Horsusi. See HARPOCRATES; HORUS

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

Memory {SD, BCW}

(See also: Memory , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary)

Pagan [from Latin paganus an inhabitant of the country, a villager; cf peasant]

Heathen, the Germanic parallel in origin and meaning, was also used to distinguish an urban dweller or cultured man from a country dweller or rustic; and so both words became terms of inferiority and ultimately of reproach. Pagans and heathen, in recent European usage, are those who are not Christian, Jews, or Moslems.

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

Jesus (Latin of Greek Iesous from Hebrew Yeshua` contraction of Yehoshua` a proper name meaning savior or helper, or that which is spacious or widespread)

Indubitably a historical character, whose life as narrated in the Gospels is pure allegory, a story of the initiation chamber. There is a story current from medieval times among the Jews, mentioned in the Sepher Toledoth Yeshua` (Book of the Generations of Jesus), to the effect that the Jesus of the Gospels was a Jehoshua ben Panthera, a Jewish adept living about 100 BC. Jesus illustrates the typical sequence in occult history: 1) the coming of a leader or teacher to a people needing to be led and taught; 2) his passing, followed by the adoration, even worship, of his followers; 3) the gradual transformation of historic facts into more or less embroidered legends or mythological tales, which in time cluster so thickly about his memory that his identity as a person, and even his name, are lost; 4) the myth, allegory, or legend; and 5) the efforts of other, later teachers to explain, interpret, and reinstate this earlier teacher, now a purely mythic figure or else materialized and misunderstood.

The Christian Gospels appear to have originated in mystery-dramas, beautiful and often sublime in their inner significances, in which were depicted the experiences of the neophyte and adept in his union with the Logos, and hence such unified individual was called a Logos incarnate as a man, the Logos itself being variously named as Christos or Dionysos, and to have been by stages adapted and given a semi-historical guise, as has happened in other instances besides the Christian mythos. Christ therefore, or the Christos, is not a particular man or an especial incarnation of divinity, but a generic term for the divine as incarnated in all human beings, although Jesus was undoubtedly the name of this great Jewish initiate-avatara as an individual. Hence this universal allegory in its Christian version has a true historical peg to hang from; for there did appear, sometime before the Christian era, a special cyclic messenger who was due to come on the change of the ecliptic point from one sign of the celestial zodiac to another, from the sign of Aries to Pisces. In theosophical literature, Jesus is considered to be an avatara, the messenger for the European Messianic or Piscean cycle. As such, Jesus represented a ray sent from the Wondrous Being or spiritual hierarch of the earth into the soul of a pure human being, while the racial buddha, Gautama Buddha, supplied the intermediate or psychological nature in this act of white magic.

"But it is probable that the theosophic effort which Jesus attempted to initiate did not endure for fifty years after his death. Almost immediately after his passing, his disciples, all half-instructed, and in some cases almost illiterate, men . . . foisted upon the world of their time the forms and beliefs of early Christianity; and had there been nothing but these, that religious system had not lived another fifty years. But what happened? During the oncoming of the dark cycle after Jesus (which began as before said about the time of Pythagoras), the last few rays from the setting sun of the ancient light shone feebly in the minds of certain of these Christian Fathers, Clement of Alexandria for one, and Origen of Alexandria for another, and in one or two more like these, who had been initiated at least in the lowest of some of the then degenerate pagan Mysteries; and these men entered into the Christian Church and introduced some poor modicum of that light, . . . which they still cherished; and these rays they derived mainly from the Neo-pythagorean and the Neoplatonic system" (Fund 486-7).

The Hebrew name Jah or Jehovah became identified in the mind of Christians with the name of Jesus, although Jesus never was in any wise identical with the Jewish Jehovah, but was identified in initiation through his own inner god or Father in Heaven, and the Jewish Jehovah mystically was the regent of the planet Saturn.

The first three letters in Greek make I.H.S. placed at the head of representations of the crucified Jesus, often said to stand for Iesus Hominum Salvator (Jesus the savior of men) or In hoc signo (in this sign), with reference to the alleged vision of a cross of the Emperor Constantine. Jesus is a form of a worldwide mystery-name, whose importance was its meaning, usually given as a three-letter monogram, analogous to the Sanskrit Aum. We find it in the Greek Gnostic Iao and variants are common in ancient Greece, such as Iasios, Iasion, Iason, Iasos; and initiates were known as Iasides or sons of Iaso.

