The Being, the Innermost, the Monad, has two Souls: the first is the Spiritual Soul, the second is the Human Soul.
The Spiritual Soul is Dante’s Beatrice, beautiful Helen, the Sulamite of the wise Solomon, the ineffable adorable wife, the Buddhi of Theosophy.
The Human Soul is the Causal principle, the noble husband, the Superior Manas of Theosophy.
Although it may seem rare and strange, while the Human Soul works, the Spiritual Soul plays.
Adam and Eve integrate within the Monad and its Kabbalistic value is 10, which reminds us of the IO, in other words, of the vowels iiiiiii ooooooo, the very sacred union of the eternal masculine with the eternal feminine, the integration of the opposites within the essential and divine Monad.
The divine Triad, Atman-Buddhi-Manas, the Being, we have said before and we repeat, is not born, nor dies, nor reincarnates within ordinary intellectual animals.
We can and must affirm, beyond all doubt, that only a fraction of the Human Soul lives within the lunar bodies. This fraction is the Essence, the psychic material that creates a Soul, develops the Human Soul, and thereby the Spiritual Soul.
The Monad, the Being, creates, fabricates, develops his two Souls, and these Souls must serve and obey him.
We must distinguish between Monads and Souls. A Monad, in other words, a Spirit, is. A Soul is acquired.
Distinguish between the Monad of a world and the Soul of a world, between the Monad of a human and the Soul of a human, between the Monad of an ant and the Soul of an ant.
The human organism, in final synthesis, is constituted by billions and trillions of infinitesimal Monads.
There are several types and orders of primary elements of any existence, of any organism, like seeds (germs) of all the phenomena of nature; we can call them Monads, (employing the term of Leibnitz, in the absence of a more descriptive term) to indicate the simplicity of the most simple existence.
An atom, as a vehicle of action, corresponds to each of these genii or Monads.
The Monads attract each other, combine, and transform themselves, giving form to every organism, world, micro-organism, etc.
Hierarchies exist among the Monads: the inferior Monads must obey the superior ones. That is the law. Inferior Monads belong to the superior ones.
All the trillions of Monads that animate the human organism have to obey the owner, the chief, the principal Monad.
The regulating Monad, the primordial Monad, permits the activity of all of its subordinates inside the human organism, until the time indicated by the law of Karma.
When the billions or trillions of Monads or vital germs abandon the physical body, death is then inevitable.
The Monads in themselves are indestructible; they abandon their old connections in order to briefly carry out other new ones.
The return to this world, the reentry, the re-embodiment, would be impossible without the work of the Monads. They reconstruct new cells with their perceptions and sensations; they reconstruct new organisms. When the primordial Monad is totally developed, it can afford to utilize its trillions of Monads to create a world, a Sun, a comet, and thus become a regulating Monad of any star, but that is something of the Gods.
The Monads or vital genii are not exclusive to the physical organism; within the atoms of the internal bodies many orders and categories of living Monads are found imprisoned. The existence of any physical or supersensible, angelic or diabolical, solar or lunar body, has billions and trillions of Monads as its foundation.
The lunar ego in itself is a composite of atoms of the secret enemy. Unfortunately, the Monads or vital genii are prisoners within such atoms.
Now we will comprehend why occult science states:
The Demon is God inverted.
To each atom corresponds a vital genie, a Monad; all the infinite modifications, all the innumerable transformations, are the result of the varied combinations of Monads.
Within the three cerebrums of the human being, Nature deposits a certain amount of vital values; when these vital values are depleted, death is inevitable.
The three cerebrums are:
After the death of the physical body, the ego, garbed with its lunar bodies, continues in the Molecular World.
Three things go to the cemetery, to the sepulcher:
The Vital Body floats near the sepulcher and disintegrates as the physical body disintegrates, as its Monads become liberated.
The personality is inside the sepulcher, but when a mourner visits, brings it flowers, it comes out; it ambulates in the cemetery and then returns to the sepulcher.
The personality has a beginning and an end. It slowly disintegrates in the cemetery.
Proserpine, the Queen of the Infernos, is also Hekate, the blessed Goddess Mother Death under whose direction the angels of death work.
