Nature Unaided Fails, Like a Roof with No Walls

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky · Secret Doctrine's Third Proposition Series · 5 pages

*Five pages, the shortest file in this batch*, and essentially an editorial note rather than a study — but it is the note that explains why the rest of this section exists, so it is a good place for a reader to start.

It takes as its text Stanza II.7 of The Secret Doctrine, which develops the theme the title states. In that shloka a rich and suggestive image from an ancient book of catechism explains why the Creators of the world were so displeased with the little progress made by our Lunar Forefathers, who were devoid of the sacred spiritual fire — that is, why a humanity produced by nature alone had reached a dead end. The image of a roof with no walls is the one the whole Third Proposition turns on: something had been raised that could not stand by itself. Two consequences are drawn. The first is that the same image, applied inductively, may afford insight into the mystery of the Double Dragon, symbol of the first Duad and cornerstone of the dark material world we live in. The second is the point of the section — that it explains the necessity of the Great Sacrifice, led by the Hierarchy of Compassion, which expands and informs the spiritual fire about itself through the abyss of matter, and so completes the triune unity and purpose of life. A long footnote is worth mentioning for its own sake: it explains, on grammatical grounds, why this library writes monas rather than monad — monadan being the accusative of the Greek monas, so that when the term is used as the subject of a verb it should be transliterated monas, with the same rule applying to duad, triad, heptad, ogdoad, hebdomad and decad.

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