Castes, Hindu. See CHATUR-VARNA

(See also: Castes, Hindu, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Castor. See DIOSCURI

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

Cat Egyptian symbol of the moon (SD 1:304-5, 387-8; 2:545-6, 552n)

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

Cataclysms (from Greek kataklysmos flood)

The term originated among the Stoics, who taught that the world is visited periodically and alternately by deluge (cataclysm) and conflagration (ekpyrosis, "burning up"). This last teaching was taken over into early Christian theology in the idea that the world will perish in flame.

The meaning of cataclysm, however, now includes both deluges and volcanic action. Theosophy holds that the earth is visited periodically and at long intervals by comparatively sudden changes, varying in geographic importance from a continental to merely local catastrophes. The whole period of the cataclysm includes a gradual beginning, a progressive intensification, a culmination, and a gradual diminution. Local transformations are often sudden, sharp, or violent, whereas those embracing a wide geographical field are usually much slower or of longer period, frequently seeming to be nothing more than the merely secular changes which human experience recognizes as customary.

Cataclysms are due to the influence of the sun, moon, planets, and ultimately also to the constellations. As all physical phenomena are manifestations of what originally occurs in the realms of mind and consciousness, the movements of the earth's crust reflect the movements in the minds of the beings inhabiting it, for all nature is an organism and all things are ineluctably knitted together by cosmic forces.

All the cataclysms are accompanied by both deluges and volcanism, but one or the other of these is accentuated at alternately different times. The forthcoming cataclysms at the end of the fifth root-race are stated to be especially marked by the action of the element fire. Lemuria, the third continental system, is said to have perished by subterranean convulsion, tremendous volcanic activity, and other phenomena arising in the igneous element, and the consequent breaking of the sea floor; whereas that of Atlantis, or the fourth great continental system, was mainly caused by axial disturbance, leading to subsidence of lands, tremendous consequent tidal waves, and the shifting of large portions of the oceanic system. "Therefore, it is absolutely false, . . . that all the great geological changes and terrible convulsions have been produced by ordinary and known physical forces. For these forces were but the tools and final means for the accomplishment of certain purposes, acting periodically, and apparently mechanically, through an inward impulse mixed up with, but beyond their material nature. There is a purpose in every important act of Nature, whose acts are all cyclic and periodical" (SD 1:640).

Conflagration was also used by Blavatsky to denote the destruction of the earth in pralayas, greater or less.

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

Catacombs Subterranean caverns and galleries, some of the most celebrated being in and around Rome. These were constructed for sepulcher, but such was not the original purpose of many in other parts of the world, though many of these also were later used for burial and hence contain bones. This latter class was originally used as secret temples for the enactment of initiatory rites. "There were numerous catacombs in Egypt and Chaldea, some of them of a very vast extent.

The most renowned of them were the subterranean crypts of Thebes and Memphis. The former, beginning on the western side of the Nile, extended towards the Lybian desert, and were known as the Serpent's catacombs, or passages. It was there that were performed the sacred mysteries of the kuklos anagkes, the 'Unavoidable Cycle,' more generally known as 'the circle of necessity'; the inexorable doom imposed upon every soul after the bodily death, and when it has been judged in the Amenthian region" (SD 2:379).

(See also: Catacombs, 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)

Candrayana. See CHANRAYANA

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

Capital Punishment ()

(See also: Capital Punishment, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Capricorn (from Latin capr goat + cornus horn)

The goat, often mystically connected with the sea; the tenth sign of the zodiac. In astrology, an earthy, cardinal sign, one of the two houses of Saturn, and the exaltation of Mars; its bodily correspondence is the knees. The symbol is a hybrid monster, often with the fore part of a goat or antelope and the hind part of a fish or dolphin. In some systems it is a crocodile. This sign marks the extreme southern limit of the sun.