See also AVATARA

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

Religion [from Latin religare to bind back, implying obligation; or from relegere to select, distinguish among various elements for the choosing of the best; ponder]

In theosophy individual religion of conduct means faith in his own essential divinity as a source of wisdom and an unerring and infallible guide in conduct; an ever-growing realization of that truth, an ever-growing consciousness of one's spiritual identity with the divine in nature; and constant devotion to the ideals thus inspired. Religion means a self-sacrificing devotion to truth, a resolve to live in harmony with all other lives, a sacrificing of the personal self to the greater self.

In theosophy there is no divorce between the devotional and speculative functions of the mind; science and philosophy do not conflict with the innate sense of rectitude. Ethics are not based on expediency, a social compact, or a special revelation, but are inherent in the laws of the universe.

The ancient wisdom is the quintessence of all religions, the universal parent-source of all faiths; and in proportion as each great world religion rises to the height of its own possibilities, so will the external divergences among the different faiths of mankind blend into the original fundamental unity.

(See also: Religion , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary)

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

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

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

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

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

Darkness In theosophical philosophy light is not regarded as self-existent, but as primordially the spiritual effect of a spiritual cause, the emanation from something grander and more radical beyond it.

This unknown divine substratum, the original superspiritual intelligence-substance of the universe, is sometimes called darkness; likewise, it is spoken of as absolute light. Thus absolute light and absolute darkness are the same, so that manifested light sprang from unmanifested light or darkness.

Philosophically, non-ego -- which is freedom from the limitations of egoity and manifested particularities -- voidness, and darkness are a three-in-one, darkness being Father-Mother and light, their Son. Night or darkness preceded day and light in cosmogony, as is recognized in Genesis, where darkness broods over the face of the deep. The creation of light, or the emanation of light from darkness, is the first step in cosmic manifestation. Light thus is truly called original substance or spiritual matter; darkness, purest spirit. Synonymous with this darkness are 'eyn soph, the Boundless, the bridgeless abyss, the unmanifest, the ever-invisible robes of the eternal parent.

Light and darkness on manifested planes constitute a duality, correlative and interdependent, neither conceivable without the other. But what is darkness to our physical senses may be light to our inner senses.

Darkness is also used to denote the shadow side of things, and hence in popular speech evil as opposed to good, ignorance to knowledge.

See also DAWN; LIGHT; USHAS

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

Cause(s). See KARMA; NIDANA; FIRST CAUSE

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

Manifestation.

See MANVANTARA

(See also: Manifestation , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary)

God (Gods) and Goddess (Goddesses) A generalizing term signifying all self-conscious entities superior to humankind, most often restricted to the three dhyani-chohanic kingdoms. The gods have differing places in nature's hierarchical scheme, running through innumerable grades of cosmic intelligences. Theosophy teaches that human beings who successfully reach the seventh round on this earth chain will pass, at the conclusion of this last round, into the kingdom superior to the human, that of the lowest dhyani-chohans.

One function of dhyani-chohans (gods or demigods of a lower type) is the watching over of all hierarchies below them, some being guardians of the human host, others guarding and protecting the less evolved kingdoms. The higher hierarchical ranges of gods or divinities in our universe "are Entities of the higher worlds in the hierarchy of Being, so immeasurably high that, to us, they must appear as Gods, and collectively -- God. . . . To the highest, we are taught, belong the seven orders of the purely divine Spirits; to the six lower ones belong hierarchies that can occasionally be seen and heard by men, and who do communicate with their progeny of the Earth; which progeny is indissoluble linked with them, each principle in man having its direct source in the nature of those great Beings, who furnish us with the respective invisible elements in us" (SD 1:133).

These beings belong to two general divisions, the arupa (formless) and the rupa (form) divinities. Those having forms should not be imagined as necessarily having human forms as in the ancient pantheons, yet rupa gods do have highly ethereal forms, some perhaps resembling the present human shape and others of quite different construction. But the arupa divinities are to our power of imagination "beings of pure intelligence and of understanding, pure essences, pure spirits, formless as we conceive form" (Fund 347).

