Reading Circle (Blavatsky: The Secret Doctrine, Book I - Part I)

Discussion on literature other than by the Star of Azazel.
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Re: Reading Circle (Blavatsky: The Secret Doctrine)

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Stanza III – Recap / short commentary on the stanza itself

1. The last cycle of pralaya turns towards the first dawn of becoming.

2. As the swelling of the mother comes from within, it ”activates” at once in the whole universe, in each seed of vacuum space, that is the shared laya point everywhere.

3. The darkness radiating light is of course the kind of light we talk about not seen with bare eye, but the inner eye. It penetrates the virgin egg (I’m thinking the virgin egg could be the untouched laya point and the absolute father – the darkness – from which the one ray of light comes from). The egg thrill and dropping non-eternal germ would be the manvantara condensing into a the world-egg’s first cycle. So the egg is a sort of the idea of the mother and the world-egg is a manifestation of it. ”Condensing into the world-egg” also brings back the idea of the big bang first condensing super thight before it ”explodes” out the phenomenal universe.

4. The three fall into the four is propably the darkness (father), the egg (mother) and the one ray (son) falling in to mirroring existence through the consequent powers, or aspects of the son. Thus the radiant essence becomes seven inside, seven outside. The poetic language seems to revolve around the lotus symbol.

5. Although I already talked about mirror nature of the temporal world, there’s still the more obvious kind of oneness here, I guess meaning that the illusion of substance has not yet overcome the essence with its veils. Thinking from a human perspective and being in a creative state, here is still the point where ideas are luminous and sparkling, and the problems of form have not yet managed to veil and shadow the joy of ”being at the fountain”.

6. Again coming to the idea of laya point (”the root of life was in every drop of the ocean of immortality”.) Darkness becomes filled with the body of father-mother – svabhavat –, it’s something a bit like aether this fire-water, I think.

7. This radiant body forming a sort of alive counter-part of the darkness of space (the son and the father) is the second logos (the first being the one ray coming from the darkness to thrill the egg) – the Divine Dragon of Wisdom. Again we go through more specificly how the son creates the septenary. It goes according to the Hieroglyphic Key: the higher triad is flowing through the fourth (prana, as in unchanged – virgin – life force that is the radiancy of the ”Bright space son of dark space”) to the lower triad. Thus the Wisdom of the Divine Dragon is in the whole of the septenary and it’s creative powers. These consequent powers – the hosts and the multitudes – then become the great illusion as the son moves from east to west (coming to the planetary symbolism of the sun representing the son).

8. Now that we are veiled by the illusion, we (the potential Lanoo’s) are asked again to remember the germ and the darkness to recognize the source of the spirit.

9. Continuing from the previous notion, here is traced again the path of the logos and the father-mother polarities to penetrate through the veils.

10. Again, the father-mother is given another angle to look at with the idea of a web spanning from spirit to matter. I’m thinking the web symbolizing the mother matrix (the laya point present in every atom) and the father given ray connecting those ”patch-points” of the matrix.

11. The fatherly (fiery) breath and the breath of the mother expand and contracts the web, like the scientist have been speculating about the expanding of the universe, and possible opposite direction eventually happening. ”The sons expand and contract through their own selves and hearts”, could be interpreted to mean their manvantaric cycles through which they eventually return to their mother’s bosom.

12. And this further manvantaric occurrence happens through Fohat, who sort of give birth to the sons and thus eventually, for example, make the atoms harden i.e. crude matter is crystallized and more notably the complexity of many more layers (we for example observe in the human constitution) become the created world pulsating forth.

Continuing the reading circle, I will try to do this kind of separate commentary on the poems first to have fresh air to come back to, after diving in to the more thick commentary provided by Madam Blavatsky.
"Would to God that all the Lord's people were Prophets”, Numbers 11:29 as echoed by William Blake
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Re: Reading Circle (Blavatsky: The Secret Doctrine)

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Stanza IV – Recap / short commentary on the stanza itself (building up to the 6th stanza we are to read through during these two months).

1. The Sons of the Fire – the four Kumaras – seem to offer us a portal to the all-encompassing interconnectedness of things as a key to the baffling numbers and hierarchies of the divine order. I’m keen to interpret this to reveal the Kumaras to be sort of winged beings, meaning that through their wisdom one can transcend the formally given teaching and thus understand the construct of powers in alive manner, not bound to the earthly logic.

