That a tablet, now called the Smaragdine, was found there is no doubt. Its discovery is attributed by tradition to an isarim or initiate, who it is said, took it from the dead body of Hermes this could not have been the Egyptian god Thoth which was buried
Fragments of the Ancient Wisdom Religion have come down to us from the remotest past, through many channels, and in various forms.
It was the Unknown Cause of all causes. Without form or being, it was beyond all existence, before Time had begun. Inscrutable, incognizable, describable only in terms of negation: the Boundless, the Causeless Cause, the Timeless. Concealed within the Bou
Art thou ignorant, Asklepios that Egypt is the image of Heaven, or what is more true, a translation and descent of all things which are governed and performed in heaven? And, if it is to be said more truly, our land is the temple of the whole world. Never
The ignorance of the ancients of the earth's sphericity is assumed without warrant. What proof have we of the fact? It was only the literati who exhibited such an ignorance. Even so early as the time of Pythagoras, the Pagans taught it, Plutarch testifies
Aeschylus, Aeschylus: Prometheus Bound (1931 trans. Gilbert Murray, George Allen Unwin, London, 1952.
Christmas is here again, and there is good reason for joy because the sun, now far away in the south, begins to travel north at the winter solstice, bringing the wintry earth a new promise of light and warmth.
From Hermetica: The Ancient Greek and Latin Writings which contain Religious or Philosophical Teachings ascribed to Hermes Trismegistus 1:341-7; translated into English by Walter Scott from a Latin text, itself a translation attributed to Apuleius from a
The ancient Egyptians believed that the numerous gods of their pantheon were emanations from the First Cause of all life which, before the moment of the new creation of the universe, rested or was potential in the primeval Waters of Space. It was through
Heaven's Mirror: Quest for the Lost Civilization by Graham Hancock, photographs by Santha Faiia, Three Rivers Press (Random House 1998; ISBN 0-609-8477-4, 352 pages, paper 25.00.
The Secret Doctrine was written for the Western world to stem the tide of abject materialism. No messenger made his appearance in glowing aura to impress the multitude and, if he had, he would probably have been completely ignored. Instead, we have a book
The terrible uncertainties of the times are forcing all of us to reexamine our thinking, to come to terms with the central questions of life and death, and how to prepare our children for the world they are inheriting. While science with its "miraculous p
Copyright 2001 by Theosophical University Press and versions also available Electronic ISBN 978-1-55700-172-6. All rights reserved. This edition may be downloaded free of charge for personal use. Except for brief excerpts, no part of this publication may
Also known as the “Chinese Classics The Five Ching” are The Book of ChangesYi The Book of HistoryShu The Book of PoetryShih The Record of RitesLi Chi and Spring and AutumnCh’un Ch’iu The Four Shu are “The Books of the Four Philosophers The Confucian Anale
The Anugita, translated by K. T. Telang. A nearly forgotten adjunct to the Bhagavad-Gita, referenced frequently in 176 pages, cloth $17.00
It was said that The Garden of Eden as a locality is no myth at all; it belongs to those landmarks of history which occasionally disclose to the student that the Bible is not all mere allegory. Eden, or the Hebrew Gan-Eden, meaning the park or the garden
Minerals, vegetation, and animals are conscious in their respective gradations. Human beings are self-conscious, and some men and women become cosmically conscious. A few have achieved the encompassing enlightenment of spiritual consciousness. A transform
The reader has had the whole case presented to him from both sides, and it remains with him to decide whether its summary stands in our favour or not. If there were such a thing as void, a vacuum in Nature, one would find it produced, according to a physi
Whatever may be the destiny of these actual writings in a remote future, we hope to have proven so far the following facts:
The year 1991 marks the bicentenary of the death of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in Vienna on December 5, 1791. During the current year numerous tributes have been paid to his remarkable genius; here we shall focus upon his masterpiece and last completed compo
p/q: H. P. Blavatsky, Isis Unveiled, 1877 Modern science insists upon the doctrine of evolution; so do human reason and the ‘secret doctrine and the idea is corroborated by the ancient legends and myths, and even by the Bible itself when it is read betwee
"As above, so below" is part of a declaration engraved on the Emerald Tablet of Hermes. While the origins of this tablet are lost to us, its ideas are said to have been derived from the Mystery-tradition of Thoth, the Egyptian god of wisdom whom the Greek
Recently I received a letter from a young man describing an experience he had had:
Seventeenth-century England was the stage for fierce religious controversy, with a broad spectrum of differences between the Roman Church and the Puritans, and between both and the Church of England. Civil war raged among religious and political factions,
Would You Believe? Finding God without Losing Your Mind by Tom Harpur, McClelland Stewart, Toronto, Canada, 2000; 236 pages, ISBN 0771039476, paperback 15.95.
