Principalities The seventh order of angels in the celestial hierarchy of the pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite. This hierarchy is recognized in the New Testament: "I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, . . . shall be able to separate us from the love of God" (Rom 8:38-9).

Principality here translates the Greek arche (beginning, first principle, province ruled over, ruler, and rule in the abstract); the Latin version gives principatus (beginning, sovereignty). The allusion is to recognized names in the Gnostic hierarchical systems of aeons or emanations. "From Mind proceeded the word, Logos, from the word, Providence [Divine Light, rather], then from it Virtue and Wisdom in Principalities, Power, Angels, etc." (Basilidean teaching). All these various denizens of the sidereal world are copies of archaic prototypes.

In a passage relating to the ancient Syrian scheme of hierarchies, the lowest or sublunary world -- Earth -- is ruled by Angels; the sphere of Mercury by Archangels; that of Venus by Principalities; that of the Sun by solar gods termed Powers; that of Mars by Virtues; Jupiter, Dominions; Saturn, Thrones.

The ninefold hierarchy divided into three triads, as given by Dionysius the Areopagite, is but a Christianized copy of ancient occult teaching taken over from Neoplatonic and Neopythagorean thought so widely current in the countries around the Mediterranean around the beginning of the Christian era and for some centuries afterwards.

The ancient wisdom, from which all these various systems of thought originally sprang, likewise has its system of hierarchies which falls naturally into a similar range of nine, ten, or even twelve grades or divisions of cosmic power and substance. These different classes of celestial or angelic beings are the various grades of entities which infill and indeed make our solar system, and to which theosophy gives other titles than those used by Dionysius.

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

Ladder Used symbolically in many cultures, to represent a means of ascending or descending to different worlds or the structure of the universe.

"The Brahmanical Ladder symbolises the Seven Worlds or Sapta Loka; the Kabalistical Ladder, the seven lower Sephiroth; Jacob's Ladder is spoken of in the Bible; the Mithraic Ladder is also the 'Mysterious Ladder.' Then there are the Rosicrucian, the Scandinavian, the Borsippa Ladders, . . . and finally the Theological Ladder which, . . . consists of the four cardinal and three theological virtues" (TG 185).

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

A Yoga Dictionary from Asanas to Zerosis

Note that all words in grey (like the following examples; Yoga, Kundalini, Enlightenment) in the dictionary are links to archives with articles related to that word or expression.

From "Easy Steps to Yoga" by Sri Swami Sivananda.

Ladder. There are many "ladders" in the mystic philosophies and schemes, all of which were, and some still are, used in the respective mysteries of various nations.

The Brahmanical Ladder symbolises the Seven Worlds or Sapta Loka; the Kabalistical Ladder, the seven lower Sephiroth; Jacob’s Ladder is spoken of in the Bible; the Mithraic Ladder is also the "Mysterious Ladder". Then there are the Rosicrucian, the Scandinavian, the Borsippa Ladders, etc., etc., and finally the Theological Ladder which, according to Brother Kenneth Mackenzie, consists of the four cardinal and three theological virtues.

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

Arthakrtya

One of the Four All-Embracing Virtues: performance of conduct profitable to others in order to lead them toward the truth.

 (See also: Arthakrtya , Buddhism, Body Mind and Soul)

Asatru: Those who practice Asatru devote themselves to the Nordic, Germanic, and Icelandic Deities, and may do so to the exclusion of all other Deities by a voluntary covenant. The ethical system is based on the writings of Edred Thorsson, who identifies Nine Noble Virtues and the Sixfold Goal as an ethical system. The virtues are courage, honor, truth, fidelity, discipline, hospitality, industriousness, self-reliance, and perseverance. The goals are right, wisdom, might, harvest, peace (frith), and love.

(See also: Asatru , Magic, Shamanism, Paganism, Wicca)

Waltz

• To see the waltz danced, foretells that you will have pleasant relations with a cheerful and adventuresome person.
• For a young woman to waltz with her lover, denotes that she will be the object of much admiration, but none will seek her for a wife. If she sees her lover waltzing with a rival, she will overcome obstacles to her desires with strategy. If she waltzes with a woman, she will be loved for her virtues and winning ways. If she sees persons whirling in the waltz as if intoxicated, she will be engulfed so deeply in desire and pleasure that it will be a miracle if she resists the impassioned advances of her lover and male acquaintances.

Source: 10 000 Dream Interpretations, by Gustavus Hindman Miller

(See also: Dream Archives, Meaning of Dreams, Dream Interpretation, Dream Dictionary, Dream Dictionary - Waltz , Meaning of Dreams about Waltz , Dream Interpretation Waltz )

Dama:

Dama: control of the outer senses; one of the  six-fold virtues of the Niyama of Raja Yoga.

