Elohīm
Elohīm (Hebrew: אֱלֹהִים) is a grammatically plural noun for "gods" or "Deity" in Biblical Hebrew. In spite of it being plural, Elohim is frequently interpreted to be a name for God "the Almighty" in Hebrew tradition. This term, however, is also used to refer to the idols and "false gods" of other religions (see, for example, Book of Judges 16:23 and Exodus 32:4).
H. P. Blavatsky regarded them in a different way. She wrote:
The Elôhîm, far from being supreme, or even exalted powers in Nature, are only lower Angels. This was the teaching of the Gnostics, the most philosophical of all the early Christian Churches. They taught that the imperfections of the world were due to the imperfection of its Architects or Builders—the imperfect, and therefore inferior, Angels. The Hebrew Elôhîm correspond to the Prajâpatis of the Hindus, and it is shown elsewhere from the Esoteric interpretation of the Purânas that the Prajâpatis were the fashioners of man’s material and astral form only: that they could not give him intelligence or reason, and therefore in symbolical language they “failed to create man.” But, not to repeat what the reader can find elsewhere in this work, his attention needs only to be called to the fact that “creation” in this passage is not the Primary Creation, and that the Elôhîm are not “God,” nor even the higher Planetary Spirits, but the Architects of this visible physical planet and of man’s material body, or encasement.[1]
Blavatsky explains that there are seven Hierarchies of Elohim, which are formed by a host of celestial beings:
The whole Kabalah explains sufficiently that the Alhim (Elôhîm) are seven; each creates one of the seven things enumerated in the first chapter, and these answer allegorically to the seven creations. To make this clear, count the verses in which it is said “And God saw that it was good,” and you will find that this is said seven times.[2]
The Elôhîm are not one, nor two, nor even a trinity, but a Host—the army of the creative powers.
The Christian Church, in making of Jehovah—one of these very Elôhîm —the one Supreme God, has introduced hopeless confusion into the celestial hierarchy, in spite of the volumes written by Thomas Aquinas and his school on the subject.[3]
Notes
- ↑ Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, Collected Writings vol. XIV (Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 1988), 212.
- ↑ Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, Collected Writings vol. XIV (Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 1988), 197, fn.
- ↑ Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, Collected Writings vol. XIV (Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 1988), 215.