In the Hindu zodiac it is Makara. Subba Row (The Twelve Signs of the Zodiac) says that ma is equivalent to the number 5, and kara means hand; thus the word signifies a pentagram. It may be taken to represent objectively both the microcosm and the macrocosm. Makara is the most mysterious of the signs, connected with the fifth group of the hierarchy of creative powers, and with the microcosmic pentagram -- the five-pointed star representing man (SD 1:219). In Egypt this sign was called the crocodile; with the Peratae Gnostics, it was represented as a dolphin and identified with Chozzar, god of the waters; it is associated with the Leviathan of Job, and with a group of five kumaras in India (SD 2:577).

"Makara is connected with the birth of the spiritual 'microcosm,' and the death or dissolution of the physical Universe (its passage into the realm of the Spiritual) . . . 'When the Sun passes away behind the 30th degree of Makara and will reach no more the sign of the Meenam (pisces) then the night of Brahma has come' " (SD 2:579 & n).

Equating the 12 sons of Jacob in the Hebrew system to the signs of the zodiac, Naphthali is assigned to Capricornus: he is called a "hind let loose."

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

Captures Astronomical bodies not belonging by origin to a particular system. The planet Neptune is spoken of as a capture not belonging to our solar system, meaning that it is a body which has been attracted into an orbit on our plane around the sun. The word is used similarly for the extra moons of those planets having more satellites than one true moon, which is the parent of the visible globe. These captured moons are satellites from the astronomical standpoint, but are not true parental moons.

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

Caracara. See CHARACHARA

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

Caraka. See CHARAKA

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

Carbonari (BCW 1:107n; 6:19-20)

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

Carboniferous Age. See GEOLOGICAL ERAS

(See also: Carboniferous Age, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Cardinal Points Either the four chief points of the compass (north, east, south, west), or the four chief zodiacal constellations which have descended to us from antiquity as Aries, Cancer, Libra, and Capricorn, though due to the precession of equinoxes these constellations shift as the ages pass. These four points are connected with the four arms of the equal-armed cross or with the swastika, as also with the cube -- the four points with zenith and nadir added.

Cosmically the four cardinal points represent a certain stage of manifestation where the three become four, in this case the number of matter. The Zohar says that the three primordial elements and the four cardinal points and all the forces of nature form the Voice of the Will, which is the manifested Logos. The Dodonaean Zeus includes in himself the four elements and the four cardinal points. Brahma is likewise four-faced.

The pyramid is the triangle repeated on the four cardinal points and symbolizes, among other things, the phenomenal merging into the noumenal.

The four cardinal points are presided over, or are manifestations of, four cosmic genii, dragons, maharajas -- in Buddhism the chatur-maharajas (four great kings) -- hidden dragons of wisdom, or celestial nagas. Hinduism has the four, six, or eight lokapalas. In the Egyptian and Jewish temples these points were represented by the four colors of the curtain hung before the Adytum.

See also EAST; NORTH; SOUTH; WEST

(See also: Cardinal Points, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Caresma. See BARESMA

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

Cancer The Crab. Fourth zodiacal sign, being watery, cardinal, feminine, and the only house of the moon; in astrology it corresponds to the stomach and breast. Its symbol is a crab; in Sanskrit it is called Karkataka, and is dedicated to Surya, the god of the sun.

In the Hebrew allocation of the signs to the 12 sons of Jacob, it is give to Benjamin, who is said to ravin as a wolf. This sign is that of the summer solstice in the northern hemisphere and is associated with heat, but in the southern hemisphere it is at the winter solstice, and we are told of times when the earth's poles were inverted so that the south pole was in Cancer.

According to Subba Row (Theos 3:42), Cancer represents the sacred Tetragram; the Parabrahmatharaca; the Pranava resolved into four separate entities corresponding to its four matras; the four avastas or four states of consciousness; the four states of Brahman, etc.

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

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)

Candala. See CHANDALA

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

Candra. See CHANDRA

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

Candrabhaga. See CHANDRABHAGA

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