Maya

With the philosophical Hindus the elements are tamasa, i.e. unenlightened by intellect, which they obscure.

We now have to exhaust the question of the mystical meaning of primordial chaos and of the root principle, and show how they were connected in the ancient philosophies with Akasha, incorrectly translated ether, and also with Maya, illusion, of which Ishvara is the male aspect.

We shall speak further on of the intelligent principle, or rather of the invisible immaterial properties in the visible and material elements that sprang from the primordial chaos.

For what is the primordial chaos but ether? It is asked in Isis Unveiled.

The Brahmanda Purana is described as that which has declared in 12,200 verses the magnificence of the egg of Brahma, and in which an account of the future Kalpas is contained, as revealed by Brahma.

Quite so, and much more, perhaps.

In the Scandinavian cosmogony, placed by Professor Max Muller, in point of time, as far anterior to the Vedas, in the poem of Voluspa, the song of the prophetess, the mundane egg is again discovered in the phantom germ of the universe, which is represented as lying in the Ginnungagap, the cup of illusion, Maya, the boundless and void abyss.

In this world's matrix, formerly a region of night and desolation, Nefeldheim, the mist place, the nebular, as it is called now, in the astral light dropped a ray of cold light which overflowed this cup and froze in it.