2. The Kumaras are allegedly descending from the Primordial Seven and passes the knowledge forth.

3. From the Son (or the Father-Mother) comes these different powers summing the Divine Man (the third logos?), from which emanates another layer of the septenary powers:
the forms (corresponding to kama manas)
the sparks (corresponding to sthula sharira)
the sacred animals (corresponding to kama rupa)
...and the messengers of the sacred fathers within the holy four (i.e. the higher triad and prana – the four Kumaras)

To conclude, I’m seeing the first logos to be the one coming from the darkness to thrill the egg, the second logos giving birth to the primordial septenary. The third logos actualizes or mirrors the archetypal septenary in a practical level within the Divine Man, thus we have the messengers and animals present in Man, through which we navigate and act within the inner world, using these powers more or less balanced ways.

4. These are called the army of the voice – the divine mother of the seven. The feminine principle means the power(s) and thus it is the army of the voice (the logos). The sparks, that I interpreted to mean the Divine Man’s sthula sharira i.e. aether, are seen subject to the seven, and these ”sparks” asre seen as geometric forms. I might be going a bit far with this, but I think it suggests the power of the aether works in correspondence with the spirits of theurgy i.e. with geometric precision, thus they are ”the modellers”, and this correspondence is to the Oeaohoo – the Radiant Logos...

5. ...who is also the Darkness (from which the first logos came forth).

It seems the three logoi are here gone through again.
I. The number, the one.
II. The numbers, one and nine, i.e. 10 – arupa universe, so are the seven sons given birth by the second logos archetypal, i.e. formless. Note that the number (1) and the numbers correspond to each other in the confusing sequence of the stanza.
III. The third logos seems to be associated with the four Kumaras attribute as the ”formless square”, i.e. their mutual balance or ”order”, which is in their ”transcendent” nature of having wings, as I interpreted earlier.

Enclosed within a circle (the fourth) we come to the idea of the four Kumaras.

6. The second seven is once again the correspondent septenary within the Divine Man, which is apparently produced by the three which corresponds to the group ”builders”. The builder nature in the divine animals and messengers of the Divine Four etc. could be seen in the similarly serving position of their own nature from angels to animals, meaning they don’t have the human freedom to choose against their nature, but rather they are bound to serve. A dog serves its master, a wolf serves its instinct, an angel serves the geometry of its nature.
"Would to God that all the Lord's people were Prophets”, Numbers 11:29 as echoed by William Blake
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Re: Reading Circle (Blavatsky: The Secret Doctrine)

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Terribly late with these, but better late than never. Been reading this over and over again and only now managed to write down something more than blurred hunches. Will come back soon for the second part and trying to catch up with the third part of the stanza soon.

Stanza VI
Secret Doctrine wrote: I. By the power of the Mother of Mercy and Knowledge (a), Kwan-Yin, the “Triple” of Kwan-Shai-Yin, residing in KwanYin-Tien (b), Fohat, the breath of their progeny, the Son of the Sons, having called forth from the lower abyss (chaos) the illusive form of Sien-Tchan (our Universe) and the seven elements:
(a) Blavatsky explains the feminine aspect of divinity and how it is part of the androgynous divinity as ideal of matter i.e. mulaprakriti, ”Light of Logos” and in Fohat it’s feminine aspect. Good to underline the thought that Fohat as the Son of Son is still androgynous.
I was left wondering if Blavatsky hinted here that first, the ideal matter is the Mother of the triple (Mother-Wife-Daugther) in the sense that abstraction of matter (spirit-matter) working from the level of ideal is the one that gives birth. If we are to find the meaning of the Mother of Mercy from this idea, at the moment I only find it in the fact that abstraction of matter would be a liberation from form, similarly as true death is a relief from specified forms that still need to be worked through. I’ve found one of the most helpful visions of the abstract matter (or that’s what I’m assuimg it to represent) in a dream shared in Jung’s Psychology and Alchemy where the dreamer, through the inner alchemical process, worked to a stage where he saw the following (funny enough, I remembered it was a sort of liquid mercury but it seemed to have a forehead, so not as abstract as it could have been), emphasis mine:
Psychology an Alchemy, Chapter 3 II, Dream No. 18 wrote:A square space with complicated ceremonies going on in it, the purpose of which is to transform animals into men. Two snakes, moving in opposite directions, have to be got rid of at once. Some animals are there, e.g., foxes and dogs. The people walk round the square and must let
themselves be bitten in the calf by these animals at each of the four corners. If they run away all is lost. Now the higher animals come on the scene—bulls and ibexes. Four snakes glide into the four corners. Then the congregation files out. Two sacrificial priests carry in a huge reptile and with this they touch the forehead of a shapeless animal lump or lifemass. Out of it there instantly rises a human head, transfigured. A voice proclaims: “These are attempts at being.”
Secondly I wondered if the Light of Logos were suggested to be the Wife as that’s where Fohat ”results from”. Trying to reach to the poetic synthesis of these two expressions, I’m interpreting it is the Knowledge of Logos, the beautiful Venus-Lucifer connecting all ideas in correct ways with its shining. But this idea of binding ideas together actually reminds me of Fohat who is ”the Swift and Radiant one” (swift as in capable of making all those connections of ideas just like that), which I would have suggested here to be only the third one – the Daughter. Anyway, I don’t think this confusion matters that much at this moment because what we are trying to do is understand the feminine aspect of these androgynous deities to understand the deities better and more wholly (this idea of more whole understanding of the deities brought to me the idea of how the often dismissed feminine aspects seems to fade away the borders of divine hierarchies in their theogonies and thus giving a climpse of the divine spheres as one divinity, an idea which could be seen also in the idea of the mother being also the wife), but if anyone have ideas how to sharp the Wife and the Daughter mixing together, they are ofcourse welcome.

