Proposition 1: The Ineffable Name

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky · Secret Doctrine's First Proposition Series · 54 pages

*Fifty-four pages, the second largest file in this batch*, opened by a full abstract and train of thoughts in which every position is listed with its page number. Its cover title states the claim: the Ineffable Name is the great mystery of creation and salvation.

The starting position is that the Supreme is unknown and unknowable, and the file assembles its witnesses for that across a wide range of traditions rather than arguing from one. St Paul is cited for the Ineffable Name as the wisdom of the initiates, the Epopteia. Being formless, invisible and immaterial, it cannot be perceived through the physical senses; it is called the Holy of Holies, the Unity of Unities, more ineffable than all silence and more occult than all essence; it is Plato's Unspeakable All, the Father whom no person has seen except the Son; it is Pythagoras's Ineffable Name and the key to the mysteries of the Kabbalah; it is the Holy Word that no man knew but he himself. The observation the file makes most of is that even Jesus performs his wonders in his Father's name and not in his own — the Name being the first and greatest mystery and the only Word, so that those who master its power have dominion over the creative powers of nature. The middle section turns the argument round: the Name is ineffable because it is non-existent. It permeates the moon and stars yet is different from them; it never differentiates but only emanates — the mechanism given being that at the beginning of Manvantara the highest Dhyani-Chohans radiate their spiritual and creative ideations, Fohat, which awaken and differentiate Mahattattva, itself the radiation of Mulaprakriti and the noumenon of the world to be. The closing movement is the most quotable. Some, it says, may seek for the Name among the hierophants of Tartary, China and Tibet, but the Word is everywhere, in all and above all; nature animates soul and body and is the footprint and shadow of divinity; so there is no need to travel to distant places to find it, for the Word is very nigh unto thee, in thy mouth and in thy heart. The Dawn of Chaos-Theos-Cosmos drawing is reproduced within the file.

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