Theos-Talk Archives (June 2009 Message tt00243)

THE NECESSITY OF THE CONTRARIES(1) 
In fact, there is neither light nor darkness in the realm of truth. Absolute light is absolute darkness, and vice versa. 
>--H. P. BLAVATSKYEVIL is but an antagonizing blind force in nature; it is reaction, opposition, and contrast --evil for some, good for others. Good and Evil are twins, the progeny of Space and Time, under the sway of Maya. Separate them, by cutting off one from the other, and they will both die. Neither exists per se, since each has to be generated and created out of the other, in order to come into being; both must be known and appreciated before becoming objects of perception, hence, in mortal mind, they must be divided. Were it light alone, inactive and absolute, the human mind could not appreciate nor even realize it. Shadow is that which enables light to manifest itself, and gives it objective reality. Therefore, shadow is not evil, but is the necessary and indispensable corollary which completes Light or Good: it is its creator on Earth. 
That which the student will do well to remember is that, with every people except the Christian nations, the Devil is to this day no worse an entity than the opposite aspect in the dual nature of the so-called Creator. This is only natural. One cannot claim God as the synthesis of the whole Universe, as Omnipresent and Omniscient and Infinite, and then divorce him from evil. As there is far more evil than good in the world, it follows on logical grounds that either God must include evil, or stand as the direct cause of it, or else surrender his claims to absoluteness. The ancients understood this so well that their philosophers -- now followed by the Kabalists -- defined evil as the lining of God or Good: Demon est Deus inversus being a very old adage. 
Esoteric philosophy admits neither good nor evil per se, as existing independently in nature. The cause for both is found, as regards the Kosmos, in the necessity of the contraries or contrasts, and with respect to man, in his human nature, his ignorance and passions. There is no devil or the utterly depraved, as there are no Angels absolutely perfect, though there may be spirits of Light and of Darkness: thus LUCIFER -- the spirit of the Intellectual Enlightenment and Freedom of Thought -- is metaphorically the guiding beacon, which helps man to find his way through the rocks and sandbanks of Life, for Lucifer is the LOGOS in his highest, and the "Adversary" in his lowest aspect -- both of which are reflected in our Ego. 
The seven primeval gods had all a dual state: one essential, the other accidental. In their essential state they were all the "Builders" or Fashioners, the Preservers and the rulers of this world, and in their accidental state, clothing themselves in visible corporeality, they descended on earth and reigned on it as Kings and Instructors of the lower Hosts, who had incarnated once more upon it as man. Thus, esoteric philosophy shows that man is truly the manifested deity in both its aspects -- good and evil, but theology cannot admit this philosophical truth. 
According to the views of the Gnostics, these two principles are immutable Light and Shadow, Good and Evil being virtually one and having existed through all eternity, as they will ever continue to exist so long as there are manifested worlds. The odd numbers are divine, the even numbers are terrestrial, devilish, and unlucky. The Pythagoreans hated the binary. With them it was the origin of differentiation, hence of contrast, discord, or matter, the beginning of evil. In the Valentinian theogony, Bythos and Sige (Depth, Chaos, matter born in Silence) are the primordial binary. With the early Pythagoreans, however, the duad was that imperfect state into which the first manifested being fell when it got detached from the Monad. It was the point from which the two roads -- the Good and the Evil -- bifurcated. All that which was double-faced or false was called by them "binary." ONE was alone Good, and Harmony, because no disharmony can proceed from one
 alone. Hence the Latin word Solus in relation to one and only God, the Unknown of Paul. Solus, however, very soon became Sol --the Sun. The ternary is thus the first of the odd numbers, as the triangle is the first of the geometrical figures. This number is truly the number of mystery par excellence. 
"The Gods became no-gods, the Sura -- A-sura," says the text; i.e., gods became fiends -- SATAN, when read literally. But Satan is shown, in the teachings of the Secret Doctrine, allegorized as Good, and Sacrifice, a God of Wisdom, under different names. The primitive symbol of the serpent symbolizes divine Wisdom and Perfection, and has always stood for psychical Regeneration and Immortality. The "Old Dragon" was pure spirit before he became matter, passive before he became active. This "Creator" is neither good nor bad per se, but its differentiated aspects in nature make it assume one or the other character. The idea is symbolized generally by the Dragon and the Serpent -- the Dragon of Good and the Serpent of Evil, represented on Earth by the right- and the left-hand Magic. 
In every ancient language the word dragon signified what it now does in Chinese language, i.e., "the being who excels in intelligence" and in Greek "he who sees and watches." And is it to the animal of that name that any of these epithets apply? Is it not evident, wherever superstition and oblivion of the primitive meaning may have led savages now, that the said qualifications were intended to apply to the human originals, who were symbolized by serpents and dragons? These "originals" -- called to this day in China "the Dragons of Wisdom" -- were the first disciples of the Dhyanis, who were their instructors; in short, the primitive adepts of the Third Race, and later, of the Fourth and Fifth Races. The name became universal, and no sane man before the Christian era would ever have confounded the man and the symbol. 
