Page 46 (part 2)

For Roman Catholics, Satan is at the foundation of Kosmos, Christ in its centre, and Antichrist at its apex. For both, the Hierarchy of Being begins and ends within the narrow frames of their respective theologies: one self-created personal God and an Empyrean ringing with the Hallelujas of created angels; the rest, false gods, Satan and fiends. Theophilosophy proceeds on broader lines. From the very beginning of AEons -- in time and space in our Round and Globe -- the Mysteries of Nature (at any rate, those which it is lawful for our races to know) were recorded by the pupils of those same now invisible "heavenly men," in geometrical figures and symbols. The keys thereto passed from one generation of "wise men" to the other. Some of the symbols, thus passed from the east to the west, were brought therefrom by Pythagoras, who was not the inventor of his famous "Triangle." The latter figure, along with the plane cube and circle, are more eloquent and scientific descriptions of the order of the evolution of the Universe, spiritual and psychic, as well as physical, than volumes of descriptive Cosmogonies and revealed " Geneses ." The ten points inscribed within that "Pythagorean triangle " are worth all the theogonies and angelologies ever emanated from the theological brain. For he who interprets them -- on their very face, and in the order given -- will find in these seventeen points (the seven Mathematical Points hidden) the uninterrupted series of the genealogies from the first Heavenly to terrestrial man. And, as they give the order of Beings, so they reveal the order in which were evolved the Kosmos, our earth, and the primordial elements by [[Vol. 1, Page]] 613 THE MATHEMATICAL POINT. which the latter was generated. Begotten in the invisible Depths , and in the womb of the same "Mother" as its fellow-globes -- he who will master the mysteries of our Earth, will have mastered those of all others. Whatever ignorance, pride or fanaticism may suggest to the contrary, Esoteric Cosmology can be shown inseparably connected with both philosophy and modern science. The gods of the ancients, the monads -- from Pythagoras down to Leibnitz -- and the atoms of the present materialistic schools (as borrowed by them from the theories of the old Greek Atomists) are only a compound unit, or a graduated unity like the human frame, which begins with body and ends with spirit. In the occult sciences they can be studied separately, but never mastered unless viewed in their mutual correlations during their life-cycle, and as a Universal Unity during Pralayas. La Pluche shows sincerity, but gives a poor idea of his philosophical capacities when declaring his personal views on the Monad or the Mathematical Point. "A point," he says, "is enough to put all the schools in the world in a combustion. But what need has man to know that point, since the creation of such a small being is beyond his power? A fortiori , philosophy acts against probability when, from that point which absorbs and disconcerts all her meditations, she presumes to pass on to the generation of the world. . . ." Philosophy, however, could never have formed its conception of a logical, universal, and absolute Deity if it had no Mathematical Point within the Circle to base its speculations upon. It is only the manifested Point, lost to our senses after its pregenetic appearance in the infinitude and incognizability of the Circle, that made a reconciliation between philosophy and theology possible -- on condition that the latter should abandon its crude materialistic dogmas. And it is because it has so unwisely rejected the Pythagorean Monad and geometrical figures, that Christian theology has evolved its self-created human and personal God, the monstrous Head from whence flow in two streams the dogmas of Salvation and Damnation. This is so true that even those clergymen who would be philosophers and who were masons, have, in their arbitrary interpretations, fathered upon the ancient sages the queer idea that "the Monad represented (with them) the throne of the Omnipotent Deity, placed in the centre of the Empyrean to indicate T.G.A.O.T.U ."* -- read "the Great Architect of the Universe." A curious explanation this, more Masonic than strictly Pythagorean. Nor did the "hierogram within a Circle, or equilateral Triangle," [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * "Science of Numbers," by the Rev. G. Oliver (p. 36). [[Vol. 1, Page]] 614 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. ever mean "the exemplification of the unity of the divine Essence"; for this was exemplified by the plane of the boundless Circle. What it really meant was the triune co-equal Nature of the first differentiated Substance, or the con - substantiality of the (manifested) Spirit, matter and the Universe -- their "Son," who proceeds from the Point (the real, esoteric L OGOS) or the Pythagorean M ONAD. For the Greek Monas signifies "Unity" in its primary sense. Those unable to seize the difference between the monad -- the Universal Unit -- and the Monads or the manifested Unity, as also between the ever-hidden and the revealed L OGOS or the Word , ought never to meddle in philosophy, let alone the Esoteric Sciences. It is needless to remind the educated reader of Kant's Thesis to demonstrate his second Antinomy. * Those who have read and understood it will see clearly the line we draw between the absolutely Ideal Universe and the invisible though manifested Kosmos. Our Gods and Monads are not the Elements of extension itself, but only those of the invisible reality which is the basis of the manifested Kosmos. Neither esoteric philosophy, nor Kant, nor Leibnitz would ever admit that extension can be composed of simple or unextended parts. But theologian-philosophers will not grasp this. The Circle and the Point, which latter retires into and merges with the former, after having emanated the first three points and connected them with lines, thus forming the first noumenal basis of the Second Triangle in the Manifested World, have ever been an insuperable obstacle to theological flights into dogmatic Empyreans. On the authority of this Archaic Symbol, a male, personal god, the Creator and Father of all, becomes a third-rate emanation, the Sephiroth standing fourth in descent, and on the left hand of En-Soph (see the Kabalistic Tree of Life ) . Hence, the Monad is degraded into a Vehicle -- a "throne"!