The Secret Doctrine vol. 1, Stanza III.4
Page 66
5. (Then) the three (triangle) fall into the four (quaternary). The radiant essence becomes seven inside, seven outside (a). The luminous egg (Hiranyagarbha), which in itself is three (the triple hypostases of Brahmā, or Vishnu, the three “Avasthas”), curdles and spreads in milk-white curds throughout the depths of mother, the root that grows in the ocean of life (b).
The use of geometrical figures and the frequent allusions to figures in all ancient scriptures (see Puranas, Egyptian papyri, the “Book of the Dead” and even the Bible) must be explained. In the “Book of Dzyan,” as in the Kabala, there are two kinds of numerals to be studied — the figures, often simple blinds, and the Sacred Numbers, the values of which are all known to the Occultists through Initiation. The former is but a conventional glyph, the latter is the basic symbol of all. That is to say, that one is purely physical, the other purely metaphysical, the two standing in relation to each other as matter stands to spirit—the extreme poles of the one Substance.
As Balzac, the unconscious Occultist of French literature, says somewhere, the Number is to Mind the same as it is to matter: “an incomprehensible agent;” (perhaps so to the profane, never to the Initiated mind). Number is, as the great writer thought, an Entity, and, at the same time, a Breath emanating from what he called God and what we call the all; the breath which alone could organize the physical Kosmos, “where naught obtains its form but through the Deity, which is an effect of Number.” It is instructive to quote Balzac’s words upon this subject: —
“The smallest as the most immense creations, are they not to be distinguished from each other by their quantities, their qualities, their dimensions, their forces and attributes, all begotten by the Number? The infinitude of the Numbers is a fact proven to our mind, but of which no proof can be physically