Theophania and the Options Open to the Adept

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky · Buddhas and Initiates Series · 8 pages

From Blavatsky Collected Writings XIV, under the heading Some Reasons for Secrecy. The definition is exact and is the point of the file: Theophania, from theos, God, and phainesthai, to appear, does not mean merely the appearance of God in man but the actual presence of a god in man — a divine incarnation. Metrodorus of Chios the Pythagorean is quoted for the framework: the holy Triad emanates from the One and is the Tetractys, the gods, daimones and souls are an emanation of the Triad, and heroes and men repeat the hierarchy in themselves.

That last clause is read to mean that man has within himself the seven pale reflections of the seven divine hierarchies, so that his higher Self is in itself only the refracted beam of the direct Ray. Anyone who regards that Ray as an Entity in the ordinary sense is placed among the infidels and atheists Epicurus spoke of, for he fastens on that God the opinions of the multitude — anthropomorphism of the grossest kind. What the adept and the occultist know, in the formula she quotes, is that what are styled the Gods are only the first principles; and yet, she is careful to add, they are none the less intelligent, conscious and living principles, the Primary Seven Lights manifested from the unmanifested.

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