necessary that we should avail ourselves of rays of light scattered in places the most remote, and that we should endeavor to recollect them into a focus, so that, by this means, we may procure as strong a light as possible; collect as industriously as we may, our light will not be too strong."*

It has hitherto been assumed, and one author has put it in plain words, that, despite all traditions as to the greatness of the ancients in astronomy, we have no proof of it in extant works; † but the present paper shows at least a glimpse of the perfection of their science-and a possible reason why we are not in possession of such records is spoken of as due to the action of the Masters of the seventh or occult schools of mystic and oriental philosophy, in having withdrawn and secreted the ancient manuscripts and records from the public eye, and so preserved them from destruction at the hands of the religious fanatics and other such ruthless barbarians and crazy iconoclasts of the dark ages. ‡ Had we the contents of the Alexandrian Library as it was in its prime, and before the last remains of it were, as it is said, destroyed by the order of the Saracen general Amrou, and other such stores of ancient learning now lost to sight, doubtless the knowledge acquired in former days would present a widely different aspect from what it does at present. But Theosophists have at least a measure of hope, derived from the information that all this knowledge is in safe keeping under the care of those great Masters whose home is spoken of as in the Himālayas and elsewhere-that They have it stored away in vast libraries, accessible only to those who have proved themselves qualified to profit by the contents. We may therefore look forward to the future as safe to unravel the mysteries of the past; and thus to restore to their true position those ancient observers and calculators of the far time, who in the dim past of the earliest ages had, as it appears probable, reached a height of scientific attainment which we are only just approaching, and of which the fragments are only to be found in the Occult Indications of Ancient Astronomy.

S. STUART.

* Anacalypsis, i, 175.

+ Lewis's Historical Survey of the Astronomy of the Ancients. The Secret Doctrine, i, 14, 18; cf Isis Unveiled, i, 406, 442.

THE FIVE CREATIVE POWERS IN THE UNIVERSE AND

A

THE INNER LIFE.

LL the great religions of the world teach that the phenomenal Universe in which we live came into existence through the power of the Logos, the divine Word. The Bible says: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made. In Him was the life, and the life was the light of men." A word is an act by which a thought is expressed, and each thought has a certain meaning or sense. Expressed in modern scientific language the above sentence may read: “All things in the visible universe are the outward manifestations or symbols of the creative thoughts which they represent, and consequently the expressions of the ideas which these thoughts contain." Man is a God and creator in his own little world. He does not 'create' things out of nothing; but at first the desire to express something arises in him, he 'draws'* an idea from his own inner self, this idea forms itself into a concrete thought, and this thought, embodying his idea, he expresses in language or in an act. Thus we have in man a representation on a little scale of what takes place in the great world on a large scale, and we can form a conception of what took place at the creation of the world (and still takes place everywhere in nature) without having been there personally ourselves. Religious teachings are seen to contain deep scientific truths, if properly understood. The whole of the manifested world is the language by which the universal infinite Spirit expresses His thoughts. The expression of its qualities is the language by which each thing in nature speaks to us; each mineral, plant and animal says by its very presence: "I am," and if we understand its qualities, we know what the thing is. Each thing speaks to us by manifesting its being, each thing says to us in its own language: "I am!" It tells us what it is by exhibiting itself as that what it actually is.

Speech in its mystic sense is sound; sound is a manifestation of life, the first attribute of Akasha, or 'spiritual ether.' Language is sound expressed in letters; each state of existence is a letter in the

In the German language the word schoepfen (to create) means to draw something from some receptacle, like, for instance, drawing water from a well.

divine alphabet. Our language is composed of sounds represented in twenty-four letters, or symbols, which also indicate the twenty-five elements or Taṭṭwas, of which the material body of this universe is composed. Shankarāchārya in his Taṭṭva Bodha, shows how from Akāsha, or manifested space, originated Vāyu (substance), from Vāyu Tejas (Light), from Tejas Apas (Water), from Apas Pṛthivi (Earth), and that from the tamasic portion of these five Taṭṭwas originate the twenty-five compound elements, forming the sthula sharira, or material body of this world.

