Ocean is the immeasurable space (Spirit in Chaos), which is the Deity . . .; and Tethys is not the Earth, but primordial matter in the process of formation" (SD 2:65).
"But there are two distinct aspects in universal Esotericism, Eastern and Western, in all those personations of the Female Power in nature, or nature -- the noumenal and the phenomenal. One is its purely metaphysical aspect, . . . the other terrestrial and physical, and at the same time divine from the stand-point of practical human conception and Occultism. They are all the symbols and personifications of Chaos, the ''Great Deep'' or the Primordial Waters of Space, the impenetrable veil between the Incognisable and the Logos of Creation" (SD 1:431).
(See also: Waters of Space, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Body mind and Soul )
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| | | | * Spiritual - Theosophy Dictionary on Xenocrates
Xenocrates (395?-314 BC) Greek philosopher and poet; "founder of the Eleatic philosophy and of pantheism, inasmuch as he combated the anthropomorphic view of the gods dominant in Homer and Hesiod, and in the popular belief in general.
He asserted the doctrine of a one all-ruling divinity, who, as true existence, opposed to appearance or non-existence, as the One and the All, the Whole, undivided, unmoved, and eternal, underlies the universe and is identical with it" (Dictionary of Classical Antiquities, p. 700). {SD 2:55; BCW 6:207-9, 14:413}
(See also: Xenocrates, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Body mind and Soul )
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| | | | * Spiritual - TheosophyDictionary on Word
Word In religious and philosophical usage, a translation of the Greek logos or Latin verbum. Its meaning here is that of reason manifested, employed mainly in a cosmogonic sense. "The esoteric meaning of the word Logos (speech or word, Verbum) is the rendering in objective expression, as in a photograph, of the concealed thought. The Logos is the mirror reflecting divine mind, and the Universe is the mirror of the Logos, though the latter is the esse of that Universe. As the Logos reflects all in the Universe of Pleroma, so man reflects in himself all that he sees and finds in his Universe, the Earth" (SD 2:25). This word was chosen because human thought, or immanent conscious intelligence or mind, manifests itself through words. It is familiar to Christians through the opening verse of John: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God"; "And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us" (1:1, 14). In the former quotation the meaning is entirely cosmogonic; in the latter, it has been diminished to signify the innate Word or divinity in man, which when in full control of the human adept can, by a stretch of metaphor, mean that the innate Christ, Buddha, or god in man so controls the human personality as to have become the latter, and thus to manifest among men.
Cosmogonically, theosophy considers the universe and all in it, from its first divine appearance to its last material modification, as being in toto as well as in all manifested details an emanation from the universal mind. This emanation takes place at the beginning of a manvantara in three separate stages or degrees: the First or unmanifest Logos; the Second or manifest-unmanifest Logos; and finally the Third or manifest Logos. Logos is applicable to these three stages because each is the manifesting of the wisdom in its divine predecessor, each stage carrying within itself, on the principle of the emanational scheme, the attributes or qualities of its predecessors. The Second Logos has invariably been considered feminine, and the Third Logos is regarded as the creative power.
Corresponding to the three Logoi in the Hindu scheme are Brahman, Brahma, and Isvara emanating originally from parabrahman-mulaprakriti. In the highly philosophical visioning of Mahayana Buddhism is adi-buddha, mahabuddhi, and the celestial buddha, occasionally indirectly called dharmakaya. On a scale of less magnitude, Hindu thought has developed the triad Brahma, the emanator or original emanation; Vishnu, the supporter or sustainer, a feminine characteristic nevertheless; and Siva at once the regenerator and producer in the sense of destroying but to regenerate. Still a third Hindu scheme is found in the series of paramatman, mahabuddhi or alaya, and mahat or cosmic creative mind.
A somewhat similar usage in the Qabbalah is Meimra, or ''imrah (word, particularly from divinity) [both from Hebrew verbal root amar to say, speak, use words]. One of the Stanzas of Dzyan refers to the Army of the Voice, which is explained to be "the prototype of the ''Host of the Logos,'' or the ''word'' of the Sepher Jezirah, called in the Secret Doctrine ''the One Number issued from No-Number'' -- the One Eternal Principle" (SD 1:94).
See also LOGOS
(See also: Word, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Body mind and Soul )
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