Ostara the Goddess of Spring: The Real Story of Easter

“Ostara” by Helena Nelson-Reed

THERE would be no glorious bursting forth of nature at Easter-time without the cyclic journey of the Sun.

The Sun-cycle ushers springtime into the world above the equator, and the ancients regarded this as the reincarnation season of the year.

The celebration of Ēoestre or Ostara is an old pagan festival, and is the origin of the word Easter. She is the goddess who symbolized the dawn, the warm Spring sun, the resurrection of Spirit in Earth, and much more.

“There is a real Easter, a Sun-cycle—the time of Vernal Equinox, on March 21st, which brings spring-time to the world above the equator. The ancients regarded this as the re-incarnation season of the year. In the Northland, the goddess Ostara was worshipped as beautiful Queen of the Spring-time, and from Ostara, our word Easter comes.

“It is said that when Ostara first came to earth, at the very beginning of the world, she wondered what it was that she had been given to do as part of the world’s work. As she wondered, she noticed how dark and cold and dead everything seemed, though she knew, of course, that the Life in all things was only sleeping for awhile till it was time to waken again. Then it suddenly came to her that this was why she was on earth—to wake things up!”

In the legend, when the beautiful Goddess Ēoestre saw all this wonderful work of hers, she said: “Hereafter, every year I will have one day called Easter, after me. That day, all shall celebrate the awakening of Life from its winter sleep.”

Then shall all people be joyous and glad and give each other eggs as gifts, for the Egg shall be my symbol. So it is fitting, for all Life is first within the egg.

“All life in first within the egg.”

“Life laughs in bud and bloom
from out the bough,
‘Tis Easter now.
The Sun his golden journey makes
In circle wide across the sky.
O, Radiance, teach us how
To mirror in our eyes the gleam,
To let shine forth the Light we dream
This Easter now.”

The Eternal Verities,
The Easter Lesson, p. 251

Life Currents in Space: Surprising Secrets about The Sun

Solar Goddess

WINTER in the northern hemisphere marks the annual return of an ancient solar festival.

Indeed, “turnings of the sun” is an old phrase, used by both Hesiod and Homer.

The novelist Alan Furst has one of his characters nicely observe, “the day the sun is said to pause,” recalls the NY Times Op Ed: “Pleasing, that idea…

… as though the universe stopped for a moment to reflect, took a day off from work. One could sense it, time slowing down.”

“The real substance of the concealed (Sun) is a nucleus of Mother substance,” H. P. Blavatsky writes in The Secret Doctrine. It is the heart and the matrix of all the living and existing Forces in our solar universe.

“It is the Kernel from which proceed to spread on their cyclic journeys all the Powers that set in action the atoms in their functional duties, and the focus within which they again meet in their SEVENTH ESSENCE every eleventh year.”

Snow Angels and the Seven Earths

Snow Angels

SNOW angels, as far as we know, are only human-made depressions formed in an area of snow in the shape of an angel.

Snow angel making is a classic and fun winter child’s game — adults too can’t resist.

Nearly everyone living in northern latitudes knows about making “snow angels.” If you don’t, or haven’t, here’s the recipe.

The creation of the snow angel is easy. The first step is to find an undisturbed blanket of snow.

The next step is to lie on your back on the newly fallen snow, spreadeagled. Arms and legs are then swept back and forth, creating the winged shape.

The finished creation should have the appearance of an angel, the movement of the arms having formed wings, and that of the legs having formed the dress.

Snow Angel

The trick is always to launch oneself carefully out of the newly formed impression without disturbing the design.

Then, if possible, take giant steps away minimizing any tell-tale footprints — leaving behind, for passers-by to marvel, a glistening angel dropped magically out of heaven!

Love is Divine Magic: the Heart Rules

Mother and Child

LOVE in its most unselfish form was described by H. P. Blavatsky as the “absence of every ill-feeling, selfishness, charity, goodwill to all beings.”

The alchemy of such enlightened ethics unleashes the power of an un-stoppable universal force.

“The powers and forces of spirit,” Blavatsky declared in her article Practical Occultism, “lend themselves only to the perfectly pure in heart — and this is DIVINE MAGIC.”

Kamadeva, a Sanskrit word, is defined in The Theosophical Glossary as “the first conscious, all-embracing desire for universal good, love, and the first feeling of infinite compassion and mercy for all that lives and feels, needs help and kindness. Only later did kama become the power that gratifies desire on the animal plane.”

“Desire first arose in It, which was the primal germ of mind,” (Secret Doctrine 2:176) — “and which sages, searching with their intellect, discovered to be the bond which connects Entity with Non-Entity.” 

That power arose,” Blavatsky said, “in the consciousness of the creative One Force, as soon as it came into life and being as a ray from the Absolute.” It was also she who, in the article Love with an Object, fervently declared:

Love can exist without form, but no form can exist without Love.

♥

Reincarnation

Devotion arose out of a feeling she wrote, “and became the first and foremost motor in man’s nature — for it is the only one which is natural in our heart, which is innate in us.”

In her first Letter to a Theosophical Convention in 1888, she wrote: “He who teaches Theosophy preaches the gospel of goodwill, and the converse of this is true also — he who preaches the gospel of goodwill, teaches Theosophy.”

