Parabrahmam is an unconditioned and absolute reality, and Mulaprakriti is a sort of veil thrown over it.
-- The Secret Doctrine -- The Synthesis of Science, Religion, and Philosophy, by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky

The Astral Light or Anima Mundi is dual and bisexual. The male part of it is purely divine and spiritual, it is the Wisdom, it is Spirit or Purusha; while the female portion is tainted, in one sense, with matter, is indeed matter, and therefore is evil already.
-- The Secret Doctrine -- The Synthesis of Science, Religion, and Philosophy, by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky

 The Sun is the ancient symbol of the life-giving and generative power of the Deity. To the ancients, light was the cause of life; and God was the source from which all light flowed; the essence of Light, the Invisible Fire, developed as flame manifested as light and splendor. The Sun was His manifestation and visible image; and the Sabæans' worshipping the Light -- God -- seemed to worship the Sun, in whom they saw the manifestation of the Deity.

The Moon was the symbol of the passive capacity of nature to produce, the female, of which the life-giving power and energy was the male. It was the symbol of Isis, Astarte, and Artemis, or Diana. The "Master of Life" was the Supreme Deity, above both, and manifested through both; Zeus, the Son of Saturn, become King of the Gods; Horus, son of Osiris and Isis, become the Master of Life; Dionusos or Bacchus, like Mithras, become the author of Light and Life and Truth.

The Master of Light and Life, the Sun and the Moon, are symbolized in every Lodge by the Master and Wardens: and this makes it the duty of the Master to dispense light to the Brethren, by himself, and through the Wardens, who are his ministers.

-- Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry, by Albert Pike

***

In the figure now under consideration a kind of pre-eminence seems to be given to the moon over the sun; proceeding probably from the Hindoos not possessing the true solar system, which must however have been known to the people from whom they learnt to calculate eclipses, which they still continue to do, though upon principles not understood by themselves. They now place the earth in the centre of the universe, as the later Greeks did, among whom we also find the same preference given to the lunar symbol.
-- A Discourse on the Worship of Priapus: And Its Connection with the Mystic Theology of the Ancients, by Richard Payne Knight

***

Rome, that reformed the world, accustomed was
Two suns to have, which one road and the other,
Of God and of the world, made manifest.
-- The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri, translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

***

Hail! Hail! Unto thee Jove supernal!
Light of the Sun! Of the Sun of the Suns!
Giver of the corn, the wine, and the oil!
Bread of the heart, ecstasy of soul, light that rays the face.
Bountiful Jove! Former of form!
Hail unto Thee! Hail unto Thee!
Essence of ecstasy! Return I unto Thee in rhapsody!
Hail unto Thee, Hail! Hail!
-- The Fire Regained, by Sidney M. Hirsch

***

The Sun's resplendent deity I sing,
The beauteous offspring of almighty Jove,
Who, thro' the vivifying solar fount
Within his fabricative mind conceal'd,
A triad form'd of splendid solar gods;
From whence the world's all-various forms emerg'd
From mystic darkness into beauteous light,
Perfect, and full of intellectual goods.
Hail! Supermundane king of light divine, ...
O best of gods, blest dæmon crown'd with fire,
My soul's sure refuge in the hour of woe, ...
And oft with thee in blissful union join'd
Thro' energy ineffable, may soar
Beyond the highest super-mundane forms
-- Two Orations of the Emperor Julian, One to the Sovereign Sun and the Other to the Mother of the Gods, by Flavius Claudius Julianus

***

We people are the children of the sun, the bright source of life; we are born of the sun and will vanquish the murky fear of death.
-- Children of the Sun, by Maxim Gorky

***

The mystic, as he sees the light of the morning dawn, looks upon it as the daily coming into his soul of the primordial Creative Fiat, "Let there be Light," and as the Light of day progresses and gradually wanes in the western sky, he sees in the glorious tapestry of the sunset a something beyond description by human tongue, a something that can be felt by the soul. If we let those five verses live within us, in the way they do in the mystic, we too, shall know the light, know the truth, as we know nothing else in the world.
-- The Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception, by Max Heindel

