What is the Ether?
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.
[The Ether, true hypothetical Proteo, one of the "representative fictions" of modern science, is one of the "principles"
inferior to what we call Primordial Substance (Âkâza in Sanskrit), one of the dreams of antiquity, and which has now come
Again to be the dream of science today. It is the largest and most daring of the surviving speculations of
The ancient philosophers. According to Webster's Dictionary, the Ether "is a hypothetical medium of great elasticity and extreme subtlety,
that it is supposed to fill all space, without excepting the interior of solid bodies, and be the means of transmission of light and heat. "
For the occultists, however, both the Ether and the primordial Substance are not hypothetical things, but true realities.
Believe in the ordinary that the Âkâza, the same as the astral Light of the Kabbalists are the Ether, confusing it with the hypothetical Ether of science.
It is a serious mistake. The Âkâza is not the Ether admitted as a hypothesis by Newton, nor is the Ether of the occultists; is much more.
The Âkaza is the synthesis of the Ether, it is the Higher Ether. The Ether is the "lining" or one of the aspects of Âkâza; is it your form or
rude body; it occupies all the emptiness of Space (or rather, all the content of Space), and its characteristic property is
the sound (the Word). It is the fifth of the seven Cosmic Principles or elements, which in turn has seven states, aspects or principles.
This semimaterial element will be visible in the air at the end of the fourth Round, and will be fully manifested in the fifth.
The Ether, like the Âkâza, originates from the single Element. The ether of physicists, or lower ether, is only one of
its subdivisions in our plane, the Astral Light of the Kabbalists, with all its effects both good and bad. The positive ether,
phenomenal, always active, is a force-substance; while the omnipresent and omnipenetrant Æther is the first number,
that is the Âkâza. (Doctr. Secr. Passim). -See: Âkâza. (G.T. H.P.B.).
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