God

Regardless of whether we believe in a God or not, all of us have been exposed to the idea of a supreme and omnipresent being. The dilemma over the existence of God is probably the most common dilemma of them all. Everyone from time to time will have a dream about "God." Its symbolism depends on the dreamer. God in our dreams can be considered a positive or self affirming symbol. It represents truth, purity, and love. It also represents the creative energy which is abundant in all of us (whether we know it or not). For a certain number of people, in the dream state, God may have negative connotations. For them God could represent eternal punishment, damnation, and invoke massive amount guilt. Most religions consider dreams to be a pathway to God or to the spiritual realm. Through dreams we have an opportunity to have experiences which are not available during the day. Our unconscious mind may be more capable of connecting to the eternal flow of spirit and it may be the dwelling place of the soul.

See also: Meaning of Dreams about Jesus   Source: Dream Lover Incorporated, http://www.dreamloverinc.com   (See also: Dream Archives, Meaning of Dreams, Dream Interpretation, Dream Dictionary, Dream Dictionary - God, Meaning of Dreams about God, Dream Interpretation God)

A Theosophical definition of Gods :

Gods

The old pantheons were builded upon an ancient and esoteric wisdom which taught, under the guise of a public mythology, profound secrets of the structure and operations of the universe which surrounds us. The entire human race has believed in gods, has believed in beings superior to men; the ancients all said that men are the "children" of these gods, and that from these superior beings, existent in the azure spaces, men draw all that in them is; and, furthermore, that men themselves, as children of the gods, are in their inmost essence divine beings linked forever with the boundless universe of which each human being, just as is the case with every other entity everywhere, is an inseparable part. This is a truly sublime conception.

One should not think of human forms when the theosophist speaks of the gods; we mean the arupa  - the "formless"  - entities, beings of pure intelligence and understanding, relatively pure essences, relatively pure spirits, formless as we physical humans conceive form. The gods are the higher inhabitants of nature. They are intrinsic portions of nature itself, for they are its informing principles. They are as much subject to the wills and energies of still higher beings  - call these wills and energies the "laws" of higher beings, if you will  - as we are, and as are the kingdoms of nature below us.

The ancients put realities, living beings, in the place of laws which, as Occidentals use the term, are only abstractions  - an expression for the action of entities in nature; the ancients did not cheat themselves so easily with words. They called them gods, spiritual entities. Not one single great thinker of the ancients, until the Christian era, ever talked about laws of nature, as if these laws were living entities, as if these abstractions were actual entities which did things. Did the laws of navigation ever navigate a ship? Does the law of gravity pull the planets together? Does it unite or pull the atoms together? This word laws is simply a mental abstraction signifying unerring action of conscious and semi-conscious energies in nature.

See also: Gods , Mysticism, Body Mind and Soul

Pagan Gods. The term is erroneously understood to mean idols. The philosophical idea attached to them was never that of something objective or anthropomorphic, but in each case an abstract potency, a virtue, or quality in nature. There are gods who are divine planetary spirits (Dhyan Chohans) or Devas, among which are also our Egos. With this exception, and especially whenever represented by an idol or in anthropomorphic form, the gods represent symbolically in the Hindu, Egyptian, or Chaldean Pantheons - formless spiritual Potencies of the "Unseen Kosmos".

(See also: Pagan Gods, Theosophy, Spirituality, Body mind and Soul, Spiritual Dictionary, )

Mystery-gods Several different groups of cosmogonic entities, among them the regents of the seven sacred planets, whose chief is the sun exoterically and the Second Logos esoterically; and in a limited sense, mystery-gods is used for two secret planets for which the sun and moon were used as substitutes. Also, in speaking of the dual nature of the Egyptian deities, the concealed or esoteric aspects of them are spoken of as mystery-gods. Again, the name is given to the kabiri or kabeiroi.

(See also: Mystery-gods, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary)

God

1.    (Judeo-Christianity) Creator and sustainer of the universe.

2.    (Theosophy) Transcendent and immanent being who guides and controls the course of planetary evolution.

