Theos-Talk Archives (October 2002 Message tt00140)

Oct 15 2002

Re: Our crowded Solar system

In the last few days papers have focused on recent discoveries made by
some Caltech astronomers (Mike Bowen and Chad Trujillo). We suddenly
become aware that in addition to our known and named 9 "planets" and
their "moons," we have some more distant and less important masses
orbiting the Sun.

In The SECRET DOCTRINE H P B mentions the 7 "sacred Planets" known to
antiquity and spoken of in the ancient "Mysteries." These "Mysteries"
being the ancient lore of earlier scientist-priests who preserved
their knowledge under the form of myth, legend, tradition and
theogony.(the lives and powers of the "gods") .

The SECRET DOCTRINE points out using analogy and correspondence that
the ancients knew many aspects of what are now being hailed as "new"
discoveries.

QUAOAR:	The discovery of a large mass of a "dark reddish" color is the
"largest body discovered since Pluto in 1930 (by astronomer Clyde
Tombaugh)." It is estimated to be the size of Pluto's moon Charon,
and its orbit is 1 billion miles beyond that of Pluto -- setting it at
4 billion miles from Earth.

It is thought to be a member of the "Kuiper belt, a swath of icy
cosmic residue that extends from Neptune to the solar system's outer
limits." (whatever those may be -- DTB) [ "the Kuiper Belt" is
discovered to be swarming with over 600 unexpected objects -- a motley
collection that defy stereotyping -- some icy, some black, some giving
off a reddish glow, etc ]

"Its "too small to be a planet, although they note it is quite
planet-like in its behaviour and acts far more like a planet than
Pluto (1,400 miles in diameter with an erratic orbit ).

The interesting thing in this report reads: "There's a whole zoo of
things out there that we ought to be exploring but haven't been able
to fit into our conceptual framework," says David Jewitt, an
astronomer at the University of Hawaii (one of the discoverers of the
Kuiper Belt). Other Plutonian peers found in recent years include
VARUNA a 550 mile-across object named for the Vedic god of the oceans.
IXION, an object estimated to be as large as Quaoar, named for the
mythical king who fathered the Centaurs; and RADAMANTHUS a smaller
object named for one of the 3 Judges of the Underworld in Greek
mythology..

"QUAOAR takes its name from the creation myth of the Los Angeles ...
Tongva tribe of the "Gabrielano Indians." According to Mark Acuna, a
tribal elder, QUAOAR is the formless, genderless creation force that
sang into existence the other deities--Sky Father, Earth Mother and
Grandfather SUN."

The student of Theosophy is here reminded of what H P B wrote in The
SECRET DOCTRINE (which we offer below)

One recalls the ancient Vedic (Hindu) legend of Shiva that Force in
nature when at the maturity of any period of Evolution is named SHIVA
"dances" the manifested Universe out of existence and into the "night"
of the sleep of time called "Pralaya, or the rest period between two
Manvantaras -- of periods of activity and work.

Both sound and dance are associated with motion, time, and vibration.
An interior energy causes these motions, and the Intelligence (
Universal Mind - Mahat) resident therein, is a periodic manifestation
of the ONE CONSCIOUSNESS as it eve proceeds striving to encourage ever
self-conscious being Man/Mind) to become a UNIVERSALLY SELF-CONSCIOUS
being.

DTB

The subjoined makes very interesting reading


=============================
{ S D I 424 ... )

"To thoroughly comprehend the idea underlying every ancient cosmology
necessitates the study, in a comparative analysis, of all the great
religions of antiquity; as it is only by this method that the root
idea will be made plain.

