The summary of the Stanzas in Volume I showed the genesis[33] of Gods and men taking rise in, and from, one and the same Point, which is the One Universal, Immutable, Eternal, and Absolute Unity. In its primary manifested aspect we have seen it become: (1) in the sphere of objectivity and Physics, Primordial Substance and Force—centripetal and centrifugal, positive and negative, male and female, etc.; (2) in the world of Metaphysics, the Spirit of the Universe, or Cosmic Ideation, called by some the Logos.
This Logos is the apex of the Pythagorean Triangle. When the Triangle is complete it becomes the Tetraktys, or the Triangle in the Square, and is the dual symbol of the four-lettered Tetragrammaton in the manifested Kosmos, and of its radical triple Ray in the unmanifested—its Noumenon.
Put more metaphysically, the classification given here of Cosmic Ultimates, is more one of convenience than of absolute philosophical accuracy. At the commencement of a great Manvantara, Parabrahman manifests as Mûlaprakriti and then as the Logos. This Logos is equivalent to the “Unconscious Universal Mind,” etc., of Western Pantheists. It constitutes the Basis of the subject-side of manifested Being, and is the source of all manifestations of individual consciousness. Mûlaprakriti or Primordial Cosmic Substance, is the foundation of the object-side of things—the basis of all objective evolution and cosmo-genesis. Force, then, does not emerge with Primordial Substance from Parabrahmanic [pg 028] latency. It is the transformation into energy of the supra-conscious thought of the Logos, infused, so to speak, into the objectivation of the latter out of potential latency in the One Reality. Hence spring the wondrous laws of Matter; hence the “primal impress” so vainly discussed by Bishop Temple. Force thus is not synchronous with the first objectivation of Mûlaprakriti. Nevertheless as, apart from it, the latter is absolutely and necessarily inert—a mere abstraction—it is unnecessary to weave too fine a cobweb of subtleties as to the order of succession of the Cosmic Ultimates. Force succeeds Mûlaprakriti; but, minus Force, Mûlaprakriti is for all practical intents and purposes non-existent.[34]
The Heavenly Man or Tetragrammaton, who is the Protogonos, Tikkoun, the Firstborn from the passive Deity and the first manifestation of that Deity's Shadow, is the Universal Form and Idea, which engenders the Manifested Logos, Adam Kadmon, or the four-lettered symbol, in the Kabalah, of the Universe itself, also called the Second Logos. The Second springs from the First and develops the Third Triangle;[35] from the last of which (the lower host of Angels) Men are generated. It is with this third aspect that we shall deal at present.
The reader must bear in mind that there is a great difference between the Logos and the Demiurgos, for one is Spirit and the other is Soul; or as Dr. Wilder has it:
Dianoia and Logos are synonymous, Nous being superior and closely in affinity with Τὸ Ἀγαθὸν, one being the superior apprehending, the other the comprehending—one noëtic and the other phrenic.
Moreover, Man was regarded in several systems as the Third Logos. The Esoteric meaning of the word Logos—Speech or Word, Verbum—is the rendering in objective expression, as in a photograph, of the concealed thought. The Logos is the mirror reflecting Divine Mind, and the Universe is the mirror of the Logos, though the latter is the esse of that Universe. As the Logos reflects all in the Universe of Plerôma, so Man reflects in himself all that he sees and finds in his Universe, the Earth. It is the Three Heads of the Kabalah—“unum intra alterum, et alterum super alterum.”[36] “Every Universe (World or [pg 029] Planet) has its own Logos,” says the Doctrine. The Sun was always called by the Egyptians the “Eye of Osiris,” and was himself the Logos, the First-begotten, or Light made manifest to the world, “which is the Mind and divine Intellect of the Concealed.” It is only by the seven-fold Ray of this Light that we can become cognizant of the Logos through the Demiurge, regarding the latter as the “Creator” of our Planet and everything pertaining to it, and the former as the guiding Force of that “Creator”—good and bad at the same time, the origin of good and the origin of evil. This “Creator” is neither good nor bad per se, but its differentiated aspects in Nature make it assume one or the other character. With the invisible and the unknown Universes disseminated through Space, none of the Sun-Gods had anything to do. The idea is expressed very clearly in the Books of Hermes, and in every ancient folk-lore. It is symbolized generally by the Dragon and the Serpent—the Dragon of Good and the Serpent of Evil, represented on Earth by the right and the left-hand Magic. In the epic poem of Finland, the Kalevala,[37] the origin of the Serpent of Evil is given: it is born from the spittle of Suoyatar, and endowed with a Living Soul by the Principle of Evil, Hisi. A strife is described between the two, the “thing of evil,” the Serpent or Sorcerer, and Ahti, the Dragon of the white magician, Lemminkainen. The latter is one of the seven sons of Ilmatar, the virgin “daughter of the air,” she “who fell from heaven into the sea,” before Creation, i.e., Spirit transformed into the matter of sensuous life. There is a world of meaning and Occult thought in the following few lines, admirably rendered by Dr. J. M. Crawford, of Cincinnati. The hero Lemminkainen,
Hews the wall with might of magic,
Breaks the palisade in pieces,
Hews to atoms seven pickets,