3.    Sum total of all that is.

4.    (Islam) Lord of the universe who cannot be represented by any form.

5.    (Hinduism) The One who plays the game of life by becoming the Many, losing itself in the creation and finding its way back to unity; supreme being, personal friend, teacher, and lover who knows the heart of all beings.

6.    (mysticism) Indwelling spirit within all beings; one's highest self realized through contemplation or service; eternal, infinite, all-wise, all-knowing, all-loving, ever-free radiant presence.

7.    (humanism) Impersonal spirit of selfless love

(See also: God, Body Mind and Soul)

Nile-God (Egypt, Egyptian). Represented by a wooden image of the river god receiving honours in gratitude for the bounties its waters afford the country.

There was a "celestial" Nile, called in the Ritual Nen-naou or "primordial waters"; and a terrestrial Nile, worshipped at Nilopolis and Hapimoo. The latter was represented as an androgynous being with a beard and breasts, and a fat blue face ; green limbs and reddish body. At the approach of the yearly inundation, the image was carried from one place to another in solemn procession.

(See also: Nile-God, Theosophy, Spirituality, Body mind and Soul, Spiritual Dictionary, )

Personal God The personal anthropomorphic extra-cosmic God of theology is a purely human creation -- for personality is a limitation utterly inconsistent with the nature of the boundless and eternal. This theological God is merely a reflection of man. The infinite source of all cannot be defined, since every possible attribute which we might assign to it is a human mental creation. We are forced to speak of God as impersonal, but must beware lest in doing so we reduce the conception to an empty abstraction.

God may denote a divine being, a being who was once in our present human stage but has evolved beyond it, having transcended the limit of personality but without losing individuality. Or God may be applied to a being who has emanated from the divine source but is on the downward arc of evolution, not having yet become man; or again it may be a projection of the human mind, like the personal God of theology, but in this case it is a human mental creation -- therefore containing human limitations because the human mind is finite -- and therefore inadmissible.

The early Christians believed that the pagan gods were impersonated by evil demons or were actually merely daemonia. It is hard to believe that Jehovah, Jupiter, the Christian God, Brahma, and the like are nothing more than merely abstract ideas, for they actually are human ways of expressing some of the active and distinctly concrete powers or potencies in the solar system.

The notion of a personal God implies arbitrary will, caprice, anger, susceptibility to propitiation, and many other human weaknesses; and the attempt to reconcile these wholly human projections of thought with the idea of abstract infinitude results in contradiction and absurdity.

It is clear enough that the universe is filled full with powers and potencies, of which all animate beings known to man, and man himself, are but minor examples; and hence polytheism when properly understood as the necessary and inevitable deduction of spiritual pantheism is seen to be true. The mistake of most polytheists in the past has been to endow these gods, divinities, or spiritual potencies with attributes all too human, instead of considering them as they ought to be considered as the formative forces of the universe, possessing consciousness and will.

See also GOD; GOD(S)

(See also: Personal God, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Lunar Gods If moon stands for the feminine side of nature, it is Isis, the Great Mother; and thus a lunar god may be a very august being, and even with some nations regarded as superior to and prior to the masculine side.

On the other hand, moon may stand for the nether pole of manifestation and thus lunar gods may stand in contrast with solar gods, as pertaining to an inferior, exoteric, or materialistic cultus. The moon is said to be threefold, e.g., Diana-Hecate-Luna, ruling over the superior, inferior, and middle worlds. Lunar gods may also apply to the lunar pitris.

"Called in India the Fathers, 'Pitris' or the lunar ancestors. They are subdivided, like the rest, into seven classes or Hierarchies. In Egypt although the moon received less worship than in Chaldea or India, still Isis stands as the representative of Luna-Lunus, 'the celestial Hermaphrodite.' Strange enough while the modern connect the moon only with lunacy and generation, the ancient nations, who knew better, have, individually and collectively, connected their 'wisdom gods' with it.

Thus in Egypt the lunar gods are Thoth-Hermes and Chons; in India it is Budha, the Son of Soma, the moon; in Chaldea Nebo is the lunar god of Secret Wisdom, etc., etc. The wife of Thoth, Sifix, the lunar goddess, holds a pole with five rays of the five-points star, symbol of man, the Microcosm, in distinction from the Septenary Macrocosm.

