Lines 8-12

8. Where was the Germ, and where was now Darkness? Where is the Spirit of the Flame that burns in thy Lamp, O Lanoo?

The Germ is That, and That is Light, the White Brilliant Son of the Dark Hidden Father..

The answer to the first question, suggested by the second, which is the reply of the teacher to the pupil, contains in a single phrase one of the most essential truths of Occult Philosophy. It indicates

I answer that the existence of imperceptible things are far more important, more real and permanent than perceptible things.

The answer to the first question, is in the second question.

In Sankrit, the Unrevealed Abstract Deity has no name. It is generally called “That” (Tad, in Sanskrit).

The word Hamsa is equal to “A-ham-sa”—three words meaning “I am He”; while divided in still another way it will read “So-ham,” “He [is] I.”

In this single word is contained, for him who understands the language of wisdom, the universal mystery, the doctrine of the identity of man’s essence with god-essence.

Hence the glyph of, and the allegory about, Kâlahansa (or Hamsa), and the name given to Brahman (neuter), later on to the male Brahmâ, of Hamsa-vâhana, “he who uses the Hamsa as his vehicle.”

The same word may be read “Kâlaham-sa,” or “I am I, in the eternity of time,” answering to the Biblical, or rather Zoroastrian, “I am that I am.”

The same doctrine is found in the Kabalah, as witness the following extract from an unpublished MS. by Mr. S. Liddell McGregor Mathers, the learned Kabalist:

The 3 pronouns, הוא, אתה, אני, Hua, Ateh, Ani—He, Thou, I are used to symbolize the ideas of Macroposopus and Microprosopus in the Hebrew Qabalah.

Hua, “He,” is applied to the hidden and concealed Macroprosopus; Ateh, “Thou,”to Microprosopus; and Ani, “I,” to the latter when He is represented as speaking.

Each of these names consists of three letters, of which the letter Aleph א, A, forms the conclusion of the first word Hua, and the commencement of Atah and Ani, as if it were the connecting link between them.

But א is the symbol of the Unity and consequently of the unvarying Idea of the Divine operating through all these. But behind the א in the name Hua are the letters ו and ה, the symbols of the numbers Six and Five, the Male and the Female, the Hexagram and the Pentagram.

The numbers of these three words, Hua, Ateh, Ani, are 12, 406, and 61, which are resumed in the key numbers of 3, 10, and 7, by the Qabalah of the Nine Chambers which is a form of the exegetical rule of Temura.

Materialists and the men of Modern Science will never understand it, since one has to:

1. admit the postulate of a universally diffused, omnipresent, eternal Deity in Nature
2. have fathomed the mystery of electricity in its true essence
3. credit man with being the septenary symbol, on the terrestrial plane, of the One Great Unit, the Logos, which is Itself the seven-vowelled sign, the Breath crystallized into the Word.

One should also:

• believe in the multiple combination of the 7 planets of Occultism and the Kabalah and its 12 zodics.
• attribute to each planet and constellation an influence which is proper to it, good or bad, after the planetary spirit which rules it can influence men and things which are in harmony and affinity with him.

Few believe in the foregoing.

For all exoteric purposes, Hansa, as every Hindû knows, is a fabulous bird which, when (in the allegory) given milk mixed with water for its food, separated the two, drinking the milk and leaving the water.

Thus showing inherent wisdom—milk standing symbolically for spirit, and water for matter.

That this allegory is very ancient and dates from the very earliest archaic period, is shown by the mention, in the Bhâgavata Purâna, of a certain caste named Hamsa or Hansa, which was the “one caste” par excellence; when far back in the mists of a forgotten past there was among the Hindûs only “One Veda, One Deity, One Caste.”

There is also a range in the Himâlayas, described in the old books as being situated north of Mount Meru, called Hamsa, and connected with episodes pertaining to the history of religious mysteries and initiations.

As to Kâlahansa being the supposed Vehicle of Brahmâ-Prajâpati, in the exoteric texts and translations of the Orientalists, it is quite a mistake.

Brahman, the neuter, is called by them Kâla-hansa, and Brahmâ, the male, Hansa-vâhana, because, forsooth, “his vehicle is a swan or goose."

This is a purely exoteric gloss. Esoterically and logically, if Brahman, the infinite, is all that is described by the Orientalists, and, agreeably with the Vedântic texts, is an abstract deity, in no way characterized by the ascription of any human attributes, and at the same time it is maintained that he or it is called Kâlahansa—then how can it ever become the Vâhan of Brahmâ, the manifested finite god?

