Emanationism - Occultism

Occultism

Emanationism is a common teaching found occult, esoteric and metaphysical writings. According to (Owen, 2005):

Theosophy draws on Neoplatonic emanationism, in particular the concept of separation from and return to the Absolute, and reworks the Eastern concepts of karma and reincarnation to provide an evolutionary theory of both humankind and the universe.

Theosophy teaches that human beings and all organisms including animals and all matter "flow" from a pure spiritual formation in the absolute to a material one over time to become materialised but later will return to the absolute after the cosmic cycle of life.

As Morgan summarises: "The Secret Doctrine laid out an emanationist view of the development of the physical universe, a process of ebb and flow in which spirit gradually unfolded itself in matter, attaining consciousness, and returning to spirit in a higher and more realised form." According to the emanationist cosmology of Madame Blavatsky all monads emerge from divine unity at the beginning of a cosmic cycle and return to this source at its close.

Blavatsky in her book The Key to Theosophy (1889) wrote that: "We believe in a universal divine principle, the root of all, from which all proceeds, and within which all shall be at the end of the great cycle of being."

Samael Aun Weor had taught emanationism from his studies with the Kabbalah and Gnosticism. He mapped out a complex esoteric cosmology with matter flowing from different planes of existence all existing in the absolute. As (Dawson, 2007) comments:

As with esoteric thought in general, Weor holds that the universe originated in the ordering activity of the absolute upon chaotic primordial matter, giving rise to (emanating) the subsequent planes of the created order (Pleroma).