The Secret Doctrine by H.
P.
Blavatsky -- Vol.
1 [[Vol.
1, Page]] 342 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
§ IV.
CHAOS -- THEOS -- KOSMOS.
T HESE three are the containment of Space; or, as a learned Kabalist has defined it, "Space, the all containing uncontained, is the primary embodiment of simply Unity.
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boundless extension."* But, he asks again, "boundless extension of what?" -- and makes the correct reply -- "The unknown container of all , the Unknown FIRST CAUSE.
" This is a most correct definition and answer, most esoteric and true, from every aspect of occult teaching.
SPACE , which, in their ignorance and iconoclastic tendency to destroy every philosophic idea of old, the modern wiseacres have proclaimed "an abstract idea" and a void , is, in reality, the container and the body of the Universe with its seven principles.
It is a body of limitless extent, whose PRINCIPLES , in Occult phraseology -- each being in its turn a septenary -- manifest in our phenomenal world only the grossest fabric of their sub-divisions.
"No one has ever seen the Elements in their fulness," the Doctrine teaches.
We have to search for our Wisdom in the original expressions of the primeval people and in their synonyms.
Even the latest of them -- the Jews -- show in their Kabalistic teachings this idea, e.g ., the seven-headed Serpent of Space, called "the great Sea." "In the beginning, the Alhim created the heavens and the earth; the 6 (Sephiroth).
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They created six, and on these all things are based.
And those (six) depend upon the seven forms of the cranium up to Dignity of all Dignities ( Siphrah Dzenioota , i, § 16), see part ii., vol.
ii.
"Ancient Divisions and the Mystic Numbers." Now Wind , Air and Spirit have ever been synonymous with every nation.
Pneuma (Spirit) and Anemos (the wind) with the Greeks, Spiritus and Ventus with the Latins, were convertible terms even if dissociated from the original idea of the breath of life.
In the "Forces" of Science we see but the material effect of the spiritual affect of one or the other of the four primordial Elements, transmitted to us by the 4th Race, as we shall transmit Ether (or rather the gross subdivision of it) in its fulness to the Sixth Root Race.
This is explained in the text of this and the following Book.
"Chaos" is called senseless by the ancients, because it represented and contained in itself (Chaos and Space being synonymous) all the Elements in their rudimentary, undifferentiated State.
They made of Ether, the fifth element, the synthesis of the other four; for the AEther of the Greek philosophers is not its dregs -- of which indeed they knew more [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * "New Aspects of Life," by Henry Pratt, M.D.
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than science does now -- which are rightly enough supposed to act as an agent for many forces that manifest on Earth.
Their AEther was the Akasa of the Hindus; the Ether accepted in physics is but one of its subdivisions, on our plane, -- the Astral Light of the Kabalists with all its evil as well as good effects.
On account of the Essence of AEther, or the Unseen Space, being held divine as the supposed veil of Deity, it was regarded as the medium between this life and the next one.
The ancients considered that when the directing active "Intelligences" (the gods) retired from any portion of Ether in our Space -- the four realms which they superintend -- then that particular place was left in the possession of evil, so called by reason of the absence of the Good from it.
"The existence of spirit in the common mediator, the ether, is denied by materialism; while theology makes of it a personal god.
But the Kabalist holds that both are wrong, saying that in ether, the elements represent but matter -- the blind cosmic forces of nature; while Spirit represents the intelligence which directs them.
The Aryan, Hermetic, Orphic, and Pythagorean cosmogonical doctrines, as well as those of Sanchoniathon and Berosus, are all based upon one irrefutable formula, viz., that the aether and chaos, or, in the Platonic language, mind and matter, were the two primeval and eternal principles of the universe, utterly independent of anything else.
The former was the all-vivifying intellectual principle; the chaos, a shapeless liquid principle, without 'form or sense,' from the union of which two sprung into existence the universe, or rather the universal world, the first androgynous deity -- the chaotic matter becoming its body, and ether its soul.
According to the phraseology of a Fragment of Hermias , 'chaos, from this union with spirit, obtaining sense , shone with pleasure, and thus was produced the Protogonos (the first-born) light.'* This is the universal trinity, based on the metaphysical conceptions of the ancients, who, reasoning by analogy, made of man, who is a compound of intellect and matter, the microcosm of the macrocosm, or great universe." ( Isis Unveiled.
) " Nature abhors Vacuum " said the Peripatetics, who comprehended perhaps, though materialists in their way, why Democritus, with his instructor Leucippus, taught that the first principles of all things contained in the Universe were atoms and a vacuum.
The latter means simply latent Deity or force; which, before its first manifestation when it became WILL -- communicating the first impulse to these atoms -- was the great Nothingness , Ain-Soph, or NO-THING; was, therefore, to every sense, a Void -- or C HAOS.
