Theos-Talk Archives (February 2002 Message tt00780)

Eldon:

The "central spiritual sun" idea seems to have come
from Empedocles, as referred to in ISIS UNVEILED. I
double checked the reference years ago and Blavatsky
is right in saying that Empedocles said what he said,
or that he is reported to have said what she said he
said, or whatever. If memory is still serving me, she
also referred to another Greek, I believe Pythagoras,
who had some similar ideas. This was not an Indian or
Tibetan idea, even though Subba Row endorsed it for
awhile.

Kant also wrote about the center of the universe
around which everything else revolves in the book in
which he developed the nebular hypothesis, a theory
which BTW is still scientific orthodoxy to this day. 
Blavatsky also referred to this book in the SD.

Finally, she brought in the medieval idea that the
planets are not mere bodies of celestial dirt, but are
ensouled with "planetary spirits." This idea seems to
have been curiously syncretized with an idea from the
Kabbalah to create a new synthesis I have seen nowhere
else.

Briefly, her "septenary" system is just the lower
seven of the ten sephiroth on the Kabbalistic Tree of
Life. These are called the "sephiroth of
construction" and are associated in THE SEPHER
YETZIREH with the seven astrological planets. 
Blavatsky carries this idea over, but rejects the idea
that the moon and the sun are planets. The moon she
says is dead (with apologies to moon worshippers) and
the sun she says is the physical location of the three
upper sephiroth, the "supernal triad." In the KEY TO
THEOSOPHY she says the Jews worship the moon (!) but
in the SD she equates the Jewish deity with Saturn. I
am not endorsing this idea, but it makes clear how she
arrived at these ideas.

In the Kabbalah, as explained by Waite, it is
theorized that there are more than one Oversoul (this
is my understanding) and that Jews come from a
different Oversoul than goys. This idea strikes me as
interesting but questionable. But it raises the
possibility that there may be several Oversouls, and
Blavatsky seems to have arrived at the notion that
there are seven, or one for each of the sephiroth of
construction, which became the planetary spirits in
her system. (Aka Elohim, dhyani Buddhas, Dhyan
Chohand, or Amshaspands. All these words mean the
same thing in her books.) Each of these planetary
spirits (which I am interpreting as discrete
oversouls) then becomes the source for "monads" (this
idea is in the SD) which then have the potential for
evolving in a mysterious fashion into humans, plants,
animals, etc. Blavatsky said that the "monads" of the
Jews were produced by the presiding genius of Saturn,
and that those "monads" were therefore "chosen" by
Saturn. It is in part this statement on her part
which leads me to suspect she was working from the
multiple Oversouls theory in the Kabbalah. The rest
of the monads were theoretically produced in some way
by the other planetary spirits. Thus humanity can be
grouped into seven distinct divisions, depending on
which "planet" your "monad" comes from.

Bear in mind I am not saying that she is right, merely
giving my understanding of what she said.

If this idea seems to make too many assumptions, it
should be said that her school reportedly did some
sort of experiment at one of their initiations in
which the members imagined they actually contacted the
"planetary spirit" which was the source of their
individual "monad". No details are given how this was
done, but it would be easy enough to figure out. I
will say no more since that leads to endless arguments
with members of the Read Only school. They want that
sort of information to remain clouded and obfuscated
as they have made clear many times. It was evidently
on the basis of these mystical experiences that the
whole theory of the "planetary spirits", "monads," and
the rest of it was based and upon which it was
justified. To decide whether the theory is correct,
one would have to replicate the experiments and
carefully evaluate the resulting experiences.

As for the "central spiritual sun" her interpretation
of the Kabbalah was that the supernal triad emanated
the seven lower sephiroth. On an astronomical level
(the astronomical interpretation was one of the seven
"keys" she wrote about) that would imply that the sun
was the origin of the seven planets, a theory which
has been debated in astronomical circles, although of
course without the mystical component.

I am sure I have obfuscated the situation more. I
don't think the modern theory of black holes is what
is referred to here, though.

