Chapter 13

Very familiar facts seem to stand in no need of explanation themselves and to be the means of explaining whatever can be assimilated to them. Thus, the boiling and evaporation of a liquid is supposed to be a very simple phenomenon requiring no explanation, and a satisfactory explanation of rarer phenomena. That water should dry up is, to the uninstructed mind, a thing wholly intelligible: whereas to the man acquainted with physical science the liquid state is anomalous and inexplicable. The lighting of a fire by a flame is agreat scientific difficulty, yet few people think so.219What says the Esoteric teaching with regard to Fire?“Fire is the most perfect and unadulterated reflection, in Heaven as on Earth, of the One Flame. It is Life and Death, the origin and the end of every material thing. It is divine Substance.”Thus, not only the Fire-Worshipper, the Parsi, but even the wandering savage tribes of America, which proclaim themselves“born of fire,”show more science in their creeds and truth in their superstitions, than all the speculations of modern physics and learning. The Christian who says,“God is a living Fire,”and speaks of the Pentecostal“Tongues of Fire”and of the“Burning Bush”of Moses, is as much a fire-worshipper as any other“Heathen.”Among the Mystics and Kabalists, the Rosicrucians were those who defined Fire in the most correct way. Procure a sixpenny lamp, keep it only supplied with oil, and you will be able to light at its flame the lamps, candles, and fires of the whole globe without diminishing that flame. If the Deity, the radical One, is an eternal and infinite Substance never consumed (“the Lord thy God is a consuming fire”),[pg 147]then it does not seem reasonable that the Occult teaching should be held as unphilosophical when it says:“Thus were formed the Arûpa and Rûpa [Worlds]: from One Light Seven Lights; from each of the Seven, seven times Seven”etc., etc.5.Fohat takes five strides220(a),and builds a winged wheel at each corner of the square for the Four Holy Ones ... and their Armies221(b).(a) The“Strides,”as already explained in the last Commentary, refer to both the cosmic and the human Principles—the latter of which consist, in the exoteric division, of three (Spirit, Soul and Body), and, in the esoteric calculation, of seven Principles—three Rays of the Essence and four Aspects.222Those who have studied Mr. Sinnett'sEsoteric Buddhismwill easily grasp the nomenclature. There are two Esoteric schools beyond the Himâlayas, or rather one school, divided into two sections—one for the inner Lanoos, the other for the outer or semi-lay Chelâs; the first teaching a septenary, the other a six-fold division of the human Principles.From a cosmic point of view, Fohat taking“Five Strides”refers here to the five upper planes of Consciousness and Being, the sixth and the seventh (counting downwards) being the astral and the terrestrial, or the two lower planes.(b) Four“Winged Wheels at each corner ... for the Four Holy Ones and their Armies (Hosts).”These are the“Four Mahârâjahs,”or great Kings, of the Dhyân Chohans, the Devas, who preside each over one of the four cardinal points. They are the Regents, or Angels, who rule over the Cosmical Forces of North, South, East and West, Forces having each a distinct Occult property. These Beings are also connected with Karma, as the latter needs physical and material agents to carry out its decrees, such as the four kinds of winds, for instance, professedly admitted by Science to have their respective evil and beneficent influences upon the health of mankind and every living thing. There is Occult philosophy in the Roman Catholic doctrine which traces the various public calamities, such as epidemics of disease,[pg 148]and wars, and so on, to the invisible“Messengers”from North and West.“The glory of God comes from the way of the East,”says Ezekiel; while Jeremiah, Isaiah, and the Psalmist assure their readers that all the evil under the Sun comes from the North and the West—which, when applied to the Jewish nation, sounds like an undeniable prophecy. And this accounts also for St. Ambrose223declaring that it is precisely for this reason that“we curse the North Wind, and that during the ceremony of baptism we begin by turning towards the West [Sidereal], to renounce the better him who inhabits it; after which we turn to the East.”Belief in the Four Mahârâjahs—the Regents of the four cardinal points—was universal and is now that of Christians, who call them, after St. Augustine,“Angelic Virtues”and“Spirits,”when enumerated by themselves, and“Devils,”when named by Pagans. But where is the difference between the Pagans and the Christians in this case? Says the scholarly Vossius:Though St. Augustine has said that every visible thing in this world had an angelic virtue as an overseer near it, it is not individuals but entire species of things that must be understood, each such species having indeed its particular angel to watch it. He is at one in this with all the philosophers ... For us these angels are spirits separated from the objects.... whereas for the [Pagan] philosophers they were gods.224Considering the Ritual for the“Spirits of the Stars,”established by the Roman Catholic Church, these look suspiciously like“gods,”but they were no more honoured or worshipped by the ancient, nor are they by the modern, Pagan rabble than they are now at Rome by the highly cultured Catholic Christians.Following Plato, Aristotle explained that the term στοιχεῖα was understood only as meaning the incorporeal principles placed at each of the four great divisions of our cosmical world, to supervise them. Thus, no more than Christians do Pagansadoreandworshipthe Elements and the (imaginary) cardinal points, but the“gods”that respectively rule over them. For the Church, there are two kinds of Sidereal Beings, Angels and Devils. For the Kabalist and Occultist, there is but one class, and neither Occultist nor Kabalist makes any difference between the“Rectors of Light”and the“Rectores Tenebrarum,”or Cosmocratores, whom the Roman Church imagines and discovers in the“Rectors of Light,”as soon as any one of them is called by another name than the one she addresses him by. It is not the Rector, or[pg 149]Mahârâjah, who punishes or rewards, with or without“God's”permission or order, but man himself—his deeds, or Karma, attracting individually and collectively (as in the case of whole nations, sometimes) every kind of evil and calamity. We produceCauses, and these awaken the corresponding powers in the Sidereal World, which are magnetically and irresistibly attracted to—and reäct upon—those who produce such causes; whether such persons are practically the evil-doers, or simply“thinkers”who brood mischief. For thought is matter, we are taught by Modern Science; and“every particle of the existing matter must be a register of all that has happened,”as Messrs. Jevons and Babbage in theirPrinciples of Sciencetell the profane. Modern Science is every day drawn more into the maëlstrom of Occultism; unconsciously, no doubt, still very sensibly.