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The Theosophical Glossary

By

H P Blavatsky

 

 

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The Secret Doctrine by H P Blavatsky

 

Glosario Teosofico (Espanol)

 

 

AUTHOR OF "ISIS UNVEILED", “THE SECRET DOCTRINE",  " THE KEY TO THEOSOPHY"

London:

THE THEOSOPHICAL PUBLISHING SOCIETY,

7, DUKE STREET, ADELPHI, W.C.

The Path Office: 132, NASSAU STREET, NEW YORK, U.S.A.

The Theosophist Office: ADYAR, MADRAS, INDIA.

1892

 

PREFACE.

The Theosophical Glossary labours under the disadvantage of being an almost

entirely posthumous work, of which the author only saw the first thirty-two

pages in proof. This is all the more regrettable, for H.P.B., as was her wont,

was adding considerably to her original copy, and would no doubt have increased

the volume far beyond its present limits, and so have thrown light on many

obscure terms that are not included in the present Glossary, and more important

still, have furnished us with a sketch of the lives and teachings of the most

famous Adepts of the East and West.

The Theosophical Glossary purposes to give information on the principal

Sanskrit, Pahlavi, Tibetan, Pâli, Chaldean, Persian, Scandinavian, Hebrew,

Greek, Latin, Kabalistic and Gnostic words, and Occult terms generally used in

Theosophical literature, and principally to be found in Isis Unveiled, Esoteric

Buddhism, The Secret Doctrine, The Key to Theosophy, etc.; and in the monthly

magazines, The Theosophist, Lucifer and The Path, etc., and other publications

of the Theosophical Society. The articles marked [w.w.w.] which explain words

found in the Kabalah, or which illustrate Rosicrucian or Hermetic doctrines,

were contributed at the special request of H.P.B. by Bro. W. W. Westcott, M.B.,

P.M. and P.Z., who is the Secretary General of the Rosicrucian Society, and

Præmonstrator of the Kabalah to the Hermetic Order of the G.D.

H.P.B. desired also to express her special indebtedness, as far as the

tabulation of facts is concerned, to the Sanskrit-Chinese Dictionary of Eitel,

The Hindu Classical Dictionary of Dowson, The Vishnu Purâna of Wilson, and the

Royal Masonic Cyclopædia of Kenneth Mackenzie.

As the undersigned can make no pretension to the elaborate and extraordinary

scholarship requisite for the editing of the multifarious and polyglot contents

of H.P.B.’s last contribution to Theosophical literature, there must necessarily

be mistakes of transliteration, etc., which specialists in scholarship will at

once detect. Meanwhile, however, as nearly every Orientalist has his own system,

varying transliterations may be excused in the present work, and not be set down

entirely to the “Karma” of the editor.

G. R. S. MEAD.

LONDON, January, 1892

                                                                                

                                        

THEOSOPHICAL

GLOSSARY

A 


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A —The first letter in all the world-alphabets save a few, such for instance as

the Mongolian, the Japanese, the Tibetan, the Ethiopian, etc. It is a letter of

great mystic power and “magic virtue” with those who have adopted it, and with

whom its numerical value is one. It is the Aleph of the Hebrews, symbolized by

 

the Ox or Bull; the Alpha of the Greeks, the one and the first the Az of the

Slavonians, signifying the pronoun “I” (referring to the “I am that I am”). Even

in Astrology, Taurus (the Ox or Bull or the Aleph) is the first of the Zodiacal

signs, its colour being white and yellow. The sacred Aleph acquires a still more

marked sanctity with the Christian Kabalists when they learn that this letter

typifies the Trinity in Unity, as it is composed of two Yods, one upright, the

other reversed with a slanting bar or nexus, thus— a. Kenneth R. H. Mackenzie

states that “the St. Andrew cross is occultly connected therewith”. The divine

name, the first in the series corresponding with Aleph, is AêHêIêH or Ahih when

vowelless, and this is a Sanskrit root.

 

Aahla (Eg.). One of the divisions of the Kerneter or infernal regions, or Amenti

; the word means the “Field of Peace”.

 

Aanroo (Eg.). The second division of Amenti. The celestial field of Aanroo is

encircled by an iron wall. The field is covered with wheat, and the “Defunct”

are represented gleaning it, for the “Master of Eternity”; some stalks being

three, others five, and the highest seven cubits high. Those who reached the

last two numbers entered the state of bliss (which is called in Theosophy

Devachan) ; the disembodied spirits whose harvest was but three cubits high went

into lower regions (Kâmaloka). Wheat was with the Egyptians the symbol of the

Law of retribution or Karma. The cubits had reference to the seven, five and

three human “principles

 

Aaron (Heb.). The elder brother of Moses and the first Initiate of the

                                                                            


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Hebrew Lawgiver. The name means the Illuminated, or the Enlightened. Aaron thus

heads the line, or Hierarchy, of the initiated Nabim, or Seers.

 

Ab (Heb.). The eleventh month of the Hebrew civil year; the fifth of the sacred

year beginning in July.

[w.w.w.]

 

Abaddon (Heb.). An angel of Hell, corresponding to the Greek Apollyon.

 

Abatur (Gn.). In the Nazarene system the “Ancient of Days”, Antiquus Altus, the

Father of the Demiurgus of the Universe, is called the Third Life or “Abatur”.

He corresponds to the Third “Logos” in the Secret Doctrine. (See Codex Nazaræus)

 

Abba Amona (Heb.). Lit., “Father-Mother”; the occult names of the two higher

Sephiroth, Chokmah and Binah, of the upper triad, the apex of which is Sephira

or Kether. From this triad issues the lower septenary of the Sephirothal Tree.

 

Abhâmsi (Sk.). A mystic name of the “four orders of beings” which are, Gods,

Demons, Pitris and Men. Orientalists somehow connect the name with “waters”, but

esoteric philosophy connects its symbolism with Akâsa—the ethereal “waters of

space”, since it is on the bosom and on the seven planes of “space” that the

“four orders of (lower) beings” and the three higher Orders of Spiritual Beings

are born. (See Secret Doctrine I. p. 458, and “Ambhâmsi”.)

 

Abhâsvaras (Sk.). The Devas or “Gods” of Light and Sound, the highest of the

upper three celestial regions (planes) of the second Dhyâna (q.v.) A class of

gods sixty-four in number, representing a certain cycle and an occult number.

 

Abhâva (Sk.). Negation, or non-being of individual objects; the noumenal

substance, or abstract objectivity.

 

Abhaya (Sk.). “Fearlessness”—a son of Dharma; and also a religious life of duty.

As an adjective, “Fearless,” Abhaya is an epithet given to every Buddha,

 

Abhayagiri (Sk.). Lit., “Mount Fearless” in Ceylon. It has an ancient Vihâra or

Monastery in which the well-known Chinese traveller Fa-hien found 5,000 Buddhist

priests and ascetics in the year 400 of our era, and a School called Abhayagiri

Vâsinah,, “School of the Secret Forest”. This philosophical school was regarded

as heretical, as the ascetics studied the doctrines of both the “greater” and

the “smaller” vehicles— or the Mahâyâna and the Hinayâna systems and Triyâna or

the three successive degrees of Yoga; just as a certain Brotherhood does now

beyond the Himalayas. This proves that the “disciples of Kâtyâyana were and are

as unsectarian as their humble admirers the Theosophists

 


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are now. (See “Sthâvirâh" School.) This was the most mystical of all the

schools, and renowned for the number of Arhats it produced. The Brotherhood of

Abhayagiri called themselves the disciples of Kâtyâyana, the favourite Chela of

Gautama, the Buddha. Tradition says that owing to bigoted intolerance and

persecution, they left Ceylon and passed beyond the Himalayas, where they have

remained ever since.

 

Abhidharma (Sk.). The metaphysical (third) part of Tripitaka, a very

philosophical Buddhist work by Kâtyâyana.

 

Abhijñâ (Sk.). Six phenomenal (or “supernatural”) gifts which Sâkyamuni Buddha

acquired in the night on which he reached Buddhaship. This is the “fourth”

degree of Dhyâna (the seventh in esoteric teachings) which has to be attained by

every true Arhat. In China, the initiated Buddhist ascetics reckon six such

 

powers, but in Ceylon they reckon only five. The first Abhijñâ is Divyachakchus,

the instantaneous view of anything one wills to see; the second, is Divyasrotra,

the power of comprehending any sound whatever, etc., etc.

 

Abhimânim (Sk.). The name of Agni (fire) the “eldest son of Brahmâ”, in other

words, the first element or Force produced in the universe at its evolution (the

fire of creative desire). By his wife Swâhâ, Abhimânim had three sons (the

fires) Pâvaka, Pavamâna and Suchi, and these had “forty-five sons, who, with the

original son of Brahmâ and his three descendants, constitute the forty-nine

fires” of Occultism.

 

Abhimanyu (Sk.). A son of Arjuna. He killed Lakshmana,in the great battle of the

Mahâbhârata on its second day, but was himself killed on the thirteenth.

 

Abhûtarajasas (Sk.). A class of gods or Devas, during the period of the fifth

Manvantara.

 

Abib (Heb.)  The first Jewish sacred month, begins in March; is also called

Nisan.

 

 

Abiegnus Mons (Lat.). A mystic name, from whence as from a certain mountain,

Rosicrucian documents are often found to be issued— “Monte Abiegno”. There is a

connection with Mount Meru, and other sacred hills. [w.w.w.]

 

Ab-i-hayat (Pers.). Water of immortality. Supposed to give eternal youth and

sempiternal life to him who drinks of it.

 

Abiri (Gr.). See Kabiri, also written Kabeiri, the Mighty Ones, celestials, sons

of Zedec the just one, a group of deities worshipped in Phœnicia: they seem to

be identical with the Titans, Corybantes, Curetes, Telchines and Dii Magni of

Virgil. [w.w.w.]

 

Ablanathanalba (Gn.). A term similar to “Abracadabra”. It is said by C. W. King

to have meant “thou art a father to us”; it reads the same

 


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from either end and was used as a charm in Egypt.

(See “Abracadabra”.)

 

Abracadabra (Gn.). This symbolic word first occurs in a medical treatise in

verse by Samonicus, who flourished in the reign of the Emperor Septimus Seveus.

Godfrey Higgins says it is from Abra or Abar

“God”, in Celtic, and cad  ‘‘holy” ; it was used as a charm, and engraved on

Kameas as an amulet. [w.w.w.]

Godfrey Higgins was nearly right, as the word “Abracadabra” is a later

corruption of the sacred Gnostic term “Abrasax”, the latter itself being a still

earlier corruption of a sacred and ancient Coptic or Egyptian word: a magic

formula which meant in its symbolism ‘‘Hurt me not”, and addressed the deity in

its hieroglyphics as “Father”. It was generally attached to an amulet or charm

and worn as a Tat (q.v.), on the breast under the garments.

 

Abraxas or Abrasax (Gn.). Mystic words which have been traced as far back as

Basilides, the Pythagorean, of Alexandria, AD. 90. He uses Abraxas as a title

for Divinity, the supreme of Seven, and as having 365 virtues. In Greek

numeration, a. 1, b. 2, r. 100, a. I, x 60, a. I, s. 200 = 365 days of the year,

solar year, a cycle of divine action. C. W. King, author of The Gnostics,

considers the word similar to the Hebrew Shemhamphorasch, a holy word, the

extended name of God. An Abraxas Gem usually shows a man’s body with the head of

a cock, one arm with a shield, the other with a whip.

[ w.w.w.]

Abraxas is the counterpart of the Hindu Abhimânim (q.v.) and Brahmâ combined. It

is these compound and mystic qualities which caused Oliver, the great Masonic

authority, to connect the name of Abraxas with that of Abraham. This was

unwarrantable ; the virtues and attributes of Abraxas, which are 365 in number,

ought to have shown him that the deity was connected with the Sun and solar

division of the year——nay, that Abraxas is the antitype, and the Sun, the type.

 

Absoluteness. When predicated of the UNIVERSAL PRINCIPLE, it denotes an abstract

noun, which is more correct and logical than to apply the adjective “absolute ”

to that which has neither attributes nor limitations, nor can IT have any.

 

Ab-Soo (Chald.). The mystic name for Space, meaning the dwelling of Ab the

“Father”, or the head of the source of the Waters of Knowledge. The lore of the

latter is concealed in the invisible space or akasic regions.

 

Acacia (Gr.). Innocence; and also a plant used in Freemasonry as a symbol of

initiation, immortality, and purity; the tree furnished the sacred Shittim wood

of the Hebrews. [w.w.w.]

 

Achamôth (Gn.). The name of the second, the inferior Sophia.

 


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Esoterically and with the Gnostics, the elder Sophia was the Holy Spirit (female

Holy Ghost) or the Sakti of the Unknown, and the Divine Spirit; while Sophia

Achamôth is but the personification of the female aspect of the creative male

Force in nature; also the Astral Light.

 

Achar (Heb.). The Gods over whom (according to the Jews) Jehovah is the God.

 

Âchâra (Sk.). Personal and social (religious) obligations.

 

Âchârya (Sk.). Spiritual teacher, Guru; as Sankar-âchârya, lit., a “teacher of

ethics”. A name generally given to Initiates, etc., and meaning  “Master”.

 

Achath (Heb.). The one, the first, feminine; achad being masculine. A Talmudic

word applied to Jehovah. It is worthy of note that the Sanskrit term ak means

one, ekata being “unity”, Brahmâ being called ák, or eka, the one, the first,

whence the Hebrew word and application.

 

Acher (Heb.). The Talmudic name of the Apostle Paul. The Talmud narrates the

story of the four Tanaim, who entered the Garden of Delight, i.e., came to he

initiated; Ben Asai, who looked and lost his sight; Ben Zoma, who looked and

lost his reason; Acher, who made depredations in the garden and failed; and

Rabbi Akiba, who alone succeeded. The Kabalists say that Acher is Paul.

 

Acheron (Gr.). One of the rivers of Hades in Greek mythology.

 

Achit (Sk.). Absolute non-intelligence; as Chit is—in contrast— absolute

intelligence.

 

Achyuta (Sk.). That which is not subject to change or fall; the opposite to

Chyuta, “fallen”. A title of Vishnu.

 

Acosmism (Gr.). The precreative period, when there was no Kosmos but Chaos

alone.

 

Ad (Assyr.). Ad, “the Father”. In Aramean ad means one, and ad-ad “the only

one”.

 

Adah (Assyr.). Borrowed by the Hebrews for the name of their Adah, father of

Jubal, etc. But Adah meaning the first, the one, is universal property. There

are reasons to think that Ak-ad, means the first-born or Son of Ad. Adon was the

first “Lord” of Syria. (See Isis Unv. II., pp. 452, 453.)

 

Adam (Heb.). In the Kabalah Adam is the “only-begotten”, and means also “red

earth”. (See “Adam-Adami” in the S.D. II p. 452.) It is almost identical with

Athamas or Thomas, and is rendered into Greek by Didumos, the “twin”—Adam, “the

first”, in chap. 1 of Genesis, being shown, “male-female.”

 

Adam Kadmon (Heb). Archetypal Man; Humanity. The

                                                                   


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“Heavenly Man” not fallen into sin; Kabalists refer it to the Ten Sephiroth on

the plane of human perception. [w.w.w.]

In the Kabalah Adam Kadmon is the manifested Logos corresponding to our Third

Logos; the Unmanifested being the first paradigmic ideal Man, and symbolizing

the Universe in abscondito, or in its “privation” in the Aristotelean sense. The

First Logos is the “Light of the World”, the Second and the Third—its gradually

deepening shadows.

 

Adamic Earth (Alch.). Called the “true oil of gold” or the “primal element” in

Alchemy. It is but one remove from the pure homogeneous element.

 

Adbhuta Brâhmana (Sk.). The Brâhmana of miracles; treats of marvels, auguries,

and various phenomena.

 

Adbhuta Dharma (Sk.). The “law” of things never heard before. A class of

Buddhist works on miraculous or phenomenal events.

 

Adept (Lat.). Adeptus, “He who has obtained.” In Occultism one who has reached

the stage of Initiation, and become a Master in the science of Esoteric

philosophy.

 

Adharma (Sk.). Unrighteousness, vice, the opposite of Dharma.

 

Adhi (Sk.). Supreme, paramount.

 

Adhi-bhautika duhkha (Sk.). The second of the three kinds of pain; lit., “Evil

proceeding from external things or beings”.

 

Adhi-daivika duhkha (Sk.). The third of the three kinds of pain. “Evil

proceeding from divine causes, or a just Karmic punishment”.

 

Adhishtânam (Sk.). Basis; a principle in which some other principle inheres.

 

Adhyâtmika duhkha (Sk.). The first of the three kinds of pain; lit., “Evil

proceeding from Self ”, an induced or a generated evil by Self, or man himself.

 

Adhyâtma Vidyâ (Sk.). Lit., “the esoteric luminary”. One of the Pancha Vidyâ

Sastras, or the Scriptures of the Five Sciences.

 

Âdi (Sk.) The First, the primeval.

 

Âdi (the Sons of). In Esoteric philosophy the “Sons of Adi” are called the “Sons

of the Fire-mist”. A term used of certain adepts.

 

Âdi-bhûta (Sk.). The first Being; also primordial element. Adbhuta is a title of

Vishnu, the “first Element” containing all elements, “the unfathomable deity”.

 

Âdi-Buddha (Sk.). The First and Supreme Buddha—not recognised in the Southern

Church. The Eternal Light.

 

Âdi-budhi (Sk.). Primeval Intelligence or Wisdom; the eternal Budhi or Universal

Mind. Used of Divine Ideation, “Mahâbuddhi” being synonymous with MAHAT.


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Âdikrit (Sk.). Lit., the “first produced” or made. The creative Force eternal

and uncreate, but manifesting periodically. Applied to Vishnu slumbering on the

“waters of space” during “pralaya” (q.v.).

 

Âdi-nâtha (Sk.). The “first” Lord”—Âdi “first” (masc.), nâtha “Lord”.

 

Âdi-nidâna (Sk.). First and Supreme Causality, from Âdi, the first, and Nidâna

the principal cause (or the concatenation of cause and effect).

 

Âdi-Sakti (Sk.). Primeval, divine Force; the female creative power, and aspect

in and of every male god. The Sakti in the Hindu Pantheon is always the spouse

of some god.

 

Âdi-Sanat (Sk.). Lit., “First Ancient”. The term corresponds to the Kabalistic

“ancient of days”, since it is a title of Brahmâ—called in the Zohar the

Atteekah d’Atteekeen, or “the Ancient of the Ancients”, etc.

 

Âditi (Sk.). The Vedic name for the Mûlaprakriti of the Vedantists; the abstract

aspect of Parabrahman, though both unmanifested and unknowable. In the Vedas

Âditi is the “Mother-Goddess”, her terrestrial symbol being infinite and

shoreless space.

 

Âditi-Gæa.  A compound term, Sanskrit and Latin, meaning dual, nature in

theosophical writings—spiritual and physical, as Gæa is the goddess of the earth

and of objective nature.

 

Âditya (Sk.). A name of the Sun; as Mârttânda he is the Son of Aditi.

 

Âdityas (Sk.). The seven sons of Âditi; the seven planetary gods.

 

Âdi Varsha (Sk.). The first land; the primordial country in which dwelt the

first races.

 

Adonai (Heb.). The same as Adonis. Commonly translated “Lord”.

Astronomically—the Sun. When a Hebrew in reading came to the name IHVH, which is

called Jehovah, he paused and substituted the word “Adonai”, (Adni); but when

written with the points of Alhim, he called it “Elohim”. [w.w.w.]

 

Adonim-Adonai, Adon. The ancient Chaldeo-Hebrew names for the Elohim or creative

terrestrial forces, synthesized by Jehovah.

 

Adwaita (Sk.). A Vedânta sect. The non-dualistic (A-dwaita) school of Vedântic

philosophy founded by Sankarâchârya, the greatest of the historical Brahmin

sages. The two other schools are the Dwaita (dualistic) and the Visishtadwaita;

all the three call themselves Vedântic.

 

Adwaitin (Sk.). A follower of the said school.

 

Adytum (Gr.). The Holy of Holies in the pagan temples. A name for the secret and

sacred precincts or the inner chamber, into which no


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profane could enter; it corresponds to the sanctuary of the altars of Christian

Churches.

 

Æbe1-Zivo (Gn.). The Metatron or anointed spirit with the Nazarene Gnostics; the

same as the angel Gabriel.

 

Æolus (Gr.). The god who, according to Hesiod, binds and looses the winds; the

king of storms and winds. A king of Æolia, the inventor of sails and a great

astronomer, and therefore deified by posterity.

 

Æon or Æons (Gr.). Periods of time; emanations proceeding from the divine

essence, and celestial beings; genii and angels with the Gnostics.

 

Æsir (Scand.). The same as Ases, the creative Forces personified. The gods who

created the black dwarfs or the Elves of Darkness in Asgard. The divine Æsir,

the Ases are the Elves of Light. An allegory bringing together darkness which

comes from light, and matter born of spirit.

 

Æther (Gr.). With the ancients the divine luminiferous substance which pervades

the whole universe, the “garment” of the Supreme Deity, Zeus, or Jupiter. With

the moderns, Ether, for the meaning of which in physics and chemistry see

Webster’s Dictionary or any other. In esotericism  Æther is the third principle

of the Kosmic Septenary; the Earth being the lowest, then the Astral light,

Ether and Âkâsa (phonetically Âkâsha) the highest.

 

Æthrobacy (Gr.). Lit., walking on, or being lifted into the air with no visible

agent at work; “levitation”. It may be conscious or unconscious; in the one case

it is magic, in the other either disease

or a power which requires a few words of elucidation. We know that the earth is

a magnetic body; in fact, as some scientists have found, and as Paracelsus

affirmed some 300 years ago, it is one vast magnet. It is charged with one form

of electricity—let us call it positive—which it evolves continuously by

spontaneous action, in its interior or centre of motion. Human bodies, in common

with all other forms of matter, are charged with the opposite form of

electricity, the negative. That is to say, organic or inorganic bodies, if left

to themselves will constantly and involuntarily charge themselves with and

evolve the form of electricity opposite to that of the earth itself. Now, what

is weight? Simply the attraction of the earth. “Without the attraction of the

earth you would have no weight”, says Professor Stewart; “and if you had an

earth twice as heavy as this, you would have double the attraction”. How then,

can we get rid of this attraction? According to the electrical law above stated,

there is an attraction between our planet and the organisms upon it, which keeps

them upon the surface of the globe. But the law of gravitation has been

counteracted in many instances, by levitation of persons and inanimate objects.

How


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account for this? The condition of our physical systems, say theurgic

philosophers, is largely dependent upon the action of our will. If well-

regulated, it can produce “miracles”; among others a change of this electrical

polarity from negative to positive; the man’s relations with the earth-magnet

would then become repellent, and “gravity”for him would have ceased to exist. It

would then be as natural for him to rush into the air until the repellent force

had exhausted itself, as, before, it had been for him to remain upon the ground.

The altitude of his levitation would be measured by his ability, greater or

less, to charge his body with positive electricity. This control over the

physical forces once obtained, alteration of his levity or gravity would be as

easy as breathing. (See Isis Unveiled, Vol. I., page xxiii.)

 

Afrits (Arab.). A name for native spirits regarded as devils by Mussulmen.

Elementals much dreaded in Egypt.

 

Agapæ (Gr.). Love Feasts; the early Christians kept such festivals in token of

sympathy, love and mutual benevolence. It became necessary to abolish them as an

institution, because of great abuse ; Paul in his First Epistle to the

Corinthians complains of misconduct at the feasts of the Christians. [w.w.w.].

 

Agastya (Sk.). The name of a great Rishi, much revered in Southern India; the

reputed author of hymns in the Rig Veda, and a great hero in the Râmâyana. In

Tamil literature he is credited with having been the first instructor of the

Dravidians in science, religion and philosophy. It is also the name of the star

Canopus”.

 

Agathodæmon (Gr.). The beneficent, good Spirit as contrasted with the bad one,

Kakodæmon. The

“Brazen Serpent” of the Bible is the former; the flying serpents of fire are an

aspect of Kakodæmon. The Ophites called Agathodæmon the Logos and Divine Wisdom,

which in the Bacchanalian Mysteries was represented by a serpent erect on a

pole.

 

Agathon (Gr.). Plato’s Supreme Deity. Lit., “The Good”, our ALAYA, or “Universal

Soul”.

 

Aged (Kab.). One of the Kabbalistic names for Sephira, called also the Crown, or

Kether.

 

Agla (Heb.). This Kabbalistic word is a talisman composed of the initals of the

four words “Ateh Gibor Leolam Adonai”, meaning “Thou art mighty for ever 0

Lord”. MacGregor Mathers explains it thus “A, the first; A, the last; G, the

trinity in unity; L, the completion of the great work”. [w.w.w.]

 

Agneyastra (Sk.). The fiery missiles or weapons used by the Gods in the exoteric

Purânas and the Mahâbhârata the magic weapons said to have been wielded by the

adept-race (the fourth), the Atlanteans. This


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“weapon of fire” was given by Bharadwâja to Agnivesa, the son of Agni, and by

him to Drona, though the Vishnu Purâna contradicts this, saying that it was

given by the sage Aurva to King Sagara, his chela. They are frequently mentioned

in the Mahâbhârata and the Râmâyana.

 

Agni (Sk.). The God of Fire in the Veda; the oldest and the most revered of Gods

in India. He is one of the three great deities: Agni, Vâyu and Sûrya, and also

all the three, as he is the triple aspect of fire; in heaven as the Sun; in the

atmosphere or air (Vâyu), as Lightning; on. earth, as ordinary Fire. Agni

belonged to the earlier Vedic Trimûrti before Vishnu was given a place of honour

and before Brahmâ and Siva were invented.

 

Agni Bâhu (Sk.). An ascetic son of Manu Swâyambhuva, the “Self-born”.

 

Agni Bhuvah (Sk.). Lit., “born of fire”, the term is applied to the four races

of Kshatriyas (the second or warrior caste) whose ancestors are said to have

sprung from fire. Agni Bhuvah is the son of Agni, the God of Fire; Agni Bhuvah

being the same as Kartti-keya, the God of War. (See Sec.Doct., Vol. II., p.

550.)

 

Agni Dhätu Samâdhi (Sk.). A kind of contemplation in Yoga practice, when

Kundalini is raised to the extreme and the infinitude appears as one sheet of

fire. An ecstatic condition.

 

Agni Hotri (Sk.). The priests who served the Fire-God in Aryan antiquity. The

term Agni Hotri is one that denotes oblation.

 

Agni-ratha (Sk.). A “Fiery Vehicle” literally. A kind of flying machine. Spoken

of in ancient works of magic in India and in the epic poems.

 

Agnishwattas (Sk.). A class of Pitris, the creators of the first ethereal race

of men. Our solar ancestors as contrasted with the Barhishads, the “lunar”

Pitris or ancestors, though otherwise explained in the Purânas.

 

Agnoia (Gr.). “Divested of reason”, lit., “irrationality”, when speaking of the

animal Soul. According to Plutarch, Pythagoras and Plato divided the human soul

into two parts (the higher and lower manas)—the rational or noëtic and the

irrational, or agnoia, sometimes written “annoia”.

 

Agnostic (Gr.). A word claimed by Mr. Huxley to have been coined by him to

indicate one who believes nothing which can not be demonstrated by the senses.

The later schools of Agnosticism give more philosophical definitions of the

term.

 

Agra-Sandhânî (Sk.). The “Assessors” or Recorders who read at the


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judgment of a disembodied Soul the record of its life in the heart of that

“Soul”. The same almost as the Lipikas of the Secret Doctrine. (See Sec.Doct.,

Vol. I., p. 105.)

 

Agruerus ; A very ancient Phœnician god. The same as Saturn.

 

Aham (Sk.). “I”—the basis of Ahankâra, Self-hood.

 

Ahan (Sk.). “Day”;the Body of Brahmâ, in the Purânas.

 

Ahankâra (Sk.). The conception of “I”, Self-consciousness or Self- identity; the

“I”, the egotistical and mâyâvic principle in man, due to our ignorance which

separates our “I” from the Universal ONE-SELF Personality, Egoism.

 

Aheie (Heb.). Existence. He who exists; corresponds to Kether and Macroprosopus.

 

Ah-hi (Sensar), Ahi (Sk.), or Serpents. Dhyân Chohans. “Wise Serpents” or

Dragons of Wisdom.

 

Ahi (Sk.). A serpent. A name of Vritra, the Vedic demon of drought.

 

Ahti (Scand.). The “Dragon” in the Eddas.

 

Ahu (Scand.). “One” and the First.

 

Ahum (Zend). The first three principles of septenary man in the Avesta ; the

gross living man and his vital and astral principles.

 

Ahura (Zend.). The same as Asura, the holy, the Breath-like. Ahura Mazda, the

Ormuzd of the Zoroastrians or Parsis, is the Lord who bestows light and

intelligence, whose symbol is the Sun (See “Ahura Mazda”), and of whom Ahriman,

a European form of “Angra Mainyu” (q.v.), is the dark aspect.

 

Ahura Mazda (Zend). The personified deity, the Principle of Universal Divine

Light of the Parsis. From Ahura or Asura, breath, “spiritual, divine” in the

oldest Rig Veda, degraded by the orthodox Brahmans into A -sura, “no gods”, just

as the Mazdeans have degraded the Hindu Devas (Gods) into Dæva (Devils).

 

Aidoneus (Gr.). The God and King of the Nether World; Pluto or Dionysos

Chthonios (subterranean).

 

Aij Talon. The supreme deity of the Yakoot, a tribe in Northern Siberia.

 

Ain-Aior (Chald.). The only “Self-existent” a mystic name for divine substance.

[w.w.w.]

 

Ain (Heb.). The negatively existent; deity in repose, and absolutely passive.

[w.w.w.]

 

Aindrî (Sk.). Wife of Indra.

 

Aindriya (Sk.). Or Indrânî, Indriya; Sakti. The female aspect or “wife” of

Indra.


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Ain Soph (Heb.). The “Boundless” or Limitless; Deity emanating and extending.

[w.w.w.]

Ain Soph is also written En Soph and Ain Suph, no one, not even Rabbis, being

sure of their vowels. In the religious metaphysics of the old Hebrew

philosophers, the ONE Principle was an abstraction, like Parabrahmam, though

modern Kabbalists have succeeded now, by dint of mere sophistry and paradoxes,

in making a “Supreme God” of it and nothing higher. But with the early Chaldean

Kabbalists Ain Soph is “without form or being”, having “no likeness with

anything else” (Franck, Die Kabbala, p. 126). That Ain Soph has never been

considered as the “Creator” is proved by even such an orthodox Jew as Philo

calling the “Creator” the Logos, who stands next the “Limitless One”, and the

“Second God”. “The Second God is its (Ain Soph’s) wisdom”, says Philo (Quaest.

et Solut.). Deity is NO-THING; it is nameless, and therefore called Ain Soph;

the word Ain meaning NOTHING. (See Franck’s Kabbala, p. 153 ff.)

 

Ain Soph Aur (Heb.). The Boundless Light which concentrates into the First and

highest Sephira or Kether, the Crown. [w. w. w.]

 

Airyamen Yaêgo (Zend). Or Airyana Vaêgo; the primeval land of bliss referred to

in the Vendîdâd, where Ahura Mazda delivered his laws to Zoroaster (Spitama

Zarathustra).

 

Airyana-ishejô (Zend). The name of a prayer to the “holy Airyamen”, the divine

aspect of Ahriman before the latter became a dark opposing power, a Satan. For

Ahriman is of the same essence with Ahura Mazda, just as Typhon-Seth is of the

same essence with Osiris (q.v.).

 

Aish (Heb.). The word for “Man".

 

Aisvarikas (Sk.). A theistic school of Nepaul, which sets up Âdi Buddha as a

supreme god ( Îsvara ), instead of seeing in the name that of a principle, an

abstract philosophical symbol.

 

Aitareya (Sk.). The name of an Aranyaka (Brâhmana) and a Upanishad of the Rig

Veda. Some of its portions are purely Vedântic.

 

Aith-ur (Chald.). Solar fire, divine Æther.

 

Aja (Sk.). “Unborn”, uncreated; an epithet belonging to many of the primordial

gods, but especially to the first Logos—a radiation of the Absolute on the plane

of illusion.

 

Ajitas (Sk.). One of the Occult names of the twelve great gods incarnating in

each Manvantara. The Occultists identify them with the Kumâras. They are called

Jnâna (or Gnâna) Devas. Also, a form of Vishnu in the second Manvantara. Called

also Jayas.

 

Ajnâna (Sk.) or Agyana (Bengali). Non-knowledge; absence of

 
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knowledge rather than “ignorance” as generally translated. An Ajnâni means a

“profane”.

 

Akar (Eg.). The proper name of that division of the Ker-neter infernal regions,

which may be called Hell. [w. w. w.].

