Sunrise

War-Cry of the Soul

Kenneth Morris

I will give you the story of Creation, as it was taught by the ancient Druids in Wales. It is to be taken as symbolical, because that high story cannot be expressed in any other way; you cannot put the vast facts of the life of the Soul in any other language than that of symbol or parable.

They taught that at the dawn of time and the Universe, the Lonely, the Spirit, God, awoke from Its sleep of ages in what is called Ceugant, the Cycle of Infinity. The Universal Night had ended, the Universal Day was to begin; there had been an endless series of Universal Days and Nights before. To call things out of latency into manifestation, That Lonely One chanted Its own name; whereupon, as it says, these worlds and systems "flashed into being more swiftly than the lightning reaches its home."

Then the Blessed Ones, that we call in Welsh the Gwynfydolion, the Host of Souls, that had slept throughout the Night, awoke in Cylch y Gwynfyd, the Cycle of Bliss. And they looked out over the spaces, and beheld that there was a height they had not attained. They saw far off the Lonely in Ceugant; and it appeared to them that the bliss of their own cycle of existence could be nothing to them but worthlessness and bitter deprivement, while they were not in union with That.

So they took council together, and were for riding forth, and taking Infinity by storm. In their winged and flaming cars they rode: Dragons of Beauty, their bugles sounding the Grand Hai Atton, the war-cry of the Soul. The depths of space lay before and below them: the infinite darkness of the material world — Inchoation, the Cycle of Necessity; little they heeded its perils in their heroic pride, and with that Light shining above them. They declared war on God, not of hostility, but of compelling love.

But it was infinite darkness they had to traverse. Crossing that abysm, oblivion took hold on them; they were sloughed in the vast mires of matter; they forgot their origin and high purpose, and fell into incarnation. Through long cycles of time they climbed through the lower worlds — elemental, mineral, vegetable, and animal — till they reached the state of humanity.

Then it became always possible for them to remember: to don the grand armor again, and fight their way upwards. It became always possible for them, listening deeply, to hear in the silence within their own being the Grand Hai Atton that called them forth at first. And at last all shall hear it and remember, and rise up; and the war shall be carried to the Gates of Infinity; and triumphant at last we shall enter in.

(From Sunrise magazine, August 1954; copyright © 1954 Theosophical University Press)



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