They are latent germs of force centers and manifest subjectively; they warm and vitalize groups of forms; they flower forth and express themselves through the medium of a form, or another hierarchy. These hierarchies are all interrelated and are negative or positive to each other as the case may be.

As is stated in the Secret Doctrine, this hierarchy is the nursery for the incarnating Jivas; (S. D., I, 238.) and it carried in it the germs of the Lives which achieved the human stage in another solar system, but were not able to proceed beyond that owing to the coming in of pralaya, which projected them into a state of latency. The condition of the hierarchy is similar, only on a cosmic scale, to the condition of the seeds of human life held in a state of obscuration during an interchain period. The three other hierarchies dealt with (first, second, and third) were those who have (in previous kalpas of logoic manifestation) passed beyond the human stage altogether. They are, therefore, the formless groups, as the remaining are the rupa groups or those having forms.

The fourth Creative Hierarchy, or the ninth, must ever be regarded in this solar system as occupying what might be considered as the third place,

• First, the Lives or the three Persons of the Trinity.
• Second, the Prototypes of man, the seven Spirits.
• Third, man or the lowest manifestation of the self-conscious Spirit aspect.

This needs to be carefully considered and has no reference to the form aspect but solely to the nature of the lives expressing themselves through other lives who are also self-conscious, or fully intelligent. This, certain of the hierarchies are not. [1202]

The four lower hierarchies are all concerned with manifestation in the three worlds, or in the dense physical body of the solar Logos. They are those who can discard or pass through the etheric body of the solar Logos and take forms composed of either gaseous, liquid, or dense substance. The others cannot. They cannot fall into physical generation.

Students must bear in mind that from the standpoint of the Logos, the solar Angels on the mental plane (the fifth subplane of the cosmic physical plane) are in physical incarnation, and what is called the "second fall" applies to this. The first fall has reference to the taking of a form of cosmic etheric matter, such as is the case with the Heavenly Men, the prototypes of the human jivas. In this latter case the bodies used are called "formless" from our standpoint, and are "vital bodies" animated by cosmic prana. In the case of ourselves and the remaining groups, the forms are composed of substance of the three lower planes (that which the Logos does not regard as principle) and, therefore, matter responding still to the vibration of the earlier system. This means that the four lower hierarchies are links between the life of the past and of the future. They are the present. They had not finished their contacts with the active intelligent principle of the preceding kalpa, and so must continue such contacts in this. They will work out of it in this system, the four will become the three and they will then be the three higher arupa hierarchies of the next system.

Before continuing our consideration of the particular hierarchies, it is necessary to point out that in these hierarchies, certain of them are termed "dominant hierarchies" and others "subsidiary hierarchies." By this is meant that certain of them are in this solar system expressing themselves more fully than the others, and this necessarily entails the consequence that their vibration is more to be felt than that of the subsidiary groups. [1203]