The Rona Scott Gallery
Rona Scott was an accredited Australian artist, and an art teacher, who frequently exhibited at the Von Bertogh Gallery in Newcastle.
Rona Scott was an accredited Australian artist, and an art teacher, who frequently exhibited at the Von Bertogh Gallery in Newcastle. Her work appeared in exhibitions alongside the works of well-known artists including Pro Hart and Salvador Dali. Rona was a member of the Theosophical Society for several decades. The latter part of her life was spent in Sydney, where she painted a set of over 70 paintings called ‘Cosmic Birth’ in the short space of a couple of years during the early 1980s. These were inspired by the Stanzas of Dzyan in Madame Blavatsky’s magnum opus, The Secret Doctrine, and more than half of the series is included in this gallery. These paintings showcase her remarkably vivid use of colour along with her individual interpretation of the beginnings of the universe. Rona Scott-Abbott passed away in 2006, leaving a substantial legacy which we are pleased to present online.
1
Introduction
Stanzas of Dzyan
1A
The eternal Mother-Parent, Space,
Shrouded within her robes invisible,
Had slumbered once again for seven ages.
Space, everlasting genetrix, the present
Cause of the All, but understood by none.
Of substance and the mighty Universe
The Mystic Root, the sole eternity,
Abstract, immovable, dimensionless.
2
Existent in and of itself alone,
Untouched by aught within its bosom, create
Or uncreate, the Causeless Cause of Spirit
And of matter - it was and ever will be.
2A
The SAGES teach Root-Nature is the Soul
And Vesture of the One, the Infinite,
(The Hindus name it Mulaprakriti),
Primordial Substance and the formless plinth
Of all phenomenal throughout the spheres
Whence bright Akasha spreads its radiant beams.
2B
TIME was not, for it lay asleep upon
The timeless breast of infinite duration.
Earth’s veil, illusion, measures up the hours
Of life’s parade of consciousness as man.
3A
Then buttressing the mirage, seeks to enslave
The sun's high majesty, the fateful stars,
Spaces his petty markers on the world,
And calls it time.
3B
As, in the DEPTHS of sleep, there is no thought,
No will, no feeling, mind is functionless,
So, in Pralaya’s tranquil obscuration,
The Mind of Being falls into abeyance,
Though ever potent to renew its force
When Heaven’s myriad hosts are emanated
to serve as bearers of divine commands;
A hierarchy enacting Nature’s Laws.
4
The SEVEN Ways to bliss were not, nor yet
The causes of world-sorrow, for no soul
Subsisted to produce its glamorous snares.
Seven Paths there are to blissful Non-Existence;
As yet they were not, for the cosmic realms
Were but an archetypal proto-thought
Embedded deep within Divinity.
5
DARKNESS alone now filled the Boundless All,
For Father, Mother, Son were once more One.
The Son, unmanifest, non-designate,
Slept on, his hour not come to set in motion
The round of birth and death, man's pilgrimage.
Darkness is Father-Mother; Light their Son.
5B
INFINITE, causeless, boundless, and alone,
The Source and Resolution of Existence
Sleeps dreamless in the Universal Mother,
While 'neath oblivion's spell, the pulse of Life,
unconscious, throbs throughout the Omnipresence.
6
Now the slow pulsing beat of dormant life
Bursts the last strand of Seven Eternities,
Thrills through Infinitude;
6B
The changeless LAW (6B) above both gods and men,
Shapes the recurrent round of Nights and Days,
The regnant cycles of supreme Brahma -
An AGE of showing forth, an age of rest.
9A
Thus Father Mother, Son, the Sacred Three
Perforce emergent from the One Alone,
Take to themselves the Universe-to-be,
Becoming Four. Yet from the past decayed
Survive the accreted deeds, desires and thoughts
Of galaxies outbreathed in former ages;
10
The Four become the Seven.
The radiant ESSENCE
Sunders the Seven in two, one part above,
13
Darkness is pure Spirit, ROOT of Light,
That LIGHT (13) which is but Darkness visible,
A jostling crowd of scurrying shadow-shapes,
Transient phantasms born of Maya’s womb.
17
Father and Mother jointly spin a WEB
The loftier filament anchored fast in Spirit,
illumined by the Darkness which is Light,
The Lower terminal merged in Matter’s shades.
THUS is the Universal fabric woven
Out of Two Substances which are but One,
SVABHAVAT unformed plasma’s inmost heart.
