G •—The seventh letter in the
English alphabet. “In Greek, Chaldean, Syriac, Hebrew, Assyrian, Samaritan,
Etrurian, Coptic, in the modern Romaic and Gothic, it occupies the third place
in the alphabet, while in Cyrillic, Glagolitic, Croat, Russian, Servian and
Wallachian, it stands fourth.” As the name of “god” begins with this letter (in
Syriac, gad; Swedish, gud: German, gott; English,
god; Persian, gada, etc., etc.), there is an occult reason for
this which only the students of esoteric philosophy and of the Secret
Doctrine, explained esoterically, will understand thoroughly; it refers to
the three logoi—the last,the Elohim, and the emanation of the latter, the
androgynous Adam Kadmon. All these peoples have derived the name of “god” from
their respective traditions, the more or less clear echoes of the esoteric
tradition. Spoken and “Silent Speech” (writing) are a “gift of the gods”, say
all the national traditions, from the old Aryan Sanskrit-speaking people who
claim that their alphabet, the Devanâgari (lit., the
language of the devas or gods) was given to them from heaven, down to the
Jews, who speak of an alphabet, the parent of the one which has survived, as
having been a celestial and mystical symbolism given by the angels to the
patriarchs. Hence, every letter had its manifold meaning. A symbol itself of a
celestial being and objects, it was in its turn represented on earth by like
corresponding objects whose form symbolised the shape of the letter. The present
letter, called in Hebrew gimel and symbolised by a long camel’s neck, or
rather a serpent erect, is associated with the third sacred divine name,
Ghadol or Magnus (great). Its numeral is four, the Tetragrammaton
and the sacred Tetraktys; hence its sacredness. With other people it stood for
400 and with a dash over it, for 400,000.
Gabriel. According to
the Gnostics, the “Spirit” or Christos, the “messenger of life”, and Gabriel are
one. The former “is called some-times the Angel Gabriel Hebrew ‘the mighty one
of God’,” and took with the Gnostics the place of the Logos, while the Holy
Spirit was considered one with the Æon Life,
(see Irenæus I., xii.). Therefore we find
Theodoret saying (in Hævet. Fab., II vii.) : “ The heretics agree with us
(Christians) respecting the beginning of all things. But they say there is not
one Christ (God), but one above and the other below. And
this last formerly dwelt in many; but the Jesus, they at one time say is
from God, at another they call him a Spirit;” The key to this is given in the esoteric philosophy. The
“spirit” with the Gnostics was a female potency exoterically, it was the ray
proceeding from the Higher Manas, the Ego, and that which the Esotericists refer
to as the Kâma Manas or the lower personal Ego, which is radiated in
every human entity by the Higher Ego or Christos, the god within us. Therefore,
they were right in saying: “there is not one Christ, but one above and the other
below”. Every student of Occultism will understand this, and also that
Gabriel—or “the mighty one of God”—is one with the Higher Ego. (See
Isis
Unveiled.)
Gæa (Gr.). Primordial Matter,
in the Cosmogony of Hesiod; Earth, as some think; the wife of Ouranos, the sky
or heavens. The female personage of the primeval Trinity, composed of Ouranos,
Gæa and Eros.
Gaffarillus. An Alchemist and philosopher
who lived in the middle of the seventeenth century. He is the first philosopher
known to maintain that every natural object (e.g., plants, living creatures,
etc.), when burned, retained its form in its ashes and that it could be raised
again from them. This claim was justified by the eminent chemist Du Chesne, and
after him Kircher, Digby and Vallemont have assured themselves of the fact, by
demonstrating that the astral forms of burned plants could be raised from their
ashes. A receipt for raising such astral phantoms of flowers is given in a work
of Oetinger, Thoughts on the Birth and Generation of
Things.
Gaganeswara (Sk.). “Lord of the Sky”, a name of
Garuda.
Gal-hinnom (Heb.) The name of Hell
in the Talmud.
Gambatrin (Scand.). The name of
Hermodur’s “magic staff” in the Edda.