Mother Space, converted into Mother Death, dearly loves her children and that is why she takes them away.
When they are working, the angels of death wear their funeral suits. They assume a spectral figure. They clutch the scythe and with it cut the silver cord that connects the internal bodies to the physical body.
The angels of death cut the cord of life and take the ego out of the physical body.
The angels of death are very wise and they develop and unfold under the ray of Saturn.
The angels of death know about more than just the ordinary death of the physical body; these ministers of death are profoundly wise in everything related to the death of the pluralized “I.”
After the death of the body, the disembodied one falls into a fainting fit which lasts for three and a half days.
The Tibetan Book of the Dead states,
You have been in a faint during the last three and a half days. As soon as you recover from this faint, you will have the thought, what has happened?, for in that moment, the entire Samsara (phenomenal universe) will be in revolution.
The Kabbalistic value of the ego is fifty-six; this is the number of Typhon, the mind without spirituality.
The ego carries away its worldliness beyond the sepulcher of the physical body. The retrospective vision of the life that just passed away is very terrible.
After the great faint of three and a half days, the deceased has to slowly experience again (retrospectively) the entire life that just passed.
The concept of time is something very important in the work of the retrospective vision of the life that just passed (the retrospective vision of Samsara).
In the Infernal Worlds, all time scales are mineral, frightfully slow, and oscillate between 80,000, 8,000, 800 and 80 years.
In this Cellular Region in which we live, gestation lasts for ten lunar months; infancy, one hundred lunar months; life, more or less one thousand lunar months.
In the Molecular World, events can be measured with the time scale that goes from one month to forty minutes.
In the Electronic World, the time scale oscillates between forty minutes and two and a half seconds.
The retrospective vision of Samsara (the life that just passed) in the instant of death and during the subsequent three and a half days, is of an electronic type and that is why each event can be measured with the electronic time measurement.
The retrospective vision of Samsara in the Molecular World is slower and that is why each event is measured with the molecular time measurement.
Before we were born in this valley of tears, the Innermost, the Monad, the Being with its two Souls, dwelled in the Milky Way, and even during the life of the physical body here below, He continues living in the stars.
After death, the fundamental thing for the Essence is to attain the transitional Buddhic state and the intermediate liberation. For the soul embryo that we have within, this is only possible by climbing, by ascending, to the Electronic World.
It is urgent to know that our divine immortal triad, our Being, our Buddha, lives in the Electronic World.
To unite with the immortal triad after death, to be one with it, in fact means to have become a transitional Buddha, to have achieved intermediate liberation, and to enjoy a beautiful vacation before returning to a new human organism.
If the Clear Primordial Light has been properly recognized at the supreme moment of death by the deceased, it is a clear sign that he has achieved intermediate liberation.
If the deceased only perceives the Secondary Clear Light at the supreme moment of death, it is a sign that he will have to struggle much to reach the transitional Buddhic state.
The difficult thing for the Essence is to become free of its bottled up condition, to escape from its bottle or prison, to come out of the lunar bodies, to abandon the pluralized “I.” Each person’s karma is definitive in the performance of this task.
When the deceased has retrospectively relived the entire life that has just passed, he then has to appear before the tribunals of Karma in order to be judged.
The legend of Zoroaster states,
Everyone whose good deeds exceeds his sin by three grams, goes to heaven; everyone whose sin is greater, goes to hell; while he, in whom they are equal, remains in the Hamistikan until the future body or resurrection.
Nowadays, in these times of perversity and crude atheistic materialism, a portion of the disembodied join the submerged mineral kingdom (the Infernal Worlds) after the judgment.
Also, many are the millions who enter a new womb immediately, without having had a good vacation within the Superior Worlds.
Certainly, the selection process exists in all of nature, and few are those who achieve intermediate liberation and the transitional Buddhic state.
The disembodied join eternity under the influences of the Moon and exit eternity through the doors of the Moon.
In the lesson of Cancer we taught that the entire life of all people is processed under the influences of the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn; life closes with a lunar end. Really, the Moon takes us and the Moon brings us as well. The seven types of planetary vibrations (in their indicated classical order) also repeat themselves after death for, “As it is above, so is it below.”
