THEOSOPHY – THE WORD

FOHAT

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But just as the opposite poles of subject and object, spirit and matter, are but aspects of the One Unity in which they are synthesized, so, in the manifested Universe, there is “that” which links spirit to matter, subject to object.

This something, at present unknown to Western speculation, is called by the occultists Fohat. It is the “bridge” by which the “Ideas” existing in the “Divine Thought” are impressed on Cosmic substance as the “laws of Nature.” Fohat is thus the dynamic energy of Cosmic Ideation; or, regarded from the other side, it is the intelligent medium, the guiding power of all manifestation, the “Thought Divine” transmitted and made manifest through the Dhyan Chohans, the Architects of the visible World. Thus from Spirit, or Cosmic Ideation, comes our consciousness; from Cosmic Substance the several vehicles in which that consciousness is individualised and attains to self – or reflective – consciousness; while Fohat, in its various manifestations, is the mysterious link between Mind and Matter, the animating principle electrifying every atom into life.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p16]

Fohat runs the Manus’ (or Dhyani-Chohans’) errands, and causes the ideal prototypes to expand from within without – viz. to cross gradually, on a descending scale, all the planes from the noumenon to the lowest phenomenon, to bloom finally on the last into full objectivity – the acme of illusion, or the grossest matter.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p63]

All the Kabalists and Occultists, Eastern and Western, recognize the identity of “Father-Mother” with primordial Aether or Akasa, (Astral Light); and (b) its homogeneity before the evolution of the “Son,” cosmically Fohat, for it is Cosmic Electricity. “Fohat hardens and scatters the seven brothers” (Book III, Dzyan); which means that the primordial Electric Entity – for the Eastern Occultists insist that Electricity is an Entity – electrifies into life, and separates primordial stuff or pregenetic matter into atoms, themselves the source of all life and consciousness.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p75-6]

Primordial matter, then, before it emerges from the plane of the never-manifesting, and awakens to the thrill of action under the impulse of Fohat, is but “a cool Radiance, colourless, formless, tasteless, and devoid of every quality and aspect.” Even such are her first-born, the “four sons,” who “are One, and become Seven,” – the entities, by whose qualifications and names the ancient Eastern Occultists called the four of the seven primal “centres of Forces,” or atoms, that develop later into the great Cosmic “Elements,” now divided into the seventy or so sub-elements, known to science.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p82]

“Fohat hardens the atoms”; i.e., by infusing energy into them: he scatters the atoms or primordial matter. “He scatters himself while scattering matter into atoms” (MSS. Commentaries.)

It is through Fohat that the ideas of the Universal Mind are impressed upon matter. Some faint idea of the nature of Fohat may be gathered from the appellation “Cosmic Electricity” sometimes applied to it; but to the commonly known properties of electricity must, in this case, be added others, including intelligence.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p85]

2. THEY MAKE OF HIM THE MESSENGER OF THEIR WILL (a). THE DGYU BECOMES FOHAT; THE SWIFT SON OF THE DIVINE SONS, WHOSE SONS ARE THE LIPIKA, RUNS CIRCULAR ERRANDS. HE IS THE STEED, AND THE THOUGHT IS THE RIDER (i.e., he is under the influence of their guiding thought). HE PASSES LIKE LIGHTNING THROUGH THE FIERY CLOUDS (cosmic mists) (b); TAKES THREE, AND FIVE, AND SEVEN STRIDES THROUGH THE SEVEN REGIONS ABOVE AND THE SEVEN BELOW (the world to be). HE LIFTS HIS VOICE, AND CALLS THE INNUMERABLE SPARKS (atoms) AND JOINS THEM TOGETHER (c).

(a) This shows the “Primordial Seven” using for their Vahan (vehicle, or the manifested subject which becomes the symbol of the Power directing it), Fohat, called in consequence, the “Messenger of their will” – the fiery whirlwind.

“Dgyu becomes Fohat” – the expression itself shows it. Dgyu is the one real (magical) knowledge, or Occult Wisdom; which, dealing with eternal truths and primal causes, becomes almost omnipotence when applied in the right direction. Its antithesis is Dgyu-mi, that which deals with illusions and false appearances only, as in our exoteric modern sciences. In this case, Dgyu is the expression of the collective Wisdom of the Dhyani-Buddhas.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p107-8]

(c) Fohat, being one of the most, if not the most important character in esoteric Cosmogony, should be minutely described. As in the oldest Grecian Cosmogony, differing widely from the later mythology, Eros is the third person in the primeval trinity: Chaos, Gaea, Eros: answering to the Kabalistic Ain-Soph (for Chaos is SPACE, ..., “void”) the Boundless ALL, Shekinah and the Ancient of Days, or the Holy Ghost; so Fohat is one thing in the yet unmanifested Universe and another in the phenomenal and Cosmic World. In the latter, he is that Occult, electric, vital power, which, under the Will of the Creative Logos, unites and brings together all forms, giving them the first impulse which becomes in time law. But in the unmanifested Universe, Fohat is no more this, than Eros is the later brilliant winged Cupid, or LOVE. Fohat has naught to do with Kosmos yet, since Kosmos is not born, and the gods still sleep in the bosom of “Father-Mother.” He is an abstract philosophical idea. He produces nothing yet by himself; he is simply that potential creative power in virtue of whose action the NOUMENON of all future phenomena divides, so to speak, but to reunite in a mystic supersensuous act, and emit the creative ray. When the “Divine Son” breaks forth, then Fohat becomes the propelling force, the active Power which causes the ONE to become Two and THREE – the Cosmic plane of manifestation. The triple One differentiates into the many, and then Fohat is transformed into that force which brings together the elemental atoms and makes them aggregate and combine.... Erebos and Nux are born out of Chaos, and, under the action of Eros, give birth in their turn to Aether and Hemera, the light of the superior and the light of the inferior or terrestrial regions. Darkness generates light....