Ganadevas (Sk.)A certain class of
celestial Beings who are said to inhabit Maharloka. They are the rulers
of our Kalpa (Cycle) and therefore termed Kalpâdhikârins, or Lord of the Kalpas.
They last only “One Day” of Brahmâ.
Gandapada (Sk.) A celebrated
Brahman teacher, the author of the Commentaries on the Sankhya Karika,
Mandukya Upanishad, and other works.
Gândhâra (Sk.) A musical note of great
occult power in the Hindu gamut—the third of the diatonic scale.
Gandharva (Sk.) The celestial
choristers and musicians of India. in the Vedas these
deities reveal the secrets of heaven and earth and esoteric science to mortals.
They had charge of the sacred Soma plant and its juice, the ambrosia drunk in
the temple which gives “omniscience".
Gan-Eden (Heb.) Also
Ganduniyas. (See “Eden”.)
Ganesa (Sk.) The
elephant-headed God of Wisdom, the son of Siva. He is the same as the Egyptian
Thoth-Hermes, and Anubis or Hermanubis (q.v.). The legend shows him as
having lost his human head, which was replaced by that of an
elephant.
Gangâ (Sk.) The Ganges, the principal sacred river in
India. There are
two versions of its myth: one relates that Gangâ (the goddess) having
transformed herself into a river, flows from the big toe of Vishnu; the other,
that the Gangâ drop from the ear of Siva into the Anavatapta lake, thence passes
out, through the mouth of the silver cow (gômukhi), crosses all Eastern
India and falls into the Southern Ocean. “An ‘heretical superstition ”, remarks
Mr. Eitel in his Sanskrit, Chinese Dictionary “ascribes to the waters of
the Ganges sin-cleansing power” No more a “superstition” one would say,
than the belief that the waters of Baptism and the Jordan have “sin-cleansing
power”.
Gangâdwâra (Sk.) “The gate or door of the
Ganges”, literally;
the name of a town now called Hardwar, at the foot of the
Himalayas.
Gangi (Sk.) A renowned Sorcerer
in the time of Kâsyapa Buddha (a predecessor of Gautama). Gangi was regarded as
an incarnation of Apalâla, the Nâga (Serpent), the guardian Spirit of the
Sources of Subhavastu, a river in Udyâna. Apalâla is said to have been converted
by Gautama Buddha, to the good Law, and become an Arhat. The allegory of the
name is comprehensible : all the Adepts and Initiates were called nâgas,
“ Serpents of Wisdom”.
Ganinnânse. A Singhalese priest who has
not yet been ordained—from gana, an assemblage or brotherhood. The higher
ordained priests “are called terunnânse from the Pali
théro, an elder”(Hardy).
Garm (Scand.). The Cerberus
of the Edda. This monstrous dog lived in the Gnypa cavern in front of the
dwelling of Hel, the goddess of the nether-world.
Garuda (Sk.) A gigantic bird in
the Ramâyana, the steed of Vishnu. Esoterically—the symbol of the great
Cycle.
Gâthâ (Sk.) Metrical chants or
hymns, consisting of moral aphorisms. A gâthâ of thirty-two words is called
Âryâgiti.
Gâti (Sk.) The six (esoterically
seven) conditions of sentient existence. These are divided into two
groups: the three higher and the three lower paths. To the former belong
the devas, the asuras and (immortal) men; to the latter (in exoteric teachings)
creatures in hell, prêtas or hungry demons, and animals. Explained
esoterically, however, the last three are the personalities in
Kâmaloka, elementals and animals. The seventh mode of existence is that of the
Nirmanakâya (q.v.).
Gâtra (Sk.) Lit., the
limbs (of Brahmâ) from which the “mind-born” sons, the seven Kumâras,
were born.
Gautama (Sk.) The Prince of
Kapilavastu, son of Sudhôdana, the Sâkya king of a small realm on the borders of
Nepaul, born in the seventh century B.c., now called the “Saviour of
the World”. Gautama or Gôtama was the sacerdotal name of the Sâkya family, and
Sidhârtha was Buddha’s name before he became a Buddha. Sâkya Muni, means the
Saint of the Sâkya family. Born a simple mortal he rose to Buddhaship through
his own personal and unaided merit. A man—verily greater than any
god!
Gayâ (Sk.) Ancient city of
Magadha, a little
north-west of the modern Gayah. It is at the former that Sakyamuni reached his
Buddha- ship, under the famous Bodhi-tree, Bodhidruma.
Gayâtri (Sk.) also
Sâvitri. A most sacred verse, addressed to the Sun, in the Rig -Veda, which
the Brahmans have to repeat mentally every morn and eve during their
devotions.
Geber (Heb.) or
Gibborim. “Mighty men”; the same as the Kabirim. In heaven, they
are regarded as powerful angels, on earth as the giants mentioned in chapter vi.
of Genesis.
Gebirol, Solomon Ben Jehudah.
Called in literature Avicebron. An Israelite by birth, a philosopher, poet and
Kabbalist, a voluminous writer and a mystic. He was born in the eleventh Century
at Malaga (1021),
educated at Saragossa, and died at Valencia in 1070, murdered by a Mahommedan.
His fellow-religionists called him Salomon the Sephardi, or the Spaniard, and
the Arabs, Abu Ayyub Suleiman ben ya’hya Ibn Dgebirol; whilst the scholastics
named him Avicebron. (See Myer’s Qabbalah.) Ibn Gebirol was certainly one
of the greatest philosophers and scholars of his age. He wrote much in Arabic
and most of his MSS. have been preserved. His greatest work appears to be the
Megôr Hayyîm, i.e., the Fountain of Life, “one of the
earliest exposures of the secrets of the Speculative Kabbalah”, as his
biographer informs us. (See “Fons Vitæ”.)
Geburah (Heb.) A Kabbalistic
term ; the fifth Sephira, a female and passive potency, meaning severity and
power; from it is named the Pillar of Severity. [ w. w w.]
Gedulah (Heb.) Another name for
the Sephira Chesed.
Gehenna, in Hebrew Hinnom. No
hell at all, but a valley near Jerusalem, where Israelites immolated
their children to Moloch. In that valley a place named Tophet was
situated, where a fire was perpetually preserved for sanitary purposes. The
prophet Jeremiah informs us that his countrymen, the Jews, used to sacrifice
their children on that spot.
Gehs (Zend) Parsi
prayers.
Gelukpa (Tib.) “Yellow Caps”
literally ; the highest and most orthodox Buddhist sect in
Tibet, the
antithesis of the Dugpa (“Red Caps”), the old “devil worshippers”.
Gemara (Heb.) The latter portion
of the Jewish Talmud, begun by Rabbi Ashi and completed by Rabbi Mar and
Meremar, about 300 A.D. [w.w.w.] Lit., to finish. It is a commentary on the
Mishna.
Gematria (Heb.) A division of the
practical Kabbalah. It shows the numerical value of Hebrew words by summing up
the values of the letters composing them and further, it shows by this means,
analogies between words and phrases. [w.w.w.]
One of the methods
(arithmetical) for extracting the hidden meaning from letters, words and
sentences.
Gems, Three precious. In
Southern Buddhism these are the sacred books, the Buddhas and the priesthood. In
Northern Buddhism and its secret schools, the Buddha, his sacred teachings, and
the Narjols (Buddhas of Compassion).
Genesis. The whole of the Book of
Genesis down to the death of Joseph, is found to he a hardly altered version of
the Cosmogony of the Chaldeans, as is now repeatedly proven from the Assyrian
tiles. The first three chapters are transcribed from the allegorical narratives
of the beginnings common to all nations. Chapters four and five are a new
allegorical adaptation of the same narration in the secret Book of
Numbers; chapter six is an astronomical narrative of the Solar year and
the seven cosmocratores from the Egyptian original of the Pymander and
the symbolical visions of a series of Enoichioi (Seers)—from whom came
also the Book of Enoch. The beginning of Exodus, and the story of Moses is that
of the Babylonian Sargon, who having flourished (as even that unwilling
authority Dr. Sayce tells us) 3750 B.C. preceded the Jewish lawgiver by almost
2300 years. (See Secret Doctrine, vol. II., pp. 691 et seq.)