A Pagan Christmas and the Real Jesus

Modern Christmas Tree

NEITHER the media nor the churches seem to know anything about the real Jesus, so we decided to enter the fray as self-proclaimed truth-seekers, based upon ancient mystical and mythical teachings and traditions.

An old cover (2009) of Newsweek featured a critical article “The Decline and Fall of Christian America, ” subtitled “The percentage of self-identified Christians has fallen 10 points in the past two decades.”

And “how that statistic explains who we are now—and what, as a nation, we are about to become.”

So popular was the article, that the runner-up news magazine, bloggers noted, was forced to disable comments on the Jon Meacham lead article.

Meachams’s controversial theme, The End of Christian America, received over 5,000 comments at the time, bloggers reported, “making the site wobbly.”

But such is still the power of Christianity and Christmas today, especially in the United States, that no professed Christian will challenge the veracity of its own origins. God only knows what results a similar survey today would yield.

Well, SHE might not know or care, but the PRRI (Public Religion Research Institute) a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization dedicated to conducting independent research at the intersection of religion, culture, and public policy, cares quite a lot.

PRRI

Based on findings from PRRI’s 2016 American Values Atlas, the single largest survey of American religious and denominational identity ever conducted. This landmark report is based on a sample of more than 101,000 Americans from all 50 states White Christians now account for fewer than half of the public.

Today, only 43% of Americans identify as white and Christian, and only 30% as white and Protestant.

Yet as is always the case, the perennial occult Theosophy, re-presented by H. P. Blavatsky, has never agreed with the Christian ideology around Jesus, and its resulting co-opting of special seasons.

Christmas Unwrapped

“A decorated tree is an important part of the American Christmas celebration. Christmas trees, candy canes, even Santa Claus seem like they’ve been around forever. But many of these Christmas traditions are surprisingly recent.”

-Harry Smith, The History Channel

The Descent of the Gods

“You must not think that the gods are without employment,” declared Synesius, the Greek bishop of Ptolemais.

The idea is developed by theosophist W. Q. Judge in his article “Cycles,” featuring the self-chosen duty of the ancient gods to watch over humanity.

“For this providence is divine and most ample, which frequently through one man pays attention to and affects countless multitudes of men.”

“For they descend according to orderly periods of time,” Synesius wrote, “for the purpose of imparting a beneficent impulse in the republics of mankind.”

The descent of the Gods

Describing these descending Gods, Synesius of Cyrene, a Neoplatonist and a bishop wrote: “For there is indeed in the terrestrial abode the sacred tribe of heroes who pay attention to mankind, and who are able to give them assistance even in the smallest concerns.”

Sounds an awful lot like the character of Jesus in Christian tradition. In truth and fact, this tradition relates to certain advance spiritual beings who are real men and women who care for the spiritual survival of humanity.

The Mahatmas

Certain god-like human beings are known in Theosophy as Mahatmas. No better description can be pointed to than that of theosophist W. Q. Judge, in “The Mahatmas as Ideals and Facts,” where he explains the Sanskrit meaning  of the term.

Buddhas

“The whole sweep, meaning, and possibility of evolution are contained in the word Mahatma,” he writes. “Maha is ‘great,’ Atma is ‘soul,’ and both compounded into one mean those great souls who have triumphed before us.”

Not because they are made of different stuff and are of some strange family, but just because they are of the human race.

This is quite a mystical and mysterious tradition for most people today who look to “Churchianity” for their religious traditions and truths.

The Pagan Christ

Tom Harpur, ex-Anglican minister and author of “The Pagan Christ”, discusses his discovery of the pagan origins of Christianity.

Krishna and the Kali-Yuga

In The Bhagavad-Gita, produced some 5000 years ago at the beginning of the Hindu “Kali-Yuga,” the Dark Age, Krishna explains his appearance on Earth to his favorite disciple Arjuna, in the following words:

“I produce myself among creatures, O son of Bharata, whenever there is a decline of virtue and an insurrection of vice and injustice in the world, and thus I incarnate from age to age

…for the preservation of the just, the destruction of the wicked, and the establishment of righteousness.

The Kali-Yuga

The first 5000 years of Kali-Yuga ended around the year 1898, marking a critical cycle for humanity. Anticipating this event, the Theosophical Movement of the modern era was re-established by The Sacred Tribe through their chosen agent H. P. Blavatsky, on November 17, 1875.

The action taken is the same ascribed to Krishna in Bhagavad-Gita:

http://www.theosociety.org/pasadena/gita/bg2.htm

“When Righteousness
Declines, O Bharata! when Wickedness
Is strong, I rise, from age to age, and take
Visible shape, and move a man with men,
Succoring the good and thrusting the evil back,
And setting Virtue on her seat again.”

The Kali-Yuga

“With the onset of Kali Yuga, 3102 BC,” Allan J. Stover writes in The Theosophical Forum, “it was as though a curtain had been dropped before the stage of history, and the death of Krishna occurred. Science has discovered that for several thousands of years previous to this date that

a ‘climatic optimum’ existed during which the world climate was much warmer than at present.

Climate Change

“Soon after the coming of Kali Yuga, all this was changed, and some 4,000 years ago, roughly speaking, the Arctic seas began to refreeze. Since then this cooling trend has advanced and retreated in minor cycles,

each accompanied by the wars and migrations of peoples which we know in history.

