It might be interesting to compare these seven, and the eighth family of “incurables,” with the allegories concerning the seven primitive sons of “Mother, Infinite Space,” or Aditi, and the eighth son rejected by her. Many a strange coincidence may thus be found between “those intermediate links ... named meta-elements” or elementoids, and those whom Occult Science names their Noumenoi, the intelligent Minds and Rulers of those groupings of Monads and Atoms. But this would lead us too far. Let us be content with finding the confession of the fact that:
This deviation from absolute homogeneity should mark the constitution of these molecules or aggregations of matter which we designate elements and will perhaps be clearer if we return in imagination to the earliest dawn of our material universe, and, face to face with the Great Secret, try to consider the processes of elemental evolution.
Thus finally Science, in the person of its highest representatives, in order to make itself clearer to the profane, adopts the phraseology of such old Adepts as Roger Bacon, and returns to the “protyle.” All this is hopeful and suggestive of the “signs of the times.”
Indeed these “signs” are many and multiply daily; but none are more important than those just quoted. For now the chasm between the Occult “superstitious and unscientific” teachings and those of “exact” Science is completely bridged, and one, at least, of the few eminent Chemists of the day is in the realm of the infinite possibilities of Occultism. Every new step he will take will bring him nearer and nearer to that mysterious Centre, from which radiate the innumerable paths that lead down Spirit into Matter, and which transform the Gods and the living Monads into man and sentient Nature.
But we have something more to say on this subject in the following Section.
Section IX. The Coming Force. Its Possibilities And Impossibilities.
Shall we say that Force is “moving Matter,” or “Matter in motion,” and a manifestation of Energy; or that Matter and Force are the phenomenal differentiated aspects of the one primary, undifferentiated Cosmic Substance?
This query is made with regard to that Stanza which treats of Fohat and his “Seven brothers or Sons,” in other words, of the cause and the effects of Cosmic Electricity, the Brothers or Sons of Occult parlance being the seven primary forces of Electricity, whose purely phenomenal, and hence grossest, effects are alone cognizable by Physicists on the cosmic and especially on the terrestrial plane. These include, among other things, Sound, Light, Colour, etc. Now what does Physical Science tell us of these “Forces”? Sound, it says, is a sensation produced by the impact of atmospheric molecules on the tympanum, which, by setting up delicate tremors in the auditory apparatus, thus communicate their vibrations to the brain. Light is the sensation caused by the impact of inconceivably minute vibrations of ether on the retina of the eye.
So, too, say we. But these are simply the effects produced in our atmosphere and its immediate surroundings, all, in fact, which falls within the range of our terrestrial consciousness. Jupiter Pluvius sent his symbol in drops of rain, of water composed, as is believed, of two “elements,” which Chemistry dissociates and recombines. The compound molecules are in its power, but their atoms still elude its grasp. Occultism sees in all these Forces and manifestations a ladder, the lower rungs of which belong to exoteric Physics, and the higher are traced to a living, intelligent, invisible Power, which is, as a rule, the unconcerned, but, exceptionally, the conscious, Cause of the sense-born phenomena designated as this or that natural law.