“Thought is matter”: not of course, however, in the sense of the German Materialist Moleschott, who assures us that“thought is the movement of matter”—a statement of almost unparalleled absurdity. Mental states and bodily states are utterly contrasted as such. But that does not affect the position that every thought, in addition to its physical accompaniment (brain-change), exhibits an objective—though to us supersensuously objective—aspect on the astral plane.225The two main theories of Science as to the relations between Mind and Matter are Monism and Materialism. These two cover the whole ground of negative psychology with the exception of the quasi-occult views of the German Pantheistic schools.The views of our present-day scientific thinkers as to the relations between mind and matter may be reduced to the following two hypotheses. These show that both views equally exclude the possibility of an independent soul, distinct from the physical brain through which it functions. They are:(1.)Materialism, the theory which regards mental phenomena as the product of molecular change in the brain;i.e., as the outcome of a transformation of motion into feeling (!). The cruder school once went so far as to identify mind with a“peculiar mode of motion”(!!), but this view is now happily regarded as absurd by most of the men of Science themselves.(2.)Monism, or the Single Substance doctrine, is the more subtle form of negative psychology, which one of its advocates, Professor Bain, ably terms“guarded materialism.”This doctrine, which commands a[pg 150]very wide assent, counting among its upholders such men as Lewes, Spencer, Ferrier, and others, while positing thought and mental phenomena generally as radically contrasted with matter, regards them as the two sides, or aspects, of one and the same substance in some of its conditions. Thought as thought, they say, is utterly contrasted with material phenomena, but it must be also regarded as only“the subjective side of nervous motion”—whatever our learned men may mean by this.To return to the commentary on the Four Mahârâjahs, however, in the Egyptian temples, according to Clemens Alexandrinus, an immense curtain separated the tabernacle from the place for the congregation. The Jews had the same. In both, the curtain was drawn over five pillars (the Pentacle), symbolizing our five senses and five Root Races esoterically, while the four colours of the curtain represented the four cardinal points and the four terrestrial elements. The whole was an allegorical symbol. It is through the four high Rulers over the four points and elements that our five senses may become cognizant of the hidden truths of Nature; and not at all, as Clemens would have it, that it is the elementsper sethat furnished the Pagans with Divine Knowledge or the Knowledge of God.226While the Egyptian emblem was spiritual, that of the Jews was purely materialistic, and, indeed, honoured only the blind elements and the imaginary“points.”For what was the meaning of the square Tabernacle raised by Moses in the wilderness, if it had not the same cosmical significance?“Thou shalt make an hanging ... of blue, purple, and scarlet ... five pillars of shittim wood for the hanging ... four brazen rings in the four corners thereof ... boards of fine wood for the four sides, North, South, West, and East ... of the Tabernacle ... with Cherubims of cunning work.”227The Tabernacle and the square courtyard, Cherubim and all, were precisely the same as those in the Egyptian temples. The square form of the Tabernacle meant just the same thing as it still means, to this day, in the exoteric worship of the Chinese and Tibetans—the four cardinal points signifying that which the four sides of the pyramids, obelisks, and other such square erections mean. Josephus takes care to explain the whole thing. He declares that the Tabernacle pillars were the same as those raised at Tyre to the four elements, which were placed on pedestals whose four[pg 151]angles faced the four cardinal points; adding that“the angles of the pedestals had the four figures of the Zodiac”on them, which represented the same orientation.228The idea may be traced in the Zoroastrian caves, in the rock-cut temples of India, and in all the sacred square buildings of antiquity that have survived to this day. This is shown definitely by Layard, who finds the four cardinal points, and the four primitive elements, in the religion of every country, under the shape of square obelisks, the four sides of the pyramids, etc., etc. Of these elements and their points the Four Mahârâjahs were the regents and directors.If the student would know more of them, he has but to compare the Vision of Ezekiel (ch. i.) with what is known of Chinese Buddhism, even in its exoteric teachings, and examine the outward shape of these“Great Kings of the Devas.”In the opinion of the Rev. Joseph Edkins,“they preside each over one of the four continents into which the Hindûs divide the world.... Each leads an army of spiritual beings to protect mankind and Buddhism.”229With the exception of favouritism towards Buddhism, the four Celestial Beings are precisely this. The Hindûs, however, happen to divide the world into seven continents, exoterically as well as esoterically; and their four Cosmic Devas are eight, presiding over the eight points of the compass and not over the continents.The“Four”are the protectors of mankind and also the agents of Karma on Earth, whereas the Lipika are concerned with Humanity's hereafter. At the same time they are the four living creatures,“who have the likeness of a man,”of Ezekiel's vision, called by the translators of the Bible,“Cherubim,”“Seraphim,”etc.; by the Occultists,“Winged Globes,”“Fiery Wheels”; and in the Hindû Pantheon, by a number of different names. All these Gandharvas, the“Sweet Songsters,”the Asuras, Kinnaras, and Nâgas, are the allegorical descriptions of the Four Mahârâjahs. The Seraphim are the fiery Serpents of Heaven which we find in a passage, describing Mount Meru as“the exalted mass of glory, the venerable haunt of gods and heavenly choristers ... not to be reached by sinful men ... because guarded by Serpents.”They are called the Avengers, and the“Winged Wheels.”Their mission and character being explained, let us see what the Christian bible-interpreters say of the Cherubim.“The word signifies[pg 152]in Hebrew, fulness of knowledge; these angels are so called from their exquisite Knowledge, and were therefore used for the punishment of men who affected divine Knowledge.”(Interpreted by Cruden in hisConcordance, fromGenesisiii. 