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THE   

THEOSOPHICAL GLOSSARY

BY

H. P. BLAVATSKY

AUTHOR OF "ISIS UNVEILED", “THE SECRET DOCTRINE",  " THE KEY TO THEOSOPHY" 

London:

THE THEOSOPHICAL PUBLISHING SOCIETY,

7, DUKE STREET, ADELPHI, W.C.

The Path Office: 132, NASSAU STREET, NEW YORK, U.S.A.

The Theosophist Office: ADYAR, MADRAS, INDIA.

1892

FROM A PHOTOGRAPHIC REPRODUCTION

OF THE ORIGINAL EDITION

THE THEOSOPHY COMPANY

LOS ANGELES CALIFORNIA

1930

A  B  C  D  E  F  G  H  I  J  K  L  M  N  O  P  Q  R  S  T  U  V  W  X Y  Z

 

PREFACE.

The Theosophical Glossary labours under the disadvantage of being an almost entirely posthumous work, of which the author only saw the first thirty-two pages in proof. This is all the more regrettable, for H.P.B., as was her wont, was adding considerably to her original copy, and would no doubt have increased the volume far beyond its present limits, and so have thrown light on many obscure terms that are not included in the present Glossary, and more important still, have furnished us with a sketch of the lives and teachings of the most famous Adepts of the East and West.

The Theosophical Glossary purposes to give information on the principal Sanskrit, Pahlavi, Tibetan, Pâli, Chaldean, Persian, Scandinavian, Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Kabalistic and Gnostic words, and Occult terms generally used in Theosophical literature, and principally to be found in Isis Unveiled, Esoteric Buddhism, The Secret Doctrine, The Key to Theosophy, etc.; and in the monthly magazines, The Theosophist, Lucifer and The Path, etc., and other publications of the Theosophical Society. The articles marked [w.w.w.] which explain words found in the Kabalah, or which illustrate Rosicrucian or Hermetic doctrines, were contributed at the special request of H.P.B. by Bro. W. W. Westcott, M.B., P.M. and P.Z., who is the Secretary General of the Rosicrucian Society, and Prćmonstrator of the Kabalah to the Hermetic Order of the G.D.

H.P.B. desired also to express her special indebtedness, as far as the tabulation of facts is concerned, to the Sanskrit-Chinese Dictionary of Eitel, The Hindu Classical Dictionary of Dowson, The Vishnu Purâna of Wilson, and the Royal Masonic Cyclopćdia of Kenneth Mackenzie.

As the undersigned can make no pretension to the elaborate and extraordinary scholarship requisite for the editing of the multifarious and polyglot contents of H.P.B.’s last contribution to Theosophical literature, there must necessarily be mistakes of transliteration, etc., which specialists in scholarship will at once detect. Meanwhile, however, as nearly every Orientalist has his own system, varying transliterations may be excused in the present work, and not be set down entirely to the “Karma” of the editor.

G. R. S. MEAD.

LONDON, January, 1892

                                                                                                                        

THEOSOPHICAL

GLOSSARY

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A —The first letter in all the world-alphabets save a few, such for instance as the Mongolian, the Japanese, the Tibetan, the Ethiopian, etc. It is a letter of great mystic power and “magic virtue” with those who have adopted it, and with whom its numerical value is one. It is the Aleph of the Hebrews, symbolized by the Ox or Bull; the Alpha of the Greeks, the one and the first the Az of the Slavonians, signifying the pronoun “I” (referring to the “I am that I am”). Even in Astrology, Taurus (the Ox or Bull or the Aleph) is the first of the Zodiacal signs, its colour being white and yellow. The sacred Aleph acquires a still more marked sanctity with the Christian Kabalists when they learn that this letter typifies the Trinity in Unity, as it is composed of two Yods, one upright, the other reversed with a slanting bar or nexus, thus— a. Kenneth R. H. Mackenzie states that “the St. Andrew cross is occultly connected therewith”. The divine name, the first in the series corresponding with Aleph, is AęHęIęH or Ahih when vowelless, and this is a Sanskrit root.

 

Aahla (Eg.). One of the divisions of the Kerneter or infernal regions, or Amenti ; the word means the “Field of Peace”.

 

Aanroo (Eg.). The second division of Amenti. The celestial field of Aanroo is encircled by an iron wall. The field is covered with wheat, and the “Defunct” are represented gleaning it, for the “Master of Eternity”; some stalks being three, others five, and the highest seven cubits high. Those who reached the last two numbers entered the state of bliss (which is called in Theosophy Devachan) ; the disembodied spirits whose harvest was but three cubits high went into lower regions (Kâmaloka). Wheat was with the Egyptians the symbol of the Law of retribution or Karma. The cubits had reference to the seven, five and three human “principles

 

Aaron (Heb.). The elder brother of Moses and the first Initiate of the
                                                                            

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Hebrew Lawgiver. The name means the Illuminated, or the Enlightened. Aaron thus heads the line, or Hierarchy, of the initiated Nabim, or Seers.

 

Ab (Heb.). The eleventh month of the Hebrew civil year; the fifth of the sacred year beginning in July.
[w.w.w.]

 

Abaddon (Heb.). An angel of Hell, corresponding to the Greek Apollyon.

 

Abatur (Gn.). In the Nazarene system the “Ancient of Days”, Antiquus Altus, the Father of the Demiurgus of the Universe, is called the Third Life or “Abatur”. He corresponds to the Third “Logos” in the Secret Doctrine. (See Codex Nazarćus)

 

Abba Amona (Heb.). Lit., “Father-Mother”; the occult names of the two higher Sephiroth, Chokmah and Binah, of the upper triad, the apex of which is Sephira or Kether. From this triad issues the lower septenary of the Sephirothal Tree.

 

Abhâmsi (Sk.). A mystic name of the “four orders of beings” which are, Gods, Demons, Pitris and Men. Orientalists somehow connect the name with “waters”, but esoteric philosophy connects its symbolism with Akâsa—the ethereal “waters of space”, since it is on the bosom and on the seven planes of “space” that the “four orders of (lower) beings” and the three higher Orders of Spiritual Beings are born. (See Secret Doctrine I. p. 458, and “Ambhâmsi”.)

 

Abhâsvaras (Sk.). The Devas or “Gods” of Light and Sound, the highest of the upper three celestial regions (planes) of the second Dhyâna (q.v.) A class of gods sixty-four in number, representing a certain cycle and an occult number.

 

Abhâva (Sk.). Negation, or non-being of individual objects; the noumenal substance, or abstract objectivity.

 

Abhaya (Sk.). “Fearlessness”—a son of Dharma; and also a religious life of duty. As an adjective, “Fearless,” Abhaya is an epithet given to every Buddha,

 

Abhayagiri (Sk.). Lit., “Mount Fearless” in Ceylon. It has an ancient Vihâra or Monastery in which the well-known Chinese traveller Fa-hien found 5,000 Buddhist priests and ascetics in the year 400 of our era, and a School called Abhayagiri Vâsinah,, “School of the Secret Forest”. This philosophical school was regarded as heretical, as the ascetics studied the doctrines of both the “greater” and the “smaller” vehicles— or the Mahâyâna and the Hinayâna systems and Triyâna or the three successive degrees of Yoga; just as a certain Brotherhood does now beyond the Himalayas. This proves that the “disciples of Kâtyâyana were and are as unsectarian as their humble admirers the Theosophists
 

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are now. (See “Sthâvirâh" School.) This was the most mystical of all the schools, and renowned for the number of Arhats it produced. The Brotherhood of Abhayagiri called themselves the disciples of Kâtyâyana, the favourite Chela of Gautama, the Buddha. Tradition says that owing to bigoted intolerance and persecution, they left Ceylon and passed beyond the Himalayas, where they have remained ever since.

 

Abhidharma (Sk.). The metaphysical (third) part of Tripitaka, a very philosophical Buddhist work by Kâtyâyana.

 

Abhijńâ (Sk.). Six phenomenal (or “supernatural”) gifts which Sâkyamuni Buddha acquired in the night on which he reached Buddhaship. This is the “fourth” degree of Dhyâna (the seventh in esoteric teachings) which has to be attained by every true Arhat. In China, the initiated Buddhist ascetics reckon six such powers, but in Ceylon they reckon only five. The first Abhijńâ is Divyachakchus, the instantaneous view of anything one wills to see; the second, is Divyasrotra, the power of comprehending any sound whatever, etc., etc.

 

Abhimânim (Sk.). The name of Agni (fire) the “eldest son of Brahmâ”, in other words, the first element or Force produced in the universe at its evolution (the fire of creative desire). By his wife Swâhâ, Abhimânim had three sons (the fires) Pâvaka, Pavamâna and Suchi, and these had “forty-five sons, who, with the original son of Brahmâ and his three descendants, constitute the forty-nine fires” of Occultism.

 

Abhimanyu (Sk.). A son of Arjuna. He killed Lakshmana,in the great battle of the Mahâbhârata on its second day, but was himself killed on the thirteenth.

 

Abhűtarajasas (Sk.). A class of gods or Devas, during the period of the fifth Manvantara.

 

Abib (Heb.)  The first Jewish sacred month, begins in March; is also called Nisan.

 

 

Abiegnus Mons (Lat.). A mystic name, from whence as from a certain mountain, Rosicrucian documents are often found to be issued— “Monte Abiegno”. There is a connection with Mount Meru, and other sacred hills. [w.w.w.]

 

Ab-i-hayat (Pers.). Water of immortality. Supposed to give eternal youth and sempiternal life to him who drinks of it.

 

Abiri (Gr.). See Kabiri, also written Kabeiri, the Mighty Ones, celestials, sons of Zedec the just one, a group of deities worshipped in Phśnicia: they seem to be identical with the Titans, Corybantes, Curetes, Telchines and Dii Magni of Virgil. [w.w.w.]

 

Ablanathanalba (Gn.). A term similar to “Abracadabra”. It is said by C. W. King to have meant “thou art a father to us”; it reads the same
 

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from either end and was used as a charm in Egypt.
(See “Abracadabra”.)

 

Abracadabra (Gn.). This symbolic word first occurs in a medical treatise in verse by Samonicus, who flourished in the reign of the Emperor Septimus Seveus. Godfrey Higgins says it is from Abra or Abar
“God”, in Celtic, and cad  ‘‘holy” ; it was used as a charm, and engraved on Kameas as an amulet. [w.w.w.]

Godfrey Higgins was nearly right, as the word “Abracadabra” is a later corruption of the sacred Gnostic term “Abrasax”, the latter itself being a still earlier corruption of a sacred and ancient Coptic or Egyptian word: a magic formula which meant in its symbolism ‘‘Hurt me not”, and addressed the deity in its hieroglyphics as “Father”. It was generally attached to an amulet or charm and worn as a Tat (q.v.), on the breast under the garments.

 

Abraxas or Abrasax (Gn.). Mystic words which have been traced as far back as Basilides, the Pythagorean, of Alexandria, AD. 90. He uses Abraxas as a title for Divinity, the supreme of Seven, and as having 365 virtues. In Greek numeration, a. 1, b. 2, r. 100, a. I, x 60, a. I, s. 200 = 365 days of the year, solar year, a cycle of divine action. C. W. King, author of The Gnostics, considers the word similar to the Hebrew Shemhamphorasch, a holy word, the extended name of God. An Abraxas Gem usually shows a man’s body with the head of a cock, one arm with a shield, the other with a whip.
[ w.w.w.]

Abraxas is the counterpart of the Hindu Abhimânim (q.v.) and Brahmâ combined. It is these compound and mystic qualities which caused Oliver, the great Masonic authority, to connect the name of Abraxas with that of Abraham. This was unwarrantable ; the virtues and attributes of Abraxas, which are 365 in number, ought to have shown him that the deity was connected with the Sun and solar division of the year——nay, that Abraxas is the antitype, and the Sun, the type.

 

Absoluteness. When predicated of the UNIVERSAL PRINCIPLE, it denotes an abstract noun, which is more correct and logical than to apply the adjective “absolute ” to that which has neither attributes nor limitations, nor can IT have any.

 

Ab-Soo (Chald.). The mystic name for Space, meaning the dwelling of Ab the “Father”, or the head of the source of the Waters of Knowledge. The lore of the latter is concealed in the invisible space or akasic regions.

 

Acacia (Gr.). Innocence; and also a plant used in Freemasonry as a symbol of initiation, immortality, and purity; the tree furnished the sacred Shittim wood of the Hebrews. [w.w.w.]

 

Achamôth (Gn.). The name of the second, the inferior Sophia.
 

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Esoterically and with the Gnostics, the elder Sophia was the Holy Spirit (female Holy Ghost) or the Sakti of the Unknown, and the Divine Spirit; while Sophia Achamôth is but the personification of the female aspect of the creative male Force in nature; also the Astral Light.

 

Achar (Heb.). The Gods over whom (according to the Jews) Jehovah is the God.

 

Âchâra (Sk.). Personal and social (religious) obligations.

 

Âchârya (Sk.). Spiritual teacher, Guru; as Sankar-âchârya, lit., a “teacher of ethics”. A name generally given to Initiates, etc., and meaning  “Master”.

 

Achath (Heb.). The one, the first, feminine; achad being masculine. A Talmudic word applied to Jehovah. It is worthy of note that the Sanskrit term ak means one, ekata being “unity”, Brahmâ being called ák, or eka, the one, the first, whence the Hebrew word and application.

 

Acher (Heb.). The Talmudic name of the Apostle Paul. The Talmud narrates the story of the four Tanaim, who entered the Garden of Delight, i.e., came to he initiated; Ben Asai, who looked and lost his sight; Ben Zoma, who looked and lost his reason; Acher, who made depredations in the garden and failed; and Rabbi Akiba, who alone succeeded. The Kabalists say that Acher is Paul.

 

Acheron (Gr.). One of the rivers of Hades in Greek mythology.

 

Achit (Sk.). Absolute non-intelligence; as Chit is—in contrast— absolute intelligence.

 

Achyuta (Sk.). That which is not subject to change or fall; the opposite to Chyuta, “fallen”. A title of Vishnu.

 

Acosmism (Gr.). The precreative period, when there was no Kosmos but Chaos alone.

 

Ad (Assyr.). Ad, “the Father”. In Aramean ad means one, and ad-ad “the only one”.

 

Adah (Assyr.). Borrowed by the Hebrews for the name of their Adah, father of Jubal, etc. But Adah meaning the first, the one, is universal property. There are reasons to think that Ak-ad, means the first-born or Son of Ad. Adon was the first “Lord” of Syria. (See Isis Unv. II., pp. 452, 453.)

 

Adam (Heb.). In the Kabalah Adam is the “only-begotten”, and means also “red earth”. (See “Adam-Adami” in the S.D. II p. 452.) It is almost identical with Athamas or Thomas, and is rendered into Greek by Didumos, the “twin”—Adam, “the first”, in chap. 1 of Genesis, being shown, “male-female.”

 

Adam Kadmon (Heb). Archetypal Man; Humanity. The
                                                                   

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“Heavenly Man” not fallen into sin; Kabalists refer it to the Ten Sephiroth on the plane of human perception. [w.w.w.]

In the Kabalah Adam Kadmon is the manifested Logos corresponding to our Third Logos; the Unmanifested being the first paradigmic ideal Man, and symbolizing the Universe in abscondito, or in its “privation” in the Aristotelean sense. The First Logos is the “Light of the World”, the Second and the Third—its gradually deepening shadows.

 

Adamic Earth (Alch.). Called the “true oil of gold” or the “primal element” in Alchemy. It is but one remove from the pure homogeneous element.

 

Adbhuta Brâhmana (Sk.). The Brâhmana of miracles; treats of marvels, auguries, and various phenomena.

 

Adbhuta Dharma (Sk.). The “law” of things never heard before. A class of Buddhist works on miraculous or phenomenal events.

 

Adept (Lat.). Adeptus, “He who has obtained.” In Occultism one who has reached the stage of Initiation, and become a Master in the science of Esoteric philosophy.

 

Adharma (Sk.). Unrighteousness, vice, the opposite of Dharma.

 

Adhi (Sk.). Supreme, paramount.

 

Adhi-bhautika duhkha (Sk.). The second of the three kinds of pain; lit., “Evil proceeding from external things or beings”.

 

Adhi-daivika duhkha (Sk.). The third of the three kinds of pain. “Evil proceeding from divine causes, or a just Karmic punishment”.

 

Adhishtânam (Sk.). Basis; a principle in which some other principle inheres.

 

Adhyâtmika duhkha (Sk.). The first of the three kinds of pain; lit., “Evil proceeding from Self ”, an induced or a generated evil by Self, or man himself.

 

Adhyâtma Vidyâ (Sk.). Lit., “the esoteric luminary”. One of the Pancha Vidyâ Sastras, or the Scriptures of the Five Sciences.

 

Âdi (Sk.) The First, the primeval.

 

Âdi (the Sons of). In Esoteric philosophy the “Sons of Adi” are called the “Sons of the Fire-mist”. A term used of certain adepts.

 

Âdi-bhűta (Sk.). The first Being; also primordial element. Adbhuta is a title of Vishnu, the “first Element” containing all elements, “the unfathomable deity”.

 

Âdi-Buddha (Sk.). The First and Supreme Buddha—not recognised in the Southern Church. The Eternal Light.

 

Âdi-budhi (Sk.). Primeval Intelligence or Wisdom; the eternal Budhi or Universal Mind. Used of Divine Ideation, “Mahâbuddhi” being synonymous with MAHAT. 

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Âdikrit (Sk.). Lit., the “first produced” or made. The creative Force eternal and uncreate, but manifesting periodically. Applied to Vishnu slumbering on the “waters of space” during “pralaya” (q.v.).

 

Âdi-nâtha (Sk.). The “first” Lord”—Âdi “first” (masc.), nâtha “Lord”.

 

Âdi-nidâna (Sk.). First and Supreme Causality, from Âdi, the first, and Nidâna the principal cause (or the concatenation of cause and effect).

 

Âdi-Sakti (Sk.). Primeval, divine Force; the female creative power, and aspect in and of every male god. The Sakti in the Hindu Pantheon is always the spouse of some god.

 

Âdi-Sanat (Sk.). Lit., “First Ancient”. The term corresponds to the Kabalistic “ancient of days”, since it is a title of Brahmâ—called in the Zohar the Atteekah d’Atteekeen, or “the Ancient of the Ancients”, etc.

 

Âditi (Sk.). The Vedic name for the Műlaprakriti of the Vedantists; the abstract aspect of Parabrahman, though both unmanifested and unknowable. In the Vedas Âditi is the “Mother-Goddess”, her terrestrial symbol being infinite and shoreless space.

 

Âditi-Gća.  A compound term, Sanskrit and Latin, meaning dual, nature in theosophical writings—spiritual and physical, as Gća is the goddess of the earth and of objective nature.

 

Âditya (Sk.). A name of the Sun; as Mârttânda he is the Son of Aditi.

 

Âdityas (Sk.). The seven sons of Âditi; the seven planetary gods.

 

Âdi Varsha (Sk.). The first land; the primordial country in which dwelt the first races.

 

Adonai (Heb.). The same as Adonis. Commonly translated “Lord”. Astronomically—the Sun. When a Hebrew in reading came to the name IHVH, which is called Jehovah, he paused and substituted the word “Adonai”, (Adni); but when written with the points of Alhim, he called it “Elohim”. [w.w.w.]

 

Adonim-Adonai, Adon. The ancient Chaldeo-Hebrew names for the Elohim or creative terrestrial forces, synthesized by Jehovah.

 

Adwaita (Sk.). A Vedânta sect. The non-dualistic (A-dwaita) school of Vedântic philosophy founded by Sankarâchârya, the greatest of the historical Brahmin sages. The two other schools are the Dwaita (dualistic) and the Visishtadwaita; all the three call themselves Vedântic.

 

Adwaitin (Sk.). A follower of the said school.

 

Adytum (Gr.). The Holy of Holies in the pagan temples. A name for the secret and sacred precincts or the inner chamber, into which no

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profane could enter; it corresponds to the sanctuary of the altars of Christian Churches.

 

Ćbe1-Zivo (Gn.). The Metatron or anointed spirit with the Nazarene Gnostics; the same as the angel Gabriel.

 

Ćolus (Gr.). The god who, according to Hesiod, binds and looses the winds; the king of storms and winds. A king of Ćolia, the inventor of sails and a great astronomer, and therefore deified by posterity.

 

Ćon or Ćons (Gr.). Periods of time; emanations proceeding from the divine essence, and celestial beings; genii and angels with the Gnostics.

 

Ćsir (Scand.). The same as Ases, the creative Forces personified. The gods who created the black dwarfs or the Elves of Darkness in Asgard. The divine Ćsir, the Ases are the Elves of Light. An allegory bringing together darkness which comes from light, and matter born of spirit.

 

Ćther (Gr.). With the ancients the divine luminiferous substance which pervades the whole universe, the “garment” of the Supreme Deity, Zeus, or Jupiter. With the moderns, Ether, for the meaning of which in physics and chemistry see Webster’s Dictionary or any other. In esotericism  Ćther is the third principle of the Kosmic Septenary; the Earth being the lowest, then the Astral light, Ether and Âkâsa (phonetically Âkâsha) the highest.

 

Ćthrobacy (Gr.). Lit., walking on, or being lifted into the air with no visible agent at work; “levitation”. It may be conscious or unconscious; in the one case it is magic, in the other either disease
or a power which requires a few words of elucidation. We know that the earth is a magnetic body; in fact, as some scientists have found, and as Paracelsus affirmed some 300 years ago, it is one vast magnet. It is charged with one form of electricity—let us call it positive—which it evolves continuously by spontaneous action, in its interior or centre of motion. Human bodies, in common with all other forms of matter, are charged with the opposite form of electricity, the negative. That is to say, organic or inorganic bodies, if left to themselves will constantly and involuntarily charge themselves with and evolve the form of electricity opposite to that of the earth itself. Now, what is weight? Simply the attraction of the earth. “Without the attraction of the earth you would have no weight”, says Professor Stewart; “and if you had an earth twice as heavy as this, you would have double the attraction”. How then, can we get rid of this attraction? According to the electrical law above stated, there is an attraction between our planet and the organisms upon it, which keeps them upon the surface of the globe. But the law of gravitation has been counteracted in many instances, by levitation of persons and inanimate objects. How

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account for this? The condition of our physical systems, say theurgic philosophers, is largely dependent upon the action of our will. If well- regulated, it can produce “miracles”; among others a change of this electrical polarity from negative to positive; the man’s relations with the earth-magnet would then become repellent, and “gravity”for him would have ceased to exist. It would then be as natural for him to rush into the air until the repellent force had exhausted itself, as, before, it had been for him to remain upon the ground. The altitude of his levitation would be measured by his ability, greater or less, to charge his body with positive electricity. This control over the physical forces once obtained, alteration of his levity or gravity would be as easy as breathing. (See Isis Unveiled, Vol. I., page xxiii.)

 

Afrits (Arab.). A name for native spirits regarded as devils by Mussulmen. Elementals much dreaded in Egypt.

 

Agapć (Gr.). Love Feasts; the early Christians kept such festivals in token of sympathy, love and mutual benevolence. It became necessary to abolish them as an institution, because of great abuse ; Paul in his First Epistle to the Corinthians complains of misconduct at the feasts of the Christians. [w.w.w.].

 

Agastya (Sk.). The name of a great Rishi, much revered in Southern India; the reputed author of hymns in the Rig Veda, and a great hero in the Râmâyana. In Tamil literature he is credited with having been the first instructor of the Dravidians in science, religion and philosophy. It is also the name of the star “Canopus”.

 

Agathodćmon (Gr.). The beneficent, good Spirit as contrasted with the bad one, Kakodćmon. The
“Brazen Serpent” of the Bible is the former; the flying serpents of fire are an aspect of Kakodćmon. The Ophites called Agathodćmon the Logos and Divine Wisdom, which in the Bacchanalian Mysteries was represented by a serpent erect on a pole.

 

Agathon (Gr.). Plato’s Supreme Deity. Lit., “The Good”, our ALAYA, or “Universal Soul”.

 

Aged (Kab.). One of the Kabbalistic names for Sephira, called also the Crown, or Kether.

 

Agla (Heb.). This Kabbalistic word is a talisman composed of the initals of the four words “Ateh Gibor Leolam Adonai”, meaning “Thou art mighty for ever 0 Lord”. MacGregor Mathers explains it thus “A, the first; A, the last; G, the trinity in unity; L, the completion of the great work”. [w.w.w.]

 

Agneyastra (Sk.). The fiery missiles or weapons used by the Gods in the exoteric Purânas and the Mahâbhârata the magic weapons said to have been wielded by the adept-race (the fourth), the Atlanteans. This

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“weapon of fire” was given by Bharadwâja to Agnivesa, the son of Agni, and by him to Drona, though the Vishnu Purâna contradicts this, saying that it was given by the sage Aurva to King Sagara, his chela. They are frequently mentioned in the Mahâbhârata and the Râmâyana.

 

Agni (Sk.). The God of Fire in the Veda; the oldest and the most revered of Gods in India. He is one of the three great deities: Agni, Vâyu and Sűrya, and also all the three, as he is the triple aspect of fire; in heaven as the Sun; in the atmosphere or air (Vâyu), as Lightning; on. earth, as ordinary Fire. Agni belonged to the earlier Vedic Triműrti before Vishnu was given a place of honour and before Brahmâ and Siva were invented.

 

Agni Bâhu (Sk.). An ascetic son of Manu Swâyambhuva, the “Self-born”.

 

Agni Bhuvah (Sk.). Lit., “born of fire”, the term is applied to the four races of Kshatriyas (the second or warrior caste) whose ancestors are said to have sprung from fire. Agni Bhuvah is the son of Agni, the God of Fire; Agni Bhuvah being the same as Kartti-keya, the God of War. (See Sec.Doct., Vol. II., p. 550.)

 

Agni Dhätu Samâdhi (Sk.). A kind of contemplation in Yoga practice, when Kundalini is raised to the extreme and the infinitude appears as one sheet of fire. An ecstatic condition.

 

Agni Hotri (Sk.). The priests who served the Fire-God in Aryan antiquity. The term Agni Hotri is one that denotes oblation.

 

Agni-ratha (Sk.). A “Fiery Vehicle” literally. A kind of flying machine. Spoken of in ancient works of magic in India and in the epic poems.

 

Agnishwattas (Sk.). A class of Pitris, the creators of the first ethereal race of men. Our solar ancestors as contrasted with the Barhishads, the “lunar” Pitris or ancestors, though otherwise explained in the Purânas.

 

Agnoia (Gr.). “Divested of reason”, lit., “irrationality”, when speaking of the animal Soul. According to Plutarch, Pythagoras and Plato divided the human soul into two parts (the higher and lower manas)—the rational or noëtic and the irrational, or agnoia, sometimes written “annoia”.

 

Agnostic (Gr.). A word claimed by Mr. Huxley to have been coined by him to indicate one who believes nothing which can not be demonstrated by the senses. The later schools of Agnosticism give more philosophical definitions of the term.

 

Agra-Sandhânî (Sk.). The “Assessors” or Recorders who read at the

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judgment of a disembodied Soul the record of its life in the heart of that “Soul”. The same almost as the Lipikas of the Secret Doctrine. (See Sec.Doct., Vol. I., p. 105.)

 

Agruerus ; A very ancient Phśnician god. The same as Saturn.

 

Aham (Sk.). “I”—the basis of Ahankâra, Self-hood.

 

Ahan (Sk.). “Day”;the Body of Brahmâ, in the Purânas.

 

Ahankâra (Sk.). The conception of “I”, Self-consciousness or Self- identity; the “I”, the egotistical and mâyâvic principle in man, due to our ignorance which separates our “I” from the Universal ONE-SELF Personality, Egoism.

 

Aheie (Heb.). Existence. He who exists; corresponds to Kether and Macroprosopus.

 

Ah-hi (Sensar), Ahi (Sk.), or Serpents. Dhyân Chohans. “Wise Serpents” or Dragons of Wisdom.

 

Ahi (Sk.). A serpent. A name of Vritra, the Vedic demon of drought.

 

Ahti (Scand.). The “Dragon” in the Eddas.

 

Ahu (Scand.). “One” and the First.

 

Ahum (Zend). The first three principles of septenary man in the Avesta ; the gross living man and his vital and astral principles.

 

Ahura (Zend.). The same as Asura, the holy, the Breath-like. Ahura Mazda, the Ormuzd of the Zoroastrians or Parsis, is the Lord who bestows light and intelligence, whose symbol is the Sun (See “Ahura Mazda”), and of whom Ahriman, a European form of “Angra Mainyu” (q.v.), is the dark aspect.

 

Ahura Mazda (Zend). The personified deity, the Principle of Universal Divine Light of the Parsis. From Ahura or Asura, breath, “spiritual, divine” in the oldest Rig Veda, degraded by the orthodox Brahmans into A -sura, “no gods”, just as the Mazdeans have degraded the Hindu Devas (Gods) into Dćva (Devils).

 

Aidoneus (Gr.). The God and King of the Nether World; Pluto or Dionysos Chthonios (subterranean).

 

Aij Talon. The supreme deity of the Yakoot, a tribe in Northern Siberia.

 

Ain-Aior (Chald.). The only “Self-existent” a mystic name for divine substance. [w.w.w.]

 

Ain (Heb.). The negatively existent; deity in repose, and absolutely passive. [w.w.w.]

 

Aindrî (Sk.). Wife of Indra.

 

Aindriya (Sk.). Or Indrânî, Indriya; Sakti. The female aspect or “wife” of Indra.

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Ain Soph (Heb.). The “Boundless” or Limitless; Deity emanating and extending. [w.w.w.]

Ain Soph is also written En Soph and Ain Suph, no one, not even Rabbis, being sure of their vowels. In the religious metaphysics of the old Hebrew philosophers, the ONE Principle was an abstraction, like Parabrahmam, though modern Kabbalists have succeeded now, by dint of mere sophistry and paradoxes, in making a “Supreme God” of it and nothing higher. But with the early Chaldean Kabbalists Ain Soph is “without form or being”, having “no likeness with anything else” (Franck, Die Kabbala, p. 126). That Ain Soph has never been considered as the “Creator” is proved by even such an orthodox Jew as Philo calling the “Creator” the Logos, who stands next the “Limitless One”, and the “Second God”. “The Second God is its (Ain Soph’s) wisdom”, says Philo (Quaest. et Solut.). Deity is NO-THING; it is nameless, and therefore called Ain Soph; the word Ain meaning NOTHING. (See Franck’s Kabbala, p. 153 ff.)

 

Ain Soph Aur (Heb.). The Boundless Light which concentrates into the First and highest Sephira or Kether, the Crown. [w. w. w.]

 

Airyamen Yaęgo (Zend). Or Airyana Vaęgo; the primeval land of bliss referred to in the Vendîdâd, where Ahura Mazda delivered his laws to Zoroaster (Spitama Zarathustra).

 

Airyana-ishejô (Zend). The name of a prayer to the “holy Airyamen”, the divine aspect of Ahriman before the latter became a dark opposing power, a Satan. For Ahriman is of the same essence with Ahura Mazda, just as Typhon-Seth is of the same essence with Osiris (q.v.).

 

Aish (Heb.). The word for “Man".

 

Aisvarikas (Sk.). A theistic school of Nepaul, which sets up Âdi Buddha as a supreme god ( Îsvara ), instead of seeing in the name that of a principle, an abstract philosophical symbol.

 

Aitareya (Sk.). The name of an Aranyaka (Brâhmana) and a Upanishad of the Rig Veda. Some of its portions are purely Vedântic.

 

Aith-ur (Chald.). Solar fire, divine Ćther.

 

Aja (Sk.). “Unborn”, uncreated; an epithet belonging to many of the primordial gods, but especially to the first Logos—a radiation of the Absolute on the plane of illusion.

 

Ajitas (Sk.). One of the Occult names of the twelve great gods incarnating in each Manvantara. The Occultists identify them with the Kumâras. They are called Jnâna (or Gnâna) Devas. Also, a form of Vishnu in the second Manvantara. Called also Jayas.

 

Ajnâna (Sk.) or Agyana (Bengali). Non-knowledge; absence of

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knowledge rather than “ignorance” as generally translated. An Ajnâni means a “profane”.

 

Akar (Eg.). The proper name of that division of the Ker-neter infernal regions, which may be called Hell. [w. w. w.].

 

Akâsa (Sk.). The subtle, supersensuous spiritual essence which pervades all space; the primordial substance erroneously identified with Ether. But it is to Ether what Spirit is to Matter, or Âtmâ to Kâma-rűpa.  It is, in fact, the Universal Space in which lies inherent the eternal Ideation of the Universe in its ever-changing aspects on the planes of matter and objectivity, and from which radiates the First Logos, or expressed thought. This is why it is stated in the Purânas that Âkâsa has but one attribute, namely sound, for sound is but the translated symbol of Logos—“Speech” in its mystic sense. In the same sacrifice (the Jyotishtoma Agnishtoma) it is called the “God Âkâsa”. In these sacrificial mysteries Âkâsa is the all-directing ‘and omnipotent Deva who plays the part of Sadasya, the superintendent over the magical effects of the religious performance, and it had its own appointed Hotri (priest) in days of old, who took its name. The Âkâsa is the indispensable agent of every Krityâ (magical performance) religious or profane. The expression “to stir up the Brahmâ”, means to stir up the power which lies latent at the bottom of every magical operation, Vedic sacrifices being in fact nothing if not ceremonial magic. This power is the Âkâsa—in another aspect, Kundalini—occult electricity, the alkahest of the alchemists in one sense, or the universal solvent, the same anima mundi on the higher plane as the astral light is on the lower. “At the moment of the sacrifice the priest becomes imbued with the spirit of Brahmâ, is, for the time being, Brahmâ himself”. (Isis Unveiled).

 

Akbar. The great Mogul Emperor of India, the famous patron of religions, arts, and sciences, the most liberal of all the Mussulman sovereigns. There has never been a more tolerant or enlightened ruler than the Emperor Akbar, either in India or in any other Mahometan country.

 

Akiba (Heb.). The only one of the four Tanaim (initiated prophets) who entering the Garden of Delight (of the occult sciences) succeeded in getting himself initiated while all the others failed. (See the Kabbalistic Rabbis).

 

Akshara (Sk.). Supreme Deity; lit., “indestructible”, ever perfect.

 

Akta (Sk.). Anointed: a title of Twashtri or Visvakarman, the highest “Creator” and Logos in the
Rig -Veda. He is called the “Father of the Gods” and “Father of the sacred Fire” (See note page 101, Vol. II., Sec.Doct.).

 

Akűpâra (Sk.). The Tortoise, the symbolical turtle on which the earth is said to rest.

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Al or El (Heb.). This deity-name is commonly translated “God’, meaning mighty, supreme. The plural is Elohim, also translated in the Bible by the word God, in the singular. [w.w.w.]

 

Al-ait (Phśn.). The God of Fire, an ancient and very mystic name in Koptic Occultism.

 

Alaparus (Chald.). The second divine king of Babylonia who reigned.. “three Sari”. The first king of the divine Dynasty was Alorus according to Berosus. He was “the appointed Shepherd of the people” and reigned ten Sari (or 36,000 years, a Saros being 3,600 years).

 

Alaya (Sk.). The Universal Soul (See Secret Doctrine Vol. I. pp. 47 et seq.). The name belongs to the Tibetan system of the contemplative Mahâyâna School. Identical with Âkâsa in its mystic sense, and with Mulâprâkriti, in its essence, as it is the basis or root of all things.

 

Alba Petra (Lat.). The white stone of Initiation. The “white cornelian” mentioned in St. John’s Revelation.

 

Al-Chazari (Arab.). A Prince-Philosopher and Occultist. (See Book Al-Chazari.)

 

Alchemists;  From Al and Chemi, fire, or the god and patriarch, Kham, also, the name of Egypt. The Rosicrucians of the middle ages, such as Robertus de Fluctibus (Robert Fludd), Paracelsus, Thomas Vaughan (Eugenius Philalethes), Van Helmont, and others, were all alchemists, who sought for the hidden spirit in every inorganic matter. Some people— nay, the great majority—have accused alchemists of charlatanry and false pretending. Surely such men as Roger Bacon, Agrippa, Henry Khunrath, and the Arabian Geber (the first to introduce into Europe some of the secrets of chemistry), can hardly he treated as impostors— least of all as fools. Scientists who are reforming the science of physics upon the basis of the atomic theory of Democritus, as restated by John Dalton, conveniently forget that Democritus, of Abdera, was an alchemist, and that the mind that was capable of penetrating so far into the secret operations of nature in one direction must have had good reasons to study and become a Hermetic philosopher. Olaus Borrichius says that the cradle of alchemy is to be sought in the most distant times. (Isis Unveiled).
 

Alchemy ; in Arabic Ul-Khemi, is, as the name suggests, the chemistry of nature. Ui-Khemi or
Al-Kimia, however, is only an Arabianized word, taken from the Greek
chemeia, (chemeia) from cumoz— “juice”, sap extracted from a plant. Says Dr. Wynn Westcott: “The earliest use of the actual
term ‘alchemy’  is found in the works of Julius Firmicus Maternus, who lived in the days of Constantine the Great. The  Imperial Library in
Paris contains the oldest-extant alchemic treatise known in Europe;
it was written by  Zosimus the Panopolite about 400 A.D.

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in the Greek language, the next oldest is by Ćneas Gazeus, 480  A.D.” It deals with the finer forces of nature and the various conditions in which they are found to operate. Seeking under the veil of language, more or less artificial, to convey to the uninitiated so much of the  mysterium magnum as is safe in the hands of a selfish world, the alchemist postulates as his first  principle the existence of a certain Universal Solvent by which all composite bodies are resolved into the  homogeneous substance from which they are evolved, which substance he calls pure gold, or summa  materia. This solvent, also called menstvuum universale, possesses the power of removing all the seeds of  disease from the human body, of renewing youth and prolonging life. Such is the lapis philosophorum  (philosopher’s stone). Alchemy first penetrated into Europe through Geber, the great Arabian sage and  philosopher, in the eighth century of our era; but it was known and practised long ages ago in China and  in Egypt, numerous papyri on alchemy and other proofs of its being the favourite study of kings and  priests having been exhumed and preserved under the generic name of Hermetic treatises. (See “Tabula Smaragdina”). Alchemy is studied under three distinct aspects, which admit of many different interpretations, viz.: the Cosmic, Human, and Terrestrial. These three methods were typified under the three alchemical properties—sulphur, mercury, and salt. Different writers have stated that there are three, seven, ten, and twelve processes respectively; but they are all agreed that there is but one object in alchemy, which is to transmute gross metals into pure gold. What that gold, however, really is, very few people understand correctly. No doubt that there is such a thing in nature as transmutation of the baser metals into the nobler, or gold. But this is only one aspect of alchemy, the terrestrial or purely material, for we sense logically the same process taking place in the bowels of the earth. Yet, besides and beyond this interpretation, there is in alchemy a symbolical meaning, purely psychic and spiritual. While the Kabbalist-Alchemist seeks for the realization of the former, the Occultist-Alchemist, spurning the gold of the mines, gives all his attention and directs his efforts only towards the transmutation of the baser quaternary into the divine upper trinity of man, which when finally blended are one. The spiritual, mental, psychic, and physical planes of human existence are in alchemy compared to the four elements, fire, air, water and earth, and are each capable of a threefold constitution, i.e., fixed, mutable and volatile. Little or nothing is known by the word concerning the origin of this archaic branch of philosophy; but it is certain that it antedates the construction of any known Zodiac, and, as dealing with the personified forces of nature, probably also any of the mythologies of the world; nor is there any doubt that the true secret of transmutation (on the physical plane) was known in  

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days of old, and lost before the dawn of the so-called historical period. Modern chemistry owes its best fundamental discoveries to alchemy, but regardless of the undeniable truism of the latter that there is but one element in the universe, chemistry has placed metals in the class of elements and is only now beginning to find out its gross mistake. Even sonic Encyclopćdists are now forced to confess that if most of the accounts of transmutations are fraud or delusion, “yet some of them are accompanied by testimony which renders them probable. . . By means of the galvanic battery even the alkalis have been discovered to have a metallic base. The possibility of obtaining metal from other substances which contain the ingredients composing it, and of changing one metal into another . . . must therefore be left undecided. Nor are all alchemists to be considered impostors. Many have laboured under the conviction of obtaining their object, with indefatigable patience and purity of heart, which is earnestly recommended by sound alchemists as the principal requisite for the success of their labours.”
(Pop. Encyclop.)

 

Alcyone (Gr.), or Halcyone, daughter of Ćolus, and wife of Ceyx, who was drowned as he was journeying to consult the oracle, upon which she threw herself into the sea. Accordingly both were changed, through the mercy of the gods, into king-fishers. The female is said to lay her eggs on the sea and keep it calm during the seven days before and seven days after the winter solstice. It has a very occult significance in ornithomancy.

 

Alectromancy (Gr.). Divination by means of a cock, or other bird; a circle was drawn and divided into spaces, each one allotted to a letter; corn was spread over these places and note was taken of the successive lettered divisions from which the bird took grains of corn. [w.w.w.]

 

Alethć (Phśn) “Fire worshippers” from Al-alt, the God of Fire. The same as the Kabiri or divine Titans. As the seven emanations of Agruerus (Saturn) they are connected with all the fire, solar and” storm gods (Maruts).

 

Aletheia (Gr.). Truth; also Alethia, one of Apollo’s nurses.

 

Alexadrian School (of Philosophers). This famous school arose in Alexandria (Egypt) which was for several centuries the great seat of learning and philosophy. Famous for its library, which bears the name of “Alexandrian”, founded by Ptolemy Soter, who died in 283 B.C., at the very beginning of his reign ; that library which once boasted of 700,000 rolls or volumes (Aulus Gellius); for its museum, the first real academy of sciences and arts ; for its world-famous scholars, such as Euclid (the father of scientific geometry), Apollonius of Perga (the author of the still extant work on conic sections), Nicomachus (the arithmetician); astronomers, natural philosophers, anatomists such as Herophilus and

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Erasistratus, physicians, musicians, artists, etc., etc. ; it became still more famous for its Eclectic, or the New Platonic school, founded in 193 A.D., by Ammonius Saccas, whose disciples were Origen, Plotinus, and many others now famous in history. The most celebrated schools of Gnostics had their origin in Alexandria. Philo Judćus Josephus, lamblichus, Porphyry, Clement of Alexandria, Eratosthenes the astronomer, Hypatia the virgin philosopher, and numberless other stars of second magnitude, all belonged at various times to these great schools, and helped to make Alexandria one of the most justly renowned seats of learning that the world has ever produced.

 

Alhim (Heb.). See “Elohim”.

 

Alkahest (Arab.). The universal solvent in Alchemy (see "Alchemy "); but in mysticism, the Higher Self, the union with which makes of matter (lead), gold, and restores all compound things such as the human body and its attributes to their primćval essence.

 

Almadel;  the Book. A treatise on Theurgia or White Magic by an unknown medićval European author; it is not infrequently found in volumes of MSS. called Keys of Solomon. [ w.w.w.]

 

Almeh (Arab.). Dancing girls; the same as the Indian nautchies, the temple and public dancers.

 

Alpha Polaris (Lat.). The same as Dhruva, the pole-star of 31,105 years ago.

 

Alswider (Scand.). ‘‘ All-swift’’, the name of the horse of the moon, in the Eddas.

 

Altruism (Lat.). From alter = other. A quality opposed to egoism. Actions tending to do good to others, regardless of self.

 

Aize, Liber;  de Lapide Philosophico. An alchemic treatise by an unknown German author; dated 1677. It is to be found reprinted in the Hermetic Museum; in it is the well known design of a man with legs extended and his body hidden by a seven pointed star. Eliphaz Lévi has copied it. [ w.w.w.]

 

Ama (Heb.)., Amia, (Chald.). Mother. A title of Sephira Binah, whose “divine name is Jehovah” and who is called “Supernal Mother”.

 

Amânasa (Sk.). The “ Mindless”, the early races of this planet; also certain Hindu gods.

 

Amara-Kosha (Sk.). The “immortal vocabulary”. The oldest dictionary known in the world and the most perfect vocabulary of classical Sanskrit ; by Amara Sinha, a sage of the second century.

 

Ambâ (Sk.). The name of the eldest of the seven Pleiades, the heavenly sisters married each to a Rishi belonging to the Saptariksha or the seven Rishis of the constellation known as the Great Bear.

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Ambhâmsi (Sk.). A name of the chief of the Kumâras Sanat-Sujâta, signifying the “waters”. This epithet will become more comprehensible when we remember that the later type of Sanat-Sujâta was Michael, the Archangel, who is called in the Talmud “the Prince of Waters”, and in the Roman Catholic Church is regarded as the patron of gulfs and promontories. Sanat-Sujâta is the immaculate son of the immaculate mother (Ambâ or Aditi, chaos and space) or the “waters” of limitless space.
(See Secret Doctrine-, Vol. I., p. 460.)

 

Amdo (Tib.). A sacred locality, the birthplace of Tson-kha-pa, the great Tibetan reformer and the founder of the Gelukpa (yellow caps), who is regarded as an Avatar of Amita-buddha.

 

Amęn. In Hebrew is formed of the letters A M N = 1,40,50 =91,and is thus a simile of “Jehovah Adonai”=10, 5, 6, 5 and 1,4, 50,10 =91 together; it is one form of the Hebrew word for “truth”. In common parlance Amen is said to mean “so be it”. [ w.w.w.]

But, in esoteric parlance Amen means “the concealed”. Manetho Sebennites says the word signifies that which is hidden and we know through Hecatćus and others that the Egyptians used the word to call upon their great God of Mystery, Ammon (or “Ammas, the hidden god ”) to make himself conspicuous and manifest to them. Bonomi, the famous hieroglyphist, calls his worshippers very pertinently the “Amenoph”, and Mr. Bonwick quotes a writer who says: “Ammon, the hidden god, will remain for ever hidden till anthropomorphically revealed; gods who are afar off are useless”. Amen is styled “Lord of the new-moon festival”. Jehovah-Adonai is a new form of the ram-headed god Amoun or Ammon (q.v.) who was invoked by the Egyptian priests under the name of Amen.

 

Amenti (Eg.). Esoterically and literally, the dwelling of the God Amen, or Amoun, or the “hidden”, secret god. Exoterically the kingdom of Osiris divided into fourteen parts, each of which was set aside for some purpose connected with the after state of the defunct. Among other things, in one of these was the Hall of Judgment. It was the “Land of the West”, the “Secret Dwelling”, the dark land, and the “doorless house”. But it was also Ker-noter, the “abode of the gods”, and the “land of ghosts” like the “ Hades” of the Greeks (q.v.). It was also the “Good Father’s House” (in which there are “many mansions”). The fourteen divisions comprised, among many others, Aanroo (q.v.), the hall of the Two Truths, the Land of Bliss, Neter-xev “the funeral (or burial) place” Otamer-xev, the “Silence-loving Fields”, and also many other mystical halls and dwellings, one like the Sheol of the Hebrews, another like the Devachan of the Occultists, etc., etc. Out of the fifteen gates of the abode of Osiris, there were two chief ones,

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the “gate of entrance” or Rustu, and the “gate of exit” (reincarnation) Amh. But there was no room in Amenti to represent the orthodox Christian Hell. The worst of all was the Hall of the eternal Sleep and Darkness. As Lepsius has it, the defunct “sleep (therein) in incorruptible forms, they wake not to see their brethren, they recognize no longer father and mother, their hearts feel nought toward their wife and children. This is the dwelling of the god All-Dead. . . . Each trembles to pray to him, for he hears not. Nobody can praise him, for he regards not those who adore him. Neither does he notice any offering brought to him.” This god is Karmic Decree; the land of Silence—the abode of those who die absolute disbelievers, those dead from accident before their allotted time, and finally the dead on the threshold of Avitchi, which is never in Amenti or any other subjective state, save in one case, but on this land of forced re-birth. These tarried not very long even in their state of heavy sleep, of oblivion and darkness, but, were carried more or less speedily toward Amh the “exit gate”.

 

Amesha Spentas (Zend). Amshaspends. The six angels or divine Forces personified as gods who attend upon Ahura Mazda, of which he is the synthesis and the seventh. They are one of the prototypes of the Roman Catholic “Seven Spirits” or Angels with Michael as chief, or the “Celestial Host”; the “ Seven Angels of the Presence”. They are the Builders, Cosmocratores, of the Gnostics and identical with the Seven Prajâpatis, the Sephiroth, etc. (q.v.).

 

Amitâbha. The Chinese perversion of the Sanskrit Amrita Buddha, or the “Immortal Enlightened”, a name of Gautama Buddha. The name has such variations as Amita, Abida, Amitâya, etc., and. is explained as meaning both “Boundless Age” and “Boundless Light”. The original conception of the ideal of an impersonal divine light has been anthrdpomorphized with time.

 

Ammon (Eg.). One of the great gods of Egypt. Ammon or Amoun is far older than Amoun-Ra, and is identified with Baal. Hammon, the Lord of Heaven. Amoun-Ra was Ra the Spiritual Sun, the “Sun of Righteousness”, etc., for—“the Lord God is a Sun”. He is the God of Mystery and the hieroglyphics of his name are often reversed. He is Pan, All-Nature esoterically, and therefore the universe, and the “Lord of Eternity”. Ra, as declared by an old inscription, was “begotten by Neith but not engendered”. He is called the “self- begotten” Ra,, and created goodness from a glance of his fiery eye, as Set-Typhon created evil from his. As Ammon (also Amoun and Amen), Ra, he is “Lord of the worlds enthroned on the Sun’s disk and appears in the abyss of heaven”. A very ancient hymn spells the name “Amen-ra”, and hails the “Lord of the thrones of the earth...Lord

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of Truth, father of the gods, maker of man, creator of the beasts, Lord of Existence, Enlightener of the Earth, sailing in heaven in tranquillity. . . All hearts are softened at beholding thee, sovereign of life, health and strength We worship thy spirit who alone made us”, etc., etc. (See Bonwick’s Egyptian Belief.) Ammon Ra is called “his mother’s husband” and her son. (See “Chnourmis” and “Chnouphis” and also Secret Doctrine I, pp. 91 and It was to the “ram-headed” god that the Jews sacrificed lambs, and the lamb of Christian theology is a disguised reminiscence of the ram.

 

Ammonius Saccas. A great and good philosopher who lived in Alexandria between the second and third centuries of our era, and who was the founder of the Neo-Platonic School of Philaletheians or “lovers of truth”. He was of poor birth and born of Christian parents, but endowed with such prominent, almost divine, goodness as to he called Theodidaktos, the “god-taught”. He honoured that which was good in Christianity, but broke with it and the churches very early, being unable to find in it any superiority over the older religions.

 

Amrita (Sk.). The ambrosial drink or food of the gods; the food giving immortality. The elixir of life churned out of the ocean of milk in the Purânic allegory. An old Vedic term applied to the sacred Soma juice in the Temple Mysteries.

 

Aműlam Műlam (Sk.). Lit., the “rootless root” ; Mulâprakriti of the Vedantins the spiritual “root of nature”.

 

Amun (Copt.). The Egyptian god of wisdom, who had only Initiates or Hierophants to serve him as priests.

 

Anâ (Chald.). The “invisible heaven”or Astral Light ; the heavenly mother of the terrestrial sea, Mar, whence probably the origin of Anna, the mother of Mary.

 

Anacalypsis (Gr.)., or an “Attempt to withdraw the veil of the Saitic Isis”, by Godfrey Higgins. This is a very valuable work, now only obtainable at extravagant prices; it treats of the origin of all myths, religions and mysteries, and displays an immense fund of classical erudition. [ w.w.w.]

 

Anâgâmin (Sk.). Anagam. One who is no longer to be reborn into the world of desire. One stage before becoming Arhat and ready for Nirvâna. The third of the four grades of holiness on the way to final Initiation.

 

Anâhata Chakram (Sk.). The seat or “wheel” of life; the heart, according to some commentators.

 

Anâhata Shabda (Sk.). The mystic voices and sounds heard by the Yogi at the incipient stage of his meditation, The third of the four states

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of sound, otherwise called Madhyamâ—the fourth state being when it is perceptible by the physical sense of hearing. The sound in its previous stages is not heard except by those who have developed their internal, highest spiritual senses. The four stages are called respectively, Parâ, Pashyantî, Madhyamâ and Vaikharî.

 

Anaitia (Chald.). A derivation from Anâ (q.v.), a goddess identical with the Hindu Annapurna, one of the names of Kâlî—the female aspect of Siva—at her best.

 

Analogeticists. The disciples of Ammonius Saccas (q.v.), so called because of their practice of interpreting all sacred legends, myths and mysteries by a principle of analogy and correspondence, which is now found in the Kabbalistic system, and pre-eminently so in the Schools of Esoteric Philosophy, in the East. (See “ The Twelve Signs of the Zodiac,” by T. Subba Row in Five Years of Theosophy.)

 

 

Ânanda (Sk.). Bliss, joy, felicity, happiness. A name of the favourite disciple of Gautama, the Lord Buddha.

 

Ânanda-Lahari (Sk.). “The wave of joy”; a beautiful poem written by Sankarâchârya, a hymn to Pârvati, very mystical and occult.

 

Ânandamaya-Kosha (Sk.). “The illusive Sheath of Bliss”, i.e., the mâyâvic or illusory form, the appearance of that which is formless. “Bliss”, or the higher soul. The Vedantic name for one of the five Koshas or “principles” in man; identical with our Âtmâ-Buddhi or the Spiritual Soul.

 

Ananga (Sk.). The “Bodiless”. An epithet of Kâma, god of love.

 

Ananta-Sesha (Sk.). The Serpent of Eternity—the couch of Vishnu during Pralaya
(lit., endless remain).

 

Anastasis (Gr.). The continued existence of the soul.

 

Anatu (Chald.). The female aspect of Anu (q.v.). She represents the Earth and Depth, while her consort represents the Heaven and Height. She is the mother of the god Hea, and produces heaven and earth. Astronomically she is Ishtar, Venus, the Ashtoreth of the Jews.

 

Anaxagoras (Gr.) A famous Ionian philosopher who lived 500 B.C., studied philosophy under Anaximenes of Miletus, and settled in the days of Pericles at Athens. Socrates, Euripides, Archelaus and other distinguished men and philosophers were among his disciples and pupils. He was a most learned astronomer and was one of the first to explain openly that which was taught by Pythagoras secretly, namely, the movements of the planets, the eclipses of the sun and moon, etc. It was he who taught the theory of Chaos, on the principle that “nothing comes from nothing”; and of atoms, as the underlying essence and substance of all bodies, “of the same nature as the bodies which they formed”.