 

Akâsa (Sk.). The subtle, supersensuous spiritual essence which pervades all

space; the primordial substance erroneously identified with Ether. But it is to

Ether what Spirit is to Matter, or Âtmâ to Kâma-rûpa.  It is, in fact, the

Universal Space in which lies inherent the eternal Ideation of the Universe in

its ever-changing aspects on the planes of matter and objectivity, and from

which radiates the First Logos, or expressed thought. This is why it is stated

in the Purânas that Âkâsa has but one attribute, namely sound, for sound is but

the translated symbol of Logos—“Speech” in its mystic sense. In the same

sacrifice (the Jyotishtoma Agnishtoma) it is called the “God Âkâsa”. In these

sacrificial mysteries Âkâsa is the all-directing ‘and omnipotent Deva who plays

the part of Sadasya, the superintendent over the magical effects of the

religious performance, and it had its own appointed Hotri (priest) in days of

old, who took its name. The Âkâsa is the indispensable agent of every Krityâ

(magical performance) religious or profane. The expression “to stir up the

Brahmâ”, means to stir up the power which lies latent at the bottom of every

magical operation, Vedic sacrifices being in fact nothing if not ceremonial

magic. This power is the Âkâsa—in another aspect, Kundalini—occult electricity,

the alkahest of the alchemists in one sense, or the universal solvent, the same

anima mundi on the higher plane as the astral light is on the lower. “At the

moment of the sacrifice the priest becomes imbued with the spirit of Brahmâ, is,

for the time being, Brahmâ himself”. (Isis Unveiled).

 

Akbar. The great Mogul Emperor of India, the famous patron of religions, arts,

and sciences, the most liberal of all the Mussulman sovereigns. There has never

been a more tolerant or enlightened ruler than the Emperor Akbar, either in

India or in any other Mahometan country.

 

Akiba (Heb.). The only one of the four Tanaim (initiated prophets) who entering

the Garden of Delight (of the occult sciences) succeeded in getting himself

initiated while all the others failed. (See the Kabbalistic Rabbis).

 

Akshara (Sk.). Supreme Deity; lit., “indestructible”, ever perfect.

 

Akta (Sk.). Anointed: a title of Twashtri or Visvakarman, the highest “Creator”

and Logos in the

Rig -Veda. He is called the “Father of the Gods” and “Father of the sacred Fire”

(See note page 101, Vol. II., Sec.Doct.).

 

Akûpâra (Sk.). The Tortoise, the symbolical turtle on which the earth is said to

rest.

 
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Al or El (Heb.). This deity-name is commonly translated “God’, meaning mighty,

supreme. The plural is Elohim, also translated in the Bible by the word God, in

the singular. [w.w.w.]

 

Al-ait (Phœn.). The God of Fire, an ancient and very mystic name in Koptic

Occultism.

 

Alaparus (Chald.). The second divine king of Babylonia who reigned.. “three

Sari”. The first king of the divine Dynasty was Alorus according to Berosus. He

was “the appointed Shepherd of the people” and reigned ten Sari (or 36,000

years, a Saros being 3,600 years).

 

Alaya (Sk.). The Universal Soul (See Secret Doctrine Vol. I. pp. 47 et seq.).

The name belongs to the Tibetan system of the contemplative Mahâyâna School.

Identical with Âkâsa in its mystic sense, and with Mulâprâkriti, in its essence,

as it is the basis or root of all things.

 

Alba Petra (Lat.). The white stone of Initiation. The “white cornelian”

mentioned in St. John’s Revelation.

 

Al-Chazari (Arab.). A Prince-Philosopher and Occultist. (See Book Al-Chazari.)

 

Alchemists;  From Al and Chemi, fire, or the god and patriarch, Kham, also, the

name of Egypt. The Rosicrucians of the middle ages, such as Robertus de

Fluctibus (Robert Fludd), Paracelsus, Thomas Vaughan (Eugenius Philalethes), Van

Helmont, and others, were all alchemists, who sought for the hidden spirit in

every inorganic matter. Some people— nay, the great majority—have accused

alchemists of charlatanry and false pretending. Surely such men as Roger Bacon,

Agrippa, Henry Khunrath, and the Arabian Geber (the first to introduce into

Europe some of the secrets of chemistry), can hardly he treated as impostors—

least of all as fools. Scientists who are reforming the science of physics upon

the basis of the atomic theory of Democritus, as restated by John Dalton,

conveniently forget that Democritus, of Abdera, was an alchemist, and that the

mind that was capable of penetrating so far into the secret operations of nature

in one direction must have had good reasons to study and become a Hermetic

philosopher. Olaus Borrichius says that the cradle of alchemy is to be sought in

the most distant times. (Isis Unveiled).

 

Alchemy ; in Arabic Ul-Khemi, is, as the name suggests, the chemistry of nature.

Ui-Khemi or

Al-Kimia, however, is only an Arabianized word, taken from the Greek chemeia,

(chemeia) from cumoz— “juice”, sap extracted from a plant. Says Dr. Wynn

Westcott: “The earliest use of the actual

term ‘alchemy’  is found in the works of Julius Firmicus Maternus, who lived in

the days of Constantine the Great. The  Imperial Library in Paris contains the

oldest-extant alchemic treatise known in Europe;

it was written by  Zosimus the Panopolite about 400 A.D.


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in the Greek language, the next oldest is by Æneas Gazeus, 480  A.D.” It deals

with the finer forces of nature and the various conditions in which they are

found to operate. Seeking under the veil of language, more or less artificial,

to convey to the uninitiated so much of the  mysterium magnum as is safe in the

hands of a selfish world, the alchemist postulates as his first  principle the

existence of a certain Universal Solvent by which all composite bodies are

resolved into the  homogeneous substance from which they are evolved, which

substance he calls pure gold, or summa  materia. This solvent, also called

menstvuum universale, possesses the power of removing all the seeds of  disease

from the human body, of renewing youth and prolonging life. Such is the lapis

philosophorum  (philosopher’s stone). Alchemy first penetrated into Europe

through Geber, the great Arabian sage and  philosopher, in the eighth century of

our era; but it was known and practised long ages ago in China and  in Egypt,

numerous papyri on alchemy and other proofs of its being the favourite study of

kings and  priests having been exhumed and preserved under the generic name of

Hermetic treatises. (See “Tabula Smaragdina”). Alchemy is studied under three

distinct aspects, which admit of many different interpretations, viz.: the

Cosmic, Human, and Terrestrial. These three methods were typified under the

three alchemical properties—sulphur, mercury, and salt. Different writers have

stated that there are three, seven, ten, and twelve processes respectively; but

they are all agreed that there is but one object in alchemy, which is to

transmute gross metals into pure gold. What that gold, however, really is, very

few people understand correctly. No doubt that there is such a thing in nature

as transmutation of the baser metals into the nobler, or gold. But this is only

one aspect of alchemy, the terrestrial or purely material, for we sense

logically the same process taking place in the bowels of the earth. Yet, besides

and beyond this interpretation, there is in alchemy a symbolical meaning, purely

psychic and spiritual. While the Kabbalist-Alchemist seeks for the realization

of the former, the Occultist-Alchemist, spurning the gold of the mines, gives

all his attention and directs his efforts only towards the transmutation of the

baser quaternary into the divine upper trinity of man, which when finally

blended are one. The spiritual, mental, psychic, and physical planes of human

existence are in alchemy compared to the four elements, fire, air, water and

earth, and are each capable of a threefold constitution, i.e., fixed, mutable

and volatile. Little or nothing is known by the word concerning the origin of

this archaic branch of philosophy; but it is certain that it antedates the

construction of any known Zodiac, and, as dealing with the personified forces of

nature, probably also any of the mythologies of the world; nor is there any

doubt that the true secret of transmutation (on the physical plane) was known in

 


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days of old, and lost before the dawn of the so-called historical period. Modern

chemistry owes its best fundamental discoveries to alchemy, but regardless of

the undeniable truism of the latter that there is but one element in the

universe, chemistry has placed metals in the class of elements and is only now

beginning to find out its gross mistake. Even sonic Encyclopædists are now

forced to confess that if most of the accounts of transmutations are fraud or

delusion, “yet some of them are accompanied by testimony which renders them

probable. . . By means of the galvanic battery even the alkalis have been

discovered to have a metallic base. The possibility of obtaining metal from

other substances which contain the ingredients composing it, and of changing one

metal into another . . . must therefore be left undecided. Nor are all

alchemists to be considered impostors. Many have laboured under the conviction

of obtaining their object, with indefatigable patience and purity of heart,

which is earnestly recommended by sound alchemists as the principal requisite

for the success of their labours.”

(Pop. Encyclop.)

 

Alcyone (Gr.), or Halcyone, daughter of Æolus, and wife of Ceyx, who was drowned

as he was journeying to consult the oracle, upon which she threw herself into

the sea. Accordingly both were changed, through the mercy of the gods, into

king-fishers. The female is said to lay her eggs on the sea and keep it calm

during the seven days before and seven days after the winter solstice. It has a

very occult significance in ornithomancy.

 

Alectromancy (Gr.). Divination by means of a cock, or other bird; a circle was

drawn and divided into spaces, each one allotted to a letter; corn was spread

over these places and note was taken of the successive lettered divisions from

which the bird took grains of corn. [w.w.w.]

 

Alethæ (Phœn) “Fire worshippers” from Al-alt, the God of Fire. The same as the

Kabiri or divine Titans. As the seven emanations of Agruerus (Saturn) they are

connected with all the fire, solar and” storm gods (Maruts).

 

Aletheia (Gr.). Truth; also Alethia, one of Apollo’s nurses.

 

Alexadrian School (of Philosophers). This famous school arose in Alexandria

(Egypt) which was for several centuries the great seat of learning and

philosophy. Famous for its library, which bears the name of “Alexandrian”,

founded by Ptolemy Soter, who died in 283 B.C., at the very beginning of his

reign ; that library which once boasted of 700,000 rolls or volumes (Aulus

Gellius); for its museum, the first real academy of sciences and arts ; for its

world-famous scholars, such as Euclid (the father of scientific geometry),

Apollonius of Perga (the author of the still extant work on conic sections),

Nicomachus (the arithmetician); astronomers, natural philosophers, anatomists

such as Herophilus and


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Erasistratus, physicians, musicians, artists, etc., etc. ; it became still more

famous for its Eclectic, or the New Platonic school, founded in 193 A.D., by

Ammonius Saccas, whose disciples were Origen, Plotinus, and many others now

famous in history. The most celebrated schools of Gnostics had their origin in

Alexandria. Philo Judæus Josephus, lamblichus, Porphyry, Clement of Alexandria,

Eratosthenes the astronomer, Hypatia the virgin philosopher, and numberless

other stars of second magnitude, all belonged at various times to these great

schools, and helped to make Alexandria one of the most justly renowned seats of

learning that the world has ever produced.

 

Alhim (Heb.). See “Elohim”.

 

Alkahest (Arab.). The universal solvent in Alchemy (see "Alchemy "); but in

mysticism, the Higher Self, the union with which makes of matter (lead), gold,

and restores all compound things such as the human body and its attributes to

their primæval essence.

 

Almadel;  the Book. A treatise on Theurgia or White Magic by an unknown mediæval

European author; it is not infrequently found in volumes of MSS. called Keys of

Solomon. [ w.w.w.]

 

Almeh (Arab.). Dancing girls; the same as the Indian nautchies, the temple and

public dancers.

 

Alpha Polaris (Lat.). The same as Dhruva, the pole-star of 31,105 years ago.

 

Alswider (Scand.). ‘‘ All-swift’’, the name of the horse of the moon, in the

Eddas.

 

Altruism (Lat.). From alter = other. A quality opposed to egoism. Actions

tending to do good to others, regardless of self.

 

Aize, Liber;  de Lapide Philosophico. An alchemic treatise by an unknown German

author; dated 1677. It is to be found reprinted in the Hermetic Museum; in it is

the well known design of a man with legs extended and his body hidden by a seven

pointed star. Eliphaz Lévi has copied it. [ w.w.w.]

 

Ama (Heb.)., Amia, (Chald.). Mother. A title of Sephira Binah, whose “divine

name is Jehovah” and who is called “Supernal Mother”.

 

Amânasa (Sk.). The “ Mindless”, the early races of this planet; also certain

Hindu gods.

 

Amara-Kosha (Sk.). The “immortal vocabulary”. The oldest dictionary known in the

world and the most perfect vocabulary of classical Sanskrit ; by Amara Sinha, a

sage of the second century.

 

Ambâ (Sk.). The name of the eldest of the seven Pleiades, the heavenly sisters

married each to a Rishi belonging to the Saptariksha or the seven Rishis of the

constellation known as the Great Bear.


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Ambhâmsi (Sk.). A name of the chief of the Kumâras Sanat-Sujâta, signifying the

“waters”. This epithet will become more comprehensible when we remember that the

later type of Sanat-Sujâta was Michael, the Archangel, who is called in the

Talmud “the Prince of Waters”, and in the Roman Catholic Church is regarded as

the patron of gulfs and promontories. Sanat-Sujâta is the immaculate son of the

immaculate mother (Ambâ or Aditi, chaos and space) or the “waters” of limitless

space.

(See Secret Doctrine-, Vol. I., p. 460.)

 

Amdo (Tib.). A sacred locality, the birthplace of Tson-kha-pa, the great Tibetan

reformer and the founder of the Gelukpa (yellow caps), who is regarded as an

Avatar of Amita-buddha.

 

Amên. In Hebrew is formed of the letters A M N = 1,40,50 =91,and is thus a

simile of “Jehovah Adonai”=10, 5, 6, 5 and 1,4, 50,10 =91 together; it is one

form of the Hebrew word for “truth”. In common parlance Amen is said to mean “so

be it”. [ w.w.w.]

But, in esoteric parlance Amen means “the concealed”. Manetho Sebennites says

the word signifies that which is hidden and we know through Hecatæus and others

that the Egyptians used the word to call upon their great God of Mystery, Ammon

(or “Ammas, the hidden god ”) to make himself conspicuous and manifest to them.

Bonomi, the famous hieroglyphist, calls his worshippers very pertinently the

“Amenoph”, and Mr. Bonwick quotes a writer who says: “Ammon, the hidden god,

will remain for ever hidden till anthropomorphically revealed; gods who are afar

off are useless”. Amen is styled “Lord of the new-moon festival”. Jehovah-Adonai

is a new form of the ram-headed god Amoun or Ammon (q.v.) who was invoked by the

Egyptian priests under the name of Amen.

 

Amenti (Eg.). Esoterically and literally, the dwelling of the God Amen, or

Amoun, or the “hidden”, secret god. Exoterically the kingdom of Osiris divided

into fourteen parts, each of which was set aside for some purpose connected with

the after state of the defunct. Among other things, in one of these was the Hall

of Judgment. It was the “Land of the West”, the “Secret Dwelling”, the dark

land, and the “doorless house”. But it was also Ker-noter, the “abode of the

gods”, and the “land of ghosts” like the “ Hades” of the Greeks (q.v.). It was

also the “Good Father’s House” (in which there are “many mansions”). The

fourteen divisions comprised, among many others, Aanroo (q.v.), the hall of the

Two Truths, the Land of Bliss, Neter-xev “the funeral (or burial) place”

Otamer-xev, the “Silence-loving Fields”, and also many other mystical halls and

dwellings, one like the Sheol of the Hebrews, another like the Devachan of the

Occultists, etc., etc. Out of the fifteen gates of the abode of Osiris, there

were two chief ones,


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the “gate of entrance” or Rustu, and the “gate of exit” (reincarnation) Amh. But

there was no room in Amenti to represent the orthodox Christian Hell. The worst

of all was the Hall of the eternal Sleep and Darkness. As Lepsius has it, the

defunct “sleep (therein) in incorruptible forms, they wake not to see their

brethren, they recognize no longer father and mother, their hearts feel nought

toward their wife and children. This is the dwelling of the god All-Dead. . . .

Each trembles to pray to him, for he hears not. Nobody can praise him, for he

regards not those who adore him. Neither does he notice any offering brought to

him.” This god is Karmic Decree; the land of Silence—the abode of those who die

absolute disbelievers, those dead from accident before their allotted time, and

finally the dead on the threshold of Avitchi, which is never in Amenti or any

other subjective state, save in one case, but on this land of forced re-birth.

These tarried not very long even in their state of heavy sleep, of oblivion and

darkness, but, were carried more or less speedily toward Amh the “exit gate”.

 

Amesha Spentas (Zend). Amshaspends. The six angels or divine Forces personified

as gods who attend upon Ahura Mazda, of which he is the synthesis and the

seventh. They are one of the prototypes of the Roman Catholic “Seven Spirits” or

Angels with Michael as chief, or the “Celestial Host”; the “ Seven Angels of the

Presence”. They are the Builders, Cosmocratores, of the Gnostics and identical

with the Seven Prajâpatis, the Sephiroth, etc. (q.v.).

 

Amitâbha. The Chinese perversion of the Sanskrit Amrita Buddha, or the “Immortal

Enlightened”, a name of Gautama Buddha. The name has such variations as Amita,

Abida, Amitâya, etc., and. is explained as meaning both “Boundless Age” and

“Boundless Light”. The original conception of the ideal of an impersonal divine

light has been anthrdpomorphized with time.

 

Ammon (Eg.). One of the great gods of Egypt. Ammon or Amoun is far older than

Amoun-Ra, and is identified with Baal. Hammon, the Lord of Heaven. Amoun-Ra was

Ra the Spiritual Sun, the “Sun of Righteousness”, etc., for—“the Lord God is a

Sun”. He is the God of Mystery and the hieroglyphics of his name are often

reversed. He is Pan, All-Nature esoterically, and therefore the universe, and

the “Lord of Eternity”. Ra, as declared by an old inscription, was “begotten by

Neith but not engendered”. He is called the “self- begotten” Ra,, and created

goodness from a glance of his fiery eye, as Set-Typhon created evil from his. As

Ammon (also Amoun and Amen), Ra, he is “Lord of the worlds enthroned on the

Sun’s disk and appears in the abyss of heaven”. A very ancient hymn spells the

name “Amen-ra”, and hails the “Lord of the thrones of the earth...Lord


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of Truth, father of the gods, maker of man, creator of the beasts, Lord of

Existence, Enlightener of the Earth, sailing in heaven in tranquillity. . . All

hearts are softened at beholding thee, sovereign of life, health and strength We

worship thy spirit who alone made us”, etc., etc. (See Bonwick’s Egyptian

Belief.) Ammon Ra is called “his mother’s husband” and her son. (See “Chnourmis”

and “Chnouphis” and also Secret Doctrine I, pp. 91 and It was to the

“ram-headed” god that the Jews sacrificed lambs, and the lamb of Christian

theology is a disguised reminiscence of the ram.

 

Ammonius Saccas. A great and good philosopher who lived in Alexandria between

the second and third centuries of our era, and who was the founder of the

Neo-Platonic School of Philaletheians or “lovers of truth”. He was of poor birth

and born of Christian parents, but endowed with such prominent, almost divine,

goodness as to he called Theodidaktos, the “god-taught”. He honoured that which

was good in Christianity, but broke with it and the churches very early, being

unable to find in it any superiority over the older religions.

 

Amrita (Sk.). The ambrosial drink or food of the gods; the food giving

immortality. The elixir of life churned out of the ocean of milk in the Purânic

allegory. An old Vedic term applied to the sacred Soma juice in the Temple

Mysteries.

 

Amûlam Mûlam (Sk.). Lit., the “rootless root” ; Mulâprakriti of the Vedantins

the spiritual “root of nature”.

 

Amun (Copt.). The Egyptian god of wisdom, who had only Initiates or Hierophants

to serve him as priests.

 

Anâ (Chald.). The “invisible heaven”or Astral Light ; the heavenly mother of the

terrestrial sea, Mar, whence probably the origin of Anna, the mother of Mary.

 

Anacalypsis (Gr.)., or an “Attempt to withdraw the veil of the Saitic Isis”, by

Godfrey Higgins. This is a very valuable work, now only obtainable at

extravagant prices; it treats of the origin of all myths, religions and

mysteries, and displays an immense fund of classical erudition. [ w.w.w.]

 

Anâgâmin (Sk.). Anagam. One who is no longer to be reborn into the world of

desire. One stage before becoming Arhat and ready for Nirvâna. The third of the

four grades of holiness on the way to final Initiation.

 

Anâhata Chakram (Sk.). The seat or “wheel” of life; the heart, according to some

commentators.

 

Anâhata Shabda (Sk.). The mystic voices and sounds heard by the Yogi at the

incipient stage of his meditation, The third of the four states


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of sound, otherwise called Madhyamâ—the fourth state being when it is

perceptible by the physical sense of hearing. The sound in its previous stages

is not heard except by those who have developed their internal, highest

spiritual senses. The four stages are called respectively, Parâ, Pashyantî,

Madhyamâ and Vaikharî.

 

Anaitia (Chald.). A derivation from Anâ (q.v.), a goddess identical with the

Hindu Annapurna, one of the names of Kâlî—the female aspect of Siva—at her best.

 

Analogeticists. The disciples of Ammonius Saccas (q.v.), so called because of

their practice of interpreting all sacred legends, myths and mysteries by a

principle of analogy and correspondence, which is now found in the Kabbalistic

system, and pre-eminently so in the Schools of Esoteric Philosophy, in the East.

(See “ The Twelve Signs of the Zodiac,” by T. Subba Row in Five Years of

Theosophy.)

 

 

Ânanda (Sk.). Bliss, joy, felicity, happiness. A name of the favourite disciple

of Gautama, the Lord Buddha.

 

Ânanda-Lahari (Sk.). “The wave of joy”; a beautiful poem written by

Sankarâchârya, a hymn to Pârvati, very mystical and occult.

 

Ânandamaya-Kosha (Sk.). “The illusive Sheath of Bliss”, i.e., the mâyâvic or

illusory form, the appearance of that which is formless. “Bliss”, or the higher

soul. The Vedantic name for one of the five Koshas or “principles” in man;

identical with our Âtmâ-Buddhi or the Spiritual Soul.

 

Ananga (Sk.). The “Bodiless”. An epithet of Kâma, god of love.

 

Ananta-Sesha (Sk.). The Serpent of Eternity—the couch of Vishnu during Pralaya

(lit., endless remain).

 

Anastasis (Gr.). The continued existence of the soul.

 

Anatu (Chald.). The female aspect of Anu (q.v.). She represents the Earth and

Depth, while her consort represents the Heaven and Height. She is the mother of

the god Hea, and produces heaven and earth. Astronomically she is Ishtar, Venus,

the Ashtoreth of the Jews.

 

Anaxagoras (Gr.) A famous Ionian philosopher who lived 500 B.C., studied

philosophy under Anaximenes of Miletus, and settled in the days of Pericles at

Athens. Socrates, Euripides, Archelaus and other distinguished men and

philosophers were among his disciples and pupils. He was a most learned

astronomer and was one of the first to explain openly that which was taught by

Pythagoras secretly, namely, the movements of the planets, the eclipses of the

sun and moon, etc. It was he who taught the theory of Chaos, on the principle

that “nothing comes from nothing”; and of atoms, as the underlying essence and

substance of all bodies, “of the same nature as the bodies which they formed”.


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These atoms, he taught, were primarily put in motion by Nous (Universal

Intelligence, the Mahat of the Hindus), which Nous is an immaterial, eternal,

spiritual entity; by this combination the world was formed, the material gross

bodies sinking down, and the ethereal atoms (or fiery ether) rising and

spreading in the upper celestial regions. Antedating modern science by over 2000

years, he taught that the stars were of the same material as our earth, and the

sun a glowing mass; that the moon was a dark, uninhabitable body, receiving its

light from the sun; the comets, wandering stars or bodies ; and over and above

the said science, he confessed himself thoroughly convinced that the real

existence of things, perceived by our senses, could not be demonstrably proved.

He died in exile at Lampsacus at the age of seventy-two.

 

Ancients, The. A name given by Occultists to the seven creative Rays, born of

Chaos, or the “Deep”.

 

Anda-Katâha (Sk.). The outer covering, or the “shell” of Brahmâ’s egg; the area

within which our manifested universe is encompassed.

 

Androgyne Goat (of Mendes). See “Baphomet”.

 

Androgyne Ray (Esot.). The first differentiated ray; the Second Logos; Adam

Kadmon in the Kabalah; the “male and female created he them”, of the first

chapter of Genesis.

 

Audumla (Scand.). The symbol of nature in the Norse mythology; the cow who licks

the salt rock, whence the divine Buri is born, before man’s creation.

 

Angâraka (Sk.). Fire Star; the planet Mars; in Tibetan, Mig-mar.

 

Augiras. One of the Prajâpatis. A son of Daksha ; a lawyer, etc., etc.

 

Angirasas (Sk.). The generic name of several Purânic individuals and things; a

class of Pitris, the ancestors of man ; a river in Plaksha, one of the Sapta

dwîpas (q.v).

 

Angra Mainyus (Zend.). The Zoroastrian name for Ahriman; the evil spirit of

destruction and opposition who (in the Vendidâd, Fargard I.) is said by Ahura

Mazda to “counter-create by his witchcraft” every beautiful land the God

creates; for “Angra Mainyu is all death”.

 

AnimaMundi (Lat.). The“Soul of the World”, the same as the Alaya of the Northern

Buddhists; the divine essence which permeates, animates and informs all, from

the smallest atom of matter to man and god. It is in a sense the “seven-skinned

mother” of the stanzas in the Secret Doctrine, the essence of seven planes of

sentience, consciousness and differentiation, moral and physical. In its highest

aspect it is Nirvâna, in its lowest Astral Light. It was feminine with the

Gnostics, the early Christians and the Nazarenes; bisexual with other sects, who

considered it only in its four lower planes. Of igneous, ethereal nature in the


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objective world of form (and then ether), and divine and spiritual in its three

higher planes. When it is said that every human soul was born by detaching

itself from the Anima Mundi, it means, esoterically, that our higher Egos are of

an essence identical with It, which is a radiation of the ever unknown Universal

ABSOLUTE.

 

Anjala (Sk.). One of the personified powers which spring from Brahmâ’s body—the

Prajâpatis.

 

Anjana (Sk.). A serpent, a son of Kasyapa Rishi.

 

Annamaya Kosha (Sk.). A Vedantic term. The same as Sthûla Sharîra or the

physical body. It is the first “sheath” of the five sheaths accepted by the

Vedantins, a sheath being the same as that which is called “principle” in

Theosophy.

 

Annapura (Sk.). See “Anâ”.

 

Annedotus (Gr.). The generic name for the Dragons or Men-Fishes, of which there

were five. The historian Berosus narrates that there rose out of the Erythræan

Sea on several occasions a semi-dæmon named Oannes or Annedotus, who although

part animal yet taught the Chaldeans useful arts and everything that could

humanise them. (See Lenormant Chaldean Magic, p. 203, and also “Oannes”.)

[w.w.w.]

 

Anoia (Gr.). “Want of understanding”, “folly”. Anoia is the name given by Plato

and others to the lower Manas when too closely allied with Kâma, which is

irrational (agnoia). The Greek word agnoia is evidently a derivation from and

cognate to the Sanskrit word ajnâna (phonetically, agnyana) or ignorance,

irrationality, absence of knowledge. (See “Agnoia” and “Agnostic”.)

 

Anouki (Eg.). A form of Isis; the goddess of life, from which name the Hebrew

Ank, life. (See “Anuki.”)

 

Ansumat (Sk.). A Purânic personage, the “nephew of 60,000 uncles” King Sagara’s

sons, who were reduced to ashes by a single glance from Kapila Rishi’s “Eye”.

 

Antahkarana (Sk.)., or Antaskarana. The term has various meanings, which differ

with every school of philosophy and sect. Thus Sankârachârya renders the word as

“understanding”; others, as “the internal instrument, the Soul, formed by the

thinking principle and egoism”; whereas the Occultists explain it as the path or

bridge between the Higher and the Lower Manas, the divine Ego, and the personal

Soul of man. It serves as a medium of communication between the two, and conveys

from the Lower to the Higher Ego all those personal impressions and thoughts of

men which can, by their nature, be assimilated and stored by the undying Entity,

and be thus made immortal with it, these being the only elements of the

evanescent Personality that survive death and time. It thus stands to reason

that


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only that which is noble, spiritual and divine in man can testify in Eternity to

his having lived.

 

Anthesteria (Gr.). The feast of Flowers (Floralia): during this festival the

rite of Baptism or purification was performed in the Eleusinian Mysteries in the

temple lakes, the Limnae, when the

Mystæ were made to pass through the “narrow gate” of Dionysus, to emerge

therefrom as full Initiates.

 

Anthropology. The Science of man; it embraces among other things :—Physiology,

or that branch of natural science which discloses the mysteries of the organs

and their functions in men, animals and plants; and also, and

especially,—Psychology or the great, and in our days, too much neglected science

of the soul, both as an entity distinct from the spirit, and in its relation to

the spirit and body. In modern science, psychology deals only or principally

with conditions of the nervous system, and almost absolutely ignores the

psychical essence and nature. Physicians denominate the science of insanity

psychology, and name the lunacy chair in medical colleges by that designation.

(Isis Unveiled.)

 

Anthropomorphism (Gr.). From “anthropos” meaning man. The act of endowing god or

gods with a human form and human attributes or qualities.

 

Anu (Sk.). An “atom”, a title of Brahmâ, who is said to be an atom just as is

the infinite universe. A hint at the pantheistic nature of the god.

 

Anu (Chald.). One of the highest of Babylonian deities, “King of Angels and

Spirits, Lord of the city of Erech”. He is the Ruler and God of Heaven and

Earth. His symbol is a star and a kind of Maltese cross—emblems of divinity and

sovereignty. He is an abstract divinity supposed to inform the whole expense of

ethereal space or heaven, while his “wife” informs the more material planes.

Both are the types of the Ouranos and Gaia of Hesiod. They sprang from the

original Chaos. All his titles and attributes are grapfiic and indicate health,

purity physical and moral, antiquity and holiness. Anu was the earliest god of

the city of Erech. One of his sons was Bil orVil-Kan, the god of fire, of

various metals, and of weapons. George Smith very pertinently sees in this deity

a close connection with a kind of cross breed between “the biblical Tubal Cain

and the classical Vulcan” . .who is considered to be moreover “the most potent

deity in relation to witchcraft and spells generally”.

 

Anubis (Gr.) The dog -headed god, identical, in a certain aspect, with Horus. He

is pre-eminently the god who deals with the disembodied, or the resurrected in

post mortem life. Anepou is his Egyptian


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name. He is a psychopompic deity, “the Lord of the Silent Land of the West, the

land of the Dead, the preparer of the way to the other world ”, to whom the dead

were entrusted, to be led by him to Osiris, the Judge. In short, he is the

“embalmer” and the “guardian of the dead”. One of the oldest deities in Egypt,

Mariette Bey having found the image of this deity in tombs of the Third Dynasty.

 

Anugîtâ (Sk.). One of the Upanishads. A very occult treatise. (See The sacred

Books of the East.)

 

Anugraha (Sk.). The eighth creation in the Vishnu Purâna.

 

Anuki (Eg.). “See Anouki” supra. “The word Ank in Hebrew, means ‘my life’, my

being, which is the personal pronoun Anocki, from the name of the Egyptian

goddess Anouki ”, says the author of the

Hebrew Mystery, or the Source of Measures.

 

Anumati (Sk.). The moon at the full; when from a god—Soma—she becomes a goddess.

 

Anumitis (Sk.). Inference, deduction in philosophy.

 

Anunnaki (Chald.). Angels or Spirits of the Earth; terrestrial Elementals also.

 

Anunit (Chald.) The goddess of Akkad ; Lucifer, the morning star. Venus as the

evening star

was Ishtar of Erech.

 

Anupâdaka (Sk.). Anupapâdaka, also Aupapâduka; means parentless”,

“self-existing”, born without any parents or progenitors. A term applied to

certain self-created gods, and the Dhyâni Buddhas.

 

Anuttara (Sk.). Unrivalled, peerless. Thus Anuttara Bodhi means unexcelled or

unrivalled intelligence”, Anuttara Dharma, unrivalled law or religion, &c.

 

Anyâmsam Aniyasâm (Sk.). A no-ranîyânsam (in Bhagavad gîtâ). Lit., “the most

atomic of the atomic; smallest of the small ”. Applied to the universal deity,

whose essence is everywhere.

 

Aour (Chald.). The synthesis of the two aspects of astro-etheric light; and the

od—the life-giving, and the ob—the death-giving light.

 

Apâm Napât (Zend). A mysterious being, corresponding to the Fohat of the

Occultists. It is both a Vedic and an Avestian name. Literally, the name means

the “Son of the Waters” (of space, i.e., Ether),

for in the Avesta Apâm Napât stands between the fire-yazatas and the

water-yazatas .

(See Secret Doctrine, Vol. II., p. 400, note).

 

Apâna (Sk.). “Inspirational breath”; a practice in Yoga. Prana and apâna are the

“expirational” and the “inspirational” breaths. It is called “vital wind” in

Anugîta.

