Theos-Talk Archives (October 1995 Message tl00240)

James writes:

JY
>Jerry, the difficulty I see is that everyone reads the words
>written, and they do not look beyond the veil, beyond Literal
>meaning I haven't 'read' Isis (I use an Index to reference it),
>but find some outlandish statement true from a certain point of
>view.

JY
>You MUST remember that this form of writing, using one analogy
>to mean another, was common among the initiates of Greece, Rome,
>Egypt, as well as many other places today unknown. Don't judge
>the book by it's cover, I believe is the correct phrase to use.

 I think it is fascinating that you read meaning into HPB's
writings in this manner. You are quite right that the Greek,
Roman and the Egyptian cultures used certain imagery in their
writings that were really analogies for other, deeper concepts.
Probably the most impressive demonstration of this kind of
interpretation that we have is Porphyry's essay "On the Cave of
the Nymphs" written in the third century of our era. The
interpretation concerns a description of the cave in Homer's
~Odyssey~, near where Odysseus re-awakens on his home island
after twenty years of being lost at sea. Porphyry considers
each image in the cave: the stone looms, the purple cloth, the
honey pots, and of course the two entrances. Porphyry interprets
the description as symbolic of the death and reincarnation of
humanity and the comings and going of the gods. He also connects
it to an astrological system. It is quite a fascinating read and
is instructive for the interpretation of sacred texts in general,
whether they be certain (but not all) Bible stories, like Sampson
or Jonah, or the Greek myths. However, it is also clear that
these symbols had fixed meaning within their own systems.
Blavatsky also discusses this method of interpretation and gives
lots and lots of examples of how it works although ~The Secret
Doctrine.~ On the other hand, ~The Secret Doctrine~ is not the
type of text that Blavatsky or Porphyry would identify as being
intended for this kind of interpretation--which leads me into the
more problematic side of your system here. Even if ~The Secret
Doctrine~ was intended for this kind of interpretation, we would
still need to know the system of correspondences before we could
apply them. Otherwise, a free wheeling use of this system can
make almost anything say almost anything.
 On the other hand, there are "blinds" in ~The Secret
Doctrine~, if you want to call them that. For instance the
Sanskrit word "Dev" could mean an elemental or a god. When HPB
uses this word, we have to stop and think about which one she
means. If you ever get around to reading the ~SD~ or ~Isis~ from
cover to cover, rather than jumping around by using key words in
the index, I think you will find a context and a theme that runs
through these works, and the temptation to interpret meanings
through analogy will disappear. My experience is that the SD is
more of a work intended to help us to discover the keys to assist
us in unlocking the mystery teachings hidden in the ancient
literature, rather than it being an enigmatic modern example of
one of those works.

Good post. Thanks

Jerry HE