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These atoms, he taught, were primarily put in motion by Nous (Universal Intelligence, the Mahat of the Hindus), which Nous is an immaterial, eternal, spiritual entity; by this combination the world was formed, the material gross bodies sinking down, and the ethereal atoms (or fiery ether) rising and spreading in the upper celestial regions. Antedating modern science by over 2000 years, he taught that the stars were of the same material as our earth, and the sun a glowing mass; that the moon was a dark, uninhabitable body, receiving its light from the sun; the comets, wandering stars or bodies ; and over and above the said science, he confessed himself thoroughly convinced that the real existence of things, perceived by our senses, could not be demonstrably proved. He died in exile at Lampsacus at the age of seventy-two.

 

Ancients, The. A name given by Occultists to the seven creative Rays, born of Chaos, or the “Deep”.

 

Anda-Katâha (Sk.). The outer covering, or the “shell” of Brahmâ’s egg; the area within which our manifested universe is encompassed.

 

Androgyne Goat (of Mendes). See “Baphomet”.

 

Androgyne Ray (Esot.). The first differentiated ray; the Second Logos; Adam Kadmon in the Kabalah; the “male and female created he them”, of the first chapter of Genesis.

 

Audumla (Scand.). The symbol of nature in the Norse mythology; the cow who licks the salt rock, whence the divine Buri is born, before man’s creation.

 

Angâraka (Sk.). Fire Star; the planet Mars; in Tibetan, Mig-mar.

 

Augiras. One of the Prajâpatis. A son of Daksha ; a lawyer, etc., etc.

 

Angirasas (Sk.). The generic name of several Purânic individuals and things; a class of Pitris, the ancestors of man ; a river in Plaksha, one of the Sapta dwîpas (q.v).

 

Angra Mainyus (Zend.). The Zoroastrian name for Ahriman; the evil spirit of destruction and opposition who (in the Vendidâd, Fargard I.) is said by Ahura Mazda to “counter-create by his witchcraft” every beautiful land the God creates; for “Angra Mainyu is all death”.

 

AnimaMundi (Lat.). The“Soul of the World”, the same as the Alaya of the Northern Buddhists; the divine essence which permeates, animates and informs all, from the smallest atom of matter to man and god. It is in a sense the “seven-skinned mother” of the stanzas in the Secret Doctrine, the essence of seven planes of sentience, consciousness and differentiation, moral and physical. In its highest aspect it is Nirvâna, in its lowest Astral Light. It was feminine with the Gnostics, the early Christians and the Nazarenes; bisexual with other sects, who considered it only in its four lower planes. Of igneous, ethereal nature in the

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objective world of form (and then ether), and divine and spiritual in its three higher planes. When it is said that every human soul was born by detaching itself from the Anima Mundi, it means, esoterically, that our higher Egos are of an essence identical with It, which is a radiation of the ever unknown Universal ABSOLUTE.

 

Anjala (Sk.). One of the personified powers which spring from Brahmâ’s body—the Prajâpatis.

 

Anjana (Sk.). A serpent, a son of Kasyapa Rishi.

 

Annamaya Kosha (Sk.). A Vedantic term. The same as Sthűla Sharîra or the physical body. It is the first “sheath” of the five sheaths accepted by the Vedantins, a sheath being the same as that which is called “principle” in Theosophy.

 

Annapura (Sk.). See “Anâ”.

 

Annedotus (Gr.). The generic name for the Dragons or Men-Fishes, of which there were five. The historian Berosus narrates that there rose out of the Erythrćan Sea on several occasions a semi-dćmon named Oannes or Annedotus, who although part animal yet taught the Chaldeans useful arts and everything that could humanise them. (See Lenormant Chaldean Magic, p. 203, and also “Oannes”.) [w.w.w.]

 

Anoia (Gr.). “Want of understanding”, “folly”. Anoia is the name given by Plato and others to the lower Manas when too closely allied with Kâma, which is irrational (agnoia). The Greek word agnoia is evidently a derivation from and cognate to the Sanskrit word ajnâna (phonetically, agnyana) or ignorance, irrationality, absence of knowledge. (See “Agnoia” and “Agnostic”.)

 

Anouki (Eg.). A form of Isis; the goddess of life, from which name the Hebrew Ank, life. (See “Anuki.”)

 

Ansumat (Sk.). A Purânic personage, the “nephew of 60,000 uncles” King Sagara’s sons, who were reduced to ashes by a single glance from Kapila Rishi’s “Eye”.

 

Antahkarana (Sk.)., or Antaskarana. The term has various meanings, which differ with every school of philosophy and sect. Thus Sankârachârya renders the word as “understanding”; others, as “the internal instrument, the Soul, formed by the thinking principle and egoism”; whereas the Occultists explain it as the path or bridge between the Higher and the Lower Manas, the divine Ego, and the personal Soul of man. It serves as a medium of communication between the two, and conveys from the Lower to the Higher Ego all those personal impressions and thoughts of men which can, by their nature, be assimilated and stored by the undying Entity, and be thus made immortal with it, these being the only elements of the evanescent Personality that survive death and time. It thus stands to reason that

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only that which is noble, spiritual and divine in man can testify in Eternity to his having lived.

 

Anthesteria (Gr.). The feast of Flowers (Floralia): during this festival the rite of Baptism or purification was performed in the Eleusinian Mysteries in the temple lakes, the Limnae, when the
Mystć were made to pass through the “narrow gate” of Dionysus, to emerge therefrom as full Initiates.

 

Anthropology. The Science of man; it embraces among other things :—Physiology, or that branch of natural science which discloses the mysteries of the organs and their functions in men, animals and plants; and also, and especially,—Psychology or the great, and in our days, too much neglected science of the soul, both as an entity distinct from the spirit, and in its relation to the spirit and body. In modern science, psychology deals only or principally with conditions of the nervous system, and almost absolutely ignores the psychical essence and nature. Physicians denominate the science of insanity psychology, and name the lunacy chair in medical colleges by that designation. (Isis Unveiled.)

 

Anthropomorphism (Gr.). From “anthropos” meaning man. The act of endowing god or gods with a human form and human attributes or qualities.

 

Anu (Sk.). An “atom”, a title of Brahmâ, who is said to be an atom just as is the infinite universe. A hint at the pantheistic nature of the god.

 

Anu (Chald.). One of the highest of Babylonian deities, “King of Angels and Spirits, Lord of the city of Erech”. He is the Ruler and God of Heaven and Earth. His symbol is a star and a kind of Maltese cross—emblems of divinity and sovereignty. He is an abstract divinity supposed to inform the whole expense of ethereal space or heaven, while his “wife” informs the more material planes. Both are the types of the Ouranos and Gaia of Hesiod. They sprang from the original Chaos. All his titles and attributes are grapfiic and indicate health, purity physical and moral, antiquity and holiness. Anu was the earliest god of the city of Erech. One of his sons was Bil orVil-Kan, the god of fire, of various metals, and of weapons. George Smith very pertinently sees in this deity a close connection with a kind of cross breed between “the biblical Tubal Cain and the classical Vulcan” . .who is considered to be moreover “the most potent deity in relation to witchcraft and spells generally”.

 

Anubis (Gr.) The dog -headed god, identical, in a certain aspect, with Horus. He is pre-eminently the god who deals with the disembodied, or the resurrected in post mortem life. Anepou is his Egyptian

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name. He is a psychopompic deity, “the Lord of the Silent Land of the West, the land of the Dead, the preparer of the way to the other world ”, to whom the dead were entrusted, to be led by him to Osiris, the Judge. In short, he is the “embalmer” and the “guardian of the dead”. One of the oldest deities in Egypt, Mariette Bey having found the image of this deity in tombs of the Third Dynasty.

 

Anugîtâ (Sk.). One of the Upanishads. A very occult treatise. (See The sacred Books of the East.)

 

Anugraha (Sk.). The eighth creation in the Vishnu Purâna.

 

Anuki (Eg.). “See Anouki” supra. “The word Ank in Hebrew, means ‘my life’, my being, which is the personal pronoun Anocki, from the name of the Egyptian goddess Anouki ”, says the author of the
Hebrew Mystery, or the Source of Measures.

 

Anumati (Sk.). The moon at the full; when from a god—Soma—she becomes a goddess.

 

Anumitis (Sk.). Inference, deduction in philosophy.

 

Anunnaki (Chald.). Angels or Spirits of the Earth; terrestrial Elementals also.

 

Anunit (Chald.) The goddess of Akkad ; Lucifer, the morning star. Venus as the evening star
was Ishtar of Erech.

 

Anupâdaka (Sk.). Anupapâdaka, also Aupapâduka; means parentless”, “self-existing”, born without any parents or progenitors. A term applied to certain self-created gods, and the Dhyâni Buddhas.

 

Anuttara (Sk.). Unrivalled, peerless. Thus Anuttara Bodhi means unexcelled or unrivalled intelligence”, Anuttara Dharma, unrivalled law or religion, &c.

 

Anyâmsam Aniyasâm (Sk.). A no-ranîyânsam (in Bhagavad gîtâ). Lit., “the most atomic of the atomic; smallest of the small ”. Applied to the universal deity, whose essence is everywhere.

 

Aour (Chald.). The synthesis of the two aspects of astro-etheric light; and the od—the life-giving, and the ob—the death-giving light.

 

Apâm Napât (Zend). A mysterious being, corresponding to the Fohat of the Occultists. It is both a Vedic and an Avestian name. Literally, the name means the “Son of the Waters” (of space, i.e., Ether),
for in the Avesta Apâm Napât stands between the fire-yazatas and the water-yazatas .
(See Secret Doctrine, Vol. II., p. 400, note).

 

Apâna (Sk.). “Inspirational breath”; a practice in Yoga. Prana and apâna are the “expirational” and the “inspirational” breaths. It is called “vital wind” in Anugîta.

 

Apap (Eg.), in Greek Apophis. The symbolical Serpent of Evil. The Solar Boat and the Sun are the great Slayers of Apap in the Book of the

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Dead. It is Typhon, who having killed Osiris, incarnates in Apap, seeking to kill Horus. Like Taoer (or
Ta-ap-oer
) the female aspect of Typhon, Apap is called “the devourer of the Souls”, and truly, since Apap symbolizes the animal body, as matter left soulless and to itself. Osiris, being, like all the other Solar gods, a type of the Higher Ego (Christos), Horus (his son) is the lower Manas or the personal Ego. On many a monument one can see Horus, helped by a number of dog-headed gods armed with crosses and spears, killing Apap. Says an Orientalist : “The God Horus standing as conqueror upon the Serpent of Evil, may be considered as the earliest form of our well-known group of St. George (who is Michael) and the Dragon, or holiness trampling down sin.” Draconianism did not die with the ancient religions, but has passed bodily into the latest Christian form of the worship.

 

Aparinâmin (Sk.). The Immutable and the Unchangeable, the reverse of Parinâmin, that which is subject to modification, differentiation or decay.

 

Aparoksha (Sk.) Direct perception.

 

Âpava (Sk.) Lit. “He who sports in the Water”. Another aspect of Nârâyana or Vishnu and of Brahmâ combined, for Âpava, like the latter, divides himself into two parts, male and female, and creates Vishnu, who creates Virâj, who creates Manu. The name is explained and interpreted in various ways in Brahmanical literature.

 

Apavarga (Sk.). Emancipation from repeated births.

 

Apis (Eg.), or Hapi-ankh. The “living deceased one” or Osiris incarnate in the sacred white Bull. Apis was the bull-god that, on reaching the age of twenty-eight, the age when Osiris was killed by Typhon—was put to death with great ceremony. It was not the Bull that was worshipped but the Osiridian symbol; just as Christians kneel now before the Lamb, the symbol of Jesus Christ, in their churches.

 

Apocrypha (Gr.). Very erroneously explained and adopted as doubtful, or spurious. The word means simply secret, esoteric, hidden.

 

Apollo Belvidere. Of all the ancient statues of Apollo, the son of Jupiter and Latona, called Phśbus, Helios, the radiant and the Sun, the best and most perfect is the one known by this name, which is in the Belvidere gallery of the Vatican at Rome. It is called the Pythian Apollo, as the god is represented in the moment of his victory over the serpent Python. The statue was found in the ruins of Antium, in 1503.

 

Apollonius of Tyana (Gr.). A wonderful philosopher born in Cappadocia about the beginning of the first century; an ardent Pythagorean, who studied the Phśnician sciences under Euthydemus; and Pythagorean philosophy and other studies under Euxenus of

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Heraclea. According to the tenets of this school he remained a vegetarian the whole of his long life, fed only on fruit and herbs, drank no wine, wore vestments made only of plant-fibres, walked barefooted, and let his hair grow to its full length, as all the Initiates before and after him. He was initiated by the priests of the temple of Ćsculapius (Asciepios) at Ćgae, and learnt many of the “miracles” for healing the sick wrought by the god of medicine. Having prepared himself for a higher initiation by a silence of five years, and by travel, visiting Antioch, Ephesus, Pamphylia and other parts, he journeyed via Babylon to India, all his intimate disciples having abandoned him, as they feared to go to the “land of enchantments”. A casual disciple, Damis, however, whom he met on his way, accompanied him in his travels. At Babylon he was initiated by the Chaldees and Magi, according to Damis, whose narrative was copied by one named Philostratus a hundred years later. After his return from India, he showed himself a true Initiate, in that the pestilences and earthquakes, deaths of kings and other events, which he prophesied duly happened. At Lesbos, the priests of Orpheus, being jealous of him, refused to initiate him into their peculiar mysteries, though they did so several years later. He preached to the people of Athens and other cities the purest and noblest ethics, and the phenomena he produced were as wonderful as they were numerous and well attested. “How is it”, enquires Justin Martyr in dismay—” how is it that the talismans (telesmata) of Apollonius have power, for they prevent, as we see, the fury of the waves and the violence of the winds, and the attacks of the wild beasts; and whilst our Lord’s miracles are preserved by tradition alone, those of Apollonius are most numerous and actually manifested in present facts?

 . (Quaest, XXIV.). But an answer is easily found to this in the fact that after crossing the Hindu Kush, Apollonius had been directed by a king to the abode of the Sages, whose abode it may be to this day, by whom he was taught unsurpassed knowledge. His dialogues with the Corinthian Menippus indeed give us the esoteric catechism and disclose (when understood) many an important mystery of nature. Apollonius was the friend, correspondent and guest of kings and queens, and no marvellous or “magic” powers are better attested than his. At the end of his long and wonderful life he opened an esoteric school at Ephesus, and died aged almost one hundred years.

 

Aporrheta (Gr.). Secret instructions upon esoteric subjects given during the Egyptian and Grecian Mysteries.

 

Apsaras (Sk.). An Undine or Water-Nymph, from the Paradise or Heaven of Indra. The Apsarases
are in popular belief the “wives of the gods” and called Surânganâs, and by a less honourable term, Sumad-âtmajâs or the “daughters of pleasure”, for it is fabled of them

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that when they appeared at the churning of the Ocean neither Gods (Suras) nor Demons (Asuras) would take them for legitimate wives. Urvasi and several others of them are mentioned in the Vedas. In Occultism they are certain “sleep-producing” aquatic plants, and inferior forces of nature.

 

Ar-Abu Nasr-al-Farabi, called in Latin Alpharabius, a Persian, and the greatest Aristotelian philosopher of the age. He was born in 950 A.D., and is reported to have been murdered in 1047. He was an Hermetic philosopher and possessed the power of hypnotizing through music, making those who heard him play the lute laugh, weep, dance and do what he liked. Some of his works on Hermetic philosophy may be found in the Library of Leyden.

 

Arahat (Sk.). Also pronounced and written Arhat, Arhan, Rahat, &c., “the worthy one”, lit., “deserving divine honours”. This was the name first given to the Jain and subsequently to the Buddhist holy men initiated into the esoteric mysteries. The Arhat is one who has entered the best and highest path, and is thus emancipated from rebirth.

 

Arani (Sk.). The “female Arani” is a name of the Vedic Aditi (esoterically, the womb of the world).
Arani is a Swastika, a disc-like wooden vehicle, in which the Brahmins generated fire by friction with pramantha, a stick, the symbol of the male generator. A mystic ceremony with a world of secret meaning in it and very sacred, perverted into phallic significance by the materialism of the age.

 

Âranyaka (Sk.). Holy hermits, sages who dwelt in ancient India in forests. Also a portion of the Vedas containing Upanishads, etc.

 

Araritha (Heb.). A very famous seven-lettered Kabbalistic wonder-word ; its numeration is 813 ; its letters are collected by Notaricon from the sentence “one principle of his unity, one beginning of his individuality, his change is unity”. [ w.w.w.].

 

Arasa Maram (Sk.). The Hindu sacred tree of knowledge. In occult philosophy a mystic word.

 

Arba-il (Chald.). The Four Great Gods. Arba is Aramaic for four, and il is the same as Al or El. Three male deities, and a female who is virginal yet reproductive, form a very common ideal of Godhead. [w.w.w.]

 

Archangel (Gr.). Highest supreme angel. From the Greek arch, “chief” or “primordial”, and angelos,
“messenger ”.

 

Archćus (Gr.). “The Ancient.” Used of the oldest manifested deity; a term employed in the Kabalah ;
“archaic ”, old, ancient.

 

Archobiosis (Gr.). Primeval beginning of life.

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Archetypal Universe (Kab.). The ideal universe upon which the objective world was built. [w.w.w.]

 

Archons (Gr.). In profane and biblical language “rulers” and princes; in Occultism, primordial planetary spirits.

 

Archontes (Gr.). The archangels after becoming Ferouers (q.v.) or their own shadows, having mission on earth; a mystic ubiquity; implying a double life; a kind of hypostatic action, one of purity in a higher region, the other of terrestrial activity exercised on our plane.
(See Iamblichus, De Mysterüs II., Chap. 3.)

 

Ardath (Heb.). This word occurs in the Second Book of Esdras, ix., 26. The name has been given to one of the recent “occult novels” where much interest is excited by the visit of the hero to a field in the Holy Land so named; magical properties are attributed to it. In the Book of Esdras the prophet is sent to this field called Ardath “where no house is builded” and bidden “eat there only the flowers of the field, taste no flesh, drink no wine, and pray unto the highest continually, and then will I come and talk with thee”. [w.w.w.]

 

Ardha-Nârî (Sk.). Lit., “half-woman”. Siva represented as Androgynous, as half male and half female, a type of male and female energies combined. (See occult diagram in Isis Unveiled, Vol. II.)

 

Ardhanârîswara (Sk.). Lit., “the bi-sexual lord”. Esoterically, the unpolarized states of cosmic energy symbolised by the Kabalistic Sephira, Adam Kadmon, &c.

 

Ares. The Greek name for Mars, god of war; also a term used by Paracelsus, the differentiated Force in Cosmos.

 

Argha (Chald.). The ark, the womb of Nature; the crescent moon, and a life-saving ship ; also a cup for offerings, a vessel used for religious ceremonies.

 

Arghyanâth (Sk.). Lit., “lord of libations”.

 

Arian. A follower of Arius, a presbyter of the Church in Alexandria in the fourth century. One who holds that Christ is a created and human being, inferior to God the Father, though a grand and noble man, a true adept versed in all the divine mysteries.

 

Aristobulus (Gr) An Alexandrian writer, and an obscure philosopher. A Jew who tried to prove that Aristotle explained the esoteric thoughts of Moses.

 

Arithmomancy (Gr.). The science of correspondences between gods, men, and numbers, as taught by Pythagoras. [w.w.w.]

 

Arjuna (Sk.) Lit., the “white”. The third of the five Brothers Pandu or the reputed Sons of Indra (esoterically the same as Orpheus). A disciple of Krishna, who visited him and married Su-bhadrâ, his

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sister, besides many other wives, according to the allegory. During the fratricidal war between the Kauravas and the Pândavas, Krishna instructed him in the highest philosophy, while serving as his charioteer. (See Bhaguvad Gîtâ.)

 

Ark of Isis. At the great Egyptian annual ceremony, which took place in the month of Athyr, the boat of Isis was borne in procession by the priests, and Collyrian cakes or buns, marked with the sign of the cross (Tat), were eaten. This was in commemoration of the weeping of Isis for the loss of Osiris, the Athyr festival being very impressive. “Plato refers to the melodies on the occasion as being very ancient,” writes Mr. Bonwick (Eg. Belief and Mod. Thought). “ The Miserere in Rome has been said to be similar to its melancholy cadence, and to be derived from it Weeping, veiled virgins followed the ark. The Nornes, or veiled virgins, wept also for the loss of our Saxon forefathers’ god, the ill-fated but good Baldur.”

 

Ark of the Covenant. Every ark-shrine, whether with the Egyptians, Hindus, Chaldeans or Mexicans, was a phallic shrine, the symbol of the yoni or womb of nature. The seket of the Egyptians, the ark, or sacred chest, stood on the ara—its pedestal. The ark of Osiris, with the sacred relics of the god, was “of the same size as the Jewish ark”, says S. Sharpe, the Egyptologist, carried by priests with staves passed through its rings in sacred procession, as the ark round which danced David, the King of Israel. Mexican gods also had their arks. Diana, Ceres, and other goddesses as well as gods had theirs. The ark was a boat—a vehicle in every case. “Thebes had a sacred ark 300 cubits long,” and “the word Thebes is said to mean ark in Hebrew,” which is but a natural recognition of the place to which the chosen people are indebted for their ark. Moreover, as Bauer writes, “the Cherub was not first used by Moses.” The winged Isis was the cherub or Arieh in Egypt, centuries before the arrival there of even Abram or Sarai. “The external likeness of some of the Egyptian arks, surmounted by their two winged human figures, to the ark of the covenant, has often been noticed.” (Bible Educator.) And not only the “external” but the internal “likeness” and sameness are now known to all. The arks, whether of the covenant, or of honest, straightforward, Pagan symbolism, had originally and now have one and the same meaning. The chosen people appropriated the idea and forgot to acknowledge its source. It is the same as in the case of the “Urim” and “Thummin” (q.v.). In Egypt, as shown by many Egyptologists, the two objects were the emblems of the Two Truths. “Two figures of Re and Thmei were worn on the breast-plate of the Egyptian High Priest. Thmé, plural thmin, meant truth in Hebrew. Wilkinson says the figure of

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Truth had closed eyes. Rosellini speaks of the Thmei being worn as a necklace. Diodorus gives such a necklace of gold and stones to the High Priest when delivering judgment. The Septuagint translates Thummin as Truth”. (Bonwick’s Egyp. Belief.)

 

Arka (Sk.). The Sun.

 

Arkites. The ancient priests who were attached to the Ark, whether of Isis, or the Hindu Argua, and who were seven in number, like the priests of the Egyptian Tat or any other cruciform symbol of the three and the four, the combination of which gives a male-female number. The Avgha (or ark) was the four-fold female principle, and the flame burning over it the triple lingham.

 

Aroueris (Gr.). The god Harsiesi, who was the elder Horus. He had a temple at Ambos. if we bear in mind the definition of the chief Egyptian gods by Plutarch, these myths will become more comprehensible; as he well says: “Osiris represents the beginning and principle; Isis, that which receives; and Horus, the compound of both. Horus engendered between them, is not eternal nor incorruptible, but, being always in generation, he endeavours by vicissitudes of imitations, and by periodical passion (yearly re-awakening to life) to continue always young, as if he should never die.” Thus, since Horus is the personified physical world, Aroueris, or the “elder Horus”, is the ideal Universe; and this accounts for the saying that “he was begotten by Osiris and Isis when these were still in the bosom of their mother”—Space. There is indeed, a good deal of mystery about this god, but the meaning of the symbol becomes clear once one has the key to it.

 

Artephius.—A great Hermetic philosopher, whose true name was never known and whose works are without dates, though it is known that he wrote his Secret Book in the XIIth century. Legend has it that he was one thousand years old at that time. There is a book on dreams by him in the possession of an Alchemist, now in Bagdad, in which he gives out the secret of seeing the past, the present, and the future, in sleep, and of remembering the things seen. There are but two copies of this manuscript extant. The book on Dreams by the Jew Solomon Almulus, published in Hebrew at Amsterdam in 1642, has a few reminiscences from the former work of Artephius.

 

Artes (Eg.). The Earth; the Egyptian god Mars.

 

Artufas. A generic name in South America and the islands for temples of nagalism or serpent worship.

 

Arundhatî (Sk.). The “Morning Star”; Lucifer-Venus.

 

Arűpa (Sk.). “Bodiless”, formless, as opposed to rűpa, “body”, or form.

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Arvâksrotas (Sk.). The seventh creation, that of man, in the Vishnu Purâna.

 

Arwaker (Scand.). Lit., “early waker”. The horse of the chariot of the Sun driven by the maiden Sol, in the Eddas.

 

Ârya (Sk.) Lit., “the holy”; originally the title of Rishis, those who had mastered the “Âryasatyâni” (q.v.) and entered the Âryanimârga path to Nirvâna or Moksha, the great “four-fold” path. But now the name has become the epithet of a race, and our Orientalists, depriving the Hindu Brahmans of their birth-right, have made Aryans of all Europeans. In esotericism, as the four paths, or stages, can be entered only owing to great spiritual development and “growth in holiness ”, they are called the “four fruits”. The degrees of Arhatship, called respectively Srotâpatti, Sakridâgamin, Anâgâmin, and Arhat, or the four classes of Âryas, correspond to these four paths and truths.

 

Ârya-Bhata (Sk.) The earliest Hindu algerbraist and astronomer, with the exception of Asura Maya (q.v.); the author of a work called Ârya Siddhânta, a system of Astronomy.

 

Ârya-Dâsa (Sk.) Lit., “Holy Teacher”. A great sage and Arhat of the Mahâsamghika school.

 

Aryahata (Sk.) The “Path of Arhatship”, or of holiness.

 

Âryasangha (Sk.) The Founder of the first Yogâchârya School. This Arhat, a direct disciple of Gautama, the Buddha, is most unaccountably mixed up and confounded with a personage of the same name, who is said to have lived in Ayôdhya (Oude) about the fifth or sixth century of our era, and taught Tântrika worship in addition to the Yogâchârya system. Those who sought to make it popular, claimed that he was the same Âryasangha, that had been a follower of Sâkyamuni, and that he was 1,000 years old. Internal evidence alone is sufficient to show that the works written by him and translated about the year 600 of our era, works full of Tantra worship, ritualism, and tenets followed now considerably by the “red-cap” sects in Sikhim, Bhutan, and Little Tibet, cannot be the same as the lofty system of the early Yogâcharya school of pure Buddhism, which is neither northern nor southern, but absolutely esoteric. Though none of the genunine Yogâchârya books (the Narjol chodpa) have ever been made public or marketable, yet one finds in the Yogâchârya Bhűmi Shâstra of the pseudo-Âryasangha a great deal from the older system, into the tenets of which he may have been initiated. It is, however, so mixed up with Sivaism and Tantrika magic and superstitions, that the work defeats its own end, notwithstanding its remarkable dialectical subtilty. How unreliable are the conclusions at which our Orientalists arrive, and how contradictory the dates assigned by them, may be seen in the case in hand. While Csoma de Körös (who, by-the-bye, never

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became acquainted with the Gelukpa (yellow-caps), but got all his information from “red-cap” lamas of the Borderland), places the pseudo-Âryasangha in the seventh century of our era; Wassiljew, who passed most of his life in China, proves him to have lived much earlier; and Wilson (see Roy. As. Soc., Vol. VI., p. 240), speaking of the period when Âryasangha’s works, which are still extant in Sanskrit, were written, believes it now “established, that they have been written at the latest, from a century and a half before, to as much after, the era of Christianity”. At all events since it is beyond dispute that the Mahâyana religious works were all written far before Âryasangha’s time—whether he lived in the “second century B.C.”, or the “seventh .A.D.”—and that these contain all and far more of the fundamental tenets of the Yogâchârya system, so disfigured by the Ayôdhyan imitator—the inference is that there must exist somewhere a genuine rendering free from popular Sivaism and left-hand magic.

 

Aryasatyâni (Sk.). The four truths or the four dogmas, which are (1) Dukha, or that misery and pain are the unavoidable concomitants of sentient (esoterically, physical) existence; (2) Samudaya, the truism that suffering is intensified by human passions; (3) Nirôdha, that the crushing out and extinction of all such feelings are possible for a man “on the path”; (4) Mârga, the narrow way, or that path which leads to such a blessed result.

 

Aryavarta (Sk.). The “land of the Aryas”, or India. The ancient name for Northern India. The Brahmanical invaders (“ from the Oxus” say the Orientalists) first settled. It is erroneous to give this name to the whole,of India, since Manu gives the name of “the land of the Aryas” only to “the tract between the Himalaya and the Vindhya ranges, from the eastern to the western sea”.

 

Asakrit Samâdhi (Sk.). A certain degree of ecstatic contemplation. A stage in Samâdhi.

 

Âsana (Sk.). The third stage of Hatha Yoga, one of the prescribed postures of meditation.

 

Asat (Sk.). A philosophical term meaning “non-being”, or rather non-be-ness. The “incomprehensible nothingness”. Sat, the immutable, eternal, ever-present, and the one real “Be-ness” (not Being) is spoken of as being “ Born of Asat, and Asat begotten by Sat”. The unreal, or Prakriti, objective nature regarded as an illusion. Nature, or the illusive shadow of its one true essence.

 

Asathor (Scand.). The same as Thor. The god of storms and thunder, a hero who receives Miölnir, the “storm-hammer”, from its fabricators, the dwarfs. With it he conquer Alwin in a “battle of

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words” breaks the head of the giant Hrungir, chastises Loki for his magic; destroys the whole race of giants in Thrymheim; and, as a good and benevolent god, sets up therewith land-marks, sanctifies marriage bonds, blesses law and order, and produces every good and terrific feat with its help. A god in the Eddas, who is almost as great as Odin. (See “Miölnir” and “Thor’s Hammer”.)

 

Asava Samkhaya (Pali). The “finality of the stream”, one of the six “Abhijnâs” (q.v.). A phenomenal knowledge of the finality of the stream of life and the series of re-births.

 

Asburj. One of the legendary peaks in the Teneriffe range. A great mountain in the traditions of Iran which corresponds in its allegorical meaning to the World-mountain, Meru. Asburj is that mount “at the foot of which the sun sets”.

 

Asch Metzareph (Heb.). The Cleansing Fire, a Kabbalistic treatise, treating of Alchemy and the relation between the metals and the planets. [w.w.w]

 

Ases (Scand.). The creators of the Dwarfs and Elves, the Elementals below men, in the Norse lays. They are the progeny of Odin; the same as the Ćsir.

 

Asgard (Scand.). The kingdom and the habitat of the Norse gods, the Scandinavian Olympus ; situated “higher than the Home of the Light-Elves”, but on the same plane as Jotunheim, the home of the Jotuns, the wicked giants versed in magic, with whom the gods are at eternal war. It is evident that the gods of Asgard are the same as the Indian Suras (gods) and the Jotuns as the Asuras, both representing the conflicting powers of nature—beneficent and maleficent. They are the prototypes also of the Greek gods and the Titans.

 

Ash (Heb.). Fire, whether physical or symbolical fire; also found written in English as As, Aish and Esch.

 

Ashen and Langhan (Kolarian). Certain ceremonies for casting out evil spirits, akin to those of exorcism with the Christians, in use with the Kolarian tribes in India.

 

Asherah (Heb.). A word, which occurs in the Old Testament, and is commonly translated “groves” referring to idolatrous worship, but it is probable that it really referred to ceremonies of sexual depravity; it is a feminine noun. [w.w.w.]

 

Ashmog (Zend). The Dragon or Serpent, a monster with a camel’s neck in the Avesta; a kind of allegorical Satan, who after the Fall, “lost its nature and its name”. Called in the old Hebrew (Kabbalistic) texts the “flying camel”; evidently a reminiscence or tradition in both cases of the prehistoric or antediluvian monsters, half bird, half reptile,

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Ashtadisa (Sk.). The eight-faced space. An imaginary division of space represented as an octagon and at other times as a dodecahedron.

 

Ashta Siddhis (Sk.). The eight consummations in the practice of Hatha Yoga.

 

Ashtar Vidyâ (Sk.). The most ancient of the Hindu works on Magic. Though there is a claim that the entire work is in the hands of some Occultists, yet the Orientalists deem it lost. A very few fragments of it are now extant, and even these are very much disfigured.

 

Ash Yggdrasil (Scand.). The “Mundane Tree”, the Symbol of the World with the old Norsemen, the “tree of the universe, of time and of life”. It is ever green, for the Norns of Fate sprinkle It daily with the water of life from the fountain of Urd, which flows in Midgard. The dragon Nidhogg gnaws its roots incessantly, the dragon of Evil and Sin; but the Ash Yggdrasil cannot wither, until the Last Battle (the Seventh Race in the Seventh Round) is fought, when life, time, and the world will all vanish and disappear.

 

Asiras (Sk.). Elementals without heads; lit., “headless” ; used also of the first two human races.

 

Asita (Sk.). A proper name; a son of Bharata; a Rishi and a Sage.

 

Ask (Scand.) or Ash tree. The “tree of Knowledge”. Together with the Embla (alder) the Ask was the tree from which the gods of Asgard created the first man.

 

Aski-kataski-haix-tetrax-damnameneus-aision. These mystic words, which Athanasius Kircher tells us meant “ Darkness, Light, Earth, Sun, and Truth”, were, says Hesychius, engraved upon the zone or belt of the Diana of Ephesus. Plutarch says that the priests used to recite these words over persons who were possessed by devils. [w.w.w.]

 

Asmodeus. The Persian Aęshma-dev, the Esham-dev of the Parsis, “the evil Spirit of Concupiscence”, according to Bréal, whom the Jews appropriated under the name of Ashmedai, “the Destroyer ”, the Talmud identifying the creature with Beelzebub and Azrael (Angel of Death), and calling him the “ King of the Devils ”.

 

Asmoneans. Priest-kings of Israel whose dynasty reigned over the Jews for 126 years. They promulgated the Canon of the Mosaic Testament in contradistinction to the “Apocrypha” (q.v.) or Secret Books of the Alexandrian Jews, the Kabbalists, and maintained the dead-letter meaning of the former. Till the time of John Hyrcanus, they were Ascedeans (Chasidim) and Pharisees; but later they became Sadducees or Zadokites, asserters of Sacerdotal rule as contradistinguished from Rabbinical.

 

Asoka (Sk.). A celebrated Indian king of the Môrya dynasty which

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reigned at Magadha. There were two Asokas in reality, according to the chronicles of Northern Buddhism, though the first Asoka—the grand father of the second, named by Prof. Max Muller the “Constantine of India”, was better known by his name of Chandragupta. It is the former who was called, Piadasi (Pali) “the beautiful”, and Devânam-piya “the beloved of the gods”, and also Kâlâsoka; while the name of his grandson was Dharmâsôká—the Asoka of the good law-—on account of his devotion to Buddhism. Moreover, according to the same source, the second Asoka had never followed the Brahmanical faith, but was a Buddhist born. It was his grandsire who had been first converted to the new faith, after which he had a number of edicts inscribed on pillars and rocks, a custom followed also by his grandson. But it was the second Asoka who was the most zealous supporter of Buddhism; he, who maintained in his palace from 60 to 70,000 monks and priests, who erected 84,000 totes and stupas throughout India, reigned 36 years, and sent missions to Ceylon, and throughout the world. The inscriptions of various edicts published by him display most noble ethical sentiments, especially the edict at Allahahad, on the so-called “Asoka’s column ”, in the Fort. The sentiments are lofty and poetical, breathing tenderness for animals as well as men, and a lofty view of a king’s mission with regard to his people, that might be followed with great success in the present age of cruel wars and barbarous vivisection.

 

Asomatous (Gr.). Lit., without a material body, incorporeal; used of celestial Beings and Angels.

 

Asrama (Sk.). A sacred building, a monastery or hermitage for ascetic purposes. Every sect in India has its Ashrams.

 

Assassins. A masonic and mystic order founded by Hassan Sabah in Persia, in the eleventh century. The word is a European perversion of “Hassan”, which forms the chief part of the name. They were simply Sufis and addicted, according to the tradition, to hascheesl-eating, in order to bring about celestial visions. As shown by our late brother, Kenneth Mackenzie, “they were teachers of the secret doctrines of Islamism; they encouraged mathematics and philosophy, and produced many valuable works. The chief of the Order was called Sheik-el-Jebel, translated the ‘Old Man of the Mountains’, and, as their Grand Master, he possessed power of life and death.’

 

Assorus (Chald.). The third group of progeny (Kissan and Assorus) from the Babylonian Duad, Tauthe and Apason, according to the Theogonies of Damascius. From this last emanated three others, of which series the last, Aus, begat Belus—“the fabricator of the World, the Demiurgus”.

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Assur (Chald.). A city in Assyria ; the ancient seat of a library from which George Smith excavated the earliest known tablets, to which he assigns a date about 1500 B.C., called Assur Kileh Shergat.

 

Assurbanipal (Chald.). The Sardanapalus of the Greeks, “the greatest of the Assyrian Sovereigns, far more memorable on account of his magnificent patronage of learning than of the greatness of his empire”, writes the late G. Smith, and adds: “Assurbanipal added more to the Assyrian royal library than all the kings who had gone before him”. As the distinguished Assyriologist tells us in another place of his “Babylonian and Assyrian Literature” (Chald. Account of Genesis) that “the majority of the texts preserved belong to the earlier period previous to B.C. 1600”, and yet asserts that “it is to tablets written in his (Assurbanipal’s) reign (B.C. 673) that we owe almost all our knowledge of the Babylonian early history”, one is well justified in asking, “How do you know?”

 

Assyrian Holy Scriptures. Orientalists show seven such books: the Books of Mamit, of Worship, of Interpretations, of Going to Hades; two Prayer Books (Kanmagarri and Kanmikri: Talbot)
and the Kantolite, the lost Assyrian Psalter.

 

Assyrian Tree of Life.Asherah” (q.v.). It is translated in the Bible by “grove ” and occurs 30 times. It is called an “idol”; and Maachah, the grandmother of Asa, King of Jerusalem, is accused of having made for herself such an idol, which was a lingham. For centuries this was a religious rite in Judća. But the original Asherah was a pillar with seven branches on each side surmounted by a globular flower with three projecting rays, and no phallic stone, as the Jews made of it, but a metaphysical symbol. “Merciful One, who dead to life raises! was the prayer uttered before the Asherah, on the banks of the Euphrates. The “Merciful One”, was neither the personal god of the Jews who brought the “grove” from their captivity, nor any extra- cosmic god, but the higher triad in man symbolized by the globular flower with its three rays.

 

Asta-dasha (Sk.). Perfect, Supreme Wisdom; a title of Deity.

 

Aster’t (Heb.). Astarte, the Syrian goddess the consort of Adon, or Adonai.

 

Astrća (Gr.). The ancient goddess of justice, whom the wickedness of men drove away from earth to heaven, wherein she now dwells as the constellation Virgo.

 

Astral Body, or Astral “Double”. The ethereal counterpart or shadow of man or animal. The Linga Sharira, the “Doppelgäinger”. The reader must not confuse it with the ASTRAL SOUL, another name for the lower Manas, or Kama-Manas so-called, the reflection of the HIGHER EGO.

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Astral Light (Occult) The invisible region that surrounds our globe, as it does every other, and corresponding as the second Principle of Kosmos (the third being Life, of which it is the vehicle) to the Linga Sharira or the Astral Double in man. A subtle Essence visible only to a clairvoyant eye, and the lowest but one (viz., the earth), of the Seven Akâsic or Kosmic Principles. Eliphas Levi calls it the great Serpent and the Dragon from which radiates on Humanity every evil influence. This is so; but why not add that the Astral Light gives out nothing but what it has received; that it is the great terrestrial crucible, in which the vile emanations of the earth (moral and physical) upon which the Astral Light is fed, are all converted into their subtlest essence, and radiated back intensified, thus becoming epidemics— moral, psychic and physical. Finally, the Astral Light is the same as the Sidereal Light of Paracelsus and other Hermetic philosophers. “Physically, it is the ether of modern science. Metaphysically, and in its spiritual, or occult sense, ether is a great deal more than is often imagined. In occult physics, and alchemy, it is well demonstrated to enclose within its shoreless waves not only Mr. Tyndall’s ‘promise and potency of every quality of life’, but also the realization of the potency of every quality of spirit. Alchemists and Hermetists believe that their astral, or sidereal ether, besides the above properties of sulphur, and white and red magnesia, or magnes, is the anima mundi, the workshop of Nature and of all the Kosmos, spiritually, as well as physically. The ‘grand magisterium’ asserts itself in the phenomenon of mesmerism, in the ‘levitation’ of human and inert objects; and may be called the ether from its spiritual aspect. The designation astral is ancient, and was used by some of the Neo-platonists, although it is claimed by some that the word was coined by the Martinists. Porphyry describes the celestial body which is always joined with the soul as ‘immortal, luminous, and star-like’. The root of this word may be found, perhaps, in the Scythic Aist-aer—which means star, or the Assyrian Istar, which, according to Burnouf has the same sense.” (Isis Unveiled.)

 

 Astrolatry (Gr.). Worship of the Stars.

 

Astrology (Gr.) The Science which defines the action of celestial bodies upon mundane affairs, and claims to foretell future events from the position of the stars. Its antiquity is such as to place it among the very earliest records of human learning. It remained for long ages a secret science in the East, and its final expression remains so to this day, its exoteric application having been brought to any degree of perfection in the West only during the period of time since Varaha Muhira wrote his book on Astrology some 1400 years ago. Claudius Ptolemy, the famous geographer and mathematician, wrote his treatise Tetrabiblos

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about 135 A.D., which is still the basis of modern astrology. The science of Horoscopy is studied now chiefly under four heads: viz., (1) Mundane, in its application to meteorology, seismology, husbandry, etc. (2) State or civic, in regard to the fate of nations, kings and rulers. (3) Horary, in reference to the solving of doubts arising in the mind upon any subject. (4) Genethliacal, in its application to the fate of individuals from the moment of their birth to their death. The Egyptians and the Chaldees were among the most ancient votaries of Astrology, though their modes of reading the stars and the modern practices differ considerably. The former claimed that Belus, the Bel or Elu of the Chaldees, a scion of the divine Dynasty, or the Dynasty of the king-gods, had belonged to the land of Chemi, and had left it, to found a colony from Egypt on the banks of the Euphrates, where a temple ministered by priests in the service of the “lords of the stars” was built, the said priests adopting the name of Chaldees. Two things are known: (a) that Thebes (in Egypt) claimed the honour of the invention of Astrology; and (b) that it was the Chaldees who taught that science to the other nations. Now Thebes antedated considerably not only “Ur of the Chaldees”, but also Nipur, where Bel was first worshipped—Sin, his son (the moon), being the presiding deity of Ur, the land of the nativity of Terah, the Sabean and Astrolatrer, and of Abram, his son, the great Astrologer of biblical tradition. All tends, therefore, to corroborate the Egyptian claim. If later on the name of Astrologer fell into disrepute in Rome and elsewhere, it was owing to the fraud of those who wanted to make money by means of that which was part and parcel of the sacred Science of the Mysteries, and, ignorant of the latter, evolved a system based entirely upon mathematics, instead of on transcendental metaphysics and having the physical celestial bodies as its upadhi or material basis. Yet, all persecutions notwithstanding, the number of the adherents of Astrology among the most intellectual and scientific minds was always very great. If Cardan and Kepler were among its ardent supporters, then its later votaries have nothing to blush for, even in its now imperfect and distorted form. As said in Isis Unveiled (1. 259): “Astrology is to exact astronomy what psychology is to exact physiology. In astrology and psychology one has to step beyond the visible world of matter, and enter into the domain of transcendent spirit.” (See “ Astronomos.”)

 

Astronomos (Gr.). The title given to the Initiate in the Seventh Degree of the reception of the Mysteries. In days of old, Astronomy was synonymous with Astrology; and the great Astrological Initiation took place in Egypt at Thebes, where the priests perfected, if they did not wholly invent the science. Having passed through the degrees

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of Pastophoros, Neocoros, Melanophoros, Kistophoros, and Balahala (the degree of Chemistry of the Stars), the neophyte was taught the mystic signs of the Zodiac, in a circle dance representing the course of the planets (the dance of Krishna and the Gopis, celebrated to this day in Rajputana); after which he received a cross, the Tau (or Tat), becoming an Astronomos and a Healer. (See Isis Unveiled. Vol. II. 365). Astronomy and Chemistry were inseparable in these studies. “Hippocrates had so lively a faith in the influence of the stars on animated beings, and on their diseases, that he expressly recommends not to trust to physicians who are ignorant of astronomy.’ (Arago.) Unfortunately the key to the final door of Astrology or Astronomy is lost by the modern Astrologer; and without it, how can he ever be able to answer the pertinent remark made by the author of Mazzaroth, who writes: “people are said to be born under one sign, while in reality they are born under another, because the sun is now seen among different stars at the equinox ”? Nevertheless, even the few truths he does know brought to his science such eminent and scientific believers as Sir Isaac Newton, Bishops Jeremy and Hall, Archbishop Usher, Dryden, Flamstead, Ashmole, John Milton, Steele, and a host of noted Rosicrucians.

 

Asura Mazda (Sk.). In the Zend, Ahura Mazda. The same as Ormuzd or Mazdeô; the god of Zoroaster and the Parsis.

 

Asuramaya (Sk.) Known also as Mayâsura. An Atlantean astronomer, considered as a great magician and sorcerer, well-known in Sanskrit works.

 

Asuras (Sk.). Exoterically, elementals and evil, gods—considered maleficent; demons, and no gods. But esoterically—the reverse. For in the most ancient portions of the Rig Veda, the term is used for the Supreme Spirit, and therefore the Asuras are spiritual and divine It is only in the last book of the
Rig Veda, its latest part, and in the Atharva Veda, and the Brâhmanas, that the epithet, which had been given to Agni, the greatest Vedic Deity, to Indra and Varuna, has come to signify the reverse of gods. Asu means breath, and it is with his breath that Prajâpati (Brahmâ) creates the Asuras. When ritualism and dogma got the better of the Wisdom religion, the initial letter a was adopted as a negative prefix, and the term ended by signifying “not a god”, and Sura only a deity. But in the Vedas the Suras have ever been connected with Surya, the sun, and regarded as inferior deities, devas.

 

Aswamedha (Sk.) The Horse-sacrifice; an ancient Brahmanical ceremony.

 

Aswattha (Sk.) The Bo-tree, the tree of knowledge, ficus religiosa.

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Aswins (Sk.), or Aswinau, dual ; or again, Aswinî-Kumârau, are the most mysterious and occult deities of all; who have “puzzled the oldest commentators”. Literally, they are the “Horsemen”, the “divine charioteers”, as they ride in a golden car drawn by horses or birds or animals, and “are possessed of many forms”. They are two Vedic deities, the twin sons of the sun and the sky, which becomes the nymph Aswini. In mythological symbolism they are “the bright harbingers of Ushas, the dawn”, who are “ever young and handsome, bright, agile, swift as falcons”, who “prepare the way for the brilliant dawn to those who have patiently awaited through the night”. They are also called time “physicians of Swarga” (or Devachan), inasmuch as they heal every pain and suffering, and cure all diseases. Astronomically, they are asterisms. They were enthusiastically worshipped, as their epithets show. They are the “Ocean-born” (i.e., space born) or Abdhijau, “crowned with lotuses” or Pushhara-srajam, etc., etc. Yâska, the commentator in the Nirukta, thinks that “the Aswins represent the transition from darkness to light ”—cosmically, and we may add, metaphysically, also. But Muir and Goldstücker are inclined to see in them ancient “horsemen of great renown”, because, forsooth, of the legend “that the gods refused the Aswins admittance to a sacrifice on the ground that they had been on too familiar terms with men”. Just so, because as explained by the same Yâska “they are identified with heaven and earth”, only for quite a different reason. Truly they are like the Ribhus, “originally renowned mortals (but also non-renowned occasionally) who in the course of time are translated into the companionship of gods”; and they show a negative character, “the result of the- alliance of light with darkness”, simply because these twins are, in the esoteric philosophy, the Kumâra-Egos, the reincarnating “Principles” in this Manvantara.

 

Atala (Sk). One of the regions in the Hindu lokas, and one of the seven mountains; but esoterically Atala is on an astral plane, and was, once on a time, a real island upon this earth.

 

Atalanta Fugiens (Lat.). A famous treatise by the eminent Rosicrucian Michael Maier; it has many beautiful engravings of Alchemic symbolism: here is to be found the original of the picture of a man and woman within a circle, a triangle around it, then a square: the inscription is, “From the first ens proceed two contraries, thence come the three principles, and from them the four elementary states ; if you separate the pure from the impure you will have the stone of the Philosophers”. [ w.w.w.]

 

Atarpi (Chald.), or Atarpi-nisi, the “man”. A personage who was “pious to the gods”; and who prayed the god Hea to remove the evil

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of drought and other things before the Deluge is sent. The story is found on one of the most ancient Babylonian tablets, and relates to the sin of the world. In the words of G. Smith “the god Elu or Bel calls together an assembly of the gods, his sons, and relates to them that he is angry at the sin of the world”; and in the fragmentary phrases of the tablet: “ . . . . I made them . . . . Their wickedness I am angry at, their punishment shall not be small . . . . let food be exhausted, above let Vul drink up his rain”, etc., etc. In answer to Atarpi’s prayer the god Hea announces his resolve to destroy the people he created, which he does finally by a deluge.

 

Atash Behram (Zend). The sacred fire of the Parsis, preserved perpetually in their fire-temples.

 

Atef (Eg.), or Crown of Horus. It consisted of a tall white cap with ram’s horns, and the urśus in front. Its two feathers represent the two truths—life and death.

 

Athamaz (Heb.). The same as Adonis with the Greeks, the Jews having borrowed all their gods.

 

Athanor (Occult.) The “astral” fluid of the Alchemists, their Archimedean lever; exoterically, the furnace of the Alchemist.

 

Atharva Veda (Sk.) The fourth Veda; lit., magic incantation containing aphorisms, incantations and magic formula One of the most ancient and revered Books of the Brahmans.

 

Athenagoras (Gr.) A Platonic philosopher of Athens, who wrote a Greek Apology for the Christians in A.D. 177, addressed to the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, to prove that the accusations brought against them, namely that they were incestuous and ate murdered children, were untrue.

 

Athor (Eg.) “Mother Night.” Primeval Chaos, in the Egyptian cosmogony. The goddess of night.

 

Atîvahikâs (Sk.) With the Visishtadwaitees, these are the Pitris, or Devas, who help the disembodied soul or Jiva in its transit from its dead body to Paramapadha.

 

Atlantidć (Gr.) The ancestors of the Pharaohs and the forefathers of the Egyptians, according to some, and as the Esoteric Science teaches. (See S.D., Vol. II., and Esoteric Buddhism.) Plato heard of this highly civilized people, the last remnant of which was submerged 9,000 years before his day, from Solon, who had it from the High Priests of Egypt. Voltaire, the eternal scoffer, was right in stating that “the Atlantidć (our fourth Root Race) made their appearance in Egypt It was in Syria and in Phrygia, as well as Egypt, that they established the worship of the Sun.” Occult philosophy teaches that the Egyptians were a remnant of the last Aryan Atlantidć.

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Atlantis (Gr.) The continent that was submerged in the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans according to the secret teachings and Plato.

 

Atmâ (or Atman) (Sk.). The Universal Spirit, the divine Monad, the 7th Principle, so-called, in the septenary constitution of man. The Supreme Soul.

 

Atma-bhu (Sk.). Soul-existence, or existing as soul. (See “Alaya”.)

 

Atmabodha (Sk.). Lit., “Self-knowledge”; the title of a Vedantic treatise by Sankârachârya.

 

Atma-jnâni (Sk.) The Knower of the World-Soul, or Soul in general.

 

Atma-matrasu (Sk.) To enter into the elements of the “One-Self”. (See S. D. I.,334 Atmamâtra is the spiritual atom, as contrasted with, and opposed to, the elementary differentiated atom or molecule.

 

Atma Vidyâ (Sk.). The highest form of spiritual knowledge; lit., “Soul-knowledge”.

 

Atri, Sons of (Sk.). A class of Pitris, the “ancestors of man”, or the so-called Prâjapâti, “progenitors”; one of the seven Rishis who form the constellation of the Great Bear.

 

Attavada (Pali). The sin of personality.

 

Atyantika (Sk.) One of the four kinds of pralaya or dissolution. The “absolute” pralaya.

 

Atziluth (Heb.) The highest of the Four Worlds of the Kabbalah referred only to the pure Spirit of God. [w. w. w.] See “Aziluth” for another interpretation.

 

Audlang (Scand.). The second heaven made by Deity above the field of Ida, in the Norse legends.

 

Audumla (Scand.) The Cow of Creation, the “nourisher”, from which flowed four streams of milk which fed the giant Ymir or Örgelmir (matter in ebullition) and his sons, the Hrimthurses (Frost giants), before the appearance of gods or men. Having nothing to graze upon she licked the salt of the ice-rocks and thus produced Buri, “the Producer” in his turn, who had a son Bör (the born) who married a daughter of the Frost Giants, and had three sons, Odin (Spirit), Wili (Will), and We (Holy). The meaning of the allegory is evident. It is the precosmic union of the elements, of Spirit, or the creative Force, with Matter, cooled and still seething, which it forms in accordance with universal Will. Then the Ases, “the pillars and supports of the World” (Cosmocratores), step in and create as All-father wills them.

 

Augoeides (Gr.). Bulwer Lytton calls it the “Luminous Self ”, or our Higher Ego. But Occultism makes of it something distinct from

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this. It is a mystery. The Augocides is the luminous divine radiation of the EGO which, when incarnated, is but its shadow—pure as it is yet. This is explained in the Amshaspends and their Ferouers.

 

Aum (Sk.). The sacred syllable; the triple-lettered unit; hence the trinity in One.

 

Aura (Gr. and Lat.). A subtle invisible essence or fluid that emanates from human and animal bodies and even things. It is a psychic effluvium, partaking of both the mind and the body, as it is the electro-vital, and at the same time an electro-mental aura; called in Theosophy the âkâsic or magnetic aura.

 

Aurnavâbha (Sk.) An ancient Sanskrit commentator.

 

Aurva (Sk.). The Sage who is credited with the invention of the “fiery weapon” called Agneyâstra.

 

Ava-bodha (Sk.). “Mother of Knowledge.” A title of Aditi.

 

Avâivartika (Sk.) An epithet of every Buddha: lit., one who turns no more back; who goes straight to Nirvâna.

