E.—The fifth letter of the English alphabet. The he (soft) of the Hebrew alphabet becomes in the Ehevi system of reading that language an E. Its numerical value is five, and its symbolism is a window; the womb, in the Kabbala. In the order of the divine names it stands for the fifth, which is Hadoor or the “majestic” and the “splendid.”

 

Ea (Chald.) also Hea. The second god of the original Babylonian trinity composed of Anu, Hea and Bel. Hea was the “Maker of Fate”, “Lord of the Deep”, “God of Wisdom and Knowledge”, and “Lord of the City of Eridu”.

 

Eagle. This symbol is one of the most ancient. With the Greeks and Persians it was sacred to the Sun; with the Egyptians, under the name of Ah, to Horus, and the Kopts worshipped the eagle under the name of Ahom. It was regarded as the sacred emblem of Zeus by the Greeks, and as that of the highest god by the Druids. The symbol has passed down to our day, when following the example of the pagan Marius, who, in the second century B.C. used the double-headed eagle as the ensign of Rome, the Christian crowned heads of Europe made the double-headed sovereign of the air sacred to themselves and their scions. Jupiter was satisfied with a one-headed eagle and so was the Sun. The imperial houses of Russia, Poland, Austria, Germany, and the late Empire of the Napoleons, have adopted a two-headed eagle as their device.

 

Easter. The word evidently comes from Ostara, the Scandinavian goddess of spring. She was the symbol of the resurrection of all nature and was worshipped in early spring. It was a custom with the pagan Norsemen at that time to exchange coloured eggs called the eggs of Ostara. These have now become Easter-Eggs. As expressed in Asgard and the Gods: “Christianity put another meaning on the old custom, by connecting it with the feast of the Resurrection of the Saviour, who, like the hidden life in the egg, slept in the grave for three days before he awakened to new life”. This was the more natural since Christ was identified with that same Spring Sun which awakens in all his glory, after the dreary and long death of winter. (See “Eggs”.)

 

Ebionites (Heb.). Lit., “the poor”; the earliest sect of Jewish Christians, the other being the Nazarenes. They existed when the term “Christian” was not yet heard of. Many of the relations of Iassou (Jesus), the adept ascetic around whom the legend of Christ was formed, were among the Ebionites. As the existence of these mendicant ascetics can be traced at least a century earlier than chronological Christianity, it is an additional proof that lassou or Jeshu lived during the reign of Alexander Jannæus at Lyd (or Lud), where he was put to death as stated in the Sepher Toldos Jeshu.

 

Ecbatana. A famous city in Media worthy of a place among the seven wonders of the world. It is thus described by Draper in his Conflict between Religion and Science, chap. i, . . “ The cool summer retreat of the Persian Kings, was defended by seven encircling walls of hewn and polished blocks, the interior ones in succession of increasing height, and of different colours, in astrological accordance with the seven planets. The palace was roofed with silver tiles; its beams were plated with gold. At midnight in its halls, the sun was rivalled by many a row of naphta cressets. A paradise, that luxury of the monarchs of the East, was planted in the midst of the city. The Persian Empire was truly the garden of the world.”

 

Echath (Heb.). The same as the following—the “One”, but feminine.

 

Echod (Heb or Echad. “One”, masculine, applied to Jehovah.

 

Eclectic Philosophy. One of the names given to the Neo-Platonic school of Alexandria.

 

Ecstasis (Gr.). A psycho-spiritual state; a physical trance which induces clairvoyance and a beatific state bringing on visions.

 

Edda (Iceland.). Lit., “great-grandmother”of the Scandinavian Lays. It was Bishop Brynjϋld Sveinsson, who collected them and brought them to light in 1643. There are two collections of Sagas, translated by the Northern Skalds, and there are two Eddas. The earliest is of unknown authorship and date and its antiquity is very great. These Sagas were collected in the XIth century by an Icelandic priest; the second is a collection of the history (or myths) of the gods spoken of in the first, which became the Germanic deities, giants, dwarfs and heroes.

