The "fire," "heat," and "motion" here spoken of, are, of course, not the fire, heat, and motion of physical science, but the underlying abstractions, the noumena, or the soul, of the essence of these material manifestations -- the "things in themselves," which, as modern science confesses, entirely elude the instru- [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- [[Footnote continued from previous page]] lated by Kashinath Trimbak Telang, M.A.; edited by Max Muller.) Whatever meaning various schools may give the term, Sattva is the name given among Occult students of the Aryasanga School to the dual Monad or Atma-buddhi, and Atma-buddhi on this plane corresponds to Parabrahm and Mulaprakriti on the higher plane.
* Amrita is "immortality." ** See Commentary No.
1 to this Stanza.
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ments of the laboratory, and which even the mind cannot grasp, although it can equally little avoid the conclusion that these underlying essences of things must exist.
Fire and Water, or Father* and Mother, may be taken here to mean the divine Ray and Chaos.
"Chaos, from this union with Spirit obtaining sense, shone with pleasure, and thus was produced the Protogonos (the first-born light)," says a fragment of Hermas.
Damascius calls it Dis in "Theogony" -- "The disposer of all things." (See Cory's " Ancient Fragments ," p.
314.) According to the Rosicrucian tenets, as handled and explained by the profane for once correctly, if only partially, so "Light and Darkness are identical in themselves, being only divisible in the human mind"; and according to Robert Fludd, "Darkness adopted illumination in order to make itself visible" ( On Rosenkranz ) .
According to the tenets of Eastern Occultism, D ARKNESS is the one true actuality, the basis and the root of light, without which the latter could never manifest itself, nor even exist.
Light is matter, and D ARKNESS pure Spirit.
Darkness, in its radical, metaphysical basis, is subjective and absolute light; while the latter in all its seeming effulgence and glory, is merely a mass of shadows, as it can never be eternal, and is simply an illusion, or Maya.
Even in the mind-baffling and science-harassing Genesis, light is created out of darkness "and darkness was upon the face of the deep" (ch.
i.
v.
2.) -- and not vice versa.
"In him (in darkness) was life; and the life was the light of men " (John i.
4).
A day may come when the eyes of men will be opened; and then they may comprehend better than they do now, that verse in the Gospel of John that says "And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehendeth it not." They will see then that the word "darkness" does not apply to man's spiritual eyesight, but indeed to "Darkness," the absolute, that comprehendeth not (cannot cognize) transient light, however transcendent to human eyes.
Demon est Deus inversus.
The devil is now called Darkness by the Church, whereas, in the Bible he is called the "Son of God" (see Job), the bright star of the early morning, Lucifer (see Isaiah).
There is a whole philosophy of dogmatic craft in the reason why the first Archangel, who sprang from the depths of Chaos, was called Lux (Lucifer), the "Luminous Son of the Morning," or man- [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * See "Kwan-Shai-Yin." The real name from the text cannot be given.
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vantaric Dawn.
He was transformed by the Church into Lucifer or Satan, because he is higher and older than Jehovah, and had to be sacrificed to the new dogma.
(See Book II.) --------- STANZA III.
-- Continued.
7.
B EHOLD, OH L ANOO!** THE RADIANT C HILD OF THE TWO, THE UNPARALLELED REFULGENT G LORY, B RIGHT S PACE, S ON OF D ARK S PACE, WHO EMERGES FROM THE DEPTHS OF THE GREAT D ARK W ATERS.
I T IS O EAOHOO, THE Y OUNGER, THE * * * ( whom thou knowest now as Kwan-Shai-Yin.
-- Comment ) ( a ) .
H E SHINES FORTH AS THE S UN.
H E IS THE BLAZING D IVINE D RAGON OF W ISDOM.
T HE E KA IS C HATUR ( four ) , AND C HATUR TAKES TO ITSELF THREE, AND THE UNION PRODUCES THE S APTA ( seven ) IN WHOM ARE THE SEVEN WHICH BECOME THE T RIDASA*** ( the thrice ten ) THE HOSTS AND THE MULTITUDES ( b ).
B EHOLD HIM LIFTING THE V EIL, AND UNFURLING IT FROM E AST TO W EST.
H E SHUTS OUT THE ABOVE AND LEAVES THE BELOW TO BE SEEN AS THE GREAT I LLUSION.