 

Avalokiteswara (Sk.) “The on-looking Lord” In the exoteric interpretation, he is Padmapâni (the lotus bearer and the lotus-born) in Tibet, the first divine ancestor of the Tibetans, the complete incarnation or Avatar of Avalokiteswara; but in esoteric philosophy Avaloki, the “on-looker”, is the Higher Self, while Padmapâni is the Higher Ego or Manas. The mystic formula “Om mani padme hum” is specially used to invoke their joint help. While popular fancy claims for Avalokiteswara many incarnations on earth, and sees in him, not very wrongly, the spiritual guide of every believer, the esoteric interpretation sees in him the Logos, both celestial and human. Therefore, when the Yogâchârya School has declared Avalokiteswara as Padmâpani “to be the Dhyâni Bodhisattva of Amitâbha Buddha”, it is indeed, because the former is the spiritual reflex in the world of forms of the latter, both being one—one in heaven, the other on earth.

 

Avarasâila Sanghârama (Sk.). Lit., the School of the Dwellers on the western mountain. A celebrated Vihâra (monastery) in Dhana-kstchâka, according to Eitel, “built 600 B.C., and deserted A.D. 600”.

 

Avastan (Sk.) An ancient name for Arabia.

 

Avasthas (Sk.) States, conditions, positions.

 

Avatâra (Sk.) Divine incarnation. The descent of a god or some exalted Being, who has progressed beyond the necessity of Rebirths, into the body of a simple mortal. Krishna was an avatar of Vishnu. The Dalai Lama is regarded as an avatar of Avalokiteswara, and the Teschu Lama as one of Tson-kha-pa, or Amitâbha. There are two kinds of avatars: those born from woman, and the parentless, the anupapâdaka.

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Avebury or Abury. In Wiltshire are the remains of an ancient megalithic Serpent temple: according to the eminent antiquarian Stukeley, 1740, there are traces of two circles of stones and two avenues ; the whole has formed the representation of a serpent. [w.w.w.]

 

Avesta (Zend). Lit., “the Law”. From the old Persian Âbastâ, “the law”. The sacred Scriptures of the Zoroastrians. Zend means in the “Zend-Avesta”—a “commentary” or “interpretation”. It is an error to regard “ Zend” as a language, as “it was applied only to explanatory texts, to the translations of the Avesta”(Darmsteter).

 

Avicenna. The latinized name of Abu-Ali al Hoséen ben Abdallah Ibn Sina; a Persian philosopher, born 980 AD)., though generally referred to as an Arabian doctor. On account of his surprising learning he was called “the Famous”, and was the author of the best and the first alchemical works known in Europe. All the Spirits of the Elements were subject to him, so says the legend, and it further tells us that owing to his knowledge of the Elixir of Life, he still lives, as an adept who will disclose himself to the profane at the end of a certain cycle.

 

Avidyâ (Sk.). Opposed to Vidyâ, Knowledge. Ignorance which proceeds from, and is produced by the illusion of the Senses or Viparyaya.

 

Avikâra (Sk.). Free from degeneration; changeless—used of Deity.

 

Avitchi (Sk.) A state: not necessarily after death only or between two births, for it can take place on earth as well. Lit., “uninterrupted hell”. The last of the eight hells, we are told, “where the culprits die and are reborn without interruption—yet not without hope of final redemption. This is because Avitchi is another name for Myalba (our earth) and also a state to which some soulless men are condemned on this physical plane.

 

Avyakta (Sk.). The unrevealed cause; indiscrete or undifferentiated; the opposite of Vyakta, the differentiated. The former is used of the unmanifested, and the latter of the manifested Deity, or of Brahma and Brahmâ.

 

Axieros (Gr.). One of the Kabiri.

Axiocersa (Gr.).      "         "

Axiocersus (Gr.).    "         "

 

Ayana (Sk.) A period of time; two Ayanas complete a year, one being the period of the Sun’s progress northward, and the other south ward in the ecliptic.

 

Ayin (Heb.). Lit., “Nothing”, whence the name of Ain-Soph. (See“Ain”.)

 

Aymar, Jacques. A famous Frenchman who had great success in the use of the Divining Rod about the end of the 17th century; he was often employed in detecting criminals; two M.D’s of the University of Paris,

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Chauvin and Garnier reported on the reality of his powers. See Colquhoun on Magic. [ w.w.w.]

 

Ayur Veda (Sk.). Lit., “the Veda of Life”.

 

Ayuta (Sk.). 100 Kôti, or a sum equal to 1,000,000,000.

 

Azareksh (Zend) A place celebrated for a fire-temple of the Zoroastrians and Magi during the time of Alexander the Great.

 

Azazel (Heb.) “God of Victory”; the scape-goat for the sins of Israel. He who comprehends the mystery of Azazel, says Aben-Ezra, “will learn the mystery of God’s name”, and truly. See “Typhon” and the scape-goat made sacred to him in ancient Egypt.

 

Azhi-Dahaka (Zend) One of the Serpents or Dragons in the legends of Iran and the Avesta Scriptures, the allegorical destroying Serpent or Satan.

 

Aziluth (Heb.) The name for the world of the Sephiroth, called the world of Emanations Olam Aziluth. It is the great and the highest prototype of the other worlds. “Atzeelooth is the Great Sacred Seal by means of which all the worlds are copied which have impressed on themselves the image on the Seal; and as this Great Seal comprehends three stages, which are three zures (prototypes) of Nephesh (the Vital Spirit or Soul), Ruach (the moral and reasoning Spirit), and the Neshamah (the Highest Soul of man), so the Sealed have also received three zures, namely Breeah, Yetzeerah, and Aseeyah, and these three zures are only one in the Seal” (Myer’s Qabbalah). The globes A, Z, of our terrestial chain are in Aziluth. (See Secret Doctrine.)

 

Azoth (Alch.). The creative principle in Nature, the grosser portion of which is stored in the Astral Light. It is symbolized by a figure which is a cross (See “Eliphas Lévi”), the four limbs of which bear each one letter of the word Taro, which can be read also Rota, Ator, and in many other combinations, each of which has an occult meaning.

 

A. and Alpha and Omega, the First and the Last, the beginning and ending of all active existence; the Logos, hence (with the Christians) Christ. See Rev. xxi, 6., where John adopts “Alpha and Omega” as the symbol of a Divine Comforter who “will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely”. The word Azot or Azoth is a medićval glyph of this idea, for the word consists of the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet, A and of the Latin alphabet, A and Z, and of the Hebrew alphabet, A and T, or aleph and tau. (See also “Azoth”.) [ w.w.w.]

                                     

B

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B —The second letter in almost all the alphabets, also the second in the Hebrew. Its symbol is a house, the form of Beth, the letter itself indicating a dwelling, a shed or a shelter. “As a compound of a root, it is constantly used for the purpose of showing that it had to do with stone; when stones at Beth-el are set up, for instance. The Hebrew value as a numeral is two. Joined with its predecessor, it forms the word Ab, the root of ‘father’, Master, one in authority, and it has the Kabalistical distinction of being the first letter in the Sacred Volume of the Law. The divine name connected with this letter is "Bakhour." (R. M. [Cyclop.]

 

Baal (Chald. Heb.). Baal or Adon (Adonai) was a phallic god. “Who shall ascend unto the hill (the high place) of the Lord; who shall stand in the place of his Kadushu (q.v.) ? ” (Psalms XX1V. 3.) The “circle dance” performed by King David round the ark, was the dance prescribed by the Amazons in the Mysteries, the dance of the daughters of Shiloh (Judges xxi., et seq.) and the same as the leaping of the prophets of Baal (I. Kings xviii). He was named Baal-Tzephon, or god of the crypt (Exodus) and Seth, or the pillar (phallus), because he was the same as Ammon (or Baal-Hammon) of Egypt, called “the hidden god”. Typhon, called Set, who was a great god in Egypt during the early dynasties, is an aspect of Baal and Ammon as also of Siva, Jehovah and other gods. Baal is the all devouring Sun, in one sense, the fiery Moloch.

 

Babil Mound (Chald. Heb.). The site of the Temple of Bel at Babylon.

 

Bacchus (Gr.). Exoterically and superficially the god of wine and the vintage, and of licentiousness and joy; but the esoteric meaning of this personification is more abstruse and philosophical. He is the Osiris of Egypt, and his life and significance belong to the same group as the other solar deities, all “sin-bearing,” killed and resurrected; e.g., as Dionysos or Atys of Phrygia (Adonis, or the Syrian Tammuz), as Ausonius, Baldur (q.v.), &c., &c. All these were put to death, mourned for, and restored to life. The rejoicings for Atys took place at the Hilaria on the “pagan” Easter, March 15.  Ausonius, a form of Bacchus, was slain “at the vernal equinox, March 21st, and rose in three days”. Tammuz, the double of Adonis and Atys, was mourned by the women at the “grove” of his name “over Bethlehem, where the infant Jesus cried”, says St. Jerome. Bacchus is murdered and his mother collects the fragments of his lacerated body as Isis does those of Osiris, and so on.

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Dionysos Iacchus, torn to shreds by the Titans, Osiris, Krishna, all descended into Hades and returned again. Astronomically, they all represent the Sun ; psychically they are all emblems of the ever-resurrecting “ Soul” (the Ego in its re-incarnation) ; spiritually, all the innocent scape-goats, atoning for the sins of mortals, their own earthly envelopes, and in truth, the poeticized image of DIVINE MAN, the form of clay informed by its God.

 

Bacon, Roger. A Franciscan monk, famous as an adept in Alchemy and Magic Arts. Lived in the thirteenth century in England. He believed in the philosopher’s stone in the way all the adepts of Occultism believe in it; and also in philosophical astrology. He is accused of having made a head of bronze which having an acoustic apparatus hidden in it, seemed to utter oracles which were words spoken by Bacon himself in another room. He was a wonderful physicist and chemist, and credited with having invented gunpowder, though he said he had the secret from “Asian (Chinese) wise men."

 

Baddha (Sk.). Bound, conditioned; as is every mortal who has not made himself free through Nirvâna.

 

Bagavadam (Sk.). A Tamil Scripture on Astronomy and other matters.

 

Bagh-bog (Slavon.). “God”; a Slavonian name for the Greek Bacchus, whose name became the prototype of the name God or Bagh and bog or bogh; the Russian for God.

 

Bahak-Zivo (Gn.). The “father of the Genii” in the Codex Nazarśus. The Nazarenes were an early semi-Christian sect.

 

Bal (Heb.). Commonly translated “Lord”, but also Bel, the Chaldean god, and Baal, an "idol".

 

Bala (Sk.), or Panchabalâni. The “five powers” to be acquired in Yoga practice; full trust or faith; energy ; memory; meditation ; wisdom.

 

Baldur (Scand.). The “Giver of all Good”. The bright God who is “the best and all mankind are loud in his praise; so fair and dazzling is he in form and features, that rays of light seem to issue from him (Edda). Such was the birth-song chanted to Baldur who resurrects as Wali, the spring Sun. Baldur is called the “well-beloved”, the “Holy one”, “who alone is without sin”. He is the “God of Goodness”, who
“shall be born again, when a new and purer world will have arisen from the ashes of the old, sin-laden world (Asgard)”. He is killed by the crafty Loki, because Frigga, the mother of the gods, “while entreating all creatures and all lifeless things to swear that they will not injure the well-beloved”, forgets to mention “the weak mistletoe bough”, just as the mother of Achilles forgot her son’s heel. A dart is made of it by Loki and he places it in the hands of blind Hödur who

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kills with it the sunny-hearted god of light. The Christmas misletoe is probably a reminiscence of the mistletoe that killed the Northern God of Goodness.

 

Bal-ilu (Chal.). One of the many titles of the Sun.

 

Bamboo Books. Most ancient and certainly pre-historic works in Chinese containing the antediluvian records of the Annals of China. They were found in the tomb of King Seang of Wai, who died 295 B.C., and claim to go back many centuries.

 

Bandha (Sk.). Bondage; life on this earth; from the same root as Baddha.

 

Baphomet (Gr.). The androgyne goat of Mendes. (See Secret Doctrine, I. 253). According to the Western, and especially the French Kabalists, the Templars were accused of worshipping Baphomet, and Jacques de Molay, the Grand Master of the Templars, with all his brother-Masons, suffered death in consequence. But esoterically, and philologically, the word never meant “goat”, nor even anything so objective as an idol. The term means according to Von Hammer, “baptism” or initiation into Wisdom, from the Greek words bafh and mhtiz and from the relation of Baphometus to Pan. Von Hammer must be right. It was a Hermetico Kabalistic symbol, but the whole story as invented by the Clergy was false.
(See “Pan ”.)

 

Baptism (Gr.). The rite of purification performed during the ceremony of initiation in the sacred tanks of India, and also the later identical rite established by John “the Baptist” and practised by his disciples and followers, who were not Christians. This rite was hoary with age when it was adopted by the Chrestians of the earliest centuries. Baptism belonged to the earliest Chaldeo-Akkadian theurgy; was religiously practised in the nocturnal ceremonies in the Pyramids where we see to this day the font in the shape of the sarcophagus; was known to take place during the Eleusinian mysteries in the sacred temple lakes, and is practised even now by the descendants of the ancient Sabians. The Mendćans (the El Mogtasila of the Arabs) are, notwithstanding their deceptive name of “St. John Christians”, less Christians than are the Orthodox Mussulman Arabs around them. They are pure Sabians; and this is very naturally explained when one remembers that the great Semitic scholar Renan has shown in his Vie de Jésus that the Aramean verb seba, the origin of the name Sabian, is a synonym of the Greek baptizw. The modern Sabians, the Mendćans whose vigils and religious rites, face to face with the silent stars, have been described by several travellers, have still preserved the theurgic, baptismal rites of  their distant and nigh-for gotten forefathers, the Chaldean Initiates. Their religion is one of multiplied baptisms, of seven purifications in the name of the seven planetary

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rulers, the “seven Angels of the Presence” of the Roman Catholic Church. The Protestant Baptists are but the pale imitators of the El Mogtasila or Nazareans who practise their Gnostic rites in the deserts of Asia Minor. (See “Boodhasp”.)

 

Bardesanes or Bardaisan. A Syrian Gnostic, erroneously regarded as a Christian theologian, born at Edessa (Edessene Chronicle) in 155 of our era (Assemani Bibl.. Orient. i. 389). He was a great astrologer following the Eastern Occult System. According to Porphyry (who calls him the Babylonian, probably on account of his Chaldeeism or astrology), “Bardesanes . . . . held intercourse with the Indians that had been sent to the Cćsar with Damadamis at their head” (De Abst. iv. 17), and had his information from the Indian gymnosophists. The fact is that most of his teachings, however much they may have been altered by his numerous Gnostic followers, can be traced to Indian philosophy, and still more to the Occult teachings of the Secret System. Thus in his Hymns he speaks of the creative Deity as “Father-Mother”, and elsewhere of “Astral Destiny” (Karma) of “Minds of Fire” (the Agni-Devas) &c. He connected the Soul (the personal Manas) with the Seven Stars, deriving its origin from the Higher Beings (the divine Ego); and therefore “admitted spiritual resurrection but denied the resurrection of the body”, as charged with by the Church Fathers. Ephraim shows him preaching the signs of the Zodiac, the importance of the birth-hours and “proclaiming the seven”. Calling the Sun the “Father of Life” and the Moon the “Mother of Life”, he shows the latter “laying aside her garment of light (principles) for the renewal of the Earth”. Photius cannot understand how, while accepting “the Soul free from the power of genesis (destiny of birth)” and possessing free will, he still placed the body under the rule of birth (genesis). For “they (the Bardesanists) say, that wealth and poverty and sickness and health and death and all things not within our control are works of destiny” (Bibl. Cod. 223, p.221—f). This is Karma, most evidently, which does not preclude at all free-will. Hippolytus makes him a representative of the Eastern School. Speaking of Baptism, Bardesanes is made to say (loc. cit. pp. 985-ff “It is not however the Bath alone which makes us free, but the Knowledge of who we are, what we are become, where we were before, whither we are hastening, whence we are redeemed; what is generation (birth), what is re-generation (re.birth)”. This points plainly to the doctrine of re-incarnation. His conversation (Dialogue) with Awida and Barjamina on Destiny and Free Will shows it. “What is called Destiny, is an order of outflow given to the Rulers (Gods) and the Elements, according to which order the Intelligences (Spirit-Egos) are changed by their descent into the Soul, and the Soul by its descent into the body”. (See Treatise, found in its

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Syriac original, and published with English translation in 1855 by Dr. Cureton, Spicileg. Syriac. in British Museum.)

 

Bardesanian (System). The “Codex of the Nazarenes”, a system worked out by one Bardesanes. It is called by some a Kabala within the Kabala; a religion or sect the esotericism of which is given out in names and allegories entirely sui-generis. A very old Gnostic system. This codex has been translated into Latin. Whether it is right to call the Sabeanism of the Mendaїtes (miscalled St. John’s Christians),
contained in the Nazarene Codex, “the Bardesanian system”, as some do, is doubtful; for the doctrines of the Codex and the names of the Good and Evil Powers therein, are older than Bardaisan. Yet the names are identical in the two systems.

 

Baresma (Zend). A plant used by Mobeds (Parsi priests) in the fire- temples, wherein consecrated bundles of it are kept.

 

Barhishad (Sk.). A class of the “lunar” Pitris or “Ancestors”, Fathers, who are believed in popular superstition to have kept up in their past incarnations the household sacred flame and made fire-offerings. Esoterically the Pitris who evolved their shadows or chhayas to make there-with the first man. (See Secret Doctrine, Vol. II.)

 

Basileus (Gr.). The Archon or Chief who had the outer super-vision during the Eleusinian Mysteries. While the latter was an initiated layman, and magistrate at Athens, the Basileus of the inner Temple was of the staff of the great Hierophant, and as such was one of the chief Mystć and belonged to the inner mysteries.

 

Basilidean (System). Named after Basilides; the Founder of one of the most philosophical gnostic sects. Clement the Alexandrian speaks of Basilides, the Gnostic, as “a philosopher devoted to the contemplation of divine things”. While he claimed that he had all his doctrines from the Apostle Matthew and from Peter through Glaucus, Irenaeus reviled him, Tertullian stormed at him, and the Church Fathers had not sufficient words of obloquy against the “heretic”. And yet on the authority of St. Jerome himself, who describes with indignation what he had found in the only genuine Hebrew copy of the Gospel of Matthew (See Isis Unv., ii., 181) which he got from the Nazarenes, the statement of Basilides becomes more than credible, and if accepted would solve a great and perplexing problem. His 24 vols. of Interpretation of the Gospels, were, as Eusebius tells us, burnt. Useless to say that these gospels were not our present Gospels. Thus, truth was ever crushed.

 

Bassantin, James. A Scotch astrologer. He lived in the 16th century and is said to have predicted to Sir Robert Melville, in 1562, the death and all the events connected therewith of Mary, the unfortunate Queen of Scots.

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Bath (Heb.). Daughter.

 

Bath Kol (Heb.). Daughter of the Voice: the Divine afflatus, or inspiration, by which the prophets of Israel were inspired as by a voice from Heaven and the Mercy-Seat. In Latin Filia Vocis. An analogous ideal is found in Hindu exoteric theology named Vâch, the voice, the female essence, an aspect of Aditi, the mother of the gods and primćval Light; a mystery. [ w.w.w.]

 

Batoo (Eg.). The first man in Egyptian folk-lore. Noum, the heavenly artist, creates a beautiful girl—the original of the Grecian Pandora—and sends her to Batoo, after which the happiness of the first man is destroyed.

 

Batria (Eg.). According to tradition, the wife of the Pharaoh and the teacher of Moses.

 

Beel-Zebub (Heb.). The disfigured Baal of the Temples. and more correctly Beel-Zebul. Beel-Zebub means -literally “god of flies” ; the derisory epithet used by the Jews, and the incorrect and confused rendering of the “god of the sacred scarabći”, the divinities watching the mummies, and symbols of transformation, regeneration and immortality. Beel-Zeboul means properly the “ God of the Dwelling:’ and is spoken of in this sense in Matthew x. 25. As Apollo, originally not a Greek but a Phenician god, was the healing god, Paiŕn, or physician, as well as the god of oracles, he became gradually transformed as such into the “Lord of Dwelling”, a household deity, and thus was called Beel-Zeboul. He was also, in a sense, a psychopompic god, taking care of the souls as did Anubis. Beelzebub was always the oracle god, and was only confused and identified with Apollo latter on.

 

Bel (Chald.). The oldest and mightiest god of Babylonia, one of the earliest trinities,—Anu (q.v.) ; Bel,
“Lord of the World”, father of the gods, Creator, and “Lord of the City of Nipur’; and Hea, maker of fate, Lord of the Deep, God of Wisdom and esoteric Knowledge, and “Lord of the city of Eridu”. The wife of Bel, or his female aspect (Sakti), was Belat, or Beltis, “the mother of the great gods”, and the “Lady of the city of Nipur”. The original Bel was also called Enu, Elu and Kaptu (see Chaldean account of Genesis, by G. Smith). His eldest son was the Moon God Sin (whose names were also Ur, Agu and Itu), who was the presiding deity of the city of Ur, called in his honour by one of his names. Now
Ur was the place of nativity of Abram (see “Astrology”). In the early Babylonian religion the Moon was, like Soma in India, a male, and the Sun a female deity. And this led almost every nation to great fratricidal wars between the lunar and the solar worshippers—e.g., the contests between the Lunar and the Solar
Dynasties, the Chandra and Suryavansa in ancient Aryavarta. Thus we find the

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same on a smaller scale between the Semitic tribes. Abram and his father Terah are shown migrating from Ur and carrying their lunar god (or its scion) with them ; for Jehovah Elohim or El—another form of Elu—has ever been connected with the moon. It is the Jewish lunar chronology which has led the European “civilized” nations into the greatest blunders and mistakes. Merodach, the son of Hea, became the later Bel and was worshipped at Babylon. His other title, Belas, has a number of symbolical meanings.

 

Bela-Shemesh (Chald. Heb.). “The Lord of the Sun”, the name of the Moon during that period when the Jews became in turn solar and lunar worshippers, and when the Moon was a male, and the Sun a female deity. This period embraced the time between the allegorical expulsion of Adam and Eve from Eden down to the no less allegorical Noachian flood. (See Secret Doctrine, I. 397.)

 

Bembo, Tablet of; or Mensa Isiaca. A brazen tablet inlaid with designs in Mosaic (now in the Museum at Turin) which once belonged to the famous Cardinal Bembo. Its origin and date are unknown. It is covered with Egyptian figures and hieroglyphics, and is supposed to have been an ornament in an ancient Temple of Isis. The learned Jesuit Kircher wrote a description of it, and Montfaucon has a chapter devoted to it.
[ w.w.w.]

The only English work on the Isiac Tablet is by Dr. W. Wynn Westcott, who gives a photogravure in addition to its history, description, and occult significance.

 

Ben (Heb.). A son; a common prefix in proper names to denote the son of so-and-so, e.g., Ben Solomon, Ben Ishmael, etc.

 

Be-ness. A term coined by Theosophists to render more accurately the essential meaning of the untranslatable word Sat. The latter word does not mean “Being” for it presupposes a sentient feeling or some consciousness of existence. But, as the term Sat is applied solely to the absolute Principle, the universal, unknown, and ever unknowable Presence, which philosophical Pantheism postulates in Kosmos, calling it the basic root of Kosmos. and Kosmos itself— “Being” was no fit word to express it. Indeed, the latter is not even, as translated by some Orientalists, “the incomprehensible Entity”; for it is no more an Entity than a non-Entity, but both. It is, as said, absolute Be-ness, not Being, the one secondless, undivided, and indivisible All—the root of all Nature visible and invisible, objective and subjective, to be sensed by the highest spiritual intuition, but’ never to be fully comprehended.

 

Ben Shamesh (Heb.). The children or the “Sons of the Sun”. The

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term belongs to the period when the Jews were divided into sun and moon worshippers—Elites and Belites. (See “Bela- Shemesh”.)

 

Benoo (Eg.). A word applied to two symbols, both taken to mean “Phśnix”. One was the Shen-shen
(the heron), and the other a nondescript bird, called the Rech (the red one), and both were sacred to Osiris. It was the latter that was the regular Phśnix of the great Mysteries, the typical symbol of self-creation and resurrection through death—a type of the Solar Osiris and of the divine Ego in man. Yet both the Heron and the Rech were symbols of cycles; the former, of the Solar year of 365 days; the latter of the tropical year or a period covering almost 26,000 years. In both cases the cycles were the types of the return of light from darkness, the yearly and great cyclic return of the sun-god to his birth-place, or—his Resurrection. The Rech-Benoo is described by Macrobius as living 660 years and then dying; while others stretched its life as long as 1,460 years. Pliny, the Naturalist, describes the Rech as a large bird with gold and purple wings, and a long blue tail. As every reader is aware, the
Phśnix on feeling its end approaching, according to tradition, builds for itself a funeral pile on the top of the sacrificial altar, and then proceeds to consume himself thereon as a burnt-offering. Then a worm appears in the ashes, which grows and developes rapidly into a new Phśnix, resurrected from the ashes of its predecessor.

 

Berasit (Heb.). The first word of the book of Genesis. The English established version translates this as “In the beginning,” but this rendering is disputed by many scholars. Tertullian approved of “In power”; Grotius “When first”; but the authors of the Targum of Jerusalern, who ought to have known Hebrew if anyone did, translated it “In Wisdom”. Godfrey Higgins, in his Anacalypsis, insists on Berasit being the sign of the ablative case, meaning “in” and ras, rasit, an ancient word for Chokmah, “wisdom”. [ w. w.w.]

Berasit or Berasheth is a mystic word among the Kabbalists of Asia Minor.

 

Bergelmir (Scand.). The one giant who escaped in a boat the general slaughter of his brothers, the giant Ymir’s children, drowned in the blood of their raging Father. He is the Scandinavian Noah, as he, too, becomes the father of giants after the Deluge. The lays of the Norsemen show the grandsons of the divine Bun—Odin, Wili, and We— conquering and killing the terrible giant Ymir, and creating the world out of his body.

 

Berosus (Chald.). A priest of the Temple of Belus who wrote for Alexander the Great the history of the Cosmogony, as taught in the

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Temples, from the astronomical and chronological records preserved in that temple. The fragments we have in the soi-disant translations of Eusebius are certainly as untrustworthy as the biographer of the Emperor Constantine—of whom he made a saint (!!)—could make them. The only guide to this Cosmogony may now be found in the fragments of the Assyrian tablets, evidently copied almost bodily from the earlier Babylonian records; which, say what the Orientalists may, are undeniably the originals of the Mosaic Genesis, of the Flood, the tower of Babel, of baby Moses set afloat on the waters, and of other events. For, if the fragments from the Cosmogony of Berosus, so carefully re-edited and probably mutilated and added to by Eusebius, are no great proof of the antiquity of these records in Babylonia—seeing that this priest of Belus lived three hundred years after the Jews were carried captive to Babylon, and they may have been borrowed by the Assyrians from them—later discoveries have made such a consoling hypothesis impossible. It is now fully ascertained by Oriental scholars that not only “Assyria borrowed its civilization and written characters from Babylonia,” but the Assyrians copied their literature from Babylonian sources. Moreover, in his first Hibbert lecture, Professor Sayce shows the culture both of Babylonia itself and of the city of Eridu to have been of foreign importation; and, according to this scholar, the city of Eridu stood already “6,000 years ago on the shores of the Persian gulf,” i.e., about the very time when Genesis shows the Elohim creating the world, sun, and stars out of nothing.

 

Bes (Eg.). A phallic god, the god of concupiscence and pleasure. He is represented standing on a lotus ready to devour his own progeny (Abydos). A rather modern deity of foreign origin.

 

Bestla (Scand.). The daughter of the “Frost giants”, the sons of Ymir; married to Bun, and the mother of Odin and his brothers (Edda).

 

Beth (Heb.). House, dwelling.

 

Beth Elohim (Heb.). A Kabbalistic treatise treating of the angels, souls of men, and demons. The name means “House of the Gods".

 

Betyles (Phśn.). Magical stones. The ancient writers call them the “animated stones” ; oracular stones, believed in and used both by Gentiles and Christians. (See S.D. II. p. 342).

 

Bhadra Vihara (Sk.). Lit., “the Monastery of the Sages or Bodhisattvas”. A certain Vihara or Matham in Kanyâkubdja.

 

Bhadrakalpa (Sk.). Lit., “The Kalpa of the Sages”. Our present period is a Bhadra Kalpa, and the exoteric teaching makes it last 236 million years. It is “so called because 1,000 Buddhas or sages appear in the course of it”. (Sanshrit Chinese Dict.) “Four Buddhas have already appeared” it adds; but as out of the 236 millions, over 151

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million years have already elapsed, it does seem a rather uneven distribution of Buddhas. This is the way exoteric or popular religions confuse everything. Esoteric philosophy teaches us that every Root- race has its chief Buddha or Reformer, who appears also in the seven sub-races as a Bodhisattva (q.v.). Gautama Sakyamuni was the fourth, and also the fifth Buddha: the fifth, because we are the fifth root-race; the fourth, as the chief Buddha in this fourth Round. The Bhadra Kalpa, or the “period of stability”, is the name of our present Round, esoterically—its duration applying, of course, only to our globe (D), the “1,000” Buddhas being thus in reality limited to but forty-nine in all.

 

Bhadrasena (Sk.). A Buddhist king of Magadha.

 

Bhagats (Sk.). Also called Sokha and Sivnath by the Hindus; one who exorcises evil spirits.

 

Bhagavad-gita (Sk.). Lit., “the Lord’s Song”. A portion of the Mahabharata, the great epic poem of India. It contains a dialogue wherein Krishna—the “Charioteer”—and Arjuna, his Chela, have a discussion upon the highest spiritual philosophy. The work is pre-eminently occult or esoteric.

 

Bhagavat (Sk.). A title of the Buddha and of Krishna. “The Lord” literally.

 

Bhao (Sk.). A ceremony of divination among the Kolarian tribes of Central India.

 

Bhârata Varsha (Sk.). The land of Bharata, an ancient name of India.

 

Bhargavas (Sk.). An ancient race in India; from the name of Bhrigu, the Rishi.

 

Bhâshya (Sk) A commentary.

 

Bhâskara (Sk). One of the titles of Surya, the Sun; meaning “life- giver” and “light-maker”.

 

Bhava (Sk.). Being, or state of being; the world, a birth, and also a name of Siva.

 

Bhikshu (Sk.). In Pâli Bihkhu. The name given to the first followers of Sâkyamuni Buddha. Lit., “mendicant scholar”. The Sanskrit Chinese Dictionary explains the term correctly by dividing Bhikshus into two classes of Sramanas (Buddhist monks and priests), viz., “esoteric mendicants who control their nature by the (religious) law, and exoteric mendicants who control their nature by diet;” and it adds, less correctly: “every true Bhikshu is supposed to work miracles”.

 

Bhons (Tib.). The followers of the old religion of the Aborigines of Tibet; of pre-buddhistic temples and ritualism; the same as Dugpas,

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“red caps”, though the latter appellation usually applies only to sorcerers.

 

Bhrantidarsanatah (Sk.). Lit., “false comprehension or apprehension”; something conceived of on false appearances as a mayavic, illusionary form.

 

Bhrigu (Sk.). One of the great Vedic Rishis. He is called “Son” by Manu, who confides to him his Institutes. He is one of the Seven Prajâpatis or progenitors of mankind, which is equivalent to identifying him with one of the creative gods, placed by the Purânas in Krita Yug, or the first age, that of purity. Dr. Wynn Westcott reminds us of the fact that the late and very erudite Dr. Kenealy (who spelt the name Brighoo), made of this Muni (Saint) the fourth, out of his twelve, “divine messengers” to the World, adding that he appeared in Tibet, A.N. 4800 and that his religion spread to Britain, where his followers raised the megalithic temple of Stonehenge. This, of course, is a hypothesis, based merely on Dr. Kenealy’s personal speculations.

 

Bhűmi (Sk.). The earth, called also Prithivî.

 

Bhur-Bhuva (Sk). A mystic incantation, as Om, Bhur, Bhuva, Swar, meaning “Om, earth, sky, heaven,  This is the exoteric explanation.

 

Bhuranyu (Sk.). “The rapid” or the swift. Used of a missile— an equivalent also of the Greek Phoroneus.

 

Bhur-loka (Sk). One of the 14, lokas or worlds in Hindu Pantheism; our Earth.

 

Bhutadi (Sk.). Elementary substances, the origin and the germinal essence of the elements.

 

Bhutan. A country of heretical Buddhists and Lamaists beyond Sikkhim, where rules the Dharma Raja, a nominal vassal of the Dalaї Lama.

 

Bhűhta-vidyâ (Sk.). The art of exorcising, of treating and curing demoniac possession. Literally, “Demon” or “Ghost-knowledge”.

 

Bhűta-sarga (Sk.). Elemental or incipient Creation, i.e., when matter was several degrees less material than it is now.

 

Bhűtesa (Sk.) Or Bhűteswara; lit., “Lord of beings or of existent lives”. A name applied to Vishnu, to Brahmâ and Krishna.

 

Bhűts (Sk.). Bhűta.: Ghosts, phantoms. To call them “demons”, as do the Orientalists, is incorrect. For, if on the one hand, a Bhűta is “a malignant spirit which haunts cemeteries, lurks in trees, animates dead bodies, and deludes and devours human beings”, in popular fancy, in India in Tibet and China, by Bhűtas are also meant “heretics” who besmear their bodies with ashes, or Shaiva ascetics (Siva being held in India for the King of Bhűtas).

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Bhuya-loka (Sk.). One of the 14 worlds.

 

Bhuvana (Sk). A name of Rudra or Siva, one of the Indian Trimurti (Trinity).

 

Bifröst (Scand.). A bridge built by the gods to protect Asgard. On it “the third Sword-god, known as Heimdal or Riger”, stands night and day girded with his sword, for he is the watchman selected to protect Asgard, the abode of gods. Heimdal is the Scandinavian Cherubim with the flaming sword, “which turned every way to keep the way of the tree of life”.

 

Bihar Gyalpo (Tib.). A king deified by the Dugpas. A patron over all their religious buildings.

 

Binah (Heb.). Understanding. The third of the 10 Sephiroth, the third of the Supernal Triad; a female potency, corresponding to the letter of the Tetragrammaton IHVH. Binah is called AIMA, the Supernal Mother, and “the great Sea”. [ w.w.w.]

 

Birs Nimrud (Chald.). Believed by the Orientalists to be the site of the Tower of Babel. The great pile of Birs Nimrud is near Babylon. Sir H. Rawlinson and several Assyriologists examined the excavated ruins and found that the tower consisted of seven stages of brick-work, each stage of a different colour, which shows that the temple was devoted to the seven planets. Even with its three higher stages or floors in ruins, it still rises now 154 feet above the level of the plain. (”See Borsippa”.)

 

Black Dwarfs. The name of the Elves of Darkness, who creep about in the dark caverns of the earth and fabricate weapons and utensils for their divine fathers, the Ćsir or Ases. Called also “Black Elves”.

 

Black Fire (Zohar.) A Kabbalistic term for Absolute Light and Wisdom; “black” because it is incomprehensible to our finite intellects.

 

Black Magic (Occult.). Sorcery; necromancy, or the raising of the dead, and other selfish abuses of abnormal powers. This abuse may be unintentional; yet it is still “black magic” whenever anything is produced phenomenally simply for one’s own gratification.

 

B’ne Alhim or Beni Elohim (Heb.). “Sons of God ”, literally or more correctly “Sons of the gods”, as Elohim is the plural of Eloah. A group of angelic powers referable by analogy to the Sephira Hôd. 
 [w. w. w.]

 

Boat of the Sun. This sacred solar boat was called Sekti, and it was steered by the dead. With the Egyptians the highest exaltation of the Sun was in Aries and the depression in Libya. (See “Pharaoh”, the “Son of the Sun”.) A blue light—which is the “Sun’s Son”—is seen streaming from the bark. The ancient Egyptians taught

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that the real colour of the Sun was blue, and Macrobius also states that his colour is of a pure blue before he reaches the horizon and after he disappears below. It is curious to note in this relation the fact that it is only since 1881 that physicists and astronomers discovered that “our Sun is really blue”. Professor Langley devoted many years to ascertaining the fact. Helped in this by the magnificent scientific apparatus of physical science, he has succeeded finally in proving that the apparent yellow-orange colour of the Sun is due only to the effect of absorption exerted by its atmosphere of vapours, chiefly metallic; but that in sober truth and reality, it is not “a white Sun but a blue one”, i.e., something which the Egyptian priests had discovered without any known scientific instruments, many thousands of years ago!

 

Boaz (Heb.). The great-grandfather of David. The word is from B, meaning “in”, and oz “strength”, a symbolic name of one of the pillars at the porch of King Solomon’s temple. [w. w. w.]

 

Bodha-Bodhi (Sk.). Wisdom-knowledge.

 

Bodhi or Sambodhi (Sk.). Receptive intelligence, in contradistinction to Buddhi, which is the potentiality of intelligence.

 

Bodhi Druma (Sk.). The Bo or Bodhi tree; the tree of “knowledge the Pippala or ficus religiosa in botany. It is the tree under which Sâkymuni meditated for seven years and then reached Buddhaship. It was originally 400 feet high, it is claimed; but when Hiouen-Tsang saw it, about the year 640 of our era, it was only 50 feet high. Its cuttings have been carried all over the Buddhist world and are planted in front of almost every Vihâra or temple of fame in China, Siam, Ceylon, and Tibet.

 

Bodhidharma (Sk.). Wisdom-religion; or the wisdom contained in Dharma (ethics). Also the name of a great Arhat Kshatriya (one of the warrior-caste), the son of a king. It was Panyatara, his guru, who “gave him the name Bodhidharma to mark his understanding (bodhi) of the Law (dharma) of Buddha”. (Chin. San. Diet.). Bodhidharma, who flourished in the sixth century, travelled to China, whereto he brought a precious relic, namely, the almsbowl of the Lord Buddha.

 

Bodhisattva (Sk). Lit., “he, whose essence (sattva) has become intelligence (bodhi)”; those who need but one more incarnation to become perfect Buddhas, i.e., to be entitled to Nirvâna. This, as applied to Manushi (terrestrial) Buddhas. In the metaphysical sense, Bodhisattva is a title given to the sons of the celestial Dhyâni Buddhas.

 

Bodhyanga (Sk.). Lit., the seven branches of knowledge or understanding. One of the 37 categories of the Bodhi pakchika dharma, comprehending seven degrees of intelligence (esoterically, seven states of

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consciousness), and these are (1) Smriti “memory”; (2) Dharma pravitchaya, “correct understanding” or discrimination of the Law ; (3) Virya, “energy” ; (4) Priti, “spiritual joy” ; (5 )Prasrabdhi, “tranquillity” or quietude; (6) Samâdhi, “ecstatic contemplation”; and (7) Upeksha “absolute indifference”.

 

Boehme (Jacob). A great mystic philosopher, one of the most prominent Theosophists of the medićval ages. He was born about 1575 at Old Seidenburg, some two miles from Görlitz (Silesia), and died in 1624, at nearly fifty years of age. In his boyhood he was a common shepherd, and, after learning to read and write in a village school, became an apprentice to a poor shoemaker at Görlitz. He was a natural clairvoyant of most wonderful powers. With no education or acquaintance with science he wrote works which are now proved to be full of scientific truths; but then, as he says himself, what he wrote upon, he “saw it as in a great Deep in the Eternal”. He had “a thorough view of the universe, as in a chaos”, which yet “opened itself in him, from time to time, as in a young plant”. He was a thorough born Mystic, and evidently of a constitution which is most rare one of those fine natures whose material envelope impedes in no way the direct, even if only occasional, intercommunion between the intellectual and the spiritual Ego. It is this Ego which Jacob Boehme, like so many other untrained mystics, mistook for God; “Man must acknowledge,” he writes, “that his knowledge is not his own, but from God, who manifests the Ideas of Wisdom to the Soul of Man, in what measure he pleases.” Had this great Theosophist mastered Eastern Occultism he might have expressed it otherwise. He would have known then that the “god” who spoke through his poor uncultured and untrained brain, was his own divine Ego, the omniscient Deity within himself, and that what that Deity gave out was not in “what measure pleased,” but in the measure of the capacities of the mortal and temporary dwelling IT informed.

 

Bonati, Guido. A Franciscan monk, born at Florence in the XIIIth century and died in 1306. He became an astrologer and alchemist, but failed as a Rosicrucian adept. He returned after this to his monastery.

 

Bona-Oma, or Bona Dea. A Roman goddess, the patroness of female Initiates and Occultists. Called also Fauna after her father Faunus. She was worshipped as a prophetic and chaste divinity, and her cult was confined solely to women, men not being allowed to even pronounce her name. She revealed her oracles only to women, and the ceremonies of her Sanctuary (a grotto in the Aventine) were conducted by the Vestals, every 1st of May. Her aversion to men was so great that no male person was permitted to approach the house of the consuls where

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her festival was sometimes held, and even the portraits and the busts of men were carried out for the time from the building. Clodius, who once profaned such a sacred festival by entering the house of Caesar where it was held, in a female disguise, brought grief upon himself. Flowers and foliage decorated her temple and women made libations from a vessel (mellarium) full of milk. It is not true that the mellarium contained wine, as asserted by some writers, who being men thus tried to revenge themselves.

 

Bono, Peter. A Lombardian; a great adept in the Hermetic Science, who travelled to Persia to study Alchemy. Returning from his voyage he settled in Istria in 1330, and became famous as a Rosicrucian. A Calabrian monk named Lacinius is credited with having published in 1702 a condensed version of Bono’s works on the transmutation of metals. There is, however, more of Lacinius than of Bono in the work. Bono was a genuine adept and an Initiate ; and such do not leave their secrets behind them in MSS.

 

Boodhasp (Chald.) .An alleged Chaldean; but in esoteric teaching a Buddhist (a Bodhisattva), from the East, who was the founder of the esoteric school of Neo-Sabeism, and whose secret rite of baptism passed bodily into the Christian rite of the same name. For almost three centuries before our era, Buddhist monks overran the whole country of Syria, made their way into the Mesopotamian valley and visited even Ireland. The name Ferho and Faho of the Codex Nazaraeus is but a corruption of Fho, Fo and Pho, the name which the Chinese, Tibetans and even Nepaulese often give to Buddha.

 

Book of the Dead. An ancient Egyptian ritualistic and occult work attributed to Thot-Hermes. Found in the coffins of ancient mummies,

 

Book of the Keys. An ancient Kabbalistic work.

 

Borj (Pers.). The Mundane Mountain, a volcano or fire-mountain; the same as the Indian Meru.

 

Borri, Joseph Francis. A great Hermetic philosopher, born at Milan in the 17th century. He was an adept, an alchemist and a devoted occultist. He knew too much and was, therefore, condemned to death for heresy, in January, 1661, after the death of Pope Innocent X. He escaped and lived many years after, when finally he was recognised by a monk in a Turkish village, denounced, claimed by the Papal Nuncio, taken back to Rome and imprisoned, August 10th, 1675. But facts show that he escaped from his prison in a way no one could account for.

 

Borsippa (Chald.). The planet-tower, wherein Bel was worshipped in the days when astrolaters were the greatest astronomers. It was dedicated to Nebo, god of Wisdom. (See “Birs Nimrud ”.)

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Both-al (Irish). The Both-al of the Irish is the descendant and copy of the Greek Batylos and the
Beth-el of
Canaan, the “house of God” (q.v.).

 

Bragadini, Marco Antonio. A Venetian Rosicrucian of great achievements, an Occultist and Kabbalist who was decapitated in 1595 in Bavaria, for making gold.

 

Bragi (Scand.). The god of New Life, of the re-incarnation of nature and man. He is called “the divine singer” without spot or blemish. He is represented as gliding in the ship of the Dwarfs of Death during the death of nature (pralaya), lying asleep on the deck with his golden stringed harp near him and dreaming the dream of life. When the vessel crosses the threshold of Nain, the Dwarf of Death, Bragi awakes and sweeping the strings of his harp, sings a song that echoes over all the worlds, a song describing the rapture of existence, and awakens dumb, sleeping nature out of her long death-like sleep.

 

Brahma (Sk.). The student must distinguish between Brahma the neuter, and Brahmâ, the male creator of the Indian Pantheon. The former, Brahma or Brahman, is the impersonal, supreme and uncognizable Principle of the Universe from the essence of which all emanates, and into which all returns, which is incorporeal, immaterial, unborn, eternal, beginningless and endless. It is all-pervading, animating the highest god as well as the smallest mineral atom. Brahmâ on the other hand, the male and the alleged Creator, exists periodically in his manifestation only, and then again goes into pralaya, i.e., disappears and is annihilated.

 

Brahmâ’s Day. A period of 2,160,000,000 years during which Brahmâ having emerged out of his golden egg (Hiranyagarbha), creates and fashions the material world (being simply the fertilizing and creative force in Nature). After this period, the worlds being destroyed in turn, by fire and water, he vanishes with objective nature, and then comes Brahmâ's Night.

 

Brahmâ’s Night. A period of equal duration, during which Brahmâ. is said to be asleep. Upon awakening he recommences the process, and this goes on for an AGE of Brahmâ composed of alternate “Days”, and “Nights”, and lasting 100 years (of 2,160,000,000 years each). It requires fifteen figures to express the duration of such an age; after the expiration of which the Mahapralaya or the Great Dissolution sets in, and lasts in its turn for the same space of fifteen figures.

 

Brahmâ Prajâpati (Sk.). “Brahmâ the Progenitor”, literally the “Lord of Creatures”. In this aspect Brahmâ is the synthesis of the Prajâpati or creative Forces.

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Brahmâ Vâch (Sk.) Male and female Brahmâ. Vâch is also some-times called the female logos; for Vâch  means Speech, literally. (See Manu Book I., and Vishnu Purâna.)

 

Brahma Vidyâ (Sk.) The knowledge, the esoteric science, about the two Brahmas and their true nature.

 

Brahmâ Virâj. (Sk.) The same: Brahmâ separating his body into two halves, male and female, creates in them Vâch and Virâj. In plainer terms and esotericlly Brahmâ the Universe, differentiating, produced thereby material nature, Virâj, and spiritual intelligent Nature, Vâch—which is the Logos of Deity or the manifested expression of the eternal divine Ideation.

 

Brahmâcharî (Sk.) A Brahman ascetic; one vowed to celibacy, a monk, virtually, or a religious student.

 

Brahmajnâni (Sk.) One possessed of complete Knowledge; an Illuminatus in esoteric parlance.

 

Brâhman (Sk.) The highest of the four castes in India, one supposed or rather fancying himself, as high among men, as Brahman, the ABSOLUTE of the Vedantins, is high among, or above the gods.

 

Brâhmana period (Sk.) One of the four periods into which Vedic literature has been divided by Orientalists.

 

Brâhmanas (Sk.) Hindu Sacred Books. Works composed by, and for Brahmans. Commentaries on those portions of the Vedas which were intended for the ritualistic use and guidance of the “twice-born (Dwija) or Brahmans.

 

Brahmanaspati (Sk.). The planet Jupiter; a deity in the Rig -Veda, known in the exoteric works as Brihaspati, whose wife Târâ was carried away by Soma (the Moon). This led to a war between the gods and the Asuras.

 

Brahmâpuri (Sk.) Lit., “the City of Brahmâ.

 

Brahmâputrâs (Sk.) The Sons of Brahmâ.

 

Brahmarandhra (Sk.) A spot on the crown of the head connected by Sushumna, a cord in the spinal column, with the heart. A mystic term having its significance only in mysticism.

 

Brahmârshîs (Sk.). The Brahminical Rishis.

 

Bread and Wine. Baptism and the Eucharist have their direct origin in pagan Egypt. There the “waters of purification” were used (the Mithraic font for baptism being borrowed by the Persians from the Egyptians) and so were bread and wine. “Wine in the Dionysiak cult, as in the Christian religion, represents that blood which in different senses is the life of the world” (Brown, in the Dionysiak Myth). Justin Martyr says, “In imitation of which the devil did the like in the

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Mysteries of Mithras, for you either know or may know that they also take bread and a cup of water in the sacrifices of those that are initiated and pronounce certain words over it”. (See “Holy Water”.)

 

Briareus (Gr.) A famous giant in the Theogony of Hesiod. The son of Cślus and Terra, a monster with 50 heads and 100 arms. He is conspicuous in the wars and battles between the gods.

 

Briatic World or Briah (Heb.) This world is the second of the Four worlds of the Kabbalists and referred to the highest created “Archangels”, or to Pure Spirits. [ w.w.w.]

 

Bride. The tenth Sephira, Malkuth, is called by the Kabbalists the Bride of Microprosopus; she is the final Hé of the Tetragrammaton ; in a similar manner the Christian Church is called the Bride of Christ.
[ w.w.w.]

 

Brihadâranyaka (Sk.) The name of a Upanishad. One of the sacred and secret books of the Brahmins; an Aranyaka is a treatise appended to the Vedas, and considered a subject of special study by those who have retired to the jungle (forest) for purposes of religious meditation.

 

Brihaspati (Sk.) The name of a Deity, also of a Rishi. It is like wise the name of the planet Jupiter. He is the personified Guru and priest of the gods in India ; also the symbol of exoteric ritualism as opposed to esoteric mysticism. Hence the opponent of King Soma—the moon, but also the sacred juice drunk at initiation—the parent of Budha, Secret Wisdom.

 

Briseus (Gr.) A name given to the god Bacchus from his nurse, Briso. He had also a temple at Brisa, a promontory of the isle of Lesbos.

 

Brothers of the Shadow. A name given by the Occultists to Sorcerers, and especially to the Tibetan Dugpas, of whom there are many in the Bhon sect of the Red Caps (Dugpa). The word is applied to all practitioners of black or left hand magic.

 

Bubasté (Eg.) A city in Egypt which was sacred to the cats, and where was their principal shrine. Many hundreds of thousands of cats were embalmed and buried in the grottoes of Beni-Hassan-el Amar. The cat being a symbol of the moon was sacred to Isis, her goddess. It sees in the dark and its eyes have a phosphorescent lustre which frightens the night-birds of evil omen. The cat was also sacred to Bast, and thence called “the (destroyer of the Sun’s (Osiris’) enemies”.

 

Buddha (Sk.). Lit., “The Enlightened”. The highest degree of knowledge. To become a Buddha one has to break through the bondage of sense and personality; to acquire a complete perception of the REAL SELF and learn not to separate it from all otherselves; to learn

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by experience the utter unreality of all phenomena of the visible Kosmos foremost of all; to reach a complete detachment from all that is evanescent and finite, and live while yet on Earth in the immortal and the everlasting alone, in a supreme state of holiness.

 

Buddha Siddhârta (Sk.) The name given to Gautama, the Prince of Kapilavastu, at his birth. It is an abbreviation of sarvârtthasiddha and means, the “realization of all desires”. Gautama, which means, on earth (gâu) the most victorious (tama) “was the sacerdotal name of the Sâkya family, the kingly patronymic of the dynasty to which the father of Gautama, the King Suddhodhana of Kapilavastu, belonged. Kapilavastu was an ancient city, the birth-place of the Great Reformer and was destroyed during his life time. In the title Sâkyamuni, the last component, muni, is rendered as meaning one mighty in charity, isolation and silence”, and the former Sâkya is the family name. Every Orientalist or Pundit knows by heart the story of Gautama, the Buddha, the most perfect of mortal men that the world has ever seen, but none of them seem to suspect the esoteric meaning underlying his prenatal
biography, i.e., the significance of the popular story. The Lalitavistűra tells the tale, but abstains from hinting at the truth. The 5,000 jâtakas, or the events of former births (re-incarnations) are taken literally instead of esoterically. Gautama, the Buddha, would not have been a mortal man, had he not passed through hundreds and thousands of births previous to his last. Yet the detailed account of these, and the statement that during them he worked his way up through every stage of transmigration from the lowest animate and inanimate atom and insect, up to the highest—or man, contains simply the well-known occult aphorism : “a stone becomes a plant, a plant an animal, and an animal a man”. Every human being who has ever existed, has passed through the same evolution. But the hidden symbolism in the sequence of these re-births (jâtaka) contains a perfect history of the evolution on this earth, pre and post human, and is a scientific exposition of natural facts. One truth not veiled but bare and open is found in their nomenclature, viz., that as soon as Gautama had reached the human form he began exhibiting in every personality the utmost unselfishness, self-sacrifice and charity. Buddha Gautama, the fourth of the Sapta (Seven) Buddhas and Sapta Tathâgatas was born according to Chinese Chronology in 1024 B.C; but according to the Singhalese chronicles, on the 8th day of the second (or fourth) moon in the year 621 before our era. He fled from his father’s palace to become an ascetic on the night of the 8th day of the second moon, 597 BC., and having passed six years in ascetic meditation at
Gaya, and perceiving that physical self-torture was useless to bring enlightenment, be decided upon striking out a new path, until he reached the state of

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Bodhi. He became a full Buddha on the night of the 8th day of the twelfth moon, in the year 592, and finally entered Nirvâna in the year 543 according to Southern Buddhism. The Orientalists, however, have decided upon several other dates. All the rest is allegorical. He attained the state of Bodhisattva on earth when in the personality called Prabhâpala. Tushita stands for a place on this globe, not for a paradise in the invisible regions. The selection of the Sâkya family and his mother Mâyâ, as “the purest on earth,” is in accordance with the model of the nativity of every Saviour, God or deified Reformer. The tale about his entering his mother’s bosom in the shape of a white elephant is an allusion to his innate wisdom, the elephant of that colour being a symbol of every Bodhisattva. The statements that at Gautama’s birth, the newly born babe walked seven steps in four directions, that an Udumbara flower bloomed in all its rare beauty and that the Nâga kings forthwith proceeded ‘‘to baptise him ”, are all so many allegories in the phraseology of the Initiates and well-understood by every Eastern Occultist. The whole events of his noble life are given in occult numbers, and every so-called miraculous event—so deplored by Orientalists as confusing the narrative and making it impossible to extricate truth from fiction—is simply the allegorical veiling of the truth, it is as comprehensible to an Occultist learned in symbolism, as it is difficult to understand for a European scholar ignorant of Occultism. Every detail of the narrative after his death and before cremation is a chapter of facts written in a language which must be studied before it is understood, otherwise its dead letter will lead one into absurd contradictions. For instance, having reminded his disciples of the immortality of Dharmakâya Buddha is said to have passed into Samâdhi, and lost himself in Nirvâna—from which none can return., and yet, notwithstanding this, the Buddha is shown bursting open the lid of the coffin, and stepping out of it ; saluting with folded hands his mother Mâyâ who had suddenly appeared in the air, though she had died seven (days after his birth, &c., &c. As Buddha. was a Chakravartti (he who turns the wheel of the Law), his body at its cremation could not be consumed by common fire. What happens Suddenly a jet of flame burst out of the Swastica on his breast, and reduced his body to ashes. Space prevents giving more instances. As to his being one of the true and undeniable Saviours of the World, suffice it to say that the most rabid orthodox missionary, unless he is hopelessly insane, or has not the least regard even for historical truth, cannot find one smallest accusation against the life and personal character of Gautama, the “Buddha”. Without any claim to divinity, allowing his followers to fall into atheism, rather than into the degrading superstition of deva or idol-worship, his walk in life is from the beginning to the end, holy and

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divine. During the years of his mission it is blameless and pure as that of a god—or as the latter should be. He is a perfect example of a divine, godly man. He reached Buddhaship—i.e., complete enlightenment—entirely by his own merit and owing to his own individual exertions, no god being supposed to have any personal merit in the exercise of goodness and holiness. Esoteric teachings claim that he renounced Nirvâna and gave up the Dharmakâya vesture to remain a “Buddha of compassion” within the reach of the miseries of this world. And the religious philosophy he left to it has produced for over 2,000 years generations of good and unselfish men. His is the only absolutely bloodless religion among all the existing religions tolerant and liberal, teaching universal compassion and charity, love and self-sacrifice, poverty and contentment with one’s lot, whatever it may he. No persecutions, and enforcement of faith by fire and sword, have ever disgraced it. No thunder-and-lightning-vomiting god has interfered with its chaste commandments; and if the simple, humane and philosophical code of daily life left to us by the greatest Man-Reformer ever known, should ever come to he adopted by mankind at large, then indeed an era of bliss and peace would dawn on Humanity.