The Essences who, after having been judged have the right to intermediate liberation and the transitional Buddhic state, need a certain type of very special ecstasy and constant right effort in order to become liberated, to escape from the lunar bodies and the ego.
Fortunately, different groups of Masters assist the disembodied and help them in this work with the rays of grace.
In the same manner that republics, kingdoms, presidents, kings, governors, etc. exist in this Cellular World in which we live, likewise in the Molecular World, there are many paradises, regions, and kingdoms where Essences enjoy indescribable states of happiness.
The disembodied ones can enter kingdoms of paradisiacal happiness such as that of Dense Concentration, the Kingdom of Long Hair (Vajrapani), or the Unlimited Vihara of the Lotus Radiation (Padmasambhava).
The disembodied ones who march towards the intermediate liberation must help themselves by concentrating the mind on any of the kingdoms of the Molecular World.
It is really very painful to wander from life to life, to roam the horrible sewer of Samsara, without enjoying the Buddhic state and the intermediate liberation.
There are kingdoms of inconceivable happiness that the disembodied one must make the effort to enter; let us remember the Blissful Kingdom of the West governed by Amitabha Buddha. Let us remember Maitreya’s Kingdom, the heavens of Tushita, that Kingdom of Supreme Bliss, which the disembodied ones who are headed towards the Electronic World can also enter.
The disembodied ones must pray a lot to the Great Compassionate One and his Divine Triad, firm in their purpose, without allowing themselves to be deviated by anything, if they truly do not want to fall into a new womb without having enjoyed the intermediate Buddhic state in the world of free electrons. Happiness in the electronic regions, the intermediate liberation after having passed through the molecular paradises, is something that is impossible to describe with human words.
The Buddhas travel through the inalterable infinite among the indescribable symphonies of the worlds, which throb within the bosom of Mother Space.
However, every reward, every bit of capital, becomes exhausted. When the Dharma of happiness is exhausted, the return to a new womb is then inevitable.
The Essence, attracted by the lunar ego and already bottled up once again inside the lunar bodies, loses the ecstasy, and returns to a new womb.
The instant in which the Essence loses the ecstasy is when it once again separates from its inner Buddha to remain bottled up within the lunar bodies and the pluralized “I.”
The return to a new womb is carried out in accordance with the law of Karma.
The egos from your former life (or lives previous to that) continue within your descendants.
The Monads of its past physical body have the power of reuniting atoms and molecules, and of reconstructing cells and organs; in this manner, we return to this Cellular World garbed with a new physical body.
The poor intellectual animal begins his life in this world as a simple germinal cell, subject to the swift time of the cells, and ends after about eighty years or more, loaded with memories and experiences of every kind.
It is urgent to know that a certain selection also occurs in the process of Reentry or Return.
The “I” is a sum of small “I’s” and not all of those “I’s” return to a new human organism. The “I” is a sum of different, diverse entities, without order of any type, and not all of those entities return to a new human organism; many of those entities are re-embodied within the bodies of horses, dogs, cats, pigs, etc.
On a certain occasion when Master Pythagoras was walking with a friend of his, the friend hit a dog. The Master scolded him, saying, “Do not hit him, for in his painful bark I have recognized the voice of an old friend who died.”
It is clear that upon arriving at this part of our present chapter, the fanatics of the dogma of evolution will launch against us all their defamatory dribble and will protest saying: “The ego cannot retrogress, everything evolves, everything must reach perfection, etc., etc., etc.” Those fanatics ignore that the ego is a sum of small animal “I’s,” and that like attracts like.
Those fanatics ignore that the ego does not have anything that is divine; it is a sum of animal entities that the law of evolution will never be able to take to perfection.
The animal entities have the full right to enter animal wombs of dogs, horses, pigs, etc., and that cannot be prohibited by the fanatics of the dogma of evolution, even if they yell, curse, and fume.
This is the doctrine of the metamorphosis or metempsychosis of Pythagoras and it is founded on the same laws of Nature.