And now, when climate warming seems to be inexorably re-establishing itself, due once again to the actions of people. Cycles indeed rule.

 ♣

The Christ-man

See: Did Jesus Exist and Who Is the Christ?

“[The] ‘resurrection’ can never be monopolized by the Christians, but is the spiritual birth-right of every human being endowed with soul and spirit, whatever his religion may be. Such an individual is a Christ-man. “

• H. P. Blavatsky, The Esoteric Character of the Gospels

Solstice Secrets, the Turning of an Electric Sun

Sun Goddess

WINTER in the northern hemisphere marks the annual return of a potent and ancient solar festival.

Indeed, “turnings of the sun” is an old phrase, used by both Hesiod and Homer.

The novelist Alan Furst has one of his characters nicely observe, “the day the sun is said to pause,” recalls contributor Richard Cohen in a  NY Times Op-Ed:

“Pleasing, that idea as though the universe stopped for a moment to reflect, took a day off from work. One could sense it, time slowing down.”

But the cyclic work of the Mother matrix never ceases. “The real substance of the concealed (Sun) is a nucleus of Mother substance,” H. P. Blavatsky wrote in The Secret Doctrine Vol. 1, p. 290:

It is the heart and the matrix of all the living and existing Forces in our solar universe.

“It is the Kernel from which proceed to spread on their cyclic journeys all the Powers that set in action the atoms in their functional duties, and the focus within which they again meet in their SEVENTH ESSENCE every eleventh year.”

The solar cycle or solar magnetic activity cycle is the nearly periodic 11-year change in the Sun‘s activity (Wikipedia)

The Web of Life: A Conscious Universe, Part 1

My Conscious Universe

THE acceptance of new ideas in Science “follows a predictable, four-stage sequence,” says the Institute of Noetic Sciences chief scientist Dr. Dean Radin, PhD.

In an excerpt from Chapter 1 of his landmark work “The Conscious Universe,” Dr. Radin describes the four progressive stages of discovery and acceptance in science.

“In Stage 1 skeptics confidently proclaim that the idea is impossible because it violates the Laws of Science. This stage can last from years to centuries, depending on how much the idea challenges conventional wisdom.

“In Stage 2 skeptics reluctantly concede that the idea is possible, but it is not very interesting and the claimed effects are extremely weak.

“Stage 3 begins when the mainstream realizes that the idea is not only important, but its effects are much stronger and more pervasive than previously imagined.”

“Stage 4 is achieved when the same critics who used to disavow any interest in the idea begin to proclaim that they thought of it first. Eventually, no one remembers that the idea was once considered a dangerous heresy.”

“The Conscious Universe,” Dr. Dean Radin

• Dean Radin, PhD, Chief Scientist at the
  INSTITUTE OF NOETIC SCIENCES (IONS)

The Convergence of
Science and Spirituality

“The possible truths, hazily perceived in the world of abstraction, like those inferred from observation and experiment in the world of matter, are forced upon the profane multitudes, too busy to think for themselves, under the form of Divine revelation and scientific authority.”  – H. P. Blavatsky, What is Truth?

“Truth” by Warner Highsmith, bronze door at main entrance of the Library of Congress.

“Where then is even relative truth to be found? If, so far back as the century of Democritus, she appeared to him under the form of a goddess lying at the very bottom of a well, so deep that it gave but little hope for her release.

“Under the present circumstances we have a certain right to believe her hidden, at least, as far off as the ever invisible dark side of the moon. This is why, perhaps, all the votaries of hidden truths are forthwith Set down as lunatics.” 

– H. P. Blavatsky, “What is Truth?”

The Third Eye

According to 19th century German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, “All truth passes through three stages: First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as self-evident.”

The renegade truth seeking cosmologists David Talbott and Wallace Thornhill,  protagonists of  the Electric Universe idea (The Thunderbolts Project) declare: “There are no isolated islands in an electric universe, from the smallest particle to the largest galactic formation.” They maintain further, agreeable to H. P. Blavatsky’s The Secret Doctrine, thatThe Secret Doc, that

Web of Life

“A web of electrical circuitry connects and unifies all of nature, organizing galaxies, energizing stars, giving birth to planets.”

Talbott and Thornhill assert, controversially, that “this electric web is controlling weather and animating biological organisms.” 

Astronomers like to believe the Sun is no more than a glowing nuclear furnace. That “galaxies are clouds of hydrogen gas and intergalactic dust,” Thunderbolts Project scientist Stephen Smith says in his article The Filamentary Firmament.   That they were all “assembled by gravity until they coalesced into swarms of glowing thermonuclear fires.”

“The Electric Universe theory” disagrees with this standard model, Smith says, and “is opposed to the idea of galaxies condensed from cold, inert hydrogen.”

Plasma Globe

Is The Sun Conscious?

“When a medieval person looked at the sky they looked at a living universe, filled with the presence of God, every star was a living, intelligent being. The mechanistic revolution replaced that with the idea that everything is a machine. 