Fohat is closely related to the “ONE LIFE.” From the Unknown One, the Infinite TOTALITY, the manifested ONE, or the periodical, Manvantaric Deity, emanates; and this is the Universal Mind, which, separated from its Fountain-Source, is the Demiurgos or the creative Logos of the Western Kabalists, and the four-faced Brahmâ of the Hindu religion. In its totality, viewed from the standpoint of manifested Divine Thought in the esoteric doctrine, it represents the Hosts of the higher creative Dhyan Chohans. Simultaneously with the evolution of the Universal Mind, the concealed Wisdom of Adi-Buddha – the One Supreme and eternal – manifests itself as Avalokiteshwara (or manifested Iswara), which is the Osiris of the Egyptians, the Ahura-Mazda of the Zoroastrians, the Heavenly Man of the Hermetic philosopher, the Logos of the Platonists, and the Atman of the Vedantins. By the action of the manifested Wisdom, or Mahat, represented by these innumerable centres of spiritual Energy in the Kosmos, the reflection of the Universal Mind, which is Cosmic Ideation and the intellectual Force accompanying such ideation, becomes objectively the Fohat of the Buddhist esoteric philosopher. Fohat, running along the seven principles of AKASA, acts upon manifested substance or the One Element, as declared above, and by differentiating it into various centres of Energy, sets in motion the law of Cosmic Evolution, which, in obedience to the Ideation of the Universal Mind, brings into existence all the various states of being in the manifested Solar System....

Fohat, then, is the personified electric vital power, the transcendental binding Unity of all Cosmic Energies, on the unseen as on the manifested planes, the action of which resembles – on an immense scale – that of a living Force created by WILL, in those phenomena where the seemingly subjective acts on the seemingly objective and propels it to action. Fohat is not only the living Symbol and Container of that Force, but is looked upon by the Occultists as an Entity – the forces he acts upon being cosmic, human and terrestrial, and exercising their influence on all those planes respectively. On the earthly plane his influence is felt in the magnetic and active force generated by the strong desire of the magnetizer. On the Cosmic, it is present in the constructive power that carries out, in the formation of things – from the planetary system down to the glow-worm and simple daisy – the plan in the mind of nature, or in the Divine Thought, with regard to the development and growth of that special thing. He is, metaphysically, the objectivised thought of the gods; the “Word made flesh,” on a lower scale, and the messenger of Cosmic and human ideations: the active force in Universal Life. In his secondary aspect, Fohat is the Solar Energy, the electric vital fluid, and the preserving fourth principle, the animal Soul of Nature, so to say, or – Electricity.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p109-12]

HE [FOHAT] IS THEIR GUIDING SPIRIT AND LEADER. WHEN HE COMMENCES WORK, HE SEPARATES THE SPARKS OF THE LOWER KINGDOM (mineral atoms) THAT FLOAT AND THRILL WITH JOY IN THEIR RADIANT DWELLINGS (gaseous clouds), AND FORMS THEREWITH THE GERMS OF WHEELS. HE PLACES THEM IN THE SIX DIRECTIONS OF SPACE AND ONE IN THE MIDDLE – THE CENTRAL WHEEL (a).

(a) “Wheels,” as already explained, are the centres of force, around which primordial Cosmic matter expands, and, passing through all the six stages of consolidation, becomes spheroidal and ends by being transformed into globes or spheres. It is one of the fundamental dogmas of Esoteric Cosmogony, that during the Kalpas (or aeons) of life, MOTION, which, during the periods of Rest “pulsates and thrills through every slumbering atom”...

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p116]

FOHAT TRACES SPIRAL LINES TO UNITE THE SIX TO THE SEVENTH – THE CROWN (a); AN ARMY OF THE SONS OF LIGHT STANDS AT EACH ANGLE (and) THE LIPIKA – IN THE MIDDLE WHEEL. THEY (the Lipika) SAY, “THIS IS GOOD” (b). THE FIRST DIVINE WORLD IS READY, THE FIRST (is now), THE SECOND (world), THEN THE “DIVINE ARUPA” (the formless Universe of Thought) REFLECTS ITSELF IN CHHAYALOKA (the shadowy world of primal form, or the intellectual) THE FIRST GARMENT OF (the) ANUPADAKA (c).

