Karma, Nemesis, Adrasteia, Themis

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky · Confusing Words Series · 8 pages

Karma is defined first, and defined narrowly: no more than the spiritual effect of causes produced and forces awakened by our own actions, under a law of occult dynamics by which a given amount of energy expended on the spiritual or astral plane produces far greater results than the same amount on the physical plane. The point the file presses hardest is that this law — conscious or unconscious — predestines nothing and no one. It exists from and in eternity, being eternity itself; and since no act can be co-equal with eternity, it cannot be said to act at all, for it is Action itself. Indissolubly connected with it is rebirth, the reincarnation of the same spiritual individuality through an almost interminable series of personalities.

The Greek comparison is then made carefully rather than loosely. With the early Greeks Nemesis was no goddess but a moral feeling, the barrier to evil and immorality, which only with time was deified into an ever-fatal and punishing figure. If Karma is to be connected with her at all it must be in her triple character: Themis as the goddess of universal order and harmony, commissioned to repress every excess and keep man within the limits of nature under severe penalty; Adrasteia, the inevitable, representing Nemesis as the immutable effect of causes created by man himself; and Nemesis proper, daughter of Dike, the equitable goddess who reserves her wrath for those maddened with pride, egoism and impiety. The conclusion keeps the categories apart: Nemesis is a mythological and exoteric power, personified and anthropomorphised, while Karma is a philosophical truth.

Read the full text (PDF, 0.5 MB, 8 pages)