Maia, in its forced derivation, has come to mean with the Greeks, "mother," from the root ma (nurse), and even gave its name to the month of May, which was sacred to all those goddesses before it became consecrated to Mary.* Its primitive meaning, however, was Maya , Durga , translated by the Orientalists as "inaccessible," but meaning in truth the " unreachable ," in the sense of illusion and unreality; as being the source and cause of spells, the personification of I LLUSION.
In religious rites the moon served a dual purpose.
Personified as a female goddess for exoteric purposes, or as a male god in allegory and symbol, in occult philosophy our satellite was regarded as a sexless Potency to be well studied, because it was to be dreaded.
With the initiated Aryans, Khaldii, Greeks and Romans, Soma, Sin, Artemis Soteira (the hermaphrodite Apollo, whose attribute is the lyre, and the bearded Diana of the bow and arrow), Deus Lunus , and especially Osiris-lunus and Thot-lunus,** were the occult potencies of the moon.
But whether male or female, whether Thot or Minerva, Soma or Astoreth, the Moon is the Occult mystery of mysteries, and more a symbol of evil than of good.
Her seven phases (original, esoteric division) are divided into three astronomical phenomena and four [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * The Roman Catholics are indebted for the idea of consecrating the month of May to the Virgin, to the pagan Plutarch, who shows that "May is sacred to Maia ([[ Maia ]]) or Vesta" ( Aulus-Gellius , word Maia) -- our mother-earth, our nurse and nourisher personified.
** Thot-Lunus is "Budha-Soma" of India, or "Mercury and the Moon." [[Vol.
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purely psychic phases.
That the moon was not always reverenced is shown in the Mysteries, in which the death of the moon-god (the three phases of gradual waning and final disappearance) was allegorized by the moon standing for the genius of evil that triumphs for the time over the light and life-giving god (the sun), and all the skill and learning of the ancient Hierophants in Magic was required to turn this triumph into a defeat.
It was the most ancient worship of all, that of the third Race of our Round, the Hermaphrodites, to whom the male -moon became sacred, when after the "Fall" so-called, the sexes had become separated.
"Deus Lunus" then became an androgyne, male and female in turn; to serve finally, for purposes of sorcery , as a dual power, to the Fourth Root-race, the Atlanteans.
With the Fifth (our own) the lunar-solar worship divided the nations into two distinct, antagonistic camps.
It led to events described aeons later in the Mahabharatan War, which to the Europeans is the fabulous , to the Hindus and Occultists the historical, strife between the Suryavansas and the Indovansas.
Originating in the dual aspect of the moon, the worship of the female and the male principles respectively, it ended in distinct solar and lunar cults.
Among the Semitic races, the sun was for a very long time feminine and the moon masculine -- the latter notion being adopted by them from the Atlantean traditions.
The moon was called "the Lord of the sun," Bel-Skemesh , * before the Shemesh worship.
The ignorance of the incipient reasons for such a distinction, and of occult principles, led the nations into anthropomorphic idol-worship.
But the religion of every ancient nation had been primarily based upon the Occult manifestations of a purely abstract Force or Principle now called "God." The very establishment of such worship shows, in its details and rites, that the philosophers who evolved those systems of nature, subjective and objective, possessed profound knowledge, and were acquainted with many facts [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * During that period which is absent from the Mosaic books -- from the exile of Eden to the allegorical Flood -- the Jews worshipped with the rest of the Semites Dayanisi "the Ruler of Men," the "Judge," or the S UN.
Though the Jewish canon and Christianism have made the sun become the "Lord God" and Jehovah in the Bible, yet the latter is full of indiscreet traces of the androgyne Deity, which was Jehovah the sun , and Astoreth the moon in its female aspect, and quite free from the present metaphorical element given to it.
God is a "consuming fire," appears in , and is encompassed by fire." It was not only in vision that Ezekiel (viii., 16) saw the Jews "worshipping the sun." The Baal of the Israelites (the Shemesh of the Moabites and the Moloch of the Ammonites) was the identical "Sun-Jehovah," and he is till now "the King of the Host of Heaven," the Sun, as much as Astoreth was the "Queen of Heaven" -- or the moon.
The "Sun of Righteousness" has become a metaphorical expression only now.
[[Vol.
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of a scientific nature.