(a) This tracing of “Spiral lines” refers to the evolution of man’s as well as Nature’s principles; an evolution which takes place gradually (as will be seen in Volume II, on “The origin of the Human Races”), as does everything else in nature. The Sixth principle in Man (Buddhi, the Divine Soul) though a mere breath, in our conceptions, is still something material when compared with divine “Spirit” (Atma) of which it is the carrier or vehicle. Fohat, in his capacity of DIVINE LOVE (Eros), the electric Power of affinity and sympathy, is shown allegorically as trying to bring the pure Spirit, the Ray inseparable from the ONE absolute, into union with the Soul, the two constituting in Man the MONAD, and in Nature the first link between the ever unconditioned and the manifested. “The first is now the seconad” (world) – of the Lipikas – has reference to the same.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p118-9]

5. FOHAT TAKES FIVE STRIDES (having already taken the first three) (a), AND BUILDS A WINGED WHEEL AT EACH CORNER OF THE SQUARE FOR THE FOUR HOLY ONES . . . . . . AND THEIR ARMIES (hosts) (b).

(a) The “strides,” as already explained (see Commentary on Stanza IV.), refer to both the Cosmic and the Human principles – the latter of which consist, in the exoteric division, of three (Spirit, Soul, and Body), and, in the esoteric calculation, of seven principles – three rays of the Essence and four aspects....

From a Cosmic point of view, Fohat taking “five strides” refers here to the five upper planes of Consciousness and Being, the sixth and the seventh (counting downwards) being the astral and the terrestrial, or the two lower planes.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p122]

... from the purely occult and Cosmical, Fohat, the “Son of the Sons”, the androgynous energy resulting from the “Light of the Logos”, and which manifests in the plane of the objective Universe as the hidden, as much as the revealed, Electricity – which is LIFE.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p136-7]

It has often been asked what was the exact definition of Fohat and his powers and functions, as he seems to exercise those of a Personal God as understood in the popular religions. The answer has just been given in the comment on Stanza V. As well said in the Bhagavad-Gita Lectures, “The whole Cosmos must necessarily exist in the One Source of energy from which this light (Fohat) emanates.” Whether we count the principles in Kosmos and man as seven or only as four, the forces of, and in, physical Nature are Seven; and it is stated by the same authority that “Prajna, or the capacity of perception, exists in seven different aspects corresponding to the seven conditions of matter” (Personal and impersonal God). For, “just as a human being is composed of seven principles, differentiated matter in the Solar System exists in seven different conditions” (Ibid). So does Fohat. He is One and Seven, and on the Cosmic plane is behind all such manifestations as light, heat, sound, adhesion, etc., etc., and is the “spirit of ELECTRICITY, which is the LIFE of the Universe. As an abstraction, we call it the ONE LIFE; as an objective and evident Reality, we speak of a septenary scale of manifestation, which begins at the upper rung with the One Unknowable CAUSALITY, and ends as Omnipresent Mind and Life immanent in every atom of Matter. Thus, while science speaks of its evolution through brute matter, blind force, and senseless motion, the Occultists point to intelligent LAW and sentient LIFE, and add that Fohat is the guiding Spirit of all this. Yet he is no personal god at all, but the emanation of those other Powers behind him whom the Christians call the “Messengers” of their God (who is in reality only the Elohim, or rather one of the Seven Creators called Elohim), and we, the “Messenger of the primordial Sons of Life and Light.”

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p139]

Fohat has several meanings.... He is called the “Builder of the Builders”, the Force that he personifies having formed our septenary chain.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p139fn]

Therefore, they [the Elements] cannot be taken as a standard for comparison with the same in other worlds. Enshrined in their virgin, pristine state within the bosom of the Eternal Mother, every atom born beyond the threshold of her realm is doomed to incessant differentiation. “The Mother sleeps, yet is ever breathing.” And every breath sends out into the plane of manifestation her Protean products, which, carried on by the wave of the efflux, are scattered by Fohat, and driven toward and beyond this or another planetary atmosphere. Once caught by the latter, the atom is lost; its pristine purity is gone for ever, unless Fate dissociates it by leading it to “a current of EFFLUX” (an occult term meaning quite a different process from that which the ordinary term implies); when it may be carried once more to the borderland where it had perished, and taking its flight, not into Space above but into Space within, it will be brought under a state of differential equilibrium and happily re-absorbed.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p143]

“Each world has its Fohat, who is omnipresent in his own sphere of action. But there are as many Fohats as there are worlds, each varying in power and degree of manifestations. The individual Fohats make one Universal, Collective Fohat – the aspect-Entity of the one absolute Non-Entity, which is absolute Be-Ness, ‘SAT.’ “Millions and billions of worlds are produced at every Manvantara” – it is said. Therefore there must be many Fohats, whom we consider as conscious and intelligent Forces. This, no doubt, to the disgust of scientific minds. Nevertheless the Occultists, who have good reasons for it, consider all the forces of Nature as veritable, though supersensuous, states of Matter; and as possible objects of perception to Beings endowed with the requisite senses.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p143fn]

