He designed and hewed therewith the throne of glory and the wheels, and the seraphim and the holy animals and the ministering angels, and of the three He founded his dwelling, as it is said, He makes his angels spirits and his servants fiery flames!" Which words "founded his dwelling" show clearly that in the Kabala, as in India, the Deity was considered as the Universe, and was not, in his origin, the extra-cosmic God he is now.
[[Vol.
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STANZA IV.
-- Continued.
4.
T HIS WAS THE A RMY OF THE V OICE -- THE D IVINE S EPTENARY.
T HE SPARKS OF THE SEVEN ARE SUBJECT TO, AND THE SERVANTS OF, THE FIRST, SECOND, THIRD, FOURTH, FIFTH, SIXTH, AND THE SEVENTH OF THE SEVEN ( a ).
THESE (" sparks ") ARE CALLED SPHERES, TRIANGLES, CUBES, LINES, AND MODELLERS; FOR THUS STANDS THE E TERNAL N IDANA -- THE O I- H A- H OU ( the Permutation of Oeaohoo ) ( b ) .* ( a ) This Sloka gives again a brief analysis of the Hierarchies of the Dhyan Chohans, called Devas (gods) in India, or the conscious intelligent powers in Nature.
To this Hierarchy correspond the actual types into which humanity may be divided; for humanity, as a whole, is in reality a materialized though as yet imperfect expression thereof.
The "army of the Voice" is a term closely connected with the mystery of Sound and Speech, as an effect and corollary of the cause -- Divine Thought.
As beautifully expressed by P.
Christian, the learned author of "The History of Magic" and of "L'Homme Rouge des Tuileries," the word spoken by, as well as the name of, every individual largely determine his future fate.
Why?
Because -- -- "When our Soul (mind) creates or evokes a thought, the representative sign of that thought is self-engraved upon the astral fluid, which is the receptacle and, so to say, the mirror of all the manifestations of being.
"The sign expresses the thing: the thing is the (hidden or occult) virtue of the sign.
"To pronounce a word is to evoke a thought, and make it present: the magnetic potency of the human speech is the commencement of every manifestation in the Occult World.
To utter a Name is not only to define a Being (an Entity), but to place it under and condemn it through the emission of the Word (Verbum), to the influence of one or more Occult potencies.
Things are, for every one of us, that which it (the Word) makes them while naming them.
The Word (Verbum) or the speech of every man is, quite unconsciously to himself, a BLESSING or a CURSE; this is why our present ignorance about the properties or attributes of the IDEA as well as about the attributes and properties of MATTER, is often fatal to us.
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * The literal signification of the word is, among the Eastern Occultists of the North, a circular wind, whirlwind; but in this instance, it is a term to denote the ceaseless and eternal Cosmic Motion; or rather the Force that moves it, which Force is tacitly accepted as the Deity but never named.
It is the eternal Karana , the ever-acting Cause.
[[Vol.
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"Yes, names (and words) are either BENEFICENT or MALEFICENT; they are, in a certain sense, either venomous or health-giving, according to the hidden influences attached by Supreme Wisdom to their elements, that is to say, to the LETTERS which compose them, and the NUMBERS correlative to these letters." This is strictly true as an esoteric teaching accepted by all the Eastern Schools of Occultism.
In the Sanskrit, as also in the Hebrew and all other alphabets, every letter has its occult meaning and its rationale; it is a cause and an effect of a preceding cause and a combination of these very often produces the most magical effect.
The vowels, especially, contain the most occult and formidable potencies.
The Mantras (esoterically, magical rather than religious) are chanted by the Brahmins and so are the Vedas and other Scriptures.
The "Army of the Voice," is the prototype of the "Host of the Logos," or the "WORD" of the Sepher Jezirah, called in the Secret Doctrine "the One Number issued from No-Number" -- the One Eternal Principle.
The esoteric theogony begins with the One, manifested, therefore not eternal in its presence and being, if eternal in its essence; the number of the numbers and numbered -- the latter proceeding from the Voice, the feminine Vach, Satarupa "of the hundred forms," or Nature.
It is from this number 10, or creative nature, the Mother (the occult cypher, or "nought," ever procreating and multiplying in union with the Unit "I," one, or the Spirit of Life), that the whole Universe proceeded.