Job hearkens to the words of wisdom, and then the "Lord" answers Job "out of the whirlwind" of nature, God's first visible manifestation Stand still, O Job, stand still! and consider the wondrous works of God; for by them alone thou canst know God Behold,
Ever since the French philosopher Rene Descartes (1596-1650) propounded his ideas, both spiritual and scientific, they have confounded men's minds. Esoteric Philosophy rejects many of his basic concepts as unnatural and therefore untrue, such as his radic
The twentieth century witnessed unspeakable tyrannies of soul and body. It is as though an Armageddon were in process before our eyes, between the altruistic urgings of the heart and the selfish demands of the personal nature, between the creative energie
Absolute Unity cannot pass to infinity; for infinity presupposes the limitless extension of something, and the duration of that 'something and the One All is like Space which is its only mental and physical representation on this Earth, or our plane of e
the least either their or our arguments. We repeat again, Buddhism is but the primitive source of Brahmanism. It is not against the primitive Vedas that Gautama protests. It is against the sacerdotal and official state religion of his country; and the Bra
The ordinary human being can not cross the thresholds of sleep and death and retain his self-consciousness, because he has not yet learned to live in his mental-spiritual vehicle, which is necessary for this purpose. There are exceptions to the general ru
described by Sayce II 226 Ea (wisdom) prototype of II 503 leaves waters to teach wisdom II 495n man-fish I 264, 345, 394, 654; II 54, 139n taught Babylonian writing II 226 taught early man I 345; II 190 Triton much like II 578 world created out of water I
Binah, Elohim, Thalatth I 394 chaos, sea, mother I 357 Ea disfigured into II 53, 61, 477, 503 female power I 394 female, womb II 104 slain by Merodach II 53, 503 spirit of chaos, Abyss II 104, 384 struggle of Bel w II 477 war betw gods II 384
The establishment of the Macedonian kingdom in Egypt had been followed by the opening of schools of science and philosophy at the new capitol. Alexandria soon became celebrated as the metropolis of literature; every faith and sect had representatives ther
but the cult is now preserved mostly in China and the Buddhist countries Bel and the Dragon being uniformly coupled together, and the priest of the Ophite religion as uniformly assuming the name of his God Archaeology Vol. xxv p. 220, London In the religi
To thoroughly comprehend the idea underlying every ancient cosmology necessitates the study, in a comparative analysis, of all the great religions of antiquity; as it is only by this method that the root idea will be made plain. Exact science could the la
If one turns to those wells of information The Natural Genesis” and the Lectures of Mr. Gerald Massey, the proofs of the antiquity of the doctrine under analysis become positively overwhelming. That the belief of the author differs from ours can hardly in
480 Charlotte E. Woods 512 A. Wilder(The Amunophs The Vocal Memnon Queen Taia King Khuen Aten and His Monotheistic Religion Its Suppression) 527 Anicius Severinus Boethius 528 Jessie E. Southwick
And now we must search Magical History for cases similar to those given in the preceding chapter. This insensibility of the human body to the impact of heavy blows, and resistance to penetration by sharp points and musket-bullets, is a phenomenon sufficie
Acharya Buddharakkhita Metta: The Philosophy and Practice of Universal Love The Wheel Publication No. 365/366 (Kandy: Buddhist Pub. Society, 1989)
Aeschylus, Aeschylus: Prometheus Bound (1931 trans. Gilbert Murray, George Allen Unwin, London, 1952.