Tradition has it that in the immemorial past, certain lower gods associated intimately with their children, humanity, on this globe; but as time went by and mankind became more immersed in material pursuits, people grew to become increasingly forgetful of their divine origin and of the presence of the shining divinities instructing and guiding their forebears, so that the gods and demigods were remembered only in mythologies and religious metaphors of the various races.

What did the ancients mean by their gods and goddesses? They were intended to represent the guiding intelligences present within or in back of all invisible secrets, as well as astral and physical manifestations of nature. During the third root-race there were beings who were

"endowed with the sacred fire from the spark of higher and then independent Beings, who were the psychic and spiritual parents of Man, as the lower Pitar Devata (the Pitris) were the progenitors of his physical body. That Third and holy Race consisted of men who, at their zenith, were described as, 'towering giants of godly strength and beauty, and the depositaries of all the mysteries of Heaven and Earth.'. . .

". . . the chief gods and heroes of the Fourth and Fifth Races, as of later antiquity, are the deified images of these men of the Third. The days of their physiological purity, and those of their so-called Fall, have equally survived in the hearts and memories of their descendants. Hence, the dual nature shown in those gods, both virtue and sin being exalted to their highest degree, in the biographies composed by posterity" (SD 2:171-2).

The primeval human deity worship degenerated during the fourth root-race (the Atlantean), the ideal at first becoming confused with the form, and the latter finally almost superseding the spirit -- thus in the relatively complete materialization of idea into form, the later Atlanteans in time began to worship themselves, what was to them the powers of nature appearing through themselves as human beings; the degeneration of the ideal proceeding so far that ultimately the worst kind of idol worship became relatively universal, except for the seed of the newer and somewhat higher mankind of the fifth root-race then beginning.

"The moderns are satisfied with worshipping the male heroes of the Fourth race, who created gods after their own sexual image, whereas the gods of primeval mankind were 'male and female,' " i.e., hermaphrodite (SD 2:135).

See also DEITY

(See also: God, Goddess , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

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)

Occultism [from Latin occultus hid]

The science of things behind the veils of nature both visible and invisible, things hidden from the multitudes. In theosophy frequently synonymous with the esoteric philosophy or secret doctrine. The study of genuine occultism signifies penetrating deep into the causal mysteries of universal being; the occult arts, by contrast, include psychism, black magic, hypnotism, psychologization, and similar uninstructed or malevolent uses of astral and mental forces.

The term occult has noble, but largely forgotten origins. It properly defines anything which is undisclosed, concealed, or not easily perceived. Early theologians, for example, spoke of "the occult judgment of God," while "occult philosopher" was a designation for the pre-Renaissance scientist who sought the unseen causes regulating nature's phenomena. In astronomy, the term is still used when one stellar body "occults" another by passing in front of it, temporarily hiding it from view. Writing a century ago, when the word had not acquired today's mixed connotations, H.P. Blavatsky defined occultism as "altruism pure and simple" -- the divine wisdom or hidden theosophy within all religions.

As the study or science of things which are hid and secret, occultism is a generalizing term because what is hid or secret in one age may readily be in a succeeding age more or less commonly known and open to public investigation. Many things that in medieval Europe were distinctly secret and therefore occult, are today the field of scientific investigation; and what is now considered to be occult, if science continues in its progress and research, may in the succeeding age in its turn become open and matter of common knowledge. Occultism then will simply have shifted its field of investigation and study to matters still more secret, still more recondite, still more deeply hid in fields of nature which are now scarcely suspected.

Theosophy or the wisdom-religion is the study of the ancient wisdom of the gods, and comprises in any one period that particular portion of knowledge which has been delivered to those who study it; whereas occultism in any age is that portion of the ancient wisdom dealing with matters which at such time are secret, hid, and unknown to the multitude.

Thus occultism is that portion of theosophy which has not yet been openly and publicly promulgated. Occultism is founded on the principle that Divinity is concealed -- transcendent yet immanent -- within every living being. As a spiritual discipline occultism is the renunciation of selfishness; it is the "still small path" which leads to wisdom, to the right discrimination between good and evil, and the practice of altruism.