24.) Very well; and vague as the information is, it shows that the Cherub placed at the gate of the Garden of Eden, after the“Fall,”suggested to the venerable interpreters the idea of punishment connected with forbidden Science or divine Knowledge—one that generally leads to another“Fall,”that of the gods or“God,”in man's estimation. But as the good old Cruden knew nought of Karma, he may be forgiven. Yet the allegory is suggestive. From Meru, the abode of gods, to Eden, the distance is very small, and from the Hindû Serpents to the Ophite Cherubim, the third out of the seven of which was the Dragon, the separation is still smaller, for both watched the entrance to the realm of Secret Knowledge. Ezekiel, moreover, plainly describes the four Cosmic Angels:I looked, and, behold, a whirlwind, ... a ... cloud and a fire infolding it ... also out of the midst thereof came the likeness of four living creatures ... they had the likeness of a man. And every one had four faces and ... four wings ... the face of a man,230and the face of a lion ... the face of an ox, and ... the face of an eagle.... Now as I beheld the living creatures, behold one wheel upon the Earth ... with his four faces ... as it were a wheel in the middle of a wheel ... for the spirit of the living creature was in the wheel.231There are three chief Groups of Builders, and as many of the Planetary Spirits and the Lipika, each Group being again divided into seven sub-groups. It is impossible, even in such a large work as this, to enter into a minute examination of even the three principal Groups, as it would demand an extra volume. The Builders are the representatives of the first“Mind-Born”Entities, therefore of the primeval Rishi-Prajâpati; also of the Seven great Gods of Egypt, of which Osiris is the chief; of the Seven Amshaspends of the Zoroastrians, with Ormazd at their head; of the“Seven Spirits of the Face”; of the Seven Sephiroth separated from the first Triad, etc., etc.232They build,[pg 153]or rather rebuild, every“System”after the“Night.”The Second Group of the Builders is the Architect of our Planetary Chain exclusively; and the Third, the Progenitor of our Humanity—the macrocosmic prototype of the microcosm.The Planetary Spirits are the informing spirits of the Stars in general, and of the Planets especially. They rule the destinies of men who are all born under one or other of their constellations; the Second and Third Groups pertaining to other systems have the same functions, and all rule various departments in Nature. In the Hindû exoteric Pantheon they are the guardian deities who preside over the eight points of the compass—the four cardinal and the four intermediate points—and are called Lokapâlas,“Supporters or Guardians of the World”(in our visible Cosmos), of which Indra (East), Yama (South), Varuna (West), and Kuvera (North) are the chief; their elephants and spouses pertaining of course to fancy and afterthought, though all of them have an Occult significance.The Lipika, a description of whom is given in Commentary 6 of Stanza IV, are the Spirits of the Universe, whereas the Builders are only our own planetary deities. The former belong to the most Occult portion of cosmogenesis, which cannot be given here. Whether the Adepts—even the highest—know this angelic order in the completeness of its triple degrees, or only the lower one connected with the records of our world, is something which the writer is unprepared to say, and she would rather incline to the latter supposition. Of its highest grade one thing only is taught: the Lipika are connected with Karma—being its direct Recorders. The Symbol for Sacred and Secret Knowledge in antiquity was universally a Tree, by which a Scripture or a Record was also meant. Hence the word Lipika, the Writers or Scribes; the Dragons, symbols of Wisdom, who guard the Trees of Knowledge; the“golden”Apple-Tree of the Hesperides; the“Luxuriant Trees”and vegetation of Mount Meru, guarded by Serpents. Juno's giving Jupiter, on her marriage, a Tree with golden fruit, is another form of Eve offering Adam the apple from the Tree of Knowledge.6.The Lipika circumscribe the Triangle, the First One,233the Cube, the Second One, and the Pentacle within the Egg234(a).[pg 154]It is the Ring called“Pass Not”for those who descend and ascend;235who during the Kalpa are progressing towards the Great Day“Be With Us”(b)....Thus were formed the Arûpa and the Rûpa:236from One Light, Seven Lights; from each of the Seven, seven times Seven Lights. The Wheels watch the Ring....The Stanza proceeds with a minute classification of the Orders of the Angelic Hierarchy. From the Group of Four and Seven emanates the Mind-Born Groups of Ten, of Twelve, of Twenty-one, etc., all these divided again into sub-groups of Heptads, Enneads, Dodecads, and so on, until the mind is lost in this endless enumeration of celestial Hosts and Beings, each having its distinct task in the ruling of the visible Cosmos during its existence.(a) The Esoteric meaning of the first sentence of the Shloka is, that those who have been called Lipikas, the Recorders of the Karmic Ledger, make an impassible barrier between the personalEgoand the impersonalSelf, the Noumenon and Parent-Source of the former. Hence the allegory. They circumscribe the manifested world of matter within the Ring“Pass Not.”This world is the objective symbol of the One divided into the Many, on the planes of Illusion, of Adi (the“First”) or of Eka (the“One”); and this One is the collective aggregate, or totality, of the principal Creators or Architects of this visible Universe. In Hebrew Occultism their name is both Achath, feminine,“One,”and Achad,“One”again, but masculine. The Monotheists have taken, and are still taking, advantage of the profound esotericism of theKabalah, to apply the name by which the One Supreme Essence is known, toitsmanifestation, the Sephiroth-Elohim, and call it Jehovah. But this is quite arbitrary and against all reason and logic, as the term Elohim is a plural noun, identical with the plural word Chiim, often compounded with it. The sentence in theSepher Yetzirahand elsewhere,“Achath-Ruach-Elohim-Chiim,”denotes the Elohim as androgynous at best, the feminine element almost predominating, as it would read:“Oneis She the Spirit of the Elohim of Life.”As said, Achath (or Echath) is feminine, and Achad (or Echad) masculine, both meaning One.Moreover, in Occult metaphysics, there are, properly speaking, two“Ones”—the One on the unreachable plane of Absoluteness and Infinity,[pg 155]on which no speculation is possible; and the second One on the plane of Emanations. The former can neither emanate nor be divided, as it is eternal, absolute, and immutable; but the second, being, so to speak, the reflection of the first One (for it is the Logos, or Îshvara, in the Universe of Illusion), can do so. It emanates from itself—as the upper Sephirothal Triad emanates the lower seven Sephiroth—the seven Rays or Dhyân Chohans; in other words, the Homogeneous becomes the Heterogeneous, the Protyle differentiates into the Elements. But these, unless they return into their primal Element, can never cross beyond the Laya, or zero-point. This metaphysical tenet can hardly be better described than in T. Subba Row'sBhagavadgîtâLectures:Mûlaprakriti [the veil of Parabrahman] acts as the one energy through the Logos [or Îshvara]. Now Parabrahman ... is the one essence from which starts into existence a centre of energy, which I shall for the present call the Logos.... It is called the Verbum ... by the Christians, and it is the divine Christos who is eternal in the bosom of his Father. It is called Avalokiteshvara by the Buddhists.... In almost every doctrine, they have formulated the existence of a centre of spiritual energy which is unborn and eternal, and which exists in the bosom of Parabrahman at the time of Pralaya, and starts as a centre of conscious energy at the time of cosmic activity....237For, as the lecturer premised by saying, Parabrahman is not this or that, it is not even consciousness, as it cannot be related to matter or anything conditioned. It is not Ego nor is it Non-Ego, nor even Âtmâ, but verily the one source of all manifestations and modes of existence.Thus in the allegory, the Lipika separate the world (or plane) of pure Spirit from that of Matter. Those who“descend and ascend”—the incarnating Monads, and men striving towards purification and“ascending,”but still not having quite reached the goal—may cross the Circle of“Pass Not,”only on the Day“Be With Us”; that day when man, freeing himself from the trammels of ignorance, and recognizing fully the non-separateness of the Ego within his Personality—erroneously regarded as his own—from the Universal Ego (Anima Supra-Mundi), merges thereby into the One Essence, to become not only one with“Us,”the manifested universal Lives which areoneLife, but that very Life itself.Astronomically, the Ring“Pass Not”that the Lipika trace round“the Triangle, the First One, the Cube, the Second One, and the Pentacle,”to[pg 156]circumscribe these figures, is thus again shown to contain the symbols of 31415, or the coëfficient constantly used in mathematical tables, the value π (pi), the geometrical figures standing here for numerical figures. According to the general philosophical teachings, this Ring is beyond the region of what are called nebulæ in astronomy. But this is as erroneous a conception as that of the topography and descriptions, given in Purânic and other exoteric Scriptures, about the 1008 worlds of the Deva-loka worlds and firmaments. There are worlds, of course, in the esoteric as well as in the profane scientific teachings, at such incalculable distances that the light of the nearest of them, though it has only just reached our modern“Chaldees,”may have left its luminary long before the day on which the words,“Let there be Light,”were pronounced; but these are not worlds on the Devalokic plane, but in our Cosmos.The Chemist goes to the laya or zero-point of the plane of matter with which he deals, and then stops short. The Physicist or the Astronomer counts billions of miles beyond the nebulæ, and then he also stops short. The semi-initiated Occultist also will represent this laya-point to himself as existing on some plane which, if not physical, is still conceivable to the human intellect. But the full Initiateknowsthat the Ring“Pass Not”is neither a locality, nor can it be measured by distance, but that it exists in the absoluteness of Infinity. In this“Infinity”of the full Initiate, there is neither height, breadth nor thickness, but all is fathomless profundity, reaching down from the physical to the“para-metaphysical.”In using the word“down,”essential depth—“nowhere and everywhere”—is meant, not depth of physical matter.If one carefully searches through the exoteric and grossly anthropomorphic allegories of popular religions, even in these the doctrine embodied in the Circle of“Pass Not,”guarded by the Lipika, may be dimly perceived. Thus one finds it even in the teachings of the Vedântin sect of the Visishthadvaita, the most tenaciously anthropomorphic in all India. For we read of the released soul that, after reaching Moksha—a state of bliss meaning“release from Bandha,”or bondage—bliss is enjoyed by it in a place called Paramapada, which place is not material, but made of Suddasattva, the essence, of which the body of Îshvara—the“Lord”—is formed. There, Muktas or Jîvâtmâs (Monads) who have attained Moksha, are never again subject to the qualities of either matter or Karma.“But if they choose,for the[pg 157]sake of doing good to the world, they may incarnate on earth.”238The way to Paramapada, or the immaterial worlds, from this world, is called Devayâna. When a person has attained Moksha and the body dies:The Jîva (Soul) goes with Sûkshma Sharira239from the heart of the body to the Brahmarandra in the crown of the head, traversing Sushumna, a nerve connecting the heart with the Brahmarandra. The Jiva breaks through the Brahmarandra and goes to the region of the Sun (Sûryamandala) through the solar rays. Then it goes, through a dark spot in the Sun, to Paramapada.... The Jîva is directed on its way ... by the Supreme Wisdom acquired by Yoga.240The Jîva thus proceeds to Paramapada by the aid of Athivâhikas (bearers in transit), known by the names of Archi Ahas ... Âditya, ... Prajâpati, etc. The Archis, etc., here mentioned, are certain pure Souls, etc., etc.241No Spirits except the“Recorders”(Lipika) have ever crossed the forbidden line of this Ring, nor will any do so until the day of the next Pralaya, for it is the boundary that separates the Finite—however infinite in man's sight—from the truly Infinite. The Spirits referred to, therefore, as those who“ascend and descend,”are the“Hosts”of what are loosely called“Celestial Beings.”But they are, in fact, nothing of the kind. They are Entities of higher worlds in the Hierarchy of Being, so immeasurably high that, to us, they must appear as Gods, and collectively—God. But so must we, mortal men, appear to the ant, which reasons on the scale of its special capacities. The ant may also, for all we know, see the avenging finger of a Personal God in the hand of the urchin who, under the impulse of mischief, destroys, in one moment, its ant-hill, the labour of many weeks—long years in the chronology of insects. The ant, feeling it acutely, may also, like man, attribute the undeserved calamity to a combination of providence and sin, and see in it the result of the sin of its first parent. Who knows, and who can affirm or deny? The refusal to admit, in the whole Solar System, of any other reasonable and intellectual beings than ourselves on the human plane, is the greatest conceit[pg 158]of our age. All that Science has a right to affirm, is that there are no invisible Intelligences living under the same conditions as we do. It cannot deny point-blank the possibility of there being worlds within worlds, under conditions totally different to those that constitute the nature of our world; nor can it deny that there may be a certain limited communication between some of these worlds and our own. The greatest philosopher of European birth, Emmanuel Kant, assures us that such a communication is in no way improbable.

