The double act of Oedipus and Sphinx unriddled

Book excerpt: Sphinx is Imagination lighting up our blind senses. She corresponds to Aether, or Spiritual Insight (Buddhi-Manas) opened up. There are two Oedipodes, a Divine Oedipus, being a ray of pure mind self-exiled from its celestial abode. And a Worldly Oedipus, a reflection of the same ray imprisoned in an impure body. Both are sentenced to suffer conjointly on earth. Inspired by the Imagination and Will of Divine Oedipus, animal man begins awakening his higher faculties. If he succeeds, he will ascend from star to star, from one world to another, circling onward to rebecome the once pure planetary Spirit that he had started from. Bereft of Ariadne’s thread of philosophy, Worldly Oedipus remains spiritually blind and unlearned, unable to escape from the labyrinth of matter. Enmeshed in the darkness of duality, his unmastered passions condemn him to involuntary exile from the solidarity of the One — a perfect recipe for drama. Sphinx is the greatest mystery of past, present, and future initiations. How the tetrad changing into a duad is explained by the triad. Man’s clinging to the form allowed the idea to be forgotten. Sphinx is the living palladium of humanity. But she devours only blind interpreters.