It is quite the reverse. The “Swan or Goose” (Hansa) is the symbol of the male or temporary deity, Brahmâ, the emanation of the primordial Ray, which is made to serve as a Vâhan or Vehicle for the Divine Ray, which otherwise could not manifest itself in the Universe, being, antiphrastically, itself an emanation of Darkness—for our human intellect, at any rate. It is Brahmâ, then, who is Kâlahansa, and the Ray, Hansa-vâhana.

As to the strange symbol thus chosen, it is equally suggestive; the true mystic significance being the idea of a Universal Matrix, figured by the Primordial Waters of the Deep, or the opening for the reception, and subsequently for the issuing, of that One Ray (the Logos) which contains in itself the other Seven Procreative Rays or Powers (the Logoi or Builders).

Hence the choice by the Rosecroix of the aquatic [pg 109]fowl—whether swan or pelican—with seven young ones, for a symbol, modified and adapted to the religion of every country.

Ain Suph is called the “Fiery Soul of the Pelican” in the Book of Numbers.128 Appearing with every Manvantara as Nârâyana, or Svâyambhuva, the Self-Existent, and penetrating into the Mundane Egg, it emerges from it at the end of the divine incubation as Brahmâ, or Prajâpati, the progenitor of the future Universe, into which he expands.

He is Purusha (Spirit), but he is also Prakriti (Matter). Therefore it is only after separating itself into two halves—Brahmâ-Vâch (the female) and Brahmâ-Virâj (the male)—that the Prajâpati becomes the male Brahmâ.

9. Light is Cold Flame, and Flame is Fire, and Fire produces Heat, which yields Water—the Water of Life in the Great Mother.129

It must be remembered that the words “Light,” “Flame” and “Fire,” have been adopted by the translators from the vocabulary of the old “Fire Philosophers,”130 in order to render more clearly the meaning of the archaic terms and symbols employed in the original. Otherwise they would have remained entirely unintelligible to a European reader. To a student of the Occult, however, the above terms will be sufficiently clear.

All these—“Light,” “Flame,” “Cold,” “Fire,” “Heat,” “Water,” and “Water of Life”—are, on our plane, the progeny, or, as a modern Physicist would say, the correlations of Electricity. Mighty word, and a still mightier symbol! Sacred generator of a no less sacred progeny; of Fire—the creator, the preserver and the destroyer; of [pg 110]Light—the essence of our divine ancestors; of Flame—the soul of things. Electricity, the One Life at the upper rung of Being, and Astral Fluid, the Athanor of the Alchemists, at the lower; God and Devil, Good and Evil.

Now, why is Light called “Cold Flame”? In the order of Cosmic Evolution (as taught by the Occultist), the energy that actuates matter, after its first formation into atoms, is generated on our plane by Cosmic Heat; and before that period Cosmos, in the sense of dissociated matter, was not. The first Primordial Matter, eternal and coëval with Space, “which has neither a beginning nor an end, [is] neither hot nor cold, but is of its own special nature,” says the Commentary. Heat and cold are relative qualities and pertain to the realms of the manifested worlds, which all proceed from the manifested Hyle, which, in its absolutely latent aspect, is referred to as the “Cold Virgin,” and when awakened to life, as the “Mother.” The ancient Western cosmogonic myths state that at first there was only cold mist (the Father) and the prolific slime (the Mother, Ilus or Hyle), from which crept forth the Mundane Snake (Matter).131 Primordial Matter, then, before it emerges from the plane of the never-manifesting, and awakens to the thrill of action under the impulse of Fohat, is but “a cool radiance, colourless, formless, tasteless, and devoid of every quality and aspect.”

Even such are her First-born, the “Four Sons,” who “are One, and become Seven,”—the Entities, by whose qualifications and names the ancient Eastern Occultists called the four of the seven primal “Centres of Force,” or Atoms, that develop later into the great Cosmic “Elements,” now divided into the seventy or so sub-elements, known to Science.

The 4 “Primal Natures” of the first Dhyân Chohans are the so-called Âkâshic, Ethereal, Watery and Fiery.

They answer to the scientific definitions of gases, which may be defined as:

• parahydrogenic
• paraoxygenic
• oxyhydrogenic
• ozonic or nitrozonic

The latter forces, or gases are the most effective and active when energizing on the plane of more grossly differentiated matter.

These elements are both electro-positive and electro-negative. These and many more are probably the missing links of Chemistry. They are known by other names in Alchemy and to Occultists who practise phenomenal powers. It is by combining and recombining, or dissociating, the “Elements” [pg 111]in a certain way, by means of Astral Fire, that the greatest phenomena are produced.

10. Father-Mother spin a Web, whose upper end is fastened to Spirit, the Light of the One Darkness, and the lower one to its shadowy end, Matter;134 and this Web is the Universe spun out of the Two Substances made in One, which is Svabhâvat.

