Theos-Talk Archives (January 1999 Message tt00018)

>What is the term in the Buddhist Tantras for "Wisdom"?
>

Usually it is jnana, which gives jnanamudra as "wisdom seal."


>(2)  Volume XII, pp. 558-559 from HPB's E.S. Instruction No. II.
>
>"Those who know the history of Simon have the two versions before them,
>that of
>White and of Black Magic, at their option, in the much talked of union
>of Simon
>with Helena, whom he called his Epinoia (Thought)."
>
>Was Helena "a beautiful and ACTUAL woman"?  Caps added.
>
>Did Simon engage in "sexual union" with Helena?
>

Yes and yes. The Epinoia as a consort is pretty much what
Cowley did with his Scarlet Women.


>HPB answers these questions as follows:
>
>"Indeed, the chief rites of this kind of magic are based on such
>digusting
>LITERAL interpretation of noble myths. . . . Those who understood it
>CORRECTLY
>knew what was meant by 'Helena'.  It was the marriage of Nous
>(Atma-Buddhi)
>with Manas. . . .Helena was the Sakti of the inner man, the female
>potency."
>Caps added.
>

Here I beleive she is correct. Even Tibetan Tantra implies multiple
levels of meaning, and the physical interpretation is only one.


>And HPB also writes in the SD (I, 381):
>
>"Such is the cosmic and ideal significance of this great symbol [the
>lotus] with the Eastern peoples. But, applied to practical and exoteric
>worship -- which had also its esoteric symbology -- the lotus became in
>time the carrier and container of a more terrestrial idea. No dogmatic
>religion has ever escaped the sexual element in it; and to this day it
>soils the moral beauty of the root idea. .

Here she is speaking out in a  typical Victorian manner
claiming that sex is a degeneration. Many historians would
say that sex is the original interpretation, and spiritual
meanings followed later.

Insofar as the lotus is concerned, it is a symbol in the Jungian
archetypal sense and thus must have multiple meanings.


>So "lotus" and "vajra" are code terms for what??
>

They are equivalent to yoni and lingum, ketis and phallus.
They have an obvious physical reference but also mental
and spiritual associations.


>And compare the above with what Daniel Cozort in HIGHEST YOGA TANTRA
>(based on
>Gelugpa tradition) writes:
>
>"This sexual union, real or imagined, causes the substance drop to
>appear at
>the tip of the sexual organ, but the drop is not emitted, being
>willfully held
>in place."
>
>So drop ("bindu" or "thig le") is a code term for ------?
>

In Tibet, thig le means both compassion and semen
It is the Tibetan for Bodicitta and sometomes bindu
although bindu as "drop" can be either white (semen)
or red (blood).


>I'm certainly open to new data and facts and so will keep an open mind,
>but for
>the most part I prefer the symbolic approach.  This seems to me much
>more in
>keeping with Blavatsky's and the Mahatmas' views.  Also more in keeping
>with my
>understanding of mysticism and from my own mystical experiences.
>

According to Jung, you can't have one without the other. True
archetypal symbols always have multiple and oppositional
meanings which change over time and culture (the cat, for
example, has been both deified and slain at various times).

Jerry S.