" From the second Round , Earth - - hitherto a foetus in the matrix of Space -- began its real existence: it had developed individual sentient life , its second principle.
The second corresponds to the sixth ( principle ) ; the second is life continuous , the other , temporary.
" The Third Round developed the third Principle -- W ATER; while the Fourth transformed the gaseous fluids and plastic form of our globe into the hard, crusted, grossly material sphere we are living on.
"Bhumi" has reached her fourth principle.
To this it may be objected that the law of analogy, so much insisted upon, is broken.
Not at all.
Earth will reach her true ultimate form -- (inversely in this to man) -- her body shell -- only toward the end of the manvantara after the Seventh Round.
Eugenius Philalethes was right when he assured his readers on his word of honour that no one had yet seen the Earth ( i.e.
, M ATTER in its essential form).
Our globe is, so far, in its Kamarupic state -- the astral body of desires of Ahamkara , dark Egotism, the progeny of Mahat, on the lower plane.
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It is not molecularly constituted matter -- least of all the human body ( sthulasarira ) -- that is the grossest of all our "principles," but verily the middle principle, the real animal centre; whereas our body is but its shell, the irresponsible factor and medium through which the beast in us acts all its life.
Every intellectual theosophist will understand my real meaning.
Thus the idea that the human tabernacle is built by countless lives , just in the same way as the rocky crust of our Earth was, has nothing repulsive in it for the true mystic.
Nor can Science oppose the occult teaching, for it is not because the microscope will ever fail to detect the ultimate living atom or life, that it can reject the doctrine.
( c ) Science teaches us that the living as well as the dead organism of both man and animal are swarming with bacteria of a hundred various [[Vol.
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kinds; that from without we are threatened with the invasion of microbes with every breath we draw, and from within by leucomaines, aerobes, anaerobes, and what not.
But Science never yet went so far as to assert with the occult doctrine that our bodies, as well as those of animals, plants, and stones, are themselves altogether built up of such beings; which, except larger species, no microscope can detect.
So far, as regards the purely animal and material portion of man, Science is on its way to discoveries that will go far towards corroborating this theory.
Chemistry and physiology are the two great magicians of the future, who are destined to open the eyes of mankind to the great physical truths.
With every day, the identity between the animal and physical man, between the plant and man, and even between the reptile and its nest, the rock, and man -- is more and more clearly shown.
The physical and chemical constituents of all being found to be identical, chemical science may well say that there is no difference between the matter which composes the ox and that which forms man.
But the Occult doctrine is far more explicit.
It says: --- Not only the chemical compounds are the same, but the same infinitesimal invisible lives compose the atoms of the bodies of the mountain and the daisy, of man and the ant, of the elephant, and of the tree which shelters him from the sun.
Each particle -- whether you call it organic or inorganic -- is a life.
Every atom and molecule in the Universe is both life - giving and death-giving to that form, inasmuch as it builds by aggregation universes and the ephemeral vehicles ready to receive the transmigrating soul, and as eternally destroys and changes the forms and expels those souls from their temporary abodes.
It creates and kills; it is self-generating and self-destroying; it brings into being, and annihilates, that mystery of mysteries -- the living body of man, animal, or plant, every second in time and space; and it generates equally life and death, beauty and ugliness, good and bad, and even the agreeable and disagreeable, the beneficent and maleficent sensations.
It is that mysterious L IFE, represented collectively by countless myriads of lives, that follows in its own sporadic way, the hitherto incomprehensible law of Atavism; that copies family resemblances as well as those it finds impressed in the aura of the generators of every future human being, a mystery, in short, that will receive fuller attention elsewhere.
For the present, one instance may be cited in illustration.
Modern science begins to find out that ptomaine (the alkaloid poison generated by decaying matter and corpses -- a life also) extracted [[Vol.
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with the help of volatile ether, yields a smell as strong and equal to that of the freshest orange-blossoms; but that free from oxygen, these alkaloids yield either a most sickening, disgusting smell, or the most agreeable aroma which recalls that of the most delicately scented flowers.
And it is suspected that such blossoms owe their agreeable smell to the poisonous ptomaine; the venomous essence of certain mushrooms (fungi) being nearly identical with the venom of the cobra of India, the most deadly of serpents.* Thus, having discovered the effects, Science has to find their PRIMARY CAUSES; and this it can never do without the help of the old sciences, of alchemy, occult botany and physics.
We are taught that every physiological change, in addition to pathological phenomena; diseases -- nay, life itself -- or rather the objective phenomena of life, produced by certain conditions and changes in the tissues of the body which allow and force life to act in that body; that all this is due to those unseen CREATORS and DESTROYERS that are called in such a loose and general way, microbes.** Such [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- *The French savants Arnaud, Gautier, and Villiers, have found in the saliva of living men the same venomous alkaloid as in that of the toad, the salamander, the cobra, and the trigonocephalus of Portugal.
It is proven that venom of the deadliest kind, whether called ptomaine, or leucomaine, or alkaloid, is generated by living men, animals, and plants.
The same savant, Gautier, discovered an alkaloid in the fresh meat of an ox and in its brains, and a venom which he calls Xanthocreatinine similar to the substance extracted from the poisonous saliva of reptiles.
It is the muscular tissues, as being the most active organ in the animal economy, that are suspected of being the generators or factors of venoms, having the same importance as carbonic acid and urea in the functions of life, which venoms are the ultimate products of inner combustion.
The doctrine and worldview that natural phenomena, places, and objects possess inherent spirit, soul, or personality — and that the cosmos is populated by countless local, plural, embodied divine agents: kami in mountain and tree, sidhe in cairn and well, landwights in field and stone, nymphs in spring and grove, haltija in forest and lake, lares and penates in household and threshold, Iamblichean daemons in element and place. Distinct from monotheism (single transcendent God), pantheism (one underlying substance), and emanation_hierarchy (cascading single source); animism's signature is the plurality, locality, and embodied-in-landscape character of the divine.
The claim that 'each particle — whether you call it organic or inorganic — is a life' and that the same invisible lives compose mountain, daisy, man, and ant attributes inherent life to all natural things, though it lacks animism's signature of local, embodied, plural divine agents in landscape.
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 is centrally built on the 'law of analogy' and the identity of constituents across all levels of being — mountain and daisy, man and ant, elephant and tree — making each scale a legible map of the others.
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 Earth's origin through successive Rounds — from 'foetus in the matrix of Space' through development of sentient life, water, and hard material form — a temporally-narrative account of cosmic/planetary beginning.
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 a structured cascade of principles (second, third, fourth) unfolding in sequence for both Earth and humanity, each level less perfect or more material than the one before.
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 'infinitesimal invisible lives' composing all matter, the Kamarupic (astral) state of Earth, and unseen creators and destroyers that no microscope can detect — 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.
Earth's development through successive principles (second: life, third: water, fourth: gross matter) with its ultimate form not reached until after the Seventh Round describes a structured descent of spirit into matter traced stage by stage.
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.
The passage explicitly parallels human development with Earth's development ('the human tabernacle is built by countless lives, just in the same way as the rocky crust of our Earth was'), making the human the privileged mirror of the cosmos.
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 states that each atom 'generates equally life and death, beauty and ugliness, good and bad, and even the agreeable and disagreeable, the beneficent and maleficent sensations' — the same principle producing both poles.
The doctrine that all existence is ultimately one substance or one divine reality; non-duality as a theological claim.
The claim that 'the same infinitesimal invisible lives compose the atoms of the bodies of the mountain and the daisy, of man and the ant, of the elephant, and the tree' implies an ultimate oneness of substance underlying all differentiated forms.