Jagad Yoni
Jagad Yoni (devanāgarī: जगद्योनि, from jagat, "world" and yoni, "womb") is a Sanskrit term usually translated as the "womb of the world." According to H. P. Blavatsky, however, the jagad-yoni "is scarcely so much 'the Mother of the World' or 'the Womb of the World' as the 'Material Cause of the Universe'."[1] In a different writing, she clarifies the esoteric interpretation of this idea:
The Jagad-yoni [is the] material cause or kârana thereof, according to the Paurânik commentators, but according to the Esoteric Philosophy the ideal spirit of that cause. It is the Svabhavat of the Buddhists and the Mûlaprakriti of the Vedântin philosophers.[2]
By this she probably means that, although Jagad Yoni can be regarded as the material cause of the cosmos, it is not a physical but a metaphysical cause. The reference to Mûlaprakriti should be taken as a general statement because, later in the same writing, when connecting Jagad Yoni to the Gnostic concept of Pleroma, she writes:
The Plêrôma or Plenum must be distinguished from Mûlaprakriti. The Plerôma is infinite manifestation in manifestation, the Jagad Yoni or Golden Egg: Mûlaprakriti is an abstraction, the Root of the Jagad Yoni, the Womb of the Universe, or the Egg of Brahmâ.[3]
Notes
- ↑ Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine vol. I, (Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 1993), 46.
- ↑ Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, Collected Writings vol. XI (Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 1973), 484.
- ↑ Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, Collected Writings vol. XI (Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 1973), 491.