Aether and Ether: Spirit of Cosmic Matter, Soul of Matter

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky · Confusing Words Series · 44 pages

At 44 pages the fullest treatment in this series, and the distinction it draws is not a matter of spelling. Æther is the Fire, the all-vivifying spirit of cosmic matter and the father of the universe; Ether is the soul of matter and the light of that fire — and in modern physics merely one of Æther's subdivisions on our own plane. In the cosmology set out here there are three higher principles in Kosmos: Chthonia or Chaos, Æther or Zeus, and Chronos or Time; Æther is represented by Zeus, Osiris and the other androgynous deities, and the Astral Light is their shadow on earth.

The key identification is that the Æther of the Greeks is the Akasha of the Hindus. Æther and Chaos — Plato's Mind and Matter — are given as the two primeval and eternal principles of the universe, utterly independent of anything else: Æther the all-vivifying intellectual principle, Chaos a shapeless liquid principle without form or sense, and from their union sprang the first androgynous deity, chaotic matter becoming its body and Æther its soul. Along the way the file separates Æther from Hemera as the light of the superior and of the inferior regions, and distinguishes the two Kosmic Fires that occult teaching keeps apart. It opens with a quick overview of terms and a section putting Æther and Ether side by side.

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