What says the Esoteric teaching with regard to Fire?“Fire is the most perfect and unadulterated reflection, in Heaven as on Earth, of the One Flame. It is Life and Death, the origin and the end of every material thing. It is divine Substance.”Thus, not only the Fire-Worshipper, the Parsi, but even the wandering savage tribes of America, which proclaim themselves“born of fire,”show more science in their creeds and truth in their superstitions, than all the speculations of modern physics and learning. The Christian who says,“God is a living Fire,”and speaks of the Pentecostal“Tongues of Fire”and of the“Burning Bush”of Moses, is as much a fire-worshipper as any other“Heathen.”Among the Mystics and Kabalists, the Rosicrucians were those who defined Fire in the most correct way. Procure a sixpenny lamp, keep it only supplied with oil, and you will be able to light at its flame the lamps, candles, and fires of the whole globe without diminishing that flame. If the Deity, the radical One, is an eternal and infinite Substance never consumed (“the Lord thy God is a consuming fire”),[pg 147]then it does not seem reasonable that the Occult teaching should be held as unphilosophical when it says:“Thus were formed the Arûpa and Rûpa [Worlds]: from One Light Seven Lights; from each of the Seven, seven times Seven”etc., etc.

5.Fohat takes five strides220(a),and builds a winged wheel at each corner of the square for the Four Holy Ones ... and their Armies221(b).

(a) The“Strides,”as already explained in the last Commentary, refer to both the cosmic and the human Principles—the latter of which consist, in the exoteric division, of three (Spirit, Soul and Body), and, in the esoteric calculation, of seven Principles—three Rays of the Essence and four Aspects.222Those who have studied Mr. Sinnett'sEsoteric Buddhismwill easily grasp the nomenclature. There are two Esoteric schools beyond the Himâlayas, or rather one school, divided into two sections—one for the inner Lanoos, the other for the outer or semi-lay Chelâs; the first teaching a septenary, the other a six-fold division of the human Principles.

From a cosmic point of view, Fohat taking“Five Strides”refers here to the five upper planes of Consciousness and Being, the sixth and the seventh (counting downwards) being the astral and the terrestrial, or the two lower planes.

(b) Four“Winged Wheels at each corner ... for the Four Holy Ones and their Armies (Hosts).”These are the“Four Mahârâjahs,”or great Kings, of the Dhyân Chohans, the Devas, who preside each over one of the four cardinal points. They are the Regents, or Angels, who rule over the Cosmical Forces of North, South, East and West, Forces having each a distinct Occult property. These Beings are also connected with Karma, as the latter needs physical and material agents to carry out its decrees, such as the four kinds of winds, for instance, professedly admitted by Science to have their respective evil and beneficent influences upon the health of mankind and every living thing. There is Occult philosophy in the Roman Catholic doctrine which traces the various public calamities, such as epidemics of disease,[pg 148]and wars, and so on, to the invisible“Messengers”from North and West.“The glory of God comes from the way of the East,”says Ezekiel; while Jeremiah, Isaiah, and the Psalmist assure their readers that all the evil under the Sun comes from the North and the West—which, when applied to the Jewish nation, sounds like an undeniable prophecy. And this accounts also for St. Ambrose223declaring that it is precisely for this reason that“we curse the North Wind, and that during the ceremony of baptism we begin by turning towards the West [Sidereal], to renounce the better him who inhabits it; after which we turn to the East.”

Belief in the Four Mahârâjahs—the Regents of the four cardinal points—was universal and is now that of Christians, who call them, after St. Augustine,“Angelic Virtues”and“Spirits,”when enumerated by themselves, and“Devils,”when named by Pagans. But where is the difference between the Pagans and the Christians in this case? Says the scholarly Vossius:

Though St. Augustine has said that every visible thing in this world had an angelic virtue as an overseer near it, it is not individuals but entire species of things that must be understood, each such species having indeed its particular angel to watch it. He is at one in this with all the philosophers ... For us these angels are spirits separated from the objects.... whereas for the [Pagan] philosophers they were gods.224

Considering the Ritual for the“Spirits of the Stars,”established by the Roman Catholic Church, these look suspiciously like“gods,”but they were no more honoured or worshipped by the ancient, nor are they by the modern, Pagan rabble than they are now at Rome by the highly cultured Catholic Christians.

Following Plato, Aristotle explained that the term στοιχεῖα was understood only as meaning the incorporeal principles placed at each of the four great divisions of our cosmical world, to supervise them. Thus, no more than Christians do Pagansadoreandworshipthe Elements and the (imaginary) cardinal points, but the“gods”that respectively rule over them. For the Church, there are two kinds of Sidereal Beings, Angels and Devils. For the Kabalist and Occultist, there is but one class, and neither Occultist nor Kabalist makes any difference between the“Rectors of Light”and the“Rectores Tenebrarum,”or Cosmocratores, whom the Roman Church imagines and discovers in the“Rectors of Light,”as soon as any one of them is called by another name than the one she addresses him by. It is not the Rector, or[pg 149]Mahârâjah, who punishes or rewards, with or without“God's”permission or order, but man himself—his deeds, or Karma, attracting individually and collectively (as in the case of whole nations, sometimes) every kind of evil and calamity. We produceCauses, and these awaken the corresponding powers in the Sidereal World, which are magnetically and irresistibly attracted to—and reäct upon—those who produce such causes; whether such persons are practically the evil-doers, or simply“thinkers”who brood mischief. For thought is matter, we are taught by Modern Science; and“every particle of the existing matter must be a register of all that has happened,”as Messrs. Jevons and Babbage in theirPrinciples of Sciencetell the profane. Modern Science is every day drawn more into the maëlstrom of Occultism; unconsciously, no doubt, still very sensibly.

