In the Beginning…
“God made everything out of nothing. But the nothingness shows through.” Paul Valéry (1871 - 1945) French poet and philosopher.
“The Genesis” The Tradition Judeo-Christian narrative of creations nativity posit a realm of no-thing-ness.
“In the beginning God created1 the heaven and the earth. The earth was [which were] without form, and void and darkness was upon the face of the deep...” (Genesis 1: 1-2)
“In the Beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He [the Word] was in the ‘Beginning’ with “God”. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. In Him was life, and life was the Light [of men]. And the Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.” (Gospel of John, 1: 1-5) (Emphasis are mine.)
This ‘nothing’ is the foundation of the creation narrative. The first heaven, or First Cause, was definition-less yet composed of a post-prepare environment of an un-order “event-horizon”; which commence at the Hyperborean Epoch2. (See Gen. 1.11-19)
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The Genesis and Evolution of our Solar System
“Now a great sign appeared in the heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, an on her head a garland of twelve stars, then being with child, she cried out in labor an in pain to give birth.”
“And another sign appeared in heaven: behold, a great, fiery red dragon having seven heads and ten horns, and seven diadems on his heads. His tail drew a third of the stars of heaven and threw them to the earth. And the Dragon stood before the woman who has ready to give birth, to devour her Child as soon as it was born…”
She bore a male Child who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron… (Revelation 12.1-5)
Chaos, a Cosmo-Conception of the Rosicrucian
We have heard information pertinent to the Cosmos, the Galaxy, the Universe, and to some extent - the Solar System; but what of “Solar Man”?
The crystallization of all anti-matter is found in the “Cosmic Avatar” – Man; it was not until the Earth Period, that the present differentiation was made.
The Earth Period, or the “acme of diversification”, belongs to the original class of virgin spirits to which our humanity belongs.
Before proceeding with the description of evolution of our humanity on the Earth after its separation from the central Sun, it is necessary for the maintenance of sequential order in the description to explain the differentiation, which scattered the planets of our System in space.
This applies not only to man and to the lower kingdoms, but also to the Worlds and Globes, which are the basis of form for the evolving life. Only the seed-atoms and the nuclei or centers of the World-Globes remain – all else is one homogenous substance. There is but one Spirit pervading space. Life and Form, its positive and negative poles, are one.
To the Rosicrucian, as to any occult school, there is no such thing as empty or void space. To them space is Spirit in its attenuated form, while matter is crystallized space or Spirit. Spirit in manifestation is dual, that which we see as Form is the negative manifestation of Spirit-crystallized and inert. The positive pole of Spirit manifests as Life, galvanizing the negative Form into action, but both Life and Form originated in Spirit, Space, and Chaos!
This state of things was what Greek mythology described as "Chaos." The ancient Norsemen and the Teutonic mythology call it "Ginnungagap," which was bounded upon the northern side by the cold and foggy "Niflheim" - the land of mist and fog--and upon the south side by the fire "Muspelheim." When heat and cold entered into space, which was occupied, by Chaos or Ginnungagap, they caused the crystallization of the visible universe.
In our present materialistic period, we have unfortunately lost the idea of all that lies behind that word Space. We are so accustomed to speaking of "empty" space, that we have entirely lost the grand and holy significance of the word, and are thus incapable of feeling the reverence that this idea of Space and Chaos should inspire in our breasts.
To get an idea from everyday life, which will illustrate, we may take the
hatching of an egg. The egg is filled with a moderately viscous fluid. This fluid, or moisture, is subjected to heat, and out of the soft, fluidic substance comes a living chick, with hard bones and comparatively hard flesh, and with down that has a comparatively hard quill, etc.
When a living chick can come out of the inert fluid of an egg without the addition of any hardening substance from outside, is it a far-fetched idea to claim that the universe is crystallized Space or Spirit?
There is no doubt that the claim will seem foolish to many yet, the especial object at present is to illustrate that Spirit is active all the time – in one way during Manifestation, and in another during Chaos.
Chaos is not a state, which has existed in the past and has now entirely disappeared; it is all around us now.
