The Solitary Ray, shooting like a falling star through the planes of Non-being into the First World of Being, the Noumenal World of Truth, gives birth to the Ideal Triangle, before withdrawing whence it had come. The Solitary Ray is the Pythagorean Monad. It strides through the Seven Regions of the Universe in three steps: First Logos, The One. Second Logos, The One made Three, concreting into Third Logos, where the Three live within The One, thus making up the Perfect Square in heaven — and a Cube on earth. Terrestrial number 2 is useless and unlucky. Twin serpents conceal the One from the many. The Seven Rays of Logos, 3 + 4, are Three Principles + Four Vehicles on the material plane. They vivify Seven Worlds of Being, symbolised by the Ladder, as follows: Absolute, Archetypal, Spiritual, Manasic, Psychic, Astral, and Elemental. The Earth is no World.

“Man is a little world inside the great universe,” teaches Paracelsus. “A microcosm, within the macrocosm, like a foetus, he is suspended by his three principal spirits in the matrix of the universe.” These three spirits are described as double: 1. The spirit of the Elements (terrestrial body and vital principle); 2. The spirit of the stars (sidereal or astral body and will governing it); 3. The spirit of the spiritual world (the animal and the spiritual souls) — the seventh principle being an almost immaterial spirit or the divine Augoeides, Atma, represented by the central point, which corresponds to the human navel. This seventh principle is the Personal God of every man, say the old Western and Eastern Occultists. Man is the Jewel of the Macrocosm.

Book 2 of 17, translated from the Arabic by the Divine Doctor John Everard, next to the Greek which has probably descended from Psellus’ archetype. With Greek and English side-by-side. Thoth-Hermes Trismegistus is Self-created Logos, the Voice of Egypt’s Great Hierophants. The High Priest of Memphis and author of the Book of the Dead is simply a personification of the teachings of the sacerdotal caste of Egypt. Thus the Babylonian Nebo, the Egyptian Thoth, and the Greek Hermes, were all gods of Esoteric Wisdom and golden threads of destiny, i.e., agents of the Sun and revealers of the Secret Doctrine. Wisdom is inseparable from Divinity.

Inconsistency and contradiction reign as much in official as in heterodox Science. The man of Science rejects everything that is not proven to him, while the Theologian accepts everything on blind faith. The Theosophist and the Occultist, who take nothing on trust, not even exact Science, the Spiritualist who denies dogma but believes in Spirits and in invisible but potential influences, all share the same contempt. Metaphysics is fiction, like poetry, said a prominent Irish physicist. Kinetic energy is an empty shadow of my mind, mused “Darwin's bulldog.” Tyndall admits how powerless is Science, even over the world of matter. Chaos is Void to sense, latent Deity to reason. The voidness of the seeming full is the fullness of the seeming void. Chaos is the Spirit of Truth that the world cannot receive because it does not see It or know It. In occult parlance there is no spatial division such as above and below, but an eternal Within, within two other withins, i.e., the planes of subjectivity merging gradually into those of terrestrial objectivity. Fohat, the Light of Logos, turns with his hands the seed and the curds of Cosmic matter in contrary directions. Outside the boundaries of our solar system, there are countless other suns, orbiting around the mysterious Central Spiritual Sun that determines the motion of celestial bodies and their direction. That motion differentiates the primordial homogeneous matter into elements and sub-elements unknown to our earth, which are regarded by modern Science as distinct individual elements, whereas they are merely temporary appearances, changing with every small cycle within the Manvantara. Certain esoteric works call them Kalpic Masks. Fohat is the scientific aspect of Vishnu and Indra, the latter older and more important in the Rig-Veda than his sectarian successor. In Egypt Fohat was known as Tum, issued of Nut-Osiris in his character of a primordial god, creator of heaven and beings. Every idol is broken save the Golden Calf or Lucifer-Venus, the twin-star, male at sunrise, female at sunset. Legend is living tradition, far more dependable than actual History, which keeps repeating herself, for she proceeds in cycles. The time is near when dead facts and events, deliberately drowned in the sea of modern scepticism, will re-emerge once more and reappear on the surface.

The Pythagorean Square is the sum of the first numbers, +++, i.e., number , the Tetractys of the Decas. Number is a numerical expression of the mysteries of the whole Kosmos, its microcosmic image or man, and the sum total of all human knowledge. A trinity of Perfect Squares make up the Dodecahedron, a Perfect Number concealed in a Perfect Cube. Thomas Taylor on the eleven faces of the Pythagorean Tetractys: The first tetractys is 1. 2. 3. 4. The second, is the monad, a side, a square, and a cube. The third, is a point, line, a superficies, and a solid. The fourth, is fire, air, water, and earth. The fifth, the pyramid, the octahedron, the icosahedron, and the cube. The sixth, seed, length, breadth, and depth. The seventh, man, a house, a street, and a city. The eighth, intellect, science, opinion, and sense. The ninth, the rational, the irascible, the epithymetic parts, and the body. The tenth, spring, summer, autumn, and winter. Saturn is the dianoetic tetractys. The Pythagorean World is the Root of Illusion.

The radiant essence of the Unknowable Deity curdles and spreads throughout the depths of the Great Breath (Space in Pralaya), the Eternal Parent, breathing out Chaos-Theos-Kosmos, an all-in-all Triple Deity. The Apsarases differ from the Gandharva Devas: the former are mere qualities and quantities. The latter, celestial singers, musicians, and instructors of mankind in the Secret Science. They are the Asuras or Daimons of the allegory. At the churning of the Ocean of Amrita, the Water of Immortality, the Suras and the Asuras twisted Shesha, the Great Serpent, rope-like round Mt. Mandara causing it to revolve. The Gods were at the one end of the serpent, the Daimons at the other.

Cosmic Fire is Deity in its universality. Hermetic Fire is the Spirit of the Truth. Crux ansata is the true Cross, Arani and Pramantha are its symbols. Swastika is Fire Crucified, the 3 made 4.

What is Divine Logos? 1. A “Breath of Darkness” moving over “the slumbering Waters of Life,” i.e., primordial substance awakened by latent Consciousness. 2. A Ray descending from “no-place” and shooting “like a falling star through the planes of non-being into the first world of being,” of the Secret Doctrine. 3. Brahma, the first god of the Hindu Trimurti. 4. “Passive Wisdom in Heaven and Conscious, Self-Active Wisdom on Earth.” 5. The Ain-Soph of the Kabbalist. 6. The First Cause of the Bible. 7. “The Germ that dwelleth in darkness and breathes [moves] over [in] the slumbering waters of life,” of the Secret Doctrine. 8. The “Highest Consciousness” of the Occultist or, to be more precise, “the sum total of Dhyani-Chohanic consciousness.” 9. The Ishvara of the Indian Mystic. 10. The Monas of Pythagoras.

There are two Times, Universal and Finite. The one is the abstraction or noumenon of Infinite Time (Kala); the other, its phenomenon appearing periodically as the effect of Mahat. What is called temporal can exist only in time, which is a portion of the revolution of the highest sphere. Time is asleep in the bosom of the Orphic trinity. Secondary Logoi, like Zeus-Jupiter are born in and out of Chronos-Saturn, or Infinite Time. The last vibration of the Seventh Eternity, when Time was not, is First Logos. Time dawns in Second Logos, and is fully expressed in the Third. All Logoi are all the Sons of the Mother before they become those of the Father. Time is the panoramic succession of our states of consciousness. Present, “past,” and “future” are compound phenomenal time.