(See also: Occultism , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary)

Adi-buddha (Sanskrit) (from adi first, original + the verbal root budh to awaken, perceive, know)

First or primeval buddha; the supreme being above all other buddhas and bodhisattvas in the later Mahayana Buddhism of Tibet, Nepal, Java, and Japan. In theosophical writings, the highest aspect or subentity of the supreme Wondrous Being of our universe, existing in the most exalted dharmakaya state.

"In the esoteric, and even exoteric Buddhism of the North, Adi-Buddha (Chogi dangpoi sangye), the One unknown, without beginning or end, identical with Parabrahm and Ain-Soph, emits a bright ray from its darkness.

"This is the Logos (the first), or Vajradhara, the Supreme Buddha (also called Dorjechang). As the Lord of all Mysteries he cannot manifest, but sends into the world of manifestation his heart -- the 'diamond heart,' Vajrasattva (Dorjesempa)" (SD 1:571). Adi-buddha is the individualized monadic focus of adi-buddhi, primordial cosmic wisdom or intelligence, synonymous with mahabuddhi or mahat (universal mind). Otherwise expressed, adi-buddha is the supreme being heading the hierarchy of compassion and our solar universe; the fountain of light running through all subordinate hierarchies and thus the supreme lord and initiator of the wisdom side of our universe.

The Great Brotherhood of the mahatmas on earth, through their chief, the Mahachohan, is the representative on our globe of adi-buddha. Because of this, Tibetan Buddhism recognizes the continuous "reincarnations of Buddha" -- not that Gautama Buddha is thus reimbodied but that adi-buddha through its human ray perpetuates itself by reflection in fit and chosen human beings. As adi-buddha is the individualized divine ideation of our universe, all-permeant and omnipresent, those individuals who raise themselves to become self-consciously at one with a ray from adi-buddha are de facto "reincarnations," greater or minor imbodiments of the cosmic buddha. Adi-buddha manifests through the hierarchy of the celestial buddhas or dhyani-buddhas, these again manifest through the manushya-buddhas and in lesser degree through human individuals who, though great, are inferior to the manushya-buddhas.

(See also: Adi-buddha , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Brain The anatomy of the brain is very complex, and the organ as a whole can be considered under two main aspects:

1)    in relation to consciousness, thought, and memory; and

2)    in relation to functional activities stimulated by nerve currents to the various organs, muscles, etc.

It is in reference to consciousness that Blavatsky states that "Occultism tells us that every atom, like the monad of Leibnitz, is a little universe in itself; and that every organ and cell in the human body is endowed with a brain of its own, with memory, therefore, experience and discriminative powers" (Studies in Occultism 100; BCW 12:134).

Pirogoff, Liebig, and others are quoted in support of the view that memory is related to the bodily organs in general and not wholly to the brain. The brain is the registering organ of memory, not memory itself. The memories of terrestrial experiences -- those pertaining to the lower mind -- arise in the bodily organs pertaining to it, and are transmitted to the structure of the brain, where they are registered in the kama-manasic consciousness.

But the finer particles of the brain cannot be so reached, for the brain in this sense is the organ of a higher noetic mind. The higher mind does not act directly on the bodily organs, but through the mediation of the lower mind. Thus it is the personal ego "catches occasional glimpses of that which is beyond the senses of man, and transmits them to certain brain cells (unknown to science in their functions), thus making of man a Seer, a soothsayer, and a prophet . . ." (Studies in Occultism 89; BCW 12:367). The brain and heart are special organs through which the higher mind acting through the personal mind can stimulate the finer particles of the body to a representation of spiritual ideas.

More particularly the brain may be described as the organ of the lower manasic activities through the manasic fluid flowing forth from the inner constitution; whereas the heart is the organ -- as yet only slightly evolved to its high purposes -- for the buddhic or buddhi-manasic parts of the invisible human constitution. Thus when the brain is trained to receive the inflow of the current arising in the higher portion of the fluid which bathes the heart, then the individual lives for the time at least in the highest portions of his constitution, and temporarily becomes a demigod on earth.