 

Eden (Heb.). “Delight”, pleasure. In Genesis the “Garden of Delight” built by God ; in the Kabbala the
“Garden of Delight”, a place of Initiation into the mysteries. Orientalists identify it with a place which was situated in Babylonia in the district of Karduniyas, called also Gan-dunu, which is almost like the Gan-eden of the Jews. (See the works of Sir H. Rawlinson, and G. Smith.) That district has four rivers, Euphrates, Tigris, Surappi, Ukni. The two first have been adopted without any change by the Jews; the other two they have probably transformed into “ Gihon and Pison”, so as to have something original. The following are some of the reasons for the identification of Eden, given by Assyriologists. The cities of Babylon, Larancha and Sippara, were founded before the flood, according to the chronology of the Jews.   “Surippak was the city of the ark, the mountain east of the Tigris was the resting place of the ark, Babylon was the site of the tower, and Ur of the Chaldees the birthplace of Abraham.” And, as Abraham, “the first leader of the Hebrew race, migrated from Ur to Harran in Syria and from thence to Palestine”, the best Assyriologists think that it is “so much evidence in favour of the hypothesis that Chaldea was the original home of these stories (in the Bible) and that the Jews received them originally from the Babylonians”.

 

Edom (Heb.). Edomite Kings. A deeply concealed mystery is to he found in the allegory of the seven Kings of Edorn, who “reigned in the land of Edom before there reigned any King over the children of Israel”. (Gen. xxxvi. 31.) The Kabbala teaches that this Kingdom was one of “unbalanced forces’ and necessarily of unstable character. The world of Israel is a type of the condition of the worlds which came into existence subsequently to the later period when the equilibrium had become established. [ w.w. w.]

On the other hand the Eastern Esoteric philosophy teaches that the seven Kings of Edom are not the type of perished worlds or unbalanced forces, but the symbol of the seven human Root-races, four of which have passed away, the fifth is passing, and two are still to come. Though in the language of esoteric blinds, the hint in St. John’s Revelation is clear enough when it states in chapter xvii , 10: “And there are seven Kings; five are fallen, and one (the fifth, still) is, and the other (the sixth Root- race) is not yet come Had all the seven Kings of Edom perished as worlds of “unbalanced forces”, how could the fifth still be, and the other or others “not yet come” ? In The Kabbalah Unveiled, we read on page 48, “ The seven Kings had died and their possessions had been broken up”, and a footnote emphasizes the statement by saying, “these seven Kings are the Edomite Kings”.

 

Edris (Arab.), or Idris. Meaning “the learned One”, an epithet applied by the Arabs to Enoch.

 

Eggs (Easter). Eggs were symbolical from an early time. There was the “Mundane Egg”, in which Brahmâ gestated, with the Hindus the Hiranya-Gharba, and the Mundane Egg of the Egyptians, which proceeds from the mouth of the “unmade and eternal deity”, Kneph, and which is the emblem of generative power. Then the Egg of Babylon, which hatched Ishtar, and was said to have fallen from heaven into the Euphrates. Therefore coloured eggs were used yearly during spring in almost every country, and in Egypt were exchanged as sacred symbols in the spring-time, which was, is, and ever will be, the emblem of birth or rebirth, cosmic and human, celestial and terrestrial. They were hung up in Egyptian temples and are so suspended to this day in Mahometan mosques.

 

Egkosmioi (Gk). “The intercosmic gods, each of which presides over a great number of daemons to whom they impart their power and change it from one to another at will”, says Proclus, and he adds, that which is taught in the esoteric doctrine. In his system he shows the uppermost regions from the zenith of the Universe to the moon belonging to the gods, or planetary Spirits, according to their hierarchies and classes. The highest among them were the twelve Huper-ouranioi, the super-celestial gods. Next to the latter, in rank and power, came the Egkosmioi.

 

Ego (Lat.). “ Self” ; the consciousness in man “I am I”—or the feeling of “I-am-ship”. Esoteric philosophy teaches the existence of two Egos in man, the mortal or personal, and the Higher, the Divine and the Impersonal, calling the former “personality” and the latter “Individuality Egoity. From the word “Ego”. Egoity means “individuality”, never “personality”, and is the opposite of egoism or “selfishness”, the characteristic par excellence of the latter.

 

Egregores. Eliphas Lévi calls them “the chiefs of the souls who are the spirits of energy and action” ; whatever that may or may not mean. The Oriental Occultists describe the Egregores as Beings whose bodies and essence is a tissue of the so-called astral light. They are the shadows of the higher Planetary Spirits whose bodies are of the essence of the higher divine light.

 

Eheyeh (Heb.). “I am”, according to Ibn Gebirol, but not in the sense of “I am that I am”.

 

Eidolon (Gr.). The same as that which we term the human phantom, the astral form.

 

Eka (Sk.). “One”; also a synonym of Mahat, the Universal Mind, as the principle of Intelligence.

 

Ekana-rupa (Sk.). The One (and the Many) bodies or forms; a term applied by the Purânas to Deity.

 

Ekasloka Shastra (Sk.). A work on the Shastras (Scriptures) by Nagarjuna; a mystic work translated into Chinese.