H E MARKS THE PLACES FOR THE SHINING ONES ( stars ) AND TURNS THE UPPER ( space ) INTO A SHORELESS S EA OF F IRE, AND THE O NE MANIFESTED ( element ) INTO THE G REAT W ATERS ( c ).
"Bright Space, son of dark Space," corresponds to the Ray dropped at the first thrill of the new "Dawn" into the great Cosmic depths, from which it re-emerges differentiated as Oeaohoo the younger, (the " new LIFE"), to become, to the end of the life-cycle, the germ of all things.
He is "the Incorporeal man who contains in himself the divine Idea," -- the generator of Light and Life, to use an expression of Philo Judaeus.
He is called the "Blazing Dragon of Wisdom," [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- ** Lanoo is a student, a chela who studies practical Esotericism.
*** "Tri-dasa," or three times ten (30), alludes to the Vedic deities, in round numbers, or more accurately 33 -- a sacred number.
They are the 12 Adityas, the 8 Vasus, the 11 Rudras, and 2 Aswins -- the twin sons of the Sun and the Sky.
This is the root-number of the Hindu Pantheon, which enumerates 33 crores or over three hundred millions of gods and goddesses.
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Describing the divine only by negation—God transcends all positive categories and concepts; the via negativa.
The passage describes the absolute (Darkness) as something that 'comprehendeth not (cannot cognize) transient light,' and states that even 'the mind cannot grasp' the underlying essences — the divine is known by what it is not.
The Hermetic axiom that the structure of the cosmos is reflected at every scale — 'as above, so below; as within, so without' — making each level a legible map of the others.
The passage explicitly maps Fire/Water to Father/Mother, Light/Darkness to Spirit/Matter, and draws parallels across Genesis, John, Rosicrucian, and Eastern Occultist tenets, showing the cosmos reflected at every scale.
Narratives or doctrines of cosmic origin — how heaven, earth, and the primordial deities first came into being. The Kojiki's deities born alone on the Plain of High Heaven, Voluspo's Ginnungagap, Genesis's tohu wa-bohu, the Timaeus's Demiurge fashioning the Receptacle, the Hesiodic Theogony, the Kalevala's egg-cosmogony, Egyptian Nun-and-Atum. Distinct from emanation_hierarchy (structural-ontological cascade), letters_of_creation (mechanism of creation), and apocatastasis/frashokereti (end-state restoration); cosmogony is temporally-narrative beginning.
The passage is fundamentally a narrative of cosmic origin: Darkness as the absolute, the first thrill of Dawn, the Ray dropped into cosmic depths, Oeaohoo emerging as 'new LIFE,' and the production of the 33 deities — a complete cosmogonic sequence.
The supreme God's radical concealment beyond ordinary knowledge or perception; the Hidden Father.
The absolute is described as 'the one true actuality' that 'comprehendeth not' and that even the mind cannot grasp, pointing to a supreme principle radically concealed beyond ordinary knowledge.
The uncreated luminous quality of the divine, sometimes experienced directly in mystical states; illumination as revelation.
Light is described as the divine Ray, the 'Blazing Dragon of Wisdom,' and the 'Luminous Son of the Morning' — the uncreated luminous quality of the divine that emerges from the absolute.
A chain of divine beings or principles flowing downward from a single transcendent source (the One or the Father), each level less perfect than the one above.
The passage traces a clear cascade from Darkness (the absolute) through Light/Ray to Oeaohoo and then to the 33 Vedic deities (12 Adityas, 8 Vasus, 11 Rudras, 2 Aswins), each level differentiated from the prior.
A historical or mythical chain of transmission for secret wisdom from master to disciple across time and cultures — the credential of the teaching, not merely its content. Distinct from oral_tradition (the spoken-not-written modality of transmission, which a lineage may or may not use) and hidden_sayings (the concealment-for-readiness of a teaching's meaning, independent of who transmitted it or in what unbroken chain).
The passage references 'Occult students of the Aryasanga School' and the transmission of knowledge through specific schools and lineages, credentialed by their connection to a tradition.
The Hermetic doctrine that a masculine-feminine generative principle operates on every plane of being, not only the biological — present at all times as a structural feature of creation itself. Distinct from divine_marriage (a specific reunification event or symbol) and aeons (paired divine beings arranged in syzygies, not a universal structural claim).
Fire and Water are explicitly equated with 'Father and Mother,' establishing the masculine-feminine generative principle as a structural feature of creation itself.