“Thought is matter”: not of course, however, in the sense of the German Materialist Moleschott, who assures us that“thought is the movement of matter”—a statement of almost unparalleled absurdity. Mental states and bodily states are utterly contrasted as such. But that does not affect the position that every thought, in addition to its physical accompaniment (brain-change), exhibits an objective—though to us supersensuously objective—aspect on the astral plane.225

The two main theories of Science as to the relations between Mind and Matter are Monism and Materialism. These two cover the whole ground of negative psychology with the exception of the quasi-occult views of the German Pantheistic schools.

The views of our present-day scientific thinkers as to the relations between mind and matter may be reduced to the following two hypotheses. These show that both views equally exclude the possibility of an independent soul, distinct from the physical brain through which it functions. They are:

(1.)Materialism, the theory which regards mental phenomena as the product of molecular change in the brain;i.e., as the outcome of a transformation of motion into feeling (!). The cruder school once went so far as to identify mind with a“peculiar mode of motion”(!!), but this view is now happily regarded as absurd by most of the men of Science themselves.

(2.)Monism, or the Single Substance doctrine, is the more subtle form of negative psychology, which one of its advocates, Professor Bain, ably terms“guarded materialism.”This doctrine, which commands a[pg 150]very wide assent, counting among its upholders such men as Lewes, Spencer, Ferrier, and others, while positing thought and mental phenomena generally as radically contrasted with matter, regards them as the two sides, or aspects, of one and the same substance in some of its conditions. Thought as thought, they say, is utterly contrasted with material phenomena, but it must be also regarded as only“the subjective side of nervous motion”—whatever our learned men may mean by this.

To return to the commentary on the Four Mahârâjahs, however, in the Egyptian temples, according to Clemens Alexandrinus, an immense curtain separated the tabernacle from the place for the congregation. The Jews had the same. In both, the curtain was drawn over five pillars (the Pentacle), symbolizing our five senses and five Root Races esoterically, while the four colours of the curtain represented the four cardinal points and the four terrestrial elements. The whole was an allegorical symbol. It is through the four high Rulers over the four points and elements that our five senses may become cognizant of the hidden truths of Nature; and not at all, as Clemens would have it, that it is the elementsper sethat furnished the Pagans with Divine Knowledge or the Knowledge of God.226While the Egyptian emblem was spiritual, that of the Jews was purely materialistic, and, indeed, honoured only the blind elements and the imaginary“points.”For what was the meaning of the square Tabernacle raised by Moses in the wilderness, if it had not the same cosmical significance?“Thou shalt make an hanging ... of blue, purple, and scarlet ... five pillars of shittim wood for the hanging ... four brazen rings in the four corners thereof ... boards of fine wood for the four sides, North, South, West, and East ... of the Tabernacle ... with Cherubims of cunning work.”227The Tabernacle and the square courtyard, Cherubim and all, were precisely the same as those in the Egyptian temples. The square form of the Tabernacle meant just the same thing as it still means, to this day, in the exoteric worship of the Chinese and Tibetans—the four cardinal points signifying that which the four sides of the pyramids, obelisks, and other such square erections mean. Josephus takes care to explain the whole thing. He declares that the Tabernacle pillars were the same as those raised at Tyre to the four elements, which were placed on pedestals whose four[pg 151]angles faced the four cardinal points; adding that“the angles of the pedestals had the four figures of the Zodiac”on them, which represented the same orientation.228

The idea may be traced in the Zoroastrian caves, in the rock-cut temples of India, and in all the sacred square buildings of antiquity that have survived to this day. This is shown definitely by Layard, who finds the four cardinal points, and the four primitive elements, in the religion of every country, under the shape of square obelisks, the four sides of the pyramids, etc., etc. Of these elements and their points the Four Mahârâjahs were the regents and directors.

If the student would know more of them, he has but to compare the Vision of Ezekiel (ch. i.) with what is known of Chinese Buddhism, even in its exoteric teachings, and examine the outward shape of these“Great Kings of the Devas.”In the opinion of the Rev. Joseph Edkins,“they preside each over one of the four continents into which the Hindûs divide the world.... Each leads an army of spiritual beings to protect mankind and Buddhism.”229With the exception of favouritism towards Buddhism, the four Celestial Beings are precisely this. The Hindûs, however, happen to divide the world into seven continents, exoterically as well as esoterically; and their four Cosmic Devas are eight, presiding over the eight points of the compass and not over the continents.

The“Four”are the protectors of mankind and also the agents of Karma on Earth, whereas the Lipika are concerned with Humanity's hereafter. At the same time they are the four living creatures,“who have the likeness of a man,”of Ezekiel's vision, called by the translators of the Bible,“Cherubim,”“Seraphim,”etc.; by the Occultists,“Winged Globes,”“Fiery Wheels”; and in the Hindû Pantheon, by a number of different names. All these Gandharvas, the“Sweet Songsters,”the Asuras, Kinnaras, and Nâgas, are the allegorical descriptions of the Four Mahârâjahs. The Seraphim are the fiery Serpents of Heaven which we find in a passage, describing Mount Meru as“the exalted mass of glory, the venerable haunt of gods and heavenly choristers ... not to be reached by sinful men ... because guarded by Serpents.”They are called the Avengers, and the“Winged Wheels.”

Their mission and character being explained, let us see what the Christian bible-interpreters say of the Cherubim.“The word signifies[pg 152]in Hebrew, fulness of knowledge; these angels are so called from their exquisite Knowledge, and were therefore used for the punishment of men who affected divine Knowledge.”(Interpreted by Cruden in hisConcordance, fromGenesisiii. 24.) Very well; and vague as the information is, it shows that the Cherub placed at the gate of the Garden of Eden, after the“Fall,”suggested to the venerable interpreters the idea of punishment connected with forbidden Science or divine Knowledge—one that generally leads to another“Fall,”that of the gods or“God,”in man's estimation. But as the good old Cruden knew nought of Karma, he may be forgiven. Yet the allegory is suggestive. From Meru, the abode of gods, to Eden, the distance is very small, and from the Hindû Serpents to the Ophite Cherubim, the third out of the seven of which was the Dragon, the separation is still smaller, for both watched the entrance to the realm of Secret Knowledge. Ezekiel, moreover, plainly describes the four Cosmic Angels:

