Sanskrit अवतार, from the root words ava “down”, and trí meaning to “pass” or “cross over”. Thusly, avātri to “pass down” or “descend.” The word signifies the passing down of a celestial energy, or an individualized complex of celestial energies, ( a celestial being).

From the Occult Glossary: “a human being who, at the time of such connexion of “heaven with earth” of divinity with matter, possesses no karmically intermediate or connecting link between the overshadowing entity and the physical body: i.e. no human soul karmically destined to be the inner masterOne who is skilled in the Wisdom of life, or one who is no l… More of the body thus born.

The intermediate link necessary, so that the human being-to-be may have the human intermediate or psychological apparatus fit to express the invisible splendor of this celestial descent, is supplied by the deliberate and voluntary entrance into the unborn child — and coincidently with the overshadowing of the celestial power — of the psychological or intermediate principle of one of the Greater Ones, who thus ‘‘completes’’ what is to be the pure and lofty human channel through which the ‘‘descending’’ divinity may manifest, this divinity finding in this high psychological principle a succiently evolved link enabling it to express itself in human form upon earth.

Hence an avatāra is one who has a combination of three elements in his being: an inspiring divinity; a highly evolved intermediate nature or soul, which is loaned to him and is the channel of that inspiring divinity; and a pure, clean, physical body. “In lay terms, an avatar which is used to express the higher entity in the physical plane – but it is of great importance to meditate on the long decryption, to overstand the significance of the term. It is not just a physical manifestation, it is a greater duty one must perform.