Bear in mind that Fohat, the constructive Force of Cosmic Electricity, is said, metaphorically, to have sprung like Rudra from Brahmâ “from the brain of the Father and the bosom of the Mother,” and then to have metamorphosed himself into a male and a female, i.e., polarity, into positive and negative electricity. He has seven sons who are his brothers; and Fohat is forced to be born time after time whenever any two of his son-brothers indulge in too close contact – whether an embrace or a fight. To avoid this, he binds together and unites those of unlike nature and separates those of similar temperaments. This, of course, relates, as any one can see, to electricity generated by friction and to the law involving attraction between two objects of unlike, and repulsion between those of like polarity. The Seven “Sons-brothers,” however, represent and personify the seven forms of Cosmic magnetism called in practical Occultism the “Seven Radicals,” whose co-operative and active progeny are, among other energies, Electricity, Magnetism, Sound, Light, Heat, Cohesion, etc. Occult Science defines all these as Super-sensuous effects in their hidden behaviour, and as objective phenomena in the world of senses; the former requiring abnormal faculties to perceive them – the latter, our ordinary physical senses. They all pertain to, and are the emanations of, still more supersensuous spiritual qualities, not personated by, but belonging to, real and conscious CAUSES. To attempt a description of such ENTITIES would be worse than useless. The reader must bear in mind that, according to our teaching which regards this phenomenal Universe as a great Illusion, the nearer a body is to the UNKNOWN SUBSTANCE, the more it approaches reality, as being removed the farther from the world of Maya.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p145-6]

It is Fohat who guides the transfer of the principles from one planet to the other, from one star to another Child-star. When a planet dies, its informing principles are transferred to a laya or sleeping centre, with potential but latent energy in it, which is thus awakened into life and begins to form itself into a new sidereal body.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p147]

When Fohat is said to produce “Seven Laya-Centres”, it means that for formative or creative purposes, the GREAT LAW (Theists may call it God) stops, or rather modifies its perpetual motion on seven invisible points within the are of the manifested Universe. “The great Breath digs through Space seven holes into Laya to cause them to circumgyrate during Manvantara”.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p147]

Such “Seven Neutral Centres”, then, are produced by Fohat, who, when, as Milton has it –
“. . . fair foundation [is] laid whereon to build . . .”
quickens matter into activity and evolution.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p148]

Now light without any shadow would be absolute light – in other words, absolute darkness – as physical science seeks to prove. That shadow appears under the form of primordial matter, allegorized – if one likes – in the shape of the Spirit of Creative Fire or Heat. If, rejecting the poetical form and allegory, science chooses to see in this the primordial Fire-Mist, it is welcome to do so. Whether one way or the other, whether Fohat or the famous FORCE of Science, nameless, and as difficult of definition as our Fohat himself, that Something “caused the Universe to move with circular motion,” as Plato has it; or, as the Occult teaching expresses it:

“The Central Sun causes Fohat to collect primordial dust in the form of balls, to impel them to move in converging lines and finally to approach each other and aggregate.” (Book of Dzyan) . . . . . “Being scattered in Space, without order or system, the world-germs come into frequent collision until their final aggregation, after which they become wanderers (Comets). Then the battles and struggles begin. The older (bodies) attract the younger, while others repel them. Many perish, devoured by their stronger companions. Those that escape become worlds.”

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p201]

“The abodes of Fohat are many,” it is said. “He places his four fiery (electro-positive) Sons in the “Four circles”; these Circles are the Equator, the Ecliptic, and the two parallels of declination, or the tropics – to preside over the climates of which are placed the Four mystical Entities. Then again: “Other seven (sons) are commissioned to preside over the seven hot, and seven cold lokas (the hells of the orthodox Brahmans) at the two ends of the Egg of Matter (our Earth and its poles). The seven lokas are also called the “Rings,” elsewhere, and the “Circles.” The ancients made the polar circles seven instead of two, as Europeans do; for Mount Meru, which is the North Pole, is said to have seven gold and seven silver steps leading to it.

The strange statement made in one of the Stanzas: “The Songs of Fohat and his Sons were radiant as the noon-tide Sun and the Moon combined;” and that the four Sons on the middle four-fold Circle “saw their father’s songs and heard his Solar-selenic radiance;” is explained in the Commentary in these words:

“The agitation of the Fohatic Forces at the two cold ends (North and South Poles) of the Earth which resulted in a multicoloured radiance at night, have in them several of the properties of Akasa (Ether) colour and sound as well.

“Sound is the characteristic of Akasa (Ether): it generates air, the property of which is Touch; which (by friction) becomes productive of Colour and Light.”

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p204-5]

In its Unity, primordial light is the seventh, or highest, principle, Daiviprakriti, the light of the unmanifested Logos. But in its differentiation it becomes Fohat, or the “Seven Sons.” The former is symbolized by the Central point in the double-Triangle; the latter by the hexagon itself, or the “six limbs” of the Microprosopus the Seventh being Malkhuth, the “Bride” of the Christian Kabalists, or our Earth.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p216]

THE SPARK HANGS FROM THE FLAME BY THE FINEST THREAD OF FOHAT. IT JOURNEYS THROUGH THE SEVEN WORLDS OF MAYA. IT STOPS IN THE FIRST (Kingdom), AND IS A METAL AND A STONE; IT PASSES INTO THE SECOND (Kingdom), AND BEHOLD – A PLANT; THE PLANT WHIRLS THROUGH SEVEN FORMS AND BECOMES A SACRED ANIMAL; (the first shadow of the physical man).