 

Apap (Eg.), in Greek Apophis. The symbolical Serpent of Evil. The Solar Boat and

the Sun are the great Slayers of Apap in the Book of the


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Dead. It is Typhon, who having killed Osiris, incarnates in Apap, seeking to

kill Horus. Like Taoer (or

Ta-ap-oer) the female aspect of Typhon, Apap is called “the devourer of the

Souls”, and truly, since Apap symbolizes the animal body, as matter left

soulless and to itself. Osiris, being, like all the other Solar gods, a type of

the Higher Ego (Christos), Horus (his son) is the lower Manas or the personal

Ego. On many a monument one can see Horus, helped by a number of dog-headed gods

armed with crosses and spears, killing Apap. Says an Orientalist : “The God

Horus standing as conqueror upon the Serpent of Evil, may be considered as the

earliest form of our well-known group of St. George (who is Michael) and the

Dragon, or holiness trampling down sin.” Draconianism did not die with the

ancient religions, but has passed bodily into the latest Christian form of the

worship.

 

Aparinâmin (Sk.). The Immutable and the Unchangeable, the reverse of Parinâmin,

that which is subject to modification, differentiation or decay.

 

Aparoksha (Sk.) Direct perception.

 

Âpava (Sk.) Lit. “He who sports in the Water”. Another aspect of Nârâyana or

Vishnu and of Brahmâ combined, for Âpava, like the latter, divides himself into

two parts, male and female, and creates Vishnu, who creates Virâj, who creates

Manu. The name is explained and interpreted in various ways in Brahmanical

literature.

 

Apavarga (Sk.). Emancipation from repeated births.

 

Apis (Eg.), or Hapi-ankh. The “living deceased one” or Osiris incarnate in the

sacred white Bull. Apis was the bull-god that, on reaching the age of

twenty-eight, the age when Osiris was killed by Typhon—was put to death with

great ceremony. It was not the Bull that was worshipped but the Osiridian

symbol; just as Christians kneel now before the Lamb, the symbol of Jesus

Christ, in their churches.

 

Apocrypha (Gr.). Very erroneously explained and adopted as doubtful, or

spurious. The word means simply secret, esoteric, hidden.

 

Apollo Belvidere. Of all the ancient statues of Apollo, the son of Jupiter and

Latona, called Phœbus, Helios, the radiant and the Sun, the best and most

perfect is the one known by this name, which is in the Belvidere gallery of the

Vatican at Rome. It is called the Pythian Apollo, as the god is represented in

the moment of his victory over the serpent Python. The statue was found in the

ruins of Antium, in 1503.

 

Apollonius of Tyana (Gr.). A wonderful philosopher born in Cappadocia about the

beginning of the first century; an ardent Pythagorean, who studied the Phœnician

sciences under Euthydemus; and Pythagorean philosophy and other studies under

Euxenus of


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Heraclea. According to the tenets of this school he remained a vegetarian the

whole of his long life, fed only on fruit and herbs, drank no wine, wore

vestments made only of plant-fibres, walked barefooted, and let his hair grow to

its full length, as all the Initiates before and after him. He was initiated by

the priests of the temple of Æsculapius (Asciepios) at Ægae, and learnt many of

the “miracles” for healing the sick wrought by the god of medicine. Having

prepared himself for a higher initiation by a silence of five years, and by

travel, visiting Antioch, Ephesus, Pamphylia and other parts, he journeyed via

Babylon to India, all his intimate disciples having abandoned him, as they

feared to go to the “land of enchantments”. A casual disciple, Damis, however,

whom he met on his way, accompanied him in his travels. At Babylon he was

initiated by the Chaldees and Magi, according to Damis, whose narrative was

copied by one named Philostratus a hundred years later. After his return from

India, he showed himself a true Initiate, in that the pestilences and

earthquakes, deaths of kings and other events, which he prophesied duly

happened. At Lesbos, the priests of Orpheus, being jealous of him, refused to

initiate him into their peculiar mysteries, though they did so several years

later. He preached to the people of Athens and other cities the purest and

noblest ethics, and the phenomena he produced were as wonderful as they were

numerous and well attested. “How is it”, enquires Justin Martyr in dismay—” how

is it that the talismans (telesmata) of Apollonius have power, for they prevent,

as we see, the fury of the waves and the violence of the winds, and the attacks

of the wild beasts; and whilst our Lord’s miracles are preserved by tradition

alone, those of Apollonius are most numerous and actually manifested in present

facts?”

 . (Quaest, XXIV.). But an answer is easily found to this in the fact that after

crossing the Hindu Kush, Apollonius had been directed by a king to the abode of

the Sages, whose abode it may be to this day, by whom he was taught unsurpassed

knowledge. His dialogues with the Corinthian Menippus indeed give us the

esoteric catechism and disclose (when understood) many an important mystery of

nature. Apollonius was the friend, correspondent and guest of kings and queens,

and no marvellous or “magic” powers are better attested than his. At the end of

his long and wonderful life he opened an esoteric school at Ephesus, and died

aged almost one hundred years.

 

Aporrheta (Gr.). Secret instructions upon esoteric subjects given during the

Egyptian and Grecian Mysteries.

 

Apsaras (Sk.). An Undine or Water-Nymph, from the Paradise or Heaven of Indra.

The Apsarases

are in popular belief the “wives of the gods” and called Surânganâs, and by a

less honourable term, Sumad-âtmajâs or the “daughters of pleasure”, for it is

fabled of them


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that when they appeared at the churning of the Ocean neither Gods (Suras) nor

Demons (Asuras) would take them for legitimate wives. Urvasi and several others

of them are mentioned in the Vedas. In Occultism they are certain

“sleep-producing” aquatic plants, and inferior forces of nature.

 

Ar-Abu Nasr-al-Farabi, called in Latin Alpharabius, a Persian, and the greatest

Aristotelian philosopher of the age. He was born in 950 A.D., and is reported to

have been murdered in 1047. He was an Hermetic philosopher and possessed the

power of hypnotizing through music, making those who heard him play the lute

laugh, weep, dance and do what he liked. Some of his works on Hermetic

philosophy may be found in the Library of Leyden.

 

Arahat (Sk.). Also pronounced and written Arhat, Arhan, Rahat, &c., “the worthy

one”, lit., “deserving divine honours”. This was the name first given to the

Jain and subsequently to the Buddhist holy men initiated into the esoteric

mysteries. The Arhat is one who has entered the best and highest path, and is

thus emancipated from rebirth.

 

Arani (Sk.). The “female Arani” is a name of the Vedic Aditi (esoterically, the

womb of the world).

Arani is a Swastika, a disc-like wooden vehicle, in which the Brahmins generated

fire by friction with pramantha, a stick, the symbol of the male generator. A

mystic ceremony with a world of secret meaning in it and very sacred, perverted

into phallic significance by the materialism of the age.

 

Âranyaka (Sk.). Holy hermits, sages who dwelt in ancient India in forests. Also

a portion of the Vedas containing Upanishads, etc.

 

Araritha (Heb.). A very famous seven-lettered Kabbalistic wonder-word ; its

numeration is 813 ; its letters are collected by Notaricon from the sentence

“one principle of his unity, one beginning of his individuality, his change is

unity”. [ w.w.w.].

 

Arasa Maram (Sk.). The Hindu sacred tree of knowledge. In occult philosophy a

mystic word.

 

Arba-il (Chald.). The Four Great Gods. Arba is Aramaic for four, and il is the

same as Al or El. Three male deities, and a female who is virginal yet

reproductive, form a very common ideal of Godhead. [w.w.w.]

 

Archangel (Gr.). Highest supreme angel. From the Greek arch, “chief” or

“primordial”, and angelos,

“messenger ”.

 

Archæus (Gr.). “The Ancient.” Used of the oldest manifested deity; a term

employed in the Kabalah ;

“archaic ”, old, ancient.

 

Archobiosis (Gr.). Primeval beginning of life.


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Archetypal Universe (Kab.). The ideal universe upon which the objective world

was built. [w.w.w.]

 

Archons (Gr.). In profane and biblical language “rulers” and princes; in

Occultism, primordial planetary spirits.

 

Archontes (Gr.). The archangels after becoming Ferouers (q.v.) or their own

shadows, having mission on earth; a mystic ubiquity; implying a double life; a

kind of hypostatic action, one of purity in a higher region, the other of

terrestrial activity exercised on our plane.

(See Iamblichus, De Mysterüs II., Chap. 3.)

 

Ardath (Heb.). This word occurs in the Second Book of Esdras, ix., 26. The name

has been given to one of the recent “occult novels” where much interest is

excited by the visit of the hero to a field in the Holy Land so named; magical

properties are attributed to it. In the Book of Esdras the prophet is sent to

this field called Ardath “where no house is builded” and bidden “eat there only

the flowers of the field, taste no flesh, drink no wine, and pray unto the

highest continually, and then will I come and talk with thee”. [w.w.w.]

 

Ardha-Nârî (Sk.). Lit., “half-woman”. Siva represented as Androgynous, as half

male and half female, a type of male and female energies combined. (See occult

diagram in Isis Unveiled, Vol. II.)

 

Ardhanârîswara (Sk.). Lit., “the bi-sexual lord”. Esoterically, the unpolarized

states of cosmic energy symbolised by the Kabalistic Sephira, Adam Kadmon, &c.

 

Ares. The Greek name for Mars, god of war; also a term used by Paracelsus, the

differentiated Force in Cosmos.

 

Argha (Chald.). The ark, the womb of Nature; the crescent moon, and a

life-saving ship ; also a cup for offerings, a vessel used for religious

ceremonies.

 

Arghyanâth (Sk.). Lit., “lord of libations”.

 

Arian. A follower of Arius, a presbyter of the Church in Alexandria in the

fourth century. One who holds that Christ is a created and human being, inferior

to God the Father, though a grand and noble man, a true adept versed in all the

divine mysteries.

 

Aristobulus (Gr) An Alexandrian writer, and an obscure philosopher. A Jew who

tried to prove that Aristotle explained the esoteric thoughts of Moses.

 

Arithmomancy (Gr.). The science of correspondences between gods, men, and

numbers, as taught by Pythagoras. [w.w.w.]

 

Arjuna (Sk.) Lit., the “white”. The third of the five Brothers Pandu or the

reputed Sons of Indra (esoterically the same as Orpheus). A disciple of Krishna,

who visited him and married Su-bhadrâ, his


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sister, besides many other wives, according to the allegory. During the

fratricidal war between the Kauravas and the Pândavas, Krishna instructed him in

the highest philosophy, while serving as his charioteer. (See Bhaguvad Gîtâ.)

 

Ark of Isis. At the great Egyptian annual ceremony, which took place in the

month of Athyr, the boat of Isis was borne in procession by the priests, and

Collyrian cakes or buns, marked with the sign of the cross (Tat), were eaten.

This was in commemoration of the weeping of Isis for the loss of Osiris, the

Athyr festival being very impressive. “Plato refers to the melodies on the

occasion as being very ancient,” writes Mr. Bonwick (Eg. Belief and Mod.

Thought). “ The Miserere in Rome has been said to be similar to its melancholy

cadence, and to be derived from it Weeping, veiled virgins followed the ark. The

Nornes, or veiled virgins, wept also for the loss of our Saxon forefathers’ god,

the ill-fated but good Baldur.”

 

Ark of the Covenant. Every ark-shrine, whether with the Egyptians, Hindus,

Chaldeans or Mexicans, was a phallic shrine, the symbol of the yoni or womb of

nature. The seket of the Egyptians, the ark, or sacred chest, stood on the

ara—its pedestal. The ark of Osiris, with the sacred relics of the god, was “of

the same size as the Jewish ark”, says S. Sharpe, the Egyptologist, carried by

priests with staves passed through its rings in sacred procession, as the ark

round which danced David, the King of Israel. Mexican gods also had their arks.

Diana, Ceres, and other goddesses as well as gods had theirs. The ark was a

boat—a vehicle in every case. “Thebes had a sacred ark 300 cubits long,” and

“the word Thebes is said to mean ark in Hebrew,” which is but a natural

recognition of the place to which the chosen people are indebted for their ark.

Moreover, as Bauer writes, “the Cherub was not first used by Moses.” The winged

Isis was the cherub or Arieh in Egypt, centuries before the arrival there of

even Abram or Sarai. “The external likeness of some of the Egyptian arks,

surmounted by their two winged human figures, to the ark of the covenant, has

often been noticed.” (Bible Educator.) And not only the “external” but the

internal “likeness” and sameness are now known to all. The arks, whether of the

covenant, or of honest, straightforward, Pagan symbolism, had originally and now

have one and the same meaning. The chosen people appropriated the idea and

forgot to acknowledge its source. It is the same as in the case of the “Urim”

and “Thummin” (q.v.). In Egypt, as shown by many Egyptologists, the two objects

were the emblems of the Two Truths. “Two figures of Re and Thmei were worn on

the breast-plate of the Egyptian High Priest. Thmé, plural thmin, meant truth in

Hebrew. Wilkinson says the figure of


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Truth had closed eyes. Rosellini speaks of the Thmei being worn as a necklace.

Diodorus gives such a necklace of gold and stones to the High Priest when

delivering judgment. The Septuagint translates Thummin as Truth”. (Bonwick’s

Egyp. Belief.)

 

Arka (Sk.). The Sun.

 

Arkites. The ancient priests who were attached to the Ark, whether of Isis, or

the Hindu Argua, and who were seven in number, like the priests of the Egyptian

Tat or any other cruciform symbol of the three and the four, the combination of

 

which gives a male-female number. The Avgha (or ark) was the four-fold female

principle, and the flame burning over it the triple lingham.

 

Aroueris (Gr.). The god Harsiesi, who was the elder Horus. He had a temple at

Ambos. if we bear in mind the definition of the chief Egyptian gods by Plutarch,

these myths will become more comprehensible; as he well says: “Osiris represents

the beginning and principle; Isis, that which receives; and Horus, the compound

of both. Horus engendered between them, is not eternal nor incorruptible, but,

being always in generation, he endeavours by vicissitudes of imitations, and by

periodical passion (yearly re-awakening to life) to continue always young, as if

he should never die.” Thus, since Horus is the personified physical world,

Aroueris, or the “elder Horus”, is the ideal Universe; and this accounts for the

saying that “he was begotten by Osiris and Isis when these were still in the

bosom of their mother”—Space. There is indeed, a good deal of mystery about this

god, but the meaning of the symbol becomes clear once one has the key to it.

 

Artephius.—A great Hermetic philosopher, whose true name was never known and

whose works are without dates, though it is known that he wrote his Secret Book

in the XIIth century. Legend has it that he was one thousand years old at that

time. There is a book on dreams by him in the possession of an Alchemist, now in

Bagdad, in which he gives out the secret of seeing the past, the present, and

the future, in sleep, and of remembering the things seen. There are but two

copies of this manuscript extant. The book on Dreams by the Jew Solomon Almulus,

published in Hebrew at Amsterdam in 1642, has a few reminiscences from the

former work of Artephius.

 

 

Artes (Eg.). The Earth; the Egyptian god Mars.

 

Artufas. A generic name in South America and the islands for temples of nagalism

or serpent worship.

 

Arundhatî (Sk.). The “Morning Star”; Lucifer-Venus.

 

Arûpa (Sk.). “Bodiless”, formless, as opposed to rûpa, “body”, or form.


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Arvâksrotas (Sk.). The seventh creation, that of man, in the Vishnu Purâna.

 

Arwaker (Scand.). Lit., “early waker”. The horse of the chariot of the Sun

driven by the maiden Sol, in the Eddas.

 

Ârya (Sk.) Lit., “the holy”; originally the title of Rishis, those who had

mastered the “Âryasatyâni” (q.v.) and entered the Âryanimârga path to Nirvâna or

Moksha, the great “four-fold” path. But now the name has become the epithet of a

race, and our Orientalists, depriving the Hindu Brahmans of their birth-right,

have made Aryans of all Europeans. In esotericism, as the four paths, or stages,

can be entered only owing to great spiritual development and “growth in holiness

”, they are called the “four fruits”. The degrees of Arhatship, called

respectively Srotâpatti, Sakridâgamin, Anâgâmin, and Arhat, or the four classes

of Âryas, correspond to these four paths and truths.

 

Ârya-Bhata (Sk.) The earliest Hindu algerbraist and astronomer, with the

exception of Asura Maya (q.v.); the author of a work called Ârya Siddhânta, a

system of Astronomy.

 

Ârya-Dâsa (Sk.) Lit., “Holy Teacher”. A great sage and Arhat of the Mahâsamghika

school.

 

Aryahata (Sk.) The “Path of Arhatship”, or of holiness.

 

Âryasangha (Sk.) The Founder of the first Yogâchârya School. This Arhat, a

direct disciple of Gautama, the Buddha, is most unaccountably mixed up and

confounded with a personage of the same name, who is said to have lived in

Ayôdhya (Oude) about the fifth or sixth century of our era, and taught Tântrika

worship in addition to the Yogâchârya system. Those who sought to make it

popular, claimed that he was the same Âryasangha, that had been a follower of

Sâkyamuni, and that he was 1,000 years old. Internal evidence alone is

sufficient to show that the works written by him and translated about the year

600 of our era, works full of Tantra worship, ritualism, and tenets followed now

considerably by the “red-cap” sects in Sikhim, Bhutan, and Little Tibet, cannot

be the same as the lofty system of the early Yogâcharya school of pure Buddhism,

which is neither northern nor southern, but absolutely esoteric. Though none of

the genunine Yogâchârya books (the Narjol chodpa) have ever been made public or

marketable, yet one finds in the Yogâchârya Bhûmi Shâstra of the

pseudo-Âryasangha a great deal from the older system, into the tenets of which

he may have been initiated. It is, however, so mixed up with Sivaism and

Tantrika magic and superstitions, that the work defeats its own end,

notwithstanding its remarkable dialectical subtilty. How unreliable are the

conclusions at which our Orientalists arrive, and how contradictory the dates

assigned by them, may be seen in the case in hand. While Csoma de Körös (who,

by-the-bye, never


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became acquainted with the Gelukpa (yellow-caps), but got all his information

from “red-cap” lamas of the Borderland), places the pseudo-Âryasangha in the

seventh century of our era; Wassiljew, who passed most of his life in China,

proves him to have lived much earlier; and Wilson (see Roy. As. Soc., Vol. VI.,

p. 240), speaking of the period when Âryasangha’s works, which are still extant

in Sanskrit, were written, believes it now “established, that they have been

written at the latest, from a century and a half before, to as much after, the

era of Christianity”. At all events since it is beyond dispute that the Mahâyana

religious works were all written far before Âryasangha’s time—whether he lived

in the “second century B.C.”, or the “seventh .A.D.”—and that these contain all

and far more of the fundamental tenets of the Yogâchârya system, so disfigured

by the Ayôdhyan imitator—the inference is that there must exist somewhere a

genuine rendering free from popular Sivaism and left-hand magic.

 

Aryasatyâni (Sk.). The four truths or the four dogmas, which are (1) Dukha, or

that misery and pain are the unavoidable concomitants of sentient (esoterically,

physical) existence; (2) Samudaya, the truism that suffering is intensified by

human passions; (3) Nirôdha, that the crushing out and extinction of all such

feelings are possible for a man “on the path”; (4) Mârga, the narrow way, or

that path which leads to such a blessed result.

 

Aryavarta (Sk.). The “land of the Aryas”, or India. The ancient name for

Northern India. The Brahmanical invaders (“ from the Oxus” say the Orientalists)

first settled. It is erroneous to give this name to the whole,of India, since

Manu gives the name of “the land of the Aryas” only to “the tract between the

Himalaya and the Vindhya ranges, from the eastern to the western sea”.

 

Asakrit Samâdhi (Sk.). A certain degree of ecstatic contemplation. A stage in

Samâdhi.

 

Âsana (Sk.). The third stage of Hatha Yoga, one of the prescribed postures of

meditation.

 

Asat (Sk.). A philosophical term meaning “non-being”, or rather non-be-ness. The

“incomprehensible nothingness”. Sat, the immutable, eternal, ever-present, and

the one real “Be-ness” (not Being) is spoken of as being “ Born of Asat, and

Asat begotten by Sat”. The unreal, or Prakriti, objective nature regarded as an

illusion. Nature, or the illusive shadow of its one true essence.

 

Asathor (Scand.). The same as Thor. The god of storms and thunder, a hero who

receives Miölnir, the “storm-hammer”, from its fabricators, the dwarfs. With it

he conquer Alwin in a “battle of


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words” breaks the head of the giant Hrungir, chastises Loki for his magic;

destroys the whole race of giants in Thrymheim; and, as a good and benevolent

god, sets up therewith land-marks, sanctifies marriage bonds, blesses law and

order, and produces every good and terrific feat with its help. A god in the

Eddas, who is almost as great as Odin. (See “Miölnir” and “Thor’s Hammer”.)

 

Asava Samkhaya (Pali). The “finality of the stream”, one of the six “Abhijnâs”

(q.v.). A phenomenal knowledge of the finality of the stream of life and the

series of re-births.

 

Asburj. One of the legendary peaks in the Teneriffe range. A great mountain in

the traditions of Iran which corresponds in its allegorical meaning to the

World-mountain, Meru. Asburj is that mount “at the foot of which the sun sets”.

 

Asch Metzareph (Heb.). The Cleansing Fire, a Kabbalistic treatise, treating of

Alchemy and the relation between the metals and the planets. [w.w.w]

 

Ases (Scand.). The creators of the Dwarfs and Elves, the Elementals below men,

in the Norse lays. They are the progeny of Odin; the same as the Æsir.

 

Asgard (Scand.). The kingdom and the habitat of the Norse gods, the Scandinavian

Olympus ; situated “higher than the Home of the Light-Elves”, but on the same

plane as Jotunheim, the home of the Jotuns, the wicked giants versed in magic,

with whom the gods are at eternal war. It is evident that the gods of Asgard are

the same as the Indian Suras (gods) and the Jotuns as the Asuras, both

representing the conflicting powers of nature—beneficent and maleficent. They

are the prototypes also of the Greek gods and the Titans.

 

Ash (Heb.). Fire, whether physical or symbolical fire; also found written in

English as As, Aish and Esch.

 

Ashen and Langhan (Kolarian). Certain ceremonies for casting out evil spirits,

akin to those of exorcism with the Christians, in use with the Kolarian tribes

in India.

 

Asherah (Heb.). A word, which occurs in the Old Testament, and is commonly

translated “groves” referring to idolatrous worship, but it is probable that it

really referred to ceremonies of sexual depravity; it is a feminine noun.

[w.w.w.]

 

Ashmog (Zend). The Dragon or Serpent, a monster with a camel’s neck in the

Avesta; a kind of allegorical Satan, who after the Fall, “lost its nature and

its name”. Called in the old Hebrew (Kabbalistic) texts the “flying camel”;

evidently a reminiscence or tradition in both cases of the prehistoric or

antediluvian monsters, half bird, half reptile,


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Ashtadisa (Sk.). The eight-faced space. An imaginary division of space

represented as an octagon and at other times as a dodecahedron.

 

Ashta Siddhis (Sk.). The eight consummations in the practice of Hatha Yoga.

 

Ashtar Vidyâ (Sk.). The most ancient of the Hindu works on Magic. Though there

is a claim that the entire work is in the hands of some Occultists, yet the

Orientalists deem it lost. A very few fragments of it are now extant, and even

these are very much disfigured.

 

Ash Yggdrasil (Scand.). The “Mundane Tree”, the Symbol of the World with the old

Norsemen, the “tree of the universe, of time and of life”. It is ever green, for

the Norns of Fate sprinkle It daily with the water of life from the fountain of

Urd, which flows in Midgard. The dragon Nidhogg gnaws its roots incessantly, the

dragon of Evil and Sin; but the Ash Yggdrasil cannot wither, until the Last

Battle (the Seventh Race in the Seventh Round) is fought, when life, time, and

the world will all vanish and disappear.

 

Asiras (Sk.). Elementals without heads; lit., “headless” ; used also of the

first two human races.

 

Asita (Sk.). A proper name; a son of Bharata; a Rishi and a Sage.

 

Ask (Scand.) or Ash tree. The “tree of Knowledge”. Together with the Embla

(alder) the Ask was the tree from which the gods of Asgard created the first

man.

 

Aski-kataski-haix-tetrax-damnameneus-aision. These mystic words, which

Athanasius Kircher tells us meant “ Darkness, Light, Earth, Sun, and Truth”,

were, says Hesychius, engraved upon the zone or belt of the Diana of Ephesus.

Plutarch says that the priests used to recite these words over persons who were

possessed by devils. [w.w.w.]

 

Asmodeus. The Persian Aêshma-dev, the Esham-dev of the Parsis, “the evil Spirit

of Concupiscence”, according to Bréal, whom the Jews appropriated under the name

of Ashmedai, “the Destroyer ”, the Talmud identifying the creature with

Beelzebub and Azrael (Angel of Death), and calling him the “ King of the Devils

”.

 

Asmoneans. Priest-kings of Israel whose dynasty reigned over the Jews for 126

years. They promulgated the Canon of the Mosaic Testament in contradistinction

to the “Apocrypha” (q.v.) or Secret Books of the Alexandrian Jews, the

Kabbalists, and maintained the dead-letter meaning of the former. Till the time

of John Hyrcanus, they were Ascedeans (Chasidim) and Pharisees; but later they

became Sadducees or Zadokites, asserters of Sacerdotal rule as

contradistinguished from Rabbinical.

 

Asoka (Sk.). A celebrated Indian king of the Môrya dynasty which

 
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reigned at Magadha. There were two Asokas in reality, according to the

chronicles of Northern Buddhism, though the first Asoka—the grand father of the

second, named by Prof. Max Muller the “Constantine of India”, was better known

by his name of Chandragupta. It is the former who was called, Piadasi (Pali)

“the beautiful”, and Devânam-piya “the beloved of the gods”, and also Kâlâsoka;

while the name of his grandson was Dharmâsôká—the Asoka of the good law-—on

account of his devotion to Buddhism. Moreover, according to the same source, the

second Asoka had never followed the Brahmanical faith, but was a Buddhist born.

It was his grandsire who had been first converted to the new faith, after which

he had a number of edicts inscribed on pillars and rocks, a custom followed also

by his grandson. But it was the second Asoka who was the most zealous supporter

of Buddhism; he, who maintained in his palace from 60 to 70,000 monks and

priests, who erected 84,000 totes and stupas throughout India, reigned 36 years,

and sent missions to Ceylon, and throughout the world. The inscriptions of

various edicts published by him display most noble ethical sentiments,

especially the edict at Allahahad, on the so-called “Asoka’s column ”, in the

Fort. The sentiments are lofty and poetical, breathing tenderness for animals as

well as men, and a lofty view of a king’s mission with regard to his people,

that might be followed with great success in the present age of cruel wars and

barbarous vivisection.

 

Asomatous (Gr.). Lit., without a material body, incorporeal; used of celestial

Beings and Angels.

 

Asrama (Sk.). A sacred building, a monastery or hermitage for ascetic purposes.

Every sect in India has its Ashrams.

 

Assassins. A masonic and mystic order founded by Hassan Sabah in Persia, in the

eleventh century. The word is a European perversion of “Hassan”, which forms the

chief part of the name. They were simply Sufis and addicted, according to the

tradition, to hascheesl-eating, in order to bring about celestial visions. As

shown by our late brother, Kenneth Mackenzie, “they were teachers of the secret

doctrines of Islamism; they encouraged mathematics and philosophy, and produced

many valuable works. The chief of the Order was called Sheik-el-Jebel,

translated the ‘Old Man of the Mountains’, and, as their Grand Master, he

possessed power of life and death.’

 

Assorus (Chald.). The third group of progeny (Kissan and Assorus) from the

Babylonian Duad, Tauthe and Apason, according to the Theogonies of Damascius.

From this last emanated three others, of which series the last, Aus, begat

Belus—“the fabricator of the World, the Demiurgus”.

 
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Assur (Chald.). A city in Assyria ; the ancient seat of a library from which

George Smith excavated the earliest known tablets, to which he assigns a date

about 1500 B.C., called Assur Kileh Shergat.

 

Assurbanipal (Chald.). The Sardanapalus of the Greeks, “the greatest of the

Assyrian Sovereigns, far more memorable on account of his magnificent patronage

of learning than of the greatness of his empire”, writes the late G. Smith, and

adds: “Assurbanipal added more to the Assyrian royal library than all the kings

who had gone before him”. As the distinguished Assyriologist tells us in another

place of his “Babylonian and Assyrian Literature” (Chald. Account of Genesis)

that “the majority of the texts preserved belong to the earlier period previous

to B.C. 1600”, and yet asserts that “it is to tablets written in his

(Assurbanipal’s) reign (B.C. 673) that we owe almost all our knowledge of the

Babylonian early history”, one is well justified in asking, “How do you know?”

 

Assyrian Holy Scriptures. Orientalists show seven such books: the Books of

Mamit, of Worship, of Interpretations, of Going to Hades; two Prayer Books

(Kanmagarri and Kanmikri: Talbot)

and the Kantolite, the lost Assyrian Psalter.

 

Assyrian Tree of Life. “Asherah” (q.v.). It is translated in the Bible by “grove

” and occurs 30 times. It is called an “idol”; and Maachah, the grandmother of

Asa, King of Jerusalem, is accused of having made for herself such an idol,

which was a lingham. For centuries this was a religious rite in Judæa. But the

original Asherah was a pillar with seven branches on each side surmounted by a

globular flower with three projecting rays, and no phallic stone, as the Jews

made of it, but a metaphysical symbol. “Merciful One, who dead to life raises!

was the prayer uttered before the Asherah, on the banks of the Euphrates. The

“Merciful One”, was neither the personal god of the Jews who brought the “grove”

from their captivity, nor any extra- cosmic god, but the higher triad in man

symbolized by the globular flower with its three rays.

 

Asta-dasha (Sk.). Perfect, Supreme Wisdom; a title of Deity.

 

Aster’t (Heb.). Astarte, the Syrian goddess the consort of Adon, or Adonai.

 

Astræa (Gr.). The ancient goddess of justice, whom the wickedness of men drove

away from earth to heaven, wherein she now dwells as the constellation Virgo.

 

Astral Body, or Astral “Double”. The ethereal counterpart or shadow of man or

animal. The Linga Sharira, the “Doppelgäinger”. The reader must not confuse it

with the ASTRAL SOUL, another name for the lower Manas, or Kama-Manas so-called,

the reflection of the HIGHER EGO.


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Astral Light (Occult) The invisible region that surrounds our globe, as it does

every other, and corresponding as the second Principle of Kosmos (the third

being Life, of which it is the vehicle) to the Linga Sharira or the Astral

Double in man. A subtle Essence visible only to a clairvoyant eye, and the

lowest but one (viz., the earth), of the Seven Akâsic or Kosmic Principles.

Eliphas Levi calls it the great Serpent and the Dragon from which radiates on

Humanity every evil influence. This is so; but why not add that the Astral Light

gives out nothing but what it has received; that it is the great terrestrial

crucible, in which the vile emanations of the earth (moral and physical) upon

which the Astral Light is fed, are all converted into their subtlest essence,

and radiated back intensified, thus becoming epidemics— moral, psychic and

physical. Finally, the Astral Light is the same as the Sidereal Light of

Paracelsus and other Hermetic philosophers. “Physically, it is the ether of

modern science. Metaphysically, and in its spiritual, or occult sense, ether is

a great deal more than is often imagined. In occult physics, and alchemy, it is

well demonstrated to enclose within its shoreless waves not only Mr. Tyndall’s

‘promise and potency of every quality of life’, but also the realization of the

potency of every quality of spirit. Alchemists and Hermetists believe that their

astral, or sidereal ether, besides the above properties of sulphur, and white

and red magnesia, or magnes, is the anima mundi, the workshop of Nature and of

all the Kosmos, spiritually, as well as physically. The ‘grand magisterium’

asserts itself in the phenomenon of mesmerism, in the ‘levitation’ of human and

inert objects; and may be called the ether from its spiritual aspect. The

designation astral is ancient, and was used by some of the Neo-platonists,

although it is claimed by some that the word was coined by the Martinists.

Porphyry describes the celestial body which is always joined with the soul as

‘immortal, luminous, and star-like’. The root of this word may be found,

perhaps, in the Scythic Aist-aer—which means star, or the Assyrian Istar, which,

according to Burnouf has the same sense.” (Isis Unveiled.)

 

 Astrolatry (Gr.). Worship of the Stars.