 

Buddhachhâyâ (Sk.). Lit., “the shadow of Buddha”. It is said to become visible at certain great events, and during some imposing ceremonies performed at Temples in commemoration of glorious acts of Buddhas life. Hiouen-tseng, the Chinese traveller, names a certain cave where it occasionally appears on the wall, but adds that only he whose mind is perfectly pure”, can see it.

 

Buddhaphala (Sk) Lit., “the fruit of Buddha”, the fruition of Arahattvaphalla, or Arhatship.

 

Buddhi (Sk.). Universal Soul or Mind. Mahâbuddhi is a name of Mahat (see “Alaya”); also the spiritual Soul in man (the sixth principle), the vehicle of Atmâ exoterically the seventh.

 

Buddhism. Buddhism is now split into two distinct Churches : the Southern and the Northern Church. The former is said to be the purer form, as having preserved more religiously the original teachings of the Lord Buddha. It is the religion of Ceylon, Siam, Burmah and other places, while Northern Buddhism is confined to Tibet, China and Nepaul. Such a distinction, however, is incorrect. If the Southern Church is nearer, in that it has not departed, except perhaps in some trifling dogmas due to the many councils held after the death of the Master, from the public or exoteric teachings of Sâkyamuni—the Northern Church is the outcome of Siddhârta Buddha’s esoteric teachings which he confined to his elect Bhikshus and Arhats. In fact, Buddhism in the present age, cannot he justly judged either by one or

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the other of its exoteric popular forms. Real Buddhism can be appreciated only by blending the philosophy of the Southern Church and the metaphysics of the Northern Schools. If one seems too iconoclastic and stero:, and the other too metaphysical and transcendental, even to being overgrown with the weeds of Indian exotericism—many of the gods of its Pantheon having been transplanted under new names to Tibetan soil—it is entirely due to the popular expression of Buddhism in both Churches. Correspondentially they stand in their relation to each other as Protestantism to Roman Catholicism. Both err by an excess of zeal and erroneous interpretations, though neither the Southern nor the Northern Buddhist clergy have ever departed from truth consciously, still less have they acted under the dictates of priestocracy, ambition, or with an eye to personal gain and power, as the two Christian Churches have.

 

Buddhochinga (Sk) The name of a great Indian Arhat who went to China in the 4th century to propagate Buddhism and converted masses of people by means of miracles and most wonderful magic feats.

 

Budha (Sk. “The Wise and Intelligent”, the Son of Soma, the Moon, and of Rokini or Taraka, wife of Brihaspati carried away by King Soma, thus leading to the great war between the Asuras, who sided with the Moon, and the Gods who took the defence of Brihaspati (Jupiter) who, was their Purohita (family priest). This war is known as the Tarakamaya. It is the original of the war in Olympus between the Gods and the Titans and also of the war (in Revelation between Michael (Indra) and the Dragon (personifying the Asuras).

 

Bull-Worship (See “Apis” ). The worship of the Bull and the Ram was addressed to one and the same power, that of generative creation, under two aspects— the celestial or cosmic, and the terrestrial or human. The ram-headed gods all belong to the latter aspect, the bull—to the former. Osiris to whom the Bull was sacred, was never regarded as a phallic deity ; neither was Siva with his Bull Nandi, in spite of the lingham. As Nandi is of a pure milk-white colour, so was Apis. Both were the emblems of the generative, or of evolutionary power in the Universal Kosmos. Those who regard the solar gods and the bulls as of a phallic character, or connect the Sun with it, are mistaken, it is only the lunar gods and the rams, and lambs, which are priapic, and it little becomes a religion which, however unconsciously, has still adopted for its worship a god pre-eminently lunar, and accentuated its choice by the selection of the lamb, whose sire is the ram, a glyph as pre-eminently phallic, for its most sacred symbol—to vilify the older religions for using the same symbolism. The worship of the bull, Apis, Hapi Ankh, or the living Osiris, ceased over 3,000 years ago the worship of the ram and lamb continues to this day. Mariette Bey discovered the Serapeum, the

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Necropolis of the Apis-bulls, near Memphis, an imposing subterranean crypt 2,000 feet long and twenty feet wide, containing the mummies of thirty sacred bulls. If 1,000 years hence, a Roman Catholic Cathedral with the Easter lamb in it, were discovered under the ashes of Vesuvius or Etna, would future generations be justified in inferring therefrom that Christians were “lamb” and “dove” worshippers ? Yet the two symbols would give them as much right in the one case as in the other. Moreover, not all of the sacred “Bulls” were phallic, i.e., males; there were hermaphrodite and sexless “bulls”. The black bull Mnevis, the son of Ptah, was sacred to the God Ra at Heliopolis; the Pacis of Hermonthis—to Amoun Horus, &c., &c., and Apis himself was a hermaphodite and not a male animal, which shows his cosmic character. As well call the Taurus of the Zodiac and all Nature phallic.

 

Bumapa (Tib.). A school of men, usually a college of mystic students.

 

Bunda-hish. An old Eastern work in which among other things anthropology is treated in an allegorical fashion.

 

Burham-i-Kati. A Hermetic Eastern work.

 

Burî (Scand) “The producer”, the Son of Bestla, in Norse legends.

 

Buru Bonga. The “Spirit of the Hills”. This Dryadic deity is worshipped by the Kolarian tribes of Central India with great ceremonies and magical display. There are mysteries connected with it, but the people are very jealous and will admit no stranger to their rites.

 

Busardier. A Hermetic philosopher born in Bohemia who is credited with having made a genuine powder of projection. He left the bulk of his red powder to a friend named Richthausen, an adept and alchemist of Vienna. Some years after Busardier’s death, in 1637, Richthausen introduced himself to the Emperor Ferdinand III, who is known to have been ardently devoted to alchemy, and together they are said to have converted three pounds of mercury into the finest gold with one single grain of Busardier’s powder. In 1658 the Elector of Mayence also was permitted to test the powder, and the gold produced with it was declared by the Master of the Mint to be such, that he had never seen finer. Such are the claims vouchsafed by the city records and chronicles.

 

Butler. An English name assumed by an adept, a disciple of some Eastern Sages, of whom many fanciful stories are current. It is said for instance, that Butler was captured during his travels in 1629, and sold into captivity. He became the slave of an Arabian philosopher, a great alchemist, and finally escaped, robbing his Master of a large quantity of red powder. According to more trustworthy records, only the last portion of this story is true. Adepts who can be robbed without

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knowing it would be unworthy of the name. Butler or rather the person who assumed this name, robbed his “Master” (whose free disciple he was) of the secret of transmutation, and abused of his knowledge—i.e., sought to turn it to his personal profit, but was speedily punished for it. After performing many wonderful cures by means of his “stone (i.e., the occult knowledge of an initiated adept), and producing extraordinary phenomena, to some of which Val Helmont, the famous Occultist and Rosicrucian, was witness, not for the benefit of men but his own vain glory, Butler was imprisoned in the Castle of Viloord, in Flanders, and passed almost the whole of his life in confinement. He lost his powers and died miserable and unknown. Such is the fate of every Occultist who abuses his power or desecrates the sacred science.

 

Bythos (Gr.). A Gnostic term meaning “Depth” or the “great Deep”, Chaos. It is equivalent to space, before anything had formed itself in it from the primordial atoms that exist eternally in its spatial depths, according to the teachings of Occultism.

                                                                                                                                                                    

C

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C.—The third letter of the English alphabet, which has no equivalent in Hebrew except Caph, which see under K.

 

Cabar Zio (Gnost.). “The mighty Lord of Splendour” (Codex Nazaraeus), they who procreate seven beneficent lives, “who shine in their own form and light” to counteract the influence of the seven “badly-disposed” stellars or principles. These are the progeny of Karabtanos, the personification of concupiscence and matter. The latter are the seven physical planets, the former, their genii or Rulers.

 

Cabeiri or Kabiri (Phśn) Deities, held in the highest veneration at Thebes, in Lemnos, Phrygia, Macedonia, and especially at Samothrace. They were mystery gods, no profane having the right to name or speak of them. Herodotus makes of them Fire-gods and points to Vulcan as their father. The Kabiri presided over the Mysteries, and their real number has never been revealed, their occult meaning being very sacred.

 

Cabletow (Mas.). A Masonic term for a certain object used in the Lodges. Its origin lies in the thread of the Brahman ascetics, a thread which is also used for magical purposes in Tibet.

 

Cadmus (Gr.). The supposed inventor of the letters of the alphabet. He may have been their originator and teacher in Europe and Asia Minor; but in India the letters were known and used by the Initiates ages before him.

 

Caduceus (Gr.). The Greek poets and mythologists took the idea of the Caduceus of Mercury from the Egyptians. The Caduceus is found as two serpents twisted round a rod, on Egyptian monuments built before Osiris. The Greeks altered this. We find it again in the hands of Ćsculapius assuming a different form to the wand of Mercurius or Hermes. It is a cosmic, sidereal or astronomical, as well as a spiritual and even physiological symbol, its significance changing with its application. Metaphysically, the Caduceus represents the fall of primeval and primordial matter into gross terrestrial matter, the one Reality becoming Illusion. (See Sect.Doct. I. 550.) Astronomically, the head and tail represent the points of the ecliptic where the planets and even the sun and moon meet in close embrace. Physiologically, it is the symbol of the restoration of the equilibrium lost between Life, as a unit, and the currents of life performing various functions in the human body.

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Cćsar. A far-famed astrologer and “professor of magic,” i.e., an Occultist, during the reign of Henry IV of France. “He was reputed to have been strangled by the devil in 1611,” as Brother Kenneth Mackenzie tells us.

 

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 of whom little has been ascertained. His accepted history is too well known to need repetition, and 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.
(See “ Mesmer”.) 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.

 

Cain or Kayn (Heb.) In Esoteric symbology he is said to be identical with Jehovah or the “Lord God” of the fourth chapter of Genesis. It is held, moreover, that Abel is not his brother, but his female aspect.
(See Sec.Doct., sub voce.)

 

Calvary Cross. This form of cross does not date from Christianity. It was known and used for mystical purposes, thousands of years before our era. It formed part and parcel of the various Rituals, in Egypt and Greece, in Babylon and India, as well as in China, Mexico, and Peru. It is a cosmic, as well as a physiological (or phallic) symbol. That it existed among all the “heathen” nations is testified to by Tertullian. “How doth the Athenian Minerva differ from the body of a cross?” he queries. “The origin of your gods is derived from figures moulded on a cross. All those rows of images on your standards are the appendages of crosses; those hangings on your banners are the robes of crosses.” And the fiery champion was right. The tau or T is the most ancient of all forms, and the cross or the tat (q.v.) as ancient. The crux ansata, the cross with a handle, is in the hands of almost every god, including Baal and the Phśnician Astarte. The croix cramponnée is the Indian Swastica. It has been exhumed from the lowest foundations of the ancient site of Troy, and it appears on Etruscan and Chaldean relics of antiquity. As Mrs. Jamieson shows: “The ankh of Egypt was the crutch of St. Anthony and the cross of St. Philip. The Labarum of Constantine . . . was an emblem long before, in Etruria. Osiris had the Labarum for his sign; Horus appears sometimes with the long Latin cross. The Greek pectoral cross is Egyptian. It was called by

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the Fathers the devil’s invention before Christ . The crux ansata is upon the old coins of Tarsus, as the Maltese upon the breast of an Assyrian king ...The cross of Calvary, so common in Europe, occurs on the breasts of mummies. . . it was suspended round the necks of sacred Serpents in Egypt. . . . Strange Asiatic tribes bringing tribute in Egypt are noticed with garments studded with crosses, and Sir Gardner Wilkinson dates this picture B.C. 1500.” Finally, “Typhon, the Evil One, is chained by a cross”.
(Eg. Belief and Mod. Thought).

 

Campanella, Tomaso. A Calabrese, born in 1568, who, from his childhood exhibited strange powers, and gave himself up during his whole life to the Occult Arts. The story which shows him initiated in his boyhood into the secrets of alchemy and thoroughly instructed in the secret science by a Rabbi-Kabbalist in a fortnight by means of notavicon, is a cock and bull invention. Occult knowledge, even when a heirloom from the preceding birth, does not come back into a new personality within fifteen days. He became an opponent of the Aristotelian materialistic philosophy when at Naples and was obliged to fly for his life. Later, the Inquisition sought to try and condemn him for the practice of magic arts, but its efforts were defeated. During his lifetime he wrote an enormous quantity of magical, astrological and alchemical works, most of which are no longer extant. He is reported to have died in the convent of the Jacobins at Paris on May the 21st, 1639.

 

Canarese. The language of the Karnatic, originally called Kanara, one of the divisions of South India.

 

Capricornus (Lat.) The 10th sign of the Zodiac (Makâra in Sanskrit), considered, on account of its hidden meaning, the most important among the constellations of the mysterious Zodiac. it is fully described in the Secret Doctrine, and therefore needs but a few words more. Whether, agreeably with exoteric statements, Capricornus was related in any way to the wet-nurse Amalthća who fed Jupiter with her milk, or whether it was the god Pan who changed himself into a goat and left his impress upon the sidereal records, matters little. Each of the fables has its significance. Everything in Nature is intimately correlated to the rest, and therefore the students of ancient lore will not be too much surprised when told that even the seven steps taken in the direction of every one of the four points of the compass, or —28 steps—taken by the new-born infant Buddha, are closely related to the 28 stars of the constellation of Capricornus.

 

Cardan, Jérome. An astrologer, alchemist, kabbalist and mystic, well known in literature. He was born at Pavia in 1501, and died at Rome in 1576.

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Carnac. A very ancient site in Brittany (France) of a temple of cyclopean structure, sacred to the Sun and the Dragon; and of the same kind as Karnac, in ancient Egypt, and Stonehenge in England. (See the “Origin of the Satanic Myth” in Archaic Symbolism.) It was built by the prehistoric hierophant-priests of the Solar Dragon, or symbolized Wisdom (the Solar Kumâras who incarnated being the highest). Each of the stones was personally placed there by the successive priest-adepts in power, and commemorated in symbolic language the degree of power, status, and knowledge of each. (See further Secret Doctrine II. 381, et seq., and also “ Karnac”.)

 

Caste. Originally the system of the four hereditary classes into which the Indian population was divided: Brahman, Kshatriya, Vaisya, and Sudra (or descendants of Brahmâ, Warriors, Merchants, and the lowest or Agriculturalists). Besides these original four, hundreds have now grown up in India.

 

Causal Body. This “body”, which is no body either objective or subjective, but Buddhi, the Spiritual Soul, is so called because it is the direct cause of the Sushupti condition, leading to the Turya state, the highest state of Samadhi. It is called Karanopadhi, “the basis of the Cause”, by the Târaka Raja Yogis; and in the Vedânta system it corresponds to both the Vignânamaya and Anandamaya Kosha, the latter coming next to Atma, and therefore being the vehicle of the universal Spirit. Buddhi alone could not be called a “Causal Body ”, but becomes so in conjunction with Manas, the incarnating Entity or EGO.

 

Cazotte, Jacques. The wonderful Seer, who predicted the beheading of several royal personages and his own decapitation, at a gay supper some time before the first Revolution in France. He was born at Dijon in 1720, and studied mystic philosophy in the school of Martinez Pasqualis at Lyons. On the 11th of September 1791, he was arrested and condemned to death by the president of the revolutionary government, a man who, shameful to state, had been his fellow-student and a member of the Mystic Lodge of Pasqualis at Lyons. Cazotte was executed on the 25th of September on the Place du Carrousel.

 

Cecco d’Ascolî. Surnamed “Francesco Stabili.” He lived in the thirteenth century, and was considered the most famous astrologer in his day. A work of his published at Basle in 1485, and called Commentarii in Sphaeram Joannis de Sacrabosco, is still extant. He was burnt alive by the Inquisition in 1327.

 

Cerberus (Gr., Lat.). Cerberus, the three-headed canine monster, which was supposed to watch at the threshold of Hades, came to the Greeks and Romans from Egypt. It was the monster, half-dog and

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half-hippopotamus, that guarded the gates of Amenti. The mother of Cerberus was Echidna—a being, half-woman, half-serpent, much honoured in Etruria. Both the Egyptian and the Greek Cerberus are symbols of Kâmaloka and its uncouth monsters, the cast-off shells of mortals.

 

Ceres (Lat.) In Greek Demeter. As the female aspect of Pater Ćther, Jupiter, she is esoterically the productive principle in the all-pervading Spirit that quickens every germ in the material universe.

 

Chabrat Zereh Aur Bokher (Heb.) An Order of the Rosicrucian stock, whose members study the Kabbalah and Hermetic sciences; it admits both sexes, and has many grades of instruction. The members meet in private, and the very existence of the Order is generally unknown. [ w.w.w.]

 

Chadâyatana (Sk.). Lit., the six dwellings or gates in man for the reception of sensations; thus, on the physical plane, the eyes, nose, ear, tongue, body (or touch) and mind, as a product of the physical brain and on the mental plane (esoterically), spiritual sight, smell, hearing, taste, touch and perception, the whole synthesized by the Buddhi-atmic element. Chadâyatana is one of the 12  Nidânas, which form the chain of incessant causation and effect.

 

Chaitanya (Sk) The founder of a mystical sect in India. A rather modern sage, believed to be an avatar of Krishna.

 

Chakna-padma-karpo (Tib.) “He who holds the lotus”, used of Chenresi, the Bodhisattva. It is not a genuine Tibetan word, but half Sanskrit.

 

Chakra (Sk.) A wheel, a disk, or the circle of Vishnu generally. Used also of a cycle of time, and with other meanings.

 

Chakshub (Sk.) The “eye ”. Loka-chakshub or “the eye of the world” is a title of the Sun.

 

Chaldean Book of Numbers. A work which contains all that is found in the Zohar of Simeon Ben-Jochai, and much more. It must be the older by many centuries, and in one sense its original, as it contains all the fundamental principles taught in the Jewish Kabbalistic works, but none of their blinds. It is very rare indeed, there being perhaps only two or three copies extant, and these in private hands.

 

Chaldeans, or Kasdim. At first a tribe, then a caste of learned Kabbalists. They were the savants, the magians of Babylonia, astrologers and diviners. The famous Hillel, the precursor of Jesus in philosophy and in ethics, was a Chaldean. Franck in his Kabbala points to the close resemblance of the “secret doctrine” found in the Avesta and the religious metaphysics of the Chaldees.

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Chandra (Sk.) The Moon; also a deity. The terms Chandra and Soma are synonyms.

 

Chandragupta (Sk.) The first Buddhist King in India, the grand-sire of Asoka ; the Sandracottus of the all-bungling Greek writers who went to India in Alexander’s time. (See “Asoka”.)

 

Chandra-kanta (Sk.) “The moon-stone”, a gem that is claimed to be formed and developed under the moon-beams, which give it occult and magical properties. It has a very cooling influence in fever if applied to both temples.

 

Chandramanam (Sk.) The method of calculating time by the Moon.

 

Chandrayana (Sk.) The lunar year chronology.

 

Chandra-vansa (Sk.) The “Lunar Race”, in contradistinction to Suryavansa, the “Solar Race”. Some Orientalists think it an inconsistency that Krishna, a Chandravansa (of the Yadu branch) should have been declared an Avatar of Vishnu, who is a manifestation of the solar energy in Rig -Veda, a work of unsurpassed authority with the Brahmans. This shows, however, the deep occult meaning of the Avatar ; a meaning which only esoteric philosophy can explain. A glossary is no fit place for such explanations; but it may be useful to remind those who know, and teach those who do not, that in Occultism, man is called a solar-lunar being, solar in his higher triad, and lunar in his quaternary. Moreover, it is the Sun who imparts his light to the Moon, in the same way as the human triad sheds its divine light on the mortal shell of sinful man. Life celestial quickens life terrestrial. Krishna stands metaphysically for the Ego made one with Atma-Buddhi, and performs mystically the same function as the Christos of the Gnostics, both being “the inner god in the temple”—man. Lucifer is “the bright morning star”, a well known symbol in Revelations, and, as a planet, corresponds to the EGO. Now Lucifer (or the planet Venus) is the Sukra-Usanas of the Hindus ; and Usanas is the Daitya-guru, i.e., the spiritual guide and instructor of the Danavas and the Daityas. The latter are the giant-demons in the Purânas, and in the esoteric interpretations, the antetypal symbol of the man of flesh, physical mankind. The Daityas can raise themselves, it is said, through knowledge “austerities and devotion” to “the rank of the gods and of the ABSOLUTE”. All this is very suggestive in the legend of Krishna ; and what is more suggestive still is that just as Krishna, the Avatar of a great God in India, is of time race of Yadu, so is another incarnation, “God incarnate himself”—or the “God-man Christ”, also of the race Iadoo—the name for the Jews all over Asia. Moreover, as his mother, who is represented as Queen of Heaven standing on the crescent, is identified in Gnostic philosophy, and

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also in the esoteric system, with the Moon herself, like all the other lunar goddesses such as Isis, Diana, Astarte and others—mothers of the Logoi, so Christ is called repeatedly in the Roman Catholic Church, the Sun-Christ, the Christ-Soleil and so on. If the later is a metaphor so also is the earlier.

 

Chantong (Tib.) “He of the 1,000 Eyes”, a name of Padmapani or Chenresi (Avalokitesvara).

 

Chaos (Gr.) The Abyss, the “Great Deep”. It was personified in Egypt by the Goddess Neїth, anterior to all gods. As Deveria says, “the only God, without form and sex, who gave birth to itself, and without fecundation, is adored under the form of a Virgin Mother”. She is the vulture-headed Goddess found in the oldest period of Abydos, who belongs, accordingly to Mariette Bey, to the first Dynasty, which would make her, even on the confession of the time-dwarfing Orientalists, about 7,000 years old. As Mr. Bonwick tells us in his excellent work on Egyptian belief—“Neїth, Nut, Nepte, Nuk (her names as variously read !) is a philosophical conception worthy of the nineteenth century after the Christian era, rather than the thirty-ninth before it or earlier than that”. And he adds: “ Neith or Nout is neither more nor less than the Great Mother, a yet the Immaculate Virgin, or female God from whom all things proceeded”. Neїth is the
“Father-mother” of the Stanzas of the Secret Doctrine, the Swabhavat of the Northern Buddhists, the immaculate Mother indeed, the prototype of the latest “Virgin” of all; for, as Sharpe says, “the Feast of Candlemas—in honour of the goddess Neїth— is yet marked in our Almanacs as Candlemas day, or the Purification of the Virgin Mary”; and Beauregard tells us of “the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin, who can henceforth, as well as the Egyptian Minerva, the mysterious Neїth, boast of having come from herself, and of having given birth to God”. He who would deny the working of cycles and the recurrence of events, let him read what Neїth was years ago, in the conception of the Egyptian Initiates, trying to popularize a philosophy too abstract for the masses; and then remember the subjects of dispute at the Council of Ephesus in 431, when Mary was declared Mother of God; and her Immaculate Conception forced on the World as by command of God, by Pope and Council in 1858. Neїth is Swabhdvat and also the Vedic Aditi and the Purânic Akâsa, for “she is not only the celestial vault, or ether, but is made to appear in a tree, from which she gives the fruit of the Tree of Life (like another Eve) or pours upon her worshippers some of the divine water of life”. Hence she gained the favourite appellation of “Lady of the Sycamore”, an epithet applied to another Virgin (Bonwick). The resemblance becomes still more marked when Neїth is found on old pictures represented as a Mother embracing

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the ram-headed god, the “Lamb”. An ancient stele declares her to be “Neut, the luminous, who has engendered the gods”—the Sun included, for Aditi is the mother of the Marttanda, the Sun—an Aditya. She is Naus, the celestial ship ; hence we find her on the prow of the Egyptian vessels, like Dido on the prow of the ships of the Phśnician mariners, and forth with we have the Virgin Mary, from Mar, the “Sea”, called the “Virgin of the Sea”, and the “Lady Patroness” of all Roman Catholic seamen. The Rev. Sayce is quoted by Bonwick, explaining her as a principle in the Babylonian Bahu (Chaos, or confusion) i.e., “merely the Chaos of Genesis . . . and perhaps also Môt, the primitive substance that was the mother of all the gods”. Nebuchadnezzar seems to have been in the mind of the learned professor, since he left the following witness in cuneiform language, “I built a temple to the Great Goddess, my Mother”. We may close with the words of Mr. Bonwick with which we thoroughly agree “She (Neїth) is the Zerouâna of the Avesta, ‘time without limits’. She is the Nerfe of the Etruscans, half a woman and half a fish” (whence the connection of the Virgin Mary with the fish and pisces) ; of whom it is said: “From holy good Nerfe the navigation is happy. She is the Bythos of the Gnostics, the One of the Neoplatonists, the All of German metaphysicians, the Anaita of Assyria.”

 

Charaka (Sk.). A writer on Medicine who lived in Vedic times. He is believed to have been an incarnation (Avatara) of the Serpent Sesha, i.e., an embodiment of divine Wisdom, since Sesha-Naga, the King of the “Serpent” race, is synonymous with Ananta, the seven-headed Serpent, on which Vishnu sleeps during the pralayas. Ananta is the “endless” and the symbol of eternity, and as such, one with Space, while Sesha is only periodical in his manifestations. Hence while Vishnu is identified with Ananta, Charaka is only the Avatar of Sesha. (See “Ananta” and “Sesha”.)

 

Charnook, Thomas. A great alchemist of the sixteenth century; a surgeon who lived and practiced near Salisbury, studying the art in some neighbouring cloisters with a priest. It is said that he was initiated into the final secret of transmutation by the famous mystic William Bird, who “had been a prior of Bath and defrayed the expense of repairing the Abbey Church from the gold which he made by the red and white elixirs” (Royal Mas. Cyc.). Charnock wrote his Breviary of Philosophy in the year 1557 and the Enigma of Alchemy, in 1574.

 

Charon (Gr.) The Egyptian Khu-en-ua, the hawk-headed Steersman of the boat conveying the Souls across the black waters that separate life from death. Charon, the Sun of Erebus and Nox, is a variant of Khu en-ua. The dead were obliged to pay an obolus, a small piece of money, o this grim ferryman of the Styx and Acheron; therefore the ancients

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always placed a coin under the tongue of the deceased. This custom has been preserved in our own times, for most of the lower classes in Russia place coppers in the coffin under the head of the dead for post mortem expenses.

 

Châryâka (Sk.) There were two famous beings of this name. One a Rakshasa (demon) who disguised himself as a Brâhman and entered Hastinâ-pura; whereupon the Brahmans discovered the imposture and reduced Châryâka to ashes with the fire of their eyes,—i.e., magnetically by means of what is called in Occultism the “black glance” or evil eye. The second was a terrible materialist and denier of all but matter, who if he could come back to life, would put to shame all the “Free thinkers” and “Agnostics” of the day. He lived before the Râmâyanic period, but his teachings and school have survived to this day, and he has even now followers, who are mostly to be found in Bengal.

 

Chastanier, Benedict. A French mason who established in London in 1767 a Lodge called
“The Illuminated Theosophists”.

 

Chatur mukha (Sk) The “four-faced one”, a title of Brahmâ.

 

Chatur varna (Sk.) The four castes (lit., colours).

 

Châturdasa Bhuvanam (Sk.) The fourteen lokas or planes of existence. Esoterically, the dual seven states.

 

Chaturyonî (Sk.) Written also tchatur-yoni. The same as Karmaya or “the four modes of birth”—four ways of entering on the path of Birth as decided by Karma : (a) birth from the womb, as men and mammalia (b) birth from an egg, as birds and reptiles; (c) from moisture and air-germs, as insects; and (d) by sudden self-transformation, as Bodhisattvas and Gods (Anupadaka).

 

Chava (Heb.) The same as Eve: “the Mother of all that lives”  "Life"

 

Chavigny, Jean Aimé de. A disciple of the world-famous Nostradamus, an astrologer and an alchemist of the sixteenth century. He died in the year 16O4. His life was a very quiet one and he was almost unknown to his contemporaries; but he left a precious manuscript on the pre-natal and post-natal influence of the stars on certain marked individuals, a secret revealed to him by Nostradamus. This treatise was last in the possession of the Emperor Alexander of Russia.

 

Chelâ (Sk.) A disciple, the pupil of a Guru or Sage, the follower of some adept of a school of philosophy (lit., child).

 

Chemi (Eg.). The ancient name of Egypt.

 

Chenresi (Tib.) The Tibetan Avalokitesvara. The Bodhisattva Padmâpani, a divine Buddha.

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Cheru (Scand) Or Heru. A magic sword, a weapon of the “sword god” Heru. In the Edda, the Saga describes it as destroying its possessor, should he be unworthy of wielding it. It brings victory and fame only in the hand of a virtuous hero.

 

Cherubim (Heb.) According to the Kabbalists, a group of angels, which they specially associated with the Sephira Jesod. in Christian teaching, an order of angels who are “watchers”. Genesis places Cherubim to guard the lost Eden, and the O.T. frequently refers to them as guardians of the divine glory. Two winged representations in gold were placed over the Ark of the Covenant; colossal figures of the same were also placed in the Sanctum Sanctorum of the Temple of Solomon. Ezekiel describes them in poetic language. Each Cherub appears to have been a compound figure with four faces—of a man, eagle, lion, and ox, and was certainly winged. Parkhurst, in voc. Cherub, suggests that the derivation of the word is from K, a particle of similitude, and RB or RUB, greatness, master, majesty, and so an image of godhead. Many other nations have displayed similar figures as symbols of deity ; e.g., the Egyptians in their figures of Serapis. as Macrohius describes in his Saturnalia; the Greeks had their triple-headed Hecate, and the Latins had three-faced images of Diana, as Ovid tells us, ecce procul ternis Hecate variata figuris. Virgil also describes her in the fourth Book of the Ćneid. Porphyry and Eusebius write the same of Proserpine. The Vandals had a many-headed deity they called Triglaf. The ancient German races had an idol Rodigast with human body and heads of the ox, eagle, and man. The Persians have some figures of Mithras with a man’s body, lion’s head, and four wings. Add to these the Chimćra Sphinx of Egypt, Moloch, Astarte of the Syrians, and some figures of Isis with Bull’s horns and feathers of a bird on the head. [ w.w.w.]

 

Chesed (Heb.) “Mercy ”, also named Gedulah, the fourth of the ten Sephiroth; a masculine or active potency. [ w.w. w.]

 

Chhâyâ (Sk.) “Shade” or “ Shadow”. The name of a creature produced by Sanjnâ, the wife of Surya, from herself (astral body). Unable to endure the ardour of her husband, Sanjnâ left Chhâyâ in her place as a wife, going herself away to perform austerities. Chhâyâ is the astral image of a person in esoteric philosophy.

 

Chhandoga (Sk)  A Samhitâ collection of Sama Veda; also a priest, a chanter of the Sama Veda.

 

Chhanműka (Sk)  A great Bodhisattva with the Northern Buddhists, famous for his ardent love of Humanity; regarded in the esoteric schools as a Nirmanakâya.

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Chhannagarikah (Tib.). Lit., the school of six cities. A famous philosophical school where Chelas are prepared before entering on the Path.

 

Chhassidi or Chasdim. In the Septuagint Assidai, and in English Assideans. They are also mentioned in Maccabees I., vii., 13, as being put to death with many others. They were the followers of Mattathias, the father of the Maccabeans, and were all initiated mystics, or Jewish adepts. The word means ‘‘ skilled learned in all wisdom, human and divine”. Mackenzie (R.M.C.) regards them as the guardians of the Temple for the preservation of its purity ; but as Solomon and his Temple are both allegorical and had no real existence, the Temple means in this case the “ body of Israel ” and its morality.“ Scaliger connects this Society of the Assideans with that of the Essenes, deeming it the predecessor of the latter.”

 

Chhaya loka (Sk.) The world of Shades; like Hades, the world of the Eidola and Umbrć. We call it Kâmaloka.

 

Chiah (Heb.) Life; Vita, Revivificatio. In the Kabbala, the second highest essence of the human soul, corresponding to Chokmah (Wisdom).

 

Chichhakti (Sk.) Chih-Sakti; the power which generates thought.

 

Chidagnikundum (Sk.). Lit., “the fire-hearth in the heart” ; the seat of the force which extinguishes all individual desires.

 

Chidâkâsam (Sk); The field, or basis of consciousness.

 

Chiffilet, Jean. A Canon-Kabbalist of the XVIIth century, reputed to have learned a key to the Gnostic works from Coptic Initiates; he wrote a work on Abraxas in two portions, the esoteric portion of which was burnt by the Church.

 

Chiim (Heb.) A plural noun—“lives”; found in compound names Elohim Chum, the gods of lives, Parkhurst translates “the living God” and Ruach Chiim, Spirit of lives or of life. [ w.w. w.]

 

China, The Kabbalah of. One of the oldest known Chinese books is the Yih King, or Book of Changes. It is reported to have been written 2850 B.C., in the dialect of the Accadian black races of Mesopotamia. It is a most abstruse system of Mental and Moral Philosophy, with a scheme of universal relation and divination. Abstract ideas are represented by lines, half lines, circle, and points. Thus a circle represents YIH, the Great Supreme; a line is referred to YIN, the Masculine Active Potency; two half lines are YANG, the Feminine Passive Potency. KWEI is the animal soul, SHAN intellect, KHIEN heaven or Father, KHWAN earth or Mother, KAN or QHIN is Son; male numbers are odd, represented by light circles, female numbers are even, by black circles. There are two most mysterious diagrams, one called “HO

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or the River Map”, and also associated with a Horse ; and the other called “The Writing of LO” ; these are formed of groups of white and black circles, arranged in a Kabbalistic manner. The text is by a King named Wan, and the commentary by Kan, his son ; the text is allowed to be older than the time of Confucius. [ w. w.w.]

 

Chit (Sk.) Abstract Consciousness.

 

Chitanuth our (Heb.). Chitons, a priestly garb; the coats of skin given by Java Aleim to Adam and Eve after their fall,

 

 

Chitkala (Sk.). In Esoteric philosophy, identical with the Kumâras those who first incarnated into the men of the Third Root-Race. (See Sec.Doct.; Vol. 1. p. 288 n.)

 

Chitra Gupta (Sk.) The deva (or god) who is the recorder of Yâma (the god of death), and who is supposed to read the account of every Soul’s life from a register called Agra Sandhâni, when the said soul appears before the seat of judgment. (See “Agra Sandhâni ”.)

 

Chitra Sikkandinas (Sk). The constellation of the great Bear ; the habitat of the seven Rishis (Sapta Riksha). Lit., “ bright-crested”.

 

Chnoumis (Gr) The same as Chnouphis and Kneph. A symbol of creative force ; Chnoumis or Kneph is “the unmade and eternal deity” according to Plutarch. He is represented as blue (ether), and with his ram’s head with an asp between the horns, he might be taken for Ammon or Chnouphis (.q.v’. ). The fact is that all these gods are solar, and represent under various aspects the phases of generation and impregna tion. Their ram’s heads denote this meaning, a ram ever symbolizing generative energy in the abstract, while the bull was the symbol of strength and the creative function. All were one god, whose attributes were individualised and personified. According to Sir G. Wilkinsen, Kneph or Chnoumis was “the idea of the Spirit of God” ; and Bonwick explains that, as Av, “matter” or “flesh”, he was criocephalic (ram- headed), wearing a solar disk on the head, standing on the Serpent Mehen, with a viper in his left and a cross in his right hand, and bent upon the function of creation in the underworld (the earth, esoterically). The Kabbalists identify him with “Binah, the third Sephira of the Sephirothal Tree, or Binah, represented by the Divine name of Jehovah”. If as Chnoumis-Kneph, he represents the Indian Narayâna, the Spirit of ( moving on the waters of space, as Eichton or Ether he holds in his mouth an Egg, the symbol of evolution ; and as Av he is Siva, the Destroyer and the Regenerator ; for, as Deveria explains:“His Journey to the lower hemispheres appears to symbolize the evolutions of substances, which are born to die and to be reborn.” Esoterically, however, and as taught by the Initiates of the inner temple, Chnoumis-Kneph was

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pre-eminently the god of reincarnation. Says an inscription: “I am Chnoumis, Son of the Universe, 700”, a mystery having a direct reference to the reincarnating EGO.

 

Chnouphis (Gr.). Nouf in Egyptian. Another aspect of Ammon, and the personification of his generative power in actu, as Kneph is of the same in potentia. He is also ram-headed. If in his aspect as Kneph he is the Holy Spirit with the creative ideation brooding in him, as Chnouphis, he is the angel who “comes in” into the Virgin soil and flesh. A prayer on a papyrus, translated by the French Egyptologist Chabas, says; ‘ 0 Sepui, Cause of being, who hast formed thine own body! 0 only Lord, proceeding from Noum ! 0 divine substance, created from itself! 0 God, who hast made the substance which is in him! 0 God, who has made his own father and impregnated his own mother.” This shows the origin of the Christian doctrines of the Trinity and immaculate conception. He is seen on a monument seated near a potter’s wheel, and forming men out of clay. The fig-leaf is sacred to him, which is alone sufficient to prove him a phallic god—an idea which is carried out by the inscription: “he who made that which is, the creator of beings, the first existing, he who made to exist all that exists.” Some see in him the incarnation of Ammon-Ra, but he is the latter himself in his phallic aspect, for, like Ammon, he is “ his mother’s husband”, i.e., the male or impregnating side of Nature. His names vary, as Cnouphis, Noum, Khem, and Khnum or Chnoumis. As he represents the Demiurgos (or Logos) from the material, lower aspect of the Soul of the World, he is the Agathodćmon, symbolized sometimes by a Serpent ; and his wife Athor or Maut (Môt mother), or Sate, “the daughter of the Sun”, carrying an arrow on a sunbeam (the ray of conception), stretches “mistress over the lower portions of the atmosphere”. below the constellations, as Neїth expands over the starry heavens. (See “Chaos”.)

 

Chohan (Tib.) “Lord” or “Master” ; a chief; thus Dhyan-Chohan would answer to “Chief of the Dhyanis”, or celestial Lights—which in English would he translated Archangels.

 

Chokmah (Heb) Wisdom; the second of the ten Sephiroth, and the second of the supernal Triad. A masculine potency corresponding to the Yod (I) of the Tetragrammaton IHVH, and to Ab, the Father.
[w.w.w.]

 

Chréstos (Gr.) The early Gnostic form of Christ. It was used in the fifth century B.C. by Ćschylus, Herodotus, and others. The Manteumata pythochresta, or the “oracles delivered by a Pythian god” “through a pythoness, are mentioned by the former (Choeph.901). Chréstian is not only “the seat of an oracle”, but an offering to, or for, the oracle.

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Chréstés is one who explains oracles, “a prophet and soothsayer”, and Chrésterios one who serves an oracle or a god. The earliest Christian writer, Justin Martyr, in his first Apology calls his co-religionists Chréstians. It is only through ignorance that men call themselves Christians instead of Chréstians,” says Lactantius (lib. iv., cap. vii.). The terms Christ and Christians, spelt originally Chrést and Chréstians, were borrowed from the Temple vocabulary of the Pagans. Chréstos meant in that vocabulary a disciple on probation, a candidate for hierophantship. When he had attained to this through initiation, long trials, and suffering, and had been ‘‘anointed’’ (i.e., “rubbed with oil”, as were Initiates and even idols of the gods, as the last touch of ritualistic observance), his name was changed into Christos, the “purified”, in esoteric or mystery language. In mystic symbology, indeed, Christés, or Christos, meant that the “Way”, the Path, was already trodden and the goal reached ; when the fruits of the arduous labour, uniting the personality of evanescent clay with the indestructible INDIVIDUALITY, transformed it thereby into the immortal EGO. “At the end of the Way stands the Chréstes”, the Purifier, and the union once accomplished, the Chrestos, the “man of sorrow”, became Christos himself. Paul, the Initiate, knew this, and meant this precisely, when he is made to say, in bad translation : ‘‘I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you” (Gal. iv.19), the true rendering of which is . . . ‘‘until ye form the Christos within yourselves” But the profane who knew only that Chréstés was in some way connected with priest and prophet, and knew nothing about the hidden meaning of Christos, insisted, as did Lactantius and Justin Martyr, on being called Chréstians instead of Christians. Every good individual, therefore, may find Christ in his “inner man” as Paul expresses it (Ephes. iii. 16,17), whether he be Jew, Mussulman, Hindu, or Christian. Kenneth Mackenzie seemed to think that the word Chréstos was a synonym of Soter, “an appellation assigned to deities, great kings and heroes,” indicating ‘‘Saviour,’’—and he was right. For, as he adds:“It has been applied redundantly to Jesus Christ, whose name Jesus or Joshua bears the same interpretation. The name Jesus, in fact, is rather a title of honour than a name—the true name of the Soter of Christianity being Emmanuel, or God with us (Matt.i, 23.).Great divinities among all nations, who are represented as expiatory or self-sacrificing, have been designated by the same title.’’ (R. M. Cyclop.) The Asklepios (or Ćsculapius) of the Greeks had the title of Soter.

 

Christian Scientist. A newly-coined term for denoting the practitioners of an art of healing by will. The name is a misnomer, since Buddhist or Jew, Hindu or Materialist, can practise this new form of

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Western Yoga, with like success, if he can only guide and control his will with sufficient firmness. The
“Mental Scientists” are another rival school. These work by a universal denial of every disease and evil imaginable, and claim syllogistically that since Universal Spirit cannot be subject to the failings of flesh, and since every atom is Spirit and in Spirit, and since finally, they—the healers and the healed—are all absorbed in this Spirit or Deity, there is not, nor can there he, such a thing as disease. This prevents in no wise both Christian and Mental Scientists from succumbing to disease, and nursing chronic diseases in their own bodies just like ordinary mortals.

 

Chthonia (Gr.) Chaotic earth in the Hellenic cosmogony.

 

Chuang. A great Chinese philosopher.

 

Chubilgan (Mongol.) Or Khubilkhan. The same as Chutuktu.

 

Chutuktu (Tib.) An incarnation of Buddha or of some Bodhisattva, as believed in Tibet, where there are generally five manifesting and two secret Chutuktus among the high Lamas.

 

Chyuta (Sk.) Means, “the fallen” into generation, as a Kabbalist would say; the opposite of achyuta, something which is not subject to change or differentiation; said of deity.

 

Circle. There are several “Circles” with mystic adjectives attached to them. Thus we have: (1) the
“Decussated or Perfect Circle” of Plato, who shows it decussated in the form of the letter X ; (2) the
“Circle-dance” of the Amazons, around a Priapic image, the same as the dance of the Gopis around the Sun (Krishna), the shepherdesses representing the signs of the Zodiac ; (3) the “Circle of Necessity”
of 3,000 years of the Egyptians and of the Occultists, the duration of the cycle between rebirths or reincarnations being from 1,000 to 3,000 years on the average. This will be treated under the term
“Rebirth” or “Reincarnation”.

 

Clairaudience. The faculty, whether innate or acquired by occult training, of hearing all that is said at whatever distance.

 

Clairvoyance. The faculty of seeing with the inner eye or spiritual sight. As now used it is a loose and flippant term, embracing under its meaning a happy guess due to natural shrewdness or intuition, and also that faculty which was so remarkably exercised by Jacob Boehme and Swedenborg. Real clairvoyance means the faculty of seeing through the densest matter (the latter disappearing at the will and before the spiritual eye of the Seer), and irrespective of time (past, present and future) or distance.

 

Clemens Alexandrinus. A Church Father and a voluminous writer, who had been a Neo-Platonist and a disciple of Ammonius Saccas. He

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lived between the second and the third centuries of our era, at Alexandria.

 

Cock. A very occult bird, much appreciated in ancient augury and symbolism. According to the Zohar, the cock crows three times before the death of a person; and in Russia and all Slavonian countries whenever a person is ill on the premises where a cock is kept, its crowing is held to be a sign of inevitable death, unless the bird crows at the hour of midnight, or immediately afterwards, when its crowing is considered natural. As the cock was sacred to Ćsculapius, and a the latter was called the Soter (Saviour) who raised the dead to life, the Socratic exclamation “We owe a cock to Ćculapius”, just before the Sage’s death, is very suggestive. As the cock Was always connected in symbology with the Sun (or solar gods), Death and Resurrection, it has found its appropriate place in the four Gospels in the prophecy about Peter repudiating his Master before the cock crowed thrice. The cock is the most magnetic and sensitive of all birds, hence its Greek name alectruon.

 

Codex Nazaraeus (Lat.) The “Book of Adam”—the latter name meaning anthropos, Man or Humanity. The Nazarene faith is called sometimes the Bardesanian system, though Bardesanes (B.C. 155 to 228) does not seem to have had any connection with it. True, he was born at Edessa in Syria, and was a famous astrologer and Sabian before his alleged conversion. But he was a well-educated man of noble family, and would not have used the almost incomprehensible Chaldeo dialect mixed with the mystery language of the Gnostics, in which the Codex is written. The sect of the Nazarenes was pre-Christian. Pliny and Josephus speak of the Nazarites as settled on the banks of the Jordan 150 years B.C. (Ant.Jud. xiii. p. 9); and Munk says that the “Naziareate was an institution established before the laws of Musah” or Moses. (Munk p. 169.) Their modern name is in Arabic— El Mogtasila; in European languages—the
Mendćans or “Christians of St. John”. (See “Baptism”.) But if the term Baptists may well be applied to them, it is not with the Christian meaning: for while they were, and still are Sabians, or pure astrolaters, the Mendćans of Syria, called the Galileans, are pure polytheists, as every traveller in Syria and on the Euphrates can ascertain, once he acquaints himself with their mysterious rites and ceremonies. (See Isis Unv. ii. 290, et seq.) So secretly did they preserve their beliefs from the very beginning, that Epiphanius who wrote against the Heresies in the14th century confesses himself unable to say what they believed in (i. 122); he simply states that they never mention the name of Jesus, nor do they call themselves Christians (loc. cit. 190. Yet it is undeniable that

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some of the alleged philosophical views and doctrines of Bardesanes are found in the codex of the Nazarenes. (See Norberg’s Codex Nazarćous or the “Book of Adam”, and also “Mendćans ”.)

 

Coeur, Jacques. A famous Treasurer of France, born in 1408, who obtained the office by black magic. He was reputed as a great alchemist and his wealth became fabulous; but he was soon banished from the country, and retiring to the Island of Cyprus, died there in 1460, leaving behind enormous wealth, endless legends and a bad reputation.

 

Coffin-Rite, or Pastos. This was the final rite of Initiation in the Mysteries in Egypt, Greece and elsewhere. The last and supreme secrets of Occultism could not be revealed to the Disciple until he had passed through this allegorical ceremony of Death and Resurrection into new light. “The Greek verb teleutaó,” says Vronsky, “signifies in the active voice ‘I die’, and in the middle voice ‘I am initiated”. Stobćus quotes an ancient author, who says, “The mind is affected in death, just as it is in the initiation into the Mysteries ; and word answers to word, as well as thing to thing ; for teleutan is ‘ to die ‘, and teleisthai ‘to be initiated’”. And thus, as Mackenzie corroborates, when the Aspirant was placed in the Pastos, Bed, or Coffin (in India on the lathe, as explained in the Secret Doctrine), “he was symbolically said to die.”

 

Collanges, Gabriel de. Born in 1524. The best astrologer in the XVlth century and a still better Kabbalist. He spent a fortune in the unravelling of its mysteries. It was rumoured that he died through poison administered to him by a Jewish Rabbin-Kabbalist.

 

College of Rabbis. A college at Babylon; most famous during the early centuries of Christianity. Its glory, however, was greatly darkened by the appearance in Alexandria of Hellenic teachers, such as Philo Judćus, Josephus, Aristobulus and others. The former avenged themselves on their successful rivals by speaking of the Alexandrians as theurgists and unclean prophets. But the Alexandrian believers in thaumaturgy were not regarded as sinners or impostors when orthodox Jews were at the head of such schools of “hazim”. These were colleges for teaching prophecy and occult sciences. Samuel was the chief of such a college at Ramah; Elisha at Jericho. Hillel had a regular academy for prophets and seers; and it is Hillel, a pupil of the Babylonian College, who was the founder of the Sect of the Pharisees and the great orthodox Rabbis.

 

Collemann, Jean. An Alsatian, born at Orleans, according to K. Mackenzie; other accounts say he was a Jew, who found favour owing to his astrological studies, with both Charles VII. and Louis XI., and that he had a bad influence on the latter.

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Collyridians. A sect of Gnostics who, in the ear]y centuries of Christianity, transferred their worship and reverence from Astoreth to Mary, as Queen of Heaven and Virgin. Regarding the two as identical, they offered to the latter as they had done to the former, buns and cakes on certain days, with sexual symbols represented on them.

 

Continents. In the Buddhist cosmogony, according to Gautama Buddha’s exoteric doctrine, there are numberless systems of worlds (or Sakwala) all of which are born, mature, decay, and are destroyed periodically. Orientalists translate the teaching about “the four great continents which do not communicate with each other”, as meaning that “upon the earth there are four great continents” (see Hardy’s Eastern Monachism, p. 4), while the doctrine means simply that around or above the earth there are on either side four worlds, i.e., the earth appearing as the fourth on each side of the arc.

 

Corybantes, Mysteries of the. These were held in Phrygia in honour of Atys, the youth beloved by Cybele. The rites were very elaborate within the temple and very noisy and tragic in public. They began by a public bewailing of the death of Atys and ended in tremendous rejoicing at his resurrection. The statue or image of the victim of Jupiter’s jealousy was placed during the ceremony in a pastos (coffin), and the priests sang his sufferings. Atys, as Visvakarma in India, was a representative of Initiation and Adeptship. He is shown as being born impotent, because chastity is a requisite of the life of an aspirant. Atys is said to have established the rites and worship of Cybele, in Lydia. (See Pausan., vii., c. 17.)

 

Cosmic Gods. Inferior gods, those connected with the formation of matter.

 

Cosmic ideation (Occult.) Eternal thought, impressed on substance or spirit-matter, in the eternity ; thought which becomes active at the beginning of every new life-cycle.

 

Cosmocratores (Gr.). “Builders of the Universe”, the “world architects”, or the Creative Forces personified.

 

Cow-worship. The idea of any such “worship” is as erroneous as it is unjust. No Egyptian worshipped the cow, nor does any Hindu worship this animal now, though it is true that the cow and bull were sacred then as they are to-day, but only as the natural physical symbol of a metaphysical ideal; even as a church made of bricks and mortar is sacred to the civilized Christian because of its associations and not by reason of its walls. The cow was sacred to Isis, the Universal Mother, Nature, and to the Hathor, the female principle in Nature, the two goddesses being allied to both sun and moon, as the disk and the cow’s

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horns (crescent) prove. (See “Hathor ‘ and “isis”.) In the Vedas, the Dawn of Creation is represented by a cow. This dawn is Hathor, and the day which follows, or Nature already formed, is Isis, for both are one except in the matter of time. Hathor the elder is “the mistress of the seven mystical cows ” and Isis, “the Divine Mother is the “cow-horned” the cow of plenty (or Nature, Earth), and, as the mother of Horus (the physical world)—the “mother of all that lives The outa was the symbolic eye of Horus, the right being the sun, and the left the moon. The right “eye” of Horus was called “the cow of Hathor”, and served as a powerful amulet, as the dove in a nest of rays or glory, with or without the cross, is a talisman with Christians, Latins and Greeks. The Bull and the Lion which we often find in company with Luke and Mark in the frontispiece of their respective Gospels in the Greek and Latin texts, are explained as symbols—-which is indeed the fact. Why not admit the same in the case of the Egyptian sacred Bulls, Cows, Rams, and Birds?

 

Cremer, John. An eminent scholar who for over thirty years studied Hermetic philosophy in pursuance of its practical secrets, while he was at the same time Abbot of Westminster While on a voyage to Italy, he met the famous Raymond Lully whom he induced to return with him to England. Lully divulged to Cremer the secrets of the stone, for which service the monastery offered daily prayers for him. Cremer, says the Royal Masonic Cyclopedia, “having obtained a profound knowledge of the secrets of Alchemy, became a most celebrated and learned adept in occult philosophy . . . lived to a good old age, and died in the reign of King Edward III.”

 

Crescent. Sin was the Assyrian name for the moon, and Sin-ai the Mount, the birth-place of Osiris, of Dionysos, Bacchus and several other gods. According to Rawlinson, the moon was held in higher esteem than the sun at Babylon, because darkness preceded light. The crescent was, therefore, a sacred symbol with almost every nation, before it became the ‘standard of the Turks. Says the author of Egyptian Belief, “ The crescent is not essentially a Mahometan ensign. On the contrary, it was a Christian one, derived through Asia from the Babylonian Astarte, Queen of Heaven, or from the Egyptian Isis . . . . whose emblem was the crescent. The Greek Christian Empire of Constantinople held it as their palladium. Upon the conquest of the Turks, the Mahometan Sultan adopted it for the symbol of his power. Since that time the crescent has been made to oppose the idea of the cross.”

 

Criocephale (Gr.). Ram-headed, applied to several deities and emblematic figures, notably those of ancient Egypt, which were designed

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about the period when the Sun passed, at the Vernal Equinox, from the sign Taurus to the sign Aries. Previously to this period, bull-headed and horned deities prevailed. Apis was the type of the Bull deity, Ammon that of the ram-headed type: Isis, too, had a Cow’s head allotted to her. Porphyry writes that the Greeks united the Ram to Jupiter and the Bull to Bacchus. [w.w.w.]