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p238]

Manvantaric impulse commences with the re-awakening of Cosmic Ideation (the “Universal Mind”) concurrently with, and parallel to the primary emergence of Cosmic Substance – the latter being the manvantaric vehicle of the former – from its undifferentiated pralayic state. Then, absolute wisdom mirrors itself in its Ideation; which, by a transcendental process, superior to and incomprehensible by human Consciousness, results in Cosmic Energy (Fohat). Thrilling through the bosom of inert Substance, Fohat impels it to activity, and guides its primary differentiations on all the Seven planes of Cosmic Consciousness. There are thus Seven Protyles (as they are now called), while Aryan antiquity called them the Seven Prakritis, or Natures, serving, severally, as the relatively homogeneous basis, which in the course of the increasing heterogeneity (in the evolution of the Universe) differentiate into the marvellous complexity presented by phenomena on the planes of perception. The term “relatively” is used designedly, because the very existence of such a process, resulting in the primary segregations of undifferentiated Cosmic Substance into its septenary bases of evolution, compels us to regard the protyle of each plane as only a mediate phase assumed by Substance in its passage from abstract into full objectivity.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p328]

When an Occultist speaks of Fohat – the energising and guiding intelligence in the Universal Electric or Vital Fluid, – he is laughed at. Withal, as now shown, neither the nature of electricity, nor of Life nor even of Light, are to this day understood. The Occultist sees in the manifestation of every force in Nature, the action of the quality, or the special characteristic of its noumenon; which noumenon is a distinct and intelligent Individuality on the other side of the manifested mechanical Universe. Now the Occultist does not deny – on the contrary he will support the claim – that light, heat, electricity and so on are affections (not properties or qualities) of matter. To put it more clearly: matter is the condition – the necessary basis or vehicle, a sine qua non – for the manifestation of these forces, or agents, on this plane.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p493]

And how can it be otherwise ? Gross ponderable matter is the body, the Shell of matter or Substance, the female passive principle; and this Fohatic force is the second principle, prana – the male and the active? On our globe this Substance is the second principle of the septenary Element – Earth; in the atmosphere, it is that of air, which is the cosmic gross body; in the Sun it becomes the Solar body and that of the Seven rays; in sidereal space it corresponds with another principle, and so on. The whole is a homogeneous Unity alone, the parts are all differentiations.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p525fn]

And so does prana (Jiva) pervade the whole living body of man; but alone, without having an atom to act upon, it would be quiescent – dead; i.e., would be in laya, or as Mr. Crookes has it, “locked in protyle.” It is the action of Fohat upon a compound or even a simple body that produces life. When a body dies it passes into the same polarity as its male energy and repels therefore the active agent, which, losing hold of the whole, fastens on the parts or molecules, this action being called chemical. Vishnu, the Preserver, transforms himself into Rudra-Siva, the Destroyer – a correlation seemingly unknown to Science.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p526fn]

The latter teaches that it is this original, primordial prima materia, divine and intelligent, the direct emanation of the Universal Mind – the Daiviprakriti (the divine light emanating from the Logos) – which formed the nuclei of all the “self-moving” orbs in Kosmos. It is the informing, ever-present moving-power and life-principle, the vital soul of the suns, moons, planets, and even of our Earth. The former latent: the last one active – the invisible Ruler and guide of the gross body attached to, and connected with, its Soul, which is the spiritual emanation, after all, of these respective planetary Spirits.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p602]

“The one Cosmic atom becomes seven atoms on the plane of matter, and each is transformed into a centre of energy; that same atom becomes seven rays on the plane of spirit, and the seven creative forces of nature, radiating from the root-essence . . . . follow, one the right, the other the left path, separate till the end of the Kalpa, and yet are in close embrace. What unites them? KARMA.” The atoms emanated from the Central Point emanate in their turn new centres of energy, which, under the potential breath of Fohat, begin their work from within without, and multiply other minor centres. These, in the course of evolution and involution, form in their turn the roots or developing causes of new effects, from worlds and “man-bearing “ globes, down to the genera, species, and classes of all the seven kingdoms (of which we know only four). For “the blessed workers have received the Thyan-kam, in the eternity”.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p635]

“Fohat sets in motion the primordial World-Gems, or the aggregation of Cosmic atoms and matter, some one way, some another, in the opposite direction ...

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p672]

Fohat turns with his two hands in contrary directions the “seed”, and the “curds”, or Cosmic matter;...

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p673]

......

Hence Cupid or Love in his primitive sense is Eros, the Divine Will, or Desire of manifesting itself through visible creation. Thence Fohat, the prototype of Eros, becomes on Earth the great power “Life-electricity,” or the Spirit of “Life-giving.” Let us remember the Greek Theogony and enter into the spirit of its philosophy. We are taught by the Greeks that all things, gods included, owe their being to the Ocean and his wife Tethys, the latter being Gaea, the Earth or Nature. But who is Ocean? Ocean is the immeasurable SPACE (Spirit in Chaos), which is the Deity (see Vol. I.); and Tethys is not the Earth, but primordial matter in the process of formation. In our case it is no longer Aditi-Gaea who begets Ouranos or Varuna, the chief Aditya among the seven planetary gods, but Prakriti, materialized and localized. The Moon, masculine in its theogonic character, is, in its cosmic aspect only, the female generative principle, as the Sun is the male emblem thereof. Water is the progeny of the Moon, an androgyne deity with every nation.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.II, p65-6]