 

Astrology (Gr.) The Science which defines the action of celestial bodies upon

mundane affairs, and claims to foretell future events from the position of the

stars. Its antiquity is such as to place it among the very earliest records of

human learning. It remained for long ages a secret science in the East, and its

final expression remains so to this day, its exoteric application having been

brought to any degree of perfection in the West only during the period of time

since Varaha Muhira wrote his book on Astrology some 1400 years ago. Claudius

Ptolemy, the famous geographer and mathematician, wrote his treatise Tetrabiblos

 


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about 135 A.D., which is still the basis of modern astrology. The science of

Horoscopy is studied now chiefly under four heads: viz., (1) Mundane, in its

application to meteorology, seismology, husbandry, etc. (2) State or civic, in

regard to the fate of nations, kings and rulers. (3) Horary, in reference to the

solving of doubts arising in the mind upon any subject. (4) Genethliacal, in its

application to the fate of individuals from the moment of their birth to their

death. The Egyptians and the Chaldees were among the most ancient votaries of

Astrology, though their modes of reading the stars and the modern practices

differ considerably. The former claimed that Belus, the Bel or Elu of the

Chaldees, a scion of the divine Dynasty, or the Dynasty of the king-gods, had

belonged to the land of Chemi, and had left it, to found a colony from Egypt on

the banks of the Euphrates, where a temple ministered by priests in the service

of the “lords of the stars” was built, the said priests adopting the name of

Chaldees. Two things are known: (a) that Thebes (in Egypt) claimed the honour of

the invention of Astrology; and (b) that it was the Chaldees who taught that

science to the other nations. Now Thebes antedated considerably not only “Ur of

the Chaldees”, but also Nipur, where Bel was first worshipped—Sin, his son (the

moon), being the presiding deity of Ur, the land of the nativity of Terah, the

Sabean and Astrolatrer, and of Abram, his son, the great Astrologer of biblical

tradition. All tends, therefore, to corroborate the Egyptian claim. If later on

the name of Astrologer fell into disrepute in Rome and elsewhere, it was owing

to the fraud of those who wanted to make money by means of that which was part

and parcel of the sacred Science of the Mysteries, and, ignorant of the latter,

evolved a system based entirely upon mathematics, instead of on transcendental

metaphysics and having the physical celestial bodies as its upadhi or material

basis. Yet, all persecutions notwithstanding, the number of the adherents of

Astrology among the most intellectual and scientific minds was always very

great. If Cardan and Kepler were among its ardent supporters, then its later

votaries have nothing to blush for, even in its now imperfect and distorted

form. As said in Isis Unveiled (1. 259): “Astrology is to exact astronomy what

psychology is to exact physiology. In astrology and psychology one has to step

beyond the visible world of matter, and enter into the domain of transcendent

spirit.” (See “ Astronomos.”)

 

Astronomos (Gr.). The title given to the Initiate in the Seventh Degree of the

reception of the Mysteries. In days of old, Astronomy was synonymous with

Astrology; and the great Astrological Initiation took place in Egypt at Thebes,

where the priests perfected, if they did not wholly invent the science. Having

passed through the degrees


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of Pastophoros, Neocoros, Melanophoros, Kistophoros, and Balahala (the degree of

Chemistry of the Stars), the neophyte was taught the mystic signs of the Zodiac,

in a circle dance representing the course of the planets (the dance of Krishna

and the Gopis, celebrated to this day in Rajputana); after which he received a

cross, the Tau (or Tat), becoming an Astronomos and a Healer. (See Isis

Unveiled. Vol. II. 365). Astronomy and Chemistry were inseparable in these

studies. “Hippocrates had so lively a faith in the influence of the stars on

animated beings, and on their diseases, that he expressly recommends not to

trust to physicians who are ignorant of astronomy.’ (Arago.) Unfortunately the

key to the final door of Astrology or Astronomy is lost by the modern

Astrologer; and without it, how can he ever be able to answer the pertinent

remark made by the author of Mazzaroth, who writes: “people are said to be born

under one sign, while in reality they are born under another, because the sun is

now seen among different stars at the equinox ”? Nevertheless, even the few

truths he does know brought to his science such eminent and scientific believers

as Sir Isaac Newton, Bishops Jeremy and Hall, Archbishop Usher, Dryden,

Flamstead, Ashmole, John Milton, Steele, and a host of noted Rosicrucians.

 

Asura Mazda (Sk.). In the Zend, Ahura Mazda. The same as Ormuzd or Mazdeô; the

god of Zoroaster and the Parsis.

 

Asuramaya (Sk.) Known also as Mayâsura. An Atlantean astronomer, considered as a

great magician and sorcerer, well-known in Sanskrit works.

 

Asuras (Sk.). Exoterically, elementals and evil, gods—considered maleficent;

demons, and no gods. But esoterically—the reverse. For in the most ancient

portions of the Rig Veda, the term is used for the Supreme Spirit, and therefore

the Asuras are spiritual and divine It is only in the last book of the

 

Rig Veda, its latest part, and in the Atharva Veda, and the Brâhmanas, that the

epithet, which had been given to Agni, the greatest Vedic Deity, to Indra and

Varuna, has come to signify the reverse of gods. Asu means breath, and it is

with his breath that Prajâpati (Brahmâ) creates the Asuras. When ritualism and

dogma got the better of the Wisdom religion, the initial letter a was adopted as

a negative prefix, and the term ended by signifying “not a god”, and Sura only a

deity. But in the Vedas the Suras have ever been connected with Surya, the sun,

and regarded as inferior deities, devas.

 

Aswamedha (Sk.) The Horse-sacrifice; an ancient Brahmanical ceremony.

 

Aswattha (Sk.) The Bo-tree, the tree of knowledge, ficus religiosa.

 
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Aswins (Sk.), or Aswinau, dual ; or again, Aswinî-Kumârau, are the most

mysterious and occult deities of all; who have “puzzled the oldest

commentators”. Literally, they are the “Horsemen”, the “divine charioteers”, as

they ride in a golden car drawn by horses or birds or animals, and “are

possessed of many forms”. They are two Vedic deities, the twin sons of the sun

and the sky, which becomes the nymph Aswini. In mythological symbolism they are

“the bright harbingers of Ushas, the dawn”, who are “ever young and handsome,

bright, agile, swift as falcons”, who “prepare the way for the brilliant dawn to

those who have patiently awaited through the night”. They are also called time

“physicians of Swarga” (or Devachan), inasmuch as they heal every pain and

suffering, and cure all diseases. Astronomically, they are asterisms. They were

enthusiastically worshipped, as their epithets show. They are the “Ocean-born”

(i.e., space born) or Abdhijau, “crowned with lotuses” or Pushhara-srajam, etc.,

etc. Yâska, the commentator in the Nirukta, thinks that “the Aswins represent

the transition from darkness to light ”—cosmically, and we may add,

metaphysically, also. But Muir and Goldstücker are inclined to see in them

ancient “horsemen of great renown”, because, forsooth, of the legend “that the

gods refused the Aswins admittance to a sacrifice on the ground that they had

been on too familiar terms with men”. Just so, because as explained by the same

Yâska “they are identified with heaven and earth”, only for quite a different

reason. Truly they are like the Ribhus, “originally renowned mortals (but also

non-renowned occasionally) who in the course of time are translated into the

companionship of gods”; and they show a negative character, “the result of the-

alliance of light with darkness”, simply because these twins are, in the

esoteric philosophy, the Kumâra-Egos, the reincarnating “Principles” in this

Manvantara.

 

Atala (Sk). One of the regions in the Hindu lokas, and one of the seven

mountains; but esoterically Atala is on an astral plane, and was, once on a

time, a real island upon this earth.

 

Atalanta Fugiens (Lat.). A famous treatise by the eminent Rosicrucian Michael

Maier; it has many beautiful engravings of Alchemic symbolism: here is to be

found the original of the picture of a man and woman within a circle, a triangle

around it, then a square: the inscription is, “From the first ens proceed two

contraries, thence come the three principles, and from them the four elementary

states ; if you separate the pure from the impure you will have the stone of the

Philosophers”. [ w.w.w.]

 

Atarpi (Chald.), or Atarpi-nisi, the “man”. A personage who was “pious to the

gods”; and who prayed the god Hea to remove the evil

 
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of drought and other things before the Deluge is sent. The story is found on one

of the most ancient Babylonian tablets, and relates to the sin of the world. In

the words of G. Smith “the god Elu or Bel calls together an assembly of the

gods, his sons, and relates to them that he is angry at the sin of the world”;

and in the fragmentary phrases of the tablet: “ . . . . I made them . . . .

Their wickedness I am angry at, their punishment shall not be small . . . . let

food be exhausted, above let Vul drink up his rain”, etc., etc. In answer to

Atarpi’s prayer the god Hea announces his resolve to destroy the people he

created, which he does finally by a deluge.

 

Atash Behram (Zend). The sacred fire of the Parsis, preserved perpetually in

their fire-temples.

 

Atef (Eg.), or Crown of Horus. It consisted of a tall white cap with ram’s

horns, and the urœus in front. Its two feathers represent the two truths—life

and death.

 

Athamaz (Heb.). The same as Adonis with the Greeks, the Jews having borrowed all

their gods.

 

Athanor (Occult.) The “astral” fluid of the Alchemists, their Archimedean lever;

exoterically, the furnace of the Alchemist.

 

Atharva Veda (Sk.) The fourth Veda; lit., magic incantation containing

aphorisms, incantations and magic formula One of the most ancient and revered

Books of the Brahmans.

 

Athenagoras (Gr.) A Platonic philosopher of Athens, who wrote a Greek Apology

for the Christians in A.D. 177, addressed to the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, to

prove that the accusations brought against them, namely that they were

incestuous and ate murdered children, were untrue.

 

Athor (Eg.) “Mother Night.” Primeval Chaos, in the Egyptian cosmogony. The

goddess of night.

 

Atîvahikâs (Sk.) With the Visishtadwaitees, these are the Pitris, or Devas, who

help the disembodied soul or Jiva in its transit from its dead body to

Paramapadha.

 

Atlantidæ (Gr.) The ancestors of the Pharaohs and the forefathers of the

Egyptians, according to some, and as the Esoteric Science teaches. (See S.D.,

Vol. II., and Esoteric Buddhism.) Plato heard of this highly civilized people,

the last remnant of which was submerged 9,000 years before his day, from Solon,

who had it from the High Priests of Egypt. Voltaire, the eternal scoffer, was

right in stating that “the Atlantidæ (our fourth Root Race) made their

appearance in Egypt It was in Syria and in Phrygia, as well as Egypt, that they

established the worship of the Sun.” Occult philosophy teaches that the

Egyptians were a remnant of the last Aryan Atlantidæ.


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Atlantis (Gr.) The continent that was submerged in the Atlantic and the Pacific

Oceans according to the secret teachings and Plato.

 

Atmâ (or Atman) (Sk.). The Universal Spirit, the divine Monad, the 7th

Principle, so-called, in the septenary constitution of man. The Supreme Soul.

 

Atma-bhu (Sk.). Soul-existence, or existing as soul. (See “Alaya”.)

 

Atmabodha (Sk.). Lit., “Self-knowledge”; the title of a Vedantic treatise by

Sankârachârya.

 

Atma-jnâni (Sk.) The Knower of the World-Soul, or Soul in general.

 

Atma-matrasu (Sk.) To enter into the elements of the “One-Self”. (See S. D.

I.,334 Atmamâtra is the spiritual atom, as contrasted with, and opposed to, the

elementary differentiated atom or molecule.

 

Atma Vidyâ (Sk.). The highest form of spiritual knowledge; lit.,

“Soul-knowledge”.

 

Atri, Sons of (Sk.). A class of Pitris, the “ancestors of man”, or the so-called

Prâjapâti, “progenitors”; one of the seven Rishis who form the constellation of

the Great Bear.

 

Attavada (Pali). The sin of personality.

 

Atyantika (Sk.) One of the four kinds of pralaya or dissolution. The “absolute”

pralaya.

 

Atziluth (Heb.) The highest of the Four Worlds of the Kabbalah referred only to

the pure Spirit of God. [w. w. w.] See “Aziluth” for another interpretation.

 

Audlang (Scand.). The second heaven made by Deity above the field of Ida, in the

Norse legends.

 

Audumla (Scand.) The Cow of Creation, the “nourisher”, from which flowed four

streams of milk which fed the giant Ymir or Örgelmir (matter in ebullition) and

his sons, the Hrimthurses (Frost giants), before the appearance of gods or men.

Having nothing to graze upon she licked the salt of the ice-rocks and thus

produced Buri, “the Producer” in his turn, who had a son Bör (the born) who

married a daughter of the Frost Giants, and had three sons, Odin (Spirit), Wili

(Will), and We (Holy). The meaning of the allegory is evident. It is the

precosmic union of the elements, of Spirit, or the creative Force, with Matter,

cooled and still seething, which it forms in accordance with universal Will.

Then the Ases, “the pillars and supports of the World” (Cosmocratores), step in

and create as All-father wills them.

 

Augoeides (Gr.). Bulwer Lytton calls it the “Luminous Self ”, or our Higher Ego.

But Occultism makes of it something distinct from


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this. It is a mystery. The Augocides is the luminous divine radiation of the EGO

which, when incarnated, is but its shadow—pure as it is yet. This is explained

in the Amshaspends and their Ferouers.

 

Aum (Sk.). The sacred syllable; the triple-lettered unit; hence the trinity in

One.

 

Aura (Gr. and Lat.). A subtle invisible essence or fluid that emanates from

human and animal bodies and even things. It is a psychic effluvium, partaking of

both the mind and the body, as it is the electro-vital, and at the same time an

electro-mental aura; called in Theosophy the âkâsic or magnetic aura.

 

Aurnavâbha (Sk.) An ancient Sanskrit commentator.

 

Aurva (Sk.). The Sage who is credited with the invention of the “fiery weapon”

called Agneyâstra.

 

Ava-bodha (Sk.). “Mother of Knowledge.” A title of Aditi.

 

Avâivartika (Sk.) An epithet of every Buddha: lit., one who turns no more back;

who goes straight to Nirvâna.

 

Avalokiteswara (Sk.) “The on-looking Lord” In the exoteric interpretation, he is

Padmapâni (the lotus bearer and the lotus-born) in Tibet, the first divine

ancestor of the Tibetans, the complete incarnation or Avatar of Avalokiteswara;

but in esoteric philosophy Avaloki, the “on-looker”, is the Higher Self, while

Padmapâni is the Higher Ego or Manas. The mystic formula “Om mani padme hum” is

specially used to invoke their joint help. While popular fancy claims for

Avalokiteswara many incarnations on earth, and sees in him, not very wrongly,

the spiritual guide of every believer, the esoteric interpretation sees in him

the Logos, both celestial and human. Therefore, when the Yogâchârya School has

declared Avalokiteswara as Padmâpani “to be the Dhyâni Bodhisattva of Amitâbha

Buddha”, it is indeed, because the former is the spiritual reflex in the world

of forms of the latter, both being one—one in heaven, the other on earth.

 

Avarasâila Sanghârama (Sk.). Lit., the School of the Dwellers on the western

mountain. A celebrated Vihâra (monastery) in Dhana-kstchâka, according to Eitel,

“built 600 B.C., and deserted A.D. 600”.

 

Avastan (Sk.) An ancient name for Arabia.

 

Avasthas (Sk.) States, conditions, positions.

 

Avatâra (Sk.) Divine incarnation. The descent of a god or some exalted Being,

who has progressed beyond the necessity of Rebirths, into the body of a simple

mortal. Krishna was an avatar of Vishnu. The Dalai Lama is regarded as an avatar

of Avalokiteswara, and the Teschu Lama as one of Tson-kha-pa, or Amitâbha. There

are two kinds of avatars: those born from woman, and the parentless, the

anupapâdaka.


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Avebury or Abury. In Wiltshire are the remains of an ancient megalithic Serpent

temple: according to the eminent antiquarian Stukeley, 1740, there are traces of

two circles of stones and two avenues ; the whole has formed the representation

of a serpent. [w.w.w.]

 

Avesta (Zend). Lit., “the Law”. From the old Persian Âbastâ, “the law”. The

sacred Scriptures of the Zoroastrians. Zend means in the “Zend-Avesta”—a

“commentary” or “interpretation”. It is an error to regard “ Zend” as a

language, as “it was applied only to explanatory texts, to the translations of

the Avesta”(Darmsteter).

 

Avicenna. The latinized name of Abu-Ali al Hoséen ben Abdallah Ibn Sina; a

Persian philosopher, born 980 AD)., though generally referred to as an Arabian

doctor. On account of his surprising learning he was called “the Famous”, and

was the author of the best and the first alchemical works known in Europe. All

the Spirits of the Elements were subject to him, so says the legend, and it

further tells us that owing to his knowledge of the Elixir of Life, he still

lives, as an adept who will disclose himself to the profane at the end of a

certain cycle.

 

Avidyâ (Sk.). Opposed to Vidyâ, Knowledge. Ignorance which proceeds from, and is

produced by the illusion of the Senses or Viparyaya.

 

Avikâra (Sk.). Free from degeneration; changeless—used of Deity.

 

Avitchi (Sk.) A state: not necessarily after death only or between two births,

for it can take place on earth as well. Lit., “uninterrupted hell”. The last of

the eight hells, we are told, “where the culprits die and are reborn without

interruption—yet not without hope of final redemption. This is because Avitchi

is another name for Myalba (our earth) and also a state to which some soulless

men are condemned on this physical plane.

 

Avyakta (Sk.). The unrevealed cause; indiscrete or undifferentiated; the

opposite of Vyakta, the differentiated. The former is used of the unmanifested,

and the latter of the manifested Deity, or of Brahma and Brahmâ.

 

Axieros (Gr.). One of the Kabiri.

Axiocersa (Gr.).      "         "

Axiocersus (Gr.).    "         "

 

Ayana (Sk.) A period of time; two Ayanas complete a year, one being the period

of the Sun’s progress northward, and the other south ward in the ecliptic.

 

Ayin (Heb.). Lit., “Nothing”, whence the name of Ain-Soph. (See“Ain”.)

 

Aymar, Jacques. A famous Frenchman who had great success in the use of the

Divining Rod about the end of the 17th century; he was often employed in

detecting criminals; two M.D’s of the University of Paris,


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Chauvin and Garnier reported on the reality of his powers. See Colquhoun on

Magic. [ w.w.w.]

 

Ayur Veda (Sk.). Lit., “the Veda of Life”.

 

Ayuta (Sk.). 100 Kôti, or a sum equal to 1,000,000,000.

 

Azareksh (Zend) A place celebrated for a fire-temple of the Zoroastrians and

Magi during the time of Alexander the Great.

 

Azazel (Heb.) “God of Victory”; the scape-goat for the sins of Israel. He who

comprehends the mystery of Azazel, says Aben-Ezra, “will learn the mystery of

God’s name”, and truly. See “Typhon” and the scape-goat made sacred to him in

ancient Egypt.

 

Azhi-Dahaka (Zend) One of the Serpents or Dragons in the legends of Iran and the

Avesta Scriptures, the allegorical destroying Serpent or Satan.

 

Aziluth (Heb.) The name for the world of the Sephiroth, called the world of

Emanations Olam Aziluth. It is the great and the highest prototype of the other

worlds. “Atzeelooth is the Great Sacred Seal by means of which all the worlds

are copied which have impressed on themselves the image on the Seal; and as this

Great Seal comprehends three stages, which are three zures (prototypes) of

Nephesh (the Vital Spirit or Soul), Ruach (the moral and reasoning Spirit), and

the Neshamah (the Highest Soul of man), so the Sealed have also received three

zures, namely Breeah, Yetzeerah, and Aseeyah, and these three zures are only one

in the Seal” (Myer’s Qabbalah). The globes A, Z, of our terrestial chain are in

Aziluth. (See Secret Doctrine.)

 

Azoth (Alch.). The creative principle in Nature, the grosser portion of which is

stored in the Astral Light. It is symbolized by a figure which is a cross (See

“Eliphas Lévi”), the four limbs of which bear each one letter of the word Taro,

which can be read also Rota, Ator, and in many other combinations, each of which

has an occult meaning.

 

A. and Ω Alpha and Omega, the First and the Last, the beginning and ending of

all active existence; the Logos, hence (with the Christians) Christ. See Rev.

xxi, 6., where John adopts “Alpha and Omega” as the symbol of a Divine Comforter

who “will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life

freely”. The word Azot or Azoth is a mediæval glyph of this idea, for the word

consists of the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet, A and Ω of the

Latin alphabet, A and Z, and of the Hebrew alphabet, A and T, or aleph and tau.

(See also “Azoth”.) [ w.w.w.]

                                     

B


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B —The second letter in almost all the alphabets, also the second in the Hebrew.

Its symbol is a house, the form of Beth, the letter itself indicating a

dwelling, a shed or a shelter. “As a compound of a root, it is constantly used

for the purpose of showing that it had to do with stone; when stones at Beth-el

are set up, for instance. The Hebrew value as a numeral is two. Joined with its

predecessor, it forms the word Ab, the root of ‘father’, Master, one in

authority, and it has the Kabalistical distinction of being the first letter in

the Sacred Volume of the Law. The divine name connected with this letter is

"Bakhour." (R. M. [Cyclop.]

 

Baal (Chald. Heb.). Baal or Adon (Adonai) was a phallic god. “Who shall ascend

unto the hill (the high place) of the Lord; who shall stand in the place of his

Kadushu (q.v.) ? ” (Psalms XX1V. 3.) The “circle dance” performed by King David

round the ark, was the dance prescribed by the Amazons in the Mysteries, the

dance of the daughters of Shiloh (Judges xxi., et seq.) and the same as the

leaping of the prophets of Baal (I. Kings xviii). He was named Baal-Tzephon, or

god of the crypt (Exodus) and Seth, or the pillar (phallus), because he was the

same as Ammon (or Baal-Hammon) of Egypt, called “the hidden god”. Typhon, called

Set, who was a great god in Egypt during the early dynasties, is an aspect of

Baal and Ammon as also of Siva, Jehovah and other gods. Baal is the all

devouring Sun, in one sense, the fiery Moloch.

 

Babil Mound (Chald. Heb.). The site of the Temple of Bel at Babylon.

 

Bacchus (Gr.). Exoterically and superficially the god of wine and the vintage,

and of licentiousness and joy; but the esoteric meaning of this personification

is more abstruse and philosophical. He is the Osiris of Egypt, and his life and

significance belong to the same group as the other solar deities, all

“sin-bearing,” killed and resurrected; e.g., as Dionysos or Atys of Phrygia

(Adonis, or the Syrian Tammuz), as Ausonius, Baldur (q.v.), &c., &c. All these

were put to death, mourned for, and restored to life. The rejoicings for Atys

took place at the Hilaria on the “pagan” Easter, March 15.  Ausonius, a form of

Bacchus, was slain “at the vernal equinox, March 21st, and rose in three days”.

Tammuz, the double of Adonis and Atys, was mourned by the women at the “grove”

of his name “over Bethlehem, where the infant Jesus cried”, says St. Jerome.

Bacchus is murdered and his mother collects the fragments of his lacerated body

as Isis does those of Osiris, and so on.

 
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Dionysos Iacchus, torn to shreds by the Titans, Osiris, Krishna, all descended

into Hades and returned again. Astronomically, they all represent the Sun ;

psychically they are all emblems of the ever-resurrecting “ Soul” (the Ego in

its re-incarnation) ; spiritually, all the innocent scape-goats, atoning for the

sins of mortals, their own earthly envelopes, and in truth, the poeticized image

of DIVINE MAN, the form of clay informed by its God.

 

Bacon, Roger. A Franciscan monk, famous as an adept in Alchemy and Magic Arts.

Lived in the thirteenth century in England. He believed in the philosopher’s

stone in the way all the adepts of Occultism believe in it; and also in

philosophical astrology. He is accused of having made a head of bronze which

having an acoustic apparatus hidden in it, seemed to utter oracles which were

words spoken by Bacon himself in another room. He was a wonderful physicist and

chemist, and credited with having invented gunpowder, though he said he had the

secret from “Asian (Chinese) wise men."

 

Baddha (Sk.). Bound, conditioned; as is every mortal who has not made himself

free through Nirvâna.

 

Bagavadam (Sk.). A Tamil Scripture on Astronomy and other matters.

 

Bagh-bog (Slavon.). “God”; a Slavonian name for the Greek Bacchus, whose name

became the prototype of the name God or Bagh and bog or bogh; the Russian for

God.

 

Bahak-Zivo (Gn.). The “father of the Genii” in the Codex Nazarœus. The Nazarenes

were an early semi-Christian sect.

 

Bal (Heb.). Commonly translated “Lord”, but also Bel, the Chaldean god, and

Baal, an "idol".

 

Bala (Sk.), or Panchabalâni. The “five powers” to be acquired in Yoga practice;

full trust or faith; energy ; memory; meditation ; wisdom.

 

Baldur (Scand.). The “Giver of all Good”. The bright God who is “the best and

all mankind are loud in his praise; so fair and dazzling is he in form and

features, that rays of light seem to issue from him (Edda). Such was the

birth-song chanted to Baldur who resurrects as Wali, the spring Sun. Baldur is

called the “well-beloved”, the “Holy one”, “who alone is without sin”. He is the

“God of Goodness”, who

“shall be born again, when a new and purer world will have arisen from the ashes

of the old, sin-laden world (Asgard)”. He is killed by the crafty Loki, because

Frigga, the mother of the gods, “while entreating all creatures and all lifeless

things to swear that they will not injure the well-beloved”, forgets to mention

“the weak mistletoe bough”, just as the mother of Achilles forgot her son’s

heel. A dart is made of it by Loki and he places it in the hands of blind Hödur

who


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kills with it the sunny-hearted god of light. The Christmas misletoe is probably

a reminiscence of the mistletoe that killed the Northern God of Goodness.

 

Bal-ilu (Chal.). One of the many titles of the Sun.

 

Bamboo Books. Most ancient and certainly pre-historic works in Chinese

containing the antediluvian records of the Annals of China. They were found in

the tomb of King Seang of Wai, who died 295 B.C., and claim to go back many

centuries.

 

Bandha (Sk.). Bondage; life on this earth; from the same root as Baddha.

 

Baphomet (Gr.). The androgyne goat of Mendes. (See Secret Doctrine, I. 253).

According to the Western, and especially the French Kabalists, the Templars were

accused of worshipping Baphomet, and Jacques de Molay, the Grand Master of the

Templars, with all his brother-Masons, suffered death in consequence. But

esoterically, and philologically, the word never meant “goat”, nor even anything

so objective as an idol. The term means according to Von Hammer, “baptism” or

initiation into Wisdom, from the Greek words bafh and mhtiz and from the

relation of Baphometus to Pan. Von Hammer must be right. It was a Hermetico

Kabalistic symbol, but the whole story as invented by the Clergy was false.

(See “Pan ”.)

 

Baptism (Gr.). The rite of purification performed during the ceremony of

initiation in the sacred tanks of India, and also the later identical rite

established by John “the Baptist” and practised by his disciples and followers,

who were not Christians. This rite was hoary with age when it was adopted by the

Chrestians of the earliest centuries. Baptism belonged to the earliest

Chaldeo-Akkadian theurgy; was religiously practised in the nocturnal ceremonies

in the Pyramids where we see to this day the font in the shape of the

sarcophagus; was known to take place during the Eleusinian mysteries in the

sacred temple lakes, and is practised even now by the descendants of the ancient

Sabians. The Mendæans (the El Mogtasila of the Arabs) are, notwithstanding their

deceptive name of “St. John Christians”, less Christians than are the Orthodox

Mussulman Arabs around them. They are pure Sabians; and this is very naturally

explained when one remembers that the great Semitic scholar Renan has shown in

his Vie de Jésus that the Aramean verb seba, the origin of the name Sabian, is a

synonym of the Greek baptizw. The modern Sabians, the Mendæans whose vigils and

religious rites, face to face with the silent stars, have been described by

several travellers, have still preserved the theurgic, baptismal rites of  their

distant and nigh-for gotten forefathers, the Chaldean Initiates. Their religion

is one of multiplied baptisms, of seven purifications in the name of the seven

planetary

 
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rulers, the “seven Angels of the Presence” of the Roman Catholic Church. The

Protestant Baptists are but the pale imitators of the El Mogtasila or Nazareans

who practise their Gnostic rites in the deserts of Asia Minor. (See “Boodhasp”.)

 

Bardesanes or Bardaisan. A Syrian Gnostic, erroneously regarded as a Christian

theologian, born at Edessa (Edessene Chronicle) in 155 of our era (Assemani

Bibl.. Orient. i. 389). He was a great astrologer following the Eastern Occult

System. According to Porphyry (who calls him the Babylonian, probably on account

of his Chaldeeism or astrology), “Bardesanes . . . . held intercourse with the

Indians that had been sent to the Cæsar with Damadamis at their head” (De Abst.

iv. 17), and had his information from the Indian gymnosophists. The fact is that

most of his teachings, however much they may have been altered by his numerous

Gnostic followers, can be traced to Indian philosophy, and still more to the

Occult teachings of the Secret System. Thus in his Hymns he speaks of the

creative Deity as “Father-Mother”, and elsewhere of “Astral Destiny” (Karma) of

“Minds of Fire” (the Agni-Devas) &c. He connected the Soul (the personal Manas)

with the Seven Stars, deriving its origin from the Higher Beings (the divine

Ego); and therefore “admitted spiritual resurrection but denied the resurrection

of the body”, as charged with by the Church Fathers. Ephraim shows him preaching

the signs of the Zodiac, the importance of the birth-hours and “proclaiming the

seven”. Calling the Sun the “Father of Life” and the Moon the “Mother of Life”,

he shows the latter “laying aside her garment of light (principles) for the

renewal of the Earth”. Photius cannot understand how, while accepting “the Soul

free from the power of genesis (destiny of birth)” and possessing free will, he

still placed the body under the rule of birth (genesis). For “they (the

Bardesanists) say, that wealth and poverty and sickness and health and death and

all things not within our control are works of destiny” (Bibl. Cod. 223,

p.221—f). This is Karma, most evidently, which does not preclude at all

free-will. Hippolytus makes him a representative of the Eastern School. Speaking

of Baptism, Bardesanes is made to say (loc. cit. pp. 985-ff “It is not however

the Bath alone which makes us free, but the Knowledge of who we are, what we are

become, where we were before, whither we are hastening, whence we are redeemed;

what is generation (birth), what is re-generation (re.birth)”. This points

plainly to the doctrine of re-incarnation. His conversation (Dialogue) with

Awida and Barjamina on Destiny and Free Will shows it. “What is called Destiny,

is an order of outflow given to the Rulers (Gods) and the Elements, according to

which order the Intelligences (Spirit-Egos) are changed by their descent into

the Soul, and the Soul by its descent into the body”. (See Treatise, found in

its


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Syriac original, and published with English translation in 1855 by Dr. Cureton,

Spicileg. Syriac. in British Museum.)

 

Bardesanian (System). The “Codex of the Nazarenes”, a system worked out by one

Bardesanes. It is called by some a Kabala within the Kabala; a religion or sect

the esotericism of which is given out in names and allegories entirely

sui-generis. A very old Gnostic system. This codex has been translated into

Latin. Whether it is right to call the Sabeanism of the Mendaїtes (miscalled St.

John’s Christians),

contained in the Nazarene Codex, “the Bardesanian system”, as some do, is

doubtful; for the doctrines of the Codex and the names of the Good and Evil

Powers therein, are older than Bardaisan. Yet the names are identical in the two

systems.

 

Baresma (Zend). A plant used by Mobeds (Parsi priests) in the fire- temples,

wherein consecrated bundles of it are kept.

 

Barhishad (Sk.). A class of the “lunar” Pitris or “Ancestors”, Fathers, who are

believed in popular superstition to have kept up in their past incarnations the

household sacred flame and made fire-offerings. Esoterically the Pitris who

evolved their shadows or chhayas to make there-with the first man. (See Secret

Doctrine, Vol. II.)

 

Basileus (Gr.). The Archon or Chief who had the outer super-vision during the

Eleusinian Mysteries. While the latter was an initiated layman, and magistrate

at Athens, the Basileus of the inner Temple was of the staff of the great

Hierophant, and as such was one of the chief Mystæ and belonged to the inner

mysteries.

 

Basilidean (System). Named after Basilides; the Founder of one of the most

philosophical gnostic sects. Clement the Alexandrian speaks of Basilides, the

Gnostic, as “a philosopher devoted to the contemplation of divine things”. While

he claimed that he had all his doctrines from the Apostle Matthew and from Peter

through Glaucus, Irenaeus reviled him, Tertullian stormed at him, and the Church

Fathers had not sufficient words of obloquy against the “heretic”. And yet on

the authority of St. Jerome himself, who describes with indignation what he had

found in the only genuine Hebrew copy of the Gospel of Matthew (See Isis Unv.,

ii., 181) which he got from the Nazarenes, the statement of Basilides becomes

more than credible, and if accepted would solve a great and perplexing problem.

His 24 vols. of Interpretation of the Gospels, were, as Eusebius tells us,

burnt. Useless to say that these gospels were not our present Gospels. Thus,

truth was ever crushed.

 

Bassantin, James. A Scotch astrologer. He lived in the 16th century and is said

to have predicted to Sir Robert Melville, in 1562, the death and all the events

connected therewith of Mary, the unfortunate Queen of Scots.


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Bath (Heb.). Daughter.

 

Bath Kol (Heb.). Daughter of the Voice: the Divine afflatus, or inspiration, by

which the prophets of Israel were inspired as by a voice from Heaven and the

Mercy-Seat. In Latin Filia Vocis. An analogous ideal is found in Hindu exoteric

theology named Vâch, the voice, the female essence, an aspect of Aditi, the

mother of the gods and primæval Light; a mystery. [ w.w.w.]

