A Dark Muse: A History of the Occult (38 page)

The interior Church was formed immediately after the fall of man, and received from God at first-hand the revelation of those means by which fallen humanity could be raised again to its rights and delivered from its misery. It received the primitive charge of all revelation and mystery; it received the key of true science, both divine and natural.

But, when men multiplied, the frailty of man and his weakness necessitated an exterior society which veiled the interior one, and concealed the spirit and the truth in the letter. The people at large were not capable of comprehending high interior truth, and the danger would have been too great in confiding that which was of all most holy to incapable people. Therefore, inward truths were wrapped in external and visible ceremonies, so that men, by the perception of the outer, which is the symbol of the interior, might by degrees be enabled to safely approach the interior spiritual truths ...

This Sanctuary remained changeless, though external religion received in the course of time and circumstances varied modifications, and became divorced from the interior truths which can alone preserve the letter. The profane idea of wishing to "secularize" all that is Christian, and to Christianise all that is political, changed the exterior edifice, and covered with the shadow of death all that reposed within it of light and life. Hence rose divisions and heresies, and the spirit of Sophistry ready to expound the letter when it had already lost the essence of truth ...

In the midst of all this, truth reposed inviolable in the inner Sanctuary. Faithful to the spirit of truth ... the members of the interior Church lived in silence, but in real activity, and united the science of the temple of the ancient alliance with the spirit of the great Saviour of man ... waiting humbly the great moment when the Lord will assemble His community in order to give every dead letter external force and life.

This illuminated community has been through time the true school of God's spirit, and considered as a school, it has ... its degrees for successive development to higher altitudes.

The first and lowest degree consists in the moral good ... The means by which the spirit of this school acts are called inspirations.

The second degree consists in that rational intellectuality by which the understanding of the man of virtue ... is crowned with wisdom and the light of knowledge, and the means by which the spirit uses to produce this are called interior illumination.

The third and highest degree is the entire opening of the our inner sensorium, by which the inner man attains the objective vision of real and metaphysical verities ... the means which the spirit uses to this end are real visions . . .

This school of wisdom has been for ever most secretly hidden from the world, because it is invisible and submissive solely to Divine Governance.

It has never been exposed to the accidents of time and to the weakness of man ...

By this school were developed the germs of all the sublime sciences, which were next received by external schools, were then clothed in other forms, and sometimes degenerated therein.

This society of sages communicated, according to time and circumstances, unto the exterior societies their symbolic hieroglyphs, in order to attract external man to the great truths of the interior ...

In this interior society man finds wisdom and therewith the All - not the wisdom of this world ... but true wisdom, and men obedient thereto ...

We must not, however, imagine that this society resembles any secret order, meeting at certain times, choosing its leaders and members, united by special objects. All associations, be these what they may, can but come after this interior illuminated circle, which society knows none of the formalities belonging to the outer rings, the work of man. In this kingdom of power the outward forms cease ...

... the chief himself, does not invariably know all the members, but the moment when it is the will of God that they should be brought into communication he finds them unfailingly in the world and ready to work for the end in view.

This community has no outside barriers ... If it be necessary that true members should meet together, they find and recognise each other with perfect certainty. No disguise can be used, neither hypocrisy nor dissimulation could hide the characteristic qualities of this society, because they are too genuine. All illusion is gone, and things appear in their true form.

No one member can choose another, unanimous choice is required. All men are called, the called may be chosen, if they become ripe for entrance.

Any one can look for the entrance, and any man who is within can teach another to seek for it; but only he who is ripe can arrive inside ...

Worldly intelligence seeks this Sanctuary in vain; in vain also do the efforts of malice strive to penetrate these great mysteries; all is undecipherable to him who is not prepared; he can see nothing, read nothing in the interior.

He who is ripe is joined to the chain, perhaps often where he thought least likely, and at a point of which he knew nothing himself.

Seeking to become ripe should be the effort of him who loves wisdom.

But there are methods by which ripeness is attained, for in this holy communion is the primitive storehouse of the most ancient and original science of the human race, with the primitive mysteries also of all science. It is the unique and really illuminated community which is in possession of the key to all mystery, which knows the centre and source of nature and creation. It is a society which unites superior power to its own, and includes members from more than one world. It is the society whose members form a theocratic republic, which one day will be the Regent Mother of the whole World.

From The Secret Doctrine

H.P. BLAVATSKY

In Seven Stanzas translated from the Book of Dzyan.

Stanza I

1. The eternal parent wrapped in her ever invisible robes had slumbered again for seven eternities.

2. Time was not, for it lay asleep in the infinite bosom of duration.

3. Universal mind was not, for there were no Ah-Hi to contain it.

4. The seven ways to bliss were not. The great causes of misery were not, for there was no one to produce and get ensnared by them.

5. Darkness alone filled the boundless all, for father, mother and son were once more one, and the son had not awakened yet for the new wheel, and his pilgrimage thereon.

6. The seven sublime lords and the seven truths had ceased to be, and the universe, the son of necessity, was immersed in Paranishpana, to be outbreathed by that which is and yet is not. Naught was.

7. The causes of existence had been done away with; the visible that was and the invisible that is rested in eternal non-being - the one being.

8. Alone, the one form of existence stretched boundless, infinite, causeless in dreamless sleep; and life pulsated unconscious in universal space, throughout that all-presence which is sensed by the opened eye of the Dangma.

9. But where was the Dangma when the Alaya of the universe was in Paramartha and the Great Wheel was Anupadaka?

Stanza II

1. Where were the builders, the luminous sons of Manvantaric dawn?

In the unknown darkness in their Ah-Hi Paranishpana. The producers of form from no-form - the root of the world - the Devimatri Svabhavat, rested in the bliss of non-being.

