from their own sources:
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Incarnation Imbodiments of an entity or monad in a body of flesh, usually human. It is also used of avataras, buddhas, etc., in treating of the manifold mystery of the union of godhood and humanhood. This mystery, both among Hindus and Christians, is a distorted and anthropomorphic understanding of the teaching as to the presence of the unseen cosmic principles throughout all nature and man, as symbolized by the circle and cross.
Divine incarnations do not mean that a divine being seizes upon and occupies the body of a human being as by a kind of obsession; but that every person has within him the powers by which he can manifest his own innate divinity, and that a few people have these powers developed in a special degree. When properly understood, a truly divine incarnation, as in avataras, was one of the greatest of the mysteries of every archaic religious system."
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Chrestes,
Chrestos,
Chrestians (Greek)
chrestos. Applied by the Greeks as a title of respect equivalent to “the worthy.” Chrestes meant an interpreter of oracles. In the language of the Mysteries, a chrestos was a candidate or neophyte, and a christos (anointed) was an initiate. Christ is a mystical expression for the human inner god, while chrest is the good but as yet unregenerated nature; using here the language of the Mysteries, Christ may be likened to Dionysos, Osiris, or Krishna, who will deliver the suffering Chrest, mankind or Prometheus, in its trial. It is Christos that incarnates in Chrestos. These usages were taken over by the Gnostic schools out of which Christianity largely sprang, and there is abundant evidence to be found among the early Christian writers and the Gnostics themselves that the adherents originally called themselves Chrestians.
Christ. See CHRESTES; CHRISTOS; MESSIAH"
Salvation [from Latin salvatio from salvare to save] In Christianity, the saving of individual souls from supposed damnation, usually by faith in the Atonement. In theosophy, as concerns the individual, salvation is achieved by victory of his divine self over the illusions created by the contact of the intermediate nature with the lower planes. In this sense the serpent of Eden, Satan even, is man’s savior, as are Prometheus, Lucifer, etc. Mankind as a whole is saved by those manasaputras who descended into intellectually senseless mankind of the third root-race and who, by thus enlightening the minds of early humanity, became the elect custodians of the mysteries revealed to mankind by its divine teachers. Again, the Silent Watchers in their various grades, who refuse to pass on into a greater light and maintain their post for the protection and guidance of humanity, are saviors also. Yet no one can be saved by the vicarious merit of another; his salvation is achieved by means of that very free will and enlightened intelligence of his own through which he at first risks falling. But the great ones maintain the ideal which the multitude elect to follow, and thus light the path mankind will ultimately tread."
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Sin Evildoing, moral obliquity expressed in thought and act; in its relation to human evolution, it applies especially to the misuse of human creative powers which occurred after the fall into material existence. The procreative act, for example, in itself is not sinful, for this is but nature’s arrangement for the continuing of the human strain, but the abuse of this power, especially for black magical purposes. This truth has been perverted by Christian theology, which regards the procreative act as essentially sinful and permissible only as a concession to the “original sin” stamped upon us by our first parents in the Garden of Eden, and only to be purged by the Atonement.
The fall of man is symbolized in the zodiacal signs of Virgo-Scorpio, and it is mankind who has become the serpent of Genesis and thus causes daily and hourly the fall and sin of the celestial Virgin, who becomes the mother of gods and devils at the same time. But karma in one of its senses would be a better word for this: “Karma . . . means, as a synonym of sin, the performance of some action for the attainment of an object of worldly, hence selfish, desire, which cannot fail to be hurtful to somebody else” (SD 2:302n).
Sin (Chaldean) The moon; also the Babylonian and Assyrian moon deity called Enzu (the lord of wisdom) and Nannar (the illuminer). The wisdom is that of the lower manas, the reflection of the higher, and this wisdom can all too often become the dark wisdom of evildoing and sorcery. Temples to Sin were erected in all the principal cities of the two empires, named E-gish-shir-gal (house of the great light). The worship of the moon deity predominated at Ur and Harran, and he was portrayed as an old man with flowing beard, having the crescent as his symbol and 30 as his number. Sin was known as father of the gods, creator of all things; and some of the ancient nations held that the moon was parent of the sun, and that the moon in its turn was once eons ago a sun itself.
The name is likewise found in the Hebrew Sinay, commonly written Sinai — a moon-mountain, referring indirectly to the fact that all such places in ancient times which were named mountain of the moon or a similar title, were then centers of occult training and initiation, whether good or bad.
Referring to the forming of mankind, the Stanzas of Dzyan say: “Who perfects the last body? Fish, Sin, and Soma.” Soma was in Hindustan also a name of the moon, and fish refers to a similar fact — fishes often being taken as symbols of the productive power of the lunar influence because of their great fecundity. Fish, Sin, and the moon conjointly are the three symbols of the immortal Being (SD 1:263). As these symbols, among other things, stand for Pisces, karma, and the mother of terrestrial life, it would seem that the pilgrimage of the human monad through the halls of experience, and the completing of its evolution thereby, is indicated."
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Reimbodiment One of the fundamental propositions of the ancient wisdom. It may include reincarnation, metensomatosis, rebirth, etc. It means that a living entity or life-center takes a new imbodiment, not necessarily physical or on earth, and does so repeatedly. Nearly the same as metensomatosis, but the latter by convention refers to human imbodiments on earth.
See also REINCARNATION
Reincarnating Ego In the intermediate aspect of man’s being, manas-kama is the ordinary seat of human imbodied consciousness; the upper or aspiring part is buddhi-manas, the reincarnating ego, “that which undergoes periodical incarnation is the
Sutratma, which means literally the ‘Thread Soul.’ It is a synonym of the reincarnating Ego — Manas conjoined with
Buddhi — which absorbs the Manasic recollections of all our preceding lives” (Key 163). At death the lower part sinks into oblivion, and the reincarnating ego passes into devachan, carrying with it the noblest aspects of the person that was. In this state it remains within the monad, while the monad peregrinates from sphere to sphere, until the time comes for reincarnation on earth. When the monad, passing through the spheres, approaches the earth, the reincarnating ego slowly reawakes to self-conscious activity, and is drawn by the karmic seeds of affinity within itself to the earth, attracting itself to the human seed whereby it builds its coming physical imbodiment.
Reincarnation Reimbodiment; specifically reinfleshment, the repeated imbodiment of the reincarnating ego in vehicles of human flesh on this earth. The unexhausted desire for earth-life draws the ego back to this globe, where it gathers to itself the material for a reincarnation and thus is finally born from a human womb. The process is repeated almost numberless times until the evolution of the inspiriting monad has reached a stage when reincarnation is no longer required. The interval between successive incarnations may be roughly estimated at 100 times the length of the preceding earth-life — a rule obviously subject to many exceptions."
Sa-Sal - Encyclopedic Theosophical Glossary