(See also: Dama , Hinduism, Hinduism Dictionary, Sanskrit Dictionary, Body Mind and Soul)

Samanarthata

Cooperation with and adaptation to others for the sake of leading them towards the truth. Samanarthata is one of the Four All-Embracing Virtues.

 (See also: Samanarthata , Buddhism, Body Mind and Soul)

Trividha-dvara (Sanskrit) [from trividha triple, threefold + dvara door, gate, entrance, opening]

The threefold gate, which is "body, mouth, and mind; or purity of body, purity of speech, purity of thought -- the three virtues requisite for becoming a Buddha" (TG 344).

(See also: Trividha-dvara , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Body mind and Soul)

Bach flower therapy (Bach flower essence method, Bach flower essence system):

 Homeopathic system of diagnosis and treatment developed in the 1930s by British physician Edward Bach (1886-1936). Bach put forth his philosophy in Heal Thyself: An Explanation of the Real Cause and Cure of Disease, first published in 1931. Therein he described five fundamental truths, in sum:

(1)           Souls, invincible and immortal sparks of the Almighty, are the real, Higher selves of humans.

(2)           Humanity's purpose is to develop virtues and wipe out all intrapersonal wrongs. Souls know what circumstances conduce to the perfection of human nature.

(3)           One's lifetime is a minuscule part of one's evolution.

(4)           When one's Soul and personality are in harmony, one is healthy and happy. The straying of the personality from the dictates of the Soul is the root cause of disease and unhappiness.

(5)           The Creator of all things is Love, and everything of which humans are conscious manifests the Creator.

Bach held that disease was essentially beneficial and that its design was to subject the personality to the Divine will of the Soul. He psychically discovered the specific healing effects of 38 wildflowers. The life force (soul quality or energy wavelength) of each of these flowers is transferable to water and thence to humans. Each of the so-called Bach flower remedies is a liquid that contains a soul quality with an affinity to a human soul quality; and each vegetable soul quality harmonizes its human counterpart with the Soul. The bases of classical diagnosis are conversation and intuition. Administration of the remedies is usually oral but may be external.

(See also: Bach flower therapy , Alternative Health, Body Mind and Soul)

Angelology A hierarchical system of angels, messengers, celestial powers or emanations, especially those of the Jews and Christians. The Jewish system is Qabbalistic; the Christian system, chiefly due to the Celestial Hierarchy and to the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy of Dionysius the pseudo-Aeropagite, was adopted from the 5th or 6th centuries and had an immense influence on later Christian theology. It was divided into a tenfold plan after the manner of Pythagoras and the Neoplatonists, the summit of this Christian hierarchy being the divine, termed God. The hierarchy includes: 1) Expanse of the Divine Presence; 2) Seraphim; 3) Cherubim; 4) Thrones; 5) Dominations or Dominions; 6) Virtues; 7) Powers; 8) Principalities; 9) Archangels; and 10) Angels.

The word may also mean a treatise on the subject, or a body of doctrine on it.

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

Angels of the Presence In Christianity, the seven Virtues or personified attributes of God, which were created by him and became the archangels. Equivalent to the seven manus produced by the ten prajapatis created by Brahma.

"As it is the Lipika who project into objectivity from the passive Universal Mind the ideal plan of the universe, upon which the 'Builders' reconstruct the Kosmos after every Pralaya, it is they who stand parallel to the Seven Angels of the Presence, whom the Christians recognise in the Seven 'Planetary Spirits' or the 'Spirits of the Stars;' for thus it is they who are the direct amanuenses of the Eternal Ideation" or of Plato's divine thought (SD 1:104) (SD 2:237, 573).

(See also: Angels of the Presence , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Hinduism Lexicon on A

From aadheenam to axis.

Read more here: » Hinduism: Hinduism Lexicon on A

Waltz

• To see the waltz danced, foretells that you will have pleasant relations with a cheerful and adventuresome person.
• For a young woman to waltz with her lover, denotes that she will be the object of much admiration, but none will seek her for a wife. If she sees her lover waltzing with a rival, she will overcome obstacles to her desires with strategy. If she waltzes with a woman, she will be loved for her virtues and winning ways. If she sees persons whirling in the waltz as if intoxicated, she will be engulfed so deeply in desire and pleasure that it will be a miracle if she resists the impassioned advances of her lover and male acquaintances.

Source: 10 000 Dream Interpretations, by Gustavus Hindman Miller

(See also: Dream Archives, Meaning of Dreams, Dream Interpretation, Dream Dictionary, Dream Dictionary - Waltz , Meaning of Dreams about Waltz , Dream Interpretation Waltz )

Magic. The great "Science". According to Deveria and other Orientalists, "magic was considered as a sacred science inseparable from religion" by the oldest and most civilized and learned nations.

