For if the said Forces had nought to do with "Creation" so-called, why call them Elohim (Alhim) in plural; "divine workmen" and Energies ([[' Energeia ]]), incandescent celestial stones (lapides igniti coelorum), and especially, " supporters of the World" ([[ Kosmokratores ]]), governors or RULERS of the World ( rectores mundi ), the "Wheels" of the World ( Rotae ), Ophanim, Flames and P OWERS, "Sons of God" ( B ' ne Alhim ), "Vigilant COUNSELLORS," etc., etc.
It was often premised (and as unjustly as usual) that China, nearly as old a country as India, had no cosmogony.
"It was unknown to Confucius, and the Buddhists extended their Cosmogony without introducing a personal God,"* it is complained.
The Yi-King , "the very essence of ancient thought and the combined work of the most venerated sages, fails to show a distinct cosmogony." Nevertheless, there is one, and a very distinct one.
Only as Confucius did not admit of a future life** and the Chinese Buddhists reject the idea of One Creator, accepting one cause and its numberless effects, they are misunderstood by the believers in a personal God.
The "great Extreme" as the commencement "of changes" (transmigrations) is the shortest and perhaps the most suggestive of all Cosmogonies, for those who, like the Confucianists, love virtue for its own sake, and try to do good unselfishly without perpetually looking to reward and profit.
The "great Extreme" of Confucius produces "two figures." These "two" produce in their turn "the four images"; these again "the eight symbols." It is complained that though the Confucianists see in them "Heaven, Earth and man in miniature," .
.
.
we can see in them anything we like.
No doubt, and so it is with regard to many symbols, especially in those of the latest religions.
But they who know something of Occult numerals, see in these "figures" the symbol, however rude, of a harmonious progressive Evolution of Kosmos and its beings, both the Heavenly and the Terrestrial.
And any one who has studied the numerical evolution in the primeval cosmogony of Pythagoras (a contemporary of Confucius) can never fail to find in his Triad , Tetractis and [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- [[Footnote continued from previous page]] a distance between this Kabalistical Deity and the Biblical Jehovah, the spiteful and revengeful God of Abram, Isaac, and Jacob, who tempted the former and wrestled with the last.
No Vedantin but would repudiate such a Parabrahm.
* Rev.
Joseph Edkins " On Cosmogony ," p .
320.
And very wisely they have acted.
** If he rejected it, it was on the ground of what he calls the changes -- in other words, rebirths -- of man, and constant transformations.
He denied immortality to the personality of man -- as we do -- not to MAN.
[[Vol.
1, Page]] 441 THE SAME IDEA IN CONFUCIANISM.
Decade emerging from the ONE and solitary Monad, the same idea.
Confucius is laughed at by his Christian biographer for "talking of divination" before and after this passage, and is represented as saying: "The eight symbols determine good and ill fortune, and these lead to great deeds.
There are no imitable images greater than heaven and earth.
There are no changes greater than the four seasons (meaning North, South, East and West, et seq.
) .
There are no suspended images brighter than the sun and moon.
In preparing things for use , there is none greater than the sage.
In determining good and ill-luck there is nothing greater than the divining straws and the tortoise.
"* Therefore, the "divining straws" and the "tortoise," the "symbolic sets of lines," and the great sage who looks at them as they become one and two, and two become four, and four become eight, and the other sets "three and six," are laughed to scorn, only because his wise symbols are misunderstood.
So the author and his colleagues will scoff no doubt at the Stanzas given in our text, for they represent precisely the same idea.
The old archaic map of Cosmogony is full of lines in the Confucian style, of concentric circles and dots.
Yet all these represent the most abstract and philosophical conceptions of the Cosmogony of our Universe.
At all events it may answer, perhaps, better to the requirements and the scientific purposes of our age, than the cosmogonical essays of St.
Augustine and the "Venerable Bede," though these were published over a millennium later than the Confucian.
Confucius, one of the greatest sages of the ancient world, believed in ancient magic, and practised it himself "if we take for granted the statements of Kin-yu " .
.
.
.
and "he praised it to the skies in Yi-kin ," we are told by his reverend critic.
Nevertheless, even in his age -- i.e.