(b) Kwan-Yin described as ”Divine Voice” and Kwan-Yin-Tien as the melodious heaven of Sound seems somewhat similar to the idea of Wife aspect in Logos as being melodious is the same idea as what I thought as ”Venus-Lucifer connecting all ideas in correct ways”. This aspect of the Mother of Mercy is relieving by knowledge/understanding, which is ofcourse seamlessly connected to the previously mentioned relief by abstraction through true death (true as in truly relieving from form, and not as an act of secretly binding oneself to form by the lack of will to understand as is often pointed to be the case in suicides).
Vâch, corresponding to Kwan-Yin, is described ”the melodious cow who milked forth sustenance and water,” as Mother-Nature. This is again very Luciferian/manas-like in my interpretation, and the latter part reminded me of Nefastos’ instructions to the Rosary of Azazel where the Virgin Goddess is described something like (I’m paraphrasing) the natures lofty being/entity, which I often see as the divine order and Wisdom of the world wrapped in the folds of mysteries.

Vâch is also described a form of Aditi, the latter of which is described in the Theosophy wiki simply as space. Kwan-Yin-Tien – ”The melodious heaven of Sound” is space for the Logos, I presume. I’m not sure if we can say space of Logos is the same space that expands in the universe, or if there are spaces within each other, i.e. if the heavenly spheres are all in one space. The idea of the Mother and the Wife being one and the same seems to suggest the idea of space remaining unchanged and one and the same base for all spheres. Agni Parthene, a Christian Hymn to the Virgin Mother has this beautiful line ”O bridal chamber of the Word”, which helps me to understand this theme of space in more charged and interesting way, reminding me of the Parable of the Ten Virgins and how I’ve indeed envisioned the virgins expected to walk in to pitch black surroundings, a pure space, with their lamps. As a form of Aditi, Vâch is described to be ”a principle higher than Ether—in Akâsa, the synthesis of all the forces of Nature”. And Ether is, if Blavatsky's usage of the word here aligns with mine, the energetic body of the world and its individuals – the fire i.e. the electricity. So what we might be looking at is a close-up of what Blavatsky wrote above of Fohat ”resulting from this ”Light of the Logos””. Could Ether be seen as the feminine aspect of Fohat?
I’m not sure if Blavatsky is suggesting Kwan-Yin and Vâch to be the one and the same or if we are again looking Kwan-Yin – Vâch – Ether being names for the triple Mother – Wife – Daughter.
"Would to God that all the Lord's people were Prophets”, Numbers 11:29 as echoed by William Blake
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Re: Reading Circle (Blavatsky: The Secret Doctrine)

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Stanza VI
Book of Dzyan wrote:2. The Swift and the Radiant One produces the seven Layu (a) centres, against which none will prevail to the great day
“ Be with us ”—and seats the universe on these eternal foundations, surrounding Sien-Tchan with the Elementary Germs (b).
So the seven Lauy centres are cosmic correspondences of the metaphysical Seven Sons, through which again another correspondence of seven elements allows the differentiation in to the objective world to take place. The meaning of Fohat is again sharpened: within cosmos (the phenomenal objective world) it is the electricity behind all life, the one in the seven elements. And as it has been many times written by Blavatsky, Fohat seems to be also at least in those Lauy centres that seems to be at the border of eternities (”Be with us”). This beyond cosmos idea makes me think the Lauy centres as kind of black holes within every atom. I also wonder if the Lauy centres are the ultimate virgin space as the Mother (-), the feminine side of Fohat, and the one life as objective cosmos the masculine Son (+).
"Would to God that all the Lord's people were Prophets”, Numbers 11:29 as echoed by William Blake
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Re: Reading Circle (Blavatsky: The Secret Doctrine)

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Thank you so much for these summaries! It really brings it all together to see It all like this because I can make a rolling film in my head which helps me remember things. It's almost impossible to do that reading through the first time.
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Re: Reading Circle (Blavatsky: The Secret Doctrine)

