First Causes & Principles

"In the beginning, my dear, the world was just Being (sat), one only, without a second. To be sure, some people say: 'In the beginning this world was just Non-being (a-sat), one only, without a second; from that Non-being was produced."

-Chandogya Upanishad, i. 9.1.

The speaker then goes on to contest the idea that Being could arise from Non-being. Thus the debate continues.

These kind of thoughts are not discussed within the Christian Church but it is something Christian initiates have looked at.

In the opening verse of Genesis the Hebrew word BERAESHITH is translated as "in the beginning". If you were to ask a Rabbi he would tell you that the word means "in the principle" or "at-first-in-principle" or "archetypal." Water is already in existence.

Here are the first verses of Genesis translated by Fabre d'Olivet:

"1. At-first-in-principle, he-created, Elohim,
the-selfsameness-of-heavens, and-the-selfsameness-of-earth.

2. And-the-earth was contingent-potentiality in-a-potentiality-of-being; and-darkness-was-on-the-face of-the-deep and-the-breath of-HIM-the-Gods was-pregnantly-moving upon-the-face-of-the-waters.

3. And-he-said HE-the-Being-of-beings: there-shall-be light; and-there-became-light.

4. And-he-did-ken, HE-the-Gods that-light as good; and-he-made-a-division HE-the-Gods, betwixt the-light-and-betwixt the-darkness."

In the first chapter the name of God is Elohim, from the fourth verse onwards, it is Yahweh-IHOAH-Jehovah Elohim.

A book that is a very good primer is Eduard Schuré's From Sphinx to Christ. In it he makes the comment:

"Esoteric tradition holds that, at the same period [the Moon condition of Earth], a certain number of Elohim, who did not wish to take part in the creation of the Earth and of other worlds subject to the laws of condensed matter, left the Sun in order to create Uranus, Neptune and other planets beyond the Saturnine region.....Therefore is Saturn the oldest of the gods, and the one with whom Time began."

Comments by Rudolf Steiner:

"There are still deeper forces which can be active in men, the forces of the outermost planet of our solar system. Modern astronomy does not regard it as the outermost since it has added two more- though even orthodox astronomers are worried because the movement of the moons does not properly fit,* but since it is the spatial arrangement with which they are concerned, they have added Uranus and Neptune. These, however, cause trouble because their moons are a little crazy compared with the ordered moons of Jupiter and other planets. In reality one must say that, for a living, concrete grasp of the planetary system, Saturn is the outermost planet.

* The moons of Neptune and Uranus move in the opposite direction to the satellites of other planets."

This was the argument of the gods which still goes on to this day:

."...It was partly due to this end that the Luciferian supporters maintained that the Earth was born out from a laggard evil; and enough too to calm the purists in their discontent against the notion of evolution and development - given the double distinction against perfection that the two seem to imply. "

But our business on Earth has a great purpose:

"as men we can bring in the holy powers through to our earth element nature as manifested. As men, through Christ, we nurture both the spiritual and the physical realms, when we transmute the Earth sphere with His goodness.

 

"Lucifer contended that Paradise be kept for all time. He had refused the new futures to come, believing that the beauty of the past offered all of Man's requirements for his subsequent being. However, nothing may keep outwardly without decaying in such preserve. The souls themselves of Man would stultify if withheld in a perpetual paradise that held no inner reality or hard-won substance to it."

- B.Hive