We have alluded, heretofore, to a substance diffused throughout Infinity: this unique substance is at once Heaven and Earth, that is to say, according to its degrees of polarization, subtile or fixed.
This series of articles is one of H. P. Blavatsky's most brilliant writings, presenting a clear statement of the meaning of true Theosophy in theory and in practice. In this fourth number the author continues, with her own consummate skill, her championin
Like a rich vein of gold that remains long untouched within the rock and then one day is laid bare and mined, so is the personality and work of the seventeenth century mystic, Thomas Traherne. Though of some distinction in his own day, for two and a quart
Man is all symmetry, Full of proportions, one limb to another, And all to all the world besides: Each part may call the farthest, brother: For head with foot hath private amity, And both with moons and tides George Herbert in Man
When Rabelais' hero, Pantagruel, has completed the long and toilsome voyage of discovery that he makes for the benefit of his friend Panurge, the two arrive at last at the shrine of the Divine Bottle, to which they are guided by the illustrious Lantern, e
Probation The process of testing undergone by an aspirant to initiation, who may be simply watched to see how he will meet the temptations and trials of life, or may be caused to encounter certain experiences specially designed to test his powers. The lat
The ancient Egyptians conceived man and kosmos to be dual: firstly, the High God or Divine Mind arose out of the Primeval Waters of space at the beginning of manifestation secondly, the material aspect expressing what is in the Divine Mind must be in a pr
* Strictly speaking, it is only from the time of the Atlantean, brown and yellow giant Races, that one ought to speak of man, since it was the Fourth race only which was the first completely human species, however much larger in size than we are now. In “
The Author the writer, rather feels it necessary to apologise for the long delay which has occurred in the appearance of this work. It has been occasioned by ill-health and the magnitude of the undertaking. Even the two volumes now issued do not complete
Bhaumika PralayaBhaumika Manvantara (Sanskrit) Bhaumika-pralaya manvantara [from bhūmi earth, land from the verbal root bhū to become, grow] The terrestrial or planetary dissolution or manifestation. The bhaumika pralaya is similar to the naimittika prala
As a whole, neither the foregoing nor what follows can be found in full anywhere. It is not taught in any of the six Indian schools of philosophy, for it pertains to their synthesis the seventh, which is the Occult doctrine. It is not traced on any crumbl
The Secret Doctrine has many hundreds of references: authors, editors, compilers, book titles, articles, and names of magazines. It is not always clear where they come from and with what they are connected. A large number are from writers who were well kn
Hades or Aides (Greek from aidesAidoneus the invisible] Son of Kronos and Rhea, brother of Zeus and Poseidon. When the world was shared among the three brothers, Hades obtained the nether regions sometimes equated with Dis, Orcus, and Tartarus. After the
Masonry Operative masonry, the art of building in stone; speculative and emblematic Freemasonry, called such since 1717 when four English Lodges of operative masons established the Grand Lodge of England of Speculative and Emblematic Freemasonry, so calle
The symbology connected with this deity is multiform and complex, as he functions on many levels. Thor’s various names indicate his many aspects as electromagnetic force which he represents in all its spectrum. His “shelf plane) is Thrudvang, his mansion
Triad A group of three, a triple unity, three-in-one, the number three; it represents the limits of ratiocinative thought, for we cannot go beyond the duality of subject and object, and must postulate a unitary essence common to both. A triad stands at th
The Secret Doctrine is not alone in speaking of primeval MEN born simultaneously on the seven divisions of our Globe. In the Divine "Pymander" of Hermes we find the same Seven primeval men evolving from Nature and "Heavenly Man in the collective sense of
This same belief in the pre-existence of a far more spiritual race than the one to which we now belong can be traced back to the earliest traditions of nearly every people. In the ancient Quiche manuscript, published by Brasseur de Bourbourg the Popol Vuh
