isis unveiled: chapter IX (as above, so below…)

"Pythagoras, Plato, Timaeus of Locris, and the whole Alexandrian school derived the soul from the universal World-Soul; and the latter was, according to their own teachings - ether; something of such a fine nature as to be perceived only by our inner sight. Therefore, it cannot be the essence of the Monas, or cause, because [...]

isis unveiled: chapter IX (as above, so below…)

"If the "spirit", or the divine portion of the soul, is pre-existent as a distinct being from all eternity, as Origen, Synesius, and other Christian fathers and philosophers taught, and if it is the same, and nothing more than the metaphysically-objective soul, how can it be otherwise than eternal? And what matter it in such [...]

isis unveiled: chapter IX (as above, so below…)

"On the other hand, the philosophers who explained the "fall into generation" in their own way, viewed spirit as something wholly distinct from the soul. They allowed its presence in the astral capsule only so far as the spiritual emanations or rays of the "shining one" were concerned. Man and soul had to conquer their [...]

isis unveiled: chapter IX (as above, so below…)

"A consideration of the subject from the standpoint of the ancients, affords us, it will be seen, a very different view from that taken by Professor Tyndall in his famous address. "To super sensual beings", says he, "which, however potent and invisible, were nothing but species of human creatures, perhaps raised from among mankind, and [...]