For besides being purely Occult, the rites of lunar worship were based, as just shown, upon a knowledge of physiology (quite a modern science with us), psychology, sacred mathematics, geometry and metrology, in their right applications to symbols and figures, which are but glyphs, recording observed natural and scientific facts; in short, upon a most minute and profound knowledge of nature.
Lunar magnetism generates life, preserves and kills it.
Soma embodies the triple power of the Trimurti , though it passes unrecognized by the profane to this day.
The allegory that makes Soma, the moon, produced by the churning of the Ocean of Life ( Space ) by the gods in another Manvantara ( i.e.
, in the pre genetic day of our planetary system), and that other allegory, which shows "the Rishis milking the earth, whose calf was Soma, the moon," has a deep cosmographical meaning; for it is neither our earth which is milked, nor was the moon, which we know, the calf.* Had our wise men of science known as much of the mysteries of nature as the ancient Aryans did, they would surely never have imagined that the moon was projected from the Earth.
Once more, the oldest of permutations in theogony, the Son becoming his own father and the mother generated by the Son, has to be remembered and taken into consideration if the symbolical language of the ancients is to be understood by us.
Otherwise mythology will be ever haunting the Orientalists as simply "the disease which springs up at a peculiar stage of human culture!" -- as Renouf gravely observes in a Hibbert lecture.
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 maps the moon's seven phases into three astronomical phenomena and four purely psychic phases, and shows the same lunar principle appearing as Soma, Sin, Artemis Soteira, Deus Lunus, Osiris-lunus, Thot-lunus, Astoreth, and Budha-Soma across cultures — each level 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 the churning of the Ocean of Life (Space) by the gods in another Manvantara (the pre-genetic day of our planetary system), the Rishis milking the earth whose calf was Soma, and the oldest permutation in theogony where the Son becomes his own father and the mother is generated by the Son.
A historical or mythical chain of transmission for secret wisdom from master to disciple across time and cultures — the credential of the teaching, not merely its content. Distinct from oral_tradition (the spoken-not-written modality of transmission, which a lineage may or may not use) and hidden_sayings (the concealment-for-readiness of a teaching's meaning, independent of who transmitted it or in what unbroken chain).
The passage traces the transmission of lunar-solar occult knowledge across a specific historical chain: the third Race of Hermaphrodites, the Fourth Root-race Atlanteans, the Fifth Race (our own), and across cultures (Aryans, Khaldii, Greeks, Romans, Semites), constituting a credential of the teaching's antiquity and continuity.
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 passage explicitly states the moon was personified as female for exoteric purposes or male in allegory, was a sexless Potency in occult philosophy, became an androgyne male and female in turn, and the worship of the female and male principles respectively led to distinct cults — making gender as a structural principle of creation a central theme.
Salvation through direct experiential knowledge of the divine nature, not through faith, ritual, or moral works alone.
The passage contrasts the 'initiated' who possessed 'profound knowledge' and 'facts of a scientific nature' with the 'profane' who remain unrecognized, implying that direct experiential knowledge of occult principles is the mark of the initiated.
Esoteric teachings reserved for those ready to receive them; outer meaning conceals an inner liberating truth.
The passage distinguishes between exoteric and occult/secret meanings throughout, states that the symbolical language of the ancients must be understood or mythology remains a 'disease,' and notes that Soma's triple power 'passes unrecognized by the profane to this day.'
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 the moon as a 'sexless Potency' in occult philosophy, identifies four 'purely psychic phases' of the moon, and discusses 'occult manifestations of a purely abstract Force or Principle' that ancient philosophers knew but modern science does not — a non-physical dimension interpenetrating the physical.
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 is centrally organized around the male/female duality of the moon (androgyne, male and female in turn), the solar-lunar opposition dividing nations into two antagonistic camps, and the dual power of the moon as both principles.
Organized, persisting groups — fraternities, orders, lodges — that maintain esoteric knowledge or practices as an institution distinct from public religion or mainstream society, holding 'the keys' collectively rather than through any one master-disciple pair. Distinct from esoteric_lineage (a genealogical chain of individual transmission, not an institution) and hidden_sayings (the concealment of a teaching's meaning, independent of whether any organized body holds it).
The 'ancient Hierophants' and the 'Mysteries' in which the death of the moon-god was allegorized suggest organized groups maintaining esoteric knowledge and practices distinct from public religion.