A new approach to the Vedas : an essay in translation and exegesis

A NEW APPROACH TO THE VEDAS

soul’s centre, viz., the root of the soul’s fire contains the dark-world ; and the soul’s fire contains the first Principle as the true fire-world. And the noble image, or the tree of divine growth, which is generated from the soul’s fire and buds forth through fierce wrathful death in freedom or in the world of light, contains the light-world or the second Principle. And the body, which in the beginning was created out of the mixed substance which-at creation arose from the light-world, the dark-world, and the fireworld contains the outer world or the third mixed Principle,” Sex Puncta Mystica, V, 28: here the first, second, and third Principles correspond to the Trinity of Fire, Supernal-Sun, and Spirit, and the properties, éamas, sattva, and rajas.

Rasa is the sappy vegetative life in trees and plants, a tincture in rain, the elixir of life, the soma- dew that drips from the world-tree, seed in all that reproduce their kind, savour in all things eaten or drunk, and the principle of beauty in art. Rasa is the fertilising (vaitasa) energy, the “ flowing” intellect, as for example in Rg Veda, I, 164, 8, where Mother-Earth, partaking of FatherHeaven, is “ pervaded by the tincture” (rasa nividdha), and the Calf (= Agni) is begotten. ‘‘ I understand here the virtual salt in the vegetable life,” Bohme, Signatura Rerum, 1X, 22. Cf. the Stoic Logos spermatikos.

He effected in himself a Trinity (tridha): one thivd Five (agnt), one third Supernal-Sun (dditya), one third Wind (vé@yz).

He is verily, the Spirit (prana), determined (v7hita) in a Trinity: of the Three Worlds, in the likeness of a horse. His head the eastern (prac?) airt, his fore-legs that and that airt on either side. Likewise his tail the western (fraticz) airt, his

hinder-legs that and that airt on either side. His 12