Theos-Talk Archives (February 2002 Message tt00762)

The origine of the word ether or aether the way it later showed up 
in Blavatsky's Secret Doctrine is what early alchemists called the 
Quintessence which to them was the fifth element, a power or essence 
that bound in a unity the otherwise separate four elements. 

Quintessence was synonymous with elixir, mercury of the Philosophers 
and etheric. The Quintessence was said to be semi-material and 
visible to certain persons. The four elements, the fifth mmed 
Quintessence and two other unnamed elements formed the Seven Cosmical 
Elements. These were held as conditional modifications and aspects of 
one ciement, the source of Akasha itself.

Akasha or Akasa was used in occultism and theosophy as an equivalent 
of the ancient term "aether. The word is the Sanskrit term for "all 
pervasive space." Akasha is also called Soniferous Ether. 
Theosophical doctrine links it to Quintessence. Accordmg to 
Blavatsky, the Akasha forms the anima mundi, the soul of the world. 
Through it, divine thought was allowed to manifest in matter. The 
anima mundi constitutes the soul and spirit of mankind. It produces 
mesmeric, magnetic operations of nature." Blavatsky introduced the 
concept of Akasha in the early mentieth century and connected it to 
the other notions of the universal life force, such as the Sidereal 
Light of the Rosicrucians, Levi's Astral Light and the Odic Force of 
Von Reichenbach. Astral Light is held by the occultists as a 
manifestation of the Aether, which is not to be confused with the 
ether of the modem physicists. Aether however can be linked to the 
Etheric of the occultists. Etheric was to them the force or energy 
that gives life within our cosmos. The influence of the etheric 
forces on inert matter creates the diversities of natural phenomena.

While the term ether crops up in Keely's phraseology around the time 
that it was widely researched to do so, Bloomfield-Moore admitted 
that it was from a particular book that both she and Keely discovered 
that "it was the ether that he had imprisoned, and for years after he 
confined his attention to efforts to keep the ether in an engine, 
supposing the ether itself to be the energy induced.


Bri.