“What if these electrical patterns in the Sun are an interface with the Sun’s mind? What if the Sun thinks? As soon as you raise that question you realize it is an utterly taboo subject. You’re not allowed to ask that question.  It’s simply off limits.”  – Rupert Sheldrake, PhD

Electric Sun

“When you look into the blue sky on a sunny day do you glimpse a ball of nuclear fire or, as the London poet and mystic, William Blake, reported, the heavenly host singing God’s praises?

“It’s an old question, revived today by the notion of panpsychism which suggests that the sun might in some way be considered conscious.”  

– Rupert Sheldrake, (Is Consciousness Fundamental?)

“Matter, after all, is nothing else than the sequence of our own states of consciousness, and Spirit an idea of psychic intuition.”

– H. P. Blavatsky, (The Secret Doctrine 1:542)

Consciousness is Universal

Plasma is not Gravity

“Strands of magnetically confined plasma can be seen throughout the cosmos,” Smith argues: “In an Electric Universe, every body in the Solar System, along with every star and galaxy, is charged with electricity and exists within a plasma environment.”

Electric Universe

Likewise, The Secret Doctrine establishes an electric universe. And that our Sun,  driven by electricity and magnetism and other mysterious conscious forces,  like all Suns, is the true heart of the solar system.

Radically at odds with modern cosmologists, Blavatsky  also considered gravity a secondary terrestrial law, an effect of the former rather than a cause.

“The law of gravitation has no right
to be referred to as an universal law.” 

“They call Gravity a law, a cause in itself. We call the forces acting under that name effects, and very secondary effects, too. One day it will be found that the scientific hypothesis does not answer after all.”

The Secret Doctrine  (1:490-498)

Plasma in Space

“Today, nothing is more important to the future and credibility of science than liberation from the gravity-driven universe,” say Talbott and Thornhill: “A mistaken supposition has not only prevented intelligent and sincere investigators from seeing what would otherwise be obvious, it has bred indifference to possibilities that could have inspired the sciences for decades.”

The Real Easter: A Goddess and The Christ Sun

THERE would be no glorious bursting forth of nature at Easter-time without the cyclic journey of the Sun. The Sun-cycle ushers springtime into the world above the equator, and the ancients regarded this as the reincarnation season of the year.

Updated and re-posted at:  https://wp.me/pk0BA-aal

God in a Box, a Hundred Versions of It

CHRISTOS is the Greek word from which the term Christ is derived. It is an archaic term that was applied to every Initiate of a certain degree within the Mystery Temples of old.

St. Paul, echoing the Gnostic belief in the saving grace of the indwelling spiritual essence in man, refers to “the Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Colossians 1:27).

The Christos principle is never some thing or person outside or separate from us. Isis-Osiris is the symbolic image of spirit guarding the good and holy mind of humankind.

Every human being is a potential Christ, the unfolding of the Christ-life a major feature of the Gospels, esoterically understood. Christos is called “the WAY,” the glorified Spirit of Truth, and the reunion which makes the soul (the Son) One with the (Father) Spirit. But in truth, gender as we understand it plays no part in this drama of spiritual awakening.

“There is only one religion, though
there are a hundred versions of it.”

 – George Bernard Shaw

Christ is confirmed, by H. P. Blavatsky, as “the divine principle in every human being.” She also wrote in her article The Esoteric Character of the Gospels: “He who strives to resurrect the Spirit crucified in him by his own terrestrial passions, and buried deep in the ‘sepulchre’ of his sinful flesh; he who has the strength to roll back the stone of matter from the door of his own inner sanctuary, he has the risen Christ in him.”

Kristas

As with the Christos, the Father Spirit, God, is never a separate being, but exists everywhere. “Our DEITY is neither in a paradise, nor in a particular tree, building, or mountain,” Blavatsky wrote, “it is everywhere, in every atom of the visible as of the invisible Cosmos — in, over, and around every invisible atom, and divisible molecule:

“…for IT is the mysterious power of evolution and involution, the omnipresent, omnipotent, and even omniscient creative potentiality.”

“The worship of the dead-letter in the Bible,” Mme. Blavatsky wrote in the Key to Theosophy, “is but one more form of idolatry, nothing better. Hence, the Bible is not the ‘Word of God,’ but contains at best the words of fallible men, and imperfect teachers. Yet read esoterically, it does contain, if not the whole truth, still, ‘nothing but the truth,’ under whatever allegorical garb. Only: Quot homines tot sententiœ.”

Fohat: Electric Plasma Currents Pervade Space

FOHAT is a term and concept which appears throughout “The Secret Doctrine” by H.P. Blavatsky – and especially in the first volume titled “Cosmogenesis.” 

What is this mysterious yet vitally important thing called Fohat which happens to be “the key in Occultism which opens and unriddles the multiform symbols and respective allegories in the so-called mythology of every nation”? (Blavatsky Theosophy Group UK)

In recent months, numerous scientific discoveries have confirmed a foundational theory of the electric universe — that is the theory that filamentary networks of electric currents pervade space and are intimately connected to the formation of stars and galaxies.

“There is not one finger’s breath (ANGULA) of void Space in the whole Boundless (Universe),” Blavatsky asserts. This is recently confirmed by today’s electrical universe scientists. (http://www.thunderbolts.info/wp/)

As the space sciences provide greater data across the entire electromagnetic spectrum, the electric universe theory moves close to confirmation. Today, professor Donald Scott discusses several recent discoveries that affirm the electrical connectedness throughout the universe.

