Sevens.
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Blavatsky, H. P. (Helena Petrovna)
Q. If the physical body is no part of the real human septenary, is the physical material world one of the seven planes of the Kosmic septenary?
A. It is. The body is not a Principle in Esoteric parlance, because the body and the Linga are both on the same plane; then the Auric Egg makes the seventh. The body is an Upâdhi rather than a Principle. The earth and its astral light are as closely related to each other as the body and its Linga, the earth being the Upâdhi. Our plane in its lowest division is the earth, in its highest the astral. The terrestrial astral light should of course not be confounded with the universal Astral Light.
Q. A physical object was spoken of as a septenary on the physical plane, inasmuch as we could (1) directly contact it; (2) retinally reproduce it; (3) remember it; (4) dream of it; (5) view it atomically; (6) view it disintegrated; (7)—What is the seventh?
These are seven ways in which we view it: the septenary is our way of seeing one thing. Is it objectively septenary?
A. The seventh bridges across from one plane to another. The last is the idea, the privation of matter, and carries you to the next plane. The highest of one plane touches the lowest of the next. Seven is a factor in nature, as in colours and sounds. There are seven degrees in the same piece of wood, each perceived by one of the seven senses. In wood the smell is the most material degree, while in other substances it may be the sixth. Substances are septenary apart from the consciousness of the viewer.
The psychometer, seeing a morsel, say of a table a thousand years hence, would see the whole; for every atom reflects the whole body to which it belongs, just as with the Monads of Leibnitz.
After the seven material subdivisions are the seven divisions of the Astral, which is its second Principle. The disintegrated matter—the highest of the material subdivisions—is the privation of the idea of it—the fourth.
The number fourteen is the first step between seven and forty-nine. Each septenary is really a fourteen, because each of the seven has its two aspects. Thus fourteen signifies the inter-relation of two planes in its turn. The septenary is to be clearly traced in the lunar months, fevers, gestations, etc. On it is based the week of the Jews and the septenary Hierarchies of the Lord of Hosts.