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    "name": "Volume I — Cosmogenesis"
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    "num": 19,
    "slug": "21-iv-chaos----theos----kosmos-342",
    "title": "IV. CHAOS -- THEOS -- KOSMOS ... 342",
    "of": 48,
    "words": 3673,
    "text": "## IV. CHAOS -- THEOS -- KOSMOS ... 342\n\n\nThe Secret Doctrine by H P Blavatsky, Vol 1, bk 2, ch 4\n\n###### The Secret Doctrine by H. P. Blavatsky -- Vol.\n1\n\n####### [[Vol. 1, Page]] 342 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.\n\n##### § IV.\nCHAOS -- THEOS -- KOSMOS.\n\n**T**HESE three are the containment of Space; or,\nas a learned Kabalist has defined it, \"Space, the all containing\nuncontained, is the primary embodiment of simply Unity. . . .\nboundless extension.\"* But, he asks again, \"boundless\nextension of what?\" -- and makes the correct reply -- \"The*\nunknown container of all*,* the Unknown FIRST CAUSE.*\"*\n*This is a most correct definition and answer, most esoteric\nand true, from every aspect of occult teaching.\n\n*SPACE***,*** *which, in their ignorance and\niconoclastic tendency to destroy every philosophic idea of old,\nthe modern wiseacres have proclaimed \"an abstract idea\"\nand a *void*,* *is, in reality, the container and\n*the body of the Universe *with its seven principles. It\nis a body of limitless extent, whose *PRINCIPLES*,*\n*in Occult phraseology -- each being in its turn a septenary\n-- manifest in our phenomenal world only the grossest fabric of\n*their sub-divisions. *\"No one has ever seen the Elements\nin their fulness,\" the Doctrine teaches. We have to search\nfor our Wisdom in the original expressions of the primeval people\nand in their synonyms. Even the latest of them -- the Jews --\nshow in their Kabalistic teachings this idea, *e.g*., the\nseven-headed Serpent of Space, called \"the great Sea.\"\n\"In the beginning, the *Alhim *created the heavens\nand the earth; the 6 (Sephiroth). . . . They created six, and\non these all things are based. And those (six) depend upon *the\nseven forms of the cranium *up* *to Dignity of all\nDignities (*Siphrah Dzenioota*, i,* *§ 16),\nsee part ii., vol. ii. \"Ancient Divisions and the Mystic\nNumbers.\"\n\nNow *Wind*,* Air and Spirit *have ever been synonymous\nwith every nation. Pneuma (Spirit) and Anemos (the wind) with\nthe Greeks, *Spiritus *and* Ventus *with the Latins,\nwere convertible terms even if dissociated from the original idea\nof the breath of life. In the \"Forces\" of Science we\nsee but the *material effect of the spiritual affect *of\none or the other of the four primordial Elements, transmitted\nto us by the 4th Race, as we shall transmit Ether (or rather the\ngross subdivision of it) in its fulness to the Sixth Root Race.\nThis is explained in the text of this and the following Book.\n\n\"Chaos\" is called *senseless *by the ancients,\nbecause it represented and contained in itself (Chaos and Space\nbeing synonymous) all the Elements in their rudimentary, undifferentiated\nState. They made of Ether, the fifth element, the synthesis of\nthe other four; for the AEther of the Greek philosophers is not\nits dregs -- of which indeed they knew more\n\n####### [[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------\n\n* \"New Aspects of Life,\" by Henry Pratt, **M.D.**\n\n####### [[Vol. 1, Page]] 343 THE UNION OF CHAOS AND SPIRIT.\n\nthan science does now -- which are rightly enough supposed to\nact as an agent for many forces that manifest on Earth. Their\nAEther was the *Akasa *of the Hindus; the Ether accepted\nin physics is but one of its subdivisions, on our plane, -- the\n*Astral Light *of the Kabalists with all its *evil *as\nwell as good effects.