Nevertheless, Genesis is an undeniably esoteric work. It has not
borrowed, nor has it disfigured the universal symbols and teachings on the lines
of which it was written, but simply adapted the eternal truths to its own
national spirit and clothed them in cunning allegories comprehensible only to
its Kabbalists and Initiates. The Gnostics have done the same, each sect in its
own way, as thousands of years before, India, Egypt, Chaldea and
Greece, had also dressed the same incommunicable truths each in its own national
garb. The key and solution to all such narratives can be found only in the
esoteric teachings.
Genii (Lat.) A name for Æons,
or angels, with the Gnostics. The names of their hierarchies and classes are
simply legion.
Geonic Period. The era of the Geonim may be
found mentioned in works treating of the Kabbalah ;
the ninth century AD. is implied. [ w. w.w.]
Gharma (Sk.) A title of
Karttikeya, the Indian god of war and the Kumâra born of Siva’s drop of sweat
that fell into the Ganges.
Ghôcha (Sk.) Lit., “the
miraculous Voice”. The name of a great Arhat, the author of
Abhidharmamrita
Shastra, who restored sight to a blind man by anointing his
eyes with the tears of the audience moved by his (Ghôcha’s) supernatural
eloquence.
Gilgoolem (Heb.) The cycle of
rebirths with the Hebrew Kabbalists; with the orthodox Kabbalists, the “whirling
of the soul” after death, which finds-no rest until it reaches Palestine, the “promised land”,
and its body is buried there.
Gimil (Scand.). “The
Cave of Gimil” or
Wingolf. A kind of Heaven or Paradise, or perhaps a New Jerusalem, built by the
“Strong and Mighty God” who remains nameless in the Edda, above the Field
of Ida, and after the new earth rose out of the waters.
Ginnungagap (Scand.). The “cup of
illusion” literally ; the abyss of the great deep, or the shoreless,
beginningless, and endless, yawning gulf; which in esoteric parlance we call the
“World’s Matrix”, the primordial living space. The cup that contains the
universe, hence the “cup of illusion”.
Giöl (Scand.) The,
Styx, the river Giöl which had to be
crossed before the nether-world was reached, or the cold Kingdom of Hel. It was spanned
by a gold-covered bridge, which led to the gigantic iron fence that encircles
the palace of the Goddess of the Under-World or Hel.
Gna (Scand.) One of the three
handmaidens of the goddess Freya. She is a female Mercury who bears her
mistress’ messages into all parts of the world.
Gnâna (Sk.) Knowledge as
applied to the esoteric sciences.
Gnân Devas (Sk.) Lit., “the gods of
knowledge”. The higher classes of gods or devas; the “mind-born” sons of Brahmâ,
and others including the Manasa-putras (the Sons of Intellect). Esoterically,
our reincarnating Egos.
Gnânasakti (Sk.) The power of true
knowledge, one of the seven great forces in Nature (six,
exoterically).
Gnatha (Sk.) The Kosmic
Ego; the conscious, intelligent Soul of Kosmos.
Gnomes (Alch.) The Rosicrucian
name for the mineral and earth elementals.
Gnôsis (Gr.) Lit., “knowledge”.
The technical term used by the schools of religious philosophy, both before and
during the first centuries of so-called Christianity, to denote the object of
their enquiry. This Spiritual and Sacred Knowledge, the Gupta Vidya of
the Hindus, could only be obtained by Initiation into Spiritual Mysteries of
which the ceremonial “Mysteries” were a type.
Gnostics (Gr.) The philosophers
who formulated and taught the Gnôsis or Knowledge (q.v.). They flourished
in the first three centuries of the Christian era: the following were eminent,
Valentinus, Basilides, Marcion, Simon Magus, etc. [ w.w. w.]
Gnypa (Scand.) The cavern
watched by the dog Garm (q.v.).
Gogard (Zend.) The Tree of Life
in the Avesta.