... our globe is subject to seven periodical entire changes which go pari passu with the races. For the Secret Doctrine teaches that, during this Round, there must be seven terrestrial pralayas, three occasioned by the change in the inclination of the earth’s axis. It is a law which acts at its appointed time, and not at all blindly, as science may think, but in strict accordance and harmony with Karmic law. In Occultism this inexorable law is referred to as “the great ADJUSTER.” Science confesses its ignorance of the cause producing climatic vicissitudes and such changes in the axial direction, which are always followed by these vicissitudes; nor does it seem so sure of the axial changes. And being unable to account for them, it is prepared rather to deny the axial phenomena altogether, than admit the intelligent Karmic hand and law which alone could reasonably explain such sudden changes and their results. It has tried to account for them by various more or less fantastic speculations; one of which would be the sudden, and as imaginary, collision of our earth with a comet (De Boucheporn’s hypothesis), as the cause of all the geological revolutions. But we prefer holding to our esoteric explanation, since FOHAT is as good as any comet, having, in addition, universal intelligence to guide him.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.II, p329-330]

Fohat is the “Son of Aether” in its highest aspect, Akasa, the Mother-Father of the primitive Seven, and of Sound or LOGOS. Fohat is the light of the latter.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.II, p400fn]

Since Fohat crossed the Circle like two lines of flame (horizontally and vertically), the hosts of the Blessed Ones have never failed to send their representatives upon the planets they are made to watch over from the beginning. This is why the Svastika is always placed – as the ansated Cross was in Egypt – on the breast of the defunct mystics.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.II, p586]

It [the svastika] is the emblem of the activity of Fohat, of the continual revolution of the “wheels,” and of the Four Elements, the “Sacred Four,” in their mystical, and not alone in their cosmical meaning; further, its four arms, bent at right angles, are intimately related, as shown else where, to the Pythagorean and Hermetic scales. One initiated into the mysteries of the meaning of the Svastica, say the Commentaries, “can trace on it, with mathematical precision, the evolution of Kosmos and the whole period of Samdhya.” Also “the relation of the Seen to the Unseen,” and “the first procreation of man and species.”

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.II, p587]

A not altogether dissimilar conclusion has been arrived at by so well known a thinker as E. von Hartmann, who, despairing of the efficacy of unaided Natural Selection, regards evolution as intelligently guided by the UNCONSCIOUS (the Cosmic Logos of Occultism). But the latter acts only mediately through FOHAT, or Dhyani-Chohanic energy, and not quite in the direct manner which the great pessimist describes.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.II, p649]

The “principle of perfectibility” of Nägeli; von Baer’s “striving towards the purpose”; Braun’s “Divine breath as the inward impulse in the evolutionary history of Nature”; Professor Owen’s “tendency to perfectibility, etc.,” are all veiled manifestations of the universal guiding FOHAT, rich with the Divine and Dhyan-Chohanic thought.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.II, p649fn]

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This “force” so-called, shows itself truly indestructible but does not correlate and is not convertible in the sense accepted by the Fellows of the R.S., but rather may be said to grow and expand into “something else” while neither its own potentiality nor being are in the least affected by the transformation. Nor can it well be called force since the latter is but the attribute of Yin-sin (Yin-sin or the one “Form of existence,” also Adi-Buddhi or Dharmakaya, the mystic, universally diffused essence) when manifesting in the phenomenal world of senses, namely, only your old acquaintance Fohat. See in this connexion Subba Row’s article “Aryan Arhat Esoteric Doctrines” on the seven-fold principles in man; his review of your Fragments, pp. 94 and 95. The initiated Brahmin calls it (Yin-sin and Fohat) Brahman and Sakti when manifesting as the force. We will perhaps be near correct to call it infinite life and the source of all life visible and invisible, an essence inexhaustible, ever present, in short Swabhavat. (S. in its universal application, Fohat when manifesting throughout our phenomenal world, or rather the visible universe, hence in its limitations). It is pravritti when active, nirvritti when passive. Call it the Sakti or Parabrahma, if you like, and say with the Adwaitees (Subba Row is one) that Parabrahm plus Maya becomes Iswar the creative principle – a power commonly called God which disappears and dies with the rest when pralaya comes. Or you may hold with the northern Buddhist philosophers and call it Adi-Buddhi, the all-pervading supreme and absolute intelligence with its periodically manifesting Divinity – “Avalokiteshvara” (a manwantaric intelligent nature crowned with humanity) – the mystic name given by us to the hosts of the Dhyan Chohans (N.B., the solar Dhyan Chohans or the host of only our solar system) taken collectively, which host represents the mother source, the aggregate amount of all the intelligences that were, are or ever will be, whether on our string of man-bearing planets or on any part or portion of our solar system. And this will bring you by analogy to see that in its turn Adi-Buddhi (as its very name translated literally implies) is the aggregate intelligence of the universal intelligences including that of the Dhyan Chohans even of the highest order.

[Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett, Letter 67, Chronological Edition or Letter 181-2, Barker Numbering.]

Is there any difference between what produces primal causes and their ultimate effects?

None. Everything in the occult universe, which embraces all the primal causes, is based upon two principles – Kosmic energy (Fohat or breath of wisdom), and Kosmic ideation. Thyan Kam (= the knowledge of bringing about) giving the impulse to Kosmic energy in the right direction.

In Fohat all that exists on earth as ultimates exists as primates.

[Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett, Chronological Edition LBS-Appendix II. p508]

Did they but know that Zhima [Vital Soul, Purusha, vivifying Universal Spirit] cannot be shut out or pumped out from a glass vessel like air, and that hence, wherever there is purush there can be no thermal limit of organic life, they would have bak-baked less and told the world less absurdities than they have. In short, motion, cosmic matter, duration, space, are everywhere and for perspicuity's sake, let us place or fancy this multiplicity in or at the top of a circle, ("boundless"). They are passive, negative, unconscious, yet ever propelled by their inherent latent life or force. During the day of activity, that cyclic force ejecting from the causative latent principle cosmic matter, like the wheel of a water mill ejects showers of water-dust around its rotating circle, put it in contact with the same principles, but whose condition owing to their finding themselves outside the state of primitive passivity of the eternal immutability has already changed. Thus the same principles begin to acquire so to speak the germs of polarity. Then coming within the Universal mind Dyan Kam develops these germs, conceives, and giving the impulse communicates it to Fohat, who, vibrating along Akasa, Od (a state of cosmic matter, motion, force, etc.) runs along the lines of cosmic manifestations and frames all and everything; blindly – agreed, yet as faithfully in accordance with the prototypes as conceived in the eternal mind as a good mirror reflects your face.

[Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett, Chronological Edition LBS-Appendix II. p512]

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Brahmâ, then, would be the germ thrown into the soil of that field, and Sakti, that mysterious energy or force which develops it, and which is called by the Buddhist Arahats of Tibet – OF-HAT.

[C.W.III, p405fn]

The word jiva the, could never be applied by the Arahats to the Seventh Principle, since it is only through its correlation or contact with matter that Of-hat (the Buddhist active energy) can develop active conscious life; and that to the question “how can Unconsciousness generate consciousness?” the answer would be: “Was the seed which generated a Bacon or a Newton self-conscious?”

[C.W.III, p423]

... the Pho (the root of the Tibetan word Pho-hat),...

[C.W.IV, p243]

[. . . matter is but the substratum of created spirits.] Or the highest Dhyan Chohans of Occultism. At the beginning of Manvantara, the Fohat which they radiate awakens and differentiates Mahattattva, itself the radiation of Mulaprakriti.

[C.W.VI, p176]

We sympathize with the “Minister” who refuses to include Sound among “Substantial Entities” We believe in FOHAT, but would hardly refer to his Voice and Emanations as “Entities,” though they are produced by an electric shock of atoms and repercussions producing both Sound and Light. Science would accept no more our Fohat than the Sound or Light-Entities of the “Substantial Philosophy” (?). But we have this satisfaction, at any rate, that, once thoroughly explained, Fohat will prove more philosophical than either the materialistic or substantial theories of the forces of nature.

[C.W.XIII, p328]

Q. Is Fohat one of the three, Father, Mother and Son?
A. Fohat is a generic term and used in many senses. He is the light (Daiviprakriti) of all the three logoi – the personified symbols of the three spiritual stages of Evolution. Fohat is the aggregate of all the spiritual creative ideations above, and of all the electro-dynamic and creative forces below, in Heaven and on Earth. There seems to be great confusion and misunderstanding concerning the First and Second Logos. The first is the already present yet still unmanifested potentiality in the bosom of Father-Mother; the Second is the abstract collectivity of creators called “Demiurgi” by the Greeks or the Builders of the Universe. The third logos is the ultimate differentiation of the Second and the individualization of Cosmic Forces, of which Fohat is the chief; for Fohat is the synthesis of the Seven Creative Rays or Dhyan Chohans which proceed from the third Logos.

[C.W.X, p334]

Sloka (4). HER HEART HAD NOT YET OPENED FOR THE ONE RAY TO ENTER, THENCE TO FALL AS THREE INTO FOUR IN THE LAP OF MAYA.
“But, as the hour strikes and it becomes receptive of the Fohatic impress of the Divine Thought (the Logos, or the male aspect of the Anima Mundi, Alaya) – its heart opens.”

Q. Does not the Fohatic impress of the Divine Thought apply to a later stage of differentiation?
A. Fohat, as a distinct force or entity, is a later development. “Fohatic” is an adjective and may be used in a more wide sense; Fohat, as a substantive, or Entity, springs from a Fohatic attribute of the Logos. Electricity cannot be generated from that which does not contain an electric principle or element. The divine principle is eternal, the gods are periodical. Fohat is the Sakti or force of the divine mind; Brahmâ and Fohat are both aspects of the divine mind.

....

Q. Can you say what is the real meaning of the word Fohat?
A. The word is a Turanian compound and its meanings are various. In China Pho, or Fo, is the word for “animal soul,” the vital Nephesh or the breath of life. Some say that it is derived from the Sanskrit “Bhu,” meaning existence, or rather the essence of existence. Now Svayambhu means Brahmâ and Man at the same time. It means self-existence and self-existing, that which is everlasting, the eternal breath. If Sat is the potentiality of Being, Pho is the potency of Being. The meaning, however, entirely depends upon the position of the accent. Again, Fohat is related to Mahat. It is the reflection of the Universal Mind, the synthesis of the “Seven” and the intelligences of the seven creative Builders, or, as we call them, Cosmocratores. Hence, as you will understand, life and electricity are one in our philosophy. They say life is electricity, and if so, then the One Life is the essence and root of all the electric and magnetic phenomena on this manifested plane.

[C.W.X, p353-4]

Q. In what relation does the Sun, the highest form of Fire we can recognise, stand to Fire as you have explained it?
A. The Sun, as on our plane, is not even “Solar” fire. The Sun we see, gives nothing of itself, because it is a reflection; a bundle of electro-magnetic forces, one of the countless milliards of “Knots of Fohat.” Fohat is called the “Thread of primeval Light,” the “Ball of thread” of Ariadne, indeed, in this labyrinth of chaotic matter. This thread runs through the seven planes tying itself into knots. Every plane being septenary, there are thus forty-nine mystical and physical forces, (the) larger knots forming stars, suns and systems, the smaller, planets, and so on.

[C.W.X, p376]

Q. To return to an early question, in what sense can electricity be called an “entity”?
A. Only when we refer to it as Fohat, its primordial Force. In reality there is only one force, which on the manifested plane appears to us in millions and millions of forms. As said, all proceeds from the one universal primordial fire, and electricity is on our plane one of the most comprehensive aspects of this fire. All contains, and is, electricity, from the nettle which stings to the lightning which kills, from the spark in the pebble to the blood in the body. But the electricity which is seen, for instance, in an electric lamp, is quite another thing from Fohat. Electricity is the cause of the molecular motion in the physical universe, and hence also here, on earth. It is one of the “principles” of matter; for generated as it is in every disturbance of equilibrium it becomes, so to say, the Kamic element of the object in which this disturbance takes place. Thus Fohat, the primeval cause of this force in its millions of aspects, and as the sum total of universal cosmic electricity is an “entity.”

Q. But what do you mean by this term? Is not electricity an entity also?
A . I would not call it so. The word Entity comes from the Latin root ens, “being,” of esse, “to be”; therefore everything independent of any other thing is an entity, from a grain of sand up to God. But in our case Fohat is alone an entity, electricity having only a relative significance, if taken in the usual, scientific sense.

Q. Is not cosmic electricity a son of Fohat, and are not his “Seven Sons” entities?
A. I am afraid not. Speaking of the Sun, we may call it an Entity but we would hardly call a sunbeam that dazzles our eyes, also an Entity. The “Sons of Fohat” are the various Forces having fohatic, or cosmic electric life in their essence or being, and in their various effects. An example: rub amber – a Fohatic Entity – and it will give birth to a “Son” who will attract straws: an apparently inanimate and inorganic object thus manifesting life! But rub a nettle between your thumb and finger and you will also generate a Son of Fohat, in the shape of a blister. In these cases, the blister is an Entity, but the attraction which draws the straw, is hardly one.

Q. Then Fohat is cosmic electricity and the “Son” is also electricity?
A. Electricity is the work of Fohat, but as I have just said, Fohat is not electricity. From an occult standpoint, electric phenomena are very often produced by the abnormal state of the molecules of an object or of bodies in space: electricity is life and it is death: the first being produced by harmony, the second by disharmony. Vital electricity is under the same laws as Cosmic electricity. The combination of molecules into new forms, and the bringing about of new correlations and disturbance of molecular equilibrium is, in general, the work of, and generates, Fohat. The synthesized principle, or the emanation of the seven cosmic Logoi is beneficent only there where harmony prevails.

[C.W.X, p379-81]

Q. Is Fohat to be understood as synonymous with force, or that which causes the changing manifestation of matter? If so, how can Fohat be said to “leave it to follow its own new growth,” when all growth depends upon the indwelling force?
A. All growth depends upon the indwelling force, because on this plane of ours it is this force alone which acts consciously. The universal force cannot be regarded as a conscious force as we understand the word consciousness, because it would immediately become a personal god. It is only that which is enclosed in form, a limitation of matter, which is conscious of itself on this plane. This Free Force or Will, which is limitless and absolute, cannot be said to act understandingly, but it is the one and sole immutable Law of Life and Being.

Fohat, therefore, is spoken of as the synthetic motor power of all the imprisoned life-forces and the medium between the absolute and conditioned Force. It is a link, just as Manas is the connecting link between the gross matter of the physical body and the divine Monad which animates it, but is powerless to act upon the former directly.

[C.W.X, p391-2]

Fohat is the agent of the law, its representative, the representative of the Manasaputras, whose collectivity is – the eternal mind.

[C.W.X, p393]

Q. What is the relation between electricity and physical or animal magnetism and hypnotism?
A. If by electricity, you mean the science which unfolds on this plane, and under a dozen various qualifications the phenomena and laws of the electric fluid – then I answer, none at all. But if you refer to the electricity we call Fohatic, or intra-cosmic, then I will say that all these forms of phenomena are based on it.

[C.W.X, p394]

Electrobiology on the lines of pure dynamic electricity has egregiously failed. Ignorant of “Fohat”no electrical currents suffice to explain to it either muscular or nervous activity!

[C.W.XII, p146]

In The Secret Doctrine it is almost revealed that the “Sons of Fohat” are the personified forces known, in a general way as Motion, Sound, Heat, Light, Cohesion, Electricity (or Electric) Fluid, and Nerve Force (or Magnetism).

[C.W.XII, p620]

... the informing divine energy – Fohat ...

[C.W.XIV, p211fn]

--oOo--