Vedic Deities
Prefatory
An introduction to Vedic Gods and Goddesses must be an attempt to enlarge upon the idea of their esoteric symbolism in the term of the mind to whatever extent possible, and to extricate the secret principle and movement of their spiritual importance, not only in the ritualistic traditions of past ages, but in the modern lives of a people in their twilight of existence and cultural decadence. The Veda is a repository of a great spiritual knowledge, documented but well hidden through a ritualistic symbolism so that only a trained eye can see the symbol and decipher its esoteric meaning. That humanity will have to remain distant from its influence until it has the drive or impulsion to dive deep into the mysteries of our ancient wisdom and seek its meaning of existence in its infinite wealth of knowledge is a painful truth, but we must for the moment keep our focus on the strength of a few individuals who dare the impossible adventure in this high pursuit of higher divine knowledge to find there our reposing ground as well as our governing principle of life.
Mythological symbolism of the Vedic age is representative of the psychological aspects of the Gods and Goddesses, their spiritual as well as occult functioning and secret movements towards a higher synthetic working, but most of the literature available to us on this subject is mostly a western interpretation, arising out of dubious scholarship, insufficient knowledge, misplaced judgement and lack of a living experience. Western Indology has contributed to the decline of quality research on the subject of Vedic Deities by its overt obsession with the symbols, and unable to decipher or even remotely understand their esoteric sense, it has replaced the native movement of the Riks with the abracadabra of its facile tongue, a derivation and interpretation so inexorably stupid and wantonly mischievous that we are bound by our Kshatriya temper, not only to respond in kind by forceful argument of spiritual logic, but also attempt to devise a native pattern and method to decipher the ancient symbols of the Vedic age for the mankind to better see and more properly appreciate or even enter into their esoteric spirit.
The foundation of Vedic knowledge is spiritual, not mental, and an effort proceeding out of intellectual labour and based merely on external data is bound to be a failure, though for a period of time may dominate as indisputable knowledge of a crude and unrefined mental authority, the luminous symbol of the Vedic knowledge obscured by a cheap parlour trick of an intellectual sidelight. We must dissuade ourselves from following the Western ambivalence and its academic as well as moral authority on the subject of Veda, and counter it by a spiritual synthesis to be worked out first in ourselves before imparting it to the rest of humanity, and even before that, to those who are ready to receive its high truth and wide spiritual embrace.
Neither the founding principle of the Vedic Deities could be approached by their more external characteristics and imageries, for the Deities themselves are expressions of a profound Truth and Power of a creative Gnosis, and they have emanated out of the heart of the highest divine Light and incarnated into mythical legends and spiritual lores and turned themselves into high mountains and massive rivers for men to draw from their immense spiritual as well as material wealth their succour and sustenance. We are bound to them as they are bound to us by a spiritual bond of the all-pervading Spirit; they are an integral part of our social and cultural evolution, and through them we see our inner truth and hidden treasure, a native viewpoint ingrained in our very being, which the Western mind sees as superstition and hallucination and rushes to prove that the Vedic cycle is nothing more than a stray community of philistines who invented the meaningless rituals and unpractical beliefs. That it also makes a conciliatory note and seems to admit part of the Riks as valid or as of having some truth based on experience is too little as a gesture of recognition, nor are we willing to admit such a meagre and insufficient viewpoint of the Western indologists on the Vedic mythology and its indefinable structure.
We are in a need of a higher authority to refer to and receive from, and what better authority could lead us into knowledge and spiritual illumination than the secret presiding Deity of the Veda itself! It is in the inner Yagna and self-sacrifice to a higher Ideal lies the secret of our ascent into the ancient and timeless Vedic Spirit, from which mankind unconsciously draws its spiritual as well as life impulse but a self-aware Yogin harnesses the occult energies of the dominant deities in the body of a higher framework and replenishes the human mould with an august strength of the Spirit and prepares mankind to a divine living upon earth. This is the intended consequence of our efforts too, for which we must pass through the necessary process ourselves and attempt to live in ourselves the wider sense of the illimitable splendours of the Vedic Truth.
We are devoted to a series on the Vedic Deities in which we shall attempt to bring forth the individual as well as collective attributes and functioning of each deity, and so attempt to explain their importance to the pursuit of a higher, divine life.