Golden Age. The ancients divided the life
cycle into the Golden, Silver, Bronze and Iron Ages. The Golden was an age of
primeval purity, simplicity and general happiness.
Gonpa (Tib.) A temple or
monastery; a Lamasery.
Gonpîs (Sk.). Shepherdesses —
the playmates and companions of Krishna, among whom was his wife
Raddha.
Gossain (Sk.). The name of a certain class
of ascetics in India.
Great Age. There were several “great
ages” mentioned by the ancients. In India it embraced the whole
Maha-manvantara, the “age of Brahmâ”, each “Day” of which represents the life
cycle of a chain—i.e. it embraces a period of seven Rounds. (See Esoteric
Buddhism, by A. P. Sinnett.) Thus while a “Day” and a “Night” represent, as
Manvantara and Pralaya, 8,640,000,000 years, an “age” lasts through a period
of 311,040,000,000,000 years; after which the Pralaya, or dissolution of
the universe, becomes universal. With the Egyptians and Greeks the “great age”
referred only to the tropical or sidereal year, the duration of which is 25,868
solar years. Of the complete age—that of the gods— they say nothing, as it was a
matter to he discussed and divulged only in the Mysteries, during the initiating
ceremonies. The “great age” of the Chaldees was the same in figures as that of
the Hindus.
Grihastha (Sk.) Lit., “a
householder”, “one who lives in a house with his family”. A Brahman “ family
priest” in popular rendering, and the sarcerdotal hierarchy of the
Hindus.
Guardian Wall. A suggestive name given to the
host of translated adepts (Narjols) or the Saints collectively, who are supposed
to watch over, help and protect Humanity. This is the so-called “Nirmanâkâya”
doctrine in Northern mystic Buddhism. (See Voice of the Silence, Part
III.)
Guff (Heb.) Body; physical
form; also written Gof.
Guhya (Sk.) Concealed,
secret.
Guhya Vidyâ(Sk.) The secret
knowledge of mystic Mantras.
Gullweig (Scand.) The
personification of the “golden” ore. It is said in the Edda that during
the Golden Age, when lust for gold and wealth was yet unknown to man, “when the
gods played with golden disks, and no passion disturbed the rapture of mere
existence”, the whole earth was happy. But, no sooner does “Gullweig (Gold ore)
the bewitching enchantress come, who, thrice cast into the fire, arises each
time more beautiful than before, and fills the souls of gods and men with
unappeasable longing ”, than all became changed. It is then that the Norns, the
Past, Present and Future, entered into being, the blessed peace of childhood’s
dreams passed away and Sin came into existence with all its evil consequences.
(Asgard and the Gods.)
Gunas (Sk) Qualities,
attributes (See“ Triguna”) ; a thread, also a cord.
Gunavat (Sk.) That which is
endowed with qualities.
Gupta Vidyâ (Sk.) The same as Guhya
Vidyâ; Esoteric or Secret Science; knowledge.
Guru (Sk.) Spiritual Teacher;
a master in metaphysical and ethical doctrines; used also for a teacher of any
science.
Guru Deva (Sk.) Lit., “divine
Master”.
Gyan-Ben-Giân (Pers.) The King of the
Peris, the Sylphs, in the old mythology of Iran.
Gyges (Gr.) “The ring of
Gyges” has become a familiar metaphor in European literature. Gyges was a Lydian
who, after murdering the King Candaules, married his widow. Plato tells us that
Gyges descended once into a chasm of the earth and discovered a brazen horse,
within whose open side was the skeleton of a man who had a brazen ring on his
finger. This ring when placed on his own finger made him invisible.
Gymnosophists (Gr.) The name given by
Hellenic writers to a class of naked or “air-clad” mendicants; ascetics in
India, extremely
learned and endowed with great mystic powers. It is easy to recognise in these
gymnosophists the Hindu Aranyaka of old, the learned yogis and ascetic-
philosophers who retired to the jungle and forest, there to reach, through great
austerities, superhuman knowledge and experience.
Gyn (Tib.) Knowledge acquired
under the tuition of an adept teacher or guru.