Exact science -- could the latter soar so high, while tracing the
operations of nature to their ultimate and original sources -- would
call this idea the hierarchy of Forces. The original, transcendental
and philosophical conception was one. But as systems began to reflect
with every age more and more the idiosyncracies of nations; and as the
latter, after separating, settled into distinct groups, each evolving
along its own national or tribal groove, the main idea gradually
became veiled with the overgrowth of human fancy...in some countries
the FORCES, or rather the intelligent Powers of nature, received
divine honours they were hardly entitled to...the very thought of any
such Force being endowed with intelligence seems absurd, and is
proclaimed unscientific.
"...W. S. W. Anson. The author remarks..."Although in Central Asia, or
on the banks of the Indus, in the land of the Pyramids, and in the
Greek and Italian peninsulas, and even in the North, whither Kelts,
Teutons and Slavs wandered, the religious conceptions of the people
have taken different forms, yet their common origin is still
perceptible. We point out this connection between the stories of the
gods, and the deep thought contained in them, and their importance, in
order that the reader may see that it is not a magic world of erratic
fancy which opens out before him, but that . . . Life and nature
formed the basis of the existence and action of these divinities."
And though it is impossible for any Occultist or student of Eastern
Esotericism to concur in the strange idea that "the religious con
ceptions of the most famous nations of antiquity are connected with
the beginnings of civilization amongst the Germanic races," he is yet
glad to find such truths expressed as that: "These fairy tales are not
senseless stories written for the amusement of the idle; they embody
the profound religion of our forefathers . . . "
Precisely so. Not only their religion, but likewise their History. For
a myth, in Greek [[mythos]], means oral tradition, passed from mouth
to mouth from one generation to the other; and even in the modern
etymology the term stands for a fabulous statement conveying some
important truth; a tale of some extraordinary personage whose
biography has become overgrown, owing to the veneration of successive
generations, with rich popular fancy, but which is no wholesale fable.
Like our ancestors, the primitive Aryans, we believe firmly in the
personality and intelligence of more than one phenomenon-producing
Force in nature.
---------
As time rolled on, the archaic teaching grew dimmer; and those nations
more or less lost sight of the highest and One principle of all
things, and began to transfer the abstract attributes of the
"causeless cause" to the caused effects -- become in their turn
causative -- the creative Powers of the Universe: the great nations,
out of the fear of profaning the IDEA... show this veneration in their
Cosmogonies.

As Thomas Taylor, the most intuitional of all the translators of Greek
Fragments, shows, no nation has ever conceived the One principle as
the immediate creator of the visible Universe, for no sane man would
credit a planner and architect with having built the edifice he
admires with his own hands.

On the testimony of Damascius ... they referred to it as "the Unknown
DARKNESS." The Babylonians passed over this principle in silence: "To
that god," says Porphyry ... "who is above all things, neither
external speech ought to be addressed, nor yet that which is inward. .
. . ."

Hesiod begins his theogony with: "Chaos of all things was the first
produced," thus allowing the inference that its cause or producer must
be passed over in reverential silence.

Homer in his poems ascends no higher than Night, whom he represents
Zeus as reverencing. According to all the ancient theologists, and to
the doctrines of Pythagoras and Plato, Zeus, or the immediate
artificer of the universe, is not the highest god; any more than Sir
Christopher Wren in his physical, human aspect is the MIND in him
which produced his great works of art.

Homer, therefore, is not only silent with respect to the first
principle, but likewise with respect to those two principles
immediately posterior to the first, the AEther and Chaos of Orpheus
and Hesiod, and the bound and infinity of Pythagoras and Plato. . . .
.

Proclus says of this highest principle that it is. . . . "the Unity of
Unities, and beyond the first adyte. . . . . more ineffable than all
silence, and more occult than all Essence. . . . . concealed amidst
the intelligible gods."

To what was written by Thomas Taylor in 1797 -- namely, that the "Jews
appear to have ascended no higher. . . . than the immediate artificer
of the universe"; as "Moses introduces a darkness on the face of the
deep, without even insinuating that there was any cause of its
existence," one might add something more. Never have the Jews in their
Bible (a purely esoteric, symbolical work) degraded so profoundly
their metaphorical deity as have the Christians, by accepting Jehovah
as their one living yet personal God.


This first, or rather ONE, principle was called "the circle of
Heaven," symbolized by the hierogram of a point within a circle or
equilateral triangle, the point being the LOGOS.

Thus, in the Rig Veda, wherein Brahma is not even named, Cosmogony is
preluded with the Hiranyagharha, "the Golden Egg," and Prajapati
(Brahma later on), from whom emanate all the hierarchies of
"Creators."

The Monad, or point, is the original and is the unit from which
follows the entire numeral system.

