Beness A term coined by Theosophists to render more accurately the essential meaning of the untranslatable word Sat. The latter word does not mean Being, for the term Being presupposes a sentient consciousness of existence. But as the term Sat is applied solely to the absolute principle, that universal, unknown, and ever unknowable principle which philosophical Pantheism postulates, calling it the basic root of Kosmos and Kosmos itself, it could not be translated by the simple term Being. Sat, indeed, is not even, as translated by some Orientalists, "the incomprehensible Entity," for it is no more an "Entity" than a non-entity, but both. It is as said absolute Beness-not "Being"-the one, secondless, undivided and indivisible All-the root of nature both visible and invisible, objective and subjective, comprehensible and-never to be fully comprehended.

Bhagavad-Gita (Sans.) Lit., "the Lord's Song," a portion of The Mahabharata, the great epic poem of India. It contains a dialogue wherein Krisha (the "Charioteer") and Arjuna (his Chela) have a discussion upon the highest spiritual philosophy. The work is preeminently occult or esoteric.

Black Magic Sorcery; necromancy, or the raising of the dead and other selfish abuses of abnormal powers. This abuse may be unintentional; still it has to remain "black" magic whenever anything is produced phenomenally simply for one's own gratification.

Böhme, Jacob A mystic and great philosopher, one of the most prominent Theosophists of the medieval ages. He was born about 1575 at Old Diedenberg, some two miles from Görlitz (Silesia), and died in 1624, being nearly fifty years old. When a boy he was a common shepherd, and, after learning to read and write in a village school, became an apprentice to a poor shoemaker at Görlitz. He was a natural clairvoyant of the most wonderful power. With no education or acquaintance with science he wrote works which are now proved to be full of scientific truths; but these, as he himself says of what he wrote, he "saw as in a Great Deep in the Eternal." He had "a thorough view of the universe, as in chaos," which yet opened itself in him, from time to time, "as in a young planet," he says. He was a thorough born mystic, and evidently of a constitution which is most rare; one of those fine natures whose material envelope impedes in no way the direct, even if only occasional, intercommunication between the intellectual and spiritual Ego. It is this Ego which Jacob Böhme, as so many other untrained mystics, mistook for God. "Man must acknowledge," he writes, "that his knowledge is not his own, but from God, who manifests the Ideas of Wisdom to the Soul of Man in what measure he pleases." Had this great Theosophist been born 300 years later he might have expressed it otherwise. He would have known that the "God" who spoke through his poor uncultured and untrained brain was his own Divine Ego, the omniscient Deity within himself, and that what that Deity gave out was not "what measure he pleased," but in the measure of the capacities of the mortal and temporary dwelling it informed.

Book of the Keys An ancient Cabalistic work. The original is no longer extant, though there may be spurious and disfigured copies and forgeries of it.

Brahma (Sans.) The student must distinguish between the neuter Brahma, and the male Creator of the Indian Pantheon, Brahmâ. The former Brahma or Brahman is the impersonal, Supreme, and uncognizable Soul of the Universe, from the essence of which all emanates, and into which all returns; which is incorporeal, immaterial, unborn, eternal, beginningless, and endless. It is all-pervading, animating the highest god as well as the smallest mineral atom. Brahmâ, on the other hand, the male and the alleged Creator, exists in his manifestation periodically only, and passes into pralaya, i.e., disappears and is annihilated as periodically. (see below)

Brahmâ's Day A period of 2,160,000,000 years, during which Brahmâ, having emerged out of his Golden Egg (Hiranyagarbha), creates and fashions the material world (for he is simply the fertilizing and creative force in Nature). After this period the worlds being destroyed in turn by fire and water, he vanishes with objective nature; and then comes the Night of Brahmâ (see below).

Brahmâ's Night A period of equal duration to Brahmâ's Day, in which Brahmâ is said to be asleep. Upon awakening he recommences the process, and this goes on for an age of Brahmâ composed of alternate "Days" and "Nights," and lasting for 100 years of 2,160,000,000 each. It requires fifteen figures to express the duration of such an age, after the expiration of which the Maha-Pralaya or Great Dissolution sets in, and lasts in its turn for the same space of fifteen figures.

Brahma-Vidya (Sans.) The knowledge or Esoteric Science about the true nature of Brahma and Brahmâ.

Buddha (Sans.) "The enlightened." Generally known as the title of Gautama Buddha, the Prince of Kapilavastu, the founder of modern Buddhism. The highest degree of knowledge and holiness. To become a Buddha one has to break through the bondage of sense and personality; to acquire a complete perception of the real Self, and learn not to separate it from all the other Selves; to learn by experience the utter unreality of all phenomena, foremost of all the visible Kosmos; to attain a complete detachment from all that is evanescent and finite, and to live while yet on earth only in the immortal and everlasting.

Buddhi (Sans.) Universal Soul or Mind. Maha -Buddhi is a name of Mahat; also the Spiritual Soul in man (the sixth principle exoterically), the vehicle of atma, the seventh, according to the exoteric enumeration.

Buddhism the religious philosophy taught by Gautama Buddha. It is now split into two distinct churches: the Southern and Northern. The former is said to be the purer, as having preserved more religiously the original teachings of the Lord Buddha. The Northern Buddhism is confined to Tibet, China, and Nepal. But this distinction is incorrect. If the Southern Church is nearer, and has not, in fact, departed, except perhaps in trifling dogmas, due to the many councils held after the death of the Master, from the public or exoteric teachings of Sakyamuni, the Northern Church is the outcome of Siddhartha Buddha's esoteric teachings which he confined to his elect Bhikshus and Arhats. Buddhism, in fact, cannot be justly judged in our age either by one or the other of its exoteric popular forms. Real Buddhism can be appreciated only by blending the philosophy of the Southern Church and the metaphysics of the Northern Schools. If one seems too iconoclastic and stern, and the other too metaphysical and transcendental, events being overcharged with the weeds of Indian exotericism-many of the gods of its Pantheon having been transplanted under new names into Tibetan soil-it is due to the popular expression of Buddhism in both churches. Correspondentially, they stand in their relation to each other as Protestantism to Roman Catholicism. Both err by an excess of zeal and erroneous interpretations, though neither the Southern nor the Northern Buddhist clergy have ever departed from Truth consciously, still less have they acted under the dictates of priestocracy, ambition, or an eye to personal gain and power, as the later churches have.

Buddhi-Taijas (Sans.) A very mystic term, capable of several interpretations. In Occultism, however, and in relation to the human principles (exoterically), it is a term to express the state of our dual Manas, when, reunited during a man's life, it bathes in the radiance of Buddhi, the Spiritual Soul. For Taijas means the radiant, and Manas, becoming radiant in consequence of its union with Buddhi, and being, so to speak, merged into it, is identified with the latter; the trinity has become one; and, as the element of Buddhi is the highest, it becomes Buddhi-Taijas. In short, it is the human soul illuminated by the radiance of the divine soul, the human reason lit by the light of the Spirit or Divine Self-Consciousness.