Proposition 1: Blavatsky on the Cross and Fire

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky · Secret Doctrine's First Proposition Series · 37 pages

Thirty-seven pages with a contents page of key concepts at the front, each entry carrying its page number. Much of it is cast *as questions with answers* — what relation the sun, the highest form of fire we can recognise, stands in to fire as it has been explained; whether fire may be regarded as the first element — which makes it easier to follow than a continuous essay would be.

The opening position is that Cosmic Fire is Deity in its universality, that Hermetic Fire is the Spirit of Truth, and that Cross and Fire are one and the same thing. From there the file works through the emblems: the crux ansata as the true cross, with Arani and Pramantha — the fire-drill and its socket — as its symbols, and the swastika as fire crucified, the three made four. Pythagoras is invoked repeatedly for the rule that the figure two is useless, the One becoming Three when it manifests. When the circle is squared the Heavenly Man appears, and the file reproduces the diagram of the Pythagorean world as root of illusion at that point. The observation that every circle is an expansion of consciousness, because Deity always moves in circles, leads to the circle of the sun as the Omphalos that lights the initiate's heart. The longest stretch is a catalogue of the swastika's symbolism, taken part by part — the central point, the circle as handle or head of the cross, the horizontal diameter, the perpendicular diameter, the two opposing forces, the dynamics, and the bend points or feet — and it is here that the file is most useful as a reference, since each element is given its own short entry. The closing sections deal with the paired generative symbols, Arani and Manthani, Yoni and Linga, Cteis and Phallus, and an addendum explains that there are two Aranis, the self-born gods and physical nature.

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