Steve

--- Eldon B Tucker <eldon@theosophy.com> wrote:
> Sufilight:
> 
> >> Blavatsky mentioned in the SD a "central sun" in
> the Milky Way,
> >> "a point unseen and mysterious, the ever-hidden
> center of
> >> attraction of our Sun and system.
> 
> > Answer: You have my word for, that this place
> exists - and
> > is very alive and kicking !
> 
> One way of thinking of black holes is that they are
> suns that are
> in a state of non-being or non-existence for a time,
> before they're
> ready to reemerge into existence again.
> 
> If we can think of a black hole as an example of a
> sun, then
> the gigantic black hole at the center of our galaxy
> could be
> thought of as a "central sun."
> 
> Following is from an Interesting article in the
> January 10, 2002
> CHICAGO TRIBUNE which I just found from a search on
> google.com.
> 
> -- Eldon
> 
> ----
> 
> > Explosive surprise at center of galaxy
> >
> > By Ronald Kotulak
> >
> > Tribune science reporter
> >
> > January 10, 2002
> >
> > Using a powerful new orbiting observatory,
> astronomers have
> > looked into the center of our Milky Way galaxy
> for the first
> > time, and what they saw looks pretty much like
> the grand finale
> > fireworks display on the 4th of July.
> >
> > Picture this: The center is crammed with a
> sparkling array of
> > hundreds of white dwarf stars, neutron stars,
> black holes,
> > supernova explosions and new star formation with
> a supermassive
> > black hole at the center surrounded by a gigantic
> > 10-million-degree cloud of dust that is blowing
> outward and
> > reaching us.
> >
> > "This is a surprise--that the center of the
> galaxy has such a
> > rich structure," said Michael Turner, chairman of
> the University
> > of Chicago's astronomy department. "When you see
> more things you
> > can understand more."
> >
> > Astronomers had suspected that the center
> contained a big black
> > hole, but they had no inkling of what was causing
> the enormous
> > amount of energy emanating from the galaxy's
> heart.
> >
> > The new discovery shows the center to be a much
> more fearsome
> > place than anyone had ever suspected, as if some
> of the weirdest
> > and wildest objects of the universe came together
> in blazing
> > glory in the very same place.
> >
> > "The central region is much more turbulent than I
> thought, much
> > more complicated, and there's a lot of mystery
> still there," said
> > Daniel Wang of the University of Massachusetts,
> who reported the
> > findings Wednesday at the American Astronomical
> Society meeting
> > in Washington, D.C. A published account of the
> findings appear
> > in the current issue of the British science
> journal Nature.
> >
> > Looking into the heart of the galaxy has not been
> easy. The
> > inability to see what was going on there left
> astronomers
> > guessing about what made the nucleus tick.
> >
> > The spiral-shaped Milky Way is about 80,000 light
> years across
> > and contains more than 100 billion stars. Our
> solar system is
> > some 26,000 light years from the center, but our
> line of sight to
> > the center is obscured by the huge dust cloud.
> >
> > As a result, regular telescopes can't see the
> center. But X-rays
> > can because they pass through the dust.
> >
> > Taking images with NASA's new Chandra X-ray
> Observatory, Wang,
> > along with Eric Gotthelf of Columbia University
> and UMass
> > postdoctoral researcher Cornelia Lang, got images
> that were 100
> > times sharper than those from radio or infrared
> telescopes and
> > the sharpest-ever images of the center, revealing
> hundreds of
> > X-ray-emitting white dwarf stars, neutron stars
> and black holes.
> >
> > "For the first time we can now detect 1,000
> energy sources at the
> > center of the galaxy compared to about a dozen
> sources that had
> > been previously known," Wang said in a telephone
> interview.
> >
> > "We can now study how the environment around the
> center interacts
> > with the large black hole in the middle, and we
> can learn a great
> > deal about how these things actually work," he
> said.
> >
> > The Chandra observatory was named after the late
> University of
> > Chicago theorist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, who
> won the Nobel
> > Prize in physics in 1987 for his work on the
> physical processes
> > important for the structure and evolution of
> stars. The
> > observatory was launched into orbit in 1999.
> >
> > "Without the X-ray eyes of Chandra, we would miss
> not only some
> > of the most exotic things going on in the
> universe, but the bulk
> > of the things going on," Turner said.
> >
> > Unlocking galactic nuclei
> >
> > The UMass discovery is helping to revolutionize
> our understanding
> > of the Milky Way's nucleus and it is the key to
> understanding all
> > other galactic nuclei in the universe, Andreas
> Eckert of the
> > University of Cologne, Germany, wrote in a Nature
> commentary.
> > The visible universe is thought to contain more
> than 100 billion
> > galaxies.
> >
> > Wang likens the center of the universe to the
> downtown of a big
> > city surrounded by its neighborhoods and suburbs.
> "What happens
> > in the center of our galaxy matters because it
> affects not only
> > the center of the galaxy but the rest of the
> galaxy as well," he
> > said.
> >
> > Not only could the new information help
> scientists understand the
> > mechanics of what makes the galaxy work, but it
> also could
> > provide more clues about the creation of our
> solar system and the
> > evolution of life.
> >
> > It could even help foretell the future of our
> sun, since white
> > dwarfs are dying stars that were about the size
> of the sun but
> > have now shrunk to about the size of the earth. 
> A spoonful of
> > material from a white dwarf weighs several tons.
> >
> > Neutron stars were once the size of about three
> suns, but have
> > shrunk and condensed into a ball of neutrons
> about 12 miles in
> 
=== message truncated ===


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