The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 of 4: The Synthesis of Science, Religion, and PhilosophyBlavatsky, H. P. (Helena Petrovna)
Religion
The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 of 4: The Synthesis of Science, Religion, and Philosophy
Blavatsky, H. P. (Helena Petrovna)
Theosophy
This becomes apparent to one who reads the latest translation and
rendering of the “Hermetic Fragments” just mentioned, by our late lamented
friend, Dr. Anna Kingsford. Disfigured and tortured as these have been in
their passage through sectarian Greek and Christian hands, the translator
has most ably and intuitionally seized the weak points and tried to remedy
them by means of explanations and footnotes. She says:
The creation of the visible world by the “working gods” or Titans,
as agents of the Supreme God,(425) is a thoroughly Hermetic idea,
recognizable _in all religious systems_, and in accordance with
modern scientific research [?], which shows us everywhere the
Divine Power operating through natural Forces.
To quote from the translation:
That Universal Being, that contains all, and which is all, puts
into motion the soul and the world, all that nature comprises. In
the manifold unity of universal life, the innumerable
individualities distinguished by their variations are,
nevertheless, united in such a manner that the whole is one, and
that everything proceeds from Unity.(426)
And again from another translation:
God is not a mind, but the cause that the Mind is; _not a spirit_,
but the cause that the Spirit is; not light, but the cause that
the Light is.(427)
The above shows plainly that the “Divine Pymander,” however much distorted
in some passages by Christian “smoothing,” was nevertheless written by a
philosopher, while most of the so‐called “Hermetic Fragments” are the
production of sectarian pagans with a tendency towards an anthropomorphic
Supreme Being. Yet both are the echo of the Esoteric Philosophy and the
Hindû _Purânas_.
Compare two invocations, one to the Hermetic “Supreme All,” the other to
the “Supreme All” of the later Âryans. Says a Hermetic Fragment cited by
Suidas:
I adjure thee, Heaven, holy work of the great God; I adjure thee,
Voice of the Father, uttered in the beginning when the universal
world was framed; I adjure thee by the Word, only Son of the
Father Who upholds all things; be favourable, be favourable.(428)
This is preceded by the following:
Thus the Ideal Light was before the Ideal Light, and the luminous
Intelligence of Intelligence was always, _and its unity was
nothing else than the Spirit enveloping the Universe. Out of Whom
[Which] is neither God nor Angels, nor any other essentials_, for
He [It] is the Lord of all things and the Power and the Light; and
all depends on Him [It] and is in Him [It].
A passage contradicted by the very same Trismegistus, who is made to say:
To speak of God is impossible. For the corporeal cannot express
the incorporeal.... That which has not any body nor appearance,
nor form, nor matter, cannot be apprehended by sense. I
understand, Tatios, I understand, that which it is impossible to
define—that is God.(429)
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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