 

Batoo (Eg.). The first man in Egyptian folk-lore. Noum, the heavenly artist,

creates a beautiful girl—the original of the Grecian Pandora—and sends her to

Batoo, after which the happiness of the first man is destroyed.

 

Batria (Eg.). According to tradition, the wife of the Pharaoh and the teacher of

Moses.

 

Beel-Zebub (Heb.). The disfigured Baal of the Temples. and more correctly

Beel-Zebul. Beel-Zebub means -literally “god of flies” ; the derisory epithet

used by the Jews, and the incorrect and confused rendering of the “god of the

sacred scarabæi”, the divinities watching the mummies, and symbols of

transformation, regeneration and immortality. Beel-Zeboul means properly the “

God of the Dwelling:’ and is spoken of in this sense in Matthew x. 25. As

Apollo, originally not a Greek but a Phenician god, was the healing god, Paiàn,

or physician, as well as the god of oracles, he became gradually transformed as

such into the “Lord of Dwelling”, a household deity, and thus was called

Beel-Zeboul. He was also, in a sense, a psychopompic god, taking care of the

souls as did Anubis. Beelzebub was always the oracle god, and was only confused

and identified with Apollo latter on.

 

Bel (Chald.). The oldest and mightiest god of Babylonia, one of the earliest

trinities,—Anu (q.v.) ; Bel,

“Lord of the World”, father of the gods, Creator, and “Lord of the City of

Nipur’; and Hea, maker of fate, Lord of the Deep, God of Wisdom and esoteric

Knowledge, and “Lord of the city of Eridu”. The wife of Bel, or his female

aspect (Sakti), was Belat, or Beltis, “the mother of the great gods”, and the

“Lady of the city of Nipur”. The original Bel was also called Enu, Elu and Kaptu

(see Chaldean account of Genesis, by G. Smith). His eldest son was the Moon God

Sin (whose names were also Ur, Agu and Itu), who was the presiding deity of the

city of Ur, called in his honour by one of his names. Now Ur was the place of

nativity of Abram (see “Astrology”). In the early Babylonian religion the Moon

was, like Soma in India, a male, and the Sun a female deity. And this led almost

every nation to great fratricidal wars between the lunar and the solar

worshippers—e.g., the contests between the Lunar and the Solar

Dynasties, the Chandra and Suryavansa in ancient Aryavarta. Thus we find the


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same on a smaller scale between the Semitic tribes. Abram and his father Terah

are shown migrating from Ur and carrying their lunar god (or its scion) with

them ; for Jehovah Elohim or El—another form of Elu—has ever been connected with

the moon. It is the Jewish lunar chronology which has led the European

“civilized” nations into the greatest blunders and mistakes. Merodach, the son

of Hea, became the later Bel and was worshipped at Babylon. His other title,

Belas, has a number of symbolical meanings.

 

Bela-Shemesh (Chald. Heb.). “The Lord of the Sun”, the name of the Moon during

that period when the Jews became in turn solar and lunar worshippers, and when

the Moon was a male, and the Sun a female deity. This period embraced the time

between the allegorical expulsion of Adam and Eve from Eden down to the no less

allegorical Noachian flood. (See Secret Doctrine, I. 397.)

 

Bembo, Tablet of; or Mensa Isiaca. A brazen tablet inlaid with designs in Mosaic

(now in the Museum at Turin) which once belonged to the famous Cardinal Bembo.

Its origin and date are unknown. It is covered with Egyptian figures and

hieroglyphics, and is supposed to have been an ornament in an ancient Temple of

Isis. The learned Jesuit Kircher wrote a description of it, and Montfaucon has a

chapter devoted to it.

[ w.w.w.]

The only English work on the Isiac Tablet is by Dr. W. Wynn Westcott, who gives

a photogravure in addition to its history, description, and occult significance.

 

Ben (Heb.). A son; a common prefix in proper names to denote the son of

so-and-so, e.g., Ben Solomon, Ben Ishmael, etc.

 

Be-ness. A term coined by Theosophists to render more accurately the essential

meaning of the untranslatable word Sat. The latter word does not mean “Being”

for it presupposes a sentient feeling or some consciousness of existence. But,

as the term Sat is applied solely to the absolute Principle, the universal,

unknown, and ever unknowable Presence, which philosophical Pantheism postulates

in Kosmos, calling it the basic root of Kosmos. and Kosmos itself— “Being” was

no fit word to express it. Indeed, the latter is not even, as translated by some

Orientalists, “the incomprehensible Entity”; for it is no more an Entity than a

non-Entity, but both. It is, as said, absolute Be-ness, not Being, the one

secondless, undivided, and indivisible All—the root of all Nature visible and

invisible, objective and subjective, to be sensed by the highest spiritual

intuition, but’ never to be fully comprehended.

 

Ben Shamesh (Heb.). The children or the “Sons of the Sun”. The


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term belongs to the period when the Jews were divided into sun and moon

worshippers—Elites and Belites. (See “Bela- Shemesh”.)

 

Benoo (Eg.). A word applied to two symbols, both taken to mean “Phœnix”. One was

the Shen-shen

(the heron), and the other a nondescript bird, called the Rech (the red one),

and both were sacred to Osiris. It was the latter that was the regular Phœnix of

the great Mysteries, the typical symbol of self-creation and resurrection

through death—a type of the Solar Osiris and of the divine Ego in man. Yet both

the Heron and the Rech were symbols of cycles; the former, of the Solar year of

365 days; the latter of the tropical year or a period covering almost 26,000

years. In both cases the cycles were the types of the return of light from

darkness, the yearly and great cyclic return of the sun-god to his birth-place,

or—his Resurrection. The Rech-Benoo is described by Macrobius as living 660

years and then dying; while others stretched its life as long as 1,460 years.

Pliny, the Naturalist, describes the Rech as a large bird with gold and purple

wings, and a long blue tail. As every reader is aware, the Phœnix on feeling its

end approaching, according to tradition, builds for itself a funeral pile on the

top of the sacrificial altar, and then proceeds to consume himself thereon as a

burnt-offering. Then a worm appears in the ashes, which grows and developes

rapidly into a new Phœnix, resurrected from the ashes of its predecessor.

 

Berasit (Heb.). The first word of the book of Genesis. The English established

version translates this as “In the beginning,” but this rendering is disputed by

many scholars. Tertullian approved of “In power”; Grotius “When first”; but the

authors of the Targum of Jerusalern, who ought to have known Hebrew if anyone

did, translated it “In Wisdom”. Godfrey Higgins, in his Anacalypsis, insists on

Berasit being the sign of the ablative case, meaning “in” and ras, rasit, an

ancient word for Chokmah, “wisdom”. [ w. w.w.]

Berasit or Berasheth is a mystic word among the Kabbalists of Asia Minor.

 

Bergelmir (Scand.). The one giant who escaped in a boat the general slaughter of

his brothers, the giant Ymir’s children, drowned in the blood of their raging

Father. He is the Scandinavian Noah, as he, too, becomes the father of giants

after the Deluge. The lays of the Norsemen show the grandsons of the divine

Bun—Odin, Wili, and We— conquering and killing the terrible giant Ymir, and

creating the world out of his body.

 

Berosus (Chald.). A priest of the Temple of Belus who wrote for Alexander the

Great the history of the Cosmogony, as taught in the


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Temples, from the astronomical and chronological records preserved in that

temple. The fragments we have in the soi-disant translations of Eusebius are

certainly as untrustworthy as the biographer of the Emperor Constantine—of whom

he made a saint (!!)—could make them. The only guide to this Cosmogony may now

be found in the fragments of the Assyrian tablets, evidently copied almost

bodily from the earlier Babylonian records; which, say what the Orientalists

may, are undeniably the originals of the Mosaic Genesis, of the Flood, the tower

of Babel, of baby Moses set afloat on the waters, and of other events. For, if

the fragments from the Cosmogony of Berosus, so carefully re-edited and probably

mutilated and added to by Eusebius, are no great proof of the antiquity of these

records in Babylonia—seeing that this priest of Belus lived three hundred years

after the Jews were carried captive to Babylon, and they may have been borrowed

by the Assyrians from them—later discoveries have made such a consoling

hypothesis impossible. It is now fully ascertained by Oriental scholars that not

only “Assyria borrowed its civilization and written characters from Babylonia,”

but the Assyrians copied their literature from Babylonian sources. Moreover, in

his first Hibbert lecture, Professor Sayce shows the culture both of Babylonia

itself and of the city of Eridu to have been of foreign importation; and,

according to this scholar, the city of Eridu stood already “6,000 years ago on

the shores of the Persian gulf,” i.e., about the very time when Genesis shows

the Elohim creating the world, sun, and stars out of nothing.

 

Bes (Eg.). A phallic god, the god of concupiscence and pleasure. He is

represented standing on a lotus ready to devour his own progeny (Abydos). A

rather modern deity of foreign origin.

 

Bestla (Scand.). The daughter of the “Frost giants”, the sons of Ymir; married

to Bun, and the mother of Odin and his brothers (Edda).

 

Beth (Heb.). House, dwelling.

 

Beth Elohim (Heb.). A Kabbalistic treatise treating of the angels, souls of men,

and demons. The name means “House of the Gods".

 

Betyles (Phœn.). Magical stones. The ancient writers call them the “animated

stones” ; oracular stones, believed in and used both by Gentiles and Christians.

(See S.D. II. p. 342).

 

Bhadra Vihara (Sk.). Lit., “the Monastery of the Sages or Bodhisattvas”. A

certain Vihara or Matham in Kanyâkubdja.

 

Bhadrakalpa (Sk.). Lit., “The Kalpa of the Sages”. Our present period is a

Bhadra Kalpa, and the exoteric teaching makes it last 236 million years. It is

“so called because 1,000 Buddhas or sages appear in the course of it”. (Sanshrit

Chinese Dict.) “Four Buddhas have already appeared” it adds; but as out of the

236 millions, over 151


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million years have already elapsed, it does seem a rather uneven distribution of

Buddhas. This is the way exoteric or popular religions confuse everything.

Esoteric philosophy teaches us that every Root- race has its chief Buddha or

Reformer, who appears also in the seven sub-races as a Bodhisattva (q.v.).

Gautama Sakyamuni was the fourth, and also the fifth Buddha: the fifth, because

we are the fifth root-race; the fourth, as the chief Buddha in this fourth

Round. The Bhadra Kalpa, or the “period of stability”, is the name of our

present Round, esoterically—its duration applying, of course, only to our globe

(D), the “1,000” Buddhas being thus in reality limited to but forty-nine in all.

 

Bhadrasena (Sk.). A Buddhist king of Magadha.

 

Bhagats (Sk.). Also called Sokha and Sivnath by the Hindus; one who exorcises

evil spirits.

 

Bhagavad-gita (Sk.). Lit., “the Lord’s Song”. A portion of the Mahabharata, the

great epic poem of India. It contains a dialogue wherein Krishna—the

“Charioteer”—and Arjuna, his Chela, have a discussion upon the highest spiritual

philosophy. The work is pre-eminently occult or esoteric.

 

Bhagavat (Sk.). A title of the Buddha and of Krishna. “The Lord” literally.

 

Bhao (Sk.). A ceremony of divination among the Kolarian tribes of Central India.

 

Bhârata Varsha (Sk.). The land of Bharata, an ancient name of India.

 

Bhargavas (Sk.). An ancient race in India; from the name of Bhrigu, the Rishi.

 

Bhâshya (Sk) A commentary.

 

Bhâskara (Sk). One of the titles of Surya, the Sun; meaning “life- giver” and

“light-maker”.

 

Bhava (Sk.). Being, or state of being; the world, a birth, and also a name of

Siva.

 

Bhikshu (Sk.). In Pâli Bihkhu. The name given to the first followers of

Sâkyamuni Buddha. Lit., “mendicant scholar”. The Sanskrit Chinese Dictionary

explains the term correctly by dividing Bhikshus into two classes of Sramanas

(Buddhist monks and priests), viz., “esoteric mendicants who control their

nature by the (religious) law, and exoteric mendicants who control their nature

by diet;” and it adds, less correctly: “every true Bhikshu is supposed to work

miracles”.

 

Bhons (Tib.). The followers of the old religion of the Aborigines of Tibet; of

pre-buddhistic temples and ritualism; the same as Dugpas,


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“red caps”, though the latter appellation usually applies only to sorcerers.

 

Bhrantidarsanatah (Sk.). Lit., “false comprehension or apprehension”; something

conceived of on false appearances as a mayavic, illusionary form.

 

Bhrigu (Sk.). One of the great Vedic Rishis. He is called “Son” by Manu, who

confides to him his Institutes. He is one of the Seven Prajâpatis or progenitors

of mankind, which is equivalent to identifying him with one of the creative

gods, placed by the Purânas in Krita Yug, or the first age, that of purity. Dr.

Wynn Westcott reminds us of the fact that the late and very erudite Dr. Kenealy

(who spelt the name Brighoo), made of this Muni (Saint) the fourth, out of his

twelve, “divine messengers” to the World, adding that he appeared in Tibet, A.N.

4800 and that his religion spread to Britain, where his followers raised the

megalithic temple of Stonehenge. This, of course, is a hypothesis, based merely

on Dr. Kenealy’s personal speculations.

 

Bhûmi (Sk.). The earth, called also Prithivî.

 

Bhur-Bhuva (Sk). A mystic incantation, as Om, Bhur, Bhuva, Swar, meaning “Om,

earth, sky, heaven,  This is the exoteric explanation.

 

Bhuranyu (Sk.). “The rapid” or the swift. Used of a missile— an equivalent also

of the Greek Phoroneus.

 

Bhur-loka (Sk). One of the 14, lokas or worlds in Hindu Pantheism; our Earth.

 

Bhutadi (Sk.). Elementary substances, the origin and the germinal essence of the

elements.

 

Bhutan. A country of heretical Buddhists and Lamaists beyond Sikkhim, where

rules the Dharma Raja, a nominal vassal of the Dalaї Lama.

 

Bhûhta-vidyâ (Sk.). The art of exorcising, of treating and curing demoniac

possession. Literally, “Demon” or “Ghost-knowledge”.

 

Bhûta-sarga (Sk.). Elemental or incipient Creation, i.e., when matter was

several degrees less material than it is now.

 

Bhûtesa (Sk.) Or Bhûteswara; lit., “Lord of beings or of existent lives”. A name

applied to Vishnu, to Brahmâ and Krishna.

 

Bhûts (Sk.). Bhûta.: Ghosts, phantoms. To call them “demons”, as do the

Orientalists, is incorrect. For, if on the one hand, a Bhûta is “a malignant

spirit which haunts cemeteries, lurks in trees, animates dead bodies, and

deludes and devours human beings”, in popular fancy, in India in Tibet and

China, by Bhûtas are also meant “heretics” who besmear their bodies with ashes,

or Shaiva ascetics (Siva being held in India for the King of Bhûtas).


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Bhuya-loka (Sk.). One of the 14 worlds.

 

Bhuvana (Sk). A name of Rudra or Siva, one of the Indian Trimurti (Trinity).

 

Bifröst (Scand.). A bridge built by the gods to protect Asgard. On it “the third

Sword-god, known as Heimdal or Riger”, stands night and day girded with his

sword, for he is the watchman selected to protect Asgard, the abode of gods.

Heimdal is the Scandinavian Cherubim with the flaming sword, “which turned every

way to keep the way of the tree of life”.

 

Bihar Gyalpo (Tib.). A king deified by the Dugpas. A patron over all their

religious buildings.

 

Binah (Heb.). Understanding. The third of the 10 Sephiroth, the third of the

Supernal Triad; a female potency, corresponding to the letter hé of the

Tetragrammaton IHVH. Binah is called AIMA, the Supernal Mother, and “the great

Sea”. [ w.w.w.]

 

Birs Nimrud (Chald.). Believed by the Orientalists to be the site of the Tower

of Babel. The great pile of Birs Nimrud is near Babylon. Sir H. Rawlinson and

several Assyriologists examined the excavated ruins and found that the tower

consisted of seven stages of brick-work, each stage of a different colour, which

shows that the temple was devoted to the seven planets. Even with its three

higher stages or floors in ruins, it still rises now 154 feet above the level of

the plain. (”See Borsippa”.)

 

Black Dwarfs. The name of the Elves of Darkness, who creep about in the dark

caverns of the earth and fabricate weapons and utensils for their divine

fathers, the Æsir or Ases. Called also “Black Elves”.

 

Black Fire (Zohar.) A Kabbalistic term for Absolute Light and Wisdom; “black”

because it is incomprehensible to our finite intellects.

 

Black Magic (Occult.). Sorcery; necromancy, or the raising of the dead, and

other selfish abuses of abnormal powers. This abuse may be unintentional; yet it

is still “black magic” whenever anything is produced phenomenally simply for

one’s own gratification.

 

B’ne Alhim or Beni Elohim (Heb.). “Sons of God ”, literally or more correctly

“Sons of the gods”, as Elohim is the plural of Eloah. A group of angelic powers

referable by analogy to the Sephira Hôd. 

 [w. w. w.]

 

Boat of the Sun. This sacred solar boat was called Sekti, and it was steered by

the dead. With the Egyptians the highest exaltation of the Sun was in Aries and

the depression in Libya. (See “Pharaoh”, the “Son of the Sun”.) A blue

light—which is the “Sun’s Son”—is seen streaming from the bark. The ancient

Egyptians taught


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that the real colour of the Sun was blue, and Macrobius also states that his

colour is of a pure blue before he reaches the horizon and after he disappears

below. It is curious to note in this relation the fact that it is only since

1881 that physicists and astronomers discovered that “our Sun is really blue”.

Professor Langley devoted many years to ascertaining the fact. Helped in this by

the magnificent scientific apparatus of physical science, he has succeeded

finally in proving that the apparent yellow-orange colour of the Sun is due only

to the effect of absorption exerted by its atmosphere of vapours, chiefly

metallic; but that in sober truth and reality, it is not “a white Sun but a blue

one”, i.e., something which the Egyptian priests had discovered without any

known scientific instruments, many thousands of years ago!

 

Boaz (Heb.). The great-grandfather of David. The word is from B, meaning “in”,

and oz “strength”, a symbolic name of one of the pillars at the porch of King

Solomon’s temple. [w. w. w.]

 

Bodha-Bodhi (Sk.). Wisdom-knowledge.

 

Bodhi or Sambodhi (Sk.). Receptive intelligence, in contradistinction to Buddhi,

which is the potentiality of intelligence.

 

 

Bodhi Druma (Sk.). The Bo or Bodhi tree; the tree of “knowledge the Pippala or

ficus religiosa in botany. It is the tree under which Sâkymuni meditated for

seven years and then reached Buddhaship. It was originally 400 feet high, it is

claimed; but when Hiouen-Tsang saw it, about the year 640 of our era, it was

only 50 feet high. Its cuttings have been carried all over the Buddhist world

and are planted in front of almost every Vihâra or temple of fame in China,

Siam, Ceylon, and Tibet.

 

Bodhidharma (Sk.). Wisdom-religion; or the wisdom contained in Dharma (ethics).

Also the name of a great Arhat Kshatriya (one of the warrior-caste), the son of

a king. It was Panyatara, his guru, who “gave him the name Bodhidharma to mark

his understanding (bodhi) of the Law (dharma) of Buddha”. (Chin. San. Diet.).

Bodhidharma, who flourished in the sixth century, travelled to China, whereto he

brought a precious relic, namely, the almsbowl of the Lord Buddha.

 

Bodhisattva (Sk). Lit., “he, whose essence (sattva) has become intelligence

(bodhi)”; those who need but one more incarnation to become perfect Buddhas,

i.e., to be entitled to Nirvâna. This, as applied to Manushi (terrestrial)

Buddhas. In the metaphysical sense, Bodhisattva is a title given to the sons of

the celestial Dhyâni Buddhas.

 

Bodhyanga (Sk.). Lit., the seven branches of knowledge or understanding. One of

the 37 categories of the Bodhi pakchika dharma, comprehending seven degrees of

intelligence (esoterically, seven states of


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consciousness), and these are (1) Smriti “memory”; (2) Dharma pravitchaya,

“correct understanding” or discrimination of the Law ; (3) Virya, “energy” ; (4)

Priti, “spiritual joy” ; (5 )Prasrabdhi, “tranquillity” or quietude; (6)

Samâdhi, “ecstatic contemplation”; and (7) Upeksha “absolute indifference”.

 

Boehme (Jacob). A great mystic philosopher, one of the most prominent

Theosophists of the mediæval ages. He was born about 1575 at Old Seidenburg,

some two miles from Görlitz (Silesia), and died in 1624, at nearly fifty years

of age. In his boyhood he was a common shepherd, and, after learning to read and

write in a village school, became an apprentice to a poor shoemaker at Görlitz.

He was a natural clairvoyant of most wonderful powers. With no education or

acquaintance with science he wrote works which are now proved to be full of

scientific truths; but then, as he says himself, what he wrote upon, he “saw it

as in a great Deep in the Eternal”. He had “a thorough view of the universe, as

in a chaos”, which yet “opened itself in him, from time to time, as in a young

plant”. He was a thorough born Mystic, and evidently of a constitution which is

most rare one of those fine natures whose material envelope impedes in no way

the direct, even if only occasional, intercommunion between the intellectual and

the spiritual Ego. It is this Ego which Jacob Boehme, like so many other

untrained mystics, mistook for God; “Man must acknowledge,” he writes, “that his

knowledge is not his own, but from God, who manifests the Ideas of Wisdom to the

Soul of Man, in what measure he pleases.” Had this great Theosophist mastered

Eastern Occultism he might have expressed it otherwise. He would have known then

that the “god” who spoke through his poor uncultured and untrained brain, was

his own divine Ego, the omniscient Deity within himself, and that what that

Deity gave out was not in “what measure pleased,” but in the measure of the

capacities of the mortal and temporary dwelling IT informed.

 

Bonati, Guido. A Franciscan monk, born at Florence in the XIIIth century and

died in 1306. He became an astrologer and alchemist, but failed as a Rosicrucian

adept. He returned after this to his monastery.

 

Bona-Oma, or Bona Dea. A Roman goddess, the patroness of female Initiates and

Occultists. Called also Fauna after her father Faunus. She was worshipped as a

prophetic and chaste divinity, and her cult was confined solely to women, men

not being allowed to even pronounce her name. She revealed her oracles only to

women, and the ceremonies of her Sanctuary (a grotto in the Aventine) were

conducted by the Vestals, every 1st of May. Her aversion to men was so great

that no male person was permitted to approach the house of the consuls where


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her festival was sometimes held, and even the portraits and the busts of men

were carried out for the time from the building. Clodius, who once profaned such

a sacred festival by entering the house of Caesar where it was held, in a female

disguise, brought grief upon himself. Flowers and foliage decorated her temple

and women made libations from a vessel (mellarium) full of milk. It is not true

that the mellarium contained wine, as asserted by some writers, who being men

thus tried to revenge themselves.

 

Bono, Peter. A Lombardian; a great adept in the Hermetic Science, who travelled

to Persia to study Alchemy. Returning from his voyage he settled in Istria in

1330, and became famous as a Rosicrucian. A Calabrian monk named Lacinius is

credited with having published in 1702 a condensed version of Bono’s works on

the transmutation of metals. There is, however, more of Lacinius than of Bono in

the work. Bono was a genuine adept and an Initiate ; and such do not leave their

secrets behind them in MSS.

 

Boodhasp (Chald.) .An alleged Chaldean; but in esoteric teaching a Buddhist (a

Bodhisattva), from the East, who was the founder of the esoteric school of

Neo-Sabeism, and whose secret rite of baptism passed bodily into the Christian

rite of the same name. For almost three centuries before our era, Buddhist monks

overran the whole country of Syria, made their way into the Mesopotamian valley

and visited even Ireland. The name Ferho and Faho of the Codex Nazaraeus is but

a corruption of Fho, Fo and Pho, the name which the Chinese, Tibetans and even

Nepaulese often give to Buddha.

 

Book of the Dead. An ancient Egyptian ritualistic and occult work attributed to

Thot-Hermes. Found in the coffins of ancient mummies,

 

Book of the Keys. An ancient Kabbalistic work.

 

Borj (Pers.). The Mundane Mountain, a volcano or fire-mountain; the same as the

Indian Meru.

 

Borri, Joseph Francis. A great Hermetic philosopher, born at Milan in the 17th

century. He was an adept, an alchemist and a devoted occultist. He knew too much

and was, therefore, condemned to death for heresy, in January, 1661, after the

death of Pope Innocent X. He escaped and lived many years after, when finally he

was recognised by a monk in a Turkish village, denounced, claimed by the Papal

Nuncio, taken back to Rome and imprisoned, August 10th, 1675. But facts show

that he escaped from his prison in a way no one could account for.

 

Borsippa (Chald.). The planet-tower, wherein Bel was worshipped in the days when

astrolaters were the greatest astronomers. It was dedicated to Nebo, god of

Wisdom. (See “Birs Nimrud ”.)


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Both-al (Irish). The Both-al of the Irish is the descendant and copy of the

Greek Batylos and the

Beth-el of Canaan, the “house of God” (q.v.).

 

Bragadini, Marco Antonio. A Venetian Rosicrucian of great achievements, an

Occultist and Kabbalist who was decapitated in 1595 in Bavaria, for making gold.

 

Bragi (Scand.). The god of New Life, of the re-incarnation of nature and man. He

is called “the divine singer” without spot or blemish. He is represented as

gliding in the ship of the Dwarfs of Death during the death of nature (pralaya),

lying asleep on the deck with his golden stringed harp near him and dreaming the

dream of life. When the vessel crosses the threshold of Nain, the Dwarf of

Death, Bragi awakes and sweeping the strings of his harp, sings a song that

echoes over all the worlds, a song describing the rapture of existence, and

awakens dumb, sleeping nature out of her long death-like sleep.

 

Brahma (Sk.). The student must distinguish between Brahma the neuter, and

Brahmâ, the male creator of the Indian Pantheon. The former, Brahma or Brahman,

is the impersonal, supreme and uncognizable Principle of the Universe from the

essence of which all emanates, and into which all returns, which is incorporeal,

immaterial, unborn, eternal, beginningless and endless. It is all-pervading,

animating the highest god as well as the smallest mineral atom. Brahmâ on the

other hand, the male and the alleged Creator, exists periodically in his

manifestation only, and then again goes into pralaya, i.e., disappears and is

annihilated.

 

Brahmâ’s Day. A period of 2,160,000,000 years during which Brahmâ having emerged

out of his golden egg (Hiranyagarbha), creates and fashions the material world

(being simply the fertilizing and creative force in Nature). After this period,

the worlds being destroyed in turn, by fire and water, he vanishes with

objective nature, and then comes Brahmâ's Night.

 

Brahmâ’s Night. A period of equal duration, during which Brahmâ. is said to be

asleep. Upon awakening he recommences the process, and this goes on for an AGE

of Brahmâ composed of alternate “Days”, and “Nights”, and lasting 100 years (of

2,160,000,000 years each). It requires fifteen figures to express the duration

of such an age; after the expiration of which the Mahapralaya or the Great

Dissolution sets in, and lasts in its turn for the same space of fifteen

figures.

 

Brahmâ Prajâpati (Sk.). “Brahmâ the Progenitor”, literally the “Lord of

Creatures”. In this aspect Brahmâ is the synthesis of the Prajâpati or creative

Forces.


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Brahmâ Vâch (Sk.) Male and female Brahmâ. Vâch is also some-times called the

female logos; for Vâch  means Speech, literally. (See Manu Book I., and Vishnu

Purâna.)

 

Brahma Vidyâ (Sk.) The knowledge, the esoteric science, about the two Brahmas

and their true nature.

 

Brahmâ Virâj. (Sk.) The same: Brahmâ separating his body into two halves, male

and female, creates in them Vâch and Virâj. In plainer terms and esotericlly

Brahmâ the Universe, differentiating, produced thereby material nature, Virâj,

and spiritual intelligent Nature, Vâch—which is the Logos of Deity or the

manifested expression of the eternal divine Ideation.

 

Brahmâcharî (Sk.) A Brahman ascetic; one vowed to celibacy, a monk, virtually,

or a religious student.

 

Brahmajnâni (Sk.) One possessed of complete Knowledge; an Illuminatus in

esoteric parlance.

 

Brâhman (Sk.) The highest of the four castes in India, one supposed or rather

fancying himself, as high among men, as Brahman, the ABSOLUTE of the Vedantins,

is high among, or above the gods.

 

Brâhmana period (Sk.) One of the four periods into which Vedic literature has

been divided by Orientalists.

 

Brâhmanas (Sk.) Hindu Sacred Books. Works composed by, and for Brahmans.

Commentaries on those portions of the Vedas which were intended for the

ritualistic use and guidance of the “twice-born (Dwija) or Brahmans.

 

Brahmanaspati (Sk.). The planet Jupiter; a deity in the Rig -Veda, known in the

exoteric works as Brihaspati, whose wife Târâ was carried away by Soma (the

Moon). This led to a war between the gods and the Asuras.

 

Brahmâpuri (Sk.) Lit., “the City of Brahmâ.

 

Brahmâputrâs (Sk.) The Sons of Brahmâ.

 

Brahmarandhra (Sk.) A spot on the crown of the head connected by Sushumna, a

cord in the spinal column, with the heart. A mystic term having its significance

only in mysticism.

 

Brahmârshîs (Sk.). The Brahminical Rishis.

 

Bread and Wine. Baptism and the Eucharist have their direct origin in pagan

Egypt. There the “waters of purification” were used (the Mithraic font for

baptism being borrowed by the Persians from the Egyptians) and so were bread and

wine. “Wine in the Dionysiak cult, as in the Christian religion, represents that

blood which in different senses is the life of the world” (Brown, in the

Dionysiak Myth). Justin Martyr says, “In imitation of which the devil did the

like in the


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Mysteries of Mithras, for you either know or may know that they also take bread

and a cup of water in the sacrifices of those that are initiated and pronounce

certain words over it”. (See “Holy Water”.)

 

Briareus (Gr.) A famous giant in the Theogony of Hesiod. The son of Cœlus and

Terra, a monster with 50 heads and 100 arms. He is conspicuous in the wars and

battles between the gods.

 

Briatic World or Briah (Heb.) This world is the second of the Four worlds of the

Kabbalists and referred to the highest created “Archangels”, or to Pure Spirits.

[ w.w.w.]

 

Bride. The tenth Sephira, Malkuth, is called by the Kabbalists the Bride of

Microprosopus; she is the final Hé of the Tetragrammaton ; in a similar manner

the Christian Church is called the Bride of Christ.

[ w.w.w.]

 

Brihadâranyaka (Sk.) The name of a Upanishad. One of the sacred and secret books

of the Brahmins; an Aranyaka is a treatise appended to the Vedas, and considered

a subject of special study by those who have retired to the jungle (forest) for

purposes of religious meditation.

 

Brihaspati (Sk.) The name of a Deity, also of a Rishi. It is like wise the name

of the planet Jupiter. He is the personified Guru and priest of the gods in

India ; also the symbol of exoteric ritualism as opposed to esoteric mysticism.

Hence the opponent of King Soma—the moon, but also the sacred juice drunk at

initiation—the parent of Budha, Secret Wisdom.

 

Briseus (Gr.) A name given to the god Bacchus from his nurse, Briso. He had also

a temple at Brisa, a promontory of the isle of Lesbos.

 

Brothers of the Shadow. A name given by the Occultists to Sorcerers, and

especially to the Tibetan Dugpas, of whom there are many in the Bhon sect of the

Red Caps (Dugpa). The word is applied to all practitioners of black or left hand

magic.

 

Bubasté (Eg.) A city in Egypt which was sacred to the cats, and where was their

principal shrine. Many hundreds of thousands of cats were embalmed and buried in

the grottoes of Beni-Hassan-el Amar. The cat being a symbol of the moon was

sacred to Isis, her goddess. It sees in the dark and its eyes have a

phosphorescent lustre which frightens the night-birds of evil omen. The cat was

also sacred to Bast, and thence called “the (destroyer of the Sun’s (Osiris’)

enemies”.

 

Buddha (Sk.). Lit., “The Enlightened”. The highest degree of knowledge. To

become a Buddha one has to break through the bondage of sense and personality;

to acquire a complete perception of the REAL SELF and learn not to separate it

from all otherselves; to learn


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by experience the utter unreality of all phenomena of the visible Kosmos

foremost of all; to reach a complete detachment from all that is evanescent and

finite, and live while yet on Earth in the immortal and the everlasting alone,

in a supreme state of holiness.