This Point is the First Cause, but THAT from which it emanates, or of
which, rather, it is the expression, the Logos, is passed over in
silence.

In its turn, the universal symbol, the point within the circle, was
not yet the Architect, but the cause of that Architect; and the latter
stood to it in precisely the same relation as the point itself stood
to the circumference of the Circle, which cannot be defined, according
to Hermes Trismegistus. Porphyry shows that the Monad and the Duad of
Pythagoras are identical with Plato's infinite and finite in
"Philebus... It is the latter only (the mother) which is substantial,
the former being the "cause of all unity and measure of all things"
...the Duad (Mulaprakriti, the VEIL) being thus shown to be the mother
of the Logos and, at the same time, his daughter -- i.e., the object
of his perception -- the produced,
producer and the secondary cause of it.

With Pythagoras, the MONAD returns into silence and Darkness as soon
as it has evolved the triad, from which emanate the remaining seven
numbers of the 10 (ten) numbers which are at the base of the
manifested universe.

In the Norse cosmogony it is again the same. "In the beginning was a
great abyss (Chaos), neither day nor night existed; the abyss was
Ginnungagap, the yawning gulf, without beginning, without end. ALL
FATHER, the Uncreated, the Unseen, dwelt in the depth of the 'Abyss'
(SPACE) and willed, and what was willed came into being." (See "Asgard
and the Gods.") As in the Hindu cosmogony, the evolution of the
universe is divided into two acts: called in India the Prakriti and
Padma Creations. Before the warm rays pouring from the "Home of
Brightness" awake life in the Great Waters of Space, the Elements of
the first creation come into view, and from them is formed the Giant
Ymir (also Orgelmir) -- primordial matter differentiated from Chaos
(literally seething clay). Then comes the cow Audumla, the nourisher,
from whom is born Buri (the Producer) who, by Bestla, the daughter of
the "Frost-Giants" (the sons of Ymir) had three sons, Odin, Willi and
We, or "Spirit," "Will," and "Holiness." ... This was when Darkness
still reigned throughout Space, when the Ases, the creative Powers
(Dhyan Chohans) were not yet evolved, and the Yggdrasil, the tree of
the universe of Time and of Life, had not yet grown, and there was, as
yet, no Walhalla, or Hall of Heroes. The Scandinavian legends of
creation, of our earth and world, begin with time and human life. All
that precedes it is for them "Darkness," wherein All-Father, the cause
of all, dwells. As observed by the editor of "Asgard and the Gods,"
though these legends have in them the idea of that ALL-FATHER, the
original cause of all, "he is scarcely more than mentioned in the
poems," not because, as he thinks, before the preaching of the gospel,
the idea "could not rise to distinct conceptions of the Eternal," but
on account of its great esoteric character.

Therefore, all the creative gods, or personal Deities, begin at the
secondary stage of Cosmic evolution. Zeus is born in, and out of
Kronos -- Time. So is Brahma the production and emanation of Kala,
"eternity and time," Kala being one of the names of Vishnu. Hence we
find Odin, the father of the gods and of the Ases, as Brahma is the
father of the gods and of the Asuras, and hence also the androgyne
character of all the chief creative gods, from the second MONAD of the
Greeks down to the Sephiroth Adam Kadmon, the Brahma or Prajapati-Vach
of the Vedas, and the androgyne of Plato, which is but another version
of the Indian symbol.


The best metaphysical definition of primeval theogony in the spirit of
the Vedantins may be found in the "Notes on the Bhagavat-Gita," by Mr.
T. Subba Row.)

Parabrahmam, the unknown and the incognisable, as the lecturer tells
his audience:

". . . . . Is not Ego, it is not non-ego, nor is it consciousness . .
. . . it is not even Atma" . . . . . "but though not itself an object
of knowledge, it is yet capable of supporting and giving rise to every
kind of object and every kind of existence which becomes an object of
knowledge. It is the one essence from which starts into existence a
centre of energy . . . . ." which he calls Logos.

This Logos is the Sabda Brahmam of the Hindus, which he will not even
call Eswara (the "lord" God), lest the term should create confusion in
the people's minds. But it is the Avalokiteswara of the Hindus, the
Verbum of the Christians in its real esoteric meaning, not in the
theological disfigurement.

