This idea and representative notion is that of the all-powerful champion -- child-like in his 'Virgin innocence' -- so powerful that this god-filled innocence (the Seraphim 'Know most,' the Cherubim 'love most') can shatter the world (articulated, so to use the word -- in the magic of Lucifer, but condemned) in opposition to the artful constructions (this 'side-life') of the magnificent apostate, the mighty rebel, but yet at the same time the 'Light-bringer,' the Lucifer, the 'Morning Star,' the 'Son of the morning' -- the very highest title 'out of heaven, 'for in heaven it cannot be, but out of heaven it is everything.
In an apparently incredible side of his character -- qualities are of no sex -- this archangel, St.
Michael, is the invincible, sexless, celestial 'Energy' -- to dignify him by his grand characteristics -- the invisible 'Virgin Combatant,' clothed .
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and at the same time armed, in the denying mail of the Gnostic 'refusal to create.' This is another .
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'myth within myths' .
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a stupendous 'mystery of mysteries,' because it is so impossible and contradictory.
Unexplainable as the Apocalypse.
Unrevealable as the 'Revelation' "( p .
213).
Nevertheless, this unexplainable and unrevealable mystery will now be explained and revealed by the doctrines of the East.
But as the very erudite, but still more puzzling author of "Phallicism" gives it, of course, no uninitiated mortal would ever understand the real drift of his remarks.
[[Vol.
2, Page]] 239 THEOLOGICAL SNUFFERS.
a theological extinguisher on the radiant star-god, Lucifer, the "Son of the Morning," thus created the most gigantic of all her paradoxes -- a black and tenebrous light -- the myth has struck its roots too deep in the soil of blind faith to permit, in our age, even those, who do not acquiesce in her dogmas and laugh at her horned and cloven-footed Satan, to come out bravely and confess the antiquity of the oldest of all traditions.
In a few brief words it is this.
Semi-exoterically, the "First-born" of the Almighty -- Fiat Lux, -- or the angels of primordial light, were commanded to create ; one third of them rebelled and refused ; while those who "obeyed as Fetahil did -- failed " most signally.
To realise the refusal and failure in their correct physical meaning, one must study and understand Eastern philosophy; one has to be acquainted with the fundamental mystical tenets of the Vedantins, with regard to the utter fallacy of attributing functional activity to the infinite and absolute deity.
Esoteric philosophy maintains that during the Sandhyas, the "Central Sun" emits creative light - - passively so to say.
Causality is latent.
It is only during the active periods of being that it gives rise to a stream of ceaseless energy, whose vibrating currents acquire more activity and potency with every rung of the hebdomadic ladder of Being which they descend.
Hence it becomes comprehensible how the process of creating, or rather of fashioning, the organic Universe, with all its units of the seven kingdoms, necessitated intelligent beings -- who became collectively a Being or creative God -- differentiated already from the one absolute Unity, unrelated as the latter is to conditioned creation.* Now the Vatican MSS.
of the Kabala -- a single copy of which (in Europe) is said to have been in the possession of Count St.
Germain -- contains the most complete exposition of the doctrine, including the peculiar version accepted by the Luciferians** and other Gnostics; and in that parchment the Seven Suns of Life are given in the order they are found in the Saptasurya.
Only four of these, however, are mentioned in the editions of the Kabala which are procurable in the public libraries, and that even in a more or less veiled phraseology.
Nevertheless even this reduced number is amply sufficient to show an identical origin, as it refers to the quaternary group of the Dhyan-Chohans, and proves the speculation to have had its origin in the Secret Doctrines of the Aryans.
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * "Creation" -- out of pre-existent eternal substance, or matter, of course, which substance, according to our teachings, is boundless, ever-existing space.
** The Luciferians -- the sect of the fourth century who are alleged to have taught that the Soul was a carnal body transmitted to the child by its father; -- and that other religious and still earlier sect of the second century A.D ., the Lucianists, who taught all this, and further, that the animal Soul was not immortal, were philosophizing on the grounds of the real Kabalistic and Occult teachings.
[[Vol.
2, Page]] 240 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
As is well known, the Kabala never originated with the Jews, who got their ideas from the Chaldeans and the Egyptians.
Thus even the now exoteric Kabalistic teachings speak of a Central Sun, and of three secondary suns in each solar system -- our own included.
As shown in that able though too materialistic work, " New Aspects of Life and Religion, " which is a synopsis of the views of the Kabalists in an aspect deeply thought out and assimilated: -- "The Central Sun .
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was to them (as much as to the Aryans) the centre of Rest ; the centre to which all motion was to be ultimately referred.
Round this central sun .
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'the first of three systemic suns .
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revolved on a polar plane .
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the second, on an equatorial plane' .
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and the third only was our visible sun.
These four solar bodies were ' the organs on whose action what man calls the creation, the evolution of life on the planet, earth, depends.
' The channels through which the influence of these bodies was conveyed to the earth they (the Kabalists) held to be electrical" ( p .
287).
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"The radiant energy flowing from the central sun* called the Earth into being as a watery globe," whose tendency, "as the nucleus of a planetary body, was to rush to the (central) Sun .
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within the sphere of whose attraction it had been created," "but the radiant energy, similarly electrifying both, withheld the one from the other, and so changed motion towards into motion round the centre of attraction, which the revolving planet (earth) thus sought to reach.
"In the organic cell the visible sun found its own proper matrix, and produced through this the animal (while maturing the vegetable) Kingdom, finally placing man at its head, in whom, through the animating action of that Kingdom, it originated the psychic cell.
But the man so placed at the head of the animal kingdom, at the head of the creation, was the animal, the soul-less, the perishable man .
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Describing the divine only by negation—God transcends all positive categories and concepts; the via negativa.
The passage states the 'utter fallacy of attributing functional activity to the infinite and absolute deity' and describes the Central Sun's creative emission as 'passively so to say' with 'causality latent,' negating positive attributes of the absolute.
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 asserts 'an identical origin' between the Kabalistic Central Sun and three secondary suns, the Saptasurya's Seven Suns of Life, and the quaternary group of Dhyan-Chohans, demonstrating structural reflection across traditions.
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 narrative of cosmic origin: the Fiat Lux, the command to create, the rebellion of one third, the failure of the obedient, and the process by which the organic universe was fashioned.
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 centrally describes the 'hebdomadic ladder of Being which they descend,' the Seven Suns of Life, the quaternary group of Dhyan-Chohans, and the cascade of creative light from the Central Sun through successive levels.
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 explicitly describes 'a stream of ceaseless energy, whose vibrating currents acquire more activity and potency with every rung of the hebdomadic ladder of Being which they descend' — the directional descent of spirit into matter.
Using apparent contradiction, reversal, or riddle to destabilise ordinary understanding and induce insight.
The passage is saturated with deliberate paradox: 'a black and tenebrous light,' the 'Virgin Combatant' who is sexless, the 'refusal to create' as divine mail, and Lucifer as both condemned rebel and 'Light-bringer.'
The Hermetic doctrine that nothing rests — matter, energy, mind, and spirit are a single continuum differing only in rate of vibration, from the grossest matter to the least material spirit. Distinct from cosmic_sympathy (affinity resonating BETWEEN separate things) in being a claim about what constitutes any one thing in the first place, and from magical_equilibrium (Lévi's operational balancing technique, which presupposes some vibration doctrine rather than stating this general principle).
The 'vibrating currents acquire more activity and potency with every rung of the hebdomadic ladder of Being which they descend' directly states the doctrine that all levels of being differ in rate and degree of vibration.