In the teaching, "The Buddhic Wave," we touched upon the warfare of the white and the dark powers of the invisible world. Also we stated that the weapons used were unlike those of earthly conflict. To understand the nature and effect of these weapons, we should discover the essential nature of desire, that principle which, like will and mind, is a component of an inseparable trinity on our planetary chain, and also on every other from that of Venus downward.

Always in this trinity the middle principle of desire is a fiery one. Not so the other two; but, as in contact with fire, metal is heated, so will above and mind below become fiery. In that reflection of this positive trinity which forms the inverted or negative triad, Kama, or selfish desire, is the fire with Lower Manas above, and the astral personal will below; both fiery through contact.

The basic physical principle is a fiery one through its union with Kama and the Astral. On each of the seven planes of our planetary chain are seven conditions of fire. These differing fires divide the total seven into forty-nine sub-planes or fires. Of the seven fires of the physical plane, Material Science recognizes only the one destructive to gross physical matter; still, as every physical being lives and moves in certain of the seven, it follows that a fire to which that being is adapted is not by him recognized as fire, but rather as an agreeable and life-sustaining element.

In the early planetary rounds, our race and the lower forms of life existed without inconvenience in that world-fire which, because long since largely outgrown by the changed and changing physical organisms of every species, is now destructive to them. Man still lives and has pleasure in certain aspects of physical fire which, before wholly outgrown, will to his backward look seem harmful. Moreover, perhaps to his physical body of the far future they will have become deadly as fire can well be.

Certain aspects of astral and kamic fire are below normal man, but, at death, depraved men gravitate to these olden fires once comparatively pure and even agreeable to our entire humanity, though long since polluted by the presence of the outcasts of the race. To Swedenborg, these divisions of the astral plane were hells, the habitation of devils.

The mind body of man has risen above certain fires of the lower manasic levels, but the fires of the Higher Manas are as yet unknown to the great majority. As for the buddhic fires, the source of all others, only a few advanced representatives of mankind are in other than their lower sub-divisions.

During incarnation the human physical body holds the other six principles in touch with certain physical fires. During its posthumus cycle of vitality, the astral body holds the other five in touch with certain astral fires. Next the kamic principle, during its cycle, holds all higher principles in touch with the kamic fires. Finally, the Higher Manas holds the two highest principles in touch with certain manasic fires.

Because the four lower principles of man are at variance with the higher three, they would humble those three to their own level. Correspondingly the hosts of darkness would debase the hosts that stand as a wall around humanity; so they breach or undermine wherever possible. During the ordeal the great Niramanakayas, the tried and proven through ages of service, stand intact in their six-fold robes of purified principles down to and including the Astral.

Among these great ones are certain who in historic times were vulnerable to attack; and even more there are who, in the Atlantean struggle, were badly worsted. Such being the case, what must be the partial weakness of thousands of the ordinary champions of Light? Concerning weapons that have wrought discomfort and defeat among the black and the white hosts, let it be said that they are certain of the forty and nine fires.

Man's physical body can be tortured by ordinary fire because, having passed out of its old fiery condition, that body has not yet evolved to a state of immunity, of unawareness of the existence of ordinary fire as such. Certain astral and kamic fires are harmful to the ordinary individual disembodied and on the astral and kamic planes. These fires he avoids, even as on earth he avoided physical fire: but, were he wholly purified in his astral and kamic bodies, such fires would to him be quite harmless. When purified in his manasic bodies, he cannot suffer from the grosser manasic fires.

To the black brotherhood, the polluted and harmful kamic fires are natural and agreeable elements constituting effective weapons against certain of the white brotherhood. The high and pure fires of Manas and Buddhi are, in turn, torturous to the black since they are fallen beings once to some extent partakers of these fires, even as we now are through the higher triad of principles. If to one evolving from a gross fire, it in time become harmful; so, to one fallen from a pure fire, that element will eventually be equally so.

The wily black magician attempts not the conquest of the wholly purified white. On the contrary, he fears and flees from his buddhic fire. Those of the white who as yet have not wholly purified their astral and kamic bodies, are more or less vulnerable to the gross astral and kamic fires of the enemy; and always they shrink, and often they flee from the intolerable burning. Selfish pride, and lust of power and possession, are manasic fires somewhat less gross. When insinuated by the black into their victims, these seem pleasant and life-giving even as on earth, but, to the somewhat purified white, they are malodorous and stifling.

In the warfare described, the weapon really effective is the pure, buddhic fire; that which adds to itself from the purified lower principles an indescribable luster and a determining energy. Having in superlative degree both that luster and energy, the great Captain of the white company is already wielding, as invincible weapon, that zodiacal fire the resplendent truth of Aquarius.

H.