2. Where was silence? Where the ears to sense it? No, there was neither silence nor sound; naught save ceaseless eternal breath, which knows itself not.

3. The hour had not yet struck; the ray had not yet flashed into the germ; the Matripadma had not yet swollen.

4. Her heart had not yet opened for the one ray to enter, thence to fall, as three into four, into the lap of Maya.

5. The seven sons were not yet born from the web of light. Darkness alone was father-mother, Svabhavat; and Svabhavat was in darkness.

6. These two are the germ, and the germ is one. The universe was still concealed in the divine thought and the divine bosom.

Stanza III

1. The last vibration of the seventh eternity thrills through infinitude. The mother swells, expanding from within without, like the bud of the lotus.

2. The vibration sweeps along, touching with its swift wing the whole universe and the germ that dwelleth in darkness: the darkness that breathes over the slumbering waters of life.

3. Darkness radiates light, and light drops one solitary ray into the mother-deep.

The ray shoots through the virgin egg, the ray causes the eternal egg to thrill, and drop the non-eternal germ, which condenses into the world-egg.

4. Then the three fall into the four. The radiant essence becomes seven inside, seven outside. The luminous egg, which in itself is three, curdles and spreads in milk-white curds throughout the depths of the mother, the root that grows in the depths of the ocean of life.

5. The root remans, the light remains, the curds remain, and still Oeaohoo is one.

6. The root of life was in every drop of the ocean of immortality, and the ocean was radiant light, which was fire, and heat and motion. Darkness vanished and was no more; it disappeared in its own essense, the body of fire and water or father and mother.

7. Behold, 0 Lanoo! The radiant child of the two, the unparallelled refulgent glory: bright space son of dark space, which emerges from the depths of the great dark waters. It is Oeaohoo the younger. He shines forth as the son, he is the blazing divine dragon wisdom; the one is four, and four takes to itself three, and the union produces the Sapta, in who are the seven which become the Tridasa (or the hosts and the multitudes). Behold him lifting the veil and unfurling it from east to west. He shuts out the above, and leaves the below to be seen as the great illusion. He marks the places for the shining ones, and turns the upper into a shoreless sea of fire, and the one manifested into the great waters.

8. Where was the germ and where was now darkness? Where is the spirit of the flame that burns in thy lamp, oh Lanoo? The germ is that, and that is light, the white brilliant son of the dark hidden father.

9. Light is cold flame, and flame is fire, and fire produces heat, which yields water: the water of life in the great mother.

10. Father-mother spin in a web whose upper end is fastened to spirit. The light of the one darkness.

And the lower one to its shadowy end, matter; and this web is the universe spun of the two substances made in one, which is Svabhavat.

11. It expands when the breath of fire is upon it; it contracts when the breath of the mother touches it. Then the sons dissociate and scatter, to return into their mother's bosom and the end of the great day, and re-become one with her; when it is cooling it becomes radiant, and the sons expand and contract through their own selves and hearts; they embrace infinitude.

12. Then Svabhavat sends Fohat to harden the atoms. Each is a part of the web. Reflecting the self-existent lord like a mirror, each becomes in turn a world.

Stanza IV

1. Listen, ye sons of the earth, to your instructors, the sons of the fire. Learn there is neither first nor last, for all is one: number issued from no number.

2. Learn what we who descended from the primordial seven, we who are born from the primordial flame, I have learnt from our fathers.

3. From the effulgency of light, the ray of the ever-darkness, sprung in space the reawakened energies; the one from the egg, the six and the five. Then the three, the one, the four, the one, the five. The twice seven the sum total. And these are the essences, the flames, the elements, the builders, the numbers, the arupa, the rupa and the force of divine man, the sun total. And from the divine man emanated the forms, the sparks, the scared animals and the messengers of the sacred fathers withing the holy four. .

4. This was the army of the voice, the divine mother of the seven. The sparks of the seven are subject to, and the servants of the first, the second, the third, the fourth, the fifth, the sixth and the seventh of the seven. These sparks are called spheres, triangles, cubes, lines and modellers; for this stands the eternal Nidana, the Oeaohoo, which is:

5. "Darkness," the boundless or the no-number Adi-nidana Svabhavat:

1. The Adi-Sanat, the number, for he is one.

II. The voice of the Lord Svabhavat, the numbers, for he is one and nine.

III. The "Formless Square." And these three enclosed within the 0 are the sacred four; and the ten are the Arupa universe. Then come the "sons," the seven fighters, the one, the eighth left out, and his breathe which is the lightmaker.

6. Then the second seven who are the Lipika, produced by the three. The rejected son is one; the "sun-sons" are countless.

Stanza V

1. The primordial seven, the first seven breaths of the dragon of wisdom, produce in their turn from their holy circumgyrating breaths the fiery whirlwind.

2. They make of him the messenger of their will; the Dzyu becomes Fohat, the swift son of the divine sons whose sons are the Lipika, runs circular errands. Fohat is the steed and the thought is the rider. He passes like lightning through the fiery clouds; takes three and five and seven strides through the seven regions above, and the seven below he lifts his voice and calls the innumerable sparks, and joins them.

3. He is their guiding spirt and leader; when he commences work he separates the sparks of the lower kingdom that float and thrill with joy in their radiant dwellings, and forms therewith the germs of wheels. He paces them in the six directions of space, and one in the middle: the central wheel.

4. Fohat traces spiral lines to unite the sixth to the seventh, the crown; and army of the sons of light stands at each angle, and the Lipika in the middle wheel, they say: this is good, the first divine world is ready, the first is now the second. Then the divine Arupa reflects itself in Chhaya Loka, the first garment of the Andupadaka.

5. Fohat takes five strides and builds a winged wheel at each corner of the square, for the four holy ones and their armies.