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    "num": 30,
    "slug": "32-xv-on-kwan-shi-yin-and-kwan-yin-470",
    "title": "XV. ON KWAN-SHI-YIN AND KWAN-YIN ... 470",
    "of": 48,
    "words": 1594,
    "text": "## XV. ON KWAN-SHI-YIN AND KWAN-YIN ... 470\n\n\nTHe Secret Doctrine by H. P. Blavatsky, Vol 1, bk 2, ch 15\n\n###### The Secret Doctrine by H. P. Blavatsky -- Vol.\n1\n\n####### [[Vol. 1, Page]] 470\n\n[[This page continued from previous section]]\n\n##### § XV.\nON KWAN-SHI-YIN AND KWAN-YIN.\n\n**L**IKE Avalokiteshwara, Kwan-shi-yin has passed\nthrough several transformations, but it is an error to say of\nhim that he is a modern invention of the Northern Buddhists, for\nunder another appellation he has been known from the earliest\ntimes. The Secret Doctrine teaches that \"He who is the first\nto appear at Renovation will be the last to come before Re-absorption\n(pralaya).\" Thus the logoi of all nations, from the Vedic\nVisvakarma of the Mysteries down to the Saviour of the present\ncivilised nations, are the \"Word\" who was \"in the\nbeginning\" (or the reawakening of the energising powers of\nNature) with the One **A**BSOLUTE. Born of Fire and\nWater, before these became distinct elements, **IT **was the\n\"Maker\" (fashioner or modeller) of all things; \"without\nhim was not anything made that was made\"; \"in whom was\nlife, and the life was the light of men\"; and who finally\nmay be called, as he ever has been, the Alpha and the Omega of\nmanifested Nature. \"The great Dragon of Wisdom is born of\nFire and Water, and into Fire and Water will all be re-absorbed\nwith him\" (*Fa-Hwa-King*)*. *As this Bodhisatva\nis said \"to assume any form he pleases\" from the beginning\nof a Manvantara to its end, though his special birthday (memorial\nday) is celebrated according to the Kin-kwang-ming-King (\"Luminous\nSutra of Golden Light\") in the second month on the nineteenth\nday, and that of \"Maitreya Buddha\" in the first month\non the first day, yet the two are one. He will appear as Maitreya\nBuddha, the last of the Avatars and Buddhas, in the seventh Race.\nThis belief and expectation are universal throughout the East.\nOnly it is not in the *Kali yug*,* *our present\nterrifically materialistic age of Darkness, the \"Black Age,\"\nthat a new Saviour of Humanity can ever appear. The Kali yug is\n\n####### [[Vol. 1, Page]] 471 DISEASED IMAGINATION.\n\n\"l'Age d'Or\" (!) only in the *mystic *writings\nof some French pseudo-Occultists. (See \"La Mission des Juifs.\")\n\nHence the ritual in the exoteric worship of this deity was founded\non magic. The Mantras are all taken from special books kept secret\nby the priests, and each is said to work a magical effect; as\nthe reciter or reader produces, by simply chanting them, a secret\ncausation which results in immediate effects. Kwan-Shi-Yin is\nAvalokiteshwara, and both are forms of the seventh Universal Principle;\nwhile in its highest metaphysical character this deity is the\nsynthetic aggregation of all the planetary Spirits, Dhyani Chohans.\nHe is the \"Self-manifested;\" in short, the \"Son\nof the Father.\" Crowned with seven dragons, above his statue\nthere appears the inscription Pu-Tsi-K'iun-ling, \"the universal\nSaviour of all living beings.\"\n\nOf course the name given in the archaic volume of the Stanzas\nis quite different, but Kwan-Yin is a perfect equivalent. In a\ntemple of Pu'to, the sacred island of the Buddhists in China,\nKwan-Shi-Yin is represented floating on a black aquatic bird (*Kala-Hansa*),*\n*and pouring on the heads of mortals the elixir of life, which,\nas it flows, is transformed into one of the chief Dhyani-Buddhas\n-- the Regent of a star called the \"Star of Salvation.\"\nIn his third transformation Kwan-Yin is the informing spirit or\ngenius of Water. In China the Dalai-Lama is believed to be an\nincarnation of Kwan-Shi-Yin, who in his third terrestrial appearance\nwas a Bodhisattva, while the Teshu Lama is an incarnation of Amitabha\nBuddha, or Gautama.\n\nIt may be remarked *en passant *that a writer must indeed\nhave a diseased imagination to discover phallic worship everywhere,\nas do the authors of \"China Revealed\" (McClatchey) and\n\"Phallicism.\" The first discovers \"the old phallic\ngods, represented under two evident symbols -- the Khan or Yang,\nwhich is the *membrum virile*,* *and the Kwan or\nYin, the *pudendum muliebre.*\"* *(See* *\"*Phallicism*,\"*\n*p. 273.) Such a rendering seems the more strange as Kwan-Shi-Yin\n(Avalokiteswara) and Kwan-Yin, besides being now the patron deities\nof the Buddhist ascetics, the Yogis of Thibet, are the gods of\nchastity, and are, in their esoteric meaning, not even that which\nis implied in the rendering of Mr. Rhys Davids' \"Buddhism,\"\n(p. 202): \"The name Avalokiteshwara . . . means 'the Lord\nwho looks down from on high.' \"Nor is Kwan-Shi-Yin \"the\nSpirit of the Buddhas present in the Church,\" but, literally\ninterpreted, it means \"the Lord that is seen,\" and in\none sense, \"the divine SELF perceived by Self\" (the\nhuman) -- the Atman or seventh principle merged in the Universal,\nperceived by, or the object of perception to, Buddhi, the sixth\nprinciple or divine Soul in man. In a still higher sense, Avalokiteshwara\n= Kwan-Shi-Yin, referred to as the seventh Universal principle,\nis the Logos\n\n####### [[Vol. 1, Page]] 472 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.