As in all theogonies a goddess precedes a god, on the principle most likely that the chick can hardly precede its egg, in Chaldea the moon was held as older and more venerable than the Sun, because, as they said, darkness precedes light at every periodical rebirth (or 'creation') of the universe.

Osiris although connected with the Sun and a Solar god is, nevertheless, born on Mount Sinai, because Sin is the Chaldeo-Assyrian word for the moon; so was Dio-Nysos, god of Nyssi or Nisi, which latter appellation was that of Sinai in Egypt, where it was called Mount Nissa" (TG 192-3).

(See also: Lunar Gods, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

God-parents Christian law, strong in the Greek Orthodox Church, weaker in the Roman Catholic, and forgotten in the Protestant, based in the fact that once a spiritual teacher begins to teach the disciple, he takes on the student's karma in connection with the occult sciences until the student becomes in turn a master.

 The god-parents "tacitly take upon themselves all the sins of the newly baptised child -- (anointed, as at the initiation, a mystery truly!) -- until the day when the child becomes a responsible unit, knowing good and evil" (BCW 9:156, cf 9:285-6).

(See also: God-parents, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

God-parents Christian law, strong in the Greek Orthodox Church, weaker in the Roman Catholic, and forgotten in the Protestant, based in the fact that once a spiritual teacher begins to teach the disciple, he takes on the student's karma in connection with the occult sciences until the student becomes in turn a master.

 The god-parents "tacitly take upon themselves all the sins of the newly baptised child -- (anointed, as at the initiation, a mystery truly!) -- until the day when the child becomes a responsible unit, knowing good and evil" (BCW 9:156, cf 9:285-6).

(See also: God-man, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

God-man Mankind after the change in the third root-race when animal humanity became incarnate devas because of the overshadowing incarnations of the manasaputras. Also manas (mind) in alliance with atma-buddhi, as contrasted with manas in alliance with the lower principles -- the latter being simply and merely human.

Sometimes used to describe the avataras appearing in the human race at periodic intervals, or again to describe buddhas or other spiritual-human beings.

(See also: God-man, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Goetia (Greek) (from goes enchanter, sorcerer)

Also goety. One who uses incantations by song or speech, one who holds others under the spell of sound, chants, or incantations. Porphyry condemns it as black magic, distinguishing it from theurgy or divine magic; and it has in general been so contrasted.

(See also: God-wisdom, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Definition and meaning of Act of God :

Act of God: An event arising out of natural causes with no human intervention which could not have been prevented by reasonable care or foresight. Examples are floods, lightning, and earthquakes. 

(Source: InsWeb)

Also see these pages: Act of God , Insurance, Insurance Sitemap, Insurance Dictionary - A

God (Gods) and Goddess (Goddesses) A generalizing term signifying all self-conscious entities superior to humankind, most often restricted to the three dhyani-chohanic kingdoms. The gods have differing places in nature's hierarchical scheme, running through innumerable grades of cosmic intelligences. Theosophy teaches that human beings who successfully reach the seventh round on this earth chain will pass, at the conclusion of this last round, into the kingdom superior to the human, that of the lowest dhyani-chohans.

One function of dhyani-chohans (gods or demigods of a lower type) is the watching over of all hierarchies below them, some being guardians of the human host, others guarding and protecting the less evolved kingdoms. The higher hierarchical ranges of gods or divinities in our universe "are Entities of the higher worlds in the hierarchy of Being, so immeasurably high that, to us, they must appear as Gods, and collectively -- God. . . . To the highest, we are taught, belong the seven orders of the purely divine Spirits; to the six lower ones belong hierarchies that can occasionally be seen and heard by men, and who do communicate with their progeny of the Earth; which progeny is indissoluble linked with them, each principle in man having its direct source in the nature of those great Beings, who furnish us with the respective invisible elements in us" (SD 1:133).