, 600 B.C., Confucius and his school taught the sphericity of the Earth and even the heliocentric system; while, at about thrice 600 years after the Chinese philosopher, the Popes of Rome threatened and even burnt "heretics" for asserting the same.
He is laughed at for speaking of the "Sacred Tortoise." No unprejudiced person can see any great difference between a tortoise and a lamb as candidates for sacredness, as both are symbols and no more.
The Ox, the Eagle,** the Lion, and occasionally [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * He may be laughed at by the Protestants; but the Roman Catholics have no right to mock him, without becoming guilty of blasphemy and sacrilege.
For it is over 200 years since Confucius was canonized as a Saint in China by the Roman Catholics, who have thereby obtained many converts among the ignorant Confucianists.
** The animals regarded as sacred in the Bible are not few: the goat for one, the Azaz-el , or God of Victory.
As Aben Ezra says: "If thou art capable of comprehending the mystery of Azazel, thou wilt learn the mystery of His (God's) name, for it has similar associates in Scriptures.
I will tell thee by allusion one portion of the mystery; [[Footnote continued on next page]] [[Vol.
1, Page]] 442 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
the Dove, are "the sacred animals" of the Western Bible, the first three being found grouped round the Evangelists; and the fourth (the human face) is a Seraph, i.e.
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 numerical progression (1→2→4→8) is presented as reflecting cosmic structure at every scale, with 'Heaven, Earth and man in miniature' showing the same pattern at the microcosmic level.
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 is explicitly a discussion of cosmogony — the 'great Extreme' as the commencement of changes, the Yi-King's cosmogony, the 'old archaic map of Cosmogony,' and the comparison of cosmogonical systems across traditions.
The ritual practice of discerning hidden knowledge — future events, concealed causes, or the will of higher powers — through a structured technique applied to cards, lots, astrological configuration, entrails, oracle, or other sortilege, rather than through direct unmediated insight. Distinct from gnosis_direct_knowledge (unmediated inner apprehension of ultimate truth, not a technique applied to an external medium) and cosmic_sympathy (the underlying doctrine of hidden affinity that many divinatory techniques presuppose, rather than the practice of consulting it).
The passage extensively discusses Confucius's 'divining straws,' the 'tortoise,' and the 'symbolic sets of lines' as structured techniques for discerning fortune, and defends them against ridicule.
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 clear cascading hierarchy: the great Extreme producing two figures, then four images, then eight symbols; and the Monad producing the Triad, Tetractis, and Decade — a chain flowing downward from a single source.
Esoteric teachings reserved for those ready to receive them; outer meaning conceals an inner liberating truth.
The passage argues that the symbols of the Yi-King and the 'old archaic map of Cosmogony' contain 'the most abstract and philosophical conceptions' that are 'misunderstood' by those lacking occult knowledge, implying an inner meaning concealed beneath the outer form.
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 harmonious progressive Evolution of Kosmos and its beings, both the Heavenly and the Terrestrial' as a directional process unfolding from the ONE through successive numerical stages, which is the staged descent of spirit into multiplicity.
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 states that Confucianists see in the eight symbols 'Heaven, Earth and man in miniature,' making the human the privileged mirror of the cosmic structure.
The absolutely simple, undivided first principle from which all multiplicity and existence flows.
The passage explicitly names 'the ONE and solitary Monad' as the source from which the Triad, Tetractis, and Decade emerge, identifying it as the absolutely simple first principle of multiplicity.
Numbers, proportions, and mathematical relationships as the underlying structure of divine reality.
The entire passage is structured around numerical evolution as the underlying structure of cosmic reality: the ONE producing two, four, eight; Pythagoras's Triad, Tetractis, and Decade emerging from the Monad; 'Occult numerals' revealing the 'harmonious progressive Evolution of Kosmos.'
The doctrine that reality has two registers — an Absolute truth as the divine or ultimate mind knows it, and a Relative truth as finite human reason perceives and must act on — with both held as legitimate on their own plane rather than the second being simply an error to correct. Distinct from apophatic_theology (a claim about how the divine may be described, by negation) and unity_of_being (a claim that being is ultimately one) in being a claim about two coexisting registers of truth-claim itself.
The passage acknowledges that 'we can see in them anything we like' regarding symbols, while asserting that those with occult knowledge see a deeper, more precise meaning — holding both the superficial and esoteric readings as valid on their own plane.