 When a planetary chain is in its last Round, its Globe 1 or A, before finally dying out, sends all its energy and “principles” into a neutral centre of latent force, a “laya centre,” and thereby informs a new nucleus of undifferentiated substance or matter, i.e., calls it into activity or gives it life. Suppose such a process to have taken place in the lunar “planetary” chain; suppose again, for argument’s sake, that the moon is far older than the Earth. Imagine the six fellow-globes of the moon — aeons before the first globe of our seven was evolved — just in the same position in relation to each other as the fellow-globes of our chain occupy in regard to our Earth now. And now it will be easy to imagine further Globe A of the lunar chain informing Globe A of the terrestrial chain, and — dying; Globe B of the former sending after that its energy into Globe B of the new chain; then Globe C of the lunar, creating its progeny sphere C of the terrene chain; then the Moon pouring forth into the lowest globe of our planetary ring — Globe D, our Earth — all its life, energy and powers; and, having transferred them to a new centre becoming virtually a dead planet, in which rotation has almost ceased since the birth of our globe. The Moon is now the cold residual quantity, the shadow dragged after the new body, into which her living powers and “principles” are transfused. She now is doomed for long ages to be ever pursuing the Earth, to be attracted by and to attract her progeny. Constantly vampirised by her child, she revenges herself on it by soaking it through and through with the nefarious, invisible, and poisoned influence which emanates from the occult side of her nature. For she is a dead, yet a living body. The particles of her decaying corpse are full of active and destructive life, although the body which they had formed is soulless and lifeless. Therefore its emanations are at the same time beneficent and maleficent — this circumstance finding its parallel on earth in the fact that the grass and plants are nowhere more juicy and thriving than on the graves; while at the same time it is the graveyard or corpse-emanations, which kill. And like all ghouls or vampires, the moon is the friend of the sorcerers and the foe of the unwary. From the archaic aeons and the later times of the witches of Thessaly, down to some of the present tantrikas of Bengal, her nature and properties were known to every Occultist, but have remained a closed book for physicists.

Such is the moon from the astronomical, geological, and physical standpoints. As to her metaphysical and psychic nature, it must remain an occult secret in this work. These are topics, indeed, “on which the adepts are very reserved in their communications to uninitiated pupils,” and since they have, moreover, never sanctioned or permitted any published speculations upon them, the less said the better.

***

A few words more of the Moon. There are some further details which may be added, though they border too closely on forbidden ground to be treated of fully. The last word of the mystery is divulged only to the adepts, but it may be stated that our satellite is only the gross body of its invisible principles. Seeing then that there are 7 Earths, so there are 7 Moons, the last one alone being visible; the same for the Sun, whose visible body is called a Maya, a reflection, just as man’s body is. “The real Sun and the real Moon are as invisible as the real man,” says an occult maxim.

In reality the Moon is only the satellite of the Earth in one respect, viz., that physically the Moon revolves round the Earth. But in every other respect it is the Earth which is the satellite of the Moon, and not vice versa. Startling as the statement may seem it is not without confirmation from scientific knowledge. It is evidenced by the tides, by the cyclic changes in many forms of disease which coincide with the lunar phases; it can be traced in the growth of plants, and is very marked in the phenomena of human gestation and conception. The importance of the Moon and its influence on the Earth were recognized in every ancient religion, notably the Jewish, and have been remarked by many observers of psychical and physical phenomena. But, so far as Science knows, the Earth’s action on the Moon is confined to the physical attraction, which causes her to circle in her orbit. And should an objector insist that this fact alone is sufficient evidence that the Moon is truly the Earth’s satellite on other planes of action, one may reply by asking whether a mother, who walks round and round her child’s cradle keeping watch over the infant, is the subordinate of her child or dependent upon it; though in one sense she is its satellite, yet she is certainly older and more fully developed than the child she watches.

It is, then, the Moon that plays the largest and most important part, as well in the formation of the Earth itself, as in the peopling thereof with human beings. The “Lunar Monads” or Pitris, the ancestors of man, become in reality man himself.

-- The Secret Doctrine -- The Synthesis of Science, Religion, and Philosophy, by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky

The Egyptian ram-headed god makes man of clay on a potter’s wheel, and so in Genesis do the Elohim fashion him out of the same material.
-- The Secret Doctrine -- The Synthesis of Science, Religion, and Philosophy, by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky

"Fohat traces spiral lines to unite the six to the seventh — the Crown." -- This tracing of “Spiral lines” refers to the evolution of man’s as well as Nature’s principles; an evolution which takes place gradually, as does everything else in nature.
-- The Secret Doctrine -- The Synthesis of Science, Religion, and Philosophy, by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky

Dew falls from the invisible air, corals grow in the water, and seeds draw their nutriment out of the soil; the earth is a great stomach, in which everything is dissolved, digested, and transformed, and each being draws its nutriment from the earth; and each living being is a stomach that serves as a tomb for other forms, and from which new forms spring into existence. Each organism requires that kind of food which is adapted to its own nature. The body cannot be nourished with theories, nor the mind with potatoes. The body requires material food, the mind mental knowledge; but the soul needs the nutriment that comes from the holy spirit of truth.