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

Theosophy [from Greek theosophia from theos god, divinity + sophia wisdom]

Divine wisdom, the knowledge of things divine; often described as attainable by direct experience, by becoming conscious of the essential, divine part of our nature, self-identification with the inner god, leading to communion with other similar divine beings. Theosophy actually is the "substratum and basis of all the world-religions and philosophies, taught and practised by a few elect ever since man became a thinking being" (TG 328). Also called by such names as the secret doctrine and the esoteric tradition, its teachings have been preserved, checked and rechecked with every new generation of its guardians and adepts.

The word became familiar to Greeks in the 3rd century with Ammonius Saccas and the Alexandrian Neoplatonists or Theurgists, who taught of divine emanations, whereby the entire universe as well as humans and all other beings are shown to be descendants of the highest gods. Theosophist is also applied to mystics in later times such as Eckhart, Boehme, and Paracelsus. It was adopted in 1875 by H. P. Blavatsky and others associated with her at the founding of the Theosophical Society as the name for the modern form of the archaic wisdom-religion which she promulgated. This wisdom-religion "was ever one and being the last word of possible human knowledge, was, therefore, carefully preserved. It preceded by long ages the Alexandrian Theosophists, reached the modern, and will survive every other religion and philosophy" (Key 7-8).

"The Secret Doctrine is the accumulated Wisdom of the Ages, and its cosmogony alone is the most stupendous and elaborate system: e.g., even in the exotericism of the Puranas. But such is the mysterious power of Occult symbolism, that the facts which have actually occupied countless generations of initiated seers and prophets to marshal, to set down and explain; in the bewildering series of evolutionary progress, are all recorded on a few pages of geometrical sign and glyphs. The flashing gaze of those seers has penetrated into the very kernel of matter, and recorded the soul of things there, where an ordinary profane, however learned, would have perceived but the external work of form. But modern science believes not in the 'soul of things,' and hence will reject the whole system of ancient cosmogony. It is useless to say that the system in question is no fancy of one or several isolated individuals. That it is the uninterrupted record covering thousands of generations of Seers whose respective experiences were made to test and to verify the traditions passed orally by one early race to another, of the teachings of higher and exalted beings, who watched over the childhood of Humanity. That for long ages, the 'Wise Men' of the Fifth Race, of the stock saved and rescued from the last cataclysm and shifting of continents, had passed their lives in learning, not teaching. How did they do so? It is answered: by checking, testing, and verifying in every department of nature the traditions of old by the independent visions of great adepts; i.e., men who have developed and perfected their physical, mental, psychic, and spiritual organisations to the utmost possible degree. No vision of one adept was accepted till it was checked and confirmed by the visions -- so obtained as to stand as independent evidence -- of other adepts, and by centuries of experiences" (SD 1:272-3).

G. de Purucker wrote: "There has existed in the world for almost innumerable ages, a completely coherent and fully comprehensive system of religious philosophy, or of philosophical, scientific religion, which from time to time has been given out to man when the world needed a fuller revealing of spiritual truth than it then at such time had. Further, this wonderful system has been for all those past ages in the safe guardianship of the relatively perfected men . . . [the mahatmas]; and, still further, the present Theosophical Movement is, in our age, one of such fuller revelations or renewals of that wonderful System" (ET 33-4).

One of the mahatmas referring to the guardianship of the divine wisdom, wrote: "For countless generations hath the adept builded a fane of imperishable rocks, a giant's Tower of Infinite Thought, wherein the Titan dwelt, and will yet, if need be, dwell alone, emerging from it but at the end of every cycle, to invite the elect of mankind to co-operate with him and help in his turn enlighten superstitious man. And we will go on in that periodical work of ours; we will not allow ourselves to be baffled in our philanthropic attempts until that day when the foundations of a new continent of thought are so firmly built that no amount of opposition and ignorant malice guided by the Brethren of the Shadow will be found to prevail" (ML 51).

See also THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY

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

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)

Philosophy The Greek philosophia meant love of wisdom, but with equal power of significance, although perhaps not etymologically as correct, the meaning was wisdom of love; also, the systematic investigation and instruction of facts and theories regarded as important in the study of truth.

