Theos-Talk Archives (September 1998 Message tt00193)

The idea of the seven keys has appeared in a number of
theosophical discussions. I thought I'd go to Vic Hao Chin's
online THE SECRET DOCTRINE, search on "seven keys" and on "keys"
and see what I might find. The citations which I got, extracted
via cut-and-paste from the online SD into WordPerfect, follow.

It would be interesting to work through the many terms and ideas
thrown out, to see if it's possible to enumerate and describe the
entire list if keys.

-- Eldon Tucker

----

I 311-312:

The seven keys to the mystery tongue, however, having always been
in [312] the keeping of the highest among the initiated
Hierophants of antiquity, it is only the partial use of a few out
of the seven which passed, through the treason of some early
Church Fathers -- ex-initiates of the Temples -- into the hands
of the new sect of the Nazarenes.  Some of the early Popes were
Initiates, but the last fragments of their knowledge have now
fallen into the power of the Jesuits, who have turned them into a
system of sorcery.

It is maintained that INDIA (not in its present limits, but
including its ancient boundaries) is the only country in the
world which still has among her sons adepts, who have the
knowledge of all the seven sub-systems and the key to the entire
system.  Since the fall of Memphis, Egypt began to lose those
keys one by one, and Chaldea had preserved only three in the days
of Berosus.  As for the Hebrews, in all their writings they show
no more than a thorough knowledge of the astronomical,
geometrical and numerical systems of symbolizing all the human,
and especially the physiological functions.  They never had the
higher keys.

I 312-313:

Yet their system is now proven identical in this special
department of symbology -- the key, namely, to the mysteries of
astronomy as connected with those of generation and conception --
with those ideas of ancient religions, the theology of which has
developed the phallic element.  The Jewish system of sacred
measures applied to religious symbols is the same, [313] so far
as geometrical and numerical combinations go, as those of
Chaldea, Greece, and Egypt, having been adopted by the Jews
during the centuries of their slavery and captivity with those
nations.* What was that system? It is the intimate conviction of
the author of "The Source of Measures" that "the Mosaic Books
were intended, by a mode of art speech, to set forth a
geometrical and numerical system of exact science, which should
serve as an origin of measures."

I 155 fn:

Because, we say, science has only one key -- the key of matter --
to open the mysteries of nature withal, while occult philosophy
has seven keys and explains that which science fails to see.
Mercury and Venus have no satellites but they had "parents" just
as the earth had.  Both are far older than the Earth and, before
the latter reaches her seventh Round, her mother Moon will have
dissolved.

II 22 fn:

The teaching is offered as it is understood; and as there are
seven keys of interpretation to every symbol and allegory, that
which may not fit a meaning, say from the psychological or
astronomical aspect, will be found quite correct from the
physical or metaphysical.

II 99 [the svastica]:

It is at one and the same time an Alchemical, Cosmogonical,
Anthropological, and Magical sign, with seven keys to its inner
meaning.  It is not too much to say that the compound symbolism
of this universal and most suggestive of signs contains the key
to the seven great mysteries of Kosmos.

II 109:

Remember in this connection the Tabula Smaragdina of Hermes, the
esoteric meaning of which has seven keys to it.  The
Astro-Chemical is well known to students, the anthropological may
be given now.

II 291:

This is the meaning when the allegory and symbol are opened and
read by means of the human key, or the key to terrestial
anthroposophy.  This interpretation of the "ark" symbolism does
not in the least interfere with its astronomical, or even
theogonic keys; nor with any of the other six meanings.  Nor does
it seem less scientific than the modern theories about the origin
of man.  As said, it has seven keys to it, like the rest.

II 335:

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; which 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 either symbolical (archaic mode of
thought), emblematical (a later though very ancient mode of
thought), parabolical (allegory), hieroglyphical, or again
logogrammical -- the most difficult method of all, as every
letter, as in the Chinese language, represents a whole word.
Thus, almost every proper name, whether in the Vedas, the "Book
of the Dead," or the Bible (to a degree), is composed of such
logograms.  No one who is 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 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 --
shall 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.