\n\nOn account of the Essence of AEther, or the Unseen Space, being\nheld divine as the supposed veil of Deity, it was regarded as\nthe medium between this life and the next one. The ancients considered\nthat when the directing active \"Intelligences\" (the\ngods) retired from any portion of Ether *in our Space*\n--* *the four realms which they superintend -- then that\nparticular place was left in the possession of evil, so called\nby reason of the absence of the *Good *from it.\n\n\"The existence of spirit in the common mediator, the ether,\nis denied by materialism; while theology makes of it a personal\ngod. But the Kabalist holds that both are wrong, saying that in\nether, the elements represent but matter -- the blind cosmic forces\nof nature; while Spirit represents the intelligence which directs\nthem. The Aryan, Hermetic, Orphic, and Pythagorean cosmogonical\ndoctrines, as well as those of Sanchoniathon and Berosus, are\nall based upon one irrefutable formula, viz., that the aether\nand chaos, or, in the Platonic language, mind and matter, were\nthe two primeval and eternal principles of the universe, utterly\nindependent of anything else. The former was the all-vivifying\nintellectual principle; the chaos, a shapeless liquid principle,\nwithout 'form or sense,' from the union of which two sprung into\nexistence the universe, or rather the universal world, the first\nandrogynous deity -- the chaotic matter becoming its body, and\nether its soul. According to the phraseology of a* Fragment\nof Hermias*,* *'chaos, from this union with spirit, obtaining\n*sense*,* *shone with pleasure, and thus was produced\nthe *Protogonos *(the first-born) light.'* This is the universal\ntrinity, based on the metaphysical conceptions of the ancients,\nwho, reasoning by analogy, made of man, who is a compound of intellect\nand matter, the microcosm of the macrocosm, or great universe.\"\n(*Isis Unveiled.*)\n\n\"*Nature abhors Vacuum*\"* *said the Peripatetics,\nwho comprehended perhaps, though materialists in their way, why\nDemocritus, with his instructor Leucippus, taught that the first\nprinciples of all things contained in the Universe were atoms\nand a *vacuum. *The latter means simply *latent *Deity\nor force; which, before its first manifestation when it became\nWILL -- communicating the first impulse to these atoms -- was\nthe great *Nothingness*,* *Ain-Soph, or NO-THING;\nwas, therefore, to every sense, a Void -- or **C**HAOS.\n\nThat Chaos, however, became the \"Soul of the World,\"\naccording to Plato and the Pythagoreans. According to Hindu teaching,\nDeity in the shape of AEther (Akasa) pervades all things; and\nit was called there-\n\n####### [[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------\n\n* Damascius, in the \"Theogony,\" calls it Dis, \"the\ndisposer of all things.\" Cory, \"Ancient Fragments,\"\np. 314.\n\n####### [[Vol. 1, Page]] 344 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.\n\nfore by the theurgists \"the living fire,\" the \"Spirit\nof Light,\" and sometimes *Magnes. *It was the highest\nDeity itself which, according to Plato, built the Universe in\nthe geometrical form of the Dodecahedron; and its \"first\nbegotten\" was born of Chaos and Primordial Light (the Central\nSun). This \"First-Born,\" however, was only the aggregate\nof the Host of the \"Builders,\" the first constructive\nForces, who are called in ancient Cosmogonies the *Ancients\n*(born of the Deep, or Chaos) and the \"First Point.\"\nHe is the Tetragrammaton, so-called, at the head of the Seven\nlower Sephiroth. This was the belief of the Chaldees. \"These\nChaldeans,\" writes Philo, the Jew, speaking very flippantly\nof the first instructors of his ancestors, \"were of opinion\nthat the Kosmos, *among the things that exist *(?)*\n*is a single point, either being itself God (Theos) or that\nin it is God, comprehending the soul of all things.\" (See\nhis \"*Migration of Abraham*,\" 32*.