Chains and Rounds

Edward Lewis Gardner (1869 - 1969).

15 Pages | Reprinted 1966, 1975, 1991 | Mini-booklet | The Theosophical Publishing House, London | No ISBN.

From the Appendix to The Web of the Universe.

A study of the Earth Chain is a study in essence of the whole Scheme. Just as in embryology one may trace the evolution of the physical form through all the earlier stages of development from the simple cell, so in the first three Rounds of our Chain the work of the first three Chains is recapitulated. On these Rounds certain work is done rapidly that took untold ages of effort on the earlier chains. The Scheme works onwards to the Climax of its involution in the fourth Round of its fourth Chain. The Rounds are the big and important divisions of a Chain's manifestation.

From page 3:

OUR TERRENE SCHEME

" In each Planetary Scheme there are seven successive incarnations or circuits of the great Life Waves from the Solar Logos. On each Chain, from the first onwards, all the stages of consciousness known as the kingdoms of nature, from the elemental to the human, are present. The broad rule appears to be that, for the span of a Chain, a given impulse of the Logoic consciousness functions through the forms of one kingdom only. "