The Golden Star

VISION 3

Elements and Elementals

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And now Ma-u and Ma-uti did see further wonders, for in the sky appeared the glorious form of Lucesius, or Jupiter, the heavenly Father of the Greeks and Romans. Jupiter Triumphator, who in his hand holds flinty pebble wherewith to throw his fulminating flashes, when, as Jupiter Tonans, his thunderous roars resound in answer to Porsena, calling loudly on the sender of the prodigies; Jupiter Fulgurator, who storms and raves; or Pluvius, whose drenching rains refresh the soil and swell the floods with life abundant.

There shines the Prince of Light, all dressed in white, his sacred colour, within his silver chariot with four white steeds. Beside him heavenly Juno, forming radiant pair; the guardians of married bliss. Their consuls also dressed in white, and priests with snowy caps surround them; and flocks of birds do wheel and tumble, and soar and dip to presage the events of future happenings; the messengers of the bright God.

And in the distance rises smoke of sacrifice, as in the days of old the ides of every month saw on the altars mighty rams, and on the kalends female lambs as offerings to Jupiter and Juno; and invocations to the pair, and Janus, did ascend unto their thrones on high.

Far down, from out the bowels of the earth and the volcano, rise up the sounds of hammer-beats on steel; where Vulcan, or Hephæstus, God of Fire, and Son of Zeus and of Hera, works at his anvil with its twenty bellows. And in his workshop are produced things exquisite and fine and wondrous to behold. The clamour ceases and, the sides of that volcano cleft in twain, there comes the God himself with Aglaia, his wife, the youngest of the Charites. Of ugly mien is he and crookéd, his wife a bright Goddess of Beauty. His retinue of Cyclopes, grim and strong, and of the Brontes, Steropes, and Pyracmon surround the limping form of the fierce God; rejected and thrown from Heaven once by Zeus, the Lord, himself; when Thetis and Euryome received him in their grotto that surrounded was by Oceanus, there to dwell for nine long years. Now he is on his way to the palace in Olympus, that shines like the stars and is imperishable.

His work and that of his attendants done; the preparation of the lower depths completed, so that earth’s bright contours be further rounded.

And now the rim of earth towards the West sinks down and frightful chasms do appear, full awesome to the soul. A distant roaring fills the air, and towering walls of Ocean’s floods draw near apace to fill the deeps and scatter high upon the rocks in scornful clouds of spray.

And high above the towering rollers, shouting with exuberance and joy, comes Neptune, or Poseidon, brother of Zeus, Son of Kronos and Rhea; whose kinsfolk, Hades, Hera, Hestia and Demeter, vied with him to rule that glorious Kingdom of the Sea, which fell by lot to him.

His horses, of which he himself is the creator, with brazen hoofs and golden manes, come galloping o’er the tossing waves, which at his approach are stilled.

Amphitrite, his lovely spouse, is with him, as, with trident held aloft, he scatters rocks or stills the turmoil of the inundation. The great Leviathan and playful Dolphins swim around his chariot, and all the monsters of the deep do homage to their King and Queen.

Loudly does the ocean roar its music of the mighty breakers, bursting on the shore with wild profound eternal bass, and booming tympanies and drums, in boundless vast omnipotence. Pure, unpolluted emblems of the Infinite, thundering on the patient shore in awful grandeur; a paragon of elemental might and beauty. The rippling waves and rolling billows now bring corallines and painted shells and precious stones and lay them at the feet of waiting strand; and wondrous creatures from mysterious caves below the surf creep on the sands; bewildered riches from the treasure chests of azure deeps.

Now comes fair Demeter, Goddess of Earth, and Persephone, bedecked with Zeus’ flowers; ravishing daughter of fairest mother, not yet despoiled by Pluto, but like a lovely rosebud, sweet and pure, with breath like nectar and ambrosia; where’er they tread the fruits of earth spring up in great abundance, and corn, the gift of Demeter, strives upwards to the animating light. And she, the good Goddess, with garland golden made of heads of corn and blood-red poppy as her sceptre, beholds with gentle glance her glorious kingdom, stretching far and wide.

“These are the Rulers of the Elements of old,” said Neteru-Hem. “The worship of the Ages has given shape and form to them, and still they roam the earth, and visible they are to the favourite few whose eyes can pierce the veil that shields the higher Worlds.”

“Are these Worlds very high above us?” asked Ma-uti.

“Nay, my child, a higher world is not higher by reason of its location, but because it is superior in quality or essence. It exists on a higher rate of vibration and intermingles with our own human, or earth atmosphere. Verily, the Gods still walk the earth and mix with men. There are conscious ethereal Entities, as invisible as the Ether in these higher worlds, of immaculate nature and purity; they are those who have completed the cycles of human evolution and are the elect of past races of men. They are called the Flagæ, the Guardian Angels, the Ancestors, the Pitris, the six-fold Dhyân Chohans; and are, in fact, men, minus the physical body.

“It is a true mystery to those who reject the existence of intellectual and conscious spiritual Beings in the Universe, and who limit full consciousness to man alone, and that only as a function of the brain. Only the right comprehension of the primeval evolution of Spirit–Matter and its real Essence, can elucidate the mystery of the soul’s destiny.

“The Universe is a product of the imagination of Nature or God; but its processes can be guided to a certain extent by the will of the Adept. As God uses the Universal Mind’s imagination to create the planets, the seas, the mountains, and all the rest, so can the imagination of the Adept’s mind use the elements of matter to manifest certain material phenomena, by making visible the invisible elements of matter and giving them form and substance. The Universal Mind, the mind of the Adept, the mind of the man on the lowest rung of evolution, they are all the same, in different grades of perfection; and the elements and elementals are at the disposal of each, according to their powers. But there is also the teaching which states that no form can be given to anything, either by Nature or by man, of which the ideal type does not already exist on the subjective plane, and that no form or shape can possibly enter man’s consciousness, or evolve in his imagination, which does not exist in prototype, at least as an approximation. For this reason it will now become clear to you, that all human forms and all objects in the Universe must have existed in Eternity as Astral or ethereal prototypes. According to these models the Gods, or Spiritual Beings, brought them into objective being and terrestrial life, and evolved the protoplastic forms of the future Egos from their own Essence. Even these Gods could not create or invent new forms of which the prototypes were not already extant in Eternity; and for the same reason the mind of man cannot invent any being, form, or condition, which does not already have existence in the Kosmos. This proves that all the Hierarchies of Gods, Angels, Spirits, Elementals, Heavenly Mansions, Elysian Fields, no matter how seemingly fantastic in conception, do exist—or else the mind of man could not conceive them.

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