Theosophy Dictionary - L

Elementaries. Properly, the disembodied souls of the depraved; these souls having at some time prior to death separated from themselves their divine spirits, and so lost their chance for immortality; but at the present stage of learning it has been thought best to apply the term to the spooks or phantoms of disembodied persons, in general, to those whose temporary habitation is the Kama Loka.

Eliphas Lévi and some other Kabbalists make little distinction between elementary spirits who have been men, and those beings which people the elements, and are the blind forces of nature.

Once divorced from their higher triads and their bodies, these souls remain in their Kama-rupic envelopes, and are irresistibly drawn to the earth amid elements congenial to their gross natures. Their stay in the Kama Loka varies as to its duration; but ends invariably in disintegration, dissolving like a column of mist, atom by atom, in the surrounding elements.

(See also: Elementaries, Theosophy, Spirituality, Body mind and Soul, Spiritual Dictionary, )

Pan (Ancient Greek). The nature-god, whence Pantheism; the god of shepherds, huntsmen, peasants, and dwellers on the land. Homer makes him the son of Hermes and Dryope.

His name means ALL. He was the inventor of the Pandean pipes; and no nymph who heard their sound could resist the fascination of the great Pan, his grotesque figure not withstanding.

Pan is related to the Mendesian goat, only so far as the latter represents, as a talisman of great occult potency, nature’s creative force. The whole of the Hermetic philosophy is based on nature’s hidden secrets, and as Baphomet was undeniably a Kabbalistic talisman, so was the name of Pan of great magic efficiency in what Eliphas Lévi would call the " Conjuration of the Elementals".

There is a well-known pious legend which has been current in the Christian world ever since the day of Tiberias, to the effect that the "great Pan is dead". But people are greatly mistaken in this; neither nature nor any of her Forces can ever die. A few of these may be left unused, and being forgotten lie dormant for long centuries. But no sooner are the proper conditions furnished than they awake, to act again with tenfold power.

(See also: Pan, Theosophy, Spirituality, Body mind and Soul, Spiritual Dictionary, )

Kabalist. From Q B L H, KABALA, an unwritten or oral tradition.

The kabalist is a student of "secret science", one who interprets the hidden meaning of the Scriptures with the help of the symbolical Kabala, and explains the real one by these means. The Tanaim were the first kabalists among the Jews; they appeared at Jerusalem about the beginning of the third century before the Christian era. The books of Ezekiel, Daniel, Henoch, and the Revelation of St. John, are purely kabalistical.

This secret doctrine is identical with that of Chaldeans, and includes at the same time much of the Persian wisdom, or "magic". History catches glimpses of famous kabalists ever since the eleventh century.

The Medieval ages, and even our own times, have had an enormous number of the most learned and intellectual men who were students of the Kabala (or Qabbalah, as some spell it).

The most famous among the former were Paracelsus, Henry Khunrath, Jacob Bohmen, Robert Fludd, the two Van Helmonts, the Abbot John Trithemius, Cornelius Agrippa, Cardinal Nicolao Cusani, Jerome Carden, Pope Sixtus IV., and such Christian scholars as Raymond Lully, Giovanni Pico de la Mirandola, Guillaume Postel, the great John Reuchlin, Dr. Henry More, Eugenius Philalethes (Thomas Vaughan), the erudite Jesuit Athanasius Kircher, Christian Knorr (Baron) von Rosenroth; then Sir Isaac Newton., Leibniz, Lord Bacon, Spinosa, etc., etc., the list being almost inexhaustible.

As remarked by Mr. Isaac Myer, in his Qabbalah, the ideas of the Kabalists have largely influenced European literature. "Upon the practical Qabbalah, the Abbé ,de Villars (nephew of de Montfaucon) in 1670, published his celebrated satirical novel, ‘The Count de Gabalis’, upon which Pope based his ‘Rape of the Lock’. Qabbalism ran through the Medieval poems, the ‘Romance of the Rose’, and permeates the writings of Dante." No two of them, however, agreed upon the origin of the Kabala, the Zohar, Sepher Yetzirah, etc. Some show it as coming from the Biblical Patriarchs, Abraham, and even Seth; others from Egypt, others again from Chaldea.