*)\n\nChaos-Theos-Kosmos are but the three aspects of their synthesis\n-- SPACE. One can never hope to solve the mystery of this *Tetraktis\nby *holding to the dead-letter even of the old philosophies,\nas now extant. But, even in these CHAOS-THEOS-KOSMOS = SPACE,\nare identified in all Eternity, as the One Unknown Space, the\nlast word about which will, perhaps, never be known before our\nseventh Round. Nevertheless, the allegories and metaphysical symbols\nabout the primeval and *perfect *CUBE, are remarkable even\nin the exoteric Puranas.\n\nThere, also, Brahma is the *Theos*,* *evolving out\nof *Chaos*,* *or the great \"Deep,\" the\nwaters, over which Spirit = SPACE, personified by *ayana *--\nthe Spirit moving over the face of the future boundless Kosmos\n-- is silently hovering, in the first hour of re-awakening. It\nis also Vishnu, sleeping on Ananta-Sesha, the great Serpent of\nEternity, of which Western theology, ignorant of the Kabala, the\nonly key that opens the secrets of the Bible, has made -- the\nDevil. It is the first *triangle *or the Pythagorean *triad*,*\n*the \"God of the *three *Aspects,\" before\nit is transformed through its perfect quadrature of the infinite\nCircle into the \"four-faced Brahma.\"\n\n\"Of him who is and yet is not, from the not-being, Eternal\nCause, is born the Being-Purusha,\" says Manu, the legislator.\n\nIn* Isis Unveiled*,* *it is said that: --\n\n\"In the Egyptian mythology, Kneph, the Eternal *Unrevealed\n*God, is represented by a snake emblem of Eternity encircling\na water urn, with its head hovering over the waters, which it\nincubates with its breath. In this case the serpent is the Agathodaemon,\nthe good spirit: in its opposite aspect, it is the Kakodaemon\n-- the bad one. In the Scandinavian *Eddas*,* *the honey\ndew, the fruit of the gods and of the creative busy Yggdrasill\n(bees), falls during the hours of night, when the atmosphere is\nimpregnated with humidity; and in the Northern mythologies, as\nthe passive principle of creation, it typifies the\n\n####### [[Vol. 1, Page]] 345 THE BIRTH OF MIND.\n\ncreation of the universe *out of water; *this dew is the\nastral light in one of its combinations, and possesses creative\nas well as destructive properties. In the Chaldean legend of Berosus,\nOannes or Dagon, the man-fish, instructing the people, shows the\ninfant world created out of *water*,* *and all beings\noriginating from this *prima materia. *Moses teaches that\nonly earth and *water *can bring a living soul: and we read\nin the Scriptures that herbs could not grow until the Eternal\ncaused it to *rain *upon earth. In the Mexican *Popol-Vuh*,*\n*man is created out of *mud *or clay (*terre glaise*),*\n*taken from under the water. Brahma creates the great Muni\n(or first man) seated on his lotus, only after having called into\nbeing *spirits *who thus enjoyed over mortals a priority\nof existence, and he creates him out of *water*,* air *and*\nearth. *Alchemists claim that the primordial or pre-Adamic\nearth, when reduced to its first substance, is in its *second\n*stage of transformation like clear water, the first being\nthe *alkahest *proper. This primordial substance is said\nto contain within itself the essence of all that goes to make\nup man; it has not only all the elements of his physical being,\nbut even the \"breath of life\" itself in a latent state,\nready to be awakened. This it derives from the \"incubation\"\nof the \"Spirit of God\" upon the face of the waters --\nCHAOS: in fact, this substance is chaos itself. From this it was\nthat Paracelsus claimed to be able to make his \"homunculi;\"\nand this is why Thales, the great natural philosopher, maintained\nthat *water *was the principle of all things in nature.*\n. . . Job says, in chap. xxvi. 5, that \"dead things are formed\nfrom under the waters, and inhabitants thereof.\" In the original\ntext, instead of \"dead things,\" it is written dead *Rephaim\n*(giants or mighty primitive men), from whom \"Evolution\"\nmay one day trace our present race.