Filamentary Networks of Electric Currents Pervade Space  

♥

Evidence of the Electromagnetic Sun – Earth Connection

Don Scott Space News on the electromagnetic Earth/Sun connection

A FEW OCCULT APHORISMS. EXTRACTS FROM A PRIVATE COMMENTARY,  hitherto secret:–

The Secret Doctrine [Vol. 1, Page 289-290]

H. P. Blavatsky

“There is not one finger’s breath (ANGULA) of void Space in the whole Boundless (Universe)… (xx.) Matter or Substance is septenary within our World, as it is so beyond it. Moreover, each of its states or principles is graduated into seven degrees of density. SURYA (the Sun), in its visible reflection, exhibits the first, or lowest state of the seventh, the highest state of the Universal PRESENCE, the pure of the pure, the first manifested Breath of the ever Unmanifested SAT (Be-ness).”

(xxi.) “The real substance of the concealed (Sun) is a nucleus of Mother substance.* It is the heart and the matrix of all the living and existing Forces in our solar universe. It is the Kernel from which proceed to spread on their cyclic journeys all the Powers that set in action the atoms in their functional duties, and the focus within which they again meet in their SEVENTH ESSENCE every eleventh year. He who tells thee he has seen the sun, laugh at him** as if he had said that the sun moves really onward on his diurnal path . .

(xxiii). “It is on account of his septenary nature that the Sun is spoken of by the ancients as one who is driven by seven horses equal to the metres of the Vedas; or, again, that, though he is identified with the SEVEN “Gaina” (classes of being) in his orb, he is distinct from them,*** as he is, indeed; as also that he has SEVEN RAYS, as indeed he has . . . .

(xxv.) “The Seven Beings in the Sun are the Seven Holy Ones, Self-born from the inherent power in the matrix of Mother substance. It is they who send the Seven Principal Forces, called rays, which at the beginning of Pralaya will centre into seven new Suns for the next Manvantara. The energy from which they spring into conscious existence in every Sun, is what some people call Vishnu, which is the Breath of the ABSOLUTENESS.

“We call it the One manifested life — itself a reflection of the Absolute …”

• H. P. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine

Essential Guide to the Electric Universe

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Be Cruelty Free, with a Universal Compassion for Life

THE spiritual sun of consciousness manifests by degrees, not in humans alone, but the  legacy of all kingdoms of nature as befits the plan of their particular hierarchy — from atoms to stars.

Samhain, origin of Halloween, for example, is similar to the Gothic samana, and the Sanskrit sámana — the Hindu God Krishna — all symbols of man’s Higher Diviner Nature.

It is such universal spiritual forces that manifest cyclically during mankind’s darkest times. And the whole of nature, visible and invisible, benefits from such cycles, it is taught in esoteric cycles — wisely appointed beneficent spiritual impulses.

It is no less than in the Bhagavad-Gita (IV:31), where Krishna, the Higher Self of all human beings, assures his disciple Arjuna that he is continually reborn as a a world benefactor.

ζ

It is only selfish Buddhas, the “Pratyekas”, he taught, who remain in the their selfish state of personal Nirvana and refuse to reach out to help others. Corresponding examples of such evil separateness can be found in all walks of life in every culture and clime.

“I produce myself among creatures whenever there is a decline of virtue and an insurrection of vice and injustice in the world,” says Krishna, “and thus  

I incarnate from age to age for the preservation of the just, the destruction of the wicked, and the establishment of righteousness.”

ξ

Our daily sleeping and waking cycles correspond to this universal impulse which daily transports us to our true home. Dreamless sleep is a state “in which even criminals commune through the higher nature with spiritual beings, and enter into the spiritual plane,” wrote W. Q. Judge in Three Planes of Human Life.

Animals have many dream states too, and dreamless states where they commune consciously or unconsciously in varying degrees, depending on the kingdom to which they belong, with the spiritual hierarchies of their particular degree.

“It is the great spiritual reservoir by means of which the tremendous momentum toward evil living is held in check. And because it is involuntary, it is constantly salutary in its effect.”

♥

In an ideal world, perfect harmony and balance between man and nature would be the norm. Thus, the keynote of Mme. Blavatsky’s worldview was the just and moral treatment of all the beings in nature, the First Object of the Theosophical Society, Universal Brotherhood.

This foundational teaching of Theosophy is expressed in The Secret Doctrine, Summing Up #5, which states that “everything in the Universe, throughout all its kingdoms, is conscious,” and

“…endowed with a consciousness of its own kind and on its own plane of perception.”

‡

Consequently, Mme. Blavatsky was adamant in opposing animal cruelty. She spoke out forcefully against sport hunting, foxes, birds and big game, and most strongly against vivisection — animals in biological experiments.

“If these humble lines could make a few readers seriously turn their thoughts to all the horrors of vivisection,” Blavatsky wished, “the writer would be content.”

Halloween: the Eternal Spiritual Fire

“THE Sun and Venus align themselves this week with the Pluto/Chiron sextile that is arranged in the background of our lives.”

