Candragupta. See CHANDRAGUPTA

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

Candrakanta. See CHANDRAKANTA

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

Candramana. See CHANDRAMANA

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

Candramasanjyotis. See CHANDRAMASANJYOTIS

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

Candra-vansa. See CHANDRA-VANSA

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

Cabiri, Cabeiri. See KABIRI

(See also: Cabiri, Cabeiri, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Cable-tow In Freemasonry, the restraint placed upon and exercised by Masons. It is the cord enclosing the tracing beard of an Entered Apprentice, "having four tassels placed at the four angles, referring to the four cardinal virtues (prudence, fortitude, temperance, and justice) and their illustrative points, while the cable-tow is emblematic of the cord or bond of affection which ought to unite the whole fraternity (See Hosea, xi, 4): . . . 'I have drawn them with the bands of humanity, the cords of love' " (The Royal Masonic Cyclopedia, Mackenzie).

(See also: Cable-tow, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Cadmus, Cadmilus (Greek) Son of Agenor, king of Phoenicia, and brother of Europa, husband of Harmonia, and father of Semele; legendary founder of Thebes, who slew the dragon, planted its teeth, and built the city with the help of some of the soldiers that sprang from the teeth.

He and his wife were finally turned into serpents by the gods. Said to have introduced into Greece an alphabet, possibly based upon 16 characters derived from either Egypt or Phoenicia. He belongs to the class of heroes, who succeeded the reigns of the gods and demigods on earth and who were parents and instructors of mortals.

Hermes was worshiped at Samothrace as the ancestral god under the name of Cadmus or Kadmilos.

(See also: Cadmus, Cadmilus, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Caduceus (Latin) A herald's staff; specially, the wand of Mercury or Hermes, god of wisdom, corresponding to Thoth. It consists of a rod or tree with two serpents wound in opposite directions round it, their tails meeting below, and their heads approaching each other above.

At the top of the rod in the Greek version is a knob, in the earlier Egyptian form a serpent's head, from which spring a pair of wings. From the central head between the wings grew the heads of the entwined serpents (spirit and matter), which descended along the tree of life, crossing the neutral laya-centers between the different planes of being, to manifest where the two tails joined on earth (SD 1:549-50).

The analogy is found in every known cosmogony, all of which begin with a circle, head, or egg surrounded by darkness. From this circle of infinity -- the unknown All -- comes forth the manifestations of spirit and matter. The emblem of the evolution of gods and atoms is shown by the two forces, positive and negative, ascending and descending and meeting. Its symbology is directly connected with the globes of the planetary chain and the circulations of the beings or life-waves on these globes, as well as with the human constitution and the afterdeath states.

Significantly, in ancient Greek mythology, Hermes is the psychopomp, psychagog, or conductor of souls after death to the various inner spheres of the universe, such as the Elysian Plains or the Meads of Asphodel. The Caduceus also signifies the dual aspect of wisdom by its twin serpents, Agathodaimon and Kakodaimon, good and evil in a relative sense.

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

Count Alessandro di Cagliostro "A famous Adept, whose real name is claimed (by his enemies) to have been Joseph Balsamo. He was a native of Palermo, and studied under some mysterious foreigner (called Althotas)

of whom little has been ascertained. . . . his real history has never been told. His fate was that of every human being who proves that he knows more than do his fellow-creatures; he was 'stoned to death' by persecutions, lies, and infamous accusations, and yet he was the friend and adviser of the highest and mightiest of every land he visited. He was finally tried and sentenced in Rome as a heretic, and was said to have died during his confinement in a State prison. . . . Yet his end was not utterly undeserved, as he had been untrue to his vows in some respects, had fallen from his state of chastity and yielded to ambition and selfishness" (TG 72).

Commenting upon the strange tales related concerning Cagliostro and Balsamo, Purucker wrote that

"it is upon the document issued from the Vatican containing the story of the so-called trial and condemnation of Cagliostro that most later students and historians of the checkered and wonderful career of that remarkable man assume that Cagliostro and Guiseppe Balsamo were one individual.

"I can only say that there is a strange mystery involved in the story of these two: Balsamo and Cagliostro. How strange is the statement, if true, that both had the name Pellegrini, which means Pilgrims! How strange is it that Giuseppe Balsamo is the Italian form of the name Joseph Balm, suggesting a healing influence; and that 'Balsamo,' whether rightly or wrongly, can be traced to a compound Semitic word which means 'Lord of the Sun' -- 'Son of the Sun'; while the Hebrew name Joseph signifies 'increase' or 'multiplication.'. . . How strange it is that Cagliostro was called an 'orphan,' the 'unhappy child of Nature'! Every initiate . . . is an 'orphan' without father, without mother, because mystically speaking every initiate is self-born. How strange it is that other names under which Cagliostro is stated to have lived at various times have in each instance a singular esoteric signification! . . .

"Perhaps I might go one shade of thought farther: to every Cagliostro who appears there is always a Balsamo. Closely accompanying and indeed inseparable from every Messenger there is his 'Shadow.' With every Christ appears a Judas" (SOPh 30-1).

(See also: Count Alessandro di Cagliostro, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Cain qayin (Hebrew) (from qayin spear)

In the Bible, the son of Adam and Eve, and a tiller of the ground. Becoming jealous of the offering which his brother Abel presents to the Lord, Cain according to the legend slays him (Genesis 4). This allegory signifies that "Jehovah-Cain, the male part of Adam the dual man, having separated himself from Eve, creates in her 'Abel,' the first natural woman, and sheds the Virgin blood" (SD 2:388). Cain and Abel represent the third root-race or the "Separating Hermaphrodite" (SD 2:134).