 

Crocodile. “The great reptile of Typhon.” The seat of its “worship” was Crocodilopolis and it was sacred to Set and Sebak—its alleged creators. The primitive Rishis in India, the Manus, and Sons of Brahmâ, are each the progenitors of some animal species, of which he is the alleged “father”; in Egypt, each god was credited with the formation or creation of certain animals which were sacred to him. Crocodiles must have been numerous in Egypt during the early dynasties, if one has to judge by the almost incalculable number of their mummies. Thousands upon thousands have been excavated from the grottoes of Moabdeh, and many a vast necropolis of that Typhonic animal is still left untouched. But the Crocodile was only worshipped where his god and “father” received honours. Typhon (q.v.) had once received such honours and, as Bunsen shows, had been considered a great god. His words are, “ Down to the time of Ramses B.C. 1300, Typhon was one of the most venerated and powerful gods, a god who pours blessings and life on the rulers of Egypt.” As explained elsewhere, Typhon is the material aspect of Osiris. When Typhon, the Quaternary, kills Osiris, the triad or divine Light, and cuts it metaphorically into 14 pieces, and separates himself from the “god”, he incurs the execration of the masses; he becomes the evil god, the storm and hurricane god, the burning sand of the Desert, the constant enemy of the Nile, and the “slayer of the evening beneficent dew”, because Osiris is the ideal Universe, Siva the great Regenerative Force, and Typhon the material portion of it, the evil side of the god, or the Destroying Siva. This is why the crocodile is also partly venerated and partly execrated. The appearance of the crocodile in the Desert, far from the water, prognosticated the happy event of the coming inundation—hence its adoration at Thebes and Ombos. But he destroyed thousands of human and animal beings yearly—hence also the hatred and persecution of the Crocodile at Elephantine and Tentyra.

 

Cross. Mariette Bey has shown its antiquity in Egypt by proving that in all the primitive sepulchres “the plan of the chamber has the form of a cross”. It is the symbol of the Brotherhood of races and men; and was laid on the breast of the corpses in Egypt, as it is now placed on the corpses of deceased Christians, and, in its Swastica form (croix

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cramponnée) on the hearts of the Buddhist adepts and Buddhas. (See “Calvary Cross”.)

 

Crux Ansata (Lat.). The handled cross,T; whereas the tau is T, in this form, and the oldest Egyptian cross or the tat is thus +. The crux ansata was the symbol of immortality, but the tat-cross was that of spirit-matter and had the significance of a sexual emblem. The crux ansata was the foremost symbol in the Egyptian Masonry instituted by Count Cagliostro; and Masons must have indeed forgotten the primitive significance of their highest symbols, if some of their authorities still insist that the crux ansata is only a combination of the cteis (or yoni) and phallus (or lingham). Far from this. The handle or ansa had a double significance, but never a phallic one; as an attribute of Isis it was the mundane circle; as symbol of law on the breast of a mummy it was that of immortality, of an endless and beginningless eternity, that which descends upon and grows out of the plane of material nature, the horizontal feminine line, surmounting the vertical male line—the fructifying male principle in nature or spirit. Without the handle the crux ansata became the tau T, which, left by itself, is an androgyne symbol, and becomes purely phallic or sexual only when it takes the shape +.

 

Crypt (Gr.) A secret subterranean vault, some for the purpose of initiation, others for burial purposes. There were crypts under every temple in antiquity. There was one on the Mount of Olives, lined with red stucco, and built before the advent of the Jews.

 

Curetes. The Priest-Initiates of ancient Crete, in the service of Cybele. Initiation in their temples was very severe ; it lasted twenty-seven days, during which time the aspirant was left by himself in a crypt, undergoing terrible trials. Pythagoras was initiated into these rites and came out victorious.

 

Cutha. An ancient city in Babylonia after which a tablet giving an account of “creation” is named.
The “Cutha tablet” speaks of a temple of Sittam”, in the sanctuary of Nergal, the “giant king of
war, lord of the city of Cutha”, and is purely esoteric, it has to be read symbolically, if at all.

 

Cycle. From the Greek Kuklos. The ancients divided time into end less cycles, wheels within wheels, all such periods being of various durations, and each marking the beginning or the end of some event either cosmic, mundane, physical or metaphysical. There were cycles of only a few years, and cycles of immense duration, the great Orphic cycle, referring to the ethnological change of races, lasting 120,000 years, and the cycle of Cassandrus of 136,000, which brought about a complete

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change in planetary influences and their correlations between men and gods—a fact entirely lost sight of by modern astrologers.

 

Cynocephalus (Gr.) The Egyptian Hapi. There was a notable difference between the ape-headed gods and the “Cynocephalus” (Simia hamadryas), 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. They are almost invariably found in a crouching posture, holding on one hand the outa (the eye of Horus), and in the other the sexual cross. Isis is seen sometimes riding on an ape, to designate the fall of divine nature into generation.

                        

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D.  Both in the English and Hebrew alphabets the fourth letter, whose numerical value is four. The symbolical signification in the Kabbala of the Daleth is “door”. It is the Greek delta D, through which the world (whose symbol is the tetrad or number four,) issued, producing the divine seven. The name of the Tetrad was Harmony with the Pythagoreans, “because it is a diatessaron in sesquitertia”. With the Kabbalists, the divine name associated with Daleth was Daghoul.

 

Daath (Heb.) Knowledge; “the conjunction of Chokmah and Binah, Wisdom and Understanding”: sometimes, in error, called a Sephira. [w.w.w.]

 

Dabar (Heb.) D (a) B (a) R (im), meaning the “Word”, and the “Words” in the Chaldean Kabbala, Dabar and Logoi. (See Sec.Doct. I. p. 350, and “Logos”, or “Word”.)

 

Dabistan (Pers.) The land of Iran; ancient Persia.

 

Dache-Dachus (Chald.) The dual emanation of Moymis, the progeny of the dual or androgynous World-Principle, the male Apason and female Tauthe. Like all theocratic nations possessing Temple mysteries, the Babylonians never mentioned the “One” Principle of the Universe, nor did they give it a name. This made Damascious (Theogonies) remark that like the rest of “ barbarians” the Babylonians passed it over in silence. Tauthe was the mother of the gods, while Apason was her self-generating male power, Moymis, the ideal universe, being her only-begotten son, and emanating in his turn Dache-Dachus, and at last Belus, the Demiurge of the objective Universe.

 

Dactyli (Gr.) From daktulos, “a finger”. The name given to the Phrygian Hierophants of Kybele, who were regarded as the greatest magicians and exorcists. They were five or ten in number because of the five fingers on one hand that blessed, and the ten on both hands which evoke the gods. They also healed by manipulation or mesmerism.

 

Dadouchos (Gr.) The torch-hearer, one of the four celebrants in the Eleusinian mysteries. There were several attached to the temples but they appeared in public only at the Panathenaic Games at Athens, to preside over the so-called “torch-race”. (See Mackenzie’s R.M, Cyclopćdia.)

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Dćmon (Gr.) In the original Hermetic works and ancient classics it has a meaning identical with that of “god”, “angel” or “genius”. The Dćmon of Socrates is the incorruptible part of the man, or rather the real inner man which we call Nous or the rational divine Ego. At all events the Dćmon (or Daimon of the great Sage was surely not the demon of the Christian Hell or of Christian orthodox theology. The name was given by ancient peoples, and especially the philosophers of the Alexandrian school, to all kinds of spirits, whether good or bad, human or otherwise. The appellation is often synonymous with that of gods or angels. But some philosophers tried, with good reason, to make a just distinction between the many classes.

 

Dćnam (Pahlavi) Lit., “Knowledge”, the principle of understanding in man, rational Soul, or Manas, according to the Avesta.

 

Dag, Dagon (Heb.). “Fish” and also “Messiah”. Dagon was the Chaldean man-fish Oannes, the mysterious being who arose daily out of the depths of the sea to teach people every useful science. He was also called Annedotus.

 

Dâgoba (Sk.), or Stűpa. Lit: a sacred mound or tower for Buddhist holy relics. These are pyramidal-looking mounds scattered all over India and Buddhist countries, such as Ceylon, Burmah, Central Asia, etc. They are of various sizes, and generally contain some small relics of Saints or those claimed to have belonged to Gautama, the Buddha. As the human body is supposed to consist of 84,000 dhâtus (organic cells with definite vital functions in them), Asoka is said for this reason to have built 84,000 dhâtu-gopas or Dâgobas in honour of every cell of the Buddha’s body, each of which has now become a dhârmadhâtu or holy relic. There is in Ceylon a Dhâtu-gopa at Anurâdhapura said to date from160 years B.C. They are now built pyramid-like, but the primitive Dâgobas were all shaped like towers with a cupola and several tchhatra (umbrellas) over them. Eitel states that the Chinese Dâgobas have all from 7 to 14 tchhatras over them, a number which is symbolical of the human body.

 

Daitya Guru (Sk.) The instructor of the giants, called Daityas (q.v.) Allegorically, it is the title given to the planet Venus-Lucifer, or rather to its indwelling Ruler, Sukra, a male deity
(See Sec. Doct.. ii. p. 30).

 

Daityas (Sk.) Giants, Titans, and exoterically demons, but in truth identical with certain Asuras, the intellectual gods, the opponents of the useless gods of ritualism and the enemies of puja sacrifices.

 

Daivi-prakriti (Sk.) Primordial, homogeneous light, called by some Indian Occultists “the Light of the Logos” (see Notes on the Bhagavat Gita, by T. Subba Row, B.A., L.L.B.); when differentiated this light becomes FOHAT.

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Dâkinî (Sk.) Female demons, vampires and blood-drinkers (asra-pas). In the Purânas they attend upon the goddess Kâli and feed on human flesh. A species of evil “Elementals” (q.v.).

 

Daksha (Sk.) A form of Brahmâ and his son in the Purânas But the Rig Veda states that “Daksha sprang from Aditi, and Aditi from Daksha”, which proves him to be a personified correlating Creative Force acting on all the planes. The Orientalists seem very much perplexed what to make of him; but Roth is nearer the truth than any, when saying that Daksha is the spiritual power, and at the same time the male energy that generates the gods in eternity, which is represented by Aditi. The Purânas as a matter of course, anthropomorphize the idea, and show Daksha instituting “sexual intercourse on this earth”, after trying every other means of procreation. The generative Force, spiritual at the commencement, becomes of course at the most material end of its evolution a procreative Force on the physical plane ; and so far the Purânic allegory is correct, as the Secret Science teaches that our present mode of procreation began towards the end of the third Root-Race.

 

Daladâ (Sk.)A very precious relic of Gautama the Buddha; viz., his supposed left canine tooth preserved at the great temple at Kandy, Ceylon. Unfortunately, the relic shown is not genuine. The latter has been securely secreted for several hundred years, ever since the shameful and bigoted attempt by the Portuguese (the then ruling power in Ceylon) to steal and make away with the real relic. That which is shown in the place of the real thing is the monstrous tooth of some animal.

 

Dama (Sk.). Restraint of the senses.

 

Dambulla (Sk.) The name of a huge rock in Ceylon. It is about 400 feet above the level of the sea. Its upper portion is excavated, and several large cave-temples, or Vihâras, are cut out of the solid rock, all of these being of pre-Christian date. They are considered as the best- preserved antiquities in the island. The North side of the rock is vertical and quite inaccessible, but on the South side, about 150 feet from its summit, its huge overhanging granite mass has been fashioned into a platform with a row of large cave-temples excavated in the surrounding walls—evidently at an enormous sacrifice of labour and money. Two Vihâras may he mentioned out of the many: the Maha Râja Vihâra, 172 ft. in length and 75 in breadth, in which there are upwards of fifty figures of Buddha, most of them larger than life and all formed from the solid rock. A well has been dug out at the foot of the central Dâgoba and from a fissure in the rock there constantly drips into it beautiful clear water which is kept for sacred purposes. In the other, the Maha

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Dewiyo Vihâra, there is to be seen a gigantic figure of the dead Gautama Buddha, 7 feet long, reclining on a couch and pillow cut out of solid rock like the rest. “This long, narrow and dark temple, the position and placid aspect of Buddha, together with the stillness of the place, tend to impress the beholder with the idea that he is in the chamber of death. The priest asserts . . . . that such was Buddha, and such were those (at his feet stands an attendant) who witnessed the last moments of his mortality” (Hardy’s East. Monachism). The view from Dambulla is magnificent. On the large rock platform which seems to he now more visited by very intelligent tame white monkeys than by monks, there stands a huge Bo-Tree, one of the numerous scions from the original Bo-Tree under which the Lord Siddhârtha reached Nirvâna. “About 50 ft. from the summit there is a pond which, as the priests assert, is never without water.”
(The Ceylon Almanac, 1834.)

 

Dammâpadan (Pali.) A Buddhist work containing moral precepts.

 

Dâna (Sk.). Almsgiving to mendicants, lit., “charity”, the first of the six Paramitas in Buddhism.

 

Dânavas (Sk.). Almost the same as Daityas; giants and demons, the opponents of the ritualistic gods.

 

Dangma (Sk.) In Esotericism a purified Soul. A Seer and an Initiate; one who has attained full wisdom.

 

Daos (Chald.) The seventh King (Shepherd) of the divine Dynasty, who reigned over the Babylonians for the space of ten sari, or 36,000 years, a saros being of 3,600 years’ duration. In his time four Annedoti, or Men-fishes (Dagons) made their appearance.

 

Darâsta (Sk) Ceremonial magic practised by the central Indian tribes, especially among the Kolarians.

 

Dardanus (Gr.) The Son of Jupiter and Electra, who received the Kabeiri gods as a dowry, and took them to Samothrace, where they were worshipped long before the hero laid the foundations of Troy, and before Tyre and Sidon were ever heard of, though Tyre was built 2,760 years B.C.
(See for fuller details “Kabiri”.)

 

Darha (Sk.) The ancestral spirits of the Kolarians.

 

Darsanas (Sk.) The Schools of Indian philosophy, of which there are six; Shad-darsanas or six demonstrations.

 

Dasa-sil (Pali.) The ten obligations or commandments taken by and binding upon the priests of Buddha; the five obligations or Pansil are taken by laymen.

 

Dava (Tib.) The moon, in Tibetan astrology.

 

Davkina (Chald.) The wife of Hea, “the goddess of the lower regions,

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the consort of the Deep”, the mother of Merodach, the Bel of later times, and mother to many river-gods, Hea being the god of the lower regions, the “lord of the Sea or abyss”, and also the lord of Wisdom.

 

Dayanisi (Aram.). The god worshipped by the Jews along with other Semites, as the “Ruler of men”; Dionysos—the Sun; whence Jehovah Nissi, or Iao-Nisi, the same as Dio-nysos or Jove of Nyssa.
(See
Isis Unveil. II. 526.)

 

Day of Brahmâ. See “Brahmâ's Day” etc.

 

Dayus or Dyaus (Sk). A Vedic term. The unrevealed Deity, or that which reveals Itself only as light and the bright day—metaphorically.

 

Death, Kiss of. According to the Kabbalah, the earnest follower does not die by the power of the Evil Spirit, Yetzer ha Rah, but by a kiss from the mouth of Jehovah Tetragrammaton, meeting him in the Haikal Ahabah or Palace of Love. [w.w.w.]

 

Dei termini (Lat.). The name for pillars with human heads representing Hermes, placed at cross-roads by the ancient Greeks and Romans. Also the general name for deities presiding over boundaries
and frontiers.

 

Deist. One who admits the existence of a god or gods, but claims to know nothing of either and denies revelation. A Freethinker of olden times.

 

Demerit. In Occult and Buddhistic parlance, a constituent of Karma. It is through avidya or ignorance of vidya, divine illumination, that merit and demerit are produced. Once an Arhat obtains full illumination and perfect control over his personality and lower nature, he ceases to create merit and demerit

 

Demeter The Hellenic name for the Latin Ceres, the goddess of corn and tillage. The astronomical sign, Virgo. The Eleusinian Mysteries were celebrated in her honour.

 

Demiurgic Mind.The same as “Universal Mind”. Mahat, the first “product” of Brahmâ, or himself.

 

Demiurgos (Gr) The Demiurge or Artificer; the Supernal Power which built the universe. Freemasons derive from this word their phrase of “Supreme Architect ”. With the Occultists it is the third manifested Logos, or Plato’s “second god”, the second logos being represented by him as the “Father”, the only Deity that he dared mention as an Initiate into the Mysteries.

 

Demon est Deus inversus (Lat) A Kabbalistic axiom; lit., “the devil is god reversed”; which means that there is neither evil nor good, but that the forces which create the one create the other, according to the nature of the materials they find to work upon.

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Demonologia (Gr.). Treatises or Discourses upon Demons, or Gods in their dark aspects.

 

Demons. According to the Kabbalah, the demons dwell in the world of Assiah, the world of matter and of the “shells”’ of the dead. They are the Klippoth. There are Seven Hells, whose demon dwellers represent the vices personified. Their prince is Samael, his female companion is Isheth Zenunim—the woman of prostitution: united in aspect, they are named “The Beast”, Chiva. [w.w.w.]

 

Demrusch (Pers.). A Giant in the mythology of ancient Iran.

 

Denis, Angoras. “A physician of Paris, astrologer and alchemist in the XIVth century” (R.M.C.).

 

Deona Mati. In the Kolarian dialect, one who exorcises evil spirits.

 

Dervish. A Mussulman—Turkish or Persian—ascetic. A nomadic and wandering monk. Dervishes, however, sometimes live in communities. They are often called the “whirling charmers”. Apart from his austerities of life, prayer and contemplation, the Turkish, Egyptian, or Arabic devotee presents but little similarity with the Hindu fakir, who is also a Mussulman. The latter may become a saint and holy mendicant the former will never reach beyond his second class of occult manifestations. The dervish may also be a strong mesmerizer, but he will never voluntarily submit to the abominable and almost incredible self-punishment which the fakir invents for himself with an ever-increasing avidity, until nature succumbs and he dies in slow and excruciating tortures. The most dreadful operations, such as flaying the limbs alive; cutting off the toes, feet, and legs ; tearing out the eyes and causing one’s self to be buried alive up to the chin in the earth, and passing whole months in this posture, seem child’s play to them. The Dervish must not be confused with the Hindu sanyâsi or yogi. (See “Fakir”).

 

Desatir. A very ancient Persian work called the Book of Shet. It speaks of the thirteen Zoroasters, and is very mystical.

 

Deva (Sk.). A god, a “resplendent” deity. Deva-Deus, from the root div “to shine”. A Deva is a celestial being—whether good, bad, or indifferent. Devas inhabit “the three worlds”, which are the three planes above us. There are 33 groups or 330 millions of them.

 

Deva Sarga (Sk.). Creation: the origin of the principles, said to be Intelligence born of the qualities or the attributes of nature.

 

Devachan (Sk.). The “dwelling of the gods”. A state intermediate between two earth-lives, into which the EGO (Atmâ-Buddhi-Manas, or the Trinity made One) enters, after its separation from Kâma Rupa, and the disintegration of the lower principles on earth.

 

Devajnânas (Sk.). or Daivajna. The higher classes of celestial beings, those who possess divine knowledge.

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Devaki (Sk.). The mother of Krishna. She was shut up in a dungeon by her brother, King Kansa, for fear of the fulfilment of a prophecy which stated that a son of his sister should dethrone and kill him. Notwithstanding the strict watch kept, Devaki was overshadowed by Vishnu, the holy Spirit, and thus gave birth to that god’s avatara, Krishna. (See “Kansa”.)

 

Deva-laya (Sk.). “The shrine of a Deva”. The name given to all Brahmanical temples.

 

Deva-lôkas (Sk.). The abodes of the Gods or Devas in superior spheres. The seven celestial worlds above Meru.

 

Devamâtri (Sk.). Lit., “the mother of the gods”. A title of Aditi, Mystic Space.

 

Dęvanâgarî (Sk.). Lit., “the language or letters of the dęvas” or gods. The characters of the Sanskrit language. The alphabet and the art of writing were kept secret for ages, as the Dwijas (Twice-born) and the Dikshitas (Initiates) alone were permitted to use this art. It was a crime for a. Sudra to recite a verse of the Vedas, and for any of the two lower castes (Vaisya and Sudra) to know the letters was an offence punishable by death. Therefore is the word lipi, ‘‘writing”, absent from the oldest MSS., a fact which gave the Orientalists the erroneous and rather incongruous idea that writing was not only unknown before the day of Pânini, but even to that sage himself That the greatest grammarian the world has ever produced should be ignorant of writing would indeed be the greatest and most incomprehensible phenomenon of all.

 

Devapi (Sk.). A Sanskrit Sage of the race of Kuru, who, together with another Sage (Moru), is supposed to live throughout the four ages and until the coming of Maitreya Buddha, or Kalki (the last Avatar of Vishnu) ; who, like all the Saviours of the World in their last appearance, like Sosiosh of the Zoroastrians and the Rider of St. Johns Revelation, will appear seated on a White Horse. The two, Devapi and Moru, are supposed to live in a Himalayan retreat called Kalapa or Katapa. This is a Purânic allegory.

 

Devarshis, or Deva-rishi (Sk). Lit., “gods rishis” ; the divine or god like saints, those sages who attain a fully divine nature on earth.

 

Devasarman (Sk.). A very ancient author who died about a century after Gautama Buddha. He wrote two famous works, in which he denied the existence of both Ego and non-Ego, the one as successfully as the other.

 

Dhârana (Sk). That state in Yoga practice when the mind has to be fixed unflinchingly on some object of meditation.

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Dhâranî(Sk.). In Buddhism—both Southern and Northern—and also in Hinduism, it means simply a mantra or mantras—sacred verses from the Rig Veda. In days of old these mantras or Dhâranî were all considered mystical and practically efficacious in their use. At present, however, it is the Yogâchârya school alone which proves the claim in practice. When chanted according to given instructions a
Dhâranî produces wonderful effects. Its occult power, however, does not reside in the words but in the inflexion or accent given and the resulting sound originated thereby. (See “Mantra” and “Akasa”).

 

Dharma (Sk.). The sacred Law; the Buddhist Canon.

 

Dharmachakra (Sk.). Lit., The turning of the “wheel of the Law”. The emblem of Buddhism as a system of cycles and rebirths or reincarnations.

 

Dharmakâya (Sk). Lit., “the glorified spiritual body” called the “Vesture of Bliss”. The third, or highest of the Trikâya (Three Bodies), the attribute developed by every “Buddha”, i.e., every initiate who has crossed or reached the end of what is called the “fourth Path” (in esotericism the sixth “portal” prior to his entry on the seventh). The highest of the Trikâya, it is the fourth of the Buddhakchętra, or Buddhic planes of consciousness, represented figuratively in Buddhist asceticism as a robe or vesture of luminous Spirituality.
In popular Northern Buddhism these vestures or robes are:
(1) Nirmanakâya  (2) Sambhogakâya (3) and Dharmakâya the last being the highest and most sublimated of all, as it places the ascetic on the threshold of Nirvâna. (See, however, the Voice of the Silence, page 96, Glossary, for the true esoteric meaning.)

 

Dharmaprabhasa (Sk). The name of the Buddha who will appear during the seventh Root-race. (See “Ratnâvabhâsa Kalpa”, when sexes will exist no longer).

 

Dharmasmriti Upasthâna (Sk). A very long compound word containing a very mystical warning. “Remember, the constituents (of human nature) originate according to the Nidânas, and are-not originally the Self”, which means—that, which the Esoteric Schools teach, and not the ecclesiastical interpretation.

 

Dharmâsôka (Sk.). The name given to the first Asoka after his conversion to Buddhism,—King Chandragupta, who served all his long life “Dharma”, or the law of Buddha. King Asoka (the second) was not converted, but was born a Buddhist.

 

Dhâtu (Pali). Relics of Buddha’s body collected after his cremation.

 

Dhruva (Sk). An Aryan Sage, now the Pole Star. A Kshatriya (one of the warrior caste) who became through religious austerities a

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Rishi, and was, for this reason, raised by Vishnu to this eminence in the skies. Also called Grah-Âdhâr or “the pivot of the planets”.

 

Dhyan Chohans (Sk). Lit., “The Lords of Light”. The highest gods, answering to the Roman Catholic Archangels. The divine Intelligences charged with the supervision of Kosmos.

 

Dhyâna (Sk.). In Buddhism one of the six Paramitas of perfection, a state of abstraction which carries the ascetic practising it far above this plane of sensuous perception and out of the world of matter.
Lit., “contemplation”. The six stages of Dhyan differ only in the degrees of abstraction of the personal Ego from sensuous life.

 

Dhyani Bodhisattyas (Sk.). In Buddhism, the five sons of the Dhyani-Buddhas. They have a mystic meaning in Esoteric Philosophy.

 

Dhyani Buddhas (Sk.). They “of the Merciful Heart”; worshipped especially in Nepaul. These have again a secret meaning.

 

Dhyani Pasa (Sk.). “The rope of the Dhyanis” or Spirits; the Ring “Pass not” (See Sec.Doct., Stanza V., Vol. I., p. 129).

 

Diakka. Called by Occultists and Theosophists “spooks” and “shells”, i.e., phantoms from Kâma Loka. A word invented by the great American Seer, Andrew Jackson Davis, to denote what he considers untrustworthy “Spirits”. In his own words: “A Diakka (from the Summerland) is one who takes insane delight in playing parts, in juggling tricks, in personating opposite characters; to whom prayer and profane utterances are of equi-value; surcharged with a passion for lyrical narrations; . . . morally deficient, he is without the active feelings of justice, philanthropy, or tender affection. He knows nothing of what men call the sentiment of gratitude; the ends of hate and love are the same to him; his motto is often fearful and terrible to others—SELF is the whole of private living, and exalted annihilation the end of all private life. Only yesterday, one said to a lady medium, signing himself Swedenborg, this: ‘Whatsoever is, has been, will be, or may be, that I AM.; and private life is but the aggregative phantasms of thinking throb- lets, rushing in their rising onward to the central heart of eternal death’

(The Diakka and their Victims; “an explanation of the False and Repulsive in Spiritualism.”) These “Diakka” are then simply the communicating and materializing so-called “Spirits” of Mediums and Spiritualists.

 

Dianoia (Gr.). The same as the Logos. The eternal source of thought, “divine ideation”, which is the root of all thought. (See “Ennoia.”)

 

Dido, or Elissa. Astarte; the Virgin of the Sea—who crushes the Dragon under her foot; The patroness of the Phoćnician mariners. A Queen of Carthage who fell in love with Ćneas according to Virgil.

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Digambara (Sk.). A naked mendicant. Lit., “clothed with Space”. A name of Siva in his character of Rudra, the Yogi.

 

Dii Minores (Lat.). The inferior or “reflected group of the twelve gods ” or Dii Majores, described by Cicero in his De Natura Deorum, I. 13.

 

Dîk (Sk). Space, Vacuity.

 

Diktamnon (Gr.), or Dictemnus (Dittany). A curious plant possessing very occult and mystical properties and well-known from ancient times. It was sacred to the Moon-Goddesses. Luna, Astarte, Diana. The Cretan name of Diana was Diktynna, and as such the goddess wore a wreath made of this magic plant. The Dihtamnon is an evergreen shrub whose contact, as claimed in Occultism, develops and at the same time cures somnambulism. Mixed with Verbena it will produce clairvoyance and ecstasy. Pharmacy attributes to the Dihtamnon strongly sedative and quieting properties. It grows in abundance on Mount Dicte, in Crete, and enters into many magical performances resorted to by the Cretans even to this day.

 

Diksha (Sk). Initiation. Dikshit, an Initiate.

 

Dingir and Mul-lil (Akkad.). The Creative Gods.

 

Dinur (Heb.). The River of Fire whose flame burns the Souls of the guilty in the Kabbalistic allegory.

 

Dionysos (Sk.). The Demiurgos, who, like Osiris, was killed by the Titans and dismembered into fourteen parts. He was the personified Sun, or as the author of the Great Dionysiak Myth says “He is Phanes, the spirit of material visibility, Kyklops giant of the Universe, with one bright solar eye, the growth-power of the world, the all-pervading animism of things, son of Semele Dionysos was born at Nysa or Nissi, the name given by the Hebrews to Mount Sinai (Exodus xvii. 15), the birthplace of Osiris, which identifies both suspiciously with “Jehovah Nissi”. (See Isis Unv. II. 165, 526.)

 

Dioscuri (Gr.). The name of Castor and Pollux, the sons of Jupiter and Leda. Their festival, the Dioscuria, was celebrated with much rejoicing by the Lacedćmonians.

 

Dîpamkara (Sk.). Lit., “the Buddha of fixed light”; a predecessor of Gautama, the Buddha.

 

Diploteratology (Gr.). Production of mixed Monsters; in abbreviation teratology.

 

Dis (Gr.). In the Theogony of Damascius, the same as Protogonos, the “first born light”, called by that author “the disposer of all things.

 

Dises (Scand.). The later name for the divine women called Walky-rics, Norns, &c., in the Edda.

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Disk-worship. This was very common in Egypt but not till later times, as it began with Amenoph III., a Dravidian, who brought it from Southern India and Ceylon. It was Sun-worship under another form, the Aten-Nephru, Aten-Ra being identical with the Adonai of the Jews, the “ Lord of Heaven” or the Sun. The winged disk was the emblem of the Soul. The Sun was at one time the symbol of Universal Deity shining on the whole world and all creatures; the Sabćans regarded the Sun as the Demiurge and a Universal Deity, as did also the Hindus, and as do the Zoroastrians to this day. The Sun is undeniably the one creator of physical nature. Lenormant was obliged, notwithstanding his orthodox Christianity, to denounce the resemblance between disk and Jewish worship. “Aten represents the Adonai or Lord, the Assyrian Tammuz, and the Syrian Adonis”(The Gr. Dionys. Myth.)

 

Divyachakchus (Sk.). Lit., “celestial Eye” or divine seeing, perception. It is the first of the six
“Abhijnas” (q.v.) ; the faculty developed by Yoga practice to perceive any object in the Universe, at whatever distance.

 

Divyasrôtra (Sk). Lit., “celestial Ear” Or divine hearing. The second “Abhijna”, or the faculty of understanding the language or sound produced by any living being on Earth.

 

Djâti (Sk.). One of the twelve “Nidanas” (q.v.); the cause and the effect in the mode of birth taking place according to the “Chatur Yoni”(q.v.), when in each case a being, whether man or animal, is placed in one of the six (esoteric seven) Gâti or paths of sentient existence, which esoterically, counting downward, are: (1) the highest Dhyani (Anupadaka); (2) Devas ; (3) Men; (4) Elementals or Nature Spirits; (5) Animals; (6) lower Elementals; (7) organic Germs. These are in the popular or exoteric nomenclature, Devas, Men, Asűras, Beings in Hells, Prętas (hungry demons), and Animals.

 

Djin (Arab.). Elementals ; Nature Sprites; Genii. The Djins or Jins are much dreaded in Egypt, Persia and elsewhere.

 

Djnâna (Sk), or Jnâna. Lit., Knowledge; esoterically, “supernal or divine knowledge acquired by Yoga”. Written also Gnyana.

 

Docetć (Gr.). Lit.,“The Illusionists”. The name given by orthodox Christians to those Gnostics who held that Christ did not, nor could he, suffer death actually, but that, if such a thing had happened, it was merely an illusion which they explained in various ways.

 

Dodecahedron (Gr.). According to Plato, the Universe is built by “the first begotten” on the geometrical figure of the Dodecahedron. (See Timaeus).

 

Dodona (Gr.). An ancient city in Thessaly, famous for its Temple of

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Jupiter and its oracles. According to ancient legends, the town was founded by a dove.

 

Donar (Scand.), or Thunar, Thor. In the North the God of Thunder. He was the Jupiter Tonans of Scandinavia. Like as the oak was devoted to Jupiter so was it sacred to Thor, and his altars were over shadowed with oak trees. Thor, or Donar, was the offspring of Odin, “the omnipotent God of Heaven”, and of Mother Earth.

 

Dondam-pai-den-pa (Tib.). The same as the Sanskrit term Paramarthasatya or “absolute truth”, the highest spiritual self-consciousness and perception, divine self-consciousness, a very mystical term.

 

Doppelgänger (Germ.). A synonym of the “Double” and of the “Astral body” in occult parlance.

 

Dorjesempa (Tib.). The “Diamond Soul”, a name of the celestial Buddha.

 

Dorjeshang (Tib.). A title of Buddha in his highest aspect; a name of the supreme Buddha; also Dorje.

 

Double. The same as the “Astral body” or “Doppelgänger”.

 

Double Image. The name among the Jewish Kabbalists for the Dual Ego, called respectively: the Higher, Metatron, and the Lower, Samael. They are figured allegorically as the two inseparable companions of man through life, the one his Guardian Angel, the other his Evil Demon.

 

Dracontia (Gr.). Temples dedicated to the Dragon, the emblem of the Sun, the symbol of Deity,
of Life and Wisdom. The Egyptian Karnac, the Carnac in Britanny, and Stonehenge are Dracontia
well known to all.

 

Drakôn (Gr.) or Dragon. Now considered a “mythical” monster, perpetuated in the West only on seals,. &c., as a heraldic griffin, and the Devil slain by St. George, &c. In fact an extinct antediluvian monster In Babylonian antiquities it is referred to as the “scaly one” and connected on many gems with Tiamat the sea. “The Dragon of the Sea” is repeatedly mentioned. In Egypt, it is the star of the Dragon (then the North Pole Star), the origin of the connection of almost all the gods with the Dragon. Bel and the Dragon, Apollo and Python, Osiris and Typhon, Sigur and Fafnir, and finally St. George and the Dragon, are the same. They were all solar gods, and wherever we find the Sun there also is the Dragon, the symbol of Wisdom—Thoth-Hermes. The Hierophants of Egypt and of Babylon styled themselves “Sons of the Serpent-God” and “Sons of the Dragon”. “I am a Serpent, I am a Druid”, said the Druid of the Celto-Britannic regions, for the Serpent and the Dragon were both types of Wisdom, Immortality and Rebirth. As the serpent casts its old skin only to reappear in a new one, so does the immortal Ego cast off one personality but to assume another.

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Draupnir (Scand.). The golden armlet of Wodan or Odin, the companion of the spear Gungnir which he holds in his right hand; both are endowed with wonderful magic properties.

 

Dravidians. A group of tribes inhabiting Southern India; the aborigines.

 

Dravya (Sk.). Substance (metaphysically).

 

Drishti (Sk.). Scepticism; unbelief.

 

Druids. A sacerdotal caste which flourished in Britain and Gaul. They were Initiates who admitted females into their sacred order, and initiated them into the mysteries of their religion. They never entrusted their sacred verses and scriptures to writing, but, like the Brahmans of old, committed them to memory; a feat which, according to the statement of Cćsar took twenty years to accomplish. Like the Parsis they had no images or statues of their gods. The Celtic religion considered it blasphemy to represent any god, even of a minor character, under a human figure. It would have been well if the Greek and Roman Christians had learnt this lesson from the “pagan” Druids. The three chief commandments of their religion were:—“Obedience to divine laws; concern for the welfare of mankind; suffering with fortitude all the evils of life”.

 

Druzes. A large sect, numbering about 100,000 adherents, living on Mount Lebanon in Syria. Their rites are very mysterious, and no traveller, who has written anything about them, knows for a certainty the whole truth. They are the Sufis of Syria. They resent being called Druzes as an insult, but call themselves the “disciples of Hamsa ”, their Messiah, who came to them in the ninth century from the “Land of the Word of God”, which land and word they kept religiously secret. The Messiah to come will be the same Hamsa, but called Hakem—the “All-Healer ”. (See Isis Unveiled, II 308, et seq.)

 

Dudaim (Heb.). Mandrakes. The Atropa Mandragova plant is mentioned in Genesis, XXX., 14, and in Canticles: the name is related in Hebrew to words meaning “breasts” and “love”, the plant was notorious as a love charm, and has been used in many forms of black magic. [ w.w.w.]

Dudaim in Kabbalistic parlance is the Soul and Spirit; any two things united in love and friendship (dodim). “Happy is he who preserves his dudaim (higher and lower Manas) inseparable.”

 

Dugpas (Tib.). Lit., “Red Caps,” a sect in Tibet. Before the advent of Tsong-ka-pa in the fourteenth century, the Tibetans, whose Buddhism had deteriorated and been dreadfully adulterated with the tenets of the old Bhon religion,—were all Dugpas. From that century, however, and

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after the rigid laws imposed upon the Gelukpas (yellow caps) and the general reform and purification of Buddhism (or Lamaism), the Dugpas have given themselves over more than ever to sorcery, immorality, and drunkenness. Since then the word Dugpas has become a synonym of “sorcerer”, “adept of black magic” and everything vile. There are few, if any, Dugpas in Eastern Tibet, but they congregate in Bhutan, Sikkim, and the borderlands generally. Europeans not being permitted to penetrate further than those borders, the Orientalists never having studied Buddho-Lamaism in Tibet proper, but judging of it on hearsay and from what Cosmo di Köros, Schlagintweit, and a few others have learnt of it from Dugpas, confuse both religions and bring them under one head. They thus give out to the public pure Dugpaism instead of Buddho-Lamaism. In short Northern Buddhism in its purified, metaphysical form is almost entirely unknown.

 

Dukkha (Sk.). Sorrow, pain.

 

Dumah (Heb.). The Angel of Silence (Death) in the Kabbala.

 

Durga (Sk). Lit., “inaccessible”. The female potency of a god; the name of Kali, the wife of Siva, the Mahesvara, or “the great god”.

 

Dustcharitra (Sk.). The “ten evil acts”; namely, three acts of the body viz., taking life, theft and adultery; four evil acts of the mouth, viz., lying, exaggeration in accusations, slander, and foolish talk; and three evil acts of mind (Lower Manas), viz., envy, malice or revenge, and unbelief.

 

Dwapara Yuga (Sk.). The third of the “Four Ages” in Hindu Philosophy ;
or the second age counted from below.

 

Dwarf of Death. In the Edda of the Norsemen, Iwaldi, the Dwarf of Death, hides Life in the depths of the great ocean, and then sends her up into the world at the right time. This Life is Iduna, the beauti- ful maiden, the daughter of the “Dwarf”. She is the Eve of the Scandinavian Lays, for she gives of the apples of ever-renewed youth to the gods of Asgard to eat ; but these, instead of being cursed for so doing and doomed to die, give thereby renewed youth yearly to the earth and to men, after every short and sweet sleep in the arms of the Dwarf. Iduna is raised from the Ocean when Bragi (q.v.), the Dreamer of Life, without spot or blemish, crosses asleep the silent waste of waters. Bragi is the divine ideation of Life, and Iduna living Nature—Prakriti, Eve.

 

Dwellers (on the Threshold). A term invented by Bulwer Lytton in Zanoni; but in Occultism the word “Dweller” is an occult term used by students for long ages past, and refers to certain maleficent astral Doubles of defunct persons.

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Dwesa (Sk.). Anger. One of the three principal states of mind (of which 63 are enumerated), which are Râga—pride or evil desire, Dwesa— anger, of which hatred is a part, and Moha—the ignorance of truth. These three are to be steadily avoided.

 

Dwijâ (Sk.). “Twice-born”. In days of old this term was used only of the Initiated Brahmans; but now it is applied to every man belonging to the first of the four castes, who has undergone a certain ceremony.

 

Dwija Brahman (Sk.). The investure with the sacred thread that now constitutes the “second birth”. Even a Sudra who chooses to pay for the honour becomes, after the ceremony of passing through a silver or golden cow—a dwijâ.

 

Dwipa (Sk.). An island or a continent. The Hindus have seven (Sapta dwipa ); the Buddhists only four. This is owing to a misunderstood reference of the Lord Buddha who, using the term metaphorically, applied the word dwipa to the races of men. The four Root-races which preceded our fifth, were compared by Siddhârtha to four continents or isles which studded the ocean of birth and death—Samsâra.

 

Dynasties. In India there are two, the Lunar and the Solar, or the Somavansa and the Suryavansa. In Chaldea and Egypt there were also two distinct kinds of dynasties, the divine and the human. In both countries people were ruled in the beginning of time by Dynasties of Gods. In Chaldea they reigned one hundred and twenty Sari, or in all 432,000 years; which amounts to the same figures as a Hindu Mahayuga 4,320,000 years. The chronology prefacing the Book of Genesis (English translation) is given “Before Christ, 4004”. But the figures are a rendering by solar years. In the original Hebrew, which preserved a lunar calculation, the figures are 4,320 years. This “coincidence” is well explained in Occultism.

 

Dyookna (Kab.). The shadow of eternal Light. The “Angels of the Presence” or archangels.
The same as the Ferouer in the Vendidad and other Zoroastrian works.

 

Dzyn or Dzyan (Tib.). Written also Dzen. A corruption of the Sanskrit Dhyan and jnâna (or gnyâna phonetically)—Wisdom, divine knowledge. In Tibetan, learning is called dzin.

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E.—The fifth letter of the English alphabet. The he (soft) of the Hebrew alphabet becomes in the Ehevi system of reading that language an E. Its numerical value is five, and its symbolism is a window; the womb, in the Kabbala. In the order of the divine names it stands for the fifth, which is Hadoor or the “majestic” and the “splendid.”

 

Ea (Chald.) also Hea. The second god of the original Babylonian trinity composed of Anu, Hea and Bel. Hea was the “Maker of Fate”, “Lord of the Deep”, “God of Wisdom and Knowledge”, and “Lord of the City of Eridu”.

 

Eagle. This symbol is one of the most ancient. With the Greeks and Persians it was sacred to the Sun; with the Egyptians, under the name of Ah, to Horus, and the Kopts worshipped the eagle under the name of Ahom. It was regarded as the sacred emblem of Zeus by the Greeks, and as that of the highest god by the Druids. The symbol has passed down to our day, when following the example of the pagan Marius, who, in the second century B.C. used the double-headed eagle as the ensign of Rome, the Christian crowned heads of Europe made the double-headed sovereign of the air sacred to themselves and their scions. Jupiter was satisfied with a one-headed eagle and so was the Sun. The imperial houses of Russia, Poland, Austria, Germany, and the late Empire of the Napoleons, have adopted a two-headed eagle as their device.

 

Easter. The word evidently comes from Ostara, the Scandinavian goddess of spring. She was the symbol of the resurrection of all nature and was worshipped in early spring. It was a custom with the pagan Norsemen at that time to exchange coloured eggs called the eggs of Ostara. These have now become Easter-Eggs. As expressed in Asgard and the Gods: “Christianity put another meaning on the old custom, by connecting it with the feast of the Resurrection of the Saviour, who, like the hidden life in the egg, slept in the grave for three days before he awakened to new life”. This was the more natural since Christ was identified with that same Spring Sun which awakens in all his glory, after the dreary and long death of winter. (See “Eggs”.)

 

Ebionites (Heb.). Lit., “the poor”; the earliest sect of Jewish Christians, the other being the Nazarenes. They existed when the term “Christian” was not yet heard of. Many of the relations of Iassou (Jesus), the adept ascetic around whom the legend of Christ was formed, were among the Ebionites. As the existence of these mendicant ascetics can

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be traced at least a century earlier than chronological Christianity, it is an additional proof that lassou or Jeshu lived during the reign of Alexander Jannćus at Lyd (or Lud), where he was put to death as stated in the Sepher Toldos Jeshu.

 

Ecbatana. A famous city in Media worthy of a place among the seven wonders of the world. It is thus described by Draper in his Conflict between Religion and Science, chap. i, . . “ The cool summer retreat of the Persian Kings, was defended by seven encircling walls of hewn and polished blocks, the interior ones in succession of increasing height, and of different colours, in astrological accordance with the seven planets. The palace was roofed with silver tiles; its beams were plated with gold. At midnight in its halls, the sun was rivalled by many a row of naphta cressets. A paradise, that luxury of the monarchs of the East, was planted in the midst of the city. The Persian Empire was truly the garden of the world.”

 

Echath (Heb.). The same as the following—the “One”, but feminine.

 

Echod (Heb or Echad. “One”, masculine, applied to Jehovah.

 

Eclectic Philosophy. One of the names given to the Neo-Platonic school of Alexandria.

 

Ecstasis (Gr.). A psycho-spiritual state; a physical trance which induces clairvoyance and a beatific state bringing on visions.

 

Edda (Iceland.). Lit., “great-grandmother”of the Scandinavian Lays. It was Bishop Brynjϋld Sveinsson, who collected them and brought them to light in 1643. There are two collections of Sagas, translated by the Northern Skalds, and there are two Eddas. The earliest is of unknown authorship and date and its antiquity is very great. These Sagas were collected in the XIth century by an Icelandic priest; the second is a collection of the history (or myths) of the gods spoken of in the first, which became the Germanic deities, giants, dwarfs and heroes.

 

Eden (Heb.). “Delight”, pleasure. In Genesis the “Garden of Delight” built by God ; in the Kabbala the
Garden of Delight”, a place of Initiation into the mysteries. Orientalists identify it with a place which was situated in Babylonia in the district of Karduniyas, called also Gan-dunu, which is almost like the Gan-eden of the Jews. (See the works of Sir H. Rawlinson, and G. Smith.) That district has four rivers, Euphrates, Tigris, Surappi, Ukni. The two first have been adopted without any change by the Jews; the other two they have probably transformed into “ Gihon and Pison”, so as to have something original. The following are some of the reasons for the identification of Eden, given by Assyriologists. The cities of Babylon, Larancha and

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Sippara, were founded before the flood, according to the chronology of the Jews.
“Surippak was the city of the ark, the mountain east of the
Tigris was the resting place of the ark, Babylon was the site of the tower, and Ur of the Chaldees the birthplace of Abraham.” And, as Abraham,
“the first leader of the Hebrew race, migrated from Ur to Harran in Syria and from thence to Palestine”, the best Assyriologists think that it is “so much evidence in favour of the hypothesis that Chaldea was the original home of these stories (in the Bible) and that the Jews received them originally from the Babylonians”.

 

Edom (Heb.). Edomite Kings. A deeply concealed mystery is to he found in the allegory of the seven Kings of Edorn, who “reigned in the land of Edom before there reigned any King over the children of Israel”. (Gen. xxxvi. 31.) The Kabbala teaches that this Kingdom was one of “unbalanced forces’ and necessarily of unstable character. The world of Israel is a type of the condition of the worlds which came into existence subsequently to the later period when the equilibrium had become established. [ w.w. w.]

On the other hand the Eastern Esoteric philosophy teaches that the seven Kings of Edom are not the type of perished worlds or unbalanced forces, but the symbol of the seven human Root-races, four of which have passed away, the fifth is passing, and two are still to come. Though in the language of esoteric blinds, the hint in St. John’s Revelation is clear enough when it states in chapter xvii , 10: “And there are seven Kings; five are fallen, and one (the fifth, still) is, and the other (the sixth Root- race) is not yet come Had all the seven Kings of Edom perished as worlds of “unbalanced forces”, how could the fifth still be, and the other or others “not yet come” ? In The Kabbalah Unveiled, we read on page 48, “ The seven Kings had died and their possessions had been broken up”, and a footnote emphasizes the statement by saying, “these seven Kings are the Edomite Kings”.

 

Edris (Arab.), or Idris. Meaning “the learned One”, an epithet applied by the Arabs to Enoch.

 

Eggs (Easter). Eggs were symbolical from an early time. There was the “Mundane Egg”, in which Brahmâ gestated, with the Hindus the Hiranya-Gharba, and the Mundane Egg of the Egyptians, which proceeds from the mouth of the “unmade and eternal deity”, Kneph, and which is the emblem of generative power. Then the Egg of Babylon, which hatched Ishtar, and was said to have fallen from heaven into the Euphrates. Therefore coloured eggs were used yearly during spring in almost every country, and in Egypt were exchanged as sacred symbols in the spring-time, which was, is, and ever will be, the emblem of birth

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or rebirth, cosmic and human, celestial and terrestrial. They were hung up in Egyptian temples and are so suspended to this day in Mahometan mosques.

 

Egkosmioi (Gk). “The intercosmic gods, each of which presides over a great number of daemons to whom they impart their power and change it from one to another at will”, says Proclus, and he adds, that which is taught in the esoteric doctrine. In his system he shows the uppermost regions from the zenith of the Universe to the moon belonging to the gods, or planetary Spirits, according to their hierarchies and classes. The highest among them were the twelve Huper-ouranioi, the super-celestial gods. Next to the latter, in rank and power, came the Egkosmioi.

 

Ego (Lat.). “ Self” ; the consciousness in man “I am I”—or the feeling of “I-am-ship”. Esoteric philosophy teaches the existence of two Egos in man, the mortal or personal, and the Higher, the Divine and the Impersonal, calling the former “personality” and the latter “Individuality Egoity. From the word “Ego”. Egoity means “individuality”, never “personality”, and is the opposite of egoism or “selfishness”, the characteristic par excellence of the latter.

 

Egregores. Eliphas Lévi calls them “the chiefs of the souls who are the spirits of energy and action” ; whatever that may or may not mean. The Oriental Occultists describe the Egregores as Beings whose bodies and essence is a tissue of the so-called astral light. They are the shadows of the higher Planetary Spirits whose bodies are of the essence of the higher divine light.

 

Eheyeh (Heb.). “I am”, according to Ibn Gebirol, but not in the sense of “I am that I am”.

 

Eidolon (Gr.). The same as that which we term the human phantom, the astral form.

 

Eka (Sk.). “One”; also a synonym of Mahat, the Universal Mind, as the principle of Intelligence.

 

Ekana-rupa (Sk.). The One (and the Many) bodies or forms; a term applied by the Purânas to Deity.

 

Ekasloka Shastra (Sk.). A work on the Shastras (Scriptures) by Nagarjuna; a mystic work translated into Chinese.

 

El-Elion (Heb.). A name of the Deity borrowed by the Jews from the Phśnician Elon, a name of the Sun.

 

Elementals. Spirits of the Elements. The creatures evolved in the four Kingdoms or Elements—earth, air, fire, and water. They are called

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by the Kabbalists, Gnomes (of the earth), Sylphs (of the air), Salamanders (of the fire), and Undines (of the water). Except a few of the higher kinds, and their rulers, they are rather forces of nature than ethereal men and women. These forces, as the servile agents of the Occultists, may produce various effects; but if employed by” Elementaries” (q.v.)_in which case they enslave the mediums—they will deceive the credulous. All the lower invisible beings generated on the 5th 6th, and 7th planes of our terrestrial atmosphere, are called Elementals Peris, Devs, Djins, Sylvans, Satyrs, Fauns, Elves, Dwarfs, Trolls, Kobolds, Brownies, Nixies, Goblins, Pinkies, Banshees, Moss People, White Ladies, Spooks, Fairies, etc., etc., etc.

 

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 Kâma 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 Kâma-rupic envelopes, and are irresistibly drawn to the earth amid elements congenial to their gross natures. Their stay in the Kâma Loka varies as to its duration; but ends invariably in disintegration, dissolving like a column of mist, atom by atom, in the surrounding elements.

 

Elephanta. An island near Bombay, India, on which are the well- preserved ruins of the cave-temple, of that name. It is one of the most ancient in the country and is certainly a Cyclopeian work, though the late J. Fergusson has refused it a great antiquity.

 

Eleusinia (Gr.). The Eleusinian Mysteries were the most famous and the most ancient of all the Greek Mysteries (save the Samothracian), and were celebrated near the hamlet of Eleusis, not far from Athens. Epiphanius traces them to the days of Inachos (1800 B.c.), founded, as another version has it, by Eumolpus, a King of Thrace and a Hierophant. They were celebrated in honour of Demeter, the Greek Ceres and the Egyptian Isis; and the last act of the performance referred to a sacrificial victim of atonement and a resurrection, when the Initiate was admitted to the highest degree of “Epopt” (q.v.). The festival of the Mysteries began in the month of Boëdromion (September), the time of grape-gathering, and lasted from the 15th to the 22nd, seven days. The Hebrew feast of Tabernacles, the feast of Ingatherings, in the month of Ethanim (the seventh), also began on the 15th and ended on the 22nd of that month,

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The name of the month (Ethanim) is derived, according to some, from Adonim, Adonia, Attenim, Ethanim, and was in honour of Adonai or Adonis (Thammuz), whose death was lamented by the Hebrews in the groves of Bethlehem. The sacrifice of both “ Bread and Wine” was performed before the Mysteries of initiation, and during the ceremony the mysteries were divulged to the candidates from the petroma, a kind of book made of two stone tablets (petrai), joined at one side and made to open like a volume.
(See Isis Unveiled II., pp. 44 and 91, et seq., for further explanations.)

 

Elivagar (Scand.). The waters of Chaos, called in the cosmogony of the Norsemen “the stream of Elivagar”.

 

Elohîm (Heb.). Also Alhim, the word being variously spelled. Godfrey Higgins, who has written much upon its meaning, always spells it Aleim. The Hebrew letters are aleph, lamed, hé,yod, mem, and are numerically 1, 30, 5, 10, 40 = 86. It seems to be the plural of the feminine noun Eloah, ALH, formed by adding the common plural form IM, a masculine ending; and hence the whole seems to imply the emitted active and passive essences. As a title it is referred to “Binah” the Supernal Mother, as is also the fuller title IHVH ALHIM, Jehovah Elohim. As Binah leads on to seven succeedent Emanations, so “ Elohim” has been said to represent a sevenfold power of godhead. [ w.w. w.]

 

Eloї (Gn.). The genius or ruler of Jupiter; its Planetary Spirit. (See Origen, Contra Celsum.)

 

Elu (Sing.). An ancient dialect used in Ceylon.

 

Emanation the Doctrine of. In its metaphysical meaning, it is opposed to Evolution, yet one with it. Science teaches that evolution is physiologically a mode of generation in which the germ that develops the foetus pre-exists already in the parent, the development and final form and characteristics of that germ being accomplished in nature; and that in cosmology the process takes place blindly through the correlation of the elements, and their various compounds. Occultism answers that this is only the apparent  mode, the real process being Emanation, guided by intelligent Forces under an immutable LAW. Therefore, while the Occultists and Theosophists believe thoroughly in the doctrine of Evolution as given out by Kapila and Manu, they are Emanationists rather than Evolutionists. The doctrine of Emanation was at one time universal. It was taught by the Alexandrian as well as by the Indian philosophers, by the Egyptian, the Chaldean and Hellenic Hierophants, and also by the Hebrews (in their Kabbala, and even in Genesis). For it is only owing to deliberate mistranslation that the Hebrew word asdt has been translated “angels” from the Septuagint, when it

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means Emanations, Ćons, precisely as with the Gnostics. Indeed, in Deuteronomy (xxxiii., 2) the word asdt or ashdt is translated as” fiery law”, whilst the correct rendering of the passage should be “from his right hand went [ not a fiery law, but a fire according to law “; viz., that the fire of one flame is imparted to, and caught up by another like as in a trail of inflammable substance. This is precisely emanation. As shown in Isis Unveiled : “In Evolution, as it is now beginning to he understood, there is supposed to be in all matter an impulse to take on a higher form—a supposition clearly expressed by Manu and other Hindu philosophers of the highest antiquity. The philosopher’s tree illustrates it in the case of the zinc solution. The controversy between the followers of this school and the Emanationists may he briefly stated thus The Evolutionist stops all inquiry at the borders of ‘ the Unknowable “; the Emanationist believes that nothing can be evolved—or, as the word means, unwombed or born—except it has first been involved, thus indicating that life is from a spiritual potency above the whole.”