Were it not that old forms--having outlived their usefulness--are constantly being resolved back into that Chaos, which is also as constantly giving birth to new forms, there could be no progress; the work of evolution would cease and stagnation would prevent the possibility of advancement.
Therefore, as students of occult science, it is necessary to realize that even during active manifestation; it is through Chaos that one is motivated toward progress.
Our life during Chaos is based upon our life in active manifestation, and vice versa, i.e., what we are able to achieve during active manifestation, and the ability to progress at all, is the result of the existence in Chaos. The interim between Periods and Revolutions is in reality much more important to the growth of the soul that concrete existence, though the latter is the basis of the former and therefore cannot be dispensed with…
The importance of the Chaotic interim lives in the fact that during that period the evolving entities of all classes are so closely united that they are really one; consequently those which are of lower development during manifestation are in closest contact with the more highly evolved, thus experiencing and benefiting by a much higher vibration that their own. This enables them to live over and assimilate their experiences in a manner impossible when hampered by Form.
We have seen the benefit to the spirit in man from the interim between death and a new birth.
There the form still exists, though much more attenuated than the dense body; but in the Cosmic Night and intervals of rest between Periods and Revolutions, when there is perfect freedom from form, the beneficial results of experiences can be much more effectively assimilated.
We have a WORD that was originally coined to convey the idea of the state of things between manifestations. This WORD, however, has been used in a material sense to such an extent that it has lost its primal significance. That WORD is ETHER i.e. Gas.
It may be thought that this is a very old word, which has nearly always existed as a synonym for a state of matter lighter than liquids, but such is not the case.
The word “gas” was first used in "Physica," a work that appeared in 1633, the author of it being Helmont, a Rosicrucian.
Helmont, did not call himself a Rosicrucian; no true Brother does so publicly. Only the Rosicrucian knows the brother Rosicrucian. Not even the most intimate friends or relatives know of a man's connection with the order. Those only who are Initiates themselves know the writers of the past who were Rosicrucian, because ever through their works shine the unmistakable words, phrases and signs indicative of the deep meaning that remains hidden from the non-Initiate. ... This
work is one of the first few fragments of the Rosicrucian knowledge being publicly given out. All that has been printed as such, before the last few years, has been the work of either charlatans or traitors.
Many a Rosicrucian, such as Paracelsus, Comenius, Bacon, Helmont and others gave hints in their works and influenced others. The great controversy concerning the authorship of Shakespeare (which has to no avail blunted so many goose-quills and wasted so much good ink that might have served useful ends) would never have arisen had it been known that the similarity in Shakespeare and Bacon.
This is because the same Initiate, who also influenced Jacob Boehme and a pastor of Ingolstadt, Jacobus Baldus, who lived subsequent to the death of the Bard of Avon, and wrote Latin lyric verse, influenced both. If the first poem of Jacob Baldus is read with a certain key, it will be found that by reading down and up the lines, the following sentence will appear:
"Hitherto I have spoken from across the sea by means of the drama; now I will express myself in lyrics."
In his "Physica," Helmont, the Rosicrucian wrote:
"Ad huc spiritum incognitum Gas voco,"
i.e., “This hitherto unknown Spirit I call Gas."
Further, on in the same work he says,
"This vapor which I have called Gas is not far removed from the Chaos the ancients spoke of."
We must learn to think of Chaos as the Spirit of God, which pervades every part of infinity; it will then be seen in its true light, as the occult maxim puts it:
"Chaos is the seed-ground of the Cosmos,"
Moreover, we shall no longer wonder how "something can come out of nothing," because Space is not synonymous with "nothing." It holds within itself the germs of all that exists during a physical manifestation, yet not quite all; for by the Alchemical Wedding of Chaos with Cosmos there is something new brought forth each time, which did not exist before; something that was not foreshown and latent.
The name of that something is Genius--the cause of Epigenesis.
It appears in all kingdoms and in all realities. It is the expression of progressive spirit in man, animal and plant. Chaos is therefore a holy name; a name that signifies the Cause of all we see in Nature and inspires a feeling of devotion in every tried, true and trained occultist. He regards the visible sense world as a revelation of the hidden potentialities of the Chaos.
K. E. Hunter