The Egyptians, for instance, were one of the most sincerely religious nations, as were and still are the Hindus. "Magic consists of, and is acquired by the worship of the gods", said Plato. Could then a nation, which, owing to the irrefragable evidence of inscriptions and papyri, is proved to have firmly believed in magic for thousands of years, have been deceived for so long a time. And is it likely that generations upon generations of a learned and pious hierarchy, many among whom led lives of self-martyrdom, holiness and asceticism, would have gone on deceiving themselves and the people (or even only the latter) for the pleasure of perpetuating belief in " miracles" ?

Fanatics, we are told, will do anything to enforce belief in their god or idols. To this we reply: in such case, Brahmans and Egyptian Rekhget-amens (q.v.) or Hierophants would not have popularized belief in the power of man by magic practices to command the services of the gods: which gods, are in truth, but the occult powers or potencies of Nature, personified by the learned priests themselves, in which they reverenced only the attributes of the one unknown and nameless Principle. As Proclus the Platonist ably puts it: "Ancient priests, when they considered that there is a certain alliance and sympathy in natural things to each other, and of things manifest to occult powers, and discovered that all things subsist in all, fabricated a sacred science from this mutual sympathy and similarity......and applied for occult purposes, both celestial and terrene natures, by means of which, through a certain similitude, they deduced divine virtues into this inferior abode".

Magic is the science of communicating with and directing supernal, supramundane Potencies, as well as of commanding those of the lower spheres; a practical knowledge of the hidden mysteries of nature known to only the few, because they are so difficult to acquire, without falling into sins against nature. Ancient and medieval mystics divided magic into three classes - Theurgia, Goëtia and natural Magic. "Theurgia has long since been appropriated as the peculiar sphere of the theosophists and metaphysicians", says Kenneth Mackenzie.

Goëtia is black magic, and "natural (or white) magic has risen with healing in its wings to the proud position of an exact and progressive study". The comments added by our late learned Brother are remarkable. "The realistic desires of modern times have contributed to bring magic into disrepute and ridicule. . . . Faith (in one’s own self) is an essential element in magic, and existed long before other ideas which presume its pre-existence. It is said that it takes a wise man to make a fool; and a man’s ideas must be exalted almost to madness, i.e., his brain susceptibilities must be increased far beyond the low, miserable status of modern civilization, before he can become a true magician; (for) a pursuit of this science implies a certain amount of isolation and an abnegation of Self ".

A very great isolation, certainly, the achievement of which constitutes a wonderful phenomenon, a miracle in itself. Withal magic is not something supernatural. As explained by Jamblichus, "they through the sacerdotal theurgy announce that they are able to ascend to more elevated and universal Essences, and to those that are established above fate, viz., to god and the demiurgus: neither employing matter, nor assuming any other things besides, except the observation of a sensible time".

Already some are beginning to recognise the existence of subtle powers and influences in nature of which they have hitherto known nought. But as Dr. Carter Blake truly remarks, "the nineteenth century is not that which has observed the genesis of new, nor the completion of old, methods of thought"; to which Mr. Bonwick adds that "if the ancients knew but little of our mode of investigations into the secrets of nature, we know still less of their mode of research".

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

Azhi-Dahaka (Avestan) Zahak (Persian) (from azhi, azi serpent; cf Sanskrit ahi)

The destroying serpent or dragon; in the Avesta a three-headed dragon who strives to seize and put out the hvareno -- the sovereign light, the glory from above. He takes hold of it, but Atar, the fire god, son of Ahura Mazda, frightens him away and recovers the light. The scene of the fight is the sea, Vourukasha (the sea from which all the waters on the earth fall down with the winds and the clouds) or the waters of space (Yast 19).

Another myth, closely parallel with that in the Vedas, tells how Thraetaona Athwya slays the three-mounted, three-headed, six-eyed serpent, the most dreadful drugh created by Angra Mainyu. The scene of the battle is the four-cornered Varena, the four sided heavens (Yasna 9). Connecting the serpent with Satan or evil, Blavatsky writes: "War in heaven between Thraetaona and Azhidahaka, the destroying Serpent, ends on earth, according to Burnouf, in the battle of pious men against the power of Evil, 'of the Iranians with the Aryan Brahmins of India' " (SD 2:390).

In far later times both the Pahlavi commentaries on the Avesta and the great epic writer of Persia, Ferdowsi, personalized Azhi-Dahaka as a fiend called Zahak and Thraetaona as King Jamshid. Azhi-Dahak in a pact with the Devil sells his soul in return for worldly possessions and the estate of his father, Mardas, a man of many virtues. He consents to the death of his father, totally gives into self-indulgence in physical pleasures out of vanity, and falls prey to the enchantment of flattery. No sooner does Zahak permit the Devil to kiss his shoulders than two black snakes grow in place of his lip marks.

