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—
THE SOUL OF THE WORI,D. 367
is a compound of Intellect and ^Matter, the Microcosm of the Macrocosm, or Great
Universe.*
"Nature abhors Vacuum" said the Peripatetics, who though Materialists
in their way, comprehended perhaps why Democritus, with his
instructor Leucippus, taught that the first principles of all things contained
in the Universe were Atoms and a Vacuum. The latter means
simply latent Force or Deity, which, before its first manifestation
when it became Will, communicating the first impulse to these Atoms
—was the great Nothingness, Ain Suph, or No-Thing; and, therefore,
to every sense, a Void, or Chaos.
This Chaos, however, became the "Soul of the World," according to
Plato and the Pythagoreans. According to Hindu teaching. Deity, in
the shape of ^ther or Akasha, pervades all things. It was called,
therefore, by the Theurgists the "Living Fire," the "Spirit of Light,"
and sometimes " Magnes." According to Plato, the highest Deity
itself built the Universe in the geometrical form of the dodecahedron,
and its
"First-Begotten" was bom of Chaos and Primordial Light
the Central Sun. This First-Born, however, was only the aggregate
of the Host of the Builders, the first Constructive Forces, who are
called in ancient Cosmogonies, the Ancients, born of the Deep or
Chaos, and the First Point. He is the Tetragrammaton, so-called,
at the head of the Seven lower Sephiroth. This was also the belief
of the Chaldeans. Philo, the Jew, speaking very flippantly of the
first instructors of his ancestors, writes as follows:
These Chaldeans were of opinion that the Kosnios, among tlie things that exist [.],
is a single Point, either being itself God [Theos] or that in it is God, comprehending
the Soul of all things.t
Chaos, Theos, Kosmos are but the three symbols of their synthesis
Space. One can never hope to solve the mystery of this Tetraktys, by
holding to the dead-letter even of the old philosophies as now extant.
But even in these, Chaos, Theos, Kosmos and Space are identified in
all Eternity, as the One Unknown Space, the last word on which will
never, perhaps, be known, before our Seventh Round. Nevertheless,
the allegories and metaphysical symbols about the primeval and perfect
Cube, are remarkable, even in the exoteric Ptira^ias.
There, also, Brahmt is Theos, evolving out of Chaos, or the Great
Deep, the Waters, over which Spirit or Space—the Spirit moving over
the face of the future boundless Kosmos—is silently hovering, in the
• Jsis Unveiled, I. 341. + "Migration of Abraham," 32.