Humility Is No Virtue: Four Keys to Its Meaning

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, James Ralston Skinner · Buddhas and Initiates Series · 18 pages

With the Pythagoreans humility was no virtue, though in modern times it is counted the greatest of them — that contrast is the file's starting point. Three ordinary senses of the word are separated first, since humility is described here as more chameleon than peacock: humility as worship, humility as hypocrisy, and humility as flattery, the last covering both stooping to conquer and kneeling to rise.

The higher meaning is taken to be astronomical and occult, and is opened with four keys. The first is the humiliation of the Spirit of Light descending into the darkness of matter, treated as a kosmic and karmic necessity. The second is the wordplay of Chrēstos in Scorpio, humiliation, against Christos in Leo, triumph. The third is the astronomical fall and rise of the Sons of Light, including the symbol of the lowering of the Sun into matter and how the Initiate and the profane each read it. The fourth sets out three syzygies, beginning with the two Messiahs: one the Sun shorn of his rays going down into the pit, the other Spirit triumphant rising to the summit heaven. Material from James Ralston Skinner is used alongside Blavatsky's.

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