Since no cure can be found that will get rid of the vicious snakes, the Devil in the form of a physician prescribes that relief would only come from feeding the snakes with the fresh brains of young men. Azhak later finds and cuts Jamshid into two in the sea of China, and reigns with cruelty for a thousand years until Fereydoun (Thraetaona, the thrice potent) defeats him and chains him to Mount Damavand.

(See also: Azhi-Dahaka , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Selfishness Making the gratification of the personal self or ego the paramount aim in conduct; a disregard of the interests of others. While individualism is a necessary stage in evolution, yet humanity on the upward arc of evolution is on the road towards realization of the essential unity of all selves. Hence selfishness is our greatest obstacle in spiritual unfolding or development.

It is not its grosser manifestations that are most harmful, but the subtler forms in which it may wear the mask of the virtues. It is overcome by aspiration towards the source of our being, by recognizing the barrenness and futility of self-seeking and its destructive results, and by the cultivation of that primal instinct of altruism which is at the heart of every being.

What is here called selfishness corresponds in the minds of Buddhist philosophers and scholars to the ideas they disputed grouped about the word atman. They never intended to deny the fundamental meaning of atman or selfhood, and yet this misconception of ancient Buddhist teaching has brought about the false idea that Gautama Buddha and his followers taught that man has no essential self or selfhood. Because selfishness was popularly considered the permanent soulhood in man, the doctrine of anatma (in Pali, anatta) was strongly and continuously taught.

The deduction shows clearly that even in India at the time of the Buddha, selfhood in its popular sense of concentration on the lower self and its interests was as popular and widespread as today. It is a paradox that in selflessness is found the noblest and highest emanation of self-expression of the atman or spiritual self in man.

(See also: Selfishness , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary)

SEPTAGRAM: a 7 point star symbol used in ceremonial magick, representing 7 tenets of: Balance, Harmony, Humility, Learning, Reincarnation, Tolerance, Trust. (Don't know the correct order.) Once it represented 7 angels who became 7 planets (the ones then known), called the Mystic Star. Other 7's include Days of the Week, Deadly Sins, Mounts of the Hand, Pillars of Wisdom, Sacraments, Virtues, & Wonders of the World.

(See also: SEPTAGRAM , Witchcraft, Wicca, Paganism, Pagan Dictionary)

abhaya: (Sanskrit) Fearlessness, one of the cardinal virtues. "Fearlessness is the fruit of perfect Self Realization - that is, the recovery of nonduality" (Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 1.4.2). Also names the mudra (hand gesture) common in Hindu icons, betokening "fear not," in which the fingers of the right hand are raised and the palm faces forward. See: mudra, murti.

(See also: Abhaya , Hinduism, Body Mind and Soul)

grihastha dharma: (Sanskrit) "Householder law."

The virtues and ideals of family life. This dharma includes all nonmonastics, whether married, single or gay. In general, grihastha dharma begins with the completion of the period of studentship and extends throughout the period of raising a family (called the grihastha ashrama).

Specific scriptures, called Dharma Shastras and Grihya Shastras, outline the duties and obligations of family life.

In Hinduism, family life is one of serving, learning and striving within a close-knit community of many relatives forming a joint family and its broader connections as an extended family under the aegis of a spiritual guru. Each is expected to work harmoniously to further the wealth and happiness of the family and the society, to practice religious disciplines and raise children of strong moral fiber to carry on the tradition.

Life is called a jivayajna, "self-sacrifice," for each incarnation is understood as an opportunity for spiritual advancement through fulfilling one's dharma of birth, which is the pattern one chose before entering this world, a pattern considered by many as bestowed by God.

In the majority of cases, sons follow in the footsteps of their father, and daughters in those of their mother. All interrelate with love and kindness. Respect for all older than oneself is a keynote. Marriages are arranged and the culture is maintained.

The householder strives to fulfill the four purusharthas, "human goals" of righteousness, wealth, pleasure and liberation. While taking care of one's own family is most central, it is only part of this dharma's expectations.

Grihasthas must support the religion by building and maintaining temples, monasteries and other religious institutions, supporting the monastics and disseminating the teachings.

They must care for the elderly and feed the poor and homeless. Of course, the duties of husband and wife are different. The Tirukural describes the householder's central duties as serving these five: ancestors, God, guests, kindred and himself. The Dharma Shastras, similarly, enjoin daily sacrifice to rishis, ancestors, Gods, creatures and men.

See: ashrama dharma, extended family, joint family, yajna.

(See also: Grihastha dharma , Hinduism, Body Mind and Soul)