 

Buddha Siddhârta (Sk.) The name given to Gautama, the Prince of Kapilavastu, at

his birth. It is an abbreviation of sarvârtthasiddha and means, the “realization

of all desires”. Gautama, which means, on earth (gâu) the most victorious (tama)

“was the sacerdotal name of the Sâkya family, the kingly patronymic of the

dynasty to which the father of Gautama, the King Suddhodhana of Kapilavastu,

belonged. Kapilavastu was an ancient city, the birth-place of the Great Reformer

and was destroyed during his life time. In the title Sâkyamuni, the last

component, muni, is rendered as meaning one mighty in charity, isolation and

silence”, and the former Sâkya is the family name. Every Orientalist or Pundit

knows by heart the story of Gautama, the Buddha, the most perfect of mortal men

that the world has ever seen, but none of them seem to suspect the esoteric

meaning underlying his prenatal

biography, i.e., the significance of the popular story. The Lalitavistûra tells

the tale, but abstains from hinting at the truth. The 5,000 jâtakas, or the

events of former births (re-incarnations) are taken literally instead of

esoterically. Gautama, the Buddha, would not have been a mortal man, had he not

passed through hundreds and thousands of births previous to his last. Yet the

detailed account of these, and the statement that during them he worked his way

up through every stage of transmigration from the lowest animate and inanimate

atom and insect, up to the highest—or man, contains simply the well-known occult

aphorism : “a stone becomes a plant, a plant an animal, and an animal a man”.

Every human being who has ever existed, has passed through the same evolution.

But the hidden symbolism in the sequence of these re-births (jâtaka) contains a

perfect history of the evolution on this earth, pre and post human, and is a

scientific exposition of natural facts. One truth not veiled but bare and open

is found in their nomenclature, viz., that as soon as Gautama had reached the

human form he began exhibiting in every personality the utmost unselfishness,

self-sacrifice and charity. Buddha Gautama, the fourth of the Sapta (Seven)

Buddhas and Sapta Tathâgatas was born according to Chinese Chronology in 1024

B.C; but according to the Singhalese chronicles, on the 8th day of the second

(or fourth) moon in the year 621 before our era. He fled from his father’s

palace to become an ascetic on the night of the 8th day of the second moon, 597

BC., and having passed six years in ascetic meditation at Gaya, and perceiving

that physical self-torture was useless to bring enlightenment, be decided upon

striking out a new path, until he reached the state of


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Bodhi. He became a full Buddha on the night of the 8th day of the twelfth moon,

in the year 592, and finally entered Nirvâna in the year 543 according to

Southern Buddhism. The Orientalists, however, have decided upon several other

dates. All the rest is allegorical. He attained the state of Bodhisattva on

earth when in the personality called Prabhâpala. Tushita stands for a place on

this globe, not for a paradise in the invisible regions. The selection of the

Sâkya family and his mother Mâyâ, as “the purest on earth,” is in accordance

with the model of the nativity of every Saviour, God or deified Reformer. The

tale about his entering his mother’s bosom in the shape of a white elephant is

an allusion to his innate wisdom, the elephant of that colour being a symbol of

every Bodhisattva. The statements that at Gautama’s birth, the newly born babe

walked seven steps in four directions, that an Udumbara flower bloomed in all

its rare beauty and that the Nâga kings forthwith proceeded ‘‘to baptise him ”,

are all so many allegories in the phraseology of the Initiates and

well-understood by every Eastern Occultist. The whole events of his noble life

are given in occult numbers, and every so-called miraculous event—so deplored by

Orientalists as confusing the narrative and making it impossible to extricate

truth from fiction—is simply the allegorical veiling of the truth, it is as

comprehensible to an Occultist learned in symbolism, as it is difficult to

understand for a European scholar ignorant of Occultism. Every detail of the

narrative after his death and before cremation is a chapter of facts written in

a language which must be studied before it is understood, otherwise its dead

letter will lead one into absurd contradictions. For instance, having reminded

his disciples of the immortality of Dharmakâya Buddha is said to have passed

into Samâdhi, and lost himself in Nirvâna—from which none can return., and yet,

notwithstanding this, the Buddha is shown bursting open the lid of the coffin,

and stepping out of it ; saluting with folded hands his mother Mâyâ who had

suddenly appeared in the air, though she had died seven (days after his birth,

&c., &c. As Buddha. was a Chakravartti (he who turns the wheel of the Law), his

body at its cremation could not be consumed by common fire. What happens

Suddenly a jet of flame burst out of the Swastica on his breast, and reduced his

body to ashes. Space prevents giving more instances. As to his being one of the

true and undeniable Saviours of the World, suffice it to say that the most rabid

orthodox missionary, unless he is hopelessly insane, or has not the least regard

even for historical truth, cannot find one smallest accusation against the life

and personal character of Gautama, the “Buddha”. Without any claim to divinity,

allowing his followers to fall into atheism, rather than into the degrading

superstition of deva or idol-worship, his walk in life is from the beginning to

the end, holy and


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divine. During the years of his mission it is blameless and pure as that of a

god—or as the latter should be. He is a perfect example of a divine, godly man.

He reached Buddhaship—i.e., complete enlightenment—entirely by his own merit and

owing to his own individual exertions, no god being supposed to have any

personal merit in the exercise of goodness and holiness. Esoteric teachings

claim that he renounced Nirvâna and gave up the Dharmakâya vesture to remain a

“Buddha of compassion” within the reach of the miseries of this world. And the

religious philosophy he left to it has produced for over 2,000 years generations

of good and unselfish men. His is the only absolutely bloodless religion among

all the existing religions tolerant and liberal, teaching universal compassion

and charity, love and self-sacrifice, poverty and contentment with one’s lot,

whatever it may he. No persecutions, and enforcement of faith by fire and sword,

have ever disgraced it. No thunder-and-lightning-vomiting god has interfered

with its chaste commandments; and if the simple, humane and philosophical code

of daily life left to us by the greatest Man-Reformer ever known, should ever

come to he adopted by mankind at large, then indeed an era of bliss and peace

would dawn on Humanity.

 

Buddhachhâyâ (Sk.). Lit., “the shadow of Buddha”. It is said to become visible

at certain great events, and during some imposing ceremonies performed at

Temples in commemoration of glorious acts of Buddhas life. Hiouen-tseng, the

Chinese traveller, names a certain cave where it occasionally appears on the

wall, but adds that only he whose mind is perfectly pure”, can see it.

 

Buddhaphala (Sk) Lit., “the fruit of Buddha”, the fruition of Arahattvaphalla,

or Arhatship.

 

Buddhi (Sk.). Universal Soul or Mind. Mahâbuddhi is a name of Mahat (see

“Alaya”); also the spiritual Soul in man (the sixth principle), the vehicle of

Atmâ exoterically the seventh.

 

Buddhism. Buddhism is now split into two distinct Churches : the Southern and

the Northern Church. The former is said to be the purer form, as having

preserved more religiously the original teachings of the Lord Buddha. It is the

religion of Ceylon, Siam, Burmah and other places, while Northern Buddhism is

confined to Tibet, China and Nepaul. Such a distinction, however, is incorrect.

If the Southern Church is nearer, in that it has not departed, except perhaps in

some trifling dogmas due to the many councils held after the death of the

Master, from the public or exoteric teachings of Sâkyamuni—the Northern Church

is the outcome of Siddhârta Buddha’s esoteric teachings which he confined to his

elect Bhikshus and Arhats. In fact, Buddhism in the present age, cannot he

justly judged either by one or


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the other of its exoteric popular forms. Real Buddhism can be appreciated only

by blending the philosophy of the Southern Church and the metaphysics of the

Northern Schools. If one seems too iconoclastic and stero:, and the other too

metaphysical and transcendental, even to being overgrown with the weeds of

Indian exotericism—many of the gods of its Pantheon having been transplanted

under new names to Tibetan soil—it is entirely due to the popular expression of

Buddhism in both Churches. Correspondentially they stand in their relation to

each other as Protestantism to Roman Catholicism. Both err by an excess of zeal

and erroneous interpretations, though neither the Southern nor the Northern

Buddhist clergy have ever departed from truth consciously, still less have they

acted under the dictates of priestocracy, ambition, or with an eye to personal

gain and power, as the two Christian Churches have.

 

Buddhochinga (Sk) The name of a great Indian Arhat who went to China in the 4th

century to propagate Buddhism and converted masses of people by means of

miracles and most wonderful magic feats.

 

Budha (Sk. “The Wise and Intelligent”, the Son of Soma, the Moon, and of Rokini

or Taraka, wife of Brihaspati carried away by King Soma, thus leading to the

great war between the Asuras, who sided with the Moon, and the Gods who took the

defence of Brihaspati (Jupiter) who, was their Purohita (family priest). This

war is known as the Tarakamaya. It is the original of the war in Olympus between

the Gods and the Titans and also of the war (in Revelation between Michael

(Indra) and the Dragon (personifying the Asuras).

 

Bull-Worship (See “Apis” ). The worship of the Bull and the Ram was addressed to

one and the same power, that of generative creation, under two aspects— the

celestial or cosmic, and the terrestrial or human. The ram-headed gods all

belong to the latter aspect, the bull—to the former. Osiris to whom the Bull was

sacred, was never regarded as a phallic deity ; neither was Siva with his Bull

Nandi, in spite of the lingham. As Nandi is of a pure milk-white colour, so was

Apis. Both were the emblems of the generative, or of evolutionary power in the

Universal Kosmos. Those who regard the solar gods and the bulls as of a phallic

character, or connect the Sun with it, are mistaken, it is only the lunar gods

and the rams, and lambs, which are priapic, and it little becomes a religion

which, however unconsciously, has still adopted for its worship a god

pre-eminently lunar, and accentuated its choice by the selection of the lamb,

whose sire is the ram, a glyph as pre-eminently phallic, for its most sacred

symbol—to vilify the older religions for using the same symbolism. The worship

of the bull, Apis, Hapi Ankh, or the living Osiris, ceased over 3,000 years ago

the worship of the ram and lamb continues to this day. Mariette Bey discovered

the Serapeum, the


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Necropolis of the Apis-bulls, near Memphis, an imposing subterranean crypt 2,000

feet long and twenty feet wide, containing the mummies of thirty sacred bulls.

If 1,000 years hence, a Roman Catholic Cathedral with the Easter lamb in it,

were discovered under the ashes of Vesuvius or Etna, would future generations be

justified in inferring therefrom that Christians were “lamb” and “dove”

worshippers ? Yet the two symbols would give them as much right in the one case

as in the other. Moreover, not all of the sacred “Bulls” were phallic, i.e.,

males; there were hermaphrodite and sexless “bulls”. The black bull Mnevis, the

son of Ptah, was sacred to the God Ra at Heliopolis; the Pacis of Hermonthis—to

Amoun Horus, &c., &c., and Apis himself was a hermaphodite and not a male

animal, which shows his cosmic character. As well call the Taurus of the Zodiac

and all Nature phallic.

 

Bumapa (Tib.). A school of men, usually a college of mystic students.

 

Bunda-hish. An old Eastern work in which among other things anthropology is

treated in an allegorical fashion.

 

Burham-i-Kati. A Hermetic Eastern work.

 

Burî (Scand) “The producer”, the Son of Bestla, in Norse legends.

 

Buru Bonga. The “Spirit of the Hills”. This Dryadic deity is worshipped by the

Kolarian tribes of Central India with great ceremonies and magical display.

There are mysteries connected with it, but the people are very jealous and will

admit no stranger to their rites.

 

Busardier. A Hermetic philosopher born in Bohemia who is credited with having

made a genuine powder of projection. He left the bulk of his red powder to a

friend named Richthausen, an adept and alchemist of Vienna. Some years after

 

Busardier’s death, in 1637, Richthausen introduced himself to the Emperor

Ferdinand III, who is known to have been ardently devoted to alchemy, and

together they are said to have converted three pounds of mercury into the finest

gold with one single grain of Busardier’s powder. In 1658 the Elector of Mayence

also was permitted to test the powder, and the gold produced with it was

declared by the Master of the Mint to be such, that he had never seen finer.

Such are the claims vouchsafed by the city records and chronicles.

 

Butler. An English name assumed by an adept, a disciple of some Eastern Sages,

of whom many fanciful stories are current. It is said for instance, that Butler

was captured during his travels in 1629, and sold into captivity. He became the

slave of an Arabian philosopher, a great alchemist, and finally escaped, robbing

his Master of a large quantity of red powder. According to more trustworthy

records, only the last portion of this story is true. Adepts who can be robbed

without


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knowing it would be unworthy of the name. Butler or rather the person who

assumed this name, robbed his “Master” (whose free disciple he was) of the

secret of transmutation, and abused of his knowledge—i.e., sought to turn it to

 

his personal profit, but was speedily punished for it. After performing many

wonderful cures by means of his “stone (i.e., the occult knowledge of an

initiated adept), and producing extraordinary phenomena, to some of which Val

Helmont, the famous Occultist and Rosicrucian, was witness, not for the benefit

of men but his own vain glory, Butler was imprisoned in the Castle of Viloord,

in Flanders, and passed almost the whole of his life in confinement. He lost his

powers and died miserable and unknown. Such is the fate of every Occultist who

abuses his power or desecrates the sacred science.

 

Bythos (Gr.). A Gnostic term meaning “Depth” or the “great Deep”, Chaos. It is

equivalent to space, before anything had formed itself in it from the primordial

atoms that exist eternally in its spatial depths, according to the teachings of

Occultism.

                                                                                 

                                                                                

  

C


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C.—The third letter of the English alphabet, which has no equivalent in Hebrew

except Caph, which see under K.

 

Cabar Zio (Gnost.). “The mighty Lord of Splendour” (Codex Nazaraeus), they who

procreate seven beneficent lives, “who shine in their own form and light” to

counteract the influence of the seven “badly-disposed” stellars or principles.

These are the progeny of Karabtanos, the personification of concupiscence and

matter. The latter are the seven physical planets, the former, their genii or

Rulers.

 

Cabeiri or Kabiri (Phœn) Deities, held in the highest veneration at Thebes, in

Lemnos, Phrygia, Macedonia, and especially at Samothrace. They were mystery

gods, no profane having the right to name or speak of them. Herodotus makes of

them Fire-gods and points to Vulcan as their father. The Kabiri presided over

the Mysteries, and their real number has never been revealed, their occult

meaning being very sacred.

 

Cabletow (Mas.). A Masonic term for a certain object used in the Lodges. Its

origin lies in the thread of the Brahman ascetics, a thread which is also used

for magical purposes in Tibet.

 

Cadmus (Gr.). The supposed inventor of the letters of the alphabet. He may have

been their originator and teacher in Europe and Asia Minor; but in India the

letters were known and used by the Initiates ages before him.

 

Caduceus (Gr.). The Greek poets and mythologists took the idea of the Caduceus

of Mercury from the Egyptians. The Caduceus is found as two serpents twisted

round a rod, on Egyptian monuments built before Osiris. The Greeks altered this.

We find it again in the hands of Æsculapius assuming a different form to the

wand of Mercurius or Hermes. It is a cosmic, sidereal or astronomical, as well

as a spiritual and even physiological symbol, its significance changing with its

application. Metaphysically, the Caduceus represents the fall of primeval and

primordial matter into gross terrestrial matter, the one Reality becoming

Illusion. (See Sect.Doct. I. 550.) Astronomically, the head and tail represent

the points of the ecliptic where the planets and even the sun and moon meet in

close embrace. Physiologically, it is the symbol of the restoration of the

equilibrium lost between Life, as a unit, and the currents of life performing

various functions in the human body.

 
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Cæsar. A far-famed astrologer and “professor of magic,” i.e., an Occultist,

during the reign of Henry IV of France. “He was reputed to have been strangled

by the devil in 1611,” as Brother Kenneth Mackenzie tells us.

 

Cagliostro. A famous Adept, whose real name is claimed (by his enemies) to have

been Joseph Balsamo. He was a native of Palermo, and studied under some

mysterious foreigner of whom little has been ascertained. His accepted history

is too well known to need repetition, and his real history has never been told.

His fate was that of every human being who proves that he knows more than do his

fellow- creatures; he was “stoned to death” by persecutions, lies, and infamous

accusations, and yet he was the friend and adviser of the highest and mightiest

of every land he visited. He was finally tried and sentenced in Rome as a

heretic, and was said to have died during his confinement in a State prison.

(See “ Mesmer”.) Yet his end was not utterly undeserved, as he had been untrue

to his vows in some respects, had fallen from his state of chastity and yielded

to ambition and selfishness.

 

Cain or Kayn (Heb.) In Esoteric symbology he is said to be identical with

Jehovah or the “Lord God” of the fourth chapter of Genesis. It is held,

moreover, that Abel is not his brother, but his female aspect.

(See Sec.Doct., sub voce.)

 

Calvary Cross. This form of cross does not date from Christianity. It was known

and used for mystical purposes, thousands of years before our era. It formed

part and parcel of the various Rituals, in Egypt and Greece, in Babylon and

India, as well as in China, Mexico, and Peru. It is a cosmic, as well as a

physiological (or phallic) symbol. That it existed among all the “heathen”

nations is testified to by Tertullian. “How doth the Athenian Minerva differ

from the body of a cross?” he queries. “The origin of your gods is derived from

figures moulded on a cross. All those rows of images on your standards are the

appendages of crosses; those hangings on your banners are the robes of crosses.”

And the fiery champion was right. The tau or T is the most ancient of all forms,

and the cross or the tat (q.v.) as ancient. The crux ansata, the cross with a

handle, is in the hands of almost every god, including Baal and the Phœnician

Astarte. The croix cramponnée is the Indian Swastica. It has been exhumed from

the lowest foundations of the ancient site of Troy, and it appears on Etruscan

and Chaldean relics of antiquity. As Mrs. Jamieson shows: “The ankh of Egypt was

the crutch of St. Anthony and the cross of St. Philip. The Labarum of

Constantine . . . was an emblem long before, in Etruria. Osiris had the Labarum

for his sign; Horus appears sometimes with the long Latin cross. The Greek

pectoral cross is Egyptian. It was called by


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the Fathers the devil’s invention before Christ . The crux ansata is upon the

old coins of Tarsus, as the Maltese upon the breast of an Assyrian king ...The

cross of Calvary, so common in Europe, occurs on the breasts of mummies. . . it

was suspended round the necks of sacred Serpents in Egypt. . . . Strange Asiatic

tribes bringing tribute in Egypt are noticed with garments studded with crosses,

and Sir Gardner Wilkinson dates this picture B.C. 1500.” Finally, “Typhon, the

Evil One, is chained by a cross”.

(Eg. Belief and Mod. Thought).

 

Campanella, Tomaso. A Calabrese, born in 1568, who, from his childhood exhibited

strange powers, and gave himself up during his whole life to the Occult Arts.

The story which shows him initiated in his boyhood into the secrets of alchemy

and thoroughly instructed in the secret science by a Rabbi-Kabbalist in a

fortnight by means of notavicon, is a cock and bull invention. Occult knowledge,

even when a heirloom from the preceding birth, does not come back into a new

personality within fifteen days. He became an opponent of the Aristotelian

materialistic philosophy when at Naples and was obliged to fly for his life.

Later, the Inquisition sought to try and condemn him for the practice of magic

arts, but its efforts were defeated. During his lifetime he wrote an enormous

quantity of magical, astrological and alchemical works, most of which are no

longer extant. He is reported to have died in the convent of the Jacobins at

Paris on May the 21st, 1639.

 

Canarese. The language of the Karnatic, originally called Kanara, one of the

divisions of South India.

 

Capricornus (Lat.) The 10th sign of the Zodiac (Makâra in Sanskrit), considered,

on account of its hidden meaning, the most important among the constellations of

the mysterious Zodiac. it is fully described in the Secret Doctrine, and

therefore needs but a few words more. Whether, agreeably with exoteric

statements, Capricornus was related in any way to the wet-nurse Amalthæa who fed

Jupiter with her milk, or whether it was the god Pan who changed himself into a

goat and left his impress upon the sidereal records, matters little. Each of the

fables has its significance. Everything in Nature is intimately correlated to

the rest, and therefore the students of ancient lore will not be too much

surprised when told that even the seven steps taken in the direction of every

one of the four points of the compass, or —28 steps—taken by the new-born infant

Buddha, are closely related to the 28 stars of the constellation of Capricornus.

 

 

Cardan, Jérome. An astrologer, alchemist, kabbalist and mystic, well known in

literature. He was born at Pavia in 1501, and died at Rome in 1576.


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Carnac. A very ancient site in Brittany (France) of a temple of cyclopean

structure, sacred to the Sun and the Dragon; and of the same kind as Karnac, in

ancient Egypt, and Stonehenge in England. (See the “Origin of the Satanic Myth”

in Archaic Symbolism.) It was built by the prehistoric hierophant-priests of the

Solar Dragon, or symbolized Wisdom (the Solar Kumâras who incarnated being the

highest). Each of the stones was personally placed there by the successive

priest-adepts in power, and commemorated in symbolic language the degree of

power, status, and knowledge of each. (See further Secret Doctrine II. 381, et

seq., and also “ Karnac”.)

 

Caste. Originally the system of the four hereditary classes into which the

Indian population was divided: Brahman, Kshatriya, Vaisya, and Sudra (or

descendants of Brahmâ, Warriors, Merchants, and the lowest or Agriculturalists).

Besides these original four, hundreds have now grown up in India.

 

Causal Body. This “body”, which is no body either objective or subjective, but

Buddhi, the Spiritual Soul, is so called because it is the direct cause of the

Sushupti condition, leading to the Turya state, the highest state of Samadhi. It

is called Karanopadhi, “the basis of the Cause”, by the Târaka Raja Yogis; and

in the Vedânta system it corresponds to both the Vignânamaya and Anandamaya

Kosha, the latter coming next to Atma, and therefore being the vehicle of the

universal Spirit. Buddhi alone could not be called a “Causal Body ”, but becomes

so in conjunction with Manas, the incarnating Entity or EGO.

 

Cazotte, Jacques. The wonderful Seer, who predicted the beheading of several

royal personages and his own decapitation, at a gay supper some time before the

first Revolution in France. He was born at Dijon in 1720, and studied mystic

philosophy in the school of Martinez Pasqualis at Lyons. On the 11th of

September 1791, he was arrested and condemned to death by the president of the

revolutionary government, a man who, shameful to state, had been his

fellow-student and a member of the Mystic Lodge of Pasqualis at Lyons. Cazotte

was executed on the 25th of September on the Place du Carrousel.

 

Cecco d’Ascolî. Surnamed “Francesco Stabili.” He lived in the thirteenth

century, and was considered the most famous astrologer in his day. A work of his

published at Basle in 1485, and called Commentarii in Sphaeram Joannis de

Sacrabosco, is still extant. He was burnt alive by the Inquisition in 1327.

 

Cerberus (Gr., Lat.). Cerberus, the three-headed canine monster, which was

supposed to watch at the threshold of Hades, came to the Greeks and Romans from

Egypt. It was the monster, half-dog and


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half-hippopotamus, that guarded the gates of Amenti. The mother of Cerberus was

Echidna—a being, half-woman, half-serpent, much honoured in Etruria. Both the

Egyptian and the Greek Cerberus are symbols of Kâmaloka and its uncouth

monsters, the cast-off shells of mortals.

 

Ceres (Lat.) In Greek Demeter. As the female aspect of Pater Æther, Jupiter, she

is esoterically the productive principle in the all-pervading Spirit that

quickens every germ in the material universe.

 

Chabrat Zereh Aur Bokher (Heb.) An Order of the Rosicrucian stock, whose members

study the Kabbalah and Hermetic sciences; it admits both sexes, and has many

grades of instruction. The members meet in private, and the very existence of

the Order is generally unknown. [ w.w.w.]

 

Chadâyatana (Sk.). Lit., the six dwellings or gates in man for the reception of

sensations; thus, on the physical plane, the eyes, nose, ear, tongue, body (or

touch) and mind, as a product of the physical brain and on the mental plane

(esoterically), spiritual sight, smell, hearing, taste, touch and perception,

the whole synthesized by the Buddhi-atmic element. Chadâyatana is one of the 12 

Nidânas, which form the chain of incessant causation and effect.

 

Chaitanya (Sk) The founder of a mystical sect in India. A rather modern sage,

believed to be an avatar of Krishna.

 

Chakna-padma-karpo (Tib.) “He who holds the lotus”, used of Chenresi, the

Bodhisattva. It is not a genuine Tibetan word, but half Sanskrit.

 

Chakra (Sk.) A wheel, a disk, or the circle of Vishnu generally. Used also of a

cycle of time, and with other meanings.

 

Chakshub (Sk.) The “eye ”. Loka-chakshub or “the eye of the world” is a title of

the Sun.

 

Chaldean Book of Numbers. A work which contains all that is found in the Zohar

of Simeon Ben-Jochai, and much more. It must be the older by many centuries, and

in one sense its original, as it contains all the fundamental principles taught

in the Jewish Kabbalistic works, but none of their blinds. It is very rare

indeed, there being perhaps only two or three copies extant, and these in

private hands.

 

Chaldeans, or Kasdim. At first a tribe, then a caste of learned Kabbalists. They

were the savants, the magians of Babylonia, astrologers and diviners. The famous

Hillel, the precursor of Jesus in philosophy and in ethics, was a Chaldean.

Franck in his Kabbala points to the close resemblance of the “secret doctrine”

found in the Avesta and the religious metaphysics of the Chaldees.


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Chandra (Sk.) The Moon; also a deity. The terms Chandra and Soma are synonyms.

 

Chandragupta (Sk.) The first Buddhist King in India, the grand-sire of Asoka ;

the Sandracottus of the all-bungling Greek writers who went to India in

Alexander’s time. (See “Asoka”.)

 

Chandra-kanta (Sk.) “The moon-stone”, a gem that is claimed to be formed and

developed under the moon-beams, which give it occult and magical properties. It

has a very cooling influence in fever if applied to both temples.

 

Chandramanam (Sk.) The method of calculating time by the Moon.

 

Chandrayana (Sk.) The lunar year chronology.

 

Chandra-vansa (Sk.) The “Lunar Race”, in contradistinction to Suryavansa, the

“Solar Race”. Some Orientalists think it an inconsistency that Krishna, a

Chandravansa (of the Yadu branch) should have been declared an Avatar of Vishnu,

who is a manifestation of the solar energy in Rig -Veda, a work of unsurpassed

authority with the Brahmans. This shows, however, the deep occult meaning of the

Avatar ; a meaning which only esoteric philosophy can explain. A glossary is no

fit place for such explanations; but it may be useful to remind those who know,

and teach those who do not, that in Occultism, man is called a solar-lunar

being, solar in his higher triad, and lunar in his quaternary. Moreover, it is

the Sun who imparts his light to the Moon, in the same way as the human triad

sheds its divine light on the mortal shell of sinful man. Life celestial

quickens life terrestrial. Krishna stands metaphysically for the Ego made one

with Atma-Buddhi, and performs mystically the same function as the Christos of

the Gnostics, both being “the inner god in the temple”—man. Lucifer is “the

bright morning star”, a well known symbol in Revelations, and, as a planet,

corresponds to the EGO. Now Lucifer (or the planet Venus) is the Sukra-Usanas of

the Hindus ; and Usanas is the Daitya-guru, i.e., the spiritual guide and

instructor of the Danavas and the Daityas. The latter are the giant-demons in

the Purânas, and in the esoteric interpretations, the antetypal symbol of the

man of flesh, physical mankind. The Daityas can raise themselves, it is said,

through knowledge “austerities and devotion” to “the rank of the gods and of the

ABSOLUTE”. All this is very suggestive in the legend of Krishna ; and what is

more suggestive still is that just as Krishna, the Avatar of a great God in

India, is of time race of Yadu, so is another incarnation, “God incarnate

himself”—or the “God-man Christ”, also of the race Iadoo—the name for the Jews

all over Asia. Moreover, as his mother, who is represented as Queen of Heaven

standing on the crescent, is identified in Gnostic philosophy, and


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also in the esoteric system, with the Moon herself, like all the other lunar

goddesses such as Isis, Diana, Astarte and others—mothers of the Logoi, so

Christ is called repeatedly in the Roman Catholic Church, the Sun-Christ, the

Christ-Soleil and so on. If the later is a metaphor so also is the earlier.

 

Chantong (Tib.) “He of the 1,000 Eyes”, a name of Padmapani or Chenresi

(Avalokitesvara).

 

Chaos (Gr.) The Abyss, the “Great Deep”. It was personified in Egypt by the

Goddess Neїth, anterior to all gods. As Deveria says, “the only God, without

form and sex, who gave birth to itself, and without fecundation, is adored under

the form of a Virgin Mother”. She is the vulture-headed Goddess found in the

oldest period of Abydos, who belongs, accordingly to Mariette Bey, to the first

Dynasty, which would make her, even on the confession of the time-dwarfing

Orientalists, about 7,000 years old. As Mr. Bonwick tells us in his excellent

work on Egyptian belief—“Neїth, Nut, Nepte, Nuk (her names as variously read !)

is a philosophical conception worthy of the nineteenth century after the

Christian era, rather than the thirty-ninth before it or earlier than that”. And

he adds: “ Neith or Nout is neither more nor less than the Great Mother, a yet

the Immaculate Virgin, or female God from whom all things proceeded”. Neїth is

the

“Father-mother” of the Stanzas of the Secret Doctrine, the Swabhavat of the

Northern Buddhists, the immaculate Mother indeed, the prototype of the latest

“Virgin” of all; for, as Sharpe says, “the Feast of Candlemas—in honour of the

goddess Neїth— is yet marked in our Almanacs as Candlemas day, or the

Purification of the Virgin Mary”; and Beauregard tells us of “the Immaculate

Conception of the Virgin, who can henceforth, as well as the Egyptian Minerva,

the mysterious Neїth, boast of having come from herself, and of having given

birth to God”. He who would deny the working of cycles and the recurrence of

events, let him read what Neїth was years ago, in the conception of the Egyptian

Initiates, trying to popularize a philosophy too abstract for the masses; and

then remember the subjects of dispute at the Council of Ephesus in 431, when

Mary was declared Mother of God; and her Immaculate Conception forced on the

World as by command of God, by Pope and Council in 1858. Neїth is Swabhdvat and

also the Vedic Aditi and the Purânic Akâsa, for “she is not only the celestial

vault, or ether, but is made to appear in a tree, from which she gives the fruit

of the Tree of Life (like another Eve) or pours upon her worshippers some of the

divine water of life”. Hence she gained the favourite appellation of “Lady of

the Sycamore”, an epithet applied to another Virgin (Bonwick). The resemblance

becomes still more marked when Neїth is found on old pictures represented as a

Mother embracing


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the ram-headed god, the “Lamb”. An ancient stele declares her to be “Neut, the

luminous, who has engendered the gods”—the Sun included, for Aditi is the mother

of the Marttanda, the Sun—an Aditya. She is Naus, the celestial ship ; hence we

find her on the prow of the Egyptian vessels, like Dido on the prow of the ships

of the Phœnician mariners, and forth with we have the Virgin Mary, from Mar, the

“Sea”, called the “Virgin of the Sea”, and the “Lady Patroness” of all Roman

Catholic seamen. The Rev. Sayce is quoted by Bonwick, explaining her as a

principle in the Babylonian Bahu (Chaos, or confusion) i.e., “merely the Chaos

of Genesis . . . and perhaps also Môt, the primitive substance that was the

mother of all the gods”. Nebuchadnezzar seems to have been in the mind of the

learned professor, since he left the following witness in cuneiform language, “I

built a temple to the Great Goddess, my Mother”. We may close with the words of

Mr. Bonwick with which we thoroughly agree “She (Neїth) is the Zerouâna of the

Avesta, ‘time without limits’. She is the Nerfe of the Etruscans, half a woman

and half a fish” (whence the connection of the Virgin Mary with the fish and

pisces) ; of whom it is said: “From holy good Nerfe the navigation is happy. She

is the Bythos of the Gnostics, the One of the Neoplatonists, the All of German

metaphysicians, the Anaita of Assyria.”

 

Charaka (Sk.). A writer on Medicine who lived in Vedic times. He is believed to

have been an incarnation (Avatara) of the Serpent Sesha, i.e., an embodiment of

divine Wisdom, since Sesha-Naga, the King of the “Serpent” race, is synonymous

with Ananta, the seven-headed Serpent, on which Vishnu sleeps during the

pralayas. Ananta is the “endless” and the symbol of eternity, and as such, one

with Space, while Sesha is only periodical in his manifestations. Hence while

Vishnu is identified with Ananta, Charaka is only the Avatar of Sesha. (See

“Ananta” and “Sesha”.)

 

Charnook, Thomas. A great alchemist of the sixteenth century; a surgeon who

lived and practiced near Salisbury, studying the art in some neighbouring

cloisters with a priest. It is said that he was initiated into the final secret

of transmutation by the famous mystic William Bird, who “had been a prior of

Bath and defrayed the expense of repairing the Abbey Church from the gold which

he made by the red and white elixirs” (Royal Mas. Cyc.). Charnock wrote his

Breviary of Philosophy in the year 1557 and the Enigma of Alchemy, in 1574.

 

Charon (Gr.) The Egyptian Khu-en-ua, the hawk-headed Steersman of the boat

 

conveying the Souls across the black waters that separate life from death.

Charon, the Sun of Erebus and Nox, is a variant of Khu en-ua. The dead were

obliged to pay an obolus, a small piece of money, o this grim ferryman of the

Styx and Acheron; therefore the ancients


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always placed a coin under the tongue of the deceased. This custom has been

preserved in our own times, for most of the lower classes in Russia place

coppers in the coffin under the head of the dead for post mortem expenses.