"It is," he says, "the Gnatha or the Ego in the Kosmos, and every
other Ego . . . . . . is but its reflection and manifestation. . . . .
. It exists in a latent condition in the bosom of Parabrahmam at the
time of Pralaya. . . ." (During Manvantara) "it has a consciousness
and an individuality of its own . . . . ." (It is a centre of energy,
but) . . . . . such centres of energy are almost innumerable in the
bosom of Parabrahmam . . . . ." "It must not be supposed, that even
the logos is the Creator, or that it is but a single centre of energy
. . . . . . their number is almost infinite." "This Ego," he adds, "is
the first that appears in Kosmos, and is the end of all evolution. It
is the abstract Ego" . . . . . "this is the first manifestation (or
aspect) of Parabrahmam." "When once it starts into conscious being . .
. . . . from its objective standpoint, Parabrahmam appears to it as
Mulaprakriti." "Please bear this in mind," observes the lecturer, "for
here is the root of the whole difficulty about Purusha and Prakriti
felt by the various writers on Vedantic philosophy. This Mulaprakriti
is material to it (the Logos), as any material object is material to
us. This Mulaprakriti is no more Parabrahmam than the bundle of
attributes of a pillar is the pillar itself; Parabrahmam is an
unconditioned and absolute reality, and Mulaprakriti is a sort of veil
thrown over it. Parabrahmam by itself cannot be seen as it is. It is
seen by the Logos with a veil thrown over it, and that veil is the
mighty expanse of Cosmic matter. . . ." "Parabrahmam, after having
appeared on the one hand as the Ego, and on the other as Mulaprakriti,
acts as the one energy through the Logos."

And the lecturer explains what he means by this acting of something
which is nothing, though it is the ALL, by a fine simile. He compares
the Logos to the sun through which light and heat radiate, but whose
energy, light and heat, exist in some unknown condition in Space and
are diffused in Space only as visible light and heat, the sun being
only the agent thereof. This is the first triadic hypostasis. The
quaternary is made up by the energizing light shed by the Logos.

The Hebrew Kabalists give it in a shape which esoterically is
identical with the Vedantic. AIN-SOPH, they taught, could not be
comprehended, could not be located, nor named, though the causeless
cause of all. Hence its name -- AIN-SOPH -- is a term of negation,
"the inscrutable, the incognizable, and the unnameable."

They made of it, therefore, a boundless circle, a sphere, of which
human intellect, with the utmost stretch, could only perceive the
vault. In the words of one who has unriddled much in the Kabalistical
system, in one of its meanings thoroughly, in its numerical and
geometrical esotericism: --

"Close your eyes, and from your own consciousness of perception try
and think outward to the extremest limits in every direction. You will
find that equal lines or rays of perception extend out evenly in all
directions, so that the utmost effort of perception will terminate in
the vault of a sphere. The limitation of this sphere will, of
necessity, be a great Circle, and the direct rays of thought in any
and every direction must be right line radii of the circle. This,
then, must be, humanly speaking, the extremest all-embracing
conception of the Ain-Soph manifest, which formulates itself as a
geometrical figure, viz., of a circle, with its elements of curved
circumference and right line diameter divided into radii. Hence, a
geometrical shape is the first recognisable means of connection
between the Ain-Soph and the intelligence of man."

This great circle (which Eastern Esotericism reduces to the point
within the Boundless Circle) is the Avalokiteswara, the Logos or
Verbum of which Mr. Subba Row speaks. But this circle or manifested
God is as unknown to us, except through its manifested universe, as
the ONE, though easier, or rather more possible to our highest
conceptions.