In The Golden Ass of Apuleius we find this doctrine of Pythagoras totally documented. Apuleius states that in the witchcraft of Thessaly, the rocks were nothing but petrified men; the birds, men with wings; the trees, men with foliage; the fountains, human bodies that bled clear lymph. For every occultist, this is an admirable, symbolic way to represent the doubtless fact, that the different entities that constitute the pluralized “I” can become re-embodied within the organisms of beasts or enter into the mineral or vegetal kingdom, etc.
With just reason, Christian mystics speak with love about the sister plant, the brother wolf, the sister rock.
Rudolf Steiner, the German Initiate, states that only human beings existed in the Polar era and that animals existed later; that they were inside the human being and they were eliminated by the human being.
Those animals were the different parts or entities of the pluralized “I” of the original Human Being. Those entities were eliminated from their internal nature and, due to the protoplasmic state of the Earth of that epoch, marched towards the present physical crystallization.
Those Polar and Hyperborean human beings had the need to eliminate those animal entities, that pluralized “I,” in order to become True Men, Solar Men.
Some subjects are so animal-like that if all that is animal-like were to be removed from them, nothing would remain.
Saturn is the planet of death and becomes exalted in Capricorn. This sign is symbolized by a small goat, as if to remind us of the goatskin, of the intellectual animals with goatskin, of the need to eliminate what is animal-like within us, the animal entities that we carry within.
The stone of Capricorn is the black onyx and every black stone in general. The metal is lead and its day is Saturday.
On Saturday, the witches of the Middle Ages celebrated their horrible Witch’s Sabbath, but Saturday is the seventh day, which is so sacred for the Jews. Saturn is life and death.
The path of life is formed by the tracks of the hooves of the horse of death.
The magnetic currents that ascend from the Earth become divine afterwards. The magnetic currents that ascend from the Earth, after passing through the sieves of the feet, continue along the calves, and when they arrive at the knees, they become charged with the lead of Saturn, thus acquiring solidity, form, strength. We are not talking about lead in its gross state; we are talking about lead in a subtle, colloidal state.
The knees possess a marvelous substance which permits them the free movement of such simple and marvelous osseous machinery. That substance is the famous Synovia, which comes from the root Sin, that means “with” and Ovia, “egg”; altogether, a substance “with egg.” The egg is very much utilized in Jinn Science and we have already talked about this in the second edition of the Esoteric Treatise of Theurgy.
During the sign of Capricorn, imagine a coffin on the ground. Walk over an imagined coffin located on the floor (imagine that the coffin is located between the legs). With bent knees walk (as if to clear an obstacle), while rotating the knees from left to right. This is done with the intention that the knees become charged with the lead of Saturn. Masonic Masters will be able to understand this exercise of Saturn very well, because they are the same steps of the Master Mason when entering the Lodge.
The natives of Capricorn have a disposition for pedagogy; they suffer a lot. They have a great sense of duty, are practical by nature, and always go through great suffering in their life: someone will betray them.
The women of Capricorn are magnificent wives, faithful until death, industrious, hard workers, patient to the maximum, but in spite of all of those virtues, the husband betrays them, abandons them, often against their own will; unfortunately, that is their Karma.
Some women of Capricorn get involved with other men, but this is only after already having been abandoned by their husband and after suffering frightfully.
The men and women of Capricorn are quite egotistical, though not all of them (we are referring to the inferior type of Capricorn). Due to this, to that egotism, they make many commitments and also garner enemies for themselves.
The natives of Capricorn become much attached to things, to money, and some even become very avaricious.
Capricorn is an earth sign, fixed, stable. However, the natives of Capricorn go on many journeys, even if they are short.
The moral pains of Capricorn people are terrible, they suffer too much. Fortunately, their practical sense of life saves them and very soon they overcome the worst bitterness of life.
This chapter is from Esoteric Treatise of Hermetic Astrology (1967) by Samael Aun Weor. It is included in the print and ebook editions of Practical Astrology by Glorian Publishing (a non-profit organization), which are illustrated to aid your understanding, and include features like a glossary and index. Buy the book, and you benefit yourself and others.