18
The FATHER'S Fiery Breath imparts dilation,
The Mother’s Aqueous Exhalation shrinks.
The Web expands, contracts; alternate motion.
With speed as swift as light bestows vibration
On every atom.
19
Svabhavat, Father-Mother, Spirit-Substance
Sends forth the electric force of Cosmic Will
To fortify the atoms with resistance.
Thus is the stamp of Universal Mind.
19A
Embossed by Fohat on each particle
of THAT which constitutes the parent Web,
While, faithfully, each particle gives back
The portrait-pattern of Primeval Light.
20A
By this transcendent knowledge do the SONS
Of the empyreal Buddhas learn to avoid
The dual modalities fixed for their choosing -
The sorrow and the bondage of the throng
Found in Creation, or the UNRUFFLED bliss
And freedom of the unborn Unity.
22A
FROM the effulgency of glorious light
Leap into space the re-awakened Forces.
First, form the Ever-Darkness comes to birth
The unitary uncompounded Ray,
The Father, he who spears the Egg of space.
Within the boundless MOTHER. Springs from the Egg
The One, who is the Son, fond integration
That binds creation, Universal Mind.
22B
Next does the RADIAL length of the enclosure.
Impress its six-fold pattern on the ring,
In turn embedded in the mind of man,
By which he calculated his cosmic cycles.
Thence UNIVERSAL Mind projects the star.
Six-pointed.
22C
For its heavenward scintillation
Delineates in all its pristine splendour
The conscious powers of its illustrious Sire,
The while its earthward beams reflected its glory
Within the worlds of Form.
22F
But the source of man is his celestial PROTOTYPE,
From whom descend the Forms, or medial stages
In which Divinity immures itself,
DISPERSED as Sparks in individual shapes.
Thus is he termed a Sacred Beast, for in.
The bestial frame is housed the immaculate glow.
23A
The DIVERSE modes of Elemental life
Now differentiate, the hierarchy
That limns the outward moulds - all, all of these,
Fresh from the heaven of coherent Light,
Origin of the inchoate tracery.
23B
Whence comes the elaborate precipitation of LIFE immortal caged within a form.
23D
Subject to their decree, the Sparks
imprint the paradigm of their Commanders.
From point to line, from triangle to cube,
In endless permutations of contrivance.
24
From Darkness emanates ADI-NIDANA
The binding rope of causal principles
Residing in the Wholeness – numberless,
Yet root of numbers, and the very SELF
Of latency, Svabhavat.
24B
These are the formless Four, the Unity
With Father, Mother, Son the hidden fount
of Karmic order, neither manifest
Nor uncreated, but FIELD of potent forces
empowering the Builders to erect
within the visible a MACROCOSM.
24C
The Triad in the insubstantial cipher,
Formless Quaternity, SYMBOLIC Square,
Is the directory of the Seven Fighters,
(The Eighth omitted – universal MIND).
Impressors of the prototypal flow
of variation on the plastic sheath
Of OBJECTIVITY, (24CR) revealing clear
Inner projections on the outer worlds.
24D
The POWERS of the Seven close bonded are
To the external children of the Sun,
Who is the rejected Eighth.
24E
No PLANET he,
But, fixed immovable within the hub
Of his titanic KINGDOM, faces in turn
Each circling orb in its subservient round
As he revolves in lonely majesty,
Lord of their fate and all that on them dwells.
25
Now FATHER, Mother, Son, the causal Three,
Unformed themselves, compelled, must usher in
The patterned energies that implicate
The structural framework constituting form.
25A
The FIGHTERS from beyond externalise
The TRIUNE overflow of sevenfold sound.
27C
The heavenly STEED with Thought the rider, he,
Sprung from the Dual in the Unmanifest,
Not raw, blind force, nor god, but living power.
Passing like lightning through the CHARGE-laden clouds.
With three cyclopean strides, the planes above,
The planes below TRAVERSING, he designs
The triple modes of consciousness, five more,
27R
The MESSENGER lifts his compelling VOICE.
The sparks respond, innumerable points
In Space, each symbol of God-given Selfhood,
Yet melded by the celestial gravitation
Of their loved Maker travelling through them all.
28
The SEEN and unseen cosmic energies,
Now aggregates the elemental atoms
Into their fiery whirlpools, thus conveying
The primary impulse to coagulate
Into the shining spheres and wheeling orbs
Whose inward harmony projects itself
In ordered sequence round a paternal sun.