“This alignment is in preparation for the Taurus Full Moon,” explains Lauren at Astrology by Lauren — a Theosophy inspired website — “which culminates on the 6th of November.” 

“Full Moons often bring things to a head, or unveils truths,” she writes: “this one also brings healing, or at least the tools to relieve ourselves of some serious baggage. It’s up to us to use them.” To read the full essay and next week’s horoscopes, visit the Articles and Horoscopes page.

Halloween, an annual holiday observed on October 31, primarily in the United States, Canada, Ireland, and the United Kingdom, is importantly in Theosophy understood as a harvest festival.

It is called “Samhain” (Summer’s End), and is rooted in Celtic polytheism. The word is also the Irish and Scottish Gaelic name for November. 

The Halloween time was the beginning of a “darker” season on Earth, with less sunlight and shorter days. But instead of the usual psychic horrors and scary costumes, we choose instead to reflect upon an inner spiritual sun, symbolized by a flaming candle placed inside a hollow pumpkin.

Candlelight Vigil

“Today the season has morphed into a holiday celebrated with costumed children and treats, where children make their rounds like so many fairies and demons from beyond the veil,” Lauren writes:

“In ancient Ireland bonfires were lit in honor of the dying sun, and as a beacon to remind the Sun to return once more from the underworld, in order to light our days once again here in the North.

And so we continue to celebrate this most magical time of year with hope and anticipation of the returning light.”

Bonfire Dance

The spiritual sun consciousness manifests, by degrees, and is the inheritance of all kingdoms of nature as befits the plan of their particular hierarchy — from an atom to a star — not humankind alone.

Samhain, origin of Halloween, is similar to the Gothic samana, and the Sanskrit sámana — which is the Hindu God Krishna, a symbol of the Higher Self, who incarnates cyclically at mankind’s darkest times.

“Even though myself unborn, of changeless essence, and the lord of all existence, yet in presiding over nature — which is mine,” Krishna says in Ch. 4 of the Bhagavad-Gita: “I produce myself among creatures…whenever there is a decline of virtue and an insurrection of vice and injustice in the world; and thus I incarnate from age to age for the preservation of the just, the destruction of the wicked, and the establishment of righteousness.”

In the Bhagavad-Gita (IV:31), Krishna assures his disciple Arjuna that as a world benefactor he is reborn to nature and humanity. It is only the selfish Buddhas, the “Pratyekas” who remain in the their selfish state of personal Nirvana and refuse to reach out to help others.

Our daily sleeping and waking cycles correspond to this universal impulse which daily transports us to our true home.

W. Q. Judge explains in The Three Planes of Human Life, that dreamless sleep is a state “in which even criminals commune through the higher nature with spiritual beings, and enter into the spiritual plane.” 

Animals have many dream states too, and dreamless states where they commune consciously or unconsciously in varying degrees, depending on the kingdom to which they belong, with the spiritual hierarchies of their particular degree. For humans

“… it is the great spiritual reservoir by means of which the tremendous momentum toward evil living is held in check. And because it is involuntary with them, it is constantly salutary in its effect.”

In an ideal world, perfect harmony and balance between man and nature would be recognized and practiced by all. Thus, the keynote of Mme. Blavatsky’s worldview was the just and moral treatment of all the beings in nature, the First Object of the Theosophical Society, Universal Brotherhood.

All Nature is Conscious

This foundational teaching of Theosophy is expressed in The Secret Doctrine, Summing Up #5, which states that “everything in the Universe, throughout all its kingdoms, is conscious,” and

“…endowed with a consciousness of its own kind and on its own plane of perception.”

‡

Consequently, Mme. Blavatsky was adamant in opposing animal cruelty. She spoke out forcefully against sport hunting, foxes, birds and big game, and most strongly against vivisection — animals in biological experiments.

“If these humble lines could make a few readers seriously turn their thoughts to all the horrors of vivisection,” Blavatsky wished, “the writer would be content.”

Awakening to the Cosmic Heart

“THERE are no isolated islands in an electric universe, from the smallest particle to the largest galactic formation.

“A web of electrical circuitry connects and unifies all of nature, organizing galaxies, energizing stars, giving birth to planets.”

On our own world, agreeing with Theosophy, David Talbott and Wallace Thornhill assert”this electric web is controlling weather and animating biological organisms.” (Thunderbolts of the Gods)

Astronomers like to believe the Sun is a glowing nuclear furnace. And, “that galaxies are clouds of hydrogen gas and intergalactic dust,” Stephen Smith notes in his article The Filamentary Firmament, and they “were assembled by gravity until they coalesced into swarms of glowing thermonuclear fires.”

“The Electric Universe theory,” Smith says, “is opposed to the idea of galaxies condensed from cold, inert hydrogen.”

“Strands of magnetically confined plasma can be seen throughout the cosmos,” Smith argues: “In an Electric Universe, every body in the Solar System, along with every star and galaxy, is charged with electricity and exists within a plasma environment.”

The Secret Doctrine, likewise, establishes an electric universe. And also that our Sun,  driven by electricity and magnetism like all Suns, is the true heart of the solar system.

Radically at odds with modern cosmologists, it also considers gravity a secondary terrestrial law, an effect of the former rather than a cause.

