To Light a Thousand Lamps - The Theosophical Society

9
The Christian Message
I
TRUTH IS FOUND IN ALL SACRED writings if we dig deep
enough beneath dogma and ritual to find the rich ore of
esotericism. The Judeo-Christian genesis story was never
intended to be taken literally, any more than were the creation
myths of Tahiti or ancient Persia, China or the Americas.
The oral and written traditions of every people, in
varying metaphor and symbol, point to the awesome moment
in beginningless time when Darkness became Light
and from the deeps of Silence came the sounding of Logos,
the Word, causing gods and stars to sing together for the
sheer joy of being and becoming.
How ‘‘nothingness’’ is able to bring forth a universe with
its hosts of lives of every type and grade is a perennial mystery.
How does zero become one and one beget two, then
three, to produce in turn myriads of living beings, from stars
to humans, animals to atoms? When all is formless and
void, who or what initiates the first quiver of rhythmic
pulsation within the vast expanses of Chaos?
Those versed in the ancient Jewish theosophy of Qabbālāh
repeatedly cite certain passages from the Zohar —
the best known Qabbalistic treatise constituting a running