 

Châryâka (Sk.) There were two famous beings of this name. One a Rakshasa (demon)

who disguised himself as a Brâhman and entered Hastinâ-pura; whereupon the

Brahmans discovered the imposture and reduced Châryâka to ashes with the fire of

their eyes,—i.e., magnetically by means of what is called in Occultism the

“black glance” or evil eye. The second was a terrible materialist and denier of

all but matter, who if he could come back to life, would put to shame all the

“Free thinkers” and “Agnostics” of the day. He lived before the Râmâyanic

period, but his teachings and school have survived to this day, and he has even

now followers, who are mostly to be found in Bengal.

 

Chastanier, Benedict. A French mason who established in London in 1767 a Lodge

called

“The Illuminated Theosophists”.

 

Chatur mukha (Sk) The “four-faced one”, a title of Brahmâ.

 

Chatur varna (Sk.) The four castes (lit., colours).

 

Châturdasa Bhuvanam (Sk.) The fourteen lokas or planes of existence.

Esoterically, the dual seven states.

 

Chaturyonî (Sk.) Written also tchatur-yoni. The same as Karmaya or “the four

modes of birth”—four ways of entering on the path of Birth as decided by Karma :

(a) birth from the womb, as men and mammalia (b) birth from an egg, as birds and

reptiles; (c) from moisture and air-germs, as insects; and (d) by sudden

self-transformation, as Bodhisattvas and Gods (Anupadaka).

 

Chava (Heb.) The same as Eve: “the Mother of all that lives”  "Life"

 

Chavigny, Jean Aimé de. A disciple of the world-famous Nostradamus, an

astrologer and an alchemist of the sixteenth century. He died in the year 16O4.

His life was a very quiet one and he was almost unknown to his contemporaries;

but he left a precious manuscript on the pre-natal and post-natal influence of

the stars on certain marked individuals, a secret revealed to him by

Nostradamus. This treatise was last in the possession of the Emperor Alexander

of Russia.

 

Chelâ (Sk.) A disciple, the pupil of a Guru or Sage, the follower of some adept

of a school of philosophy (lit., child).

 

Chemi (Eg.). The ancient name of Egypt.

 

Chenresi (Tib.) The Tibetan Avalokitesvara. The Bodhisattva Padmâpani, a divine

Buddha.


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Cheru (Scand) Or Heru. A magic sword, a weapon of the “sword god” Heru. In the

Edda, the Saga describes it as destroying its possessor, should he be unworthy

of wielding it. It brings victory and fame only in the hand of a virtuous hero.

 

Cherubim (Heb.) According to the Kabbalists, a group of angels, which they

specially associated with the Sephira Jesod. in Christian teaching, an order of

angels who are “watchers”. Genesis places Cherubim to guard the lost Eden, and

the O.T. frequently refers to them as guardians of the divine glory. Two winged

representations in gold were placed over the Ark of the Covenant; colossal

figures of the same were also placed in the Sanctum Sanctorum of the Temple of

Solomon. Ezekiel describes them in poetic language. Each Cherub appears to have

been a compound figure with four faces—of a man, eagle, lion, and ox, and was

certainly winged. Parkhurst, in voc. Cherub, suggests that the derivation of the

word is from K, a particle of similitude, and RB or RUB, greatness, master,

majesty, and so an image of godhead. Many other nations have displayed similar

figures as symbols of deity ; e.g., the Egyptians in their figures of Serapis.

as Macrohius describes in his Saturnalia; the Greeks had their triple-headed

Hecate, and the Latins had three-faced images of Diana, as Ovid tells us, ecce

procul ternis Hecate variata figuris. Virgil also describes her in the fourth

Book of the Æneid. Porphyry and Eusebius write the same of Proserpine. The

Vandals had a many-headed deity they called Triglaf. The ancient German races

had an idol Rodigast with human body and heads of the ox, eagle, and man. The

Persians have some figures of Mithras with a man’s body, lion’s head, and four

wings. Add to these the Chimæra Sphinx of Egypt, Moloch, Astarte of the Syrians,

and some figures of Isis with Bull’s horns and feathers of a bird on the head. [

w.w.w.]

 

Chesed (Heb.) “Mercy ”, also named Gedulah, the fourth of the ten Sephiroth; a

masculine or active potency. [ w.w. w.]

 

Chhâyâ (Sk.) “Shade” or “ Shadow”. The name of a creature produced by Sanjnâ,

the wife of Surya, from herself (astral body). Unable to endure the ardour of

her husband, Sanjnâ left Chhâyâ in her place as a wife, going herself away to

perform austerities. Chhâyâ is the astral image of a person in esoteric

philosophy.

 

Chhandoga (Sk)  A Samhitâ collection of Sama Veda; also a priest, a chanter of

the Sama Veda.

 

Chhanmûka (Sk)  A great Bodhisattva with the Northern Buddhists, famous for his

ardent love of Humanity; regarded in the esoteric schools as a Nirmanakâya.


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Chhannagarikah (Tib.). Lit., the school of six cities. A famous philosophical

school where Chelas are prepared before entering on the Path.

 

Chhassidi or Chasdim. In the Septuagint Assidai, and in English Assideans. They

are also mentioned in Maccabees I., vii., 13, as being put to death with many

others. They were the followers of Mattathias, the father of the Maccabeans, and

were all initiated mystics, or Jewish adepts. The word means ‘‘ skilled learned

in all wisdom, human and divine”. Mackenzie (R.M.C.) regards them as the

guardians of the Temple for the preservation of its purity ; but as Solomon and

his Temple are both allegorical and had no real existence, the Temple means in

this case the “ body of Israel ” and its morality.“ Scaliger connects this

Society of the Assideans with that of the Essenes, deeming it the predecessor of

the latter.”

 

Chhaya loka (Sk.) The world of Shades; like Hades, the world of the Eidola and

Umbræ. We call it Kâmaloka.

 

Chiah (Heb.) Life; Vita, Revivificatio. In the Kabbala, the second highest

essence of the human soul, corresponding to Chokmah (Wisdom).

 

Chichhakti (Sk.) Chih-Sakti; the power which generates thought.

 

Chidagnikundum (Sk.). Lit., “the fire-hearth in the heart” ; the seat of the

force which extinguishes all individual desires.

 

Chidâkâsam (Sk); The field, or basis of consciousness.

 

Chiffilet, Jean. A Canon-Kabbalist of the XVIIth century, reputed to have

learned a key to the Gnostic works from Coptic Initiates; he wrote a work on

Abraxas in two portions, the esoteric portion of which was burnt by the Church.

 

Chiim (Heb.) A plural noun—“lives”; found in compound names Elohim Chum, the

gods of lives, Parkhurst translates “the living God” and Ruach Chiim, Spirit of

lives or of life. [ w.w. w.]

 

China, The Kabbalah of. One of the oldest known Chinese books is the Yih King,

or Book of Changes. It is reported to have been written 2850 B.C., in the

dialect of the Accadian black races of Mesopotamia. It is a most abstruse system

of Mental and Moral Philosophy, with a scheme of universal relation and

divination. Abstract ideas are represented by lines, half lines, circle, and

points. Thus a circle represents YIH, the Great Supreme; a line is referred to

YIN, the Masculine Active Potency; two half lines are YANG, the Feminine Passive

Potency. KWEI is the animal soul, SHAN intellect, KHIEN heaven or Father, KHWAN

earth or Mother, KAN or QHIN is Son; male numbers are odd, represented by light

circles, female numbers are even, by black circles. There are two most

mysterious diagrams, one called “HO


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or the River Map”, and also associated with a Horse ; and the other called “The

Writing of LO” ; these are formed of groups of white and black circles, arranged

in a Kabbalistic manner. The text is by a King named Wan, and the commentary by

Kan, his son ; the text is allowed to be older than the time of Confucius. [ w.

w.w.]

 

Chit (Sk.) Abstract Consciousness.

 

Chitanuth our (Heb.). Chitons, a priestly garb; the coats of skin given by Java

Aleim to Adam and Eve after their fall,

 

 

Chitkala (Sk.). In Esoteric philosophy, identical with the Kumâras those who

first incarnated into the men of the Third Root-Race. (See Sec.Doct.; Vol. 1. p.

288 n.)

 

Chitra Gupta (Sk.) The deva (or god) who is the recorder of Yâma (the god of

death), and who is supposed to read the account of every Soul’s life from a

register called Agra Sandhâni, when the said soul appears before the seat of

judgment. (See “Agra Sandhâni ”.)

 

Chitra Sikkandinas (Sk). The constellation of the great Bear ; the habitat of

the seven Rishis (Sapta Riksha). Lit., “ bright-crested”.

 

Chnoumis (Gr) The same as Chnouphis and Kneph. A symbol of creative force ;

Chnoumis or Kneph is “the unmade and eternal deity” according to Plutarch. He is

represented as blue (ether), and with his ram’s head with an asp between the

horns, he might be taken for Ammon or Chnouphis (.q.v’. ). The fact is that all

these gods are solar, and represent under various aspects the phases of

generation and impregna tion. Their ram’s heads denote this meaning, a ram ever

symbolizing generative energy in the abstract, while the bull was the symbol of

strength and the creative function. All were one god, whose attributes were

individualised and personified. According to Sir G. Wilkinsen, Kneph or Chnoumis

was “the idea of the Spirit of God” ; and Bonwick explains that, as Av, “matter”

or “flesh”, he was criocephalic (ram- headed), wearing a solar disk on the head,

standing on the Serpent Mehen, with a viper in his left and a cross in his right

hand, and bent upon the function of creation in the underworld (the earth,

esoterically). The Kabbalists identify him with “Binah, the third Sephira of the

Sephirothal Tree, or Binah, represented by the Divine name of Jehovah”. If as

Chnoumis-Kneph, he represents the Indian Narayâna, the Spirit of ( moving on the

waters of space, as Eichton or Ether he holds in his mouth an Egg, the symbol of

evolution ; and as Av he is Siva, the Destroyer and the Regenerator ; for, as

Deveria explains:“His Journey to the lower hemispheres appears to symbolize the

evolutions of substances, which are born to die and to be reborn.” Esoterically,

however, and as taught by the Initiates of the inner temple, Chnoumis-Kneph was


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pre-eminently the god of reincarnation. Says an inscription: “I am Chnoumis, Son

of the Universe, 700”, a mystery having a direct reference to the reincarnating

EGO.

 

Chnouphis (Gr.). Nouf in Egyptian. Another aspect of Ammon, and the

personification of his generative power in actu, as Kneph is of the same in

potentia. He is also ram-headed. If in his aspect as Kneph he is the Holy Spirit

with the creative ideation brooding in him, as Chnouphis, he is the angel who

“comes in” into the Virgin soil and flesh. A prayer on a papyrus, translated by

the French Egyptologist Chabas, says; ‘ 0 Sepui, Cause of being, who hast formed

thine own body! 0 only Lord, proceeding from Noum ! 0 divine substance, created

from itself! 0 God, who hast made the substance which is in him! 0 God, who has

made his own father and impregnated his own mother.” This shows the origin of

the Christian doctrines of the Trinity and immaculate conception. He is seen on

a monument seated near a potter’s wheel, and forming men out of clay. The

fig-leaf is sacred to him, which is alone sufficient to prove him a phallic

god—an idea which is carried out by the inscription: “he who made that which is,

the creator of beings, the first existing, he who made to exist all that

exists.” Some see in him the incarnation of Ammon-Ra, but he is the latter

himself in his phallic aspect, for, like Ammon, he is “ his mother’s husband”,

i.e., the male or impregnating side of Nature. His names vary, as Cnouphis,

Noum, Khem, and Khnum or Chnoumis. As he represents the Demiurgos (or Logos)

from the material, lower aspect of the Soul of the World, he is the Agathodæmon,

symbolized sometimes by a Serpent ; and his wife Athor or Maut (Môt mother), or

Sate, “the daughter of the Sun”, carrying an arrow on a sunbeam (the ray of

conception), stretches “mistress over the lower portions of the atmosphere”.

below the constellations, as Neїth expands over the starry heavens. (See

“Chaos”.)

 

Chohan (Tib.) “Lord” or “Master” ; a chief; thus Dhyan-Chohan would answer to

“Chief of the Dhyanis”, or celestial Lights—which in English would he translated

Archangels.

 

Chokmah (Heb) Wisdom; the second of the ten Sephiroth, and the second of the

supernal Triad. A masculine potency corresponding to the Yod (I) of the

Tetragrammaton IHVH, and to Ab, the Father.

[w.w.w.]

 

Chréstos (Gr.) The early Gnostic form of Christ. It was used in the fifth

century B.C. by Æschylus, Herodotus, and others. The Manteumata pythochresta, or

the “oracles delivered by a Pythian god” “through a pythoness, are mentioned by

the former (Choeph.901). Chréstian is not only “the seat of an oracle”, but an

offering to, or for, the oracle.

 
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Chréstés is one who explains oracles, “a prophet and soothsayer”, and

Chrésterios one who serves an oracle or a god. The earliest Christian writer,

Justin Martyr, in his first Apology calls his co-religionists Chréstians. It is

only through ignorance that men call themselves Christians instead of

Chréstians,” says Lactantius (lib. iv., cap. vii.). The terms Christ and

Christians, spelt originally Chrést and Chréstians, were borrowed from the

Temple vocabulary of the Pagans. Chréstos meant in that vocabulary a disciple on

probation, a candidate for hierophantship. When he had attained to this through

initiation, long trials, and suffering, and had been ‘‘anointed’’ (i.e., “rubbed

with oil”, as were Initiates and even idols of the gods, as the last touch of

ritualistic observance), his name was changed into Christos, the “purified”, in

esoteric or mystery language. In mystic symbology, indeed, Christés, or

Christos, meant that the “Way”, the Path, was already trodden and the goal

reached ; when the fruits of the arduous labour, uniting the personality of

evanescent clay with the indestructible INDIVIDUALITY, transformed it thereby

into the immortal EGO. “At the end of the Way stands the Chréstes”, the

Purifier, and the union once accomplished, the Chrestos, the “man of sorrow”,

became Christos himself. Paul, the Initiate, knew this, and meant this

precisely, when he is made to say, in bad translation : ‘‘I travail in birth

again until Christ be formed in you” (Gal. iv.19), the true rendering of which

is . . . ‘‘until ye form the Christos within yourselves” But the profane who

knew only that Chréstés was in some way connected with priest and prophet, and

knew nothing about the hidden meaning of Christos, insisted, as did Lactantius

and Justin Martyr, on being called Chréstians instead of Christians. Every good

individual, therefore, may find Christ in his “inner man” as Paul expresses it

(Ephes. iii. 16,17), whether he be Jew, Mussulman, Hindu, or Christian. Kenneth

Mackenzie seemed to think that the word Chréstos was a synonym of Soter, “an

appellation assigned to deities, great kings and heroes,” indicating

‘‘Saviour,’’—and he was right. For, as he adds:“It has been applied redundantly

to Jesus Christ, whose name Jesus or Joshua bears the same interpretation. The

name Jesus, in fact, is rather a title of honour than a name—the true name of

the Soter of Christianity being Emmanuel, or God with us (Matt.i, 23.).Great

divinities among all nations, who are represented as expiatory or

self-sacrificing, have been designated by the same title.’’ (R. M. Cyclop.) The

Asklepios (or Æsculapius) of the Greeks had the title of Soter.

 

Christian Scientist. A newly-coined term for denoting the practitioners of an

art of healing by will. The name is a misnomer, since Buddhist or Jew, Hindu or

Materialist, can practise this new form of


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Western Yoga, with like success, if he can only guide and control his will with

sufficient firmness. The

“Mental Scientists” are another rival school. These work by a universal denial

of every disease and evil imaginable, and claim syllogistically that since

Universal Spirit cannot be subject to the failings of flesh, and since every

atom is Spirit and in Spirit, and since finally, they—the healers and the

healed—are all absorbed in this Spirit or Deity, there is not, nor can there he,

such a thing as disease. This prevents in no wise both Christian and Mental

Scientists from succumbing to disease, and nursing chronic diseases in their own

bodies just like ordinary mortals.

 

Chthonia (Gr.) Chaotic earth in the Hellenic cosmogony.

 

Chuang. A great Chinese philosopher.

 

Chubilgan (Mongol.) Or Khubilkhan. The same as Chutuktu.

 

Chutuktu (Tib.) An incarnation of Buddha or of some Bodhisattva, as believed in

Tibet, where there are generally five manifesting and two secret Chutuktus among

the high Lamas.

 

Chyuta (Sk.) Means, “the fallen” into generation, as a Kabbalist would say; the

opposite of achyuta, something which is not subject to change or

differentiation; said of deity.

 

Circle. There are several “Circles” with mystic adjectives attached to them.

Thus we have: (1) the

“Decussated or Perfect Circle” of Plato, who shows it decussated in the form of

the letter X ; (2) the

“Circle-dance” of the Amazons, around a Priapic image, the same as the dance of

the Gopis around the Sun (Krishna), the shepherdesses representing the signs of

the Zodiac ; (3) the “Circle of Necessity”

of 3,000 years of the Egyptians and of the Occultists, the duration of the cycle

between rebirths or reincarnations being from 1,000 to 3,000 years on the

average. This will be treated under the term

“Rebirth” or “Reincarnation”.

 

Clairaudience. The faculty, whether innate or acquired by occult training, of

hearing all that is said at whatever distance.

 

Clairvoyance. The faculty of seeing with the inner eye or spiritual sight. As

now used it is a loose and flippant term, embracing under its meaning a happy

guess due to natural shrewdness or intuition, and also that faculty which was so

remarkably exercised by Jacob Boehme and Swedenborg. Real clairvoyance means the

faculty of seeing through the densest matter (the latter disappearing at the

will and before the spiritual eye of the Seer), and irrespective of time (past,

present and future) or distance.

 

Clemens Alexandrinus. A Church Father and a voluminous writer, who had been a

Neo-Platonist and a disciple of Ammonius Saccas. He


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lived between the second and the third centuries of our era, at Alexandria.

 

Cock. A very occult bird, much appreciated in ancient augury and symbolism.

According to the Zohar, the cock crows three times before the death of a person;

and in Russia and all Slavonian countries whenever a person is ill on the

premises where a cock is kept, its crowing is held to be a sign of inevitable

death, unless the bird crows at the hour of midnight, or immediately afterwards,

when its crowing is considered natural. As the cock was sacred to Æsculapius,

and a the latter was called the Soter (Saviour) who raised the dead to life, the

Socratic exclamation “We owe a cock to Æculapius”, just before the Sage’s death,

is very suggestive. As the cock Was always connected in symbology with the Sun

(or solar gods), Death and Resurrection, it has found its appropriate place in

the four Gospels in the prophecy about Peter repudiating his Master before the

cock crowed thrice. The cock is the most magnetic and sensitive of all birds,

hence its Greek name alectruon.

 

Codex Nazaraeus (Lat.) The “Book of Adam”—the latter name meaning anthropos, Man

or Humanity. The Nazarene faith is called sometimes the Bardesanian system,

though Bardesanes (B.C. 155 to 228) does not seem to have had any connection

with it. True, he was born at Edessa in Syria, and was a famous astrologer and

Sabian before his alleged conversion. But he was a well-educated man of noble

family, and would not have used the almost incomprehensible Chaldeo dialect

mixed with the mystery language of the Gnostics, in which the Codex is written.

The sect of the Nazarenes was pre-Christian. Pliny and Josephus speak of the

Nazarites as settled on the banks of the Jordan 150 years B.C. (Ant.Jud. xiii.

p. 9); and Munk says that the “Naziareate was an institution established before

the laws of Musah” or Moses. (Munk p. 169.) Their modern name is in Arabic— El

Mogtasila; in European languages—the

Mendæans or “Christians of St. John”. (See “Baptism”.) But if the term Baptists

may well be applied to them, it is not with the Christian meaning: for while

they were, and still are Sabians, or pure astrolaters, the Mendæans of Syria,

called the Galileans, are pure polytheists, as every traveller in Syria and on

the Euphrates can ascertain, once he acquaints himself with their mysterious

rites and ceremonies. (See Isis Unv. ii. 290, et seq.) So secretly did they

preserve their beliefs from the very beginning, that Epiphanius who wrote

against the Heresies in the14th century confesses himself unable to say what

they believed in (i. 122); he simply states that they never mention the name of

Jesus, nor do they call themselves Christians (loc. cit. 190. Yet it is

undeniable that


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some of the alleged philosophical views and doctrines of Bardesanes are found in

the codex of the Nazarenes. (See Norberg’s Codex Nazaræous or the “Book of

Adam”, and also “Mendæans ”.)

 

Coeur, Jacques. A famous Treasurer of France, born in 1408, who obtained the

office by black magic. He was reputed as a great alchemist and his wealth became

fabulous; but he was soon banished from the country, and retiring to the Island

of Cyprus, died there in 1460, leaving behind enormous wealth, endless legends

and a bad reputation.

 

Coffin-Rite, or Pastos. This was the final rite of Initiation in the Mysteries

in Egypt, Greece and elsewhere. The last and supreme secrets of Occultism could

not be revealed to the Disciple until he had passed through this allegorical

ceremony of Death and Resurrection into new light. “The Greek verb teleutaó,”

says Vronsky, “signifies in the active voice ‘I die’, and in the middle voice ‘I

am initiated”. Stobæus quotes an ancient author, who says, “The mind is affected

in death, just as it is in the initiation into the Mysteries ; and word answers

to word, as well as thing to thing ; for teleutan is ‘ to die ‘, and teleisthai

‘to be initiated’”. And thus, as Mackenzie corroborates, when the Aspirant was

placed in the Pastos, Bed, or Coffin (in India on the lathe, as explained in the

Secret Doctrine), “he was symbolically said to die.”

 

Collanges, Gabriel de. Born in 1524. The best astrologer in the XVlth century

and a still better Kabbalist. He spent a fortune in the unravelling of its

mysteries. It was rumoured that he died through poison administered to him by a

Jewish Rabbin-Kabbalist.

 

College of Rabbis. A college at Babylon; most famous during the early centuries

of Christianity. Its glory, however, was greatly darkened by the appearance in

Alexandria of Hellenic teachers, such as Philo Judæus, Josephus, Aristobulus and

others. The former avenged themselves on their successful rivals by speaking of

the Alexandrians as theurgists and unclean prophets. But the Alexandrian

believers in thaumaturgy were not regarded as sinners or impostors when orthodox

Jews were at the head of such schools of “hazim”. These were colleges for

teaching prophecy and occult sciences. Samuel was the chief of such a college at

Ramah; Elisha at Jericho. Hillel had a regular academy for prophets and seers;

and it is Hillel, a pupil of the Babylonian College, who was the founder of the

Sect of the Pharisees and the great orthodox Rabbis.

 

Collemann, Jean. An Alsatian, born at Orleans, according to K. Mackenzie; other

accounts say he was a Jew, who found favour owing to his astrological studies,

with both Charles VII. and Louis XI., and that he had a bad influence on the

latter.


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Collyridians. A sect of Gnostics who, in the ear]y centuries of Christianity,

transferred their worship and reverence from Astoreth to Mary, as Queen of

Heaven and Virgin. Regarding the two as identical, they offered to the latter as

they had done to the former, buns and cakes on certain days, with sexual symbols

represented on them.

 

Continents. In the Buddhist cosmogony, according to Gautama Buddha’s exoteric

doctrine, there are numberless systems of worlds (or Sakwala) all of which are

born, mature, decay, and are destroyed periodically. Orientalists translate the

teaching about “the four great continents which do not communicate with each

other”, as meaning that “upon the earth there are four great continents” (see

Hardy’s Eastern Monachism, p. 4), while the doctrine means simply that around or

above the earth there are on either side four worlds, i.e., the earth appearing

as the fourth on each side of the arc.

 

Corybantes, Mysteries of the. These were held in Phrygia in honour of Atys, the

youth beloved by Cybele. The rites were very elaborate within the temple and

very noisy and tragic in public. They began by a public bewailing of the death

of Atys and ended in tremendous rejoicing at his resurrection. The statue or

image of the victim of Jupiter’s jealousy was placed during the ceremony in a

pastos (coffin), and the priests sang his sufferings. Atys, as Visvakarma in

India, was a representative of Initiation and Adeptship. He is shown as being

born impotent, because chastity is a requisite of the life of an aspirant. Atys

is said to have established the rites and worship of Cybele, in Lydia. (See

Pausan., vii., c. 17.)

 

Cosmic Gods. Inferior gods, those connected with the formation of matter.

 

Cosmic ideation (Occult.) Eternal thought, impressed on substance or

spirit-matter, in the eternity ; thought which becomes active at the beginning

of every new life-cycle.

 

Cosmocratores (Gr.). “Builders of the Universe”, the “world architects”, or the

Creative Forces personified.

 

Cow-worship. The idea of any such “worship” is as erroneous as it is unjust. No

Egyptian worshipped the cow, nor does any Hindu worship this animal now, though

it is true that the cow and bull were sacred then as they are to-day, but only

as the natural physical symbol of a metaphysical ideal; even as a church made of

bricks and mortar is sacred to the civilized Christian because of its

associations and not by reason of its walls. The cow was sacred to Isis, the

Universal Mother, Nature, and to the Hathor, the female principle in Nature, the

two goddesses being allied to both sun and moon, as the disk and the cow’s


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horns (crescent) prove. (See “Hathor ‘ and “isis”.) In the Vedas, the Dawn of

Creation is represented by a cow. This dawn is Hathor, and the day which

follows, or Nature already formed, is Isis, for both are one except in the

matter of time. Hathor the elder is “the mistress of the seven mystical cows ”

and Isis, “the Divine Mother is the “cow-horned” the cow of plenty (or Nature,

Earth), and, as the mother of Horus (the physical world)—the “mother of all that

lives The outa was the symbolic eye of Horus, the right being the sun, and the

left the moon. The right “eye” of Horus was called “the cow of Hathor”, and

served as a powerful amulet, as the dove in a nest of rays or glory, with or

without the cross, is a talisman with Christians, Latins and Greeks. The Bull

and the Lion which we often find in company with Luke and Mark in the

frontispiece of their respective Gospels in the Greek and Latin texts, are

explained as symbols—-which is indeed the fact. Why not admit the same in the

case of the Egyptian sacred Bulls, Cows, Rams, and Birds?

 

Cremer, John. An eminent scholar who for over thirty years studied Hermetic

philosophy in pursuance of its practical secrets, while he was at the same time

Abbot of Westminster While on a voyage to Italy, he met the famous Raymond Lully

whom he induced to return with him to England. Lully divulged to Cremer the

secrets of the stone, for which service the monastery offered daily prayers for

him. Cremer, says the Royal Masonic Cyclopedia, “having obtained a profound

knowledge of the secrets of Alchemy, became a most celebrated and learned adept

in occult philosophy . . . lived to a good old age, and died in the reign of

King Edward III.”

 

Crescent. Sin was the Assyrian name for the moon, and Sin-ai the Mount, the

birth-place of Osiris, of Dionysos, Bacchus and several other gods. According to

Rawlinson, the moon was held in higher esteem than the sun at Babylon, because

darkness preceded light. The crescent was, therefore, a sacred symbol with

almost every nation, before it became the ‘standard of the Turks. Says the

author of Egyptian Belief, “ The crescent is not essentially a Mahometan ensign.

On the contrary, it was a Christian one, derived through Asia from the

Babylonian Astarte, Queen of Heaven, or from the Egyptian Isis . . . . whose

emblem was the crescent. The Greek Christian Empire of Constantinople held it as

their palladium. Upon the conquest of the Turks, the Mahometan Sultan adopted it

for the symbol of his power. Since that time the crescent has been made to

oppose the idea of the cross.”

 

Criocephale (Gr.). Ram-headed, applied to several deities and emblematic

figures, notably those of ancient Egypt, which were designed


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about the period when the Sun passed, at the Vernal Equinox, from the sign

Taurus to the sign Aries. Previously to this period, bull-headed and horned

deities prevailed. Apis was the type of the Bull deity, Ammon that of the

ram-headed type: Isis, too, had a Cow’s head allotted to her. Porphyry writes

that the Greeks united the Ram to Jupiter and the Bull to Bacchus. [w.w.w.]

 

Crocodile. “The great reptile of Typhon.” The seat of its “worship” was

Crocodilopolis and it was sacred to Set and Sebak—its alleged creators. The

primitive Rishis in India, the Manus, and Sons of Brahmâ, are each the

progenitors of some animal species, of which he is the alleged “father”; in

Egypt, each god was credited with the formation or creation of certain animals

which were sacred to him. Crocodiles must have been numerous in Egypt during the

early dynasties, if one has to judge by the almost incalculable number of their

mummies. Thousands upon thousands have been excavated from the grottoes of

Moabdeh, and many a vast necropolis of that Typhonic animal is still left

untouched. But the Crocodile was only worshipped where his god and “father”

received honours. Typhon (q.v.) had once received such honours and, as Bunsen

shows, had been considered a great god. His words are, “ Down to the time of

Ramses B.C. 1300, Typhon was one of the most venerated and powerful gods, a god

who pours blessings and life on the rulers of Egypt.” As explained elsewhere,

Typhon is the material aspect of Osiris. When Typhon, the Quaternary, kills

Osiris, the triad or divine Light, and cuts it metaphorically into 14 pieces,

and separates himself from the “god”, he incurs the execration of the masses; he

becomes the evil god, the storm and hurricane god, the burning sand of the

Desert, the constant enemy of the Nile, and the “slayer of the evening

beneficent dew”, because Osiris is the ideal Universe, Siva the great

Regenerative Force, and Typhon the material portion of it, the evil side of the

god, or the Destroying Siva. This is why the crocodile is also partly venerated

and partly execrated. The appearance of the crocodile in the Desert, far from

the water, prognosticated the happy event of the coming inundation—hence its

adoration at Thebes and Ombos. But he destroyed thousands of human and animal

beings yearly—hence also the hatred and persecution of the Crocodile at

Elephantine and Tentyra.

 

Cross. Mariette Bey has shown its antiquity in Egypt by proving that in all the

primitive sepulchres “the plan of the chamber has the form of a cross”. It is

the symbol of the Brotherhood of races and men; and was laid on the breast of

the corpses in Egypt, as it is now placed on the corpses of deceased Christians,

and, in its Swastica form (croix

 
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cramponnée) on the hearts of the Buddhist adepts and Buddhas. (See “Calvary

Cross”.)

 

Crux Ansata (Lat.). The handled cross,T; whereas the tau is T, in this form, and

the oldest Egyptian cross or the tat is thus +. The crux ansata was the symbol

of immortality, but the tat-cross was that of spirit-matter and had the

significance of a sexual emblem. The crux ansata was the foremost symbol in the

Egyptian Masonry instituted by Count Cagliostro; and Masons must have indeed

forgotten the primitive significance of their highest symbols, if some of their

authorities still insist that the crux ansata is only a combination of the cteis

(or yoni) and phallus (or lingham). Far from this. The handle or ansa had a

double significance, but never a phallic one; as an attribute of Isis it was the

mundane circle; as symbol of law on the breast of a mummy it was that of

immortality, of an endless and beginningless eternity, that which descends upon

and grows out of the plane of material nature, the horizontal feminine line,

surmounting the vertical male line—the fructifying male principle in nature or

spirit. Without the handle the crux ansata became the tau T, which, left by

itself, is an androgyne symbol, and becomes purely phallic or sexual only when

it takes the shape +.

 

Crypt (Gr.) A secret subterranean vault, some for the purpose of initiation,

others for burial purposes. There were crypts under every temple in antiquity.

There was one on the Mount of Olives, lined with red stucco, and built before

the advent of the Jews.

 

Curetes. The Priest-Initiates of ancient Crete, in the service of Cybele.

Initiation in their temples was very severe ; it lasted twenty-seven days,

during which time the aspirant was left by himself in a crypt, undergoing

terrible trials. Pythagoras was initiated into these rites and came out

victorious.

 

Cutha. An ancient city in Babylonia after which a tablet giving an account of

“creation” is named.

The “Cutha tablet” speaks of a temple of Sittam”, in the sanctuary of Nergal,

the “giant king of

war, lord of the city of Cutha”, and is purely esoteric, it has to be read

symbolically, if at all.

 

Cycle. From the Greek Kuklos. The ancients divided time into end less cycles,

wheels within wheels, all such periods being of various durations, and each

marking the beginning or the end of some event either cosmic, mundane, physical

or metaphysical. There were cycles of only a few years, and cycles of immense

duration, the great Orphic cycle, referring to the ethnological change of races,

lasting 120,000 years, and the cycle of Cassandrus of 136,000, which brought

about a complete


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change in planetary influences and their correlations between men and gods—a

fact entirely lost sight of by modern astrologers.