Every living being requires that particular kind of food which is adapted to its species and to its individual organism, and Life, the great alchemist, transforms the food taken. A hog, for instance, will extract nutriment out of substances that would act as poisons in the organism of man, but there is no animal known that will eat the excrements of a hog. Animals refuse to eat or drink things which are injurious to them, and they select by their natural instincts those things which they require; it is only given to intellectual man to disobey his natural instincts, and to eat or drink things which are injurious to him, but which may gratify some artificially acquired taste. Man is much more subject to diseases than animals in a state of liberty, because animals live in accordance with the laws of their nature, and man acts continually against the laws of his nature, especially in regard to his eating and drinking. As long as his body is strong it can expel or overcome the injurious influences which are continually caused in it by intemperance, gluttony, and morbid tastes; but such a continuous effort at resistance will imply a serious loss of vitality, and a time will come when disease will be the result, because the organism requires a period of rest and a renewal of strength to expel the accumulated poisonous elements.

-- The Life of Philippus Theophrastus Bombast of Hohenheim Known by the Name of Paracelsus and the Substance of his Teachings, by Franz Hartmann, M.D.

[Librarian's Comment: This assertion is precisely wrong.  Gluttony results not from some inherent perversity in human nature, indicative of some tendency to deviate from natural wisdom, but rather from society's ability and inclination to over-satisfy our natural desires for wholesome substances.  People become obese from eating fast-food not because they are inclined to gluttony, but because fast-food providers, for commercial benefit, appeal to the human desire for fat, sugar, and salt.  Fat, sugar and salt are rare in nature, and thus we have evolved to eat as much of them as we can, whenever they are available.  What is really poisoning humanity is wealth itself, and our inability to adjust to abundance after having evolved through millennia of scarcity. This is why there are signs in zoos saying, "Don't feed the animals."  By providing a gorilla with a human diet, you can give a gorilla a very human heart attack. Evolutionary forces, genetic in the first instance, social in the second instance, are driving the epidemic of gluttony and substance abuse that are the bane of civilization.  Few, however, are those who would return to the enforced asceticism of neolithic scarcity in order to be rid of this affliction.

The diatribe against human nature, so common among moralists of every stripe, argues that unlike animals that have remained loyal to the law of "God and Nature," human beings pursue their own perverse deviations, which in the Judaeo-Christian myth, derives from the sin of Eve, who, out of desire for a new taste-treat, succumbed to the serpent's lure and ate of the Fruit of Knowledge, aka The Apple.  Thus, while animals lack free-will, and can neither be saved or damned, humans are said to suffer from the curse of free-will, that can only be cured by subjugation to the Divine Will, for which moral instruction in the form of Religion, is required.  Thus, sin all comes down to appetite, and even today we find that the sin of gluttony must be countered with the virtue of "Dieting."]

 It was left with the early and ignorant Christian fathers to degrade the philosophical and highly scientific idea of this emblem into the absurd superstition called the “Devil.” But the Pagans have always shown a philosophical discrimination in their symbols. The primitive symbol of the serpent symbolised divine Wisdom and Perfection, and had always stood for psychical Regeneration and Immortality. Hence Hermes, calling the serpent the most spiritual of all beings; Moses, initiated in the wisdom of Hermes, following suit in Genesis; the Gnostic’s Serpent with the seven vowels over its head, being the emblem of the seven hierarchies of the Septenary or Planetary Creators. Hence, also, the Hindu serpent Sesha or Ananta, “the Infinite,” a name of Vishnu, whose first Vahan or vehicle on the primordial waters is this serpent. Yet they all made a difference between the good and the bad Serpent, between the former, the embodiment of divine Wisdom in the region of the Spiritual, and the latter, Evil, on the plane of matter. Jesus accepted the serpent as a synonym of Wisdom, and this formed part of his teaching: “Be ye wise as serpents,” he says. “In the beginning, before Mother became Father-Mother, the fiery Dragon moved in the infinitudes alone”. The Aitareya Brahmana calls the Earth Sarparajni, “the Serpent Queen,” and “the Mother of all that moves.” Before our globe became egg-shaped “a long trail of Cosmic dust moved and writhed like a serpent in Space.” The “Spirit of God moving on Chaos” was symbolized by every nation in the shape of a fiery serpent breathing fire and light upon the primordial waters, until it had incubated cosmic matter and made it assume the annular shape of a serpent with its tail in its mouth, which symbolises not only Eternity and Infinitude, but also the globular shape of all the bodies formed within the Universe from that fiery mist. The Universe, as well as the Earth and Man, cast off periodically, serpent-like, their old skins, to assume new ones after a time of rest. The serpent is, surely, a not less graceful or a more unpoetical image than the caterpillar and chrysalis from which springs the butterfly, the Greek emblem of Psyche, the human soul.
-- The Secret Doctrine -- The Synthesis of Science, Religion, and Philosophy, by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky