Page 436.

Students in the west have little or no idea of the forces that lie latent in Sound, the Âkâshic vibrations that may be set up by those who understand how to pronounce certain words. The Om, or the “Om mani padme hum” are in spiritual affinity with cosmic forces, but without a knowledge of the natural arrangement, or of the order in which the syllables stand, very little can be achieved. “Om” is, of course, Aum, that may be pronounced as two, three or seven syllables, setting up different vibrations.

Now, letters, as vocal sounds, cannot fail to correspond with musical notes, and therefore with numbers and colours; hence also with Forces and Tattvas. He who remembers that the Universe is built up from the Tattvas will readily understand something of the power that may be exercised by vocal sounds. Every letter in the alphabet, whether divided into three, four, or seven septenaries, or forty-nine letters, has its own colour, or shade of colour. He who has learnt the colours of the alphabetical letters, and the corresponding numbers of the seven, and the forty-nine colours and shades on the scale of planes and forces, and knows their respective order in the seven planes, will easily master the art of bringing them into affinity or interplay. But here a difficulty arises. The Senzar and Sanskrit alphabets, and other Occult tongues, besides other potencies, have a number, colour, and distinct syllable for every letter, and so had also the old Mosaic Hebrew. But how many students know any of these tongues? When the time comes, therefore, it must suffice to teach the students the numbers and colours attached to the Latin letters only (N.B. as pronounced in Latin, not in Anglo-Saxon, Scotch, or Irish). This, however, would be at present premature.

The colour and number of not only the planets but also the zodiacal constellations corresponding to every letter of the alphabet, are necessary to make any special syllable, and even letter, operative.855 Therefore if a student would make Buddhi operative, for instance, he would have to intone the first words of the Mantra on the note mi. But he would have still further to accentuate the mi, and produce mentally the yellow colour corresponding to this sound and note, on every letter M in “Om mani padme hum”; this, not because the note bears the same name in the vernacular, Sanskrit, or even the Senzar, for it does not—but because the letter M follows the first letter, and is in this sacred formula also the seventh and the fourth. As Buddhi it is second; as Buddhi-Manas it is the second and third combined.

Page 439.856

The Pythagorean Four, or Tetraktys, was the symbol of the Kosmos, as containing within itself, the point, the line, the superficies, the solid; in other words, the essentials of all forms. Its mystical representation is the point within the triangle. The Decad or perfect number is contained in the Four; thus, 1+2+3+4=10.

Page 477.

The difficult passage: “Bear in mind ... a mystery below truly,”857 may become a little more clear to the student if slightly amplified. [pg 532] The “primordial Triangle” is the Second Logos, which reflects itself as a Triangle in the Third Logos, or Heavenly Man, and then disappears. The Third Logos, containing the “potency of formative creation,” develops the Tetraktys from the Triangle, and so becomes the Seven, the Creative Force, making a Decad with the primordial Triangle which originated it. When this heavenly Triangle and Tetraktys are reflected in the Universe of Matter, as the astral paradigmatic man, they are reversed, and the Triangle, or formative potency, is thrown below the Quaternary, with its apex pointing downwards: the Monad of this astral paradigmatic man is itself a Triangle, bearing to the Quaternary and Triangle the relation borne by the primordial Triangle to the Heavenly Man. Hence the phrase, “the upper Triangle ... is shifted in the man of clay below the seven.” Here again the Point tracing the Triangle, the Monad becoming the Ternary, with the Quaternary and the lower creative triangle, make up the Decad, the perfect number. “As above, so below.”

Page 481.

To the five senses at present the property of mankind two more on this globe are to be added. The sixth sense is the psychic sense of colour. The seventh is that of spiritual sound. In the second instruction, the corrected rates of vibration for the seven primary colours and their modulations are given. Inspecting these, it appears that each colour differs from the proceeding one by a step of 42, or 6 × 7.

Carrying the process backward, and subtracting 42, we find that the first or ground colour is green, for this globe.

The second and fourth octaves would be heat and actinic rays, and are invisible to our present perception.

The seventh sense is that of spiritual sound; and, since the vibrations of the sixth progress by steps of 6 × 7, those of the seventh progress by steps of 7 × 7. This is their table: