The Golden Star

VISION 1

The Domains of Night

“When the Hidden Logos had first concentrated His Mind into Himself, the quality of Darkness pervaded His assumed Body, and when He finally abandoned this Body it was transformed into Night.”

“And how long will this Night last, dear Messenger?” asked Ma-U.

“It will last for one-hundred years of Brahmâ; or, according to mortal reckoning, 311,040 trillions of years; which figure represents one-hundred years of Days and Nights of Brahmâ. Perhaps this may seem a long time to your limited senses, but in terms of Eternity these Days and Nights are like a series of flashes from a lighthouse, which soon will cease when day returns.

“Born in the Body of Night are the Asuras, who form the first three classes of Pitris, and they—together with the other four classes of Pitris, who are called the Sons of Twilight—are amongst those Holy Rulers who endowed mankind with Mind. And they have made man in the form of a reflection of themselves, a sevenfold mystery of a sevenfold mystery. As the hearts of the Pitris have four lower cavities and three higher divisions, so is the heart of man constructed. As the bodies of the Pitris radiate seven Rays, so find we in man seven nervous plexuses, which radiate similar rays. And so it is with the seven layers of the skin in Pitris and man. Thus men became the shadows of the Shadows of the Gods, each a shadow of his own colour and kind, inferior to his Father; because the Creator is the substance of which man is the shadow, born in the darkness of the material, or in man the animal. In a similar manner, Earth is the Dark Night when compared with the glorious Day of the Heavenly Light. As the wise Pymander, one of the Ancient Sages, has said: ‘I am thy Thought, thy God, more ancient than the moist Principle, the Light that radiates within Darkness, and the shining Word of God is the Son of Deity.’

“Therefore,” continued Neteru-Hem, “men are the Spirits of the Earth, clothed in shadow and linked with the higher regions by their Astral Selves, and warmed by the Solar Lhas, or Spirits; and the Earth, called Kliphoth, is the residence of the Prince of Darkness, whose name is Samaël, the Angel of Death.

“The first men were negative forms, ethereal astral shadows of their creative Progenitors, having neither astral nor physical bodies. These gradually melted away and became absorbed in the bodies of their own Sweat-Born progeny, which were of a more solid substance. And so, the shadow retiring and becoming covered with flesh, man’s physical body was formed. And these bodies were vivified when the Sons of Wisdom, the Sons of Night, came down, ready for incarnation. The Lords said: ‘We can choose, for we have Wisdom.’ So they all chose those human vehicles that appealed most to their Wisdom. Some entered the Chhâyâs, some projected a dim burning spark; some entered the bodies of one race, others the bodies of another. One race was ready, the rest were not; and in this lies the secret of the subsequent inequalities of intellectual capacity, of birth, of social position.

“The angels that fell into generation became known as the Serpents and Dragons of Wisdom, born and created out of the secrecy and mystery of the Night.

“It was the Christian Saviour who came, like Krishna, to save mankind from eternal death and who conquered the Kingdom of Darkness, or Hell, as every Initiate does when he has developed within himself the Logos, or Christos, the Spiritual Ego, or Higher Self.”

“But”—said Ma-u—“you spoke just now about the Days and Nights of Brahmâ; what exactly is meant by that, Messenger?”

“The Days and Nights of Brahmâ”, responded Neteru-Hem, “are those cycles of activity and rest, which, according to the ancient Teachings represented certain periods of 4,320,000,000 mortal years in which activity prevails on earth, making one Day of Brahmâ; and this is followed by a period of rest and darkness of equal duration, when all activity ceases, and this is called a Night of Brahmâ, to be followed by another Day, and so on. It is further taught that the Sons of Dark Wisdom—which in the Christian Theology are identical with the Archangels, the so-called Fallen Angels—that these Great Lords are as Divine and as pure, if not purer, than all the Michaels and Gabriels so glorified in the Churches.”

“How, then, came it to pass that the Churches have fallen into this error?” asked Ma-uti.

“One of the reasons is,” replied the Messenger, “that the memories of Atlantis and the fall of its peoples, have continued up to the period of the birth of the Christian Church; and one of these memories is the story of how the Atlanteans were endowed with divine powers, just as all mankind is today—though many are not aware of it—and, feeling within themselves the inner God, Logos, or Christos, each felt that he was a Man–God in his nature, though physically an animal. From the day they realized this a struggle between the God-principle and the animal self began; a struggle for life between the spiritual and the physical. Those Atlanteans who conquered the lower, physical body, joined what they termed the Sons of Light. The others became slaves to matter and were termed the Sons of Darkness. In other words, the first slaked off the shackles of the material, so that their minds became purified and ready to rejoin the Heavenly Hosts through union with the Soul; whilst the latter failed to do so and had to continue to be brought into incarnation after incarnation, until they too fought the good fight and conquered; and so won freedom. Therefore, we have the Kabalistic and symbolical teaching that God is Light—mirrored inversely in Nature and Matter—which is Darkness. This emblematical cosmogony was represented from time immemorial in the Temples of Egypt, where we find the two figures in black and white, the two Kabiri, personifying the opposite poles, north and south; or the commemoration of the passing of the original north pole of the earth to the south pole of heaven; or the inversion of the poles, when the great inclination of the earth's axis resulted in the displacement of the oceans, the submersion of the polar lands, and the consequent upheaval of new continents in the equatorial regions, and vice versa. The two figures also portray Set, the slayer of Osiris, as the Dark Night, and Osiris as the Light of Day and the Sun. And I want you to realize that Light, Life, Love, Goodness and Beauty, are as much the adversaries of darkness, death, hatred, evil and ugliness, as what the Christians call Satan, or the Devil is their great Enemy; the adversary of mankind and all that is good.

“So we find Light and Darkness engaged in an unending battle, each the reverse side of the other and representing the same principle in different ways.”

“Will the struggle between Light and Darkness then be an eternal one, dear Messenger?” asked Ma-uti.

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