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
It must be remembered that the words “Light,” “Flame” and “Fire,” have
been adopted by the translators from the vocabulary of the old “Fire
Philosophers,”(130) in order to render more clearly the meaning of the
archaic terms and symbols employed in the original. Otherwise they would
have remained entirely unintelligible to a European reader. To a student
of the Occult, however, the above terms will be sufficiently clear.
All these—“Light,” “Flame,” “Cold,” “Fire,” “Heat,” “Water,” and “Water of
Life”—are, on our plane, the progeny, or, as a modern Physicist would say,
the correlations of Electricity. Mighty word, and a still mightier symbol!
Sacred generator of a no less sacred progeny; of Fire—the creator, the
preserver and the destroyer; of Light—the essence of our divine ancestors;
of Flame—the soul of things. Electricity, the One Life at the upper rung
of Being, and Astral Fluid, the Athanor of the Alchemists, at the lower;
God and Devil, Good and Evil.
Now, why is Light called “Cold Flame”? In the order of Cosmic Evolution
(as taught by the Occultist), the energy that actuates matter, after its
first formation into atoms, is generated on our plane by Cosmic Heat; and
before that period Cosmos, in the sense of dissociated matter, was not.
The first Primordial Matter, eternal and coëval with Space, “_which has
neither a beginning nor an end, [is] neither hot nor cold, but is of its
own special nature_,” says the Commentary. Heat and cold are relative
qualities and pertain to the realms of the manifested worlds, which all
proceed from the manifested Hyle, which, in its absolutely latent aspect,
is referred to as the “Cold Virgin,” and when awakened to life, as the
“Mother.” The ancient Western cosmogonic myths state that at first there
was only cold mist (the Father) and the prolific slime (the Mother, Ilus
or Hyle), from which crept forth the Mundane Snake (Matter).(131)
Primordial Matter, then, before it emerges from the plane of the never‐
manifesting, and awakens to the thrill of action under the impulse of
Fohat, is but “a cool radiance, colourless, formless, tasteless, and
devoid of every quality and aspect.” Even such are her First‐born, the
“Four Sons,” who “are One, and become Seven,”—the Entities, by whose
qualifications and names the ancient Eastern Occultists called the four of
the seven primal “Centres of Force,” or Atoms, that develop later into the
great Cosmic “Elements,” now divided into the seventy or so sub‐elements,
known to Science. The four “Primal Natures” of the first Dhyân Chohans are
the so‐called (for want of better terms) Âkâshic, Ethereal, Watery and
Fiery. They answer, in the terminology of practical Occultism, to the
scientific definitions of gases, which—to convey a clear idea to both
Occultists and laymen—may be defined as parahydrogenic,(132) paraoxygenic,
oxyhydrogenic, and ozonic, or perhaps nitrozonic; the latter forces, or
gases (in Occultism, supersensuous, yet atomic substances), being the most
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