Emanation and Radiation

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, Thomas Taylor · Confusing Words Series · 8 pages

The real subject is emanation against evolution — opposed in metaphysical meaning, the file says, and yet one with it. Science teaches that evolution is physiologically a mode of generation in which the germ pre-exists in the parent and its final form is accomplished in nature, and that in cosmology the process takes place blindly through the correlation of the elements. Occultism answers that this is only the apparent mode, the real process being emanation, guided by intelligent forces under an immutable law. Hence the formulation that occultists believe thoroughly in evolution as given out by Kapila and Manu, and yet are emanationists rather than evolutionists.

The doctrine of emanation is presented as once universal — taught by the Alexandrian and Indian philosophers, by the Egyptian, Chaldean and Hellenic hierophants, and by the Hebrews in the Kabbala and in Genesis. The philological point at the centre is that the Hebrew asdt was translated "angels" in the Septuagint when it means emanations or aeons, precisely as with the Gnostics; and that in Deuteronomy xxxiii, 2 the same word is rendered "fiery law" when the correct reading is that from his right hand went a fire according to law — the fire of one flame imparted to and caught up by another, as along a trail of inflammable substance. That image, quoted from Isis Unveiled, is what the word emanation is meant to convey, and is what distinguishes it from radiation.

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