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Polyhymnia wrote: Wed Apr 07, 2021 6:39 pm Thank you so much for these summaries! It really brings it all together to see It all like this because I can make a rolling film in my head which helps me remember things. It's almost impossible to do that reading through the first time.
The struggle through the stanzas and the commentaries is indeed easily confusing and I've been trying to bring a sort of half-step to them by making interpretations. The interpretations are also making the text itself smaller, thus the "half-step", and that is why I would also encourage everyone reading this topic to make their own interpretations and not relying too much on takes made by others. I often anguish with the thought that my interpretation sometimes distorts the original meaning.
"Would to God that all the Lord's people were Prophets”, Numbers 11:29 as echoed by William Blake
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Re: Reading Circle (Blavatsky: The Secret Doctrine)

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While outwardly this reading group has been stagnating, I've been reading some second generation Theosophist literature which has proven valuable tool to make another reference point to what Blavatsky have tried to point us towards. While madame B's language can be cumbersome, many of the second generation expressions are easier to understand, but at the same time they make another kinds of veils that endagers the teachings to be exotericized or lost amidst fantastic tales. Both have their pros and cons but studying them both at the same time surely is helpful and can create an image much more whole. I have been doing this by reading and translating Ervast with the purpose of pointing to where in Secret Doctrine these matters are written about. Hopefully I can share this with you later on. Perhaps there are already some worthwhile second generation Theosophist literature in English one can read in preparation to starting or continuing with the Secret Doctrine. Alice Bailey comes to mind as a possibility, although I am not familiar with her work myself and it has been said her writing is quite similar to that of Blavatsky's, so the benefit of different kinds of expressions might not be as wide as I'd hope. Go and see. I'm especially interested reading her Treatise on Cosmic Fire as there's many points in SD where this fire is mentioned.

The Secret Doctrine Index is extremely helpful in such research.
"Would to God that all the Lord's people were Prophets”, Numbers 11:29 as echoed by William Blake
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Re: Reading Circle (Blavatsky: The Secret Doctrine)

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Smaragd wrote: Thu Jan 06, 2022 3:24 pmAlice Bailey comes to mind as a possibility, although I am not familiar with her work myself and it has been said her writing is quite similar to that of Blavatsky's, so the benefit of different kinds of expressions might not be as wide as I'd hope. Go and see. I'm especially interested reading her Treatise on Cosmic Fire as there's many points in SD where this fire is mentioned.

I wouldn't say HPB & AB are similar in style, except that both are verbose and claimed to speak on behalf of the central lodge. ToCF is the one and only Bailey one really needs, and it is very good – in case one can endure the style. Where Blavatsky's style is sometimes difficult because she so utterly lacks focus, Bailey's style is difficult because it is almost always extremely dry and catalogue-like. There are also parts in many of the books where the scribe's (Bailey) Christian dualist mind gives a creepy overtone of simplistic good & evil.
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Re: Reading Circle (Blavatsky: The Secret Doctrine)

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Nefastos wrote: Thu Jan 06, 2022 3:37 pm Bailey's style is difficult because it is almost always extremely dry and catalogue-like.
That's what I was afraid of. While the scribings of the lectures of Ervast are concise and managing to point deep concepts so that almost a child could understand. There's sometimes a kind of storytelling approach as alot of emphasis is given to real life metaphors.
"Would to God that all the Lord's people were Prophets”, Numbers 11:29 as echoed by William Blake
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Re: Reading Circle (Blavatsky: The Secret Doctrine)

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There's been preparations made to take this reading group to its end, and we will continue it visibly on the upcoming New Moon. I just read T. Subba Row's Notes one the Bhagavad Gita (p. 22 of the PDF) which was referred to in Secret Doctrine, and I must recommend it to anyone about to read Secret Doctrine, although it is originally meant to prepare readers with some basic philosophy to understand Bhagavad Gita. The text draws out alot of the vocabulary used by Blavatsky, but in a form that is almost as clear as day, where as Blavatsky seems to write partly about the same things with alot of veiled or syncretistically obscured expressions. Additionally Subba Row's text works as an excellent window to different ways of dividing principles, which sets the philosopher above these divisions rather than crumbled by their form. I hope reading this article will allow reading deeper in to the meanings of Secret Doctrine, infact I am sure it will.

I happened to find the text also in Finnish from my bookshelf, bought from a city library surplus sale about 7 years ago. But I have managed to dodge it all these years because Gita hasn't yet reached the top of my reading list. :roll: Bought it only because I had heard Subba Row's name come up in some Theosophy related sources.
"Would to God that all the Lord's people were Prophets”, Numbers 11:29 as echoed by William Blake
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