 

Cynocephalus (Gr.) The Egyptian Hapi. There was a notable difference between the

ape-headed gods and the “Cynocephalus” (Simia hamadryas), a dog-headed baboon

from upper Egypt. The latter, whose sacred city was Hermopolis, was sacred to

the lunar deities and Thoth Hermes, hence an emblem of secret wisdom—as was

Hanuman, the monkey-god of India, and later, the elephant-headed Ganesha. The

mission of the Cynocephalus was to show the way for the Dead to the Seat of

Judgment and Osiris, whereas the ape-gods were all phallic. They are almost

invariably found in a crouching posture, holding on one hand the outa (the eye

of Horus), and in the other the sexual cross. Isis is seen sometimes riding on

an ape, to designate the fall of divine nature into generation.

                        

D 


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D.  Both in the English and Hebrew alphabets the fourth letter, whose numerical

value is four. The symbolical signification in the Kabbala of the Daleth is

“door”. It is the Greek delta D, through which the world (whose symbol is the

tetrad or number four,) issued, producing the divine seven. The name of the

Tetrad was Harmony with the Pythagoreans, “because it is a diatessaron in

sesquitertia”. With the Kabbalists, the divine name associated with Daleth was

Daghoul.

 

Daath (Heb.) Knowledge; “the conjunction of Chokmah and Binah, Wisdom and

Understanding”: sometimes, in error, called a Sephira. [w.w.w.]

 

Dabar (Heb.) D (a) B (a) R (im), meaning the “Word”, and the “Words” in the

Chaldean Kabbala, Dabar and Logoi. (See Sec.Doct. I. p. 350, and “Logos”, or

“Word”.)

 

Dabistan (Pers.) The land of Iran; ancient Persia.

 

Dache-Dachus (Chald.) The dual emanation of Moymis, the progeny of the dual or

androgynous World-Principle, the male Apason and female Tauthe. Like all

theocratic nations possessing Temple mysteries, the Babylonians never mentioned

the “One” Principle of the Universe, nor did they give it a name. This made

Damascious (Theogonies) remark that like the rest of “ barbarians” the

Babylonians passed it over in silence. Tauthe was the mother of the gods, while

Apason was her self-generating male power, Moymis, the ideal universe, being her

only-begotten son, and emanating in his turn Dache-Dachus, and at last Belus,

the Demiurge of the objective Universe.

 

Dactyli (Gr.) From daktulos, “a finger”. The name given to the Phrygian

Hierophants of Kybele, who were regarded as the greatest magicians and

exorcists. They were five or ten in number because of the five fingers on one

hand that blessed, and the ten on both hands which evoke the gods. They also

healed by manipulation or mesmerism.

 

Dadouchos (Gr.) The torch-hearer, one of the four celebrants in the Eleusinian

mysteries. There were several attached to the temples but they appeared in

public only at the Panathenaic Games at Athens, to preside over the so-called

“torch-race”. (See Mackenzie’s R.M, Cyclopædia.)


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Dæmon (Gr.) In the original Hermetic works and ancient classics it has a meaning

identical with that of “god”, “angel” or “genius”. The Dæmon of Socrates is the

incorruptible part of the man, or rather the real inner man which we call Nous

or the rational divine Ego. At all events the Dæmon (or Daimon of the great Sage

was surely not the demon of the Christian Hell or of Christian orthodox

theology. The name was given by ancient peoples, and especially the philosophers

of the Alexandrian school, to all kinds of spirits, whether good or bad, human

or otherwise. The appellation is often synonymous with that of gods or angels.

But some philosophers tried, with good reason, to make a just distinction

between the many classes.

 

Dænam (Pahlavi) Lit., “Knowledge”, the principle of understanding in man,

rational Soul, or Manas, according to the Avesta.

 

Dag, Dagon (Heb.). “Fish” and also “Messiah”. Dagon was the Chaldean man-fish

Oannes, the mysterious being who arose daily out of the depths of the sea to

teach people every useful science. He was also called Annedotus.

 

Dâgoba (Sk.), or Stûpa. Lit: a sacred mound or tower for Buddhist holy relics.

These are pyramidal-looking mounds scattered all over India and Buddhist

countries, such as Ceylon, Burmah, Central Asia, etc. They are of various sizes,

and generally contain some small relics of Saints or those claimed to have

belonged to Gautama, the Buddha. As the human body is supposed to consist of

84,000 dhâtus (organic cells with definite vital functions in them), Asoka is

said for this reason to have built 84,000 dhâtu-gopas or Dâgobas in honour of

every cell of the Buddha’s body, each of which has now become a dhârmadhâtu or

holy relic. There is in Ceylon a Dhâtu-gopa at Anurâdhapura said to date from160

years B.C. They are now built pyramid-like, but the primitive Dâgobas were all

shaped like towers with a cupola and several tchhatra (umbrellas) over them.

Eitel states that the Chinese Dâgobas have all from 7 to 14 tchhatras over them,

a number which is symbolical of the human body.

 

Daitya Guru (Sk.) The instructor of the giants, called Daityas (q.v.)

Allegorically, it is the title given to the planet Venus-Lucifer, or rather to

its indwelling Ruler, Sukra, a male deity

(See Sec. Doct.. ii. p. 30).

 

Daityas (Sk.) Giants, Titans, and exoterically demons, but in truth identical

with certain Asuras, the intellectual gods, the opponents of the useless gods of

ritualism and the enemies of puja sacrifices.

 

Daivi-prakriti (Sk.) Primordial, homogeneous light, called by some Indian

Occultists “the Light of the Logos” (see Notes on the Bhagavat Gita, by T. Subba

Row, B.A., L.L.B.); when differentiated this light becomes FOHAT.

 


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Dâkinî (Sk.) Female demons, vampires and blood-drinkers (asra-pas). In the

Purânas they attend upon the goddess Kâli and feed on human flesh. A species of

evil “Elementals” (q.v.).

 

Daksha (Sk.) A form of Brahmâ and his son in the Purânas But the Rig Veda states

that “Daksha sprang from Aditi, and Aditi from Daksha”, which proves him to be a

personified correlating Creative Force acting on all the planes. The

Orientalists seem very much perplexed what to make of him; but Roth is nearer

the truth than any, when saying that Daksha is the spiritual power, and at the

same time the male energy that generates the gods in eternity, which is

represented by Aditi. The Purânas as a matter of course, anthropomorphize the

idea, and show Daksha instituting “sexual intercourse on this earth”, after

trying every other means of procreation. The generative Force, spiritual at the

commencement, becomes of course at the most material end of its evolution a

procreative Force on the physical plane ; and so far the Purânic allegory is

correct, as the Secret Science teaches that our present mode of procreation

began towards the end of the third Root-Race.

 

Daladâ (Sk.)A very precious relic of Gautama the Buddha; viz., his supposed left

canine tooth preserved at the great temple at Kandy, Ceylon. Unfortunately, the

relic shown is not genuine. The latter has been securely secreted for several

hundred years, ever since the shameful and bigoted attempt by the Portuguese

(the then ruling power in Ceylon) to steal and make away with the real relic.

That which is shown in the place of the real thing is the monstrous tooth of

some animal.

 

Dama (Sk.). Restraint of the senses.

 

Dambulla (Sk.) The name of a huge rock in Ceylon. It is about 400 feet above the

level of the sea. Its upper portion is excavated, and several large

cave-temples, or Vihâras, are cut out of the solid rock, all of these being of

pre-Christian date. They are considered as the best- preserved antiquities in

the island. The North side of the rock is vertical and quite inaccessible, but

on the South side, about 150 feet from its summit, its huge overhanging granite

mass has been fashioned into a platform with a row of large cave-temples

excavated in the surrounding walls—evidently at an enormous sacrifice of labour

and money. Two Vihâras may he mentioned out of the many: the Maha Râja Vihâra,

172 ft. in length and 75 in breadth, in which there are upwards of fifty figures

of Buddha, most of them larger than life and all formed from the solid rock. A

well has been dug out at the foot of the central Dâgoba and from a fissure in

the rock there constantly drips into it beautiful clear water which is kept for

sacred purposes. In the other, the Maha


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Dewiyo Vihâra, there is to be seen a gigantic figure of the dead Gautama Buddha,

7 feet long, reclining on a couch and pillow cut out of solid rock like the

rest. “This long, narrow and dark temple, the position and placid aspect of

Buddha, together with the stillness of the place, tend to impress the beholder

with the idea that he is in the chamber of death. The priest asserts . . . .

that such was Buddha, and such were those (at his feet stands an attendant) who

witnessed the last moments of his mortality” (Hardy’s East. Monachism). The view

from Dambulla is magnificent. On the large rock platform which seems to he now

more visited by very intelligent tame white monkeys than by monks, there stands

a huge Bo-Tree, one of the numerous scions from the original Bo-Tree under which

the Lord Siddhârtha reached Nirvâna. “About 50 ft. from the summit there is a

pond which, as the priests assert, is never without water.”

(The Ceylon Almanac, 1834.)

 

Dammâpadan (Pali.) A Buddhist work containing moral precepts.

 

Dâna (Sk.). Almsgiving to mendicants, lit., “charity”, the first of the six

Paramitas in Buddhism.

 

Dânavas (Sk.). Almost the same as Daityas; giants and demons, the opponents of

the ritualistic gods.

 

Dangma (Sk.) In Esotericism a purified Soul. A Seer and an Initiate; one who has

attained full wisdom.

 

Daos (Chald.) The seventh King (Shepherd) of the divine Dynasty, who reigned

over the Babylonians for the space of ten sari, or 36,000 years, a saros being

of 3,600 years’ duration. In his time four Annedoti, or Men-fishes (Dagons) made

their appearance.

 

Darâsta (Sk) Ceremonial magic practised by the central Indian tribes, especially

among the Kolarians.

 

Dardanus (Gr.) The Son of Jupiter and Electra, who received the Kabeiri gods as

a dowry, and took them to Samothrace, where they were worshipped long before the

hero laid the foundations of Troy, and before Tyre and Sidon were ever heard of,

though Tyre was built 2,760 years B.C.

(See for fuller details “Kabiri”.)

 

Darha (Sk.) The ancestral spirits of the Kolarians.

 

Darsanas (Sk.) The Schools of Indian philosophy, of which there are six;

Shad-darsanas or six demonstrations.

 

Dasa-sil (Pali.) The ten obligations or commandments taken by and binding upon

the priests of Buddha; the five obligations or Pansil are taken by laymen.

 

Dava (Tib.) The moon, in Tibetan astrology.

 

Davkina (Chald.) The wife of Hea, “the goddess of the lower regions,

 
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the consort of the Deep”, the mother of Merodach, the Bel of later times, and

mother to many river-gods, Hea being the god of the lower regions, the “lord of

the Sea or abyss”, and also the lord of Wisdom.

 

Dayanisi (Aram.). The god worshipped by the Jews along with other Semites, as

the “Ruler of men”; Dionysos—the Sun; whence Jehovah Nissi, or Iao-Nisi, the

same as Dio-nysos or Jove of Nyssa.

(See Isis Unveil. II. 526.)

 

Day of Brahmâ. See “Brahmâ's Day” etc.

 

Dayus or Dyaus (Sk). A Vedic term. The unrevealed Deity, or that which reveals

Itself only as light and the bright day—metaphorically.

 

Death, Kiss of. According to the Kabbalah, the earnest follower does not die by

the power of the Evil Spirit, Yetzer ha Rah, but by a kiss from the mouth of

Jehovah Tetragrammaton, meeting him in the Haikal Ahabah or Palace of Love.

[w.w.w.]

 

Dei termini (Lat.). The name for pillars with human heads representing Hermes,

placed at cross-roads by the ancient Greeks and Romans. Also the general name

for deities presiding over boundaries

and frontiers.

 

Deist. One who admits the existence of a god or gods, but claims to know nothing

of either and denies revelation. A Freethinker of olden times.

 

Demerit. In Occult and Buddhistic parlance, a constituent of Karma. It is

through avidya or ignorance of vidya, divine illumination, that merit and

demerit are produced. Once an Arhat obtains full illumination and perfect

control over his personality and lower nature, he ceases to create merit and

demerit

 

Demeter The Hellenic name for the Latin Ceres, the goddess of corn and tillage.

The astronomical sign, Virgo. The Eleusinian Mysteries were celebrated in her

honour.

 

Demiurgic Mind.The same as “Universal Mind”. Mahat, the first “product” of

 

Brahmâ, or himself.

 

Demiurgos (Gr) The Demiurge or Artificer; the Supernal Power which built the

universe. Freemasons derive from this word their phrase of “Supreme Architect ”.

With the Occultists it is the third manifested Logos, or Plato’s “second god”,

the second logos being represented by him as the “Father”, the only Deity that

he dared mention as an Initiate into the Mysteries.

 

Demon est Deus inversus (Lat) A Kabbalistic axiom; lit., “the devil is god

reversed”; which means that there is neither evil nor good, but that the forces

which create the one create the other, according to the nature of the materials

they find to work upon.


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Demonologia (Gr.). Treatises or Discourses upon Demons, or Gods in their dark

aspects.

 

 

Demons. According to the Kabbalah, the demons dwell in the world of Assiah, the

world of matter and of the “shells”’ of the dead. They are the Klippoth. There

are Seven Hells, whose demon dwellers represent the vices personified. Their

prince is Samael, his female companion is Isheth Zenunim—the woman of

prostitution: united in aspect, they are named “The Beast”, Chiva. [w.w.w.]

 

Demrusch (Pers.). A Giant in the mythology of ancient Iran.

 

Denis, Angoras. “A physician of Paris, astrologer and alchemist in the XIVth

century” (R.M.C.).

 

Deona Mati. In the Kolarian dialect, one who exorcises evil spirits.

 

Dervish. A Mussulman—Turkish or Persian—ascetic. A nomadic and wandering monk.

Dervishes, however, sometimes live in communities. They are often called the

“whirling charmers”. Apart from his austerities of life, prayer and

contemplation, the Turkish, Egyptian, or Arabic devotee presents but little

similarity with the Hindu fakir, who is also a Mussulman. The latter may become

a saint and holy mendicant the former will never reach beyond his second class

of occult manifestations. The dervish may also be a strong mesmerizer, but he

will never voluntarily submit to the abominable and almost incredible

self-punishment which the fakir invents for himself with an ever-increasing

avidity, until nature succumbs and he dies in slow and excruciating tortures.

The most dreadful operations, such as flaying the limbs alive; cutting off the

toes, feet, and legs ; tearing out the eyes and causing one’s self to be buried

alive up to the chin in the earth, and passing whole months in this posture,

seem child’s play to them. The Dervish must not be confused with the Hindu

sanyâsi or yogi. (See “Fakir”).

 

Desatir. A very ancient Persian work called the Book of Shet. It speaks of the

thirteen Zoroasters, and is very mystical.

 

Deva (Sk.). A god, a “resplendent” deity. Deva-Deus, from the root div “to

shine”. A Deva is a celestial being—whether good, bad, or indifferent. Devas

inhabit “the three worlds”, which are the three planes above us. There are 33

groups or 330 millions of them.

 

Deva Sarga (Sk.). Creation: the origin of the principles, said to be

Intelligence born of the qualities or the attributes of nature.

 

Devachan (Sk.). The “dwelling of the gods”. A state intermediate between two

earth-lives, into which the EGO (Atmâ-Buddhi-Manas, or the Trinity made One)

enters, after its separation from Kâma Rupa, and the disintegration of the lower

principles on earth.

 

Devajnânas (Sk.). or Daivajna. The higher classes of celestial beings, those who

possess divine knowledge.


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Devaki (Sk.). The mother of Krishna. She was shut up in a dungeon by her

brother, King Kansa, for fear of the fulfilment of a prophecy which stated that

a son of his sister should dethrone and kill him. Notwithstanding the strict

watch kept, Devaki was overshadowed by Vishnu, the holy Spirit, and thus gave

birth to that god’s avatara, Krishna. (See “Kansa”.)

 

Deva-laya (Sk.). “The shrine of a Deva”. The name given to all Brahmanical

temples.

 

Deva-lôkas (Sk.). The abodes of the Gods or Devas in superior spheres. The seven

celestial worlds above Meru.

 

Devamâtri (Sk.). Lit., “the mother of the gods”. A title of Aditi, Mystic Space.

 

Dêvanâgarî (Sk.). Lit., “the language or letters of the dêvas” or gods. The

characters of the Sanskrit language. The alphabet and the art of writing were

kept secret for ages, as the Dwijas (Twice-born) and the Dikshitas (Initiates)

alone were permitted to use this art. It was a crime for a. Sudra to recite a

verse of the Vedas, and for any of the two lower castes (Vaisya and Sudra) to

know the letters was an offence punishable by death. Therefore is the word lipi,

‘‘writing”, absent from the oldest MSS., a fact which gave the Orientalists the

erroneous and rather incongruous idea that writing was not only unknown before

the day of Pânini, but even to that sage himself That the greatest grammarian

the world has ever produced should be ignorant of writing would indeed be the

greatest and most incomprehensible phenomenon of all.

 

Devapi (Sk.). A Sanskrit Sage of the race of Kuru, who, together with another

Sage (Moru), is supposed to live throughout the four ages and until the coming

of Maitreya Buddha, or Kalki (the last Avatar of Vishnu) ; who, like all the

Saviours of the World in their last appearance, like Sosiosh of the Zoroastrians

and the Rider of St. Johns Revelation, will appear seated on a White Horse. The

two, Devapi and Moru, are supposed to live in a Himalayan retreat called Kalapa

or Katapa. This is a Purânic allegory.

 

Devarshis, or Deva-rishi (Sk). Lit., “gods rishis” ; the divine or god like

saints, those sages who attain a fully divine nature on earth.

 

Devasarman (Sk.). A very ancient author who died about a century after Gautama

Buddha. He wrote two famous works, in which he denied the existence of both Ego

and non-Ego, the one as successfully as the other.

 

Dhârana (Sk). That state in Yoga practice when the mind has to be fixed

unflinchingly on some object of meditation.


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Dhâranî(Sk.). In Buddhism—both Southern and Northern—and also in Hinduism, it

means simply a mantra or mantras—sacred verses from the Rig Veda. In days of old

these mantras or Dhâranî were all considered mystical and practically

efficacious in their use. At present, however, it is the Yogâchârya school alone

which proves the claim in practice. When chanted according to given instructions

a

Dhâranî produces wonderful effects. Its occult power, however, does not reside

in the words but in the inflexion or accent given and the resulting sound

originated thereby. (See “Mantra” and “Akasa”).

 

Dharma (Sk.). The sacred Law; the Buddhist Canon.

 

Dharmachakra (Sk.). Lit., The turning of the “wheel of the Law”. The emblem of

Buddhism as a system of cycles and rebirths or reincarnations.

 

Dharmakâya (Sk). Lit., “the glorified spiritual body” called the “Vesture of

Bliss”. The third, or highest of the Trikâya (Three Bodies), the attribute

developed by every “Buddha”, i.e., every initiate who has crossed or reached the

end of what is called the “fourth Path” (in esotericism the sixth “portal” prior

to his entry on the seventh). The highest of the Trikâya, it is the fourth of

the Buddhakchêtra, or Buddhic planes of consciousness, represented figuratively

in Buddhist asceticism as a robe or vesture of luminous Spirituality.

In popular Northern Buddhism these vestures or robes are:

(1) Nirmanakâya  (2) Sambhogakâya (3) and Dharmakâya the last being the highest

and most sublimated of all, as it places the ascetic on the threshold of

Nirvâna. (See, however, the Voice of the Silence, page 96, Glossary, for the

true esoteric meaning.)

 

Dharmaprabhasa (Sk). The name of the Buddha who will appear during the seventh

Root-race. (See “Ratnâvabhâsa Kalpa”, when sexes will exist no longer).

 

Dharmasmriti Upasthâna (Sk). A very long compound word containing a very

mystical warning. “Remember, the constituents (of human nature) originate

according to the Nidânas, and are-not originally the Self”, which means—that,

which the Esoteric Schools teach, and not the ecclesiastical interpretation.

 

Dharmâsôka (Sk.). The name given to the first Asoka after his conversion to

Buddhism,—King Chandragupta, who served all his long life “Dharma”, or the law

of Buddha. King Asoka (the second) was not converted, but was born a Buddhist.

 

Dhâtu (Pali). Relics of Buddha’s body collected after his cremation.

 

Dhruva (Sk). An Aryan Sage, now the Pole Star. A Kshatriya (one of the warrior

caste) who became through religious austerities a


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Rishi, and was, for this reason, raised by Vishnu to this eminence in the skies.

Also called Grah-Âdhâr or “the pivot of the planets”.

 

Dhyan Chohans (Sk). Lit., “The Lords of Light”. The highest gods, answering to

the Roman Catholic Archangels. The divine Intelligences charged with the

supervision of Kosmos.

 

Dhyâna (Sk.). In Buddhism one of the six Paramitas of perfection, a state of

abstraction which carries the ascetic practising it far above this plane of

sensuous perception and out of the world of matter.

Lit., “contemplation”. The six stages of Dhyan differ only in the degrees of

abstraction of the personal Ego from sensuous life.

 

Dhyani Bodhisattyas (Sk.). In Buddhism, the five sons of the Dhyani-Buddhas.

They have a mystic meaning in Esoteric Philosophy.

 

Dhyani Buddhas (Sk.). They “of the Merciful Heart”; worshipped especially in

Nepaul. These have again a secret meaning.

 

Dhyani Pasa (Sk.). “The rope of the Dhyanis” or Spirits; the Ring “Pass not”

(See Sec.Doct., Stanza V., Vol. I., p. 129).

 

Diakka. Called by Occultists and Theosophists “spooks” and “shells”, i.e.,

phantoms from Kâma Loka. A word invented by the great American Seer, Andrew

Jackson Davis, to denote what he considers untrustworthy “Spirits”. In his own

words: “A Diakka (from the Summerland) is one who takes insane delight in

playing parts, in juggling tricks, in personating opposite characters; to whom

prayer and profane utterances are of equi-value; surcharged with a passion for

lyrical narrations; . . . morally deficient, he is without the active feelings

of justice, philanthropy, or tender affection. He knows nothing of what men call

the sentiment of gratitude; the ends of hate and love are the same to him; his

motto is often fearful and terrible to others—SELF is the whole of private

living, and exalted annihilation the end of all private life. Only yesterday,

one said to a lady medium, signing himself Swedenborg, this: ‘Whatsoever is, has

been, will be, or may be, that I AM.; and private life is but the aggregative

phantasms of thinking throb- lets, rushing in their rising onward to the central

heart of eternal death’

(The Diakka and their Victims; “an explanation of the False and Repulsive in

Spiritualism.”) These “Diakka” are then simply the communicating and

materializing so-called “Spirits” of Mediums and Spiritualists.

 

Dianoia (Gr.). The same as the Logos. The eternal source of thought, “divine

ideation”, which is the root of all thought. (See “Ennoia.”)

 

Dido, or Elissa. Astarte; the Virgin of the Sea—who crushes the Dragon under her

foot; The patroness of the Phoænician mariners. A Queen of Carthage who fell in

love with Æneas according to Virgil.


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Digambara (Sk.). A naked mendicant. Lit., “clothed with Space”. A name of Siva

in his character of Rudra, the Yogi.

 

Dii Minores (Lat.). The inferior or “reflected group of the twelve gods ” or Dii

Majores, described by Cicero in his De Natura Deorum, I. 13.

 

Dîk (Sk). Space, Vacuity.

 

Diktamnon (Gr.), or Dictemnus (Dittany). A curious plant possessing very occult

and mystical properties and well-known from ancient times. It was sacred to the

Moon-Goddesses. Luna, Astarte, Diana. The Cretan name of Diana was Diktynna, and

as such the goddess wore a wreath made of this magic plant. The Dihtamnon is an

evergreen shrub whose contact, as claimed in Occultism, develops and at the same

time cures somnambulism. Mixed with Verbena it will produce clairvoyance and

ecstasy. Pharmacy attributes to the Dihtamnon strongly sedative and quieting

properties. It grows in abundance on Mount Dicte, in Crete, and enters into many

magical performances resorted to by the Cretans even to this day.

 

Diksha (Sk). Initiation. Dikshit, an Initiate.

 

Dingir and Mul-lil (Akkad.). The Creative Gods.

 

Dinur (Heb.). The River of Fire whose flame burns the Souls of the guilty in the

Kabbalistic allegory.

 

Dionysos (Sk.). The Demiurgos, who, like Osiris, was killed by the Titans and

dismembered into fourteen parts. He was the personified Sun, or as the author of

the Great Dionysiak Myth says “He is Phanes, the spirit of material visibility,

Kyklops giant of the Universe, with one bright solar eye, the growth-power of

the world, the all-pervading animism of things, son of Semele Dionysos was born

at Nysa or Nissi, the name given by the Hebrews to Mount Sinai (Exodus xvii.

15), the birthplace of Osiris, which identifies both suspiciously with “Jehovah

Nissi”. (See Isis Unv. II. 165, 526.)

 

Dioscuri (Gr.). The name of Castor and Pollux, the sons of Jupiter and Leda.

Their festival, the Dioscuria, was celebrated with much rejoicing by the

Lacedæmonians.

 

Dîpamkara (Sk.). Lit., “the Buddha of fixed light”; a predecessor of Gautama,

the Buddha.

 

Diploteratology (Gr.). Production of mixed Monsters; in abbreviation teratology.

 

Dis (Gr.). In the Theogony of Damascius, the same as Protogonos, the “first born

light”, called by that author “the disposer of all things.

 

Dises (Scand.). The later name for the divine women called Walky-rics, Norns,

&c., in the Edda.


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Disk-worship. This was very common in Egypt but not till later times, as it

began with Amenoph III., a Dravidian, who brought it from Southern India and

Ceylon. It was Sun-worship under another form, the Aten-Nephru, Aten-Ra being

identical with the Adonai of the Jews, the “ Lord of Heaven” or the Sun. The

winged disk was the emblem of the Soul. The Sun was at one time the symbol of

Universal Deity shining on the whole world and all creatures; the Sabæans

regarded the Sun as the Demiurge and a Universal Deity, as did also the Hindus,

and as do the Zoroastrians to this day. The Sun is undeniably the one creator of

physical nature. Lenormant was obliged, notwithstanding his orthodox

Christianity, to denounce the resemblance between disk and Jewish worship. “Aten

represents the Adonai or Lord, the Assyrian Tammuz, and the Syrian Adonis”(The

Gr. Dionys. Myth.)

 

Divyachakchus (Sk.). Lit., “celestial Eye” or divine seeing, perception. It is

the first of the six

“Abhijnas” (q.v.) ; the faculty developed by Yoga practice to perceive any

object in the Universe, at whatever distance.

 

Divyasrôtra (Sk). Lit., “celestial Ear” Or divine hearing. The second “Abhijna”,

or the faculty of understanding the language or sound produced by any living

being on Earth.

 

Djâti (Sk.). One of the twelve “Nidanas” (q.v.); the cause and the effect in the

mode of birth taking place according to the “Chatur Yoni”(q.v.), when in each

case a being, whether man or animal, is placed in one of the six (esoteric

seven) Gâti or paths of sentient existence, which esoterically, counting

downward, are: (1) the highest Dhyani (Anupadaka); (2) Devas ; (3) Men; (4)

Elementals or Nature Spirits; (5) Animals; (6) lower Elementals; (7) organic

Germs. These are in the popular or exoteric nomenclature, Devas, Men, Asûras,

Beings in Hells, Prêtas (hungry demons), and Animals.

 

Djin (Arab.). Elementals ; Nature Sprites; Genii. The Djins or Jins are much

dreaded in Egypt, Persia and elsewhere.

 

Djnâna (Sk), or Jnâna. Lit., Knowledge; esoterically, “supernal or divine

knowledge acquired by Yoga”. Written also Gnyana.

 

Docetæ (Gr.). Lit.,“The Illusionists”. The name given by orthodox Christians to

those Gnostics who held that Christ did not, nor could he, suffer death

actually, but that, if such a thing had happened, it was merely an illusion

which they explained in various ways.

 

Dodecahedron (Gr.). According to Plato, the Universe is built by “the first

begotten” on the geometrical figure of the Dodecahedron. (See Timaeus).

 

Dodona (Gr.). An ancient city in Thessaly, famous for its Temple of


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Jupiter and its oracles. According to ancient legends, the town was founded by a

dove.

 

Donar (Scand.), or Thunar, Thor. In the North the God of Thunder. He was the

Jupiter Tonans of Scandinavia. Like as the oak was devoted to Jupiter so was it

sacred to Thor, and his altars were over shadowed with oak trees. Thor, or

Donar, was the offspring of Odin, “the omnipotent God of Heaven”, and of Mother

Earth.

 

Dondam-pai-den-pa (Tib.). The same as the Sanskrit term Paramarthasatya or

“absolute truth”, the highest spiritual self-consciousness and perception,

divine self-consciousness, a very mystical term.

 

Doppelgänger (Germ.). A synonym of the “Double” and of the “Astral body” in

occult parlance.

 

Dorjesempa (Tib.). The “Diamond Soul”, a name of the celestial Buddha.

 

Dorjeshang (Tib.). A title of Buddha in his highest aspect; a name of the

supreme Buddha; also Dorje.

 

Double. The same as the “Astral body” or “Doppelgänger”.

 

Double Image. The name among the Jewish Kabbalists for the Dual Ego, called

respectively: the Higher, Metatron, and the Lower, Samael. They are figured

allegorically as the two inseparable companions of man through life, the one his

Guardian Angel, the other his Evil Demon.

 

Dracontia (Gr.). Temples dedicated to the Dragon, the emblem of the Sun, the

symbol of Deity,

of Life and Wisdom. The Egyptian Karnac, the Carnac in Britanny, and Stonehenge

are Dracontia

well known to all.

 

Drakôn (Gr.) or Dragon. Now considered a “mythical” monster, perpetuated in the

West only on seals,. &c., as a heraldic griffin, and the Devil slain by St.

George, &c. In fact an extinct antediluvian monster In Babylonian antiquities it

is referred to as the “scaly one” and connected on many gems with Tiamat the

sea. “The Dragon of the Sea” is repeatedly mentioned. In Egypt, it is the star

of the Dragon (then the North Pole Star), the origin of the connection of almost

all the gods with the Dragon. Bel and the Dragon, Apollo and Python, Osiris and

Typhon, Sigur and Fafnir, and finally St. George and the Dragon, are the same.

They were all solar gods, and wherever we find the Sun there also is the Dragon,

the symbol of Wisdom—Thoth-Hermes. The Hierophants of Egypt and of Babylon

styled themselves “Sons of the Serpent-God” and “Sons of the Dragon”. “I am a

Serpent, I am a Druid”, said the Druid of the Celto-Britannic regions, for the

Serpent and the Dragon were both types of Wisdom, Immortality and Rebirth. As

the serpent casts its old skin only to reappear in a new one, so does the

immortal Ego cast off one personality but to assume another.


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Draupnir (Scand.). The golden armlet of Wodan or Odin, the companion of the

spear Gungnir which he holds in his right hand; both are endowed with wonderful

magic properties.

 

Dravidians. A group of tribes inhabiting Southern India; the aborigines.

 

Dravya (Sk.). Substance (metaphysically).

 

Drishti (Sk.). Scepticism; unbelief.

 

Druids. A sacerdotal caste which flourished in Britain and Gaul. They were

Initiates who admitted females into their sacred order, and initiated them into

the mysteries of their religion. They never entrusted their sacred verses and

scriptures to writing, but, like the Brahmans of old, committed them to memory;

a feat which, according to the statement of Cæsar took twenty years to

accomplish. Like the Parsis they had no images or statues of their gods. The

Celtic religion considered it blasphemy to represent any god, even of a minor

character, under a human figure. It would have been well if the Greek and Roman

Christians had learnt this lesson from the “pagan” Druids. The three chief

commandments of their religion were:—“Obedience to divine laws; concern for the

welfare of mankind; suffering with fortitude all the evils of life”.

 

Druzes. A large sect, numbering about 100,000 adherents, living on Mount Lebanon

in Syria. Their rites are very mysterious, and no traveller, who has written

anything about them, knows for a certainty the whole truth. They are the Sufis

of Syria. They resent being called Druzes as an insult, but call themselves the

“disciples of Hamsa ”, their Messiah, who came to them in the ninth century from

the “Land of the Word of God”, which land and word they kept religiously secret.

The Messiah to come will be the same Hamsa, but called Hakem—the “All-Healer ”.

(See Isis Unveiled, II 308, et seq.)

 

Dudaim (Heb.). Mandrakes. The Atropa Mandragova plant is mentioned in Genesis,

XXX., 14, and in Canticles: the name is related in Hebrew to words meaning

“breasts” and “love”, the plant was notorious as a love charm, and has been used

in many forms of black magic. [ w.w.w.]

Dudaim in Kabbalistic parlance is the Soul and Spirit; any two things united in

love and friendship (dodim). “Happy is he who preserves his dudaim (higher and

lower Manas) inseparable.”

 

Dugpas (Tib.). Lit., “Red Caps,” a sect in Tibet. Before the advent of

Tsong-ka-pa in the fourteenth century, the Tibetans, whose Buddhism had

deteriorated and been dreadfully adulterated with the tenets of the old Bhon

religion,—were all Dugpas. From that century, however, and

 
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