Hysterema (Greek) Incompletion or inferiority; in Gnostic thought, the smaller or manifested world in contrast to the pleroma (completion or unmanifested, the fullness) from which it emanates. The hysterema, represented as a circle, contains "the Square of primordial Matter, or Chaos, emanated by Sophia, called the Ektroma (or Abortion). Above this is a Triangle, primordial Spirit, called the Common Fruit of the Pleroma, or Jesus, for to all below the Pleroma it appears as a unity" (BCW 13:16). This square and triangle are reflections of unmanifest counterparts in pleroma.

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Hysteria This protean disorder is regarded as a functional neurosis with abnormal sensations, emotions, or paroxysms, manifesting itself chiefly by emotional instability, by the ease with which it is influenced, in negativism and impulsiveness, a tendency to make sensations, a remarkable egotism, desire to talk, to fabricate, and to simulate. There is constant, capricious change of mood and activity. No other disorder can counterfeit so many diseases as hysteria.

The psychic faculties at times displayed in clairvoyance, hallucinations, cataleptic and somnambulistic states, etc., show an active functioning in the astral body; while convulsive and other abnormal movements, and mental absences in which the actor does and says bizarre, unwonted, and inexplicable things for various periods of which only a vague or no remembrance is retained, point to the play of some astral entity, as occurs in other obsessions.

The theosophical interpretation of hysteria is that some obsessing astral entity, not always excarnate human or wholly human, is playing upon the human being in unnatural and useless ways. The patient's unconscious includes his various past lives in which he developed the neurotic tendencies which now attract harmful psychic influences. Among the various types and grades of astral entities from which the normal body and mind are a protection, there are the elementaries dominated and enslaved by some special form or forms of desire. Of such, there may be those with the intense love of attention and the egoism which is so generally marked in hysterical types.

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Hydromancy. See DIVINATION

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Hygeia or Hygea hygieia (Greek) Health; goddess of health, daughter of Aesculapius, represented as a maiden feeding a serpent from a cup -- the serpent referring generally to the vital pathways or flow of the buddhi, often alluded to in Hindu writings as kundalini, drinking from the cup of knowledge. Identified with the Roman Salus.

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Hyksos, Hyksos The Shepherd-Kings of Egypt, who invaded and conquered Egypt from the east sometime after the beginning of the 13th dynasty. Under Salatis they made Memphis their capital city and their descendants held Egypt for 511 years.

"According to Josephus, the Hyk-sos were the ancestors of the Israelites. This is doubtless substantially true" (IU 2:487).

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Hyle (Greek) Wood, material; primordial matter as first manifested in and from Chaos, but as yet undifferentiated; the Mother, paired with spirit as Father. A Pythagorean word and, according to Plutarch, one of a lower tetraktys consisting of to agathon (the good), nous (intelligence), psyche (soul), and hyle (matter). Equivalent to ilus.

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Hylo-idealism A philosophic cult founded by Dr. Robert Lewins, popular at the time when The Secret Doctrine was written (1887-8). It regarded self as the reality. The main reason Blavatsky seems to have so strongly criticized this group was for its materialistic basis, as it derived the cognizing self from matter (as expressed by the hylo in its name). This is directly contrary to theosophic teachings which derive both the primordial self and all its manifestations from cosmic spirit or the Logos.

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Hylozoism (from Greek hyle matter + zoe life)

A term used by Ralph Cudworth (1617-88); the doctrine that matter includes its own vitalizing principle. Contrasted in The Secret Doctrine with crude materialism on the one hand and anthropomorphic deism on the other, it is said to be tantamount to a kind of pantheism.

The Stoics, using the word matter to mean something that actually exists, argued that the vitalizing agents in matter, although spiritual in origin, must themselves be material in order to affect matter. The duality between spirit and matter, or the active and passive potencies, they regarded as formal and a concession to Aristotelianism. They recognized the mind and vitality inherent in nature:

"Nature is a habit moved from itself, according to seminal principles," says Laertius, after Zeno. This is equivalent to recognizing the hierarchies of gods, in contrast with the notion that one "Supreme Architect" concerns himself directly with the innumerable details of the inferior ranges of the universe.

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Hyparxis (Greek) Essential nature; Neoplatonic term for the summit, beginning, or hierarch of a hierarchy:

"this army of beings in any one hierarchy is . . . more than a mere collective entity, because it is united in its apex, in what is actually the fount of that hierarchy. This fount is the hyparxis or spiritual sun from which all the other nine planes or classes of the hierarchy emanate . . . ; even as the hyparxis of any one hierarchy is the lowest class or plane of a superior hierarchy, and so practically ad infinitum" (Fund 108-9). Equivalent to the First Logos.