Esoteric teachings reserved for those ready to receive them; outer meaning conceals an inner liberating truth.
The text explicitly withholds names ('The real name from the text cannot be given'), uses coded references (Lanoo, Oeaohoo), and states that meanings are for 'those ready to receive them,' marking it as esoteric teaching with concealed inner truth.
A non-physical dimension of reality, interpenetrating the physical world, populated by forces, beings, and forms ordinarily imperceptible to physical senses and instruments, that can affect embodied life without being seen — Dion Fortune's 'mind-side of nature,' the astral plane of Western esotericism broadly construed. Distinct from astral_light (a specific transmitting medium or fluid operating within this realm, not the realm itself), pleroma (the divine fullness at the summit of a cosmic hierarchy, not a parallel plane coextensive with ordinary life), and animism (particular indwelling spirits bound to specific natural objects, not the general unseen dimension itself).
The passage describes noumena and 'things in themselves' that 'entirely elude the instruments of the laboratory, and which even the mind cannot grasp,' pointing to a non-physical dimension of reality.
The doctrine that the cosmos unfolds as a structured descent of spirit into matter — a directional process traced stage by stage from an unconditioned principle down through successive planes to full materialization — complemented by its own eventual return ('evolution'). Distinct from emanation_hierarchy (the static structure of the resulting levels of the cascade) and cosmogony (a single originating event rather than an ongoing staged process) in naming the directional cosmic PROCESS of descent itself, paired with its own complementary ascent.
The Ray is 'dropped at the first thrill of the new Dawn into the great Cosmic depths' and re-emerges 'differentiated as Oeaohoo the younger' to become 'the germ of all things' — a directional descent of spirit into differentiation.
The divine reason, word, or ordering principle through which the universe was created; mediates between the transcendent God and the material world.
The 'divine Ray' that is dropped into cosmic depths and the Philo quotation of 'the Incorporeal man who contains in himself the divine Idea' both describe a mediating ordering principle between the transcendent and the manifest.
Numbers, proportions, and mathematical relationships as the underlying structure of divine reality.
The passage explicitly maps the cosmogonic process onto numbers: 'The Eka is Chatur (four), and Chatur takes to itself three, and the union produces the Sapt (seven) in whom are the seven which become the Tridasa (thrice ten),' with the 33 Vedic deities as a sacred number.
The dissolution of binary oppositions (male/female, inner/outer, above/below) as a mark of spiritual completion.
The passage explicitly states that Light and Darkness are 'identical in themselves, being only divisible in the human mind,' dissolving the binary as a mark of understanding the absolute.
Using apparent contradiction, reversal, or riddle to destabilise ordinary understanding and induce insight.
The passage uses deliberate reversals — Darkness as the true light, Light as illusion, Lucifer as the 'Luminous Son of the Morning' — to destabilize ordinary understanding and induce insight into the absolute.
The Hermetic doctrine that apparent opposites are identical in nature but differ in degree — two extremes of the same scale (hot/cold, love/hate) — such that one pole can be shifted toward its opposite by a change of degree ('mental transmutation'). Distinct from opposites_transcended (a completion-state marking the path's end, not this doctrine's active technique) and magical_equilibrium (balance held BETWEEN two forces, not identity-by-degree of what looks like two forces).
The passage's central thesis is that Light and Darkness are 'identical in themselves, being only divisible in the human mind,' and that 'Light is matter, and Darkness pure Spirit' — a direct articulation of the doctrine that apparent opposites are identical in nature but differ in degree.
The doctrine that reality has two registers — an Absolute truth as the divine or ultimate mind knows it, and a Relative truth as finite human reason perceives and must act on — with both held as legitimate on their own plane rather than the second being simply an error to correct. Distinct from apophatic_theology (a claim about how the divine may be described, by negation) and unity_of_being (a claim that being is ultimately one) in being a claim about two coexisting registers of truth-claim itself.
The passage distinguishes between the absolute (Darkness as pure Spirit, 'the one true actuality') and the relative (Light as 'merely a mass of shadows... simply an illusion, or Maya'), holding both as legitimate on their own plane.
The doctrine that all existence is ultimately one substance or one divine reality; non-duality as a theological claim.
The claim that 'Light and Darkness are identical in themselves' and that the absolute is the 'one true actuality, the basis and the root of light' asserts that all existence is ultimately one reality.