---

Senzar The Mystery of the Mystery Language, Part 1

By John Algeo

---

An Example Of Senzar

Is Senzar quite unrecoverable, or is it possible that we have it all about us? In particular, can we have had a Senzar text lying under our noses ever since the publication of  The Secret Doctrine? The proem to that work begins with these words:

An Archaic Manuscript -- a collection of palm leaves made impermeable to water, fire, and air, by some specific unknown process -- is before the writer's eye. On the first page is an immaculate white disk within a dull black ground. On the following page, the same disk, but with a central point. (I, 1)

Later more symbols from the manuscript are described and reproduced:

The first illustration being a plain disk A, the second one in the Archaic symbol shows  a disk B with a point in it -- the first differentiation in the periodical manifestations of the ever-eternal nature, sexless and infinite ... In its third stage the point is transformed into a diameter, thus C It now symbolizes a divine immaculate Mother-Nature within the all-embracing absolute Infinitude. When the diameter line is crossed by a vertical one D , it becomes the mundane cross. Humanity has reached its third Root-Race; it is the sign for the origin of human life to begin. When the circumference disappears and leaves only the + it is a sign that the fall of man into matter is accomplished, and the FOURTH race begins. (I, 4-5)

From the left to the right A - B - C - D 

One document that we are told is written in Senzar is the palm-leaf manuscript of the Stanzas of Dzyan. The content of the manuscript is described as these and other visual symbols. Of course, it is possible that the symbols are simply illustrations for a text of a more conventional sort, written in an alphabet or ideographic script also of a more conventional sort. But it is equally possible that these symbols -- these circles and lines -- are the "hieroglyphic cipher," the "geometrical figures and symbols" of Senzar. And indeed, the latter seems more likely, as the cut of Ockham's razor. Moreover, the version of cosmogenesis in the Book of Dzyan is said to be "hieroglyphic or pictorial" (CW XIV, 206), an apt description of these symbols.

In her discussion of myths about the origins of the gods, Blavatsky quotes a sentence from the Book of Dzyan (I, 434):

[Note from the editor: these symbols could not be reproduced on our JOOMLA template. Instead and for all clarity a photo of this particular paragraph is placed here,]

Most of the geometrical symbols in that sentence stand primarily for numbers in an obvious way. The first five represent 31415, the number of pi (the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter: 3.1415). The next four stand for 4311 or 432, representing the number of years in a cycle totaling 4,320,000. The last two are more general symbols, zero representing the world boundary or ring pass not, and the point representing the nondimensional, unmanifested first logos. This sentence shows the use Blavatsky has described of geometrical symbols -- that is, Senzar -- in the Book of Dzyan.

Most significantly, Blavatsky speaks of "the 'Mystery-language' of the prehistoric ages, the language now called SYMBOLISM" (I, 309). If the "Mystery-language" is Senzar, then Senzar is symbolism -- a system of symbols that are traditional, secret in their interpretation, but also known all over the world. The symbols HPB describes from the palm-leaf manuscript are precisely the symbols we find from Polynesia to the caves of the Pyrenees, from the oldest rock carvings of Africa to present-day dream symbolism. They are truly a universal language. Senzar -- in the Book of Dzyan.