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Hypatia Fifth century Neoplatonic philosopher, daughter of the mathematician Theon; murdered in 415 by a mob incited by Cyril, Archbishop of Alexandria.

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Hyperborean (from Greek hyperboreos beyond the north wind)

In Greek mythology the Hyperboreans dwelt in the inaccessible extreme north, in bliss and everlasting spring, exempt from death and old age, toil and war. Sometimes it was said that sunshine was continuous for six months, and that Phoebes (the sun) visited the region every year. The Secret Doctrine adopts this name for the continent or homeland of the second great root-race of mankind.

See also ROOT-RACE, SECOND

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Hyperion (Greek) (from hyper above, high + ion he that goes)

The sun god, commonly joined with Helios in Homer, as Hyperion Helios or Helios Hyperion. Also a titan descended from Ouranos and Gaia (heaven and earth) who pairs with Thea. Strictly speaking, the sun god and the titan are one, the distinction lying in this individual's being viewed from two different aspects.

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Hvanuatha. See HVANIRATHA

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Hvergelmir, Hvergalmer (Icelandic) (from hverr cauldron, boiler + gelmir loud one, screamer)

Roaring cauldron; in Norse myths, the spring which waters the third root of Yggdrasil (the World Tree) which reaches into Niflheim, the home of mists (nebulae). From Hvergelmir flow the thrice twelve plus one ice streams or glaciers, elivagar, which furnish the various life forms for the kingdoms of nature, each one suitable to the type of being which is to inhabit and use that form.

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Hwan (Chinese) Spirit.

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Hwergelmir. See HVERGELMIR

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Hwun. See HWAN

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Hwyl (Welsh) Sail; the method of chanting used in Wales for poetry and rhetoric, the idea being that the inspiration drives and fills the spoken words with a certain vibrant, singing quality of sound, as the wind fills, swells, and drives the sails of a ship.

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Hyades (from Greek hyo to rain)

The rainers, or daughters of rain; the stars in the head of Taurus the Bull, the brightest of them being Aldebaran. The usual explanation, borrowed from the Greeks and Romans, is that their rising with the sun, which occurs in May, indicates rain, but they also indicate periodical deluges (SD 2:785).

In Greek mythology they were nymphs, the daughters of Atlas and Aethra, and sisters of the Pleiades, their number varying from two to seven. They were worshiped as nurses of Zeus or Dionysos, and for this service were put in the sky as stars.

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Hydra (Greek) A water serpent, feminine, corresponding to a masculine hydros; usually the monster which Hercules overcomes in one of his twelve labors.

As the twelve labors signify, among other things, the trials of an initiant in the Mysteries, the mythologic hydra symbolizes the psycho-astral forces which have to be mastered.

In past stages of evolution, when inchoate attempts at formation were made, and when planes and states of matter were not as they are now, strange monsters existed, which were at first purely lower astral, then astral-physical, and finally physical, before they died out. Hence the idea that the hydra was derived from traditions or astral visions of some reptile-monster of the Mesozoic Age may be an imperfect intuition of the facts.

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Hydranos (Greek) Baptizer:

"a name of the ancient Hierophant of the Mysteries who made the candidate pass through the 'trial by water,' wherein he was plunged thrice. This was his baptism by the Holy Spirit which moves on the waters of Space. Paul refers to St. John as Hydranos, the Baptist. The Christian Church took this rite from the ritualism of the Eleusinian and other Mysteries" (TG 146).

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Hydrogen The chemical element hydrogen is a terrestrial manifestation of an element fundamental throughout the universe; and it is in this general sense that it is often spoken of in The Secret Doctrine. There we find hydrogen described as the material and spiritual basis, its subjective or abstract essence occupying a similar position in the world of mental and subjective phenomena to that which its physical equivalent occupies among the chemical elements.

It is spiritual fire, the ray which proceeds from its still greater spiritual noumenon, the dhyani of the first element. It is a gas only on our terrestrial plane, and is very closely allied to the physical protyle or root-element. It is the upadhi of both air and water, and is fire, air, and water -- one under three aspects (SD 2:105, 112-13).

Blavatsky also states that all the matter of the universe, when analyzed by science to its ultimates, yields only four elements: hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and carbon. These four are the basis of organic matter, and are correlated with the four lower human principles: hydrogen with kama and with the primary creative powers, so that the trinity of Mother-Father-Son corresponds to hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen.

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