28B
The LOGOI, emblematically portrayed
In intertwined triplicities, reveal
The sixfold paths of trackless void, direct
Each galaxy to its predestined station,
But relevant to one sole focal point
Around whose stainless light Creation turns.
30
THREE strides already taken, now the five
Transport the might of Fohat through the subtler
States of consciousness and being.
31B
31C
32
FOHAT the swift end radiant one begets
The seven Laya Centres, zero points.
Where differentiation has its birthing,
Whene’er the outward tide of life full flowing,
33
FOHAT the swift end radiant one begets.
The seven Laya Centres, zero points.
Where differentiation has its birthing,
Whene’er the outward tide of life full flowing,
35A
Polarised into male and female forces,
He builds the little wheels of FIERY dust,
Imposing on them everlasting laws
By which the like repels, the unlike attracts,
Forbidding harmful contact, aggregates
And fuses the ingredients into orbs.
The ejected impulse of desire expands,
Imparting powers of subsequent creation.
36A
Thus, at the FOURTH Eternity, the Sons
Who ply the faculty of mental building
Receive the charge: "Bestow your images
On the most recent forms on earth created.
Give of your heritage of noble mind
To these, my living creatures, and endow
Their lowly sheathes with God-like consciousness
Of SELF-HOOD and the potency of thought.
Let reason and Intelligence be theirs
As they are yours; so may they wholly wield
The two-edged weapon of free will and choice".
(That double axe of Minos' Cretan Isle).
One third refuses, but two thirds obey,
Hence, the first war in heaven, then on earth
By correspondence as it is seen in man,
The higher ever striving to resist
Its coalescence with the lower vestures.
Such is the curse of falling into flesh.
The latent must its actual reveal,
The in-turned externality should face
To know itself, or ever be in nescience.
With incarnation suffering is born,
For action and reaction, cause, effect,
Serve as instructors of the wayfarer
Through his long circuit of necessity.
39
From the first ray that pierced the mother-Deep
Derive the many rays – TOTALITY
A hinterland relating each to all
And all to One. The Sparks, still undetached,
Are but the temporary concentrations
Of the pure essence in the uniting Flame.
Life precedes form and life survives decay
Or integration of discrete encasements.
40
Where’er the One great Darkness manifests,
The ONE becomes the two. Relationship
Produces thence the Three, the Triune Root
Of consciousness of self that comprehends.
The macrocosmic plenum, Mahat Atman,
The Three-in-One, the Universal Mind,
The Light illuminating every atom
And every soul that enters into flesh.
41
Each timeless SPARK, surviving every change
Of outer guise, aeonically sustained
Within the transcendental web of power
Issued from Father-Mother, is fast anchored
By the immortal triple thread of light;
This is the three-tongued flame that never dies.
As KINDLED lamps maintain their luminescence.
By drawing on the golden life beneath,
So does the newly-born quaternary
That FILLS the lower worlds with living forms
Imbibe the sweet elixir from its fount.
‘Tis but one MOON reflects its argent rays
In many streams; the myriad rippled glints
Must share a communal nativity.
42
Thy SPARK O man, hangs by the finest thread
of Fohat from that ardent immanence.
42A
It journeys through the Seven Worlds of Maya,
Assuming in the first the hardened cloak
Of metal and of STONE; the SECOND sees
A metamorphosis into the Plant;
After full seven rounds of permutation,
The SACRED Animal appears. In FINE
From these combining attributes comes Man,
The Thinker. Who shall form him? Seven and One -
The SEVEN Breaths breathed by the fiery Dragon
Of Wisdom, AUTHOR of the Seven Rays,
Who, stirred, awakened, quickened by the One,
The Light from Darkness, furnishes the urge
To grow, diversify, elaborate.
42C
FORM upon form, gestated by the Ocean,
That watery cauldron of emergent Life:
Then knowledge from the Universal Mind,
Reflected, like the moonlight from the sun;
Lastly, hallowed desire, the Soma force
That presses onwards to divinity.
43
The TENUOUS thread that links the man of shadows
To his Monadic source, his Silent Watcher,
Dhyan Chohan, Lord, his own undying Master,
Ever increases in its radiant STRENGTH.
With each grade of material existence.
Thus will the common light of day be changed
Into the dazzling blaze of noontide glory.
Unnumbered