“The law of gravitation has no right to be referred to as an universal law,” Blavatsky wrote (1:490-498): “They call Gravity a law, a cause in itself. We call the forces acting under that name effects, and very secondary effects, too. One day it will be found that the scientific hypothesis does not answer after all.”

“Today, nothing is more important to the future and credibility of science than liberation from the gravity-driven universe,” say Talbott and Thornhill: “A mistaken supposition has not only prevented intelligent and sincere investigators from seeing what would otherwise be obvious, it has bred indifference to possibilities that could have inspired the sciences for decades.”

Goddess and the Christ Sun, the Real Story of Easter

THERE would be no glorious bursting forth of nature at Easter-time without the cyclic journey of the Sun. The Sun-cycle ushers springtime into the world above the equator, and the ancients regarded this as the reincarnation season of the year.

The celebration of Ēoestre or Ostara is an old pagan festival, and is the origin of the word Easter. She is the goddess who symbolized the dawn, the warm Spring sun, the resurrection of Spirit in Earth, and much more.

“Just as there is a real Christmas—the time of winter solstice, explains the Theosophy School text, The Eternal Verities:—”there is a real Easter, a Sun-cycle, the time of the Vernal Equinox.“

In the legend, when the beautiful Goddess Ēoestre saw all this wonderful work of hers, she said: “Hereafter, every year I will have one day called Easter, after me. That day, all shall celebrate the awakening of Life from its winter sleep.”

“Then shall all people be joyous and glad and give each other eggs as gifts, for the Egg shall be my symbol. So it is fitting, for all Life is first within the egg.”

Ö

Angels in the Snow

SNOW angels, as far as we know, are only human-made depressions formed in an area of snow in the shape of an angel.

Snow angel making is a classic and fun winter child’s game — adults too can’t resist.

Nearly everyone living in northern latitudes knows about making “snow angels.” If you don’t, or haven’t, here’s the recipe.

The creation of the snow angel is easy. The first step is to find an undisturbed blanket of snow.

The next step is to lie on your back on the newly fallen snow, spreadeagled. Arms and legs are then swept back and forth, creating the winged shape.

The finished creation should have the appearance of an angel, the movement of the arms having formed wings, and that of the legs having formed the dress.

The trick is always to launch oneself carefully out of the newly formed impression without disturbing the design.

Then, if possible, take giant steps away minimizing any tell-tale footprints — leaving behind, for passers-by to marvel, a glistening angel dropped magically out of heaven!

Our Earth’s Secret Sun

OCCULT philosophy denies that the Sun is a globe in combustion, and defines it simply as a world, a glowing sphere.

The real Sun is hidden behind, it says, and the visible one is only its reflection, its shell. 

The Nasmyth willow leaves (sunspots), mistaken by Sir J. Herschel for ‘Solar inhabitants,’ are really the reservoirs of solar vital energy — the vital electricity that feeds the whole system.

The ancients understood the real Sun is the storehouse of our little island in space, ever self-generating its vital electric fluid, and ever receiving as much as it gives out.

There is a regular circulation of the vital fluid throughout our planetary system, of which the Sun is the heart —the same as the circulation of the blood in the human body sustains our life. And the Sun contracts as rhythmically at every ebb and flow of fluid as the human heart does.

“The visible Sun is only a window cut into the real Solar palace and presence, which reflects, however, faithfully the interior work.”

Instead of the rhythmic pulse taking second or so, “it takes the solar blood ten of its years, and a whole year to pass through its auricles and ventricles, before it washes the lungs and passes thence to the great veins and arteries of whole the solar system,” according to this ancient wisdom. “As Above so Below” is a key concept in the old Hermetic teachings with which Theosophy agrees.

Photo of a Sunspot

“This, Science will not deny, since Astronomy knows of the fixed cycle of eleven years when the number of solar spots increases,” H. P. Blavatsky asserts, “which is due to the contraction of the Solar HEART. The universe (our world in this case)

“…breathes, just as man and every living creature, plant, and even mineral does upon the earth; and as our globe itself breathes every twenty-four hours.”

“In the same manner as a man approaches a mirror placed upon a stand, beholds in it his own image, so the energy or reflection of Vishnu (the Sun) is never disjoined, but remains in the Sun as in a mirror that is there stationed” [Vishnu Purana, Ch. XI]

“The dark region of sun spots is not due “to the absorption exerted by the vapours issuing from the bosom of the sun and interposed between the observer and the photosphere,” as Father Secchi would have it (“Le Soleil“ II., 184), nor are the spots formed “by the matter (heated gaseous matter) which the irruption projects upon the solar disc” (ibid), Blavatsky says.

Dawn of the Sun

WINTER in the northern hemisphere marks the annual return of an ancient solar festival.

Indeed, “turnings of the sun” is an old phrase, used by both Hesiod and Homer.

The novelist Alan Furst has one of his characters nicely observe, “the day the sun is said to pause,” recalls the NY Times Op Ed: “Pleasing, that idea…

… as though the universe stopped for a moment to reflect, took a day off from work. One could sense it, time slowing down.”

“The real substance of the concealed (Sun) is a nucleus of Mother substance,” H. P. Blavatsky writes in The Secret Doctrine. It is the heart and the matrix of all the living and existing Forces in our solar universe.