The twenty-five letters of our alphabet correspond to these twentyfive compound elements of Shankarāchārya. The great mystic, Jacob Boehme says: "From the A originate the twenty-five letters." The five vowels represent the five creative powers in the universe. In the Bhagavad-Gita Krshna, as the representative of the Word, tells Arjuna: "I am the A and the O" (the Alpha and Omega); the beginning and the end, the infinite universal Spirit and its manifestation in form." In Hebrew the word Jehovah is the name of the universal Creator, the dark God, or Karma. The word is composed of the five vowels, to which is added the H as the symbol of the universal creative breath of life.

H
JEOUA.

If the numbers represented by these letters in Hebrew are counted cabalistically, we obtain the so-called 'Ludalfian number,' known to every architect as indicating the relation of the diameter of a circle to its circumference. Thus "Jehovah" is the Architect of the material world (Joseph the carpenter in the Bible). But as yet the world is without light, and the soul of man without love and wisdom, without real self-knowledge, the redeemer. If we now insert within the word Jehova the letter Schin, which symbolises fire, there arises within the centre the light of wisdom from the fiery spark of divine love, and instead of 'Jehova' we have now the word 'Jehoshua,' the origin of the word Jesus, meaning the spiritual light and life of the soul. (S. John I, 4).

*

The sound of each letter, if properly pronounced, contains a

See: F. Hartmann. Jehoshua the prophet of Nazareth. T. P. S. (London).

great spiritual power, and the nature of those powers is even indicated by the form of the letters in the Latin alphabet.*

In the shape of A its character is indicated. From the one invisible point (the Absolute) arise two branches, representing the division of light and darkness or spirit and matter. The two lines Ʌ may be imagined to extend into infinitude; they enclose nothing. A, if properly pronounced comes from the centre (the heart); it is a representative of Ākāsha, or unlimited space.

E gives us the feeling of elevation, locomotion, extension, and indicates the existence of three different planes.

I (ee) penetrates into the depths like an arrow; it goes to the heart. Boehme says: The I is the centre of supreme love and the O the centre of the conceivable Word in the Godhead." In it is the power of the Ego, the knowledge of Self. In it is the expression of Will and the manifestation of Individuality.

O is expressive of comprehension, encompassment, or form.

U (00) represents fullness, profundity, a vessel (the soul) open at the top and capable of receiving the light and the grace of God.

Boehme says: "The five vowels are the holy name of God in His aspect as sanctity; the other letters indicate and express the character of the name of God (the All) contained in nature. The five vowels also represent the holy trinity; the Ʌ outbreathing of the Spirit, the O the retention, the V the outbreathing of the divine breath."

The Word in its triune aspect is not anything different from God (the All). God is not a wizard, who by pronouncing a magical word created a world in some unaccountable manner. God Himself is the Word that speaks itself out. In its triune aspect it represents itself as a trinity: AOU or father, son and spirit (will, thought and expression). From this Word the Macrocosm (M) is born. The Word as a trinity AOU, in its manifestation M, constitutes with this letter the sacred quaternary, the number of truth, the AOUM,

FRANZ HARTMANN, M. D.

*The vowels ought to be pronounced as they are in Latin, Italian, German, etc. A as in dark, E as in bed, I as in stick, O as in more, U as the double o in fool.

OCCULT CHEMISTRY.

XII.
RADIUM.

R

adium has the form of a tetrahedron, and it is in the tetrahedral

groups (see article V) that we shall find its nearest congeners; calcium, strontium, chromium, molybdenum, resemble it most closely in general internal arrangements, with additions from zinc and cadmium. Radium has a complex central sphere (Plate XXII), extraordinarily vivid and living; the whirling motion is so rapid that continued accurate observation is very difficult; the sphere is more closely compacted than the centre-piece in other elements, and is much larger in proportion to the funnels and spikes than is the case with the elements above named; reference to Plate VIII will show that in these the funnels are much PLATE XXII.