Page 9 (part 8)

There are two esoteric schools -- or rather one school, divided into two parts -- one for the inner Lanoos, the other for the outer or semi-lay chelas beyond the Himalayas; the first teaching a septenary, the other a six-fold division of human principles. From a Cosmic point of view, Fohat taking "five strides" refers here to the five upper planes of Consciousness and Being, the sixth and the seventh (counting downwards) being the astral and the terrestrial, or the two lower planes. ( b ) "Four winged wheels at each corner . . . . . for the four holy ones and their armies (hosts)" . . . . . These are the "four Maharajahs" or great Kings of the Dhyan-Chohans, the Devas who preside, each over one of the four cardinal points. They are the Regents or Angels who rule over the Cosmical Forces of North, South, [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * The four aspects are the body, its life or vitality, and the "Double" of the body, the triad which disappears with the death of the person, and the Kama-rupa which disintegrates in Kama-loka. [[Vol. 1, Page]] 123 THE SECRET OF THE ELEMENTS. East and West, Forces having each a distinct occult property. These BEINGS are also connected with Karma, as the latter needs physical and material agents to carry out her decrees, such as the four kinds of winds, for instance, professedly admitted by Science to have their respective evil and beneficent influences upon the health of Mankind and every living thing. There is occult philosophy in that Roman Catholic doctrine which traces the various public calamities, such as epidemics of disease, and wars, and so on, to the invisible "Messengers" from North and West. "The glory of God comes from the way of the East" says Ezekiel; while Jeremiah, Isaiah, and the Psalmist assure their readers that all the evil under the Sun comes from the North and the West -- which proposition, when applied to the Jewish nation, sounds like an undeniable prophecy for themselves. And this accounts also for St. Ambrose (On Amos, ch. iv.) declaring that it is precisely for that reason that "we curse the North-Wind, and that during the ceremony of baptism we begin by turning towards the West (Sidereal), to renounce the better him who inhabits it; after which we turn to the East." Belief in the "Four Maharajahs" -- the Regents of the Four cardinal points -- was universal and is now that of Christians,* who call them, after St. Augustine, "Angelic Virtues," and "Spirits" when enumerated by themselves, and "Devils" when named by Pagans. But where is the difference between the Pagans and the Christians in this cause? Following Plato, Aristotle explained that the term [[ stoicheia ]] was understood only as meaning the incorporeal principles placed at each of the four great divisions of our Cosmical world to supervise them. Thus, no more than the Christians did, do they adore and worship the Elements and the cardinal (imaginary) points, but the "gods" that ruled these respectively. For the Church there are two kinds of Sidereal beings, the [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * Says the scholarly Vossius, in his Theol. Cir. I. VII.: "Though St. Augustine has said that every visible thing in this world had an angelic virtue as an overseer near it, it is not individuals but entire species of things that must be understood, each such species having indeed its particular angel to watch it. He is at one in this with all the philosophers . . . For us these angels are spirits separated from the objects . . . whereas for the philosophers (pagan) they were gods." Considering the Ritual established by the Roman Catholic Church for "Spirits of the Stars," the latter look suspiciously like "Gods," and were no more honoured and prayed to by the ancient and modern pagan rabble than they are now at Rome by the highly cultured Catholic Christians. [[Vol. 1, Page]] 124 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. Angels and the Devils. For the Kabalist and Occultist there is but one; and neither of them makes any difference between "the Rectors of Light" and the Cosmocratores, or "Rectores tenebrarum harum," whom the Roman Church imagines and discovers in a "Rector of Light" as soon as he is called by another name than the one she addresses him by. It is not the "Rector" or "Maharajah" who punishes or rewards, with or without "God's" permission or order, but man himself -- his deeds or Karma, attracting individually and collectively (as in the case of whole nations sometimes), every kind of evil and calamity. We produce CAUSES, and these awaken the corresponding powers in the sidereal world; which powers are magnetically and irresistibly attracted to -- and react upon -- those who produced these causes; whether such persons are practically the evil-doers, or simply Thinkers who brood mischief. Thought is matter,* we are taught by modern Science; and "every particle of the existing matter must be a register of all that has happened," as in their " Principles of Science " Messrs. Jevons and Babbage tell the profane. Modern Science is drawn more every day into the maelstrom of Occultism; unconsciously, no doubt, still very sensibly. The two main theories of science -- re the relations between Mind and Matter -- are Monism and Materialism. These two cover the whole ground of negative psychology with the exception of the quasi-occult views of the pantheistic German schools.** [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * Not of course in the sense of the German Materialist Moleschott, who assures us that "Thought is the movement of matter," a statement of almost unequalled absurdity. Mental states and bodily states are utterly contrasted as such. But that does not affect the position that every thought, in addition to its physical accompaniment (brain-change), exhibits an objective -- though to us supersensuously objective -- aspect on the astral plane. (See "The Occult World," pp. 89, 90.) ** The views of our present-day scientific thinkers as to the relations between mind and matter may be reduced to two hypotheses. These show that both views equally exclude the possibility of an independent Soul, distinct from the physical brain through which it functions. They are: -- (1.) M ATERIALISM, the theory which regards mental phenomena as the product of molecular change in the brain; i.e. , as the outcome of a transformation of motion into feeling (!). The cruder school once went so far as to identify mind with a "peculiar mode of motion" (!!), but this view is now happily regarded as absurd by most of the men of science themselves.