“It is the Kernel from which proceed to spread on their cyclic journeys all the Powers that set in action the atoms in their functional duties, and the focus within which they again meet in their SEVENTH ESSENCE every eleventh year.”

Astrology, Numbers and Destiny

ASTROLOGY is just unscientific superstition many skeptics insist. Real philosophy, Theosophy counters, seeks “rather to solve than to deny.”

“It is an axiom of the philosophic student,” Blavatsky affirms, “that truth generally lies between the extremes.”

This is what the ancients meant by Astrology she says.

“Mention the word ‘astrology’ and skeptics go into an epileptic fit,” natural health researcher Mike Adams says.

“The idea that someone’s personality could be imprinted at birth according to the position of the sun, moon and planets,” Adams comments, “has long been derided as ‘quackery’ by the so-called ‘scientific’ community

… which resists any notion based on holistic connections between individuals and the cosmos.”

ξ

But wait a minute. Recently, scientific studies showing planetary imprinting called “seasonal biology” has confirmed the principle underlying astrology. The scientific study shows that planetary positions do, surprisingly, influence our biological clocks. Why not our psychological and mental states as well?

Occult Influences

“The ancients always considered the ‘ambient’ – or entire heaven – at birth,” Blavatsky colleague William Q. Judge wrote in Astrological Influences, “as being that which affected man.”

New Age Mother, Madame Blavatsky, referred often to astrology in her Theosophical writings, as in the following lines from “The Theosophist” in Blavatsky Collected Writings compiled by Boris de Zircoff.

Although a study of the science of astronomy may enable us “to determine what the course of events will be,” she insisted that:

“…the clock indicates,
it does not influence the time.”

Å

Thus, she says, “though the planets may have no hand in changing the destiny of man, still their position may indicate what that destiny is likely to be.”

“And a distant traveler has often to put right his clock, so that it may indicate correctly the time of the place he visits.”

Ω

Rebirth of Ostara

SPRING Equinox is the mid-point of a rising tide, the nights and days are balanced, and Western culture declares it the first day of Spring.

The spark of light that was born at the Winter Solstice has reached maturity, and from this point forward, the days grow longer than the nights.

Ēoestre or Ostara is an old pagan seasonal festival, and is the origin of the word Easter. She is the goddess who symbolized the dawn, the warm Spring sun, and much more.

Without the cyclic journey of the sun there would be no glorious bursting forth of nature at Easter-time. The Sun-cycle ushers springtime into the world above the equator, and the ancients regarded this as the re-incarnation season of the year.

“Just as there is a real Christmas—the time of winter solstice, explains the Theosophy School text, The Eternal Verities—”so there is a real Easter, a Sun-cycle, the time of the Vernal Equinox, on March 21st.”

In the legend, when the beautiful Goddess saw all this wonderful work of hers, she said: “Hereafter, every year I will have one day called Easter, after me. That day, all shall celebrate the awakening of Life from its winter sleep.

“Then shall all people be joyous and glad and give each other eggs as gifts, for the Egg shall be my symbol. So it is fitting, for all Life is first within the egg.”

Ö

Seven Secrets of The Sun

OCCULT philosophy denies that the Sun is a globe in combustion, and defines it simply as a world, a glowing sphere.

The real Sun is hidden behind, it says, and the visible one is only its reflection, its shell. 

The Nasmyth willow leaves (sunspots), mistaken by Sir J. Herschel for ‘Solar inhabitants,’ are really the reservoirs of solar vital energy — the vital electricity that feeds the whole system.

The ancients understood the real Sun is the storehouse of our little island in space, ever self-generating its vital electric fluid, and ever receiving as much as it gives out.

There is a regular circulation of the vital fluid throughout our planetary system, of which the Sun is the heart —the same as the circulation of the blood in the human body sustains our life. And the Sun contracts as rhythmically at every ebb and flow of fluid as the human heart does.

“The visible Sun is only a window cut into the real Solar palace and presence, which reflects, however, faithfully the interior work.”

Instead of the rhythmic pulse taking second or so, “it takes the solar blood ten of its years, and a whole year to pass through its auricles and ventricles, before it washes the lungs and passes thence to the great veins and arteries of whole the solar system,” according to this ancient wisdom. “As Above so Below” is a key concept in the old Hermetic teachings with which Theosophy agrees.

Photo of a Sunspot

“This, Science will not deny, since Astronomy knows of the fixed cycle of eleven years when the number of solar spots increases,” H. P. Blavatsky asserts, “which is due to the contraction of the Solar HEART. The universe (our world in this case)

“…breathes, just as man and every living creature, plant, and even mineral does upon the earth; and as our globe itself breathes every twenty-four hours.”

“In the same manner as a man approaches a mirror placed upon a stand, beholds in it his own image, so the energy or reflection of Vishnu (the Sun) is never disjoined, but remains in the Sun as in a mirror that is there stationed” [Vishnu Purana, Ch. XI]

“The dark region of sun spots is not due “to the absorption exerted by the vapours issuing from the bosom of the sun and interposed between the observer and the photosphere,” as Father Secchi would have it (“Le Soleil“ II., 184), nor are the spots formed “by the matter (heated gaseous matter) which the irruption projects upon the solar disc” (ibid), Blavatsky says.