THE THEOSOPHIC TORCH: by Grace Knoche
O the great benefactor who points the Way! To Triptolemus have all men erected temples and altars, because he gave us food by cultivation; but to him who discovered truth, and brought it to light and communicated it to all—not the truth which shows us how to live but how to live well—who of you has built an altar for this, or a temple, or has dedicated a statue, or who worships God for this?—Epictetus
THE final stitches are taken in the little garment which has stood for the evening's duty. It is folded and laid aside, to fill on the morrow a need as impersonal as the service that need inspired, silent tribute to a system of work so practical and so perfect in its conservation of energy that the world is already clamoring at Lomaland gates to be let into the secret. A pile of loved books—very tiny ones, The Voice of the Silence, the Bhagavad-Gitâ, Patañjali, and the rest—lies beside the sewing-basket, jostling the newspaper, which, because of the temporary need of another, at present has to be given room. But I brush it aside to take up one of the little writings—any one of them, from cover to cover, would hardly make up a newspaper page—thankful that if the frothy and distempered bilge-water of current crime and gossip does have to lie before me, I do not have to drink of it; grateful that even in the present heyday of lower psychological influences I am free to drink what I will, free to pick my associates from among the immortals—if I choose. And so we parry, and give and take, question on my part and answer on his—small wonder that H. P. B. paid tribute to his philosophy and W. Q. J. to his life, this grand old Roman whose company for an hour any one would be proud to have—Epictetus!
O the great benefactor who points the Way!
This, a tribute to the Helpers of Humanity by one who was humbly, yet with the courage of Hercules, trying to fire the mind of his age with the torch-gleam of a true philosophy of life—Theosophy in fact, but adapted to the conditions of his time, a fevered and cruel time, though with gleams of nobility and spiritual splendor here and there.
What a picture comes before one of this brave old Roman Socrates, banished in his last years from Rome by the Emperor Domitian—for the crime of being a philosopher! And then another picture—of the Epictetus as the Rome of Nero knew him, young but never strong, weakly, lame, the abused slave of Nero's profligate secretary; allowed by his owner to study philosophy because it chanced to be the fashion in wealthy Rome to number wise men among one's "possessions" as one numbered cocks and fine horses; Epictetus, a slave, often in chains, tortured at his master's whim—but a Torch-bearer of the Truth!
Although a disciple of Rufus, the great Stoic teacher of the time, Epictetus himself claiming no superiority to his teacher whom he lovingly quotes, the conviction forces itself upon one that the latter bathed in a wider ocean of truth than that of Stoicism as a doctrine. He quotes Socrates, Plato, Diogenes, far more than Zeno; he had no part in the tolerance of many Stoics to the idea of suicide. And we hear him down the ages fulminating against the Academics, the Epicureans, the Skeptics; declaring the Godhood, the Divinity, of man; immortality, the higher law, man's obligation to study human nature in its duality; Karma, the power of the Spiritual Will, the royal road to happiness; and man's obligation to integrity, fidelity, compassion, reverence, gratitude, trust, love, wisdom and a noble use of power. What was he banished for? what is it that he said?
If Caesar should adopt you, no one could endure your arrogance; to know, then, that you are the son of Zeus—will you not be elated?... You are a superior thing; you are a portion separated from the Deity; you have in yourself a certain portion of Him. Why then are you ignorant of your own noble descent? When you are in social intercourse, when you are exercising yourself, when you are engaged in discussion, know you not that you are nourishing a god, that you are exercising a god?
But give me directions, you say. Why should I give you directions? Has not Zeus given you directions? What directions, what kind of orders, did you bring when you came from Him? To keep what is your own; not to desire what is not your own. Fidelity is your own, and integrity, and modesty and virtue; for who can take these things from you? who, excepting yourself, can hinder you from using them? Having such promptings and commands from Zeus, what kind do you still ask from me? Am I more powerful than he, am I more worthy of confidence?