We believe in no Magic which transcends the scope and capacity of the human mind, nor in "miracle whether divine or diabolical, if such imply a transgression of the laws of nature instituted from all eternity. Nevertheless, we accept the saying of the gif
As to the advance of scientists, their very learning, moreover, is impeded by these two causes their constitutional incapacity to understand the spiritual side of nature, and their dread of public opinion. No one has said a sharper thing against them than
boundless and unconditioned, cannot create, and therefore it seems to us a great error to attribute to him a "creative thought as is commonly done by the interpreters. In every cosmogony this supreme Essence is passive; if boundless, infinite, and uncondi
This Masonic commandment mouth to ear, and the word at low breath is an inheritance from the Tanaim and the old Pagan Mysteries. Its modern use must certainly be due to the indiscretion of some renegade kabalist, though the "word" itself is but a "substit
* So firmly established seems to have been the reputation of the Brahmans and Buddhists for the highest morality, and that since time immemorial, that we find Colonel Henry Yule, in his admirable edition of "Marco Polo giving the following testimony The h
The chaos of the ancients; the Zoroastrian sacred fire, or the Antusbyrum of the Parsees; the Hermes-fire; the Elmes-fire of the ancient Germans; the lightning of Cybele; the burning torch of Apollo; the flame on the altar of Pan; the inextinguishable fir
The historian has described this lake as measuring 450 miles in circumference, and 300 feet in depth. It was fed through artificial channels by the Nile, and made to store a portion of the annual overflow for the irrigation of the country, for many miles
The Lesser Mysteries are a preparation of the neophyte for initiation in the Greater Mysteries through various degrees of purification and discipline combined with training in intellectual and spiritual perception. As indicated in the previous chapter, se
Axiokersos, Pluto or II 362 cave of initiation II 237n cold realm of shades II 774 Hyperborean II 138 Jesus guides souls to II 542 limbo, kama-loka or I 244; II 374n Mercury guides souls to II 364, 542 our globe is Hinduism) II 234 Prometheus sent to II 4
The Stanzas, with the Commentaries thereon, in this Book, the second, are drawn from the same Archaic Records as the Stanzas on Cosmogony in Book I. As far as possible a verbatim translation is given; but some of the Stanzas were too obscure to be underst
This fire is the higher Self, the Spiritual Ego, or that which is eternally reincarnating under the influence of its lower personal Selves, changing with every re-birth, full of Tanha or desire to live. It is a strange law of Nature that, on this plane, t
The history of the evolution of the Satanic myth would not be complete if we omitted to notice the character of the mysterious and Cosmopolitan Enoch, variously called Enos, Hanoch, and finally Enoichion by the Greeks. It is from his Book that the first n
When the Abbe Louis Constant known as Eliphas Levi said in his Histoire de la Magie that the “Sepher Jezirah, the Zohar, and the Apocalypse (of St. John) are the master-pieces of the Occult Sciences he ought, if he wanted to be correct and clear, to have
see: Joseph Edkins, Chinese Buddhism, 1880 The word Ch‘an (in old Chinese, jan and dan originally signifying ‘resign had not the meaning to ‘contemplate now its commonest sense before the Buddhists adopted it to represent the Sanscrit term Dhyana. The wor
There is a book that has come down to us from hoary antiquity. It is The Divine Pymander of Hermes, translated from the Arabic by Dr. Everard (1650) and published anew in 1973 (Secret Doctrine Reference Series, Wizards Bookshelf, San Diego What emerges fr
The ultimate human adventure and the most challenging is, and always has been, the pursuit of truth the discovery of those truths that enable us to deal with the practical, social, philosophical, and scientific challenges that confront us. Clues to such t
We have shown in the Secret Doctrine that everything in this world of effects has three attributes or the triple synthesis of the seven principles. In order to state this more clearly, let us say that everything which exists in the world around us is made