Theosophical Jewels: The Cycle of Life

Philaletheians UK · Constitution of Man Series · 1 page

The third of the Theosophical Jewels plates, and the one whose arrangement most directly illustrates a doctrine. Two strands of beads sweep across the frame in a long double curve — the upper running through green, magenta, orange and amber into clear faceted stones, the lower through violet, jade, opal and white — with a short bright strand of small beads threaded between them across the middle, so that the two curves are joined rather than parallel.

The caption reads: The Cycle of Life, ever moving onward and upward. It belongs with the two Path plates issued alongside it, which give the descending and ascending arcs separately; this one shows them as a single continuous movement, which is the point the section's prose makes when it describes the pilgrimage of consciousness from Light to Darkness and back as one cycle rather than two journeys. Read with Post-mortem wanderings of the wicked soul, where reincarnation is defined as the serial and periodical rebirth of every monad from pralaya to pralaya, the plate is that definition in a picture. The section list offers it both as a PDF and as a JPEG.

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