In the Anugita a conversation is given (ch.
vi., 15) between a Brahmana and his wife, on the origin of Speech and its occult properties.* The wife asks how Speech came into existence, and which was prior to the other, Speech or Mind.
The Brahmana tells her that the Apana ( inspirational breath ) becoming lord, changes that intelligence, which does not understand Speech or Words, into the state of Apana, and thus opens the mind.
Thereupon he tells her a story, a dialogue between Speech and Mind.
"Both went to the Self of Being ( i.e.
, to the individual Higher Self, as Nilakantha thinks, to Prajapati, according to the commentator Arjuna Misra), and asked him to destroy their doubts and decide which of them preceded and was superior to the [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * Anugita forms part of the Asvamedha Parvan of the "Mahabharata." The translator of the Bhagavatgita, edited by Max Muller, regards it as a continuation of the Bhagavatgita.
Its original is one of the oldest Upanishads.
[[Vol.
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other.
To this the lord said: 'Mind is Superior.' But Speech answered the Self of Being, by saying: 'I verily yield (you) your desires,' meaning that by speech he acquired what he desired.
Thereupon again, the Self told her that there are two minds, the 'movable' and the 'immovable.' 'The immovable is with me,' he said, 'the movable is in your dominion' ( i.e.
of Speech) on the plane of matter.
To that you are superior.
Divine archetypal beings or eternal attributes dwelling within the Pleroma, often arranged in male-female syzygies.
The Dhyan Chohans are described as 'conscious intelligent powers in Nature' forming a hierarchy, directly analogous to aeons as divine archetypal beings.
The universal fluid or medium of occult philosophy — Lévi's Great Magical Agent — that transmits will, thought, and magical influence between minds and matter, and preserves the impress of all forms and actions as a book of consciences; cognate with akasha and the anima mundi. Distinct from cosmic_sympathy (a doctrine of hidden affinity) in being a substantival medium that can be charged, directed, and abused.
The 'astral fluid' is explicitly described as the medium through which thoughts are engraved, the mirror of all manifestations, and the channel through which the spoken word exerts its causal-magical force.
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 axiom 'The sign expresses the thing: the thing is the (hidden or occult) virtue of the sign' and the claim that humanity is 'a materialized though as yet imperfect expression' of the divine hierarchy express the as-above-so-below principle.
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 narrates how the whole Universe proceeded from the number 10 (creative nature, the Mother) in union with the Unit (Spirit of Life), providing a doctrine of cosmic origin.
The supreme God's radical concealment beyond ordinary knowledge or perception; the Hidden Father.
The Force that moves the eternal Cosmic Motion 'is tacitly accepted as the Deity but never named,' expressing the supreme principle's radical concealment beyond naming.
The doctrine that the divine is present within all things and the universe itself, pervading creation rather than remaining solely transcendent above it. Distinct from unity_of_being (the general claim that all existence is one substance, agnostic about whether that substance indwells its parts) and from kingdom_within (the divine present specifically IN THE INDIVIDUAL human, accessible without mediation) — divine_immanence is the general pervading-presence claim applied to all of creation, not a human-specific indwelling.
The passage states that 'in the Kabala, as in India, the Deity was considered as the Universe, and was not, in his origin, the extra-cosmic God he is now,' directly asserting the divine as present within and identical with the cosmos.
Fragments of divine light or spirit trapped inside material bodies, awaiting liberation and return to their source.
The Stanza explicitly names 'THE SPARKS OF THE SEVEN' as subject to and servants of the seven, identifying fragments of divine light within the hierarchical structure.
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 describes the 'Army of the Voice' as the Divine Septenary with sparks subject to the seven, and the Hierarchies of Dhyan Chohans as cascading conscious intelligent powers in Nature.
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).
The feminine Vach (Speech/Nature) as 'the Mother' in 'union with the Unit I, one, or the Spirit of Life' explicitly presents the masculine-feminine generative principle operating at the cosmic level of creation.
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 'astral fluid' described as 'the receptacle and, so to say, the mirror of all the manifestations of being' and the 'Occult World' in which the magnetic potency of speech operates constitute a non-physical dimension interpenetrating the physical.
