Starting from todays Full Moon, we will revisit Stanza VI, 1. to cut through confusions and continue forth with the rest of the Stanzas after the upcoming week. We may take longer than one week on each of the slokas, especially those which have longer commentaries in order to keep the amount of reading manageable.
The first part of the poem and its commentary focuses on the the idea of the divine voice and the feminine aspects of it. It’s treefold nature of being: the Mother, Wife and Daughter of the masculine side of Logos seems to speak of the metaphysical procession of the divine voice and the feminine role in it*.
Blavatsky draws an important definition to the magic power (feminine emphasis) of voice in the following sitation (emphasis mine):
Secret Doctrine wrote:If Kwan-Yin is the “melodious Voice,” so is Vâch ; “the melodious cow who milked forth sustenance and water” (the female principle) […]. She is male and female ad libitum, as Eve is with Adam. And she is a form of Aditi—the principle higher than Ether—in Akâsa, the synthesis of all the forces in Nature; thus Vâch and Kwan-Yin are both the magic potency of Occult sound in Nature and Ether—which “Voice” calls forth Sien-Tchan, the illusive form of the Universe out of Chaos and the Seven Elements.
”Magic potency” is a pair of words which ties this hermaphrodite idea together. Magic means the substance, and potency means the germ of an idea. The Occult sound significe both of these, the idea impregnating the chaotic, abstract matter. Below I have attached a diagram which I compiled according to the T. Subba Row’s clarificating article of which we spoke earlier and to which the book itself pointed to in a footnote. This diagram could be seen breaking these things apart, while the idea of the occult sound on the contrary attempts to picture them all as one.
Regarding the italized part of the quote: on one occasion in Blavatsky’s Collected Writings the following definition of Akasa is given, which seems to go hand in hand how she uses it in the above quoted part of the Secret Doctrine:
Blavatsky's Collected Writings wrote:Ether. Students are but too apt to confuse this with Akasa and with Astral Light. It is neither, in the sense in which ether is described by physical Science. Ether is a material agent, though hitherto undetected by any physical apparatus; whereas Akasa is a distinctly spiritual agent, identical, in one sense, with the Anima Mundi, while the Astral Light is only the seventh and highest principle of the terrestrial atmosphere, as undetectable as Akasa and real Ether, because it is something quite on another plane.
Comparing this to my diagram, I think it is quite safe to say Akasa goes to the category marked by Mulaprakriti. It’s definition as spiritual agent, although it is the base of all materia, is important. This comes back to the Mother’s purity – the venerated immaculate nature of it –. which points to how it is impregnated only by the purest of archetypal ideas. Black metal fans can surely identify this idea from the sense of pure fire and the majesty and power hidden in chaos, to which the music can sometimes point towards in a poetic fashion. Well, at least my own teenage moments with Emperor included such moments of awe and occult fascination towards the "controlled", or as I'd say it now:
impregnated chaos and the abstract power hidden there. Again, this comes down to the concept of Occult sound.
So as the androgyne Logos is the word or potential of all manifestation then its feminine aspect seems to me as the voice or sound or speech – the expression of the word. The feminine logos is all the attributes and powers as potentialities, while the masculine represents the hidden totality of ’idea’ and the intelligences and geometry of spirits. When reflected from the idea of Anima Mundi, the Mother aspect of the feminine Logos is the primordial fountain matrix hiding the formulas by which everything fits together in the spiritual realm. This is where all the sustenance = Truth and vitality, the silent guiding voice of the whole comes from. It is the secret wisdom of how things click together in a meaningful way. The oneness of the Mother and the Wife – the source of the common Oedipal theme in cosmogonies – seems to come back to the idea of space (the mother) and the sound of the space – the reverberation if you will (the daughter) within which the Son-Logos is the seed idea.
Secret Doctrine wrote:thus Vâch and Kwan-Yin are both the magic potency of Occult sound in Nature and Ether—which “Voice” calls forth Sien-Tchan, the illusive form of the Universe out of Chaos and the Seven Elements.
The Seven Elements are the germs (geometric, archetypal, intelligences) of the Seven sons imprinted (by Fohat) on the primordial materia (Mulaprakriti).
* The procession is described with the four Vâchs in the following way:
1.
The Para form of the Goddess seems to be that of the Mother, who is, according to Subba Row, Parabrahmam manifested and Parabrahmam as seen by Logos. It is the abstract base of matter. In the diagram below this is Mulaprakriti, the reflection of which is seen through the Logos and in correspondence by the imagined dashed line.
2.
The Pasyanti form that of the Wife of the Logos (the female aspect of the androgyne being which the Logos is) who could be seen giving birth to the Seven Sons.
3.
Madhyama form as the Light of the Logos, the daugther of the Logos. This is Fohat who brings the ”image” in the Mind of the Logo to the chaos – the primordial matter of Mulaprakriti – and starts to give structure and order to it. (The images in the mind of Fohat are the Seven Sons, according to the archetypal forms of the seven ages and races of man take place.)
4.
Vaikhari-Vâch as the objective reality: limited by time with altering emphases of the Seven in multiple different layers.
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