 

El-Elion (Heb.). A name of the Deity borrowed by the Jews from the Phœnician Elon, a name of the Sun.

 

Elementals. Spirits of the Elements. The creatures evolved in the four Kingdoms or Elements—earth, air, fire, and water. They are called by the Kabbalists, Gnomes (of the earth), Sylphs (of the air), Salamanders (of the fire), and Undines (of the water). Except a few of the higher kinds, and their rulers, they are rather forces of nature than ethereal men and women. These forces, as the servile agents of the Occultists, may produce various effects; but if employed by” Elementaries” (q.v.)_in which case they enslave the mediums—they will deceive the credulous. All the lower invisible beings generated on the 5th 6th, and 7th planes of our terrestrial atmosphere, are called Elementals Peris, Devs, Djins, Sylvans, Satyrs, Fauns, Elves, Dwarfs, Trolls, Kobolds, Brownies, Nixies, Goblins, Pinkies, Banshees, Moss People, White Ladies, Spooks, Fairies, etc., etc., etc.

 

Elementaries. Properly, the disembodied souls of the depraved; these souls having at some time prior to death separated from themselves their divine spirits, and so lost their chance for immortality; but at the present stage of learning it has been thought best to apply the term to the spooks or phantoms of disembodied persons, in general, to those whose temporary habitation is the Kâma Loka. Eliphas Lévi and some other Kabbalists make little distinction between elementary spirits who have been men, and those beings which people the elements, and are the blind forces of nature. Once divorced from their higher triads and their bodies, these souls remain in their Kâma-rupic envelopes, and are irresistibly drawn to the earth amid elements congenial to their gross natures. Their stay in the Kâma Loka varies as to its duration; but ends invariably in disintegration, dissolving like a column of mist, atom by atom, in the surrounding elements.

 

Elephanta. An island near Bombay, India, on which are the well- preserved ruins of the cave-temple, of that name. It is one of the most ancient in the country and is certainly a Cyclopeian work, though the late J. Fergusson has refused it a great antiquity.

 

Eleusinia (Gr.). The Eleusinian Mysteries were the most famous and the most ancient of all the Greek Mysteries (save the Samothracian), and were celebrated near the hamlet of Eleusis, not far from Athens. Epiphanius traces them to the days of Inachos (1800 B.c.), founded, as another version has it, by Eumolpus, a King of Thrace and a Hierophant. They were celebrated in honour of Demeter, the Greek Ceres and the Egyptian Isis; and the last act of the performance referred to a sacrificial victim of atonement and a resurrection, when the Initiate was admitted to the highest degree of “Epopt” (q.v.). The festival of the Mysteries began in the month of Boëdromion (September), the time of grape-gathering, and lasted from the 15th to the 22nd, seven days. The Hebrew feast of Tabernacles, the feast of Ingatherings, in the month of Ethanim (the seventh), also began on the 15th and ended on the 22nd of that month.  The name of the month (Ethanim) is derived, according to some, from Adonim, Adonia, Attenim, Ethanim, and was in honour of Adonai or Adonis (Thammuz), whose death was lamented by the Hebrews in the groves of Bethlehem. The sacrifice of both “ Bread and Wine” was performed before the Mysteries of initiation, and during the ceremony the mysteries were divulged to the candidates from the petroma, a kind of book made of two stone tablets (petrai), joined at one side and made to open like a volume.
(See Isis Unveiled II., pp. 44 and 91, et seq., for further explanations.)

 

Elivagar (Scand.). The waters of Chaos, called in the cosmogony of the Norsemen “the stream of Elivagar”.

 

Elohîm (Heb.). Also Alhim, the word being variously spelled. Godfrey Higgins, who has written much upon its meaning, always spells it Aleim. The Hebrew letters are aleph, lamed, hé,yod, mem, and are numerically 1, 30, 5, 10, 40 = 86. It seems to be the plural of the feminine noun Eloah, ALH, formed by adding the common plural form IM, a masculine ending; and hence the whole seems to imply the emitted active and passive essences. As a title it is referred to “Binah” the Supernal Mother, as is also the fuller title IHVH ALHIM, Jehovah Elohim. As Binah leads on to seven succeedent Emanations, so “ Elohim” has been said to represent a sevenfold power of godhead. [ w.w. w.]

 

Eloї (Gn.). The genius or ruler of Jupiter; its Planetary Spirit. (See Origen, Contra Celsum.)

 

Elu (Sing.). An ancient dialect used in Ceylon.

