Examining the Inner Identity
Between Small and Large Events
Carlos Cardoso Aveline
The Letter “E”, as in “E-Theosophy”, corresponds to the
number five, representing the various levels and aspects of Nature
“As Below So Above”
(An old adage quoted in “The
Mahatma Letters”, TUP, p. 92)
According to the hermetic principle of analogy, each fact in daily life is connected to the universal law and its cycles. That which is immense reflects itself in that which is small. The Moon can be seen on the surface of a lake. Each atom is a summary of the solar system.
Everything in the Universe is in unity, and words and numbers have several layers of meaning. They point to both large and small dimensions of reality. The name of the e-group E-Theosophy, the numbers involved in it, and the date when it was established, are no exceptions to the rule.
The word Theosophy comes from the Greek language. The expanded word E-Theosophy has ten letters, or two times five, making the Pythagorean Decad, an ancient symbol for Kosmos and Eternity.
The first letter in the word E-Theosophy can be seen as more than a reference to the electronic aspects of the Internet world. Such a symbol has its own weight, its own tradition – which transcends short term events.
Thousands of years ago, the letter E was present at the oracle of Apollo in Delphi, the city in ancient Greece. Plutarch – whom the theosophical Mahatmas quote in their Letters regarding several occult matters – wrote an entire treaty called “The E At Delphi”.
The E is the fifth letter in the Greek alphabet. It corresponds to number five – and it is a symbol of it. There are five elements in Nature, and the fifth element is the astral light, the abstract, non-physical space where every Internet operation is made, and where E-Theosophy works. The famous five platonic solids correspond to the five elements in nature. The fifth element, astral light, is symbolized by the pentagonal Dodecahedron, a geometrical figure with 12 faces.
Plutarch writes that according to Plato our world is in a way “put together through the union of five worlds”.
He describes them thus:
“One is of earth, another of water, a third of fire, a fourth of air; and the fifth, the heavens, others call light, and others aether, and others call this very thing a fifth substance (Quintessence) which alone of the bodies has by nature a circular motion that is not the result of any compelling power or any other incidental cause. Wherefore also Plato, apparently noting the five most beautiful and most complete forms among those found in Nature, pyramid, cube, octahedron, icosahedron, and dodecahedron, appropriately assigned each to each.” [1]
Elsewhere, Plutarch writes:
“The nature of the dodecahedron, which is comprehensive enough to include the other figures, may well seem to be a model with reference to all corporeal being.” [2] And these words are an excellent description of the astral light.
The number five of letter E relates to the Sun, or Apollo – the god who reads the future, the god of eternal being. There is no need to discuss here the traditional sayings about a connection between each of the five elements and the great initiations.
The future is written in the astral light, the fifth element.
“Know Thyself”, the motto at the Greek temple of Delphi, constitutes a key and a means to attaining a more conscious interaction with the future. Only true self-knowledge leads to a perception of that unlimited Duration which contains in itself both past and future.
The Metaphysics of Number Seven
E-Theosophy was started on July 7, 2010. July is the seventh month of the year.
On its first day of existence, fourteen people joined the e-group. The number is two times seven. If we take the zeros out of the year 2010, we have the number “21” – which is three times seven. Twenty-one is also the number of our century, on which HPB made a couple of optimistic prophecies regarding humanity.
It was on a July 7 that Helena Petrovna arrived at New York, having gone to the United States “by orders”. She soon would found the theosophical movement, and Sylvia Cranston writes, while referring to HPB:
“1873 – After brief travels in Eastern Europe, went to Paris in spring. On her Master’s orders left for New York, landing July 7.” [3]
In September 1880, Helena Petrovna published an article entitled “The Number Seven and Our Society”. In it she makes a detailed list of events which manifestly express the occult link between the number seven and the modern esoteric movement. Among other evidences, Helena Petrovna says, referring to the magazine she founded in India in 1879:
“July 7, the first Prospectus, announcing the intended foundation of the THEOSOPHIST was written…” [4]
The annual position of the Sun in the sky during July 7 makes a precise harmonious astrological aspect named sextile (60 degrees), with its own position two months later, September 7.
On September 7, 1875, 17 people were gathered in H.P.B.’s rooms in New York for the purpose of hearing a lecture by George H. Felt on the Lost Canon of Proportion of the ancient Egyptians. It was on that date, whose occult relation to July 7 is one of mutual harmony, that the practical decision was made to actually create the theosophical movement. The following day, September 8, the decision was formalized, with minutes being signed by William Q. Judge and Henry S. Olcott.
