Poem selection by Wm. C. Eldon Serjeant | Note and Editor’s Note by H.P.B.
. . .
All hail! thou glorious Bride, in Light array’d,
O, woman, clothed with the Bridegroom’s Power,1
Arise and shine! The time is now at hand
To change this earth into a heaven bright,
This hell into a paradise of Saints;
Through thee alone can mortals rise from earth
To soar into Eternity . . .
Editors’ Note
This second part of the three which form the bulk of the poem called “Twilight Visions” by their author—from a purely Kabalistic standpoint of universal symbolical Esotericism, is most suggestive. Its literary value is apparent. But literary form in occultism counts for nothing in such mystic writing if its spirit is sectarian—if the symbolism fails in universal application or lacks correctness. In this, Part II., however (of the third to come we can yet say nothing), the Christian-Judæan names may be altered and replaced by their Sanskrit or Egyptian equivalents, and the ideas will remain the same. It seems written in the universal “mystery-language,” and may be readily understood by an occultist, of whatever school or nationality. Nor will any true mystic, versed in that international tongue, whose origin is lost in the dark night of pre-historic ages, fail to recognise a true Brother, who has adopted the phraseology of the Initiates of the ancient Judæan Tanaim—Daniel and St. John of the Apocalypse—and partially that of the Christian Gnostics, only to be the more readily understood by the profane of Christian lands. Yet the author means precisely the same thing that would be in the mind of any Brahminical or Buddhist Initiate, who, while deploring the present degenerated state of things, would place all his hope in the transient character of even the Kali Yuga, and trust in the speedy coming of the Kalki Avatar. We say again, the divine Science and Wisdom—Theosophia—is universal and common property, and the same under every sky. It is the physical type and the outward appearance in the dress, that make of one individual a Chinaman and of another a European, and of a third a red-skinned American. The inner man is one, and all are “Sons of God” by birth-right.
The editors regret that, by an over-sight, the sub-title, “The Cross,” that headed Part I. of “Twilight Visions,” published in our January number, should have been omitted.—[H.P.B.]
1. In the Kabala, the Bride of the “Heavenly Man,” Tetragrammaton, is Malkuth—the foundation or kingdom. It is our earth, which, when regenerated and purified (as matter), will be united to her bridegroom (Spirit). But in Esotericism there are two aspects of the logos, or the “Father-Son,” which latter becomes his own father; one is the unmanifested Eternal, the other the manifested and periodical logos. The “Bride” of the former is the universe as nature in the abstract. She is also his “mother”; who, “clothed with the bridegroom’s power,” gives birth to the manifested universe (the second logos) through her own inherent, mystic power, and is, therefore, the Immaculate Mother; “the woman clothed with the sun, and travailing” in child birth, in Revelation, ch. xii.—Ed. [H.P.B.]