The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1Theosophy / New ThoughtMystical / EsotericEnglishShareThe Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 211893 edition - EnglishMoreVersion - 1 available1893 editionLanguageEnglishEspañol‹The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 1The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 2The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 3The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 4The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 5The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 6The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 7The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 8The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 9The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 10The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 11The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 12The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 13The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 14The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 15The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 16The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 17The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 18The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 19The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 20The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 21The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 22The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 23The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 24The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 25The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 26The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 27The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 28The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 29The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 30The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 31The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 32The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 33The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 34The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 35The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 36The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 37The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 38The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 39The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 40The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 41The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 42The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 43The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 44The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 45The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 46The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 47The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 48The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 49The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 50The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 51The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 52The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 53The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 54The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 55The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 56The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 57The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 58The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 59The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 60The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 61The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 62The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 63The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 64The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 65The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 66The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 67The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 68The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 69The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 70The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 71The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 72›As Three Into Four, Into The Lap Of Mâyâ.The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 21ListenPlay this chapter in spoken English.Save chapterListen to chapter1The Primordial Substance had not yet passed out of its precosmic latency into differentiated objectivity, or even become the (to man, so far) invisible Protyle of Science. But, as the “Hour strikes” and it becomes receptive of the Fohatic impress of the Divine Thought—the Logos, or the male aspect of the Anima Mundi, Alaya—its “Heart” opens. It differentiates, and the Three (Father, Mother, Son) are transformed into Four. Herein lies the origin of the double mystery of the Trinity and the Immaculate Conception. The first and fundamental dogma of Occultism is Universal Unity (or Homogeneity) under three aspects. This leads to a possible conception of Deity, which as an absolute Unity must remain forever incomprehensible to finite intellects. 2If thou wouldest believe in the Power which acts within the root of a plant, or imagine the root concealed under the soul, thou hast to think of its stalk or trunk, and of its leaves and flowers. Thou canst not imagine that Power independently of these objects. Life can be known only by the Tree of Life....(90) 3The idea of Absolute Unity would be broken entirely in our conception, had we not something concrete before our eyes to contain that Unity. And the Deity being absolute, must be omnipresent; hence not an atom but contains It within itself. The roots, the trunk, and its many branches, are three distinct objects, yet they are one tree. Say the Kabalists: “The Deity is one, because It is infinite. It is triple, because It is ever manifesting.” This manifestation is triple in its aspects, for it requires, as Aristotle has it, three principles for every natural body to become objective: privation, form, and matter.(91) Privation meant in the mind of the great philosopher that which the Occultists call the prototypes impressed in the Astral Light—the lowest plane and world of Anima Mundi. The union of these three principles depends upon a fourth—the Life which radiates from the summits of the Unreachable, to become a universally diffused Essence on the manifested planes of Existence. And this Quaternary (Father, Mother, Son, as a Unity, and a Quaternary—as a living manifestation) has been the means of leading to the very archaic idea of Immaculate Conception, now finally crystallized into a dogma of the Christian Church, which has carnalized this metaphysical idea beyond any common sense. For one has but to read the Kabalah and study its numerical methods of interpretation to find the origin of the dogma. It is purely astronomical, mathematical, and preëminently metaphysical: 4the Male Element in Nature (personified by the male deities and Logoi—Virâj, or Brahmâ, Horus, or Osiris, etc., etc.) is born through, not from, an immaculate source, personified by the “Mother,” for—the Abstract Deity being sexless, and not even a Being but Be‐ness, or Life itself—that Male having a “Mother” cannot have a “Father.” Let us render this in the mathematical language of the author of The Source of Measures. Speaking of the “Measure of a Man” and his numerical (Kabalistic) value, he writes that in Genesis, iv. 1— 5It is called the “Man even Jehovah” Measure, and this is obtained in this way, viz.: 113 x 5 = 565, and the value 565 can be placed under the form of expression 56.5 x 10 = 565. Here the Man‐number 113 becomes a factor of 56.5 x 10, and the (Kabalistic) reading of this last numbered expression is Jod, He, Vau, He, or Jehovah.... The expansion of 565 into 56·5 x 10 is purposed to show the emanation of the male (Jod) from the female (Eva) principle; or, so to speak, the birth of a male element from an immaculate source, in other words, an immaculate conception. 6Thus is repeated on earth the mystery enacted, according to the Seers, on the divine plane. The Son of the Immaculate Celestial Virgin (or the Undifferentiated Cosmic Protyle, Matter in its infinitude) is born again on earth as the Son of the terrestrial Eve, our mother Earth, and becomes Humanity as a total—past, present, and future—for Jehovah, or Jod‐Hé‐Vau‐ Hé, is androgyne, or both male and female. Above, the Son is the whole Kosmos; below, he is Mankind. The Triad or Triangle becomes Tetraktys, the sacred Pythagorean number, the perfect Square, and a six‐faced Cube on earth. The Macroprosopus (the Great Face) is now Microprosopus (the Lesser Face); or, as the Kabbalists have it, the Ancient of Days, descending on Adam Kadmon whom he uses as his vehicle to manifest through, gets transformed into Tetragrammaton. It is now in the “Lap of Mâyâ,” the Great Illusion, and between itself and the Reality has the Astral Light, the Great Deceiver of man’s limited senses, unless Knowledge through Paramârthasatya comes to the rescue. 75. THE SEVEN(92) WERE NOT YET BORN FROM THE WEB OF LIGHT, DARKNESS ALONE ‹Previous chapterThe Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 20Next chapterThe Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 22›Similar passagesBy tradition and source labelFind similarCompare selectedCompare with similarAsk Deep ThoughtSelect passages to search for parallels.Tap any verse to select it, then compare selected passages or ask Deep Thought. Public domain in the United States via Project Gutenberg