The very word "God" in the singular, embracing all the gods -- or theos from theoi -- came to the "superior" civilizations from a strange source, one entirely and as pre-eminently phallic as the sincere, open-spoken lingham of India. The attempt to derive God from the Anglo-Saxon synonym "good" is an abandoned idea, for in no other language, in all of which the term varies more or less, from the Persian Khoda down to the Latin Deus, has an instance been found of a name of God being derived from the attribute of Goodness. To the Latin race it comes from Aryan Dyaus (the Day); to the Slavonian, from the Greek Bacchus (Bagh-bog); and to the Saxon races directly from the Hebrew Yodh or Jod. The latter is the number-letter 10, male and female, and Jod the phallic hook -- hence the Saxon Godh, the German Gott, and the English God. This symbolic term may be said to represent the Creator of physical "Humanity," on the terrestrial plane; but surely it had nothing
 to do with the formation or "Creation" of Spirit, gods, or Kosmos! 
In the Toleduth (generation) of Adam, the verse "God created (bara, brought forth) man in his image, in the image of God created he him, male and female created he them," if read esoterically will yield the true sense, viz.: "The Elohim (gods) brought forth from themselves (by modification) man in their image ... created they him (collective humanity, or Adam) male and female created he (collective deity) them." This will show the esoteric point. The sexless Race was their first production, a modification of and from themselves, the pure spiritual existences; and this was Adam solus. Thence came the second Race: Adam-Eve or Jod-Heva, inactive androgynes, and finally the Third, or the "Separating Hermaphrodite," Cain and Abel, who produce the Fourth, Seth-Enos, etc. It is that Third, the last semi-spiritual race, which was also the last vehicle of the divine and innate Wisdom, ingenerate in the Enochs, the Seers of that Mankind. The Fourth, which had
 tasted from the fruit of the Tree of Good and Evil -- Wisdom united already to earthy, and therefore impure, intelligence -- had consequently to acquire that Wisdom by initiation and great struggle. And the union of Wisdom and Intelligence, the former ruling the latter, is called in the Hermetic books "the God possessing the double fecundity of the two sexes." Mystically Jesus was held to be man-woman. 
All made a difference between the good and the bad Serpent (the Astral Light of the Kabalists) -- between the former, the embodiment of divine Wisdom in the region of the Spiritual, and the latter, Evil, on the plane of matter. The Astral Light, or the Ether, of the ancient pagans (for the name of Astral Light is quite modern) is Spirit-Matter. Beginning with the pure spiritual plane, it becomes grosser as it descends until it becomes Maya or the tempting and deceitful serpent on our plane. Most of the Western Christian Kabalists -- pre-eminently Eliphas Levi -- in their desire to reconcile the Occult Sciences with Church dogmas, did their best to make of the "Astral Light" only and pre-eminently the Pleroma of early Church Fathers, the abode of the Hosts of the Fallen Angels, of the "Archons" and "Powers." 
Lucifer is divine and terrestrial light, the "Holy Ghost" and "Satan," at one and the same time, visible Space being truly filled with the differentiated Breath invisibly; and the Astral Light, the manifested effects of the two who are one, guided and attracted by ourselves, is the Karma of humanity, both a personal and impersonal entity: personal, because it is the mystic name given by St. Martin to the Host of divine Creators, guides and rulers of this planet; impersonal, as the Cause and effect of universal Life and Death. "Manas is dual -- lunar in the lower, solar in its upper portion," says a commentary. That is to say, it is attracted in its higher aspect toward Buddhi, and in its lower descends into, and listens to the voice of its animal soul full of selfish and sensual desires; and herein is contained the mystery of an adept's as of a profane man's life, as also that of the post-mortem separation of the divine from the animal man. When the
 Church, therefore, curses Satan, it curses the cosmic reflection of God: it anathematizes God made manifest in matter or in the objective; it maledicts God, or the ever-incomprehensible WISDOM, revealing itself as Light and Shadow, good and evil in nature, in the only manner comprehensible to the limited intellect of MAN. 
Great intellect and too much knowledge are a two-edged weapon in life, and instruments for evil as well as for good. When combined with Selfishness, they will make of the whole of Humanity a footstool for the elevation of him who possess them, and a means for the attainment of his objects; while, applied to altruistic humanitarian purposes, they may become the means of the salvation of many. 
An impenetrable veil of secrecy was thrown over the occult and religious mysteries taught, after the submersion of the last remnant of the Atlantean race, some 12,000 years ago, lest they should be shared by the unworthy, and so desecrated. Of these sciences several have now become exoteric -- such as Astronomy, for instance, in its purely mathematical and physical aspect. Hence their dogmas and tenets, being all symbolized and left to the sole guardianship of parable and allegory, have been forgotten, and their meaning has become perverted. 
It is this secrecy which led the Fifth Race to the establishment, or rather the re-establishment of the religious mysteries, in which ancient truths might be taught to the coming generations under the veil of allegory and symbolism. Behold the imperishable witness to the evolution of the human races from the divine, and especially from the androgynous Race -- the Egyptian Sphinx, that riddle of the Ages! Divine wisdom incarnating on earth, and forced to taste of the bitter fruit of personal experience of pain and suffering, generated under the shade of the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil -- a secret first known only to the Elohim, the SELF-INITIATED, "higher gods" -- on earth only. 

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>
>From: Henry B. Ellak <henrybellak@yahoo.com>
>To: theos-talk@yahoogroups.com
>Sent: Thursday, 11 June, 2009 12:55:30 PM
>Subject: Theos-World Did HPB use the term Evil, if so where?
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>Did HPB use the term Evil?  I thought she talked about Karma, that there is
>no good karma and no bad karma, only karma.
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>I could be wrong, but I do not remember the term Evil being used by HPB
>or William Q. Judge.
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>It seems strange to me, to see theosophists using the term evil.  This term
>is so lorded with cultural moral values, which may vary from culture to culture.
>Henry B. Ellak
>
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