The poor primordial Elements have long been exiled, and our ambitious Physicists run races, to determine who shall add one more to the fledgling brood of the sixty and odd elementary substances.
Meanwhile there rages a war in modern Chemistry about terms. We are denied the right to call these substances “chemical elements,” for these are not “primordial principles of self-existing essences, out of which the universe was fashioned,” according to Plato. Such ideas associated with the word “element” were good enough for the old Greek Philosophy, but Modern Science rejects them; for, as Mr. [pg 361] William Crookes says: “they are unfortunate terms,” and experimental Science will have “nothing to do with any kind of essences except those which it can see, smell, or taste. It leaves others to the metaphysicians....” We must feel grateful even for so much!
This “Primordial Substance” is called by some Chaos. Plato and the Pythagoreans named it the Soul of the World, after it had been impregnated by the Spirit of that which broods over the Primeval Waters, or Chaos. It is by being reflected in it, say the Kabalists, that the brooding Principle “created” the phantasmagoria of a visible, manifested Universe. Chaos before, Ether after this “reflection,” it is still the Deity that pervades Space and all things. It is the invisible, imponderable Spirit of things, and the invisible, but only too tangible, fluid that radiates from the fingers of the healthy magnetizer, for it is Vital Electricity—Life itself. Called in derision, by the Marquis de Mirville, the “Nebulous Almighty,” it is to this day termed by the Theurgists and Occultists the “Living Fire”; and there is not a Hindû who practises at dawn a certain kind of meditation but knows its effects. It is the “Spirit of Light” and Magnes. As truly expressed by an opponent, Magus and Magnes are two branches growing from the same trunk and shooting forth the same resultants. And in this appellation of “Living Fire” we may also discover the meaning of the puzzling sentence in the Zend Avesta: there is “a Fire that gives knowledge of the future, science and amiable speech”; that is to say, which develops an extraordinary eloquence in the sibyl, the sensitive, and even some orators. Writing upon this subject, in Isis Unveiled, we said:
The Chaos of the ancients, the Zoroastrian Sacred Fire, or the Atash-Behram of the Parsîs; 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 Fire in the temple on the Acropolis, and in that of Vesta; the Fire-flame of Pluto's helm; the brilliant Sparks on the caps of the Dioscuri, on the Gorgon's head, the helm of Pallas, and the staff of Mercury; the Egyptian Ptah-Ra; the Grecian Zeus Cataibates (the Descending) of Pausanias; the Pentecostal Fire-tongues; the Burning Bush of Moses; the Pillar of Fire of Exodus, and the Burning Lamp of Abram; the Eternal Fire of the “bottomless pit”; the Delphic oracular vapours; the Sidereal Light of the Rosicrucians; the Âkâsha of the Hindû Adepts; the Astral Light of Éliphas Lévi; the Nerve-Aura and the Fluid of the Magnetists; the Od of Reichenbach; the Psychod and Ectenic Force of Thury; the “Psychic Force” of Sergeant Cox, and the atmospheric magnetism of some Naturalists; galvanism; and finally, electricity—all these are but various names for many different manifestations or effects of the same mysterious, all-pervading Cause, the Greek Archæus.
We now add—it is all this and much more.
This “Fire” is spoken of in all the Hindû Sacred Books, as also in the Kabalistic works. The Zohar explains it as the “White Hidden Fire, in the Risha Havurah,” the White Head, whose Will causes the fiery fluid to flow in 370 currents in every direction of the Universe. It is identical with the “Serpent that runs with 370 leaps” of the Siphrah Dtzenioutha, the Serpent, which, when the “Perfect Man,” the Metatron, is raised, that is to say, when the Divine Man indwells in the animal man, becomes three Spirits, or Âtmâ-Buddhi-Manas, in our Theosophical phraseology.
Spirit, then, or Cosmic Ideation, and Cosmic Substance—one of whose “principles” is Ether—are one, and include the Elements, in the sense St. Paul attaches to them. These Elements are the veiled Synthesis standing for Dhyân Chohans, Devas, Sephiroth, Amshaspends, Archangels, etc. The Ether of Science—the Ilus of Berosus, or the Protyle of Chemistry—constitutes, so to speak, the rude material, relatively, out of which the above-named Builders, following the plan traced out for them eternally in the Divine Thought, fashion the Systems in the Kosmos. They are “myths,” we are told. No more so than Ether and the Atoms, we answer. The two latter are absolute necessities of Physical Science, and the Builders are as absolute a necessity of Metaphysics. We are twitted with the objection: You never saw them. And we ask the Materialists: Have you ever seen Ether, or your Atoms, or, again, your Force? Moreover, one of the greatest Western Evolutionists of our modern day, co-“discoverer” with Darwin, Mr. A. R. Wallace, when discussing the inadequacy of Natural Selection alone accounting for the physical form of Man, admits the guiding action of “higher intelligences” as a “necessary part of the great laws which govern the material Universe.”[498]
These “higher intelligences” are the Dhyân Chohans of the Occultists.
Indeed, there are few myths in any religious system worthy of the name, but have a historical as well as a scientific foundation. “Myths,” justly observes Pococke, “are now proved to be fables, just in proportion as we misunderstand them; truths, in proportion as they were once understood.”
The most distinct and the one prevailing idea, found in all ancient teaching, with reference to Cosmic Evolution and the first “creation” [pg 363] of our Globe with all its products, organic and inorganic—strange word for an Occultist to use!—is that the whole Kosmos has sprung from the Divine Thought. This Thought impregnates Matter, which is co-eternal with the One Reality; and all that lives and breathes evolves from the Emanations of the One Immutable, Parabrahman-Mûlaprakriti, the Eternal One-Root. The former of these, in its aspect of the Central Point turned inward, so to say, into regions quite inaccessible to human intellect, is Absolute Abstraction; whereas, in its aspect as Mûlaprakriti, the Eternal Root of all, it gives one at least some hazy comprehension of the Mystery of Being.