The system is certainly very old; but like all the rest of systems, whether religious or philosophical, the Kabala is derived directly from the primeval Secret Doctrine of the East; through the Vedas, the Upanishads, Orpheus and Thales, Pythagoras and the Egyptians. Whatever its source, its substratum is at any rate identical with that of all the other systems from the Book of the Dead down to the later Gnostics. The best exponents of the Kabala in the Theosophical Society were among the earliest, Dr. S. Pancoast, of Philadelphia, and Mr. G. Felt; and among the latest, Dr. W. Wynn Westcott, Mr. S. L. Mac Gregor Mathers (both of the Rosicrucian College) and a few others. (See " Qabbalah ".)

(See also: Kabalist, Theosophy, Spirituality, Body mind and Soul, Spiritual Dictionary, )

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L - Letter L, La and Laeti, Labarum, Labro, Labyrinth, Lachesis, Lactantius, Ladakh, Ladder, Ladder of Life, Lady of the Sycamore, Laena, Laghina, Lahash, Lahgash, Lajja, Lak, Lakh, Lakshana, lakshana, Lakshmi, Laksmi, Lalita Vistara, Lalitavistara, lam rin, lamah shabahtani, Lamech, Lamiae, Lamrin, Land of the Eternal Sun, Lang-Shu, Language, Lanka, Lanoo, Laomedon, Lao-Tse, Lao-tze, Lao-tzu, Lapis philosophorum, Lapis Philosophorum, Lararium, Lares, Larva, Last Judgment, Latona, Laukika, Laurentian Period, Lavana, Law of, Law of Irreversibility, Law of Retardation and Acceleration, Law of Retribution, Laws of Manava-dharma-sastra, Laws of Manu, Laya, Laya-center, Layam, Lay-chelas, Lebanah, Lebanon, Leda, Left-hand Path, Lehdaio, Leibniz, lemech, Lemminkainen, Lemnos, Lemures, Lemuria, Leo, Lethe, Leto, Leucippus, Levanah, Levi, LŽvi, Leviathan, Levitation, lezidi, Lha, Lhagpa, Lhakang, Lhakhang, Lhamayin, Lhasa, Lhassa, Lhy, Liber, Liberalia, Liberation, Libzu, Lif and Lifthrasir, Life of Brahma, Life-atom, Life-fluid, Life-thread, Life-wave, Life-winds, Light of the Logos, Light-bearer, Light-bringer, Lights, Lila, Lilalohita, Lilatu, Lilin, Lil-in, Lilith, Limbo, Limbs, Limbus, Limbus Major, Limbus Minor, Linga, Linga Purana, Linga Sharira, Lingam, Linga-Purana, Linga-sarira, Lingha, Lion, Lipi, Lipika, Lipikas, Liquor Amnii, Liquor Vitae, Lithoi, Lithos, Living Buddhas, Living Dead, liweyathan, Lobha, Lodge-Force, Lodge-Spirit, Lodur, Lodurr, Logi, Logia, Logic, Logograms, Logon, Lohans, Lohita, Lohitanga, Loka, Loka Chakshub, Loka Palas, loka-cakshus, Loka-chakshus, Lokaloka, Lokanatha, Lokapalas, Lokapala-sabha-varnana, Lokapati, Lokaratha, Loki, Lokothra, Lokottara, Lokottaradharma, Longinus, Lord of the, Lord of the Flies, Lord of the Lotus, Lord's Prayer, Lorelei, Loreley, Lost Soul, Lost Word, lotus, Lotus Sutra, Louis Claude de, Love Feasts, Lower Countenance, Lower Face, Lower Nature, Lower Principles, Lower Quaternary, Lower Self, Lubara, Lucianists, Lucifer, Luciferians, Lucina, Lucius, Lucius Apuleius, Lucretius, Lug, Lully, Luminous Arc, Luna, Lunar Chain, Lunar Gods, Lunar Pitris, Lunar Race, Lung, Lunisolar Year, Lupercalia, Lustrum, Lusus Naturae, Lycanthropy, Lycomidae, Lynceus, Lyre of Apollo,

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