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A Blavatsky Quotation Book: being an Extract for each Day of the Year

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December

December 1

True Occultism or Theosophy is the “Great Renunciation of Self”, unconditionally and absolutely, in thought as in action. It is Altruism, and it throws him who practises it out of calculation of the ranks of the living altogether. “Not for himself, but for the world he lives”, as soon as he has pledged himself to the work ..... he has to become a mere beneficent force in Nature.

Practical Occultism, Page 36

December 2

Both the human spirit and soul are pre-existent. But while the former exists as a distinct entity, an individualisation, the soul exists as pre-existing matter, an unscient portion of an intelligent whole.

Isis Unveiled, Volume 1, Page 316

December 3

The upward progress of the Ego is a series of progressive awakenings, each advance bringing with it the idea that now, at last, we have reached “reality”; but only when we shall have reached absolute Consciousness, and blended our own with it, shall we be free from the delusions produced by Mâya.

The Secret Doctrine, Volume 1, Page 71

December 4

Occultism is not magic, though magic is one of its tools. Occultism is not the acquirement of powers, whether psychic or intellectual, though both are its servants. Neither is occultism the pursuit of happiness, as men understand the word; for the first step is sacrifice, the second renunciation.

Lucifer, September, 1887

December 5

Dreams, foreboding, prescience, prognostications, and presentiments are impressions left by our astral spirit on our brain, which receives them more or less distinctly, according to the proportion of blood with which it is supplied during the hours of sleep.

Isis Unveiled, Volume 1, Page 179

December 6

This inner soul of the physical cell — the “spiritual plasm” that dominates the germinal plasm — is the key that must open one day the gates of the terra incognita of the Biologist, now called the dark mystery of Embryology.

The Secret Doctrine, Volume 1, Page 238

December 7

He who is led by personal considerations cannot enter a heaven where personal considerations do not exist. He who does not care for Heaven, but is contented where he is, is already in Heaven, while the discontented will in vain clamour for it.

Practical Occultism, Page 73

December 8

The Occultists, who regard Physical Nature as a bundle of most varied illusions on the plane of deceptive perceptions; who recognise in every pain and suffering but the necessary pangs of incessant procreation; a series of stages towards an ever-growing perfectibility, which is visible in the silent influence of never-ending Karma, or Abstract nature.

The Secret Doctrine, Volume 2, Page 498

December 9

As many physical diseases are due to the presence of parasites, attracted or produced by uncleanness and other causes, so parasitic spirits are attracted by immorality or spiritual uncleanness, thereby inducing spiritual diseases and consequent physical ailments.

Modern Panarion, Page 79

December 10

On the physical plane, two like poles will always repel each other,while the negative and positive are mutually attracted; so do Spirit and Matter stand to each other — the two poles of the same homogeneous substance, the Root Principle of the Universe.

The Secret Doctrine, Volume 1, Page 268

December 11

Fear and hatred are essentially one and the same. He who fears nothing will never hate, and he who hates nothing will never fear.

The Secret Doctrine, Volume 3, Page 541

December 12

As a rule Occultism is a dangerous, double-edged weapon for one to handle who is unprepared to devote his whole life to it. The theory of it, unaided by serious practice, will ever remain in the eyes of those prejudiced against such an unpopular cause an idle, crazy speculation, fit only to charm the ears of ignorant old women.

Modern Panarion, Page 38

December 13

Starting upon the long journey immaculate, descending more and more into sinful matter, and having connected himself with every atom in manifested space — the Pilgrim, having struggled through, and suffered in, every form of Life and Being, is only at the bottom of the valley of Matter, and half through his cycle, when he has identified himself with collective Humanity. This, he has made in his own image. In order to progress upwards and homewards, the “God” has now to ascend the weary up-hill path of the Golgotha of life. It is the martyrdom of self-conscious existence.

The Secret Doctrine, Volume 1, Page 288

December 14

The Universe is worked and guided, from within outwards. As above so it is below, as in heaven so on earth; and man, the microcosm and miniature copy of the macrocosm, is the living witness to this Universal Law and to the mode of its action.

The Secret Doctrine, Volume 1, Page 295

December 15

Memory — the despair of the materialist, the enigma of the psychologist, the sphinx of science — is to the student of old philosophies merely a name to express that power which man unconsciously exerts, and shares with many of the inferior animals — to look with inner sight into the astral light, and there behold the images of past sensations and incidents.