In common usage it denotes the mental and moral sciences, in some respects being nearly equivalent to metaphysics, and including a number of divisions.

Theosophists speak of a triad of philosophy, religion, and science as being merged by theosophy into a unity; but science was itself at one time called natural philosophy, so that the chief distinction is that between faith and reason.

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

West The forces of the four cardinal points have each a distinct occult property, and are ruled over by the four regents.

Blavatsky states that there is occult philosophy in the early Christian doctrine, echoes of which still linger in both the Orthodox Greek and the Roman Catholic Churches, that public calamities are due to invisible messengers from the north and west, and particularly from the west, the conjunction of the two points being combined in the northwest (SD 1:123).

Most good, on the other hand, flows forth from the north and east. The Egyptian goddess Hathor is spoken of as the infernal Isis, the goddess preeminently of the west or nether world. East and west are not localities but directions, and when used in reference to localities the meaning is purely relative. Good and evil, too, are relative terms as experienced by human beings, for such messengers and influences are in all cases strictly karmic agents; and often what people in their blindness and weakness think a calamity or misfortune may indeed be a blessing in disguise.

See also CARDINAL POINTS

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

Good. See EVIL; AGATHON, TO

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

Infinite (from Latin in not + finitus ended)

That which is endless or not finite; ancient peoples expressed the frontierless, beginningless, and endless hierarchical immensities, whether of space, time, spirit, or matter in many ways, as in the 'eyn soph (without bounds or frontiers) of the Qabbalah, the Hindu parabrahman (beyond Brahman), the Void, the Sunyata of Buddhism, the Ginnungagap (gaping void) of the Scandinavians, the Deep of the Bible, or the waters of space, etc.

Many philosophers of antiquity considered it futile to speculate upon that which is ex hypothesi beyond the understanding of the human mind, confessedly finite in function and range. For whatever the human mind can shape or figurate to itself as a concept must be de facto finite in itself, however great or grand. Infinite was never used as a synonym for deity or any divine being, for however immense in its incomprehensible vastness in both time and space, it could be nevertheless only finite, for the human mind itself had given birth to the human thought, and the human mind is finite.

Similarly, the Absolute is not the infinite, for absolute means "freed" or "liberated," such as the cosmic hierarch of a universe; and this could not be infinite or boundless, but must have been of finite origin, grown into stature of divine grandeur. The ancients taught that the universe was filled with gods, and that the universes were as numerous in beginningless space and time, as number in itself is beginningless and endless and therefore incommensurable.

"The Boundless can have no relation to the bounded and the conditioned";

"the immutably Infinite and the absolutely Boundless can neither will, think, nor act. To do this it has to become finite, and it does so, by its ray penetrating into the mundane egg -- infinite space -- and emanating from it as a finite god" (SD 1:56, 354).

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

Am 'em (Hebrew) Mother; occasionally any female ancestor; also a mother-city, and by the same metaphor occasionally the earth as the common mother of all.

See also AIMA; 'IMMA' `ILLA'AH

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

Heart The heart is the seat in the human body of buddhic consciousness, corresponding to the anahata chakra which is ruled by the planet Venus. There are three principal centers of the human body: the heart as the center of spiritual consciousness; the head as the center of mental consciousness; and the navel as the center of kamic or emotional consciousness.

The heart is the organ through which the higher ego acts, seeking to impress the lower self which works through the brain. In this sense the heart is the most important part of the body, and when developed leads to spiritual mastery, the unity of atma-buddhi-manas. In another sense, the heart corresponds to prana, "but only because Prana and the Auric Envelope are essentially the same, and because again as Jiva it is the same as the Universal Deity" (BCW 12:694).

Cosmically, the sun is the beating heart of the solar system, and the sunspot cycle of approximately 12 years represents the cycle of its beating, as it sends forth and receives back the circulations on many planes which sustain the solar system. The sun is "a beating heart; in another sense, it is a brain. There is a temptation to use the words heart and brain literally, and such usage wanders not far from fact. But it is not the physical globe which is the true head and heart, except insofar as the physical universe is concerned. The real head and the real heart, coalescing and working as one, are the divinity behind and above and within the physical vehicle of our glorious daystar" (FSO 299; cf SD 1:541-2).

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