 

Empusa (Gr.). A ghoul, a vampire, an evil demon taking various forms.

 

En (or Ain) Soph (Heb.). The endless, limitless and boundless. The absolute deific Principle, impersonal and unknowable. It means literally “no-thing” i.e., nothing that could be classed with anything else. The word and ideas are equivalent to the Vedantic conceptions of Parabrahmn. [ w.w.w.]

Some Western Kabbalists, however, contrive to make of IT, a personal “He”, a male deity instead of an impersonal deity.

 

En (Chald.). A negative particle, like a in Greek and Sanskrit. The first syllable of “En-Soph” (q.v.), or nothing that begins or ends, the “Endless”.

 

Enoichion (Gr.). Lit., the inner Eye” ; the “Seer”, a reference to the third inner, or Spiritual Eye, the true name for Enoch disfigured from Chanoch.

 

Ens (Gr.). The same as the Greek To On “Being”, or the real Presence in Nature.

 

Ephesus (Gr.). Famous for its great metaphysical College where Occultism (Gnosis) and Platonic philosophy were taught in the days of the Apostle Paul. A city regarded as the focus of secret sciences, and that Gnôsis. or Wisdom, which is the antagonist of the perversion of Christo-Esotericism to this day. It was at Ephesus where was the great College of the Essenes and all the lore the Tanaim had brought from the Chaldees,

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Epimetheus (Gr.). Lit., “He who takes counsel after” the event. A brother of Prometheus in Greek Mythology.

 

Epinoia (Gr.). Thought, invention, design. A name adopted by the Gnostics for the first passive Ćon.

 

Episcopal Crook. One of the insignia of Bishops, derived from the sacerdotal sceptre of the Etruscan Augurs. it is also found in the hand of several gods.

 

Epoptes (Gr.). An Initiate. One who has passed his last degree of initiation.

 

Eridanus (Lat.). Ardan, the Greek name for the river Jordan.

 

Eros (Gr.). Hesiod makes of the god Eros the third personage of the Hellenic primordial Trinity composed of Ouranos, Gća and Eros. It is the personified procreative Force in nature in its abstract sense, the propeller to “creation” and procreation. Exoterically, mythology makes of Eros the god of lustful, animal desire, whence the term erotic esoterically, it is different. (See “ Kâma”.)

 

Eshmim (Heb.). The Heavens, the Firmament in which are the Sun, Planets and Stars; from the root Sm, meaning to place, dispose ; hence, the planets, as disposers. [ w. w.w.]

 

Esoteric (Gr.). Hidden, secret. From the Greek esotericos, “inner” concealed.

 

Esoteric Bodhism. Secret wisdom or intelligence from the Greek esotericos “inner”, and the Sanskrit Bodhi, “knowledge”, intelligence— in contradistinction to Buddhi, “the faculty of knowledge or intelligence” and Buddhism, the philosophy or Law of Buddha (the Enlightened). Also written “ Budhism”, from Budha (Intelligence and Wisdom) the Son of Soma.

 

Essasua. The African and Asiatic sorcerers and serpent charmers.

 

Essenes. A hellenized word, from the Hebrew Asa, a “healer”. A mysterious sect of Jews said by Pliny to have lived near the Dead Sea per millia sćculorum—for thousands of ages. “ Some have supposed them to be extreme Pharisees, and others—which may be the true theory—the descendants of the
Benim-nabim of the Bible, and think that they were ‘Kenites and Nazarites. They had many Buddhistic ideas and practices; and it is noteworthy that the priests of the Great Mother at Ephesus, Diana-Bhavani with many breasts, were also so denominated. Eusebius, and after him De Quincey, declared them to be the same as the early Christians, which is more than probable. The title ‘ brother’, used in the early Church, was Essenean ; they were a fraternity, or a koinobion or community like the early converts.”
(
Isis Unveiled.)

 

Ether. Students are but too apt to confuse this with Akâsa and with

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Astral Light. It is neither, in the sense in which ether is described by physical Science. Ether is a material agent, though hitherto undetected by any physical apparatus; whereas Akâsa is a distinctly spiritual agent, identical, in one sense, with the Anima Mundi, while the Astral Light is only the seventh and highest principle of the terrestrial atmosphere, as undetectable as Akâsa and real Ether, because it is something quite on another plane. The seventh principle of the earth’s atmosphere, as said, the Astral Light, is only the second on the Cosmic scale. The scale of Cosmic Forces, Principles and Planes, of Emanations—on the metaphysical—and Evolutions—on the physical plane—is the Cosmic Serpent biting its own tail, the Serpent reflecting the Higher, and reflected in its turn by the lower Serpent. The Caduceus explains the mystery, and the four-fold Dodecahedron on the model of which the universe is said by Plato to have been built by the manifested Logos—synthesized by the unmanifested First-Born—yields geometrically the key to Cosmogony and its microcosmic reflection—our Earth.

 

Eurasians. An abbreviation of “European-Asians”. The mixed coloured races: the children of the white fathers and the dark mothers of India, or vice versa.

 

Evapto. Initiation; the same as Epopteia.

 

Evolution. The development of higher orders of animals from lower. As said in Isis Unveiled: “Modern Science holds but to a one-sided physical evolution, prudently avoiding and ignoring the higher or spiritual evolution, which would force our contemporaries to confess the superiority of the ancient philosophers and psychologists over themselves. The ancient sages, ascending to the UNKNOWABLE, made their starting- point from the first manifestation of the unseen, the unavoidable, and, from a strictly logical reasoning, the absolutely necessary creative Being, the Demiurgos of the universe. Evolution began with them from pure spirit, which descending lower and lower down, assumed at last a visible and comprehensible form, and became matter. Arrived at this point, they speculated in the Darwinian method, but on a far more large and comprehensive basis.” (See “Emanation”.)

 

Exoteric. Outward, public; the opposite of esoteric or hidden.

 

Extra-Cosmic. Outside of Kosmos or Nature; a nonsensical word invented to assert the existence of a personal god, independent of, or out side, Nature per se, in opposition to the Pantheistic idea that the whole Kosmos is animated or informed with the Spirit of Deity, Nature being but the garment, and matter the illusive shadow, of the real unseen Presence.

 

Eye of Horus. A very sacred symbol in ancient Egypt. It was

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called the outa the right eye represented the sun, the left, the moon. Says Macrobius : “ The outo (or uta) is it not the emblem of the sun, king of the world, who from his elevated throne sees all the Universe below him”?

 

Eyes (divine). The “eyes” the Lord Buddha developed in him at the twentieth hour of his vigil when sitting under the BO-tree, when he was attaining Buddhaship. They are the eyes of the glorified Spirit, to which matter is no longer a physical impediment, and which have the power of seeing all things within the space of the limitless Universe. 0n the following morning of that night, at the close of the third watch, the “ Merciful One” attained the Supreme Knowledge.

 

Ezra (Heb.). The Jewish priest and scribe, who, circa 450 B.c., compiled the Pentateuch if indeed he was not the author of it) and the rest of the Old Testament, except Nehemiah and Malachi. [w.w.w.]

 

Ezra (Heb.). The same as Azareel and Azriel, a great Hebrew Kabbalist. His full name is Rabbi Azariel ben Manahem. He flourished at Valladolid, Spain, in the twelfth century, and was famous as a philosopher and Kabbalist. He is the author of a work on the Ten Sephiroth.

                                                                                                           

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F —The sixth letter of the English alphabet, for which there is no equivalent in Hebrew. It is the double F F of the Ćolians which became the Digamma for some mysterious reasons. It corresponds to the Greek phi. As a Latin numeral it denotes 40, with a dash over the letter (F) 400,000.

 

Faces (Kabbalistic), or, as in Hebrew, Partzupheem. The word usually refers to Areekh Anpeen or Long Face, and Zeir-Anpeen, or Short Face, and Resha Hivrah the “White Head” or Face. The Kabbala states that from the moment of their appearance (the hour of differentiation of matter) all the material for future forms was contained in the three Heads which are one, and called Atteekah Kadosha
(Holy Ancients and the Faces). It is when the Faces look toward each other, that the Holy Ancients” in three Heads, or Atteekah Kadosha, are called Areek Appayem, i.e., “Long Faces”. (See Zohar iii., 292a.) This refers to the three Higher Principles, cosmic and human.

 

Fafnir (Scand.). The Dragon of Wisdom.

 

Fahian (Chin.). A Chinese traveller and writer in the early centuries of Christianity, who wrote on Buddhism.

 

Fa-Hwa-King (Chin.). A Chinese work on Cosmogony.

 

Faizi (Arab.). Literally the “heart”. A writer on occult and mystic subjects.

 

Fakir (Arab.). A Mussulman ascetic in India, a Mahometan “Yogi”. The name is often applied, though erroneously. to Hindu ascetics; for strictly speaking only Mussulman ascetics are entitled to it. This loose way of calling things by general names was adopted in Isis Unveiled but is now altered.

 

Falk, Caїn Chenul. A Kabbalistic Jew, reputed to have worked “miracles”. Kenneth Mackenzie quotes in regard to him from the German annalist Archenoiz’ work on England (1788) :—“ There exists in London an extraordinary man who for thirty years has been celebrated in Kabbalistic records. He is named Caїn Chenul Falk. A certain Count de Rautzow, lately dead in the service of France, with the rank of Field-Marshal, certifies that he has seen this Falk in Brunswick, and that evocations of spirits took place in the presence of credible witnesses.” These “spirits” were Elementals, whom Falk brought into

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view by the conjurations used by every Kabbalist. His son, Johann Friedrich Falk, likewise a Jew, was also a Kabbalist of repute, and was once the head of a Kabbalistic college in London. His occupation was that of a jeweller and appraiser of diamonds, and he was a wealthy man. To this day the mystic writings and rare Kabbalistic works bequeathed by him to a trustee may be perused in a certain half-public library in London, by every genuine student of Occultism. Falk’s own writings are all still in MS., and some in cypher.

 

Farbauti (Scand.). A giant in the Edda; lit., “the oarsman”; the father of Loki, whose mother was the giantess Laufey (leafy isle); a genealogy which makes W. S. W. Anson remark in Asgard and the Gods that probably the oarsman or Farbauti “was the giant who saved himself from the flood in a boat, and the latter (Laufey) the island to which he rowed”—which is an additional variation of the Deluge.

 

Fargard (Zend.). A section or chapter of verses in the Vendidad of the Parsis.

 

Farvarshi (Mazd.). The same as Ferouer, or the opposite (as contrasted) double. The spiritual counterpart of the still more spiritual original. Thus, Ahriman is the Ferouer or the Farvarshi of Ormuzd— “demon est deus inversus”—Satan of God. Michael the Archangel, “he like god”, is a Ferouer of that god. A Farvarshi is the shadowy or dark side of a Deity—or its darker lining.

 

Ferho (Gnost.). The highest and greatest creative power with the Nazarene Gnostics.
(Codex Nazarćus.)

 

Fetahil (Gr.). The lower creator, in the same Codex.

 

First Point. Metaphysically the first point of manifestation, the germ of primeval differentiation, or the point in the infinite Circle “whose centre is everywhere, and circumference nowhere“.
The Point is the Logos.

 

Fire (Living). A figure of speech to denote deity, the “One” life. A theurgic term, used later by the Rosicrucians. The symbol of the living fire is the sun, certain of whose rays develope the fire of life in a diseased body, impart the knowledge of the future to the sluggish mind, and stimulate to active function a certain psychic and generally dormant faculty in man. The meaning is very occult.

 

Fire-Philosophers. The name given to the Hermetists and Alchemists of the Middle Ages, and also to the Rosicrucians. The latter, the successors of the Theurgists, regarded fire as the symbol of Deity. It was the source, not only of material atoms, but the container of the spiritual and psychic Forces energizing them. Broadly analyzed, fire is

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a triple principle; esoterically, a septenary, as are all the rest of the Elements. As man is composed of Spirit, Soul and Body, plus a four fold aspect: so is Fire. As in the works of Robert Fludd (de Fluctibus) one of the famous Rosicrucians, Fire contains (1) a visible flame (Body); (2) an invisible, astral fire (Soul); and (3) Spirit. The four aspects are heat (life), light (mind), electricity (Kâmic, or molecular powers) and the Synthetic Essence, beyond Spirit, or the radical cause of its existence and manifestation. For the Hermetist or Rosicrucian, when a flame is extinct on the objective plane it has only passed from the seen world unto the unseen, from the knowable into the unknowable.

 

Fifty Gates of Wisdom (Kab.). The number is a blind, and there are really 49 gates, for Moses, than whom the Jewish world has no higher adept, reached, according to the Kabbalas, and passed only the 49th. These “gates” typify the different planes of Being or Ens. They are thus the “gates” of Life and the “gates” of understanding or degrees of occult knowledge. These 49 (or 50) gates correspond to the seven gates in the seven caves of Initiation into the Mysteries of Mithra (see Celsus and Kircher). ‘I’he division of the 50 gates into five chief gates, each including ten—is again a blind. It is in the fourth gate of these five, from which begins, ending at the tenth, the world of Planets, thus making seven, corresponding to the seven lower Sephiroth—that the key to their meaning lies hidden. They are also called the “gates of Binah” or understanding.

 

Flagć(Herm.). A name given by Paracelsus to a particular kind of guardian angels or genii.

 

Flame (Holy). The “ Holy Flame” is the name given by the Eastern Asiatic Kabbalists (Semites) to the Anima Mundi the “world- soul” The Initiates were called the “Sons of the Holy Flame.

 

Fludd (Robert), generally known as Robertus de Fluctibus, the chief of the “Philosophers by Fire”. A celebrated English Hermetist of the sixteenth century, and a voluminous writer. He wrote on the essence of gold and other mystic and occult subjects.

 

Fluvii Transitus (Lat.). Or crossing of the River (Chebar). Cornelius Agrippa gives this alphabet. In the Ars Quatuor Coronatorum, Vol. III., part 2, 1890, which work is the Report of the proceedings of the Quatuor Coronati Lodge of Freemasons, No. 2076, will be found copies of this alphabet, and also the curious old letters called Melachim, and the Celestial alphabet, supplied by W. Wynn Westcott, P.M. This Lodge seems to be the only one in England which really does study “the hidden mysteries of Nature and Science” in earnest.

 

Fohat (Tib.). A term used to represent the active (male) potency of

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the Sakti (female reproductive power) in nature. The essence of cosmic electricity. An occult Tibetan term for Daiviprakriti primordial light: and in the universe of manifestation the ever-present electrical energy and ceaseless destructive and formative power. Esoterically, it is the same, Fohat being the universal propelling Vital Force, at once the propeller and the resultant.

 

Foh-tchou (Chin.). Lit., “Buddha’s Lord”, meaning, however, simply the teacher of the doctrines of Buddha. Foh means a Guru who lives generally in a temple of Sakyamuni Buddha—the Foh-Maeyu.

 

Fons Yitć (Lat.). A work of Ibn Gehirol, the Arabian Jewish philosopher of the Xlth century, who called it Me-gôr Hayyűn or the “Fountain of Life” (De Materia Universali and Fons Vitć). The Western Kabbalists have proclaimed it a really Kabbalistic work. Several MSS.,Latin and Hebrew, of this wonderful production have been discovered by scholars in public libraries; among others one by Munk, in 1802. The Latin name of Ibn Gebirol was Avicebron, a name well-known to all Oriental scholars.

 

FourAnimals. The symbolical animals of the vision of Ezekiel (the Mercabah). “ With the first Christians the celebration of the Mysteries of the Faith was accompanied by the burning of seven lights, with incense, the Trishagion, and the reading of the book of the gospels, upon which was wrought, both on covers and pages, the winged man, lion, bull, and eagle” (Qabbalah, by Isaac Myer, LL.B.). To this day these animals are represented along with the four Evangelists and prefixing their respective gospels in the editions of the Greek Church. Each represents one of the four lower classes of worlds or planes, into the similitude of which each personality is cast. Thus the Eagle (associated with St. John) represents cosmic Spirit or Ether, the all-piercing Eye of the Seer; the Bull of St. Luke, the waters of Life, the all-generating element and cosmic strength ; the Lion of St. Mark, fierce energy, undaunted courage and cosmic fire; while the human Head or the Angel, which stands near St. Matthew is the synthesis of all three combined in the higher Intellect of man, and in cosmic Spirituality. All these symbols are Egyptian, Chaldean, and Indian. The Eagle, Bull and Lion-headed gods are plentiful, and all represented the same idea, whether in the Egyptian, Chaldean, Indian or Jewish religions, but beginning with the Astral body they went no higher than the cosmic Spirit or the Higher Manas—Atma-Buddhi, or Absolute Spirit and Spiritual Soul its vehicle, being incapable of being symbolised by concrete images.

 

Fravasham (Zend). Absolute spirit.

 

Freya or Frigga (Scand.). In the Edda, Frigga is the mother of the gods like Aditi in the Vedas. She is identical with the Northern Frea of

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the Germans, and in her lowest aspect was worshipped as the all- nourishing Mother Earth. She was seated on her golden throne, formed of webs of golden light, with three divine virgins as her handmaidens and messengers, and was occupied with spinning golden threads with which to reward good men. She is Isis and Diana at the same time, for she is also Holda, the mighty huntress, and she is Ceres-Demeter, who protects agriculture—the moon and nature.

 

Frost Giants or Hrimthurses (Scand.). They are the great builders, the Cyclopes and Titans of the Norsemen, and play a prominent part in the Edda. It is they who build the strong wall round Asgard (the Scandinavian Olympus) to protect it from the Jotuns, the wicked giants.

 

Fylfot (Scand.). A weapon of Thor, like the Swastika, or the Jaina, the four-footed cross ; generally called “Thor’s Hammer”.

                                                                                                

G  

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G •—The seventh letter in the English alphabet. “In Greek, Chaldean, Syriac, Hebrew, Assyrian, Samaritan, Etrurian, Coptic, in the modern Romaic and Gothic, it occupies the third place in the alphabet, while in Cyrillic, Glagolitic, Croat, Russian, Servian and Wallachian, it stands fourth.” As the name of “god” begins with this letter (in Syriac, gad; Swedish, gud: German, gott; English, god; Persian, gada, etc., etc.), there is an occult reason for this which only the students of esoteric philosophy and of the Secret Doctrine, explained esoterically, will understand thoroughly; it refers to the three logoi—the last,the Elohim, and the emanation of the latter, the androgynous Adam Kadmon. All these peoples have derived the name of “god” from their respective traditions, the more or less clear echoes of the esoteric tradition. Spoken and “Silent Speech” (writing) are a “gift of the gods”, say all the national traditions, from the old Aryan Sanskrit-speaking people who claim that their alphabet, the Devanâgari (lit., the language of the devas or gods) was given to them from heaven, down to the Jews, who speak of an alphabet, the parent of the one which has survived, as having been a celestial and mystical symbolism given by the angels to the patriarchs. Hence, every letter had its manifold meaning. A symbol itself of a celestial being and objects, it was in its turn represented on earth by like corresponding objects whose form symbolised the shape of the letter. The present letter, called in Hebrew gimel and symbolised by a long camel’s neck, or rather a serpent erect, is associated with the third sacred divine name, Ghadol or Magnus (great). Its numeral is four, the Tetragrammaton and the sacred Tetraktys; hence its sacredness. With other people it stood for 400 and with a dash over it, for 400,000.

 

Gabriel. According to the Gnostics, the “Spirit” or Christos, the “messenger of life”, and Gabriel are one. The former “is called some-times the Angel Gabriel Hebrew ‘the mighty one of God’,” and took with the Gnostics the place of the Logos, while the Holy Spirit was considered one with the Ćon Life,
(see
Irenćus I., xii.). Therefore we find Theodoret saying (in Hćvet. Fab., II vii.) : “ The heretics agree with us (Christians) respecting the beginning of all things. But they say there is not one Christ (God), but one above and the other below. And this last formerly dwelt in many; but the Jesus, they at one time say is from God, at another they call him a Spirit;” The key to this is given

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in the esoteric philosophy. The “spirit” with the Gnostics was a female potency exoterically, it was the ray proceeding from the Higher Manas, the Ego, and that which the Esotericists refer to as the Kâma Manas or the lower personal Ego, which is radiated in every human entity by the Higher Ego or Christos, the god within us. Therefore, they were right in saying: “there is not one Christ, but one above and the other below”. Every student of Occultism will understand this, and also that Gabriel—or “the mighty one of God”—is one with the Higher Ego. (See Isis Unveiled.)

 

Gća (Gr.). Primordial Matter, in the Cosmogony of Hesiod; Earth, as some think; the wife of Ouranos, the sky or heavens. The female personage of the primeval Trinity, composed of Ouranos, Gća and Eros.

 

Gaffarillus. An Alchemist and philosopher who lived in the middle of the seventeenth century. He is the first philosopher known to maintain that every natural object (e.g., plants, living creatures, etc.), when burned, retained its form in its ashes and that it could be raised again from them. This claim was justified by the eminent chemist Du Chesne, and after him Kircher, Digby and Vallemont have assured themselves of the fact, by demonstrating that the astral forms of burned plants could be raised from their ashes. A receipt for raising such astral phantoms of flowers is given in a work of Oetinger, Thoughts on the Birth and Generation of Things.

 

Gaganeswara (Sk.). “Lord of the Sky”, a name of Garuda.

 

Gal-hinnom (Heb.) The name of Hell in the Talmud.

 

Gambatrin (Scand.). The name of Hermodur’s “magic staff” in the Edda.

 

Ganadevas (Sk.)A certain class of celestial Beings who are said to inhabit Maharloka. They are the rulers of our Kalpa (Cycle) and therefore termed Kalpâdhikârins, or Lord of the Kalpas. They last only “One Day” of Brahmâ.

 

 

Gandapada (Sk.) A celebrated Brahman teacher, the author of the Commentaries on the Sankhya Karika, Mandukya Upanishad, and other works.

 

Gândhâra (Sk.) A musical note of great occult power in the Hindu gamut—the third of the diatonic scale.

 

Gandharva (Sk.) The celestial choristers and musicians of India. in the Vedas these deities reveal the secrets of heaven and earth and esoteric science to mortals. They had charge of the sacred Soma plant and its juice, the ambrosia drunk in the temple which gives “omniscience".

 

Gan-Eden (Heb.) Also Ganduniyas. (See “Eden”.)

 

Ganesa (Sk.) The elephant-headed God of Wisdom, the son of Siva.

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He is the same as the Egyptian Thoth-Hermes, and Anubis or Hermanubis (q.v.). The legend shows him as having lost his human head, which was replaced by that of an elephant.

 

Gangâ (Sk.) The Ganges, the principal sacred river in India. There are two versions of its myth: one relates that Gangâ (the goddess) having transformed herself into a river, flows from the big toe of Vishnu; the other, that the Gangâ drop from the ear of Siva into the Anavatapta lake, thence passes out, through the mouth of the silver cow (gômukhi), crosses all Eastern India and falls into the Southern Ocean. “An ‘heretical superstition ”, remarks Mr. Eitel in his Sanskrit, Chinese Dictionary “ascribes to the waters of the Ganges sin-cleansing power” No more a “superstition” one would say, than the belief that the waters of Baptism and the Jordan have “sin-cleansing power”.

 

Gangâdwâra (Sk.) “The gate or door of the Ganges”, literally; the name of a town now called Hardwar, at the foot of the Himalayas.

 

Gangi (Sk.) A renowned Sorcerer in the time of Kâsyapa Buddha (a predecessor of Gautama). Gangi was regarded as an incarnation of Apalâla, the Nâga (Serpent), the guardian Spirit of the Sources of Subhavastu, a river in Udyâna. Apalâla is said to have been converted by Gautama Buddha, to the good Law, and become an Arhat. The allegory of the name is comprehensible : all the Adepts and Initiates were called nâgas, “ Serpents of Wisdom”.

 

Ganinnânse. A Singhalese priest who has not yet been ordained—from gana, an assemblage or brotherhood. The higher ordained priests “are called terunnânse from the Pali théro, an elder”(Hardy).

 

Garm (Scand.). The Cerberus of the Edda. This monstrous dog lived in the Gnypa cavern in front of the dwelling of Hel, the goddess of the nether-world.

 

Garuda (Sk.) A gigantic bird in the Ramâyana, the steed of Vishnu. Esoterically—the symbol of the great Cycle.

 

Gâthâ (Sk.) Metrical chants or hymns, consisting of moral aphorisms. A gâthâ of thirty-two words is called Âryâgiti.

 

Gâti (Sk.) The six (esoterically seven) conditions of sentient existence. These are divided into two groups: the three higher and the three lower paths. To the former belong the devas, the asuras and (immortal) men; to the latter (in exoteric teachings) creatures in hell, prętas or hungry demons, and animals. Explained esoterically, however, the last three are the personalities in Kâmaloka, elementals and animals. The seventh mode of existence is that of the Nirmanakâya (q.v.).

 

Gâtra (Sk.) Lit., the limbs (of Brahmâ) from which the “mind-born” sons, the seven Kumâras, were born.

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Gautama (Sk.) The Prince of Kapilavastu, son of Sudhôdana, the Sâkya king of a small realm on the borders of Nepaul, born in the seventh century B.c., now called the “Saviour of the World”. Gautama or Gôtama was the sacerdotal name of the Sâkya family, and Sidhârtha was Buddha’s name before he became a Buddha. Sâkya Muni, means the Saint of the Sâkya family. Born a simple mortal he rose to Buddhaship through his own personal and unaided merit. A man—verily greater than any god!

 

Gayâ (Sk.) Ancient city of Magadha, a little north-west of the modern Gayah. It is at the former that Sakyamuni reached his Buddha- ship, under the famous Bodhi-tree, Bodhidruma.

 

Gayâtri (Sk.) also Sâvitri. A most sacred verse, addressed to the Sun, in the Rig -Veda, which the Brahmans have to repeat mentally every morn and eve during their devotions.

 

Geber (Heb.) or Gibborim. “Mighty men”; the same as the Kabirim. In heaven, they are regarded as powerful angels, on earth as the giants mentioned in chapter vi. of Genesis.

 

Gebirol, Solomon Ben Jehudah. Called in literature Avicebron. An Israelite by birth, a philosopher, poet and Kabbalist, a voluminous writer and a mystic. He was born in the eleventh Century at Malaga (1021), educated at Saragossa, and died at Valencia in 1070, murdered by a Mahommedan. His fellow-religionists called him Salomon the Sephardi, or the Spaniard, and the Arabs, Abu Ayyub Suleiman ben ya’hya Ibn Dgebirol; whilst the scholastics named him Avicebron. (See Myer’s Qabbalah.) Ibn Gebirol was certainly one of the greatest philosophers and scholars of his age. He wrote much in Arabic and most of his MSS. have been preserved. His greatest work appears to be the Megôr Hayyîm, i.e., the Fountain of Life, “one of the earliest exposures of the secrets of the Speculative Kabbalah”, as his biographer informs us. (See “Fons Vitć”.)

 

Geburah (Heb.) A Kabbalistic term ; the fifth Sephira, a female and passive potency, meaning severity and power; from it is named the Pillar of Severity. [ w. w w.]

 

Gedulah (Heb.) Another name for the Sephira Chesed.

 

Gehenna, in Hebrew Hinnom. No hell at all, but a valley near Jerusalem, where Israelites immolated their children to Moloch. In that valley a place named Tophet was situated, where a fire was perpetually preserved for sanitary purposes. The prophet Jeremiah informs us that his countrymen, the Jews, used to sacrifice their children on that spot.

 

Gehs (Zend) Parsi prayers.

 

Gelukpa (Tib.) “Yellow Caps” literally ; the highest and most

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orthodox Buddhist sect in Tibet, the antithesis of the Dugpa (“Red Caps”), the old “devil worshippers”.

 

Gemara (Heb.) The latter portion of the Jewish Talmud, begun by Rabbi Ashi and completed by Rabbi Mar and Meremar, about 300 A.D. [w.w.w.] Lit., to finish. It is a commentary on the Mishna.

 

Gematria (Heb.) A division of the practical Kabbalah. It shows the numerical value of Hebrew words by summing up the values of the letters composing them and further, it shows by this means, analogies between words and phrases. [w.w.w.]

One of the methods (arithmetical) for extracting the hidden meaning from letters, words and sentences.

 

Gems, Three precious. In Southern Buddhism these are the sacred books, the Buddhas and the priesthood. In Northern Buddhism and its secret schools, the Buddha, his sacred teachings, and the Narjols (Buddhas of Compassion).

 

Genesis. The whole of the Book of Genesis down to the death of Joseph, is found to he a hardly altered version of the Cosmogony of the Chaldeans, as is now repeatedly proven from the Assyrian tiles. The first three chapters are transcribed from the allegorical narratives of the beginnings common to all nations. Chapters four and five are a new allegorical adaptation of the same narration in the secret Book of Numbers; chapter six is an astronomical narrative of the Solar year and the seven cosmocratores from the Egyptian original of the Pymander and the symbolical visions of a series of Enoichioi (Seers)—from whom came also the Book of Enoch. The beginning of Exodus, and the story of Moses is that of the Babylonian Sargon, who having flourished (as even that unwilling authority Dr. Sayce tells us) 3750 B.C. preceded the Jewish lawgiver by almost 2300 years. (See Secret Doctrine, vol. II., pp. 691 et seq.) Nevertheless, Genesis is an undeniably esoteric work. It has not borrowed, nor has it disfigured the universal symbols and teachings on the lines of which it was written, but simply adapted the eternal truths to its own national spirit and clothed them in cunning allegories comprehensible only to its Kabbalists and Initiates. The Gnostics have done the same, each sect in its own way, as thousands of years before, India, Egypt, Chaldea and Greece, had also dressed the same incommunicable truths each in its own national garb. The key and solution to all such narratives can be found only in the esoteric teachings.

 

Genii (Lat.) A name for Ćons, or angels, with the Gnostics. The names of their hierarchies and classes are simply legion.

 

Geonic Period. The era of the Geonim may be found mentioned in

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works treating of the Kabbalah ; the ninth century AD. is implied. [ w. w.w.]

 

Gharma (Sk.) A title of Karttikeya, the Indian god of war and the Kumâra born of Siva’s drop of sweat that fell into the Ganges.

 

Ghôcha (Sk.) Lit., “the miraculous Voice”. The name of a great Arhat, the author of Abhidharmamrita
Shastra, who restored sight to a blind man by anointing his eyes with the tears of the audience moved by his (Ghôcha’s) supernatural eloquence.

 

Gilgoolem (Heb.) The cycle of rebirths with the Hebrew Kabbalists; with the orthodox Kabbalists, the “whirling of the soul” after death, which finds-no rest until it reaches Palestine, the “promised land”, and its body is buried there.

 

Gimil (Scand.). “The Cave of Gimil” or Wingolf. A kind of Heaven or Paradise, or perhaps a New Jerusalem, built by the “Strong and Mighty God” who remains nameless in the Edda, above the Field of Ida, and after the new earth rose out of the waters.

 

Ginnungagap (Scand.). The “cup of illusion” literally ; the abyss of the great deep, or the shoreless, beginningless, and endless, yawning gulf; which in esoteric parlance we call the “World’s Matrix”, the primordial living space. The cup that contains the universe, hence the “cup of illusion”.

 

Giöl (Scand.) The, Styx, the river Giöl which had to be crossed before the nether-world was reached, or the cold Kingdom of Hel. It was spanned by a gold-covered bridge, which led to the gigantic iron fence that encircles the palace of the Goddess of the Under-World or Hel.

 

Gna (Scand.) One of the three handmaidens of the goddess Freya. She is a female Mercury who bears her mistress’ messages into all parts of the world.

 

Gnâna (Sk.) Knowledge as applied to the esoteric sciences.

 

Gnân Devas (Sk.) Lit., “the gods of knowledge”. The higher classes of gods or devas; the “mind-born” sons of Brahmâ, and others including the Manasa-putras (the Sons of Intellect). Esoterically, our reincarnating Egos.

 

Gnânasakti (Sk.) The power of true knowledge, one of the seven great forces in Nature (six, exoterically).

 

Gnatha (Sk.) The Kosmic Ego; the conscious, intelligent Soul of Kosmos.

 

Gnomes (Alch.) The Rosicrucian name for the mineral and earth elementals,

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Gnôsis (Gr.) Lit., “knowledge”. The technical term used by the schools of religious philosophy, both before and during the first centuries of so-called Christianity, to denote the object of their enquiry. This Spiritual and Sacred Knowledge, the Gupta Vidya of the Hindus, could only be obtained by Initiation into Spiritual Mysteries of which the ceremonial “Mysteries” were a type.

 

Gnostics (Gr.) The philosophers who formulated and taught the Gnôsis or Knowledge (q.v.). They flourished in the first three centuries of the Christian era: the following were eminent, Valentinus, Basilides, Marcion, Simon Magus, etc. [ w.w. w.]

 

Gnypa (Scand.) The cavern watched by the dog Garm (q.v.).

 

Gogard (Zend.) The Tree of Life in the Avesta.

 

Golden Age. The ancients divided the life cycle into the Golden, Silver, Bronze and Iron Ages. The Golden was an age of primeval purity, simplicity and general happiness.

 

Gonpa (Tib.) A temple or monastery; a Lamasery.

 

Gonpîs (Sk.). Shepherdesses — the playmates and companions of Krishna, among whom was his wife Raddha.

 

Gossain (Sk.). The name of a certain class of ascetics in India.

 

Great Age. There were several “great ages” mentioned by the ancients. In India it embraced the whole Maha-manvantara, the “age of Brahmâ”, each “Day” of which represents the life cycle of a chain—i.e. it embraces a period of seven Rounds. (See Esoteric Buddhism, by A. P. Sinnett.) Thus while a “Day” and a “Night” represent, as Manvantara and Pralaya, 8,640,000,000 years, an “age” lasts through a period of  311,040,000,000,000 years; after which the Pralaya, or dissolution of the universe, becomes universal. With the Egyptians and Greeks the “great age” referred only to the tropical or sidereal year, the duration of which is 25,868 solar years. Of the complete age—that of the gods— they say nothing, as it was a matter to he discussed and divulged only in the Mysteries, during the initiating ceremonies. The “great age” of the Chaldees was the same in figures as that of the Hindus.

 

Grihastha (Sk.) Lit., “a householder”, “one who lives in a house with his family”. A Brahman “ family priest” in popular rendering, and the sarcerdotal hierarchy of the Hindus.

 

Guardian Wall. A suggestive name given to the host of translated adepts (Narjols) or the Saints collectively, who are supposed to watch over, help and protect Humanity. This is the so-called “Nirmanâkâya” doctrine in Northern mystic Buddhism. (See Voice of the Silence, Part III.)

 

Guff (Heb.) Body; physical form; also written Gof.

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Guhya (Sk.) Concealed, secret.

 

Guhya Vidyâ(Sk.) The secret knowledge of mystic Mantras.

 

Gullweig (Scand.) The personification of the “golden” ore. It is said in the Edda that during the Golden Age, when lust for gold and wealth was yet unknown to man, “when the gods played with golden disks, and no passion disturbed the rapture of mere existence”, the whole earth was happy. But, no sooner does “Gullweig (Gold ore) the bewitching enchantress come, who, thrice cast into the fire, arises each time more beautiful than before, and fills the souls of gods and men with unappeasable longing ”, than all became changed. It is then that the Norns, the Past, Present and Future, entered into being, the blessed peace of childhood’s dreams passed away and Sin came into existence with all its evil consequences. (Asgard and the Gods.)

 

Gunas (Sk) Qualities, attributes (See“ Triguna”) ; a thread, also a cord.

 

Gunavat (Sk.) That which is endowed with qualities.

 

Gupta Vidyâ (Sk.) The same as Guhya Vidyâ; Esoteric or Secret Science; knowledge.

 

Guru (Sk.) Spiritual Teacher; a master in metaphysical and ethical doctrines; used also for a teacher of any science.

 

Guru Deva (Sk.) Lit., “divine Master”.

 

Gyan-Ben-Giân (Pers.) The King of the Peris, the Sylphs, in the old mythology of Iran.

 

Gyges (Gr.) “The ring of Gyges” has become a familiar metaphor in European literature. Gyges was a Lydian who, after murdering the King Candaules, married his widow. Plato tells us that Gyges descended once into a chasm of the earth and discovered a brazen horse, within whose open side was the skeleton of a man who had a brazen ring on his finger. This ring when placed on his own finger made him invisible.

 

Gymnosophists (Gr.) The name given by Hellenic writers to a class of naked or “air-clad” mendicants; ascetics in India, extremely learned and endowed with great mystic powers. It is easy to recognise in these gymnosophists the Hindu Aranyaka of old, the learned yogis and ascetic- philosophers who retired to the jungle and forest, there to reach, through great austerities, superhuman knowledge and experience.

 

Gyn (Tib.) Knowledge acquired under the tuition of an adept teacher or guru.

                                                                                                                            

H   

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H ,—The eighth letter and aspirate of the English alphabet, and also the eighth in the Hebrew. As a Latin numeral it signifies 200, and with the addition of a dash 200,000; in the Hebrew alphabet Châth is equivalent to h, corresponds to eight, and is symbolised by a Fence and Venus according to Seyffarth, being in affinity and connected with , and therefore with the opening or womb. It is pre-eminently a Yonic letter.

 

Ha (Sk.) A magic syllable used in sacred formulć it represents the power of Akâsa Sakti. Its efficacy lies in the expirational accent and the sound produced.

 

Habal de Garmin (Heb.) According to the Kabbalah this is the Resurrection Body: a tzelem image or demooth similitude to the deceased man; an inner fundamental spiritual type remaining after death. It is the “Spirit of the Bones ” mentioned in Daniel and Isaiah and the Psalms, and is referred to in the Vision of Ezekiel about the clothing of the dry bones with life: consult C, de Leiningen on the Kabbalah, T.P.S. Pamphlet, Vol. II., No. 18. [ w. w.w.]

 

Hachoser (Heb.) Lit., “reflected Lights”; a name for the minor or inferior powers, in the Kabbalah.

 

Hades (Gr.), or Aїdes. The “invisible”, i.e., the land of the shadows, one of whose regions was Tartarus, a place of complete darkness, like the region of profound dreamless sleep in the Egyptian Amenti. Judging by the allegorical description of the various punishments inflicted therein, the place was purely Karmic. Neither Hades nor Amenti were the hell still preached by some retrograde priests and clergymen; but whether represented by the Elysian Fields or by Tartarus, Hades was a place of retributive justice and no more. This could only be reached by crossing the river to the “other shore”, i.e. by crossing the river Death, and being once more reborn, for weal or for woe. As well expressed in Egyptian Belief: “The story of Charon, the ferryman (of the, Styx) is to be found not only in Homer, but in the poetry of many lands. The River must be crossed before gaining the Isles of the Blest. The Ritual of Egypt described a Charon and his boat long ages before Homer. He is Khu-en-ua, the hawk-headed steersman.”
(See “Amenti”, “Hel” and “Happy Fields”.)

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Hagadah (Heb.) A name given to parts of the Talmud which are legendary. [w. w.w.]

 

Hahnir (Scand.), or Hönir. One of the three mighty gods (Odin, Hahnir and Lodur) who, while wandering on earth, found lying on the sea-shore two human forms, motionless, speechless, and senseless. Odin gave them souls; Hahnir, motion and senses; and Lodur, blooming complexions. Thus were men created.

 

Haima (Heb.) The same as the Sanskrit hiranya (golden), as “the golden Egg” Hiranyagarbha.

 

Hair. Occult philosophy considers the hair (whether human or animal) as the natural receptacle and retainer of the vital essence which often escapes with other emanations from the body. It is closely connected with many of the brain functions—for instance memory. With the ancient Israelites the cutting of the hair and beard was a sign of defilement, and “the Lord said unto Moses. . . They shall not make baldness upon their head”, etc. (Lev. XX1., 1-5.) “Baldness”, whether natural or artificial, was a sign of calamity, punishment, or grief, as when Isaiah (iii., 24) enumerates, “instead of well-set hair baldness”, among the evils that are ready to befall the chosen people. And again, “On all their heads baldness and every beard cut” (Ibid. xv., 2). The Nazarite was ordered to let his hair and beard grow, and never to permit a razor to touch them. With the Egyptians and Buddhists it was only the initiated priest or ascetic to whom life is a burden, who shaved. The Egyptian priest was supposed to have become master of his body, and hence shaved his head for cleanliness; yet the Hierophants wore their hair long. The Buddhist still shaves his head to this day—as sign of scorn for life and health. Yet Buddha, after shaving his hair when he first became a mendicant, let it grow again and is always represented with the top-knot of a Yogi. The Hindu priests and Brahmins, and almost all the castes, shave the rest of the head but leave a long lock to grow from the centre of the crown. The ascetics of India wear their hair long, and so do the war-like Sikhs, and almost all the Mongolian peoples. At Byzantium and Rhodes the shaving of the beard was prohibited by law, and in Sparta the cutting of the beard was a mark of slavery and servitude. Among the Scandinavians, we are told, it was considered a disgrace, “a mark of infamy”, to cut off the hair. The whole population of the island of Ceylon (the Buddhist Singhalese) wear their hair long. So do the Russian, Greek and Armenian clergy, and monks. Jesus and the Apostles are always represented with their hair long, but fashion in Christendom proved stronger than Christianity, the old ecclesiastical rules (Constit. Apost. lib. I. C. 3) enjoining the clergy “to wear their hair

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and beards long” (See Riddle’s Ecclesiastical Antiquities.)  The ‘Templars were commanded to wear their beards long. Samson wore his hair long, and the biblical allegory shows that health and strength and the very life are connected with the length of the hair. If a cat is shaved it will die in nine cases out of ten. A dog whose coat is not interfered with lives longer and is more intelligent than one whose coat is shaven. Many old people as they lose their hair lose much of their memory and become weaker. While the life of the Yogis is proverbially long, the Buddhist priests (of Ceylon and elsewhere) are not generally long-lived. Mussulmen shave their heads but wear their beards; and as their head is always covered, the danger is less.

 

Hajaschar (Heb.) The Light Forces in the Kabbalah; the “Powers of Light”, which are the creative but inferior forces.

 

Hakem. Lit., “the Wise One”, the Messiah to come, of the Druzes or the “Disciples of Hamsa”.

 

Hakim (Arab.) A doctor, in all the Eastern countries, from Asia Minor to India.

 

Halachah (Heb.) A name given to parts of the Talmud, which are arguments on points of doctrine; the word means “rule”. [ w. w.w.]

 

Hallucination. A state produced sometimes by physiological disorders, sometimes by mediumship, and at others by drunkenness. But the cause that produces the visions has to be sought deeper than physiology. All such visions, especially when produced through mediumship, are preceded by a relaxation of the nervous system, in variably generating an abnormal magnetic condition which attracts to the sufferer waves of astral light. It is the latter that furnishes the various hallucinations. These, however, are not always what physicians would make them, empty, and unreal dreams. No one can see that which does not exist—i.e., which is not impressed—in or on the astral waves. A Seer may, however, perceive objects and scenes (whether past, present, or future) which have no relation whatever to himself, and also perceive several things entirely disconnected with each other at one and the same time, thus producing the most grotesque and absurd combinations. Both drunkard and Seer, medium and Adept, see their respective visions in the Astral Light; but while the drunkard, the madman, and the untrained medium, or one suffering from brain-fever, see, because they cannot help it, and evoke the jumbled visions
unconsciously to themselves, the Adept and the trained Seer have the choice and the control of such visions. They know where to fix their gaze, how to steady the scenes they want to observe, and how to see beyond the upper outward layers of the Astral Light. With the former such

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glimpses into the waves are hallucinations: with the latter they become the faithful reproduction of what actually has been, is, or will be, taking place. The glimpses at random caught by the medium, and his flickering visions in the deceptive light, are transformed under the guiding will of the Adept and Seer into steady pictures, the truthful representations of that which he wills to come within the focus of his perception.

 

Hamsa or Hansa (Sk.) “Swan or goose”, according to the Orientalists ; a mystical bird in Occultism analogous to the Rosicrucian Pelican. The sacred mystic name which, when preceded by that of KALA (infinite time), i.e. Kalahansa, is name of Parabrahm ; meaning the “ Bird out of space and time”. Hence Brahmâ (male)is called Hansa Vahana “the Vehicle of Hansa” (the Bird). We find the same idea in the Zohar, where Ain Suph (the endless and infinite) is said to descend into the universe, for purposes of manifestation, using Adam Kadmon (Humanity) as a chariot or vehicle.

 

Hamsa (Arab.). The founder of the mystic sect of the Druzes of Mount Lebanon. (See “Druzes” .)

 

Hangsa (Sk) A mystic syllable standing for evolution, and meaning in its literal sense
“I am he”, or Ahamsa.

 

Hansa (Sk.) The name, according to the Bhâgavata Purâna, of the “One Caste” when there were as yet no varieties of caste, but verily “one Veda, one Deity and one Caste”.

 

Hanuman (Sk.) The monkey god of the Ramayana; the generalissimo of Rama’s army; the son of Vayu, the god of the wind, and of a virtuous she-demon. Hanuman was the faithful ally of Rama and by his unparalleled audacity and wit, helped the Avatar of Vishnu to finally conquer the demon-king of Lanka, Ravana, who had carried off the beautiful Sita, Rama’s wife, an outrage which led to the celebrated war described in the Hindu epic poem.

 

Happy Fields. The name given by the Assyrio-Chaldeans to their Elysian Fields, which were intermingled with their Hades. As Mr. Boscawen tells his readers—“The Kingdom of the underworld was the realm of the god Hea, and the Hades of the Assyrian legends was placed in the underworld, and was ruled over by a goddess, Nin-Kigal, or ‘the Lady of the Great Land’. She is also called Allât.” A translated inscription states:—“After the gifts of these present days, in the feasts of the land of the silver sky, the resplendent courts, the abode of blessedness, and in the light of the Happy Fields, may he dwell in life eternal, holy, in the presence of the gods who inhabit Assyria”. This is worthy of a Christian tumulary inscription. Ishtar, the beautiful goddess, descended into Hades after her beloved Tammuz, and found

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that this dark place of the shades had seven spheres and seven gates, at each of which she had to leave something belonging to her.

 

Hara (Sk.) A title of the god Siva.

 

Hare-Worship. The hare was sacred in many lands and especially among the Egyptians and Jews. Though the latter consider it an unclean, hoofed animal, unfit to eat, yet it was held sacred by some tribes. The reason for this was that in a certain species of hare the male suckled the little ones. It was thus considered to be androgynous or hermaphrodite, and so typified an attribute of the Demiurge, or creative Logos. The hare was a symbol of the moon, wherein the face of the prophet Moses is to be seen to this day, say the Jews. Moreover the moon is connected with the worship of Jehovah, a deity pre-eminently the god of generation, perhaps also for the same reason that Eros, the god of sexual love, is represented as carrying a hare. The hare was also sacred to Osiris. Lenormand writes that the hare “has to be considered as the symbol of the Logos . . . the Logos ought to be hermaphrodite and we know that the hare is an androgynous type”.

 

Hari (Sk.) A title of Vishnu, but used also for other gods.

 

Harikesa (Sk.). The name of one of the seven rays of the Sun.

 

Harivansa (Sk.) A portion of the Mahâbhârata, a poem on the genealogy of Vishnu, or Hari.

 

Harmachus (Gr.) The Egyptian Sphinx, called Har-em-chu or “Horus (the Sun) in the Horizon”, a form of Ra the sun-god; esoterically the risen god. An inscription on a tablet reads “0 blessed Ra Harmachus Thou careerest by him in triumph. 0 shine, Amoun-Ra Harmachus self-generated ‘. The temple of the Sphinx was discovered by Mariette Bey close to the Sphinx, near the great Pyramid of Gizeh All the Egyptologists agree in pronouncing the Sphinx and her temple the “oldest religious monument of the world ”—at any rate of Egypt.

“The principal chamber”, writes the late Mr. Fergusson “in the form of a cross, is supported by piers, simple prisms of Syenite granite without base or capital . . no sculptures or inscriptions of any sort are found on the walls of this temple, no ornament or symbol nor any image in the sanctuary”. This proves the enormous antiquity of both the Sphinx and the temple. “The great bearded Sphinx of the Pyramids of Gizeh is the symbol of Harmachus, the same as each Egyptian Pharaoh who bore, in the inscriptions, the name of ‘living form of the Solar Sphinx upon the Earth ‘,”writes Brugsh Bey. And Renan recalls that “at one time the Egyptians were said to have temples without sculptured images” (Bonwick). Not only the Egyptians but every nation of the earth began with temples devoid of idols and even of symbols. It is

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only when the remembrance of the great abstract truths and of the primordial Wisdom taught to humanity by the dynasties of the divine kings died out that men had to resort to mementos and symbology. In the story of Horus in some tablets of Edfou, Rouge found an inscription showing that the god had once assumed “the shape of a human-headed lion to gain advantage over his enemy Typhon. Certainly Horus was so adored in Leontopolis. He is the real Sphinx. That accounts, too, for the lion figure being sometimes seen on each side of Isis. . . It was her child.” (Bonwick.) And yet the story of Harmachus, or Har em-chu, is still left untold to the world, nor is it likely to he divulged to this generation. (See “Sphinx”.)

 

Harpocrates (Gr.). The child Horus or Ehoou represented with a finger on his mouth, the solar disk upon his head and golden hair. He is the “god of Silence” and of Mystery. (See “Horus”). Harpocrates was also worshipped by both Greeks and Romans in Europe as a son of Isis.

 

Harshana (Sk.) A deity presiding over offerings to the dead, or Srâddha.

 

Harvîri (Eg.) Horns, the elder: the ancient name of a solar god: the rising sun represented as a god reclining on a full-blown lotus, the symbol of the Universe.

 

Haryaswas (Sk.) The five and ten thousand sons of Daksha, who instead of peopling the world as desired by their father, all became yogis, ‘as advised by the mysterious sage Narada, and remained celibates. “They dispersed through the regions and have not returned.” This means, according to the secret science, that they had all incarnated in mortals. The name is given to natural born mystics and celibates, who are said to be incarnations of the “Haryaswas”.

 

Hatchet. In the Egyptian Hieroglyphics a symbol of power, and also of death. The hatchet is called the “Severer of the Knot ” i.e., of marriage or any other tie.

 

Hatha Yoga (Sk.) The lower form of Yoga practice; one which uses physical means for purposes of spiritual self-development The opposite of Râja Yoga.

 

Hathor (Eg.) The lower or infernal aspect of Isis, corresponding to the Hecate of Greek mythology.

 

Hawk. The hieroglyphic and type of the Soul. The sense varies with the postures of the bird. Thus when lying as dead it represents the transition, larva state, or the passage from the state of one life to another. When its wings are opened it means that the defunct is resurrected in Amenti and once more in conscious possession of his soul. The chrysalis has become a butterfly.

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Hayo Bischat (Heb.) The Beast, in the Zohar: the Devil and Tempter. Esoterically our lower animal passions.

 

Hay-yah (Heb.) One of the metaphysical human “Principles”. Eastern Occultists divide men into seven such Principles; Western Kabbalists, we are told, into three only—namely, Nephesh Ruach and Neshamah. But in truth, this division is as loose and as mere an abbreviation as our “Body, Soul, Spirit ”. For, in the Qabbalah of Myer (Zohar ii.,141 b., Cremona Ed. ii., fol. 63 b., col. 251) it is stated that Neshamah or Spirit has three divisions, “the highest being Ye’hee-dah (Atmâ) the middle, Hay-yah (Buddhi), and the last and third, the Neshamah, properly speaking (Manas) ”. Then comes Mahshabah, Thought (the lower Manas, or conscious Personality), in which the higher then manifest themselves, thus making four; this is followed by Tzelem, Phantom of the Image (Kama-rupa in life the Kamic element); D’yooq-nah, Shadow of the image (Linga Sharira, the Double); and Zurath, Prototype, which is Life—seven in all, even without the D’mooth, Likeness or Similitude, which is called a lower manifestation, and is in reality the Guf, or Body. Theosophists of the E. S. who know the transposition made of Atmâ and the part taken by the auric prototype, will easily find which are the real seven, and assure themselves that between the division of Principles of the Eastern Occultists and that of the real Eastern Kabbalists there is no difference. Do not let us forget that neither the one nor the other are prepared to give out the real and final classification in their public writings.

 

Hay-yoth ha Qadosh (Heb.) The holy living creatures of Ezekiel’s vision of the Merkabah, or vehicle, or chariot. These are the four symbolical beasts, the cherubim of Ezekiel, and in the Zodiac Taurus, Leo, Scorpio (or the Eagle), and Aquarius, the man.

 

Hea (Chald.) The god of the Deep and the Underworld; some see in him Ea or Oannes, the fish-man, or Dagon.

 

Heabani (Chald.) A famous astrologer at the Court of Izdubar, frequently mentioned in the fragments of the Assyrian tablets in reference to a dream of Izdubar, the great Babylonian King, or Nimrod, the “mighty hunter before the Lord ”. After his death, his soul being unable to rest underground, the ghost of Heabani was raised by .Merodach, the god, his body restored to life and then transferred alive, like Elijah, to the regions of the Blessed.

 

Head of all Heads (Kab). Used of the “Ancient of the Ancients” Atteehah D’atteekeen, who is the “Hidden of the Hidden, the Concealed of the Concealed”. In this cranium of the “White Head”, Resha Hivrah, “dwell daily 13,000 myriads of worlds, which rest upon It, lean upon

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It” (Zohar iii. Idrah Rabbah). . . “In that Atteehah nothing is revealed except the Head alone, because it is the Head of all Heads. . . The Wisdom above, which is the Head, is hidden in it, the Brain which is tranquil and quiet, and none knows it but Itself. . . . And this Hidden Wisdom . . . the Concealed of the Concealed, the Head of all Heads, a Head which is not a Head, nor does any one know, nor is it ever known, what is in that Head which Wisdom and Reason cannot comprehend “ (Zohar iii., fol. 288 a). This is said of the Deity of which the Head (i.e., Wisdom perceived by all) is alone manifested. Of that Principle which is still higher nothing is even predicated, except that its universal presence and actuality are a philosophical necessity.