These beings belong to two general divisions, the arupa (formless) and the rupa (form) divinities. Those having forms should not be imagined as necessarily having human forms as in the ancient pantheons, yet rupa gods do have highly ethereal forms, some perhaps resembling the present human shape and others of quite different construction. But the arupa divinities are to our power of imagination "beings of pure intelligence and of understanding, pure essences, pure spirits, formless as we conceive form" (Fund 347).

Tradition has it that in the immemorial past, certain lower gods associated intimately with their children, humanity, on this globe; but as time went by and mankind became more immersed in material pursuits, people grew to become increasingly forgetful of their divine origin and of the presence of the shining divinities instructing and guiding their forebears, so that the gods and demigods were remembered only in mythologies and religious metaphors of the various races.

What did the ancients mean by their gods and goddesses? They were intended to represent the guiding intelligences present within or in back of all invisible secrets, as well as astral and physical manifestations of nature. During the third root-race there were beings who were

"endowed with the sacred fire from the spark of higher and then independent Beings, who were the psychic and spiritual parents of Man, as the lower Pitar Devata (the Pitris) were the progenitors of his physical body. That Third and holy Race consisted of men who, at their zenith, were described as, 'towering giants of godly strength and beauty, and the depositaries of all the mysteries of Heaven and Earth.'. . .

". . . the chief gods and heroes of the Fourth and Fifth Races, as of later antiquity, are the deified images of these men of the Third. The days of their physiological purity, and those of their so-called Fall, have equally survived in the hearts and memories of their descendants. Hence, the dual nature shown in those gods, both virtue and sin being exalted to their highest degree, in the biographies composed by posterity" (SD 2:171-2).

The primeval human deity worship degenerated during the fourth root-race (the Atlantean), the ideal at first becoming confused with the form, and the latter finally almost superseding the spirit -- thus in the relatively complete materialization of idea into form, the later Atlanteans in time began to worship themselves, what was to them the powers of nature appearing through themselves as human beings; the degeneration of the ideal proceeding so far that ultimately the worst kind of idol worship became relatively universal, except for the seed of the newer and somewhat higher mankind of the fifth root-race then beginning.

"The moderns are satisfied with worshipping the male heroes of the Fourth race, who created gods after their own sexual image, whereas the gods of primeval mankind were 'male and female,' " i.e., hermaphrodite (SD 2:135).

See also DEITY

(See also: God, Goddess, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

God-sparks When evolution starts on the downward arc, the spiritual essence appears as a vast host of individual monads or spiritual, conscious atoms which, because of their lack of the self-conscious human condition, are often termed unself-conscious god-sparks -- although this does not mean that they lack self-consciousness on their own plane, for these monads never leave their own planes.

To speak of a monad incarnating means that a ray projected from the monad "descends" from its plane in a minor avataric sense to inflame the nascent manasic element or power in lower beings, precisely as took place in the cases of the manasaputras.

These god-sparks, being the spiritual monads of living entities, gradually emanate from themselves the successive vestures through which they manifest, the process taking place serially and ladder-fashion on the downward arc; with the eventual result that, at the end of the ascending arc, the unself-conscious god-sparks become self-conscious gods, which means that the self-conscious humanity of them becomes linked self-consciously to the self-consciousness of the monads on their own plane.

(See also: God-sparks, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

God-sparks When evolution starts on the downward arc, the spiritual essence appears as a vast host of individual monads or spiritual, conscious atoms which, because of their lack of the self-conscious human condition, are often termed unself-conscious god-sparks -- although this does not mean that they lack self-consciousness on their own plane, for these monads never leave their own planes.

To speak of a monad incarnating means that a ray projected from the monad "descends" from its plane in a minor avataric sense to inflame the nascent manasic element or power in lower beings, precisely as took place in the cases of the manasaputras.

These god-sparks, being the spiritual monads of living entities, gradually emanate from themselves the successive vestures through which they manifest, the process taking place serially and ladder-fashion on the downward arc; with the eventual result that, at the end of the ascending arc, the unself-conscious god-sparks become self-conscious gods, which means that the self-conscious humanity of them becomes linked self-consciously to the self-consciousness of the monads on their own plane.

