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The Secret Doctrine by H. P. Blavatsky -- Vol. 1 [[Vol. 1, Page]] 349 THE MANY ARE ONE. [[This page continued from previous section ]] § V. ON THE HIDDEN DEITY, ITS SYMBOLS AND GLYPHS. T HE Logos or Creative deity, the "Word made Flesh," of every religion, has to be traced to its ultimate source and Essence. In India, it is a Proteus of 1,008 divine names and aspects in each of its personal transformations, from Brahma-Purusha down through the Seven divine Rishis and ten semi -divine Prajapati (also Rishis) to the divine-human Avatars. The same puzzling problem of the "One in many" and the multitude in One, is found in other Pantheons, in the Egyptian, the Greek and the Chaldeo-Judaic, the latter having made confusion still more confused by presenting its Gods as euhemerizations, in the shapes of Patriarchs. The latter are now accepted by those who reject Romulus as a myth, and are represented as living and historical Entities . Verbum satis sapienti. In the Zohar, En-Soph is also the O NE, and the infinite Unity. This was known to the very few learned Fathers of the Church, who were aware that Jehovah was but a third rate potency and no "highest" God. But while complaining bitterly of the Gnostics and saying . . . "our Heretics hold . . . that P ROPATOR is known but to the Only begotten Son* (who is Brahma among the rest) that is to the mind" ( nous ), Irenaeus never mentioned that the Jews did the same in their real secret books. Valentinus, "the profoundest doctor of the Gnosis," held that "there was a perfect AION who existed before Bythos, or Buthon (the first father of unfathomable nature, which is the second Logos) called Propator." It is thus A ION, who springs as a Ray from Ain-Soph (who does not create ), and A ION, who creates, or through whom, rather, everything is created, or evolves. [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * As Mulaprakriti is known only to Iswar, the L OGOS, as he is called now by Mr. T. Subba Row, of Madras. (See his Bhagavadgita Lectures.) [[Vol. 1, Page]] 350 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. For, as the Basilidians taught, "there was a supreme god, Abraxas , by whom was created mind" ( Mahat , in Sanskrit, Nous in Greek). "From Mind proceeded the word, Logos , from the word, Providence (Divine Light, rather), then from it Virtue and Wisdom in Principalities, Powers, Angels, etc., etc." By these (Angels) the 365 AEons were created. "Amongst the lowest, indeed, and those who made this world, he (Basilides) sets last of all the God of the Jews, whom he denies to be God (and very rightly), affirming he is one of the angels" ( Ibid. ) . Here, then, we find the same system as in the Puranas, wherein the Incomprehensible drops a seed, which becomes the golden egg, from which Brahma is produced. Brahma produces Mahat, etc., etc. True Esoteric philosophy, however, speaks neither of "creation" nor of "evolution" in the sense the exoteric religions do. All these personified Powers are not evolutions from one another, but so many aspects of the one and sole manifestation of the A BSOLUTE all. The same system as the gnostic prevails in the Sephirothal aspects of Ain-Soph, yet, as these aspects are in Space and Time , a certain order is maintained in their successive appearances. Therefore, it becomes impossible not to take notice of the great changes that the Zohar has undergone under the handling of generations of Christian Mystics. For, even in the metaphysics of the Talmud, the "lower Face" (or "Lesser Countenance"), the microprosopus, in fact, could never be placed on the plane of the same abstract ideal as the Higher, or "Greater Countenance," macroprosopus. The latter is, in the Chaldean Kabala, a pure abstraction; the Word or L OGOS, or D ABAR (in Hebrew), which Word, though it becomes in fact a plural number, or "Words" -- D (a) B (a) R IM, when it reflects itself, or falls into the aspect of a Host (of angels, or Sephiroth, "numbers") is still collectively O NE, and on the ideal plane a nought -- 0, a "No-thing." I T is without form or being, "with no likeness with anything else." ( Franck , " Die Kabbala ," p. 126.) And even Philo calls the Creator, the Logos who stands next God, " the S ECOND G OD," and "the second God who is his (Highest God's) W ISDOM" ( Philo. Quaest. et Solut ) . Deity is not God. It is NOTHING, and DARKNESS. It is nameless, and therefore called Ain-Soph -- "the word Ayin meaning nothing." See Franck " Die Kabbala ," p. 153. See also Section XII. , " Theogony of the Creative Gods. " The "Highest God" (the unmanifested L OGOS) is its Son. Nor are most of the gnostic systems, which come down to us mutilated by the Church Fathers, anything better than the distorted shells of the original speculations. Nor were they open to the public or reader, at any time; i.e. , had their hidden meaning or esotericism been revealed, it would have been no more an esoteric teaching, and this could never be. Alone Marcus (the chief of the Marcosians, 2nd century), who taught [[Vol. 1, Page]] 351 THE GNOSTIC IDEA. that deity had to be viewed under the symbol of four syllables , gave out more of the esoteric truths than any other Gnostic. But even he was never well understood. For it is only on the surface or dead letter of his Revelation that it appears that God is a quaternary, to wit: "the Ineffable, the Silence, the Father, and Truth," -- in reality it is quite erroneous, and divulges only one more esoteric riddle. This teaching of Marcus was that of the early Kabalists and ours. For he makes of Deity, the number 30 in 4 syllables , which, translated esoterically, means a Triad or Triangle , and a Quaternary or a square, in all seven , which, on the lower plane made the seven divine or secret letters of which the God-name is composed. This requires demonstration.