I looked, and, behold, a whirlwind, ... a ... cloud and a fire infolding it ... also out of the midst thereof came the likeness of four living creatures ... they had the likeness of a man. And every one had four faces and ... four wings ... the face of a man,230and the face of a lion ... the face of an ox, and ... the face of an eagle.... Now as I beheld the living creatures, behold one wheel upon the Earth ... with his four faces ... as it were a wheel in the middle of a wheel ... for the spirit of the living creature was in the wheel.231

There are three chief Groups of Builders, and as many of the Planetary Spirits and the Lipika, each Group being again divided into seven sub-groups. It is impossible, even in such a large work as this, to enter into a minute examination of even the three principal Groups, as it would demand an extra volume. The Builders are the representatives of the first“Mind-Born”Entities, therefore of the primeval Rishi-Prajâpati; also of the Seven great Gods of Egypt, of which Osiris is the chief; of the Seven Amshaspends of the Zoroastrians, with Ormazd at their head; of the“Seven Spirits of the Face”; of the Seven Sephiroth separated from the first Triad, etc., etc.232They build,[pg 153]or rather rebuild, every“System”after the“Night.”The Second Group of the Builders is the Architect of our Planetary Chain exclusively; and the Third, the Progenitor of our Humanity—the macrocosmic prototype of the microcosm.

The Planetary Spirits are the informing spirits of the Stars in general, and of the Planets especially. They rule the destinies of men who are all born under one or other of their constellations; the Second and Third Groups pertaining to other systems have the same functions, and all rule various departments in Nature. In the Hindû exoteric Pantheon they are the guardian deities who preside over the eight points of the compass—the four cardinal and the four intermediate points—and are called Lokapâlas,“Supporters or Guardians of the World”(in our visible Cosmos), of which Indra (East), Yama (South), Varuna (West), and Kuvera (North) are the chief; their elephants and spouses pertaining of course to fancy and afterthought, though all of them have an Occult significance.

The Lipika, a description of whom is given in Commentary 6 of Stanza IV, are the Spirits of the Universe, whereas the Builders are only our own planetary deities. The former belong to the most Occult portion of cosmogenesis, which cannot be given here. Whether the Adepts—even the highest—know this angelic order in the completeness of its triple degrees, or only the lower one connected with the records of our world, is something which the writer is unprepared to say, and she would rather incline to the latter supposition. Of its highest grade one thing only is taught: the Lipika are connected with Karma—being its direct Recorders. The Symbol for Sacred and Secret Knowledge in antiquity was universally a Tree, by which a Scripture or a Record was also meant. Hence the word Lipika, the Writers or Scribes; the Dragons, symbols of Wisdom, who guard the Trees of Knowledge; the“golden”Apple-Tree of the Hesperides; the“Luxuriant Trees”and vegetation of Mount Meru, guarded by Serpents. Juno's giving Jupiter, on her marriage, a Tree with golden fruit, is another form of Eve offering Adam the apple from the Tree of Knowledge.

6.The Lipika circumscribe the Triangle, the First One,233the Cube, the Second One, and the Pentacle within the Egg234(a).

It is the Ring called“Pass Not”for those who descend and ascend;235who during the Kalpa are progressing towards the Great Day“Be With Us”(b)....Thus were formed the Arûpa and the Rûpa:236from One Light, Seven Lights; from each of the Seven, seven times Seven Lights. The Wheels watch the Ring....

The Stanza proceeds with a minute classification of the Orders of the Angelic Hierarchy. From the Group of Four and Seven emanates the Mind-Born Groups of Ten, of Twelve, of Twenty-one, etc., all these divided again into sub-groups of Heptads, Enneads, Dodecads, and so on, until the mind is lost in this endless enumeration of celestial Hosts and Beings, each having its distinct task in the ruling of the visible Cosmos during its existence.

(a) The Esoteric meaning of the first sentence of the Shloka is, that those who have been called Lipikas, the Recorders of the Karmic Ledger, make an impassible barrier between the personalEgoand the impersonalSelf, the Noumenon and Parent-Source of the former. Hence the allegory. They circumscribe the manifested world of matter within the Ring“Pass Not.”This world is the objective symbol of the One divided into the Many, on the planes of Illusion, of Adi (the“First”) or of Eka (the“One”); and this One is the collective aggregate, or totality, of the principal Creators or Architects of this visible Universe. In Hebrew Occultism their name is both Achath, feminine,“One,”and Achad,“One”again, but masculine. The Monotheists have taken, and are still taking, advantage of the profound esotericism of theKabalah, to apply the name by which the One Supreme Essence is known, toitsmanifestation, the Sephiroth-Elohim, and call it Jehovah. But this is quite arbitrary and against all reason and logic, as the term Elohim is a plural noun, identical with the plural word Chiim, often compounded with it. The sentence in theSepher Yetzirahand elsewhere,“Achath-Ruach-Elohim-Chiim,”denotes the Elohim as androgynous at best, the feminine element almost predominating, as it would read:“Oneis She the Spirit of the Elohim of Life.”As said, Achath (or Echath) is feminine, and Achad (or Echad) masculine, both meaning One.

Moreover, in Occult metaphysics, there are, properly speaking, two“Ones”—the One on the unreachable plane of Absoluteness and Infinity,[pg 155]on which no speculation is possible; and the second One on the plane of Emanations. The former can neither emanate nor be divided, as it is eternal, absolute, and immutable; but the second, being, so to speak, the reflection of the first One (for it is the Logos, or Îshvara, in the Universe of Illusion), can do so. It emanates from itself—as the upper Sephirothal Triad emanates the lower seven Sephiroth—the seven Rays or Dhyân Chohans; in other words, the Homogeneous becomes the Heterogeneous, the Protyle differentiates into the Elements. But these, unless they return into their primal Element, can never cross beyond the Laya, or zero-point. This metaphysical tenet can hardly be better described than in T. Subba Row'sBhagavadgîtâLectures:

Mûlaprakriti [the veil of Parabrahman] acts as the one energy through the Logos [or Îshvara]. Now Parabrahman ... is the one essence from which starts into existence a centre of energy, which I shall for the present call the Logos.... It is called the Verbum ... by the Christians, and it is the divine Christos who is eternal in the bosom of his Father. It is called Avalokiteshvara by the Buddhists.... In almost every doctrine, they have formulated the existence of a centre of spiritual energy which is unborn and eternal, and which exists in the bosom of Parabrahman at the time of Pralaya, and starts as a centre of conscious energy at the time of cosmic activity....237

For, as the lecturer premised by saying, Parabrahman is not this or that, it is not even consciousness, as it cannot be related to matter or anything conditioned. It is not Ego nor is it Non-Ego, nor even Âtmâ, but verily the one source of all manifestations and modes of existence.