\"\n\n\"In the primordial state of the creation,\" says Polier's\n*Mythologie des Indous*,* *\"the rudimental\nuniverse, submerged in water, reposed in the bosom of Vishnu.\nSprung from this chaos and darkness, Brahma, the architect of\nthe world, poised on a lotus-leaf, floated (moved) upon the waters,\nunable to discern anything but water and darkness.\" Perceiving\nsuch a dismal state of things, Brahma soliloquises in consternation:\n\"Who am I? Whence came I?\" Then he hears a voice:**\n\"Direct your thoughts to Bhagavat.\" Brahma, rising from\nhis natatory position, seats himself upon the lotus in an attitude\nof contemplation, and reflects upon the Eternal, who, pleased\nwith this evidence of piety, disperses the primeval darkness and\nopens his understanding. \"After this Brahma issues from the\nuniversal egg (infinite chaos) as *light*,* *for\nhis understanding is now opened, and he sets himself to work:\nhe *moves *on the eternal waters, with the spirit of God\nwithin himself; and in his capacity of *mover *of the waters\nhe is Vishnu, or *Narayana.*\"* *This is\n\n####### [[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------\n\n* With the Greeks, the \"River-gods,\" all of them the\nSons of the primeval ocean (Chaos in its masculine aspect), were\nthe respective ancestors of the Hellenic races. For them the **O**CEAN\nwas the father of the Gods; and thus they had anticipated in this\nconnection the theories of Thales, as rightly observed by Aristotle\n(Metaph. I., 3, 5).\n\n** The \"Spirit,\" or hidden voice of the *Mantras*,*\n*the active manifestation of the latent Force, or occult potency.\n\n####### [[Vol. 1, Page]] 346 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.\n\nexoteric, of course, yet in its main idea as identical as possible\nwith the Egyptian cosmogony, which shows in its opening sentences\nAthtor,* or Mother Night (which represents illimitable darkness),\nas the primeval element which covered the infinite abyss, animated\nby water and the universal spirit of the Eternal, dwelling alone\nin Chaos. Similarly in the Jewish Scriptures, the history of the\ncreation opens with the spirit of God and his creative emanation\n-- another Deity.**\n\nThe Zohar teaches that it is the primordial elements -- the trinity\nof Fire, Air and Water -- the four cardinal points, and all the\nForces of Nature, which form collectively the **V**OICE\nof the **W**ILL *Memrab*,* *or*\n*the \"Word,\" the Logos of the Absolute Silent ALL.\n\"The indivisible point, limitless and unknowable\" spreads\nitself over the endless space, and thus forms a veil (the Mulaprakriti\nof Parabraham) which conceals this Absolute point. (*Vide infra*)*.*\n\nIn the cosmogonies of all the nations it is the \"Architects\"\nsynthesized by Demiurgos (in the Bible the \"Elohim\"),\nwho fashion Kosmos out of Chaos, and who are the collective *Theos*,\n\"male-female,\" Spirit and matter. \"By a series\n(*yom*)* *of foundations (*hasoth*)* *the\nAlhim caused earth and heaven to be\" (Gen. ii., 4). In the\nBible it is first *Alhim*,* *then Jahva-Alhim, and\nfinally Jehovah --after the separation of the sexes in chapter\niv. of Genesis. It is noticeable that nowhere, except in the later,\nthe *last *Cosmogonies of our Fifth race, is the ineffable\nand unutterable **N**AME*** -- the symbol of the\nUnknown Deity, which was used only in the **M**YSTERIES\n-- used in connection with the \"Creation\" of the Universe.\nIt is the \"Movers,\" the \"Runners,\" the *theoi\n*(from* *[[*theein*]], \"to run\"),\nwho do the work of formation, the \"Messengers\" of the\nmanvantaric law, who have now become in Christianity the \"messengers\"\n(malachim); and it seems the same in Hinduism or early Brahmanism.\nFor it is not Brahma who creates in the *Rig Veda*,*\n*but the Prajapati, the \"Lords of Being,\" who are\nthe *Rishis; *the word *Rishi *(according to Professor\nMahadeo Kunte) being connected with the word to move, to lead\non, applied to them in their terrestrial character, when, as Patriarchs,\nthey lead their hosts on the Seven Rivers.