 

Emanation the Doctrine of. In its metaphysical meaning, it is opposed to Evolution, yet one with it. Science teaches that evolution is physiologically a mode of generation in which the germ that develops the foetus pre-exists already in the parent, the development and final form and characteristics of that germ being accomplished in nature; and that in cosmology the process takes place blindly through the correlation of the elements, and their various compounds. Occultism answers that this is only the apparent  mode, the real process being Emanation, guided by intelligent Forces under an immutable LAW. Therefore, while the Occultists and Theosophists believe thoroughly in the doctrine of Evolution as given out by Kapila and Manu, they are Emanationists rather than Evolutionists. The doctrine of Emanation was at one time universal. It was taught by the Alexandrian as well as by the Indian philosophers, by the Egyptian, the Chaldean and Hellenic Hierophants, and also by the Hebrews (in their Kabbala, and even in Genesis). For it is only owing to deliberate mistranslation that the Hebrew word asdt has been translated “angels” from the Septuagint, when it means Emanations, Æons, precisely as with the Gnostics. Indeed, in Deuteronomy (xxxiii., 2) the word asdt or ashdt is translated as” fiery law”, whilst the correct rendering of the passage should be “from his right hand went [ not a fiery law, but a fire according to law “; viz., that the fire of one flame is imparted to, and caught up by another like as in a trail of inflammable substance. This is precisely emanation. As shown in Isis Unveiled : “In Evolution, as it is now beginning to he understood, there is supposed to be in all matter an impulse to take on a higher form—a supposition clearly expressed by Manu and other Hindu philosophers of the highest antiquity. The philosopher’s tree illustrates it in the case of the zinc solution. The controversy between the followers of this school and the Emanationists may he briefly stated thus The Evolutionist stops all inquiry at the borders of ‘ the Unknowable “; the Emanationist believes that nothing can be evolved—or, as the word means, unwombed or born—except it has first been involved, thus indicating that life is from a spiritual potency above the whole.”

 

Empusa (Gr.). A ghoul, a vampire, an evil demon taking various forms.

 

En (or Ain) Soph (Heb.). The endless, limitless and boundless. The absolute deific Principle, impersonal and unknowable. It means literally “no-thing” i.e., nothing that could be classed with anything else. The word and ideas are equivalent to the Vedantic conceptions of Parabrahmn. [ w.w.w.]

Some Western Kabbalists, however, contrive to make of IT, a personal “He”, a male deity instead of an impersonal deity.

 

En (Chald.). A negative particle, like a in Greek and Sanskrit. The first syllable of “En-Soph” (q.v.), or nothing that begins or ends, the “Endless”.

 

Enoichion (Gr.). Lit., the inner Eye” ; the “Seer”, a reference to the third inner, or Spiritual Eye, the true name for Enoch disfigured from Chanoch.

 

Ens (Gr.). The same as the Greek To On “Being”, or the real Presence in Nature.

 

Ephesus (Gr.). Famous for its great metaphysical College where Occultism (Gnosis) and Platonic philosophy were taught in the days of the Apostle Paul. A city regarded as the focus of secret sciences, and that Gnôsis. or Wisdom, which is the antagonist of the perversion of Christo-Esotericism to this day. It was at Ephesus where was the great College of the Essenes and all the lore the Tanaim had brought from the Chaldees.

Epimetheus (Gr.). Lit., “He who takes counsel after” the event. A brother of Prometheus in Greek Mythology.

 

Epinoia (Gr.). Thought, invention, design. A name adopted by the Gnostics for the first passive Æon.

 

Episcopal Crook. One of the insignia of Bishops, derived from the sacerdotal sceptre of the Etruscan Augurs. it is also found in the hand of several gods.

 

Epoptes (Gr.). An Initiate. One who has passed his last degree of initiation.

 

Eridanus (Lat.). Ardan, the Greek name for the river Jordan.

 

Eros (Gr.). Hesiod makes of the god Eros the third personage of the Hellenic primordial Trinity composed of Ouranos, Gæa and Eros. It is the personified procreative Force in nature in its abstract sense, the propeller to “creation” and procreation. Exoterically, mythology makes of Eros the god of lustful, animal desire, whence the term erotic esoterically, it is different. (See “ Kâma”.)

 

Eshmim (Heb.). The Heavens, the Firmament in which are the Sun, Planets and Stars; from the root Sm, meaning to place, dispose ; hence, the planets, as disposers. [ w. w.w.]

 

Esoteric (Gr.). Hidden, secret. From the Greek esotericos, “inner” concealed.

 

Esoteric Bodhism. Secret wisdom or intelligence from the Greek esotericos “inner”, and the Sanskrit Bodhi, “knowledge”, intelligence— in contradistinction to Buddhi, “the faculty of knowledge or intelligence” and Buddhism, the philosophy or Law of Buddha (the Enlightened). Also written “ Budhism”, from Budha (Intelligence and Wisdom) the Son of Soma.

