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II
634 '^^^ SECRET DOCTRINE.
Light is the great Protean magician, and under the divine Will of the Architect*
[or rather the Architects, the "Builders," called 07te collectively], its multifariouG;,
omnipotent waves gave birth to every form as well as to every living being.
From
its swelling electric bosom, spring Matter and Spirit. Within its beams lie the
beginnings of all physical and chemical action, and of all cosmic and spiritual
phenomena; it vitalizes and disorganizes; it gives life and produces death, and from
its Primordial Point gradually emerged into existence the myriads of worlds, visible
and invisible celestial bodies. It was at the ray of this First Mother, one in three,
that "God," according to Plato, "lighted a Fire which we now call the Sun,"t and
which is not the cause of either light or heat, but merely the focus, or, as we might
say, the lens, by which the Rays of the Primordial Light become materialized, are
concentrated upon our Solar System, and produce all the correlations of forces. J
This is the Ether, as just explained in the views of Metcalfe, repeated
by Dr. Richardson, save for the submission of the former to some
details of the modern undulatory theory. We do not say that we deny
the theory; we assert only that it needs completion and rearrangement.
But the Occultists are by no means the only heretics in this respect;
for Mr. Robert Hunt, F.R.S. finds that:
The undulatory theory does not account for the results of his experiments. § Sir
David Brewster, in his Treatise on Optics, showing "that the colours of vegetable
life arise .... from a specific attraction which the particles of these bodies
exercise over the diiferently-coloured rays of light," and that "it is by the light
the sun that the coloured juices of plants are elaborated, that the colours of bodies
are changed, etc.," remarks that it is not easy to allow "that such effects can be
produced by the mere vibration of an ethereal medium." And he \s forced, he says,
"by this class of facts, to reason as if light was material' [.]. Professor Josiah P.
Cooke, of Harvard University, says that he "cannot agree .... with those
who regard the wave-theory of light as an established principle of science." {[
Herschell's doctrine, that the intensity of light, in effect of each undulation, "is
inversely as the square of the distance from the luminous body," if correct,
damages a good deal, if it does not kill, the undulatory theory. That he is right,
was proved repeatedly by experiments with photometers; and though it begins to^
be much doubted, the undulatory theory is still alive.H
To this remark of Sir David Brewster— "forced to reason as if light
was material"—there is a good deal to repl)\ Ivight, in one sense, is
of
• I have often been taken to task for using expressions in Isis denoting belief in a personal and
anthropomorphic God. This is not n\y idea. Kabalistically speaking-, the "Architect" is the generic
name for the Sephiroth, the Builders of the Universe, as the "Universal Mind" represents the collectivity
of the Dhyan Chohanic Minds.
+ TimcEus.
X I. 258.
Researches on Light in its Chemical Relations
Modern Chemistry.
'I Isis Unveiled, I. 157.