Thus in the allegory, the Lipika separate the world (or plane) of pure Spirit from that of Matter. Those who“descend and ascend”—the incarnating Monads, and men striving towards purification and“ascending,”but still not having quite reached the goal—may cross the Circle of“Pass Not,”only on the Day“Be With Us”; that day when man, freeing himself from the trammels of ignorance, and recognizing fully the non-separateness of the Ego within his Personality—erroneously regarded as his own—from the Universal Ego (Anima Supra-Mundi), merges thereby into the One Essence, to become not only one with“Us,”the manifested universal Lives which areoneLife, but that very Life itself.

Astronomically, the Ring“Pass Not”that the Lipika trace round“the Triangle, the First One, the Cube, the Second One, and the Pentacle,”to[pg 156]circumscribe these figures, is thus again shown to contain the symbols of 31415, or the coëfficient constantly used in mathematical tables, the value π (pi), the geometrical figures standing here for numerical figures. According to the general philosophical teachings, this Ring is beyond the region of what are called nebulæ in astronomy. But this is as erroneous a conception as that of the topography and descriptions, given in Purânic and other exoteric Scriptures, about the 1008 worlds of the Deva-loka worlds and firmaments. There are worlds, of course, in the esoteric as well as in the profane scientific teachings, at such incalculable distances that the light of the nearest of them, though it has only just reached our modern“Chaldees,”may have left its luminary long before the day on which the words,“Let there be Light,”were pronounced; but these are not worlds on the Devalokic plane, but in our Cosmos.

The Chemist goes to the laya or zero-point of the plane of matter with which he deals, and then stops short. The Physicist or the Astronomer counts billions of miles beyond the nebulæ, and then he also stops short. The semi-initiated Occultist also will represent this laya-point to himself as existing on some plane which, if not physical, is still conceivable to the human intellect. But the full Initiateknowsthat the Ring“Pass Not”is neither a locality, nor can it be measured by distance, but that it exists in the absoluteness of Infinity. In this“Infinity”of the full Initiate, there is neither height, breadth nor thickness, but all is fathomless profundity, reaching down from the physical to the“para-metaphysical.”In using the word“down,”essential depth—“nowhere and everywhere”—is meant, not depth of physical matter.

If one carefully searches through the exoteric and grossly anthropomorphic allegories of popular religions, even in these the doctrine embodied in the Circle of“Pass Not,”guarded by the Lipika, may be dimly perceived. Thus one finds it even in the teachings of the Vedântin sect of the Visishthadvaita, the most tenaciously anthropomorphic in all India. For we read of the released soul that, after reaching Moksha—a state of bliss meaning“release from Bandha,”or bondage—bliss is enjoyed by it in a place called Paramapada, which place is not material, but made of Suddasattva, the essence, of which the body of Îshvara—the“Lord”—is formed. There, Muktas or Jîvâtmâs (Monads) who have attained Moksha, are never again subject to the qualities of either matter or Karma.“But if they choose,for the[pg 157]sake of doing good to the world, they may incarnate on earth.”238The way to Paramapada, or the immaterial worlds, from this world, is called Devayâna. When a person has attained Moksha and the body dies:

The Jîva (Soul) goes with Sûkshma Sharira239from the heart of the body to the Brahmarandra in the crown of the head, traversing Sushumna, a nerve connecting the heart with the Brahmarandra. The Jiva breaks through the Brahmarandra and goes to the region of the Sun (Sûryamandala) through the solar rays. Then it goes, through a dark spot in the Sun, to Paramapada.... The Jîva is directed on its way ... by the Supreme Wisdom acquired by Yoga.240The Jîva thus proceeds to Paramapada by the aid of Athivâhikas (bearers in transit), known by the names of Archi Ahas ... Âditya, ... Prajâpati, etc. The Archis, etc., here mentioned, are certain pure Souls, etc., etc.241

No Spirits except the“Recorders”(Lipika) have ever crossed the forbidden line of this Ring, nor will any do so until the day of the next Pralaya, for it is the boundary that separates the Finite—however infinite in man's sight—from the truly Infinite. The Spirits referred to, therefore, as those who“ascend and descend,”are the“Hosts”of what are loosely called“Celestial Beings.”But they are, in fact, nothing of the kind. They are Entities of higher worlds in the Hierarchy of Being, so immeasurably high that, to us, they must appear as Gods, and collectively—God. But so must we, mortal men, appear to the ant, which reasons on the scale of its special capacities. The ant may also, for all we know, see the avenging finger of a Personal God in the hand of the urchin who, under the impulse of mischief, destroys, in one moment, its ant-hill, the labour of many weeks—long years in the chronology of insects. The ant, feeling it acutely, may also, like man, attribute the undeserved calamity to a combination of providence and sin, and see in it the result of the sin of its first parent. Who knows, and who can affirm or deny? The refusal to admit, in the whole Solar System, of any other reasonable and intellectual beings than ourselves on the human plane, is the greatest conceit[pg 158]of our age. All that Science has a right to affirm, is that there are no invisible Intelligences living under the same conditions as we do. It cannot deny point-blank the possibility of there being worlds within worlds, under conditions totally different to those that constitute the nature of our world; nor can it deny that there may be a certain limited communication between some of these worlds and our own. The greatest philosopher of European birth, Emmanuel Kant, assures us that such a communication is in no way improbable.

Back to Index Next