Isis Unveiled, Volume 1, Page 178

December 16

In the shoreless ocean of space radiates the central, spiritual, and invisible sun. The universe is his body, spirit, and soul; and after this ideal model are framed All Things. These three emanations are the three lives, the three degrees of the Gnostic Pleroma, the three “Kabalistic Faces”, for the Ancient of the ancient, the holy of the aged, the great En-Soph “has a form and then he has no form”. The invisible “assumed a form when he called the universe into existence”, says the Sohar, the Book of Splendour.

Isis Unveiled, Volume 1, Page 302

December 17

Matter has extension, colour, motion (molecular motion), taste and smell, corresponding to the existing senses of man, and the next characteristic it develops — let us call it for the moment “Permeability” — will correspond to the next sense of man, which we may call “Normal Clairvoyance”.

The Secret Doctrine, Volume 1, Page 272

December 18

The star under which a human Entity is born, says the Occult Teachings, will remain for ever its star, throughout the whole cycle of its incarnations in one Manvantara. But this is not his astrological star.

The Secret Doctrine, Volume 1, Page 626

December 19

Man is also triune; he has his objective, physical body; his vitalising astral body (or soul), the real man; and these two are brooded over and illuminated by the third — the sovereign, the immortal spirit. When the real man succeeds in merging himself with the latter, he becomes an immortal entity.

Isis Unveiled, Volume 2, Page 588

December 20

Our only true course is to let the motive for action be in the action itself, never in its reward; not to be incited to action by the hope of the result, nor yet indulge a propensity to inertness

Practical Occultism, Page 75

December 21

Every true Theosophist holds that the divine Higher Self of every mortal man is of the same essence as the essence of these Gods. Being, moreover, endowed with free-will, hence having, more than they, responsibility, we regard the incarnated Ego as far superior to, if not more divine than, any spiritual Intelligence still awaiting incarnation.

Lucifer, March, 1889

December 22

Sow kindly acts and thou shalt reap their fruition. Inaction in a deed of mercy becomes an action in a deadly sin.

The Voice of the Silence, Page 49

December 23

We describe Karma as that law of readjustment which ever tends to restore equilibrium in the physical, and broken harmony in the moral, world. We say that Karma does not act in this or that particular way always; but that it always does act so as to restore harmony and preserve the balance of equilibrium, in virtue of which the universe exists.

The Key to Theosophy, Page 138

December 24

We believe that everything in material life is most intimately associated with spiritual agencies.

Modern Panarion, Page 136

December 25

As one of the greatest reformers, an inveterate enemy of every theological dogmatism, a persecutor of bigotry, a teacher of one of the most sublime codes of ethics, Jesus is one of the grandest and most clearly defined figures on the panorama of human history .... the grand figure .... wil reign supreme and universal only on that day when the whole of humanity recognises but one father — the Unknown One above — and one brother, the whole of mankind below.

Isis Unveiled, Volume 2, Page 150

December 26

Mystically .... the Lipika .... are connected with Karma, the Law of Retribution, for they are the Recorders, or Annalists, who impress on the (to us) invisible tablets of the Astral Light “the great picture-gallery of eternity”, a faithful record of every act, and even thought, of man; of all that was, is, or ever will be, in the phenomenal Universe.

The Secret Doctrine, Volume 1, Page 130

December 27

Christ has given you one prayer of which you have a lip-prayer and a boast, and which none but the true Occultist understands.

The Key to Theosophy, Page 47

December 28

The Occultist accepts revelation as coming from divine yet still finite Beings, the manifested Lives, never from the unmafestable One Life; from those entities, called Primordial Man, Dhyâni-Buddhas, or Dhyân Chohans, the Rishi-Prajâpati of the Hindus, the Elohim or Sons of God of the Jews, the Planetary Spirits of all nations, who have become Gods for men.

The Secret Doctrine, Volume 1, Page 38

December 29

To feel “compassion” without an adequate practical result ensuing from it is not to show oneself an “Altruist”, but the reverse. Real self-development on the esoteric lines is action.

Lucifer, October, 1889

December 30

“There is but one light, and there is but one darkness”, says a Siamese proverb. Daemon est Deus inversus, the Devil is the shadow of God, states the universal kabalistic axiom. Could light exist but for primeval darkness? And did not the brilliant, sunny universe first stretch its infant arms from the swaddling bands of dark and dreary chaos?

Isis Unveiled, Volume 1, Page 560

December 31

Man and parties, sects and schools, are but the mere ephemera of the world's day. Truth, high seated upon its rock of adamant, is alone eternal and supreme

Isis Unveiled, Volume 1, Page XI

“Tis well ..... Prepare thyself, for thou wilt have to travel on alone. The teacher can but point the way. The Path is one for all, the means to reach the goal must vary with the pilgrims.

The Voice of the Silence, Page 66

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