The Mândukya Upanishad writes:

“As a spider throws out and retracts its web, as herbs spring up in the ground … so is the Universe derived from the undecaying one,” Brahmâ, for the “Germ of unknown Darkness,” is the material from which all evolves and develops, “as the web from the spider, as foam from the water,” etc. This is only graphic and true, if the term Brahmâ, the “Creator,” is derived from the root brih, to increase or expand. Brahmâ “expands,” and becomes the Universe woven out of his own substance.

The same idea has been beautifully expressed by Goethe, who says:

Thus at the roaring loom of Time I ply, And weave for God the garment thou see’st Him by.

11. It expands when the Breath of Fire is upon it; It contracts when the Breath of the Mother138 touches it.

Then the Sons dissociate and scatter, to return into their Mother’s Bosom, at the end of the Great Day, and re-become one with her. When it140 is cooling, it becomes radiant.

Its Sons expand and contract through their own Selves and Hearts; they embrace Infinitude.

The expanding of the Universe, under the “Breath of Fire,” is very suggestive in the light of the fire-mist period, of which Modern Science speaks so much, and knows in reality so little.

Great heat breaks up the compound elements and resolves the [pg 112]heavenly bodies into their Primeval One Element, explains the Commentary.

“Once disintegrated into its primal constituent, by getting within the attraction and reach of a focus, or centre of heat [energy], of which many are carried about to and fro in space, a body, whether alive or dead, will be vapourized, and held in the ‘Bosom of the Mother,’ until Fohat, gathering a few of the clusters of Cosmic Matter [nebulæ], will, by giving it an impulse, set it in motion anew, develop the required heat, and then leave it to follow its own new growth.”

The expanding and contracting of the “Web” i.e., the world-stuff, or atoms—express here the pulsatory movement; for it is the regular contraction and expansion of the infinite and shoreless Ocean, of that which we may call the noumenon of Matter, emanated by Svabhâvat, which causes the universal vibration of atoms.

But it is also suggestive of something else. It shows that the ancients were acquainted with that which is now the puzzle of many Scientists and especially of Astronomers—the cause of the first ignition of matter, or world-stuff, the paradox of the heat produced by refrigerative contraction, and other such cosmic riddles—for it points unmistakably to a knowledge by the ancients of such phenomena. “There is heat internal and heat external in every atom,” say the MSS.

Commentaries, to which the writer has had access, “the Breath of the Father [Spirit], and the Breath [or Heat] of the Mother [Matter]”; and they give explanations which show that the modern theory of the extinction of the solar fires, by loss of heat through radiation, is erroneous. The assumption is false even on the Scientists’ own admission.

For, as Professor Newcomb141 points out, “by losing heat a gaseous body contracts, and the heat generated by the contraction exceeds that which it had to lose in order to produce the contraction.” This paradox, that a body gets hotter, as the shrinking produced by its getting colder is greater, has led to long disputes. The surplus of heat, it is argued, is lost by radiation, and to assume that the temperature is not lowered pari passu with a decrease of volume under a constant pressure, is to set at naught the law of Charles.

Contraction develops heat, it is true; but contraction (from cooling) is incapable of developing the whole amount of heat at any time existing in the mass, or even of maintaining a body at a constant temperature, etc. Professor Winchell tries to reconcile the paradox—only a seeming one in fact, as J. Homer Lane proved—by suggesting “something [pg 113]besides heat.”

“May it not be,” he asks, “simply a repulsion among the molecules, which varies according to some law of the distance”?143 But even this will be found irreconcilable, unless this “something besides heat” is ticketed “Causeless Heat,” the “Breath of Fire,” the all-creative Force plus Absolute Intelligence, which Physical Science is not likely to accept.

However it may be, the reading of this Stanza, notwithstanding its archaic phraseology, shows it to be more scientific than even Modern Science.

12. Then Svabhâvat sends Fohat to harden the Atoms. Each144is a part of the Web.145 Reflecting the “Self-Existent Lord,”146like a Mirror, each becomes in turn a World.147

Fohat hardens the Atoms; i.e., by infusing energy into them, he scatters the “Atoms,” or Primordial Matter. “He scatters himself while scattering Matter into Atoms.”

It is through Fohat that the ideas of the Universal Mind are impressed upon Matter. Some faint idea of the nature of Fohat may be gathered from the appellation “Cosmic Electricity,” sometimes applied to it; but, in this case, to the commonly known properties of electricity, must be added others, including intelligence. It is of interest to note that Modern Science has come to the conclusion, that all cerebration and brain-activity are attended by electrical phenomena.