On the general importance of number seven in theosophy, H.P.B. wrote:
“A deep significance was attached to numbers in hoary antiquity. There was not a people with anything like philosophy, but gave great prominence to numbers in their application to religious observances, the establishment of festival days, symbols, dogmas, and even the geographical distribution of empires. The mysterious numerical system of Pythagoras was nothing novel when it appeared far earlier than 600 years B.C. The occult meaning of figures and their combinations entered into the meditations of the sages of every people; and the day is not far off when, compelled by the eternal cyclic rotation of events, our now sceptical unbelieving West will have to admit that in that regular periodicity of ever recurring events there is something more than a mere blind chance.” [5]
In the same article she added, quoting from a German journal:
“The number seven was considered sacred not only by all the cultured nations of antiquity and the East, but was held in the greatest reverence even by the later nations of the West. The astronomical origin of this number is established beyond any doubt. Man, feeling himself time out of mind dependent upon the heavenly powers, ever and everywhere made earth subject to heaven. The largest and brightest of the luminaries thus became in his sight the most important and highest of powers; such were the planets which the whole antiquity numbered as seven. In course of time these were transformed into seven deities. The Egyptians had seven original and higher gods; the Phœnicians seven kabiris; the Persians, seven sacred horses of Mithra; the Parsees, seven angels opposed by seven demons, and seven celestial abodes paralleled by seven lower regions. To represent the more clearly this idea in its concrete form, the seven gods were often represented as one seven-headed deity. The whole heaven was subjected to the seven planets; hence, in nearly all the religious systems we find seven heavens.”
The Number Seven and H.P.B.’s Farewell in 1891
The seven gives the proportion of life. Actions like writing and reading unfold in seven layers. Words, consciousness, sounds, and music, are all septenary.
On the third day of the seventh month, July, 1890, the Headquarters of the Blavatsky Lodge in London was moved from 17, Lansdowne Road, into a new house which had been arranged by Mrs. Annie Besant. The new address was 19, Avenue Road. On the occasion, H.P. B. had a certain insight and said:
“I shall never move again, they will take me from here to the crematorium.”
The fact is narrated by her sister Vera P. Jelihovsky. Vera explains:
“When asked why she foretold this, she gave as a pretext that this house had not her lucky number; the number seven was lacking.” [6]
Indeed, numbers have power.
H.P.B. died, or rather abandoned her physical body, in London on the eighth of May, 1891. In that day of the year, the sun in the sky makes two harmonious geometrical and astrological aspects. One is a strong sextile to its own position on 7th of July. The other is an equally strong trine to 7th of September and 8th of September, which are the real dates of the foundation of the theosophical movement in 1875.
These astrological aspects involve months number Five (May), Seven (July) and Nine (September).
The day seven of the seventh month stands in the center, making two almost perfectly symmetrical sextiles, one to eighth of May, the other to seventh and eighth of September.
As life naturally follows the law of analogy, each small event is enlightened by its living connection to the greater rhythms in nature. Every little aspect of our planet is in unity with the whole universe, and the occult correlations around E-Theosophy are but a few practical examples of it.
NOTES:
[1] “The E At Delphi”, a treaty included in “Moralia”, by Plutarch, Loeb Classical Library, Harvard, Volume V, 514 pp., see pp. 193-251.
[2] “Obsolescence of Oracles”, a treaty included in “Moralia”, by Plutarch, Loeb Classical Library, Harvard, Volume V, 514 pp., see p. 449.
[3] “HPB, The Extraordinary Life and Influence of Helena Blavatsky”, Sylvia Cranston, G.P. Putnam’s Sons, New York, copyright 1993, 648 pp., see p. XIV. Read also the compilation “The Formation of the Theosophical Society”, by Boris de Zirkoff, in “Collected Writings”, H.P. Blavatsky, TPH, volume I, pp. 121-125. On p. 124, one sees that HPB received orders from her Master to establish a “secret Society”. She narrates the fact in her Scrapbook and dates the note “July 1875”.
[4] See the article “The Number Seven and Our Society”, in “Theosophical Articles”, H.P. Blavatsky, Theosophy Co., Los Angeles, 1981, 512 pp., Volume I, p. 352.
[5] “The Number Seven”, an article by H. P.B. See “Theosophical Articles”, H.P. Blavatsky, Theosophy Co., Los Angeles, 1981, 512 pp., Volume I, pp. 345-346. The article can be found at our associated websites.
[6] “Lucifer” magazine, London, April 1895 edition, pp. 103-104. Article by Vera Jelihovsky, entitled “Helena Petrovna Blavatsky”. This is part 6 and final of a serialized text.
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In September 2016, after a careful analysis of the state of the esoteric movement worldwide, a group of students decided to form the Independent Lodge of Theosophists, whose priorities include the building of a better future in the different dimensions of life.
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E-Theosophy e-group offers a regular study of the classic, intercultural theosophy taught by Helena P. Blavatsky (photo).
Those who want to join E-Theosophy e-group can do that by looking for it at Google Groups or writing to indelodge@gmail.com.
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