That Chaos, however, became the "Soul of the World," according to Plato and the Pythagoreans.
According to Hindu teaching, Deity in the shape of AEther (Akasa) pervades all things; and it was called there- [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * Damascius, in the "Theogony," calls it Dis, "the disposer of all things." Cory, "Ancient Fragments," p.
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fore by the theurgists "the living fire," the "Spirit of Light," and sometimes Magnes.
It was the highest Deity itself which, according to Plato, built the Universe in the geometrical form of the Dodecahedron; and its "first begotten" was born of Chaos and Primordial Light (the Central Sun).
Describing the divine only by negation—God transcends all positive categories and concepts; the via negativa.
Ain-Soph is described as 'NO-THING,' a Void, 'to every sense' a nothingness — the divine characterized by negation of all positive attributes before manifestation.
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 Light of the Kabalists is explicitly named as a subdivision of Akasa on our plane, with all its evil as well as good effects.
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 states that man, a compound of intellect and matter, is 'the microcosm of the macrocosm, or great universe,' making the human a legible map of the cosmos.
Ontological opposition between two primal principles (light/darkness, truth/lie, spirit/matter) as the fundamental structure of reality.
The passage explicitly states that 'the aether and chaos, or, in the Platonic language, mind and matter, were the two primeval and eternal principles of the universe, utterly independent of anything else.'
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 entire passage is a cosmogonic narrative: from the Unknown First Cause through Space, through the undifferentiated Chaos, through the union of aether and chaos, to the production of the first androgynous deity and the first-born light.
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.
According to Hindu teaching, 'Deity in the shape of Aether (Akasa) pervades all things,' and Space itself is the container and body of the Universe.
The infinite, unknowable aspect of the divine prior to and beyond all emanation; the hidden root from which the Sephirot unfold.
Ain-Soph is explicitly named as 'the great Nothingness, or NO-THING,' the void before first manifestation when it became Will, corresponding to the infinite unknowable divine prior to emanation.
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 cascading structure from the Unknown First Cause through Space's seven principles down to the grossest fabric of their sub-divisions in the phenomenal world.
The doctrine of the universe as boundless and without center or circumference, populated by innumerable worlds — Bruno's rejection of the closed Aristotelian sphere; the divine and the cosmos as ontologically infinite.
Space is described as 'boundless extension' and 'a body of limitless extent,' affirming the cosmos as without boundary or circumference.
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 Ether/Akasa as 'the Unseen Space' held divine as the veil of Deity, and the Astral Light as a non-physical medium with both evil and good effects.
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 describes a directional descent: the 'chaotic matter becoming its body, and ether its soul,' tracing spirit's unfolding into material form as a structured process.
The divine reason, word, or ordering principle through which the universe was created; mediates between the transcendent God and the material world.
Spirit/Pneuma is described as 'the intelligence which directs' the blind cosmic forces of nature, functioning as the ordering principle between the undifferentiated chaos and the manifested universe.
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 and centrally states that man is 'a compound of intellect and matter, the microcosm of the macrocosm, or great universe,' using this as the basis for the universal trinity.
Numbers, proportions, and mathematical relationships as the underlying structure of divine reality.
The passage is saturated with numerical symbolism: seven principles each being a septenary, the six Sephiroth, the four primordial Elements, the fifth element as synthesis, and the Dodecahedron form.
The ten attributes or emanations through which the Ein Sof (Infinite) reveals itself and creates the universe in Kabbalistic theology.
The passage explicitly references 'the 6 (Sephiroth)' and their dependence on 'the seven forms of the cranium up to Dignity of all Dignities (Siphrah Dzenioota).'
The doctrine that the one Godhead or first principle subsists as three co-equal aspects or persons rather than a bare unity — the Christian Father/Son/Holy Ghost invoked in the recurring liturgical formula 'In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost,' but structurally the same pattern as the Egyptian Amen/Ptah/Osiris, the Hindu Brahma/Vishnu/Siva, and the Kabbalistic Chochmah/Binah/Kether triads that esoteric writers explicitly map onto it as instances of one universal law. Distinct from unity_of_being (the general claim that all existence is one substance, agnostic about internal plurality) and divine_simplicity (God as having no parts or divisions at all) in asserting a definite three-aspected differentiation within a single divine essence.
The passage explicitly names 'the universal trinity' based on the metaphysical conceptions of the ancients, grounded in the union of aether, chaos, and the resulting first-born.
The doctrine that all existence is ultimately one substance or one divine reality; non-duality as a theological claim.
Space is defined as 'the primary embodiment of simply Unity' and the all-containing uncontained, asserting the fundamental oneness underlying all multiplicity.