Āditi
(Āditi) A Sanskrit word meaning “not tied, free, unbroken, boundless.” In the VEDAS Aditi is the Great Mother of the deities of light. Her attributes are those of motherhood, spaciousness and luminosity. The word is derived from the root da, to bind, to which the negative prefix a- is attached.
“Aditi is Heaven, Aditi is the mid-region, Aditi is Mother and Father and Son. Aditi is all the gods, Aditi is the five human races; all that has been born and that is to be born” (Rg Veda I.89.10).
“She is the matrix and the Order, the cradle and the protection to whom men pray for assurance, guidance, for forgiveness and security for she is the ‘friend of all men’ (Rg V. VII.10.4). ‘The queen of righteousness, of powerful authority, the immovable” (Atharva-Veda VII.6.2.). Within her vast field of life is played out the drama of creation, the orderly materializing of the blueprint of Cosmic Order which the gods “vision” and establish in our space-time world (Rg V. IV.55.2). She is therefore the “queen of Order, the gracious guide and good protectress” (Yajur-Veda 1.5).
These extracts from the Vedas confirm all the hints given in The Secret Doctrine. Here Aditi is called “Cosmic Space” (SD I:53 fn.). The “Boundless or Infinite Space” (SD I:99). Aditi “is the primitive light, the Akasa of the phenomenal world” (SD II:42, fn). Aditi is indeed MULAPRAKRTI. All this is summed up in the following passage:
- The Upper Aether or Akasa, is the celestial virgin and mother of every existing form and being, from whose bosom, as soon as “incubated” by the Divine Spirit, are called into existence Matter and Life, Force and Action. Aether is the Aditi of the Hindus, and it is Akasa. (SD I:332 and also p. 527, fn.)
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