If you would make anything a habit, do it; if you would not make it a habit, do not do it.... So with respect to the soul: when you have been angry you must know that not only has this evil befallen you, but that you have also increased the habit, and in a manner increased the habit thrown fuel on the fire.... For he who has had a fever, and has been relieved from it, is not in the same state that he was before, unless he has been completely cured. Something of the kind happens also in diseases of the soul. Certain traces and blisters are left in it, and unless a man shall completely efface them, when he is again lashed in the same places, the lash will produce not welts but sores.
It is circumstances (difficulties) which show what men are. Therefore, when a difficulty falls upon you, remember that God, like a trainer of wrestlers, has matched you with a rough young man. For what purpose? you may say. Why, that you may become an Olympic conqueror; but it is not accomplished without sweat.... Hercules, when he was being exercised by Eurytheus, never deemed himself wretched; but fulfilled courageously all that was laid upon him. But he who shall cry out and bear it hard when he is being exercised by Zeus, is he worthy to bear the scepter of Diogenes?
The philosopher's school, ye men, is a surgery; you ought not to go out of it with pleasure but with pain, for you are not in sound health when you enter: one has dislocated his shoulder, another has an abscess ... another a headache. And shall I sit and utter to you little thoughts and exclamations, that you may praise me and go away, one with his shoulder in the same condition as when he entered, another with his head still aching, and a third with his fistula or his abscess just as they were? Is it for this that young men quit home and leave their parents and friends, their kinsmen and property, that they may say to you, Wonderful! when you are uttering your exclamations? Did Socrates do this, or Zeno, or Cleanthes?
Diogenes well said to one who asked from him letters of recommendation, "That you are a man he will know as soon as he sees you; and he will know whether you are good or bad if he has, through experience, the skill to distinguish the good and the bad; but if he has not, he would not know though I were to write him ten thousand times." For it is just the same as if a drachma asked to be recommended to a person. If he is skilful in testing silver, he will know you (the drachma) for what you are. We ought then in life to be able to have some such skill as in the case of silver coin, that we may be able to say, like the judge of silver, Bring me any drachma and I will test it.
When Florus was deliberating whether he should go down to Nero's spectacles, and also perform in them, he asked Agrippinus for advice, and Agrippinus said, Go down. But why do you not go down? said Florus; and Agrippinus replied, I do not even deliberate about the matter; for he who has brought himself to calculate the value of external things, is very near to those who have forgotten their own character.
But if I do not take part, I shall have my head struck off. Go then, said Agrippinus, and take part; but I will not. Why? Because you consider yourself to be only one common thread in the tunic; it is then fitting for you to take thought how you shall be like the rest of men. But I wish to be purple, that small part which is bright, and makes all the rest appear graceful and beautiful.
Katherine Tingley said recently in one of her intimate talks on the subject of the individual responsibility of students in being given the opportunity to bring a deeper than the common touch into the production of The Aroma of Athens:
We are just now at a strange point in the cycle and in many ways are linking ourselves with the past.
May not one evidence of this be an easier recognition of the Theosophic Light that has been passed from hand to hand down the ages? Many have been its disguises, many and strange the lamps holding it, often obscured it has been, again nameless—but ever the one Light, the one Flame, shining upon and enlightening all men.
THE PYTHAGOREAN SOLIDS:
by F. J. Dick, M. Inst. C. E., M. Inst. C. E. I.
Students of The Secret Doctrine and of ancient teachings such as those of Pythagoras, the Kabala, and the sacred books of different races and epochs, are often puzzled by the frequent references to Number, and to elementary plane forms like the circle, triangle, and square. It may be surmised that these symbols refer to meta-physical forces of various orders concealed within the "atom" and within nature generally. For nature is built, obviously enough, upon some internal principles of structural harmony. Without discussing the many avenues of thought suggested by a study of the five regular solids, the main features of these forms may be briefly summarized.
In the first place, they may be all considered as generated by Twelve Points on the surface of the Sphere, at equal adjacent distances, or by six diameters of the sphere mutually inclined at angles whose tangent is 2, the number of the octave in music. Joining each of the twelve with every other point, we have 66 lines, of which 36 are internal. Six of the latter being diameters, there remain 30, intersecting at 20 points, which give the 30 edges of the internal dodecahedron. The 30 outer, or external lines of the 66, form the edges of the icosahedron.
