The great Magic Agent is the fourth emanation of the life principle [we say—it is the first in the inner, and the second in the outer (our) Universe], of which the Sun is the third form ... for the day‐star [the Sun] is only the reflection and material shadow of the Central Sun of truth, which illuminates the intellectual [invisible] world of Spirit, and which itself is but a gleam borrowed from the Absolute. So far he is right enough. But when the great authority of the Western Kabalists adds that, nevertheless, “it is not the immortal Spirit, as the Indian Hierophants have imagined”—we answer, that he slanders the said Hierophants, as they have said nothing of the kind; for even the Purânic exoteric writings flatly contradict the assertion. No Hindû has ever mistaken Prakriti—the Astral Light being only above the lowest plane of Prakriti, the Material Kosmos—for the “immortal Spirit.” Prakriti is ever called Mâyâ, Illusion, and is doomed to disappear with the rest, the Gods included, at the hour of the Pralaya. As it is shown that Âkâsha is not even the Ether, least of all then, we imagine, can it be the Astral Light. Those unable to penetrate beyond the dead letter of the _Purânas_, have occasionally confused Âkâsha with Prakriti, with Ether, and even with the visible Sky! It is true also that those who have invariably translated the term Âkâsha by “Ether”—Wilson, for instance—finding it called “the material cause of sound” possessing, moreover, this _one single property_, have ignorantly imagined it to be “material,” in the physical sense. True, again, that if the characteristics are accepted literally, then, since nothing material or physical, and therefore conditioned and temporary, can be immortal—according to metaphysics and philosophy—it would follow that Âkâsha is neither infinite nor immortal. But all this is erroneous, since both the words Pradhâna, Primeval Matter, and Sound, as a property, have been misunderstood; the former term (Pradhâna) being certainly synonymous with Mûlaprakriti and Âkâsha, and the latter (Sound) with the Verbum, the Word or the Logos. This is easy to demonstrate; for it is shown in the following sentence from _Vishnu Purâna_.(401) “There was neither day nor night, nor sky, nor earth, nor darkness, nor light, nor any other thing, save only One, unapprehensible by intellect, or that which is Brahman, and Pums, [Spirit] and Pradhâna [Primordial Matter].”