Guardian of The Threshold - According To Theosophy

According To Theosophy

The Dweller of the Threshold (or Guardian of the Threshold) is a literary invention of the English mystic and novelist Edward Bulwer Lytton, found in his romance Zanoni (1842). Right after the novel, the term has obtained wide currency and usage in theosophical circles. The Guardian of the Threshold is a spectral figure and is the abstract of the debit and credit book of the individual. "It is the combined evil influence that is the result of the wicked thoughts and acts of the age in which any one may live, and it assumes to each student a definite shape at each appearance, being always either of one sort or changing each time" "This Dweller of the Threshold meets us in many shapes. It is the Cerberus guarding the entrance to Hades; the Dragon which St. Michael (spiritual will-power) is going to kill; the Snake which tempted Eve, and whose head will be crushed by the heel of the woman; the Hobgoblin watching the place where the treasure is buried, etc. He is the king of evil, who will not permit that within his kingdom a child should grow up, which might surpass him in power; the Herod before whose wrath the divine child Christ has to flee into a foreign country, and is not permitted to return to his home (the soul) until the king (Ambition, Pride, Vanity, Self-righteousness, etc.) is dethroned or dead." According to Max Heindel, the Dweller on the Threshold (also called Guardian of the Threshold), which every aspirant has to meet -usually at an early stage of his progress into the unseen worlds- is one of the main causes of obsession of men interested in occultism.