\n\nMoreover, the very word \"God\" in the singular, embracing\nall the gods -- or *theos *from *theoi* -- came\nto the \"superior\" civilized nations from a strange source,\none entirely and as pre-eminently *phallic* as the\n\n####### [[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------\n\n* Orthography of the \"Archaic Dictionary.\"\n\n** We do not mean the current or accepted Bible, but the *real*\nJewish one, now explained kabalistically.\n\n*** It is \"unutterable\" for the simple reason that it\nis non-existent. It never was a *name*, nor any *word*\nat all, but an Idea that could not be expressed. A substitute\nwas created for it in the century preceding our era.\n\n####### [[Vol. 1, Page]] 347 THE MYSTIC ELEMENTS.\n\nsincere, open-spoken *lingham *of India. The attempt to\nderive God from the Anglo-Saxon synonym \"good\" is an\nabandoned idea, for in no other language, in all of which the\nterm varies more or less, from the Persian Khoda down to the Latin\n*Deus*,* *has an instance been found of a name of\nGod being derived from the attribute of *Goodness. *To\nthe Latin races it comes from the Aryan *Dyaus *(the Day);\nto the Slavonian, from the Greek Bacchus (*Bagh-bog*);*\n*and to the Saxon races directly from the Hebrew *Yodh\n*or* Jod. *The latter is ,\nthe number-letter 10, male and female, and Jod the phallic *hook:*\n--* *hence the Saxon *Godh*,* *the Germanic\n*Gott*,* *and the English *God. *This symbolic\nterm may be said to represent the Creator of physical \"Humanity,\"\non the *terrestrial *plane; but surely it had nothing to\ndo with the formation or \"Creation\" of Spirit, gods,\nor Kosmos!\n\nChaos-Theos-Kosmos, the triple deity, is *all in all. *Therefore,\nit is said to be male and female, good and evil, positive and\nnegative: the whole series of contrasted qualities. When latent\n(in pralaya) it is incognizable and becomes the *unknowable\nDeity. *It can be known only in its active functions; hence\nas *matter-Force *and* living Spirit*,* *the\ncorrelations and outcome, or the expression, on the visible plane,\nof the ultimate and ever-to-be unknown UNITY.\n\nIn its turn this triple unit is the producer of the four primary\n\"Elements,\"* which are known in our visible terrestrial\nnature as the seven (so far the *five*) Elements, each\ndivisible into forty-nine (or seven times seven) sub-elements,\nwith about seventy of which Chemistry is acquainted. Every Cosmical\nElement such as Fire, Air, Water, Earth, partaking of the qualities\nand defects of their Primaries, are in their nature Good and Evil,\nForce (or Spirit) and Matter, etc., etc.; and each, therefore,\nis at one and the same time Life and Death, Health and Disease,\nAction and Reaction. (*See Section XIV.*,* *\"*The\nFour Elements.*\")* *They are ever and constantly\nforming matter under the never-ceasing impulse of the **O**NE\nElement (the *incognizable*),* *represented in the\nworld of phenomena by 'AEther, or \"the immortal gods who\ngive birth and life to all.\"\n\nIn \"the Philosophical writings of Solomon Ben Yehudah Ibn\nGebirol\" (translated in Mr. Isaac Myer's *Kabbalah*,*\n*just published) it is said on the structure of the Universe,\n\"R. Yehudah began, it is written: -- 'Elohim said: Let there\nbe a firmament in the midst of the waters.' Come, see, at the\ntime that the Holy. . . . created the World, He\n\n####### [[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------\n\n* The Cosmic Tabernacle of Moses, erected by him in the Desert,\nwas *square*,* *representing the four cardinal points\nand the four Elements, as Josephus tells his readers (*Antiq.\n1*,* viii ch.*,* xxii.*)* *It is the\nidea taken from the pyramids in Egypt and in Tyre, where the pyramids\nbecame pillars, the Genii, or Angels have their abodes in the\nfour respective points (See §* xiv.; *\"*The\nFour Elements.