(See also: God-parents, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Lunar Gods. Called in India the Fathers, "Pitris" or the lunar ancestors.

They are subdivided, like the rest, into seven classes or Hierarchies, In Egypt although the moon received less worship than in Chaldea or India, still Isis stands as the representative of Luna-Lunus, "the celestial Hermaphrodite". Strange enough while the modern connect the moon only with lunacy and generation, the ancient nations, who knew better, have, individually and collectively, connected their "wisdom gods" with it. Thus in Egypt the lunar gods are Thoth, Hermes and Chons; in India it is Budha, the Son of Soma, the moon; in Chaldea Nebo is the lunar god of Secret Wisdom, etc., etc.

The wife of Thoth, Sifix, the lunar goddess, holds a pole with five rays or the five-pointed star, symbol of man, the Microcosm, in distinction from the Septenary Macrocosm. As in all theogonies a goddess precedes a god, on the principle most likely that the chick can hardly precede its egg, in Chaldea the moon was held as older and more venerable than the Sun, because, as they said, darkness precedes light at every periodical rebirth (or "creation") of the universe. Osiris although connected with the Sun and a Solar god is, nevertheless, born on Mount Sinai, because Sin is the Chaldeo-Assyrian word for the moon; so was Dio-Nysos, god of Nyssi or Nisi, which latter appelation was that of Sinai in Egypt, where it was called Mount Nissa.

The crescent is not - as proven by many writers - an ensign of the Turks, but was adopted by Christians for their symbol before the Mahommedans. For ages the crescent was the emblem of the Chaldean Astarte, the Egyptian Isis, and the Greek Diana, all of them Queens of Heaven, and finally became the emblem of Mary the Virgin. "The Greek Christian Empire of Constantinople held it as their palladium. Upon the conquest by the Turks, the Sultan adopted it . . . and since that, the crescent has been made to oppose the idea of the cross". (Eg. Belief.)

(See also: Lunar Gods, Theosophy, Spirituality, Body mind and Soul, Spiritual Dictionary, )

Sons of God An idea, containing divine as well as historic events, known among all ancient peoples.

In ancient Biblical Hebrew, these sons of the Divine or sons of God are called the Benei 'Elohim (sons of the 'elohim) who in Genesis 6 "descend" in order to gain experience by incarnation in astral-physical bodies. They are the so-called fallen angels, one class of which corresponds to manasaputras. Also used for those evolved beings, or men graduated from lower classes of human experience, who at a primordial period descended and taught humanity the arts and sciences which were preserved and afterwards practiced by the initiates of the different root-races. Again, used of men of the seventh root-race, who are to be born of immaculate parents when they appear ages hence.

Elsewhere these sons of God are mystically spoken of as sons of Light, for the various hierarchies generalized under these phrases are all emanations from the manifest or Third Logos.

(See also: Sons of God, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary)

The Name of God, In Welsh Enw Duw, written. This name was sounded at the birth of the universe, "whereupon latency flashed into existence more swiftly than the lightning reaches its home." This sacred word is given as O I W -- the Welsh w being a vowel, equivalent to the Sanskrit u. But in Cywydd Cyfrinach ("The Poem of the Secret," by Rhys Goch o Eryri, c. 11th century), a poem on this sacred word, we are told that the letters of it are to be taken from the words Awen and Menw, which would suggest the Sanskrit pranava Aum.

(See also: Name of God, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary)

OLD RELIGION (The): Italian Witchcraft, founded in the mid-14th century with the teachings of Aradia, the Holy Strega, and based upon the pre-Estruscian Italian belief system. The Old Religion is a worship of the "Source of All Things", through the personification of the Goddess and God. Also known as Strega, Stregheria, and La Vecchia Religione.

(See also: OLD RELIGION, Pagan Organisations, Paganism, Pagan Dictionary, Wicca, )

King

(See also: God name, Witchcraft, Wicca, Paganism, Pagan Dictionary)

A Christian theological definition of Religion according to CARM - The Christian Apologetics & Research Ministry:

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Religion

See also: Religion , Christianity, Body Mind and Soul