The Atoms of Science Are the Vibrations of Occultism

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky · Secret Doctrine's First Proposition Series · 17 pages

Seventeen pages of selections from The Secret Doctrine, arranged under an abstract and train of thoughts with each point given its page number. The frontispiece is by Sonia Chivarar. *Of all the files in this section it is the one that engages most directly with physical science*, and it is the place to start for a reader interested in that side of the argument.

Fohat, the Light of the Logos, is said to shape the atoms out of crude material still invisible to us, and the Great Breath to vibrate and differentiate the first manifested atom. From that beginning the file develops a single idea in several directions: that what science calls atoms, occultism calls vibrations. Sound and rhythm are held to be closely related to the four elements of the ancients, so that the potency of the spoken word awakens their corresponding powers with good or bad results. The question the file puts most sharply is a practical one — how could you make yourself understood by semi-intelligent forces whose means of communication is not through spoken words but through sounds and colours in correlated vibrations? The answer given is by employing sound, light and colour, which those grades of intelligence understand. Light and heat are called ghosts of matter in motion. Natural-born magicians are defined as those whose inner selves are connected by direct descent with the group of Dhyani-Chohans who are the first-born of Ether. A strong claim about the senses follows: no substance possesses any inherent gustatory or olfactory property, taste and odour being mere sensations caused by vibrations and therefore illusory perceptions — the evidence offered being that we taste and smell in dreams and visions. Akasha is identified as primordial substance and the vehicle of Divine Thought, knowledge of which alone can lead to knowledge of the forces of nature. The file ends on its own summary: the waves and undulations of science are produced by atoms propelling their molecules into activity from within, and atoms filling the immensity of space are, by their continuous vibration, eternal motion — cyclic and spiral — which keeps the wheels of life rolling.

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