*\")\n\n####### [[Vol. 1, Page]] 348 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.\n\ncreated 7 heavens above, 7 earths below, 7 seas, 7 days, 7 rivers,\n7 weeks, 7 years, 7 times, and 7,000 years that the world has\nbeen. The Holy *is the seventh *of all,\" etc. (p.\n415).\n\nThis, besides showing a strange identity with the cosmogony of\nthe Puranas (*e.g*., Vishnu Purana 1st Book), corroborates\nwith regard to number seven, all our teachings as briefly given\nin \"Esoteric Buddhism.\"\n\nThe Hindus have an endless series of allegories to express this\nidea. In the primordial Chaos, before it became developed into\nthe *Seven Oceans *(Sapta Samudra) -- emblematical of the\n*seven gunas *(conditioned qualities) composed of *trigunas\n*(Satwa, Rajas and Tamas, see Puranas) -- lie latent both\n*Amrita* (immortality) and *Visha *(poison, death,\nevil). This allegory is found in the \"Churning of the Ocean\"\nby the gods. *Amrita *is beyond any guna, for it is UNCONDITIONED\n*per se; *yet when fallen into the phenomenal creation\nit got mixed up with **E**VIL, *Chaos*,*\n*with latent *theos *in it, and before *Kosmos *was\nevolved. Hence, one finds Vishnu -- standing here for eternal\nLaw -- periodically calling forth Kosmos into activity -- \"churning\nout of the *primitive *Ocean (boundless Chaos) the *Amrita\n*of Eternity, reserved only for the gods and devas; and he\nhas to employ in the task *Nagas *and* Asuras* --*\n*demons in exoteric Hinduism. The whole allegory is highly\nphilosophical, and we find it repeated in every philosophical\nSystem. Plato, having fully embraced the ideas of Pythagoras --\nwho had brought them from India -- compiled and published them\nin a form more intelligible than the mysterious numerals of the\nGreek Sage. Thus the *Kosmos *is \"the Son\" with\nPlato, having for his father and mother the Divine Thought and\nMatter.*\n\n\"The Egyptians,\" says Dunlap,** \"distinguish between\nan older and younger Horus; the former the *brother *of\nOsiris, the latter the *son *of* *Osiris and Isis.\"\nThe first is the *Idea *of the world remaining in the Demiurgic\nMind, \"born in darkness before the creation of the world.\"\nThe second Horus is this \"Idea\" going forth from the\n*Logos*,* *becoming clothed with matter, and assuming\nan actual existence.***\n\n\"The Mundane God, eternal, boundless, young and old, of winding\nform,\"**** say the *Chaldean oracles.*\n\nThis \"winding form\" is a figure to express the vibratory\nmotion of the Astral Light, with which the ancient priests were\nperfectly well acquainted, though its name was invented by the\nMartinists.\n\nNow Cosmolatry has the finger of scorn pointed at its superstitions\nby modern Science, which ought, however, as advised by a French\n\n####### [[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------\n\n* Plutarch, \"Isis and Osiris,\" I., vi.\n\n** \"Spirit History of Man,\" p. 88.\n\n*** Mover's \"Phoinizer,\" 268.\n\n**** Cory, \"Fragments,\" 240.\n\n####### [[Vol. 1, Page]] 349 THE MANY ARE ONE.\n\nsavant, before laughing at it \"to remodel entirely its own\nsystem of cosmo-pneumatological education.\" *Satis eloquentiae*,*\nsapientiae parvum. *Cosmolatry like Pantheism may be made\nto yield in its ultimate expression the words applied to Vishnu\n. . . . \"He is only the *ideal *Cause of the *Potencies\n*to be created in the work of creation; and from him proceed\nthe potencies to be created, after they have become the real cause.\n*Save that one ideal cause*,* *there is no other\nto which the world can be referred. . . . *Through the potency\nof that cause*,* *every created thing comes by its\nproper nature.\" (*Original Sanskrit Texts*,* Part\niv.*,* pp. *32, 33.)\n\n--------------\n\n[[This page continued in next section]]\n\nNext Section\n\nContents",
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