Article selections by “A Book-Worm” | Note by H.P.B.
The well-known passage I. Timothy iii., 16, has exercised the attention of students for a few hundred years [re: the word Θεός]. . . .
It is necessary . . . to see how far Theosophy will help us in the investigation. Θεός is advocated by the vast majority of the Fathers . . .
The Vulgate has always stood on Θεός. . . .
Many versions give ὃς . . . This has been justified by the Alexandrian manuscript . . .
When, however, a Theosophist looks over the MS., a new light is thrown on the subject. Whether the writer used the word Θεός or ὃς does not matter, and if he is distinctly shown to have used a symbol, the fixed point in the centre of unity is equivalent to the idea of God.
For several reasons, I content myself at this moment with asking the Editors of Lucifer to inform an ignorant outsider like myself. What is the occult meaning of the ; and in what sense did St. Paul and his copyists, a few centuries later, use the symbol as an equivalent to the Ineffable God? . . .
In the Occult meaning it is the primordial Ideation, the plane for the double-sexed logos, the first differentiation of the ever unknowable Principle or abstract nature, sexless and infinite. The point represents the first formation of the root of all things growing out of the rootless Root, or what the Vedantins call “Parabrahma.” It is the periodical and ever-recurring primordial manifestation after every “Night of Brahmā,” or of potential space within abstract space: not Jehovah, assuredly not; but the “Unknown God” of the Athenians, the It which St. Paul the master Mason and the Initiate declared unto them. It is the unmanifested logos.—Ed. [H.P.B.]