 

Heavenly Adam. The synthesis of the Sephirothal Tree, or of all the Forces in Nature and their informing deific essence. In the diagrams, the Seventh of the lower Sephiroth, Sephira Malkhooth—the Kingdom of Harmony—represents the feet of the ideal Macrocosm, whose head reaches to the first manifested Head. This Heavenly Adam is the natura naturans, the abstract world, while the Adam of Earth (Humanity) is the natura naturata or the material universe. The former is the presence of Deity in its universal essence; the latter the manifestation of the intelligence of that essence. In the real Zohar not the fantastic and anthropomorphic caricature which we often find in the writings of Western Kabbalists—there is not a particle of the personal deity which we find so prominent in the dark cloaking of the Secret Wisdom known as the Mosaic Pentateuch.

 

Hebdomad (Gr.) The Septenary.

 

Hebron or Kirjath-Arba. The city of the Four Kabeiri, for Kirjath Arba signifies “the City of the Four”. It is in that city, according to the legend, that an Isarim or an Initiate found the famous Smaragdine tablet on the dead body of Hermes.

 

Hel or Hela (Scand.). The Goddess-Queen of the Land of the Dead; the inscrutable and direful Being who reigns over the depths of Helheim and Nifelheim. In the earlier mythology, Hel was the earth-goddess, the good and beneficent mother, nourisher of the weary and the hungry. But in the later Skalds she became the female Pluto, the dark Queen of the Kingdom of Shades, she who brought death into this world, and sorrow afterwards.

 

Helheim (Scand.), The Kingdom of the Dead in the Norse mythology. In the Edda, Helheim surrounds the Northern Mistworld, called Nifelheim.

 

Heliolatry (Gr.). Sun-Worship.

 

Hell. A term with the Anglo-Saxons, evidently derived from the name

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of the goddess Hela (q.v.), and by the Sclavonians from the Greek Hades: hell being in Russian and other Sclavonian tongues—ad, the only difference between the Scandinavian cold hell and the hot hell of the Christians, being found in their respective temperatures. But even the idea of those overheated regions is not original with the Europeans, many peoples having entertained the conception of an underworld climate; as well may we if we localise our Hell in the centre of the earth. All exoteric religions—the creeds of the Brahmans, Buddhists, Zoroastrians, Mahommedans, Jews, and the rest, make their hells hot and dark, though many are more attractive than frightful. The idea of a hot hell is an afterthought, the distortion of an astronomical allegory. With the Egyptians, Hell became a place of punishment by fire not earlier than the seventeenth or eighteenth dynasty, when Typhon was transformed from a god into a devil. But at whatever time this dread superstition was implanted in the minds of the poor ignorant masses, the scheme of a burning hell and souls tormented therein is purely Egyptian. Ra (the Sun) became the Lord of the Furnace in Karr, the hell of the Pharaohs, and the sinner was threatened with misery “in the heat of infernal fires”. “A lion was there” says Dr. Birch “and was called the roaring monster”. Another describes the place as “the bottomless pit and lake of fire, into which the victims are thrown” (compare Revelation). The Hebrew word gaї-hinnom (Gehenna) never really had the significance given to it in Christian orthodoxy.

 

Hemadri (Sk.) The golden Mountain; Meru.

 

Hemera (Gr.) “The light of the inferior or terrestrial regions” as Ether is the light of the superior heavenly spheres. Both are born of Erebos (darkness) and Nux (night).

 

Heptakis (Gr.) “The Seven-rayed One ” of the Chaldean astrolaters: the same as IAo.

 

Herakies (Gr.). The same as Hercules.

 

Heranasikha (Sing.) From Herana “novice” and Sikha “rule” or precept: manual of Precepts. A work written in Elu or the ancient Singhalese, for the use of young priests.

 

Hermanubis (Gr.). Or Hermes Anubis“ the revealer of the mysteries of the lower world ”—not of Hell or Hades as interpreted, but of our Earth (the lowest world of the septenary chain of worlds)—and also of the sexual mysteries. Creuzer must have guessed at the truth of the right interpretation, as he calls Anubis-Thoth-Hermes “a symbol of science and of the intellectual world ”. He was always represented with a cross in his hand, one of the earliest symbols of the mystery of generation, or procreation on this earth. In the Chaldean Kabbala (Book of Numbers) the Tat

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symbol, or +, is referred to as Adam and Eve, the latter being the transverse or horizontal bar drawn out of the side (or rib) of Hadam, the perpendicular bar. The fact is that, esoterically, Adam and Eve while representing the early third Root Race—those who, being still mindless, imitated the animals and degraded themselves with the latter—stand also as the dual symbol of the sexes. Hence Anubis, the Egyptian god of generation, is represented with the head of an animal, a dog or a jackal, and is also said to be the “ Lord of the underworld” or “ Hades ” into which he introduces the souls of the dead (the reincarnating entities), for Hades is in one sense the womb, as some of the writings of the Church Fathers fully show.

 

Hermaphrodite (Gr.). Dual-sexed; a male and female Being, whether man or animal.

 

Hermas (Gr.). An ancient Greek writer of whose works only a few fragments are now extant.

 

Hermes-fire. The same as “Elmes-fire”. (See Isis Unveiled Vol. I.,p. 125.)

 

Hermes Sarameyas (Greco-Sanskrit) The God Hermes, or Mercury, “he who watches over the flock of stars” in the Greek mythology.

 

Hermes Trismegistus (Gr.). The “thrice great Hermes”, the Egyptian. The mythical personage after whom the Hermetic philosophy was named. In Egypt the God Thoth or Thot. A generic name of many ancient Greek writers on philosophy and Alchemy. Hermes Trismegistus is the name of Hermes or Thoth in his human aspect, as a god he is far more than this. As Hermes-Thoth-Aah, he is Thoth, the moon, i.e., his symbol is the bright side of the moon, supposed to contain the essence of creative Wisdom, “the elixir of Hermes ”. As such he is associated with the Cynocephalus, the dog-headed monkey, for the same reason as was Anubis, one of the aspects of Thoth. (See “ Hermanubis”.) The same idea underlies the form of the Hindu God of Wisdom, the elephant-headed Ganesa, or Ganpat, the son of Parvati and Siva. (See “Ganesa”.) When he has the head of an ibis, he is the sacred scribe of the gods; but even then he wears the crown atef and the lunar disk. He is the most mysterious of gods. As a serpent, Hermes Thoth is the divine creative ‘Wisdom. The Church Fathers speak at length of Thoth-Hermes. (See “Hermetic”.)

 

Hermetic. Any doctrine or writing connected with the esoteric teachings of Hermes, who, whether as the Egyptian Thoth or the Greek Hermes, was the God of Wisdom with the Ancients, and, according to Plato, “discovered numbers, geometry, astronomy and letters”. Though mostly considered as spurious, nevertheless the Hermetic writings were highly prized by St. Augustine, Lactantius, Cyril and others. In the

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words of Mr. J. Bonwick, “ They are more or less touched up by the Platonic philosophers among the early Christians (such as Origen and Clemens Alexandrinus) who sought to substantiate their Christian arguments by appeals to these heathen and revered writings, though they could not resist the temptation of making them say a little too much. Though represented by some clever and interested writers as teaching pure monotheism, the Hermetic or Trismegistic books are, nevertheless, purely pantheistic. The Deity referred to in them is defined by Paul as that in which “we live, and move and have our being”—notwithstanding the “in Him” of the translators.

 

Hetu (Sk.). A natural or physical cause.

 

Heva (Heb.). Eve, “the mother of all that lives”.

 

Hiarchas (Gr.). The King of the “Wise Men”, in the Journey of Apollonius of Tyana to India.

 

Hierogrammatists. The title given to those Egyptian priests who were entrusted with the writing and reading of the sacred and secret records. The “scribes of the secret records” literally. They were the instructors of the neophytes preparing for initiation.

 

Hierophant. From the Greek “Hierophantes”; literally, “One who explains sacred things ”. The discloser of sacred learning and the Chief of the Initiates. A title belonging to the highest Adepts in the temples of antiquity, who were the teachers and expounders of the Mysteries and the Initiators into the final great Mysteries. The Hierophant represented the Demiurge, and explained to the postulants for Initiation the various phenomena of Creation that were produced for their tuition. “ He was the sole expounder of the esoteric secrets and doctrines. It was forbidden even to pronounce his name before an
uninitiated person. He sat in the East, and wore as a symbol of authority a golden globe suspended from the neck. He was also called Mystagogus” (Kenneth R. H. Mackenzie, ix., F.T.S., in The Royal Masonic cyclopćdia). In Hebrew and Chaldaic the term was Peter, the opener, discloser; hence the Pope as the successor of the hierophant of the ancient Mysteries, sits in the Pagan chair of St. Peter.

 

Higher Self. The Supreme Divine Spirit overshadowing man. The crown of the upper spiritual Triad in man—Atmân.

 

Hillel. A great Babylonian Rabbi of the century preceding the Christian era. He was the founder of the sect of the Pharisees, a learned and a sainted man.

 

Himachala Himadri (Sk.). The Himalayan Mountains.

 

Himavat (Sk). The personified Himalayas; the father of the river Ganga, or Ganges.

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Hinayana (Sk.). The “ Smaller Vehicle”; a Scripture and a School of the Northern Buddhists, opposed to the Mahayana, “the Greater Vehicle”, in Tibet. Both schools are mystical. (See “Mahayana”.) Also in exoteric superstition the lowest form of transmigration.

 

Hiouen Thsang. A great Chinese writer and philosopher who travelled in India in the sixth century, in order to learn more about Buddhism, to which he was devoted.

 

Hippocrates (Gr.). A famous physician of Cos, one of the Cyclades, who flourished at Athens during the invasion of Artaxerxes, and delivered that town from a dreadful pestilence. He was called “the father of Medicine “. Having studied his art from the votive tablets offered by the cured patients at the temples of Ćsculapius, he became an Initiate and the most proficient healer of his day, so much so that he was almost deified. His learning and knowledge were enormous. Galen says of his writings that they are truly the voice of an oracle. He died in his 100th year, 361 B.c.

 

Hippopotamus (Gr.) In Egyptian symbolism Typhon was called “the hippopotamus who slew his father and violated his mother,” Rhea (mother of the gods). His father was Chronos. As applied therefore to Time and Nature (Chronos and Rhea), the accusation becomes comprehensible. The type of Cosmic Disharmony, Typhon, who is also Python, the monster formed of the slime of the Deluge of Deucalion, “violates” his mother, Primordial Harmony, whose beneficence was so great that she was called “The Mother of the Golden Age”. It was Typhon, who put an end to the latter, i.e., produced the first war of elements.

 

Hiquet (Eg.). The frog-goddess; one of the symbols of immortality and of the “water” principle. The early Christians had their church lamps made in the form of a frog, to denote that baptism in water led to immortality.

 

Hiram Abiff. A biblical personage; a skilful builder and a “Widow’s Son”, whom King Solomon procured from Tyre, for the purpose of super-intending the works of the Temple, and who became later a masonic character, the hero on whom hangs all the drama, or rather play, of the Masonic Third Initiation. The Kabbala makes a great deal of Hiram Abiff.

 

Hiranya (Sk.). Radiant, golden, used of the “Egg of Brahmâ”.

 

Hiranya Garbha (Sk.). The radiant or golden egg or womb. Esoterically the luminous “fire mist” or ethereal stuff from which the Universe was formed.

 

Hiranyakasipu (Sk.). A King of the Daityas, whom Vishnu—in his avatar of the “man.lion”—puts to death.

 

Hiranyaksha (Sk.). “The golden-eyed.” the king and ruler of the

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5th region of Pâtala, the nether-world; a snake-god in the Hindu Pantheon. It has various other meanings.

 

Hiranyapura (Sk.). The Golden City.

 

Hisi (Fin.). The “Principle of Evil ”in the Kalevala, the epic poem of Finland.

 

Hitopadesa (Sk.). “Good Advice.” A work composed of a collection of ethical precepts, allegories and other tales from an old Scripture, the Panchatantra.

 

Hivim or Chivim (Heb.). Whence the Hivites who, according to some Roman Catholic commentators, descend from Heth, son of Canaan, son of Ham, “the accursed”. Brasseur de Bourbourg, the missionary translator of the Scripture of the Guatemalians, the Popol Vuh, indulges in the theory that the Hivim of the Quetzo Cohuatl, the Mexican Serpent Deity, and the “descendants of Serpents” as they call themselves, are identical with the descendants of Ham (! !) “whose ancestor is Cain”. Such is the conclusion, at any rate, drawn from Bourhourg’s writings by Des Mousseaux, the demonologist. Bourbourg hints that the chiefs of the name of Votan, the Quetzo Cohuati, are the descendants of Ham and Canaan. “I am Hivim”, they say. “ Being a Hivim, I am of the great Race of the Dragons. I am a snake, myself, for I am a Hivim’ (Cortes 51). But Cain is allegorically shown as the ancestor of the Hivites, the Serpents, because Cain is held to have been the first initiate in the mystery of procreation. The “race of the Dragons” or Serpents means the Wise Adepts. The names Hivi or Hivite, and Levi—signify a Serpent “; and the Hivites or Serpent-tribe of Palestine, were, like all Levites and Ophites of Israel, initiated Ministers to the temples, i.e., Occultists, as are the priests of Quetzo Cohuatl. The Gibeonites whom Joshua assigned to the service of the sanctuary were Hivites.
(See
Isis Unveiled, Vol. II. 481.)

 

Hler (Scand.). The god of the One of the three mighty sons of the Frost-giant, Ymir. These sons were Kari, god of the air and the storms; Hler of the Sea; and Logi of the fire. They are the Cosmic trinity of the Norsemen.

 

Hoa (Heb.). That, from which proceeds Ab, the “Father”; therefore the Concealed Logos.

 

Hoang Ty (Chin.). “The Great Spirit.” His Sons are said to have acquired new wisdom, and imparted what they knew before to mortals, by falling—like the rebellious angels— into the “Valley of Pain”, which is allegorically our Earth. In other words they are identical with the “Fallen Angels” of exoteric religions, and with the reincarnating Egos, esoterically.

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Hochmah (Heb.). See “Chochmah”.

 

Hod (Heb.). Splendour, the eighth of the ten Sephiroth, a female passive potency. [ w. w.w.]

 

Holy of Holies. The Assyriologists, Egyptologists, and Orientalists, in general, show that such a place existed in every temple of antiquity. The great temple of Bel-Merodach whose sides faced the four cardinal points, had in its extreme end a “Holy of Holies” hidden from the profane by a veil: here, “at the beginning of the year ‘the divine king of heaven and earth, the lord of the heavens, seats himself’.” According to Herodotus, here was the golden image of the god with a golden table in front like the Hebrew table for the shew bread, and upon this, food appears to have been placed. in some temples there also was “a little coffer or ark with two engraved stone tablets on it”. (Myer’s Qabbalah.) In short, it is now pretty well proven, that the “chosen people” had nothing original of their own, but that every detail of their ritualism and religion was borrowed from older nations. The Hibbert Lectures by Prof. Sayce and others show this abundantly. The story of the birth of Moses is that of Sargon, the Babylonian, who preceded Moses by a couple of thousand years; and no wonder, as Dr. Sayce tells us that the name of Moses, Mosheh, has a connection with the name of the Babylonian sun-god as the “hero” or “leader”. (Hib. Lect., p. 46 et seq.) Says Mr. J. Myer, “The orders of the priests were divided into high priests, those attached or bound to certain deities, like the Hebrew Levites; anointers or cleaners ; the Kali, ‘illustrious’ or ‘elders’; the soothsayers, and the Makhkhu or ‘great one’, in which Prof. Delitzsch sees the Rab-mag of the Old Testament. . . The Akkadians and Chaldeans kept a Sabbath day of rest every seven days, they also had thanksgiving days, and days for humiliation and prayer. There were sacrifices of vegetables and animals, of meats and wine. . . . The number seven was especially sacred. . . . The great temple of Babylon existed long before 2,250 B.c. Its ‘Holy of Holies’ was with in the shrine of Nebo, the prophet god of wisdom.” It is from the Akkadians that the god Mardak passed to the Assyrians, and he had been before Merodach, “the merciful”, of the Babylonians, the only son and interpreter of the will of Ea or Hea, the great Deity of Wisdom. The Assyriologists have, in short, unveiled the whole scheme of the “chosen people”.

 

Holy Water. This is one of the oldest rites practised in Egypt, and thence in Pagan Rome. It accompanied the rite of bread and wine. “Holy water was sprinkled by the Egyptian priest alike upon his gods’ images and the faithful. It was both poured and sprinkled. A brush has been found, supposed to have been used for that purpose, as at this

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day.” (Bonwick’s Egyptian Belief.) As to the bread, “the cakes of Isis were placed upon the altar. Gliddon writes that they were ‘identical in shape with the consecrated cake of the Roman and Eastern Churches’. Melville assures us ‘the Egyptians marked this holy bread with St. Andrew’s cross’. The Presence bread was broken before being distributed by the priests to the people, and was supposed to become the flesh and blood of the Deity. The miracle was wrought by the hand of the officiating priest, who blessed the food. . . . Rouge tells us ‘the bread offerings bear the imprint of the fingers, the mark of consecration ‘.”
(Ibid, page 458.) (See also “ Bread and Wine”.)

 

Homogeneity. From the Greek words homos “the same” and genos “kind”. That which is of the same nature throughout, undifferentiated, non-compound, as gold is supposed to be.

 

Honir (Scand.). A creative god who furnished the first man with intellect and understanding after man had been created by him jointly with Odin and Lodur from an ash tree.

 

Honover (Zend). The Persian Logos, the manifested Word.

 

Hor Ammon (Eg.). “The Self-engendered”, a word in theogony which answers to the Sanskrit Anupadaka, parentless. Hor-Ammon is a combination of the ram-headed god of Thebes and of Horus.

 

Horchia (Chald.). According to Berosus, the same as Vesta, goddess of the Hearth.

 

Horus (Eg.). The last in the line of divine Sovereigns in Egypt, said to he the son of Osiris and Isis. He is the great god “loved of Heaven”, the “beloved of the Sun, the offspring of the gods, the subjugator of the world”. At the time of the Winter Solstice (our Christmas), his image, in the form of a small newly-born infant, was brought out from the sanctuary for the adoration of the worshipping crowds. As he is the type of the vault of heaven, he is said to have come from the Maem Misi, the sacred birth-place (the womb of the World), and is, therefore, the “mystic Child of the Ark” or the argha, the symbol of the matrix. Cosmically, he is the Winter Sun. A tablet describes him as the “substance of his father”, Osiris, of whom he is an incarnation and also identical with him. Horus is a chaste deity, and “like Apollo has no amours. His part in the lower world is associated with the judgment. He introduces souls to his father, the judge” (Bonwick). An ancient hymn says of him, “By him the world is judged in that which it contains. Heaven and earth are under his immediate presence. He rules all human beings. The sun goes round according to his purpose. He brings forth abundance and dispenses it to all the earth. Everyone adores his beauty. Sweet is his love in us.”

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Hotri (Sk.). A priest who recites the hymns from the Rig Veda, and makes oblations to the fire.

 

Hotris (Sk). A symbolical name for the seven senses called, in the Anugita “the Seven Priests”. “The senses supply the fire of mind (i.e., desire) with the oblations of external pleasures.” An occult term used metaphysically.

 

Hrimthurses (Scand.). The Frost-giants; Cyclopean builders in the Edda.

 

Humanity. Occultly and Kabbalistically, the whole of mankind is symbolised, by Manu in India; by Vajrasattva or Dorjesempa, the head of the Seven Dhyani, in Northern Buddhism; and by Adam Kadmon in the Kabbala. All these represent the totality of mankind whose beginning is in this androgynic protoplast, and whose end is in the Absolute, beyond all these symbols and myths of human origin. Humanity is a great Brotherhood by virtue of the sameness of the material from which it is formed physically and morally. Unless, however, it becomes a Brotherhood also intellectually, it is no better than a superior genus of animals.

 

Hun-desa (Sk.). The country around lake Mansaravara in Tibet.

 

Hvanuatha (Mazd.). The name of the earth on which we live. One of the seven Karshvare (Earths), spoken of in Orma Ahr. (See Introduction to the Vendidad by Prof. Darmsteter.)

 

Hwergelmir (Scand.). A roaring cauldron wherein the souls of the evil doers perish.

 

Hwun (Chin.). Spirit. The same as Atmân.

 

Hydranos (Gr.). Lit., the “Baptist”. 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.

 

Hyksos (Eg.). The mysterious nomads, the Shepherds, who invaded Egypt at a period unknown and far anteceding the days of Moses. They are called the “Shepherd Kings”.

 

Hyle (Gr.). Primordial stuff or matter; esoterically the homogeneous sediment of Chaos or the Great Deep. The first principle out of which the objective Universe was formed.

 

Hypatia (Gr.). The girl-philosopher, who lived at Alexandria during the fifth century, and taught many a famous man—among others Bishop Synesius. She was the daughter of the mathematician Theon, and became famous for her learning. Falling a martyr to the fiendish

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conspiracy of Theophilos, Bishop of Alexandria, and his nephew Cyril, she was foully murdered by their order. With her death fell the Neo Platonic School.

 

Hyperborean (Gr.). The regions around the North Pole in the Arctic Circle.

 

Hypnotism (Gr.). A name given by Dr. Braid to various processes by which one person of strong
will-power plunges another of weaker mind into a kind of trance; once in such a state the latter will do anything suggested to him by the hypnotiser. Unless produced for beneficial purposes, Occultists would call it black magic or Sorcery. It is the most dangerous of practices, morally and physically, as it interferes with the nerve fluid and the nerves controlling the circulation in the capillary blood-vessels.

 

Hypocephalus (Gr.). A kind of a pillow for the head of the mummy. They are of various kinds, e.g., of stone, wood, etc., and very often of circular disks of linen covered with cement, and inscribed with magic figures and letters. They are called “rest for the dead” in the Ritual, and every mummy-coffin has one.

 

                                                                                                                

I   

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I .—The ninth letter in the English, the tenth in the Hebrew alphabet. As a numeral it signifies in both languages one, and also ten in the Hebrew (see J), in which it corresponds to the Divine name Jah, the male side, or aspect, of the hermaphrodite being, or the male-female Adam, of which hovah Jah-hovah) is the female aspect. It is symbolized by a hand with bent fore-finger, to show its phallic signification.

 

Iacchos (Gr.). A synonym of Bacchus. Mythology mentions three persons so named: they were Greek ideals adopted later by the Romans. The word Iacchos is stated to be of Phśnician origin, and to mean “an infant at the breast ”. Many ancient monuments represent Ceres or Demeter with Bacchus in her arms. One Iacchos was called Theban and Conqueror, son of Jupiter and Semele; his mother died before his birth and he was preserved for some time in the thigh of his father; he was killed by the Titans. Another was son of Jupiter, as a Dragon, and Persephone ; this one was named Zagrćmus. A third was Iacchos of Eleusis, son of Ceres: he is of importance because he appeared on the sixth day of the Eleusinian Mysteries. Some see an analogy between Bacchus and Noah, both cultivators of the Vine, and patrons of alcoholic excess. [w.w.w.]

 

Iachus (Gr.). An Egyptian physician, whose memory, according to Ćlian, was venerated for long centuries on account of his wonderful occult knowledge. Iachus is credited with having stopped epidemics simply by certain fumigations, and cured diseases by making his patients inhale herbs.

 

Iaho. Though this name is more fully treated under the word“Yaho” and “Iao”, a few words of explanation will not be found amiss. Diodorus mentions that the God of Moses was Iao; but as the latter name denotes a “mystery god”, it cannot therefore be confused with Iaho or Yaho (q.v.). The Samaritans pronounced it Iabe, Yahva, and the Jews Yaho, and then Jehovah, by change of Masoretic vowels, an elastic scheme by which any change may be indulged in. But “Jehovah” is a later invention and invocation, as originally the name was Jah, or Iacchos (Bacchus). Aristotle shows the ancient Arabs representing Iach (Iacchos) by a horse, i.e., the horse of the Sun (Dionysus), which followed the chariot on which Ahura Mazda, the god of the Heavens, daily rode.

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Iamblichus (Gr.). A great Theurgist, mystic, and writer of the third and fourth centuries, a Neo-Platonist and philosopher, born at Chalcis in Cśle-Syria. Correct biographies of him have never existed because of the hatred of the Christians; but that which has been gathered of his life in isolated fragments from works by impartial pagan and independent writers shows how excellent and holy was his moral character, and how great his learning. He may be called the founder of theurgic magic among the Neo-Platonists and the reviver of the practical mysteries outside of temple or fane. His school was at first distinct from that of Plotinus and Porphyry, who were strongly against ceremonial magic and practical theurgy as dangerous, though later he convinced Porphyry of its. advisability on some occasions, and both master and pupil firmly believed in theurgy and magic, of which the former is principally the highest and most efficient mode of communication with one’s Higher Ego, through the medium of one’s astral body. Theurgic is benevolent magic, and it becomes goetic, or dark and evil, only when it is used for necromancy or selfish purposes; but such dark magic has never been practised by any theurgist or philosopher, whose name has descended to us unspotted by any evil deed. So much was Porphyry (who became the teacher of Iamblichus in Neo-Platonic philosophy) convinced of this, that though he himself never practised theurgy, yet he gave instructions for the acquirement of this sacred science. Thus he says in one of his writings, “Whosoever is acquainted with the nature of divinely luminous appearances fasmata ( knows also on what account it is requisite to abstain from all birds (and animal food) and especially for him who hastens to be liberated from terrestrial concerns and to be established with the celestial gods”. (See Select Works by T. Taylor, p. 159.) Moreover, the same Porphyry mentions in his Life of Plotinus a priest of Egypt, who, “at the request of a certain friend of Plotinus, exhibited to him, in the temple of Isis at Rome, the familiar daimon of that philosopher “. In other words, he produced the theurgic invocation (see “Theurgist”) by which Egyptian Hierophant or Indian Mahâtma, of old, could clothe their own or any other person’s astral double with the appearance of its Higher EGO, or what Bulwer Lytton terms the “ Luminous Self”, the Augoeides, and confabulate with It. This it is which Iamblichus and many others, including the medićval Rosicrucans, meant by union with Deity. Iamblichus wrote many books but only a few of his works are extant, such as his “Egyptian Mysteries” and a treatise “On Dćmons”, in which he speaks very severely against any intercourse with them. He was a biographer of Pythagoras and deeply versed in the system of the latter, and was also learned in the Chaldean Mysteries. He taught that the One, or universal MONAD,

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was the principle of all unity as well as diversity, or of Homogeneity and Heterogeneity; that the Duad, or two (“ Principles”), was the intellect, or that which we call Buddhi-Manas; three, was the Soul (the lower Manas), etc. etc. There is much of the theosophical in his teachings, and his works on the various kinds of dćmons (Elementals) are a well of esoteric knowledge for the student. His austerities, purity of life and earnestness were great. Iamblichus is credited with having been once levitated ten cubits high from the ground, as are some of the modern Yogis, and even great mediums.

 

Iao (Gr.). See Iaho. The highest god of the Phśnicians the light conceivable only by intellect”, the physical and spiritual Principle of all things, “the male Essence of Wisdom ”. It is the ideal Sun light.

 

Iao Hebdomai (Gr.). The collective “Seven Heavens” (also angels) according to Irenćus. The mystery-god of the Gnostics. The same as the Seven Manasa-putras (q.v.) of the Occultists.
(See also “Yah” and “Yaho”.)

 

Ibis Worship. The Ibis, in Egyptian Hab, was sacred to Thoth at Hermopolis. It was called the messenger of Osiris, for it is the symbol of Wisdom, Discrimination, and Purity, as it loathes water if it is the least impure. Its usefulness in devouring the eggs of the crocodiles and serpents was great, and its credentials for divine honours as a symbol were: (a) its black wings, which related it to primeval darkness—chaos; and (b) the triangular shape of them—the triangle being the first geometrical figure and a symbol of the trinitarian mystery. To this day the Ibis is a sacred bird with some tribes of Kopts who live along the Nile.

 

Ibn Gebirol. Solomon Ben Yehudah: a great philosopher and scholar, a Jew by birth, who lived in the eleventh century in Spain. The same as Avicenna (q.v.).

 

Ichchha (Sk.). Will, or will-power.

 

Ichchha Sakti (Sk.). Will-power; force of desire; one of the occult Forces of nature. That power of the will which, exercised in occult practices, generates the nerve-currents necessary to set certain muscles in motion and to paralyze certain others.

 

Ichthus (Gr.). A Fish: the symbol of the Fish has been frequently referred to Jesus, the Christ of the New Testament, partly because the five letters forming the word are the initials of the Greek phrase, Iesous Christos Theou Uios Soter, Jesus Christ the Saviour, Son of God. Hence his followers in the early Christian centuries were often called fishes, and drawings of fish are found in the Catacombs. Compare also the narrative that some of his early disciples were fishermen, and the assertion

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of Jesus― “I will make you fishers of men”. Note also the Vesica Piscis, a conventional shape for fish in general, is frequently found enclosing a picture of a Christ, holy virgin, or saint; it is a long oval with pointed ends, the space marked out by the intersection of two equal circles, when less than half the area of one. Compare the Christian female recluse, a Nun—this word is the Chaldee name for fish, and fish is connected with the worship of Venus, a goddess, and the Roman Catholics still eat fish on the Dies Veneris or Friday. [w.w.w.]

 

Ida (Scand.). The plains of Ida, on which the gods assemble to hold counsel in the Edda. The field of peace and rest.

 

Ideos, in Paracelsus the same as Chaos, or Mysterium Magnum as that philosopher calls it.

 

Idises (Scand.). The same as the Dises, the Fairies and Walkyries, the divine women in the Norse legends; they were reverenced by the Teutons before the day of Tacitus, as the latter shows.

 

Idćic Finger. An iron finger strongly magnetized and used in the temples for healing purposes. It produced wonders in that direction, and therefore was said to possess magical powers.

 

Idol. A statue or a picture of a heathen god; or a statue or picture of a Romish Saint, or a fetish of uncivilized tribes.

 

Idospati (Sk.). The same as Narayana or Vishnu; resembling Poseidon in some respects.

 

Idra Rabba (Heb.). “The Greater Holy Assembly ‘ a division of the Zohar.

 

Idra Suta (Heb.). “The Lesser Holy Assembly”, another division of the Zohar.

 

Iduna (Scand.). The goddess of immortal youth. The daughter of Iwaldi, the Dwarf. She is said in the Edda to have hidden “ life” in the Deep of the Ocean, and when the right time came, to have restored it to Earth once more. She was the wife of Bragi, the god of poetry; a most charming myth. Like Heimdal, “born of nine mothers”, Bragi at his birth rises upon the crest of the wave from the bottom of the sea (see “Bragi”). He married Iduna, the immortal goddess, who accompanies him to Asgard where every morning she feeds the gods with the apples of eternal youth and health. (See Asgard and the Gods.)

 

Idwatsara (Sk.). One of the five periods that form the Yuga. This cycle is pre-eminently the Vedic cycle, which is taken as the basis of calculation for larger cycles.

 

Ieu. The “first man”; a Gnostic term used in Pistis-Sophia.

 

Iezedians or lezidi (Pers.). This sect came to Syria from Basrah. They use baptism, believe in the archangels, but reverence Satan at the

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same time. Their prophet Iezad, who preceded Mahomet by long centuries, taught that a messenger from heaven would bring them a book written from the eternity.

 

Ifing (Scand.). The broad river that divides Asgard, the home of the gods, from that of the Jotuns, the great and strong magicians. Below Asgard was Midgard, where in the sunny ćther was built the home of the Light Elves. In their disposition and order of locality, all these Homes answer to the Deva and other Lokas of the Hindus, inhabited by the various classes of gods and Asuras.

 

Igaga (Chald.) Celestial angels, the same as Archangels.

 

I.H.S. This triad of initials stands for the in hoc signo of the alleged vision of Constantine, of which, save Eusebius, its author, no one ever knew. I.H.S. is interpreted Jesus Hominum Salvator, and In hoc signo. It is, however, well known that the Greek IHS was one of the most ancient names of Bacchus. As Jesus was never identical with Jehovah, but with his own “Father” (as all of us are), and had come rather to destroy the worship of Jehovah than to enforce it, as the Rosicrucians well maintained, the scheme of Eusebius is very transparent. In hoc signo Victor ens, or the Labarum  T (the tau and the resh) is a very old signum, placed on the foreheads of those who were just initiated. Kenealy translates it as meaning “he who is initiated into the Naronic Secret, or the 600, shall be Victor” but it is simply “through this sign hast thou conquered”; i.e., through the light of Initiation—Lux. (See “Neophyte and “Naros”.)

 

Ikhir Bonga. A “Spirit of the Deep” of the Kolarian tribes.

 

Ikshwaku (Sk.). The progenitor of the Solar tribe (the Suryavansas) in India, and the Son of Vaivaswata Manu, the progenitor of the present human Race.

 

Ila (Sk.). Daughter of Vaivaswata Manu; wife of Buddha, the son of Soma; one month a woman and the other a man by the decree of Saraswati; an allusion to the androgynous second race. Ila is also Vâch in another aspect.

 

Ilavriti (Sk.). A region in the centre of which is placed Mount Meru, the habitat of the gods.

 

Ilda Baoth. Lit., “the child from the Egg”, a Gnostic term. He is the creator of our physical globe (the earth) according to the Gnostic teaching in the Codex Nazarćus (the Evangel of the Nazarenes and the Ebionites). The latter identifies him with Jehovah the God of the Jews. Ildabaoth is “the Son of Darkness” in a bad sense and the father of the six terrestrial “ Stellar”, dark spirits, the antithesis of the bright Stellar spirits. Their respective abodes are the seven spheres, the upper

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of which begins in the “middle space”, the region of their mother Sophia Achamôth, and the lower ending on this earth—the seventh region (See Isis Unveiled, Vol. II., 183.) Ilda-Baoth is the genius of Saturn, the planet; or rather the evil spirit of its ruler.

 

Iliados. In Paracelsus the same as “Ideos” (q.v.). Primordial matter in the subjective state.

 

Illa-ah, Adam (Heb.). Adam Illa-ah is the celestial, superior Adam, in the Zohar.

 

Illinus. One of the gods in the Chaldean Theogony of Damascius.

 

Ilmatar (Finn.). The Virgin who falls from heaven into the sea before creation. She is the “daughter of the air” and the mother of seven Sons (the seven forces in nature).
(See Kalevala, the epic poem of
Finland.)

 

Illusion. In Occultism everything finite (like the universe and all in it) is called illusion or maya.

 

Illuminati (Lat.). The “Enlightened”, the initiated adepts.

 

Ilus (Gr.). Primordial mud or slime; called also Hyle.

 

Image. Occultism permits no other image than that of the living image of divine man (the symbol of Humanity) on earth. The Kabbala teaches that this divine Image, the copy of the sublime and holy upper Image (the Elohim) has now changed into another similitude, owing to the development of men’s sinful nature. It is only the upper divine Image (the Ego) which is the same; the lower (personality) has changed, and man, now fearing the wild beasts, has grown to bear on his face the similitude of many of them. (Zohar I. fol. 71a.) In the early period of Egypt there were no images; but later, as Lenormand says, “In the sanctuaries of Egypt they divided the properties of nature and consequently of Divinity (the Elohim, or the Egos), into seven abstract qualities, characterised each by an emblem, which are matter, cohesion, fluxion, coagulation, accumulation, station and division ”. These were all attributes symbolized in various images.

 

Imagination. In Occultism this is not to be confused with fancy, as it is one of the plastic powers of the higher Soul, and is the memory of the preceding incarnations, which, however disfigured by the lower Manas, yet rests always on a ground of truth.

 

Imhot-pou or Imhotep (Eg.). The god of learning (the Greek Imouthes). He was the son of Ptah, and in one aspect Hermes, as he is represented as imparting wisdom with a book before him. He is a solar god; lit., “the god of the handsome face “.

 

Immah (Heb.). Mother, in contradistinction to Abba, father.

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Immah Illa-ah (Heb.). The upper mother; a name given to Shekinah.

 

In (Chin.). The female principle of matter, impregnated by Yo, the male ethereal principle, and precipitated thereafter down into the universe.

 

Incarnations (Divine) or Avatars. The Immaculate Conception is as pre-eminently Egyptian as it is Indian. As the author of Egyptian Belief has it: “It is not the vulgar, coarse and sensual story as in Greek mythology, but refined, moral and spiritual “; and again the incarnation idea was found revealed on the wall of a Theban temple by Samuel Sharpe, who thus analyzes it: “First the god Thoth . . . as the messenger of the gods, like the Mercury of the Greeks (or the Gabriel of the first Gospel), tells the maiden queen Mautmes, that she is to give birth to a son, who is to be king Amunotaph III. Secondly, the god Kneph, the Spirit . . . . and the goddess Hathor (Nature) both take hold of the queen by the hands and put into her mouth the character for life, a cross, which is to be the life of the coming child”, etc., etc. Truly divine incarnation, or the avatar doctrine, constituted the grandest mystery of every old religious system!

 

Incas (Peruvian). The name given to the creative gods in the Peruvian theogony, and later to the rulers of the country. “The Incas, seven in number have repeopled the earth after the Deluge ‘, Coste makes them say (I. iv., p. 19). They belonged at the beginning of the fifth Root-race to a dynasty of divine kings, such as those of Egypt, India and Chaldea.

 

Incubus (Lat.). Something more real and dangerous than the ordinary meaning given to the word, viz., that of “nightmare ”. An Incubus is the male Elemental, and Succuba the female, and these are undeniably the spooks of medićval demonology, called forth from the invisible regions by human passion and lust. They are now called “Spirit brides” and “Spirit husbands” among some benighted Spiritists and spiritual mediums. But these poetical names do not prevent them in the least being that which they are—Ghools, Vampires and soulless Elementals; formless centres of Life, devoid of sense; in short, subjective protoplasms when left alone, but called into a definite being and form by the creative and diseased imagination of certain mortals. They were known under every clime as in every age, and the Hindus can tell more than one terrible tale of the dramas enacted in the life of young students and mystics by the Pisachas, their name in India.

 

Individuality. One of the names given in Theosophy and Occultism to the Human Higher EGO. We make a distinction between the immortal and divine Ego, and the mortal human Ego which perishes.

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The latter, or “personality” (personal Ego) survives the dead body only for a time in the Kama Loka; the Individuality prevails forever.

 

Indra (Sk.). The god of the Firmament, the King of the sidereal gods. A Vedic Deity.

 

Indrâni (Sk.). The female aspect of Indra.

 

Indriya or Deha Sanyama (Sk.). The control of the senses in Yoga practice. These are the ten external agents; the five senses which are used for perception are called Jnana-indriya, and the five used for action—Karma-indriya. Pancha-indryani means literally and in its occult sense “the live roots producing life”(eternal). With the Buddhists, it is the five positive agents producing five supernal qualities.

 

Induvansa (Sk.). Also Somavansa or the lunar race (dynasty), from Indu, the Moon.
(“See “Suryavansa”.)

 

Indwellers. A name or the substitute for the right Sanskrit esoteric name, given to our “inner enemies”, which are seven in the esoteric philosophy. The early Christian Church called them the “seven capital Sins ‘: the Nazarene Gnostics named them, the “seven badly disposed Stellars”, and so on. Hindu exoteric teachings speak only of the “six enemies” and under the term Arishadwarga enumerate them as follows: (1) Personal desire, lust or any passion (Kâma); (2) Hatred or malice (Krodha); ( Avarice or cupidity (Lobha); ( Ignorance (Moha); ( Pride or arrogance (Mada); (6) Jealousy, envy (Matcharya); forgetting the seventh, which is the “unpardonable sin”, and the worst of all in Occultism.
(See Theosophist, May, 1890, p. 431.)

 

Ineffable Name. With the Jews, the substitute for the “mystery name” of their tribal deity Eh-yeh, “I am”, or Jehovah. The third commandment prohibiting the using of the latter name “in vain”, the Hebrews substituted for it that of Adonai or “the Lord”. But the Protestant Christians who, translating indifferently Jehovah and Elohim—which is also a substitute per se, besides being an inferior deity name— by the words “Lord” and “God”, have become in this instance more Catholic than the Pope, and include in the prohibition both the names. At the present moment, however, neither Jews nor Christians seem to remember, or so much as suspect, the occult reason why the qualification of Jehovah or YHVH had become reprehensible; most of the Western Kabbalists also seem to be unaware of the fact. The truth is, that the name they bring forward as “ineffable”, is not in the least so. It is the “unpronounceable”, or rather the name not to be pronounced, if any thing; and this for symbological reasons. To begin with, the “Ineffable Name” of the true Occultist, is no name at all, least of all is it that of

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Jehovah. The latter implies, even in its Kabbalistical, esoteric meaning, an androgynous nature, YHVH, or one of a male and female nature. It is simply Adam and Eve, or man and woman blended in one, and as now written and pronounced, is itself a substitute. But the Rabbins do not care to remember the Zoharic admission that YHVH means “not as I Am written, Am I read” (Zohar, fol. III., 23Oa). One has to know how to divide the Tetragrammaton ad infinitum before one arrives at the sound of the truly unpronouncable name of the Jewish mystery-god. That the Oriental Occultists have their own “Ineffable name” it is hardly necessary to repeat.

 

Initiate. From the Latin Initiatus. The designation of anyone who was received into and had revealed to him the mysteries and secrets of either Masonry or Occultism. In times of antiquity, those who had been initiated into the arcane knowledge taught by the Hierophants of the Mysteries; and in our modern days those who have been initiated by the adepts of mystic lore into the mysterious knowledge, which, notwithstanding the lapse of ages, has yet a few real votaries on earth.

 

Initiation. From the same root as the Latin initia, which means the basic or first principles of any Science. The practice of initiation or admission into the sacred Mysteries, taught by the Hierophants and learned priests of the Temples, is one of the most ancient customs. This was practised in every old national religion. In Europe it was abolished with the fall of the last pagan temple. There exists at present but one kind of initiation known to the public, namely that into the Masonic rites. Masonry, however, has no more secrets to give out or conceal. In the palmy days of old, the Mysteries, according to the greatest Greek and Roman philosophers, were the most sacred of all solemnities as well as the most beneficent, and greatly promoted virtue. The Mysteries represented the passage from mortal life into finite death, and the experiences of the disembodied Spirit and Soul in the world of subjectivity. In our own day, as the secret is lost, the candidate passes through sundry meaningless ceremonies and is initiated into the solar allegory of Hiram Abiff, the “Widow’s Son”.

 

Inner Man. An occult term, used to designate the true and immortal Entity in us, not the outward and mortal form of clay that we call our body. The term applies, strictly speaking, only to the Higher Ego, the “astral man” being the appellation of the Double and of Kâma Rupa (q.v.) or the surviving eidolon.

 

Innocents. A nick-name given to the Initiates and Kabbalists before the Christian era. The “Innocents” of Bethlehem and of Lud (or Lydda) who were put to death by Alexander Janneus, to the number of

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several thousands (B.C. 100, or so), gave rise to the legend of the 40,000 innocent babes murdered by Herod while searching for the infant Jesus. The first is a little known historical fact, the second a fable, as sufficiently shown by Renan in his Vie de Jésus.

 

Intercosmic gods. The Planetary Spirits, Dhyan-Chohans, Devas of various degrees of spirituality, and “Archangels” in general.

 

Iranian Morals. The little work called Ancient Iranian and Zoroastrian Morals, compiled by Mr. Dhunjibhoy Jamsetjee Medhora, a Parsi Theosophist of Bombay, is an excellent treatise replete with the highest moral teachings, in English and Gujerati, and will acquaint the student better than many volumes with the ethics of the ancient Iranians.

 

Irdhi (Sk.). The synthesis of the ten “supernatural” occult powers in Buddhism and Brahmanism.

 

Irkalla (Chald.). The god of Hades, called by the Babylonians “the country unseen”.

 

Isarim (Heb.). The Essenian Initiates.

 

Ishim (Chald.). The B’ne-Aleim, the “beautiful sons of god”, the originals and prototypes of the later
“Fallen Angels”.

 

Ishmonia (Arab.). The city near which is buried the so-called “petrified city” in the Desert. Legend speaks of immense subterranean halls and chambers, passages, and libraries secreted in them. Arabs dread its neighbourhood after sunset.

 

Ishtar (Chald.). The Babylonian Venus, called “the eldest of heaven and earth“, and daughter of Anu, the god of heaven. She is the goddess of love and beauty. The planet Venus, as the evening star, is identified with Ishtar, and as the morning star with Anunit, the goddess of the Akkads. There exists a most remarkable story of her descent into Hades, on the sixth and seventh Assyrian tiles or tablets deciphered by the late G. Smith. Any Occultist who reads of her love for Tammuz, his assassination by Izdubar, the despair of the goddess and her descent in search of her beloved through the seven gates of Hades, and finally her liberation from the dark realm, will recognise the beautiful allegory of the soul in search of the Spirit.

 

Isiac table. A true monument of Egyptian art. It represents the goddess Isis under many of her aspects. The Jesuit Kircher describes it as a table of copper overlaid with black enamel and silver incrustations. It was in the possession of Cardinal Bembo, and therefore called “Tabula Bembina sive Mensa Isiaca ”. Under this title it is described by W. Wynn Westcott, M.B., who gives its “History and Occult Significance” in an extremely interesting and learned volume (with photographs and illustrations). The tablet was believed to have been a

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votive offering to Isis in one of her numerous temples. At the sack of Rome in 1525, it came into the possession of a soldier who sold it to Cardinal Bembo. Then it passed to the Duke of Mantua in 1630, when it was lost.

 

Isis. In Egyptian Issa, the goddess Virgin-Mother; personified nature. In Egyptian or Koptic Uasari, the female reflection of Uasar or Osiris. She is the “woman clothed with the sun” of the land of Chemi. Isis Latona is the Roman Isis.

 

Isitwa (Sk.). The divine Power.

 

Israel (Heb.). The Eastern Kabbalists derive the name from Isaral or Asar, the Sun-God. “Isra-el” signifies “striving with god”: the “sun rising upon Jacob-Israel ” means the Sun-god Isaral (or Isar-el) striving with, and to fecundate matter, which has power with “God and with man” and often prevails over both. Esau, Ćsaou, Asu, is also the Sun. Esau and Jacob, the allegorical twins, are the emblems of the ever struggling dual principle in nature—good and evil, darkness and sunlight, and the “ Lord” (Jehovah) is their antetype. Jacob-Israel is the feminine principle of Esau, as Abel is that of Cain, both Cain and Esau being the male principle. Hence, like Malach-Iho, the “Lord” Esau fights with Jacob and prevails not. In Genesis xxxii. the God-Sun first strives with Jacob, breaks his thigh (a phallic symbol) and yet is defeated by his terrestrial type—matter; and the Sun-God rises on Jacob and his thigh in covenant. All these biblical personages, their “Lord God” included, are types represented in an allegorical sequence. They are types of Life and Death, Good and Evil, Light and Darkness, of Matter and Spirit in their synthesis, all these being under their contrasted aspects.

 

Iswara (Sk.). The “Lord” or the personal god—divine Spirit in man. Lit., sovereign (independent) existence. A title given to Siva and other gods in India. Siva is also called Iswaradeva, or sovereign deva.

 

Ithyphallic (Gr.). Qualification of the gods as males and hermaphrodites, such as the bearded Venus, Apollo in woman’s clothes, Ammon the generator, the embryonic Ptah, and so on. Yet the phallus, so
conspicuous and, according to our prim notions, so indecent, in the Indian and Egyptian religions, was associated in the earliest symbology far more with another and much purer idea than that of sexual creation. As shown by many an Orientalist, it expressed resurrection, the rising in life from death. Even the other meaning had nought indecent in it: “These images only symbolise in a very expressive manner the creative force of nature, without obscene intention,” writes Mariette Bey, and adds, “It is but another way to express celestial generation, which should cause the deceased to

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enter into a new life”. Christians and Europeans are very hard on the phallic symbols of the ancients. The nude gods and goddesses and their generative emblems and statuary have secret departments assigned to them in our museums; why then adopt and preserve the same symbols for Clergy and Laity? The love-feasts in the early Church—its agapć as pure (or as impure) as the Phallic festivals of the Pagans; the long priestly robes of the Roman and Greek Churches, and the long hair of the latter, the holy water sprinklers and the rest, are there to show that Christian ritualism has preserved in more or less modified forms all the symbolism of old Egypt. As to the symbolism of a purely feminine nature, we are bound to confess that in the sight of every impartial archćologist the half nude toilets of our cultured ladies of Society are far more suggestive of female-sex worship than are the rows of yoni-shaped lamps, lit along the highways to temples in India.

 

Iurbo Adunaї. A Gnostic term, or the compound name for Iao Jehovah, whom the Ophites regarded as an emanation of their Ilda-Baoth, the Son of Sophia Achamoth—the proud, ambitious and jealous god, and impure Spirit, whom many of the Gnostic sects regarded as the god of Moses. “Iurbo is called by the Abortions (the Jews) Adunai” says the Codex Nazarćus (vol. iii., p.13  The “Abortions” and Abortives was the nickname given to the Jews by their opponents the Gnostics.

 

Iu-Kabar Zivo (Gn.). Known also as Nebat-Iavar-bar-Iufin-Ifafin, “Lord of the Ćons” in the Nazarene System. He is the procreator (Emanator) of the seven holy lives (the seven primal Dhyan Chohans, or Archangels, each representing one of the cardinal Virtues), and is himself called the third life (third Logos). In the Codex he is addressed as “the Helm and Vine of the food of life”. Thus, he is identical with Christ (Christos) who says “I am the true Vine and my Father is the Husband- man “(John xv. i). It is well known that Christ is regarded in the Roman Catholic Church, as the “chief of the Ćons”, and also as Michael “who is like god”. Such was also the belief of the Gnostics.

 

Iwaldi (Scand.). The dwarf whose sons fabricated for Odin the magic spear. One of the subterranean master-smiths who, together with other gnomes, contrived to make an enchanted sword for the great war-god Cheru. This two-edged-sword figures in the legend of the Emperor Vitellius, who got it from the god, “to his own hurt”, according to the oracle of a “wise woman”, neglected it and was finally killed with it at the foot of the capitol, by a German soldier who had purloined the weapon. The “sword of the war-god” has a long biography, since it also re-appears in the half-legendary biography of Attila. Having married against her will Ildikd, the beautiful daughter of the King of

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Burgundy whom he had slain, his bride gets the magic sword from a mysterious old woman, and with it kills the King of the Huns.

 

Izdubar. A name of a hero in the fragments of Chaldean History and Theogony on the so-called Assyrian tiles, as read by the late George Smith and others. Smith seeks to identify Izdubar with Nimrod. Such may or may not be the case; but as the name of that Babylonian King itself only “appears” as Izduhar, his identification with the son of Cush may also turn out more apparent than real. Scholars are but too apt to check their archćological discoveries by the far later statements found in the Mosaic books, instead of acting vice versa. “The chosen people” have been fond at all periods of history of helping themselves to other people’s property. From the appropriation of the early history of Sargon, King of Akkad, and its wholesale application to Moses born (if at all) some thousands of years later, down to their “spoiling” the Egyptians under the direction and divine advice of their Lord God, the whole Pentateuch seems to be made up of unacknowledged mosaical fragments from other people’s Scriptures. This ought to have made Assyriologists more cautious; but as many of these belong to the clerical caste, such coincidences as that of Sargon affect them very little. One thing is certain Izdubar, or whatever may be his name, is shown in all the tablets as a mighty giant who towered in size above all other men as a cedar towers over brushwood—a hunter, according to cuneiform legends, who contended with, and destroyed the lion, tiger, wild bull, and buffalo, the most formidable animals.

                                                                                                                    

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J —The tenth letter in the English and Hebrew alphabet, in the latter of which it is equivalent
to y, and i, and is numerically number 10, the perfect number (See Jodh and Yodh), or one. (See also “I”.)

 

Jâbalas (Sk.). Students of the mystical portion of the White Yajur Veda.

 

Jachin (Heb.). “In Hebrew letters IKIN, from the root KUN “to establish”, and the symbolical name of one of the Pillars at the porch of King Solomon’s Temple” [ w.w.w.]

The other pillar was called Boaz, and the two were respectively white and black. They correspond to several mystic ideas, one of which is that they represent the dual Manas or the higher and the lower Ego; another connected these two pillars in Slavonian mysticism with God and the Devil,to the“WHITE” and the “BLACK G0D” or Byeloy Bog and Tchernoy Bog. (See “Yakin and Boaz” infra).

 

Jacobites. A Christian sect in Syria of the VIth cent. (550) which held that Christ had only one
nature and that confession was not of divine origin. They had secret signs, passwords and a solemn initiation with mysteries.

 

Jadoo (Hind.). Sorcery, black magic, enchantment.

 

Jadoogar (Hind.). A Sorcerer, or Wizard.

 

Jagaddhatri (Sk.). Substance; the name of “the nurse of the world”, the designation of the power which carried Krishna and his brother Balarama into Devaki, their mother’s bosom. A title of Sarasvati and Durga.

 

Jagad-Yoni (Sk). The womb of the world; space.

 

Jagat (Sk.). The Universe.

 

Jagan-Natha (Sk.). Lit., “Lord of the World”, a title of Vishnu. The great image of Jagan-natha on its car, commonly pronounced and spelt Jagernath. The idol is that of Vishnu Krishna. Puri, near the town of Cuttack in Orissa, is the great seat of its worship; and twice a year an immense number of pilgrims attend the festivals of the Snâna yâtra and Ratha-âtra During the first, the image is bathed, and during the second it is placed on a car, between the images of Balarâma the brother, and Subhadrâ the sister of Krishna and the huge vehicle is

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drawn by the devotees, who deem it felicity to be crushed to death under it.

 

Jagrata (Sk.). The waking state of consciousness. When mentioned in Yoga philosophy, Jagrata-avastha is the waking condition, one of the four states of Pranava in ascetic practices, as used by the Yogis.

 

Jâhnavî (Sk.). A name of Ganga, or the river Ganges.

 

Jahva Alhim (Heb.). The name that in Genesis replaces “Alhim”, or Elohim, the gods. It is used in chapter I., while in chapter II. the “Lord God” or Jehovah steps in. In Esoteric philosophy and exoteric tradition, Jahva Alhim (Java Aleim) was the title of the chief of the Hierophants, who initiated into the good and the evil of this world in the college of priests known as the Aleim College in the land of
Gandunya or Babylonia. Tradition and rumour assert, that the chief of the temple Fo-maїyu, called
Foh-tchou (teacher of Buddhist law), a temple situated in the fastnesses of the great mount of
Kouenlong-sang (between China and Tibet), teaches once every three years under a tree called
Sung-Mîn-Shű, or the“ Tree of Knowledge and (the tree) of life”, which is the Bo (Bodhi) tree of Wisdom.