 

Essasua. The African and Asiatic sorcerers and serpent charmers.

 

Essenes. A hellenized word, from the Hebrew Asa, a “healer”. A mysterious sect of Jews said by Pliny to have lived near the Dead Sea per millia sæculorum—for thousands of ages. “ Some have supposed them to be extreme Pharisees, and others—which may be the true theory—the descendants of the
Benim-nabim of the Bible, and think that they were ‘Kenites and Nazarites. They had many Buddhistic ideas and practices; and it is noteworthy that the priests of the Great Mother at Ephesus, Diana-Bhavani with many breasts, were also so denominated. Eusebius, and after him De Quincey, declared them to be the same as the early Christians, which is more than probable. The title ‘ brother’, used in the early Church, was Essenean ; they were a fraternity, or a koinobion or community like the early converts.”
(Isis Unveiled.)

 

Ether. Students are but too apt to confuse this with Akâsa and with Astral Light. It is neither, in the sense in which ether is described by physical Science. Ether is a material agent, though hitherto undetected by any physical apparatus; whereas Akâsa is a distinctly spiritual agent, identical, in one sense, with the Anima Mundi, while the Astral Light is only the seventh and highest principle of the terrestrial atmosphere, as undetectable as Akâsa and real Ether, because it is something quite on another plane. The seventh principle of the earth’s atmosphere, as said, the Astral Light, is only the second on the Cosmic scale. The scale of Cosmic Forces, Principles and Planes, of Emanations—on the metaphysical—and Evolutions—on the physical plane—is the Cosmic Serpent biting its own tail, the Serpent reflecting the Higher, and reflected in its turn by the lower Serpent. The Caduceus explains the mystery, and the four-fold Dodecahedron on the model of which the universe is said by Plato to have been built by the manifested Logos—synthesized by the unmanifested First-Born—yields geometrically the key to Cosmogony and its microcosmic reflection—our Earth.

 

Eurasians. An abbreviation of “European-Asians”. The mixed coloured races: the children of the white fathers and the dark mothers of India, or vice versa.

 

Evapto. Initiation; the same as Epopteia.

 

Evolution. The development of higher orders of animals from lower. As said in Isis Unveiled: “Modern Science holds but to a one-sided physical evolution, prudently avoiding and ignoring the higher or spiritual evolution, which would force our contemporaries to confess the superiority of the ancient philosophers and psychologists over themselves. The ancient sages, ascending to the UNKNOWABLE, made their starting- point from the first manifestation of the unseen, the unavoidable, and, from a strictly logical reasoning, the absolutely necessary creative Being, the Demiurgos of the universe. Evolution began with them from pure spirit, which descending lower and lower down, assumed at last a visible and comprehensible form, and became matter. Arrived at this point, they speculated in the Darwinian method, but on a far more large and comprehensive basis.” (See “Emanation”.)

 

Exoteric. Outward, public; the opposite of esoteric or hidden.

 

Extra-Cosmic. Outside of Kosmos or Nature; a nonsensical word invented to assert the existence of a personal god, independent of, or out side, Nature per se, in opposition to the Pantheistic idea that the whole Kosmos is animated or informed with the Spirit of Deity, Nature being but the garment, and matter the illusive shadow, of the real unseen Presence.

 

Eye of Horus. A very sacred symbol in ancient Egypt. It was called the outa the right eye represented the sun, the left, the moon. Says Macrobius : “ The outo (or uta) is it not the emblem of the sun, king of the world, who from his elevated throne sees all the Universe below him”?

 

Eyes (divine). The “eyes” the Lord Buddha developed in him at the twentieth hour of his vigil when sitting under the BO-tree, when he was attaining Buddhaship. They are the eyes of the glorified Spirit, to which matter is no longer a physical impediment, and which have the power of seeing all things within the space of the limitless Universe. 0n the following morning of that night, at the close of the third watch, the “ Merciful One” attained the Supreme Knowledge.

 

Ezra (Heb.). The Jewish priest and scribe, who, circa 450 B.c., compiled the Pentateuch if indeed he was not the author of it) and the rest of the Old Testament, except Nehemiah and Malachi. [w.w.w.]

 

Ezra (Heb.). The same as Azareel and Azriel, a great Hebrew Kabbalist. His full name is Rabbi Azariel ben Manahem. He flourished at Valladolid, Spain, in the twelfth century, and was famous as a philosopher and Kabbalist. He is the author of a work on the Ten Sephiroth.