\n\nperceived by the Universal Buddhi -- or Soul, as the synthetic\naggregate of the Dhyani-Buddhas: and is not the \"Spirit of\nBuddha present in the Church,\" but the omnipresent universal\nSpirit manifested in the temple of Kosmos or Nature. This Orientalistic\netymology of Kwan and Yin is on a par with that of \"Yogini,\"\nwhich, we are told by Mr. Hargrave Jennings, \"is a Sanskrit\nword, in the dialects pronounced Yogi or Zogee (!), and is equivalent\nto Sena, and exactly the same as Duti or Duti-Ca' -- *i.e.*,\na sacred prostitute of the temple, worshipped as Yoni or Sakti\"\n(p. 60). \"The books of morality,\" in India, \"direct\na faithful wife to shun the society of Yogini or females who have\nbeen adored as Sakti . . . amongst the votaries of a most licentious\ndescription.\" Nothing should surprise us after this. And\nit is, therefore, with hardly a smile that we find another preposterous\nabsurdity quoted about \"Budh,\" as being a name \"which\nsignifies not only the sun as the source of generation but also\nthe male organ (*Round Towers of Ireland; *quoted by Mr.\nHargrave Jennings in \"*Phallicism*,\"* *p.\n264). Max Muller, in his \"False Analogies,\" says that\n\"the most celebrated Chinese scholar of his time, Abel Remusat,\"\nmaintains \"that the three syllables I Hi Wei (in the fourteenth\nchapter of the *Tao-te-king*)* *were* *meant\nfor Je-ho-vah (*Science of Religion*,* *p*. *332);\nand again, Father Amyot, who \"feels certain that the three\npersons of the Trinity could be recognised\" in the same work.\nAnd if Abel Remusat, why not Hargrave Jennings? Every scholar\nwill recognise the absurdity of ever seeing in Budh, \"the\nenlightened\" and \"the awakened,\" a \"phallic\nsymbol.\"\n\nKwan-shi-yin, then, is \"the Son identical with his Father\"\nmystically, or the Logos -- the word. He is called the \"Dragon\nof Wisdom\" in Stanza III., as all the Logoi of all the ancient\nreligious systems are connected with, and symbolised by, serpents.\nIn old Egypt, the God Nahbkoon, \"he who unites the doubles,\"\n(astral light re-uniting by its dual physiological and spiritual\npotency the divine human to its purely divine Monad, the prototype\n\"in heaven\" or Nature) was represented as a serpent\non human legs, either with or without arms. It was the emblem\nof the resurrection of Nature, as also of Christ with the Ophites,\nand of Jehovah as the brazen serpent healing those who looked\nat him; the serpent being an emblem of Christ with the Templars\nalso, (see the Templar degree in Masonry). The symbol of Knouph\n(Khoum also), or the soul of the world, says Champollion (*Pantheon*,*\ntext* 3),* *\"is represented among other forms\nunder that of a huge serpent on human legs; this reptile, being\nthe emblem of the good genius and the veritable Agathodaemon,\nis sometimes bearded.\" The sacred animal is thus identical\nwith the serpent of the Ophites, and is figured on a great number\nof engraved stones, called Gnostic or Basilidean gems. This serpent\nappears with various heads (human and animal), but its gems\n\n####### [[Vol. 1, Page]] 473 SNOBS, OR DRAGONS?\n\nare always found inscribed with the name [[*CHNOUBIS*]]\n(Chnoubis). This symbol is identical with one which, according\nto Jamblichus and Champollion, was called \"the first of the\ncelestial gods\"; the god Hermes, or Mercury with the Greeks,\nto which god Hermes Trismegistos attributes the invention of,\nand the first initiation of men into, magic; and Mercury is Budh,\nWisdom, Enlightenment, or \"Re-awakening\" into the divine\nScience.\n\nTo close, Kwan-Shi-Yin and Kwan-Yin are the two aspects (male\nand female) of the same principle in Kosmos, Nature and Man, of\ndivine wisdom and intelligence. They are the \"Christos-Sophia\"\nof the mystic Gnostics -- the Logos and its Sakti. In their longing\nfor the expression of some mysteries never to be wholly comprehended\nby the profane, the Ancients, knowing that nothing could be preserved\nin human memory without some outward symbol, have chosen the (to\nus) often ridiculous images of the Kwan-Yins to remind man of\nhis origin and inner nature. To the impartial, however, the Madonnas\nin crinolines and the Christs in white kid gloves must appear\nfar more absurd than the Kwan-Shi-Yin and Kwan-Yin in their dragon\ngarb. The subjective can hardly be expressed by the objective.\nTherefore, since the symbolic formula attempts to characterise\nthat which is above scientific reasoning, and as often far beyond\nour intellects, it must needs go beyond that intellect in some\nshape or other, or else it will fade out from human remembrance.\n\n---------------------\n\nContents",
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