The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 2 of 4: The Synthesis of Science, Religion, and PhilosophyBlavatsky, H. P. (Helena Petrovna)
Religion
The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 2 of 4: The Synthesis of Science, Religion, and Philosophy
Blavatsky, H. P. (Helena Petrovna)
Theosophy
This is quite natural if we are to believe the statement of Herodotus, who
records in Euterpe (cxlii), that the written history of the Egyptian
priests dated from about 12,000 years before his time. But what are 12,000
or even 120,000 years compared with the millions of years which have
elapsed since the Lemurian period? The latter, however, has not been left
without witnesses, notwithstanding its tremendous antiquity. The complete
records of the growth, development, social and even political life of the
Lemurians, have been preserved in the Secret Annals. Unfortunately, few
are those who can read them; and those who could would still be unable to
understand the language, unless acquainted with all the seven keys of its
symbolism. For the comprehension of the Occult Doctrine is based on that
of the Seven Sciences; and these Sciences find their expression in the
seven different applications of the Secret Records to the exoteric texts.
Thus we have to deal with modes of thought on seven entirely different
planes of Ideality. Every text relates to, and has to be rendered from,
one of the following standpoints:
1. The Realistic Plane of Thought.
2. The Idealistic.
3. The purely Divine or Spiritual.
The other planes too far transcend the average consciousness, especially
of the materialistic mind, to admit of their being even symbolized in
terms of ordinary phraseology. There is no purely _mythical_ element in
any of the ancient religious texts; but the mode of thought in which they
were originally written has to be found out and closely adhered to during
the process of interpretation. For it is symbolical, the archaic mode of
thought; emblematical, a later though very ancient mode of thought;
parabolical or allegorical; hieroglyphical; or again logogrammical, the
most difficult method of all; every letter, as in the Chinese language,
representing a whole word. Thus, almost every proper name, whether in the
_Vedas_, the _Book of the Dead_, or, to a certain degree, in the _Bible_,
is composed of such logograms. No one not initiated into the mystery of
the Occult religious logography can presume to know what a name in any
ancient fragment means, before he has mastered the meaning of every letter
that composes it. How is it to be expected that the merely profane
thinker, however great may be his erudition in orthodox symbolism, so to
say—_i.e._, in that symbolism which can never get out of the old grooves
of solar myth and sexual worship—how is it to be expected that the profane
scholar should penetrate into the arcana behind the veil? One who deals
with the husk or shell of the dead‐letter, and devotes himself to the
kaleidoscopic transformation of barren word‐symbols, can never expect to
get beyond the vagaries of modern Mythologists.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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