The Pythagorean World, Root of Illusion

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky · Secret Doctrine's First Proposition Series · 1 page

*A single chart sheet, dated 14 February 2017, drawn after The Secret Doctrine* volume II page 599. It carries its own pointer for readers who want the argument behind it: for an in-depth analysis, consult "Proposition 1 - Diagram Notes", "Light drops one Solitary Ray" and "Tetragrammaton is the Key to Occult Theogony", all held in this same section.

The sheet is portrait and simply arranged. At the top is a yellow triangle lettered along its sloping sides — The Ideal Triangle, The Divine and Formless World of Spirit, The Three Higher Planes of the Septenary Cosmos — with its apex numbered 1 and its lower corners 2 and 3, labelled Three Principles down the left margin. Beneath it stand four tall columns shading from pale violet at the top to pink at the foot, labelled Four Cosmic Vehicles of Form on the left and Pythagorean Double Quaternary on the right, that right-hand label divided into Intelligible above and Sensible below. Each column carries a Greek term at the top and an element at the bottom: Agathon over Fire, Nous over Air, Psyche over Water, and Hyle over Earth. The Philaletheians monogram and a wave of coloured strands sit beneath. Four footnotes fill the lower margin and carry the substance. The first quotes The Secret Doctrine on the union of the three principles depending upon a fourth, the LIFE, which radiates from the summits of the Unreachable to become a universally diffused essence on the manifested planes of existence. The second explains that this lower Tetractys, a quaternary of form, is one and the same as the Tetragrammaton of the Jews, and adds the editor's aside that the real Tetractys is profoundly occult — the Tetractys of the Invisible Monas or First Logos — while the Sacred Tetractys of the Greeks was Nous Demiourgos or Second Logos. The remaining two gloss the Greek terms noēton, the world of Mahat, and aisthēton, a universe ruled by outward-looking senses, and close on the pun the chart is built around: Pythagoras coined the term Cosmos, the Greek word for beautiful — beautiful it may be, yet the Pythagorean World is Maya, the root of every illusion.

Read the full text (PDF, 0.3 MB, 1 page)