Joining one set of alternate corners of the Dodecahedron by 12 lines, a cube appears. So far, there are 33 points defined, including the center of the sphere. Joining opposite corners on each Cube-face by 12 lines, two interlaced tetrahedrons appear. These define, by their intersection, 6 new points and 12 new lines forming the Octahedron, beautifully poised in the heart of the Sphere.
Thus only 39 points, including the central point, are needed to define the Pythagorean solids, only one solid form being repeated, the Tetrahedron, which in fact is seen to repeat itself ten times. For between the interlaced Tetrahedron corners and the eight faces of the included Octahedron, eight smaller Tetrahedrons are seen.
The interlaced Tetrahedrons suggest the origin of the plane symbol—the interlaced triangles; but the full beauty of the symbol does not appear until we notice that the axis of symmetry of the Tetrahedrons coincides with the diagonal of the Cube, and that the orthographic projection of all these on a plane perpendicular to the diagonal gives a perfect hexagon with the interlaced triangles in the center. The interlaced Tetrahedrons—one a reflection of the other—in fact define the eight corners of the Cube. The Tetrahedron is "3," and the Cube is "4" (or 6). So we see one way in which the "three fall into the four," and why it is a septenary, and a decad, as well as a three, or a four, according to the various aspects and interrelations considered of the electric, rotary, magnetic, or vibratory forces symbolized by the various lines.
Science has already reached the speculation that the hypothetical carbon "atom" has a tetrahedronal form. Let us look at this Tetrahedron with the eye opposite the middle of an edge and in line with the center. The two opposite edges now form the Cross, composed of two equal lines, but separated by a space. One is reminded of an electric wire, and a magnetized needle placing itself at right angles to, although at some distance from, the current in the wire. Thus the opposite edges, whether as rotational vectors or in some other way, indicate a connexion with the dual forces of attraction and repulsion. The Tetrahedron, a triangular pyramid, may be a Fire-symbol. In any case the following passage is suggestive:
When the molecules of salt, clustering together, begin to deposit themselves as a solid, the first shape they assume is that of triangles, of small pyramids and cones. It is the figure of fire, whence the word "pyramids"; while the second geometrical figure in manifested nature is a square or a cube, 4 and 6; for, "the particles of earth being cubical, those of fire are pyramidal" truly—(Enfield). The pyramidal shape is that assumed by the pines—the most primitive tree after the fern period. Thus the two opposites in cosmic nature—fire and water, heat and cold—begin their metrographical manifestations, one by a trimetric, the other by a hexagonal system. For the stellate crystals of snow, viewed under a microscope, are all and each of them a double or treble six-pointed star, with a central nucleus, like a miniature star within the larger one. (The Secret Doctrine, II, 594.)
The number Five penetrates the whole system of the Five solids in a remarkable way. Thus there are 24 pentagons visible, and by joining other corners of the Dodecahedron, Five Cubes are seen, which of course produce Five Octahedrons, and twice that number of principal interlaced Tetrahedrons. Five has been said to be the Number of Life.
Confining ourselves to one rectangular system, we find Four axes of symmetry for the Tetrahedrons and Three for Cube and Octahedron. Thus there are really 73 principal lines in the complete system defined by the 39 points. A study of the three principal orthographic projections shows that the circle should be divided into 3, 4, 5, 6, parts, and the products of these, or 360 degrees. Certain angles are found in abundance, such as 36, 60, 72, 90, 108, 144; and their combinations and products by 10 and 12, and their multiples, give figures bearing a strong resemblance to the various cyclic periods of eastern chronology. Periodic orbits are vibrations on a large scale.
Twice the perimeter of an Icosahedron-face divided by the perimeter of a Dodecahedron-face is 3.1416, the value of π used in all ordinary scientific and constructional work.
The actual error is so small that if both were accurately made of copper at the same temperature, the Icosahedron-face would only have to be brought rather more than one degree Fahrenheit below the temperature of the other for the π value to be absolutely correct. Accuracy of this sort is unattainable outside of specially equipped laboratories. So the Pythagorean solids may be said to "square the circle."