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 passage traces a directional process from the One through the Voice through the number 10 to the whole Universe, suggesting a staged descent, though not explicitly framed as involution paired with evolution.
The twenty-two Hebrew letters as the building blocks through which God creates and sustains all existence.
The passage explicitly states that in Sanskrit, Hebrew, and all alphabets, every letter has its occult meaning and rationale, is a cause and effect, and that vowels contain the most formidable potencies.
The divine reason, word, or ordering principle through which the universe was created; mediates between the transcendent God and the material world.
The entire passage is organized around the 'Army of the Voice' as prototype of the 'Host of the Logos,' with the Word (Verbum) as the creative and ordering principle through which the universe proceeds.
The Hermetic doctrine that THE ALL is Mind, and the Universe is mental in nature — a created thought held in the mind of THE ALL. Distinct from unity_of_being in specifying WHAT the underlying oneness is (mind, not an unspecified single substance), and from logos (a mediating ordering word BETWEEN a transcendent God and a separate material world) in collapsing that mediation entirely — under mentalism there is no world outside mind to mediate to.
The passage states that the 'Army of the Voice' is 'a term closely connected with the mystery of Sound and Speech, as an effect and corollary of the cause — Divine Thought,' and that the spoken word is a 'Blessing or a Curse,' grounding reality in mind/thought.
The human being as a small-scale image of the entire cosmos; the body, soul, and intellect mirroring the structure of the heavens and the divine — distinct from correspondence in that it makes the human the privileged mirror.
Humanity as a whole is described as 'in reality a materialized though as yet imperfect expression' of the Hierarchy of Dhyan Chohans, making the human the small-scale image of the cosmic structure.
The absolutely simple, undivided first principle from which all multiplicity and existence flows.
The 'One Number issued from No-Number' and 'the One Eternal Principle' explicitly identify the absolutely simple first principle from which all multiplicity flows.
Numbers, proportions, and mathematical relationships as the underlying structure of divine reality.
The passage is saturated with numerical mysticism: the Divine Septenary, the One Number from No-Number, the number 10 as creative nature, the occult cypher nought, and the correlation of letters to numbers.
Combining, transposing, or cycling through letters or names as a meditative or theurgical technique.
The OI-HA-HOU is explicitly identified as 'the Permutation of Oeaohoo,' a technique of combining and transposing letters as a theurgical or meditative practice.
Divine names or formulas that carry ontological power, used in prayer, liturgy, or magical practice.
The passage extensively discusses how names carry ontological power: 'To utter a Name is not only to define a Being (an Entity), but to place it under and condemn it through the emission of the Word to the influence of one or more Occult potencies.'
A temporary mental construct given visible form on the astral plane by directed imagination — ordinarily without independent life, and dispellable by the same imaginative act that made it, unless invocation of elemental essence or projection of the maker's own force gives it sufficient sustained power to resist unmaking, at which point it escalates into an artificial_elemental. Distinct from artificial_elemental (the escalated, quasi-independently-alive entity this concept precedes and can turn into) and astral_light (the ambient medium in which a thought-form is formulated, not the construct itself).
The passage states that when the soul creates a thought, 'the representative sign of that thought is self-engraved upon the astral fluid,' describing the formation of a mental construct on the astral plane.
The doctrine that all existence is ultimately one substance or one divine reality; non-duality as a theological claim.
The identification of the Deity as the Universe ('the Deity was considered as the Universe') implies a non-dual ontological claim, though the passage also maintains a hierarchical structure.
The doctrine and practice that spoken or sung word carries causal-magical force — that uttering names, formulas, songs, or incantations alters reality directly rather than merely communicating about it. Vainamoinen's runo-songs that move mountains and command iron, Norse galdr, Vedic mantra, Shinto kotodama, the magician's barbarous names in the Greek Magical Papyri, Iamblichean arcane signatures and inexplicable symbols, biblical creation-by-word. Distinct from sacred_names (the ontological power of names themselves) and prayer (address to the divine); word_power_incantation is the magical-causal efficacy of the spoken word as such.
The passage's central theme is that spoken word carries causal-magical force: 'To pronounce a word is to evoke a thought, and make it present: the magnetic potency of the human speech is the commencement of every manifestation in the Occult World.'