 

Jaimini (Sk.). A great sage, a disciple of Vyâsa the transmitter and teacher of the Sama Veda which as claimed he received from his Guru. He is also the famous founder and writer of the Pűrva Mimânsâ philosophy.

 

Jaina Gross. The same as the “Swastika” (q.v.), “Thor’s hammer” also, or the Hermetic cross.

 

Jainas (Sk.). A large religious body in India closely resembling Buddhism, but who preceded it by long centuries. They claim that Gautama, the Buddha, was a disciple of one of their Tirtankaras, or Saints. They deny the authority of the Vedas and the existence of any personal supreme god, but believe in the eternity of matter, the periodicity of the universe and the immortality of men’s minds (Manas) as also of that of the animals. An extremely mystic sect.

 

Jalarupa (Sk.). Lit., “water-body, or form”. One of the names of Makâra (the sign capricornus). It is one of the most occult and mysterious of the Zodiacal signs; it figures on the banner of Kama, god of love, and is connected with our immortal Egos. (See Secret Doctrine.)

 

Jambu-dwipa (Sk.). One of the main divisions of the globe, in the Purânic system. It includes India. Some say that it was a continent,—others an island—or one of the seven islands (Sapta dwipa) It is “the dominion of Vishnu”. In its astronomical and mystic sense it is the name of our globe, separated by the plane of objectivity from the six other globes of our planetary chain.

 

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Jamin (Heb.). The right side of a man, esteemed the most worthy. Benjamin means “son of the right side”, i.e., testis. [w.w.w.]

                                                                                                                   

Janaka (Sk.). One of the Kings of Mithilâ of the Solar race. He was a great royal sage, and lived twenty generations before Janaka the father of Sita who was King of Videha.

 

Jana-loka (Sk. The world wherein the Munis (the Saints) are supposed to dwell after their corporeal death (See Purânas). Also a terrestrial locality.

 

Janârddana (Sk.). Lit., “the adored of mankind”, a title of Krishna.

 

Japa (Sk.). A mystical practice of certain Yogis. It consists in the repetition of various magical
formulć and mantras.

 

Jaras (Sk.). “Old Age”. The allegorical name of the hunter who killed Krishna by mistake, a name showing the great ingenuity of the Brahmans and the symbolical character of the World-Scriptures in general. As Dr. Crucefix, a high mason well says, “to preserve the occult mysticism of their order from all except their own class, the priests invented symbols and hieroglyphics to embody sublime truths ”.

 

Jatayu (Sk.). The Son of Garuda. The latter is the great cycle, or Mahakalpa symbolized by the giant bird which served as a steed for Vishnu, and other gods, when related to space and time. Jatayu is called in the Ramayana “the King of the feathered tribe”. For defending Sita carried away by Ravana, the giant king of Lanka, he was killed by him. Jatayu is also called “the king of the vultures”.

 

Javidan Khirad (Pers) A work on moral precepts.

 

Jayas (Sk.), The twelve great gods in the Purânas who neglect to create men, and are therefore, cursed by Brahmâ to be reborn “in every (racial) Manvantara till the seventh”. Another form or aspect of the
reincarnating Egos.

 

Jebal Djudi (Arab.). The “Deluge Mountain” of the Arabic legends. The same as Ararat, and the Babylonian Mount of Nizir where Xisuthrus landed with his ark.

 

Jehovah (Heb.). The Jewish “Deity name J’hovah, is a compound of two words, viz of Jah (y, i, or j, Yôdh, the tenth letter of the alphabet) and hovah (Hâvah, or Eve),” says a Kabalistic authority, Mr. J. Ralston Skinner of Cincinnati, U.S.A. And again, “The word Jehovah, or Jah-Eve, has the primary meaning of existence or being as male female”. It means Kabalistically the latter, indeed, and nothing more; and as repeatedly shown is entirely phallic. Thus, verse 26 in the IVth chapter of Genesis, reads in its disfigured translation . . . . “then began men to call upon the name of the Lord”, whereas it ought to read

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correctly . . . . “then began men to call themselves by the name of Jah-hovah” or males and females, which they had become after the separation of sexes. In fact the latter is described in the same chapter, when Cain (the male or Jah) “rose up against Abel, his (sister, not) brother and slew him”(spilt his blood, in the original). Chapter IV of Genesis contains in truth, the allegorical narrative of that period of anthropological and physiological evolution which is described in the Secret Doctrine when treating of the third Root race of mankind. It is followed by Chapter V as a blind; but ought to be succeeded by Chapter VI, where the Sons of God took as their wives the daughters of men or of the giants. For this is an allegory hinting at the mystery of the Divine Egos incarnating in mankind, after which the hitherto senseless races “became mighty men, . . . men of renown” (v. 4), having acquired minds (manas) which they had not before.

 

Jehovah Nissi (Heb.). The androgyne of Nissi (See “Dionysos”). The Jews worshipped under this name Bacchus-Osiris, Dio-Nysos, and the multiform Joves of Nyssa, the Sinai of Moses. Universal tradition shews Bacchus reared in a cave of Nyssa. Diodorus locates Nysa between Phśnicia and Egypt, and adds, “Osiris was brought up in Nysa he was son of Zeus and was named from his father (nominative Zeus, genitive Dios) and the place Dio-nysos”—the Zeus or Jove of Nyssa.

 

Jerusalem, Jerosalem (Septuag.) and Hierosolyma (Vulgate). In Hebrew it is written Yrshlim or “city of peace”,but the ancient Greeks called it pertinently Hierosalem or “Secret Salem”, since Jerusalem is a rebirth from Salem of which Melchizedek was the King-Hierophant, a declared Astrolator and worshipper of the Sun,’“the Most High” by-the-bye. There also Adoni-Zedek reigned in his turn, and was the last of its Amorite Sovereigns. He allied himself with four others, and these five kings went to conquer back Gideon, but (according to Joshua X) came out of the affray second best. And no wonder, since these five kings were opposed, not only by Joshua but by the “Lord God”, and by the Sun and the Moon also. On that day, we read, at the command of the successor of Moses, “the sun stood still and the moon stayed” (v. 13) for the whole day. No mortal man, king or yeoman, could withstand, of course, such a shower “of great stones from heaven” as was cast upon them by the Lord himself . . . . “from Beth-horon unto Azekah” “and they died” (v. ii). After having died they “fled and hid themselves in a cave at Makkedah” (v. i6). It appears, however, that such undignified behaviour in a God received its Karmic punishment afterwards. At different epochs of history, the Temple of the Jewish Lord was sacked, ruined and burnt (See“Mount Moriah”)—holy ark of

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the covenant, cherubs, Shekinah and all, but that deity seemed as powerless to protect his property from desecration as though they were no more stones left in heaven. After Pompey had taken the Second Temple in 63, B.c., and the third one, built by Herod the Great, had been razed to the ground by the Romans, in 70 A.D., no new temple was allowed to be built in the capital of the “chosen people” of the Lord. In spite of the Crusades, since the XIIIth century Jerusalem has belonged to the Mahommedans, and almost every site holy and dear to the memory of the old Israelites, and also of the Christians, is now covered by minarets and mosques, Turkish barracks and other monuments of Islam.

 

Jesod (Heb.). Foundation; the ninth of the Ten Sephiroth, a masculine active potency, completing the six which form the Microprosopus. [w.w.w.]

 

Jetzirah (Heb.). See “Yetzirah”.

 

Jetzirah, Sepher; or Book of the Creation. The most occult of all the Kabalistic works now in the possession of modern mystics. Its alleged origin, of having been written by Abraham, is of course nonsense; but its intrinsic value is great. It is composed of six Perakim (chapters), subdivided into
thirty-three short Mishnas or Sections; and treats of the evolution of the Universe on a system of correspondences and numbers. Deity is said therein to have formed (“created”) the Universe by means of numbers “by thirty-two paths (or ways) of secret wisdom ”, these ways being made to correspond with the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet and the ten fundamental numbers. These ten are the primordial numbers whence proceeded the whole Universe, and these are followed by the twenty-two letters divided into Three Mothers, the seven double consonants and the twelve simple consonants. He who would well understand the system is advised to read the excellent little treatise upon Sepher Jetzirah, by Dr. W. WynnWestcott. (See “Yetzirah”.)

 

Jhâna (Sk.) or Jnana. Knowledge; Occult Wisdom.

 

Jhâna Bhaskara (Sk.). A work on Asuramâya, the Atlantean astronomer and magician, and other prehistoric legends.

 

Jigten Gonpo (Tib.). A name of Avalokitęswara, or Chenres-Padma-pani, the “Protector against Evil”.

 

Jishnu (Sk.). “Leader of the Celestial Host”, a title of Indra, who, in the War of the Gods with the Asuras, led the “host of devas”. He is the “Michael, the leader of the Archangels” of India.

 

Jiva (Sk.). Life, as the Absolute; the Monad also or “Atma-Buddhi”.
 

Jivanmukta (Sk.). An adept or yogi who has reached the ultimate state of holiness, and separated himself from matter; a Mahatma, or

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Nirvânee, a “dweller in bliss” and emancipation. Virtually one who has reached Nirvâna during life.

 

Jivatma (Sk.). The ONE universal life, generally; but also the divine Spirit in Man.

 

Jnânam (Sk.). The same as “Gnâna”, etc., the same as “Jhâna” (q.v.).

 

Jnânendriyas (Sk.). The five channels of knowledge.

 

Jnâna Sakti (Sk.). The power of intellect.

 

Jörd. In Northern Germany the goddess of the Earth, the same as Nerthus and the Scandinavian Freya or Frigg.

 

Jotunheim (Scand.). The land of the Hrimthurses or Frost-giants.
 

Jotuns (Scand.). The Titans or giants. Mimir, who taught Odin magic, the “thrice wise”, was a Jotun.

 

Jul (Scand.). The wheel of the Sun from whence Yuletide, which was sacred to Freyer, or Pro, the Sun-god, the ripener of the fields and fruits, admitted later to the circle of the Ases. As god of sunshine and fruitful harvests he lived in the Home of the Light Elves.

 

Jupiter (Lat.). From the same root as the Greek Zeus, the greatest god of the ancient Greeks and Romans, adopted also by other nations. His names are among others: (1) Jupiter-Aërios; (2) Jupiter-Ammon of Egypt ; (3) Jupiter Bel-Moloch, the Chaldean; (4) Jupiter-Mundus, Deus Mundus, “God of the World”; (5) Jupiter-Fulgur, “the Fulgurant”, etc.,etc.

 

Jyotisha (Sk.). Astronomy and Astrology; one of the Vedângas.
 

Jyotisham Jyotch (Sk.). The “light of lights”, the Supreme Spirit, so called in the Upanishads.

 

Jyotsna (Sk.). Dawn; one of the bodies assumed by Brahmâ the morning twilight.

                 

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K.—The eleventh ]etter in both the English and the Hebrew alphabets. As a numeral it stands in the latter for 20, and in the former for 250, and with a stroke over it (K) for 250,000. The Kabalists and the Masons appropriate the word Kodesh or Kadosh as the name of the Jewish god under this letter.

 

Ka (Sk.). According to Max Muller, the interrogative pronoun “who?”—raised to the dignity of a deity without cause or reason. Still it has its esoteric significance and is a name of Brahmâ in his phallic character as generator or Prajâpati (q.v.).

 

Kabah or Kaaba (Arab). The name of the famous Mahommedan temple at Mecca, a great place of pilgrimage. The edifice is not large but very original; of a cubical form 23 X 24 cubits in length and breadth and 27 cubits high, with only one aperture on the East side to admit light. In the north-east corner is the “black stone” of Kaaba, said to have been lowered down direct from heaven and to have been as white as snow, but subsequently it became black, owing to the sins of mankind The “white stone”, the reputed tomb of Ismael, is in the north side and the place of Abraham is to the east. If, as the Mahommedans claim, this temple was, at the prayer of Adam after his exile, transferred by Allah or Jehovah direct from Eden down to earth, then the “heathen” may truly claim to have far exceeded the divine primordial architecture in the beauty of their edifices.

 

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 Medićval 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 Böhmen, Robert Fludd,

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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 Medićval 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 “.)

 

Kabalistic Faces. These are Nephesch, Ruach and Neschamah, or the animal (vital), the Spiritual and the Divine Souls in man—Body, Soul and Mind.

 

Kabalah (Heb.). The hidden wisdom of the Hebrew Rabbis of the middle ages derived from the older secret doctrines concerning divine things and cosmogony, which were combined into a theology after the time of the captivity of the Jews in Babylon. All the works that fall under the esoteric category are termed Kabalistic.

 

Kabiri (Phśn.) or the Kabirim. Deities and very mysterious gods with the ancient nations, including the Israelites, some of whom—as Terah, Abram’s father—worshipped them under the name of Teraphim. With the Christians, however, they are now devils, although the modern Archangels are the direct transformation of these same Kabiri. In Hebrew the latter name means “the mighty ones”, Gibborim. At one time all the deities connected with fire—whether they were divine, infernal or volcanic—were called Kabirian.

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Kadmon (Heb.). Archetypal man. See.“Adam Kadmon”.

 

Kadosh (Heb.). Consecrated, holy; also written Kodesh. Something set apart for temple worship. But between the etymological meaning of the word, and its subsequent significance in application to the Kadeshim (the “priests” set apart for certain temple rites)—there is an abyss. The words Kadosh and Kadeshim are used in II. Kings as rather an opprobrious name, for the Kadeshuth of the Bible were identical in their office and duties with the Nautch girls of some Hindu temples. They were Galli, the mutilated priests of the lascivious rites of Venus Astarte, who lived “by the house of the Lord”. Curiously enough the terms Kadosh, etc., were appropriated and used- by several degrees of Masonic knighthood.

 

Kailasa (Sk.). In metaphysics “heaven”, the abode of gods; geographically a mountain range in the Himalayas, north of the Mansaravâra lake, called also lake Manasa.

 

Kailem (Heb.). Lit., vessels or vehicles; the vases for the source of the Waters of Life ; used of the Ten Sephiroth, considered as the primeval nuclei of all Kosmic Forces. Some Kabalists regard them as manifesting in the universe through twenty-two canals, which are represented by the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet, thus making with the Ten Sephiroth thirty-two paths of wisdom. [w. w. w.]

 

Kaimarath (Pers.). The last of the race of the prehuman kings. He is identical with Adam Kadmon. A fabulous Persian hero.

 

Kakodćmon (Gr.). The evil genius as opposed to Agathodćmon the good genius, or deity.
A Gnostic term.

 

Kala (Sk.). A measure of time; four hours, a period of thirty Kashthas.

 

Kala (Sk.). Time, fate; a cycle and a proper name, or title given to Yama, King of the nether world and

Judge of the Dead.

 

Kalabhana (Sk.). The same as Taraka (See Secret Doctrine, Vol. II., p. 382, foot-note).

 

Kalagni (Sk.). The flame of time. A divine Being created by Siva, a monster with 1,000 heads. A title of Siva meaning “the fire of fate”.

 

Kalahansa or Hamsa (Sk). A mystic title given to Brahma (or Parabrahman); means “the swan in and out of time”. Brahmâ (male) is called Hansa-Vahan, the vehicle of the “Swan”.

 

Kalavingka (Sk.), also Kuravikaya and Karanda, etc. “The sweet- voiced bird of immortality “. Eitel identifies it with cuculus melanoleicus, though the bird itself is allegorical and non-existent. Its voice is heard at a certain stage of Dhyana in Yoga practice. It is said to have awakened King Bimbisara and thus saved him from the sting of a cobra. In its esoteric meaning this sweet-voiced bird is our Higher Ego.

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Kalevala. The Finnish Epic of Creation.

 

Kali (Sk.). The “black”, now the name of Parvati, the consort of Siva, but originally that of one of the seven tongues of Agni, the god of fire—“the black, fiery tongue”. Evil and wickedness.

 

Kalidasa (Sk.). The greatest poet and dramatist of India.

 

Kaliya (Sk.). The five-headed serpent killed by Krishna in his childhood. A mystical monster symbolizing the passions of man—the river or water being a symbol of matter.

 

Kaliyuga (Sk.). The fourth, the black or iron age, our present period, the duration of which us 432,000 years. The last of the ages into which the evolutionary period of man is divided by a series of such ages. It began 3,102 years B.C. at the moment of Krishna’s death, and the first cycle of 5,ooo years will end between the years 1897 and 1898.

 

Kalki Avatar (Sk.). The “White Horse Avatar”, which will be the last manvantaric incarnation of Vishnu, according to the Brahmins; of Maitreya Buddha, agreeably to Northern Buddhists; of Sosiosh, the last hero and Saviour of the Zoroastrians, as claimed by Parsis ; and of the “Faithful and True” on the white Horse (Rev. xix.,2 ). In his future epiphany or tenth avatar, the heavens will open and Vishnu will appear “seated on a milk-white steed, with a drawn sword blazing like a comet, for the final destruction of the wicked, the renovation of ‘creation’ and the ‘restoration of purity’”. (Compare Revelation.) This will take place at the end of the Kaliyuga 427,000 years hence. The latter end of every Yuga is called “the destruction of the world”, as then the earth changes each time its outward form, submerging one set of continents and upheaving another set.

 

Kalluka Bhatta (Sk.). A commentator of the Hindu Manu Smriti Scriptures; a well-known writer and historian.

 

Kalpa (Sk.). The period of a mundane revolution, generally a cycle of time, but usually, it represents a “day” and “night” of Brahmâ, a period of 4,320,000,000 years.

 

Kama (Sk.) Evil desire, lust, volition; the cleaving to existence. Kama is generally identified with Mara the tempter.

 

Kamadeva (Sk.). In the popular notions the god of love, a Visva-deva, in the Hindu Pantheon. As the Eros of Hesiod, degraded into Cupid by exoteric law, and still more degraded by a later popular sense attributed to the term, so is Kama a most mysterious and metaphysical subject. The earlier Vedic description of Kama alone gives the key-note to what he emblematizes. Kama is the first conscious, all embracing desire for universal good, love, and for all that lives and feels, needs help and kindness, the first feeling of infinite tender compassion and mercy that

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arose in the consciousness of the creative ONE Force, as soon as it came into life and being as a ray from the ABSOLUTE. Says the Rig Veda, “Desire first arose in IT, which was the primal germ of mind, and which Sages, searching with their intellect, have discovered in their heart to be the bond which connects Entity with non-Entity”, or Manas with pure Atma-Buddhi. There is no idea of sexual love in the conception. Kama is pre-eminently the divine desire of creating happiness and love; and it is only ages later, as mankind began to materialize by anthropomorphization its grandest ideals into cut and dried dogmas, that Kama became the power that gratifies desire on the animal plane. This is shown by what every Veda and some Brahmanas say. In the Atharva Veda, Kama is represented as the Supreme Deity and Creator. In the Taitarîya Brahmana, he is the child of Dharma, the god of Law and Justice, of Sraddha and faith. In another account he springs from the heart of Brahmâ. Others show him born from water, i.e., from primordial chaos, or the “Deep”. Hence one of his many names, Irâ-ja, “the water-born”; and Aja, “unborn” ; and Atmabhu or “Self-existent”. Because of the sign of Makara (Capricornus) on his banner, he is also called “ Makara Ketu”. The allegory about Siva, the “Great Yogin ”, reducing Kama to ashes by the fire from his central (or third) Eye, for inspiring the Mahadeva with thoughts of his wife, while he was at his devotions—is very suggestive, as it is said that he thereby reduced Kama to his primeval spiritual form.

 

Kamadhâtu (Sk.). Called also Kamâvatchara, a region including Kâmalôka. In exoteric ideas it is the first of the Trailâkya—or three regions (applied also to celestial beings) or seven planes or degrees, each broadly represented by one of the three chief characteristics; namely, Kama, Rupa and Arupa, or those of desire, form and formlessness. The first of the Trailokyas, Kamadhâtu, is thus composed of the earth and the six inferior Devalokas, the earth being followed by Kamaloka (q.v.). These taken together constitute the seven degrees of the material world of form and sensuous gratification. The second of the Trailôkya (or Trilôkya) is called Rupadhâtu or “material form” and is also composed of seven Lokas (or localities). The third is Arupadhâtu or “immaterial lokas”. “Locality”, however, is an incorrect word to use in translating the term dhâtu, which does not mean in some of its special applications a “place” at all. For instance, Arupadhâtu is a purely subjective world, a “state” rather than a place. But as the European tongues have no adequate metaphysical terms to express certain ideas, we can only point out the difficulty.

 

Kamaloka (Sk.). The semi-material plane, to us subjective and invisible, where the disembodied “personalities”, the astral forms, called

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Kamarupa remain, until they fade out from it by the complete exhaustion of the effects of the mental impulses that created these eidolons of human and animal passions and desires; (See “Kamarupa”.) It is the Hades of the ancient Greeks and the Amenti of the Egyptians, the land of Silent Shadows; a division of the first group of the Trailôkya. (See “Kamadhâtu”.)

 

Kamarupa (Sk.). Metaphysically, and in our esoteric philosophy, it is the subjective form created through the mental and physical desires and thoughts in connection with things of matter, by all sentient beings, a form which survives the death of their bodies. After that death three of the seven “principles”—or let us say planes of senses and consciousness on which the human instincts and ideation act in turn—viz., the body, its astral prototype and physical vitality,—being of no further use, remain on earth; the three higher principles, grouped into one, merge into the state of Devachan (q.v.), in which state the Higher Ego will remain until the hour for a new reincarnation arrives; and the eidolon of the ex-Personality is left alone in its new abode. Here, the pale copy of the man that was, vegetates for a period of time, the duration of which is variable and according to the element of materiality which is left in it, and which is determined by the past life of the defunct. Bereft as it is of its higher mind, spirit and physical senses, if left alone to its own senseless devices, it will gradually fade out and disintegrate. But, if forcibly drawn back into the terrestrial sphere whether by the passionate desires and appeals of the surviving friends or by regular necromantic practices—one of the most pernicious of which is medium- ship—the “spook” may prevail for a period greatly exceeding the span of the natural life of its body. Once the Kamarupa has learnt the way back to living human bodies, it becomes a vampire, feeding on the vitality of those who are so anxious for its company. In India these eidolons are called Pisâchas, and are much dreaded, as already explained elsewhere.

 

Kamea (Heb.). An amulet, generally a magic square.

 

Kandu .(Sk.). A holy sage of the second root-race, a yogi, whom Pramlôcha, a “nymph” sent by Indra for that purpose, beguiled, and lived with for several centuries. Finally, the Sage returning to his senses, repudiated and chased her away. Whereupon she gave birth to a daughter, Mârishâ. The story is in an allegorical fable from the Purânas.

 

Kanishka (Sk.). A King of the Tochari, who flourished when the third Buddhist Synod met in Kashmir, i.e., about the middle of the last century B.C., a great patron of Buddhism, he built the finest stűpas or dagobas in Northern India and Kabulistan.

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Kanishthas (Sk.). A class of gods which will manifest in the fourteenth or last manvantara of our world—according to the Hindus.

 

Kanya (Sk.). A virgin or maiden. Kanya Kumârî “the virgin- maiden” is a title of Durga-Kali, worshipped by the Thugs and Tantrikas.

 

Kapila Rishi (Sk.). A great sage, a great adept of antiquity; the author of the Sankhya philosophy.

 

Kapilavastu (Sk.). The birth-place of the Lord Buddha; called “the yellow dwelling”: the capital of the monarch who was the father of Gautama Buddha.

 

Karabtanos (Gr.). The spirit of blind or animal desire; the symbol of Kama-rupa. The Spirit “without sense or judgment” in the Codex of the Nazarenes. He is the symbol of matter and stands for the father of the seven spirits of concupiscence begotten by him on his mother, the “Spiritus” or the Astral Light.

 

Karam (Sk.). A great festival in honour of the Sun-Spirit with the Kolarian tribes.

 

Kârana (Sk.). Cause (metaphysically).

 

Kârana Sarîra (Sk.). The “Causal body”. It is dual in its meaning. Exoterically, it is Avidya, ignorance, or that which is the cause of the evolution of a human ego and its reincarnation ; hence the lower Manas esoterically—the causal body or Kâranopadhi stands in the Taraka Raja yoga as corresponding to Buddhi and the Higher “ Manas,” or Spiritual Soul.

 

Karanda (Sk.). The “sweet-voiced bird,” the same as Kalavingka (q.v.)

 

Kâranopadhi (Sk.). The basis or upadhi of Karana, the “causal soul”. In Taraka Rajayoga, it corresponds with both Manas and Buddhi. See Table in the Secret Doctrine, Vol. I, p. 157.

 

Kardecists. The followers of the spiritistic system of Allan Kardec, the Frenchman who founded the modern movement of the Spiritist School. The Spiritists of France differ from the American and English Spiritualists in that their “Spirits” teach reincarnation, while those of the United States and Great Britain denounce this belief as a heretical fallacy and abuse and slander those who accept it. “When Spirits disagree...”

 

Karma (Sk.). Physically, action: metaphysically, the LAW OF RETRIBUTION, the Law of cause and effect or Ethical Causation. Nemesis, only in one sense, that of bad Karma. It is the eleventh Nidana in the concatenation of causes and effects in orthodox Buddhism ; yet it is the power that controls all things, the resultant of moral action, the meta physical Samskâra, or the moral effect of an act committed for the

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attainment of something which gratifies a personal desire. There is the Karma of merit and the Karma of demerit. Karma neither punishes nor rewards, it is simply the one Universal LAW which guides unerringly, and, so to say, blindly, all other laws productive of certain effects along the grooves of their respective causations. When Buddhism teaches that “Karma is that moral kernel (of any being) which alone survives death and continues in transmigration ‘ or reincarnation, it simply means that there remains nought after each Personality but the causes produced by it ; causes which are undying, i.e., which cannot be eliminated from the Universe until replaced by their legitimate effects, and wiped out by them, so to speak, and such causes—unless compensated during the life of the person who produced them with adequate effects, will follow the reincarnated Ego, and reach it in its subsequent reincarnation until a harmony between effects and causes is fully reestablished. No “personality”—a mere bundle of material atoms and of instinctual and mental characteristics—can of course continue, as such, in the world of pure Spirit. Only that which is immortal in its very nature and divine in its essence, namely, the Ego, can exist for ever. And as it is that Ego which chooses the personality it will inform, after each Devachan, and which receives through these personalities the effects of the Karmic causes produced, it is therefore the Ego, that self which is the “moral kernel” referred to and embodied karma, “which alone survives death.”

 

Karnak (Eg.). The ruins of the ancient temples, and palaces which now stand on the emplacement of ancient Thebes. The most magnificent representatives of the art and skill of the earliest Egyptians. A few lines quoted from Champollion, Denon and an English traveller, show most eloquently what these ruins are. Of Karnak Champollion writes :— “The ground covered by the mass of remaining buildings is square; and each side measures 1,800 feet. One is astounded and overcome by the grandeur of the sublime remnants, the prodigality and magnificence of workmanship to be seen everywhere. No people of ancient or modern times has conceived the art of architecture upon a scale so sublime, so grandiose as it existed among the ancient Egyptians; and the imagination, which in Europe soars far above our porticos, arrests itself and falls powerless at the foot of the hundred and forty columns of the hypostyle of Karnak! In one of its halls, the Cathedral of Notre Dame might stand and not touch the ceiling, but be considered as a small ornament in the centre of the hall.”

Another writer exclaims: “Courts, halls, gateways, pillars, obelisks, monolithic figures, sculptures, long rows of sphinxes, are found in such profusion at Karnak, that the sight is too much for modern compre-

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hension.” Says Denon, the French traveller: “It is hardly possible to believe, after seeing it, in the reality of the existence of so many buildings collected together on a single point, in their dimensions, in the resolute perseverance which their construction required, and in the incalculable expenses of so much magnificence! It is necessary that the reader should fancy what is before him to be a dream, as he who views the objects themselves occasionally yields to the doubt whether he be perfectly awake. . . . There are lakes and mountains within the periphery of the sanctuary. These two edifices are selected as examples from a list next to inexhaustible. The whole valley and delta of the Nile, from the cataracts to the sea, was covered with temples, palaces, tombs, pyramids, obelisks, and pillars. The execution of the sculptures is beyond praise. The mechanical perfection with which artists wrought in granite, serpentine, breccia, and basalt, is wonderful, according to all the experts animals and plants look as good as natural, and artificial objects are beautifully sculptured; battles by sea and land, and scenes of domestic life are to be found in all their bas-reliefs.”

 

Karnaim (Heb.). Horned, an attribute of Ashtoreth and Astarte; those horns typify the male element, and convert the deity into an androgyne. Isis also is at times horned. Compare also the idea of the Crescent Moon—-symbol of Isis—as horned. [w.w.w.]

 

Karneios (Gr.). “Apollo Karneїos,” is evidently an avatar of the Hindu “Krishna Karna”. Both were Sun-gods; both “Karna” and Karneios meaning “radiant”. (See the Secret Doctrine II., p. 44. note.)

 

Karshipta (Mazd.). The holy bird of Heaven in the Mazdean Scriptures, of which Ahura Mazda says to Zaratushta that “he recites the Avesta in the language of birds” (Bund. xix. et seq.). The bird is the symbol of “Soul” of Angel and Deva in every old religion. It is easy to see, therefore, that this “holy bird” means the divine Ego of man, or the “Soul”. The same as Karanda (q.v.).

 

Karshvare (Zend). The “seven earths” (our septenary chain) over which rule the Amesha Spenta, the Archangels or Dhyan Chohans of the Parsis. The seven earths, of which one only, namely Hvanirata—our earth—is known to mortals. The Earths (esoterically), or seven divisions (exoterically), are our own planetary chain as in Esoteric Buddhism and the Secret Doctrine. The doctrine is plainly stated in Fargard XIX., 39, of the Vendidad.

 

Kartikeya (Sk), or Kartika. The Indian God of War, son of Siva, born of his seed fallen into the Ganges. He is also the personification of the power of the Logos. The planet Mars. Kartika is a very occult personage, a nursling of the Pleiades, and a Kumâra. (See Secret Doctrine.)

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Karunâ-Bhâwanâ (Sk.). The meditation of pity and compassion in Yoga.

 

Kasbeck. The mountain in the Caucasian range where Prometheus was bound.

 

Kasi (Sk.). Another and more ancient name of the holy city of Benares.

 

Kasina (Sk.). A mystic Yoga rite used to free the mind from all agitation and bring the Kamic element to a dead stand-still.

 

KâsiKhanda (Sk.). A long poem, which forms a part of the Skanda Purâna and contains another version of the legend of Daksha’s head. Having lost it in an affray, the gods replaced it with the head of a ram Mekha Shivas, whereas the other versions describe it as the head of a goat, a substitution which changes the allegory considerably.

 

Kasyapa (Sk.). A Vedic Sage; in the words of Atharva Veda, “The self-born who sprang from Time”. Besides being the father of the Adityas headed by Indra, Kasyapa is also the progenitor of serpents, reptiles, birds and other walking, flying and creeping beings.

 

Katha (Sk.) One of the Upanishads commented upon by Sankarâchârya.

 

Kaumara (Sk.). The “Kumara Creation”, the virgin youths who sprang from the body of Brahmâ.

 

Kauravya (Sk.). The King of the Nagas (Serpents) in Pâtâla, exoterically a hall. But esoterically it means something very different. There is a tribe of the Nâgas in Upper India; Nagal is the name in Mexico of the chief medicine men to this day, and was that of the chief adepts in the twilight of history; and finally Patal means the Antipodes and is a name of America. Hence the story that Arjuna travelled to Pâtŕla, and married Ulupi, the daughter of the King Kauravya, may he as historical as many others regarded first as fabled and then found out to be true.

 

Kayanim (Heb.). Also written Cunim; the name of certain mystic cakes offered to Ishtar, the Babylonian Venus. Jeremiah speaks of these Cunim offered to the “Queen of Heaven”, vii. 18. Nowadays we do not offer the buns, but eat them at Easter. [w.w.w.]

 

Kavyavahana (Sk.). The fire of the Pitris.

 

Kchana (Sk.). A second incalculably short: the 90th part or fraction of a thought, the 4,500th part of a minute, during which from 90 to 100 births and as many deaths occur on this earth.

 

Kebar-Zivo (Gnostic). One of the chief creators in the Codex Nasarćus.

 

Keherpas (Sk.). Aerial form,

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Keshara (Sk.). “Sky Walker”, i.e., a Yogi who can travel in his astral form.

 

Kether (Heb.). The Crown, the highest of the ten Sephiroth; the first of the Supernal Triad. It corresponds to the Macroprosopus, vast countenance, or Arikh Anpin, which differentiates into Chokmah and Binah. [w.w.w.]

 

Ketu (Sk.). The descending node in astronomy; the tail of the celestial dragon who attacks the Sun during the eclipses; also a comet or meteor.

 

Key. A symbol of universal importance, the emblem of silence among the ancient nations. Represented on the threshold of the Adytum, a key had a double meaning: it reminded the candidates of the obligations of silence, and promised the unlocking of many a hitherto impenetrable mystery to the profane. In the “Śdipus Coloneus” of Sophocles, the chorus speaks of “the golden key which had come upon the tongue of the ministering Hierophant in the mysteries of Eleusis”, (1051). “The priestess of Ceres, according to Callimachus, bore a key as her ensign of office, and the key was, in the Mysteries of Isis, symbolical of the opening or disclosing of the heart and conscience before the forty-two assessors of the dead”.
(R. M. Cyc1općdia).

 

Khado (Tib.). Evil female demons in popular folk-lore. In the Esoteric Philosophy occult and evil Forces of nature. Elementals known in Sanskrit as Dakini.

 

Khaldi. The earliest inhabitants of Chaldea who were first the worshippers of the Moon god, Deus Lunus, a worship which was brought to them by the great stream of early Hindu emigration, and later a caste of regular Astrologers and Initiates.

 

Kha (Sk.). The same as “Akâsa”.

 

Khamism. A name given by the Egyptologists to the ancient language of Egypt. Khami, also.

 

Khanda Kâla (Sk.). Finite or conditioned time in contradistinction to infinite time, or
eternity—Kala.

 

Khem (Eg.). The same as Horus. “The God Khem will avenge his father Osiris”; says a text in a papyrus.

 

Khepra (Eg.). An Egyptian god presiding over rebirth and transmigration. He is represented with a scarabćus instead of a head.

 

Khi (Chin.). Lit., “breath”; meaning Buddhi.

 

Khnoom (Eg.). The great Deep, or Primordial Space.

 

Khoda (Pers.). The name for the Deity.

 

Khons, or Chonso. (Eg.) The Son of Maut and Ammon, the personifica-

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tion of morning. He is the Theban Harpocrates, according to some. Like Horus he crushes under his foot a crocodile, emblem of night and darkness or Seb (Sebek) who is Typhon. But in the inscriptions, he is addressed as “the Healer of diseases and banisher of all evil”. He is also the “god of the hunt”, and Sir Gardner Wilkinson would see in him the Egyptian Hercules, probably because the Romans had a god named Consus who presided over horse races and was therefore called “the concealer of secrets”. But the latter is a later variant on the Egyptian Khons, who is more probably an aspect of Horus, as he wears a hawk’s head, carries the whip and crook of Osiris the tat and the crux ansata.

 

Khoom (Eg.), or Knooph. The Soul of the world; a variant of Khnoom.

 

Khubilkhan (Mong.), or Shabrong. In Tibet the names given to the supposed incarnations of Buddha. Elect Saints.

 

Khunrath, Henry. A famous Kabalist, chemist and physician born in 1502, initiated into Theosophy (Rosicrucian) in 1544. He left some excellent Kabalistic works, the best of which is the “Amphitheatre of Eternal Wisdom” (1598).

 

Kimapurushas (Sk.). Monstrous Devas, half-men, half-horses.

 

Kings of Edom. Esoterically, the early, tentative, malformed races of men. Some Kabalists interpret them as “sparks”, worlds in formation disappearing as soon as formed.

 

Kinnaras (Sk.). Lit., “What men?” Fabulous creatures of the same description as the Kim-purushas, One of the four classes of beings called “Maharajas”.

 

Kioo-tche (Chin.). An astronomical work.

 

Kirâtarjuniya of Bharavi (Sk.). A Sanskrit epic, celebrating the strife and prowess of Arjuna with the god Siva disguised as a forester.

 

Kiver-Shans (Chin.). The astral or “Thought Body”.

 

Kiyun (Heb.). Or the god Kivan which was worshipped by the Israelites in the wilderness and was probably identical with Saturn and even with the god Siva. Indeed, as the Zendic H is S in India (their “hapta” is “sapta”, etc.), and as the letters K, H, and S, are interchangeable, Siva may have easily become Kiva and Kivan.

 

Klesha (Sk.). Love of life, but literally “pain and misery”. Cleaving to existence, and almost the same as Kama.

 

Klikoosha (Russ.). One possessed by the Evil one. Lit., a “crier out”, a “screamer”, as such unfortunates are periodically attacked with fits during which they crow like cocks, neigh, bray and prophesy.

 

Klippoth (Heb.). Shells: used in the Kabbalah in several senses;

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(1) evil spirits, demons; (2) the shells of dead human beings, not the physical body, but the remnant of the personality after the spirit has departed; (3) the Elementaries of some authors. [w.w.w.]

 

Kneph (Eg.). Also Cneph and Nef, endowed with the same attributes as Khem. One of the gods of creative Force, for he is connected with the Mundane Egg. He is called by Porphyry “the creator of the world”; by Plutarch the “unmade and eternal deity”; by Eusebius he is identified with the Logos; and Jamblichus goes so far as almost to identify him with Brahmâ since he says of him that “this god is intellect itself, intellectually perceiving itself, and consecrating intellections to itself; and is to be worshipped in silence”. One form of him, adds Mr. Bonwick “was Av meaning flesh. He was criocephalus, with a solar disk on his head, and standing on the serpent Mehen. In his left hand was a viper, and a cross was in his right. He was actively engaged in the underworld upon a mission of creation.” Deveria writes: “His journey to the lower hemisphere appears to symbolise the evolutions of substances which are born to die and to be reborn”. Thousands of years before Kardec, Swedenborg, and Darwin appeared, the old Egyptians entertained their several philosophies. (Eg. Belief and Mod. Thought.)

 

Koinobi (Gr.). A sect which lived in Egypt in the early part of the first Christian century; usually confounded with the Therapeutć. They passed for magicians.

 

Kokab (Chald.). The Kabalistic name associated with the planet Mercury; also the Stellar light.
[w.w.w.]

 

Kol (Heb.). A voice, in Hebrew letters QUL. The Voice of the divine. (See “Bath Kol” and “Vâch”.)
[w.w.w.]

 

Kols. One of the tribes in central India, much addicted to magic. They are considered to he great sorcerers.

 

Konx-Om-Pax (Gr.). Mystic words used in the Eleusinian mysteries. It is believed that these words are the Greek imitation of ancient Egyptian words once used in the secret ceremonies of the Isiac cult. Several modern authors give fanciful translations, but they are all only guesses at the truth. [w.w.w.]

 

Koorgan (Russ.). An artificial mound, generally an old tomb. Traditions of a supernatural or magical character are often attached to such mounds.

 

Koran (Arab.), or Quran. The sacred Scripture of the Mussulmans, revealed to the Prophet Mohammed by Allah (god) himself. The revelation differs, however, from that given by Jehovah to Moses. The Christians abuse the Koran calling it a hallucination, and the work of

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an Arabian impostor. Whereas, Mohammed preaches in his Scripture the unity of Deity, and renders honour to the Christian prophet “Issa Ben Yussuf” (Jesus, son of Joseph). The Koran is a grand poem, replete with ethical teachings proclaiming loudly Faith, Hope and Charity.

 

Kosmos (Gr.). The Universe, as distinguished from the world, which may mean our globe or earth.

 

Kounboum (Tib.). The sacred Tree of Tibet, the “tree of the 10,000 images” as Huc gives it. It grows in an enclosure on the Monastery lands of the Lamasery of the same name, and is well cared for. Tradition has it that it grew out of the hair of Tson-ka-pa, who was buried on that spot. This “Lama” was the great Reformer of the Buddhism of Tibet, and is regarded as an incarnation of Amita Buddha. In the words of the Abbé Huc, who lived several months with another missionary named Gabet near this phenomenal tree: “Each of its leaves, in opening, bears either a letter or a religious sentence, written in sacred characters, and these letters are, of their kind, of such a perfection that the type-foundries of Didot contain nothing to excel them. Open the leaves, which vegetation is about to unroll, and you will there
discover, on the point of appearing, the letters or the distinct words which are the marvel of this unique tree! Turn your attention from the leaves of the plant to the bark of its branches, and new characters will meet your eyes! Do not allow your interest to flag; raise the layers of this bark, and still OTHER CHARACTERS will show themselves below those whose beauty had surprised you. For, do not fancy that these super posed layers repeat the same printing. No, quite the contrary; for each lamina you lift presents to view its distinct type. How, then, can we suspect jugglery? I have done my best in that direction to discover the slightest trace of human trick, and my baffled mind could not retain the slightest suspicion.” Yet promptly the kind French Abbé suspects the Devil.

 

Kratudwishas (Sk.). The enemies of the Sacrifices; the Daityas, Danavas, Kinnaras, etc., etc., all represented as great ascetics and Yogis. This shows who are really meant. They were the enemies of religious mummeries and ritualism.

 

Kravyâd (Sk.). A flesh-eater; a carnivorous man or animal.

 

Krisâswas Sons of (Sk.). The weapons called Agneyastra. The magical living weapons endowed with intelligence, spoken of in the Ramayana and elsewhere. An occult allegory.

 

Krishna (Sk.).. The most celebrated avatar of Vishnu, the “Saviour” of the Hindus and their most popular god. He is the- eighth Avatar, the

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son of Devaki, and the nephew of Kansa, the Indian King Herod, who while seeking for him among the shepherds and cow-herds who concealed him, slew thousands of their newly-born babes. The story of Krishna’s conception, birth, and childhood are the exact prototype of the New Testament story. The missionaries, of course, try to show that the Hindus stole the story of the Nativity from the early Christians who came to India.

 

Krita-Yuga (Sk.). The first of the four Yugas or Ages of the Brahmans; also called Satya-Yuga, a period lasting 1,728,000 years.

 

Krittika (Sk.). The Pleiades. The seven nurses of Karttikiya, the god of War.

 

Kriyasakti (Gk.). The power of thought; one of the seven forces of Nature. Creative potency of the Siddhis (powers) of the full Yogis.

 

Kronos (Gr.). Saturn. The God of Boundless Time and of the Cycles.

 

Krura-lochana (Sk.). The “evil-eyed”; used of Sani, the Hindu Saturn, the planet.

 

Kshanti (Sk.). Patience, one of the Paramîtas of perfection.

 

Kahatriya (Sk.). The second of the four castes into which the Hindus were originally divided.

 

Kshetrajna or Kshetrajneswara (Sk.). Embodied spirit, the Conscious Ego in its highest manifestations; the reincarnating Principle; the “Lord” in us.

 

Kshetram (Sk.). The “Great Deep” of the Bible and Kabala. Chaos, Yoni; Prakriti, Space.

 

Kshira Samudra (Sk.). Ocean of milk, churned by the gods.

 

Kuch-ha-guf (Heb.). The astral body of a man. In Franz Lambert it is written “Coach-ha-guf”. But the Hebrew word is Kuch, meaning vis, “force”, motive origin of the earthy body. [w.w.w.]

 

Kuklos Anagkęs (Gr.). Lit., “The Unavoidable Cycle” or the “Circle of Necessity”-. Of the numerous catacombs in Egypt and Chaldea the most renowned were the subterranean crypts of Thebes and Memphis. The former began on the Western side of the Nile extending toward the Libyan desert, and were known as the serpents’ (Initiated Adepts) catacombs. It was there that the Sacred Mysteries of the Kuklos Anagkęs were performed, and the candidates were acquainted with the inexorable laws traced for every disembodied soul from the beginning of time. These laws were that every reincarnating Entity, casting away its body should pass from this life on earth unto another life on a more subjective plane, a state of bliss, unless the sins of the personality

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brought on a complete separation of the higher from the lower “principles” ; that the “circle of necessity” or the unavoidable cycle should last a given period (from one thousand to even three thousand years in a few cases), and that when closed the Entity should return to its mummy, i.e., to a new incarnation. The Egyptian and Chaldean teachings were those of the “Secret Doctrine” of the Theosophists. The Mexicans had the same. Their demi-god, Votan, is made to describe in Popol Vu (see de Bourbourg’s work) the ahugero de colubra which is identical with the “Serpent’s Catacombs”, or passage, adding that it ran underground and “terminated at the root of heaven”, into which serpent’s hole, Votan was, admitted because he was himself “a son of the Serpents”, or a Dragon of Wisdom, i.e., an Initiate. The world over, the priest-adepts called themselves “Sons of the Dragon” and “Sons of the Serpent-god”.

 

Kukkuta Padagiri (Sk.), called also Gurupadagiri, the “teacher’s mountain”. It is situated about seven miles from Gaya, and is famous owing to a persistent report that Arhat Mahâkâsyapa even to this day dwells in its caves.

 

Kumâra (Sk.). A virgin boy, or young celibate. The first Kumâras are the seven sons of Brahmâ born out of the limbs of the god, in the so-called ninth creation. It is stated that the name was given to them owing to their formal refusal to “procreate their species”, and so they “remained Yogis”, as the legend says.

 

Kumârabudhi (Sk.). An epithet given to the human “Ego”.

 

Kumâra guha (Sk.). Lit., “the mysterious, virgin youth”. A title given to Karttikeya owing to his strange origin.

 

Kumbhaka (Sk.). Retention of breath, according to the regulations of the Hatha Yoga system.

 

Kumbhakarna (Sk.). The brother of King Ravana of Lanka, the ravisher of Rama’s wife, Sita. As shown in the Ramayana, Kumbhakarna under a curse of Brahmâ slept for six months, and then remained awake one day to fall asleep again, and so on, for many hundreds of years. He was awakened to take part in the war between Rama and Ravana, captured Hanuman, but was finally killed himself.

 

Kundalini Sakti (Sk.). The power of life; one of the Forces of Nature; that power that generates a certain light in those who sit for spiritual and clairvoyant development. It is a power known only to those who practise concentration and Yoga.

 

Kunti (Sk.). The wife of Pandu and the mother of the Pandavas, the heroes and the foes of their cousins the Kauravas, in the Bhagavad-gita. It is an allegory of the Spirit-Soul or Buddhi. Some think that

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Draupadi, the wife in common of the five brothers, the Pandavas, is meant to represent Buddhi: but this is not so, for Draupadi stands for the terrestrial life of the Personality. As such, we see it made little of, allowed to be insulted and even taken into slavery by Yudhishthira, the elder of the Pandavas and her chief lord, who represents the Higher Ego with all its qualifications.

 

Kurios (Gr.). ‘The Lord, the Master.

 

Kurus (Sk.) or Kauravas. The foes of the Pandavas in the Bhagavad Gita, on the plain of Kurukshetra. This plain is but a few miles from Delhi.

 

Kusa (Sk.). A sacred grass used by the ascetics of India, called the grass of lucky augury. It is very occult.

 

Kusadwipa (Sk.). One of the seven islands named Saptadwipa in the Puranas. (See Secret Doctrine II., p. 404, Note.)

 

Kusala (Sk.). Merit, one of the two chief constituents of Karma.

 

Kusînara (Sk.). The city near which Buddha died. It is near Delhi, though some Orientalists would locate it in Assam.

 

Kuvera (Sk.). God of the Hades, and of wealth like Pluto. The king of the evil demons in the Hindu Pantheon.

 

Kwan-shai-yîn (Chin.). The male logos of the Northern Buddhists and those of China; the “manifested god”.

 

Kwan-yin (Chin.). The female logos, the “Mother of Mercy”.

 

Kwan-yin-tien (Chin.). The heaven where Kwan-yin and the other logoi dwell.

 

                                                                                                                          

L   

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L.—The twelfth letter of the English Alphabet, and also of the Hebrew, where Lamed signifies an Ox-goad, the sign of a form of the god Mars, the generative deity. The letter is an equivalent of number 30. The Hebrew divine name corresponding to L, is Limmud, or Doctus.

 

Labarum (Lat.). The standard borne before the old Roman Emperors, having an eagle upon it as an emblem of sovereignty. It was a long lance with a cross staff at right angles. Constantine replaced the eagle by the christian monogram with the motto en touty nika which was later interpreted into In hoc signo vinces. As to the monogram, it was a combination of the letter X, Chi, and P, Rho, the initial syllable of Christos. But the Labarum had been an emblem of Etruria ages before Constantine and the Christian era. It was the sign also of Osiris and of Horus who is often represented with the long Latin cross, while the Greek pectoral cross is purely Egyptian. In his “Decline and Fall” Gibbon has exposed the Constantine imposture. The emperor, if he ever had a vision at all, must have seen the Olympian Jupiter, in whose faith he died.

 

Labro. A Roman saint, solemnly beatified a few years ago. His great holiness consisted in sitting at one of the gates of Rome night and day for forty years, and remaining unwashed through the whole of that time. He was eaten by vermin to his bones.

 

Labyrinth (Gr.). Egypt had the “celestial labyrinth” whereinto the souls of the departed plunged, and also its type on earth, the famous Labyrinth, a subterranean series of halls and passages with the most extraordinary windings. Herodotus describes it as consisting of 3,000 chambers, half below and half above ground. Even in his day strangers were not allowed into the subterranean portions of it as they contained the sepulchres of the kings who built it and other mysteries. The “Father of History” found the Labyrinth already almost in ruins, yet regarded it even in its state of dilapidation as far more marvellous than the pyramids.

 

Lactantius. A Church Father, who declared the heliocentric system a heretical doctrine, and that of the antipodes as a “fallacy invented by the devil”.

 

Ladakh. The upper valley of the Indus, inhabited by Tibetans, but belonging to the Rajah of Cashmere.

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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.

 

Lady of the Sycamore. A title of the Egyptian goddess Neїth, who is often represented as appearing in a tree and handing therefrom the fruit of the Tree of Life, as also the Water of Life, to her worshippers.

 

Laena (Lat.). A robe worn by the Roman Augurs with which they covered their heads while sitting in contemplation on the flight of birds.

 

Lahgash (Kab.). Secret speech; esoteric incantation; almost identical with the mystical meaning of Vâch.

 

Lajja (Sk.). “Modesty”; a demi-goddess, daughter of Daksha.

 

Lakh (Sk.). 100,000 of units, either in specie or anything else.

 

Lakshana (Sk.). The thirty-two bodily signs of a Buddha, marks by which he is recognised.

 

Lakshmi (Sk.) “Prosperity”, fortune; the Indian Venus, born of the churning of the ocean by the gods; goddess of beauty and wife of Vishnu.

 

Lalita Vistara (Sk.). A celebrated biography of Sakya Muni, the Lord Buddha, by Dharmarakcha, A.D. 308.

 

Lama (Tib.). Written “Clama”. The title, if correctly applied, belongs only to the priests of superior grades, those who can hold office as gurus in the monasteries. Unfortunately every common member of the gedun (clergy) calls himself or allows himself to be called “Lama”. A real Lama is an ordained and thrice ordained Gelong. Since the reform produced by Tsong-ka-pa, many abuses have again crept into the theocracy of the land. There are “Lama-astrologers”, the Chakhan, or common Tsikhan (from tsigan, “gypsy”), and Lama-soothsayers, even such as are allowed to marry and do not belong to the clergy at all. They are very scarce, however, in Eastern Tibet, belonging principally to Western Tibet and to sects which have nought to do with the Gelukpas (yellow caps). Unfortunately, Orientalists knowing next to nothing of the true state of affairs in Tibet, confuse the Choichong, of the Gurmakhayas Lamasery (Lhassa)—the Initiated Esotericists, with the Charlatans and Dugpas (sorcerers) of the Bhon sects. No wonder if—as Schagintweit says in his Buddhism in Tibet—“though the images of

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King Choichong (the “god of astrology”) are met with in most monasteries of Western Tibet and the Himalayas, my brothers never saw a Lama Choichong”. This is but natural. Neither the Choichong, nor the Kubilkhan (q.v.) overrun the country. As to the “God” or “King Choichong” he is no more a “god of astrology” than any other “Planetary” Dhyan Chohan.

 

Lamrin (Tib.). A sacred volume of precepts and rules, written by Tson-kha-pa, “for the advancement of knowledge”.

 

Land of the Eternal Sun. Tradition places it beyond the Arctic regions at the North Pole. It is “the land of the gods where the sun never sets”.

 

Lang-Shu (Chin.). The title of the translation of Nagarjuna’s work, the Ekasloka-Shastra.

 

Lanka (Sk.). The ancient name of the island now called Ceylon. It is also the name of a mountain in the South East of Ceylon, where, as tradition says, was a town peopled with demons named Lankapuri. It is described in the epic of the Ramayana as of gigantic extent and magnificence, “with seven broad moats and seven stupendous walls of stone and metal”. Its foundation is attributed to Visva-Karma, who built it for Kuvera, the king of the demons, from whom it was taken by Ravana, the ravisher of Sita. The Bhâgavat Purâna shows Lanka or Ceylon as primarily the summit of Mount Meru, which was broken off by Vayu, god of the wind, and hurled into the ocean. It has since become the seat of the Southern Buddhist Church, the Siamese Sect (headed at present by the High Priest Sumangala), the representation of the purest exoteric Buddhism on this side of the Himalayas.

 

Lanoo (Sk.). A disciple, the same as “chela”.

 

Lao-tze (Chin.). A great sage, saint and philosopher who preceded Confucius.

 

Lapis philosophorum (Lat.). The “Philosopher’s stone”; a mystic term in alchemy, having quite a different meaning from that usually attributed to it.

 

Lararium (Lat.). An apartment in the house of ancient Romans where the Lares or household gods were preserved, with other family relics.

 

Lares (Lat.). These were of three kinds: Lares familiares, the guardians and invisible presidents of the family circle; Lares parvi, small idols used for divinations and augury: and Lares prćstites, which were supposed to maintain order among the others. The Lares are the manes or ghosts of disembodied people. Apuleius says that the tumulary in scription, To the gods manes who lived, meant that the Soul had been trans-

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formed in a Lemure ; and adds that though “the human Soul is a demon that our languages may name genius”, and “is an immortal god though in a certain sense she is born at the same time as the man in whom she is, yet we may say that she dies in the same way that she is born”. Which means in plainer language that Lares and Lemures are simply the shells cast off by the EGO, the high spiritual and immortal Soul, whose shell, and also its astral reflection, the animal Soul, die, whereas the higher Soul prevails throughout eternity.

 

Larva (Lat.). The animal Soul. Larvć are the shadows of men that have lived and died.

 

Law of Retribution. (See “Karma”.)

 

Laya or Layam (