II 357:

Meru -- the abode of the gods -- was placed, as before explained,
in the North Pole, while Pƒtƒla, the nether region, was supposed
to lie in the South.  As each symbol in esoteric philosophy has
seven keys, geographically, Meru and Pƒtƒla have one significance
and represent localities; while astronomically, they have
another, and mean "the two poles," which meaning ended by their
being often rendered in exoteric sectarianism -- the "Mountain"
and the "Pit," or Heaven and Hell.  If we hold at present only to
the astronomical and geographical significance, it may be found
that the ancients knew the topography and nature of the Arctic
and Antarctic regions better than any of our modern astronomers;
they had reasons, and good ones for naming one the "Mountain" and
the other the "Pit."

II 471:

With them, as now shown by the discovery of the key to the
correct Bible reading -- Geometry, the fifth divine Science
("fifth" -- because it is the fifth key in the series of the
Seven Keys to the Universal esoteric language and symbology) was
desecrated, and by them applied to conceal the most terrestrial
and grossly sexual mysteries, wherein both Deity and religion
were degraded.

II 496:

But the chief "Soul" is Manas or mind; hence, Soma, the moon, is
shown as making an alliance with the solar portion in it,
personified as the Prachetasas.  But of the seven keys that open
the seven aspects of the Ramayana, as of every other Scripture,
this is only one -- the metaphysical.

II 517:

In truth, every one of the seven Keys has to be used in its right
place, and never mixed with the others, if we would unveil the
entire cycle of mysteries.

II 584:

The few instances and examples brought forward reveal only one
small portion of the methods used to read the symbolical
ideographs and numerals of antiquity.  The system being of an
extreme and complex difficulty, very few, even among the
Initiates, could master all the seven keys.  Is it to be
wondered, then, that the metaphysical gradually dwindled down
into the physical nature; that the Sun, once upon a time the
symbol of DEITY, became, as ‘ons glided by, that of its creative
ardour only; and that thence it fell into a glyph of phallic
significance?

II 771:

This allegory is reproduced in its other mystic meaning (another
of the seven keys).

I 374:

While the Eastern Occultists have seven modes of interpretation,
the Jews have only four -- namely, the real-mystical; the
allegorical; the moral; and the literal or Pashut.  The latter is
the key of the exoteric Churches and not worth discussion.  Read
in the first, or mystical key, here are several sentences which
show the identity of the foundations of construction in every
Scripture.

II 595:

To the metrological key to the symbolism of the Hebrews, which
reveals numerically the geometrical relations of the Circle
(All-Deity) to the Square, Cube, Triangle, and all the integral
emanations of the divine area, may be added the theogonic Key.
This Key explains that Noah, the deluge-Patriarch, is in one
aspect the permutation of the Deity (the Universal Creative Law),
for the purpose of the formation of our Earth, its population,
and the propagation of life on it, in general.

I 291 fn:

This is the meaning when the allegory and symbol are opened and
read by means of the human key, or the key to terrestial
anthroposophy.  This interpretation of the "ark" symbolism does
not in the least interfere with its astronomical, or even
theogonic keys; nor with any of the other six meanings.  Nor does
it seem less scientific than the modern theories about the origin
of man.  As said, it has seven keys to it, like the rest.

II 593:

All this then is sexual and phallic, and our modern scholars seem
to find in these symbols nothing beyond a physiological or
phallic meaning.  Nevertheless, the three figures 365, or the
number of days in a solar year, have but to be read with the
Pythagorean Key to find in them a highly philosophical and moral
meaning.

I 604:

The law of Analogy is the first key to the world-problem, and
these links have to be studied co-ordinately in their occult
relations to each other.

II 553:

Interpreted with the help of merely the symbolical key, Enoch is
the type of the dual nature of man -- spiritual and physical.

I 150:

The Law of Analogy in the plan of structure between the
trans-Solar systems and the intra-Solar planets, does not
necessarily bear upon the finite conditions to which every
visible body is subject, in this our plane of being.  In Occult
Science this law is the first and most important key to Cosmic
physics; but it has to be studied in its minutest details.