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360 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
tialities in it. Then awake anew the Brahmas and Buddhas—the coeternal
Forces—and a new Universe springs into being.
In the Sepher Vetzirah, the Kabalistic Book of Creation,
the author
has evidently repeated the words of Manu. In it, the Divine Substance
is represented as having alone existed from the eternity, boundless
and absolute; and as having emitted from itself the Spirit.* "One
is
the Spirit of the living God, blessed be Its name, which liveth for
ever! Voice, Spirit, and Word, this is the Holy Spirit."t And this is
the Kabalistic abstract Trinity, so unceremoniously anthropomorphized
by the Christian Fathers. From this triple One emanated the whole
Kosmos. First from One emanated number Two, or Air (the Father),
the creative Element; and then number Three, Water (the Mother),
proceeded from Air; Ether or Fire completes the Mystic Four, the
Arbo-al.:j: "When the Concealed of the Concealed w^anted to reveal
Himself, he first made a Point [the Primordial Point, or the first
Sephira, Air, or Holy Ghost,] shaped into a sacred Form, [the Ten
Sephiroth, or the Heavenly Man,] and covered it with a rich and
splendid Garment, that is the \Vorldr%
"He maketh the Wind His messengers, flaming Fire His servants ";||
says the Yetzirah, showing the cosmical character of the later euhemerized
Elements, and that Spirit permeates everj^ atom in Kosmos.
Paul calls the invisible Cosmic Beings the "Elements." But now
the Elements are degraded into, and limited to, atoms of which nothing
is known so far, and which are only "children of necessity," as is Ether
also. As we said in his Unveiled:
The poor primordial Elements have long been exiled, and our ambitious Physicists
run races, to determine who shall add one more to the fledgling brood of the
sixty and odd elementary substances.
Meanwhile there rages a war in modern Chemistry about terms.
are denied the right to call these substances "chemical element's," for
these are not "primordial principles of self-existing essences, out of
which the universe was fashioned," according to Plato. Such ideas
associated with the word "element" were good enough for the old
Greek Philosophy, but Modern Science rejects them; for, as Mr.
» The manifested Spirit: Absolute, Divine Spirit is one with absolute Divine Substance; Parabrahman
and Mulaprakriti are one in essence.
their primal character, are one also.
+ Sepher Yetzirah, Chap. I. Mishna ix.
t Ihid. It is from " Arba" that Abram is derived.
} Zohar, 1. 2 a.
II
Sepher Vetzirah, Mishna ix. 10.
We
Therefore, Cosmic Ideation and Cosmic Substance, in