This Logos which sleeps in the bosom of Parabrahmam during Pralaya, as
our "Ego is latent (in us) at the time of sushupti, sleep"; which
cannot cognize Parabrahmam otherwise than as Mulaprakriti -- the
latter being a cosmic veil which is "the mighty expanse of cosmic
matter" -- is thus only an organ in cosmic creation, through which
radiate the energy and wisdom of Parabrahmam, unknown to the Logos, as
it is to ourselves. Moreover, as the Logos is as unknown to us as
Parabrahmam is unknown in reality to the Logos, both Eastern
Esotericism and the Kabala -- in order to bring the Logos within the
range of our conceptions -- have resolved the abstract synthesis into
concrete images; viz., into the reflections or multiplied aspects of
that Logos or Avalokiteswara, Brahma, Ormazd, Osiris, Adam-Kadmon,
call it by any of these names -- which aspects or Manvantaric
emanations are the Dhyan Chohans, the Elohim, the Devas, the
Amshaspends, &c., &c. Metaphysicians explain the root and germ of the
latter, according to Mr. Subba Row, as the first manifestation of
Parabrahmam, "the highest trinity that we are capable of
understanding," which is Mulaprakriti (the veil), the Logos, and the
conscious energy "of the latter," or its power and light*; or --
"matter, force and the Ego, or the one root of self, of which every
other kind of self is but a manifestation or a reflection."

It is then only in this "light" (of consciousness) of mental and
physical perception, that practical Occultism can throw this into
visibility by geometrical figures; which, when closely studied, will
yield not only a scientific explanation of the real, objective,
existence of the "Seven sons of the divine Sophia," which is this
light of the Logos, but show by means of other yet undiscovered keys
that, with regard to Humanity, these "Seven Sons" and their numberless
emanations, centres of energy personified, are an absolute necessity.
Make away with them, and the mystery of Being and Mankind will never
be unriddled, not even closely approached.


It is through this light that everything is created. This ROOT of
mental SELF is also the root of physical Self, for this light is the
permutation, in our manifested world, of Mulaprakriti, called Aditi in
the Vedas. In its third aspect it becomes Vach,*** the daughter and
the mother of the Logos, as Isis is the daughter and the mother of
Osiris, who is Horus; and Mout, the daughter, wife, and mother of
Ammon, in the Egyptian Moon-glyph. In the Kabala, Sephira is the same
as Shekinah, and is, in another synthesis, the wife, daughter, and
mother of the "Heavenly man," Adam Kadmon, and is even identical with
him, just as Vach is identical with Brahma, and is called the female
Logos. In the Rig-Veda, Vach is "mystic speech," by whom Occult
Knowledge and Wisdom are communicated to man, and thus Vach is said to
have "entered the Rishis." She is "generated by the gods;" she is the
divine Vach -- the "Queen of gods"; and she is associated -- like
Sephira with the Sephiroth -- with the Prajapati in their work of
creation. Moreover, she is called "the mother of the Vedas," "since it
is through her power (as mystic speech) that Brahma revealed them, and
also owing to her power that he produced the universe" -- i.e.,
through speech, and words (synthesized by the "WORD") and numbers.

But Vach being also spoken of as the daughter of Daksha -- "the god
who lives in all the Kalpas" -- her Mayavic character is thereby
shown: during the pralaya she disappears, absorbed in the one,
all-devouring Ray.

But there are two distinct aspects in universal Esotericism, Eastern
and Western, in all those personations of the female Power in nature,
or nature -- the noumenal and the phenomenal.

One is its purely metaphysical aspect, as described by the learned
lecturer in his "Notes on the Bhagavat-Gita;" the other terrestrial
and physical, and at the same time divine from the stand-point of
practical human conception and Occultism. They are all the symbols and
personifications of Chaos, the "Great Deep" or the Primordial Waters
of Space, the impenetrable VEIL between the INCOGNISABLE and the LOGOS
of Creation.

"Connecting himself through his mind with Vach, Brahma (the Logos)
created the primordial waters." In the Kathaka Upanishad it is stated
still more clearly: "Prajapati was this Universe. Vach was a second to
him. He associated with her . . . she produced these creatures and
again re-entered Prajapati."

...As already stated, Aditi-Vach is the female Logos, or the "word,"
Verbum; and Sephira in the Kabala is the same. These feminine Logoi
are all correlations, in their noumenal aspect, of Light, and Sound,
and Ether, showing how well-informed were the ancients both in
physical science (as now known to the moderns), and as to the birth of
that science in the Spiritual and Astral spheres. ..."