Again "beginning with Cain, the first murderer, every fifth man in his line of descent is a murderer. . . . In the Talmud this genealogy is given complete, and thirteen murderers range themselves in line below the name of Cain. This is no coincidence. Siva is the Destroyer, but he is also the Regenerator. Cain is a murderer, but he is also the creator of nations, and an inventor" (IU 2:447-8).

In Biblical genealogy, the line of Cain is Enoch, Irad, Mehujael, Methusael, and Lemech, whose sons were Jubal, Jabal, and Tubal-cain; the line of Seth, the third son of Adam and Eve, is Enos (Enoch), Cainan, Mehalaleel, Jarad (or Irad), Enoch, Methuselah, Lamech, and Noah (Genesis 4-5). Blavatsky calls it "fruitless (to) attempt to disconnect the genealogies of Cain and of Seth, or to conceal the identity of names under a different spelling. . . . all these are symbols (Kabalistically) of solar and lunar years, of astronomical periods, and of physiological (phallic) functions, just as in any other pagan symbolical creed" (SD 2:391n).

See also ABEL

(See also: Cain qayin, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Cainite(s). See ROOT-RACE, FOURTH

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

Caitanya. See CHAITANYA

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

Caitya. See CHAITYA

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

Cakra. See CHAKRA

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

Cyclops Kyklops (Greek) (from kyklos circle, round + ops eye)

Plural cyclopes. Round-eyed giants; Homer locates them in Sicily as a lawless race of giants with one central eye, devouring men and caring naught for Zeus; their chief is Polyphemus. For Hesiod, they are three sons of Heaven and Earth, named Arges, Brontes, and Steropes, titan of flame, thunder, and lightning respectively. Later they were considered assistants of Hephaestus in his workshops under volcanoes and their number was no longer confined to three.

The history of human evolution has passed down to us transfigured by the progressive accretion of myths, so that the name cyclopes was handed down to various owners until it meant merely giants who built vast walls. Hesiod's original three were the last three subraces of the Lemurians, the one eye was the wisdom eye, the other eyes not being fully developed as physical organs until the beginning of the fourth root-race.

Odysseus, a fourth-race hero, though he destroys a barbarous race in the interests of culture, nevertheless puts out the third eye. It is an allegory of the passage from a simpler Cyclopean civilization of huge stone buildings to the more sensual civilization of the Atlanteans (SD 2:769). Disciples of the initiates of the fourth root-race were said to hand over divine knowledge to their cyclopes, sons of cycles or of the infinite (SD 1:208), while the cyclopes supposed to have built walls were masons in the sense of initiators (SD 2:345).

The legend of the cyclops with the third eye is also found in ancient Ireland. De Jubainville parallels the three cyclopes of Hesiod with the three famous Irish smiths, Goibniu (Gavida) and his brothers. Goibniu slew the wicked Fomorian Balor -- also a cyclops with one eye in the middle of his forehead -- to give victory to the Tuatha De Danaan (gods of day and life) (Irish Mythological Cycle 122).

(See also: Cyclops, Kyklops, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Mt Cyllene In Greek mythology, mountain in Arcadia where Hermes or Mercury was born.

See also Mountains, Mundane. (SD 2:541)

(See also: Mt Cyllene, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Cymry (Welsh) The Welsh people. Many derivations of this word have been suggested; the accepted one nowadays gives Cymry the meaning of "associated peoples" (from Old Welsh combrox compatriot from com with + bro district, region)

, and assumes that it came into vogue in that lost period of history during which England changed from Latin and Celtic to Germanic or Anglo-Saxon in speech; and Wales, from being mainly Gaelic, became Brythonic or Cymric in speech -- the language being called Cymraeg. George Borrow identified the word with the Sanskrit kumara; others see in it cyn mru (first womb, or first mother).

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

Cynocephalus (from Latin canus dog + cephalus head)

The dog-headed ape (Simia hamadryas) which in Egyptian mythology was called Amemet (eater of the dead) whose master was Thoth or Tehuti. In the Judgment scene in The Egyptian Book of the Dead, Amemet is represented as seated by Thoth, ready to inform his master when the pointer marks the middle of the beam on the balance, when the heart is being weighed in the scales. After Thoth makes his announcement to the gods concerning the result of the weighing of the heart, the company of the gods decree that Amemet shall not be permitted to prevail over the successful candidate.

"There was a notable difference between the ape-headed gods and the 'Cynocephalus' . . . , a dog-headed baboon from upper Egypt. The latter, whose sacred city was Hermopolis, was sacred to the lunar deities and Thoth-Hermes, hence an emblem of secret wisdom -- as was Hanuman, the monkey god of India, and later, the elephant-headed Ganesha. The mission of the Cynocephalus was to show the way for the Dead to the Seat of Judgment and Osiris, whereas the ape-gods were all phallic" (TG 92).

"The dog-headed ape was a glyph to symbolise the sun and moon, in turn, though the Cynocephalus is more a Hermetic than a religious symbol. For it is the hieroglyph of Mercury, the planet, as of the Mercury of the Alchemical philosophers, 'as,' say the Alchemists, 'Mercury has to be ever near Isis, as her minister, as without Mercury neither Isis nor Osiris can accomplish anything in the great work.' Cynocephalus, whenever represented with the Caduceus, the Crescent, or the Lotus, is a glyph of the 'philosophical' Mercury; but when seen with a reed, or a roll of parchment, he stands for Hermes, the secretary and adviser of Isis, as Hanuman filled the same office with Rama" (SD 1:388).

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

Cythraul (Welsh) The principle of evil, later personified as the Devil.

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

Cytoblastema An obsolete biological word for the formative material from which cells were supposed to arise.

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

Cyuta. See CHYUTA

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