Karma lipikas

 

 

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Lipika

Lipika (devanāgarī: लिपिक) is a Sanskrit word that means "scribe". In Hindu thought the lipikas (also referred to as the four Maharājas) are gods that regulate Karma. Mme. Blavatsky defined them as follows:

Lipikas (Sk.). The celestial recorders, the “Scribes”, those who record every word and deed, said or done by man while on this earth. As Occultism teaches, they are the agents of KARMA-the retributive Law.

Contents

1 General description

2 The four Maharajas

2.1 According to Besant and Leadbeater

3 Lipikas and Astrology

4 Further reading

5 Notes

General description

The Lipika are a hierarchy connected with the "recording" of karma. Mme. Blavatsky wrote:

The Lipi-ka, from the word lipi, “writing,” means literally the “Scribes.” Mystically, these Divine Beings are connected with Karma, the Law of Retribution, for they are the Recorders or Annalists who impress on the (to us) invisible tablets of the Astral Light, “the great picture-gallery of eternity”—a faithful record of every act, and even thought, of man, of all that was, is, or ever will be, in the phenomenal Universe. As said in “Isis,” this divine and unseen canvas is the BOOK OF LIFE.

As with all the hierarchies, there are different "degrees" of lipikas in the highest, intermediate, and lower worlds:

The Lipika . . . are the Spirits of the Universe, whereas the Builders are only our own planetary deities. The former belong to the most occult portion of Cosmogenesis, which cannot be given here. Whether the Adepts (even the highest) know this angelic order in the completeness of its triple degrees, or only the lower one connected with the records of our world, is something which the writer is unprepared to say, and she would incline rather to the latter supposition. Of its highest grade one thing only is taught: the Lipika are connected with Karma—being its direct Recorders.

In a passage of the The Secret Doctrine Mme. Blavatsky describes them in a way that resembles the Primordial Seven who are the Seven Rays:

As it is the Lipika who project into objectivity from the passive Universal Mind the ideal plan of the universe, upon which the “Builders” reconstruct the Kosmos after every Pralaya, it is they who stand parallel to the Seven Angels of the Presence, whom the Christians recognise in the Seven “Planetary Spirits” or the “Spirits of the Stars;” for thus it is they who are the direct amanuenses of the Eternal Ideation—or, as called by Plato, the “Divine Thought.”[4]

The Lipika "make an impassible barrier between the personal EGO and the impersonal SELF. . . . They circumscribe the manifested world of matter within the RING “Pass-Not.”

They are also connected to the close of the maha-manvantara:

The Lipika proceed from Mahat and are called in the Kabala the four Recording Angels; in India, the four Maharajas, those who record every thought and deed of man; they are called by St. John in the Revelation, the Book of Life. They are directly connected with Karma and what the Christians call the Day of Judgment; in the East it was called the Day after Mahamanvantara, or the “Day-Be-With-Us.”

Stanza IV.6 call the Lipikas "the second seven", that is, the hierarchy that emanates after the primordial seven:

Then the Second Seven, who are the Lipika, produced by the three (Word, Voice, and Spirit).

The primordial seven being on the highest manifested plane (frequently referred to as the third), the lipika appear on the fourth plane, the highest of our Planetary Chain:

The Lipika are on the plane corresponding to the highest plane of our chain of globes.