The Aletheia of Occult Science

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky · Mystic Verse and Insights Series · 3 pages

Three pages from Esoteric Section Instruction No. II, in Blavatsky Collected Writings volume XII pages 569-70, under the heading "Deity is Unity and vice versa."

The passage begins by conceding the charge and then refusing it. Esotericism pure and simple speaks of no personal God, and for that reason its students are considered atheists — yet occult philosophy as a whole is said to be based absolutely on the ubiquitous presence of the Absolute Deity, which is not speculated upon because it is at once too sacred and, as a Unit, incomprehensible to the finite intellect, while the entire philosophy rests on its divine powers as the source of all that breathes and lives. The historical argument follows: in every ancient religion the One was demonstrated by the many. Egypt, India, Chaldea, Phoenicia and finally Greece expressed their ideas of Deity by multiples of three, five and seven, and also of eight, nine and twelve great gods, all symbolising the powers and properties of the one and only Deity — an infinite subdivision by irregular and odd numbers to which those nations subjected their one divinity. The cycle of gods so constituted is said to have had all the qualities and attributes of the one supreme and unknowable, since in that collection of personified symbols dwells the God One, illustrated with the Egyptian address to the god Ani, who resides in the agglomeration of his divine personages. The last part identifies the Plērōma of Valentinus with the Space of occult philosophy — Plērōma meaning fullness, the sum total of all divine manifestations and emanations, the totality of rays proceeding from the One and differentiating on all planes into the powers called angels and planetary spirits in every nation's philosophy — with the observation that the Gnostic Aeons speak the same language as the Devas of the Purānas.

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